May 11 – 11 Speakers in One Meeting at RUMC

Can You Imagine 11 Speakers in One Meeting to Help You in Your Career?

Join us Monday, May 11th starting at 5:55 pm for this not to miss event!

On Monday Night, May 11th, our volunteer Barbara Marks has organized one of our most popular events - 11 Speakers in a Roundtable Format.

You have time to pick 3 during the evening based on what you are most interested in.

When you arrive at 5:55 pm you can join us for our speaker / dinner program with RUMC volunteer and Craig Simons. You want to arrive on time as our serving line will close at 6:15 pm.

For information and directions please go to http://www.blogger.com/www.RUMCjobnetworking.com.

Our 11 Speakers are focusing on the following topics. You may choose 3 of them to participate in during our meeting:

1.The Importance of a Positive Attitude and How to Maintain It - Diane
Tuccito
2. Successful 30 Second Introductions - Tim Morrison
3. The Ruthie List Theory & Many Common Mistakes by Job Seekers - Ruthie
Powell
4. Small Business Opportunities - Bill Williams
5. Dealing with Compensation Issues During Your Job Search - Curt Engelmann
6. Interviewing and Body Language - Bruce Dreyfus
7. Networking into the Hidden Job Market - Richard Kirby
8. How to Answer Interview Questions - Nancy Schrempp
9. The Process- How to have a positive experience with "HR" - Dutch Earle
10. Making Networking Work for You - Greg Losh
11. Budgeting During a Job Search - Ryan Hunt, Dave Ramsey Certified
Counselor

Assessment Special- We have On-line assessments from our connections with CrossroadsCareer. They are on sale at a huge discount from the retail $80.00 fee for only $20.00. If you want to know more please contact Pat Holt at pholt@theaigroup. com

Please review the schedule below for Monday Night for the half dozen activities that are scheduled for you:

1. 5:55 pm - Dinner with Craig Simons. Craig has spent many hours preparing a special topic for you. Our dinner program is focused on developing your spiritual resume so you are not conducting your job search alone! Our serving line will close at 6:15 pm.

2. 6:30 - 7:45 pm Resume Reviews. We have Recruiters and HR Professionals volunteering their time as Resume Reviewers that are anxious to go one-on-one with you.

3. 6:30 - 7:45 pm Resume Workshop. Tim Morrison will lead a workshop in the best practices for getting selected via your resume.

4. 6:30 - 7:45 pm Industry Networking (a new addition).Network with others in the main room for networking in your profession. We will have sales, HR, IT and other groups for you to be a part of. If we are missing your group let us know!

5. 6:30 - 7:45 pm Interview Workshop. This is run by professional career coach Richard Kirby. Richard has an informal drop-in format.

6. 6:30 - 7:45 pm Start Your Own Business Opportunity Workshop. This is a coordinated by business consultant Bill Williams. Should you start your own business now and leave the corporate world? That question can be answered.

7. 7:00 - 7:45 pm Chapel Time with our Prayer Ministry leaders! We recognize the need to keep God in your search. This is way too hard to do without Him. Dedicated prayer partners are waiting in the Chapel between 7:00 and 7:45 to pray with you. Join them. This could be the most critical moment you spend.

8. 7:45 pm The Main Program - with 11 Guest Speakers.

NOTE:Our meeting is located in Building B on the church campus. We have signs on the street to direct you. The best parking will be at Building A and at Building D. You'll find it only a short walk to Building B. Review our website www.RUMCjobnetworking.com for maps of the campus under the link "Directions. "

Our last meeting had over 350 job seekers to hear Debbie Rodkin from Re:FocusOnCareers for her Networking Boot Camp. We also had over 75 on-site volunteers ready to assist. Take advantage of all the people to network with and our volunteers that want to assist you.

We start at 5:55 pm with a dinner speaker/program and close around 9:10 pm. No RSVP is required for the dinner but please be respectful of our starting time for dinner speaker and arrive at 5:55 pm as our serving line will close at 6:15 pm. Our dinner topic will be led by Craig Simons (details below). We accept $3.00 donations from those that are capable to help cover the costs of the dinner which have dramatically grown the past few months. However,the dinner is available at no cost for those that attend. Beat the traffic and have dinner with us.

Outplacement Resources and Resume Assistance

I spoke with Drake, Beam and Morin last year to get information on support services available through their firm. They provided some detailed information and I posted it on November 26, 2007. Please use the archive section at the bottom of the main page or use the "post label" search option to find the information. Prices may have changed a little but should not be substantially different.

Market Meltdown: Change Your Job Search Mindset

Market Meltdown: Change Your Job Search Mindset
Joe Turner 10/20/08

The current economic meltdown is just the tip of a much larger iceberg that will have far reaching economic implications for all of us here in the U.S. Tens of thousands of layoffs in and beyond the financial industry will only be the start of more sober times as companies across the country will be forced to rethink their future hiring plans.

One fact seems certain. All of these combined circumstances will have huge ramifications for job seekers. The failing economy and a constantly rising unemployment rate will require individuals to take a fresh approach to their job search.

Referencing the most recent economic crisis, Neil McNulty, Principal Recruiter, McNulty Management Group states, "The game has changed, but the rules remain the same; now, more than ever, job seekers need to change their mindset from looking for 'openings' to looking for 'opportunities. ' Opportunities are born out of crisis and chaos, and exist even in the worst economy."This means that you, as a job seeker, must look beyond job postings and move into marketing yourself to the managers of the companies and organizations who are experiencing problems that you can solve.

Here's how:
1. Change Your Mindset: Move away from being a passive job seeker and toward being an active problem-solver. Don't just rely on the Internet to find job openings. Scour the marketplace to find the hidden jobs that aren't advertised. Most jobs are not posted or advertised. The best jobs are often found through networking, word-of-mouth and informational interviews.
2. Stop Thinking of Yourself as Just an Assortment of Job Skills: See yourself as a product to package and market, and then create your own marketing campaign to find your desired job. This includes having a state-of-the- art resume and sharpening your interviewing skills.
3. Sell ROI: View yourself in terms of Return on Investment for an employer. See yourself as a mini-profit and loss center. Be prepared to demonstrate ways you have helped to positively impact the bottom line of your past or current employer. This means demonstrating ways you've helped make money or save money for an employer or clients. As employees, we all touch money. Some of us may be closer to it than others. Regardless, we must find ways to prove this in short "sound bites" when given the opportunity.

Remember, it's not about you, but about the organization itself. All communication with a prospective employer must answer the question, "What's in it for me (the employer)?" The road ahead will be littered with casualties; make no mistake about that.We could sit by and whine about the circumstances. We could wait for the government to initiate a "bailout" package that might somehow rescue the unemployed. Or, we could take charge of our own lives and power ourselves forward.

Joseph P. Kennedy said many years ago, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." That statement is just as true today as it was then. Whether we're employed or not, we all have this rocky, tough economy in common. We can respond as victims of the economy or we can get tough, and get going. As a recruiter, Joe Turner has spent the past 15 years finding and placing top candidates in some of the best jobs of their careers. Author of "JobSearch Secrets Unlocked" and "Paycheck 911" , Joe has interviewed on radio talk shows and offers
<http://www.jobchangesecrets.com/> free insider job search secrets.

Behavioral Interviewing used in Phone Screens and Face to Face Interviews

SHRM Home > HR News
1/28/08 4:00 PM
Behavioral Interviewing Popular, but Training in Use Urged
By Kathy Gurchiek
Use of behavioral interviewing is on the rise, according to a new survey, but employers are cautioned to identify and define crucial competencies and train interviewers in their use if they want positive results.
More than half (55.7 percent) of 2,556 senior HR professionals and training and development executives surveyed plan to continue using behavioral interviewing at the same frequency, and almost one-fourth (24.7 percent) plan to use it more often, according to a national survey the Novations Group conducted in December 2007.
Behavioral interviewing is a technique aimed at predicting a job candidate’s suitability for a position based on his or her past workplace behavior.
“The interviewer asks the candidate to describe, in detail, how he or she handled specific situations in the past,” Novations executive consultant Tim Vigue said in a press release.
“The answers enable the hiring manager to learn the candidates’ capacity to handle similar situations in the new position.”
The sharp rise in the hiring technique may be attributable in part to what Vigue says is “an increasingly diverse talent pool” that demands that organizations hire the best candidate “from the broadest possible pool.” That requires, he said, using “objective methods that won’t screen out qualified candidates due to bias.”
However, for behavioral interviewing to be effective, the employer must identify and define a short list of the competencies and behaviors considered crucial for the position, and have people who are trained in the technique administering the questions, Vigue noted.
What Is Behavioral Interviewing?
“Behavioral interviewing” is a term that is tossed around loosely, observed Mark Stewart, who has a Ph.D. in industrial psychology and sits on the Society for Human Resource Management’s Organizational Development Special Expertise Panel.
He was skeptical that the 55.7 percent who said they use behavioral interviewing all adhere to the same standards for conducting those interviews.
It’s a technique that goes beyond including some questions about how a job candidate handled various work situations at a former employer, he said. It requires the interviewer to have been trained in spotting the strong answers for the competencies in question and knowing how to score those answers, Stewart said.
“The key in behavioral interviewing is that it has to be structured, [with] set questions that are delivered to every candidate in the same wording, the same order and scored in the same way,” he said in a SHRM Online interview.
For example, the main interview question would be followed up with questions structured to elicit the candidate’s actions and thinking; the outcome of the action taken; what he or she learned from the experience; and how he or she applied the lessons learned at a later date.
The interviewer records any negative or positive themes evident from the candidate’s answers—such as a lack of timely response to customer issues, or handling difficult customers comfortably.
“Ideally, the head of HR works with operational executives to determine the competencies or knowledge, skills and abilities needed to [execute] corporate strategy,” Stewart said in a follow-up e-mail.
“After executives reach consensus, HR must create methods to measure these competencies, educate organizational members on the process and potential value, and work with these people to fully implement the process,” as well as maintain records on the interview program’s use and effectiveness, he wrote.
Stewart, a senior consultant for PCI Human Resource Consulting Inc., in Pittsburgh, advised employers interested in using behavioral interviews to:
• Train the interviewers in its use.
• Use a system that checks that the persons not only received the training but all displayed some degree of accuracy.
• Follow up with the employees after they completed training.
• Involve the hiring manager, who should be familiar with and trained in the process.
• Demonstrate that the interview questions used three or four years ago remain representative of those positions.
Behavioral interviewing can be used in any industry but might be too expensive a process for low-level applicants, Stewart said.
The best way to use the technique, he said, is further along in the selection process, after screening the resume and conducting some type of online inventory. Interviewers can conduct phone interviews that incorporate behavioral interview questions and can conduct in-person behavioral interviews with the final candidates. It’s a way to keep the cost down and the quality of hires up, he said.
“Improving the interview quality is a never-ending process. Predicting performance potential is an art; it’s always sketchy,” he said. The interview answers, he added, “should be viewed as a piece of the data, not the complete picture.”
Kathy Gurchiek is associate editor for HR News.

DBM Direct Documents

Click to enlarge for detail.

Outplacement Resources

DBM (www.dbm.com) is the world’s leading provider of strategic human resource solutions that help organizations align their workforces to meet changing business needs. Known for over 35 years for its innovative and effective career transition services, DBM offers in-depth capabilities in employee transition, retention, development, and selection. Founded in 1967, the company has more than 225 locations in over 45 countries.

Ordinarily DBM works directly with a company that is downsizing and DBM's services are included as part of a severance package for departing employees. They very kindly agreed to meet with me and have prepared a combination of group and individual services to assist former Wieland employees. I will cover the highlights here and have more detailed information if you are interested.

The DBM Direct package is online assistance and includes resume assistance via email, access to a research resource center, tutorials for interviewing questions, access to skills and knowledge inventory assessments and additional services. Thirty days of access costs former Wieland employees $100 and sixty days of access cost
$150.

I have a document with detailed information and attempted to post it but encountered technical difficulties. I will continue to try so hopefully that information will be available on the blog soon.

In addition, DBM has offered to conduct either full or half day seminars that would include a DBM facilitator for the duration of the session, thirty days access to DBM's Comprehensive WebCenter and sixty days access to the DBM Search Guide. The session would be limited to 15-20 participants and would range in price from $40 to $100 per person, depending on whether it is a half or full day session and on how many choose to participate.

Please email me at elizbell@bellsouth.net if you are interested in additional information. For those of you who are interested in DBM Direct, please consider the seminar as well. A full day session with 20 participants, including thirty days access to DBM's WebCenter and sixty days access to the DBM Search guide , is the same expense as simply thirty days access to DBM Direct. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.