Glen Cathey the Boolean Man!

Yesterday I attended the Tuesday part of the weekly Tuesday/Thursday lunch chat with Maureen at Magic Method. The topic vary but almost always phone sourcing but sometimes sourcing as a whole (internet & phone). Being a corporate recruiter it serves me twofold: one I get to learn about new and different sourcing techniques and second I get to hear what is going happing in the agency world.

This Tuesday we had a special presenter Glen Cathey who shared with us some of his thoughts, techniques, and logic on how he approaches his internet searches Boolean style. He also took some time to put together some search strings for us to get a real life example of how this thing actually works. I am actually working on a pretty niche search and have been able to apply some of his techniques.

Subscribe to Glen’s blog it will make you better. If you don’t…well it will be your loss.

Don’t Lie on Your Resume!!!!

Here is an article about the President of Tetra Tech getting demoted because of discrepancies in his education. He has over 40 years of experience in the industry but due to these discrepancies he has been demoted. The lesson here…DON’T LIE ON YOUR RESUME or any other document. This guys was the President; do you think that they would have any problem getting rid of anyone else? Nope, so keep that resume up to date and honest.

True personal story – I sent a guy to interview for a mid level position and asked if he graduated from the university on his resume his answer was “not exactly” not the right answer. It was a YES or NO. It is ok to put that you attended the university and even what you were studying but do not elude that you graduated unless you actually have! Needless to say he did not get the job and we did not work with him anymore after that. What sucks is that he was actually a great candidate.


Here is a link to the Tetra Tech article.

http://enr.ecnext.com/coms2/article_necoar081008a

Rejection Letter

This was sent to me when I asked the question on Linkedin regarding rejection letters to send out to candidates that we will not be considering. In the recent weeks there as been some conversation on ERE groups regarding sending rejection letters and closing the gaps with applicants. I agree that applicants that fit the job description should be contacted to close the loop but when people reply to your posting that can not in anyway be considered a candidate they need to get something like this.

This letter is only reserved for those folks at there who don’t take the time to read the job description. Please feel free to make any additions or submit your own letters.

*Note - this letter was sent to me from a Linkedin question regarding rejection letters. I laughed to I feel the need to share


Dear Candidate

Thank you for submitting your resume. Unfortunately, we are unable to consider you for this position.

While not expressly stated in the position description, one of the primary required skills is "reading comprehension". Based on the submission of your resume for this position, we are confident that you may be lacking in this regard. There was no match whatsoever between our requirements and your resume.

We understand that sometimes there are other factors that result in a mismatch between an applicant's skills and a position description. Perhaps your resume was submitted by vandals, or maybe applying for our opening was the only way to extricate yourself from being eaten by wolves. If this is the case, we here at [company] understand.

But we still won't consider you for this position.

We hope you understand, but given your history with us and all the reading involved here, we're pretty sure you won't.

Warm regards,
Director of Unqualified Candidate Rejection

QUOIN Educators Conference

Last Thursday & Friday the Quoin Foundation hosted the Educators Conference for Region 5 which includes schools in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, & Louisiana. We had two presentations and some healthy round table discussions.

On Thursday Nancy Barry spoke to us from her book When Reality Hits: What Employer Want Recent College Graduates to Know. It was a great presentation and fit the audience of industry members and educators. Our round table discussion brought up some great ideas on what universities can do to teach their students about what to expect when you come into the workforce and what we as the industry can to do train and develop those graduates.

Friday morning Joe Powell of Rice University Building Institute spoke about performance characteristics of the world's most competitive A/E/C firms as well as what will be needed to join the next generation of global market leaders. Joe Powell is the author of The New Competitiveness in Design Construction. I was not able to attend but the feedback I got about the presentation was that it was very beneficial.

I plan on writing more about Nancy's presentation since it deals strictly with college graduates and that is currently what is taking up all my time right now. Stay tuned

September HR Carnival

The new HR Carnival is up at Guerilla HR. Have a look and see what all the blog is about.

Things Learned in Construction Internship 2008

This was given to me from one of our interns this summer. It is very interesting to see what they actually "learned"



1. Most important piece of equipment on the job site: copy machine.

2. When you totally screw up in class everyone laughs at you and you fail the test. When
you totally screw up on the job, no one laughs and people die.

3. If there is a clean spot anywhere on or around your desk, you need to be assigned more work.

4. The smallest shower can turn the site into a mud hole faster than you can blink.

5. Coffee level = Productivity level

6. Desk quality is determined by distance to the copy machine.

7. It's polite to warn everyone before you send massive emails that clog the network.

8. If the architect ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

9. Never sign something unless you're damn sure it's right.

10. If you say you'll have something done by the end of the week, come hell or high water, you get it done by the end of the week.

11. The network is always clogged just after the first crack of thunder; as everyone in the office goes to weather.com at the exact same time.

13. Most everyone in construction and architecture writes in all caps, and no one really knows why.

14. Building towers before the time of computers must have really sucked.

15. Pedestrians may have the right-of-way over cars, but bulldozers have the right-of-way over everything.

16. Gasoline : Cars :: Coffee : Contractors

17. If your crane gets stuck in a muddy pit, just use your other crane to pick it up.

18. Spanglish.

19. You'd trade most of what you learned in college to know how to read a set of blue prints.

20. Anti-rain dances don't work.

21. Mixed up submittal numbers? Bad concrete pour? Rain? Just blame the intern!

22. Construction fatalities are horrifyingly common.

23. At any point in time, there are about 100 different ways to get killed on the jobsite.

24. The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

25. Never promise anything about the future until it's the past.

26. Do not, under any circumstance, let one of your sub-contractors push you around.

27. In everything you do, do it as if your going to either sue, or be sued about it.

28. Neither the Constitution or the Bill of Rights applies to interns.

29. The mere presence of a person wearing slacks and a college ring will dramatically increase productivity and safety in his immediate area.

30. If you really want to, you can keep concrete alive for 3-4 days, even in the Texas summer.

31. Rarely do accidents kill the person at fault. Instead, they normally kill someone who was doing nothing wrong.

32. Double punch Tuesdays.

33. Never delete emails; create a filing system instead.

34. Office mistakes are fixed with the "undo" button. Field mistakes are fixed with concrete chippers.

35. Lunch meetings = free food.

36. The time between 4PM and 5PM is the longest hour of the day.

37. Nothing of any substance or consequence is accomplished after lunch on Friday.

38. For the love of God, don't forget to attach the file to the email.

39. If you see someone running on a job site, follow him; He's either running to someone who needs medical attention, or away from something that's about to go catastrophically wrong.

40. Some of the scariest words a mechanical contractor can say are: "I don't think it's supposed to make that sound..."

Summer Interns

For 12 weeks each summer Austin Commercial has the opportunity to impact the next generation of builders in the form of our Summer Internship Program. This year we had a record 27 Interns in 5 locations on 18 projects. They came from 15 different universities throughout the southern half of the United States. Our Interns really enjoyed the chance to get real life construction experience that they can take back to school and apply to their studies. Here are some things that they had to say about their internship experience:

• Everyone here at St. Ann Court made it interesting and enjoyable to come out to work everyday. I remember coming in the first day, intimidated by the foreign environment and feeling completely clueless. I truly came a long way now that I look back. I definitely feel like I’m more capable in the construction and architecture field. – Tracey – St. Ann’s Court

• I really enjoyed the type of quality people that choose to work for Austin and how the company is ran. This was a great experience for me and I look forward to talking to you in the future. Stan – JW Marriott

• I had an amazing time this summer, and learned an incredible amount. For the first time, I had an internship that prepared me for the workplace, and gave me responsibilities that I would encounter in the future. The team I worked with was beyond helpful, and was great to work with/around. Again, I really appreciate the opportunity I was given, and look forward to seeing you in the fall! – JD – ASU Dorms

• I have had a very good experience working with Austin this summer, and I am very thankful I had the opportunity to participate in this summer’s internship program. Kim – Charlton Methodist Hospital

In addition to providing interns with an educational experience, Austin Commercial also uses the intern program to recruit future hires. Historically over 2/3rds of the interns that participate in our program come back to work for us.

Tip Your Hat to the Topping off of the New Omni Fort Worth

Topping out of the Omni Hotel in downtown Fort Worth that is being build by Austin Commercial.

read more | digg story

Irving Convention Center Renderings Released

The first peek at the Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas that is going to be built by Austin Commercial.

read more | digg story

HR Carnival

The new HR Carnival posting is up at McArhur’s Rant. Check it out.

Is this why recruiters have a bad name?

I just received a call from a Will who said that he was with HR and he told me that he was looking over some invoices and need to know if I had any workers under me who were not employees. I did not recognize a “Will” so I asked what department he was in and he told me he was doing accounts payable in HR. We like many large companies have our HR pieces spread out so there was a chance that we might have hired a “Will” and I did not know it. The story sounded fishy so I continued to ask some questions. “Will” essentially wanted to get a list of the contractors that we had on staff and then generate a call list to poach from. I finally got him when I asked what floor he was on and since we don’t have anyone on the 6th floor I said “nice try Will” and he hung up.

Is this the reason that why recruiters have such a bad name in our industry. Everything that came out of this guy was a complete lie. I know that it is getting difficult to find talent in such a tight market but to resort to lying? I know that sometimes I have been guilty of stretching the truth a little to get a contact to call me back but nothing to the extreme of coming in under the disguise of a fellow employee. Am I reacting to much or is this normal? “Will” is a true snake in the grass.

Career Fair Tips

“You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow This opportunity comes once in a lifetime” Eminem says in his song Lose Yourself rings true when it comes to career fairs and interviews. You get one shot to make an impression so don’t miss you chance by not being prepared. Here are a few tips for to get the most out of your time at a career fair. I will post another blog on interview tips.
Tips for a successful career fair:

• Make sure your resume is up to date – most recent job experience, contact information, organizational involvement
• Make sure you have plenty of copies of your resume - It is better to have them not need them than to need them and not have them.
• Dress appropriate for the career fair – you typically can not go wrong with a suit but business casual works.
• Know your resume forwards and backwards. This may sound like a no brainer but this is important when you are selling yourself to the company so that you can direct them to points in your resume as well as you what experience you have on there so you are not talking about something that is not on the resume.
• Research the companies that you are most interested in speaking with – find your top 5-10 companies and know what they do, where they are located and what opportunities they have.
• Sell YOURSELF – employers are there to hire people but you are not the only candidate that they are going to speak with. Be able to describe your relevant experience in detail i.e.: if you have completed and internship got into detail on what you did, your role & responsibilities, role, description of the project.
• Relate the conversation back to how you fit with the company – if you are talking about classes, relate it to how it fits with the company or role you are applying for. If you are involved in organizations relate what you do back to the position you are applying for. Be on your game and fight for the job.
• Prepare questions - get some questions together that think that you need to know about the company. What opportunities are available? What locations are hiring? How are they staged for the the future?
• Budget your time – the top companies will have many people who want to speak with them so you might have to come back a couple of times to get some one on one time or just wait until they get done with the conversation.

Remember that you are not the only one coming by the booth, some companies may see literally hundreds of candidates at each career fair so you need to take advantage of the time you have to make the best impression possible.You have worked hard to get this far and it would be a shame to lost it in the final stretch because you did not take the time to prepare for the career fair.

Incoming Freshmen

I posted this answer on Linkedin and wanted to share it with you guys.The question was: What are the things a freshman SHOULD do?


This was my answer:

Have a good time and try to learn something.
· Make sure most of your class load is focused on the basics: I know you want to get into your major but give yourself time and if you throw yourself into your major classes and realize that you don’t want to be there it is tough to start over again & you don’t want to be a Senior taking freshman English.
· Take advantage of living on campus and meet new friends. Get involved in multiple campus/extracurricular activates: don’t over extend yourself but try to hold an office in at least one organization. There is usually an organization related to your major so get in that one and then get in another one not related to your major. (Social Fraternities & Sororities are a great way to gain life skills) – looks great on a resume
· Take control of your schedule/life – use advisors to help but you need to be the one who is calling the shot and setting up your schedule. Do not rely on your parents to do if for you. (put on your big boy pants and run your life)
· Get to know your professors: it is the difference between a letter grade
· Get a job: try to get in within in your major but if not get something. Work experience is great on a resume and will help get you a good internship
· Make good grades your freshman & sophomore year: these classes are usually easier than when you get into your major and it is nice to have a little wiggle room when you have that one class that kicks your arse.”
· Finally, enjoy your time in college!!! Chances are you will never get to do it again, because once you graduate you have to get a real JOB! No sleeping late, skipping class, spring break, date parties, pulling all nighters, etc.

Please feel free to comment and add anything I might have forgotten.