The New Paradigm for Hiring

The old job search paradigm for candidates is looking for posted jobs and sending applications.

In the pre- Internet era, a job search was limited to a local network of open positions found in places like newspaper classified ads. A typical job search began by scanning local or national classified pages, applying to a handful of jobs that seemed like a reasonable fit by phone or a mailed resume, and then waiting to hear back from employers.

In the mid-1990s, online job boards led to optimism that technology would make the job search more efficient. For the first time, online sites pulled together all job postings and made them keyword searchable to anyone with an internet connection. It was revolutionary, but it was still the same old paradigm for hiring.

Today, there is a New Paradigm that Promises to Make a Fundamental Change in Hiring

Today’s online job sites are more than just aggregators of job postings. They are employer review sites, career networking sites, and job marketplaces that collect detailed data on all sides of the job market – data on people, companies, skills and jobs.

This new paradigm for job search uses big data and machine learning to cut through the clutter of online job postings and candidates to curate a smaller, smarter set of job recommendations that better fit a candidate.

This is possible by leveraging the vast amount of information on not only jobs and companies, but also job seekers’ personalized skills, education, and other professional experiences), job, company preferences, work locations, and more. Candidates get matched faster with jobs and companies that best fit their skills and preferences and hiring managers get smaller pools of qualified applicants.

Consider eHarmony. It has mastered the ability to connect people based on data using the same strategy behind its business model to tap into the market of people in search of the perfect job, rather than the perfect partner.  Elevated careers by eHarmony, requires job candidates to upload a resume and fill out a profile. Profile information is then paired with eHarmony’s matching technology to connect individuals with job matches based on skills, values, and personality. Searches can be conducted based on keywords and other parameters.

It matches job seekers with potential companies based on factors involving culture, personality and skills using a “Compatibility Scorecard”. The scorecard breaks down individual and company values so both can see what they have in common to understand compatibility. Along with eHarmony’s matching technology, the scorecard pairs candidates with job listings.

Time is another issue. Recruiting takes time and money. Replacing a bad hire is expensive, costing from a 3 to 5 times a person’s annual salary, depending on their position and how long they’ve been there.

Job seekers don’t typically like spending a lot of time filling out online job applications. In a recent report, 60% of job seekers said they’d started an online application without finishing it.

Matching jobs to job seekers is complex and there’s a multi-billion dollar recruiting industry devoted to it.

Data-driven recruitment may also increase a company’s performance and boost employee engagement. Information about a candidate’s personality and how the person fits within a particular company’s culture could play a much bigger role in addressing retention, engagement and productivity among employees.

Consider Wells Fargo. It developed a predictive model to help them with selecting qualified candidates for teller and personal banker positions. The company worked with Kiran Analytics to identify qualities that engaged high-performing employees in client-facing positions and looked for those specific qualities in potential candidates. At the end of the program’s first year, new employee retention was up by 15% for tellers and 12% for personal bankers.

Job seekers will soon apply directly for jobs matching search queries, as well as view compatibility information and predicted job satisfaction with a specific organization, helping lead to higher productivity and retention among employees.

Sites like Monster and CareerBuilder don’t pair job seekers with positions based on compatibility, skills, values. They just present candidates with thousands of job openings.

AI is clearly making job seekers’ journeys easier. And, there’s more good news: it’s only going to get better. Growing data sets and continuous AI learning means AI platforms like WorkFusion and Scout Exchange’s will only get smarter and more efficient.

The trick for job seekers to take advantage of all AI has to offer now and in the future. Job searchers need to make sure their resumes accurately align with job performance AND skill sets. You’ll need to feed AI data to be prepared and competitive for all stages of the employment journey.

The Emergence of AI for Candidate Screening

Tesla, Accenture, LinkedIn, and many major companies are going beyond using resumes to identify candidates adding a neuroscience-based and how likely they are to succeed.

The average job receives 250 applications, yet the candidate chosen by the company fails 30-50% of the time.

Automated artificial intelligence systems can look through resumes faster than a human can and flag the ones that might be of interest. AI takes all the data stored in resumes, staffing agency databases, online job boards, and social media to help shortlist the most fitting applicants. It determines which candidates will be best suited for the job without knowing where they live or determining how old they are.  What’s more, AI can also help unearth passive candidates, widening the talent pool.

For example, ‘Helena’ by Woo is an AI-powered alternative to Siri — it specializes in engaging passive candidates, an often-overlooked segment. A year-old entrant to the HR technology segment, Woo is a marketplace that matches employers and possible employees – without the intervention of either. Hiring teams have data pouring in from a variety of sources. In a fully digital HR ecosystem, it is difficult to process and analyze all these disparate data streams. An AI-based candidate screening software can easily integrate with existing HR platforms, from HRIS to ATS systems, or even onboarding and offboarding tools.

Traditional interviews are not the most effective ways to access candidates. In the year 2018, with the help of new interviewing tools and platforms, it would be possible for recruiters to assess a candidate’s overall skills and capabilities in much lesser time.

They are working with Pymetrics, a company that has distilled what used to be a 4-hour, academic process of evaluating a person’s cognitive and emotional capabilities into a 30-minute game-playing scenario. Candidates are asked to complete brain tasks (like puzzles or quizzes) and then AI comes up with measurements of things like the person’s problem-solving skills, ability to multitask and level of altruism (concern for the welfare of others) with the results measured against their own top employees.

Even if a company doesn’t use Pymetrics, the trend in hiring seems to be finding someone who’s “hungry” and someone who’s going to do whatever it takes to excel. The magic word is hungry (Not went to Harvard.) Watch how they do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aimj2wNHNA8. Questions typically have nothing to do with past experience, and everything to do with hunger. With unemployment at record lows, the competition for top talent has literally never been greater so companies are finding that they need to be contrarian in their hiring practices – finding and empowering the non-obvious candidates. Along with creative and critical thinking tests, candidates are asked a set of questions that are tied to an AI -powered algorithm. The types of questions include:

• What did your parents do for work?
• What do you believe about the world that other people don’t?
• Who paid for your college education?
• What has been your biggest failure in life?
• Why do you want to join a team where the hours are longer and the pay is lower than a big company?

While some look like “normal” interview questions, it’s worth looking at, for example, the one about college. If you put yourself through college, what does that say about you? Well, a lot. You had to balance school with work, so you learned how to manage your time as a young adult. You probably had to work when other people were partying, which means you know how to delay gratification.

Essentially the questions are designed to elicit the answers to that critical question: How hungry are you? Hungry people are driven to succeed. They want to move up, move forward, move things along. They stay late not to look good, but because they want to nail it. They tend to make things at your company far more efficient, because they’re constantly thinking about what’s not working and how they can improve it. Hungry people inspire those around them, because they bring a kind of relentless enthusiasm to the table.

4 Ways AI Is Changing the Candidate Search & Interviewing Process.

1. It will sharpen the job posting process – How do you ensure the right candidates see your company’s job postings? Artificial intelligence has the answer, suing predictive analytics. Software scans job postings (and the job postings of competitors) and analyzes them based on language patterns and structure. The findings will help companies write stronger job descriptions by identifying what differentiates underperforming job posts from successful ones.
2. Data Management Processing (DMP). It uses cookies to track people who visit career pages. Using this data, employers can learn more about candidate demographics and use platforms like Google Ads to target them.
3. Video interviews are becoming more prominent for hiring – The number of companies that use video interviews in their hiring processes are getting more common. As more companies adopt facial and speech recognition technology for this purpose, the video interview will become an even more crucial part you getting selected for a job.
4. Monitoring speech patterns, facial tics, and body language – technology will be able to measure personality traits, stress levels and confidence.

Many people apply for jobs—and continue to work jobs—that don’t necessarily match up with what they want to do.

By providing employers with more details about prospective hires, AI could enable businesses to tweak jobs to fit talented people or recommend positions that might suit a person’s career interests.

As Steve Jobs once said in a commencement speech at Stanford University ” stay hungry, stay foolish”. AI is about to open the world of work to a new way of matching candidates in some amazing ways.

A Word that Changed the Reality of You Becoming Remarkable

The word is access.

On a recent trip to Vietnam, I discovered that wireless connections are provided free throughout the country. What was once a vendor sitting in front of store selling motorcycle parts, is now a store-front linked to a global market with product fulfillment handled by someone in another county at a global distribution center.

Access has changed how we job search, learn, socialize, travel, communicate, build businesses, network, entertain themselves, sell, buy, and find work. This hyper-connected and fully accessible global access is now reality for almost anyone with a computer and an Internet connection.

Consider BTS. In 2017, K-pop group BTS broke into the American music scene. Their win as the top social artist at the 2017 Billboard Music Awards (BBMA) gave them the chance to perform at the American Music Awards, making their U.S. television debut. Their press tour included appearances on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” “The Late Late Show with James Corden” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

BTS was formed when Bang Si-hyuk began to quietly build a different kind of studio, and to cultivate the band that would become BTS. A successful songwriter and music producer, Bang began to assemble a group of teens for a boy band. This would go on to become Bangtan Boys, then BTS.

BTS’s unique use of social media has fostered the growth of a multi-language fan base

They heavily relied on using a collective YouTube and Twitter account to promote themselves online, from their humble beginnings to today’s success. Their on-line access to millions of potential fans was what propelled them to their amazing success.

Think about how access has changed our lives.

• Opportunities – Secure a job on Indeed or LinkedIn, sell on Etsy or Amazon, or freelance through Upwork or Lyft.
• Capital – Leverage crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo or the crowdfunding platform Patreon to turn a passion project or idea into sustainable income.
• Connectivity – Launch a business or brand with a webcam and Wi-fi.
• Information – Search YouTube to learn how to start a podcast, follow a news outlet on Twitter to receive instant breaking news notifications, or listen to an audiobook while on an airplane.
• Travel – Seeing the world is easily within reach with Travelocity, Google Maps, Google Translate and Airbnb.
• Products – Front-door delivery of the world’s best-reviewed, and most cost-effective products and services.
• Contacts – 95% percent of Americans own a cell phone and 75 % can reach their phones 24 hours a day.
• Audiences – Create community, test ideas, get discovered, and/or sell goods and services via social networks and online communities.
• Cultures – Play Fortnite with someone anywhere in the world in real-time.
• Tools – Slack, Airtable and Asana make it possible to be more efficient and productive.

The only thing constraining people now is a limited ambition, lack of awareness of digital tools or insufficient knowledge to use the tools that are typically free or at a reasonable cost.

Access is your key to avoid settling for just being average. If there are better employers, superior services, or improved products out there, they can be found. Digital access has made it easy for employees to find a better company, move to a different location and learn new skills required for a new job.

Access is empowering a new generation of creators and consumers.

Become a creator using access to become remarkable recognizing that your income will almost always be in direct proportion to the people you serve.

Success in a Job Search is Almost Always More than a Single Event or a Lucky Break

Most people like to think of progress as a straight line.

Consider an ice cube. Ice melts only when it hits 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

Does that mean the energy required to increase the temperature of ice from 25 to 31 degrees doesn’t matter?

Of course not. You may only see results when you hit 32 degrees, but you never would have seen the ice melt had you not got the ice warmer over time.

Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change. Often people make a few small changes, fail to see a tangible result and decide to stop.

Like the ice cube that is gradually warming, you are getting closer to success by just focusing on your daily habits to are natural and logical to reach a goal.  It’s the process of getting better that is the secret, not waiting for a speculative event to claim the prize.

One thing about success is that it’s tied to a foundation of prior work, during which noticeable improvement is probably not obvious. If you keep randomly changing the manner by which you are heating your “symbolic” ice cube or quit to soon, you will lose the power from compounding your efforts and never get hot enough to start melting.

Most of us have no difficulty recognizing luck when it’s on conspicuous display, as when someone wins the lottery. But randomness often plays out in subtle ways, and it’s easy to construct narratives that portray success as having been inevitable. Those stories are almost invariably misleading, however, a simple fact that has surprising implications.

Consider the history of the Mona Lisa, perhaps the most famous painting in the world. After having languished in obscurity for most of its early existence, Leonardo da Vinci’s work was pushed into the spotlight in 1911 when it was stolen from the Louvre. The widely publicized theft remained unsolved for two years until Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian maintenance worker at the Louvre, was apprehended after trying to sell the painting to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. His arrest provoked a second wave of publicity, with images of the Mona Lisa splashed around the world.

If it had it never been stolen, most of us would know no more about it than we do of the two obscure Leonardo da Vinci canvases from the same period that hang in an adjacent gallery at the Louvre. The Mona Lisa is famous largely for being famous.

As in the art world, so too in the world of work. Almost every career trajectory entails a complex sequence of steps, each of which depends on those preceding it. If any of those earlier steps had been different, the entire trajectory would almost surely have been different, too.

To acknowledge the importance of random events is not to suggest that success is independent of talent and effort. In highly competitive arenas, those who do well are almost always extremely talented and hard-working.

As Charlie Munger, the vice chairman of Warren Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, once said…….

Distraction is the Enemy of Vision

Historical records show that typically only one third of all businesses will ever make a profit.

Another third barely break even.

And the rest never even get close.

According the U.S. Small Business Association, only two thirds of businesses make it past the first 2 years and fewer than half make it to 4.

In fact, it’s highly likely that even with the a hot product and a massive market your dreams just won’t turn out to be the huge success that you imagine them to be.

But here’s what’s exciting.

On top of all the historical facts and figures of doom, your single biggest enemy is something you probably haven’t even considered – being distracted.

And if you can solve this problem, your odds for success just got a whole lot better.

Kanye West posted on Twitter in April of 2017 that “You have to protect your ability to create at all cost.”

Keep in mind that activity doesn’t always equal progress.

A lot of effort doesn’t mean that at the end of the day you’ve done anything other than run frantically in circles.  Distraction only amplifies that.

When you are really, really busy, it’s easy to imagine that everything you are doing will somehow make you successful.

Doing things that don’t matter usually get you the exact same results – results that don’t really make a difference.

Too much cake is just as bad as not enough vitamins

Just like job search, focus on solving a problem for an employer (customer) and they will call you asking for help.  Be brutally honest with yourself.

You can argue away your distractions.  And for a moment you may even convince yourself that your actions are helping.  But you’re just leaving yourself less prepared than ever to actually realize your dreams coming true. 

So, don’t get distracted from reaching your goals.

Apply a relentless focus on the key issues that get you to the future you want for yourself. Get serious about it.  Be prepared for your biggest enemy ahead of time and the success you achieve may surprise you.

 

When I was younger, I found myself bouncing from one idea to the next, trying to get the desired results and failing. I felt like I was banging my head against a wall. My vision was clear, so why wasn’t I able to make it happen?

I finally realized distraction was the cause, so I began focusing on a concept I found in several business books.

Play to Your Strength: The 70-25-5 Principle

• Give 70 % of your time to your areas of strength.
• Give 25 % of your time to the areas you want to improve.
• Give 5 % of your time to the areas of your weakness.

Distraction can happen to anyone, but only when you fail to set goals does it win. A goal must be written down; otherwise, it’s just a dream.

Studies have shown that “individuals with clear, written goals are significantly more likely to succeed than those without clearly defined goals.”

The truth is that if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward.

When dedicating 70% of your time working in areas of strength, you’re likely to make progress toward your daily goals.

Focusing 25% of your time working on areas that need improvement will ensure you do not remain stagnant.

Finally, if you spend 5% of your time working on weaknesses, you will become very well-rounded, giving you more clarity to handle future challenges you may face.

Mike Krieger, the co-founder Instagram acquired by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion, took a novel pro-focus approach to avoid being distracted.

When he and Kevin Systrom launched the company in 2010, he had a blanket “no meetings” policy. He turned down every request from outsiders.

A no-meeting policy simplified life, like Steve Jobs wearing the same black turtleneck each day, to save time by not having to decide about what to wear each day.

Two things, Krieger says, really helped him.

1. Schedule intentional free time marked out on your calendar.
2. Make sure to schedule a follow-up on what it is you need to focus on.

 

In every success story, the longest chapter is the one about determination.

Don’t let distraction stop you from what you want.

The World of Work and the Deployment of Facial-Recognition / Biometric Systems

The service industry in the U.S. represents 80% of U.S. private-sector employment, or 89.7 million jobs. For many people with no defined specialty qualifications, service work is often a core part of their income while they train for highly skilled positions or earn money while they explore their career options.

Hidden with this job sector is the evolving deployment of facial-recognition / biometric systems designed to reduce the number of employees required to do service jobs and sell services/products from a centralized source direct to consumers.

Biometric technology is also becoming linked to voice systems that rely on biometric authentication to complete transactions that otherwise would be handled by a salesperson on the phone or in-person.

Consider this:

Take a look at this scenario in terms of time and what may eventually become AI making a purchase decision for you by selecting “the best option” based on your known preferences without the need for cash and with no direct interaction with a person.

As society moves toward being cashless and biometrically authenticated, in some cities homeless people are wearing barcodes around their necks in an attempt to increase donations. The organization Greater Change, gives homeless people a QR code, similar to the kind issued for online tickets. People who want to give money – but who may not have any change in their pocket – can scan the code using their smart phone and make an online payment to that person. The donation goes into an account which is managed by a case worker who ensures that the money is spent on agreed targets, such as saving for a rental deposit or for groceries.

Stop for a moment and think about how this technology will change the job market as we know it. Essentially, the majority of “support employees” could be replaced by an ecommerce tied to minimal staff with the purchasing process all done from your phone. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec77S25kuVs

Think AI and biometrics are years away – take a closer look.

Facebook’s DeepFace program can now determine whether 2 photographed faces belong to the same person, with an accuracy rate of 97.25%. When taking the same test, humans answer correctly in 97.53% of cases, or just 0.28% better than the Facebook program.

Google’s FaceNet links a face to its owner with almost perfect results.

Look to China for where the world of work is heading as it related to technology and how the business world is changing from people-based to digital-enabled.

In Guangzhou, BingoBox has built a network of 300 fully automated convenience stores. The free-standing glass boxes, about half the size of a 7-Eleven, stock a similar assortment of merchandise, all of it labeled with RFID tags. Shoppers scan a QR code displayed on the front of the store with the WeChat app. Selected items are placed on a counter, and an RFID reader instantly and tallies the total. Shoppers pay via a mobile phone. A scanner near the door verifies that a customer is leaving with only the goods they paid for.

 A Car Vending Machine

Instead of having to go from dealership to dealership see the new models, a prospective buyer can schedule a test drive at their convenience by going online to pick up the vehicle at a Ferris-wheel-like vending machine built by Alibaba. The structure holds 30 automobiles in a stack—including models by BMW, Ford and Volvo. The fee for a three-day test drive is only a couple of hundred yuan (less than $50), but the security deposit can go up to the thousands.

The Return of the Automat

In the Zhejiang province famed for its sticky-rice dumplings, has equipped its outlets with an Alibaba-powered technology that allows a diner to order food on their mobile phone or a screen at the entrance of the restaurant and then pick up his meal from lockers connected to the kitchen. When his food is ready, the customer receives a notification on his phone with a locker number. The cubby clicks open as they approach. Drinks are dispensed from smart vending machines that look like refrigerators that are unlocked by scanning a QR code on the door with a phone. After the customer closes the door again, the app automatically charges them for the bottles he takes by reading radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags attached to the drinks.

Types of Biometric Devices

Retina Scanner – These scan the unique biometric pattern in each person’s iris, and match it against a certain number of unique identifying marks that set every person apart from everyone else. Iris scanning and retinal scanning are both used to identify a person according to their unique pattern, but they tend to be far costlier and more complex.

Finger Print Scanner – As far as price goes, the fingerprint scanning is on the lower end of the scale. The cheapest fingerprint scanners are the ones that only scan the actual print, though the costlier ones actually scan the presence of blood in the fingerprint, the size and shape of the thumb, and many other features. These costlier systems actually capture a 3D image of the fingerprint, thereby making it much more difficult for the fingerprint to be counterfeited.

Each person around the world has a distinctly unique face, even two twins that the human eye cannot tell apart. It may be something as small as the slightly different placing of the eyebrows, the width of the eyes, or the breadth of the nose. There are certain markers that enable these biometric recognition scanners to instantly identify the uniqueness of each person scanning their facial features, thus enabling the device to ensure that only the single person with the correct bone structure and feature placement can gain access.

Every person in the world has a unique voice pattern, even though the changes are slight and barely noticeable to the human ear. However, with special voice recognition software, those tiny differences in each person’s voice can be noted, tested, and authenticated to only allow access to the person that has the right tone, pitch, and volume of voice. It’s surprisingly effective at differentiating two people who have almost identical voice patterns.

As the adoption of biometric technology increases, it may decrease service related jobs but also create higher skilled work mainly in the area of software engineering, production, testing, implementation and maintenance of biometric systems.

Today’s workers are faced with a unique challenge: maintaining strong employability in a job market that’s constantly changing and evolving with new industries and technologies.

The U.S. Department of Labor reports that the average U.S. worker changes jobs every 4.6 years, making it more important than ever to be able to adapt to new career needs as industries change. If you’re a service industry worker now, anticipate the need to upgrade your technical skills to enhance your employability.

Regard of what you do for a living, ensure your financial security by being relevant for work that is in demand and have skills that you have “reality verified” as marketable and in demand in a career field that interests you.

How to Re-Engineer Your Job Search

Finding a job is no easy thing, and even though technological advancements have seemingly made the process easier and more user-friendly, in many cases it’s more complicated than ever before. Job boards on the internet might seem like an easy way to get your resume out there, but it’s just as easy to be overlooked.

As job seekers and recruiters continue their searches a new tool is quickly rising to the top as a way to find the best people for the right positions: Big Data. Knowing how big data is being used now for recruiting and job searching can give people an advantage over the competition.

Think of how many people apply online for a position when a business posts on a job board. Some companies receive thousands of resumes for a single opening, so it’s understandable that qualified candidates can fall through the cracks. With such a deluge of resumes, companies are applying big data analytics practices to a field of prospective job seekers.

Big data, however, goes much further than search queries and talent management systems.

Many businesses are actually developing profiles on people based upon their social media presence. This even applies to people who aren’t actively searching for a job.

Businesses build their own resumes of candidates by identifying details from people’s social media profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other sites. From these profiles, companies use big data tools to identify patterns of behavior, interests and skills that are qualifying factors for current and future job openings. If the targeted individual isn’t looking for a job at the moment, businesses will likely keep them on file for future reference.

With social media playing such an integral role in big data recruitment, job seekers need to do what they can to manage their profiles with the intent of gaining a job in mind. That means using your social media presence to emphasize your work-related skills and demonstrating your abilities.

Curating your profiles also requires you to engage in discussions with other people in your field of choice, showcasing your thoughts and opinions and helping direct discussions. Using this process, you may even become known as a thought leader, someone to turn to when others want an expert’s opinion.

The bottom line: You need to put yourself in a position to take advantage of big data and utilize it to get noticed. The more understanding you have of how big data is affecting job searches, the faster you can get it working for you.

A study just released by Lever, a hiring management system used by small and mid-sized companies around the world describes how 600 of their clients hired 15,000 people – the real surprise in that 1.5 million people applied for these 15K jobs – only 1% of the total.

If you’re a job seeker this may seem like finding a job is a long-shot, however, taking a closer look at the numbers tells a different story.

• The odds were worse for people who applied on a job board – 130 to one – yet 48% of their jobs were filled this way. Although it’s inefficient, it is a major source of hires.
• Getting referred was the best way to get a job. It only took 12 people to hire someone this way. This is 10X better than applying. According to the Lever data only 14% of all jobs were filled by referrals.
• Only 4% of all hires came through a recruiting agency but in these cases the company only needed to see 25 people to hire one person.
• This direct sourcing approach represented 34% of all hires and its recruiters needed to screen 65 people to yield one hire.

For more senior-level staff and mid-management positions. less than 20% are filled via people who apply online, 40% are referrals (including recruiting firms and staffing agencies) and 40% are direct sourced.

Consider these insights:

1. Mix it up. Go narrow and deep rather than broad and shallow. Use a mix of all the techniques. Idea: Find 20 jobs every week you think look interesting and narrow this list down to the best five. And then only apply to 2-3 of them you’re perfectly qualified to handle. But don’t just wait to hear if the company is interested. Instead use the backdoor to get an interview. This means finding someone in the company who can get you a referral to the hiring manager.
2. Get found. Reverse engineer your LinkedIn profile and online resume to make sure recruiters can find it. When they find it make sure your major accomplishments and track record are instantly visible.
3. Bypass screeners. If you get an onsite interview the chances for getting a job are (10%) regardless of how you were initially found, with one exception. For referrals it’s twice that at 20%.
4. Build a true network.Networking is getting people who can vouch for your abilities to recommend you open jobs they know about. In parallel, actively participate in business and groups where people in your field hang out. Recruiters review these online listings to get referrals.
5. Build a reverse network. Take calls from recruiters. Listen to what they have to say and then provide a great referral. They will pay you back with future interviews.
6. Force a discovery interview. If you do ALL of the above, you will probably get an interview. But the likelihood you’ll get an offer is still only 10% unless you’ve been referred, increasing your odds by 20%.

To increase your odds of getting an offer you need to make sure you’re being interviewed accurately. Ask the interviewer about some of the big tasks the person hired will likely be assigned to handle. Then give detailed examples of work you’ve accomplished that’s most comparable and you’ll likely be invited back as a finalist.

Ultimately you need to commit to doing what other candidates aren’t willing to do. That’s how you stand out. Consider these tips:

1. Find the company you want to work for.

Many job seekers respond to as many job postings as possible, hoping the numbers will be on their side. But shotgun resume submissions result in hiring managers sifting through dozens of candidates to find the right person.

To show the hiring manager you are the right candidate, you have to do the work. Instead of shot-gunning your resume, put in the time to determine a company you definitely want to work for in terms of the job and cultural fit.

2. Really know the company.

You can’t possibly know if you want to work for my company unless you know a lot about the company; that’s the difference between just wanting a job and wanting an actual role in a business. Check out management and employees on social media. When you know the people, you know the company. Learn as much as you can, then leverage that knowledge.

3. Determine how you will make an immediate impact in the role.

Training takes time, money and effort. An ideal new hire can be productive immediately. While you don’t need to be able to do everything required in the job, it helps if the company can see an immediate return on their hiring investment. (Remember, hiring you is an investment that needs to generate a return.) Identify one or two important things you can contribute from day one.

4. Don’t just tell. Show.

Put what you can offer on display. If you’re a programmer, mock up a new application. If you want a sales position, create a plan for how you’ll target a new market or customer base, or describe how you will implement marketing strategies the business doesn’t currently use.

5. Use a referral as a reinforcement.

Business is all about relationships.  Knowing that someone we trust is willing to vouch for you is a data point that often tips the decision scale toward giving you an interview, and even giving you the job.

6. Be the one who knocks.

Don’t wait to be called for an interview. Don’t even wait for an opening to be posted; after all, you’ve identified ways you can immediately help the company you want to work for. Approach people right and they will pay attention.

The key to success that wins in the job market is knowing your audience. Define how you can help a company fix real problems in their market, after you understand their world and their perspectives, you can validate these findings with a mix of empirical or intuitive thinking – that’s what will get you hired.

Artificial Intelligence and The Future of Job Search

 

Some large companies receive as many as 4.5 million resumes annually. Others get 10 million applications every year. Obviously, only a tiny fraction of these applicants can get hired. Finding a new job can be a job unto itself: perfecting a resume, scanning career websites, networking among friends and acquaintances. Job searches of the future need to be a completely different experience, with technology doing most of the heavy lifting. I predict a job-hunt landscape that will look very different just a few years from now.

The Job Board

About 65% of people look for new jobs within 91 days of being hired at a job which suggests matchmaking in the search for work may be less than perfect. Those imperfections can only be fixed with data—and lots of it. The sheer amount of information on job skills, salaries and user tendencies makes matching people to positions simply impossible without using AI to crunch the numbers. the Indeed.com job board generates an average of 25 terabytes of data every day.

Skills Above All

Skills testing is the centerpiece for CodeFights, a four-year-old San Francisco-based firm that offers tech workers a platform on which to practice their coding skills and to demonstrate those skills which are

scored and rated on the CodeFights platform. This system of skills-based recruiting opens doors for programmers based largely on their proven talents and offers recruiters a true picture as to what a prospective hire can actually do. There are so many data points to consider: skills, salaries, location, personality, experience, company culture, inaccuracies in resumes or job descriptions.

Job search platforms or services will ultimately become education hubs, offering skills-building services that also rate proficiency, making it easier for job-seekers to prove their quality to employers, with whom they would be matched.

A Layer of Testing

Assessing skills specific to various industries is the name of the game for Harver, a five-year-old firm based in Amsterdam. Its specialty is having job applicants go through a testing process—chosen by hiring companies—that gauges whether they are a good match for a given position. The firm has made deals with Netflix, Booking.com, OpenTable and Zappos. It’s impossible to predict whether someone would stay in the job and do it proficiently so the firm designs algorithms and testing processes with recruiting clients to predict a good match for a job. 

A Deeper Knowledge Equals Efficiency

AI and machine-learning allow services like Indeed to make predictive assessments of factors such as what a salary should be. Calculations hone in on what wages would be appropriate for a particular job, in a specific location, or at a specific company. Exact job title also comes into play.

As for the future, job seekers will likely see a reduction in their research time while looking for work. As AI and machine-learning develop in the field, a service like Indeed should be able to suggest new, much more compatible opportunities based on a job seekers’ work experience, skills, salary, interests and location. A career-focused AI should also tell job seekers whether they are being paid fairly at their current job, with a high degree of accuracy, compared to others in their line of work. Consider this:

• In China, where there aren’t enough radiologists to keep up with the demand of reviewing 1.4 billion CT scans each year to look for early signs of lung cancer. Radiologists need to review hundreds of scans each day which is not only tedious, but human fatigue can lead to errors. Infervision trained and taught algorithms to augment the work of radiologists to allow them to diagnose cancer more accurately and efficiently.

 

• Music-generating algorithms are now inspiring new songs. Given enough input—millions of conversations, newspaper headlines and speeches—insights are gleaned that can help create a theme for lyrics. There are machines such as Watson BEAT that can come up with different musical elements to inspire composers. AI helps musicians understand what their audiences want and to help determine more accurately what songs might ultimately be hits.

 

• Using natural language processing, machine learning and advanced analytics, Hello Barbie listens and responds to a child. A microphone on Barbie’s necklace records what is said and transmits it to the servers at ToyTalk. There, the recording is analyzed to determine the appropriate response from 8,000 lines of dialogue. Servers transmit the correct response back to Barbie in under a second, so she can respond to the child. Answers to questions such as what their favorite food is are stored so that it can be used in conversation later.

 

• The AI tech revolution has hit farming as well, and John Deere is getting data-driven analytical tools and automation into the hands of farmers. They acquired Blue River Technology for its solution to use advanced machine learning algorithms to allow robots to make decisions based on visual data about whether or not a plan is a pest to treat it with a pesticide. The company already offers automated farm vehicles to plough and sow with pinpoint-accurate GPS systems and its Farmsight system is designed to help agricultural decision-making.

• UK news agency Press Association partnered with news automation specialist Urbs Media to have robots write 30,000 local news stories each month in a project called RADAR (Reporters and Data and Robots). Fed with a variety of data from government, public services and local authorities, the machine uses natural language generation technology to write local news stories. These robots are filling a gap in news coverage that wasn’t being filled by humans.

 

• • Google is using AI and satellite data to prevent illegal fishing. On any given day, 22 million data points are created that show where ships are in the world’s waterways. Google engineers found that when they applied machine learning to the data, they could identify why a vessel was at sea. They ultimately created Global Fishing Watch that shows where fishing is happening and could then identify when fishing was happening illegally.

 

• Even Disney is getting even better thanks to big data. Every visitor gets their own MagicBand wristband that serves as ID, hotel room key, tickets, FastPasses and payment system. While guest enough the convenience, Disney gets a lot of data that helps them anticipate guests’ needs and deliver an amazing, personalized experience. They can resolve traffic jams, give extra services to guests who may have been inconvenienced by a closed attraction and data even allows the company to schedule staff more efficiently.

In the span of less than 20 years, job hunting will have evolved from newspaper want ads to online job boards to social sites like LinkedIn to AI powered headhunting. Experts in the recruiting field agree that AI can help streamline the connection between employer and candidate. With the vast amounts of data collected on skillsets, job titles and salaries, AI can help job boards like Indeed make accurate predictions on hiring competition and compensation. It helps cut down on the research time for job seekers and helps employers find qualified candidates faster.

 

A Secret to Success that Few People Ever Talk About

Have you ever wondered how some people are able to achieve amazing success while others work just as hard but achieve very little? What’s their secret?

It’s consistency – building small “meta habits” that you engage in every day that keep you focused on your highest priorities.

To be consistent means to focus on the present moment while maintaining a long-term view that helps you measure your results and the impact of your daily actions. Consistency is about repeating the same actions (habits) over and over again, getting feedback from these actions and adjusting them to help you stay on track as you work towards your goal.

Even though the concept of staying consistent seems very simple on the surface, most people struggle with this idea. They find it difficult to stay consistent because there are just too many distractions. People are simply not focused, committed or disciplined enough to stick with something in the short-term for long-term results.

Keep in mind that consistency is not just about REPETITION. It’s also about EVOLUTION.

It’s not about mindlessly repeating an action over and over again. It’s about learning, growing and adapting your actions that can help lead to incremental improvements over an extended period of time. 

Preparing Yourself for Consistent Action

Before you begin taking consistent action, it’s important that you mentally prepare yourself by first establishing a goal that you would like to achieve. Then reverse engineer your goal by progressively moving from the end outcome to the present moment backward step-by-step. Take a deep look at your goal to get an understanding of how all the steps and pieces came together over time.

It’s also important to identify specific timeframes you will be working with that will keep you on track as you work toward your goal. With timeframes in place, you will work with more purpose and a sense of urgency.

There is, however, one additional question you need to be asking yourself.

What repetitive activities should I STOP doing? 

Often it’s not only what we focus on or do that matters,

it’s also what we AVOID doing that makes all the difference.

Consider for a moment the act of reading a self-development or business book for 30 minutes a day. This might not seem like a lot but reading 30 minutes a day over the course of a week is only a 3.5-hour commitment. And in 12 months, you will have read for 182 hours.

In fact, it might seem that you have gotten very little value over the first few weeks or months. Slowly but surely the seeds of new thoughts and ideas are laid, and over time you will make more and more associations and connections between what you were reading and what you already knew.

Surprisingly over time, you will have created a series of “aha” moments where suddenly everything becomes crystal clear. It was as though you suddenly woke up and saw your life and circumstances in a brand-new light.

As a result, you ended up making a different set of choices and decisions that led you down a very unique path, and your life has been transformed. And to think that it all started with just 30 minutes of reading time a day. This is the power of consistency over a period of many months and years.

Maybe you won’t even see much of a difference over the course of several months. However, over an extended period of time (sometimes over many years), as you accelerate your momentum, there will be a noticeable difference. And then one day you will look back where it all started in disbelief at the progress you have made.

Imagine a leaky faucet. Regardless of how you hard you twist the knob, it still drips. One drop at a time. Incessantly – drip, drip, drip. But put in the right environment and given enough time, that same dripping with that same consistency, can have an immense amount of power. That’s how canyons are made. Not all at once, but through the power of consistency.

Author Darren Hardy, thePublisher of Success magazine has written the ‘The Compound Effect’ to explain how we can achieve massive results in our lives through daily consistency. Making a small, consistent and insignificant action each day can generate incredible results in our lives.

Consider this.

Mai Li was studying to be a professional ballerina when tragedy struck – she lost her right arm in a car accident. For many years she was distraught, but then she met Zhai Xiaowei who as a child had lost his left leg to a tractor.

Mai had a vision that the two should dance together, but Zhai was reluctant because he had never danced before. Mai convinced him to give it a try and the two practiced every day for a year from 8am to 11pm. Zhai dropped Mai over a thousand times.

They were the first handicapped couple to enter the CCTV (China TV) national dance competition and ended up winning a Silver medal with a 99.17 score, and the highest audience vote ever.

Take a look at what Mai Li and Zhai Xiaowei consistent effort (habits) achieved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnLVRQCjh8c

The choice is yours to make.

So, what will you choose to focus on today that can change the course of your destiny, your job and your life?

Job Search Lessons from the Movie: Star Trek The Kobayashi Maru

The Star Trek simulation “Kobayashi Maru “scenario comes from the 1982 Star Trek show that places a trainee in command of a Federation Starship whose objective is to rescue the crew of the civilian starship Kobayashi Maru which is under attack by enemy Klingon warships in their territorial space.

Any decision made by the trainee is sure to result in loss of life and destruction, a “no win” scenario that is meant to test the character of the commander, rather than their skill at the helm. Captain Kirk, the commanding officer of Starship Enterprise, hacked the simulator to make a rescue possible. For many people, the rescue was achieved by cheating.

But the test was the problem and Kirk solved that problem. He didn’t hack the Kobayashi Maru to win, but rather he made it winnable. Kirk simply changed the “conditions” of the test. By changing the conditions – by evening out the odds – Kirk actually made the whole thing more fair, the opposite of cheating.

Think about this concept related to job search. You want a specific job, but you don’t have the experience listed in the job description, so you move on to another option thinking what you want is impossible and can’t be done.

The funny thing is that almost 99% of the time the things that we think are impossible are in reality merely difficult. Our brain tries to tell us that the words impossible and difficult are one in the same thing. Most of the time we haven’t actually really tried, or we haven’t gone through the effort of trying to solve the problem in a unique way.

In short, we accept no-win scenarios in our lives all the time, yet the people who seem to succeed most in life are the ones who don’t seem to believe in in no-win scenarios at all.

Which brings us to back to Star Trek and the infamous Kobayashi Maru test.

Take a 1-minute look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N-H1lz3OJ4

Perhaps the most vexing piece of the job search puzzle is that change is happening so fast and the rules of business and what gets results seems to defy what has always seemed to work in the past.  I think Captain Kirk’s idea for redefining a problem is the real solution. Consider this.

Since its debut in 2009, “Shark Tank” has produced its fair share of start-up success stories, but its most successful product is a sponge.

Yes, a sponge.

Lori Greiner offered Scrub Daddy $200,000 for a 20% stake in the company. The smiling sponge has since sold over 10 million units, made more than $50 million in sales, and secured the title as the most successful “Shark Tank” product of all time. If you told someone you could make $50 million selling sponges, they would probably say you’re crazy. Lori knew that a person’s income is almost always in direct proportion to the number of people they serve.

Maybe redefining what you need to get financial security is the secret 1^st step to develop a plan to help a company make money, save money or solve a problem.

Starting a side hustle while you are currently working is a risky proposition, but this is one time when looking for a long-term job with one employer might be riskier. Look for sustainable employment with jobs for many emoloyers (customers) that will give you an ongoing living. And don’t wait until you come up with the perfect idea. Take action now. You’ll be better off if you work out the kinks as you face them. Just get started.  So, what does this all mean?

Talent isn’t the next big thing, it’s the only thing.

In this NEW era of employment, you’ll need to do 3 things to survive by rewriting the concept of work by doing a job instead of having q job.

1. Identify your MARKETABLE talent.
2. Have a SYSTEM that utilizes technology to broadly market your talent.
3. SELL your skills tied to measurable metrics that can help a company or customer make money, solve a problem or reduce costs.

The “Tectonic Shift” of Employment Change Your “Locus of Control” by looking for Customers NOT a Job

Perhaps Captain Kirk’s idea to redefine his problem is your solution.

In Aaron Sorkin’s movie, “Steve Jobs”, when confronting John Sculley at a dramatic board meeting, Jobs said he sat in a garage with Wozniak and invented the future.

Welcome to the 4^th “tectonic shift” of employment.  In Today’s Job Market, You Need to Sell Yourself as “Talent” Not Just Someone Looking for Work. You Need to Become Your Own Personal Brand.

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