Questions By Category:
Joining The Exchange:
Why should I join the Exchange if I'm happy where I am?
It is rare indeed for anyone to work for one company for an entire career. Since the odds favor your changing jobs at some point, you have everything to gain by letting The Exchange look for interesting opportunities now. You also have the option to prevent prospective employers from communicating with you. When you are ready to receive notices, simply turn the option on. The Exchange will then resume communications with you on their behalf.
How long will it take to create a dossier? This sounds like it could be a time consuming process.
A basic dossier can be built in about fifteen minutes. If you have a lot of experience or subject matter knowledge, it will take more than that. However, you don’t need to do it all at once. You can come back as often as you wish until your dossier is complete. As a general rule, each survey takes about five minutes to complete, so you can easily budget your time.
Confidentiality:
How is the confidentiality of my personal profile assured?
The Exchange operates on a double blind principle. That means that no employer knows your identity until you reveal it. Conversely, an employer's identity is not revealed until The Exchange contacts you about a job opportunity on their behalf. This symmetry guarantees that no unwanted communication occurs with either party.
How can I be matched to opportunities if my personal data is to remain confidential?
Employers use CASE, a companion service to The Exchange, to specify job requirements and help with candidate selection. These services share a common language and are able to communicate with one another to perform precision matching. Also, because these are both managed services, the communication between these services is inaccessible to the employer. They only know that a communication has taken place, not who the recipients are. If you think about it, when employers initiate a candidate search they are not interested in your identity, only your qualifications. Only after knowing you are qualified and interested is your identity important to them.
Your Dossier:
What information do you keep on file about me?
Your dossier contains everything an employer wants to know about you when they begin to evaluate your candidacy for a job. It contains basic things such as your contact information, your education, your employment history, and your resume. But it also contains detailed information about your experience and knowledge that would otherwise only be revealed in a job interview.
Isn’t this the same information as I have in my resume?
No. It is much more detailed. Also, because it is stored in a data warehouse, complex combinations of attributes or characteristics can be queried that would simply be impossible with a resume.
What are the advantages of revealing all of this about myself?
First, you can reveal as little or as much as you wish about yourself. Remember, though, the more that is known about you, the better your chances are for being selected for an interview. Since all of this information is maintained confidentially until you authorize its release, you have everything to gain by disclosing as much as possible about yourself.
How often do I need to update my dossier?
You should update your dossier whenever there are meaningful changes to your experience or knowledge. Incidentally, because CASE and The Exchange communicate with one another, your dossier will always reflect your latest responses to questions posed to you. In that way, CASE helps to keep your dossier current without requiring special effort on your part.
What happens to my dossier if I leave the Exchange?
Your information will be permanently removed from The Exchange. If you change your mind once you have left, you’ll have to repeat the membership process.
Membership Benefits:
As an Exchange member do I have to repeatedly fill out questionnaires each time I apply?
No. One of the benefits of Exchange membership is that your questionnaires will be completed for you whenever you qualify for a job. In addition, your contact information, education, work history, and resume will also be supplied to them automatically. However, there may be questions that an employer will want to ask you that will require your response. For instance, if an employer were to ask you a question with a free form response, you would need to supply that.
How will I be notified of job opportunities?
You will receive an email from InqHire sent on behalf of the employer. It will contain links to the employer's website and to the job description. That way you can evaluate the opportunity before deciding to apply.
Provisional Qualification:
I have received one or more notices from Exchange Member Services indicating that I am provisionally qualified for a job. What exactly does this mean?
Every position offered by our clients has one or more requirements you must meet for you to be considered eligible. Your eligibility is determined by your responses to questions that are directly connected to these requirements.
When you joined The Exchange you completed a number of surveys which contained questions whose subject matter is commonly contained in requirements statements. So, if this same subject matter is contained in a questionnaire for a new position that a client has opened, The Exchange can quickly compare your response to the required response to determine your eligibility.
But what happens if you never provided a response to this subject, either because it was not included in a survey you completed, or it was and you omitted it? The Exchange then has to make a choice. The Exchange logic is set to give you the benefit of the doubt. That is, if it has no information upon which to determine your eligibility, it sends you an invitation. This is provisional qualification.
The function that I specialize in is very broad, having many different domains. Why can’t The Exchange isolate those positions that are relevant for me and not inform me of others that are not?
This is really just a question of timing. The Exchange is a new service. As it matures, its knowledge of members will grow to a point that this will cease to be a problem. In the meantime, InqHire has taken the view that it is better to inclusive, rather than exclusive, in considering who should receive invitations.
I recently received a notice for a job which was far too junior for me, given my experience and qualifications. Why did this happen?
This can happen for one of several reasons. You may not have entered any target income in your dossier. Since employers include income criteria in their requirements, lacking income data about you leads The Exchange to include you in its list of invitees
It is also possible that you have undervalued your skills relative to the market. So, if you have set your asking price too low, you may find that you are qualifying for positions that require a lot less skill and experience than you have. In this case you should login to The Exchange and increase the amount of your target income. You’ll probably want to do this in stages so that you don’t set the level too high.
You may also have set the level of the job you are looking for inappropriately. For example, you’ll want to be sure that if you are a manager, that you haven’t authorized The Exchange to inform you of individual contributor positions.
Why do I keep receiving notices for jobs that are not in my desired work location(s)?
This will occur if you have not set your preferences to reflect your desired work locales. In that case, login into The Exchange, select the Preferences tab, and indicate your desired work locations.