CPGjobs

Sonoma-Cutrer Names Michael Schroeter as New Winemaking Director

Schroeter Becomes Only Third Head Winemaker in History of Storied Winery

May 13, 2010, Windsor, CA – The Sonoma-Cutrer Winery announced today that Michael “Mick” Schroeter has been named Winemaking Director.  Schroeter, 50, is a native Australian and will become only the third Winemaking Director in the company’s history.  He replaces Terry Adams, longtime winemaker who announced his retirement last October.

As only the third head winemaker, Schroeter succeeds Adams who has been with Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards since its founding in 1981.  Adams was preceded by head winemaker Bill Bonetti when the winery was first established by founder Brice Cutrer Jones. Adam’s has provided nearly three decades of service to Sonoma-Cutrer and will continue this dedication as he will stay on through July to help Mick transition into the new role as head winemaker.

“Mick is an outstanding winemaker with a history of success and I could not be more pleased to hand off Sonoma-Cutrer to a better person.  His energy and leadership will help continue our tradition of making the finest Chardonnay and Pinot Noir,” said Adams.

As the Winemaking Director, Schroeter will oversee the vineyard’s winemaking operations as well as the production of the award-winning Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines.

“We are excited to have Mick join the Sonoma-Cutrer family and have confidence that he will be an outstanding leader as head winemaker.  His many years of experience, reputation within the industry and impressive number of awards, including twice being named winemaker of the year, make him the ideal person for us.  We look forward to a new chapter of success and innovation under his direction and thank Terry Adams for his assistance in this transition,” said John Hudson, Director of Marketing.

Schroeter began his career at Penfold’s in Australia thirty-three years ago as a lab supervisor.  In 1987, he completed his BS in Oneology from Roseworthy Agricultural College and worked as a winemaker with Penfolds for six years thereafter.  For the last seventeen years he has been Vice President of Winemaking for Geyser Peak Winery in California where his duties included vineyard assessment, harvest scheduling, winemaking direction, budgeting and brand ambassadorship.

“I fully understand the huge shoes that I will be stepping into and cannot begin to express my appreciation to those who have entrusted me to this position,” said Shroeter.  “It’s a privilege to work with this winery and apply my experience to their legacy of success.  I look forward to carrying on the Sonoma-Cutrer tradition and following Terry Adam’s commitment to excellence.”

Schroeter, and his wife Linda, reside in Sonoma County, California, with their children, Matilda, Sadie, and Charlie.

Sonoma-Cutrer is one of the fine wines produced and marketed by Brown-Forman Corporation, a producer and marketer of fine quality beverage alcohol brands, including Jack Daniel’s, Southern Comfort, Finlandia, Canadian Mist, Fetzer, Korbel, Gentleman Jack, el Jimador, Tequila Herradura, Chambord, Tuaca, Woodford Reserve and Bonterra. Please enjoy our wines responsibly.

Calling All “Big Fish”

Message from Penny Sallberg

Candidate Q & A: “Why Have I Received No Reply To My Job Submissions?”

Every week I answer a huge number of emails from candidates who have questions about the job submissions process. One common concern is the response rate from employers advertising open positions.

Recently I received the following question from a candidate:

Penny,
I saw your profile on LinkedIn and I am seeking assistance in my job search. Been a rough road with trying to land something. With many opportunities out there, and the economy in rough shape, I am seeing if possibilities could be made to land through your services.

Here is my reply, which many of you may also find helpful:

Thank you for contacting me. I checked on your submissions and see that you have applied to Company X a lot. X is a company that receives a lot of candidate submissions— and not just from us. They are so big in fact, that they have 3rd party vendors to which they outsource their initial candidate screening processes. This 3rd party vendor handles a lot of Company X’s early qualifying. They too are big, move slowly AND they don’t want help— even though they don’t do such a great a job and really need the help. I’m telling you this not to discourage you, but only so that you set your expectations about response time realistically. Company X does hire people, so the best thing to do with them is to apply whenever you see something that is appropriate…but don’t expect a quick response or any response unless they go to step 2.

Because there are currently so many people looking for work, you must always be prepared for someone else getting the job. I know that isn’t what you want to hear, but out of the hundreds of qualified people who apply to each job, only one of them gets hired. Make sure your resume is perfect, and I mean perfect. Any grammatical errors, font errors, spelling errors (oh no!), and formatting errors are just an excuse for them to throw you in the trashcan.

Remember too, this is a numbers game. You might have been the next person they were going to contact when they found Mr. or Ms. right. It’s timing, a perfect background and resume, and luck, the trifecta of getting hired. It has really always been this way but more people are involved now and like you, they are getting anxious and scared.

I don’t blame you for feeling this way, but keep checking the site and keep applying to the jobs that are appropriate. Try not to expect a call from recruiters telling you that you aren’t a fit, they won’t be doing that. I know it’s rude, but they barely have time to call the people that are a fit. So instead of using up your energy on being angry or upset about that, use the energy you saved to apply to another job or attend a networking event.

When you do find a position on CPGjoblist that you think is really a good fit for you, perfect your resume and cover letter, submit, then wait for 3 weeks. If you don’t get a call, send me an email telling me why you would be perfect for the position. If, upon reviewing your background and experience I agree, I will personally forward your information on to the Hiring Manager with my recommendation that they give you a closer look. After that it’s up to you and your resume. I hope this helped a little bit.

Penny Sallberg-Carrillo
Senior Vice-President & Co-Founder,
CPGjoblist

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

CPGjobs Continues to Grow

600,000 page views, 57,000+ candidates

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