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Resources of the Week!

1. Saw this post from Leah Allen Manning who seems to have landed back on her feet pretty quickly. Three tips - you’ve probably seen them if you’ve been following me for a while…but never hurts to highlight the successes!

2. Last week, I talked about preparing for interviews, and thought a question bank might be helpful - so here you go!

3. A round-up of recently posted jobs in the recruiting/people! And here’s another!

4. And sign up for a free networking chat!

What’s going on in the job market?

Some important news on this front that should guide anyone on the search:

1. Job openings are declining - there are still 8.49M jobs posted but that’s down about 300k from about 2 months ago. The good news here is that this is above pre-pandemic job openings, but the bad news is that it’s still fewer openings.

2. Friday’s US jobs report is expected to show about 240k new positions added to payrolls in April - down from 303k in March.

3. ADP is reporting that wage growth for job changers is 9.3% - good news here is that changing jobs DOES increase your compensation, but the bad news is, that’s down from over 10% a year ago.

4. People are not leaving their jobs - that’s important because companies layoffs resulted in companies right-sizing - they are less likely to add new roles, but lots of openings are driven by backfills since those roles made the cut as priorities after layoffs. With fewer people leaving, there are fewer jobs for people to move into.

And we’re headed into the “Summer Slump”

No idea if this is an actual phrase or not but we’re gonna make it a thing because in my experience, hiring slows down over the summer. This is often why we see a “September Surge” - because hiring picks up after the slowdown of the summer.

Why do things slow down? Mostly because a lot of people take vacations in the summer so getting roles approved, interviewing, etc. becomes trickier. Hiring managers don’t want to kick off a process only to have delays due to interviewer availability and such.

On the recruiting side, we typically expect to see things slow down a bit through the summer..so as candidates, be prepared for that.

And we’re headed into the “Summer Slump”

No idea if this is an actual phrase or not but we’re gonna make it a thing because in my experience, hiring slows down over the summer. This is often why we see a “September Surge” - because hiring picks up after the slowdown of the summer.

So what does that mean for me?

1. Stay put. If you’re employed, don’t leave to focus on a full time search.

2. Focus on the industries that are hiring: hospitality, construction, manufacturing, healthcare, education, transportation, professional services.

3. Avoid tech. In fact tech (information) is the ONLY industry that saw a DECREASE of 4k jobs. The applicant pool for tech is growing and you’re competing against really highly qualified folks.

4. Summer is also a great time to find temp work that could carry you through until the fall.

🙋Answering Your Questions🙋

Each week, I’ll answer a few of your questions in this section. You can submit your questions here.

The first thing I want to say is that most cold outreach doesn’t get responses…a great recruiter might get responses 20% of the time - and they are offering people jobs! In sales, 2-3% can be a success! So don’t get too discouraged.

It sounds like the messages you’re sending are fine, but I would consider:

1. Is it really networking? Emailing people for help on a job search isn’t actually networking. Networking is building authentic connections with people in your industry over time. You can do that through networking groups, meeting people in your community, etc. Make sure you’re genuinely reaching out to connect with someone, and build that connection authentically before asking for help.

2. What are you asking of people? If you’re asking for a meeting, they may not respond because saying no feels rude, but they have no reason to meet. If you’re asking them to look at your profile or refer you to jobs, this may feel like work for them. Asking to “pick someone’s brain” is often seen as asking for unpaid labor by many.
   When it’s more like “I applied for a job with your company, please let me know if you have any additional questions” or “I just submitted an application and would love to hear your insights into what the team is looking for”, they may be more likely to respond.

3. Do you have a connection? People are more likely to respond when your name is familiar to them, a mutual connection introduces you, etc. So engage with their content, look for people who have common backgrounds (maybe you’re from the same city, went to school together, etc.) and try to drop that.

4. What’s in it for them? Consider offering to buy them a coffee (you can send a gift card!) or offering some support. They will usually decline the offer, but it may catch their interest and show you’re really serious about connecting and be more likely to get a response. I would NOT do this with anyone at a company you’re interested in working at (as it could be viewed as trying to bribe them) but if you’re genuinely networking with people in your industry, you might give this a try!
   

This will really vary based on your company’s policies. Most companies do not benchmark against inflation, they benchmark against the job market for their industry. So in many cases, the market hasn’t moved (or even dropped) the last few years so wages are stagnant, and performance is the primary driver of increases.

You also want to know the process for compensation changes. For example, at every employer I’ve had, these have been done across the company annually and the process was managed consistently so no one needed to ask for a raise. So if there’s a standard timeline and process, then you may need to align with that (though the fact that it’s been 2 years makes me think there’s not).

Make sure you understand your company’s compensation philosophy so you can align your request with your policies.

I would probably anchor most heavily on your impact. Show how your work has aligned to making the company money, saving the company money, driving efficiency, etc. Show how you’ve taken on more work or more complex work while staying at the same compensation. If your work is helping the company be more successful, they have more incentive to pay you more.

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