Candidate Tips...The Right Way to Resign: How to Leave Your Job in Good Standing

By Caroline Levchuck

After you've landed a new job, the excitement of starting something new may be accompanied by anxiety and guilt over leaving the familiar and perhaps some good friends, too. Even if you're leaving mostly enemies behind, it's still a good idea to leave your job in good standing.

Corporate alumni associations are sprouting up all over the Fortune 500, at companies including GE, Procter & Gamble and Yum! Brands, and it's in your best interest to be a part of these burgeoning professional networks. In fact, if you handle your transition properly, your former employers may even view your ascension elsewhere as a PR asset.

"Whatever the circumstances are around your departure, keep your mind on the big picture and don't do anything that could come back to haunt you," says career coach Deborah Brown-Volkman.

She recommends three steps for wrapping things up at your old job and departing with a pat on the back from your boss.

Write Down Everything You Do and How It Gets Done

Forget job descriptions. They rarely tell us precisely what an individual does day-to-day or reveal the "It's not really my job, but I kind of do it anyway" responsibilities that grace any worker's plate each week. Also, in an age of zero redundancy at many companies, you cannot rely on even your supervisor to understand what you do and how you do it.

"Often a boss feels like, 'I don't know what this person does -- I only know she can't leave!'" Brown-Volkman says.

So, do your boss and colleagues right by creating an exhaustive list of everything you handle, along with detailed instructions on how to handle it. Your coworkers will appreciate you for having this thorough document -- and for having done so much during your tenure.

Remain Until You Train the New You

Two weeks' notice may be the minimum an employer requests, but most companies will appreciate a more lengthy lead-time so you can help train your replacement. If you do so, your boss will be indebted to you. You're also sending a message that you want your former coworkers and employer to succeed.

"It's hard to give a lot of notice because your next employer may be waiting anxiously for you to start, and many people want to take a week off between jobs," Brown-Volkman says. However, she urges departing workers to spend "as much time as you can with your replacement or colleagues who will be temporarily handling your workload. Train them so they've got it down cold."

Also, tap your own network for a potential replacement. You may even be eligible for a finder's fee if you refer the right person for the job.

Wish Everyone Well When You Leave

Brown-Volkman advises giving all your coworkers a heartfelt farewell and offering them a few words of encouragement and appreciation. "Even if you don't like someone, bury the hatchet," she says. "It takes a big person to do that, but you never know when you'll meet this individual again."

Also, she points out that former coworkers are the best candidates to join your professional network. "You will always have common ground with these folks," she says. "They're easy to stay in touch with. There will always be some bit of news or gossip you can bond over, and that makes it less awkward to pick up the phone and chat."

All of this is for the future -- the big picture, she adds. "You could end up working for some of these people," she says. "You may need a favor. You just don't know, so make sure you leave on the best possible terms."

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Client Tips...10 Questions the Boss Should Ask Every Employee

Behavioral Interviewing

You may feel that two short interviews and a three page resume are not sufficient for you to make an important hiring decision. Perhaps you should consider the kinds of questions you are asking the candidate in your interviews. Behavioral interviewing is a very good technique to help you identify the right person.

What is behavioral interviewing?

It is a style of interview that forces candidates to answer questions which demonstrate their competencies (knowledge, skills and abilities) by giving specific examples from their past experiences. The focus on the interview is less about what they can or could do (ie, hypothetical situations), and more about what they have done in specific situations in the past.

Behavioral interviewing is based on the assumption that a person's past performance (in previous roles) is an excellent predictor of their future performance.

How to prepare for a behavioral interview

To prepare for a behavioral interview, take the following steps:

• Make sure you have clearly defined the competencies for the role. General competencies include:

• Enthusiasm
• Knowledge/skills
• Problem solving
• Team building
• Personal attributes
• Leadership
• Communication
• Flexibility
• Decision making
• Develop a series of questions which will enable you to find out if the candidate has these competencies.
• Questions might take the form of:

• Give me an example of how you have .
• Tell me about a situation where you .
• In the past, how did you deal with a situation where .
• Given your past experience, how would you best deal with .

What should you look to evaluate in a behavioral interview?

There are three types of competencies you should look for:

• Content competencies - which are work/role specific.
• Functional/transferable skills - which are used generally with people, information or things, regardless of the specific environment.

Adaptive or self-management skills - which are personal characteristics.

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The Recruiter's View: Candidate-Driven Market is Impacting Hiring More Than Ever Before

Despite some challenges during the winter months, U.S. employment has experienced consistent growth in 2015, with 251,000 new jobs as the monthly average. Many companies are expanding their teams, but are finding it difficult to recruit, especially in the executive, managerial and professional job market. In this sector, which is candidate-driven, employers continue to lose great candidates who are accepting other job offers. This is due to lengthy hiring practices, below-market salaries and an inability of prospective employers to sell their brand, the role and career-pathing opportunities. Retention is also a challenge, as the brightest talent recognize more jobs are available and feel more confident about pursuing them. Now more than ever, companies are feeling the pressure of the candidate-driven market, forcing many to reevaluate and overhaul their recruitment efforts, to attract and retain the specialized talent needed to move their organizations forward.

Click to watch the video.

New data from the most recent MRINetwork Recruiter Sentiment Study, a biannual employment landscape survey of MRINetwork recruiters across approximately 600 worldwide offices, indicates that the candidate-driven market, which has experienced a consistent uptick since 2011, is here to stay, and the rate at which top performers are rejecting job offers continues to grow. According to the survey, 90 percent of respondents feel the executive, managerial and professional sector is candidate-driven. This stands in strong contrast to companies who still believe employers are driving the labor market, and that their pre-recession talent acquisition and retention methods can still be effective.

"The job climate has definitely shifted in the past three years to a candidate-driven market," said a recruiter responding to the study. "Candidates now have choices and employers need to make the interview process go smoothly and quickly." The report reveals in the first half of 2015, a 36 percentage point increase from the second half of 2011, that recruiters feel the talent market is candidate-driven.

The availability of more job opportunities and a growing shortage of highly specialized talent are the overriding forces behind the candidate-driven market. With multiple job offers to consider and the ability to reject less desirable work opportunities, top performers have the upper hand. To that end, a reluctance by many companies to provide respectable wage increases, or offer competitive salaries to prospective hires, is impacting their hiring and retention abilities. According to the study, 47 percent of recruiters say the primary obstacle to hiring is a failure to recognize that top candidates are no longer accepting the low salaries that were customary during the recession. Further, year-over-year survey data points to acceptance of another job offer as the most common reason that candidates turn down a role, with a six percentage point increase from the first half of 2014. The message is clear; employers who do not recognize this reality will continue to lose their top picks to competitors. Further, the time between the first interview and the rejected offer is shrinking, with an eight percentage point increase from the second half of 2013, for candidates that rejected offers within two weeks of the first interview.

MRINetwork recruiters provide the following survey insight about rejected job offers:

• The shift to a candidate-driven marketplace has been enormous just over the course of the last year. The biggest concern is that candidates understand this, but companies do not.
   
• Companies tend to feel their offer/opportunity is unique. Candidates are expecting more in the way of benefits and compensation.
   
• Employers think there are better candidates out there who they haven't seen. They also don't seem to have a clue that the best candidates are in the driver's seat.
   
• Many organizations still don't realize they need to bring their A-game to attract.

With more top performers moving on, the candidate-driven market points to several things:

• Internal and external branding will continue to be important as companies face growing pressure to sell their value proposition to employees and candidates. "Clients are beginning to, but not across the board at all levels, recognize this is a candidate-driven market where the best talent need to be convinced their lives would be better if they were in that particular role," says an MRINetwork recruiter.
   
• Lengthy hiring processes must be replaced with streamlined, candidate-facing interviewing practices. One recruiter notes, "Clients need to understand that they are in a competitive situation and good candidates are getting multiple offers. "They are still taking too long to finish the deal."
   
• Not surprisingly, talented employees who were hired at bargain salaries during the recession are moving on. According to one recruiter, "Clients are beginning to understand that if they aren't competitive with compensation and culture, they will struggle to make strategic hires. The time where companies could seek to hire someone who's already done/doing the job for which they're looking to hire, and willing to come for lateral compensation is just about over."

Although the study results demonstrate that top performers are driving the hiring process in the executive, managerial and professional space, recruitment and retention will continue to present challenges for overall hiring as the job market expands. The recruitment practices of the past are no longer effective and companies need to recognize that modern hiring approaches are now necessary to acquire and keep the best talent.

To view the complete study, visit www.MRINetwork.com/recruitersentiment.

Engineers Get Busy! A Welcomed Resurgence.

Sometimes trends in the engineering professions are difficult to define because of slow pace or incremental changes that can be difficult to perceive.  But, demand for engineering talent has been a dramatically increasing trend in the past few months.  Simply put, many firms have more work than people to execute the work, and the ability to win more available work is constrained by not having the necessary leadership and personnel.  Of course this is good news for recruiters like us, but, most importantly, it is a welcomed resurgence for the engineering professions. It is good news for everyone from the entry-level grad ready to enter the profession, to the senior engineer ready to take on a Principal role.

Improvement in the general economy is the prime driver.  In addition, there might be some improvement in the political environment in many states that is driven by the understanding of the critical needs of our crumbling infrastructure.  Credit the ASCE for their quadrennial
Report Card for America's Infrastructure and some excellent coverage in general media such as reviews of books like Jonathan Waldman's Rust, The Longest War and Rosabeth Moss Kanter's Move: Putting America's Infrastructure Back in the Lead.

Some of our recent opportunities are listed here but remember that job opportunities are very fluid and the best strategy for finding a new opportunity is to create a relationship with a recruiter who can identify the right career step as it becomes available.

Contact Pat Havard at 530-478-6478 Ext 115 or Pat@prgnc.com to learn more about our services and these exciting opportunities. Referrals are always welcome!

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