Do your employees step up and perform at the highest level?  If so, it is probably due in part to good leadership.  I’ve been writing a lot lately about corporate culture, and started thinking about whether your employees are inspired to work for you, or just have to work for you.

There are a lot of qualities…

It is getting slower out there. Over the past four months, growth rates of US job postings have been on a slide downwards with the latest addition in May of only 2.1%. Employers posted a daily average of 2,600,000 job openings (estimate) during the last 30 days, just 55,000 more than in April. Four of the five largest metro area posted gains. Employers in the New York Metro area added just 1.0% while the Los Angeles job market remained virtually unchanged (down 0.4%).

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For most recruiters, the client meeting is key. It is in a face-to-face meeting that the magic happens. This is where your credibility, and the business, is won or lost. It’s here that a recruiter can win exclusivity, secure multiple temp orders, and resolve pricing and service dilemmas.

In fact a great deal of a recruiters time is spent securing the visit. Planning, cold calling, referrals.

Yet, too often, the visit is a wasted opportunity at best, and an unmitigated disaster…

In a sales interview, when asked, "What percentage of budget did you achieve in the last measurable year?" often the answer is, “100%”. Look at the leader-board in any sales organisation and a very small portion of the team is actually…

Your most promising candidate drops out at the last moment. The short-listed candidate refuses to go for an interview. you are frustrated that your candidate just does not talk to you.

These and many other such instances are commonplace in the life of a recruiter. Every candidate gives you enough signs to tell you when he has lost interest in the opportunity that you are discussing with him. (male pronoun is being used throughout this post to represent both…

On the occasion of a wonderful long weekend dedicated to family, food, and fun it’s imperative to remember what this holiday celebrates. Over the course of generations, Americans have sacrificed their youth, their bodies, and all too often their lives to protect our nation and its citizens. To pay homage to these incredible sacrifices is the very least each of us can offer, but it is even better to try to repay these brave patriots with something more tangible. For those of us involved in…

Learn more about these three current issues in this interview of Scott Wintrip of the Wintrip Consulting Group /…

A few weeks back I started a discussion thread on LinkedIn titled “In-house recruiters rejoice! The cold call is dead. Long live Social Recruitment – Discuss” – It turned out to be a bit of a monster and with 129 comments was the biggest topic in the IOR (Institute of Recruiters) group for approximately 3-4…

“The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin’ in the wind”.

-          Bob Dylan

In case you missed it, or were just too busy waiting for the rapture, Bob Dylan turned 70 this past Tuesday, May 24^th. In honor of that milestone, I decided to go back and listen again to my extensive collection of Dylan albums and CDs. Every time I listen to Dylan I hear something that I didn’t hear before, a subtle phrase, the…

There has been a great deal of criticism of Agency recruiters lately, quite a bit of it from me.

But a recent theme is emerging where Corporate HR managers and internal recruiters have launched some scathing attacks on the process followed by recruiters. A recent blog, Dear John, from…

Last week I posted an article. The Process and Pitfalls of Education Verification, about the ins and outs of education verification.   I directed it toward recruiters and staffing groups as well as to human resources managers.  Among other things, I wrote about various instances where employment candidates try to fudge on their degrees.   I wrote about the different ways they may stretch the truth. 

Alright, sometimes they just downright lie about having a degree when that…

The simplicity of selling is believing you provide tremendous value to your clients and engaging in conversations to help economic buyers fully understand the value you delivery. One powerful way to deliver value right now is to help prospects and customers anticipate the market and edge-out their competitors through active hiring strategies. Their win will be in having temp and fulltime talent who are ready for the continuing influx of business in this recovery.



The following…

A couple of weeks ago I had a Twitter discussion with a well known NZ recruitment industry figure Jonathan Rice about selling retained versus contingent recruitment. Jonathan made the point that, “[many recruiters] provide an excellent service but are too scared to ask for some money up front, probably missing a trick somewhere there!”

It was immediately obvious to me then that many recruiters’…

1. Ask us how long we have lived in the area. Do not ask us where we are REALLY from. Do not ask us what our nationality is when you mean ethnicity.  Aside from EEO issues in the US, these questions show  that you have already put us in a box as "other" and we are tired of hearing it.  Also, for Asian orphans, this can be a painful question. Some do not know. One woman I met was abandoned in Saigon as a toddler speaking Chinese in 1968. …

Experience: It’s a word that can either help or haunt you.  Everyone seems to be looking for experience, yet there are so many people without it.  It’s a catch-22.  You need someone to give you a chance (you having no experience) in the first place to…