April’s Contractor of Month is Adam Jennings, a Digital Asset/Rights Manager at Swoon’s business and employment-oriented service client in San Francisco.
Adam was first Swooned by Maggie when he was on the job market in Sunnyvale, CA. She reached out to him about a role at our client, which just so happened to be a company he had wanted to work with for quite some time.
“Working with Maggie has been great. She is my first point of contact for everything, routinely helping me and pointing me to the right people when I have questions,” said Adam.
He started at the client as the Head of Registration for their flagship conference, then joined the Center of Excellence team, and ultimately landing his role as the Digital Asset/Rights Manager where he is currently working.
In his role, Adam has worked to help develop and launch two internal tools that work and help to store and share the photography, videos and other collateral for all marketing campaigns. His hard work has led him to talks with his team about the opportunity for his role to convert to a full-time position this summer.
His favorite part about his job and the company is the culture;
“It is the first place to truly feel like home. Culture and integrity are bred and instilled by the leadership in place. Some companies use it as a tag word or selling point, but here, they really own their culture and respect peoples’ values. We really are in it together,” Adam says.
FUN FACT: Adam enjoys golfing and loves attending music festivals. He went to the Stagecoach country music festival this month, and frequents southern California to continue his love for surfing.
Congratulations on all your achievements, Adam!
Here at Swoon, our recruiters see hundreds of resumes a day and are aware of what makes a resume stand out to hiring managers. While each company and position are unique, these three resume tips are relevant for any role in any industry.
The Simple Things Matter
It is important to have a clean, crisply designed resume that is easy to skim through. You can make your resume easy to read by choosing a simple, standard font. You may stand out if you choose a unique font, but not in a good way. If someone cannot easily find the keywords they are looking for, your resume will be dismissed.
You also want to remain consistent in your layout. If you are putting a range of dates on your resume and you spell out the months on one position, do not change this and use abbreviated months in a different position. The same thing goes with bolding and italicising If you bold one job title, bold them all.
Grammar and spelling errors can ruin your chances of getting hired from the start. In most cases, your resume is your only chance at a first impression. Make sure you have triple-checked your resume for mistakes. There are online services such as Grammarly that help explain why certain things are incorrect on your document and what you should do to fix them. Also, it never hurts to have another set of human eyes review your page for anything you overlooked.
PRO TIP: It is a myth that resumes must be only one page in length. If you have a large amount of experience to share, it is okay to continue onto more pages, but remember, nobody wants to read a nine-page resume either.
Keywords
It may seem obvious if you are a designer that you know how to use the Adobe Creative Suite. However, no skill should be left out of a resume, especially if it is a program or certification. Many times, hiring managers will do a search function on resumes, typing in keywords to be sure the resume has them listed. Even if you are a great candidate, you may be overlooked if you are not focused on including these common industry keywords. If you are experienced in Adobe, add the specifics. Do you know Adobe Photoshop, or are you only familiar with Adobe Illustrator? The more specific you can be in these cases, the better.
Tailoring your resume to each individual job description is another great tip. Look for keywords in the job description that you have experience with. Then, be sure to format your resume to include these words. A great perk when working with our team at Swoon, is that we do the tailoring for you. We will make sure that your resume is customized for each role we submit you to. As a bonus, you will get a leg-up on the competition, because we know what the individual hiring managers are looking for in each candidate’s profile.
Quantify Your Successes
Although it will take some extra work, quantifying your efforts is a key tip to getting your resume noticed. Instead of including a bullet point that says:
- Created and implemented a social media plan that grew the company following on all platforms
Say:
- Created and implemented a social media plan that grew the company’s Instagram following by 500 followers, Facebook likes by 40% and Twitter followers by 95
Including these numbers shows that you can quantify your work and gives a more accurate story of your success. Be mindful not to include numbers that are insignificant, or do not add value to a statement. You want to highlight your biggest successes in each of your roles, and then mention the day to day functions that can be transferred to the work you would do in the new role you are applying for.
If you are ready to start looking for a job, or simply want to update your current resume, these tips are sure to get you headed in the right direction. As always, we are here to help, so reach out with any questions or apply for one of our open roles today!
Written by: Jessica Henry
February’s Contractor of the Month is Stacey Hou, a Financial Analyst turned Data Analyst at one of Swoon’s clients, a consumer credit reporting agency in Boston.
Stacey started her Swoon journey when she applied to a role online and started working with Beth Suchocki. Beth and team offered advice, provided sample questions to ask during interviews, and checked-in throughout the process. In fact, Stacey was deciding on concurrent offers and Beth negotiated a more favorable package, ultimately sealing the deal for Stacey.
When starting as a Financial Analyst, a typical workday for Stacey included data entry and reporting, financial journaling, auditing and transactions. As she became more familiar with her role, Stacey realized due to her background in coding, that she was able to automate a lot of her work. Her boss was very supportive and began to assign Stacey additional tasks in business intelligence, coding and data analysis fields.
Stacey was then offered a full-time position with the client as a Data Analyst and her new position started this month! She now supports the business in quantitative data and coding to improve efficiencies.
“My favorite part about the job is the flexibility to identify the optimal way of doing a project and being able to run with it. I am not set to doing everything by a certain set of rules, and this empowers me to go a more creative and passionate route,” Stacey said.
We at Swoon would like to congratulate Stacey on her success and wish her well in her new, full-time role!
Fun Facts: Stacey has a three-pound toy poodle named Luna and a rescue Chinchilla named Bubbles! She loves music and works as an event pianist and church organist in her spare time.
January’s Contractor of the Month is John Santaguida, a Business Analyst at one of Swoon’s social media and mobile application clients. During a typical day, John checks the workflows he has set up and runs project requests. He also works on building these workflows for ad products and started a targeting incubation program where he and his team run new target requests and monitor the results.
Swoon recruiter Tyler Parks connected with John and helped him to land this role that he says he otherwise would not have applied for because he didn’t know he had the required skillsets. John loves working at Swoon and with his current company. He said he is never left out because of his contractor status and he loves the open-book, cross-functional nature of his team.
John hopes to become a product manager with the company down the line and continue to grow with the team. There have been conversations about converting him to a permanent employee this year.
Fun Fact: John knows how to make balloon animals!
Congratulations on being our Contractor of the M
And why is it more accepted, even normal, today?
Recently, there have been many publications on “ghosting” which, according to Dictionary.com, is “the practice of suddenly ending all contact with a person without explanation.” Most of these articles are about ghosting in the dating world or leaving an event without saying goodbye. However, ghosting is present in the workforce as well in relationship-driven industries including B2B and B2C. Therefore, it makes sense why ghosting is happening more frequently than ever in the recruiting and staffing industry.
“A total of 48% of 600 polled by LinkedIn have seen an increase in ghosting since the beginning of 2018.”
This leads me to question, “Why has rudeness become more accepted with highly professional and generally decent people,” and set me on a path to find connections between the many publications, blogs and podcasts discussing “ghosting,” “icing,” etc.
Here are a few reasons people are ghosting in the recruiting world:
- It is currently a candidate’s market, where there are more jobs than there are qualified individuals to fulfill them, so candidates can be pickier on the roles they want to accept.
- Unfortunately, recruiters are sometimes guilty of ghosting candidates. I like to think that most industry professionals are above this, but there are recruiting and staffing professionals that are either overwhelmed with their workloads or are not thinking long-term when they forget to follow up or decide not to follow up with a candidate.
- Hiring managers are ghosting staffing agencies. From an agency perspective, if the candidate is not right for the role after an interview, we see more ghosting of feedback as the clients are simply moving on to the next candidates.
- Managed Services Programs (MSPs) have been no strangers to ghosting, as recruiting agencies often work with the end-client via a vendor management system and little to no human interaction with the decision makers. This makes ghosting sometimes the norm for MSP recruiting scenarios.
Many human interactions are through email, social media, apps and other communication portals powered by technology which makes it easier to dehumanize these conversations.
Being “too busy” has also become an acceptable reason for ghosting. However, when we make human connections with other people, one would think the propensity to ghost is decreased, and yet an article from HuffPost suggests that there is a common fear of conflict.
“There are many psychological reasons why someone ghosts, but at its core, ghosting is avoidance and often stems from fear of conflict.” – HuffPost
Fear. This is causing us to avoid commonplace decorum in our personal and professional relationships. We make ghosting okay in our minds because we want to avoid conflict and/or negativity. The reality is; however, when we “ghost,” we are essentially kicking the conflict can down the road to deal with later.
For the recruiting and staffing industry, when a…
- Candidate ghosts an interview or pulls a no-show, this is likely tracked in a CRM, and the recruiting company/potential employer will probably not want to interview them for any other roles in the future.
- Recruiter ghosts it may ruin their reputation down the line and their company’s. This is a small industry and reputations are built over time, with Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Yelp reviews, etc.
- Hiring manager ghosts on feedback or establishing next steps, reviews of the company on sites like Glassdoor will likely not be as desirable for other potentially quality candidates if news of their ghosting gets out.
- Employee ghosts…references are still relevant! And the unemployment rate will not likely stay below 4% nationally forever. It’s the lowest it’s been in 50 years.
The Golden Rule of treating others as one’s self would wish to be treated is highly applicable in interpersonal relationships, and as of recently, the dilemma of “ghosting” in the workplace. Don’t hide behind technology as an avoidance vehicle. In today’s connected world, reputation and “reviews” go a long way.
Swoon’s October Contractor of the Month is Nirmit Rungta, a Business Analyst for a large healthcare client in Richmond, Virginia. Nirmit was on a one-year contract with the client, and because of his hard work, it was extended into 2019.
He applied for the position online and was quickly in contact with Lisa and her team. He was then introduced to Sonya and Ashley and had nothing but wonderful things to say about them.
“Swoon has been wonderful. Ever since I joined, everyone has been great when they come to meet with me. They make things comfortable with the right combination of formal and informal in our meetings,” he explained.
Nirmit’s future goals are to expand his knowledge within the company to become a project manager. In his spare time, he enjoys staying fit by playing soccer and volleyball, hiking, and cycling. Fun fact: In his past, Nirmit was a drummer in a metal band!
Congratulations on your hard work paying off, Nirmit. We look forward to watching your career grow!
Our September Contractor of the Month is Alan Robinson, Technical Support Specialist at one of Swoon’s largest pharmaceutical clients in Indianapolis. Alan was on a one-year contract with the client, and we are happy to announce he was converted to a full-time employee with them this month! A few fun facts Alan shared with us included that he is a U.S. Navy Veteran (12 years), a private pilot, and has three wonderful grandchildren.
Alan said the hiring process through Swoon was great! “It was smooth, personable and I had good interactions with Ashley and Mark,” he said. For him, communication is key, and he said that Swoon’s team was very proactive and remained in constant communication with him, even after the onboarding process was complete.
“I was treated like a number in the past, but not with Swoon,” Alan said of his experience with staffing firms. Alan was self-employed when a Swoon recruiter reached out to him about this opportunity through his LinkedIn profile. He had worked with this client in the past and was excited at the chance to work there again.
Congratulations on your hard work paying off, Alan. It was our pleasure working with you and we wish you nothing but the best on your full-time venture!
There is a common saying that goes, “to best know how to use something that belongs to you, you must know everything about it.” This idea applies so well to Swoon’s Wellness Wednesdays chapter two topic: healthcare and the benefits offered by one’s company.
Most companies, if not all, currently have specific benefits allotted to their employees. These benefits are based on the intention to preserve the health and stability of a company’s employees as, truly, if you think about it, what is a company without the employees within it?
The one fault of the employee, when offered these benefits, is that they may not have the information to best utilize them. Therefore, here at Swoon, we have created a guide on how best utilize the advantages you work so hard for!
The Guide
- Make a customized plan that fits one’s individual and family needs: According to Entrepreneur.com, forty percent of employees say having a large selection of benefits strengthens the loyalty between them and their employers. Therefore, it is best to use this advantage to account for the typical needs/patterns of yourself and family.
- Ask the right questions: On Trinet.com, we found a lot of questions that could very be useful during open enrollment and throughout the year. Check’ em out!
- Has the prescription drug coverage changed?
- Will I be able to get coverage for my family in the coming year?
- Are the doctors and facilities I want to use in-network?
- Have we changed benefit plan administrators or insurance carriers?
- What’s new in the benefit options that might be beneficial to me and my family?
- Are there any new voluntary benefits?
- How often can I visit my doctor on this plan?
- Do we have a wellness program that could potentially save me money?
- Know how to get specialized care if need be: There are so many types of doctors, and when enrolling for benefits, it is important to check your plans coverage options. Fun fact, according to Aetna, there are over 60 types of medical specialists! Most insurance companies have benefits one can use for these specialists visits such as Dermatologists, Chiropractors, and Psychiatrists.
- Don’t be afraid to utilize your healthcare benefits! Some people don’t want to miss work to go to the doctor or simply think they will get better from a sickness on their own. However, there are times when going to the doctor is necessary. The more physically and mentally well employees are, the less likely they are to have to miss multiple days of work. According to an article by U.S. News, “Health benefits keep you out of the hospital, and make you a better employee all around… the business wants happy, healthy employees and the employees want to be happy and healthy as well.”
Overall, we hope that you will utilize the benefits that are available to you at your employer. It is important when enrolling to make sure you are getting the best plan not just for you, but also for your family. Here at Swoon, we take employee health very seriously and pay for all internal employees medical, dental and vision insurance, as we want everyone to come into work feeling their best each day!
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/thesaurus-category/american/branches-of-medical-science
http://www.faqs.org/ologies-isms/Lie-Mem/Medical-Specialties.html
Written By: Osoranna Mojekwu
You have taken all the right steps to prepare for your interview and you are ready to give it your all. You have written down notes about the company and questions you have for the interviewer, you know the job description like the back of your hand, and you have your suit jacket back from the dry cleaner.
The interview starts off great, and you are nailing the questions the interviewer asks. But then, they ask about your weaknesses. You panic. You wonder, “how am I supposed to answer this without hurting my chances at getting the job? Should I say I don’t have any career-related weaknesses?” Take a deep breath.
There are many ways to talk about your biggest weakness that can actually improve your chances of winning the role rather than hurting them:
- Be Specific – Don’t throw out a general trait like being lazy or messy. Instead, choose to talk about a software, certification or other skill sets that you have not yet mastered (Excel, foreign language, Adobe Photoshop) and be sure to explain what you are doing to become better at it (online classes, meet-up groups, etc.).
- Don’t Give an Example Directly Related to the Role – Of course you may not be as good at Excel as you hope to be, but if you are applying for a data analyst role, this would not be a good weakness to bring up as it is a skill you would often use in this job. You want to make sure you do not make the interviewer question your ability to perform the tasks they need this person to do. Instead, focus on something that is still business related but not something that you would be doing daily in the new role.
- Stay Composed and Focused – Do not let this question throw off your confidence. For some interviewers, the whole point of asking about weaknesses is to see how the candidates react to the question. Remain calm and answer just as you would any other interview question.
- Don’t be Arrogant – Claiming you don’t have any weaknesses or trying to make a good attribute into a weakness is not a good idea. For example, saying you are a perfectionist or that you are just too well organized may come off as insincere. If you want to focus on something like this, be careful how you phrase it, you might say something like, “Sometimes I am so focused on keeping myself organized and making sure that everything is in its place that I lose sight of the greater goal of a project and the creativity needed to finish it.”
To best prepare your answer to this question, list out your weaknesses ahead of time so that you can choose which weakness is right to discuss at which interview. Interviewing can be a scary and overwhelming process, but it doesn’t have to be. Working with a Swoon recruiter will help you to get your resume recognized, help you prepare for your interviews and the type of questions you will be asked and ultimately easy your interview worries.
As technology continues to advance and the need for niche skillsets in the workplace continues to grow, the importance of having a diverse team is more critical than ever. Swoon prides itself in being a high-performing company with employees who have the knowledge and expertise to deliver above and beyond expectations. Therefore, it is the primary focus of ours to hold, develop and recruit individuals who are as forward-thinking, globally-minded and diverse as the consumers and clients utilizing our product. We realize that diversity and inclusion are some of the most vital entities in a company continuing its path of exponential growth. They allude to the technological advances that we stand upon today and more importantly, the ones that we are most looking forward to in the future.
The Research
Return on Investment has become a large pillar in the reasons for the increased recruitment and interest of diversity and inclusion professionals. This is because studies have shown a direct correlation between diversity and bottom-line gains. Free market research has proven that often, a more diverse company yields an increased number of consumers. According to a new study from Forbes and McKinsey, of 366 public companies examined, those who remain in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above national industry medians. Could it be because consumers are looking for an image of themselves in the product they are cultivating? Just maybe!
The way Swoon looks at the importance of diversity is simple. With it, there are several more perspectives, helping us to be a better company and continue our expansion.
“I feel Swoon diversifies its staff and differentiates itself from competitors by simply not being afraid of change. Working in this manner has been to our advantage with candidates and clients alike,” said Talent Acquisition Specialist, Nashana Alexander.
According to Business Insider, a study showed that diverse teams make fewer mistakes and can look at critical facts more closely. This interesting study also found that culturally diverse groups were more likely to come up with new, innovative products in comparison to the typical homogenous teams.
“Diversity in the workplace is so important because people [our consumers] can see their stories being told, and it allows people to see themselves within others that are like them. It also supports variance in thought because when different ideas are brought to the table, innovation and creativity are bred,” said Talent Acquisition Specialist, Ashley Andrews.
Some have also found that diverse companies are more profitable because they attract the most qualified/skilled employees across the board. When we discover the best talent in non-segmented groups, it can only be assumed that the best of the best employees, beyond typical classifications, can be selected. Here at Swoon, the many cultures that have been put together under one space allow the feeling of empowerment to flourish within the office. An eagerness to learn, grow and collaboratively succeed has become more prevalent since inclusivity became a top goal of ours. Without even realizing it, it has also improved profitability because the diverse community within Swoon has influenced the way we work – both by ourselves and together.
Swoon and Diversity
The Swoon Analytics team noted that from June 2017 to today, we have exponentially grown in staff by 56 percent! We raised our earnings last year from the year before and are expecting to increase our revenue by 28 percent this year!
This summer, we decided to take things up a notch by opening a fully-equipped office in Toronto, Canada. By doing this, we have begun to realize the opportunities that come with having a globally-impacting company dually for the minds of the people in it and for clients we serve. Being able to communicate effectively in different parts of the world is a substantial benefit because it allows us to understand the many cultural nuances and concepts that come with this international expansion.
The Momentum
Recently, organizations have heavily invested in developing STEM youth, and with this, we acknowledge the bright future ahead of Swoon! Because organizations are instilling programs for the diversification of the STEM field, companies like us who are constantly in search of qualified professionals will get the excellent opportunity to expand from this effort.
Swoon, our woman-owned company, shows us all that diversity is the strength we need to keep moving forward. We anticipate our company becoming a leading force in diversity and inclusion within the staffing and recruiting industry!
Article by: Osora Mojekwu and Timothy Dixon-Traylor