StlRecruiting

Kevin Wheeler Coming To St Louis

Kevin Wheeler, the noted sage we read so often on ERE.net is coming to St Louis this Thurdsay to speak at a function for Koppen Group, a local executive search firm.

Kevin's talk preceded the blogger panel at the ERExpo, and I had the chance to listen in for 30-40 minutes as he described the use of social networks and how they will affect recruiting in the future. 

Kevin is in town to give a lecture on The Future of Recruiting, and Kristen Koppen, the owner of Koppen Group, sent me an invitation after we met in San Diego.

Should be fun.   

The Top Hyperion Consultant In St Louis

Howard Johnson was a Hyperion candidate of mine back when I was a recruiter.  To be honest, I was lucky that he agreed to work with me, because he was one of those consultants who could spend 365 days on the road from the demand for his services, and I happened to catch him during some free time.  Well, Howard is based here in St Louis, and he has just started a blog to help market his Hyperion services. He has a successful website marketing his Essbase experience, but he's finally agreed that blogging is going to work for him.  If you're looking for a Hyperion consultant,and you're in St Louis, you probably already know him.

Here's his interview, along with his availability.

1. What do you do?

I'm an independent consultant that specializes in the following: Hyperion system 9 upgrade, Hyperion Essbase, Hyperion Planning, Reports and Analyzer.  While recruiters attempt to label you as either a technical or functional consultant, I appear to be both.  I can handle many tasks including: requirements gathering, interviewing end users, front end development, overall architecture design, back end development (essbase calc scripts, etc.) infrastructure, and even server installs   After going head to head with a few of the platinum partners for project work, I've discovered that while their project plans dictate 5-6 resources, I've been able to complete these projects with myself being the only resource.   

If You Hate Us So Much, Why Would You Offer To Lead Us?

I don't understand John Sumser.  He is the Executive Editor in Waiting for Recruiting.com, a Group Recruiting blog I helped build with Jason Davis, Michael Kelemen, and Anthony Meaney, along with the 300 or so recruiting bloggers and the 1000's of Recruiting.com readers.

John has been taking a lot of flack in the blogosphere.  Most bloggers seem to think he's not the right person to helm Recruiting.com, but at least most of us are willing to let him take a crack at it.  John is very influential in this space, and has played a not-minor role in helping Jason Davis get Recruiting.com off the ground by serving as a mentor.

So what's with today's column?  Sumser picks out a Silicon Valley blog and praises it, but decides to start off his recommendation with a swipe at blogging in general.

It's been a long time since I recommended a blog. For the most part, few are consistently useful enough to merit routine attention. Fighting through the navel gazing that passes for transparency and into the act of real content creation is too much work for most bloggers.

Is this the man who is supposed to lead Recruiting.com?  Blogs aren't perfect, and there is a lot to be desired, but I have to question the wisdom of insulting the community you are supposed to lead.  If John hates blogs so much that he can't keep the snide comments to himself, how can he possibly expect to have any real impact on the recruiting blog community?

I'm no Pollyanna, dreaming of a blog utopia where everything written online is Pulitzer Prize winning material, but complaining about quality on blogs is hardly a reasoned argument.  It's a drive-by attack.

I've read John's columns for two years now, and not once have they ever given me insight on how to hire people.  In fact, I'd have to say:

It's been a long time since I recommended a John Sumser column.  For the most part, few are consistently useful enough to merit routine attention. Fighting through the navel gazing that passes for analysis and into the act of useful reporting is too much work for most readers.

I really wanted to stay out of this, because it's not useful for the recruiting community as a whole.  At some point, this whole story goes beyond parody and leaps into tragedy.  To be relevant, the Recruiting blogosphere needs to focus on using blogs to hire people from building communities of passive talent to evaluating tools to help recruiters.  John Sumser has become a distraction from that purpose.

Can we move on to important matters?

HireVelocity: Interview from an ERE exhibitor

While at the ERExpo, I happened upon Dennis Smith hanging out at the Hirevelocity booth.  Since anything Dennis likes, the rest of us by definition would like, I took the opportunity to get an interview from Jill Rosenfield.  These are her answers to my questions on what makes HireVelocity tick.

Questions for HireVelocity:

1)  What is HireVelocity?  Can you give me a) HireVelocity in 10 words or less, and b) A 30-second Elevator pitch?

A). We are an RPO - Recruitment Performance Optimization firm.
B). We provide sourcing and screening services to large companies with Talent Acquisition organizations.  Our output is Qualified, Available, and Interested (QAI) candidates to corporate recruiters.  This frees the Corporate Recruiters up to spend time with Candidate Control and Hiring Manager Relationship Management.

2) How long have you been around?  Where are you located?

3 -1/2 years.  Locations in Atlanta, Tampa, Salt Lake City and Hyderabad, India.

3)  Do you see yourself as a competitor to third party recruiting firms?  Is there any room to work together?

To a certain extent they will see us as a competitor for the easier-to-fill positions.  However, we really emphasize the importance of Search firms once we have proven, for a low cost, that the right candidate is going to come from a search firm.

Video Of The ERE Panel

Video of the ERE Expo is up.  We're the Ask The Blogger Panel, the third result.  Next time, I'm going to do a better job at introductions.

Finding Candidates Through Blogging

Bloggers are some of the smartest, hardest working, best looking and cheapest candidates you can find.  Well, not all of those, but they certainly are worth looking into as a source of candidates.  Bloggers tend to have access to a wider range of cutting edge tools, assimilate information quickly, are cutting-edge technology users, and often know more about social marketing than your marketing agency.  So how do you find them and how do you filter them?   

1) Finding them:  Hello Mr. Search Engine. Blogs rank highly in search results because they give relevant information on the topics you search for.  If you want to find a blog on java developers in St Louis, search "java developers St Louis blog".  To  improve your results - go 10 or 20 pages into the search results, and ch change your searches to say "java programmer", "Java missouri", and the names of local companies you often source from. 

2) Go where they are. Some bloggers don't want to identify where they currently work, so the place to look for them is in local user groups that cover the technology you want to hire for.  Bloggers leave comments with their url attachede, which means if you are reading about a coding problem, and the user says they are from St Louis, click on their name, and it will often take you to their url.

3) Make friends with bloggers and ask them for referrals.  Bloggers know other bloggers, and if you have a good reputation, they might be willing to go to bat for you when you are looking.  Offering referral rewards is a positive.

 

ERExpo Recap

We're back from the 2007 ERExpo in San Diego, slightly sunburned, well-rested (we stayed extra days in La Jolla), amazed, thrilled and disappointed.

First, let me just say congratulations to David Manaster, who pulled off a great event with world-class companies and excellent sessions.  I'm sure the behind the scenes is messy, but I didn't see any mistakes, and that has to be a good feeling for the largest ERExpo to date.  David told me over 600 paid registrants and a about a thousand people total (including vendors and speakers) attended.  David's wrap-up is on his blog.

Second, let me say thank you to my fellow panelists.  Heather Hamilton was knowledgeable and spoke about branding.  Dennis Smith spoke about industry recruiting, and Joe Grimm talked about the personal touch that blogging has brought him in the newspaper recruiting business.  Thank you to all three for agreeing to appear in public with me.

On a side note - in addition to being very funny, Joe Grimm is an extremely courteous man raised on Midwestern values.  Each time my wife came over to us, he would stand in introduction.  When was the last time you saw such respect?  Seriously, I spent a lot of time with Joe, and count him among new-found friends.

So what about the conference?  I'd say that there was a clear theme running through the conference attendees.  Change is in the Wind.

Economic New Good for St Louis

24th State has a roundup of good news on Jobs growth, specifically IT jobs growth for the St Louis region.

www.24thState.com is a blog on Missouri politics.

EliteIT Services Is In The PD

EliteITServices was in the Post-Dispatch. They're bloggers.  The article.

Occasional dry spells in finding candidates have forced the company to become more creative in locating employees. It finds "passive candidates" — people who are not even looking for work — through websites such as linkedin.com, an online network that links professionals around the world.

Word of mouth also attracts many prospective candidates, with 72 percent coming from referrals, Hubert said. She noted that a blog on the company's website also attracts potential contractors.

Rob and Sandy are forward thinking. In addition to the blog, they have several other projects that are focused on building expertise and connecting with IT candidates.  Check out their website at EliteITServices.com

Live From ERExpo

Here's a fun figure for you.  $17B = the amount spent yearly on online advertising in the US.

$35B - the amount spent  yearly on recruiting in the US.

It's an interesting conference - the Marriott is beautiful - San DIego has great weather, and there are a lot o people here.  Over 600 paid registrants and almost 1000 with vendors and speakers. 

The theme, if there is one, is change.  Everyone knows that the way we used to recruit, whether that be phone or internet, is going to change.  Every company here is pitching some new way of interfacing with customers and finding new employees.

Russell Glass of Zoom Info is inteviewing people with a television camara.  Just because.
TiVo sounds like a great, great place to work.
Monster does more than job boards - I'm going to try to get an interview with an Eric Wiesegarner (sp?), who I expect will give us a much different view of Monster than we normally see.
Jason Davis is a fount of new ideas.  He is one of the most creative people I know.
The KA sushi bar in the Gaslamp district serves really fresh octopus.

For more, check out the ERExpo Blog.