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3 Job Search Tips You've Probably Never Heard

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Today, job search advice is available everywhere online. You’ve probably read the obvious tips: prepare for your interview, tailor your resume and cover letter, network with industry professionals, etc. But, what are some of the tips that aren’t as readily available online? Here are some job search tips you’ve probably never heard:

Don’t job search, company search

  • Don’t focus on the quantity of job openings you’re applying for, strive for quality instead. By narrowing your search to ideal organizations, you can build relationships within those companies and have a better chance at landing a job interview. After all, networking is one of the top ways to land a new job—but you knew that, right?

Spend more time following-up than applying

  • Sure, you need to spend a great deal of time tailoring your resume, writing your cover letter and filling out additional information requested by a potential employer. But you also need to be proactive in your job search by keeping track of your applications and following-up to show you’re passionate about the position. You can easily be lost in the “black hole” of job boards and applicant tracking systems. Sometimes, this means the hiring manager never actually sees your resume. Follow-up can be the key to standing out from the crowd (not everyone does it) and gaining an employer’s attention.
  • I recommend stating that you will follow-up within one week in your cover letter. If you don’t hear back beforehand, shoot the hiring manager an email to inquire about the position. Don’t follow-up too often – as that can often irritate a busy hiring manager – once per week for 3-4 weeks is plenty.

Focus on building and maintaining your personal brand

  • With loads of resumes, cover letters and online applications for each open position, you can understand how a hiring manager has difficulty deciding which candidate would be best for the position. They obviously don’t have time to interview everyone to determine fit, so they probably rely on employee referrals, computer applications that sort applicants based on keywords, and standout candidates who know their strengths.
  • Be a standout job applicant by clearly conveying your personal brand in your job search documents – and identifying how your skills and qualifications can benefit the organization. Although this takes time and effort, it can pay off tremendously in your job search. It might just be the edge you need to land your dream opportunity.

What unique job search tips have worked in your career? Anything job seekers should absolutely avoid doing in their search?

Magnetic Leadership Attracts Top Talent: #TChat Preview

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Originally posted by Matt Charney, one of #TChat’s moderators, on MonsterThinking Blog

The CEO of today looks a lot different than  the company man of previous generations, increasingly likely to have traded  in the gray wool suit for shorts and flip-flops, their secretaries for smart phones, and corporate branding with personal branding.

One only has to look as far as Steve Jobs’ black turtleneck, or Bill Gate’s bifocals, or even Undercover Boss to see the impact that leaders have on the way clients, and candidates, perceive and interact with an organization.  Tony Hsieh has made Zappos as recognizable for its corporate culture as its corporate product; likewise, Donald Trump is his corporate product.

The close correlation between leadership and talent extends far beyond these high profile examples, two concepts that have long been inexorably intertwined.  Influential lists like Fortune’s annual 100 Best Companies to Work For or a company’s Glassdoor.com ratings, rely heavily on workers’ perceptions of leadership and management within their organizations.

Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that executive and managerial communications and engagement are among the primary drivers for employee satisfaction and, subsequently, retention.  Satisfaction with leadership plays a similarly prevalent role in worker productivity, with magnetic leaders adding more to the bottom line than can be reflected on a balance sheet.

When it comes to attracting and retaining talent, active, engaged and innovative leaders provide a key competitive advantage.  After all, it’s that magnetism they possess which creates a powerful draw for potential workers (and customers), not to mention providing a potent, and public, voice for communicating with both internal and external stakeholders.

Tonight’s combined #TChat and #LeadershipChat recognizes the critical correlation between talent and leadership, and that’s why we’re partnering up to discuss some of the most critical challenges – and opportunities – confronting leaders and the workers who rely on them every day.

We hope you can join us tonight at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT for what’s been jokingly called “Twitter Chat M&A” as our communities come together for a conversation on magnetic leadership and how it fits in with the bigger talent picture.

To follow along or to join the conversation, remember to use both the #LeadershipChat and #TChat hash tags; for more background on #LeadershipChat, click here.

It’s sure to be a lively discussion, so we’re only including four questions tonight instead of our regular seven to keep the conversation flowing while keeping it focused on the issues, and ideas, that matter most.

#TChat + #LeadershipChat Questions and Recommended Reading: 06.14.2011

Here are tonight’s questions, along with some related posts on leadership and talent  we think are worth checking out.  This background reading isn’t mandatory to get in on tonight’s joint #TChat #LeaderChat action, but we suggest checking out these articles by top leadership and talent-management thought leaders before the chat (or if you missed it):

Q1: What is the role of a leader when it comes to making talent decisions?

Read: How Successful Companies Attract and Retain Employees by Connie Blaszczyk

Q2: What should a leader consider when addressing “talent alignment?”

Read: 5 Things Every CEO Should Know About Talent Alignment by Lisa Petrilli

Q3: How can a leader show genuine authenticity to new recruits and current employees?

Read: Starbucks Wakes Up and Smells the Coffee (And Buzzes Back Up the Leader Board) by Allen Adamson

Q4: How does being a genuine leader impact a workplace culture brand?

Read: 5 Authentic Keys to Attracting Top Talent by Meghan M. Biro

Visit www.talentculture.com for more great information on #TChat, as well as other great resources on careers and hiring.

Monster’s social media team supports #TChat’s mission of sharing “ideas to help your business and your career accelerate — the right people, the right ideas, at the right time.”

We’ll be joining the conversation this Tuesday night as co-hosts with Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman from 8-9 p.m. (Eastern) via @MonsterCareers and @Monster_Works.

HRO: Engagement Perception and Social Recruiting Technology

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I spent most of this past week at the HRO Today conference in Las Vegas as a member of the blog squad, and what do I have to show for it? A new appreciation for HR and Recruiting technology innovation – that’s what.

On the personal side, new friendships were made and old bonds renewed. In short, a very good conference. I even had an opportunity to sing along with dueling pianos  – talk about a Talent Show. Right up my alley. We had many laughs. What happens in Vegas is not always meant to stay in Vegas after all.

This week’s #TChat was a highlight of course. As I referenced earlierin the week,  The HRO Analyst Study was pretty fascinating from my perspective. So while there’s plenty of HR technology out there, much of it is focused on talent management and recruitment. HR and recruiters just are not perceiving what’s out there as innovative, perhaps because most of what we’re seeing isn’t screaming cloud, mobile application. What the survey found, instead, was a gap in perceptions of innovation.

For example, 62 percent of technology providers think it’s vital to innovate in talent management technology – but only 33 percent of practitioners agree. Even more telling: 70 percent of providers surveyed think talent management technology supports work, while practitioners – 37 percent – view the technology as ‘just gadgets’.

But wait, there’s more – over 70 percent of practitioners surveyed say providers ‘rarely or never’ talk to them to gauge whether their offerings align with the practitioners’ business strategies and goals. Yikes, what a disconnect! As a “recruitment practitioner” (one of my hats) I’m hoping there are many more of us who see these innovative tools as a must have – I certainly fall into this grouping.

So let’s go to Door #1 and a review of my stint as a judge on the iTalent2 Demo Competition. The talented roster of hopefuls: BranchOut a solution that helps people tap into their Facebook friends network to find career opportunities; InternMatch a brilliant yet simple application that simplifies finding interns and marketing internship opportunities for organizations of pretty much any size; JobScore a social media-enabled talent management application; SmartRecruiters a winner (did I say it is free?) application with a great SaaS recruiting solution; Wednesdays a team building and employee engagement application built on social media networking, and Work4labs, with a very cool application that enables career sites on Facebook. Quite an impressive array of new technologies included here.

As a judge who ended up being closer to Simon Cowell than Paula Abdul as we first thought – I was way careful about the numbers I gave each company featured, never going past 8 on a scale of 1-10. Apologies to the contestants if that seems harsh, but we’re talking about my passion here: innovation meets matching people talent with new career opportunity.

I have a weak spot for technologies that do it well. In classic start-up form no company or application is perfect just yet. Innovation is truly about creating a culture of working and reworking ideas where it’s ok to make mistakes in the early innings. I found flaws in each application from either a usability or branding perspective. It will be exciting to watch their progression in the coming months. There were almost too many good things on offer for the judging panel.

SmartRecruiters won – it’s a free (yes, free), social-media enabled application that helps companies recruit top talent. The pitch was strong, the website is user friendly, it’s organized and the people are enthusiastic about it’s potential in the market.

I have a soft spot for InternMatch. I mentor as many interns as I can and many people know I’m an advocate for these programs. Pay it forward and all, interns are a great resource for any company – and actual work experience with actual companies is part of a complete education.

I’m so energized by the people I met, the ideas that were presented, the technology that is available right now that will make talent recruiting and hr management so much easier and more productive. I can’t wait to talk to people (and clients) about what I’ve heard about in Vegas and beyond. Onward we go.

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Focus on Your Employees, Key to Workplace Culture Success

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As an organization, your perceived workplace culture is a part of your brand. There are plenty of posts out there that discuss how your brand is more than just your logo. It is an overall perception and the emotional connection people make with who you are as an organization on a holistic level. Taking the complete package that we have come to understand as a brand is that which we market to our target audience. Marketing 101, right?

I would suggest that many organizations are dropping the ball  in marketing organizational culture to a specific market segment. This particular segment is so critical to the success of your company. It’s your employees. If you’re not leveraging the brilliance of your marketing department to reach out to your own people, you are leaving tons of money and talent on the table. Internal marketing is absolutely essential to be a major player in business…especially in the 21st century.

How do you communicate your workplace culture to your employees? Is it in their employee handbook, hanging on prominent walls in frames and the “mandatory” screensaver from HQ? How would you view your marketing department if their top notch marketing campaign only consisted of a blurb in your product/service user instructions, a refrigerator magnet and an invite to follow on Twitter? Pretty lame, huh?

So why does it seem good enough for your potentially best evangelists, your employees? Imagine a campaign that is collaboratively developed with input from the C-Suite, HR and Marketing on how to market to your employees. If it makes it easier, replace the word “employee” with “customer/client”. What would you do to market your culture effectively to them?

Why do your customers buy from you? You most likely meet a need in their life and they emotionally connect with your brand in some way or another. You’re employees need the same opportunity to create a connection in order to be the best they can possibly be. Without this, they will not offer their discretionary effort; which is where your bottom line profit realizes the most difference.

There isn’t a process or management tool that can demand a discretionary effort from any employee. It is only given by choice as a gift to the organization when they feel valued and connected. Values is a great place to start with your engagement marketing campaign. People connect so quickly with those. If you show people you plan to give them the freedom to the job you hired them to do without the “adult babysitting”, you will come out ahead as well.

See what your brainstorming brings to the surface when the C-Suite, HR and Marketing get together? It will be different for each company based on the vision and mission. It has to reach your target market, the employees, exactly where they are…not where you think they should be. Don’t demand them to come where you are. Go to them and walk with them as you travel to that place.

What can you do to market your workplace culture better to your employees?

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HR Demo Show Vegas – Humanizing Employer Brands Makes Me Happy

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There are technologies that transform an economy (railroads), and technologies that lead to an industry (and an economy) treading water (railroads.) HR technology is a transformative set of technologies, one I can’t wait to dig in to. The place to see what’s coming up for us HR and Recruiting practitioners is the HR Demo Show, to be held May 24-25 at The Venetian in Las Vegas.

Did I say Las Vegas? Yup. I will be making an appearance on a blog squad that includes friends like Maren Hogan Craig Fisher and Geoff Web. I also look forward to meeting Jessica Miller-Merrell IRL for the first time. Fun times.

In this case I’m talking about new technologies for the workplace and talent management, not trains. Technologies have transformed many businesses and industries and displaced others. But its value as a creator of strategic value has been under attack for some time.

Flashback way back yonder to the year 2003 Nicholas Carr published ‘IT Doesn’t Matter’ in the Harvard Business Review, followed by a book, Does IT Matter? in 2004. His argument (to paraphrase the article, and some of Carr’s rebuttal of various criticisms): because IT is structural, built in to a company’s operations, it is no longer a strategic differentiator or source of advantage to businesses. Sure, it helps with competitiveness – you need to be on par with those in your industry in your use of IT to survive – but it’s no longer a source of tremendous advantage. IT has become a commodity.

Back to the present. Not so fast. Technology is very much transforming industries. In Recruiting and HR specifically, technology is a transformative power because today’s social tools have the power to enable emotional connections between employers, employees and job seekers (future employees). This is a hugely important tool for connecting with and hiring the right talent. And it’s no sceret I love any valuable tool that helps employer’s humanize their workplace brand when recruiting new people to teams. Job seekers “buy into” a workplace culture when they accept a job offer – it’s an emotional connection made with people first and foremost.

Things are changing fast in the world of software tools designed to support Recruitment and HR functions within a workplace. As Kevin W Grossman says, the next five to 10 years should be an interesting time for talent management technologies in our space. Cue the flash and sizzle: be at the HR Demo Show to hear what’s changing.

So much is exciting. I am going to look at things that promise much improvement for talent management in the workplace:

  • Humanizing talent acquisition—by facilitating human interaction and establishing emotional connections between employers and job candidates. Taleo looks like an interesting option here.
  • Helping to build an employment brand—by creating talent communities via social, mobile, cloud and collaboration technologies and activities.
  • Going beyond standard applicant tracking system features—by reaching into the CRM realm to keep the pipeline filled with truly qualified candidates, to grab and nurture candidates’ interest, and to empower global recruitment and multi-lingual outreach. Kenexa has an interesting set of offerings, as does Epicor.
  • Getting social networking to work effectively by driving applicants back to companies’ career portals; giving companies a clearer picture of their social media efforts/effectiveness, and helping them track and manage referrals more efficiently.

I’ll be attending talks on RPO, HRO and MSP practices and IT solutions, and reporting back to you. There’s a ‘demo’ in the show name, so I’ll be going to demos of various interesting and geeky offerings – right up my alley. I’ll be separating the very cool from the not-so-cool and on where we can use new technologies for strategic, competitive advantage.

It’s Vegas, so there will definitely be a stroll and a dance (or five) down the Strip (no cards, please) or a stop at the Red Square. There will be opportunity to connect with my fellow HR and Recruitment practitioners and purveyors of HR systems. And there will be lots of opportunity to find out about talent management, and how systems will help our industry make this a priority to stay innovative.

Join me in Vegas. Or check in here and hear what I’m hearing. HR/Recruiting technologies are on the cusp, and I don’t want to miss the opportunity, the transformation, the prospect of creating competitive advantage.

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Recruit from the Inside Out: Establish a Relationship with a Talent Acquisition Partner

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Much has changed in how companies find talent and how people find jobs. With the seismic shift in employment sourcing that is the Internet, why would a company seek out the services of a recruiter or talent acquisition strategist? Why would a job seeker trust one person or firm to guide a career?

It may seem that I’ve been a bit abstract on the TalentCulture blog lately, talking about intent, emotional intelligence, and one of my very favorite topics = personality/culture fit. But the root of my thinking comes from a core competency: recruitment and talent acquisition strategy. I’ve spent most of my career in this space and still find making candidate placements endlessly interesting and rewarding. Recruiters of all shapes and sizes are the front-line scouts and nurturers of the talent (people) companies need to succeed. Odds are companies in need of key talent, and talent in need of employment, won’t get that level of skill, commitment, and personal service from a website that aggregates thousands of resumes and runs keyword searches – certainly useful but a bit antiseptic, necessary but not always sufficient, a starting point, typically not a destination.

I have been asked this question often lately. How has the recruiter role changed in these digital times? My answer is this: Talent acquisition and recruiting still matter. It’s an art form. It’s a skill. It’s a calling. It’s about making a match, the right match and saving my clients valuable time. Most importantly it’s about forging meaningful and productive relationships that can be sustained through multiple career searches in a world where skills need to change more often than hemlines. It’s about trust and partnership. It’s about culture fit in all directions.

The term recruiter can turn some people off. They automatically think ‘headhunter’, which conjures up images of a predator trying to lure them away from what might be a perfectly comfortable job. I adopted the term ‘talent acquisition’ to explain what I do. Talent acquisition professionals have a dual responsibility: they must understand the unique business and cultural needs of the company that engages them to find good candidates, and they must understand the personality, skills, and goals of the candidates with whom they work. It sounds like a situation ripe for conflict of interest, but it’s not: an ethical, responsible talent acquisition professional can manage two sets of interests and needs in parallel, with the goal – and great responsibility – of ensuring the best outcome for all parties.

For the job seeker, the talent acquisition professional – the recruiter – is a career partner, a person who forges a relationship with you as you negotiate the changes and evolutions of your career. Part therapist, part social scientist and part business negotiator, this person provides advise, helps you understand what you need in terms of workplace culture fit, guides you in interactions with prospective employers, and even helps negotiate. In my practice, the goal is not to see a candidate land one job with my client: it is to help you build a satisfying and rewarding career. There’s enormous, long-term value in such a relationship.

A company/hiring manager partnering with a talent acquisition firm works with a professional(s) who is passionate about making the right connections, evaluating the corporation’s culture and job requirements and making a match with a pool of candidates who are qualified and have the right personality attributes and character. It’s a commitment  – a responsibility – we do take it seriously.

In this digital age, where job boards and social media offer some of the tools to match jobs and candidates there is still no replacement for the skill, insight and viable connections offered by a savvy and creative talent acquisition partner.

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