Your Career Site Pretty or Sh!tty

Your Career Site Pretty or Sh!tty According to the global employer branding research firm Potentialpark, your career site needs to score high across the following 6 areas to score high amongst your candidates: Usability Employer Branding Talent Relationship Building Application Management Recruitment Process Assessment Individual Feedback Are you getting it right? We’re going to breakdown these 6 steps and make sure your career site is doing it’s job properly. Usability: It’s essential that your career site is easy to spot and use. First off it shouldn’t take more than a couple of clicks from your homepage for potential candidates to find and access your latest vacancies i.e. don’t hide your careers section in the footnotes! From hereon ensure a straightforward route to your latest vacancies. Have your most recent roles clearly visible, provide a user friendly search tool, organise vacancies into categories for an easier search, provide an interactive job map etcetera. In a world where online attention span wanes by the second, you want to make sure that there are no obstacles between candidates and your jobs. Lay it out in black and white, and make it easy to apply in under 20 minutes. On that note, if you’re using an ATS make sure it’s user friendly i.e. No lengthy registration forms. Offer candidates the option of applying with a full or partial upload of professional profile such as LinkedIn, it helps if your career site is mobile-friendly too. Employer branding: Your career site is the prime opportunity to sing your own praises, after all people are visiting it because they want to know more about joining you. Give them what they want! Apart from a professionally branded career site you want to advertise your personality, what sets you apart from the rest. Make sure you feature at least one if not all of the following: An employer video Staff testimonials Office photographs Company benefits Social media links Direct contact information Remember your employer brand is the dangling carrot for most candidates, make sure it’s a nice big fat juicy one and organic to boot. Talent relationship building: If your company has the capacity for internships or summer placements consider advertising this on your career site. Ideally you want to drive traffic via social media, seminars, university open days and the like. It’s an great opportunity to begin cultivating ties with future talent, in this case university students or graduates seeking experience. Alternatively use your career site as a base to invite candidates to your talent community with links to your social channels, online forums and the like. For those who have a keen interest in joining the company it’ll be an ideal opportunity to jump straight into your online network. Application management: Whether you’re using an ATS or not the procedure should be the same: When you advertise a job any subsequent applications must be dealt with as quickly and effectively as possible. This process starts on the career site, where the application itself shouldn’t take more than about 10-20 minutes. It needs to be a straightforward journey from A to B to avoid dropouts, plus it’s advisable to set up an automatic reply. Studies show that 90% of candidates prefer an automatic response over nothing. The simplest way to do this without an ATS is to set up a standalone email account for job applications with an auto reply. If you know it’ll take a while for you to process applications be sure to mention it in order to save any disgruntled applicants. On a side note, if you don’t have any open vacancies offer your candidates the option to send in unsolicited applications on your career site. It’ll boost your employer brand and ultimately contribute to a growing talent pool. The recruitment process, assessment and individual feedback: Stemming from the career site is of course, the hiring process itself. As with application management the companies who generally score highly with candidates are those who deal with applications with speed, efficiency and last but not least, communication. Statistically candidates are happy to wait 1-2 weeks for a definitive reply or further instructions such as assessments. Similar to the application itself, it pays to whittle down the assessment process to the bare essentials to save any subsequent drop out. Ideally you also want to communicate any rejections asap, so whether this is following application or assessment make sure it’s not left to the back burner. Last but not least, consider adding feedback for those who don’t make it through. Your career site are you getting it right? Remember your career site isnt just somewhere to post job ads. Maximise its full potential with great employer branding and a flawless candidate experience. Are you ticking all the boxes, or do you think theres more to add? Let us know your thoughts below.

If You Are Not Billing, Be Skilling - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

If You Are Not Billing, Be Skilling - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career No matter what stage you are at within your career  â€" whether you are a student, a first time employee or a seasoned executive. No matter what business you are in or want to be in. There is a stage for which you should always be considering, evaluating and preparing.  Just like with sports there is a need in every career  to  constantly refine and improve your skills. Those that do so consistently will stand out in their career. While I think it is important for everyone to seek to improve their skills, I think this is especially true for Millennials.  Whether we like it or not Millennials should think of their jobs as a string of consulting engagements. In case you don’t know… consultants need to be billable. Consultants that don’t maintain a certain level of billable hours… often don’t get to remain on as consultants for much longer. There is a corollary to this…  Consultants that are not Billing need to  spend their time improving their skills… aka Skilling. Most companies factor in a percentage of a consultants time for training. For better or worse Millennials are being faced with companies that  seem to change a little more quickly and a lot more cavalierly than the companies of yesteryear. Those that can adapt will Stand  Out  in their  Career. By keeping skills honed and options open opportunities will be presented that can be acted upon. Stay curious A friend posted something on Facebook today where he said he was bored. I think he meant it in jest, but it got me thinking. There is no excuse these days for being bored. There is always something to occupy our time. That doesn’t mean those things should be able to lock onto and control our time, but there is no reason to be bored in this day and age. The simple cure for boredom is curiosity. Stay Curious. The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. ~Dorothy Parker By staying curious you open yourself up to new possibilities. Satisfaction of ones curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. ~Dr. Linus Pauling Curiosity may not always make you healthy, wealthy and wise, but  my  guess is that you’ll get at least one of these by following your curious intuitions. By constantly looking for new ways to build your skills you will  gain new experiences and expand your world view. All good things. As you seek to Stand Out in your Career remember this one simple tip: If you are Not Billing be Skilling.

6 Ways to Manage Your Personal Brand in 5 Minutes Per Day - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

6 Ways to Manage Your Personal Brand in 5 Minutes Per Day - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Let’s be honest, trying to find balance between our careers, friends and family, and personal branding is a lot of work. However, managing your personal brand doesn’t have to be stressful or time consuming. The trick to managing your personal brand is making priorities for your brand and sticking to them. If you want to manage your personal brand without it consuming your day, here are six things you can do that take five minutes per day: 1. Build your networking lists. Create a spreadsheet in Excel or Google Docs. Within this spreadsheet, start collecting names and contact information of people in your industry and networks. This will help you create a database of people you can reach out to when you need career advice. As you check Twitter, LinkedIn, or read industry blogs, remember to add a new contact to your networking list. Even if it’s adding one or two new contacts per day, this will make a huge difference in your networking efforts. 2. Tweet about industry news. If you’re worried about social media consuming your life, dedicate five minutes per day to tweet about industry news and trends. If you find an interesting article your followers would find valuable, be sure to send it their way. 3. Revisit your goals. Sometimes it can be a challenge to stay focused on our goals when we become busy with job searching, work, or building our brands. A great way to get you focused on your brand is to revisit your goals. Your goals serve as a great foundation for managing your personal brand. 4. Write a new goal each week. Before you start a new week, write down a goal for your personal brand, career, or job search. Whether it’s writing a networking email or participating in a Twitter chat, these simple goals will motivate you to manage your personal brand. 5. Comment on a blog post. Another way to build relationships for your personal brand is to interact with bloggers. As you read blogs or news articles each week, take five minutes to write a thoughtful comment. This shows your interest in the blogger’s work and can even spark a new relationship. 6. Answer a question on Quora. To build credibility for your brand and showcase your expertise, spend a few minutes answering a Quora question related to your industry. It doesn’t have to be a long, complex answer. Just share some of your personal tidbits, thoughts, or research you’re familiar with to build credibility for your brand. Managing your personal brand doesn’t have to be super time consuming. By making it your goal to spend at least five minutes a day doing one of these takes, you’ll keep your personal brand engaged online. What are your favorite quick and easy tips for managing your personal brand?

Youve Got 3 Minutes. What Will You Say - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Youve Got 3 Minutes. What Will You Say - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Everything cannot be boiled down to 3 minute increments. Nor should they be.. However, there are times when thats all the time you have. Sometimes you have even less. Perhaps as little as 8 seconds. (Have I already lost you?) Do you need the full three minutes? For the sake of argument lets just say you do. If you only had three minutes to get your point across, could you? Warning: You only have 8 seconds! Three minutes is about 22 times more than you might actually be able to keep someones attention. Im not saying that youre boring people, but the fact is people only have an attention span of about eight seconds. How will you keep their  eight seconds of attention let alone 22 times more than that? Eight seconds is all youve got. A Microsoft study highlights the deteriorating attention span of humans, saying it has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds today. Smartphones are making humans subject to the whims of a passing squirrel. In this study â€" researchers have discovered that the human attention span has dropped by 50% in 15 years. I wrote about this in Living in the Age of the Goldfish Response Rate. End, Middle, Beginning Since you only have three minutes you better start with the end in mind. Meaning you better know what you want from your three minutes of conversation before you get started. Begin with the end in mind. ~ Stephen Covey, Habit 2 Are you in the habit of thinking about the ask and putting it at the beginning of the conversation? If not, this is a good time to learn about that. For example, if you want to get someone to attend your event ask them at the beginning. If you want to ask someone for money ask them at the beginning. If you want someone to do something for you ask them at the beginning. Why ask at the beginning? Because if you have to put a bunch of preamble in front of your ask your never going to get to the ask. Remember your goal is to make a request of someone to do something for you. Which is why youre putting the ask (aka the request) upfront. What if the person agrees to your ask right away? There are two ways to think about this. One is to thank them and stop talking. The other is to have your Plan B for your secondary ask. Where do we go from here? Now, lets go beyond imagining it and expect it. You just got on an elevator with someone youve been wanting to speak to. Youve Got 3 Minutes. What Will You Say?

Personal Branding and Executive Job Search Book Second Edition - Executive Career Brandâ„¢

Personal Branding and Executive Job Search Book â€" Second Edition Ive just completed the second edition of my ebook, 23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land . . . A practical guide to executive branding, marketing your ROI value and navigating the new world of job search. Updates to  the content  reflect the ever-changing nature of social media and job search in the digital age. I paid particular attention to the two chapters on . (The colloquial chapter titles in the book  are things clients have actually said to me or asked me.): I set up a profile a while ago, but I never finished it or did anything with . How will recruiters and employers find me on ? If you can  find time to use only one social network, it has to be . and most other social networks have gone through major changes since I wrote the first edition of the book in 2011. To improve the user experience, they periodically tweak existing features and functionality, and roll out new features, while eliminating others. Want to get a handle on social networking and how to land a job in the new world of executive job search? Click here to read about, purchase and immediately download 23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land.   00 0

2 Super Secret Job Search Ninja Techniques that Youve Never Heard Before - CareerEnlightenment.com

After two months, Alex received calls from four of his five target people. A few months after that, he had job offers from two of his target creative directors.Summary:Find five or ten names of people you want to talk to in a companyTake out an ad for each of their namesLink the ad to your website to demonstrate your body of work with an easy way for them to contact youFacebook Ads and the Power of the Second DegreeThis next technique comes from Ian Greenleigh who found that most managers and leaders are so proud of their success, that they usually fill in their entire Facebook profile, including their role at their company. This revelation helped him get hired at his dream company, Bazaar Voice, in a few short weeks.Ian took out an ad in Facebooks Ad Manager platform and directed it just to people in a specific geography, who had a specific role in their bio. This is what his ad looked like:And it directed people to a page on his website called, “5 Reasons You Should Hire Me”.Ia n was surprised how many people offered to help him. And he found that although Bazaar Voice didn’t respond directly, someone with a connection to his dream company did respond, and offered to make an intro for him. The power of his second degree. In his own words, “This was a great conversation starter.”Identify the job titles of the people you want to work forTake out a Facebook ad focused on just themExperiment with different ads, and different targetsDirect them to your website where you can start a conversationWhat about you? What are you secrets to job searching? Feel free to chime in the comments section below.

Two new resources to help you with your job search - Hallie Crawford

Two new resources to help you with your job search This summer we added two new associate coaches to our team, Katie  Weiser and Jasmine Marchong, to help you with your job search and crafting a winning resume. Before you approach a recruiter or resume writer you have to remember to be prepared. You need to know exactly what youre looking for. Some people make the mistake of thinking a headhunter can help them with their career direction. They cant necessarily Thats not always their area of expertise. Before you approach either, make sure you have a clear idea of the jobs youre interested in, and also bring job postings with you. They need these in order to help place you, and resume writers need this to help you craft your resume. One of our new team members, Jasmine Marchong, is a professional resume writer and has been writing resumes for approximately eight years. She offers a complimentary resume review to help you get started with ideas on what to do next to improve your document. Contact Jasmine to get help with your resume here: https://www.halliecrawford.com/contact-resume.html. Ideal Career Coach P.S.  Are you in the ideal career for you?  Find out if you’re in the right career with our  Ideal Career Quiz.