Category Archives: Hiring

The Importance of Honesty in the Job Search Process

January 31, 2023

When it comes to finding a job, it can be tempting to stretch the truth about your qualifications, experience, or skills to make yourself seem more appealing to potential employers. However, lying about your background can have serious consequences and can harm your reputation and future job prospects.

Examples of people who have lied about their background or experience and were later caught include:

  • A marketing executive who claimed to have a degree from an Ivy League university, but was later found to have lied about his education. He was fired from his job and faced difficulty finding future employment.
  • A job candidate who inflated their previous job title and responsibilities, but was caught when their former employer was contacted for a reference. They were not offered the job and their reputation was tarnished among potential employers.

These examples highlight the importance of being honest in the job search process. Lying about your background can lead to immediate consequences such as being fired or not being offered the job, as well as long-term consequences such as a tarnished reputation and difficulty finding future employment.

So, what can you do to present your background in an honest way even if there may be shortcomings in your work experience or skills?

  1. Emphasize your strengths: Focus on the skills and experiences you have that are relevant to the job you’re applying for and highlight your accomplishments in those areas.
  2. Be transparent: If there are gaps in your work history or if you have limited experience in a certain area, be upfront about it and explain why.
  3. Highlight your potential: If you’re looking to transition into a new career or industry, emphasize your transferable skills and your desire to learn and grow in your new role.
  4. Get references: Having a solid network of professional references can help potential employers feel more confident in your abilities and experiences.
  5. Practice honesty: Always be truthful about your qualifications, experience, and skills, even if it means not getting the job. In the long run, honesty will serve you better than dishonesty.

Being honest about your background and experiences is crucial in the job search process. Not only does it demonstrate integrity, but it also protects your reputation and future job prospects. Emphasize your strengths, be transparent about any shortcomings, and practice honesty to present your background in the best light possible.

 

Struggling with your resume?  Allied can help!  Apply today and our experienced recruiters can help you put your best self forward with the Lehigh Valley’s leading companies!

LVEDC Q&A: Susan Larkin Discusses Staffing Challenges During COVID-19

June 5, 2020

The Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation (LVEDC) is led by a Board of Directors with expertise that represents a broad cross-section of the regional economy. LVEDC Director and Allied Personnel Services Vice President Susan Larkin, who has more than two decades of experience in the staffing industry, recently shared her insights about the employment challenges businesses face during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Q: Please tell us about Allied Personnel Services and your role there.

A: Since 1984 Allied has been providing staffing and employment solutions to Lehigh Valley employers. We develop long-term partnerships with our clients, and many of the area’s most successful companies have been clients for 30+ years.  A key to Allied’s success is our ability to deliver timely and effective talent solutions that are flexible to quickly adjust to changing market conditions.

My role as Vice President is to oversee operations and to consult with our clients, developing strategic staffing programs and sharing critical labor market information based on the diverse insight and experience I’ve gained over my 25 years as an executive in the staffing industry.

Q: Before the pandemic, when unemployment was at record low levels, attracting and retaining talent was the biggest issue facing employers. How has the pandemic changed employer perspectives on the importance of talent supply?

A: The pandemic has elevated employers’ awareness of how fragile the talent supply is and how a high rate of unemployment doesn’t always equate to a robust talent supply.  Because of the strong distribution and biotech sectors in our area, layoffs in those areas were not as significant.  Add to that the challenges families face finding child care, the fears surrounding a return to work in the face of COVID, and the financial incentives offered through FCCRA [Families First Coronavirus Response Act] and unemployment, and the supply of available talent hasn’t significantly increased.  Retaining talent has really become an even bigger focus.  Keeping the hardworking, reliable, skilled employees on staff is critical to success when industries see a return to prior levels of workload.

Q: What types of jobs do employers need to fill during the quarantine economy and how do you expect that to change as restrictions are eased?

A: There continues to be a demand for skilled manufacturing roles, logistics staff, and scientific roles like quality control and lab work.  As restrictions ease, we expect to see the offices and smaller businesses rebound with a corresponding increase in demand across all skill levels.

Q: What role did school closures and the availability of child care play on employment during the pandemic and how will that affect the local economy as the economy opens back up?

A: It is an extremely difficult hurdle for families.  Some people were forced to leave the workforce completely to stay home with small children.  Others that had the luxury of moving to a work from home arrangement were forced to figure out how to both educate their own children and keep up with their own work.  If daycares and schools do not reopen in the fall, this will have a long-term negative impact on the talent supply and productivity of at home workers.  Workers will require increased flexibility for child and family care and employers should be prepared to adapt to accommodate these new employee needs.

Q: Explain why enhanced employment benefits may be a challenge for some employers to find workers?

A: Enhanced employment benefits were intended to provide workers affected by the pandemic with immediate, significant financial assistance to allow them to remain home during the stay-at-home order.  Unfortunately for essential businesses that have continued to operate, these enhanced benefits have had the unintended consequence of incentivizing people not to work.  Many are able to make significantly more money each week with unemployment than they could earn with the jobs available to them.  This has made recruiting for all types and levels of employees a challenge.

Q: How does social distancing and more rigorous disinfecting impact the number of workers an employer can hire even if there is demand for the product or service?

A: Complying with the ever-evolving CDC and OSHA guidelines has forced companies to rapidly adjust their operations.  Hiring, training, scheduling and workflows have all been adapted, and in some cases the number of workers able to work in certain areas has been reduced in order to comply with social distancing guidelines.  There have been some opportunities created with increased needs for sanitation and medical screening workers.  We’ve seen our clients reacting well to these new challenges, and certainly those who are able to pivot to a new normal quickly will see a quicker recovery.

Q: How does the Lehigh Valley talent supply initiative position the region coming out of the COVID-19?

A: The LVEDC Talent Supply Initiative recognized the need to prioritize building a strong workforce before COVID-19, and the work around developing and retaining talent will easily be able to be applied to the post-COVID labor market.  Areas such as career pathways, internships, and apprenticeships will all be vital in reshaping the workforce as we move forward, and the work that has been done in these areas already has prepared the Lehigh Valley to respond to the new challenges that employers will face.

Source:  LVEDC

Job Search Tools: Wordle

January 9, 2020

Have you ever heard of a wordle? Self-described as a “toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide”, they offer an interesting way to visually represent text. Words that appear more frequently in the source text are displayed larger than other words. It’s an interesting exercise to create a wordle of your blog feed to see if the resulting image accurately represents the message you are hoping to deliver with your posts.

The wordle created from our blog feed is below, and it perfectly captures the goals and message of this blog. (Click to enlarge.)

Wordles aren’t just for blogs. You can cut and paste any text and create an image. Try creating a word cloud from your resume. Are the words that represent your strengths, skills and experience that you want to highlight the largest? If you have multiple resumes that you use for different positions, creating a wordle for each is an easy way to see if they are emphasizing the correct things. And what about your cover letters? A wordle can help you see if the keywords and important points of the job description or posting that you are responding to are prominent enough in your letter.

Wordles are a fun “toy”, but also have some possibilities to help you with your job search, even if only to help you look at it a bit differently. Sometimes being able to take a different perspective can be a big help, especially with something like your resume that you may have looked at over and over. And that new perspective might be the spark your job search needs.

Once you have that resume ready to go, check out our current openings and get it over to our recruiters!

Nonprofits as First Steps

August 30, 2019

From The Wall Street Journal

By DENNIS NISHI

imagesWhile her friends interned at big investment-banking firms, Molly Heitzman chose a summer job in 2009 with Fundación Paraguaya, a microfinance company in Asuncion, Paraguay. She believed that giving the poor access to basic banking services was an effective way to fight poverty, and she’d also gain some global work experience.

The nonprofit was experiencing an abnormally high 13% loan default rate so Ms. Heitzman went out to investigate the problem. She discovered that many small businesses had defaulted because of poor to nonexistent accounting practices.

“I proposed a program that would school borrowers in the business basics of marketing, accounting and saving money,” she says, uncertain as to whether the organization used her ideas.

Ms. Heitzman’s efforts actually made a stronger impression on Deloitte Consulting in Minneapolis, which hired her for a full-time job as a business analyst a year later in 2010.

Although career experts say college graduates will continue to face a tough job market in the new year, volunteering for nonprofit work like the Peace Corps can fill an experience gap and provide a competitive advantage. That’s especially the case since nonprofit work can be like an accelerated management course. Volunteers are often pressed into management and administrative roles they might otherwise not attain for years at for-profit companies.

First, find a nonprofit organization that you’re interested in working with since commitment to the job and the cause is important, says Mark Lonergan, founder of the Redwood City, Calif.-based recruiting firm Lonergan Partners.

“Any way you can show that you genuinely applied yourself in a very important way can count as a very important component of any résumé,” he says. “Employers want to know that you were serious about the work.”

Seek out roles that offer transferable experience. Managing volunteers, for example, to build an irrigation system in Honduras is relatable to many different for-profit job duties. Working as a museum docent may be harder to sell.

Be prepared to aggressively promote and even defend your nonprofit experience during interviews. There is still a stigma associated with nonprofit work at some companies, career experts say.

Turn your more esoteric experiences into a narrative that illustrates how you overcame obstacles and achieved goals. People respond well to stories. Highlight the intangibles that employers are always looking for during interviews.

Emphasize your flexibility, communication skills and ability to deal with ambiguity, says Patricia Tourigny, vice president of talent acquisition for Avon, Conn.-based Magellan Health Services. “We don’t see a lot of entry-level résumés with that kind of experience, but when we do, we take notice. And we’re always looking for it.”

The pay for volunteer work may be negligible but full-time volunteers can defer or even have federal student loans forgiven through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program from 2007. Unfortunately, the law doesn’t help with private student loans.

 

Interested in exploring non-profit careers?  Allied works with a wide range of not-for-profit organizations in the Lehigh Valley.  Check out our job openings and apply today!

First 90 days: Helping New Hires Start Off on the Right Foot

February 4, 2019

Setting an unachievable bar for new hires is unproductive for the long-term health of your company and your employees. While it’s reasonable to hope that new hires will hit the ground running, regardless of their skill level and experience, employees just starting out are entitled time to onboard — and will benefit greatly by you providing a career roadmap for their first 90 days on the job.

So how long is a fair amount of time to allow them to get up to speed?84619535-welcome-new-employee

A majority  (54 percent) of chief financial officers (CFOs) interviewed for a recent Robert Half Finance & Accounting survey said they give new hires less than 3 months to prove themselves. Another 9 percent of respondents said they give new hires less than 30 days to prove themselves.

Clearly, the burden of success during the first 90 days doesn’t rest entirely on employees’ shoulders. It’s in your company’s best interest to set your new hire up with the tools needed to succeed and become a productive member of your team. Ensuring that you avoid the costs of a bad hire begins with the candidate vetting process long before a job offer is made.

Here are five tips managers can follow to bring new employees into the fold and help them thrive in their new role.

1.    Make onboarding a priority

You worked hard with human resources to craft an accurate job description, sift through applications, interview candidates and negotiate an attractive offer. After you pause and pat yourself on the back knowing the hiring process is behind you, now’s the time to help the new employee get acclimated with the work environment, office technology and duties.

You’ve already laid the groundwork by having IT set up the work station and voicemail before they arrive. You’ve contacted campus security about scheduling your new employee to get a new ID badge and office keys. Onboarding is the component that continues your work and will help your new hire be more productive and, with any luck, more inclined to stay with the company.

2.    Elements of a successful orientation strategy
Structure. Onboarding periods vary depending on an individual company’s needs, but it’s wisest to begin with a schedule. This will enable staff members involved to understand their roles and budget appropriate time. You should also provide new hires with a schedule so they know what the expectations are for the first few days and weeks on the job.

A proper welcome. Make it a priority to introduce new hires to their immediate colleagues and others at your company with whom they will interact on a regular basis, and encourage tenured workers to reach out to them. This period of icebreaking will be beneficial to both sides.

Education. During the first 90 days, encourage new employees to learn as much as possible about the company, its history, priorities and best practices. During this time, provide new hires information in digestible bites on special initiatives, products and services, major clients, dos and don’ts, quarterly and annual goals, and, most importantly, how their role contributes to the overall organizational picture.

3.    Set targets for success

During the starting weeks, provide new hires with tangible short- and long-term goals to work toward in their first 90 days. It’s easier for new hires to hit targets when they know what to aim for. Explain that this list of goals will be part of their 90-day performance review.

4.    Provide regular feedback and an open-door policy

Don’t make new hires wait until their annual review for an assessment of their performance. They need praise and constructive criticism at regular intervals. Schedule frequent check-ins during the first 90 days to recognize successes and pinpoint areas for improvement.

Most new hires, especially members of Generation Z, crave consistent and frequent feedback. Envision this time as a training ground for your company’s future top performers. Encourage them to come to you with questions or issues.

5.    Be on the lookout for warning signs

In an ideal world, every new hire would be a perfect fit. In reality, that’s easier said than done. Even if you’ve avoided making hiring mistakes, sometimes you just don’t know whether an employee will work out until they’ve been tested in everyday work situations.

During the first few months, be on the lookout for red flags, which include:

  • Absenteeism
  • Missed deadlines
  • Poor performance on assignments
  • A negative attitude
  • Conflict with coworkers
  • Complaints

If you notice any of these characteristics in the first few weeks, don’t wait to see if things improve. Take action immediately if you want to salvage this hire. Poor performance could be an indication of either inadequate training on your part or a lackadaisical attitude on the employee’s part, but you won’t know until you dig deeper.

Meet with your new hire and construct a plan for improvement, with benchmarks. If there’s no improvement over a set period of time, then you’ll have to cut your losses and terminate them for the good of client relations and team morale.

It takes time and effort to get new hires off on the right foot. By providing them a clear roadmap, you and your team can help new hires quickly acclimate to the workplace culture and become contributing members.

 

Source: in2vate