Author: Portfolio Creative

Check out last Friday’s Business First of Columbus for an exclusive report on Portfolio Creative. The article shares our future plans for growth and new services that we’ll be offering the creative community here in Columbus and possibly other cities nationwide. Big things are happening for us, and we thank Business First for reporting our exciting changes to their loyal and business savvy readers!

It’s been a whirlwind day week at Portfolio Creative! Yes, Portfolio Creative. We’re in the midst of a brand update, including a refresh of our name and logo. To be seen on High Street and at a website near you very, very soon.

Meanwhile, since Portfolio Creative made the Inc.500 list we’ve caught the attention of some local media. Apparently this wonderful creative industry that we think is so interesting is interesting to others as well. It’s fun to get to talk about our work, our people, our clients and why we love what we do. We couldn’t possibly do any of it without all of you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Look for us in The Daily Reporter/SoureNews online, C-Magazine, Business First and The Columbus Dispatch. When links are ready, you’ll see them here.

Whether you’re currently looking for a position, or just planning your future career development, recruiters are valuable people to know. Here are a few tips for a more successful recruiter/candidate relationship.

1. Understand areas of expertise. Every recruiter or firm has an area of focus–even within general firms people tend to specialize in some way. This may be by profession (IT, legal, healthcare), level of expertise (mid-level manager, executive, C-suite), location or other factors. Define the type of position you’re looking for, and then research to find which recruiters specialize in those areas. Keep in mind that recruiters in one field often have connections in others, so if they aren’t right for you ask if they know anyone who might be.

2. Build an open and honest relationship. Recruiters need to find out as much as they can about you and what you’re looking for, in the shortest time possible. The more they can understand your experience, wants, needs and desires, the more successful they can be in connecting you with the right opportunities.

3. Realize the limitations. Recruiters have a lot of connections, but there are limitations to what they can and will do for a candidate. While they may approach it in many different ways, the recruiter’s role is to help their client find the right people to fill certain needs within their company. If there is a fit between you and something one of their clients needs, great. But the recruiter generally is not in the position to create an opportunity where there is none, nor can they help pursue positions that they’re not working on.

4. Think long-term. Working with a recruiter is often an intense, short-term relationship. They genuinely want to help their clients find the right people, and vice versa. By building a long-term relationship, even if the right position isn’t there now they’ll think of you in the future and THAT could be the perfect position.

5. Utilize multiple resources. A great relationship with one or two recruiters in your field should just be one item in your job-search and career development toolkit. Other recommended tools are an excellent professional resume, strong interviewing skills, a portfolio of top-notch work, and your own networking efforts. While a recruiter is primarily working on behalf of the client, a career coach works with the candidates and can be a very valuable resource in your search as well.

In looking for my own indicators that the economy is headed in a more positive direction, I’ve noticed one recent trend–more job postings. On the CSCA job board it seemed that we were suddenly having A LOT more postings. More employers are looking for help, both freelance and full-time, which (presumably) means their business is picking up as well. June and July had an equal number of postings, but in August we’ve already had that same number of postings and it’s not even mid-month. I like this trend, let’s keep it going!

Portfolio has earned the position of #326 on the 2009 Inc. 500 annual ranking of the fastest-growing companies in America! This definitive list measures revenue growth from 2005 through 2008 of U.S. based, privately held companies. Additionally, this puts us at 7th in country for our industry (Human Resources) and tops in Ohio.

Thank you! We couldn’t have accomplished this without the support and loyalty of our clients, associates, and staff.

In my ongoing belief that advertising can both BE good and DO good, I submit this recent campaign for Salvation Army. A local agency and more than fifty businesses in Portland, Maine pooled resources to create a clever and cost-effective free campaign. And doesn’t that just make sense for an organization who is asking for money to help others? Who strengthens their community with the work they do? Who wants your money, but has to justify how and where they’ll spend it? Plus they got some damn good publicity out of the whole thing. Good and good.

The opportunity of a lifetime is staring you in the face.  You think you’re the perfect person for the position that the company has posted on their site.  You jump through their hoops to get your brief cover letter and resume submitted.  It’s exciting… your life is about to change.  Then, you wait.  “They’ll call”, you tell yourself.  They don’t. “Well, at least they’ll let me know if I’m a candidate or not.”  They don’t… in fact, you never hear anything from them ever again.  It’s as if your resume went into a black hole.  

There are many of you out there who have gone through this process.  It leaves one feeling as though applying to any and all corporate sites are a big waste of time and are a frustration to be avoided by simply not participating.  That would be a mistake.  I know, I managed a black hole.  Or, at least, I managed the job requisitions that I submitted to the site.  That fact is part of the explanation that I hope I can provide on how black holes operate.  

Many HR Managers and Talent Acquisition Managers (Recruiters) are managing a single site.  It’s just one of their responsibilities and some are better at it than others.  Some care enough to tell everyone who has applied whether they’re a candidate or not.  My experience has shown me that a “not interested” response is appreciated and that’s what drove me to respond to every applicant.  It may be generic in it’s tone and content, but that’s because managers are responding to, perhaps, 100 candidates at once.  Sure, managers do concentrate on the best qualified candidates and that’s where their energy goes.  But, even if they don’t respond at all, a candidate’s resume goes into the system.  It can come up again in another search when another manager, or even the same one who ignored you the first time, initiates a query for certain skills while working on another position.  If there aren’t any negative comments on your file, they have no reason not to call you if you’re a candidate of interest.

There are other reasons that the call or email may never come.  The department boss may not want to lose the money that’s been allocated for the position.  They don’t want to pull it off the site because that will send a signal that the department doesn’t need anyone.  However, the department boss may need it, but just not right now.  So, the job stays posted; the department boss doesn’t lose their budget; and you go into a black hole because nobody cares about the candidate who has applied to a job that’s not “real” at that point in time.

Another reason for the lack of response could be due to the nature of the job.  For instance, if you’re in sales, your role requires you to find a decision-maker within an organization.  If a sales person submitted an email requesting a meeting with the CEO, do they get an email back from the CEO saying, “Come on in!”  No.  They have to try harder than that; they have to be clever enough to get around the gatekeepers.  Therefore, one of the first hurdles that the company may set is silence.  The sales candidate must pursue the opportunity and the measurement of their abilities may be judged by how they get around the initial “no”, which is this silence.

Keep submitting.  Be aggressive.  Stay positive.  The opportunity of a lifetime could be staring you in the face… go for it.

The short answer is yes. I attended Social Media Summer Camp this morning at sparkspace and Todd Swickard of People To My Site provided these surprising Facebook statistics:

• More than 4 million users become fans of pages daily
• Facebook users share more than 1 billion forms of content each week
• Site membership grew 85% in 2008
• Currently, there are more than 150 million users (54 million unique visitors per month)
• 85% of users are between 18-54 years old
• Facebook is the #2 site behind Google…beating Yahoo!

So what are you waiting for!? Go ahead and create a company page to promote your business, post events, create polls (something we’ll be doing very soon!), share photos, link your blog, send updates to fans, start a discussion- the list goes on with news apps being developed every day. Check out ours at http://www.facebook.com/PortfolioCreative

A recent study produced by four key workforce and training organizations shows that “U.S. employers continue to struggle with an ill-prepared workforce, finding new hires lack critical basic and applied skills.” And employer-sponsored training is not successfully correcting the deficiencies.

What does that tell me? That employees (or wanna be employees) need to work to correct the deficiencies on their own. Knowledge is power–if you know what employers are looking for, you can highlight the key skills that you have and improve where you’re lacking. Employers aren’t going to do it for you, more than ever employees are responsible for their own success and career growth. May seem like a Catch-22, but it’s the reality of today’s working environment.

Statistics from the report:

OVERALL PREPARATION OF NEW WORKFORCE ENTRANTS
Educational level    Deficient    Adequate    Excellent
High school            33.9%        50.6%         15.6%
Two-year college    21.7          54.6           23.7
Four-year college   17.4           51.1          31.5

TRAINING GAP IN APPLIED SKILLS
Skill    Percentage reporting a high need for the skill, but offering no training in it
Creativity                        68.6
Ethics                              55
Professionalism               47.5
Lifelong learning             44.1
Critical thinking               43.6
Written communication    37
Diversity                          33.3
Oral communication        31.3
Teamwork                       24.5
IT                                    24.4
Leadership                      22.6

Source: The Ill-Prepared U.S. Workforce: Exploring the Challenges of Employer-Provided Workforce Readiness Training, produced by Corporate Voices for Working Families, the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD), The Conference Board, and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

Each quarter we put together a calendar of local creative events that is mailed to Portfolio clients and potential clients. We pull the events and other interesting goings on in Central Ohio, and ask one of our fantastic designers to design the calendar. They really have free reign, and always turns out to be wonderful and creative.

For Summer 2009 uber-talented designer and photographer Alan McClelland created the calendar, you can check it out here and here. Thanks Alan!