“With the current unstable economy and rising unemployment rate, more people are heading online to search for jobs, and interestingly not just the unemployed. The career development category also grew 20 percent year-over-year among at work users, suggesting that many people are trying to build up their resumes and get a sense of the job market before the next potential layoff,” –Chuck Schilling, research director, agency & media, Nielsen Online.

In what is surely a sign of the economic times we live in today, Nielsen.com reports that there was a “20% year-over-year increase in unique visitors to career development sites, which grew from 41.5 million visitors in January 2008 to 49.7 million visitors in January 2009.” Here are some of the eye opening and interesting facts about Nielsen’s findings:

1. 65+ Age Group was the fastest growing group in the career development category increasing 41% from 2.5 million unique visitors in January 2008 to 3.6 million visitors in January of 2009 according to job blog Cheezhead.com.
   
2. Careerbuilder.com was the #1 career development “destination in January 2009, with 20.8 million unique visitors.”
3. Yahoo “Hot Jobs” was the #2 career development destination with 11.7 million visitors
4. Monster.com was the #3 career development destination with 9.5 million unique visitors

The following is a breakdown by age group the web traffic to career development sites

Courtesy Marketwire.com and Nielsen.com “Web Traffic to Career Development Sites Increases 20 Percent Year-Over-Year in January, According to Nielsen Online”

This week Susan and I spoke at a “Brown Bag” panel discussion at ProMatch in Sunnyvale. The subject of the discussion was blogging for job seekers. Before we could discuss blogging, we provided our posit (which is coming true each day) that we formulated in Q 2 of 2008: the role of the resume has changed, there is a paradigm shift and new trend in job search, and the role of the job seeker has changed.

Your resume is no longer your #1 marketing tool in a job search, job search is being performed online via social media networks by hiring managers, and job seekers must deliver their value via the social media tools available to them.

Mounting Evidence of the Paradigm Shift: Applicant Explorer Tool

In another piece of evidence that signals the paradigm shift in job search, Careerbuilder.com recently rolled out a new feature called the Applicant Explorer on their blog TheHiringSite.com. What is The Hiring Site blog? According to careerbuilder.com:

• Social networking sites
• Professional and personal blogs
• Personal and corporate Web sites
• Press releases
• Discussion and forum postings
• Articles and news stories published online

Analysis

Careerbuilder.com is competing with Linkedin’s Application features. Linkedin features allows job seekers to stream their online content directly into their profile page. Most job seekers do not opt in to provide their online content on their Linkedin profile page. With careerbuilder’s Applicant Explorer, job seekers will not be able to hide the fact they do not have an online presence. This raises the stakes for job seekers in the continually evolving paradigm shift in job search today. Make no mistake about it, job seeker’s must deliver their value first before the resume or appear to be completely out of touch with the current job search climate.

Silicon Valley star Guy Kawasaki did not intend for his chapter “The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy” in Reality Check to be job seeker’s advice; yet the main theme is vital for any job seeker’s success. The chapter outlines 8 steps to drive your competition crazy aimed at helping entrepreneurs and corporations understand how to win at the art of business.The most valuable theme and step is “Focus on the customer.” Guy outlines the irony that entrepreneurs and businesses should not take action against the competition–don’t do anything to them but everything for the customer.

Theme: Make the Hiring Manager Happy

The idea and theme here is to ignore your competition and focus completely on a hiring manager’s happiness. Ignore the millions who are out of work and competing for the same jobs, ignore the pundits who continue to fuel the panic, ignore the negative naysayers who continue to bring your spirit down.

Instead think about what makes hiring managers happy? How about taking the task of reading resumes off their plate. What about saving them time, energy, and focus by removing the screening process that entails resumes and cover letters. Why not remove the gray areas and guess work for a hiring manager by delivering a better more revealing resource than a resume which is simply a job seeker’s listing of their value? How about removing the issue of back checking aka background checks to validate claims on a resume? Why not attempt to reduce their time wasted recruiting and looking for the right candidate for the job when you are available?

Most Hiring Managers Dislike:

• Deluge of resumes create huge time crunch
• Lost productivity in their own jobs due to resume review process
• Tasking other people from their jobs to help in the review of resumes
• Guess work involved in hoping they choose the right candidate
• Decisions about new hires ultimately reflect upon the hiring manager’s own judgment
• Lack of information or verifiable proof that job seeker can deliver their listed values in their resume

Make a Hiring Manager Happy:

• Craft your value message of expertise, accomplishments, and experience
• Establish your “employment campaign” blog that delivers your value message
• Research how you can provide value to targeted hiring managers then deliver your value message
• Write a keyword rich, descriptive, and opportunity message Linkedin profile
• Utilize Twitter to broadcast and deliver your value message
• Research your target companies for their participation in Web 2.0 blogging, social media networking, and engage them through these channel

Careerbuilder.com ran a survey (Sept ‘08) of 31,000 employers about their use of social media in screening and finding job applicants. The results include:

• More than 1 in 5 employers use social media sites to screen job applicants
• 22% of the 31,000 employers said they use social media to find human capital
• 9% more said they would begin utilizing social media sites in 2009
• 31% or nearly 10,000 employers will focus on social media as a recruiting and screening tool in 2009

The writing, pardon the pun, is on the wall. If you want to make a hiring manager happy, and help yourself, you will adopt all of the steps outlined above to help you–stand apart from the competition.

Good news does still happen. A very good article by CNN’s new partner CareerBuilder.com just came to my attention through my social media “broadcasting and research” tool Twitter.com. The CNN article is titled “13 companies hiring this year” by Careerbuilder.com’s Rachel Zupek.

I am going to provide the highlights of what each company is looking for in human capital along with the list of the 13 companies.

Tip: Go to Google and input each company name along with the word “blog.” If any of the companies interest you, it is a fundamental idea to know if they support a blog and Web 2.0 social media tools.

1. 7-Eleven: Convenience retailer

Description of Needs: “In 2009 we seek candidates for operations, accounting, information systems, merchandising and marketing.”

2. Banfield: World’s largest general veterinary practice

Description of Needs: “Our plan for 2009 calls for hiring quality associates to staff our new hospitals. . . To staff our hospitals, we are looking for veterinarians, PetNurses, office managers and client service coordinators.”

3. Farmers Insurance

Description of Needs: Entrepreneurs who want to grow their own business. They are especially interested in bilingual individuals to continue to expand their position in diverse markets.

4. Gentiva Health Services: In-home care services

Description of Needs: Nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other clinicians; as well as sales, management and administrative support professionals are in demand.

5. HealthMarkets: Health insurance provider

Description of Needs: Agents willing to build their own business.

6. ITT Corp’s Advanced Engineering and Sciences division

Description of Needs: Defense electronics and services “Our primary focus will be on candidates with a strong engineering background or those with prior military experience.”

7. M.A.R.S. International: Mobile cosmetic and reconditioning services

Description of Needs: “Technicians to execute repairs and for managers to oversee the technicians .  .  . These technicians will have some aptitude for working with their hands, enjoy working outdoors and managing their own time.”

8. PricewaterhouseCoopers: Tax and Advisory services

Description of Needs: “We’re currently looking to fill roles across our organization. We have needs in each line of service — audit, tax and advisory — as well as our internal firm services organization, such as marketing, sales, HR and IT.”

9. ServiceMaster: Landscape maintenance, restoration, pest control, home inspections cont.

Description of Needs: all positions relating to all their businesses.

10. State Farm: Insurance provider

Description of Needs: “We have opportunities in claims, underwriting and systems/IT. We are also always looking for that next State Farm agent.”

11. Sutter Health: Health care providers

Description of Needs: “From providing care at the bedside to implementing lifesaving technology and administrative professionals, there are a variety of positions available throughout our Sutter Health network.”

12. The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company/Scotts LawnService

Description of Needs: “We’re hiring for territory service representatives, sales representatives and customer service representatives.”

13. URS Corporation: Engineering, construction, and technical services provider

Description of Needs: “In 2009, we will be looking for talent in key areas such as engineering, construction management, program management, power, environmental, health and safety, homeland security, logistics, operations and maintenance and more. Positions are available at all experience levels — from new graduates to seasoned professionals.”

14. One final possibility Kaiser Permanente: Health insurance and care

Description of Needs: Physical Therapists, Senior Physical Therapists and Speech Therapist II