For Employers And Recruiters

Seth Godin: The Interview As We Know It Is Obsolete!

Once again, Seth Godin cuts through years of accumulated "wisdom" to question a time-honored tradition. He suggests that the job interview, as we know it, is either too much or too little, depending on the job in question. I don't see traditional interviewing changing any time soon. Too bad though -- I have to agree with Seth on this one!

If Your Online Job Ads Aren't Working As Well As You'd Like...

Are your online job postings attracting as many high-quality applicants as you'd like?

Do your online job postings provide salary information?

If the answer to both questions is "no," there's most definitely a connection. As an employer, I understand all the reasons why you don't list salary on your job postings. But the fact of the matter is, you're turning off a lot of job seekers by failing to include this information. Specifically, you're turning off the better job seekers, who won't bother to consider an opportunity unless they know the salary and it's acceptable.

Another Reason For A Great Company Profile

A colleague at work made a comment the other day that I had to add to my long and growing list of reasons you need a great company profile -- on your site, and on any employment Web sites you use.

Many employers fail to consider the distinction between job postings and company profile, and what info belongs in each. So, they end up inserting bits of company profile into their job postings. Some job postings get a lot. Some get a little. These snippets of company info get redundant (for job seekers who read more than one of your job postings) or worse, they may seem contradictory.

Isolating relevant company info into your company profile lets you create a single, consistent, highly focused company profile that tells job seekers why they want to work for you. Perhaps more importantly, it lets you focus your job profiles just on the specific opportunity they describe. It's a win-win!

Recruiting For The Future

When it comes to the latest recruiting techniques, Zoë Goldring and Gretchen Ledgard of JobSyntax are about as hip as it's possible to be. It's pretty cool to have Zoë contribute a post to my site as part of the Great Recruiting Blogswap.

There’s a lot of talk out there regarding the “war for talent” in America. George himself commented on this phenomenon in his recent post on creating a global talent pool. The thing is I think most people view recruiting and “solutions” to recruiting problems in a short-sighted manner. In fact, many of the suggestions I hear on solving issues are really only band-aides or stop-gap measures. Nothing proposed has been targeted towards the root cause of these shortages.

And what is that root cause you may ask? Interest. That’s right, kids these days just aren’t as interested in the jobs that have the highest demand for skilled employees; chemistry, computer engineering, nursing, teaching… and the list goes on. You can raise salaries, increase benefits, provide telecommuting options and outsource all you want, but the fact of the matter is unless you create a healthy supply of future employees you’re just robbing Peter to pay Paul.

What creates interest in kids varies from generation to generation. I’m not saying I know what these interests are today or how to answer them, but what I do know is that in these critical talent shortage areas, it’s going to take a village to get folks into these careers and they need to start early. Companies, professional associations, schools and parents all need to work together to present compelling story for different career paths.

One fine example of this is the American Plastics Council. They’ve been running TV, print and radio ads since 1999. This campaign is memorable to me because of the TV spots with the tag line, “It’ll be a miracle if he makes it to…” Not only does this particular add speak to parents raising children, but also the longevity of the child safety concerns that they may have. Additionally they run spots that are funny, up to date with current trends and make you want to go to their website. When you get to the site, there’s lots of great information on how plastics can effect your everyday life from the food you cook to the car you drive. On top of which they provide topics for teaching plastics in the classroom. The message here is that plastics are an interesting area to become involved and there are many applications in various career paths. If I were a kid and someone was teaching me about how the bike helmet I wear protects me, but also is made of a space age material that I could be part of creating, heck yeah I’d be interested.

So what I am proposing here is instead of thinking just about the short term, let’s take a long view approach to the supply and demand issue. In fact I say dedicated a portion of your recruiting not only to what your needs are today, but what your needs might be in 10 years. The data is there to support you. All you have to do is invest.

On that note let me leave you with one final question; what are the activities and events that you or your company support today to ensure an adequate supply of future candidates?

Schrödinger's Cat & The Myth Of Passive Job Seekers

Have you ever read something that doesn't really spark your interest until you think about it later? Sometimes, then you can't stop thinking about it. I read a great critique of the popular concept of "passive job seekers" recently. It was very thought provoking (in a delayed sort of way) and I wish I could remember where I read it.

Following is a summary of that author's thoughts, as I remember them, with extra commentary by yours truly.

Ever since I first heard about "passive candidates," everything about the concept has bothered me. The idea itself and the label. Let's start with the label. At best it is misleading (or, at least, an oxymoron) to apply the word "passive" to an allegedly superior class of job seeker.

Moreover, the concept is misleading -- it's like dismissing people who don't want to date you as "antisocial." And it's just lazy thinking. The artificial distinction between "active" and "passive" candidates obscures a variety of reasons why a job seeker may be "passive" with respect to any given job opportunity. Many of which, contrary to the myth, do not make "passive" candidates better.

Here's a short list of issues with some commentary. Again, credit belongs to the mystery author who started me down this path.

1. A job seeker who is called "passive" because they are happily employed elsewhere is a dangerous employee to recruit. It will likely take a great deal to get them on board, and you may well be setting yourself up to have an unhappy employee, sorry they left a job/company they loved.

2. If the job seeker isn't happy where they are, but is "passive" because they are too complacent or unmotivated to actively seek alternate employment, why would this be the sort of person you'd want to recruit? Apathy/laziness isn't the same thing as loyalty, and is hardly a virtue.

3. Any job seeker is open and receptive ("active") to alternative employment opportunities when approached the right way -- it's just a question of what the right way is. Case in point: I don't know of anyone who loves their job so much that if a good friend started telling them about a great opportunity, they'd stick their fingers in their ears and start humming. It's not like job seekers are binary circuits, either open (active) or closed (passive).

4. If you haven't figured out how to reach a specific candidate, or type of candidate, referring to them as "passive" completely obscures the recruiting issues you face and need to overcome to widen the recruiting net you're casting.

As the popular myth stands, it ignores or obscures whether a job seeker is "passive" because he or she is unreachable, unavailable, unrecruitable, disinterested, etc. Pretty significant differences, so I'm not just splitting hairs (or philosophical cats, Herr Schrödinger).

Sourcing the best from the best

It is an honor yet again to share a guest posting, by way of the Great Blogswap, full of very useful recruiting information. This week, my guest is Jim Stroud, a great blogger and all around versatile thinker.

In support of the Blogswap sponsored by Job Syntax and Recruiting.com, here is a sourcing strategy I hope proves useful.

Sourcing the best from the best

How do you decide which companies to target in your recruitment initiatives? Sure major competitors come to mind immediately, but why stop there? Why not create your list based on the best companies operating in your field? (Especially those companies with award-winning products!) Do you know them all? Are you sure? You may want to do a search in MSN for top companies in your space using the following string: [ intitle:award.winning keyword ]

I tried this strategy on MSN to find leads for top companies operating in the electronics space. My search string looked like this:

[intitle:award.winning intitle:electronics ]

Here are a few examples of what I found:

LG Electronics Unveils Next Generation of Award-Winning TV ...

Wallingford Electronics is Austin's award-winning computer integrator ...

econoSTACK - an award winning project in power electronics

Philips Innovation Campus Delivers Award Winning Video and Audio ...

To switch things up a bit, let’s do a similar search on Yahoo with the following search string:

[ intitle:best.of  intitle:electronics ]

Here are a few examples of what I found:

Best of CES Awards - CES 2006 - Consumer Electronics Show Las Vegas - CNET.com

Best Of CES 2005 - Hot Products Shown At The 2005 Consumer Electronics Show - CES Photo Gallery Two

Cobra Electronics Wins Prestigious ICES Best of Innovations Award

Article | Arrow Electronics Named to Forbes ``Best of the Web B2B''

And (why not?) here is the same search (more or less) on Google with the following search string:

[ (intitle:award.winning | intitle:nominated.for ) consumer.electronics ]

Here are a few examples of what I found:

Cirrus Logic Powers SONICblue’s Award-Winning Rio Riot

Plantronics Showcases Award-Winning Headsets at Consumer ...

Sling Media :: Sling Media Develops PAL Version of Award-Winning ...

So, with a quick scan I have discerned that some of the top (award-winning) electronic companies are: SlingMedia, Plantronics, Cirrus Logic, Arrow Electronics, Cobra Electronics, LG Electronics and Philips. Not to mention those cited in some of the articles linked above. Hmmm… if these companies are winning awards, I might want to recruit some of their people.(Smile) Additional search terms you may want to consider are: “Best of,” “Top 100,” “Best Companies,” “Award Winning,” “Nominated For,” “Best of Breed” and “Fastest Growing.”

If you like this kind of thing, check out my Digability guides and add a few more strategies to your bag of tricks.

Happy Hunting!

Posted with pleasure by:

Jim Stroud
Recruiter-Sourcer-Blogger-Podcaster-Author-Cartoonist-Nice Guy

FAQS: All you wanted to know about my blog, but were afraid to ask
WEB: http://www.jimstroud.com

The Other Side of the Fence

As part of the Great Recruiting Blogswap, I am very pleased to offer a guest posting from Jim Durbin, someone whose blog helped inspire me to start my own.

Jim Durbin here from StlRecruiting -- a recovering recruiter and someone well-versed in the problems with recruiters. The problem ... is those darn jobseekers.

Okay, that's not really where I'm going with this, but there is an element of truth in the fact that most of the problems recruiters are blamed for originate with bad job-seekers and bad employers. That may seem like a case of passing the buck, but the truth is the recruiting industry exists solely because job-seekers and employers aren't very good at finding each other.

This does not exempt recruiters from bad behavior, but you cannot understand recruiting until you understand who pays the bills and who stands to benefit.

Clients: Employers pay fees to recruiters for successful matches, but that requires recruiters to work on jobs for no money until a successful placement is made.

Cost:  $15,000 per placement.

Recruiters: Time is money, and the cost of employing recruiters, finding open job requirements, sourcing prospects, sorting candidates through bizarre HR rituals, and then making sure an acceptance is made takes money.

Cost: $1-2,000 a week per recruiter

Candidates: Spend $.10 on a copy of their resume, a few bucks on gas, and sometimes, sometimes, $15 on a haircut sometime during the interview.

Cost:  $15.10

Clearly, recruiters put forth the most effort and the most money in the beginning of the relationship, without a guarantee of success, and yet the candidate and the client have the final say.

Clients pay the bills, but job-seekers provide the raw material. That said, if a recruiter is hitting their numbers and making a lot of money, they're placing 20-50 people a year, but speaking to over 10,000. So 1 out every, roughly 300 people a recruiter talks to in a given year is placed by that recruiter. And those are the good numbers.

The burden of the recruiting industry is not to change their ways, but to better explain them. Job-seekers, those that are honest with themselves, can accept that a recruiter may not place them, but the frustration comes from not knowing what they did wrong or what skill they lack.

Of course, any recruiter who takes the time to explain to the 299 people who didn't get the job why his client chose someone else, won't be in business long enough to make it worthwhile. This is why so  many job-seekers are frustrated, and they lash out at recruiters.

If you find yourself in that position, put yourself in the shoes of the recruiter. Find a way to get in their good graces so they will explain it to you. Or consider paying them $15,000 for their time.

In Praise Of Interns

I know a local business owner who believes, and I do quote, that "interns aren't worth the space they take up." Great! In this geographically finite job market, that's one less employer to tap this exceptional talent pool.

Interns can be a phenomenal investment, for so many reasons:

1. Eager to learn and eager to please, good interns can master a variety of tasks and be quite productive in staying on top of them. You may be surprised at both their capabilities and their work ethic.
2. Like your own "farm team," they can provide a ready pool of talent to bring on board full-time as needed. When hired, unlike other new employees, they bring knowledge of your company and the job. And, you have better sense for what you're getting.
3. Treated well, interns can become your best campus-recruiting PR tool.

My, how the world has changed. When I was in college, studying abroad was far more popular than internships. Summers were for jobs like house painting, and during the school year I rarely looked off-campus for work. This is one change that benefits employers enormously ... those who tap into it anyway.

Really Bad Job Postings

I was talking with a friend whose job includes reviewing job postings. In her review, one of the main things she looks to see is whether they are properly categorized.

Other entries on this blog make it clear that I think many job postings fall short. But even I was shocked by something she told me.

"Some job postings are so vague, I can't tell if they are properly categorized, because I can't figure out what the job is from the posting!" She went on to describe these bad postings: full of vague jargon, some even seemed to be deliberately obscuring what the job actually entailed, like they were protecting trade secrets or trying to fool job seekers into applying.

Wow. That's really something. But it's good news for smart employers who have gotten hip to writing good job postings: in many cases, beating the competition doesn't take much!

Better Job Postings

Better job postings is a cause near and dear to my heart, as my readers know. Here's one of the best arguments I've ever read in support of job postings written to appeal to job seekers. I swear, it's just crazy enough to work! I haven't read anything by Mo Edjlali previously, but I'm impressed.