You don't have to be a whiz to hire great people or find a great job. This site is about recruiting made simple. Find who you are looking for with tips from a whiz!
I heard that if you have a goal, you should never say that you’re going to start it sometime in the future. Don’t say, “I’ll start that tomorrow morning” or “I’ll do that after ____” because it creates a sense of non-urgency in your subconscious. If you can put it off for awhile, why bother doing it at all? If you want to achieve something, fully commit by taking the first step RIGHT NOW.
Nearly every HR and recruiting conference has a session about “The Future of Recruiting.” What about the present? What about the change factors we need to make TODAY to get there? It’s the individuals and companies who are making changes TODAY who will shape the future and reap its rewards.
HR Departments – Start utilizing your recruiting partners as real partners, instead of competition. Pick up the phone and tell your recruiter what they can do to help you and readily provide info that will help them be successful. You’re paying them to help you, right? Then, cross those recruiting tasks you just delegated off of your to-do list and get to those strategic projects you never have time to tackle. When open positions at your company are being filled with quality people (thanks to a well-informed recruiting partner) and you’re achieving other major HR goals within your organization, everyone wins – especially your employees and your bottom-line! Make that call right now.
Recruiters – When you get that call from HR, start thinking like a busy hiring manager and busy HR department. You’ve been hired to alleviate pressure, not intensify it. Tell your hiring managers that they’ll see fewer, but better qualified candidates. Know. Your. Client. Research their industry, understand the challenges in their market, know what potential candidates will say about them and how to overcome that. Commit to using your expertise to reduce the workload of your client’s managers. High-quality, pre-screened candidates are harder to find. Accept it and then conquer it, starting right now.
Candidates/Jobseekers – Quit your whining. Yeah, the economy has been miserable for awhile. Get over it. There are jobs out there – do you want one? If a recruiter calls you about a job and says they think you’d be qualified, don’t make them wish they hadn’t called. Don’t tell me about how much you hate the job search process, how your last boss was a jerk and the company was useless. I’m not your friend, I’m representing your potential boss. Use good manners, dress professionally, speak clearly and make sure your follow-up is timely and thoughtful. Make it your goal that everyone who talks to you will be happy that they had the opportunity. Remember that you are representing yourself AND your recruiter when you speak to an employer. Don’t embarrass me. Think of the most professional, successful person you know and mimic their best qualities. The way they dress, how they act and how they communicate is probably what made them successful. Start doing these things now.
What could you do now to move yourself and your company forward? What habits have you been TRYING to break instead of just breaking them? We could change the world starting today. Why wait for the future?
P.S. A tip of the hat to G.K. Chesterton who wrote, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” (I actually thought I was being creative with my title, but then realized it sounded a little too familiar, thus requiring further research.) The American Chesterton Society suggests that he meant some things are so important, that you should do them yourself, even if it means doing it poorly. So again I say, don’t wait until the day you can do something important perfectly, just start doing it today! You’ll get better.
People tell me that they have a LinkedIn profile, but it doesn’t really do anything for them, or they don’t really “get it,” or it’s just too overwhelming to complete and they’re not really sure where to start. Other people say that they don’t have a LinkedIn profile because they’re not looking for a job.
I can tell you LinkedIn is for much more than jobseekers! Salespeople actively review their contacts and extended connections via LinkedIn for potential sales leads. It’s much easier to make a warm sales call based on a mutual connection! LinkedIn is also a fantastic resource for connecting and conversing with people in your industry. For many recruiters, LinkedIn is one of their top resources for learning about hiring trends, connecting with new client companies AND identifying new talent. Tech-savvy hiring managers often use their profiles to advertise the open positions and/or network with potential future employees.
In order to maximize the benefit you get from LinkedIn, you need to have a complete and informative LinkedIn profile. It explains who you are, what you know, what you have to offer and why you’d be interested in connecting. After your profile is complete, you need to CONNECT. Connect to friends, family, co-workers (both current and former), people you meet at tradeshows – almost anyone! More connections means more conversations. The next step is to look at LinkedIn Groups. There are groups for almost everything on LinkedIn; professional associations, alumni chapters, personal interests, sports fans, news channels, etc. Find a few that work for you and join the conversation or simply read about what’s happening in your areas of interest. If you don’t have a lot of connections, groups are a great way to build your network.
If all this seems a little overwhelming to do on your own, I’m now offering a new service that is a great way to get a step up on making your LinkedIn profile work for you – in whatever capacity you need.
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I’m eager to help you start maximizing your results from a great resource. Sign up and let’s get started!
Comic by Cyanide and Happiness
Our client hired us to identify a Human Resources Manager for their growing financial services firm. They were looking for someone who could manage HR functions as a “department of one,” but have enough experience to offer leadership and guidance as they continue to grow.
This was an exciting search with the opportunity for me to make a lot of fantastic, new connections in HR! I appreciated that as a client, they had a clear idea of their needs, but were open to considering candidates who were a half-step outside of what they’d originally considered, with regard to secondary criteria like industry experience and current employer size. This helped to broaden their candidate pool without deviating from their primary search criteria.
If I spoke to you as a candidate for this role or if you offered referrals to great candidates in our search, THANK YOU for your time and consideration! I hope to have the opportunity to help you or someone you know again in the future.
Job postings should not be the same as job descriptions.
Job postings should prompt a call to action in a jobseeker. They should inspire someone to pack up a tent and set up camp outside your office building like a Black Friday Target sale. Okay, maybe that’s a little over-eager. But they should make someone excited about working for your company and interested in quickly taking the steps necessary to land a job with you.
Use job postings to convey your culture, highlight specific needs for the job, and explain what kind of person is likely to be successful doing it! This will be far more interesting to applicants than “other duties as assigned.” Job descriptions are better suited as documentation used within the company to describe the intricate details of a job someone already holds.
As a recruiter, I don’t rely heavily on applicants, but I do use job postings to convey necessary details about a job to a candidate in a written format. In that usage, I want to inspire my candidates to be excited about the next step in the interview process, develop some strong follow-up questions, and prepare for likely upcoming questions as we proceed. For more technical positions, it is handy if a client company can provide a job description later in the interview process to give additional detail.
If you’re looking for employees who are active and energized, start with making sure your job postings encourage that attitude!
Hi! I'm Jessica. I believe that recruiting (when done correctly) is about creativity, minimizing limitations and applying new methods to make the whole hiring & job search process a little more efficient for everyone. In this blog, I will focus on recruiting and how HR, jobseekers and recruiters can make the hiring process a little smoother – and maybe a little more fun!
