Job Seekers vs. Recruiters

 

Job Seekers in Las Vegas say that there are no jobs in Las Vegas.  Recruiters in Las Vegas say that there are plenty of Jobs in Las Vegas.  So where does the communication breakdown come from?

Simply put, the wrong people are searching in the wrong places!

So I decided to breakdown the methods that I have the most success with and let both recruiters and applicants know that they should start there.

Web 2.0 (Social Networking Sites): Myspace, Facebook, and Linkedin. 

Job Seekers- You can market yourself professionally on these sites and if you are using these sites someone will probably look you up on them.  You might want to take the provocative photos and such down (unless you’re looking for that type of job, because it is Vegas).

Recruiters- MySpace has a FREE posting linked with Oodle which is one of the better free posting sites. Linkedin is great for finding IT, Sales, and professionals, while Facebook is great for college students and alumni.

Traditional Job Boards: Jobing.com and HotJobs.com

Job Seekers- You want to have your friends look at your resume to make sure it sounds good and everything is spelled correctly.  Also use a cover letter you want to have your cover letter explain your direct experience to the requirements listed.

Recruiters- Jobing.com and HotJobs.com have refreshable and changeable job postings so that you can make sure that your posting is always on top.  They also have pre-screen questionnaires which will save you a ton of time.  Plus they have great PR ratings with Google, and they get hit by SimplyHired and Indeed (screen scraping sites that gather all the jobs).  You can contact David Dickens (Jobing.com) at (702) 948-0979 and Brian Hooper (HotJobs.com) at (415) 913-1997

Free Job Boards: Craigslist , Gadball, and Oodle

Job Seekers- It’s free and there are a lot of mom and pop companies that can’t afford an ad for a position so they end up here.  Do NOT put your address or phone number on here, put an email and your initials ONLY, there are a lot of scary people out there as much as there are good people.

Recruiters- It’s free and it works.  The method to keep your Craigslist postings up are to clean your registry every posting because people will flag it, and if you clean your registry then it takes 10x longer for the posting to be flagged.

Print Media: JobsToday and JobFinder

Job Seekers- Just go to any Terrible Hurst, Gas Station, and Convenience Store and pick up a copy.  This is one of the best ways to find a Sales position!

Recruiters- These are display ads that are free for Job Seekers and you can make some really catchy ads that will get great results (make sure that you can create a flashy ad).  You can contact CC Huxtable (Jobs Today) at (702) 383-0333 and Selina Stallings (Job Finder) (919) 319-6816 x217.   

Job Fairs: Las Vegas Review Journal, LasVegasJobs.com, Opportunity Blvd.

Job Seekers- Walk up to EVERY station and give them the resume and ask them if there is a position fitting your background.  Most employers have more positions open than they have listed at their booth, and worst is that most will point you in the right direction.  Do NOT just walk around the room and say that nothing interests you.

Recruiters- These three Job Fairs are the best ones in Las Vegas, pay some money for a decent booth, and have plenty of flyers (but I don’t really need to tell you that).  You can contact CC Huxtable (Las Vegas Review Journal) at (702) 383-0333, Dyann Wildman (LasVegasJobs.com) at (702) 257-1527, and Chelsey Kuzyk (Opportunity Blvd.) at (702) 240-4100. 

Also feel free to contact me, because I have no problem helping someone get a job, or helping someone hire for a position.

 

More than Just a Job… Just Might be a SCAM!

More than Just a Job… Just Might be a SCAM!

I was speaking with a company in San Diego that was looking for a Human Capital Manager to run all of their Recruiting.  They use the term Human Capital instead of Recruiting or Talent Acquisition because they wanted to make a distinction between Human Capital and Human Resources.  Well it became obvious the reason why the distinction after a few minutes into the interview.  A person who has any human resources sense wouldn’t take the position.

They’re a small company 35, used to be over 200 however due to recent economic (also legal) incidents they have significantly downsized.  In short the CEO was sued for assaulting, wrongfully imprisoning, and battering a former employee, as well as sued by two of his largest accounts for breach of agreements as well as law.

The VP of HR was explaining to me their compensation package and the fluidity of that.  As a small company they don’t quite have the overhead or reserve needed to stabilize it.  I can understand the need for fluidity with a small company of 35.  He went on to say how the fluidity worked, if the company made $35K above goals for that week, everyone would receive a $1K bonus.  So the janitor and the Jr. Programmers would be happy because that’s a great increase (right?).  Likewise the situation was often reversed if they went under goals everyone would take a deduction that week.  So the janitor and the Jr. Programmers wouldn’t make anything that week.

I asked him when was the last time that they had a surplus and he told me about one year they were $1mil above goals and they spread loaded that to all 200 employees.  That’s a nice $20K bonus for the year.  However he mentioned that since the beginning of last year they haven’t quite been hitting their goals consistently.  He said that he constantly take a $1K hit a week.

Now he said that dumbest thing that he could have, he bragged about how he and the CEO were able to get people to work for him for FREE!  That’s not something that you want to brag about to a perspective employee.  He went on to say that they spread load the fluctuations on amount not on salary, so a ton of Jr. Programmers would be working for NOTHING while the CEO and the VPs are still taking 2-3K a week home.  That’s when I realized that this was really a scam.

I didn’t confront the guy about his flawed system (obviously he’s a Kool-Aid drinker) of compensation.  He went on to say that they overcome the lack of revenue upfront by giving employees Stock Options.  Basically every week that they short you, you get $2 of stock options for every $1 shorted.  That sounds good until you realize that this is a private company and there aren’t any real stock options.  If you are terminated or quit before the company is taken public, you loose all your stock options.

What is worse is that last year when the company went from 200 to 35 employees they also dissolved the old company and created a whole new one.  This dissolved all the stock options that everyone had accumulated over the last 5-years.  Now the CEO/Owner has a rap sheet that is 45 pages long (seriously I found it photocopied online) and I have no doubt that he will fire every single person working for him the day before he takes it public, sell all of it, and then flee the country.  He’s about a crooked as it gets.

So the VP of HR ended up inviting me to a Group Style Interview.  I’m all for Group Style Interviews they save time, etc. etc.  However I told the guy to email me because I didn’t have time to write down the time and address because I was investing all my funds into a Madolf approved stocks.

The moral of the story is that most companies that try to defer payment for services are scams, for (1) it’s illegal, and (2) if you do research you’ll almost always see a lot of unethical practices by them.

Oh and for those of you wondering, I’m still employed, I’m just keeping my options open.

Craigslist and the Job Seeker

There is a lot of speculation about Craigslist and both the type of Jobs found here as well as the type of applicant found here.  I haven’t had a problem with either for the most part.

Let’s start with Job Postings on Craigslist.  There seems to be some speculation on what’s an actual job posting and what is a scam.  There are the three golden rules that I use.

(1)    Occasionally there is the posting that is phishing for personal information for Identity Theft, but any ad that has a phone number or address or company name in it is usually a good one.

 

(2)    Also any ad from a Gmail, Yahoo, Live etc. account I would consider bogus.  Any ad that has an actual domain to it is an actual position.  I would be wary of the confidential postings, any company that will secretly hire someone’s replacement will do that to you, and one day you’re going to show up to work and they have your replacement hired and you out of that job.

 

(3)    Some ads just sounds too good to be true, usually this is the case, however ads are designed to sound good and get people interested.  If it meets the requirements in 1 and 2 above then it might be something that you want to check into.

Before you flag a posting check to see if it is a legitimate posting. If you recognize the company and you want to do them harm flagging the posting doesn’t really do anything.  They’ll just repost it and it’s easier to repost an ad than flag one.  You can post a “Re:” to it and call them out, that usually works well, or better yet post your RANTs about the company in the Rants and Raves section.

What about the Job Seekers, if you’re posting your resume on Craigslist I can (and so does everyone else) understand that you don’t want to put a phone number, address, etc.  At least put a first name, and don’t write a paragraph, cut and paste your resume into the posting.

You are going to get spammed by companies that are looking to hire everyone and some that are phishing for personal information.  If the email does not come from a domain or have a link to an actual website then feel free to mark it as spam.

When you come in for an interview at least wear business casual attire.  I know that Craigslist doesn’t have the highest caliber jobs but you should at least dress semi-appropriately.  Bring a hard copy of your resume and expect to fill out an application.

You should also practice the interview before showing up, do some research about the company (at least know what it is that they do).  Get the 50 standard interview questions and rehearse your answers to each of them.  You can find those questions by a quick Google search.

When the interview is done and they tell you what the next step is I suggest closing with the “besides (whatever it is) what is holding me back from getting hired?”  That’ll give you a better overview of the process.

Some other good sources for finding employment in Las Vegas are:

·         The Job Finder (Can be found at most gas stations)

·         Las Vegas Jobs Today (Can also be found at most gas stations)

·         Jobing.com

·         Yahoo HotJobs

A Cup of Humble Tea

 

I’m a pretty confident/arrogant guy about my abilities.  I’ve never been anywhere that I didn’t shatter any records that they had. 

To challenge my recruiting abilities I will line up about four or five executive search firms for a position give everyone as much information as possible and then have a race to see who could fill the position fastest.  I have never been beaten; in fact I was usually disgusted with the complete lack of quality candidates that the major names brought in.

Well I was in a race to fill a Sr. .NET Developer position, and again my candidate came in first.  It was the second interview with my guy and we were actually going to skip the interview and just make an offer because he did really well.  So he’s waiting in the lobby, I tell him that the IT Manager is running behind because there was an IT issue.  He waits 15 minutes and then says that he gives professors 15 minutes and that we could call him, and he walks out. 

The manner that this guy presented himself was really arrogant.  I thought that I was arrogant, but wow I know who the employer is and who isn’t.  Wow.

Anyways then a candidate from a Staffing Firm was 2^nd place so we call him in, and we’re working out the offer now.

So I wanted to make two points.

(1)    Regardless how much of a hot shot you are, never walk out of an interview unless you’re waiting an hour or something absurd.  If you’re supposed to be an executive you understand that business doesn’t always work on schedules and people need to flexible sometimes. 

(2)    Congratulations to Brian Resendes with Proventure Staffing for being the only Recruiter to beat me.  That shows some serious skills and talent.

 

If you have a position that is just not getting filled and you desperately need someone in there for a good price then call up Brian at 702-577-2711 or www.proventurestaffing.com.

 

 

Hiring Choices and the Disposable Employee

I’ve worked for a good amount of growing companies out here in Las Vegas and have been a key part in taking them from a small company to a large or medium corporation.  The most recent two have doubled or quadrupled in size within a matter of months.

One trait that I see over and over again from the small business owners (or as they like to call themselves CEOs), is what I refer to as the “churn and burn” mentality.

This started in Las Vegas from the gaming community where it is so easy to be a valet attendant, dealer, or cocktail waitress where just about anyone with a nice smile can do it.  This meant that it was almost easier to replace someone than to keep someone.  So the revolving door of employees was created, people would walk in as quickly as they would walk out.

Now that same mentality is in the Call-Center industry as well and it isn’t a good thing.  I’ve even seen it reach up into Management positions.  Where a small business owner thinks that everyone can be replaced and he can do every job.  They also think that Recruiting is the easiest job there could be.  It’s simply not true.

Five years ago Las Vegas was the number one spot to start a career in the nation.  Today it has one (or if not) the highest unemployment and foreclosure rate.  Quality applicants are leaving Las Vegas for jobs elsewhere and what we’re getting in return are what I call the Second Strikes.  Second Strike are people from California that already have 2 strikes and don’t want to get their third so they come to Vegas to work in the Call-Center and unskilled markets.  Those of you in management throughout the valley know exactly what I’m talking about.

So while the talent pool is drying up in Las Vegas, Employers are now faced with a huge majority of unemployed people and still think that they can treat their people like crap.  What is going to happen to the Call-Center industry in Las Vegas is the same thing that happened to the Gaming industry, unions.

The unions were created for employees to band together establish rules that employers must follow in order to maintain employees.  If the employer breaks any of the rules, all the union employees (90% of casinos) go on strike.  The business pretty much collapses.

When a group of employees are treated poorly they group together and almost revolt against the employer/abuser.  Then union stewards come in and set up standards in which the employer can treat the employees, how they can discipline them, etc. 

If the Call-Center industry wasn’t so cheap to outsource, there would already be a Call-Center union in Las Vegas.   They have one in the UK where businesses that outsource are taxed in order not to outsource.  With the newly elected Barack Obama in office he guaranteed to eliminate tax breaks for companies that outsource.  So within a few years there will be Call-Center Unions in Las Vegas.

So if you want to keep Unions out of your Call-Centers you need to treat your employees respectfully.  Give them decent wages, benefits, etc.  if you don’t start doing that now, you are going to end up paying all of them $17 an hour with full benefits and have them going on strike once or twice a year. 

I’m not going to even get into the cost involved with the revolving door that most companies have.  Treat you people respectfully, pay them well, give them benefits, and watch your productivity soar through the roof.

Thanksgiving Thoughts

I was thinking about Thanksgiving and what it is supposed to mean and I remember a former boss of mine that wore a shirt that had some Native Americans and a title that said The First Homeland Security or something similar. 

What irked me is that he wore it on Thanksgiving (why I was working on Thanksgiving is beyond me), and would always talk about how Thanksgiving is a marketing scheme.  That Thanksgiving is when we gave the Native Americans (according to him the perfect people) small pox, took their food, raped their women, and enslaved their children.  While I do agree that the interaction between the Settlers and Native Americans isn’t what it should have been, it wasn’t a victim/assailant scenario.

That is besides the point that I’m trying to make.  The boss was the most negative person that I ever knew.  He would always find a way to complain about everything.  He once said that on Thanksgiving everyone should give him a Thanksgiving card and be thankful that he gave them a job.  Besides the most negative person that I ever met, he was also the most arrogant.

He would also try to get an unreasonable amount of mileage out of everything that the company did for its employees.  An example is that he thought because there was a nice office, free-lunches, and that the people got paid they owed him more than just doing their jobs.  However when the employees would ask for something extra, like the day after Thanksgiving off, he would say that the agreement is that they work, he pays. 

Another example is that every time a subordinate would make up complaints against a Manager, they would investigate.  When they found that the Manager was falsely accused (usually true), they would hold that claim against the Manager for as long as they could.  He would go on and repeat at every evaluation that the easy thing for the company would be to have fired that Manager rather than spend time and investigate the issue.

I knew this was a flat out lie, because the company is responsible for investigating all claims and doing what is right (based on the employee manual).  Secondly it is harder to fire every Manager over every false allegation and then recruit a replacement, train them, and hope that their subordinates don’t make up stories about them. 

Hypocrisy is the word use to describe these types of people, what’s best for them at the time, and not what is consistent and ethical.  

So while this guy from New England believed that the founding fathers were terrorists and invaders, he also believed that people should be thankful to him for paying them, but he refused to be thankful to people for the work they did.  Because of this a company with a good benefits package, good compensation, nice office, etc. had one of the highest turnover rates because of the way he treated people.

This should be a lesson to every Manager/Employer out there.  You really need to understand quid pro quo (this for that).  You pay someone for services rendered under the conditions of paying them on time, rendering the benefits advertised, in the environment advertised, etc.  If they perform poorly at their job then they are fired, if you perform poorly at yours they quit. 

Almost every CEO and Business Owner understands the extreme challenge of Talent Management.  If you treat your people horribly then they will go someplace that they are not.  You have to be competitive with every business in the area in the total of your rewards system in order to be capture and retain top talent.  This includes the way people are treated.

You should be thankful if you have any talent working for you, and this holiday season should show that thanks.  Even though times are tough and business profits are low, really taking the time to explain that to your employees and express your thanks, it will go a long way to keeping them.

Evaluating a Prospective Employer

I was recently watching the Real Housewives of Atlanta and the ladies were interviewing personal assistants.  They were offended when the applicant’s didn’t research them before.  I thought that it seemed a bit arrogant that they wanted people to do research on them prior to an interview.  Like that job is the only one out there in Atlanta and that people need to bow down and kiss their butts before being paid to do so.

 

I think that it is a good idea to do a lot of research on a company and the person interviewing before an interview.  It helps you get the job, it really does. 

 

When researching a company you WILL find bad things said about them.  Almost every negative comment about a company will be from a disgruntled ex-employee or a competitor.  There are some factual comments from customers, actual employees that were mistreated, etc.  However the majority of them will be from disgruntled ex-employees and competitors.

 

What you really want to do is take in the scope of clientele, if a company deals with 10,000 people a year and they have 100 complaints that means there is a 99% satisfaction rating with that company.  Look at Walmart, they have tens of thousands of employees, service millions of people on a regular basis, and have a huge number of complaints about them. 

 

The red flags that you want to look out for are ones where there a repeated claims about not paying people, physical violence, drugs, illegal or unethical business practices, etc. 

 

You’re going to find ones about Management style, calling people incompetent, etc.  Those are all matters of opinion, and since everyone is an individual that means that things might be different for you.  However it there are a lot of claims that the employer constantly cheats employees out of money then it’s probably true.

 

A good thing to do is ask the employer if you can sit and watch the people in the working environment for a few minutes.  If they are happy and smiling then chances are that the place is nice.  If people walk around like abused children then chances are that you should run.

 

Either way Google the company so at least you know what some people have said about the company, the worst is that you can ask the Manager that you’re talking to about that.   Basically sit there and say, I read this about your company, what’s your company’s side of the story?

 

It shows that you did your homework and that you don’t but things at face value.  That is the worst that you could be, (1) not smart enough to too lazy to do research, or (2) accepting everything as fact.

With the Economy No One is Hiring? Bullcrap!

In order to stay in business with the recent economic developments companies can no longer sit back and wait for revenue streams start to pour in.  This is evident by the massive increase in sales positions in the local Las Vegas Job Market. 

I hear people complain that there aren’t enough jobs out there.  Well there are not enough of the types of Jobs that they want.  Companies outsourced many call-center Jobs to foreign countries because of the cost of having to keep the call-centers full.  The same thing is evident with the Big 3 having financial problem when their linemen make $77 an hour. 

For a company to operate properly it has to make more money than it puts out.   And when people don’t want to work for the wages that are three times higher than a competitive country then of course jobs are going to be shipped overseas.  Example: A call-center rep in India makes $600 US dollars a month, That is the same about that a Las Vegas call-center rep makes in a week. 

So when people see Jobs (Station Casino’s Reservations Department) get shipped overseas that is why.  I’m sure if they could get people willing to work $8 or $9 an hour they would keep it in Las Vegas.  Instead the company can’t do that because the business equation doesn’t work out anymore.

What’s happened is a lot of Call-Center Jobs that were in Las Vegas a few years ago are no longer, and the ones that are here are commission based jobs.  I hear people say all the time that they have a family to feed and that they can’t do that on commission, because if they don’t produce they don’t get a check.

Welcome to reality, if you aren’t doing your job you get fired.  In today’s economy people are going to have to suck it up take a job that may not be exactly what they want and start working and making money. 

People are milking the unemployment system and due to that Government cannot support its infrastructure and they have to cut back on Schooling, Transportation, etc.  Therefore more people are loosing their jobs and this is just propagating the situation.

The only way to fix the economy right now is to get out there start working and make money.  It may not be the type of work that everyone wants to do, but the cash is just as green.

 America needs to start producing and that means that we need to start working.  We complain saying that Jobs are being shipped overseas and illegals have come over and taken our jobs.  That’s because they’ll do the jobs that we don’t want to do, and if we are going to do them we want to bring a union in and make $77 an hour for a $12 an hour job. 

There are a TON of jobs right now in Las Vegas.  They may not be the career choice that you’re looking for but they pay the bills.  I run a search on SimplyHired for jobs in Las Vegas and 15,315 pop-up.

A lot of Healthcare, Technical, and Sales jobs are out there.  If you’re not a computer person or a nurse you may just have to smile and be a sales person for a while.  You can always quit when the economy picks back up.

If you want to see this economy pick up we have to forget the socialist ideals of “spreading the wealth” and start learning the capitalist ideals of “making the wealth”.  We can wait until the President starts playing Robbin Hood and taking from the rich and giving to the poor, or we can go back to what has made this country great and start working.

I would rather earn a living than be living on hand outs.