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When Monster bought Trovix in the summer of 2008, the blogosphere popped with wonder at how the job board would make use of Trovix’ job matching technology.

Forrester Research analyst Zach Thomas suggested that, “By making this acquisition, Monster is putting a real emphasis on search and they believe it will help them leap-frog the competition.” Others were less generous.

The answer has been coming ever since Monster began beta testing Power Resume Search several months ago. A few weeks ago, confident that its $100 million investment was the homerun it expected, Monster turned Power Search live, premiering it during an analyst meeting that was also webcast over a marathon five hours or so.

Tuesday, the company demoed the new search for a group of recruitment consultants and bloggers. And the result was no mere home run; think grand slam.

In a word, Monster’s new Power Resume Search is stunning. Stunning in its simplicity. Stunning in its speed. Stunning in its ability to intuit skills from a title, and to rank and rerank the resulting candidates depending on what skills and other qualities you decide important. Stunning in its potential for changing the job board business. keep reading…

So, there you are, innocently researching a potentially awesome new candidate when you stumble upon her personal blog that goes beyond mere TMI and causes your cheeks to turn crimson. Or, perhaps your eyes are still bug-eyed after reading about some “interesting” history in a candidate’s criminal background check. Or you receive a video resume and your knee-jerk reaction is that the person is simply u-g-l-y with no alibi.

Whatever the case, if you have ever felt as though you might be running into legal issues, the U.S. EEOC’s Assistant Legal Counsel Carol Miaskoff says to listen up to the following basic rules:

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The hot stuff in HR technology these days is all to do with social networking. Recruiters are flocking to social media with the energy of a bull let loose in a pasture full of lonely cows during mating season. All that effort does produce some results — candidates (or calves; depending on what you’re thinking right now) — but they’re inconsistent (in both cases). And there are plenty of skeptics that question the value of social networking as a scalable recruiting solution. Social media has its place in the recruiting universe, but the buzz around it is overshadowing other interesting technologies. Two in particular that I’d like to highlight may not be as exciting, but address fundamental needs for recruiters. keep reading…

We live in a world of pictures, movies, and sound. The printed word is being replaced and expanded by cheap, easy access to video websites like YouTube as well as sites such as Hulu.com and Veoh.com.

According to Gartner, Inc., the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, more than 25 percent of the content that workers view each day will be dominated by pictures, video or audio by 2013. keep reading…

Article and research by Charles Handler and Mark C. Healy

For the last seven years, Rocket-Hire has surveyed users of web-based pre-employment assessment tools, so we again asked members of the ERE community to tell us about their usage of typical pre-employment screening, testing, and assessment programs. As with years past, we zeroed in on the pulse of pre-employment assessment usage. And in an increasing climate of legal scrutiny for testing, and the hoopla surrounding the Ricci case, we decided to focus the content of today’s article on two issues that are inexorably linked: Implications of evaluating one’s assessment strategy, and attention to relevant legal issues.

Those interested in obtaining a copy of our full report can email us (chandler@rocket-hire.com) and we will be sure to send you a full copy once it has been completed.Or, check out an upcoming Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, probably the October 2009 issue, where we’ll have an in-depth analysis.

A Word About our Methodology
This year, 148 recruitment and hiring professionals completed the Rocket-Hire Online Assessment Usage Survey. Respondents were evenly representative of recruiters, recruiting leaders, HR executives, business owners, and hiring managers, and featured a wide variety of organizations and hiring situations.

Use of Assessment Tools
Overall usage of assessment tools was generally about the same as in past years — roughly two-thirds of respondents. Of that two-thirds, 54% are deploying both paper-based and online assessment, and 30% are using exclusively online assessment. The remaining employ only paper-based tools. Most use a variety of different assessment methods, with the majority using between one and three different types. The table below reveals the proportion of firms using various common tools.

Usage rates of common assessment tools

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What makes a good candidate different from a bad one? What defines a high quality candidate? I can’t count the conversations I have had with recruiters on these questions, and few have had answers.

For as long as I can remember, recruiters have focused on cost as the primary measure of their effectiveness and value to the organization. The most popular recruiting metric has been cost-per-hire, and recruiting functions justify their existence by showing how much less expensive they are than an outsourced solution.

This, however, has begun to change. keep reading…

Subtle as it may seem, there is Grand Canyon of difference between a database of prospective candidates and a community of talented prospective candidates.

Recruiters frequently tell me they have a talent community, when further investigation reveals that they have a huge database of people they do not know at all. These databases have been built up using impersonal methods including the career website, profiles gathered through the applicant tracking system, and perhaps referrals from other employees.

Databases suffer from two major problems when it comes to being effective recruiting tools. keep reading…

Talk to Steven Toole about ResumePal for even just a few minutes and you get the feeling this is how sliced bread came about. ResumePal is a simple, elegant, and free solution to an annoying jobseeker and recruiter problem.

It’s an easy-to-use method to apply for jobs through corporate websites without having to reenter the data for each different employer. Jobseekers create a profile once, then by logging in to ResumePal from any participating employer’s site, they just click to apply. When they change their profile, by updating their contact information for instance, ResumePal automatically updates the database of every participating employer to which they’ve applied.

“It’s very similar to PayPal,” says Toole, vice president, employer marketing at Jobfox, which developed the service. “It’s convenient for jobseekers, but there are significant benefits for employers too.”

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Almost daily we get news of another online recruitment service launch or job board startup. Some of the more useful we write about.  By far though, the majority of these are me-toos; one more entrant into a field so crowded you can’t cross cyberspace without tripping on one of them.

Occasionally, though, we come across a site worth sharing. Here for instance are three of the more browse-worthy.

Labor Insight

This is a cool site even if you have no interest in employment analytics. If nothing else, you’ll be wowed by the site’s interactive, graphical displays and ease of use.

Starting with a map of the United States, a simple mouseover of the states gives you such basic employment information as household income, and size of the labor force. Click on a state and you see what cities have the most online job posting activity, an indicator of how robust the local economy is. Drill down, and Labor Insight will list every posted job in the time period you pick.

There’s also a search by company, which will tell you what company has posted the most jobs online during a given period. Or what company has posted the most jobs in Alabama, or check trends in occupations by ONET code (Occupational Information Network) or … well, you get the idea.

The site is a product of EmployOn, LLC, a jobs technology company, that provides jobs searching and matching, data structuring, and other services to education, government, and others. Laborinsight.com is a natural offshoot from the job scraping, and data structuring EmployOn does.

Even if you don’t think you have any use for such business intelligence (if you think that, we suggest you think again), try out the site. The three-day free trial tells us that this is not going to be a free service.

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The recruiting function is constantly looking for ways to improve its business impact and unfortunately, just such an opportunity is about to hit them right in the face.

By now, everyone’s most likely heard of the impending Employee Freedom of Choice Act that will make unionization significantly easier.

As a recruiting professional, have you contemplated what role recruiting can play in maintaining a “union-free” environment at your organization?

Think about it! What better way to ensure that an organization will remain union-free than changing the recruiting, branding, and hiring process so that your organization is more likely to attract new hires who naturally (without any direct influence from management) wouldn’t want to join a union?

Hiring For Tendencies Is a Common Practice

It is common to design recruiting and hiring processes to select individuals with certain mindsets or behavioral tendencies.

Southwest Airlines, for example, has been written up in numerous books and articles for how they successfully attract and hire individuals who naturally behave and act in a certain way. In the case of Southwest, its hiring process targets candidates who naturally put the needs of the individual customer before their own.

Southwest is not alone. A range of organizations, from the FBI to Disney and Google, have all designed recruiting processes that identify and hire individuals prone to certain behaviors and actions. So why not adapt that recruiting concept to focus on individuals who prefer an independent work environment?

The Time to Act Is Now

Now is the opportune time to act before union-related publicity increases to the point where the spotlight is continually on any union-avoidance activities and while most recruiting functions are facing a reduced hiring load.

Rarely do recruiting leaders have as much time as they have now to strategize and to reengineer their processes.

The goal is to redesign your recruiting and hiring processes in order to improve the chances of attracting and hiring individuals who, when given a choice, have a higher probability of selecting independence over “big brother” group action (i.e., unionization).

Don’t Have A Cow

Upfront, you need to realize that it’s ok for management to resist unionization. Most firms rely primarily on the “traditional approach” which focuses heavily on anti-union propaganda campaigns among existing workers.

However, there’s no reason why that approach can’t be supplemented by an effective recruiting campaign that proactively acts “on the front end” before workers are even hired.

Now, I’m not suggesting even for a minute that you go out and purposely hire only “union hating” new employees, because that actually would be illegal.

What I am suggesting is that recruiting can make a major contribution in maintaining your workforce’s flexibility and competitiveness by revising your firm’s employment processes so that they now include elements that “naturally” attract more independent-thinking workers.

Incidentally, I started my working career as a card-carrying union member and now as a professor, am currently represented by a union, so don’t automatically assume that I don’t understand the value unions can provide.

However, I would remind you that as an HR employee, if your executives choose to go down the “maintain a non-union environment road,” it’s your responsibility to make sure that recruiting makes a substantial contribution to that effort.

Start With Market Research

After getting management’s approval for the overall concept and strategy, identify the types of personalities, demographic groups, and regional locations where you’re likely to find a large percentage of “independent thinkers.”

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Last week the Wall Street Journal ran a very interesting article: “Test for Dwindling Retail Jobs Spawns a Culture of Cheating.”

This well-written and researched piece is somewhat groundbreaking in that it is the first article in a mainstream media outlet to provide evidence of cheating on employment tests. Those of us in the testing industry have always been concerned with the security of our tests and have taken a variety of precautions to defend against it, but this is the first time I have ever read actual evidence that documents the existing of cheating.

As a testing expert and someone who has a high degree of familiarity with Unicru/Kronos (the company whose tests are the subject of the piece), I figured it would make sense for me to weigh in on this important article. Here are some thoughts about the article and the issues it raises:

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How are you doing with those New Year’s resolutions? We mean the work ones, not those “lose-weight-eat-healthy-get-more-exercise” ones.

If “Reevaluate background screening program” isn’t on your list, add it now because you can bet that should the EEOC come calling it will do it for you.

Ever since 2006 when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission adopted a series of changes that have come to be known as the “Systemic Initiative,” EEOC field offices have been aggressively pursuing cases where one or more forms of discrimination permeate a company’s hiring practices. These can be as overt as the $20 million settlement last month against LA Weight Loss Centers for refusing to hire men. Or they can be as unintentionally discriminatory as refusing to hire anyone with a violent criminal record.

This latter instance was the heart of the leading U.S. case on background screening, El v. SEPTA.

Douglas El was fired as a driver of the mentally and physically disabled when a criminal check turned up a juvenile murder record. His attorneys sued showing that the policy has a disparate impact on Blacks who are more likely to have a record than whites. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia upheld the employer in the case, but recruiters should take little comfort in that decision.

“The third circuit dropped lots of hints,” says EEOC attorney Carol Miaskoff, that it would have ruled differently, but for a lack of expert witnesses on the part of El’s attorneys. They chose not to counter testimony by noted criminologist Dr. Alfred Blumstein that a person with a criminal record is more likely to recidivate, even if, as in El’s case, the conviction was 40 years old.

So why should this prompt a new year’s review of hiring practices?

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Here’s a company that’s set itself the goal of helping people lead happier lives and helping companies build happier and more productive workplaces.  When Jiibe Solutions (profile; site) has accomplished those tasks it may as well just go on to create peace on earth.

Greg Scott, co-founder and CEO, harbors no illusions about the challenge he and his partner, Stephen Race, have set for themselves. “Well,” he said, explaining his vision, “it takes some companies a while to understand the value of being entirely open. It’s still a small percentage, but I was quite surprised (at how many do).”

What he’s talking about is Diialog, a sort of company-wide 360 assessment that takes the measure of company culture. It’s designed to reveal the culture as it is and compare it to the culture employees — and company leadership — desire it to be. In its purest form, the results would be reported to the entire company and made available on Jiibe.com, a site that matches jobseekers to companies based on “fit.”

There are categories for management style, vision, and social consciousness; 10 factors in all. When enough employees complete the assessment, the results can be revelatory, showing the gaps, as well as the company strengths. keep reading…

This article has been updated with a corrected link to the survey at the end.

by Dr. Charles Handler and Mark C. Healy, M.A.

We I/O psychologist-types tend to be real data hounds. Much of the work we do for our employers/clients involves the use of data to investigate specific hypotheses in order to illuminate the underlying truth in a situation. The outcome of this work often has tremendous value to organizations because it provides them with hard data on which strategic decisions can be based. Additionally, the collection and analyses of data often helps us to identify new trends that we haven’t yet thought about.

Many of you who follow our articles know that we have a keen interest in the pre-employment assessment industry, and write quite a bit about its trends and happenings within. Our interest in data and trends has led to an annual online screening and assessment usage survey.

The idea for this survey was born back in 2002, when we became frustrated over the lack of available information about the usage of pre-employment screening and assessment tools. This lack of information has been a challenge because though everyone seems to be saying that screening is becoming a hot area, there’s little actual data available to confirm this statement or to tell us how hot it really is. This lack of information also makes it hard for those of us who follow this industry closely to provide factual information about how companies are using online screening and assessment tools, and what the results of this usage have been. This year we have made a few changes to the survey questions to help us be sure we are staying up to date with some of the major trends and issues that pertain to assessment and the manner in which it is integrated into the hiring process.

At the end of this article, you’ll find a link to this year’s survey. Take a few minutes to help other members of our community by providing information about your company’s screening and assessment practices. The more data that’s collected, the clearer existing and emerging trends will become. Last year, we had a record number of responses, a fact that seems to indicate the increased interest level in screening and assessment. Given the steady increase in interest and the lack of information about this industry, we feel the results will continue to have value for the ERE community. We look forward to reporting our findings right here on ERE sometime this coming Spring.

In order to provide some extra motivation, here’s a quick summary of the trends identified in last year’s results.

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A few weeks ago I had a chance to visit the 11th annual HR Technology Show in Chicago. While the show includes all types of HR-related technology, there is a definite focus on recruitment and hiring. Below are some of my observations about technology and trends as they relate to the areas of interest to ERE readers and my specialty area of focus: technology based screening and assessment tools.

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Next week, four company founders will take the platform at ERE’s second Startup Forum to tell the world about their better mousetrap. They’ll follow in the footsteps of four other startups that introduced themselves at the Spring Expo in San Diego, and who, today, are just emerging from beta or, in one case, not yet there, or about to launch a new version, but in every case still still here and hopeful.

At ERE’s Fall Expo in Hollywood Beach, Florida, recruiters will meet the newest businesses to launch. Two of the founders will talk about how their respective companies are harnessing the power of video to help recruiters make better hiring choices and save the environment while also saving the hiring company a few dollars.

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After a lengthy screening process, the hiring committee feels it has found the right candidate for the company. Now comes the tricky part: how do you design an offer and go through the offer stage of the process without damaging the relationship with the candidate?

Many companies are not prepared to go through the offer step of the process. As a result, they damage the relationship with the candidate. This leads to one of two unfortunate conclusions. Either they lose the candidate or the candidate comes on board, but with scar tissue. Applying some of the best practices from the sales world into a sales talent screening program helps to avoid that scenario.

The offer stage of the hiring process parallels the proposal phase of sales. Best practices in sales say that you don’t present a proposal until a thorough needs analysis has been completed. If a sales person is presenting a proposal to a prospect, he has acquired the information needed to design a solution, has discussed budget, has a full understanding of their solution requirements, and has set an expectation on pricing. This is certainly the case if the salesperson is going to be successful in winning the account.

Looking at this process in relation to the offer stage of the sales talent screening program, many of the same best practices from sales hold true. During the screening program, information needs to be gathered from the candidate to determine their financial requirements. Unfortunately, many sales talent screening programs focus exclusively on screening the candidate for fit, but do not consider the needs for the offer phase of the process. This leads to a last-minute scurry to mine the information from the candidate, or they design the offer blindly. Neither of those are best practices for the offer stage.

In sales, it is said that if you are going to lose, lose early. This prevents you from making a huge investment in a relationship that will not generate revenue. The parallel to screening sales talent is understanding the financial requirements of the candidate early enough to stop the process before over-investing in the relationship. There is no point in continuing a process with a candidate who requires a compensation level 25% above what you can offer. This probably seems logical, but hiring executives rarely focus on this as a de-selection element early in the process.

Just like discussing pricing with a prospect, the financial-needs discussion requires finesse. The candidate knows that you are asking questions about their financials, just like a prospect knows a sales person is fishing for budget information. The better-skilled salespeople tell their prospects, “I don’t want to waste your time by getting you excited about a solution that will not fit in your budget constraints…”

In much the same way, this discussion can be had with the candidate, “I don’t want to excite you about an opportunity that might not be a match for your financial needs. As you look at making a change in position, what thoughts have you given to your compensation requirements?”

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If you’re into brown, blue and green you ought to go be a doctor or a forest ranger. See how easy picking a career is when you know your colors?

Like white? Then interior decorating is for you. (Too easy. Everyone knows white goes with everything.)

How about if your favorite colors happen to be black and red and orange? Maybe you just really like Halloween. Otherwise, you are “The Evaluator,” says a press release from CareerBuilder (profile; site), which just added a color wheel (parked on the old CareerPath.com website) to help jobseekers better assess their personality.

Before we get scolded for making light of a serious assessment tool let us note that the Color Career Counselor has been scientifically vetted with the results published in the North American Journal of Psychology. You can read the paper here, but fair warning: it’s full of the kind of statistical analysis we avoided in college.

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Back in 2006 I wrote an article discussing the integration of assessments into job boards. It was an example of the continued movement toward the inclusion of assessments into the mainstream of recruiting and hiring products and systems.

In this article, I praised the progress being made in understanding the value of quality assessment products in the modern hiring process.

I strongly believe that the words I wrote in 2006 are as relevant today as they ever were; in fact, they are more relevant now than ever. The days of the big job boards and their keyword matching strategies are numbered.

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Quality of Hire Measurement
Reporting and metrics is always a hot topic for recruiting, but so few companies do it right. In my research over the years, most companies measure time-to-hire and cost-per-hire but ignore quality-of-hire. Lisa Shapiro Mendell is an exception. She is interested in adding this key performance indicator to her recruitment metric dashboard and wants to know what other companies have done the same.

Ravi Subramanian recommends hiring manager surveys and assessments. Michael Chernesky asks a very relevant question…who is accountable? Bonita Martin says recruiters and Steven Yeong says hiring managers. Joshua Letourneau offered some great insight based on his experiences. While many of his clients do measure quality of hire, their process often fails because of one of three problems. They don’t measure quality of hire beyond the first day; the hiring manager survey turns into a game since “recruiters are incentivized to make the survey look good”; or feuds spark between HR and the hiring manager. Josh’s solution to overcome these challenges lies in performance assessments that measure expected versus actual performance. Anyone out there having great success measuring QOH? Share your story; we would love to hear it.

Wednesday’s Question of the Day
Anna Patterson’s latest Internet search engine, Cuil, is backed by $33 million in venture capital and expected to outshine Google. I read negative reviews of Cuil and wanted to know if anyone is using it and seeing results. Glenn Gutmacher, Sourcer extraordinaire, is not a fan…it is slow and produces poor quality results. Without launching an alpha or beta version, Glenn believes they “set high expectations and they ‘way’ underdelivered.” T Tallis agrees. Amanda Blazo is more optimistic. She acknowledges Cuil’s shortcomings but encourages us to give it time.

Phone Screening Candidates
Diane Propsner wonders: before a third-party recruiter sends a resume to a corporate recruiter, How much time should he or she spend on phone screening and what questions should be asked? She gave us an overview of her process and the questions included. Andrew Stone agrees with Diane that 10-15 minutes is not enough time for building a relationship with a candidate. Tania Murray recommends “tailoring your cover sheet to your client to focus on just what they (candidate) told you is important to them.” According to Tania, it is critical to know the candidates goals and motivations. Joy Naui offers a different approach by suggesting that third-party recruiters first contact the hiring manager. The phone screening should include key points based on that conversation. Questions should include more than technical skill questions. If a candidate recognizes that you are genuine about finding them the right job, they will agree to answer more questions.

Thursday’s Question of the Week
After hearing Dr. Wendell Williams’ Selection and Assessment webinar on July 23, an attendee wanted to know if behavioral or situational screening questions are better and why. I thought I would ask you. Joe Payne is in favor of behavioral questions since they are a good indicator of past actions and can allow interviewers to dig deeper. Matt Cooper brings up an interesting point that most candidates are too prepared for behavioral questions with the amount of information available on the Internet including examples and preparation tools. Interviewers need to be creative and get more specific. KT Connor agrees with Matt and also cautions against self-reporting assessments instead recommending objective decision tools.

Are Job Boards Becoming Obsolete?
This is a hot topic of debate, check it out!