SkyWater Blog

If you encounter one of these frightful executive recruiters, don’t be tricked!

Are you ready for Halloween? At SkyWater we've fed our pet bats, dry cleaned our very best capes, and changed the sheets in our coffins. Just kidding. If you've worked with SkyWater before, you know we're not the vampires that some make recruiters out to be. But stories of truly terrible recruiters aren't always completely unwarranted. In celebration of Halloween, I thought I’d give you a peek at some of the most horrifying characters in my own profession, executive recruiting, in hopes that you can recognize the very best recruiters, and stick with the good guys.

Here’s What We’re Really Looking for On Your Resume...

Recruiters and hiring managers go through hundreds of resumes every week. Sometimes, we might sift through more than a hundred resumes for a single position. Even for the strongest candidates, it’s not always easy to break through the clutter. But there are certain tactics you can use to make your qualifications stand out. I recently asked Ben Lehmann, Director of Sales and HR recruiting at SkyWater Search Partners, what leaps off the page for him when he’s reviewing resumes. Here are his top 7 tips.

Let me start with an understatement: a lot has changed in the employment industry during 2020. While the Twin Cities hasn’t suffered the same unemployment rates as much of the country, we’ve certainly followed the trend of COVID’s impact on our economy. As a result, we’ve gone from a candidate shortage so dire that many local employers were facing serious risks of failing to meet plan simply because they couldn’t get enough people on board to do the work – to something of a surge in available talent.

Trying to be all things to all employers just doesn't work any more, if it ever did. The candidate whose resume says "Project Manager" AND "Engineer" must decide which she is. Otherwise, she comes across to potential employers as confused, unfocused and possibly desperate.

3 Steps (and a Free Template You Can Use) to Save a Great Candidate

Have you ever been waist-deep in the hiring process with your dream hire, only to have them second guess the opportunity and decide to stay where they are?

Job loss at any time is stressful and disorienting. In the middle of a global pandemic, it seems almost surreal. Yet, all across America this is the reality of COVID-19. Here, in Minnesota, more than 450,000 people have seen their jobs taken away, pared down, or temporarily suspended.

It’s been a long year. For the large majority of us, even with experience telecommuting, working from home has never gone like this before. As an executive recruiter, I’ve always believed that employee experience is the single greatest predictor of employee success and retention. I also believe that the key to understanding employee experience is communicating. Ask good questions, listen intentionally, follow up, role model, observe. But lately, I think that most managers whose employees were abruptly thrust out of the office and into instant telecommuting, it’s growing increasingly difficult to have a good sense of how each individual is really doing.

Over the past several years, the concept of “Employee Engagement” – and the practice of using surveys to measure it – has attracted a lot of attention among managers and the HR leadership who support them.  It’s also generated a great deal of confusion.  What is employee engagement?  Isn’t it just a new name for employee satisfaction?  We keep surveying them but nothing ever changes… why bother?

You could be missing out on receiving exceptional applicants.

We see this often: You've posted an open position at your organization, but you feel as if you haven't been attracting the right candidates to apply. Maybe you've posted the position on sites that don't get the right kind of traffic. Maybe you're having trouble attracting traffic to your own company career page. Have you taken a second look at the job description itself?

Perhaps you're thinking it's about time to review your career path options and explore the opportunities available out there. You might be asking yourself what your long-term career goals are and which employers will match those aspirations to support your career development.