John McCarthy, Author at AGI Jobs - Page 5 of 12AGI Jobs

23Sep

2013

Developing a Marketable Resume

Resume Best practices to convey how your career has increased profitability

I met with a friend recently who has started to think about a career transition. He has been with the same company for about 18 years and started with them straight out of college. The task of resume writing, interviewing and marketing himself for a new job was daunting because he had never done any of these activities. I think many great employees find themselves in a similar situation and stay in a mediocre career because they perceive the process of changes will be greater than the pain staying in a position that is not the best fit. I have a lot of compassion and understanding towards this stance so I began to talk through some very simple tasks with my buddy to help him break this process down so it seemed more manageable. It was very helpful to him and he has made great progress. I believe these generalities can help every career seeker in any stage of their career.

A resume is a place to start to communicate your marketability. I am not the guy who thinks you need to spend oodles of money or time worrying about the colors on your resume, the format or how many pages it is, but the general gist of a resume is that it is the key and first step to open doors to an interview and potential job offer. There are so many different thoughts on what makes a good resume but I believe the most important element of a resume is its conveyance of the individual’s track record and ability to increased profit. This seems obvious, but what is not so obvious to those that do their job and do it well is the microcosm of their activity that leads to profitability. Here are a few areas the job seeker must convey on the resume and throughout an interview to maximize their marketability:

Profit through sales driving – Most companies are top line driven these days. So, as a leader how have you driven sales? Don’t just think of the obvious like “I increased this contract negotiation to get a 10% increase”, but realize the nature of the little things you do around customer service and relationships that ultimately drive top line. Think about times customers bought more than they originally anticipated due to your diligence. Think about times you trained and developed your subordinates on great service and how that has led to top line. Net/Net – comb your business activity with great precision for any activity that can equate to top line increase and be sure you can communicate its worth. Most job seekers can talk to the large accomplishments around increasing sales, but I find myself most impresses with the explanation of top line increase that are out of the box, but have great influence on revenue.
Profit through creating culture – If you are a manager of a team or considered a leader in any capacity, the culture you create can have the largest impact on motivation of the individuals around you and performance. While culture remains abstract, I believe it is the most important, silent, business partner that affects profitability. The work world is starting to understand this more and more so the ability to communicate specifics around culture creation and its impact on profitability can go a long way in distinguishing the good from the great leaders.
Profit through cost control – Through the recession this area took the largest emphasis as companies looked to go leaner. This will always remain an important area when marketing yourself. The opportunity lies in the detail. The obvious trimming of costs and increased profitability associated with it should be able to be seen by even the average leader; however, the smallest of saving and the quantification of that saving over time can really impress those you will be marketing yourself towards.
Profit through time management – When speaking of waste, time is the biggest profit sucker. If you are able to communicate the efficiency of how you spend your time, how you teach others to manage their time and how this leads to profits you will certainly be ahead of the game. Detail oriented is a quality that everyone hiring is seeking in a candidate. I believe the best discipline of detail is in the way an individual uses time to add value to a company. We have heard so much about work smart, not hard and time management that our eyes gloss over on this subject, but it remains one of the most important variables in communicating your worth to an organization!

If I can boil all this down, I would say to be extremely marketable you must not focus on the forest of your accomplishments, you must be able to see the trees in that forest. Every decision we make in our business leadership has an impact. Consciousness around this truth will give you a new mindset to understand how you add value in your career. If you can come to the resume, interview or performance evaluation with preparation in these areas I guarantee you will open doors to career growth and prosperity. Please chime in if you have additional insight to help others develop a marketable resume that shows profit focus.

10Aug

2013

Relocation for Work is a lot of work

It is always fascinating to look on how our rapid pace of change in life is changing even the smallest details of finding a new career. Among these changes are the realities facing career seekers that are looking to relocate or make themselves available to do so. I surely don’t claim to be an expert on all relocation details in all industries, but I am involved in at least 10 relocation placements per year and have been for many years. I have watched these become more difficult since the housing crisis so can draw some generalities about best practices. It is important for career seekers to understand how to best market themselves if relocation is their reality. For that purpose, let’s define the two type of candidates seeking relocation and unpack some perceptions hiring managers have in both instances:

Compass.Direction

+ The first type of relocating candidate is one that seeks to relocate to a certain city for a specific purpose. Usually this is to get closer to family or their roots. In this case the candidate should ensure that they make it clear as to why they are seeking to move to that area. In this instance, it should be noted on resumes exactly where the candidate is seeking to move. If a living location has already been determined in that city, it is appropriate to put that on the resume during submittal. Candidates should make sure they communicate their knowledge of the market they are moving to. More than ever, companies desire that candidates are very knowledgeable of local trends and demographics of the market they are hiring for so this knowledge is imperative for the relocating candidate to be able to communicate

+The other type of relocating candidate is one that seeks the best opportunity for the growth of their career and is willing to go most anywhere to do so. Most companies have become apprehensive to even interview these types of candidates, but if candidates in this category can market themselves correctly they can have a huge advantage in gaining great opportunity; however, without intentionality they will find themselves spinning their wheels. The best way for candidates in this category to gain traction with this strategy is to specify and take aim the top 3 companies they would want a career with, apply to a local area or an area with a vested interest if possible and then communicate their relocatability. In this instance the candidate is seen as more marketable.

Most importantly and relevant to both types of candidates, relocating candidates must have thought out their relocation strategy in depth. If a relocating candidate is not able to explain specifics of getting out of a lease, selling or renting a current home and family plans they will not convince a hiring manager that they are serious about a move.

Advancing in our career is important and relocation can certainly help, but without being conscious of relevant hiring trends candidates will not be moving forward. If I can draw one safe conclusion across all industries is that candidates that are seeking to relocate usually do not have a good blueprint to learn from to market themselves. Please chime in and share your experience whether you are a hiring manager, employer or candidate who has relocated. Together we can help those that are serious about growing their careers in a different geography.

15Jul

2013

Career Advice, Interview Tips, Management Tips

Interview Best Practices: First impressions to hire GREAT talent

First Impressions – are you interviewing with a GREAT employer

I have focused most of the thoughts in this blog on interview best practices for job seekers and advice to get offers of employment, but I also want to encourage and develop employers to better understand how they can recruit, hire and retain top talent. Truth be told, there is not a surplus of GREAT manager candidates in our industry and we are starting to see separation from those GREAT employers who are intentional about selecting GREAT managers and those that will settle for the GOOD managers. The outcomes for the employers who can find, recruit , hire and retain those GREAT managers is obvious. These employers are becoming the leaders in the industry while others are just sustaining.

While working with many employers, one development opportunity that we see as integral for the recruitment of GREAT Managers is developing interview best practices. One interview best practice for employers is to be intentional about creating a great first impression for candidates. It is said that a hiring decision is usually made in the first 5 minutes of an interview and I believe the same goes for top talent decided if an employer is GREAT. If a hiring manager is able to well develop rapport within the first part of the interview process, the candidate is much more likely to want to work for that employer. The GREAT employers we work with get this and go to great lengths to ensure their professionalism, courtesy and communication is impeccable from the start. We are in the people business and those employers that understand how to treat people to make them really love their brand are gaining a great competitive advantage, maximizing the opportunity to make GREAT hires and increase profitability through best leveraging their human capital. KUDOS to our clients for being GREAT employers!

If you are an employer, a hiring manager or aspire to be one, please chime in and let us know how you set the stage to recruit and hire GREAT talent. We want to all learn from each other’s interview best practices to redefine and develop on how to best handle hiring trends.

01Jul

2013

Career Advice, Management Tips

Hiring Millennials — How to Include Them into the Diverse Restaurant Workforce

The Millennials are Coming! And We’re Hiring Them!

The Millennials are Coming | Hiring & Retention | AGI Hospitality Recruiting I recently came upon a very interesting infographic about the mindset of today’s Millennials whose job-hopping choices impact restaurant profitability. I was intrigued by the statistics within the information, because years ago, I wrote my Master’s thesis on the topic of managing generational differences in a diverse workforce. As I reflect back on all of the knowledge I gained on that topic, it still sparks a big curiosity in me since I interview so many Millennials and prepare them to meet with our great restaurant employers nationwide. My hyper-awareness of this specific demographic is so second-nature to me because of my knowledge and experiences working this particular age group. Now that the Millennials are coming, we need to spend some time to better understand tehm so we can include them into the diverse restaurant workforces of today. We will be hiring Millennials, retaining them as employees, and motivating them to advance in their career path; so it should become a bigger priority to get to know this generation.

Millennials are made up of those born from roughly 1980 to 2000. This generation makes up a large majority of restaurant workers (about 75%), so managers and employers need to be attune to behavior and motivational factors among this generation in order to maximize profit through employee retention. It seems Millennials are one of the toughest generations to truly adapt management strategies. So how do we tackle this opportunity?

Because of the era they have grown up in, Millennials tend to have distinct personality traits. In order to fully embrace these differences, managers and employers must adjust their attentions to wanting to learn more about the habits and expectations of this particular group of people who endorse the company’s brand. With the familiar, yet unfair, stereotypes that Millennials find themselves battling, I’m very interested in learning about what techniques hiring managers are using to ensure that stereotypical barriers are not getting in the way of finding those best-fit restaurant staff members.

For instance, it’s amazing to contemplate the fact that Millennials are the first generation to have been raised in an era of such advanced technological breakthroughs that impact daily life at an astronomical level! Never before has any generation been continually exposed to high-tech gadgets that provide instantaneous results! Microwaves, computers, cell phones, satellites, and ATM’s seem to have always been so commonplace in the life of a Millennial, that without just one of these things, the disruptions that would be experienced would be – well, AWFUL! Of course, we must admit that not every single Millennial has grown up with every bit of technology I’ve mentioned; but chances are very high that the majority of this age group knows about every one of these things that I’ve mentioned.

Let’s learn together through best practices! So, Managers — How are you addressing your Millennial employees’ generational differences to ensure productivity and retention?

TAGS: Career Advice, Career Path, hiring manager, job seeker, Restaurant Manager

18Apr

2013

Career Advice, Resume Tips

What You Can Do to Improve Your Resume Submissions: Homework Required!

Your Resume Should Be Your Golden Ticket

I know, I know; you hear this all the time – resumes are very critical as the first step in being considered for that job you want! When you have the opportunity to submit a resume, you should feel confident that you have constructed it well enough so that it will serve as the “golden ticket” to get you an interview invitation. Today, I want to help you better understand what all of it means and what you can do to improve your resume submissions.

Speaking from the marketing side of personal branding, I can assure you that how your resume looks, reads, and feels seriously matters to the hiring manager. Your goal is to present a resume that the hiring manager will slowly comb over multiple times, write notes on it, and share with others who are involved in the hiring decision. You want your name and credentials to be sticky in the mind of everyone who reads it. You want your resume to have so many company fingerprints on it, that the crisp paper it was printed on becomes warn with wonderful wear! This doesn’t mean that you print out your resume and mail it in (unless you are instructed to do that). This is relevant to the hiring manager at the receiving-end of an electronically-submitted resume who will want to print it out as a hardcopy. And think about how special it is when others email your resume throughout the company – how great it is when your resume is part of an email trail that has a nice long list of people it was shared with along the way! These extra people can become ambassadors for you! Each “eShare” will give your resume a longer life, and that’s the ticket!

I often relate marketing yourself for a job through a resume as being similar to how the auto industry uses spectacular car brochures in the showroom lobby. These are printed materials that are crafted to catch your eye, give you the specs of the car, the unique and powerful features of that car, and the options the car can come with or special ordered. Even when you know the exact make and model of the car you want, the printed brochure is still very useful in giving you further details that will help you feel more comfortable about your buying decision. Of course, there are plenty of other ways to buy a car; but when you know that you want a brand new car customized exactly the way you want it and plan to get the most mileage from it, you will seek out all of the available information about it first. Sometimes you choose a totally different car then you originally had in mind. But for the most part, the dream situation is determining what car you want and then pursuing the means to find out if that car is really what you want to buy. In essence, your resume is the brochure of YOU in the showroom!

So many articles are written about resume writing tips regarding content, context, and syntax. But I have a feeling that, while you know that you should be reading these articles, you probably don’t have the time or patience to hunt them down for yourself. How handy would it be if – right here and right now – I gave you some links of articles about resume tips that you could utilize for better results? These article links that I am providing are currently trending and are excellent! I wouldn’t be sharing them if they were bad techniques or impractical. They are quality, and I hope you will set aside some time to really “study” them out to see which methods you can begin to use this week to improve your resume.

Yes, I am asking you to do some “homework” on this. Yes, it will feel just like a major school project if you are taking your career destiny seriously enough – but imagine the better results you will gain if you do this for yourself! Invest important precious time and energy in YOU for a better working-life future! Your heart of hearts tells you that you are worth it, so do it! Study these things and implement everything that is relevant to your career path. Become an expert in your own resume construction and submit it proudly rather than hopefully. Bookmark or save this page in your browser as a favorite so you can reference it as many times as you need. In order to really absorb and apply anything from these readings, it will be best if you don’t rush through all of the articles. After all, it’s about YOU, so take the time that is necessary to make a measurable difference in how your resume is being considered!

I challenge you to do this; and if you do, I promise that you will be so happy that you did! Please let me know which article you found to be the most useful to you, or if there are any other articles out there that you would like to share.