Increased Suit Sales May Mean More Interviews; Hiring Activity Continues

Is the recession helping Men’s Warehouse sell more suits? The Houston-based tuxedo and suit retailer reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings, thanks in part to increased sales.

While there was no indication from the company as the reason behind the increased sales, workplace authority John Challenger believes it could be a surge in suit-buying by out-of-work Americans trying to look their best for job interviews. “After years of many workplaces going casual, a trend that hurt suit retailers, job seekers wanting to dress up for interviews don’t have anything in their closet that fits or is in fashion. So, they are heading out to restock their suit collections. Places like Men’s Warehouse that offer good value are going to do better than high-end retailers selling $1,000 suits,” noted Challenger. With the job market so competitive, is it important to dress up for interviews? Are dress codes in the office returning to a more formal or traditional business attire because of the economy?

A look at the monthly employment figures from the government can be somewhat disheartening for the millions of job seekers hoping to land a position in the slowly recovering economy. After all, total non-farm payrolls suffered a net loss of 54,000 jobs in August while private payrolls grew by only 67,000, well short of the growth needed to make a dent in unemployment. If you are in an industry like construction, manufacturing or retail, the picture looks even worse. Construction added 19,000 jobs after two months of losses totaling 13,000 jobs. Manufacturing payrolls fell by 27,000 last month while retailers’ payrolls shrank by nearly 5,000. Looking at those numbers, one might simply assume that there are no jobs available in these industries. However, that is not the case.

While it is true that employers in these areas lost more employees than they gained, there was still plenty of hiring. The Bureau of Labor Statistics latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey provides a clearer picture of hiring activity, albeit a month behind the other employment data. In July, for example, the report shows that construction companies hired 351,000 new people, up from 289,000 a month earlier. Additionally, there were another 76,000 job openings that were left unfilled at the end of the month. Manufacturers hired 294,000 in July and had 228,000 more openings. Retailers hired 603,000 and still had nearly 300,000 openings to fill heading into August. So, yes, payrolls are still showing net losses, but these numbers show that hiring is occurring.

It is critical that job seekers not give up or even let up on their searches due to the assumption that no jobs are available. What can job seekers do to improve their chances of being one of the people hired? Are all of the job openings reported by employers advertised in the help wanted sections or online? If not, what can job seekers do to uncover this hidden job market?

Why Mobile Web Sites Trump Mobile Apps

I’ve been an advocate for years of consumer marketers, employment marketers, and others making their web sites accessible to anyone with a web-enabled mobile phone. I’ve also repeatedly reminded those folks that iPhones are wonderful, but atypical when it comes to viewing a web site through a mobile device. If you or your I.T. people look at your organization’s web site through an iPhone and pronounce it in good shape for all mobile users, think again. Only about 10 percent of mobile users with web-enabled phones have iPhones and the vast majority of the others have web-enabled phones like mine: they can access web sites but the vast majority of those sites are so messed up that they’re practically or completely unusable. Don’t believe me? Try entering your web site address into the dotMobi Emulator but be warned: you’ll likely puke when you see just how bad your web site looks on a couple of very typical mobile phones.

One solution to this problem has been to create applications — better known as apps — so that users of a particular phone can download your app to their phone and then be able to use some and perhaps all of the features offered by your web site. The apps can be designed to eliminate virtually everything from your web site except for one feature so an employer, for example, could create an app that only displays career-related information, job postings, and the application form. Very, very, very few have done so. If you belief the hype in articles such as WIRED’s “Web is Dead,” then you’d question the sanity of any marketer who doesn’t already have at least one and preferably multiple apps available for virtually every major mobile phone.

As stated so well by Todd Defren at PR-Squared.com, “You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad — that’s one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and the New York Times — three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smart phone. Another app … (etc.) … You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not the Web.”

That line of thinking takes Todd and many others in the direction of advocating that organizations create apps for just about everything under the sun for it seems clear that mobile users are in love with apps and leaving the web, even the mobile web, behind. But then Todd reads “The Great App Bubble” in FastCompany and wisely thinks again. According to Fast Company’s article, only 20 percent of consumers use free applications even after only one day of downloading it. After 30 days, that percentage drops to under five percent. Paid applications fair better, but hardly. It seems that the “value of most apps may be in satisfying the curiosity of what the app can do, not in its usefulness or relevance in a user’s daily life.”

So what’s a marketer of products, services, or employment opportunities to do? Unless you’re one of those rare marketers who needs to promote something like a wildly ambitious video game, invest your time, money, and other resources in your mobile web site as that can be used by everyone with a web enabled phone rather than a series of apps as you need a different app for just about every different type of mobile phone. Years ago, recruiters used to say that no one ever got fired for posting a job to Monster.com as it was a good, safe choice. Today, those same people should be saying that no one will be fired for devoting resources to building out a good mobile site first rather than first building a series of apps.

The Career Activist Republic

One of my favorite people in the staffing and employment industries is Peter Weddle the author or editor of over two dozen books and former columnist for The Wall Street Journal, National Business Employment Weekly, and CNN.com. He’s also the executive director of the International Association of Employment Web Sites, the only association for job boards like CollegeRecruiter.com.

Peter just published yet another book and this one is perfectly targeted to anyone who is considering striking out on their own by starting their own business, whether that business be a traditional one with physical premises, employees, and inventory or the type of business which has become far more popular over the past couple of decades: consulting. Peter makes the case the today’s workers aren’t becoming free agents like others have referred to them as but instead they’re becoming “freed agents” meaning their own career activists.

Peter’s new book, The Career Activist Republic, is based around three ideas:

1. Every human being is a person of talent—they are endowed with a capacity for excellence which enables them to accomplish extraordinary feats at work.
2. In today’s turbulent global marketplace, employers are no longer hiring even perfectly qualified candidates—what they want, what they need to employ is talent.
3. That desperate need empowers every American to work for him or herself while being employed by someone else—to create the kind of security they can actually count on even in difficult times.

Have you lost faith in the American Dream? Read The Career Activist Republic and give yourself the tools to construct it for yourself.

Succeeding in Your Current Job

While many people are looking for jobs, others who have them may not exactly be content with what they are doing.  This was the case for one former assistant who wanted more out of her first entry level job.  Like most if not all college graduates, she expected to get a good job after graduation.  Unfortunately, her new job didn’t live up to what she had hoped, but she persevered and moved forward in her career.

This former assistant shares knowledge on how to succeed in your current job, satisfy your boss, and advance your career in a recent article.  However, if you’re a college graduate looking for a job in this economy, it’s important to get your foot in the door, and be productive in your search.

Remember, your first real job is a stepping stone on your way to a successful career.

Information provided by Lilit Marcus and Nancy Cook.

Source

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/25/surviving-subservience.html

Resume Turnoffs

With so many job seekers out there, it is important for them to develop clean and clear resumes that recruiters/employers will notice.  However, there are certain mistakes that will turnoff those who will read your resume.  Remember, the goal of your resume is to get an interview.

Watch out for these resume turnoffs:

Omitting information – By leaving out important information, you leave question marks about whether or not you’re a legitimate job candidate.  For example, leaving off your home address might disqualify you if an employer believes you live out of town but is only interested in local candidates.

Providing more information than necessary - Your resume should provide enough information about you as a candidate for a specific job, but avoid details that are irrelevant to the employer/recruiter.

Poor resume presentation - The physical appearance of your resume is just as important as the content.  Of course, you should check for spelling and grammatical errors.  According to experts, resumes don’t need graphics, photos, or headshots.

Wrong choice of buzzwords – Be careful about using too many action words in your resume.  Otherwise, you might not clearly emphasize your qualifications for a particular position.

The next time you submit a resume, make sure it avoids these mistakes that will turn off potential employers.

Information provided by Meghan Casserly.

Source

http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/05/employment-search-headhunters-recruiters-job-application-tips-forbes-woman-careers-how-to-write-a-resume.html

Expansion of .jobs Charter Walks and Talks Like a Duck Even While Claiming It Isn’t a Duck

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m opposed to the proposed expansion of the .jobs charter from what is currently allowed to what would be allowed. What is currently allowed is for Employ Media, the registrar, to help an employer such as Toyota funnel job seeker traffic to its career web site by registering and promoting Toyota.jobs. What Employ Media wants to do is expand that so that it may use secret criteria which may or may not change and may or many not be applied uniformly to create tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or perhaps even a million new geographic, occupational field, and other such domains such as NewYork.jobs, engineer.jobs, and diversity.jobs. In essence, Employ Media would be given the right to create the sandbox and decide who gets to play in it, for how long, and at what price. Those who are friends may get to play for longer and at a lower cost. Those who aren’t friends may be treated quite differently. And Employ Media may retain whichever domains it wishes for itself. In effect, Employ Media becomes both the registrar and the competitor.

One of the key complaints against the proposed expansion of the .jobs charter is that Employ Media would create perhaps a million new job boards. A White Paper on Dot Jobs just published by Direct Employers Association executive director Bill Warren — one of the key driving forces behind the proposed expansion — addresses this concern in what I can only describe as double speak:

[T]his is not a million job boards but rather one dynamic jobs platform, it will provide a single interface for posting jobs to niche, targeted locations. Automated job feeds and single postings will only be accepted from vetted employers and, when the .jobs TLD build‐out is complete, all jobs will automatically appear in the appropriate city, state, country, and occupational .jobs URLs. Job seekers will be able to enter a desired city, state, geographic region, country, or occupation plus .jobs (Atlanta.jobs, Georgia.jobs, etc.) in their browser for immediate access to relevant jobs.

So if I understand Bill properly, they’re not creating a million job boards but one and that one job board will be accessible by perhaps a million different domain names such as NewYork.jobs, engineer.jobs, and diversity.jobs and each of those domain names will have different content which is targeted to its users so NewYork.jobs will contain only information about jobs in New York, engineer.jobs will contain information only about engineering jobs, and diversity.jobs will contain information only about jobs for diverse candidates. I’m sorry, but how is that not a million job boards? Oh, because underlying each of them is a common platform. In other words, one database and common software will drive all of them. Does anyone really think that 99 percent of the visitors to these sites will understand that? If there are a million domains with different content, that’s a million job boards regardless of any double speak to the contrary.

Whether the underlying software is shared or unique to each board, they’ll function to the individual users as separate boards. And if they function as separate boards, then they are separate boards. Ever hear the expression that if something walks like a duck and talks like a duck then it must be a duck? Well folks, Employ Media and Direct Employers Association can call it what they wish, but this is a duck.