Find Job Leads in the Business Section

Courtesy of the Recruiting BlogSwap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter. Article by: Lorraine Russo of the Underground Job Network

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I was reading the New York Times this morning and came across an interview with William D. Green, chairman and C.E.O. of Accenture. One of the things that caught my eye in this article was his statement:

“This year…we built a human capital strategy for the future…refreshed our corporate-wide strategy, and I moved my leadership people around into different positions and promoted some new people into leadership roles to infuse energy.”

This statement alone suggests a number of things happening at Accenture:

1. They are changing the way they attract and retain employees.
2. People are being moved laterally within the company.
3. A few folks were promoted
4. With all these internal changes and employee movement, opportunities could be awaiting you at this global consulting firm.

When you get to know Mr. Green a bit better through this article, you’ll find that he is a plumber’s son who made good. He appears to be a down-to-earth person who looks for qualities in his employees that speak to character and integrity—characteristics that are often challenging to convey on a resume or cover letter.

He also mentions that Accenture “gets two million CVs a year and…hire[s] between 40,000 and 60,000 people...we need people who are analytical, and have common sense, good judgment and the ability to get along with other people.” So if Accenture hires around 40,000 people per year, let’s see what's on their website.

A visit to Accenture's career pages shows HUNDREDS of openings in the US, including quite a few entry level opportunities. Click on the <more> button on the left side of the screen to see all US openings by location. So with what you now about the TYPE of people Accenture likes to hire, how will you describe yourself when applying? As Mr. Green says:

“We’re taking a more scientific approach to how we recruit. We do something called “critical behavior interviewing.” It’s based on the premise that past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior… essentially what we’re looking for is, have you faced any adversity and what did you do about it?

“…It’s what have you learned, what have you demonstrated, what behaviors do you have? Have you shown intuition? Have you shown the ability to synthesize and act? Have you shown the ability to step up and make a choice? How have you dealt with the hand in front of you, played it out?”

“What critical behavior interviewing does is get at people’s character, and you get to see where work fits in their value system, where pride fits in their value system, where making hard decisions or sacrificing fits in their value system. I mean, you sacrifice and you’re a victim, or you sacrifice because it’s the right thing to do and you have pride in it. Huge difference. Simple thing. Huge difference.”

Hopefully the above quotes will give you some insight as to the traits and characteristics of an Accenture employee. Knowing this, take a closer look at your resume...does it read like someone William Green would like to hire? Does it tell the story of what you've accomplished and how you got there? Take a moment and read the NYT article in its entirety here.

Recruitment Social Media - Don't be Left Behind

A few days back I saw the first ever job posting on Indeed advertising for a “Talent Community Manager”. (Kudos to Deluxe for taking a huge step forward in recruiting and leveraging this opportunity) Using social media for recruitment takes time, technology and people and they “get that”

Considering Facebook alone as over 300 million users, ½ of which log in to their account in a given day it would not be surprised to see other organizations follow their lead and take advantage of this untapped source of finding and engaging candidates.

Being that this is a VERY new type of position to any industry, let alone recruiting I can imagine how finding someone to fill such a position would be challenging.

Social Media Communities – It’s Not a Waste of Time

In addition to the enormous challenge of finding someone who can successfully build, manage and engage members of a community how do you convince the powers that be that social media is more than a big playground? The way I see it, there are a few different ways social media tools can be used in recruiting including;

• Finding candidates
• Building relationships with potential candidates
• Enhancing your employment brand

I don’t think many would argue with the above bullet points but how do you create a business case for allocating resources?

Measuring the ROI of Social Media used as a Recruiting Tool

Measuring the effectiveness of social media is another challenge because it means that people need to shift their way of thinking from quantitative to something more qualitative. That said, below are some ways to measure your social media success:

• Career Site Traffic – The more people coming to your career site and specific job postings the more people that are applying for your jobs. A free analytics tool like Google Analytics will help you track referrals. If you are sharing links to specific jobs on Facebook and Twitter, URL shortening tools like Bit.ly and Traceurl can measure click through rates
  
  
• Influence – The greater influence you have in social media, the bigger your reach and of course audience and the more visibility your organizations employment brand gets. Your Twitter influence can be measured with tools like Twinfluence and Twitter Grader. Facebook has a similar tool that lets you measure the influence of your business pages.
  
  
• Buzz & Chatter – Are people talking about your organization? What are they saying? With any luck their talking about your career opportunities, what interviewing is like and how great your company culture is. Other important things are how often people are linking to you or mentioning you on Twitter. In addition to the tools mentioned above, you’ll want to use Google alerts to monitor both positive and negative buzz.
  

Social media is more of a long term investment; results won’t happen overnight. Simply creating a Twitter account and a Facebook business page won’t cut it – You have to take time to get to know people, the RIGHT people, listen, contribute and be transparent.

At the end of the day social media is an opportunity for your organizations to have engaging conversations with potential & current employees. Don’t be left behind.

Feel free to post a comment if you are actively engaging in a social media strategy, I'd love to hear what's working and not working for you!

Three Strategies for Success in Your Job

You figure you’re in the right job or business. But you’re not fully satisfied. You feel you could be doing a bit better. And things may be set to change in your market or company. What should you be doing now to prepare for such change?

You need a robust strategy for success. Here you would do well to borrow from business. Whether you’re employed by a company or self-employed, think of yourself as a business and adopt one of the tried-and-tested strategies used by business to achieve competitive success.

• Envision what the ideal provider of your services would look like in three to five years’ time. Do some brainstorming. You need to think creatively about how your marketplace may change over the next three to five years and how the needs of your employer or customers may be affected. What will the ideal provider of your services look like? To what extent will he or she be different from the ideal provider of today? More qualified? In what? Better trained? In what way? More experienced? In which areas? More skilful? How?
  
  
• Next, set your sights. To what extent do you wish to become like the ideal provider? You’ll never get there, of course. No one is perfect. You may not want to get there, given the impact this could have on other aspects of your life. But you may want to stretch your sights and narrow the gap. You need to pinpoint your goal.
  
  
• Finally, adopt one of the three generic strategies for success, detailed below, needed to bridge the gap. The first two are based on generic business strategies. To develop a sustainable competitive advantage, companies generally follow either a differentiation strategy or a low-cost strategy. They either do something distinctive and well, or do more or less the same as others but at lower cost. What they would be well advised not to do is exactly the same as other companies do, the so-called me-too recipe for lack of success. The third is a strategy not recommended for business, but appropriate for individuals in certain circumstances: working on your weaknesses.
  
  
• Differentiate with the Stand Out! strategy.
  You can use this differentiation strategy whether you’re employed or self-employed. Stand Out! is about making what you offer distinctive and different from others in your position. It builds on your strengths and circumvents your weaknesses.
  
  A study by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton found that people’s greatest room for improvement is in the area of their greatest strength. Identify your greatest strengths, and figure out ways to build on them to set yourself apart from others or become special to someone or some group of people (customers, for instance). Think Madonna. Love her or loathe her, her sustained Stand Out! strategy since the 1980s of image reinvention and self-publicity has yielded extraordinary success.
  
  
• Go low cost, with the easyU! strategy.
  If you’re self-employed, your earnings are typically a reflection of your charges on the one hand and your volume of work on the other. Are your rates keeping you from being as busy as you want to be? If you’ve researched the market, as suggested above, you probably have a good idea of what the market can bear. Sometimes, to maximize your exposure in the market, get more clients, and generate more free advertising via word-of-mouth, lowering your rates can be a sound growth strategy. Perhaps you need to make it easy for clients to call you first, before anyone else. (Think Southwest, which found a way to do it cheaper—and stole customers from the rest of the airline industry.)
  
  
• Improve your competitiveness with the Sharpen Act! strategy.
  You may not be able to differentiate sufficiently in your job, and you may not choose to become the lowest cost provider, but you do need to stay in that job. To pre-empt being squeezed out, you need to improve your competitiveness. In the Sharpen Act! strategy, you build on your strengths to the extent that you’re able to in the circumstances, but meanwhile you work on some of the weaknesses that are holding you down. These could, for example, be presentation/public speaking skills, computer skills, appearance, leadership skills, marketing, networking, or organization. Identify one or two and work on raising your capabilities, narrowing the gap with the ideal provider. Who knows, you could even transform a weakness into a strength.

EXAMPLE: Take Debbi - She works in the marketing department of a professional services company. Her brainstorming reveals that the ideal employee a few years’ hence will need to be adept at presenting on her feet. Yet public speaking is one of Debi’s greatest fears. What should she do? She can’t carry on as is. She has either to look elsewhere, or bite the bullet. She joins Toastmasters International. As for thousands of others, worldwide, it transforms her life, and is a huge amount of fun to boot. Her Sharpen Act! strategy enhances, possibly even saves, her job.

Many people feel stuck in their jobs. But they know they could do better, for themselves, for their company. The best way to boost your performance, pay, and job satisfaction is to follow a robust strategy, whether Stand-Out!, easyU!, or Sharpen Act! Such strategies work for companies, and they can for work for you as well.

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Vaughan Evans is a renowned economist, business strategist, sought-after speaker, and the author of Backing U! A Business-Oriented Guide to Backing Your Passion and Achieving Career Success - Business and Careers Press, 2009, http://www.backingu.com/

Article courtesy of the recruiting blogspot a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Quick Internet tips to help find a job

Although the economy may not be the best for job seekers right now, there are jobs out there...YES, really great companies are looking for talent.

Here are some quick internet tips to help find a job. Courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:
From: Matthew Warzel, MJW Careers

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When a job seeker says "I don't have Internet access or I'm not Internet savvy," it cannot be an excuse in this competitive environment the job market has become. Here are some quick thoughts:

• Sorry, but faxing doesn't cut it anymore
  
  
• Get email account for FREE at Yahoo, Hotmail or Google
  
  
• Go to a friend's house with Internet or to your local library because they have internet!
  
  
• Enroll in a free or sometimes very cheap, local "Learn How to Use Internet" classes at Library or community colleges, high schools, etc.
  
  
• sign up for a $25/class to learn basics of internet terms, navigation, etc. Even Microsoft Word to develop your resume and cover letter.
  
  
• Post your resume onto general and niche specific job boards as well as company portals.
  
  
• Almost all companies post their job openings on their website...so go to a company website, find the CAREERS section and enter that career section (called a portal)...sometimes you can even setup an account before applying to a job, post your resume onto that company career account and setup keyword alerts....thus, if you're a mechanical engineer and they post a job a month later for an mechanical engineer, the company will let you know via this alert to your email, which will allow for you to apply as soon as it's posted...this can allow for you to be on top of the application list too for recruiters, because sometimes recruiters at companies will only look at the top 100 applicants as opposed to all 1000 candidates who applied (and being one of the 1st to apply, can make you higher on that list, thus in the top 100)
  
  
• Setup Google news and Yahoo news alerts for the word "'relocating' or 'relocation' and the job seeker's city or near-city's name" to find companies who are relocating to the job seeker's area; "expansion" and "growth" to identify growth companies and emerging opportunities for you to seek out hiring decision makers and recruiters at those companies
  
  
• Review leading online and published newspapers like Forbes and Wall St. Journal to keep up on those growth industries (as well as your local paper)- DON'T BE INTIMIDATED OR ASHAMED! You want and need to learn and you are bettering yourself. This is the right step forward. IF YOU AREN'T DOING IT, YOUR COMPETITION IS!
  
  
• Finally (non-Internet related), try to place yourself into growth industries (biotech, nutrition, energy & renewable energies, photonics, and IT) that you can fit into in respect to your transferable skills as opposed to dying industries (textile, printing, apparel manufacturing & general manufacturing such as steel, and airlines)
  

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Nice is a Four-Letter Word

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:
From: Candice Arnold
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Starting a new job can be nerve-racking, especially when it comes to adapting to a new work environment. It's as important for new hires to be able to mesh well with their coworkers as it is for them to be able to quickly learn how to do their new jobs. So what's the best way for a new employee to endear himself to his coworkers? Should he strive to be likable or nice?

"I would say that the phrase 'being likable' implies that you are easy to get along with and that you respect other people, whereas, 'being nice' denotes a lack of sincerity," said Holly Stokes, author of "Train Your Brain, Get Results."

Melody Brooke,author of "Oh WOW, This Changes Everything," agrees that nice people seem insincere and untrustworthy. "Being likable is a personality thing ..." she said. "There is something about the person you feel warmly toward. Likable definitely gets you further than being nice."

Mark Stevens, president of MSCO and author of "Your Marketing Sucks," is also in support of being likable instead of nice, if forced to choose. "Nice people are often treated disrespectfully. Is this fair? Of course not. But human nature isn't always fair. Boy by a long shot," said Stevens. "On the other hand, people are often 'likable' because they are self-confident, exude charm and power. They may or may not be 'nice' but they are 'liked' because they are interesting or exhilerating to be around. You don't have to choose between nice and likable, you can be both, but push come to shove, take the latter. It's a lot more fun."

"If you work to be kind, the people who are worth their salt will like you," said Dick Cheatham of Living History Associates, Ltd. "Thus, you get both ... being kind and being liked."

Psychotherapist, Dr. Nancy Irwin gave a broader perspective, pointing out that each has its benefits in the professional world. "Each quality has its place. There is not one that is better than another, inherently. Different businesses and jobs have different qualities that are needed. [For example], public speakers should come across as likable, as should most performers. Yet, being nice (authentic, real), is more important for teachers, health professionals, etc."

Truly, the best way for any new employee to work well and get along with his coworkers is to first be himself, whether it's his nature to be nice or to be likable. In time, his colleagues will see for themselves who he really is and any preconceived notions they may have had about "nice" vs. "likable" will go right out the window ... at least in his case.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.