KCRecruiting

A Safe Place To Talk About The Boss: WurkPal

WurkPal has been in the news lately - well, they left a comment for me and I saw them on TechCrunch, which counts as news.

This latest variant on the old Vault system of talking about companies is betting that information on the real state of a company is valuable to employees, executives, and job-seekers.  When I logged on, the special function assumed I worked for Charter (they are my cable service), but presumably, if you logged in from Sprint or Hallmark, those companies would pop up.

They have a blog up - it has a post on Sunday - we'll see if they follow the trend of one post and done - but I have to say that I understand why companies keep pitching the idea that shared information is worth paying for.

The idea is that people want to share information, and if they did, the workplace would be a better place.  I'm not sure that is true, but it's worth trying out.  At least, it's worth it for recruiters and sourcers to try and track people down.  Of course, they're anonymous...

If Recruiters Were Los Angeles Gangsters

If I ran my own recruiting firm, all of my recruiters would be required to memorize the speech Marsellus Wallace gives to Butch (Bruce Willis) in Pulp Fiction.

The day of the offer, you might feel a slight sting. That's pride messing with you. To heck with pride! Pride only hurts ... it never helps. You fight through that stuff 'cause a year from now, when you kickin' it in the Caribbean, you gonna say to yourself, my recruiter was right."

I'm not saying it would be legal, or even advisable, but it sure would be a lot of fun to see the reaction you would get.

And if any of my candidates ever backed out of an offer, you know what speech they would get.

Where Are The Computer Science Students?

I attended a roundtable employer forum at a local community college yesterday.

A few interesting things came out of the discussions.

1.) The number of kids going into computer science programs is dwindling because:

• There is no future in IT because all the IT jobs are being outsourced
• There are no entry level jobs in IT, no companies will hire without real world experience
• There are no jobs in IT because there are no IT jobs posted in the newspaper
• The academic programs are not keeping up with the changes in technologies

According the academics, they are given the above information by incoming/potential students. 

There were employer jaws hitting tables throughout the room and the school faculty members were VERY interested to learn that all the employers were struggling to find talent and the demand was only growing.

2.) No fewer than 5 of the 10+ employers in the room reported they were anticipating a need for COBOL programmers as the guys doing it today were retiring soon and there was no one in the bullpen to keep the mainframe lights on

3.) Junior/Community Colleges foresee a need to specialize in areas such as IT, Finance, Nursing, etc.  They will do this to attract regional students wanting to pursue a certain practice...ex. One school who is already strong in math and science will focus their IT curriculum on Application Development/Programming. Another strong in business will focus their IT curriculum on Project Management and Business Analysis.

These schools are getting smart about marketing and attracting those students not ready for a 4 year school, the non-traditional student returning to complete a degree and those people looking to brush up on skills or pursue certificate programs.

I was very interested in the disconnect between academia and corporate america.  For recruiters, there could be a potential pool of talent at the juco right down the street.

Get involved with the faculty, sit on employer panels, present opportunities to the teachers and get in front of classrooms to discuss employment opportunities.

The schools are begging for input and there is a group of people there trying to better themselves to get a job...will it be with you?

-Doug Burris,

Intronic Solutions Group

Great Interview Question

There is no one silver bullet interview question, but there are some great ones that I like to throw out.

My favorite this month,

"What was the last big mistake you made, and what did you do to correct it?"

The best employees will describe a mistake they made at work and give you details on what they did to make it better.

The mediocre employees will give you a lame answer about a copier breaking down, or

The rebellious employees will tell you about when they shot their boss in a paintball game.

The incompetent employees will tell you they never make mistakes.

The employees just taking a paycheck will talk about their spouse or children.

The young employees will talk about their social lives.

What would you do?

Advertising and Marketing Niche Blog In St Louis

A St Louis advertising blogger is branching out and collating information about advertising and marketing jobs and meetings in the local area.  With a few simple google searches, the AdSaint has turned themselves into a destination for every marketing, advertising and PR employee to check weekly into for new places to go, new people to meet, and the occasional job search.

The key to the blog is the fact that's local and targeted. Traffic may be small, but it will certainly be targeted, and most important, the writers for the AdSaint blog will quickly become mini-celebrities in their community. 

How do I know?  Because my niche recruiting blogs have done the same for me.  If you want to know how to get into the newspaper, build a passive candidate management tool, and dominate the Google Search Results for your name (go aheard, search "Jim Durbin recruiter" in Google and count how far you go before you don't read something about me), you might consider hiring Durbin Media Group to teach you how to build a small community.

Or you could start it yourself, and get that sweet feeling of earned labor. Either way - if you're interested in growing your career or branding your company - copy Walt and Maeve at the Ad Saint.

Don't Use Confidential Resumes

Mike Tiffany over across the state writes about the use of confidential resumes and has some advice for you.

DON'T DO IT!

Recruiters are substantially slowed down by you marking your resume as confidential on the job boards. Slowed down means everything from they may not want to take the time to contact you through the email addresses 50 characters long, or they may be working a position that only allows 1-2 candidates which means they'll take the first ones that respond.  Remember, recruiters also may be working with 25-50 candidates for various slots, so they may easily lose you in their process.

If you worry that much about a confidential search - why are you posting your resume on a public job board, anyway? 

8.2 Million Jobs Created Since 2003

Call it propaganda if you will, but there's a reason why staffing companies are enjoying stock prices twice as high as they were a year ago.

8.3 million jobs created in the last 3 1/2 years.

Today,   The Bureau Of Labor Statistics Released New Jobs Figures – 132,000 Jobs Created   In June.  Since August 2003, more than 8.2 million jobs have been created, with more than 2 million jobs created over the twelve months ending in June.  Our economy has now added jobs for 46 straight months, and the unemployment rate remains low at 4.5 percent.

Americans   Are Working And Taking Home More Pay

• Real After-Tax Per Capita Personal Income Has Risen By 9.9 Percent – Nearly $3,000 Per Person – Since President Bush Took Office.

• Real   Wages Rose 1.1 Percent Over The 12 Months Ending In May. This is faster than the average rate during the 1990s, and it means an extra $729 in the past year for the typical family with two wage earners.

• The   Economy Has Now Experienced Over Five Years Of Uninterrupted Growth, Averaging   2.9 Percent A Year Since 2001. Real   GDP grew a strong 3.1 percent in 2006.

• Since   The First Quarter Of 2001, Productivity Growth Has Averaged 2.8 Percent.  This   is well above average productivity growth in the 1990s, 1980s, and   1970s.

• Purchasing   Managers Reported Manufacturing Expansion For The Fifth Consecutive Month In   June.    The Institute for Supply Management manufacturing index rose to 56 in June.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Overlords

Facebook is growing, and their demographics are changing, and everything you thought about them has been turned on its head.  If you were thinking about them.  Which you should be, because the Millennials are coming, and they are bringing the new social networking with them.  Gen X has already signed on.

TechCrunch reports on the massive growth enjoyed by Facebook after the release of their API, and the shifting demographics that make Facebook a must-learn for the recruiting world are staring us in the face.

Over the past year (May ‘06 - May ‘07), Facebook saw an 89% increase in unique visitors to the site at 26,649,000 uniques, with a 143% increase in page views at 15.8 billion. The site’s stickiness has increased and then tapered off at about 190 minutes per average user.

That's not small potatoes, and lest you think this is just college kids, check out the changes in demographics after the jump.

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Find information on Diversity recruiting at DiversityJobs.com.

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Midwest Income By Household In 2003.

Here's a wild statistic for you.  The median income for a full household in the Midwest in 2003 was $44,732.

Now median is not the average, it's the the midpoint in a series of numbers; half the data values are above the median, and half are below.

So when you're out looking for a job and talking about what you should make, take your earnings with a bit of salt. If it takes a bit of effort to find jobs that pay $90,000 a year, it's because you are making more than twice as much as half of the country makes as a whole family (including double-income households).

Just a thought.  Maybe it should be harder to find those jobs.  Although it should be easy to find people to take them. 

EEOC Says Requiring Employees To Speak English Is Against The Law

One of the scariest things that can happen to a recruiter is an EEOC lawsuit.  If you are unlucky enough to be caught in such a net, your best bet is to take the cash in your freezer and flee the country.

Well, not really, but you've been caught in one of the government's worst dragnets.  And you thought the IRS was bad.  The problem with EEOC lawsuits is they legally deal with your compliance with government mandates on hiring, but in reality, they are dealing with moral and ethical issues of whether or not you discriminate.

Now, in a perfect world, the EEOC would cover only real discrimination.  A manager refuses to hire a woman, or a black man, or a Sikh because he doesn't like that group. Pretty clear.  The manager gets fired, the candidate gets some compensation, and the company learns a lesson.  But that's not the way it goes.

The EEOC can file complaints against your company for unintentional discrimination.  Yep, involuntary discrimination occurs when practices you engage in lead to results that don't fit the government's view of the racial and gender make-up of your staff.  In practice, this leads to a massively complex series of hiring practices that catch up good recruiters and transform them into zombie paper-pushers, afraid to use their judgement because judgement is the legal equivalent of admitting your bias.

Try saying you were using your judgement in an EEOC lawsuit.   It's probably worth millions to the candidate for you to do so.

Of course, I can only write about this because I'm not recruiting for positions with a large firm, but it's worth it to take a look at what the EEOC can do to you, for something as simple as requiring that English be spoken for your job position.  An interview with Lamar Alexander on one of his recent amendments to the immigration bill speaks volumes.

What the EEOC has done is equated a speaking requirement that employees speak English with illegal discrimination based on national origin. That was never intended. And what it does in practical effect means that a shoe shop or a Senate office or a school or a department store or a Wal-Mart basically has to hire a lawyer to prove that speaking English is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to that business. The burden of proof would be on every business in America to show they have some reason to expect their employees to speak our common language.

That's right, employers.  Having a requirement that your employees speak English can be considered a violation of the EEOC policies regarding discrimination based on national origin.

I have no advice on how to solve the problem, other than to say that if your goal is to increase the size of the government, you have to expect the government to look for ways to employ those people, and they usually will be employed in creating mischief.