Introducing Stella & Dot

Welcome to Stella & Dot – Geneva Lake 

www.stelladot.com/genevalake

Join me as I show you the latest in Stella & Dot!

                                              

Warmest Wishes,

 

 

A Note From A Recruiter’s Desk…

Job Numbers Released

As the new job numbers came out this week, I couldn’t help but wonder if we are really getting out of the so called “jobless recovery” or if we are simply turning one corner blindly to run right into a wall.

From a White House press release on April 2, 2010.

Payroll employment increased 162,000.  Even after adjusting for the 48,000 temporary Census workers hired and a rebound effect from the February snowstorms, this number suggests an increase in underlying payroll employment.  Moreover, revised estimates now show a small job gain in January and a smaller job loss in February than previously reported.  As a result, for the first quarter of 2010 as a whole, job growth averaged 54,000 per month.  This is a dramatic change from the first quarter of 2009, when average job loss was 753,000 per month.

Nearly 50,000 of the 162,000 jobs were temporary government jobs, another nearly 50,000 were temporary jobs from the private sector leaving roughly 62,000 as actual permanent jobs. The minimal gains are nonetheless gains however, will not be enough to get us back to where we were before the recession any time soon.

From My Perspective

For every hourly, service industry job opening, there are at times hundreds of applicants. Upon reviewing an online resume submitted to me this week  a candidate wrote the following:

Job Skills:
i have no job skills for which the position i am applying for

This is a literal quote written exactly as the candidate wrote it on the online resume submitted and is all too common. The number of candidates without basic job skills is astounding! Most commonly I see candidates with no basic job skills including basic communication skills. I have literally seen applicants who misspelled every word on their resume except for the word “I”. In addition to lacking basic job skills, candidates often times have trouble holding a job for more than a few months at a time.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are a tremendous number of candidates that are overqualified for the positions they are applying for. For instance, a Line Cook openings may have a former Executive Chef apply for the position, Bartender roles are having former restaurant owners and consultants apply. In my personal experience, once hired for these roles, these newly minted employees last until a better opportunity comes along which for some is a matter of weeks or months. Can you hardly blame them! This could be good or bad depending on what your organizational needs are, but be prepared that they may only be with you for a short period of time.
The applicant in the middle is often times the elusive candidate, a diamond in the rough so to speak. When reflecting on the candidate pool for some hourly service industry positions, a few things have jumped out at me and seem to be much more exaggerated given the current economic conditions.

1. The education gap in this country is tremendous from one region to the next. (I am right now working in the Milwaukee-area market). Many high school students are not leaving school with basic job skills and when I say basic I mean even just being able to spell the simplest of words.
2. The younger generation (high school – college) has an entitlement mentality when it comes to employment, salary, benefits, etc. For many the idea of working hard to earn something is a foreign concept.
3. The underemployed in the country right now mask the true unemployment numbers and fail to show how dire the employment outlook really is in many markets.

These ideas are of course my perspective based on my personal experiences. There are always exceptions in any group and the ideas expressed here are generalizations.
There are no good or immediate answers to all the issues addressed here. However, I challenge everyone to think about education, if our youth continues to come out of the education system without job skills, we will continue to perpetuate the education gap. On the reverse side of this argument, it is important to teach our youth personal responsibility. Take personal responsibility to utilize the resources that exist to better oneself.
I believe the current economic conditions have changed the job market for a long time to come and it is important that we change our thought process to reflect the newly created reality (more to come on this newly created reality soon).
This is a note of reflection from my desk this week, I look forward to your comments.

Kalous HR Consulting

We offer a full range of HR solutions tailored for your specific business needs. With continually changing employment laws and regulations, most organizations today don't know, what they don't know. We know what you need to know!

Areas of Specialization Include:

• HR Audits & Analysis
• Organizing the HR function for your business
• Legal Compliance
• Interim HR Management
• Recruitment & Retention
• Training (Employer & Employee)
• Employee policies, procedures & handbooks
• Job descriptions - ADA requirements
• Unemployment claim prevention, protests & hearings
• Workers' Compensation including investigation
• EEOC charges & EEO reporting
• Labor Relations
• Compensation
• Performance Appraisals
• Employee Surveys
• Assisting in guiding employers through disciplinary action, documentation, termination, hiring, recognition, maintaining employee files, etc.

 

Our Mission:

Our mission is to assist you in making your business a success by strategically managing the Human Resources function and teaching you to be knowledgeable in Human Resources. We will work with you as a business partner for your continued success, HR is our passion, let us help you so you can enjoy yours!

 

www.kaloushrconsulting.com

LinkedIn Best Practices For Business

Great article on using LinkedIn for business....

http://e-strategyblog.com/2009/05/linkedin-best-practices-for-business/

Seeking A Job - Here Are Your Sites!

Searching for jobs?

Check out these sites:

http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2009/21/my-big-fat-job-list



A-

Updates to LinkedIn

LinkedIn continues to evolve and is gaining new members and being updated at a record pace due to the current economic conditions, more specifically, the job market.

LinkedIn has become a primary source for Recruiters and HR Professionals to seek and research candidates for open positions. Using this type of a site allows recruiters to be selective of their candidates and conduct focused searches (as compared to looking through hundreds of resumes, many of which the candidate is not qualified for the position).

They continue to add new applications such as slide shows and blogs for professionals to market themselves. Another recent update is the ability to add some personal information. I recommend professionals be selective about what information they put out on the web however, if you are seeking employment, you many want to consider updating your profile to include some additional contact information. Again, some information such as martial status and birthday you may want to stay away from just to avoid potential discrimination issues. The information that can now be added is below:

Personal Information
Phone:
Address:
IM:
Birthday:
Marital status:

Just another resource that is available for Free that continues to evolve!

A-

Finding Balance, While Maintaing Momentum!

Cleaning the house, laundry, running errands, grocery shopping, making dinner, mowing the lawn, maintaining the garden & landscaping, raising the kids, time with friends & family, and oh yeah, running a business! Sound familiar? How do you find balance and still maintain your business momentum?

As I blog about this, I must confess that I struggle with this myself and consider this to be a continuous area of improvement and focus. I have found that for me, finding balance is about de-cluttering my life and is really a personal evolution that has not come easy or quick.

So what do I mean by de-cluttering your life? Consider some of the things I have done and think about what you can incorporate into your life:

• The first thing I did was to take stock of my relationships, were there people in my life that were constantly negative and bringing me down? Where there people who seemed to always need some "drama" happening in their life and if it there wasn't, they would create or seek it? I will tell you that there are people that I consider to be friends but no longer have close relationships with anymore. I also left a husband now ex-husband in the aftermath of my former life, but have moved myself into a better place with an intimate group of close friends and family that make me feel better as a person just because I have them in my life. I also have a new husband with goals and values that are in sync with my own.
• The second thing I did and probably the easiest for me was to de-clutter my space. Letting go of "things" that I had held on to for no specific reason other than I may need it someday! I sorted out my closet (which I still do seasonally), photos, collectibles (dust collectors), etc. I organized and sorted and maintain a philosophy of something comes in, something goes out when it comes to "stuff" in my life. I set away time each week to clean and organize, everything has a place and once you define these places and put things in them when not in use, your well on your way to maintaining daily organization.
• The third thing is to de-clutter your time. There are a lot of things in life that I consider to be clutter, the TV is a huge source of mental and time clutter. Do you need to watch the news morning, noon and night? Probably not, could you just watch it in the evening while making dinner or in the morning with getting through your morning beauty routine. Do you have to sit and watch Grey's Anatomy every Thursday night or could you download it off iTunes and watch it while you workout? Do you need all those TV shows are could you narrow it down to a select few? Think about how much time you watch TV and what you watch? Think about how stressed and busy you feel, would eliminating a few hours of TV time in favor of more productive things eliminate some of that stress? Email and Internet is another thing that clutters our time, dedicate some specific time each day to respond to emails rather than sitter there all day jumping on every email that comes in. Avoid the Facebook/Twitter/MySpace trap, these are legitimate ways to promote your business and network however, you should dedicate an allotment of time to do this and not get caught sitting in front of it all day waiting for people to update their status. Are there obligations in your life that you'd rather not do or that don't keep you moving forward personally and professionally? Think of other things that clutter your time and how you can eliminate or reduce the amount of time spent on these things.
• Think about what is important and make the time! Family, sleep, exercise, etc. You make your list and you make the time, will eliminating some TV make more time for these things?
• Learn to say No! Will joining the PTA eliminate time for the really important things and people in your life? You have to learn you can't do it all and will need to say no.
• Learn to delegate! Can your kids help with household chores, does it make sense to have the neighbor kid mow your lawn? What is the value of your time? During the time spent mowing the lawn could you have made money working for a client, etc? Would you have made more than it would cost to pay someone to mow the lawn or clean the house? At some point, these are things you need to think about.
• Make lists! Making a list helps you to organize your time so you don't have to run back to the grocery store for that one thing you forgot.
• Make a long-term plan and think about the benefits! Think about where you want to be in 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years and so on. Write it down and look at it often, this will keep you on track and help you to keep moving forward. Think about the long term benefits to exercising vs. watching TV... will 30 minutes of yoga recharge you better than 30 minutes of TV? Weigh all your options and choose the one that aligns with your goals.

This list is not all-inclusive, but should get you thinking and will be a good start to finding some balance and maintaining your momentum.

A-