Career Connectors

Connecting professionals in career transition with hiring companies and quality resources

Career Connectors eUpdate
Subscribe Here

Republic Services

08/28/18 – I Want a New Job, Now What?

by

Written by Nicole Langston

KEYNOTE PRESENTATION

I Want a New Job, Now What?

Sierra Collister

Sierra Collister is a local Gilbert resident with 15 years of progressive sales and marketing experience, specializing in building multi-million dollar brand strategies for consumer products on Amazon.com. Her broad experience in the business world includes management roles for diverse organizations including large publicly traded companies and small family owned businesses. In her career, Sierra has survived (and thrived) financial restructuring, re-organizations, layoffs and more. Sound familiar?

SIGNS IT’S TIME TO LOOK FOR A NEW JOB:

Whether you are in between jobs, in a bad job, or were passed over for a promotion. (That bites!)

  1. Maybe things are not going well with your boss, your coworkers.
  2. Maybe it’s not a good culture fit for you.
  3. Maybe you are depressed about work, when you aren’t there or even when you are there. If there are times that you wake up and feel like you have a brick sitting on your chest, then that is a sign.
  4. Maybe your company has had multiple rounds of layoffs, and you are going down.
  5. Maybe your job has advanced/changed in skills, but you aren’t getting the compensation aligned for that level of experience.
  6. Maybe your skills are not being utilized and you are bored.
  7. Maybe your stress has become unmanageable and it is spilling into your personal life.
  8. Maybe you have lost your work/life balance entirely.
  9. Maybe you have a unique reason not included here, maybe your personal life goals have changed.

“Nothing happens, until the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change. – Arthur Burt”

LET’S GET STARTED

Sierra is excited to help provide tools to find your next role. Even if you aren’t currently active on social media, there are many tools that are needed for your professional search.

What does your social network say about you?

  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

Sierra uses the last 3 channels for personal branding or personal life. LinkedIn is non negotiable, you have to be on it, as it is your digital resume. Personally she doesn’t connect with coworkers on the last 3 either, but that is her preference.

  • 60% of hiring employers use social networking sites to research job candidates.
  • 2 in 5 employers said they are less likely to interview job candidates if they are unable to find information about the person online.
  • She highly recommends Googling yourself! That is the first thing an employer will do.
  • Work on branding yourself positively and professionally.
  • Clean up and work on your name profile results. If you happen to have one bad review, then get active on social media to move that negative rank/presence down and the new activity to drive positive up.
  • 50% of hiring managers who screen candidates via social networks said they’ve found information that caused them not to hire a person.
  • Hiring managers will google you!

Social media photos – the Biggest Offenders:

  • Inappropriate drinking or drug use
  • Bigoted comments
  • Bad mouthing previous employers

Keep in mind your audience.  Your LinkedIn profile picture should be a professional headshot.  Get one here today! Sierra recommends updating every 3-5 years as long as image still looks like you.

SELF-ASSESSMENT

  • Elevator speech
    • Script it out until it feels natural. Focus on your top 3 skills or super powers.
    • She always ends with an open ended question for the interviewer. It gets them to answer/reply.

“Hi, my name is Sierra, but some people call me the Queen of Amazon.com. That’s because I work with companies to …. At your company, how do you handle your business on Amazon.com?

  • What do you want to do with your career? (next one)
  • Career Assessment – CC includes some resources for free to attendees (DISC Assessment)
  • Career Coaches – CC includes coaches onsite at events (LinkedIn, Resume, Social Media, Financial)
  • Clean up and update/optimize your LinkedIn profile!
    • Recommendations – give and get recommendations on profile
      • Usually a client/vendor/partner is best, never your boss, only a coworker if you know they will be discreet
    • Skills
    • Endorsements

*Again the CC coaches can help you with these items.

ITS ALL ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIPS!

  • Who do you know? Who can you reach out to? Who are former mentors? Who is on your short list from these?
    • Current and/or former business associates
    • Peers
    • Past Companies
    • Friends
  • Who are your targeted companies? Develop your own hit list of approximately 5 to focus on
  • What networking events will you attend to target that?
  • Reconnect with people
    • networkingphoenix.com – There are so many different types of groups you can find to connect with.
    • LinkedIn groups – can be very helpful. You can target your industry, your job focus, and more. You can build your lead pipeline from it.
    • Church groups
    • Next door (neighbors/friends, etc.)
    • Facebook groups

Find out who you know from the above that can help you.

  • Speak positive
  • Be positive – always go in with a positive outlook. Even if you don’t get what you need that day, you may help someone else. That is all positive!
  • Spread positive vibes

PREPARATION

  • Use a “human voice” in your resume instead of a robotic zombie voice
    • The CC Resume writer coaches here can help
  • Stop writing “cover letters” and start writing “pain” letters. Approach the cover letter as what you can do to help them with their company/job needs

Get ready for the interviews

  • Sierra likes to provide a copy of the job description, a copy of the resume and get input on ways to align/improve
  • Your portfolio (this is optional and may not apply to all jobs) – remove all sensitive information (names of companies, financial figures etc) your successes, achievements, work etc.
    • Bring your 30/60/90 day plan to the interview
    • Maybe you can help develop a process for them
    • Maybe you can bring in XX amount of clients
    • Maybe you can bring in XX amount of revenue
    • Print on nice resume paper
    • Bring prepared questions to ask
    • Bring common interests
    • Research!

ATTRIBUTES

Before the employer asks their questions, ask them the top 3 attributes someone needs to be successful in this role.  Then when you are asked questions, you can include the needed skills in your response.  Do the same thing for each person you interview with, as they will each have their own ideas.

REMEMBER ME

Find something personal that will make you stand out from the crowd, so you can leave a memorable impression with the interviewer.

GETTING READY

  • Where do you need help?
    • If you are getting an initial screening but not in person, then maybe you need help with your interviewing skills
    • If you aren’t getting phone screening requests, then maybe you need to focus on your resume (CC Resume Writers can help you)

“What is the #1 reason people lost jobs or didn’t get promoted within their organizations?”  Failure to stay current in their field.

GETTING RESULTS – MOOCs

MOOC = Massive open online courses

Harvard business reviewed surveyed 52K people around the world

72% said their online classes helped them professionally

43% improved candidacy for new job

26% of respondents cited the classes as a reason they found a new job

19% changed to a new career

  • Take courses, add them to your resume or LinkedIn profile, if relevant
    • Once you take the course, post something on LinkedIn, share the link to the course
    • Shows you are a lifelong learner
  • There are many sites that offer online courses

IS THE JOB RIGHT FOR YOU?

When you get a job offer, you need to evaluate and make sure it is a good fit.  You will be spending 40 hours + and want to be happy in your job.

BEING SENSATIONAL AT YOUR NEW JOB

  1. Behave as if you are still being interviewed
  2. See your manager as a person you help, not a person who tells you what to do
  3. Build relationships based on performance, not conversation
  4. Go the extra mile early and often
  5. Spot the high performers and mimic them
  6. Find a way to stand out
  7. Create your own Project
  8. Find people to help
  9. Never forget why you were hired
  10. Watch and learn

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of ruts and start searching for different ways of truer answers.” – M. Scott Peck, American psychiatrist and author of “The Road Less Traveled”

Q&A session:

Q:  What does it look like to grow relationships in your network?

A:  Social media is helpful, reach out to those in your network that you haven’t connected with in a while. Have conversations to stay in touch; renew those contacts; even if they don’t have a job for you, ask they keep you in mind; if not maybe you can help them with someone in your network. Maybe even consider adding a calendar, 2x a year reaching out to them personally to stay in mind. Maybe you share a family photo, send Christmas card, etc.

Carl Forkner (Coach) added a LinkedIn recommendation idea; for those of you that have paper recommendations, you can scan them and attach them to your profiles as well. Many of us have pre-social media recommendations.

Q:  What does she mean by cleaning up/optimizing your social media profiles?

A:  Sierra clarified that means making sure the your results are all positive.

Carl Forkner (Coach) added that while you should keep your Facebook profile private, but you can create a public business page instead that can be found on the web. Good tool to utilize.

HIRING COMPANIES

Republic Services
Shannon Taylor, Director Talent Acquisition

Shannon leads the talent acquisition strategy and process, recruitment technology, and vendor relationships nationally. Shannon is a partner to the business and translates the human capital initiatives into commercial and operational excellence.

Republic Services motto is “We’ll handle it from here.”

They look for candidates who are citizens of the earth.

The red star that you see on their trucks, represents their 5 Rs which are their 5 company values.

Who are we seeking? Java Developer, eCommerce Analyst, Analyst Operations Effectiveness, Billing Coordinators, Senior Analyst Digital Marketing, Manager Financial Support, Systems Engineer, IT Risk & Compliance Analyst, Corporate Accountant, Quality Assurance Manager, GIS Developer and more.  Go here to apply.  Staff are eligible after 6 months to apply to other roles in house.

Liberty Mutual
Justin Oviatt, Sr Branch Manager

Liberty Mutual is a Fortune 100 company with 50K+ employees in 30 countries and 5 continents. As a point of reference, they are larger than: Starbucks, McDonalds, Facebook, Nike, and American Express.

They have 2 campaigns they do annually:

  • Give with Liberty
    Employees can take their money and donate to any charity they want. Liberty Mutual will match .50 to the dollar. It comes directly from the paychecks. They donated $52M globally in 2016.
  • Serve with Liberty
    Employees can take a day to donate their time to a company that they partner with. (Goodwill is one of them).

They are growing themselves and are currently #6 but want move to the #3 top life insurance company. Industry and how we live our lives continues to change daily. Liberty tries to get ahead of that and be innovative. Currently Liberty Mutual utilizes mobile claims and drones for evaluating disaster relief.

Available positions in Arizona:

  • Field Service reps
  • Inbound sales and service reps
  • Inbound claim positions

RESOURCES

Goodwill of Central and Northern AZ (GCNA)
Bobby Ghisolfo, Director of Mission Services

Bobby is the Director of Mission Services for Goodwill of Central and Northern AZ. Bobby and his team collaborate with over 700 employers in the Phoenix metro marketing to understand the expectations and standards they are looking for in prospective job seekers.

Bobby asked audience “What happened to the economy 10 years ago?” The recession. He was let go and looking for work. He applied to 125 jobs at the time. How many interviews do we think that he got? Answer = 0 not a single one. He found out that his resume was really bad.

Bobby stared with Goodwill in 2015. He had negative impression of Goodwill prior to starting with them. Goodwill does a lot to help job seekers, which is why they partner with CC. Goodwill does have career advisors, resume and interview coaches as well. Goodwill will do a phone interview and mock interview with candidates to help them prepare. Goodwill works with many companies/employers.

Goodwill’s new platform will be going public in the next 2-3 months.  Visit it virtually instead of onsite at mycareeradvisor.com

Woz U
John Bernard, Director of Business Development

How many of you have heard of Woz U?  How many have heard of Steve Wozniak?

One of the owners, has made their money. Now their focus is to give back to community. Help and teach development so people can grow. If you are tired of what you have been doing, if you have had a lot of interviews and nothing has come up, maybe it is time to consider doing something else. Yes, there is a cost involved to take the classes, but you don’t have to pay it back until you land in a new job.

CLOSING

Recaps: if you missed any of the information today you can always go to our website and see the recap  www.careerconnectors.org/recap

Photos: we don’t email you your photos. In a few days we will post them. www.careerconnectors.org/photos

Sheila concluded the meeting by thanking our wonderful host Central Christian Church – Gilbert for their support, as well as, all our amazing corporate sponsors and volunteers.

VOLUNTEERS: We can’t make these events happen without our volunteers. Many of our volunteers are in transition and we always welcome additional help.

NEXT EVENT: The next event will be held on Thursday, September 6, 2018 at our Phoenix location (GCU) Grand Canyon University. Topic: Salary Negotiation – Make More Money.

10/24/17 – Courage to Communicate: Interview with Confidence

by

Courage to CommunicateWritten by Miriam Spinner

I had a job interview at an organization several years ago that had an amazing culture. In the midst of the interview, I realized that I had no interest in the role. When the interviewee said ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’ I said, “starting my own business”. The interview ended real quick.

My business did not start 5 years later, and my response damaged the opportunity to be considered for other positions in that organization. I should have completed the interview,
with a friendly face, and let them know immediately afterwards that the position was not a good fit for me.

Interviewing is never easy, and the process typically is long with multiple steps. It may feel frustrating, but with patience and understanding the pain will be eased.

Congratulations if you scored the first step!

Keynote

“Courage to Communicate: Interview with Confidence”

Jody McPhearson

Jody McPhearson knows how to communicate and build relationships. He is a professional development and leadership speaker. He is the founder and CEO of “Jody Speaks”, and the non-profit organization “Three C’s Youth Project”. He is an expert in connecting companies with emerging generations, and providing solutions on how to attract, recruit, onboard, retain and develop them.

What is a job interview?

An interview is no different than selling a hamburger at McDonalds, or dating your first partner. Think about it – a successful dater or sales person has a short time to engage their listener, and to communicate a strong image. The job candidate needs to do the same. It has a dual purpose: 1) To get to know you, and 2) You to get to know them. We need to determine if the role is a good fit for us. If the inside structure in the organization looks shiny and new, and they are playing air hockey, it may or may not be a good fit for you.

Jody’s Tips for a Successful Interview

Don’t know where to start? Start with confidence. DJ Khaled is no less than 350 lbs. He walks around with no shirt. He exhumes confidence. You have the experience – be confident in who and where you are. Interviewers can smell desperation.

Practice, practice, and practice more. Schedule time with a friend, family, colleague, or coach to conduct a mock interview. If the interview will be on a video call, then set it up, and ensure there are no technical issues. Make sure you are well equipped, and the confidence will follow.

Know the company

Do your research. Talk about them, know where they are located and travel to the site. They have the same personalities as people.

What happens in the interview?

Every interview leads up to the same question – “Why should I hire you?”
Why are you qualified? Build rapport with the interviewee. Tell your story in 3 sentences. Connect with the interviewee, and help them see how you fit in the group. Learn how to sell yourself, and how to bring value to the company.

If you are asked an illegal question, stick to the job qualifications, and if you are asked for salary requirements, you can state that you would prefer to talk about it after a decision has been made.

LinkedIn

Jody’s network has over 3,000 connections. Network with business associates, clients, and colleagues. Your second and third degree connections can help you network for a potential job. Companies could reach out to you for other positions.

STAR

Use the STAR (Situation, Task, Action and Result) approach in responding to interview questions. The interviewer is seeking your skills in organization, planning, leadership, decision-making, problem solving and critical thinking. Interpersonal skills are critical since it can disrupt the harmony in the culture. Remember to take a moment to think about your response.

Jimmy Fallon writes handwritten letters. Write handwritten notes to set yourself apart, as well as email within 24 hours after the interview. In a panel interview, send a separate note to each interviewer. Follow-ups keep you on their radar. Ask how long it will take to decide on a final candidate.

  • Jody summed up by sharing with us a few thoughts:
  • If you don’t have the courage to ask, you will not get.
  • Find the pain, and fix it.
  • Sell yourself, but not too cocky.
  • Be humble, don’t assume and respect all people.

Hiring Companies

Republic Services
Danielle Eugene, Recruiter
Clayton Myers, Recruiter
Republic Services is a preferred waste recycling and waste services company. Candidates that have done due diligence are appreciated the most by the recruiters. Sell us who you are, and why you need to work for us. Often candidates are not the person they presented during the interview. Don’t put the responsibility on the interviewee – we can see the truth. Build rapport with us – it is huge. Do your research ahead of time. The interview starts the minute you leave your driveway. Your interviewee might be in the same coffee line or bathroom prior to the interview. The CEO of Republic Services started as a driver. They respect all positions – from driver to CEO. They seek reliable and resourceful candidates.

Republic Services is seeking people who are passionate about customer service. Their branches are in several valley locations including Buckeye and Mesa. Their corporate office is in Scottsdale. They value promotions within the organization. Open positions include Payroll Administrator, Application Programmer Analyst, Business Analyst Technical-Business Intelligence, Customer Service Rep, Director Engineering Operations, Division Accountant, Manager Risk Management, Staff Engineer and Environmental Manger. Complete your application online.

Cognosante
Robin Stanton, Corporate Recruiter
Cognosante translates to “Mind” and “Health” in Latin. Cognosante is a leader in health information technology solutions and services for federal and state public health agencies. Their headquarters is in Virginia. The culture is centered around their employees and their contribution. They look for innovation and take pride in their work. They celebrate different cultures, and this month is dedicated to Spanish heritage. They volunteer as a group, and take ski trips together. Cognosante even has a softball team!

Benefits are effective on the first day, which include pet insurance, company match, and PTO. They have a leadership development program that includes topics such as empathy, accountability and team development. They also offer access to courses and LinkedIn learning. There are remote opportunities for various roles. Open positions include IT Support Analyst, Production Support Analyst, Consumer Outreach Specialist and Case Analyst. Apply at www.cognosante.com/careers.

Allstate
Jill Romanowski, Field Sales Associate
Tori Castlegrante, Agency Process Specialist
Allstate offers opportunities in their corporate office, as an agency owner, as a financial representative or as part of an agency staff. There are 250 Allstate agencies in the SW region (Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico, Utah). The regional offices are in Tempe. Opportunities in the Tempe office are in claims, product management and Information Technology.

Opportunities are in owning any agency. You will receive support to secure a license. There is a 1 week training class. There is a veterans program that provides support for licensing.
Allstate is offering a $10,000 referral to become an agency owner! Apply at www.allstate.com/careers.aspx

Freedom Financial Network
Alesia Martin, Director of Human Resources
Freedom Financial Network provides financial solutions, services and education to consumers to resolve their debt. There are 1800 employees, with offices in Tempe and headquarters in San Mateo. The recently added 800 positions. Their offices will be relocated to new buildings next to Tempe Marketplace. They were #1 Best Place to Work in Phoenix for 2016!

The culture is not flashy. The founders match employee contributions to build a financial fund for employees in need. They take care of their own. There is also monthly lunch. Also monthly is a unique performance incentive. The bonus is real!

Alesia’s last message was the following:
We have the lowest unemployment rates, and as an HR professional, make sure you show up with lots of energy for the position.

Open positions include Negotiations Supervisor, Project Manager, Risk and Controls Specialist, QA Engineer, Business Intelligence Specialist, Business Process Analyst, Manager Talent Acquisition, Compliance Analyst, Marketing Specialist. Apply at www.FreedomFinancialNetwork.com.