Glassdoor Blog » John Sumser

Social Job Hunting Trifecta: Opportunity, Insider Info and Connections

John Sumser — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:00:37 +0000

There is a lot of fuss going around about using your social network(s) in job hunting. The theory is that your friends can help you find a job. Somehow, some way, you should be able to bet your future on the folks you know.

On LinkedIn, it’s possible to store your resume (or its equivalent) online so that recruiters can find you. There isn’t a very good way to actually engage in a job search. If you are disciplined enough to search for all of your friends and acquaintances, you can build a network that may expose you to some opportunities.

Glassdoor is the TripAdvisor or Yelp for companies. A trip through the pages of Glassdoor will tell you about working conditions, the job interview process, salaries and what employees think of the CEO. It’s a sort of a Michelin guide to employers. Over many years, the company has curated an enormous bounty of reviews, reports, salary data and help for navigating the internal HR process.

By itself, it’s a diamond in the rough waiting for people to come and get smart about the companies they want to work for. Increasingly, Glassdoor is recommended as the first stop in any job search. The primary question you can answer on the site is “What’s it like to work for Company x?”

This week, Glassdoor is merging two other streams of data to create a single environment for job hunters.

Glassdoor has always had a flow of millions of job listings. When people come to research jobs and companies, they get the web’s most comprehensive picture of the inside of the company, the jobs available, what it’s like to work there and the details of the hiring process.

With Inside Connections, Glassdoor allows job hunters to harness their Facebook network to round out the rest of the services. Using Facebook to log in to the site makes it possible for Glassdoor to evaluate your Facebook network to see who can help you with the job hunt.

It’s a Social Job Hunting Trifecta: Opportunity, insider info and connections.

Glassdoor is built on anonymity and the company goes to extreme lengths to keep members’ information private. Posting a review or salary on Glassdoor is still anonymous. You still get to choose the information you share, such as your job title and location.

There are a host of services in the marketplace that try to serve job hunters by using social information. Glassdoor is the first to provide a comprehensive research environment where results are driven by the user’s social network.

Social Job Hunting Trifecta: Opportunity, Insider Info and Connections is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Job Hunting Tricks For Veterans

John Sumser — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:00:28 +0000

Job Hunting for Veterans is very different than it is for civilians. Veterans face misunderstanding and suspicion in their search for work. Translating military experience into something a civilian boss can understand is a unique challenge.

The United States Military is a land unto itself. It’s a place where the language is a sub-dialect of English focused on the specific tasks and realities of military life. It’s hard to overestimate the difference between being inside and being a civilian.

At about $1 trillion in annual budget outlays, the first layer of Defense spending is over 4% of the economy. When you add the local impact of those dollars, it’s easy to argue that Defense has a 10% footprint. The size of the budget swings significantly depending on whether the military is actively engaged in conflict operations. The world that gives us veterans is a big maze.

It involves a lot of people. Roughly 1.5 million people are active military, 500 thousand civilians support them, another 900 thousand are in ‘reserve’ forces. That’s nearly 3 million before you count the various shapes and kinds of Defense contractors, vendors, suppliers and family members. (Wikipedia)

The unique tasks and orientations of the military make it a relatively closed ecosystem. But when it shrinks and swells, it has significant consequence for the worlds around it. Military veterans have extraordinary levels of experience. Responsibility, which is won slowly in civilian life is big and rapidly acquired. Being responsible for the lives and safety of your peers on an always on basis matures active duty personnel quickly.

This means that veterans face different competitive pressures than the rest of us. When there are a lot of veterans in the market for work, things seem harder.

Because it is a highly technical environment, veterans are comfortable with the complexities of decision making in a high stress, high data, high ambiguity environment. Typically, great responsibility is placed on the shoulders of relatively young people. After time in the military, the rest of the world seems smaller and less important.

Under ‘normal circumstances’, about 250 thousand people leave the active duty military each year. As the various global conflicts conclude that number will grow for the next several years. The predictable problems associated with translating military experience into civilian language significantly slows the rate at which veterans make the transition.

The unemployment rate for vets is bad and getting worse. “Fair or not, eight years in the Army is viewed by some employers as eight years without private-sector skills and experience,” says Business Week. “The skills issue is particularly troubling. Hiring is strongest in jobs that require specialized education, and weakest for blue collar jobs……Even military jobs that are in the right ballpark for growth industries — say, software or electronics technician — may involve specialization that doesn’t readily apply to Silicon Valley’s Web 2.0 or software-services jobs.”

If you are a veteran getting ready to join the civilian workforce, here are several things you can do to ease the transition.

Start reading FastCompany. This site and magazine are the best single source for insight into the language and culture of American business. Remember, you are coming from a different culture and you need to ‘go local’. FastCompany will give you the clues you need to start to pass as a native. After a while it gets easier.
When you move from the military to civilian life, you always go from being a little fish in a big pond to being a big fish in a little pond. The trouble is that your colleagues may not know this. Be patient as you learn about new work environments.
GlassDoor is a great place to survey both the ways that people think about their employers and what it’s like to work there. Read about the employers you’d like to work for.
Some common military management techniques don’t work quite as well in the civilian world. The difference is that employment is generally ‘at will’ for both employer and employee. The great things you learned about ‘toughing it out’ don’t translate very well.
Being in the military forces you to be very good at decision making. Most civilians don’t have this sort of leadership experience. If you relax, you can emerge as a natural leader because of your training.
Understand how your military skills translate into civilian skills. Both Military.com and Jibe.com have useful ways to translate your skills into job requirements.
Prepare to work hard on the transition. Time in the military is a firm foundation for the rest of your life. The first step in making the most of it is learning to translate it into civilian terms.

Job Hunting Tricks For Veterans is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Personal Branding: Workplace Narcissism Or An Effective Practice?

John Sumser — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:00:45 +0000

Branding is a term that has its roots in the heyday of the American West. A brand was burnt into the hyde of an animal so that, after the snows were gone, a rancher could figure out whose animal belonged to whom. A brand signified that this cow was owned by that guy.

Brands were idiosyncratic icons that could be easily recognized. Applied with red hot steel in the iconic shape, clear differences between brands were essential. Cattle rustlers and horse thieves were treated to severe consequences so ownership had to be brutally clear.

The cows never had the benefit of anesthesia.

You’ve certainly heard about personal branding. It’s the idea that the entire world needs to be able to distinguish you from all of the other people who are pretending to be you, or competing with you for a job. While a hot branding iron is not required in order to brand oneself, extraordinary attention to differentiation is.

The business of personal branding, which resembles the behavior of young children preening in front of a mirror, is a new form of narcissism. It is rooted in the notion that celebrity can be a key to career success. Nothing is further from the truth.

Bosses and coworkers hate prima donnas. The more you practice personal branding, the more they are going to want to sear your behind with a red hot personal avatar. Workplace associates prefer those who pitch in to those who kiss up.

Personal Branding: Workplace Narcissism Or An Effective Practice? is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Holiday Job Hunting: No Better Time Than Now, Really

John Sumser — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:54:46 +0000

Ask around. Most of the incumbent career coaches are going to tell you that job hunting gets tough in December. They say that decisions don’t get made, recruiters are slacking off, budgets are slamming shut and interviewers are glazing over. The ‘end of the year slump’ is like most of the other down times in the hiring cycle.

It’s an illusion. Believe it and you’ll relax your efforts. That’s the very stuff of which self-fulfilling prophesies are made.

It’s an illusion. Refuse to believe it and you’ll discover a world of decision makers with a little bit of time on their hands. There are openings if you’ll just take advantage of them.

Great executives lead by example. That means that the exact kind of people you’d love to work with are in their offices on days like the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Most of the people in their organizations are working at half speed so they are alone in the office with time on their hands. They’re busy setting examples and have no scheduled meetings.

There is no better time to get your story in front of them.

As always, the only trick to a successful job hunt is knowing what you want. As you reach out to the leaders you hope to work for, keep the following things in mind.

Keep your message short and clear. Practice describing your goal until you can say it in under a minute. When you get your next boss on the phone, you need to be flawless.
Find their phone number in advance. Use LinkedIn to identify the people you want to talk to. They are the managers of the groups you hope to work in. Find their phone numbers by calling into the company and asking for them by name (preferably after hours).
Send your resume, on paper, in advance. Address it to the attention of the person you are going to call.
Begin your call with a solid value opener. “I know you are working on X and I am in a position to really help”. You’ll know what X is by looking at their LinkedIn profile.
Tell them what you want to do. 60 seconds. Max.
Offer a money back guarantee. “Let me come into the office. I’ll work for a week. Then, let’s talk about whether or not you want to hire me. If you don’t, I won’t charge you.”
Be persistent.

The holiday season can be the perfect time to look for work. They’re not so busy, you’re not so busy.

Holiday Job Hunting: No Better Time Than Now, Really is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

The Value Of Building Your Personal Brand

John Sumser — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:24:10 +0000

Have you heard about personal branding? It’s the idea that in the 21st Century, you are responsible for the degree to which you are known; that you are responsible for your own marketing.

The theory goes that you are a brand and your success depends on that brand being widely visible. So, you need to have sexy visuals, lots of recommendations on LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization of your profile and resume (this is a trick that makes your profile appear higher in search results).

You need a personal coach, a visual resume, video clips and a hundred other services. Then, people will easily find you and yours will be a life of leisure.

It’s a lopsided battle. Since there are only two or three John Sumsers, we don’t have to fight very much to see who’s on the top of the Google search results (I usually win). For the John Smiths of the world, Google-centric employment branding is some kind of a nightmare.

It is true that marketing is a personal responsibility in the 21st Century. We are being freed from our safety nets. At the same time. technology is making it possible for us to tell our stories in interesting ways. We are all going to have our own personal advertising agencies staffed by, who else, us.

Google the term ‘personal brand’. There’s a magazine, a Wikipedia entry, tips galore and the earnest enthusiasm of early adopter evangelists.

To hear the soothsayers tell it, you need a broad public face that competes with large corporate brands.

This is more of the foolishness that is brought to you by the people who think that your friends are a network that can get you a job, recommend a restaurant and help you find a church. Somehow, your network is uniquely suited to deliver you to the exact people with whom you wish to interact. That’s the magic formula. You have to build your own personal marketing department while exploiting the connections you’ve made by working on the little league team and tending the community garden.

Assume that the gargantuan stuff is poppycock. Actually, you can assume it is something much more guttural, I just can’t call it that here.

But, you do need to toot your own horn in the world in which you live.

Most of us live in small cities where the employment and income generating opportunities are very specific. We don’t need to build personal brands as an avocation; we need to build our reputations as great workers and contributors.

If 100 people in your town know that you are an amazing plumber, coder, customer service rep, leader, executive or whatever, that’s probably enough to grease the skids of your career. While you do need to work on and manage your reputation, you don’t need a personal brand consultant.

Unless your name is something like John Smith, you live in a huge city and have no idea what you want to do.

The Value Of Building Your Personal Brand is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Reinvent Yourself To Land A New Job

John Sumser — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:00:39 +0000

The New York Times recently ran a story about the new Catsup from Heinz. It’s got Balsamic Vinegar in it. Can you think of anything more mundane than Catsup? Yet, Heinz builds their empire on it and has reinvented it a kajillion times.

Remember ‘Anticipation’? How about the ever present squeeze bottle. Do you recall when they started marketing the lid on the bottom? It’s all plain old high profit Catsup.

If you’ve had more than a little bit of career, someone has undoubtedly told you that you need to reinvent yourself. If you’re like me, that sounds like a big task and at least a little impossible. I wonder, ‘How do I do this reinvention thing?”

Just think about Heinz. They didn’t make the Catsup into Mustard or Mayonnaise; just new bottles and new theme songs. In this iteration, the balsamic vinegar replaces the standard white vinegar in the recipe. Nothing complicated.

That’s it. If you want to reinvent yourself, you need to do the equivalent of making a new bottle, creating a new theme or substituting one ingredient for the other.

Reinvention really means changing the way that you describe your skills and talents. It requires learning to think about yourself a little differently. Using the song “Anticipation” helped Heinz focus attention on what was always considered a product weakness, the slowness of the pour.

Imagine what it took to think about the fact that you have to hit the bottle as a strength. That’s the only way to get the upside down bottle marketing.

Finally, the squeeze bottle was the permanent solution to the pourability question. It wasn’t possible until technology made mass squeezing available.

Here are some exercises that might help you with your reinvention.

What is your greatest weakness? The other day, someone told me that I was too smart and always made things complicated. Try to imagine your foible as the trademark for your brand.
Imagine that you’re a car. What about you is like headlights? How would changing them to LEDs change the way you think about and describe yourself.
The Art of Shaving has turned a mundane ritual into a celebration of things male. What is something you do so often that you take it for granted? How could you portray it as a serious strength.

My friend Brian was a construction estimator in the first part of this century. He also had a side business as an artist. He was a gregarious member of his church.

Today, he is a pretty successful social media strategist. He took the estimating and project management parts of his construction job, added his reputation for good design and finished it off with business development skills.

It wasn’t easy. It also wasn’t a complete bulldozer job on his life and career. He simply took the bits and pieces and rearranged them. It took about a year.

And now, he’s the new Balsamic Brian.

Reinvent Yourself To Land A New Job is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Why Honesty Will Help You Land The Job

John Sumser — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:31:13 +0000

They say companies don’t want to hire people who are unemployed. They say that it’s harder to find work if you are over 45, female, a recent college graduate, an auto worker, from the construction industry, or a single dad. Then they say that lying on your resume will get you disqualified.

Hmmm… They sure say a lot of stuff, don’t they?

In our culture, the whole process of getting a job is more taboo than the sorts of steamy sex you can see on cable in the evening. It’s more okay to talk about the ways in which we are broken or are victims than it is to discuss the real challenges of finding work. From every corner comes the message that you should be ashamed if you are unemployed, underemployed or actively looking for work.

If you’re in the market for a job, the competing ideas create a real box. Don’t let them know you are unemployed, but don’t lie on your job application. Hide your identity and preferences in order to avoid discrimination, but never, ever misrepresent yourself.

When you need the work and fall into one of these categories, it’s easy to be confused and bewildered. Fear, the great destroyer of integrity, moves right into your heart during bouts of economic transition. It’s natural to yield to the temptation to lie and pretend.

Don’t give in to it.

Fear and dishonesty are symptoms of a lack of self-confidence. If you are trying to pretend you are someone or something other than who you are, people will be able to tell. Human beings are amazing in their ability to sniff out desperation.

Low self-confidence snowballs. Every little shortcut you take on the way to being something you’re not results in longer pauses in your conversations, stiffer responses to interview questions, inability to maintain eye contact and a sort of tinny sound when you speak. People who are hiding something (and that’s what it feels like once you start lying about who you are) always sound that way.

The real problem is that dishonesty is a slippery slope. Once lying becomes okay, there’s no telling where it stops. The best job hunting advice anyone can give you is “always be honest”.

So, what do you do if you really believe that you are a member of a class of people who are being discriminated against?

First of all, don’t knuckle under. Be who you are and be proud of it. Remember Popeye the Sailor who famously said, “I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam”.
Second, like all objects of discrimination, you are going to have to work harder than the others. I know, I know, it’s not fair. So what? You are just going to have to get used to it.
Third, stop acting like you are entitled to a job. It may feel like you are being left out of all the fun. It usually looks like you are whining. Saying that you are being discriminated against (or even feeling that way) never comes across in a useful way. Just stop it. Get therapy if you have to.
Fourth, know what you are good at, what you are bad at, and what you are learning. Those are the stories that employers want to hear. Clear self perception and a demonstrated willingness to learn are signs of enterprise and the willingness to work hard. Employers seek these things.
Finally, get clear with yourself that nothing in the employment world is worth lying about.

The economy is changing. Where we used to have the luxury of deriving our self concept from our vocation, now we have to find it in our lives. In the end, we are responsible for building our own self esteem. It begins by being up front about what and who we are.

Why Honesty Will Help You Land The Job is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

5 Steps To Improve Your Online Profile & Get Noticed

John Sumser — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 14:00:37 +0000

While the good old resume is in no danger of disappearing, you’d better have your online profiles in shape. Something like 80% of all employers check you out online when you apply for a job. Assuming that you’re smart enough to have tailored your Facebook profile during the job hunt, you need to focus on the things that will get you noticed, examined and hired.

While it used to be true that LinkedIn was THE place to host your professional profile, upstarts like BeKnown (from Monster) are making headway in the social job hunt. You’ll want to test out the new sites by building a profile and watching the results. It’s worth noting that the newer entrants have more reason to work for your success. After all, like you, they are trying to make a name for themselves.

When you post a profile or resume somewhere, you only have one goal: to get noticed by the right recruiter for the right job. Once your resume is on the list, it needs to grab the recruiter’s attention with data points that highlight your success and effectiveness in jobs like the one you want. Your profile needs to scream “Pick me! pick me! pick me! Hey, look over here and pick me.”

Here are five steps to improve your profile to get the attention you want.

Study the descriptions of jobs you’d like to have. Read the job descriptions and learn the jargon. Print out 20. Prioritize them (from 1 to 20) by the degree of their appeal to you. Go over them line by line with the person who is your job hunt sounding board. Be able to explain why you prefer one over the other.
Now that you have a very clear picture of which words recruiters are using to define the jobs you want, make a list of the 30 most commonly used words in those job descriptions. This is a critical step. These are the words that recruiters are searching for when you want them to find you.
With the list in hand, rewrite your profile to make sure that you use each of those keywords at least 3 times in your profile. Be careful to make sure that your language flows gracefully. If it appears that you’ve simply stuffed the profile with key words, you are going to get ignored.
Look for services that use your profile to match you to jobs. See if your profile matches you to the jobs you want. If it doesn’t, tweak it and watch what happens. The best profiles are tested and retested and you learn about what the market is currently offering.
Be extremely attentive to your current job title and job description. What matters is how the recruiter will think about it, not how you, your boss or your colleagues think about it. Search LinkedIn for people with the same job title and look to see how they’ve described their job and experience. Many companies, maybe even most, have unique and idiosyncratic names for their jobs. The closer yours is to what they’re looking for, the better off you are.

The profile is here to stay. You have to manage it like it was a new puppy. By paying attention to the grooming and feeding of your online profiles, you can increase the chances of finding the job you want.

5 Steps To Improve Your Online Profile & Get Noticed is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Why Where You Live Matters In Your Job Search

John Sumser — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:00:57 +0000

You’ve no doubt heard the endless noise about the value you can get from your social media network in the job hunt. You’ve probably also wondered why it seems to work so well on TV and in the blogs but not for you. It feels like the celebrated technique works out there, but not in here.

The great information deluge of the 21st Century often makes us feel dumb. (I feel overwhelmed by the data flow. I assume that you do, too.) We live in a time where fact and market hype are not always easy to tell apart.

The idea that your friends are a network and therefore a powerful weapon in your job search comes from Malcolm Gladwell’s popularization of Social Network Theory. No doubt, you are familiar with the idea that everyone is separated by 6 phone calls. This Six Degrees of Freedom idea is the foundation of the famous Kevin Bacon Trivia game.

I have no doubt that you could get Bill Gates on the phone in six calls if you had good reason and a compelling idea. The same is probably true for any public figure you could identify. A good idea, a compelling reason and some determination puts you in the right frame of mind to make that connection.

And, to execute on that, you’d want to work through your friends. Getting in touch with someone you can identify as a target is feasible in six calls.

The problem with most job hunts is that you have no idea who you are trying to connect with. Unlike famous people, hiring managers are not usually surrounded by a throng of people who might be connected to someone whose connections you might be connected to. They’re often busy working and have a close circle of friends.

That you can’t find work through your friends is neither their fault nor yours.

If you are like most people, you live in the region you grew up in. Your friends are a collection of relationships with deep historical roots. As you’ve aged, the geography has broadened.

But not by all that much.

Your job prospects have much more to do with the local economic climate than they do with your network. For those of us who aren’t on the Billionaire’s list, where we live has a profound impact on the opportunities available to us. Our future is every bit as bright as the future of our region.

Sometimes, that’s not so good.

The world has become a patchwork of economies in different states of maturity with different issues in the local labor supply. If you feel like your opportunities are limited and/or you have been out of work for a substantial period, you are going to have to consider moving.

The decline of industries is a natural thing. Global competition from economies with younger people is predictable. Finding good work is a personal responsibility. When the opportunities seem slim, it’s time to consider your options closely.

Why Where You Live Matters In Your Job Search is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

How To Ask For & Get Online Recommendations

John Sumser — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:00:43 +0000

As an experiment, I recently asked 20 friends to write me a recommendation on LinkedIn. About 25% of the people I asked actually completed a recommendation. Even then, I didn’t really like everything that everyone said. I chose not to show all of them on my profile.

As a job hunter, having recommendations available online is a really valuable thing. Most employers do some level of online background checking. It usually amounts to a quick look at your Facebook page and LinkedIn profile. Having several recommendations visible when they look will instantly add to your credibility.

Here’s how to ask for and get the recommendations you want:

Always ask people who know you well enough to write a glowing recommendation. You’ll know who these folks are. Time on LinkedIn or some other social network is not good enough. Ask people who have worked with you and are familiar with you as a whole person.
The best way to get a nicely done recommendation is to write one first. This exchange happens routinely. Take a look at the recommendations on a few pages and compare those to the recommendations on the recommender’s page. This reciprocal back scratching is how recommendations have always worked.
If you’re asking someone who is busy, you might offer a sample of the kind of recommendation you’d like. Early in my career, I was surprised to discover that this was how the writing of recommendations worked. If someone really valued my contribution, they’d ask me for a sample that I liked and then edit it to their needs. Offer to write a suggested version.
LinkedIn has a great recommendation system. If you ask for help using the system, your reference will be able to add the task into regular workflow.
Expect that some (in my case, it was most) people are going to be too busy to help you out. As is the case in most aspects of job hunting, don’t take it personally. Just ask the next person.
If you don’t like the recommendation you get, ask for a rewrite. Really. Give the author suggestions. “When you call me a cowboy, I know what you mean, but I think others might not understand your humor. Could you say ‘independent thinker’ instead?”
Just because you get a recommendation doesn’t mean you have to publish it. Carefully consider the impact your recommendation will have on a prospective employer’s view of you.
Really work to personalize the note you send asking for the recommendation:
Hi Bob,
I hope you’re doing well. I’ll never forget the amazing time we had when we were working on the Acme proposal in Boston. I’m in the process of gathering references for my next job transition. I’m hoping that you’ll be willing to write one for me on LinkedIn. I’d be happy to offer suggested language, if you’d like.
John
Search for LinkedIn recommendation samples. If you can’t figure out what to say or what you want said about you, there is a treasure trove of useful boilerplate online. For a good giggle, visit the Endorser. It will automatically generate a reference letter for you.
Finally, the essence of a great recommendation is one sentence telling how you know the person followed by at least two or three sentences that tell a story. Stories make your recommendation memorable.

Your online profiles are the basis for managing your reputation. Carefully building a bank of references is the key to presenting a solid professional face to the job market.

How To Ask For & Get Online Recommendations is a post from: Glassdoor Blog