Is your “six seconds of fame” enough to land you a job?
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 keep reading…
Today we pause in the hunt to source RNs to recognize nurses for the work they do and the dedication they bring to a profession that is among the most in-demand recruiting challenges in the U.S.
This is National Nurses Week, and today in particular, is set aside as both National Student Nurses Day and National School Nurse Day. In many of the English-speaking nations of the world, including the U.S. and Canada, May 6-12 is a week to honor professional nurses. The timing coincides with the May 12 birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.
Born 197 years ago into a wealthy, upper-class British family, Nightingale would be both amazed and pleased at how the work she did tending the wounded in Crimea has today become in the U.S. a profession of 3.1 million with responsibilities second only to the doctors with whom they work. keep reading…
I’ve had many recruiting bosses, sometimes in large organizations, sometimes in small. I’ve been privileged to have had a few who have been exceptionally good. Here’s what the good ones had in common, and the sorts of things they would and wouldn’t do.
keep reading…
You can have a life-long career, not just a spring-break job, at a retail store.
That’s the message the retail industry wants to get through as part of a new campaign it’s launching.
The centerpiece of the campaign is a new website at the “thisisretail.org” address, a highly visual page meant to show that the industry is dynamic and exciting; a field, for example, that’s for you if you’re an artist, a designer, or a marketer.
The National Retail Federation will be gathering stories of people who’ve had good careers in the industry, and trying to spread them on social media sites. It’ll also advertise in print, on the radio, and online to play up retail careers.
A problem common to most recruiters and human resources professionals today is a lack of understanding the actual job they are trying to fill. It’s really a fine line a recruiter toes, because understanding the role itself is not only imperative for sourcing talent but is also a huge advantage for closing that top passive candidate. The overall understanding of the role itself starts with the job title. If the job title is not a good fit for what you seek, you are likely in big trouble. keep reading…
Two years ago, LinkedIn realized how much it needed not just a lot of good employees quickly but a lot of good recruiters quickly.
It came up with an uncommon answer, one its recruiting director Brendan Browne talked about at today’s ERE conference in San Diego. keep reading…
Maybe it’s the season, Passover, Easter, the Spring equinox. You know that whole rebirth, cycle of life thing. Whatever it is, something got BusinessInsider into taking the lipstick off the pig and showing the warts of life on Wall Street.
In 23 frames that no banking recruiter will ever show a candidate, BusinessInsider lists the kinds of Wall Street hell that would make even Dante reconsider whether he should have added a tenth circle. In its own version of “abandon all hope,” BusinessInsider inscribes its entry to the frames: “Click to see how working on the Street ruins your life.” keep reading…
On the verge of leaving the recruiting calling …
I am a second-generation recruit who knew he wanted to be a recruiter. In junior high I’d go to my dad’s office and stuff envelopes of candidates to prospective clients and help rewrite resumes. I went to school and studied HR management and organizational development. After a stint in social work to give back and learn more about how people ticked, I went into recruiting.
I have started departments, trained recruiters and managers on targeted interviewing, and worked for some of the top firms in life sciences and finance — making them able to compete in a global economy.
I have had the privilege to study sourcing from Shally Steckerl and to debate Lou Adler on the art of recruiting. And I read articles each day on the profession of recruiting.
So, I am stunned to say I am done. keep reading…
Recruiting, as many of us know it, has undergone a transformation in the last few years. In fact, there are recruiters coming in to the workforce now who only source within LinkedIn Recruiter, or who’ve never had to keep a physical (read: paper) file on a candidate. Some of the changes that have rocked our industry over the last six to eight years have been great ones. Some could use a keener eye, but I’m not here to criticize.
What I want to do is point to the things that haven’t changed; I want to talk about getting back to recruiting basics. Because not everyone can afford the fancy social recruiting suites and very few can veto the boss when he says no to a perks program. These are the skills that every recruiter should know and all recruiters used to know. These things obviously work with the new tools and platforms … but they’re effective without them. So let’s get back to the basics.
Here are five things not to forget in the social recruiting fervor. keep reading…
There is nothing like a good controversy to stir up one’s feelings and subsequently a fierce debate. One of my favorite things about reading articles on ERE is how some of its contributors have a wonderful ability to write articles that generate comments a mile long because of controversial subjects covered. We were barely into 2013 when Adrian Kinnersley wrote an article entitled, “Why LinkedIn will never kill the professional recruitment industry,” which was very on point.
People are so polarized around this issue, but the comments section was what really made it an interesting read for me. If I didn’t know better I would have expected a fistfight to break out. One commenter even suggested that commission-only salespeople are unable to provide independent advice to candidates, and candidates know this. This inspired me to pick up my pen (figuratively, that is) and write, which I haven’t done lately.
The Demise of the Agency Recruiter keep reading…
When U.S. News issued its list of the 100 Best Jobs for 2013, its No. 1 criterion was hiring demand. After that came salary. Also factoring into the equation were work-life balance, stress, and the unemployment rate for individuals in each of the occupations.
Based on those factors, and a few others, dentist ranked at the top of the 100 Best Jobs list. Registered nurse was second, followed by pharmacist and computer systems analyst. Of the top 10 jobs on the list, six are in health care. The other four are in tech. (Telemarketer ranked at the bottom of the list.)
HR came in 72nd in the rankings, sandwiched between sales manager (71) and plumber (73). keep reading…
Last month, I wrote a post called “Recruiters: Your Days Are Numbered” for which I was lynched in the comments thread for disparaging the recruiting profession and forecasting its demise. Even Josh Bersin — a leading authority on HR — chimed in to describe the article as “a bit of a joke.” keep reading…
You’re at a social event, catching up with an old friend or meeting someone for the first time, and the conversation turns to your career. You say “I’m a recruiter.” Their response is likely, “Oh, like a headhunter?”
If you are a headhunter, then the conversation moves on and everyone understands each other. But if you are a corporate recruiter, your response is typically “Well, not exactly; I am a recruiter for (Insert Company Name Here). This is typically followed by a quizzical look in the other person’s eye (especially if you don’t work for a company with a household name).
If your initial response was “I’m a sourcer” or “I’m a contract recruiter” or “I’m a recruiting manager,” or something along those lines, then you’ve likely just confused the other person even more.
Sound familiar? keep reading…
“A penguin walks through that door right now wearing a sombrero,” your interviewer says, then asks, “What does he say and why is he here?”
If you answered, “Where’s the sunscreen?” congratulations and welcome to the Clark Construction Group family. The candidate who came up with that got the job.
And congratulations to Clark Construction, a 3,900-employee, $4 billion company with just a quirky enough interview process to make Glassdoor’s annual list of the Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions. It’s a list distinguished by questions that range from the almost ordinary — “How would you rate your memory?” asked of a candidate for a front desk job with Marriott — to the absolutely impenetrably bizarre — “What kitchen utensil would you be?” asked at Bandwidth.com, a connectivity and network company that has absolutely nothing to do with kitchenware. keep reading…
More evidence of the use of the crowd and the cloud in the employment field: A small group of California and Nevada job seekers is turning to an online “crowdsourcing” site to raise money for their candidate community. keep reading…
Recruitment, Recruitment Group, Talent Acquisition, Talent Acquisition Group, Executive Recruiters, Recruiter, Corporate Recruiters, Internet Recruiters, Sourcing Specialists, Talent Acquisition Specialist, and I am sure I am missing some monikers associated with recruiting.
I had a colleague in one of my 2012 meetings describe the job of the recruiters as being sourcing specialists. She went on to explain that recruiters don’t sit at a desk; they get out and they actively meet people. They don’t just post positions and do the administrative stuff. Sourcing specialists, on the other hand, use keywords and methodology to find key professionals to fill open vacancies … that was her way of explaining our recruiter role to some non-HR staff. In her mind, she believes that recruiters who aren’t out and about actively recruiting are sourcers.
While I spent most of my time in that meeting biting my tongue, her description caused me to think about recruitment as a profession and whether or not we are misunderstood or having an identity crisis. keep reading…
If you’ve known someone who has applied for an entry-level job only to be told they need to have experience — you’ll get it.
It is a new video by some Boston University students and grads, parodying Les Miserables using what the mock-movie-preview-makers see as a sad state affairs for liberal arts majors. keep reading…
If someone said “career center,” chances are good you’d think of something at a university. Maybe, you’d imagine a government-sponsored jobs office.
Not this one. One of the more highly regarded of the big U.S. tech companies has an in-house career center, one not publicized due to the internal belief that it gives the firm a competitive advantage. In fact, despite its wide reach with about 5,000 employees having used it, this center is barely even marketed within the walls of the company, with 60-70% of employees who use the career center hearing about it via word of mouth from other employees. keep reading…
Recruiting can be boiled down to three critical ingredients that make up the mix: sourcing, screening, and verifying. A traditionally manual function of HR, process automation is snatching the reins from bloated HR divisions and outside recruiters.
According to Bersin & Associates, spending on outside recruiters represented a third of recruiting budgets in 2010; however, due to high commissions (averaging 21% of a new hire’s first year salary), spending halved in 2011 in favor of sourcing talent directly on social networks.
Of course, fancy recruiting IT is imperfect and can not (yet) replicate the intangibles of a seasoned recruiter. Plus, someone has to pilot the software — push the button, as it were. But make no mistake, the tech industry is going after 100% of the pie. And that means cutting out the middleman.
We’re already seeing signs of disruption. keep reading…
If you are a recruiting leader, I would like to introduce you to a concept that many are not familiar with, which is “whole career employment.” The premise of this hiring and workforce planning model is that instead of the traditional expectation that employees will work at a firm continuously from their hire date until they retire, leaders need to plan for the eventuality when top employees may come and go from your firm several times throughout their whole career.
This new model is necessary because it fits both the changing loyalty levels and expectations of workers and the evolving way that work is done. The average tenure of the American worker at a single firm is just over four years and Americans may hold between 5 and 10 jobs throughout their career. This process of hiring, losing and bringing back employees requires a hiring model that is more flexible and sophisticated than most firms currently have.
A whole career model is a hiring and workforce planning strategy that focuses on the reduced loyalty and retention levels among top performing employees. Instead of focusing on hiring a top person only one single time, it plans on targeting them for rehire at several different points throughout their entire career. Smart firms will plan to recruit and hire the very best back into regular or contingent jobs at points in their career when we need them and when they are willing and able to work for us in some capacity. The goal is to get as much high-quality work from top performers whenever they are available throughout their career.
Lifelong Employment Is Coming to an End keep reading…
