Month: December 2020

This weekend I was playing with my son with “Era – Medieval Age” construction board game which is a brilliant evolution of the classic “roll and write” games.
While everyone was trying to win the game, i was hearing a discussion about the service and advantages that companies have in turning to recruitment agencies for recruiting.

His perplexity about the difficulties of our work made me reflect.

Seen from the outside, our role of “talent seekers” seems to be useless in a world where there are more and more unemployed and fewer and fewer companies hiring. Yet the reality is different.

GeoJOB Recruitment refers to companies in a very particular and complicated to understand sector: the one of building, construction, plant engineering and geotechnical engineering.

It has to study and analyze candidates, trying to discover their inclinations to understand how they will fit into the new organization, by making clear what their role will be and by identifying the right candidate; not only from his competence and work experience.

Every day talk, in person or by telephone, with dozens of candidates and I can assure you that our work isn not that simple.

At the end of the game I left my son with a quote from a Plato aphorism:

“You can find out more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation”

Plato said it 400 years before the birth of Christ and today gamification is a more innovative reality in the field of personnel selection.

At this point I aroused in him a great deal of curiosity on the subject

What does “Gamification” mean?

The simplest and most immediate way to explain the term “gamification”,  is to define it as “the use of game mechanisms and elements of game design in contexts unrelated to the game itself”.

We must not confuse gamification with games. We are not talking about video games. Gamification tries to exploit various techniques to increase and improve people’s involvement using the dynamics of the game.

Why use the gamification tool to optimize the selection process?

One of the goals of gamification is to make the candidate more loyal and passionate about the selection process.

In the recruiting sector, there are companies that use gamification both to motivate people to apply and to make more detailed preselections of the candidates mass. Even today these techniques are little used.

At geoJOB  we don’t want to escape the possibility of using this tool for pre-selection.

In fact, what makes a game, and consequently also gamification, fun, compelling, stimulating and emotionally resonant, should not be sought in the simple use of game mechanisms but in game design, which actually represents the artistic and experiential part of gamification.

The three sacred strategies of gamification.

There are mainly three strategies to achieve as many business objectives:

• Create levels and through a series of rules lead the candidate to level up. With this technique the candidates are stimulated to improve themselves in order to obtain higher and higher scores;
• Giving rewards or feedback to candidates. This leads them to more clearly visualize the things they know and the things they don’t know. The most advanced systems entrust personalized study programs based on these results. It is a strategy widely used in internal selection and training processes; Give candidates badges and recognition to track progress and earn status. This strategy is also used to more engage workers and create a corporate culture devoted to continuous improvement to achieve greater status.
• In light of these considerations, it seems clear that gamification, if well designed, is able to offer different  opportunities to organizations, also in the recruitment process, precisely because of its ability to involve users.

However, we cannot consider it as a definitive and complete solution, it must first of all be included in the selection process, which must necessarily start from a professional and detailed CV screening.

A summary reading of the CVs could lead to the exclusion of an ideal candidate that the gamification alone could not bring out.

The topic of how to “know how to read” a CV and whether artificial intelligence, machine learning and compound semantics can help the recruiter will be explored in our next posts.

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Most of the companies in the construction sector are small and medium sized enterprises. The priority is to make the construction site work at its best, that’s why their staff is mainly composed of technical and operational figures, often at the expense of an organized management and managerial structure.
When the decision to include new people in the team is made, the selection is entrusted to an expert technician or to the ownership, who will follow the entire selection process, from the curricula screening up to the last interview before admission inside the company.
What’s the problem with this modus operandi? First of all, the figures who have other tasks and goals are forced to focus their time on activities which their not prepared for
That means that the time spent is not enough to manage the selection process in an ideal way. And the trend will be the resource evaluation only for seniority and technical skills, not balancing them adequately with soft skills and transversal skills.

ots of times has happened to include a new resource on the construction site and after a few days hear: “I didn’t think that working on the site was that difficult” or “I don’t get along with the site manager, he always shouts” all of this generates an inevitably production rhythm slowdown and a harmful domino effect begins, workers arguing with each other, jobs delivered late and at worst the risk of getting hurt and injured.
Let’s not turn around it, working on a large construction site is very difficult, you get dirty and you work even in adverse weather conditions. A person can be technically the best out there in the world but if is not ready for the the construction site life, he will hardly last more than a month in it.
We tent to avoid this to happen immediately, we entrust the first selection process phase to a recruiter who does it by profession who is able to make candidates feel at ease, and at the same time to understand the aptitude characteristics by analyzing the actual matching between the characteristics , the values ​​and attitudes of the candidate to business needs. This doesn’t mean that the recruiter must follow the entire process but at least he has to set up a suitable candidates list for the role not only by considering the knowledge they have but above all for their personal aptitudes.

A construction company can do without a psychologist in its staff?
What’s the role of an occupational psychologist within a company? Why is he (potentially) a good selector?
The role of the an organization psychologist constitutes a great added value in the personnel selection phase as he has training in interview techniques, he is well aware of the distorting effects leading from errors in the evaluation of a candidate and he knows how to manage the relational dynamics  created in a professional context.

Let’s try to apply this concept in the construction sector  specifically in the shipbuilding sector where human relationships and teamwork are a fundamental aspect; having adequate and very different technical skills its one thing, but to experience the construction site every day and to know how to balance them with one’s own temperament and that of one’s colleagues its a different thing.The risk is hire someone who seems perfect but who turns out to be unsuitable for that specific role after a few days, what happens in this case? That the selection process must be repeated from scratch with an unnecessary increase in time and costs.

That’s the reason why, by entrusting the first cognitive interview to an occupational psychologist significantly reduces this risk, the technical skills will be subsequently verified through a second more in-depth interview with a technical figure of the company.

How does the occupational psychologist carry out the selective process?

The recruiting psychologist has to put the person at ease, making them feel free to express themselves. He knows well that the individual must be respected even in an evaluation phase.

Secondly, the psychologist will analyze the person character peculiarities during the dialogue by analyzing the actual matching between the characteristics, values ​​and attitudes of the candidate to business needs. If he deems it appropriate, he will support the selection process by using psycho-aptitude tests or assessment centers.

These tests will in no case replace the human work of the psychologist, they will only be a valid support in the selective phase.

We saw that having a psychologist in the company staff with HR department support not only constitutes a great added value but allows considerable savings in time and costs, times if we think about the sudden turnover of inadequate personnel, costs if we think about economic outlay that the company must sustain for  not well organized selective process.

We are partners of those companies who want to continue growing and need specialized figures for their construction sites. With this mindset, the geoJOB staff makes use of a team of occupational psychologists who are interview, techniques and management of selection processes experts.

Are you looking for workers for your construction sites in the Infrastructure and Plant Engineering sector?

Find out more about our specialist recruiting services.

How to draw up a resume that allows you to work on construction sites. Few rules to write simply!

It seems easy to write your own resume, but it’s not. Have you ever thought about who will read it? So try to think as the recruiter or the company that is looking for a construction site professional. But don’t be scared. Writing is not that complicated.
In order to write a good resume, you need a few simple things. But they have to be the right ones. Essential.

Let’s start…

First, we need to coordinate the information around three data groups. Which are:

• personal information;
• previous activities;
• their training.

Then you can also add the frills such as hobbies, attitudes, sports and other no less important things, that will certainly enhance your curriculum and make recruiters understand the transversal skills you have, those that the human resource managers  are interested in. But remember, the most important things are those three we mentioned before
Let’s start with the first one …

Personal information

We recommend you to always be essential in writing your resume. Everything can fit on a page, also to those who are wordy and would never stop writing about themselves.
This information is very easy, makes people understand who you are and how to contact you.
It is therefore about entering obvious data such as: name and surname, date and place of birth, nationality, marital status, possible VAT number, residential address and contacts (telephone number, mobile phone, e-mail). Then we have the section concerning the driving license which is very important, because having the C, D or a special license can also represent an advantage in our sector.
Knowledge of languages ​​(English, French, German …) can also be interesting, and must always introduced by a suitable adjective (basic knowledge, advanced, fluent …).

Previous activities

The curriculum is the self-certification of your career path. Your professional experiences must therefore be highlighted in a few lines to allow those who will read you to immediately identify the role and duties you have performed in the past.

It is therefore useful to start from the last work experience and then, to scale, describing the previous ones.
Every single job must be preceded by the time period in which it was carried out. For example: “April 2010 – October 2013: in charge of the realization of wall coverings at Edil Cipolla di Giarratana (RG): linear and architectural partition walls; customized walls and supports, fireproof / anti-humidity; creation of linear, shaped and architectural false ceilings; creation of specific supports for thermal and acoustic insulation. “
This allows you to highlight all the tasks and specializations matured in the past, also going specifically in a few lines. But always with a few, concise, words, only the right ones.
It is very important to divide these individual experiences into small blocks of text, perhaps using the Word bulleted lists
The following education experiences must obviously be highlighted because they allow us to frame the type of professionalism and specialization developed after school, when you started working. These are the recruiters and companies key clues. Here, as well will be necessary to talk about the years in which you obtained the individual qualifications, followed by the names of the institutions and schools in which you attended the courses.

And at last, the transversal skills

Here we come to the final details, which are generally called “Interests, hobbies and free time”, all things that may appear ornamental, but are not.
In this part of the curriculum you will have to try to talk about yourself, the things you love and the extra professional activities that you’ve been passionate about and that you are still passionate about, trying to highlight the elements of your character. Knowing what your interests are can help the recruiter to understand a little more about you and better track your profile. In this part of the curriculum your soft skills emerge, those that can make the difference in choosing another candidate.
In fact, it is not enough to say that you have “excellent interpersonal skills”, or a “great aptitude for problem solving”, or a “strong work ethic”. You say these things, and you want to make a good impression. But they should also be verified. And the best way to do this is to document them through activities you’ve actually done. For example, playing or having played football or basketball at a certain level suggests that you are capable of working as a team.
On the other hand, if you love extreme and individual sports it can mean that you have discipline and know when to take risks, all desirable characteristics for a leadership or command role.
But remember: anything you put in your resume can become an easy target in the interview, so don’t cheat. You need to be sure that you express your passion for what you have written. Otherwise it can become boomerang!
Anyway, the story of one’s hobbies and interests, which may also include computer skills, is important and must be exposed with care. And be sure these skills are not neglected by recruiters at all.

geoJOB helps you

At geoJOB we know that very often workers come home from construction sites very tired, and that the last thing they would like to do is sit and write the resume with their computer. They have more urgent things to do
And that’s the reason why, the geoJOB team will assist workers in the construction sector to improve, upon reservation and by sending an email request, the presentation of their curriculum, deepen their professional activity and evaluate the job offers to be filled.
An extra service for those who get up every day at 5 in the morning while everyone is asleep.