The first perquisite for building a talent community is passion; and that desire is a core factor on which a community is established.  If there is not an affinity for your community within your organization, do not attempt to build a talent community.  The lesson of the past 5 years is that most communities will fail if there is not the energy or the motivation to keep the conversation going. …

Funny how the debate about a blog post by Katie McNab has found its way overseas with some quite different points of view UK vs. US.

Of course there is no right or wrong but as I have worked in many areas of recruitment (TPR, In-house, tech vendor, media buyer, website designer, job poster etc) I thought I'd share how I'd run an In-house team.

My approach would be of architect - builder - contract labour. 

The…

Why do some candidates look so great on paper but bomb when they are actually placed in a position? Many times it comes down to that elusive buzz phrase: "cultural fit."

Cultural fit means different things to different companies, but it is generally the shared values and principles that form the organization's identity and push it in a certain direction. While cultural fit is an intangible, not to mention hard to define, attribute, it is one of the most important. In…

This is a topic that I am writing about that has been on my mind recently beacuase of a letter....Dear John and the response letter titled....Dear Katie.   I am sure you all have read it.  If not, please read them both.  It is a great conversation and I think it really makes you think about what type of recruiter that you want to be.  

I am going to start with 2 types of Agency or 3rd Party Recruiters.   Not sure what to call them, so I am going to call them Recruiter A and…

I'm not talking about Facebook or other forms of social media, I am referring to the people that think designing a web page or home page to find a job using services like about.me and flavors.me.  Enough is Enough! Employers are not looking for flashy pizzazz, they are looking for someone that can do the job.  Technology is integrating itself into our lives more and more everyday but the workforce and hiring managers, they still use a calculator and pick up the phone.   It's not that using a…

Unfortunately, passion and drive are sometimes overlooked qualities of a job candidateduring the search and interview process.

Generally, when people are being interviewed, the hiring manager uses a task-and-experience job description to find candidates. Then they focus on a resume, whichhighlights skills acquired through school and job experience. While skills and experienceare important attributes that should always be considered, talent and passion are equally--if not more--vital…

Rather than bury this in a serious discussion thread on Katie's Dear John post i thought it might be kind of fun to make it a response to her Dear John letter.  Please understand it's for fun...sort of.

Dear Katie,

Thank you so much for your letter.  It is at least nice to know that you are well and something bad had not happened to you. I respect your position and your budget constraints.  Actually the reason for my call was three fold.  I really wanted to discuss all…

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

Data: WANTED Analytics | Analysis:…

In this day and age where every little look means something, and every little phrase or #tweet means something else, where do we draw the line? At work, we are expected to achieve certain goals and carry a certain aura around us, In our personal life we spend an equal amount of time (or more) trying to distance ourselves from our work persona to lead a relatively happy home life. My question is this….What would happen if we just chose to put forth one (1) image and let the chips fall where…

I’m a great believer in stealing ideas. Think about it: are most successful businesses truly original? Not often – instead, they take an idea and perfect it, then execute skillfully. (This applies to art, music, and literature, too – if you listen carefully, you’ll hear Matthew Sweet stealing from The Beatles, who stole from Buddy Holly, who stole from Hank Williams, who stole from….).

Are there ideas out there that are worth stealing for your job board? You bet! And…

I am fascinated by some of the discussions I see taking place either on Facebook or Twitter.  Something caught my eye last night during a job hunting chat that made me wonder just where in the world this is all going.

The "what do employers look for on your Facebook page?" topic came up.  Many participants jumped right in with what they suspect companies might be finding - and how they react to those findings. 

Being someone who sees many of these issues in…

Following one of my previous posts, which touched on the importance of not forgetting your own referral scheme and keeping it as simple as possible, I thought I'd share a relaunch of a head office (c. 250…

Every month I have the honor of presenting, How to Use the Internet and Social Media in Your Job Search, to a group of very dedicated government professionals who are transitioning. While we present this class to many groups each month, this group is the most challenging due to their resistance to being on the internet, let alone using social media. And they have good reason to…

This little incident happened just the other day.

It was Sunday, so I was not in work mode at all. In fact I was watching my son trial for a Sydney Representative cricket team, and my mind was on him bowling fast and batting straight.

On the side of the field, the mums and dads congregated, and the usual banter was flying fast and furious, when one of the guys turned to me and said,

“I thought of you this week.”

The dad in question is well known to me. We have sat…

Here’s the latest update of the candidates your competition is currently seeking.



Our data comes from 16,046 staffing firms and recruiters, from which, we’ve listed the top 25 titles being sought and the number of new jobs for each in the past 90 days. In addition, we’ve included the increase or decrease in demand compared to the same 90-day period last year.

Data: WANTED Analytics |…

When a candidate applies for a job, the main part of the experience is the application form itself. And yet, even though everything else is just extras around it, this is the part that some companies fall down on!

The most important thing with regards to candidate experience from an application form is usability.

Is the form: difficult to read? Badly set out? Very long?

If your form is in an unusual font, a very bright/faded colour or is in a similar colour to the…

Editor’s note:  Every have a bad writing day?  I think v1 of this post fell into that category.  This is a revised and expanded version of previous post. 

How do you build a talent community? Is there a step by step method of creating and building a community? Today, I answer those questions differently.

In the past, I described the approach to building community as a recipe.…

Last week I posted a blog (Acknowledging the Elephant in the Room) that received a great many well thought out and passionate comments. It is the goal of any blogger to draw attention to some topic that is relevant and sparks a good deal of give and take. Needless to say…

I’m a big advocate of staffing technology (of course!), but I also promote using social media in recruiting and staffing. After all, recruiters and staffing professionals need to go where candidates are, and candidates are on the web, checking their email, Facebook accounts, LinkedIn connections, and Twitter feeds.

In this post, I’ll focus exclusively on Twitter and 6…