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9 Steps You Can Take Today To Find A New Job in 2013

January 2, 2013 — 8 Comments

2013_2

It’s a brand new year, a time where many people attack their New Year’s resolutions with excitement and resolve. If you were one of the many people whose resolution involves finding a new job or making  career change, you may be wondering where to start. Here are nine steps you can take today to position yourself well to find your next gig. 

  1. Update your resume: How long has it been since you updated your resume? Chances are it could benefit from at least a few tweaks. Whether you’re actively looking for a job or not, it’s a good idea to keep you resume current as you never know when an opportunity may come along. Here are some resources that can help: How To Spruce Up A Boring Resume (via Mashable), Tips for Writing a Resume in Online World (via WSJ)
  2. Update your LinkedIn profile: Most recruiters are actively using LinkedIn to find candidates. Will they find you? If so, what will they find? Do you have a (somewhat professional) photo? Do you have a compelling headline that will catch their attention? Is your profile 100% complete? LinkedIn is one of the top sourcing platforms for Recruiters, so how you present yourself here is important. You can find some great tips on how to create a compelling profile from LinkedIn expert Craig Fisher here.  Continue Reading…
In Job Search , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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How To Pick Your Next Employer

November 27, 2012 — 3 Comments

A former colleague reached out to me a few weeks ago with a quandary. She had recently joined a well-known company in a Marketing leadership role – and learned a few weeks in the manager, culture, and organization were not at all what she expected. She loves the work she’s doing – but doesn’t feel she’s in the right organization and was seeking advice on how to pick the right employer. The full background of our discussion is here.

We talked about a few things she could do, which led her to suggest the topic would make for a good blog post. I wanted to tap into the collective wisdom of my network so thought I’d pose the question to some smart HR friends and see what advice they have. I got some great responses below that provide valuable insights and action job seekers can use when vetting their next opportunity. I also recommend reading this recent article by George Anders, 11 Ways to Gauge Your Next Employer’s Culture.

Susan LaMotte (Exaqueo.com, blog, @SusanLamotte) 

  • Ask to speak to more people in the organization–make sure you get 15 minutes with key team members in all reporting lines
  • Ask your potential new boss what his/her day is like–what meetings they have on the calendars and how work gets done
  • Find people who have just left the org (previous job on linked in profile) and find out why
  • Ask for examples of times things happened that they promise. for example: “that’s great to hear that you’re really focused on career pathing as an organization. Can you provide an example or two of how that has played out for a few individuals?”
  • Ask things like “how would you react to me doing _____” and fill in the blank with the innovative idea or unique work practice you’re accustomed to. Continue Reading…
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A Lesson In Failure

October 17, 2012 — 11 Comments

Earlier this month marked the one-month anniversary of Career Hangout (CHO). It also marked the final episode.

Career Hangout was an ambitious idea for a collaborative project between me and Laurie Ruettimann. We wanted to find a way to “pay it forward” and use our collective HR insights and networks to provide job search and career management advice to professionals.

We spent two months focusing our time and energy on getting CHO ready to air – designing a logo, building a website (actually two of them after we changed WordPress themes), registering social media profiles, booking guests, finding a producer, learning about Google Hangouts On Air (HOA), testing HOA, teasing/marketing/promoting the show. . . you get the picture. We invested hours of time into CHO before broadcasting our first show. Continue Reading…

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Introducing Career Hangout

September 12, 2012 — 5 Comments

Pay it forward.

My friend Laurie Ruettimann and I got together a few months ago and talked about the state of the job market. Many people are struggling. Struggling to find jobs, to keep jobs, to find their way out from dead end jobs, and struggling on how to advance their careers in a climate where salaries are flat and opportunities are scarce. This discussion got us thinking about what we can we do to help.

We’ve both been in HR for our entire careers. We’ve been exposed to almost every HR scenario you can imagine: hiring, firing, promoting, training, developing – you name it. We both have a lot of smart friends in our industry with great expertise in job search and career development. We know recruiters at many top employers throughout the U.S. We have friends who are accomplished professionals in a variety of fields. We realized we could leverage those contacts, knowledge and expertise to to help people manage and develop their careers, and we could do it through Career Hangout (CHO). Continue Reading…

In Job Search , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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How To Build A Social Recruiting Platform On Twitter

August 27, 2012 — 13 Comments

Social recruiting. It sounds good, it’s ‘buzzy’ – but what does it really mean? More importantly, how can someone new to social media recruiting get started? This is a broad topic; as social recruiting is complex thing with many layers. Over time with, we’ll dissect the layers through a variety of posts covering topics like social referrals, Facebook company pages, employment branding, and sourcing – but today we’re going to focus on using Twitter as a recruiting tool. Specifically, we’ll be sharing tips on how to create, launch, and grow a corporate recruiting Twitter account.

These are some steps I recommend you take (or at least consider) when launching a social recruiting effort on Twitter. This isn’t designed to be an exact blueprint as every company and culture is different so you should personalize these suggestions for your organization. To that point, understand from the outset that you should tweak all advice that you get on the topic of social recruiting. Every company is different; internal politics, power centers, appetite for risk, target hires, etc. – all of these characteristics impact how you should shape your social recruiting strategy. Scour your networks, resources, contacts, conferences, the Googles and whatever else you can for ideas then figure out how you can tweak and mold them to work for your organization. Continue Reading…

In Recruiting, Social Media , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Amplify Tool Review: Mobile Tools for Mobile Recruiters

July 18, 2012 — 9 Comments

If you happened to read George Anders’ recent Forbes cover story about LinkedIn, you know that I’m a big proponent of recruiters getting out of the office and going mobile. The recruiting landscape has evolved. Call it Recruiting 3.0 or whatever term you’d like, but the days of sitting in front of a computer banging on a keyboard talking into your headset are in the past (P.S. if you haven’t read that Recruiting 3.0 article you’re missing out. It’s a great playbook for modern recruiting that influenced some of my views that you can read about in this Quora question). We’re living in an incredibly dynamic landscape for top talent. Recruiters must evangelize for their organizations: conferences, network events, tweetups, hackathons – whatever, wherever and whenever they can. So for today’s recruiters to be at their best, they need an arsenal of mobile recruiting tools. Continue Reading…

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SHRM and Social Media, We’ve Come A Long Way Baby.

July 2, 2012 — 2 Comments

The post below originally appeared on SHRM’s Buzz site and can be found here.

If you attended this years’ SHRM national conference this year, chances are you’re getting a good sense of the shift to social in the global HR community. Whether you visited a Smart Bar in The Hive to get some one on one social media guidance from one of the many volunteers, sat next to someone feverishly ‘live tweeting’ on the iPad during a session, or tweeted yourself – social was omnipresent at SHRM 12. This is a great thing. Why?

SHRM had a strong turnout this year with over 10,000 attendees. Many more couldn’t attend a particular session (thanks to a great many options) or couldn’t make the conference this year. Most sessions have several attendees live tweeting content, so it can be shared with anyone. Live tweeting is the act of tweeting noteworthy content from a particular conference session using a hashtag (like #SHRM12). Anyone can follow that hashtag and see a collection of tweets on that subject. This gives anyone with a computer or smartphone an opportunity to learn from what’s being shared by the presenter. Continue Reading…

In HR, Social Media , , , , , , , , , ,
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