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Your The Boss

May 11, 2010, 7:00 am

My Virtual Business Group

All of these posts about business groups have been interesting. I’ve never joined one or even considered joining one, even though my uncle was executive director of Young Presidents’ Organization for many years. (O.K., I considered it then but didn’t qualify.)

Reading Jay Goltz’s thoughts and the comments they inspired made me wonder: hey, haven’t any of you heard about industry-specific Internet forums?  I participate regularly in a number that are found on the Woodweb Web site. You may find this surprising, but woodworkers are like doctors — there are many sub-specialties, each with its specific tool set and procedures.

The site hosts forums on each of these, along with a business and management forum, and one for everything that doesn’t easily fit a category. (There are also places to post job openings, solicit subcontract help, and sell surplus equipment, and a whole bunch of other useful stuff.) So I can post and answer questions on any aspect of my business or operations. The community is large enough that a variety of opinions are available. I don’t always agree with my fellow posters’ politics, but a huge amount of good advice is freely exchanged.

Here’s what I really like about this set-up:

o It’s free. The site is supported by advertising. If I were selling equipment or offering a job, there would be a nominal charge, but it’s cheaper than classified ads in the local paper.

o It’s moderated. Unlike Google groups or Usenet, spam doesn’t see the light of day and jerks get their posts deleted.  The site owners/administrators are accessible for questions regarding this. The site is their livelihood, and they are very attentive to regular posters. They recognize that good participants make the site interesting and improve their business.

o I can talk to my competitors. I found it odd that the groups mentioned in Jay’s posts made a big deal of the fact that you wouldn’t be placed in a group with your competitors. So what’s the point then? Those are the people I want to hear from most. I know that a lot of small-business owners are paranoid about someone stealing their great ideas, but that’s ridiculous. Really, there is enough business in this enormous country to go around. Once you get beyond your fear, competitors are the best people to talk to.

We have another cabinet shop on the floor above us in our building. I could spend a great deal of energy worrying that this competitor is going to harm me in some way, but instead we are the best of friends. When I moved in, we made an agreement not to poach each other’s employees, as that could be very harmful to both of us. With that settled, it’s been a terrific resource to have a competitor to check with regarding pay rates, the landlord, materials suppliers, etc., etc. The Internet forum puts me in touch with shops all over the country, so this benefit is multiplied many times over. I can get candid opinions on tools, suppliers, ways to deal with customers, and how to handle employees, all from people who live the same life I do.

o I can be anonymous if I want. I usually sign my posts with my real name, but I’m in the minority among regular posters.  Many use a pen name. Some are just plain anonymous, and I can take that option when I’m asking a sensitive question.

o I can spend as much or as little time as I want and still get what I need out of it. Reading takes a few minutes a day. Questions and answers can be as long or short as I want. The regular preparation for and attendance of a business group are big turn-offs for me.

For the face-to-face social aspects that can be found in a business group, I have a couple of alternatives: first, a weekly pick-up soccer game and, second, a monthly poker game. Some of the guys are small-business owners, some aren’t, whatever. Both of these groups are all male. The soccer is healthy sporting fun, the poker is boozy naughty fun. I use these groups to fulfill my need to hang out with people I like. I’d hate to be paying for a business group with people I don’t like all that much.

I have no idea whether Woodweb is unique or whether there are similar sites for many industries. I also have no idea whether Woodweb is profitable. But it has been around for at least six years.

Do any of you participate in similar forums?

Paul Downs founded Paul Downs Cabinetmakers in 1986. It is based outside Philadelphia.

10 Job Search Strategies For The Passive Job Seeker

If you are a passive job seeker, you have a challenge.  You can’t tell everyone that you are looking.  At least not officially.  After all, you don’t want to compromise your current job.  In case the wrong person hears about your plans . . .

So what is a passive job seeker to do?

Whether you are a passive or active job seeker, the #1 tool to find a job is networking.  And you can’t exactly head on out to the local job search group and toss out a newly minted elevator pitch.

Because some will say to you:  “I thought you had a job?”

And some will say to someone who works at your company: “Hey, I saw Barbara at the networking event the other night.  Sounds like she is looking for something new . . .”

So what is a passive job seeker to do?

• You want a new job
• You are terrified to leave before getting a new one
• You can’t overtly network without risking #2

So here is a list of 10 things a passive job seeker can do to look for a job effectively without risking the one you have:

1. Hire A Career Coach – especially one that is really well connected in your community.  And hire them for one thing.  Connections.  Spend the money wisely . . . while you have it.
2. Take time now to get your paperwork ready.  Create a strong resume update.  Capture the data you need to make your accomplishments tangible and measurable.  Create a SoloSheet™ and share it with a few trusted friends and former co-workers.
3. Identify your target companies and begin following them on Twitter.  Create a list on Twitter of great companies in your city and add them to it.  Assuming they are not competitors of your current company, try to build a relationship through re-tweets and friendly @replies..
4. Get yourself set up on Indeed, Monster, CareerBuilder, Yahoo! Hot Jobs and niche sites for your industry (e.g. CPGJobList).  Get private alerts set up that will inform you of the jobs being advertised.
5. Be findable in social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo) and make sure your content there is up-to-date and consistent with what you want your career brand to look like.
6. Go to job search focused networking events to build up your network.  Ask to be added to their mailing lists – many have Yahoo groups with daily job leads.  And you might even find a few people to help along the way.
7. Attend industry events.  You will hear about new companies and potentially those that are hiring.
8. Be really attentive and helpful when recruiters call.  Give them a reason to want to call you back by referring great people to them.
9. Become a subject matter expert through speaking or blogging.  You will attract opportunities.
10. Join my Watchlyst™ – Once I have your career objectives, I can send you job leads if/when I see them.  On the QT.

If this is not you.  If you are actively looking or not looking at all, share this post with a friend who’s working but looking for something more.  I’m sure they’d appreciate the thought.

What ideas do you have?  How do you look effectively without spilling the beans?

Michael Carrillo Talks!

I was recently interviewed by an independent journalist working on a story about leadership in the recruitment industry. Personally, I have always enjoyed the interview process because it helps me solidify my thoughts and reconsider strategy set months before. Below you will find an excerpt from that interview.

- Michael Carrillo
The past two years have seen some pretty troubling economic news— and the disappearance of several “niche” job sites, yet CPGjobs appears to be going strong. What is the key to your continued success?

Well, you’ve said something very interesting here in terms of classifying CPGjobs as a niche job site. Although it is true that we specifically do serve professionals working in CPG, we really don’t consider ourselves to be a member of the “niche job site” category. This is true for two reasons.

Number one is that the consumer packaged goods industry incorporates many, many different industries like packaging, procurement, distribution and logistics, engineering, and many more…as well as the traditional marketing and brand management functions people tend to associated with consumer goods manufacturing. So to classify us as a “niche” job site I think is really limiting and we don’t see ourselves in this way.

Number two, we really don’t consider ourselves simply a “job site” or job board, but rather, a Consumer Packaged Goods Talent Network. What this means is that our business model incorporates the best use of job site technology in conjunction with the values of traditional recruiting. Simply put, we are a company of real people staying in touch with each other, understanding the needs of our customers on both the client and candidate side, and enabling conversation between all three legs of this stool.

In my mind, “niche job sites” are automated job boards with no connection to their candidates or to their clients. CPGjobs always has and always will maintain the human touch in our business interactions. In the office we lovingly refer to this as “going beyond the board.”

CPGjobs serves all areas of the industry, but your client roster does include some of the largest, most successful multinational companies in the consumer packaged goods industry. What are you hearing about how these latter clients’ needs are changing (or staying the same)?

Employers are looking for supplier-partners that understand their business and the various functional areas within their business. They need recruitment partners that are in touch with the candidates they serve. This has always been true, but with the massive cuts in most HR departments, it becomes even more critical. These organizations also need a partner that can perform multiple tasks on their behalf because they simply no longer have the resources to do many things internally.

At CPGjobs we extend our clients’ reach into the CPG industry. We help them with employment branding for their company as a whole, in addition to helping them fill open positions.

Just one example of this would be the way we leverage our position in the CPG Community on LinkedIn through our large professional group, CPGpeople. There, we use the power of this huge professional network to brand our clients’ organizations and employment brands, and reach into a robust community of passive and active candidates to recruit on behalf of those clients.

With so many highly-skilled CPG professionals now looking for work, how does CPGjobs help clients “sort through the noise?”

Well, first of course, is the fact that we live and breathe CPG. Clients that work with us are looking for skill sets specific to our industry, and we are very clear with our registered candidates that they must have CPG experience to be considered for positions listed on our site. This is part of our initial screening process and results in a candidate set that looks very different from the applicants our clients might receive from listing a position on Career Builder, for instance.

We also provide clients with a number of valuable tools that they can use in their hiring process. These tools include passive submissions to job postings, unlimited permission-based data mining of candidates through our People Search product, and outbound communications to candidates though our Network Access package of services.

Being able to fish in the right pond, so to speak is a huge percentage of the value we bring to clients. Our “pond” is the CPG industry and our “fish” are CPG experienced professionals. Our industry specificity is a huge factor in helping clients cut through the noise.

Social networking has not lost any of its buzz in recruiting. Are clients really utilizing social networks to their fullest? How is CPGjobs helping clients operate in this social space?

Unfortunately, the news from the real world is that clients are really not yet using social networking to its fullest…for a variety of reasons.

First, of course is the fact that using existing tools can be extremely time consuming— and time is something in very short supply in most HR departments right now. Further, the fact of the matter is that most clients’ ATS systems have really not kept up with this particular recruiting trend and modifying such legacy systems to incorporate web 2.0 kinds of functionality is VERY time consuming and expensive. Many of our clients have incorporated blogging, tagging and sharing as part of their marketing strategy and in some cases even on their careers pages – but integration with candidate applications systems has tended to lag behind.

And finally, true metrics for the whole social networking piece are pretty underdeveloped and most client recruitment metrics are still based on more traditional passive hiring methods.

At CPGjobs we have developed a holistic approach to help our clients with social networking through our Network Access package of services. This includes but is not limited to LinkedIn and our CPGpeople group and sub-groups, @cpgjobs on Twitter, our job board CPGjoblist, personal outbound email communication, candidate job alerts and newsletters. We even still use the phone!

CPGjobs has always been actively involved in workplace diversity and inclusion. Recently, you assumed a position on the Board of the California Diversity Council (CADC). Can you explain why CPGjobs has been so active on diversity issues and how has this interest in diversity effected the business?

As a minority and women owned firm, CPGjobs has always been dedicated to workplace diversity. We want to walk the talk on diversity/full inclusion as we grow the business. You are never to small or too big for this. Three years ago we had the opportunity to seed a new organization for California— the California Diversity Council. As founding members, both Penny Sallberg and I felt that through this opportunity we could help shape a new and important organization from the ground up.

One unique aspect of the CADC is that we are seeking involvement and representation from both academia AND business and industry sectors. Our intention is that the fusion of emergent research in the area of diversity and real world business and community experience will offer a powerful engine for creating a “next level” conversation in California around these important topic areas for the good of all Californians.

Being active at this level continues to guide CPGjobs with diversity best practices.

What do you think will be the top 3 trends in the (employment) industry over the next several years?

Well first I really do think that we will see a trend towards less automation and more personal interaction. We already see this trend happening with the clients that we serve. What we hear from them is that they use us not simply because of our job board or position in online social communities, but because we have constant personal interaction with our candidate network. In other words, I think that the media we use to do the job of recruitment will actually become less important than the message.

Second, the quality of candidate pipelines will become more important (as opposed to the historically arduous task of sifting through lots of submissions for each job). For example, CPGjobs has one of the largest CPG specific candidate pipelines across multiple job categories; and we are growing at over 1,000 new registrants a week. These are people that we can reach out to on behalf of our clients. It is a very skill-set specific, active candidate network that will continue to develop over time.

And finally, social networking will continue to mature as a candidate access tool. We are seeing this increased interest now. Our clients are using us more and more to reach out to our networks on LinkedIn, Twitter and others in increasing numbers.

What kinds of changes do you anticipate clients will see at CPGjobs over the next 3 quarters?

You will continue to see a growing CPG Talent Network that is real, fluid and evolving. Clients will consider this to be their network, which they will be able to access themselves and through us. If I could wave a magic wand, its effect would be to help clients see that the activity of recruiting, and the efficacy of CPGjobs in particular, is not just about the jobs, but about developing an effective CPG professional pipeline.

Anything Else?

Social Networking is not new to CPGjobs. For over 10 years our company has maintained a steadfast posture working one-on-one with our talent community. It has never been about “only the job” but about the community.

One of our goals continues to be reaching out to our network and being available for them to reach back to us. “Social Networking” is really just a fancy label for staying in touch.

Michael Carillo, President and Founder, CPGjobs

The California Diversity Council Wants You

As a minority owned firm, CPGjobs is dedicated to workplace diversity. We actively support and participate in leading diversity organizations.

I am the newly named Vice-Chairman of the Board for the California Diversity Council (CADC), a non-profit organization that is rapidly establishing itself in California to work toward the promotion of diversity and inclusion best practices to meet the challenges of the 21^st Century.

One unique aspect of our CADC entity is that we are seeking involvement and representation from academia as well as a variety of business industry sectors.  Our intention is that the fusion of emergent research in these areas with real world business and community environments will offer a powerful engine for creating a “next level” conversation in California around these important topic areas for the good of all Californians.

We are actively growing our Board of Directors and Sponsors and are looking for strong executives and companies who are visionary and have a passion for diversity and inclusion.

Our current Board consists of individuals from leading companies and include:

Mary Campbell, Ph.D: Chairman (Assistant Vice President, Career Services,
University of Southern California)
Michael Carrillo, Vice Chairman (President and Founder, CPGjobs)
Dawn Martin, Secretary (Director, Diversity Inclusion & Culture Initiatives, Cricket
Communications)
Carmen J. Smith, (Vice President, Global Strategies for Diversity & Inclusion, Disney
Parks & Resorts)
Elana Hobson, (Regional Vice President, Jack In The Box)
Cathy Campbell, (Director, Diversity & Inclusion, Charles Schwab)
Frank Nainoa, (Senior Manager of Professional Development University of Phoenix)
Tom Wright, J.D. (Director, Strategic & Academic Alliances, The Apollo Group)
Dennis Kennedy (CEO & Founder, National Diversity Council)

In addition to Board Member position involvement, we have sponsorship, speakership, and symposium opportunities, as well as a number of other ways you and your organization can become involved.

I would like to connect with you to see if the CADC is an organization in which you would like to participate.  Please connect with me directly or forward this information to the person at your company who is responsible for diversity/inclusion efforts.

I look forward to hearing back from your organization.

Thank you,
Michael Carrillo
President, CPGjobs
Vice Chairman, California Diversity Council