2 No’s to Yes and an Almost!

Warehouse and Operations as a Career

Welcome back to Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I’m Marty, and I hope you’re having a Productive and Prosperous week. Can you believe it’s May already, we’re in the 5^th Month of 2018, times flying by. This week I had the opportunity to slow down a little and get back to the basics. I really enjoyed speaking with some warehouseman at a couple different facilities. I had a few site visits scheduled and most of the management teams were busy or on vacation, so I was able to just walk around and introduce myself to some Receivers and Unloaders, I met a very interesting Put away Associate, he was an accomplished & experienced reach lift driver, and I met a couple of over the road drivers, those conversations are always interesting. Each one of my new friends was on their 2^nd or 3^rd position with their respective employers. I love all the opportunities our industry provides us and seeing people advancing within their careers, it’s great seeing those plans coming together!

One of my favorite and most enjoyable tasks is getting to do some recruiting and interviewing individuals for employment. I don’t get to do much of it anymore, this week I had the opportunity and jumped right on it. My first interview was a young gentleman that had worked in the warehouse before and had been in the construction field for the last 4 years. His warehousing experience consisted of about 1 year with the electric pallet jack, running some pallets, a little sanitation and about 6 months of unloading trailers. He added he felt comfortable on the forklift, I think he had been on a sit-down counterbalance for about 6 months in all. Reviewing his resume, of course it was really heavy with construction duties. I noticed he had listed several certifications and courses with Health and Safety, all in the Construction Industry. It was evident he was interested in the Safety field. With all this in hand I grabbed his Application, attached his Resume and brought him back to an interview room. After introducing myself and throwing out a little small talk I asked him what type of work he was asking for. He shared he thought Construction was going to be his career choice but due to having to rely on different contractors and companies having bids accepted and ready to sign, he just wasn’t getting enough work. We reviewed his resume together and by asking more in-depth questions I was able to ascertain he had a lot more warehousing experience than he had written, or maybe it was the way it was written! I explained to him how when I had first read is work history it came across as very little warehousing and I hadn’t gotten that feeling of passion from it as I had from our talk! I brought up Safety and discovered he held several certificates in Operations as well, even an OSHA 10 hour in general industry as well. I helped him rework his resume, we explained more on his earlier positions and his Safety knowledge. It looked much better for the positions he was applying for now. I presented it to a Recruiter, they placed him, and he went to his PIT training the next day. He’d been hired!

My second interview was one that almost got away! He filled out the application but had not attached the requested resume, he just listed his work history. Really, he’d just named the places he had worked and provided contact names and numbers as references. It looked like they may have been his Supervisors at each place. So, he had walked in about lunch time, a couple of recruiters were with other applicants and the others were out of the building. I just happened to be walking by as the receptionist was letting him know that she’d get his paperwork to a Recruiter and someone would be calling him. I went ahead and asked her for his information and invited him to come on back. Know she thanked me but commented that he didn’t have experience for the equipment positions he was applying for. But, being an Op’s guy, I wanted to see what had brought him in, what he was looking for. To keep a long story short, while speaking with him, of course I wasn’t familiar with the Companies names he had listed but by digging into what he had done for each of those companies I learned he actually had over 6 years of Single and double pallet jack usage and that he had been operating a standup reach truck for the last 4 of those years as well. It took me 45 minutes to get him to share all his experience with me but now he’d offered up enough for me to work with! I sat with him and we banged out a Resume in about 30 minutes, presented him to a recruiter and he starts work next Monday!

The moral to the stories is, we’re selling our experience, our history and really a peak into our personalities when we’re job hunting. I’m honestly not sure that a Recruiter screening either applicant would have pulled their applications out of the stack for an interview! I’ll throw out that Responsibility word again, I feel we have to own up to the fact we’re the ones asking for a chance here. A recruiter may look at 100 resumes or applications a day on a computer screen, we have to give them a reason to call us right. Check out our Episode 4 titled The Resume and maybe Episode 5 The Interview, we kind of explain how to put a Resume together, it’s not a hard endeavor at all & a little on how we can prepare ourselves to ace that face to face interview! It’s so important that we use the right keywords to get their attention and to make sure it highlights our experiences for the positions we’re applying for! I think we need to take advantage of every minute we get to speak with a potential employer, it’s those few minutes we’ll get to win them over with our personalities, our positive attitudes and convince them we will be their next hire. Oh and I just looked up a couple of other episodes you may find helpful. Episode 42 The Job Fair, we talk a bit on presenting ourselves there & maybe Episode 45 Making Job Boards & Social Media work for Us, it’ll help us understand what a hiring agent is going to try and learn about us!

I mentioned earlier how we’re the one looking for a chance or shot when we’re out job hunting and how our hiring agent needs some help from us to realize our value. I feel it’s our responsibility alone to project that right? Well this morning I stopped in at another office, this facility hires only for light industrial positions & the recruiters only reach out to the most qualified candidates to begin with. Their positions really need that production experience. Well, the sourcing agent had identified a great candidate, had all the experience necessary, that perfect fit for the job! So, when she called him he nailed to phone interview, sounded like he would love he position. She wanted to set up a face to face interview, really just a formality, they both pretty much agreed they were looking a perfect fit here. Let me grab the sheet of paper he had given me, lets see, ok she had written a note in the note field and I want to get it right, ok, she noted. He is not able to come in for our interview since we are not paying for his gas. If we can come to an agreement to pay for his gas he can stop by our office. The Candidate stated he is interested yet this is his offer to us. Not that recruiters don’t see things like this ever so often but, it was about 23 miles, easy driving miles, freeway miles. He really wanted to position but felt like his Prospective employer should pay to meet him? Out of curiosity I asked her how many other people had applied for the position, there was 167 others in the machine. She filled the position a bit later in the day. Now there’s absolutely nothing wrong with him having his own conditions while looking for employment but that moment is gone now. If he call’s in tomorrow the positions filled. I’d think if it was just a matter of not having the gas to come out today, which is certainly understandable, all he’d of needed to do is state that, let her know he’d like to come out in a few days, I bet the door would have been open, at least to another position or job.

Lets remember, a good resume, not a professionally made one, just one that tells what we’ve done and why we’re the best candidate is all we need. Use keywords so the recruiter will want to know more about us is really important too. I said we’re the ones needing a shot but our new employer is needing a great crew member too, I feel its our responsibility to do a little research on where we want to work & lets go ahead short cut them having to do much research on us. The bottom line is we need each other right.

I really enjoyed sharing a couple of this weeks stories with you today and I hope each of you heard something that rang a bell for you. I want to thank each one of you for checking in with us each week, and we appreciate your participation immensely. Please email [e-mail] with any topics you’d like us to research for you or with any comments about the Show! Have a Productive, Prosperous and Safe week out there!