Magic Pot of Jobs

Recruiting.com makes an excellent point today about what happens when corporations go nuts on the filtering and start blocking out huge swaths of blogs- employees feel more free to mouth off, and the company becomes unable to see what’s being said about them.

Scoble scoffs at employee blogging policies that are more specific than “Be Smart,” but frankly, Scoble has the luxury of working at Microsoft, most of whose employees by definition are internet-savvy folk who are well aware of the risks of blogging about one’s employer.

The problem, of course, is that the idea of employees having the ability to share their opinions in front of a worldwide audience is scary to corporate PR departments. It’s not that PR departments are venal or clueless, it’s that branding and PR have always been about controlling your message, and suddenly every one of your employees potentially worldwide exposure for whatever they want to say about your company. Yikes!

Microsoft has actually handled it in a pretty good way- they’ve gone so far as to build blogging tools into their developer network sites and encourage their employees to blog. They’ve taken the Transparency tack, and it’s serving them well, brand-wise. GM is another company that is trying to use blogging for its benefit.

The challenge for companies is to get over the fear that accompanies lack of control. The reward is that saying, “We are confident in the quality of what we do and in the way we treat our employees,” is a powerful message in itself. Concerned that a few disgruntled employees (and no matter how good you are, there will always be a few) can torpedo the whole thing? How about a CEO blog? How about a blog from your internal recruiting department? How better to have your company recognized as a leader in its field than by sharing information about industry trends and predictions on a corporate blog?

Steph and I have returned from our December holidays, my little MagicPotHeads, and while we’re all recovering from our holiday food comas, here’s something sure to sap the holiday spirit right out of you.

Fifty people have been indicted in connection with a scheme to defraud the Red Cross out of thousands upon thousands of dollars of aid meant for Katrina victims. Nice, huh?

What does this have to do with the Magic Pot of Jobs, you ask? The workers involved in the fraud weren’t Red Cross employees, they weren’t volunteer aid workers, they were temporary employees contract and subcontracted through Spherion, a major staffing company.

The fraud went like this: Usually, the Red Cross is either setting up shelters or meeting individually with disaster victims to determine what kind of immediate monetary aid is needed. But in this case, there were so many evacuees being sent so many places, that the old methods weren’t going to work. So they contracted out to 2XCL of North Carolina, which provides both consulting and staffing services, but isn’t large enough to staff call centers of that magnitude. 2XCL contracted out to Spherion, which is large enough to provide the people, but generally won’t build the call center for you.

The Spherion temporary employees found ways to exploit weaknesses in the process to divert funds for themselves and took claim numbers to Western Unions near their homes to pick up the funds. The Red Cross noticed the fraud when they saw how many pickups were being made in areas where there were few evacuees.

None of this should be construed as a slam on 2XCL or Spherion. The realities of the situation of hiring large numbers of temporary staff for relatively low-skill, low-wage work are these:

- Temp agencies deal in people who don’t have permanent jobs. Most of them are wonderful people who just need some more experience and skills before getting a regular job, or people who just prefer to temp, but the unpleasant fact is that there are going to be some people who don’t have jobs because they are less attractive as employees.
- In an emergency situation like this, there’s just less time to screen each individual applicant to avoid hiring these undesirable employees. You can run criminal background checks on each of them, but they don’t always turn up relevant information.
- If a system can be abused, it will be. Some people are dishonest, and some people just don’t see how that sort of thing harms others.

So, what can employers who need large-scale projects like this do to get the best results?

- Require criminal background screenings for all talent placed. They’re worth the money and don’t delay the process too much. They don’t filter everything out, but they’ll filter out anyone who already has a record.
- Try to contract with staffing services who have a large presence in the geographical areas where you need the people. They’ll likely already have a good talent pool that they know well to start while they try to get you some more.
- If you have to contract with a consulting provider to help put something like a call center together, they probably won’t have an extensive staffing practice. So when you negotiate what you’ll pay for individual employees, negotiate a low markup rather than a low hourly rate. If you negotiate a low hourly rate, your contractor’s markup as well as the subcontractors’ markups have to go into that number, potentially leaving a very low pay rate for the employees. Low pay rates mean that higher-caliber employees won’t want to take the positions, preferring take assignments that pay in line with their skills. When the pay rates are artificially low, you tend to get employees who can’t get better paying jobs. When bill rates are artificially low, there is less incentive for the subcontractor to encourage their best people to take your assignment, and they’ll send those people where they can bill higher rates. Negotiating a lower markup for the contractor means you free up the subcontractor to pay and bill rates that are more in line with the market, and you’ll get better employees out of the deal.

In the past few weeks here at the MISF, we’ve had a few candidates walk in and want to discuss career opportunities without a resume. Two of the people that I’ve spoken with became insulted that we asked to see one. “But I have a wealth of professional experience,” was one reply; the other applicant wanted us to go to his website to learn more about him.

I’m unclear as to what the block is about resumes. A resume gives me a quick, basic overview of an applicant’s professional history. It’s the foundation for our discussion about career options.

I also must have one to send to my client. I will, of course, call my client to talk about a candidate in more detail and offer up information that may not be reflected in a resume, such as an applicant’s personality. But at the end of the day, my client still needs the piece of paper in her hands to see where a candidate has worked before, what skills he has, and some clear evidence as to why he’s qualified to do a job.

I recently had a thought about the value of resumes: think of them as an introduction, not as what’s going to land you a job. An interview makes or breaks a professional opportunity, but a resume is what piques the hiring manager’s interest enough to learn more about you.

I hit on a new measure of a person’s charm and social grace the other day as I was running late to a client meeting- Minutes.

How charming and pleasant a person is can be measured by the number of minutes late they can be for a meeting and still convince you to forgive them.

I always figured I was about 15 minutes of charming- I’m pleasant, I’ve got the little-and-cute-girl thing going for me, and I’m pretty funny.

Tuesday, I was 20 minutes late for a meeting, but the client forgave me anyway. Clearly going to that meeting on how to thrive at networking events paid off in an extra 5 minutes of charm.

So, I seem to have fixed the problem whereby Safari and Firefox users on the Mac could submit a comment and still not have it show up on the blog.

However, what I don’t know is whether I’ve fixed the problem that was preventing IE for Windows users from entering anything in the Name field, and I can’t test it out for a week, because I’m in a house full of other Mac users (these are indeed my people).

So if someone using Windows IE could check that out for me, I’d appreciate it. If you can’t leave a comment, you can email me at tiffany -at- baxendell.com to tell me.

Tiffany and I like to joke around the office that we *heart* various things: wifi, underground fiber optics, david allen, wiki, adrian brody. We’re geeky to the point that we make the shape of a heart with our fingers when we say so. So imagine my pleasure when I ran across “I *heart* my job” buttons!

I’m one of the lucky people, in that I truly enjoy what I do, who I do it with, and who I do it for. But for many years, and through many bad jobs, I didn’t think that going to work would ever be enjoyable.

Like anything else, a good job is worth the wait, and worth the time, effort, networking, resume blitzing, haggling, negotiating, and more that it can take to get one. In my line of work, I realize that sometimes getting a job that you love is not always possible right away. There are bills to be paid, obligations to be met that preclude you from finding your 9-5 bliss.

But it *is* possible to find something that you like more than you dislike.

When Tiff and I meet with interview candidates, in addition to asking them what they want to do, we also ask people to consider what job tasks they absolutely don’t want to do (within reason). Our thought is that it helps people to examine what it was about past jobs that didn’t work for them. Don’t like dealing with budgets? Say so. Not big into working on teams? That’s OK. Just be honest and up front about what you want to do.

Oh, and if you’re interested in the “I *heart* my job” button go to http://hellomynameisscott.blogspot.com/2005/12/i-heart-my-job-what-about-you.html.

I’m at my fiancé’s family’s home for the holidays this year, and my future father-in-law has suggested a new photo to base the blog template on.

A Range Rover, parked with some DC landmark in the background, with people in suits slung over the hood and strapped to the grill. Me, standing proudly in front, wearing a pith helmet and carrying a cell phone and a dayplanner.

What do you think?

Voting ends tonight for Recruiting.com’s blog awards. As a reminder, MPOJ has been nominated for Best Third Party Recruiting Blog.

Enjoy.

I received a job description today from a prominent local company. The description is in Comic Sans.

Why do people in business use Comic Sans for official correspondence? Did you want me to laugh and smile at your network administrator requirements?

In addition to looking amateur, Comic Sans is hard to read, as its edges are not uniform.

When choosing a font for a resume, a cover letter, or any document that will represent you or your company, it’s best to err on the side of conservatism. Times New Roman, Courier, Tahoma and Arial are easy to read, both on screen and in print. They give your document a clean, polished, and uniform appearance.

I’m not entirely opposed to working outside of this font set, especially for resumes for graphic designers or other creative professionals. However, use discretion. Make sure that you print out your resume to see how what is on your screen translates to paper. (I can’t reiterate enough how often recruiters/HR folks still print resumes.) If you have the opportunity, try looking at any non-standard font choices on different screens. What may look crisp and beautiful on your Mac at home could be muddy on the hiring manager’s PC.

Recruiting.com’s post about paying for the employment process reminded me of something that comes up occasionally in my recruiting efforts.

A reputable recruiting firm will never ask a jobseeker to pay for the firm’s services in representing her. Recruiting and staffing firms make their money by charging fees to the companies looking for candidates, not candidates looking for companies. If you meet with a recruiter who asks you for money, get up and walk out. I don’t trust anyone who wants to take money from people who don’t have jobs just to help them find one- it reeks of taking advantage of people’s desperation.