Recruiters get terrible press.

And it’s worse now then ever before. Everyone has a ‘terrible recruiter’ story. They are ‘lazy, sleazy, pushy and incompetent’. And those are just the nicer things said. Every day brings more abuse and increasingly, gleeful…

Way back in 2008, I created a training guide called Resume Forensics. In a nutshell, it was a how-to for finding resumes and passive candidates on Google, Yahoo, Bing and a few other resources. In all modesty, it was an underground hit. I…

At 200 million plus users, LinkedIn is one of the biggest employment marketplaces in the world.  Because of this, people called …

Having a professional brand is not a new concept for job hunters. It’s the image you present to potential employers wherever you are. In a competitive job market, it’s essential to build your own professional brand so that you will stand out from the rest of the pack and build a consistent reputation. Your brand will also help people remember who you are so that when they…

Each month, the New York City metro area consistently outnumbers all other metros in hiring demand. In March, there were more than 437,000 ads available online in the greater New York area. (Los Angeles was in 2nd place with about 258,000 ads.) This ad volume represents a 1% decline in demand compared to March of 2012. Approximately 89% of available job ads during March were posted by employers, whereas staffing firms and recruiting agencies only accounted for about 11% of ads.…

When Gerry Crispin was a boy hiring was so easy. There was lots of talent just lying all over the place.

All you had to do was put an ad in the paper and hire a secretary to open the resumes.



But, now, things are different.

You…

In November 2012, I wrote a post called Whiskey, Wine and Root Beer http://wthomsonjr.com/november-2012/whiskey-wine-and-root-beer/ .  It was a fan favorite, and still to this day one of my favorite posts.  This weekend  my family and I  made the drive down to Carrizo Springs, TX again. …

I have long held the view that people need to be a little braver with their CV's and resumes. Far too many people write their CV/resume so it offends nobody. Trouble is, it attracts nobody either.

Just last week I had a candidate who sent me their CV.…

Many people have started to consider business cards a bit ‘old hat’ in this new era of social networking and direct online portfolios. However don’t be fooled, when used right business cards can help streamline your recruitment operations and help generate more positive leads.

Firstly I would suggest that any member of…

The laws surrounding email SPAM are somewhat of a mystery to many recruiters, with many actually violating the law on a regular basis without even know it. And that's scary because EACH separate email sent in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act may be subject to penalties of up to $16,000. That’s right, per email sent.

"Yikes", you say. "That’s a crap load of money," you exclaim.

"Yup it…

Oh, did this did just happen to me?

Recently I was called by a recruiting agency recruiter.  The person, from Manpower, called me about a position that he was looking to fill for an engineering/technical recruiter.  I am not shocked by this as that is what we do for a living.  However what did shock me was the pedantic way in which the person went about it while leaving a message.  It was almost robotic in its…

4 years ago this month I was asked to leave one of the largest contingency recruiting firms that I’d been with for 10 years. I had reached burnout and the grace to carry struggling recruiters had ceased regardless of past success as my company went from 40 recruiters to 10 in no time. As I sent my resume out to sales gigs I had offers left and right for jobs that paid $35k-$40k plus commission to sell a widget.

An independent recruiter and friend called me and reminded me that I…

Top 3 Items to Bring to Your Interview  

Don’t arrive to an interview empty-handed! Being well prepared demonstrates to your potential employer that you’re able to handle any task thrown at…

HR practitioners and researchers alike agree that employee referral programs are an excellent source-of-hire. Cost-effective, yet sporting a significant ROI, referral programs enable corporate recruiters to leverage their employees’ networks to reach quality talent pools. With a faster time-to-hire than average, referred applicants are recognized as more productive additions to the workforce.

Employee Referrals Make for Better Employees

1. For…

I hear it too often.  Why hasn’t this position been filled?  We just aren’t getting enough candidates.  The candidates aren’t strong enough.  I was the perfect fit for the job, why wasn’t I invited back for another interview?

See, as a recruiter I am the middleman between the manager and the client/company and getting someone hired or not.  I am the…

It seems that Monster is continuing its long, slow fade as the ‘big dog’ in the job board world (funny how long-term lack of leadership can do that to you). But there are plenty of services vying for the leadership role:Indeed, CareerBuilder, and LinkedIn come…

I have been living a lie. For far too long I have pretended to fit a mould, that simply is not me.

For the past seven years, I have woken up every morning, wrangled my tie around my neck, shined my shoes, put on my corporate face, and tackled the recruitment agency world. My time, my (awesome) clients and candidates, my decisions are not my own.

Working…

Here is our weekly feature in which we share the top articles we enjoyed from the past week about recruitment marketing, social recruiting and anything else in the recruiting space. In this article, we’ll be talking about employee turnover, complexity, hiring wisdom, source of hire and introverted employees.

Here are the articles that interested us this week (in no particular order), enjoy!:

 …

CLIP - The Sex Test 4 Recruiters

I had two guests today. First, a short visit by Charles Krugel, the employment lawyer from Chicago.

My contention is…

We have decided to do it. Yes, Will Thomson & Amy Ala are joining forces to write a post that hopefully will shake up the recruiting community a little bit.  We are both corporate recruiters, we both have come from the agency world, and we…