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Job Search is often a time of mixed feelings – anxiety, excitement, stress, panic, relief, frustration and more. During a tough economy, many job seekers have been either searching for a long time and / or out of work for a long time, which adds more emotions to the upheaval.  Many job seekers talk about their confidence and self-esteem levels going down. They start to question their own value – if I am not getting called in for an interview, then maybe I am just not good enough? Yet, when they think about it logically, they are very confident that their performance for their last employer was top-notch. They were successful in daily job performance, they were well-liked, they could multi-task, and they can provide numerous examples where they contributed new ideas that improved operations, saved money, or added to the bottom line.

The loss of confidence and low self-esteem is pretty common during an extended job search.  It is a normal reaction to the circumstances. Think about it – so much of our identity is tied to employment – from the type of work we do, to bringing home a paycheck and being a contributor.  Suddenly, we have lost our identity, our paycheck, and no one is calling.  That being said, it is important to seize control and work on your confidence.  Your confidence level can seriously impact your momentum and the way you come across to others. You want to be viewed as someone who is positive, enthusiastic, and ready to work. Exuding low self-esteem can give employers the wrong impression and lead to a vicious cycle of not getting offers and further extending your search.

Here are some strategies that may help when you feel low:

• Positive self talk –think about your successes and strength; remind yourself of top notch performance and impact
• Take a break – be sure to schedule breaks to stay fresh
• Exercise – get outdoors or to a gym – those who exercise tend to feel better about themselves and improve their physical stamina; they exude energy
• Reward yourself – figure out what motivates you – a movie, lunch with a friend, a good book…whatever it takes to motivate you for your efforts
• Take a class – join a program to learn something new

Implementing strategies to increase your confidence will make you feel better, will improve your attitude, and will help with your professional image to get better results!

Now, on to my current views of the job market from a staffing and recruiting firm’s perspective.…

As I have mentioned in previous articles, an excellent barometer for the employment market has always been the staffing industry.  Financial experts often look to our industry to guide them with decisions and predictions.  Typically, when the economy begins to experience a downturn, staffing companies will see it first.  Companies will start by eliminating temporary personnel and slow down or put a freeze on new hires.  Layoffs often follow these initial steps.  Conversely, as the economy starts to rebound, staffing companies will experience a pickup in business activity prior to many other industries.  As companies begin to build confidence in the demand for their product or service, they often reach out to staffing companies to ease back into the hiring process.  Business is picking up but they do not want to make a full-time commitment yet to new hires.  During these times companies like the flexibility that comes with working with a staffing firm.  Hiring temporary employees is a common practice when ramping up the workforce.

Well, I am happy to report that business is good!  The challenge over the past few years has been consistency.  We would see a flurry of good activity only to be followed by a lull.  It was not until the fourth quarter of 2011 when the activity picked up and stayed up.  This was the beginning of many good signs that the job market has made a turn for the better and continues to head in the right direction.

As I mentioned, business has remained steady since October of last year.  First quarter 2012 numbers for our temporary staffing placements are up 20% over first quarter 2011.  Yet, an even stronger sign that companies are feeling more confident about their business and the economy overall is that demand for our direct hire services has increased dramatically.  Our billings for these services in the first two and a half months of 2012 equal more than half of our total billings for the entire year of 2011.  Additionally, we have already surpassed our 2011 total number of temp to hires in the first quarter of 2012.  These are all solid signs that the job market is truly turning around for the better.

In my next ‘President’s Corner’ I will touch on the industries where we are seeing the most activity.  In the meantime I wish you all much success!

Sincerely,

Bill

How many times have you been asked this question, only to reply with an awkward “no?”

A LinkedIn profile is now a part of every professional’s tool kit. With over 150 million members worldwide and growing, it is imperative for you to have a LinkedIn profile to be considered relevant in today’s working world.

“I’m not looking for a job, why should I have a LinkedIn profile?”

Whether you are job seeking or not, joining the largest business social networking site is still important for you.

Here are four reasons why:

1. Business professionals expect you to have one. Your LinkedIn profile gives people a concise, efficient view of who you are as a professional. Your profile shows who you are, where you have been, what your expertise is, and who recommends you.
2. Greatly aides networking efforts. All professionals are, or should be, seeking to increase and enhance their network. LinkedIn helps ease that process by opening doors to people you don’t know, or reinforcing a connection past the handshake and business card exchange.
3. Shows that you are relevant. The fact of the matter is, personal and business social networking is part of our cultural landscape. It’s here to stay. By NOT having a LinkedIn profile, you are branding yourself as out of date and unwilling to use currently accepted business tools.
4. Resources you desire are here. Are you looking for the latest industry updates? Want to find alternate suppliers? Need expert advice on a work related problem? Do you seek new sales leads? Your answers are on LinkedIn! Industries, roles and locations are all represented on LinkedIn. You will be surprised by the wealth of expert information available to you through the LinkedIn network.

“I’m just getting started in my career. LinkedIn is for professionals that already have established work histories.”

Not true! LinkedIn is important no matter what stage in your career.
Here are four reasons why:

1. Manage your professional “brand.” What is the first thing a recruiter or business contact is going to do after meeting you? They are going to Google you. A LinkedIn presence lets contacts know you are serious about being professional. It also helps control what results come up in search engines when “Googling” your name. LinkedIn profiles typically rank higher than other information available about you on the internet. It’s better for your LinkedIn profile to appear higher in a search than your Facebook or MyLife profiles. Also, consider that no presence on the internet can be more damaging than a negative one.
2. Show references. LinkedIn allows you to request “recommendations” from former supervisors, colleagues, professors or volunteer organizations. Adding recommendations to your profile is a great way to build credibility and showcase your merit without anyone having to chase down your references. Recommendations are a highly sought out and frequently read part of any LinkedIn profile.
3. Manage professional connections. Facebook is great for friends, but is not the right platform for business connections. LinkedIn allows you to share updates, contribute to conversations and highlight your professional endeavors without the distraction of those wild party pics from last night. LinkedIn allows you to leverage social networking on a strictly professional basis.
4. Let recruiters and hiring managers find you! Recruiters and hiring managers all use LinkedIn as a time saving resource to seek out active and passive candidates with the skill sets and experience they seek for open opportunities. The robust LinkedIn search tools allow recruiters to use very specific criteria. Some of these include years of experience, schools attended, languages you speak, groups you belong to, and much more!

Are you ready to jump in and start your LinkedIn profile now? If you are, I invite you to read Five Tips to Get Started on LinkedIn.  This post walks you through setting up your LinkedIn account. Still have questions? Feel free to email me and I will do my best to help.

For more great information, check out Inc. Magazine’s, 6 Steps to a More Marketable LinkedIn Profile.

We would love to hear about your success, frustrations, fears and triumphs using LinkedIn. Please leave us some comments and let us know how you are doing.

Wishing you all the best!

posted by Bonnie Jeffers

1. Let LinkedIn search your email contacts. Right after the initial screen where you input your name, title, company and industry, LinkedIn will search your email contacts to find people with LinkedIn accounts. You can choose not to allow this search, but we suggest letting LinkedIn do its thing. This will make it easy to identify people you already know using LinkedIn. Once you do this, you can choose whether or not to send them an invitation to connect.

2. Pay attention to the next step.  LinkedIn is going to ask you: Why not invite some people? These contacts will all be pre-selected with a check mark. Before you click anything else, be sure whether or not you want to invite all of those folks to join.  If you aren’t paying attention, LinkedIn will invite your entire contact list to join. (This is not a bad thing, as every professional should be on LinkedIn. But this should be your choice, not an OOPS.) If you don’t want to invite everyone, choose Skip this step and then you will be presented with all of your contacts and can choose individually those you wish to invite.

3. You only need a FREE account. A step or two more into the process and LinkedIn will ask you to Choose Your Plan Level.  You can do plenty with a free account. We are all using free accounts at Emerson and we accomplish quite a lot.

4. Follow LinkedIn’s advice for Completing Your Profile. LinkedIn will walk you through steps to enhance and complete your profile. Let the program help you. You can always decide to skip a section completely, or come back to it later.  Just save your changes and log out. It might take several visits to complete your profile. Some people never have a 100% complete profile! That’s ok. Just get started, add some information, connect to some people you know, and you are well on your way.

5. Requesting and accepting connections. When sending an invite to connect, personalize your greeting. No one likes form mail. Let people know that you meant to send the invite and you didn’t just mindlessly invite every profile you ran across. An example would be: “Hi Jim! I haven’t seen you since college. I just joined LinkedIn and am looking to grow my network. Hope all is well.”

TIP: Make your request message brief. The initial message length before you connect is approximately 282 characters, or about four sentences long.

Conversely, send a quick note after receiving a request to connect. It’s the little human things that will make you stand out from others. Remember you are online. It’s up to you to make it personal. Here’s what I do. “Dear Pam, Thank you for the invitation to connect. Please let me know if I can make any introductions within my network. Best regards, Bonnie”

I hope these tips are helpful getting you up and running on LinkedIn. Please leave comments and let us know how you are doing. Now go start building your network!

Posted by Bonnie Jeffers

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Can you be fired for what you say on Facebook? You betcha……! So how many of you really believe that your Facebook is private? Well, certainly if you have properly set your Facebook privacy controls you should be, right? What is that you say? You haven’t set them up? You don’t know how to? You didn’t know controls exist? You think you did but you are not sure? You thought you wrote a direct message but instead discovered you posted it on someone’s wall? Uh oh people…you could be in trouble.

The truth is, we love social media – Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and more. We love being connected, we love having that access to what is going on with our friends and colleagues, we love being able to share our fun events, our crazy photos, and to rant on when we are mad. We love being able to do this in the heat of the moment…at the touch of our fingertips. But so do employers and recruiters. They love the instant access to information just like you do. And what they are finding out could cost you your job.

Applying for jobs? We all know that employers are going to check references. But did you know that they are also going to search Google, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and more? They are reading your profiles, your wall, your updates, your comments to others, your tweets, and on and on. This cyber information gives them all kinds of insights about who you are and how you think – even if YOU think it is just for fun.

Do you have a job so you think you do not have to worry? Think again. You can argue all you want that social posts should not weigh in to employer decisions. But the reality is that they DO. They are concerned about corporate image. They worry about anger management and security issues in the workplace. They wonder if their staff are team players, are they honest, are they ethical. There are have been numerous articles about people who have lost jobs for what they say – foul language, ranting, name calling, or even the fact that they are using employer time to get onto social media sites. You used it during your lunchtime you say? Did you check to see whether your employer has a policy about using their computers for personal usage?

Realize that anything you put out in cyberspace is out there for others to discover. What you say gives insight into how you are and how you think – even if you just wrote it to vent in a mad moment. When you use employer time and equipment, it is trackable and traceable. Consider the impression this may make on employers. My advice? Leave the ranting off the keyboard and play with your friends in your own backyard.

Our new recruiter Gregg Podolski is ready to take on anything, even this sandwich

Gregg started with Emerson about eight weeks ago and we thought it was time to introduce him. Gregg is a direct hire recruiter focusing on permanent opportunities in Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia. His four years recruiting experience for a healthcare staffing firm have provided Gregg with a great professional network and the drive necessary to be successful in agency recruiting.

Gregg is ready to tackle any challenge, even the sandwich called Dead Man Walking – a cheeseburger served between two grilled cheese sandwiches . Gregg approaches all his searches the same methodical way he approaches the aptly named sandwich – one bite at a time.

Self-described as “honest, easy-going and professional,” Podolski says his personal motto is “A smile goes a long way.”

A graduate of Rutgers University, Gregg lives in Eastampton with his wife, daughter and a baby on the way!

Want to try a Dead Man Walking for yourself? Head over to Kaminski’s Bar & Grill in Cherry Hill, NJ. Tell them Gregg sent you.

presented by Diane Irwin, Dynamic Resumes

It is amazing how many opportunities we have to meet new people easily (read “potential job lead connections”) and in the most surprising places. A client of mine, Jennifer, had jury duty this week and was excited to tell me about some networking that fell in her lap that day!  We all know how much time you sit around in a crowded room with others serving their civic duty, and most people bring books, laptops, tablets, and more to stay occupied during the wait.

Jennifer is a senior in college and currently searching for an Engineering position. She brought some trade journals to read during her wait. This prompted an inquiry from the man next to her, Brad, and it turned out he was an Engineering student as well. Another woman overhearing their discussion, piped in that her son, Rick – an Engineering major, recently got a job with Company XYZ.  Jennifer left that day with phone numbers and email addresses for Brad, Rick, and info that Company XYZ is hiring. Jennifer can now keep in touch with Brad and help each other with job leads. She can contact Rick and establish a connection with him as well as garner info on hiring needs at the company. She can research the company on her own, and see if they have positions posted on their website.

So, carry trade journals or books related to your field when you are going to be waiting (doctors” offices, car tune ups, your kids’ soccer games, and of course, jury duty!) and you will increase the odds of connecting with others in unexpected places!

Emerson Personnel Group provides companies all across South Jersey and Philadelphia with temporary and temp-to-hire staff. Clients and candidates often ask:

How many of your temporary opportunities go permanent?

Based on all of the temp-to-perm opportunities Emerson has staffed in 2011, 75% have either converted to a full time, permanent position or are still on-going. That’s three out of four people landing a permanent job by taking on a temp assignment.

What should this tell you?

This should tell you two things.

One – Emerson Personnel is deeply committed to helping everyone become more successful. We listen to our clients and our candidates’ needs. We place the right people in the right opportunities. If we didn’t, our success rate wouldn’t be so high.

Two – Unemployed job seekers should consider temp and temp-to-hire opportunities. No, there are no guarantees and they don’t pay benefits but temp opportunities do open doors, create income, and can be a bridge to your next permanent job. Three out of four Emerson employees would agree.

For an in-depth look at a candidate’s transition from a temporary to permanent role, please read Catherine George-Kaiser’s Success Story.

Posted by Bonnie Jeffers

The association now known as MASA began as the South Jersey Chapter of the New Jersey Association of Personnel Consultants. The organization’s primary goal is to “promote the growth and welfare of the recruiting profession in the region and developing a common set of ethical standards and practices.”

From their beginnings in 1980 to now, the organization has grown to over 30 member firms throughout the mid-Atlantic region, with a focus in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. MASA members represent a variety of specialties within the recruiting and staffing industry.

Posted by Bonnie Jeffers

Emerson Personnel’s 40th celebration was well attended.  As I met and spoke with the other Emerson clients it was very evident that everyone feels as I do, that Emerson treats each one of us as though we are their most important customer.  It speaks well for the organization.  Everyone is so friendly and helpful.  Thanks for the taking the time to show your appreciation to us and Congratulations on winning “The Best of SJ”.  You certainly deserve the award.

Carol Adams, National Sales Manager
Franklin Machine Products

Congrats EPG on 40 successful years of business! The celebration was a wonderful reflection of your most prominent attributes of integrity, professionalism, and a culture of caring for your clients and your employees. I know this is why Emerson Personnel Group has been and will continue to be successful.

It is gratifying to do business with really nice people who are always willing to help YOUR business become better every day. Thank you Emerson Personnel Group for your friendship, loyalty, and continued support.  If you haven’t worked with EPG-YOU SHOULD!

Leanne Cindea, Principal
Laurel Benefit Advisors

The celebration was top notch but I wouldn’t have expected anything less from Emerson Personnel.  I have dealt with Emerson for over 10 years and have used them both when I needed temporary help and in finding a permanent employee.  I have hired four temp to perm employees from Emerson and three of them are still with me and are an asset to MWP Transcripts.

I have always worked with Denise Tocco and she is definitely a very valuable employee to Emerson.  She knows exactly what I need in a temp and goes out of her way to be sure she sends me someone who comes in ready and able to immediately be a productive member of my staff.

Pat Thierry
Moorestown Word Press

I was honored to participate and celebrate the 40 anniversary for Emerson Personnel last evening.  To be a viable organization for that length of time speaks to the leadership, customer focus and teamwork which are all hallmarks for Emerson Personnel.  Congratulations and best wishes!

Alan W. Dean, SPHR, CEBS, Director, Human Resources
Comar

When staffing businesses seem to come and go with every change in the season, it’s incredible that an organization like Emerson Personnel has not only survived, but has grown and prospered over 40 years.  But then, all you have to do is meet the staff of folks that work there, and you know it to be an extended “family” of individuals on the same mission of serving their customers and employees in a very committed manner.  Great job!  Here’s to the next 40 years!

Joe Giamboi, SPHR
Forge Employment Resources Corporation

Posted by Bonnie Jeffers