WEDDLE S 2011 User S Choice Awards: the Elite of the Online Employment Industry

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WEDDLE’s 2011 User’s Choice Awards: The Elite of the Online Employment Industry

WEDDLE's Tips for Success

The Washington Post has described Peter Weddle as "…a man filled with ingenious ideas." He writes or has written:

• A biweekly column about online job search for CNN
• A biweekly column about online recruiting for CareerJournal.com from The Wall Street Journal
• A weekly column about Web-sites for job seekers for the National Business Employment Weekly
• A biweekly newsletter about online resources for successful recruiting and retention that is distributed worldwide
• A biweekly newsletter about effective job search techniques and successful career self-management that is distributed worldwide
• Annual Guides and Directories to the 100,000+ employment sites operating on the Internet today.

WEDDLE's is pleased to present Tips for Success, a compilation of some of Peter's most popular articles for recruiters, HR professionals, job seekers, and career activists.

• If you're a recruiter or HR professional, we hope these articles will help you use the Internet effectively as you (a) search for the best qualified candidates for your open positions and (b) work to retain, develop and lead world class employees.
• If you're a job seeker or career activist, we hope these Tips will help you find a rewarding and fulfilling job and achieve your career goals.

"I've known Peter Weddle for years. He is an immensely likeable guy. He is also extremely knowledgeable. He's been a master for years of the whole field called 'The Web', and the job-boards in particular …."
Richard Nelson Bolles, author of What Color is Your Parachute?

To reach the articles of interest to you, simply click on the appropriate button below.

The Application Two-Step

Here’s a not uncommon scenario on the Internet today: you spend several hours surfing the Web at a number of employment Websites; you search through hundreds of job postings in their job databases; and finally, you find what you’ve been looking for. There, right in front of you, is a posting for your dream job. So, what do you do? Send in your resume, right? Well, not exactly; if that were the sum of it, a lot more of us would be getting offers for the jobs we really want.

You see, applying for a job online is actually a two-step process:

• Step 1 is a test, while
• Step 2 is the answer.

Complete the first step, and you will be considered an applicant; complete the second step, and you will get yourself noticed. Do both steps, and you will likely move to the head of the applicant line.

Step 1: The Test

When you see a job posting, you are facing a test. The purpose of this exam is to determine whether or not you paid attention in Mrs. Murphy’s kindergarten class. What was the first lesson you were taught there? That’s right: you must pay attention to directions. So, a job posting is, first and foremost, a test to determine whether you can follow the directions the company has provided for applying. These directions might be:

• Cut and paste your resume into the body of an e-mail message,
• Send your resume as an attachment to an e-mail message,
• Complete the online application form that the company provides, or
• Send your resume to the company by old fashioned postal mail.

Whatever the method the employer chooses, however, the key is that you follow its directions. In essence, that’s the way—and the only way—the employer wants it done. So, this job posting exam in Step 1 is pass or fail; either you follow the employer’s directions and are considered a genuine applicant or you don’t follow its directions and are designated a “graffiti applicant.” The former gets you into the zone of consideration; the latter gets you tossed into the reject pile.

Step 2: The Answer

As soon as you have completed Step 1, begin to implement Step 2. If Step 1 enables you to pass the test; Step 2 provides the answer that will ace it. Why? Because recruiters are inundated with applicant resumes these days, so it’s very hard for any single person—even one who is extremely qualified for an opening—to get noticed. To overcome that disadvantage, you must help your resume stand out.

The minute you have passed the test in Step 1, start networking to find contacts in the organization that posted your dream job. You’re trying to find one (or both) of two kinds of contacts:

• Employees of the organization whom you know
• Employees whom you don’t know, but with whom you share an affinity (e.g., you are both members of the same professional association, alumni of the same college or university, live in the neighborhood)

Networking to such contacts is not as difficult as it may initially seem, thanks to the Internet. Use online databases and directories at the Websites of such organizations as your professional society, college or university alumni association, community softball league, parent-teacher association and community gardening club. Research shows that we are all only separated by six levels of acquaintances, and the Web is the best way to make those connections.

The purpose of this networking is to ask your friend or contact to refer your credentials to the appropriate recruiter in the employer’s HR Department. When they do so, they move your resume from one of hundreds or thousands in the organization’s resume database to one of a handful or less on the recruiter’s desktop. There, it will almost certainly get noticed and considered. Why? Because recruiters believe that the best candidates are those referred by the organization’s own employees.

Does this mean you can avoid Step 1 altogether? Can you simply ignore the submission of your resume in response to the job posting and just network your way in the door? Sure, but you lose some advantages when you do. Sending in your resume puts it into the employer’s candidate database, which ensures that your credentials are also accessible for other openings in the organization, including those that are not even advertised online or elsewhere. In addition, submitting your resume cuts down on the work a recruiter has to do even with an employee referral. Since it’s already in the database, your resume can be quickly forwarded to hiring managers and others for evaluation and a decision.

Simple as applying for a job online might seem, it’s actually both the first assessment an employer will make of your capabilities as a prospective employee and a way to give yourself a competitive edge in the real world. All you have to do is practice the Application Two-Step.

The above article is reprinted with permission from WEDDLE’s LLC. © Copyright 2005. All Rights Reserved.

Riding the Net to Your Next Job

There are over 40,000 employment-related sites now operating on the Internet, and new sites launch every week. They include well known national job boards as well as smaller, specialty sites that focus on a specific career field, industry or geographic location. There are sites operated by:

• commercial enterprises;
• professional societies and associations;
• college, university and technical school alumni organizations;
• newspapers, magazines and other publications;
• affinity groups (e.g., veterans, women’s groups); and
• federal, state and local government agencies.

Whatever your background or level of experience, there is almost certainly a number of sites that can help you achieve your employment objective. In fact, there are so many options offering so many different features and services that it's easy to overlook some of the sites that might be most helpful to you. To avoid this pitfall, use the simple 4-step process below. It'll help you to make smart choices among the various sites and get the most out of those sites that you elect to use.

Step 1.

Decide what job board services and features would be most helpful to you. There is a wide range of possibilities, including:

• Listings of full time, part time, contract and consulting jobs from employers, staffing agencies and/or executive search firms:
• Databases where you can store your resume or profile for employers and recruiters to see;
• Assistance in planning a job search campaign, writing a resume, negotiating a compensation package, investigating relocation costs, and accomplishing a host of other important activities;
• Salary surveys for your field, level of experience, and location;
• Information about various employers, collected from third party research firms, the organizations themselves, and/or their current or former employees; and
• Job agents, which are software programs that automatically compare the jobs posted on a site to your employment objective and notify you privately whenever a match is found.

Not every site has all of these resources, but many offer several of them. The key is knowing what to look for.

Step 2.

Identify 6-8 sites that might be useful to you. Look for sites that specialize in your career field, industry and/or location as well as those that provide most or all of the services and features you selected in Step 1. The easiest and fastest way to acquire such information is to use one or more of the following print publications:

• WEDDLE’s Guide to Employment Websites. This annual publication is the “consumer’s report” of job boards.
• The Guide to Internet Job Searching by Margaret Riley Dikel. This book is particularly helpful for recent college graduates.
• What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles. This acclaimed reference will help you use job boards effectively as a part of a larger job search campaign.
• WEDDLE’s WIZNotes. These mini-guides are the “CliffsNotes” of job search success online.

All of these publications can be found in major book stores. In addition, the two WEDDLE’s titles are available through the catalog at the WEDDLE’s Website.

Step 3.

Visit each site and see how well it measures up to your expectations and needs. Carefully evaluate the services and features you identified in Step 1 and also consider the following:

• Is the site well designed and visually appealing?
• Is the site well maintained (e.g., do all of its pages open, are any of its links broken)?
• Is the site easy to use (e.g., can you get around quickly and find your way back to your starting point easily)?
• Are the instructions on the site clear and helpful?
• Are all of the advertised services and features actually available?
• Do the services and features provide the caliber of assistance you expected?

Keep track of what you find in each of these areas for each of the sites.

Step 4.

Compare the sites using your findings from Step 3. Select those that provide the best combination of helpful services and a pleasant user experience. For best results, use at least five sites regularly:

• two general purpose employment Websites, and
• one that focuses on your career field,
• one that specializes in your industry, and
• a third that serves the geographic area where you want to live and/or work.

Visit these sites regularly and take full advantage of their resources. When you do, you'll be well on your way to riding the Net to your next job.

The above article is reprinted with permission from WEDDLE’s LLC. © Copyright 2005. All Rights Reserved.

Online Recruitment Advertising for the Best Talent

Any job posting can (and will) attract active job seekers, but only a very special listing will engage and sell the passive “A” and “B” level performers that employers and recruiters most want to recruit. Why is that so? Because top talent is unlike any other talent.

The best and brightest:

• are almost always employed, so you have to convince them to go from the devil they know (their current employer) to the devil they don’t (your employer). To do that, you must get rid of generic ad content and highlight the factors that matter most to them.
• have the attention span of a gnat, so you have to sell them hard and fast. You must identify your employer’s competitive advantages and then build your ad to lead with those factors and fully describe them.
• never look for a job, but instead, search for a career advancement opportunity. That means your ad must promote the special attributes of your employer and its workers as much as the challenge of the opening, itself.
• are often Boolean illiterate, because they seldom have much experience searching for a job online. To be effective, therefore, your ad must compensate for that deficiency by removing the impediments to finding it in a job database.

What follows are some tips to help ensure that your online recruitment advertising works with the top talent who aren’t looking for a job.

To get them to change devils

Effective job postings are not classified ads. They cannot be constructed as simple employment notices. If you want your posting to influence passive prospects, it must function as an electronic sales brochure—a listing that has enough selling power to convince people to do the one thing they most hate to do: change.

That selling power comes from knowing what matters most to your prospective customers. What factors will overcome their natural lethargy and their fear of the unfamiliar (or barely familiar)? Recruiters cannot intuitively determine those factors, and hiring managers, despite what they might think, are often in the dark, as well. The only people who can tell you what matters most to a top performer is another top performer in the career field for which you are recruiting. That doesn’t mean you have to go out and canvass the workforce, but it does mean that you must do some research internally. The next time a hiring manager or employer client asks you to write a posting for a new opening, tell them that you’d like to speak with the top performers who are working in the same or a similar position right now. Then, ask those individuals what convinced them to say “Yes” to the organization’s offer and emphasize those points both in the title and throughout the body of your job posting.

To sell them hard and fast

The best talent is impatient and not easily impressed. They are contacted by recruiters all of the time; offers come to them, so going to a job board or an employer’s site to read a recruitment ad often makes them feel slightly out of place and even uncomfortable. To overcome that unease, a job posting must pack a lot of power into its first five lines. That’s all the space and time it has to connect with and capture the attention of the passive “A” or “B” level performer. If the first five lines can’t do that, it’s unlikely that prospects will read any further.

What must the first five lines include? Four factors:

• A powerful, compelling statement about why the opening is a dream job.
• An equally powerful and compelling statement about why the organization is a dream employer.
• A statement about the compensation being offered, expressed in numbers. A salary range will normally work, but such thread-bare phrases as “competitive” and “commensurate with experience” will not.
• A hard-hitting statement about your organization’s commitment to protecting the privacy of its applicants (assuming that’s true).

To present a career advancement opportunity

The best talent is just as concerned as the employer about an opening’s requirements and responsibilities. However, they see these factors from their unique perspective. To them, the issue is not what they would be responsible for, but rather:

• What would they get to do?
• What would they get to learn?
• What would they get to achieve?
• Whom would they get to work with?
  Similarly, they don’t see the issue as what requirements they must fulfill, but rather:
• What experience must they have had to be able to excel at the new job?
• What expertise will enable them to continue to be a top performer for their new employer?

An effective job posting takes the same information that employers typically provide in their classified ads and expresses it in a way that connects it to the individual’s career concerns and aspirations. It changes the focus of the content from what the employer wants to what job seekers (and “A” or “B” level performers) want to know.