Career Management Alliance Blog

Barry Deutsch, from Impact Hiring Solutions, writes one of the best blogs for job seekers I’ve seen.  You can follow him on Twitter (@Barry_at_IMPACT). He recently wrote The Best Recruiters Eliminate YOU With their First Question, which is a must-read if you are (or want to) work with recruiters. It is a long post but it is an eye-opener.  What I’m taking away from the post is: The recruiter is not your BFF.  No matter how nice they are, they are not to be dumped on. Don’t let your hair down, don’t be overly casual with them. Continue Reading »

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More from a posting on the RecruitingBlogs site from corporate recruiter Bill Meiers: Several of the commenters to Meier’s blog posting protested that it’s cumbersome to open multiple attachments when resumes are e-mailed to them. Thus, they prefer the job-seeker’s resume as an attachment, but the cover letter in the BODY of the e-mail to which the resume is attached. At least one commenter, though, feels it’s more professional when cover letters attached to an e-mail. One option is to do both — paste the letter in your e-mail and attach it. That way, those who don’t want to bother with an additional attachment don’t have to, while those who want the attachment have the option of opening it.

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Through various organizations, I communicate with many employment professionals, recruiters and hiring managers who discuss their encounters with prospective employees.  There are a number of common ideas that I want to share.  Interviewers understand the pressures candidates face and are sympathetic.  Nevertheless they have a job to do.  So much depends on the so-called “soft factors” to complement the specific experience and accomplishment and it is these soft factors that can be the deal breaker. In the past, I have written about preparation for the interview.  Job seekers must understand no matter how good they consider themselves, candidates must take on a new or enhanced set of skills.  As an interviewee, you must acquire those interviewing communication skills that will set you apart and create a comfort zone of confidence in the interviewer that this person is the right person for the job.  The interviewer can only see what the candidate reveals.  That means you have to respond to what they want to see.  If you get that interview and position yourself as someone who has a record of accomplishment in the specific areas sought, and position yourself as well qualified with the human characteristics they value, you become a very viable candidate. Continue Reading »

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I was one of seven coaches invited to participate in roundtable discussions on career related matters at Connect 2009 - The Annual Shulich Alumni Forum.   This Personal Coaching session was quite popular, and sold out prior to the event. Here I am with a captive MBA audience facilitating a discussion on Building Your Presence in the Social Media Era. Gist of the session included: Why Social Media?

• The traditional approach to job search has changed
• More competition for available jobs
• More touch points for recruiters and job seekers

LinkedIn, for example, is one of the fastest-growing recruiting tools used by recruiters. It is a great source for finding candidates because it’s free and top professionals can be found there. Continue Reading »

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Let's hope that ExecuNet is right about improvement in the executive job market. According to a recent email, ExecuNet is seeing signs of improvement. The organization reports that executive profiles in its private membership network are being more frequently searched by recruiters and hiring decision makers looking for potential candidates for unadvertised positions. The email goes on to say that they have seen a 50% increase in executive member landings since last summer.

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Mark and I have completed our numbers crunching for about 180,000 hires we collected from 40+ firms last month and we will publish our 9th Source Of Hire whitepaper probably by the end of next week- we're writing it now. An early peek at the data will be discussed privately in an "open mike" webinar with survey respondents and CareerXroads colloquium members before the end of the month but an ERE webinar next week (2/17) will be the first public look at the current SOH data. Continue Reading »

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Some of you may recognize the name Matt Bud. If you don't, he is the Chairman of The Financial Executives Networking Group (FENG). Several times a week, he emails a newsletter containing an editorial he writes. This is his most recent article and I have re-posted it with his permission. Enjoy! ****************

Many years ago I had to buy my son a car to get to school. So, we went down to the local used car lot and I spotted a Ford Escort. It was kind of cute. If memory serves, it was black and it was a stick shift.

Having grown up poor, I wasn't new to buying a used car. I opened up the hood and the engine was spotless. I was kind of surprised given the number of miles on the car and when I asked about it, the dealer told me he had steam cleaned the engine. Among the many things he told me he fixed was that he had replaced the windshield. Hard to sell a car with a cracked windshield. Continue Reading »

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January’s Recruiter Confidence Index from Execunet shows that a growing number of companies are adding executive jobs and that fewer firms are eliminating them The monthly study confirms that the economic recovery is beginning to take hold. In January, 64% of companies... Continue Reading »

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According to Dr. John Sullivan, the definition of a down-but-not-out-star is this ...

... you bring an exceptional record of performance and whatever bumped you from your perch is most likely only a short bump in the road. (Full article)

I was having the “passive candidate” conversation with another finance executive recruiter recently. His comments really resonated given the article by Dr. Sullivan. When asked whether he presents unemployed candidates to his client companies, he said yes ... and why they are unemployed makes the big difference. Did they work themselves out of a job or were they terminated? Continue Reading »

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EMC, a global Fortune 200 brand leader in information infrastructure, put together a concise, free (no registration required) e-book, 100 Job Search Tips from FORTUNE 500 Recruiters, that is loaded with insider tips from recruiters, along with stories from the recruiting trenches. The e-book includes advice from recruiters specializing in sales, telecommunications, executives, federal, college grads, engineering, IT, Information security, and various global business functions. Continue Reading »

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