Recruiting
experts joined forces on Thursday to dish out advice on how to land a
job in this embattled economy. The Info River Valley's latest event
played to a packed house, as Dimitri Boylan, from HotJobs.com, Andy
Sernovitz, CEO of Gaspedal Ventures, and Jessica Shevitz, an HR
Consultant with Journey Consulting gabbed about what companies want from
future employees and what tactics recruits need to take. One of the
more universal concerns the crowd had was about online job databanks.
Are resumes going into a vacuum? Are they really hitting the in-boxes of
the HR Director? The answer: If you want to know, make a phone call.
While a long groan was almost audible from the crowd, the panel insisted
unanimously that following up with a call was the most important step
in the application process.
Franc Carreras, a recent MBA grad from Columbia, said that another
lesson he took away from the panel was the fact that applicants should
cough up a figure when a company asks for a salary requirement. "They
could see it as a confidence issue if you don't," he says. After the
panel, Sernovitz succinctly summarized the gist of the event: "You need
to conduct a search the way your Dad told you to do it," he says. "Write
a cover letter and perform follow up."
A chronicle of the people and events in technology, internet and media since 1997, mixed in with snapshots of musings and observations.
