Put the damn salary range down!
Whenever I see other people advertising on job boards and the like, one thing that bugs me is when people don’t put down the pay range and benefits. Note that my annoyance level goes up with the maturity and specificity of the position.
For instance, one employer put down that they wanted a person with 15 years of Human Resources experience, a SPHR, a Bachelors (but preferably an MBA) and seven years of management experience. What did they put for the salary range? Depends on experience. Uh, dudes, you know what their experience is going to be.
Pay is such a taboo topic and I like confronting it head-on. You’ve got to though and that’s why I think job seekers should also be very honest about salary if the prospective employer is being honest. I know what I want to make and what I am unwilling to work for so I would say “optimally I would like to make this much per year but I will absolutely not take any offer below this much.”
The poor argument I always hear is that we don’t want to disqualify candidates who might overlook the position based on salary range. I say that if the perfect person walked in today and you aren’t going to pay him or her more than 60k plus 10k in bonuses, we might as well advertise that as our upper limit. Because if someone comes in with a minimum of 80k and 20k of bonus, it is just going to be a big waste of time trying to reconcile those two numbers.
What you probably don’t know about me…
Much like primary school where you can play tag, Dennis over at WirelessJobs.com has tagged me to reveal five things you might not know about me. Dennis needs to fix his permalinks because I can’t directly link to the post that he tagged me but REST ASSURED it is there.
So in keeping with the theme of this blog, I am going to list off five things you don’t know about your HR guy. These apply to me too.
- I like to drink. And why wouldn’t you want to drink? It helps your career (most of the time). So when you think I am sitting there scoffing at your MySpace pictures of you doing a keg stand, I am actually kind of wishing I was there. Because I am bored at the office.
- I am a really nice guy. This isn’t a lie. I like cute fuzzy things like everyone else. I assist an old lady by carrying in her groceries when I see the opportunity. I volunteer in the community. In fact, when you are sitting in my office and I am giving you your final warning, I am hoping that I am helping you right yourself and that sometime down the road, you’ll thank me.
- I love sports. College football, basketball, pro football and basketball. Basically from late August through March (June if the NBA is any good), I am watching any one of these sports. The rest of the time is what we in the Northern US call summer. Hit me up for a conversation on any of these topics.
- I am very happily married. I am on year two and so far so good. No kids, but little HR guys and gals are certain to be flocking around in the next couple of years. I actually hope to be a stay at home HR guy (or at least, work significantly at home). We’ll see though.
- I really enjoy gossip. I know, I know but at least I am being honest. The good part (for any past, present or future employees reading) is that I limit it to friends, family and of course professional organizations. The place to get the dirt on people is at a SHRM meeting. Glad I’m not alone fellow HR guys and gals.
No tagging for me though. If you like though, you can respond with a comment or a trackback.
Best Blog and Keyword Stuffing
For those who may be interested, this blog has been nominated for “Recruiting.com Best Blog” award. If you like this blog, take a minute and please vote for it. Also, please feel free to vote for some of the other fantastic blogs on there. While I don’t expect to win (after all, those pesky recruiters would hate to see a generalist win), I think it is good to recognize the top blogs in our industry.
Jim Stroud posts on CollegeRecruiter about how to be slick about adding keywords to your resume.
I don’t know about other recruiters but I think keywords are awful. Whenever I see them, they seem… oh how to put it… tacky? And while Jimmy’s idea is pretty slick, if your recruiter doesn’t have an application tracking system (ATS) that parses the resume with the included summary, you are out of luck. I would guess that would be a good guess if the company has less than a 1,000 people and would almost be a sure thing with less than 500 people. So that can help you get a job at the big companies but there are better ways to do keywords that will help you get a job period.
I know it is a radical idea but how about including some of those keywords in the actual content of your resume. If it isn’t important enough to be even be mentioned, it is unlikely adding the keyword is going to help that. If you have sales experience but you don’t mention sales in your resume, what makes you think that adding “sales” to your keywords is going to help you land the job.
Sure, adding keywords is easy and too few people do it… now. But if something is easy and effective, guess how long that will help you? It seems much more worth the effort to spend it on making your resume produce results, no matter what computer (or what human) is looking at it.
Networking for Introverts
Businesspundit has a great article about how (and why) to network if you’re an introvert.
Networking is essential to all jobs but the job of being a job seeker and the job of seeking the job seekers are one of the incredibly important places where networking works. Everybody says that, in landing a job, it is all in who you know. Yet, we do so little to make that come true for ourselves when we are in that situation.
The first point sums it up nicely: networking is an investment. It is an investment in the most important thing in your life: yourself. And while introverts may scoff at this, well…don’t. I think it is a good primer on how to get started and get past the uncomfortableness. I can only mildly understand what being an introvert is like but I meet a lot of successful people that are introverts. When they see value in something though (like networking), they will latch on to it.
Google indexing fun…
No, really.
So I was talking to Joel Cheesman a month or two ago about the fact that Google hadn’t indexed my website. Since it had been six months since I started this thing, I thought it was a bit weird. So did he and we pretty much left the conversation baffled. MSN and Yahoo already had me on their radar. I don’t really care all that much about Google juice but I was just annoyed at that prospect.
The Cheez did give me a piece of advice though: “try to run some AdWords on Google.” I didn’t feel like doing it out of principle. Google should be giving me props anyway. Why should I give them any money?
Last Sunday (the 3rd), I finally relented. I looked to see if my site was indexed and it still wasn’t. I opened up an AdWords account and put in some keywords that made some sense. I directed all of the ads to this page.
Well, here comes Tuesday the 5th and I check it and guess what: I am indexed.
Coincidence? I think not. I submitted my site to Google in May and September. There is no logical explanation for this except that Google figured out I was a legitimate site only after I ran an ad with them.
What is Web 2.0 and how will it change recruiting?
I don’t know.
Okay, that is a lie. Fittingly enough, Wikipedia sums up the Web 2.0 question pretty nicely (itself, of course, being part of web 2.0). If you don’t feel like reading through that, I believe that the two bedrock principles of web 2.0 are collaboration through technology and using the web as a platform for programs.
There is quite a bit of talk about how this will change recruiting immensely. After all, the collaborative part sounds pretty sexy. And we have been promised so much! The end of newspapers, job boards and best of all, never having an open req that you can’t fill. Imagine being able to connect with all kinds of different people immediately. Being able to brand your company, have positive relationships with individuals and make contacts that make you a better recruiter.
Sounds pretty great, right?
Some recruiters are latching on to any web 2.0 tool out there (sometimes shelling out some significant money for it). And why wouldn’t you, especially if all you’re told is this is the wave of the future?
The problem is that these solutions are often incomplete. Let me lay out the typical steps here:
- Web 2.0
- ????????????
- Success!
And that’s fine (and necessary) if you are an entrepreneur in a new technology field but if you’re a recruiter, that’s not going to help (at least not now). Whatever advantage you get is going to be focused on certain industries, in certain markets, with certain job types and still isn’t going to be all that fantastic. Even then though, there are still advantages to staying on the forward edge of technology and I do not wish to chastise those who spend their time (or money) doing this. I do this myself and no, I don’t have a self-hating personality.
If your organization is having a problem filling reqs, I am willing to bet that 99% of it is a human deficiency and 1% of it is a technology deficiency. That sounds awfully mean doesn’t it?
Most organizations with a great overall talent strategy aren’t struggling. Or, if they are struggling, they are struggling in ways that other companies wish they were struggling. Premiere companies (and ultimately the people) don’t struggle because they have good execution throughout their entire organization. They market their jobs like they do their products, recruit as much as they need, they on-board and train for ongoing success, they retain the people they need and they network constantly (and have been for years before social networking). That means missing one web 2.0 trend doesn’t kill them and if something big came up technology wise, they would have both the wisdom and experience to make the changes that align them. GE and Exxon didn’t die off when mailing or faxing resumes became a thing of the past.
Then there is the “other” category. These guys don’t have a great talent strategy. And “these guys” are a majority of the companies out there. Whenever you have a poor talent strategy, it is easy to point to technology as a culprit. It is easier to fix technology (or try to compensate with it) because it is more difficult to face the fact that your strategy needs work.
I guess my point is web 2.0 is still very targeted. If you want to get the most bang for your buck though, you can start by making your organization people focused and branding your company in the employment market. Web 2.0 will sift its way through and will probably come up with some great new deal that will help recruiting and possibly even change the way recruiters operate.
That time is not now though. While keeping a close eye on the upcoming technologies is worthwhile, keeping a closer eye on your processes, branding, networks and company culture is more important.
Results-Only Work Environment
Tiffany at “Pote Magico de Trabajos” posted about ROWE again and I thought I’d throw myself in that mix.
First of all, work places should already be results only. This is, of course, laughable. Between mandatory Monday - Friday meetings and archaic attendance policies, your best performer might be on a written warning even though (with absences), they meet your expectations otherwise as an employee.
Second of all, I loathe meetings. I hate them with a passion. If I am in a meeting, it should be with a future employee, a current employee with an issue or hiring managers. I like being part of strategic planning but I hate the meetings associated with them. I just want to submit my work and answer any questions. If we can’t figure things out in normal meetings in a half an hour, the meeting leader was poorly prepared or we were poorly prepared.
I am also a meeting jumper. As soon as it digresses, I am out of the door. No permission asked.
So to say that ROWE appeals to me is an understatement. But that is only personally. I know I could handle it and it would be likely that I would be working nearly the same hours.
Professionally? It would pretty much be a nightmare year of transition. If I managed to survive, we would probably be okay after that first year.
Training management to judge people only on results. To set goals, hard goals, achievable goals. Again, management. To go to meetings optional. *insert scary music* The execs would want to hit the eject button a week into it.
I am sure the consulting helps but trying to beat that day to day habit of meetings, checking in, impromptu meeting, checking in, etc… That’s ingrained. From the first day of work on. And breaking that habit is something that I don’t know if I would be ready for.
So how about you? Could you take that on? Could you work in an environment where you were judged solely on the results you produce? Would it be a discipline challenge for you?
Career Dilemas SOLVED and Networking in December!
Of course, the answer is on CNN and it is online.
I don’t know how much I agree with some of these. Making your college degree choice based on what the job market is doing today and ignoring your personal traits and skills (not even considering whether you would enjoy it or not) is asking for failure. And that’s only helping the massive failure rates of institutions of higher learning in general (at the undergraduate level of course). Churning out college grads with no real world experience, no hard skill sets and essentially worthless degrees is asking for failure too but on a much more depressing and wide scale.
Advice on keeping your desk clean is well taken but not always applicable. My bosses desk is about the same level of cleanliness as mine. The whole advice section on starting a new job isn’t that great either.
Besides that though, I think it is a pretty good article. Job seekers should check it out.
Also, I forgot the source of the second part of this post so my apologies. If I find it, I’ll credit it.
December is a GREAT time to network with hiring managers and recruiters. They are typically less busy during this time of year and are more receptive to networking opportunities. I have found this to be true in my professional experience. Granted I am trying to tie up loose ends this time of year, I also don’t mind networking. It gets me out of the office and being stuck in the office from dark to dark can get really old.
Blogversity and the meaning of it all
I am so happy to be writing about Ami and his Blogversity blog. In the short measure of time we have spent gazing upon each other’s blogs with lust, I also have respect for the great amount of time and thought that is put into each one of his posts. The move from wordpress.com to his own domain steps him up to that next level. With his increased flexibility, he can do, literally, anything. And by anything, I mean walk on the moon sort of anything.
Now he has raised the bar and is going all corporate on us and I’ve got to wonder, what is the meaning of it all?
I mean this whole shindig. These w o r d s that you are reading right now? What is the meaning of it? Hell, what is the meaning of anything some lousy guy with a ridiculously unoriginal moniker (come on, “Your HR guy”?) going to say to me that is going to impact me? What can HE teach ME?
I guess my experience with blogging is that the purpose and the “meaning of it all” has to start with yourself. If you aren’t getting rewarded by your blog, than nothing–publicity, hits, or how big that blogroll is–is going to change it. If I wanted to pimp my business, I would. If I wanted to pimp myself, I would. And I am not saying it like pimping is that bad (easy now!). That’s not my deal. I like to make connections with individual readers who are interested in learning more about that man behind the mask. I too am interested in learning about my readers (the men and women behind the masks). Not out of self-promotion or pride but just to make that connection and not a connection to hopefully exploit sometime but a real, physical, pour a beer for you, throw a snowball at your bald head kind of connection.
That’s why I blog. Why do you blog?
So I support Ami and his new Blogversity project (and let’s hope it isn’t anything like the Manhattan project). And just because I have an inside line doesn’t mean I have any idea what Ami’s plans are for the domain. I just hope it is good and that it fulfills. My bet is that it does.
Would you hire a quitter as your CEO?
I hope there is more to this story than what has been publicized. The current Bank of America CFO is quitting due to regulatory burdens. Bank of America doesn’t have any additional regulatory burdens compared to its major competitors. He also seemed to complain that the CFO doesn’t get the glory like the CEO and said after he ends his term with BoA, he would consider a CEO position but not a CFO position. And while de Molina won’t be seeking another CFO position, there is nothing like publicly proclaiming that you can’t handle the same stresses as your peers.
Now ultimately some apologists will blame the government for this regulatory mess they’ve setup in the wake of Enron and WorldCom scandals. Hell, I’ll even buy some of that. The problem of course is that everyone has to deal with the government the same, especially when you’re talking about SOX at a publicly traded company.
The ultimate question to me is why would anyone hire him to be a CEO? I am sure he is a nice guy and his CFO position was probably a big ole’ pain in the ass but when the going got tough, this guy quit. The thing is, I am sure he will be hired by someone and who knows, he might be good. I just don’t see it though.
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About
Your HR Guy is a Human Resources Generalist practicing in the field. But don't let that fool you, this isn't a boring blog. I seek relevance and humor in a place we will spend much of our lives. Everything from workplace issues, job seeking and terrible bosses. Read more...
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