Jason Blais: From the Recruiting Front Lines

Okay job seekers, here’s the best kept secret in Digital Resumes: YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT THE RECRUITER IS GOING TO SEARCH FOR! Searching a resume database to find a candidate is often very similar to searching any other database- you enter a key word or phrase that you’re searching for, and the database spits out results that match your search. Sounds simple, right? While working in the field speaking with job seekers, I am continually amazed at how little direction is provided to them from “resume experts” on this extremely fundamental concept.

Normally, when reviewing a job seekers resume with them, I can find major ommissions in just a few seconds that dramatically affect their ability to be found in a database search. Often, its something this simple: you put your job title in that reads “Inside Sales Rep”. What if the recruiter searches for Account Manager? or Sales Professional? or Sales Representative? Would you want to be found in those searches? This is the simplest thing job seekers can change on their resumes to increase the number of people who find them and contact them.

We advise that you simply add a “Keyword Summary” to the end of the digital resume, and list out all the terms that you could use if your were searching for yourself. We also suggest you include job titles that you believe in your heart you are qualified for, but have not yet done. For example, maybe you’ve have Assistant HR Manager in your work experience, and you’ve done it for many years. If you truly feel you are qualified for an HR Director job, you should include that keyword. At best, the recruiter who searches for HR director will find you, review your qualifications, and call you to find out more. At worst, they will see that you don’t have that experience and not call…

RECRUITERS/HR MANAGERS VIEW: Remember, if you are searching a resume database, it’s absolutely critical that you are creative and thoughtful with your search terms. This is the best way to ensure you’re finding ALL the relevant candidates.

Today, JobsInRI, the Rhode Island-specific employment website operated by JobsInTheUS, exhibited at the annual fall career fair at the University of Rhode Island. We’ve attended URI events for the past 4 years or so, and this usually tends to be a good event with lots of college students getting ready to enter the workforce. Unfortunately, RI now tops the unemployment rates in the country at around 8.9%, nearly doubling in the last year. This isn’t good news for graduating seniors. In fact, I believe I saw more graduate programs exhibiting at this year’s event than any other I’ve attended- the message? Stay in school a couple more years until the economy and job growth is stronger!

The URI career fair is open to the public. I spent a few minutes speaking with a gentlemen who had more than a decade (or two) experience in printing and graphic design / prepress for commercial printing. Two years ago, this was a highly marketable skill as print was still strong, and these skills becoming harder and harder to find. Now, with the slumping economy and associated belt-tightening, people are moving away from direct mail, printed newsletters, and other printed materials, choosing instead to move toward email and web based marketing and communication. The thought, of course, is that there’s no production cost or hard costs, such as the paper, and that its more environmentally friendly. In reality, the decision is simple business economics- its cheaper to send emails, whether its internally for employee notices, to members for newsletters, or to customers for marketing, than it is to print and mail these pieces.

In speaking with this gentleman, I offered suggestions on career options that would take advantage of his transferable skills: Graphic Design and Layout skills are just as valuable now, but must be updated and modified for these new web tools. This may take learning new software, but if the most important knowledge is the general rules of good layout and design, which he likely has with his experience. Its much easier to teach the hard skills of a new software than it is to teach the soft skills of good creative application and knowledge of design elements. Another skilled trade being undervalued and underappreciated because of the advent of new software and technology…

THOUGHTS FOR RECRUITERS / HR PROFESSIONALS: It is truly important to understand the value of soft skills within your company, and to weight those appropriately in your screening and hiring process. Remember, FIRST WHO, THEN WHAT. If you have the right people with the right motivation, culture, ideals, morals, drive, intelligence, strengths, it is easy to teach them the hard skills that are relevant to your company. If you hire people based on hard skills that lack all those soft skills, you’ll constantly be working on employee issues and retention programs, wondering why your turnover is so high when you always get the most skilled people.

That’s the way it looks from the recruiting front lines today. I hope you’ll share any thoughts via the comments link.

Last week I presented a webinar focused on Employment Branding to more than 150 companies through a great resource called GoToWebinar (free plug- it’s a great and easy to use web conferencing tool).

I also provided the same presentation to a group of HR professionals at the Seacoast Human Resource Association, SHRA, in Portsmouth, NH, a local chapter of SHRM.

I’ve presented this material a handful of times, and one piece of feedback that I get consistently really stands out, so I wanted to share.

During the presentation, we discuss how to identify a company’s unique employment proposition- it’s employment brand. That is, what does your company provide to it’s employees that make you unique? This ranges from flexibility of schedules, to compassionate environment, to generous benes and compensation, to stabile work environment and so on…

We ask the employers to assign human personality traits to themselves as employers. Actually, we do this as an exercise, and suggest that they have their employees fill this out. As with a consumer brand, the brand is what people tell you it is, not what you think it is. If people perceive Kia’s to be cheap, low quality transportation, that’s the reality of the brand, regardless of what people at Kia would want you to believe, AND REGARDLESS OF THE ACTUAL QUALITY OR VALUE THAT KIA OFFERS. If people don’t see it that way, it isn’t that way.

Likewise, your employment brand is whatever your employees say it is.

So as we go through this process, it almost always comes up that this is difficult to do, because different departments (horizontal), or different job grades (vertical) would have different opinions about the company’s strengths, weaknesses, personality.

This is where I recently stopped my thought process, and asked myself, WHY IS IT THAT THERE IS SO MUCH VARIATION IN VIEW OF THE COMPANY BOTH HORIZONTALLY AND VERTICALLY? If one department treats your employees well, pays well, is open and honest in communication, and is compassionate to them, why would that change from department to department? Or, for that matter, based on how high up the ladder you are?

So, this is, or may be, a reality for many companies. And the suggestion up front is simple- analyze your employment personality/brand for each functional area- horizontally and vertically- to capture granular detail about each department, so as you build your brand it is customized and focused right down to that level.

Here’s my second thoughts on that. If you are hearing very conflicting feedback about your company’s strengths, weaknesses, personality, etc, there’s more work that needs to be done first…. sorry. This finding presents an excellent opportunity to identify inconsistencies internally, and develop a blueprint for building better employee relations and engagement.

Your ability to have a strong and pervasive culture will allow you to better identify the best potential candidates, based on your current environment and staff. Attracting better candidates leads to hiring better employees.

• Hiring better employees leads to reduced costs for turnover, as retention increases.
• Increased retention means better long-term skill development for your business.
• Better long term skill development means better productivity, consumer relations, profitability.

THIS IS WHY IT IS IMPORTANT. A business’s ability to realize long term sustainability and growth is based on the collective skills and engagement of it’s employees. Top producing, happy, engaged employees will have the greatest effect on you bottom line of variable you can control.

From the Recruiting Front Lines, that’s how I see it today! Please click here to share your comments.

jchasseblais

I presented a webinar on October 16 on the topic of EMPLOYMENT BRANDING (which I’ll be presenting two more times this mont in-person with the NHLRA and with the Seacoast HR Association). Over 160 HR, Recruiting, and Hiring Professionals attended the webinar to learn more about the benefits of building and Employment Brand, the process of developing that brand, and some basics to analyze the brand penetration.

This is the 4th time presenting this material, and each time the engagement, excitement, and interest of the audience is very high. What I find surprising is how few businesses out there actually take the time to work through this process, and develop their own brand. In the employment advertising world in which I work (quick plug for the sites of JobsInTheUS!), we see the quality of thousands of job postings everyday- some are terrific, most are mediocre to subpar.

My original thought process when developing this seminar and webinar was to provide HR directors and business leaders with a blueprint to help them increase their hiring success, thereby elevating their employee retention and productivity, and reducing turnover costs. I am from a marketing background, and understand that much of the information and expertise provided by an employment advertising ageny or recruitment advertising agency, can be learned and developed internally by the in-house personnel and recruitment professionals- those in charge of attracting, screening, and hiring the best possible candidates for their company.

The question I now find myself asking through my internal dialogue is whether or not this is a duty that is or should be a priority of the personnel and recruiting professionals that are employed by a company? OR, is this an effort best left to the “industry experts” as an outsourced function?

Now, I will be the first to admit that I am an idealist. And I think that deep down I believe that the most fundamental and elementary role of HUMAN RESOURCES is to ensure that a business has the very best people in place, working as effectively and efficiently as possible, to achieve the company’s stated goals and mission.

That being said, I’m not naive, and do understand that the HR environment includes a much fuller landscape with many more integrated ecosystems that must be dealt with- from adherance to employment laws to personnel disputes to OSHA regulations and now even supervision of alignment with S/OX compliance. OF course there’s also benefits, compensation, retention strategies…. I could go on and on as I’m sure that you, the readers of this blog, understand.

My point is that I question whether outsourcing the company’s efforts to attract top talent is really in the company’s best interest. Maybe it is. Perhaps, the best possible situation is to have a very close and open relationship with the right agency and maintain oversight of the direction, tone, and image that is being built, while allowing the experts create the graphics, place the advertising, handle the copy writing, etc.

I’d like to get input from anyone who finds themselves on any side of this issue: one who outsources, one who handles this in-house, or an agency who is hired to handle these issues.

Please SHARE YOUR COMMENTS BY CLICKING HERE!

That’s the view from the Recruiting Front Lines- I’ll be in touch soon.

jb

Okay, so if you’ve read my recent posts, you’ve seen that my company hosted 4 career fairs last month- one each in ME, NH, RI, and AL. All were a success, if you count success as providing an opportunity for local businesses to meet face to face with job candidates. I am proud that we did them, and believe we offered a benefit to a great many job seekers and employers in the markets we serve.

That being said, I’m still rather dismayed about some of the attitudes and behaviors of the employers who say they’re looking for great talent, but do not engage job seekers and are not fully prepared for the occasion.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I really don’t fault any employers make the effort to be there. The problem, as I see it, is much more interwoven in our business culture. Rarely, if ever, are decision makers present at such events. That being the case, the entire value of the face to face meeting is watered down and almost completely lost. Also, in many cases, the people sent to staff the booths are fully informed on the skills and experiences required for the specific openings. Again, I don’t believe this is the fault of the people staffing the booths, or of the HR dept in general. It has merely become status quo… good enough.

And adding on to the discouragement for some of the job seekers (trust me, I heard from dozens directly, and hundreds through our survey forms, so I’m not making this stuff up- while the majority of attendees ranked the event very well, some of the higher level seekers felt disappointed by the occasion), is that once they do have a good conversation at this type of an event, they are sent home to fill out an application online.

My goodness!!! Let’s place decisions on the most fundamental pieces of a company in the hands of online resources! FOR REAL?! This sometimes seems like some type of Orwellian nightmare… Oh, yes, I liked you, and think you’d make a great candidate, but our computer will prescreen you and let us know if we should follow up.

I spoke with a company last year that really drove this point home for me. One of their long term employees moved out of state with her husband who was in the military. After 2 years, she returned to the area and tried to get her job back. It was mandatory for her to now go through an online application and screening resource administered by a third party. You know where I’m going with this… SHE FAILED TO GET THROUGH THE PRESCREEN! Her manager, who was relaying this story, was very clear that she was an excellent employee with a great track record and work ethic. Now, because the decisions about this 3rd party administrator are made at the corporate level, this manage CAN’T HIRE THE BEST PERSON, and has no recourse to circumvent the system.

Okay…so maybe its just early on a Tuesday morning… but that’s what I think I think!

The properties of JobsInTheUS have launched a focused initiative to reinforce strong and lasting connections with the local communities they serve in AL, LA, MA, ME, MS, NH, VT, & RI. Unlike most internet resources, these companies are participatory in local business and trade associations, HR Associations, career centers at colleges, universities, trades schools, and government centers. In addition to this interaction with the business community, the JobsInTheUS.com websites now also provide in-person events to connect great in-state employers with the best local talent. Check out this series of posts with briefs on the recent career fairs hosted by JobsInAL, JobsInNH, JobsInME, and JobsInRI!

JobsInRI 2008 Career Fair Attracts Great Local Candidates

On Thursday, September 18, JobsInRI.com, in partnership with the Northern RI Chamber of Commerce, hosted a successful career fair at the Twin River Gaming Facility in Lincoln. Merchant Card Services, Express Personnel, and AAA of Southern New England sponsored the event, which was heavily advertised on multiple radios station, on area campuses, through local business and trade associations, and by email invitations to job seekers. Unlike other recent events, the more than 600 job seekers who attended were able meet with dozens of employers looking for great employees to fill jobs in Rhode Island. Companies as big as Rite Aid, Raytheon, and Amica exhibited alongside great local businesses such as the Groden Network, Picerne Real Estate Group, and Cranston ARC.

This broad range of high-quality, in-state employers illustrated a brighter side of the Rhode Island economy. In fact, the 32 companies on hand represented hundreds of current openings in the state, and the 2008 JobsInRI Career Fair helped them connect with great local candidates. “We were very excited about the level of the candidates that came through today. In fact, 24 out of the 25 exhibitors that answered our feedback surveys stated that they found potential candidates during the career fair,” said Jason Blais, Field Operations Manager for JobsInTheUS.com and JobsInRI.com. Obviously, the employers were impressed as well. According to Michael Coates, of Clean Water Action, “The turnout at this fair was very impressive. Your organization obviously took a lot of care in advertising this event.”

This Career Fair reinforced JobsInRI.com’s status as the #1 local employment resource in Rhode Island. Currently, there are more in-state, Rhode Island career opportunities posted with JobsInRI.com than anywhere else. In addition to providing the leading resource to find jobs, JobsInRI.com also provides the best value to employers. In September alone, the website, www.JobsInRI.com, received more than 1,000,000 page views.

WERE YOU ABLE TO ATTEND THIS EVENT? DO YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS EVENT OR CAREER FAIRS IN GENERAL? PLEASE SHARE YOUR COMMENTS WITH US!

jb

The properties of JobsInTheUS have launched a focused initiative to reinforce strong and lasting connections with the local communities they serve in AL, LA, MA, ME, MS, NH, VT, & RI. Unlike most internet resources, these companies are participatory in local business and trade associations, HR Associations, career centers at colleges, universities, trades schools, and government centers. In addition to this interaction with the business community, the JobsInTheUS.com websites now also provide in-person events to connect great in-state employers with the best local talent. Check out this series of posts with briefs on the recent career fairs hosted by JobsInAL, JobsInNH, JobsInME, and JobsInRI!

JobsInME.com 2008 Career Fair Attracts Great Local Candidates

On September 17, hundreds of job seekers descended on the Wyndham Hotel in South Portland to attend the 2008 JobsInME Career Fair. This event, presented by JobsInME.com in partnership with the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce, brought together 48 of the region’s best local employers to promote career opportunities and find their next great employees.

Maine Medical Center, Bath Iron Works, InterCoast Career Institute, and the Central Maine Medical Family sponsored the event, which was promoted heavily through the JobsInME.com website, the Androscoggin County chamber, and on the radio at WCYY, WHOM, WJBQ, and WBLM, which also did live call-ins from the event! This promotion, along with the list of high quality employers on hand, attracted great quality candidates, looking for all types of career opportunities.

With the economy slowing and unemployment rising slightly in Maine, great local businesses are finding a growing stream of quality applicants for all their open positions. In fact, more than 90% of the employers stated that they found potential candidates and viable resumes during the event! JobsInME.com staff were on hand providing resume tips and career advice to the hundreds of jobs seekers who made their way through the 2008 JobsInME.com Career Fair. Said one of the JobsInME.com staff, “It was a great experience for me – to be able to show people that we’re so much more than just a website on the internet, that JobsInME.com is a real, local business, and we’re committed to helping local job seekers connect with local employers. It was great sharing our expertise with people face to face.”

WERE YOU ABLE TO ATTEND THE EVENT? DO YOU HAVE THOUGHTS ON THIS EVENT? PLEASE SHARE YOUR COMMENTS WITH US!

jb

The properties of JobsInTheUS have launched a focused initiative to reinforce strong and lasting connections with the local communities they serve in AL, LA, MA, ME, MS, NH, VT, & RI. Unlike most internet resources, these companies are participatory in local business and trade associations, HR Associations, career centers at colleges, universities, trades schools, and government centers. In addition to this interaction with the business community, the JobsInTheUS.com websites now also provide in-person events to connect great in-state employers with the best local talent. Check out this series of posts with briefs on the recent career fairs hosted by JobsInAL, JobsInNH, JobsInME, and JobsInRI!

JobsInAL.com 2008 Career Fair Attracts Great Local Candidates

On September 10, JobsInAL.com, in partnership with Manufacture Alabama!, hosted a career fair at the Cahaba Grand in Birmingham. This successful event brought together area employers with high quality local job seekers.

More than 25 companies registered to exhibit at the event, representing many different industries. What the attending companies found when they arrived was a professional and friendly JobsInAL.com staff, along with very good quality applicants. In fact, 86% of the employers expressed that the event was successful for their purposes, and were likely to attend the next event in the spring. Job seekers who came through were able to have good conversations with some of the area’s best employers.

The Cahaba Grand event space allowed for a comfortable atmosphere, providing seekers and employers with a great atmosphere to connect and get to know each other. Patrick Erb, the Manager of Outreach and Education for JobsInAL.com took the time to work with job seekers one on one, offering advice and directions on resume writing, interview practices, and the overall job hunting process.

WERE YOU ABLE TO ATTEND AS A JOB SEEKER OR EMPLOYER? IF SO, PLEASE SHARE YOUR COMMENTS HERE!