From Recruiting.com: 7 Tips for Recruiting Gen-Y Offer generous referral bonuses. Consider different geographies. Keep ‘em moving. Tlk 2 them. Get flexible. Community service. Think beyond the short term. Shelley Solheim, CMP Channel
Continue ReadingDirty Jobs Compensation
It is a week to be thankful for many things – especially if you don’t have a “Dirty Job.” No, not that type of dirty. Dirty as in the Mike Rowe series on Discovery Channel. MSN.com has a story today titled They’re Dirty Jobs, But They Gotta Get Done. A sampling of the jobs and their average pay: Butcher Leaving work in blood-stained clothes would be a serious HR issue in many offices, but the practice is nothing unusual for a butcher, whose grisly work involves cutting and washing the innards of slaughtered animals to create sides of beef, steaks, sausage and ribs in slaughterhouses and meat-packing establishments. This job… Read More
Continue ReadingTelecommuting – Now More Than A Trend
We’ve been on the telecommuting trend for quite some time this year as it continues to grow. I think it is safe to say it is more than a trend now. As we source for sales positions, it is quite apparent that the younger candidates almost always address this issue early in the process. They want to know what tools are in place and what the office expectations are. We only work in the sales arena so our data may be slightly exaggerated to that end. Nonetheless, telecommuting is a hot article topic as you can see from CareerJournal.com’s Good News for Professionals Who Want to Work at Home: A… Read More
Continue ReadingStarbucks Statistics
As a complete coffee addict, I found these statistics about Starbucks remarkable: Starbucks’s closest competitor in the coffeehouse market, Caribou Coffee, is just one-twenty-fifth its size. Every 10 weeks, Starbucks opens as many stores as the total number of Caribou outlets. Starbucks has had 14 straight years with at least 5% same-store sales growth. Contrary to popular opinion, Starbucks increases sales at rival nearby coffeehouses. For example, when it blitzed Omaha with six stores, coffee sales at local joints went up as much as 25%, and more new ones opened shop. According to Starbucks, the company pays more for insurance for its employees ($200 million) than it does for coffee… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat You Can Ask In An Interview
This article on HR World – 30 Interview Questions You Can’t Ask and 30 Sneaky, Legal Alternatives to Get the Same Info – is making quite a splash on the web today. I think it is an interesting read with some excellent suggestions regarding how to phrase interview questions. To give you a sample: 12. What you can’t ask: Do you have kids? This one is for positions in which the candidate may work with children. The added experience of children at home may be a bonus for you, but it’s not an employer’s place to ask about this. Rather, inquire about the candidate’s experience, and they may volunteer this information to… Read More
Continue ReadingA Memorable Resume Title
I’ve been mining through a major job board resume database looking for a specific type of salesperson this morning which is tedious work. The “detailed” view includes very little information about the person. The one item that does stand out is the resume title. Most are boring and forgettable. However, I did find this one rather clever: “Dry Behind The Ears” Sales Pro That is a good approach to get noticed from a long list. In a separate resume, the person appears to have mistyped. Well, at least I think he mistyped. His desired salary is $801,000. I have a feeling that number is going to keep him out of… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Disarming Casualness Of The Web
We’re in full-fledge sourcing mode here at Select Metrix and I am taking up the task of resume mining. I am aghast at what I am finding. A new trend that I have seen before, but not to this level, is writing without capitalization. I know this is an offshoot of texting. My dislike of this improper writing format probably reveals my lack of appreciation for text messaging. I don’t do it – email is fine with me. Online resumes are difficult to manage in that the formatting is often truncated and oddly spaced due to the job board’s coding. Yet, capitalization is not affected. I just read through a resume… Read More
Continue ReadingThe No-Show Trend
We haven’t seen this trend yet, but I suspect it may show up on our front stoop at some point. From The Career News (sorry, no link) comes this abridged story from MSNBC.com: The first step to acing the interview: Show up! I know this sounds obvious, but apparently not to everyone. “It happens all the time lately,” says Emmanuel Conde, director of recruitment for Alliant Technologies, an information-technology staffing firm that estimates about 50 percent of entry-level IT professionals they try to place don’t show up for interviews. Among senior level folks, about 20 percent skip it. The no-show phenomenon is a growing problem for many recruiters and hiring… Read More
Continue ReadingFinancing Via Job Change
I enjoy skewering the mainstream media for “talking down the economy” which is a practice they condemned back in 2000. But all signs point to a slowdown in this red-hot economy which has led the Federal Reserve to target a soft landing. I’m no economist, but I found this article by John Sumser quite interesting. His take on the economy is one I have not heard (emphasis mine): The veterans, burnt by the dot com bust and the post 911 recession will argue that business will contract and layoffs will ensue. That’s the prototypical recession profile. Everywhere you turn, this scenario is forecast or implied. … Or, there may be… Read More
Continue ReadingSelling In The Information Age
I was reading an interesting article from ManageSmarter.com titled Sales Triggers for Advantage and came across this opening: Do you remember the old days when the sales professional’s role was easier to manage? I’m not saying the actual job of selling was easier—none of us signed up for a sales career because it was easy—but the amount of information we had to work with was far less than today. Before the Web, you had a directory of industry professionals to cold call and some leads to follow up on. You drew from your own contacts and those of your colleagues, and perhaps read a trade magazine or journal for industry… Read More
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