April 2004
Feeling outsourced and outsmarted in your job search?
Here are six trends to help you succeed
By
President of Workforce Associates
and author of
NetWork: Maximizing Your Career Resources on the Internet
Available online and in print from Author House
As election campaigning roars to a start and the economy whimpers along, the number of articles and heated discussion about outsourcing continues. We subscribe to four daily newspapers in this household. Every day I’m clipping and downloading pro’s and con’s about this issue that is sure to have its advocates and detractors. I’ll confess that I favor outsourcing right from the beginning. Any effort that promotes free trade, continued cheap goods and higher productivity is important to advancing economic prosperity around the world.
For years, you have heard me harp on the need to upgrade your skills. Nothing like having several hundred million Indian Brahmins who value education as a ticket to a better life to prompt Americans who have become sloppy and complacent to open a book and master the computer. Coming alive, however, should not mean crying for protectionism and unions to keep them from upgrading their skills. No, Americans are too creative and full of entrepreneurial spirit and dynamism to capitulate to the competition from high-quality Indian scientists and engineers. So, don’t complain about Indians taking away jobs. Be glad that someone is willing to do the lower end manufacturing, call center, and even programming jobs. This saves our fine brains for even more creative endeavors!
At the same time, companies are becoming keener in their hiring practices. Just as I’m reading daily articles about outsourcing, I’m also seeing more articles about how companies need to get ready for the next round of labor shortages in this country. Here are the latest trends that I’ve noticed about how to play it smart in the next round of hiring:
Trend #1: Promote yourself as a top quality employee, not just a top quality candidate.
Because of productivity gains, companies are looking for someone who does not need a learning curve to be useful to the company. That’s why having an electronic resume that demonstrates that you have the experience and expertise to jump right into a new position and make a positive difference will help you enormously in the hiring process. Your command of all the active verbs and adjectives in the English language scattered throughout your resume will help the HR folks find your application fast. Your ability to research the company through Google and networking groups will also mean that your abilities will be quickly noticed by hiring professionals.
Challenger and Grey, in their recent survey, call older workers "bargain workers" because of their experience and expertise. I prefer to think of us as top employees, not bargain basement specials! See http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2004/03/15/daily25.html/15/daily25.html for details.
Trend #2: Learn the lingo: Peter Drucker, Six Sigma, Good to Great, Emotional Intelligence, etc.
Unless you confine your reading to the Sports page, you probably know what I’m talking about: These concepts, books, and management gurus are widely read and adopted by progressive companies.
While you have a bit of extra time during your job search, devote part of it to reading books and business publications of all kinds on these subjects. Business Week, Forbes, Barron’s, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Business 2.0, and Fortune magazine and the local business journals have lots of information about what’s hot and not. They all have free websites to get summaries. Your local library subscribes to all of them, if you’re cheap about paying for subscriptions.
Also look at Wired and Technology Review magazines on a regular basis to find out about trends in technology to be alert to. Understanding nanotechnology, advances in health and the biomedical fields, etc. will help you be better prepared for technological advances, not blindsided and marginalized by them.
Another favorite of mine is American Demographics, where the latest trends in diversity are monitored and described. Since our country is rapidly becoming more Hispanic and Asian, it is a requirement to become more knowledgeable about these groups and their values and customs. The same thing applies to Generations X, Y, and Z who are or will be your co-workers. I hear regularly from employers about the lack of work ethic among younger workers and intergenerational rivalries that compromise morale in the workplace. Don’t become a cranky Boomer! Embrace these young puppies and become their mentor, not their rival in your office.
Trend #3: Follow Job Boards because they’re becoming more sophisticated.For example, Monster.com keeps adding more niche job boards under its umbrella while niche job boards continue to proliferate. Hotjobs.com and CareerBuilder.com also have become major leaders. Make sure that your electronic resume is on at least 10 job boards and keep adding more weekly. Continue to use Craiglist, http://www.chronicle.com, and your professional association’s website to your mix of job boards. Check Google and the other search engines daily to research new and different job boards. In previous articles, I’ve gone into depth about networking websites that seem to be all the rage among creative job seekers.
Trend #4: Understand the importance of Assessment testing.Visit your local community college’s career resource center and ask to take the WorkKeys battery of tests. More and more employers are using WorkKeys as an assessment tool. There are eight tests – none like you’ve ever taken before. For example, when’s the last time you’ve taken a listening test? There are also tests to measure your teamwork skills, ability to locate information, writing prowess, technology aptitude (not computer related), and other critical problem solving skills. You’ll be amazed about your strengths and weaknesses in these vital, but often untested, workplace skills. Each test runs 45 minutes. Your scores can be checked against hundreds of careers and occupations where the best in those fields also took WorkKeys. See http://www.act.org/workkeys for more information. Manpower uses another powerful assessment tool called SHL. You can find practice tests and many powerful helps on this website from its parent company in England: http://www.shldirect.com/ Become familiar with this tool, too. You’ll find that you’ll learn a great deal about your strengths and weaknesses, which you can work on.
More and more companies are relying on these tools to add value to their hiring process. Just as you prepared for the SAT and GRE exams and studied for tests in college, become knowledgeable about WorkKeys, SHL, and the whole host of other assessment tools that are increasingly available online. The Web-based Screening and Assessment Systems included over 60 vendors at last count and probably will have many more in its 2004 guide that is due to be released soon.
Trend #5: Prepare for more sophisticated Interviewing techniques.The situational interviewer believes the closer you can get to a real work situation, the better the evaluation will be. So you will be asked to perform some aspect of the job you’re applying for. If you are prepared, you will be able to give your interviewer an excellent chance to see how well you will perform on the job.
What is situational interviewing? For example, your interviewer will ask you for colorful descriptors in answers to such questions as:
"What would your co-workers identify as your strengths and weakness?" and "Give me three words to describe yourself."
Another aspect of situational interviewing is to create an artificial stressful condition to see how you would react. For example, the stress interviewer puts the candidate on the spot: "We're not really sure you are suitable for the job." Another form of situational interviewing is what’s known as behavioral interviewing. In this situation, the interviewer bases questions on what she thinks may be your past performance and asks for specific examples of your past work accomplishments. It’s important that you prepare mentally and physically for these zingers and have a credible and truthful response to each one of them. Practice the questions and your answers with your friends and family. They can give you helpful language and ideas re how to respond.
Trend #6: Understand that Technology in hiring will not replace humans. However, it is making the process more complex.
It seems that with all the applicant tracking systems now available that technology has replaced the human touch in the hiring process. Nothing could be farther from the truth. When it comes to hiring decisions, HR professionals still play the central role. The role of this increasingly sophisticated technology is in providing recruiters with the tools they need to reduce information overload. It also helps them make better, more informed decisions.
The implications of having this technology at the fingertips of the recruiter means that job seekers must understand that new technology very well in order to improve their chances of getting the positions that they want. An electronic resume that has a keyword section and keywords liberally spread throughout will enhance your ability to be noticed. However, your master of the technology doesn’t end there. You need to understand that more and more companies are using assessments to screen and evaluate candidates after your electronic resume successfully passes the first round.
Conclusion:
Outsourcing has captured only a few hundred thousand American jobs while opening up millions better paying and more challenging careers in this country. Balancing that comforting fact, though, is the new reality that none of us can remain complacent about our present positions – much less future ones. This is the age of job insecurity. That’s the fact. Get used to it and thrive in it. Don’t become a dinosaur and don’t let your sons and daughters think that they will be immune to the same pressures. The age of continuous learning and upgrading of skills is well underway. Find out about distance learning in addition to devouring lots more publications. If you need to, take a course in skim reading so you can keep up.
Wishing you a wonderful month. Please email me your comments, thoughts, and suggestions. I’ve received lots of resumes this past month plus many stories of 40+ folks finding very good positions. Hope that April will be successful for you as well. All the best --
Sincerely,
Jane M. Lommel, Ph.D.
jlommel@WorkforceAssociates.com
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