In offering some advice today to a family member who is job hunting, I came to the realization that the cover letter is all but dead. The family member’s query was how to write a compelling/ interesting cover letter because he was looking to find ways to get his resume noticed by the hiring managers.

His inquiry wasn’t a bad one – he wanted his resume to stand out against the rest. It’s no secret that hiring/HR managers see hundreds of resumes per opening and only a small percentage…

Hiring managers receive many resumes for each job posting. Candidates who want to get a jump on the competition find creative ways to make their resume stand out. A creative resume can help you get noticed and increase your chances of getting an interview.



But sometimes candidates go too far with their creativity.





Making your resume stand out from the crowd can be a difficult task.



The main purpose of a resume is to help you get an…

Best Practices for New Employee Onboarding

Rich Peterson says, "Most new hires fail within 18 months on the job."

Smart Onboarding is critical in making career transitions much smoother.

Why Onboarding Matters?

It s proven that new hires without an effective onboarding program will fail over the course of their short lived career with your organization.

One of the important ways that HR can impact the workforce and…

Sourcecon 2013: Five Easy Steps to Building Winning Boolean Search Strings

The Session was a Boolean operator/search string 101. John Childs who ran the session went through the most common operators; AND, OR, wild cards, and more.

Johns 5 step…

I know this might seem like a strange one especially if you have no idea who Igor Ansoff is. Let me explain more. I am lucky enough to be doing a job I love and getting paid for it. What is even better is I get asked to train people on marketing and sales. A couple of weeks ago I was running two days’ training on marketing aligned to business growth. We also had a lecture where the speaker shared the top two marketing tools that had come out of a recent high level event!…

In a previous post I mentioned how the ansoff matrix was a way to focus on the marketing side of your recruitment business, because it might just be the missing part that you have not…

This year has been a year of many conferences for me, most of them being dedicated to sourcing: speaking at SourceCon in Atlanta in February 2013, at Sourcing Summit New Zealand in May, at Sourcing Summit…

Now that we have our segments, let’s use a real world example to examine how we can use them to develop a Target Company List. Since I live in the NYC Metro area I’ll choose a local company: PepsiCo.

1. Competitors: A quick search of the Beverage – Soft Drinks industry on any Finance and Investing website gives us our list for this segment: The Coca-Cola Company, Dr. Pepper Snapple, Monster Beverage Corporation, Jones Soda Co., etc.
2. Industry: Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG).…

SourceCon Seattle 2013: An interview with Glenn Gutmacher

While I was at SourceCon in Seattle, I had the pleasure of sitting down with one of the top sourcing professionals in the country, Glenn Gutmacher, to discuss SourceCon, sourcing and more.

Dean: So, Glenn, how do you…

Featured Guest Post by Gerry Crispin, Principal & Founder, Career XRoads

During the last three years TalentBoard, a US non-profit overseeing the Candidate Experience Awards, has been collecting data that the organization’s volunteers…

Sourcecon 2013: Driving the ship – Leading and Managing a Military Veteran Sourcing Program

The first session I attended was on managing a veteran sourcing program by Dan Piontkowski. In this session he went over a lot of great information about Vet sourcing programs.

He specifically made it clear you need the right people doing it and it…

Yes I'm recruiting and interviewing candidates to be my future boss at the moment, I didn't even think twice about it till recently when this project is close to the end.

I got just a bit worried, thinking back to some of the best and worst bosses I've come across in the past. About, the reasons my work "drive" slowed down and instead got me updating my linkedin. How my…

“Vegas, baby! Vegas!!” – Trent

SEO Alert: This is an #HREvolution preview post, but since if you haven’t already booked #HREvolution tickets, you're SOL, I wanted to lay out what Ben Eubanks and couldn't cover about Gen Y in 45 minutes during our #HREvolution session Sunday.  Hope to see you there, but either way, read on and if you tweet, add #HREvolution to the end. See you in…

“Emotions are some of the main drivers of engagement” – Dale Cranagie 

In any company the employees are basically the front line, the face of a company and the advocates of a brand. Their level of engagement is decisive for the success of a business.  Engaged staff deliver better, remain committed to their employer and stay focus on achieving all the business goals whilst giving their best and being positive brand…

Funny Anchorman jokes aside, the reason for the picture here is because so many people talk about Big Data to the point that it's a little over-used. So why am I talking about it? Well, because technology corporations still need engineers who are constantly solving data aggregation issues that are ever increasing. And because of this, sourcers and recruiters need to understand what to…

I have been using LinkedIn since the beginning and have had a LinkedIn Recruiter account for the last few years. I was doing a audit of my current account usage, as well as trying different formats to increase responses. With a current accept rate of 15%, I should be happy with the results, right? I look back to comments by Lou Adler about how to get a much higher response rate. I use templates and personalized messages. I try both direct and indirect recruiting. 

In doing a deep…

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

There are a number of reasons why recruiters shy away from contract placements, but most of those reasons are results of myths or misconceptions. One common myth about contract staffing is that you have to have a stable of contractors ready because clients may request them at a moment's notice.

This misconception is tied to the temp agency model. They have a group of temps who are employed by the agency and are sent out to assignment after assignment, most of which only last a few…

Integrated platform provides everything businesses need to source, engage and hire the best talent.

SmartRecruiters today announced the launch of the SmartRecruiters Hiring Platform. The new solution is a single platform, which allows businesses to source, engage, and hire top talent. SmartRecruiters Hiring Platform is now available to 50,000 SmartRecruiters customers around the world. …