We send a $250 gift certificate if you refer a successful candidate; who do you know who is qualified?
Our client is a manufacturing company on the I-75 south corridor. I’ve had two friends work there and both say it’s the best company they’ve ever worked for; the first one retired and the other took his place. They have a great culture and awesome benefits.
Driven by continuous improvement and superior quality standards, this role is highly collaborative, requiring a person who is proactive, adaptive to ever-changing priorities, with strong problem-solving skills, and a positive attitude in the face of challenges. Workload falls into three main categories:
30 to 60% research and development,
20 to 40% process engineering, and
30 to 50% quality assurance and technical support to internal and external customers.
Successful candidate will identify product improvements and lead product changes from concept to commercial implementation. He or she will initiate new product design concepts, provide technical evaluation of product and raw materials, understand the accompanying process and necessary equipment, and generate product costing for new product designs. Work with a wide range of materials including inks, coatings, films, and paper.
Responsibilities
Research and Development: Manage products through all phases of the process including establishing critical paths, collaborating with departments and suppliers to accomplish project goals, manage and evaluate costs, and ensure product is evaluated and tested to meet quality guidelines and customer requirements.
Process Engineering: Evaluate, analyze, and make recommendations on process changes, machine conditions, products, designs, and cost improvements to improve the competitive position of the company. Work with new and existing suppliers to source raw materials that meet technical requirements and cost targets.
Technical Support / Quality Control: Provide technical support to the sales team, manufacturing team, suppliers, and customers as needed. Coordinate the resolution of product quality concerns (internal process or customer) and facilitate responsiveness to customers, production group, or sales group.
Requirements
BS or MS in an engineering or science-related discipline; BS ChemE preferred. Or five years related experience.
Experience with statistical quality control and quality improvement methods required.
Ability to travel 10-15% (domestic and/or international) to visit customers and suppliers.
Experience with structured problem solving methodologies.
Lean manufacturing experience.
Basic material knowledge, in particular converting substrates (paper, foil, and film), printing inks, resins, adhesives, and coatings.
Reply / EEOC
Send résumé and compensation requirements to: dave@ofarrellcm.com.
Please list the industries you have worked in so we can easily spot qualified candidates.
Must be free and clear to work in the USA for an indefinite period.
Several years ago, I had a brand-new client who told me he would only be considering opportunities in Atlanta or Florida. A few days later he bounded into my office to say he’d accepted a position in St. Louis. Huh?
Hopefully things worked out okay for him and his family despite the hasty decision.
☑ One bird or two? Sometimes a bird in the hand isn’t worth two in the bush. I’ve had several new clients tell me they knew they’d made a mistake before they even started their most recent position. Yet here they are, terminated less than a year after they began their ill-fated job.
Don’t panic. Don’t jump at the first thing that comes along.
Stick to your guns and find an opportunity that is a good match for you.
☑ Trade-offs? When you get right down to it, you probably will have to make some trade-offs. Your finances, the length and difficulty of your search, and other factors might indicate pragmatism over an ideal job.
Separate the things you “have to have” from things that would be “nice to have.” If all the essential elements are present, then it may be advisable to move forward.
☑ How much am I worth? One question that comes up for nearly every job seeker concerns #compensation. Although base #salary is what everyone seems to key in on, compensation entails a lot more than that.
One reliable site is www.salary.com. View this screen snip of the rich data you get about the comp and #benefits.
Basically, this shows you earn $7K per month in comp and $3K per month in benefits.
☑ It’s the benefits, baby. Oh my goodness, there’s never been a time when benefits from one company to another were so disparate. Healthcare costs might range from $40 to $400 every two weeks. And commuting expenses have never been higher, so #WFH saves boatloads of money.
– – – – – This is just a tiny excerpt from my book Market-Ready in Minimum Time™. BIG NEWS… I’ll be releasing an eBook version of MRMT™ in the next few weeks! So keep your eyes peeled. I’ll be announcing the eBook’s availability via email and LinkedIn (as well as Facebook).
Dave O’Farrell helps his clients shorten their search, earn more money, and get better results. He helps employers soften the blow when they have to let employees go by offering the very best outplacement service on the planet. Reach out to Dave through his LinkedIn page.
A recent article from IndustryWeek indicates that the U.S. added 390,000 jobs to the economy in May. And the pay rate for these new jobs is 5.2% higher than it was in May 2021.
What that pay increase statistic does not take into consideration however is how that increase compares to the rate of inflation. And according to the U.S. Inflation Rate Calculator, the inflation rate for the 12 months ending May of 2022 is 8.6%.
Number of long-term unemployed down.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of long-term unemployed accounted for 23.2 percent of all unemployed persons in May 2022. In March 2021, the long-term unemployed were 43.2 percent of total unemployment. Long-term unemployed is defined as those who are jobless for 27 weeks or more.
Leisure and hospitality are still going strong.
Not surprising, the leisure and hospitality industries—which are still rebounding from closures and high unemployment in 2020—provided a healthy percentage of the surge in new jobs in May 2022. According to the BLS, 84,000—or about 21% of the total jobs added—belonged to this industry.
Professional and business services gained 75,000 jobs in May. Within the industry, “job gains occurred in accounting and bookkeeping services (+16,000), computer systems design and related services (+13,000), and scientific research and development services (+6,000).” And get this: Employment in professional and business services is 821,000 higher than in February 2020.
Healthcare, manufacturing, and wholesale trade also continue to be strong industries in the job growth area, combining for 60,000 jobs added last month.
Teleworking actually continues to go down.
While it’s true that the number of companies that offer remote working and work from home is up from the period pre-pandemic, the actual number of teleworkers is down from 7.7% to 7.4%. Please note this number represents those who telework because of the coronavirus pandemic. That does not represent the number of companies who decided to shift their workforce, shrink their office real estate, and encourage work-from-home for other reasons.
What will June bring? With the recent economic news, what trends do you expect in terms of employment, new jobs, industry, and remote working?
Dave O’Farrell helps his clients shorten their search, earn more money, and get better results. He helps employers soften the blow when they have to let employees go by offering the very best outplacement service on the planet. Reach out to Dave through his LinkedIn page.
A recent Forbes article on workplace trends examined an increasingly recognized need for employers … staffing for resilience. Before the pandemic hit, the focus of organizations was to hire workers who create “efficient organizations.”
Think about the power of efficiency when the world is turned upside down, businesses are forced to close, and the masses are working from home. It’s hard to be efficient when, what you’re efficient at, has changed drastically or is no longer a reality.
As the Forbes article states…
“Ensuring a workforce is healthy enough to keep a business running is clearly a critical element of resilience, but it also covers the implementation of processes that are more flexible, with built-in redundancies to provide cover when disaster strikes, resulting in operational efficiency becoming compromised.”
This is why companies appear to be, according to uschamber.com, focusing on soft skills and knowing the right questions to ask while interviewing. These are just a couple ways they look to hire employees that are easily adaptable and open to change.
Now more than ever, job seekers need to be able to answer the “flexibility” questions in interviews.
Please describe how you led your team during COVID.
Tell us about a task or project that you took on in the past couple of years that was outside of your scope of work.
Give us an example of how you were especially creative in solving a problem that was unique to the pandemic.
Tell us about a time when you made a sacrifice to achieve an important goal during the lockdown.
Now tell us about a time when you were unwilling or unable to make the necessary sacrifice to achieve a goal. No business wants to become obsolete, nor do they want to hire staff that will help them get to that obsolescence more quickly.
How have you become more flexible, and more adaptable, in the last couple years? What have you done to make yourself more personally resilient?
How can you demonstrate your flexibility and resilience to prospective employers?
Dave O’Farrell helps his clients shorten their search, earn more money, and get better results. He helps employers soften the blow when they have to let employees go by offering the very best outplacement service on the planet. Reach out to Dave through his LinkedIn page.
Last week, I shared some insights on 2022 workplace trends as predicted in a January article from Harvard Business Review. Among the things mentioned in the article “11 Trends that Will Shape Work in 2022 and Beyond” was last week’s focus of the shortened workweek. This week, I’d like to dive in to Trends #4 and #6 on their list.
Increased Turnover
Article writers Brian Kropp and Emily Rose McRae predict (in Trend #4) that employee turnover will continue to increase as hybrid and remote work become the norm for knowledge workers. As to WHY this will create more—not less—turnover is an astute observation: “Employees that work hybrid or remotely have fewer friends at work and thus weaker social and emotional connections with their coworkers.”
As to how this affects the job seeker, consider this also… “With hybrid and remote work as the norm, the geographic radius of the organizations that someone can work for also expands.” This means that companies who don’t have to provide workspace for everyday knowledge workers can expand their search beyond their geographic “center.”
This is also true for the prospective employee. You may not have to move to Silicon Valley for your dream job in big tech… The job may be hosted there, but it might meet you where you are.
Recently, I spoke to an HR manager who said their radius for a “local” candidate has expanded from 40 to 90 miles. This gives them the ability to reach well-qualified candidates on the northern perimeter of Atlanta. She said they can WFH almost every day. And she lives in Villa Rica – 37 miles and 52 minutes away.
When they have team meetings at HQ, all employees are close enough to arrive for a 9:00 AM start time, they bring in lunch, and send everyone home no later than 4:00 PM. This supports work-life balance, strengthens relationships, and builds an esprit des corps.
Improved Collaboration
As to why some companies are comfortable with this shift, Kropp and McRae offer this explanation in their predicted Trend #6. The tools we use to work remotely will become the tools that help measure and improve performance.
They put it this way, “Moving forward, the same tools that employees are currently using to work in a virtual environment will be used to assess the contributions that employees are making.”
In other words, a company that wants to expand its team doesn’t have to expand their physical office capacity. Likewise, replacing a staff position can mean they look in a wider geographic area than ever before—without the expectation for the candidate to relocate for the job.
What do you think about this? How does the trend of remote working, which appears to be on the rise, affect your job search?
Dave O’Farrell helps his clients shorten their search, earn more money, and get better results. He helps employers soften the blow when they have to let employees go by offering the very best outplacement service on the planet. Reach out to Dave through his LinkedIn page.
For the #3 trend, the article lists “To compete in the war for knowledge worker talent, some companies will shorten the work week rather than increase pay.”
You may remember in my email to you last week that I discussed another source (TechRadar) that noted the 4-day workweek would be a top trend in the job market in 2022.
Here’s what HBR had to say about this trend back in January:
“While some companies are able to compete for talent through compensation alone, others don’t have the financial resources to do so. Rather than trying to win the war for talent by increasing compensation, we are seeing some employers reduce the number of hours worked by employees and keeping compensation flat”.
And if you’re wondering if this form of compensation is somehow short-changing the very talent they are seeking to attract, remember one hard-to-overlook factor: inflation.
In addressing that factor, the article states: “employers will find the compensation they offer will be worth less and less in terms of purchasing power for employees.”
So yes, while the increase in wages has doubled (4% versus the normal rate increase of 2%) the inflation factor makes the apparent increase worth a little less than in past years.
So now time is being given as another form of compensation. And if the HBR article title is any indication, the prediction is that this will last even beyond 2022.
Dave O’Farrell helps his clients shorten their search, earn more money, and get better results. He helps employers soften the blow when they have to let employees go by offering the very best outplacement service on the planet. Reach out to Dave through his LinkedIn page.
