Jason Blais: From the Recruiting Front Lines

Sitting idly on the recruiting front lines today, I was thinking back today to a state HR conference that I attended last year. One of the key note speakers was brought in from half way across the country to share her perspective on the human resource profession, and working with a diverse workforce in particular. This person was a humorist, whose dynamic and comically irreverent presentation style provided a great release to the HR professionals in attendance. During her speech, she covered all of the non-traditional diversity issues- the happy person, the curmudgeon, the martyr, the pleaser, the introverts, the extroverts, and everyone in between. I think it is very true to say that we are all diverse in our own ways.

At another HR meeting, I recently heard a speaker espousing the virtues of including people with disabilities into the diversity conversation, and the potential benefits of hiring said people. During her talk, she made a quip about how we are all disabled in some way, but for most of us, you just can’t see the disability. Of course she was referring to all of our personal disabilities such as perpetual tardiness, short attention spans, closed-mindedness, fear of confrontation, hubris, need for acceptance, and all the other personality disabilities that impede our ability to act with grace and tact in all situations. I have to also agree with this speaker- everyone has their own special disabilities.

Having said that, I also feel that too many people seem too ready to put people into boxes based on their age, work experience, or any other personal trait. It’s my feeling that all people are unique, but so rarely do we, as recruiters, employers, managers, co-workers, employees, friends, or relatives, take the time to get to know and work with those unique characteristics of our acquaintances.

I recall a workshop that discussed working in a multi-generational milieu. The presenter spoke about the work-related differences for people in different age groups – check out this article on age diversity in the workforce for a glimpse of what I’m talking about- and how we all fall into broad categories. Now, as an idealist, non-conformist, and believer in self-direction, my first reaction is to react negatively, with thoughts about why these categories are too general, and make too great of an assumption. However, as I listened to the speaker (and as I read further down the article attached), I find myself agreeing with the opinions put forth.

What I end up with is a great inner debate on how to deal with people, and particularly with first impressions and screening of candidates when I am hiring. There are only so many hours in a day, after all, so how can I be open to the potential greatness and uniqueness of seemingly unfit applicants, while using my experience and intuition to ferret out the best candidates quickly and efficiently? I have seen enough anomalies to know that you can’t judge an employee’s fit or performance by a resume. So… how do you weed through 75 resumes to find the right candidate?

Well, I hope you’re not expecting an answer. That’s not a hypothetical question. Can anyone tell me how you best narrow down all applicants, keeping into account all peoples uniqueness, casting aside personal preferences, to find the best candidate?

In the world that I live, work, and play (not necessarily in that order), I do see a workforce evolving dramatically from the one I entered 15 or so years ago. Different motivators, different rules, different expectations. HR professionals and managers at all levels, in my mind, have a more difficult job than they have ever had before.

MY (SECOND) QUESTION OF THE DAY: What is the best interview question that you use to uncover potential personality fit?

Another busy day on the recruiting front lines! My first stop this morning was to an event facility in New Hampshire, to meet with a potential partner and explore the capacity of the venue. As it looks now, we’ll have 70 NH employers exhibiting their employment brand to potentially 1,000 job seekers looking for work in the state. While the new partnership isn’t formalized in writing yet, it does look good, and should position this job fair to be the recruiting event of the year.

For our career fair, we’re asking job seekers to pre-register. This makes them eligible for door prizes, and provides us with great information about the demography of people attending the event. While it’s still more than 4 weeks away, we already have more than 100 job seekers pre-registered, and the profile is unique in the job fair world. The majority of the registrants so far, about 2/3, are currently employed, with just over half having 4 year degree or further education, and the average age of registrants right now is approximately 40 years old.

When I proposed this event a while back, I felt that the job fair market in this area really underserved this population- experienced passive job seekers. Many job fairs catered to the fully unemployed, and most in NH are focused on college students, as its the colleges who are hosting them. Through our data collection, we knew the make up of job seekers passively looking tended to be very different than that of the people we see at the career events we have exhibited at. So, thus far, the diversity of the job seekers we’re attracting to our job fair in March looks to be dynamic and unique. I’m very glad to see things filling in nicely. Another thing that we do differently is sending up job fair tips to both the exhibitors and job seekers. We’ve seen that dispersing a few key tips to both groups really does help to better prepare both sides. Should be fun…
(If you’re an experienced job fair exhibitor, do you agree with this assessment of the demography of job fairs? I’d appreciate your input by clicking here.)

Any way, that was just the start of the day…

The bulk of my day was spent at the NHCUC job fair in Manchester NH. I have attended this event for 4 years now, and find it to be a great resource for us to not only promote our service to job seekers and students, but also to engage and provide resume and interview tips to them. I was very impressed by the number of students who were prepared with updated resumes and confidence in their approach. Many however, were still very unsure exactly what type of work they wanted. I often suggest to them to post a resume online, and see who finds them, and I provide advice to the extent that I can. I can’t help but leave any college student focused job fair feeling that all college seniors should be required to take a full semester course in career exploration/development in order to graduate. But I guess that’s just my opinion, and I have to acknowledge that a course such as that would still only be as valuable as the effort put in by both the professors and the students. If they don’t want to consider what job to get, they won’t.

Students were from many area schools including Franklin Pierce, Plymouth State, Colby-Sawyer, Rivier College, Saint Anselm, Southern NH University and more. At this point, I do want to give praise to all the career development professionals and other college staff that helped to promote this event and prepare their students to find job opportunities. The vast majority had professional attire, copies of their resumes, and exhibited a strong approach with eye contact, handshakes, and introductions. While these may seem like obvious things to do at a job fair, I am sure that many recruiters will agree that it’s not always the norm.

I fielded many questions about how to find work with an art degree, how to find internships, and how to get a career in marketing. I tried to review resumes, make suggestions regarding companies that I knew of personally, and provided tips on how to explore career options further. Most students were very engaged in the conversation, and seemed eager to really dig in to carving out their career path.

One job seeker story that stood out today: I met a young lady who had graduated college in 2005, and was recently laid off from a company that was closing it’s doors. She received a 2 week severance package, was suddenly finding herself unemployed. She had worked with a local sports organization for a couple years in customer service, and was hoping to find another admin asst job or customer service job in the Manchester Area. Her question to me was this: When an employer writes NO PHONE INQUIRIES on their job postings, and does not provide a direct email address, how do I follow up when I haven’t heard back about a resume I submitted.

Ouch. I didn’t have a good answer to this one. This young lady had submitted her resume, which was well done, and seemed to have the transferable skills necessary for clerical work, for 80 job openings in the last month, and had only had a couple call backs, with only ONE interview scheduled. I spoke with her at length about this issue, and shared her frustration. It seems as though ATS systems and other HRIS services have really taken the humans out of human resources. If you are hiring people to work for you, but give them no way to follow up with you after they’ve submitted your resume, what is left for them to do. I know that there are times when it is difficult for me to reply to every resume I get, but at least on our website, we have a telephone number and generic email address that will get to me if someone is assertively trying to follow up to interview with our company.
Here’s a quick poll question, and I’m open to feedback (you can share your thoughts by clicking on the Comments link and adding your ideas): If a company accepts resumes online, should they have any obligation to either reply to all applicants, or at least to provide some contact info, so that applicants can follow up?

One Recruiter story that stood out today: I spoke with a recruiter from a health care facility, who I see at many events in the area. I asked about attendance at other events this year, and how this event was panning out. Her reply was that attending career events has almost become simply an obligation and routine, rather than an active recruitment activity. Most of the events don’t yield too many qualified candidates, but the fear of missing one, and the added benefit of exposure for the company, keeps people coming back. This recruiter also said that she felt that so many people are going online today, that fewer and fewer realize the value of these in-person events. Interesting… Anyway, it reminded me about our job fair coming up, and I am more resolved than ever to not only provide valuable tips for registered job seekers, but to also reinforce and underscore the impact of meeting with a recruiter face to face, and making a personal connection.

Well, that’s the news from the recruiting front lines, this time in Manchester, New Hampshire. I’ll be posting again soon with issues an updates from the recruiting front lines in Alabama and Louisiana.

We have been crazy preparing for a very busy period on the recruiting front lines. Between today, February 19th and the end of the month, my organization will be exhibiting at nearly a dozen events across the gulf coast and the northeast, meeting with job seekers and employers, and coming face to face with the fears, hopes, concerns, and issues surrounding finding a new job, and finding the perfect candidate.

I’ll be updating this blog almost daily starting on Thursday, February 21st, after attending the New Hampshire College and University Council career fair in Manchester. One of the largest college student job focused career events in the northeast, this event will give us a great chance to speak with volumes of college students and soon-to-be grads.

Check back soon, or click on the subscribe button at left to set up email notifications, so updates will be emailed to you.

That’s all for now from the recruiting front lines. Stay tuned for new updates coming soon.

Over the past 4+ years, I have exhibited at more than 100 career events across new england. As a representative of an organization’s whose purpose is to connect local job seekers with local jobs, I make great effort to provide insight, tips, or value to any job seeker I speak with. I have found that taking some time to speak with a job seeker outside of the context of the recruiter/job seeker dynamic, really gives me a unique opportunity to listen to the fears and concerns that they have. It also gives me a chance to hear and dispel myths or false preconceptions that they may have about finding a job.

For example, I often hear job seekers tell me that they needed to do whatever was necessary to get their resume to one page, because recruiters and HR personnel are too busy to read more than that, and won’t bother with their resume. I hope this doesn’t offend any career counselors out there, but in my experience as a hiring manager and working with HR professionals, NO ONE IS GOING TO THROW AWAY A QUALIFIED CANDIDATE’S RESUME BECAUSE ITS TWO PAGES. In fact, quite the opposite is true. This is a very generalized example of how the process often works:

A recruiter, hiring manager, staffing rep, HR generalist, etc, posts a job opening on the web. They then receive 30 resumes via email. As a ballpark number, out of those 30, only about 10 will actually get a call back. Then, out of the 10, maybe 4-6 will get an interview. Now, when I begin screening resumes to decide who to call, I start by looking for the people that I am SURE have the experience and/or relevant skill set that will transfer to my job opening. To that end, if a candidate has chopped their resume to fit a four, eight, or fifteen year work history into one page, it is very likely that they have not included ALL of the skills and experiences that they have accumulated over time. Thus, if the skill that I need is on the cutting room floor, then I may not choose to call this person. I would much rather get ALL the information at the beginning of the process, so that I can be sure that I’m using my time effectively to call the most likely qualified people. Maybe I’m lazy, but I do not want to spend time calling people to find out that they don’t have the qualifications that I need. It is a fact that I would rather skim through twenty 4-page resumes to find 10 good people to call, then skim through forty 1-page resumes, and not knowing if any of them are truly qualified for the job that I have open.

Okay, okay…. so the title of this post is “When I meet a passive job seeker…” At many job fairs, I will meet the passive job seeker, whether that person is an early retiree looking for a part time job for ice-cream money, or someone fully employed looking for a career change or greener pastures. Often times, when they come up to me, I’ll ask what kind of work they are looking for, and the answer is usually that they don’t know, and that they’re not seriously looking, just seeing what kind of options they have. Well, with that attitude, I will guess that they find that their options are extremely limited. As a hiring manager, I wouldn’t get too engaged with a candidate who didn’t really know what they wanted to do, as it may turn out that I hire them only to have them find out that my work is not what they want to do.

I have begun to suggest to the passive job seekers to change their approach. Instead of stating that they don’t know what they want, they should open with a different position. I suggest starting by sharing a 2 sentence summary of your experience, and then stating that they are looking for new opportunities. This gives the recruiter an idea of your experience, and changes the dynamic so that THEY will tell YOU what opportunities they have that may work for you. This changes the conversation, and puts the recruiter in the position of “selling” their jobs to you, rather than the other way around.

If you’re a passive job seeker, try this, and let me know how it works. If you’re a recruiter, please let me know what you think about these pieces of advice.

See you all soon at the recruiting front lines!

Formatting Tips
Your resume will be displayed on JobsInAL.com in plain text, so you will need to remove any special formatting such as bold, italic, underlines, bullets, indents, and centering. If you have a resume created in Word, you can remove special formatting by saving it as a plain text file (with the extension .txt). You can open it up in Notepad (if you have Microsoft Windows) to view how it will look.

1. Manually remove any characters that are not readable and correct any spacing problems
2. If you had bullets, you will need to change them to asterisks (*)
3. Align everything to the left and use line breaks to separate headers from text.
4. Keep line width narrow (about 4.5 inches)
5. Preview your resume and check for any incorrect line breaks or special characters you might have missed before you send the message to a potential employer

Keep in mind that most resumes sent via email or viewed online are viewed for only 5-8 seconds during the initial screening. So, when it comes to e-resume writing, the first half of the first page of your resume should contain a summary of major accomplishments or key skills that sells you to the recruiter.

Making Your Resume Searchable
When your resume is stored in an online database, hiring managers and recruiters will probably conduct a keyword and key phrase search, since using phrases often increases the relevance of the search results. For example, a separate keyword search on “database” and “marketing” would return a larger number of resumes than a search on “database marketing”. Therefore, you want to think both in keyword and combinations of keywords that are likely search phrases and be sure to include both in the text of your e-resume.

These basic guidelines will get you started:

• The best source of words/phrases that a recruiter will use in a keyword search are his/her own – review job descriptions, job postings, and classified ads for positions in your field – most of the keywords and phrases that the hiring manager or recruiter will use are in there.
• Use industry “buzz words” and jargon – this is one time where that is encouraged – including commonly used acronyms in your field (e.g., MCSE when listing your certification for a network engineer in the IT industry).
• Other potential search words include the company names of your employers, cities where you have worked, and the college/university that you attended.

Don’t completely discard your paper resume. Instead, bring it with you to the interview. Any fancy formatting stripped from the electronic version will still come in handy – perhaps to help separate you from all the other candidates being interviewed.

Finally, just as with the paper version, it’s important to remember that your electronic resume is only active with a company for about six months. Resumes are then often deleted or put in an archival section of the company’s database. And of course, an e-resume should always be kept up-to-date.

Bringing the Human Resources Back to Louisiana

Working at JobsInTheUS as a Recruiting Consultant, Manager of Outreach and Education, and now as the Field Operations Manager, I have presented workshops on how to create more attractive and effective job postings to dozens of employer groups over the past few years. However, after all these presentations, and all the positive feedback and testimonials of success from employers, I never realized the true potential of employment advertising and the internet. That potential hit me like an awakening when I least expected it.

I was at the gym on Saturday morning, just settling in to my 60 minutes on the elliptical trainer, when this realization struck. Now, one of the reasons I picked this particular gym to join was that every aerobic machine has it’s own flat screen TV with a remote control and headphone jack propped up in front of it. This idea of giving me something to distract myself, as I worked out has been great. As is my custom, I try to find an engaging program to tune in to as I sweat away the 60 minute workout. As so often I do, I landed on CNN, which is mostly attractive for it’s lack of commercials, keeping my attention longer.

This day happened to be Saturday, February 9^th, and the presidential campaign was in full swing. Caucuses were underway in Kansas, Nebraska, the Virgin Islands, and Washington, while votes were being cast at the Louisiana Primary. CNN was airing a show entitled Ballot Bowl ’08, and was covering the top candidates as they rallied support for their nominations. CNN aired lengthy clips of each of the candidates speaking to crowds at town halls, diners, senior citizens homes, and various arenas.

Barack Obama was speaking in Lafayette, LA, regarding the tens of thousands of displaced residents who have not been able to return after Katrina. Obama spoke passionately about increasing federal support and speeding up the reconstruction, conjuring up visions of a mass migration back to LA to restore the communities and economy. It was then that the power of recruitment advertising and the internet occurred to me.

At JobsInTheUS, we have been providing informational seminars to help companies use the internet to position themselves as the employer of choice in their area and industry. We talk about what makes them a great place to work, the unique qualities that make them special, and we share what job seekers are looking for. We have seen that businesses who promote themselves with descriptive profiles, including colors, logos, and images, are much more successful in their recruiting efforts, while those who put in little effort, tend to get a return in kind. The internet broadcasts your business and your employment opportunities across the globe. Through the web, a person living in Idaho can find out all about the job openings in Baton Rouge or Houma. That is, they can find out as much as your company tells them. We spend a great deal of effort on search engine optimization, so when a person searches for a “job in Louisiana” in a search engine, we show up to promote the real in-state jobs that are available.

Tens of thousands of displaced Louisiana residents are still living outside the state, awaiting an opportunity to return. Most of the people that we work with wear many hats in their companies. I urge all HR professionals, business owners, office managers, and personnel staff to don one more cap, that of the lighthouse keeper. But instead of shining your light to keep boats from crashing into the coast, your light should serve as a beacon to all who are looking to return to Louisiana. A beacon of light that shines on the great opportunities you can provide and illuminates your unique culture and qualities. A light that will attract people to your company and to the region. Take the time to show what makes you special, and remember, as you write you company profile or fill in your job description online, that you are doing more than merely posting a help-wanted ad. You are broadcasting to the world that there is opportunity in Louisiana, and there is something great to come home to.

Well, it was a productive day for a Friday. Our company is launching a job fair of it’s own in NH in March. We had carefully selected the date, location, time, and focus, and we’re off to a great start. It’s amazing how few good career events there are in NH, compared with ME. This is a great event to showcase how much we can motivate people to get up and out. We are partnering with NHWorks and the Nashua Chamber to promote the event, and I’m pretty sure we’ll get 1,000 job seekers in, averaging 40 years of age, and almost all currently employed.

I’ll also be attending a summer camp career fair in Maine on SUNDAY. I’ll let you know how that one turned out after it’s done.

raytheon

fidelity

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liberty mutual careertv spotlight

LibertyMutual Recruiter

AFLAC!

ARAMARK:

ENTERPRISE RENT A CAR

Today, the recruiting front lines were located in Burlington VT… for me anyhow. VABIR, the Vermont Association of Business Industry and Rehabilitation held an employer recognition breakfast to thank the local businesses who are actively providing employment opportunities and support to VABIR’s clients. Beverly Manitsky, an Education and Outreach Consultant who works with JobsInVT was recognized for her work presenting a workshop on internet job hunting. This presentation included how to find and use relevant key words, how to search by specific industry or location, how to identify legitimate job opportunities, how to set up career agents, and how to create effective e-resumes that can be found in resume databases. Beverly has worked with JobsInVT for a couple years now, and has been providing outreach to job seekers and employers across northern VT, and I am very glad to call her an associate. She represents JobsInVT and JobsInTheUS very well, and her presence on the ground goes a long way to building long term relationships.

For JiVT, the educational seminars are a great way to provide outreach into the community, and help qualified local job seekers better understand how internet job hunting works, and how they can use web-based resources more effectively. You may or may not be surprised by the number of people who are still not comfortable or confident using the web to find jobs. We find this to be common among all types of groups: from professionals in transition who haven’t searched for a job in more than 10 years to college seniors preparing to graduate, blue collar, white collar, no collar- virtually all demographics have some population that still are hesitant to utilize the internet for business or job related activities. With the decline in page counts and increase in costs for newspaper advertising, the recruiting market has made a shift to the internet for advertising, starting in 1996 and outspending print for the first time in 2007. I am glad to work for an organization that understands that with this dramatic and extremely fast transition, comes a need to better prepare both job seekers and employers on how to leverage the power of the web for employment purposes.

Anyhow, I’ll get off my soap box now, and get back to VABIR. This was a very nice breakfast and despite an unexpected blizzard, had a very good turnout. The guest speaker provided a very moving and honest story about how he first got involved with VABIR, and the transformation that he has undergone as a result. I will post more on the speaker soon. Keep your eyes peeled. Below is some info on VABIR, and their mission.

IF you have a positive story about employing people with disabilities through a VABIR program, please add a comment and share your experience.

Happy Fat Super Tuesday everyone! This morning I attended a presentation by Merritt Carey, founder of Graffam Solutions, at the Human Resource Association of Southern Maine. The title of the meeting was Disability as Diveristy & How to Use HR as a Marketing Tool. Casey spoke about the benefits to companies of promoting their social responsibility policies to increase consumer loyalty. Corporate Social Responsibility is a very hot topic right now, as can be seen in the January 17 issue of the Economist. Carey asserted that central to social responsibility issues are HR Policies that display a high regard for employee’s benefits and appreciation. She expressed that many companies can see increased market share by doing a better job of promoting the good internal HR policies and external social responsibility initiatives that they may already be doing.

Her position is that consumers have more access now to the culture and policies of big businesses, and therefore are more likely to make buying decisions based on how they feel a company’s ideals align with their own.

She also discussed how promoting social responsibility initiatives and positive internal HR policies can affect recruiting and retention, thereby affecting bottom lines from the inside out. On this issue, the word from the recruiting front lines is simply this: THAT’S ABSOLUTELY CORRECT! We have seen first hand for years that promoting strong employee benefits and appreciation is a key to building a strong employment brand. Employment Brand is a term used to identify the marketing efforts geared toward recruiting and employee retention. This is a must-do for any business that relies on it’s talent pool to maintain market share and grow their business. The war for talent is becoming more expensive and difficult to win every day, and as the baby-boomers leave the traditional workforce and the job growth continues to rise, the ability to be viewed as the employer of choice will be the key to winning the best talent.

Carey also discussed how it is important, particularly in a state as ethnically homogeneous as Maine to include people with disabilities in the diversity discussion. She cited how disabled Americans control a trillion dollars in expendable income, and that this is a group very likely to want to do business with businesses that have disability initiatives in place.

It was a good meeting, and left me thinking about how the business I work for can help HR professionals build their employment brand, and embed it into their consumer marketing….

Any thoughts on this?