NFL Draft Lessons to Remember in Your Job Search

Silly season is in full gear for NFL fans, as the 2017 NFL Draft is just around the corner. Fans around the globe are currently studying up on their favorite draft prospects, and getting in massive arguments on social media in regard to the ones they do not like.

For the collegiate athletes about to take the first step toward their dream of playing in the NFL, this time of year is a much different experience.

With the visibility level of the NFL Draft being at an all-time high, the poking and prodding into every aspect of a draft prospect’s life is also at an all-time high. Many athletes are dealing with higher levels of scrutiny than they could have ever imagined, and how they respond to it is being monitored by their future employers.

Take Ohio State Buckeyes Safety Malik Hooker, for example.

Yesterday, Louis Riddick from ESPN put out a tweet that caught Hooker’s attention. He stated, “J. Adams could do everything M. Hooker can do IF asked to play that role. The same could not be said the other way around. #context.”

Riddick was referencing another safety prospect in the NFL Draft, Jamal Adams from LSU, and how he can do everything Hooker can do and more. Hooker, not pleased by the tweet, simply retweeted it with a response of “Oh Okay” with two crying emojis after it.

Was Hooker’s response good or bad? Honestly, it will all come down to how his future employers in the NFL Draft see it. More than likely, they will tell him the same thing one of his fellow draft-mates, Budda Baker, was alluding to—do not respond to “haters.”

Regardless of how the NFL views Hooker’s response, there is a lesson job seekers can learn from the NFL Draft. Arguably, every little thing an athlete does leading up to the draft could end up costing them millions of dollars—just like any negative action a job seeker performs in the process could cost them a chance at the job of their dreams with the company of their dreams.

Last year after the 2016 NFL Draft, we talked about how social media in particular could cost them in the long run. It was on the heels of a picture of top offensive line prospect Laremy Tunsil smoking marijuana out of a gas mask caused him to lose $7 million dollars by falling from No. 6 to No. 13 in the draft.

In that article, we focused on three items (making your social account private, thinking before you hit submit and deleting any questionable posts) for job seekers last year. This year, we are going to take a slightly different approach. After speaking to a few NFL players about their NFL Draft Experience over on the VIKTRE Career Network, there were two things that really stood out from their process that job seekers should pay attention to.

No. 1: Answer every question truthfully

One of the things that always stands out in the interviewing process is the number of questions a job seeker will be asked. From serious questions to the most random, off-the-wall questions, hiring managers (at the NFL level or business level) seem to think up anything to make a job seeker sweat.

At times, however, a job seeker may seem backed into a corner by a question and try to talk their way through it without actually knowing the answer. This can work if you arrive at the answer quickly, however, most of the time a hiring manager can tell when you are trying to “B.S.” them, and it will not grade out positively in your favor.

One athlete we interviewed recently told us that anyone being interviewed should just, “Answer every question truthfully” and not try to lie or pretend they know. He continued, “Honestly, I think admitting you do not know but would be willing to work to find out and learn really showed something.” This player was eventually drafted in the third round of the NFL Draft and played in the league for nine seasons, so he may know a thing or two.

No. 2: Never stop working

When talking to former NFL All-Pro Kicker, Nick Lowery, he offered up some excellent advice for job seekers. “After going undrafted, I was cut by team after team looking for a chance to be a starting kicker in the league. But I never stopped working.”

Lowery went from being undrafted to one of the best kickers in NFL history. He kept learning and working both on and off the field, and carved out an excellent career playing and an even more impressive one off the field when it was all said and done.

When job seekers finally get hired, some seem to think just showing up and doing their job is enough to carve out a long career. But like in football, there is always someone who is waiting in the wings trying to prove themselves worthy of a promotion—so you need to keep working and learning to make yourself more valuable to both your company and any other company you may look to work for in the future.

Final Word

Many people do not pay attention to the NFL Draft or sports in general because of the millions of dollars they make playing a “kid’s game.” However, there are many lessons job seekers can take away from reading the stories of players and how they make it to the game and how they make it to the top of the sport.

The two pieces of advice given in this article are just a start for job seekers, so stay tuned to NexGoal as we come out with another NFL Draft related article here in the days leading up to the draft!

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What is Your Company Doing to Change Job Seeker Perception?

How often does your company do an internal audit of how you are corresponding with job seekers? The answer to this question, for most companies, is not very often—and it could be one of the main reasons your company is having difficulty attracting top-tier talent for your organization.

A recent study released by research firm “Future Workplace” echoed this sentiment, as many job seekers reported having a poor overall experience during their job search. No, it wasn’t the overwhelming number of job alerts they receive from job boards that they complained about though, it was the experience with the actual employer after they had applied for the job that had job seekers discouraged.

According to their study, which surveyed 1,200 respondents (826 job seekers and 374 employers), 60 percent of job seekers reported a bad candidate experience while applying for jobs. This wasn’t the only relevant data point from the article, here are a few others that really stood out and should be of major concern to companies.

  • Of the 60 percent of job seekers who reported a bad experience, “72% report having shared that experience online on an employer review site, such as Glassdoor, on a social networking site, or directly with a colleague or friend.”
  • In regard to communication post-application, “65% of job seekers say they never or rarely receive notice from employers.”
  • “80% of job seekers say they would be discouraged to consider other relevant job openings at a company that failed to notify them of their application status. Yet, they would be 3.5 times more likely to re-apply to a company if they were notified.”
  • “Fewer than half of employers re-engage declined candidates yet nearly all (99%) believe re-engaging will help them build their talent community and protect their employer brand.”
  • “While the typical job seeker spends about 3 to 4 hours preparing and submitting one job application, the typical employer spends less than 15 minutes reviewing that application. About 70% of employers believe job seekers spend only 1 hour or less in researching, preparing for, and submitting their job application.”

The full article had plenty of more eye-popping statistics about the candidate experience from their research, but these were some of the most important in my eyes. Let’s dive a little deeper at the potential impact of this on your company.

Are reviews killing your company image?

According to the data above, 72 percent of those who reported a bad experience are discussing it online, on social networks or with friends. With our society advancing into a non-stop sharing platform thanks to social media and easy utilization of the internet—you need to spend more time reading what people think of your brand.

Many of you reading this probably have not looked for a job recently, but reading company reviews have become a vital part of the research and review process for candidates now. From personal experience, I would not apply to a company that has a negative review on a website like Glassdoor, without doing more investigating into the culture. Simply, if other people are posting about their bad experiences, why would I as a job seeker want to go there?

While it is difficult to control the overall experience and what people are posting, companies need to make sure they are putting their best foot forward from first interaction.

This is actually something that one of our project coordinators here at NexGoal was telling me earlier today is a common complaint from job seekers he works with, It is also one of the reasons they turn to him as a recruiter to help facilitate their search. Put simply, many were turned off by the first point of contact at organizations and were no longer interested in the position. If they are reporting it to him, how many more job seekers out there are telling the same to their friends and social media about that same negative experience?

Want to learn more about the NexGoal Corporate Client Experience? Click here!

Communication is key…and you are likely dropping the ball!

Interview Mistakes

The least you could do is tell them they weren’t selected for the job.

How many times have you stressed to your employees that communication is key? It is probably written on a white board somewhere in your office, in a handbook or on a piece of artwork hanging on wall. Yet despite this fact, many of us do not practice what we preach—and the data shows it.

In the day and age of auto-responder emails, if your company does not (at a bare minimum) have an automated message going out when someone submits an application—you are doing it all wrong. From there, someone in your human resources department should be coordinating with marketing to send up a follow-up email once you have selected a candidate.

Listen, we are not telling you to send out a detailed reason for not selecting them. But how difficult is it really to send them something along the lines of, “Thank you for your interest in (insert position name here). After careful consideration, we have selected a candidate we think best fits our needs. Though we did not select you for this position, we urge you to check back for other open positions in our company because we think you could be a fit in the future!”

Most candidates are going to be frustrated they were not selected, but this simple communication shows the door could be open one day, which goes a long way. Do you have to take them for a job in the future? That is completely up to you, but what this does is leave the candidate with a sense of closure on the position they applied for—and a positive story to tell their friends when they are all done, which could be the difference between a positive and negative social review.

Re-engagement is a necessity

Now that you have sent them the positive “they were not selected” message, what do you do with these candidates and their contact information? Well, according to the data above—not enough.

As someone who has spent many years in the email marketing industry, re-engagement campaigns are so vital to your organization. If you are not attempting to grow your database, you will continue to decline from those who unsubscribe—because unsubscriptions are inevitable.

In the job industry, the same theory applies. Those who applied to your job previously will eventually get jobs, thus reducing the size of your future candidate pool. However, you never know when they are willing to switch jobs or become unemployed—so stop dismissing them just because you did not hire them the first time around!

Save all of their contact information with your notes in an excel document, and put them on a monthly or quarterly email distribution list with your latest jobs. Or send them out an email asking if they would like to be notified about future job openings. Once again, just a little communication could go a long way.

Your candidates are doing research…and it is time to acknowledge that

Many of us come from the days of mass applications on every job board just trying to get hired. Unfortunately, what this did was create a mentality of thinking job seekers do not actually care where they get hired and are not putting in the effort to get hired.

However as time has gone on, job seekers became frustrated with being just a “number” that was being pre-screened by software and not a person—so they started doing more research. Job seekers began identifying the companies they wanted to work for through this process, and learned more about a company to prepare for their first meeting, so take notice!

Give job seekers more than the 15 minutes you have been giving them in the past. Click the link on their resume that goes to their LinkedIn account, read the cover letter they sent in and do a little research of your own. Just because their resume does not say “10 years of sales experience” does not mean they may not meet your 10-12 years of relevant experience requirement on the job description. You may be passing on your next great hire if you do not dig a little deeper.

Bonus Tip: Market your company to the candidate

Back in the day (I’ve always wanted to say that), most employers were able to get by with the standard job description—because job seekers were easily flocking to them. Then this crazy thing happened, job seekers got smart and realized they wanted to find a place that was a good fit for them before applying for the job.

For those doing the hiring, this means they were no longer getting top candidates to apply because that person could not find out why they should come work for their company in the job description. Every company wants to tell you what they want in an employee, but what they fail to realize is they need to sell to that potential employee as well.

Go and pull up a current job posting for your company and read it over. Would you be motivated to spend an hour or so applying for a job after reading it? More than likely your answer is no—so add a “Company Culture” section or a “Why You Should Work Here” section. You may think it is cheesy, but a potential candidate will appreciate it, and it just could land you that top-tier talent you have been missing out on all these months since your job posting went live.

Struggling to market your company? Let NexGoal help find the candidate you need! Set-up a meeting today!

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Three for Thursday: 3 Cs of Personal Branding

“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”

These were wise words spoken by legendary Mad Men character, Don Draper. They are especially wise in the context of personal branding.

There are many students who have just graduated college this past semester who are now faced with the task of finding employment. With unemployment at 4.9 percent, competition has lessened for many positions and job seekers can be more selective in their employment choices. This doesn’t mean it’s easier to get the job you always wanted. You’re not going to get noticed with the same cookie- cutter business graduate resume that 95% of your peers or going to put out there. So how do you make yourself different? Change the conversation. Create the personal brand that you want employers to see and not what they are expecting. The following are the “Three C’s” of personal branding and they can change the conversation to get you noticed.

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Create

Your Message

It all starts with creating your message.

One of our favorite stories from last year was the story of Nina Mufleh. Mufleh’s dream job was to work for Airbnb. She tried to get in touch with the company through job postings and emails but had no luck. That’s when she decided to think outside the box. She ended up creating a website for herself that highlighted her knowledge of Airbnb and the travel industry, how she thinks they could improve, and how she was qualified to work at Airbnb. Her efforts ended up getting noticed by both Airbnb’s CMO and CEO and she eventually got an interview with the company.

What Mufleh did was create something that no one else had thought of doing and an opportunity presented itself. She realized that there were other people who probably were as qualified or more qualified than herself on paper and she decided to change the conversation to highlight her knowledge of Airbnb and the travel industry. Everyone has a resume and a LinkedIn. What can you create that someone else doesn’t have? You don’t necessarily have to create a website but maybe start a blog that demonstrates your knowledge in a specific area. If you’re a numbers guy, create a new statistical model or formula. Take an area that you are strong in and display it in a way that is original and creative.

Customize

IMG_1246

Creating a unique experience can help you stand out.

A quick marketing lesson: When trying to create brand awareness, one needs a clear message that highlights their brand in such a way that resonates with the target market while differentiating itself from different brands. Let’s use bottled water as an example. Company A might claim that their water comes from mountain springs and is therefore more natural and refreshing than other brands. Company B may claim that the material used to bottle their water is more bio degradable than other brands and is therefore more eco-friendly. Both companies are selling the same product, however they are customizing their message to appeal to a specific target market amongst bottled water consumers.

This is the same process you should be using when applying for a job. How are you going to customize your message and differentiate your personal brand so that it appeals to the company you’re applying for? If you’re applying for a job in sports highlight your athletic experience and how it coincides with the position. If it is an international job, highlight relevant traveling you’ve done and the knowledge you gained from the experience. Overall, you want to establish a brand that is unique and can’t be duplicated by another candidate.

Connect

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Reaching out is key!

If you’ve been following our blog series, you already know that we have touched on the importance of connecting and networking in our “Life After Graduation” blog. It is however well worth our time to reiterate how valuable connecting and networking can be. Connecting is what ties the first two C’s together. You can create and customize your personal brand all you want, but if you do not build an audience your brand and message will fall on deaf ears. Humans by nature do not like unfamiliarity. Make your brand known and easily recognizable. Familiarity is what can separate you from another candidate.

Athletes have a particular advantage when it comes to connecting their personal brands. “Athletes get a lot of chances to meet people in their community. Events like fundraisers and booster events are a great way to integrate yourself into the local community and meet people of influence.” says NexGoal CEO Kevin Dahl. “Mingle, get business cards, and follow up with these contacts.  You have a great opportunity to be put in front of the people that may hire you.  Make a good impression and seize the opportunity!” Putting yourself in situations where you are surrounded by people who have influence can make all the difference in gaining the attention you desire.

Summary

Are you ready to change the conversation and get your dream job? Follow the “Three C’s” of personal branding and you will effectively put yourself in the driver seat of accomplishing your goal.

Take the First Step

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3 Major Mistakes Job Seekers Are Making This Summer

We get it. The sun is shining, the temperature is warmer and the last thing anyone wants to really do is get off work and sit at their computer for another few hours searching for a new job.

For job seekers who are currently employed, balancing their home and work lives can be challenging. Add a job search into the mix, and it seems like all free time has gone out the window.

Not having “enough time” is one of the biggest reasons why job seekers have reported not changing jobs sooner to our recruiting team here at NexGoal—especially in the summer. Many of them want to use that spare time to enjoy themselves, spend time with their families or go on a much needed vacation.

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By all means, please do those things this summer! You have worked hard and deserve some time to relax. But do not put off that job search completely, because you could find yourself making one of these three mistakes that are our topic for this week’s “Three for Thursday.”

Mistake 1: Thinking Companies Are Not Hiring

If you think this sounds familiar, it is because we touched on it last week in our “3 Reasons You Should Jump Start Your Job Search After a Holiday” article. Many job seekers seem to think because they take vacations in the summer, that hiring departments do the same. However, this could not be further from the truth.

According to CareerBuilder, “U.S. employers added 287,000 jobs in June, beating expectations. Unemployment rate rose to 4.9% #jobsreport #JobsFriday.” For comparison sake, the economy is averaging the addition of 171,500 jobs a month in 2016—so, June’s job additions were more than 100,000 over the monthly average.

What does this mean for you? I think that one is simple, you need to be looking for jobs in the summer! The jobs that were added in June are being filled in July by these companies (trust us, you should see the influx in job posting we received for this moth), which means the opportunity you are waiting for could literally be knocking at your door—or in your inbox if you sign up for our eNewsletter here.

Mistake 2: Not Being Prepared to Apply for Jobs

I cannot tell you how many of my friends say to me, “Man, I want a new job. I think I’m going to start searching this weekend.” However, when I ask them how that job search went—I find out it never actually started.

After digging a little deeper, the main reason is because they forgot when you apply for a job you actually need a cover letter and a resume to apply. Usually the next question is if I will help them create one real quick so they can start their job search up the following weekend.

If you are anything like my friends, it is time to stop being unprepared when you head into a job search. There are so many resources out there (like our friends at TopResume) to help you create a resume and cover letter with ease.

“Proper planning prevents poor performance,” is one of my favorite all-time quotes—and it applies to a job search now more than ever. Employers receive dozens of resumes every day for their open jobs posted online, so as a candidate you need to have a plan of attack when it comes to starting your job search to make sure you stand out from the crowd.

Mistake 3: Letting “Comfort” Keep You in a Bad Situation

This is a mistake I personally made for over two years, and it compounds tenfold in the summer.

Despite the fact you are stuck in a job or career you no longer want to be, having that steady paycheck while you are doing all of those fun things you want to do in the summer seems to create a false sense of comfort for job seekers. So take a deep breath and repeat after me, “There’s a reason I want to change jobs.”

Once you have repeated that, it is time to create a to-do list of what you need to start your job search right now. Updating your resume, getting new references, writing a compelling cover letter and updating your LinkedIn headshot (I’m guilty of this right now) are common to-dos for all job seekers.

Doing this will remove you from the comfort of your current job in the summer, and get you in the right mindset to make that change you have been vowing to start for months. Oh, and if you need any help—head on over to our Candidate Center and enter your info to get started!

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3 Technological Changes You Need to Make to Land a Job in 2016

Technology is changing the way people just like you navigate the often crowded waters of job seeking. Long gone are the days of simply opening up the newspaper and looking under the “Help Wanted” classified section, picking up the phone and speaking to the hiring manager directly about setting up an interview.

In today’s society, speaking to a hiring manager on the phone before submitting a cover letter and resume is pretty much non-existent. Not being able to make an impression on someone prior to them reviewing your history has put many job seekers at a marked disadvantage these days. With a flood of resumes in their inbox, hiring managers simply do not have the time to approach job searches like they did in the past.

What does this mean for a job seeker?

Simply, you need to find a different way to stand out in the hiring process. If you are solely relying on a solid resume to win you an interview—you are taking a major risk when it comes to your job search.

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Sales Representative – New York, NY – Ready to Dominate a New Industry?
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As we do every week here at NexGoal, the team has put together three tips in our “Three for Thursday” series for job seekers. The focus this week is on three technological approach changes you need to make in your overall job search as you leap back into the hiring process.

Re-define your social presence

If you do not know what having a social presence means, stop what you are doing and head over to LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and create accounts right now. Social media has changed dramatically over the years, and while you may have sworn it off back when people were spending hours on who they should put in their Best Friends section on “Myspace,” it is time to open yourself up to a new way to connect.

Where should you start if you do not have any of these? For a job seeker, not having a LinkedIn account is a major no-no today. It is a great way to have a “live resume” available, connect with people you have done business with in the past, view job openings all across the world and even send messages to those working at a company of interest to see what the culture is like.

Having a LinkedIn account with a detailed work history, links to projects, published work and other key tasks you completed will give you an advantage over others in the job search. As for the other two networks I mentioned, Twitter and Facebook are often viewed as more interaction based areas, which you should capitalize on. Both provide you with the opportunity to interact with key members of any industry of interest to you in an open setting. From there, someone could reach out to you because they see you interacting with a different person.

The opportunities are endless on social media. Having a social presence has connected me to people I would ordinarily not have a chance to interact with. Sure, you have to take the good with the bad on social media in terms of “trolls,” but overall the good has outweighed the bad—and it isn’t even close.

Develop a brand for yourself

When it comes to personal branding, the phrase “Brand yourself before someone else does” always comes to mind. Establishing a social media presence gives you a “voice” for others to interact with—but it does not always provide others with a good idea of who you are from a branding standpoint.

Two years ago, Forbes wrote a great article titled “7 Things You Can Do to Build An Awesome Personal Brand.” I suggest you give it a read to see the entire list, but one thing really stood out to me that most people do not do—“Secure a personal website.”

The article stated about securing a personal website, “Having a personal website for yourself is one of the best ways to rank for your name on the search engines. It doesn’t need to be robust. It can be a simple two to three page site with your resume, link to your social platforms, and a brief bio. You can always expand on the website with time.”

As someone who has written for and operated quite a few websites in my day, this is a great way to think of what a personal website can do. For someone like me with the name Bob Evans, I am never going to rank in Google or search engines for my own name alone. However, if you Google “Bob Evans sportswriter” from my long-time freelancing positions, the first two results are links to my outdated Bleacher Report writer profile. Further down the list you can find a link to my Twitter account, as well as a couple of links to podcasts I was on as a featured guest. For your name, your website could be the very first search result when someone Googles your name!

I actually do not have a personal website live right not for the public to see. My personal sports sites have always been more important, but since joining the jobs industry I found the value in having a personal website—so it is currently in development. If you do not have a personal website, you can use services like about.me or Squarespace to make something simple today, though I would suggest reaching out to someone who does website design for a living to create one for a couple hundred dollars—a small investment now could pay off in a major way in the future!

Always be closing

Okay, so I’m not going to channel my inner Alec Baldwin from Glengarry Glen Ross and rip every person in the room in an attempt to rally the troops to sell real estate. Though, Baldwin’s epic speech and “Always be closing” reference apply to much more than the sales industry.

For your job search, “Always be closing” refers to how you have set yourself up for potential decision makers to easily find out who you are and your job history. This means you need to have these items at the ready at all times—but how? You aren’t going to just walk around with copies of your resume to give out in case you run into someone at a bar, are you?

Since the answer to that is absolutely not, you need to take other measures. For starters, get business cards made if you do not have any. Seriously, you can go on VistaPrint right now and get 500 cards for under $20. If you do not have business cards, it is a laziness factor—not a financial one.

This is a very good business card example.

This is a very good business card example.

Having a business card is not enough though, you need to make sure the proper contact information is on there. No, I am not talking about your phone and address—links to all of your social accounts and personal websites need to be on there as well. Also, pay a few extra dollars and get a heavier stock business card. If yours bends in someone’s pocket or wallet after you give it to them, if they are anything like me it will get thrown away. I don’t want a bent business card sitting on my desk with all of the other business cards I have acquired networking.

On top of having business cards, you should also make sure to have an email signature that is optimized in the same way. If you reach out to someone about a job, make it easy for them to click your LinkedIn profile, visit your personal website and follow you on social from the first point of contact.

Final Word

Doing the above does not guarantee you will get the job—but it absolutely brings you into the way job seekers are getting noticed in 2016. As a bonus tip to help stand out even more, once you have completed these three things before you apply for a job, you should have your resume checked by a professional.

We actually have partnered up with one of the top resume services in the industry, and you can get a resume critique absolutely free right now by simply clicking this link and uploading your most recent resume. It is a free service, and if they can help identify one thing wrong—it is well worth the 30 seconds.

Before You Go

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Get a Free Resume Critique Today!

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