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Marty here with Warehouse and Operations as a Career and were back at The Taste of Oak Cliff Festival. We had a blast out here last year, and with an invitation from Belmar Integrated Logistics we jumped at a chance to come on out and talk with everyone that stopped by their Recruiting Booth today! I even ran into a couple of people I’d had the pleasure to help secure new positions for in the past, it was really neat getting to catch up with them and their careers! I wanted to talk about a recurring question that came up over and over again, it seemed to be aimed at staffing or sourcing companies in general, but I sensed frustration and sometimes desperation even as people would ask “are you background friendly”. From my experiences your typical staffing or sourcing agency are working within their customers guidance. I believe things are mostly looked at on a case by case basis. I see this question come up often, way too often on social media too. Look, what ever happened has happened, we have to have a job, we’ve all got bills to pay and we have to find work. I feel, and understandably so, its easy to get frustrated and just start answering ads or posting comments like are you background friendly. As much as I believe social media is a great tool for us to use when seeking employment, we do have to work it. You’ve probably heard me, and several recruiters that’s been on the show, that Facebook is a great place to find those companies or agencies that’s hiring but call them! An email might be ok if they have provided an email address but call them, leave a message, or messages if you don’t catch them on the phone. I have just not seen any positive results with private or direct messages, recruiters just don’t have the time to answer all the questions one by one. I had one recruiter show me her Facebook inbox, it was full of where are you located, what are the hours, can you tell me more and are you background friendly. We shouldn’t have a problem sharing, I mean we have to be totally honest when we’re speaking with a hiring agent about our backgrounds. Oh, and as a side note, don’t falsify anything like that on our application, they won’t be working with us when we’re caught doing that. But like I mentioned earlier, everyone knows we need work. If we’ve paid our fines, done our time or whatever, and we’re working on getting a fresh start we can find work, we’re just going to have to work harder at it maybe. A few months ago, I had a young man explaining he had a background issue and another individual chimed in on the conversation, she knew of a warehouse that was a little more relaxed with employment history. She gave him the address and he applied and was hired on. Try not to get down about it or embarrassed, it happened, we’ve learned from it, or I hope we have, and we can get work. Even if its not exactly what we want, I encourage everyone to just get in the door and show our management team what we can do. Once we’re that valued employee, they’ll got to bat for us and they won’t want to lose us right! I encourage you to call the phone numbers in the ads or go and apply in person when the address is listed. The way I look at it is if a recruiter doesn’t supply you with a phone number or an address and is encouraging you to DM or PM them its probably not what I’m needing right now which is a job I can start quickly and with no cost to me! We’ll there’s my 2 cents about backgrounds and employment, we can find work, it’s harder maybe, but we’ll be successful. I hear just as many people without any kind of background opportunities getting just as frustrated. Finding work is work, but we can all find us something to get in the door with!
So, the taste of oak cliff festival is like most of your spring and summer festivals, you have the great food, man, there’s some great food out here today, anyway, there’s booths set up for the crafty type, business owners selling their jewelry and paintings, realtors, staffing agencies, Colleges, vacation planners, and of course the list goes on and on but today I was thinking about all the planning and logistics it takes to put something like this together and then close it down and haul it off. I helped Belmar set up this morning, we arrived early, as did all the other vendors and we all swarmed the event space together. Everyone would pull up to their assigned booth and unload all their wares or point of sale materials and then try and get the vehicles back out on the street. Just as in our daily work activities there has to be a flow, a workflow if you will to make everything work, things have to be in sync and have their rhythm! I couldn’t help but wonder how it had all come together. It was a chamber of commerce event, and I realized that each booth was an independent company really. It reminded me of a supply chain, which as we’ve learned is the backbone of our industry, or warehousing and transportation!
I think we talked about the supply chain in an earlier episode and I have upcoming plans to interview a couple of pros in the logistics fields next month but todays event really got me to thinking about how much we see logistics and the supply chain in our everyday lives.
Wikipedia.org tells us the supply chain is a system of organizations, people, activities, information, and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_chain That’s what I experienced this morning!
And then logistics, the detailed coordination of a complex operation involving many people, facilities, or supplies. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/logistics
I’m excited about learning more on both those fronts in the coming weeks and I’ll have those experienced in the fields sharing all their thoughts and opinions about their industries with us!
Lets all remember seeking employment is quite possibly harder to do than the jobs we’re seeking. Don’t get discouraged, it’s out there, that dream job is available to us, we just have to work hard to find it. I can only suggest to use those phone numbers and apply in person when ever possible. I think social media and the job boards are great places to source our next career but its honestly our responsibility to get in front of those hiring agents and recruiters. Rarely are they going to seek us out, and its my experience, I’ve been told to use that word instead of saying its my opinion, so it’s my experience that asking all the questions like tell me more or info in the comments or DM’ing and PM’ing individual questions will rarely produce results for us. Well I’ve got to get back up at the table and meet some more people and of course hit up a couple more of those food trucks so I’ll say thanks for listening in this week and I hope you’ll join us again next week. Remember we love getting mail, send us a message to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com with comments and any topic suggestions you may have. Have a great week and please think, work, and be Safe out there!