For Most People, Finding a Job Is A Stressful Undertaking.
It doesn't matter whether you're a new job seeker, looking for your first job, or an experienced worker looking for that next career move, searching for a job is stressful. The process of searching for a job is full of problems. The job search process is largely opaque. It has a lot of 'middle men' in it, i.e., recruiters or Human Resource specialist. It is labor intensive on both the part of the job seeker as well as the hiring manager.
Finding a Job Is a Common Shared Experience
For many job seekers, myself included, finding a job is a fairly common yet anxiety producing process. Why does it induce such anxiety? Because it is a process where you don't have control. In my case, as a Project Manager, my job is all about having control. Knowing every task and every deliverable, with a final goal in mind.
How to Select a SAP Recruitment Agency
Why The Current Job Search Process Sucks
And How We Are Fixing It
You would think that with systems like LinkedIn, and websites like Monster and Indeed, and the thousands of other job sites out there, it would be easy to find that next job, especially during the best economy with the lowest unemployment numbers in the past 50 years.
One problem, of course, is that there are so many sites, and so many players in the job search game, all trying to fill or find a position playing the same old games. Yet, it is so very true that for the most part, who you know is as important as what you know (usually, a lot more important, it turns out). The good-Ole-boy's network is alive and well and if you are not in that network or a Good-Ole-Boy, you don't get the best jobs because someone else has taken over control of your career.
That sucks!
Do You Have A Strong Network?
The who you know part is supposed to be what LinkedIn is about. It may well have been initially, but today, not so much. You may well have a strong network of people who can help you. But it is just as likely that you have a weak network or a network of people who really can't help you get the job you want. Much of your network comes down to where you've lived, work you've done and how conscientiously you've actually networked.
What's a Month of Job Searching Worth To You
The reality is that, on average, a typical job seeker can expect to spend one month on the job market for every $10,000 in annual salary they hope to earn.
The other reality is that if you're on the bench, i.e., unemployed, your bills keep coming in and you need to earn a certain amount every hour of the month to cover them. The real question is, why would you need to spend a month looking for a job? After all, at least in the U.S.A, there are currently far more job openings than there are available workers, or at least that what's being reported by the BLS.
Persistent Imbalance in Supply and Demand For Workers
The reason this imbalance in the Supply and Demand for workers is present, yet many people struggle to find a job, is both complicated and simple at the same time. Part of the reason is that employers are extremely selective, and in many cases, are willing to leave a position vacant to get just the right person.
Many Reasons a Worker Might Turn Down Your Job Offer
On the worker side, the reasons are as varied as are the workers, but in my experience, it comes down to being able to evaluate each offer and finding them wanting. Sometimes, the new job doesn't pay expenses (in the case of contracting on SAP projects), sometimes when you do the financials on staying in place versus moving to the new location, it doesn't add up. Sometimes a spouse isn't willing to move. Other times, the location is unattractive (can you say 'state taxes'). For these and many other reasons, workers are sticky and don't easily move.
We Don't Like To Move Much
I recently read that in any given year, about 3% of the US population changes states, while up to 6% moves at least one county over. The number in Europe is, unsurprisingly, much lower, at around 0.1%. For the US population, this level of mobility is way down from what it was in the earlier part of the century. For employers seeking job candidates, this means there are often few, if any applicants for posted positions.
It's Hard To Know What To Retrain For
It's an unfortunate fact of the current job market that most companies, at least smaller ones, don't or won't invest in employee training. There are many reasons for this reluctance, including the possibility that if you train someone up on a new skill, they may leave you, or you may have to pay them more to stay. But then again, imagine what happens if you don't train them and they stay.
Of course, one basic function of any HR department is to build in exit barriers so that a well trained employee will not want to leave. An exit barrier could be as simple as offering a health insurance package or any other number of benefits for example.
Public Communication Skills In Short Supply
Most employers are looking for an exact fit to a long list of specific skills, especially technical skills. But yet, at least according to a recent LinkedIn article, the number one skill employers say current and potential employees lack or at least need to drastically improve is public communication, which is just one element of communication skills.
This makes it very difficult for a job seeker to 'aim' himself in a new career direction via retraining. But due to the dynamic nature of the job market, training and education are now lifelong activities. But if you want to stay employable, then you better budget both time and money for constant skill upgrades.
Why Visibility Is Your Key To Success When It Comes To Job Hunting
As someone who has been in the job market for a very long time, experiencing both success and failure, I've slowly come to realize that many players aren't really working in my best interest or on my behalf. For instance, let's take a deeper dive into how a job board, such as LinkedIn or Indeed works.
How Most Job Boards Really Work
You, a candidate, create a profile or online resume. A company post a job. But in reality, it is typically a recruitment agency that you actually see posting jobs. They either reach out to you or you apply to a posted job.
Next, you typically get a call from a 'recruiter', who may be a fairly knowledgeable person about recruitment, or you get a call from an Indian based 'outsourced' recruitment agency, who pre-screens you. You've still not been in direct contact with the hiring manager, which means you're not in control of the process. In most cases, though you may get asked a lot of questions about your past experience and skills; there is, in reality, only one question the 'recruiter' is interested in getting an answer to, which is: "What's your rate".
Learn How To Negotiate Based On Facts
As in all negotiations, he who throws out the first number loses. But most candidates will give a number they believe is fair and realistic, but in nearly 100% of the cases, the response from the recruiter will be, "that's too much", or "that's more than I have available", or the more classic, "the client isn't willing to go that high".
I will not tell you how to handle these 'negotiations', at least not in this blog, but I will tell you there are plenty of strategies and tactics to work here. But this is where the vast majority of match-ups die and one of the reasons many jobs remain unfilled (as there are plenty of people available to work).
You Became The Sellable Resource - But Didn't Get Paid For The Privilege
How did the job board provide visibility to this process? In reality, it just provided a recruiter with another 'sell-able resource' (your resume), but you, the resource, didn't actually get to sell yourself to the hiring manager. You probably were not even told who the end client was or where they were located. You were kept in total darkness, as it turns out, you were probably not the only one kept "in-the-dark".
Hiring Manager Never Got To Meet You
The hiring manager didn't get a chance to see if maybe you're the right person for the job. Your rate without the middlemen (of which there can be quite a few), may well have been exactly the right rate the hiring manager was willing to pay, but the middlemen don't work for free, so there was no sale. That means the job to be done isn't getting done and the entire organization suffers.
You're Were The Perfect Fit - Yet The System Failed
You might well have been a great fit and the perfect candidate with all the right bells and whistles and depending on the job, location and benefits you may have been willing to strongly consider the hiring managers target salary range had you and the hiring manager had a chance to talk things out. However, someone else decided for you, that you had no merit and the person who contacted you had already moved on to the next number on their call list.
What If You Had Direct Access To The Hiring Manager
Though it may be true that for some positions, at some points in time, a hiring manager could be overwhelmed with applicants for a position. While at other times, a vacant position may not garner a single applicant. Hiring managers, (as opposed to the HR Department), have a job to be done and a position to fill to get that job done.
HR KPIs Don't Align With The Hiring Manager
The KPIs that the HR department are measured by are usually not the same as the KPIs the Hiring Manager is measured by. HR is usually measured by the number of open positions, time-to-hire, employee retention and turnover, and of course, personnel cost. The Hiring Manager will usually be measured on something relevant to his particular department or function, say production. These could be production variances, quality measurements, planning variances, and many others. Unless the company is using something like the Balanced Scorecard and HR is aligned with production, they will rarely be pulling in the same direction.
What Would The Ideal World Look Like
In an ideal world, the hiring manager would simply post his job, and qualified and available applicants would find him. The job board would provide total and complete line-of-sight visibility between the hiring manager and the job seeker and facilitate the connection. Should there be a good match, all the usual HR logistics would need to happen, but at least the right person for the job will have been found without all the layers being present.
We've Built The Tool For The 21st Century To Do That
We call it Mapertunity. You post a job or resume on Mapertunity and it will show them on a map. We've built an advanced search tool around this concept that allows you to find the job or candidate you're looking for - right on the map. But because it is based on using visual information, (the map combined with both job postings and job candidates), and our ability to see vast amounts of geographical information at a glance (at up to 60,000 times faster than reading about it), it provides unique, unparalleled job search and candidate sourcing capabilities.
Find The Right Job Closest To You
I've been travelling heavily for most of my jobs since 1978! Some years were worse than others, but the bottom line is that I've often had to travel far for work. I've had a tolerant family all these years but realize that I've missed many important days I would rather not have. What I would rather have done is to find the right job close to my front door, preferably across the street. That's been all but impossible up to now.
Mapertunity Is Engineered To Provide Total Visibility For Jobs and Candidates
Now that we've built Mapertunity, we have a system that lets anyone search for all available jobs in any geographic area, without knowing a single business name, website or even job title or keyword. Just by visiting the "Job Map", Mapertunity will show you all Jobs, Candidates and Companies within a 25 mile circle around your present location.
Simple To Operate - Powerful Results
All you have to do is click and explore. Or search for something specific by using our fuzzy keyword search, city, postal code, state or country toolbar. Of course, you can narrow your search using Job Title or Keyword, a search range Distance restriction, or using the map zoom function itself. You can also move the map where ever you want. You can fix the map to certain locations such as my home, my office, current location or just say let the map "go there" and explore the jobs and candidates around any given point on the earth.
Find The Candidate Closest To You
This works the other way as well. If you're an employer, and you want to know if there are actually any available workers, regardless of skillet, available within, say, one mile of your business location, you can do that search on Mapertunity. You can also search the whole planet if you want, or explore any area on the planet. Our search tool works pretty good!
Location, Location, Location
Why would you care how far away they are from your business location (or the job location, more specifically)?
One of the biggest reasons is that they are much more likely to accept an offer from you if you are the easiest commute for them. They are also likely to be much more likely to stay with you if you are their closest job opportunity. Long commute times, the cost of relocation, and all of the other cost and hassle of moving around and enduring long commutes is a huge factor in why Americans and others don't move too much.
See Available Candidates On The Map
Being able to see candidates on a map is currently an impossibility with all major job board brands. But imagine if you were looking to build a new factory, say, in Seymour, Indiana, where there is already a heavy concentration of industry, such as Cummins, Inc.
One of your investment decision criteria is whether there are enough available workers within a reasonable commuting distance of your new factory to staff it up. With Mapertunity, the State Unemployment Office will now have a complete picture of the real labor situation, throughout the state, and tell you if your plan is feasible.
Mapertunity Brings Advanced 21st Century Job Search Capabilities To The Labor Market
We believe this last aspect, the advanced capabilities Mapertunity brings to the labor market, is key to aligning what schools are teaching to what employers are seeking. With this new system, you can now stop guessing about who knows what, and who needs to know something and start ensuring the labor force is perfectly matched to the demands of the market.
Not a bad dream.
Ready to post your first job on Mapertunity.com. Click the button. Your first posting is free.
