Helpful feedback

Karen G recently sent me an email, expressing interest in the temp-to-hire Administrative Receptionist position advertised as job 107497.  I was confused because that search had been completed about four weeks before she sent her email.  And I thought I had updated all of our advertising within an hour of that search ending.

So I asked Karen where she had seen the ad.  She said she’d noticed it as a Featured Opening here on my blog.  Aha!

I have assumed that on the older blog posts for featured openings my readers would double-check the link to our website to see whether the position is still posted there.  I shouldn’t have made that assumption, especially since these blog posts do say that it’s OK to apply directly!

So, from this point forward, I will add a comment to the end of any new Featured Opening when the search has been completed.  Hopefully, that will simplify the information for everyone.

A big THANK YOU to Karen G for this helpful feedback!

For better, for worse – part 2

“For better, for worse.  For richer, for poorer.”  When you and your partner repeated these vows, you knew that your life together would have ups and downs over the years.  For many couples, involuntary unemployment is one of the lowest “downs” you face together.

It’s pretty obvious that involuntary unemployment is hard on the person who is without work – financially hard, professionally hard, emotionally hard.  It’s not always as obvious that involuntary unemployment brings just as many new stresses and hardships for the wife, husband, or partner of the unemployed worker.  For the spouse or partner, the core new stress is renegotiating and reinventing how best to support and encourage your loved one through the difficult process of finding a new job.

Spouse to spouse, I’d like to suggest that you might focus on your wedding vows as one way to think about how to empower your partner through the period of unemployment.  So here are four examples that might help.

For better, for worse – part 1

“For better, for worse.  For richer, for poorer.”

These words – or phrasing similar in meaning – have expressed the intentions of so many couples to intertwine their lives throughout the ups and downs that the years will bring.  Involuntary unemployment can certainly be one of the stresses that severely tests this vow.

I’ve been thinking recently about spouses and partners – and how they can best be involved in supporting one’s search for new employment.  What prompted my reflection on this has been a noticeable upswing in the number of phonecalls coming from people identifying themselves as wives, husbands, partners of applicants, asking that the applicant be considered for a particular advertised opening.

The curiosity is that the individuals who have someone calling on their behalf aren’t people who are employed full-time.  They’re people who are working part-time hours – or not at all.  So it’s not that these individuals have absolutely no chance within regular business hours to make this call themselves.

From that, I’m surmising that these spouses or partners are usually well-intentioned people whose lives are staring straight into the face of the “for worse” and “for poorer” circumstances.  They seem to be people who are genuinely concerned about the self-esteem and professional well-being of their companion who is now unemployed or underemployed.  And often, they are people who intimately share the risks of the financial turbulence that their partner’s less-than-full employment can bring to the household.

I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.

I’m also realizing that neither the candidate nor their companion has really thought about how unhelpful and even hurtful it can be to have a spouse or partner calling a prospective employer on one’s behalf.  Let’s explore what a staffing professional hears from the caller in a typical conversation.