Remember when you were single and the amount of time you took make yourself look good? It was all like the gym, a shower and some cold brews with the crew on the weekends. Your plans were simple then and you took time to keep yourself in shape.
Posting a good job description is lot a lot of prep and fluff, you know kinda like you used to do before the weekends. Then one day you settle down. Work becomes loaded with tasks and meetings. And, now your job descriptions aren’t a priority.
And once you get entrenched in the daily battles of sourcing and recruiting, you rarely find the time to work on job descriptions. And when you do need to write one up, you slap some hand-me down job template. It’ not that you don’t care, it’s just you don’t have the time.
Plus, writing job descriptions is insanely cheesy like the acid jean outfit you wore while clubbing..yeah, that pic is soooo going on facebook courtesy of your college crew .
Most recruiters let their job postings get away from them. We’re too busy, or we don’t understand what the manager really wants is what I hear all the time. And, old school recruiters complain it-is-just-a-frickin-job-description-nobody-will-take-time-to-read.
And there you have it.
A job req posted on all the job boards that cost thousands of dollars and all you get are a handful of unqualified candidates or desperate visa holders scrambling for work.
Hey look, there is a reason why you don’t have many applicants and it starts with the job description and you. You want to improve the quality of applicants then you got take some action and work on the job description.
Here is what you need to do.
Research where the best places to attract the type of talent you want. Go for maximum exposure and post to major job boards and use tag words in the job title to grab attention.
Take time to write a good job description and highlight why your company is awesome and why everyone is oh-so happy working there. Mention awards in your job description that you company got within last few years. And most importantly, slash away all the corporate mumbo jumbo and actually describe the type of work performed.
Better job descriptions means less time recruiting. It works when recruiters spend the time to make a job description the write way.
I recently witnessed several spit takes in one meeting when the boss delivered news of a hiring slowdown. IT Recruiters are so freaking frustrated right now, they could easily drop kick an innocent pimply face recruiting intern. Yeah, sure some jobs are being canceled and plenty of recruiters are mumbling what they are going to do.
But there is something that every recruiter, sourcer….and intern should be going. Building target lists. Yep. Here is how.
TARGET COMPANIES Build target lists from Linkedin or search Indeed.com on competitors that hire same skills. Capture the data and add it to something like a spreadsheet.
TARGET NAMES Once you have list of company names, begin using Linkedin, Facebook, Jigsaw and other sites to find the people that work for the companies on your target list. Capture this data and then run searches on Google or use people finding tools like eGrabber.
Once you have a solid list of target companies with names that have contact info, store them into an candidate tracking system.
POST JOBS ANYWAY No doubt the job boards like Monster.com have desperate contractors who may need a visa. I see digital tumbleweeds rolling on these sites because nobody is posting their resume. They have become the MySpace for jobseekers.
However….
It’s still worthwhile to post jobs to career boards. When a slow down occurs, the rest of the world doesn’t need to know. In fact, your company should maintain an image of “always hiring”. Basically, you want the image of stability.
RELATIONSHIP BUILDING The best recruiters know you have to pick up the phone, make the calls, and establish relationships. This is the most critical piece for Sourcing/Recruiting. Gathering names and company names means nothing if you don’t have solid relationships being established.
Work on your sales pitch and keep your passive candidate targets informed of what your company needs.
The one thing that I’ve always experienced is that your passive candidates will eventually call you or send someone your way. Just takes a little patience and on-going effort.
Congratulations! You sourced one heckava nerdy IT software developer. You had a great phone interview where you both made fun of the iPhone crowd, and totally agree Iron Man 2 was a let down. Now what? You gotta get this Pizza-eating-Mountain-Dew-drinking-Supernerdyfragilisticexpialidocious developer a technical interview. And, you’re dreading it because he is going to fail unless he has Bill Gates super geek coding powers.
But before you make that dreaded call to your Hiring Manager who is going to hand the technical interview over to a guy that sits in corner cube displaying dungeons and dragons fantasy figurines, you might want to ask them if they really need a technical test.
Seriously, tests suck. But, we’ve all had to take them. The problem with these technical tests is that either way too broad (as in pulled in from a Google search) or they reflect the current role which is pretty much a hybrid type role. What do I mean by hybrid role? It’s when you combine several skills into one super duper geeky job. And this has been a trend since the economy tanked.
What I am really getting at here is quite simple. Tests aren’t that good sometimes because they are made for the current position. And in some cases, those giving the test failed it too.
So unless the technical test is customized for each candidate, I think you are throwing out the baby with bath water when the candidate fails. And for all the sourcers that I know, this strikes a nerve especially the amount of effort it took to source the candidate. And once candidates begin to fail technical test regularly, sourcers often find themselves screening candidates with the technical test.
The big question still remains. Do we really need to give a technical test? And, if you do need to give tests, where in the process? I can tell you right now, technical test that are used to screen out candidates is a flawed concept.
When the first chance to switch from recruiting to sourcing came my way, I jumped on it like a Spider Monkey. Yeah, sure, sourcers are labeled nerdy, geeky, and homely, but our work is fun. And, to be good a sourcer you shouldn’t have to guzzle Red Bull, and bang out hundred complex Boolean search strings. You just need to know these three rules.
Cold Calls
Some good sourcing blogs are Boolean Black Belt and Research Goddess but you’re NOT going to find training materials on how to cold call candidates. And to be honest, good sourcers need to know how to make a cold calls. Unfortunately, most companies don’t want sourcers to make ANY calls. That is the recruiter’s job they say. But, if you really want to reduce time to fill, sourcers need to make the first call and SELL the candidate on the job. And, that requires cold calling.
Know How To Treat Passive Candidates
Great sourcers find tons of rock star candidates and toss them over to a recruiter who then sends out a generic email with a lame job description and link to a job req. If you think this method works, please stop reading now and go back to your teddy bear filled bed. Passive candidates are NOT actively looking for jobs. So don’t treat them as if they applied online. Establish a relationship and court them like a horn-dog politician in a room full of sexy interns.
Stay in one place
A lot of companies shuffle sourcers around like a deck of cards. You won’t find much success if sourcers are constantly changing job verticals, geographies, and job profiles. And who gets blamed when the job requisitions have been open for months? The sourcers! And it’s not their fault. To be effective sourcers, we build pipelines according to profiles. We research the competition and target those key players. So, stop moving sourcers around. Keep them put. You will get better results.
Cold calls, treating candidates better, and staying in one place are three rules for success. Lastly, good sourcers use tools, they snoop, and know things like birthdates, mortgage loans, and divorce settlements. Given the opportunity to apply these three rules, makes sourcers even better.
I was so frustrated when Atlanta kept getting snubbed for recruiting conferences I wanted throw my Hotpocket at all the organizers. I mean we have some big names here in Atlanta.
Residing in Hotlanta we have the nation’s whiz-bang sourcer, the sleuthiest sleuth of them all, Shally Steckerl. Just look up Recruiter in your dictionary and you’ll see Eric Jaquith’s bio. Then you have Jim Stroud (Jack Bauer of Sourcers) and if sourcers don’t know his name, they have Alzheimer’s. Leslie O’Connor created SourceCon (then sold it) and Stephanie Lloyd is another known name that has a bigger web footprint than Lady GaGa.
So finally we have a great conference coming up called Tru Source ATL on September 22nd -23rd. And, it’s taken this long to get a freakin sourcing conference here? Are you kidding me!
Here are some topics I expect at Tru Source ATL.
Mobile technology. As always, sourcers find all the cool apps and share them with the stuffysnootyknowitall recruiters who will take credit for it later. So it’s not surprising to see all the expert sourcers are all over the mobile technology exploiting them until privacy laws are enacted and companies ban them fearing they will lose MORE employees. I expect to hear and see some serious sourcing nerdiness about mobile technology.
Social Media. Most of the good sourcers I know work in sweatpants all the time because they are comfortable and they work from home. Why do they work from home you ask? Well, social media is possibly the reason. You see, sourcing involves a lot of sites that are normally banned on the company network. These sites have to be accessed outside the network, which is where most of the geeky sourcers dwell.
The Semantic Web. No longer will data will be tied down to one single database or application. Instead data will be shared across the entire web. Most sourcers don’t see this as big deal, but I beg to differ. Every time Linkedin changes something that affects search results, the sourcing blogs blow up, and rioting ensues. Dude, bro, hear me out on this one. Web 3.0 is going to drop kick your sourcing efforts into another dimension.
Sourcing strategies. Most companies (I say this for Atlanta based companies) have some type of sourcing strategy that is tied into the recruiting process. Some work and some don’t. Problem with sourcing strategies is they are created AFTER all the others failed. I want to hear some successful sourcing strategies that worked the first time and all the time.
Sourcing is the colonoscopy of recruiting. Recruiters need to have it and will do anything to avoid it. It’s true. Most recruiters are backed up right now (pun intended). They need sourcing more than anything. And, I’m expecting to learn a lot from Tru Source ATL. It’s not enough to say that you got it all covered because in a world of instant status updates, fan pages, tweets and video streams, good sourcers are listening in and finding great candidates and I want to freakin know how. What do you want from Tru Source ATL?
Today, recruiters are getting into dog brawls over mobile app developers. But why the sudden frenzy? Why do all the recruiters have their thongs in a wad over recruiting mobile apps? Why!
Easy. There are billions of people that have mobile phones. And the days of having a desktop or laptop are coming to an end. It will all be done through small mobile devices that can wirelessly connect to other devices and networks. And to get things more geeky complicated, we have tons of mobile apps that are downloaded for business and personal use every second.
If you are recruiter, it’s time to jump into the APP hunt. It’s time to start looking at all the mobile Apps that can be used for recruiting. Maybe you already have. Maybe, just maybe you’re geeky enough to develop a recruiting App for your company. Want to learn some more about mobile and recruitment, then check out this free webinar at ERE.
Recruiters know that the client always comes first, but that is changing. Candidates are becoming more important than the client. In the past, recruiters always focused on the client needs and ditched candidates that didn’t pan out.
Today, IT companies are in a hiring frenzy. But finding candidates has been tough. Businesses have not changed how they interview or find candidates. It’s sort of like trying to pull water from an empty well.
So, recruiters are cultivating talent via online networking. And, they are building relationships within online communities. Spam them with job links and these online communities will bounce recruiters out.
Recruiters are matching candidates to a company rather than a job. And funny thing is recruiters just want to be accepted into the online communities as an equal contributor.
Every Recruiter I know right now is busy busy busy. And the good ones like to share notes on candidates. That means a lot of emails back and forth about a resume. Check out CompareMyDocs You send your documents to other recruiters for feedback and you can see where others have contributed their feedback within the document. Just keep it in a simple format like a word doc. CompareMyDocs
USB 3.0 is finally here! What does this mean? It means you can transfer large files in seconds. I back up my computer to an external hard drive. It takes hours. But with USB 3.0 I can transfer 5 gigabits in seconds. Having said that, I purposely never bought an Apple or new PC until they started shipping computers with USB 3.0. Now, I will be looking to seriously upgrade my computer. Folks, now is the time to purchase a PC with USB 3.0
GoldMail Free is a web based program that allows you to create a slideshow message with images, and even video! You can create up to five messages of up to 3 minutes before you are asked to delete older ones. This is a great marketing service for Recruiters to reach candidates.
Sure, a Bran Muffin is good for your colon, but its bad news when you’re stuck in rush hour traffic. And trust me. There are more contract recruiters moving through recruiting departments faster than a milk of magnesium frosted bran muffin. Google (according to WSJ) added 800 new employees in the first quarter. Basically it’s what I like to call a Talent Grab, or as some say a hiring spike.
Hiring spikes are really good for contract recruiters because of the demand. A mad dash for talent, and contract recruiters are hired for short periods.
During hiring spikes, it’s a feeding frenzy on candidates –think Piranha I, and II. Contract recruiters swarm in, and devour anyone that has a phone or email.
However before the frenzy ends, contract recruiters jump onto other contracts before their current project ends. Leaving only a few pennies, some paper clips and dust bunnies, contract recruiters swim away. Poof. Gone. And on to the next fresh meat.
Let’s not forget about the worst recession in history too. Contract recruiters are crazy skittish and gun shy. So fidgety, they will jump at anything and everything that is more secure or long term contract.
The problems begin when too many contract recruiters jump before the hiring goals are completed. Unfortunately the full time perm recruiters catch the heat when deadlines are missed and the hiring drags on.
And there is not any real solution to deter the migratory contract recruiter. They just go where there is food. But, what I have learned over the years is that those contract recruiters are calm if the water is calm. What this means, the more instability within the HR department, the more contract recruiters come and go. But when it’s calm and a process in place, contract recruiters are fairly good creatures but with razor sharp teeth waiting to devour job reqs.
When was the last time you’ve seen a Nike TV spot describing one of their shoes? Um, like never. Nike is an image. When they run a 30 second spot, they show Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and Lance Armstrong. They are into SELLING an IMAGE not shoes.
Advertising your job is a waste of time these days if you don’t have an image. Companies are trying to attract the right people. Problem is they are selling a job and not an image.
That is why building a company career image is paramount in attracting the top players. Here is what I call the “Four Factors” to consider in building a positive employer image.
1) Money. Low balling candidates, under paid, or poor compensation plans are the worst for a company image. Paying more than fair market is the right way.
2) Benefits: If you’re company is known for having a gym, nap areas, and excellent benefits, then you’re going to attract better talent.
3) Location: Can you get to it by train, or bus? Or do you have to drive 100 miles out to the wilderness. Good location or letting them telecommute is a great image.
4) Leadership: Companies that employ incompetent people attract incompetent candidates. Hiring A players always attracts the best candidates.
The four factors listed above have to be addressed before even posting a job and building strong company career image. In fact, you can post a 1000 jobs along with video clips of famous people, and no one will care. Nobody. But being known for having some awesome perks, benefits or comp plan, then you won’t need to post 1000 jobs to find good people.
It’s just a fact. Good people want to work for good companies. Consider these four factors: money, benefits, location and leadership every year. Focus on how to improve them or change them. And before you pay to post a job, try to sell your image, not the job.
Recruiters, let me tell you something. We’ve lost the basics of recruiting. It’s been replaced with idealistic disillusioned recruitment methods. The problem with most Recruiters is that we get some social media knowledge. A little info or a nugget and we become experts overnight. The fact is, you don’t know what the hell you are talking about. None of us do. That’s why were frickin’ recruiters to begin with.
Recruiting is not rocket science. In fact, it’s very simple. It’s finding someone and getting them a job. But, we have over complicated recruiting with tools, social media, process, methodology and blah freaking blah blah frickin’ blah.
Again friends! Let me tell you something! We truly don’t understand Recruiting because it’s so simple yet we make it complicated.
Forget about technology for a moment. Forget about process, methods, and planning.
Let’s forget everything we know. And I mean forget all there is about recruiting and start over.
Yes! Start over!
I’d like to introduce the concept building a relationship. You know, relationships you have with your family, spouse, and friends? Yeah, well, it requires your voice, ears, mind and soul. You invest some trust with someone. The same goes with Recruiting. We need to build relationships with candidates.
Here are the 3 fundamentals of recruiting
1) Interact – Over the phone, or in person, recruiters should be talking to candidates.
2) Listen – It’s not about you. It’s about what the candidate needs.
3) Inform – Explaining our job needs, or selling an opportunity or a candidate.
Recruiters are required to interact, listen, ask questions, and then act. Pure and simple. It’s what recruiting is about.
I’m not knocking social media, process, and all these new dazzling recruiting tools. We truly need them. But that doesn’t replace the basics of Recruiting.
I plan on getting back to the fundamentals of recruiting. But after I tweet these jobs, work on my career branding and promote my online communities.
Our current unemployment rate is like the McRib sandwich. With a lot of hype and marketing, the McRib was McDonald’s finest obesity marketing scheme to date. It was a boneless pork patty shaped like it had bones. Then it was slathered in BBQ Sauce, and eaten between a spongy sandwich bun. Whenever the sandwich made a comeback tour, every teen, nerd, geek and weed smoker communally grubbed on the McRib.
The unemployment rate made a comeback tour and hasn’t really ended. The numbers released from DOL today indicate that it’s still high. It’s still smelly. The truth is that we are in a “rehire mode”. But it’s painfully slow due to the negative news around unemployment.
I get daily emails and calls for recruiting help. Is the unemployment rate really reflective of the job market right now? If companies are hiring again, then it’s just a matter of time before that number goes down. However it seems to be staying put with the help of some marketing and hype. Hopefully the unemployment rates will go down and not comeback for a while - kind of like the McRib.
Every Recruiter wants an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that is not slow, and not too cumbersome. But truthfully, Recruiters want an ATS that knows where and when to post jobs or refresh them, what resumes to upload, and to automatically generate reports.
What Recruiters really want is Predictive Analytics within their Applicant Tracking System.
Ever bought a pair of jeans or shirt from the mall? The retailers use predictive analytics within their supply chain software that knows when to put items on sale, restock the shelves, and generate coupons. Check out Oracle Retek.
So, what Recruiters really want is an ATS that has built in predictive analytic algorithms that can populate job description fields, post it and then auto match resumes. It’s a simple request but complex technology.
The problem is that an ATS uses old musty dusty technology. And, some will argue their bells and whistles of being able to incorporate Social Media into the tool sets, but the truth is the all ATS lack predictive analytics.
The majority has embraced Web 2.0. We are coming up on Web 3.0 and the difference between them is the predictive technology found in Web 3.0.
That’s why I hope that these large scale dinosaurs ATS (Taleo and Kenexa) will either evolve or wither away into extinction. In a world of smart phones, social media mania, and predictive analytics Recruiters need an ATS that is a relevant tool rather than a procedural burden. Don’t you agree?
It’s a dog eat dog world right now for job boards and some are resorting to crafty shenanigans to attract job seekers.
Here’s how it works.
The Recruiter posts a job to Monster.com, and then rogue-predator type websites repost it to their site. Your job is like a Venus Fly Trap. Job seekers are lured to another job board, register online only to be hit up with monthly membership fees, and spam.
In the end you get nothing, the job seeker pays a fee and the rogue job boards or websites are laughing all the way to the bank.
So, I’ve come up with a solution that every Recruiter should consider implementing.
Remember back in the day when an email, phone and fax number was on a job posting?
Try posting contact info within the job description. Also consider adding your Twitter ID in there too. Make it easier for candidates to contact you. Job postings are very expensive these days. Good candidates rarely apply online. So why not make the most of all this exposure and publish your contact info.
Or, have some fun!
Try embedding random odd phrases in your job posting. Use something like, “Monkey waxing”, or “Puffin humper”, anything that is odd and can be easily Googled. Think of them as tag words. No pun attended
But seriously, your careers website gets a few hits once you post it to a job board. Meanwhile smaller job boards are predators using your company logo and active jobs to gobble up leads and candidates. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
When I got into IT recruiting 10 year ago nerds frustrated the hell out of me. I called them. They never call me back. I called again and again. No return calls. And, you know why? I never gave them a reason to call me back.
Candidates typically use their mobile number on resumes and they are less likely to answer a call from an unfamiliar person.
So if you are going to leave a message here are the 3 steps to get that rock star candidate to call you back.
#1 Never ever sound like a salesman, which means don’t sound like a door-to-door salesman. Recruiters often sound like a cheesy 80’s DJ when calling. Just be yourself. Sound like a normal human being.
#2 Give them a reason to call you back. Sure you got a job, but so what. You really want the candidate call you, then throw out the salary range, or bonus plan. I used to invite my passive candidates to social mixers at trade conferences. Whatever it takes, give the candidate a reason to call you back.
#3 Answer the freakin’ phone! You called them, they called you back and now you’re screening the call because you don’t recognize the number. Honestly, you’re a total tool if you do this on a regular basis. You spent all day tracking down candidates and then you turn around and screen the calls, waiting to listen to the voice message. Don’t do it. Pick it up EVEN if you are on the other line. Take the call.
Recruiters leave long boring messages that get deleted within seconds. It doesn’t help that we have bad rep for not returning calls too. But consider these three steps when calling candidates and remember to leave a short and simple voicemail.
Understanding a database is Nerdy complicated. But Recruiters need databases to store candidate info and reports. If you get a moment, check out Infodome. It is a free and a paid site that lets you create databases with ease. It has drag and drop formatting, good instructions, and makes putting together reports a snap. Infodome is the start in right direction for those that need an easy database to set up and use.
Understanding a database is Nerdy complicated. But Recruiters need databases to store candidate info and reports. If you get a moment, check out