Ah, references. They can be that little added oomph your candidate needs to get the job- It can also be the axe that puts them out the running. 

Many candidates offer references when you interview them. You may already have some if they applied online and your company requires they list a few. 

The reference check is a valuable way to check the validity of the claims made by the candidate in respect of experience and qualifications. It gives another point of…

A new trend emerging in the recruitment sector is the “engagement” portal. These offer Recruiters opportunities to engage with Employers.

They split into 2 models which can be broadly characterised as:

Tendering sites: e.g. http://bountyjobs.com which publish employer’s jobs and invite recruitment agencies to “bid” to work on them, and

Networks: e.g.…

I was lucky enough to attend this Tuesday’s #TChat (which you should attend if you are on Twitter) and there was a great conversation on “Best Practices Evaluating, Purchasing & Implementing HR/Recruiting Tech & Software”.  Long title, but a pretty interesting conversation between HR / Recruiting professionals with a few vendor opinions mixed in.  I encourage you to read the recap on the…

Hello.  My name is Melissa and I'm a recruiter.

Hi, Melissa!

I've been recruiting for about nine months now.  I had a friend who got me started on this and now I'm hooked! 

But I've got some problems.  First, I'm new.  Second, my friend who got me into this sees this more of a "lifestyle business" than a career.  She doesn't want to pursue new clients or work on orders that are, you know, actual work.  Third,…

It’s very easy to immediately exclaim, “Yes! Of course I will!” without thinking about the consequences. Much like the bachelor/bachelorette contestants desperately accept a rose or engagement ring in the heat of the moment, so do some job applicants only to find out weeks later “it just wasn’t a good fit for me”. But could this have been avoided in the first place? In order to avoid accepting a position you really don’t want, consider these factors:

• Goals- First…

Well, that's not all that surprising.  If you've ever felt like you needed to learn the Japanese language just to understand some of the vocabulary involved with these initiatives, trust me, you're not alone.

But there is an easier way than studying Kanji characters to get a handle on this, and it's called Simple Excellence. Actually,

"…

Resume is an important document to win an interview.It is a summary of a job candidate's work and educational experience. Employee makes selection from a bundle of resume and tries to find outstanding resume. Most of the resumes are written in the traditional paragraph format that is not easy to read. 

The HR has 100 0f resumes and they will not read the paragraphs.  They'll scan 1-2 lines of each paragraph and probably will not find what they are looking for because they didn't spend…

As mentioned in What Does a Google URL mean? Part I, every query we ask Google to run is represented with a URL that points to a results page, these URL’s are not static, but dynamic links which are continually updated and therefore provide real time results. 

To fully maximize the use of our Boolean operators and Google queries we must understand the URL Syntax Google uses. …

When you spend every waking minute analysing the possible outcomes for the recruitment industry over the next decade and you have a brain so limited in capacity as mine, you end up hearing the old cliché ringing in your ears:

“You can’t halt progress!”

I believe this to be true and short of a post apocalyptic return to the Stone Age, which actually seems frighteningly more likely than it did a week ago, I suspect that In-House, Social Media et al will continue to rise…

The recent trend we have reported on where companies refuse to consider unemployed candidates for their job openings has now caught the attention of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

While the practice of preferring currently employed candidates is nothing new, it gained national attention after several employers…

The secret to having a resume that is searchable!!!

As you all know when you apply to a job, your resume goes into a huge database, were the recruiter then searches based on skills and buzz words. The problem is of course sometimes it is hard to know what words they will search on, and without these words in your resume someplace, you resume may not get pulled as being a fit for a position.

Well here are a few of the little secrets to…

DOE is cutting right and left as they prepare for the worst. This means I'm left to fend for myself. This means no CRM besides what our watered down version of Kenexa can provide. In order to keep ahead of all of the outside emails I get on a regular basis (20+ daily) I decided to find a free solution. 

Thus, my simple Zoho form was created: …

” Nearly half, or 47.4%, of executives surveyed in the latest Executive Monitor report indicated they are planning to look for a new job in 2011.”

The 2011 Executive Monitor Report has just been released today. It offers valueable insights into what Australian men…

Recruiters are a great source for finding a job that will fit your need and skill set.  They help you through the interview process and try to help prepare you for your interviews.  The best thing about having a recruiter help you is that they have already done most of the leg work.  They know the right contacts for certain companies and have built relationships with the people that work there.  

Social networking is extremely important in today’s society.  It’s a good way to…

Wed March 16, 2011 is my 4th anniversary show.

You can arrange to call your tip in - in which case you wd have to defend it --

Or you can just give it to me via the comments on this blog. 

I will pass it on to the callers and we will discuss it on our own.

The Recruiting Animal Show

live every Wed at NOON ET…

What Staffing company hasn’t faced the problem of suddenly having to fill a large job order in only a few hours? Text messaging turns this stressful job into an effortless task. Using SMS, a staffing company can send out a mass text with information about the open positions and anyone available will quickly call back to fill those positions. Text messaging offers a way to communicate important information easily to all temps in a timely manner. Through SMS, staffing companies can…

This week in my blog roll I came across a blog titled “Job Titles Matter” written by Laurie Ruettimann of Cynical Girl, a blog that I read everyday. It was right on point that job title’s do matter to candidates and are critical to the recruiting…

I've returned this year to SXSWi with not only great expectations but fun deliverables. As I'm writing from my hotel this morning in Austin, TX I'm reminded that I'm only on the 2nd day of the event and already feeling like I have connected with a week's worth of people, heard a week's worth of industry chatter and seen a week's worth of after hours socializing.  It's not overwhelming, as some might…

The NCAA tournament is gloriously upon us and like every year there are teams that watched their team’s bubble burst on Selection Sunday (unfortunately including my alma-mater Boston College).  While their resumes were all good enough to make the tournament (and some think better than some teams that made it), the selection committee had to turn them away as they could ONLY select 68 teams.  Now the bubble bursting teams search for the next opportunity and move on to play the NIT as a…