CareerCam Blog

How can outsourcing help your business, and what projects or tasks are right to outsource? Examine some of the pros and cons of outsourcing to get a feel for how you can make outsourcing work for your business.

Outsourcing Pros

1. You can save on operational costs. Often you can pay a contract employee less than you would to have someone do the same job in-house. Plus you don’t have to pay benefits, or overhead.
2. You can broaden the skill set of your team by outsourcing. If you don’t have all the skills you need to get a project done you can outsource to someone who can. If you don’t have all the skills you need to get a project done you can outsource to someone who can.
3. You can outsource mundane and routine tasks so that your internal staff can stay focused on growing your business.
4. Outsourcing is highly flexible and allows people to work remotely. This is an advantage to parents wanting to stay home with their children, and also to people that do not want a traditional 9-5 job.

Outsourcing Cons

1. Language or cultural barriers can cause confusion and misunderstandings.
2. Time zone differences can make communication difficult, and cause projects to stretch longer than they should. For example, if an outsourced worker has a question while you are sleeping, and won’t receive an answer from you until he or she is asleep that definitely slows the work down.
3. It is difficult to get employees on the same page in person. It is even harder trying to get everyone on the same page from multiple remote locations.

When you choose to outsource a project it is important to make everything is clear as possible to avoid misunderstandings up front. Make sure to tie your payments to specific measurable project milestones. And most important, be sure to get everything in writing.

By Anonymous Franchise Discussion

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Last year I started working with a client whom I will call “C”. C is a very successful senior level sales executive who is now in his mid 40s. Like many other people, C has reached that point in his career when he is taking stock of what he really wants to do. He is a great pharmaceutical sales guy - momentum and talent have helped him to navigate a lucrative career and to stay with the same company through a couple of mergers. C has come to the conclusion that pharmaceutical sales isn’t what it used to be. Constant reorganizations make it hard to make as much money and generally create frustration and aggravation for some of the salespeople.

I helped C with his resume and I put him in touch with superstar executive coach, Brooke Vuckovic. Brooke has a PhD from the University of Chicago and is a professor at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management. She works with top executives to help them to figure out the answer to the question, “What’s next in my career?” C has decided that it might be time to explore a job with a start-up if he can find the right opportunity. So, he is in the process of researching companies to try to find an opportunity that he is excited about.

C called the other day and asked me to help him update his resume in advance of attending a big industry conference. He heard about a couple of trailblazing entrepreneurs who have a unique product that he is uniquely qualified to sell because of his particular industry knowledge and contacts. So, in addition to resume updates, we talked a lot about how to approach the people he wanted to meet and we did some online research so that C would be prepared for his meeting.

Then C headed off to the conference. The day after the conference I got an email from C to call him right away…that he had big news. When I called I half expected him to tell me that the entrepreneurs he was meeting had offered him a job on the spot. He is a super talented guy so it wouldn’t have surprised me if that had happened. But, that is not what C wanted to say.

C told me that after having spent nearly 20 years in pharmaceutical sales he had never gone to a conference and made as many contacts as he did that day. He said he had great conversations with industry leaders and got about 30 business cards from folks he planned to follow up with. His point was that when he opened himself up to working with a professional coach and a resume writer he was stepping out of his comfort zone but that by taking that step he opened more doors for himself than he could ever have imagined.

There is a saying that if you keep doing what you have always done you will get the same results that you have always gotten. The opposite is also true: if you do something different than what you have done before you will probably get different results. In the past, C took a more passive approach to his career which was pretty easy since his skills got him promoted regularly. Now, he is aggressively pursuing options that he is choosing for himself and he can’t believe the results he has gotten so far.

I am sure as a salesman, C did a lot of networking with industry contacts in order to sell products. But networking for a job requires a somewhat different focus in that you are seeking out an opportunity for yourself rather than for a product or for your company. My friend Thom Singer has written a couple of great books about networking and I know he just gave a speech at South By Southwest Interactive about networking at conferences. Thom’s advice? Walk up to someone and say “Hello” and see what happens from there. So simple, so easy, yet it can seem so difficult when you are at a conference but as C found out the rewards of doing so are many.

By Liz Handlin of Ultimate Resumes.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

CareerCam is happy to announce that we have joined the Recruiting Blogswap! The Recruiting Blogswap is a content exchange service sponsored by our friends at CollegeRecruiter.

Every so often, CareerCam will be publishing articles written by other members of the Blogswap. These articles will cover various aspects of the recruiting experience, not just live video interviewing and online career events. If you like what you read, be sure to follow the links back the the original author!

So you think you are a sales executive? Let’s qualify you as a candidate:

1. Do you love to cold call?
2. Do you understand how to develop relationships with your recruiters?
3. Do you understand how to develop relationships inside large companies once you have them as a client?
4. Are you familiar with all the procedural processes and paper work of your clients?
5. Do you regularly attend trade fares?
6. Are you an active networked?
7. Do you reside on LinkedIn and Google?
8. Do you love to research new prospects?
9. What time do you make your first phone call in the morning?
10. What time do you go home at night?

These are all leading questions that could help determine if a sales executive is up to par or is just blowing smoke. There is a split within sales known as the hunter/ farmer split.

The farmer logically grows the account once the seed is sown, waters the crops, and brings in a large new harvest. He also makes sure that wolves do not prey on his sheep by knowing every sheep in the flock.

A hunter is a wolf who goes out and hunts. A wolf does not wait for the sheep to come to him, he goes out and finds it, stalks it, and takes it down. The wolf is never content, nor does it get fat. A hunter is always hunting or he is no longer a hunter.

Are you a hunter or a farmer? Perhaps you are both, or neither. If you are neither, you and those people who depend on you have a serious problem.

By Techruiter at http://www.boston-technical-recruiter.com

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

On Monday, February 18th, CareerCam facilitated an Online Career Event for Environment America. Using CareerCam’s technology and network of schools, Environment America sent invitations to 25 Ohio-based colleges and universities. Within a week, 99 students had registered!

During the Online Career Event, Environment America:

1. Broadcast live with a webcam
2. Conducted a PowerPoint presentation
3. Showed a 7 minute video clip on their organization
4. Conducted multiple Q/A sessions via the phone
5. Constantly fielded questions through instant messaging

Here are the complete details:

1. Marketing began one week prior to the event
2. 25 schools were invited
3. 99 students registered
4. 45 students logged into the event
5. 12 schools were represented at the event
6. 11 students planned on applying for an internship or job
7. 24 students completed the survey at the end of the event

For more information on CareerCam Online Career Events, click here.

Interested in what the survey results said? Well, here they are:

Survey Results

1.Overall, was attending this Online Career Event worth your time?
a.Yes 21/24 ( 88%)
b.No 0/24 ( 0%)
No Answer 3/24 ( 13%)

2.We’re you able to watch the video?
a.Yes 17/24 ( 71%)
b.No 5/24 ( 21%)
No Answer 2/24 ( 8%)

3.Are you planning on applying for a job or internship with Environment America?
a.Yes 11/24 ( 46%)
b.No 0/24 ( 0%)
c.Undecided 11/24 ( 46%)
No Answer 2/24 ( 8%)

4.Would you rather attend an Online Career Event or an On-Campus Info Session?
a.Online Career Information Event 17/24 ( 71%)
b.On-Campus Information Session 4/24 ( 17%)
No Answer 3/24 ( 13%)

5.Overall, how would you rate the registration and login process?
a.Easy 15/24 ( 63%)
b.Not too bad 7/24 ( 29%)
c.Hard 0/24 ( 0%)
No Answer 2/24 ( 8%)

6.Would you be interested in setting up a video interview?
a.Yes 4/24 ( 17%)
b.No 4/24 ( 17%)
c.Maybe. I would like more information 11/24 ( 46%)
No Answer 5/24 ( 21%)