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By John Zappe
www.ere.net
Who says no one’s hiring? Certainly not the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which earlier this month reported that 4.4 million Americans got jobs in February. That’s only slightly less (and February is a short month) than the 4.5 million new hires in January.
Fortune magazine recently posted a listed of 28 companies on its Fortune 100 list that have openings for at least 150 jobs. Topping the list is Wal-Mart, which, Fortune says, has “thousands” of jobs ranging from clerk to store manager. Bank of America, which has had layoffs and drooping revenue, is looking for 1, 860 workers in all areas.
Prudential, which made the list, is seeking 235 new employees in a variety of corporate positions including actuarial, market research and analysis, operations, and administrative.
We happened to catch a careers pitch for Prudential flashing on the company’s digital billboard in Times Square, of all places. (The company is headquartered across the Hudson River in Newark, NJ.)
Company spokesman Peter Price tells us recruitment shares billboard time with other company units and messages. So it’s not exclusive, but it is part of the “broad net” the company casts.
To be sure, the number of hires nationally is well off the recent high, which came in July 2006. Then, 5.63 million workers were hired. And the new hire rate has declined over the last year, especially in the Midwest, South, and West. Some industries have been hit harder than others. As you might expect, hiring dropped most sharply in retail, hospitality, finance and insurance, recreation and entertainment, and (this may be a surprise) in government.
The government says the “quits rate, ” which it calls “a barometer of workers’ willingness or ability to change jobs, ” is at its lowest point in eight years. According to the BLS, only 1.5 percent of the working population of the U.S. voluntarily left their jobs during February. That translates into 2 million workers.
So, much as recruiters treasure passive hires, those 4.4 million new hires in February included a substantial number of workers coming from the ranks of the unemployed and underemployed.
Is it any wonder, therefore, that companies are still hiring recruiters? A quick check of SimplyHired and Indeed shows tens of thousands of jobs with the keyword “recruiter” or “sourcer.” A quick check of those listings show that a fair number are in healthcare, one of the few still-growing sectors. But there are also plenty of recruiter positions in IT, finance, a few in retail, and, of course, with staffing firms.
Incidentally, everyone is getting into the recruiting act. NBCPhiladelphia.com, the city portal of the local NBC TV station in Philly, is featuring companies with jobs paying in six-figures. Check out the comments that some users have posted, including the one where a job-seeker makes a pitch. |
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You can ask for feedback, but you won’t always get it.
By Eve Tahmincioglu
Mary Ortega of Wilmington, Del., has been on 40 interviews for marketing and public relations jobs in the last 10 months.
Before interviewing, she always researches the company and the people she’ll be meeting. She dons a nice suit and comfortable high-heeled shoes. She’s also driven from Washington, D.C., to New York on more than one occasion for job interviews.
Even though she has yet to land a gig, that’s not what’s frustrating her most. She’s angry because she rarely gets constructive feedback or even a phone call on why she wasn’t chosen.
Ortega, 43, usually gets a brief e-mail such as this one she received on March 13:
At this time we have decided to move forward with other candidates whose experience more closely matches our requirements.
“No one seems to have the balls to pick up the phone anymore,” she says. “Have we become a passive-aggressive society?”
There’s nothing more frustrating than putting the time and energy into a face-to-face interview, only to get little to no information on why you didn’t get a job. Unfortunately, this is becoming commonplace throughout the work world, as more and more hiring managers opt to ditch civility and do little to follow-up with desperate job applicants.
There’s a host of reasons why.
Companies are so fearful of lawsuits they want to limit the amount of information they give candidates after they’ve decided not to hire them so as not to make a slip and say something that can be taken as discriminatory.
Many human resource personnel and managers are also too busy to take the time to provide a self-help session for job seekers who are looking for advice on what not to do next time.
And still others just don’t want to have to talk to someone they’ve rejected, opting to use e-mail as a safe haven from a rejected candidate’s wrath or disappointment.
No feedback, group rejections
Ryan R. Miner didn't even get an e-mail after he interviewed on Feb. 20 for a scheduler position for a California congressman.
“I interviewed with his chief of staff and it went very smooth,” says Miner, 23, who’s an unpaid intern for a Maryland TV station, WHAG. “She said, ‘When the congressman returns next week, I will sit down with him and go over all applicants, and figure out who we want to talk to next.’”
That was more than a month ago, and Miner hasn’t even gotten a rejection e-mail.
“I would like to know what they thought I could have done better in the interview or did they think I was not qualified,” he says.
Often these rejection e-mails aren’t even personalized.
Recently, social networking group Twitter Inc. interviewed applicants for a business project manager position the firm had open and mistakenly sent out rejection e-mails en masse.
The e-mail went out to more than 180 people, and every recipient could see everyone else’s e-mail address, making it clear that no e-mail was personalized.
The faux pas ended up on the Web site TechCrunch, which included the actual e-mail:
{During the course of our recruiting efforts, we come across many fine candidates such as you, and we carefully evaluate each candidate’s background and interests against our projected workloads and staffing needs. Although we are impressed with your background, the hiring committee has decided to move forward with a different candidate.
We will keep your information on file for six months in case future opportunities arise.}
Twitter immediately apologized for the screw up, but it got me wondering why the firm felt it necessary to send out
a form letter instead of being more personal.
“Regarding feedback after an interview. I'd say that's a case-by-case basis,” says Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.
Sometimes, he adds, the applicant takes the initiative.
“Candidates will send me a personal e-mail or an invitation to join their network on LinkedIn,” he says. “We're
talking with very talented folks, so I think it's useful to stay connected even if they don't wind up joining Twitter — they may be a fit down the road.”
Realizing many of these e-mails are indeed generic may make many of you cringe, but there are ways to figure out why you were not chosen.
Let’s start out with some of the reasons hiring managers say people don’t end up getting a job.
Spherion Corp, a recruitment and staffing firm, surveyed hiring managers and found the top reasons candidate don’t get hired include: not enough experience; the wrong skill mix; another candidate has better experience or skills; or the candidate was looking for more money than the position paid, according to Rebecca Callahan, senior vice president of Spherion’s Recruitment Process Outsourcing division.
Because of the economy, she adds, many job openings end up being withdrawn during or after the interview process for lack of funding.
If you work with a recruiter, it’s easier for them to get the poop on why you got the heave ho because the hiring managers may be more comfortable telling a middle man or woman instead of you, says Waffles Pi Natush, president of The Barrett Group.
You should send a follow-up e-mail or make a call to the hiring manager after a canned rejection and try to get more information. But being overly persistent won’t get you anywhere and may even hurt your chances for a future job with the company, recruiters say.
Other ways to get feedback
If you get nowhere with the hiring managers, Natush actually suggests you try and contact the person who got the gig instead of you.
That’s easy to figure out given all the social network sites out there. You can just search for the company and position, or even go to the company Web site. Depending on the position, the person’s name and contact information may be right on the site.
“Call the person that got the job,” he says. “You’ll have a networking contact with a person in a position that interests you, and that person may have left a similar position or has been interviewing in different places.”
Be genuine and wait until your anger over not getting the job subsides. You don’t want to come off as a spurned candidate, he says.
For Andrea Tobor of San Francisco, it wasn’t about being spurned. She wanted to know why after four interviews with a marketing firm and rave reviews from everyone she met, she got a voice mail left on her answering machine at midnight from the hiring manager that she didn’t get the job.
She eventually got someone in human resources to fess up. Turns out, one of the senior vice president she interviewed with thought she was after her job, she says.
After looking into 200 jobs, landing 25 interviews and having little to show for it, Tobor, 59, decided to launch her own business consultancy called Radical Partnering in December.
“I saw the writing on the wall,” she says.
Sometimes, however, you might get more truth than you bargained for.
Ortega from Wilmington pushed the issue after receiving yet another e-mail rejection with few details after interviewing, and surprisingly one of the managers gave it to her straight in follow-up e-mail:
“No hidden agendas. Everybody thought you did well and you were well thought of. Except, the interview did not go well with Scott? And that killed it. He thought you were nervous and did not do a good job of answering questions. Just keep up the good work and you'll be ready for the next opportunity.”
“It was my fifth interview at the company,” she says, still stinging from what Scott, a senior vice president at the firm, felt about her. “This one really hurt.” |
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The Inc 5000 profile is posted at http://www.incbiznet.com/companies/gtn-technical-staffing-and-consulting. We made the Inc 5000 list for 2007 and expect a much higher ranking for 2008. |
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President Obama says that "economists from across the political spectrum agree" on the need for massive government spending to stimulate the economy. In fact, many economists disagree. Hundreds of them, including Nobel laureates and other prominent scholars, have signed a statement that the Cato Institute has placed in major newspapers across the United States. Read more at http://www.cato.org/fiscalreality. |
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Economic consulting firm Moody's Economy.com has forecasted U.S. job growth by geographic region and by industry. We will update this graphic each month with revised data from Moody's Economy.com. This graphic shows last year's actual job growth and Moody's Economy.com's forecasted job growth for 2009 and 2009-12.It covers every U.S. state and the District of Columbia and fourteen industry sectors. The data are seasonally adjusted. National data through fourth-quarter 2008 and state data through third-quarter 2008 are averages of monthly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey. State data for fourth-quarter 2008 are an average of CES survey data for October and November and Moody's Economy.com's forecasted value for December 2008. The CES survey tracks the number of people employed full and part time by industry. It excludes proprietors, self-employed people, unpaid family or volunteer workers, farmworkers and domestic workers. Government employment covers only civilian workers. Employees are counted where they work, not where they live. The data for 2009 through 2012 are forecasted by Moody's Economy.com. Demographic trends such as population growth, migration patterns, the age composition of populations, cost of living and business costs, and the global orientation of regional economies are key factors in its longer-term job growth forecasts. The short-term jobs forecasting model reflects the industry makeup of regions and the growth outlook for those industries. For example, the industrial Midwest takes into account the problems in the auto industry, and the relative success of the technology industry is reflected in forecasts for California's Bay Area and Boston. Moody's Economy.com's model also takes into account policy decisions made by the Federal Reserve and the specifics of the fiscal stimulus package and the bank bailout legislation as details become available. Data for 381 metro areas will be added to this interactive graphic in the coming weeks and will also be updated monthly. For graphs and full article visit: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-02-06-new-jobs-growth-graphic_N.htm. |
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