Carl Bradford

Archive for the ‘Unadvertised Jobs’ Category

A whitepaper’s – The ninth Source of Hire report from CareerXroads – key findings report that, on average, 41 of the country’s larger businesses filled just over 50% of their job vacancies in 2009 by internal transfers and promotions.

That’s the greatest percentage since CareerXroads first reported the information in 2002.

Predictions for 2010

Regarding 2010, however, 48% of the participating businesses believe they will hire and hire aggressively. The prediction is for a 29% growth in hiring. Only 10.8% of the interviewed employers anticipate hiring a lesser number of employees in 2010. Compare those percentages to the Source of Hire Report issued a year ago and you will discover that 100% of the businesses forecasted they would employ fewer employees.

The reports authors, Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler attitributed this to an increase in internal movement resulting from the US economic downturn, thus effectively obscuring many other sources of hire.  They expect internal movement (promotions and transfers) to return to more typical levels in 2010.

HR’s Disconnect with Contingent Workforce

Another key finding – and something recruiting managers and Human Resource professionals need to quickly get a handle on – is that 30% of the respondents were unaware for the size of their contingent labor force.

Amazingly, the survey preference selected from the 30% was that we “do not really know and can’t even guess” the size of the contingent employed pool. Of those who did report a size, the average was 13.6% of the labor force was considered contingent.

Another very interesting thing discovered is that forecasts call for these businesses to increase their contingent staff size to as much as 25%-35% in the coming years.  If that is correct, this only serves to point out that the HR and recruiting staff professionals have a very big ‘disconnect’ that has to be resolved.”

It should be pointed out however that the majority of the reports results deals with the source of employment of full-time staff.

Sources of External Hires

As Crispin and Mehler have reported for the last eight years, referrals are the largest supply of external hires. Not only were 26.7% of the external hires produced from recommendations from their workforce (who are the reason for the largest share), vendors, alumni, customers, and the like, but referrals are a powerful applicant resource.

A side note: If you’re reading this summary report, and are an active job seeker, this is a big, big clue on how to bypass the traditional recruiting application process and get recommended by an insider.  What, you don’t know anyone? There is a strategy for getting past that hurdle, but that’s part of what I coach my candidates on how to do.  You’ll need to contact me for that level of advice.

Just how effective is the referral system” “The yield for referrals is one hire for each 15 referrals, making this category essentially the most effective source by far and away,” say Crispin and Mehler.

Close to referrals, company job sites, at 22.3% of the total external hires, produce the most hires.

This is likely due to the fact that job seekers find the organization website from elsewhere; probably from the search engines or perhaps a employment post website link or an email from a friend.

Add these two top percentages together and you discover that 49% of all external hires come via referrals and the company website.

You’re probably wondering where job boards weigh in on source of hire.  The report indicated that job boards averaged 12.3% of all external hires.

Now the total for all three sources are 61.3%.

That leaves almost 39% of hires from other sources. Part of the difficulty in reporting on the 39% of external hires can be attributed to HR’s poor tracking systems, a portion of it is traceable, but attributed to a host of smaller sources.  One of the emerging sources is social media, but the ability to track that is still being developed.

An additional observation

LinkedIn accounts for 60 percent of all hires attributed to social media. Now, again if you’re a job seeker this is a big clue you must utilize in your job search.  The problem is, very few job seekers really know how to maximize LinkedIn’s effectiveness beyond the obvious.  For those that do, it is a treasure-trove of job opportunities, often yielding job opportunities with little or no competition.

In a July issue of BusinessWeek, corporate recruiter Elisa Bannon of US Cellular in Chicago was quoted as saying, “I use to spend up to $4 million a year to post jobs through three of the big job boards – Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo! HotJobs.”  Not any more!

Her 2009 budget was slashed to $1 million and with 2,500 openings to fill as Director of Talent Acquisition, she left these big boards and moved to the social networking site LinkeIn.  Now instead of spending $4 million she spends $60,000 and feels like she has a high quality of job candidate by tapping into more passive job candidates.  This has extremely critical implications for your job search!

If you think you’re conducting an effective job search by relying on the big job boards and networking with a few current and past colleagues, you would be wrong.  You’re missing out on job opportunities that now appear on the social networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to name a few.

Finding Unadvertised Jobs

There are also a number of jobs that can also be classified as “unadvertised”.  There is a way to uncover those jobs, but you won’t do it by using conventional methods and relying on the big job boards. This fact is supported by an article in the April 13, 2009 issue of Fortune magazine.

Finding these jobs will take more work, but when you find those job opening gems using unconventional job search methods, you will also find much fewer candidates who will be your competitors for these jobs.

Bannon also reports not only is she saving money, she has made one hire per day in the previous 30 days for a position that has normally taken six months to fill.  This points out how much quicker you can be hired when discovered through these alternative job search methods.

Smarter Job Hunting Skills Are Required

It takes some newly acquired skills to understand just how to conduct an effective job search using these new methods, but if you’re up to the challenge, I can show you just how to accomplish that.  If you’re already using some or all of these resources, you’re likely not working them at peak efficiency.  Because I’ve been in the recruiting and employment world for over 40 years – see my bio here – I know colleagues who specialize in teaching you just how to pull this off and you can start now.

Here’s How To Acquire Those New Skills

I can connect you with information that not only shows you how to really take advantage of these social networking sites, but they also have some super sleuthing methods of find unadvertised jobs.  These methods are worth a fortune in career success for those willing to spend the time and effort to utilize these new strategies.

See also my related post about Twitter, Face Book, LinkedIn and using social media for find jobs by going here.

Many jobs, especially with larger US employers are being moved from poorly performing job boards like Monster, CareerBuilder and YahooHotJobs.

TalentSeekr is playing a part in making this happen. Large companies such as IBM and GE are examples of companies who are talking about shifting large online recruiting budgets away from poorly-performing job boards.

TechCrunch reported  this trend in a September 10th blog post by saying, “that is the idea behind TalentSeekr, which is essentially an ad network for jobs.”

“Companies fill out what jobs they are trying to fill in what locations, then TalentSeekr creates and tests multiple ads across the Web—social networks, blogs, forums, search engines, you name it.”

“Based on the response rate and quality of the applicants that come through the ads, TalentSeekr optimizes the mix of ad types (banner, text, video, creative elements) and placement. (Watch the video below to see how it works). If more qualified applicants are coming in through LinkedIn than Facebook, it readjusts the mix. (In fact, LinkedIn makes a lot of money through recruitment ads on its own site in much the same manner. TalentSeeker is attempting to apply the same principles in a more distributed manner across the Web).”

This is the same trend that I’ve been reporting for some time.  As mentioned previously, I began to see this trend several months ago, but its only beginning to be discussed more openly in the press.  I was able to spot the trend early because of the corporate recruiter training certifications that I do.

What this means for the Job Seeker

If you’re relying mostly on job boards, you’re just plain missing out on where many of the best jobs are listed.

If you’re not too lazy to really use some advanced techniques to ferret out some of the best hidden jobs, I have the information on how to make that happen.

If you want to get ahead of your competition, just email me using this link and I’ll get you the information you want.  This is for the serious job seeker!

BusinessWire – Executives are optimistic and preparing for growth, according to the Ninth Annual Forbes/Gartner C-Level Executive Study with C-Level and senior management executives.

More than 650 executives participated in the study, “Preparing for Growth in the Current Economy,” conducted between April 21, 2009 and May 6, 2009. The complete study is available at http://www.forbes.com/adinfo/research.html.

• Seven out of ten respondents said they were confident about their organizations’ prospects for revenue growth in 2010 (26% were very confident and 44% were somewhat confident).
• Large companies (those with 1,000-plus employees) were the most optimistic – 78% were somewhat or very confident in 2010 revenue growth.
• Small businesses (under 100 employees) were the least positive, with 67% expressing confidence in 2010 growth.
• Looking beyond 2010, 87% of executives were very (46%) or somewhat (41%) confident in their prospects for growth through 2012. More than 92% of large-company executives expected revenue growth to occur before the end of 2012, with more than half (53%) being very confident.

Executives Planning For the Upturn

• More than half of large-company executives (53%) said they are preparing strategies to be ready for the economic upturn, compared to just under half of midsize businesses (49%) and 41% of small businesses.
• Large companies are investing for growth in 2009– including technology, new products and services, and marketing initiatives.
• Small businesses, meanwhile, are putting more emphasis on increasing their marketing and advertising expenditures.

On the technology front, executives see digital marketing and communication as the best tech investments for business growth, followed by customer relationship management and digital collaboration technologies.

What This Means For You

You should be optimistic, yet this growth will be slow to spread into more jobs.   For those so inclined, the prediction for more state and federal job opportunities will offer some of the quickest growth.

If you search using Google job opportunities, you can expect to find more and more employers moving their job listings into the broader aspects of the Internet and social media sites vs. use of large job boards. Niche and specialty job boards will continue to do well in the near term and as a job seeker you can expect to find some of the best jobs listed there.

I was also somewhat surprised this week to see that there is a correlation between the number of Human Resources – HR – professionals looking for job opportunities and the number of recruiting job opportunities available.  I read one report this week that over 108,000 jobs were available in US within the HR/recruiting profession. These jobs covered everything from entry level and support positions to very senior recruiting executive positions.

Typically when you begin to see a significant number of jobs in the recruiting profession open up, it means there are plans for more aggressive hiring in the near future.

There are several indicators that point to the fact the worst of the economic recession we’ve been in is over.

This will eventually lead to more jobs, but there is also an interesting phenomenon that will be a part of the improving job market.

Something Unexpected

When most people discuss the job market, they usually focus on the unemployed being able to secure one of the new job opportunities.  However, there is another dynamic that will impact the filling of new jobs.

That is the competition for these new jobs the unemployed will have with the currently employed.  Recent surveys show that a “pent up demand” to make a job change exists within the employed ranks.  That is a natural occurrence when employees, who are dissatisfied with their job, are unable to make a job change.

This reluctance is a factor of not only the limited number of job opportunities the employed have to choose from, but also the fear created by the weak job market.  The weak job market causes the employed to remain in “a safe harbor” or continue remain in their “port during the storm”.

That means of course that when an employed person leaves, their job will also become available, perhaps to a currently unemployed person.

But, that also means there will be excessive “market churn” in the short term until the job market settles down to a more normal rhythm.

Recruiting Staff Complications

Employers are also short on the number of recruiters because many of them have been laid off or have left the profession altogether.  Expect the turmoil of getting through the job application and interviewing process to be complicated because of that.

A sign of all of this is the number of available recruiting related jobs now vacant and the efforts underway to fill them.  Yesterday, August 27, I saw a report that indicated over 108,000 recruiting department jobs at all levels are open by employers who need to shore up their recruiting staff.

This will be interesting to watch, but most of all a welcome relief to many as this process begins unfolding.