Are You Media Social?

Many people don’t realize how different from the job search of today is from the job search of not even too many years ago. Many others find it difficult to learn about today’s different kind of search and therefore shove the issue to their back burner, planning to deal with it later—if they do at all. Yet others, often younger ones, embrace the new wave and benefit from it.

Social media are open for two-way communication and are important for more than social interaction. Those media are especially important for job seekers because more than 80 percent of recruiters use social media to find job candidates. In 2008 and 2009, many company human resources departments eliminated part of their staffs, and thus the recruiting responsibility fell directly on the shoulders of the hiring manager. An advantage offered by social media is that they reveal people’s personalities, and after all, companies are looking for candidates who will fit into their cultures.

Using social media, job seekers should follow the following steps.

• Identify target companies and the people in your specific area of expertise.
• Research specific problems you can help with.
• Identify people within the target company who might be willing to be of assistance to you. This requires tenacity!
• Connect to those people via social media.
• Start interacting with them to establish credibility.

Admittedly, accessing the Internet to find a job is tedious, laborious, dull, and exhausting, but it can be made easier with several existing job search tools and organizers. For example:

·       CareerShift.com

·       Becomed.com

·       JibberJobber.com

·       JobKatch.com

None of those organizers are perfect, and users experience a steep learning curve to set one up and master it. Some of the organizers connect easily with LinkedIn and Outlook. Others require a fee. And yet others do not connect with certain job boards.

It’s all about building mutually beneficial relationships. But it’s worthless unless the other party can help and is willing to refer you to others. Of course, the same is expected from you. The advantages of online networking are numerous: It’s free. Job seekers can do research before meeting the other party. The connection is fast and easy. And such communication is effective and speedy. Regrettably, though, in many cases the relationships are shallow and not durable.

In the past, job search networking meant going to meetings, shaking hands, smiling, exchanging business cards, and following up. That still holds true today, but via social networking, one can do preliminary research in order to make an event more effective than it would be without such advance research.

One way or another, to benefit from networking, one needs to vastly increase one’s sphere of acquaintances. And that process itself needs to be managed carefully. Luckily, several programs can provide some help in this area. For example:

• BatchBlue.com
• Plaxo.com
• Gist.com

Again, another learning curve with advantages and disadvantages.

Looking for a job is very time-consuming, but it can have a fun component if one has the patience, tenacity, and foresight to see that at the end of the job search tunnel will be a wonderful job waiting to be found. Good luck on your journey and I invite your comments.

Posted via email from The Landing Expert

How Hiring Decisions Are Made

Years ago, I had a large office in the Wall Street area with a personal secretary screening my phone calls, opening mail, taking dictation, and managing my calendar. Since then of course, the business world has changed. The next phase had executives sharing a pool of secretaries using floppy discs working on word processors. That was followed by an administrative assistant supporting at times an entire group.

Whereas years ago the hiring process and the hiring decision were the exclusive domain of the executive, nowadays—since so-called teamwork has become a major part of the work environment—hiring decisions are often shared and thus made by several team members. That process supports the concept that a group decision is better than an individual decision. As a result, the process has become convoluted, protracted, and not necessarily better—in my opinion.

Today’s job market is flooded with lots of very qualified candidates chasing very few openings. The way hiring happens has also changed. Technology has infiltrated the process, and today’s submission of one’s candidacy is purely mechanical. Nobody sees the candidate’s skills and qualifications unless the hiring manager’s keywords match those on the résumé, and only then is the original résumé reproduced for reading. Once that happens, several candidates get reviewed via a selection process.

To save time and money, a phone interview, or screen, is the next hurdle candidates face. It’s usually accomplished by someone junior in the human resources department who does not fully understand the hiring department’s particular needs. If an external recruiter is the intermediary between the candidate and the hiring company, then the recruiter’s financial motivation is playing a key role. That’s because recruiters work for the company paying their commissions.

Decision Making

Decision making is a complex process because several parties have a say and a stake in it. For example, sometimes the human resources department representative’s opinion carries significant weight, and other times the rep is merely a paper trail processor. Sometimes a candidate is interviewed by several people in addition to the final decision maker. Those others, too, have a say—because hiring managers want to show their support of their teams by demonstrating their collegiality—but to what extent those other opinions matter is probably variable. And what happens when a hiring manager favors a particular candidate but several others who’d be future peers of the candidate show resistance? In addition, in most cases hiring managers know the thinking and mentality of the person they report into, so what happens if their own opinion is opposed regarding the type of person who should be hired?

A recent large survey was conducted among human resources professionals and hiring managers. The survey clearly found that by far, the number one factor in the hiring decision is the fit factor—meaning, the determination about whether a candidate will fit into the culture of the company. Fully 100 percent of the respondents said so! But what is this culture that’s referred to? Who defines it? Who interprets it?

Some companies use exclusively behavior-based or situation-based interview questions. The tenet here is that past performance is a good indicator or predictor of similar such performance. I wonder if those companies can decisively demonstrate that by practicing this theory, they become able to hire and retain a higher-caliber labor force.

Ultimately, of course, it is people who make the final decision about which candidate to offer the job to. The interview process is certainly not a science but an art. Can that art be learned in order to improve one’s chances of being hired? Well, I’m sure you know the answer to the old riddle that asks, Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?

Posted via email from The Landing Expert