Inland Empire Jobing Community Blogs

The Conference is just around the corner, taking place October 6-8, 2008, in Long Beach.  Program and registration details are available by clicking www.pihraconference.org

PIHRA, given its increasingly strategic HR focus, has chosen the theme, Advancing the Business of HR , to bring a respectable balance between ‘compliance’ and ‘strategic’ program components.

Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) research shows that some executives still view HR professionals with a critical eye. Our keynote conference speakers, Mike Losey, a past president of SHRM, and Barbara Sanfilippo, a leading customer service expert, will invigorate our conference with insights particular to our HR profession.  They will share with us how we, as HR professionals, can bridge the gap to the executive suite.

HR professionals play an increasingly important role as partners to the executives at their companies and have the opportunity to view themselves as consultants, with the business leaders as clients.  The challenge is to step forward and take full responsibility for providing services to business leaders that demonstrate a measurable impact on the core business operations, while at the same time, building relationships with those executives.

The wide array of educational sessions offered at the conference will advance your ability to be agents for change, be the strategic partner and form critical alliances both inside and outside your organization.

Scott Christopher, head of speaking and training at O.C. Tanner Company, joins us for another Wake-up Session to demonstrate Why Fun at Work is Serious Business. See his video below.

Certified Executive Resume Writer and Career Coach Laura Smith-Proulx is the Executive Director of An Expert Resume and Executive Resume Expert. Published in six career bestsellers, she is a former corporate recruiter who works with executives and IT leaders to win interviews by presenting a compelling leadership brand.

That's a great question... and one for which there is no "magic" answer. But if you're in the job hunt at this point, you might swear that the process seems to be taking longer than ever before.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that most companies receive unprecedented volumes of resumes in response to any job posting. In other words, the popularity of Internet job search is at least partly to blame for extending the process.

However, even seasoned professionals and executives using targeted networking and other types of job search methods are finding their quest is ongoing. Some prominent studies suggest that a job search will take one MONTH for every $10,000 of salary.

What's a well-qualified candidate to do?

Here are some ways to gauge how long your job hunt might take, and some methods to start addressing it--long BEFORE frustration sets in:

1 - First, assess the factors that may affect the duration of your search.

In particular, the amount of time you'll need to invest will be largely dependent upon the following:

* Your qualifications for the role you seek vs. that of your competition

* The industry in which you may be limiting your search

* Economic conditions affecting demand for your skills or within your industry

* Any factors that play into selection by recruiters (an unfinished degree, frequent job changes, short tenure at your current position, etc.)

* Any other mitigating circumstances, such as large numbers of people exiting your field (such as in the mortgage or construction industries), or relatively high pay for your career goal (including the field of pharmaceutical sales) that encourages applicants to flood employers with resumes

* The type of job search you conduct (i.e., online only or using networking to expand your options)

2 - Next, take a look at your methods, and expand them beyond Internet-only search.

Online search efforts CAN be fruitful, but for many applicants, the low rate of return (anywhere from 4 to 18 percent) can severely limit your success.

I highly encourage you to avail yourself of other opportunities by joining professional associations, creating and monitoring an online profile to maximize connections, sending resumes directly to companies without posted job openings, getting in touch with recruiters, and using other networking opportunities.

3 - Last, revise your thinking about job hunting itself.

A successful search is no more than a means by which to spread the word about your qualifications.

The more you can establish yourself as an expert in your field, using tools such as connections to others, blogging on your area of expertise, gaining additional training, or creating a web portfolio to showcase your work, the easier it will be to have others locate YOU.

In short, while some facets of a job hunt may be beyond your control, you CAN significantly cut down the amount of time needed to find your next opportunity by using the most productive search methods, and developing a business presence that can catapult your presence from ordinary to cutting-edge.

In a changing and competitive market, learning best practices from accomplished professionals in your industry can be key to your career management. For the Training and Development profession, one of the most accomplished professionals in the industry is Bob Pike, CSP, CPAE. A pioneer in the HRD industry since 1969, Bob Pike has well earned his reputation as the "trainer's trainer." In his full-day workshop, titled: “The Power of Participant-Centered Training: Design, Deliver, and Transfer a Learning Experience with Greater Results,” Bob will share with ASTD-Orange County members the best practices that he has developed over 35 years in the industry. Based on the profiles of 100,000 people of every demographic strata, Bob Pike will share and demonstrate how you can create the most effective experience for your participants, empower you within your career, and help you close your own personal gap between knowing and doing.

The workshop is scheduled for Thursday, August 28. Don't miss this unique opportunity to learn from a master in the training and development field!

Event Details

Are you ready to find your next job?  Then join Jobing.com and over lots of local employers on Thursday, August 21st from 2 PM - 6PM at The Ontario Convention Center.

Register Today to:

1) Find a Great Local Job - The Jobing.com Career Expo provides you with direct access to over 250 local companies who are ready to hire talented people just like you. 

2) Meet with Hiring Managers and Recruiters Face-to-Face - The Jobing.com Career Expo is your opportunity to stand-up and be noticed. 

(3) Workshops - The Jobing.com Career Expo is one of the only local career events to provide you with educational workshops prior to the event. 
 
(4) Meet with Over 250 Local Companies - The Jobing.com Career Expo is one of the most highly attended career events by area employers. 
   
(5) Discover Community Agencies that Can Assist You in Your Career - At each Jobing.com Career Expo you'll have the chance to meet and learn about various community agencies which can help you in your search for a new career as well as assisting you once you're on-board in your new position.  

Be sure to note the NEW TIME (2PM-6PM)...See you on August 21st!

 

6-week Program at no cost

Receive 6 units of College Credit  

8-hour Forklift Certification

Placement Assistance

Logistics is a growth industry in Southern California !

Get information about an industry where your experience can count!

Prepare now for career opportunities in warehousing, inventory, sales, distribution, freight forwarding, purchasing, supply chain, and more!

Class starts August 11

Attend Orientation on one of these days:

Saturday, August 2 @ 11am – East Los Angeles College

1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez, Monterey Park CA 91754 in the Tech Center E-7, Room 415

Monday, August 4 @ 2pm – Wilshire Metro Worksource

3550 Wilshire Blvd. 5th Floor, Los Angeles CA 90010 in the Training Room

Thursday, August 7 @ 10am – Los Angeles Valley College

5800 Fulton Avenue , Valley Glen CA 91401 in the Faculty Lounge

Bring these documents with you to the Orientation:

Photo ID; Social Security Card; Right-to-work documents; Resume; Vets should bring their DD214

Contact Monica Pecot to pre-register: 213-365-9829

Funded by the City of Los Angeles WIB in partnership with the Employment Development Department.

Equal Opportunity Employer Program. Auxillary aids and services are available upon request to individuals with disabilities. To ensure availability, your request should be received at least 5 business days in advance of the need.  TTY: 213-365-9829 - Fax: 213-365-9839

Dr. Ann Kwinn was winding down her presentation on The Virtual Classroom when she decided to outline a bit of an upcoming workshop that she and technical training guru Ruth Clark would be facilitating.  As Ann revealed that participants would be designing virtual classroom training during the workshop, I asked: "Will we need to bring laptops to the workshop?"

I thought this was a good question, because laptops had never been mentioned whenever we discussed her workshop, and yet it seemed they would be an integral part of the course if we were to be designing virtual training.

Ann surprised many of us by answering: "No, you'll be designing your projects on paper."  Big pieces of paper, apparently.

This lead me to wonder, in my best Carrie Bradshaw impersonation: "Can a technical or systems-based workshop succeed using paper-based activities?"

It's possible go low-tech intermittently, I suppose.  After all, Dr. Kwinn demonstrated the Virtual Classroom concept of polling quite well with flash cards.  She handed each participant a stack of flash cards, each a different colour, displayed a question with colour-coded answers on a Powerpoint slide, and asked us to answer the question by holding up a flash card that matched the colour of the answer. 

Voila!  Instant polling!

Ann's decision to back away from the computer in this training class isn't a novel concept.  Discover Dan Roam, who wrote a book on visual thinking called: The Back of the Napkin.  In this book, Dan comments that computer programs such as Excel or Powerpoint can be obstacles to buy-in during meetings, that our messages can be better communicated using simple drawings.  Powerpoint's a media everybody loves to hate, but Dan suggests that drawing our ideas on the back of a napkin (or any surface, really) can help crystallize these ideas in other peoples' heads.  He's made quite a career of this, appearing on CNN, Fox News, and other shows to demonstrate his visual thinking methodology like a street magician.

Let's give a for-instance on how low-tech activities can differently engage our brain. 

Ann's message at the beginning of her presentation was that the training mode is not impactful for the transference of knowledge, the training methodology is.  In other words, you can design the same training for instructor-led, eLearning, or WebEx classes, and the amount of knowledge transferred will remain the same for each person regardless of which version of the course that person took.  If you stand in front of a classroom, in front of a camera, or in front of a computer monitor and lecture, the learners will still remember a small share of the information you've provided because, as we all know, telling ain't training.

Now.  Let's imagine that Ann did cart in several computer stations so each attendee could play around with a virtual classroom software program.  Let's imagine that she decided to demonstrate polling by asking a question in the virtual classroom, and asking everyone to respond virtually.  We would all get the idea of what polling is, just like we did using Ann's flash cards.  In both cases, Ann designed an activity that had us experience an example of polling.

But would we have been able to acknowledge that the methodology we're used to using in the classroom is what we need to pay attention to when we design our virtual training?  By having us raise coloured flash cards, Ann created an "ah-hah moment," revealing not only that polling is a tool to be used in virtual training, but that it's something already within our design toolboxes.  So is whiteboarding, so is transferring the class audio to a virtual attendee.

I doubt that would have been as obvious if Ann had gone the technical route, even if she had stopped to say: "Remember, this is something you already do in classroom training."  I believe we would have nodded, and pushed another button when told that doing so is the next step.

I wonder how often we complicate our technical training by relying upon the system that we're training as the training mode.  I wonder if, sometimes, the concepts that we need to discuss are set on the back burner because now we're pushing buttons and experiencing a new tool -- learning how to use a new tool, not necessarily how best to apply it.

A belated welcome to Armen Ayvazian who joined the Sport Chalet IT department to serve as our new Infrastructure Manager. Armen is responsible for the group that manages our computer hardware, data base management, and voice and data services. Armen comes to us most recently from Reliance Steel and Aluminum Co., a fortune 500 company where he had a similar position and was responsible for the IT infrastructure for over 50 locations across the U.S.. Prior to working at Reliance, Armen held positions at EarthLink, Berliner Photography, and the Motion Picture Industry Pension & Health Plans. His rich background will help us as we continue to grow, become increasingly dependant on our network, face increasing legislative and compliance initiatives, and develop more robust disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

Armen grew up in the La Canada area and currently resides in South Pasadena. In his free time Armen enjoys running and exhausting sessions on his Nordic Track.

=Welcome aboard Armen!

I was at a meeting this morning when the earthquake shook the building.  I wanted to run out but I realized where would I go? I said to myself, remain cool it’s just an earthquake.

After it was all over I thought to myself, how it would feel to be in a middle of a job interview during an earthquake. One of the things I would always encourage anyone to do is to remain cool. If you are in an interview, it’s always good to know your surroundings. What you don't want to do is scream out of there, it does not show you work well under pressure. Here are a few other tips that might help you get through an emergency.

1. Remain composed. Make sure everyone is ok.

2. Its always good to follow the lead of the one who is interviewing you. If staff in the build has to evacuate, find out if you should stay or reschedule.

3. If they want you to stay, gather your things and walk out with everyone else.

4. If you need to reschedule, be sure to follow up with a call or email within 24 hours.