Heli Toivonen's Blog

Give Feedback to Your Interviewer for Dummies

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:34:34 +0200

What do you think about this service which is offered to job seekers by “Ask a Manager”:

Interviewed for a job and then never heard back? No rejection, no anything? Let your interviewer know how rude that is - without burning any bridges.

Now here, presented to you by Ask a Manager: a service that job seekers can use to generate an anonymous letter to the employer, telling them how rude their silence is.

First, read the instructions to the right. Then, using the form below, submit the email address of the employer who never responded to you. They’ll get a polite letter explaining why their silence is rude. The letter will be sent from this site; the employer will not know that you are the sender…

I agree that it IS annoying if you are a job seeker sending applications to and being interviewed by prospective employers and then never hearing back from them. I also find the idea of giving feedback to the employers fantastic but seriously, why should somebody send it anonymously via an unknown web page? HR people are always teaching others how to give and receive feedback and they should be able to cope with honest and personal personal feedback from a candidate without considering it as a way of burning the bridges.

So if you are annoyed because you did not hear back from the recruiter, my advice is to take the following steps: 1) search for his/her phone number 2) dial the number 3) introduce yourself 4) give your feedback 5) thank for his/her time.

It is so simple!

Employment Forecast for 2018

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:52:44 +0200

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has forecasted the future of employment for 2018. Interesting reading especially if you are thinking about changing your occupation in the coming years.

My favourite Games

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:48:00 +0200

In times of Nintendo Wii and tons of other computer games, I would like to publish my top five list of board/dice games. Real old school games which you play with real people in the real reality:

The Settlers of Catan (Catanin uudisasukkaat)

I got to know this German board game while I was living in Austria. We spent quite many evenings playing this dynamic strategy game. Players of the game are immigrants of the island of Catan and the purpose is to expand your colony by building new settlements, roads and villages on the island. On the one hand, you are on your own, trying to achieve as many points as possible and trying to hinder the others building new roads, settlements and villages. On the other hand, you need to cooperate and negotiate with the other players or you have no chances to win. Highly entertaining game where strong emotions can be expected. And, if you are planning to become a top executive in the Silicon Valley, this game is a must :-) : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126092289275692825.html .

Ingenious (Genial)

This German board game (how come the best board games come from Germany??) was introduced to me last year when we left to our round-the-world trip. In this game, a player selects randomly tiles which are concealed from the other player. Players take turns placing tiles on the board and points can be scored by creating lines of identically colored hexes. There are versions for 2 players and for 4 and I would recommend the version for 2 players (cannot be bought in Finland as far as I know). Genial was a perfect game for the two of us travelling and having lots of free time. We played it more than 100 times during our 6 months trip and I am still not bored of it.

Yatzy

A classic, which I have played since my childhood and I still like it a lot. A game where you don’t have to think too much but it is still entertaining. It is easy to carry with and easy to teach to new people even if you don’t have a common language. I also call Yatzy a game of no words because as soon as you know the other players well, there is no need to ask where they want to place the scoring combination because you just happen to know it. And you can easily create your own versions of Yatzy, such as Speed Yatzy (if you want to know the rules, write me an e-mail :-))

Alias

A very simple Finnish game where the purpose is to explain words to your partner who tries to take guess at the words in a limited period of time. The pair who has the largest number of right guesses, wins the game. I have spent many hilarious moments with Alias. It is a fun game if you have a partner who talks and thinks fast and who is on the same wavelength than you. Vice versa, if your partner is slow and you don’t have much in common, Alias can be quite frustrating.

Trivial Pursuit

Simply too good to be left out of the list of my favourite games.

My next game investments will be Taj Mahal, Ticket to Ride (Menolippu) and Carcassonne. Reviews of the games can be found in Finnish on www.lautapeliopas.fi.

Games can also be related to recruitment. A few years ago, I read several articles about using board games as a selection method in recruitment. I was fascinated by the idea since I am a big fan of games, and in certain games you can really see the characteristics of a person in a short time. I will dig deeper in that field and post about my findings soon.

The Best Web Tools (by Intunex)

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:29:24 +0200

Intunex provides here a list of the best web tools, which are currently available to support your business operations. The best thing is that most of the tools are free and you can also easily use them for private purposes. Nothing to add on that list.

Last Christmas

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:43:36 +0200

Last Christmas, exactly one year ago, we started our 6 months journey around the world. Quitting job, taking a break and not knowing what comes after that. No worries, no stress and no time schedule for months. Now 6 months have passed after we returned from the trip and we have moved from Austria to Finland, searched for new jobs and started working again. It has been an exciting year and I hope next year will also bring along many exciting and unforgettable moments.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

War for Talent

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:09:32 +0200

In spite of the Christmas Peace, which will be declared in Turku, Finland tomorrow, the war for talent continues. Recruiting and retaining talented employees has become more and more competitive in the past years, and companies need to come up with new strategies how to survive and win this war. According to a study of McKinsey & Co, the most important company resource in the coming years willl be talent. Talents want to have great jobs in great companies with great values, great culture and great management, not forgetting great salary and great location.

I have been fighting in the war for talent when I recruited technical staff (researchers, engineers, technical sales and marketing people) for multinational engineering and chemical companies in Central Europe. Even with the help of well-known recruitment consultants and headhunters, it was extremely difficult to find the right people for the open positions. We did a lot in terms of employer branding and new recruitment strategies but there were simply too many other companies out in the market offering better salaries, more attractive locations etc.

The war for talent has also hit Finland if you believe the Finnish media and the authorities (see e.g Taloussanomat ). The Finnish labor force is shrinking, and until 2013 there will be more employees retiring from the job market than employees replacing them. The gap needs to be filled with foreign employees who will be imported en masse from different parts of the world. We need more talented researchers, doctors, engineers, teachers, and so on in order to stay competitive.

I have recently moved back to Finland and I have not seen a sign of war for talent yet. Of course the economic downturn has influenced the supply and demand in the job market but I could not believe that people with academic degree, several years of working experience, international background, business mindset, excellent language and social skills have it so hard to find proper jobs here. One dark November evening I met 4 foreigners who had voluntarily moved to Finland and all of them had been searching for a job for months. Three of them came from Western Europe and one from India, and their backgrounds varied from mathematics to law and business. It was frustrating to hear their stories how badly they had been treated in the application processes and how most of them had planned to start searching employment elsewhere where companies and people are more open-minded. Friends of them had already given up and left the country.

What I want to say with this posting is that firstly, many of the Finnish companies have apparently not heard from the war for talent yet or if they have, they have not understood the importance of it. Secondly, as long as the attitudes towards foreign employees are so narrow-minded there is no need to start recruiting more people from abroad. Thirdly, it would be wiser to utilize the resources that are already available here rather than start attracting new people to Finland. And believe me, attracting foreign talents to Finland is not going to be a piece of cake. For most of the foreigners who move to Finland, the motivation to come here is definitely not the weather and not the location but the Finnish girls with whom they fall in love. And hopefully in the future also an irresistible job offer from a Finnish company, which has understood the importance of the war for talent!

Which Occupation is bad for Your Marriage?

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:36:00 +0200

I read an interesting article about the correlation between occupations and divorce rates. Dr Michael Aamodt carried out a study on the likelihood of success of a marriage based on the occupation of one of the partners. According to the results, those who have extrovert and stressful jobs and those in caring professions are more likely to divorce than other professionals. Dancers, choreographers and bartenders have a 40 % chance of divorcing. Caring professions such as nurses and psychologists have a likelihood of 29 % to get divorced. On the contrary, agricultural engineers, optometrists, dentists and clergyman have only a 2-7% chance of divorcing.

According to the article, the main reason for the varying divorce rates is the environment where you are working. If you are working in an extrovert environment such as bars and restaurants, you will have more chances to meet other people and develop relationships. On the other hand, opticians also meet lots of people in their work but they don’t have time to have long conversations with the customers. An interesting finding was the fact that those in caring professions have high divorce rates. This might be because they they care for other people at cost of their own happiness or because they are naturally sensitive and vulnerable people.

However, if you are dreaming of a long marriage you should avoid partners with these occupations (divorce rates in brackets):

Dancers and choreographers (43.05%)
Bartenders (38.43%)
Massage therapists (38.22%)
Nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides (28.95%)
Entertainers and performers, sports and related workers (28.49%)
Baggage porters and concierges (28.43%)
Telemarketers (28.10%)
Waiters/waitresses (27.12%)
Roofers 26.85%, and maids and housekeeping cleaners (26.38%)
Chefs/head cooks (20.10%)

I will merry a senior data analyst soon and I would be very interested to know the likelihood of our success. Any info? Anyone? :-)

Social Media Companies building Employer Image

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:47:00 +0200

A quick look on the career pages of the largest social media companies such as Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn shows how they are successfully using their own tools in recruitment and employer branding. It seems to be very simple to create a positive image by giving open and honest information about the employees, their working conditions, atmosphere in the office, benefits, career opportunities etc.. One really gets the feeling that the employees truly like to work for these companies:

PS. What do you think about the new Twitter office?

Why does Social Recruitment make Sense?

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:03:29 +0200

Jobvite has listed 4 main reasons why social recruitment makes sense for companies in times of the digital revolution:

Because more and more people network online
Because people build their opinion based on the information they get in social networks
Because you can easily get connected with passive candidates
Because recruitment through social media is less expensive than through traditional channel.

You can read the complete article here.

Jobvite also conducted a survey on the usage of social recruitment in the U.S.. The survey results showed that already 80 % of the companies are using or are planning to use social networks in recruitment. LinkedIn is clearly number one (95 %), followed by Facebook (59 %) and Twitter (42 %) when sourcing candidates on online networks.

It is obvious that the survey does not reflect the current situation in Europe but it clearly shows where the trend is going.

How to get started with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter & Co.

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:28:00 +0200

As soon as you have understood the importance of social revolution, you need to start rethinking your recruitment and employer branding strategies on the web (in case you haven’t done that yet). What would I do in HR if I got the task to build a presence for a company in online networks? I could think of the following steps:

Create an account for the company in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Start gathering friends and followers. I would start with the existing employees and candidates and, with help of them, start spreading the word to other target groups.
Link the Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles to the company web page.
Post and tweet interesting job opportunities, promotions and news about the company regularly.
Screen potential candidates in social networks.
Follow what is written about the company on the internet and react to the feedback.
Observe what the competitors and other companies are doing.
Stay updated about changes and new social networks in web 2.0.

If you are not familiar with the web 2.0 environment and you don’t have a digital native in your team, why don’t you hire an intern who is more than happy to spend his/her working days in social networks and get paid for that?

The most Popular Google Searches in Finland in 2009

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:27:00 +0200

Google Zeitgeist listed the most popular searches for Finland in 2009:

Facebook
Youtube
Iltalehti
Ilta-Sanomat
IRC
Suomi24
Nettiauto
Mtv3
Hotmail
Gmail

Just to compare: in 2008, Youtube was leading and Facebook was on 8th place.

How You Doin'?

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:46:00 +0200

This is so hilarious! My personal highlight from my all time favorite TV show

I am an Immigrant, a Digital Immigrant

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:54:00 +0200

If you are a digital immigrant, you should read the speech about digital revolution by Rubert Murdoch, which he held to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 2005. Here are a few quotations from his speech:

Like many of you in this room, I’m a digital immigrant. I wasn’t weaned on the web, nor coddled on a computer.

What is happening is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don’t want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don’t want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what’s important.

Instead, they want their news on demand, when it works for them.

They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it.

They want to question, to probe, to offer a different angle.

In short, we have to answer this fundamental question: what do we – a bunch of digital immigrants — need to do to be relevant to the digital natives?

Probably, just watch our teenage kids.

What do they want to know, and where will they go to get it?

They want news on demand, continuously updated. They want a point of view about not just what happened, but why it happened.

The digital native doesn’t send a letter to the editor anymore. She goes online, and starts a blog.

We may never become true digital natives, but we can and must begin to assimilate to their culture and way of thinking.

PS. If you don’t know what a digital immigrant means, google for it :-)

How are Candidates and Employees rating Your Company on the Web?

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:26:00 +0200

When I have been preparing myself for job interviews, I have missed a web page where I can exchange information about interview and assessment centre experiences with other job seekers. Now I found this great web page, Glassdoor.com, where candidates can write interview reviews, and former and current employees can rate their companies and share salary information. This gives candidates helpful insider information such as how is it to work for a certain company, what could I possibly earn and what can I expect from the interview day and hiring process. The company founders asked themselves the following question when the company was founded:

“What would happen if someone left the unedited employee survey for the whole company on the printer and it got posted to the Web?”

The answer is: more transparency and honest insider information for free both for candidates and companies. You can easily find out how is your image on the market and how are your competitors benchmarked. Are you paying worse salaries than your competitors? Are your hiring methods still up-to-date? These kind of internet services also emphasize the need for employers to be present on the web, to be informed what is written about them in online communities (this can be easily done with Google Alerts). A great deal of people form their opinions based on other users’ experiences.

Most of the rated companies on Glassdoor.com are U.S. based but I hope the service will be expanded to Europe soon!

The Most Popular Recruiting Pages in Finland - an Analysis based on Google Insights

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:23:00 +0200

I decided to start my blog with the subject I am the most familiar with: recruiting. I have interviewed hundreds of candidates in my previous jobs and I have been interviewed several times for jobs I have applied for. As a recruiter and job searcher you are always faced with the question: where should I post my job in order to find the right candidates or, alternatively, in which job board do I find the most suitable openings.

I did a quick analysis regarding the popularity of Finnish recruiting pages with the help of Google Insights. With Google Insights you can compare the search volume of different terms in specific regions and within specific timeframe. This is of course statistically seen not a valid method but since most of us are using Google, it gives you good insights about the popularity of the recruiting pages. I compared the search volumes for the following job boards in Finland in 2009: Monster, Mol, Uranus, Oikotie and Aarresaari.

In the first chart I searched for the names of the web pages (e.g. “Aaarresaari”, “Monster”):

This search shows that Mol and Oikotie are by far the most popular search terms. Monster is on third place and Aarresaari and Uranus are not often searched.

Since the term “Oikotie” also includes the search for cars, houses etc. and “Monster” can refer to other pages than monster.fi, I limited the search and combined the terms “name of the job board” and “työpaikat”, which means jobs, (e.g. “Monster työpaikat”, “Oikotie työpaikat”) and received the following results:

This chart shows a similar trend than the previous chart. Oikotie and Mol are leading, Monster is clearly on third place. Aarresaari and Uranus are not shown because there is not enough data available.

From my experience as a recruiter and job searcher, these results reflect the real situation on the market. However, it would be interesting to see what the official visitor numbers of these recruiting pages are. Do they indicate a similar trend than Google Insights?

Heli taking the Helicopter View

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:27:00 +0200

This is it. My new blog. I have been blogging before about private stuff but I stopped keeping that blog a few years ago. I decided to become a blogger again because there are so many things about HR I want to say. It is well known that the role of traditional HR will undergo a huge change in the coming years and my goal is simply to stay updated and be part of that HR revolution. I want to be shaping the future rather than just observing it. In this blog, my plan is to focus on HR trends such as social media, HR technology, recruitment and employer branding as well as other stuff that comes into my mind. Let’s see what the future brings…

Taking the helicopter view refers to a management metaphor for seeing the “big picture”, i.e. seeing the things as a whole rather than sticking into the details. I try to follow that metaphor when writing this blog.