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Archive for the ‘Job Market’ Category

If the role were reversed and I sent this email – would YOU hire ME?

25 Oct
P…..n is seeking  Management Consultant/Sr. Project Manager's to  help define a straetgy for a streamlined customer onboarding service model and user experience for a brokerage cleint's advisors and service associates.  Consultant should have top notch SME skills in brokerage as well as be able to run streams of work
 
15 + years experience in the brokerage Industry
candidate must have heavy PM skills – focus on Wealth Mngt/Private Client
 
Work with both Technology and Business employees
 
 Great Client Facing skills is a must for both. Large scale project initiatves.
 MUST be able to present a Strong Strategic vision
                                      
Skill Description
Sr Project Mngt. Strong Business focus. Able to handling multi work streams.
excellent writing and analytical skills
Experience on solutions type (fixed) strategy engagments a plus
Experience w/ Customer on -boarding

There are a lot of articles written about what job candidates should do to prepare their resumes and cover letters. Candidates are urged to pay attention to their grammar and spelling if they hope to land even a phone interview. But what about the other side of the conference table? Would you take an offer from an employer seriously if it were written like a 411 email scam? How about taking strategic career advice from a recruiter that can't spell strategy?

The above email from an IT recruiting/consulting company is so poorly written that I first thought that it was a joke. Let's look at this from the point of view that the recruiter should be taking. The Senior Project Manager position will probably bring the recruiting company anywhere from about $20,000 to $30,000 for an employee position and about the same figure for a six to nine month contract position. If we take $20,000 as a reasonable estimate then this email represents a $20,000 opportunity for this recruiting company.

Does this look like an email that you would send to attract and land a $20,000 opportunity? Even if the spelling were correct, stringing together buzz words without understanding what they mean will not attract qualified candidates. At a minimum, I would expect the recruiting company to adhere to the same standards that job seekers are expected to follow  and at least use plain business common-sense. I don't know how many other Sr. Project Manager candidates received this email, but I would love to see the responses of the ones that replied :-)

 
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Posted in Job Market, Just Business, Observations

 

What is #HireFriday?

13 Aug

help wanted ad I just stumbled onto the #HireFriday hashtag a week ago. The hashtag is a tweet that contains the term e.g my tweet for today:   “IT & Project manager: Infrastructure, Network and Web.  Hands-on technical or analysis  http://tinyurl.com/yhq6ynh”.
Essentially the #HireFriday hashtag appears to be a spontaneous Twitter movement (@HRmargo)  to get recruiters to actually engage with and help job seekers. The #HireFriday Twitter community encourages cross-over communications to sites like LinkedIn and of course lots of blogs which is only natural because your Twitter PR moment STILL has to fit within about 120 characters (you need to leave room in the 140 character maximum for your message to be RETWEETED by others).  If the recruiters (at least on #HireFriday) just respond to job seekers and clear out their in-box by responding to applicants it would be a good start.

  1. Unfortunately, the current modus operandi is one where recruiters have no problem requesting and accepting resumes they just seem to be incapable of responding to them. This leads to the common complaint from job-seekers that we submit resumes or are even asked by recruiters to submit resumes and then no response, complete silence, or if we get an interview there is frequently not even the minimal common courtesy of communicating back to the applicants.

When you add-in job boards and web sites with expired jobs and fake jobs, recruiters (and job boards) that sell information on to email lists and spammers – well not only isn’t the playing field level its completely flooded.

So, #HireFriday is a small attempt to bring some semblance of balance back to the process by leveraging social media. It’s too early to tell but today is Friday – you can catch my #HireFriday hashtag on Twitter @WinstonLawrence and I would LOVE to hear from other #HireFriday users – leave a comment – point to your LinkedIn profile or online resume but more importantly tell me if #HireFriday is working for you or not.

My tweet for today: IT & Project manager: Infrastructure, Network and Web.  Hands-on technical or analysis  http://tinyurl.com/yhq6ynh

 
3 Comments

Posted in Job Market, Observations

 

Job Market counselors – job seekers beware

02 Aug

The job market is tough, which of course is news to no one, particularly job seekers and while the internet does offer a lot of tools to help with a job search, it also makes it a lot easier to be distracted. If you spend any time on the social networks then one obvious distraction is the Job Market Counselor or Career Advice expert.  I am not talking about legitimate, professional  job counselors and career advisors who actually do help people.  I am talking about the folks who were selling real estate or used cars last month and this month are hanging out an internet shingle or tweeting  their credentials  as a Job Market Counselor and career advice guru.

Job Seekers Beware

One recent ‘expert’ was touting how to add more followers on Twitter and Facebook to expand your job search network and of course the fact that you could conveniently download their $9.95 ebook on how to increase Twitter followers was just a happy coincidence.  I have also seen tweets that link to blog articles on how to “gift yourself employment.”  probably part of an upcoming series like “gift yourself car repair” and “gift yourself real-estate”.  In short, there is no quick answer – and I am by no means an expert, other than being one with the seekers these days but here goes: Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted in Job Market, Just Business

 

Smart 2010 Workforce New York Warning

01 Jun

       If you are a New York resident and looking for a job in New York these days you may have run across the Workforce New York site run out of the NYS Department of Labor. The Workforce New York locations actually have some excellent workshops and facilities for job hunters that are well worth taking advantage of,  however, you need to be very careful when using their Smart 2010 job lead services. When you work with one of the counselors and provide a resume it gets entered into their SMART system to provide you (via email) with automated job matches that the system finds. It does not appear that Dept. of Labor or the SMART system,  screens  potential employers or job opportunities very well (if at all) and you may get taken in by some of the less than stellar sites out there.

      The images on this post are from the New York Job Exchange Site, that you are directed to from one of the Smart 2010 job matches. In this example,  an e-commerce manager position from a local company – not a bad match. If you click on the “APPLY NOW” job link you end up on another New York Job Exchange page.

        If you were to look closely at the “access the website to apply”  link before clicking, you will see that it leads to one of the sites with a less than stellar reputation for job seekers:  TheLadders, or one of the dozen or so differently named sites that TheLadders uses when it doesn’t want to use the “Ladders” name.  You can Google “theLadders” and “scam” to see a lot of other comments on the net about this outfit.

      Next, look up the company on the New York Better Business Bureau site – it is not an accredited Better Business company (not a surprise) but the BBB still rates sites that come to its attention and theLadders is  rated as a “B” due to the number of complaints against the company – not good!

       So what’s wrong with this? Well for one thing the New York Job Exchange listing should be sending you to real employers that are looking to hire not to sign up pages for companies like the Ladders where you cannot directly apply to the job. You must sign up with the Ladders, give them your resume and hope that they will submit your application to the employer if it meets with their approval (again, so why is this job posted with the New York Job Exchange).
    If you still think it’s a good idea to give them your resume then you might also want to carefully think about the ‘opportunity’ to join the Ladders at $30.00 per month or the ‘free resume review’ and subsequent pressure to pay for resume services (anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000) to fix your completely messed up excuse of a resume..

I am not sure why the New York Job Exchange/workforce New York is still working with this company – I have reported them for deceptive job postings before (and gotten what I guess is a standard NYS form letter response)  but as long as New York Job Exchange keeps them on their site then prospective job seekers need to be careful even if the job lead comes from the NY Department of Labor.

 
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Posted in Job Market

 

Tools for the Job Search challenged

23 Feb

I have been keeping a running list of job search tools and sites. The main criteria being that they are wholly or in part free to use and that they are useful. This list is also on my research links page. I don’t have Dice, CareerBuilder or Monster on this list, not because they are not useful but because they should already be on any internet job searchers short list (at least the resume should be up there).

[table “4” not found /]

Glassdoor.com (Interview Questions &Answers)

Lots of good job search leads, tools and sections on this site. I like this section because people that have actually been interviewed at a company post the questions that they were asked. Of course past performance is no guarantee of future success but why would you go on an interview at a company without being as fully prepared as possible.

JibberJobber.com

Think of this site as your personal assistant for the job search. I want to like this site it seems to have a lot going for it but it is somewhat intimidating (why the emphasis on entering all of my contacts for example – I dont need another Plaxo). I’m going to take one of their webinars before I make up my mind to keep this link or drop it.

LinkedIn.com

It’s LinkedIn – If you don’t know about this site and you’re looking for a professional position then you may have a job search problem since networking is the way to go and LinkedIn is probably the premiere way to keep track of, add to and communicate with your former, current and future networking colleagues.

Linkup.com

A new addition to me and I haven’t used it a lot as yet but this sites ‘hook’ that separates it from other job site aggreators is that it searches company web sites for the positions. Sometimes companies post to Careerbuilder or Monster etc and then point back to their site for the actual application process and sometimes they only post some jobs on their web sites.

Yippeejobs.com

Another JRM (Job Resource manager) solution like JibberJobber. Once you get past the opening screen weirdness – why a site would want to make its users jump through hoops just to sign in and get started is beyond me (and yes I know its still beta) but once you do sign in…..
Yippeejobs proudly proclaims its CRM roots showing that it is built in part on top of the succesful open-source SugarCRM solution. If you are familiar with CRM applications then this tool will have the shortest learning curve. I like it so far, but will have to use it some more.

So what do you think comments, particularly suggestions for any job search sites that you find useful will be added and if there is enough interest I’ll make this post a ‘sticky’.

 
5 Comments

Posted in Job Market

 

Onewire for a focused job search.

16 Feb

I’ve been using LinkedIn for a couple of years and I am reasonably happy with it. If nothing else, Linkedin is a good way to keep up with current and former colleagues and companies on a global basis in almost any conceivable industry (even Spiderman lists his profile there) and given the state of the global economy LinkedIn is a valuable research tool when looking for a new position. I’ve never paid for LinkedIn and I haven’t seen a good reason to although if I was a recruiter or HR manager I would probably pay for the upgrade services.

So, I was a little skeptical when I got an email link to a startup called Onewire but after looking at their web-site and a couple of reviews (businessinsider),  I was convinced enough to sign-up. I haven’t fully completed my profile on the site yet but Onewire has a couple of strong points (for me).

  • Focus on the Financial services sector (Wall street, Banks, Hedge Funds, Insurance).
  • New York city based startup with close proximity to its target market
  • Gives subscribers much tighter control over their profile and what prospective employers can see.

LinkedIn is still the 800 pound gorilla in this market but Onewire appears to have found a niche in the NYC financial services sector and appears to be prepared to exploit it. Given the current economy you can’t fault their timing (lots of potential subscribers to sign up and a tight-knit group of prospective employers close by).

Excuse me I’ve got to go check if  Openwire needs any experienced financial services IT management, project management or web architect skills

 
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Posted in Job Market, Just Business