I know what you did last summer…

Well it’s the last week of summer, which means it’s getting time to put the boat away, send the kids back to school, get the grill ready for tailgating, and get ready for football season!!! (Can you tell I’m excited?)

It also means that it is time to Google yourself.

You see, with the Web being the first place that people go to search for things to buy, places to fly, or new things to try, it’s also where recruiters and hiring mangers go to learn about you “on the sly.”

Marc Cenedella

Marc Cenedella TheLadders

Marc Cenedella New York

Marc Cenedella 10013

Marc Cenedella Harvard Business School

It’s the first page of results that’s most important, so it’s the first page of results that you really want to focus on and understand.

Go through each of these searches and check, carefully, each of the links on the first page to understand how you are being presented or referenced on the Web.

If all you find is glowing praise and adulation, fantastic for you and congratulations!

But if you find material that might put you in the wrong light, it’s important to try and do something about it:

Patch up: If you control the site or page that has the troubling information or photos, patch up your online reputation quickly by removing or deleting the questionable material.

Push it down: If you do not control the site, another way to improve your online reputation is to push the offending material down in the results. By expanding your presence on social networks, blogs, and community forums, you can generate new web content that could get ranked higher in the search results than the bad information.

This means making sure you have a presence on Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Quora, Meetup, About.me, LinkedIn, etc. Each of these sites allows you to have a public profile on a highly ranked website that is regularly ranked highly by Google. By creating a consistent presence across multiple properties, you improve your chances of controlling the first page of results.

Petition: It’s a long shot, but if you’re unable to remove the offending information, you can petition the site owner or webmaster to remove it. You are asking for a favor, so never approach a website proprietor with outrage, incredulity, or legal posturing. I can guarantee that won’t work, and it usually backfires when said proprietor posts your communications for future visitors to read and ridicule.

You best bet is to humbly seek their help… “I’m looking to clean up my online reputation so that my family, friends, and business colleagues won’t get the wrong idea about me. There is some unfortunate information on your website, and I’d really appreciate it if you would consider removing this particular bit. I know you have the right to have whatever you want on your site, and perhaps you didn’t even put everything up there yourself. So I would really appreciate it if you could help out a guy who is in a little bit of a jam.”

Again, the anonymous Internet seems to make e-mail arguments much easier, and many website operators can be very prickly about preserving their independence, so never, ever take a high-handed or aggressive approach.

Prepare: If patching, pushing and petitioning don’t work, that means you’ll have to prepare for the question in your job interview. Simply and clearly state the circumstances that led to the bad information and then stop. Don’t go into a long or tortured conversation about implications, how it makes you feel, or how unfair it is. By being open, honest and sensible, you may actually be able to come out ahead…

“Yes, during the downturn I was required to let go over 350 people in my division. Unfortunately, several of the impacted people shared their negative viewpoints of my performance in that role online. I can understand and sympathize with their anger, but I thought that preserving the ability of our company to survive very difficult economic times was in our best interests.”

“Is there anything specific I can address for you?”

If you forthrightly answer the question, show an openness to further inquiry (the appetite for digging through dirty laundry is actually much smaller than you’d imagine), and then move on, you’ll be doing the best to put a positive spin on an unfortunate situation.

OK, Readers, I hope you have a great last week of the summer, and let’s “get back” to work next week!

August 29, 2011 | 

Comments » 14 Comments »

Feel good about yourself: our new feedback system is humane and sane

The modern job search has created a problem for job-seekers and recruiters alike: there’s too much noise and not enough humanity in the system.

When we speak with HR professionals and recruiters like you, we hear time and again: “I’d like to give feedback to candidates but there’s just no way to do it sensibly.”

Well, we’re taking the problem off your hands.

TheLadders has launched a new candidate feedback system that enables you to give feedback — humanely — while realizing that you’re a busy person and any system needs to take that into account when giving feedback — sanely.

So here’s how it works

When you give a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down” on a candidate, we let them know… gently. We don’t show them the thumbs up or thumbs down, we just give them the information they need so that they know the result.

A thumbs up from you means that they will receive this message in their inbox: “Yes, you’re a fit.” Every job-seeker that’s a fit gets an opportunity to follow up with a three-hundred character note to let you know when’s best to contact them.

And a thumbs down from you means that they will receive this very simple message in their inbox: “Sorry, not a fit.”

By creating a mechanism for you to give feedback without getting into an e-mail exchange, we’ve made it possible to give candidates what they need — humanely and sanely.

The problem with e-mailing candidates back and forth is that it opens you up to a feedback / counseling / or grievance session that you don’t have the time for, and that your boss and the legal department have no doubt told you is counterproductive.

So while it’s always been your goal to be as much of a “people person” as you could be, the unfortunate reality has been that the rise of internet recruiting has made it just about impossible for you to carry through. The saying “no good deed goes unpunished” comes to mind.

Further, what’s great about this system is that by providing a tiny bit feedback, you allow us to provide a great deal of feedback.

When we see a candidate getting a half-dozen, or a dozen “no”s on a particular type of job, we can intervene. We can re-direct their search. We can help them think through if their strategy is the best one for getting ahead.

So by being a part of TheLadders, you’re making the world a better place, a nicer place, and letting us help professionals find jobs faster.

And all it takes is that little click!

Have a great week, Talent People!

August 24, 2011 | 

Comments » 2 Comments »

Hired!

Last week I mentioned that companies are hiring. This week I’ll remind you that… they’ve already hired!

Even though we’re entering the “dog days” of August, companies are hiring and gearing up for September.

In the interest of “show, don’t tell”, here’s just a sample of 50 of the jobs accepted already this month by your fellow subscribers here at TheLadders:

OK, Readers! Good luck in your search this week!

August 15, 2011 | 

Comments » 46 Comments »

Get your photo up! I’m going to give you a shout out…

As you probably know, I write a weekly newsletter to our 4.7 mm subscribers here at TheLadders, and have been doing so for eight years now (phew! time flies…)

Well, next week, I’m going to be plugging you in the newsletter, but I need your help.

When your profile photo looks like this:

or this:

or even this:

…You’re not going to be attracting many followers who view you as the path to their future success, or as a thought leader in the social world that we now live in.

You know, it looks strange if everybody else has a reasonable, professional photo and you don’t.

So double-check your profile, update your photo, and make sure you’re not standing out for the wrong reasons.

Here are 16 of our recruiters and HR professionals from across the country to give you an idea of what good headshots can be.…

Thanks and have a great week!

August 10, 2011 | 

Comments » 2 Comments »

These companies are hiring

The unemployment report came out on Friday and it showed a slight drop in the unemployment rate to 9.1%. Of course, 9.1% remains too high, as having almost a tenth of Americans that want to work sitting on the sidelines is a tragedy. As I mentioned on Fox NEWS on Wednesday, the remarkable story is that there is no remarkable improvement in the economy at this point in the recovery.

Despite that, what you need to remember for your job search is that companies are hiring!

As just an example, here are twenty top companies posting that just this week posted their jobs with us (click on the name to see all of their jobs):

• Starbucks
• ADP
• Kellogg’s
• Accenture
• Oracle
• MetLife
• Microsoft
• HP
• AT&T
• The Home Depot
• Honeywell
• Citigroup
• Bank of America
• Paychex, Inc.
• Wells Fargo
• Smith & Nephew Inc.
• The McGraw-Hill Companies
• Amazon
• NaviSite
• Pitney Bowes

How can that be? With the unemployment rate at such a high level, how can it be that these companies are hiring?

Well, it’s two things, Readers.

First off, you have to remember that most hiring is replacement hiring. It’s not companies saying that they’re going to grow their workforce by leaps and bounds, rather, it’s companies replacing routine attrition that occurs as employees flow in and out of any organization.

Think of it this way. Even though the level in your bank account probably doesn’t change *too* much in a particular year, and you may be more or less happy with where it is, a lot of new dollars come into your account each year from your current job (and then go out to expenses). So the vast majority of activity in your bank account is the addition of dollars to replace the ones you’ve already used.

Same thing in the employment market. We may be more or less happy with the overall rate of employment or unemployment, but the changeover from new employees coming in and old employees going out is far, far greater than the change in overall level.

Yep, most hiring is replacement hiring. Which means that most companies are hiring all the time.

Second, companies are always expanding. There are always sectors of the economy that are growing while others shrink. As an example, if your company has anything to do with Apple Inc. right now, you’re growing. Man, are you growing!

And that’s whether or not your company has anything to do whatsoever with technology. If you sell cardboard boxes to Apple, you’re growing. If you sell real estate maintenance to Apple, you’re growing. If you sell the little plastic biodegradable forks that the geniuses who design iPads use to eat their arugula salads at their gorgeous headquarters… guess what?… you’re growing.

So part of the job search is figuring out where’s the growth and where’s the shrink, and allocating your time accordingly.

So, folks, I hope you’ll enjoy perusing the companies above and all the companies hiring on TheLadders this week, and that you have a great week in the hunt!

I’ll be rooting for you,

August 8, 2011 | 

Comments » 37 Comments »

Passport Search — sample our keyword and radius search

If you’re using Passport, you know it got better last week.

Of course, it’s still free to post a job to our almost five million members.

And you know that you can use Pipeline to get the “word” on a new assignment out to your followers immediately.

But now we’ve also added search to Passport. Check it out on the Passport Search page, and when you find someone you like, just add them to your followers and we’ll show you their resume.

Then, when you want to connect with specific candidates, just click “connect”, and the candidate writes back to let you know whether or not they’re interested, and also let you know whether phone or e-mail is better.

By the way, this “connect” button is golden, fantastic, a dream. Unlike other sites where you have to spam and spam people to get a response, with TheLadders you’ll hear back!

And that’s because our career-minded professionals make up a serious community, not just a phonebook.

Now, look, let’s be honest: we’re not giving away the farm here. The full disclosure is that Passport search gives you keyword and radius search for free. Everything else remains paid.

So sample our search with Passport, or sign up for the full experience with Premier — the choice is yours, and, as always, we’ll be standing by…

Have a great week in the hunt!

August 3, 2011 | 

Comments » None

Psst.

Welcome to the first day of August!

You know, Labor Day is just five weeks away, which marks the start of two important seasons…

With the end of the lockout this past week, football will be kicking off at Lambeau Field on Thursday, September 8th! (Can you tell I’m looking forward to it?)

And, perhaps more importantly for our present purposes, Labor Day marks the beginning of the fall hiring season. Companies, recruiters, and HR people put away their summer flip-flops and redouble their efforts to fill out their rosters for the rest of the year and for 2012.

Which means it’s an important season for you to get yourself ready.

Now, the right way to get hired after Labor Day is to be well-prepared before the whistle blows in September. Here’s how we’ll help…

Vetted, relevant jobs. You know that with TheLadders you’ll get jobs that have been screened — by real, live human beings — to make sure they’re not work-from-home, irrelevant, or under your pay-grade.

It’s a drag to dig through page after page of off-target listings on the Monsters and Indeeds of the world, and it can be tremendously frustrating to sort through all that “no way” to find the one “all right!”

That’s why we take that drudgery off your hands and we do that work for you with our team of Job Search Specialists right here in our Manhattan offices. By having two real people review every single job before it’s allowed onto our site, we give you a better experience with real, vetted, relevant jobs.

Which means you can spend your Sundays this fall sitting back in the big chair with the remote, not leaning forward and squinting at the small print on a computer screen.

Confidential, private connections with recruiters and HR professionals — without the water cooler chatter.

Publicly updating your profile on LinkedIn leads to some awkward conversations in the hallways…

“Hey! Saw your profile update… I didn’t know you were looking for a job… couldn’t make it work out with that clown of a boss you got, huh?”

And if that’s what they’re saying to you, what are they saying to your boss? Your peers? The promotions committee?

Well, with TheLadders, you don’t have to tell the whole world you’re looking.

With “Follow Recruiter“, you manage which recruiters and which HR people you want to keep tabs on — and you decide who and when you want to hear from them.

And because your profile is part of our private career network — not publicly available to your colleagues, classmates, and competitors — you control how confidential you want to be.

We’re the right tool when you want to “pssst” your confidential intentions without being forced to put your career plans on display to the world.

Resume help. Writing a resume is (sigh) one of the more anxiety-producing elements of the job search:

“Does that sound right?”

“Does this font look goofy?”

Yeah… we know… we know… It’s a task that you only do once every few years and it seems like it ought to be obvious. Which is frustrating.

Because it’s like drawing your own portrait. You’re rather familiar with the subject matter, but it’s not something you’ve practiced doing, so it’s tough to tell whether it looks right or not.

Well, we write over 10,000 resumes each year here at TheLadders, so we’ve got you covered.

We give every Premium member a free resume critique based on the tens of thousands of resumes that we’ve scored on a scale of 1 to 10 (about 10% get an 8, 9 or 10). And if you’d like, we can help you write a new one.

Over a million dollars of career content.

You know the job search has changed. We know the job search has changed.

That’s why we’ve spent over $1 mm re-writing the playbook on career advice with our career and job search advice section. I collected 52 of the best ones into one handy list here.

Well, Readers, I hope that gets you a good pre-season checklist. Let’s play ball!

August 1, 2011 | 

Comments » 3 Comments »

Some call me lazy… I call it being clever

How would you like to get 1,000 people that you hand-picked to help you source for your next open position? I’m talking about 1,000 high-end professionals who are career-minded and have volunteered to read your every request as soon as you send it. Would you be interested?

Well, that’s what TheLadders career network is all about, and with MyPipeline you can put an army of hundreds or thousands of volunteers to work for you.

Whenever I discover how to get a lot of work done at no cost to me, some people might call it being lazy. Me? I call it being clever. I call it being productive. I call it being collaborative.

Because cooperating with other people and giving them something they want — great job information — in exchange for something you want — the heads up on who might be looking, or who might raise their hand for a role like the one you’re currently filling — is a great way to make your recruiting practice better. Collaboration leads to happier clients and hiring managers.

So whenever you do a search on TheLadders, use “invite to follow” to invite future prospects to follow you.

Once you get a follower, they stay your follower. That means your next assignment and your next assignment and your next assignment and your next… will be sent automagically to your volunteer army.

Now, is MyPipeline going to replace the traditional “sly” sourcing call: “Do you know anybody who would be right for this role?” Yeah, probably, but it’s going to take a while so don’t cancel your Skype account yet.

Look, these days, you have to work smart, not just hard. And there’s nothing smarter than putting the power of TheLadders career network to work for you…

July 27, 2011 | 

Comments » None

Don’t ask for a job

Here’s an easy way to turn dreaded employment networking into deadly effective bonding:

When you’re networking, ask for a reference, not a job.

Whether you’re doing catch-up drinks or grabbing lunch to reconnect (and, hopefully, staying out of this horrible heat!), your main goal is to get an ally, not a tally of job listings. Adding another helping hand to your search is your aim.

So don’t ask your college buddy if he knows of any jobs for people like you. How would he?

And don’t ask your boss from two jobs ago if she has the names of any people who are currently looking to hire somebody like you. It puts her on the spot.

No, instead, ask for a reference. Mention that you’re going to be moving on, or you’re already looking, or that you’re actively out on the street. Let them know the type of positions you are and are not suited for, and what you’re hoping to achieve in your next opportunity.

And then ask them if — when it gets to that happy place in your search — it would be OK to use them as a reference.

By not putting them on the spot about specific job openings, you reduce the awkwardness inherent in the networking conversation.

And by letting them know that you hold them in high enough esteem to potentially use them as a reference, you’re actually paying them a compliment.

You’re also making it easier for them to say “yes”, and to feel good about themselves for being a good friend and helping you out with this little favor.

All of which means that you have a new buddy in your search — one who’s going to be thinking about keeping an eye out for new opportunities and an ear open for fresh possibilities for their reference-able friend: you.

It’s wins and grins all around.

Now, this doesn’t work for just any old person you meet on the street. There’s probably a pretty good match between people you’d take to lunch and those you could ask to be a reference. So my advice would be to stick to asking those you know well enough.

Being realistic, the widely offered and deeply wrong advice from the past decade that you should try to extract favors, concessions, names, jobs, and career assistance from people you’ve only met over the phone is not only useless, it can be counter-productive to your aims by antagonizing your broader network.

By making your networking about compliments, you’ll find it pays dividends.

Good luck in the search this week!

I’m rooting for you.

July 25, 2011 | 

Comments » 37 Comments »

Thank you!

Thank you so much for your cornucopia of answers last week to the question “How often should I follow up on the job?” They were fantastic and fantastically insightful!

The spirit of community among friends we’ve been blessed with here at TheLadders has made our first eight years with you a wonderful experience. And that’s why I’m particularly thrilled to be announcing the next stage in our growth together.

Today we are announcing the expansion of TheLadders.com career network to all professional careers starting in September 2011.

It’s been a long time in the making. From the beginning in 2003, when we set out to become the “Society of the Nation’s Top Talent” to our first appearance in the New York Times in 2007, we’ve talked about preparing for the day when we would expand to cover all professional jobs.

Now that we’ve grown to almost five million members in the United States and 43% of high-end professionals used TheLadders in their job search last year, we’re making that day a reality.

We believe that you can’t take the ‘H’ out of HR. That’s why we vet and review every job, every resume, and every recruiter before we allow them into our community. And that vetting, that screening, that concentration on creating results for you, has led us to become the leading career network for high-end jobs.

It’s also why we focus on delivering a career-minded audience with unique insights to you via our career network. Whether it’s our industry-first “inside scoop” on a candidate’s emotional profile – why they’re looking not just what they’ve done – or innovative features like MyPipeline that deliver your recruitment branding messages directly to professionals’ inboxes — TheLadders career network is about translating modern technology into practical, useful, compelling recruiting solutions.

Over the years, we’ve experienced steadily increasing demand from professionals and employers to expand our services to positions below our compensation threshold. Each year, we’ve turned away millions of professionals, and hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of jobs, because of our focus on just the highest end.

During this time, we’ve worked hard at becoming experts at modern recruiting. We’ve underwritten research at universities. We’ve spent over a million dollars re-writing the playbook for job search advice. We published our Amazon Top 100 best-seller: “You’re Better Than Your Job Search”. And we’ve studied the history of the job search through the past two centuries.

The result of those years of effort has meant success for you. By understanding the science behind the modern job search, we’ve created industry-leading products to help you find the best fit fast.

To cite just two examples, with FitFinder we guarantee that we’ll deliver upwards of ten resumes to your desk within 48 hours of taking your job. Over 70% of the time our clients – that’s you – tell us that the resume is right for the job or right for the pipeline. Seventy percent of the time! There is simply nothing else like it – a call, a couple of days, and a candidate list for you to start closing right now. Nobody else in the industry comes close.

And with Signature, our program for job-seeking professionals, we put that expertise to work with weekly or bi-weekly calls. When they follow our program, we guarantee they’ll get an offer. Or their money back. It is historically unprecedented in the careers business.

These industry-leading innovations mean success for you, success for the HR community, and success for us together. It’s just one of the reasons why we’ve tripled the number of recruiters and HR professionals in our community this year alone.

We’ve learned so much in our travels so far, and coming this September, we’re excited to be going even farther with you.

Thank you for everything you’ve meant to us along the way and thank you for your continued support!

July 21, 2011 | 

Comments » 2 Comments »