Category: Hiring

Are You Doing Your Part For Your Military Initiative?

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Diversity, Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, Military, New Job

 

Fleet week 2Every year I get excited to hear about Fleet Week and often wonder what it would be like to go to one. Fleet Week is a United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and United States Coast Guard tradition in which active military ships recently deployed in overseas operations dock at major cities for one week. The crew members have the opportunity to enjoy the local cities for that week while the public can take a guided tour of the ships.

This year, in fact today, was my first time as LA is having its inaugural Fleet Week. We at Military.com / Monster.com have the opportunity to team up with the office of Mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles (thank you Blas Villalobos and Lorraine Perales) to be a part of a celebration of our servicemen and servicewomen who protect the seas for us. As an organization that that truly believes in our servicemen (military.com) and my own personal advocacy to help (brother served in the Army for 28 years), I find myself privileged to walk the hanger, cruise the outskirts of the ships with the likes of the men and women that serve.

One of my personal goals have been and always will be is to serve the ones who serve us to make sure they are gainfully employed after serving a career (short or long) in the military. So today my goal was to share our transition app as well as our military skills translator with the military, veterans and equally important, the spouses. Our families of the United States Armed Forces have skill-sets that are unparalleled to most. Our problem in talent acquisition is we don’t speak their language and it takes too much time to work with them to figure out how they fit…or rather fit in (culture is for another article).

In LA County, 3% of the population is comprised of veterans, while 11% of the homeless population is a veteran. This equates to 2,733 of our homeless brothers and sisters are the folks that served you proud in the military.

Now Military.com is one of the few places to go to for a preventative measure for our military (and spouses) to be proactive about their career in the afterlife of service so they are not stranded and underemployed after separation. There are a ton of tools to prepare for transition and we have some of the best.

My brother used to recruit for the Army more than 10 years ago and we all know the big draw for young adults is they will have the skills to do any job they want when they get out. The unfortunate truth is when they transition out, albeit they have the skills, they do not and cannot (self-doubt) get the job they are qualified for because there needs to be a better bridge between recruit and separation. Then on the flip side, recruiters (in the civilian world) do not have the time or the patience to see where these candidates are qualified for the job they applied for, therefore pass on them.

I am not advocating that recruiters take their own time to learn MOS (military occupational specialty) codes, however I am asking for you to open up and grab the tools to learn what they do and have more patience. Because I tell you, they can blow away some of your current staff and they can also add some new light and flavor to your culture.

To learn more about what Mayor Garcetti’s team is working on to  help our homeless veterans, please go to www.lamayor.org/ending-veteran-homelessness for more information. I encourage you to reach out and see how you can help. If you are not from LA, inquire what your city is doing to help the veteran homeless predicament.

~The Organic Recruiter

Managing the Black Hole in the Job Application Process

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, New Job
Margot Carmichael Lester, Monster Contributing Writer
As a job seeker, you have to act like a salesperson. As a salesperson myself, I am here to tell you it is extremely hard to get to a yes or a no. Usually it’s a “hold tight”, “no word yet”, radio silence, or “we’ll let you know when we need you”.
What’s it going to take to get to a yes or a no? First off, read the article below as it gives great advice to the job seeker. I would add to it that you need to know the company, the competition and you better than any other candidate. Do not pretend to be anyone else and be the best you you can be.
Recruiters, please share this article with friends, family, and anyone you know are looking for their next job. ~The Organic Recruiter
Managing the Black Hole in the Job Application Process

You’ve invested the time in completing the job application, polishing your resume and writing a compelling cover letter. Once you’ve submitted your materials, though, you enter the black hole — the space between applying for jobs and hearing back from potential employers. Managing this period of the job search process effectively is harder than ever in a tight economy.

“We’ve all been on the opposite side of the desk,” says Armen Arisian, HR manager at Nytef Group, a plastics manufacturing company in West Palm Beach, Florida. “Twisting in the wind is no fun.”

But don’t stress. Employ these strategies to survive the uncertainty without losing your sanity.

Be Real

It’s important to remember there are people on the other side of the black hole who are doing their best to fill the job in a timely manner, says Will Pallis, a lead recruiter for VistaPrint, an online supplier of graphics and printing based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Chances are good the hiring companies have been inundated with applications.

“While there are a lot of variables here, the most important factor is how much time the corporate recruiter or hiring manager has to sift through the resumes submitted for each job,” he explains. “Skilled corporate recruiters have the ability to review large quantities of resumes to determine if the applicant has the required skill sets and education required for a particular role. But if that recruiter has a large volume of active resumes, the amount of time to review them is obviously decreased.”

Be Reasonable

There’s nothing wrong with checking in on the status of your application, as long as your job-seeking behavior does not become desperate. Unfortunately, there’s no industry standard for how often to inquire. “Do not be a pest” says Jay Meschke, president of EFL Associates, a Leawood, Kansas, search firm. “It is fine to seek acknowledgement of application material after a week, but diplomacy is the watchword. A potential employer becomes wary of applicants who become ‘stalkers.’”

If you’ve got a real person to contact on the inside, ask about the ground rules or protocol up front. “Inquire about when you should expect to hear back, if you should proactively contact the gatekeeper and at what intervals, plus what forms of contact would be most appropriate, such as telephone calls, emails, etc.,” he says.

And if you don’t hear back at all? “After more than a couple [follow-ups], move on same as you would in any other potential relationship,” Arisian counsels. “They’re just not that into you.”

Be Positive

The biggest challenge may be managing your own emotions. “Learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable,” says Scott Silverman, executive director and founder of Second Chance, a nonprofit agency helping the homeless and chronically unemployed in San Diego. “The only thing you can control is your own attitude.”

To do that, Eric Frankel, a personal branding and job search expert in Westwood, New Jersey, suggests, “Transition yournegative, stressful feelings to positive, optimistic emotions by supplementing your job search tactics with positive activities — time with friends, family, exercise and casual strolls on the beach. A limited number of ‘vacation’ days are OK when unemployed.”

You also can busy yourself by continuing your job search.

Be Optimistic

Dealing with uncertainty is never easy, but it’s a fact of life. Use this time as an opportunity to focus on what can happen, not what isn’t happening.

“As with the universe, realize that thousands of black holes are present,” Meschke notes. “Each one is worth exploring. You never know when the black hole evolves into a worm hole that leads to the next job.”

For Job Seekers, the Black Hole Persists

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, New Job
By LAUREN WEBER

Why am I not getting calls back for my application? What’s the deal…am I not good enough? These are the thoughts of job applicants these days. They are being treated like a piece of paper and not an actual person.
People invest time in their career. Isn’t it fair to treat them like humans, not paper? Referring back to my Optimization page (Gail and Richie) depicts the life of a recruiter and how hiring managers think of applicants, “where’s my resumes?”. 
People, we need to open our eyes as this article shows, recruiters are acting as if these real people are merely a piece of paper and it is okay if we don’t call them back. I’m here to tell you, it is not. These people want to work for you and they should not have to put their lives on hold until (if ever) they hear from you. 
Thank you, Lauren, for this great article below. ~The Organic Recruiter
Most of today’s online job applications still enter a black hole.

Frank N. Stein had a stellar resume—he was an Ivy League graduate, with stints as a corporate recruiter at Johnson & Johnson and Russell Reynolds, and his CV was loaded with the keywords needed to float to the top of today’s automated job-applicant software.

He was also not a real person, a fact noted at the bottom of his one-page resume.

Even so, recruiters at only two of the 100 companies where he applied for jobs read far enough to discover that Stein was a fiction designed to “mystery shop” the job-seeker experience. The ruse was created by recruiting consulting firm CareerXroads, according to a report released Monday.

What does that tell Mark Mehler, a founder of CareerXroads?

“Recruiters read the first three paragraphs of a resume,” he said. “That’s all the job seeker is going to get.” And that only counts those whose resumes pass through the automated keyword screening that winnows a set of applications from hundreds to a few dozen.

Every year, Kendall Park, N.J.-based CareerXroads submits a fake resume through the career websites of the companies on Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work Forlist, to assess the recruiting practices of some of the most well-respected employers in the country, including Google Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Deloitte LLP.

The results are generally dismal, as they were again this year. Job seekers’ main complaint—that they shoot their applications into a black hole—was confirmed.

Out of the 100 companies, 64 never sent Stein any notification that he was not being considered for the job for which he had applied. Months after submitting his resume, he “was left hanging in the breeze,” said Mehler. Overwhelmingly in job seeker surveys, candidates tell CareerXroads “they just want to know, ‘am I in or out?’ They don’t want to keep chasing and wondering.”

Six of the employers followed up with Stein wanting to schedule interviews, two uncovered the ruse, and 28 eventually notified him that the position had been filled, or at least that he wasn’t in the running.

Worst of all, 28 is the highest number of companies extending that courtesy in the twelve years CareerXroads has conducted the Mystery Job Seeker survey.

There’s no excuse for those oversights, Mehler said, given that those communications can be automated easily in today’s applicant tracking systems, the software that stores job applications.

Most systems have the capacity to do this, but major corporations don’t use those features because they’re scared that opening the lines of communication will lead to lawsuits, too many phone calls to recruiters, and too many questions they can’t answer, he said.

There were bits of good news from Frank N. Stein’s experience. Nearly all employers now send an email acknowledging receipt of a job application. In addition, career websites are easier to navigate than in previous years, and employers have gotten better at streamlining the application so that it takes less time to complete – in most cases, 10 minutes or less.

Another pleasant surprise, according to Mehler: Stein had been unemployed by choice for a year (he had rejected six job offers as poor fits for him, then took a 6-month sabbatical to bicycle across the country), and still received interest from six of the 98 employers who thought he was a real person. “That’s huge,” said Mehler. “It shows that if you write a good resume and have great experience behind you, you can still find a job.”

Lauren Weber

Reporter, The Wall Street Journal.
Lauren Weber writes about workplace issues and careers for the Wall Street Journal.

Love Your Job? How Does Your State Rank?

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Latest News and Articles, US Employment Numbers

 

Love Job Pic

New Monster and Brandwatch study reveals the states where people love their jobs the most – and it’s not where you might think

Analysis of over 2 million tweets about job sentiment indicates significant shifts in where people love and hate their jobs in the U.S.

PR Newswire, Weston, Mass. – July 12, 2016
Monster (NYSE: MWW), a global leader in connecting people to jobs, and Brandwatch, the leading social intelligence company, today announced the results of their second annual Monster and Brandwatch Job Report, a social media study of job sentiment and corresponding interactive infographic on the insights. Revealing where people love and hate their jobs the most in the U.S., the study also analyzed exactly who, what, when, where and why people take to Twitter to discuss how they feel about their jobs, and how those findings differ from the 2015 report.

“Perception of professional happiness is continuously evolving, influenced by a variety of external and personal factors. These range from uncertainty driven by volatile financial markets and the US presidential election, to work environment and employee benefits,” said Matt Anchin, Senior Vice President, Global Communications and Content at Monster. “The latest data shows some drastic changes compared to last year’s report, indicating that people are potentially approaching their work lives differently. Additionally, whether you are a job seeker looking for a new opportunity with high happiness potential or are an employer trying to increase employee satisfaction, it seems that the adage ‘location, location, location’ may just be the most important thing to consider.”

Who’s Feeling the #JobLove?

Where do the lovers and haters live?

The most significant insight of the 2016 study is that overall US state population is now a key indicator of job satisfaction. In seven out of the 20 least-populous US states, as ranked by the US Census Bureau, people are tweeting about loving their job at a higher ratio to hating their job:

  • Idaho
  • Montana
  • North Dakota
  • Vermont
  • Utah
  • Maine
  • Alaska
  • Washington
  • Minnesota
  • Tennessee

At the same time, the top 10 states in which people on Twitter hate their job at a higher ratio than loving their job are consistent with last year’s results. All are exclusively in the Eastern half of the US, and eight of last year’s 10 lowest-ranked states made a showing again this year. Furthermore, three of the 10 most populous states in the country according to the US Census Bureau – Michigan, Ohio and Florida – appear on this list, suggesting that population size significantly impacts job hate in addition to job love:

  • Michigan
  • Virginia
  • West Virginia
  • New Jersey
  • Ohio
  • Maryland
  • Louisiana
  • Florida
  • Connecticut
  • Delaware

When are people loving and hating?

During this study, conducted April 2015-March 2016, Monster and Brandwatch also analyzed how social media job sentiment varied by specific months and days.

While July remains the most hated month of the year, October is now the most loved month, a change from last year’s top month for job love, November.

There has also been a shift in the days of the week that U.S. workers tweet most positively about work, with Thursday overtaking Friday as the day with the highest job love-to-hate ratio.

“With the ever increasing popularity of social media platforms, it’s becoming more and more common for people to publicly share their opinions about anything and everything – both personal and professional – at incredible scale. A collection of social media mentions is an extremely interesting dataset, because it gives you a rare opportunity to evaluate an audience’s natural and unfiltered opinions on a topic,” said Amy Barker, Head of Analytics at Brandwatch. “This study revealed that workplace social dynamics appear to also now play a greater role in job sentiment. Workers tended to refer to ‘people’ in conversations where both job love and job hate is expressed. This suggests that it’s not always about the work, the pay, or the office, but about who you spend every day with.”

Building on data and insights from the 2015 Monster and Brandwatch Job Report, Monster and Brandwatch used Brandwatch Analytics to analyze and compare more than 2 million English-language tweets across both reports, searching for conversations that included words and phrases indicating loving or hating their jobs. In-depth analysis within the study also utilized Monster data on the top skills and job titles in the US. For the full report, including details on the top jobs and job skills in each state, gender demographics of loving vs. hating US jobs, and why people hate their jobs, visit theMonster and Brandwatch Job Report.

About Monster Worldwide
Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: MWW) is a global leader in connecting people to jobs, wherever they are. For more than 20 years, Monster has helped people improve their lives with better jobs, and employers find the best talent. Today, the company offers services in more than 40 countries, providing some of the broadest, most sophisticated job seeking, career management, recruitment and talent management capabilities. Monster continues its pioneering work of transforming the recruiting industry with advanced technology using intelligent digital, social and mobile solutions, including our flagship website monster.com® and a vast array of products and services. For more information visit www.monster.com/about.

About Brandwatch
Brandwatch is the world’s leading social intelligence company. Brandwatch Analytics and Vizia products fuel smarter decision making around the world.

The Brandwatch Analytics platform gathers millions of online conversations every day and provides users with the tools to analyze them, empowering the world’s most admired brands and agencies to make insightful, data-driven business decisions. Vizia distributes visually-engaging insights to the physical places where the action happens.

The Brandwatch platform is used by over 1,200 brands and agencies, including Cisco, Whirlpool, British Airways, Walmart, and Dell. Brandwatch continues on its impressive business trajectory, recently named a global leader in enterprise social listening platforms by the latest reports from several independent research firms. Increasing its worldwide presence, the company has offices around the world including Brighton, New York, San Francisco, Berlin and Singapore.

Brandwatch. Now You Know.

www.brandwatch.com | @Brandwatch | press office | contact

Contact
Monster
Kristen Andrews
978-461-8089
kristen.andrews@monster.com

Brandwatch
Dinah Alobeid
347-331-0131
dinah@brandwatch.com

For Oringinal article – Click Here

Millennials: You’re Not That Cool

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Diversity, Employment Retention, Employment Value Proposition, Generational Gap, Hiring, Interviewing, Latest News and Articles, Millennials

One of the biggest conundrums of companies to date is “what do I do about millennials?”, “how do we hire millennials?, and “how do we change for them?”.  The simple truth is you do nothing different and by all means, you don’t change for them.

It’s just like you have always done, you want the right candidate for the right job. You don’t change your identity or your culture for your friends, do you? Why should you do that for your company? Millennials are amazing and bright young adults. Remember when you wanted to change the world when you were their age? Did the companies change for you? Of course not.

As William Wallace said, “Hoooolllld, Hoooolllld!”. It’ll be okay guys. We will survive and this generation will take us to the next level. Be patient. ~ The Organic Recruiter

By – Candy Store | June 6th, 2016 ~ I asked a good friend (who chose anonymity) of mine who has been recruiting for top talent for a decade to give an undercover thought on talent today. For more candy just ask and I will go to the store.

Have you ever looked at a Millennial resume and thought “Why on Earth are you deemed the most important generation to recruit?” I have. I do often. I look at the resumes coming through and read all the articles about how we need to focus on recruiting this generation by tailoring to their expectations and think to myself: WHY? What makes this generation so special?

Well friends, I have to tell you: conception, perception, reception.

Conception

Every generation has a name. In a way, each one of us has been categorized and generalized with standard attributes of the relative generation. We are conceived and then misconceived due to these generalities awarded. There is truth to it but varying degrees.

Generation Name Births Starting Births Ending
Baby Boomer Generation 1945 1964
Generation X 1961 1981
Generation Y – The Millennials – Gen Next 1975 1995
Generation Z – iGen 1995 2015

Perception

Did Millennials make themselves special or were they designated as the special generation because of the luxuries they have from an inspiring environment? Did they become a byproduct of Gen X where inventions and dreams were evolving? There is an abundance in technology and ideas are enabled to flourish.  Was Gen X taken for granted because it seems we have focused our attention on the Millennials?  If Gen X had not paved the path, would the Millennials still be who they are today? Maybe the Millennials aren’t the Cool Kids. . .maybe it was the generation before them?

“Baby Boomers are exiting the workforce; a greater number of Millennials will join the workforce. It is estimated that Millennial workers (those born between 1980 and 2000) will comprise one-half of the workforce by 2020.” According to Evren Esen, SHRM-SCP and Director of Survey Programs at SHRM.

Reception

Gen X is middle to upper management today. The middle management workers are coaching and developing the Millennials. Gen X received the responsibility of bridging the gap between Baby Boomers who are now executive management, and Millennials who are the dominant workforce. Millennials were received by other generations with an apprehension because of the expectations and aloofness they exhibit. They are a generation that has not matured enough to define a goal.  As interviews take place, often times you will see the classic Zoolander look loom on a Millennial’s face quietly saying “Who am I?”

Millennials are known for wanting to change the world. Let’s take a moment and acknowledge had prior generations not shared the same desire, we would be stagnant. As it stands, we are not. We are constantly evolving and that is the product of all generations combined, not just Millennials.

Are Millennials special and unique? Yes.  So is everyone else.  As we embark on our journey to recruit talent, it is healthy to take a step back and realize the tactic to recruit Millennials is no different than what has been there all along:

  • Respect, develop and appreciate talent.
  • Drive purpose to your organization.
  • Take the time to embrace change, not fear it.