It’s amazing how many great lessons about recruiting and managing you can learn from your kids’ sports activities. For instance, I’ve been helping coach my younger daughter’s softball teams for many years now, and I’ve learned that the approach I typically use to manage a team when times are good don’t fare as well when the going gets tough. Sound familiar? I’ll explain.
Question: When I interviewed for two excellent jobs recently, I was reminded of the following fable:
It’s that time of year when spiders and other creepy-crawly creatures seem to be everywhere, whether crawling around your home thanks to falling temperatures outdoors, or in the form of children’s costumes for Halloween.
A Seattle area reader I'll call "Mark" recently wrote me about a sticky employment situation he found himself in:
Here is some good news about the job market: One of the nation's leading department store chains announced last week it will hire 78,000 temporary workers for the holiday season, up four percent from the number it hired last year. Hopefully, other stores, services and businesses will show similar optimism about the 2011 season and follow suit. If you consider a temporary or part-time job during the holiday season, right now is the time to begin applying for those jobs. Waiting even a few weeks might significantly decrease the odds of finding a holiday position...
In the current economy, companies are often expected to turn on a dime in response to changing market needs in order to stay vibrant . What that means is that many companies are constantly reorganizing-not just every year but sometimes as frequently as every 6 months. Employees live in a constant state of change including new processes, new procedures, new bosses, and new organizational structures.
Cover letters continue to be a mystery to many job seekers. Questions such as what type of information to include, how long should the cover letter be and how to grab a recruiter’s attention plague job seekers as they look to make their application stand out .
If you’re looking for a job, you may want to head to the central time zone. The four cities with the most hiring activity in September are located there. Despite being one of the worst cities to find a job, Memphis showed the greatest improvement in managerial hiring with a 13% gain in September. The only other cities to show any improvement were Nashville (+3%), Milwaukee (+2%) and Chicago (+1%). Unfortunately, hiring activity dropped double digits (10%) in Miami, Hartford and Philadelphia. Losses were also seen in Boston (-9%), San Diego (-8%), and Denver (-8%).