If you're talking in more than nine second soundbites, you're wasting your words, losing the attention of buyers, and positioning yourself as just another long-winded person trying to make your case. From soundbites on broadcast news to politicians delivering provocative statements to posts on Twitter, we've become a society that consumes information in smaller and smaller chunks. According to research at the University of California, the incredible shrinking soundbite has gone from 43 seconds in 1968 to a mere nine seconds today. As a result, when you communicate, especially when selling, you need to choose your words carefully while delivering them with impact, passion, and enthusiasm. Not an easy thing to do, especially when you're an outgoing person whose default factory programming as a human being is to share your gift for gab.
Maybe you've thought about getting into recruiting, and now would be a good time considering the demand for recruiters is at its highest levels in four years, according to an April 2012 report by Wanted Analytics. While the U.S. unemployment rate is hovering around 8%, hiring managers are struggling to find the right people and are turning to recruiters to find the most qualified candidates.
Understand the Position You're Recruiting For Experienced recruiters say that finding candidates with the right credentials and experience isn't always the hardest part about recruiting--it's understanding the job that needs to be filled and the business requirements for that position.
But the role is full of misconceptions. To give new recruiters a leg up, I spoke to some experienced recruiters to learn about the mistakes they made and what insights they'd share with new recruiters in the field.
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Recruiting Doesn't Only Happen Behind a Computer While recruiters can use the Internet as their primary tool for finding candidates, using it exclusively could limit their access to a more diverse pool of candidates.
Jonathan Weems, a technical recruiter who's been in the field for five years, says his biggest mistake as a new recruiter was assuming he could always find the best candidates online. He stresses that new recruiters need to network offline just as much.
"Also talk to employees within your own company, find out where they came from, and start building relationships internally," says Weems.
- Use Multiple Tools to Find Candidates New recruiters sometimes fall into the trap of relying entirely on one or two tools--and using them in the same way--simply because they're familiar with them or have seen some good results.
If recruiters are consistently achieving great results with a particular tool, like Monster or LinkedIn Recruiter, by all means they should continue using them. But failing to leverage other tools, could cause recruiters to miss out on a larger pool of candidates.
- Don't Just Watch the Internet, Use It According to a survey by Jobvite, 89% of companies said they would recruit in social networks in 2011, and 55% would spend more on social recruiting. While companies are beefing up their social recruiting efforts, some could argue that recruiting has always been very social.
"The best people who are [recruiting] online were probably pretty good at it when social recruiting wasn't really an issue," says Lance Haun, editor of SourceCon and community director for ERE.net. "They're naturally social and they're trying to have conversations with people. It's just an extension of what they're doing in real life."
Even though recruiting apps can automate daunting tasks like posting jobs to multiple social networks, recruiters who don't actively engage with job seekers are failing to take full advantage of those platforms.
"Successful recruiters don't watch the Internet and social networks--they use them as tools to do more of what they do best: talking to people," says Miles Jennings, CEO of Recruiter.com.
For example, without any experience as an engineer or insurance claims processor, it can be tricky to know what to seek out in candidates for those positions. Beyond identifying relevant keywords to hunt for in candidate resumes, recruiters need to understand the business and what the hiring manager is really seeking in a candidate.
Recruiters can start by engaging with professionals in the field they're hiring for to learn as much as they can about the profession. The things you learn will give you a better understanding of the kind of candidate you should look for.
What other tips, challenges, or misconceptions should they know about?
Jennifer King is an HR Analyst for Software Advice, a company that reviews and compares HR and recruiting software. She writes about technology, trends, and best practices in human resources. Read the full article on her HR Blog: http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/hr/so-you-want-to-be-a-recruiter-1050312/
Part 1 - THE PROBLEM:
Employees want to feel that their good work is appreciated and appropriately compensated. However, 7 out of 10 do not believe that there is a clear relationship between their pay and their job performance. Let's investigate this further.
- Although technically impossible, most employees believe that their performance is above average. Each, therefore, believes that he or she should be paid above average. But this, of course, is impossible.
- Most employees feel that they are not adequately paid compared to those performing similar work in other organizations. They, therefore, also believe that their pay is below the level of their job performance.
- Employees often perceive that there are poor performers in their organization who are earning as much if not more than they earn. They thus conclude, "If that lazy so-and-so is still here, they must be under-paying me for my good work."
- Supervisors don't have the know-how or guts to differentiate between poor, average, and above average performers. They take the simple way out and give everyone the same pay increases each year.
- Our employee surveys consistently show that employees say that tying pay to performance is very important to them. We have found this to be particularly true in unionized organizations where the union has negotiated contracts that require their employer to tie pay increases to years of service rather than performance.
Countless jobseekers ask us the question of how to portray education on a resume if they have not finished their degree. One of the most common pain points for a job seeker is the feeling of going up against myriad other job seekers with more degrees, more professional training, more completed courses - you name it.
In fact, our 30+ years have taught us that when it comes down to the finish line, practical, hands-on, on-the-ground experience trumps theory every time. Does that mean that education isn't valuable? Absolutely not! Your degree will give you just one more rung on the belt, especially if it is in your field.
Having said this, here are some tips to keep in mind when discussing your education - both on and off your resume.
As reported by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the economy seems more stable this year than it did last year. Company and household balance sheets are stronger, and retail sales are rising. "The recovery seems more broad-based in the U.S.," says Jonas Prising, president of the Americas at ManpowerGroup. "I see it across industries and I see it across geographies." Risk also is lower, he notes. "The external environment and the factors that affected it last year are a lot less severe this year."
Consumer-loan delinquencies fell across the board in the fourth quarter, the first time that's happened in eight years, according to the American Bankers Association in Washington. Banks have reduced leverage, with financial-institution debt as share of the economy at its lowest level in a decade. And corporations are flush with cash: The ratio of liquid assets to short-term liabilities is the highest since 1954, based on data compiled by the Federal Reserve.
We all know what you need to do to get ready for your next interview. You need to research the job and the hiring company, be prepared for those behavioral interview questions, job skills etc. Now, there's another thing you need to be prepared for and this question is coming up more and more. Interviewers are actually asking for your Facebook login information.
For years, employers have used background checks and even credit checks as screening tools. But now, as social media has become such in integral part of our daily life, employers are aggressively searching the internet for information on prospective employees as a means of protecting themselves. Employers are not obligated for the most part to explain why a candidate gets rejected. Any red flags that come up in their searches could wind up being the reason the applicant gets passed over. It could be any number of things: age, lifestyle, politics, affiliations, to name just a few. Are you comfortable with what they'll find? Try doing a Google search on your name and see what comes up in the search results. Good? Bad? Ugly?
So what do you do if you have a Facebook profile and are asked for your password? The real question is whether or not you want to work for a company the demands to look through the window into your private life. It would be easy to say of course not, but what if you really need the job financially? If you are worried this could happen to you, take another look at what you have posted from an outside point of view and look for things that might trip up your chances of getting hired or be potentially embarrassing to friends or family. A possible alternative is if you have not already done so, create a LinkedIn account. This is the largest professional network and a great way to connect with other members in your field. You can suggest the interviewer take a look at this profile instead.
This is an on-going discussion and some states and organizations are trying to put legislation in place banning this practice including the ACLU.
- Jean Vosler
Jean is the Director of Marketing and Communication for www.net-temps.com, a leading online job board.
Most people have the wrong concept of job interviews. They falsely believe that a job interview is an event where the interviewers ask all the questions and the applicant only provides answers. This type of event is not an interview. It is an interrogation. During an interrogation, one person asks the questions while the other person provides responses. Do you really think people get hired by going on interrogations? I don't think so.
Think back to your best interview experience, and you'll discover that your meeting was a two-way conversation. The interviewer asked you questions; you thoughtfully responded and then asked your own questions. The interview flowed effortlessly as two professional peers exchanged information and work perspectives. It felt like you were in a groove, spontaneous, and in the zone where everything came easily and comfortably. You were confident and felt like the job was yours for the taking.
This Podcast describes how to facilitate that kind of interview every time. Well, maybe not every time, but most of the time. If your interviewer is a real jerk, you can only do so much. How to deal with jerks in the interview process is covered in a separate Podcast. Most interviewers are wonderful, nice people, but there are a few assholes who are real jerks trying to hide their own insecurity.
The Typical Job Interview
Let's imagine we are observing a typical job interview where the candidate does not ask questions. The interviewer begins by saying, "Tell me about yourself." The applicant provides an excellent response with a 60-second overview of his/her skills that relates directly to the position. After the response, the applicant sits quietly waiting for the next question. The interviewer asks the next question which is followed by a nice response from the applicant and then more silence. This one-way interrogation ritual continues for 40 minutes. The last 5 minutes of the interview are reserved for applicant questions. The interviewer begins this phase by asking, "Do you have any questions?" The candidate says, "No, I have no questions at this time. You have done an excellent job of telling me about the position and the company."
John was a well seasoned engineer looking for a new job. He entered the interview feeling confident that his resume was strong enough to land him the job. Then the interview began, and the panel's first question was: "Tell us about your most impressive contribution that you've made at your current company." John simply froze. He couldn't think of a good example in those few seconds and realized he'd lost the job by not being better prepared.
Expect Situational Questions
More employers today, especially Fortune 500 companies, are using a difficult interview style of questions to weed out job candidates. My career counseling clients say these "behavioral" or "situational" questions are the hardest type to answer. If you are not ready for them, it's easy to make a fatal error.
The interviewer uses a probing style to ask questions seeking very specific examples of your actions in a work situation. These questions begin with these phrases: "Tell me about a time ...", or "Describe ...", or "Give me an example ..." The interviewer is looking for details of your past abilities and how you acted in a specific work situation. The correct answers offers specific details, a clear specific illustration of what the problem or situation was, where it took place and the RESULTS you personally achieved. The interviewer often then rates each response to determine how well you reacted to these situations in the past, as a way to predict your future performance with their company.
Here are several questions that my career counseling clients were recently asked in their job interviews:
According to the ASA Staffing Index, the March index is 89, February was 87. Since the beginning of 2012, temporary and contract employment has grown 18.3%, according to the index.
The ASA Staffing Index is reported nine days after each workweek, making it a virtual real-time measure of staffing employment trends. ASA research shows that staffing employment is a coincident economic indicator and leading employment indicator.
Ex-Recruiter Reveals Secrets to Gaining Headhunter's Attention
In my former life as a recruiter (also affectionately referred to as "headhunter"), I received hundreds of resumes a week from all parts of the country. The statement that a person's resume gets a 15-second read is not far from the truth. In fact, 15 seconds is a generous assumption. In reality, a resume must capture the recruiter's attention in the first five seconds to avoid the round file. Candidates can greatly improve their chance of catching the recruiter's attention by following three simple rules:
- Use the correct format
- Include plenty of quantifiable accomplishments
- Sprinkle liberally with appropriate keywords.
The first rule, use of correct format, is crucial. There is one, and only one, proper resume format for recruiters -- chronological. Recruiters do not have time or patience to figure out the complexities of a functional resume. To recruiters, time is money. A second danger of using a functional resume is that recruiters automatically assume the candidate is attempting to hide something. This assumption is universal. No job-seeker on earth can hide unpleasant facts within a functional resume. Recruiters are trained from the start to pick up on any possible "red flags" that identify the job seeker as an undesirable candidate.
