You will never attract passionate people to work for you until you create ways of letting people be passionate about the work they already do for you–and then find ways of letting that passion out into the world so that it can seek out, find, and attract others to you.
Sony gets it. Do you?
Popularity: 1% [?]
Conventional wisdom suggests that having employees in the office means they will be more focused and more productive, but recent research from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management suggests that Telecommuters – people who work from home one or several days per week – and those who have flextime available to them from their employers claim that they can work an average of 19 hours more per week before feeling that their job is interfering with their life.
Researchers from Brigham Young University analyzed data from 24,436 IBM employees in 75 countries, identifying the point at which 25 percent of employees reported that work interfered with personal and family life.
For office workers on a regular schedule, the breaking point was 38 hours per week. Given a flexible schedule and the option to telecommute, employees were able to clock 57 hours per week before experiencing such conflict.
Not all of those 57 hours are telecommuting hours, notes lead study author E. Jeffrey Hill, a professor in BYU’s School of Family Life. The typical high-flexibility work arrangement includes a mix of office time and firing up the laptop from home, the venue depending on the task at hand.
“Telecommuting is really only beneficial for reducing work-life conflict when it is accompanied by flextime,” Hill said. ~ Source: BYU News
This isn’t completely a new thought, however. Earlier this year, Discovery News reported findings from another study done in the UK that "working remotely appears to be connected with working harder and being happy with your job."
A recent study out of Cranfield School of Management in the United Kingdom suggests that workers given flexible hours by their employers tend to work more intensely than their counterparts with more rigid office hours.
The researchers posit that the reason for this phenomenon is a kind of payment to the employer from the worker in exchange for the freedom to choose where and when to work.
However, the reality of a down job-economy right now drives employees to put in longer office hours to appear indispensable which may actually drive down employee loyalty over time and increase turnover and recruiting costs:
That [employee's] jacket needs to be on the back of the office chair at 8 at night because everyone is trying to prove that they’re indispensable.
–Sylvia Ann Hewlett, president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, reported by CNN
What about you? Do you work longer when you know your company is willing to be flexible with your time and schedule?
Popularity: 3% [?]
Someone recently asked Robert Scoble if he would continue working at his current employer, Rackspace, if he won the lottery. His gut answer was ‘Yes’, though he didn’t know why until he saw this video from Dan Pink:
I wrote a lot more about this including notes on the subject on my ConnectedWell blog, but here’s the video for your consuming pleasure:
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(From Lifehacker and NYTimes)
Solution? Have breaks during your meetings (or, you’re really not as important as you think you are)
A professor of business surveyed more than 9,000 managers and workers and found a familiar paradox: nearly everyone considers email checking and texting during face-to-face meetings rude, but most people still do it
But, it’s of course only rude to the person holding the meeting (and others who are "in charge"). ShakespeareGeek in the Lifehacker comments had this to say about the Double Standard:
Grab a manager and say, "Can I show you a quick something at my computer?" If you can get him to go over to your cube at all, rest assured that he’ll be checking his Blackberry while you try to explain your demo. Remember, it’s only rude if *you* do it on *his* time.
Popularity: 2% [?]
I’m presenting at the Utah County Job Club tomorrow on how recruiters view your resume. This event is held in the North meeting room of the East Bay Cafe on the Novell campus. Novell* graciously donates this space for the club’s use to the community. Come and see what “recruiter blinders” are and how your carefully hand-crafted resume actually looks from my eyes (hint: I don’t see what you see)
Also, check out/join the Job Club community on LinkedIn. If you can’t come tomorrow (or you might), at least participate in the conversation and share what you know!
Directions to the Meeting
The Utah County Job Club meets every Wednesday at 8am-9am at East Bay Cafe, the Novell Cafeteria. There is no fee to be a part of the group and you’re welcome to buy something to eat at the East Bay Cafe. This group is about providing a place where job seekers can connect to support each other and learn about effective job searching.
Address/Directions:
1800 South Novell Place
Provo, UT 84606
Parking available on the south end of the campus – near the large main building H. Walk along the west side of Bldg H back to the East Bay Cafe (you’ll see a large orange sign). The meeting is held in the conference room on the far north end of the cafeteria area.
In the mean-time, here’s how to write the perfect resume. (finally!) Also a post of mine on adjusting your LinkedIn profile to act like a resume, and below is a great SlideShare presentation called “Resume Zen” by Chris Ferdinandi over at EMC Career Services. I’m too ADD to listen to the audio track without skipping here and there, but I agree with the content!
*Novell is my employer
Popularity: 3% [?]
A post over at JibberJobber got me thinking about how agency recruiters and corporate recruiters often have a different view of the world and, for a job-seeker, knowing the ropes here can make a world of difference in the success (or failure) of your career search.
Corporate Recruiters generally get paid a salary (not commission) by the company for whom they are hiring. They are full-time, salaried employees who have been hired as an internal, dedicated resource aligned to support some unit(s) or function(s) of the company. They are required to focus not only on “the fill” of a position, but often have some say in the big-picture of a company’s recruiting strategy. They (or their bosses) are (hopefully) involved in talent management initiatives along with workforce/succession planning. They are often deployed against solving special deficiencies in the organization around certain talent requirements. The corporate recruiter has to focus not only on the transactional element of the jobs they fill, but also on the overall impact to their organization and they have a long-term, vested interest in the success of the organization overall thanks, in part, to the talent they bring to the table.
Corporate recruiters often have a set of job requisitions, or a “req load” that they are tasked with filling. Many companies measure their recruiters in terms of the old stand-by metric: “time to fill” (how long a job is open before it is closed) while many progressive organizations are tying in other metrics designed to determine overall “ROI” of the acquired talent back to the business. They are often part of a recruiting or staffing division of a larger Human Resources department.
Corporate recruiters are often focused on the strategy and quality of a hire long before the posting goes live on the website and long after the newly minted employee smiles for their security badge on day one.
Agency/External/Third-party Recruiters work either alone or in concert with others in an agency/vendor model. Their fee structure can be either contingency (pay-per-placement), contract (on-site, but paid as a consultant) or retained (off-site recruiting, but paid a flat fee per search or set of searches) search. Contingency recruiting is the most-common type of external third-party recruiting agency you will find. Their focus is generally on a specific market and/or set of companies/industries or skills. You may find agencies dedicated to nursing, finance, or engineering, or you will find general “full-service” agencies with specialized divisions to help across several of your business needs.
Agency recruiters (sometimes called headhunters) are simultaneously trying to please two clients–the company that pays their headhunting fees and the candidates who they find, develop and submit to companies. If push comes to shove, the corporation wins the fight between the two because having the best, most-qualified candidate doesn’t do any good if nobody will hire them from you (and pay the fee).
Some agencies may have dedicated business-development people out selling the firm’s abilities and locking in contracts. In the “back office”, there may be one or several recruiters and even sourcing/support people searching for and dialing up people that fit the newly caught job orders the sales people bring in the front door. In this model, the recruiter owns the candidate relationship while the sales person owns the client/business relationship.
Other firms, especially smaller boutique/custom recruiting shops have recruiters who run a “full-cycle desk” meaning they are responsible for finding opportunities to fill and filling the jobs–the entire recruiting lifecycle. Often, these are the most highly specialized, niched recruiters. Often with several years of good recruiting behind them (and the nice car and bling to prove it) or a chosen preference for controlling everything (or both), these recruiters are usually the best in the business and have seen and heard it all. Efficient, quick, and expensive, they make hiring manager’s headaches go away, and they are paid well for it. Often, these recruiters tend to specialize in high-level, executive recruiting or very niched industries where there may be a very limited number of candidates in the world who could perform the job.
Agency recruiters are deployed when either companies do not have the internal resources to do a qualified search for a given job, or they want to outsource much of the finding, screening and administrative work of hiring. Often, companies of all sizes, including startups will partner with agencies to provide a “second pair of eyes” to ensure the right person gets hired for the job, no matter if they came from an agency, or from a direct applicant.
Some key differences you should note about each recruiter is to understand their focus, how they get paid, and how they view a “hire”.
Both roles are highly transactional, but the agency recruiter is very narrowly focused on filling their open positions quickly. That drives the kinds of conversations you can have. They aren’t naturally going to spend a lot of time with you unless you’re similar to talent they have placed before.
Also note that while corporate recruiters are generally paid salaries, headhunters earn some sort of commission-based incentive either straight-commissions or a low base salary and they have to earn the rest of their keep. Time is money for all of us, but even more for agency recruiters. So. Please. Be. Brief.
Agency recruiters will work to staff up a whole team of people if hired to do so, but that is the extent of their influence on the organization. An internal recruiter is tasked with (and takes on) owning long-term per-placement quality overall. Therefore, they are more apt to develop long-tail relationships and develop broader pipelines knowing that a wide net may be better in the long-run than lots of small, focused nets being cast in the short-run.
Popularity: 4% [?]
I found a good sample of Joel Spolsky’s thoughts on hiring good programmers:
This is seriously good content, and some really awesome reading.
Oh, and concerning Hitting the High Notes…
Remember, there are exactly as many notes as are required. No more, no less.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Welcome news to the ears of the great team at EnticeLabs, First Advantage and Omniture’s founders Josh James and John Pestana have chipped in $2 Million in funding to add to the $1.3 Million the Provo, Utah startup has already received in the past. Techcrunch broke the news earlier today.
Over the past few years, the company has been developing the TalentSeekr recruiting engine, which proactively helps companies place targeted recruitment advertising in front of specific candidates that fit a reasonable set of criteria, determined within milliseconds by the EnticeLabs servers.
In May, Ryan Probasco and Grant Gordon appeared on the Couchcast show I host to talk about the technology.
Way to go, team!
Transparency: I am loosely affiliated with EnticeLabs.
Popularity: 5% [?]
The sample size can’t be representative of all orgs, but Smartblog on Workforce polled their readers and found 72% of them do not recruit using social media tools.
Also, 43% of respondents couldn’t care less, thank you.
72% of companies polled do not use social media to recruit
What innovative ways is your company recruiting? (or… not?)
IMG from CollegeRecruiter.com
Popularity: 3% [?]
Data released today by job aggregation service SimplyHired shows that Salt Lake City ranks fifth of the top five markets for job seekers when comparing the number of job-seekers for each unique job.
The rankings were “determined by the ratio of job seekers to unique open positions (duplicates removed) in metro areas around the country.” Utah’s capital, Salt Lake City (Jobsearch), and presumably surrounding metro areas such as Ogden and Provo/Orem fared well in the overall list, opposed to nearby Las Vegas, which has 26 candidates for every unique job opening.
SimplyHired revealed their findings only on the top and bottom 15 markets. Regional areas such as Denver, Colorado Springs, Albequerque, Phoenix, Boise, Reno and others were not included in either of these lists.
Salt Lake City, Utah Ranks 5th overall in best cities to find a job, according to data released today by SimplyHired.com
These are interesting statistics, for sure. There are a few caveats I see that you should consider as well:
Popularity: 4% [?]
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