Career Coach Office Hours: November 8 2022
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
I answered questions about job search, hiring staff, management, career transition, as well as workplace issues. Join me at 1 PM Eastern on Tuesdays and Fridays on LinkedIn or YouTube (JobSearchTV.com channel). You can also message me on Linkedin before the show and I will answer it, too.
04:00
Why do companies hire staffing agencies for recruitment? I’m tempted to be snotty but I won’t. They hire them because they think that will help them do what they don’t have time themselves to do– find people. You see, for most Job Hunters, you think they just run ads and people apply for positions and they fill jobs. What recruitment agencies, what staffing agencies are able to do is go out and aggressively locate people who may not be actively on the market. As I coined the expression many years ago, they find the best person who’s available, not the best person who sees an ad. Thus, they’re able to dig in deeper because they have the time. They have the concentrated motivation to do this because staffing agencies are contingency firms, meaning that they’re only paid if they deliver results. Results are not resumes. Results are hires. As a result, companies hire staffing agencies for recruiting to help them find people they might not otherwise find for themselves to help them fill positions that they consider important to have filled. So that’s why they do it.
05:30
What should software developers do next when they are put on a performance improvement plan? Ah! You weren’t paying attention, were you? Normally when a firm puts someone on a performance improvement plan or PIP (P-I-P, performance improvement plan. PIP), what they do at that time is to tell people what the issues are. They tell them what it is they need to work on. And thus, you were told what it is to work on. And given the fact that you may have been shocked, and weren’t listening all that carefully, because you were too busy being shocked (Again, if I were in your shoes, I might respond that way, too) what I want to encourage you to do is ask your manager and/or HR for a copy of the write up that prompted them to put you on the PIP, and what the requirements were for you to stay with the firm after the 30 days were up, because normally that’s what happens. You’re given a 30-day performance improvement plan. And if yours is longer, great. You have more time. But you want to get a copy in writing of the performance improvement plan and you tell them, ‘I want to hit these markers. I want to be still working here at the end of the deadline.’ And then once you start working on them, I want you to schedule a regular weekly meeting with your manager to keep she or he updated on what you’ve been doing so that this way, you’re not just walking in on day 30. And telling them ‘hey, good news! I’ve been doing all right stuff,’ and winding up in a situation where they’re kind of surprised. They’ve already recommended your termination, as they might be prone to do because HR will check in with him and go, ‘How’s she doing? How’s he doing?’ And then the manager says, ‘I have no idea.’ So they’ll start preparing the termination paperwork, in advance so at the 30-day mark, they can just hand it to you. So I’ll just simply say, what you should be doing is, what it is, is in the performance improvement plan that you have to improve and notify your manager along the way, ideally, weekly. If it needs to be more than that, make it more than that. But start off with a minimum of once a week that you’re sitting down with your manager to run by her or him what it is you’ve been doing to satisfy the performance requirements.
4 Things to Consider When Changing Careers
09:01
Should managers and employees be friends rule? Definitely not more than friends. I want to be clear about that! So here’s where I see a problem with it. Managers and employees can be friends as long as employees understand that there are times that a manager is going to give them some tough love, and make demands that may not coincide with how you’d expect a friend to deal with you. I’d like to say it’s okay to be friendly, but not friends. Because what often happens is each party to this, the manager and the employee, confuses the friendship with the professional relationship too. And managers have a different responsibility than their staff, right? So I’ll just simply say, I believe you should be friendly without being friends to ensure that you, as a manager, can feel comfortable asserting yourself at the right times for a particular situation that needs escalation, if you know what I mean.
10:24
This is just snark. If leadership is unaware of a problem, does it exist? So there are two ways to answer this. The first one is, maybe it’s not a problem. Seriously, maybe it’s not a problem. Maybe you think it’s a problem. Maybe they don’t think it’s a problem. Now, the other way to answer this is of course it exists. But I don’t know the scenario here. Whether this legitimately is a problem, or whether you because you’re less senior, view it that way, and they don’t.
11:39
Is that a good sign that a recruiter will give me an update by next week, during a phone screen? I think your grammar is terrible. I’ll just simply say is it a good sign that a recruiter wants to give me an update next week? And they tell me that during a phone screen? The answer is no. It doesn’t mean anything. They just want to bring this to a successful conclusion in some way by next week. Maybe it’s because they want to bring you back. Maybe they’re going to reject you. We don’t know this. We only know that they made this statement to you which doesn’t say anything. So if they said more than that, just put it into the chat so I can address it during today’s session.
13:16
When an executive at the company where you’ve been doing contract work, is keeping you in the dark about the status of an offer to hire you full-time, does it do any harm to look for another job in the meantime? So the answer is no. It’s not a problem from your standpoint. It’s a requirement from your standpoint, that you start looking for something else, while they’re keeping you in the dark making a decision on their side or not wanting to lose you so they’re not telling you anything because they already know they can’t extend you. Unless you’re wealthy, and money doesn’t matter to you, you should be starting to network and applying for things in order to ensure you continue to work. So, get out there. Start talking to people. Start getting interviews for yourself. Perform well. Get hired for the end of the contract, okay?
14:29
What happens when a good employee quits their job to go work at a better what they think will be a better place but isn’t and within months tries to return to their old job? The answer is don’t know. They could say could have been relieved that you are leaving or that you left. They could try and bring you back. They might have replaced you already and they only have one spot that relates to someone with your background and they don’t want to take you back. So I don’t know the answer to this. Those are the three options in the decision tree that they have to work with, that you have to work with.
15:24
Why are many different jobs wanting pre-recorded virtual interviews? Because it saves them time. Seriously, it saves them time. Imagine for a second, you’re a large organization and coming into your applicant tracking system is 100 resumes an hour. That’s not unusual. 100 resumes an hour. Now, if they’re going to schedule a time to talk with each person (and remember it’s every hour, there’s another 100 resumes) until they get to the point that they’re 100 resumes for this new job that they posted. And then all night, they’re more resumes coming in. And all the next day, there are more resumes coming in. There’s no way that they can speak to everyone. So what they do with pre-recorded virtual resumes, is some of these systems will have the ability to discern what was said and decide whether you’re qualified, based upon what they’ve been told to listen for. So they want pre-recorded answers for virtual interviews to save them time in order to ensure that their systems can figure out whether you say the magic keywords that will demonstrate that you’re qualified for a particular job.
17:09
Should employers include personality interview questions, when assessing job applicants? Here’s the problem. If people are asked different personality questions, then bias creeps into the process. Someone can file suit, and sue the company and you, individually, and as an employee of the firm and the firm itself, by the way, because you asked different people different questions. Have these questions been benchmarked and evaluated and assessed for whether or not they’re nondiscriminatory? There are lots of different things along these lines that show up. But the long and the short of it is? Should they do it? Most shouldn’t. Most shouldn’t. Because it’s a way that bias shows up, discriminatory behavior shows up that can cause legal problems.
18:21
Is the secret to getting an application through on a job site purely because buzzword bingo? Yeah, I’m not sure what you mean by buzzword bingo. I think of it, buzzword bingo, as being keyword stuffing terms into the beginning of your resume to get yourself an interview. Don’t do that. So in addition to buzzwords– in other words, representation of your experience that demonstrates your fit for the job. They’re looking at job history. Are you at the right level of experience. Do you have the right experience? You may view that as buzzwords but how you tell the story in your resume will make a difference abpout you being selected for even an interview. So get out there. Start talking to people. It’s not about buzzword bingo. It’s about . . . getting the interview involves representations of your experience and meshing them with the job description so that a firm knows that you’re qualified, you’re interested, you’re available.
20:19
Do jobseekers benefit a lot from LinkedIn Learning? I think there are multiple people who benefit from LinkedIn Learning. Obviously, ones whose skills have gotten rusty benefit from LinkedIn Learning. But the other group of those who want to learn something and go to work and feel where they can leverage that experience to get a job. So do they benefit from LinkedIn Learning? Absolutely. Rusty people get to improve their skills and learn it very inexpensively. And I say that because LinkedIn Learning is free to those who have some version of LinkedIn premium account.
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4 Things to Consider When Changing Careers
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. He is hired to provide No BS Career Advice globally. That can involve job search, hiring staff, management, leadership, career transition and advice about resolving workplace issues. Schedule a discovery call at my website, www.TheBigGameHunter.us
He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2500 episodes.
I do a livestream on LinkedIn, and YouTube (on the JobSearchTV.com account) Tuesdays and Fridays at 1 PM Eastern. You can send your questions about job search, hiring better, management, leadership or to get advice about a workplace issue to me via messaging on LinkedIn or in chat during the approximately 30-minute show.
Website: www.TheBigGameHunter.us
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