We all know the job market is tough these days. And there are dozens of theories about the causes of the current job market downturn. However, an obvious observation is offered by Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard University - the size of the global workforce has doubled in the last 10 years. A global readjustment of the work force is clearly underway.
This change greatly increased the size of the global labor pool from approximately 1.46 billion workers to 2.93 billion workers . . . I have called this 'The Great Doubling' . . . What impact might the doubling of the global work force have on workers? . . . You don't need an economics PhD to see that this would be good for employers but terrible for workers.
Freeman attributes this shift to the entry of China, India, and the former Soviet Union into the global economy. We all know about the boom of software developers in Eastern Europe. And anyone who has called a service or tech support line has probably talked to a call center based in India. And China is gaining ground in global manufacturing and other economic sectors.
So the ripple effect has turned into a tidal wave for the North American work force. Outsourcing is turning into job scarcity, which means American workers have to work twice as hard as ever to compete in the job market. This is why I assert that now is the time to start thinking about competing on a global scale. Don’t limit your job search to your neighborhood or regional market (if you have a choice). Now is the time to market your expertise worldwide.
In this week’s Ask the Coach call, a question came in regarding the use of recruiters. Where do you find the right ones?Randy suggested the Kennedy Red Book, also known as the Directory of Executive & Professional Recruiters.Randy also noted that you have to make recruiters only part of your job search strategy. He suggested you spend no more than 5 percent of your search time working directly with recruiters. Instead, he advocates putting more effort into getting noticed by your target companies.
A “new” way to do that is to begin blogging about these target companies. This is a great way to demonstrate your domain expertise and get the attention of hiring managers at target companies at the same time. Here’s how it works:
It is assumed that you will have done your research on that company, i.e. assessed the company’s special challenges, examined likely new product segments, assessed their competitive position, performed your SWOT analysis, etc.
Now you can begin to write. Offer your expert opinion about the path you see the company taking.Your opinions can be complimentary and supportive, or can offer insights into the potential downside to the company’s strategy. Your blog entries do not have to be long, but they should be thought through.
Now create awareness for your blog. Use your social media network and your network of contacts, but most importantly, make sure your blog entries get the attention of the hiring managers at your target companies.
Here’s one example Randy offered. One of his clients wrote a blog about XYZ company. The client then e-mailed the CEO and the vice president of marketing at XYZ company, referencing the blog and the comments, and asking for input. It got their attention.
The objective of the blogging exercise is to begin a dialogue. It provides an opening to start talking with senior staff. Granted, the dialogue may not result in an interview, but it is certain to get you noticed, which is a great first step.
This week’s Ask the Coach call included a lot of discussion about managing your Internet presence. Coaches agree that it’s important to be able to be “found” online, but how do you manage your online identity, and how do you find others who can help you in your quest for a new career. Kris had a number of insights that were very useful.
When using LinkedIn, for example, a number of callers were concerned about the public nature of changes to your LinkedIn profile. These updates could alert your boss or your co-workers to the fact you are looking for a job. The easiest solution, of course, is to change your profile settings. You can set the privacy settings for your LinkedIn profile so others can’t see your profile updates. Simply log in to LinkedIn, and click on the “Settings” link on the upper right of the top menu bar. You now can adjust your profile settings, including privacy. Just change the settings under “Profile and Status Updates” so others won’t see when you change your profile settings.
There also was a question how to find email addresses of contacts at companies that interest you. Is there a way to find the contact information for hiring managers? Kris recommends starting with resources like Jigsaw.com. You also can “google” email addresses using the company’s base URL signature and some wildcards. For example, enter “%@spencerstuart.com” where % is the wild card, and be sure to enter the search term in quotes. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, you will be presented with multiple pages, and you will have to scroll down to find the contact you want. Boolean search strings also are useful. You can use a string line (email | mailto | contact) * kornferry.com, again remembering to put in the company URL and then sift through the results.
If you have identified someone you wish to reach but don’t see their email address listed in the search results, take a look at the format the email addresses take, e.g. john.smith@company.com or jsmith@company.com. Chances are you can make an educated guess at the correct email address and reach the party you are targeting.
Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from a recent session with career coach Don Orlando.
Based on the insight shared in this week’s Ask the Coach call, it’s clear that it’s more important than ever to build an online brand presence and post your credentials online where they can be found by discriminating hiring managers. The way corporations are finding qualified job candidates is changing, and to succeed, your tactics need to change along with it.
As Don told those on this week’s call, the current system is antiquated and hopeless broken because it can’t keep up with the demand. Consider the following steps companies use to find candidates:
Recruiters or hiring companies post openings on one or more or the mega job boards. Since the big job boards don’t maintain exclusive, qualified job listings, chances are those jobs will proliferate throughout the Web, since it is a common practice to scrape and repost job listings. As a result, corporations are inundated with applications, and most of the applicants are not qualified. Why? A recent study shows that recruiters and hiring managers spend on average 15 seconds reviewing a resume; but the average job applicant spends 23 seconds scanning posted job openings.
Recruiters put together a review panel based on applicants to cull through the mountain of online applications, and narrow them down to three or four likely candidates. If one of those candidates is hired, it means a commission of 25 percent to 33 percent of their annual salary for the recruiter.
Frustrated with the quality of the candidates they are interviewing, the company starts looking for the candidates themselves, using a spear fishing approach rather than a trawler net to land the types of candidates they need.
This third option is becoming the norm, not the exception. Don notes that more companies are becoming more discriminating in where they post their job listings, and they are proactively searching the Web seeking out qualified job candidates. Corporations are using more targeted job boards, like NETSHARE, to control their job listings, making sure they get higher quality candidates and aren’t flooded with unqualified Internet applicants. They also are using outlets like LinkedIn and the professional forums on NETSHARE, following specialty blogs and industry-specific discussions to find those who write about their industry and provide quality comments for discussion. They then follow these industry experts, make a connection and establish a rapport until those proven experts might entertain an offer.
So why not go where companies are looking for candidates. Don’t get scooped up with all the other Web candidates. Instead, be exclusive, connect with your online peers, and show them what you know and the hiring managers will to seek you out. That’s the new reality.
Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from this week’s session with our newest expert to join Ask the Coach, Christine Dennison, The Job Search Coach.
This week’s call started with a question from a professional who has been transferred from one job to another throughout his career. As a result, it appears that he doesn’t have a focus. How do you combat that in presenting yourself in a resume or cover letter?
The best way to approach a resume these days is to put a summary of your qualifications at the top or a value proposition. It’s no longer useful to start with a career objective at the top if the resume. Instead, you need to show your value from the outset, and provide your background in a nutshell and guide the reader. You can use accomplishments or themes around your background.
For example, even if you have had a number of different kinds of positions, you can usually take a step back and figure out if there are themes, things you are good at. Think in terms of what difference you made for each company you worked for; what did you inherit, how did you solve problems, and how do you add to their bottom line. If you can summarize that kind of information it will demonstrate your value in a nutshell. If you have a diverse background with many career changes, you still can identify a recurring theme.
It’s also important that you not ask the reader to have to figure you out. You are not asking them to choose from the long list of possibilities and isolate the matching elements that fit the position. Don’t worry about getting in all the key words and experience that might fit the job. Pick a main theme and develop two or three different versions of the resume to cover the different hats you might wear.
Anyone rememberClifford Stohl? He sprang to fame back in the late 1980s when he published The Cuckoo’s Egg, an Internet thriller (from before the days of the web) where he tracked an international spy ring through the Internet. He followed that book with Silicon Snake Oil in 1995, an anti-technology look at the Internet and the way it depersonalizes human interaction. What made me think of Stohl was an old article from NewsweekStohl penned before the release of Silicon Snake Oil entitled, “The Internet? Bah! Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't, and will never be, nirvana.”
What’s fascinating is that Stohl has been proven so absolutely and complete wrong in 15 years. Here are just of few of his predictions from 1995:
Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.
Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.
Well, of course we are all living in a virtual world these days. We are telecommuting. There are interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. The printed newspaper is dying and all kinds of multimedia content are being delivered online. The Web is changing everything, for better or for worse, and in an irreversible way.
Stohl’s biggest argument (in 1995) is that the Internet depersonalizes human interaction. He claims that computers are really isolating us rather than drawing us closer together:
What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.
But that was before the birth of social media. I have always been an advocate for human interaction, and I always say a face-to face meeting is preferred to a phone call or an online chat. That’s why we have a weekly Ask the Coach phone call where NETSHARE members can interact with career coaches and get practical advice. It’s the same reason I have a weekly welcome call with members to get to know them personally, and see how we can help them with their career challenges.
However, contrary to Stohl’s predictions, social media has proven to be an invaluable tool to promote more personal interaction. Technology-driven conversations via LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are helping all of us become more connected and broaden our reach to touch and connect with even more people. Once we connect online, we can move those exchanges into more intimate conversations via e-mail, phone, and in person.
Stohl continues to be an interesting visionary worth listening to for new ideas, but no one gets it right all the time. A lot of his predictions from 1995 have proven themselves to be completely wrong, and I think we are all the better for it.
Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from this week’s session with our newest expert to join Ask the Coach, Barbara Safani, owner of Career Solvers based in New York City.
Barbara Safani is the latest career expert to join the NETSHARE team, and she had some sage words of advice for job seekers in today’s market. She noted that the landscape has changed, and the time to hire has increased substantially. Along the way, the parameters change, which means the job specs change, business needs change, and these delays have nothing to do with the candidates. It’s not about you!
And because searches take longer, you need to stay in touch with the hiring authorities without stalking them. Look for natural touch points. If you read an article or blog that is relevant, pass it along with a note, “Thought you might be interested in this…” And as you are interviewing, ask that all-important questions, “What is the next step in the process? What is your timeline?” Use tangible data points to determine when you need to touch base again.
One caller asked Barbara if she had a top five action list to get hired? Barbara did have a top five list to help executives find meaningful work:
Network – Building your professional network is a lifelong endeavor, and you need to be consistent and persistent. Even when you are working, take the time to maintain your network of contacts. You never know when you may need them. Make a brief contact at least once a quarter to remind your network of who you are, what you did together, and how you know each other.
Recruiters – Build relationships with recruiters. Recruiters are struggling like everyone else. There has been a huge reduction in inventory, and recruiters are looking for help like everyone else. Become a resource; Help them find qualified candidates who meet exact criteria. Remember they do not work for you, but they will help you if you can help them.
Use online networking – Join those social networks you feel most comfortable with, because you will get more out of them.Using business sites like LinkedIn also makes it easier to reconnect with those in your network and find people who can help you get ahead.
Direct targeting of companies – It’s up to you to find companies that need your expertise. You are the only one who can best determine if you have what that company needs, and if there is a good fit, even if they don’t have a specific opening. Make the contact, become known, and create your own opening.
Online Career Sites – There are a wide range of online career sources, from the big job posting boards to the niche career service sites, like NETHSHARE, which offers networking tools, forums, resources, and screened job postings. The big job boards can be useful for researching the job market and see who is hiring, and the niche career sites with screened postings are better for applying for targeted positions.
Of course, even identifying these top five approaches, you still need to apply a multi-pronged approach and use all possible routes that lead to success. Spend more time on relationship building. When people are comfortable with whom you are, they can become your best ally.
