By Peg Krollpfeiffer

pkrollpfeiffer@my.madonna.edu

To focus on professional networking and professional networking Web sites such as LinkedIn was the quintessence of many valuable insights Stephen A. Lowisz, President and CEO of Qualigence, provided to Madonna students and guests at the Mc Manus business lecture “Recruiting Americans back to Work” at Kresge Hall.

Stewart Arends, Dean of Madonna’s School of Business, kicked off the lecture by thanking the Mc Manus family for beginning the Mc Manus Distinguished Business Lecture series in 1989.  “We start our 21st year tonight,” said Arends. 

Tom Schoenfeldt, Adjunct Faculty Member of the School of Business at Madonna, introduced Lowisz who immediately took over the attention of students and guests at Kresge Hall. 

“I’m not here to talk about what we are doing,” said Lowisz. “I’m here to talk about you guys.” Lowisz started off by providing insight into the recruiting business and how the recruiting process works. “You have to know how a recruiter thinks,” he said.

According to Lowisz, jobs are available. But job seekers need to know where to begin and how to find them, when many job openings don’t reach the potential candidates. “Most of the jobs are in the manager’s head,” said Lowisz. Many job openings are generated by employee changes in process that haven’t been posted, yet, and before the information is forwarded to the HR department or headhunters, the jobs have been filled internally or by employee referrals.

According to Lowisz, only 20 to 30 percent of all job openings are published on company Web sites.

But how do we find matching jobs? Most people look for jobs online.

“Career boards are actually the No.1 utilized way to find a job,” said Lowisz. Unfortunately, that doesn’t match with the sources companies use to fill their open positions.

According to Lowisz, a survey conducted in 2008 by CareerXroads showed that companies fill most positions by referrals with 23.7 percent, followed by the company’s Web site, and job boards, such as Monster or Career Builder, declined to only 12.5 percent.  “And this has been going down every year,” said Lowisz. “The one that has been growing is the referrals – the networking.”

Whereas 80 to 90 percent of referrals come from employees, 10 to 20 percent come from vendors, suppliers, or just somebody who knew somebody.

“We always think of referrals as you know somebody and you will refer me to somebody that you know,” said Lowisz. But in reality, a referral is considered an introduction by an employee even though there might be no personal relationship between the employee and the referred candidate; they just networked at some point. Niche sites account for the largest number of hires among the career boards. According to Lowisz, in a projection of sources that will be used by employers to find candidates over the next 12 months, referrals rank again No.1, followed by some of the job boards, especially niche sites, and the company Web sites.

Companies receive on average 125 applications per opening. “Recently, I saw one that had 9,000 applications in four days,” said Lowisz. To review so many applications, companies use Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to prescreen the applications.  ATS are programmed to recognize keywords, not competencies. The more keywords match the better is the chance to receive a call from the recruiter, even though other candidates might be more competent.

Recruiters usually use the ATS only to filter keywords for the currently posted position and not as a potential candidate database. Lowisz recommends reapplying, if a candidate is interested in more than one opening because very few recruiters go back into the system to match previous candidates to other positions.

With a massive amount of applications per posted position and the keyword filters of the ATS, it becomes obvious why candidates should build a network and thus raise the chances to be acknowledged by the hiring staff.

Lowisz recommends taking advantage of the available online referral technology. “I guarantee you the entire management staff is on LinkedIn with their profile, function and contact information,” he said.

Therefore, to creatively approach the staff directly is certainly more effective than sending the application into the “black hole” of the company’s application system. He also recommends to befriend the recruiter of a company and not only to ask for a job. The approach of asking what the recruiter sees going on in the industry and providing a short insight of what one is looking for and can do for a company is more likely to result in valuable information. Even if they don’t know of an opening at the moment, as soon as the recruiter forwards the information to a coworker, it turns into a referral. “Networking with these individuals online is the best way to go,” said Lowisz.

According to Lowisz, recruiters are encouraged to search for potential candidates within those networking communities.  He also recommends posting only a profile with a short summary of current and past positions. Recruiters sometimes shy away from entire resumes posted on networking sites and they might perceive it as a desperate approach to find a job.  Lowisz called this difficulty that unemployed job seekers encounter, “the power of perception”.  Recruiters receive studies and surveys on a daily basis and are bombarded with messages that imply currently employed professionals will be a longer term asset to the company than people who are currently unemployed.

According to Lowisz, a study by one of the largest HR consulting firms resulted in a rule that states that employees who have been recruited from other employers last an average of 54 months whereas employees hired when they were unemployed only stay about 13 months with the company. “The perception created to hiring managers and the recruiters is – forget all these people who don’t have a job. Go after the people who have a job,” said Lowisz. “This doesn’t make sense, but it is a perception job seekers have to face.”

The power of perception also includes the underemployed as they remain active to the market and employers are hesitant to hire somebody who is overqualified for a position or fill a part-time position with somebody who is looking to work fulltime. Employers are worried to lose these employees as soon as the economy turns around.

During his presentation, Lowisz shared valuable insider knowledge with his audience comprised of first-time job seekers and experienced professionals.

“Mr. Lowisz provided very practical advice for students about to launch their careers, as well as for those in the audience who are underemployed. I found it interesting that so many jobs are filled before they are ever posted, which makes networking so vital to your job search success,” said Karen Sanborn, Director of Marketing at Madonna University.

Regardless of the job seekers’ current situation – college graduate, employed, unemployed, or underemployed – job applicants need to keep in mind all the recruiting challenges, engage the network, and despite the difficulties – stay positive.