Category: Interviewing

Understand Recruitment Cycles to Give Your Job Search an Edge

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Hiring, Interviewing, New Job, Uncategorized

What do 23, 21, 20 and 36 mean to you? Seasons come in all walks of life to include the right time to get serious about your job and when it just might be a little harder to be seen. Enjoy this read to find out more about what these numbers mean.

~The Organic Recruiter

by John Rossheim, Monster Senior Contributing Writer

When it comes to connecting with the right job opportunity, timing isn’t everything, but it’s certainly something. Tuning into industries’ and employers’ annual recruitment cycles just might give you a decisive edge.image

That’s the consensus of recruiters and employers with fingers on the pulse of seasonal variations in hiring. Here’s a quarter-by-quarter summary of how these hiring dynamics play out.

First Quarter: A New Year’s Wave of Hiring

Sometimes peaks of hiring correspond with workplace factors that are only loosely related, like when people take vacation. “Hiring seems to be done by consensus more than any other decision,” says Scott Testa, chief operating officer of Mindbridge Software in Norristown, Pennsylvania. “So most hiring decisions have to be made when people are in the office.”

Major hiring initiatives may follow close on the heels of the holidays and summer. “The big months for hiring are January and February, and late September and October,” says Testa. “Job seekers who make contact right at the start of these cycles have the best chance of being hired.”

Strong hiring periods like the first quarter, when demand for talent may outweigh the supply of qualified candidates, may be a good time to go for a job with more responsibility or higher pay. “If you’re currently employed and looking to improve your status, you’ll want to look during the peak hiring season,” says Glenn Smith, president of search firm Precise Strategies in O’Fallon, Illinois.

Second Quarter: Gearing Up for Summer

For those whose livelihood depends substantially on fair weather, spring is when hiring peaks. In the construction industry, hiring in April, May and June proceeds at double the pace of December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS).

Tourism and hospitality hiring is also very strong in the spring. And businesses looking to hire professional workers before fall often do so now, before key decision makers start rotating out for summer vacation.

Third Quarter: Recruiters Relax a Bit, and Vacation Plays a Role

Hiring slows down in July before picking up at the end of August. For those with nontraditional but impressive employment backgrounds, there’s an advantage to looking in relatively slow hiring months like July and December, says Smith.

For example, recruiters, less pressed for time than in peak months, may be willing to take a longer look at an experienced professional woman seeking to return to work after taking years off to care for children.

Fourth Quarter: A Rush, Then a Lull

The fourth quarter presents the most complex hiring dynamics of the year, with its mix of fall activity, holiday retail hiring, Thanksgiving-to-New Year’s slowdown, and end-of-year financial and budget maneuvering.

“Hiring managers and bank CEOs will typically try to reduce their operating profits by incurring search fees towards the end of each year, to avoid paying taxes,” says Josiah Whitman, an executive recruiter with Financial Placements of Lake Oswego, Oregon. His firm’s job orders are distributed this way: first quarter, 23 percent; second quarter, 21 percent; third quarter, 20 percent; fourth quarter, 36 percent.

Although December hiring is at low levels in many industries, recruiters are determined to fill the year’s remaining openings by December 31, and the supply of applicants dwindles as Christmas and the new year approach.

Major industries classified as information, financial services, and professional and business services, having hired heavily in the second quarter, see their lowest level of hiring in December, says JOLTS.

But December isn’t as slow as it used to be, say some observers. And applications tend to slow down during the holiday season more than openings do — tipping the balance in favor of those who do apply.

“It seems that business just keeps going through the holidays,” says John Challenger, CEO of outplacement and search firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas in Chicago. “There doesn’t seem to be the kind of letup that there used to be.”

So playing the recruitment peaks doesn’t mean waiting out the rest of the year. “You need to be out there looking for opportunities, not finding excuses to avoid looking,” says Tom Johnston, CEO of SearchPath International in Cleveland.

Original Article

Are You Doing Your Part For Your Military Initiative?

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Diversity, Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, Military, New Job

 

Fleet week 2Every year I get excited to hear about Fleet Week and often wonder what it would be like to go to one. Fleet Week is a United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and United States Coast Guard tradition in which active military ships recently deployed in overseas operations dock at major cities for one week. The crew members have the opportunity to enjoy the local cities for that week while the public can take a guided tour of the ships.

This year, in fact today, was my first time as LA is having its inaugural Fleet Week. We at Military.com / Monster.com have the opportunity to team up with the office of Mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles (thank you Blas Villalobos and Lorraine Perales) to be a part of a celebration of our servicemen and servicewomen who protect the seas for us. As an organization that that truly believes in our servicemen (military.com) and my own personal advocacy to help (brother served in the Army for 28 years), I find myself privileged to walk the hanger, cruise the outskirts of the ships with the likes of the men and women that serve.

One of my personal goals have been and always will be is to serve the ones who serve us to make sure they are gainfully employed after serving a career (short or long) in the military. So today my goal was to share our transition app as well as our military skills translator with the military, veterans and equally important, the spouses. Our families of the United States Armed Forces have skill-sets that are unparalleled to most. Our problem in talent acquisition is we don’t speak their language and it takes too much time to work with them to figure out how they fit…or rather fit in (culture is for another article).

In LA County, 3% of the population is comprised of veterans, while 11% of the homeless population is a veteran. This equates to 2,733 of our homeless brothers and sisters are the folks that served you proud in the military.

Now Military.com is one of the few places to go to for a preventative measure for our military (and spouses) to be proactive about their career in the afterlife of service so they are not stranded and underemployed after separation. There are a ton of tools to prepare for transition and we have some of the best.

My brother used to recruit for the Army more than 10 years ago and we all know the big draw for young adults is they will have the skills to do any job they want when they get out. The unfortunate truth is when they transition out, albeit they have the skills, they do not and cannot (self-doubt) get the job they are qualified for because there needs to be a better bridge between recruit and separation. Then on the flip side, recruiters (in the civilian world) do not have the time or the patience to see where these candidates are qualified for the job they applied for, therefore pass on them.

I am not advocating that recruiters take their own time to learn MOS (military occupational specialty) codes, however I am asking for you to open up and grab the tools to learn what they do and have more patience. Because I tell you, they can blow away some of your current staff and they can also add some new light and flavor to your culture.

To learn more about what Mayor Garcetti’s team is working on to  help our homeless veterans, please go to www.lamayor.org/ending-veteran-homelessness for more information. I encourage you to reach out and see how you can help. If you are not from LA, inquire what your city is doing to help the veteran homeless predicament.

~The Organic Recruiter

Managing the Black Hole in the Job Application Process

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, New Job
Margot Carmichael Lester, Monster Contributing Writer
As a job seeker, you have to act like a salesperson. As a salesperson myself, I am here to tell you it is extremely hard to get to a yes or a no. Usually it’s a “hold tight”, “no word yet”, radio silence, or “we’ll let you know when we need you”.
What’s it going to take to get to a yes or a no? First off, read the article below as it gives great advice to the job seeker. I would add to it that you need to know the company, the competition and you better than any other candidate. Do not pretend to be anyone else and be the best you you can be.
Recruiters, please share this article with friends, family, and anyone you know are looking for their next job. ~The Organic Recruiter
Managing the Black Hole in the Job Application Process

You’ve invested the time in completing the job application, polishing your resume and writing a compelling cover letter. Once you’ve submitted your materials, though, you enter the black hole — the space between applying for jobs and hearing back from potential employers. Managing this period of the job search process effectively is harder than ever in a tight economy.

“We’ve all been on the opposite side of the desk,” says Armen Arisian, HR manager at Nytef Group, a plastics manufacturing company in West Palm Beach, Florida. “Twisting in the wind is no fun.”

But don’t stress. Employ these strategies to survive the uncertainty without losing your sanity.

Be Real

It’s important to remember there are people on the other side of the black hole who are doing their best to fill the job in a timely manner, says Will Pallis, a lead recruiter for VistaPrint, an online supplier of graphics and printing based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Chances are good the hiring companies have been inundated with applications.

“While there are a lot of variables here, the most important factor is how much time the corporate recruiter or hiring manager has to sift through the resumes submitted for each job,” he explains. “Skilled corporate recruiters have the ability to review large quantities of resumes to determine if the applicant has the required skill sets and education required for a particular role. But if that recruiter has a large volume of active resumes, the amount of time to review them is obviously decreased.”

Be Reasonable

There’s nothing wrong with checking in on the status of your application, as long as your job-seeking behavior does not become desperate. Unfortunately, there’s no industry standard for how often to inquire. “Do not be a pest” says Jay Meschke, president of EFL Associates, a Leawood, Kansas, search firm. “It is fine to seek acknowledgement of application material after a week, but diplomacy is the watchword. A potential employer becomes wary of applicants who become ‘stalkers.’”

If you’ve got a real person to contact on the inside, ask about the ground rules or protocol up front. “Inquire about when you should expect to hear back, if you should proactively contact the gatekeeper and at what intervals, plus what forms of contact would be most appropriate, such as telephone calls, emails, etc.,” he says.

And if you don’t hear back at all? “After more than a couple [follow-ups], move on same as you would in any other potential relationship,” Arisian counsels. “They’re just not that into you.”

Be Positive

The biggest challenge may be managing your own emotions. “Learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable,” says Scott Silverman, executive director and founder of Second Chance, a nonprofit agency helping the homeless and chronically unemployed in San Diego. “The only thing you can control is your own attitude.”

To do that, Eric Frankel, a personal branding and job search expert in Westwood, New Jersey, suggests, “Transition yournegative, stressful feelings to positive, optimistic emotions by supplementing your job search tactics with positive activities — time with friends, family, exercise and casual strolls on the beach. A limited number of ‘vacation’ days are OK when unemployed.”

You also can busy yourself by continuing your job search.

Be Optimistic

Dealing with uncertainty is never easy, but it’s a fact of life. Use this time as an opportunity to focus on what can happen, not what isn’t happening.

“As with the universe, realize that thousands of black holes are present,” Meschke notes. “Each one is worth exploring. You never know when the black hole evolves into a worm hole that leads to the next job.”

For Job Seekers, the Black Hole Persists

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, New Job
By LAUREN WEBER

Why am I not getting calls back for my application? What’s the deal…am I not good enough? These are the thoughts of job applicants these days. They are being treated like a piece of paper and not an actual person.
People invest time in their career. Isn’t it fair to treat them like humans, not paper? Referring back to my Optimization page (Gail and Richie) depicts the life of a recruiter and how hiring managers think of applicants, “where’s my resumes?”. 
People, we need to open our eyes as this article shows, recruiters are acting as if these real people are merely a piece of paper and it is okay if we don’t call them back. I’m here to tell you, it is not. These people want to work for you and they should not have to put their lives on hold until (if ever) they hear from you. 
Thank you, Lauren, for this great article below. ~The Organic Recruiter
Most of today’s online job applications still enter a black hole.

Frank N. Stein had a stellar resume—he was an Ivy League graduate, with stints as a corporate recruiter at Johnson & Johnson and Russell Reynolds, and his CV was loaded with the keywords needed to float to the top of today’s automated job-applicant software.

He was also not a real person, a fact noted at the bottom of his one-page resume.

Even so, recruiters at only two of the 100 companies where he applied for jobs read far enough to discover that Stein was a fiction designed to “mystery shop” the job-seeker experience. The ruse was created by recruiting consulting firm CareerXroads, according to a report released Monday.

What does that tell Mark Mehler, a founder of CareerXroads?

“Recruiters read the first three paragraphs of a resume,” he said. “That’s all the job seeker is going to get.” And that only counts those whose resumes pass through the automated keyword screening that winnows a set of applications from hundreds to a few dozen.

Every year, Kendall Park, N.J.-based CareerXroads submits a fake resume through the career websites of the companies on Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work Forlist, to assess the recruiting practices of some of the most well-respected employers in the country, including Google Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Deloitte LLP.

The results are generally dismal, as they were again this year. Job seekers’ main complaint—that they shoot their applications into a black hole—was confirmed.

Out of the 100 companies, 64 never sent Stein any notification that he was not being considered for the job for which he had applied. Months after submitting his resume, he “was left hanging in the breeze,” said Mehler. Overwhelmingly in job seeker surveys, candidates tell CareerXroads “they just want to know, ‘am I in or out?’ They don’t want to keep chasing and wondering.”

Six of the employers followed up with Stein wanting to schedule interviews, two uncovered the ruse, and 28 eventually notified him that the position had been filled, or at least that he wasn’t in the running.

Worst of all, 28 is the highest number of companies extending that courtesy in the twelve years CareerXroads has conducted the Mystery Job Seeker survey.

There’s no excuse for those oversights, Mehler said, given that those communications can be automated easily in today’s applicant tracking systems, the software that stores job applications.

Most systems have the capacity to do this, but major corporations don’t use those features because they’re scared that opening the lines of communication will lead to lawsuits, too many phone calls to recruiters, and too many questions they can’t answer, he said.

There were bits of good news from Frank N. Stein’s experience. Nearly all employers now send an email acknowledging receipt of a job application. In addition, career websites are easier to navigate than in previous years, and employers have gotten better at streamlining the application so that it takes less time to complete – in most cases, 10 minutes or less.

Another pleasant surprise, according to Mehler: Stein had been unemployed by choice for a year (he had rejected six job offers as poor fits for him, then took a 6-month sabbatical to bicycle across the country), and still received interest from six of the 98 employers who thought he was a real person. “That’s huge,” said Mehler. “It shows that if you write a good resume and have great experience behind you, you can still find a job.”

Lauren Weber

Reporter, The Wall Street Journal.
Lauren Weber writes about workplace issues and careers for the Wall Street Journal.

Millennials: You’re Not That Cool

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Diversity, Employment Retention, Employment Value Proposition, Generational Gap, Hiring, Interviewing, Latest News and Articles, Millennials

One of the biggest conundrums of companies to date is “what do I do about millennials?”, “how do we hire millennials?, and “how do we change for them?”.  The simple truth is you do nothing different and by all means, you don’t change for them.

It’s just like you have always done, you want the right candidate for the right job. You don’t change your identity or your culture for your friends, do you? Why should you do that for your company? Millennials are amazing and bright young adults. Remember when you wanted to change the world when you were their age? Did the companies change for you? Of course not.

As William Wallace said, “Hoooolllld, Hoooolllld!”. It’ll be okay guys. We will survive and this generation will take us to the next level. Be patient. ~ The Organic Recruiter

By – Candy Store | June 6th, 2016 ~ I asked a good friend (who chose anonymity) of mine who has been recruiting for top talent for a decade to give an undercover thought on talent today. For more candy just ask and I will go to the store.

Have you ever looked at a Millennial resume and thought “Why on Earth are you deemed the most important generation to recruit?” I have. I do often. I look at the resumes coming through and read all the articles about how we need to focus on recruiting this generation by tailoring to their expectations and think to myself: WHY? What makes this generation so special?

Well friends, I have to tell you: conception, perception, reception.

Conception

Every generation has a name. In a way, each one of us has been categorized and generalized with standard attributes of the relative generation. We are conceived and then misconceived due to these generalities awarded. There is truth to it but varying degrees.

Generation Name Births Starting Births Ending
Baby Boomer Generation 1945 1964
Generation X 1961 1981
Generation Y – The Millennials – Gen Next 1975 1995
Generation Z – iGen 1995 2015

Perception

Did Millennials make themselves special or were they designated as the special generation because of the luxuries they have from an inspiring environment? Did they become a byproduct of Gen X where inventions and dreams were evolving? There is an abundance in technology and ideas are enabled to flourish.  Was Gen X taken for granted because it seems we have focused our attention on the Millennials?  If Gen X had not paved the path, would the Millennials still be who they are today? Maybe the Millennials aren’t the Cool Kids. . .maybe it was the generation before them?

“Baby Boomers are exiting the workforce; a greater number of Millennials will join the workforce. It is estimated that Millennial workers (those born between 1980 and 2000) will comprise one-half of the workforce by 2020.” According to Evren Esen, SHRM-SCP and Director of Survey Programs at SHRM.

Reception

Gen X is middle to upper management today. The middle management workers are coaching and developing the Millennials. Gen X received the responsibility of bridging the gap between Baby Boomers who are now executive management, and Millennials who are the dominant workforce. Millennials were received by other generations with an apprehension because of the expectations and aloofness they exhibit. They are a generation that has not matured enough to define a goal.  As interviews take place, often times you will see the classic Zoolander look loom on a Millennial’s face quietly saying “Who am I?”

Millennials are known for wanting to change the world. Let’s take a moment and acknowledge had prior generations not shared the same desire, we would be stagnant. As it stands, we are not. We are constantly evolving and that is the product of all generations combined, not just Millennials.

Are Millennials special and unique? Yes.  So is everyone else.  As we embark on our journey to recruit talent, it is healthy to take a step back and realize the tactic to recruit Millennials is no different than what has been there all along:

  • Respect, develop and appreciate talent.
  • Drive purpose to your organization.
  • Take the time to embrace change, not fear it.