Some cities and states offer more than a place to work. They offer high job growth rate and long-term career security. What are the top states and cities?
Studies from the Arizona State University W. P. Carey School of Business give interesting information that helps us find answers to those questions.
Maps based on Arizona State University W. P. Carey School of Business studies.
Building a business or a career is a continual process of expanding your goods, services, skills, and network. The first day that I sat down to start my career as a recruiter, I had no contacts. I had a telephone, an empty legal pad, and a box of blank 5 x 8 index cards.
After a decade, my contact management system contained tens of thousands of contacts. I had personally tracked and created files for these people. Most of them I have reached out to by phone, email, or professional networks. I still make new connections every day. Little has changed except that my file system has gone from paper to a computer.
Here is a partial list of companies where I had recruiting contracts:
In the list are many companies that no longer exist. In some cases, the brands still exist. However, these brands are part of another company. To stay in business, I had to continue to grow new business.
Companies come and go. People come and go. Processes change. Opportunities are here today and gone tomorrow. People who build new relationships and expand their relationships will build security.
Change is constant in business and careers. The process of building a business and building a career never ends.
Branding: When the Lowest Price Is Not Enough
I worked as a recruiter in the consumer-packaged goods industry. Every day I talked with job seekers and hiring managers who sold consumer products through retail stores.
When I reviewed qualifications, I was assessing a job seeker’s ability to make brands successful. Themes recurred in the profiles I recruited. The hiring companies were seeking people who could design and conduct successful brand campaigns.
Interviewing
When you are interviewing, you might find these ideas helpful to show companies how you can make their brands successful.
Targeted
Walmart, Costco, and Walgreens all sell pharmaceuticals. Walmart targets customers who want to buy sustainable quantities at the best price. Costco, on the other hand, targets customers who can afford to buy larger quantities to get the better price. Walgreens (and CVS) have stores in every neighborhood. They charge higher retail prices for the convenience of shopping locally.
Simple Calls to Action
Calls to action are statements that bring the customer to act. They may be explicit like the statement “Save now.”
Or the call to action may be implicit: “Offer is good while supplies last.” The statement implies that you must buy now to reap the benefits.
Consistent
Once you know your audience, you hit them with the same message over and over. Advertising is like the Colorado river. Even when navigating through the rapids, you are not likely to see the river eroding the walls and floor of the Grand Canyon. Over time, however, the canyon becomes deeper, wider, and changes course.
Logos and Icons
The use of logos has taken on even more significance as social media has created icons and identity for their brands. Just the following letters alone are enough for people to identify major social media sites: in, f, G+, P, and t. In order, those iconic letters represent LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Twitter, of course, is the iconic birdie.
Slogans
Slogans are memorable. Here are examples.
“Expect More. Pay Less” (Target Stores) ™
“Ace is the place with the helpful hardware man.” (Ace Hardware™)
“The Most Interesting Man in the World” (XX Dos Equis™)
“Save Money. Live Better.” (Walmart™)
“Glasses in less than an hour.” (LensCrafters™)
My favorite slogan is the iPod launch slogan: “A thousand tunes in your pocket.” (Apple™)
On the first day that I worked as a corporate recruiter, I sat down at a desk that had a telephone, a stack of 5 X 8 file cards, a legal pad, and a copy of the Directory of Advertisers.
I had no clients. I had no applicants. I had a very short list of contacts from my brief career in sales at Procter & Gamble and Polaroid Corporation.
Another recruiter in the office had claimed Polaroid as a client before I arrived at the firm. Therefore, he had staked out the best potential client I might have.
Over the next 30 years I would recruit for Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Nestle, Clorox, Del Monte, ConAgra, Mobil Consumer Products, Quaker, Tambrands, Unilever, Reckitt-Benckiser, Maybelline, and many other equal and lesser-sized companies.
Even before the arrival of online networks, I had developed a file-card database of 12,000 contacts. Today, with LinkedIn, I have the same 200 million contacts as everyone else.
I first published this website April 15, 2005. I began to publishing a newsletter later that year. My newsletter helped my business immensely. Often people would save a copy of these newsletter as a record of my contact information.
I find the term amusing. I find it even more amusing to know that some recruiters take offense at the term. But in the recruiting world, I was a headhunter. I actively contacted new candidates before they began to look for a job.
I adopted the title of “The World’s Noblest Headhunter.” The title worked as an icebreaker. It also helped me to develop a brand.
Starting a new business is exciting and yet often painful and full of uncertainty. My start as a recruiter was typically painful. I had beginner’s bad luck before I had beginner’s good luck. Three after I started to work, another recruiter copied contact information from my files and placed one of the candidates. The first candidate I placed accepted the job. Then the candidate quit the first day on the job and returned to his previous company.
It was probably six months before I had a steady stream of business. This was a scary period. However, it was a period that led to over three decades of a highly rewarding career.
Poise: It’s inside you. ~ www.jaywren.com
Some people have a graceful balance. They exude confidence. Their presence is dignified and reassuring. They have a quiet command presence. They have poise.
Poise begins with an inner calmness. This calmness radiates outward. Here are some things you can do to develop the inner calmness that gives you poise.
Not everyone who has poise feels compassion. But everyone who feels compassion have poise.
People who have compassion are not self-conscious. They are not thinking about themselves.
On the other hand, self-absorbed people focus on what’s going on inside their head. They think about how unfairly the world treats them. These people build anger and intolerance. They lack the grace and balance of a person with poise.
People with poise release the insecurities that come from thinking about ourselves. Their insecurities dissipate like clouds.
When we feel compassion, our thinking goes outward to the real world. We are not thinking about ourselves. We are we thinking about other people and the world around them. Additionally, we are thinking about people in kind of and positive way. We become gracious and our minds create emotional balance.
Compassionate people have a gracious interest in the world where they live. They have poise.
Conscious breathing creates focus in the present moment. It assists us to do at a higher, more natural level.
Professional athletes in all sports take a deep breath to focus and gain composure. Watch a basketball player on a free throw line. They take a deep breath to relax. Baseball pitchers do the same thing. Before each pitch, they settle into position, select their pitch, and then they take a deep breath. Batters also regain focus and clear their mind by taking a deep breath before stepping into the batter’s box.
Watch swimmers on the starter’s stand. They take a deep breath. The extra oxygen burns off adrenaline. Their mind goes from internal insecurity to the water in front of them.
Put your shoulders back. Uncross your arms. Relax your muscles. Allow your body to send signals of balance and confidence. Your body language will help other people feel confident and happy around you. It will also transform your mental state to a balanced confidence. You will exude poise.
Top 100 Consumer Products Companies, including the name, address, and phone number of America’s largest consumer products companies.
Click the icon pin to see the company name, address, and phone number. When you click the icon, a new tab will open to help you find you find directions to the company office.
Scroll in and out to select new pins.
To expand, click the [ ] icon to open the map in a new tab.
Are you just beginning your career? Or perhaps, are you considering switching industries? The Consumer-Packaged goods industry might offer the career you are seeking.
What is the Consumer-Packaged goods industry?
Consumer-Packaged goods companies sell products essential consumers. These products they make are ones that consumers buy a frequent basis. Another term for Consumer-Packaged goods is fast-moving consumer goods. Consumer-Packaged goods companies stand in contrast to the durable goods industry. Durable goods companies make products like cars, computers, and appliances.
Some people do not include fresh products as Consumer-Packaged goods companies. However, people with experience in other categories of Consumer-Packaged goods crossover to fresh food products companies.
The fastest growing sector of the Consumer-Packaged goods company is the natural or organic sector.
The data industry is a growth industry. You might want to focus on this sector of the Consumer-Packaged goods industry.
“Writing headlines is a specialty – there are outstanding writers who will tell you they couldn’t write a headline to save their lives.” – The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership, Bill Walsh
Resumes headlines are also known as resume titles. They serve several purposes. Here are two of them.
First, they raise the number of times your resume appears in keyword searches. This purpose is critical to ensuring that hiring managers even find your resume on the Internet or in their database.
Second, in a glance, the hiring manager or the recruiter can decide whether to take time to read your resume. In most cases, resume readers do little more than glance at resumes before deciding to read them.
A good place to insert the headline is in the objective statement. Headlines should be at the top of the resume. Resume writers put the objective at the top of the resume.
A headline should be concise. Overloading a resume with an objective plus a summary of experience is not wise. It could discourage hiring managers and recruiters from reading your resume.
If you are going to use either as a headline for your resume, I recommend that you use a summary of experience. A hiring manager or a recruiter will decide to interview you based on your experience. They usually infer that your career objective matches their interest by the mere fact that you have applied for a specific job.
Writing great headlines is not always easy. Some people have special skills for writing the headline in media. In many cases, media companies leave the headline writing to the copy editors. To repeat the opening quote, “Writing headlines is a specialty – there are outstanding writers who will tell you they couldn’t write a headline to save their lives.”
However, here is a simple tip for word selection for your resume headline.
In a very straight forward fashion, just copy the job title and other wording from the job description. Then paste the same wording into your resume headline. When hiring managers or recruiters are doing resume searches, they are logically looking for wording that matches the wording of their job description.
Headlines sell the story. Let a great one sell your story.
It is your responsibility to stop thinking negative thoughts about yourself before they become fixed in your mind as beliefs. Smile. Say something nice about yourself. Make a list of your blessings.
“Don’t let the world change your smile. Let your smile change the world.” A Work in Progress by Connor Franta
Social anxiety is common. People who are shy are not the only people who experience social anxiety. People who are confident about what they say or do around friends and family may feel social anxiety when they are among strangers or in front of an audience.
Social anxiety can make you avoid opportunities for work, fun, and networking. It can cut your opportunities for leadership roles. Your anxiety can generate signals that make it harder for people to reach out to you.
“I’ll take a person with humor much more seriously than someone without one.” Networking is a Contact Sport by Joe Sweeney
There are many things that you can do to calm your jitters. Perhaps the most overlooked way is simply to smile. People smile when they are happy. And equally important is that smiling can help you feel happy. “Fake ’till you make it” is an ambiguous term. Some people see it as a disingenuous way of faking your skills. Another view, is that faking confidence can help you gain confidence. A smile triggers thoughts that generate happiness.
The smiley face emoji says to other people you approve of what they have to say. Smiling has a similar effect. It tells people you approve of them. It creates trust and helps people open up to you.
You are generating charisma. People find your presence attractive. Your smiling helps people feel more confident and comfortable being around you. In turn, they smile and you feel confident from their signal of approval.
A frown will chase away friends. Ah, but there is something about a smile that attracts people and draws people to you.
So, let it go. When you see people, start with a smile. As people approach, nod and smile. When you are shaking hands with people, look at them and smile.
“Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.” ― Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
Most hiring companies do reference checks on potential employees. How reliable are these references? How risky are they to the job seeker and to the people who are acting as references?
Intelligent people are not going to give references who will say bad things about them. They make of list of people who will say positive things. Before giving the name of the reference to a prospective employer, intelligent people call the reference. They reach an understanding that the reference is willing and supportive.
One of the worst placements I made had references from two former clients who gushed about the qualities of the person. Once the person got the job, his performance was the exact opposite of what the job references said it would be. The references, both of whom held solid positions with solid companies, were clearly in on a set up.
Smart hiring managers know that job references are a set up. In a way, reference checks are a test of a person’s ability to find people who can say good things about them.
At best, these references are confirmations of employment dates.
Reference checks are risky to the job seeker and to the people serving as references.
The people speaking as references put themselves at risk and their company at risk. If they say something that hurts the job seeker, a job seeker can (and job seekers have) come back and sued past employers.
The intelligent company policy is to prohibit reference checks. These companies only give prospective employers the employment dates for past employees.
In a confidential job search, a job seeker puts their current employment at risk by allowing hiring companies to call people about the job seeker’s efforts to find new employment. Nearly everyone says they can keep a secret. But do they? To quote Benjamin Franklin again, “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
Nonetheless, companies continue to check job references, and job seekers continue to give references.
There are a few simple things to consider about job references. None of these things takes all the risks out of reference checks but these are ideas that are worth considering.
The Essential Phone Interview Handbook by Paul Bailo
Do you really need to bother preparing for phone interviews? It is just a phone call. It is not as though the person on the phone can see you. Can you accomplish anything at all?
You’ve already invested time applying for the job. You have filled out and application. You may have completed a web-based questionnaire.
Now you are ready to get face-to-face with people at the hiring company.
But you can’t meet face-to-face, because you must speak with some screener on the phone.
The person on the phone plays a real role in your getting a job with the company. Even if you never speak with that person again, you cannot get a face-to-face meeting without their recommendation. Furthermore, the person on the phone may be someone who will be involved with you throughout your career with the hiring company. Getting off on the right foot may pay huge dividends down the line.
Prepare as though you are going to a real interview.
Have these things on your desk:
Select your interview place carefully.
Even though you are on the phone, let your personality shine.
Remember to focus.
Thank the interviewer for taking time to speak with you. Emphasize that you hope to have a chance to speak again.
