Queen Shariba speaks on ERE

A list of he Queen's articles on ERE...

How to Make a Gatekeeper Feel Comfortable

One of the most important skills to learn when you're learning to deal with gatekeepers is how to make that gatekeeper feel comfortable and cause her to cooperate with your requests.

Recruiting Sustainability

So far, telephone names sourcing is a niche product; most companies just haven't bought into it. There are a variety of reasons and the biggest one is that most companies don't yet know about it. Now you do. You have no more excuses.

What Do I Say?

Encouragement for recruiters who have to make cold calls.

Matters That Measure

Generating names can produce a strong return-on-investment; not only does it produce new passive candidates, but each one of the passive candidates will know others.

Names Sourcing: What Is It?

Names sourcing is a little-understood activity. Simply put, it's the finding of people who hold specific titles (usually) within (usually) specific organizations so that you, as a recruiter, may contact them and offer them your opportunity.

Help Me Help You

For ongoing success, it's important you provide sourcers with accurate, consistent information. This article reminds recruiters about what information sourcers need to get the job done right, as well as a reminder of how working together can ultimately help you become more effective.

Larry the Cable Guy's Perfect Job

"Hey Larry, do you have a specific interview strategy for this position?"

"Sure do - I'm gonna git'er done."

Heady challenge awaits Chief Beer Officer

"At a time when employers are clawing and scrapping for any competitive edge to recruit and hire the best and the brightest, one hotel chain appears to have discovered the ultimate executive recruiting tool—beer."

"Another surprise in the search for a CBO has been the number of women who have applied for the job. About 10 percent of the applicants have been women, which is slightly higher than expected. But the real surprise...has been the depth of beer knowledge that female applicants apparently possess. When compared to their male counterparts, a much higher percentage of female applicants have had a perfect score on the beer knowledge section of the online application."

There is hope...

Portland, OR Contract Recruiting positions

Received a LinkedIn from Mark Johnson of The Standard - he's looking for a Contract Recruiter or two...

In this role you will partner with a Sr. Staffing Partner in support of the customer on two critical fronts:

• You will combine your excellent project management, interpersonal, and organizational abilities to help us successfully recruit sales trainee candidates from colleges and the open market. This will involve working with select college campuses and organizations to ensure visibility to graduating seniors, managing all media campaigns used to promote our positions, sourcing candidates directly and via referrals, working candidates through our hiring process and finally transitioning the hires into an integration process. We are staffing 8-12 positions. This component requires full-cycle responsibility for all openings, thus excellent management engagement, consulting and communication abilities are critical.
• You will work with the Sr. Staffing Partner and others to source candidates for our other open positions. Our talent markets are very constrained, thus much of the work is research driven and involves cold calling or calling referrals. Your primary objective is to keep the funnel of candidates full and moving toward progressive screening in our process. This component will not involve full-cycle responsibility.

For this 4-6+ month assignment you will need:

• Solid experience with managing hiring projects as above. Must have the ability to independently develop and execute a sourcing plan for each position, including sources, methods, screening tools, etc. within set time-lines.
• Direct experience in researching and cold-calling leads within a staffing context. Research (Boolean logic/grammar etc.) and sourcing utilizing the internet and common staffing resources (Monster/LinkedIn etc.) are required. Must be a fearless cold caller, able to professionally manage 1st-contact calls and represent the company professionally, combined with generating a connection with potential candidates very, quickly. You will supporting all phases of recruiting and staffing, so experience conducting formal screening and interviewing, writing effective ad copy, managing in-bound applicant flows, managing the hiring process, etc. are required experience.

A person with 3+ years of experience in aggressive corporate staffing would be ideal, however those with agency experience and appropriate project management skills, are equally encouraged. Those with less experience should not hesitate but should understand the qualifications required before doing so.

For over 100 years, Standard Insurance Company has quietly earned a reputation for service, financial strength and product quality. Today The Standard is one of the nation’s most highly regarded providers of group benefits insurance, retirement plans, investment advice, and individual disability insurance and annuities. With over 3K employees, $3B in annual revenue, and operations in every major metro market in across the country, we are one of Portland’s largest, oldest & most recognized employers.

Our Staffing team contributes to the success of the business by attracting and recruiting the industries best talent. We are seeking an individual to help us achieve important short term objectives in support of our stellar field sales team. This potential temp-to-regular position is critical to the success of an on-going business initiative.

The Standard offers an excellent work environment, a great team and the opportunity to gain experience in a fascinating, high-growth segment of the financial services industry. Our offices are located downtown (6th Ave @ Main), near MAX, Pioneer Place, PSU and other amenities.

If you meet or exceed the criteria above please e-mail Mark ASAP. Anyone who refers the winning candidate his way gets a $50.00 gift card of their choosing. Just remind him (typical recruiter - can remember a phone number from a resume 10 years ago but forgets a promise for a gift card)...

Help for Identity Theft Victims

More banks offer free help for victims of identity theft

To stand out from the competition and attract depositors, a number of community banks and credit unions are joining insurers and a few major banks like Citibank (C) in offering customers free identity theft recovery service.

The service is aimed at helping victims close compromised accounts, place fraud alerts and prevent additional damage. Such efforts could help squelch identity theft, which claimed an estimated 8.9 million victims and accounted for $56.6 billion in losses in 2005, according to Javelin Strategy & Research.

In the past year, about 130 credit unions and community banks rolled out free identity theft recovery services to their customers, according to Identity Theft 911, which contracts with businesses providing the service to customers and employees.

MetLife Insurance (MET), for example, which has offered free identity theft recovery service to its homeowner policyholders since June 2005, extended it to customers of its online MetLife Bank in December.

Read the whole thing here.

Bosses Don't Keep Word

A mail survey for a Florida Sate University study of workers that included men and women of various ages and races in the service industry and manufacturing, from companies large and small found that nearly two of five bosses don't keep their word and more than a fourth bad mouth those they supervise to co-workers.

And those all-too-common poor managers create plenty of problems for companies as well, leading to poor morale, less production and higher turnover.

“They say that employees don't leave their job or company, they leave their boss,'' said Wayne Hochwarter, an associate professor of management in the College of Business at Florida State University, who joined with two doctoral students at the school to survey more than 700 people working in a variety of jobs about how their bosses treat them.

The results of the study are scheduled for publication in the Fall 2007 issue of The Leadership Quarterly, a journal read by consultants, managers and executives.

The findings include:
39 percent of workers said their supervisor failed to keep promises.
37 percent said their supervisor failed to give credit when due.
31 percent said their supervisor gave them the “silent treatment'' in the past year.
27 percent said their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or managers.
24 percent said their supervisor invaded their privacy.
23 percent said their supervisor blamed others to cover up mistakes or to minimize embarrassment.

Read the whole not very nice thing here.

Telephone Names Sourcing

Be the Rabbit Force, Obi-Wan.

Employment Contracts

Hire by the Contract Now, Risk a Big Regret Later

The new heads of Exxon Mobil, PepsiCo and Pfizer don’t have one. Nor do the chief executives at Citigroup, General Electric and Procter & Gamble. And some corporate governance experts say shareholders are better off as a result.

It is an employment contract, and it has been in the spotlight ever since a number of prominent chief executives were ousted with golden goodbyes — Robert L. Nardelli’s $210 million exit package from Home Depot being the most recent. Employment contracts, agreed upon when a new leader arrives, have been blamed for virtually guaranteeing such huge payouts even when that executive fails.

“Time and time again, the smoking gun of any major compensation problem is in the form of a contract that was executed at a earlier date,” said Patrick McGurn of Institutional Shareholder Services, a proxy advisory firm. “It was at the heart of Home Depot. People never imagine when they ink these contracts that it could go wrong.”

While they may be tarred by controversy, employment agreements are still common at many large corporations. And compensation experts do not see them going away soon.

“Rumors of the employment contract’s demise are greatly exaggerated,” said Jannice L. Koors, a managing director at Pearl Meyer & Partners. “As long as you need to do things to lure top executives from positions they are already in, you are going to have to offer them some kind of protection to get them to say yes.”

Read the whole thing here.

Telephone Sourcing Tip

Are You a Needy Wuss?

Do you allow the other person on the phone to assume all the power? When she says, “What’s your number – I’ll have him call you back,” what do you say? “Oh, here it is: namby pamby phone number and have a good day,” as you wimp off into obscurity?

WRONG!

“You know what, I’m on the phone all day long and he’ll have a hard time getting through – is there a better time to call?”

“I’ll give him a call later today – what’s his extension (or direct dial)?”

“I’m on the run – can you put me through to his VoiceMail and I’ll leave a message and oh, by the way, what’s his extension (or direct dial, or cell)?”

All these come-backs will keep you in control and allow you to show up another inning to take another swing. Who said you needed to answer all her questions? Announce yourself “with authority” as the dumb-dumb Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh in the great baseball movie “Bull Durham” instinctively wants to do but do it in such a way that the seasoned Crash Davis would approve. Understand what you’re up against.

Recruiting-oops...

SPITZ JOB-SEEKER ERR-MAIL

Hundreds of would-be staffers in Gov. Spitzer's administration were nervously biting their nails yesterday after an e-mail address list of job seekers accidentally became public.

One applicant, with strong ties to Assembly Republicans, told The Post he feared he would be fired if his interest in working for Democrat Spitzer became known.

"Holy s---, they did what?" declared the Republican after learning that a Spitzer recruitment aide accidentally sent an e-mail response to a job applicant that included the e-mail addresses of another 227 people.

Many of the addresses revealed the identities of the job seekers and included at least two journalists and many employees of former Gov. Pataki. "There's a good deal of anxiety among a lot of the applicants," said a Spitzer insider. "Those whose bosses didn't know they were looking are afraid they'll find out."

Spitzer press secretary Christine Anderson said, "We apologize to the individuals who this may have inconvenienced."


Well isn't this special...

Smelling a Rat: The SEC and Exec Comp

Exec Comp: The SEC's Side of the Story - Compensation - CFO.com

When the SEC issued an amendment to its new executive-compensation disclosure rules late on the Friday before Christmas, a number of politicians and journalists smelled a rat. Indeed, it looked to some as if the SEC was reporting the amendment in the dead of night to get the least possible exposure for its news.

As it happened, the SEC ruffled some Congressional feathers. Irritated by the SEC's failure to contact him in advance of its announcement, the new Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, told CFO.com that the commission failed to grasp "how greatly they have pissed off America over stock options."

Password, please.

FCC rules expected on phone records

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is recommending the FCC order land-line and wireless phone carriers to require that customers use a password to immediately obtain their calling records from a representative by phone, FCC officials say.

Customers also could obtain their records without a password by asking phone companies to send the information to their home addresses, or having a phone company representative call them back at their home or cellphone number of record.

Those trying to obtain their calling data online would have to use a password.

Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center says the proposed rules are "a step in the right direction," but a more foolproof strategy would be to not provide calling details on a bill.”


Well, wouldn’t that last be an interesting outcome?

Read the whole thing here.

Annoying Workplace Habits That Need to be Broken

From Marshall Goldsmith, "What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful!"

1. Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations—when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point.

2. Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.

3. Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them.

4. Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.

5. Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However”: The overuse of these negative qualifiers which secretly say to everyone, “I’m right. You’re wrong.”

6. Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.

7. Speaking when angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.

8. Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share our negative thoughts even when we weren’t asked.

9. Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.

10. Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to praise and reward.

11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.

12. Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.

13. Clinging to the past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.

14. Playing favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.

15. Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.

16. Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.

17. Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.

18. Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.

19. Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.

20. An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.

Extreme Jobs

“Extreme jobs” is the phrase coined by the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force of the Center for Work-Life Policy. As defined by the task force, you have an extreme job if you work 60 hours or more a week and meet at least 5 additional characteristics from a list of 10. These include fast-paced work under tight deadlines, responsibility for profit and loss, a large amount of travel, an unpredictable flow of work, and work-related events outside business hours.

Based on two surveys and dozens of interviews and focus groups, the task force estimates that about 20 percent of high earners in the United States (defined as those in the top 6 percent of income levels) meet the definition of an extreme worker. That means 20 percent of those who make it to the top are working harder than any human can sustain for very long.

A 60-hour workweek, with a one-hour commute each way, means leaving the house at 7 a.m. every morning and not returning until 9 p.m. And more than half of extreme workers log longer hours than that.

What they don’t love is the fallout on the parts of their lives that are not work. Sixty-nine percent say their extreme jobs undermine their health, 46 percent say work gets in the way of a good relationship with their spouse, and 58 percent say it gets in the way of strong relationships with their children.

The solution, both groups say, is what Catalyst calls “the agile workplace.” That means a philosophy of flexibility. On the specific topic of Pcast, that could include subsidies for after-school care and backup care, and the ability to telecommute.

The alternative, the task force warns, is that today’s distracted and overworked employees will become tomorrow’s drag on the bottom line. “The culture that celebrates the extreme ethos today may tire of it — quite literally — tomorrow,” Ms. Hewlett writes. If so, she will need to coin another term. “Expired workers,” perhaps?

Read the whole thing here.

Did they see it coming?

And why weren’t they prepared?

Edge knows the 41% of Jobster’s workforce that’s feeling the pain after the axe swipe this week probably feel like bugs under a microscope but what better way to gain exposure for their next jobs? Hey, Jobster – post a site on your site where all the bloody can post their resumes for the world to pick and choose from - it’s a humanitarian idea whose maybe time has come: “Hire our people – they’ll make the best employees for you like they did for us!” might go a long way in salving some of the wounds.

But hey, what does the Edge know? As a proponent of telephone names sourcing what the Edge would do is call your number (206 826-5627) and press 4 for your company directory and by pressing JUST ONE number that corresponds to a letter of the alphabet your directory will spit out every one (or most) of your employees - the smart ones will either: be at their desks over the next couple weeks and answer ALL incoming calls or put a message on their VoiceMails making it EASY for someone to find them (email addresses SPELLED OUT and cell/home numbers are always appreciated!)

But that’s what the Edge would do if the Edge was interested in contacting your employees. Now that Edge thinks about it, Edge would bet good money the majority of the disenfranchised will soon have NEW JOBS and now the Edge is beginning to see what all the “transparency’ has been about – good job Jason!

But the Jobsterees – here lies another conundrum. Did they have the good sense God gave a mule to see this stuff coming? Or were they secure in their ivory tower; grown lazy in their view of the world as the harsh and unwelcoming place it can be and off-guard as to their own future fates? As a recent Monster memo brought to our attention by Joel Cheesman in his memorable recent blog post “monster will fire your ass too” states:

“In a world where Wall Street can take 30% of a company’s market value for missing estimates by a penny, we need to insure that any expense, no matter how big or small, is justifiable and provides a significant return.”

That’s the way it is boys and girls. If you’re an expense and not providing “a significant return” you’d best just pick your coat up at the door and leave because your sorry behind isn’t welcome any more. “...by a penny...” Think about that. By a penny your fate is charged. By a penny you have a job (or not). Edge’s advice to you is to buy a penny or two out of your budgets and invest in your futures – invest and believe in yourself and realize if a company is willing to pay you a salary, in return they’re receiving “a significant” amount off the sweat of your brow. It’s your decision to make that trade-off. Or not. It’s your decision to become proactive about your own futures and keep your ears to the ground about “other” opportunities. It’s your decision to cull the best opportunity for yourself out of the maelstrom because, believe the Edge, that’s what the company you’re working for is doing. One penny drop in their earnings could mean the end of your employment and the reality is, most times it’s the workforce that feels the cutting edge of this dulled knife.

It’s not the elaborate office space; it’s not the stock options of the few C levels who control things, it’s not the fleet of planes waiting in a hangar to swift them to any destination in the world at their heart’s desire – it’s you – the Individual Contributor, the one who sweats it out day in and day out, who’s going to feel the real pain.

Make no mistake - don’t think for one minute more they’ll keep you on-board out of charity or some misaligned sense of loyalty – they know that’s your bailiwick. If they would, it’s not a company you’d want to be working for, anyway.

And that’s the way it is, today, January 5, 2007 here on the Edge.

Small Firms = Untapped Market?

Small employers struggle to fill jobs
By Jim Hopkins, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Small employers ramping up hiring plans to levels not seen in two years face a labor shortage that's forcing many to increase wages and benefits.

The pinch is tightest in 26 states with below-average jobless rates, new Labor Department data and private surveys show. More than half those states are especially dependent on small employers, those with fewer than 500 workers.

Nationwide, the share of small firms planning to hire through early 2007 rose to 19% in November from 16% the month before, say surveys by the National Federation of Independent Business trade group. November's share was the highest since November 2004.

Read the whole thing here.

Immigrants Behind 25% of Startups

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Foreign-born entrepreneurs were behind one in four U.S. technology startups over the past decade, according to a study to be published Thursday.

A team of researchers at Duke University estimated that 25 percent of technology and engineering companies started from 1995 to 2005 had at least one senior executive - a founder, chief executive, president or chief technology officer - born outside the United States.

Immigrant entrepreneurs' companies employed 450,000 workers and generated $52 billion in sales in 2005, according to the survey.

Their contributions to corporate coffers, employment and U.S. competitiveness in the global technology sector offer a counterpoint to the recent political debate over immigration and the economy, which largely centers on unskilled, illegal workers in low-wage jobs.

"It's one thing if your gardener gets deported," said the project's Delhi-born lead researcher, Vivek Wadhwa. "But if these entrepreneurs leave, we're really denting our intellectual property creation.

Read the whole thing here.

Do you believe in Magic?

Making magic is a lot of hard work.

We gain advantage only when we embrace risky breakout ideas. Our survival depends not on sticking to what works but on making leaps that let us predict new challenges and seize on new opportunities. In a connected world, he says, "magic is all that's left."

Actually making the leaps, of course, is another matter. When transformation is required, Monroe says, "you have these kicking-and-screaming" moments. "Anytime you move from one state to another, you have a class of people who are so excited they can't believe it, and another class who think the world is coming to an end--which in a way, it is."

Read the whole thing here.