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Here’s how blogs can work for You!

“You know it works when you start getting calls from people you don’t know who want to work with you,” We’re talking about blogs and technology and how you can make them work for. Stephanie Lloyd National Careers + Workplace Columnists explains it here.

Thanks to Dan Schawbel‘s generosity on Twitter I recently discovered an article on AJC.com, “Here’s how blogs can work for you” by Laura Raines.

Raines writes, “Blogs are spreading faster than kudzu in the business world. Why? “Because, when done effectively, they are a great marketing, sales and public relations tool for corporations or entrepreneurs,” said Barbara Giamanco, CEO of Talent Builders Inc., which helps professionals attract business and increase sales by using social media strategies and tools.   blogging_requires_passion_and_authority1

“You know it works when you start getting calls from people you don’t know who want to work with you,” she said. Recently, Giamanco garnered a major corporate client. A friend had referred her, but before calling, he did an online search, and read her LinkedIn profile and her blog, which relates to her core competencies of sales, people development and social media technology. “He liked what I had to say, so before he even met me, I had made an impression as a professional with credibility and integrity,” Giamanco said.”

What Giamanco describes are the fundamentals of relationship-based selling. These are the same principles that successful recruiters apply to their businesses, and a blog can be a fantastic vehicle to demonstrate your expertise and connect with others in the field, as well as with candidates and prospective clients.

“The technology has made it easier than ever to start a blog, and with search engines preferring content that is relevant and recent, blogs often top the results list of a search. That can be a business advantage—-or not.”

It is important to keep in mind that the same rules apply when using social media tools to build meaningful relationships with people. Nobody likes spam and people aren’t interested in “bots” spewing information at them. It’s the difference between the law of attraction and an obvious sales pitch. Developing credibility takes thought and energy. It’s an investment.

Says Raines, “A blog is not a brochure. “One of the quickest ways to fail is to make it an online sales pitch,” Giamanco said. “Nothing turns people off faster than a ‘slick Willy’ hawking his product or services. You want to have a conversation with people and get them to participate.”

Giamanco goes on to say. “People want to do business with people they know, like and trust, but building that relationship takes time. Don’t expect instant results.”

Raines says that you should be authentic when writing on your blog. “Use your own voice and be real,” Giamanco said. “But always treat others with courtesy and respect. If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t say it online.”

Brett Borders recently wrote on his blog, Social Media Rockstar, 10 simple ways to show kindness online, “Some of the top social media “rockstars” come across as incredibly nice people. They’ve cultivated a conscious, polished online interaction style that makes other people feel included, welcome, important and appreciated. An “aura of awesomeness” is crowned upon them, in part, because their fans feel good after interacting with them.”

Be prepared to make a commitment. Blogging requires time and effort to draw readers in and keep them interested and engaged. Once you get started you’ll need to post at least several times a week.

However, it doesn’t have to be as difficult or time-consuming as it sounds if you’re smart about it. There are so many things you can write about, and so many ways that you can structure a blog post without spending too much time. I suggest a healthy combination of several different types of articles.

  • Write a response to something you have read. It could be something you read in a book, article, or blog post. I don’t comment on other people’s blogs very often but I do write blog posts in response to what I read and link back to it. (Bloggers like it when you do this FYI. Unless your blog post is horrible or you are launching a personal attack on them but let’s assume that’s not the case and I do not recommend either of these things.)
  • Do an email interview with someone. I do these a lot. They’re easy to do for both the blogger and the interviewee and very popular with readers, and I love the fact that unless you are a complete idiot this leaves very little room for misquoting someone.
  • Answer people’s questions in a blog post. I do this all the time too. Someone comes to me with a question and I ask them if I can write my response in the form of a blog post and I have yet to have someone say no. Plus even if they said no you could just do it anyway and not mention their name so there.
  • Obviously you need to write about original ideas that you have related to your field. I’m just saying that not every single post needs to be one of these.

Michael Kogon, CEO and founder of Definition 6, a leading interactive solutions marketing company, suggests focusing on a subject “that draws from your expertise and is broad enough to interest readers. It should be professional, not your personal musings. No one wants to read your thoughts on the universe, unless you’re Stephen Hawking.”

Some of the things that I recommend when blogging:

1. Write about things you care about. Tell us what you do and how you do it and tell us how you feel about what you do and why you do it the way that you do.

2. Let us in to your life. We want insight. While we definitely do not want a play-by-play account of a day in the life of your pet snail we do want to know your interpretation of the information you are sharing with us so don’t just say Apple just released the next gen iPhone. Tell us if you bought it and if so why and if not why and do you like it or love it or hate it and why.

3. Put a picture in your blog post. At least one. Some of us are visual and some of us have absolutely no imagination whatsoever and we need to look at a picture.

4. Don’t be all business and don’t be stuffy. If we wanted to read a textbook we would buy one and no we do not want to read about your cat. That is not what I’m talking about.

5. Have a blogroll. Call it what you want but we want to know what blogs you read so we can learn more about you and also if we like to read your blog (?) we might also like to read some of the blogs that you also like to read.

Last but not least, do not forget:Links are good manners! Chris Brogan says, “Links are good manners. They signal intent. They connote sharing. They help your audience connect better. Link, even if it takes a bit more time. Fair?”

Ready to get started? I suggest you read How to get a job by blogging in order to learn how to set up the kind of professional blog that will get you hired. This is an excellent article that walks you through the process, step-by-step, with links to and explanations about the things you’ll need. And then check out and bookmark @Animal’s guide to basic HTML for bloggers.

About Stephanie:

stephanie13-070809 Stephanie is Founder and CEO, Radiant Veracity in Atlanta, Georgia, at the intersection of Talent + Social Media.

She is a National Careers + Workplace Columnist for Examiner, a division of Clarity Media Group owned by one of the largest media investment companies in the world. There she authors a highly-regarded career and job search advice column for 70 major markets nationwide.

With more than 15 years of experience in corporate recruiting and executive search, Stephanie works with hiring managers, HR executives, business owners, and recruiting firms on recruitment and retention strategy including how to better utilize social media for talent acquisition and employee communication.

Here’s how blogs can work for You!

“You know it works when you start getting calls from people you don’t know who want to work with you,” We’re talking about blogs and technology and how you can make them work for. Stephanie Lloyd National Careers + Workplace Columnists explains it here.

Thanks to Dan Schawbel‘s generosity on Twitter I recently discovered an article on AJC.com, “Here’s how blogs can work for you” by Laura Raines.

Raines writes, “Blogs are spreading faster than kudzu in the business world. Why? “Because, when done effectively, they are a great marketing, sales and public relations tool for corporations or entrepreneurs,” said Barbara Giamanco, CEO of Talent Builders Inc., which helps professionals attract business and increase sales by using social media strategies and tools.   blogging_requires_passion_and_authority1

“You know it works when you start getting calls from people you don’t know who want to work with you,” she said. Recently, Giamanco garnered a major corporate client. A friend had referred her, but before calling, he did an online search, and read her LinkedIn profile and her blog, which relates to her core competencies of sales, people development and social media technology. “He liked what I had to say, so before he even met me, I had made an impression as a professional with credibility and integrity,” Giamanco said.”

What Giamanco describes are the fundamentals of relationship-based selling. These are the same principles that successful recruiters apply to their businesses, and a blog can be a fantastic vehicle to demonstrate your expertise and connect with others in the field, as well as with candidates and prospective clients.

“The technology has made it easier than ever to start a blog, and with search engines preferring content that is relevant and recent, blogs often top the results list of a search. That can be a business advantage—-or not.”

It is important to keep in mind that the same rules apply when using social media tools to build meaningful relationships with people. Nobody likes spam and people aren’t interested in “bots” spewing information at them. It’s the difference between the law of attraction and an obvious sales pitch. Developing credibility takes thought and energy. It’s an investment.

Says Raines, “A blog is not a brochure. “One of the quickest ways to fail is to make it an online sales pitch,” Giamanco said. “Nothing turns people off faster than a ‘slick Willy’ hawking his product or services. You want to have a conversation with people and get them to participate.”

Giamanco goes on to say. “People want to do business with people they know, like and trust, but building that relationship takes time. Don’t expect instant results.”

Raines says that you should be authentic when writing on your blog. “Use your own voice and be real,” Giamanco said. “But always treat others with courtesy and respect. If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t say it online.”

Brett Borders recently wrote on his blog, Social Media Rockstar, 10 simple ways to show kindness online, “Some of the top social media “rockstars” come across as incredibly nice people. They’ve cultivated a conscious, polished online interaction style that makes other people feel included, welcome, important and appreciated. An “aura of awesomeness” is crowned upon them, in part, because their fans feel good after interacting with them.”

Be prepared to make a commitment. Blogging requires time and effort to draw readers in and keep them interested and engaged. Once you get started you’ll need to post at least several times a week.

However, it doesn’t have to be as difficult or time-consuming as it sounds if you’re smart about it. There are so many things you can write about, and so many ways that you can structure a blog post without spending too much time. I suggest a healthy combination of several different types of articles.

  • Write a response to something you have read. It could be something you read in a book, article, or blog post. I don’t comment on other people’s blogs very often but I do write blog posts in response to what I read and link back to it. (Bloggers like it when you do this FYI. Unless your blog post is horrible or you are launching a personal attack on them but let’s assume that’s not the case and I do not recommend either of these things.)
  • Do an email interview with someone. I do these a lot. They’re easy to do for both the blogger and the interviewee and very popular with readers, and I love the fact that unless you are a complete idiot this leaves very little room for misquoting someone.
  • Answer people’s questions in a blog post. I do this all the time too. Someone comes to me with a question and I ask them if I can write my response in the form of a blog post and I have yet to have someone say no. Plus even if they said no you could just do it anyway and not mention their name so there.
  • Obviously you need to write about original ideas that you have related to your field. I’m just saying that not every single post needs to be one of these.

Michael Kogon, CEO and founder of Definition 6, a leading interactive solutions marketing company, suggests focusing on a subject “that draws from your expertise and is broad enough to interest readers. It should be professional, not your personal musings. No one wants to read your thoughts on the universe, unless you’re Stephen Hawking.”

Some of the things that I recommend when blogging:

1. Write about things you care about. Tell us what you do and how you do it and tell us how you feel about what you do and why you do it the way that you do.

2. Let us in to your life. We want insight. While we definitely do not want a play-by-play account of a day in the life of your pet snail we do want to know your interpretation of the information you are sharing with us so don’t just say Apple just released the next gen iPhone. Tell us if you bought it and if so why and if not why and do you like it or love it or hate it and why.

3. Put a picture in your blog post. At least one. Some of us are visual and some of us have absolutely no imagination whatsoever and we need to look at a picture.

4. Don’t be all business and don’t be stuffy. If we wanted to read a textbook we would buy one and no we do not want to read about your cat. That is not what I’m talking about.

5. Have a blogroll. Call it what you want but we want to know what blogs you read so we can learn more about you and also if we like to read your blog (?) we might also like to read some of the blogs that you also like to read.

Last but not least, do not forget:Links are good manners! Chris Brogan says, “Links are good manners. They signal intent. They connote sharing. They help your audience connect better. Link, even if it takes a bit more time. Fair?”

Ready to get started? I suggest you read How to get a job by blogging in order to learn how to set up the kind of professional blog that will get you hired. This is an excellent article that walks you through the process, step-by-step, with links to and explanations about the things you’ll need. And then check out and bookmark @Animal’s guide to basic HTML for bloggers.

About Stephanie:

stephanie13-070809 Stephanie is Founder and CEO, Radiant Veracity in Atlanta, Georgia, at the intersection of Talent + Social Media.

She is a National Careers + Workplace Columnist for Examiner, a division of Clarity Media Group owned by one of the largest media investment companies in the world. There she authors a highly-regarded career and job search advice column for 70 major markets nationwide.

With more than 15 years of experience in corporate recruiting and executive search, Stephanie works with hiring managers, HR executives, business owners, and recruiting firms on recruitment and retention strategy including how to better utilize social media for talent acquisition and employee communication.

Make Yourself More “Findable” on the Big 3

12 Steps to findability on the big 3 – LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Geoff Peterson of General Lead talks about how you can maximize your presence in the world of social media…

Make Yourself More “Findable” on the Big 3

 

On LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, success starts with your profile, but does not end there. Don’t spare yourself ANY opportunities to be found on these great communities. Make yourself accessible. It’s amazing to me how many recruiters really keep themselves in the dark, not fully utilizing the “Big 3” (LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter) with a complete profile, full contact details and other vital information.                  binoculars

 

Try these 12 fixes to get you on track:

 

1)      With the “Big 3” make sure you complete your profiles to the fullest extent. Don’t leave any sections or areas blank. This is crucial. With LinkedIn and Facebook, fill in your personal information, education, work experience, etc. All of this makes you more “findable” through searches in their systems. With Twitter, you only have 160 characters to work with on your bio, so make each character count by using abbreviations and symbols where you can. Also on Twitter, use a web link in your profile that makes sense for you, such as a link to either your company, career site or a current “hot” open position.

2)      Place your phone number(s) and email address on all three sites. Make it easy to be found by potential job seekers. LinkedIn and Facebook have dedicated contact settings sections to use.

3)      Each of these sites allow some form of customization with your page. In the case of Twitter, try also putting together a background wallpaper for your account that gives additional information about your company and who you are.

4)      Change your profiles and update your status frequently on all three. Give links to open positions. Drive traffic to your opportunities or career sites. Tell people why they should work for you.

5)      In LinkedIn, utilize the “Interests” area as a place to put key words to attract potential candidates to your profile. For example, I have ASP.NET in my interests area as a key word. The thinking is, if a job seeker is looking for someone in the recruiting field in Pittsburgh who specializes in ASP.NET technologies, then my profile would come up.

6)      LinkedIn and Facebook allow “vanity” URL’s. Take advantage of this. Twitter allows a screen name. My suggestion is to make your screen name your real name. This makes it easy for people to remember you and also associate the name with you.

7)      In LinkedIn, use your “Summary” section as a bulletin board to update your current network and new connections on what you do, your current open positions, and how to reach out to you.

8)   LinkedIn allows for applications to be added to your profile. Currently there are only a few to choose from. I recommend adding Slideshare (where you can share PowerPoint presentations), WordPress or Blog Link (where you can add a personal or company blog right to your page) and Box.net (where you can add documents from your company such as open positions and benefits). Facebook allows you to add applications as well to your profile. You’ll find applications for both LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as many other sites you may use. Add ones that are appropriate for you.

9)      Facebook recently updated their privacy settings, allowing members to share their profiles and status updates with not only their friends but with anyone on Facebook as well. This opens up the possibility to reach their enormous community of over 250M people. Learn to take advantage of this.

10)   Facebook limits you to one network at a time (i.e. my network is Pittsburgh, PA.). This causes limitations on who can see your profile in searches. They do however allow you to change it twice every 60 days. This can play into your Facebook strategy if you decide to move from one network to another to gain a larger audience.

11)   On LinkedIn and Facebook, a no-brainer fix is to join groups. On both sites, you’ll find thousands that can be utilized for finding top talent, as well as leaving an imprint of yourself for others to find you. Facebook Fan Pages (similar to groups) are another element for Facebook members to utilize. You always have the option to start your own groups or fan pages as well.

12)   Get yourself up on directories. For example, Twitter has WeFollow and TwitR where users can place themselves among other members using tags (or key words) to be discovered.

 

*There are many more fixes that can allow you to become more findable on the “Big 3.” Want to see some screen shots on these ideas? Need some further clarification on how to fully utilize LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter? Check out my recent webinar presentations on Advanced LinkedIn, Facebook Strategies and TweetTwainer.

 

About Geoff:

geoff-petersonGeoff Peterson is the Managing Principal of General Lead, a national provider of talent delivery, advanced sourcing solutions and custom recruitment training, and is the Founder of RecruitChute, a targeted resume delivery service. In addition, Geoff is also the editor for StaffBytes, a blog dedicated to recruiting industry tips, techniques and instructional videos, and is the author of “The Sourcer’s Playbook.”

Feel free to take a look:  51xzaabnmcl__sl160_1

 The Sourcer’s Playbook is a book dedicated to Sourcers, Recruiters and Researchers. This invaluable book is filled with over 100+ “play-by-play” tutorials for finding active and passive talent directly and indirectly using the web. Take a deep dive into Social and Business Networks, Social Media, Search Engines, The Blogosphere, Microblogs, Niche Communities, Groups, Mobile Technologies, and Sourcer Tools and Technologies. See how to harness the power of the web with advanced search techniques, strings, hacks, commands and sourcing strategies.

YES – Twitter Works For Recruiting! (I have proof)

“it’s time you stopped asking for proof that recruiting using Twitter works, and actually listen when people share proof with you. I recently used a fantastic resource called HARO (Help A Reporter Out)…

YES – Twitter Works For Recruiting! (I have proof)

This post is dedicated to all the nay-sayers and people who keep belly-aching “Show me the ROI of Twitter”…. it’s time you stopped asking for proof that recruiting using Twitter works, and actually listen when people share proof with you. I recently used a twitterfantastic resource called HARO (Help A Reporter Out) started by Peter Shankman, @skydiver on Twitter. I wanted to find individuals who have found their current full-time position through communication on Twitter. Take note: this could be via a job posting that was tweeted, an @ message from a company representative, or a DM from a colleague passing along some information about a position. Here are just a few of the responses I received. The results, quite frankly, I think are going to surprise    you…

1. Chris Kieff – Director of Marketing at Ripple6, Inc.: Chris lost his job in January of 2008. He did the usual things such as going to job boards and  applying for jobs, but he also started increasing his presence on LinkedIn and Facebook, and decided to start his own blog about internet marketing, www.1goodreason.com. He began writing about search engine marketing and internet marketing, and he started connecting with other bloggers through several social media resources and having offline meetings with people to solidify connections (hint). Chris had begun interviewing for various opportunities but as many companies ended up in hiring freezes, he simply wasn’t finding anything. After one such opportunity was lost, he went out to Twitter and tweeted ‘I just lost a job opportunity but I think they want me to be a consultant now…’ An observant employee at Ripple6 who was following him saw his message, said they were looking for a social media person, and he started going through the hiring process. He was eventually hired on full-time as Director of Marketing, based on a Twitter follower directly from Ripple6 who was keeping an eye open.

2. Megan Soto – Account Associate at LaunchSquad: Megan was recruited and eventually hired by her PR firm through Twitter. She was a senior at the University of Oregon and had a couple of internships in the queue for the summer. Megan was active on Twitter and had a class-assigned blog about PR, which was her focus in the Journalism school. She tweeted about one of LaunchSquad’s clients in reaction to a cool New York Times article they’d just secured. While scanning for Twitter activity on the article, Brett Weiner, a partner at LaunchSquad, found her tweet, which led them to her blog and they eventually contacted, interviewed and hired her as a salaried Account Associate.

3. John Robinson, Jr. – Interactive Developer at Balcom Agency: John started at Balcom in April of 2009. He is responsible for coding and helping design numerous websites for businesses and nonprofits using PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. John actually wasn’t looking for a new job when he noticed Balcom Agency’s tweet about a job opening for a developer for its fast-expanding interactive division. Still, he shot a quick direct message back to @Balcomagency to ask about the job, and by the time Balcom’s social media specialist, Kayla Bond, responded he’d already gotten a tweet from Balcom’s interactive account director, Chip Hanna. As webmaster for the Amon Carter Museum for five and a half years, John handled its Twitter account and the Balcom Agency was on the “friend” list.

4. Andrea Slesinski – Media Relations Specialist at MediaSource: Andrea was working at a full-service communications/branding agency and had been hunting for a new job for several months when she saw the post by the media relations director at MediaSource, whom she knew in “real life.” She sent her some correspondence and arranged for interviews via Twitter the entire way through. The only time they communicated outside of Twitter was when Andrea sent her resume and cover letter for the position, which she did via e-mail.

5. Rob Totaro – Account Representative at POTRATZ: Rob just started a job at the end of June 2009 that he found through an update on Twitter. He didn’t know Christy Potratz, one of the owners at Potratz Partners Advertising, but through other people she had begun following me. He followed her back and after a few weeks saw their posting for an Account Rep. He responded and interviewed, and eventually was hired.

6. Lance Hunt – Software Architect/Consultant at Cogent Company: Lance had been on Twitter for a good while before getting laid-off and had around 100 followers at the time. Before the RIF, he already had accumulated a few recruiters as followers as well as many key players/influencers in the .NET Development arena due to a variety of past discussions on technical, social networking, and philosophical topics. The initial announcement about and from Lance and others being caught in the Telligent layoff was a big surprise to many who had been following Telligent over the years, so the overall response from the community was great. It seemed like everyone he had chatted with in the past offered to leverage their contacts and tried to help. At least 75% of Lance’s twitter job prospects were identified indirectly through colleagues in the industry who saw the tweets and gave him a referral or sent his information to someone they knew. The remaining contacts were directly from employers or recruiters who were already active on Twitter and were either interested in topics that he had been discussing and found him through that, or were actively searching on terms around layoffs and job search and found him that way. Lance’s current employer, Cogent Company, was one of those who found him through the former method of searching on topics and following other peoples’ discussions. Marc Hoppers, the owner, had seen Lance’s tweets while researching discussions on social networking topics and contacted him via a DM to see if he would come in for an interview. The rest is history.

7. Tac Anderson – Social Media Director at Waggener Edstrom: Tac’s story is a personal one for me, because it was my direct message to him that alerted him to the position he now has. I had been following Tac’s blog, New Comm Biz, for a little over a year, and we had connected through Twitter and shared a few links and other niceties over time. When the position at Waggener became available, Tac was one of the first folks I reached out to for it. I sent him a direct message and asked if he might be interested. Tac was at a point where he was ready for a new opportunity, so he began the interview process at Waggener and eventually was hired.

8. ME! 🙂 Amybeth Hale – Talent Attraction Manager at AT&T: I was laid off from my job at the end of February. Immediately, I started quietly reaching out to some of my network connections through Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. One of the individuals I reached out to was Chris Hoyt, Associate Director, Talent Attraction with AT&T. Chris and I had been introduced by Jennifer McClure over the fall of 2008, and as we were both bloggers in the recruiting community, we developed a good friendship and respect for each other. When I told Chris what was going on, he set up a time for us to discuss an opening he had on his team, and it was a great fit for both of us. I was hired and started with AT&T at the beginning of April 2009.

I don’t know what additional proof anyone needs that Twitter is a helpful tool for connecting companies who are hiring to candidates who are looking. And for those who say this only works with certain job functions or in certain select industries – take a look at the variety in the stories presented here: we have marketing, PR, advertising, web development, software architecture, and recruiting professionals from companies operating in telecommunications, technology consultancy, interactive design, advertising, multimedia, and public relations. In addition, this worked for people ranging from fresh out of college to senior / director level professionals. So this isn’t limited to just the “social media” people or the “creative” companies.

Another interesting observation I had from reading through these stories is that the majority of the folks mentioned who were monitoring, seeking, and reaching out to these qualified candidates via Twitter were in fact NOT RECRUITERS, but observant employees and either partners or owners in their companies. So… perhaps this is a rude wake-up call to recruiters: the more you resist and poo-poo using tools like Twitter to find, connect with, and develop relationships with people, the more beneficial it will be for the direct hiring authorities, since they’ve already seemed to embrace this method of search.

So my recommendation to you is this: do what you want, and what you think is right for you. But stop asking for proof that it works, because it’s out there and you’re just not listening. And all those candidates are being grabbed up left and right by others who have chosen to embrace the tools, whether or not you do.

About Amybeth:

untitled4 Amybeth began my career in research in the summer of 2002 as the sole researcher for an award-winning MRI-affiliated executive search firm in Ohio and then as the Manager of Internet Research for a recruiting franchisor in Ohio. Most recently, I worked as a Sourcing Strategist for a global public relations firm and am currently working as a Talent Attraction Manager with AT&T, doing strategic sourcing and brand evangelism.

Check out my blog at: www.researchgoddess.com

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Sweat, BO, and Recruiting

I totally get it and how cool is this… Jessica Lee rips it raw with a sometime accurate account of interviewing candidates. The question becomes what do you do? How do you handle certain situations? It’s a fun and quick read, but in reality it’s true…

There are things we don’t really talk about that we probably really need to talk about as recruiters.

For example, you’re sitting across the way from a candidate who is sweating profusely.

 

Let’s rewind to before you realize he’s sweating profusely though. The chap has an awesome resume – maybe he was   even referred to you by a trusted source. You spoke to him on the phone and a five minute conversation was enough for sweat1you to realize that he’s a smart cookie. You’re looking him up on Facebook as you’re chatting. You don’t see anything scary while you’re on the phone so you invite him to meet with you. You greet him in the lobby and notice a slightly clammy handshake. No problem – we all get a little nervous. Five minutes, eight minutes, 14 minutes into the interview, you realize that it’s just not a sheen you’re seeing on his face – he’s sweating. Profusely sweating. And you begin watching the sweat beads roll down his forehead. The sweat has even gathered around his shirt collar which almost appears as if it is bleeding with the top half of his collar, the part touching his neck, darker than the rest of his collar because of the sweat dripping off of his noggin. (As I write this, I’m thinking in particular about this one candidate who was wearing a red collared shirt. The visual was made even worse as a result.)

With this sweating candidate, you take a quick break to look away from him – maybe you look down at his resume and out of corner of your eye, you see him quickly trying to wipe the sweat beads away. Or maybe you stop at another point to look at your computer saying that you need to look at the schedule to double check who he is to meet with after you – and in the reflection of your monitor, you can see that he is fanning himself with his papers. He knows that he is a sweaty mess. You know that he’s sweating. And pretty much, it’s at the point where it’s no longer possible for the situation to not be awkward. He’s uncomfortable, you’re a little grossed out. So at that point, what do you say? What are you supposed to do?

I’m a nice gal, for the most part. But I don’t like looking at people with sweat beads rolling down their foreheads. Neither do you. And it’s highly likely that your hiring manager isn’t going to like it either.  But your inner HR angel says it’s wrong to judge. Maybe the sweat is related to a health condition, which takes you down the path of whether you’re discriminating against him. At which point, you have a few options:

a) Let him flounder, sweaty mess and all.
b) Hand him a tissue.
c) Ask him if he wants a break for water or the restroom.
d) Abandon ship and call it quits. You can’t have a sweater working for you.
e) Fill in the blank…

Thousands of interviews under my belt, I still am stopped in my tracks when faced with a profuse sweater. Depending on the person, I might go for option c, d, or e… but it’s never not awkward, folks. At least for me. But I will say this wholeheartedly – these are the kinds of things we need to discuss. As recruiters, there are lessons I think we need to pass down to junior recruiting pros including the exit strategies we’ve devised over the years. (There’s that good ole.. “I think we have some scheduling difficulties. Crap! No one else can meet with you today! I am so sorry!”)  And for candidates,… well, the truth hurts sometimes but what hurts even worse is you not getting a job because you don’t realize how distracting and off putting something seemingly simple like sweat can be. I’d rather you be embarrassed as you read this, learn from it and land that job because the alternative is you sitting there clueless about what went wrong in your  bointerview.

So what else are we not talking about? Body odor. Overwhelming cologne. Slutty interview outfit. Too much makeup. I know you’ve got some good ones to share in the comments – and while you’re at it, hit the comments with world famous exit strategies because somethings, we need to just put on the table.
—
About Jessica:

jlee-bio Jessica Lee is an Employment Manager for APCO Worldwide, a global PR firm in D.C. Like most upscale HR pros, she spends half of her time on recruiting, the other half on ER, Training and OD.  When she’s not hammering a candidate to determine Motivational Fit, she’s updating her spreadsheet to determine her lifetime “time to hire” and “cost per fill.”   See Jessica’s Riffs and Rants on Fistful of Talent by clicking here…

Talk to Jessica via Email, LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook…

Anyone Can Learn the “Art” of Sourcing

Some people call sourcing an art simply because they are not able to break down their own sourcing process into a series of repeatable steps, including the analytical thought processes applied. The goal is not to remove thought from the process – in fact…read it all here:

Anyone Can Learn the “Art” of Sourcing

In my recruiting career, I’ve come across many people who believe that sourcing is difficult to   learn. I think that there are a number of contributing factors to this belief, including the idea that sourcing is more art than science, exposure to poor and/or ineffective training, the lack of  picture62access to a sourcing mentor, and in some cases – the absence of a true desire to master the craft.

I feel that sourcing is more science than art and can be relatively easy to learn, provided you actually WANT to learn and have access to the proper training and resources.

Art vs. Science

Dr. John Sullivan believes that “The primary difference between a function that is driven by science versus one driven by ‘art’ is that the scientific approach allows a business or recruiting process to be repeated again and again with the exact same level of quality and results.”

What some expert sourcers can do quite literally appears to be magic – I can understand where the idea that sourcing is an “art” comes from.  However, I am here to tell you that candidate sourcing CAN be broken down to a process that can be repeated by anyone, and breaking the sourcing process down to a repeatable science does NOT remove creativity from the equation.

Some people call sourcing an art simply because they are not able to break down their own sourcing process into a series of repeatable steps, including the analytical thought processes applied. The goal is not to remove thought from the process – in fact, it’s quite necessary. However, even the creative thought processes applied by sourcing “magicians” can be broken down into a process that anyone can follow and execute repeatedly, with excellent results.

How Do People Learn?

Part of the reason why some people believe that sourcing is an “art” is because of how they were trained, or more correctly, how they were NOT trained.

Mastery of the sourcing process does not come from reading books, blogs, or cheatsheets, nor does it come from attending seminars. Although quite a bit of information can be transferred from these training materials and means, the most effective method of learning exactly how to expertly source top talent comes from a combination of #1 Training that involves the ability to practice the sourcing techniques and strategies being learned with immediate feedback from the trainer, and #2 Having access to a sourcing coach or mentor who can provide you regular feedback and coaching on your sourcing efforts.

Occupational training studies have shown that the vast majority of people learn by DOING, not by reading and watching. Thus it is critical that any effective sourcing training will allow you to use the techniques you’re being taught under the guidance and evaluation of the trainer

After the formal training sessions are over, it is critical to have ongoing access to a sourcing mentor. Without a mentor, sourcers and recruiters don’t have any basis of comparison when it comes to the quality and effectiveness of their sourcing strategies and tactics. Without a basis of comparison, most people are simply not capable of objectively judging the quality and quantity of their search efforts. It’s similar to taking a single golf lesson and then going to play golf without the instructor watching and coaching you and expecting to become a professional golfer.

Lacking the ability to apply what you’ve been trained on under the guidance of an expert coach, there is no way for you to receive immediate feedback on the sourcing techniques you’re applying. Until a highly proficient mentor reviews and assesses your sourcing efforts and results objectively, you may actually be in a dangerous state of ignorant bliss. You don’t know what you don’t know.

Disturbing Statistics

I recently read Shally Steckerl’s excellent ERE post referencing the findings from the Arbita Recruitment Genome Report (a link is provided in the post to download the report) and learned that 81% of the 482 respondents feel Internet sourcing is a major part of their recruitment strategy, 79% manage Internet sourcing internally, and that 47% feel their team has inadequate training on Internet research and sourcing.

If most companies highly value sourcing and feel it is a major part of their recruiting strategy, and most manage the process internally, yet nearly half feel their team has inadequate training – the $64,000 question is WHY is the training inadequate for such a critical function?

Perhaps it is because many companies simply don’t possess strong in-house sourcing expertise? Or could it be due to a poorly designed and executed sourcing training program? The worst case scenario is that it could be both.

If a sourcing and recruiting team doesn’t already posses at least 1 sourcing expert – buying training materials, watching webinars, and attending seminars will not magically convert the team into a group of sourcing experts. What’s missing from these training methods is that when the team members who participate in the training go back to their office, the training has little chance of sticking without a highly proficient sourcing mentor on the team to evaluate their efforts and provide feedback, guidance, and a basis of comparison.

Ideally, a team with at least 1 sourcing expert can leverage that person to assimilate (Borg-style, if you will) all training materials, strategies, and tactics they are exposed to and incorporate them into an effective training program involving interactive feedback that is critical for learning and lots of deliberate practice.

Master your Craft

I’ve been told that sourcers and recruiters don’t want to know “this Boolean stuff,” that they just want resumes delivered to them with the least amount of effort, and that sourcers and recruiters want sourcing solutions that require little-to-no thinking.

That’s like being on the golf course and overhearing other golfers complain about how hard golf is, that they don’t want to put the effort into learning the rules or even a proper swing, and that they just want to swing a club and have the ball go into the cup, get it over with, and go home. Why are they even on the golf course if all they do is complain and they have no real interest in playing the game? Get off the course!

Similarly, if you’re a sourcer or a recruiter who is responsible for the finding candidates and you’re not interested in and dedicated to mastering your craft, you should look for another job. Unlike golf, which is a hobby for most, if you are a sourcer or recruiter, finding candidates is your job – it’s at least part of, if not all of what you get paid to do. But maybe that’s the issue – if finding candidates is just a job and not a passion, you will never master the craft of talent identification.

A Call to Action

  • If you are a sourcer or recruiter and you’re not already a sourcing guru, commit to becoming one. You can’t hire or place someone you can’t find.
  • Seek out training that #1 goes beyond the “what” and deeply into the “how” and the “why,” and #2 allows you to use the techniques you’re being taught under the guidance and evaluation of the trainer.
  • Find and engage a sourcing mentor who is capable of expertly and objectively judging the quality and quantity of your sourcing efforts as well as capable of consistently challenging and pushing you just beyond your current ability.
  • Perform deliberate practice of sourcing best practices under the guidance of an expert coach or mentor.
  • If you manage sourcers or recruiters who are responsible for sourcing and you don’t already have at least 1 person with expert-level sourcing expertise – acquire one. If you want to have the best talent identification and acquisition team in the world, upgrade your entire team.
  • Taking a golf lesson from Tiger Woods will not make you play as well as Tiger Woods. It’s what you DO with the training – be sure to attack the unfamiliar and the uncomfortable with passion, seek to figure out the “why” and the “how” and to continually improve your skills and ability.

About Glen:

picture7 Glen Cathey is the author of www.booleanblackbelt.com, a blog about sharing best practices for leveraging the Internet, job boards, resume databases, and social networks for sourcing and recruiting. With over 12 years of experience in the recruiting and staffing industry, he currently serves as the V.P. of Recruitment for a large staffing firm and trains hundreds of recruiters every year in the art and science of leveraging technology for talent identification and acquisition.

Act While Other’s Wait – the Arbita Recruitment Genome Report

There are so many tools and services in our industry, each vying for your attention and promising to be the only solution you need. However, many of them are mostly “bells and whistles”, providing little value to your organization’s employment brand or recruitment effectiveness. DOWNLOAD the Full Genome Project Here FREE!

Act While Other’s Wait – the Arbita Recruitment Genome Report

In May 2009, Arbita revealed the first survey results from the Recruitment Genome Report. The purpose of this multi-year research project is to define the most effective recruitment practices from among the thousands available.

Below are my thoughts about the results, but you can download the full 11-page report for yourself here: http://www.arbita.net/Offer/Recruitment-Genome-Report-Download.html

Why is this important to staffing leaders?

There are so many tools and services in our industry, each vying for your attention and promising to be the only solution you need.  However, many of them are mostly “bells and whistles”, providing little value to your organization’s employment brand or recruitment effectiveness. Don’t be alarmed – such is the case among vendors in every industry, not just in recruitment. Our industry has long needed a concerted, vendor neutral, consensus-based approach to answer the question of what works and what is just hype.

Our job as recruiters has always been incongruous. We must be masters of basic human psychology, well-versed in business rules and requirements, savvy in the use of tools and technology, and cognizant of the nuances of the industry and its unique business “ecosystem.” All the while, we receive little thanks from the customers we advocate, both our hiring managers with urgent job openings they have a hard time filling, and our candidates who depend on us to champion their cause and provide a good match. Both appreciate us only when we are most desperately needed, and otherwise tend to categorically dismiss us regardless of how often we prove our value.

It doesn’t help that the recruitment industry changes so dramatically from day to day. Modern recruiters must truly be project managers. No individual could learn how to handle the multitude of specialties found in all aspects of recruiting on their own in one lifetime. This is why the answer to “what works” must come from a community, not from one single person’s biased voice, no matter how experienced or seasoned a leader s/he may be.

This report is important to staffing leaders because:

  • Our industry has long needed a concerted, vendor neutral, consensus-based approach to answer the question of what works and what is just hype. Through this report we intend to find some consensus around which technologies are appropriate based on real results, not just on speculation.
  • The answer to “what works” in recruiting must come from a community not from one single person’s biased voice. New ideas are great. Innovation is necessary. But so is testing and validation, and not just in one environment. If a solution works only in specific, rare or controlled situations then it is not a best practice.
  • Our service economy has given way to a knowledge economy. Knowledge comes from people and that makes recruiters critical to an organizations survival but the recruiting industry has not yet dealt with this shift. The recruiters role will become increasingly valuable as job seekers become more sophisticated at finding connections and networking for their next job.
  • Most survey respondents believe Internet recruiting is so key it must be kept in-house but half felt team is inadequately trained. Just going out and buying any training is not the solution. First we need to better understand the gaps shared across many organizations, then we can devise the best ways to fill those gaps.
  • Companies’ recruitment goals are not strategic when their staffing leaders highly value Internet recruiting, yet half feel sourcing skills are deficient and are not allowed to spend on developing recruiters’ skillset. It is not a leader’s job to know how best to do all the jobs but to make everyone’s job better.

The staffing leader’s world is extremely complex and not getting easier

Staffing leaders in both corporate and agency roles must contend with the latest and greatest employment branding challenges, online social and professional networks, job boards and resume databases, employment advertising destinations, recruiting exchanges, referral services, leads databases, resume capture and processing technologies, and communication platforms; not to mention contend with organizational requirements around Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) and possibly even Contact Relationship Management (CRM) Systems.

“Our service economy has given way to a knowledge economy. Our economic survival now depends on the exchange of knowledge, not the exchange of services. Knowledge comes from people, and people are at the heart of recruiting. Therefore, our jobs will be even more crucial to our organization’s growth and progress in the years ahead. However, the recruiting industry has not yet dealt with that shift.”

As a longitudinal study, Arbita’s report is not yet complete but the first stage revealed to me a few surprises and confirmed some suspicions. Perhaps the most salient confirmation is that the recruitment industry, by and large, has not yet realized that our service economy has given way to a knowledge economy. Our economic survival now depends on the exchange of knowledge, not the exchange of services. Knowledge comes from people, and people are at the heart of recruiting. Therefore, our jobs will be even more crucial to our organization’s growth and progress in the years ahead. However, the recruiting industry has not yet dealt with that shift.

Anything short of a synergistic recruiting strategy involving all these components remains tactical no matter how excellently executed:

  • Solid team architecture. This could mean centralization, decentralization, or a hybrid of both. And it could include various definitions of roles, both internal (employees) and external (vendors/partners). But what it must include is strong definition. There’s very little in the form of a “standard” for recruitment positions. How can an organization decide if it needs a dedicated sourcer, community developer, or candidate developer if the definition of the primary role of recruiter varies so widely? Answering questions around what kinds of team structures really work will go a long way in making more efficient use of the technologies available.
  • Direct sourcing ability. Every recruiting organization should be able to find leads for their hard-to-fill positions. Finding talent and making connections is a core value we offer. Survey respondents clearly agree this is an important skill. Not all positions are “critical hires” but when they are, we need to be able to fend for ourselves and not depend on someone else doing it for us. This doesn’t mean every recruiter must be a master researcher, it just means every recruiting team needs to have some ability to get out of a tight spot and find a handful of leads at critical times.
  • Functioning analytics. We don’t know what we don’t know. 62% of staffing leaders feel they have the wrong metrics but 70% of them feel their marketing strategies are satisfactory. How could anything be proven satisfactory when it is not being adequately measured? Before we can begin to target social media sites, focus our search engine marketing, or more accurately distribute our job advertisements, we must have complete details on every click and forward. Anything else is just guesswork. The only way to do this is with a system capable of tracking every source without requiring us to manually create or police the source categories inside our applicant tracking software.
  • Grassroots social media involvement. Only 15% of respondents source from blogs! Only half of respondents identify talent on social networks or use search engine queries to find prospects. Each of these mostly ignored sources is larger than any one database, why overlook them? Recruiters can and should engage their target audience in their native habitat and that includes blogs, micro-blogs, networking sites, and online communities.
  • Search engine optimization. Only 25% of respondents have effective strategies for optimizing their organic presence in search engine query results. Fewer than 25% of respondents use search engine marketing to have a paid presence among search engine results. Search engines are the first place where many people go to ask questions. Why are only a quarter of us using them to reach our target audience?
  • Career web sites that provide an engaging user experience and that have full integration into your HRIS. If you are engaging prospects online keep they are going to expect your organization to be web savvy. We already know that arcane and dehumanizing online applications don’t get us very far, but what we are learning is that our applicants are expecting convergence. Next generation career websites will allow applicants to use them how they want to use them, and connect with your on their terms. This may very well involve following your organization on Twitter or belonging to your company Facebook fan page, but the point here is that it is their choice, not yours. Instead of making them go where you want them to go, you now have to be where they already are.
  • Sustainability through nurturing a center of excellence, and championing subject matter expertise. Lets face it, nobody knows everything. But by putting a few good minds together we can certainly keep up. Organizations need a place to house their collective experiences, and a champion or two charged with keeping alive the body of knowledge. Wisdom comes from putting this knowledge into practice, so if the knowledge resides outside your organization, or can easily walk out the door, what becomes then of your wisdom?

Decreased Spending on Recruiter Development

Social media is bringing forward unprecedented change in how people network online. Networking is a critical component of career progression, and modern means for networking are evolving so fast that without learning from others, a recruiter could waste invaluable time just keeping up with the changes.

Social media is also disseminating what were closely-guarded secrets in recruiting and sourcing practices, thus making information freely and openly available. Information, however, is not knowledge. In fact, I would argue that what is available is merely data, not even information. The key to translating all that data into information and eventually knowledge is to determine meaning. Knowledge is what happens when we use our experience, and experimentation, to interpret information and make decisions on how to proceed. Expert advice in matters such as Social Media, SEO/SEM and Sourcing Skill Development is critical for survival, lest your recruiters waste too much time sifting through data, experimenting with dead ends, and re-inventing the wheel.

“An overwhelming majority of staffing leadership respondents indicated decreased spending on the development of their recruiters’ skill set, on search marketing, and on developing a social media presence. This is disturbing to me because we are in the middle of a digital evolution.”

Accomplished vendors, consultants and educators don’t just make guesses or relate data they picked up empirically. Instead, they synthesize it, separate what works from what does not, and act as trusted advisors providing significant value through their experience encountering pitfalls as well as successes. Another reason I find this result disturbing is the fact that nearly all responding companies believe that use of the Internet is such a key recruitment strategy that they see the need to keep this skill set in-house, yet almost half of them felt their team is inadequately trained and are dissatisfied with their current sourcing capability.

Recruitment Goals Fail to be Strategic

This finding is already clear to me just in reviewing the survey results from questions around recruiter development. What it tells me is most staffing leaders responding to the survey highly value Internet recruiting, and half feel their sourcing skills are deficient yet they are being directed to spend the same or less on developing those skills among their recruiters. Clearly, this means recruitment goals are not being thought through at the strategic level.

It is a widely held belief that recruitment goals should be tied directly to strategic business objectives. Survey results find most respondents agree with that belief, and in addition 70% report being satisfied that their company’s recruitment marketing strategy is driving the achievement of overall recruitment goals. However, being strategic about recruitment is not just something we do in marketing. Marketing is a critical component but it is only one of several which need to be executed with synchronicity and efficiency in order to achieve greatness in attracting the right talent at the right time.

Other components include solid team architecture, the ability to directly source a percentage of critical talent that will not respond to marketing, functioning analytics that clearly demonstrate ROI permitting more efficient spend, grassroots social media involvement, search engine optimization, career web sites providing a good user experience that fully integrates with the ATS and HRIS, and sustainability through a center of excellence that champions internal subject matter expertise. Anything short of an integrated strategy involving all these components remains tactical, no matter how excellently it is executed.

I didn’t cover all the points in the survey. Other strategic components of a synergistic approach to staffing are detailed in the full report here:
http://www.arbita.net/Offer/Recruitment-Genome-Report-Download.html

I didn’t cover all the points in the survey. Other strategic components of a synergistic approach to staffing are detailed in the full report here:
http://www.arbita.net/Offer/Recruitment-Genome-Report-Download.html

AWOL Metrics

I was not surprised to find 38% of survey participants felt they have the right metrics to support their recruitment marketing decision, until I realized what that means in context with the previous finding. How could this exist while at the same time 70% of respondents are satisfied with their marketing strategy? To look at this another way, 62% of staffing leaders feel they have the wrong metrics, so how could 70% of them feel their marketing strategies are satisfactory? How could anything be proven satisfactory when it is not being adequately measured?

The reason is adequate recruitment marketing analytics are AWOL (absent without leave) for most staffing leaders. Even more disappointing is how few leaders expect to improve their metrics in the coming year. Why? Because however critical, measuring marketing strategy is both very challenging and time consuming without the right tools. One example of missing data is that more than half of the surveyed population utilizes direct marketing, yet that method is in no way reflected under their source of hire metrics. Also absent are detailed metrics around responses to search engine marketing campaigns, social networking activity or even results of organic search engine optimization. Via the survey we know smart companies are employing them, but when looking at their source of hire these methods are inadequately represented.

Blogs, SEO, SEM and Social Networks are Underutilized

Measurement is not the only gap, the other large gap is utilization. Only about 15% of respondents are utilizing blogs as a source of talent, yet blogs in all their shapes and sizes are among the largest sources of information online, larger than any one database. Only a quarter of the respondents have effective strategies for optimizing their organic presence in search engine query results, and fewer than that use search engine marketing to have a paid presence among those same results. Just shy of half the respondents have effective strategies to identify talent via social networks, and about the same percentage utilize search engines to identify online talent. It is clear to me that even if they get good at measuring from where their best hires come, employers have still a long way to go in tapping all the best sources of talent.

Job Boards Are Ineffectively Used

Traditional job boards are an area where I would have expected surveyed staffing leaders to have the most established, refined and perfected recruitment practices, yet I was stunned to find almost half were dissatisfied with their performance and less than 10% will spend more on job posting solutions this year. Is this because job boards are becoming less effective? No, it is because employers continue to approach job boards the same way they always have, while the Internet population has grown in both size and sophistication, and become more resourceful. People are seeking ways to connect, not just be “talked at” by an advertisement. Vertical search engines specializing in finding information in only one discipline, such as cooking recipes (allrecipes.com), movies (imdb.com) or jobs (simplyhired.com), are living proof that advertising works when it connects with the community by adding some value.

Employers shouldn’t be surprised when response to their job board activity drops because they publish flat, un-engaging, untargeted and unimaginative content, without regard to their readers’ interests. Improvements in those areas would increase results.

But job boards offer more than just advertising; they also have searchable databases full of interested job seeking prospects. It may seem a simple function of “enter keyword and find matching candidates” but that approach often misses talent hidden in plain sight. Though it ultimately means the same thing, employees often describe what they do using language different than what hiring managers use to describe their requirements. As a result resumes, blogs, social network profiles and other relevant content seldom contains the exact same language as in job descriptions, and good prospects go unnoticed.

Appropriate Technology

Through my tour of service in the Peace Corps, working in one of the most remote and inhospitable environments in the western hemisphere, the focus was always to utilize “appropriate technology.” This term refers to utilization of technology that leverages local resources and is mindful of the population’s cultural and social outlook. Rather than forcing the utilization of resource-draining technology just because it is available, staffing leaders would do well to learn from such a highly sustainable approach and utilize the simplest level of technology that effectively achieves their hiring goals.

Initial survey results clearly indicate that not every available solution is appropriate to every environment, and that inexpensive solutions are often ignored while costly ones are ineffectively utilized. Wisdom is in formulating an integrated strategy that maximizes resources you already have, and makes use of a mix of appropriate technology you haven’t yet considered. My recommendation to staffing leaders is that they reach out to trusted external advisors who have their best interest in mind, and not just listen to vendors hawking their product or service as “the only solution you need.” Now is the time to act, while others wait for things to get better, and when your dollars stretch much further than they do in the midst of hiring frenzies.

Are you curious about any of my conclusions? Would you like to challenge them or find different ones of your own? If so, you can get the full survey report here:

http://www.arbita.net/Offer/Recruitment-Genome-Report-Download.html

About Shally:

untitled2 Shally Steckerl is a talent acquisition consultant, strategist, and speaker originally from Colombia, South America, now residing in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Steckerl is the Founder and Chief CyberSleuth of JobMachine, now Arbita ACES (aces.arbita.net), the premier provider of sourcing consulting services and workforce development. Early in his career Mr. Steckerl realized that as a contingency recruiter he could beat the competition by finding people who were not available in mainstream sources. Since then he has been instrumental in building numerous world class sourcing and research organizations.

Because of his passion for the Internet as a recruitment tool and his continually innovative methods, Mr. Steckerl has developed a reputation as one of the most respected authorities in passive candidate research and talent pipeline development worldwide. A pioneer in recruitment Internet research, accomplished author and celebrated speaker, he is a regular contributor to many industry publications. Mr. Steckerl is frequently requested to present at leading domestic and international recruiting conferences and conduct private workshops.

Mr. Steckerl now spends his time consulting with organization interested in building passive candidate pipeline generation and recruitment teams, and developing their advanced sourcing skills.

Please visit the Press & Publications Page for a complete listing of Mr. Steckerl’s speaking engagements and publications. You can reach Shally at [email protected], MSN IM at [email protected], through Text SMS or via skype:jobmachine

Act While Other’s Wait – the Arbita Recruitment Genome Report

There are so many tools and services in our industry, each vying for your attention and promising to be the only solution you need. However, many of them are mostly “bells and whistles”, providing little value to your organization’s employment brand or recruitment effectiveness. DOWNLOAD the Full Genome Project Here FREE!

Act While Other’s Wait – the Arbita Recruitment Genome Report

In May 2009, Arbita revealed the first survey results from the Recruitment Genome Report. The purpose of this multi-year research project is to define the most effective recruitment practices from among the thousands available.

Below are my thoughts about the results, but you can download the full 11-page report for yourself here: http://www.arbita.net/Offer/Recruitment-Genome-Report-Download.html

Why is this important to staffing leaders?

There are so many tools and services in our industry, each vying for your attention and promising to be the only solution you need.  However, many of them are mostly “bells and whistles”, providing little value to your organization’s employment brand or recruitment effectiveness. Don’t be alarmed – such is the case among vendors in every industry, not just in recruitment. Our industry has long needed a concerted, vendor neutral, consensus-based approach to answer the question of what works and what is just hype.

Our job as recruiters has always been incongruous. We must be masters of basic human psychology, well-versed in business rules and requirements, savvy in the use of tools and technology, and cognizant of the nuances of the industry and its unique business “ecosystem.” All the while, we receive little thanks from the customers we advocate, both our hiring managers with urgent job openings they have a hard time filling, and our candidates who depend on us to champion their cause and provide a good match. Both appreciate us only when we are most desperately needed, and otherwise tend to categorically dismiss us regardless of how often we prove our value.

It doesn’t help that the recruitment industry changes so dramatically from day to day. Modern recruiters must truly be project managers. No individual could learn how to handle the multitude of specialties found in all aspects of recruiting on their own in one lifetime. This is why the answer to “what works” must come from a community, not from one single person’s biased voice, no matter how experienced or seasoned a leader s/he may be.

This report is important to staffing leaders because:

  • Our industry has long needed a concerted, vendor neutral, consensus-based approach to answer the question of what works and what is just hype. Through this report we intend to find some consensus around which technologies are appropriate based on real results, not just on speculation.
  • The answer to “what works” in recruiting must come from a community not from one single person’s biased voice. New ideas are great. Innovation is necessary. But so is testing and validation, and not just in one environment. If a solution works only in specific, rare or controlled situations then it is not a best practice.
  • Our service economy has given way to a knowledge economy. Knowledge comes from people and that makes recruiters critical to an organizations survival but the recruiting industry has not yet dealt with this shift. The recruiters role will become increasingly valuable as job seekers become more sophisticated at finding connections and networking for their next job.
  • Most survey respondents believe Internet recruiting is so key it must be kept in-house but half felt team is inadequately trained. Just going out and buying any training is not the solution. First we need to better understand the gaps shared across many organizations, then we can devise the best ways to fill those gaps.
  • Companies’ recruitment goals are not strategic when their staffing leaders highly value Internet recruiting, yet half feel sourcing skills are deficient and are not allowed to spend on developing recruiters’ skillset. It is not a leader’s job to know how best to do all the jobs but to make everyone’s job better.

The staffing leader’s world is extremely complex and not getting easier

Staffing leaders in both corporate and agency roles must contend with the latest and greatest employment branding challenges, online social and professional networks, job boards and resume databases, employment advertising destinations, recruiting exchanges, referral services, leads databases, resume capture and processing technologies, and communication platforms; not to mention contend with organizational requirements around Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) and possibly even Contact Relationship Management (CRM) Systems.

“Our service economy has given way to a knowledge economy. Our economic survival now depends on the exchange of knowledge, not the exchange of services. Knowledge comes from people, and people are at the heart of recruiting. Therefore, our jobs will be even more crucial to our organization’s growth and progress in the years ahead. However, the recruiting industry has not yet dealt with that shift.”

As a longitudinal study, Arbita’s report is not yet complete but the first stage revealed to me a few surprises and confirmed some suspicions. Perhaps the most salient confirmation is that the recruitment industry, by and large, has not yet realized that our service economy has given way to a knowledge economy. Our economic survival now depends on the exchange of knowledge, not the exchange of services. Knowledge comes from people, and people are at the heart of recruiting. Therefore, our jobs will be even more crucial to our organization’s growth and progress in the years ahead. However, the recruiting industry has not yet dealt with that shift.

Anything short of a synergistic recruiting strategy involving all these components remains tactical no matter how excellently executed:

  • Solid team architecture. This could mean centralization, decentralization, or a hybrid of both. And it could include various definitions of roles, both internal (employees) and external (vendors/partners). But what it must include is strong definition. There’s very little in the form of a “standard” for recruitment positions. How can an organization decide if it needs a dedicated sourcer, community developer, or candidate developer if the definition of the primary role of recruiter varies so widely? Answering questions around what kinds of team structures really work will go a long way in making more efficient use of the technologies available.
  • Direct sourcing ability. Every recruiting organization should be able to find leads for their hard-to-fill positions. Finding talent and making connections is a core value we offer. Survey respondents clearly agree this is an important skill. Not all positions are “critical hires” but when they are, we need to be able to fend for ourselves and not depend on someone else doing it for us. This doesn’t mean every recruiter must be a master researcher, it just means every recruiting team needs to have some ability to get out of a tight spot and find a handful of leads at critical times.
  • Functioning analytics. We don’t know what we don’t know. 62% of staffing leaders feel they have the wrong metrics but 70% of them feel their marketing strategies are satisfactory. How could anything be proven satisfactory when it is not being adequately measured? Before we can begin to target social media sites, focus our search engine marketing, or more accurately distribute our job advertisements, we must have complete details on every click and forward. Anything else is just guesswork. The only way to do this is with a system capable of tracking every source without requiring us to manually create or police the source categories inside our applicant tracking software.
  • Grassroots social media involvement. Only 15% of respondents source from blogs! Only half of respondents identify talent on social networks or use search engine queries to find prospects. Each of these mostly ignored sources is larger than any one database, why overlook them? Recruiters can and should engage their target audience in their native habitat and that includes blogs, micro-blogs, networking sites, and online communities.
  • Search engine optimization. Only 25% of respondents have effective strategies for optimizing their organic presence in search engine query results. Fewer than 25% of respondents use search engine marketing to have a paid presence among search engine results. Search engines are the first place where many people go to ask questions. Why are only a quarter of us using them to reach our target audience?
  • Career web sites that provide an engaging user experience and that have full integration into your HRIS. If you are engaging prospects online keep they are going to expect your organization to be web savvy. We already know that arcane and dehumanizing online applications don’t get us very far, but what we are learning is that our applicants are expecting convergence. Next generation career websites will allow applicants to use them how they want to use them, and connect with your on their terms. This may very well involve following your organization on Twitter or belonging to your company Facebook fan page, but the point here is that it is their choice, not yours. Instead of making them go where you want them to go, you now have to be where they already are.
  • Sustainability through nurturing a center of excellence, and championing subject matter expertise. Lets face it, nobody knows everything. But by putting a few good minds together we can certainly keep up. Organizations need a place to house their collective experiences, and a champion or two charged with keeping alive the body of knowledge. Wisdom comes from putting this knowledge into practice, so if the knowledge resides outside your organization, or can easily walk out the door, what becomes then of your wisdom?

Decreased Spending on Recruiter Development

Social media is bringing forward unprecedented change in how people network online. Networking is a critical component of career progression, and modern means for networking are evolving so fast that without learning from others, a recruiter could waste invaluable time just keeping up with the changes.

Social media is also disseminating what were closely-guarded secrets in recruiting and sourcing practices, thus making information freely and openly available. Information, however, is not knowledge. In fact, I would argue that what is available is merely data, not even information. The key to translating all that data into information and eventually knowledge is to determine meaning. Knowledge is what happens when we use our experience, and experimentation, to interpret information and make decisions on how to proceed. Expert advice in matters such as Social Media, SEO/SEM and Sourcing Skill Development is critical for survival, lest your recruiters waste too much time sifting through data, experimenting with dead ends, and re-inventing the wheel.

“An overwhelming majority of staffing leadership respondents indicated decreased spending on the development of their recruiters’ skill set, on search marketing, and on developing a social media presence. This is disturbing to me because we are in the middle of a digital evolution.”

Accomplished vendors, consultants and educators don’t just make guesses or relate data they picked up empirically. Instead, they synthesize it, separate what works from what does not, and act as trusted advisors providing significant value through their experience encountering pitfalls as well as successes. Another reason I find this result disturbing is the fact that nearly all responding companies believe that use of the Internet is such a key recruitment strategy that they see the need to keep this skill set in-house, yet almost half of them felt their team is inadequately trained and are dissatisfied with their current sourcing capability.

Recruitment Goals Fail to be Strategic

This finding is already clear to me just in reviewing the survey results from questions around recruiter development. What it tells me is most staffing leaders responding to the survey highly value Internet recruiting, and half feel their sourcing skills are deficient yet they are being directed to spend the same or less on developing those skills among their recruiters. Clearly, this means recruitment goals are not being thought through at the strategic level.

It is a widely held belief that recruitment goals should be tied directly to strategic business objectives. Survey results find most respondents agree with that belief, and in addition 70% report being satisfied that their company’s recruitment marketing strategy is driving the achievement of overall recruitment goals. However, being strategic about recruitment is not just something we do in marketing. Marketing is a critical component but it is only one of several which need to be executed with synchronicity and efficiency in order to achieve greatness in attracting the right talent at the right time.

Other components include solid team architecture, the ability to directly source a percentage of critical talent that will not respond to marketing, functioning analytics that clearly demonstrate ROI permitting more efficient spend, grassroots social media involvement, search engine optimization, career web sites providing a good user experience that fully integrates with the ATS and HRIS, and sustainability through a center of excellence that champions internal subject matter expertise. Anything short of an integrated strategy involving all these components remains tactical, no matter how excellently it is executed.

I didn’t cover all the points in the survey. Other strategic components of a synergistic approach to staffing are detailed in the full report here:
http://www.arbita.net/Offer/Recruitment-Genome-Report-Download.html

I didn’t cover all the points in the survey. Other strategic components of a synergistic approach to staffing are detailed in the full report here:
http://www.arbita.net/Offer/Recruitment-Genome-Report-Download.html

AWOL Metrics

I was not surprised to find 38% of survey participants felt they have the right metrics to support their recruitment marketing decision, until I realized what that means in context with the previous finding. How could this exist while at the same time 70% of respondents are satisfied with their marketing strategy? To look at this another way, 62% of staffing leaders feel they have the wrong metrics, so how could 70% of them feel their marketing strategies are satisfactory? How could anything be proven satisfactory when it is not being adequately measured?

The reason is adequate recruitment marketing analytics are AWOL (absent without leave) for most staffing leaders. Even more disappointing is how few leaders expect to improve their metrics in the coming year. Why? Because however critical, measuring marketing strategy is both very challenging and time consuming without the right tools. One example of missing data is that more than half of the surveyed population utilizes direct marketing, yet that method is in no way reflected under their source of hire metrics. Also absent are detailed metrics around responses to search engine marketing campaigns, social networking activity or even results of organic search engine optimization. Via the survey we know smart companies are employing them, but when looking at their source of hire these methods are inadequately represented.

Blogs, SEO, SEM and Social Networks are Underutilized

Measurement is not the only gap, the other large gap is utilization. Only about 15% of respondents are utilizing blogs as a source of talent, yet blogs in all their shapes and sizes are among the largest sources of information online, larger than any one database. Only a quarter of the respondents have effective strategies for optimizing their organic presence in search engine query results, and fewer than that use search engine marketing to have a paid presence among those same results. Just shy of half the respondents have effective strategies to identify talent via social networks, and about the same percentage utilize search engines to identify online talent. It is clear to me that even if they get good at measuring from where their best hires come, employers have still a long way to go in tapping all the best sources of talent.

Job Boards Are Ineffectively Used

Traditional job boards are an area where I would have expected surveyed staffing leaders to have the most established, refined and perfected recruitment practices, yet I was stunned to find almost half were dissatisfied with their performance and less than 10% will spend more on job posting solutions this year. Is this because job boards are becoming less effective? No, it is because employers continue to approach job boards the same way they always have, while the Internet population has grown in both size and sophistication, and become more resourceful. People are seeking ways to connect, not just be “talked at” by an advertisement. Vertical search engines specializing in finding information in only one discipline, such as cooking recipes (allrecipes.com), movies (imdb.com) or jobs (simplyhired.com), are living proof that advertising works when it connects with the community by adding some value.

Employers shouldn’t be surprised when response to their job board activity drops because they publish flat, un-engaging, untargeted and unimaginative content, without regard to their readers’ interests. Improvements in those areas would increase results.

But job boards offer more than just advertising; they also have searchable databases full of interested job seeking prospects. It may seem a simple function of “enter keyword and find matching candidates” but that approach often misses talent hidden in plain sight. Though it ultimately means the same thing, employees often describe what they do using language different than what hiring managers use to describe their requirements. As a result resumes, blogs, social network profiles and other relevant content seldom contains the exact same language as in job descriptions, and good prospects go unnoticed.

Appropriate Technology

Through my tour of service in the Peace Corps, working in one of the most remote and inhospitable environments in the western hemisphere, the focus was always to utilize “appropriate technology.” This term refers to utilization of technology that leverages local resources and is mindful of the population’s cultural and social outlook. Rather than forcing the utilization of resource-draining technology just because it is available, staffing leaders would do well to learn from such a highly sustainable approach and utilize the simplest level of technology that effectively achieves their hiring goals.

Initial survey results clearly indicate that not every available solution is appropriate to every environment, and that inexpensive solutions are often ignored while costly ones are ineffectively utilized. Wisdom is in formulating an integrated strategy that maximizes resources you already have, and makes use of a mix of appropriate technology you haven’t yet considered. My recommendation to staffing leaders is that they reach out to trusted external advisors who have their best interest in mind, and not just listen to vendors hawking their product or service as “the only solution you need.” Now is the time to act, while others wait for things to get better, and when your dollars stretch much further than they do in the midst of hiring frenzies.

Are you curious about any of my conclusions? Would you like to challenge them or find different ones of your own? If so, you can get the full survey report here:

http://www.arbita.net/Offer/Recruitment-Genome-Report-Download.html

About Shally:

untitled2 Shally Steckerl is a talent acquisition consultant, strategist, and speaker originally from Colombia, South America, now residing in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Steckerl is the Founder and Chief CyberSleuth of JobMachine, now Arbita ACES (aces.arbita.net), the premier provider of sourcing consulting services and workforce development. Early in his career Mr. Steckerl realized that as a contingency recruiter he could beat the competition by finding people who were not available in mainstream sources. Since then he has been instrumental in building numerous world class sourcing and research organizations.

Because of his passion for the Internet as a recruitment tool and his continually innovative methods, Mr. Steckerl has developed a reputation as one of the most respected authorities in passive candidate research and talent pipeline development worldwide. A pioneer in recruitment Internet research, accomplished author and celebrated speaker, he is a regular contributor to many industry publications. Mr. Steckerl is frequently requested to present at leading domestic and international recruiting conferences and conduct private workshops.

Mr. Steckerl now spends his time consulting with organization interested in building passive candidate pipeline generation and recruitment teams, and developing their advanced sourcing skills.

Please visit the Press & Publications Page for a complete listing of Mr. Steckerl’s speaking engagements and publications. You can reach Shally at [email protected], MSN IM at [email protected], through Text SMS or via skype:jobmachine

Creatively Weave Your Networking Web

How long have you been on Twitter? How about LinkedIn? Facebook? Friendster? Friendfeed? Touch economic times might effect hiring but it shouldn’t effect your reach. Take a quick read from Kim Hollenshead: “Creatively Weave Your Networking Web”

Creatively Weave Your Networking Web

The current job market has me as a corporate recruiter answering a ton of calls from outside recruiters wanting to help me fill my jobs.

Really? What jobs?

Grant it, I have continued to hire, but not nearly at the rate we had anticipated this year and yet I remain busy. And still the recruiters call asking to help me fill my administrative roles in which I have none. I mean I have friendsterabsolutely NO ADMINISTRATIVE role in my organization. I work at a day trading / hedge fund firm.

My day-to-day work now consists of working on what few job openings (shameless plug – a CFO role currently in which we aren’t paying fees, but I’d love to talk to possible candidates) I have and then giving my attention to more HR Generalist work. It’s not so bad, I’ve only been in my current role of Recruiting Specialist at Kershner Trading since December 2008 and for the last almost three years prior, I was the sole HR / Recruiter at another organization. Either work is fine. It’s work and I’m happy to have it.

But as I pondered about what to write for my post to this group I thought how can I really assist them? What can I tell them from my experiences that this group might not already know and then it hit me . . . I can career counsel this group just the same way I career counsel people every week.

At least two to three times a week I get an e-mail, a call, a note, a LinkedIn request or some form of communication from someone in my network either introducing someone else to me or asking to meet with me. Seem excessive for someone pushing HR paperwork? Perhaps.

But the secret to my silly popularity is that over the last 3 years I’ve been working my network. Not really intentionally mind you, but working it nonetheless.

Prior to my current company I worked for a marketing agency and my Chief Marketing Officer was a cutting edge early adopter who encouraged me to take crazy leaps with him.

For some of you just the term early adopter might be foreign, so I’ll be happy to give you my definition. An early adopter is someone who embraces technology or a new way of doing things far before others even know of its existence.

How long have you been on LinkedIn? Me? Since 2005.

How long have you been on Twitter? Me? Since fall of 2007.

Those are my two main networks of choice. And they work.

I’m not going to brag on the number of people I’m connected to or how many people think I’m cool enough that they follow me. That’s not the point. The point is that I’ve built these networks while no one was really paying attention.

As an HR Manager it really wasn’t my job to have the most followers on any network. My job was to get my job done. But you want to know what I did over morning coffees, lunches, and evening networking events? I mingled. I talked. I LISTENED.

I attended events in which I was the ONLY HR / recruiter type there. I fell in love with social media and attended their Social Media Club meetings once a month in the evenings and their Social Media Breakfasts in the morning before work. I worked the registration tables so I’d become familiar with the attendees and they’d become familiar with me. I’ve been to two South by Southwest Interactive festivals in Austin. Lucky for me it’s in my backyard, so heck I wouldn’t miss that!

I started blogging a couple of years ago. I would bounce over to Plurk when Twitter’s stability sucked. I Flickr. I Facebook. I’ve done my time in MySpace.

If you’re beginning to think I’m a social butterfly you wouldn’t be far from wrong. And you may be asking at this point what is the point?

The point is I wasn’t where other HR and recruiters hung out. I was alone with interesting and amazing people. I was learning about where they hung out, what they were interested in and what new technologies were on the horizon.

Where has this desert brought me? The question is actually WHO has this desert brought me?

It’s brought me an incredibly vast network that I can utilize. Not use. Utilize. There’s a difference. Webster defines use as the art or practice of employing something while utilize is defined as to make use of: turn to practical use or account.

Not only was I where potential future employees lurked, but I was an outsider genuinely interested in them and genuinely interested in the things that they found of interest. And I believe if you were to ask those people today about me they’d tell you that they have a certain level of respect for me because I wasn’t trying to use them, but instead I became their friend.

In fact, I’ve even been asked to speak at events where they want a different perspective on social media and I’m more than happy to oblige. Each of these events brings me more potential employees from either those people specifically or from people within their networks.

I’m still weaving my network web. I’m happy to meet with those out of work and give them pointers on how to get in front of my recruiter / HR counterparts. I’m happy to lend an ear and give advice on how they’ve chosen to pitch themselves to their potential hiring managers. I’m happy to share with them the new technologies I’ve learned and how they could use them in their job search.

So, let me encourage you to step outside of the recruiter / HR networks in which you’ve probably already established yourself. That’s great if you’re attending and finding value in the ERE network, staffing associations and SHRM. But if you limit yourself to talking amongst your peers you’ll find yourself hard pressed to talk to the people that matter – your future candidates and your future employees.

About Kim:

me-1-08  Kim Hollenshead has held various roles within HR since 1997 beginning with that as a corporate recruiter in Austin, Texas. In order to expand her HR knowledge, Hollenshead sought positions that gave her perspectives from both corporate charged initiatives as well as staffing agencies. With the evolution of the internet, Hollenshead found herself mesmerized by online social networking and social media and became involved with these outlets in 2005. Today, Hollenshead marries her HR and online social persona by advocating the use of social networks. She envisions them as tools to help both employees and employers in ways that can either better employees’ skill sets or to create value by using online tools to make high impact business decisions. She serves as a Recruiting Specialist at Kershner Trading Group, a proprietary trading firm in Austin, Texas, created and runs www.helpiwaslaidoff.com, is the communication chair person for her home owners association and in her spare time enjoys gardening, cooking, papercrafting and making jewelry.

Say Something Dan – It’s all about me!

Bill Boorman asked recently what advice I’d give people new to the Recruiting industry. My best advice, don’t get seduced by the technology, don’t get swayed by all the “experts” online, and everywhere else, don’t believe Hiring Managers and HR people who tell you how to do your job. So what do you do?

Those that know me, know I live by this. I’d like to think I’m not selfish, but it is an attitude/awareness which has really has helped since I started believing in it.

I even have some friends, that will recite… “it’s all about Dan!” and I love it.

Let’s go back a little. Many years ago I went to a sales training seminar. They say, that if you get one good thing out of these things then it is money well spent. So there I was, in this huge auditorium with 1500 of my soon to be close friends, vehemently resisting buying the cassette tape (explanation of what term is for those Gen Y’s reading this from wikipedia) selling which was 90% of the seminar. You know the “90% of your time is dead time, traveling in your car, walking to the office etc. Why waste that time? Buy my pack of 192 cassette tapes and you’ll always be learning and making MORE MONEY!” My resistance was strong, in fact I had on my “this is crap why am I wasting my time on this” hat when the presenter said something which changed my professional outlook on life.

Please note these are not direct quotes, even though they are marked out that way, a little license must be allowed, as the seminar was around 15 years ago.

“Get out your business card” he said. “Cross out your company name, and your title consultant, salesman, business development manager, what ever it is” he said. I dutifully obeyed. “now give yourself a new title, call yourself “CEO, Managing Director, Head Honcho, President! whatever.” Now you can see you name and your new title. You are that. You are the CEO of your name, the CEO of you. Everything you do has impact on that person.”

Now that had an impact on me. I started seeing how everything had an impact on me. It gave me a huge amount of confidence, and continues to do so. I began to take my role personally, I began to take my business personally. It made me more professional!

   When I look at situations, opportunities, people, I am a consumer. I think “what’s in it for me?” I look at things like it is my decision, and how it will affect me. I view things like if the business is doing well, then I am successful, and if the company isn’t doing well, then I need to lift my game.

I’ve taken this a little further of late. I have been working with the IT people of my company looking at all this web2.0 technology and how we can implement it in our organisation. There are lots of choices, lots of tools, free stuff, stuff that’ll cost, sexy looking, awesome to have stuff. But hold on… “what’s in it for me?” Will I (and thus my company) benefit from it?

Does having a Plaxo account help? A corporate Facebook page? A corporate Twitter account? A Yammer account? A wiki? A Youtube channel? Video advertising? A MySpace page? A blog? Do I target passive candidates? Do I use job boards or rely on social media? Applicant Tracking Systems in Beta version? Email vs phone calls? Agencies v inhouse? Is old school better?

I’ve tried them all! Some I got nothing out of, and after initial hype and excitement, found no real value to my company (or me) and had to walk away. Admit to mistakes, learn and move on!

Bill Boorman asked recently what advice I’d give people new to the Recruiting industry. My best advice, don’t get seduced by the technology, don’t get swayed by all the “experts” online, and everywhere else, don’t believe Hiring Managers and HR people who tell you how to do your job. Try things, but don’t commit too hard. Find what works for you and stick to it. Make it all about YOU! (or me of course). Respect the profession and thus yourself, you’ll find your groove, but be prepared to step outside it, to expand your horizons.

Trust me, if you are looking for the silver bullet, to fix your Recruiting issues, the only one thing guaranteed to do that, is what is staring back at you from the mirror.

Now recite after me. “IT’S…. ALL…. ABOUT…. ME!”

About Dan:

dnuroo  Dan has been in the Recruitment industry since 1997, where he started working for an IT Recruitment Agency. He worked in a number of roles there, from Resourcer to Account Manager to general consultant. In 2002 he took the plunge into the world of Internal Recruitment and has been in his current role with DWS as National Recruitment Manager since then. He is a career Recruiter who is passionate about the industry, and when time allows he is active in a number of online Recruiting Communities.

Website: http://saysomethingdan.blogspot.com/

Email: [email protected]

Say Something Dan – It’s all about me!

Bill Boorman asked recently what advice I’d give people new to the Recruiting industry. My best advice, don’t get seduced by the technology, don’t get swayed by all the “experts” online, and everywhere else, don’t believe Hiring Managers and HR people who tell you how to do your job. So what do you do?

Those that know me, know I live by this. I’d like to think I’m not selfish, but it is an attitude/awareness which has really has helped since I started believing in it.

I even have some friends, that will recite… “it’s all about Dan!” and I love it.

Let’s go back a little. Many years ago I went to a sales training seminar. They say, that if you get one good thing out of these things then it is money well spent. So there I was, in this huge auditorium with 1500 of my soon to be close friends, vehemently resisting buying the cassette tape (explanation of what term is for those Gen Y’s reading this from wikipedia) selling which was 90% of the seminar. You know the “90% of your time is dead time, traveling in your car, walking to the office etc. Why waste that time? Buy my pack of 192 cassette tapes and you’ll always be learning and making MORE MONEY!” My resistance was strong, in fact I had on my “this is crap why am I wasting my time on this” hat when the presenter said something which changed my professional outlook on life.

Please note these are not direct quotes, even though they are marked out that way, a little license must be allowed, as the seminar was around 15 years ago.

“Get out your business card” he said. “Cross out your company name, and your title consultant, salesman, business development manager, what ever it is” he said. I dutifully obeyed. “now give yourself a new title, call yourself “CEO, Managing Director, Head Honcho, President! whatever.” Now you can see you name and your new title. You are that. You are the CEO of your name, the CEO of you. Everything you do has impact on that person.”

Now that had an impact on me. I started seeing how everything had an impact on me. It gave me a huge amount of confidence, and continues to do so. I began to take my role personally, I began to take my business personally. It made me more professional!

   When I look at situations, opportunities, people, I am a consumer. I think “what’s in it for me?” I look at things like it is my decision, and how it will affect me. I view things like if the business is doing well, then I am successful, and if the company isn’t doing well, then I need to lift my game.

I’ve taken this a little further of late. I have been working with the IT people of my company looking at all this web2.0 technology and how we can implement it in our organisation. There are lots of choices, lots of tools, free stuff, stuff that’ll cost, sexy looking, awesome to have stuff. But hold on… “what’s in it for me?” Will I (and thus my company) benefit from it?

Does having a Plaxo account help? A corporate Facebook page? A corporate Twitter account? A Yammer account? A wiki? A Youtube channel? Video advertising? A MySpace page? A blog? Do I target passive candidates? Do I use job boards or rely on social media? Applicant Tracking Systems in Beta version? Email vs phone calls? Agencies v inhouse? Is old school better?

I’ve tried them all! Some I got nothing out of, and after initial hype and excitement, found no real value to my company (or me) and had to walk away. Admit to mistakes, learn and move on!

Bill Boorman asked recently what advice I’d give people new to the Recruiting industry. My best advice, don’t get seduced by the technology, don’t get swayed by all the “experts” online, and everywhere else, don’t believe Hiring Managers and HR people who tell you how to do your job. Try things, but don’t commit too hard. Find what works for you and stick to it. Make it all about YOU! (or me of course). Respect the profession and thus yourself, you’ll find your groove, but be prepared to step outside it, to expand your horizons.

Trust me, if you are looking for the silver bullet, to fix your Recruiting issues, the only one thing guaranteed to do that, is what is staring back at you from the mirror.

Now recite after me. “IT’S…. ALL…. ABOUT…. ME!”

About Dan:

dnuroo  Dan has been in the Recruitment industry since 1997, where he started working for an IT Recruitment Agency. He worked in a number of roles there, from Resourcer to Account Manager to general consultant. In 2002 he took the plunge into the world of Internal Recruitment and has been in his current role with DWS as National Recruitment Manager since then. He is a career Recruiter who is passionate about the industry, and when time allows he is active in a number of online Recruiting Communities.

Website: http://saysomethingdan.blogspot.com/

Email: [email protected]

Is ResumePal the Answer?

“Job Seeker’s frustration with the application process was sited as the number one concern” says Jessica Miller-Merrell, from a recent poll she conducted via blogging4jobs.com. Is there a legitimate solution? Is ResumePal the answer?

Is ResumePal the Answer? 

 

picture4  Job Seeker’s frustration with the application process was sited as the number one concern during an informal poll I conducted last week using multiple social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and LinkedIn.  The response was overwhelming with well over 50 comments in the form of emails, direct messages, replies, and general comments.  Survey participants expressed concerns with the length of the job search process from the resume to job offer process particularly with the Talent Management Tracking Systems that most mid to large sized companies use to manage their job openings and applicant flow. 

 

@JenniferHarper commented like many, “(Biggest frustration) probably creating an account and entering your information on every organization’s website over and over again.”

 

Candidates on average spend between more than 20-30 minutes creating profiles and submitting applications for job board websites like Monster and CareerBuilder and sometimes even longer for company specific career sites depending on candidate assessments and skill questionnaires that are required as part of the application process. 

 

Job Fox, a company formed in 2004 aims to bring candidates and companies together with a new tool called, ResumePal.  ResumePal is a new service released earlier this year that hopes to make the application process easier for job seekers.  Candidates can visit www.jobfox.com or www.resumepal.com and create a candidate profile online once and have the ability to apply to thousands of company career sites.  Steven Toole, the VP of Employer Marketing compares ResumePal to PayPal.  Much like PayPal, job seekers can use the ResumePal service as a way to universally apply for positions.  Companies and Talent Management Systems who use ResumePal can do so at no cost which certainly makes the new tool attractive. 

 

Job Fox’s biggest obstacle will not only be generating traffic and interest for candidates to log onto their site and create a profile as well as convincing millions of companies to utilize the free service.  Although ResumePal is a service that is at no cost to companies, the majority of companies are struggling to manage outdated and expensive talent management systems.  And updating career service sites is certainly not at the top of the priority list for most companies, who have paired down non-income generating departments like Human Resources, Recruiting, and Information Technology during the current economic crisis. 

 

According to Cheezehead.com, Job Fox has also felt the effects of what Job Fox called “the new normal” economy.  In early February 2009, Job Fox restructured its sales force and laid off 30 sales representatives.    For most, job seekers and recruiting professionals included, the jury is still out for ResumePal.

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a new mother to Ryleigh (pictured above), blogger, human resource professional, and social media enthusiast.  Jessica’s blog at www.blogging4jobs.com provides job seekers tips and tricks for the job hunt allowing them to learn the unwritten rules of the job search.  Jessica’s upcoming book scheduled to be released this fall is called “Tweet This!” Her book discusses Twitter business strategies for small business, non-profits, and consultants.  You can follow Jessica on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 

Google URL Modifications – Applied to International Sourcing

First – ADD the phrase “&cr=countryXX” to the end of any Google search URL. Second – Use a two letter country code to replace “XX” (must be capital letters) then hit Enter. – Searching for international talent? @SourceHenge breaks it down fo you here.

Google URL Modifications – Applied to International Sourcing

Sourcing for international candidates presents many challenges. Job board access can be very expensive as most major boards charge separately for each country. Yet traditional Boolean web searches get very tricky as each country has its own postal codes, geography, metro regions, area codes, etc. It takes a lot of time to become familiar with all this, not to mention the language barrier and all the different translations of the word “résumé”.

Usually for International sourcing on Google I’ve found research on these options:

picture15

¨ Use a “site: search” to find résumés within the Top Level Domain. For this example I want sites that end in .UK. – – site:.UK intitle:cv j2ee -jobs Results

¨ Do a traditional résumé string and then filter it with geography keywords. Example – – intitle:cv j2ee “49” Germany -job Results

¨ Fill out the Advanced Search: Date, Usage Rights, Numeric Range Form and sort results by Region.

 

Problem

1. For the “site: search” I found that the results, while they are accurate, are VERY limiting. Some domains, like .net or .com, will be left out of this search, even though a .com site may also contain information from an international candidate.

2. The problem I had with my traditional search strings was that using “Germany” and area code “49” as keywords got me several false positives. It also required someone to put their phone number on their résumé which doesn’t always happen.

3. And with Google Advanced Search, I didn’t want to have to keep going back to the Advanced Search: Date, Usage Rights, Numeric Range Form every time I wanted to change my search criteria. Also, Google Alerts does not support the Advanced Search function.

Solution: Google Advanced Search – URL Modification

To save time I wanted a way to HAND CODE the results. This way I could automate and set up RSS feeds for new hits, or be able to generate a new search quickly with Copy & Paste. Right now, both Live and Yahoo support Boolean operators that help narrow down a search geographically, but Google does not. Since Google has no geography-based Operators, I decided to spend some time analyzing Google Advanced Search URL’s to see if it was possible.

Here is what a Google URL looks like for a basic J2EE résumé string. The keywords are underlined in the URL:

picture21

Now I am going to use the same keywords, and click the Advanced Search. In the Date, Usage Rights, Numeric Range tab I am going to select France in the Region Field. Now, all my results should originate in France and my URL looks like this:

picture3

When looking over the new URL, I noticed that each new phrase begins with the “&” symbol. Then, I noticed that one of the phrases contained the word “country” so I figured that must be the Region Command in the URL. It is underlined in the picture above.

Putting the Google URL Modification together

First – ADD the phrase “&cr=countryXX” to the end of any Google search URL

Second – Use a two letter country code to replace “XX” (must be capital letters) then hit Enter.

For a Complete List of Country Codes: http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/ctycodes.htm

Example1: ADD “&cr=countryIT” for Italy hosted sites

Example2: ADD “&cr=countryCA” for Canada hosted sites

Example3: Complete Walkthrough

Here is the Original Search URL for the keywords “oracle sales”:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=oracle+sales

Here is the same search Modified for China:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=oracle+sales&cr=countryCN

Benefits

¨ Tons more results than traditional “site: search”. With a Google URL mod search in France I got 2390 Results. With a “site: search” I got only 44 Results.

¨ Automate searches and create RSS feeds from URL’s

¨ Get more results faster with less research

¨ Search beyond Top-Level domains

¨ Create quick web bookmarks of favorite searches

Here are some additional shorthand Google URL mods that may be helpful

¨ &lr=lang_XX Add this to the URL to control the language of the results. Replace XX with the 2 letter Country Code.

¨ &as_qdr=d Add this to return hits dated today

¨ &as_qdr=w Add this to return hits dated within the most recent week

¨ &as_qdr=m Add this to return hits dated within the most recent month

¨ &as_qdr=y Add this to return hits dated within the most recent year

About Adam:

adam1 Adam Wiedmer works within the Recruitment Process Outsourcing industry in the Boston area. He specializes in providing sourcing and recruiting solutions for high-volume recruitment needs. With only two years experience, Adam has placed candidates for Fortune 500 companies in many verticals such as IT, finance, sales, and customer service. Aside from recruiting, Adam is a dedicated musician and spends his time attending concerts, playing bass, and writing music.

Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwiedmer

The Evolution of Recruiting

So when we throw in the idea of recruiting tomorrow’s workforce through social networks and the fun dialogue with naysayers that follows, I keep coming back to one thing – Evolution. Don’t think its relative? Think again.

Guest post by Chris Hoyt (aka: RecruiterGuy)

I recently had the pleasure of sitting in on one of the Future of Talent sessions conducted by Susan Burns and Kevin Wheeler.  I was really impressed with the number of hot topics addressed that were related to recruiting and corporate change, and the conversations that were held as a result.  (I’d really recommend attending one of these events if you can.)

One of the items addressed and that I found the most interesting (and that is a cousin to an earlier article published here) was related to the level in which a company should be involved in, or permit employees to engage in, social networking – and the impact this could have on its talent pool.  The small team chosen to address this item had some interesting thoughts on what types of employees do and don’t use social tools like Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn.  And frankly, I was a bit surprised at a few that felt some types of jobs (by design, not permission) wouldn’t allow an employee to be “social.”

While the conversation was interesting – and the opinions varied – the group was almost unanimous on one aspect of the issue…  Companies can police or attempt to control the conversations taking place – but they’ll ultimately fail. And as a result, they’ll not only do a disservice to their own (employment) brand but they risk a message being crafted by their employees that is much less than favorable and that they can’t be taken seriously by participants when addressing.

This is of course more of the same basic verbiage that you’ll find at any social recruiting, new media, or marketing webinar or speaking sessions – it’s not rocket science.  The idea is that if the employees want to collaborate or network or even just complain… they will.  And they’ll do it from a desktop, laptop, mobile phone, internet cafe, etc.  It just doesn’t matter – the world is getting smaller as technology makes it easier for people to communicate and share.
(note: don’t forget that encouraged communication and involvement could just as easily foster positive messages and communication about an employer’s culture – the dialogue doesn’t have to be (and certainly isn’t always) negative!)

So when we throw in the idea of recruiting tomorrow’s workforce through social networks and the fun dialogue with naysayers that follows, I keep coming back to one thing – Evolution.  Don’t think its relative?  Think again.

We aren’t recruiting the same way we did 10 years ago.  Heck, we aren’t even recruiting the same way did last year.  And it’s not because we’ve stumbled on these “fun” new tools that no one ever thought of before…  It’s because smart recruiters change how they recruit – by engaging the talent in ways that are most comfortable for the candidate and by going TO the candidates – not posting and praying and waiting to be found.  Smart recruiters do this to survive.  They do it because they have to.

“Evolution is not a force but a process. Not a cause but a law.” – John Morley

Social Recruiting isn’t a fad. Mobile Recruiting isn’t a rumor.  We’re in the middle of a major “shift” when we talk about how people today – and the workforce of tomorrow – are communicating and engaging one another.  If a company wants to stay as competitive as possible they’ll realize that this change is really no more a phenomenon than the move from fax was to email.  It’s inevitable and it’s upon us.

So when we think about avoiding social networks for recruiting – or even locking our recruiters out of them at work – I almost laugh a bit.  With the growth of networks like LinkedIn (probably the easiest network to justify in a workplace) that are growing by an average of 500k members a week we’ve got to see that cutting these off from our talent hunters is like giving them a screwdriver to drive in a nail.  It might get done – but nowhere near as quickly or neatly (or without injury) as it could.

Quick concerns when the conversation turns to opening up the floodgates?

  1. Where to start (what network?!)
  2. How to prevent a Time Suck (recruiters “wasting” time!)
  3. Measuring the Return (hires or applications?)
  4. Maintenance (okay, what now?)

These are pretty common and core concerns for not only teams that are just getting started but companies that have been dabbling in social networks for talent for any amount of time.  None of them should be show-stoppers, however.  And if you’ve been doing this for a while then you know that none of them should be discounted – regardless of a company’s size.

I’ll be blowing out the bullets above in some upcoming articles but the message delivered here (and hopefully the conversation that follows) is that if companies want to remain competitive they’re going to have to shift that “police state” mentality or break through that barrier of fog or resistance related to social recruiting and networking.  Will Social Recruiting replace the job boards?  No – certainly not anytime soon and with the possibility of never.  But you will see social integrated more and more into the major boards and in both big and small ways on company recruiting sites through 2010.

Are you evolving?  Are you interested in talking about how recruiting is changing?  Comment on this post and/or text “RecruiterGuy” (no quotes) to 41411 on your mobile device and lets keep the conversation going.

Convinced that social networks are a waste of time and don’t yield results?  That’s cool, too.  Just fax me your… oh wait… I haven’t even seen a fax machine all year.

Never mind – just log off of the internet connection that you’re obviously borrowing from someone else and forget you ever read this.


About Chris Hoyt:

As a mobile marketing/recruiting evangelist and self proclaimed Social ‘X’ addict, Chris Hoyt has been pushing the boundaries of each aspect of full-cycle recruiting for over 14 years – most recently as the Associate Director of Talent Attraction at AT&T.

With a passion for breaking out of traditional recruitment practices and a background that includes training it’s no mystery that the combined teams of recruiters and sourcers working with Chris are constantly evolving and pushing the envelope of non-traditional talent attraction and recruitment.  Whether functioning as a coach, team lead, or individual contributor it’s his top notch results using ‘out of the box’ strategies that have established him as a recruiting expert amongst peers and clients alike.

In a time where the return on investment for social media struggles to be defined within the recruiting and staffing world, Chris moves forward in an effort to show impact, scope of reach and brand influence by engaging and tracking both the candidate’s involvement and experience.

More than One Route through the Search Process

Google can’t solve every search, but it can sure as heck get you closer to the answer in most cases. Shannon Myers outlines 7 ways to help you adjust your search to stay in tune with evolving search techniques. In the end it’s back to the basics…

Recently, I came across this sign posted in front of one our local churches

Google has a number of great solutions but indeed it cannot solve every search ….neither can any search engine, job posting site, mobile recruiting, phone sourcing, google-search2social media or any other new strategy or tool that comes out. I’m not saying they don’t solve many and I am sure someone will come out to debate me on the subject as there often are but really there is no one set way of doing things. Not every search is the same and most definitely neither are the recruiters who conduct the search or the candidates and employers we work with.

So why do I tell you this. When Ryan approached me about writing a blog post I tried to think about something I could write about that I am most passionate about in recruiting. What I am passionate about is not one particular part of the recruiting process but the search itself and the evolving ways of conducting a search.

 

Every day I get hit with emails and phone calls trying to get me to buy “the” product for recruiting today, switch over to “the best” applicant tracking system around, purchase postings on “the best” new or old job board out there, etc. I am sure many of you either are getting these solicitations or are in a sales role but who determines who or what is the best? There are arguments back and forth every day about why someone thinks their way is the best. If every one of these were actually the best and the only way to work then why aren’t we all doing the same thing? Wouldn’t we just get the same results?

Instead of exhausting yourself trying to do things the way someone else is telling you, work in a niche you really don’t like because it’s “the” hot industry today or emulate the search process of a self-proclaimed guru, explore a little and find what works for you. Most likely the answer will be you enjoy what you do, the searches will come easier and candidates and employers will notice how genuine you are about the process.

Here are a few thoughts that may lead you along your own path.  7_in_7_logo-medium

Plan Each Search

Even if it takes 2 minutes and most of the process is repeated like checking your ATS first or reaching out to your network for referrals, try to make a plan for how you are going to conduct your search. Plan for change, it’s inevitable. Whether it’s the needs of the job or the availability of candidates, whatever it is we are dealing with people and life and people are not static. Even Google as an example – if you sat on Google with the same search string plugged in for a week most likely your results would change from beginning to end.  The more complicated the search, the longer the process the more that changes.

Time

Know how much time you have to devote to a search and what needs to be accomplished during any particular time period. Stick with what already works but if you have time explore something new. You cannot use every tool in every search but by taking a few minutes to plan your search especially if you have multiple searches running at once you will find time savers and wasters. As it happens often it will also keep any online recruiting time directed at searching not surfing.

Budget

Searches can involve paid or free tools, ad posting, research, whatever. Know what your budget is and what you feel comfortable using. Just because “everyone” is using a tool does not mean that you should blow your budget on something that might not work for you.

I wanted to purchase a piece of software once that I knew I would only use for a week or two at max. I called a sales rep explained the situation and they said no problem what you are looking for is really inexpensive, it’s only twenty nine ninety-nine. Luckily when they told me the amount that would be charged to my account it was phrased as two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars. Their inexpensive was $2995.00, mine $29.95. Does it mean I wouldn’t spend $2995 on a tool if I felt it saved me more time and money than the cost, no but for that particular tool I was not willing to go above a couple hundred dollars. What’s fits into your budget?

Skill and Comfort Level

A tool or technique is only as good as the recruiter using it. Whether it’s technical or presentation skills are you really going to be comfortable with your skill level and knowledge to utilize a particular tool or technique?

Last year at SourceCon both Dave Copps and Michael Marlatt blew me away with some of the mobile recruiting technology they discussed. I’ve listened to follow up discussions by Michael and am an avid visitor to his site. Now do I still think mobile recruiting is going to soon be a part of our main stream recruiting culture and can be very useful? Yes. Do I have the budget to implement an SMS campaign and the skills to make it happen? You got it. Do feel comfortable enough with it to actually use it? Heck no!

There are a lot of discussions lately about whether Social Media is useful as a recruiting tool.  Those who have not at least experimented I think are missing out but if they have tried an avenue using Social Media and they just are not comfortable using it I completely understand. And those of you trying to cross them over, why would I debate a competitor to use something I have success with that they have no interest in using? I’d rather they don’t use it, more for me. Like SMS, there are things I know I have the skill, budget and knowledge to utilize but I just haven’t gotten comfortable with yet. You’ll find phrases or scripts people use when marketing candidates to new employers that may work perfectly for them but if you try to repeat them in it may not work for you.

Listen to what others might have to offer but find your own voice.

Prepare Your Environment for Your Work Style

This may seem a little geeky and will definitely give you insight into how organized I do things but every day I track things with lists and spread sheets. I think I’m probably one of the few women who gives her husband to-do lists on the weekend that come directly from a categorized spread sheet.  I keep track of things constantly to keep organized the ever evolving piles of information. Every day seems to be a new site, a new trick or technique, a question or a way to phrase something. I may not use them right away or have time to try each one out but I try to explore a little each week and see what new things I can incorporate into my arsenal.

When I worked in a bullpen office setting I was amazed to see how each cube was different yet the person with the quietest voice, sparsely decorated environment who came in an hour early every day was equally as successful as the loud boisterous one who was always late and whose cube you required only the sense of smell to locate. It didn’t matter the environment or the words they used when speaking with candidates and employers because they used what worked for them. My endless organizing would drive someone else batty but it works for me.  Some people strive for the paperless office. That’s a great accomplishment but if you find yourself happy and productive finding the best candidates to fill the jobs and it means you turn off your computer, use sharp #2 pencils with a polka dot notebook, go for it.

On the technical end, just like customizing your surroundings, maybe try configuring your computer browser to use the tools you most need as well. IGoogle is still a favorite of mine but there are endless to choose from Opera, Alefo, Netvibes, myYahoo, GoogleChrome, etc.

Change Your Approach

When using search engines explore other options besides Google and Bing. Try posting the same search to various engines and watch the different results. Some of my favorites are Google, Exalead and Clusty but now we have search engines just for specific types of search like TwitterSearch, Bloglines, Icerocket, Everyzing, Whozat, Pipl, Wink, etc. If you are bored with the way you view results try SearchMe or Viewzi.  Or better yet create something that resembles your own search engine using RSS Feeds or Yahoo Pipes. The list goes on but the idea is to experiment.

Too often we fall into a routine of using the same terms to describe the same jobs and often get the same results. It’s always good to shoot first for the easy target but when that fails, find out what else a title or skill could be called. I like Broadlook’s Title Research tool and the dictionary or thesaurus. I also look at competitor’s ads online, note different wording on resumes I receive or use sites like Onetcenter.org and Wikipedia for detailed job descriptions.  Use your stand by descriptions but try incorporating some new ones and see what results you gain.

Only you know what motivates you’re the best. A manager can ring a bell, hold a contest, buy everyone pizza for lunch, etc but they are just grasping for ways to find something that is going to motivate you. If you get stuck in a rut try a different approach. Maybe work from a different desk, stand when you are on the phone instead of sitting, take on a new persona if you are phone sourcing (it will at least be fun for a phone call or two), blast some music for few minutes between calls or take a quick run around the block. Don’t wait for someone else to motivate you, find you own motivation.

Listen and Learn from your Candidates, Your Employers and Your Colleagues

Recently someone was on Twitter complaining that it was crazy to follow other recruiters online. To each their own, seriously, but I have gained so much knowledge by following other people in our industry its amazing. Sites like RecruitingBlogs.com and ERE.net have really opened a dialogue for people to share ideas. Twitter, Plurk, even the beloved Recruiting Animal Show are an expansion to continue the dialogues in real time. Industry experts who offer webinars and host sessions at events, bloggers who open themselves up for endless comments and coordinators of small one or two person events to coordinating large conferences are all people you can learn from. If everyone is following someone and you don’t know why that’s even more reason to reach out to them. Know who you are learning from. If you connect with someone online and find them interesting, reach out, pick up the phone and talk to them. Hold a discussion that entails more than 140 characters at a time.

People love to talk if someone seems genuinely interested. Take the time to ask the right questions and Candidates and Employers will give you the answers. How did the employer find the last person that started with them? What works what doesn’t? Where do they hang out online and in person, go there. You get the idea.

The essential thought I am trying to convey is to take what you know already works, listen and learn from others exploring new options but ultimately clear out the clutter and find new success however it works best for you.

About Shannon Myers:

Shannon Myers is the Managing Partner of Walton Search, recruitment and sourcing firm that  bio-picspecializes in the Healthcare Industry. Prior to founding Walton Search in 2007 she began her career in a combination of photography and higher education, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and working as both a photographer and in Student Affairs at fine arts colleges. She made the transition to recruiting in 2001 beginning as a sourcer quickly moving to full cycle recruiting in healthcare. Shannon is always exploring the newest sourcing methods and was a Grandmaster Sourcing Challenge winner for SourceCon2008. In addition to her recruiting effort at Walton Search Shannon also trains others on the use of Social Media and remains active within the arts community.