Author:
Ed Pollock, March 7th, 2010
Layoffs hurt people and come back to bite businesses, too.
A recent article in Newsweek (February 15th, 2010) written by Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, discusses the bad effects of lay-offs at corporations and on their employees.
In the early 60’s I was being recruited by IBM for a position in Human Resources. I was told about IBM’s dedication to its employees and their families, and given a copy of the employee’s handbook, which even included company songs. I was invited to a large company meeting at an auditorium in the Washington, D.C. area. I went. At the end of the 2 hour meeting, all the employees stood up and sang one of the company’s songs. Morale and spirit were high, and in those days IBM ruled the roost of US corporations. But, by the time the 80’s came around, IBM started a series of lay-offs, and the company started their great decline from the top. Read more…
Categories: Hiring Trends, Job Hunting Tags: layoffs | 
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Author:
Ed Pollock, February 21st, 2010
It might not be as bad as you think - keep your chin up!
Of course as you’ve read and heard, the media have been blasting over TV, Radio, net and newsprint that the nation has over 10% unemployment. Some articles break down the numbers for unemployment by race, sex, and age groups, which sometimes reveal interesting information. But they often miss a different cut – some very critical numbers that affect you directly.
Now, a story published by Daily Finance called “Recession Hammers Low-Wage Workers, but Glances Off the Affluent” cites findings by researchers at The Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University which tell a truly different story about unemployment numbers. This survey covers the period of October to December 2009. Here’s the deal: Read more…
Categories: Job Hunting Tags: | No comments
Author:
Ed Pollock, February 14th, 2010
At least the patient has a heartbeat!
As we previously mentioned, the job market in the Bay area has definitely improved, but with a slight glitch: salaries (on an average) have either gone down or not kept up with inflation, as reported by a Dice.com salary survey of 1,260 Silicon Valley based technology professionals.
A key example is the IT field, where salaries were down 1%. With inflation running about 3%, that’s a loss of 4% in buying power. Read more…
Categories: Hiring Trends, Job Hunting Tags: Hiring Trends, salaries | No comments
Author:
Ed Pollock, January 30th, 2010
Beware what you post!
Saw a couple of interesting, related posts this weekend about social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace etc.) and job hunting. I’d group the concerns into three areas:
First, be careful what you post about the job hunt itself. If you’re updating your status to “just had a great interview” or “just interviewed a terrible company” you may be broadcasting to a much wider audience than you think. Facebook, for example, recently changed the way that your information is shared (and many people clearly aren’t aware of this). Yes, you can limit who can see your information if you’ve got everything set right, but it’s harder to protect than you think. For example, Facebook applications that you use (like FamilyLink) have access to pretty much everything – again, unless you set the application access to limit this. So, just assume your prospective employer can see your status. That way, you can’t go wrong. Read more…
Categories: Job Hunting Tags: Internet techniques | No comments
Author:
Ed Pollock, January 26th, 2010
In an article yesterday, Fortune magazine details 22 companies hiring a total of 87,750 jobs nationwide. These companies were recently rated “best companies to work for” by Fortune. Several of the companies listed have a presence in the Bay Area, including:
- Edward Jones
- Google
- Qualcomm
- Cisco
- Genentech, and
- Intel
Some other companies hiring (with a lesser presence in the Bay Area) include: PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, and Accenture.
The article doesn’t detail exactly where the openings are – but sometimes companies are flexible on this, anyway.
-Good hunting!
Categories: Hiring Trends, Job Hunting Tags: Hiring Trends, SF bay area | No comments
Author:
Ed Pollock, January 24th, 2010
Just saw another job hunting myths post – seems like our original list (which dates back to the 90’s) continues to echo through the web! We still like ours best….but it’s nice to see others, too.
Categories: Job Hunting Tags: | No comments
Author:
Ed Pollock, January 24th, 2010
Job Hunting in December? Yes!
A widely held belief is that Job Hunting in December is a waste of time. But, times and beliefs are changing rapidly – and that belief about Job Hunting in December now needs to get washed down the drain.
Thanks to a highly motivated staff of consultants and some hard working clients, December came in as the best month of the year for 2009 for our clients to land new jobs. We refer to the job hunt as a “Market Campaign”, and we had more Market Campaign Completion (MCC’s) in December than any other month in 2009, and it was the best December since 1999 (the era of the dot.coms).
We started to see some good movement starting in the fall of 2009. Many companies, who have trimmed their staff to the bone, were starting to hire consultants for 3-6 month contracts. Also, as noted in prior blog posts, some of the stimulus money finally made its way to Silicon Valley. And the Dice Career Fair this month had 13 hiring companies; attendance came close to 1,000 job seekers.
In the MCC’s in December, the average compensation (base pay) was $117,000, with highest being $175,000. We also saw our first sign-on bonus ($6,000) in over 6 months. The clients were fairly evenly divided, with 38% making career changes and 62% staying with their career path. The biggest gains were in IT and ‘Green Jobs’.
We got some great comments from clients this month which we’ll use to update the website at some point, like “all the effort and hard work paid off”, “had great confidence walking into the interview room”, and “improved my salary $30,000”. 100% of our December clients who completed their job hunting campaigns checked the box that they would be happy to receive referrals.
I feel confident that 2010 will be a good year for the Valley.
Good hunting!
Categories: Hiring Trends, Job Hunting Tags: green careers, Hiring Trends, SF bay area | No comments
Author:
Ed Pollock, January 6th, 2010
Years ago, the San Jose Mercury used to hold Job Fairs at the Santa Clara Convention Center. It was not unusual for there to be 50 companies attending and space was on a first come-first served basis, and rapidly filled up. In the last few years the numbers have sharply decreased, and with the Mercury’s unfortunate down-sizing, they left the field.
Dice’s Targeted Career Job Fair has filled the void, and now has 4 shows scheduled in the South Bay for 2010. The first show is scheduled for Thursday, January 14th, between the hours of 11 am to 3 PM at the Santa Clara Convention Center. I suggest you come early, there will be a line to get in. Make sure you bring several clean copies of your most recent resume. Read more…
Categories: Hiring Trends, Job Hunting Tags: job fair, resume critique | No comments
Author:
Ed Pollock, January 6th, 2010
Choose the right clothes for your interview!
Here’s the follow-up to my post regarding the candidates who showed up for the interviews. There are two important themes here. First, dress appropriately, and second, arrive early.
Dressing for an interview.
I wrote a bit about this previously, so I’ll just enhance that a bit with examples of how people showed up here for their interviews.
Too many of the applicants were either over dressed or under dressed. How can you be “overdressed”? Well, in a sense, its dressy clothing for the wrong occasion. When you dress up for an interview, you don’t want to wear clothes that look like you’re gong out on a date. Yes, that’s dressy, but it’s not business dress. It’s fancy casual dress. Others were under-dressed. No matter how much you paid for your jeans, they aren’t interview clothes for office jobs. After you get the job, jeans may be fine – but when you interview, you want to dress in business wear. With so many people today responding to the same ad, it is critical to dress properly.
Read more…
Categories: Interviewing Tips, Job Hunting Tags: arrive early, interview dress | No comments
Author:
Ed Pollock, December 14th, 2009
Um...don't do this ever, and especially not when job hunting!
A few weeks ago, AA-Careers ran a job ad on Craigslist. When we ran the same ad 3 years ago, we received 48 resumes in a 30 day period. The November, 2009 result? This time, we received over 650 resumes in less than a week.
After a couple of follow up questions to my initial post, we decided to go into some more detail on the statistics:
- 29% of applications had at least one spelling mistake.
- 33% had attachments we couldn’t open using either the latest version of Microsoft Word or Acrobat Reader.
- 17% of applications had poorly written, missing, or completely inappropriate cover letters.
- 44% of resumes had a very vague objective unrelated to the job being applied for.
Ouch! Our initial reaction was a bit of shock at all the work it would take to go through the applications. Then, after we’d gone through a triage process, we became concerned for all the job hunters. Hundreds of them made the triage process easy – because they were easy to eliminate. Read more…
Categories: Job Hunting, Resume Writing Tips Tags: Cover Letters, Resume Writing Tips | 4 comments
