Online Employee Screening

In a recent comment to the Smaller Indiana question above, I offered these thoughts:

The term "personal brand", is a bit lame... but it has begun to stick. I live in this space, and I can tell you, that in just the last 30 days, I have heard the term "personal brand" used and recognized more than in the last 6 months. I'm willing to wager, you are going to hear it more in the next year, and it will be nothing new in 3 years.

Call it what you will, the concept is about the information that is available to everyone about you. Information that forms a basis for who people think you are.... whether it is your hobbies and interests, your religious affiliation, your family, your education, your career, charitable work, where you grew up, etc., etc., etc. Organizaitons use this information to screen employees. Fair or not, all of these things collectively allow others to form an opinion of you. An opinion that you can't discuss with them.... not that they would even give you a straight answer if you asked them anyway.

Everyone should consider being proactive with this. You will have a tough time removing much of the information on you that can be found on the internet, but you can make a conscious decision about what you would like others to think about you in the next 5-10 years, and try to manage that impression. Develop an online professional portfolio of your best stuff. Over time.... you can likely change your "brand", much like Target did.... but it takes time.

Most are going to talk about personal branding, but many aren't going to take the long term steps necessary to really make a difference. I believe that there is great opportunity here.... obviously (CareerScribe), to get ahead of your competition, at least for a few years.... then who knows.

Yesterday I had the unpleasant experience of realizing I set Alarm #2, instead of Alarm #1 on my clock. So 5 seconds after the alarm went off, and I realized it's already 7:30am, when I have an 8:00am meeting, that's 30 minutes away.

The dreaded nightmare of oversleeping.... only to be outdone by the nightmare of showing up to class, and there's a big test that you haven't studied for.

Then the panic and questions set in :

How did this happen?
What could I have done differently?
So now what?
How do I avoid this ever happening again?

All great questions, much like the questions one asks themselves when they find out they are losing their job. This scenario has been playing out all too often over the past year as professionals realize they've made mistakes in managing their careers, and they aren't prepared to market themselves in a competitive job market.

There isn't anything you can do now to change the past, but you can deal with the situation at hand as best you can, and look for better ways to market yourself, such as free online portfolios. Online employee screening is becoming much more popular as a means of candidate sourcing, so if you don't have a professional presence online, you are likely being overlooked for some opportunties.

More importantly, recognize there are habits and skills you can be developing now, so that you aren't in this situation again. Begin developing a career portfolio, and maintain it routinely so you can avoid the panicked feeling of waking up late for your meeting.


 

 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!

• 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.

• There's too many resumes to functionally screen future employees. How can I conduct candidate evaluation and find the best candidates? 
• How can I track the accomplishments and performance of my internal people in a meaningful way?

• The resume is so limited. Two pages? How do I share best stuff, my professional portfolio? 
• How do I stand apart from the sea of candidates out there now?

Read any newspaper, and it is obvious that today’s job market is in a worrisome state. With unemployment rates at a 16 year high, many professionals have been laid off, and if they are still employed, they are concerned about their job security. Now is time for professionals to take back control of their careers by taking advantage of new ways to market themselves.

Staying viable means going beyond the traditional methods of managing your career, such as, simply updating a resume and trying to stay close to individuals who can help advance your career. Always keep in mind that successful career management is more about knowing how to put yourself ahead of the competition and win interviews and offers. It isn’t always about who has the best skill set, which in most cases is not something you can prove until you have been hired.

 Whether you are actively or passively looking for a job, here is a list of the things that you should be doing to beat the competition and protect one of your most valuable assets—your career.

1.       Document, Document, and Document. Keep an online, up-to-date and accurate professional portfolio of your finest accomplishments at work. Many people associate career portfolios with creative jobs, but that’s not the case. Details of your accomplishments, including the artifacts, add credibility to your words. Items to consider including in an online portfolio should include, but are not limited to, copies of degrees, certifications, letters of recommendation, offer letters, projects, articles you’re published in, creative designs, performances, press releases, etc.

2.       Make your best first impression every time. Everyone understands that video is being used more and more on the internet; therefore, it should come as no surprise that it has found its way into the employment process. Through “short” video introductions by companies and candidates, significant efficiency can be gained in the process. Your opportunity as a candidate to make your best first impression is undeniable. Script it and record it. Whether it takes three takes or 20, you will have the introduction you’re happy with. Limit introduction videos to 60-90 seconds. Anything longer risks losing the interest of the viewer. Stick to simple content such as describing the three things that are most important to you in your career at this time. You are more likely to scare someone away in a video job interview, rather than convince them to hire you.

3.       Artifact verification. Many companies spend thousands of dollars a year verifying your information, because they have been trained not to trust resumes. Give yourself an edge on your competition by delivering this information to them already verified. The cost to verify your information is fairly minimal. The 5 areas I suggest you consider verifying are :

-          Education/degrees

-          Certifications

-          Employment

-          Credit check (every 6-12 months)

-          Felony background check (every 6-12 months)

Imagine having 10 equally skilled candidates to consider based on their resumes, but one of them took the initiative to verify their information in advance. Which one would stand out to you?

4.       Assessment tools. The final weapon to consider including in your career marketing arsenal is assessment tools. More than ever, assessment tools are becoming widely used by companies to screen employees. Consider completing one of the better known personality based tests on yourself, such as Predictive Index, Meyers-Briggs, Wonderlic or Disc, as well as one of the many credible skills tests, if you have expertise with a specific technical skill. The results of these tests should be included in your online portfolio.

Collectively, all these pieces, along with profiling what you are looking for in your career, create a much more complete picture of who you are professionally. When going head-to-head with other candidates still relying on a traditional resume, you will get more attention when being considered for positions.

A great way to present yourself to potential employers is to utilize a virtual career portfolio/profiling tool, like CareerScribe (www.CareerScribe.com). This gives you the opportunity to organize and showcase your accomplishments in one location that can easily be sent to and accessed by prospective employers. By bringing all of these pieces together you will demonstrate initiative, creativity, progressiveness, thoroughness, organization, and most of all credibility and honesty. These are traits highly sought by companies.

CareerScribe has formed a great space in the new way companies and candidates are connecting.  If you haven't seen it, check out our new article in the Indianapolis Star.


1) Candidate Evaluation Time - Companies spend a lot of time and money evaluating talent.  In order to correctly achieve quality hiring, companies have traditionally gone to great measures to gather information about potential employees.

CareerScribe allows companies to get a wealth of information much earlier in the hiring process by leveraging items like free online portfolios for candidates, video, document sharing, and other items that indicate what that particular person is looking for in a new opportunity.

2) Future Talent Management - Companies aren't always hiring.  We know that, but the top companies are always keeping in touch with emerging top talent and existing valuable veterans in the industry.  This is hard when the talent pool is deep as it currently is with layoffs.

CareerScribe allows companies to maintain contacts or even track candidates and tie them to potential future positions.  It's a talent pipeline that feeds your company.

3)  Up-To-Date Data - Unfortunately, many companies collect resumes for the future because they understand the importance of issue two.  However, by the time it's time to call on that candidate, that professional portfolio or resume is out of date.

CareerScribe has become a destination for that new talent.  As they stay up on their career objectives and accomplishments, so do you.  All of a sudden those stale resumes don't seem so stale do they?

4)  Screen Candidates - A lot of larger companies have some sort of Applicant Tracking System.  It's clunky and old and has been there since the 90 year old Recruiter (no offense to the 90 year olds out there)!  This has even hightened the pain of issue 3.  Smaller companies can't afford a first class Applicant Tracking System and even if they could, it's too complex for the resources of a medium sized business, not to mention the small business owner.

CareerScribe brings tools to allow candidates to pass through stages during the hiring process.  Since CareerScribe already shortens the process at the get go, you start with a more qualified talent pool.  Now taking those candidates and tracking them with an online tool...how much more could you get done?  Ask CareerScribe companies.

5) Employee Screening - It's very hard for someone who does not manage an employee daily to really get insight into how much value they bring to the company, especially when it comes to evalutations.  Most direct managers are doing those evaluations, but even they struggle to remember all the accomplishments that the best employees accomplished.  All the while, that top employee may be looking or being pursued by the competition.

Many CareerScribe companies are using the tools to help organically grow their company and growing new managers and executives from the incredible talent inside.  With CareerScribe, they are able to keep evaluations and notes on a particular person safe and secure, digitally.  Documenting HR actions is great, not only for legal reasons, but for employee development.

Check out CareerScribe and see how much it can help a successful company become even better!

I remember the sound of typewriter coming from the spare bedroom. This bedroom had recently been converted to a home office because my dad chose to leave his job and begin looking for work elsewhere. He typed out resume after resume. This was before word processors. This was before digital communication. He and my mom literally typed out each resume, sealed it up in a brown envelope, and mailed it off. Bazaar.

Now, candidate sourcing is conducted via the Web, of course. Hiring managers pursue quality hiring by subscribing to job boards and accessing more resumes than they can possibly sort through.

I wonder when this particular tool for candidate evaluation - the resume - will become as antiquated as the typewriter.

Our identities now live on the Web, in amazing detail. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. Full personal and professional portfolios can be uploaded. This reality renders the standard resume (listing only previous employers, titles and time durations) seem so very limited.

When will online employee screening become entirely different, where hiring managers are reviewing entire career portfolios as the standard? When's the tipping point when we all realize how outdated the resume is?

In today's job market, where companies can be very fussy about quality hiring, I can't help but think it will be soon.

The two-page resume just doesn't make sense anymore.

In a recent survey conducted by Spherion Corp, approximately 33% of U.S. workers plan to look for a new job in 2009. That works out to somewhere around 45 million people that plan to change jobs.

So is this bad news... well it certainly isn't good news if you're one of the 45 million, but if you're an employer in this market, it's great news. The bad news is existing candidate sourcing processes may not work, since there may be a deluge of candidates to screen through. Employers should be considering advanced online employee screening tools such as CareerScribe, which offers free online portfolios to candidates that in turn significantly helps employers screen employees in a more insightful way and in much less time.

This candidate rich market is an inventory building opportunity for any company that plans to hire someone in the next 2 years. Statistics would say that candidates not normally as active in the employment market, are now looking, but they will become passive again.

Companies should be investing in better talent management systems that allow for the database to be linked to regularly updated career information, like CareerScribe offers.

Currently the job market is looking a little heavier on the candidate side as companies are forced to release high quality talent due to shrinking markets and lower profits.

Many economists are predicting a turnaround in 2009 however.  This will result in high candidate sourcing demands requiring companies to screen employees at a record level.

Obama is planning on using up to $850 billion dollars to create new jobs and stimulate the economy.  Now is the time for candidates to update their career portfolio.

If candidate's do not have a career portfolio, creating a free online portfolio is easy.  CareerScribe.com has the best portfolio and is improving candidate's ability to market themselves.

As the U.S. struggles to come out of this recession, it will all begin with new hiring and top talent.  The job search begins with great career management.  Companies will begin to hire this new talent.  Even people with great jobs will find even better opportunity.

Obama's plan includes many public projects over the next 2-4 years.  He also is planning to make Congress more transparent by making bills more accessible and publishing the plans online for the public to evaluate.

Now is the time to take advantage of the opportunity that will be created by this upcoming economic stimilus package.