Search Results - common financial

Topic: The Truth About Hiring Recruiters …….At Least.... My Version Of The Truth: …the question is…How do you separate yourself from the sea of competition? AND for the record…there is a SEA of competition. I recently posted a contract recruiter position and within 4 days I got over 400 submittals. Ugggggh. Now I know how my clients used to feel before they met me Unfortunately, here is a look into what I saw….typos and misspellings on resumes, zero mention of accountability, inconsistent information, absent information from previous jobs, half completed resumes and 6-1 resumes were from recruiter wan-na -bees. The sad part is, some of the wan-na-bees took more time to position themselves than some of the veterans. If you are a serious player, and you want to separate your candidacy from the sea of competition I suggest you take your job search seriously, even if it is for a contract recruiter role. You may be asking yourself, what does she mean take it seriously? First of all, to me seriously means…..take your time; who you are being in your job search IS a reflection of who you will be on the job. First and foremost, Read the ad or job posting in full. If asked, answer the questions concisely and accurately, in recruiting; time is money, get to the point. If there are instructions to follow, this is not the time to demonstrate what a rogue you are, these days recruiting has lots of processes and the bigger the company the more risk involved, if you cannot follow the application instructions, you are sending a message that you can’t assimilate to their ways of doing things. On the other hand if you follow the instructions verbatim and don’t do anything above and beyond, like using some creativity in your communication or application you may be sending a message that you give just what is asked and nothing more. If you are applying to me, look me up, find me on google, face book, linked in, talk to me in my language; don’t address me by Dear Sirs when my name is Margaret. When I get resumes like that I can them immediately, first of all I have never met a dude named Margaret and second of all it tells me you don’t care. After all, typically a person hiring a recruiter is someone who has done the job before, and done it well, so they are expecting you to blow them away with knowledge, pizzazz, terminology, technology, etc. If you are applying with me and I am a recruiter and we both share a common recruiter language and use the same type of vernacular, I expect you to use that to your advantage. Recruiting is a form of sales..show you know that by positioning yourself in the right manner. Seriously also means doing your homework. Find out what company you are applying with, go to your browser and type in www.whotheheckamiapplyingfor.com and look at who is requesting your services and tailor your application and response to the buyer. Job searching is a sales process; YOU are SELLING me on WHY I should INVEST in YOU. That takes positioning, discernment, listening, questioning/probing and salesmanship. Remember, who you are being in your own search process IS indicative of how you will conduct your searches for your new client, or if you are a rookie, who you are being in your job search is an indicator of how you will function in this role for others….seems easy enough to understand, however sometimes when we are too close to something we catch a case of running on automatic, or worse, a case of entitlement and we forget the game we are playing. We also forget that in THIS game, it is always about winning. Winning the game means working. Losing the game means keep looking, or keep on trucking to the next gig, until that gig runs out. A real recruiter in 2008 lists accomplishments, numbers of jobs filled, time to fill measurements submittals or interviews to hire. Great recruiters know their retention rates and their percentage of good hires. In 3rd party recruiting, a real recruiter knows their billings, per month, per quarter, if not per week. They also know their send out to placement ratio and their job order to fill ratio. In Staffing a solid recruiter knows their fill ratios and their (fall off ratio)misery index. The name of THIS game is numbers, the numbers tell the story. No numbers always means NO results and no results are simply put ….zeros and zeros indicate a performance issue....and anything else is JUST a STORY. As with every profession, people are evaluated by their performance; our performance in this industry is about quality of hires within a given time frame. There are a few other important metrics yet none as important as, did this person fill the jobs with good people and did the hiring manager/new employee get served within an acceptable time frame. Another element of taking your search seriously is the level of effort you have put forth in personal /job/competency development. What have you done to increase your awareness of the marketplace? What have you done to improve and expand your capacity to identify passive talent? If your biggest claim to fame is running an ad on Career Builder, scanning the resume and forwarding it to your client, you are in a bit of a pickle. While that might work, sometimes; that is nothing to be all that proud of, unless you are spending a significant amount of time screening, assessing, and evaluating that talent, with considerably more tools than your gut instinct. Also, consider if that IS your claim to fame, charging 30% or $100.00 per hour for that will soon become a distant memory; frankly companies have more than 25 different alternatives to find candidates THAT way. Also, to add a little more rub to the wound….that is not really considered recruiting in my book, sourcing resumes, is sourcing resumes and whether I like it, believe in it or not, I CAN get that done through the Philippines for $2100.00 per search through Velocity resources, or $2500 per month through PSG. When more and more companies realize that there are alternatives, the easy way will become someone else’s cheaper way. On the other hand, if you know how to and enjoy (well forget about like, you need to be good at it, if not great) sourcing passive talent through using social networks and internet mining tools, like broadlook or jigsaw then that is something to brag about, and I recommend you brag loud and clear. Include your percentages of hires using passive candidate streams and social networks. If you are a farmer of people and you use your personal and business community to continually generate passive candidate flow and you have your very own ‘affinity network’ then brag about that as well. If you have a list, a data base of candidates, live and usable candidates, hell that is something to brag about, you come armed and prepared to generate maximum results in a minimal amount of time. Taking your job search and your career seriously means continually upping your level of service offering and depth of service. As I have mentioned if your thing is sourcing, do it fabulously. Invest in your own development, learn the systems, learn the technology and apply it. After all, you buy clothing, fine wine, jewelry, so go buy a new way to source candidates, sign up for that $500.00 training, and then learn everything you can and apply it the second you get out of training, then brag about the results you produced. Tell the world. If your bag is full life cycle recruiting, take that seriously and learn about the new wave of candidate selection tools that are being adopted into many company’s hiring processes. At the On-Rec conference a group of English business folks told me that 85% of all companies in their countries use behavioral interviewing, as well as competency and personality assessments to validate their hiring choices and create new employee development programs. I do not think the US is there yet, and due to the financial and business strategy consequences of poor hiring practices, I believe many more are on that path. An excellent way to differentiate you from the sea of recruiters looking for work is to capitalize on ANY training you have taken and applied successfully. Leverage that through personal career positioning. Lastly, no matter what your age, unless you create a cure for some major problem and land a plentiful sum of millions, you and I are probably going to be working for a living, if we like this type of work, we all need to be getting better all the time. We all need to be deepening our capacity and competency level to do more and better in less time, it is the way people do business. A good or bad example of doing more for less is this ‘bounty’ jobs types of site. It is a place where companies name the price for the candidate, and recruiters…out bid each other to get the work/placement. If that is not the industries response to our industry commoditizing ourselves and our service, than I am from another planet. The reality of being in the recruiting job market in 2008 is…. if you are not getting better, you ought to think about getting out, because before you know it you will be replaced by someone who is a lot more willing to do the same job for a lot, and I mean a lot less. If you like the business, live like you will be engaging in a job search and stay ahead of the curve. Keep track of your results, operate with integrity, don’t make placements you know won’t work out, create solid contacts and networks and learn everything you can, and always be positioning yourself the way you want to be perceived.…; Added by Margaret Graziano at 1:57am on September 18, 2008

Blog Post: What Candidates Tell Me: Simple Hiring Errors We All Make and How to Correct Them: This article contains actual statements made during post-interview debriefings and has been contributed by Jason Sanders, Ivy Exec's Vice President of …; Added by Elena Bajic at 6:31pm on February 16, 2012

Topic: Meet Irina Shamaeva, Boolean Strings Guru: acebook Profile • Your website; my company Brain Gain Recruiting http://www.braingainrecruiting.com • Irina's Personal blog • Groups: “Boolean Strings” Q & A with Irina Shamaeva Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world, Irina Irina: My family is unusual. I have two lovely children, Jane, a 29-year old, and Peter, a 5-year old. I am lucky to have Jane and her family living close by. Jane has a daughter Oksana who is 4 and is close friends with her uncle Peter. My children are the joy of my life. Most of the adults in our extended family are mathematicians; Jane “rebelled” and her education is in literature. She got her degrees at Columbia and UC Berkeley (grad) and is teaching English Literature at a small private high school in Berkeley. We talk daily, are close, and also, strangely, moms of young children. My son Peter has a huge amount of energy and is very athletic and social. My granddaughter Oksana is also full of energy and is already showing her talents in math and reading. I feel blessed when I have both Peter and Oksana in my lap. A big part of who I am is my cultural background. I came to NYC from Russia in 1990 for my first trip abroad ever, enjoyed the trip and got a 3-month contract in San Francisco over email (email was very new then). I brought then 12-year-old Jane to San Francisco, and in the middle of my stay got an offer to stay as an employee. My temporary visit to the US has lasted since. I’ve lived in San Francisco and Berkeley all this time and love the area. My family members Jane, Peter and Oksana are all bilingual English-Russian speakers. My father is still living in Moscow, Russia. At 78, he is an actively working, published mathematician, loves swimming and travels to conferences in the summers, where he is invited to make presentations. Last summer he and I met in Rome; next summer the plan is to meet in London. Six Degrees: What do you do for fun? Irina:I love spending time with my children and share my favorite activities with them. I used to take ballroom dancing lessons; now I go to free-style dancing events and classes. Last summer Peter and I went to a Northern CA dance camp in the Sierras near Kings Canyon Park, and we loved it. I volunteer at Peter’s school weekly, helping his teacher in the Kindergarten classroom. I am an avid backpacker. I especially like high mountains, walking cross country to high elevations with views, rocks and snow. I have been on many Sierra Club trips; Yosemite is my favorite place to go to. I also enjoy downhill and cross-country skiing. I do yoga and meditation. I am interested in psychology, especially character theories, such as the Enneagram. I keep in touch with long-time friends whom I met in high school. They live all over the world now. Last summer, we had a reunion in Yosemite and my classmates came from Washington DC, Boston, San Francisco, and the Netherlands. Six Degrees: How did you get started as a recruiter? Irina: I have been recruiting since 2003. In 1991-2003 I worked as a Software Engineer and later a Manager/Director here in the Bay Area. I worked in Biotech and Multimedia. A few times my jobs ended abruptly when my start-ups shut down during the dot-com era. At one company we were invited to a meeting with a 15-minute notice to learn that that was our last day, and no further pay was given. I worked with recruiters as a candidate quite a bit and it felt like for them it was an easy way to make money. (Indeed, I was once “placed” at a start-up by a recruiter who initially reached me by email and then was nowhere to be found throughout the whole interview process and the offer negotiation but got paid in the end.) I started recruiting on my own as a contingency recruiter while being completely new to this type of business. (Typical for me, since I also was not quite qualified for many of my previous jobs, learned on the fly and did quite well.) I didn’t make any money in the first 6 months, but then it took off. I was really lucky to get together with my Partner Julia Tverskaya. We’ve run Brain Gain Recruiting as Partners since 2004. As I, Julia is a former software manager; she is also a chess grandmaster and won some US competitions in the past. She’s ideal as a partner, smart, reliable, and has mastered the art of interviewing candidates, including some areas that were new for us, such as strategy consulting. Early on, we got on the vendor list for a Big Four consulting company, and stayed on based on our success, when they cut their list from 5,000 people to 100 early in 2008. Thanks to Julia, we are one of the very few companies who are on the vendor list for their Strategy and Change Practice. Over the years our clients have included software development, financial and consulting companies. In the last 2+ years we have mostly been placing high-level consultants in ERP/IT (SAP, Peoplesoft, Oracle, Siebel, etc.), Strategy and Change, and Finances. We are also getting some jobs in the Government sector now. The majority of our openings are in the $100K+ per year range. Six Degrees: What single event had the most impact on your sourcing/recruiting career? Irina: The event was my son Peter’s arrival. When Peter was little and I was a stay-at-home Mom for his first year, I tried to do recruiting. I remembered how I could help friends improve their resumes and find jobs and also how I worked with recruiters as a candidate and so it felt like a thing to try. A few months later, I got a call from a recruiter offering to join their client as a software manager, and ended up placing someone for that position for a $5K referral fee. That was the beginning. In my before-recruiting life, I was often able to help bring in good employees for my companies and help friends find jobs. In 1997 I got my first “recruiting” award of $8K for referring successful job candidates to my company Applied Biosystems. Before that, in 1994, when I was leaving my job, I talked my boss into hiring a friend of mine from Moscow, Russia, to replace me – which he did, without even first meeting my friend face to face. It worked out very well for all. Do you have a mentor to whom you attribute your overall outlook on recruitment, capabilities, and/or model your career after? Irina: I do not have a career mentor. I often learn things on my own. Of course I pick advice from others, especially given the wealth of web-based publications. I feel grateful to Lou Volpe of www.Recruitalliance.com for his advice to “submit only A candidates” early in my recruiting career. Simple as it is, this was the best advice I ever got about recruiting. Six Degrees: Tell us about your company Irina: Our company, Brain Gain Recruiting, is a two-person partnership. Both Julia and I wear multiple hats but my role is mainly a Sourcer for our company. In addition, I have been training multiple recruiting contractors, some of whom came from a non-recruiting background. In 2008 I created sourcing-related forums, blogs and events and posted on many sites. My area of expertise that I talk about is web sourcing. One topic, constructing Boolean search strings, got very popular. So far I have enjoyed blogging and teaching and got many emails and messages thanking me for sharing useful information. I plan to keep it as part of what I do. Six Degrees: (A) What other companies' recruiting operations do you admire or have heard are best-practice examples? Irina: We’ve worked with a number of third-party recruiters as split partners (on both client and candidate sides). I have watched two recruiters with whom we have worked closely that felt as great examples in certain ways. (B) In what aspects are they superior? Irina: The two recruiters I admire know the business inside out, know competitors and news about them, understand assumptions behind job descriptions, can assess resumes in rather complex areas and can speak to both clients and candidates in a meaningful way. We are not bad ourselves but these people seem stronger. Six Degrees: What recent general news story or industry trend do you feel will have an impact on your work in the future? Why? Irina: With the slow economy, we have a challenge and those who are the strongest at what they do and can make changes work for them will be successful. I feel it’s good to have challenges since they make me grow professionally and invent new ways to do business. Six Degrees: List/detail speaking events, awards, publications, where you have you represented your company: Irina: I have written publications and blog posts about web sourcing and Boolean Strings and may go to some speaking events. Some of my online posts are listed on http://booleanstrings.wordpress.com/about; here are selected links: • Two Common Misconceptions about Searching Google for Resumes • Use Facebook to verify candidate’s location and send fewer emails • Boolean vs. "Googlean" • New Year's quiz - 8 fun Boolean questions for all - QUIZ-JAN2009 • Number of results matters • Finding email addresses. • Looking for people based on a target title and a target company name • How to source candidates on LinkedIn even if your network is small • Find the LIONs based on keyword search • How to create a target email list of candidates in no time and for free • LinkedIn Tutorial, Part 2 • I Disagree with Donato Diorio | The Talent Buzz • BountyJobs Competitor Recommended - RecruitAlliance A few more articles will be published soon in TheSource and ERE in January 2009. Six Degrees: What is your next career goal? What do you need to do to get there? Irina: I’d like to grow our company, get more business and hire more recruiters so that I could delegate some tasks and concentrate on the company strategy, expand my sourcing skills, invent new ways to source and teach the sourcing community.…; Added by Dave Mendoza at 12:08pm on February 4, 2009

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