Recruiting and Sourcing Secrets

Recruiters not using Social Networks

2008-04-29T09:35:35Z

I had been using social networks for recruiting for couple of years now and most of the (Corporate) recruiters I speak have hardly used it. This might be opposite to agency recruiters who always had embraced social network. After working all sides (Agency, Headhunting, Corporate -as a Researcher and recruiter) the only reason I see was the lack of time. Most corporate recruiters are so much buried in administrative process, there 30 + requisitions, there ATS and I will be surprised if they even get time to look at the job boards. Social Networks are really far them there reach if there daily routine is not heavily automized.

Saying that I wasn't surprised by the Research conducted by Cranfield School of Management in association with Personnel Today on a survey from 582 senior HR and recruitment managers around the UK (YES ITS UK) says that
"Web 2.0 Revolution Has Not Yet Hit Recruiters"
How about in US?

For the complete Article:-

Web 2.0 Revolution Has Not Yet Hit Recruiters

Recruiters are not taking advantage of Web 2.0 technology according to a new report out today from Cranfield School of Management. Despite the recent hype about the possibilities of Web 2.0, only 10 per cent of recruiters use social networking sites and only a small minority use blogs, videos or other web 2.0 technology for recruitment. Private sector organisations were significantly more likely to use social networking sites for recruitment than public sector organisations.

Web 2.0 provides the opportunity for organisations to differentiate their recruitment site from more traditional sites with interactivity, allowing control and input from the candidate and providing information in a variety of formats such as video, audio, graphics and text, as well as using social networking sites such as Linked-In or Facebook to communicate with job seekers. It offers recruiters the ability to engage with job seekers in a way that could prove valuable within the current “war for talent”. So why are recruiters not embracing this new technology?

“One of the reasons why social networks have been slow to take off as a recruitment tool might be because recruiters do not consider them as a credible way to communicate, despite the fact that large numbers of their target labour market use them regularly” says Dr Emma Parry, Research Fellow at Cranfield School of Management.

“Recruiters may be missing a trick at the moment by not adopting Web 2.0 technology. Organisations need to engage with job seekers in order to encourage them to apply for their jobs. Text-heavy recruitment pages with no interactivity will not win the hearts and minds of the Web 2.0 generation. Customising the recruitment process and using innovative channels to reach out to job seekers may be the way to find the talent that your organisation needs”.

Of the 10 per cent of organisations that used social networking sites for recruitment, they were most likely to use Linkedin (63 per cent), Facebook (39 per cent) or Myspace (21 per cent). Just under half of the organisations that use social networking sites contact potential employees directly via these sites while just under a third have a company page on a social networking site.

Organisations that use social networking for recruitment most commonly do so in order to expand the reach of their recruitment followed by the need to attract employees that fit with the values and culture of the organisation or to build a relationship with employees that are already interested in the company. Just under a third (of this 10 per cent) use social networking sites to check up on potential employees.

More commonly used for recruitment are search engines with over a quarter of organisations using sites such as Google (75 per cent), Yahoo (33 per cent) and MSN (just under a quarter).

2008 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity

2008-04-09T12:19:42Z

DiversityInc announced its 2008 Top 50 Companies for Diversity with Verizon topping the list.

"Top 50 companies have clarity of their absolute values of human dignity, demonstrating a global adherence to these core beliefs. These sustainable values drive margin," said Luke Visconti, partner and cofounder of DiversityInc.

Wonderful!!... but does this make sense? when most of the people tell me that the diverse population is filled with/for low end or middle management.

How much of these diverse employees are earning over 100K?.. Now that would be a list which makes sense and I would like to see from these top 50 companies. Anyone?

Anyways that was my two line rant.. to read the complete article on what DiversityInc says

The 2008 Top 50 List

1. Verizon Communications	26. Wells Fargo & Co.
2. The Coca-Cola Co.	27. Ford Motor Co.
3. Bank of America	28. PepsiCo
4. PricewaterhouseCoopers	29. Pepsi Bottling Group
5. Procter & Gamble	30. Xerox Corp.
6. Cox Communications	31. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp.
7. Merrill Lynch & Co.	32. General Mills
8. Johnson & Johnson	33. KeyBank
9. IBM	34. Health Care Service Corp.
10. American Express	35. Sprint
11. Marriott International	36. Disney Co.
12. Sodexo	37. Abbott
13. JPMorgan Chase	38. Accenture
14. Wachovia	39. Macy's
15. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida	40. Henry Ford Health System
16. Deloitte	41. Bright Horizons Family Solutions
17. Ernst & Young	42. WellPoint
18. HSBC Bank USA, NA	43. Kaiser Permanente
19. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide	44. General Motors
20. Cummins	45. Citigroup
21. Merck & Co.	46. Capital One Financial Co.
22. AT&T	47. CSX
23. Turner Broadcasting System	48. Toyota Motor North America
24. Prudential Financial	49. KPMG
25. Monsanto Co.	50. Hilton Hotels Corp.

Reverse Migration OR Salmon Phenomenon

2008-04-09T12:23:25Z

br>Reverse Migration OR Salmon Phenomenon

The last couple of days there has been a lot of news about reverse migration.
Immigrants in the United States (mostly Illegal) are returning to their native land. The US economy going in recession, back home the economy is booming in countries like India, China and Brazil.

Everyone has a different reason to go back.. One of my friend who recently took a high paying job in Barclays, India (Pune) left US after 4 years mentioned about going back to his roots/his family...but I think it had to do a lot with the high salary Barclays gave him and so many companies giving out in India.
For many illegals it might be due to the tougher restriction on getting drivers license renewed or like many Brazilians immigrants in Boston or NJ it just might be the economy.

Few days back Miamiherald had the news about more Hispanics retiring to native homelands. The many reasons that were quoted were more health benefits for retiress back home, better value for the money they have saved in US and able to maintain the same standard of living and anxiety at returning to one's roots. You can read the complete article here.

When my friend went back to Pune, India last month; I was thinking is it time for me to go back? but then I got a email from my folks out there who were counting the days for the summer to be over and on top of that NO electricity at 115 degrees for 3-4 hrs every day. Wow.........idea dropped and that too for a long time...... may be I will think again when I am about to retiree ...

Psst, Hey Buddy... Wanna Hot Job?

2008-04-02T10:01:27Z

Article Title: Psst, Hey Buddy... Wanna Hot Job?
Author Byline: America's #1 Recruiter
Author Website: http://www.tonybeshara.com/tips/hot-job/

Job search advice is almost as plentiful as weight loss solutions these days, it seems – and just as effective. Books, newspaper columns, radio shows, web articles, blogs, and career sites are just some of the places offering their wisdom. In the last week, I read competing articles on two of the largest web portals that listed “myths” about job searches. Several myths were in both articles, and on two of those, the authors had opposing answers – basically, one said “Do this,” and the other said “Don't do this.”

How can I tell you to not believe most of what you hear or read about finding a job? Why should you believe me instead? Tough question. I think the answer lies in the fact that I give you tough answers. Almost all of the books, articles, etc., I’ve read have some meaningful tidbits, but most are sugarcoated beyond recognition. They are really just “feel good” books – “you’re out of work, but gosh, haven’t I made you feel good! Come back again / Buy my next book!”

Yes, I want traffic to this site, and I have a successful book out and another on the way, but I not going to pander to your anxiety to wring money from your purse. I’m going to tell you like it is – getting a good job is tough. It requires hours of work and practice. It takes dedication and persistence. You have to eat rejection like it was cotton candy. Use common sense – if getting a good job was easy, or fun, or something that had no stress or frustration, everyone would have good jobs. Here are a few clues that you might be getting worthless advice:

* Does the author/speaker seem tooyoung to have significant real world experience? I’ve seen authors who couldn’t have had more than a couple of jobs themselves giving others advice.

* Do they offer “interviewing tricks,” or “killer resume formats” or some such “special knowledge” that they have somehow discovered? I cover these topics, but there is nothing special about my answers – except that they’re right.

* Do they rationalize why you do not have to work as hard, or be as error-free, or pay attention to all of the details? Feels good, doesn’t it? The world is full of worthless things that feel good.

* Do they minimize the role of the face-to-face interviews?

Amazingly, I’ve read job search strategies that focused on sending out resumes. 95% of all hires happen because the employee asked the employer for the job in person, to their face. The other 5% were hired when the employer asked the employee to come work for the company. Rarely do these authors have personal experience finding people jobs every day. I've read and studied at least 200 books, articles, and web sites from universities, technical colleges, "job/career coaches," and other sources that claim expertise – most of what they write just isn't true. Their ideas might seem plausible in theory, and almost certainly make you feel good about what you’ve been doing in your search so far, but the practical application of most of their advice will lead your job search astray.

I've been placing candidates from all professions and trades in good jobs since 1973 - more than 7,000 people in that time. I have resumes from more than 90,000 other people who I was not able to help. Why? Because in my profession, I find people for jobs, I don’t find jobs for people. I'm not paid unless my clients hire those people I find, so for many years I have been teaching my candidates how to make my clients hire them. I’ve gotten very good at it.

Yes, there is some good job search advice available, but most is not. Check out the author’s credentials – do they have real world experience? If you finish reading their advice and aren’t thinking, “Whew, I have my work cut out for me,” it was probably worthless advice.

If you liked this article the rest only get better. Go Pro now and get access to all of the advice I have to offer!

Ask for personal advice from Tony, the #1 recruiter according to the industry's leading journal, The Fordyce Letter: www.tonybeshara.com/asktony/

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities

Cultivating Your Organic Research Team

2008-03-30T17:10:39Z

The last couple of years so many companies has opened up a new titles and positions for Sourcers or researchers. But what do they do; what does it mean?How do you keep them focus on what's best for them and ofcourse the co?

Many companies tried with Jr. Recruiters or coordinators or entry level recruiters as a sourcer and I am sure they failed. Many companies are trying outsourcing with the notion that its as simple as outsourcing the coding part. They fail to understand that the culture .. yes the culture play a big important part in talking to a candidate. Its hard for a candidate to understand that football is not soccer.. or is it?you kick the ball don't you....
Its not that it can't be done but it takes time.

So how do you cultivate your research team?

Meet Russ Moon who is the AVP Strategic Research Team with Wachovia Corp. He has been mentors to many and a great friend. He will be speaking at ERE giving a real-world best practices regarding the selection and development of researchers to enable them to make greater contributions to their employers.
This session is for you if your company has researchers, will hire researchers in the next year, utilizes contract sourcers or researchers OR if you want to know what lies "Over the horizon".

Among many he's going to tell you :-
-Why building this resource is strategically significant.
-Defining competencies that predispose people to succeed.
-Why mentoring and communities of practice are critical to success.
-The case for ongoing internal & external active development & why it's not optional.
-The potential to leverage the research skill as a portal to senior leadership positions
-Creating an environment where your Researchers can excel and how to coach them to rapid development.
-What Researchers really feel is important to their success !

Research is a rapidly growing area of recruiting and one many corporations have under used in the past. It's getting more expensive to generate candidate names, so this session will not only help you gain a competitive advantage but will hopefully save you money as well.

I can't say enough how important this topic is going to be for the recruiting world and I am sure many more presentators would be lining up with their webinars and training after seeing this one.

Say hello to him if you see him at ERE .. you can't miss him or see some pics.

Searchme -The Visual Search Engine

2008-03-27T17:02:57Z

Searchme

A visual search engine with results primarily in a visual format(of course) with an image of the site. Are you a fan of Apple? Then this site might look familiar as the results are displayed in a way that is similar to browsing through albums in iTunes.

They say that there server holds/indexed about 1 billion + pages which is nothing compared to Yahoo claiming 20 Billions pages. More than that it reminded me of an application I downloaded sometime back called spacetime..

The difference is spacetime does much more stuff than Searchme... more on spacetime later...

Searching on Searchme...

Logging in gives you a clean page with a black background,

Which is the night theme and can be changed to white-day Theme.
A simple keyword search like software developer will lead you to many pages but nothing on resumes.
Boolean doesn't works so adding more keywords is the only way for filtering what you looking for.
I input "software developer resume j2ee" and voila it brings me a lot of resumes. Choosing the work & career category didn't help me much.

Check out the video belong to see its working on what I did...

Is it worth checking out? .. yes ...
Is it a good source for resumes?..,.. nah don't think so as the engine is till at very infant and will take time to grow.

A great engine if you like visual learning or scroll below to see the actual links.

Don't forget to check out spacetime.. I am sure they won't be happy to see this product as a search Engine.

Searchme- Still a baby campared to other engines.

Sourcing from Diigo

2008-03-27T14:58:22Z

Sourcing from Diigo ( Digest of Internet Information Groups & Other Stuff ).

My good friend Tim O’Connorwho is currently the Strategic Sourcing Lead for Capgemini is doing a presentation at ERE on sourcing /searching active/passive people from DiiGO.
A true web 2.0 phenomenon ;the first time I heard about Diiggo was through Jim Stroud and had been fan of them since the days when CNET rated Diigo as the 10 best research tool. I have used DiiGO to do many of my research projects and a little bit of sourcing.

Tim's presentation (April 2nd- SanDiego) would take you to the next level on how to set up your searches on Diigo, searching people, searching with tags, keeping notes-all these without taking any space on your harddisk and finally sharing the results (profiles/resumes/links) with your team.

Don't miss his presentation and forget to say hello if you are at ERE.
I will explain the step by step process in coming weeks.. A big thanks Tim for sharing his idea.

Linkedin (for) Recruiter - Corporate Solutions

2008-03-10T08:39:13Z

Linkedin Recruiter

Did you see the new Linkedin Recruiter.. Its being couple of years I am using Linkedin but the Corporate solutions for recruiters blew me off. The redesigned Linkedin has a lot of potential and a lot to offer.

20 million + users and growing; Linkedin has upgraded their candidate search feature. Recruiters with Linkedin Recruiter can view up to 1,000 search results instead of the 500 available in other accounts.
Logging takes you to the dashboard which is different from the Linkedin Outlook toolbar dashboard which most of us have. On the left side it shows my ongoing projects,my job postings, searches and search history letting me pull up any old searches I have done. On the middle of my screen has the Usage Information and status of Inmails and Alerts.

Many of the features reminds me of zoominfo where in you can create and save projects. You can share these projects(the profiles your saved or sourced) with your other recruiting team members.

The best feature I liked was the search alerts. You can now save the searches you are doing on Linkedin and have you alert when a new match is found as long as you keep the search alert ON.

Other features include adding the profile to clipboard and saving profiles to the projects and batching the Inmails together instead of writing one by one.

Great work- Linkedin developers.

E-Verify gaining ground

2008-02-24T15:59:15Z

E-Verify is a voluntary program run by the United States government to help certify that employees hired by companies are not in the country illegally.
The program is operated by the Department of Homeland Security in partnership with the Social Security Administration.
Since the pilot project which started with 500 companies in 5 states it has grown to more than 53,000 employers who have signed up to participate in E-Verify, which was announced by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The program has been growing by approximately 1,000 new employers each week since last October 07.
With an increased data sources feeding into E-Verify and start of using photos to help verify the authenticity of employee's documentation. It's also working on regulations to require the approximately 200,000 federal contractors to use the system. Currently about 24,000 employers use it voluntarily.

Starting the week of Mar. 1, federal fines imposed on employers who hire undocumented migrants goes up from 2,200 for first offense, and up to $10,000 after that— will rise by 25%. man oh Man..

SHRM asserts that it is inefficient, ineffective and prone to error.ummmmmmm but I am sure we will be hearing more about it and not only federal but more and more private companies would start using it in coming days.

Tech Wages Hit Highest Level in Seven Years BUT..........

2008-02-14T07:16:06Z

Tech Wages Hit Highest Level in Seven Years but Growth Quickly Slows

Hourly wages for highly-skilled technology professionals reached an all-time high during the fourth quarter of 2007, and though growth slowed sequentially at the end of the year, it still remained ahead of 2006. The average hourly wage for high-impact technology workers was recorded at $32.39 during October, the highest average pay figure documented by the Yoh Index of Technology Wages since its inception in 2001.

However, reflecting the economy's slowdown in late 2007, average wages dropped $0.88 in November from October. Similarly, while average wages had experienced a 7.1% increase in September, they were followed by 5.7% growth in October, and 3.4% improvement in November and December, when compared to the same months in 2006.

"Despite sequentially slower growth at the end of 2007, we continue to see solid wage growth year-over-year, and remain cautiously optimistic for the technology and professional job market in 2008," says Jim Lanzalotto, Vice President of Strategy and Marketing for Yoh. "Weaknesses from other sectors of the economy may have permeated here and caused the decline, but customer demand is still strong; project backlogs are still full; and there are no signs that works in progress will be abandoned."

The Yoh Index of Technology Wages reached a high of 115.96 in October 2007, when indexed to January 2001 (1/2001 = 100), indicating a 5.7% increase in wage growth, when compared with the same period in 2006.

Trends in Technology Wages: January 2001 – Present

Yoh began indexing pay rates in the technology sectors in January 2001. The technology wage market experienced an unstable year in 2001 and then fell dramatically after September 11. Wages experienced another up-and-down year in 2002, but were then up slightly in 2004, as compared to 2003. In 2005 and 2006, tech wages consistently outpaced national trends. In 2007, wages started out strong and continued to grow, reaching an all time high of 115.96 during the fourth quarter of 2007, but growth slowed at the end of the year.

The Yoh Index of Technology Wages presents a current view of the changes in employer demand and supply of technology workers nationwide. Indexed to January 2001, the Yoh Index of Technology Wages was first introduced in January 2003 and is released quarterly.