ASK ANYTHING: In an interview setting
By Corey Switzer There is always healthy debate over what is appropriate to do and/or say in an interview setting. Well – most of the press goes to what’s INAPPROPRIATE in an interview setting, but I’d like to take this nugget of time to discuss something interesting: WHAT IS APPROPRIATE FOR AN EMPLOYER/RECRUITER TO ASK IN AN INTERVIEW? The short answer is that an employer/recruiter can ask ANYTHING they want in an interview. “What?!?!?!!?”, you say. Yes – it’s true. We can ask anything we want to of a candidate. How many kids do...
read moreRecruiters do this for a living…Trust us.
By Wendy Sanacore We all have our jobs to do and we all have varying definitions of success. Recruiters’ jobs are entirely contingent on finding the perfect candidate to suit our clients’ needs. So you can bet that if we’re reaching out to speak with you, you have what it takes and probably more to please our client. That being said, it requires some honesty on your part, too. We’ve worked really hard to build a relationship with our client and we’re presenting you as a candidate because you represent us well. So be up front. Your...
read moreWelcome Christina Schweitzer
By Corey Switzer Today I have the honor of welcoming our newest TxMQ employee, Christina Schweitzer, to our audience out there in the blogosphere. It just so happens that Christina and I have been business contacts/friends for a number of years, and I’m VERY excited that we finally get the opportunity to work together! Christina is someone that I’ve looked up to in a general sense, deferred to on tough HR questions, and respect as a “Human Capital Solution Architect” (that coming straight from her Linkedin profile). This woman is...
read moreA BALANCED BUSINESS – A Recruiters Perspective
By Corey Switzer As a recruiter I have the advantage of seeing business through a birds eye perspective. Whether you’re my small 15-employee start up or my large Fortune 100 corporation, I come to gain an intimate knowledge of your fears, struggles, hopes, frustrations, accomplishments, etc. I have to say – it’s fun when I can hold my own in a business-related conversation with my father (who has been in the specialty metals industry for the whole of his career) because decision makers have confided in me and come to me with problems...
read moreGeneration WHY?? (A blog about Generation Y)
By Corey Switzer If you read my blogs regularly, you probably know I have a fascination with employee interaction; ESPECIALLY the interaction between Gen Y and “everyone else”. This COULD be because I hover on the cusp of Gen X (born from the mid 1960’s to mid 1980’s) and Gen Y (born between 1981 and about 2000). As you can see there’s a bit of overlap and I fall smack dab in there! Ever since Gen Y (AKA, the Millennials) have begun entering the workforce there’s been management pandemonium! How do we deal with these “kids”?...
read more4 PRINCIPLES OF BUSINESS / What are yours?
By Corey Switzer I read an interesting article this morning on the 4 core principles that Apple’s Chief Designer lives by. As a technology service-based company, I think it’s safe to say we take Steve Jobs’ company and innovators pretty seriously! Our ears perk when they have something to say. Don’t we all want to emulate the Apple’s and the Google’s of the world? Somehow they started with an idea and got it right! From www.inc.com, Jonathan Ive (Apple’s Chief Designer) gives us insight into his 4 principles: “Do something...
read moreDIY: Create Your Own Employees
By Corey Switzer “Despite the fact that more than 14 million people are unemployed, there remain 3.2 million job openings in America”. This was one of the first sentences of a Careerbuilder article I read this morning (Minding the Gap: New Initiative Takes On Workforce Skills Training) that addresses the widening skills gap we are experiencing in the employment sector. CB then goes on to talk about how they are launching a test program meant to assist certain sectors of the unemployed public by providing industry specific training aimed to...
read moreYour Career Path Is Just like Building Your Dream House.
By Wendy Sanacore It’s been a while since I have blogged and for that I apologize. Honestly, I have just been so busy, it has been hard for me to find the time to really sit down and put some effort into it and I never want to just blog for the sake of blogging if you know what I mean. So I was watching HGTV the other day, one of my favorite TV channels, and I was watching one of the home makeover shows where they take a run down, abandoned million-dollar home and fix it up from the ground up and make it a multi-million dollar home and it...
read moreEnd of Support for WebSphere Application Server V6.1
By Wendy Sanacore As of September 30, 2012 IBM will be discontinuing WebSphere Application Server V6.1 support for the following products: WebSphere Application Server V6.1 WebSphere Application Server Express V6.1 WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment V6.1 WebSphere Application Server for Developers V6.1 WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition V6.1 for Novell SLES WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition V6.1 for AIX IBM HTTP Server for WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor...
read moreIs there a skills gap?
By Chuck Fried So where is unemployment really? What do all the numbers really mean? At a high level, there is little question that there are a lot of people unemployed, or under employed today; far more so than in years past. Yet are all of these people actually looking for, or interested in working? And what is meant by the skills gap spoken of by engineering and enterprise IT employers? In a nutshell, there is a skills gap between available, willing candidates for these manufacturing and engineering jobs, and employers. We use...
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