Archive for September, 2009

Life is full of clichés — but your interviews shouldn’t fall victim to them. The interview process is constantly evolving, and with it, you too must review your process — and yes, evolve. Don’t forget –  just as you are screening job seekers through an interview, they are also screening you.

Companies expect candidates to continuously advance their skills, be cognizant of industry news, and surpass expectations. It should come as no surprise, then, that candidates expect the same of the companies with which they’re interviewing. When is the last time you thought about the questions you ask candidates in an interview? Or changed them to stay current or reflect the changing attitudes and needs of the job seekers in today’s market? We’ve rounded up some of the most cliché interview questions, courtesy of the experts: job seekers themselves. Underneath each cliché, we’ve added a new twist on the old standard.

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• Posted by: Amy Chulik on September 30, 2009
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• Categories: Employee Attraction, Employer Advice, Interviewing

Yesterday, CareerBuilder released the results of a survey about confronting awkward office situations.  More than 4,400 workers nationwide participated to reveal which embarrassing observations – from an undone zipper to the need for a breath mint – they would be willing to point out to a co-worker of equal, lower or higher status. (Results after the jump.)

It may seem silly, but when you’re in these situations yourself, it doesn’t always feel that way – personal hygiene and appearance are pretty sensitive subjects, and rather than risk awkwardness by trying to save someone from future embarrassment, many of us will do anything we can to avoid it altogether.  Case in point: When I told a friend of mine about this survey, she immediately related:

“We had a guy at my office who smelled,” she said.  The guy’s body odor was so distracting, in fact, that my friend went to HR about it. When HR told her that it was her job to tell the employee, she went to some male co-workers asking them to say something to the guy, but they, too, refused. 

“What did you eventually do?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she said. “He doesn’t work there anymore.” 

“Oh.” Not the answer I was hoping for.  Awkward silence.

“He wasn’t let go or anything,” she added. ”He just left. I forget why.” 

For her, the problem solved itself (sort of), but I still felt bad for the employee she was talking about; however, I don’t know how I would’ve handled the situation myself, and as the survey results indicate, not many others would have handled the situation differently than my friend had:

Only 28 percent of survey respondents revealed that they would tell a co-worker at an equal or lower level that he/she needed a shower; while only 11 percent would do the same for a higher level co-worker.    

On a similar note, I recently came across this post on ERE.net by recruiter Sarah Welstead, who suggests that it’s in recruiters’ best professional interests to give candidates with bad personal hygiene a heads-up. After all, the author reasons, “if we don’t tell them, who will?…These candidates will be unemployed for months.” 

What are your thoughts? Do you agree? Have you ever had to confront a co-worker about bad hygiene, and if so, how did you do it?

Keep reading for full survey results. Continue Reading…

• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on September 25, 2009
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• Categories: Survey Results

If you’ve ever skimmed the Eat This, Not That! book series (you can admit it), you know the premise of the books is to help you make healthier choices about the foods you eat.  Instead of consuming a thick, rich, creamy chocolate milkshake, for example, you could theoretically get the same delicious taste satisfaction – but fewer calories! – by eating fat-free, no-sugar-added chocolate pudding (theoretically).

Anyway, the list below aims to do for recruiters and hiring managers what these books do for conscientious eaters: Achieve the desired results by making better choices.  In order to achieve their goals of getting certain information out of candidates, recruiters and hiring managers need to be careful in the way they phrase certain interview questions; otherwise, they could face potential legal ramifications.   

Recruiters and hiring managers should already know that any question that asks a candidate to reveal information about his or her national origin, citizenship, age, marital status, disabilities, arrest record, military discharges, or personal information is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

But while avoiding these subjects sounds easy enough, it’s not always glaringly obvious what questions might be construed as inappropriate – even when they seem harmless on the surface.  Below is a guideline to avoiding 10 potentially dangerous questions – while still getting the information you’re looking for. Continue Reading…

• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on September 24, 2009
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• Categories: Employee Attraction, Employer Advice, Interviewing

Have you been overhearing your employees talking about living on ramen (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and refreshing the computer screen a hundred times a day to spot the exact moment that paycheck deposits? That may not come as a huge shock, but current worker struggles may be deeper and more common than you realize.

As we continue to experience the effects of a sluggish economy, many workers are struggling with household budgets. A whopping 61 percent of workers report they always or usually live paycheck to paycheck just to make ends meet, up from 49 percent last year and 43 percent in 2007, according to a new nationwide survey of more than 4,400 workers by CareerBuilder. Thirty percent of workers with salaries of $100,000 or more report that they too live paycheck to paycheck, up from 21 percent in 2008.

So, how are workers getting by?

• Posted by: Amy Chulik on September 22, 2009
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• Categories: Economy, Employee Retention, Survey Results

A few years ago I had the opportunity to attend a two-day corporate training event at the Human Performance Institute. The Institute’s message is all about managing energy – not time – as the key to sustained high performance.

While the information presented was really powerful, the one line that stuck with me all these years was something one of the nutritionists said. She said, “waste or waist,” meaning leftover food can either be wasted or go straight to your waist. Now choose the lesser of the two evils.

Well, “waste or waist” may be applicable for food, but at CareerBuilder, we hate to waste anything. And to my joyful surprise, when I arrived at work today I found 10 pristine CareerBuilder Jack in the Boxes left behind in a dark storage room.

You may not know this, but Jack took home the gold medal in the Special Promotions category of the 2008 BMA Tower Awards. So, needless to say, he’s kind of a big deal, and finding this guy robbed of all of his glory in a dark storage closet was kind of like finding a few extra Emmy statuettes carelessly tossed into the laundry hamper. (Relatively speaking, the Jack in the Boxes are probably more akin to statuettes from the Daytime Emmy’s, but still…) That said, here’s my challenge to you: Help me find this award-winning guy a good home.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you want to be a proud owner of the award winning Jack, simply become a fan of our employer Facebook page, CareerBuilder for Employers AND leave a comment on our Facebook Wall about a topic you’d like us to discuss on Facebook. We’ll choose 10 lucky new followers at random to win. This offer expires Monday September 28 at 5 pm CST. Don’t let our lonely Jacks go to waste!

Facebook fans have the opportunity to receive exclusive info and promotions, as well as interact with fellow fans (and us of course!).

• Posted by: Stephanie Gaspary on September 21, 2009
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• Categories: Contest, Social Media

This week, while you were planning your Patrick Swayze movie marathon,  apologizing to Taylor Swift, or curing blindness with a tooth, here’s what you may have missed in the world of hiring and recruiting… 
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• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on September 18, 2009
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• Categories: Week in Review