Simply Hired Blog

Why Start-Ups Are Great For Working Mothers

For me, it's all about the "F" word ---- Flexibility! I am a single mom of two young children and I thank God every day that I work at a start-up, and in particular, at Simply Hired. The Simply Hired Founders have made it a priority to create a culture that promotes flexibility, creativity, and fun!

Let's face it, work is a necessity for most of us, and whether you work at a start-up or a Fortune 500 Company, the pressure "to do more with less" is present now more than ever! With the constant corporate demands to out-perform last year, last month, last week - forget about trying to keep up with the Jones, we are all just trying to keep up with our own children! As for me personally, spending time with my children is the most important priority in my life and by working at Simply Hired - this is possible.

Some people avoid start-ups, stating it is too risky or too many hours. Well, I am here to counter that argument, with the known fact that "job security" is a thing of the past - no matter what size the company (unless you are a funeral director and then I guess it is pretty certain that you will always have business). Speaking from experience, any size company can demand long hours, but being a manager in a large company typically dictates a schedule of endless mandatory meetings where a start-up typically tries to avoid long meetings because the meeting attendees are also the ones getting the work done! :-)

I head up the Simply Hired sales team and I spend a lot of time on the phone, and since we live in a hyper-mobile society where the work/home boundaries are pretty much non-existent, my job can be done from anywhere. So after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays while I am coaching my seven year old's soccer team or while I am chaperoning my five year old's pumpkin patch field trip - I never miss a call! Many of our clients are on the East Coast and I am a morning person, so it works out great that Simply Hired has set me up with the latest technology and tools to work V.O. (virtual office) and I am energized to get 2-3 hours of work done before most West Coast people even turn the lights on at work. At times, I need to go back to the office at night or on weekends for a user group session, customer event or to catch up on work and my kids love tagging along to see what new snacks are in the kitchen or new games are on the shelves!

Another main reason I enjoy working at Simply Hired is the other "F" word ---- Fun! I have made incredible friendships at Simply Hired and it is primarily due to the continuous teambuilding activities, events, training sessions, etc. that are embodied into the Simply Hired culture. For example, last week I enjoyed Wafflemania one day, tye-dying class another and ended the week with the Simply Hired Olympics! It's True! I am sure most people have already stopped reading this post to go check out what openings we have, but if you are still reading, please finish, and then check us out at www.simplyhired.com, as it is an awesome place to work and we are hiring! :) I physically, mentally and emotionally love to exercise, but as a single mom, it is virtually impossible, so I am thankful that Simply Hired cares so much about the health and well-being of its employees that every week I look forward to attempting the eagle pose at the Bikram Yoga class lead by Michelle, a first class instructor, right in our own offices. It you have to work - why not find a place that makes it fun!

The phone is ringing and it's time to close some business so I must run, but I encourage everyone, especially working moms, to select a job that matches your own skills, interests and abilities and then select a company that supports a culture that fits your lifestyle. Remember - start-ups typically offer working moms more flexibility and fun which are essential ingredients to succeeding in the workplace while maintaining the family life balance!

Carpe Diem!

Simply Hired Announces PPC “Featured Jobs” Offering with 1,000,000+ Job Listings

Since its inception, Simply Hired has been working to create a simple model for job search:

1. Search: Job seekers can search a comprehensive job database of 5M jobs from thousands of talent seekers, including job boards, recruiters and employers.
   
2. Click: Job seekers click on a search result, and visit the talent seeker site to see the full job listing.
   
3. View: Job seekers view the full job listing on the talent seeker site. We charge no fee to talent seekers for clicks from our organic search results.
   

To allow talent seekers to highlight their highest priority jobs, we are excited to launch our Featured Jobs offering. Talent seekers can bid to have any of their job listings featured on the site via a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) model.

Featured Jobs are selected jobs from our organic search results set that are in higher demand by talent seekers. They appear above and below organic search results, and are marked “Featured”.

This creates a true win-win for both job seekers and talent seekers. Job seekers can clearly see jobs that are the highest in demand, while talent seekers can highlight jobs that have higher priority.

This has several advantages:

• Deep Targeting: Job seekers input targeted queries into our search engine for both occupation and location. Featured Jobs in the job seeker’s search results are given greater visibility.
  
• Pay For Performance: Our PPC model ensures that talent seekers only pay when job seekers click on their listings. As a result, this method is significantly more economical than traditional solutions.
  
• Selective Job Listing Promotion: Talent seekers can take any set of jobs in our database and promote them as Featured Jobs automatically. No job listings need be created, and no additional copy needs to be written.
  
• Talent Seeker Branding: Job seekers see the detailed job listings directly on the talent seeker’s site, which creates deeper engagement with the talent seeker brand.
  
• Full Control: Talent seekers can control their budgets and bid amounts, and receive comprehensive reporting in our online system.
  

We’ve seen a strong response from talent seekers, with over 1,000,000 Featured Jobs in our database, including large job boards such as CareerBuilder, Dice and Employment Guide, as well as niche boards such as Diversity Inc. and LawJobs.com.

We continue to deliver solutions to connect job seekers to talent seekers, and look forward to your input and participation in this new offering.

Fiction or Fact?

I need your help. I am asking you at the same time that I am asking the people you are looking for (job seekers). So here it is:

You have to fill a job for a Quality Assurance (QA) engineer. You know that one good thing about the job is that it is a great entry into the company. A lot of your field engineers come from the QA ranks. But you also know that the bad thing is that the QA management isn’t that good and that turnover is huge: greater than 50%, compared to your competitors, who keep over 90% of their QA engineers around but who don’t career track them into field opportunities as often as you do. Your company isn’t the biggest, and it isn’t the best (as determined by the Street) but you really do believe that your growth opportunities are superior to your competitors. (Let’s call the company CoolCo!.)

Now, here are two job descriptions you could post for the position:

CoolCo! is a rapidly growing and dynamic healthcare products and services companies. We make insulin pumps that save lives, and we hear from our customers every day the sort of difference that our products make in their lives. We ship the best product, and that starts with making sure that we make the best product. That’s where you come in. We need experienced Quality Assurance engineers who want to be a part of a rapidly growing and dynamic company that is making lives better.

Or...

Insulin pumps save lives. Since 1990 over 2 million people have experienced better quality of life because of this innovation. We didn’t invent the insulin pump, but we are trying to make people’s lives better through the pumps that we deliver. We are CoolCo!, a mid-sized and rapidly growing healthcare products manufacturer. Since good pumps start with great quality, we are putting a lot of effort into finding the right sorts of Quality Assurance engineers. If you are a QA engineer who is looking for an opportunity in the healthcare industry we ask that you check us out. But because we want to make sure that we start this relationship off right you should know that QA engineering at CoolCo! can be tough. The good news is that more of our QA engineers go on to careers in Field Engineering than our competitors, so you have a real career track here at CoolCo!. But in order to achieve that career track you have to put up with a rigorous work environment. Only the best QA engineers get to move up, and the rest tend to move out. It is a competitive environment.

So let me ask you...

Which one do you think would work best? Which one would you post, and what sorts of responses do you think you would get to each one? How would you evaluate success: the greatest number of resumes, even if many weren’t a fit, or a smaller number of applicants with most of them being a better fit for the position you were trying to fill?

I am hoping that we can get a real conversation going about this. And if you have any job descriptions that you have used that you think not only got great candidates but ended up in happy employees, I would love to see those too. Post them in comments (or a link to them) or send them to me at jjhunter at gmail dot com. Thanks!

Fact or Fiction?

I need your help. I am going to ask the same thing over on the Talent Seeker (recruiter) side. I have a theory and would like you to validate it or tell me that I should lay off the cold medicine.

My premise is that people who are looking for a job would rather know the facts than be impressed by well-written fiction. That you, the job seeker, would rather not waste your time applying for a job that you know you aren’t going to like. And that you would be especially interested in working for a company that took the risk of being transparent and authentic.

Some of my friends smirk at me, or openly laugh. The say things like “Pet Rock” and “All New and Improved!” meaning, of course, that people tell businesses all the time that they want to be entertained more than informed, that a clever slogan is more important than solid information.

It’s true that marketing says silly things and people buy based on slogans and hyperbole. But I don’t think it is fair to compare buying laundry detergent to selecting a job. Buy the wrong laundry detergent and you have wasted $7. Settle for the wrong job and you are in for months of heartache, mental anguish and negative emotions. So my theory is based on an (hopefully reasonable) assumption that people are more careful about their jobs than their daily purchases. The risk of a bad pet rock is pretty small. The risk of a bad job is huge.

And yet there are a lot of people who make a pretty good living taking “Must be willing to work like a sled dog for horse meat” and turn it into “Exciting Artic job opportunities!” They tell us that it is the recruiter’s responsibility to lure you, and a recruiter's job to make a decision about whether you are right for the job or not. I think they are wrong. I think it is the job seeker's responsibility, but that you can't be held accountable for something that you don’t know.

So take a look at the post we put up last week called “Sexy Language” and the post on this subject on the recruiters side and then let us know:

Which would you rather have? Sexy language or the truth? And, if the truth was presented to you, could you “handle it”? Would you reward a company for being open, or would you tend to shy away? Can you tell us about examples of job descriptions that you think were good? One’s that were bad? What was the difference?

I think this a big deal and an important topic. You start your relationship with most companies by reading a job description. It seems like you would want to know as much as possible about whom you were going to spend so much time with. But maybe it’s just me, and maybe it’s just too much cold medicine…

Fact or fiction? Let me know!

Job Fair @ Fox Interactive Media

On Tuesday, 10/3, the folks at Fox Interactive Media, parent company of MySpace.com, FoxSports.com, IGN Entertainment, AmericanIdol.com and other popular sites, are holding a job fair at their Beverly Hills headquarters. This free event will run from 4 – 8 PM. With more than 250 open positions, FIM is likely to have a job that will pique your interest. So stop by and grab an espresso, gnosh a canapé, and chat with the online media gurus at Fox. More details here.