ENG – Thursday, August 4, 2005

Topic – “What is CareerBuilder.com and how to Productively Work with It?”

Speaker – Michael Erwin – Senior Career Advisor, CareerBuilder.com

For executive positions, manager and up, the 3rd quarter is the best time for hiring. Executive hiring falls off during 4th quarter when companies are trying to meet their budgets.

Hiring for positions with salaries $100+ will be on the increase over the next 6 months.

While the Midwest is seeing slower growth that other areas of the country Illinois added over 51,000 during the past year. This is in the mid to high range for job growth.

Unemployment will continue to come down. By 2012 there will be a shortage of skilled labor of around 1 million. A large group of baby boomers will be retiring in the near future and the upcoming labor force will not be able to fill all the available positions.

Total employment growth is expected to increase 15% from 2002 to 2012. 75% of hiring managers surveyed plan to recruit in 2005.

The top categories for executive job growth ill be in pharmaceutical/biotech, healthcare, high-tech, financial services and business services. The fastest growing industries in Illinois are administrative and support services, healthcare, professional and business services, scientific and technical and construction.

41% of hiring managers say it is difficult to find good executive candidates.

The biggest resume pet peeves of hiring managers are resumes that are not clear or too wordy, resumes that are not tailored to their company and resumes that include irrelevant information from the past.

Keep resumes short and easy to read. Research the company culture before you go into the interview so you can craft your answers to fit the company.

The top things hiring managers look for in an interview are relevant experience, a goof fit for the company culture, effectively communicating accomplishments in the interview and the level of enthusiasm for the job and the company.

You need to act fast when sending your resume. 30% of hiring managers recruiting for executive positions fill them within one month.

Make sure you market yourself – What is your product? – How are you different?

The top online job boards are CareerBuilder, Monster and HotJobs. CareerBuilder is owned by the three largest newspaper organizations is the US, The Tribune Company, Gannett and Knight Ridder

55% of all job seekers use Internet sites but networking is still the best way to get a job.

In 2005, 3 of 4 hires can be attributed to employee referrals and the Internet.

Job seekers are either active or passive. Everyone should be a passive job seeker – you never know when the next opportunity may come up.

When positing your resume on CareerBuilder take advantage of the opportunity to post 5 different resumes on their database. Each resume should have a different spin depending on the job or industry you are targeting.

Your career summary is very important and must grab the attention of the reader and of the ATS job matching software used by CareerBuilder. The software matches the first 10 lines of your resume. Your career summary should be followed by 3 sentences telling what you did. Make sure you write in the first person and use your industry buzzwords.

Use the search executive job options available on CareerBuilder, set up 5-6 different job alerts and update something on your resume each week. Each time you make a change to you resume it goes back to the top of searchable resumes. Also, be specific when you set up your job alerts.

Keep your resume simple. Send yourself test e-mail so you can see what the employer will see.

A new free service on CareerBuilder is job matching. You automatically get this when you set up your account. Once or twice a week you be sent an e-mail with jobs that match your search criteria. Make sure you look at this e-mail. It may contain jobs that you may have missed.

Donna Krissek Communications Specialist krissek@sbcglobal.net