Category Archives: Job hunt

Unlocking inside information on future employers

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Look inside before you commit to walk through the gates or guard station every day.

Do your due diligence on an employer before you sign on as an employee.

Starting today, there’s another way to peek in to corporate cultures: It’s Great Rated! a “social search engine for workplace culture,” developed by the organization that researches Fortune’s Best Places to Work list.  It was created by  Great Places to Work Institute  which has studied workplaces for 25 years and has an inspiring mission statement.

It joins Glassdoor, Indeed, Vault and a variety of others that rate and relay workers’ often-anonymous perspectives on workplace culture.

Great Rated! has impeccable timing, since so many workers are tired of their jobs and want to trade up. One survey by CareerBuilder showed that one-fourth of all workers were job hunting, though others show an even higher share searching.

Job seekers need to unlock information about potential employers - as well as the sites that provide it. (Bigfoto.com)

Job seekers need to unlock information about potential employers – as well as the sites that provide it. (Bigfoto.com)

What it doesn’t have yet are a large number of employers. It will start with 24 companies that have been through its ratings and reviews. “But it will be more each day,” a spokeswoman says, with more than 100 interested in joining.  Its more established competitors list hundreds or thousands of employers.

To join Great Rated!, employers pay a $995 fee (more if they want add-ons for branding and social media), and then stand aside while the site’s owner distributes a random survey to a “representative sample” of the company’s employees. “Companies cannot pick and choose who takes the survey,” Great Rated! CEO Kim Peters said through a spokeswoman.  Some other rating sites are based on ‘”ad hoc comments,” she noted several times.

Great Rated! uses a statistically valid survey to create “a true picture of the workplace,” Peters said through a spokeswoman.

At Glassdoor, “we never claim the reviews to be scientific since they are based on employees’ opinions; however we do feel that they are directionally relevant,” said Samantha Zupan, a spokeswoman. It does, however, publish the entire reviews so jobseekers can note “the good, the bad and everything in between,” she noted.

The debut gives me the chance to provide readers – whether they’re soon to graduate from a university or hope to leave a 20-year now-stale career with one company – some suggestions on where to look up a potential future employer.

Start with the company’s own website. Then visit two or three workplace culture ratings sites -  and go visit the employer in person. Here’s some options for the initial research:

  • Glassdoor was founded in 2007, and received “more than a half million company reviews” from former and current staff over the last 12 months. It says it has reports on more than 225,000 companies in the U.S., Australia, India and other countries. The company started by providing salary information, then added added workplace culture and CEO’s performance. Now it gives interview questions you might be asked.  It offers “enhanced employer profiles,” social recruiting and other employer products for a fee. I was a paid Glassdoor blogger for more than two year.  Its top company (on the 50 Best Places to Work): Facebook, with 430 reviews and 621 interview experiences.
  • Great Rated!  – I will add more here after I can explore the site, giving it a few days to get going.  The company has some good partners, including Simply Hired which is providing job listings.  (Simply Hired ranks sixth in online job sites.)
  • Indeed - This job search giant offers its own ‘best places to work’ lists, when at least 15 reviews by current or former employees are received. It has a sweet function that allows you to see the employers by city, so if you’re in Dallas, you’ll know who’s got the best reviews – and go after jobs there. Its top company:  Concur, which makes travel and expense software and systems and has 87 job openings.
  • Vault  Established in 1996, this site seems focused more on student, 20-somethings and  accounting, consulting, banking and law firms rankings, with separate scores for diversity, prestige and a few other areas. Some of the best information is reserved for “gold members” who pay $9.95 a month for access. It also produces digital and other career guides and some interesting internship ratings. Its top rated company: Multiple ones: Bain & Co., J.P. Morgan and PriceWaterhouse Coopers all top lists.

I’m also partial to the Fortune Best employers list  (note that I proudly contribute to Fortune and Fortune.com) and lists by Working Mother and one by DiversityInc.  Some regional lists, created by business media or local nonprofits, also can be valuable.

One thing for all job seekers to remember is that most of these sites earn most or all of their money from the employer, which places ads, job listings, buy services or access, or in Indeed’s case pay per clicks. Some take care to disclose what information is provided by the employer, but not all clear on their methods.  Look at their FAQs and disclosures – transparency is important in information providers as well as from future employers.

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Read your audience; 3 poetry slam hacks that help during job interviews

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Michelle Hooks, on right, with MSU Poetry Slam members. (Photo by Solomon Martin)

Michelle Hooks, on the right, with MSU Poetry Slam members learned a lot from her poetry performance that applies to job searches. (Photo by Solomon Martin)

By Michelle D. Hooks

I was always the first poet to perform, the sacrificial poet, to determine how the judges will score as the poetry slam went on. When people walked into the venue and took their seats, I became nervous and my hands shook. Then when I stepped on stage, I looked around at the audience, took the deepest breath I could take and the poetry slam began when I said the first word.

For all four years at Michigan State University, I performed, kept score, judged and persuaded judges as a member of the MSU Slam Poetry Team. As I started to search for work, I discovered that a poetry slam is similar to a job interview. The only difference is both the interviewee and interviewer share all of these roles: judge, audience, performer and host.

Much like basketball players and gymnasts learn life skills from their sports, participating in poetry slams taught me skills that I regularly use in a job interview, including these:

Present yourself in front of an audience.

I prepare for a job interview the same way I prepare for a poetry slam: I perform in front of a friend who knows what distracts me, who times me and critiques my performance. The more I do this, I more I pick up irksome cues, like fidgeting my hands while I perform or looking around a room without focus. Then I do them less. Before a job interview, my friend and I go over a list of commonly asked questions as she jots down notes of my behaviorisms.

The more you prepare, the more confident you feel, whether you are in front of an HR representative or in a venue of 50 people. Practice makes permanent.

Read the audience.

No job interview or poetry slam is alike, so you have to read the audience to feel what they like or dislike. If my comment evoked a look of concern, I quickly offered a more fitting response. If the interviewer’s head was tilted to the side, I know this meant they were unsure of my answer. Whenever I hear an “Um…” I sense that something isn’t right.

“The interview may start off very formal, but as you become acquainted with one another, the mood may relax and you may adapt your body language to reflect what you sense from the interviewer,” writes executive resume writer Don Goodman, in a Careerealism post.

Ashley Ellis’ copywriter John Marsh suggests looking for a genuine smile, upright posture and strong eye contact. If you see these signs during your interview, it’s on the right track.

Never give up.

I never won a poetry slam in my college career, but that didn’t stop me from performing poetry in other settings, like talent shows. The job search was rough for me. I applied to several jobs and received plenty of nos.

After 14 months of looking, I shifted gears, stopped looking for a job online and went out in person. I met Vickie at a CreativeMornings/Detroit event and she told me that she wanted a researcher/writer.

I hesitated at first because I was so used to rejection. Yet of all of the jobs that I sought, this was one of the few that pertained to my love of writing and creativity. I couldn’t pass it up. It was at that moment it felt like I won my first poetry slam ever.

I was prepared, adaptable and persistent, all of which grew from my time on the poetry slam team.

 

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7 employers with lots of internships to fill

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It’s not too late to land an internship. Yes, even for summer, there’s still quite a few available.

This message goes out to all the runners-up and procrastinators out there who understand how valuable an internship can be but still haven’t managed to land one – yet.

Often, April is the busiest month for internship postings, according to Indeed, which ranks as the top job aggregation site around.   “They’re advertising still for summer,” said Mike Steinerd, director of sales recruiting at Indeed.

True, the number of internship jobs declined 7 percent in January and February of this year compared to the same period of 2012, but that followed a near doubling in number from 2011 to 2012, Indeed reported.

If you need a push on applying, consider that 60 percent of students who worked a paid internship received at least one job offer last year, compared to 36 percent of those with no internships on their resume, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

So where are those elusive internships available?  Disney, Penske and Oracle have more than a hundred apiece, as does Hewlett Packard.

But the most U.S. internships – more than 200 per employer – can be found at these companies, according to Indeed:

  1. Enterprise Rent-A-Car
  2.  AT&T
  3. Intel
  4.  ADP
  5. Walmart
  6. eBAY
  7.  IBM

That’s a great target list. Here’s another one:  Look for fast-growing start-ups, on the Inc. 5000 list or in your local business weekly and growing 100 to 150 percent a year.  They may have been so busy growing that they didn’t think to post internships. Or maybe they considered it but missed deadlines for career fairs on campus.

Smaller organizations may decide later than others that they want an intern. But want them they will.  So keep an eye on the listings at your university career services center and on Indeed, suggests Steinerd. Or shoot the CEO a note offering yourself as a go-getter who doesn’t need a job posting to light their way into a great summer job.

Any company listed in italics made Indeed’a list for most internship job openings in 2012 and this year.  

NEXT:  Other ways to land professional summer work

 

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5 ways to make your career luck – or at least build your confidence

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It doesn’t take a winning lottery ticket or the “luck of the Irish” to inject good fortune into our careers and lives. But some intentionality could pay off.

I’ve lived a charmed life – and my career has been filled with good fortune and good friends. Yet recently I’ve experienced a few setbacks, including the reorganization of the Glassdoor Blog.

So it’s time to invite Lady Luck to hang out in my home-office. And I’m eager for a good swig of luck juice, and I’m going to drink a big glass alongside a plate full of hard work, creativity and great connections. All that makes for a balanced diet for career success.

If you’d like to join me, here’s some ways to create work and life luck:

Wish someone good luck.  It’s likely to boost their confidence. In a marvelous LifeHacker post , writer Eric Barker points out that the placebo effect can increase our self-confidence and performance. I see a lot of this on Twitter – people sending hopes for good fortune in music, sports and other careers.

See good luck in bad experiences.  Sometimes luck comes to us disguised as a

Bad luck can open the door for good fortune. (Picture-Newsletter.com photo)

Bad luck can open the door for good fortune. (Picture-Newsletter.com photo)

demanding and particular boss or in a layoff, writes Job-Hunt.org, Susan Joyce. She suggests taking a small, unobtrusive good luck charm with you everywhere – particularly networking events and job interviews.

Be open to new experiences. It’s one way you can create your own luck, according to Richard Wiseman, a psychology professor who studied 400 people and wrote The Luck Factor.  It’s possible to enhance the amount of good luck in your life, he believes. People can start this by keeping a “luck diary” of positive and fortunate experience that happen each day, Wiseman told Fast Company .

Add a visible symbol of luck. Place a three-legged frog or an Arowana fish on your desk

Choose your own good luck symbol or use one from Feng Shui. (Picture-Newsletter.com photo)

Choose a good luck symbol – some Chinese suggest red works. (Picture-Newsletter.com photo)

or bookshelf. These and other Feng Shui symbols could bring greater wealth and business opportunities and more.  Some people use bells, others a mask or another good luck symbol, in their offices.

Work hard and be flexible too, since many people in the LinkedIn survey saw that as a magic opener to good fortune. I wrote about this last year, and found the variety of answers based on age and geography quite interesting. It also helps to trust your instincts.  Or go with your gut, as the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs told a Stanford graduating class. His perspective shows up in Inc.’s six suggestions on creating luck.

Some of my good luck “charms” are a beautiful rock or shell I carry in my pocket many days; the small heart painting an artist gave me a couple of years ago that hangs in my office and the numbers three and five. (I have three children; lived most of my life in families of five and like that it’s halfway to ten!)

I also believe kindness and good karma can create good luck, so as hard as I’m working on my writing and this blog, I’m taking time for charitable projects and small acts of everyday kindness.

Good luck in your career!

What brings you good luck? And what charms will you use to advance your job search or career? I’d love to hear some stories and examples, so please share them in the comments!

 

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9 big job boards – and a bigger idea for finding a job

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Where do you search for a new job?

When I recently wrote a piece for Quartz about Indeed hitting 100 million unique visitors worldwide, I found out quite a bit about the big job boards that a job seeker might appreciate.

And even though job boards are far from the most effective ways to land a position, I thought I’d share this list of the leaders, which comes from comScore Media Metrix.

Here are the top job and career sites:

1. Monster                   25.03 million

2. CareerBuilder         20.74 million

3. Indeed                      20.73 million

4. About.com  Jobs              6.36 million

5. Beyond.com               5.82 million

6. SimplyHired                5.30 million

7.  Brassring.com             5.23 million

These sites are listed by the number of U.S. residents who visited them in January. Indeed’s 100 million number is worldwide – and it’s in a lot of countries.

A better measure – which I haven’t found yet and which may not exist – would be the number of actual job listings on the sites as a ratio against how many people landed jobs after using the site. Yet counting job listings is fraught with complexities too, since some sites post the same job several times or carry questionable ads for work-at-home schemes and the like.

The fastest growing career sites includes Beyond.com, with an 81 percent growth since January 2012.  Beyond offers job seekers 500 communities and even more industry and regional sites.

The other fast-growing site is  Jobs.net, which experienced a 100 percent growth in visitors in the last year,

I’d also like to mention eHow Careers & Work, where traffic grew 32 percent and MiracleWorkers.com because it has such a beautiful name. (It focuses on health care jobs, not prophet, wizard and magician jobs.)

Despite all this detail, I’d like to remind everyone that the best way to land a job is to find it before it shows up on these big job boards.

Spot it on a bulletin board at the coffee shop or in an overheard conversation on the bus. Get a former colleague to recommend you to the department head and then stay in touch as plans are created for a product launch. Locate it via a friend of a friend who’s looking for a new administrator, or tell people at a chamber mixer or at Creative Mornings exactly what you’re looking for – and follow up with those who may have leads  Personal connections work for finding work. If you don’t believe this, ask my new researcher how she landed a very part-time job with me.

Copyright © Vickie Elmer 2013

Source: comScore data for January 2013

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A half dozen smart ideas to target your job hunt toward growth

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Anyone trying to find a new job wants to aim their networking and resumes at good prospects, and employers that are thriving.

Some  you can pick up by reading earnings reports of major companies or checking Fortune magazine’s list of best places to work (especially the ones with many job openings).

Some of it you can learn up here, as I cull economic and employment reports for good growth prospects.   New U.S. jobless data that shows 236,000 jobs added in February, about 21 percent more than the previous three months. Here’s a half dozen suggestions based on recent research:

  • Professional pickup.    The professional and business services category showed good growth, boosted by hiring of accounting and administrative staffs, according to new Bureau of Labor Statistics data for February.  Computer design, architecture and management consultant jobs also gained.
  • Growing jobs in agriculture.  The number of farming jobs gained 21.6 percent last month, SimplyHired reported, the most of any sector. Some of these jobs will be found in cities, through urban agriculture and farmers markets.
  • Temp jobs are gaining. Temp firms added a net 16,100 jobs last month, and The highest paid and fast growing temp jobs are R.N.s and computer programmers, both average over $32 an hour, CareerBuilder says. But the fastest growing temporary jobs (that don’t pay as much) include HR specialists, office clerks, customer service reps and assemblers, according to its new report created in association with Economic Modeling Specialists.
  • Always open.  AT&T, Best Buy, Family Dollar and McDonald’s regularly show up on SimplyHired’s list of the five companies with the most job openings. Each has 13,500 or more positions to fill across the country.
  • Building jobs.   Some 58 percent of manufacturers expect to hire in March, for a net hiring of 49.1 percent (after subtracting those that expect to reduce payrolls), according to the Society of Human Resource Management SHRM Line report.  Salaried and hourly job openings both are increasing, in February their gains hit four-year highs for that month.  The SHRM hiring figures are anticipatory, but the BLS data for February shows the most manufacturing hiring in fabricated metal, wood and food products.  Construction also showed robust growth last month, with 31,700 jobs added in specialty trades.
  • Go where they’re short. The jobs where shortages exist, according to the Federal Reserve Beige Book, are truck drivers, software developers, compliance officers and engineers. In some regions, this imbalance has led to “significant compensation gains,” the Fed reported this week.

Just because you’re not a software guru or a manufacturing engineer or a fast-food fry-maker should not hold you back. These companies need recruiters and marketing staff and finance types too, and they may also want to hire a masseuse or a concierge or a chef to keep their current staff happily in their jobs.

Here’s three more resources for finding employers that have ample opportunities:

  • My January post here gave some ideas, including the healthy growth in health care and a list of employers with job openings in many metro areas.
  • Susan Joyce’s Job-Hunt.org post suggests alumni associations and more.
  • Glassdoor’s list of 50 best places to work, chosen by employees and Working Mother’s lists make good fishing ponds.
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Healthy hiring: AT&T, bars and many health care companies

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If you’re looking for a new job or a different employer or boss this year, there’s plenty of options available. If you want to target your search, we have some very good information to share – and some hopeful trends too.
The number of job openings has increased in seven of the last eight months, Simply Hired reported, and U.S. employers added 155,00 jobs in December, near the average amount created each month last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was enough that the Washington Post reported that the labor market is getting stronger, “but not particularly rapidly.” (The unemployment rate held steady at 7.8 percent, but rose for African Americans and adult women, according to the BLS.)
Job openings increased in all 50 metropolitan areas in December, reports SimplyHired, a leading job search engine. The report shows a 10.5 percent increase in job openings last year, based on its analysis of job listings culled from more than 30,000 sites. Some employers have thousands of openings in a number of cities.
Health care employers listed more than 300,000 job openings in December, more than twice as many as were available at tech companies or the education sector, Simply Hired reports. More than one-third of the top hiring companies last month were in health care or related fields, with jobs posted in close 50 locations. Most of the health care employers are regional, so their job opportunities won’t show up in multiple cities the way those at AT&T or Starbucks do.
The BLS data also showed strong growth in health care hiring last month.Health care employers added 44,500 jobs in December, more than any other category. One quarter of the health care hiring occurred at hospitals, and almost as many jobs were added at nursing and residential care facilities, the BLS table B-1 shows. The rest of the jobs were created by physicians’ offices, home health care concerns and other outpatient care centers.Two other sectors stood out in the BLS monthly jobless report:1. Leisure and hospitality employers hired 31,000 in December, a few thousand more than in recent months. Those new positions have turned up largely in restaurants and bars, which have added 38,000 to their payrolls in December, and an estimated 400,000 jobs in the last year.

Bars and clubs are adding jobs steadily. (Photo by Picture-Newsletter.com)

Bars and clubs are adding jobs steadily. (Photo by Picture-Newsletter.com)

2. The construction field grew by 30,000 jobs last month, some of them undoubtedly related to Hurricane Sandy repairs. More than a third of the jobs were created in residential specialty trade contractors like heating and plumbing companies, though non-residential construction firms gained 7,000 jobs

Yet if you’re not interested in building physical spaces, there still are plenty of opportunities out there. So who’s hiring now? The SimplyHired report names names and gives the largest employers with the most job openings in the 50 largest cities. Here’s a quick summary (with links to the careers pages of the companies listed):

  • Accenture – With 850 jobs in New York, 950 jobs in Washington, D.C. plus others in Chicago, this management consulting and outsourcing firm is growing.
  • AT&T - Shows up in the top 5 employers nationwide fairly regularly, with 14,026 openings, Ma Bell certainly is planning to write a lot of paychecks this  year.
  • Family Dollar Stores – the No. 1 employer adding jobs nationwide; 16,445 of them; the company is opening a new distribution center in St. George, Utah.
  • Great Clips - This hair care and cutting chain made the top 5 hiring employers nationwide this time, with more than 16,000 jobs. It needs plenty of help in Charlotte, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Portland and Phoenix.
  • HCA Healthcare - Hundreds of jobs, not all of them medical, in Dallas, Denver, Miami, Orlando, Houston and more.
  • McDonald’s - 13,487  jobs open nationwide, with clusters in Chicago and Cleveland. Don’t want to be a burger flipper? They’re hiring managers and HR consultants and facilities people.
  • Starbucks – hundreds of job openings, and among the largest employers with openings in Los Angeles, Portland, Sacramento and of course its hometown of Seattle.

The biggest gains in job openings were found in non-profit and real estate fields, SimplyHired reported.  Professions including sales reps, educators, food staff and law enforcement showed double digit increases – most above 20 percent growth in openings in the last year.

And which sectors are slow enough for most job seekers to skip? Transportation and government sectors remain week, SimplyHired’s data shows. And the BLS indicates that transportation, retail and agriculture shed jobs in December.

So target growth sectors and companies and happy hunting!

Note: I am not endorsing these companies as a place to work, and suggest each job seeker complete some due diligence on the company’s fortunes and culture.

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