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Karen Mattonen interviewed me for her radio show at Recruiter Life.
It's a full 47 minutes long, but it's a pretty good background on what blogs are, where they came from, and how they can be used.
Sounds like I'm on a treadmill, though. I need to work on my breath control in audio interviews.
John Hollon over at the Workforce Blog says that you shouldn't waste your time during the Holidays looking for a job, because everyone is stressed out over shopping.
The reason for this is simple: Very little real hiring goes on between mid-November and mid-January. Yes, there are always exceptions, like the desperate art director character played by Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer, but my longtime experience as both a hiring manager and a job seeker is that nothing related to job-seeking (and, for that matter, little related to jobs in general) happens from Thanksgiving to about Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
I think he's dead wrong, and I'll point you back to my holiday post for things to do to liven up your job search. Here's a question. Those people who start jobs January 1st or 2nd. When did they get their offer letters?
The truth is if you wait until mid-January, you're stuck in the middle of a bunch of people who decided to make a change this year and started their job hunt in mid-January. If you start now, even if they don't hire immediately, you differentiate yourself early. While there may be a slowdown in hiring (not supported by six years I spent in recruiting), the people who work hard in December can and do get hired.
Companies don't budget Jan1-Dec1 all that often. Many companies have fiscal quarters that start April, July, and October. And even those that do, often can add a person at the end of the year on contract, while they work out their budget for the next year. Now, John is in the newspaper business, which may be a totally different industry that does no hiring during the holidays.
For most of us, buying into the idea that no one is paying attention is a costly mistake.
HR Capitalist catches this one, which blows the mind for sheer audacity.
I really feel sorry for people who have to take that job. And if you happen to go into a Circuit City, remember to be nice. Those people need it very badly.
If you're a Third Party Recruiting Firm looking to expand your recruiting operations in the New Year, chances are you're tempted to go headhunting for an experienced recruiter to round out your team. You all know my views on salespeople. They should be calling you. But a recruiter? That's someone you need to hunt for. You want someone with over 5 years of experience, a track record of success in good years and bad, and a solid knowledge of the ins and outs of the St Louis market.
And you liked to pay them no more than $60,000 as a base, with a solid commission plan that will have them earning six figures within two years.
Setting aside the troublesome issue of non-competes signed by these star recruiters, something else is going to trip you up. You won't get anyone to budge for less than $100,000, guaranteed, for at least one year.
Some of you just choked on your morning coffee, so allow me to elaborate.
Continue reading "The Difficulty In Hiring Experienced Recruiters" »
COMSYS has two new positions they are recruiting for. One is a a C# developer with a good commute off 40, and the other is a Sharepoint Developer.
Both positions are long-term contracts and based in St Louis, MO. For more information on COMSYS St Louis, check out their recruiting blog subdomain.
I was forwarded this job posting by another blogger, the Good Product Manager, which is a case study in giving value back to a community. If you want the direct contact of the hiring manager (and you're a candidate), shott me an e-mail and I'll give it to you.
Job Title: Interaction Designer
Description: The Interaction Designer works with UCD team members, product managers and developers, to create and improve the user interfaces of Elsevier's main existing and new Web products. Depending on skills and seniority, activities include: carrying out field studies and user interviews, creating personas, designing interaction flows(wireframes), usability testing, and working with visual designers and developers to get the user interface implemented.
Qualifications
1. Degree or training in developing user interfaces and production of(Web) user interfaces, throughout the complete project cycle from the creation of initial site specifications to design, production, testing and launch, playing a proactive role in the process.
2. Experience in and knowledge of User Centered Design practices, such as setting up and carrying out user tests, and interaction design.
3. Familiar with the basics of web technologies, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, and with designing for database-driven websites. Any additional technical skills, such as more in-depth knowledge of web technologies or server-side technologies such as PHP, are a strong plus.
4. Visual design skills are a strong plus.
5. Conceptual thinking, presentation skills at a high level, creative.
6. A drive for wanting to build products from the user's point of view.
7. Ability to work on multiple projects with minimal assistance from fellow team members
8. Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
9. Ability to work and communicate pro-actively with business owners, product managers and project managers
10. Good listener and communicator, self-reliant, creative out-of-the box thinking and used to taking initiatives.
11. Experience with eLearning a plus
12. US citizenship required
Job is in Westport, but can also be located in Dayton, OH.
I got this nice e-mail from a corporate headhunter - so am posting her search.
Grant Cooper & Associates is conducting a confidential search for the Chief Operating Officer of a client, a leading provider of custom-designed EAP (Employee Assistance Program), Work-life, and Wellness solutions to businesses located throughout the United States. Our client is a fast-growing privately held organization founded in the early 1980’s. The Chief Operating Officer position will be based in the St. Louis headquarters, reporting to the President. Successful candidates should possess a BS in business (MBA/MHA is a “plus”). Strong operations and finance background, 15 or more years of experience, including some history in a service- or consulting-related environment, and ability to build a sales team and contribute to aggressive business development strategies. Inquiries and referrals to be addressed in confidence to:
Nikki Kijanko, Consultant
Grant Cooper & Associates, Inc.
314-726-5291 x 146
kijanko@grantcooper.com
www.grantcooper.com
It may be creeping up on you, or you may have been buying groceries for a week, but Thanksgiving and the holiday season are fast approaching. While chowing down on turkey and swilling eggnog, you might give some thought to your career, or to how you sell during the holidays.
Advice for Candidates:
1) Act Now. Don't wait until January 1 to start looking for a job. That's when everyone hits the job boards.
2) Be Social. Attend lots of corporate parties (there's no better place to talk business then a corporate party, and if you're lucky, the festive cheer will lead to referrals, phone numbers, and a new job in your stocking.
3) Enjoy The Season, but Not Too Much. If you're a candidate, now is not the time to put that jingle bell message on your answering machine or cell phone.
Advice for Recruiters:
1) Respect the Holidays.
Some people do not like to work over the holidays. If you are
encountering resistance, be sensitive that there may be extenuating
circumstances. Don't be too cheery or cheesy with your holiday
wishes.
2) Work On The Holidays: In direct contradiction to number 1, remember that people are taking time off to shop, to relax, and using vacation up at the end of the year. If you work hard at this time, you'll get people when they aren't at work, and prior to the rush of calls in the New Year. The market is tight, and while you have to be respectful, you also have to dig for people who want to be recruited, but haven't had time to look, until December.
3) Don't forget the holiday wishes. Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, or even just Fun Festivus are all important holiday wishes - just make sure you know who you are speaking to. Don't assume - and don't over reach - but a well timed Merry Christmas to someone tired of secular wishes can be a boost to your attitude as well as to your business.
4) Don' forget the e-cards to your contractors. A little goes a long way. If you're not sending out Christmas cards to you contractors - send them an e-card.Advice for Salespeople:
1) Call Early. Even the most diligent of holiday workers is mentally kicking off by 2:00 or 3:00 in the month of December. Early calls suggest that you are not giving up on business, but you are leaving your afternoons for shopping, egg nog, and office parties. 7:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. calls are a prerequisite.
2) Save your meetings for the afternoon - managers are open to meeting you - and an afternoon can be a casual meeting or coffee or tea or at least not the formal meet and greet you normally use as your introduction.
3) Get your Holiday Cards out early. The day after Thanksgiving is the earliest they should receive the cards - but anytime in the first week is fine. Managers put those cards up on their desks and boards - the more they have, the more important they seem to co-workers. Cards sent the day before Christmas have almost no value - and they let the manager know you aren't that organized.
4) Use your time to understand their first quarter needs. If they have business - great. Many times managers don't - so you have to turn this visit into an analysis of what you'll be doing for them in the next three months.
5) Schedule your next meeting. Don't let a prospect escape without scheduling the next phone call or meeting. Telling them when you will next speak with them and then following through is very important. "We'll talk in January," is not a vote of confidence in you abilities - it is a dismissal.
6) Go easy on the holiday goodies. The last thing most of us need is more holiday junk food. Sudoku puzzles, small books and pamphlets, and something they will actually use in the new year (not another coffee mug) is your goal. Another coffee cake or bagels is overkill, and too many other account managers use this as their hook.
Your managers and lazy recruiters will tell you that December is the slowest month. While many managers do take that time off, remember that this is the time to differentiate yourself. There's less business, but less competition, which means more business for you.
Good luck, and so I can be the first to say it, Merry Christmas, St Louis.
Update: Rick Calvert of BlogWorldExpo is laying the blame for Mike Arrington not appearing at his own feet. In this lengthy entry, Rick says there was a miscommunication in e-mails, and he gave Michael the wrong date. Mike had every intention of appearing, and even offered to fly in Friday morning.
Good enough for me. Rick seems like a straightforward guy, and states clearly that the problem was his, not Michael. But then Michael writes at CrunchNotes that he never agreed to attend, and normally doesn't go to conferences, and we should all back off the criticism. Yes, he's busy, but the excuse is still a bit thin. The answer basically comes to, this wasn't important to me, so I didn't worry about it. That's a fair statement - he's running a business and can't afford to follow up with every person who wants to hear from him. Basically - bloggers aren't important, his business is.
And that's his right, but if he wonders why people jump all over him, then he needs to spend a bit more time hanging around bloggers. The story was out - it gets corrected, and people who jump to conclusions are shamed. Welcome to the world of immediate reporting. I imagine there are several hundred CEO's who feel the same way about information reported on TechCrunch. The truth is we heard "I forgot," and responded. It was a story - a big one if it was true.
The bigger question is why bloggers should hold up Michael Arrington as an industry leader if he clearly doesn't want to be. He got his fame and money not just by working hard, but as a result of his readers. When he decides that he owes nothing to the blogosphere, either in terms of explanation or in showing up to key events, he shouldn't be surprised if he takes a few hits. Blogs got big because the public wanted information from people who weren't arrogant elites. As we grow in size and influence, if we don't self-police, how are we different than the regular media?
A blogger, especially one who owes their career to the blogosphere, should know that. So point taken, Michael. You don't speak at conferences. No one has the right to ask you to be a leader, or to give a damn about new media. We get your message loud and clear.
End Update:
I was in the Cult of Blogging presentation this morning. Leo LaPorte was there, and Justine from iJustine. Om Malik and Michael Arrington were not.
Om had a good excuse – he hurt his back. I’ve done that, and completely understand. But the reason we heard about Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, that he just “forgot,” is really kind of lame.
But Michael – he’s one of us. He’s a blogger who made good, and has built a useful and profitable site. For him to blow us off, if that is what happened, is unacceptable. Michael, I may just be a little blogger, but I want to know why you failed to show. If you attended the conference, and feel the same way, please write a post and let me know about it. We have to hold industry leaders accountable.
Other links: Jeremiah, Chris Brogan, Allen Stern.
How many bloggers are there, and who are these people? The BlogWorldExpo has compiled some of the statistics.
| Important Blogging Statistics |
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Just a little bit of information, seeing as the liveblogging seems to be a bit disjointed.
Liveblogging from the BlogWorldExpo, in the session on small business blogging. This has particular resonance for recruiters, as I regularly point out that third party recruiters can increase placement fees by at least $100,000 per year with a focused blog.
1) Industry Networking: As I've proved on this blog, building out your online network with a blog is a great way to establish your expertise to your audience. I'm a blog expert with a background in recruiting. That gives me a unique perspective on the manner that is now broadcast to over 100,000 people each year. That's a trust that could not have been generated on my own.
2) SEO Benefit. I rank on the first page of Google for hundreds of search terms for recruiting, St Louis consulting, headhunters, specific technology interviews, and even random office pranks.
Update:
Scott is covering the Do's and Don'ts. He says delete your dead blog if you stop writing for good.
I'll be asking him questions about recruiting, because he was involved in the recruiting blogging early, if I recall correctly.
I'll tell you this - Scott gets it. He says spend 50-60% of your time off blog, reading, commenting. it's like he took our training (He didn't, he just gets it).
Time Invested: Scott says 2-3 hours a week blogging, and 2-3 hours off blog. Someone asked if that was a lot of time to spend as an entrepreneur. He gave an example that showed an increase of 15% in business directly attributable to the blog. I commented that you can make $60-100,000 as a recruiter using a blog.
I already have a website. Should I add a blog? He points out that two companies used LiveJournal and MySpace to make money. I never thought about it that way. You go to where your audience is.
Franki and I are here in Las Vegas, attending the Blog Word Expo. Our goals are to:
1)Meet other bloggers to build our network
2) Find possible employees to work in our social media marketing firm.
3) Find out if any companies are here that like our unique take on working with social media.
The first session is on Tracking Reputation in the Blogosphere (more on this at brandstorming). The session is run by online monitoring companies, Umbria, Collective Intellect, and filtrbox. They are doing a decent job of explaining that.
Howard Kaushansky is talking about moving past monitoring, and into gaining insights from your customers. That's a pretty powerful statement. Rather than just looking at whether someone is talking about your brand, you can use the blogosphere as a giant focus group. Your customers are telling you what they want. Are you listening?
Update: The question of influence comes up, and the panelists aren't that happy with internet rankings. They specifically discuss Technorati and Alexa and Compete, but PageRank fits into this too. A corporate type asks the question of engaging with these people. Do you legitimize them? They are clearly thinking of influence in a old style corporate sense. Your online reputation is different than that of your offline reputation, and it's important to recognize that in an era of search engines.
I'm not a banking industry expert, but I do show up on the first page of Google for Wells Fargo Business Line of Credit as an unhappy customer. That only happens because I've been fortunate enough to build up a high-ranked blog or two that is content-specific. How then would you rank my influence?
As Robin points, out influence is not static. A blogger may have influence on a single topic and a single moment in time, which is what makes this so vague.
Good panel. I'm going to go up and chat to these three.
Questions to ask them:
Are you getting blowback from people who don't like to be monitored (Howard says no, in fact most people who respond like that they are paying attention.)
Is there an algorithm to track influence? No. There are alogrithms they use internally, but they work in conjunction with eyeballing the site. Robin says eyeballs, but they also have internal). Howard says they do have algorithm.
I've run into David Manaster at three times now. I saw him for lunch when he came into town, I chatted with him at the San Diego ERExpo, and I spent a not insignificant amount of time with him at the NAPS conference this weekend.
Some things you might not know about the founder and CEO of ERE.
1) He ran a marathon.
2) He started ERE from his parent's basement.
3) He has an intern program that is wildly successful for bringing in new talent and promoting them.
4) He is a case study in how to run a business as an entrepreneur (rather than stay at the $400 hotel, he stayed next door in the cheaper hotel).
5) He's a Mac fan, and could teach me a few tricks on how to improve my productivity with it.
6) He's a genuinely nice guy who listens to those around him.
7) He's a better blogger than he gives himself credit for.
Lest you think I'm trying to get hired or something, I'm actually writing this because I initially saw ERE as competition to Recruiting.com. We were the brash young upstarts, and ERE the stodgy industry dinosaur.
How wrong I was! The more I spend time around ERE staff and learn their story, the more impressed I am. Set aside questions about global warming, and there's a lot to admire about David and his staff. Sometimes we miss that in the blog-eat-blog world we've created.
A local St Louis company is looking for a temporary contract recruiting to assist in college recruiting. If that's you, and you want to know more about it, contact me by clicking on that e-mail button to the top right.
I'm down here at our new office, alternating between working and scrubbing the floor to get rid of the paint spills (we had paper down, but nobody's perfect). AT&T told me they would be here between the hours and 8 and 5 to install DSL, so I brought laptop with an EVDO card and have been waiting, terrified someone would show and I would miss them.
Cue the jokes.
Wait. That's not what this is about. I just got a call (and an e-mail) from the technician, telling me he was on the way. I've never had that happen before. And I also found out I get free AT&T WIFI hotspots with the DSL package. And when I called, they were able to track my account quickly and give me the info I needed.
Color me impressed. In fact, I like it so much that I would recommend it to any business owner.
I have but two complaints, or rather suggestions.
1) The AT&T website doesn't give me easy access to phone numbers - even to buy. I'm a child of the internet, but I'm much more comfortable calling then ordering service online. At least on the phone, I can ask if there are problems. I'd be worried about picking up a service package and then getting locked into it, based on past experience with phone companies. Seriously, when it takes me a while to find phone numbers, the average online customer is going to be lost. You need a big button with a number, on each page.
2) I think it's great that you call, but you could have let me know that you were going to call. I didn't have to be here all day, and if I didn't have EVDO, I'd be in trouble. I would have lost a whole day. be more forceful. Don't tel me 8-5. Tell me you'll call me ahead of time.
Otherwise, good job AT&T DSL/phone service. And your truck just arrived.
2)
An interesting day down here in San Antonio. It started with a 7:00 a.m. executive briefing sponsored by Keen Hire. Margaret Graziano had a panel that included Shally, Joyce, me, and Margaret, to talk about the changes coming to the staffing marketplace.
NAPS is the National Association of Personnel Services, which means owners of staffing firms across the country. There is an emphasis on certifications, one that I have looked down upon in the past, but am starting to understand from a selling standpoint. If you have the right certifications, you can sell to Human Resources executives, something more and more necessary in the staffing world.
The focus of the panel, and Margaret's excellent talk later that morning, was the ways in which staffing and recruiting are changing. It's not enough to find people anymore. Recruitment Process Outsourcing is coming, and if you're the kind of firm that relies on recruiters who surf Monster and send over candidates without professionally screening them, you're going to be in a world of hurt in the next few years.
I'll have more on Margaret's talk later. It's information you should all know. And if you want to purchase assessments, you can always head over to the Keen Hire website.
In St. Louis news - our fair city is being well represented in Texas. Sendouts.com sponsored the meeting, and is throwing a shindig tonight. Scott Ginsberg, the Nametag Guy, was our lunchtime speaker (and a regular blogger). The Fordyce Letter is a prominent feature, and Mark Berger is also speaking. And then of course there's me.
And the Marriott Riverwalk. Wow, what a hotel. Really, really classy and beautiful. But their WiFi policy sucks. $250 a day for the conference floor ($10 in the lobby). The Holiday Inn Market Square, where I'm staying, has free wifi.
