My mother is on Facebook. I’ve been mildly amused by this until last week when that’s how I found out my mom lost her job. That’s right, my mom - who lives a mile away, who I see twice a week and talk to on the phone almost every day, told Facebook she got laid off before her recruiter daughter. My jaw dropped. My eyes watered. I immediately grabbed my phone and ran down the hall to call her. After two tries she finally picked up, in tears. My brother, 12 years younger…

As we approach the end of the year, we thought we'd return to the list of the "50 Best Careers of 2011" pubished by US News to see if the actual hiring demand was similar to expectations. Over the next few weeks, we'll revisit each job category and look at hiring demand. Today, we'll review the Business and Finance…

I have conflicting sentiments regarding a recent exchange I had with someone within my LinkedIn network. This is a 1st level connection but someone who I do not know nor have had any previous direct communication. So I guess this is how “social” works these days…

On 12/09/11 7:20 AM, -name- wrote: -------------------- Yesterday -company name- decided to start donating toys for Facebook likes. The boss has always been a supporter of -charity…

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I know now that I am removed from reality. I thought that my recent interviews with Jennifer McClure and Shally Steckerl and CoraMae Lengeman were pretty good. The masses however thought that this show was a breath of fresh air compared to my recent offerings.

Linda Brenner on…

Regardless if you are in a firm or in an internal recruiting role, trust is the brand you are selling.  I have walked into offices of new clients, as well as internal hiring leaders new to work with me who had a bitter taste of past recruiters.  'Tis true...there are bad recruiters who give our industry a bad name.  The complaint is often about either promises broken, poor quality of candidates presented, or the favorite act of "Disappearing Recruiter" (where did they go, hello is…

Sometimes recruiting is just being in the right place at the right time. Oh, I know, it's lots of work and we have to be good with people, no fear of rejection, yada yada. But some days you just have to shake your head and thank your lucky stars that there is such a thing as pure dumb luck.

It's only Wednesday but so far I've had two insanely lucky breaks this week. Scenario #1 - after WEEKS of sourcing for a very tough to fill purchasing role I got a hit from a LinkedIn…

Facebook or LinkedIn? Which is better to recruit with, my dear? When it comes to advertising, Twitter says you can have it your way. How is this for a cool recruiting strategy? Solve an online puzzle and you get to apply for a spy job for the British government. All this, plus Jim Stroud goes hip hop, if only for a moment, on this episode of The Jim Stroud Show. …

You post a job.  Candidates apply.  And this is where the screening process begins for most recruiting organizations.  First, recruiters filter through resumes in their ATS to find qualified candidates to interview.  Second, they interview the best candidates and progress them into more interviews if needed.  Lastly, they take all the information available to them (from both recruiters & hiring managers) to decide which interviewee is hired at the company.

This screening…

Imagine running a business where you have no idea where revenue comes from or your associated cost to generate it (AKA: expenses). Imagine running a business where you have no idea what your profit margin is? Crazy, right? Well guess what; that’s the way most of you run your business.

To be specific, most recruiters have no idea how to or chose not to use the most important tools on a regular basis, analytics to determine where business comes from and how much money is made. Now,…

It’s that time of the month – time to glance back and see if anything really happened in the past 4 weeks. Surprisingly enough, it did. Here’s what I noticed:

• Monster partners with Ogden Newspapers: Monster adds to its bevy…

In some ways avoiding the kind of  abusive and criminal sex practices that have been plaguing Penn State University is a fairly easy task.  It is a matter of conducting background checks not only for pre-employment screening but periodically to determine if your staff has been convicted of any criminal and sexual offenses.  But then what about the first timers?  Or, rather, those who were never caught?

Determining whether sex abuses are taking place, particularly in the employment…

Things get smaller, faster, and more expensive in some cases. I was watching Predator 2 and was surprised by how they had to use pay phones or be by a phone to communicate. How did life work when there were only VCRs and simple TV remotes? When our children have children, will there be something so beyond our comprehension? Time will tell.

What is more important to our society, ease of use or power of functionality? I believe it lies in the middle. People interact more freely and…

I’ve titled this blog in this way as it is the first in a short series of tales that all left me with the same feeling; that I need to increase people’s respect of me and what I do.

The in-house recruiter

A lot has been written about the relative skills of the external recruiter versus the in-house recruitment manager and I don’t intend to enter too deeply into this debate except to share an annoying thing that…

The big question I'm really interested in is this: What's in the best interests of the candidate and client... a consultative approach, or a sales approach?



After all... the "better" recruiters in our industry always focus on the big "close". For these recruiters, every aspect of their work resolves around "closing"... And that's why they feel we're working in a…

A completely unscientific poll indicates that amongst Zones recruiters I’m one of the more accessible. I tweet. I blog. I put my business cards in every fishbowl I can find (although I still haven’t won a free lunch). It probably comes as no surprise that somehow I ended up being the lucky internal recruiter who gets most, if not all of the agency cold calls. I wrote some time ago about why…

Jim Stroud chats with Michael Marlatt about mobile recruiting. Specifically, they discussed companies sending text messages to passive candidates. The photographs in the show were taken by Stephen Renney. Download the show notes: http://www.scribd.com/doc/74396806 …

I have been recruiting for 25 years and have just come across a situation I have never faced.  Perhaps some of you have been here and can offer advice.

I have a retained client looking for a CEO in the US.  The fee they are paying me is very significant and six figures, but specifically for this position. The client is headquartered abroad.  The client is very wonderful and upfront.  My initial panel included three people who he is interested in.  They were all flown to the…

Just two weeks ago, I attended a conference in Philadelphia regarding social media’s influence on the business world as we know it. It’s amazing to see how different departments are leveraging social media in their day-to-day tasks. In fact it’s great. However, for those of you who haven’t jumped on board the social media train, you are missing out. Let’s take HR for example. Recruiters know that they…

Those of you who have read past posts will know that I am a Rec2Rec…  I source, and place the best recruiters in the market into reputable agency brands… Tough job I’ve got – no seriously, I have a tough job. 

My candidates are recruiters and my clients are recruiters – oh, and I’m a recruiter also…

And, guess what?... The majority of you reading this article are recruiters as well.

For the most part we, (that’s you and I), speak the same language,…