Hispanic Jobs

I overheard two guys from another office in our building this morning talking about not having enough product to deliver to their clients. One asked the other, “can’t we make an excuse for each of them for why they wont get their product?” And the other replied, “We can, but it just hasn’t been done yet.”While LatPro doesn’t have the manufacturing piece of the equation to worry about like these guys, every company faces challenges that come their way that can be put off by an excuse. If you really want your clients to respect you, instead of an excuse, let them know the truth as to why there have been delays or issues and how and when you plan to rectify the situation.

If a client calls and asks for pricing, for example, they should get a prompt reply back. I’ve been in the situation where they’ve called a few times because they didn’t feel like they got that return information soon enough. Yes, their sales rep may have been on vacation or the red light on the phone didn’t show a new message was in the phone inbox, and sometimes it really isn’t your fault or there are complicating factors. But an honest call back saying sorry for the delay and how can I help you now usually does the trick, and clients are thankful for the attention they are getting and the forthrightness.

So I know this isn’t earth-shattering business news, but try to do things that are asked of you, when they are asked of you, with the quality that your customers expect from your company. And if it doesn’t quite work out that way, which sometimes it wont, and a client complains or asks why, tell them the truth. Tell them you will do better next time… and make sure you do. So back to the title “Excuses are for losers!”—my high school wrestling coach used to use that on our team all the time. And you know what? He was right then and it applies now as well.

Between my regular role in public relations for LatPro, and my special assignments such as helping with the public relations for the NSHP diversity job fairs, my days are usually pretty busy! We have a planned two-month hiatus between the Atlanta and Washington, D.C. fairs, which gives me a little time to actually write about some of the work that I do for the events!

I begin my public relations work for a diversity job fair about six weeks before the event. I generally do some research on the local job market, as well as the demographics in the area. After I’ve completed that research, my first major step is to write the press release that will be sent out to all the local media with details of the event.

My next undertaking is to create a list of media outlets in the surrounding areas of the upcoming job fair so that about two weeks before the event I can start efficiently contacting all the relevant media with the news of the diversity job fair. My list of targeted media includes newspapers, as well as local TV and Radio stations and local networking websites.

Another large portion of my time in preparation for the diversity job fairs involves developing media partnerships with local chapters of Hispanic organizations. The organizations that we partner with in each city are a combination of organizations that I approach because we have worked with them in the past, organizations that I found through internet searches or word-of-mouth, and organizations which approach us about an opportunity to be a part of the event.

Arranging the media partnerships is one of my favorite parts of this job. I find it so rewarding to work with Hispanic professionals who are dedicated to their local organizations and are really working on a grass-roots level to increase awareness of and provide opportunities for bilingual employment for Hispanic professionals in their cities. By partnering with the NSHP job fair, the local organizations have their name included in e-mail invitations that go out to prospective jobseekers, and they have a presence at the diversity job fairs. Their membership benefits with a personal invitation to attend the event, and they often find their membership increases through the visibility they have at the event.

The goal of these public relations tasks is always the same, to make sure as many Hispanic and bilingual professionals as possible learn about and are able to attend the upcoming events. Our next event is the Washington, D.C. job fair on August, 21st. I’d better get to work!

Some months ago I decided that it was time for a change. I have been at LatPro for more than 5 years now and while I love the team and the product, I am seriously in need of some change. It’s just who I am. I have never been for so long with one product and I have reached the point where I need a different product and a different challenge –if possible multiple challenges.

So I talked with Carolina first and with Eric afterwards and as I am not sure what path I want to take in the future -if I want to work independently or for another company-, I offered a transitional period of three months so they could find someone else to replace me and/or we could re-assign with calm part of my tasks to some other members of the team.

That period is coming to an end so even when my plans are to take at least a couple of sabbatical months, I decided to polish my resume and get it out there into some other job boards, just in case…

Of course I already have accounts in a good number of job boards because I am always doing benchmarking for LatPro, but in some of them I had a profile without a resume (CareerBuilder) in other cases I had the resume but not public (Monster).

Following my own advice -I always recommend jobseekers to use one or two of the general job boards and one or two niche board like us- I decided to get my resume in CareerBuilder. Mamma mia…, WHAT a mistake!

First, I had to enter it twice, by some reason the first time wasn’t saved. Then right after I hit “save” I got an ad, an interstitial, so I have to click on the “no thanks”. Ten seconds later I got an email through CB that was one of those general blasts from companies no matter what your resume looks like.

As they have an option where you can choose to stop a specific company/recruiter from seeing your resume or sending you emails, I clicked on “block recruiter” promptly. Next day, same email. I blocked it again. Next day, same email, I blocked it again and I contact their support team asking how I was getting those emails if I had blocked the recruiter not once but 3 times…. And guess what? I never got an answer!

This is just half of my bad experience with Careerbuilder, but after some more blasts offering jobs that had NOTHING to do with my profile I decided that enough is enough and I made my resume private with them. Not good enough. When I receive their job agents, if I click on any job listed there, I got a pop under…. So I think I may kill my account there. I am not desperate looking for a job, and I find the whole experience so awful, that is not worth my time.

Monster on the other hand, is not SO bad. Still, I have an interstitial each time I login, what once again means losing my time clicking for the 10th time in “no thanks” (no thanks, guys, I have said it like 20 times already, I am not interested in a University of Phoenix degree, give me a break!) and the quality of jobs there goes from pretty decent jobs to things that seem more spam and/or scams than real jobs. HotJobs also has a lot “work from home” and fishy offers, but at least does not bother you with interstitials or popunders.

Comparing this experience with LatPro, where you will never find an interstitial, where we do not have a “block a recruiter” because we know that if the recruiter grabbed the email there is little we can do but where we have an opt out option so people get out of blasts, where each company posting has to fulfill some quality assurance levels, where there are no fishy “work from home opportunities” and where customer support answers in 24 hours… I love our product more than ever!

Of course LatPro targets professionals, and that makes us different from Monster and Careerbuilder, so it makes sense that they may not care in being more picky with the job offer they published as we are, but there is no excuse for their disrespect for the jobseeker when it comes to the search experience.

I guess that if you are extremely desperate for a job, you may not care how many times you have to click in a “no thanks” page to get to see jobs, nor do you mind getting offers that have nothing to do with your profile or 20 pop unders open after seeing the same amount of jobs. And I do understand that job boards are not charities and they need profits, but if Careerbuilder wants to live just from advertising, I will be looking for a job somewhere else.

Why don’t I talk about any direct competition of LatPro? Because there is none. I tried another job board that supposedly targets Hispanic professionals and I got once and again the same jobs through their agent and they also seem to be more about advertising than anything else.

So, so far I will stick with searching at LatPro, Monster, HotJobs and networking of course. Did I tell you? I loved LatPro as a product before I started working here, I have seen it improving by developing more tools and services during my 5 years here, and I may be leaving but I still love the product. Is simply one of the best if you want to search for good jobs and you want an answer each time you have a question!

Jesus H…. (that’s Hey! Zeus, like in Die Hard with a Vengeance (see the third one down)). What’s going on with companies today?

This past weekend, every step I took there was someone who wanted to kill some business for their company.

Friday I returned a car to Enterprise Rent-A-Car. I calculated that I’d need to put $6 in the tank to cover the 36 miles I had driven while my car was being repaired at the adjoining dealership. I further reasoned that since my VW Passat gets 25 mpg on the same route that I drove then the smaller VW Jetta would surely get the same mileage. At $4 per gallon and 24 mpg estimate, my $6 is spot on. However, when I got to the point of turn-in, the guy said that the gas gauge was an eighth of a tank short even after my $6 fill-up and that I owed $14. I gave him the basic math lesson above, and he lowered the rate to $8, but I still complained. His rationale was that gas gauges are exact (he said I was exactly an eighth of a tank short). But everyone knows that gas gauges are just estimates—I mean when I squeezed every drop possible into the Passat this morning, it still didn’t register on Full and the line certainly doesn’t move completely smoothly all the way down. He also suggested that I was idling and not getting the gas mileage I was estimating. I could’ve let the car run all night in the driveway and got better gas mileage than what he was charging for. Anyway, I paid the $8 and told him I’d never use them again.

Despite the gas argument, I still had a good night sleep on Friday night. And it’s a good thing… on Saturday morning it all started again. I went to Home Depot at around 9am. Now personally I think they should restock all the shelves on non-business hours so people can shop in those aisles when they are open. Even if they restocked when they first opened, they should’ve been done by 9am and certainly weren’t restocking a second time at that time of day. But every time I go to Home Depot, I get blocked in one place or another by some police tape that says the aisle is temporarily closed and there is some forklift moving around in there. This particular time, I started down the open aisle only to be turned around by a couple of guys and locked out of it because they were about to work. Seeing that there were only 50 or so people in the whole store, you’d think they’d have waited 3 minutes or helped me make it 1 minute to pick up some air conditioning filters, but no—five or ten minutes one guy told me—I didn’t stick around to get them. Last time I was there, the whole nursery was practically on lockdown around lunchtime on a Saturday (that’s prime gardening time here in Florida) while a crane-like machine and several forklifts drove in some trees and pallets of mulch. Not very good for business.

Finally on Sunday, I dialed DirecTV to add an additional receiver for a new television. I am already a customer of theirs, but had to go through 85 menus to finally speak with someone. My order was almost complete, I was put on hold, then I got disconnected. Since THE verifying information the representative took to identify me was my phone number, I was certain that a call back was seconds away. After 30 minutes and no call, I repeated, and 85 menu choices later I was on with someone new. I asked why no call back and she told me they don’t do that, that they are an inbound center only, and that there were not even any notes in my account as if my first call never existed. I told her that was a terrible business model and not good for their company. I mean I was begging to give them my money and they weren’t going to take it! Anyway, I did make that purchase, but others may not be so inclined to call back.

My point to this whole post is that customer service matters, and bad customer service will destroy your business. In my opinion, the LatPro customer service department is a competive advantage that our company has over much of our competition. But, if my customer service or sales department ever acts like these companies did, or reminds you of my problems from this post, please call or email me right away. I will do what I can to answer your questions or make sure someone does. And certainly if you want to spend money, let me know.  I’d be happy to oblige you and your company. We will do our best to customize a proposal that meets your needs and budget.