Willows Marsh is pleased and thrilled to announce a new partnership with the brilliant folks at CareerAdvantagePortal!
CareerAdvantage provides relevant, actionable business information and career campaign management tools to help candidates (from entry level to C-level executives) research potential employers, identify new relationships, and find "hidden" job opportunities.
Want to research your contacts on LinkedIn? CareerAdvantagePortal is integrated and seamlessly displays your LinkedIn contacts with one click .
Additionally, the career portal contains fast, accurate information including in-depth information on millions of companies and key executives, a national recruiter database, hidden job opportunities obtained directly from employer’s web sites.
The future of career search belongs to those professionals who have access to superior business intelligence and know how to use it. CareerAdvantage offers candidates a competitive advantage with access to in-depth company profiles, "hidden" job opportunities comprehensive recruiter databases and online career networking tools.
CareerAdvantage provides candidates and career professionals tools they can use to research companies that may be hiring. Career Advantage contains rich content on millions of business, executive contacts, recruiters, job postings, "hidden" job opportunities, and includes social networking tools and a built in CRM system to track and manage the job search.
Comprehensive Company Search
Search millions of potential employers within our Career Portal or research companies before you interview with them.
Hidden Job Opportunities
Receive information and indicators about companies that are expanding, and will be hiring. Many of our "job triggers" indicate new products, signing new custom contracts, hiring senior executives and indicate a need to hire new employees BEFORE they publicly post a job.
Advanced Search by Companies & Executives
Use advanced search to filter out companies and find potential employers that meet your criteria such as industry, size location, title, or even a keyword searches such as “Harvard MBA” or “IBM”.
Job Postings from Employers
Find “hidden” job opportunities. CareerAdvantage aggregates job postings directly from employer web sites and updates the listings each day. Many of these job postings are never listed on some of the Job Board web sites such as Monster.com, Hotjobs.com or CareerBuilder.com
Recruiter Search Database
Search for thousands of recruiters around the country. Our database includes detailed information such as retained recruiters, contingency recruiters, industry specialization and positions (i.e. marketing, C-level, entry level, finance, sales, etc.).
Manage and Track Job Opportunities
The average candidate researches over two hundred potential employers and may apply to dozens of job opportunities. Career Advantage makes it easy for candidates to track and manage their search online.
Contact us today at info@willowsmarsh.com or Toll-Free: 866-214-5445 for an Overview of our complete Outplacement and Career Transitions solutions. Whether you are a Company seeking to provide best of class transition services to your workforce, or an individual wishing to accelerate your job search, Willows Marsh provides affordable, customized solutions.
I received some great email comments regarding the post on Behavioral Interviewing, and have decided to keep this ongoing by posting, every month, a different set of Behavioral Questions for you to practice. With the Holidays upcoming, you may want to leverage some of your downtime by thinking about these. Answering tough questions for the first time in the actual interview is unwise, so answer here first.
You can also run your answers by us and our readers by posting in the comments section.
The first step in Career Transition is Self Assessment. These Behavioral Questions target this specific area. Have at it!
Self Assessment
Can you recall a time when you were less than pleased with your performance?
Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way.
Give a specific occasion in which you conformed to a policy with which you did not agree.
Give an example of an important goal that you had set in the past and talk about your success in reaching it.
If there is one area you've always wanted to improve upon, what would that be?
In what ways are you trying to improve yourself?
Tell us about a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job done.
What do you consider to be your professional strengths? Give me a specific example using this attribute in the workplace.
What goal have you set for yourself that you have successfully achieved?
What was the most useful criticism you ever received?
I am so inspired by this project, and I hope you will be too.
If you'd like to help the Lemonade project, you can contribute here. Your donation will go to legal fees, distribution costs, and screening expenses. Again, nothing is expected. But every bit matters. Thank you.
About Lemonade, the Movie:
More than 130,000 advertising professionals have lost their jobs in this Great Recession. Lemonade is about what happens when people who were once paid to be creative in advertising are forced to be creative with their own lives.
DETROIT UPDATE: 11/13/09
News from Eric Proulx:
In case you're in the advertising industry and haven't heard yet, BBDO in Detroit is closing its doors after losing the Chrysler account, laying off nearly 500 people. It's the latest in a long string of bad news for the Detroit ad community.
As Todd Gilleland of Cola Creative describes it, no one in Detroit leaves their homes anymore. No one socializes or attends Red Wings or Pistons games. It's an entire population trying to figure out how to survive.
Eric is working closely with Todd to bring an event and screening of Lemonade to Detroit. Tentatively planned for December 17, we want people to come out of seclusion, even if for a night, to watch a movie and enjoy each others' company. And maybe, collectively, we can start to think about what's next.
Ideally, we'd love to find a sponsor or two to fund it, including the costs of getting my partner and I out there, food & beverages. (The venue is graciously being donated by Ringside Creative.) So if you know anyone in Detroit who might want to be associated with this event, please do no hesitate to give them my name.
As for distribution of the film, there's still no official news to report. But if you happen to be in Miami next week, there is a pre-screening at Books and Books next Tuesday, November 17. You can register at www.adfedmiami.com.
Stay tuned. And thank you for all your support!
Sincerely,
Erik Proulx
PS - If you'd like to help the Lemonade project, you can contribute here. Your donation will go to legal fees, distribution costs, and screening expenses. Again, nothing is expected. But every bit matters. Thank you.
If you are in Boston/Cambridge area, please support the movie's Premiere.
Monday, 11/30 7:00 PM, premiere for movie Lemonade at the Brattle Theater Cambridge, MA
In addition to the movie, creator Eric Proulx is writing a book as well. Here is his call for submissions:
"Lemonade, the book will assemble a collection of essays from people telling stories of reinvention in their own words. Only this time, I don't want to limit it to the advertising industry. Imagine all the inspirational personal triumphs that arose after the auto industry crash. Think of all the school teachers, engineers, and finance professionals who have found their life's work thanks to being downsized. Those of us in advertising provide just one, very sheltered viewpoint of what's possible in unemployment.
If you lost your job but found your calling, Eric wants to hear from you:
"You can submit a simple abstract of your experience, or an entire 1k - 3k word essay. (I want this to be more about the quality of your story and less about the quality of the writing. If your story is inspiring enough, we'll get it written.)
Here are the general guidelines for your submission:
It can be a 1-paragraph abstract, 3000-word essay, or anything in between. But is has to communicate your inspirational post-layoff story.
The submission must be an original, unpublished work.
There's no submission fee or cash prize. This is simply a forum to tell your story and inspire others who need to hear it.
All entries become the property of Please Feed The Animals and Fighting Monk, Inc (the legal entity for my business).
I want to be ambitious about getting this completed. So all submissions must be received by November 30.
ALERT JOB SEARCHERS: Research just got a whole lot easier for free!
I've told you never to approach a company without a firm understanding of why you're approaching them, based upon extensive research you conduct on your target companies.
Toward that aim, we've used a variety of free and proprietary databases, but the best ones are very expensive. Not anymore.
Tracked.com launched today, and I am impressed. In the past, I was a buyer of information services, and I have reviewed hundreds of companies who offer less than this at premium prices.
From company breaking news, extensive bios, and customized watchlists, Tracked goes one step further than "old school" databases, and makes it social; profiles, 140 character messages, connections, groups and more.
Go get an account - understand they are in Beta, and will be improving and adding features as they go forward, and at times the server may slow a bit, but jump in now. Visit the "Tour" link for great walk-throughs, and their youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/RakedInsights is chock-full of good demos.
Then research your target list! Using Tracked.com in combination with other search tools will absolutely prove valuable to you in your job search and interviews.
A note to users regarding record accuracy: ALL research databases are only as good as the information that is confirmed by principals in the company, and data is generally updated on a rotating basis. Ideally, data should not be modified based upon anything other than a company authorized principal confirming the modification. All databases - Hoovers, OneSource, D&B, etc. will have inaccuracies even in their premium pay subscriptions - it's the nature of the beast as people move on to new roles & companies and it may take a bit for the updates to be confirmed, so double-check, and expect occasional discrepancies.
from Miles Lennon of Tracked.com: "We spend many cycles on creating new ways to curate data both algorithmically and manually. Although we're striving for near-perfect accuracy, we understand that sometimes incorrectly reported data will hit the site. That is the nature of the beast, but it's one of the many reasons this project is so intellectually stimulating."
And, folks, this company just launched and I heard from the support team immediately! Within ten minutes of my inquiry, I had a response. Outstanding!
Related to the below data, if you are in transition, you have to think like an independent contractor.
The way you secure work today is by establishing yourself as an expert and developing opportunities to solve problems in your area of expertise with other folks in the same situation. Crowdsolve. That is the bottom-line.
Make sure you understand Social Media tools as well; build your brand via your Google Profile, a blog, Twitter, LinkedIn and tools like VisualCV.
If you say none of these things are for you or don't relate to you, you will struggle in the current highly competitive climate.
MASS LAYOFFS -- AUGUST 2009
Employers took 2,690 mass layoff actions in August that resulted in the separation of 259,307 workers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single employer. The number of mass layoff events in August increased by 533 from the prior month, and the number of associated initial claims increased by 52,516. Over the year, the number of mass layoff events increased by 803, and associated initial claims increased by 70,356. Year-to-date mass layoff events (21,184) and initial claims (2,162,202) both recorded program highs through August. In August, 900 mass layoff events were reported in the manufacturing sector, seasonally adjusted, resulting in 93,892 initial claims. Over the month, the number of manufacturing events increased by 279, and associated initial claims increased by 21,626. (See table 1.) During the 21 months from December 2007 through August 2009, the total number of mass layoff events (seasonally adjusted) was 44,669, and the number of initial claims filed (seasonally adjusted) in those events was 4,556,636. (December 2007 was the start of a recession as designated by the National Bureau of Economic Research.)
The national unemployment rate was 9.7 percent in August 2009, seasonally adjusted, up from 9.4 per-cent the prior month and up from 6.2 percent a year earlier. In August, total nonfarm payroll employment decreased by 216,000 over the month and by 5,830,000 from a year earlier.
Industry Distribution (Not Seasonally Adjusted)
The number of mass layoff events in August was 1,428 on a not seasonally adjusted basis; the number of associated initial claims was 125,024. (See table 2.) Average weekly layoff events rose from 285 in August 2008 to 357 in August 2009, and average weekly initial claims increased from 28,000 to 31,256. Seven of the 19 major industry sectors reported program highs in terms of average weekly initial claimants for the month of August: construction; wholesale trade; retail trade; management of companies and enterprises; educational services; arts, entertainment, and recreation; and accommodation and food services. (Average weekly analysis mitigates the effect of differing lengths of months. See the Technical Note.) The manufacturing sector accounted for 31 percent of all mass layoff events and 33 percent of initial claims filed in August 2009. A year earlier, manufacturing made up 29 percent of events and 37 percent of initial claims. Within manufacturing, transportation equipment comprised the largest number of aver-age weekly claims (2,269) despite experiencing the largest decrease in average weekly initial claims over the year (-1,688) among three-digit NAICS industries. (See table 3.) The administrative and waste services sector accounted for 14 percent of mass layoff events and 12 percent of initial claims, down from 15 and 14 percent, respectively, the previous August. Construction accounted for 11 percent of events and 10 percent of initial claims, an increase from 10 percent of events and 7 percent of claims in August 2008.
Of the 10 detailed industries with the largest number of mass layoff initial claims, 3 reached a series high for August: motorcycle, bicycle, and parts manufacturing; warehouse clubs and supercenters; and casino hotels. The industry with the largest number of initial claims was temporary help services (6,721). (See table A.) Table A. Industries with the largest number of mass layoff initial claims in August 2009
Geographic Distribution (Not Seasonally Adjusted)
Among the 4 census regions, the West registered the highest number of initial claims in August due to mass layoffs (36,897), followed by the Midwest (32,197) and the South (29,486). (See table 5.) Average weekly initial claims associated with mass layoffs increased over the year in 3 of the 4 regions, with the Northeast experiencing the largest increase (+2,064). In 2009, the Northeast reported its highest August level of average weekly initial claims (6,611) in program history.
Of the 9 geographic divisions, the Pacific (30,781) had the highest number of initial claims due to mass layoffs in August, followed by the East North Central (25,962) and the Middle Atlantic (23,491). (See table 5.) Seven of the 9 divisions experienced over-the-year increases in average weekly initial claims, led by the Middle Atlantic (+1,786). This year, the Middle Atlantic, Mountain, and South Atlantic divisions reached program highs for August in terms of average weekly initial claims.
California recorded the highest number of average weekly initial claims in August, with 6,521, even though it had the largest over-the-year decrease in average weekly claims (-704). The over-the-year decrease was largely due to a drop in claims from the administrative and support services industry. The states with the next highest number of average weekly initial claims were New York (2,851), Pennsylvania (2,481), and Florida (1,949). Thirty states and the District of Columbia experienced over-the-year increases in average weekly initial claims, led by Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois. In 2009, eight states reached program highs in average weekly initial claims for the month of August: Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.
Note
The monthly data series in this release cover mass layoffs of 50 or more workers beginning in a given month, regardless of the duration of the layoffs. For private nonfarm establishments, information on the length of the layoff is obtained later and issued in a quarterly release that reports on mass layoffs lasting more than 30 days (referred to as "extended mass layoffs"). The quarterly release provides more inform-at ion on the industry classification and location of the establishment and on the demographics of the laid-off workers. Because monthly figures include short-term layoffs of 30 days or less, the sum of the figures for the 3 months in a quarter will be higher than the quarterly figure for mass layoffs of more than 30 days. (See table 4.) See the Technical Note for more detailed definitions.
_____________ Mass Layoffs in September 2009 is scheduled to be released on Thursday, October 22, 2009, at 10:00 a.m. (EDT).
Metropolitan area over-the-year unemployment rate increases, August 2009
For the eighth consecutive month, all of the nation's 372 metropolitan areas had over-the-year unemployment rate increases. The largest jobless rate increase from August 2008 to August 2009 was reported in Detroit-Warren-Livonia, Michigan (+7.9 percentage points), followed by Muskegon-Norton Shores, Michigan (+7.0 points).
Avoiding Star Trek Walk-on Guest Syndrome (aka The "Petersen" Syndrome), when Working with Recruiters
You remember it: whenever Captain Kirk or Jean-Luc Picard took an unknown crew member on the Away Team, that person died pretty soon after stepping foot out of the transporter. I don’t recall anyone ever saying “Gee, it’s too bad Petersen just got eaten by that Rock Monster” either.
He served his purpose to heighten suspense, got his SAG card, and he was outta’ there.
Sometimes, not all but sometimes, working with a contingent recruiter may be much the same, with you sadly, playing the all too short-lived role of Petersen.
Before every recruiter on the web writes me mad-mail, let me preface by saying I have been a recruiter in the Permanent Placement Industry (also in the Temporary Placement industry, but that’s a story for another day). I am now in the Outplacement business. Different thing but there are similarities.
Let’s go to Wikipedia for the definitions:
Executive search (informally headhunting) is the process of recruiting individuals to fill executive positions in organizations. Executive search may be performed by an organization's board of directors, by executives in the organization, or by an outside executive search organization. The executive search profession has two distinct fields, retained executive search and contingency search. Retained search firms are paid a retainer fee regardless of whether a successful placement is made. Contingency firms are paid only if a candidate is found, and generally, the candidate must stay in the position for X weeks or months for payment to be made and the contract fulfilled.
OUTplacement is a term used to describe the efforts made by a Company Fee-paid downsizing firm to help the redundant employees through the career transition process, and help them re-orientate to the job market. An Outplacement firm may refer a candidate to retained executive search or contingency search firm to assist in the transition process.
In the current employment market, there is a glut of talent in the available pool – a buyer’s market as it were, at a time when there’s not a lot of buying going on. If you’re searching for a new position, there’s a huge, talented competition pool out there with you.
For a Contingency Executive Search professional, it is critical that they respond quickly to an organization’s request for a specific talent-set in a potential employee. The Executive Search Professional may have 3 or 4 candidates basically suited to fill the open position; however, one of those is the favorite, the perfect fit. The search professional must send a handful of people to the interviewing company to give them options, but they may be selling one specific candidate a bit more aggressively than the others.
In other words, one of those candidates is Spock. The others are Petersen 1, Petersen 2, and so on.
It’s up to you, the Job Seeker, to figure out which you are, and to effectively manage the process in partnership with the search professional, not at the bidding of.
A great search professional is your partner in this process. They can be an invaluable asset. A really great one will work with you throughout your career if you have demonstrated in-turn that you are a prepared, articulate, employable professional.
An Executive client of ours recently mentioned to me, that a third-party recruiter he was working with kept sending him to interviews that didn’t seem to fit for him. I asked him why he kept accepting interviews from this particular Placement representative. He said “Well, I don’t want to make them angry, so I figure I’d better go.”
You can’t have that folks. This is not a time to be wasting time.
Shop around, network, talk to others in your field that have a relationship with a Search Professional or firm and request an introduction. Be very prepared for the subsequent telephone or face-to-face interview.
Find a search professional that thinks you’re Spock. Anything else would be illogical.
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