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#YourCareer : Why it Pays to Provide Recommendations to Others on LinkedIn. How Many Recommendations do You Have or Better, Given?

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One of LinkedIn’s most vital, yet neglected, goals is to obtain as many recommendations from past supervisors, bosses, peers, and co-workers as possible to enrich your profile. You can never have enough! If you are undergoing interviews for job consideration, future employers can link to the recommenders and find out more about you on the social media platform. They can also contact your referrals to get the ‘skinny’ on your past performance.

But what if you are not actively looking for a job and are more of a passive careerist? What is the point of getting involved in the recommendation process? Exposure and branding. Did you catch in the previous paragraph that I noted future employers can link to the recommender and engage? What do they see when they click on the link to your name in another person’s recommendation? Your profile. This subtle branding gives you more exposure and eyeballs on your LinkedIn profile and reputation, enabling you to build your brand.

Your LinkedIn profile is a rich marketing vehicle for your skills and capabilities. Once you have reached 100% profile completeness, recruiters and headhunters may see your referrals to others and link through to your profile. If you provide your contact information in the summary section, recruiters can easily pick up a phone or send an email. Once folks link into your profile – you may be a ‘better candidate’ for the position they are trying to fill. What a great way to passively shop for a new job, right?

 

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What Skill Sets Do You Have to be ‘Sharpened‘?

 

Did you know?  First Sun Consulting, Llc (FSC) is celebrating over 32 years in delivering corporate & individual outplacement services & programs to over 1200 corporate clients in the U.S., Canada, the UK, & Mexico!   Visit us @ www.firstsun.com  OR Ask for a Quote for Services at  info@firstsun.com

We here at FSC want to thank each of our corporate partners for the opportunity to serve & moving each of their transitioning employee(s) rapidly toward employment!

 

Article continued …

Who do you want to provide recommendations for? Look for the shakers and movers in the industry with which you worked in the past or your current position. Look for your LinkedIn connections with many folks connecting to them. Search out profile owners who have a considerable following. Look at the company profiles for businesses you used to work for employees on the profile for which you can provide recommendations.

On some company pages, you may see profile owners in a listing for ‘most recommended.’ Clicking on that profile might take you to the profile where you can send a connection invitation to a high-powered industry expert. Once they accept your invitation to connect, more people will look at your profile because they want to connect to that mover and shaker, too!

Remember that exposure – in a good way – is vital to branding yourself and increasing your public relations to a new and potential strategic alliance with future employers. Get your name in front of past co-workers – they may remember what a great job you did and realize you are still a great job candidate. Many companies are realizing that alumni job candidates are even more valuable as rehires than brand-new employees who come to the job as strangers. Recognizing your name as a referral may prompt fond memories of your past performance…and result in an interview phone call!

 

FSC Career Blog Author:   Dawn Boyer, Ph.D., owner of D. Boyer Consulting – provides resume writing, editing, publishing, and print-on-demand consulting. Reach her at Dawn.Boyer@me.com or visit her website at www.dboyerconsulting.com.

FSC Career Blog – November 1, 2023

#BestofFSCBlog : Reality Check- Recruiters are Not your Friends. There’s No Such Thing as a Professional Job-Finder. MUst REad!

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This fact may burst a bubble for most job seekers. The hard reality is job seekers have the wrong idea about what recruiters and headhunters do for a living. When one starts a search for a new job, the first professional they may try to connect with is a recruiter. A recruiter would know where to find a job…right? They can take the resume and push it to everyone they know…right? Dead wrong.  

Here is the hard-core truth. Recruiters are too busy to call anyone their company isn’t ‘interested in’ for a specific job. Recruiters will not return phone calls, voice mail, email, or text messages to strangers or applicants who don’t meet the minimum job requirements. They are already overwhelmed with communications trying to find the ‘perfect candidate.’ If you are not ‘the match,’ – you can talk ’til you’re blue in the face,’ but it won’t change circumstances. You will only waste your and the recruiter’s time.

There’s no such thing as a professional job-finder. Resume writers, career advisors, career counselors, life coaches, or outplacement service professionals may operate with parallel tasking – but they’re not job-finders. Recruiters are candidate finders. It’s not their responsibility to find a job for job seekers. Don’t blindly contact recruiters and ask them to help you find a job. 

 

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Answer: Simply go to our FSC Career Blog below & Type(#Jobsearch, #Resume, or #Networking) in Blog Search:  https://www.firstsun.com/fsc-career-blog/

What Skill Sets Do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

Did you know?  First Sun Consulting, LLc (FSC) is celebrating over 30 years in the delivery of corporate & individual outplacement services & programs to over 1200 of our corporate clients in the U.S., Canada, UK, & Mexico!  

We here at FSC want to thank each of corporate partners in the opportunity in serving & moving each of their transitioning employee(s) rapidly toward employment !

Article continued …

It’s also a numbers game – job seekers submit resumes, aim for multiple interviews, and hope for an offer letter. Recruiters review hundreds of resumes from websites, headhunters, or employee referrals for each position, query the resumes for matching keywords, and send the top 5-10 results to a hiring manager. The hiring manager picks the top three to interview and make a decision based on salary (budget), availability, knowledge, skills, experience, abilities, and personality in the interview.  

It sounds harsh, but it is reality. Finding a job is not a matter of justice, fairness, or luck. No one owes anyone a job. Recruiters are your ‘friend’ only if you meet the immediate requirements of an open job requisition. Recruiters don’t have time to invest in job seekers, their inconveniences, and their car or family problems.  Recruiters do care about recruiting, filling jobs, keeping hiring managers happy, and staying within a staffing budget. They will be polite to qualified candidates and perform the steps necessary to get that candidate hired.  Likewise, hiring managers do not care about applicants’ inconveniences and problems.  Hiring managers care whether the qualified candidate has great skills, stays within a labor budget, and can get the job done.  

Recruiters and headhunters are ‘people finders,’ not ‘job finders.’ They have a set number of specific openings at any given time and usually only hire one person per seat. One. Recruiter’s jobs are to conduct a ‘high throughput’ process. It is a matter of getting the right resume with the needed skill set to the recruiter to solve a company’s problem.  

Job seekers must ask when the decision will be made during the interview. If the company is interested in hiring, they’ll call. If you know when the position closes, call the day after if you haven’t gotten a ‘sorry, we found another more qualified candidate’ message. One call…no more. Drop that job lead into the dead file if you get a voicemail and no callback. Most recruiters have an email management system within their ATS, and there is a chance they’ll notify the ‘rejects.’ But most likely, they don’t have time for follow-up. 

To summarize, there is little point in calling a recruiter to ask them to help you, the job seeker, to find a job. Job seekers should recognize the recruiters’ viewpoint for what they do for a living. It is up to the job seeker to find that job and apply. It’s not a recruiter’s responsibility to help the job seeker find or get that next career position.

 

FSC Career Blog Author:

Dawn Boyer, Ph.D., is an associate of First Sun Consulting, and the owner of D. Boyer Consulting – providing resume writing, editing, and publishing consulting services. Reach her at: Dawn.Boyer@DBoyerConsulting.com or http://dboyerconsulting.com.

Bio: Dawn D. Boyer, Ph.D., manages and operates a consulting firm in Norfolk, Richmond, Colonial Beach (Dahlgren), and Gloucester, VA. Her background is 24+ years in the Human Resources field, of which 12+ years are within the Federal & Defense Contracting industry. She is the author of 940+ books on business, human resources research, career search practice, women’s studies, genealogy lineages, and adult coloring books. Her books are listed on Amazon.com under her author’s page for Dawn D. Boyer, Ph.D.

 

FSC Career Blog | October 13, 2022 | Dawn Boyer, Ph. D. 

 

 

 

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#JobSearch : Lost Your Job?  First Steps First. Great Ideas to Get Through the Unemployment Period.

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Nothing is more worrisome than being out of work and dreading the bills coming in the mail that you can’t afford to pay.  Scarier yet is not having funds for job shopping (gas money or interview clothing).  Here are some ideas to help you get through the unemployment period and make time without a job work to your advantage.

Your full-time job while unemployed is applying online for jobs. Once you lose your job, you should immediately research your state’s unemployment benefits options.  In some states, a two-week waiting period must be reached before application; in other states, you may be eligible on the first day of unemployment. You must file for the benefits. In most states, you may do so online via an Internet-based application. The state will require forms completed pertaining to the circumstances leading to the job loss. Be truthful. If you were fired, state the honest reason. Not all states deny unemployment benefits for being fired unless the termination was for extreme reasons (e.g., embezzlement, equipment destruction, theft, avoidable OSHA-related safety incidents, or vandalism).

 

Like this Article?  Share It!    You now can easily enjoy/follow/share Today our Award-Winning Articles/Blogs with Now Over 2.5 Million Growing Participates Worldwide in our various Social Media formats below:

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Answer: Simply go to our FSC Career Blog below & Type(#Jobsearch, #Resume, or #Networking) in Blog Search:  https://www.firstsun.com/fsc-career-blog/

What Skill Sets Do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

Did you know?  First Sun Consulting, LLc (FSC) is celebrating over 30 years in the delivery of corporate & individual outplacement services & programs to over 1200 of our corporate clients in the U.S., Canada, UK, & Mexico!  

We here at FSC want to thank each of corporate partners in the opportunity in serving & moving each of their transitioning employee(s) rapidly toward employment !

 

Article continued …

Regardless of the waiting period, the employment commission in each state is one of the best places to search for a new job.  Many companies post job openings to comply with the EEOC mandate for the 3-5-day public posting of positions, and they can do so for free. The state also supplies job listings within an easy commute to your city and surrounding areas.

Apply directly to public job openings – some companies will allow resume uploads into their Automatic Tracking Systems (ATS), even if there are currently no job openings (this is called ‘resume farming’  by recruiters). Alternatively, apply online by uploading your resume to proprietary resume databases, e.g., Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, Indeed, or USAJobs.gov (resume loading for the job seeker).

You don’t want a blank space on your resume where you were unemployed if you can avoid it. Recruiters are not fond of seeing extended periods of unemployment (the UNNA syndrome – Unemployed Need Not Apply). However, after the 2009 housing crash and the COVID pandemic, they are more used to seeing these phenomena of long periods of unemployment. The good news is that there are two rich opportunities to add content to your resume, allow you to meet new people, and network for new employment opportunities.

First, offer your time or assistance to non-profit organizations or obtain training to enrich your job skills. Many small non-profit organizations (NPSs) are desperate for grant writers, volunteers, mentors, and specialists. There is a shortage in these skills for many small NPOs who can’t afford to pay salaries for these job skills – your local paper may run lists of NPOs needing assistance.

Second, if you can’t do the education or training and can’t offer assistance as a volunteer, the next best activity is to go into business for yourself as a consultant. Shop the market for companies needing your skill set as a 1099 consultant (a local city business license may be less than $50).  You never know when your skills sets may turn into a more realistic method to replace that lost salary.  Recruiters will note you didn’t let the dust settle after a job loss and view you as a more viable candidate.

While you are unemployed, get the training (or education) you didn’t have time to take while you were working, and add industry or trade certifications to the achievements on your resume. Take classes to advance your education beyond the courses or degree you last achieved.  There may be inexpensive adult education classes in your city that provide insight into a fresh new topic for you. Computer skills are one of the hottest training needs in any industry. If you gain insight into how software or a process works, it will move you ahead of the job’s competition.

As you achieve the training, education, or volunteer work, add it to your resume as the most recent ‘employment’ activity.  The longer you are unemployed, the more obvious the non-productive activity and the less viable a candidate you become to recruiters.  Filling that gap with volunteer activities, education or training, and/or part-time consulting work demonstrates you are still a viable and highly qualified candidate.

FSC Career Blog Author:  Dawn Boyer, Ph.D., is an associate of First Sun Consulting, and the owner of D. Boyer Consulting – providing resume writing, editing, and publishing consulting services. Reach her at: Dawn.Boyer@DBoyerConsulting.com or http://dboyerconsulting.com.  

Bio: Dawn D. Boyer, Ph.D., manages and operates a consulting firm in Norfolk, Richmond, Colonial Beach (Dahlgren), and Gloucester, VA.  Her background is 24+ years in the Human Resources field, of which 12+ years are within the Federal & Defense Contracting industry.  She is the author of 940+ books on business, human resources research, career search practice, women’s studies, genealogy lineages, and adult coloring books.  Her books are listed on Amazon.com under her author’s page for Dawn D. Boyer, Ph.D.

 

FSC Career Blog | September 19, 2022

 

#JobSearch : How to Work With Headhunters. Important: Headhunters Work for the Company that Hired them, Not for You. MUst REAd!

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What is a headhunter?

There is a distinction between headhunters and recruiters. Headhunters tend to be more singularly focused on filling a particular role and actively seek out the perfect person for the job, whereas recruiters tend to work on multiple jobs at once and rely more on candidates finding them. “You’re going out to find people. You’re not waiting for them to come to you,” says Matt Clarke, managing director at recruitment firm Blackwood Associates LLC. “There are some people who are more proactive and there are others that are reactive. It’s more about the proactive approach.”

A headhunter usually tries to convince a high-performing worker to leave a job for a competitor, according to Mr. Clarke. “You’re recruiting someone out of their current seat based on a referral or knowing that they’re good in their current space.” This can be more challenging than trying to find a role for someone who is looking for a new job. “They’re happy and you’re motivating them to make a move.”

Do headhunters focus on candidates who are mid-level or higher?

Not necessarily. While some headhunting firms specialize in filling C-suite jobs, others fill jobs that require less experience. “It spans where you are in your career. It’s really more about your company’s focus,” says Mr. Clarke.

Headhunters don’t work for you, they work for an employer to fill a position.

Headhunters primarily work with companies looking to fill a position. If you aren’t getting a call back from a headhunter, you are not alone. A headhunter’s focus in most cases is to devote his or her time to the client, not a job seeker who isn’t an active target. “Most recruiters work for companies that are paying them to find candidates,” says Stacey Staaterman, a leadership and career coach based in New York. “So, what’s most important for people on the job-search side is that they need to be sensitive to the fact that they’re not the first priority.”

 

Like this Article?  Share It! You now can easily enjoy/follow/share Today our Award-Winning Articles/Blogs with Now Over 2.5 Million Growing Participates Worldwide in our various Social Media formats below:

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Question: Want the ‘the best/current articles/blogs on the web’ on Job Search, Resume, Advancing/Changing your Career, or simply Managing People?

Answer: Simply go to our FSC Career Blog below & Type(#Jobsearch, #Resume, or #Networking) in Blog Search:  https://www.firstsun.com/fsc-career-blog/

What Skill Sets Do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

Did you know?  First Sun Consulting, LLc (FSC) is celebrating over 30 years in the delivery of corporate & individual outplacement services & programs to over 1200 of our corporate clients in the U.S., Canada, UK, & Mexico!  

We here at FSC want to thank each of corporate partners in the opportunity in serving & moving each of their transitioning employee(s) rapidly toward employment !

 

Article continued …

Why would a company work with a headhunter?

Companies hire headhunters for a variety of reasons. “It could be that it’s a messy situation, so they need a recruiter to sell it,” says Roy Cohen, a career coach and author of “The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide: Success Secrets of a Career Coach.” Another reason could be the seniority of the role. Mr. Cohen says that recruiting for a very senior-level position, such as a division president or chief executive, can be a heavy lift and companies may prefer to use a headhunter with the expertise to find the ideal person from a “large universe of potential candidates.

”If you are contacted by a headhunter, it helps to ask tough questions about why the role is open, because some of those reasons might not be positive for a candidate. “Be careful what you wish for when you do work with a recruiter. It could be they’ve been hired because the situation is one that has been problematic,” says Mr. Cohen. “Maybe there’s turnover, maybe the boss is a screamer. There could be all sorts of reasons they’ve hired this recruiter.”

How to find a headhunter to work with.

Since most headhunters are looking at a fairly small pool of people, you may have to get creative to get yourself on their radar. One way is to triangulate the jobs they are trying to fill by speaking to people in your own network in similar roles. “It’s about networking with people who work in the field that you’re looking for a job, because it’s likely that if you’re talking to people who are in visible positions in your field, they will have received calls from recruiters,” says Mr. Cohen. Find out who the headhunters are that are targeting them. There is often a virtuous cycle of people referring headhunters to their contacts when they themselves are not interested in positions.

You may need to tell people you trust in your network that you are open to talking to headhunters. Mr. Cohen says that this strategy is preferable to emailing several recruiters en masse.  It is useful to develop a relationship with a headhunter that might pay off later. If you happen to be contacted by one for a position you have no interest in, think about how you might be able to help him or her with a solid reference to someone else in your own network. “I always tell people if they’re looking, identify a few headhunters that you can establish a bit of a rapport with so that they kind of know you and stay in touch,” says Ms. Staaterman. “Don’t be annoying—be helpful. If you’re not right for a position, give the headhunter a few names. That always creates goodwill.”

What are headhunters looking for and what are their motivations?

Headhunters look for high-quality candidates—who in most cases are already employed—and try to convince them to leave for a better job. Usually, they are trying to meet specific requirements from the company that hired them to fill the job, but sometimes they may look for less obvious candidates who might be an interesting wildcard. “There is a growing interest in having nontraditional candidates on the candidate list,” says Ms. Staaterman. “The term is a ‘cultural add.’ It’s essentially trying to bring something different into the organization,” she says. “Thanks to companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, we have more awareness [that] having a diversity of thought, for many companies, is a good thing.”

How some headhunters can harm you and how to avoid them.

You need to be smart about which headhunters you are willing to work with, says Mr. Clarke. You should make sure they are not trying to hire you for a job that someone else left due to an unresolved problem, such as the work culture or bad management. You also need to avoid working with headhunters who aren’t thoughtful about the jobs they submit you for. “If they’re just sending your résumé around to different firms—let’s use banks, for example—some headhunter gets your résumé, or some recruiter gets your résumé and they’re not professional, [or] good at what they do, and they start sending you around to different companies without telling you where your résumé has been sent in, that can absolutely crush your chances of getting jobs at certain places,” says Mr. Clarke.

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