Staff Source posts their jobs on a variety of job boards. Within those posts are specific qualifications and requirements about the position at hand. We appreciate receiving hundreds of resumes from the job posting HOWEVER the major downfall is that only 1 or 2 out of every 20 people that apply are actually qualified for the job. Applying for the position you are qualified for not only saves time for the recruiter, but it also helps to get you employed faster. The pre-screening process moves quickly if everything is illustrated on your resume and when we send it out to our client they can also see all of the skills they are looking for making their decision easier.

What exactly does “qualified” mean? It means your skills match the qualifications and requirements of the job description. If the job description says the position requires 1 year of recent forklift experience we like to see on your resume that your last job (within the last 6 months) included operating a forklift and that you were there for a least a year. If you were not at your last job for a year, your total forklift experience should equal at least 1 year altogether.

Staff Source attends a number of job fairs and open houses. Again, sometimes we are focused on certain positions for the open houses and if a job seeker is applying for a forklift position but their resume does not have any forklift experience at all on it we are confused. In some cases the candidate will say “I have done forklift before but it’s not on there.” Our question is always WHY NOT?

We strongly suggest that in this case or any case you are applying for a specific job make sure the skills for the job at hand are on there! We like to see ALL of your skills however we understand that some candidates have a multitude of experiences (industrial, customer service, retail, hospitality, etc.) so depending on which job is available you can present different skills. Some people have 2 or 3 different resumes which is fine, just make sure you focus on the right things on the right one!

Some additional tips to help tailor your resume to a specific job:

• Print the job description and compare it to your resume

• Highlight your skills that match the job description and expand on them

• Check the employer’s website for additional info and corporate values

• Review the requirements of the job so during your interview you can incorporate how you can do those things/have done those things in your past experiences

Staff Source will be at St. Victors Church (553 Hirsch Ave, Calumet City) on Tuesday July 9th from 1pm-4pm.

IMMEDIATE OPENINGS
Quality and assembly positions
Pay: $8.15/hr+
July 1st 11am-2pm
St. Victors Church
553 Hirsch Ave. Calumet City, IL 60409

***Bring an UPDATED resume and photo ID.

Candidates need to be able to pass a drug screen and have a clean criminal background.

 

Join us tomorrow  (Tuesday, July 23) in Calumet City for an open house!

We will be at the VFW Post 8141 at 664 Hirsch Ave, Calumet City from 10 a.m.-1 p.m.

Lear Corp. has been running around the clock to keep up with the red-hot sales of the Ford Explorer sports utility vehicle, and is accelerating its production.

The plant on 165th Street in Hammond is operating at full capacity and employs more than eight times as many workers as it did five years ago.

These days, the only times the first-tier auto parts supplier’s 100,000-square-foot plant isn’t filled with employees is Saturday nights and Sunday mornings.

The Hammond plant has been churning out 63 sets of car seats per hour seven days a week, and is upping its hourly production by about 14 percent. The plant has to start producing 72 sets of seats per hour to continue to feed the nearby Chicago Assembly Plant, which makes the Explorer and other hot-selling Ford vehicles, Lear Corp. plant manager Michael Segvich said.

Explorer sales are up 25.9 percent so far this year, as compared to last year, according to Ford Motor Co. Overall Ford sales are up by 13.9 percent this year, and the automaker’s June sales reached their highest level since 2006.

The impact has been dramatic on Lear’s Hammond facility, which makes seats for the Explorer, the Taurus, and the Police Interceptor versions of both those vehicles, along with the Lincoln MKS.

 

Weathering the downturn

Flash back to 2008. Car sales were in the dumps. Detroit automakers were in bankruptcy court and lining up for government bailouts.

Dealerships across the country were closing. Showrooms were shuttered. Inventories were liquidated.

As few as 89 workers clocked in at the Lear plant during the downturn, Segvich said. But the employment has since rebounded to 764 employees, including 710 hourly workers.

“We can’t make enough seats for Ford right now,” Segvich said.

Workers crowd around the plant’s three assembly lines, tightening bolts, installing heating pads and steaming wrinkles out of the fabric. They stuff foam padding into cloth, suede or leather seat covers. They attach head restraints and reclining mechanisms.

If the seat is for a Police Interceptor, they put in special stab-proof plates.

They check the seats. They check them with lasers, by sight and by hand. They check them again and again to ensure all the bolts are torqued just right and every piece is calibrated to the automaker’s exact specifications.

The Lear employees, who are members of United Auto Workers Local 2335, need only about 50 minutes to make a fully finished seat that is ready to install in a vehicle.

Finished seats pile up fast, filling pallets on metal racks that stand a few stories high. But they don’t stay there for long.

 

Thriving business

Lear’s Hammond plant is a just-in-time supplier, meaning it doesn’t make the part if Ford doesn’t order it.

As of late, they have been shipping out 34 truckloads of seats a day, which mostly go to the Chicago factory. Every seat made in Hammond that’s bound for Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant in Hegewisch ends up in a vehicle within four hours, Segvich said.

About 70 percent of the seats they make go into the Explorer, which is one of Ford’s top-selling vehicles with more than 75,000 units sold so far this year.

Workers build those seats every day from 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and then from 6 p.m. to 4 a.m.

The Hammond plant is back up to three shifts after shrinking to just one during the downturn.

That has affected nearby Contract Services Group, which furnishes Lear with seating sub-assemblies. The auto parts supplier also has been running three shifts to keep up with demand.

Business has been thriving as the auto industry has rebounded, said Contract Services GroupPresident Mirko Marich.

“A lot of companies went out of business, but fortunately for us we were able to modify our business model and weather the storm,” he said. “We’ve been seeing some pretty amazing growth over the past couple of years.”

Much of the growth can be attributed to Ford’s decision to retrofit the Chicago Assembly Plant, which had only produced the Taurus for years, to make several different types of vehicles, Marich said. That way, if sales of one car model flag, another vehicle could pick up the slack.

Sales have been so strong of late that the Lear plant will only idle for one week this summer instead of the usual two weeks. Segvich can’t recall the Hammond plant ever taking such a short summer break for maintenance in the 18 years he’s worked there.

“We’ve gotten about as busy as we can get,” he said.

 

Article and photograph courtesy of The Times Newspaper

The Obama Administration announced last week that it “will provide an additional year before the ACA mandatory employer and insurer reporting requirements begin.” The announcement was in response to concerns expressed by ASA and its partners in the Employers for Flexibility in Health Care (E-Flex) coalition, which ASA and other major business groups formed in 2011 to represent employers of part-time, temporary, and seasonal employees in the rule-making process. The E-Flex coalition argued that employers needed more time to effectively implement the complex new requirements of the law.

In a blog posted on the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s website, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy Mark J. Mazur said the delay in enforcement of the employer responsibility provisions is designed to allow the administration to consider ways to simplify the employer reporting requirements and to give employers time to adapt their health coverage and reporting systems to the new rules.

Staff Source looks at A LOT of resumes every day…some good and some bad. Here is a compilation of some helpful tips to make sure yours is placed in the good pile!

Tip #1 – Use bullet points to improve readability

Nobody likes to search for exactly what you did and where you did it. A simple solution to this problem is to use bullet points under your company/title with your scope of responsibility. Example:

2/2009-12/2012                   Company Name                Hammond, IN

Customer Service Representative

• Maintain filing system, answer phone calls, data entry

• Process payroll using QuickBooks and managed accounts payable/receivable

• Form strong customer/client relations and communications

Tip #2 – Make sure you account for gaps in employment

If you have major time gaps in between work experiences (more than 1 year) the person interviewing you will ask what you were doing during that time period. If you do not note it on your resume make sure you can explain what you were doing (attending school, etc.). Companies like to see solid work history which means you maintain working at the same company for more than 2 years. It is also a plus to show accomplishments and growth while you were at that company such as promotions, new titles, etc.  “Job hoppers” are what we refer to as people who have had 5 or more jobs in 1 year which is not a good sign. It shows us you are not committed or loyal to companies and most companies are looking for employees that want to be there long term.

Tip #3 – List software you are familiar with

It is good to point out certain software you have worked with or have been trained on such as AutoCad, QuickBooks, Photoshop, etc. You can put these within your work experiences or separate it out and put it at the top or bottom of your resume. Just make sure to put it somewhere because many companies will quickly look through resumes and if they are looking for certain software you want them to be able to find it quickly and easily. They can also conduct “keyword searches” through job boards such as Career Builder or Monster for specific software/skills and if it’s not listed on your resume you will not come up in their search.

Tip #4 – Use action words

Using strong action words to describe your experience is important to keep the attention of whoever is reading it. Instead of using “responsible for answering phone” you could use “manage the phone system”. A good tool to help you with this is to see what the synonyms are for the word you were going to use. You also want to be sure to not use the same action words for each experience; try to think of different ones to use throughout your resume. Also be sure to keep the action words consistent as far as present or past tense.

Tip #5 – Review and update quarterly

Many people forget this simple task of keeping your resume UPDATED. It is very important to keep your resume updated with everything you’ve done thus far even if you are currently working and/or not looking for a job. If you have been at a company for 5 years you have probably forgotten what your responsibilities were when you started. You do not want to forget anything you did therefore it’s smart to make a list of things you do so you can easily transfer it to your resume when needed. You should always have your LinkedIn profile updated with your most recent experiences so updating your resume should be easy!

 

Now that you have the tips to help you create a professional resume be sure to always take a couple with you to an interview! Even if you emailed the company a copy of it before your interview take one with you to be prepared.

Staff Source’s hospitality division, Hospitality Services Group, is looking for cooks with Asian Cuisine specialties for a location in Hammond, Indiana.

Pay is negotiable based on experience. All shifts available. 
MUST:
Be 21 or older
Able to pass drug screen
Clean criminal background

1+ years of experience as a cook preferred but not required.

If interested and qualified please submit an updated resume to Christine Wallace at cwallace@staffsourceusa.com.

 

 

 

 

Staff Source will be at the Hobart Community Center on Monday June 3rd from 10am-1pm recruiting for a variety of industrial and hospitality positions. These positions include:

Industrial:

• forklift operators
• machine operators
• packagers
• CDL drivers (Class A or B)
• quality control inspectors

Pay: $8/hr +

Hospitality:

• wait staff
• banquet servers
• experienced cooks

Pay: $10/hr +

Please bring an updated resume and valid photo ID to the open house.

The Hobart Community Center is located in Festival Park at 111 E. Old Ridge Road, Hobart, IN 46342.

 

Staff Source will be sponsoring a 5k- Miles for Melanoma- on June 2nd at Wicker Park. All of the money raised will go directly to Dr. Markovic and his team at the Mayo Clinic as they maintain their relentless dedication and focus to finding a cure for cancer. This cause is very personable to Staff Source due to 2 of the partners, Milan and Dan Kesic, being melanoma survivors.

“My name is Milan Kesic and I am a Stage III Metastatic Malignant Melanoma survivor. I’m so grateful to Dr. Markovic and his team for helping me stay alive that I decided I was going to try and help other people do the same thing.”

To see more of Milan and Dan’s story please visit the website: www.milesformelanoma.net.

You can also donate to the cause at http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/close-to-a-cure–2.