Hiring?

Who is Hiring?

People with money are hiring. Who are these people with money?
We call them customers [or prospects in sales speak].

Find their wants and needs. Serve them. Create a customer. Market to them, then innovate your product or service. Innovation drives prosperity.

HOW A JOB SEARCH IS LIKE FISHING

Looking for a J.O.B.?

You are not alone. Unemployment is increasing and more people are competing for the open positions that remain. 

Are you using the right bait?

Think of employers as fish.  Use the bait that appeals to the fish you want to catch.  Firms need employees to replace people that have left or to increase firm capability in sales or some other function. Proper keywords will attract leads for jobs. 

Using a single fishing pole from shore is a less than optimal way to catch fish. Stop doing it in your job search. Firms and the managers that are hiring are just like fish. They will bite with the right bait. There are still many in the sea.

Do you know of GPS?

GPS is a Global Positioning System. It is a guidance technology. It uses satellites to get to a specific location. If you want to catch fish, you have to get where the fish are. Use tools to locate fish and to get close to them. Jobs are like fish. Find them and reel them in.

Send out lots of boats

Continuing with the fishing analogy. Use multiple fishing poles or send a fleet of boats out on your behalf. If you are looking for work you must tell your family, friends and network specifically what you are looking for. They are the crew of the boats you are sending out. More boats equals more fish.

More than boats, nets are key

The boats your network is using should be equipped with large nets that will haul in the fish you seek. Better nets are part of how specific you are in telling people what you are looking for in a job [career] opportunity. Give them five through ten keywords. These words will light up their radar screen when they come upon them. 

ACTION & COMMUNICATION

Once someone in your network brings in a load of fish, job leads, take immediate action. Follow up immediately. Make sure that you thank the captain and crew for bringing in such a wonderful catch. 

What else do you think is important in catching good jobs?

JOB SCAM PART 2

More of the same from these folks. Repeat after me, "if it sounds too good to be true, it is."

from Abdul Seymour to "David.damore" date Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 7:46 AM subject Career opportunity

hide details 7:46 AM (8 minutes ago)

Reply

Hello!

Our company would like to offer you the following position: Assistant Manager.

This is part-time home-based position. You'll need no money and no special skills to start. This job requires only few hours during the week and is available on the whole territory of United States. You can easily combine it with your main employment.

If you are interested and would like to know more about our company and position offered, please drop me a line to:
career@pix-trade.com

Thank you.

Have a nice day.

Sincerely,
General Manager
PIX Trade, Inc.

JOB, INTERVIEW & NETWORKING TIPS

Apply the following to Jobs, Interviews and Networking events.

Earlier today a friend mentioned something called S.O.A.R. stories. Wasn't sure what he was talking about. He elaborated that S.O.A.R. is...

• Situation
• Obstacle
• Action
• Result

It is a good idea to have 3-5 SOAR stories. These are useful in discussing challenging Situations, Obstacles encountered, Actions taken and Results.

Obviously it is best if the end Result is a positive outcome. If not, use a different story.

What are your thoughts on S.O.A.R. ?

FIND JOBS NOW WITH SOCIAL NETWORKING

IDEA: Sharing & Finding Jobs

If you come across an interesting job post [online or through word-of-mouth] share it.

If you are searching for a job, the folks that post to Twitter using #job" are helping you find one of the following...

• Job
  
• Next Job
• Better Job

How does this work?

Simple, include the following in the post to Twitter...

• "#job" [This will help people find it]
  
• Job title or responsibilities
  
• Location / Geographic area
  
• Firm
• Link to posting [use TinyURL] to make it fit

Below is one posted the other day. The order isn't important overall. The order listed above is probably the most effective for posting.

"admore: #Job: Sales/Retail/Business Development with McGraw-Hill near Lansing, MI http://tinyurl.com/6orrzc"

Current postings can be found here.
Set up and subscribe to the RSS for that search. Look for "Feed for this query" on the Summize search above.

HT: jminni

What are your thoughts and ideas for turning the power of social networking into a more powerful job tool?

LAYOFF VS. FIRINGS

About two weeks ago it was reported that ePrize, a Michigan based sales promotion services firm, fired 20 employees.

Why would a firm need to do such a thing and why would it make it public? The people fired are damaged goods since ePrize publicized that they were terminated for poor performance.

From Crain's Detroit Business:

"Pleasant Ridge-based ePrize Inc. fired nearly 20 “underperforming” staffers on Tuesday, the company’s founder said.

A couple positions were eliminated in a streamlining effort, but ePrize President and CEO Josh Linkner said the remainder of the terminations were not layoffs but terminations based on job performance."

What are the possible problems?
Below are four possibilities.

• Improperly Hired
• Poorly Trained
• Poorly Managed
• Business Pullback [Result: Layoffs]

Lets take them one at a time.

Improperly Hired
EPrize is a relatively young firm. It was founded in 1999. It is possible that their training systems have not developed as the firm has grown in the nine or so years since ePrize was established. HR and hiring managers may have made imprudent choices during the years of rapid growth and quick hiring.

Poorly Trained
It is possible that the managers have a heavy load since ePrize may be operating much like a start up firm. In the rush to "make the numbers" it is likely that something had to give. As the saying goes, "what gets measured is what gets done" and that training had weak measurement metrics. Certainly sales growth and profit numbers were much more closely monitored. Since this was likely, managers focused intensely on revenue and profit metrics. Training and mentoring fell by the wayside. Growing firms need strong bench talent and the best way to get it to hire quality individuals and to have strong mentor/training relationships throughout the firm.

Poorly Managed
Some of the same problems that were pointed out above also apply here. Managers zero in on the areas where executives indicate focus needs to be [revenue, profits, growth targets]. Less time and energy was spent on managing and developing people to grow into their current positions and to prepare them for future opportunities [Bench Talent Development].

Business Pullback
It is not a secret that the US economy has been facing challenging circumstances for the first half of the year. Recession or not, there are a lot of headwinds. High fuel and food prices are sapping the spending power of consumers. When people have less money to spend and a sense of pessimism the velocity of money slows. Inflation affects consumers, manufacturers and the retailers that are in the middle. Home prices have also fallen precipitously and Consumer sentiment is very low at 56.6.

Economic Challenges
As consumers become resistant to discretionary spending, many products and services see sales decline or stagnate after continued year over year growth. Firms begin to see margins tighten and profits to decline. Stock prices fall as future earnings expectations fall. At some point shareholders will implicitly demand that management make changes to "get results." Management will make changes on costs and expenses that they can control. Firms will cut back on marketing and advertising budgets as business slows. Competing firms will likely do the same. Firms like ePrize will see less business as their clients devote fewer resources to the kinds of promotions they specialize in. All of this will lead to ePrize reducing staff as business falls.


What happened with ePrize?
When a firm fires people they seek to replace them with more talented and capable people. Did ePrize fire or lay people off? The jury is still out, as of right now there are no new job postings coming through on job search engine Indeed.com for ePrize [See data below]. According to the ePrize Twitter page jobs have been posted here.

Of the jobs below, two of the jobs are at ePrize, the other two are not. As of right now there are no clear indications that the folks who are no longer at ePrize are being replaced. If new posting are clearly posted [with dates and specifics] that may indict people were indeed terminated.
As of right now it appears that there may be a slowdown and that these folks were laid off and not fired.


What are your thoughts?

Technology Help Desk Intern - new

ePrize - New York, NY

Maintaining laptops, software, printers and other technology. Must have network knowledge to be our hands on person for network connectivity in the office. To... From NewYorkJobs.com - 25 days ago - save job - block - email - more... View all ePrize jobs Salary Search: Technology Help Desk Intern salaries in New York, NY More information about ePrize Related forums: Eprize - New York, New York Permanent link to this job

Graphic Designer - ePrize ~ Interactive Web Designer for 74 ... - new

ePrize - Pleasant Ridge, MI

the continued growth of ePrize, the growth of our... Subway. ePrize has earned numerous awards, including the number-six ranking among the PROMO 100. ePrize's... From Advertising Age - 21 days ago - save job - block - email - more... View all ePrize jobs Salary Search: Graphic Designer - ePrize ~ Interactive Web Designer for 74 of the Top 100 Brands! salaries in Pleasant Ridge, MI More information about ePrize Related forums: Eprize Permanent link to this job

Senior Human Resources Generalist - new

Accolo Inc. - Pleasant Ridge, MI

Resources Generalist for ePrize in Pleasant Ridge, MI... Subway. ePrize has earned numerous awards, including the number-six ranking among the PROMO 100. ePrize's... From HotJobs - 25 days ago - save job - block - email - more... View all Accolo Inc. jobs Salary Search: Senior Human Resources Generalist salaries in Pleasant Ridge, MI More information about Accolo Inc. Related forums: HR Generalist - Accolo Permanent link to this job

Senior Human Resources Generalist - new

Accolo - Detroit, MI Resources Generalist for ePrize in Pleasant Ridge, MI... Subway. ePrize has earned numerous awards, including the number-six ranking among the PROMO 100. ePrize's...
From Monster - 26 days ago - save job - block - email - more...

RSS - Is it the way of the future?

RSS feeds seem like they have been around a long time. At the same time most people have little knowledge of them. Just last month RSS feeds became more relevant to me. I set up feeds in the past, but did not understand how powerful they could be. Now specialized information comes to my little corner of the Internet. Before, I had some on my iGoogle page. Then somehow I stumbled on to Google Reader.

An average day has me going through 300+ postings. Don't read them all. The good ones get stars and some are shared with others. Some are set up as job alerts [ Indeed.com, Oodle.com and careerbuilder.com ]. Once you create a search that finds jobs that interest you, create an RSS feed and similar search results come to you.

Hopefully you find this post somewhat interesting. As I write more and more, thoughts and writing style should become more focused and clear. If you can leave your thoughts, please do. This site is so new, it is not clear if readers can leave comments.

Job searching in challenging times

Firms seem to be very cautious in their hiring. They want top performers that create value many times their cost [wages + benefits]. They always do. But now, the time from the first job post to hire seems longer than usual.

Some of the tools being used in my search...

1. http://www.indeed.com/

2. http://www.oodle.com/job/

3. http://www.careerbuilder.com/

What are some job search sources you use or have used in the past?