Thursday, May 29, 2008

Free Gas Giveaway

You know, when gas went to $3 per gallon, I was not exactly exultant about it, but I didn't complain all that much. Then as it approached $4 per gallon, I started to get a bit frustrated. And now, over this pas weekend, as it cruised past the $4 mark and closer to $4.25 in our local area, I really became irritated. I just can't help feel that we are being taken total advantage of by all parties involved at this point.

It just seems that all we are doing these days are talking about gas prices and how they are affecting other items we purchase with increased prices. Remember the days we used to throw out the old, “not bad weather we’re having”, or “how about them Knicks” for quick conversation intros? Those have been replaced with, “man are these gas prices ridiculous or what”?

With all of this nonsense I thought, why not incorporate this entire dilemma into our approach to attract quality candidates. So I convinced the managing partner of JTL to all our recruiters to offer $1,000.00 worth of FREE GAS as a sign-on bonus for some of our open positions this summer.

So what jobs are we offering this on? If you look through open positions at the JTL Services, Inc. website you will find ones that offer this promotion. Pay particular notice as we are also offering other promotions. For example, we are offering a $5,000 cash bonus on one of our positions already.

In the meantime, let’s all try and be cognizant of our use of gas this summer. Every little bit helps. It was nice to actually see that the people responded by traveling significantly less over this past holiday weekend.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Godzilla vs. Megalon

Another one bites the dust at Monster.com. Jon Trumbull, Chief Accounting Officer says buh-bye. He had been there since 2002, but has followed many others through the exits of what was seemingly once a job board mega haven.

Meanwhile CraigsList.com, which was once only popular in large metro areas, is climbing the ladder of most visited websites each month, ranking much higher than Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com. Sharing in this success trend are the local recruiters who provide a professional and functional web presence.

If you have been reading my Blog, you can see I have no love at all for Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com and the many other job boards that just don't understand social networking and its growth into a Monster (no pun intended) of it's own - a Godzilla of sorts.

If you are seeking a new job, I am willing to bet that after about two weeks of searching through Monster and CareerBuilder you will understand that they simply are not the place to be searching. Get a LinkedIn.com account and use some of the other boards like simplyhired.com, or jtlservices.com - if you are in CT or Raleigh area of NC :)

Friday, May 16, 2008

What's the Dilio?

In my seemingly going-nowhere-fast search to better understand the rapidly changing Internet arena for job searches, I have discovered a clandestine revelation. I am not alone!

It seems almost every day there is a new job board or newly surfaced online Web 2.0 service promising to sort it all out and be the de-facto playing field for job seekers. But which ones work is what we all want to know. The jury is out.

From my digging around I can tell you a few things I noticed that are, to be brutally blunt, horrible. Let me explain. A job seeker typically wants to search for jobs that are actually open positions and posted within recent days, and of course meeting their qualifications.

I find, and I could be wrong, that jobs posted in CareerBuilder.com, and Monster.com are either re-posted as new jobs or posted by recruiters looking for talent to add to their databases. This is very troubling to me and our recruiters since we are most interested in placing positions as quickly as possible for our actual open positions. Heck, if we cant place our open positions, we can't stay in business.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the necessity of building a talent pool. But I also understand there is a better way to accomplish this task. We, for one, keep open lines of e-communications with our placements. After all, it is they that can provide the best possible network to available talent. They have friends, family, relatives, neighbors, and co-workers that in essence become our virtual talent pool.

Thankfully, people are intelligent and quickly learning the hidden tricks of many job boards and turning to a more local, quality and successful job recruiters.

My message to many would be to be careful of relying on Monster.com and/or CareerBuilder.com if you are seeking a job. I am not saying you can't find an open position and actually get a good job by using them. I am more saying to open up to other avenues at locating your next job.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Do You Really Hate Your Job?

Are you tied of giving dishonest answers to friends and family about how your job is going? Are you tired of allowing your miserable job to negatively effect other areas of your life? Are you tired of being in future financial fear not knowing where the company you work for is heading?

It sounds so easy - if you hate your job that much, then quit! Oh, but quite the contrary indeed. It just isn't that easy for many. And I would know.

I worked at a place nearly 10 years before I could muster enough testosterone to walk away. And hate might be too weak of a word for how I felt working there. Especially the last year that I was there. It wasn't any of my co-workers that I disliked. It wasn't necessarily the owner of the company that I disliked. In fact, the people there might have been a variable that kept me there so long. It was just the fact that I knew the long term outcome of my being there. I knew that I was wasting talents and skills that I could use to flourish elsewhere. I was there under false promises and a self-inflicted false reality. But enough about that as just the thought of my wasteful existence there for so long begins to increase my blood pressure.

The reality for many people is that they feel they simply can't quit their jobs that they despise so much. They manufacture a myriad of obstacles believing they can't do better elsewhere. When you boil these obstacles down however, it is simply fear that remains as a constant with each of these reasons to not leave the job.

And it is this fear that may creep up on you years later when your options may be minimized. Why not open up some options and give yourself a chance at bettering your overall life? When people legitimately hate their job, it typically effects many other aspects of their lives in a negative fashion. Why subject yourselves to this?

Have some confidence in the notion that when you are proactive, things can fall in your lap. When you work towards a dream with passion and conviction and use some planning, common sense and intelligence, it can pay off. And in many cases it does. Think of all the people out there who are successful. Do you believe they are successful for some reason other than their drive at being successful? When you sit and wait for things to happen, you get old.

Reassess your career and determine if it is something that you are happy or even "OK" with. If you really do hate your job then please work towards fixing that problem. I wouldn't say to just quit and walk away, but certainly consider creating a plan of action to put yourself in a better place. I did. And it continues to pay off every day.

Stay tuned, as this is a real topic of interest to me and I want to Blog about how to better position yourself and your career by continously branding yourself. It's really not as difficult as it may sound. Again, more information about this to come.

And really if you are miserable or don't really know if you are miserable, don't just take my word on the topic. There are many resources out there to back up my comments. There is also a book that can be seen at this link that is worth a read.

As always, if you need any career assistance, please consider JTL Services, Inc. We have over 600 clients and thousands of candidates and have been doing this for nearly a decade.

http://www.jtlservices.com/

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Goodness, Show Some Enthusiasm!

A hiring manager more than likely will determine whether or not you are a top candidate for their open position in about the first 15 minutes of your interview. So post-interview damage control is generally not something that can help rearrange those first impressions you gave during that short time period. In short, get it right early in the Interview!

Yes, skills and experience are essential to any job, however a positive and enthusiastic attitude is crucial. Be sure and ask positive questions and leave the more difficult questions for a later time - say, when you get an offer. Go to the Interview portraying that you really want the job and are excited about the opportunity. If you learn you are not intersted in the job during or after the interview - you can deal with that easy task later.

This job advice reminds me of a candidate a recruiter here at JTL placed about two years ago. The recruiter sent over the candidate's resume to a client - but only because we didnt have any other quality candidates to send at the immediate time the client was asking. To be honest, the recruiter was hesitant to even send the resume to this particular job because it looked like it may have had too many disqualifiers in it. But... the client reviewed the resume, took our word that the candidate was worth a look and agreed to accept an interview nonetheless.

The interview went fantastic! The candidate was very enthusiastic, energetic and portrayed a solid positive attitude. The client realized the candidate may have been lacking in some of the skills required but felt that the candidate possessed enough foundational skills to build from. The client wisely realized that being enthusiastic is not a skill someone can learn and that having a company with upbeat employees is far batter then having a floor full of pessimistic punch-in, punch-out people.

So please, for goodness sake, you may be nervous at your next interview, and especially during the first few minutes, but smile, and show some energy.

For job advice and information, please visit http://www.jtlservices.com/

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Job Search On CraigsList.com

Some people plain out overlook the value of CraigsList.com when it comes to the job hunt. Sure, we've all heard of this online haven, but how many of us give it the credit it deserves?

The fact is, placing a job posting on CraigsList.com is super easy, and super affordable for recruiters and hiring managers. And by super affordable, I mean it is by and large free. You only pay to post in the large metro areas, for example, LA, NY, Chicago and the like. And because it is free, recruiters and hiring managers like to post jobs there... daily!

Take a moment and find out for yourself just how easy it is to search for job openings in your area and in your industry. In most cases you will find around a dozen or so listings every day. And look at it this way, because there isn't an overload of people looking for jobs there, you could be that big fish in a small pond vs. in Monster.com and CareerBuilder.comwhere you could be the opposite - a small fish in a large ocean.