When Searching for that “Perfect Internship”

Always choose experience over money. As you read this, you are probably shaking your head thinking, “How can I take an unpaid internship and still have spending money?” Regardless of the pay, the purpose of the internship is to provide you with experience. If you shy away from unpaid or lower wage internships you could be missing out on an opportunity that could help you grow professionally and personally.

Use the connections and resources you have available. Your professors, family and friends want to help you succeed. Reach out to your network and inquire about internship openings or even if you can use them as a reference to attest to your work ethic. Also, take time to speak with your career services department. Not only can they help you tailor your resume, but they can direct you to your school’s online job resources and possibly introduce you to recruiters from companies you are interested in interning with.

Take advantage of online resources. Almost all employers have a career page on their website that links directly to open positions with their company. However, if you are unsure of a company that you’d like to work for, visit sites like <a href=”http://internships.jobs” target=”_blank”>Internships.jobs; that provide you with vetted and reliable internship opportunities from companies around the nation.

During Your Interview

Take time to showcase your personal brand. An interview is all about selling yourself and your skills to an interviewer. Use this opportunity to show how and why you’d be well suited for the position. Your interviewer will be listening for not only your skills, but to see if your personality would be well matched with the company’s culture.

Engage and connect with your interviewer. You want your interviewer to connect with you during conversation and remember you afterwards, bottom line. Turn your interview into a conversation, not a back-to-back round of question, answer, question, answer. By turning your interview into a conversation you are actively engaging your interviewer and providing he/she with meaningful points to remember about you.

Ask Questions. At the end of every interview, you have the opportunity to ask your interviewer questions. This is the part of the interview that allows you to see if this company would be a good fit for you. Make sure to have meaningful and unique questions prepared. Ask questions like, “What made you choose a career with this company? What is the culture of this company? Why do you enjoy your job?”

For the Duration of Your Internship

Ask questions— a lot of them. Rule number one of any internship: never be afraid to ask questions. You are there to learn after all, and if you don’t understand something, just ask. Your employer doesn’t expect you to know how to do everything. So if you encounter a task that is unfamiliar to you, ask questions.

Tackle your tasks with positivity and enthusiasm. Let’s face it, not every task you are given at work is going to be fun. While you may be given some “go-fer” tasks, exhibit the same amount of professionalism for small and large projects. You never know when you could receive a full-time job offer after all.

Get to Know the Industry. Jump on every opportunity available to learn more about the industry you are working in. Attend meetings, conferences and events with your team. After your internship is completed, you may not stay in the industry, but you will have done your best to educate yourself on the inner workings and may meet some great people to add to your network along the way.

Make Mistakes. While you may not want to make mistakes, you are going to. It’s human nature. At the end of the day, it’s how you learn and move forward. If you make a mistake, take ownership for your actions and your employer will appreciate your honesty and willingness to fix your mistakes.

Network and get to know fellow interns and full-timers. One of the biggest components of a job search is your network. Have you heard the phrase, “It’s all about who you know”? When job searching, that couldn’t be more correct. Build a professional relationship with full-time employees and your fellow interns. The people around you are a great source for job advice and tips that may help you land your next job.

Follow the tips above to increase your chances for success at a great internship experience. Keep in mind, even though you are there to work, you need to have fun along the way. After all, your internship may ultimately lead you to a career that you love!

Ready to search for an internship? Visit Internships.jobs. For additional advice and resources, check out our Pinterest board for job seekers, the Social Jobs Partnership page and Jobipedia.org.

The post Internship Advice: How to Land an Internship & Maximize Your Experience appeared first on DirectEmployers Association.

Each year, DiversityInc Magazine releases lists of top companies in a number of hiring and staffing areas including but not limited to diversity, disabilities, veterans and minorities. This year, we are proud to see our Member companies comprising the majority of these lists. Check out some of the stats that we pulled:

The DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for People With Disabilities
- 9 out of 10 are current DirectEmployers Members

The DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for Global Diversity
- 10 out of 10 are current DirectEmployers Members

The DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for Veterans
-7 out of 10 are current DirectEmployers Members

The DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for Recruitment & Retention
- 9 out of 10 are current DirectEmployers Members

The DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for Executive Women
- 8 out of 10 are current DirectEmployers Members

The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity
- 38 out of 50 (or 76%) are current DirectEmployers Members

Other DE Member Honors:
Top Company for Diversity-Management Progress (BASF)
Top Company for Supplier Diversity (AT&T)
Top Company for Global Cultural Competence (Monsanto)

Congratulations to our Members! We are proud to be involved with such hardworking organizations that are so dedicated to the HR profession, and hope that their jobs are made easier through Membership with our Association.

Think your organization has award-worthy initiatives? Consider entering the inaugural DirectEmployers Awards Competition! Learn more on the DEAM13 Awards page.

The post DE Members Prominent on 2013 DiversityInc Employer Recognition Lists appeared first on DirectEmployers Association.

Keyword Mapping Crosswalks
Keyword mapping crosswalks take a military code or skill (MOS/MOC) and apply a keyword(s) to it. This means when a transitioning military member searches by their MOC/MOS the mapper takes that code and applies a keyword search to it. For example if a transitioning Army Veteran searches 11B the keyword mapping at the back might apply the word “intern” and search all job/job titles for the word “intern”. Keyword mapping crosswalks make for an all inclusive mapping experience, but they are not all that accurate. Searching for jobs by keywords is always hit or miss and with most military codes its hard to narrow down the military occupation to one keyword phrase.

Skill Mapping Crosswalks
Skill mapping crosswalks apply skills to all the different job titles a company has and matches those skills to skills that have been mapped to every different military code. This means when a transitioning military member searches by their MOC/MOS the mapper takes that code and applies a set of skills that it thinks you should have. It then takes these skills and crosswalks them with the skills mapping that was set up for all of your companies different job titles/categories. For example if a transitioning Air Force Veteran searches 3C072 the skill mapping at the back might apply the skill “computer programming” and then match that skill up to all the jobs in your company where the skill “computer programming” might relate. Skill mapping crosswalks if set up properly can be very useful. The issue is that you as a company have to go into all of your jobs and apply relevant skills to them and then trust that the skills you picked will match up properly to the skills attached to MOC’s. Skill mapping crosswalks usually take a lot of time to implement and it is a painstaking process to apply skills to all of your jobs.

Occupation Mapping Crosswalks
I left this one for last, because this is how the .JOBS Veterans Crosswalk Microsite is set-up to work. Our crosswalk takes all of your jobs and applies a government standard civilian occupation to it. This is done through a program called O*NET. We have a license to the O*NET program which allows us to apply these standardized occupations to every one of your jobs. Once we have done this we take these occupations and map them to military codes. So, basically jobs get put into occupation buckets, then occupation buckets are mapped to relevant military codes. So, as long as jobs are getting put into the appropriate occupation bucket then it will map correctly to the military codes. We understand that are mapping process is not an exact science so we offer a couple options in order to allow for a more inclusive job mapping experience. First we can work directly with your company to determine if the occupation buckets your jobs are getting put in are the proper buckets, and if they are not we can offer consult on how to get them mapped to the appropriate occupation. We also allow for companies to manually add occupation to military code mappings. This means that if your company believes a certain occupation show map to a specific MOC/MOS then we can add that to your individual crosswalk. Rather than walk you through an example of how our crosswalk works, I’d rather let the platform speak for itself. Below are links to three veterans crosswalks that I would encourage you to take for a spin.

Veteran Crosswalk Examples

• Aetna-Veterans.jobs
• Eaton-Veterans.jobs
• Harris-Veterans.jobs

The post How the .JOBS Military Crosswalk Works appeared first on DirectEmployers Association.

You never know what you’re going to see in sunny San Diego! However, there is a chance you may see a helicopter rescue drill. Did you know that there are 9 Marine Corps and Naval bases in and around San Diego?

According to the United States Department of Labor, Veterans comprise 7.7% of the U.S. labor force and many reside in the area. Are you meeting your veteran hiring goals?

The DirectEmployers Annual Meeting & Conference is quickly approaching and, this year, we’ve added a pre-conference event to extend the Association’s veteran outreach and coincide with your hiring initiatives. Enter in, the Veterans Connect Career Fair on Monday, October 21, from 10 AM – 2 PM. We’ve invited all employers to bring their recruiters and promotional materials, talk with vets and, perhaps, interview onsite. If you are interested in participating, please visit vetconnect.directemployers.org.

Employers can also take this week in October to help underwrite the conference, show support for DirectEmployers, and exhibit in the DEAM13 Expo Hall. For more information regarding underwriter opportunities, please visit the Underwriters page.

The post The Employment Line, Episode 4: Veterans Career Fair Announced for DEAM13 appeared first on DirectEmployers Association.

Digital Recruitment Challenge

A growing trend among our Member companies in the retail space is the need to develop a strategy around smartly and effectively highlighting evergreen positions. Evergreen jobs are jobs that are always open or fresh for a specific company. These are jobs were the company is not necessarily hiring at the moment, but they are perpetually looking for good candidates to fill the roles. These type of jobs are the ones always in need and having these jobs posted and helping to build a talent pipeline makes for a more efficient recruitment cycle on them. REI is a member company that has a lot of Evergreen positions. At this moment REI has over 1,640 jobs open. Of these 1,640 85 would be considered regular current openings and 1,555 would be considered evergreen positions or jobs where REI is currently accepting applications. The challenge with these jobs is that it is extremely important to highlight or differentiate Evergreen jobs from current openings. Through the use of .JOBS Microsites, the wildcard facet feature, and the featured jobs upgrade, REI has been able to seamlessly merge there two types of jobs into one jobs platform, while maintaining elements that announce to job seekers the differences of the jobs.

.JOBS Microsite Solution

REI.jobs has been able to solve the evergreen challenge through two different features available on .JOBS Microsites. The two features along with screenshots are shown below.

Wildcard Facet

On every one of REI’s .JOBS Microsites there are filters for State, City, and Job Title. REI has also added a filter where it filters jobs by “Status”. This filter takes REI’s jobs and breaks them down into two buckets. They have jobs where they are just “Accepting Applications” and they have jobs that are considered “Current Openings”. Giving this as an option to filter by makes it clear when job seekers are filtering jobs that there are two different types of jobs in the system.

Featured Jobs

The other element that REI is using on its .JOBS Microsites to highlight Evergreen jobs from current openings is the featured jobs upgrade. This feature allows for a specific subset of jobs to be highlighted differently from the rest. When filtering jobs or doing searches on REI’s microsites, the jobs that are currently open float to the top, they are highlighted subtly, and there are small logos added to them. This feature is best seen through screenshots and by visiting the site yourself.

Results

This thought out process on Evergreen jobs and the use of 25 .JOBS Microsites has lead to huge increases in SEO traffic and job seeker interaction on REI’s microsites.

The post .JOBS Mini Case Study – Evergreen Jobs appeared first on DirectEmployers Association.

Source: Metro.us

In today’s job market, it is nearly impossible to find employment without a bachelor’s degree, and oftentimes without a master’s degree. Unfortunately, recent college grads may still have trouble securing a professional position. The good news is, according to a report released last month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for individuals having recently earned bachelor’s and advanced degrees is experiencing a downward trend—albeit still high as compared to pre-recession days¹.

In an effort to find a job, grads have to get creative in their search and implement more aggressive tactics. If you are preparing to don a cap and gown and head out into the business world late this spring, take a few of these tips into consideration prior to your job search.

Get an Internship
While obtaining a permanent, full-time position would be the best-case scenario, it is smart to take any opportunity that you can get. Internships are a great way to gain experience, network, and get your foot in the door with a company. If you do a good job, you may end up being offered a full-time position in the end. In the very least, you will have real-world experience to bring to another company. Interested in an internship? Search and apply for one in your area of expertise at Internships.jobs.

Attend Career Fairs
Whether virtual, through your school, or a public event, career fairs are a beneficial means to finding employment. These free events should be included in your job searching agenda and are meant to connect you with potential employers, allowing you to showcase your skills and experience face-to-face interaction with recruiters.

Create an Online Portfolio
Depending on what line of work you hope to be in, you may find it beneficial to have a compilation of your work prepared for an employer to review. Compile research papers, projects and work samples, along with a resume and professional headshot, into a simple website. This is your brand and it should represent you well. Want a more simple solution? Beef up your LinkedIn profile and include your past experience, contact information and current employment objective.

Start Networking
You’ve heard the phrase, “It’s all about who you know.” Well, that phrase couldn’t be truer. Networking and building connections is a task that begins in college and never truly ends throughout the duration of your career. Find networking events in your city and make plans to attend, create a LinkedIn profile, and start connecting. This is a great way to acquire interviews and foster professional relationships that could be useful in the future.

Reach Out to Your Existing Contacts
Go through all of the contacts you have acquired through past positions, career fairs, school events, and personal connections and reach out to see if they know of any open positions you may be a good fit for. You never know where there might be an unadvertised opportunity waiting for you.

The key is to be proactive and start your search sooner rather than later—don’t take the summer off. Take the initiative, show an employer why they should offer you a position, and don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t happen right away. Simply enjoy your last days as a college student and make plans to hit the ground running post-graduation!

Looking for tips on crafting a stellar resume? Get helpful tips and advice in this post regarding what employers want to see on a resume.

Source:
1 – Bureau of Labor Statistics; http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2013/ted_20130405.htm

The post Summer 2013 Jobs Outlook: 5 Tips for Soon-to-be Grads appeared first on DirectEmployers Association.

In preparation for the busy conference season ahead, we’ve put together some tips to help you get the most out of the events you may attend.

Make Plans Pre-Conference
We’ve got a great agenda this year, jam-packed with a number of can’t-be-missed sessions in our recruiting, compliance and leadership tracks. To make things a little less hectic, plan out which sessions you wish to attend ahead of time. This will give you more time to network, browse the expo hall and enjoy the experience!

Share the Knowledge Post-Conference
In order to bring what you learned back to the office (and to ensure that you are approved to come back next year), provide your supervisor and fellow department members with a write-up of key takeaways and suggestions on how you can implement them in your organization.

Put Your Smartphone Away
While it may be tempting to check email on your mobile devices every few minutes, try turning them off during the sessions and direct all of your attention to the event. You came to network and learn—wait until breaks or later in the evening to catch up on your emails and work tasks.

Part Ways with Your Team
Attending with your co-workers? While it may be tempting to stick together, try splitting up and attending a variety of sessions. Be sure to take notes and share the knowledge with one another post-event. There may be some really great tips to be acquired from sessions you might otherwise have missed.

Take Advantage of Evening Social Events
If you have a free night, take the opportunity to take in the sights of the area with your new connections – head to dinner or enjoy the nightlife as a group. Bonding over shared experiences could lead to beneficial business opportunities in the future!

Join the Conversation
From asking questions during the Q&A sessions to getting involved through social media, being conversational is crucial to getting the most of your experience. If there is something you want to learn from a speaker that wasn’t covered in the presentation, don’t be afraid to ask. And tweeting with the designated conference hashtag is another way to connect with other attendees, while sharing points of the presentations that resonate with you. Get a conversation going and make plans to meet up!

Bring and Collect Business Cards
Networking is a major component of attending a conference. The quickest way to share your contact information with another attendee is to swap business cards. There are also great apps available, such as CardMunch, which enable you to capture images of business cards with your mobile device and add the information directly to your contacts list. Post-conference, connect on the various social media networks and reach out with a simple, “It was nice meeting you and I look forward to staying in touch” message. A little goes a long way!

DirectEmployers will be at many upcoming conference include NACE 2013 Conference & Expo, HCI Strategic Talent Acquisition, SHRM 2013 Annual Conference & Exposition and the 2013 ILG National Conference. To see all events we’ll be attending, presenting or exhibiting, visit our Network with Us page.

The post Conference Survival Guide appeared first on DirectEmployers Association.

Indianapolis, IN –Today, DirectEmployers Association announces its partnership with jobipedia.org, a website that provides an online job portal in addition to personal, free and timely answers about job searches and the workplace directly from active company recruiters.

Members of HR Policy Association, representing over 340 chief human resource officers of America’s largest companies, created Jobipedia.org. HR Policy Association members believe that, despite other available resources, many of today’s graduates lack some basic professional skills such as how to behave in an interview or to assimilate into the workplace. Jobipedia.org helps these graduates and other job seekers by directly answering their questions and building a searchable database of other questions and answers. Jobipedia.org topics include interviewing, resumes, compensation, appropriate attire and workplace behavior. Jobipedia.org not only provides credible and reliable job-related information, but it also allows job seekers to interact directly with experienced corporate recruiters, a feature no other website can provide on this scale.

“We are members of both HR Policy and DirectEmployers Association, so it’s exciting to see these organizations come together on such an important workforce development initiative. Both Associations are always looking to improve the labor market and this effort illustrates that commitment. The combination of resources and technology will really benefit both employers and job seekers for a long time to come,” said Carrie Corbin, Associate Director of Strategic Staffing and Talent Attraction, AT&T.

In conjunction with Jobipedia, WeHireAmerica.jobs was created to be included in the ongoing effort, to help attract qualified applicants to fill more than a quarter of a million existing jobs* for workers at all skill levels in the United States. WeHireAmerica.jobs is operated through a partnership between HR Policy Association and DirectEmployers Association, a nonprofit HR consortium of leading global employers. By combining the resources of these two organizations, WeHireAmerica.jobs is able to feature job openings of more than 300 of the nation’s largest employers.

“Our partnership with DirectEmployers Association has been an incredible help in our efforts to develop tools to assist job seekers. From their support and guidance on our jobipedia.org steering committee to their technical expertise in building our job board WeHireAmerica.jobs, DE has been a fantastic resource of support and guidance,” said Jaime Fall, Vice President, Workforce and Talent Development Policy, HR Policy Association.

Since the test launch of jobipedia.org, in October 2012, professional recruiters from HR Policy member companies, many of which also belong to DirectEmployers Association, have posted more than 1,200 personalized responses to questions. Over 60 of the nation’s leading colleges and universities provide links to the site from their career services websites, including Cornell, Duke, Georgia Tech, NYU, Ohio State, University of San Diego, University of Missouri-Kansas City and Tufts.

About DirectEmployers Association
DirectEmployers Association is a leading nonprofit Human Resource consortium of global employers that was formed to assist in the sharing of ideas, incorporation of best practices, and research and development of technology. Through this consortium, business standards are shaped and technology is used with respect to the diversity that is reflected in the various cultures embodied in a global workforce. Their recognized expertise in compliance, recruitment and cost effective technology enables Members to reach the largest, most diverse pool of quality job seekers worldwide. For more information visit www.directemployers.org.

About HR Policy Association
HR Policy Association is the lead organization representing chief human resource officers of major employers. The Association consists of more than 340 of the largest corporations doing business in the United States and globally, and these employers are represented in the organization by their most senior human resource executive. Collectively, their companies employ more than ten million employees in the United States, nearly nine percent of the private sector workforce, and 20 million employees worldwide. They have a combined market capitalization of more than $7.5 trillion. These senior corporate officers participate in the Association because of their commitment to improving the direction of human resource policy. Their objective is to use the combined power of the membership to act as a positive influence to better public policy, the HR marketplace, and the human resource profession. For more information visit www.hrpolicy.org.

Media Contacts:
Nancy Holland, DirectEmployers Association, 317-874-9022, nancy@directemployers.org

The post DirectEmployers and Several of its Member Companies Partner with jobipedia.org to Offer Job Seeker Advice and a Jobs Database appeared first on DirectEmployers Association.

Ani started working at DirectEmployers as an intern just over a year ago and quickly became an integral member of the product development team. Although she’s only been here for a short time, her contributions have been invaluable to the Product Development team.

SmartFile, a business file sharing and FTP hosting platform built on an open source API, put on the competition. As explained in SmartFile’s press release, the contest challenged Indiana college students to “develop an open source application that interacts with the newly released SmartFile API over a period of 50 days.”

After qualifying for finals, Ani and her teammate presented a five-minute pitch to five of Indianapolis’ top business leaders. Submissions were judged in the following areas: Innovation, Utility, Use of SmartFile Platform, Design and User Experience.

Ani receiving the prize for winning the SmartFile contest. Photo from: http://www.smartfile.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bake-off-winners.jpg

Rick Wehrle, VP of Product Development at DirectEmployers is thrilled. “Ani has balanced school and work as a part-time intern with DirectEmployers, and also had time to enter and win the SmartFile contest! Recently Ani has been leading the development of My.jobs, a new web site currently in beta, for job seekers to privately manage and control their job search experience. My.jobs is being developed as open-source software. Check out Ani’s GitHub profile (https://github.com/stemchan), and her code contributions to My.jobs in the public GitHub repository (https://github.com/DirectEmployers/MyJobs).”

You can read the official press release from SmartFile on the Wall Street Journal website for more details on the 2013 SmartFile Platform Bake-Off. We are so happy for you Ani, congratulations!

The post DirectEmployers Software Developer Wins Big in Open Source Programming Competition appeared first on DirectEmployers Association.

Q: Data Robot, every week you have graphs and tables showing pages indexed, impressions, visits, conversions, and CTR (Click Through Rate).  Can you define each of those for me?

A: Great Question, below are the individual metrics with definitions.

Pages Indexed = Amount of Unique Pages that Google Sees from your site.  Google goes out and crawls websites on a daily or weekly basis depending on the popularity of your site. The amount of unique pages that their bots crawl is the pages indexed for that site.

Impressions = How many times your .JOBS microsite was presented to a job seeker on Google, could be loosely defined as how many times did you rank well enough in a Google search to be seen.

Visits = How many people visited this site, if a person visits multiple times it counts towards the total

Conversions = How many people click apply on a job, click your talent community button, or click on one of your social media links at the bottom of the microsites.

CTR (Click Through Rate) = Percentage of visits that turn into conversions

The post Google Analytics Question of the Week – Stat Definitions appeared first on DirectEmployers Association.