Unemployment and the In Box: HRExaminer’s Job Hunter Week

Last modified on 2011-05-06 02:33:58 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

This week we’re focusing on finding the next job.  The official unemployment rate for March 2011 was 8.8% with new statistics coming out this week.  Gallup, who regularly polls 30K people, puts jobless rates higher at 9.5% unemployed and 19.6% underemployed.

That means that you know someone who is unemployed.  Chances are it’s someone who is a close friend or family member.  If you are a recruiter or human resources professional, you are barraged with questions and pleas for advice or help.  I get at least several of those emails a week.  I can only imagine what it is like for people in the hiring trenches.

So HRExaminer is looking at the job hunt and compiling information and resources to give to people looking for help.

Tuesday’s piece is by Top 100 Influencer David Perry.  David is an executive recruiter who, along with co-author Jay Conrad Levinson, has taken on unemployment as a personal mission in the Guerrilla book and DVD series.  The latest edition, Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0 launches this week.  And we invited David to tell us what’s new and important in the job hunting process.  The book begins with an introduction by me and ends with some legal perspective by EAB contributor and editor Heather Bussing.  In between are insights and wisdom from lots of smart people all over the recruiting and HR industry, including Harry Joiner, Peter Clayton, Jim Durbin, Barbara Ling, Steve Rothberg, Dennis Smith and Rayanne Thorn.

The rest of the week will be my thoughts on job hunting, originally published at Glassdoor in their career advice blog.  The blog offers resources and helpful advice on everything from resumes to interview tips to how to survive the emotional ups-and-downs of the job search. There are great posts by my good friends Hank Stringer, Rusty Rueff and Jeff Hunter, as well as newer voices, Vickie Elmer, Debra Wheatman, Heather Huhman, Meghan M. Biro, Liz Ryan, Nancy Mann Jackson and Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter.  (Full disclosure: I get paid to write the blog pieces at Glassdoor, but they have no idea I’m writing this.)

Glassdoor is a perfect example of how job hunting resources have evolved with the internet and social media. It became possible in the late 1990’s to do online research about a prospective employer’s business and financial performance, but you were limited to carefully crafted surface of the company.  Glassdoor has taken the next step to give you in-the-know perspective by people who work at the company and people who have applied for jobs there. Glassdoor is effectively the Yelp of job hunting.  And that is turning the tables on employers who must now consider employee and candidate experience as part of their marketing and overall brand strategy.

Job hunting has changed again; and it’s always useful to be reminded what HR looks like from the outside.

We invite you to join the conversation and tell us where you direct friends who need help with a job hunt as well as the advice you give them.

Exploiting “Digital Recruiting” to land a job

Last modified on 2011-05-03 03:06:23 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The 'Rogue Recruiter' David Perry, co-author of Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0

Nicknamed the ‘Rogue Recruiter’ by the Wall Street Journal, David Perry is the author/coauthor of four books including Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0 and has written on leadership, executive recruiting and job search, for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Chicago Sun Times, Globe & Mail and other firms. A well known name in executive search circles, David is the managing partner of Perry-Martel International one of North America’s top executive search firms.

Exploiting “Digital Recruiting” to land a job

by David Perry

This post talks about how job hunters can exploit the employers’ recent move to digital searches to create a ‘force multiplier’ and get noticed.

In the past year, 50-million jobs were filled in the United States  –  almost all without a job posting!

The jobs weren’t posted because of a change in the way employers hunt for candidates.  Today, employers can’t deal with the avalanche of resumes they would get if they posted the jobs.  So they are relying on a brand new digital armory to find the handful of “most qualified” recruits that they want to interview.

Employers have gone digital!

This move makes things easier for job hunters!  Any candidate with the right digital skills has more power and more opportunity to find and land a job than they have ever had before.

In my new book, co-authored with Jay Levinson, “Guerrilla Marketing for Job-Hunters 3.0,” I lay out the  new tools and tactics to make you light up on the digital radar!

Sub-titled: “How to Stand Out from the Crowd and Tap into the Hidden Job Market Using Social Media and 999 other Tactics Today,” the new book goes beyond  ‘where to look’ for a job, to include ‘how to be found in the digital job marketplace.’  It took a guerilla marketer to spot this trend and few job candidates are aware of it yet.  If you can grasp these simple digital techniques now, you will have a jump on all those who are still sending out resumes.  While resumes are still a critical element, job hunters also need digital strategies.

The new book tells how to use different social media at the same time, so job hunters can leverage online resources like ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, and Facebook.  You may even tap into “the secret lives of top corporate recruiters.”  Job-hunters are also advised on little-known search-engine optimization tricks used by companies looking for employees and how to use the new tools to build online profiles that present value to searchers.

Drive to Own The “Means of Employment”

Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0 understands our human desire to direct and know our fate.  Partly this comes from the current economic uncertainty; partly it reflects the history of the past century and more, which has been a striving towards the realization that people’s opinions matter!  We have always moved in the direction of greater freedom…because that is human nature.  People are taking control of their lives, which means ownership of the means of employment.  We are in a renaissance of self-direction.  In an uncertain world, we need to find ways to expand our opportunities and  abilities. We want to control our destinies.

“Taking control of your employment is especially important in today’s demographic because so many people are looking for new kinds of work  -  work that has meaning for them.  Our population is getting older  –  for the first time, there will be more people over 65 than under 5  — and older people are more reflective: they want to know they are doing something meaningful.  Our book helps provide a catalyst for their productivity.

In a digital age, you master the digital stage.

As the first multi-media book for job hunters, Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0 has:

• “Quick Response” Tag technology from Microsoft to deliver exclusive content
• Digital tools to perform precession job searches and online placements of candidate values
• Hot links for fast access to online tools
• Tweets and other social media tools

If you are a job hunter or know a job hunter, it is essential to understand the latest technology and tools for finding your dream job and getting it.

You can pick up a copy of my book, Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0 here.
 
- David Perry
 
 

Passion is a Choice

Last modified on 2011-05-06 02:48:56 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” ~ Martin Luther King

Passion is a choice. If you’re wandering around trying to figure out how to find your real true passion, take a break. Sit down. Your passion is not out in the world, it’s somewhere inside of you. Look all you want. When you are finally ready to feel the fires of passion burning in your heart, follow these simple guidelines.

Passion is a decision for most of us. While it would be wonderful and miraculous to wake up one day and know exactly what you want and where you are going, it’s probably not going to happen. Your passion is a fire that you have to build for yourself, in yourself.

Personality tests, self assessment, vocational aptitude instruments and a good conversation with your local minister or bartender are all good ways to collect insight into what you might do. But, when all of the data is in, all the advice received and all of the insight understood, you remain faced with the choice.

Build your passion just as you’d build a fire.

1. Gather the wood. Set aside a place and time to build and reinforce your passion. Building and maintaining passion requires that you have the necessary resources collected (enough wood for the fire, so to speak). Having a regular time each day in which to consider and refine your dream is important. 15 Minutes in the morning or at the end of the day is sufficient. Have inspirational literature, good books, writing materials and a comfortable place to sit. Write down your dream. Each day refine some portion of it. Each day, review your dream and improve on it in some small way. The clearer you can see it the likelier it is to happen. Manufacture passion, don’t wait around for it.

2. Use kindling to get the fire started. Passion is not an intellectual thing. It is critical to think carefully about your dream and build it into something bigger each day. But, passion means action. Start with tiny things that are easy to like. Sing a song, take a walk; do something that you like just because it exercises your “I like stuff” muscles. In some small way, do the thing that you dream about. Make a point of being able to go to bed each day knowing that you did at least one thing to move you towards your dream. You will hit patches of the road where it takes the depths of your commitment to find the one small thing. That’s where you start to really learn that passion is a decision. You do it even when you don’t feel like it.

3. Add bigger things as the fire starts growing. Momentum takes a while. Think about how small a snowball can be before you roll one big enough to be the base of a snowman. As you gain your footing in the process of manufacturing your dream, you’ll find opportunities to try big things. Try them. There’s nothing that says you have to be successful in every single venture. The idea is to get the fire so hot that it doesn’t mind an occasional wet log. Keep tending the fire.

4. Sharpen sticks and roast the marshmallows. You’ve made the decision. You’ve built the fire. Sharpen the sticks and use the fire for something fun. Once it is stable, your passion can hold the dreams and aspirations of others. It’s not terribly surprising that the people who are great at deciding to have their own passion are our leaders. You know the ones. Dreaming your dream and manufacturing your own passion is how you get on that track.

It’s really normal to get suck in the process at any of the steps. The key to developing and sustaining momentum is to understand that it won’t always feel great. Sometimes, you just push it through. Passion is the decision that matters in those times.

This article was originally published in Glassdoor’s Career Advice Blog.  Here are more of John Sumser’s career articles at Glassdoor.

The Odds of Getting A Job With a Recruiter

Last modified on 2011-05-06 02:52:43 GMT. 8 comments. Top.

“Many are called but few are chosen.”

The business of matching people with jobs is horribly flawed, loaded with waste and abuse and impossible to navigate. While you may have heard about headhunters actively recruiting people from their current assignments, it’s a relatively rare thing. Fewer than seven percent of the workforce is ever contacted by a recruiter.

The odds are one in 12 that a recruiter will contact you, on average. In reality, the odds are way worse than that for most people. Recruiters work in markets where there are shortages and/or high demand. Most people work in occupations where there is relatively low demand. If you remove the seven percent who actually get calls from headhunters, the likelihood becomes infinitesimally small.

But wait, it’s worse than that.

Most headhunters work on a pure performance-based commission structure for compensation. The very nature of their pay forces them to focus on the jobs and skills that are most in demand. Since there is no sustained cash flow, most recruiters work in operations where capital is in short supply. Cash is king in the recruiting business.

Contingency headhunters plow through an enormous number of connections and gate keepers in their search for a candidate who feels like the right (and salable) package. They take on more assignments than they can fill (closing one in eight or one in 10 deals is normal in the business)

In order to complete a single search, a recruiter may review as many as 300 resumes, culled from a variety of sources, none of them submitted by the candidates. That pile is sifted into a short list of approximately 10 resumes through a series of telephone calls and decisions. Those 10 people are heavily evaluated before being presented to the customer.

So, assuming that the headhunter you’re talking to closes 12% of the positions she tries to fill, the odds are:

• 1 in 12 (8.5%) That a recruiter will ever call you
• 1 in 30 (3.3%) that you will make it to the short list
• 1 in 10 (10%) that you will be selected
• 1 in 8 (12.5%) that she will fill the job she is talking to you about

In other words, the overall odds are about 1 in 28,520 (.0035%) that your conversation with a headhunter will land you a job.

You are better off buying scratch-off lottery tickets.

This article was originally published in Glassdoor’s Career Advice Blog.  Here are more of John Sumser’s career articles at Glassdoor.