The Executive Update

Ask the Coach: Taking the Pulse of the Job Market

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in career coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from this week’s session with Kristin Speer of Accelerated Search Consulting.

So what is the state of the current job market? According to Kristin, things are starting to move, although there are some differences in market conditions depending on the level of the position you are applying for. Kristin says that at the line-management level, she is seeing more “project-based” or “commoditization” hiring, where companies are looking for resources to support a specific product or project that needs to ramp quickly. The current trend is to hire fast and, if you don’t work out, fire fast, so candidates today need to adjust on the fly to adapt to fulfill the task at hand.

Kristin noted she is not seeing much of this kind of hiring at the executive level at all. Surprisingly, she also has not seen the amount of interim hiring she was expecting. The searches for senior executives are taking longer, and while many companies have decided they need to make a change, they are being extremely cautious in hiring their change agents and making sure they make the best choice. Some searches are more urgent, especially if there is a good fit and the hire makes good financial sense. Kris said she is seeing a bit of softening in hiring for the fourth quarter, but hiring is not coming to a halt, so job seekers need to be sure they have their names in the pipeline and they are actively promoting themselves.

For those trying to relocate, companies are still considering local candidates first. There are some steps you can take to level the playing field. For example, don’t put your address on your resume. Kris and others are seeing more resumes that simply list a name, cell phone number, and e-mail. And if the hiring manager sees a resume with a local area code, they feel more comfortable about the candidate.

And for those who have been unemployed for some time, be sure to have some kind of job listed on your resume after 2009.

Ask the Coach: Federal Hiring Practices Are Changing with the Times

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 .

Don Orlando was this week’s career coach, and Don has extensive experience in military and government recruiting. Don noted that with the changes in the economy, many job seekers are finding new opportunities in the government sector; opportunities they may not have considered before. And he also sees big changes in the way government agencies are approaching hiring.

Don shared a memo he received from the recent Federal Jobs Conference in San Diego indicating that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will not be renewing its contract with Monster Government Solutions, the company that powers the Federal USAJOBS.com web site. Instead, the OPM plans to host the USAJOBS.com site itself, as part of an effort to create a more open Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) platform that can be integrated with all commercial ATS platforms. This is part of a new initiative to make federal hiring practices more competitive and help government agencies recruit the best and the brightest. As stated in a May 11 memorandum issued by the White House:

“To deliver the quality services and results the American people expect and deserve, the Federal Government must recruit and hire highly qualified employees, and public service should be a career of choice for the most talented Americans.  Yet the complexity and inefficiency of today's Federal hiring process deters many highly qualified individuals from seeking and obtaining jobs in the Federal Government….”

The overall objective is to make federal hiring practices more competitive, and to start adopting the same best practices used for hiring by the private sector. For example, changes to be implemented by November 1 include:

• Eliminating any requirement to respond to essay-style questions when submitting an initial application for a federal job.
• Allowing individuals to submit resumes, cover letters, and applications using plain language, and assessing applicants using “valid, reliable tools,” and
• Selecting qualified applicants using the “category rating” approach, rather than the so called “rule of three” where candidates are limited to the top three scoring applicants.

There are some significant changes afoot in government hiring practices that will make it easier to compete for federal jobs. As with most bureaucratic changes, they won’t come overnight, but there is a sea change coming and more job seekers will start looking to government jobs as a more viable career alternative.

Why Is Job Market So Tough? There Are Twice as Many Workers!

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.

Don’t Chase Openings, Create Opportunities

The interesting thing about defining your personal brand is that, if you do it properly, you open up a whole new vista of career opportunities. Creating your personal brand requires a lot of introspection; a degree of soul-searching that is hard to achieve if you are too busy trying to please your current employer or your next employer.

There is a truism that I have shared with any number of jobseekers over the years. Getting fired is very freeing; cathartic; an opportunity to take your “do over.” Most senior managers are too worried about personal cash flow to understand the advantages of suddenly becoming a free agent. It’s when you lose your roadmap to the future that you have an opportunity to define a new path.

If you do the soul-searching and really work at creating your professional brand, then you can narrow the field for your job search, and open up broader career options at the same time. Your unique brand value should allow you to define a niche market where your expertise will prove invaluable. You should be able to create your own career opportunity, rather than pursuing available job openings.

Knowing the difference between opportunities and openings is critical to the successful jobseeker. Everyone is pursuing openings; those listings posted on job boards and e-mail lists. Everyone is scrambling to squeeze into the same opening, but there is only one candidate to fit the position. Your strategy needs to encompass every opportunity, both proactive and reactive. So certainly continue to put yourself out there on job boards and pursue those openings; people do get hired that way. But you also need to be able to create career opportunities.

One of the interesting aspects of the Internet is that it has actually made finding a job harder for the jobseeker. The web has broadened the field of potential candidates to encompass the entire planet. Employers can now post an exact description of the candidate they are seeking on one or more job sites and, due to the power of Internet proliferation, they can find the exact candidate they are seeking. The web makes it possible to scour the planet for the perfect employee, and it means you are competing with the global population for the same job.

That’s why it makes more sense to create opportunities rather than pursue openings. By taking the time to distill your unique value proposition – your brand – you have narrowed the potential market for the product that is “you.” Once you have defined your target market, you can develop marketing strategies to present yourself to those select members of the corporate demographic that will benefit from what you have to offer.

As we noted here before, it is better to be hunted than to hunt for a job. Similarly, you need to create your own opportunity. Find the perfect niche – the perfect company with the exact need – and sell yourself to fill the gap. Make your pitch strong enough the interviewee would be worried if you were hired by the competition. You need to prove you are uniquely qualified for the position that your employer hasn’t really thought of, yet. That’s the difference between creating your own unique opportunity and chasing openings where you may have to shoehorn the fit.

Granted, this approach is unconventional, maybe even unorthodox, but it has proven results. If you don’t take the lead, you are destined to follow, and as the saying goes, if you are not the lead dog, the view never changes.

Check back with Executive Update and we’ll do our best to show you how to command the lead.