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Warehouse and Operations as a Career the Podcast. Welcome back, I’m Marty, and I find myself over in Nevada this week. Just a regular quarterly visit really. I completed a couple of safety walks, checking some files and I had the opportunity to visit with a few recruiters and watch’em in action! I always enjoy getting to answer a few questions from applicants, especially about equipment usage and any warehouse positions there applying for. Its been a great trip!
I ran across an article from Government Executive this morning https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2020/02/job-recruiters-are-wary-3-things-social-media/162928/ , I’ll add the link in todays show notes. It kind of goes along with what we were talking about last week regarding our use of social media and I wanted to share their thoughts real quick before we get started. It was titled Job Recruiters Are Wary of 3 Things on Social Media. Let me read a couple of excerpts from the article. You ought to check it out, it’s pretty interesting. Anyway, so it says that:
Job recruiters are less likely to select candidates who appear to be too self-involved or opinionated in their social media posts, according to new research.
The researchers also found that recruiters are less likely to hire employees who post content suggestive of drug or alcohol use.
“In 2018, 70% of employers reported looking at social media sites to help them evaluate potential employees, and almost that many—60%—eliminated candidates on the basis of negative content,” says Michael Tews, associate professor of hospitality management, citing a recent report by CareerBuilder. “It’s important for job candidates to be aware of how they portray themselves in social media.”
Tews notes that little is known about how much weight hiring managers give to potentially negative social media posts. Therefore, he and his colleagues investigated the effects of three potentially negative topics—self-absorption, opinionatedness, and alcohol and drug use—on hiring managers’ decision making.
They asked Are Your Social Media Posts Self-Absorbed?
The team recruited 436 hiring managers from a variety of organizations, 61% of whom worked in the hospitality industry and the remainder in industries ranging from information technology to healthcare.
The researchers gave participants a scenario to read depicting a hypothetical job candidate who answered interview questions well and exhibited enthusiasm, but also appeared to be prone to job hopping. Next, they asked the participants to review components of the candidates Facebook profiles and to rate their employment suitability.
Researchers randomly assigned each of the participants to view one of 16 different Facebook profiles showing either a male or female exhibiting self-absorption or not, opinionatedness or not, and alcohol and drug use or not. After reading these profiles, the hiring managers evaluated the candidates’ employment suitability by providing an assessment of person to organization fit and an overall candidate evaluation.
The researchers found that self-absorption negatively impacted recruiters’ perceptions of candidates’ employment suitability and that self-absorption was more important than opinionatedness or drug and alcohol use in driving these negative perceptions. I found that a bit wild my self!
“Social networking sites are often thought of as incubators of self-absorption, motivating people to tell others about their every deed and thought,” says Tews. “It could be that hiring managers view individuals who are more self-absorbed and focused on their own interests to be less likely to sacrifice for the benefit of other employees and the organization.”
Next they advised to Watch Which Opinions You Show To Job Recruiters
The team also found that opinionatedness negatively affected perceptions of employment suitability.
“Social networking sites have given rise to unprecedented numbers of individuals expressing extreme and controversial ideas in a public forum,” says Tews. “People who post divisive subject matter may be viewed as more argumentative and less cooperative. Additionally, their views could run counter to those of hiring managers, which may influence managers’ beliefs in candidates’ qualifications for jobs.”
Finally, the team found that content suggesting alcohol and drug use negatively affected hiring managers’ perceptions of employment suitability, although the effect was much smaller than for self-absorption and opinionatedness.
The researchers conclude that individuals should refrain from posting content on social networking sites that suggest self-absorption, opinionatedness, and alcohol and drug use during the job search process.
The research appears in the International Journal of Selection and Assessment.
Source: Penn State It’s a good read, you should check it out, it certainly made me think even more about our social profiles and feeds.
Like we shared last week, it’s out there, it’s going to be used, we just need to clean it up, at least while we’re out looking for work or starting our new careers!
So today I’d like to share my week with you. Some weeks, well, some weeks are just filled with opportunities, I guess. No, really, it’s been a great week, and I’ve been very proud of a couple of supervisors that’s given me a call. This is a good one. A supervisor called that his facility had bought a new slip sheet attachment. The maintenance department had attached it, but they’d left off the freight guard or had taken it off. An associate noticed it during his pre-trip and reported it. He of course didn’t want to drive it like that, he was afraid the freight would have gotten damaged and he’d have been blamed for it. It was just an oversight and by his due diligence, he reported it and it was corrected. Oh, and I really liked this one here. A supervisor had rolled out his near miss program last week and already he’s seen the crew stepping up! An unloader noticed a newer employee stooping over to pick up 38# cases of cans. He went to the file, got a near miss report sheet and went to the trailer with the new associate and they both filled it out together. He shared the proper way to lift the cases and they talked about the ergonomics of lifting and how important it is to practice proper lifting. They brought it over to the supervisor and he shared it with the group the following morning! Then I had an HR manager share a call he’d received from one of his associates, and the employee was pretty upset. It seems the associate was involved in an auto accident, off the clock and away from work, on his own time, and wouldn’t be able to return to work for a few days. His contention was that those days should be paid by the company because it wasn’t his fault he was involved in an accident. Now I understand. Going a week without pay is tough. I asked the HR manager did he advise him to check with his auto insurance company or maybe to file a claim with whoever hit him. He didn’t express all that to him though. I think, well first, I guess, sometimes we employees talk before we think things through. And then again, our employers should sometimes help us through our thoughts, maybe take a little extra time with us. We’re trying to get all this life and adult stuff figured out. Anyway, we probably do need to learn to think first and then talk. Remember the old saying, we were given 2 ears and only one mouth for a reason! When we lose our tempers or we’re not willing to at least listen to others we can leave such a negative impression that we could be putting our job at risk! Let’s just think things through.
Let’s see, what happened next, oh, this one sucked. I heard about a forklift and a single electric rider pallet jack getting together. It didn’t end well. I heard that the EPJ operator ended up with a broken leg. I haven’t seen the accident investigation yet, but do we really need to see one. It should not have happened! All of our training, for either piece of equipment, has taught us to stay focused, watch for others and never operate our equipment if others are present. We know to stop, make eye contact and understand the others intention before we move another inch. Now there is a coworker, a peer, that is going to be out work for a few days, maybe longer if his leg is truly broken. I hate hearing things like this, there so avoidable. We need to follow our training. It’s hard, staying focused while we’re striving for productivity, its rough. But the alternative could be something we couldn’t live with.
One more and I’ll get to the point. So, an associate is told that their hours are going to be changed. Of course, this wasn’t cool but it was going to have to be, and actually it couldn’t be avoided. Now the employee didn’t like it, and there were a couple of different options on the table, but they ended up just getting mad and didn’t want to talk about it. Yet, they went to the floor and started talking about it to everyone that couldn’t offer any solutions to them. They ended up out of a job because that position was done away with and they hadn’t gone back to the supervisor to discuss the options available and that were on the table. I so wish they had handled this one a little differently. The company lost a good employee and the employee walked away from a promising career.
So, another typical week as a manager! But seriously, joining the workforce is hard. We here at WAOC talk a lot about responsibility. As an employee we have a lot of responsibility. We are responsible for ourselves, our earning potential, our jobs. And we’re responsible for our coworkers and we’re responsible for our company and following all its procedures and rules. As we’ve learned, there is a purpose to them though. If we don’t want to follow all the directions or would rather not take on those responsibilities, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that thinking, all we have to do is give notice and move on. We may just be in the wrong industry. Our warehouse and transportation jobs can be dangerous, things are very structured because of it. There are rules, and ways to act or react to situations and training for us because we have to all work together. Our plans and careers are a part of all that structure. Let’s all do our part is all I’m saying!
Well, I have one more stop today and I’m on my way back home. I hope I shared something that you can relate too today, and it helped you in one way or another. If any of this ring a bell for you start up a conversation on either Twitter or Facebook where we can be found using @whseandops.
Until next week, lets listen, know what we’re going to say before we say it and stay focused on our task so we all can go home safely!