Margaret

Don’t believe everything anyone tells you. Well, I mean, have SOME trust in people or you’ll end up a miserable, friendless old cynic. What I’m referring to are reviews on the Internet, possibly biased friends, potential future colleagues, company websites ….expounding on jobs, companies, salaries… Company websites: I may be stating the obvious here (never stopped me before) but companies want to portray themselves in the best light, for future business, public relations, attracting the best staff. Even if it’s on the whole pretty good, and in fact can be excellent when the CEO remembers to take his medication, these

What salary were you making at your last job/last three jobs? Thanks to NYC legislation in November 2017, it’s illegal to ask that question. It’s also a no-no in Oregon, New Orleans and Puerto Rico. If a potential employer asks you because they didn’t know the law had changed, or they didn’t care, try to swat them off respectfully. “I’m not comfortable answering that question. It’s against the law now to be asked… then put on cheery, upbeat smile… “ But I can talk about my salary requirements if you prefer.” If for some reason they repeat the question with

This article could be 10,000 words long. Consultants charge fees, actual MONEY you might not want to part with if you are unemployed, to give you training sessions. This article, on the other hand, will be shorter. And free. None of it will be brain surgery. How to find jobs. Use the Internet; it’s your friend. For the most part. There’s LinkedIn, and potential employers put their jobs up on it. So, if you want a job in a Manhattan hotel, google “Manhattan hotel”; 764 come up. Google “Manhattan hotel jobs” and frighten yourself with the number that come up.

At the risk of taking oomph away from the help that staffing agencies can give to job seekers, there’s a nice synergy sometimes between us and LinkedIn. Basically I’m saying, don’t put all your eggs in one basket (oh dear, and avoid clichés like the plague). If you have decent LinkedIn details, agencies are much more likely to try to get in touch with you for suitable job assignments they have. Of course, annoyingly, so can the hiring companies who can get to you direct, and cut out us, the middle man with our middle-man fees – sigh. But one

And it’s the real deal because it comes from ME, Margaret. I’ve seen enough of ‘em in my time, and so I know whereof I speak. (ok, sometimes other views are valid too, but let’s focus, and not get sidetracked with trivia). Here are some of the comments that other people have given Merit’s adorable candidates: To executive/administrative assistants: “Leave your Master’s/MBA off”. What? You spent a fortune doing a graduate degree, it took blood, sweat and tears to study for it, you’re a better person for it and yet you shouldn’t put it, one of your proudest achievements, on

I work for a staffing service so I tend to think in terms of candidates, clients, and of course staffing services. What are the continuing issues? Staffing services. Naturally, Merit never does anything wrong, ever, but as for the others? Oh dearie me… in 2017, it’s going to be a) Return candidates’ phone calls promptly. b) Remember to give candidates some feedback. I’m thinking specifically when clients don’t return OUR calls; we have to remember to let the candidates know. “No message to relate” often becomes “forget to tell the world it’s no message”. c) Give good advice about resume

If I see that phrase “time out of your busy schedule” one more time in a thank you letter to potential employers, I shall SPIT. It is such a cliché, there is no excuse for using it ever under any circumstances. Whatsoever. Remember, this blog on the Merit website is called “Margaret says” and this is one of those times when Margaret says and isn’t going to listen to any “Yes, but what if”s”…Please don’t ever use it. Actually, if I had ten dollars for every time I’ve read it in a thank you letter/email, I’d be sunning myself on

A super line attributed to Dorothy Parker –if you don’t know who she is, check her out on google, and even better, read some of her stuff. Brilliant. She used the line, apparently, in the office whenever the telephone rang. Things were puttering along nicely in the early years of the new Millennium, those first few years of the noughties, as the BBC called the years between 2000 and 2009. But then, in about 2007, there were signs that the economy was changing, and not for the better. It got worse in 2008 and some of us began to panic

We had a nice candidate walk through our doors the other day, charming but clueless. She had never been to a staffing service before and presumably didn’t know what to expect. When told about a rather fabby job we had, she somehow didn’t believe her luck and started grilling us; e.g. Us: “Billions in assets”. Her: “Well, it has to be a major corporation”.   Us: “Unless you think we mean billions of quetzbogs, not billions of dollars, we can assume it’s a major corporation”. Ok, conversation didn’t go 100% like that, but the naive woman clearly had a trust

Lord love a duck.***(***Stupid English i.e. not British, specifically English… expression uttered when nothing else will fit… often used when stunned or dismayed.) We sit here day and night searching for candidates and clients and suitable jobs, try to put everything together in order to make a few pence, keep the wolf from the door, stop us ending up in the poorhouse. And what thanks do we get? In no order of importance, here are some observations about the rôle of staffing services, what we do, what we shouldn’t do, what the candidates should do, what the candidates shouldn’t do….

Of course, we’re all total angels at Merit and would practicallynever dream of criticizing candidates’ behavior….. No, it’s just supposed to be a headline that grabs your attention. What my colleagues and I thought might be useful to y’all would be a blog letting you know what the recruitment process is like from OUR side of the eyeballs. Any comments are supposed to be helpful to you – the fact that I might find it cathartic to write them is purely a bonus. How often should you contact us? Not too often and definitely not too infrequently either is the

 A statement like that does wonder for the old self esteem. NOT. We all have to face it in life at some time, though. If it’s in the singular, you’re not what he/she wants, it could be rejection, major bummer, by the person you want to be your life partner if only the feeling were reciprocated. It could be that you can’t get into a particular club, college, society, branch of the Military, let’s not depress ourselves further by thinking of more examples.  What I’m thinking of is rejection by a company which you had hoped would offer you a