Recruiting and Sourcing Secrets

Linkedin -Updates for companies you're following

Rithesh — Mon, 10 May 2010 11:18:00 GMT

Enough of my laziness .. so back to committing on my blog.

LinkedIn recently launched a great features which will help you in tracking companies you like or your competition or someone you could be hiring from.. It gives you an update on "RECENT DEPARTURES" - Employees that recently left the companies (don't imagine that LinkedIn will magically update if someone doesn't edit their profile) ; NEW JOB OPPORTUNITIES- (great if you are job seeker) ; PROMOTIONS & CHANGES & NEW HIRES are the other two updates which you can get via email like this :-

How to set it up? Go to your LinkedIn account - Do a simple search on the name of the company you like and on the right top corner you will have "Follow company NEW" - very simple

Fired.. What was the excuse for you?

Rithesh — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:45:00 GMT

This is the season for getting fired or being laid off. Its sad but the first and foremost reason HR gives or may be you hear would be performance. Your performance evaluation which comes in picture here, and rounding up everyone who has the low rating or in many case bad ratings is the most common practice. Everyone understands that.. but what if you don't have a performance issue?

What about the others? Why did I get fired not my colleague? I thought we had a similar job profile and we do the same things; so why me? not her/him?

So I start thinking about the reason and would love to hear from other recruiters, HR professionals on more reasons.

1) You are a duplicate employee and not open to change.

2) You make more salary than me. I never heard anyone doing this( because no one talks about it). If we both are doing the same task you are probably the one to go. It cost the company more to keep you.

3) Last Come First Go (LCFG). It might be fair to many employees or for building your existing co. loyalty but if the new employee is better then you are loosing a valuable asset.

4) Weakest Link. You are a hardworking guy but so are others. The question comes, if you look(just the perception) stronger than your colleague?

5) Do you kiss your boss A** enough? Do I really need to explain this?

6) Do you kiss your clients A** enough? Your client like to deal with your friend more than you. That's a problem. You may be good but your friend is a better client Ass Kisser.

7) Future business need;Change in technology, skills which you haven't kept up with but others have and that affects you.

Anymore anyone?

And can someone explain why this ones a pet line for many HR or Hiring managers

"I think you would be happier working for another company and that it was in my best interest that he let me go" Geez really?can I decide that?

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Recruiting In India

Rithesh — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:14:00 GMT

From the last 6 months I had been working on a project for my firm looking for experienced candidates interested in going or working for KPMG India ( BTW I am still looking for people with experience in Audit, Advisory and Tax)Its been a great experience especially telling most candidates in India that I have no interst in their photograph or personal details in the resume.

I used many different methods for finding people from Twitter, Linkedin to Orkut (instead of Facebook for India)

On a recent short trip to India to "Gods Own Country" ; I still have my folks over there and not because NPR has putting a lot of ads on "Incredible India"(Good website though). So while flipping the giant phone Directory and looking at various Ads by banks. I was really surprised to see many banks mentioning the names and titles of most working in that location. Better customer support I suppose.. I don't know but they had mentioned all senior manager and above from Finance, IT ,Audit , HR dept.

I thought of giving them call... just for the heck of it. I called two of them and both were interested in talking further and got there cell numbers.

India recruiters are you listening? Do you go through phone directory in your local area to call?

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Its not me, Its always You

Rithesh — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:01:00 GMT

I know I got many emails asking me if I have stopped blogging. Its a lame excuse but I say "I have been busy".. not lazy. (Wink)

Continuing with Excuses; one of the hardest part I feel during the whole interview process is to tell the candidate that he wasn't selected or that he was not a fit or may be even you suck big time. As a recruiter you can't say more than few scripted words like ok it was great meeting you and you were good but just not the match we were looking for.. kinda like that. You often don't here feedbacks like you were biting your nails or txting during interview or you were trashing your previous employer. You have to imagine that there are a lot of legal restrictions to follow in everything from posting the jobs to selection.

You have candidates who blame the recruiter for not clearing the interview. I feel as they don't have access to the hiring manager so they got to be "mad at someone"-Its better to spare their family if they can take out the frustration when you crush their ego.

Then you have candidates who thinks they were the best and no clue why they weren't selected. It could as simple as a firm handshake or the bad breadth.Its hard to give a honest feedback for that.

Over the years I have learned one thing - Don't argue with any candidate when giving the bad news. To be a good salesman you have to be a good listener too. Mention about helping them, reach out to your network.

Most of the times it frustrates me giving the bad news especially as you are the one to find the candidate, build a relation.

Gary Will lists a archive of shocking questions & horrible experience from actual interviews.

Its easy to say to "excuse the recruiter" as the broker. Its the Hiring manager who wants to fill a position and its you who want the job.. where do the recruiter come in?

They come everywhere during the hiring process. From Finding your behaviour sitting at the reception, getting you friendly and in finding how much you care about the job.

It does helps working with the recruiter even though he/she still won't be able to exactly tell you why you didn't get the job.

P.S:- I downloaded a new applicationon Iphone / Blackberry- Contact Capture by Broadlook. Its a great tool for capturing contact informations from lists ,documents and emails. I personally deleted tha app as I don't use iphone to extract mass contact data.

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Oddskills - JobBoard

Rithesh — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:31:00 GMT

With a name like Oddskills.com I thought you might find jobs that no ones want to do or posting like "I like to dig a hole in my yard" but turns out that's just the name as it has all jobs you mostly see in any job board.

Since its launch 2 months back Oddskills.com looks to have grown very well. You can see a lot of new position based on your interest, skills or location. I just signed up. I like the fact that signing up was very easy and posting or searching for any position looks very easy too. I strongly believe those are two most important thing which turns users away from any job board.

Job Seekers.. something for you to look at.

I am not sure how they would be making money as everything is free unless the use the ad space which currently runs Google Ads

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Top 10 IT Certifications - Verify them

Rithesh — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:33:00 GMT

I am currently hiring for a Sr. Business Analyst in Montvale, NJ and ran across a
excellent resume but in the resume the candidate mentioned in one of the section that he's a "Certified Project Manager.. Pending". What does that mean? Pending? Most of these exams are online and like the PHR (which I have) and you get the results immediately.
So either you are a PMP or you are not ..simple.

This got me to thinking the other certifications online which are easily verifiable

1) Microsoft - MCP/MCSC & 50 thousands others they have

2) CISCO -Cisco Career Certifications Tracking System
        * The Tracking System does not track CCIE lab results.

3) Oracle Certification Program (OCP /DBA Others)
         Please send an email to ocpexam_ww@oracle.com and place "OCP Credential Validation" in your subject line.. blah blah - Read more at Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

4) PMI (PMP) Certification Verifications

5) Verify other Security Certification Like CISA/CISM/CGEIT

6) CompTIA Certifications (A+,RFID,Network, others)

7) Verify a Red Hat Certificate

8) Sun Certifications

9) QA Certifications

10) Citrix CCEA or CCA Certification

TWO Non IT -

CPA LICENSE VERIFICATION - Cost $45 (Looks Like they are the only One Charging)

And for all those HR and Recruiting professionals out there

HR Certification - GPHR /SPHR/PHR HR Certification - GPHR /SPHR/PHR

Now you dont have excuses; Either your name is in one of this list or you don't have a certification.

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LeadResearcher Pro - Find Emails,Phone numbers FAST

Rithesh — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:52:00 GMT

Recently I heard about a new software beta release of LeadResearcher by Egrabber. I have used many of their excellent products like ResumeGrabber and Resumefinder and this seems to another feather in the cap.

Why do you need it?

If you are a recruiter looking at email patterns for a specific company or looking to find all the possible email addresses of employees working in a given company.
For example you search on Linkedin to find a great profile in a company with no contact info. Now you can use this tool to get the contact information.

It works in 3 different ways

1) Type in a name and company. It digs the net and bring out corresponding domain based email contacts
2) If you are interested in more info you can find more details like phone number, company news or web details
and 3) or if you have someone's emails id; it does a Reverse emails look up searching for again phone number details or company info/domain info

They have a good 2 min demo you can watch at LeadResearcher.

To try it out I downloaded a 3 day trial version of LeadResearcher and here's how it worked for me.

Final Verdict: -Another Great Product but wish it was cheaper to afford in this economy.

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Find a Job on Twitter

Rithesh — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:06:00 GMT

Find a Job on Twitter

Its tougher than it sounds but not that hard. The most important aspect is networking but what are

the other things you can do?Lets assume you have a twitter account and you have been doing some

tweets.

1) The first thing you need to do is creating a self brand.You have created a clean image with link to

you resume online or you might use http://twtjobs.com/ to create your twitter resume

2) Start following things of your interest. Yes following sanfranescorts is fun but keep that for your

private ID. Follow Industry experts , people you already know.

3) Start Networking with Recruiters. Follow them all.. starting with me ..

@ http://twitter.com/rithesh or the easiest way to look for recruiters is using the site command in

Google You can follow more than 10 thousand accounts related to jobs or recruiters.

For Ex:-

I use this site:twitter.com +bio (recruiter OR sourcer OR headhunter)

command in Google to to get http://tinyurl.com/onyd9z

4) Now you have searched for individual recruiters search for Corporate Twitter accounts Like

@KPMGUSCareers - KPMG US Open Job Positions

@KPMG - KPMG Careers

@EMCCareers - EMC Job Postings

@WBCareers - Warner Brothers Career Opportunities

@DeloitteTalent - Deloitte Job Postings

@TheRecruiterGuy - AT&T

@AppleRecruiter

@HewittCareer and so many others

Corporate Twitter Accounts includes

- Best Buy

- Cisco Systems

- Toys ‘R’ Us

- Dell

- Johnson & Johnson

- Wells Fargo

- Microsoft

- Time Warner

- FedEx

- New York Life Insurance

- McDonald’s

- Oracle

- Google

- Avnet

- Amazon.com

- CBS

- Texas Instruments

- Monsanto

- Whole Foods Market

- Rubbermaid

- Symantec

And so many others. Follow them interact with them

5) A lot of twitter related job sites are popping up every day like

http://jobshouts.com/

http://www.twithire.com/

http://www.twitterjobsearch.com

http://twitterjobcast.com/

http://tweetmyjobs.com get notification of new jobs on your cell phone

Or use twitag.com/tag/job to search for jobs ,conference, experts, webinars etc using "hash tag" #tag

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Strategy for hiring The Disabled

Rithesh — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:08:00 GMT

Strategy for hiring The Disabled

Given a chance would you hire Albert Einstein as your scientist or maybe consider FDR, Beethoven, or Thomas Edison? These and are several of the famous people who had some form of disability

ADA-Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990- is a civil rights law which prohibits, under certain circumstances, discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act. Disability is defined as "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity."

According to the U.S. Census, people with disabilities comprise the largest minority group, approximately 20 percent of the population

Everyone agrees that the Economy is bad, so it stands to question, why is the unemployment rate (15 percent ) among disabled workers almost double that of the non disabled population? Especially considering that disabled workers have one of the highest retention rates of 85 percent.

DiversityInc recently published a list of the Top Companies for people with Disabilities. The list may not be perfect; The companies are doing all they could (I am sure they are trying) and it’s especially hard committing to programs during these hard economic time which is why it’s more important not to lose focus.

Disability inclusion is not about being compliant or avoiding a law suit. It is about maintaining a competitive advantage. It’s about becoming the employer of choice. It’s about sending the right message to your employees and your customers. It’s about enhancing your organization to access untapped talent.

Many believe that there's a shortage of talent and with a large workforce pending to retire in coming years. The Gen Y are coming to the market. They are well versed with ADA. They will not tolerate discrimination and would expect the same of level of understanding they got in their schools, community and college.

It’s very important to know that there are different types of disabilities. Physical Disabilities like Cerebral Palsy or Cystic fibrosis, Acquired Disabilities like AIDS or Multiple Sclerosis and Developmental Disabilities like Dyslexia, ADD or Learning Disability which are very common.

According to the United States Social Security office almost 1 in 4 of today’s 20 year-olds will become disabled before reaching age 67.

Hiring disabled employees may qualify your business for additional tax benefits such as: deduction for costs of removing barriers to the disabled and elderly; disabled access credit and work opportunity tax credit financial programs.

IT’S ABOUT ABILITY.

The statistics and numerous surveys demonstrate that Disabled workers have one of the highest retention rates and the lowest turnover therefore ultimately costing companies less to provide a reasonable accommodation.

Companies also gain in - Increased employee productivity and organizational performance through a more diversified employee base; Tax benefits; Lower economic costs because of lower absenteeism; decreased employee turnover, and better-than-average safety records

So what should be your strategy for hiring Disabled workers?

(1) Establish Affinity Groups - resources to raise and share voice which will change the misinformation and attitudes of your staff. Educate everyone.

(2) Plan - look at your current diversity plan. Does it focus on specific programs for tapping or reaching out to disabled?

(3) It has to be a Top down approach. Not only the leadership and management should be actively involved in the efforts but should make it mandatory

(4) Involve people who are disabled. The best ideas would come from them. For example while creating a new software design or product design which might appeal to someone who is blind (voice recognition) or deaf or hard of hearing.

(5) Have an effective PR campaign in creating awareness. It should be an issue of the entire organization. It’s just not about legality. Is your career page friendly for disable.. Does it show only people who are multi race or is there a picture of a disabled person. (How about someone in a wheelchair?).

(6) Get your mentorship or internship process involved for disability.

(7) Select and external/national/local disability partner to implement programs, events, workshop etc.

(8) Portray your company as one that values the contribution of individuals with disabilities. Disability inclusion should be in your Organization's Value Proposition

(9) Budgeting for the inclusion of people with disabilities should be a part of the overall budget. It should be a centralized resource. Everyone knows the cost of hiring a Foreign worker (H1 B costs $3000 Plus Green Card another $5000). The Average Cost for Employers to Accommodate Persons with Disabilities is less than $500 for more than 60% of People with Disabilities

(10) Create networks (social /professional) internally and externally just for disability candidate pipelines. Do Targeted recruiting

Employers who hire people with disabilities create a positive corporate image. Hiring people with disabilities is not charity. But bringing them into the organization is an exemplary act that models corporate responsibility. It’s about ABILITY and its time you start doing something about it.

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Networking is icky! ...or maybe no

Rithesh — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:57:00 GMT

Ok, for some of us, the thought of networking is just plain icky, not to mention scary. To be honest, that was how I felt, especially when I was still new to my field and did not have any work experience. I thought networking was just another work for "sucking up." And then I realized, networking is just a means of gathering and sharing information. It doesn't need to be icky. As a college student, if you have questions about an assignment, about a new concept that's been presented in class, or about an upcoming exam, I hope you feel comfortable approaching your instructor with your questions. You'd probably call or email, or you might seek out your instructor before/after class, or during his or her office hours. Likewise, if you have questions about a particular occupation or about working for a specific organization, it makes perfect sense, and is absolutely acceptable, to seek out professionals who can answer those questions during an informational interview.

Informational interviews are a form of networking and are a great starting place, especially if you have little-to-no work experience in your field. Are professionals willing to be interviewed? Many are willing, but be respectful of their time by asking smart questions. Let's return to the example of asking your instructor a question about an assignment. The conversation with your instructor is usually most effective if you have specific questions in mind. If you approached your instructor with, "Can you tell me about the assignment?" they'd probably say, "What part of the assignment?" or "Weren't you listening in class?" On the other hand, if you asked, "You mentioned we should cite at least 6 sources. May I cite blogs or should I only site academic journals?" your instructor knows what specific information to clarify for you. Likewise, when conducting informational interviews, you want to have specific questions in mind that probe deeper than any information you might read online or in a book. "From my readings, it seems that art therapy is gaining momentum and seeing some real growth. Is that consistent with what you've been seeing in the field?" If you were pursuing a career in art therapy, it would be useful to know whether or not there was demand for art therapists, so a question like the one above helps you get an answer that will assist you in your decision-making. It also gives the professional you're interviewing a specific question to address. Informational interviews can certainly vary in length and depth of conversation, but I suggest requesting 20-30 minutes of the professional's time and generating 10-15 thoughtful questions to ask. You can always ask fewer questions or add more as the conversation progresses. Can informational interviewing get you a job? Maybe, but usually not directly. (A friend of mine was offered a job at the end of an informational interview, but that was definitely an exception, not the rule!)

Let me give you another example. Let's say that a high school student were given your name by one of the admissions counselors because they were interested in majoring in the same subject as you. The high school student dutifully emails you to set up a time to for a brief conversation. She asks for only 20 minutes of your time which you appreciate because you have a lot of other things going on. In her email, she includes a list of questions she hopes to ask you, which makes you happy because you can prepare your responses in advance of the conversation. The high school student calls you on the predetermined day and your conversation goes very well. Then, at the end of the call, she asks if you can get her into your college. "Wha????" you ask. "Of course not! That's not my decision." You'd probably leave the conversation scratching your head. On the other hand, if the student asked you for advice about how to be successful at your college, you'd likely be happy to share with her what classes you thought were phenomenal, what food to avoid at the cafe, and what residence halls to steer clear of. Why would you be willing to share all of that information? Because the student was respectful of your time, asked thoughtful questions, had done some research about your school, and mostly because, you're a nice person. As nice as you are, however, you don't have the power to get her admission to your school.

Likewise, most professionals are happy to share insights, advice, and even contacts with you. Some will bend over backwards to help you out. Why? Because they are nice people. But, they might not be in a position to offer you a job. So don't make things awkward by asking for one. Of course, be honest and let them know you're looking for employment, just don't put the burden on them to find the job for you. Hopefully you can see that networking (of which, informational interviewing is a legitimate form), doesn't have to be icky. So, get out there and start networking!

About the author: Career development professional with 10 years of experience in career advising. Specializes in working with undergraduate students with little-to-no work experience. Special interests include: international students, immigrant populations, parents transitioning back into the workforce, faith in the workplace, and Christian career counseling. Grace's site, Sweet Careers, provides tips, advice, videos, and tutorials to help job seekers find meaningful careers.

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.

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