A Good Job Seeker’s Dilemma

Job seekers oftentimes must make such decisions at some point in their careers:

     ·         Stay at my current company or go to a new one? 
     ·         Which new job offer is the best opportunity for me? 

What to do???

For those of you unemployed and reading this, having trouble getting one good job offer, this might seem like a dream situation.  However, the fact is that for those that find themselves in such a situation, sleepless nights are the norm.

In these cases, whether you employed or not, the situations are actually very similar, with the only difference being whether one of the options is to remain at a current position.

These types of decisions require left-brain/right-brain agility, meaning using some element of logic as well as paying attention to your gut (emotion). 

The financial element is always present, and for some job seekers, the only issue of importance. 

For many though, besides compensation, the company itself and a person’s anticipated fit into the company are equally important.  How the job seeker perceives the environment of the new company and the people they will be working with is oftentimes critical, and this is why the interviews and conversations with potential bosses and/or co-workers are so important when making the decision. 

It is so easy for a candidate to think of the recruitment process as one-directional, trying to convince the employer that you are worth hiring.  However, the other aspect is equally relevant – deciding if the company and specific role is appropriate for you.  So, while the company is trying to make its determination, you should be doing the same.  Identify, even before you visit the company, those issues that are important to you, professional and otherwise, and use your powers of observation from your time at the interviews themselves to glean what you can.  Is the work environment quiet or loud, are people working in groups or alone, is it clean or messy, what is the average age – all of these can be factors depending upon who you are and what you want.  These are not necessarily the types of things that will be clear in interviews, but at some point you generally get the opportunity to see the actual working spaces and sometimes even have the chance to speak with potential colleagues, so take advantage when the situation arises.

In addition, most job candidates don’t make an effort to reach out to people that are working at or have knowledge of the company, instead relying upon impressions from the people they meet as part of the official recruitment process.  However, just as the company asks the job seeker for references, job candidates can also take it upon themselves to use their network of acquaintances together with websites like LinkedIn to research the company itself, and speak to individuals that have an understanding of the employer.

Besides the specific details of the alternatives, there is a big intangible as well.  Something in the DNA of the person that plays a big part in these types of decisions, a person’s ability to accept risk:

·         I have seen a number of times that a person currently working gets a job offer from another company and ultimately decides to stay at their current employer, even when the conditions (financial, professional and otherwise) at the new company were considerably more attractive.  Nonetheless, risk and change can be so undesirable for the individual that they decide to stay with the known and comfortable option.

·         The converse is also true.   Someone jumps to a new company for an extra 500 shekels a month, and quickly learns that the new company is not so stable, finding themselves out of a job in a short period of time.

During your job search, choices are always a positive, but they don’t make things easier for you.  Think carefully, speak with others, and learn as much as you can about the alternatives before making a decision.

I have a dilemma of my own these days.

My team, the Golden State Warriors, is playing in the NBA finals against Cleveland, with their Israeli coach David Blatt. 

I allude to a similar far-fetched situation in a previous article about searching for work, loyalty, and sports: http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.co.il/2010/10/loyalty-at-work.html.  Now, amazingly, it has come true.

My childhood (and current) favorite basketball team is playing in the NBA finals against a team with an Israeli connection – whom to root for? 

Because I am getting grief about this from all sides, I feel the need to publically respond. 

I am a big David Blatt fan, and appreciate what he has accomplished throughout his career as a proud Israeli, including leading his team in his first year in the NBA to the finals.  He is the ideal representative of Israel for the sports world in America.  My brain makes a strong case for his team.

 

 

However, I simply can’t force myself to do it.  My heart tells me the Warriors, a team that has not won a championship in 40 years, is the only choice for me.  I can hopefully mitigate the potential ill-feelings by others in Israel with this choice by pointing out that the star of my Warriors, Steph Curry, has a Hebrew phrase tattooed on his arm.

 

 

Go Warriors!

Dynamic Resume/CV and Static LinkedIn Profile

I teach my job seeking clients that they should consider as if their LinkedIn profile is virtually stapled to each CV that they send out. Ignoring this is a grave danger; recruiters will find your profile on LinkedIn if they invest a small amount of time, and believe me, many do!

If the LinkedIn profile positively complements your resume, everything is wonderful. However, if your persona on LinkedIn is somehow different or adds confusion for a recruiter, you can be eliminated from contention for a job without even being aware of it.

Most job seekers create multiple versions of their resume because they have more than one objective in their job search, and/or decide to emphasize different elements in their background depending upon the specific targeted job. In such real-world situations, the static nature of the LinkedIn profile that is associated with these various versions of the resume creates a problem.

And, since LinkedIn currently gives no means to a person to create the equivalent of multiple profiles, one to match their different resumes/job targets, there is no satisfying solution.

With such an obvious inherent conflict, some people choose to make the LinkedIn profile all-encompassing, essentially a combination of all versions of their resume. Another approach is to use LinkedIn to supplement their primary job search objective, and lose the benefit of LinkedIn as a complement for the remaining career goals.

Either of these solutions is imperfect at best, and until LinkedIn allows for the equivalent of multiple profile functionality, there is no way for many job seekers to fully support their job search efforts using this otherwise excellent employment search resource.

Misreading the Job Search Situation

So, my 13-year old son starts yelling yesterday morning as he is getting ready for school.  The current fashion style where we live is for kids to wear pants that have holes in them.  They buy them that way, and from what I can see, it seems that the more holes they have, and the bigger the holes are, the more expensive the pants actually are.  I would think that since they require less material, the cost would be lower, but that is not the way it works.

Anyway, the problem my son had on this fine morning was that his pants were wrinkled.  Yes, it’s true, a kid that is happily wearing pants that have holes in them for some reason does not like it if they are wrinkled.  I naively assumed that once he had passed the point of preferring a defect in his clothes, another imperfection would be considered even more of a positive.  In fact, I even started to hope that if our kids liked wrinkles in their clothes, the amount of time spent ironing in our house would go down.  Apparently though, not all faults are the same.

We make assumptions all the time when searching for a job, and sometimes we are wrong.  Generally though, we don’t have someone so vocally telling us when this happens.

There have been a few times over the past couple of weeks that I have heard complaints from job seekers, and I am not sure they are justified.

These particular complaints all revolved around the concept of what is correct for a company to require when seeking a new employee.  Someone complained about a company looking for telephone sales people with the requirement that candidates can’t have a foreign accent for the targeted region.  Another protested that an employer had a requirement for specific citizenship of candidates.  Someone else didn’t agree that a university degree should be required.  Or, that candidates must live in the center of the country in order to be considered for the job in Tel Aviv.

Yes, there are laws that prohibit discrimination in the workplace and recruitment process.  But such rules are not mutually exclusive with allowing a company the flexibility to decide for themselves what the suitable profile is for its candidates. 

I think job seekers would do themselves a favor by trying to imagine themselves in the HR manager’s shoes, in Israel in the year 2014.  Today it is still a buyer’s market – companies have confidence that if they wait, they will find the person that they seek, and generally don’t feel the need to be flexible in a big way.  And from what I have seen, they are correct.  Employers that have strong feelings about specific characteristics that it takes to succeed in their environment, and have the patience to wait until they find someone that matches, usually get what they want.  I have seen companies with job openings for many months, waiting for the right person to come to their attention.

If you were the HR manager of the company, I believe that you would demand to have this ability to decide.   And the chances of a job seeker changing the minds of an employer is much smaller than finding a different company that you are more suitable for, or possibly changing the way that you approach the company.

To me, the task of the job seeker when something happens that you are not expecting is to try to infer the real world situation in the market, and then take action to improve your chances, rather than ignoring the signs and continuing to rely upon faulty assumptions.

For instance:

 ·         If you looking for a job in telephone sales and mother tongue accent is an issue, identify companies that sell in your native language, and target them.  Don’t wait for them to advertise – send them your CV and use LinkedIn or other resources to start conversations with people working in the company.

·         University degrees are often times used as filters, even if they are not the most critical element in predicting the success of a candidate.  If the company has many job seekers that seem similar, and some have degrees and others don’t, then it can be a factor.  One option is to find something (truthful) to put in your education section which is meaningful.  Or, use networking to get introduced by someone trusted by the company, a way to mitigate the importance of something like a university degree.  Another approach is to focus more on job openings where a university degree is not critical.  A longer term solution, if appropriate, is to make efforts to get a degree.  There are even online options that allow the studying to be done from home.
·         The majority of jobs are in the center of the country.  No matter what your attitude is about commuting, or how far you commuted before moving to Israel, many Israeli companies want their employees to live close to the office.  They have encountered bad experiences previously with people living further away that burn out from the traveling, and as long as they have confidence that they will find someone close by that is qualified, they will stop reading a CV if the candidate lives too far away in their opinion.   Roles that are more senior are less sensitive to location, but not always immune from such considerations.  So, your options are to be open to relocating (and make sure this is clear on your CV) and/or focusing on jobs near your home (something that can be very limiting if you don’t live in the center of the country).

When you are looking for a job, you have to constantly evaluate the responses (or lack thereof) and consider whether your job target(s) and way of searching is the most appropriate for you.  If you are not making as much progress as you would like, it is a good idea to speak with others and consider new ways to move forward.

Who is worse, the job seeker that applies for a job without being qualified, or the HR/recruiter that spends 5-15 seconds reviewing a CV?

That is like asking who came first, the chicken or the egg?

I wouldn’t even attempt to address the age-old second question, but I would like to consider the first.

I am not sure how closely these facts of life are related to each other, but I do believe that in this day and age of Internet job sites, their association is an undeniable fact.

In the ideal world, job seekers would send their CV only for jobs for which they are fully qualified.  In the ideal world, recruiters/HR people would invest the time to read each CV in its entirety, in order to fully understand the capabilities of the job candidate.

Of course, in the ideal world, I would be so rich that the entire concept of job search would be irrelevant to me.

Enough of that, back to the real world…

Let’s look at this first from the HR/recruiter’s perspective (for instance, me :>).  I advertise regularly on Internet sites and social media forums for job candidates on behalf of employers.   As can be expected, I receive many CVs in response to my job postings.  At first I was surprised, but now I have become hardened to the reality that the majority of the CVs I receive are from people that do not even meet the basic requirements of the job as described in the posting.  In fact, I am convinced that many people send their CVs without reading anything but the job title.  So, what this means to me is that I need to do two phases of sorting, first to remove the completely unqualified people, and then from those remaining, to identify the most relevant for further consideration.  Certainly in this first phase of filtering, I go very fast, spending a minimal amount of time on each CV, knowing as I do that most are irrelevant anyway. 

Now, let’s consider this from the job seeker’s viewpoint.  When all you have to go on is a job posting, even in the best case, it is virtually impossible to understand exactly what the employer seeks, which “requirements” are critical and which are simply nice-to-have.  It costs virtually nothing to send a CV, neither financially nor time-wise, so it is always better to err on the side of sending and hoping for the best.  Besides, even when a CV is sent for which the job seeker feels there is a perfect match, the chance of getting a positive response from the employer hovers around the 10% range at best.

So, what we have here is a problem brought on by the nature of the medium.  I don’t mean to imply that the introduction of Internet job sites created the new situation of such a large number of CVs being sent, many not suitable.  I have no doubt that HR professionals from previous generations had the same complaints.  However, it is certainly true that when the job seeker has easy access to hundreds of jobs daily and can apply with the click of a button, the problem is exacerbated exponentially.

HR personal certainly won’t invest a great deal of time in reviewing CVs when they know the majority are irrelevant.  And job seekers have no incentive not to send their CVs as frequently as possible.

Is there a better way?

Consider this…  A general rule of thumb in the job search industry is that two-thirds of all jobs are never publically advertised.  This is generally agreed to be true worldwide.  If you stop to think about this, it seems counterintuitive.  If an employer is seeking job candidates, why wouldn’t they be advertising in as many public forums as possible?

The answer is that many companies come to the conclusion that having a recruitment process that includes filtering (via some combination of manual and automated process) large quantities of unknown people is not effective.  It doesn’t bring the results that they require, but rather a huge administrative load with a poor return-on-investment.

So, what do they do instead? 

Some may use placement agencies to do the initial filtering, meaning that candidates that are presented to the employer are only those that have been pre-filtered based upon their specific requirements.

However, informal networking (word-of-mouth) introductions play a huge part in the actual filling of these unadvertised roles.  And these entire interactions are completely hidden to those outside of the process.

One of my favorite stories told to me by a job seeker using our Israemploy website illustrates this point.  The person had seen a perfect job posting on our site, and sent in his CV as instructed.  He heard back nothing.  So, he decided to take additional action.  The company name was included in the job listing, so he used LinkedIn to find people that worked at the employer doing a job similar to his.  From LinkedIn, he introduced himself to a couple of these people, and was able to begin a conversation.  At some point in the conversation, as is not so rare, the person inside the company told the job seeker to send them his CV, and he would forward it to the HR person.  Remember, the job seeker has already sent his CV to the HR person via the job site.  Now, he takes the exact same CV, and sends it to his contact within the company.  The contact within the company takes this CV and sends it to the exact same HR person that has already received the CV via the job site.  The CV is the same, the HR person that receives it is identical; the only difference is the way that it is delivered – via a known/trusted person.  However, in this case that was the critical factor – because the internal person sent the CV to the HR person, the HR person treated it differently, and ultimately the job seeker was invited to an interview.

From this real world example, it is easy to see how networking benefits not only the employer, but also the job seeker.  This is the real (and oftentimes invisible) way that companies identify new job candidates. Job seekers must understand the significance of networking in the recruitment process, and take steps to insert themselves into the mix.  Without such awareness, the job seeker is guaranteed to be missing many job opportunities which can be perfectly suitable – and that is the biggest shame of all. 

Related Articles:

·         LinkedIn – Tying it all Together

·         Not Getting Responses to E-Mail Job Applications?

Election/Job Campaigning in the Air…

The Israeli elections are over, yet we are still in the extended waiting period, without knowing what the government coalition will look like.

For those Big-Time Wrestling fans out there, it may remind you of the WWF Battle Royals:

Everyone in the ring at the same time, and you keep fighting until there is one person left standing.  And ironically, as we are accustomed to in Israel, notice the referee in the picture that is supposed to make sure the rules are being followed is not even paying attention to the action, maybe being distracted by media with cameras in the front row as so often happens.

And by the way, anyone that is interested in this spectacle, I highly recommend the documentary/movie: I’m From Hollywood.  It will give you a better appreciation of this "sport" – you can find this Andy Kaufman movie on YouTube.

Anyway, on to employment…

You know, the new MKs in the Israeli Knesset are not so different from more traditional job seekers.  They had to go through a grueling recruitment process, being subjected to scrutiny and uncertainty, before being offered a job.  For those fortunate enough to make it into the Knesset, the natural inclination at that point might be to feel the fun has finally begun.    Plenty of press, congratulations from friends and family, and warm welcomes from veteran politicians. 

But the reality can be quite different, something that they will be reminded of many times over. 

This is of course not surprising to anyone that remembers what it is like to start a job at a new company.  Once you accept a job offer, you are generally thrust into an environment that has many unknowns, both in terms of personalities and expected behaviors.   Who will be your allies and who will be your adversaries?  For MKs, on the face of it, these distinctions are more straightforward, as those in your party are meant to be your friends, and those outside are somehow more suspect.  New employees don’t have the luxury of this pre-defined label, and must feel their way around more by trial and error.  At the end though, personal relationships based upon concrete shared objectives are generally more lasting than political party allegiance, which at least in Israel is tenuous at best.

They don’t call it office politics for nothing.  But hey, if you play your cards right, your tenure at your job will most likely be longer than most of the incoming MKs.

Telephone Interviews

When I started doing recruiting, I had a lot to learn, as I didn’t come from the HR sector at all.

One such discovery was the significance and absolute danger for the job seeker related to the initial telephone call from the employer, especially when it falls on an unsuspecting/unprepared person.

At first, when one of my employer clients decided that they wanted to begin a recruitment conversation with one of my job candidates, I understood this to mean that the company would be inviting the person to their offices for a face-to-face interview. Now I understand from hard life experience that this is in fact the best case scenario, and certainly not a foregone conclusion.

My history with the recruitment process until this point was my own personal experience with job search for myself. Maybe I have a faulty memory, but what I remember was that when I submitted my CV and a company was interested in me, they would call and invite me to their offices for an interview. I don’t recall the telephone discussion being anything more than a short conversation to make the logistical arrangements.

What I started to realize very quickly was that many of the job seekers that had telephone conversations with the employer were never actually invited to a personal interview – the process completely ground to a halt for them with this one and only phone interaction.

It was clear that I was missing something - what was actually going on?

Each employer operates differently, but somewhere in their thought process, consciously or not, is the question: How much resources do I want to invest in this candidate? Reviewing a CV is the least “expensive” for an employer, followed by a telephone call, and then finally an in-person interview.

Maybe you have heard that a CV/resume is reviewed on average 20-30 seconds. Of course, this is the first stage of filtering, and most candidates are removed from contention at this point. Anyone who has sifted through large numbers of CVs knows that the majority of people that submit their candidacy don’t even meet the qualifications listed in the job posting. If the CV is especially interesting, I will invest more than the usual amount of time in reading it before ultimately deciding whether the candidate is suitable to be submitted to the company for further consideration.

So, what happened next was shocking to me at first. Not so much that people that I thought were appropriate were not all generating strong interest from the employer – that was to be expected, as I generally was not the only resource they had presenting candidates. However, a much-higher-than-expected percentage of people that the companies decided to speak with based upon the CV that I submitted had the recruitment process stop after one telephone conversation.

I became very curious – what is the employer looking for in this phone conversation, and what are they asking to allow them to arrive at the go/no go decision of whether to invest even more resources by inviting the job seeker to an interview at the office?

When the employer gets the CV, either pre-screened by a recruiter or directly from a job candidate, they do their own evaluation. Certainly the processing is different depending on whether the candidate was pre-screened by a trusted agency or is not filtered at all.

At the end, though, from the oftentimes large quantity of initial CVs, the company whittles the number of candidates down to a more manageable size – those that may meet their candidate profile. What comes next is the process that the company has created to go from “may meet the candidate profile” based upon the contents of a one-dimensional CV to a more confident understanding that this person has the skills and motivation to do the job and fit the company.

Of course, each employer has their own philosophy for the entire recruitment process, and the initial phone conversation is only one aspect of this. Still, it might help the job seeker conceptually to place an employer in one of three categories regarding how they view the call:

1. Scheduling - This initial telephone call is designed to set a time for the job seeker to come to the employer’s offices for an interview. I mistakenly thought at first that this was the only way that companies viewed this conversation, but I now realize that the majority of employers use this first encounter as something much more than simply scheduling.
2. Mini-Interview - The hiring manager/HR person knows that it is impossible to get a clear picture of the candidate from the CV, nor for the candidate to have a full comprehension of the company/position from the job listing, so the call is used to narrow the gaps. Details on the CV are discussed/elaborated upon, and additional relevant information not contained in the CV may be requested. Also, it can be used for the employer to provide additional details about the job in order to allow the candidate to understand better the specifics and respond with their level of interest. Can be 5-15 minutes in length.
3. Full-Interview - The call is the equivalent of an in-person interview, simply conducted by telephone. Oftentimes 30 minutes or more.

I have come to the conclusion that from the perspective of the job seeker, unless you know otherwise, you should be planning that the initial telephone conversation will be a short or long variation of a traditional interview, and prepare yourself accordingly.

First things first... Since this call is generally not scheduled in advance, you can’t know when it’s coming and fully prepare in the same way you would for a more traditional planned interview. So, when the company calls, make sure that you are in a situation where you can concentrate and make a good impression. If you are driving, stop the car! If there is a lot of noise or bad reception, try to find a more suitable near-by location to talk. If you are taking care of an unhappy child, or are in the middle of something that you simply can’t interrupt, politely ask if you can reschedule the conversation. There is a risk in asking to reschedule, as the company doesn’t always call back (quickly) and you may lose your chance to be one of the initial candidates, but generally they will get in touch in a timely fashion.  Having the conversation when you are not at your best is a recipe for disaster. And if you are not available to take a call while you are in the job search process, make sure you have voice mail associated with your telephone, and don’t forget to listen to your messages regularly.

As the conversation begins, keep these points in mind:

• When the company asks for clarification, you should be happy that you have the opportunity to provide additional information, rather than have the company make assumptions that don’t serve your purposes. It doesn’t matter if the answer to the question is already contained your CV – responding intelligently and articulately makes a positive impression.
• Don’t be evasive/defensive. When a company asks why you left your previous job, why you have a hole in your work history, or what your salary expectations are, answer the question clearly. Of course you should be prepared in advance for such questions, in the same way you would be for an in-person interview, and provide pre-planned responses that serve your interests. For more details of interview questions, see this article.

Getting a telephone call from a perspective employer is an excellent sign. You have passed the initial CV review stage, generally something that very few achieve. Preparing yourself for the telephone conversation in the same way you would for a face-to-face interview will give you the best chance to move forward in the recruitment process.

Do you need an initial summary in your CV?

When working with job seekers on their CVs/resumes, one critical issue arises quickly: Is it valuable to include an initial summary/profile?

I receive many CVs from job candidates on behalf of companies that I do recruiting for. About half of them include such summaries.

What is the correct way to begin your CV?

To me, the answer is clear when we review two statistics that arise from studies focused on how CVs are reviewed by employers:

• Average amount of time that a CV is “read” – 20-30 seconds
• Position on CV where the reader starts – top of the first page

The conclusion that I draw from the above is that the job seeker has very little time to get their message across, and that in such a short period of time, there is no way that the employer can read the entire document. However, the initial part of the CV will almost certainly be read.

So, to use a hi-tech term, if I reverse engineer from the above information, I quickly can come to the conclusion that I want my targeted important message to the employer to be at the top of the first page. If the most important details are spread throughout your CV, you can’t have full confidence that you are even getting your message across in such a short period of time.

Another strong reason for opening your CV with a section that summarizes your key skills/accomplishment as relates to your job target is that it allows you to describe yourself in a favorable way to the employer. Without this, you are hoping that the employer will infer your suitability from other parts of your document (work history, education…). Why leave this critical point to chance? If you are qualified for the job which you are applying for, you want this to be obvious quickly, and highlighting the most relevant parts of your background is an excellent way to achieve this objective.

Once you decide that you want to include an opening summary, the question becomes, what to include in this section.

First, you need to understand well what employers are seeking for your job target. You can determine this based upon some combination of your own previous work experience, talking with others in Israel that do the job, and looking for relevant job advertisements. Then, for those relevant skills which you possess, it makes sense to include them in your initial summary.

However, this is not enough. The above is critical to illustrating that you meet the requirements of the job, but it doesn’t distinguish you from all of the other candidates that also have the necessary qualifications. This is one of the most difficult tasks of a job seeker when creating a CV – how to make yourself a three-dimensional person when arriving in a one-dimensional (file/paper) format, while at the same time making you different in a positive way from other qualified candidates.

An excellent way to attempt this feat is by including not only skills in your CV, but also accomplishments. The wonderful thing about accomplishments is that they are unique to you.

People working in sales usually have an easier time with this, as they are oftentimes measured by quantifiable criteria. So, mentioning quota, increasing revenues… can serve this purpose well.

However, for the majority of job seekers, accomplishments are not always so readily handy and bite-size. The goal is to include in your CV relevant benefits that previous organizations have achieved from your efforts. Again, the idea is to distinguish yourself from other candidates, while at the same time helping the company understand what benefit your previous employers received from your work, something that can be more tangible for a company to understand than simply a list of your skills.

For instance, if you introduced a process in a previous role that saved the company time, money…, then this can be something to point out. If you played an integral part of a project that made a difference to the bottom line of your company, then this can work as well.

If your initial statement (some combination of relevant skills and suitable accomplishments) matches the company’s candidate profile, then there is a much better chance that the employer will continue reading your CV, and quite possibly give you more than just a short glance.

The rest of your CV after the summary should include details that provide more detail to what is related in the short initial section and give evidence that what you wrote there is true.

Including an initial summary on your CV is an excellent way to highlight why you are a high level candidate for the job, helping you paint the proper profile for the employer while also including details to make you stick out from the pack.

Is Your Job Search Routine?

Most people got up today thinking that it is just a normal day. Not me, though. I stayed awake until 3am watching my San Francisco 49ers beat the New Orleans Saints in a playoff game (American football for those who don’t know). What an awesome finish, the Niners got a touchdown with nine seconds left to win! So, I am especially tired, but today is a great day, not merely regular.

As a sports fan, I am by definition filled with routines; some call them superstitions. When something works previously, I stick with it. About one year and a half ago, the San Francisco Giants (baseball) were two (series) wins away from winning a championship, something that hadn’t occurred in my lifetime (and I am almost 50), so I incorporated them into my Employment in Israel article: Loyalty at Work. They ended up surprising everyone, especially San Francisco fans, by winning the World Series. So, now that the 49ers are two wins away, and I feel that their fate somehow rests within my fingertips, I have the responsibility to help push them over the top.

If you are not a sports fan, you might want to skip the next paragraph.

Actually, I am somehow feeling less nostalgic writing this article than the previous one in this series. One year and a half ago, there had been no championship for any of the Big Three of San Francisco sports in more than 30 years, and the Giants themselves hadn’t won since 1954, before I was born and before they were even playing in San Francisco. Even more importantly, after being removed from US sports since the time I made aliyah in the 1994, I reconnected to something that was almost a matter of life and death for me when I was younger. So, it was a kind of coming out party for me – I was confident enough being an Israeli to become overtly American again (not that my accent when I speak Hebrew fools anyone). Some of those components are missing this time. However, there is a big positive now. Previously I had no way to watch the games; last night I used a free website that shows the games live. Lack of sleep is a small price to pay for being able to see the action rather than just reading about it. The next improvement will be to find other San Francisco sports fans in Israel and watch together in a place where I can yell when they score, rather than restrain myself so that I don’t wake up my wife and kids.

Routines like this are building blocks in the construction of our everyday lives. In this particular case, the events themselves that make up my routine are spread apart by many months, so it is difficult to see the pattern without me hitting you over the head with it. However, the big and little things we do automatically each day without thinking about them comprise a large portion in all of our daily activities.

This seems to be especially true for those searching for work. The question is, does your routine make sense – is it the correct way to go about securing your next employment? Well, of course that depends upon what your objective is, and what you are doing to realize it. However, all job seekers should be “routinely” asking themselves these questions:

• Is your routine in tune with the realities of the 2012, or are you using what worked for you previously, before social media became so prominent in the majority of effective job searches, or before you moved to Israel? 
• Are you using resources (websites/placement companies) that someone recommended to you, even though their career objectives and yours are very different? 
• Are you focusing most of your time using job websites for your next opportunity? From what I understand after speaking with numerous job seekers, this is the routine for many people. In my opinion, this is THE number one reason why people become frustrated with job searches. Certainly people do get jobs they apply to from websites, but the majority of people working today did NOT find their job from a website. Two-thirds of all jobs are never publicly advertised, so spending so much time on job sites guarantees that you will never even be aware of the majority of available jobs. Networking is the single best investment of your time when seeking work: Employment Networking - Getting to the Other Two Thirds of the Jobs.

So, we will all know soon if my routine that began with the SF Giants will carry over to celebrating a Super Bowl victory for the 49ers. For job seekers, results of your routine usually cannot be discerned so quickly and clearly, but nonetheless, they are much more tangible to achieving your objectives than mine are.

Or maybe not…

Go Niners!

And yes, if things go according to plan, in the very near future I will be writing my third installment in the San Francisco Sports trilogy, Ode to the (Golden State) Warriors. Maybe if they sign Omri Caspi, everything will turn out good!

Discrimination in Israeli Employment

Two issues have come to my attention in recent days related to discrimination in the workplace, so I thought others might benefit from considering them as well.

First is an article recently from the Jerusalem Post: http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Judaism/Article.aspx?id=247862. The issue here is whether it is acceptable, legally, morally or otherwise, for companies to discriminate against job candidates because of race (in this case, Arabic).

The second time was a question raised by a reader to a job that appeared on our website, Israemploy. The job was for a religious organization, and specified that the employee must be male.

What is allowed?

In Israel, we have the Employment (Equal Opportunities) Law, 1988. This law forms the main legal basis for prohibiting discrimination in the workplace, both in the public and private spheres:

Section 2.(a)

Employers shall not discriminate between their employees or between candidates for employment because of their sexual orientation, because they are parents, because of their age, gender, race, religion, nationality, land of origin, opinion or party, in any of the following:

- hiring;
- working conditions;
- promotion;
- professional training or studies;
- discharge or severance pay;
- benefits and payments provided for employees in connection with their retirement from employment.

Yet, there may be certain exceptions in which discrimination of a sort may be permitted:

a) In relation to women, the most important of these are 'genuine' occupational qualifications, which include:

- Reasons of physiology (not enough physical strength)
- Reasons of decency or privacy
- The provision of personal services promoting welfare or education; and jobs affected by legal/religious restrictions, where customs are such that the duties could not, or could not effectively, be performed by a woman (actually, this can be relevant for men as well – for instance, mikva attendant role)

b) In the case of ethnic minorities the exceptions are:

- Dramatic performances, where the dramatis personae requires a person of a particular racial group.
- Artists or models for advertising purposes, for reasons of authenticity
- Where services are rendered for the welfare of the particular group

So, what does this all mean?

Certainly, in the case of a religious organization where the requirements of the job are such that only one particular gender can fulfill it, this type of limitation is allowed.

And what about the newspaper article example, restricting a race from jobs for non-employment specific reasons (rather nationalistic objectives)? Well, I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the equal opportunities law was created in part to specifically restrict such instances.

Translation Profession in Israel

In the on-going attempt to highlight professions that are most suitable for immigrants in Israel, I am delighted to introduce an article describing the translation sector written by Micaela Ziv, former chairperson of the Israel Translators Association.  

Several good things about the field of translation in Israel

• The need for translation in a variety of language pairs is ever-growing in the global marketplace and is thriving in Israel
• Translation is easier than ever before – it can be done anytime, anywhere, and now with a wealth of information and linguistic resources at your fingertips
• The Israel Translators Association welcomes newcomers and veterans in the field alike, offering professional development, mentoring and networking opportunities throughout the year

Who should consider the field of translation in Israel?

• Anyone with prior experience in translation from abroad
• Anyone who:

o writes well
o has fluent knowledge of two languages (Hebrew does not have to be one of them) and a very good grasp of their respective cultures
o is ready to keep on learning
o enjoys the idea of translating!

Remember – all your education and work experience can contribute greatly to your value in the field. A useful rule of thumb: focus on the areas you really know about – being a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ is not an advantage here.

• Fields in demand include marketing, finance, legal, academic, technical, scientific, localization and literature

Employment opportunities

There are virtually no in-house salaried positions for translations (other than a few positions with governmental bodies, such as the Bank of Israel or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and at newspaper desks). Most of us are independently self-employed, working either directly with our own clients or through translation agencies, or both. Obviously, pay rates from agencies are lower, but then they are the ones who find the clients and deal with the problems of following up on payments, advertising, and so on! Many newer translators start off working for agencies while developing their own clientele through personal contacts, networking, advertising and so forth.

Payment is usually calculated on a per page basis, with a page defined as 250 words.

It is a free market with quite a wide price range (and prices differ for different language pairs), but the ITA does have information on rates that can provide a guide.

Does knowing two languages automatically make you a potential translator?

In a word – NO!

Translation lies somewhere between a profession and an art, so a good translator should have a certain natural aptitude that can then be greatly enhanced by attending training courses. Israel offers many opportunities – academic and other – to do this. These include courses at Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv University, Beit Berl College, Oranim College, and programs offered by companies like WritePoint. It should be said that the commercial courses are probably less detailed (and less theory-oriented) than the academic courses.

What’s the difference between a translator and an interpreter?

A translator works with the written word and provides a written product. Interpreters work with the spoken word. Interpreting may be either simultaneous (while the person is speaking) or consecutive (speaker says a few sentences, you interpret, speaker talks some more, you interpret, and so on). This is a skill that requires prior training, which can be obtained at some of the institutions mentioned above. Payment is usually on an hourly or per-diem basis.

What other skills and equipment do you need to get started?

It’s an online profession. So you should start off with a good computer, printer, fax and scanner. You should be familiar with Word, Excel and PowerPoint (or similar programs), know how to use search engines well, use general and field specific online and printed dictionaries, and be easily reachable by email.

As for any freelance work, you should find a good accountant who can handle your questions and show you the required bookkeeping procedures. For those of you who read Hebrew there is also a software program called Avodat Milim designed specifically to make the translator’s bookkeeping easier. You will also need to be registered with the tax authorities (VAT, Income Tax and National Insurance).

If you are planning to work in areas with a lot of repetitive text (for example, legal, financial, technical) you might consider investing in a Translation Memory program. “What’s that?” you say. Don’t worry – your colleagues at the ITA will be happy to explain all this and a good many other concepts, which is another way of saying that the smart move is to become a member as soon as you have decided that translation and interpreting is going to be your field! Membership in the ITA indicates a seriousness of intention that enhances your CV and is a marketing booster, especially for beginners.

The Israel Translators Association

The ITA is the home base for the translation profession, and welcomes both self-employed and salaried translators (as well as editors, localizers, and other language-related professionals). With an informative website in both Hebrew and English, monthly lecture evenings, and an international three-day conference in February, the ITA’s mission is to help its members develop professionally as well as to upgrade the status of the profession in Israel.

To help new members of the profession hone both their translation and business skills (avoiding pitfalls, handling clients), the ITA has set up a flexible mentoring program, which also helps people gain the experience they need to be eligible for the Certificate of Recognition – the first phase of its accreditation program. The ITA is often able to offer its members discounts on certain field-related publications and software. Membership forms are available on the website. If you have questions, write to info@ita.org.il and a member of the committee will get back to you within a reasonable time (remember – they are all volunteers!).

In addition, the ITA is itself a member in LAHAV, an umbrella organization that lobbies for the rights of the self-employed and small businesses.

Age Discrimination – Stanley Fisher, et al

Stanley Fisher is the president of the Bank of Israel. He has held this position for 6 years, encompassing a very difficult global financial period. Israel has a small domestic economy, and is heavily dependent upon exports as well as tourism – so when the world economy tanks, Israel is very directly impacted. Most Israeli experts seem to agree (and it is very rare to find economists that agree, let alone Jewish economists ;>) that Israel has weathered this economic period quite well, and the international community seems to concur in general. Although Stanley Fisher is not solely responsible, clearly he has a strong impact on Israel’s current enviable economic situation.

Recently the position of Head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) became available, and Stanley Fisher, with his impeccable credentials, was interested in being considered for this post. Very early in the process, he was dismissed as a candidate because he was too old (the maximum age is 65 and he is 67).

I have a friend who is a doctor in Israel. At the hospital where he works, he will have to retire well before the age of 70. His father is a doctor in the US and is still working each day at a hospital – he is 85 years old!

At least in the case of Stanley Fisher, we can assume that not being allowed to head the IMF will not cause him financial hardship (after all, he continues to hold an excellent job), something not true for everyone that approaches retirement age. As baby boomers advance in age, with looming high health costs and less than expected savings, the question of when to stop working becomes more difficult. At least in Israel, with basic universal health coverage, these costs are less of a factor in this decision.

For most people seeking work though, official retirement age is not the main roadblock, rather the difficulties in getting a job while still at pre-retirement age. Employers have a profile of their ideal employee, and age range is often (sometimes unconsciously) part of this vision. If the job seeker falls outside that range, the person reviewing the CVs may well stop reading when they get to the birthdate entry.

From the legal perspective, things in Israel are clear. It is not allowed to make a negative hiring decision based upon age. However, as with all things in Israel, there is the law and there is the way that it is implemented. For instance, I was living in Israel for many years before I understood that the traffic laws in Israel and the US are very similar – the difference is only in the enforcement. However, this enforcement difference, meaning that the traffic laws in Israel are enforced much less than they are in the US, leads to an outcome where drivers in Israel don’t fear penalties and drive recklessly. Most drivers simply don’t appear to take the law into account when driving.

Age and job seeking is quite similar. It is standard for a job seeker to include their age/birthdate on their CV in Israel. If age is not supposed to be a factor, why would a job seeker do this? The answer is clear - because potential employers expect it. The fear, and justifiably so, is that if a person submits a CV without their age listed, this raises red flags to those reading it – essentially inducing the question “what is this candidate hiding?”. If the person is particularly relevant, the company may contact them and ask them some questions, including age, but in many other cases the job seeker will simply be eliminated from contention. Of course, not all companies operate this way, but it is a calculated risk to take such a chance. Most people that are “young” simply put their age, as it would generally be considered a positive to perspective employers; job seekers that are in their 60s (or 50s [or 40s]) must constantly decide what to do.

In my work at Israemploy, I am in touch with many companies in Israel seeking employees. I always try to understand what the profile is of the candidates they seek, and age often plays a role. Although companies are never going to make a straight statement that violates the law, it is possible to learn a lot from what they do say.

Each company and hiring manager’s philosophy is different. Some will state that age is not relevant, a factor absolutely unrelated to the recruitment decision (from my experience, this is a rare statement to hear, and even more rare when it is true).

Generally most job seekers assume they come across age limitations only at the higher end of the working-age spectrum, but in fact there can be lower age limits as well. Some companies have had bad experiences with young employees, those that may lack responsibility/stability. In this case, they prefer workers above a certain arbitrary age, for instance 25 or even 30. Other companies have a work-force with an average age of 20s, and have found that introducing someone significantly older than this is a mismatch.

Nothing is absolute, age preferences are flexible, and can become relaxed based upon the urgency of filling an opening and/or the expected difficulty of identifying a candidate that meets the requirements. If a company needs to find an employee quickly, then their optimum age profile becomes elastic. And for a company that is seeking a hard-to-find person, such as a Swedish speaker, age issues become less critical by necessity.

It would be wonderful if it was possible to educate employers to eliminate or at least reduce their false prejudices, whether they are related to age, gender, race, religious affiliation… Especially in the case of not considering “older” employers, it is not difficult to create a list of the advantages for an employer of hiring a mature worker, including:

• No young children at home that require attention, meaning availability for longer work hours
• No military obligations for men, no pregnancy leaves for women, translating to more days available to work
• More experience, higher capability to do the job [this I have found to be a two-edged sword in the eyes of employers, as often they tell me that they prefer a person without too much experience, as those with long work histories are many times set in their ways, and not open to learning/considering a new way of doing things]

The truth is, though, that attempting to have a rational discussion about such issues typically doesn’t help if the preconceived notion itself is not based in logic. Job seekers tell me that there should be more efforts made by the government at enforcing the law, but it is unclear whether this would lead to an improvement “on the ground”.

In the short-term, I tend to believe that job seekers that are outside the typical employer ideal profile range would be better off investing their resources in identifying and pursuing opportunities that are more suitable. Of course this is easier said than done, but focusing on smaller companies that don’t have an existing large workforce of young employees, or speaking with others to find companies that already do employ “older” workers, or looking for companies that market their product/services to the greying population – all of these may help you uncover new possibilities.

And please remember, as you do integrate into the Israeli work force and arrive to a position where you impact hiring decisions, remember when you were looking for a job and the difficulties that you encountered, something that is bound to make a cumulative positive impact on the overall Israeli recruitment process.

Salary Expectations - Be Prepared

I grew up in America, and made aliyah when I was 31. I have a technical background, not sales/marketing. I don’t remember engaging in many financial negotiations before I arrived in Israel. Things were simpler – there was a price tag in the store – you paid this amount if you wanted the product. A newspaper subscription, telephone service… there was a listed price and you only had to decide if this was acceptable for you. In fact, the only negotiation I remember was the time I purchased a new car; this is the one situation I encountered in the US where haggling is expected, and as a novice I left that encounter with the car, but also with a very bad feeling that I performed poorly and got taken advantage of (both were true).

Now, after living in Israel for more than 10 years, negotiation has become second-hand. Not that I claim to be an expert or even good, but at least I am aware of it and am not intimidated to start the process/game. Strangely enough, when I arrived in Israel and decided to buy a new car, I found that this is about the only instance here when negotiation is NOT generally possible. On one hand, it was a relief (as I couldn’t be taken advantage of compared to others), but when the price of a car in Israel is approximately twice the price of a car in the US, this feeling is a mixed blessing.

Each employer has their own philosophy regarding when to check candidate salary expectations. Sometimes this query will arrive as a request in the job listing itself when you are submitting your application, other times it will be raised in an initial telephone interview, and it may also appear much later in the interviewing process. There are also employers that don't raise this issue directly at all, they simply make a job offer and wait for the reaction. 

I have heard many people complain because companies don’t list the salary for the position in the job listing itself. From one perspective, this would save the job seeker and the employer a lot of time, as it is more likely that unqualified people would not apply. Typically companies in Israel will not publicly announce their salary structure, but if they ask in the job advertisement or in an initial phone interview for the candidate’s salary expectations, then they are trying to accomplish this initial screening.

What is the best approach for the job seeker to take when the questions is posed to them in one form or another?

There are three (3) possibilities in how your response will be processed:

• You come in lower than their salary range – in this case they may either consider you under-qualified OR see that they have an opportunity to get a good person lower than the range they had in mind OR they will understand that you would certainly be open to the range they have in mind
• You come in within their salary range – good match
• You come in above their salary range – they may consider you overqualified/mismatched OR they may try to see if you would be open to work in their salary range OR they may say for someone this good they are willing to consider raising their range

All of this is generally academic, since you as the candidate cannot have confidence that you know their range. However, if you do know the actual salary range within the market in Israel in general, then this is an excellent starting point. It is absolutely critical for the job candidate to try to determine the average salary range for their target job. If you don’t know this already, then speaking with people that work in the same profession is a good way to get to this information.  Sometimes you can find salary surveys online (most are in Hebrew), but is not clear to me how accurate they are.

Giving a range rather than a flat figure is usually a good idea, as it gives you a better chance to overlap into the range of the employer.

Many people are flexible in their salary expectations, especially people new to the Israeli employment market. So for instance, in order to guard against coming in too high, you can add to your salary expectations response that you are flexible and open to discussion.

Other companies take the approach that they want to get to know the candidate and understand their capabilities, and only then to raise the issue of salary. The idea here is that if the company decides that they want the candidate, they can oftentimes find a way to make the compensation work. In this case, your response will typically be the beginning of the compensation negotiation.

At some point or another you can expect that if the employer is interested in you, they will ask for your salary expectations. You as the job candidate should do your homework beforehand and not be caught unprepared.

Headhunter’s Lament: Why Don’t Job Seekers Use LinkedIn Correctly???

Maybe you've heard before that employment recruiters use LinkedIn in the same way that web surfers use Google: to search for the information they need. In the case of recruiters, what is needed are candidates that match the profile being sought. I am one such recruiter.

Sounds simple, right? Well in reality this is fraught with problems, most of which could be solved to the benefit of the job seeker and recruiter at the same time in a simple way. You see, if I can’t find you, then you have no visibility for the job that I know about.

First, let’s take a step back. LinkedIn is a large (more than 100 million members worldwide) professional networking site. It is free to use, and for anyone seeking work now, or expecting to do so in the future, this resource is simply gold! I won’t recount the features here; anyone that wants more detail is welcome to read this article: http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.com/2009/12/linkedin-tying-it-all-together.html.

People use LinkedIn for a variety of reasons. I am addressing now those of you who consider job search one of the objectives for maintaining a LinkedIn presence.

Recruiters use LinkedIn in two general instances:

1. A candidate sends a CV, and the recruiter would like to check for even more detail about them than can be found in the confines of a short document. In this case, the recruiter will do a LinkedIn people search on the specific person of interest, and view their profile. If you don’t have a LinkedIn presence, or your profile is weak (no detail, recommendations, achievements…), then this is a lost opportunity for you the candidate to impress the recruiter.
2. The recruiter has the job requirements for a specific role, and is searching for qualified candidates. Again, if you don’t have a LinkedIn presence or it is weak OR you haven’t included your contact details, then you are missing an opportunity to be available/reachable to the recruiter.

This is a case where recruiters and job seekers have identical objectives, to be known to each other. I, as a recruiter, am ready to do my part, but if you the job seeker don’t do yours, then you will remain invisible or undervalued by me, which doesn’t serve your purpose. We would all be better served if LinkedIn morphed into an international comprehensive CV/resume bank, up-to-date and in real-time. It has the potential, but job seekers can use it much better than they do today.

If you are searching for work and are not on LinkedIn (and you reading this sentence), I cannot understand your logic. LinkedIn is free! Maintaining a LinkedIn profile does NOT indicate to your current employer that you are seeking employment (in fact, your boss/colleagues are probably already using LinkedIn) – there is no risk! I can’t find you if you’re not there! You can’t use the power of networking if you don’t have access to others on LinkedIn. For all of you that may know job seekers that don’t have a LinkedIn profile, please send them a link to this article!

If I find you on LinkedIn, and you match my requirements, but I have no way to reach you, then the opportunity is once again lost. In LinkedIn as it exists today, if two people are connected directly, then it is possible to send a message within LinkedIn to the other person. Also, if two people are in the same LinkedIn group, then it is possible to send them a message within LinkedIn (although this became more difficult on LinkedIn recently, and requires inconvenient steps). However, many of the people that I find interesting are not connected to me nor do we share a group. You as the job seeker don’t want to leave this to chance. In your profile, include your contact details (email, telephone, whatever you want) in the summary and/or personal information area. If you don’t make it easy for me, then I am going to go on to other candidates.

Let me give some recent examples that I encountered of candidates being poorly served because of lack of effective use of LinkedIn. These are the results of various searches I did on LinkedIn for candidates based in Israel that meet different professional criteria:

• The huge majority of these candidates of interest that I found that match my profiles did not have contact details in their LinkedIn profile, and I had no way to contact them. What a shame!
• The person was not connected to me closely on LinkedIn, so I didn't find them in my searches.  The results of searches default to being sorted by relevance, which is some combination of search criteria match and closeness of LinkedIn connection to you.  If everything else is equal, the closer connections appear first, then people that share groups, and finally everyone else.  So, if there are many people that match my criteria, and we are not closely related nor do we share a group, then probably I won't find you.  Think of this as LinkedIn candidate SEO.
• For people that I can contact directly via a LinkedIn message, either because we are connected or share a group, or because contact details are contained in their profile, oftentimes this email address is one that is not checked often by the person, a special-purpose LinkedIn email account. If you don't use an account that you check every day or two, in many cases the opportunity will no longer exist.
• I found candidates on LinkedIn that might have met my search criteria, but the information that they provided in their profile was so scant that I couldn’t understand much about them.
• I do candidate searches outside of LinkedIn as well because of the lack of universal accessibility. I found a number of prospects in this way. I then looked for them on LinkedIn, to try to understand why I wasn’t able to identify them directly. The results:
• A number of candidates had no LinkedIn profile at all.
• Some candidates gave their location as USA/Switzerland… on LinkedIn, so I had no way of knowing they were located in Israel.
• Candidate's LinkedIn profiles were out of date, not including new skills they had acquired nor new jobs that they had held. 
• People did not have the critical keywords in their LinkedIn profile. For instance, I found German speakers in Israel that didn’t include the word German in their profile. I found web analysts that didn’t include the technical terms SPSS and SQL in their profiles. In the same way that you should be thinking when creating your CV/resume, if a term, skill, achievement is important, whether it be language, technical or anything else, then you MUST include this in your profile. And as you add new skills to your portfolio, update LinkedIn. This is the way that recruiters search for candidates in LinkedIn, using keywords, and if you don’t include the relevant ones for your employment objectives, then you are invisible.

From the results of this exercise, I recommend the following to job seekers wishing to optimize their LinkedIn use for access to recruiters:

• Obviously, the first step is to register for LinkedIn.
• Ensure that your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date and detailed.  Make sure you include all of the relevant keywords in your profile.  And don't forget to include your contact details.
• Make as many connections as you can, and join as many groups as are relevant.
• It is not enough to create a profile on LinkedIn, no matter how good, then forget about it. Every time something major changes, such as moving to a new job or acquiring a new relevant skill, your profile should be updated.

LinkedIn is a job seeker’s dream come true, and if you use it wisely, you significantly increase your chances of getting access to opportunities that you couldn’t find otherwise.

Surefire Way to Get a Raise

A programmer friend in Israel has found a way to get a raise that never fails (yet!).

All you have to do is follow these simple steps:

1. Decide you want to leave the job
2. Find another job at a better salary
3. Tell your current (and soon-to-be previous) employer that you are leaving and what your new financial conditions are
4. A raise (matching the new offer) will follow almost on-the-spot

This has happened to him twice in recent years, and I know others that have had identical experiences.

I am not sure if this is something specific to Israel. Something similar happened to me in Israel totally outside the realm of employment. There is competition for local residential telephone/DSL service between the telephone and cable companies. Previously I used the telephone company service, but then I heard of an offer from the cable company that was much better. I called the telephone company to see if they would match/beat the offer of the cable company (since living in Israel I find myself doing this, something unheard of in the US), as I preferred not to go through the hassle of changing. The phone company did not agree. So, I switched my telephone/DSL service to the cable company. Afterwards, when I called up the telephone company to cancel my service, they immediately did offer me a deal that was even better than what I got with the cable company – however at this point it was too late.

I understand from these situations that companies are playing the odds, basically assuming that the majority of people, whether customers or employees, based upon inertia and other factors, will not look around for a better deal. Sure, companies will lose some individuals because of this attitude, but in the global long run they believe it is the most effective way to operate. Maybe they are even right…

What can the individual employee learn from this mode of operation in Israel?

For some people, your first inclination may be to skip step 2 (and possibly step 1) above, and have the threatening salary conversation with your boss, even though you don’t have another job offer. Unless you are a pretty good poker player though and are certain that you a valuable and difficult-to-replace role employee, this type of bluff is obviously risky, as your employer may not agree with your analysis of your worth and help you out the door. Of course, it is possible to tone down the initial conversation without mentioning a phantom job offer, a more traditional “I deserve a raise” discussion.

Whatever way you decide is best in your specific situation, being prepared for this conversation with a reminder of your value to the company and accomplishments provides you with the best opportunity to sell your worth to your boss. Inherent in any such discussion is the unsaid threat of looking for another job that does meet your needs, and sometimes that is enough. If you don’t initiate the meeting though, you will often find that it doesn’t ever occur.

Israel Good Deeds Day – April 5, 2011

I read in the newspaper that today is Israel Good Deeds Day, an event promoted by Ruach Tova.

In principle I am against these “days”, which seem to be marketing events publicized by companies to encourage people to buy their products. As I remind my kids, Father’s and Mother’s Day should be celebrated every day, and rather than presents on an arbitrary day, simple appreciation at regular intervals is the ideal.

However, how can anyone be against a good deeds day - a day encouraging people to volunteer themselves for the benefit of society? As Chabbad says: One Mitzvah at a Time!

So, let’s think how we can apply this to job seekers. Actually, Jacob Share has recently written about this subject: http://jobmob.co.il/blog/job-search-kindness/.

Remember, looking for a job can be a very lonely and even demoralizing process. Searching the Internet for employment, sending CVs that don’t get responses, making calls that lead nowhere – any kindness you can offer to the job seeker is more than welcome.

This is not just an altruistic act. If you want to make two people happy when you are driving, let someone merge into the lane in front of you, or give the right of way on a turn – both you and the other person get that nice feeling of being on the sending or receiving end of a favor, and this can be contagious, even on the mean Israeli streets! Helping a job seeker is like money in the bank – and the next time you are looking for work, hopefully you will be repaid with interest.

OK, but how can you practically help a person seeking work? If you know one or more people that are looking for a job, you can ask them to send you their CV, which you can review and comment on, as well as forward to your employer's HR person and/or others in the industry as appropriate. Can you imagine how nice it feels for the person you know to have someone actually call them up and express interest and make an effort to help?

Another approach would be to go to a site with many job seekers, whether it is a group in LinkedIn or on one of the mailing lists, and write a message to members offering your assistance. For instance:

My name is Moshe and I work as an accountant at a hi-tech company in Israel. As my part in Israel Good Deeds Day, I am available to anyone seeking work in the accounting industry and would like a networking contact. Anyone is welcome to write to me at aby@def.com – I will respond as quickly as I can to all inquiries.

Please don’t wait, do it now! And may everyone receive the exact good deed that they need to put that smile on their face.

Want to Get a Job – Maybe You Should do Something about Your Hair

Songs from the musical Hair have been going through my mind recently. Yes, it’s an oldie, and not even one of my favorites, but it is unavoidable. I try to keep current on job search literature, and for some reason, the topic of hair has come up a few times lately.

So, what does hair have to do with finding a job?

In terms of your CV, a big debate exists regarding whether it is a good idea to include your picture: http://jobsearchinisrael.blogspot.com/2010/11/women-should-not-include-their-picture.html.

Clearly, in the context of an interview, the job candidate needs to present a clean and professional image, and your hair is part of the picture that you create. An interview is generally not the time to make a fashion statement about uniqueness – except for in the rare instance, your objective must be to portray a person that will fit in – and unkempt hair, wrinkled clothes, or an overabundance of rings hanging from various parts of your face generates a less than desirable impression.

Regarding hair specifically, what’s better though, curly or straight, up or down, long or short, facial hair or clean shaven? Search the web, and you can read for hours on this subject.

For people that fit into the “elderly” end of the job seeking crowd, removing the gray from your hair and/or updating the style is one of the suggested ways to come across stronger, or at least younger and more vital. I am probably less style conscious than the average person walking down the street, but for the life of me I can’t imagine how one style of hair can make a more positive impression than another (assuming the length is within the norm and it is evenly cut), but apparently there may be something to this. I spoke to my three sons, ages 15, 13, and 10 about hair styles, and I was subjected to long explanations about “moikan”, “spitzim”, and “modregote “ – it seems their strategy is to get the strangest haircuts that they can without crossing the line and getting kicked out of their religious schools. Needless to say, if you want to try to understand this subject better, I suggest that you should look for assistance outside the Machol family males.

Now I come to the part of this article that is not for the squeamish: woman’s hair styles. For some time now at Israemploy, I have a part in translating some job listings from Hebrew to English. I am not sure how many men are aware of what seems to occur in a woman’s beauty parlor, but if the job descriptions are anything to go by, there is a lot of waxing, pulling, and twisting going on. As a small example, you can read this article which discusses a new beauty procedure and its relation to employment: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704461304576216470789970688.html?mod=dist_smartbrief. I turned to my wife for this part of my research to try to get a better understanding. She is someone that makes me skip over the violent parts of movies. Yet, after hearing less than a minute of her describing what she has paid people to do to her in such a salon, the music from Hair is immediately replaced in my head by the much more appropriate sounds from Little House of Horrors!

I heard an interesting story recently which describes a particular hair and job interview combination which must be unique to Israel. Someone told me that a young religious friend of hers went on a number of interviews with a head covering, and she was consistently asked how many children she intended to have (nor was she getting called back for a second interview). So, this friend decided for her next interview to wear a wig instead, and voilà, no question about the number of planned offspring and ultimately a job offer was extended to her.

I guess that hair can have a real impact in the recruitment process in some cases. I now consider myself lucky that I was born with curly hair that looks the same before and after combing. For those of you not so fortunate, maybe applying some Grease will solve the problem – as long as it doesn’t make you look like a throwback from another age.