Magic Pot of Jobs

We’ve got an applicant here who has earned himself the nickname “Cheerios.”

The guy calls me up and asks if we can help him find a job. We talk over his experience and decide it’s really not what we’re looking for, but I have him send me a resume to look at anyway.

After talking with my coworkers, however, it becomes clear that this applicant has no manners. Nearly every one of my coworkers has a story about this guy calling and barking, “Tiffany!” into the phone when they answer.

Not, “May I speak to Tiffany please?” or “Hi there, is Tiffany available?” but “Tiffany!”

Now, my coworkers are smart-asses, every one. Responses to this have included, “I’m sorry, did you mean you’d like to speak to Tiffany, please?” and “No, this is AIMEE, can I help you?” (They’re polite smart-asses, at least.)

He doesn’t get the hint, and either barks, “Tiffany!” again, or snaps, “I want to talk to Tiffany!”

My partner took the call for me yesterday, and he proceded to yell at her that he had sent me a resume and I was going to provide feedback and he was calling to speak to me, not her.

We were discussing this at the end of the day, that long, dark teatime of the working soul after 4 PM when your brain is fried and you’re looking for something non-challenging to do.

Someone remarked that he was asking for me the way that 2 year olds ask for things. Sitting on the floor, I yelled, “CHEERIOS!”

Yeah, like that!

So now the guy is called “Cheerios,” because he asks for me the way a 2 year old demands Cheerios. You expect it from toddlers, because they haven’t learned how to string sentences together yet and they’re just starting to learn the concept of “manners.” That’s what toddlerhood is for.

It’s not so tolerable from an adult trying to get a job.

*Note: Nothing in this entry is intended to defame Cheerios cereal or General Mills. I’m a big fan of Cheerios in all its tasty incarnations and eat them for breakfast at work with my unit partner regularly. Nothing but love for the oaty breakfast food here.

I just had a candidate come in here, fill out half the application, get up, grab his bag, and walk out of the office, without a word to anyone.

Weird.

I had a job for him, too.

I know, I know, vow to write better, post more, and then… disappear for a week. Sorry dudes.

But I wanted to draw your attention to this Washington Post piece about spider/scrape job sites. It’s an interesting idea, and the benefits to both employers and jobseekers are obvious.

Of course, Monster is going to hate sites like SimplyHired and Indeed, because it’ll no longer make sense to pay $400 to post a job on Monster.

I’m still formulating my opinion on this one. On one hand, the benefits to jobseekers and employers are obvious. And Monster’s own Terms of Use state that all user-submitted content remains the property of the user who submitted it, so it’s not as though Monster’s content is being stolen. I suppose technically it’s theft of content from the employer, but employers choose Monster to get wide exposure for their posting, so it’s hard to imagine that they’d object.

On the other hand, the sites pretty much are spidering Monster’s own database (forbidden by the TOU) essentially to undercut them. That seems shady.

I love the idea of a pay-per-click, search engine-style model for paying for job listing exposure. It seems like it’ll save all kinds of time and money for everyone except for the pay-per-posting sites they compete with. And I love the idea of competing business models- I firmly believe that the model that provides the best value for the money will succeed, even if it isn’t even the best known. I also firmly believe that businesses which do not provide good value for the money deserve to fail in the face of competition from worthier businesses. So I’m not worried about poor ol’ Monster’s success in the face of a new model for posting jobs.

I’m just not sure it’s fair to use Monster’s own system to clobber it.

UPDATE Dave McClure of SimplyHired has stopped by to clarify their use of Monster listings in the comments on this entry. I encourage you to read his remarks and consider them in your own opinion-forming. Thanks, Dave!

Speaking of Recruiting.com, Jim Durbin has a great post up over there about dealing with clients and candidates as a recruiter.

Look people, I’ve said it before, and now Jim has said it, but let me lay it out one more time.

Recruiters make money by putting people to work. It sounds like Jim is on a commission program, while I’m on a salary-plus-bonus scale, but the principle is the same. It is in our financial interest to help you find a job, but not just any job- the RIGHT job, the one that will make your new employer a repeat client, the one that will have you telling your friends about the great new job we helped you find.

And while my friend Chris is right that there are some jackass recruiters out there, people who shouldn’t be allowed near a job description, no recruiter worth his or her salt will waste the client’s time, his/her own time, and your time by blasting your resume out for every job description that happens to have a couple of words in common with your resume.

A good recruiter will be honest with you about what your prospects are, the kind of environment you’ll fit into, and how best to present yourself. You may indeed be really smart and a quick study, but if my client is looking for experience you don’t have, you aren’t getting the job and I’m not going to look like an idiot by submitting you when you don’t have the required qualifications. As Jim says, “Recruiters don’t get paid to waste time.”

It’s a little bit discouraging to discover that someone else is doing what you’re doing, only better. Meet Recruiting.com, a collection of recruiting blogs and bloggers who have been at this a lot longer than I have.

And it’s only discouraging for a minute really. Then it becomes an incentive to better your own performance. So thanks for challenging me, Recruiting.com. I’m enjoying your posts a great deal.

The company I work for has a certification program that everyone has to go through if they want to be promoted. It’s a few tests of operational knowledge and a couple of online trainings. The idea is that you have to be there at least a year and have a performance review rating of “good” or better before you can become certified. If you’ve been there less than a year, you can request to have the service duration requirement waived.

The catch is, you have to write the “business case” for why you should receive this special treatment. A business case. For why the company should send me a certificate and a pin, and allow me to put the word “Certified” on my business card 6 month early.

We’re taught to be modest and not to brag about our accomplishments, which is a nice ideal for social settings, but can screw us a bit in business. In interviews, resumes, client presentations, we have to sell ourselves as much as is necessary to achieve our desired objective. But we still don’t want to appear arrogant.

So how do we accomplish it?

First, there are numbers. Everyone wants high-producing people who work ahead of deadlines. I wrote about how I achieved the productivity standard of X dollars for a new employee in 7 months instead of twelve. So talk about how at your previous position, you finished a project a month ahead of deadline and 15% under budget. This works in sales, too- talk about how much time and money your product or service will save the client.

Second, understand how you can solve an employer’s problems. It’s a rare company where they hire on extra people just because they have some extra money in the budget. Companies have problems that they believe can be solved by additional staff. So what do you bring to the table? In my business case, I wrote that since I have recently become the most senior technical recruiter in my office and am participating in the training of the others, it would make sense for me to be certified, lending me extra credibility in that role. Give the employer an additional way to think about how you would fit in at the organization. What’s special about you that will solve their problems?

It’s not enough to present your qualifications and expect that the employer will connect the dots to see what a great employee you’d be. You have to show them all the reasons that you are uniquely qualified for their opening.

It’s getting to be an interesting time here in the Pot O’ Jobs. My boss has given the go-ahead for us to pursue the kinds of businesses that will be hiring bloggers. We’ve started to see those positions get posted and believe that in DC of all places, there will only be more.

I’m very excited about this, because I was just thinking the other day that the network admin/programmer side of tech culture isn’t as interesting to me as the citizen’s media/blog culture aspect. Don’t get me wrong, I still love what I do, but I’m positively salivating at the addition of this area of specialization to our practice.

This means that I’m going to be adding some of my blog projects to my professional bio. In the division I’m in, we like to talk about how each of us is from the industry we’re placing into, so we know what our clients are talking about and can recruit intelligently for it. So to demonstrate my expertise in blogging, Magic Pot of Jobs and Metroblogging DC will become part of the bio sheet that our prospects get.

But that also means that I’ll be handing over the URLS to those projects to my boss’s boss’s bosses, as well as my clients and talent. Great. Did you notice that prominent link to my personal blog in the very first entry? Lovely.

So in order to avoid getting Dooced, I’ve got to do a little thinking about how to maintain my unique (irreverent and snarky) voice without crossing that thin, barely visible line between, “stuff that’s fresh and interesting” and “stuff that’ll get me fired.”

Of course, I could just be flattering myself by thinking I’m all that interesting, so hey, this could all be moot.

Anyway, first things first. People I tell stories about shouldn’t recognize themselves if they come here. So that will probably change… you’ll find that some of my stories are a little lighter on detail, or that I’m using the access control over at the personal blog a little more frequently.

Next, I need to post consistently. More (quality) posts == more useful blog. I’ve got three blogs to maintain now, so I need to budget time each day to posting.

Looks like I’ve got some things to figure out. I hope you guys will come along for the ride.

I’ve worked for several companies that need this list: 10 Steps to Better Meetings.

And while you’re improving your life, check out Lifehacking Your Grocery List.

I’ve had a request for my thoughts on cover letters. To tell you the truth, in my line of work, I don’t see many cover letters. One of my coworkers does all the incoming applicant screening, so by the time I see a resume, there’s not a cover letter attached. When rresumes are sent to me, they’re usually from people I’ve just spoken to on the phone.

But I do see just enough cover letters to know that the most common problem with them is the same problem that plagues Objective statements on resumes. That is, they’re BORING and generic.

Don’t just ramble about being a hard worker who is flexible to all kinds of environments. Don’t write a cover letter that you could have sent to 50 other companies. Write one that tells me a little about what kind of person you are, what you’ll be like to work with. Here’s a hint: Everyone and their grandma tells me that they’re a hard worker, customer service-oriented, and a quick learner. Tell me something that everyone else isn’t telling me.

While both resumes and cover letters ought to sound very professional, it’s important that they give the sense that there’s a real person behind them, rather than a drone with a list of skills. Joel Spolsky rants pretty effectively on both cover letters and resumes.