February 2010 Blog Posts (184)

February's online recruiting news

February's online recruiting news roundup is live.

I'd say the biggest news this time is not in print. The big news is that job boards are getting busier and our revenue is stable or growing. Usually, we have a better sense for where the economy is going than the economists, so I'd say look for positive news coming out in the next couple months.

Added by Eric Shannon on February 2, 2010 at 6:33pm — No Comments

Make sure you have a product before jumping on the ‘Personal Brand’ band wagon

“You now have to decide what ‘image’ you want for your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place.” – David Ogilvy

A lot has been said in the past few years about personal branding. A term introduced in the early 80´s by Al Ries and Jack Trout in their book: "Positioning: The Battle for your Mind". In chapter 23 Ries and Trout point that you can benefit by using positioning strategy to advance… Continue

Added by Jose J. Ruiz on February 2, 2010 at 6:00pm — No Comments

VMS Part II: Vendors - Are you a “limp noodle”?

Are you currently an IT staffing vendor working through a VMS? What kind of results do you get? Have you measured your return on time? Do you feel like you “sling resumes” up against the wall and see if they stick like your homemade spaghetti?

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you’re probably following the VMS process as it was laid out by procurement. You’ve heard it all before right? “Don’t contact the managers directly”, “Only submit resumes through the VMS… Continue

Added by Kevin Womack on February 2, 2010 at 3:29pm — No Comments

IT Job Seekers and VMS – Put yourself in a position to win

As I was watching the final play of the Saints/Vikings NFC Championship game last week (and, coincidentally, procrastinating on writing this article), I thought about all of the preparation and moments that must have led to the Saints being in position to win the game on one final play.

If you are an IT Job Seeker, hopefully you realize that you are in a competition and, let me tell you, there is no competition as fierce as getting a job through a VMS. For the uninitiated, VMS is an… Continue

Added by Kevin Womack on February 2, 2010 at 3:27pm — No Comments

The Next Big Thing or Next Big Idea?

What will the coming year bring to employer branding and employee engagement? 2009 will probably become the year when social recruiting came to the fore – not always in reality, but definitely the possibilities. Employers, recruiters and recruitment ad agencies (are they still known as that?) all scrambled together to try out the shiny new toys in the pram – Twitter, Facebook and Linked In. There were even attempts using alternative ‘new’ targeted media such as Spotify and Xbox LIVE. The coming… Continue

Added by mark rice on February 2, 2010 at 2:59pm — No Comments

Maximize, Expand, Diversify….pick your cliche

Stop me if you’ve heard these statements from Corporate or Agency Staffing Professionals “I never use job boards”, “We only use direct sourcing to find the best candidates”, “We post our jobs and select the best candidates” or maybe you’ve heard candidates tell you “I only work with one recruiter” or “I don’t post my resume”.

While I can respect someone for taking a stance for what they believe, I can’t stand by and let Recruiters and Candidates continue to make a HUGE mistake. I can… Continue

Added by Kevin Womack on February 2, 2010 at 2:41pm — No Comments

Twitter: A Learning Tool? Whatever...

Learning with a Bird?

There are worlds of research related to how we learn. This research and opinion can even be broken down by groups, individuals and organizations to differences in culture, geographic location and how learning is facilitated. One technology that can help bring all these elusively segregated items together is cloud computing.… Continue

Added by Benjamin McCall on February 2, 2010 at 1:35pm — 3 Comments

The Best Format for Your Resume (Hint: It's Not .PDF)

So you want your resume to look pretty. Naturally. But is your pretty format preventing your resume from functioning as well as it should?

Did you know that many corporate and staffing agency ATS's (Applicant Tracking Systems) strip your resume of formatting when the information is imported into your profile? Or that when you forward your resume to a recruiter, they often have to copy and paste it into a new…

Continue

Added by Craig Fisher on February 2, 2010 at 12:30pm — 22 Comments

What would be the "One Best Approach" to the recruitment. Initial screening and final selection process ?

Recruitment is the process of finding and attracting a pool of suitable candidates for the vacancy. Many hiring managers have a difficult time recruiting top quality applicants for the very demanding jobs they are trying to fill.

Thus it is of vital importance to adopt one best approach for the recruitment process, from the initial screening till the final selection process. Best approach for recruitment should be:

• Time constraint

• Cost Efficient

• Quality… Continue

Added by Sana Shakeel Ahmad on February 2, 2010 at 12:08pm — No Comments

Sr.SAML Design Engineer @ WA for 3-6 months

Let me know if you any one can help me on this---

Qualifications:

* Bachelor's Degree and 4+ years relevant experience.

* Highly motivated individual who is success driven and willing to maintain a high degree of customer satisfaction with an excellent grasp of enterprise integration challenges.

* Experience with Public Key Infrastructure including either Entrust, Microsoft or RSA certificate authority systems. Specific Entrust experience is a… Continue

Added by mohanrao on February 2, 2010 at 11:15am — No Comments

JobDeck and its implications for job boards

By now you’ve probably heard of JobDeck, a modified version of the popular Twitter search application, TweetDeck. A collaboration between TwitJobSearch and TweetDeck, JobDeck has a permanent, specialized search that focuses on jobs. These are sourced from the Twittersphere, based on employment-related keywords, plus additional content from LinkedIn.

Well, it’s gotten the New York Times… Continue

Added by Jeff Dickey-Chasins on February 2, 2010 at 9:00am — 2 Comments

New Ways To Increase Client Base

Does anyone have fresh ideas that work in 2010. I use linked in and the telephone.
Voice Mail and gate keepers have blocked the way for me to reach the power people.
Cold calling emailing does not work like it used to. I would like to share ideas here.

Thank you

Jane Roth

Added by Jane Roth on February 2, 2010 at 8:35am — No Comments

Customer service in Recruitment. We need to put our money where our mouth is

For all my blog posts see 'The Savage Truth'

Read the websites of any ten random recruitment companies. From any country. In the ‘About Us’ or ‘Our Services’ section, you will almost certainly find glowing and poetic prose about ‘customer service’ and the ‘customer comes first’ and ‘exceptional standards of service delivery’ and many other cliche-ridden phrases. But these claims were not written without sincerity. The companies… Continue

Added by Greg Savage on February 2, 2010 at 3:52am — No Comments

What Can We Learn from Ignatius Reilly?

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him."

— Jonathan Swift

In my spare time (loosely defined term), I have committed myself to go back and re-read some of the classic literature assigned to me during my formative years. As I have started this new year out with a moral constitution directed towards happy, positive thoughts - Heart of Darkness is still collecting dust on my bookshelf. Mr. Kurtz… Continue

Added by Chris Hood on February 2, 2010 at 1:20am — No Comments

When “Good” is “Bad”: The Overly Zealous Employee

In the changing world of work, the virtues of yesteryear can seem quite the opposite in the contexts and complexities of the 2010 workforce environment.

Take the reasons underlying employee absenteeism. Overall, every successful organisation wants the highest possible productivity on the corporate as well as individual levels, but in order to achieve that the work ethic must be cultivated in context.

In other words, you want people to come to work instead of finding… Continue

Added by Sam Lawson on February 1, 2010 at 8:25pm — No Comments

What end of the talent pool are you in?

It is sink or swim out in the job market today. Whether laid-off or gainfully employed, I often ask my candidates about their key motivation during a job search – these are the top four answers:

1. A new career path

2. Better/Fair compensation

3. Reached a career plateau

4. Feel unappreciated

Another seemingly irrelevant question I ask is the following: What is the biggest misconception your peers have about you?

As a… Continue

Added by Amos on February 1, 2010 at 7:30pm — 5 Comments

Online marketing industry is forecasted to "literally double over the next five years"

A new RecruitingPods.com podcast show just launched, the "Onward Search Career Cast," sponsored by Wilton, CT based staffing and executive search agency, Onward Search. In the inaugural episode I speak with Ken Clark, co-founder and SVP of Onward Search, and Josh Gampel, VP. The company does both temp staffing and executive search assignment ($100K+).

According to Ken Clark, "the biggest… Continue

Added by Peter Clayton on February 1, 2010 at 5:00pm — No Comments

Dr Pete - Ergonomics at Work

In an effort to bring you more information on a variety of topics, we have enlisted a few "guest bloggers."

I have spoken with a few managers out there and learned that workplace ergonomics was a topic of interest. I guess all managers and companies are in favour of finding ways to increase productivity while decreasing workplace accidents and sick days. So I give you Dr. Pete Moore - widely regarded in Ontario as a leading lecturer in workplace ergonomics and expert in his field. We… Continue

Added by Corey Harlock on February 1, 2010 at 3:43pm — No Comments

Why Do They Always Get a Raise Right Before the Offer?

Why is it that candidates ALWAYS seem to get a review, raise, additional responsibilities right before your client is about to make them an offer?

Alright, it doesn’t ALWAYS happen. As recruiters we tend to exaggerate just a bit, but it happened this last week to not one, but to two recruiters I know and have great respect for, and it drives me mad when I hear this.

This should never happen.

We, as third party search professionals, shouldn’t let it… Continue

Added by Jeff Skrentny, CERS on February 1, 2010 at 3:15pm — 7 Comments

Adapt: No Pun Intended

You may ask yourself, “what is Adapt?”

Adapt is a fully configurable, or “adaptable”, applicant tracking system that automates many of your day to day processes. Bond International Software provides this web base application that tracks your clients, candidates, job orders and even approved time cards.

One of Adapts greatest features is its dynamic dashboards, designed like that of iGoogle. Dashboards allow you to perform day to day workflow from one central… Continue

Added by Holly Pellum on February 1, 2010 at 1:34pm — No Comments