Volunteering During Job Transition: Good Idea!

I wanted to take a moment to say a word or two about volunteering during career transition. While it is not always feasible to give your time to unpaid work when you've been laid off, downsized or outsourced, it is something that you should consider carefully. As the organizer of the JobCamp event, I was helped by over 150 dedicated volunteers, foremost among them a group of twelve selfless individuals who put in an effort that any company would be proud sing about.

I could not tell you how many of the 150 interviewers and resume doctors and presenters are currently without employment (probably many of them), but I can tell you that many--most--of the core organizing team are unemployed or severely underemployed.

In other circumstances you may question the wisdom of why someone would devote so much time and effort to something that would not put a cent into their pockets. Granted, there is a certain amount of feelgood popularity that results from being involved in an event that benefits the community and that's enough reason for some to do it. But when you look at the resounding recommenation that it gives those individuals when they walk into their next interview and explain what they did when the chips were down?

Wow.

I challenge any area employer not to be impressed with the individuals who worked on the Milwaukee JobCamp team. They exemplified the very best qualities we seek in employees--dedication, belief in the mission of the organization, consideration and teamwork, communication, the ability to prioritize, diplomacy, and camaraderie.

Before dismissing any opportunity out of hand when you are in transition, consider the opportunity and adventure that it might provide. And consider the message that it sends to your next potential employer.

Twitter and Hiring: Back to Classifieds? It's About Time!

I frequently hear hiring professionals debating the value of Twitter as a hiring tool. The space is replete with thousands of social media experts who feel you should tweet but are often maddeningly short on details when it comes down to the specifics.

In my daily life, Twitter has been a tool that I use to promote myself, my company, my events, and thought leadership about recruiting and quality hiring. That's a lot of purposes for a 140-character-limit platform! Being a good citizen of the Twitter world seems to require of me (still feeling it out, of course) a balance between offering good information, responding to interesting messages and friends, and, yep, throwing out the occasional job opportunity.

I find that Twitter works especially well in the IT space, where a lot of engaged discussions go on with regards to open source technologies and programming languages. It's like walking into a room of experts who can probably point you in the right direction and announcing a need for help.

But probably the most intriguing thing about using Twitter--and status updates on LinkedIn and Facebook for that matter--is the space limitation. It reminds me a great deal of how classified ads worked--or still, work, I suppose, though I can't imagine anyone in the IT space still paying much attention to the printed classifieds.

One of the endemic problems of moving job advertisements to the online world was something that seemed like a huge benefit at first: the lack of limitations. Suddenly, it was five times more cost effective to write as much as you wanted in a job description and have it posted online. Isn't that great? Unfortunately, the lack of writing strictures has brought us to a place where economy of words and careful description has gone away. Look at any job board and you'll find thousands of horribly written position descriptions that are geared more toward Human Resources departments than the job seekers they ought ot be aimed at.

Position descriptions as they exist on the boards and on corporate web sites today consist of endless bulleted lists; obtuse, vague, trite or inaccurate descriptions; legalistic jargon; and exclusionary requirements. These descriptions have the effect of convincing the potential hire that a company is asking for too much specialization (a purple squirrel hunt is what it's called in the recruiting biz).

It's no wonder that hiring professionals are now looking at Twitter with a bit of a jaundiced eye. It would require us to get back to the business of writing a compelling, intriguing description of an available position along with a clear call to apply. It does not bore us with endless bullet points (like in PowerPoint, all bullets in job descriptions probably ought to be banned), nor does it exclude, nor does it stultify the company. Tweeting an interesting compelling position description that drives someone to my web site to apply or to ask me direct questions about my work opportunities is a welcome addition to the recruiter's arsenal.