(December 26, 2006) After years, we finally met Steve Levy this fall. For some reason, we had him pictured as a   shortish older fellow with really big ears (It’s probably the impish quality in his writing). We were surprised to find a young energetic noticeably bald guy. At least we got the impish ears right.   

That’s the way it is with people you read online. You develop these incredible, usually inaccurate mental maps and decide you know the guy. Usually, nothing is farther from the truth than an image you create with limited feedback. So it was with Mr. Levy.

Occasionally here, more likely here, Levy’s voice is biting, sarcastic and very, very clear. It’s a must read. As is usually the case in great writing, having an opinion matters. Levy knows how to have one.

Here’s his take on 2006:

2006 has been no different than any other year in recruiting – really, the more things change the more they stay the same. Recruiting has always been like the Matchmaker song from Fiddler on the Roof. New technology comes and goes, productivity increases then decreases then increases – it’s like the building of roadways around New York City by Robert Moses in the mid-1900s: traffic increased, more roadways were built, these roadways became clogged again, build another road, etc. The basic premise here is still moving from point A to point B as expeditiously, comfortably and safely as possible. Just like recruiting – finding the best person for the opportunity as expeditiously, comfortably and safely as possible. How has 2006 changed this?

Not at all.

• Consider the passive candidate. In 1998, he wrote about an HR Manager from Chicago getting all worked up about recruiters peeling back URLs to find company directories and finding passive jobseekers – she complained it was like stealing someone’s wallet right off a table.John snorted (yes, he snorts), “The idea that recruiting so-called “passive candidates” is stealing sounds like a deep rationalization for poor performance on a critical strategic task.” In 2006, more people became aware of how to identify and recruit the passive candidate – not only the ones on the Deep Web but also those who can only be reached through old-fashioned brick and mortar, pick-up-the-phone and dial-and-smile. This is utterly fantastic – regardless of how one gets to these people – the magnifying focus on the passive person is a best of 2006. Ultimately those who can deep search and phone source will find themselves at the top of the market while those who cannot…
• Consider discussions on ethics. Was there something in the water used by Starbucks in their coffee or Coke/Pepsi in their soda? Was there a sudden infarction in one corner of the Universe that mutated the genetic code of recruiters causing them to suddenly feel guilty about recruiting people away from companies? The vocal outburst by a few recruiters has been noticed by those who do not see a problem in our industry – I think I may have been one of these people (lol). If nothing else, I was certainly opinionated towards the got ethics? debate at ERE San Diego. Ah, the halcyon days of ethics in 2006.The issue is not so much the use of what some may consider to be unethical techniques but is more so the pervasiveness of the problem. Whether you want to believe it or not, no data exists proving that we have a problem in our profession. I called my friend at the AESC and asked about surveys that measured the breadth of “unethical behaviorin the executive retained industry…no data. All in all, an entire year of discussion…but no data. My hope is that our industry does not develop an industry wide code of conduct but rather promotes education to companies, recruiters and candidates. Once educated, I strongly believe that market forces would begin to weed out the “lesser” performers – especially given the number of communication vehicles available for sharing such information. As they say at Syms, an educated consumer is our best customer.
• Consider the increase in the number of recruiting blogs. Some good, some bizarre, some serious, some comical. But the sheer number of blogs portends that many viewpoints will continue to be aired – and this is a slam dunk for our profession. In 2006, recruiter-centricthreads went nose-to-nose with candidate-centric ones: The nexus of these two has resulted in a mutual, “I never knew you felt this way” – as evidenced by the number of mutual posts and comments (see Steven Rothberg’s CollegeRecruiter blogs and Jason Alba’s JibberJobber blog). This has been a slam dunk and education for everyone. But what I’d like to see in 2007 are CEOs blogging about their company’s quest for talent – now this would be revolutionary.
• Consider the escalation of staffing in SHRM. No, I’m not kidding. There are still less than 20 EMA chapters and well over 500 general SHRM chapters in North America – and far too many generalists still believe cost-per-hire is a valuable performance metric for recruiting – yet when SHRM’s LINE report (leading indicators of national employment based out of Rutgers University), finally took off in 2006, SHRM took a quantum leap in the right direction. Please SHRM- more!
• Consider the definition of an applicant. Do we have to? Has any recent government ruling generated so many puzzled looks by recruiters than the one issued by the OFCCP? Simple FAQs aside, did this ruling ever create a cottage industry for our profession: Job boards, ATS’, consultants – it was the recruiting industry’s version of Y2K.
• Consider Radio Shack. Trash 80 is now Trash 06. See? No one ever really learns – companies and recruiters. And they won’t in 2007. Incidents like these just demonstrate that Groundhog Day exists in Recruiting. 
• Consider Armed Forces Recruiting. You think you have a problem because people don’t know your company well and your salary is at the 50^th percentile? Try recruiting people to join a service branch – especially a frontline one – when the media details every death and injury each day. Yet the recruiters who sit in local stations and become part of the community and try and educate people about the benefits of being a soldier, a pilot or a seaman are cursed at, have doors slammed in their faces, and are lied to every day. Despite this, 2006 proved to be a success for them in meeting their goals. I’m proud to be a COI – Circle of Influence, someone who works with local recruiters to identify and implement alternative forms of recruiting. And I’m a better recruiter for it.
• Consider Monster. Naughty, naughty. And from the recruiting industry no less. Now, where are their ethics???
• Consider that even consumer product companies are changing their ads to reflect workers. We all know that Madison Avenue still primarily presents us as geezers, using likenesses for medical ads. Yet there are changes – even I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up has gone younger…need we even mention Viagra?What this portends – and I’ve seenthe move towards ads that accurately reflect their target audiences – is that the hiring of older people will continue to grow as companies view for workers who can help them generate greater revenues. So to the younger recruiters out there – do you think you know me?

These are my major happenings for 2006. What do they mean to most recruiters? Probably not too much. Recruiting is still like politics where elections are won by shaking hands and kissing babies. Technology may help remedy the administrative quicksand that seems to be growing deeper but we still have to get out there and press the flesh. So for 2007, why not stop using that job board for one week, and take a stack of business cards, a pad of paper, and some pens down to that coffee shop (I’d recommend Starbucks) near where some companies are introduce yourself.

I think I did pretty well…

About Steve Levy:

Steve Levy, Principal of outside-the-box Consulting, has been graciously referred to by Jeff Hunter of Electronic Arts, as “the recruiting industry’s answer to Tom Peters” and by JobMachine’s own Shally Steckerl as someone who “facilitates the  generation of fresh solutions to quagmired problems.” Others have called him a creative thought leader in recruiting but Levy prefers action to thoughts – and is actually embarrassed by such platitudes. Better to Google this phrase (without quotes): steve-levy recruiting – that’s steve hyphen levy space recruiting then press the <enter> key – it makes no sense to hide from all the recruiting and business content he’s created especially given the mission of JobMachine.

With a bevy of business experience outside of HR – sales, marketing, information technology, software development, management consulting, patent law – his expertise is on working with companies to plan, design and implement creative systems, processes and infrastructures that improve workforce planning, recruiting, and organizational development while strengthening financial and operational performance under demanding business conditions.

An incurable observer, pundit and even serious writer of all things employment, he was the Electronic Recruiting Exchange’s (www.ere.net) first blogger back in November 2004 – a few hours before Shally became the second blogger – and has for the past two years offered the bulk of his points of view on job search, recruiting, onboarding, and business on RecruitingBlogs.com. His previous blog, The Recruiting Edge, was a Blog of the Year Nominee for 2006. He is the co-Founder of the Long Island dot NET Users Group and was previously on the Board of Directors for the New Jersey Metro SMA; Steve also sits on several Advisory Committees for various HR, job search, and HR technology organizations. He is an incurable attendee at far too many professional association meetings – only a handful of which are related to human resources.

Levy has been profiled and quoted in articles on human resources, social media, and the employment landscape in Newsday, NY Post, Kennedy’s RecruitingTrends newsletter, and QuintCareers.com, as well as on many an HR and recruiting blog. Even Dave Mendoza wrote something nice about him a few years back.

Steve is a Tau Beta Pi engineer from the University of Vermont (there is no such thing as a former engineer, Marine or Jesuit) with his graduate degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology (focus in research design and quantitative methods) from Hofstra University. He lives in New York and doesn’t possess a single professional certification in recruiting or human resources.

Most of all, Steve is on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Plaxo so be sure to connect to him.

Oh, and did I mention the Jones Beach Lifeguard Corps? Who’s launching the boat?

It’s a small world after all

I have a song going around in my head that’s been there since I first visited Disney 3 years ago. We now have annual pilgrimages to Orlando in October and Paris for Christmas week each year, to bow at the feet of Mickey and wonder at his might. This is brand marketing in the extreme, and we always come back for more. The ride we always go on, mostly because my wife hates it is “small world.” Ridden once, you receive the brainwashing of the mighty mouse, and the tune goes on loop annually, with a subliminal message to part with your dollars, Euros, pounds and all other currencies at least once annually.

Just recently, the tunes been playing louder in my head and I can’t seem to shake it. The reason for this is simple, since discovering twitter and LinkedIn over the last 6 months, I while away the wee small hours communicating with recruiters across the world, trying to assist with issues and concerns whilst learning about so many cultures and more importantly time zones. It really has become a small world, where the only geography is bandwidth. This afternoon I’ve run two episodes of my internet radio show Ready for Lift Off (www.blogtalkradio.com.)

The concept is really simple; it’s a broadcast conference call lasting one hour. To get on to the show you call a number in New York. During today’s show (thanks to the twittersphere), I’ve had guests from Melbourne, Belfast, Indianna,Texas, London and other parts of the world. The concept of the show is quite simple, we are basically a collection of old recruiters lamenting the days B.C. (before computers) and discussing the challenges recruiters face and some possible solutions, based on some 300 years combined experience.

What has become increasingly clear to me is that wherever we are in the world, the problems recruiters face are basically the same. Geography really is irrelevant; we are as worried about how we make money and the state of the market wherever we are located. My biggest concern right  now is not new business or making placements. I have lots of old fashioned techniques like picking up the phone and getting out and meeting people that help with that and go some way to solving problems regardless of geography. My biggest concern over the future success of the market is our candidate flow and how we treat our basic raw commodity.

It’s easy to say now that there are plenty of candidates about, and our data-bases are overflowing with resumes but what do those candidates really think of us, and are they knocking on our door out of desire or necessity? Personally, I think if you drew a pole the latter would come out way on top. That to me is a dangerous situation, because the challenge is there not only from competitors, but career coaches, corporate recruiters, job boards, web-2.00 and hiring managers themselves learning to harness technology. During todays show a hardened recruiter, and kind of game keeper turned poacher Keith Robinson (@SiteAdvisor) reminisced on how we used to talk about the candidate experience during their dealings with recruiters. I describe Keith in this way because he went from a successful career as a recruiter to launching one of the UK’s largest job sites, which makes him well placed to comment on both.

During my 27 years in recruitment, I have had many candidates that have repeatedly come back to me with help and guidance on the most important thing to them, their careers. Many of these I have never placed, but they have valued the experience and would always refer them to others. I think  the candidate experience is best judged by those we don’t place, rather than those we do. I was given a stat today by Shane from Intelligence Software (@1ntelligence) that recruiters only place 1% of the candidates they come in contact with. I have no reason to think that’s wrong, so how do I keep the other 99% speaking positively of the experience even when I haven’t found them a job?

The key here is in the word experience. I have a few pledges I would like recruiters to make that I believe, those that take the pledge will stand out, and where they are based in the world will be irrelevant.

My 10 recruiter pledges for providing candidates with a Disney like experience that makes them want to come back for more is as follows:

1: I will understand that I sell people and not products and will treat each as an individual.

2: I recognize that I am assisting with one of the biggest decisions you have to make, and will take time to understand not only your skills and experience that are marketable, but also your needs and wants by conducting a full interview and not just register you.

3: I will be open with you over how I work and what your expectations should be of me. If I am unlikely to help you, I will tell you.

4: I will give you a realistic idea of the probability of me being able to help you, and will refer you elsewhere if I think it is unlikely.

5: If I make a commitment to you to do something, I will do it.

6: I will fully understand the vacancies I’m recruiting for including the company, the culture, the role, the prospects and points of appeal and the decision making process. I will communicate this to you fully before you decide whether you wish to be submitted.

7: I will ask three things of you: honesty, reliability and communication. Because I expect this of you, you can expect it of me.

8: I will stress to my clients the need for quick and helpful feedback at every stage. I will contact you when I have agreed even if it is to tell you I have no news.

9: I will give you feedback constructively and honestly in order to help you with your job search. I will not dress up bad news, but give it to you as it is (thanks to @Jerry_Albright for this one) and with guidance for next time. I expect the same from you, and if you give me news I don’t want to hear, then I promise not to throw my toys out of the pram!

10: I will deal with you as I would want to be dealt with were I in your shoes.

Nothing here is rocket science, or in fact anything new. It is something we can all commit to, and don’t really need to learn. It is dependent on building relationships, calling, talking and listening. It can’t be achieved by e-mail or social media (although it has it’s place.) lets get back to making the candidate experience a priority to make your brand and the whole “brand recruiter” stand out, or else we might be lamenting the demise of our natural resource.

It is a small world, you can catch the show any Monday at 1.00 EST or download either the international show or the European show (goes out 7.00a.m. EST) any time after the show.

I’m proud to be a recruiter, let’s protect the brand!

About Bill Boorman:

Bill Boorman is something of a recruitment veteran, having worked in the industry for 22 years. All this despite being told at his first job that he didn’t have a future in the business! At the age of 42, the industry has given him most of his experience, having worked in most market places.

Recruitment has given him an insight in to the workings of many companies and he believes that this has given him a broad based understanding of business and people in general. He bases his training and consultancy work on this experience. He describes himself as being a non-academic trainer, preferring instead to deliver “true life” training that mixes reality with theory. Through his many experiences he has many case studies that help make sense of the problems delegates face.

Bill operates three distinct brands, spreading his message worldwide:

• The Bill Boorman Consultancy
• The Good News Group (Recruiters)
• Read for lift off with Bill Boorman
• @BillBoorman
  

Personally, Bill is married with two children, who give him plenty of inspiration. He runs marathons around the world badly and slowly, and loves being in the great outdoors.

Innovation is sweet success in this business and when top flight entrepreneurs let their minds run you typically get great results. To be successful in this business requires you to have a sharp mind, open to unique opportunity and the ability to recognize opportunity even when it can’t be seen.

I recently had the great pleasure to speak with Mark Tully, founder and CEO of GoFishRecruiting.com. “Go Fish is an online candidate and job exchange exclusively for recruiters.” It gives recruiters the opportunity to connect with candidates and job orders across all industries with a global reach. It’s truly an open network for recruiters with the drive to make money.  It’s a very simple tool to grasp, the design is slick and the members are serious recruiters looking to connect with other serious recruiters.

It’s a free service at this time, so I definitely recommend taking a quick moment to become a member Free! As an independent or split based recruiter I think you’ll find this program to be very beneficial to your bottom line.

As a recruiter looking to market your candidates, you’ll have the opportunity to upload, create profiles and market as many candidates as you wish. The same is true for job openings. It’s a fee based arrangement between both recruiters with $0 from the fee or transaction ever going to the Go Fish site. You keep the entire split.

As with any candidate placement opportunity, the better the quality of talent the more interest you will draw.  According to Mark “The average fee for recruiters on Go Fish is $18,000.” If you do the math this would net you $54,000 additional revenue per year if you were to place just 1 candidate every 2 months. You can’t beat it. It’s innovative, it’s fun and best of all it’s profitable.

In the end 4 great opportunities exist:

• Market unlimited candidates and jobs
• Find and connect with great candidates and jobs
• Network with great recruiters creating strong split partnerships
• Save time and make more placements

Sound good? I thought it did, so I took GoFishRecruiting.com for a spin.

Posted on and Retieved from: Mac OS X

As a follow up to my Yammer posting HERE I wanted to be sure you all had the chance to see this tool. Now, I’ve never used it but I am also a PC…go figure. Enjoy!

Gabble is a native Mac OS X desktop client for the Yammer messaging service. It’s the first Yammer desktop client designed specifically for the world’s best operating system. Let Windows users wrestle with that crazy Adobe Air stuff. For Mac users there’s now a better way. Gabble is written in Cocoa and Objective-C 2.0, which means it’s a first class citizen of your desktop and behaves the way you expect it to. So you can spend less time frustrated by annoying UI inconsistencies and more time enjoying the social media revolution.

Sharing the Good with eCompliments

Fresh, fast paced and full of good; that’s how I would describe my friends at eCompliments. Have you heard of them? If not, you have now and I encourage you to take advantage of their platform. eCompliments is a new site with an old idea that has been refreshed and redressed.

eCompliments is an “online forum” for “sharing the good”. In its simplest form, it’s a review site with similarities to the likes of a yelp or citysearch. But it’s different, and here’s why. I had the pleasure of speaking with Darin Manis the CEO and founder of eCompliments about this venture and I learned a lot. I learned that the team at eCompliments exudes a weird passion for what they do. They’re addicted and they’ve got momentum; and that’s dangerous.

eCompliments is unique in that it’s the first online review site to provide a seamless communication channel from business to consumer and consumer to business. “Having the opportunity to connect the business and consumer is big thing for us,” said Manis. In a world of technology where real time updates are not quick enough and Twitter consumes most of lives it’s important to realize that there is a conversation taking place about you somewhere. Why not join in the conversation?

So how does eCompliments work? It’s a review site that allows you to search and review a person, business or an organization. But of course I tend to slant towards the recruiter and you know how I like to twist technology to benefit recruiters so here’s is how it works and how you can benefit from it.

eCompliments allows users to review businesses as well as people. It’s fascinating how this works and if you position yourself properly you will benefit from its robust system of recommendations creating connections and business opportunities for yourself.

Here are just a few ways I recommend leveraging eCompliments as a recruiter.

1. If you own, operate or run a staffing related business: you need to give this a shot. This is such a great and easy way to create a strong buzz around your brand and connect with your market at the same time.
2. Corporate staffers – use this platform to record compliments from the experience you provided to the candidates. Ask them to recommend your company; it will go a long way when others are researching your job openings. Be sure to include a link to these reviews from your career site.
3. After creating an authentic profile to market your work, complete the circle by linking this profile into you social networking circle as an added channel of development.
4. Leverage eCompliments as your online portfolio to market your recommendations and to connect with those that find your service or product to be inept.
5. Create a custom url and direct candidates or prospective clients to your review site so that they can learn more about your business.
6. Search out and connect with individuals leaving comments on target companies or products. This should help narrow your search.

So sure it’s a little non traditional way of sourcing, but give it a try. It’s basic Boolean friendly, has a filtered search, and has been bringing up some relevant search results for me. There are multiple versions of the site including both free and paid versions. Try them out for yourself to see which format will work better for you.

While you’re on the site be sure to look up you favorite pizza shop and leave some good comments for them as well.

Here’s a quick video to better understand it capabilities. Be sure to leave your comments and let me know you thoughts.