ERE.net

Here’s a question I bet didn’t come up at the Social Recruiting Summit on Monday: Should I add my boss as a Facebook friend?

What prompted this question (which I encourage you to comment on at the end of this article) is Hunch. That’s right, Hunch, a dot-com that launched out of beta on Monday. It’s not exactly a search engine. Nor is it an oracle. It’s, well, here’s how co-founder Caterina Fake explained it to CNN.com: “It’s something new.”

We’ll call it a decision engine, since that’s what others are doing and it’s as good a descriptor as any. The first time you use Hunch, you’re confronted with 20 questions. More will come later, but Hunch starts easy. You can skip these profiling questions, but like talking with a shrink, any question you ask will be answered with several from Hunch.

When I asked Hunch about where to look for a job, it presented me a with a list of topics and question options including, “Should I look for a job or wait?” Not exactly what I was looking for, but interesting enough. The first question Hunch asked when I agreed to that topic was “Do you need the money?” After working my way through the decision tree, Hunch advised me to “wait a bit.” But the split between that answer and start looking was 55-45.

Besides being fun, Hunch has a serious side. Though it isn’t going to replace a search engine for sourcing candidates, it can help cut through the clutter to help you answer questions like “Do I need an in-house person for my U.S. business?” Or “Is it OK to ask my co-worker on a date?” keep reading…

Joshua Kahn (who goes by twitter.com/joshuakahn on Twitter), spoke this afternoon at the social recruiting summit, talking up some of his favorite ways to geek out. Kahn works for Accenture, mainly on the Best Buy account. keep reading…

We interrupt today’s wall-to-wall social media coverage to bring you this bit about something old school in the way of promotion: The human billboard.

We’re not talking here about the sandwich sign guys or even the athletic sign spinners you see on street corners pointing to check cashing businesses, tanning salons and new home developments. (Though you would be surprised at how much the jobs pay and just how cutthroat the business is.)

Nope. We’re talking about the president and founder of a technology sales lead company wandering around the showroom floor at SHRM’s upcoming conference in New Orleans handing out $100 bills. All you have to do is find Clay C. Scroggins, a/k/a Claydough, walk up to him and say “Hi, Clay” to get one of the five hundreds he’s going to be handing out. keep reading…

One of the largest employers in the world has embraced cloud computing for HR in a way so big that Siemens AG will have one of the largest, if not the largest, enterprise cloud computing deployments in the world.

The lucky beneficiary of the German electronics and electrical engineering giant’s decision to replace its multiple talent systems globally is SuccessFactors, which will see most of its performance and talent management modules deployed to Siemens’ 430,000 employees in 80 countries and 20 languages.

Dr. Norbert Kleinjohann, head of corporate information technology for Siemens, says in the press release announcing the deal, “The enterprise cloud computing business model is a strategic direction for us. It not only lowers IT costs, and creates faster end-to-end processes, but can also grow with our requirements both globally and locally.”

SuccessFactors says the Siemens deployment will include its compensation, goal, performance, and recruiting management, career development planning, variable pay, and succession planning tools. SuccessFactors willl replace Siemens’ existing multiple talent systems globally. keep reading…

Experienced companies with HR and IT professionals who have been through a system acquisition process before probably won’t find much help at CompareHRIS. But for the thousands of companies whose employee management system consists of file folders and outsourced payroll, the site is as good a place as any to start when the time comes to upgrade.

Industry consultants may beat up on us for saying that, since the process of identifying company needs and finding and evaluating vendors is, or should be, far more complicated than checking off a couple dozen boxes. But, as the saying goes, when you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.

That’s what we like about CompareHRIS; it’s a starting place for those who don’t know where the trailhead is. keep reading…

How long have we been talking about mobile recruiting? Finally, someone has done something more about it than simply enable job posting and “received your application” messaging.

Jobscience unveiled an iPhone app in London today that will let you source a resume database from a park bench, the airport terminal, or anywhere you have connectivity. When you find the right contact you can reach out however you think best — email, text message, social network post, or that other thing iPhones do, voice call.

The mobile application works with the ATS offerings available on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange. Jobscience uses the Force.com platform for the applications it offers, including ATS solutions for large and small businesses, staffing agency software, and others. Because of that flexibility, users can add on other applications available through the AppExchange.

Besides searching the company database via an iPhone, recruiters and hiring managers can create and manage job reqs and postings, handle scheduling, and do virtually (no pun intended) anything they can from their desktop.

“Jobscience for iPhone is the first complete applicant tracking system that can run on a mobile device,” says Michael Vicchitto, marketing manager of Jobscience, calling it “the most scalable and flexible solution for human resources and the staffing industry available today.” keep reading…

The March 2009 issue of Fast Company lists its take on the 50 most innovative companies in the world.

As I read their analysis, it seemed evident that the lessons learned about what makes a company innovative could be directly applied to the recruiting industry. With this perspective in mind, here’s how I’d translate business and product innovation into recruiting ideas.

Some of them are wild and crazy, but then again, they might just work.

keep reading…

Do you use LinkedIn for sourcing? Everybody does these days, right? Would you like to be more efficient, reach more relevant people, and do this all for free? Perhaps you are aware of some of the points below, but I hope you will find something new here too.

keep reading…

If you work at a company that has recently cut back on its recruiting budget, but not on its high expectations, attempting to deliver can be frustrating.

Fortunately, if you have the courage to shift your approach you can still produce significant results using recruiting approaches that require little or no money. I am sure you are probably thinking that the old adage “you get what you pay for” holds true, but I am sure you also realize that there are exceptions to every rule (after all, ERE.net is free!).

Over the course of my career, I have compiled hundreds of innovative steps that recruiters and line managers have taken to reach top talent when other solutions simply were not working or they didn’t have the money to fund them.

I recently put pen to paper and completed a new book entitled 1,000 Ways to Recruit Top Talent, which as the name implies, offers numerous recruiting ideas, all of which have been used successfully.

The following is a checklist of some of those ideas that require little or no budget to implement. These approaches also work during strong economic times but they are especially appropriate during a major business downturn.

keep reading…

Can’t get enough of HR shows and technology? Then you’re in luck. HRchitect (profile; site) is organizing what the consulting firm is calling the “largest regional HR technology event.”

To be held outside Dallas on June 10 and 11, 2009, the show used to be sponsored by the area chapter of the International Association for Human Resource Information Management. HRchitect helped organize it in years past, but is now sponsoring the conference itself.

Matt Lafata, show chair and VP of sales and marketing at HRchitect, promises theHRshow as it’s being called, will be the “largest HRM show in the Southwest and one of the biggest tech shows besides HR Tech.” He and Rick Fletcher, HRchitect CEO, insist they aren’t trying to compete with the HR Technology Conference and Exposition put on every year by the magazine HR Executive.

“Our show is regional,” Lafata told us, estimating that about 90 percent of the attendees will come from Texas and adjacent states. Added Fletcher: “We’re not trying to take away from HR Tech or any other show.” keep reading…

Let’s face it: YouTube, Break, Hulu, and Veoh have changed the way we view movies and videos and, more important, they have changed the way we use the Internet.

We rely more and more on pictures, graphics, and videos to display data, deliver the news, give us instructions, and keep us up-to-date with our families. The facts are amazing. Using Quantcast as my source, here is a rough idea of what’s going on. The online version of the New York Times, for example, has a monthly readership that averages about 14 million people in the United States. And that’s the largest readership of any print media I could find. The online Wall Street Journal does a paltry 4 million and even the prestigious Economist does only 3 million globally and most are seeing declining readership.

On the other hand, YouTube averages about 71 million viewers monthly — just in the U.S. And its rivals are also doing well and growing. Veoh does about 23 million, Hulu about 19 million, and Break about 15 million globally.

This indicates a decisive trend: more and more of us are getting information and education from video, rather than from words – whether in print or online.

We have already seen video slowly gaining in popularity and importance in recruiting. All top-tier career sites incorporate both pictures and video. Usually the videos are of employees talking about their jobs, but some include campus tours or chats with the CEO or a hiring manager. Many recruiters have received a video resume, and chat rooms have buzzed with concerns over the legality of such resumes and whether they should be accepted.

I don’t believe there is any serious legal issue in using video resumes, as long as your organization has a policy about how they are used. They are no more discriminatory than a face-to-face interview and may actually help to showcase communication skills and other positive traits. They can speed up the pre-screening process and may even eliminate the need for the number of interviews we subject candidates to.

Younger candidates, who are just entering the job market, may prefer to create a video resume as it reflects the media with which they are most comfortable. I can also easily imagine a time when the face-to-face interview is replaced with a live, virtual interview, perhaps with the hiring manger and several others also present virtually. The use of video lowers costs, expands the number of people who can participate in an interview, allows asynchronous viewing, and makes it more convenient for a candidate.

Here are just four of the ways organizations are using video.

keep reading…

There is no doubt that technology has had a significant impact on the way we identify and recruit candidates in this age of social networking and blogging, but have we gone too far?

I recently had the opportunity to speak at a recruiting conference whose major theme focused on technology and its application in the recruiting lifecycle. As I stood in the back of the room waiting for the speaker in front of me to finish her presentation, I was shocked at what she had to say. She stated that “there is no reason to actually talk to a candidate today.” She continued by saying that “email and text messages should be the only means we use to contact and recruit candidates today because that is the medium they use.”

As this well-known speaker’s comments began to sink in, I realized the cause of many of the problems we face today — it’s people like this speaker who teach us to rely almost exclusively on technology! I may not be a doctor, but the last time I checked, every candidate is a living, breathing, human being with the innate craving to have a relationship with other living, breathing, humans.

Within the recruitment profession today, technology has moved from a tool to identify candidates and create efficiencies to a mechanism that replaces real relationships. If we all rely on the same technologies to identify, engage, and recruit candidates, what will be the differentiator from company to company? Are candidates to be treated as a commodity?

Have we forgotten that recruiting is sales? That sales is what builds real relationships? That technology should enable us to be more efficient but cannot engage a candidate in the way a recruiter can? Obviously these are all rhetorical questions aimed at pointing out how our near-reliance on technology is only exacerbating the problems we face today.

As I surveyed the room after I heard these ridiculous statements, I realized the impact this speaker had on the audience of seemingly young, inexperienced recruiters who were attempting to learn at least one nugget of information they could apply when returning to their respective companies.

keep reading…

Progressive companies are now implementing Just-in-Time (JIT) sourcing programs to ensure they have a ready pipeline of top talent once the economy recovers. This will provide early adopters a significant competitive advantage and an increased share of the best talent.

In fact, these are the same companies that everyone else will be benchmarking in 2010 and beyond. So if you’d rather be the presenter at ERE Expo instead of sitting in the audience hearing about what you should have done, here are some things to consider as you begin implementing a JIT sourcing program.

Back in the late 1970s and 1980s, supply chains became very sophisticated with concepts like material requirements planning, demand-pull procurement, Kanban, and just-in-time sourcing becoming commonplace. Recruiting is now starting to apply these same supply-chain ideas to improve the quality and timing of hiring efforts. This parallels the increased application of advanced consumer marketing and advertising concepts to recruitment advertising. It is the adoption of techniques from these two fields that makes JIT sourcing possible.

The basic concept behind JIT sourcing is the development of a dynamic candidate database of resumes and prospects. On top of this is a drip marketing program nurturing and engaging with this database on an ongoing basis.

When jobs become available, appropriate candidates in the database are notified and invited to evaluate them. As long as the database is filled with enough high-quality candidates and if primed properly, enough people should raise their hands for consideration. This means that jobs could be available for interviews within hours after a req is formally opened.

Even better, a recruiter could query the database ahead of time to determine whether there are enough candidates available to meet upcoming hiring needs. If not, sourcing programs can be accelerated to meet future supply needs.

keep reading…

I just returned from the Future of Talent conference put on by Kevin Wheeler. This is a truly exceptional experience for those lucky enough to attend. The quality of content and discussions would be hard to duplicate. Having heard and talked about where talent management might be in the foreseeable future, it was logical to look at what technologies might be there to support it. As luck would have it, the Fall brings opportunities by the truckload to review the future of HR technology.

Judging by what’s on display and what’s being discussed at some other HR tech conferences I’ve been to, HR technology appears to be geared more to the past than the future.

keep reading…

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.

keep reading…

Some reflections on the HR Tech Conference in Chicago that ended Friday:

• Talent management technology will be to the next five years what the ATS was to the last;
• Recruiters need to engage with line supervisors on a regular basis, and not just when a req comes through, because you will be measured on how well your hires do;
• For the same reason, recruiters need to play as big a role in the selection of HRMS tools as every other HR division;
• All HR professionals must become more proactive in identifying and implementing tools to help workers better engage with each other and the company and, for that matter, with their peers in the wide world.

The need for HR to take a more aggressive role was made so very clear in a conversation I had with a bank personnel officer on the last day of the conference.

keep reading…

The war for talent isn’t over, but the world’s economic woes are turning it into more of a series of skirmishes than hot battle.

“Recruiting is not going away,” said Zach Thomas, senior analyst with Forrester Research. But it is shifting focus to retention and internal recruiting.

He joined other industry analysts at a panel at HR Tech Thursday to discuss “Today’s Technology Trends and Predictions.” None of the four went so far as to declare the war over, but each in their own way suggested that the mass exodus of Baby Boomers from the workplace may not be quite so mass as we’ve been hearing.

keep reading…

There’s no sign of an economic crisis here at HR Tech. The annual technology show opened at McCormick Place in Chicago with some 2,000 attendees and 250 exhibitors, ranking it among the largest in the show’s 11-year history. The only nod to global financial conditions is an emphasis on performance management and succession planning over recruitment.

“We’re not seeing cutbacks,” Christopher Faust, executive vice president / global strategy for Softscape, told us this morning. “But we are hearing (from prospects) ‘How can I leverage what I’ve got?’” Softscape customers have always been heavily invested in succession planning. Now, says Faust, they are also asking about performance management so they can better manage their existing workforce.

Same story at StepStone, the European talent management company that is making a push into the U.S. market. Interest in the performance management and succession modules is especially keen, we were told. Less so for the recruitment. “The companies want to inventory their assets and better plan in case there has to be layoffs,” a StepStone staffer said.

keep reading…

Decision-making can be a daunting challenge, especially when faced with pressure to cut costs and reorganize in a challenging economy. As recruiters, you are presented with a myriad of tools, services, and processes to choose from and the list keeps growing and growing! I just wanted to say thanks for sharing your toughest decisions with us every day on the ERE discussion boards. I learn such valuable information from you!

Twittering for Sourcing
We see it used at conferences. We read about it on our discussion boards. We might even be active “Tweeters” ourselves … but how effective is Twitter for sourcing and recruiting? Erika Hanson Brown recently joined the Twitter community and wants to know how it works in the recruiting world. John Kennedy is skeptical about Twitter. Although it can help save time when learning about a potential candidate, John relies on some advice he received years ago, “there are only three true productive tools in recruiting — the pen, the pad of paper, and the telephone.”

After reading several more responses to Erika, it is clear that John is in the minority. Twitter can be an effective tool if you follow the advice of Kelly Dingee and Mark Tortorici including search strings, and tying together SMS and social networking sites. If anyone is interested, you can check out Dennis Smith’s presentation on the Recruiting Road Show and tune in to ERE’s webinar series on November 5 for some tips and advice from Geoff Peterson.

ATS Wish List
Erica McNally wants to know what are your “must-haves” and your “nice-to-haves” when selecting your ATS. What’s on your “wish list”? Jake Stupak lists the following: scheduling for multi-users, resume parsing, email tracking, and candidate and position matching. Sylvia Dahlby astutely advises to identify your unique business requirements first. “The leading apps all have the basics” — think about what your company needs before creating your list. She recommends CareerXroads and HRchitect for additional information. (HRchitect, by the way, is doing a workshop in San Diego at ERE’s conference on “How to Save Your Current ATS and Get a Return on Your Investment.”)

I have to add The Newman Group (who will also be doing a session on HR systems at the Spring Expo) to that list since it has a wealth of knowledge in this arena. Dorothy Beach, unhappy with Vurv, has been very impressed with Avature’s Recruiting CRM tool as an ATS option. (I also sat on a demo last week with Michael Johnson and agree that it is worth checking out.) This makes me wonder…will CRM tools replace traditional ATS tools? What do you think? Would you take the leap?

Onboarding New Hires and The Buddy System
There are several programs that if implemented correctly can make onboarding strategies successful. Based on research and discussions, many companies would include the “buddy system” on that list. Laura Arnold is very interested in a program that would pair an internal employee with a new hire but wants a new name for “the buddy system.” Apparently, Laura is not alone. Several respondents use a variety of different names, including “Mentor Program.” Bryan Chaney also recommends “Internal Career Counselor” and “Coworker Coach” while Joann Robinson has used “New Hire Partner,” “Orientation Partner” and “Orientation Coach.”

I’m interested in knowing if any companies have been able to measure the success of their onboarding programs, more specifically the concept of a “mentor program.” Todd Raphael has an in-depth look at onboarding in the next Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

JobFox or Net-Temps?

Kathleen Coughlin wants to add a new job board to her list. Can anyone recommend JobFox or Net-Temps? Although Kathleen did not receive feedback on Net-Temps, JobFox (often considered the eHarmony of recruiting) has some work to do. Taryn Pfalzgraf has been satisfied with the customer service but feels that the process is too time-consuming. She recommends a “conditional trial membership” or “waiting a few months to see if they’ve ironed out their problems.” Kimberley Joyce would have to agree. As an Oracle-centric company, she was reassured that JobFox could meet her companies’ needs. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Among other complaints, they are unable to add different tools, languages, and functionality. Given this negative feedback, Eden Shaffer encourages Kathleen to consider Search Engine Marketing instead. What do you think?

Hiring a Virtual Recruiter/Sourcer and Unethical Competitors
These topics continue to dominate the discussion boards. We’d love to hear what you think about these critical and timely recruiting issues…

ERE interviews prominent figures in the industry at RecruitFest about how they are using technology and social media. Learn how they’ve developed good business leads, and how you can expand relationships that may not have happened otherwise.

keep reading…