#myunfold

A short recap of how MyUnfold works:

(A) For job candidates with a MyUnfold account, you will validate your skills through assessments from our vetted partners. After your skills assessments and based upon your scores you will be matched to jobs.

(B) For the recruiter/company side, they will tell us what skills are important to them for their positions and tell us the level of skill they want for each one. Now the skill levels are as follows:

For the rest of this posting, we will cover in detail how to use MyUnfold from the candidate perspective, deep diving into how to take an assessment at MyUnfold.

Firstly, (and not so surprisingly) you need to go to MyUnfold.com to sign up for an account. You will see the below image on your screen. Jump right into things and click on the “SIGN-UP with LinkedIn” button to start matching yourself to great opportunities.

After you click on the SIGN-UP button the screen will now show the following image.

MyUnfold is meant to be the buddy that’s got your back during the job hunting process, but for the service to work it’s magic and find you great opportunities, you need to allow access to your LinkedIn profile (it’s how we pull in initial data). Simply fill in the email and password you use to access your personal LinkedIn page, and then click Allow access. BTW - if you don’t remember your LinkedIn email and/or password, you can always go to the LinkedIn website to retrieve it.

The next screen to show will give a brief explanation of how the skills validation works. Here’s the lowdown: You will receive only one chance per skill. Each skill’s validation takes about 4-5 minutes. All questions are multiple choice. The questions start off easy and become harder as you get them correct and vice-versa. You receive less time to answer easy questions and more time to answer the harder questions.

Simple enough, right? Only thing left is signing up with our amazing partners, Smarterer. This is 100% needed to take the skills assessments on MyUnfold, so be sure to sign up. The red box below indicates where to click to allow you to sign up for Smarterer on the main page of your MyUnfold account.

To sign up for Smarterer you either use your Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn accounts. You can also use your email address to sign up for Smarterer.

Once you have signed up for Smarterer your personalized MyUnfold profile will appear. The picture below is for an example from our Co-Founder, Alex Diaz.

If your profile isn’t already populated with assessments to take, you will need to place your cursor of the words Search Skills. Then type in the skills you want to validate. For example if you type in Marketing, 10 possible skills will appear. After you take the test you’ll see a score, based upon the star system explained above.

From there, you’re solid! You can continue to take the skills tests recommended to you by the MyUnfold platform or do your own - either way, the more you do, the better the opportunities that come to you down the road. 

After you validate your skills, all opportunities matched to your skill-set will show up on the right section of the page (where it says Opportunities in the above image). As they populate be sure to look at the ones that catch your eye, and click on them for more details. Recruiters will reach out to you as they get your results and to make things easier – we’ll even set up a phone conference for your first interaction/interview.

At the end of the day, the point of MyUnfold is simple: to lighten and enlighten people’s lives, and give everyone a chance to shine. We wanted to give new job seekers (students graduating, industry-changing professionals, military veterans, etc.) a chance to prove themselves to be capable to work in today’s workforce while at the same time catering to the needs of the everyday recruiter. How much you put into your craft shows on MyUnfold, and we’ll make sure to do whatever it takes to get that hard work noticed.

In the words of the great Steve Martin, “Be so good, they can't ignore you”.

We couldn’t agree more, Steve.

Glad you asked, as we slowly roll into the New Year, we'll be casually reaching out to those of you that have signed up with us via the mailing list to try out the MVP — followed by a survey with your initial thoughts.  This is very important, because you, have an opportunity to give us crucial feedback on our road map to developing a full-fledged product, and making MyUnfold your experience. :-) Until then, friends - be merry, be well, and stay tuned! PS: be sure to check out our blog from time to time to read all the great content we're sharing. Here are 2 quick reads that you may like to check out from the blog.

10 Tips for an Awesome Coffee Meeting - Really like networking? Maybe you want to know how to conduct an informational interview? Then this "how to" guide is for you.  

Recruiting: more Science than Art - We all noticed that something is broken in the way people hire and get hired. Endless forms have to be filled, nothing is unified and GitHub (for developers), or Dribbble (for designers) are not taken into consideration. What is wrong and how could it be fixed? Maybe it's a matter of not hiring with your gut, but trusting more in the data.

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So has the recruitment process finally caught up yet? Nope! It's Simple: If you want to find new talent, be on mobile. If you hope to retain great talent, be on mobile.

For example, if you’re a company HR pro wanting to find new talent, you must be able to speak fluent social and mobile. Potential hungry candidates are looking at a company’s “digital voice” by lurking on their Facebook and Twitter pages long before the interview. They’re also exploring a company’s LinkedIn page and seeing who they may have connections with that either work there or can connect with to find out what the real company culture is like. 

Telling everyone that your company is innovative, open-minded, and an amazing place to work means nothing anymore. It's like a college degree today; the average norm. But hearing that from existing employees or friends you know is another. And where are potential hires looking to see how existing employees talk about their work and life? Social and Mobile.

Or how about company employees that complain about the lack-luster office internet speed or not being able to use the best consumer cloud tech to get work done and collaborate with other workers? Do you think new potential hires aren't hearing about these kinds of things? They are. (Did you really think no?) And if they’re not and just hoping to “drive a cubicle” for 8 hours a day, would you want to hire that type of employee anyway? I'd hope not.

Mobile Platforms and Lower Turnover Rates

Mobile platforms are like your fitness regime; you get out what you put in. If your enterprise social / mobile collaboration platform looks like a treadmill that doubles as a second closet with clothes hangers and your laundry basket, chances are, few employees are actually using it. If, however, employees are communicating, connecting, and collaborating on the company’s mobile platform, chances are, they are more engaged with your company’s product or service, and in turn, are less likely to leave your company.

Does that help lower turnover rates? No doubt. Are mobile platforms the panacea to a company culture that doesn’t communicate well? Nope. Remember, you get out what you put in.

How Mobile Affects Millennial Learning Capabilities

To understand how my generation uses and adopts technology, it’s easier to understand the demographic in two parts - older and younger Millennials. The first time most older Millennials (28-36) really touched technology was in high school and college. Younger Millennials (18-25) started much sooner and maybe even with a parent’s hand me down iDevice. Thus, Younger Millennials may adopt and use mobile tech faster than older ones but if there is a gap of Millennials “who learn quicker on mobile”, it would be very small.

The ability to learn quicker on mobile for Millennials is due to the fact that we spend both personal and professional time with the same device all day long. We may be posting an Instagram with friends while at lunch, responding to a business email 3 minutes later, replying to a Twitter @mention, and group instant messaging about a networking event later in the day. And snapchat to lift our spirits from a dry meeting.

The days of having one device for work and another for pleasure are quickly sun-setting. (mostly found by Gen X, seriously what the #$%@?) And companies who think otherwise are going to have a very hard time finding and retaining talent. Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just stating the facts about the new mobile reality. 

Mobile and the Future

The future of work is mobile. What the printing press was to the Enlightenment, mobile is and will be for the next generation of both consumers and business professionals. Mobile is more than disruptive; it’s revolutionary. If you want to recruit, hire, train, and maintain present and future generations of your workforce, you must KNOW and BE mobile. It’s that simple.

Set expectations right up front. Don't blindside people with a ten person panel interview when they think they're just coming in to talk with a hiring manager or someone in HR. Yes, we all understand you read something somewhere where some douche wrote; who for all we know, never did an interview in his/her career that it's important to see how people react under pressure situations like that. Here's a hint - while they're outwardly smiling and shaking hands, they are plotting the deaths of everyone involved in the interview. What you're portraying to the candidate is that they are small and that you are the bullying kids on the playground. Seriously, all jokes aside this isn't cool! This type of methodology is highly risky because it could leave a negative perception about the entire business outwardly and internally if hired because of the first encounter. Perceptions are like labels, they stick.

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Be prepared. For every complaint that I've seen from the hiring side of the table about unprepared candidates, I've seen or heard an equal number from the candidate's side of unprepared interviewers. Considering that the candidate has gone through a process to share details about their work and interest in you. A simple idea, read their resume. Know who they are, what their skills are, and the job(s) for which you're specifically interviewing them for. The number one excuse used by recruiters, (Wait For It...) I don't have the time. But if you do not take time, then how can you ever have time. It is all about opportunity cost and value.

Loose lips sink ships...and careers. It's great that you've held an open casting call for talent. It's nice that you're trying to simplify your own process by creating a single email to let all of the candidates know who is moving on to the next round of interviews. They created this thing called BCC: use that instead of the CC: field so that some of those candidates don't start getting questions about if they're leaving their current job, or why they're leaving their current job, or hey, that's cool, someone forwarded it to that person's current boss because they're a friend...

Lay out the process. Is this the only interview? Will there be one more? Two more? Five more? Knowing that in advance will help people figure out if this is for them or not. And again, we get it - "culture" is important to you...but people's time is important to them as well. Four interviews to get down to group that still has at least three more interviews to go...and they didn't know that ahead of time? Guess who's dead to a lot of people and gets a bad rep around town for wasting huge amounts of people's time? You are.

Be positive. You know read those articles before that encourages us to tell candidates to be positive? Guess what? If you're in a rotten mood and/or having a bad day at work, and this is the candidate's only exposure to the company... NEWSFLASH, culture matters on the other side of the interviewing table too. Keep in mind you will most likely be the first interaction with the company meaning all perception of culture, professionalism, etc. rest in your hands. So check your attitude at the door and take one for the team. Each company is always looking to poach talent from the other. Don't make it easy for them.

Congratulations! You've Reached the Final Thought

If you have read this article, you are on way to capturing wonderful talent. Everyone in your team owes you high fives and fist bumps. (Wait, they still do this? Just don't be that person that initiates) All the candidates on the playground will want to be on your epic team. Or just maybe, you may know someone else is looking to reach  the same awesomeness like you. So pass this along. Keep in mind karma is real and he/she can play nice or mean at the turn of corner or in this case an interview.