I’m very busily employed now, four weeks into an IT change management role, but still receiving occasional thanks-but-no-thanks emails from former prospects.
For the most part I’ve let the 100-or-so job application dismissals I’ve received go without comment, but feeling frisky with two shiny paychecks under my belt I felt compelled to respond to one today. I was polite, but wondered: where was my phone screen?
Posted in The Write Stuff
Tagged employment, hiring, interview, job search, jobs, LinkedIn, Nokia, recruiters, resume, unemployment
A while back I implored the warm bodies involved in job posting and hiring to improve upon a few aspects of the process. After an attractive hyperlink led me down the wrong rabbit’s hole this morning I decided to expound further on one in particular: job descriptions.
The offender today was a listing for an Operations Coordinator. As a current job seeker who has frequently found himself in such facilitating roles, even without the title, I eagerly clicked the link to view the description. But they weren’t really looking for an Operations Coordinator at all– they wanted an administrative assistant for human resources.
Okay, by some stretch one could get there… using the same logic that promotes plumbers to Sanitation Engineers. But wouldn’t HR Administrative Assistant be more accurate for the job seeker?
It reminds me of an anecdote recently related to me by the recruiter who helped get me into my original job with Nokia a few years ago. He was supporting a client in finding a Packaging Engineer and was passed a resumé that just flat confounded him. The goal was to find someone with broad experience ranging from product conceptualizing to marketing. Instead he received an application from a big-thinking grocery sacker.
Anyway, this isn’t supposed to be an Easter egg hunt. Once again on behalf of job hunters everywhere I am beseeching those responsible: for our sake and yours, please think these job titles through carefully. The time you save may be your own. 😉
Posted in The Write Stuff, Unusability
Tagged hiring, job description, job search, job title, LinkedIn, Nokia, recruiter, recruiters, recruiting, unemployment
After a dry spell of job postings from late March to mid April I was able to kick up quite a flurry this past weekend. I’m assuming the end of March saw many employers freezing recruitment activities until stock was taken of first quarter financials. At a former employer when things got tough they would release temporary workers for a couple of weeks and then bring some back. I’ll let readers form their own conclusions on how well that yo-yo show affected the bottom line.
Of course I took advantage of the increase in listings I found, and noticed afterward how thick my stack of application printouts had grown. I had stopped counting after about 80 so I was curious to see where I was now.
130.
Posted in The Write Stuff
Tagged employment, hiring, jobs, LinkedIn, recruiters, unemployment
One of my job-blogging colleagues writes about a concept called Job Angels, which is essentially a network formed around the concept of people helping each other find employment. Sounds great! I’ve been doing it for years and never knew there was an organization. Does that make me an unofficial member? Do I owe back dues?
Silliness aside, she drove home the point that electronic job applications have not made the candidate vetting process any easier for recruiters. Indeed, if anything they have made it much easier for great unqualified masses to spam employers with unusable applications that crowd out the qualified. I don’t even want to know the typical signal-to-noise ratio these days.
She’s correct, then, that the process is broken. Maybe services like Job Angels is one solution. But maybe there’s another.
Posted in The Cat Corral, The Write Stuff
Tagged employees, employers, employment, job search, LinkedIn, recruiters, recruiting, unemployment
Maybe it’s just coincidence, but the day after taking headhunters in general to task for poor responsiveness (among other sins) I spoke with two today who are both putting me in for opportunities.
Karma works!
No, this isn’t an appeal to remote islanders looking for cranial trophies. Instead, I’d like to make some requests of those actively seeking prospective employees in the United States.
The current economic implosion has poured hundreds of thousands of hardworking professionals onto a market unable to place them all. There are certainly jobs avaialble, but many of us are being told we are overqualified for them and summarily dismissed. Laws of supply and demand are hard at work, allowing recruiters the luxury of being highly selective and weeding out many candidates who could perform the role but may have some deficit on their resumé.
To help both job seekers and people placers, I’d like to ask the following of those on the demand side of this equation:
Posted in The Write Stuff
Tagged employees, employment, hiring, jobs, LinkedIn, professionals, recruiters, unemployment
Tabula Crypticum 