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marilyn-mackes.jpg Employers expect to hire 7 percent fewer graduates from the college Class of 2010 than they hired from the Class of 2009, according to a new report published by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

Employers responding to NACE's Job Outlook 2010 Fall Preview survey expect to trim college hiring again this year, following significant cutbacks in hiring that affected the Class of 2009. The Class of 2009 saw employer hiring plans change almost overnight from a 6.1 percent increase to an decrease of more than 21 percent, thanks to the meltdown of the financial sector last fall. (See Figure 1.)

Continue reading "Hiring Down 7 Percent for College Class of 2010" »


By Lindsey Pollak

As the largest and most vibrant professional social network, LinkedIn provides a wealth of opportunities for career services professionals. But LinkedIn doesn't work unless you work it.

How can you make the most of LinkedIn? I am currently leading a series of official, free LinkedIn training webinars designed exclusively for career services professionals (you are invited to register at http://careerservices.linkedin.com/webinar). As I teach in the webinars, the most important place to begin is by creating a strong LinkedIn profile. The more complete and robust your profile (LinkedIn will alert you when you've reached 100 percent completion), the more professional contacts will find you, the more opportunities will come your way and the more students will have a model for creating their own professional online presence.

Here are some tips for creating a profile that will impress employers, parents, students, administrators, professional colleagues, conference planners and more:

Continue reading "LinkedIn Profile Tips for Career Services Professionals" »

Virtually every major job board shares at least some of the jobs posted to it with other job boards. The boards each do this to help ensure that they have plenty of jobs postings for virtually every candidate who runs a search at their sites. Some boards, for example, may have a lot of postings for candidates in the eastern United States but not have enough for candidates who are searching for a position in the western United States so they'll pursue crossposting partnerships with boards which are strong in the west but not in the east. By sharing postings, candidates using either board are almost always sure to find multiple positions of interest so they'll be more likely to register, apply to the jobs, come back repeatedly, and refer their friends.

A good analogy is the menu at a restaurant. If you look at the menu outside of the restaurant to decide if you want to eat there and see only one item on the menu that is of interest to you, then you'll be more likely to opt to go elsewhere than if the menu had 10 items of interest to you. Furthermore, if the menu has 10 items of interest to you, then you'll be more likely to come back and refer your friends.

Continue reading "Why Job Boards Share Postings" »

I was at the ERE Expo 2009 conference in San Diego from Monday through Wednesday evening. The conference was smaller than the most recent ones but that was certainly due to the economy and not ERE's way of putting on a recruiting conference. ERE does a great job.

My flights back to Minneapolis were somewhat interesting. I flew American Eagle out of San Diego to Los Angeles. As we're about to board, a tiny, tiny plane pulled up to the regional gates. Two props and about eight passenger seats. Yikes. Another group boarded that plane. Phew. Ours then pulled up. Regional regional jet. Phew.

Continue reading "What Time Is It?" »

We just finalized our booth selection for the ERE Expo Spring 2009 recruiting conference. We're looking forward to being there and hope to meet with many of our partners, clients, vendors.

If you're not yet signed up to attend ERE, I can get you a discount of $100. Go to their registration page and enter discount code SD09EXH. Hope to see you there!

photo of turkeyTomorrow is American Thanksgiving. My favorite holiday.

May you and your family have a wonderful and memorable Thanksgiving!!

George Lenard, one of the foremost experts on employment law issues as they pertain to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, just posted a detailed and very interesting analysis of a recently decided court case in which a federal district (trial) court ruled that a school district's non-renewal of a teacher's contract was lawful due to his activities on MySpace.

In a nutshell, the teacher created a number of MySpace pages including some under aliases. He posted nude photos of men to those pages and engaged in on-line communications with his high school students in a manner that the court felt was more akin to peer-to-peer than student-to-teacher communications. He was warned by his employer to stop but didn't. Intrigued? Check out George's Employment Blawg.

You better believe that it does. Thankfully it appears that Gen Y turned out at the polls in droves two days ago. Early indications are that this election saw the highest percentage of under 30 voters in history. That's really important given that Gen Y will likely need to fix some of the messes created by the Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers.

One of the excuses that some people make for not voting is that their votes don't really count. They typically don't mean that their votes aren't counted but rather that their votes aren't needed. Well, remember eight years ago in Florida when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by about 500 votes? Here in Minnesota we're seeing the about the same margin of victory for the U.S. Senate race between the incumbent, Republican Norm Coleman, and the challenger, Democrat Al Franken. We've lived through one of the long, nastiest, and most expensive senatorial races in history and after 2.91 million voted the margin of "victory" for Coleman is 471 votes.

Continue reading "Does Your Vote Count?" »

My wife and I are celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary this week. We rented a cottage in Lake Placid, New York. What a wonderful area of the country.

The scenery is incredible, the weather has been great, there isn't too much to do -- just perfect.

I'm in Chicago on Monday for the International Association of Employment Web Sites Congress. Many and perhaps most of the member job boards will be represented there but certainly a number of the boards will be unable to send anyone or perhaps will only able to send some of the people they would have sent in an ideal world.

For those members unable to attend, I'll be writing frequent blog entries on the association web site. The blog provides an opportunity for you to participate in the dialogue and tap into the content of the conference from your own desktop or laptop, wherever you might be. We'll miss not having you there in person, but at least you'll have real time access to both the program and the views of your peers.

Continue reading "Attention IAEWS Members" »

This is definitely one of the most unusual press releases that I've run across in the 17 years since I founded this organization.

Press releases typically trumpet good news. You know, feel good stuff. But the folks over at WorkBlast apparently felt strongly enough about letting the world know that they've terminated their relationship with CareerTours that a press release trumpeting the not-so-good feeling stuff hit the wires.

Perhaps feelings hitting the wires isn't the best way of describing what appears to be a nasty break-up. Perhaps a better way of describing this announcement is something else hitting the fan. One has to wonder what happened between these two partners to cause that certain something to hit the fan. Here's the WorkBlast press release:

Continue reading "WorkBlast Terminates Partnership with CareerTours" »

Ever heard the expression that if you ask me to speak about something for an hour that I can be ready in five minutes but if you ask me to speak about something for five minutes that I won't be ready for an hour? Twitter is kind of like that. Rather than posting a blog article of any length, Twitter only accepts blog articles (Tweets) of 140 characters or less. Try condensing your next multi-paragraph piece of advice or thought into one or two sentences. It isn't easy. You really have to focus on what is the most important pieces.

If you're not yet using Twitter, see what it is like at my Twitter page. If you are using Twitter, I invite you to follow my Tweets. I'll be notified that you're following and promise to check out your Tweets as well.

Oh, and it doesn't really take me an hour to write a Tweet. Five minutes is pretty typical.

Those who know me know that one of my pet peeves is the atrocious customer service that most airlines seem to serve up most of the time even though similarly qualified and compensated customer service people who work for hotels seem to serve up great customer service most of the time. Why the airlines can't or won't figure out how to deliver customer service while their travel industry siblings did long ago is beyond me.

Want some examples? Well, too bad. Here they are:

Continue reading "U.S. Airways Really Knows How to Tick Off a Frequent Flyer" »

One of the tenants by which I try to run CollegeRecruiter.com is not to make strategic decisions based upon tactical problems or vice versa. For example, if an employee is taking an lunch break that is too long, don't fire her. The excessive lunch break is comparatively minor and therefore tactical. The termination of an employee is comparatively serious and therefore strategic. Tactical issues tend to be those which most influence an organization in the short-term while strategic tend to have the greatest influence over a long period of time.

Another example would be the auto manufacturers. Just months ago Ford was adamant about shutting down the Ford Ranger light pickup truck manufacturing facility in Saint Paul,Minnesota. By all accounts the product was high quality and so were the workers. But Ford wanted to get rid of the Ranger because they wanted to sell more of the monster pickup trucks from which they could make big margins. That despite Ford's claims that it was an environmentally focused company.

Well, $4 per gallon gas sure turned them around. Now they're talking about expanding the Ranger production because so many buyers of pickup trucks are tired of spending their entire paychecks on the gas it takes to get to and from work. But is the problem confined to Ford? Hardly. Take a good look at the vehicles and advertising coming out of the other manufacturers such as Honda and Toyota, which won't make the fuel efficient Prius in nearly the quantities demanded by the marketplace.

Message to the auto manufacturers: stop trying to solve the strategic environmental and energy problems facing all of us with tactical solutions like advertising and pretending.that you're green when you're anything but. Your customers can smell that nonsense a mile away and the nonsense smells even worse than what is spewing out of the tailpipes coming out of the rear ends of your monster trucks.

Since moving to the U.S. in 1988, I've grown to love football. Not football like just about everyone outside of North America thinks of it. That's soccer. My kids play and love it. I get the game enough to know that it isn't for me. Not intensive enough.

My favorite sport is hockey. No surprise as I was born and raised in Canada. But hockey is it without a doubt. Hands down. Fast, intense, skillful, and at times brutal. What an incredible combination.

Football has to be second. It has the intensity, skill, and brutality but lacks the speed. Oh well, not every sport can be perfect.

So I'm really excited about tonight because I'll be attending my first Canadian Football League game. I lived in Winnipeg for 22 years and never went to a Blue Bombers game. Incredible. But that's all about to change. Should be a lot of fun.

GodzillaMozilla. Sounds like some overgrown reptile that repeatedly invades and strikes terror into the hearts of Japanese everywhere. Well, at least those who watch a lot of old B movies.

But those of us who use Firefox know that Mozilla is a global community of thousands who believe in the power of technology to enrich people's lives. It is a public benefit organization dedicated not to making money but to improving the way people everywhere experience the Internet. And it is an open source software project whose code has been used as a platform for some of the Internet's most innovative projects.

Continue reading "New Firefox Web Browser" »

A lot of high schools, colleges, and employers are concerned about the phenomena commonly referred to a "helicopter parents," which typically are Baby Boomer and older Gen X parents who are constantly hovering over their teenage and adult children. I think that it is safe to say that most experts feel that parents who accompany their children to job interviews and even complete their work assignments for them are doing a disservice to their kids.

But not everything about the behavior of a helicopter parent is negative. In an article published through the free recruiting content exchange service, Recruiting Blogswap, Marcia Robinson of Bullseye Resumes argues that parental involvement at the college level could enhance rather than hinder college student graduation rates.

There are approximately 50,000 job boards in the United States and about the same elsewhere in the world. Many are essentially cookie cutter boards with little to no traffic and little to no unique job posting or article content. But all serve employers and job seekers and to survive and thrive all must therefore listen to those visitors to understand what features, functionality and services they like best on today's job boards.

Fortunately, the industry has the International Association of Employment Web Sites to help us out with keeping up-to-date on issues like this. The executive director, Peter Weddle, conducted a survey between April, 2007 and April, 2008 and generated over 15,700 responses. The results were:


  • 19.4% The caliber of the job postings on a site;
  • 19.1% The number of job postings on a site;
  • 16.7% Ease of access to employment opportunities on the site;
  • 16.2% The job search tools and information provided on a site;
  • 16.1% The fact that access to employment opportunities is free; and
  • 12.5% The ability to network with others on the site.

Continue reading "What Job Seekers Want From Job Boards" »

Guy Kawasaki, venture capitalist and Apple evangelist, just announced the launch of Alltop.com, a site which helps its users explore their passions by collecting stories from "all the top" sites on the web. They've grouped these collections -- "aggregations" -- into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, Macintosh, and, wait for it, careers.

Content from a number of my favorite bloggers are included at Alltop, including Penelope Trunk, Jason Alba, Karen Burns, G.L. Hoffman, Gautam Ghosh, Todd Raphael, Joel Cheesman, Gerry Crispin, George Lenard, Dave Mendoza, Lindsey Pollak, and Toby Dayton. Oh, and this blog is there too.

Continue reading "Alltop.com Beats Jason Goldberg's social|median to the Punch" »

Interesting take on the work habits of Millennials over at the Life Before Noon blog. Author Carla Blumenthal praises her Millennial generation for being diverse, multitasking, tech-savvy individuals who love teamwork, are optimistic, and determined. But she's candid about the faults of her generation as well:

In class work, internship and job hunting we often wish for things to happen instead of actually trying. We think about doing something, talk about it with every possible adviser and then try. I spend more time making to-do lists, thinking and talking about the work I have to do than actually doing work. My friends and I often talk about the future, internships, job hunting, and applications more than we actually complete them.

Continue reading "Millennials Need to Try Less and Do More" »

flip-flops-white-house-george-w-bush.jpgInteresting (and seemingly bitter) blog article at Hodes Q Trac about Gen Y / Millennial workers. The author, Jasmine Flowers, takes issue with stereotypes of this generation as being flip flop wearing, illiterate, hypersensitive, and unable to think critically.

Perhaps I'm biased but my experience with Millennials has been quite the opposite. For example, I find them to be incredibly literate but in a different way than Boomers or Gen X'ers. Millennials have an incredible ability to converse through cell phone text messaging and instant messaging with several and even dozens of people simultaneously. How can someone who regularly converses in writing like that with so many people be accused of being illiterate?

Are they hypersensitive? Are they unable to think critically? Sometimes, sure. But who wasn't at the age of twenty?

Do they wear flip flops too often? Well, yeah. But even with that issue I find it amusing that foot attire criticism is being leveled by the very Boomers and Gen X who absolutely adored such fashion statements as super wide ties, acid washed jeans, bell bottoms, burning bras, and leisure suits.

From the staff of CollegeRecruiter.com to the students, graduates, schools, employers, and other users of CollegeRecruiter.com, we wish you a happy, healthy, new year.

It amazes me how many employees do not realize that it is simply not acceptable to trash talk their supervisors, co-workers, or employers on Facebook, MySpace, or any other social networking site. Many would never consider writing such statements on a placard and walking around with it like a picketer yet they don't think twice about writing derogatory and sometimes outright defamatory statements on-line.

"Employees need to understand that discriminatory or harassing blog or web entries that they make regarding co-workers may well be considered in the same vein as if they actually made those comments verbally in the workplace," wrote Donna Seale in her blog, Human Rights in the Workplace. She added that "employers need to understand that just as they can be found vicariously liable for failing to take reasonable steps to stop harassing verbal comments in the workplace, so too they can potentially be found liable for failing to put a stop to similar types of comments that are occurring on sites like Facebook if they knew or ought to have known they were being made."

Continue reading "The Dangers of Facebook in the Workplace" »

When Georgia State Professor Dave McDonald first took his computer programming class into the virtual world Second Life this fall, he wasn't sure what to expect. What he found was a bit chaotic. Students flew around and talked over one another as he tried to lead them.

"Every time we meet (in world), something goes wrong," said McDonald, associate professor and the director of Emerging Technologies for the J. Mack Robinson College of Business. "And that's the learning experience." McDonald is not alone. Since Linden Labs' Second Life has come into the mainstream, universities are increasingly exploring the benefits it holds for education. And many teachers are experiencing hiccups as they attempt to transition their lectures from the real classroom to the virtual world.

Continue reading "Second Life Used to Create Virtual College Teaching Lab" »

TMP just created an application in Facebook called Work With Me. The pitch to Facebook users is that they share information on pop culture, events and opinions - so why not JOB OPPORTUNITIES?

Using Work With Me, Facebook users can notify friends about current job opportunities within the organization of the user. TMP pitches that it's a win-win solution for everyone -- the user promotes their company's jobs to their friends, the user's company increases its access to top talent -- and when a friend who the user referred is hired, the user will be recognized.

Continue reading "TMP Creates Facebook Application" »

Social networking utility Facebook appears to be on the verge of competing head-to-head with business networking site, LinkedIn. According to a report on CNN Money, Facebook has in the works a new feature that will provide its users with the ability to separate their work "friends" from their social ones.

If Facebook successfully pulls this one off, then LinkedIn and its ilk may become irrelevant. One of the key frustrations that I have with these networking sites is that there are so many of them. I receive multiple requests virtually every day to become someone's "friend" at some site that I've often never heard of. Some of them may be phishing attacks while most are probably legitimate. But who has time or the need to become a "friend" to everyone who asks you and to maintain an accurate profile at multiple sites? If Facebook will allow its users to create professional and social profiles, then it will take far less time to maintain your information on that site and there will be less of a reason to use the other sites.

Photo of YodaEver used Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia? It is written by some of the most brilliant and, ahem, not so brilliant people in the world in a collaborative manner that is truly remarkable. You can post an article about a topic you know a lot about, or about a topic that you know nothing about, and I can edit your words to improve, or damage, the quality of your article. The theory is that if enough people edit an article, the quality of the article will be improved. That's the theory and it usually works well. Usually.

The reality of Wikipedia is that because anyone can post an article or edit someone else's article, all articles must be read with some skepticism. The errors in the articles may be accidental or deliberate and very few of the contributors are scholars.

So along comes Scholarpedia, which takes the best of Wikipedia but using similar wiki technology but gets rid of the worst but only accepting articles and edits from actual experts. Here's how they describe their venture:

Continue reading "Size Matters Not" »

Just received an email from Harry Joiner saying he was booted off of Facebook for following their instructions to upload his email program's address book. Apparently, his 4,600 Gmail names were too many for Facebook even though they state no limit and accepted his request to email the "make me a friend" request. Why they don't just code in a hard limit that would be acceptable to them is beyond me.

Harry might be interested to know that I did pretty much the same thing with my Outlook address book. Not to one up him, but my address book was, ahem, much larger. But when I uploaded I only asked Facebook to send the "make me a friend" requests to people who are already Facebook members. I didn't want to start selling the merits of Facebook to others, even though I think it has tremendous potential for all.

By the way, if you're interested in becoming my friend, and I could definitely use some as life can get pretty lonely, here's my Facebook badge:

Continue reading "Marketing Headhunter Faces Off Against Facebook" »

Minneapolis I-35W bridge collapseI've already heard from a number of clients, vendors, and partners asking if our Minneapolis-based employees and their families are fine or if any were killed, injured, or missing as a result of the collapse yesterday evening of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River near downtown Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) campus. We're all fine and we very much appreciate the concern. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.

Continue reading "Minneapolis Bridge Collapse" »

It is always nice to hear people saying nice things about you or your company's products. I had a couple of those today from advertising agency contacts who were praising our service and products. But that's not what this blog entry is about. Instead, it is about how great it feels to be the person who is dispensing the praise.

A few weeks ago, our web site suffered a denial of service attack that made our site unavailable for a few minutes. We were unaware of it until after the fact because INetU, our managed hosting company, identified the threat and immediately neutralized it for us. They then notified us of what had happened. I sent an email to our sales representative praising him and the rest of their team and received a request back for a testimonial. Smart. Very smart. I agreed.

The public relations person emailed a questionnaire to me and I completed it and emailed it back to her. She took the information and converted it into a web page that contains information about our site and why we like working with INetU. Smart. Very smart.

photo of nickelsOne of the lessons that I learned early in my business career was that it was important to give away a lot of nickels. Now that may seem counterintuitive, but the reason is that those nickels have a way of coming back to you as dollars.

Jim Durbin's excellent blog entry on the value of networking got me thinking about this again. Thanks, Jim!

Too much Pronger, too much Giguere, too much Niedermayer (squared), too much physical play, too much McDonald, too much Carlyle, too much Burke, not enough Spezza, not enough referees, not enough exposure between the East and West during the season -- anything else? Oh yeah, did I mention too much Pronger?

Continue reading "Anaheim Wins: Still Digesting" »

Maimonides Yesterday at the dinner table my wife and I had one of those "we must be doing something right" moments. We were talking about work and how we're about to hire a new Client Services Representative when our 12 year old (we also have 10 and 8 year olds) said that hiring someone is the highest level of tzedakah. For those who do not know Hebrew, and I fall into the group that knows just a little, tzedakah is often translated as being equivalent to charity or tithe but that is not an accurate translation because charity implies that your heart motivated to act. Tzedakah, however, literally means righteousness. In other words, tzedakah means doing the right thing.

I was pretty sure that my 12 year old was right but I looked it up today and confirmed that all of those years of Religious School didn't go to waste. Maimonides defined nine levels in giving tzedakah:

Continue reading "Finding Work for Someone is the Highest Level of Charity" »

The Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. is a holiday that is welcomed by most as it is the unofficial start of summer and all the joy that comes with that most glorious of seasons. So enjoy the weekend, laze around in your hammock, grill some burgers, but also take some time to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice so that we could be free and enjoy the lifestyles that we do.

In Flanders Fields

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD, Canadian Army (1872-1918)

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.


John McCrae and Flanders Fields

Perhaps I'm out to lunch on this, but I've always thought of Web 2.0 as being more than just user generated content. As one of the owners of CollegeRecruiter.com, I think that I have a pretty good handle on different types of user generated content and I draw a big distinction between user generated content which is just data and user generated content which is information.

To me, user generated content which is just data includes job postings and resumes. There's little to nothing there that's truly informative. User generated content which is information includes articles, blog entries, podcasts, and videos. Just about everything there is informative.

So, am I out to lunch? Does your definition of Web 2.0 include job postings and resumes?

Students fleeing shootings at Virginia TechJust when we thought we've seen it all, just when we thought nothing worse could happen, something does. Before it was Columbine. This time it was Virginia Tech.

I hope that there isn't a next time, but I'm realistic enough to know that there will be. I can only hope that it won't be as horrendous as Columbine or Virginia Tech.

I can't imagine that the good folks over at Jobster are too happy about this, but Careerbuilder ads are still showing up pretty prominently on Facebook.

Continue reading "Careerbuilder Still on Facebook" »

Helicopter ParentThe term "helicopter parents" has gained some prominence over the past few years to describe some parents of Gen Y young adults. These parents are always hovering over their children, hence the reference to helicopters. Rather than allowing their children to make the mistakes which are necessary for them to become independent, these parents are in constant contact with their children and make most of the big decisions for them. To compound the problem, whenever their children face adversity, they know that their parents will be at their side and that the fights will be carried out by the parents, ostensibly on behalf of their children.

Continue reading "Helicopter Parents: Are You One of Them?" »

On March 15th, I'll have the pleasure of being the featured guest for the first of a three part series of Kennedy Information teleconferences on "Best Practices: How to Effectively Reach and Recruit the College Market." The first of the conferences is entitled, "Podcasting: A Cutting Edge Recruiting Tool to Catch Job Hunting Students."

Continue reading "Upcoming Audio Conference on Podcasting" »

The new Facebook career center powered by Jobster went live today. If you have a Facebook account, go to http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2229765339. Otherwise, here's a screen capture:

Continue reading "Facebook Goes Live With Jobster" »

Mark Messier at Edmonton's Rexall Place retirement ceremonyLast night was the retirement ceremony at Edmonton's Rexall Place arena for Mark ("Moose") Messier, the greatest leader in hockey history. Second all-time in games played. Second all-time in points scored. Six Stanley Cup rings. First player to captain two different teams to Stanley Cup victories.

Fans of Mark's second team, the New York Rangers, called him the Messiah as they believed that he was the promised one who would end their four decades of futility and finally bring a Stanley Cup to Manhattan. He did, but hopefully New York fans understand that a player who was called the Messiah because he won one Cup for them must naturally be held in even higher esteem by fans in Edmonton where he grew up and won five Cups.

Continue reading "The Passing of an Era" »

helicopter parentHelicopter parents, so called because they constantly hover over their children, are looked down upon by many career counselors and employers because they exert too great an influence over the paths followed by their children. The military and some other employers target advertising to the parents because these employers know that the kids won't sign up unless the parents give their blessing. But where is this going? What will happen in five, 10, or even 20 years? Will we see these parents objecting to the negative performance review that their 40 year old children receive?

I'm not concerned about parents being too involved in the career choices their kids are making. At least, I'm not as concerned about that as I am about parents not being involved enough. If I had to pick, I'd go with the helicopter parent over the neglectful parent. But certainly the best parent is the one who is there to provide advice and wisdom to their child and who has the strength to allow their child to make mistakes and get hurt.

I had the pleasure of seeing venture capitalist and Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki speak a few weeks ago and of the many interesting points that he made was that organizations should replace their mission statements with mantras. Mission statements, he said, are incredibly costly to create primarily because of all of the staff time that goes into the process yet no one can ever remember the wording and they're often so vague as to be meaningless. An example that he used was for Wendy's:

Continue reading "Replace Mission Statements With Mantras" »

Kennedy Information has a great audio conference scheduled for Thursday, February 15th for all those who are considering blogging and those who want to learn more about the best practices. The speakers are three of the best: Dave Mendoza (most votes for best blog in the 2007 Recruiting.com best blog awards) Joel Cheesman (judge's pick for best blog), and Gretchen Ledgard (first corporate recruiting blogger).

Human resources search engine optimization expert Joel Cheesman posted an entry yesterday comparing MySpace to Facebook and giving a number of reasons why he likes MySpace more than Facebook. One of his reasons is that he can promote a very simple web page address to those who want to look at his MySpace page. Facebook? Not so much.

cheese head cheesehead

Continue reading "Battling Pages: Cheesman's MySpace vs My Facebook" »

Saw a great movie tonight with my wife and three kids (12, 10 and 7): The Ultimate Gift. It will be in the theatres in March and, when it is, see it. James Garner plays a self-made billionaire grandfather who attempts to salvage the one family member who could become a real mensch. The grandfather's lessons are delivered through 12 gifts, including the gifts of work, laughter, and family.

Do you remember the feeling that you had after 9/11 when you looked at your friends and loved ones and realized what was truly important in life? Re-live that feeling and restore those priorities by taking in this film.

Continue reading "The Ultimate Gift" »

Corporate recruiters who want to blog or are considering blogging take note: Dave Mendoza of JobMachine.net and Kennedy Information are teaming up to present a three part teleseminar. You can attend one, two, or all three sessions or order CD recordings if you are unable to call in at the designated times.

The first seminar is entitled "An Introduction to Blogging" and is scheduled for Thursday, February 1, 2007. The second seminar is entitled "Employee Blogs: 'New School' Employment Branding" and is scheduled for Thursday, February 15, 2007. The third and final seminar is entitled "Evolution of Blogs" and is scheduled for Thursday, March 1.

Dave is a world class trainer and Kennedy Information is a world class provider of recruiting content, so this should be phenomenal series. Sign up at the Kennedy Information web site.

Scott ShapiroAbout five years ago, I received a call from the then Assistant Director of Career Services at Emory University's undergraduate business school. Emory, because of its location in Atlanta, is not prime recruiting ground for Minneapolis-based employers. The Assistant Director had met me at a college recruiting conference and thought that I might be willing to help one of his students. That student was just profiled in Business Week and I couldn't be happier.

Continue reading "The Great Fringe Benefit of Helping Others" »

rubber duckyWhen is a politican conservative (or liberal) not a political conservative (or liberal)? When they're a college student. According to the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Freshman Survey of 271,441 freshmen entering college in fall 2006, 43 percent identify themselves politically as “middle-of-the road,” 31 percent identify themselves as “liberal” or “far left” and 26 percent identify themselves as being “conservative” or “far right.”

No huge surprises there, right? Well, let's continue. Based on their attitudes towards controversial social issues such as marital status for homosexuals, abortion, and the legalization of marijuana, the four most “conservative” religious groups are Baptists, Mormons, 7th Day Adventists, and “Other Christians” (mainly Evangelicals). Large majorities of students in each of these groups (58%-80%) opposed the traditional the “liberal” views on these isues of legalizing marital status for homosexuals, keeping abortion legal, and legalizing marijuana.

Continue reading "When Is a Duck Not a Duck?" »

Now is the perfect time to get organized at work. Not only does being organized at work reduce clutter, but it will help you be more efficient and effective everyday. Here are a few suggestions to help you get organized at work:

Continue reading "Time to Get Organized" »

One of my spies (okay, it was Amitai Givertz) tipped me off to a story about a new social networking site for high schoolers. Apparently hoping to ride on the coat tails of MySpace and Facebook, Minnesota-based, business development firm BDC Capital Inc. said that it's in the process of developing a multiple-site online networking portal geared toward high school students and alumni.

Continue reading "New Social Networking Site Will Make Lawyers Rich" »

College students and recent graduates are highly mobile. They travel for fun and play sports at a lot of different locations, so having a great bag is pretty important to them. Even though I'm a lot older than a typical college student, my regular travels give me a pretty good feeling for some of the needs of that typical college student so I was really open to an offer by High Sierra to test out one of their new bags.

Continue reading "Great Travel and Sports Bag" »

I travel a lot. About every other week and sometimes more frequently. It is amazing how different airports can be when it comes to being business traveler friendly. Yesterday was a long travel day and offered me three very different approaches to how airports treat their customers, the flyers.

Continue reading "Wireless Access at Airports" »

I would like to take this time to introduce our bloggers to Kip Havel of Spherion Corporation.

Kip is Spherion Corporation's director of public relations and corporate marketing. Of the many different hats he wears, his true passion is developing and conducting workforce and employer surveys.

Continue reading "Kip Havel - Spherion Corporation" »

I have been to a lot of recruitment conferences. Most are great and a few are, well, not quite as great. But few have approached the quality of the just completed OnRec Global Expo 2006 put on by David Hurst and team. About 200 attendees were treated to some phenomenal speakers. There was a great mixture of speakers and attendees from the U.S. and overseas.

OnRec logo

Continue reading "Reporting from OnRec Global Expo 2006" »

Do headhunters (third party recruiters) represent the candidate or the employer who pays the the TPR to find the candidate? Does the answer change if the TPR does more for the candidate that merely place her by also providing to her help with writing her resume, setting her salary expectations, and even providing career counseling? If the TPR charges the candidate for these services and then charges the employer a success fee when the TPR places the candidate with the employer, is that unethical or even illegal double dipping?

Continue reading "Headhunters Should Disclose Their Loyalties" »

I've been having conversations with non-bloggers (fraternizing with the enemy?) about the difference between blogging and writing articles. Through those conversations, I've come to believe that there is no difference even though most of us in the blogosphere would like to think there is.

Continue reading "Do I Blog or Do I Write?" »

Facebook just added a feature called Notes to their arsenal of tools that students can use when networking with others. To virtually everyone involved in any way with blogging, Notes are blogs. So why is Facebook calling them Notes rather than blogs? Could it be that they're starting to feel the heat from people like me who are concerned that Facebook hasn't done enough to educate their users about the dangers that posting certain types of content pose to them?

Continue reading "Facebook Adds Blogs. Or Are They Blogs?" »

Heather Eagar, a former professional resume writer who started her online career in 2003, currently helps thousands of job seekers with their quest for a new and better job. She has created many career-driven and job seeker focused sites. Each one serves a different - yet important - market.

Continue reading "Heather Eagar, Professional Resume Writer Provides Job Seekers on CollegeRecruiter.com with Valuable Insights to Resume Writing" »

Frank G. Risalvato, CPC, CEO of IRES, Inc. is a respected leader in the field of recruiting. In addition to providing first-rate executive search services, he is sought as an expert speaker and his cutting-edge articles, opinions, and insightful quotes frequently appear in some of the most respected names in the world of business, internet, and career related media … all of which is found at his recruiter training site located at www.searchwizardry.com

Continue reading "Introducing Frank Risalvato - Ires, Inc. Contributing Author on CollegeRecruiter.com" »

Workers in human resources are marginally more bored than accountants, but administrative and secretarial staff are the most fed up. According to the Workforce Boredom Index, also bored with their jobs are manufacturing and sales employees, ranked second and third on the index. Teachers and healthcare workers were the least bored at work.

The survey of more than 2,000 graduates aged 21 to 45 found more than half were regularly bored at work.
When asked why they found their job interesting, 81 percent of teachers questioned said it was the challenge of the role and the same proportion said it was because "no two days were the same."

Employees surveyed said they were mainly bored because of the lack of challenge in their jobs (61 percent). Half of those employees who said they were bored had considered changing profession in the past year.

Source: Training and Development Agency for Schools

I'm scheduled to speak in Norfolk, Virginia tomorrow at the Eastern Association of Colleges and Employers (EACE) annual conference. My presentation is entitled, "Facebook, MySpace, and Other Social Networking Sites: Friend or Foe to Students and Employers?"

Sites such as Facebook and MySpace and other social networking sites are web-based software programs that enable people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form on-line communities. They're incredibly popular and powerful. MySpace has seen a 4,300% increase in traffic in two years and by some measures is now the most visited web site. It has "only" an 80 percent share of the social networking traffic. In second place is Facebook with eight percent, then Xanga with four percent, then Yahoo! 360 degrees with one percent. Does anything with under one percent of the market share of its niche ever matter? I thought not. So let's end that list there.

One of the items that I found interesting in preparing this presentation was the origins of social networking sites. I believe that they're a natural outgrowth of reality television. So what are the origins of reality television? Well, radio. Candid Microphone is credited as the first reality show. It aired on radio starting in 1947 and spun off Candid Camera in 1948. Fast forward to 1989 with COPS, then The Jerry Springer Show in 1991.

But the reality TV show that really put the genre on the map and set the stage for social networking sites was MTV’s The Real World, which launched in 1992. Why? Because for the first time regular people were put onto camera and encouraged to act outrageously while pretending to act normally.

Agree?

Prior to Volt, Dale Olson had the chance to work across the entire agency recruiting spectrum. At various times and companies, he has been responsible for driving new business development, recruiting for both national and local IT accounts, conducting in-depth internet research, and managing the entire placement process from client contract negotiation through to the candidate offer letter. Like the people that he recruits, Dale Olson loves technology and is currently pursuing a BS degree in Computer Science at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Continue reading "Introducing Dale Olson, Volt Technical Resources" »

Jason Davis, blogger extraordinaire, is revered by many and reviled by few. But now he has attained near immortal status. He has been depicted in one of Jim Stroud's The Recruiting Life comics. Awesome, guys!

This post to Introduce David Gordon is part of an ongoing series of profiles of people who write for CollegeRecruiter.com through our blogs , articles, or our Ask the Experts questions and answers.

Continue reading "Introducing David Gordon, Director of Internship Studies - Columbia College Chicago" »

This post to Introduce Rachel Moeller is part of an ongoing series of profiles of people who write for CollegeRecruiter.com through our blogs , articles, or our Ask the Experts questions and answers.

As an Economics major in college, I had great aspirations of conquering Wall Street. The problem was that I was choosing a career path based on what I thought was the “right thing to do,” not on what I enjoyed. It took two years in the banking industry to convince me that I needed to look within myself to make a career decision that would be satisfying for me. It was this realization that led me to pursue a career in education, and ultimately, as a career counselor. It is very gratifying for me to provide the kind of support that I wish had been available to me years ago.

Continue reading "Introducing Rachel Moeller , Associate Director, Career Services - Lafayette College" »

One of my favorite people is Paul DeBettignies of MNHeadhunter.com, and now he's sure to become even more popular with lots of people. Why? Because he's one of the few people outside of Canada who not only remember the World Hockey Association, but also went to a game. Amazing. I'll have to ask him sometime if he remembers the coach of the Saint Paul Fighting Saints, Glen Somnor, pulling out his dentures so that he could jump the boards into the Winnipeg Jets bench during a scrum. Quite the character, and so was Glen. :)

Seriously though, Paul just re-launched his web site with the help of Franki Durban at Durbin Media Group. For those who have not had the pleasure of meeting Franki, she's the (much) better half of Jim.

Congrats!!!

This post to Introduce Terese Corey Blanck is part of an ongoing series of profiles of people who write for CollegeRecruiter.com through our blogs , articles, or our Ask the Experts questions and answers.

In addition to what CollegeRecruiter.com already discloses about me, I am anxiously awaiting the release of two new books my business partners and I authored over the past two years. The books, The College to Career Road Map: A Four-Year Guide to Finding Your Path and The College to Career Road Map: A Four Year Guide to Coaching Your Student, are being published by Atwood Publishing and are due out in the middle of August.

Continue reading "Terese Corey Blanck author of "The College to Career Road Map: A Four-Year Guide to Finding Your Path"" »

This post to Introduce Janine A. Schindler is part of an ongoing series of profiles of people who write for CollegeRecruiter.com through our blogs , articles, or our Ask the Experts questions and answers.


Janine Schindler is a certified executive coach with twenty-three years of experience spanning the corporate ranks in Fortune 1000 and 100 firms. As the owner of JAS Coaching & Training (JASCAT), she works with an established worldwide client base and provides an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results.

Continue reading "Expert panelists Janine A. Schindler - Career Coach" »

Etiquette. The word may bring to mind images of the Victorian Era and unnatural rules of behavior. But today basic etiquette is an important part of presenting a positive image to your boss or to your clients or customers. The skills required to project a relaxed and competent image are now receiving attention from all types of organizations, which expect employees at a variety of levels to be able to successfully present themselves and the company’s interests.

“Many people that make it to the top understand these rules, and they expect others to know them too. Most of the people I work with are upwardly mobile and good at their jobs but might lack the social skills to take that next step,” explains Jane Wilger, president of Minneapolis-based Wilger Image Development.

Wilger provides common sense guidelines for situations business people frequently experience, whether they are engineers, salespeople, administrators or executives. In her seminars, Wilger discusses all aspects of business meals, how to dress for success, body language, introductions, and even cellular phone manners. A few of her favorite tips follow below:

Continue reading "Business Etiquette Tips" »

I have lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, all my life, except for the years I went to Wake Forest University. I have two daughters who just graduated from college and have gotten their first jobs. My oldest daughter is an Event Planner for Coca Cola, here in Charlotte, and my youngest daughter, is a research assistant for a retained search firm, following in Dad's footsteps.

Continue reading "Introducing Robert Jones, Recruiting Manager for the Specialized Technology Recruiting Group of Sherpa, LLC" »

Yvonne and CollegeRecruiter.com have been associated with one another since 2001. The relationship has grown over the years to include her collaborating in the book, The Last Job Search Guide You'll Ever Need, being one of the panelists on Ask the Experts, article and podcast contributor, and now as the Career Coach team member. Yvonne sees her role as being the one who provides a no-nonsense, non-pie in the sky, version of the work world and pursuing opportunities. She's there to cheer the interns for their victories, boost their spirits during the dips, and offer constructive insights and advice.

In addition to career coaching, Yvonne is an Organizational Development Consultant. She approaches things principally from a management perspective in order to find solutions to situations in business operations, systems management, employee attraction and retention, assistance with employee development initiatives, and succession planning.

I love talking to people. I love to read. I've been known to read labels on bottles and packages in grocery stores and strike up conversations with total strangers at the drop of a hat. It's not uncommon for me to be the pivotal piece in starting a commuter party on the Gold Line and then have fellow passengers wonder how that happened. Outgoing and convivial are two parts of my personality.

My first and enduring career passion is the law. At the ripe old age of 13, I determined that I wanted to be a lawyer. Without any type of outside counsel, I determined that one day I might miss a case deadline, lose the case, get sued by my client, get disbarred, and go bankrupt in total shame. So I opted for the next best career in law -- legal secretary. I went through all the tiers of the legal career except being a lawyer. But this was good because I had the opportunity to see what each tier was about and that it did not hold the amount of challenge and reward I need. I still want to return to law school and actually complete my law degree as well as earn my license to practice.

Another very long standing desire is to travel the world, several times over. It's because of this insatiable desire to know more about other places and actually see them, to know the people, politics, social and religious structures, and other dynamics that make the countries unique. Another dream job I have is being a global journalist who goes from one place to another reporting on events. Talking to the leaders, as well as the man on the street, about things that are happening in their country, getting their perspective on why, the solutions, how those things are affecting them. And then tie up all of that information into how it affects the U.S. and other countries.

I totally enjoyed my two-year radio broadcast. The reason was that it was the culmination of all of my past careers. It was a broadcast about the legal news for the week sent out on a private band to 13 Bay Area counties to 13,000 visually impaired listeners. I was the producer. That meant I developed a relationship with the sponsoring newspaper and went through a week's worth of news. I then selected news stories that would be of interest to my listeners. At times, I wrote my own reportage from a one-paragraph blurb (often called a nutgraph). It was delightful to get back from having done my story over my broadcast and find that The Chronicle had run a full story on the same subject that was nearly identical to mine! I had the opportunity to put together roundtable discussions of experts on topics of interest, ballot measure issues that needed closer examination and discussion, feature judicial profiles of those vying for election. I was writing, I was using the law, I was talking, I was interviewing, I was developing special content.

I love writing -- just about any type of writing.

More information about Yvonne can be read on her CollegeRecruiter.com Biography .

Shannon Seery Gude of EXCELER8ion dropped me an email to direct me to a great speech by Penn State President Graham Spanier. The remarks by Spanier started with the top four ways to know that you've been out of college for too many years:

Continue reading "Top Four Ways to Know You've Been Out of College for Too Long" »

As the content manager for CollegeRecruiter.com, I would like to introduce you to Kevin Donlin who writes for our CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Resume Writing Experts Blog.

Kevin is President of Guaranteed Resumes. Since 1996, he and his team have provided resumes, cover letters and job search help to clients in all 50 states. Author of "51 Ways to Find a Job Fast -- Guaranteed," Kevin has been interviewed by USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, CBS Radio and many others. You can read more about Kevin in his CollegeRecruiter.com biography.

In the coming days, I will profile more of our blog authors, including those who write for our Insights by Employers Blog, Insights by Internship Experts Blog, Insights by Admissions Counselors Blog, Insights by Candidates Blog, and Insights by Financial Aid Experts Blog.

I recently had the good fortune of speaking about podcasting and blogging at the National Association of Colleges and Employers annual conference and the Southwest Association of Colleges and Employers annual conference. In both presentations, I discussed how Duke University and Harvard Medical School were two of the first schools to use podcasting as part of their education delivery systems. Now the University of North Carolina (UNC) Charlotte has joined the fray. Trust me: many others will soon follow.

Professors can use podcasting to deliver lectures to students via their computers and the students can then download those podcasts to their iPods. While some may view this as making it easier for students to cut class, I view this as a way of relieving students from being primarily focused on copying down everything that a professor says during the lecture so that the student can instead focus on actually listening to what the professor says. Then, when it comes time to review your brief notes, you can do so while listening to the lecture again through your iPod and replay the lecture or parts of it as many times as you wish.

"The benefits of these podcasts are very practical to the users and to the university," said Mirsad Hadzikadic, dean of the College of Information Technology. "Users have a new source of easily accessible information from our staff and faculty and from visiting experts, and the college increases its profile among people who are interested in computing and informatics. And, hosting the podcasts is fun."

The only downside to trends such as this is that they are largely confined to Gen Y. Gen X'ers like me and older generations are able to use technology such as podcasts, but that technology is not integrated into our daily lives to the same extent. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't think that the generation in college should be called Gen Y. They should be called Gen W with the W standing for wired or, even more appropriately, wireless. This is the wireless generation folks, and they are going to do some remarkable things for all of us.

I would like to start introducing our experts and counselors through a featured profile for all of our site viewers to be able to read and learn more about. I will start off with myself and provide you with some information about me.

I recently returned from Iraq after a year and half deployment. I have been hired as the Content Manger for CollegeRecruiter.com. I am responsible for recruiting and retaining bloggers and other writers, providing them with assistance such as generating new logins and topic suggestions, monitoring content to make sure it is G rated, and working to position CollegeRecruiter.com to become the focal point for information posted about issues related to college recruitment from schools, employers, students, graduates, and others.

I have known Steven Rothberg, the founder of CollegeRecruiter.com for over nine years. Together we have worked on many projects. In college I was an art major in the areas of graphic design, illustration and multimedia production. Steven and I started working together while I was doing freelance graphic design.

I have a blog which I just recently started called SoldierNow.com – http://www.SoldierNow.com which is basically a military blog to provide information to future soldiers who are thinking about joining the army. My goal is to help them find what interest them, provide any information about bonuses they can receive when enlisting and helpful resources to get them ready for talking with a recruiter. So if you know anyone interested in joining the army, send them my way. Have them mention CollegeRecruiter.com so I can not only provide them with information about the army, but other resources that are available through CollegeRecruiter.com that may be of interest to them.

Facts about me:
• I am married to my wife Melody. Both of us went to high school and college together. She is a CPA (or as I like to call her, a math geek) for Limited Brands corporate headquarters in the Bath & Body Works division. We have three children (2 boys, 1 girl ages 9, 5, and 2).
• In my spare time I enjoy playing ice hockey, day trading the stock market, painting with oils and acrylics, digital photography, & blogging.
• Member of Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity, Beta Phi Chapter

Shawn Augustson | Content Manager – CollegeRecruiter.com

It is day two of the Southwest Association of Colleges and Employers (SWACE) conference in New Orleans. Attendees are happy, excited, and yet also uneasy. They're happy to see each other and to have the opportunity to attend such a wonderfully put on conference. They're excited about the material that they're about to learn (perhaps even a few of them feel that way about my presentation on blogging and podcasting this afternoon). But they're uneasy because the conference is in New Orleans.

The informal walking tour that a few colleagues and I took last night into the French Quarter revealed little visible damage remaining from Katrina (unlike my drive yesterday through the devastated St. Bernard's Parish) but the number of people in the bars, souvineer shops, and on the streets was far fewer than in previous years. The garbage on the streets and the amount of construction seemed higher than in previous years. The consensus was that this city is coming back, but even in the least damaged areas, there is still so much to be done.

This morning a group of 27 of us took a guided tour of the American sector (downtown) and French Quarter. Our local guide was wonderful and quite colorful. He provided us with a lot of interesting information and, as all good guides too, quite a lot of trivia. At the end of his 1.5 hour tour, he told us that we were the first large group that he's led since Katrina, which was almost 10 months ago. In addition to the damage this city took from the storm, it is also suffering from the damage caused by the drop-off in tourism.

New Orleans is a great city. It has survived and come back to prosper through hurricanes, fires, and other natural disasters. I hope and pray that this time will be no different. But for anyone who assumes that most of the damage has been repaired simply because we're approaching the one year anniversary of Katrina, think again. Come down here and see for yourself. Get out of the downtown and French Quarter and into the areas such as St. Bernard's Parish. See what is really happening. See how entire neighborhoods are virtually deserted and the only people who are living in them are living in FEMA trailers. How long will those trailers survive before they fall apart? And who would want to live on a block where every other home is deserted and infested with mold and wildlife?

Wendy's is paying $11 per hour here and they add a $125 bonus for every week that you stay on the job. You simply cannot find enough people to do the work that needs to be done and with the neighborhoods in the condition they are, you have to wonder how the employers here are ever going to be able to entice the talent they will need in order to rebuild this majestic city.

I arrived today in New Orleans for the annual Southwest Association of Colleges and Employers (SWACE) conference. The last time I was in this area was as a volunteer a couple of weeks after Katrina hit. At that time, you couldn't get into New Orleans because the city was under water. Today, the water is gone but the devastation remains.

Seth Gardner of Nechama: Jewish Response from Disaster joined me for a delicious lunch at Elizabeth's Restaurant (home of the soon-to-be-famous Praline Bacon) and then a tour of various parts of the metro, including St. Bernard's Parish. Those of us who live outside of this area simply cannot comprehend the scale of the destruction and how much work remains to be done. Almost every home suffered extensive water damage and very few have been repaired. Nechama and other non-profit relief groups like it are making a huge difference in the lives of the people they touch, but there are far too many people who need such help and far too little help being offered.

Seth showed me the inside of a house that Nechama recently gutted so that it could be repaired by its ex-fisherman owner and we then went to a free medical and dental clinic run by Operation Blessing. That organization is all over the place down here. It receives its funding from Pat Robertson's The 700 Club. Love them or hate the parent organization, their Operation Blessing people are doing tremendous work down here.

We then headed to downtown New Orleans so that he could drop me at my hotel, the InterContinental. The downtown area is dirty and a ton of construction is going on to repair the infrastructure, but there is no question that it is open for business and more than capable of hosting world class conferences again. Which bring me back to SWACE.

Tomorrow is the first day of the conference and I was fortunate enough to be included as a speaker. I'll be talking about blogging and podcasting, two areas that are definitely my passion. I'll share with the career service office professionals and employers who attend my thoughts on how they can best use podcasting and blogging to help students find rewarding employment. They'll also get a sneak peak at one of the video podcasts that we're about to go live with. Shhh. Don't tell anyone.

After a few years, does anyone actually remember who spoke at their commencement day ceremony let alone what they said. Well, I guarantee you that the May 2006 graduates of Syracuse University will remember forever who spoke to them not only because of who is he or what he said, but because of how he delivered it. You see, Billy Joel delivered his speech to the tune of Down in New Orleans.

Attend my presentation tomorrow morning at the National Association of Colleges and Employers 2006 annual conference in Anaheim, California and you'll quickly find out. Or check out today's blog entry by Seth Godin, in which he shreds the arguments of those who believe that podcasting is a terrible name .

While some think that Memorial Day is simply the start of summer, a day off work, and a day to grill, others in society know the true meaning.

Kasson, Minnesota Memorial Day

You hear it continuously: we need to improve. We need to become more efficient. We need to become more effective. We need new features. Better features. Better service. According to Seth Godin, that's the wrong approach.

Seth feels that better is not always the right strategy as better is not always superior to different. "When you make something that works a little better, you're playing the same game, just keeping up with the status quo. When you make something different, on the other hand, you're trying to change the game."

About three years ago, I had the link to a New York employment discrimination case. A young woman, who is a congenital amputee, desired to go into medicine. Her first step in preparing for her medical career was to become an EMT (emergency medical technician) more commonly known as ambulance attendant or paramedic. She passed all parts of the employment tests except the strength test. After going through a rigorous training regimen, she retook the test and passed it. She ws still denied employment with the hospital where she applied, but another hospital did hire her.

What was enthralling about this case was when the judge asked her if she considered herself disabled or unable to do the work. Her matter of fact reply was, "I can do anything I want to do." The other significant part of this story is that the candidate refused to use a prosthetic device. Instead she learned to adapt to her condition and, quite literally, do whatever she wanted without assistance.

Continue reading "Ability and Tenacity" »

This is a first. Business Week has their 50 and 100 best of employers and several other categories of business and education notables (typically MBA aka "B" schools). But this week, BusinessWeek published a first. They have a PDF chart available that shows the survey results of how undergraduate business schools were ranked by current students.

Continue reading "50 Best Undergrad Business Colleges" »

This entry has nothing to do with sourcing, recruiting, or human resources. But it does have everything to do with humanity. One of the greatest baseball players ever died today. Kirby Puckett. An amazing fielder. An amazing hitter. A tortured soul. Dead at the age of 45 from a stroke. See CNN for details.

I moved to Minnesota in 1988, a year after the Twins won their first World Series championship. In 1991, I was working in Rochester, Minnesota. I shared a house with a co-worker. Night after night we would sit in the living room watching the Twins win game after game. Kirby was always a force. When the Twins needed someone to drive home a run in the ninth, it was Kirby batting. When the Twins needed someone to jump impossibly high to snatch away an opponent's sure home run, it was Kirby in center field. So we watched Kirby and his brothers just about every night all summer and all fall and we were rewarded with the second World Series championship for the Twins. In November, when we re-entered society, we realized that we were both single and had been dateless for months. Good thing that Kirby won it for us. If the Twins had lost, that would have been too hard to take.

Kirby, we'll miss you.

I've had quite the varied reaction to yesterday's blog entry about a fictitious job posting for new hockey players for the USA men's team. While several teams played below their expectations, it was Mike Modano and some of the other players on the American team that refused to admit that their failure to perform might have been primarily responsible for their failure to win more than one out of their four games.

Ever had an employee like Mr. Modano? Talented? Yes. Heart? Yes. Proves great leadership skills over a long period of time and with a wide variety of co-workers? Yes. Able to accept blame when there's failure? Not a chance.

Continue reading "New Hockey Players Needed. So Is a Sense of Humor." »

Employers, are you listening? Struggling to find a bright, entrepreneurial, financial whiz with a knack for global trade and logistics? Look no further:

This is not a joke. I repeat. This is not a joke.

The countdown has begun. CollegeRecruiter.com is re-launching tomorrow. We'll have a brand new look-and-feel, including new navigation. The biggest change will be the significantly greater prominence that we'll provide to our blogs and podcasting content.

Apparently Apple isn't content with virtually every student on every campus walking around listing to music and podcasts through their iPods. Now, according to a recent Associated Press article, Apple wants to get into the education game too.

In partnership with Stanford University, the University of Missouri, and four other schools, Apple will make college lectures and related content available via its new iTunes U product. Apple is creating customized versions of its iTunes software so schools willl be able to post podcasts, audio books, videos, and other content to their web sites. Students will be able to download the material to their PC or Mac computers and then rip it to their iPods or other such portable audio players.

Unlike material posted to the regular iTunes site, this material need not be made available to the general public. The schools will be able to decide what material is made available which groups or even to the general public. Stanford, for example, has chosen to give the public free access to some lectures and also audio broadcasts of its sporting events.

According to Chris Bell, Apple's director of product marketing for iTunes, iTunes U allows Apple to leverage “the ubiquity that we've established on campuses with iPods and iTunes.” For those of us who weren't English majors, that basically translates into Apple plans to extend its near monopoly in music being played on portable devices to the educational materials being played on portable devices.

The Minneapolis / Saint Paul International Airport is one of the nicer airports in the country. Still an airport, but one of the nicer ones. I was there yesterday evening waiting to board a plane Los Angeles for HRO World where I'll participate as one of the bachelors in their version of the dating game. Don't worry, my wife knows and she's cool with me trying to convince Red Lobster's Tanya Tateyama that we deserve their business. Shhh. Don't tell anyone. They're already a client. But I digress.

As I'm waiting for my plane, a well dressed passenger walks up to gate agent's desk and a little too loudly asks if there are any seats available in first class because she's continuing on to Australia and doesn't want to have to sit in coach. While I sure didn't blame her for wanting to sit in a seat where you didn't have to remove your legs and weigh as much as my six year old in order to be comfortable, her brashness was very un-Minnesotan. As Garrison Keillor says, we're all so nice and above average. Yup. You betcha.

Continue reading "Don't Argue With Your Customers When They Insist They Want to Buy" »

If we could just get the name of the right person in that particular company. You know, the one who's in the know about certain things. The one who can connect you to the right people or point you in this direction instead of that. The one who can provide the hints about which doors just might lead to Opportunity. There is a way to find the name of that person. It's a form of passive networking. It's called reading.

Continue reading "Getting Leads" »

The words were uttered between clenched teeth under a cool, regulated, muted voice. "I won't be coming back." The words were stern and unequivocating.

Continue reading "I Won't Be Coming Back" »

Our new CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Candidates Blog launched only a couple of weeks ago, and already there are dozens of entries by college students and recent graduates who are unemployed, underemployed, and employed. When you read through the entries, a common thread emerges. Many seem to recognize the critical importance of getting great work experience prior to graduation and, when presented with a good opportunity, not to get greedy by holding out for the perfect opportunity.

I do not advocate that candidates should automatically accept the first job offered to them. To the contrary, as such jobs are often poorly suited to the candidate's credentials. If they are overqualified for the job, they'll be bored and likely will quit after only weeks or months. Not exactly a great resume builder. On the other hand, if they're underqualified, they'll be stressed and will likely be fired. Again, not exactly a great resume builder. Candidates must research their competencies, interests, and values to determine which industry they wish to target. Then they need to research that industry to determine which organizations to target. Then they need to research those organizations to determine which departments to target. Then they need to identify decisionmakers within those departments and network with them. If that sounds like a lot of work, well, it can be. But professionals spend about one third of their working lives on the job, so isn't it worth the investment in yourself?

Life is simply too short to accept a job which is not a great fit. There are so many jobs out there. And because we live in a free country with a robust economy, we all have choices. Don't settle and don't over reach. Find a good job, not necessarily the perfect job, and invest in yourself. For an investment in yourself is probably the best investment you can ever make.

Millions of New Yorkers have been harmed by the city's latest transit strike. Most are finding a way of getting to work, getting errands done, and generally staying mobile. But the loss of mass transit has made the already stressful process of getting to and from work almost intolerable. And with the holidays right around the corner, little gets done at work at this time of the year even without a strike, so many workers have decided to avoid the mess and instead work from home.

Coincidentally, I wasn't able to get much work done today either, although my situation wasn't due to the transit strike. Instead, I was knocked sideways (not as bad as being knocked backwards) by some kind of virus. Almost like the flu. Almost like the common cold. But not quite either. Yet due to the incredible advances in modern communication, I was able to be almost as productive from my living room as from my office. I checked and returned emails. I instant messaged with key vendors. I talked on the phone with a client. And I participated in a conference call during which we won a significant new client.

Continue reading "New York City Transit Strike and Being Sick" »

One of the benefits of being one of the owners of a high traffic web site targeted to college students and recent graduates is that you get lots of freebies. Organizations send products to me regularly so that I can try them out and, if I like them, perhaps write about them.

Recently, I received a couple of games for the new Nintendo DS. Very cool. Animal Crossing Wild World and Metroid Prime Pinball are both rated "E" for everyone. Although the "E" rating refers to content, it could also refer to fun because these games are both fun for everyone.

Animal Crossing allows you to decorate your own home, go fishing, chat with the characters, and even interact with your real-world friends using the wireless technology built into the DS. Metroid Prime Pinball is definitely more exciting than cerebral. In addition to be able to play dozens of different pinball games, you'll collect hidden artifacts, find weapon upgrades, battle characters, and, if you wish, interact with your real-world friends.

Now if only the good folks at the Lamborgini dealer could be convinced that their car sales would spike shortly after I reviewed one of those sweet vehicles....

I'm pleased to announce the launch of our second blog, the CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Candidates blog. The students and graduates who will write for Insights by Candidates blog will describe their career development and the career development of their friends and family. We'll learn from them about the labor market for students and graduates. What job search techniques are working and not working. What they like and don't like about their career service offices. Which employers are doing an effective job of reaching out to this generation. For anyone involved in college hiring, our new CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Candidates blog should be a fantastic source of information.

I had the pleasure of speaking today at the 2005 Mountain Pacific Association of Colleges and Employers (MPACE) Annual Conference. What a great job the organizers did.

The conference was at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak conference center in Phoenix, Arizona. The keynote speaker was Randy Snow, an absolutely brilliant, gifted motivational speaker. I'm not usually one who enjoys these types of speeches because they often come across more as group therapy sessions than anything else, but Randy was really something else. He's been in a wheelchair since the age of 16 as a result of a farming accident but has never let his disability get the better of him. Truly a remarkable person. No excuses for him. So no excuses for us so-called able bodied people.

Continue reading "Mountain Pacific Association of Colleges and Employers Conference" »

Although the economy can and hopefully will do better so that everyone who wants to work will find rewarding work, given what this country has been through recently there can be little doubt that the economy is in great shape. In case you missed the news, the Gross Domestic Product grew 3.8 percent in the third quarter. That is a great growth rate at the best of times, but some unusual problems were thrown at the economy during the third quarter. Problems like Katrina. And Rita. And $70-a-barrel oil. The strength and diversity of our economy never ceases to amaze me.

Good news out of Washington, D.C. The October Labor Statistics from the Department of Labor (DOL) indicated that the number of unemployed persons, 7.4 million, and the unemployment rate, 5.0 percent, were virtually unchanged in October. There had been concern that the massive unemployment and shifting of population as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita would have caused the rates to jump.

Continue reading "October 2005 Labor Statistics" »

Great news from the nation's capital: the U.S. Army is not only hitting its recruiting goals for reenlistment but is exceeding them. For months, there has been significant concern in many circles about the negative impact on recruiting resulting from the war in Iraq and continued engagements in other hot spots around the world, including Afghanistan, South Korea, Kosovo, and many, many others.

But apparently the Army has found a way to retain its soldiers and that's good news for all of us. Over the past three years, reenlistment rates have been at least six percent higher than the Army's goals. The Army attributes these strong rates to unprecedented cash bonuses and a renewed sense of purpose in fighting terrorism. To make the record bonuses even more enticing, some are tax-free if soldiers reenlist while in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Continue reading "Army Exceeds Reenlistment Goals" »

The blogosphere is buzzing about Google's plans to enter into on-line classifieds and scan every book in the world, copyrighted or not. See Digital Rules By Rich Karlgaard.

Apparently Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac, and others see Google as both benevolent (they love its search engine) and evil (their publisher constituents are nervous that they might actually have to compete with the brains and capital at Google). CollegeRecruiter.com is impacted both as a publisher of books and as the seller of job postings, a type of on-line classified advertising. Are we nervous about Google's forays into two of our business areas? Sure. Are we excited about the potential because we see the potential for working with their systems in such a way that we are able to help level the playing field against some of our larger indirect competitors that are able to buy advertising on the Superbowl? Absolutely.

Continue reading "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad (Good?) Wolf?" »

Google recently announced the release of Google Base, an on-line classified advertising system that allows employers, job boards, and other organizations to post job openings. The release has been quite the topic of conversation in the recruitment world. See, for example, Google Enters Job Listings Fray | workforce.com.

While some of the highest traffic job boards view the entry by Google into recruitment advertising as a threat and have refused to cooperate, Careerbuilder, CollegeRecruiter.com and others view Google's move as an opportunity. Within weeks and certainly months, expect many and perhaps most premium job boards to follow our lead by crossposting some or all of their jobs to Google because doing so is good for the candidate, good for the employer, and therefore good for the job board.

Continue reading "Google Base - Threat or Opportunity?" »

There's been a lot of buzz in my environment over the past several months. It has to do with pride. The pride that the community criticizes is that attributed to conceit, unmerited satisfaction and inflated status about something.

While the detractors scorn pride, they only recently stopped to consider the positive side of pride. This is being elated over doing something well and bringing positive credit to those who deserve it. Once reminded of this other aspect of being proud of something, the community admitted that there is the negative aspect of pride and the one that is positive. There are different dimensions to the one characteristic.

Now there is yet another perspective with regard to pride, or actually something we call self-confidence. It is possible to be confident, that is, have a belief in one's own abilities or being certain, having assurance. That can be expressed in various ways that one goes about doing or saying things. However, let's not get confidence mixed up with bullying.

Continue reading "A Significant Difference: Pride, Bullying, Confidence" »

Great news out of the yesterday's Senate confirmation hearings for Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman to-be. In prepared his prepared remarks Bernanke vowed to stay focused on both inflation and jobs as he understands that it is "low income people who suffer most from recession [and] low-income people who suffer most from a high level of inflation."

Continue reading "Fed Chairman-to-be Ben Bernanke Focused on Inflation and Jobs" »

I think that there's a cliche out there about always a bridesmaid and never a bride. While that wouldn't quite apply to me (I am a guy, after all), I could, as Bill Clinton used to say, feel their pain. For years I've looked forward to being one of the speakers at the National Association of Colleges and Employers National Meetings. These are, without question, the premiere conferences for those involved in college hiring. Most of the attendees are college career service office professionals, but there are also hundreds of employers and vendors. Last year's National Meeting in Milwaukee attracted thousands of attendees. Next spring's meeting in Anaheim, home of Mickey, should be even bigger. And I'll be one of the speakers.

Continue reading "National Association of Colleges and Employers 2006 National Meeting" »

I learned today about Steven Sinofsky's Microsoft TechTalk, a blog for college grads interested in learning about careers at Microsoft. While some may criticize Microsoft for being "the evil empire," an opinion to which I've never subscribed, there can be little doubt that Microsoft has grown over the past couple of decades into a very large company.

Continue reading "Microsoft Blog for College Grads" »

As the President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, I speak at a number of HR conferences. Some are general and some are specifically geared to college or Internet recruiting issues. It never ceases to amaze me that I've never run into a candidate at these conferences, other than the HR people who are looking for new HR positions. College students and recent graduates should attend college recruiting conferences. Diverse candidates should attend diversity recruiting conferences. They'll be surrounded by dozens and even hundreds of senior human resource professionals and hiring managers. What could be a better investment?

Just in case there was any doubt about the effect of the rebounding economy on starting salaries, it was reported today that the compensation for recent business school graduates from Harvard, Dartmouth, and Stanford rose at least 9.5 percent from a year earlier. See Dallas Morning News.

Most of the growth, as can be expected, was driven by sharply higher salaries being offered by investment banking firms. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., for example, paid members of its class of 2004 about $85,000. This year's group should be treating last year's group to steak dinners. The class of 2005 is being paid about $140,000, an astounding one year increase of 35 percent.

Continue reading "MBA Salaries Regain Dot Com Highs" »

CollegeRecruiter.com plans to allow a few employers and recruiters to get some great added exposure and develop a real rapport with the job seekers and others who use our site. How? By allowing those organizations to designate one or more of their staff to post regular entries to our blog.

If you're willing to post diary-type entries at least two or three times a week, then I want to talk with you. I'm looking for employers to really pull back the curtains and allow candidates to gain some real insight into the hiring process, what it is like to work at your organization, etc. Insights about what candidates are doing well and not doing well would be great. I wouldn't want you to use any names about specific candidates or otherwise identify them in any way, but writing about specific situations would be great.

Interested? Contact me directly at Steven@CollegeRecruiter.com or 800-835-4989.

Reaction has been mixed today after the announcement by President George W. Bush that his latest pick for the U.S. Supreme Court is Judge Sam Alito. See TPR or Used Car Salesman for one example of reaction from the recruiting community.

Continue reading "Judge Sam Alito" »

If you're a college student or recent graduate who wants to be journalist or writer, then you may wish to consider applying to intern for CollegeRecruiter.com. See the CollegeRecruiter.com Journalism Internship job posting.

Continue reading "Write for the CollegeRecruiter.com Blog" »

If you're looking for a new job and frustrated by a lack of interviews, don't assume that all you need to do is spif up your resume. Candidates often place too much emphasis on their resume and not enough on the other facets of a job search, such as researching industries, organizations within the industries, departments within the organizations, and the hiring managers within those departments. Candidates should also place more emphasis on researching themselves.

Continue reading "Personal Portfolios" »

One of the great benefits of being one of the owners of CollegeRecruiter.com is that I am able to speak with both employers and job seekers about the job market and the process of hiring new talent and finding a new job. Yet one of the frustrating aspects is that I am now so aware that so many job seekers make the same mistakes over and over again. For example, probably once a week I hear from a job seeker who is frustrated because they've applied to hundreds of jobs yet can't seem to get hired. When I question why they would continue to do the same thing over and over again when it hasn't brought them success, most basically shrug and say that's the only way that they know to find a job.

Continue reading "Career Coaching" »

Interesting post at Recruiting.com regarding how differently today's youth communicates versus how their parents communicate. See Recruiting.com: College Students Today, Employees Tomorrow: Are You Ready?.

One of the key points of the discussion is that today's college students are far more likely to participate in a discussion if it is held using instant messaging or other such technology. I've been seeing this trend for years so pushed to facilitate such communications between our customer service people and our users. Until about a year ago, candidates could contact us by phone, email, fax, snail mail, etc. All the normal methods. But all of those methods are deemed by college students to be too slow, even email. They're used to carrying on discussions with a dozen friends via IM simultaneously, so why would they want to wait even hours for our people to get back to them? Once we implemented the change, they were able to get answers immediately.

Continue reading "Communicating Through Instant Messaging" »

It's fine to say you want to go into The Arts or the law or, as someone recently said, Accounting. That's the big picture. Having some concept of what the big picture is constitutes a major step in embarking on the most amazing journey of your life.

Continue reading "Choose a Road, Choose a Path" »

CollegeRecruiter.com just announced that we will take a leadership role in the delivery of employment-related content via audio recordings. See CollegeRecruiter.com Uses Podcasting to Deliver Employment Advice to Students and Recent Graduates (October 18, 2005 Press Release).

We anticipate that the vast majority of those who listen to the recordings will download them to their iPods and listen to them when they have a few minutes but don't have access to a computer, such as in between classes or while commuting. Our goal is to deliver to our visitors the content that they want, how they want it, and when they want it. While some podcasting services charge a fee, we do not.

"We all hope that our judgment is keen enough that when it comes to hiring, we actually have hired the best person for the job. When it comes to hiring one of the company leaders, it's especially important to know that the best possible (or even the best) is part of the organization.

"It's when an emergency or a disaster occurs and that person is propelled into taking sharp, quick, definitive action that the proof the pudding occurs. There's no time in that situation to shift about looking for the alternatives and waiting for feelings to subside. Nor is there time to be timid. There's time enough for feelings and such afterward. It is imperative that the situation be assessed quickly and accurately and that the best available options are executed on time."

From "When All Are Losing Their Heads," September 11, 2001


Continue reading "Focus" »

How secret can a job in the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (a/k/a MI6 of James Bond lore) be when Her Magesty's government launches a career site for the agency and announces in prominent scrolling type that it is hiring across the board? See Careers in and recruitment for the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).

In all seriousness, although the work that such intelligence agencies conduct is often should be done in secret, their existence has hardly been a secret. Tom Clancy's books frequently feature operatives from the Central Intelligence Agency and the CIA advertises many of its openings on CollegeRecruiter.com. Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, also wrote about the inner workings at the National Security Agency. The NSA, like the CIA, are both U.S. intelligence agencies.

If you're looking for a life of excitement and danger, most of the positions that these organizations offer will disappoint you. You're probably better off pursuing a career as a storm chaser or NASCAR driver. But if you're looking for a career where intelligence and analysis are valued and language skills prized, then jobs with organizations such as MI6, the CIA, and the NSA may be just the ticket.

Although CollegeRecruiter.com and Jobster are indirect competitors, it is nice to see that Jobster agrees with the customer first philosophy that we've had since I founded this company in 1991. See jobster blog: web 2.0.

Back in the dot com gold rush days of 1998 to early 2000, it was incredibly common to hear organizations without profits, revenues, or customers talk about how they had all the answers because they had the best technology. What they failed to understand was that if you build a better mouse trap, the world will not beat a path to your door if they do not perceive a need for that mouse trap. One of our direct competitors back then, may its soul rest in peace, was sold to a staffing company for $30 million. Not bad, especially when you consider that the staffing company was paying that kind of money for an organization with $300,000 in revenue and $3 million in losses. They too had all the answers. Very Web 1.0.

Today's profitable web sites, and we fall into that category, understand that technology for the sake of technology may be cool and fun, but it doesn't make good business. It doesn't make good business for our customers, our vendors, or our shareholders. Technology that helps our customers be more effective and more efficient is very Web 2.0.

Steven Rothberg, President and Founder
CollegeRecruiter.com

So many times, people think of their resume and the end of the job search Nirvana. They spend hours, if not days, perfecting not only how it looks on paper but how it will look when it's faxed. Some diligently work on sending an ASCII version of their resume so that it will retain its formatting and legibility.

Continue reading "New Job Search Tools" »

It appears that up to 100,000 post-secondary students in New Orleans may at least temporarily have lost their schools as a result of damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. See CNN.com - New Orleans universities work to rebuild - Oct 4, 2005.

The good news is that schools from around the country have opened their doors and their arms to make these students feel welcome and allow them to continue their studies until Tulane, Xavier, Loyola, and the other fine institutions in New Orleans are back in business. It will be interesting to see how many students from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama elected to continue their studies through on-line schools. While some on-line schools do not have the best reputation, many are accredited and well respected by small and large employers across the country.

CNN reported today that only 35,000 jobs were lost in September 2005, far lower than most experts had predicted in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. With 300,000 jobs being lost in the Gulf States, that means that 335,000 new jobs were created in other states. That's an incredibly strong month in most areas of the country, but let us not forget the devastation in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Tonight, tens of thousands of people will be sleeping in crowded Red Cross shelters. As the flu season approaches, how many of those who are weakened by their ordeal will suffer even more as the person in the cot next to them sneezes, coughs, and otherwise sends germs from their "home" to yours, a distance of only a few inches?

According to a radio news report, Best Buy put out a "now hiring" banner outside of one of its stores in New Orleans to help them replace the employees that they had who are now either dead or living hundreds of miles away because their homes were destroyed. Best Buy is hiring 10 to 15 people per day and starting to feel some upward pressure on wages. This type of corporate rebuilding is going to be the key to the rebuilding of the Gulf States. While the Red Cross and other disaster relief organizations do tremendous good, they aren't going to turn the economy around. Employers will need to do that. Yet employers are not and should not be social welfare organizations. Best Buy isn't going to hire someone simply because that person really wants to work, promises to work hard, or loves Best Buy. They'll be hired because they've convinced Best Buy that they'll increase the store's revenues more than the store will pay them, decrease the store's expenses more than the store will pay them, or some combination of the two. If 10 to 15 people per day at just one store in a devastated city like New Orleans can manage to do that, then all job seekers should be able to do the same. Don't just tell employers that you want the job. Prove to them that they can't afford not to hire you.

Last night was a low point. The day had been long and rugged. It tested the spirit to the nth degree. There was one accomplishment that should have been stellar. Instead, it was taken as, "So what?" And that attitude colored the entire day.

Continue reading "Ready for Anything!" »

So I'm sitting on a bus stop with someone I know. He's pulling his life back together and looking for more permanent work. After inquiring about the type of work he does, I turned to him and asked, "If you could get some type of class to help you get a job and keep a job, what type of class would it be?"

He didn't think long. "To get a job, I'd want a class on writing my resume and how to present myself."

"Okay," I responded, "What would you want to know about how to keep a job?"

Continue reading "Job Preparation Wishes" »

I received a call today from a college in Vermont. Their students want to go to the Gulf Coast, probably Mississippi or Louisiana, to help with the efforts to clean-up from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. They're planning on spending a week or so as part of their alternative spring break problem. Whoever calls this generation "the entitled generation" just doesn't understand how caring, giving, and involved they are in their communities.

The school called because I am a volunteer on the Board of Nechama: Jewish Response to Disaster. We've arranged for free housing, food, water, showers, toilets, and other basic necessities in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Although Nechama is a Jewish organization, many of our volunteers are not Jewish and we do not look at a victim's race, gender, religious affiliation, etc. when determining whether we can help them or not. We do not ask who they are. Instead, we ask how can we help. Which is exactly what these students from Vermont are asking.

There are times in history when competition for jobs were hot. No, I can't name them off the top of my head. All I know is there was a shortage of opportunity and an overabundance of people who could and wanted to work.

I'm not certain people went to some of the lengths then that they do these days in order to gain the upper hand or the rare opportunity to get in the door to earn the dollars and have the security of a paycheck for an honest day's work well done. The one time period that comes to mind is the '30s Depression. Everyone was down and out. The suicide rate had dropped. But few people had more than the wish in their hearts. They put in their time, earned their bucks, then moved on to whatever the horizon held in store for them. Others put down roots. It was just a given that everyone needed a job and when some store had the dollars and the volume to justify it, they'd put a sign in the window that read:

HELP WANTED

All that was necessary was to go in the door, pick up the sign, say you wanted the job. You were hired on the spot and started that minute.

Today, however, jobs are scarce. But there's something else that's even more scarce. It's the civility that we as a people had back in the '30s. No, I wasn't around then. But I read. I wasn't around then. But I listened to the stories of those who were. I wasn't around then. But I paid attention to how those who were acted around me with others (whether young or old) and how they went about getting something for themselves.

There is a more graceful way of doing things than using duplicity in order to gain the upper hand. There is a more honest way of talking with people -- that tends to be more enduring. It's called honesty.

Some may call me naive. But it's proven itself time and time again. Each time the situation has been uncomfortable and there's little to no more wiggle room or space for negotiation, it's proven to be the best route to simply tell the truth. The person on the other side seems to understand. They seem to respect the honesty. They hear the genuine effort that has gone beforehand in order to fulfill requirements that simply could not be performed under the circumstances.

Some people don't seem to understand this honesty factor. They feel the only way they can win whatever it is they aspire to is by using whatever tactics they can. It doesn't matter that they may hurt many in the process. It doesn't seem to matter that they may lie or massage the truth to the point that it's something other than what it seems. The only thing that matters is the winning.

While these latter types may gain the upper hand in the short run, they do themselves long-term disservice. The truth of their devices is soon revealed. People remember. People resent. When faced with the prospect of dealing with the latter types in the future, the opportunity is turned aside to someone else.

While it may seem that the only way to survive is to be just as ruthless and unprincipled as a competitor, in the long run (and that's what really counts), it's best to be as honest as possible. Be creative. Be tactful and courteous. Be aggressive. Be aggressive when it counts. Be aggressive about meaningful things. It's best to be the best you can be in all manner of things. That is the key to surviving in a ruthless market.

Had my haircut this morning. Not much new or interesting there, but the woman who cuts my hair told me that her significant other is considering quitting driving a truck all over the country and instead temporarily moving to Mississippi or Louisiana to help with the clean-up efforts from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. He's heard that contractors and other organizations are hiring people with chain saw and handyman type experience for $20 per hour. As a long haul truck driver, he's been clearing about $1,000 per month. So at $20 per hour he can make almost 3.5 times as much doing storm clean-up work than driving a truck.

Seems to me that he can make even more by working for himself. He owns a chain saw and knows how to use it safely, so he could just go door-to-door and make $500 or so per house for a few hours of work. I've heard many homeowners have been paying thousands of dollars to vultures who always seem to descend on victims when they are the most desperate. $500 to clear a huge downed tree is pretty reasonable, and for someone who knows what they're doing and can do it safely and quickly it is very good money. And it sure beats driving a truck across the country day after day for someone who enjoys the company of others.

Had an interesting conversation today with a consultant who works with job seekers. His philosophy is that job seekers really damage their chances by failing to promote themselves. Most of us have been taught to be modest and not to brag about our accomplishments, yet to properly sell yourself to a potential employer you must cite your accomplishments and prove that you're the best candidate for the position. This is a real struggle for many job seekers, yet it is one that they must overcome to be successful.

One option that job seekers can use is to sell themselves as a job seeker as if they were selling a service to a potential customer. They should make sure that the customer (the employer) understands not only the features but, more imporantly, also the benefits. Although it grates on the nerves of most when people speak about themselves in the third person, it may be helpful to some job seekers to think of themselves that way. But don't speak that way. Please!

Microsoft announced today that it would increase the salaries of Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer. If these two aren't amongst the most underpaid executives in the world, I don't know who is.

There's little doubt that Microsoft's stock has languished over the past couple of years and that many now view the company as being past its prime, tired, and fat. But over the next year or so this powerhouse is set to release new versions of its most powerful money generating products, including the greatly anticipated successor to Windows XP.

So Bill will now make $620,000 per year for creating and running one of the most successful organizations ever. While that sounds like a lot of money to most of us, let's not forget that Dennis Kozlowski had his former employer, Tyco, pay $1 million for a birthday party for his wife and $6,000 for shower curtains.

So congrats to Microsoft, its shareholders, and its customers. And thank you to Bill and Steve for recognizing that they provide a great deal of value, but don't need to be paid more than the guy across the street in order to feel good about themselves.

Steven Rothberg, President and Founder

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak about volunteering to a groups of 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students. I spoke with them about the importance of volunteering, not only because it helps their community and the world but also because, well, it just feels so good to help others. These kids, if you can call a 17 year old a kid, were so bright, so motivated, so eager to give of themselves that I found myself wondering all the way home how anyone could describe this generation "The Entitled Generation."

Do these kids have more stuff than their parents? In most cases, yes. Are they more likely to take that stuff for granted? In most cases, yes. Are these kids more likely to forego the opportunities of making more money or having a bigger job if they must sacrifice their quality of life? In most cases, yes.

While there are certainly bad apples in every basket, I absolutely love this generation. These 17 year olds were 13 years old on 9/11. They were, for the most part, too young to have held jobs and still young enough to be highly impressionable. They're still young enough to be idealistic and cynicism about their ability to make a difference has not yet set in. And they are eager to make a difference, even if the difference that each makes individually won't change the world.

I've spoken about my volunteering efforts to rooms of Baby Boomers, Gen X'ers, and Gen Y'ers. Boomers typically sit back and listen. They typically are interested and like being entertained, but when it comes time for them to make a contribution, they usually beg off by claiming that they're too busy. Are they? I have no doubt that they're busy. We all are. But like everything else in life, it is a matter of priorities. If they really wanted to volunteer to help better the lives of those around us, they could and would.

Gen X'ers also tend to be somewhat passive when hearing about volunteer opportunities, but when it comes time for them to make a contribution, most of them do. The biggest issue that I've found with Gen X'ers is that many and perhaps most of them have not yet identified the one or two causes about which they feel passionate. They struggle with how to divide their energy between different causes because they feel positively about many. They are willing and able to make time in their day, week, month, or year to make a difference but they need help figuring out how to do so.

Gen Y'ers, much more than the other two groups, dive right in. At yesterday's sessions, I heard no excuses about being too busy or a desire to simply write a check. Instead, what I heard was, "How can I be involved?" They had no doubt that they wanted to contribute and would find a way to do so. Their questions were not based upon deciding how what is the minimum amount that they should contribute. Instead, they wanted to know from those of us with more experience how they could make the most difference to the lives of those around us.

Does the world have problems? You bet. Do we all need to be surrounded by more people who care and who get involved? Absolutely. Are we in good hands with this youngest generation of adults? Without a doubt.

Steven Rothberg, President and Founder
CollegeRecruiter.com

Given the fact that we are only now (and I mean in the last six months or less) emerging from the New Millennium Depression, it's surprising how many people I see using employment development centers and dressed as though they're going to the park or kicking around on a Saturday afternoon to do housework.

Continue reading "On the Ready" »


News reports
indicate that about 200,000 jobs have been lost to Hurricane Katrina, yet some insist that the construction and other recovery-related work will actually help the economy. Although the money being pumped into the economy from the relief work will help, that money would have helped far more had it been spent to create wealth rather than to repair damage.

Think of it this way. You own a business and your facility suffered $50,000 in storm-related damage. You spend the $50,000 to hire the contractors. But when they're finished you're just back where you started. Your facility is no better. You're producing the same products at the same price with the same level of staffing. If you had invested the $50,000 in new equipment or training for your staff, you would be able to produce your products for less money, which would allow you to sell them to your customers for less, make a greater profit, or both. That investment, therefore, would produce real economic gains for your customers, your company, or both.

No question that we need to spend the money to repair the damage just as we need to spend money to maintain a military strong enough to defend our nation, but spending money to repair damage or to buy tanks is an economic dead end. Once the money is spend, the outputs don't create new wealth. The replacement windows and the tanks are needed, but unlike new production line equipment or worker training, replacement windows and tanks don't create new wealth.

Steven Rothberg, President and Founder
CollegeRecruiter.com

I'm in Atlanta attending the IQPC Recruiting & Staffing Summit. Yesterday evening, I attended a workshop yesterday evening on the best practices for maximizing the technology initiatives in the staffing process. The presenter, Shally Steckerl, is a lead researcher at Microsoft.

Very interesting discussion. Along with some human resource professionals, we discussed the technology available to HR, how it is being used, how it should be used, and what is missing. It was that last component that I found to be the most interesting. Incredible as it may be, there is no technology that would allow HR to determine the source of hire for its stars. Human resource information systems (HRIS) exist and allow HR to determine which of its employees are its stars. Applicant tracking systems (ATS) exist and allow HR to determine the source for its hires. But HRIS and ATS systems can't speak with each other.

Think of the powerful impact such a system would have. A hiring manager could instruct HR to hire a new marketing assistant. With such a tool, HR would be able to use technology to determine which of the existing marketing assistants are the real stars and then determine the source for those employees. Did they apply through employee referrals? Corporate web site? Job board? Once HR has those two pieces of information, they can efficiently and effectively source the new candidate. Hopefully that future will come sooner rather than later.

Steven Rothberg, President and Founder
CollegeRecruiter.com

I'm in Atlanta to speak at the IQPC Recruiting & Staffing Summit annual conference. I arrived last night at a nice but moderately priced all suites hotel. I selected it, in part, because it offered free wireless Internet access. After checking in, I turned on my computer and could see through WinXP that there were half a dozen wireless networks and most of them had strong signals. I tried to connect to several of them but could not establish a connection. I called the front desk. The only help they provided was to give me two toll free numbers to the wireless Internet service provider. I called those numbers. They both rang to the same place and after holding for several minutes I was only offered the opportunity to leave a message. I did so and then went to get dinner.

Continue reading "Poorly Trained Hotel Workers" »

I'll be in Atlanta from Tue 9/20/05 through Thu 9/22/05 to attend and speak at the IQPC Recruiting & Staffing Summit. It is a great gathering of human resource leaders from 150+ top employers. These types of industry events are always a good use of time as they lend themselves well to meeting existing and potential customers, vendors, and business partners.

Steven Rothberg, President and Founder
CollegeRecruiter.com

I spent the last five days in Mississippi and Louisiana doing volunteer disaster relief work for Nechama: Jewish Response to Disaster http://www.nechama.org. As terrible as the destruction is on TV, seeing it first hand is even worse. I walked through a neighborhood in Ocean Springs, Mississippi and could only cry. Houses ripped from their concrete foundations and moved hundreds of feet inland. Boats dropped like seashells blocks from their former moorings. Homes cracked into multiple pieces. Teddy bears laying abandoned amidst the rubble.

Even in Hattiesburg, an hour's drive inland, the devastation was terrible. Although houses were not reduced to splinters in Hattiesburg, thousands of homes were destroyed from wind damage. Countless trees were uprooted, which many of them crashing down onto homes and opening up gaping holes in their walls and roofs. With the high heat and humidity of the area, mold quickly takes root and destroys everything soft in its path. The only cure is to rip out and discard everything that it touches, including wallboard, carpeting, furniture, books, clothes, etc.

And what will become of the people who once lived in the now destroyed homes? Hundreds of thousands are living in shelters and temporary shelters. Many will never return as they have nothing to return to. Will they find employment and rebuild their lives? My hope is that those who struggled to find employment in cities such as New Orleans will find rewarding positions in Houston, Baton Rouge, Jackson, and other cities. My fear is that we will treat these neighbors as we treated those who fled the dust bowl that was Oklahoma in the 1930's. We must not.

Welcome to the CollegeRecruiter.com Blog. Unlike many blogs on other sites, our intention is that this blog will actually be of interest to most of our users rather than simply serving as a platform from which we speak. We intend to use this blog to engage in conversation with the job seekers, employers, career counselors, and others who use CollegeRecruiter.com. I encourage all of our users to pose questions and post answers. In short, should you have a career-related question, post it. Should you have an answer to a question that has been posted or wish to offer a different answer from those which are already published, post it.

Steven Rothberg, President and Founder
CollegeRecruiter.com job board