http://mattrangroup.com/Mattran Group - Mattran Groupen-ushttp://mattrangroup.com.com/rss/rss.xmlThu, 08 Sep 2011 02:09:53 CST - A candidate called our office to report he had just been rejected from a search because he was currently unemployed. The company had now established a policy that their HR department did not accept applications from candidates that were unemployed. A few attorneys are trying to build a case for discrimination. But unemployment is not a protected class under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or any subsequent federal legislation. So what do you do if you are out of work and need to overcome that objection? Be prepared to explain the circumstances of your unemployment. Here are five of the most frequent comments we hear that you will need to address: Attitude: Unemployed candidates will say or do anything to get back to work. Talk about business ethics and your code of professional conduct. Cite examples from your personal or business life where you have decided not to make expedient decisions for short-term gains but chose in favor of doing the right thing. Attitude:Unemployed candidates will take positions they are overqualified for, only to keep looking for something for which they are better suited. The temporary job syndrome is easy to spot on a resume. If you have had many short-term positions, make a compelling argument for why you made those decisions. If you havent, cite your prior record of stability as an indicator of future behavior. Attitude:Unemployed candidates were not of value to their company, or they would still be employed. Put your termination into context. Note what was happening to the total company during the time you were terminated. Did you survive several rounds of layoffs? Was your department merged with the same department in your newly acquired company? Did the company decide to make wholesale cuts during the recession? Were you the last one in in a company whose policy is then first one out? Attitude:Unemployed candidates dont have current skills or current client relationships This may be true if you are trying to get back into an industry you left. Stay connected to your industry association. Attend trade shows and take a temporary assignment that will keep you in the industry. Network regularly with people in the industry in and out of your discipline and up and down the corporate ladder. Check into continuing education classes provided by professional associations or colleges. Attitude:Unemployed candidates have something wrong with them. Nobody wants them. Something wrong can be an excuse for not hiring anyone, but the most frequent impressions stems from some indicator that the candidate is lazy and really doesnt want to work, is too old to coach, or lacking skills. As soon as you become unemployed get to work getting another job. Do not decide to use your severance pay for a vacation. While you are searching for a new position take some additional training in a few software programs, or e-learning in your industry. Your main objective should be to make finding your next job, your full-time job. Rose Mattran Thu, 08 Sep 2011 02:09:53 CSThttp://www.mattrangroup.com/refresh/templates/blog_entry.php?blog_id=23Wed, 27 Jul 2011 03:07:34 CST - Highly skilled candidates are always in demand, and are frequently courted by forward-thinking companies. If you are a desirable candidate, and are actively interviewing, its not uncommon to have serious interest from more than one company. How you handle the decision-making process can be tricky. No two companies progress through the hiring process at the same speed. Just because you are in their interviewing loop, doesnt mean they are going to actually hire someone. Trying to engineer the timing of offers so you can compare them is a dangerous strategy. The adage, A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, clearly applies. Learn to evaluate each position on its own merit then decide for or against that opportunity. Comparing offers rarely enhances the decision making process. Best advice for moving forward in your job search is to try to eliminate positions before you get to the offer stage. Try not to want the job. Nothing is gained by getting an offer from a company you do not intend to work for. Here are a few good questions to ask yourself while you are interviewing with companies. Does it meet or get me closer towards meeting my career objectives? Sometimes it takes more than one position to move you to where you ultimately want to be. Can I see myself being successful in the position? If you cant see yourself performing at a high level, you either dont have enough information about the position, or its not the best position for you. Is it something I would like to do for a long time? Never take a position thinking its going to be good enough to take until something better comes along. That attitude will taint your performance, and it might be longer than you think before that dream job turns up. Would I feel good about joining the company? You will spend a lot of time and energy working with the people in your new company. Do you feel that you fit in well with the corporate culture? If the answer is no or you are not sure, you had better rethink the opportunity. You need to be extremely happy and enthusiastic about what you are getting yourself into, or its not the right fit. How will this decision enhance the lives of those that are close to me? You might not be the only stakeholder in this decision. Happy at work and miserable at home is not a good situation. If the positions you are considering do not meet your criteria in these areas you are best advised to discontinue the interviewing process and focus your energy on finding more suitable opportunities. Rose Mattran Wed, 27 Jul 2011 03:07:34 CSThttp://www.mattrangroup.com/refresh/templates/blog_entry.php?blog_id=22Mon, 21 Feb 2011 08:02:55 CST - Before you start to look for a new position, take a step back and think deeply about what is really important to you and your family. Have a meeting with the key stakeholders and discuss what the ideal work/life balance would look like. Be reasonable, or your plan to achieve that goal will be nothing more than a pipedream. Heres a great way to start the conversation; CLAMS. To help you get started, here are five topics to consider: C andndash; Challenge. Will you be happy in a position that offers very little challenge andndash; What does that mean to your self-esteem, personal growth and motivation for going to work each day? L andndash; Location. Is relocation possible? Would a new position enable you to live in a place you always wanted to live? If you are not moving, how far and under what circumstances are you willing to commute? A andndash; Advancement. Do you need to be in a company where you can grow your career? Do you aspire to be a GM or CEO some day, or does moving up the corporate ladder leave you unimpressed? What level position do you find interesting and satisfying? M andndash; Money. There is a range that goes from needs to wants. Identify what you need to pay bills and feed your family. Be realistic about wants, as we all want the most we can make. Generally, it would be prudent to bracket your current or most recent salary with needs on one end and wants on the other. Do consider a lateral move if it will provide the Challenge, Location, Advancement or Security that you desire. S andndash; Security. This is a tough one. Its very elusive. Be honest. No job is secure. Security is very difficult to determine, and even positions once considered very secure, such as teaching and public service, are affected by post-recession economics. Even if you cant prioritize all the CLAMS, you should be able to identify a few that rise to the top of the list. Using that information, you can begin to formulate the kind of opportunities you would like to pursue. The next step becomes researching where to look for those companies. Stay tuned for more on that topic. Rose Mattran Mon, 21 Feb 2011 08:02:55 CSThttp://www.mattrangroup.com/refresh/templates/blog_entry.php?blog_id=21Tue, 01 Feb 2011 08:02:40 CST - We have now entered into a candidate driven market. In the last month, 82% of the currently employed candidates that our firm evaluated as A Players and were interviewing with our clients had multiple offers on the table. These are the most desirable candidates by experience and skill-set with verifiable track records of high achievement and success. These are the candidates you want. These are the candidates you hire us to source, assess and deliver. The ability to attract, interest and hire these candidates is getting more difficult. They are in demand, being courted, and carefully evaluating their options. The housing market has also had its impact on the ability of many candidates to relocate, which reduces the pool of available talent. But the economy is turning around, and the best candidates are getting good offers. So what does this mean to a company trying to hire? It means that: You have to attract candidates; you have to have a story to tell, and a future to sell. You have to be decisive and move efficiently. Its an indicator of corporate culture. You have to pay attention to who is representing your company and the candidates impression of how the process is managed. How you onboard new hires is their first opportunity to evaluate your company. From the more tactical side of conducting the search, we urge you to think the entire process through. Start the search when you are able to plan a six-week window of telephone and face-to-face interviews with all the people who will be involved in the hiring process. Resist the temptation to think that more recruiters are better. That will only confuse the good candidates, and complicate the hiring process. Develop a good relationship with your recruiter; we should be your trusted partners for talent acquisition. Companies that can make timely decisions will win the best candidates. We can help you organize and streamline your hiring process. Rose Mattran Tue, 01 Feb 2011 08:02:40 CSThttp://www.mattrangroup.com/refresh/templates/blog_entry.php?blog_id=20Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:01:03 CST - Technology has made the identification of candidates easier than ever. With the overabundance of posting sites and resume services on the internet almost anyone can retrieve a stack of resumes that are keyword matched to those on a job description. But will that alone produce a truly good candidate? Recruiting has two aspects: art and science. We might say that the science of recruiting is the technology of recruiting; knowing where to look, who to call, and the many electronic haystacks under which the needle is hiding. Its the process that identifies the candidates with the appropriate skill sets. The art, on the other hand, is the ability to ask the questions and have the conversations that will really uncover what makes the candidate tick. Assessing is the ability to get under the candidates skin; ask the right questions and understand their current employment situation, skills, training, work ethic, management preferences, business goals and philosophy. Then there are life goals, family support, fears, hopes and dreams. And when we are finished with those topics, there are the deep discussions surrounding self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Getting to the bottom of this list is quite a process. From the time we meet the candidate until we introduce them to you, it is not unusual for us to have had 5 or 6 interviews. With each conversation, we get a clearer picture of how the candidate will perform in your environment. Our goal is to deliver candidates that will find meaning and satisfaction in their work. They will work harder and better and be happier employees. When we get to our short list and are ready to recommend people to you, we make sure the full candidate profile makes sense. We have the right skills and personality in an individual who is highly motivated to make a change for all the right reasons. We can see them being successful in your company. We get a chuckle when candidates tell us that the interviews they have with us a far more difficult and penetrating than the ones conducted by our clients. We know why. Rose Mattran Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:01:03 CSThttp://www.mattrangroup.com/refresh/templates/blog_entry.php?blog_id=19Mon, 03 Jan 2011 09:01:33 CST - Happy New Year! Congratulations for automatically getting a year older. And welcome to my favorite topic: The accusation that recruiters try to find out how old you are from your resume. Recruiters really dont care how old you are. We care about your experience and your training; what you can do for our client. If your experience is doing the same thing for 25 years, how valuable is that experience past, lets say, the 5th year? Or have you been working and gaining new experience as you grow within a company? That kind of information should be on your resume. It really is a shame that age and experience are so linked. But please try not to make it worse by insulting a recruiter who asks when you graduated from college. Its part of your Curriculum Vitae andndash; or your lifes story. Heres our very best resume advice for 2011: Be 100% honest. Stretching the truth, even a little bit, isnt worth it. If you cant make an honest claim that would ultimately have to be corroborated by a co-worker or supervisor, then dont put yourself in an embarrassing position by stretching the truth. Include all dates, even if you think its painful to fess up to being as old as you are. Dates are important to verify education, your work history and residency. Withholding dates is the biggest red flag on resumes. Someone will ultimately check those dates. Then what? Do not restrict your resume to the last 10 years of your work history. Your resume is a document about the sum total of your work history, not starting when you decided it really counts. And think about how stupid this looks: Your first position out of college was as Vice President of Operations in a $200M company. There must be a myth circulating that its acceptable to hide how old you are so you can secure an in-person interview. Then what? Dazzle them with your brilliance? You can do that at 25 or 65. Happy New Year. Please take this to heart. Rose Mattran Mon, 03 Jan 2011 09:01:33 CSThttp://www.mattrangroup.com/refresh/templates/blog_entry.php?blog_id=16Fri, 17 Dec 2010 01:12:33 CST - The Harvard Business Review Press recently published an important book by Peter Cappelli and Bill Novelli titled Managing the Older Worker. While their book is directed toward the managerial relationship between an older worker and younger boss, their statistics make a compelling argument for including workers over 60 in your candidate pools. Theres plenty of information about the aging population and baby boom/bust and how demographics alone will create an aging workforce. But Cappelli and Novelli tell us more about the kinds of workers and value the older workers bring to a company. Here are a few examples: Older workers are not motivated as much by money, but the feeling of being needed, and appreciated for doing a good job. They are not interested in climbing a corporate ladder. Older workers want to stay mentally and physically active. They want to do something worthwhile, learn something new and help others. They are very reliable, often more flexible with work schedules. Contrast these attributes to the Gen Y or Millenniums who have been repeatedly been termed self-centered, unstable and immature, and you can see why a glance in the direction of the older worker may be a better cultural match for your company. Rose Mattran Fri, 17 Dec 2010 01:12:33 CSThttp://www.mattrangroup.com/refresh/templates/blog_entry.php?blog_id=14Thu, 02 Dec 2010 10:12:20 CST - If you listen to the medias relentless harping on the near 10% unemployment rate and happen to be a business owner or manager trying to hire a skilled worker, you are probably confused and wondering why you cant find good people to hire. Watching the change in the employment market over the last two years had led us to the conclusion that most of the unemployed are actually unemployable - particularly in the corporate segments where we routinely work. The really good people, for the most part, are working. Yes, some have gotten caught in corporate closings, but in general, unemployment in the mid to senior level segments we work has been consistently around 4.5%. Skilled, well-educated and highly motivated employees are in great demand, and we will affirm that there are more available positions than qualified candidates to fill them. So how do you attract and hire the best and brightest workers? Here are a few things to think about: Be aware that your quest for attracting talent begins with how you approach the marketplace. Are you posting a position on a job board that is meant to attract the unemployables? Or, are you hiring professional representation to uncover the talented people who you would really like to hire? Is your interviewing process in the hands of the people who are only marginally capable of describing the position and career opportunity to your candidates? Or have you engaged a highly trained professional who thinks beyond matching key words on job descriptions with resumes? Have your hiring managers been conducting the same interview with everyone for the last 20 years? Or, are your hiring managers professionally coached on how to interview each individual candidate so they fully understand their motivation for joining your company? Effective hiring is not about being able to identify talented candidates. Its about the process that starts when you find them. Rose Mattran Thu, 02 Dec 2010 10:12:20 CSThttp://www.mattrangroup.com/refresh/templates/blog_entry.php?blog_id=2Tue, 16 Nov 2010 01:11:18 CST - Welcome to our new website. Its been under construction for a while, perhaps longer than some of us would like, but from my perspective, thats a good thing. It has allowed us time to think and re-think many aspects of our business and what we have really been doing for the last 23 years. Sales Consultants of Sarasota was opened in 1987 and from the start we have been fielding questions like, Do you handle engineering or manufacturing placements? or, You guys just do sales and marketing, right? So our name change was somewhat inspired by wanting to reduce the prominence of the word sales in our name. But probably the more significant reason for initiating the change, is wanting to un-bundle the skills that contribute to our consistently high performance in the executive search process, and offer them as stand-alone services. We have created products to help you in less monumental ways than adding to your permanent headcount. We have been listening to your concerns and are here to help you. So we hope you enjoy the new look to our website and spend some time investigating the new services we will offer, as well as this front page blog. It will be updated twice each month and contain short and topical comments from us, and whatever we can legally borrow from the great business minds of our era. We are all very excited about where we are headed and hope you will stay with us for the next chapter. More good things will follow. Rose Mattran Tue, 16 Nov 2010 01:11:18 CSThttp://www.mattrangroup.com/refresh/templates/blog_entry.php?blog_id=1