The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you’re playing by somebody else’s rules, while quietly playing by your own. –Michael Korda

Losing a great candidate is a painful and disheartening experience. I for one, beat myself and wonder what I could have done differently as I do a cerebral post mortem. Sadly, it is the occupational hazard with which we live daily and it is a part of the game of recruiting. With that in mind, we all need to learn from our mistakes and do our best not to repeat them.

Losing great candidates will never go away completely. But we can look to some ideas and insights that will help that event to become less frequent. Please consider the following points and know that if you do lose a candidate, you played the game as well as possible. (more…)

Hyland also has a quirk in its interview process. Candidates applying online are required to write and submit a poem. Not an essay, not a biography — a poem. How does that strike you? (more…)

The following is a primer on things to take into consideration when making your decision on an applicant tracking system. It takes time and research, but the payoff will be well worth the effort. (more…)

As a professor and a corporate recruiting strategist, I can tell you that very few applicants truly understand the corporate recruiting process. Most people looking for a job approach it with little factual knowledge. That is a huge mistake. A superior approach is to instead analyze it carefully, because data can help you understand why so many applicants simply can’t land a job. If you can bear with me for a few quick minutes, I can show you using numbers where the job-search “roadblocks” are and how that data-supported insight can help you easily double your chances of landing an interview and a job.

Your Resume Will Face a Lot of Competition (more…)

I get it. There aren’t enough hours in the day, and this isn’t exactly a “today’s to-do list” type of endeavor. But building an employer brand is only as complicated and time consuming as you make it. It will also be as expensive as you make it, but it will be worth more than its weight in work.

You will get more out of a properly constructed employer brand than you put into it. And if you believe that time is money, then take note. In a survey of more than 4,700 talent acquisition decision makers, a reported 50 percent savings in cost per hire is associated with a strong employer brand.

I work with small- to medium-sized businesses every day, and many of them don’t have the time, resources, or knowledge base that the big guys do to recruit. That’s where employer brand shines. According to research firm Universum, two of the top three channels that will be the most used for employer brand promotion are the website (92 percent) and social media (80 percent). Most of us have those things and in a smaller firm you often have far more access to the control of those things than you would in a Fortune 500.

Here’s what to do: (more…)

But — setting aside the definition of these communities in the first place — who exactly might be part of such a group?

Ascendify Founder & CEO Matt Hendrickson says there are five different categories of people who could be community members: (more…)

The main question is not whether job boards are relevant, but whether their search results are relevant for their users. Do job seekers find the job they want, and do employers find the candidates they need? It is a simple equation of attention and relevance, and currently the competition happens to play a better card on both aspects.

The typical job board offers this primary search interface to job seekers:

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Death by interview is worth closer examination because harsh treatment during interviews impacts almost every working American, simply because each one of us is subjected to many interviews during our lifetime.

The hiring interview shares a love/hate status, where even though applicants initially hope to be granted an interview, once they are finally notified, they almost universally undergo a wave of stress and painful memories that causes them to stop looking forward to them.

“Death by interview” is the term used to describe the drawn out pain that job applicants suffer as a result of requiring an excessive number of interviews, repeating the same questions across multiple interviews. and the unnecessary uncertainty that is part of most interview processes.

Death by Interview Component No. 1 — An Excessive Number of Interviews (more…)

Many of our clients have been early adopters of sales 2.0 methodologies and they have found that sales has shifted. Today’s customers are more educated, more connected, and looking for a vendor to partner with. They are bombarded with information and as a result are harder to connect with. To adapt, companies are building more efficient inside sales organizations that have the capabilities to find and connect with buyers. They use Salesforce.com, marketing automation, and are all social in nature. These companies have a need for both inside and enterprise talent but have recognized that in order to drive activity and build pipelines they must have a strong inside sales plan in place. If you are building an inside sales force, here are five tips to consider. (more…)

For me, defining a talent community is easy.  (more…)

There are a number of emerging trends in hiring right now that center around the currency of the new millennium: data. The impact of our ability to collect, organize, and interpret data is rapidly changing all areas of the economy. Should employment be any different? There are three ways in which data is slowly killing the employment test as we know it. (more…)

This is the story of how Informatica Talent Acquisition became data-centric and used that centricity to our advantage to fix the problem. (more…)

Below are four of the biggest social media trends I see today. (more…)

Many do not have an online presence. Most will not respond to emails, Tweets, or phone calls — if you are able to find them. They are known to their circle of friends and colleagues only, and participate online primarily in technical forums, professional sites, and through emails with associates.

An engineer I know is top in his chosen field. He is highly sought after by a small circle of technical experts for his depth of knowledge and experience. He has no LinkedIn profile, no Facebook page, and does not Tweet. He only answers his phone when he knows the caller personally. Yet, he regularly changes jobs depending on how interesting the project offered. He has never spoken with a recruiter (other than me as a friend). He finds his projects through his narrow but powerful network of fellow engineers.

How would a recruiter ever find him — or the hundreds of others who are similar? (more…)

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to call someone and quickly establish rapport.

This person will be someone: (a) you don’t know; (b) will not be expecting your call, and; (c) will not want to talk with you.

You will have approximately 30 seconds to accomplish your mission. If you don’t succeed, you won’t have a second chance. Good luck, Jim! (more…)

The False Premise: Hiring the Best is Always Best (more…)

Anyone who tracks advanced trends in talent management knows that many of them  originated in the Silicon Valley. However, you probably also know that many of the publicized practices that start in the Silicon Valley are so unique and even outrageous (like the free Sweets Shop that is part ice cream parlor and bakery at Facebook), that no firm outside of the Valley ever copies them.

The three Silicon Valley practices that I am highlighting today probably won’t require immediate action at your firm, simply because they are so bold and outrageous that conservative talent managers will not even consider them. As a result, I am labeling them “leading edge practices that you should simply be aware of.” (more…)