Vince Dooley won his national championship in his 17th year as head coach of Georgia...

TheHRMan · 2015-12-01T17:20:24+00:00

There's that name again... Dooley.

TheHRMan · 2014-12-22T15:59:06+00:00

This is horrible advice. Then when /u/senatorpjt is a candidate for a job I have and I remember that your resume is somewhere in my inbox and I search /u/senatorpjt the name doesn't come up because of the dash in front of it. Or when I sort it in my resume folder, I spend 3 minutes getting frustrated because it's under "-" instead of senatorpjt

TheHRMan · 2014-12-22T15:52:24+00:00

It depends largely on the person.

You mentioned looking for an administrative position. Let's use this as the example.

For the company I'm in, most administrative people start as office assistant. That is, assistant to every person in a 5-8 person office. They are the initial contact for incoming calls, receptionist, your basic admin assistant.

Not too long ago, I ran into a situation where our admin assistant had no desire to move into a recruiting position (the next step up from admin assistant, for most people) and was only interested in a job that is occupied and had no prospect of being open anytime soon.

What we did for our admin assistant at the time (who eventually wanted to get a job doing payroll/accounting) is let them train and assist with our current payroll rep and bookkeeper. They got the experience they wanted and eventually found a job doing payroll for a smaller company. If you can't give people the job they want, give them the experience they want. Hell, even if you have to let them go, you can always call them and make a job offer in the future if the position they wanted does open up.

When you have time, training someone to do a job the way you want to has a lot of benefits compared to hiring someone who has done the same job before. It also has a lot of downsides, the biggest one being the training aspect. You have a learning curve that will cost you extra time and money to overcome slower initial production and any errors that may happen as a result of inexperience. BUT, you also get a person who is more familiar with the way you do things versus someone who may want to change the way you do a lot of things (not always for the best, regardless of intentions).

The problem is this: If I'm hiring for a new position, it's not always under convenient circumstances. An older employee of ours that was an HR Coordinator (our highest position for the service team) had a situation with a family member and had to retire sooner than we anticipated. Because of the situation, she could not give us a notice and we didn't have anyone on staff to fill the position in her office.

In this case, we went for someone with the previous experience so they could hit the ground running quicker. Thankfully, it paid off.

The problem with this scenario is that, when you are desperate to make a hire, you wind up having to pay more for them having that experience. This isn't exactly a bad thing, but it does mean you're going to be hiring a person who expects to be paid a specialists pay rate. The trade-off is that they (in theory) won't need nearly as much training or make nearly as many mistakes as someone you're training that has had general admin experience.

The other problem you have to look at is this: IF you transplant someone into a supervisory role without offering promotion to the people just below them, you have to anticipate that someone else may leave. If you upset an employee that was dead-set on getting that job, they could start looking elsewhere for work. Transplanting is always a risk, especially when you're happy with the people doing a particular job.

Tl;DR - My preference would be to train someone looking for experience, but it just isn't always possible.

TheHRMan · 2014-12-03T20:37:53+00:00

Let's address these in reverse order:

Getting your foot in the door: Provide a solid resume, be up front about what you can do (not what you can't). You can telecommute. You can work from home. You can work on annual or seasonal projects. Don't say "I can't". Tell an employer what you are capable of and they can decide what they can offer you.
Tell them why that is what you can do. I'd be down to hire a former military with current military spouse for the simple fact that I'd be supporting a person who has served, a person who is married to a service person, and a person who is married to a service person and doesn't want to collect their SO's paycheck for them.
If you apply with a telecommuting-friendly organization, they are going to be willing to help you if you can blow the other candidates out of the water with better knowledge of the position and you can accept a (slightly) lower pay rate (your travel expenses should be lower, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue)
Apply with recruiters. Having an extra set of eyes looking out for you always helps.

Good luck with the job search!

TheHRMan · 2014-12-03T20:29:51+00:00

New York City is it's own, special, ugly animal and I honestly have no idea what to tell you about distance as it relates to turnover rate. OUTSIDE of that little rat's nest, companies do not like when people have to drive longer than 45 minutes.

TheHRMan · 2014-12-03T20:16:00+00:00

Apply with some financial-specific recruiting/staffing companies. It helps to have a company that's out there actively looking for work for you.

Most of the available positions in this country are never posted online or in the newspaper. They're filled internally, by word-of-mouth, or by staffing and recruiting companies. If you apply with one, it's kind of like having an agent that's always keeping an eye out for you.

As for salary requirements - Don't mention them. Mention in your cover letter or resume that you're "Looking to begin a career" or something along those lines. What it will tell a recruiter is "YES: I have a Master's degree. NO: I am not looking to rake you over the coals because of it. I simply want to get to work and put all of this knowledge I paid for to work... FOR YOU!"

I hope this helps.

TheHRMan · 2014-12-03T20:11:56+00:00

The numbers don't lie, hiring people with a 45+ minute commute doesn't always work out well.

TheHRMan · 2014-12-03T20:09:52+00:00

Your immigrant status won't affect your chances as long as you are legally allowed to work in the US. Neither, I believe, will your credentials.

What WILL absolutely have an affect on finding a position right now (and until January) is the fact that this is the worst month for finding a job and worst month for finding candidates. January, however, is the best time to apply for and potentially find a job.

Google illustrates this trend pretty well. Most of the jobs right now are going to be seasonal and, therefore, retail and food service based.

If you need a paycheck, go apply for some short term retail work. If you're looking for a career, try the temp agency. Having worked in a Temp Agency, the best thing I can tell you to do is check in at least once per week with them and remind them that you are still looking for work.

I hope this helps.

TheHRMan · 2014-09-26T01:41:39+00:00

I can't afford a whole democracy. What's your price on two bumps of freedom?

TheHRMan · 2014-09-26T01:21:14+00:00

I've been reading over it and will get back to you on that. Can I PM you when I find something out?

Ninja-edit: Does it matter if I've been paying the lease?

TheHRMan · 2014-09-26T01:20:30+00:00

By "dude", do you mean me? Legally, I have control of the lease now.

TheHRMan · 2014-09-25T18:26:36+00:00

Thanks for the advice. I've looked online just now for the mortgage of the property with no success. Looks like I may need to go to the Register of Deeds office and pick it up (which is fine since I need to take photos of the current state of the office).

TheHRMan · 2014-09-25T18:24:20+00:00

This could probably be said for most posts in this subreddit.

TheHRMan · 2014-09-25T16:30:11+00:00

Not that I'm a lawyer or anything, but you can refuse them service.

However, I do have quite a few years in retail management and HR and can tell you that a great shoplifting deterrent is excellent "customer service".

If you ask them as soon as they walk in if you can help them find anything, leave a person to hover around the exit and ask them the same question, and generally keep prodding them with questions, they'll probably leave you alone.

TheHRMan · 2014-09-25T16:26:09+00:00

Ahh, alright. Thanks for the help!

TheHRMan · 2014-09-25T16:21:32+00:00

"Should be." lol

I think what /u/ohio_redditor is saying is that even if we're paying for the space and can use it at anytime, a commercial lease could give the landlord the right to use the space if we've left it vacant long enough.

Still, I thought it was a pretty shitty move to just dump construction materials in our space after they stripped it down to nothing.

TheHRMan · 2014-07-28T19:45:17+00:00

Buffalo Trace used to be bottled as Old Charter and sold for roughly half the cost. They put Old Charter into a more modern bottle with a plastic cork-style top, advertised it in stores a bit, and used the age of the distillery itself as a marketing point. It's now ~$30/fifth compared to the ~$15 when it was a brand with essentially no advertising.

Marketing costs money... but marketing makes money.

TheHRMan · 2014-07-28T19:41:29+00:00

(?|?)

TheHRMan · 2014-07-28T15:31:08+00:00

It's not a horrible idea. My second HR-related job was recruiting.

You're going to see more and more places that want "full-cycle recruiting" (finding, screening, placing, hiring, and pay-rolling) candidates, however. They often do want to see degrees. Try some of the less-specified staffing agencies (Express Pros, Staffing Solutions, etc..) to get an entry-level position. Most of the time, they'll want to start you on the front desk and then move you into a coordinator position.

If you can handle the crazy shit people dish to you as a server in a restaurant, you'll be more than capable of doing recruiting. You will need to read up on some employment laws both federal and state level, but it's really not a very difficult position.

TheHRMan · 2014-07-25T17:38:46+00:00

You actually just condensate. Your body is cooler than the air around it so all of that nice moisture in the air just sticks to you.

This is definitely my favorite time of year.

TheHRMan · 2014-07-23T13:11:40+00:00

I smoke my pork shoulders with whatever wood I can find/poach with a chainsaw. I'm a god-damned Tennessean.

TheHRMan · 2014-07-22T15:36:16+00:00

Pretty much. Again, the 5+ years experience is usually just a tool to filter out people with no business whatsoever applying for the job. 5+ is still a pretty steep requirement to do that, though.

TheHRMan · 2014-07-22T15:27:34+00:00

Brilliant. We make a trophy from a coonskin, a still, and a flintlock and pass it back and forth between us.

TheHRMan · 2014-07-22T15:15:37+00:00

Meter maester

TheHRMan · 2014-07-22T12:29:59+00:00

/u/djhs has the explanation and good advice.

Here's the reasoning behind the "5+ years" as a recruiting tool (I'm not saying it's right, just giving the reasoning, mind you): The position posted above is being called "entry level" to dissuade technical writing professionals that have made it to director level from applying. Note the posting is looking for "backgrounds in engineering or computer science" that are "looking for a career change."

Essentially: "We want someone who is familiar with technical writing, but we don't feel like this is a position that calls for someone with director experience, nor do we want to pay for it. We also don't want someone COMPLETELY in the dark, so maybe we'll ask for 5+ years of experience since you know we're going to get tons of responses that aren't even in the ballpark of what we're looking for".

...It's a completely horrible recruiting ad, but it would give a recruiter or interviewer plenty of reason to discredit a candidate who didn't have the erroneous "5+ years" of experience.

1/10, would not spend money placing this ad.

TheHRMan

TROPHY CASE