Ascension Career Coaching

04/30/2020

This episode will focus on all things related to interviewing and the 5 types (Pre screen, Informal meet up, Formal, Panel & Video)

04/06/2020

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5 Things You Didn't Know Recruiters Look for On Your Resume

Looking for a job in 2020? Read this.

Looking for a job can be exciting. It can also feel intimidating, draining, and vulnerable. You're putting yourself out there, "selling" yourself, trying to convince others of your value.

Like dating, your mindset can swing drastically from day to day, from "I've got this!" to, "This is never going to happen. No one is ever going to want me ever again."

It doesn't help that a job search is often compounded by financial pressure. You may have limited savings and a definite need to find a new position quickly.

Wherever you are in the process, it's important to remember that no matter how you feel, you are capable and resourceful. This is doable. You're simply looking for a way to contribute in the world ... and there are hiring managers out there right now looking for someone just like you.

Here are a few things those recruiters and hiring managers look for:

1. Keywords

You already know recruiters look for keywords, but probably not just how much. As career transformation coach Pat Nunno Roque points out, "Nearly 75% of resumes are rejected because they're not correctly ATS (Applicant Tracking System)-formatted or keyword-optimized."

Read that again--almost 75 percent of resumes are rejected right off the bat because they don't have the right formatting and keywords.

The solution? Make sure your resume has the right keywords for the industry. If you're working with a career coach or professional resume editor, ensure this is part of their service. If you're doing it yourself, run your resume through tools like Jobscan or ZipJob to make sure you've got the right keywords in there.

2. The connection between your resume and your LinkedIn profile

I've been guilty not aligning this in the past. In my haste to send out resumes, I've forgotten to scan and edit my LinkedIn profile to ensure that it matches.

The resume you send out needs to sync with information on your LinkedIn profile--they need to tell the same story.

One of the first things a recruiter will do is look at your LinkedIn profile, and they like to see the same companies or organizations you mentioned on your resume, as well as the same kind of story. If you're applying for marketing positions, you should have at least one of those up there, and the bullet points on it should match what you're putting on your resume.

3. Pedigree (not)

Most people think recruiters and hiring managers care deeply about where you went to school. Sure, it looks good if you went to an Ivy League school--but that's not what most recruiters are looking for.

Recruiters and hiring managers want to know you can do the job. Period. It's far more important to them that they see a story of growth and contribution on your resume than that you attended a specific school.

For example, a recruiter for Accenture said that when recruiting for a software engineering position in a past role, she was more interested in people who'd graduated from coding bootcamps than those with a BS in Computer Science from a prestigious college.

Why? In part because the coding bootcamp people (especially if they'd graduated recently) were more likely to be up-to-date in terms of their knowledge base. But also because a college degree doesn't matter as much to a recruiter as whether you can do the job they need to fill.

(It's worth noting that this came up during a conversation with a friend who wants to transition from massage therapy into software engineering and was thinking of going back to school for software engineering. "Don't do that," advised our mutual friend, the recruiter. "Save yourself the time and money and just go to a good coding bootcamp.")

4. Interesting hobbies

Recruiters get bored scanning thousands of resumes. It's fun for them to see your unique hobbies and/or interests (and interesting to discuss in an interview).

Don't go crazy discussing your passion for chinchillas; but don't be afraid to leave a line or two at the end of your resume to drop in a few of your interests.

5. How you improved processes

According to Laszlo Bock, Google's SVP of People Operations, one of the easiest ways to make your resume stand out is to use a simple 3-step process when crafting bullet points on your resume.

The point of the process is to help you to clearly tell the story of how you generated change or impact in your organization. The more specific you are--especially in terms of numbers and percentages--the better.

Remember: This is doable.

Now get out there and do it.

By Melanie CurtinWriter, activist@melaniebcurtin

Looking for a job involves soul-searching as well as practical help. Recruiters, hiring managers, new teams and companies all look for similar things.

04/06/2020

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Going Virtual With a Career Fair

We’re living in strange times. Hiring the right candidates is challenging enough without a national crisis, but especially now, recruiters have it tough. As a result, many are turning to virtual events.

Of course, you probably already know that, because everyone everywhere is turning to virtual everything. Yet despite not being able to hold in-person events, your goal remains the same: hire the best talent. Meanwhile, recruiters everywhere are also scrambling to provide a stellar candidate experience in these unprecedented times of uncertainty.

So if you’re considering hosting a virtual career fair — and you probably should be — here are four ways to ensure your event is a success:

1. Highlight the Human Connection
Undoubtedly, the biggest challenge of holding events online is the risk of losing human connection. After all, how can we build relationships without shaking hands and making eye contact?

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to focus on human connection and get results from your events. You can start by personalizing your email invitations. It’s OK to use some form of automation or mass email, but make sure you are leading with the person’s name and customizing it to the role the person would be interested in.

You should also make emails a reflection of your company’s brand by infusing messaging that brings out your organization’s personality. My favorite way to accomplish this is by using the “write-like-you-speak” (or how an exemplar of your company would speak) technique to really make a connection.

Lastly, it can be really easy to hide behind text-based chats, but after a while, texting can come across as lukewarm, at best. If you really want to stand out, consider adding video to your events. This can be as simple as a video presentation at the beginning of the event where you have a hiring manager share details about your company, culture, and values.

Indeed, videos are an especially terrific way to bolster your employer branding. Unfortunately, many employers make videos without thinking about what candidates want to know, or use the same videos for years.

Keep in mind that job-seekers prefer to watch videos of hiring managers and see employee-generated content, as opposed to recruiter videos. Also, use candidate personas when planning video content, and update your videos based on candidate feedback.

2. Marketing Is Half the Battle
Just because you build a virtual hiring event doesn’t mean that candidates will come. Marketing is half the battle.

Email is often the primary method for promoting a virtual career fair, and it can yield excellent results if you create a targeted list of invitees from your candidate database. Re-engaging former candidates is always the lowest hanging fruit, but it’s one you should definitely grab!

You should also promote your events via your social-media channels. Start a few weeks or a month before the event, and post multiple times to increase the chances that the right job-seekers will learn about it.

At the same time, be sure to post about your event on your careers site, which can entail leveraging a chatbot and highlighting the event on job-specific pages.

3. User-Friendliness Is the Other Half
This should be a no-brainer…yet many employers are still hosting virtual career fairs that aren’t easy to join or participate in. The most successful events are mobile-friendly and simple for candidates to join with a single click. After all, it’s important to make the job hunt as painless as possible.

It doesn’t end there, though. To truly create a frictionless experience for candidates, prepare them in advance by explaining the purpose and structure of your event before it starts. Additionally, communicate with candidates about how to get help before, during, and after your event if they have questions or technical issues.

Lastly, don’t go live until you host a practice event for your team. That’s the best way to validate what works and uncover what doesn’t. What is confusing? What needs more explanation? Candidate experience matters now just as much as it did before the pandemic. Make sure you are on the top of your game!

4. Continue the Conversation
Following up with candidates is also essential. If your hiring managers weren’t part of your event, you should connect them with top candidates right after to engage people and keep them in your pipeline.

This will also seem self-evident, but it’s sometimes amazing how often employers forget to do this: Email attendees after your event, thank them for their time, and include a feedback survey. Also communicate next steps to candidates whom you’d like to move forward. Consistent, transparent communication helps ensure a great candidate experience.

Ultimately, we don’t know how long we’ll be recruiting in a world of social distancing, but even when it’s safe to gather again, virtual career fairs should remain a big part of your conversational recruiting strategy. Continue honing your process and look for new ways to build relationships with candidates. By JOE MATARAPRIL 1, 2020

We’re living in strange times. Hiring the right candidates is challenging enough without a national crisis, but especially now, recruiters have it tough. As a result, many are turning to virtual events. Of course, you probably already know that, because everyone everywhere is turning to virtual ev...

04/06/2020

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4 Ways Diversity Is Directly Linked to Profitability

Recruiting employees from different backgrounds is the surest way to stay competitive.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Workforce diversity is becoming an increasingly vital component in the business world. There is good reason for this trend. Research shows that more diverse staffs have been linked to rising company productivity levels, which directly correlate with increased profitability. In fact, Barron’s recently published an article highlighting the many ways diversity has measurable impacts on firms’s success. In short, today’s businesses simply cannot afford to ignore diversity when hiring.

Bottom lines are impacted by diversity across the board: gender and sexuality, ethnicity — even age, which is often overlooked as a category of potential discrimination. Understanding how diversity of all types affects profitability is the first step to incorporating this broader-minded philosophy into a company’s culture. Below are four ways diversity impacts the bottom line for businesses of all sizes.

1. Diversity attracts more talent
Companies that display ethnic, gender and age diversity appeal to a broader spectrum of job seekers, giving those companies a better chance at attracting top talent. Today’s companies are in a fierce competition for the best employees and are always looking for ways to draw them in. Simply put, diverse companies appeal to a diverse workforce and have a distinct advantage over companies that do not have a healthy percentage of women and people of color and varying ages on staff. When recruiting, businesses that source candidates from a diverse base are more likely to hire people with diverse characteristics.

2. Different experiences lead to more innovation
If everyone on the team thinks the same way, there’s little room for innovation, which creates a stifling environment for inventing the next big thing. On the other hand, people from dissimilar walks of life approach the world from a wide range of perspectives and offer unique intellectual capital to the companies for which they work.

Listening to the viewpoints of those who have had different experiences engenders richer brainstorming sessions, which foster outside-the-box thinking and higher levels of creativity for today’s companies. These sessions can in turn lead to an idea or invention that will help a firm distinguish itself from its competitors and become more successful.

3. Diverse thought leads to increased customer satisfaction
Serving the end user is difficult if a company’s decision-making team doesn’t include people who can relate to that customer. A diverse team is more likely to relate to a particular audience’s wants, needs and pain points, creating greater opportunities to resonate with customers. Also, a diverse staff introduces the potential to reach new demographics in ways that might not have come to light with a homogenous group at the helm. Ultimately, customer volume and satisfaction can be improved through higher levels of diversity, which raises profitability.

4. A diverse team resonates with both customers and investors
Today’s investors and customers are keeping a keen eye on Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) when it comes to the companies they invest in and support. Diversity is playing an increasing role in how these groups assess ESG. As clients and customers become more diverse, they want to work with and support diverse people; therefore, these groups seek out companies that actively and openly champion diversity as a pillar of their philosophy. Having a more diverse workforce gives entrepreneurial firms a better chance of connecting with the investors and customers who will help them grow their businesses.

Growing demand to increase company diversity is leading to a greater emphasis on this characteristic in the business realm. Just as sustainability was once a “nice-to-have” quality in a company and is now a necessity, diversity is fast becoming the norm rather than the exception among businesses. By recognizing how diversity is linked with greater innovation, increased customer volume and satisfaction, better ESG profiles and a higher likelihood of attracting top talent, entrepreneurial firms can begin to incorporate diverse hiring strategies that will lead to rising profitability.

- Jana Turner, Principal, RETS Associates CONTRIBUTOR

Recruiting employees from different backgrounds is the surest way to stay competitive.