Before starting my latest tirade about how both white and blue color workers’ belief that their wages should be constantly going up in today’s labor market is not realistic, I would like to reestablish my credentials.

Before becoming a Technical Recruiter at Discovery Personnel, Inc., I worked primarily as an engineer manager in the Medical Industry for 25 years.  I have an MBA from the University of Dayton and a BS ME from Purdue.  I have now been a technical recruiter for over 10 years, recruiting primarily for the Plastics Industry.  During most of my career, conventional wisdom said that every time an engineer or manager changed jobs, he or she should get a 10 to 20 percent increase in salary and that held pretty much true during my career.

In my second career, as a Technical Recruiter,  I have seen major shifts in the labor market due to globalization.  The percent loss of jobs in the Plastics and Rubber Industry alone from 1995 through 2005 is about 12%.  Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, in Der Spiegel Spec. Int. Ed. 7, 2005.  I am sure the job loss percentage in the plastics industry has increased even more over the last couple of years. 

Obviously,  The Boss (a.k.a. Bruce Springsteen) is just as correct today as he was in 1985 when he sang about the steel mills, “The foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back.”   Assuming The Boss is correct, and who I am I to argue with The Boss, why do a large percentage of the downsized plastic industry job seekers expect a salary, or hourly rate, increase when looking for a new job? 

I am currently reading The Entrepreneurial Society, By David B. Audretsch.  On page 87, Mr. Audretsch states:

Perhaps the iron law of globalization will  inevitably force wages down in the developed countries toward the lowest common denominator found on the globe.  Certainly, if you ask the textile worker or auto workers in the United States who are still lucky enough to to have jobs, they will no doubt enthusiastically endorse the validity, if not virtue of the iron law of globalization.  Their wages, in real terms, have been diminishing steadily for decades now.

It should be pointed out theat David B. Audretsch is an award winning economist and a director at the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Germany and professor at Indiana University.  Who am I to argue with David Audretsch? 

Why then do I upset injection molding machine set up technicians when I tell them they are more likely to see a pay decrease, instead of an increase, when they get their next job?  Most people like to believe they are special, and some are, but most are not and I believe that is one reason they have unrealistic expectations.  Another reason is that in a society where people are taught to believe they should see the glass is half full instead of half empty, many people have trouble facing reality.  

A small percentage of job seekers will actually see increases in their salaries because of their education that makes them a rarer commodity.  Companies are lining up to hire graduates from colleges that train plastics or polymer engineers.  They are in demand because so few students today want to work in manufacturing.  Why work hard in manufacturing when you can make ten times as much money managing a hedge fund? but, as usual, I digress.  Unfortunately, these individuals are few a far between. 

Plastics engineers, who have worked for one of the automotive suppliers for twenty years and do not have a degree are going to make less money, not more when they are downsized or they are going to remain unemployed.  This just a cold hard fact.  The reason engineers are being downsized is because globalization has made it difficult, if not impossible, to compete effectively, and a new employer will almost be forced to offer less money. 

Skilled laborers, such as machinists, are finding the job loss/pay reduction even more difficult to accept.  Machinists are very intelligent people who once had very rare skills.  Fifteen years ago, I remember seeing big signs in front of machine shops offering signing bonuses and vacations along with the potential to reach a six figure salary with overtime.  Those days a long gone when a machinist in China or India is being paid one tenth as much (China and India are now outsourcing work to countries with even lower wage rates).   Most machinists I talk with conceptually understand the effects of globalization but they still refuse to work for lower wages believing something will change or the government will help them.  Unfortunately there is little the government can do except offer retraining or the extension of unemployment insurance payments. 

I say all of this to implore job seekers not to kill the messenger when the poor Technical Recruiter has to provide a reality check.  If you have been downsized, there may be a job out there for you but probably not paying what you are use to making and it is only going to get worse. 

Brains not brawn will be required to achieve an acceptable standard of living in the future, in the developed countries.  Good luck, or God speed, because most of us are going to need it.

Job Seekers often ask me if they should post their resumes and/or search on Career Sites. Depending on the circumstances I tell them that it is their best interest to post or not to post.  Since I get so many questions about web sites, I wanted to share the following;

Career Sites Fail Job Seekers

Very often candidates are asked by company hiring officials how the Third Party Recruiter (Headhunter) found them.  This rather innocuous seeming question is often asked early in the interview process, why? 

There is an obvious answer to this question.  The company is gathering intelligence so they can do a better job of recruiting candidates directly, and since the job seeker wants to ingrate themselves to the company, they are more than happy to answer the question.  After all the candidate has nothing to lose, right? - WRONG!

If the job seeker responds that the Headhunter found him or her on a Job Board, or they responded to a Job Board posting by the Third Party recruiter, the candidate may ultimately actually be hurting them self.  How can this be?

• The company now knows that you are an active job seekers and decides not to hire you.  Companies that hire Headhunters to find candides to fill their job openings want to believe they are getting passive job seekers.  Passive candidates are perceived to be a rarer commodity by companies and, therefore, move valuable.  The logic is that if the candidate is not looking for a new position, the company must be taking care of him or her and they must really be good at what they do.  In fact, I have found many “passive” candidates to be too lazy or scared to look for a new job and are not necessarily that “valuable” to their current company but they are hanging on for dear life. 
• The company now believes they know where individuals with your skills and training “hang out” when looking for a job so they pass on hiring you so they can find their own candidates on the same job board.  Many years ago I found a candidate for a President’s position on Headhunter.net.  He interviewed well and was basically hired.  The last step in the process was to have dinner with the company’s CEO and the head of the Personnel Department.  The dinner went well but at the end of the dinner the CEO asked the candidate how I found him.  When the candidate replied the Headhunter found him on Headhunter.net the CEO told the Personnel VP not to hire the candidate and to begin using Headhunter.net to find their own candidates.
• The company now knows you are an active candidate but decides to try to hire you anyway.  Obviously, you were not hurt by revealing you responded to, or you resume was found, on a job board, or were you?  I have worked with companies who after finding out that the job seeker was found on a job board, the company decided to offer the candidate less money than they were originally planning, because they perceived the job seeker was not a valuable as they originally thought.

These are just a few of the reasons I believe it is in a job seekers best interest to be very careful when answering the, “How did the Headhunter find you?”, question.  Even if you know the Headhunter found your resume on the Internet via a Job Board, such as Monster, Hotjobs, Careerbuilder, etc., try to sidestep the question, or if cornered, respond with “He/She told me his/her Research Department found me.”  However you decide how to respond to the, “How did the Headhunter find you?” question, never guess and say they probably found me on a Job Board.

A Recruiting Industry Trainer/Writer recently published “WEEDLE’s Annual Source of Employment Survey” which can be read in its entirety at www. weedles.com.  Since most job seekers are not familiar with Peter Weedle’s work, I decided to take an excerpt from his 2008 Employment Survey and share it with Job Hunter’s Journal readers and provide some of my own insights.  Of the 15,600 survey respondents, 65% were male, 35% female and the median age was 40 to 45 years.

When asked to identify where they found their last job, the respondents listed the following sources as their to ten (not all sources are listed so the percentages will not total to 100%):

• 13.3% – An ad posted on an Internet job board
• 7.0% – A tip from a friend
• 6.8% – Other
• 6.3% – A newspaper ad
• 6.2 – They posted their resume on a job board
• 6.0% – A call from a headhunter
• 5.8% – They were referred by an employee of the company
• 5.2% – They sent a resume to the company
• 4.9% – At a career fair
• 4.8% – By networking at work.

How do these findings compare to those of a year ago?

An ad posted on an Internet job board was the highest ranked source last year, as well, but the percentage of respondents citing this source has almost doubled; it was 7.6% in 2007 compared to 13.3% in 2008.  A tip from a friend was the second most cited source in 2007, as it was this year, but the third and fourth most cited sources in 2007-career fairs and a call from a headhunter both dropped a bit in the rankings.  Newspapers, on the other hand, gained a notch, moving from the fifth most cited source in 2007 to the fourth most cited source in 2008, and the percentage of respondents citing newspapers went up, as well (from 5.7% in 2007 to 6.3% in 2008).

What else did the survey uncover?

Respondents gave a thumbs-down to two sources of employment that have generall been viewed mre favorably by recruiters.  Just 3.9% of the individuals in the poll said they found their last job:

• through the publication of their professional association
  or
• on a social networking site.

I believe the reported findings are somewhat misleading and that Third Party Recruiters (Headhunters) account for a much larger percentage of the placements than the survey would indicate:

• The percentage of jobs found through “An ad posted on an Interent job board” (13.3% ) is highly misleading because a majority of the posting are by Headhunters and the placements are due to their efforts
• The 6.2% ”They posted their resume on a job board” is also misleading because most job seekers that post their resume tell me nothing happens until a Third Party Recruiter contacts them and places them with the Headhunter’s client company
•  At least half of all newspaper/magazine ads (6.2%) are placed by Headhunters who are directly responsible for the job seeker’s placement. 

If only 50% of the ad posting responses and resume job posting placements are due to Headhunter efforts the “A call from a headhunter” percentage would lead the the list at 18.9%.  Just food for thought when starting a job search.

Overall, the main lesson that can be taken from this survey is that there are many ways to skin this job search cat (sorry PETA) and the savvy job seeker will utilize as many of these methods as possible.

I am a third party recruiter who receives over 100 resumes per week.  Most of those resumes are responding to postings I have place on several thousand job boards, or on my own web site.  When I post a job opening, I carefully spell out the job requirements.  Job seekers responding to my posting often have very few, or none, of the job skill and experience requirements in their resumes.  When I respond to the candidate via e-mail, or call them, and inform them that they don’t fit the job requirements, the job seeker often responds by telling me that they have the requisite skills but they failed to include the information in the resume.  

A Resume is not just a formality, it is the key to unlocking the company’s hiring door.  If the information on the resume does not include the  information the hiring company wants, no amount of cajoling by the recruiter will get the hiring company to interview the candidate.  With the easy access to word processing software these days, there is no excuse for not tailoring a resume to fit the job description unless the job seeker does not have the requisite job skills and experience.  If a job seeker does not have the experience and job skills the company wants, they should not be responding to the positing by a third party recruiter for that particular position anyway.  If the job seeker is responding to the posting in order to get help from the third party recruiter with their job search, that should be clearly stated somewhere in the response.

I know many candidates believe that third party recruiters should “think outside the box” and present them to the hiring company anyway but that is not what companies are paying us to do.  Companies provide lists of qualifications they want met and that is that.  Companies are not looking for creativity when they hire a third party recruiter, they are looking to have their hiring needs met period. 

The perfect resume probably has not been written but a resume does not have to be perfect, it merely has to be good enough to get you a job interview.  The following 12 items should help in your efforts to write an effective, if not perfect, resume. 

1. Never, never lie on your resume.  Even stating that you are still working for a company when you are merely collecting some type of unemployment compensation from the company is a lie.  Intentionally misleading people into believing you have a degree when you do not is a lie.  Leaving a job off the resume that you worked at for six months is a lie.  I was ready to hire an engineer several years ago and I was very happy to have found someone after a long search.  I told the headhunter I was working with that I was ready to make the candidate an offer but when I found out he was not employed, I decided not to make the offer.   I withdrew the offer because during the interview I asked him if he was still working and he said yes.  I figured if he would lie to me about that he would lie to me when he came to work for me and that was a risk I was unwilling to take.
2. Make sure all contact information is correct.  I once had an executive making over $250,000 get very angry with me because my client company would not send him his interview expense check.  When I checked into it, I found out the check had been returned to the company several times.  The candidate had an incorrect address on the resume.  I have seen many resumes with incorrect telephone numbers.  This is not as important in the email era, unless your email address is wrong also, but it is not a good thing.
3. Make sure you have NO spelling errors on the resume.  Virtually everyone has access to word processing program with a spell checker.  If you do not, invest in a word processing program and use the spell checker.  Spelling errors send everyone who reads the resume a message that you don’t really care.  I once had a candidate who after interviewing with a company felt compelled to write a thank you letter, which is normally a good thing.  Unfortunately, the thank you note was hand written and full of spelling errors.  The company’s offer letter and the candidate’s thank you note passed each other in the mail.  After receiving the thank you note, the company withdrew the offer.
4. Talk about your accomplishment’s not the team’s accomplishments.  The team (in most cases) is not trying to get the job, you are.
5. List accomplishments, not your job description.  The hiring company wants to know what you did to make your company more successful, not that you watered the plants every morning.  This can be very important.  I rewrote an executive candidate’s resume (for a fee) that had been out of work for six months.  The main thing I changed was his to list his accomplishments and eliminated his duties.  A few weeks later I received a letter from him stating he had 6 interviews and was deciding between 3 offers.   He also sent me an additional check.
6. Minimize or eliminate the use of bullet  points (like this one) and fancy graphics.  My computer reads most of the resumes sent to me before I do and it gets very upset if it has to sift through bullet points or cute winking happy faces.  Also, more and more hiring companies are reading resumes directly into data bases and bullet points and graphics make this a slow process. 
7. Do not use tables.   Tables present a whole host of problems if the recruiter has to make a change on the resume or if the company is trying to feed the resume directly into their data base.
8. Try to keep the resume to two pages.  One page is usually too short but more that 2 page resumes often get ignored because no one has time to read more than two pages.
9. Do not call your resume a Curriculum Vitae.  They are all the rage in Europe but a true Curriculum Vitae is almost an autobiography and no one in Human Resources wants to see that.
10. Do not list references on your resume.  There are so many reasons not to do this that I do not want to list them here.  One of the biggest reasons not to list references is that the person you have listed as a reference may quickly become your strongest competitor for the job after the recruiter talks to him or her. 
11. Do not put your Social Security Number on your resume.   This seems obvious in this era of identity theft but I still see resumes with Social Security numbers.
12. Do not list personal items such as hobbies, number of children, church affiliations, etc.  These can only hurt you because most Human Resource Managers think they are Psychiatrists and if they see you like to read, they automatically assume your are an introvert and this could be a bad thing if you are interviewing for the Plant Manager position.  Also, deep down most companies believe you should not have a life outside the company.  If you have time for hobbies that means you could be working longer hours developing that perfect report no one is going to read.  I interviewed with a well known maker of orange juice in Florida several years ago for a management position.  The Vice President of Operations explained that he expected everyone to work on Saturday and after taking your family to church on Sunday morning, you should probably come into the office in the afternoon (if you had to go to church or synagog on Saturday, I guess you were in big trouble).  I think a lot of executives still believe all your waking moments should revolve around work, even though they know better than to say it.  I got the job offer but turned it down. 

Previously, I have talked about the fact that when an individual interviews for a job, the purpose of the interview is to get the job.  Recently another of my candidates lost an excellent job that he fit perfectly because he was worried about the potential commute during the interview.  The company took his reticence during the interview as an indication that he really was not interested in the position or the company, when really he was worried about driving to work in heavy traffic.  When told that he was not getting a job offer he was very disappointed because he had decided he really wanted the job.  When asked why he acted so cool during the interview process he explained that he was worried about the potential commute.  He asked to have the company reconsider him for the position but the opportunity was lost and the ironic thing is that he was probably the best candidate I could have placed with the company.

Unfortunately, the traffic he saw was from the airport to the plant site and the company was located in a suburb and had he driven a few miles west he would have found that he could have lived virtually in the country.   The moral of this story is during the interview, concentrate on the interview process and getting the offer.  The details can be worked out later and if the concern is real and cannot be eliminated, the offer can be rejected.  

The Future of Plastics Sales? – NO MORE WILLY LOMANS

Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman in The Death Of A Salesman has always defined what is a salesperson for me, possibly because I am an engineer by training and never truely understood salespeople.  Willy Loman always worked very hard creating relationships with everyone from the receptionist to the Chief Executive Officer.  I doubt that Willy would have understood that what he really did was reduce friction in the sales process, even though he believed creating relationships was what he was all about.  Through Willy’s sales efforts, he was able to bring together people who needed whatever product  he was selling at the time with people wanting to purchase that product or something very similar.  What he really got paid to do was simply to find a buyer and seller and reduce the friction in the selling process. 

Willy would be shocked today to find out that sales relationships are not nearly as important today as they were in his era.  The flattening world and the Internet have taken much of the friction out of the sales process.  Buyers can look up the price of copper, coffee, plastic resins, paper bags, etc. on the Internet and get a very good price if not the very best price.  Getting the very best price or product value still may require some help and that is where the salesperson of today enters the fray. 

In my capacity as a Third Party Recruiter for the Plastics Industry, I have several clients who are looking to sell plastic bags, plastic resins, plastic colorants, etc.  The companies are all struggling to find the salespeople they need.  Part of the reason for the paucity of sales candidates is money.  If you are not a salesperson, you must understand that money is very, very important to salespeople.  Salespeople often depend on money to help establish their self worth.  Taking a new sales position with less base pay may have little affect on them financially, especially if they can make up the money through commissions, but the lower base salary may impact the salesperson’s self worth.  Let’s face it, scientists and engineers usually determine their self worth by unique knowledge or skills, others do not have.  Self worth is very important to all of us.

Unfortunately for salespeople who have grown fat on reducing friction in sales process, keeping the high base salaries and incomes in an increasingly hypertransparent world is becoming increasingly difficult.  I have the resumes of several hundred plastic salespeople who once had a six figure base salary and are now out of work.  They are not out of work because they have poor sales skills, most are very good salespeople but the loss of friction in the sales process has reduced their value to potential employers.  The Web’s price-deflating impact and the ever Flattening World, as described in Thomas L. Friedman’s book titled The World is Flat, has reduced the ability of companies to pay the salaries many salespeople believe they should still be earning. 

Instead of six figure base salaries, our clients want to pay experience salespeople with industry contacts base salaries of $40,000 to $65,000 plus commissions and/or bonuses.  Obviously, cutting the base salary in half that a salesperson is use to making will not only negatively impact them financially if they cannot make us the difference with commissions or bonuses it will also negatively affect their self worth.  I believe that the potential loss of salespeople’s self worth is the reason they turn down these positions with lower base salaries even though they are unemployed.  Salespeople are also very optimistic, they have to be, and they may also believe a position paying their old base salary or more is just around the corner and I hope for their sakes it is.   

Ken Nunley, a third party recruiter and owner of Ken Nunley Gate House Consulting gave me a Questionnaire that he asks candidates to fill out and submit if they are interested in one of the positions listed on his web site www.QualityEngineerJobs.com.  I am sharing this Questionnaire, with Ken’s blessing, with my avid readers four a couple of reasons.  The first reason is that Ken is a very successful third party recruiter and this list provides excellent insight into what information a recruiter wants from a job applicant.  The second reason I am sharing this questionnaire is that before Ken became a very successful third party recruiter, he was a very successful human resources manager and has inside knowledge of what information companies want from job applicants. 

The following questionnaire should be used as a guide by anyone preparing  a resume, responding to a company job advertisement, responding to a third party recruiter job advertisement, or during a telephone or face-to-face job interview.  The questions are not in any particular order of importance but yet, they are all important. 

• As a part of our QUALITY process please indicate your SALARY and RELOCATION preferences, what type of products and/or industries you’re experience with?
• What is prompting you to leave your current or last employer?
• What prompted you to leave your next to last employer?
• What is your completed BS degree and/or your advanced degree in?
• Your  SALARY or RELOCATION preferences?
• Salary Range?
• Relocation – Urban, Suburban, Rural?
• Is the salary posted for this position within your interest range?
• Will you consider CONTRACT work?
• Are there any required skills in this job description that you are not experienced with?
• What types of products and/or industries are you experienced with?
• How many years of experience do you have in each industry?
• What is your availability to travel domestically and internationally?
• For DOD and DOE job submittals or no-US citizens – what are your current citizenship/VISA status and/or past or current security clearance?
• Do you require relocation support because you are a current home owner?
• Please list the contact numbers at which you can be reached, HOME #, CELL# and WORK#.
• Employment tenure of less than 36 months with any employer should be explained, i.e., lay off, plant closure, released, etc.
• Employment gaps of more than 1 year should be explained!
• Please provide us with the following information from your last two jobs:
   -  What was produced at that site? - Include:  Employer/Company name and product/services produced?
   -  Who were your major customers? – Include: Employer/Company name and services/products sold to?
   -  With what process were you most involved? – Include: Employer/Company name and your focused contribution   and accomplishments?
               
• ALL resumes MUST have dates of employment, employer name and job title!!!

Obviously this Questionnaire is written for anyone applying for a job.  I have a similar questionnaire on my web site www.discoverypersonnel.com that is tailored for someone requesting Discovery Personnel’s help with their job search.  Either questionnaire will provide a good overview of what information a company or third party recruiter needs from someone applying for a position or requesting help with a job search.  BE PREPARED!