“optimistic (people) are more likely to create their own luck”

This was a great quote I read in a #BNET article yesterday, and yes it had me up all night thinking, “What if all job seekers behaved this way?” Now before you take major offense, stop and think about your attitude and approach to finding a new job. You don’t have to be a displaced worker. No, all job seekers from Executive level to college grads fall into my post. Most people I connect with, literally dozens on a daily basis, for the most part don’t allow for much work, optimism and even fun in their job search. Many people tend to put in little effort and have an unrealistic expectation that “HR” or a “Headhunter” will just pick their resume out of a sea of paper/emails/HRIS profiles and, wah-lah I am hired.

The problem with this false expectation is that people don’t realize just how many OTHER people are looking for a new job or looking to change jobs, so any great employment brand or true recruiting professional is inundated with 100’s (if not thousands) of applicants each day. To that end, those who are bitter or show less than pleasant attitudes, lazy in their application or follow-up, or allow their inner emotions to control their outer attitude to the people coordinating the effort on their behalf, well you get to see the delete key.

Yes I said it; selection is at an all time high!

So how do you navigate this challenge? First start by preparing mentally, that finding a job is real work. You have to develop and execute a strategy; the right tools, a plan for using those tools, network, network, network and follow-up to show you are different from the 300 others who sent a mass LinkedIn message or email (see my previous post on “Don’t Send Your Resume to 50 Recruiters at a Time!”).

As you work through this challenge, be overly optimistic, positive and even contagious with those whom you interact. The receptionist where you dropped off your resume or met as you went in to interview, the recruiter who you have talked with three times about the job (if they are any good), peers that you network with and all the new people you meet while you are on this journey. Put in your mind each morning that you will show a smile and have a great attitude and follow-up, even if not selected for the job. Heck, many times the first person who is selected does not take the offer…are you number two in line?

Also prepare yourself each day on the amount of time and energy you will invest on your job search. I highly caution you not to make it sporadic or from the hip. Calendar out the times each day you will look at your job search agents, alerts, job boards, the people you are following on LinkedIn or the Ladders. See what is new and relevant to your background, move on from those opportunities that are not! Have a well developed and written resume, one which you can tweak to the job you are applying for and speaks to you being a fit for this need.

OK, enough of my rant for the day. After all, I may just get you on the line 3 times as we work through your next career opportunity! But as we do, expect for me to put some work back on your plate to ensure we are making the right match. For as my grandmother would say if I took too long of a break from chopping wood in Alaska, “It’s not going to get done by itself honeyboy, you have to get off your toosh and put some effort into it.”

Good luck in your job search, but take the time to do it right!

Chris

For questions or help on this and many other ideas on how to make your career search more effective contact the staff at The Wellington Group @ info@twgrecruiters.com  or visit The Career Store.

What is the predominate first step in this day and age of interviewing with a potential new employer? The telephone! Call it whatever; Prep-call, Pre-interview, Phone-screen, Telephone-interview, Video-interview…etc. The simple fact is that it has become easy and cheap for companies to hold telephone interviews or even video (like Skype) interviews before bringing on-site or in-person the final round of people.

With that said how are your telephone interviewing skills? Are you preparing well, in a location of minimal distractions and ready to sell yourself? Below are a few quick tips to help you better prepare for that next telephone interview.

Telephone Interview Tips from The Recruiting Guy:

• Have a copy of your resume and the job description with you on the call or video call. In addition, have a note pad and a couple of pens ready as well for points of interest and questions during the call, and to capture any name(s) and contact information for follow-up thank you note(s).
• Thoroughly review the job description and any associated information you have about the job for which you are being considered. Write out any areas you have of strength, add in some specific examples in case you are asked to elaborate. For any areas you are not sure about or are “rusty” do your research or decided how you are going to respond (so it’s not off the cuff). Example, “I don’t know that particular piece of email software, BUT I would love the chance to put my computer skills to work and learn about it quickly.”
• Do your homework on the company. Check out their website, fan pages on social media, latest 10k reports or other financial reports, the management team close to the job (if not the person interviewing you) by reviewing their LinkedIn or ZoomInfo profiles. What do you have in common?
• Write out the questions you would like answered by the interviewer. REMEMBER, this is an initial interview in most cases so don’t control the time with your questions, be specific and brief.
•  Prepare for the right phone presence. Even though you are not in suit on the other side of the desk with this person, be mindful of your personality, tone, enthusiasm and articulation of both questions and answers.
•  Take or make the call in a place of minimal distractions and if possible on a land line and not a cell phone. You want to ensure all information is promptly communicated in a professional manor with no dropped calls or noisy background traffic.

In many cases the telephone interview is your first, and can be your last, introduction to a company. Use this time and opportunity to prepare well, and to put your best effort forward! This is the chance to “sell yourself” and the skills, knowledge and experience you bring to this job and the company.

Good luck with your next telephone interview!

Chris                                                                                                                

For questions or help on this and many other ideas on how to make your career search more effective contact the staff at The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com or visit The Career Store.

Wow, I don’t think this was at all what people were expecting to see and read about, DOL News Release. Most had predicted as high as 11% unemployment and continued doom and gloom in the job market. The impact of a much stronger (lower) unemployment number is not hitting the markets yet, the DOW again for a second day has started off below 10,000.

So what is truly in this DOL report and what can we take away from it? First, the overall number has not changed and is in fact negative by 20,000 more unemployed Americans. While job losses have slowed the job increases have not caught up yet. Healthcare continues to be a strong and growing sector, opposite to the continued decrease in construction jobs in the US. Manufacturing jobs rose by 11,000 while an even bigger gain was seen in retail jobs, 42,000. Transportation took a hit, but it’s such an undefined or obscure category that needs further analysis of the data points and types of jobs lost to understand the root cause. An interesting statistic on job increases was the number of new Government hires in January. 33,000 people put to work, with just less than half of that being the 2010 Census project, so more hires will be coming in this sector for sure.

One great sign for professionals in the recruitment and more so temporary labor industry, 52,000 new heads out in January. For those who have studied this piece of the overall trending data going back generations now, temporary help is a first key indicator of jobs coming back. It’s a “dip your toes in the water” scenario, if you will, by many employers to see what impact that person(s) may have in driving ROI to the organization. A great data point which is not tracked nor communicated well is the ratio of temporary labor headcount turned into full time employees. Since September, the temporary labor job number has increased by 247,000.

Ok, if you have looked at the numbers and are hearing the news then 9.7% does not seem correct. We went to the negative more but had a decrease in the total unemployed? My speculation for this is twofold. First, more people are getting out of the mainstream job market and starting their own businesses. Not hiring others, but sole proprietors working now in every niche from drug development consulting to accounting services and even a major spike in network marketing enrollees. Secondly, some people have simply quit looking for a job and their unemployment has run its course. As a result they are not reporting weekly status updates to the Fed, and as such the DOL can’t report data it does not have.

In the DOL’s own release 2.5 million people were not counted as “They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.” These are mainly disgruntled Americans who feel there is no work for them.

Overall, it is exciting to see that we are back in a more “normal” range for unemployment. I am a believer that levels we have been seeing over the past 6 months are the new norm. 4-5% unemployment rates are in the past or the distant future until all the uncertainty surrounding healthcare, small business (individuals making over $250,000) tax rates, lending and other impending items are worked out between Congress and the Whitehouse.

Chris

“ABC Recruiters company has just added Dr. James E Worthing Jr. as Managing Director of the company’s X niche recruitment focus…Dr Worthing has spent the last 35 years of his career in senior management with a number of well-known companies…”

Being so involved in all aspects of the recruitment or executive search business, I see headlines, email blasts (spam), self made PR pieces, tweets, etc all with a very similar theme. Someone with a great career in another industry making the jump now into recruiting based solely on the credentials they have on their own resume. I am not saying this is good or bad as I myself have focused 7-8 years of education on the FDA regulated product development niche. What I will attempt to do in this blog segment is help educate you the consumer (hiring company or job seeker) on what to look for when you see this information or someone selling their past career and not their current results.

Let’s start with the obvious. How can someone who knows NOTHING about the recruiting, executive search, or the staffing industry all the sudden be an ideal “Managing Partner, Principal, or General Manager of XYZ division?” That is like saying, “we have a new Partner in our law firm with a chemicals background, he never went to law school but he has managed a chemicals plant.” What? Can this new figure-head, who has never gone through the training nor put in the time to become a professional recruiter, suddenly lead a team of people through a true talent search process?

At this point I am going to get, “Chris, they have been a senior manager before and have hired people.” That is great, it means they have been handed pre-screened resumes or the application of someone who works in another area of the company and went through a predetermined interview process, WITH ALL THE RESOURCES OR WORK DONE FOR THEM. What they lack is the 2-6 months of training before being put on your most critical staff need or taking and helping to structure your resume and bio to represent you at their client. You see, just being a manager and having to hire in the past does not anoint them as a true, professional headhunter. It goes to the old belief that if we hire a PhD in Chemistry every Chemical Company will want to work with us, ignoring the fact that we may not have a database, network nor the experience as a firm in that niche.

I have had a lot of experience in my career dealing with this very same challenge in adding staff or growing a company. Do you hire experienced recruiters to meet either your internal needs or as headhunters to meet the need of your clients? Or, do you hire someone from their industry and hope they can pick-up the recruitment piece? 9 out of 10 times the second scenario does not work out in the long run. Short term it seems great. They have a lot of connections, make a number of calls, etc, etc, etc. But, that call list grows short very quickly, more so when the past companies they have worked for are large fortune or global in nature. Take IBM for instance. Hiring an ex-IBM executive was a major trend a number of years ago with both the Manpower’s and Korn Ferry’s of the industry. The trend we thought, was if the individual has been there in the past they can call back in and WHAM we have business or we’ll have an immediate candidate base. Well, that was not the case. People, more so Sr Management, worked in very specific groups, had limited networks and employee access, and did not want to start at the bottom and work their way back into a new career (which is truly what this situation is). The same goes for ex/current legislators, judges and even HR Directors.

Here are a few questions to ask when a firm is trying to sell you on the non-recruiting credentials of this new figure-head:

1. What training have you had on the latest recruiting technologies and techniques
2. What is your firms on-boarding and training program
3. How many similar clients and staff searches do you have under your belt
4. Name some of the tools and resources you might use to fill our need
5. Do you have an HR or Recruiting Certification (to ensure they don’t get you into a hot mess by asking illegal questions on your behalf)
6. Who is on your team doing the actual research, sourcing and headhunting work
7. What is your recruitment process

At the end of the day, the headhunter or recruitment firm is representing you, your company or your brand. Be cautious on who you select with this invaluable possession – for it is not enough to have the working knowledge of your industry – the person or firm must also have the training, technology and recruitment process expertise to make them a true extension of your recruitment resources.

Chris

^{To hire The Recruiting Guy as a speaker or trainer visit The Recruiting Guy or contact The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com.}

I love this time of the year, for the past 72 hours I have been receiving New Years cheer from around the world. From vibrantly colored greeting cards to texts, tweets and Facebook messages, everyone wishing to express their joy and excitement for the coming year. Well, its 1-4-10 and time to put those well wishes and excitement for the New Year into motion.

Most people have a New Year’s resolution (or two or three…) yet few if any of us truly see these resolutions through to the end of the year. In fact, at this point just three days into the 2010, you are probably already justifying why you will not take that step(s) toward your resolution(s) today. Whether it is joining a gym, making more money, securing a new job or landing a major new client, we quickly start to slip back into old habits and then justify why we did not sacrifice that extra tinny-tiny 15 minutes today, of which would have given us hours of personal satisfaction and emotional uplift.

You see I have been around a lot of people in both the corporate World of Work and as an entrepreneur who have set and achieved some very high goals. Watching these people achieve the one or two items in their lives which they put on paper and they committed to is 2000x more rewarding than giving them a goal as a manager, business owner or Master Mind peer. Achieving their goals invigorated them to a new status of thinking, acting and living. As a result they naturally had to move forward in their lives, continuing to achieve more of what they set out to do.

My quick advice to anyone looking to set and achieve change in their lives this year is not a laundry list of “resolutions” but some solid, self-committed goals that will truly inspire and empower you to do more in your life and achieve your dreams for 2010 and beyond.

Top 4 Helpful Ideas to Focus on Your Goal(s):

1. Develop a larger, more encompassing goal – Rather than making a list of all the things you want to physically manifest this year, take that list and discover what is the one most holistic and encompassing goal that would cover all you smaller goals. A great example might be a new job paying 50% more. This would allow you to take the extra income goal and also deliver to yourself your investments, vacations and giving goals into one.

2. Careful who you share your goal with – People get very excited and want to run out and tell the world, “hey, it’s the New Year and here is what I plan to accomplish.” This is great and we expect our friends and family to support us 100% in this New Years endeavor. Guess what, they don’t and in many cases can’t. You see they are also looking to change in the New Year, if not then they are terribly jealous of those who are sacrificing to do so. It’s hard to be negative and positive at the same time and you don’t want other’s negative thoughts to influence your drive for success in 2010!

3. Get involved with like minded people – If you are being cautious on running and telling everyone you know about your new goal then you do need to seek out help and support to take your life to that next level this year. A great way to help keep your mind focused and positive is as simple as surrounding yourself with like minded people. This could be a Master Minds group of other professionals or business owners, a professional business association, goal setters networking group, a group of positive minded people in your church / temple or other such examples and even combinations of people that can help support you while you are supporting them back.

4. Do something every day to put you closer to your goal – Here is a tough one, don’t let your mind and activities stop until you have reached or exceeded your goal, period. Be as persistent to making that change or achieving that desired result as the sun it to rise each day and the hours of the clock continue to move. As time and the World are not waiting for you to decide to take action today or keep you mind focused, you must commit to doing this for yourself. Find items that can enforce your thoughts and beliefs like a book on your niche or better yet a calendar you can write in and plan each day.

I thank everyone for their support, kind works and friendship in 2009. It has truly been my pleasure to be of service to people around the world and I am excited about doing even more in 2010.

Have a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Chris

^{To hire The Recruiting Guy as a speaker or trainer visit The Recruiting Guy or contact The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com.}

Careful where you put your resume or enter your email address as it just might be a recruiting firm in disguise!

I received an email last week from a LinkedIn connection that read, “Come check out this exciting new website for medical professionals only…,” Well, you know me I had to check it out, just might be a great place to network with some of the people we are seeking for current or future job openings. Also, it seemed a bit “fishy” as the person sending this through LinkedIn is also an owner of a staffing company. So I bounced the link to my third monitor and started to peel back the layers of this so called networking site for “medical professionals only.”

What I found is an all too common scenario in the world of internet smoke and mirrors, a recruiter or recruitment firm trying to build their candidate pipeline and/or client leads through a misleading website. Yes, some recruitment firms are creating a false identity to attract in more traffic to their niche(s). A few have even gone as far as to post corporate client jobs or import them off the web to look like real networking posts. The truth is they are paid to do so or they literally take the Indeed.com model and apply it to their recruitment firm so their traffic is increased. All in an effort to get you to their site!

Some prime examples of these boards are Openreq! (the Recruiting and HR industry’s “job-board” but try to put a job on there for a staffing client if you are in the same niche as the creator/staffing company owner), LinkedIn spin-offs (abuse of the LinkedIn system and a nuisance to many professional users), Jobs 2.0, Blue Steps (candidate capture portal for AESC company Members = Recruiters), Beaker (no not another Biospace but recruiters working on commission trying to fill jobs), Med Careers Village (a recruitment company founder and firm),  and on and on.

Now I don’t have an issue with recruitment firms creating “fish nets” or niche capture job boards, what chafes me is the sneaky and questionable way they are going about this fishing. I have seen and given feedback to many that are using not just the internet but social media sites and user groups to help build their brand awareness in a very professional and productive manner. I applauded these people and hold many in high regard for their approach. My issue lies with false promotion / advertising and abuse of the general public who put their careers and livelihood in the hands of recruiters (one of them is me) each day.

Now since “no one is managing the internet,” as Jill on the TWG team often says, it’s up to the global user community to share with each other these questionable intensions. After all, you might just be looking for a group of “medical professionals only,” and not for your information to be logged and captured by a recruiter in disguise. So be aware the next time you are invited to a niche internet community for behind the flashy webpage may not be other niche professional, instead recruiters who want you or your information.

Chris

To hire The Recruiting Guy as a speaker or trainer visit The Recruiting Guy or contact The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com. 

Social Media and the Corporate Impact Part II

Is social media killing your company’s productivity? Stop and think about what you don’t know before you give an immediate answer to what you do know. How many of the people in your organization have unlimited access to a computer or smart phone each day? Has your organization set-up up the internet to block out access to any and all social networking sites (there are dozens)? Can people tuck away in a corner and update their Facebook page or send a tweet?

Now answer the question. A common response I have received is of course “it depends.” If your staff or certain people on your staff are in positions where they need to be highly visible and connecting with new people each day then great, it’s good to have them utilizing the latest technology in order to do so. Providing they are not wasting time with personal updates and connections. If however, your staff or members of your company don’t need to be on-line connecting with others throughout the work day then yes, they may just be killing productivity with social networking.

I recently had to coach a friend and colleague through a job loss not because of economic issues, a layoff or even performance. No, he was let go from being on his personal internet pages too much during the day. This is someone who I know is a top performer in the recruiting field, but as such has some idle time and the resources in front of him to check his MySpace and send out a status update once a day which eventually turned into multiple times per day.

Why is social networking at work such an issue? Mainly as a result of lack of direction and policy by corporations and management. People in general like to communicate with friends, family, peers and yes strangers. Social networking has become the new water cooler for the work place and without guidelines by which people should work by, then how long of a water break do they need?

In short, does you company have a policy by which to operate from or at least guidelines in place to help managers with navigating this new but very sticky issue? If not, then it might be time to start the research on your own to ensure the right people are helping to brand and drive revenues with work-place social networking and you don’t have an entire staff on the web having fun or even venting some steam to others on-line.

Chris

^{To hire The Recruiting Guy as a speaker or trainer visit The Recruiting Guy or contact The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com.}

Social Media and the Corporate Impact Part I 

To put this blog piece in context, Social Media for this blog is any third party on-line or internet based networking or people-connecting tool. Examples of such are Facebook, Eacademy, Plaxo, Myspace, U-tube and Twitter. What I am not referencing are internal corporate “wanna be” social networking tools, associations (most of which have gone “on-line” now to save on cost), static websites, email, instant messaging or even the ever prevalent texting.

Why did I highlight the difference? In the next couple of blogs I will be talking about the trends I have seen and researched and the data which exists about social media or social networking and its impact to the corporate environment. Those non-social media types are many times already present in the workplace as companies provide employees with limitless emailing, cell phones (or the policy that it’s ok to have it with you and work) and texting, instant messaging solutions, web-based company portals, on-line meeting programs, and on and on.

The goal of my blogging about this topic is not to create hype or fear about allowing such uses in the work place, but rather highlight the fact that the World of Work has changed. In just a few short years we have gone from telecom and land-lines ruling the communication method and business sectors to flat screen monitors with built in web-cams on employee desks and Blackberry’s in the hand of all those around the conference table.

I hope you enjoy these pieces and please do leave your thoughts and feedback on this topic as you never know who on the web might just like what you have to say!

Chris

To hire The Recruiting Guy as a speaker or trainer visit The Recruiting Guy or contact The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com. 

Released just over three hours ago and already a lot of web-chatter, news announcements, emails and calls to my office about the latest job numbers from the US Department of Labor. The summary report can be found at Department of Labor New Release.

So what is all the hype about? 331,000 reported job losses for the month of July. Now that may seem like a very high number but its more “normal” than the losses from November 08 to April of this year, which averaged almost twice as many at 645,000 job losses per month. Total unemployment was down by.1 percent to 9.4%, not a significant change. The sector which had job gains continues to be Health Care with an increase of 20,000 jobs.

Since my ear is constantly to the ground for the staffing and recruiting industry, I had to take notice and point out the impact of the past 10 months. The temporary help market has lost 844,000 jobs while the entire business services sector has been impacted by 1.5 million jobs lost. The release notes this decline has lessened Substantially over the past three months. These numbers reflect the contract, contract to hire and consultant employment areas and not so much the direct hire or executive search services.

While this appears to be good news, the job losses we are still seeing in the staffing and recruitment industry to me is a key indicator that the US is yet to hit the “bottom” of the job loss portion of this economic turndown. In studying trending data for the last 25 years, until we begin to see a rise in staffing numbers we have yet to make a full turn in the positive. With staffing companies (IT, Engineering, Administrative, Day Labor, Etc) still laying off internal staff I don’t see a lot of confidence or stability in overall employment for the US.  

So, is it good news that perhaps the US is slowing on the job loss front? Unemployment seems to have stabilized for now right at 9.5%, not at the 10% plus which so many news media and talk show host predicated. Unfortunately I foresee these numbers rising again for a short period of time this fall as government and state budgets get approved, many of which will call for job cuts.

Chris

Recruiting and Technology: Session 2

As I tour the country and work with various recruiters and professional headhunters I can’t help but to chuckle at the complaints the modern recruiter (corporate, executive search, staffing and basement dwellers) all seem to have. My internet is too slow, CareerBuilder is down again, my wireless mouse is not working, and on and on. It was not that long ago when we had to fax or hand deliver resumes and you were lucky to get a company email to contact some hiring manager or job seeker.

Now, I have a flat screen TV in my office and can’t live without all the small technology toys to include the so aptly named crackberry! Well most of it I can live without and probably become an even more productive recruiter and member of society, except my multiple monitors! I remember the first time I heard about running dual monitors for recruiting. I had seen the concept for call centers and IT developers but never thought it would apply to me. I was wrong.

I was attending a Top Echelon conference and one of the main presenters was hosting a training session. He had two screens being projected and showed how to run their ATS tool on one screen and look at a candidate or job order on another. What? Yeah I said that and laughed it off but Tiffany who was with me said, “Pretty cool.” Ok, so maybe there was something we were missing here. So, we asked what does it take to set up dual monitors in our office.

The set up was very easy, and after a few years now I have assisted numerous recruiters and companies, with various laptop or desk top hardware configurations, transition into the multiple monitor mode. If you are paying attention I said multiple monitors as I have found out with my laptop and docking station that I can have three monitors, and have since found a great USB product that will allow me to run up to five (yes, not enough desk space).

So why multiple monitors? As I learned at that conference; efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. I am sure there are a number of other gains like cost savings on printing, speed to market, enhanced phone time, etc. But it is great to have the resume of the person you are talking with on one screen, your ATS on another and the job order or client website on the third. Not to mention, but hey I am the boss, facebook or Yahoo IM running to see who I might ping during the day.

All told, running a dual or multiple monitor configuration is not that big of an investment, even for an entire team of recruiters and researchers. The enhancements you gain far outweigh the time and cost to set this technology up. Plus, you seem smarter to the person on the other end of the phone when you can Google a word or phrase they mention and say, “oh yeah here is what you are talking about!”

To engage The Recruiting Guy to train or consult with your staff visit our services page or contact The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com.