Archive for the 'Recruitment' Category

#TRULondon and the World of Graduate Recruitment

Published February 14, 2011 Job Hunting , Recruitment , Students 3 Comments
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So I know I’ve written mostly about my students recently – apologies if that’s not what you come here for! Indulge me once more though if you will…

Next week (17th Feb to be precise) some of the Middlesex University Bright Futures committee and I will be attending #TRULondon.  Sadly our attendance wll be a bit limited due to the raft of presentations and work due to be completed that week, however we’re incredibly excited to be coming and will be running a track on Thursday afternoon about what it’s like to be a student tackling the graduate recruitment processes these days. Well. Not me. I have almost finished my BA in Recruitment Practice but, you know, I’m not wholly sure I’ll be done in time for graduation this year… :s

Final year students face some huge challenges at the best of times: Slogging through the toughest year of their studies in addition to job hunting (though not as you and I know it) and often juggling part-time work and family commitments as well.

To you and I, job hunting probably means tweaking your CV a bit and labouring over a nice covering letter. Now this is work enough, but students have it even harder: The application forms for a lot of graduate schemes are projects unto themselves! Highly reflective, essay-style questions that take time and work to complete. If (IF!) you make it through the first round screening then there’s a good chance you’ll have to sit a raft of skills tests – literacy, numeracy and sometimes logic too. Now I’ve never sat any of these for real myself, but I’ve done plenty of practice ones and let me tell you now that all common sense goes out the window when you see a little clock ticking in the corner of the screen and a raft of numbers in front of you! I can only imagine how much more stressful they are when you’re trying to do your best to get onto a scheme with a company you really want to be a part of! Then there’s the interviews, the assessment centres and, if the stars align, maybe a job at the end of it all! I can’t begin to tell you how many hours work go into each and every graduate scheme application.

But obviously there’s not just the big schemes, and that’s often what a lot of students fail to realise and where universities, friends and family can really add some value. All those wonderful SME’s out there who could benefit from a bright, enthusiastic grad and vice versa!

The single biggest hurdle I’ve come across when working with students has been getting them to realise that, no matter what company a person works for, they are just that: A person. We get employees to come in and talk to the students wherever possible and I also like to drag them along to networking events and so on when I can. The feedback is always resounding: They are just normal, nice people! Who knew, eh!? ;)

Aside from taking the fear away a little, the networking is fantastic. It’s so great to be able to talk to and get advice from someone who’s shoes you might like to be in a few years from now. It’s nice to hear real stories and to know you’re not the only person out there who’s found it tough. It’s also great when they identify that, actually, they have friends and family already in the industry who might be able to help them too!

The other big challenge I often face is getting students to see the value of what they do. One girl I spoke to the other week had been running her own dance business for years but it wasn’t even on her CV! Despite marketing it herself, sorting out the finances, taking lessons, working with schools, choreographing and hosting events… She’d mentioned it in passing under Hobbies & Interests on her CV and that was it. All that amazing business experience not mentioned anywhere because she didn’t consider it to be a “real job”, just something she enjoyed doing and that she happened to make a bit of money out of!

We all need to do more to help the next generation of business men and women. Many big companies won’t even come to our university because we’re not Russell Group or one of their target uni’s, and many of the students don’t have the billion UCAS points required to even apply to some of the big schemes due to personal circumstances. I understand why things are as they are, but as one person said in one of the higher ed employability forums this week: How is that not discrimination?!

I hate the term “employability” though. The meaning gets so warped that I don’t even know what people mean when they say it half the time! Judgements are made on so much more than skills and sometimes I think that being employable just means being able to distinguish yourself from everyone else! But these are all the things we will be discussing at #TRULondon this week and we really hope you’ll join us for the debate! :)

In addition to myself, you can meet six wonderful young men and women from Middlesex University, all of whom have done me incredibly proud this year:

Top 100

Published February 6, 2011 Job Hunting , Recruitment , Students 1 Comment
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So 100 was a good number. Not an exact number, but a pretty close estimate. It was the number of attendees the Middlesex Bright Futures Society had at their first event the other week and it’s a number I’m very proud of!

I try not to get overly involved in the day to day running of the society – I have plenty of experience organising events and working in the corporate world. The idea is for the committee to get as hands-on as possible and just use me to bounce ideas off and steer things back on track if needs be (not that this ever seems to happen!) so, while I was involved in the event, I was hardly a key player. From room booking to catering to marketing to inviting corporate sponsors, I was really impressed with the way the committee pulled together to organise such an awesome event! Everyone played a part and played to their strengths!

The format for the first event was kept as simple as possible. As it’s the first year of having a Bright Futures Society on campus at Middlesex University, we needed to hammer home what the society was about and what the students can get out of it, rather than being too creative early on. So the format was simple: Three corporate speakers, talking about their company, their experiences and what they look for in graduates when they’re recruiting.

Thanks to Julius Kessy and Kenneth Izevbigie, we ultimately had a rep from Centrica, one from the ACCA and two from IBM. I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed all three presentations! I suppose that was a little presumptuous of me, but it’s true…

Both Centrica and IBM sent employees who were former students at Middlesex, which was an excellent move. The students identified instantly with the speakers and it was great to see such success stories taking the time to come back and spread the word to current students! It was also lovely to see Joakim Feltborg again, having worked with him the previous year – oh how the tables have turned! :)

Centrica surprised me with the versatility of their scheme. They only require a 2:2 (fairly unheard of) and have no hang-ups about UCAS points – something which I am quite passionate about for a variety of reasons! They judge applicants almost entirely on the calibre of their application and where they are at in their lives now. I thought this was an incredibly refreshing approach and, as the presenter was clearly passionate about the company and the graduate scheme, this only made them all the more appealing!

ACCA surprised me because I’m not an accounting/finance person and, while the information wasn’t particularly relevant to me, they still managed to keep it interesting and informative!

IBM, frankly, left me very much wanting to work for the company! They had sent two reps – one on the graduate scheme and another on her placement year there. They did an energetic tag team presentation, covering all areas of the company, schemes and company culture.

We had over 75 student attendees in the end (I say over because, although 75 signed in, there were quite a few who sneaked in through the back and side doors of the lecture theatre without registering), plus a range of lecturers and careers/placement staff, plus myself and the committee, which totally to something in the region of 100 attendees in the end. I don’t know how this compares to other societies, but I thought it was an excellent number!

We are planning our next event to be a more hands-on affair with some business games and the like. There is lots to do between now and March but I have no doubt the committee will do a sterling job! :)

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If you would like to meet the Middlesex Bright Futures Committee, we will be leading a track on graduate recruitment at #TRULondon on Thursday 17th March. Come along and say hello!

Don’t be a Smug Git

Published October 5, 2010 Human Resources , Recruitment 1 Comment
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So I like to think I’m reasonably tolerant of cold calls from recruiters. They are calls that I myself sometimes have to make and I hate when people give me  the run-around rather than just saying from the word go that they’re not interested. But you know what? If you’re going to cold call any company, then try and retain some form of professionalism and don’t be a smug, arrogant git!

The website of my recruitment-related employer often attracts agency phone calls. We’re very niche and, while we do often recruit in-house, we also recruit for external positions and, if you don’t look at our website properly, it can be an easy mistake to make.

Of course; if you read the website properly it’s screamingly apparent…

So anyway, yesterday I had a phone call from an agency (who shall remain nameless… for now!) touting for business. I didn’t have to, but I took the call. The guy made his pitch, spoke about a specific role we were advertising for, told me how he had looked at our website (looked perhaps, but not read…), and asked whether we’d be interested in utilising his services. Though he had read the job ad, he had clearly done no further research on the company. He didn’t understand what we were or what we did. I explained that we wouldn’t be interested and why. I explained what the company is about how we work. I was, in my humble opinion, perfectly polite, friendly and helpful – if you know me then you’ll know it’s not generally my style not to be.

At the end of the conversation – clearly annoyed by his lack of success – he opted to take the sarcastic, smug approach and closed with “Oh, I see. Well in that case, I suspect the job you’re advertising is for XXX company – thanks for the heads up on that!” [Note: For this to really work, when you imagine him saying it in your head, you have to imagine a really smug, stupid voice and, at the end, a really fake, self-satisfied laugh]

Well there was no need to speak to me like that. And, actually, it wasn’t for XXX company at all…

…But thanks for the lead! ;)

Trust Me… I’m an Estate Agent!

Published April 21, 2010 Recruitment 2 Comments
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So (I keep starting my posts with “so”, sorry) Mr J and I are debating moving house at the moment (long boring story) and we’re starting to get some valuations done.

Now I know recruitment people have a bad rep, but surely their biggest rivals are estate agents?! If we had the time and inclination (neither of which we do) we’d love to try something like Tepilo but sadly its looks as though we’re going to be beholden to the agents.

So the valuations are underway, but even from the off we struggled to select which agents to even invite round to look at the place. We’ve viewed a few houses ourselves (with mixed success) but the levels of service vary so heavily from agent to agent.

A little summary for you…

Agent 1: By far my favourite. We’ve viewed two properties with them and both agents stood out. They didn’t push us, let us take our time, answered our questions (seemingly) honestly even if the answer wasn’t really positive. But neither was pushy at all. And while I like that as a buyer, I’m not sure how I feel about that as a seller… Do houses really sell themselves?

Agent 2: What a wide boy! Rocked up late and (clearly late for his next appointment) ferried us round the house in 5mins flat. Bragged about all the sales he’d made that week and was more interested in trying to sell ours for us.

Agent 3: Talk about disinterested! While I concede that she was something like 8 months pregnant and it was a Sunday, I have never seen anyone less interested! The house had SO much potential and she failed to point out 99% of what I (Joe Public) could even spot. Mr J told me later that he’d had to haggle just to get a viewing on it, such was her disinterest.

Agent 4: The owner was showing the property (always uncomfortable IMO, but fair enough). He was expecting us at 12. We were expecting to be shown round at 5. You can imagine how well that went down…

Agent 5: Never called us back to confirm a viewing we requested. Nice tactic.

Agent 6: we’ve avoided like the plague after the atrocious experience we had last time. They sell a lot of flats (or maybe they don’t and that’s why there’s so many on their database…) so we’ve asked them to do a valuation. We already regret that decision. We’ve had about 8 calls in 4 days from them. Mr J sends them straight to voicemail now and debating suing them for harassment! ;)

I’ve never had many dabblings with recruiters. What I have has been annoying to say the least, but I have faith, because I too am a recruiter and I blindly refuse to believe they can all be bad. But if estate agents are an equal comparison and my experience is anything to go by then I have a new understanding… Where’s the trust? Where’s the honesty? Why is it I want none of these people to sell my house?! And if I had the same kind of experience with recruiters why would I want them to help me find staff?!

That Little Thing Called Communication

Published March 15, 2010 Recruitment , Uncategorized 6 Comments
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So I have asthma. Not really bad asthma, but bad enough. I have a blue inhalor for attacks and red one for preventative use (I know, I know, they’re usually brown, but the brown ones make me worse for some reason?!) I’m not very good at using the red one – I just can’t seem to integrate it into my daily routine – so more often than not I let it get too bad and end up reaching for the blue one.

I’ve had asthma since I was 15 or 16 (half my life, almost!) and I can’t remember a time when my blue inhalor wasn’t a Ventolin. As the asthma sufferers out there will know, Ventolin is the brand of choice when it comes to reactive inhalors. They’re made by GSK and somehow have taken over the market. There are actually different types of Ventolin inhalor, but Salbutamol is the active ingredient in all of them, and it’s actually also available unbranded as a “generic medicine”, not just as Ventolin.

A couple of months ago I did an anonymous survey about my Ventolin inhalor. The idea was to find out how I’d feel about receiving a generic version instead. I hadn’t really thought about it before – as I say, I can’t actually remember a time when I haven’t been given Ventolin. The survey was quite thought provoking and the long and short of it was that I decided I’d be happy with a generic Salbutamol product, so long as it was identified to me by the Pharmacist.

Well guess what turned up in my collection from the Pharmacist the other week? A generic Salbutamol inhalor! And guess how I feel? Pretty naffed off  to be honest! I’ve gotta say, the fact that neither the Pharmacist or one of their assistants saw fit to take two (count ‘em!) minutes out of their day to explain to me that, though it wasn’t a Ventolin, it’ll do the same thing, is really rubbish communication IMO! If it weren’t for the fact I’d done a survey on this very topic the other month, I would genuinely have believed that they’d issued me with the wrong prescription. I’d have taken it back down there and told them as much, and then I’d have been really mad that I’d gone all the way down there to change it when I found out it didn’t need changing.

I wonder how many people went back and questioned what they were issued? I wonder how much time they wasted with confused, angry customers when they could have taken just a minute or two to explain the situation?

If you’re a regular sufferer of something (anything) then the chances are you know and understand your medication quite well, so to have it changed on you without explanation is not good customer service. I think this is true of anything – if you have regular customers with expectations then it’s important that you meet them. And if you can’t meet them, or if you have to change a service or product that you offer for whatever reason, then you need to manage your customers’ expectations and communicate the change to them.

I go out of my way to give my custom to an independent Pharmacy because I think it’s important to support independent companies (especially with the likes of Tesco, Sainsbury and other big chains all diversifying and dominating the markets) but I’ve got to say, I’m really unimpressed by the communication in this instance and, if it happens again, I’ll be getting my prescriptions elsewhere…

</rant>

More Un- Stuff!

Published February 24, 2010 Recruitment , Social Media 8 Comments
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Photo courtesy of Tristan Greaves

So you’re all up to speed on my TRU Source experience now, I trust! And so to days two and three! In case you missed them I have a selection of decent photos here, and some rubbishy mobile ones here. Or they’re on Facebook too.

My first taste of an unconference was TRU London I in November of last year. It was totally different to TRU London II in many respects. For a start, I think the venue has a big impact on the feel of an event: TRU I was in a massive atrium-style room in the Barclays Building at Canary Wharf, and had little pods where the tracks were held. The pods were too small really and the acoustics for anything non-pod were pretty abominable so I think Bill and Geoff were right to change venues. TwitJobSearch provided the Soho venue this time, but having the rooms so far apart did make it feel a little less joined up though, IMO. I didn’t always know what was going on where and, if you got a bit bored or fancied a change, then it wasn’t quite so easy to sneak off elsewhere, as office security was fairly tight! I did, however, feel the big room was very conducive to networking. There were plenty of seats, a Twitter Fountain of #trulondon tweets, refreshments and so on.

Track-wise, I also felt that things were a lot more interactive this time. At TRU I it felt to me as though it was mostly the track leaders doing the talking, but at TRU II there was a lot more interaction and opinion sharing, which was really nice.

I attended a variety of (official) tracks including:

  • The Candidate Experience
  • The Future of Recruitment
  • Recruiting Communities
  • Employee Vs Employer Branding
  • Sourcing
  • Social Media Circus

As well as some more unofficial ones including:

  • The Unattending Track (a personal favourite!)
  • The Pub Track

And I also attended an HR Happy Hour radio show with Steve Boese and met a ridiculous number of wonderful people from the UK and overseas - some of whom were new to me and some of whom were familiar in name and avatar if nothing else! To me, while the learning and sharing of ideas is obviously key, a big part of this kind of events is about the networking and that is one area in which TRU London II delivered 100%!

The organisation wasn’t perfect on day one, but by day two it felt as though things had been ironed out. I actually much preferred day two for a variety of reasons – for a start it felt more relaxed, there were less people so it was a bit less chaotic, and it just felt more… well… unconferency! I also won a Flip Video Camera from Jobsite which increased my seratonin levels somewhat! :)

So it was a busy few days, all in all, and there’s too much content to talk about for one blog post, so once I’ve assimilated everything and tried some new ideas out I’ll report back on my learning from my three days of TRU events. In the meantime though, there’s a few little thank you messages I’d like to pass on:

Thank you…

  • To Bill Boorman and Geoff Web for organising the event;
  • To Jobsite for my Flip Cam;
  • To Peter Gold for sharing (IMO) the most excellent ideas, all of which I intend to use;
  • To Matt Alder and Sara Headworth for the never ending and highly amusing soundbites at the Unattending Track;
  • To my twitter buddy Mervyn Dinnen for keeping me in a constant supply of lattes, smoothies and diet cokes, despite receiving not one drink in return! (Next time it’s on me – promise!)
  • To everyone who RT’d my copious tweets;
  • To all my non-recruitment Twitter followers who didn’t unfollow me!

See you next time! :)

Unlearn

Published February 23, 2010 Recruitment 9 Comments
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Photo courtesy of Craig Fisher

So last week was, for me at least, three days of TRU events; all arranged by Bill Boorman and Geoff Webb. First of all there was TRU Source, and then there was two days of TRU London. And what a fab three days it was!

But let’s start with TRU Source, and I’ll do a separate post for TRU London…

Wednesday saw me hauling my suitcase up some narrow stairs in an office in Covent Garden (actually, that’s somewhat of a lie – Brendan Murphy carried both mine and his bags most of the way up… What a gent! :) ) to be met with a room overflowing with people. The group was split into two and (on the grounds that there was no way I was lugging my bag back down the stairs, plus it seemed unkind to ask Brendan to do it for me again having only just got it to the third floor) I stayed put!

We started the morning with Marie Journey and Jim Stroud. What a pair! Now I hate to get all gushy, but I have to say, TRU Source was an excellent event IMHO and I loved everyone there. Both Marie and Jim just had this unsurpressable energy and passion for sourcing, combined with an infinite knowledge of resources. I’d cleverly left my notebook and my netbook in the bottom of my suitcase so resorted to taking notes on the back of my old shopping lists until my kindly neighbour lent me half his notepad (and believe me I needed it!)

We broke for lunch early (Marie was hungry!) and had a chance for networking and chit chat. I got my first hug from Jim Stroud (the first of many, I might add – he’s such a hugslut!) and then Geoff Web did a bit of ad libbing and a Q&A session with us while we waited for the second session to start.

The afternoon brought with it a change of faces and we had another fantastic session with Katharine Robinson and Irina Shamaeva. Irina is, like, the goddess of all things boolean and was a fountain of search knowledge! Katharine was the UK sourcing representative and had oodles of useful rousources for us to look at. She also started the session with an excellent example of why you should be searching for people and not for CV’s – only two people in the room had current CV’s online! And there must have been over 20 of us!

I’m not even going to begin to tell you everything I learned because a) it will take too long b) you should have gone yourself, and c)… well there isn’t a c), sorry. I have to say though that I thoroughly enjoyed the day and came away feeling at least 5 IQ points more intelligent than I went in!

TRU Source was, IMHO, rather overshadowed by TRU London and I think that was a real shame. While TRU London was a fantastic event, TRU Source was an unsurpassed learning experience and I think it deserved it’s own moment of glory. Despite spending some six hours with five of the best sourcers out there, I also felt we’d hardly scratched the surface, and this was emphasised on Friday when I attended the TRU London Sourcing track and found I was still learning a raft of new skills!

I hope that Bill and Geoff run more UK sourcing events because I think there’s a lot we recruiters can learn. Next time, though, maybe we need a two day event for TRU Source by itself!

The Darker Side of Recruitment

Published January 24, 2010 Human Resources , Recruitment 26 Comments
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Though recruitment has various dark sides to it, the biggest for me is dirty old men! (Let’s not be ageist now, men can be inappropriate at any age!)

In my (main) job, I work almost exclusively with men; a large percentage of whom are between 50 and 60. Generally I like this demographic – they’re a flirty bunch, but with values. And by that I mean that they’re mostly happily married, respect that I too am married, and are just having a bit of harmless fun if and when they say something risqué. If at any stage I was to give them the impression they’d made me feel uncomfortable they would totally mortified, stop instantly and apologise profusely. But that never happens because they know the difference between cheeky and inappropriate. They consider themselves to be charming and, on the whole, I agree… Though I concede my feminist values may be a little lax compared to some!

There is, however, a very small percentage of men who really make my skin crawl. They don’t know when to stop and have no mental filter which tells them not to make totally inappropriate comments. You know the type, I’m sure – the planet’s still riddled with them, sadly. They give good men everywhere a bad name!

I’ve encountered a few of these types over the years, but last year I had a real corker. A gentleman we’d registered some time before (with no issues) contacted us looking for work so I gave him a call to update his details and speak to him about a couple of relevant roles. Well. What can I say! I’ve got a fairly unshakeable disposition and am not easily lost for words, but this fella left me speechless! I was asked, amongst other things, my height, weight, what I was wearing, whether I was single, how I’d feel about a dirty weekend on the continent… The list goes on! He even sent me an email starting “Hi Sexy”! Thankfully I got him off the phone reasonably quickly and had a good laugh about it afterwards. What did upset me though was that, while I can take it on the chin and see the funny side, there are a lot of people more vulnerable than me, and that call could have seriously upset someone. Now he may be from a different generation (he was a little older than the demographic mentioned earlier), but my Grandad is 92 and even he knows stuff like that is downright wrong.

The sad thing is, we can choose not to call him again, but he’s still out there somewhere upsetting the female population. And really, who can stop him?! The best we can do is tell it like it is, so these are my tips for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation:

  • Be firm, not submissive. You need to make it quite clear that the behaviour is inappropriate. Your marital status or anything else brought up is irrelevant.
  • Say what they’re doing out loud to them – call it what it is: Sexual harassment. Be blunt about how you perceive their actions.
  • Don’t laugh it off or try not to hurt their feelings.
  • Don’t be drawn in to the conversation. Stick to your guns and be repetitive if you need to.
  • Talk to your colleagues / manager about the incident afterwards. Others need to be aware.

NB. I hope any men reading don’t think that this is a sexist post because it isn’t meant to be. I’m well aware that the female of the species is equally capable of being inappropriate; I’m just posting from my personal experience.

Google Wave CVs?

Published December 2, 2009 Recruitment , Social Media 10 Comments
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My personal description of Google Wave: A bit like Facebook messaging in that you can follow the conversation from the top down and embed photos, videos and links. The difference is that it’s in real-time and you can also attach documents, gadgets, maps and so on. You can also add and remove people from the wave as it goes along, make it public or private, and people can contribute and edit as they see fit.

Clearly it’s a lot more advanced than that, but you get the idea! If you’re not on Wave* or don’t know much about it and would like the official spiel then you can find it here.

So anyway, I’ve been lucky enough to score an invite thanks to @MikeOwcarz and have been messing about with it for about a month now. So far I’ve found it all a bit overrated: I can totally see the collaborative benefits, but for me personally it serves no real purpose at this moment in time. In fact, I can’t say that I’ve really used it for anything more than instant messaging until the other day when I thought I’d have a look at some of the public waves. This was inspired by a tweet by @andyheadworth explaining the joys of public searches. To do a public search, type “with:public” and your search term in the Google Wave search bar and see what comes up. I, for one, hadn’t even realised that public waves existed so I had a rather excited half hour seeing what I could find!

Well in all honestly there wasn’t an awful lot of public waves that I could be bothered to follow (lets be fair though; this is a new tool still in Preview stage), but I did see a rather inspired use of a wave as a CV. I’m not going to try and link to it because a) I don’t know if it’s possible, b) anyone without Wave won’t be able to see it and c) well, there isn’t a c) but everyone knows a good argument should have at least three points to it. Anyway, it’s called “CV: Scott Bradley” for those who want to search and have a look. It’s not amazing, but it did get me thinking about how well Wave could be used as a tool in this respect.

I think dear old Scott has used his wave quite nicely on the whole. He’s attached his CV, written a nice little paragraph about his situation and has embedded a location map. The bit I don’t understand is that he’s then also copied and pasted his CV into the body of the wave which surely defeats the object, but there you go! Scott got me thinking though; this could be a great tool for job seekers when (if?) it goes more mainstream. Depending on your career, you could make a whole online portfolio with video, work samples and links to your websites and/or social media pages. People could provide feedback, ask questions and get in touch quickly and easily. I appreciate you can probably do this on a website with a bit of IT know-how, but this is a very useable and accessible format for those not in the know and, as one of Google’s little gems, it will surely be beautifully searchable!

Now I’m not overly technically minded so it’s possible I’m being totally obtuse here. Perhaps putting your details on a public wave opens you up to all sorts of ID or intelligence theft, or maybe it opens you up to abusive remarks and other such horrors, but it’s a nice idea and I take my hat off to Scott for being one of the first people (that I can find, anyway) to use it in such a creative way.

Public CVs and portfolios might not be for every person or profession but it did make me think about where the future of CVs could be headed.

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Note: If you want to make one of your waves public then you need to include public@a.googlewave.com as a participant. This is easier said than done because when you type in the email address Wave tells you there’s no account for this email address. Instead, you have to go to ‘Manage Contacts’ and add a new contact from there. ‘Public’ will then appear in your contacts and you can add it from there.

* I still have a couple of spare Google Wave invites so, if you haven’t been able to get one yet, talk to me on Twitter and I’ll happily oblige on a first come, first served basis.

From Recruiter to Job Hunter…

Published November 29, 2009 Job Hunting , Recruitment 23 Comments
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So my second blog entry was going to be about Google Wave (don’t worry folks – it’s already written and you’ll get it soon enough!) but I read a great post last week on Twitter and decided to change tack.

@grahamsalisbury wrote:
“I am beginning to regard online job boards with the same degree of suspicion that I normally reserve for Wikipedia”

I couldn’t help but smile! I’ve been in the same job for nearly five years now, working as a recruiter, and I’d kind of forgotten what it was like to be a job seeker until recently. I shan’t bore you with the gory details, but basically my employer has had to cut my hours due to the recession and so I’ve had to look for additional employment to supplement my income and keep Mr J in PlayStation 3 games (I know, I know…!) Anyway, the employment issue is resolved (temporarily at least) and I was lucky enough to not be looking too long, but this was my first time as a job seeker in some time and it was really quite humbling!

Last time I was job hunting, local papers were still reasonably en vogue and, while job boards were very much in the picture, there seemed to be just the one or two big names that were worth a visit. But how things have changed now! Now my local papers are all affiliated with (different) jobs boards, there are niche boards popping up all over the place and (maybe it’s just me, but) there seem to be even more ‘big name’ boards too! Now I’ve no problem really with the number of job boards in existence; as a recruiter I’ve advertised on plenty in the past (with mixed results!), but what I did find particularly annoying was the way the same jobs were duplicated over and over on all of them. Some employers were guilty but it was mostly the agencies with the multiple postings. And you can bet your bottom dollar half those postings were out of date too! I genuinely found it quite confusing: When the job descriptions sounded familiar I would have to check back and see whether it was a job that I had already ‘tagged’ on another board. Half the time it wasn’t, it was just that I’d already read the advert three times previously elsewhere, but it was SO time consuming and ever so frustrating. Job hunting is a drain at the best of times, but I felt as though whole evenings were just vanishing into a black hole!

Other than spending half my life trawling the internet for vaguely relevant and still current job vacancies, my biggest quandary was which jobs to apply for. The current market means that most of the jobs I liked the look of didn’t pay the kind of salary I was used to getting (and in my part of the world, salaries aren’t really that great anyway). You work hard to get to where you are and no-one wants to take a step backwards, but at what point do you put your pride aside and say that some income is better than no income? I’ve always said (rather arrogantly) that there’s no reason for me to ever be unemployed – there is always the counter at McDonalds or the checkout at Tesco. But that’s really not true any more; even these entry level jobs have people queuing to apply because some income is better than no income. And there you have it! Who would employ me; a somewhat overqualified candidate with no recent retail experience, over someone who’s been made redundant from Thresher or Woolworths who is far more relevant?! But how do you decide what’s worth the effort? Do you apply for anything and everything and hope that something sticks, or do you do what you’d normally do (if jobs weren’t so fiercely fought over) and stay targeted and focussed, even though there are less relevant positions to apply for? It’s so difficult to decide. It’s easy to judge people who apply for jobs they’re totally over qualified for, but the reality is that many people are not in a situation where they can support themselves and their families with no income.  

Though I didn’t apply for that many positions in the end, I got not one reply saying thanks but no thanks. These were applications directly to employers rather than through agencies and the funny thing was that this neither surprised nor bothered me. And that made me feel a bit sad. When did such disrespectful behaviour start becoming so universally acceptable?!

Unfortunately I don’t have the answers to these problems, but I did want to share my experiences. It’s a tough market out there and, as recruiters, it’s easy for us to get caught up in our work and forget that we’re dealing with real people: They have feelings, families and responsibilities just like us, and they are trying to doing their best. We can all show a little more compassion. Put yourself in the jobseekers shoes for a few minutes and ask yourself how you’d feel.

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About Me

Over eight years’ recruitment, HR and sales experience in the private sector. For the last four and a half years I have worked in the construction industry, specialising in the recruitment and co-ordination of quantity surveyors.

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