Energy Jobs Network Blog

Marshall Loeb with MarketWatch, suggests that just hitting the Submit button on an online job application is not enough when appyling for a job through an online application process. It is important for your resume to stand out among the hundreds of applications a recruiter may get for each job they have posted. Using keywords is one way to ensure your application does not get lost in the pile. You should also try to boost your “Google score” by attending professional conferences and workshops that are likely to list your activities online. Read more about it here

The following is an article written by Peter Weddle and I believe has some good advice. As a jobseeker, you do not want any obstacles in your way when finding a job now or in the future. Don’t let your current actions sabotage your chance for a job in the future.

Perhaps you saw the tape of the incident as it was endlessly replayed on news and sports shows a year or so ago. It showed a young man sitting dazed on top of a net over the home plate crowd at Yankee Stadium after he had jumped off the upper deck during a ball game. It seems he wanted to impress his friends and maybe land on an ESPN highlight reel. What he got instead was a court date and a new moniker. Courtesy of The New York Post, he’s now known as “the village idiot.” He wasn’t smart enough to think about the consequences of his actions.

While most of us would shake our heads at such public stupidity, there are some among us who are guilty of acting the same way, at least on the Internet. What do I mean?

They trash their previous and even their current employers on blogs and discussion forums;

They trade in malicious gossip with e-mails about their former or current coworkers and bosses; and

They exercise their right to express their opinions by venting their spleen in crude and defamatory language.
And when they engage in such behavior, they are ignoring its consequences. They are acting like “cyber-idiots.”

The village idiot was dumb on two counts: he could have hurt himself with his ignorant behavior and, perhaps worse, he could have hurt others if that net had ripped and sent him flying into the crowd beneath it. The same can be said for cyber-idiots.

First, their comments can and do hurt others. They can undermine the credibility of their employers and undercut the reputations of their coworkers. Regardless of the accuracy of the idiot’s comments or their “right” to make them, posting them in a public forum where rebuttal is difficult or impossible can have only one purpose: to harm the other party. And, in most cases, that’s exactly what happens.

Second, their comments can and do hurt them. A column in USA Today not so long ago cited several examples of workers who were fired by their employers for making inaccurate or inappropriate comments about the organizations in their own personal blogs. Did they have the right to make such comments? Absolutely. Was it smart to do so? Absolutely not. The commentary a person posts online-in e-mail and on discussion forums as well as in their own blog-will be part of the public profile they build for themselves, and that profile will be used to evaluate them for employment today and, thanks to the limitless memory of the Web, for the rest of their career.

Ignoring the consequences of one’s actions simply isn’t rational. It can’t even be described as prudent risk taking. It doesn’t involve weighing the possible benefits of an action against its potentially negative outcomes. Instead, when village and cyber-idiots commit their acts, they focus exclusively on what they perceive to be the positive results they will achieve. And, the tragedy is that those results are all but insignificant when measured against the long term negative impact they are guaranteed to have.

The village idiot is likely to spend a year in jail and have a lifelong criminal record for his 15 minutes of fame; and

Cyber-idiots may feel momentarily vindicated or superior while expressing their views in an e-mail message or on their blog, but the harm to their own reputation will likely last as long as they are in the workforce.

Back in the ancient past before the Web, we were urged not to “burn our bridges behind us” when dealing with employers and coworkers. The rationale, of course, was that circumstances change: And that has never been more true than in the rapidly shifting environment of the contemporary world of work. For example:

The boss and coworkers we had in one organization can easily show up in the one to which we’ve moved;

The organization that previously employed us can acquire the organization that employs us now;

The opportunity we thought we had at our new employer can disappear or never appear at all and make the opportunity at our former employer suddenly look much better; and

The boss and coworkers we had in our previous employer might (a) live next door to, (b) have been graduated from the same college as, or (c) be somehow related to our current boss and coworkers.

The Internet has short circuited the six degrees of separation that used to buffer what we said and diminish its impact. In today’s hyper-connected world, acting like a cyber-idiot can and almost certainly will come back to haunt you. That’s one reason why you shouldn’t do so.

The second reason is something your mother taught you; it’s called the Golden Rule-the key to success (in work as well as life) is to treat others as you would like them to treat you.

According to a recent Weddle’s survey, “the five largest sources of new employees were online job boards, staffing and executive search firms, tips from friends and family members, networking in a business context, and two methods that have been pooh-poohed recently by the cognoscenti of employment: career fairs and newspapers“.

These sources are listed below from most used to fifth most used. These five sources accounted for 57.7% of the positions that people took during their last job search.

#1 - 13.22% of respondents - Answering ads and posting a resume on job boards

#2 - 11.3% of respondents - A call from a headhunter or staffing firm

#3 - 11.1% of respondents - A tip from a friend or family member

#4 - 10.5% of respondents - Networking at work or at a business event

#5 - 5.8% of respondents - A virtual tie between career fairs and answering an ad in a newspaper

What were the least helpful sources of employment, as reported by our survey respondents? Beginning with the least effective, they were:

Networking at a social event

Answering an ad in a publication of their professional association

Using a social networking site

Sending a resume directly to an employer

Responding to a notice posted in a store

According to a report titled, Are They Really Ready to Work? Employers Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21st Century U.S. Workforce, the following were identified by employers as today’s five most important applied skills for employees: professionalism, teamwork, oral communication, ethics and social responsibility and reading comprehension.

The percentage of employers citing each of these skills for high school graduates, two year and four year college graduates were:

Professionalism: High school graduates-80.3%; Two year college graduates-83.4%; Four year college graduate-93.8%

Teamwork: High school graduates-74.7%; Two year college graduates-82.7%; Four year college graduate-94.4%

Oral communication: High school graduates-70.3%; Two year college graduates-82.0%; Four year college graduate-95.4%

Ethics & social responsibility: High school graduates-63.4%; Two year college graduates-0%; Four year college graduate-0%

Reading comprehension: High school graduates-62.5%; Two year college graduates-71.6%; Four year college graduate-0%

Click Here to read the entire report

With the wide spread use of the internet today and the availability of creating your own webpages and blogs, have you considered the consequences of the information you are posting on your webpages and blogs? According to Peter Weddle, here are some things you should think about before you post stories, pictures and information about yourself on the internet.

First, information posted on social networking sites is, by definition, in the public domain. It’s available to anyone in society who has Internet access, and that’s virtually every employer, public and private, small as well as large. In other words, this information is not like your credit report, civil court record and employment references. Those data are private and not available to the general public, so an employer must get your permission, in writing, to access them. What you post on a social networking site, on the other hand, is a portrait of you that is just as public as the news reports about Lindsay’s partying.

Second, recruiters have a fiduciary responsibility to check all available data about a person who is being considered for employment. The dictionary defines a fiduciary as “A person to whom power or property is entrusted for the benefit of another.” In this case, an employer has entrusted the recruiter with the responsibility of ensuring that any person who is hired by the organization is who they say they are and will not either be a danger to themselves or others or impede the good order and performance of the organization. Therefore, if a recruiter fails to check information you have posted about yourself in the public domain, they are failing to do their job, and that means they’re putting their own career at risk.

Third, in today’s litigious world, employers expose themselves to civil and even criminal penalties if they fail to evaluate a person fully before hiring them. We’ve all seen the news reports about employees who rampage through offices firing weapons and killing coworkers and others who harm innocent bystanders while driving under the influence on a business trip. The victims of such tragedies have every right to ask if the employer could have prevented the situation by doing a better job of checking the information that’s available about a prospective hire. And when the employer fails to do so, the fines are steep and the damage done to its reputation is long-lasting. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that employers today are leaving no rock unturned-including those on the information superhighway-when they assess employment candidates.

Read more about this

Are you a career activist?

July 20th, 2007 Jobseekers none Comments

In a recent newsletter sent out by Peter Weddle, he discusses career activism. He states, “The reality in today’s world of work is that the quality of your personal performance and the dedication that you show to your employer give you absolutely no job security. Being a career activist does not mean you are serial jobseeker. A job seeker wants something that employers control: a job. Their success is based on someone else’s decision. A career activist, in contrast, focuses on what they control: their career. They make the decisions, and they do so to meet their own goals.

A career activist is someone who:

sets the direction for their career (by identifying near, mid and longer term goals that are interesting, challenging and meaningful to them); and

initiates the specific actions (e.g., finding a mentor, acquiring a certain kind of experience, learning new skills) that will enable them to make steady progress toward and actually accomplish those goals.

A career activist, then, is in charge of the change in their career, rather than its victim. Ask yourself these questions.

Am I doing my best work in my current job or am I just coasting?

Are my skills and knowledge at the state-of-the-art in my career field or am I growing obsolete?

What job should I be doing in the next 12-18 months in order to upgrade my performance and my satisfaction at work?

What do I need to do now to prepare myself so that I can compete successfully for that job at that time?”

Click here to read this article in its entirety in section two.

Are you as careful shopping for a job as you are shopping for a cell phone?

July 5th, 2007 Jobseekers none Comments

Peter Weddle makes a good point in his latest email commentary. We put a lot of effort in making decisions about what car we’ll drive or what cell phone service we will use but do we put enough effort into researching the potential company for which we will work? Even though the job we choose can have lasting consequences, may of us do not do any research before applying for or accepting a job. He suggests that we use the same structured decision-making process when looking for a job as we do when purchasing a car, TV or cell phone. Read more

How Good Are Employees Sourced Online?

June 21st, 2007 Employers none Comments

A recent survey conducted by Weddles shows that “the Internet is among the most effective methods recruiters now have for acquiring top talent and, ultimately, for winning the War for the Best Talent.” The results of employers polled regarding the caliber of candidates hired from online recruiting versus employees hired via other sources are as follows:

31.3% said they were among their best employees

47.9% said they were above average employees

16.7% said they were average employees

2.1% said they were below average employees

2.0% had no opinion

With half of all employers getting 25% of all new hires orginating from online sources, the internet proves to be an effective way to recruit top talent for companies. Read more about it

MORE: Tips and Tricks for upcoming job Interview

June 1st, 2007 Jobseekers none Comments

Interview Opener
Wait for the handshake. The rules of a handshake have changed as more women have entered the workforce. Normally, two men should shake firmly. Beyond that, you’ll have to use your judgement. Don’t crush a person’s hand. Practice with male and female friends.

Keep standing. Don’t sit until you are directed to. There may be other people participating in the interview and it’s best to show that you are “open to direction.”

Make a good first impression and maintain it. Mirroring is a powerful technique if used subtly, no matter the interviewer’s mood.

Here are some “DOs”

Be succinct. Don’t be a Chatty Cathy; don’t tell your life story. Give a bit of detail instead of just “yes” and “no”.

Nod your head. But don’t over do it. It shows you are attentive and amenable to being managed. Women are more likely to nod than men, so men should practice more.

Ask for clarification. You may be attentive, but if you don’t understand something, politely ask for clarification.

Ask questions. Ask about the culture at the company and any general questions that an interviewer has not mentioned yet.

Be flexible. Even dream jobs have uninteresting tasks that must get done. Don’t wrinkle your nose at a list of tasks. And say you’re willing to learn if you don’t know how to do something.

Ask about your role. You could be interviewed for multiple positions, despite what the job description you applied to indicated. Ask what positions you’re being considered for.

Ask about your team. Ask how many people you’d be working with and what they do. Ask if there’s anyone internally that is applying for the job.

Ask about the last person. Ask why the last person left the position, or if it’s a new one. If the interviewer hesitates, back off. If they answer anyway, they’ll probably respect you for asking.

Ask about future opportunities. Is there room for growth? Asking shows that you’re career-minded, and that you might stay long-term.

Here are some “DON’Ts”

Don’t ask about salary benefits first. Let the interviewer bring it up. Typically, this is discussed towards the end, and usually if they’re interested in you.

Don’t fidget. It’s often perceived as a sign of untrustworthiness.

Don’t mumble. Speak clearly and enunciate your words. This should be part of your pre-interview practice with friends.

Don’t be intimidated. Be confident without being arrogant.

Don’t lie in the interview. A skilled interviewer can “read” an applicant.

Don’t show off or overact. Just be yourself, but don’t be overly effusive.

Don’t hit on your interviewer. Seriously, you’re in an interview, not a nightclub.

Don’t complain about someone. Be positive.

Don’t seem needy. Sure, you need a job, but if you act like it, you probably won’t get it.

Closer and Post Interview

Be prepared to be tested. You might be asked to prove, say, your computer programming skills with a small quiz on basic principles of coding. Interviews for other industries might include similar testing.

Know your availability. An interviewer may ask when you can start. Don’t be afraid to say that you have a vacation scheduled, etc., or that you can start immediately.

Be flexible on salary. When asked what you’re expecting, a good answer for a new grad is that you’re hoping for at least fair entry level wages, with performance bonuses. You might even say that you’re willing to accept stock options, especially at a startup.

Ask for the job. If the interview goes well and you think you want to work there, ask for the job. Say something like, “Well this sounds like a very interesting job and I’d love to work here.” Do this when they offer their handshake goodbye. If they like you, you’ll be asked back for a second interview, or you might get offered the job right there.

Say thank you. Thank the interviewer and the receptionist, etc.

Be patient, part 2. As you’re leaving, ask about the selection process and when you might hear back. If there’s more than one position, you might hear back sooner. You might get more than one interview, but that may require sign-off from someone on vacation.

Follow up on each interview. Experts offer differing opinions on this. If in doubt, call reception and ask their suggestions, especially if you haven’t heard back within two weeks.

Who is being hired online?

May 21st, 2007 Employers, Jobseekers none Comments

According to the article posted on Weddles.com, in the early 1990s, techie positions accounted for most online hires. In a recent survey, mid-level professional positions account for slightly less that 50% of online hires. Executive positions and hourly positions accounted for the lowest percentage of online hires. Even though the executive searches account for a small percentage of online hires(3.9%), 11.5% of recruiters and employers said they primarily use the Internet for such openings

The Internet has become an accepted way to find employment opportunities in the full range of permanent positions available in today’s organizations. Click here to read more.

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