Finally, Friday!
If your week was as long as ours, you’ll appreciate that today’s roundup isn’t going to take too much of anything seriously. We had enough of that serious stuff when we had to write out four-figure checks to the U.S. Treasury. So we’ll put the business stuff after we introduce you to Ronald Gulick.
He claims to be “a normal accounting and finance recruiter by day.” We’re going to leave that up to you to judge, after you check out Ron’s video. Spend even a few minutes with it, and you’ll appreciate why he says, “My wife always tells my friends that if they saw me at work, they would not recognize me.”
In what has to be the understatement of the week, Ron tells us, “I am a non-traditional thinker. I love new ideas. I don’t like the norm.”
“NO other recruiter has my skills (in rapping AND recruiting combined),” Ron tells us in an email, “and this is a huge differentiator between me and the competition. Many of my clients and candidates love my videos ”
Why do them?, we wondered. “Attention, plain and simple,” Ron says, being as honest and direct as we wish the world’s politicians would be at least some of the time.
Without further introduction (Ron asked us not to involve his company in this, but, shoot, you guys are recruiters; if you can’t find Ron you might rethink that whole career path thing), Here’sssssss Ronnie:
And, Now, the News
CareerBuilder says fewer companies are using social media to background-check candidates today, than was the case three years ago. Three years, CareerBuilder’s survey found 45 percent of companies checking social sites. Now 37 percent say they do; another 11 percent plan to start.
Perhaps reflecting the legal issues that are beginning to be raised about the practice, 15 percent of the survey respondents say their companies prohibit using social media to research candidates.
Among those who do, a majority (65 percent) are looking to see how the candidate presents themselves. They’re looking for professionalism, and whether the candidate might be a good fit with the company culture (51 percent). Twelve percent own up to looking for reasons why a candidate should not be hired.
Whether actively looking for reasons to ding a candidate or not, 34 percent of the hiring managers have. Almost half (49 percent) say they’ve not hired someone because they found provocative or inappropriate photos or information about them; 45 percent said they discovered information about drinking or drug use. Poor communication skills, lying about qualifications, bad mouthing a previous employer, and making discriminatory remarks were other negatives that led to a disqualification.
On the other hand, 29 percent said their social media research led them to making an offer. 58 percent said they got a “good feel for candidate’s personality”; 55 percent said the content conveyed a professional image (55 percent). Being well rounded, signs of creativity, and positive endorsements from others were among the pluses leading to a job offer.
AfterCollege Relaunches
AfterCollege is launching a redone website today, pivoting away from being mainly a job board to a site with networking opportunities, more like LinkedIn and other sites, and the Web 2.0 lingo we’ve all come to know (profiles, follow, etc.). Job-seekers can build a profile, as well as “follow” jobs from employers like Rent-A-Center, Farmer’s, or Saddleback Memorial, and exchange messages with employers. Job candidates can also turn their profiles into a resume with one click.
Jobs Most In Demand
Physical therapists top the list of Wanted Technologies’ list of the 50 most-common job titles online. Wanted does analyses of online data, scouring the web, scrubbing the information, and then making it available to its clients, among whom is The Conference Board. Periodically, the company releases various bits, including the job title list.
You can find the complete list here. You can probably guess, though, that healthcare and IT jobs are well represented. Surprisingly, the list also includes a number of retail job types. The one that surprised us the most: Cook.