Ladders Work Around

(Oxymoron)
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I received an email from a Human Resources Consultant and friend of mine who got an email alert about a Human Resources opportunity. It came from a group called Retired Brains. She sent the note to me and said:

Hello, Matt:

I hope that you have had a wonderful 2009 so far. This year promises to be another challenging year for HR professionals. I'm forwarding this email to point out the oxymoronic nature of the recruitment process. I received the following job alert from Retired Brains. I clicked on the HR Mgr, Chicago role only to find that it was a Ladders listing and it was imprinted broadly w/ "Must be currently employed to apply".

The Ladders listing requires you to be a paid subscriber.. What else to do? Here is a trick you can do with a job description that sometimes works when it has "unique language" in it.

The first bullet of this job posting is:

• Partner with Corporate Executives in leading enterprise-wide functional groups to develop and implement talent development programs. Provide leadership and direction to the JM people planning process.

The unique language here is "to the JM people planning process". You just don't seee too many position descriptions that contain that exact phrase.

Copy and paste "to the JM people planning process" into a good vertical search engine like Indeed or Simply Hired and see what happens. I did it in Indeed and I found that there was an additional posting. The job was listed under a free site called http://www.diversity-jobs.com/

Vertical Job Search Engines are COOL.

This post will benefit Human Resources Professionals interested in searching for positions in the Chicago Metro area. I've put together a small toolkit in Microsoft Excel that pings two search engines - Indeed & Simply Hired. Links are broken out by functional area.

Enjoy - you can download the spreadsheet here.

Leverage Web 2.0 For The "Heavy Lifting" In Your Job Search

I've met many people in transition that search for opportunities on the web by visiting a variety of major job boards and running search queries each time they visit a site. Additional time is spent visiting company sites, checking often to see if positions they are interested in have been posted.

This can be very time consuming and can take time away from more important activities such as networking. There is a technological solution that can help. The web has become more interactive through Web 2.0 applications.

Job seekers can leverage the power of these applications to help reduce much of the "heavy lifting" involved in online job search.

The strategy here is to use vertical job search engines that "scrape" jobs from all the major job boards as well as many company sites. The results show up in the search engine with links that will take you to the actual postings. A few of the top rated vertical job search engines are (in no particular order) Jobster, Indeed,or SimplyHired (my favorite . Also, websites such as Craigslist and Google Base should be utilized.

Upon running a search query at any one of the sites listed above the user is typically afforded the ability to get automated email alerts for specific job search queries on a daily basis. This is helpful but it can quickly overload an email in box. The answer to this problem is to utilize the power of XML or RSS feeds to bring relevant content (specific job leads) directly to a user's desktop.

Before running a job search query at any of the vertical search engines or other sites mentioned, an RSS Feed Reader or Aggregator should be set up. There are many out there including IGoogle and My Yahoo! - both of which are free

If you are going to use either of these you will need to register and set them up. Just follow the directions. Once your account is set up, visit the vertical search engines mentioned above. Next, run a search query and then scan the page for a link called RSS FEED, XML or click on the little orange box.

You will be asked if you want to add the feed to a feed aggregator. Various feed aggregators will be listed, including My Yahoo! IGoogle or Favorite Feeds in Internet Explorer (version 7.0 or better). Follow the onscreen instructions to add your search query information to the feed aggregator that you have previously selected and set up. If you are using My Yahoo!, change your internet browser homepage to My Yahoo or IGoogle and let them serve as your launch point. Now all the position postings that meet your search criteria automatically come to you. No more heavy lifting! Here is an example of what your homepage can look like:

Job Search Hack - Blind Posting?

I've seen this happen countless times. A job posting is placed on a site favored by recruiters such as Craigslist, Jobkabob or The Ladders. The recruiter describes the client but decides not to reveal the client name. This is a blind posting. Or is it? Well it just might not be.

Copy and paste is one of the first editing techniques people learn when working with text on computers. The process saves time, but in the recruiting world, particularly in the realm of contingency recruiting, the time saved may not be worth it.

Recruiters who want to maintain client anonymity should avoid using client fed job descriptions verbatim. Rewriting the position posting to avoid the use of unique verbiage or descriptors can help. Alas some recruiters prefer to copy and paste and fail to do this, not realizing the client may have previously posted the position elsewhere on a less effective medium or one that is less focused on the target market.

Savvy job searchers are leveraging the power of vertical job search engines as a method to expose blind ads. It does not work all of the time but sometimes it does. It is a simple three step process that involves:

1. Finding the blind position and (here is the irony) copying unique verbiage. In this case "appropriate mix of compensation vehicles".

2. Choosing your favorite vertical search engine and (more irony) pasting unique verbiage "appropriate mix of compensation vehicles" into "What": then clicking the gray Find Jobs button.

3. Reviewing the results and following the links to see detail and possibly who the company is. In this case, the company is Nicor, Inc. Note that "appropriate mix of compensation vehicles" is highlighted below.


As a reference, here is a listing (in no particular order) of some of the more popular vertical job search engines in the United States - Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com, Jobster, Just-Posted.com