xScion Solutions, LLC

I was talking to my dad yesterday and naturally he asked about the earthquake, did I feel it? Was there any structural damage to buildings? Were there any injuries? Then he asked me a question with not such a concrete answer, how was the earthquake going to affect potential candidates’ perception of the DC metro area? Would it impose a stigma on the area and therefore make it more difficult to recruit people to come live and work? I hadn’t thought about this until he brought it up. He was implying that I may have to do some damage control on any of the candidates I was talking to shortly after the quake, assure them that this is not typical of the area.

In all honesty, I think in today’s job market one, fairly minor, earthquake is not going to deter people from relocating to the DC area for a new job. People are so excited of the prospect of a job opportunity; they will overlook this minor bump in the road.

A simple search on Google for “DC earthquake” and “effects on recruiting” confirmed my theory. No one has even proposed the idea that recruiting for jobs could be affected due to the recent earthquake. So have no fear DC area recruiters, the earthquake is not going to make the ever pleasant search of finding the perfect candidate any more challenging.

Last week I attended a five day webinar put on by Brown Bag Recruiter, hosted by Amitai Givertz. The main focus was on how to get the most out of your online searches using Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and similar websites. Givertz had many good tips that I thought I’d pass along.

He says there are six rules recruiters must remember when searching through the massive amounts of information on the Internet.
1. Stay singularly focused
2. Understand the game
3. Stay lean, mean, and undercover
4. Creating avoidance will kill you
5. Stop making friends
6. Don’t bite off more than you can chew

I think the common theme in these rules is searching and networking is about quality, not quantity. It doesn’t necessarily matter if you have 20 or 200 connections on LinkedIn, but rather how you use those connections.

He highlighted the value of using Boolean search strings in Google because Google turns up with millions of websites and to have to go through pages and pages of irrelevant material is time consuming. The basic Boolean operators are: AND, OR, NOT, (), and “ “. These operators are designed to expand or limit your results and create a more targeted search.

Aside from Boolean searching he also suggested using these commands and operators for searching within Google:
Insite:
Intitle:
Inurl:
Filetype:
Ext:

Happy searching!

You can measure worker productivity, GDP, consumer confidence or unemployment numbers if you want but I measure the hotdog to hamburger ratio to get a sense of where the economy is.

A couple times a month, the community service organization I belong to raises funds by being the food vendor at a local bingo hall. Not a glamorous black tie affair with $250 a plate meals but hamburgers, hotdogs, fries, etc. I’m not being judgmental but I am pretty sure that the people who attend this particular bingo hall don’t have tuxedoes tucked away in their closets. No, these are salt of the earth types. A mix is backgrounds, ages and races but mostly on the lower end of the economic scale.

Several years ago, we used to waste a lot of hotdogs. They come in packages of eight and on a typical night we would sell maybe two at $2.00 each. The rest would be left for the cleaning crew. At the same time we would sell as many as 48 hamburgers at $3.50 each. For several years the ration of hotdog to hamburger sales was stable at about .042.

Then, about three years ago the sale of hotdogs began to increase and we would sell the entire package of eight. Sometimes we even opened a second package. As hotdog sales increased hamburger sales decreased and the attendance of bingo players remained the same.

Last week, we sold 20 hotdogs and 32 hamburgers with a ration of .625. I had to open three packages hotdogs.

So that is where the economy is. People are still paying bingo but they are making choices to save money elsewhere. To these people the $1.50 saved on dinner is important.

Until I see the number of hotdog sales decreasing I will remain pessimistic about our economy.

It is no surprise that employers can (and often do) check out their prospective employees Facebook pages. What exactly are they looking for? How far back can your Facebook and other social media webpages be tracked?

Social Intelligence is a company that assists in finding Facebook pages of potential employees and looking for content such as: violence, sexual innuendos, compromising pictures or situations, and racial remarks. The company then reports their findings to the prospective employer. Some would argue that this is a breach in privacy, but in reality when someone puts something on a Facebook page, even if their settings are ‘Private’ that information becomes available to anyone on the Internet. There is always a way of finding out information on people and the Social Intelligence website is specializing in just this.

Mark Drucker, CEO of Social Intelligence, says they are able to find information from Facebook pages up to seven years ago. Do you even remember what you were doing seven years ago? It is worth taking note of what you put on your Facebook page, and what you write on your friends’ walls because if Social Intelligence were to do a search on your name, all the content you have ever looked at or posted on Facebook will appear. Just be mindful, at least for the next seven years!

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/8996.aspx

Yesterday I had the privilege of tuning into a webinar hosted by JobFox, a career website that connects job seekers to potential employers mainly through social media websites. The webinar was called “The Art of Social Recruiting” – quite a broad topic, but it caught my interest to see how they were going to tackle a subject that could be discussed endlessly. The speaker on the webinar was Peter Weddle, an author and columnist for CNN.com and The Wall Street Journal. He is well-versed on the subject and has written many articles on recruiting and social media.

Weddle said the common fiber across generations of job seekers is that they are all “career activists” i.e. everyone wants to do something they enjoy where they feel they can grow and be appreciated. Once you have realized this about people you are ready to pick out the top-talent. To do this effectively he said, “Remember the Golden Rule of social recruiting: What you do to recruit the best talent, will also recruit mediocre talent, but the inverse is not true.”

Peter then broke social recruiting down into different types of relationships that the recruiter needs to form through social websites. There is the ‘Blink Relationship,’ the type that is formed quickly and the ‘Red Shirt Relationship,’ one that takes time to develop and then is maintained through sporadic communication. The common goal in these relationships is to build trust between the recruiter and the job seeker. Once the trust is built, the recruiter can begin to build their network and ask for referrals from the job seeker, thus creating a pipelined network from which to drawn upon when needed.

Each relationship had a ‘Golden Rule’ to abide by, following the theme of the ‘Golden Rule’ of social recruiting. The Golden Rule of the Blink Relationship: “Flattery first, facts second.” Because the relationship is being formed quickly and most likely with little introduction, the recruiter needs to flatter the job seeker so the job seeker is more enticed to connect with them. The Golden Rule for Red Shirt Relationships: “Career first, jobs second.” These job seekers want to know that they are going to be able to advance in their career and that this is not simply a job to make money, but that there will be opportunities for upward mobility.

To put his ideas into action, he says the most important thing is to assign someone in your organization who has the time to dedicate to forming and maintaining these relationships. The only way social recruiting will work is to nurse the relationships once they have been formed and keep up with connections.

A recent report by The National Association of Colleges and Employers states that starting salaries for college graduates have risen over the past year and are continuing on that trend. The average starting salary for college grads as of summer 2011 is $51,018, up from $48,661 last year. These numbers are in vast contrast to numbers in 2010 when the starting salaries for college grads were lower than 2009.

Students graduating with social science and humanities degrees see slightly less salary increase (1.3%) compared with engineering degrees (8.1%) or English majors (6.6%). Even so, the increase in starting salaries is helping students to move away from home and live independently of their families who may be suffering financially.

Works4Labs recently launched its job searching tool that incorporates social media. It is proving to be convenient, effective and an innovative tool for college grads and employers alike. The website is a Facebook app that parses the career centers jobs into the University’s Facebook web page. This app then allows students who have a school e-mail address to upload their cover letter and resume right to Facebook and apply to multiple jobs at once. Works4Lab is essentially cutting down on the number of databases students have to search for jobs on and using Facebook as their anchor.

With the rise in starting salaries and more job opportunities for college graduates it makes one wonder if the job market is on the rise for the rest of the nation? It is hard to say how much these statistics can be generalized to the rest of the economy. It is certain that college graduates now have more prospective jobs to choose from and can be slightly more choosey when deciding between job offers. Moreover, even if salaries nationwide aren’t going up for the general population, these statistics give hope that the economy could turn around for the rest of the United States in the near future.

http://www.ere.net/2011/07/07/starting-salaries-rise-for-new-grads/#more-19827

Today marks the second annual social media day! With the ever expanding world of social media, it seems fitting that we have a day to recognize and reflect on how media, advertising, recruiting, and socializing has changed since the rise of LinkedIn in 2003, Facebook in 2004, and Twitter in 2006. Though these websites serve slightly different purposes the common goal is to keep people connected through the Internet.

Some would say that we already put too much emphasis on social media, why do we need a day to celebrate it? I don’t see it as a celebration so much as a reflection on how far technology has come since the days of picking up the phone and calling your friend. Instead of picking up the phone you now have the option to write on your friend’s wall, look at their pictures, mention them in a tweet, or send them a message on LinkedIn. It has been proven many times that when used appropriately social media can be a wonderful tool for businesses, families, and keeping in touch with friends miles away.

Many people disparage social media because it eliminates the personal, face-to-face connections with people, but in reality these websites aren’t going to disappear anytime soon. In fact, websites similar to LinkedIn and Facebook continue to appear. If you are a typical non-believer in social media, let today be a day where you look at the positives of these websites and embrace them, you just may find they’re not as harmful as you once believed.

Get involved in a local meet-up http://www.meetup.com/mashable/ and celebrate however you deem appropriate!

We have always felt that the IT Professional Services industry is the bellwether for the economy.  When the wheels are about to come off the good economy bus, our business dries up quickly, competition gets fierce and Consultant engagements are not extended.  It is easy for a client to shed Consultants and hunker down to live through the storm so that’s what they do. Conversely, when the down economy starts to turn positive, our industry feels it first as clients want temporary help before they commit to FTEs.

Where this causes a problem for us is in price expectations.  Client’s, who still think the economy is in the tank, want us to charge the same rates we did at the bottom of the economic cycle.  However, we are way beyond that today and are seeing candidates who have multiple opportunities and are negotiating salaries upwards. So while our cost is going up, our clients are seeking to drive our revenue down. So our choice is either to sacrifice our margin or lose the bidding war for the talent. We typically choose the former.

Trying to explain to a client that the fact they have not gotten a raise is not necessarily reflective of the marketplace for IT talent is never a fun conversation so if our dear clients could take a look a the following information from DICE we would appreciate it.

http://www.ere.net/2011/06/10/dice-survey-tech-demand-pushing-up-salaries-fill-time/

There can be no doubt that America’s financial future is in peril at this point. It would also be fair to say that our leaders in government are doing little to get us out of this mess. Seems that no matter which party is in office the tendency is to avoid any short-term pain that could lead to long-term recovery and focus instead on pushing any pain into the future so the re-election bid will go well.

It was our leaders that got us into this mess and in the past government programs have helped get us out of it (think interstate highways, microchips, the internet) but the dithering we see today will unfortunately lead us nowhere but down.

If the government can’t/won’t help it is up to private companies to take the lead and create the jobs that we need to increase the tax base which, when combined with spending cuts will, begin to reduce the deficit and lead us back to prosperity.

So where do we turn? How about to the large innovators? How about to the 2^nd largest company (by market cap) in the country? A company whose products have changed the technology landscape, shifted user interface paradigms and caused other companies to scramble to keep up?  I am of course speaking of Apple.  Apple’s revenues are in excess of $65B and they employ nearly 50,000 of the brightest engineers, designers and marketing people in the world.  Surely they can help, right?

Maybe not.  Foxconn the Chinese company that actually makes all of Apple’s wonderful products and has revenues 10% lower than Apple employs nearly 1,000,000 people or 20x that which Apple does.  As Bruce Springsteen said “Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back.”

Will the leaders of our large companies have more courage and conviction than our government leaders and move manufacturing jobs back to the US?  I doubt it and I am afraid for our future.

click for credit

We have been experimenting with social media for quite some time now in one form or another because we believe (although not as much as we used to) that social media would help our company grow.  We believe(d) that if we increase our presence on the internet, get more followers on Twitter, have a cool blog, get fans on Facebook and generally put ourselves out there that more people will visit our site and apply to our open consulting jobs. This would of course drive more revenue with which we would solve world hunger or perhaps a get a better applicant tracking system. We are undecided.

The results of our little controlled experiment were not very good.  We had cool blog entries.  We have 3000 twitter followers.  One month we had 10,000 people visit our site via the blog and a grand total of three of them applied for jobs.  I’m sure there is some fancy term for this like conversion rate or something and I’m sure that .03% is not very good.

So the experiment is over.  For now.  A friend was just telling me about amazing results he is getting on Facebook so perhaps another experiment is in order.

In case you want another opinion check out this post from a smart woman who likes cats.

http://thecynicalgirl.com/ten-reasons-why-you-dont-need-a-blog/