It's seems that it has become more and more acceptable to arrive late to a meeting.
I am as guilty as the next person, maybe more, when it comes to showing up on time.... all the time. I find myself easily distracted by "one more call", "one more email", etc. I may have started out with every intention of being 10-15 minutes early, but that last call or task I decided to take on, always seems to make me 3-5 minutes late.
Most of the people I talk with, seem to be ok with being 5-10 minutes late for a meeting, but there are certainly a number of more traditional/"old schoolers", who will significantly devalue you, if for no other reason than you arrived late. This especially seems to be the case in the Indianapolis job search market.
So here are the rules I've established :
1) If you're going to be late, even 1 minute, call or text message the person you are meeting, and let them know you're running a few minutes behind. In return, the person you are meeting should wait with no hard feelings.
2) If you are running more than 10 minutes behind, call and text message if they don't answer. Also send an email because most seem to get emails instantaneously on phones anymore. Be very apologetic, and don't make excuses. Give the person you are meeting the option to reschedule, and expect it if you are running more than 15 minutes behind.
3) Finally, if you are the one waiting, and you haven't received any calls, texts or emails from the person you are supposed to be meeting with. Wait for 10 minutes, try calling them and leave a message. Anything over 15 minutes late, you are free to go with no guilt on your part.
NEVER be late to an interview. Being on time speaks to enthusiasm, organization and planning in the candidate evaluation process. Interviewers will use this to screen employees.
Of course.... I'm writing this blog while I'm waiting on someone that is now nearly 30 minutes late with no call. I think I'll leave!
I am totally hooked on technology. That's right, hooked. I am not a techie (in fact, I majored in English largely to escape the continually morphing and encroaching gadgets, software, and the like). But now I can appreciate the amazing difference technology, once one embraces it, can have on the quality and efficiency of life.
Those college friends who would have otherwise been scattered like seeds in the wind - Facebook.
Keeping up, in real time, with the latest and greatest - Twitter.
Sharing pictures for download and print on demand (because Grandmas demand it!)- ShutterFly.
Getting intimate access to the daily thoughts and struggles of thought leaders and corporate gurus - Blogging.
And, duh, managing one's career with an easy to use, innovative, and sharable application - CareerScribe.
Do you think that it's strange that you'll manage your friendships (that you would have otherwise let dissolve) with a fervor, but let your career flop around like wet cardboard? Get online, create your free professional portfolio, and get noticed during candidate evaluations. You agonized for hours over which photo to use for your facebook profile, perhaps you should direct some of that energy into managing your career!
For awhile now, I've been telling professionals that doing a good job managing your career is like dieting and excercise. No one can argue that you should be doing it, but unfortunately, our educational system is only now starting to incorporate(require) students to learn some of the very basic skills/habits, such as maintaining a career portfolio as a routine.
State workforce development offices are starting to recognize the importance of these skills. Realizing it's only a bandaid to provide resume services and certain types of training. These things may help the person at the time, but you're not equipping them with skills to help them throughout their career. Professional portfolios are the way to go when it comes to candidate evaluation.
The bad news is, like dieting and excercise, many of the career management skills and habits being taught to professionals with 5-10+ years of experience, likely won't stick. The employment pool has been so negatively reinforced with their habits, i.e. "I only update my resume when I'm unhappy or been told I'm going to lose my job", that it's very tough to unlearn that way of thinking, and realize the good career management habits can be fun. Documenting your successes and accomplishments, which ultimately creates more value and can help you further your career, should be fun. If you own a house, doesn't it make you feel good when the house has been freshly painted, you've planted flowers, mulched and just mowed the lawn? All these things add value, and you feel that inside.
Hopefully, the current employment market issues will translate into long term changes to our education system and the services our tax dollars provide through regional workforce offices.
I'll admit, I hesitated for a moment to join twitter - but I'm glad that moment has passed. I'm following Chuck Gillespie, and I recently viewed a tweet that stated, "Amazed at how orgs worry about their applicant experience ten times more than employee experience. Why?" (http://crgillespie.wordpress.com) OMG, LOL!
But it's true, right? Firms wine and dine potential, but neglect assets? You'll knock yourself out to create a quality hiring process, spend countless hours screening potential employees, and endure long meetings to discuss candidate evaluations. But once you have found your golden boy, he's just another cog in the works.
Create an experience that's meaningful and lasting for candidates on both sides of the process. Those who want in should create a professional portfolio through CareerScribe so your evaluation is effecient and successful. Once that candidate is on board, they utilize that same application to create an on-going talent mangagement system that allows you to easily recognize and promote high performing employees. In the end, you're creating an environment that's attractive to people inside and outside of your organization.
Tweet, tweet.
I have never met a manager who looked forward to a layoff. Unfortunately, it's an all too common occurrence these days. Every manager searches for the kindest words, right approach, or best justification when delivering the news, but it's tough to find anything that feels adequate. Losing a job has been likened to going through divorce, and managers know what hardships may lay ahead for ex-employees. But many employers are doing their best to soften the blow.
Career coaches and outplacement firms are contracted by employers to aid recently severed employees in getting a leg up on other job seekers. Professionally written resumes, interview coaching, networking strategies, and professional document creation are typical components of the service. Good start, but something is missing - a comprehensive, on-line, value driven, accomplishment laden, job preference identifying career portfolio.
Consider using outplacement/career coaching firms as partners in a layoff, and ask them to include CareerScribe in their curriculum. An on-line professional portfolio will go a long way in helping candidates obtain their next position, and will be a permanent asset to them. As previous employees move forward in their search, they can use these career portfolios to present immediate value and stand out in candidate evaluations.
As a previous career coach, I can tell you those services are the hope and motivation that is absent for so many job seekers. Including CareerScribe brings tangible value to a much needed, and greatly appreciated, service.
I attended an unconference today sponsored by Catalist Jobs (catalistjobs.com) where experts (including our own Jeff Bockelman) spoke to candidates regarding strategies to a successful job search. So I was curious, does the information being given to your potential candidates match up with what companies are saying they want?
yes and no.
There was a consistent message of uniqueness, creativity, and professionalism in the tone and content of today's speakers. And companies say they want a stand out candidate to fill the position. But are companies utilizing opportunities in candidate evaluation, beyond just an applicant tracking system, to screen employees and get the result they are looking for? Not unless they're using CareerScribe.
A resume is a good start, but it's just a start. If someone handed you a yearbook and asked you to pick a spouse, you'd laugh, right? But you'll get about as much info from a yearbook as you will a resume. A general understanding of the person, but hardly enough info to make a smart commitment. Ask for more.
Ask for a professional portfolio through CareerScribe. This online employee employee screening tool brings you a giant, efficient step forward in the commitment of hiring an new employee, teammate, bottom-line impacter!
Give candidates the (mutually beneficial) opportunity to present themselves in a unique, creative, and professional way.
Here's some copy from the official press release. Nice.
ExactTarget, which plans to hire more than 100 additional new associates this year, will initially use CareerScribe to evaluate technical candidates for its Solutions Consulting Group.
“We’re excited to be working with ExactTarget and to provide them with a powerful method that will considerably reduce the amount of time spent evaluating and pursuing the most qualified candidates,” said Jeff Bockelman, founder and president of CareerScribe. “I know from experience how much time can be invested during the first round of the hiring process. As a professional recruiter, I spent hours upon hours interviewing individuals who I knew within the first few minutes of meeting were not going to be right for the position. That is one of the reasons we founded CareerScribe.”
In addition to recruiting resources, CareerScribe’s platform also provides companies with tools to simplify the performance management process for their current employees. Employees can catalogue their current skill sets, goals and track day-to-day accomplishments via CareerScribe’s exclusive CareerTracker tool. The tool provides employees with an online career journal to highlight major career accomplishments, upload supporting documents and store the information on visual timelines. At the end of the year, the journal provides both employees and managers rich documentation on accomplishments, making data compilation for performance reviews easier.
“CareerScribe provides yet another resource for us to leverage to build our team,” said Todd Richardson, ExactTarget’s vice president of human resources and risk management. “The technology gives us additional tools to interact with candidates across the country.”
As I was reading the entire internet, I came across an interesting article on msn.com from CareerBuilder.
The article was about how you should format your resume and put certain keywords in there that will help you be found. They weren't suggesting you lie, but they were highlighting a serious problem with their software.
They search resumes. As we know by now, things have changed and we are not our resumes. CareerBuilder obviously agrees with this. How did they fix it? They decided, let's help our users make our search better. Instead they should be telling people to use tools that help them market themselves better. Using tools like virtual portfolios in their job search allow companies improve candidate sourcing without relying on keyword tricks.
Quality hiring has been a hot topic for companies since the dawn of time. Many are using sophisticated tools to help with their online employee screening. Candidates need to realize this and start using the same tools to better define what they want and what they have to offer.
Resume "keywords" aren't going to cut it.
I recently was involved on a panel for the local HR association, and was pleasantly surprised by the level of interest they seem to have in social media and the future of candidate sourcing.
I've experienced a lot of apprehension on the part of HR professionals in recent years to the uses of social spaces, video job interviews, etc. to screen employees. Many have used it for quite a while, many are just beginning to use it more, and still many act as if it is just a passing fad.
Concerns about discrimination claims seem to top the list of concerns around the risks of such tools and processes, but I feel the issue is one more of fear. Fear of change, fear of new technology and processes that have seemed to take place overnight. Just 5 years ago, no one was talking about videos, tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn. Let alone the cataclysmic changes that have taken place in the past 6-12 months, which have forced millions of people into the web social world.
3-5 years might as well be overnight in the HR world, when many of the recruitment processes and underlying fundamentals have remained essentially the same for 20 years.
However, I have seen many positive things in the past few months that lead me to believe the HR profession will embrace these changes as a whole. However, there will always be a pocket of people praying it all goes away!
So I was reading my yahoo email and this teaser caught my eye:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090506/ap_on_re_as/as_australia_world_s_best_jobPretty amazing. In short, this guy submits one of 35,000 video applications to be the "caretaker"of an island off Australia and write a blog to promote the area. Skill assesments included swimming, eating, and relaxing. I'm now consdering a change in career - Professional Relaxer.
Seriously, though, how in the world do you fill the best job in the world (this lucky Aussie will pull down six digits this year)? It's hard enough to fill jobs here in the Indianapolis area with all the hopeful applicants who apply.
In a phrase, ONLINE EMPLOYEE SCREENING. Notice the story does not indicate that resumes were requested, but online videos were mandatory. This Queensland organization knew whoever they choose needed to represent them well, be well spoken, have a great personality, and strong writing skills. And make sure you check out the picture of this guy - obviously there were not looking for just another pretty face!
That's why CareerScribe is such a great choice when you consider improving your process for quality hiring. Asking candidates to complete their free online porfolio, which gives you the opportunity to conduct candidate evalutations earlier in the process, can make your hires quicker (fewer face to face interview with dud candidates), more in-depth (you already have good understanding of their background, expectations, preferences, etc), and ultimately more successful (better information, better hiring success).
So even if your open position does not require long hours by the pool, it is
someone's "best job in the world." Make sure you find them - the right person, not just a warm body.
I saw this great article about folks looking for a job leveraging the power of a video job interview.
Check it out:
http://bit.ly/JbRQRHere's a quote from the article.
“Of all the 55 or so applications we received, Ryan's was the only one who had a video resume attached,” says Jossie Orense, who was an assistant to the dean at the time he applied for the job. The video resume definitely helped get him in the door, she says. “It was our first time to ever receive a video link, we were curious about what he had to say.”
The time for sharing video as a position / candidate evaluation tool is certainly at hand. Now add to that the ability for candidates to share their online
professional portfolio with prospective employers. It really changes much of what we know about conducting a job search, for the candidate and for the company. And for candidates ... it's free.
Here's a final quote from the article, “I can’t say I got the job because of it, but I think it made me seem more legit."
No question about it.
So, I just met with a client who is now using CareerScribe in three distinct ways.
Numero Uno | Candidate Evaluation
Despite the current economic conditions, this company is hiring. Lots. There method prior to CareerScribe was quite conventional. Lots of resumes. Hours of phone interviews, most ending without enthusiasm. They are now working alongside their current applicant tracking system to invite all promising candidates to connect with their open positions via CareerScribe. Now they've got 5X the information on all interested candidates and plan to review the candidates' professional portfolios as a team ... before the synchronous phone call.
Numero Dos | Intern Assessment
This organization is actively employing interns over the summer and intentionally giving them a comprehensive, working tour of the organization. Their asking all of the interns participating in this program to build their profiles on CareerScribe. This will give hiring managers throughout the company a deep sense of the interns' accomplishments and where they may fit best in the company in the long run.
Numero Tres | Internal Performance
One group within the organization is asking all of their individual contributors to track their accomplishments on a week by week basis in CareerScribe. At the end of the year, the manager will have all of the detail and insight necessary on each individual.Performance reviews and merit increase conversations will be very informed.
Wow. Pretty Cool.
Need more money? Work harder.
Want to look/feel better? Lose 10 pounds.
Need more time? Tough luck.
Time is the one factor we cannot replace, create, change, store, borrow, loan, or renew.
Time - it is what it is. Even as you read this it slips away...
What we can do, however, is assign a value to our time. You probably get paid X number of dollars per month, right? And based on X numbers of hours per week, you can say within a few dollars what your time is worth. And how many of those valuable (and your organization would likely say expensive) hours do you spend trying to recruit, identify, and hire quality applicants? If I told you that you could save the ONE thing you cannot create by making a simple request of your candidates would you do it?
By requesting a professional portfolio, you can weed out 25-40% of candidates you would initially consider bringing in for an interview. CareerScribe allows you, at your convenience, to view a broad, yet detailed, picture of candidates and offers the ability to conduct candidate evaluations before conducting time consuming interviews.
Candidates complete their free online portfolio, your talent management system runs like a well oiled machine, and you find the right fit quickly and effeciently.
Father Time would be proud.
Timeline based, career portolfios will be the future resume, used by employers to screen employees. Maintaining the details and artifacts of your education, training, experience and accomplishments, paint a much clearer and genuine picture of who you are.
So what types of events should I be including in my professional portfolio.... along with what documentation?
Here is a list to consider :
- Educational events (attachments might include diplomas, transcripts or a class syllabus)
- Training/seminar events (attachments might include certificates, course outlines and/or advertising material for the event)
- Employment events (attachments might include offer or resignation letters, performance reviews, emails noting a promotion or merit increase)
- Accomplishments (attachments could be wide and varied, but consider pdfs, jpgs, spreadsheets, emails, letters, videos, etc)
The best way to maintain a career portfolio is 1 event at a time. Try to look back every week, and ask yourself "What happened this week that might add value to my career" and document it while you remember!!!! As you come across old events, upload the digital files or scan the hardcopy documents.
This is the proof of your achievements and accomplishments that you can never find when you need it.
In the Indianapolis Job Search market, many people are asking me what questions they can ask to help insure the company they are interviewing with is stable.
First thing to know, is there aren't ANY guarantees. A company may appear to do well, and then something changes. Life cycles of companies are cyclical, and there will be ups and downs. Just because some bad events seem to occur within a year of you starting a job, doesn't mean you were lied to, or the facts were misrepresented.
However... that being said, there are certainly several things to ask a company, that might help you measure stability. The important thing to keep in mind when asking these "tougher" questions, is to wait until after the candidate evaluation process is over. You may even want to wait until they have made you an offer, but you haven't accepted.
1) Ask "Has there been any significant events in the companies recent history (3 years), either positive or negative, that I should be aware of? Anything that I will hear about after starting work, and will feel silly for not knowing."
2) Ask "What is the outlook for the company in the next 1 year, 3 years, 5 years. Are they considering buying other companies, strategic mergers or sale of any company divisions or assets."
3) Ask "How leveraged is the company right now? How much debt does the company have, and where does it come from.... banks, private equity, owners, etc." Keep in mind, if the company isn't public, you may not get a complete answer on this one.
4) If the person you are interviewing with, has been with the company for less than 3 years, ask "After accepting your position with the company, did you discover anything about the company's culture, or way of doing business, that was a surprise to you?"
These are a few questions that can help you collect some additional information, that may help in your decision.
However, reading a person's body language, eye contact, voice inflections, etc., may give you more insight to the answers you are really looking for.
The resume database. Drop it in. Spray and Pray. Yours among thousands of others.
It just doesn't work that well, right?
In contrast to databases that house a Candidate's resume in static state, CareerScribe Profiles can be continually updated to account for new activities, goals and experiences. Just as a Facebook account can be continually updated and modified, the CareerScribe Profile permits Candidate to continuously refine their Profile, adapting to the needs of specific industries and employers, and adding new experiences and skill sets to your professional portfolio.
It's a dynamic professional profile, it can endlessly updated and shared with whomever you wish.
Think how much value this could bring. Companies conducting candidate evaluation, probably won't find your resume. But what if you send them you CareerScribe profile? Now we're talking.
This is a great way to bypass the applicant tracking system. Heck, you're going to get lost in there anyway.
It was encouraging to see CareerScribe featured on some pretty major blogs and news sites this past week. For example, here's what appeared on Yahoo Finance:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/CareerScribe-Launches-Beta-bw-14713461.htmlHere's some of the CareerScribe features most talked about:
- Sharing - Candidates can load their entire career portfolio into CareerScribe and, with the click of one button, share it with anyone they choose, even if the recipient is not a member of CareerScribe.
- Candidate Sourcing - For companies, the big benefit is being able to screen potential employees in a dramatically better way. Rather than look through a stack of resumes, companies are conducting online screening by looking at CareerScribe Profiles. So much more information, so much more quickly.
- Quality Hiring - Companies have all the chips on their side of the table now. And yet struggle is still present: the challenge now is to work around the applicant tracking system and find good candidates in a more meaningful way. There's just too many resumes to wade through.
CareerScribe continues to gain momentum. Perhaps this truly is the "resume of the 21st century."
I met a guy in Career Services at a big ten university last week. He got kicked off facebook for sending out 700 messages to alumni from university. I love that. Good for him.
700 messages. Whew.
There's an easier way to do this.
It starts by getting graduating seniors to build their profiles on
CareerScribe. It's a perfect tool for them. They have a way to share their professional portfolio and introduction video, free of charge.
Once the students are in CareerScribe, universities can track their career path, geography and they can group them and message out to them by any categorization (e.g., year of graduation, major, etc.). CareerScribe is the way to keep in touch with alums and to promote students. (This is good for companies associated with the university as well: they've got a ready means for candidate sourcing and evaluation.)
Sooo much easier than 700 messages in facebook.
On Monday, March 23, we were excited to announce some significant enhancements to the look and feel of CareerScribe. This announcement was placed on the Business Wire and received a great response. Two days later, we have well over 40 websites, social media portals and search engines that have picked up the story.... very exciting!
Here are a few examples :
Yahoo - Finance
MarketWatch
Morningstar
Reuters
CareerScribe offers a career management tool for professionals that includes a free online portfolio and the ability to use video to introduce yourself. For companies,
CareerScribe has created a tool that allows companies to view these online portfolios, which adds much deeper insight to the candidate evaluation process, and eliminates bad interviews that should never happen. In addition, companies can develop a more meaningful applicant tracking system.
Setting yourself apart in this job market is essential. Of course, we all know this. And it makes us anxious, because we don't know quite how to do it. (Putting your resume on off-white paper just doesn't seem to be quite enough.)
What if, in additional to a resume, you could provide you
very best stuff. The examples (of when you contributed or designed or implemented) that you're most proud of? What if you could offer your professional portfolio to those conducting candidate evaluation ...
before the opportunity for an interview?
You can. And it will be awesome.
Build a profile on
CareerScribe. There, you'll be able to upload and describe your finest work. And you'll be able to send it to whomever you wish. The recipient doesn't even need to be registered in CareerScribe.
It's true. Gather up your professional portfolio, draft up a script for your introduction video ... and share it. With anyone.
This will ease your anxiety. Promise.
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