“Using Social Media to Enhance Your Job Search” by Matthew Levy

Saturday May 10, 2014 at 8:00 am

“Using Social Media to Enhance Your Job Search”

You’ve been there…

Applying for jobs posted on internet job boards and never hearing a word.  Sending your resume around and not getting many nibbles. Statistics show that only a small percentage of jobs are posted and they attract hundreds of candidates.  It can feel like playing the lottery.  You wonder: how are you supposed to stand out?

You’d think it would be impossible, but it’s not. It doesn’t have to be that way.  You just have to be a little creative…

Come invest in yourself by learning from Matt during this interactive presentation how to stand out from the crowd by using social media tools such as LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging, email marketing and YouTube so that corporate recruiters, headhunters, hiring managers and potential clients will be attracted to you, will find you, will call you and ultimately hire you!

About the speaker:  Matthew Levy is an HR Executive, career expert, keynote speaker and author.  He regularly gives speeches to networking groups and professional organizations on job search and career management topics.  He is also President of the Philadelphia Society of People & Strategy, a 300 person senior level HR professional organization.  Connect with him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewflevy

Posted in Monthly Meeting

Working with Recruiters to Find a Job by David Schuchman

It is common to work with a recruiter or search firm to find your next job. Keep in mind that many published sources have indicated that only about 10% of job hunters find a new position using search firms. As a result, using recruiters as a resource should consume no more than 10% of your time. Keep these facts in mind so you optimize your use of a search firm as a productive job search resource:

Recruiters work for employers, not job hunters
A recruiter’s job is to find the best talent for the position their client employer is seeking to fill based on the employer’s requirements. They work to find talented individuals who have done the job already for a prior employer, or people ready to move up to the next level in their same career path. While they help individuals whom they are able to place, it is not their primary responsibility to provide assistance or guidance for job seekers.

Different Types of Recruiters
• Contingency recruiting companies are paid only when their client company hires a candidate they submit. For each position, employers may offer multiple recruiting companies the opportunity to work on the same job posting. They only pay a fee to the recruiter who actually finds the right talent, and the process can be a very competitive. Contingency recruiting is the most common type.
• Retained Search recruiting companies are paid by a company to take on an exclusive role in a given search. They typically receive an up-front retainer fee. The remainder of the fee is paid on an installment basis as the search progresses. This is often used for high level executive searches.
• Corporate Recruiters are usually company employees seeking to fill internal positions.

Recruiters have limited time (like everyone)
Recruiters are likely to be very responsive to people they see as strong potential candidates for their clients’ job orders. They are likely to be much less responsive to individuals who are not perceived as potential candidates. In addition, most recruiters don’t have the time to respond to the many unsolicited resumes or phone calls that they receive virtually every week. When you do find those few recruiters that spend time to build a relationship with candidates, keep them active in your network.

Recruiters help job hunters get the best compensation
Typically, recruiting fees are based as a percentage of a new hire’s first year base salary. Therefore, the more you earn, the more they earn. Often recruiters have inside information about what the company is willing to pay, and are able to obtain the highest salary that the company is willing to offer for the position.

Working with a recruiter can be a great benefit in your job hunt, but only if you understand their role in the hiring process. Budget your time appropriately when working with recruiters to maximize your efforts and results.

Posted in Uncategorized

Career growth organization Breakfast Club NJ implements Haydle knowledge platform for its members

Haydle

East Brunswick – NJ career-oriented network Breakfast Club NJ announced today that it will be launching its own knowledge base utilizing Haydle’s proprietary Q&A search engine platform as a free benefit for its members.

Breakfast Club Founder, Frank Kovacs explained the reasoning for launching this new service: “Since our start about thirteen years ago, we have grown to over four thousand professionals, including over four hundred sitting C-level executives.  With an online collaboration tool like Haydle, we are extending our intellectual and relationship capital outside of our regular meetings and providing a more powerful and meaningful experience to all our members; past, present and future.”

Joel Confino, CEO of Haydle added, “The Haydle team is excited to have The Breakfast Club NJ use our system. We believe in the mission of The Breakfast Club, and think its members will benefit from and enjoy using Haydle to communicate in a way that wasn’t possible before.  We also look forward to getting feedback from people using it as our greatest source of new ideas for the product is our user base.”

Breakfast Club members are encouraged to sign up now at http://haydle.com/thebreakfastclubnj/.

About The Breakfast Club NJ

The Breakfast Club NJ was created in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 to promote social networking, career growth and to help people in career or job transition.  Meetings are held on the 2nd Saturday of each month at the Days Hotel Conference Center East Brunswick, 195 Route 18 South NJ Turnpike/I-95S Exit 9, East Brunswick, NJ 08816, downstairs in the Middlesex Conference Room; there is a fee of $10.00 to cover the cost of the room. All meetings start at 8am but it is encouraged that all attendees arrive between 7:30 – 7:45 for networking.

About Haydle

Haydle, an enterprise Q&A product uses questions to “pull” knowledge from an organization. This is information trapped the heads of SMEs, and often lost in emails, content mgmt systems, and discussion boards. Answers are validated by team voting and then permanently captured for future search.

Contact

To learn more, please contact

Frank Kovacs

(732) 310-2500

fkovacs@comcast.net

www.thebreakfastblubnj.com

 

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Posted in News Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

It’s Counterintuitive for Job Seekers

Photo credit  for Digitalart

Photo credit for Digitalart

It would be interesting to review a few perceptions that job seekers have on issues stemming from feelings rather than from thinking. Such perceptions are based more on gut feelings rather than logic. Examples follow.

The interview is about me.

People feel good when asked to come in and interview, because they think the interview is about them. In fact, it is not. The interview is about the interviewer’s needs and the interviewer’s competitive evaluation process that considers the candidate’s ability to provide what the interviewer needs.

Accept LinkedIn invitations only from people you know.

When in transition, it’s not about whom you know so much as it is who knows you. After all, it’s you who is looking for a job. And the more connections you have, the more opportunities you’ll have. If you’re hiding in a box, no one will find you.

Create your own résumé.

People in transition need to preserve their savings, and so many compose their own résumés, which eventually get changed or edited or rewritten by others equally unqualified yet willing to help. The typical outcome is a less than competitive résumé that generates very few or no bites. The best advice, therefore, is to hire a trusted and recommended professional, certified, and experienced résumé writer. A less expensive solution—provided you’re absolutely certain your résumé is a good one—is to have it edited by a professional editor. Such an editor or resume writer knows what sells and would put that knowledge and expertise to work for you. And yes, the good ones are not inexpensive.

No need to tell family about being in transition.

Many people feel uneasy or embarrassed about revealing too many details of their transition. That’s a big mistake, because family and friends really are the people who will go out of their way to be of help.

No need to pay for career coaching.

Again, like with the résumé, people want to preserve their savings and do not want to spend on professional help such as experienced career coaches. This too is a huge mistake. A career coach will not only shorten the in-transition period but also teach you pertinent interviewing skills as well as how to negotiate a job offer. In most cases, fees spent on career coaching are dwarfed by the benefits gained from knowing how to negotiate a better compensation package.

Focus only on your past career path and ignore other possibilities.

In today’s fast-changing business environment, new jobs are being invented every day, and many of the past’s traditional jobs are morphing into new ones or becoming totally eliminated. Job seekers who do not consider job opportunities in fields unrelated to their past ones make a mistake. Some reach a point—possibly because of age discrimination or the elimination of their traditional jobs—at which a change in career might be a wonderful solution. It worked for me extremely well.

Posted in Uncategorized

Why You Need a Succession Plan

An organization uses succession planning to ensure that it recruits superior employees, develops their knowledge, skills, and abilities, and prepares them for advancement. You need to develop a succession plan to ensure that your employees are constantly developed to fill each needed role as the organization evolves.
As your organization expands, loses key employees and provides promotional opportunities, your succession plan guarantees that you have employees on hand ready and waiting to fill new roles. Through your succession planning process, you will retain superior employees because they appreciate the time, attention, and development that you are investing in them. To effectively do succession planning in your organization, you must identify the organization’s long term goals. In addition, successful succession planning builds bench strength to protect your organization against the challenges associated with these 3 occurrences:

Organizational Growth & Reorganization
Organizational growth has the potential to provide a company with a variety of benefits, including greater efficiencies from economies of scale, increased marketplace visibility, a greater ability to withstand market fluctuations, greater profits, and increased prestige for employees. While it spurs job creation, organizational growth also has challenges. A company may outgrow the skills or abilities of its leaders and employees. All those involved may quickly become stressed out trying to keep up with the demands of expansion. Without proper succession planning, the expansion may become ineffective and stall.

Loss of a Key Employee
Every corporation has key leaders or employees that make substantial contributions to the operation, profitability, and success of the business. Any individual who has critical intellectual information, sales relationships, product knowledge, and/or industry contacts that may adversely affect profits in the event of their absence, may be considered key. A succession plan will ensure that an organization can tolerate the short term and permanent loss of a key employee.

Easily Replace a Poor Performer
A poorly performing employee can negatively affect team and organizational performance. Sometimes, they can undermine their coworkers’ efforts through their incompetence or uncivil behavior. When attempts to correct their behavior or improve their performance fails, it may become necessary to terminate that employee. A robust succession plan will ensure that an organization will have cultivated other employees to fill the void caused by a staff termination. In addition, it will allow you to plan ahead to replace that employee with a new recruit in a timely fashion.

David Schuchman

from BCNJ Member Blog Feed http://dlvr.it/5Xgzkj
via IFTTT

Posted in Member Contributions Tagged with: ,

What Employers Look For When Hiring Staff by David Schuchman

Hiring the best people is more critical than ever. In a tight job market, employers are able to be very selective about who they hire. However, the cost of finding, interviewing, engaging and training new employees is high. With so many qualified candidates, what are employers looking for in the people they choose to interview? Here are six things that employers look for when they review job applicants.

 

Professional Competency

Does the candidate have the necessary skills, experiences and education to successfully complete the tasks to perform well? Employers are looking for evidence in a person’s past that shows that they can. This doesn’t mean that each candidate needs to have done this particular job with this particular title before. Instead, it means the candidate needs to have a track record of success in the skills that the position requires.

 

Compatibility

Can this person get along with colleagues, and with existing and potential clients and business partners? An additional critical consideration is the person’s willingness and ability to get along well with his or her boss. If the new employee can’t get along well with others, there will be problems.

 

Satisfaction with the Organization

Most employers want to hire people who will stick around for a long time. They also want to hire people who will be happy with the job. Unhappy people tend to be less productive, a drain on other employees’ morale, and may quickly leave the organization.

 

Fit with Company Culture

Does the candidate seem like they will easily embrace the culture, or does it seem like they will struggle to fit in? Every business has a culture or a way that people behave and interact with each other. Culture is based on certain values, expectations, policies and procedures that influence the behavior of a leader and employees. Workers who don’t reflect a company’s culture tend to be disruptive and difficult.

 

Character

Does the candidate have values that align with the organization? Are they honest; do they tell the truth and keep promises? Are they a team player? It’s not enough to just show up at work every day and do the minimum required. Employers are looking for candidates who care about getting things done, and to do those things well.

 

Enthusiasm for the Job

Is this just one job of many the candidate is applying to? Or, does the candidate have a special interest in this one? Employers would rather hire someone who will be excited to come to work than someone who sees it as “just a job.”

 

Posted in Uncategorized

Organizing the Project Team

As seen on blog.bennythepm.com

Congratulations! You have a project team. Now what do you do?

As a Project Manager (PM), you are tasked with being the leader of the project. Once you are assigned as the PM, you are now the mini-COO of that specific project. All eyes, especially those of senior management, will be on you.  So the first order of business once the project and project team has been assigned, is to organize the team. Now in my last blog post “How does a PM define Responsibilities” posted on March 23, 2014 (http://blog.bennythepm.com/2014/03/how-does-pm-define-responsibility.html)  I stated that the PM has to assign responsibility and keep the team members focused on their specific responsibilities. The PM must also organize the team and keep them organized so that the project goals are attained. That is not as easy as it sounds for many reasons. However, the goals of the project must be the goals of the project team and it is up to the PM to make sure that the goals are being met.

Once the team is assigned, the PM begins the organization 

The first thing the PM must do is meet with the project sponsor to ensure the project goals are understood. Then the PM schedules the first project team meeting, and along with the project sponsor, the PM should begin organizing the team and their respective tasks. For example, just because the PM should be the “guardian” of the project repository, does not mean that the PM is the only person who makes updates to that repository. Assigning responsibility does not end with assigning tasks. Individuals should take turns being the “scribe” and someone should be assigned the keeper of the repository, with another team member as the close second (possibly the PM taking either role).

As the PM bears the greatest responsibility for the delivery of the project, the PM should also bear the greatest authority. That does not mean autocratic authority, but it does mean that the final decision should be the PM’s and the project sponsor’s.

                                Besides organizing the team, the PM should organize the project

As I indicated above, the PM should begin by organizing the project with the communication plan, the roles and responsibilities, and the status meetings. The PM should schedule one-on-one meetings with the individual project team members if necessary.  The PM should also schedule the delivery of the status report to the project sponsor and management and be the representative to the change control board (for any changes, if necessary). Now, the PM is not the sole voice of the project, so the PM must be able to organize the necessary team members if they are needed at the change control meetings, or if necessary, with management. Probably the hardest organizing task for the PM will be keeping the project sponsor up to date and informed of project issues. This task may be difficult because of the project sponsor’s schedule, as the project sponsor may be a senior manager and not have as much flexibility as the rest of the team.

It’s all about delivery

In the end, it is about delivery. Even if there are changes that go before the change board, the PM must be able to deliver and defend any changes. If the project team can deliver on the project, then the PM will be viewed as a successful PM that can deliver projects. But don’t forget the value of the project. In my blog http://blog.bennythepm.com/2012/09/the-value-of-delivered-project.html I comment that the value must be communicated as soon as the project starts and continuously until the project ends. The delivery of the project depends on the strategic value of the project and the alignment of the project to the organization’s strategic goals.

Even when the project is delivered, the value must be communicated to senior management and why the project was so very important to the organization in the first place.

Posted in Benny the PM

Social Media: So, What Is It for People in Transition?

4355757753_70f08de04aThere’s no newspaper or magazine nowadays that does not devote some space to the fast-developing new phenomenon called social media. My explanation for this is very simple: Let’s say you invite some people for a social gathering to take place in your house. Among the dozen or so you host will be some who are very knowledgeable about certain subjects, and some others, less so. That doesn’t mean that those who aren’t very knowledgeable will not contribute to the conversation. They will, but their content will be less factual or less valuable to the listeners.

So, how does this situation apply to the electronic versions of social media? Today there are a significant number of such venues. The more popular are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (which is oriented more toward business contacts). People use them for communication in a similar way that those guests of yours do in your house. However, the interchanges happen electronically. Some of the written material is thorough, researched, meaningful, and at times useful. Other information simply amounts to chitchat that has no value except perhaps to a very few. The advantage of social media is that if you don’t like what you read, you can just move on to read something else. Conversely, when you’re faced with a similar situation in a physical venue, it would be rude to tell the speaker you’re bored and you’d prefer to move on.

If you’re in transition and looking for your next job, you’ll have to interact or network with people extensively. Not everything you hear people say will be valuable to you, but some of it will. Similarly, you have to be selective about your sources of reading material and their contents; it’s easy to be swept into meaningless and verbose articles at the end of which you realize you’ve gained nothing. On the other hand, once you learn to become selective and focus only on substantive reading material, you’ll realize you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, meaning that some other people can provide you the information you need.

Twitter, as an example, is limited to 140 characters. Some tweets are obvious wastes of time. The fact that John finished eating his muffin is irrelevant to most readers. But if someone draws your attention to a newly written article about a subject you’re trying to learn more about, that article could prove to be very valuable. The conclusion is that you need to eliminate the garbage found on social media and follow the selective few gems that will compensate you for your precious time.

Posted in Uncategorized

Why should I join Google+ and how will it help my job search?

Hello everyone – I am Adrienne Roman, and I am one of the Social Media moderators for The Breakfast Club NJ.

I am thrilled to announce that The Breakfast Club NJ can now be found on Google+! In addition to our The Breakfast Club NJ Social Media suite of platforms on Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter, we have just added Google+. You will need a Google account to use Google+.

What is Google+?

It is the 2nd largest social networking site after Facebook boasting 540 million active monthly users (Oct 2013). If you look up Google+ in Wikipedia, it gives a comprehensive history and explanation to its terminology and features. Right now, I want to highlight how it can help you in your job search.

Why should I join Google+ and how will it help my job search?

1. Look at the number of users:

According to Wikipedia – Social Media Statistics
• Facebook now has over 1.15 billion users.
• Twitter now has over 550 million registered users and 215 million monthly active users.
• Google+ now has over 1 billion enabled accounts and 359 million active monthly users.
• YouTube has over 1 billion monthly active users.
• As of June 2013, LinkedIn reports more than 259 million users in more than 200 countries and territories.
2. Branding – both professional and personal:

• Simply having another platform enforcing the professional brand you initiated on Linkedin, strengthens your brand.
• ‘Circle’ is a feature that allows for the organization of groups or lists for sharing information either publicly or privately. You can strengthen your brand by joining circles that reflect your area(s) of expertise.

3. Hangouts – multi-person video chat:

• Mobile friendly.
• Free video conferencing for up to 10 people – what a great way for a reunion – work related, college, networking in general.
• Great opportunity to hone those interview skills! There really never seems to be enough time for mock interviews. Google+ is an efficient and effective way for a group to mock interview each other. What would it take for a group to mock interview each other – maybe 3 questions a night for half an hour?
• Opportunity to give back – offer to conduct or evaluate and give feedback on a mock interview.
• Hangout with groups and people that may be out of your geographic range.
• Excellent way to practice for Skype interviews!

4. Convenient Networking:

• The Breakfast Club NJ has over 4000 members. The Google+ platform provides a convenient location for employed members and unemployed members to connect and network outside of the monthly meetings.
• An opportunity to shine (more on this later).

5. A special invitation to hiring managers and recruiters:

• Frequent our page and circles and connect with people to fill positions with qualified candidates at your company.
• Great way for you to find talent.
• It’s free!
• Get to know a prospective employee before making a job offer.
• Post jobs that need to be filled quickly, with just the right person for the job.

An opportunity to shine (I told you we’d get back to this), as well as, an opportunity to give back! This platform will only be successful with member engagement and help. We need volunteers to join Google + and create Circles. And we need members to join circles, and engage in conversation, post, share, etc. What is important to you? Industry? Profession? Geography? Career change? New to transition? LTU? Relocating out of state?

Personally, I would love to see a Circle entitled ‘TBCNJ Landing Success’, with everybody who has landed, posting their success stories. This would be a great way to give back by providing some useful guidance, motivation, and inspiration to the group.

Another thought I have is to have a morning coffee group to meet for a ½ hour or so – bring you own coffee – but do dress appropriately – it is a video chat – people can and will see you. Fuzzy slippers are optional. And to be fair – there should be an afternoon tea group as well. Volunteer moderators are needed for both of these positions.

Please contact me – Adrienne Roman adrienne1204@optonline.net to discuss Google + ideas, or if you need any help with Google+.

Posted in Uncategorized

The Trauma of Unemployment

2b017cd7a7f2ecef9b0f225be6485ba5The emotional stress associated with unemployment is understood only by those who are unemployed. Often, even people closely associated with the unemployed such as spouses or other family members don’t fathom the emotional pressure and pain that settles in on those without sources of income and places to go to called work.

Unfortunately, some jobless people stay in transition for a long time. Today the main reason is usually the current economic condition, but it isn’t the reason all the time. In fact, some people get quickly transplanted into new jobs, but others get held back due to their lack of a solid plan and inability to make decisions. Have you noticed that some people procrastinate decision making and agonize even over the simplest kinds of decisions? For example, some people take forever to make a menu choice in a restaurant, while others wait impatiently for the last person to decide. Or, maybe you had a boss who couldn’t make even ordinary decisions and who constantly maneuvered just to avoid the need to make the decision? There are reasons that such phenomena exist and I’m certainly not competent to attempt to provide those reasons, but through my work as a career coach I see such indecision at times with my clients.

So, how can a career coach help with such issues? Well, it’s not the job of the career coach to conduct a session like a psychologist would. And sometimes even psychologists don’t know how to or neither prepared nor qualified to. A career coach, though, can at least help narrow down the choices and assist in the decision-making process by, say, guiding clients to the right personality assessment tests, or by listening carefully to clients’ affinities or certain successes from the past, or, if appropriate, by guiding clients to other recommended professionals with advanced degrees like Ph.D.’s who are expert in counseling regarding career, job search, and workplace issues.

Honestly, most people don’t know what they want in terms of a job unless they see it in context. People can’t predict the advantages and disadvantages of a profession or a job unless they can somehow identify with it. Perhaps a friend or someone else can tell them the good, the bad, and the ugly about it. And even in that case, the future is highly unpredictable. I’m sure that at one time or another, you asked someone for an opinion of the company the person worked at. And I’m equally sure you received an answer. But was that answer a valid one? Or was it only that person’s opinion about the boss? Certainly, if the boss treats us nicely, we’ll say the entire company is great! And if the opposite is true, the entire company stinks! Everything’s always relative, isn’t it.  Does this topic ring a bell?  What are your stories?  Feel free to comment.

Posted in Uncategorized