— Archive for February, 2010 —

• I had a bad day

  It all went so wrong, so very, very wrong — right from the start. You left your notepad with your hand-written questions at home; your CEO pulled you into a last-second meeting that made you a half-hour late to the interview; and you finished it off by saying “I think my background and experience make me uniquely suited to making a big contribution here at Avis,” which was a good point, except you were interviewing at Enterprise. Whew. You had a bad day in the job hunt. A really bad one. You feel embarrassed, and you’re starting to wonder if anybody is ever going to be foolish enough to hire you. It happens to all of us. My job here at TheLadders is the 27th job that I’ve had in my life. So I’ve been through 27 job hunts, and I could spend a couple hours over lunch filling you [...]

  Feb 28

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• What am I supposed to say in the interview?

  *** From my weekly newsletter to TheLadders.com subscribers *** The job interview is an unusual situation: you’re put in a room you’ve never been in, with a person you’ve never met, to talk about a company you don’t work at, in order to persuade somebody that you’ll be excellent at a job you don’t have. No wonder it feels awkward, artificial and anxious. But a lot of the “mystery” around great job interviewing comes from the fact that we don’t do it that often. Every few years, we’re supposed to magically dust off our interview skills and go out there and shine. Well, I talk to a lot of job-seekers, hiring managers, and recruiters, and the “secrets” behind great interviews aren’t really that mysterious after all. So here’s what you need to know for making your job interviews a lot less nerve-wracking and a lot more effective. Pick three points [...]

  Feb 21

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• History of Job Search, Job-seekers in 2010

  Before we get to the topic of the state of job-seeking and job-seekers in 2010, we should address the one truth that anybody in HR, recruiting, or the job search will tell you: job-seekers generate too many applications for jobs, frequently applying for jobs outside their expertise, geography, and qualifications. Every single recruiter focus group I’ve been in over the past seven years has made it clear that the 21st century model generates far too much “noise” to “signal”, and that fact is having a deleterious impact on all involved. Job boards Now the problem is not strictly a job-seeker problem. The rise of internet job boards has contributed mightily. The absence of friction in the 21st century job search — by which I mean the time and cost of finding and applying to jobs — plays into job-seeker behavior in an insidious way. With mass job boards like Monster [...]

  Feb 9

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• Speaking in your town soon

  *** From my weekly newsletter to TheLadders.com subscribers *** My passion in life is jobs. I find them fascinating: it’s the intersection of human emotion, desire and dreams, and the more mathematical world of economics, markets, supply and demand. The field requires empathy, tough love, and a knowledge of human psychology while also profitably employing left-brain skills like econometrics, data analysis, and statistical studies of human behavior. I stumbled into jobs a decade ago and embraced what I found there: a calling that is rewarding, meaningful, and damn hard. Which makes it fun, worthwhile, and a job where I find myself wishing for more hours in the day. It scratches everything that itches on me. And so I’ve been getting more and more requests to speak on the topic of “jobs” these days. It’s not that I’ve solved the problem by any stretch of the imagination — we still have [...]

  Feb 8

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• Monster’s Super Bowl Ad features violinist, but there are no violinist jobs on Monster

  As regular readers of Stone know, I am a huge fan of Monster’s historic role in advertising the internet as a comprehensive resource for the job search. In particular, their 1999 Ad “When I Grow Up” is easily one of the Top Five Super Bowl commercials of all time, and they have done other ground-breaking work. That’s why I’m baffled at this year’s entry. Their Super Bowl ad this year features a fiddling beaver that searches on Monster.com for ‘violinist’. The beaver ends up getting the job, the girl, and the fancy limo ride through New York City. There’s just one problem. There are no violinist jobs on Monster: And it’s not just that there are no violinist jobs on Monster today, but there are likely very few violinist jobs ever posted on Monster or elsewhere. Certain professions — the performing arts, law firm attorneys (as opposed to corporate counsel), [...]

  Feb 8

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• Monster Acquires HotJobs.com

  This news story: In a separate news release, Monster Worldwide announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Yahoo! under which the Company will acquire the assets of Yahoo! HotJobs, a leading online recruitment website. Additionally, Monster and Yahoo! have entered into a multi-year commercial traffic agreement, effective upon the closing of the acquisition, in which Monster will become Yahoo!’s provider of career and job content on the Yahoo! homepage in the United States and Canada. The transaction combines Monster’s online career expertise and history of innovation with Yahoo!’s vast network of traffic and provides significant benefits to millions of job seekers and customers globally. Felt like deja vu all over again to me: TMP Worldwide Inc. (NASDAQ: TMPW), the world’s leading supplier of human capital solutions, including the pre-eminent Internet career portal Monster.com(R), announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire HotJobs.com, Ltd. (NASDAQ: [...]

  Feb 3

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• Our 49 best articles on Job Search

  *** From my weekly newsletter at TheLadders.com *** Thanks so much to everybody who enjoyed my Beatles-themed newsletter last week! I read all your emails, and the memories, trivia and thoughtful comments on the Fab Four were really just a joy to receive in my inbox… Now, let’s face the facts. The modern job hunt doesn’t make a lot of sense. If you’re a waiter or bartender, you can find a new job on Craigslist this weekend. But if you’re a professional, the rule of thumb is six to eight months. In other words, the more experienced, talented and educated you are, the longer the job hunt has you sitting on the sidelines, biding your time. I don’t know who designed the system that way, but there it is. Luckily, our Editor-in-Chief, Matthew Rothenberg, has been busy over the past year or two putting together knowledgeable advice packages with excellent [...]

  Feb 1

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