Dear JOYCE: My Daughter met her husband on eHarmony, and so far their marriage has worked out great. Now, I've read that eHarmony is working on starting a career site that employs the same principles with the dating site late next year. What is your opinion about this job matching idea working out and for jobseekers? --D.A.A.
EHarmony has helped people to find a date for years. Already in the matchmaking business, now the company wants to help people to find a job, bringing the values of employers for job applicants for a new website that uses many of the same personality assessment tools as a site for romance.
The question is: will the inventory matching personality really work for the private workplace? The recruitment industry opinion varies from "maybe" to "probably not" in "no way."Besides views espoused by cheering troops, eHarmony found no rousing affirmations that the approach based on matching software true values of the applicant with a company will have greater appeal to employers than those that arose during the scheduled interviews, other workplaces or online applications.
The forecaster giving bigger yields are Joel Cheesman, an experienced hiring pro who blogs on the website JobScore.com. In a blog that gently titled "3 reasons why eHarmony of matching job will Suck", Cheesman says:
1) no success Story. It names several companies that had tried to establish job matching services but is now functioning.
2) core competency Not. Large companies with dense traffic have hustled to open labour market inroads for years. Remember eBay's Kijiji or MySpace jobs? Don't make a dent in Craigslist.
3) intake is not dating. Incentive to fill out a questionnaire 29-point works if you're hoping to find true love. Doesn't work so well with jobs. For matching to succeed, Webdesigner and his employer, must fill out a large set of data. Only the most desperate job seekers will do this, and employers don't want to fill out lengthy forms only to access these candidates.
In addition, I will add another factor that could dim prospects for promotion of eHarmony to enter the labour market: participation costs. Modern CVS are accustomed from fees paid by an employer for work links.
Dear JOYCE: employers must provide paid vacation time? How much time? --T. J.
Shockingly, no. In fact, the United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee workers paid vacation anytime, says a new study. Even so, 77 percent of u.s. workers are getting paid vacation time--an average of 13 days per year. Read the entire study "No-vacation nation Revisited" by the Center for economic and policy research.
Dear JOYCE: my brother was here over the weekend. He told me that he had just landed a new job with a start-up company that includes "getting home with technique series." the title is "new media gurus." What do you think really do? --J.J.
Probably the title describes a technical Executive in digital media. Or a marketing whiz could use the same title. Fanciful, funky products that replace the traditional titles are not common, but some organizations use it to suggest the company culture. Examples: problem wrangler, ninja, Ambassador communications sales, marketing rockstar, head of marketing and Director of money.
Dear JOYCE: I'm a get-to-the-point with the kind of person. I don't like to read the page-long paragraphs and books and ride. But I know that I need help to get up to speed on all the new technology and other things in the world to look for a job. Where do I start? --L.U.T.
Try a short new book with many updated ideas and an unforgettable title: "Cut the crap, get a job! A new job search process for a new era, "by Dana Manciagli, a veteran hiring manager for multi-national companies, including Microsoft, IBM and Kodak. Visit the author's website, danamanciagli.com for a personal meetup.
Career questions (Email for possible use in this column to Joyce Kennedy found in jlk@sunfeatures.com, use "reader question" in the subject line. ««Or the mail in the box 368, Cardiff, CA 92007.)