Jobseekers today grow weary of sending in online applications and never hearing a response. Sometimes they wonder if they’re a fit for an organization, but there’s little to help them understand, so they just apply…or not…and wait for a response.

Let’s tip our hats to the 10 fastest-growing staffing agencies in the U.S. They know how to recruit, use staffing software, and employ social media to fill their client’s staffing needs quickly and reliably. Annual growth figures reflect average growth between 2005 and 2009.  This list will wet your appetite while we wait for…

As a background checking service we see our fair share of physical and sexual violence that can be related to the home  or domestic environment.  But domestic violence is not necessarily contained within the home.   Domestic violence may originate in the home, but it can affect the workplace.

Studies claim that one in four women are victims of domestic violence.   Homicide  is the second leading cause of death among women in the workforce.  While women constitute the majority of…

Today’s question, is recruitment Agile?

For anyone not familiar with agile this is the agile manifesto:

We are uncovering better ways of developing

software by doing it and helping others do it.

Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer…

Recruiting is a time intensive process and anyone that says otherwise obviously has not done the job.  But even so, every recruiting initiative doesn’t have to be time intensive or hands on.  There are a few initiatives where you can use tools and services that can save you time so you can spend it on more important initiatives that cannot be put on auto-pilot.  There may be an upfront cost in time to set these initiatives and tools up, however, once you have them going they should provide a…

A good friend of mine was laid off of his job of 10 years and is searching for new employment. He has a complete LinkedIn profile with contact info and resume (thanks to me) and is on Monster and CareerBuilder.

He got a call last week from a local recruiter at a niche staffing firm. On the phone the recruiter told him he had a ‘couple’ of jobs for him, and they arranged to meet. My friend has an interim job so he had to arrange time off to meet this…

Not a single day passes by of late without hearing the dreaded words 'global talent pool', but what does that phrase actually mean in practice, if anything at all?

Consider a typical recruiting scenario. You're looking for a mid-career engineer for a specific location. There is no relocation package on offer so straight away it would be fair to assume that 99 times out of a hundred your likely candidate is going to come from a 30 or 40 mile radius of wherever the business is situated.…

Spring is here as rising temperatures indicate. It's the time when optimism gets a boost and we look forward to summer fun. Unfortunately current developments in the job market cause some concern. While labor demand is still rising, the speed of growth is slowing. Employers in the US increased their online job postings by 3.1% in April as compared to March. Since February this is the third consecutive month of declining growth. While demand increased by 6.1% in February as compared to…

Do you ever feel like your head will burst if you have to create or remember another login/password combo? Sure, your browser tries to help (at least mine does), prompting helpfully to ‘remember’ the login – usually. But that’s specific to your computer. What happens when you’re away from it? If you’re like me, you try to stick to a few combos and keep them in your head.

So what does this have to do with job boards and career sites? Plenty. If you use…

Have you scoured our job boards lately? I probably wouldn’t blame you if you have no interest, you’d be sharing the same view as jobseekers.

Why might I say this…?

Well they are as boring as Bat$%#%. This topic has been on my mind for a while, and when I saw a tweet on twitter from Katie McNab (Pepsi Co Recruitment Manager) I decided it was time to vent.

Katie showed an example of two ads that she believed were dismal  and she was right, well I was mortified when they…

Total volume added in the past 90 days and the percentage increase compared to the same period last year.

Data: WANTED Analytics | Analysis: StaffingU…

Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails

That's what Recruiters are made of !"

What are little HR Professionals made of?

"Sugar and spice and all things nice

That's what HR Professionals are made of!"

When you are finished laughing and / or gagging I am curious to…

It’s quite a few years since I worked a desk as a recruiter. But I did, for many years. And I was a pretty good recruiter too. Not great mind you. Just good enough to have a lot of fun, and make a bit of money.

At Firebrand we have hired 25 new recruiters in the past 6 months, so I am spending a lot of time training and coaching. As a result I am telling a lot of stories from my time on the desk. And it reminded me that…

In my mind, the engagement level of an organization's Recruiters are a major indicator of how well that organization's Recruitment function performs.  Over the years I have worked with hundreds of Recruiters in countries all over the world and one of the characteristics that always differentiated the performance of the great Recruiters from their Recruitment colleagues was the high levels of passion and engagement they brought every day to their role and their organization.

I remember…

Face it, more and more hiring managers are admitting that they will look at a candidate’s social media profile at some point during the hiring process. And why shouldn’t they. There is a lot of valuable information to be gleamed from a candidate’s electronic footprint. A lot has been written about some of the pitfalls and problems with using this data, so I won’t hash over it here. My focus is on 9 things you should consider if you are going to adopt a strategy of using social media (social…