I am not a networking expert but through the hard yards of personal experience I learned how to get the most from networking events when I was a recruiter.



In this day and age with the accompanying vast amounts of free information available via the internet, it frequently surprises me how unprepared most recruiters appear to be, for live networking events.

 

There are many opportunities to network online and maybe that abundance causes recruiters to be less prepared…

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Two weeks ago I took my eldest son to the 2012 Year 7 Orientation Day at his new secondary school. All the kids and parents were milling around before the event started. There was an excited buzz in the air as students from many different primary schools checked out their future school-mates.

 

As I was waiting for the formalities to start, I was looking around the hall and noticed the school motto plastered across the wall: There is more in…

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One of the more humiliating recent events within the Australian recruitment industry was Chandler Macleod’s withdrawal from the $400 million Australian Defence Force recruitment contract it had won from incumbent provider, Manpower.



At the time of the contract win in July 2008, Stephen Cartwright, the CEO at that time of Chandler Macleod, described it as a ‘landmark contract’. And so it proved to be a ‘landmark’ in how quickly a contract ‘win’ could turn into a morale-sapping, PR and… Continue

In August 2009 I blogged about the innovative recruitment campaign of Australian software company, Atlassian. This campaign invited open slather recruitment agency participation ... with a catch. The Atlassian32 campaign was launched with the purpose of hiring 32 software engineers for their Sydney head office.



After I posted the article on my personal blog 39 people commented on the article, easily the most number of comments any of my blog posts has received. To say… Continue

It has to be one of the most clichéd lines in job descriptions and hence, recruitment advertising - the request for ‘excellent communication skills'.



It is omnipresent in today's recruitment lexicon. Alternatively, substitute your favourite synonym such as ‘excellent', ‘good', ‘outstanding', ‘exceptional', ‘superior' or ‘high level'.



Unfortunately these phrases are of no help whatsoever to candidates, or recruiters.



Why?



To make an accurate assessment… Continue

I wasn't at the major Australian recruitment industry conference last month in Queensland (RCSA Conference), but from all accounts it was an excellent conference. I did follow the articles and blogs being posted from the conference and one in particular caught my eye.



It was Top consultants bill five times more: Study.



The article reported on the BSRP Asia research that concluded that the financial difference between the elite recruiter and the average was… Continue

I always knew that when one of my recruiters started a sentence with ‘I assumed..." that it was going to be a story with an unhappy ending.



Assumptions are for the unskilled, the lazy or the unthinking. The definition of assume is "to take for granted or without proof, suppose as a fact".



To take anything for granted in the world of recruitment consulting is asking for trouble. Here is a incomplete list of unwise assumptions, summarised from my 20 years of (often painful)… Continue

A common request I receive from clients or prospective clients is to run a workshop on "client control".



Of course it's a ridiculous concept because you can no more "control" someone else (unless you have a gun to their head) than you can read their mind. Everyone chooses what control, or more accurately said, what influence they allow another person to have over them.



Observing a champion recruiter at work is to gain a lesson in masterful… Continue

*Conditions apply



Sounds fabulous, doesn't it? Surely it can't be true?



But it is! There really is a hiring boom in one organisation, in contrast to the hiring hibernation occurring almost everywhere else in the recruitment forest. And you don't have to have ANY previous relationship with the company to submit candidates.



Surely this is too good to be true? So what's the catch?



You bet there's a catch. And this catch provides a revealing glimpse into… Continue

As a rookie recruiter many years ago, I was told a by an old hand in recruitment, while we were sharing a convivial drink, that ‘recruitment is simple but that doesn't mean it's easy'. Over the years I have had reason to reflect on the truth of that statement many times and it's hard to fault it.



It still amazes me when I see so many recruiters doing things, or not doing simple things that, if changed, would make an immediate difference to their results. It seems that ‘best practice'… Continue

This month Lance Armstrong's comeback to the Tour de France is big news in the world of sport.



For those of you unaware of Lance Armstrong, he's the only man in history to have won 7 Tour de France's, road cycling's holy grail.



Just in case this isn't impressive enough, he won them consecutively and also fought back from a life-threatening bout of testicular cancer a germ cell tumour that metastasised to his brain and lungs when he was in his mid… Continue

Nervous candidates may be reading the press and viewing the TV news and deciding it's "better the devil you know" and consequently putting their job search on hold until it's more certain as to what the future holds for the economy.



In this climate, there is even more reason to work hard on placing immediately available candidates.



When I was working a perm desk I always paid special attention to my immediately available candidates. Although they may not have all been A1… Continue