How to Identify and Approach Passive Candidates

How to Identify and Approach Passive Candidates Around 80% of the workforce is considered passive (ie open to talking, always looking or maybe available to talk) the other 20% is happy with their job. This infographic, courtesy of Marinated and Entelo, explains the mentality of passive candidates and when to contact them for a job opportunity. Takeaways: There are 4 factors which influence a passive candidate:  the time theyve spent at their current job, the company health, social network shift and explicit  availability. Contact a passive candidate when they are 2-3 years into their current position. When the companys health is not looking good (for example at lay-off times) is the best time to approach a passive candidate. Keep on eye on a passive candidates social media action layout changes, and changes to a companys connection they may be looking for a new job. There are a number of phrases that mean the same thing: looking for a job make sure you spot these too! RELATED: How to Rule Passive Candidates In or Out

My Personal Branding Journey Part 10 Reflecting Back and Moving Forward - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

My Personal Branding Journey Part 10 â€" Reflecting Back and Moving Forward - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career This is the last post in our series where we follow Marcos Salazar’s personal branding journey, as he uses the concepts and four-step process outlined in Me 2.0 for his own career. It’s been an amazing month sharing my personal branding journey with all of you. I have received great feedback, engaged in some interesting discussions, and made some good friends along the way. For that, I thank all of you who took time out of your busy lives to read (my often long) blog posts and would love for you to continue following on my personal blog via email or RSS. The value of taking a periodic step back As I reflected back on my personal branding journey this past week, I thought about all that I have learned about what it means to create a personal brand today. Things such as the tricky balance of marketing yourself while not being seen as a pure self-promoter, the value of forming relationships via social media, or developing a brand that makes you a purple cow are just a few of many lessons I learned that will help me in building a strong personal brand going forward. However, what may have been the most important thing I have learned on this journey is that developing a strong personal brand can be used as a psychological tool for personal growth. Instead of just seeing personal branding as tool to market yourself, it is important to see it as an avenue for digging deeper and deeper into who you truly are and who you want to eventually become. In today’s ever changing, hypercompetitive working world we are always on the go and often so focused on getting to that end goal that we don’t stop and see what’s right in front of us. Therefore, it is important for us from time to time to take a step back and ask ourselves if our current personal brand is in line with what we are passion about. So when you get a chance, set some time aside, look at the bigger picture, and see if your personal brand is aligned with your both your passions and professional goals. Continue focusing your brand While I decided to develop my brand as a Renaissance Worker with this concept encompassing my varied skills, talents, and work experiences into one identity, I have come to see that you simply can’t focus on all of them at once. A problem I often have is I sometimes take on too many projects at the same time and spread myself thin. Well, if you add too many slashes to your personal brand there is a potential to spread others people’s attentions too thin also. Therefore, as time goes on I will continue to tighten up my brand more and more while exploring the passions that are most important to me. One example of getting more focused is deciding on the topics I will be writing about on my personal blog, www.marcossalazar.com. As I was thinking about new blog posts I wanted to write, I realized I needed to focus my topics so people can know what type of information and resources I will be providing. This is why I have decided to put my writing under a smaller of themes: 1.       Psychological Development for Young Professionals 2.       Career adventurism in the 21st century 3.       Gen Y Millennial issues (work, social, professional, psychological topics) I may throw in occasional posts from some of my other slashes such as girl and women leadership, social media, exercise and fitness, and a new area I am exploring â€" Gen Y Millennial politics â€" but   for the time being my writing will be focused on these three themes. In addition to my blog, I have learned how valuable a tool Twitter is to raise awareness about your brand out. Therefore, I will also be focusing my Twitter streams just like my blog. I love how Dan does such a great job of being a resource for topics related to Personal Branding and highlights them with caps at the beginning of most tweets. I will be doing something similar but will focus my tweets on the topics above. Syncing your growth As you evolve as a person, so should your brand. In the 21st century we are not going to stay in the same job, or even the same field, for the rest of our lives. Therefore, as your passions, interests, and talents expand, so should your personal brand. This may not necessarily mean going the route I have gone of developing a whole brand around all of your passions and talents but rather, learning how to integrate your growth to serve and further your personal brand. Good luck and hope you enjoyed my personal branding journey! Author: Marcos Salazar is the author of The Turbulent Twenties Survival Guide, which focuses on the psychology of life after college and what graduates go through as the make the transition from school to the working world. He writes a career adventurism and psychological development blog for young professionals at www.marcossalazar.com. You can connect with him on Twitter @marcossalazar.

Engaging with the Disengaged

Engaging with the Disengaged HR professionals know how employee engagement works, although not all managers get it, in essence, engaged employees demonstrate higher levels of performance, commitment, and loyalty, whereas the disengaged do not. Building a culture where employees engage with their work and organisational objectives is important because the employer benefits from staff who are likely to put energy and commitment into the work and the discretionary effort that makes for a high performance workplace. Gallup characterises three levels of engagement the engaged, not-engaged and the actively disengaged, with the latter being of most concern to the employer brand because they are likely to share their discontent with co-workers and the world at large. Once you are aware of the importance of employee engagement you can see the organisational benefit in raising levels of engagement. If you want people who put in extra effort and generate innovative ideas to improve services and save money you need a management style and corporate culture which is collaborative and empowers and engages employees. Enabling engagement to flourish There are a number of key drivers to consider in trying to build employee engagement: Job design has a clear influence on levels of engagement. Good employees want challenging, creative and varied work that uses existing skills and enables the development of new skills. Staff want to feel that the work they do is important, with a clear purpose and meaning. Opportunities for, and access to, development and training opportunities that enable career growth, are considered crucial in enabling engagement with the organisation. Constructive, regular feedback aligned with timely recognition and reward are key drivers. Salary is important but is not something that secures engagement. Building a collaborative environment that engenders good working relationships between employees and managers. Reciprocity is crucial, with managers making time to listen and employees feeling they have a voice. Employees want to understand corporate values and goals, and see how their own role contributes to the bigger picture. Leaders and managers who support and inspire staff, developing them, encouraging them to use their strengths and giving them the autonomy and accountability to work towards clear goals, are seen as engaging. Engagement is influenced by the culture of the organisation, leadership and management style, internal communications, levels of trust and respect, and organisational reputation. Critical for building employee engagement, and building effective performance, is an employee’s commitment and the ‘extent to which the employee derives enjoyment, meaning, pride and inspiration from something or someone in the organisation’, (Lockwood, 2007). In terms of engaging with the disaffected it seem that trust in the organisation’s senior management is a major issue for those who are disengaged. It may be that having trust does not directly influence engagement levels but research suggest that where trust is lacking, disengagement results. Organisations which are characterised as an ‘employer of choice’ are more likely to have high levels of employee engagement which they create with workplace environments where employees feel respected and valued, and feel a connection with the organisation such that they are willing to exert discretionary effort in the pursuit of its success.

Why Recruiters Should Focus on Passive Job Seekers

Why Recruiters Should Focus on Passive Job Seekers Think back over your last 9-10 hires. Where were they sourced? Chances are, based solely on statistics, 7-8 of them were not looking for a new role and reached out to you based on your EB. They likely either came from your social media presence or employee referral. The current job market is heavily skewed in favor of the candidate. That means that regardless if they’re in the minority as an active job hunter, or in the majority as a passive seeker if you aren’t dedicating at least some of your energy and budget to recruitment marketing you’re missing ~80% of your potential new hires. We’re going to pause for a moment to clear up some definition confusion. An active job seeker is someone who is either unemployed or unhappily employed and actively conducting a search for a new position. Counter to that, a passive job seeker is someone who is NOT actively looking to move companies, either because they’re happy in their current role, or just because they haven’t thought about it. Passive candidates make up an estimated 80% of the workforce, meaning that while they make take some persuasion, these folks will move companies for the right role, at the right time, and with the right company. Recruitment marketing is the practice of cultivating your company’s employer brand (EB) so that when these people see that perfect opening with you, they jump in and apply. Between this and directly going after a particular candidate, you find on your own or have referred to you you have a picture of passive recruiting. Passive Recruiting Entails a Major Shift in Approach Active recruiting looks very much like traditional recruiting. That is, you craft a job description, post it to job boards, then wait for applicants to find it. If the response is low, you may supplement by trolling the job boards for appropriate candidates with their resume posted, indicating their status as an active job seeker. Passive recruiting, on the other hand, looks a lot more like inbound marketing. You’re posting on social media, writing blog posts, responding to other people’s comments on Facebook, and otherwise engaging with your following online. Your audience on these platforms have all expressed an interest in your company, your EB, and your EVP as demonstrated via your presence, making them de facto passive job seekers in that they will jump at the opportunity to join the company should the right opening appear. Both approaches are valid and a solid recruiting strategy should include some amount of both. The question is, why add passive recruiting to an existing active effort? From our experience, there are 7 main reasons the passive recruiting approach should be considered required for most companies. You already know a lot about them When you added recruitment marketing to your repertoire, you did create target personas, right? Then you already have a heap of information about your audience at your disposal. You can use that to tailor your content, as intended, but you can also use it to personalize your interactions with people. If you know, for example, that your target candidate for a particular opening is into a certain genre of movie, get acquainted with the newest releases and use that as a conversation starter. They require less energy and resources to onboard If someone who’s been following your presence for several months decides they’re ready to jump on board, chances are they’ve done their research. Studies show that somewhere north of 75% of candidates research potential employers before they apply. This takes a load off your onboarding team since these folks will know company history, mission, values, etc. And since they’re likely already working in their field, there won’t be a lengthy learning process while they get up to speed with how things work. You need to build up your talent pool The idea of a talent pool is nothing new. What is new is how you can fill yours up with high-quality potential applicants simply by asking for contact information. Use a form that requires a name and email address for your gated content. Put out sign-up sheets at job fairs and conventions. Then get those folks entered into your newsletter database, segmented appropriately, and start sending them interesting, engaging, relevant content via email on a regular basis. Now, when an engineering spot opens up, you literally have a list of engineers you already know are interested to draw from. Quite simply, there’s a lot of them Did you catch that 80% statistic earlier? That’s the estimate of how much of the workforce would be interested in moving jobs but is not currently actively seeking that perfect position. That’s a lot of people. And the more of them you get your messaging in front of, the more of them you’ll have to choose from to fill that new opening. Heck, you may not even have to advertise the spot, just put the word out to your pool and see who jumps. They have the skill set you need Since the majority of passive job seekers are currently employed, you have proof that they know their stuff right there. Ask for a portfolio of current projects, or references to teammates just in case, of course. But as a general statement, if someone is a working programmer, they can likely program. You already know your EB resonates with them You receive an application from someone who, in answer to the question about sourcing, says they’ve been following your Facebook page for 6 months. And now they’re applying for the first time to your newest opening for a full-stack developer. This is a pretty good sign that they’re going to be familiar with your EB and that it resonates. Otherwise, why would a happily employed developer send out that application? There’s less competition for them You’ve been there. You’ve gone 2 interview rounds with a fantastic active candidate only to have them inform you that they’ve accepted an offer from your biggest competitor. That’s the one glaring downside to active recruiting, there’s a good chance you aren’t the only place they’ve applied, so you’re in a race for their attention and talent. With passive job seekers, you can take your time, resting easy in the knowledge that since they reached out to you, they’re interested in you specifically and you aren’t likely to run into this sort of time crunch. About the Author: Adrian Cernat is the CEO and founder of SmartDreamers, a platform that helps companies reach more, better candidates in record time by automating recruitment marketing activities to accelerate online talent acquisition. SmartDreamers was founded in 2014 and currently operates in Europe, the US and the APAC region.

Fine Times Being A Financial Advisor As A Viable Career Choice - CareerMetis.com

Fine Times Being A Financial Advisor As A Viable Career Choice Starting a career as a Financial Advisor can be an excellent choice for somebody who would like to head down a new career path, and this is because this is the type of job where having some experience in life actually helps.For example, if you needed to save to buy a car or a house, or helping someone with their medical care costs, such as a relative. In terms of your own financial challenges, these are experiences which you will put into practice as a financial advisor, because the key emotion of empathy is a defining factor of this job!Photo Credit â€" Pixabay.comThe nature of the role is, in essence, providing clients with advice on how to manage their money. In doing this, general duties may include researching the marketplace and recommending what appropriate products or services are available to your clients, and making sure that they are aware of the products that meet their needs and then securing a sale.evalDepending on your own area of expertise, you may sell different type s of products, for example, employee pension schemes to businesses, or offering mortgages, or investment advice to individual clients, where other areas are also general in terms of their advice, such as saving plans or recommending insurance policies.Other duties can include contacting clients, setting up meetings, conducting reviews of clients’ particular financial circumstances in comparison to what they aim to do with their own financial situation, having an analytical approach when it comes to looking at information, making a risk analysis of your client, creating financial strategies, promoting or selling products in order to meet targets, keeping up to date with the financial legislation procedures, producing financial reports, and also meeting the regulatory aspects of the job.Photo Credit â€" jphotostyle.comTraining as a financial advisor requires a lot of study, and you will have to sit a very challenging exam known as the CPA, but there are many different resources to h elp you when it comes to preparing for the exam, such as Beat the CPA, which offer different learning materials and resources to suit your specific learning style. Once you have qualified (which is no mean feat!) you can then start on your career.You could always try an internship or work with a mentor during your studying to get used to the environment, and you can, at least, find out if it is the right career move for you.If you decide that it is the right move, then you can go on to working as an advisor in large financial institutions such as banks, or you may choose to be an independent financial advisor, which means you would be self-employed and you would generate your own work.Being aFinancial Advisor is a very rewarding career. You are, ultimately, helping people to manage their money to better prepare for their futures. As money is a constant worry for many people, we turn to our financial advisors for reassurance. So, by embarking on this type of career, you can help peop le sleep soundly at night.

Changing What We Do

Changing What We Do There was an article in the NYTimes this week about the conditions of the labor market in a Wisconsin town thatlost over4,000 GM jobs. These overpaid ($28/hr) workers are now being forced to re-tool themselves for jobs that wont come close to paying them what they used to make.Here is a sample of the transitioning career paths: Electrician to Radiology Technician Truck Driver to Logistics and Warehouse Management Machine Operator to Veterinarian Assistant Employee to Restaurateur The US economy used to be a balance of manufacturing and service sector jobs. However, that changed. We dont make many things in the United States today. That means that the millions of people with manufacturing backgrounds will have little choice but to take their careers in a new direction. The NY State Dept of Labor publishs monthly newsletters.In the latest edition, it stated that in the Finger lakes there were over 1,500 new jobs created in Educational and Health care services from 2007 to 2008. Not huge numbers, but one of the few growing industries in the region. So the message that I ampassing along is this: Thinkservice, think independent, think global marketplace. Anyjob that physically requiresthat you touch or help isnt going anywhere yet. We cant even predict what the in demand occupations will be 10 years from now (though they still try). That comes from the DOL. It is so difficult to predict what the future holds.You can look backhistoricallyto see how this country rose out of previous recessions, but all those times this countrys makeup was hugely manufacturing based. That isnt the case, we cant hope that making more cars, tanks, airplanes, anything, will bring us out of where we are. The jobs that are hopefully going to come from the current stimulus package are foggy. However, this we know. They wont be paying $28/hr. Re-tooling and re-budgeting arethe answers. Down size personal budgets. Simplify your life style. If you cant make a lot of money, then you might as well love what you do!

Great Giveaway #4 Botanica Photographics, Olive Hope, Jessica Torres Photography!

Great Giveaway #4 Botanica Photographics, Olive Hope, Jessica Torres Photography! It’s Great Giveaway #4! Happiness sadness. Happiness that weve gotten this far (havent the packages been awestometastic, if I do say so myself?) sadness that theres just 1 day left. OK. Im over it. Lets commence with the happiness, shall we? Oh! In case you’ve just arrived, every day for this entire week I’ve had a package of products (yes, that means more than 1!) featured, all of which will go to that day’s winner. Each giveaway will be open for entries until 6/8, I’ll use random.org to announce all the winners on my blog on 6/9.   So if you haven’t already, head to this week’s earlier entries comment for your chance to win. Then, come back tomorrow for yet another chance. Fun, right?! Right! Now well commence with the happiness. Its a photo that looks like a painting thats printed directly onto a sheet of aluminum. Its so the future, Botanica Photographics is bringing it to ya. And because Im the host, it makes me instantly hip trendy, too. Even though calling myself hip trendy makes me automatically not. I can never win. But you can! With my contest. (Whew! Glad I brought that around). You can check out Mikes work on his website, tweet him on Twitter, fan him on Facebook. Oh yeah. Totally the future. photo by djkreutzer of http://www.hippyurbangirl.com Danette is so freakin hilarious, Id be remiss if I didnt print the product description she sent me for this giveaway: (1) Desi is made up of turquoise colored beads with a vintage look. She is one size fits most, and is uber comfortable. She is gorgeous, and loves to go out on the town! A little secret about hershe likes to be shown off dont break her heart and make sure you do. (2) Well Said Ring Dream Big. Inspired by reaching for the stars, living big, big dreams, not holding back, etc. Wearing this ring is an instant reminder to Dream Big. We are entitled to our Big Dreamsyou can declare that when you are wearing this ring! The ring is available in black and white and pastels. No wonder her clients say that her rings are like candy make me so happy cant have just one. Lucky winner you get two! You can always purchase more at the Olive Hope Etsy store, get to know Danettes awesomeness on her blog, Twitter Facebook fan page! Jessica lives in a small Idaho town outside Boise with one computer-geek husband, two rambunctious little boys, one adorable baby girl, her camera.   When shes not taking pictures, she works full time, go to basketball and T-ball games, reads stories to her kids, hikes around beautiful Idaho, reads a lot of books blogs, sews a bit, crochets a bit, rearranges furniture in her house avoids the laundry. With all that on her plate, Im thrilled she makes the time to share her talent! You are so gonna wanna check out her website, Etsy shop, Facebook Page Twitter feed! In order to enter the Great Giveaway #4, submit your comment that answers the following question: If you were forced to pick 1 activity that youd have to do every day for the rest of your life, what would it be? You have until 6/8 at 11:59p Eastern to enter with your comment for this every Great Giveaway this week (1 entry per Giveaway per person)! Winners will be announced on 6/9, but don’t forget to come back tomorrow to enter Great Giveaway #5 with prizes from Crafty Fanny Sweet Eventide! ********************************************************************************************************* Get Danielle LaPorte’s Nuggets of Genius in your own home, on your own time.   The Digital Firestarter Sessions from my “cult leader” have launched! What’s your Joy Equation? Find out with Molly Hoyne’s Pay-What-You-Can-Afford Program! I’ll be on the panel at Blog Out Loud 6 on Monday, June 14th at 7:30p at Tonefarmer (yes, Tonefarmer) in NYC. I’m there, it’s free, Fanny Jane is offering deliciousness there’s a goody bag. You’re so coming.