I will never forget the day I came around this corner in Boston near the Bell Atlantic building (Now Verizon) on my way to work and found hundreds of 411-information workers picketing. This was late summer 1998. The economy was booming beyond its bounds. The financial giants of Boston (including Bell Atlantic) sat literally feet from this place in their glittering towers of monolithic, economic supremacy, but these workers felt an injustice had been served, and through their union, they walked out on their employer so they would hear and know their frustration.

The uproar and the noise echoed deafeningly off the walls of the other buildings. I could see business people in the large windows above looking down at the craziness below with distant interest. Police with riot gear stood nearby. Since it was nearly 8am, as people tried to go into the building for work, they would receive shouts, jeers and swearing in return from the emotional, angry scene. I was frozen in my tracks. I literally felt breathless as I watched the scene–the anger, the emotion, the intensity.

Checking my watch, I knew I would be late if I stayed there, but I

just.

couldn’t.

leave.

Hundreds of people walked through that square in the few minutes I was there watching. Hurrying to work with their newspapers and lattes, cellphones and blackberrys. Some of them stopped and looked. Most of them hurried on. I felt like I was caught in that moment.

That experience really effected me (obviously, since it’s 11 years later and I am blogging about it). I remember wondering what it meant. What was the point? It began to make me think long and hard about the hours I was putting in for my employer, making someone else’s retirement a sure thing. I began to lose the taste for the technologies I worked with every day. There had to be something MORE than just writing code!

Fast-forward a few years, a layoff, two more kids and a mortgage, and I jumped from technology programming into recruiting, mainly because of the opportunity to use what I know about technology with what I know about people and help people get connected with new and amazing opportunities. Hopefully ones they could be proud of when they went home at night.

But that isn’t enough. There is more to be done because the ground has shifted and moved, and the companies who don’t learn this will soon enough be spit out by the very economic forces that made them great when it was OK to treat your employees like tools.

Markets are Conversations”. - Cluetrain Manifesto

Cluetrain, Rise of the Creative Class, and Groundswell (how to be human) give you primers and clues into the language.

Blogs, Twitter, and Facebook show you a peek into the conversation.

Meetups, Codeaways, ignites and camps give you access to the people.

But without your CORPORATE PARTICIPATION, you will be forced, eventually (by either your talent leaving you, or the market selling you) to watch all of this revolution from the sidelines… unable to join in until it is far, far too late.

“Markets are conversations… Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.

But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.”
- The Cluetrain Manifesto

2) If we see you wearing Prada shoes and carrying a Gucci bag, we will assume you are doing well financially and therefore do not need a raise.

3) If you dress poorly, you need to learn to manage your money better, so that you may buy nicer clothes, and
therefore you do not need a raise.

4) If you dress just right, you are right where you need to be and therefore you do not need a raise.

Sick Days:
We will no longer accept a doctor’s statement as proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work.

Personal Days:
Each employee will receive 104 personal days a year. They are called Saturdays & Sundays.

Bereavement Leave:
This is no excuse for missing work. There is nothing you can do for dead friends, relatives or co-workers. Every
effort should be made to have non-employees attend the funeral arrangements in your place. In rare cases where
employee involvement is necessary, the funeral should be scheduled in the late afternoon. We will be glad to
allow you to work through your lunch hour and subsequently leave one hour early.

Bathroom Breaks:
Entirely too much time is being spent in the toilet. There is now a strict three-minute time limit in the
stalls. At the end of three minutes, an alarm will sound, the toilet paper roll will retract, the stall door will open, and a picture will be taken. After your second offense, your picture will be posted on the company bulletin board under the ‘Chronic Offenders’ category. Anyone caught smiling in the picture will be sectioned under the company’s mental health policy.

Lunch Break:
* Skinny people get 30 minutes for lunch, as they need to eat more, so that they can look healthy.

* Normal size people get 15 minutes for lunch to get a balanced meal to maintain their average figure.

* Chubby people get 5 minutes for lunch, because that’s all the time needed to drink a Slim-Fast.

Thank you for your loyalty to our company. We are here to provide a positive employment experience. Therefore,
all questions, comments, concerns, complaints, frustrations, irritations, aggravations, insinuations, allegations, accusations, contemplations, consternation and input should be directed elsewhere.

The Management

If you want to hurry up and wait, here’s some great ways to skip the line and jump headfirst into the “resume blackhole”:

1. Blah, blah, blah and don’t respect their time.
   Once you get a meeting with a recruiter, its good to find out if they have time for you, and how much. Then keep to it. That shows respect, and smarts on your part… to juggle a conversation, and exit gracefully when the time is right. If the conversation is going well, but it’s time to leave, simply state something like, “I’d like to continue this, but I know we’re out of time. Should we reschedule?”
2. Ask for an interview without knowing if there’s even a job open.
   Candidates know the recruiter is their gateway into the company. Coaches and job-hunters tell you to get an interview at all costs, but asking for one before you know there’s even a job can end up killing your chances to get one at all.Remember: The recruiter’s job is not to interview. The recruiter’s job is to find the right person to fill open positions. The interview is a tool in that process to be used with the right people at the right time. Not anytime.
3. Call back. A lot. A few times everyday works best.
   It’s appropriate to call an office line and then maybe a mobile phone if they didn’t pick up. Leave a courteous message briefly reminding them of who you are and what specific position you’re interested in. Chances are high they know you called, but just can’t get back to you at the moment.  Recruiters have caller ID , too, and a hyper-sensitive awareness of phone-numbers and people (which are some basic DNA characteristics of a recruiter). If you consistently call multiple times a day (especially if you’re as reliable as Old Faithful), your recruiter may begin to find things to be busy with when you call. Or worse, out of nowhere, you’ll get a voicemail they left late at night (on purpose so you wouldn’t be there to answer) saying “Thanks, but no thanks.”Call. Leave a brief, specific message (referring to the exact role you’re interested in ). Possibly email the next day or two days later mentioning that you called a few days before, and asking for an update on the status of your application and/or the specific job you are interested in.  Let them know that, if there is no progress, or if you are no-longer a candidate, it’s OK for them to tell you.
4. Promise to follow-up if they don’t get back to you.
   Don’t say, “I’ll check back in a few days if I don’t hear from you.”  A busy recruiter will simply say to themself, “OK, great. I don’t have to call you back, let’s see if you follow-through on your promise.” Its not polite to give someone a deadline for no reason at all. Putting them on the hook may just guarantee the phone stays on the hook whenever you call.
5. Don’t take “no” for an answer.
   When you’re being told a position isn’t right for you, It’s completely fair to ask what was missing from your background or experience to keep you out of the running.  Ask for candid feedback, and request if there’s a seperate set of positions they feel you’d be more qualified for, or  if the things which limited your candidacy this time around can be improved upon for the next time.  Phrasing your questions like, “Is there something in the job requirements I do not meet?” will encourage your recruiter to be open and honest with you, and you’ll likely avoid platitudes like, “well, you’re just not a match” (the recruiter version of “we’re just not that into you”). 

   Finally, when the call is complete, you may ask permission to email or call the recruiter if future opportunities arise, if you can connect with them on LinkedIn or another network you both use (LinkedIn recommendations are an excellent “parting gift” to your recruiter, btw), and then graciously thank them for their time and let them off the phone.

You should note that all of these suggestions change when you’ve moved beyond the passive/tense/delicate “screening” process and into the active “interviewing” process . In the latter, all of the above change, except the respect thing. That one seems to stick around for, well, ever.

The summary is to remember that your recruiter is just as interested in finding the right person to fill their jobs as you are in making the right move. Help them help you. Openness and respect mutually in the beginning will pay dividends. Respect them, be low-maintenance, don’t make them work hard for you and, when the timing is right, they will work very hard for you.

Good luck!

P.S. Enjoy a good laugh at other jobseeker’s sakes at NotHired.com. Some links may be NSFW. Others may make you roll with laughter.

Our first step to address this was to wind down almost all our contracts with external contractors and vendors providing recruiting services for Google. However, after much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organization by approximately 100 positions. #

Also, they are displacing up to 70 engineering employees by closing offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden, Alan Eustace, SVP engineering & research said.

In a Wall Street Journal story commenting on the changes at Google, Jessica Vascellaro reports:

Google spokesman Matthew Furman said the closing of engineering offices in Texas, Norway and Sweden wasn’t motivated by cost cutting and that Google will offer jobs to the 70 employees affected by the changes. Alan Eustace, Google’s senior vice president for engineering and research, wrote in a blog post that the moves would help Google better coordinate its efforts across different geographic areas.Mr. Furman added that the 100 recruiters let go represents less than a quarter of Google’s total recruiter population. “Overall, we will be working with [those recruiters] to try to locate them other jobs at Google,” he said.

He said that the company didn’t have plans to announce any further cuts at this time. In recent months, Google has taken measures such as reducing the hours of its food service and giving employees cellphones instead of year-end cash bonuses.

Utah’s economy continues to outpace the United States, though we’re losing ground on key economic indicators, we’re losing that ground more slowly than the nation as a whole and many states around the country.

September 2008 Unemployment Rate Utah VS. USA Click for latest employment situation report
Utah: 3.5%	U.S.: 6.1%
Year-Over Nonfarm Growth
Utah: 0.1%	U.S.: -0.4%

With economists and pundits expecting the worst Christmas shopping season in a generation.  Like Alisa Roth with Marketplace says it, “It’s hard to believe. But it looks like Americans may have quit shopping. Retail sales fell nearly 3 percent in October. And that’s the biggest drop since the Commerce Department started keeping track back in 1992.”

Things aren’t getting nicer, either:

Jerry Yang at Yahoo! calls it quits, meanwhile Republicans appear to be pushing Detroit off the cliff they’re facing.

How is the economy and recession (which Jeff Thredgold estimates began nearly a year ago) affecting YOU, personally?

What have you changed about your lifestyle? No-longer online window shopping? Stricter budgeting? Only perusing certain aisles at the grocery store? Job change? Changes in retirement goals?

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS. What’s happening out there?

Here’s the latest list (below), from the February 4, 2008 edition.  Find the full Fortune 100 list online.

It’s worth noting that eBay is the only company listed on the Fortune 100 that is in Utah.

Notes:
N.A.: Not available. U.S. employees includes part-timers as of time of survey. Job growth, new jobs, and voluntary turnover are full-time only. Revenues are for 2006 or latest fiscal year. All data based on U.S. employees.
* Average annual pay: yearly pay rate plus additional cash compensation for the largest classification of full-time salaried and hourly employees.

I shared a few things with him which I am glad to say were published in this month’s magazine along with some other good, insightful thoughts from both local and national employers.

If you don’t receive Business Connect Magazine (which I strongly recommend), you can read Peter’s article online here: How to Retain Your Employees.

Just for fun, I’ve listed the more verbose responses to some of what Fretty asked me:

What do you see as the most effective means of retaining employees?

The most-common reason people leave their jobs is because they don’t like their boss. This takes on a lot of forms from not feeling challenged, to feeling micromanaged, passed over for opportunities, or not being trained well. It’s regular for new managers to completely change over much of their staff within a year after they take a new post, generally because of these personality factors.

It’s not about the money, it’s not benefits, it’s not getting a shiny car for being employee of the year like Doba did last year*. At the end of the day, the employee’s direct supervisior has more power and ability to help and employee feel liked and encouraged or disgruntled and dissatisfied than any other thing a company can do.

We all know that the cream rise to the top, and in business, the superstar talent will always keep their eyes and ears open through active and passive networking. Even the least-talkative or outgoing employee likes to work where they feel liked and appreciated, and even they will seek new opportunities when they feel their relationship with their direct supervisor is strained. Superstars are savvy enough to not complain about their boss around other people, but they will sing their praises, and your company’s, if they like what they’re doing, and they feel satisfied with their job.

That being said, the best boss in the world will lose employees hand-over-fist if the company is not:

• Paying well (by the way, which means ahead of the curve, not right at the median pay-range),
• Doesn’t provide adequate (read: liberal quantities of) tools to help employees succeed at their jobs
• Misses opportunities to praise and reward employees for the hard work they do (recognition is more important than money, but money talks very loudly).
• Provide all of the required and some over-the-top benefits to make sure their employees (and their families) feel appreciated as more than cogs in the machine.

What mistakes do people commonly make when trying to keep employees?

1. Hire the wrong bosses.
   People are promoted to management for the worst reasons. They look the part, they have the right degree, or they’ve been there the longest. Just like a brilliant doctor without any bedside manner, the most accomplished, credentialed, superstar manager will fail miserably if she can’t incite enthusiasm and success in her employees.
2. Don’t give bosses tools for retention.
   Corporate policies always play their heavy hand when employees want flex time, or to try out a special project, or even take an extra day of vacation to see their kid’s last soccer game of the year. Google’s 20% rule, where employees get one day a week to work on any approved project of their choosing has produced some of their best creations. Why not?  This is much better use of “water cooler” time anyway, isn’t it?
3. Don’t ask people what they want to do next.
   People will jump companies in a heartbeat for new challenges. Companies are usually horrible at actually helping people accelerate through their careers internally. Challenge them, ask them for help with special projects, allow them to be creative and try new things with your blessing.
4. Pay exactly the “market rate”.
   Duh. This one is easy to fix, but hard to approve through management. Yes, employee costs are high. But replacing an employee costs up to 70% of that employee’s annual salary. It’s your choice: You can lose them every 8-16 months (current averages for non-executive transitions), or you can pay them an extra 10% or even 30% over the market, with regular, meaningful raises.
5. Stifle creativity by maintaining the status-quo.
   Doing more of the same, but hoping for something different is the definition of insanity. People will either go insane or go somewhere else if you don’t allow them to have input to your processes and take on difficult projects. Toyota championed this, allowing any factory line worker to stop the whole plant if they saw something that needed to change.
6. Don’t Talk.
   The old joke is, if you hear from your CEO more on CNN than in your own business, there’s something wrong (See GBAT #16).  Maybe your CEO isn’t ever on CNN, but this is the age of transparency, and if your employees don’t know what’s really going on behind the brass-handled doors of the C-suite, they will go elsewhere.
7. Don’t Listen.
   Gatekeepers, assistants, and other executives are great at keeping the bad news and feedback from getting to the top. That’s bad. Engage in conversations. Real, honest, and serious ones. Your staff will respect you for listening, and likely respect you even more when you recognize where you’re wrong, admit it publicly, champion the better ideas, and make sure you always pass credit where it’s due. Likely, when people know that if they talk to you, you will act… they will make sure they only talk to you about really crucial things in the first place! P.S. If your employees blog, comment on them!
8. Don’t Relax.
   Companies that let their hair down once in a while and do something fun–take your employees to the premier of a new movie, send them to lagoon for a day, host a staff retreat that’s actually about retreating–will retain employees longer because people will like working there.  Do something once a quarter… maybe two smaller events and two significant onces. Make them memorable, fun, and for everyone.

* Don’t get me wrong, Doba did an AMAZING thing by doing this, but not everyone can/should.  I’d be open to it, personally though…

If you’re vying for a position at a company, there is a fine line you must walk between looking like everyone else and being so different you don’t fit in at all.

Here’s a few simple ideas I can suggest for getting around the gatekeepers, receiving straight feedback, and (if you’re right for it) the job.

• Research: Candidates who do their research on their target company immediately jump ahead of the rest when all skills are equal. And, don’t just regurgitate what the website says, dig deeper. Find out competitors, read analyst reports, blogs, insider opinions or comments left around the web by employees. Really look into the organization!A key research item people don’t consider is the people who you may know that work (or have worked) for that company. Respect their time (a.k.a. buy them lunch) and see how they would recommend you move forward with approaching the company.
• Focus your Message: No joke, I received a resume today that said, “Objective: Any management position anywhere in your company.”  I have no idea what the rest of the resume said because I moved on instantly.Your goal is to coordinate all of the various skills and items on your resume into a cohesive, easilly-digested, sugar-coated tablet of skilled resume goodness. It needs to be an authentic representation of who you are (and what you’ve done), but it also needs to easilly/bluntly/obviously answer the question: “What will do you do for me that nobody else can do?”The most-crucial step of focusing your message is to also focus on your target audiences*! Will you speak to a recruiter first? A hiring manager? A gatekeeper of some other sort? If you’ve done enough research, this should be clear.* I made “audiences” plural on purpose. Don’t think for a second that your messaging to the recruiter and the VP should be the same!
• Consistently Deliver the Message: Red flags get drawn all over your application when your story seems to change without rhyme or reason.Know your availability, know your schedule, know your salary expectations, and above all, know your elevator pitch – cold.Your presentation to whoever you speak with, on the phone, by email, or in-person, should reflect both the intensity and passion you want to bring to the job, plus your humanity and personality that would make working with you a breeze.Candidates who shift their message, or push too hard with their message, are equally as likely to be turned down as candidates who don’t have a rational message at all.

What other things have YOU done to find success with standing out from the crowd? Please share!

Checkout medical jobs at Health Jobs USA.

Sam’s Blog, Go Big Always, pushes the envelope just by its nature. He hits right at home when he says, “Companies are so highly matrixed and political that they make sticking your neck out nearly impossible”.

He gives 5 ways to GO BIG ALWAYS:

• Bravery
• Conceptualization
• Intuition
• Relationships
• Execution

I love the visuals, but what do YOU think of his message? Please comment!