Are you currently trying to find a job and looking for advice? Angie Grilliot with UnitedHealth Group offers her advice on how to take a step back and ask yourself, “What is it that I want to do?” Learn more about how being able to communicate where you have been and where you want to be in your career can help set you apart from other job seekers.

The Help Wanted blog is brought to you by DirectEmployers, a non-profit association of global employers, which provides simple, sophisticated solutions for Human Resources and Recruitment.

Make the most of your job search so you can land the job you have been searching for. Learn more about the five ways you can maximize and how to prepare yourself upcoming interviews.

The Help Wanted blog is brought to you by DirectEmployers, a non-profit association of global employers, which provides simple, sophisticated solutions for Human Resources and Recruitment.

Matt Luther, National Military Recruiting Director, Cintas

Entering the recruiting world was a strange journey according to the Cintas National Military Recruiting Director, Matt Luther. His role after the military gave him insight into what he was truly passionate about, helping other serviceman transition into the civilian workforce. Since he accepted the position in 2010, Matt has been helping expand the military recruitment program and increase their recruitment outreach through the use of DirectEmployers service offerings.

When asked about free time, like many other members, Matt Luther claims he doesn’t have much between his children’s baseball and soccer games. “I’d really like to tinker around with a ’67 Corvette, so Honey if you’re reading this, that’s what I’d like for my next birthday,” he said jokingly during our chat. But his sense of humor is met with endearing pride and duty when it comes to his roles as both Military Recruiting Director for the Cintas Corporation and Chief Warrant Officer 4 in the Ohio National Guard.

During our conference last fall, Matt took some time aside to discuss how his military experience has impacted his perspective on recruiting, the extremely successful military recruiting efforts at Cintas, and how he benefits from the DirectEmployers membership.

Nancy: Could you share how you got to the position you’re in and how your military experience has parlayed into your perspective on recruiting?

Matt: It has been kind of a strange journey getting into the recruiting world. I was in the Army for 9 years as a helicopter pilot. I left in 2001 and was recruited by a military recruiting firm to a supervisory role at Target Corporation. After a few different roles at different logistics companies, I soon realized I wasn’t a big fan of logistics management.

As I was coming out of the service I had quite a few sales companies that wanted me to come work for them. Typically people getting out of the military don’t think that’s a role they would pursue. They often don’t feel comfortable with it because they haven’t done it before so they don’t know how it’s going to work or have concern about living on a commissions check. In any case, I was trying to find a new role in 2006 after mine was eliminated. I went to work for Recruit Military as an account executive in Cincinnati and worked with local, regional and nationwide businesses to help them structure and find ways to recruit military veterans into their job opportunities.

I learned a lot in that role about recruiting and about all of the different methodologies, or lack of methodologies, that companies had for bringing veterans onboard and to work for them. Also, I learned that coming from an Army background, you’d be surprised how little somebody in the Army may know about what somebody does in the Air Force, or Navy or the Marine Corps. So I learned a lot about what other service members do in a lot of the different occupational specialties throughout the military. I also discovered a passion for helping veterans and became involved in some volunteer organizations outside of work as well.

In 2009, I went to Iraq with my Ohio National Guard Unit and when I came back, there was an opportunity to work for Cintas. After a few months in the interview process, I was offered the position and started in May of 2010, filling the shoes of Sally Hart, who built the military program at Cintas. We’ve had this military recruiting program for 20 years.

Nancy: What does Cintas do well with the military recruiting program that other companies might learn from?

Matt: I think one thing about Cintas, as I mentioned, is that they’ve had a military recruiting program for 20 years. It’s never been the “flavor of the week” at Cintas. It’s part of our company’s core culture. Dick Farmer, who founded Cintas and is our Chairman Emeritus was a Marine Corps Officer back in the 50’s. As we faced growth problems back in the 90’s, we didn’t know where to get the bench strength for our future general managers. Dick knew we could find this strength from the Marine Corps, as it was part of his background. Eventually Dick realized that it wasn’t just his affinity for veterans and service members that made this beneficial, but that it was also good business sense. These are people who are going to be able to come in, hit the ground running, and are able to learn the ropes very quickly. Otherwise, we could have forestalled our growth plan without this bench to draw from – so that’s how this program started.

Over the past 20 years we’ve expanded to all the other services as well as both officer and enlisted ranks. All of this is a big part of the reason we have such a good funnel of Veterans reaching out to Cintas. We’ve put our name out there, advertised, have a web presence, and a military recruiting webpage. All those different things make people think about Cintas when they’re getting out of the service. And, there’s a lot to be said about the military and word of mouth because people talk to one another, they stay in touch, they become good friends and they rely on their friends’ opinions, oftentimes when they’ve already made the transition.

Nancy: From a military recruiting perspective, what are some of the DirectEmployers member benefits that you find attractive?

Matt: You never know where a military person is going to go look when they’re getting out of the service. We do a lot of advertising to the military in print to let them know about opportunities with Cintas, but at the same time, we just don’t know where they’re going to go look. People in the military are so diverse and they come from so many different backgrounds. DirectEmployers is great for that because of the fact that our jobs get distributed too so many places around the web.

The other thing I think is really important, and again this is something that has a lot of meaning to me, is that oftentimes we talk about the people who are getting out of the military now, but there are many people who got out of the military some time ago. And of course with unemployment the way it is, many of our military veterans are unemployed. Not only those who are transitioning, but those who have been out for some period of time as well. The DirectEmployers Association’s relationship with NASWA is very valuable in order for us to be able to reach that population.

There are of course DVOPs and LVERs who help get them in touch with employers and resources, but when they’re going to the state workforce agencies, they’re finding our opportunities and getting back in touch with us. So that to us is a very valuable relationship. It’s great to know that our positions are getting distributed out there and that we are reaching so many more places than if we just had a relationship with a job board. Or just posting jobs through our applicant tracking system, and reaching out through social media and hoping that was good enough. So the DirectEmployers relationship is very important in order to be able to “shotgun” our jobs to so many boards on a regular basis in a very well thought out manner.

A special thank you to Matt for sharing his story. Matt also participated in the Social Jobs Partnership by sharing helpful advice on how service men and women can highlight their experience in the military. Check out the video of him at: http://vimeo.com/36450718.

Searching for a job and need advice from a recruiters standpoint? Dennis Smith with St. Jude Medical talks about connecting with employers on a personal level and focusing on quality over quantity when it comes to your outreach methods. Learn what he feels are great ways to not spread yourself thin and make yourself noticed during your job search.

The Help Wanted blog is brought to you by DirectEmployers, a non-profit association of global employers, which provides simple, sophisticated solutions for Human Resources and Recruitment.

• 3 Tips for improving your SEO strategy for recruitment
• Upcoming Employers Connect to focus on social media in recruiting, 4212 and 503 compliance, advanced talent acquisition practices and maximizing limited resources – bonuses include networking with other member companies, AND receiving HRCI credits for attending
• Fun fact in honor of Mother’s Day

Keeping you connected, with no waiting—The Employment Line. Thank you for watching.

The Employment Line is brought to you by DirectEmployers, a non-profit association of global employers, which provides simple, sophisticated solutions for Human Resources and Recruitment.

An internship program is among the most effective tools organizations have to identify, recruit, and hire college talent, enabling organizations to build a relationship with top students early in their college careers, before they are actually in the market for a job).

The internship program also provides the organization with a key advantage over competitors: The organization can extend a job offer to the intern at the conclusion of the summer internship—before the student returns to school for the fall recruiting season and before other organizations have a chance to compete for the student’s interest.

In NACE’s 2012 Internship & Co-op Survey, overall, organizations with a formal college relations and recruiting program reported that 42 percent of their new college hires were from their own internship programs.

The internship program, however, also provides ROI on the other end. NACE’s survey found that former interns have a higher retention rate than their peers who did not do an internship.

But not all internship programs are created equal, and those that are poorly organized or mismanaged can be costly and yield little.

Below are five best practices to building a top-notch, effective program to feed your full-time college hiring efforts:

1. Pay your interns.
   There are two key reasons why you need to pay your interns, if you expect your program to help you recruit full-time hires: First, you want to ensure that you have the best students available to you—not just those students who can afford to forgo a paycheck for the summer. Second, there are legal hurdles associated with unpaid internships that can make it difficult to give your interns meaningful assignments. Without meaningful assignments, there is no way to assess the intern as a potential employee. (Note: NACE publishes salary/benefits information for interns. See NACE’s Guide to Compensation for Interns & Co-ops at www.naceweb.org/research/intern-wages-compensation/2012-survey/.)
2. Provide real work assignments, not busy work.
   Providing interns with real work is number one to ensuring your program’s success. Interns should be doing work related to their major, that is challenging, that is recognized by the organization as valuable, and that fills the entire work term.

   You can guarantee that hiring managers provide real work assignments by checking job descriptions, emphasizing the importance of real work assignments during a manager/mentor orientation sessions, and communicating with interns frequently throughout the work term to determine who they perceive what they are doing.

3. Hold orientations for all involved.
   It’s important that everyone “be on the same page,” so hold an orientation session for managers and mentors as well as a session for students. Orientations ensure that everyone starts with the same expectations and role definitions.
4. Provide interns with a handbook and/or website.
   Whether in print/PDF or presented as a special section on your website, a handbook serves as a guide for students, answering frequently asked questions and communicating the “rules” in a warm and welcoming way.

   You may also want to maintain a separate website for interns, which you can use as communication tool, with announcements from the college relations staff or articles of interest written by the interns themselves.

5. Have an intern manager.
   Having a dedicated manager is the best way to ensure that your program runs smoothly and stays focused on your criteria for success. Unfortunately, the size and resources available to most internship programs mean that this isn’t always possible. If your program isn’t big enough to warrant a dedicated full-time staff member, an excellent short-term solution is to hire a graduate student (look for a student working toward an advanced HR degree) to be your intern, and put this college relations intern in charge of the daily operation of the internship program. This gives the interns a “go-to” person, and gives you and your staff a break from the many daily tasks involved in running a program of any size. For this to work, you have to plan the program structure in advance (don’t expect your intern to do it), and be accessible to your college relations intern.

Get more best practices for internship programs at “15 Best Practices for Internship Programs” at www.naceweb.org/recruiting/15_best_practices/, and access the executive summary from NACE’s 2012 Internship & Co-op Survey at www.naceweb.org/intern-co-op-survey/.

INDIANAPOLIS, April 26, 2012 /BusinessWire/ — To help address the high unemployment rate, DirectEmployers Association, a nonprofit consortium of global employers, continues to focus on creating a local job network that better connects job seekers with employers. Through a network of metropolitan and city-focused .JOBS microsites, job seekers can easily find local jobs and employers can benefit from the efficiency of the niche listing opportunities.

Finding metro-focused sites will be the simplest task for job seekers. Instead of using traditional search field methods, job seekers will be able to input their metro location followed by the .JOBS extension. For example, instead of using Google or Bing to search for jobs in the New York metro area, job seekers can enter http://newyorkmetro.jobs/ into their browser. They will then be directed to the New York metro jobs microsite with employment opportunities available in that area. While traditional job boards focus on being general and all-inclusive, DirectEmployers metro-focused sites showcase only job opportunities within that city or metro-area. “So many times employers are pigeonholed into placing a job listing in a general job board that doesn’t focus on location. The majority of job seekers are searching for job opportunities in their local market,” commented Rick Wehrle, Vice President of Product Development, DirectEmployers Association.

Benefits of the metro-focused microsites don’t just extend to job seekers. Employers can target metro areas where they recruit heavily, allowing their job opportunities to be properly positioned and increase traffic to their career sites. “Compliance and job delivery to state workforce agencies have always been a focus of DirectEmployers. In addition to compliance efforts and partnership outreach, we are enthusiastic about further product development opportunities that help unite job seekers and employers. With the further development of .JOBS metro-focused microsites, we are able to maximize our membership offerings and assist in furthering recruitment reach,” said Bill Warren, Executive Director, DirectEmployers Association. While more products are set to release this coming year, the team at DirectEmployers continues to push for more innovation through technical advances.

About DirectEmployers Association

DirectEmployers Association is a leading nonprofit HR consortium of global employers that was formed to assist in the sharing of ideas, incorporating of best practices and research and development of technology where labor practices are concerned. 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. Our recognized expertise in compliance, recruitment and cost effective technology enables our members to reach the largest, most diverse pool of quality job seekers worldwide.

MEDIA CONTACT: Nancy Holland, Vice President of Marketing, DirectEmployers Association, +1-317-874-9022, nancy@directemployers.org

ETA and BLS Leaders Meet with NASWA Representatives

On March 31, 2012, NASWA representatives met with Jane Oates, Assistant Secretary of USDOL’s Employment and Training Administration and Jack Galvin, Deputy Commissioner, Bureau of Labor Statistics, to discuss ways to improve Labor Market Information.

LMI Committee Chair Jay Rowell (IL) led the effort via telephone with Executive Director Rich Hobbie assisting. LMI Committee members attending included Steve Saxton (CA), Sue Mukherjee (PA), Rebecca Rust (FL) and James Moore (DC) while Evilina Tainer-Loescher (IL) participated via telephone.

The meeting was the first among Assistant Secretary Oates, BLS Deputy Commissioner Galvin and the LMI Community to begin a discussion on the future of the federal-state partnership in the development and use of labor market information (LMI).

While there was acknowledgement that declining federal funds makes the process difficult, NASWA encouraged ETA Assistant Secretary Oates and BLS Deputy Commissioner Galvin to help foster an environment where ETA, BLS and the Workforce Information Council (WIC) are working in a cooperative fashion so products and services can easily be shared among all the federal partners and the states. (The Workforce Information Council, established by the Workforce Investment Act and funded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, acts with other Federal agencies and State employment statistics agency representatives to plan, guide, and oversee the nationwide workforce information system.)

NASWA pointed out that Federal domestic discretionary spending has been cut recently and faces another cut under in January 2013 of nearly 10 percent. LMI programs are likely to be hit by this cut and other cuts as the federal government tries to reduce annual budget deficits and national debt. Funding for BLS and ETA has been declining already along with funding for their LMI programs. The BLS is coping with the declines in funding by paring programs and centralizing some operations, such as the current employment statistics (CES) program. ETA recognizes states are receiving less, but still expects the workforce system to be data-driven, a goal also shared by the States.

NASWA is hopeful this meeting will be the first among many for BLS, ETA and the States to work together and develop plans in the face of continuing budget cuts.

How to get the most out of your membership with the “Owning Your Membership” webinar series; Annual Conference (DEAM12), recruiting volunteers for committees; tip about social media in recruiting; SEILG Conference; #rethinkDE; Employers Connect, May 16th in Newark, NJ

Keeping you connected, with no waiting—The Employment Line. Thank you for watching.

The Employment Line is brought to you by DirectEmployers, a non-profit association of global employers, which provides simple, sophisticated solutions for Human Resources and Recruitment.

I’ve been a heavy networker for several years, and one thing I can absolutely count on when I attend a networking event is that I will never see a single “back office” person at the event. It’s always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS the sales and marketing people.

Always.

We’ve heard all the reasons why this is so: They’re the “face” of the company. You don’t do sales or marketing. Office people aren’t “people people.” Everything you need to do your job can be found right here in the building.

Bull!

There are professional associations and networking groups for just about any profession you’d care to name. I’ve attended meetings and gatherings of technical writers, purchasing managers, foundry production managers, printing professionals, sign makers, and even HR professionals.

Everyone has had something to contribute to each other, to their association, and even to their industry. But where the really great networking happens is when someone shows up to a meeting they normally wouldn’t attend, simply because the two industries are related, even a little.

What would happen if a technical writer and a printing professional met? Or a foundry production manager and a purchasing manager? Or even an HR professional and a sign maker?

I don’t know either, but I’m willing to bet you could see some pretty cool stuff happen.

So Why Should RECRUITERS Attend Networking Events?

Because it’s going to make your job easier. It’s going to make it possible to find the professionals you’ve been searching for.

Let’s say your job involves recruiting a lot of computer software engineers. Where are you going to find them? Online is going to be your best bet, but it’s not the only place. You can stand out from your competition — yes, you have competition: other recruiters who are trying to win those same professionals — by going to the places where those computer software engineers gather.

No, not Star Trek conventions.

User groups. Association meetings. Networking groups. Conferences and conventions.

Because even professionals in a so-called “solitary profession” like software engineering still have the need to gather with other software engineers, share information, and socialize.

The best place to find a bunch of software engineers all gathered together at once is at their meetings or conferences.

The phrase “fish in a barrel” comes to mind.

The whole point of networking is not to meet as many people as possible, or to find one person to spend talking to for an entire hour. It’s to find a few people you can find time to talk to later over coffee or lunch, develop relationships with, and possibly use as a resource to help with future recruiting efforts.

Consider attending some of the events and meetings of some of your target job candidates. Join their organizations. Serve on committees that will put you in contact with the decision makers, thought leaders, and best-connected people in the organization.

Those are the people who will know who’s looking for a job, and can refer them to you. They’re the ones you’ll call when you have an opening and need a top-notch candidate. They’re the ones who will pass the word to their networks, saying, “Janice at Global Services has an opening for a network manager, and needs to fill it yesterday.”

By getting out of the office and going to the gathering places of your target candidates, you’ll make your job much easier, and your success rate much higher. It just takes some effort and some willingness to shut off your computer and get out of the office. At least, until after you finish this blog post.

Erik Deckers is the owner of Professional Blog Service, and the co-author of Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself. His new book, No Bull**** Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing, which he wrote with Jason Falls, is in bookstores and on Amazon now.