Tips for Working with Recruiters

Recruiters don’t find people jobs: The average job seeker has it all mixed up – recruiters don’t go out and find jobs, recruiters find candidates. They match candidates with open positions given to them by their client companies. Recruiters are tasked with filling these job requisitions. If you’re planning on working with recruiters, understand that they are often looking for very specific types of candidates – don’t get offended if you don’t match.

Recruiters are part of the bigger picture: With this in mind, job seekers should embrace one or more recruiters as part of their overall job seeking strategy – not as an end-all solution. Professional networking, social media sites, and other job seeking channels should still be utilized to maximize individual job leads. Job seekers should recognize that recruiters can open additional doors for them and are inevitably part of the larger job market landscape.

Recruiters and job seekers need to work together: It’s all about teamwork. Job seekers should be honest about their credentials and in turn, recruiters will work hard to push their profile towards befitting opportunities. Be open and upfront about your current compensation and future expectations and recruiters will get the interviews rolling. If everything works out, the recruiter makes a placement and you get a new job – both sides win when there’s mutual respect and understanding.

All too often, job seekers throw themselves at recruiters and expect royal treatment. Candidates have a hard time accepting the fact that recruiters don’t work for them, but with them. Recruiters always have your best interests in mind (and they want you to get hired), but they can’t make individually tailored jobs appear out of thin air.

Seeing eye-to-eye with recruiters isn’t all that complicated when you use their services as one of many valuable resources in your job seeking toolbox. If you are looking for a job, make sure you pursue every avenue available to you – and that working with recruiters in the correct fashion is part of your job search strategy.

 
Answering messages in your email inbox could wipe out precious prime  time by distracting you to address what’s most important to others. Your inbox is an easy organizing system for other people’s agendas – not necessarily yours!

 
Just think for a moment of how many emails you receive, even after being screened for junk or spam. It can often be easier to answer an email than make a prospecting call, but it is obvious which action will benefit you most.

 
Incoming calls can also have a negative impact on your ability to succeed. Your destiny should be controlled by your planned outgoing calls vs. the incoming calls. You have to ask yourself – who calls you most?  Each conversation, every molecule of free advice and any time spent will cost you a fortune in possible production and income.

 
Now let’s address solutions for your inbox and incoming calls

 
INBOX SOLUTIONS
Create and follow an email policy that you and your team establish. If you are not working a fast pace, high volume temp, clerical, call center or light industrial desk – there is no reason you need to answer emails as they arrive. Answer them three times throughout the day (early am, over lunch and at the end of the day). It’s amazing the amount of time this puts back in to your day to focus on your priorities.

 
Share your email processing information with your clients and candidates, so they don’t expect to receive an immediate response. It’s interesting that response time to emails keeps increasing, while response time to texting is almost immediate. This is obviously another way to communicate with candidates and clients – but you never want to abuse the privilege.

 
INCOMING CALL SOLUTIONS
The Staffing and Recruiting Profession places less than 5% of the candidates attracted to you, your website and firm. The other 95% should be provided with resources that give them something to do.  Help every candidate you speak with through either placing with a client or send them to www.patricecareerhelp.com where they can get a “live” person critiquing their resume, 50 free resume cards, free weekly seminars on different topifcs of finding a job, school information for retraining and much more.

Beware of your inbox!  It is often a simple organizing system for other people’s agendas.  It is easy to wake up and spend the first couple of hours each day answering or screening emails – but is that really allowing you to focus on priorities most important to you?

Before you even open your computer, take time to identify your priorities for the day and what you need to do to be the most productive in your job search.  I’m not advising you to avoid your email, I’m just suggesting that you identify your top priorities first and answer your incoming mail no more than two to three times each day.

Sitting behind a computer is easier than attending a job fair           – but not as effective
Sitting behind a computer is easier than networking calls               – but not as effective
Sitting behind a computer is easier than informational interviews   - but not as effective
Sitting behind a computer is easier than direct marketing yourself  – but not as effective
Sitting behind a computer is easier than following up by phone      – but not as effective

There are many incredible resources within our Career Portal that we want you to utilize, but these activities must be in line with your top priorities.  You can work very hard on your job search without results.  It’s time to get selfish with your time and only complete actions that give you the best chance of scheduling interviews that could lead to a job offer.  Don’t allow your job search agenda to be controlled by anyone else but YOU!

FREE JOB SEEKER WEBINARS

You Can’t Sound Like Every Other Job Seeker
May 15th @ 11:00 am PST | 12:00 pm MST | 1:00 pm CST | 2:00 pm EST

When you are talking to hiring authorities, do you really differentiate yourself from other job seekers? Do you share facts that other job seekers can’t? During this session you will learn the following:

• How to identify your personal brand
• How to present your brand and differentiators to hiring authorities
• How to position yourself as the solution to problems

References Are Critical to Your Success
May 30th @ 12:00 pm PST | 1:00 pm MST | 2:00 pm CST | 3:00 pm EST

People like to buy on the approval of others. Your references, endorsements or testimonials can make the difference of you being rejected or obtaining a job offer. During this session we will address:

• How to effectively use References and/or testimonials
• How to obtain the greatest impact from endorsements
• What you can do to obtain more testimonials
• Why you should inform your references of your job search activities

*To register, login to our Career Portal and click on the WEBINAR Tab. Then click on the Event and register by clicking the Webinar registration link for each event listed.

We take our direction from you! If you have any ideas you would like to share with us, please contact us at support@careersupportnetwork.com 

Share your success stories to be shared on our Career Portal: support@careersupportnetwork.com 

To Your Successful Career Search,

Patrice & Associates Hospitality Recruiting

Give the news face-to-face
Part of keeping doors open is showing respect for your soon-to-be former boss. So don’t just slip a resignation under his or her door or e-mail your two weeks’ notice to avoid confrontation. That’s like dumping someone by text message. Instead, schedule a meeting with your manager to tell them eye-to-eye you will be leaving. From there, a resignation letter is appropriate to make things formal. Have it ready for the meeting. Giving notice in person may be awkward, but it is essential to leaving on good terms.

Pave the way for your replacement
Even if you’re not training the person who takes your place, you want to make his or her transition as smooth as possible. Your old colleagues will appreciate that and remember it if you ever work together in the future. Plan for your absence as though you’re going on vacation. Create a how-to manual of your responsibilities and how you do them. Reach out to specific people on your team and key outside contacts/clients to see if they have any questions or would like to train with you before you leave. To address any issues after you leave you should leave your contact information.

Be as positive as possible
If you’re looking at your exit interview as a time to air your grievances and tell your HR manager why you hated your job, don’t. It’s too little, too late, and could cause your reputation damage — and you won’t be around to repair it. If you’re asked why you’re leaving, be objective, calm and professional in your explanation. You never know when the person asking the question will be in a place to help you advance your own career in the form of another, future opportunity or a reference. A good rule of thumb: Pretend your words will be replayed to every single co-worker and superior at the organization. Because they very well might be.

Finally, you land a killer opportunity, pass the phone screen and show up to an interview with a hiring manager. Just as you think you’re about to close the deal, she spins her computer screen around and asks you to login to your Facebook account.

What do you do?

This is common enough that it now has a name:  shoulder surfing.  According to Lori Andrews, a law professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law specializing in Internet privacy, this practice is “coercion if you need a job”. Not to mention the violation in Facebook’s privacy policy, albeit unenforceable.

Facebook’s official statement is that shoulder surfing “undermines the privacy expectations and the security of both the user and the user’s friends” and “potentially exposes the employer who seeks this access to unanticipated legal liability.”

The ruling, made by the FTC in May, 2011, was that companies can use social media information as part of a background check but this information must be available from public databases. In other words, strictly speaking, it could be illegal for companies to use private social media information against you without your consent. (I say could be because I am not a lawyer, I just pay attention.)

However, there are some cases wherein this type of deep probing could be deemed appropriate; for example law enforcement or defense. In this case, it would be easy for the employer to defend their request to access private data as it pertains directly to the candidate’s qualification to perform the job.

But when Justin Bassett, a statistician based in New York, was asked for his Facebook password he refused. And so should you. Many states are already in the process of introducing legislation against this practice, and if you live in Illinois and or Maryland, such legislation already exists.

Focus on the description of the job and the credentials required by each position.  If a job sounds interesting and you have the credentials listed, apply without hesitation.  Many of these growing fields offer quick advancement potential and additional responsibilities once you have proven yourself. 

Quite often, if you have the credentials needed, jobs are created around your talents and abilities.  That is why it is so important to NOT reject possible interviews because of a job title.   Nothing happens until you get yourself in front of hiring authorities.  It is not uncommon for hiring authorities to refer job seekers to other hiring authorities or departments within their own company.

Your job as a job seeker is to interview as much and as often as possible.  If you get in front of enough hiring authorities, you will eventually find a job and job offer that fits you perfectly!

1. Always be polite and treat everyone with respect. (You can always disagree, but you needn’t be disagreeable.)

2. If a conflict arises, focus on fixing the problem, not assigning blame.

3. Restrict your comments to what is or is not being done.

4. Think of possible solutions before discussing the problem.

5. Resist name-calling and criticism.

6. Focus on facts, not feelings.

7. When it comes to customers, remember they may not always be right, but you must always do what’s right.

8. No matter how inconsiderate a customer or fellow employee may be, do not talk about it with other employees or customers.

9. Realize there may not be a solution; you may have to agree to disagree.

10. Consider conflict as an opportunity to learn something about yourself. Someone else may push your buttons, but that person did not install them.

If you are not asked if you have any questions, it is always wise to let the person know you have questions.  You don’t want to shoot from the hip when asking questions.  Write down questions in advance that will reveal what is most important to each person in the interviewing process.

It is also acceptable to pull out a list of questions that you have pre-written.  This shows preparation on your part and often impresses the interviewer.   You ask your questions, listen carefully to the answer and then position yourself as the person who can solve their problems.  This is also the time where you can bring up accomplishments or facts about yourself that never came up during the interview process.  Questions can make the difference of you getting screened in or out!

 Jason Brown

 Ocoee, FL

QSR spoke to Beth Scott, vice president of food and beverage concepts, about plans for the new stateside restaurants.

Why is now the time to be opening new restaurants? For a long time it was “don’t spend,” and now everybody is catching up. Plus we are building new hotels, and third-party restaurant groups are now more interested in hotels as a way of growing their companies. Restaurant companies that wouldn’t look at nontraditional locations in the past are looking at them now—at hotels, airports, and schools.

How will you select which hotels they go into? Anything new gets them, as well as hotels we’re converting to the Hilton brand.

Will these restaurants be partnerships with existing concepts or unique to Hilton properties? For our luxury brands, like the Conrad hotels and Waldorf-Astoria, there’s a desire to partner with celebrity chefs or higher-end concepts. But overall, some of the quick-service concepts are appealing because of the way people want to eat now.

The rise of grab-and-go market concepts is huge—everyone’s got one now. Even the celebrity chefs are opening them, including Mario Batali and Cat Cora. People are on the move these days and don’t have time to sit down and have a meal. They want higher-end grab-and-go.

Do you expect to have some hotels with only quick-serve concepts? A quick serve probably wouldn’t replace a sit-down restaurant but it could, especially in a city where there’s a plethora of restaurants nearby.

Which brands are already signed up to work with Hilton? We’ve got the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf signed up. They are expanding rapidly throughout the country. We’ve got Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, the Il Mulino group, and Michael Jordan’s restaurant group. We have about 20 concepts listed already.

These are groups that know how to operate in a hotel environment, which is great, as sometimes they are the only restaurant in a hotel. Breakfast and room service are a key part, so if they don’t understand the operating environment, it becomes impossible to manage.

How do you learn what works in each market? We spend a lot of time doing market studies, not just on hotels but also looking at what the local diners are looking for. We have a captive audience, but we strive to build hotels that can stand on their own. So it’s a combination of what’s right for a hotel and the market that it’s going into.