Posts tagged with “hr”

Twenty years ago the best way to find a job was to speak to your personal network (which is still the best way), scan the newspaper classifieds and call the employer, or go to a career fair. Unfortunately, nearly everything we do has become automated or online or more efficient in one way or another, thus minimizing interpersonal contact. As such, the best way to get your resume in the hands of a hiring manager is to use the most direct route possible. Job boards are easy and you can definitely focus on quantity over quality by utilizing that route, but is that the best way to find the job?

Working with a recruiter and staffing agency can be a quite daunting task. You never really know the amount of contact they have with the manager, sometimes they are vague in the requirements they have, occasionally you will hear from the recruiter in the beginning and then never again.

How do you distinguish who you should work with and who would be wasting your time?

A study done recently in Canada came up with some bad news for minorities in the job market: resumes with non-anglo names on them received 40% fewer calls back from potential employers than those with English names -- even when they had exactly the same experience and qualifications.

Why the difference? Of course that's hard to say but experts think it's a mix of possible concerns about a person's ability to use the English language effectively in business, and a simple preference for hiring someone that's the same ethnicity as oneself. Sometimes it's a conscious choice but often it's completely unintentional.

What do you think, have you seen or experienced anything like this?

It's been a couple weeks and you haven't heard back. Is it time to follow up with HR?

Laurie Ruettimann from PunkRockHR.com says no. The goal isn't to follow up with HR, but to figure out who the hiring manager is and follow up directly with them. While this may seem difficult, plenty of search and social networking sites are around to help make this task far easier than it used to be.

Laurie also points out one key point to remember no matter who you are following up with -- Stalkers don't get hired. Don't go overboard.