Rusty Rueff

San Francisco, CA

Guest Blogger Rusty Rueff is Glassdoor.com’s career and workplace expert and member of the Clearview Collection in addition to serving as a member of the company’s Board of Directors He was most recently CEO of SNOCAP, the digital music commerce provider for MySpace, until its sale to imeem in April 2008. Previously, Rusty led global human resource departments at PepsiCo and later Electronic Arts and is co-author of “Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business" (Prentice-Hall. 2006). Through the Glassdoor.com blog, Rusty contributes practical career advice for employees and job seekers and provides unique perspectives from an employer’s point of view.

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Recent Posts by Rusty

Negotiating Salary? Be Transparent & Know Your Needs

Posted by Rusty Rueff • February 9th, 2010 • Comments

The recruiter asks, “How much was your salary at your last job and what are you expecting in this position?”

This is the moment of truth and you will be forever judged by the recruiter by what you do at this moment. Your choices are to tell the truth and take the chance that you are underselling yourself. Or to inflate, not tell the truth and if found out in a reference check, either don’t get the job after all, or have the recruiter always remember that you didn’t tell it like it was.

Here’s what you need to know before you answer…

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Tell-Tale Signs You Are Losing The Attention Of A Job Interviewer

Posted by Rusty Rueff • February 2nd, 2010 • Comments

In job interviews or other business meetings we take people for granted thinking we have their undivided attention. So we go into the meeting as if we are the most important person in the world to them for the next 45-60 minutes. I need to let you in on a little secret. You are not.

Here are the tell-tale signs of losing someone’s attention and how to get them focused back on you when they drift…

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Ways To Find Serenity In Work

Posted by Rusty Rueff • January 26th, 2010 • Comments

As I sat in church this past weekend, before the service I saw on the rotating message screen I saw that the church was offering a resume workshop for those who are out of work and want to improve their resume. The night before I had been at an event where I had been asked by someone what their son, who is graduating from college, was to do when the jobs that had been going to college graduates were now being taken by those with experience and who are willing to do positions that are below them experientially, making it so he can’t find a job. The day before that I had a long conversation with a friend who is stuck in a job that he dislikes but doesn’t want to take the chance of moving to another company where the security may not be there. As we know, these stories and questions are only the tip of the iceberg of the pain that people are feeling. And with the media messages we receive daily about the uncertainties in the financial market and shifting government actions, we are all affected by the collective mood swings of the nation.

When you add ...

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Working Through The Stretch…

Posted by Rusty Rueff • January 19th, 2010 • Comments

This time of year is a hard time of the year for a lot of people. The newness of the New Year has worn off, the holiday break is a distant memory, Martin Luther King Day marks the last holiday until Memorial Day (or maybe Good Friday if you get that day off). It is a long stretch regardless between now and the summer and it feels longer when the weather is bad and the job market continues to suffer. The winter doldrums can set in and if not careful, morale begins to suffer and then productivity slips and ultimately results falter. Here are some ways this winter to beat the winter blahs and push through the long stretch positively:

• Take control of your disposition. The recent Glassdoor.com Employment Confidence Survey indicates that there is worry about the time it will take in the future for finding a job to replace the one you are in now. Abraham Lincoln said, “You are only as happy as you make up your mind to be”. In this time when it does not look like things are going to get much better in the short-run, you have to make up your own ...

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Interview Fright…How To Beat It!

Posted by Rusty Rueff • January 12th, 2010 • Comments

Last week I was sitting at a Peet’s Coffee with a college senior who is graduating next May from my Alma Mater, Purdue, and she sheepishly asked me, “How do I make sure that I am really, really good in a job interview?”  I thought about it for a moment and then went into coaching her on how to be best prepared, etc.  But as I thought about it later, I should have seen it in the blush of her face and the timidity of how she asked the question, what she was really asking is how to get over what we all feel as we sit in an interview; stage fright or what I call interview fright!  It’s real, it’s part of being human and we all get it, so let’s talk about a few ways to overcome it, or at least make it better so that the fright and nervousness doesn’t impede the strong impression we are trying to make:

Know your lines! Every stage director, presentation consultant, etc., will tell you that being prepared is the best offensive and defensive move you can make to overcome your fright.  The more you interview the better you will be.  The ...

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New Year = New Job? Pursue a New Job or Pursue Happiness?

Posted by Rusty Rueff • January 5th, 2010 • Comments

It’s a new year and a new decade with continued signs of economic and employment recovery. As we start the first week of Twenty-Ten, there is an air of renewed optimism and hope all around us.  I believe we are on the cusp of seeing the job market open back up and the return of jobs beginning to “churn” again.  Not only have we seen a reduction of jobs, but for nearly the past two years, people with jobs that seemed secure, stayed in them and didn’t take the chance of looking at the grass on the other side. This was wise since it wasn’t about the grass being greener on the other side; it was about not even knowing what color the grass was.  This stopped the normal “churn” that has always been there. But now, things are starting to change and there is a real pent-up churn waiting to happen and when it does, it will come on strong. So now, would be the time to start thinking about what you want to do next!  Sure, you have a dream job (or at least you should have one), but what about the other attributes of the next job? ...

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The Scariest Job interview Question Of All…

Posted by Rusty Rueff • December 29th, 2009 • Comments

Last week in his weekly post, Hank Stringer addressed the question of how to answer what is many times the last question of an interview; “What questions do you have for me?” At the same time that Hank was posting his thoughts, I was coaching a senior executive on how to answer the same question.  I won’t say that it is any more an important question at one job level versus another, but I will say that how you answer this question can be either the icing on the cake to a good interview, or the answer that ices what might have other been a successful interview.  I want to offer you three suggested ways to answer the question:

Turn the table with a question that keeps the interviewer talking but shows that you are intently listening. One that has worked on me is,  “I’m not sure I have any one great question for you, but I will ask is there anything that you think you want from me, or anyone in this job, to knock it out of the park?  This question gives the interviewer a chance to state what he/she wants to see in the job/person and ...

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The “5 Golden Rings” Of Getting A Job

Posted by Rusty Rueff • December 22nd, 2009 • Comments

With this being Christmas week and all, and my penchant for a good play on words, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to play upon the words of the most annoying part of the song “Twelve Days of Christmas”.  In fact, don’t be surprised if you see a reprise of this during Olympic week in Vancouver 2010 too…you know, five rings and gold medals.  Okay, enough of that, and on to the five golden rings of getting a job:

Make sure every contact “rings a bell” – We all know that we have to be so much better at networking and connecting than ever before. But with this comes having to have a very good memory as to who you talked to, when and for what job.  It’s too much to remember, so if you haven’t started your contact list/database then now is the time.  You’ve got be quick on your feet and with a database in front of you, you can be like a salesperson with Salesforce.com in front of them and be able to rattle off who, when, where and for what, you last spoke to them about.  This memory at your finger tips can impress and be ...

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Matching the Best Places to Work Lists To Your Dream Job

Posted by Rusty Rueff • December 18th, 2009 • Comments

It’s that time of year when the “best of lists” start coming out.  This week the ten best books of 2009 came out from the New York Times.  The Grammy Nominations are out.  The Golden Globes just came out and the Oscar nominations are coming soon.  It’s also the time for the best places to work lists to be released.  There is the Fortune list along with others and it’s also the second year for the Glassdoor.com Employees’ Choice Awards.  Just like when the media lists come out, we try to see, read, and/or listen before the awards show, the resumes start pouring into the companies who make the “best” lists only making it harder to get a job at one of these corporations. So, how do you get your dream job at a company now inundated with resumes given that they have likely attracted a lot more talent with their name on the best place to work list?

Don’t give up just because it got more competitive. If you wanted to work at this company before, then you really want to work for them now, ...

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Hiring Advice For Employers, Recruiters & Talent Search Firms To Help Reduce Unemployment Rate

Posted by Rusty Rueff • December 15th, 2009 • Comments

Despite a recommendation from a United States Senator, and a recommendation from the head of one of the Commissions that requires Senate confirmation, and another recommendation from the #2 person within another agency (and who happens to be one of the largest contributors to President Obama’s campaign), I could not get invited to the Presidential Job Summit.  In hindsight, I should have just dressed up and crashed it as that seems to work, but that just wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. I am not sorry that I wasn’t included other than I had hopes that something tangible would come from the session.  I may be one of the few Americans who watched all of the sessions online.  More to come on that and my learning from watching all of those sessions (btw, you can too on www.whitehouse.gov).

In the meantime, here is an idea that might help, without government subsidies or any taxpayer money… This initiative would be all of us helping each other out and participating in our own support in getting people back to work.  This initiative revolves around reducing one of the largest barriers that get in the way of hiring and that is the ...

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