October 2017 |
Transition-e-news Volume 4 Issue 135 |
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Transition Insight
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TAOnline Virtual Career Fair * The Big Virtual * October 17, 2017
The Big Virtual is a quarterly TAOnline Virtual Career Fair where U.S. veterans and security cleared professionals can connect online with military-friendly organizations. The event takes place from your computer on October 17th from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm (ET). This event is for anyone seeking nationwide opportunities and is for all ranks and branches of service, including active duty, Reserve, National Guard, and individuals with a security clearance (including civilians). For more information and to register for the event, visit www.taonline.com/tbv-js.
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Wanted: Engaged Employees
by Barbara Adams, CPRW, CEIP, MFRW, MMRW, MFCA-T Your next employer is looking for engaged employees. If you can demonstrate that you will be one, your chances of getting the job you want improve significantly. If you’re not in the HR field, you may have never heard the phrase “employee engagement.” It’s a big deal for HR professionals, because roughly half of the employees they deal with from day to day aren’t engaged in what they’re doing. Basically, employee engagement measures the emotional commitment that an employee has to his or her organization and to the organization’s goals. There has been massive volumes of research conducted on the topic since the 1960’s. It all shows that engaged employees are more committed, more productive, have fewer absences and accidents, and are more attuned to customers. All good things, but the statistics on employee engagement are pretty miserable. According to Gallup, 51% of the US workforce is not completely engaged with their work. The same percentage is looking to leave their current job (though some of them may be engaged employees who are exasperated with the rest of the team). Disengaged employees cost organizations between $450 and $550 billion annually and the cost to replace an employee who leaves can be 33% of his annual salary.1 It all boils down to this. Engaged employees contribute and make money for the company. Disengaged employees don’t and they’re expensive.
What makes an Engaged Employee? It’s no surprise that most of the research on the subject is designed to help companies implement programs that will improve employee engagement. For several years, risk management and insurance company Willis Towers Watson has conducted an ongoing Global Workforce Study.2 Their research indicates several key drivers for employee engagement within an organization: ● Quality of and trust in company leadership ● Establishment of clear goals and objectives for each employee ● Work/life balance ● Relationship with direct supervisors ● Clear Communications Here’s the thing. Despite the research and the best efforts of well-meaning HR professionals and their consultants, efforts to improve employee engagement aren’t really getting anywhere. Regardless of the study you choose to read, the 50% disengaged statistic hasn’t improved much over the years. That fact provokes a few questions: If company efforts to engage employees aren’t really working, then where do the engaged employees come from? Could commitment and the propensity for engagement with your work and your employer be an intrinsic characteristic? Are some folks just naturally more likely to be committed to their work? The answer to those questions is self-evident and people who make hiring decisions know it. Some people are self-motivated and they’re much more likely to be engaged in what they’re doing. If you can demonstrate that you have been and will be an engaged employee, the decision makers will want to hire you. Illustrating Engagement during the Job Search What are the characteristics that you need to highlight in your resume and when you interview? They’re the good attributes of an engaged employee – commitment, the ability to generate ideas, lead, and contribute to the company’s success. That’s no great revelation, but there’s another more interesting way to indicate that you’ll be engaged – by directly addressing the drivers of engagement that are listed above. The objective is to show that you’re self-motivated, with a natural inclination to engage with what you’re doing and those around you, even if some of the organizational incentives are lacking. Here are some examples: 1. Demonstrate proactive engagement. Include narratives that illustrate how you took charge of an initiative, faced a challenge, and produced results. 2. Show that you’re career-minded. Even if the company doesn’t have a set career progression for each employee, express your goals and how they fit your commitment to the company’s success. 3. Illustrate how you work with supervisors, peers, and subordinates. You can perform at top levels, even if the organizational structure is a little fuzzy. 4. Communicate clearly – especially if you’ll be in a managerial role. Weak communications is a problem in many organizations. They may need someone just like you. Creating An Engaging Resume Your resume is an important component in your job search. Yes, it should be engaging and it should demonstrate your engagement. Your resume should convince your next employer that you’ll be a contributor, that you’ll be self-motivated and focused on the goals of the company. If you can demonstrate the characteristics of an engaged employee in your resume, you’ll improve your prospects for interviews and job offers. Could you use some help? Maybe you are an engaged employee, but you have a hard time putting your accomplishments, creativity, and commitment into just the right words. CareerPro Global has been working with job seekers like you for over 30 years to create resumes that present a clear and compelling illustration of their capabilities and accomplishments. When you choose CareerPro Global, you’ll gain a partner who will work with you to create a corporate or management resume that will land on top of the stack, resulting in interviews and job offers. Ready for your next career move? We hope you’ll get in touch for a free consultation. Sources: 12017 Employee Engagement and Loyalty Statistics, Access Perks, 8/28/17. 22014 Global Workforce Study, Willis Towers Watson, 8/14 Sources: 1 -
2017 Employee Engagement and Loyalty Statistics, Access Perks, 8/28/17. 2 -
2014 Global Workforce Study, Willis Towers Watson, 8/14 |
The Jobseeker and "Taking a Stand"The Department of Veterans Affairs Blog - reprinted with permission Unless you are living in a bubble, no doubt you have heard about the ongoing discussion of sports players taking a knee, sitting out or avoiding the National Anthem. No matter your view on the topic, the action entails people demonstrating their views in public, specifically at work. That brings up the question, how does publically sharing one’s views impact the “jobseeker”? I recently wrote a series about how social media can affect your personal brand here and here. In it, I discussed the impact your social media pages can have on your personal brand. Today, we are learning how sharing one’s views can impact their career, and also as a jobseeker. As a recruiter, I have always felt that by taking a public stance on a topic, I lose half my market. Having served in the Military for 20 years and now the federal government, I am used to keeping my personal opinion to myself at work. I could share my point of view on sensitive subjects, but I know that doing so comes with consequences I must be prepared for. We all have the right to share, voice, stand and kneel. And unless you are in a dark room in your home, someone is listening and watching and they will most likely have an opinion. Maybe it is the same as mine, maybe not. Uncle Sam made it easy for me, “The Hatch Act of 1939, officially An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, prohibits employees in the executive branch of the federal government from engaging in some forms of political activity”. The military adopted a similar policy. In private sector, we each make our own decisions on what we want to “take a stand” for. A recent survey finds 75% of Americans Believe Employers Should Take a Political Stand. I find that surprising, but okay. Let’s entertain that. As a jobseeker, would you apply for a company that had differing opinions than your own on hot-button issues? I believe companies have a social responsibility to do good for their employees and communities when possible. Build a playground, sponsor a fundraiser for kids or host a community clean-up day, these are things I can understand. As a jobseeker, be prepared for limited options when we mix politics and career. I am not sharing this point of view as a spiritual advisor or civil rights counselor; I am sharing it as a career counselor. No one cares about your career, like you do. |
Avoid the Resume Black Hole: How to Get Your Emailed Resume Noticed© Copyright, 2017, Susan P. Joyce. All rights reserved. We often email resumes in response to a job posting or send our resume to a networking contact, recruiter, or hiring manager. That can be very effective, or it can be a waste of time and energy, depending on how well it is done and how good a fit the resume is for the opportunity. Often people seem to assume that the person receiving the email has only one job posting open or will intuitively understand which job is being applied for. I’ve often seen email messages with subjects like: “Resume attached” “Your job posting” “Applying for your job” “Assistant job” and even plain old “Attached.” Too often those subject links can make the message look like spam or, worse, a malware-laden message, and may be deleted. Certainly they are often ignored because they put the burden on the recipient for figuring out why the message was sent and what it is about. Think about your own email usage. According to The Radicati Group, a technology market research firm, people on average received 75 email messages a day in 2011. Anyone who posts a job online could easily receive100 additional messages a day from people responding to the posting – that’s 175 messages. That’s a lot of email to dig through! If someone spent only 1 minute on each of those 175 messages, that’s nearly 3 hours spent on only scanning email. Not going to happen, is it? So, if they aren’t deleted, those messages sit in that inbox or other email folder waiting… Email Is Both the Conduit and the BarrierUnless someone applies for a job on a job board, most resumes are sent via email, and they end up sitting in someone’s INBOX or in an email folder somewhere on their computer. Sometimes they are read immediately. Often, they sit in that inbox or folder, possibly for days or weeks. How does your message with your resume get found and read eventually? The email software’s search function is frequently the tool used to sift through messages to find the appropriate applicants and resumes. Few of us think about the email search function when we send our resumes (or other email) messages.
For Resume Impact, Email Must Be EffectiveFor the resume to be found, the subject of the email must be effective. It must clearly communicate to the recipient the reason that the message should be opened. So, the subject line is critical to the effectiveness of the message. “Resume attached” and “Your job opening” don’t make the cut. The person scanning the inbox or using the email search function is looking for specific words in the subject of a message. Or, the email search function may also be used to find specific words in the content of the message. So, keep that in mind when you write your email message. Since the email search function usually allows searching through only message subjects or through the text in the body of the message, cover both of those bases with your email message. Keywords must be included in the subject of the message.Often, searches focus on the subject lines of the messages because that is usually the quickest search to perform. To be sure that your message appears in a search through message subjects, think about the keywords that would be relevant for an employer searching through all those email messages to find the ones from people applying for a specific job opening?
For example, Subj: Resume for Admin Assistant in Dispatch position, # 1570, in San Diego, CA In this case, the job title of the job posting is “Admin Assistant in Dispatch.” So, those words are exactly the words used in the email subject. Include those same keywords in the body of the message, too.The same important keywords, described above, that are included in the title of the message need to also be included in the body of the message as well. This ensures that they are found if someone is searching through the email message as a whole, not just the subject. In addition, since the email message is a form of cover letter for your resume, including the details of the job being applied for is helpful for the reader and, surprisingly, frequently omitted. Including this information comes under the heading of “being easy to hire” in addition to leveraging the email search function. Since you have more space in the body of the message, you have room to include more of your resume’s keywords, and, in fact, you can copy and paste your entire resume – or the most relevant portions of it – into the message below the “cover letter” introductory text at the top of your message. Bottom Line: Go with the ProbabilitiesI think it’s more productive long-term to write your message with the email search function in mind. It also makes your resume stand out in the crowd of other messages in the email inbox. And, following these recommendations will make it clear to the recipient why the message was sent. Particularly today, a clear and coherent subject and email message stand out from the crowd of relatively-clueless appearing responses to job postings. For More on Effective Job Search:Beating the Resume Black Hole: How to Use the Right Keywords on Your Resume New Resume Black Holes: Applicant Tracking Systems Avoid the Resume Black Hole: The Resume Customization Cheat Sheet Applying for a Job: 5 Tips for Avoiding the Discard Pile Why Submitting a Resume Isn’t Enough, and What You Can Do Is Your Job Search Too Old Fashioned? Why You Didn’t Get the Job: 10 Reasons You Can Control Why Job Hunting Is So Hard, and How You Can Make It Easier Be Easy to Hire. Don’t Make Them Think (Job-Hunt.org) How to Work with Internal Recruiters How to Work with External Recruiters
About the Author… Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. In 2011, NETability purchased WorkCoachCafe.com, and Susan has been editor and publisher of WorkCoach since then. Susan also edits and publishes Job-Hunt.org, is a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a columnist on HuffingtonPost. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg and on Google+ --> |
Google to give $1B to nonprofits and help Americans get jobs in new economy
Reprinted with permission ©2017
Stars and Stripes SAN FRANCISCO (Tribune News Service) — Google will invest $1 billion over the next five years in nonprofit organizations helping people adjust to the changing nature of work, the largest philanthropic pledge to date from the Internet giant. The announcement of the national digital skills initiative, made by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in Pittsburgh, Pa. Thursday, is a tacit acknowledgment from one of the world's most valuable companies that it bears some responsibility for rapid advances in technology that are radically reshaping industries and eliminating jobs in the U.S. and around the world. Pichai's pitstop in an old industrial hub that has reinvented itself as a technology and robotics center is the first on a "Grow with Google Tour." The tour that will crisscross the country will work with libraries and community organizations to provide career advice and training. It heads next to Indianapolis in November. "The nature of work is fundamentally changing. And that is shifting the link between education, training and opportunity," Pichai said in prepared remarks at Google's offices in Pittsburgh. "One-third of jobs in 2020 will require skills that aren't common today. It's a big problem." Google will make grants in its three core areas: education, economic opportunity and inclusion. Already in the last few months, it has handed out $100 million of the $1 billion to nonprofits, according to Pichai. The largest single grant – $10 million, the largest Google's ever made – is going to Goodwill, which is creating the Goodwill Digital Career Accelerator. Over the next three years Goodwill, a major player in workforce development, aims to provide 1 million people with access to digital skills and career opportunities. Pichai says 1,000 Google employees will be available for career coaching. In all, Google employees will donate 1 million volunteer hours to assist organizations like Goodwill trying to close the gap between the education and skills of the American workforce and the new demands of the 21st century workplace, Pichai said. The announcements which drew praise from state and local politicians including Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf come as Google scrambles to respond to revelations that accounts linked to the Russian government used its advertising system to interfere with the presidential election. Google is embroiled in a growing number of other controversies, from a Labor Department investigation and a lawsuit by former employees allege systemic pay discrimination to the proliferation of misinformation in search results and extremist content on YouTube. As the controversies have multiplied, so too have calls for Washington to regulate Google because of its massive scale and global reach. "This isn't the first time we've seen massive, market-creating and labor market-disrupting companies try to address growing public pressure and possible regulatory limits in this way. But it often has been individual corporate titans who've gotten into philanthropy – Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller – as a way to rehabilitate their own images, tarnished by anxiety about the size of their companies and treatment of workers," said Margaret O'Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington. "What's interesting here is what this signals about how Google's future business ambitions. It is betting that its next era will be one not of search and apps but of devices and labor market interventions." Google's not alone fending off critics. A recent headline in tech news outlet TechCrunch read: "Dear Silicon Valley: America's fallen out of love with you." The tech industry, once a shiny symbol of American innovation and pride, has found itself on the defensive after the election of Donald Trump, which telegraphed the deepening disillusionment of everyday Americans who have watched the gains of the economic recovery pass them by. While whole communities in the nation's heartland have fallen into economic decline, the tech industry, clustered in vibrant coastal hubs like San Francisco and New York, has grown wealthy off new developments that are disrupting how Americans live and work. The pace of that innovation is quickening. For years tech companies could not deliver on promises of hyper-intelligent machines capable of performing human tasks. Now the technology is catching up to the aspirations. In recent years, Google and other companies have made long strides, from self-driving cars that whisk you to your destination to digital assistants who answer your questions. This new wave of automation that aids consumers in their everyday lives has a dark side: It's killing off traditional jobs and stranding workers, still struggling after the recession, who are unprepared for the shift. Google, says O'Mara, will have "undeniably disruptive impacts on the jobs people do and the skills they need for them." In the 1960s when computer-aided automation worried the nation, presidential and congressional commissions and government agencies tackled the challenge. "Now it's the private sector. And even though $1 billion sounds like a lot, it is a small number compared to government education programs or, for that matter, the balance sheets of large tech companies," O'Mara said. When Pichai came to the United States from his native India 24 years ago, it was the first time he had been on a plane. Pittsburgh was the first city he saw. Though Pittsburgh was moored to its early 20th century roots as a steel town, Carnegie Mellon University was already propelling the city into the future. "As a new arrival, I was homesick but struck by something new: the sense of optimism," he said. "I remain a technology optimist." Pichai envisions that transformation for Pittsburg as a blueprint for the country to make the transition to a new industrial era. On Thursday, Pichai detailed other programs Google is undertaking.
"We don't have all the answers. The people closest to the problem are usually the people closest to the solution," Pichai said. "We want to help them reach it sooner."
(c)2017 USA Today |
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