Connect Smart

There’s a Better Way to Hire and be Hired

It’s Throng’s design guy, David Seaver again. Let’s start with a photo I took recently at a professional talk held in Palo Alto, CA:

These stickers could be worn on one’s lapel or shirt, to indicate interests in hiring or in being hired. At least one man wore both—I have no idea what the story was, there, but I’m sure it was an interesting one.

However, these stickers, from the viewpoint of the Throng developer team, represent a series of missed opportunities, at least thus far.

To begin with, many of the attendees had gone to a pre-event dinner. A good time to chat, and maybe angle for work, but...well, yeah, who wants to show up at the restaurant wearing a sticker that says they need a job?

This is exactly the sort of interaction where Throng can make everyone’s day a bit simpler. If, prior to the evening’s events, attendees who were job-hunting or hiring had loaded their wants list with statements such as “What I want is a job as a game designer” or “What I want is to hire a game designer,” then even as people got to the restaurant, they would have received appropriate alerts from Throng. And this would have continued at the main event. Better yet, since every Throng alert can turn into a chat, it’s possible to open a chat thread, exchange a few words, even from opposite ends of the room, and arrange a proper meeting for later.

Better still, because of the patented technology behind Throng, someone who wanted to talk to potential hires wouldn’t have to settle for the pool of people who were actively looking for work. By using the Search function to find members of a specific profession, and saving the search as an Alert, they could locate any matching Throng-using professional attendee. And let’s face it, sometimes the person you absolutely want to hire is already working. Hint: offer them a more interesting job and more money. That often works.

As a bit of icing on the cupcake, this initial meeting can be arranged by the actual hiring manager or someone from the manager’s department, who actually knows the field, rather than having to wrangle someone from HR into attending the event, so it may be possible to get a couple of pre-interviews done on the spot!

So, there’s another set of reasons to use Throng. By taking advantage of mobile technology, we can help our careers and lives go a little more smoothly, while saving valuable lapel space for important things, like vintage “Chicken Inspector No. 23” badges.

Mobile design: Pretty, Ugly, or Hardworking

Today’s post is by David Seaver, the design guy at Throng, and is based on discussions I’ve had regarding the graphic and product design of Throng, Highlight, and Circle. In particular, the relationship between design and function.

Circle and Highlight are very similar in their essential function: they take information from Facebook, and use it to match you with other users near you, based on commonalities such as friends, schools, and workplaces. There, the resemblance ends. Circle is just stunningly pretty, with a simple and appealing graphic metaphor, great colors, and nice use of gesture-controlled animation. While it is still working on the basis of serendipitous discovery, rather than user-directed discovery, it does a great job of giving you a top-level view of who is nearby, and the design gives a sense of instant comprehension at that level.

Highlight, a bit of a pioneer in the social/local field, provides more immediate information about its discoveries by using a text-based main view. This would, in my view, have been better served with a cleaner layout. Text on textures on a phone undermines readability, doing a disservice to both the user and the app. This looks like a case where the UI was created by programmers, and then the visual style was skinned on later. And while others have commented on the eye-watering quality of the Highlight logo, my main issue is that while I, too, like the work of Bradbury Thompson, there is something peculiar about a CMYK color reference in the identity of an app that lives entirely in the RGB world.

And Throng? We had a slightly different design problem to solve, since we decided that local/mobile discovery should be more user-directed. Packing that into a phone screen led to a design based on clear text, with colors and symbols used to improve wayfinding on the screen, that is, to lead the attention of the user, and to help them create alerts and to read the resulting information easily.

What this gives the user is the ability to make a wide range of declarative statements regarding the sort of people about whom they would like to be alerted, as well as how they would like to be found by other users. It also let us build a simple way for users to search their LinkedIn and Facebook networks, and then to turn those search terms into further locality-based alerts.

Connect smart!

Hello again! I've been gone for a while. Apologies to those of you who wondered what happened to our periodic updates and analyses of the US job market. I'll be the first to acknowledge that the need for these updates has not gone away: the job market is still weak and a lot of folks are looking for work.

So... are we going to start doing job market analyses again? Not for now. I will be tracking an issue which relates to both our professional lives and our personal lives. Connecting to other people and getting to a face to face meeting is still hard, even though we belong to one or more of the large social networks.

I'm shifting my focus to writing about approaches, technologies and products that help you connect smarter to people around you—hence the new blog title "Connect Smart." And because I'm an unabashed promoter of mobile technology, I'll be writing a lot about how apps on iPhone and Android help you connect smart.

Hello again! I've been gone for a while. Apologies to those of you who wondered what happened to our periodic updates and analyses of the US job market. I'll be the first to acknowledge that the need for these updates has not gone away: the job market is still weak and a lot of folks are looking for work.

So... are we going to start doing job market analyses again? Not for now. I have decided to take on a less abstract, more immediate issue which relates to both our professional lives and our (I hope) larger personal lives. Connecting to other people has never been more important, or easier, but the problem remains of how to do it most effectively.

I'm shifting my focus to writing about approaches, technologies and products that help you connect smarter to people around you—hence the new blog title "Connect Smart." And because I'm an unabashed promoter of mobile technology, I'll be writing a lot about how apps on iPhone and Android help you "Connect Smart".

Jobs For Manufacturing Experts Up by 11% Since October

Jobs for manufacturing experts  are up by 11% since October of last year. Hiring for these positions peaked in January. There was a small drop of less than 1% in February. This information corroborates a story in the Wall Street Journal which said that "indexes of manufacturing output hit their highest levels in seven years in the U.S. ". What NimbleCat's information  adds to the WSJ story is that most of the increase took place in the rust belt.

All of the top five metro areas for manufacturing jobs in February were in or near the rust belt. Detroit claimed almost 5% of new manufacturing jobs , with Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Tulsa following along. The increase of manufacturing jobs in Detroit confirms a story in Daily Finance  that places auto manufacturing in the top ten growth industries for 2011. 

 Jobs that are related to manufacturing, namely supply chain, logistics and procurement held steady during this period.

How can you leverage this information? If you're hiring for manufacturing jobs, you can find qualified professionals in your area with People Search on Facebook. If you want to  find out how your Facebook network can help you connect with manufacturing experts, try Throng. Throng creates dramatic graphics that make it easy to see who you're connected to, where they work or study and what their interests are. Tell me what you think at smehta [at] nimblecat [dot] com.

More Jobs for Nurses in Rust Belt States In January

New jobs for nurses were plentiful in rust belt metro areas in January.  Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit and Baltimore together accounted for 10% of new nursing jobs. 

What is interesting about these numbers is that rust belt cities which have cold winters have historically seen retirees move to warmer climates. And you might expect this to be reflected in higher volumes of hiring in southern cities like Las Vegas snd Phoenix, but also in other southern states. Not so. There were more jobs for nurses in the rust belt states than in the southern states in January.

Could it be that this last recession is changing historic patterns? Are people now less likely to move south as they retire? That may well be what we're seeing in this information.

Are you hiring nurses or looking for a job in this field? NimbleCat aggregates over a million jobs each month to create analyses like this one. Our Jobs app on Facebook matches your resume or social profile to highlight the best fit jobs for you. If you are hiring nurses, use NimbleCat People Search to zero in on the best candidates.

Demand for recruiters drops in January

Demand for recruiters has decreased by 30%  from a peak in the fall of 2010. Based on jobs aggregated and analysed by NimbleCat, recruiter hiring increased by almost 30% from April to September of last year. It has declined since November to April, 2010 levels. This may well indicate that many companies have completed the expansion of their staffing teams for the moment.

An article in the Wall Street Journal confirmed the increase in hiring last fall based on interviews with recruiters and an analyis of the titles of jobs aggregated by Indeed. Skip to the end of this post for my plug on why NimbleCat's numbers are more accurate and timely than those from Indeed :-)

IT professionals, project managers and product managers were in high demand in January, as they have been in previous months. In  contrast, human resources and marketing professionals continue to be in the top ranks of job seekers. To reinforce the opening paragraph of this post, 10% of all resumes and social profiles aggregated by NimbleCat in January were for recruiters.

 So, why are NimbleCat's numbers likely to be more reliable than those supplied by Indeed for the WSJ article? 

Indeed gets numbers like those reported in the WSJ by looking for keywords in job titles. NimbleCat identifies and analyses the relevant parts of the job description, omitting boiler plate text and ads. Our scoring engine then classifies jobs  into one of the many job categories that it is trained to  recognize. And we analyse and aggregate jobs in real time so we can  report what happened yesterday, last week or last month.

 NimbleCat aggregates jobs, resumes and social profiles to provide its people and job search services. All this functionality is available from Facebook apps, so you access it easily from the one place that so many of us frequent every day.

 

My NimbleCat Score

(This post was written by Poonam Murgai, V.P. Engineering  at NimbleCat, Inc.)

My NimbleCat score is  .  Click on the score to see more details on  my professional profile. The number 156 in the score image is an aggregate score based on my career in software development;  the star following it indicates that I have management experience.    I use my NimbleCat score to establish my credibility with other professionals I might not know yet, but need to connect with on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other places on the social web.

Most professionals work hard to keep their resumes current.  They get coached on how to refine it, to put their best face forward for the employer.  Some people like to attach their whole life history in their resume - after all it is hard to leave out that waiter's job in school which paid the bills.  Others like to add volume to their resume, describing each project in intricate detail without describing their role.  Resumes like these would have mixed luck getting the attention of the employer, as they just want to know if the individual has the skills they need at that present time, and have thirty to sixty seconds to determine that.

Clearly a focused resume would work better.  Even better would be a way for the employer to quickly determine the best fit candidate.  That is where the NimbleCat score has been instrumental in establishing credibility.   It grades an individual on their education, professional accomplishments, and management expertise after essentially analyzing the DNA of the resume.

Use the NimbleCat Grader™ application on Facebook   to grade your professional profile on Facebook or LinkedIn, or to grade a resume.  You can then see how you compare with your peers, and get hints on how to improve your resume or profile based on NimbleCat's analysis.   Now you can put your NimbleCat score in your email signature, on your Facebook or LinkedIn profile, or anywhere you want to stand out.

 

Seattle Produces Almost As Many Software Jobs As All Of California

California produced almost 10% of all software jobs in the United States in December. However, the single metro area of Seattle produced almost as many jobs as all of California. Clearly good news for Washington state, but there's a silver lining for California as well.

The good news for California job seekers  is that  more software jobs are being created in California than before. When I wrote about this last June, the San Francisco Bay Area ranked sixth among all metro areas. In December, the Bay Area ranked third, just behind Seattle and the DC metro area.

I also took a look at what companies were hiring for in the software space. One trend I noticed last June and again in December is that software producers are creating more quality assurance jobs. The ratio of software engineers to software quality is now two to one. This number was closer to three to one in years past. As a user and a producer of software, I'm glad that there's more emphasis on quality.

NimbleCat posts weekly on the state of the job market in different industries. If you are hiring for software jobs, use NimbleCat  to identify credible candidates and quickly connect with them on LinkedIn, Facebook or by email. You can find us at http://www.nimblecat.com or on Facebook .

Job statistics reveal valuable economic trends

(This post was written by David Seaver, Director of Marketing at NimbleCat, Inc.)

Economic statistics traditionally rely heavily on data reported to government agencies, as well as on opinion surveys of experts. The Wall Street Journal article referenced in last week’s post based its conclusions partly on a well-regarded survey of purchasing managers. But at what point do the these sources leave us with only half of the real story? I suspect that this situation occurs frequently, but there are remedies. Because job posts are a strong indication of a company’s future plans, statistics derived from them can supplement economic data and provide key insights that are essential to understanding the larger picture.

Last week’s post looked at a two different types of manufacturing jobs, pursuant to an article by the WSJ which discussed a rise in manufacturing. In this post, I’d like to follow up  on the meaning of the numbers in that post and on issues with both how organizations gather statistics and how these statistics are analyzed.

NimbleCat’s statistics, which are extracted from job postings (rather than opinion surveys), confirmed that positions for both manufacturing process experts and supply-chain/logistics experts are, indeed, rising, month over month in the US. When we look at regions, however, there are two very different stories. The first category shows a concentration in traditional industrial areas: Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis. The second shows concentrations in regions more commonly associated with commerce, government, and possibly imports: DC leads the list, Detroit falls to third, Chicago moves from fourth to second, and Boston suddenly appears in fifth, not having made the first list at all.

The first set (jobs for manufacturing experts) denotes what most people connect with manufacturing—busy factories full of people and machines, building and assembling products. The primacy of Detroit almost certainly reflects the rebound of Ford and GM, in particular.

The second set appears to have little to do with the “nuts and bolts” of manufacturing. Rather, it probably reflects activities related to corporate and government procurement processes and the large volume of imports that are a part of our economy.

Statistics like those cited by the WSJ, while correct up to a point, may fail to reflect our  present post-industrial reality. I would suggest that, in effect, they display a worldview better suited to the Eisenhower era, in which growth in manufacturing meant actual expansions of factories in the US, increased domestic production, and across-the-board job growth and opportunity.

NimbleCat’s more granular statistics show that while this still occurs, many jobs that are classified as manufacturing jobs may not, in fact, contribute to domestic manufacturing. I suspect that they almost certainly reflect opportunities for global manufacturing concerns, rather than domestic companies. The primacy of DC in the logistics/supply-chain realm is likely to reflect a net drain in resources (i.e. taxes), quite possibly with little to no wider benefit, and with no net gain in domestic economic productivity.

NimbleCat posts weekly on the state of the job market in different industries. If you are a job seeker, you can benefit from the over one million jobs that we aggregate each month. The Jobs app on Facebook selects fresh, suitable jobs for you every day. Try it at  http://apps.facebook.com/ncjobalerts.

Jobs for manufacturing experts up almost 10% in Q4, 2010

The number of jobs for manufacturing experts grew by almost 10% during the fourth quarter of 2010, according to an analysis of jobs aggregated by NimbleCat. These numbers not only confirm a story on worldwide growth in manufacturing  in the Wall Street Journal from this Monday, but also indicate that we can expect  domestic manufacturing to grow in 2011.

The WSJ article was based on a survey of purchasing managers. Rather than surveying what people said, I looked at the number of posted  jobs for manufacturing engineers and lean manufacturing experts.

There has been a steady increase in the number of jobs for these professionals over the past quarter, including in December, which is often expected to be a slow month for hiring.

I also looked at where manufacturing jobs were created in December. The picture for all manufacturing jobs is very different than the picture for manufacturing experts, as the last two bar graphs show.

Jobs for manufacturing experts are focused in traditional US manufacturing centers - Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Chicago. When we include supply chain and logistics jobs in the mix, the Washington DC metro area jumps to the top of the list; Atlanta and Boston rank higher as well.  

Do you need to connect with manufacturing and supply chain experts? You can connect with them faster with NimbleCat's People Search. You can also find People Search on Facebook. If you are looking for a job in manufacturing, get daily alerts on jobs with Jobs on Facebook.