No BS Hiring Advice

Making Your Job Ads Sing

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Most job ads (sometimes even my own) are an exercise in lazy copy writing.

I say that because they are a recitation of every skill known to be a part of the job with no discernment to suggest which are more important than others.

Here is a typical technology ad:

Sr. Developer – J2EE/web service/WebLogic 10.x

Job Purpose/ Description:

·         10 plus years of IT work experience in systems programming / analysis

·         Experienced in web service development, both client and service side, preferably using SpringWS

·         Experienced in front end development using JSF, Struts, JSP, JSTL Strong Java fundamentals and application of Design patterns

·         Experienced in Spring framework, JAXB, XML Parsing technologies

·         Experience with Java/XML-based J2EE application development, including experience developing SOA services using WDSL, SOAP, XML Schema

·         Extensive experience with SOA and n-tier architectures, standards, and application development and testing best practices

JOB REQUIREMENTS

·         J2EE/web service

·         WebLogic v10.x experience.

·         JSF, Struts, JSP, JSTL

·         Spring framework, JAXB, XML

·         SOA services using WDSL, SOAP, XML Schema

·         Oracle Coherence experience a definite plus.

Contact Details Name and Email address

I can’t wait to apply to that one!

How about this gem:

Credit Administration Manager – Senior Level

A Premiere Central Coast financial institution has an employment opportunity for a Senior Level Credit Administration Manager.  This position will oversee the Credit Administration function which includes collections, special assets and appraisal services;  and will manage the loan portfolio in terms of works outs, asset recovery efforts, valuation of loan collateral and reporting changes in loan collateral.

Requirements

  • Must have 7-10 yrs commercial/corporate loan work out exp. in a financial services environment and a min. of 5 yrs supervisory exp.
  • Working knowledge of comm. credit, construction lending, and SBA lending.
  • Bankruptcy and credit law knowledge a must.
  • Excellent verbal, written and interpersonal skills required to interact with all levels of personnel and customers.
  • Proficiency in all Microsoft applications required.
  • Competitive compensation and benefits.
  • Community or Regional banking experience preferred.

Is it any wonder that most people believe their employers think of them as being disposable and “just another body.”

Have you thought of at least pretending that people might be interested in the job they would be performing and a few nuggets of information about your organization that might get them excited about working for your firm?

I don’t mean the usual nonsense of it being “a dynamic organization” or a job with “high visibility” when none really exists.

Tell people the truth about your firm. Tell them you are a $400 million firm that has been experiencing explosive growth with your product or that your company does $45 billion annually and projects top line growth of 7% for this year. These days, people get are excited when they believe they will be working for a survivor, let alone a winner!

Talk about the job . . .describe the manager as someone who is leading a group of 7 and needs one additional person. Speak of mentoring possibilities, opportunities to learn new technology and, please stop with the laundry list of job requirements and be honest with which are really required and which would be a plus.

And, see if you can actually make your ad fun and use video, a Facebook fan page, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote your opportunity!

 

© 2010 all rights reserved.

Ozzie? Meet Ozzie. The Changing Workforce

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What’s different about the workforce in America today? Some point to the inadequate skills that the workforce has. Many point to an expensive labor force.

I look at a change in character and how important it is to adapt when you recruit.

Once upon a time, the American labor force was personified by tv characters like Ozzie Nelson from Ozzie and Harriet or Jim Anderson from “Father Knows Best.” These were individuals who worked hard, one was self-employed, the other an insurance salesman who were focused on career and family.

Today, Ozzie has been replaced by a generation that does not think of sacrifice, is used to being catered to and that extends to the workplace.

They expect companies to love them, hire them, take their interests into account . . . and I’m not talking about young workers; I’m speaking about the aging workers like me (I’m 59).

Yes, they put in time and effort, but they are not compliant like the worker in the 50’s was. They expect to be seen and praised and that their work be fascinating.

Yes, I know it is ridiculous but tell me this.

Are you on Facebook? Have you read what people tweet on Twitter or create videos of on YouTube?  Do you notice how people speak with one another. Have you looked at the applications on their iPhone or mobile device and how it caters to them?

This is what we are as a country now.

And these are the people you are interviewing.

I am not going to tell you to cater to them.

I am going to tell you to communicate with people better in your interview process.

For example, do you know whether your candidates prefer being communicated with via text, email or phone?

Does your corporate website display properly on a mobile phone?

Does your firm have a Facebook fan page? A Google+ Brand Page? How is your company described on LinkedIn (you do know that people can look up your company on LinkedIn)?

You can’t just run an ad on a job board any more. They want to “know you first.”

 

© 2010, 2012 all rights reserved.

The Myth of The Passive Job Candidate Exposed

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I have been a recruiter for almost 40 years and many years ago, helped to create the myth of the superiority of the passive job applicant. The myth was created to combat the huge advertising advantage that larger search firms by inferring that the people they were representing were inferior.

The myth suggests that the passive job applicant is superior to because the active job hunter is the one who is a failure at their current firm or was cut by a company for inferior performance.

While those points may be true of some, most people who are looking for work were laid off because of economic circumstances, not because of incompetence and, if they are working and looking for work, because they are seeking a better opportunity elsewhere.

And, if you are someone who found a position by answering an ad, how do you feel hearing that others think less of your qualifications based upon the medium you were located by rather than through an evaluation of your skill and ability relative to others.

So, the next time a recruiter tries that that little speech with them, I hope you stand up proudly and tell them that you found your job through an ad (or found the recruiter who referred you to the job through an ad) and put this nonsense away once and for all.

 

© 2009 all rights reserved.

Finding Talent in Aisle 4

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“Attention all shoppers. J2EE developers are available on sale in aisle 4. Bring your developer to the register and receive 10% off the marked price.”

Since “The Great Recession” began, too many employers have treated individuals with special skills as no more than commodities to be purchased in bulk as though they were a blue light special (for those of you outside the United States, one American retailer would place a blue light in the aisle near a sale item and refer to it as a blue light special).

The result of this commoditizing of talent by your firm will probably impact your firm’s reputation in a marketplace that has started to show signs of labor shortages in certain critical areas like IT.

Don’t believe me?

A Director of a function with a firm was chose between three job offers based upon the firm’s reputation with his friends and the behavior they exhibited on his interviews and did not choose the highest money offer.

This is becoming a more common occurrence as people have ready access to information online, the ability to maintain relationships with former colleagues through social networking and the job market has become more active again.

Another person being hired to lead a function in an insurance firm was so impressed with how the executive leadership interviewed him and established a relationship with him during its numerous interviews, that he was prepared to accept a lesser offer . . . but did not have to. As a matter of fact, he received a job offer with a financial incentive to remain with them for several years (something that with his employment history was unnecessary).

My point is that we are back to times when it will be critical to return to the attitude of selling your organization and your job opportunity to potential hires.

And not just at middle and senior management levels but at seemingly junior staff levels.

Last week, I received a call from a good client asking for someone with 2-3 years experience with a particular skill and was unwilling gto consider someone a little more senior.

I asked, “Where do you think I can find this person? They don’t exist.”

“Why don’t they exist?”

“Because 2-3 years ago when we were in the midst of the great economic calamity that destroyed the Western financial system, no one hired anyone. Now there is no one with 2-3 years of experience.”

Yes, talent shortages are in our future in many job catagories as a logical outcome of corporate behavior the past few years.

Often, it doesn’t take money to advantage your business in your sector. It takes the persistent effort to build a great reputation and the willingness to expend effort in all your interviews to leave everyone with a great feeling about your business even if you don’t plan on hiring them.

 

 

 

© 2011 all rights reserved.

No B. S. Hiring Advice: You’re Fighting Over What?

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter makes the suggestion to you about negotiating salaries with new hires.

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

Follow him at The Big Game Hunter, Inc. on LinkedIn for more articles, videos and podcasts than what are offered here and jobs he is recruiting for.

Visit www.TheBigGameHunter.us. There’s a lot more advice there.

Email me if your firm is trying to hire someone.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Pay what you want for my books about job search

Subscribe to TheBigGameHunterTV on YouTube  for advice about job hunting and hiring. Like videos, share and comment.

Trying to hire someone? Email me at JeffAltman@TheBigGameHunter.us

Being Fair with Your Recruiting Vendors

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I work with many clients who are overwhelmed with a schedule that is difficult to lose control over.

They are interviewing people every 30 minute, speaking with hiring managers, chasing those same hiring managers, evaluating, assessing, qualifying potential hires, putting together and extending job offers, checking references PLUS talking to 3rd party recruiters who are incompetent to evaluate talent (this is what they tell me).

It never ends. Every day.

When I qualify job applicants, I ask them where they have been on interviews and where they have submitted their resumes before submitting it to a client.

Recently, I have been hearing more and more companies tell me, “He’s in our system.”

Let me be blunt.

I understand that sometimes a candidate doesn’t tell me the truth or forgets a place or two, but when you start to notice that the client has not contacted the candidate until I attempted to present them, I can see what is going on.

A firm has a contract with a job board and is harvesting resumes and having them input into their system or people are sending resumes and no one looks at the data base until a third party recruiter “tickles” them at which point they actually see the resume for the first time, claim ownership and contact the candidate.

I understand that you are stretched thin but this is wrong.

Be honest and don’t cheat people.

If you have too much to do, hire a contract recruiter to review everything that arrives in your data base daily or hire a firm like mine to review resumes daily that you source from the boards or from other means and either identify possible fits based upon a basic screen or accept a discounted fee for referring someone who is hired that comes from your data base (like having a captive agency working with your data base).

Being fair will allow you to improve your job to hire ratios and get more jobs off your desk which with a recovering economy will become more important over the next 12-24 months.

 

 

© 2010 all rights reserved.

Recruiting Is Not a Factory Process

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As I look at how corporate recruiting has changed over my almost 40 years of experience in recruiting, the most obvious change has been the evolution of the belief that recruiting talent is something that should be homogenized, compartmentalized, controlled, micro-managed and processed. Concurrent with this change is the belief that recruiting software can simplify hiring to the point that it is far more effective with matching, predicting success, candidate communications and a host of other activities.

Anyone really see much evidence of this because the people I speak with tell me something different.

It’s one thing to say, “My data base allows me access to a lot of resumes of people with whom I can communicate with more easily [via email].”

Everything else seems to be so much hocus pocus to help justify high priced software that has limited affect across an enterprise.

And from the candidate side, what are you telling a potential hire when you say, “I know you aren’t actively looking for something else and I know we reached out to you about a job, but we need you to input your resume into our system to proceed.“

I’ll tell you what I take from it . . . your company is like a government agency.

Is that the message you want to convey to people?

© 2010 all rights reserved.

Keeping Older Workers is Essential…

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When I started in the search business in the early 1970’s, it didn’t take long for me to notice that there were very few people in their 40’s who were working in technology (my focal point at the time). I remember asking myself, “What happens when people turn 40 in this business?”

Today, this is no longer an issue as firms have discovered that in the age of labor shortages, older workers are essential to firms achieving success. But a new problem has been created that few firms are addressing.

By aggressively doing things to hold on to the baby boomer generation, Gen-X workers are roadblocked and becoming increasingly frustrated with their increasingly limited advancement options.

And when companies hire people, companies often make the mistake of focusing on the boomer issue of needing to earn more when they could be adding the Gen-X issue–What’s my advancement opportunities with your company. After all, one of the issues they have is being squeezed by the enormous generation of boomers who won’t quit or retire yet and the up and coming explosion referred to as Gen-Y.

What happens to this smart. self-reliant group of Gen-X adults?

So, as you look at your staff, what are you doing to create advancement options for your staff in their 30’s? What are you doing to cultivate their skills.

And, as you look to hire someone in their 30’s, speak to the upside that will exist for them and not just the money.

 

 

© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC 2010

The Prime Directive: Does HR Lead or Fail to Lead?

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Businessweek carried a terrific column from Jack and Suzy Welsh entitled, “So Many CEO’s Get This Wrong” that describes how HR should function and the mistakes that corporate HR makes.

Responding to a question that points out the HR is often felt in a negative way vs. The Welsh’s claim that it is the most powerful part of any organization, they acknowledge that HR is often marginalized in organizations into the people who issue the newsletter, plan the company picnic or, at the other extreme, “the cloak-and-dagger society.”

They then call for HR to be “the killer app” within a company but acknowledge it seldom is, laying the blame squarely upon the CEO who does not put HR at the table the same way as the CFO.

They recount a story of speaking to 5000 HR executives in Mexico City and asking how many of their organizations were on the same footing as the CFO and getting fewer than 50 hands to go up. They then ask whether the Boston Red Sox would be better run by the CFO or the Director of Player Personnel (as a Yankee fan, I encourage the Red Sox to try the Welsh’s suggestion and report back in a decade or two).

So what do they suggest?

Part pastor (who can hear all sins and complaints without recrimination) and part parent (loving and caring but giving it to you straight when you get off track), they are men and women with stature and substance.

Their job is not to make people warm and fuzzy. The job is to create ways to motivate and retain people; they create review and appraisal systems that let’s people know where they stand and monitor it with the rigor that is invested in SOX compliance. Third of all, they need to be able to confront charged relationships like those with unions, people no longer delivering the goods, or those with egos as large as all outdoors but who have stopped growing.

They exhort CEO’s to elevate HR to the same level of professionalism as is expected of their CFO’s while acknowledging that few organizations are currently pointed in this direction. They ask, “. Since people are the whole game, what could be more important?”

So, what’s the focus of your work? Is it attracting and retaining great people? What are you doing to put systems in place that motivate, inspire and reward (yes, reward) talent. You know, the people you say are at the crux of the organization and its achievements and success.

And what are you doing to support people when they stop growing or stop performing. How do you get them on track or get them out?

© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC 2012

Are You an Adult Elephant?

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In this video, Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter uses the story of how baby and adult elephants are trained to encourage you.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a recruiter for more than 40 years.

Follow him at the Big Game Hunter, Inc. on LinkedIn for more articles, videos and podcasts than what are offered here and jobs he is recruiting for.

Visit my website, http://www.TheBigGameHunter.us to sign up for a complimentary subscription to No B.S. Job Search Advice Ezine, pay what you want for my books and guides to job hunting and watch hundreds of other videos about job hunting and hiring.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.

Subscribe to TheBigGameHunterTV on YouTube for advice about job hunting and hiring. Like videos, share and comment.

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Pay what you want for my books about job search

Trying to hire someone? Email me at JeffAltman@TheBigGameHunter.us

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