StlRecruiting

Back In The Old Days

The first staffing firm I worked in was a satellite office in Los Angeles.  We had a Monster and a Dice account, but our primary files was a stack of resumes about 6 feet tall that came from a pair of files in the corner.  We would take the files, call people, and "update their resume," while putting them into the computer.

Good times.  And as I progressed in the organization, I would always start my recruiters out on those paper files - learning to pick up the phone, dial, ask questions, and enter information into the recruiter.  Those that did well in that first week excelled. Those who struggled with just that simple task, never got it and quickly moved on.

Today we have the fancy applicant tracking systems that are supposed to solve all our problems, but I still maintain that working with paper files the first week or two is the key to good training, both for the phone and for entering data into the computer.

Yes, I do a lot of training and talking abotu social media, but the secrets of my recruiting success has always been more phone calls than google searches or board resumes.  And while I use social media to prospect these days, I use the phone to close the deal.

Between Jobs Lab At Windsor

I'm going to try to make it to Windsor Crossing to try and help out in the Between Jobs Lab tonight at 7:30.  A lot of recruiters are pitching in trying to share information about getting a job, and I'd like to share my expertise.

The problem is always one of time.  Maybe in a larger group, people won't expect that I can actually find them a job, and instead will listen on how they can go about getting their own.

I'm reviewing a book by Rose Jonas, the Job Doctor, and I can tell you it's exactly what people need. I've found that encouragement and support are often more important than jobseeking tips and tricks.  I'll have a full review later, once the cloning process is complete, but i'll try to take some notes and twitter tonight.

by the way, if you're following along - my Twitter ID's are @smheadhunter, for social media headhunting and recruiting, and @brandstorming for small business marketing.

Helping Jobseekers With Social Media

 (Welcome KSDK viewers - have a look around and click through the links in this post.)

Click here to view the segment on Today In St Louis.

Looking for work?  Hoping to use social media to find it?  Here are some resources you really ought to be tapping into in your job search.

Ultimate Job Hunting Secrets. This is the best book I've read for jobseekers, ever. Most books are written for only top people.  They are written with the assumption that you are a highly driven, highly successful, name brand employee with the ability to negotiate high salaries and with the resources to wait out job offers. That's not many of us.  This book lays out the basics for those who aren't used to looking for work.  

JibberJobber: JibberJobber.com, and his book, I'm on LinkedIn, Now What.  Jason Alba was a jobseeker a few years ago, and launched a site to help him find work.  He's since turned it into a program that is extremely helpful in managing your search. 

BeYourOwnHeadhunter.com - run by Paul DeBettignies, the MNHeadhunter, who is turning a lot of his focus to helping candidates.

Are you an executive, with your own unique jobhunting challenges?  Head on over to NetShare.com, where executives learn to pitch themselves, network with other executives, and get advice from top coaches.

There's also this post of mine that was published at Marketing Profs on how to raise your profile so headhunters will find you.  And an old favorite, 8 ways to get noticed online.  It all boils down to a single piece of advice.  Figure out what you're interested in.  Go online and find people discussing that topic.  Engage those people, and make sure that you have a profile somewhere online that tells people you are available.

Top Secret Recruiting Tip:  Don't say you're "looking for work."  Instead say you are "interviewing for new positions."

 

Don't Discourage Job Candidates With Negative Talk

Recruiters are considered experts in hiring by most candidates.  Even the least successful of us have a load of knowledge on the employment processs that a lot of candidates will never have, and so when it comes to asking about the local job market, our opinion tends to carry a lot of weight.

Unfortunately, most candidates we talk to aren't hired. It's a function of the system.  If we had 100% contact to hire ratios we'd all retire after a month, or if we worked inside, would be let go because of full employment.

So what do we do?  Far too many recruiters talk down the economy or the hiring prospects as a defense against job-seekers who want to know why they weren't chosen by us or our client.  And that's the charitable explanation. We're also prone to making warnings about the recession to depress salaries, a tactic that would never fly internally, but third party firms find it creeping up whenever we get a good person on the phone who wants to know why we couldn't perform.

Look, I know it's tough to tell someone that they weren't selected, or that we chose to submit someone else.  The easy route is to blame malevolent forces outside of our control, and even if we do want to help, telling someone the truth about why we they weren't hired it liable to earn you an ungrateful earful, and no doubt some nasty words to friends and family.

I know full well that there are crazy people out there, and there are also a whole lot of unrealistic yahoos who think it's our job to map out their careers.  They expect us to be career counselors, even though they're not the ones paying us, and they're just as likely to try to go around us as work honestly with us.  So is a white lie really the best answer? 

Resume Advice: Unpaid Work On Your Resume

Blue Sky Resumes has a thought-provoking post out about unpaid experience when preparing your resume.  Louise is a professional resume writer, and you should take what she says as holy writ:

Too often, people feel that unpaid experience doesn't belong on a resume but this is completely wrong and also self-defeating. Why does it matter whether or not you were paid to do something? Do you learn more when you're being paid? Is the experience any less valuable when you work for free?

No, unpaid experience belongs on your resume as long as it relates to what you want to do next. There are different ways to do this. You can list these experiences as 'freelance event planner' or even 'volunteer event planner.'  Then show the dates just as you would with a normal position, describe the work (you can say that it was unpaid if this makes you feel more comfortable) and highlight a couple of key accomplishments.

I would wholeheartedly agree.  Relevant experience, even if it's unpaid, is definitely important to list on your resume.  Louise and her questioner were focused more on volunteer work, but there's a second part of the story you should focus on, especially in today's economy.

What unpaid work are you doing that will lead you to a better job?  In olden days, or at least in the myths of the olden days, young go-getters joined squash clubs and smoking clubs and crashed charity events to rub elbows with the wealthy and successful in order to curry their favor.  Caddying at country clubs, working as a parking valet for private parties and serving as a waiter in nice restaurants is the stuff of legends, but it actually works.  It's how I got my start years ago.

Hiring Through The Cell Phone: AJb4U2 :0 lol

Two years ago, a few (possibly apocryphal) stories were running about recruiters hiring candidates through the use of text messages.  One story came from Steven Rothberg, who talked about using text messaging to improve your college recruiting.

Well, it's anecdotal, but I just heard about a person getting a multi-million dollar job offer through a text message.  And they don't work for Google.

Enter Rachel Bilson, one of the stars of the O.C., who is re-emerging in the new film, Jumper.  Reports from SMS Text News are saying she was hired through a text message.  The report is originally from the TImes of India, and it says:

She says, “I was at my cousin’s wedding in Tennessee and I got a text message. I guess it’s the new way to cast someone in a movie — the director just text messages you. It’s not bad, I wouldn’t mind if it happened more often. Doug sent me a text message and asked me what I was doing. I went, ‘Literally, right now?

I’m at my cousin’s wedding.’ And he messaged, ‘Well, what are you doing this autumn? Are you gonna come be in my movie?’ I was like, ‘I’m going to have to talk to some people about that. Hopefully it will work out.’ And it did.”

Now that Hollywood is on the bandwagon, can corporate HR be far behind? Put away those stuff envelopes with your formal letters. If you can't say you hired in 160 characters or less, you're not going to get the top talent.

Does The Way You Interview Prevent You From Hiring The Best Candidate?

I was reading through John Sullivan's mullings about Notchup, the service that pays candidates to interview, and a paragraph leaped out at me. 

My experience and research has found that as much as 50% of the reasons that top candidates refuse to consider firms' job opportunities are directly related to the design of the recruiting strategy and the hiring process itself. Any combination of weak employment branding, negative comments found on the Internet, neutral or negative comments by current employees, a weak corporate jobs website, requiring multiple interviews, and a slow hiring decision will scare away up to 50% of the most qualified candidates.

John has real data to back up those assertions, which means that for companies that lack strong branding and employment processes, the pool of the best available candidates starts out at half strength.  And human nature being what it is, these companies don't even know they're missing out.

You can't measure what you don't see.  If your recruiting process and your employment brand turns off candidates, you don't even get the chance to interview them.  This can only lead to a disastrous misreading of the employee marketplace.

If your hiring managers and human resources executives are telling you there's a talent war going on, and you're constantly struggling to hire top people, it could be that the problem is not the marketplace, but you.  That would certainly explain the surveys of companies with multiple critical jobs to fill, who can't seem to find the right people.  Maybe the people are there, but they won't come interview with your company.

If that's the case, it's time to bring in outside help.

Some things to look for:
1) A high number of interview drop-offs (individuals come in for one interview, but not two).
2) Your employee referrals are under 20%.
3) Your staffing firm only speaks to you in platitudes, and can't offer any suggestions on how to improve).
4) The top account managers for your staffing firms aren't working with you.
5) A quick Google search turns up negative information.

If talent is truly the driving force behind success, are you doing your best to attract talent?

How To Use Google To Get Found As A Candidate

Jim Stroud has a neat article up over at the Job Search Strategist on the value of candidates using adwords to get themselves found by recruiters.  It's downright ingenious.

"Google has a cool tool call “Google Ad Words” that allows customers to advertise based on the search terms a Google visitor uses. Translation: You can advertise your resume at the top of the search results! “Whoa, hold on a minute there Sparky!” you say, “Advertising on search engines is expensive isn’t it?” To which I would reply, “Not really, 5 dollars is all it takes to get started.”

Now, while you are blinking your eyes in utter amazement (or, at least with mild fascination), let me give you the highlights of this most wonderful jobseeker tool.

Jim gives us the lowdown on what Google Adwords is, for those who aren't familiar, and walks you through an actual use of PPC (pay per click) that should help you increase your exposure for getting a job for as little as $5 a month.  That's some pretty smart recruiting.

Top Notch HR Professional In Portland

Lance, better known as the HR guy in our circles, is looking for a new job in Portland.  He and the missus moved out to Oregon, and he's looking for a position that's closer than the remote work he's doing now.

As far as career transitions go, this is about as good as it can go. I love the company I am leaving, the company loves me back and doesn't want me to go but outside circumstances are forcing us apart like a corporate version of Romeo and Juliet (minus the double suicide).  Those circumstances are a fabulous job my wife got...250 miles away. The last six months involved me telecommuting but HR is one of those things where something gets lost in the distance. Ultimately, they need an HR guy (or gal) on-premise and I really want to work with someone besides my cat. So while I help in transition, I also have the pleasure of seeking a new position.

The best part about this is applying some of the things I didn't know when I first started job seeking a long while ago. For one, I have started by reaching out to my network instead of just mindlessly sending out a resume to every HR job in sight. I've already received a few leads along those lines. The next thing I am doing in conjunction with reaching out is...well, this. I am blogging about it. I know I have readers in Portland, OR and others who may be familiar with the area as well and I would love your tips and leads on anything HR/recruiting in Portland! Networking events and similar types of functions are also appreciated.

Lance is an excellent blogger (he just won the Best HR Blog at Recruiting Blogs), and if you're in that area, or know people that are, reach out to him and give him a hand.  You'll look good doing so.  His contact e-mail is at the link.

Reasons To Look For A Job Over The Holiday

More Reasons to look for a job over the Holiday, from Robert McCauley of RHI.

It's not that I needed the validation to prove my earlier posts right - common sense would tell you that the best time to look for a job is when other people stopped looking.

"You face less competition. Buying into popular theory, many job seekers halt their quests for employment in November and December, choosing to save their efforts for when the calendar changes. But take a glimpse at the want ads, and you'll see that employers haven't stopped looking for talent. With fewer candidates vying for the same number of positions, you may have an edge over the competition, unlike no other time during the year."

Earlier posts:

Columnist says stop looking for a job   
holiday, job-seekingHolidays is perfect time to start looking for a job.