1. Write a clear job description. This should be a no-brainer, but I can’t tell you how many listings I read that are laden with vagaries, typos and obscure acronyms. Conversely, some companies use such lengthy job descriptions that they seem as if they’re meant for an entire department. If you have certain requirements such as years of experience or degrees, ensure that the description matches the job summary or headings. There’s nothing more annoying than reading a heading with a required 1-3 years experience and then reading 3-5 years further into the description. I can’t tell you how often this happens. Attention to detail, people!
2. Send paperwork before or after the interview. Don’t you just love arriving at an interview and meeting a clipboard stacked with forms for the first half hour or so? Sometimes I’m too nervous to remember the zip code of the address I lived at 7 years ago or other miniscule facts. Please let us fill out your forms on our own time so we can be more accurate and less rushed. If we’re interested in the job, I can assure you forms will be sent/mailed/emailed back to you. A wonderful company I recently interviewed with used this method and it made the process much easier.
3. Ask for references at the appropriate time. My references are very busy people. I have a big problem with companies that ask you to provide references along with your resume or application. You haven’t met me, you don’t know if you’ll like me, but you want to check my references? I personally hang on to my references tight and will not permit any calls without my knowledge. The appropriate time to ask for references is during or after an interview when both parties express a mutual interest. Any job listing that asks for references from the get-go seems like some sort of phishing scam. If you want to get a feel for me before meeting, check out my LinkedIn profile.
4. Be on time! Even though we are looking for a job, we still have places to be and people to see. Some of us may even have a job while we’re looking for a job. I once waited a total of 45 minutes before and in between various stages of an interview. I was starving and thirsty, plus my son had belt testing for Tae Kwon Do after school that I couldn’t miss. They did allow me to reschedule the last part of my interview, but I was already so turned off that I really just went back to brush up on my interviewing skills.
5. Business casual at a minimum, please! Job candidates that have a clue will wear a good suit to an interview. If your staff greets me in jeans, a threadbare faded company polo shirt and sneakers, I’m going to feel pretty uncomfortable and question your company’s professionalism from the get-go. It’s really not that hard to put on khakis, loafers and a crisp tucked-in shirt with a belt. Save the low-maintenance look for the company picnic.
6. Know your company brand. I recently had an interview where the HR rep was completely unaware of one of their business offerings. If your HR staff doesn’t know the “who, what, where, why and how” of your company, you are doing a huge disservice to everyone involved. Consider training sessions with marketing, public relations and/or corporate communications to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
7. Don’t assume anything. An incredibly tactful HR person once asked me why my previous company went out of business. It actually is still going strong…I just chose to move out of the area. There are about 100 other more pleasant ways to ask why I no longer work at Company XYZ. These types of presumptive questions just scream “negative work environment.”
8. Attitude matters. Why is it that some HR folks don’t know how to act at an interview? HR is basically a huge gateway to your brand. Many times HR is the first and last interaction a job seeker will have with your company. Positive, personable employees that enjoy working for you are a must. If the interviewer is really miserable at their job, then I assume I’ll be miserable there as well.
9. Follow up! It is disappointing to go through the hiring process and not hear anything back from the potential employer. I know how to take a hint; however, we take time to write a perfect cover letter, prepare for the interview and send out thank you notes. Your company should have enough courtesy to let us know if we’re not the right fit. There’s nothing worse than having your follow-up emails and phone calls ignored. Even if it is just a generic email, we need some type of closure.
10. Remember, it’s a two-way street. Yes, the economy stinks and unemployment is in the double digits. This does not mean that your company can overlook items 1-9 because you believe anyone will take whatever you have to offer regardless of HR’s professionalism. Job seekers are interviewing you too, and the top-notch candidates are not going to ever be interested in working for you if your HR department is not in line with your brand. It’s important to think beyond the recession when quality employees could be at a premium.

I recently had an interview for a technical support position at a large call center with Fortune 500 clients. Not exactly my dream job, but I will rarely turn down an interview. First, I had to go through their testing—typing, basic grammar and spelling and an assessment of my web research skills. I’m quite good at finding what I need on the web, but I nearly failed this portion of the test. The monitor was tiny, washed out and flickering. The controls did nothing to correct the problems. I could barely read the information required to quickly answer questions within the given timeframe.

As I passed the test by only a few seconds to spare, my head started pounding from the monitor and stress of almost failing a test I should be able to ace. Seated in a windowless over air conditioned room, the door was left ajar just enough for my observation pleasure. A man dressed in jeans and a worn, untucked company shirt was leaning on the receptionist’s desk, chatting loudly about cars and sports…for 20 minutes. He finally ended his talk and disappeared behind a section of cubicles. Five minutes later, I was in the unfortunate position of meeting him face to face. 

His slovenly appearance and lack of consideration for my time was only the beginning. He made no eye contact whatsoever and maintained a gruff, harried, negative manner, routinely interrupting my attempts to answer what I consider to be inappropriate questions.

“Why did your store go out of business?” What a profound question during these trying economic times. It actually didn’t go out of business. I simply sold my share to move from Miami-Dade to Broward County, but thanks for assuming the worst about my business acumen…at a call center.

“What are you living on?” I wanted to say something about a mattress under I-75,” but I maintained my decorum. I reminded him that I sold my business.

“Do you speak Spanish?” Unfortunately, my command of the Spanish language left me after college, but I do want to re-learn it. I then received a condescending lecture on how we can learn anything we want to and just saying we want to do learn something isn’t good enough. I get it. In my spare time as a single mother learning Microsoft-talk, consulting and looking for full-time work, I most certainly can add Spanish to the mix.

He then went on to tell me about the customer service position he needed to fill. Training started in two days. Wait a minute…I was interviewing for a technical support position. “We don’t do technical support.” Really? That’s not what the recruiter told me when she sent me to this nightmare. I informed him that as a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator, I am only interested in technical positions with his company and inquired about the IT department.

“We only hire people from within for IT.” How? You just told me your company doesn’t do technical support.

“Maybe our Ft. Lauderdale location does technical support. I’m not sure. You’ll have to go there.” Dude, you’re in HR! You don’t even know what your company does. Besides, shouldn’t you look on your computer to see if there is a more appropriate position, pick up the phone, or refer me to another, helpful HR person…something…anything? I’m not driving aimlessly to the other location because you’re unsure.

“The only openings I have to fill now are in customer service.” Yes, the only openings YOU have to fill are in customer service. But because you are inconsiderate, rude and lazy, you won’t help your coworkers in HR fill other openings or refer a highly qualified candidate that could be a huge asset to your company to the right person. Sounds like a great corporate culture.

I simply thanked him for his time and ended the interview. The third-party recruiter was upset because the company does in fact have technical support positions. She also heard bad things about the person I met and had hoped I wouldn’t “get” him.

This company turned me off so strongly that I never would want to be associated with them in any capacity. One individual singlehandedly ruined the company brand for me, all those I shared my experience with and possibly hundreds of other applicants.

Just as a handful of job candidates make the cut for an interview, another handful will cross company’s path over the course of their careers with the opportunity to make their own cut–in favor of a different company. It is said that customer service is the new marketing. Now more than ever, HR must be added to the new marketing mix.

In my next post, I will offer some suggestions HR departments should consider to take a preventative strike against ruining their company brand during the hiring process.

A special “thank you” goes out to Kevin Kermes for discussing this topic with me and providing information for this post.

There is one caveat about this man’s genius—he is marketing impaired. I spent the last few weeks sitting down with him in front of our laptops trying to position his highly-regarded products. Unfortunately, it did not go as smoothly as I anticipated. Here is an excerpt from one of our conversations:

MB: What makes your products better than your competition?

Engineer: Well…Ummmm…{Insert silence here}

MB: Okay, let me rephrase the question. What problems are your customers facing and what solutions do your products provide?

Engineer: They want to sound good.

MB: Yes, I’m sure they all want to be the next Clapton or Santana, however, how do your products give them an edge?

Engineer: I really can’t reveal that. I would be giving away my designs.

MB: Let’s forget for a moment what’s under the hood. Tell me in layman’s terms why a musician should choose your products over others.

Engineer: Ummm…I’m not sure.

MB: You do know. You just can’t seem to communicate the big picture effectively. Otherwise, that guitar magazine wouldn’t have just written a four page article about you.

Engineer: Right. {Insert more silence here} What was the question?

MB: Okay. I’m an A-list jazz guitarist calling you from Japan after the last leg of an Asian tour. I’m exhausted. My internal clock is a mess, and I had one too many beers last night. I saw you pedals on another guitarist’s pedal board and want some more information. What would you say to me?

Engineer: I’ll tell him about how our pedals are {insert long list of features here, NOT benefits}

MB: {Insert long sigh here)

Finally, after poking and prodding until almost midnight, we were able to take all the little technical details about each product and weave them into the critical “what’s the big deal?” message. By beginning at a features level and working our way slowly up to the benefits ladder, I had most of what I needed to start writing product descriptions for the new company web site. We even came up with an incredibly creative idea for a future ad campaign in the process.

Engineers please take note: Technical specifications are great, but if you can’t answer “what’s in it for me?” or “why should I care?” effectively, don’t expect your potential customers to help you figure it out along the way.

Often, engineers do have the product positioning information that we persistent marketing folks need to do a decent job. It’s simply buried deep underneath all the theories, formulas and standards.

In response to my tweet about phishing scam job listings, Dice personally contacted me via Twitter and email. Thanked for letting them know about Consider This Marketing’s sordid past, I was politely informed that their investigation is underway. Let me point out that I have 15 measly Twitter followers and only started this blog a couple of weeks ago. One of my early adopting followers from Canada was nice enough to retweet the warning. Americans need to be more like Canadians, but that’s a whole other post.

Now I don’t think Dice is that bad after all…as long as they show me some follow-through. Here’s the fine print: I just checked their web site and still see the same 110 job openings. Well, progress can be slow, especially at their Urbandale (ironic name!), Iowa headquarters.

I’m completely energized by the incredible customer service potential of social media. I’m sitting here in my home office humming The Clash’s Revolution Rock as I write this. The crappy $30 electric pencil sharpener that can’t seem to get the lead out…the granite polish that makes my black countertops look like they’re finished with unbuffed car wax…the squeaking noise my minivan makes every morning after numerous service appointments…beware! They’ve all been added to my to-do list.

In summary, social media can work for business as long as companies respond to dissatisfied customers quickly or suffer the consequences–www.ihateyourcompany.com, #ihateyourcompany, hefty PR invoices…it goes from bad to worse. Fortune 1000s now need to step up to the plate, help reignite the economy and hire social media managers… pronto!

After pushing the “Report This Job” button on two separate occasions and completely filling out the associated form, I contacted Dice via telephone about a week later when I saw the same 110 job postings by the same company. I obtained the name and email address of the woman in charge of dealing with scumbag clients (great job!), sent her a detailed note, and received the following response:

Hello Marcy,

Thank you for your email.  We appreciate you bringing this to our attention concerning the company Consider This Marketing/Next Media Partners.  Can you recall when you notified Dice on two separate occasions concerning this company as we don’t seem to have record of you contacting us regarding. 

In order to report a job posting, issue with a specific company, etc you can use the “Report This Job” feature located in the upper right hand corner of all job postings.  This feature allows for the quickest way to report problems or issues regarding companies and their job postings. 

Please let us know if you have any questions or need additional assistance.

Thank you for your time.

Dice Tech Support

How nice of this woman to forward my email to tech support, where English just might be a third language. I promptly replied, informing Dice that I in fact utilized their ”feature” twice. Once again, I received a pass-the-buck response similar to “we  have no way of looking this information up since we’re in tech support, but we’ll look into it.”  I’m just loving this feature!

There are still 110 job listings under Consider This Marketing, each with a fresh new date. So, if you use Dice or would like to help put a stop to phishing companies, please take a moment to search for positions with this charming organization and push the blue “Report This Job” button.

This past June my son finished Kindergarten and hard cold reality hit–I needed to get back to work full time when my son starts first grade. I ventured out on the job boards, spent hours filling out forms, uploading my resume/cover letter and setting up automated searches—the whole nine yards.As a recent MCSA with little experience outside the Microsoft Boot Camp lab or my own little home office geekdom, it was difficult to find jobs where I met most of the requirements. I also ended up losing a nice chunk of so-called friends to “the dark side” in a rather unpleasant divorce, so my network suddenly shrunk.

One day I received an email from Dice with my ideal job opening—a tier 1 systems administrator at a marketing company called Consider This Marketing in Miami. I clicked on the link to their web site listed under Next Media Partners. The only address listed was in Orlando. The site looked okay, but a little on the light side as far as a marketing company should go. I did not see a portfolio, executive bios or as much content as one would expect from a marketing company.

Unfortunately, I am always giving people, and apparently companies, the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they are reorganizing and just opening an office in Miami. I applied for the position and heard nothing…just like so many others.

Fast forward to August and I received another email from Dice with the same job opening, thought it odd and checked out the company again. Thankfully I had been searching for a web designer for a project and noticed how complete their web sites generally are—tons of client work, decent branding and solid content. I examined all the openings listed under Consider This Marketing. Boy, business is really booming over there! This company was hiring at all levels of IT and web programming in numerous cities such as Shreveport, LA and Biloxi, MS and El Paso, TX. El Paso? I have never been there but I cannot imagine it is a hub for marketing companies.

A quick Google search of the mystery company names followed by “scam” brought up links to a variety of sites that track internet fraud. It turns out that Consider This Marketing, Next Media Partners or whatever other choice name you want to call them is a phishing scheme by Ralph Edward Bell and Alec Difrawy a.k.a. Ayman El-Difrawi. These scumbags have a long rap sheet of fraud including a fake modeling agency and a variety of fraudulent employment related companies. Apparently, they take your personal information and sell it to other unscrupulous companies. If you apply for one of their positions and notice a vast increase in email, no, you are not becoming popular. You are receiving spam.

I alerted Dice about the fraud via their “Report This Job” link…twice. I also called them and got right through…to someone’s voicemail. Today there are 110 job openings at Consider This Marketing on Dice. It seems it is too large of an account to lose. I did receive the name and email address of the person who handles complaints over at Dice and I certainly will use it, but I am not expecting any miracles. I will keep you updated. Until then, if a company seems phishy, trust your sense of smell and stay away.

Dear Marcy,

Thank you for attending the HP Virtual Career Fair. We have great news! The event was so successful that it will now be available on-demand until Feb 4, 2010. Feel free to log in to attend the webcasts and visit exhibitor booths. We look forward to seeing you at the next event!

-HP Virtual Career Fair team

I just love how large companies can turn an abysmal failure into a blaring success. I thought an apology would have been more appropriate. This is what the email really should have said:

Dear Marcy,

We are sorry you wasted approximately 2 hours of your valuable time registering for our Virtual Career Fair, sitting through PowerPoint v. 1 slides presented by individuals that forgot to take their SSRIs this month and receiving rejection(s) to your chat requests. To compensate our poor planning, you will be receiving a $50 gift certificate redeemable for our ridiculously overpriced HP ink. We respectfully request that you do not attend our next event.

-HP Virtual Career Fair team

It seems HP will need all the time up until February 4, 2010 to work out its virtual convention center kinks. Or, it will take all that time for HR to get back to everyone who attempted to chat with a human being in HR.

If anyone hears of other virtual career fairs, please let me know. I would love to see how other companies stack up.

In the mean time, I’m very busy researching my Wii game idea. I think I’ll call it Headhunter.

For those of you living a sane childless life, Baby Einstein is a series of DVDs that feature puppets, toys and other brightly colored images synchronized to classical music. For a reason unbeknownst to me, these DVDs captivate babies, giving new frazzled mothers 25-30 minutes of quiet uninterrupted bliss.

I received two of these little charmers at my baby shower. Before long they moved into heavy rotation at our house. I ordered the rest of the set from Amazon and was subsequently notified by email each time a new Baby Einstein DVD was available. I soon became an internet marketing person’s dream. I opened the emails, clicked on the link, and in less than 90 seconds became the proud owner of the newest tantalizing release.

My son’s Baby Einstein addiction occurred during 2002 and 2003 when he was below the age of 2. As soon as he became mobile, new infatuations emerged. We had a long lean Wiggles period followed by the Thomas the Tank Engine and Handy Manny eras, ending with the Cars and Madagascar years. Now my son is seven. He’s into his Nintendo DSi, Wii, laptop and the occasional Matchbox car and Bakugan.

I eBayed off the Baby Einstein DVDs years ago, yet I continue to receive monthly emails from Amazon regarding the flurry of new Baby Einstein DVDs, books, toys and clothing.

I understand how this type of email marketing serves us grown-ups. We like a particular author or band, we’re notified when the newest release is out, we buy their newest release when the economy is good…I get it. I even recall pre-ordering a book prior to its release. It’s great customer retention marketing and works well with adults. It does not work well with the adults purchasing children’s items.

Attention Amazon Email Marketing Team: Please be advised that kids grow up quickly and I am no longer interested in Baby Einstein products. It’s been well over five years since I ordered anything remotely related to Baby Einstein. Doesn’t anyone in your database marketing department have children? FYI, this also applies to puppy products. The wee wee pads are generally not needed after a year (except for my mother’s Yorkshire Terror who pees every time she visits my house) and could possibly relate to other product purchase scenarios that I am too tired to think about now. Please remove me from your email list…unless you have information on how to pre-order that new DSi game my son wants for the holidays.

At 8:45 in the morning I filled out the registration, uploaded my resume and signed in. I am soon presented with a cool virtual urban convention center environment. There were two link options–Exhibition Hall and Conference Hall. Since I’m not the world’s best networker and I’ve never attended a job fair, let alone a virtual job fair, I decided to start at the Conference Hall to obtain some background information on their opportunities.

When in the Conference Hall, you are viewing a stage with a nice view of the virtual convention center from an audience perspective. There were 14 attendees, but only 2-4 of them were clearly women’s heads. I can only see the backs of their heads, so I can only surmise they were women due to long hair, but I could be wrong. I wasn’t sure about the other 2 potential women. One was blurry and the other cut in half, so they could go either way. The presenter on stage was an incredibly polished, politically correct minority woman wearing glasses and a power suit. Perhaps this choice made up for shortcoming of women?

The virtual conference attendees were cut from actual photographs, while the conference room was more like an architectural rendering. In other words, the designers put rear head shots in an animation. It was kind of like taking an Exacto knife, cutting out human heads from a magazine and pasting them into one of my son’s Nintendo Wii games.

Hmmm…what a great idea! A new Wii game featuring unemployed, overqualified, cutthroat, job hunters, desperate for an opportunity, fighting each other off for the best windowless cubicle! The winner earns a paycheck that is just short of the mortgage! The Mature Audience version comes complete with bonus switch blades so you can literally cut the throats of anyone interfering with your ultimate quest for employment! I’m just loving the possibilities…but I’ve digressed, so back to HP.

I assume the overall design is part of another company’s interface called Unisfair, so I’ll give HP a break on the graphical faux pas. The large screen presentation in the Conference Hall offers two choices—HP USPS Federal Consulting Overview or HP Contact Center Hiring. Well, somewhere I read that the contact centers are in Arkansas, Pennsylvania or some other state that I don’t live in and don’t want to live in, so I chose the first option.

Remember those reel to reel films they used to make us watch in junior high? Yes, I’m aging myself but this presentation was just like them–poor audio, monotone voices and monotonous content. Couldn’t HP find some livelier people who can make it through a few sentences without getting tongue-tied? This was a recorded presentation! I fumble words often, but if I am making a recording for potentially thousands of people, I’m pretty sure I would re-record it until I sounded awake and didn’t mess up.

Next come the generic black and white PowerPoint slides. Isn’t this HP–innovator of color printing? There were a few slides in color, but they looked borrowed from a few different presentations. Nothing was consistent. The result was a mish-mash of ineffective slides complete with punctuation errors. Doesn’t anyone in corporate communications review this stuff before it goes out?

Putting aside the graphics and presentation, I believe HP failed miserably in its attempt to use Web 2.0 as a recruiting tool, and here’s why. My first visit was to the Federal Consulting virtual booth. It was about 8:50 and the fair didn’t start until 9:00. I chose to join in the booth discussion first so I could get a feel for how others “chat” with recruiters. There were lots of “good morning from [insert your city here] messages and a smattering of small talk by the recruiters. “You guys are the early birds,” stated one recruiter. Next, someone inquired about positions in their region. A recruiter immediately replied that most of the positions were in Washington D.C. Really? That’s odd, because when I was trying to keep my eyes open during the presentation, the gentleman, sounding as if he needed life support, read a slide that clearly stated opportunities in other states such as Florida and Texas. The recruiter at the booth just contradicted his head honcho. Doesn’t anyone in HR communicate with each other to make sure all their eggs are all in the same basket?

Annoyed with small talk and misinformation, I carefully composed a private message to a recruiter, indicating my qualifications and inquiring about the mysterious Florida jobs. It would have been nice to receive an answer, but my private chat request came back “rejected!” What a great choice of words at a job fair! Aren’t we all feeling low enough? I tried again and received the same response.

I went back to the booth chat area and saw a message from one of the recruiters. “If you would like to apply for a position, please visit the Information area,” which essentially was a sign on the “show floor.” I clicked on “Information” and linked right to…wait for it…the HP job web site!

At this point I just laughed. Since I was already there, I performed a search “Powered by Taleo” where I had to enter my area of preference. How many times do I have to enter US, Florida, Ft. Lauderdale before open positions in the Philippines stop coming up? Quite a few. I finally was able to receive a list of jobs in the US, but where in the US, I just wasn’t sure. I applied for one position in a secret US location (perhaps “Location: US” means telecommute from anywhere? That would be awesome!).

Just in case you are thinking I’m too ignorant to conduct a successful search on the HP Jobs web site, think again. As a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA) and I had to take 7 nearly impossible exams to get there. Only 3 more to go until MCSE. Besides, I really haven’t come across this problem before and I’ve searched MANY company job sites…TOO many. I also have extensive experience working in internet marketing with a number of high-tech companies, so I believe I am competent enough to fill out a search form accurately.

One more visit to the booth chat area and the comments from the 77 or so other users signed on at that time were not pretty. People were pissed off. The chatters were typing things like “I’ve never had a question ‘rejected’ before.” “This is terrible—I’m outta here.” “Is there anyone from HP actually here?” On the plus side, this is a great example of a Web 2.0 initiative gone horribly wrong.

Imagine a large company exhibiting at a technology job fair. Instead of manning the booth, interacting professionally with potential candidates and putting their best foot forward, they just hang the “Please Visit Our Web Site” sign, ditch the show and go out for coffee. Essentially, this describes HP’s actions, albeit in a virtual world. Not only is this unfair to the attendees that spent time signing up, posting resumes and trying to speak with a recruiter, it makes HP look like a company with a lot of “issues.”

Don’t get me wrong. I like HP. I have always owned an HP printer. If I had a grudge against the company I certainly wouldn’t have bothered signing up for what I have dubbed “The Virtual Career Fiasco.”

Let’s give HP the benefit of the doubt, suppose there was a technical glitch, recruiters lost the connection and were unable to reconnect. Doesn’t HP manufacture servers, storage and networking products? Gee, when I finally get a good job in IT, just sign me up for their stuff! But seriously, such a huge glitch really isn’t acceptable from the “World’s Leading Information Technology Company.” How about conducting a few dry runs before the big day?

And then there were comments in the chat area such as “Oh, they probably weren’t expecting such as huge turnout.” Really? Does anyone at HP keep up with what’s going on out there? All HR hands on deck are required in today’s economy.

In closing, the HP Virtual Career Fair was great idea with terrible execution. The nifty tag line for this event was “How much impact are you looking for?” My answer: a heck of a lot more from HP. If anyone from HP happens to read this, please construe my comments as constructive criticism. And, if anyone from HP happens to read this and would like the next Virtual Career Fair to be a huge success, I’m available.