Looking for a job is stressful – just ask Google. A search for ‘job search stress’ returns about 55,000,000 results.

Whether the job seeker is a member of the long-term unemployed, recently out of work, or even employed but exploring their options it’s important to understand that they are going through a stressful, time-consuming process. The easier you can make…

I recently gave a presentation on this topic as I often feel that much of the HR vernacular is always around employee engagement and should be much more about employee happiness. Now my written word is about as eloquent as a line backer ice skating but try to bear with me!

I asked the audience the question “Can you be…

Every few months or so, a new game app comes around that my 16 year old daughter and all of her friends go crazy over. They sit there in a deep stare, barely moving, likely not even breathing - then BOOM - an eruption of disappointment, followed by the resolve to do even better next time, even if it means subsidizing their time spent on homework or interacting with their parents. This goes on and on…

Effective communication is never one sided, but that’s exactly what you get with email. One person writes and transmits; the receivers read and reply. These monologues are never, ever effective dialogues as there is a time delay that allows too much room for misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and miscommunication. Email strips away not only the tone, and too often the context, from the message, but it also removes the very essence of efficient and effective human conversation.

Is…

The source for many of my posts over the years has been the local churches announcing their upcoming sermons for the Sunday services and this one is no different. Originally I thought about this in a different context but the events of the past week have changed my focus.

We are involved in an ever-changing world and these changes require that we change our focus and approaches in order to successfully deal with those changes.  They require us to change our corporate culture. Newton’s…

You’ll never hit the mark 100% of the time, but it is important to always look back and reflect on your hiring successes and failures to identify their common traits. We have been in the recruiting and hiring business for a while now and have identified some common hiring mistakes that are totally avoidable.

Stop hiring resumes and start hiring…

About 20% of jobs are considered hard-to-fill. Chances are your organization is filling some of these jobs. Understanding how difficult recruiting can be, I wanted to share some tips with you on how to expand your candidate supply for your open positions. 

1. Look for Candidates with Other Job Titles

If you're recruiting a Web Developer, don't…

YES! A big, fat “yes” is the answer. Retention is such a powerful metric in business because of the ridiculously high cost of turnover. Retained employees represent a great return on the many investments that employers make on their workforce, and onboarding is a solid, yet often overlooked aspect of those investments.

According to a …

LinkedIn is always good for a survey on the latest recruiting and HR trends! Recently they polled 800 professionals and over 13,000 talent acquisition leaders to gauge the importance of mobile recruiting today.

I wasn’t surprised to see just how high…

As the popularity of contract staffing continues to grow, we have noticed a shift in the way that contractors are being used. Rather than simply being a stop-gap measure in limited circumstances or to test the hiring waters during difficult economic times, we are seeing employers building a blended workforce model that integrates contractors as part of a deliberate, long-term…

Like almost every agency recruiter out there, I've been using LinkedIn for a while now. It has become an integral part of our business model here at Sun Recruiting and while we don't rely on it - it is certainly one of our more important tools. Back when I started using LinkedIn several years ago, I put some thought into how I wanted to use it. I understood how it worked and…

Take No Prisoners is a free weekly memo from Scott Wintrip that explores how Radical Accountability prospers companies and changes lives. Instead of taking people hostage with outdated, heavy-handed, and ineffective methods of management, measurement, and motivation, Radical Accountability focuses on creating an unwavering responsibility for getting what matters most done.

Radical Accountability is considered a practice as there is always an aspect of it that can be…

How to be Successful in Recruitment Part 05

- Negotiation

Negotiation is an interesting topic and one that gets mentioned a lot in recruitment circles. Typically those discussion go along the lines of

‘I bet they will want to…

Other than satisfactory salaries, employers also need to offer good employee benefits in order to attract and retain the best talent.

One of the types of employee benefits that are regarded as important by job seekers and employees is health insurance.

As the cost of health care continues to rise, it is becoming increasingly necessary for employees to…

An assembly line at a Ford plant. Credit: Wikipedia Commons

In 1914, Henry Ford did something dramatic, to the point it made headlines in newspapers across the country – he increased pay from $2.25 a day to $5 a day for his factory workers.

Not that the $5 was guaranteed. Workers got $2.25 daily and the other…

I’ve recently had a call from a good client of mine, asking if I was able to run a new training programme for them.

Sounds great doesn’t it? Well, ordinarily yes, but in this instance I wasn’t sure.

Like most people I love being asked to do more work for my clients, but the problem was that what they were asking for wasn’t really my main area of expertise.

It was something that I touch on in other courses…

Once, in a world far, far away (i.e., the 1990s), Monster beat its chest and claimed to be the biggest and best source for online jobs in the world, bar none.

Then, last week, Monster - diminished, no longer for sale, and facing significant declines in revenue - once again beat its chest and said that it would…

After experiencing rising stock prices for the past 5 years, Amazon shares decreased 21% in 2014, according to Yahoo!…

PROBLEM:

Most major recruiting conventions aren't for regular, workaday recruiters like US.

I've been to a few major recruiting conventions (and was even a panelist at one), but not many. Most of the people there seemed to be mainly senior corporate, staffing and recruiting professionals, aka, THE PEOPLE WHO CREATE AND OVERSEE THE PROBLEMS THAT WE IN RECRUITING AND HAVE TO SOLVE. Their companies paid thousands of dollars (if you include travel and accommodations) to be…

This is the hardest blog post I’ve ever written. Some will say it’s too personal, and they’re probably right. My regular readers know this blog is a diary of sorts, I generally write about whatever is top of mind and damn the consequences. Others may feel sorry for me. A few might even understand, having gone…