There’s more to recruiting than meets the eye

Posted on December 4, 2012 by psgstaffing • Posted in PSG News • Tagged Boston Recruiter, recruiting • Leave a comment

If you’ve worked with a recruiter – either as an employer looking to find the right talent or as a job seeker looking for the right opportunity – you may have wondered what it is, exactly, that the recruiter does. Perhaps you have even second-guessed their process.

We think this Recruiter.com article, Why Recruiting Looks Easy, does a nice job of summing up the recruiting process. We agree with the author that, while recruiting may look easy – “few professions look so simple. It’s really hard to pass along a piece of paper, right? You can almost hear hiring managers thinking to themselves, “Yeah, I’ll bet your fingers are really tired from dragging all those resumes from a folder into an email. Real hard work.” Few jobs seem so easy to duplicate.” – there’s certainly more to the recruiting process than meets the eye.

The article mentions the behind-scenes recruiting work like identifying, spotting, finding and assessing talent; understanding the job and culture; working a database and connections; possessing insight into the department’s or hiring manager’s psychology; and the persistent calling and online searching to bring people together.

PSG’s Frank Gentile agrees with the author’s conclusion that “anyone or any recruiter can luck out and make a placement or two. But the background required for long-term recruiting success is much different. It involves the deep study of companies, products, markets, assessment, and professions coupled with a kind of brute force stamina to doggedly pursue the talents of other people.” Frank has worked in the recruiting field for more than 20 years. As someone who hires and trains recruiters, Frank says that the best recruiters share several traits, including the ability to maintain the stamina and tenacity to focus on long-term goals and a strong sense for evaluating intangibles such as culture fit and matching candidates’ career aspirations with employers’ business objectives.

Ask A Recruiter: Culture Fit

Posted on November 28, 2012 by psgstaffing • Posted in Ask a Recruiter, Career Tips • Tagged compatibility, Culture Fit, management style, Work environment • 1 Comment

Q: What do people mean when they talk about culture fit? Why is it important?

A: Culture fit refers to the compatibility between employees and their workplace and it is a measurement of how well a worker will do in a certain environment. To understand the culture of a workplace and whether it fits the employee’s work style, you can look at the work environment, management style, collaboration among all staff, communication norms, and employee motivations, recognition and reward factors.

At PSG, we talk about culture fit all the time. We often meet with job seekers who are looking for a new job that is exactly the same as their last job, but in a different environment, because the culture fit was ‘off’ in their previous job. We also see people take a temporary job that may not have been their first choice and then, based on the culture at that organization, find that the job is a great fit and they end up electing to stay there. Temping and interning are great ways to try out an environment.

To understand if you are culturally a good fit with an organization, I recommend these tips:

Evaluate the culture fit just as much, if not more, as you would other criteria when deciding on a new job.
Decide which cultural factors are most important to you, and develop a list of questions to ask during the interview that will help you determine whether the workplace is right for you.
Ask for a tour. If the interview consists of being shown into an office and then walking straight out, ask for an impromptu tour that can give you a glimpse of how people interact.
Use your personal network and social media connections to link up with people you know who have inside knowledge of an organization to get their input on its culture.
Go with your gut.

About the Recruiter
Katy Leveque is a Senior Group Manager at PSG. Katy learned the recruiting business from the ground up. She joined PSG shortly after graduating college over five years ago and today Katy oversees the service teams that support some of PSG’s most valued clients.

PSG Sponsors Business Case Competition for Latino Students

Posted on November 15, 2012 by psgstaffing • Posted in PSG News • Tagged ALPFA Student Summit, PSG Sponsors ALPFA Student Competition • Leave a comment

PSG recently participated in ALPFA’s Annual Student Summit at Brandeis University, which attracted more than 300 students. At the Summit, PSG sponsored two business case competitions among the students. PSG President Aaron Green presented the two winning teams, one from Hult International Business School and one from Brandeis University, with a $1,000 check from PSG.

ALPFA is the largest Latino professional association, uniting professionals and students in the fields of business, accounting, finance and other professions and connecting them to a community of resources to help them succeed and rise through corporate ranks. ALPFA is dedicated to enhancing opportunities for Latinos and building leadership and career skills.

Massachusetts Unemployment Rate Rises Slightly for Fourth Month in a Row

Posted on November 15, 2012 by psgstaffing • Posted in On Jobs • Tagged Massachusetts jobs, Massachusetts unemployment rate • Leave a comment

The unemployment rate in Massachusetts rose to 6.6 percent, up slightly from 6.5 percent in the previous month, according to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. Although 7,900 jobs were added across the state in October, this is the fourth consecutive month that the overall unemployment rate has risen. Massachusetts’ unemployment rate remains below the national average of 7.9 percent.

Ask A Recruiter: Is Getting an MBA Worth It?

Posted on October 22, 2012 by psgstaffing • Posted in Ask a Recruiter, Career Tips • Tagged getting an MBA, going back to school • Leave a comment

Q: I’m thinking about getting my MBA and am trying to decide if it’s worth it. What are your thoughts?

A: Determining whether an advanced degree will help your career or not depends on several things:

First, think about why you are considering going back to school. Do you lack certain skills that would help you advance in your profession? Would you like to switch career paths? Do you see an advanced degree leading to a bump in salary? These are all reasons for pursuing a new degree. Knowing what is driving your desire will help you determine if getting the degree will be “worth it.” For example, if you feel that an advanced degree will elevate your pay grade it may be helpful to determine if this is true by talking to your HR department and then comparing the cost of getting the degree with the anticipated pay raise.

It’s also important to consider the industry you work in and your role within that industry. Advanced degrees can be essential to some jobs, such as highly technical roles like engineers, or to management positions that require well-rounded critical thinking. Other jobs – such as sales positions – rely more heavily on experience.

If you feel that an MBA or other advanced degree will help your chances of moving into a management position, I suggest running this scenario by your boss. Doing so will not only let you know if your boss views you as management material, but will also give you a sense of whether your employer values advanced degrees and whether they may pay for all or some of your education.

Of course it would be tough to overlook the current economic climate and that’s certainly another factor to consider. Recently, much attention has been paid to the high costs of college education and it’s important to consider whether you can handle the expense and, of course, the time commitment that going back to school would require.

About the Recruiter
Laurie Fiumara has 10+ years of experience in the staffing and recruiting industry. As a director and member of the management team at Professional Staffing Group (PSG), she oversees PSG’s major client relationships.

Massachusetts Unemployment Rate Climbs

Posted on October 19, 2012 by psgstaffing • Posted in On Jobs • Tagged Massachusetts jobs, Massachusetts unemployment rate • Leave a comment

For the third month in a row, the Massachusetts unemployment rate rose slightly – from 6.3 percent to 6.5 percent in September, according to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. Massachusetts also added over 5,000 jobs last month, primarily in the leisure and hospitality sector, as well as the professional, scientific and business service sector and also the construction sector.

Massachusetts’ unemployment rate remains lower than the national average, which was 7.8 percent in September.

PSG’s Aaron Green Named to List of 100 Influential People in Staffing Industry

Posted on September 28, 2012 by psgstaffing • Posted in PSG News • Tagged Aaron Green, staffing industry leader • 1 Comment

Congratulations to PSG’s founder and president, Aaron Green, who was recently recognized as one of the most influential people in the staffing industry by Staffing Industry Analysts.

Green was named to the Staffing 100, which appears in the October 2012 issue of SI Review and can also be viewed here.

Ask A Recruiter – Researching a Company Before an Interview

Posted on September 24, 2012 by psgstaffing • Posted in Ask a Recruiter, Career Tips • Tagged preparing for a job interview, research before an interview • 1 Comment

Q: How do I go about researching a company before I interview with them?

A: As a recruiter, I’m glad you’re asking this question! It shows initiative, which employers will appreciate too.

First, let me point out all the reasons why conducting research before an interview is so important:

It will help you understand what the company does and what their place is in their market.
It will help you form questions to ask during the interview. (For more information on preparing smart questions to ask during an interview, see my colleague’s recent post on the topic.)
It will also help you form answers to the questions you will be asked during the interview. After researching the company and its products and/or services, you’ll be able to respond to questions with a better sense of what the interviewer is looking for and can use the language and terms the company is familiar with.
You will learn the company address and can use that to practice getting to the location on time for the interview.
You will learn about the company culture, its core values and mission. Often these corporate objectives are stated on the company web site. If the company has a blog, you can read the entries to get a sense of how its employees relate to their employer.
You can find out more about the people who work at the company, especially the management team, including their background, previous work connections and experiences.
If the company is publicly traded, you can search by its ticker symbol to find out about the financial health of the company, its major stakeholders and what people are saying about its future prospects.
You can see whether anyone in your network works at the company or is connected to its employees.
You can research competitors, which will enable you to participate in a higher-level dialogue and sound confident while adding to the conversation.

I recommend spending an hour to an hour and a half researching online. Start with the company website, where you typically will find an ‘About Us’ section and other pages with detail on the company’s products and services. You can also Google the company to find recent news articles. LinkedIn is a good source for seeing whether anyone you know works at the firm or is connected to its employees. Be wary of information or comments on complaint boards or web sites that promise “inside information” as they might be tainted by their source, i.e. a disgruntled individual.

About the Recruiter
Kristen Coppins has 8+ years of experience in the staffing and recruiting industry. As a Director and member of the management team at Professional Staffing Group (PSG), she oversees the new hire training and development program. Kristen is also a member of ASA’s Continued Education Committee.

Massachusetts Job Growth Slows, Unemployment Up Slightly

Posted on September 20, 2012 by psgstaffing • Posted in On Jobs • Tagged Massachusetts jobs, Massachusetts unemployment rate • Leave a comment

The Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development released its jobs report for August and said the state unemployment rate rose to 6.3 percent, up from 6.1 percent in July. The Massachusetts economy lost 4,800 jobs last month and the office revised its jobs number for July saying that the state only added 300 jobs that month, not the 1,600 jobs originally reported.

Overall, Massachusetts has added more than 30,000 jobs in 2012 and its unemployment rate remains lower than the national average of 8.1 percent.

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