Talent 911

Sloppy Drunk Realities of the Social Media Revolution

Were you “that girl” in college? You know the one I’m talking about. The type that went to every house party, won the championship trophy for beer pong, and took pictures of each debacle? Now you’re a woman with a professional career and you’re using social media for work. You’re a fan of your work’s Facebook page…but do you connect with your co-workers? What about your boss? How about your clients?

As a sort of sales and marketing professional in 2011, social media is a huge part of my world. If I had “secrets” out there on Web 2.0 I can guarantee that my co-workers, boss, or clients would find them. I believe in transparency. You can connect with me on Twitter (@emilywhitemi), LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/emilywhitemi) or on Facebook. You can view my followers, connections, and friends. You can check out my favorite bands, my love of yoga and cooking, and the various nonprofit positions I’ve held over the past ten years. I want you to know me.

If you get to know me I believe you will like me, and if you like me…you’ll probably be more interested in doing business with me. It can only be beneficial for me to have a wide open network and utilize everything I’ve got – both professionally and personally – to build my brand and support my clients.

So if you were “that girl”, I recommend un-tagging yourself or deleting those pictures off the interweb. If you have political views you would rather not share, I suggest keeping them to yourself or setting up a tight privacy setting on that media. However, what you do is part of who you are and its part of your brand. Brand management is a key component of being a professional worker in any arena.

This is 2011. Nothing is a secret. Change the sloppy drunk past and look forward to your bright sparkly professional social media future.

Emily White is a technical recruiter here at HRU.  She was born and raised in Sanford, Michigan and attended Saginaw Valley State University for her undergraduate degree in psychology.  Emily is also a graduate of the University of Chicago (social science).  She lived and worked in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts for 3 years and recently returned home to Michigan.  She loves talking to people.  Emily spends her free time going to yoga, visiting friends and family, and experimenting in the kitchen.  You can follow her on Twitter @emilytwhiteMI.   

Extending the Shelf Life of your Tweets

As a relatively new user to Twitter, I’m quickly learning that the best way to understand and learn is to follow lots of awesome people and watch their tweets. The people you follow depend on your interests and your profession. I follow yoga teachers and fanatics, food bloggers, HR professionals, local businesses, businesses I work with or want to work with, and all folks local to Lansing, Michigan. 

Follow your Twitter stream and you’ll quickly see people writing a few words, inserting a bitly or owly link, and then adding random words with a #, a hashtag, in front of them. What are they doing? What is this? Read Twitter’s quick tutorial on hashtags and then click on a friend’s hashtag to find out more!

 

This is a clip from my Twitter feed. You can see the links people post and a few hashtags like #inspired and #yoga. Clicking on #yoga will take you to a search screen and give you all of the Tweets that contain a #yoga. But, how do you know which hashtag to use? http://hashtags.org is a great resource to find your hashtag.  Are you tweeting about a job opportunity in Michigan?  Search for Michigan Jobs and then other combinations such as MIJobs or michiganjobs.  You’ll soon find that #Michigan and #jobs, separately in the tweet, are what most people are using.  When you go to tweet about that Michigan job opportunity, using these hashtags allows people looking for Michigan jobs to have a way to FIND your tweet! This is very important. Utilizing hashtags allow other people to FIND your tweet!  Now, not only did your tweet get sent to your follows, but you sent it to a stream where others can find it that are not in your network. 

 

On Social Media Today, Steve Olenski provides data that shows hashtags have taken over the Twitter-sphere in 2010.  Hashtags increase the shelf life of your tweet and connect you to your target audience.  Hashtags allow Twitter to go from an isolated follower-following network to an expansive world-wide or local network.  Yes, expansive world-wide OR local.  #LoveLansing is an explosive tool in this area.  Not only do local businesses use it, but local people follow it and read it on a daily basis.  Hashtags have become so important that there is a website that creates a newspaper out of a hashtag! Paperli - http://paper.li/ - allows you to read a hashtag as a daily newspaper.  This provides even further reach and ROI for your tweets. 

Last week, out of #LoveLansing came #LoveMichigan. Bruce Servern introduced #LoveMichigan as a hashtag to showcase all things Michigan; just like #LoveLansing does for all things Lansing.  Tweets sent to these hashtags can include a local event, job opportunity, or notes on the weather. Although these hashtags are integral to using Twitter in 2011, it is important not to overuse them! Take Twitter’s advice and only use up to 3 hashtags per tweet. Don’t overload the feed with irrelevant information or items that don’t go with the hashtag’s theme.  Most of all, have fun and connect with your Twitter-verse.

Emily White is a technical recruiter here at HRU.  She was born and raised in Sanford, Michigan and attended Saginaw Valley State University for her undergraduate degree in psychology.  Emily is also a graduate of the University of Chicago (social science).  She lived and worked in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts for 3 years and recently returned home to Michigan.  She loves talking to people.  Emily spends her free time going to yoga, visiting friends and family, and experimenting in the kitchen.  You can follow her on Twitter @emilytwhiteMI.   

Consider Contract Employees in 2011

Recently at ERE, Dr. John Sullivan wrote an extensive article focused on “What’s Wrong with Reference Checking?” that had a side note on the benefits of hiring employees first on a temporary basis.  Dr. Sullivan argues that reference checks are not a solid indicator of current and future performance due to a wide range of variables.  The questions reference checks ask are not always good indicators of performance (job title, dates of employment, personality traits).  Work environments will not be the same from one department to another, much less from one company to another.  Hiring employees on a temporary basis as contractors can provide a more complete view of how an employee will function in your company’s unique environment.  

As we finish out 2010 and begin to enter Q1 of 2011, most companies are winding down for the season.  While the entire company is wrapping things up and shutting down, the corporate HR team is frantically ironing out the last bits of a staffing plan for 2011. 

Not only is choosing to add headcount a concern, but so too is recruiting top talent to the organization.  The economy in Michigan is beginning to pick up – slowly but surely – as we have companies like Chrysler hiring 1,000 additional workers in 2011.  While the unemployment rate across the nation is still high, we are beginning to see organizations add employees.  The market is about to become more competitive.  People are receiving offers from multiple organizations – how will you stay competitive this year, while ensuring that you find the top performing candidates for your company?

One solution to both of these issues; attracting top talent and ensuring that you have hired high performing individuals, is to work with a staffing company to hire contract workers.  Corporate recruiters do not always have the time and resources to dedicate to lengthy sourcing and hunting efforts.  Many companies simply cannot afford to purchase access to resume databases, take time to post to college websites, or develop their networks to find the right person for the job.  You're working on keeping your current employees happy and ensuring all of the other parts of the HR world are kept in balance!  

Working with a staffing firm can help to streamline the very best candidates directly to your try and find and less to review and screen out, as the staffing agency has already done that part for you.

An outstanding technical recruiting team will work with you to really understand the cultural fit at your company, how you would like the interview process to be run, and fully comprehend your time frame and on-boarding process.  You should be able to treat an agency recruiter as your dedicated recruiter/hunter.  If you are not getting this level of service from your current agency, consider exploring your options!

When you have identified a candidate that you would like to bring on board to your company you can do so on a contract basis.  This allows you a unique opportunity to discover whether or not this individual is the perfect person for the job with as little risk to your company as possible.  Hiring someone directly does not allow you this freedom!  With a good staffing agency, this person is still receiving benefits and a good pay wage, it is simply a chance for both of you to test each other out and ensure a good fit.  

Would you propose to marry someone you had never taken out for coffee or to your favorite local restaurant?  Not very likely – hiring contractors is a great way to “date” an employee before you decide to fully invest and offer that “engagement ring” of a direct position.  Staffing companies can provide a wide range of options include six month contract to direct positions, long term contract (with the potential to hire that individual directly at any time), and they can also assist with direct-hire opportunities.

Companies are adding to their headcount, but they are doing so after taking the time to ensure the person is needed.  It is critical that positions are absolutely necessary before a requisition is created.  With all of the time, effort, and money that go into ensuring a person is needed for a job, shouldn’t the same amount of care be taken to ensure the individual is a solid fit and an outstanding performer?  Working with a staffing agency can help you to meet these goals.

What are your staffing expectations for 2011?  How will you ensure that your company finds and retains the very best employees?   

Emily White is a technical recruiter here at HRU.  She was born and raised in Sanford, Michigan and attended Saginaw Valley State University for her undergraduate degree in psychology.  Emily is also a graduate of the University of Chicago (social science).  She lived and worked in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts for 3 years and recently returned home to Michigan.  She loves talking to people.  Emily spends her free time going to yoga, visiting friends and family, and experimenting in the kitchen.  You can follow her on Twitter @emilytwhiteMI.   

Why GenY is Done Playing Nice

Generation Y is continuously being discussed in the HR world as a generation that is needy, requiring constant feedback and rewards, and also one that provides and endless fountain of ideas, tech-savvy attitudes, and is an agent of change.  Penelope Trunk’s article on “Why Gen Y is Better at Your Job Than You Are” gives glowing praise for all of the illuminating views and actions that our generation brings to the table.   As a Gen Y’er myself, I think some of her points are quite valid, and others are blatant attempts to coddle and reassure a group of people who are trying to make it in the workforce.

She begins the article by explaining that Gen Y can teach all of the older folks a thing or two about how to act and react in a job role and then goes on to list point by point, why Gen Y is better at your job than you are.  Here is a point by point discussion of her list: 

1. Productivity – while Penelope explains that we’re great at multi-tasking and the ability to find information quickly, she neglects to mention that sometimes the quest for more information can go extreme.  Yes, we’re good at finding what we need on the interweb…but we’re also so good at multitasking that sometimes we go far, far above and beyond what we needed to in order to find the answer, the solution, or the information needed.  The “older generations” can teach us a thing or two about establishing focus.

2. Communication – Sure, we’re on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and all other media…at all times…every minute of the day.  My colleague, Justin, states that “As far as their communication skills I would disagree, there is more to communication than writing (which isn’t all that great, LOL, OMG, LMAO and other short blasts don’t always get the job done), when I see a room full of people and they are all texting and tweeting etc instead of talking I disagree that they are superior communicators.”  While I agree with Justin that we need to focus on writing, phone skills, and face-to-face communication, I do not agree that we’re all a bunch of tweeting fools that lack these skills!  In our business, as a recruiter, these skills are extremely important to hone.  They are bread and butter skills for our profession.  I can say with full confidence that my Gen Y colleagues are adept at communicating.

3. Career Mobility – here’s where she falls short of the mark.  Job-hopping is not what we need to be discussing.  What we need to discuss is the pure fact that the jobs our parents had are not the jobs that we are looking at.  No longer can we depend on a 30 year career with one company, multiple promotions, a full retirement fund, maybe even a pension plan, and complete security and comfort.  These companies have changed.  The jobs have changed.  The economy has changed.  In order to stay competitive in wages and skills, we have to move positions every so often.  Yes, Gen Y is likely more comfortable with this fact than other generations, but this is a reality that ALL generations are going to be facing.

4. Career Resilience – Penelope makes the point that Gen Y’ers always have a fall back plan.  This is true.  I don’t think our fall back plans are always for the reasons she assumes.  It is because of our insane need to multitask and the constant flow of ideas that entrepreneurial opportunities arise!  As a woman Gen Y’er, I completely agree with Ms. Career Girl (Nicole Grimaldi).  In her article “Gen Y Women: Is Crazy the New Normal?” she identifies and explains that our generation seems to try and do everything at once and is completely unable to stop this habit.  I think this fact more than anything contributes to the entrepreneurial spirit that allows our generation to have a safety net plan.  Between jobs, I started developing my own career services gig, helping people write resumes and cover letters, both for free and for money.  I am a very enthusiastic baker, I’m a good healthy food cook, I love making and canning my own jam, and I’m at yoga class as many days as I can each week (props to Hilltop Yoga!).  Could these activities be a fall back plan if they needed to be?  Sure.  I have even done a one-time stunt as a personal cook.  Is that my direct intention?  Not at all.  These are things that I enjoy and they keep my body and mind busy!

The most important take away that “older generations” should get from Gen Y is not that we can do your job better than you are, it is that you should welcome and accept the fact that we are agents of change and allow us to offer ideas and help you build and grow our company.  Cindy Janovitz, of Women of HR, says it best in her article “I Am Done Playing Nice,”  I am a fire cracker.  Let us firecrackers go to work and do what we do best!  As trite as it may be, help us help you.  All of us have great things to offer each other to the benefit of our workforce.

Emily White is a technical recruiter here at HRU.  She was born and raised in Sanford, Michigan and attended Saginaw Valley State University for her undergraduate degree in psychology.  Emily is also a graduate of the University of Chicago (social science).  She lived and worked in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts for 3 years and recently returned home to Michigan.  She loves talking to people.  Emily spends her free time going to yoga, visiting friends and family, and experimenting in the kitchen.  You can follow her on Twitter @emilytwhiteMI.   

A Resume Tells Me A Story...Don't Leave Any Chapters Out!

It is both extremely hard and very rewarding, to sift through the resumes on the Michigan Talent Bank (a resume database set up by the State of Michigan for Michigan residents who are unemployed).  Looking at each resume, individually, yields one person’s legacy and hope for the future.  Taking the resumes of our Michigan workforce as a whole yields a comprehensive view of Michiganders.  Their livelihoods, experience, talents, skills, and fierce desire and hope for the next job on their career path are incredible.  I am proud to be born and raised here and to have the chance to return and contribute.

Coming to HRU from a recruiting position at another non-technical company, the resumes I saw had mostly teaching related experiences.  There were very few positions listed on each resume.  Most teachers and faculty members tend to land a job and stay there until retirement or promotion within the school district or university.  Seeking technical workers such as mechanical/industrial engineers, controls engineers, technical writers, java developers, and maintenance engineers, there are many more jobs listed on a resume.  Each resume is an individual historical account.  Many resumes list starter jobs, especially resumes of recent graduates.  They list positions such as jewelry counter assistant, library assistant, fast food associate, and farm hand.  Mostly, a resume starts to detail positions after a higher education degree.

On many mid to high level career resumes between the years 2008 and 2010, there is often a time gap.  The gap can be a few months or it can be a few years.  This is a period of time that is seeking a name.

Some individuals choose to ignore this gap in the resume and keep moving forward with describing their next work experience.  Some people list their volunteer positions and continuing education courses or degrees.  Frequently, people list the time period and explain that they were “actively seeking employment”.  Does a period of unemployment require an explanation? Is it important for a recruiter and employer to know and understand that yes, indeed, this individual was trying their best to find a job but there were none available due to the economic climate? Is it beneficial to an applicant to list this on their resume?  Is addressing the employment gap a beneficial move for applicants?

Yes!   We in the recruiting world understand that times are extremely tough, but we need the info! Plus, we will ask anyway, so you might as well give it to us.  In addition to seeing the gaps in employment on resumes, we also see career professionals taking low level hourly jobs to make ends meet.  Typically, these resumes do not elaborate on the tasks and skills gained at the “last resort” position.  A resume is a marketing tool.  A resume should always try to market an experience towards the goal job.  Explaining a period of unemployment, even with a brief sentence, helps to market you to prospective employers.  The skills gained as a stocker on the night shift at a local grocery store certainly have marketability of their own!  Team building skills, communication, timeliness, organization, and dependability if you creatively consider the job, the list of skills can be endless.

Although the economy forces us into tough choices and results in historical gaps and career side-steps we did not plan to take, briefly identifying these time periods and the skills and knowledge gained can only help to market oneself to a future employer. 

  

Emily White is a technical recruiter here at HRU.  She was born and raised in Sanford, Michigan and attended Saginaw Valley State University for her undergraduate degree in psychology.  Emily is also a graduate of the University of Chicago (social science).  She lived and worked in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts for 3 years and recently returned home to Michigan.  She loves talking to people.  Emily spends her free time going to yoga, visiting friends and family, and experimenting in the kitchen.  You can follow her on Twitter @emilytwhiteMI.