Applications Have Doubled

Since re-launching almost two weeks ago, we’ve been keeping a close eye on our daily metrics to help make sure that the new design of our site and the continuing tweaks are making it easier for our visitors. One key metric is the number of applications. Good news: that’s just about doubled.

Inspiration – where does yours come from?

Last night, as I was thinking about what I would post about today I was feeling uninspired. I wasn’t feeling very creative and I was drawing a blank. After a long holiday weekend you would think I would wake up with all kinds of creative thoughts ready to put pen to paper.
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But… I had nothing.
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Nothing until 11 o’clock PM when I was suddenly inspired by our local news who ran a story about amazing accomplishments and highlighted Jonathan Lester. You know who he is, right? I know are least 2 people reading this blog know who he is.
Jonathan Lester is a left-handed Boston Red Sox pitcher. His 2006 rookie season was cut short due to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But, less than two years after being diagnosed with lymphoma, Lester pitched the final game of the 2007 World Series against Colorado and just last week he threw a no-hitter as Boston beat the Kansas City Royals, 7-0. He is the first Red Sox lefty to toss a no-hitter since Mel Parnell against the White Sox on July 14, 1956.
If that’s not inspiring – I don’t know what is. So I started to think about what inspires and motivates me. Although I am not pitching no hitters for a Major League Baseball team, I am raising two children who I hope will grow to accomplish amazing things just like John Lester. And that is what inspires and motivates me.
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What about you? What inspires and motivates you?
Courtesy of Sodexo Careers Blog Making every day a better day.

A Seat At the Table With the Expert – Jackie Bassett

An interview by Phil Rosenberg
Jackie Bassett joins us today to discuss the media industry, and demand for new media professionals.
Jackie is a published author and the CEO of BT Industrials, a Washington DC based consulting firm, focusing on “turning problems into profits” for clients. Advertising and Media firms are one BT Industrials major business verticals.
reCareered: Thanks for joining us today Jackie. What do you see as the 2 greatest issues in Advertising and Media today?
Jackie Bassett: That’s easy, the two biggest issues are 1) Identifying what customers want, and 2) Finding Digital Talent. Today companies are great are managing collaboratively. For instance, the President of one client chose to move their offices closer to their talent, even though it doubled his commute.
reCareered: If your clients are having challenges finding digital talent, what skills do you see most in demand today?
Jackie Bassett: Flash, Actionscript steaming, content creation (video, audio, written). My clients need people who can get messages across to an ADD world. They need marketing specialists who can make effective byte sized content. Also, employees with experience in creating YouTube video is in high demand.
reCareered: Why do you think your clients are having problems finding this talent. Are there shortages?
Jackie Bassett: Maybe, but companies are looking in the wrong places for talent. It’s out there, even if it’s not the primary job of the candidate. Often my clients are looking for talents that haven’t been demonstrated in the workplace yet, but demonstrated in worker’s hobbies. Since worker hobbies rarely show up on a resume, the system overlooks some great talent. That’s how they look in the wrong places.
reCareered: If traditional search methods are the wrong places for this type of media worker, then what are the right places?
Jackie Bassett: You’re more likely to find these workers in the places they normally hang out. For instance, if you want a great YouTube video creator, why not go to YouTube and look for people who are creating innovative material?
reCareered: What kinds of people are on YouTube creating great videos? What would their resumes look like?
Jackie Bassett: They might be Network Admins, traditional advertising people, even accountants. These skills are probably not on their resume.
reCareered: So how can a digital media hobbyist get their work noticed and possibly make a career of these skills.

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Who Wants a Piece of Me?

Hey, want a piece of me?
Go right ahead, just steal my content…
In case anyone noticed the comments between a couple of readers and me over the past few days, you might be wondering why I’d ask anyone to steal my content.
But first, how can today’s rant affect job seekers? As a job seeker you publish content also. Maybe it’s just your resume, but hopefully you’re getting other ideas from this blog and others. Hopefully, you’ve got content on your personal web page, LinkedIN, Facebook, MySpace, Interview on Demand, on an online portfolio, or your ResuBlog. Maybe you have video or audio on YouTube, pictures on Flickr, or bookmarks on Del.icio.us. Or you’ve shared your thoughts and commented on other blogs, forums, and groups.
Sharing expands your web presence and helps you promote and expand your subject matter expertise. As for me – I’m a “give before I get” kind of guy. For example, at networking events, I ask people how I can help them…and it usually has nothing to do with career search. In the same light, I want the content of this blog to be shared widely, and to benefit as many job seekers and career changers as possible. It’s my form of “Business Karma”.

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Interview Tips – Don’t Tell Everything You Know

Last week I was honored to give a presentation on interview tips to students at Ellis College via webcast. About 40 people participated and we had a very lively discussion of interview tips and tactics for handling specific interview questions. Several participants asked me how I would recommend that they respond to some specific interview questions. The questions we discussed all revolved around issues that could elicit a negative response from the interviewee. We also talked about questions that interviewees might want to ask a potential employer that could be construed negatively. Without rehashing every specific question we discussed let me offer one piece of interview advice: don’t tell everything you know.
If a potential employer asks you to give an example of a time that you had to deal with a difficult employee, boss or co-worker make sure that your answer is as positive as you can make it. Don’t give a lot of ancillary information – answer the question clearly and honestly but don’t risk sharing additional information that could make you look bad. Stick to the facts and don’t share every little detail if those details could in any way be misconstrued or interpreted in a way that isn’t to your advantage.

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Do Recruiting Basics Advance with New Technologies?

In this innovative world, we are often lured into adopting new practices that seek to improve how we recruit and assess people. What about video interviews and automated reference checks? Are these new technologies making what we’ve done in recruiting for decades significantly better? In other words, how are these new technologies improving on the basic concepts of recruiting? Are there ways to leverage innovation to advance the basics of recruiting? If yes, how?
It is well known that mastering the basic concepts of anything is the key to success. This can be done in sports as well as business. What we are going to review in this article is the ways in which two basic steps in the recruiting process – the structured interview and the reference check – have been improved upon significantly through new technologies.
Today your organization is probably performing reference checks as well as interviews on candidates before offering them a job. These two steps are part of the basics of recruiting. But, first let’s see if they are justified as basics. Are they justified as being the best practices to maintain in your organization as they are currently performed?
Are interviews and reference checks legitimate practices?
Interviewing is of course a step that few organizations would do without. However, there are interviews and then there are interviews. The assessment accuracy of all interviews is not the same. We know that structured interviews (validity r=0.51) are about 35 percent better than unstructured interviews (validity r=0.38), and that structured interviews are the best way to assess people. This confirms our constant usage of them and qualifies them as being good basic practices to keep. Yet, it is often hard to ensure that managers are performing structured interviews. It is also sometimes hard to truly compare candidates when they’ve been interviewed weeks apart.
Reference checking is often more challenging, for it is, indeed, in its current forms, of a lower accuracy rate than interviews (validity r=0.26). Nonetheless, about 95 percent of organizations perform them, as they bring some value to the recruiting process. Some organizations face legal issues following the reference check process, as employers are damned if they perform them, and damned if they don’t. Most often companies still perform them, but more as an administrative task and under highly controlled circumstances, which seek to prevent any wrong doing while asking questions by the recruiter or manager.
The reference check is more often combined in the background checking process. In this way, performing a traditional reference check is justified, even though the value delivered is often relatively low.
Can technology give new vigor to these two basic steps and address their weaknesses?
Are video interviews an improvement?
The Internet, in its current state, enables video transmission to take place as easily as text. A consequence of this has been the use of the Internet as a platform for interviewing candidates. Some early attempts at accomplishing this in 2000 were not successful, as the bandwidth was not sufficient.

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Employment Screening Practices

On-demand employment background screening company, HireRight, Inc., recently released its 2008 HireRight Background Screening Benchmarking Report. Based on a comprehensive survey of security and human resources professionals, the report addresses not only key factors influencing employment screening programs today, but the scope, the methods used, as well as the types of background checks most commonly performed. In fact, according to the benchmarking report, the most common reasons for performing employment background and drug screening is to mitigate risk, improve the quality of hire, promote workplace safety, as well as meet regulatory compliance requirements. The report also reveals that there is an increased risk factor for firms that utilize contingent labor since extended workforces including consultants, contract labor, temporary and vendor personnel are screened only one-third as often as the permanent, full-time workforce. Additional key findings suggest that just over a third of all respondents indicated their organization conducts background checks internationally in some form and that job applicants are five times more likely to be screened than current employees, highlighting the existing employee risk that may exist at many companies. “We believe the 2008 HireRight Background Screening Benchmarking Report is a valuable tool organizations can use to assess their own screening programs in the context of the practices of their peers,” says Rob Pickell, vice president of marketing and product management, HireRight, Inc. “Whether you are an employer looking to do background checking for the first time or already have a comprehensive screening program in place, this report can help you by providing a consolidated view into how other organizations are approaching their employment screening programs today.”
Article courtesy of Kennedy Information Recruiting Trends providing leading edge insights and strategies for the recruiting professional

Trade Skill Videos Deliver Good Insight

This is a guest post by Steven Krager.
“You know, like nunchaku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills… girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.”
These wise words from Napoleon Dynamite are the theme of the promoted video on the new Australian website skillsone.com.au. If Napoleon is right, it looks like I’m going to be single for a long time. Luckily for Australians, the Australian government has funded a program to increase interest in trade skills within the country. The funds back the Institute for Trade Skills Excellence. The first aim of the Institute is to “improve the profile and status of trades.” One of the ways they plan on achieving that goal is through the new video-based skillsone.com.au site.
The site is actually pretty cool. The videos are broken down into eight different categories of trades such as Building and Construction, Automotive, and Manufacturing. Dozens of videos exist for each category, and most of the videos seem to be profiles of people in a specific trade. For example, the first video on the Electrical category is called, “Training Future MacGyvers.” They interview electricians on the job and observe what they do.
The videos give a great sense of what the day-to-day practice of each trade is actually like. Obviously there is a lot of variation of types of jobs within each trade, and the site reflects that by profiling hundreds of different people.
If you’re curious about different trades, the videos are worth checking out. If you live in Australia, you may even find a future employer, as the site also incorporates “virtual tours” of different employers in Australia.
One great thing about the site is that because its government funded, there are no annoying ads. And the best part for non-Australia residents: the iste was paid with somebody else’s tax dollars!
So give it shot and see why the site recently won a Webby Award for Associations. You may find the tools to develop some “great skills.”
Article by Andrew G.R. and courtesy of jobacle.com – your cure for carbon copy career advice!

Twitter Etiquette

I just read a great post over on the Exalt Creativity blog about Twitter Etiquette. The blog’s author, Rebecca Coggan, reminds us that the etiquette rules for Twitter are similar to those of other social networking sites and that it’s important to observe the community first and post content that adds value. She also warns that posting too frequently may be perceived as spamming. I’ve heard that people who misuse Twitter are sometimes referred to as twits. Perhaps we should refer to spam on Twitter as spit???
Keep your posts relevant and think of ways to share information that will help those who read your tweets. Just like traditional networking, be cognizant of what you can give, not what you can get. Enjoy!
Article by, Barbara Safani and courtesy of CareerHub.com. The Career Hub blog connects job seekers with experts in career counseling, resume writing, personal branding and recruiting.

What has been your most influential internship?

I have done quite a few internships during my college career, but one stands out above the rest. I took one semester out of my junior year to work for The Walt Disney World Resort. The internship was pretty basic, you work in the parks and have the opportunity to take classes on the side. Although the work was easy, what I learned was worth more than anything.

The Walt Disney World Resort has thousands of guests per year. The amount of different people I got to meet and have conversations with was amazing. I learned so much about different cultures and lifestyles from taking five minutes out of my time to listen.

But, I can’t forget the variety of people I lived and worked with. I lived with five other girls, two being from the United States and the other three were from PR, Brazil, and Mexico. It was wonderful to hear about their lives and learn that we weren’t so different from each other.

My internship also taught me patience and the abitily to deal with issues. There was always a lot goin on at work and The Walt Disney Company has such high standards. Patience was key to keeping your temper down when in a stressful situation.

Lastly, I had many networking opportunities to talk to others who worked within the company. They gave a lot of useful advice and I still use it to this day.

I highly recommend any one to look at working for this company.