CareerPlug » job seekers

Top 20 Fastest Growing Salaries

Hillary — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:41:11 +0000

We recently ran across an article posted on CNN.com that may be reason for both recruiters and job-seekers alike to get excited. Check out the fastest growing salaries in the U.S. As sales recruiters, we were thrilled to see that Insurance Agents made it in to the top ten.

Engage Me With Your Soft Skills

Hillary — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:44:07 +0000

Whether a recruiter or a job-seeker, it may be helpful to be reminded every now and then that soft skills are an important component to a well-rounded candidate. A recent article in SI Review reported that strong work ethic is the most sought-after soft skill, according to the respondents of an Express Employment Professionals survey.

Here’s a recap of the soft skills cited in the survey and how respondents ranked them by importance:

Strong work ethic – 23%
Positive attitude – 17%
Communication – 11%
Being a team-player -10%
Flexibility – 9%
Being a problem solver -7%
Being self-directed – 5%
Working well under pressure – 5%
Being a quick learner – 4%
Organizational skills – 3%
Creativity – 1%

Soft skills are also known as transferable skills and employers are always looking out for valuable examples of those that transfer most directly to their open position. A resume should pinpoint a few (1-3) specific soft skills and how they have been applied in a current position. Substantiating them with strong examples will add more credibility and engage a hiring manager. A resume with a laundry list of soft-skills can have the opposite effect. Hiring managers will learn more about your soft skills during the interview, so on a resume be sure to highlight only those most relevant to the open position, don’t build a generic list. For more examples of how you can infuse valuable soft skills in to your resume, check out these tips from Executive Resume Writer, Laura Smith-Proulx.

“Everyone Eats Cookies”

Hillary — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:14:40 +0000

Jon Picoult, recently wrote an article in the New York Times that caught my attention. Not simply based on the fact that a cookie was mentioned, but more so because he spoke of the current discourteous nature of the recruiting industry. It seems that, despite the growing number of unemployed out there, recruiters and human resource departments are, shall we say, less than communicative with applicants. That goes for job finalists who leave an interview feeling they’ve nailed it and then never hear back from the company again, all the way to candidates who are simply rejected and never receive notification of such a decision. The general absence of follow-up calls, status notifications, or even responses to inquiries, seems to be the M.O these days.

In his article, Picoult wrote about a story of a manager from Nabisco who, when at an HR industry conference, shocked the audience by stating that his company responded to each and every resume they received. When a dumbfounded peer asked why on earth the company did this, the manager responded, “Because- everyone eats cookies.”

This response struck a chord. It made me think about CareerPlug and our approach to communicating with candidates. I can happily say that we are no-doubt, a company who recognizes that “everyone eats cookies.” In fact, our specialty is personalization. Everyone wants to feel they’ve been heard, so we make sure that happens; it’s less a rule of business but rather a simple gesture of kindness and human decency. As soon as we know the status of a candidate, they are notified, within moments. This concept of attentive correspondence seems to have slipped through the cracks within the industry.

So, if very few recruiters are doing it these days…does that make us in style? I think it does. Personalization is the new black.

(Preoccupations “Be Nice to Job Seekers. (They’re Shoppers, Too.)”, By Jon Picoult Published: May 30, 2009)