Tag Archives: Job applications

The Biggest Change in Hiring

Be nice to recruiters

Unpredictability and uncertainty in the business world shorten employment tenure. There are several reasons for this: The fast-paced and ever-changing evolution of technology is generating competitive pressures. Consumer tastes are changing and demanding new products and services. And world events are destabilizers; revolutions, wars, floods, droughts, earthquakes, tsunamis, and reactor meltdowns are examples.

Employers find themselves needing to react via quick adaptation. Company organizational charts the way we used to know them are shifting to meet foreseeable demands for staffing needs. Thus, the result is a contingent and temporary labor force. Statistics show that people change jobs on an average of every three years—some of them staying with the same employer but in new roles and some joining a different employer.

Recruiters will have an increased role in matching job seekers with jobs.

About half of all new openings at large employers are nowadays filled by internal mobility but still under the control of a recruiter. The rest of the openings are filled by new hires—also via a recruiter. The hiring manager makes the final decision about whom to hire, but recruiters can block job seekers based on their own discretion.

It is evident that job seekers’ interactions with recruiters will increase. In many cases, recruiters are not viewed favorably by job seekers. They are considered the necessary [d]evils. Most job seekers don’t understand the pressures on the typical recruiter. Each recruiter works simultaneously on filling 15 to 20 job openings. Recruiting is a human resources task but functionally reports to and is evaluated by hiring managers. Recruiters rely on applicant-tracking-system technology but have to make final decisions based on interviewing every reasonable candidate. Recruiters don’t know the details of the job more than the extent of the information supplied in the job description. And recruiters are very much under time pressure to produce results for hiring managers and meet hiring managers’ urgent needs.

How to increase your chances of being selected as a good candidate by recruiters

Follow the instructions precisely in terms of how recruiters want you to submit your credentials. Demonstrate that you have a keen interest in the position you’re applying for. Be honest and genuine. Come prepared when interacting with them. Don’t cause them embarrassment. They need to present you to the hiring manager. Ensure that you are a match with the job description. Use TagCrowd to make sure your résumé includes most of the keywords that recruiters are likely to use as queries based on the job description. And last, use Jobscan.co (note: the filename ends with .co and not .com) to match your résumé to the job description.

In the current job market, the competition is fierce, and to maintain a high level of competitiveness, one has to know what to do and how to adapt to employers’ needs. All of that learning and carrying out are laborious and time-consuming. But don’t give up! A job is waiting for you. Go get it!

While in Transition, Are You Keeping Pace with Technology?

Photo credit to digitalart

I know that the title I selected for this blog represents a near impossibility. Technology in the past decade has been developing at a furious pace, and from what I read it is expected to speed up even more. And that makes it even more difficult to stay abreast with. In this blog I want to limit my intent to two areas when I talk about technology. The first area is the technology in your particular profession. And regardless of what that profession is, new and technological advancements are parts of every profession. Companies are very interested in reducing costs, and they therefore embrace technology to keep up their levels of competitiveness with others in the same industry. The second area is the technology that evolved in the past decade in the area of social media.

It is highly advisable that while in transition you stay on top of technological developments in your particular profession. Hiring managers are more interested in hiring someone who’s up-to-date as opposed to someone who’s been out for a while and who lacks the latest technology skills and therefore whose learning curve will be steep and possibly prolonged.

Equally important, I see the need for people in transition to show potential employers their proficiency in using social media. At the very least, one should use LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook but also potentially some others. The aforementioned social media could give a job seeker a huge advantage by acquiring a personal brand and then promulgating it to would-be employers or other networking folks. As a career coach, I strongly recommend to my clients that they spend no less than one hour a day—and possibly longer—in learning the functionalities of these new and developing and ever-changing tools. Many recruiters and hiring managers take advantage of them, and so should you.

Don’t be Fooled by the Job Description.

When preparing my clients for interviews I am often handed the Job Description relevant to the interview. Most often I caution my clients to take that Job Description with a grain of salt. I have learned through the years working for major companies that “the bigger the company the bigger the mess”. And I of course say this with sarcasm but there is a lot of truth in this. Typically Job Descriptions are documents required by Human Resources to have on file for reference purposes. They have no practical use except during the hiring process or during the yearly employee evaluation should there be a dispute. Once a position needs to be filled the Job Description becomes the focal point for recruiting. However, very often these documents have not been adequately updated and made pertinent to the opening. At times they are outright misleading! Evidence to this was when I interviewed with Honeywell. Truthfully, I was very reluctant to apply for the position advertised in The New York Times. It was two titles below my level but it was 15 minutes drive from my house. Since I was so upset with my employer at that time I was very motivated to make a change. Evidently my resume was so impressive that I was called in for an interview. Only during that interview I find out that they are looking for someone with my background and accomplishments and not what they advertised for. I have spent my best fifteen years of my career with Honeywell.

So what is the candidate to do to be best prepared for the interview? The answer to this question is to learn the skill of sleuthing into the company through his networking contacts and the skill of being able to ask the interviewer questions revealing the key issues on his mind. The Job Description may reveal some of the issues but often is buried among the details. The reason for this is easy to understand. Job Descriptions are often written by HR. How much they understand the core needs of the position? HR most often uses standard language descriptions that are very general. “Looking for a highly motivated self-starter with strong organizational and leadership skills. Must be an excellent communicator with…”. The same goes for recruiters unless they have a long-standing relationship with the company. The conclusion is that the candidate should attempt to surface the true needs of the hiring manager as soon as possible at the start of the interview. One way to do this is by asking the interviewer a question such as “…I understand what you are saying but I wonder if you could share with me what would the hired candidate be doing say in the first three weeks on the job? Paraphrasing that question you would be asking what is important for you? After all a newly hired person will focus in the initial period on the job on what the boss needs done. Right?