My recommendation is a file name that actually sells you a little bit. For example, if you’re going for a project manager position and your name is Joe Cool, try out a file name like: “Resume–Joe_Cool–Talented_Project_Manager.pdf” and just see if you don’t get more bites on that little nugget of visual eye-candy of a hook!

Some real-world examples of either bad file names or pet-peeves of recruiters (ok, of me):

• resume.doc – Really? I am a recruiter. Do you think I may, possibly, already have a file named that already somewhere on my system? I will have to rename your resume in order to save it (or rename some other file).  You may risk just getting deleted if you’re not a standout candidate.
• 2009 resume.doc – This is worse than the previous one. Not only are you absent of creativity, you also haven’t updated your resume since last year.  Believe it or not, I have seen years in resume file-names dating back three years.
• 2010 resume.doc – This one tells me that you look for a job at least annually.  This one is your current years’ attempt at a new gig.  I should tell facilities to not spend a lot on your office’s name-plate. You won’t be around long.
• Micorsoft Resume.doc – If you’re applying for a job at a company (say, Microsoft), and you use that company name in the resume file name, please spell it right!
• Apple Resume.doc — If you’re applying for a job at a company (say, Microsoft), please get the company name right!
• anything.docx – “docx” is the new file format used in Microsoft Office 2007 or later. Some people don’t have that version of office and may not read your resume… or it may come out formatted very differently than you intended!
• anything.doc – In fact, not every company uses Microsoft Word. You’d be much better off saving your resume as a PDF file, which is nearly universal in both availability to view and formatting fidelity.  Use something like PDFCreator (free) to “print” any document to a PDF file.
• Joe_2010.05.0113.doc – You’re either seriously OCD organized, a librarian or an operating system. I don’t know what that says about you, but be aware.
• Resume10_v3.doc – This doesn’t really matter to me what version your resume is, other than for some reason you keep changing it.  I don’t care, but you did lose an opportunity to share something about you in your file-name that might have made you a little more memorable.

*Please, please do not actually try and make your resume anything resembling a literary masterwork.

In the book You Are the Message, media executive Roger Ailes wrote that you only have seven seconds to make a first impression. With a job on the line in an interview, the pressure to immediately impress is even more intense. No wonder we get flustered.

Here’s the 12 ways to under-whelm that she mentions.  What are yours?
(click through for her good advice for each)

1. Show up sick.
2. You have a black eye (or other injury)
3. You have a nose-ring (unless it’s the right culture for that)
4. You’re sweating.
5. You’re underdressed.
6. You’re late.
7. You’re early.
8. You misuse your lobby-time.
9. Your handshake isn’t up to par.
10. You’re bad at small-talk.
11. You haven’t done your research.
12. You have a personal tick.

Still, I occasionally receive resumes with some of these items on them or included in the cover letter.  They are not necessary, and can hurt your chances of getting hired.  Still, not having them included on your resume shouldn’t affect you one bit.

1. Your Picture
   Your resume is not facebook (though some may say facebook is becoming your resume). Leave out your photograph for at least two reasons:

• First, it is illegal for companies (in the US) to hire you based on your race or sex, age, etc. Having your photograph on your resume puts the company you’re applying to in an awkward spot. If they hire you, was it because of your race? If they did not hire you, was it because of your sex? Are you too old? Some companies will refuse to consider resumes with images because of the liability, which means you just got deleted from the possibility of landing the job.
• Second: Humans make very quick judgements about things they may not be consciously thinking of. Do you want to have your appearance considered for the job (for better or worse) before you’re even interviewed? Isn’t dressing right for your interview stressful enough? Let your qualifications and intelligence speak for you, not your “buddy pic”. NOTE: If you are in a field where your physical image is part of the job, then, obviously, this is moot, but you knew that going in, I hope.

2. Your birthdate or age.
   I am surprised how much I am seeing this lately, and usually from younger applicants (I know they are “young” because they tell me how old they are). I am guessing this is from a lack of experience, but this is both a very private piece of information (in this age of identity theft) and companies can not hire you (or not hire you) based on your age, and you throwing it out there just makes recruiters (and their attorneys) squeamish. Leave it off there.

   If we see you graduated this year and your last job was an internship, we’ll get the picture–you’re entry-level. We don’t send out birthday cards until after you’re on the payroll.

3. Your social security number or other ID number (such as a resident alien ID).
   I see this frequently from individuals wishing to prove their citizenship or ability to work in the US. Maybe this is appropriate in other countries, but in the United States, simply stating “Authorized to work in the US for any employer” is sufficient.

   Please don’t give thieves a chance to steal your identity, either. If you included your birthdate as well, you should call your credit card companies RIGHT NOW.

4. Your references.
   This one is a matter of respect as well as privacy of those people you list. It is fully appropriate to disclose that you have professional references (the other kind of references don’t really do anything anyway) and you will provide them when it makes sense. However, revealing your references should be done somewhere in the interview process, usually when the company is about to make a hiring decision. Read: After the 2nd round.

   I should note here that it is appropriate for you to call your references and let them know you have released their phone number to a certain company who may be calling. It’s only polite and, remember, your relationship with your reference is much more important in the long-run than your relationship with the ACME Bean Counter company who may be calling them.

In a word, this example from Not Hired is a pretty good description of what not to do:

I updated my work email signature and felt a little saucy and embedded my hCard information right into the HTML. (Yes, the Unix users out there who only read plain-text emails won’t see it).

hCard is a microformat, a way to encode certain pieces of human-readable information with machine-readable meta-data to allow computers and other devices to recognize (and thereby smartly use) otherwise plain, lifeless text.

• I started with the hCard Creator, and then hacked the HTML from there.
• I also uploaded my hCard to my website, and embedded it in the sidebar of my blog (so every page of my side is hCard visible)
• Then I linked to the following technorati page, concatenating my URI (bold, below) to the end of theirs (http://feeds.technorati.com/contacts/http://www.utahtechjobs.com) that uses (I assume) XSL wizardry and black magic to turn an hCard embedded into a web-page into a downloadable vCard for import into your favorite address book or vCard-aware app.
• Anyway, it may take some time to become widespread, but my info is out there, and available. Click Add Me To Your Address Book to try the vCard!

<GEEK: END />

BUT, once you’ve finished making changes, it is confusing how to make the edits go away so the edits don’t show anymore.

This is especially important in a resume… you don’t want the edits showing up somehow when you email your resume over to that great new opportunity!

To Finalize or Finish your document after editing, you want to find the “Accept Change” button on the “Track Changes” toolbar that pops up when you enable edit tracking (see picture)

(click to enlarge)

Then, when you click the small down arrow to the right of the button, the hover menu will show up. You want to choose “Accept All Changes” (see picture)

(click to enlarge)

Once you’ve done that, SAVE the file to make sure the edits are fixed. Better yet, save the document as an Adobe PDF file. Personally, I use the free, open source PDF Creator program (passed along to me by the Software For Starving Students organization)

Good luck!

Here’s my first compilation. Right now, get within earshot of me and one of the following songs is playing!

Click to see this iMix in the iTunes store

Bubbly   Colbie Caillat Points of Authority   Linkin Park The Reason   Hoobastank Upside Down   Jack Johnson Small Town   John Mellencamp Remind Me (Radio Edit)   Royksopp Galvanize   The Chemical Brothers American Woman   Lenny Kravitz Ooh La La   Goldfrapp What Heaven Sees In You   Mindy Gledhill Remember the Promise   Brett Raymond Live Like You Believe   Jenny Phillips God Don’t Give Up On Us   Becky Garrett

]]> http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/my-first-imix-summertime-mix-july-2007.htm/feed 0 http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/add-horsepower-to-your-marketing-communications.htm http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/add-horsepower-to-your-marketing-communications.htm#comments Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:25:31 +0000 Robert Merrill communications twelve horses integration powerhouse marketing strategies hints http://www.utahtechjobs.com/?p=889 Steve Spence tossed me this link to check out, and I agree that Utah business communications consulting powerhouse Twelve Horses recently launched a new blog, sharing some great tips, hints and ideas for effective total-integration marketing and communications strategies, like this post:

Marketing By Accident

I cant tell you how many time I have talked to companies about various aspects of their marketing strategies, and had them say, We havent really started doing [that kind] of marketing yet. It might be email, it might be a solid web site, it might be blogs, or social marketing, or any number of other flavors.

I think of this as Marketing By Accident. If someone wants to know about you or your product, and they do a search online only to find a crappy website, or no site at all, dont think for a moment that you are not doing web marketing. Make no mistake about it, you have definitely sent a message about your brand. Everything we do, or dont do is marketing. If you send an email and it is poorly written, that is your email marketing. If you dont comment on industry blogs, and have no blog of your own then you are doing blogging as part of your marketing strategy. Your blog just reads: we really dont get it.

Nothing is more valuable than your brand. Control your brand. Dont market by accident.

I don’t hide the fact that I like Jibber Jobber’s career-management tools. It’s about time that job-seekers have access to the same contact-management tools and resources that recruiters and companies have. I personally know the owner, Jason Alba, and I think his work is excellent. Furthermore, I like that he developed the tool out of a real need (his own job search) rather than some entrepreneurial seizure about how to get rich off others.

I have recommended this tool for anybody interested in managing their career (psst: nobody will do it for you), but for the next few days, Jason has made it SUPREMELY EASY to join up and get started.

First of all, you can always join up for FREE and use many of the tools. But, to really kick-start your career-management into high gear, you should become a premium member… and until Monday, April 9th, it’s just $99 to get premium access for LIFE ($396.00 off the regular price).

Ninety-Nine Bucks?

Check out the tool. Try it out free and, if you want, upgrade to the premier career toolset by Monday for the rest of your life, for less than the cost of a nice evening on the town.

• Janet gives pros and cons of professional blogging and blogs in the workplace.
• Networking and personal-branding expert Jason Alba explains how to blog without actually blogging.

These two are gurus of threading blogging into your life without being too overzealous about it. Take advantage of their opinions. Or don’t. Your call.

Oh, and from this comment, I can see that twitter is gaining more Utah users! newspapergrl, Phil801, LauraMoncur, PaulWilson, moustache… are there others? Thanks to jeffbarr for introducing me…

]]> http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/to-blog-or-not-to-blog-2.htm/feed 3 http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/happiness-can-make-you-rich.htm http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/happiness-can-make-you-rich.htm#comments Thu, 22 Feb 2007 15:51:34 +0000 Robert Merrill
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http://www.utahtechjobs.com/?p=801 Listening to the Power of Full Engagement this morning, I jotted down the following concerning developing a deep sense of purpose, and deriving happiness from it.

“Income… doesn’t noticeably influence satisfaction with marriage, family, friendship or ourselves, all of which do predict a sense of well-being.

In turn, happiness has been clearly associates with higher productivity.

In short, Money may not buy happiness, but happiness may help you get rich.” (emphasis added)
- David Myers “The Pursuit of Happiness“

I think this is true. As I have connected to my deepest-held values, my productivity has surely increased, and my happiness and satisfaction… and the income has followed.

]]> http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/happiness-can-make-you-rich.htm/feed 0 http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/twitter-me-this-why-hyper-connected-people-need-twitter.htm http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/twitter-me-this-why-hyper-connected-people-need-twitter.htm#comments Tue, 13 Feb 2007 14:24:44 +0000 Robert Merrill http://www.utahtechjobs.com/?p=797 Last week, I had a rather enjoyable lunch with Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist for Amazon Web Services (aws blog). He mentioned twitter as his way of “broadcasting” updates to his colleagues and acquaintances about what he’s up to.

It’s a one-to-many way to broadcast what’s up in your life, and keep people informed about you simply and easily. In good “web 2.0″ fashion (in my opinion), Twitter is all about doing a very simple thing–giving interested people status updates–very, very well.

• When you sign up for Twitter, you’ll get a personal website URL where people can read your updates.
• You can then find other people you know, like Jeff, and add them to your friends list (so you will be notified of their updates).
• Browsing around, you’ll find interesting people you may want to keep up with. Even Lord Vader is using twitter these days to keep in touch.
• From there, see how you want to be notified:
• Online
• Email
• Instant Messaging (seems like all platforms are supported)
• Cell Phone/SMS
• Got a website, or blog? Add one of the badges, like the one over there on my sidebar.
• And, you can hack with their API, if you’re a real geek.
• There’s also commands you can SEND to twitter via IM or SMS if you want to do things to your network:
• Turn updates on and off
• “nudge” people (or everyone) for an update
• Invite people to join your network

Social Media Club calls this “EM” or Everywhere Messaging (as opposed to “IM” or Instant Messaging), and they believe it will change how we keep up with and keep in touch with our associates, coworkers, and friends.

EM… has tremendous potential for solving some of the biggest problems I face on a daily basis, and have been thinking about for over a decade, most especially the idea of annotating the world around us and sharing key [insights] about what is happening and what I see as the important matters of the day.

Bottom-Line:

• Get a few people on twitter (maybe you and your super-hip, cool-cat friends) and use it to ping each other with what’s going on.
• Try it with your co-workers, or a that hyper-brainstorming group you hang out with.
• Put the badge on your blog so people know what you’re up to before calling you needlessly.

…Then, you’ll see why it’s such a good tool. At least, Dan Cederholm and I think so.

]]> http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/twitter-me-this-why-hyper-connected-people-need-twitter.htm/feed 4 http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/tips-for-corporate-blogging.htm http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/tips-for-corporate-blogging.htm#comments Fri, 09 Feb 2007 22:20:59 +0000 Robert Merrill
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http://www.utahtechjobs.com/?p=791 Novell’s Bruce Lowry shares some thoughts on Corporate Blogging he gleaned from a meetup he attended in SF last night.

Mauro Lupis list of keys for successful corporate blogging started with passion for the subject, talking to people (not consumers), and being credible. (source)

I would agree, as I think those things have been the foundation of why this blog has been such a thrill as I try to disseminate what I know and what am learning with the community around me.

]]> http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/tips-for-corporate-blogging.htm/feed 0 http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/defining-company-culture.htm http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/defining-company-culture.htm#comments Mon, 15 Jan 2007 03:38:18 +0000 Robert Merrill
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http://www.utahtechjobs.com/?p=769 Last night, I was taught something which has an interesting business application.

It seems so simple when boiled down to its roots like this, but I doubt many managers have used this explanation of why their company’s actual culture sometimes doesn’t match it’s gloriously-framed mission statement.

Your culture is the combination of your organization’s daily, repeated choices.

• “Culture” is made up of collected traditions… what people do and when.
• “Traditions” are made up of collected habits… reasons why things are done are often forgotten. Here, we see the bricks of status-quo being fortified thickly and repetitively.
• “Habits” are simply things done repeatedly. That’s all. They come from the same choice being made to solve the same problem over and over.
• “Choices” are the root of all of this–both choices to do and to not do create habits. Your staff is watching how you react to situations which arise. They will often do what they think you would do (or what you would not do).

Here’s the rub: Once you make certain choices repeatedly enough, or often enough, and without spending enough time showing or explaining situations where you would make that choice differently, your staff will unquestioningly follow the CULTURE you’ve created, even if it goes against how they might act in their personal life, or how they–personally–would want to be treated.

Why? Because they work for you. They represent you. And, especially when it comes to front-line staff, even if they would tell their closest friends that they don’t like working for you, when they are there, they will go to long-lengths to follow what they feel is “policy” even if it hurts you.

This is because they are paid to “do what’s policy”. It’s ingrained in us. And, I believe, people will go get another job if they don’t agree with your policy before they ever, ever raise their hand and ask you why things are the way they are.

[As an example, the Kohl's debacle I wrote about yesterday has absolutely nothing to do with employees actively disobeying the company's mission statement--and everything to do with the obviously sloppy traditions exhibited by in-store staff leads and managers in right on the floor. If the leads and managers wanted this store clean--and actively and constantly cleaned it (from picking up things to firing sloppy employees), this store would be clean.]

On the plus side, leveraging this can also create very powerful cultural traditions in your company if you teach and train them through your own choices and encouraging and rewarding the out-of-bounds things employees may do that support your vision.

How can you put this to work in YOUR organization (office, business, civic group, church or family?)

]]> http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/defining-company-culture.htm/feed 0 http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/10-ways-to-blow-the-interview.htm http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/10-ways-to-blow-the-interview.htm#comments Tue, 02 Jan 2007 20:16:09 +0000 Robert Merrill
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http://www.utahtechjobs.com/?p=765 CareerBuilder.com Editor, Kate Lorenz, posts the following on MSN’s Career Advice.

Information abounds regarding what you should say in an interview. But it can be just as important to realize what not to say. It is also imperative to note that what you say say can be communicated through both your words and actions.

1. You arrive late to the interview.
What it means: “I really don’t care about getting this position.”

Arrive a healthy 15 minutes before your scheduled appointment to give you time to collect your thoughts, review your notes and make a good first impression.

2. You’re rude to the receptionist.
What it means: “I’m difficult to get along with.”

Receptionists are the gate keepers and it’s their job to be the eyes and ears of the company,” cautions Lauren Milligan, founder and CEO of ResuMAYDAY, Inc. Besides, if hired, you may need their cooperation one day.

3. You answer questions with trite or clich responses.
What it means: “I’m just one of the crowd.”

Telling the interviewer you are a perfectionist and expect too much of yourself is sure to elicit a yawn, if not a discreet roll of the eyes, Milligan warns. Prepare potential responses ahead of time to avoid relying on
the usuals.

4. You don’t ask questions.
What it means: “I’m not that interested in your company.”

The interview should be a two-way conversation “to determine if you are the right fit for the company, and if the company is the right fit for you,” Milligan says. Use the interview to gather as much information
about your potential new position as possible.

5. You answer the standard “Tell us about yourself,” with “What would you like to know?”
What it means: “I have nothing special to offer this company.”

This is your opportunity to steer the conversation into areas where you truly shine. Don’t waste this chance by appearing to lack any outstanding qualities you want to share. And please don’t start with where you were born. Focus on your career unless your birthplace is relevant to the job.

6. You use inappropriate language.
What it means: “I’m unprofessional and if it shows in the short span of an interview, imagine what I’ll be like in the office.”

Even if they’re only mild and somewhat acceptable words, there still is no place for them in the interview.

7. You trash-talk your former boss.
What it means: “I have no discretion; I’ll blab any inside information.”

“If you left your prior job on poor terms, you need to put this relationship in a positive light for the interview,” Milligan advises. “Even if your boss was to blame.” You never want to bring negativity or antagonistic emotions into the interview. Keep it positive and upbeat.

8. You ask the interviewer to not contact your former employer.
What it means: “I have something to hide.”

Even if you do not get along with your boss, you can always name someone else in the organization as a reference.

9. You exaggerate your accomplishments or credentials.
What it means: “I’m not good enough on my own merits, so I need to lie to make myself look good.”

A skilled interviewer can easily identify fabrications in your background or experience. State your qualifications with confidence. You don’t have to be Superman to get hired; you just have to be right for the job.

10. You don’t thank the interviewer.
What it means: “I have no manners.”

Forgetting to thank your interviewers in writing for their time can take the luster from even the most stellar interviewee.

JobCentral helps with your job search online.

]]> http://utahtechjobs.com/2007/10-ways-to-blow-the-interview.htm/feed 0 http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/the-revolution-will-not-be-televised.htm http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/the-revolution-will-not-be-televised.htm#comments Thu, 09 Nov 2006 09:21:05 +0000 Robert Merrill
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http://www.utahtechjobs.com/?p=724 (Alternate title for this post: “If you shout your job-ad in the forest, will anyone hear you?“)

A great Utah County company, Mozy, recently held a competition to find and reward top local programming talent with a $10K prize.  Their intention was to use this as an avenue to locate potential employees.  It’s a great idea.

However, in the shakedown, we can all learn something interesting about marketing to and attracting talent and how important it is to get in touch with people through the channel they want to listen to.

Mozy went through great time and (I’m sure) expense to market their showdown, dubbed ‘deathmatch’ to as many programmers as possible. 

• A highly visible billboard was placed along I-15, the only major freeway through Utah County–and seen by hundreds of motorists/hour. 
  

 

• Local T.V. and Newspaper news outlets covered the story deeply, a credit to Mozy’s PR chops.

 

Yet, when local PHP Programming whiz Jon Jensen, partial winner of the $10K prize, blogged about his Deathmatch experience, he teaches us an important lesson about the upcoming professional generation–just because it’s on TV doesn’t mean your audience is listening.

Last Friday I found this gem—a local programming contest with a $10K grand prize. This was the first I’d heard of it, even though it had received quite a bit of local media coverage. So I went to mozy.com and registered for the competition, and the next morning my $10K quest began.

How interesting is it that, with all the media hype–and the expensive billboard–this co-winner of the event found out about it NOT from the news, NOT from the billboard, NOT from a traditional method at all, but from digg, a relatively new social-bookmarking tool wildly popular among the >30 professional/technical set.

Mozy, who has a blog, didn’t leverage it.  And after all their marketing and expense, it was this article by techrockies, which they self-dugg, that Jon picked up on.

Some other interesting notes:

• Take a look at the search string Mozy Deathmatch in Google.  Three of the top 10 results (including the #1and #2 results) came from BLOGS, not the company itself or traditional media.  The 10th one (as of this writing) is from Digg.

 

• It may or may not mean anything, but Jon notes that “[He] was going up against college faculty and professionals with far more experience and knowledge than [himself]“.  Is it possible that Mozy attracted this class of people because of how they marketed their event?  Just a thought…

 

• “Utah Brian” was also a finalist and heard about the event the day before.  He doesn’t share how he heard about it.  Note the interesting discussion in the comments area of his blog between Brian and Jon (who I’ve written about all-along, above) and others. 

 

Bottom-line: In hiring, especially in a tight market, the people you are looking for are not looking for you.  Make a serious study of how the people you are targeting are engaging information and sharing it among themselves.

I purposefully used the title The Revolution Will Not Be Televised to reference an interesting book of the same name showing how Internet communication has radically changed how people are collecting, consuming and commenting on information.

]]> http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/the-revolution-will-not-be-televised.htm/feed 1 http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/tips-for-more-effective-job-postings.htm http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/tips-for-more-effective-job-postings.htm#comments Sat, 04 Nov 2006 11:56:37 +0000 Robert Merrill http://www.utahtechjobs.com/?p=721 I received a newsletter from TheLadders.com (a free-for-recruiters job-board for $100K+ poisitions) detailing some tips on more-effective job postings.

Tips for More Effective Job Postings

Some of these are specific to TheLadders.com, while some are more general, but all will get you a more targeted, qualified response to your job postings.

1. Be Detailed. The more you spell out the details of the position, the more targeted your response will be. Be sure to include as much information as possible about the hiring company and the position. If you’d like to keep the company confidential, be sure to at least include a Company Headline that gives a brief description of this company (ie "Fortune 500 Pharmaceuticals"). If the job doesn’t require a specific location, be sure to label it "Virtual/Travel". This will ensure that your job is seen by all interested candidates.

Remember: a good job description contains the necessary information. A great job description gives job seekers every bit of information they need to decide whether or not they’d like to apply.

2. Highlight Key Information. Don’t be afraid to use bolding to call out your most specific requirements and guidelines for application — make it impossible for job seekers to miss!

We recommend that you not only use bold font to distinguish this key informtion, but also highlight these points at the beginning and/or end of the job description. It’s especially helpful to put strict requirements or instructions at the very end, where they’ll be right above the "apply" button.

3. Start Strong. Always start your job postings with an "attention grabber" or "hook" — something that will pique that candidate’s interest and entice them to read further. Many recruiters that we work swear by this format:

• "Hook"
• Company Description
• Detailed Job Description
• Bulleted List of Application Requirements
• List of Qualities that are Preferred but Not Required
• Bolded List of "Dealbreakers", or "Candidates Need Not Apply If…" (see tip #2 for more on this!)

4. Identify Your Target. Is your goal to reach a broad audience and get a lot of applications? Or would you rather receive a few, very targeted applications? To reach a broader audience and receive a lot of applications, write a more general job posting. If you prefer to narrow your applicant pool and target an exact audience, be very specific and use strong language to identify your ideal candidate.

With these tips, you should be off to the races posting your $100k+ jobs. 

Happy Hiring!

]]> http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/tips-for-more-effective-job-postings.htm/feed 0 http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/private-company-better-recruiting.htm http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/private-company-better-recruiting.htm#comments Sat, 14 Oct 2006 19:10:15 +0000 Robert Merrill
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http://www.utahtechjobs.com/?p=703 Devin Thorpe, Mid Market Maven, gives many reasons for taking your company private–one of them (the sixth one, to be exact) is better recruiting:

The question of public or private impacts recruiting in four areas:

• Options…
• Cash Compensation…
• Focus…
• Scandal Aversion…

I would continue on Thorpe’s point about focus.  For me, working in a company that was private and went public while I was there, I realized a significant difference in my ability–down in the trenches–to execute on my business.  Much of what we did suddenly became clouded by "what would the shareholders think".  It’s not necessarilly bad, but it is different. Keep your eyes open!

Furthermore, suddenly having other company’s experts and analysts poking and prodding at our company financials generated good and bad press.  Having your company dragged through the mud because of third-party analyst predictions can dramatically change your company’s collective mood! 

From a recruiting standpoint, being public does change your chances of attracting talent–because they can spend 30 seconds on Google Finance and find all the good, bad and ugly anybody ever wanted to know about you.

I encourage you to read the entire post and learn more about Thorpe’s reasoning here.  It makes a lot of sense, to me.

]]> http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/private-company-better-recruiting.htm/feed 0 http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/retaining-your-top-talent.htm http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/retaining-your-top-talent.htm#comments Tue, 10 Oct 2006 23:23:07 +0000 Robert Merrill
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http://www.utahtechjobs.com/?p=699 CIO Insight gives some very good advice about what keeps your top-guns on your side when the headhunters come a-calling.

And, no, it’s not just about the money.

In the article, Attracting and Retaining IT Pros: An Idea You May Not Have Thought Of, written by David Foote, there are some nuggets of value that help managers see into the minds of their best people:

Talented, motivated… professionals want three additional things [in addition to good pay]: career advancement and new challenges; a great group of people to work with; and a certain amount of work/life balance. Not just in their current jobs, but especially in the jobs and roles they aspire to two to three years or more down the road. Without a reasonable expectation that they can get satisfaction in these areas at your company, they will find an employer who will satisfy all or most of these immutable needs.

So, what should you do?

The Internet tells me that immutable means: "not subject or susceptible to change or variation in form or quality or nature…" 

In other words, "Write this down.  You’re going to need this from time-to-time."

To answer the question, "what should you do?" Foote gives some very good advice in the article.  To me, what it boils down to is:

• Make a concerted, global effort (within your scope of operations) to be concerned about the people in your team–who they are (and want to be), not just their jobs and what they do for you.
• Sit down with your direct reports and work with them.  Have them do the same for their teams.  They are recruiting future superstars from the ranks of thier staff.   These meetings should be regular (once a month may be too much–every three months may be too sparse).  These meetings should be part formal and informal.
• This will be a joke if you try and do it either all-at-once or without serious, concentrated effort over many, many months, quarters and years.
• Don’t start this without the gut to persevere even when temptation comes to stop or redirect… or worse–get distracted by putting out fires and dealing with those day-to-day emergencies that, in the whole, are meaningless if you lose your top-talent.

]]> http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/retaining-your-top-talent.htm/feed 0 http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/google-reader-gets-facelift.htm http://utahtechjobs.com/2006/google-reader-gets-facelift.htm#comments Fri, 29 Sep 2006 03:26:26 +0000 Robert Merrill
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http://www.utahtechjobs.com/?p=687

I track a lot of websites and blogs–both from people in the recruiting industry, and from business leaders I follow, businesses in the local area, and top-talent in the area that I like to track because I respect their opinions.

VIDEO: See Chris Wetherell, Google Reader Engineer, introduce the new version of the feed reading application.

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