High-Touch Recruiting

The Art of High-Tech/High-Touch Recruiting Sponsored by MightyRecruiter. As an expert in helping small businesses achieve their hiring and recruiting goals, Rebecca Barnes-Hogg knows that it’s the people that make an organization. From the time she started helping her high school friends find summer jobs to the present day, Rebecca has always excelled at matching the right people with the right opportunities. Today, as the founder of YOLO Insights ® and author of the upcoming book The YOLO Principle (SPARK Publications, 2017), Rebecca has developed a unique approach to recruiting. In her upcoming webinar for MightyRecruiter, Rebecca explores the challenges of recruiting in today’s dynamic recruiting landscape and shares her high-tech/high-touch recruiting techniques for successfully snaring qualified candidates in a tight labor market. You’ve written that “Recruiters have to be proactive and engage with candidates long before an opening exists.” Why is that important and what are your best tips for making and maintaining those connections The reason it’s important to engage with candidates even before you have an opening is that the labor market is so tightâ€"and if you look at the numbers, it seems like it is only going to get worse. For recruiters to efficiently fill positions, they need to be looking at talent all the time to create a pipeline, even when they don’t have an open position. Recruiters should always be building a pool of candidates for future use. To do that, my best tip is always to be listening to potential candidates for qualities that employers want, even if you don’t have a requisition for it now. I’ll talk to candidates about their skills and which other industries or positions they might be interested in pursuing down the road. It’s about thinking outside the box as far as where their skills might fit, even if it is outside their current industry. Often, there are possibilities for moving candidates into other roles that the jobseekers themselves may not have ever considered. How else do you connect with candidates that might be different from the way other recruiters operate? This may seem odd, but I try to build relationships with candidates by giving them good advice. When I am interviewing someone, and they do or say something that I know will disqualify them from an opportunity, I’ll tell them. For example, I had a candidate who kept mispronouncing the client’s name. She was perfect for the position, but I knew that if she went in there and mispronounced the company’s name, she would be out of consideration immediately. So giving jobseekers tips and friendly advice makes interviewing easier for them, and later they remember me because I treated them well and helped them. Now when I need help from them, they are going to take my phone call, or answer my email, or give me their friends’ names. I view recruiting like building a spider web; you are always throwing out things and creating new patterns and new ways to reach people From a spider web to the World Wide Web, I know you place substantial value on social recruiting. What’s your process for using social media to engage with candidates? I don’t know that I have a process, per se. It’s more about reading between the lines. What words are jobseekers using? What are candidates talking about? And what aren’t they talking about? I monitor a lot of different Twitter feeds for things related to recruiting. One of the things that I like to look at are recruiting-related hashtags â€" #recruiterfail, #recruiterspam, #ihaterecruiters are some good ones. The things you read about when you look at these hashtags are funny at times, but it’s sad because recruiters are doing things that bother candidates and they don’t know it. At the end of the day, it hurts them and their reputation. I look at these hashtags to see the things that recruiters are doing that candidates don’t like and make sure I act differently. Another simple thing I do is that when someone starts following me on social media, I’ll do a little investigating to look at their feed and then I’ll send them a little note thanking them for following me. The key to social recruiting is to be human and have it be a two-way street. You are also a big proponent of recruiters doing their due diligence through research, and collecting business intelligence pay off. Could you explain how research can help a recruiter sharpen their recruiting strategy? This is where search engines can be your friend. Regardless of your preferred search engine, learning how to use them effectively is critical. When I am working to fill a role, I’ll do a search on the industry to find out what the top ten news stories are currently. This gives me an understanding of what problems the industry is facing and what its challenges are at the moment. I can then use that information when I recruit to find people who can address those particular difficulties. For example, I am doing a search right now for a client who has some bad reviews on Glassdoor. The company is now looking to hire HR staff and so rather than trying to gloss over the bad reviews when I am speaking to candidates I mention that if they do their research, they will find these bad reviews. The reason I do that is that as candidates for this company’s HR staff, they will have the chance to help turn those negative reviews around. This kind of research on my part and this kind of transparency can help me find candidates who are excited about that kind of challenge and identify those people who are looking to gain experience in organizational development. Just by knowing the challenges, you can craft questions that will help you identify the perfect candidate to help that company fix whatever problem they are facing. If you were going to summarize your webinar in a few sentences, how would you describe it? The focus of the webinar is that recruiting today is about relationships over everything else. Recruiters have to build relationships with current employees, with candidates, with potential candidates, and with your community. These sources are where your future workforce is going to come from. It might come to you through your career site, through social media, or through referrals, but you have to build relationships, and you have to be human about it. I’ll be giving a bunch of tips and tricks and tools about how to create those relationships by using online tools and some old-school tactics, as well. This post is sponsored by MightyRecruiter. Be sure to join their  upcoming webinar, Today’s Recruiting Landscape: Where to Post Jobs for Best Visibility, Which Benefits to Negotiate for Qualified Hires, and More, on Tuesday, June 13, and ask your questions first hand!

The Future of Your Searchable Brand - With or Without Google - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

The Future of Your Searchable Brand - With or Without Google - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career The DLD conference was yesterday and it was held in Munich. The highlight of the event (Thanks TechCrunch) was a session called Humans Disrupting Algorithms, in which David Kirkpatrick of Fortune spoke with Jimmy Wales and Jason Calacanis. Jimmy has developed a beta of Wikia Search, whereas Jason Calacanis has been running Mahalo for a few months now. Jason said 60% of people are not happy with search results, up from 50% last year. Both of these search engines are operated by humans. The 60 employees who run Mahalo are paid, whereas the people running Wikia are not. The idea with the creation of both is to eliminate the pollution that Google has because of people who develop thousands of websites for SEO advantages. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE3TKktZZbI] Google’s VP of Search Product and User Experience, Marissa Mayer, commented on human v. algorithmic search results from the audience. The problem isnt with the searching process, its with the result. You cant do the fat If you read Chris Anderson, the real value is in the long tail. So if I did a startup I would do something else. I would do a Facebook. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gL4cg-vIQY] My opinion I dont see Google losing market share, but it do see a percentage of the people who traditionally use Google switching to these other services when they are in search of more hard results. You cant search for your name in Mahalo unless youre a celebrity or someone recommends a link to your site. Whatever happens, your going to start having to perform maintenance on these other sites just in case. Do you think that search engines should be human operated or by Googles PageRank algorithm?

Top 5 Time Management Tips for Recruiters

Top 5 Time Management Tips for Recruiters When I was a journalist, I organised my life by spinning plates. I quickly became  a certified expert at successfully balancing twenty tasks at once, and soon found myself with two really exciting opportunities staring me in the face.  One  being to join the circus, the other to forge a  career in recruitment marketing. After I missed the annual circus auditions, I chose the latter. What I’ve learned along the way  is that to be successful in recruitment,  youve got to manage your  time effectively. Here are five tips to help you get the most out of your working day: 1. Don’t confuse working long with working hard The first rule of time management to is measure it in terms of successful results, not activity. Confusing activity with results is a toxic way of killing precious working hours and it’s vital that you measure your productivity in regards to working smarter, not longer. For example, if you have a call booked in with a client you should always set out an agenda. What do you want to achieve from the call? By planning your results you’re ensuring the phone call isn’t a complete waste of time. Twenty quality calls are better than fifty pointless ones that you make ill-prepared. 2. Step away from the to-do list Treat your calendar like your  Bible, and stay vigilant. It’s time to ditch the to-do list that has the same points carried over the past  three days and instead, have your daily tasks set out religiously in your diary, and stick to it. Both your client and candidate processes should be resilient enough for you to have a scheduled time to speak to them, if not, then it’s time to work on your processes. If anyone calls/emails at random times of the day it’s OK to get back to them when you’re free, don’t fall into the domino trap of being reactive. Always be proactive. 3. Tackle the complex tasks in the morning Everyone has experienced trouble getting their wheels rolling in the  morning, however studies show if you start the day right (get up earlier, eat breakfast etc) you can accomplish a lot before you even realise you’re tired. Fear is still asleep until around 9am so always tackle the most complex tasks first and sail through the rest of the day doing the tasks you enjoy. After all, the king of productivity, Benjamin Franklin, once said, ‘The early morning has gold in its mouth’ and we all know recruiters aren’t the type to pass up on gold. 4. Score your candidates There is nothing worse than candidates missing calls, rearranging interviews and leading you up the ‘no commission this month’ garden path. To avoid the aforementioned, it’s important to always know the difference between a lead swinger and an ideal candidate. The time efficient way to identify this is to quantify their value based on important factors that will make it a quick and easy process for both parties. Ask yourself these  whether they are Exclusive? Immediately available? Open to new markets? Excited by clients? Easy to keep in contact with? Do they listen to advice? 5. Control your clients Controlling both your clients  and candidates can be the difference between a three-day and a three-week process. There’s no point in having a top candidate with a client that doesn’t cut the mustard. The better the client, the more significant the process will be, therefore, there’s a better chance of the candidate getting the job (and liking it). Do they have a good retention rate? Do they have clear promotion targets? How good are their incentives? Mastering the art of time management is down to developing a habit to automate your routine tasks, giving you more time for you to spend on tasks that need a little more TLC. About the author:  Megan Hill is the Operations and  Marketing Manager at ion Search Recruitment to Recruitment.

The long-distance relationship goes mainstream 3 tips for survival

The long-distance relationship goes mainstream 3 tips for survival Does this courtship sound familiar to you? We used Instant messenger a lot. But sometimes you just want to get away from your computer, so then wed text. But fighting while you text is so tedious you may as well just get back on IM. This description is from Sandra Proulx, who maintained a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend for two years, before they moved in together in New Hampshire. Their relationship reflects one of the big changes that millennials have brought to dating: The long-distance relationship. Its becoming more and more mainstream as young people increasingly rejigger what it means to step out into adult life. The trend starts before college, when young people are tied to technology, communicating with people all over the world, and making friends with people theyve never met in person. Then college comes, and the experience includes much more travel than it used to. Junior year abroad used to be the time to travel. Now theres also a summer internship for most students, and many students travel to another state every summer for a coveted internship of one sort or another. Among college students 78% say they have been in a long-distance relationship. After that, traveling for a job seems normal. Thirty years ago, people would generally look for a job out of college in a city they wanted to build a life in. Today, the first job is just a first step. And millenniels are experimenters. They see their twenties as a time to try out a bunch of different jobs, and they also see it as a time to try out a bunch of different cities. It used to be that you could tell where someone was living by the area code on their phone. Now that area code on their cell phone only tells you where they started. Additionally, millenniels are acutely aware of the problems generation X encountered from putting off having children. Baby-boomers mothers told gen-X daughters: Dont worry about getting married, you have time. Focus on your career. You can have kids later. Now we have a whole industry of women penning their ordeal of trying to get pregnant. And its pretty clear that IVF is not something that makes putting off having kids til age 40 something to plan for. So the typical gen-Y graduate plans on being married around age thirty. Which means that while he or she is gallivanting from job to job and city to city, there is also, a parallel hunt for a stable partner. Enter the long-distance romance. To be sure, not everyone likes doing the long-distance routine, and New Kid on the Hallway lays out a lot of reasons why. But anecdotal evidence suggests that long-distance relationships have become mainstream for people not only in college, but after college. And, in fact, when it comes to making two careers and one relationship work across state lines, there are some best practices. Here are three: 1. Have a plan for being together eventually, and be flexible. Ben Morris, founder of Boston Pedicab, spent a semester of school in San Diego where he met his girlfriend, Carolyn Soohoo. Two months after meeting her, he went back to Northeastern to finish college, they agreed to maintain a long-distance relationship while Morris finished school and then, hed move to San Diego. Knowing that they had a plan to be together made them committed to daily, hour-long phone calls. Its not like you can kill an hour together watching TV, says Soohoo, in order to be together we had to be talking. But before he got to San Diego, he founded Boston Pedicab, and Soohoo ended up coming to Boston instead. It was a big move for Soohoo. But she points out that learning to live together was not that hard because she and Morriss knew each other very well, Because of the distance, we were forced to talk about things that would come up a lot later in other relationships. 2. Get comfortable with deep conversation that flows electronically. The ubiquitous Blackberrry is evidence that technology has allowed people to blur the lines of work life and personal life. And the better you can use technology the more you can blur the lines. For example, Twitter technology to update people about what youre doing all the time makes IM look like low-maintenance communication. And if youre good with a wiki then collaboration with people you cant see doesnt seem that hard. Much of the technology that makes the workplace telecommuter-friendly to young people makes a telecommuter relationship possible as well. And, perhaps the most surprising thing is that these relationships seem to work out. Proulx says that a lot of their communication took place within the 160-character limit of a text message. When you only see the person once a month, you figure out how to write a whole novels worth of information in 160 characters. 3. Be honest with yourself when its going nowhere. Elina Furman is the author of the new book Kiss and Run: The Single, Picky, and Indecisive Girls Guide to Overcoming Her Fear of Commitment. Not surprisingly, she has experience with long-distance relationships. But hers lasted five years, but it didnt really go anywhere. I thought it was the best thing in the world. But I was much less committed than I realized. The long-distance allowed me to gloss over issues and keep a safe distance without ever having to commit. Not that all dead-end relationships are bad. Furman is the first to say that having a boyfriend who was generally out of the picture probably helped her career: I had the security of the relationship without the responsibilities of a relationship, and that freed me up to concentrate on my career. But as she got closer to age thirty, she got more interested in the idea of settling down. And in hindsight she recommends that you ask yourself: Are you making a plan for living in the same zip code, or are you just coasting? Either is fine, but the key to success in both the long-distance relationship as well as the careers it accommodates is to know what you are aiming for so that you can ask yourself if youre getting it.

Making Your Own Beats Online

Making Your Own Beats OnlineMany of the artists who use an online music producer to make their beats online, are often surprised at how easy it is to do it yourself. However, there are a few things that you should know before you jump in and begin making your own beats.Online beats come in two forms. There are beats that come from the likes of streaming services like YouTube or Google Play Music. These beats are a lot easier to create then most other beats that you will find online. There are also a number of free websites that are dedicated to providing beats.With the free beats online, you have to download the MP3 file before you can begin to use them. However, this does not mean that you cannot make your own beats online. This is really a matter of knowing what to do and where to get the necessary tools to help you create your own music online. If you have access to a computer, you can easily make your own beats without much difficulty.You may be wondering how the online producers of beats do this. Well, the fact of the matter is that most of these online producers do not have the skills or the time to do it all themselves. Most of them are just creating these beats for the enjoyment of others, but they are able to put the sound together very well.Even though the online beat makers cannot do it all by themselves, they can still make beats online. In fact, you will find that many of the beats online are completely free. So you can create your own beats by using these free beats online.But just because these beats are free does not mean that you do not have to worry about getting them mixed up, or not being able to find the specific song you are looking for when you begin to make yourown beats online. With many of the online beat makers that create beats online, the process is really very simple. Most of them even have the ability to mix all of their beats together in the exact way that you would like.The only problem with doing this is that it is very difficu lt to mix all of the sounds at once, especially if you are not a musical genius. It is often times easier to mix each sound separately. But to accomplish this, you must master the use of your ears. So in addition to learning the skills that the online beat makers have learned, you also need to practice your ears.If you are trying to learn how to make your own beats online, it is always best to learn through an online tutorial. The tutorials that come with most of the good online beat makers provide the best tutorials to make you understand the basics of producing beats. As long as you are sure that you are familiar with the general terms used in music making, you should be able to get started quickly and easily.

What Business Leaders Can Learn from Endurance Athletes

What Business Leaders Can Learn from Endurance Athletes We’ve all watched the drama play out in businesses of every size, from major corporations to brand new startups: companies fail when their leaders have a vision for growth that is too ambitious, or when they fail to scale fast enough to deliver growth. CEO and executive coach, Dr. Alison Eyring founder of Organization Solutions, endurance athlete, and author of Pacing for Growth; Why Intelligent Restraint Drives Long-Term Success has watched it happen all over the world. Often, hyper-growth companiesâ€"like Uber, for exampleâ€"fall into this trap. “[Uber] didnt think about building compassion into its profit line,” wrote one publication. “In their race for growth, they haven’t built the leadership capabilities needed to sustain their growth trajectory,” Eyring said. When Going Too Fast Is Too Much In addition to her business career, Eyring has over 15 years of experience training for and competing in endurance sports. She has learned all complex systems have real limits to growthâ€"and when you push them too far or too fast, the system breaks down. “I learned this the hard way when I tore my calf training for a 100k race in Mongolia,” said Eyring. “When injury happens to a business, it’s usually because the business is starting to feel the pain of going too far and too fast without the leadership capabilities needed to sustain it.” Eyring says that Uber, and the “next Ubers,” can learn from the failure of QXL.com. At the height of the first dot-com boom in the late 1990s, this ill-fated online auction company was the European rival to eBay. QXL.com was the darling of the UK Internet scene, and at one point was valued at over $2 billion. But behind the scenes, there was a lack of focus and alignment amongst its leadership, and a tendency to bite off far more than they could chew. Endurance VS Sprints Jules Persaud, Director of Trips at AirBnB and former QXL employee, remembers: “Products would be launched in haste and the resources needed to make them successful were moved into other new areas before sustainable growth had taken hold. Shiny new projects and PR-driven initiatives created multiple ‘sprints’ that didnt fold into a cohesive strategy.” During the time of QXL.coms hyper-growth, its leadership was under huge pressure to keep growing. They felt compelled to keep moving quickly, but they needed to build new capabilities to sustain its growth. However, none of its leaders were willing to put their hands up and challenge whether activities fit into a cohesive strategy. Ultimately, eBay won the day; their leaders were focused, relentless, and obsessive about their goals. “If you push a business too fast or too far without first building the right capabilities, you cause harm to the business and you cause harm to its people,” said Eyring. “Saying no takes mature leadershipâ€"the kind that drives an organization to focus on the right things and empowers people to say no when things don’t make sense.” QXL was in such a rush to grow, they failed to develop the capability of mature leadership. The Answer: Intelligent Restraint Leaders need to push their business to grow as fast and as far as possible if they are to keep up with the competition and with rapidly evolving customer needs. But just like endurance athletes, Eyring says, they also need to know when are at their max, so that they can build up the capabilities they will need to sustain long-term growth. This is especially tough for hyper-growth companies like QXL and Uber, where leaders are consumed by growthâ€"breaking into new markets and launching new products. “When we push beyond the limits of the organization without critical leadership capabilities, the result can be ruinousâ€"both financially and in terms of staff burnout and media catastrophes,” said Eyring. “By practicing what I call ‘Intelligent Restraint,’ businesses can drive the performance they need today and still build the right capabilities that they will need to transform for tomorrow.” Is your business pacing for growth? Take this quick test to see. Join Dana Manciagli’s Job Search Master Class now and get the most comprehensive job search system available!

3 Myths Busted About Working with Recruiters for Your Job Search

3 Myths Busted About Working with Recruiters for Your Job Search 3 Myths Busted About Working with Recruiters for Your Job Search Job seekers of all ages would like to have recruiters “pitch” them as a great candidate. Let’s clear up a few myths: Myth #1: Recruiters will introduce candidates to their clients. Truth #1: Yes, if you are a fit for a position the recruiter is working on. The reason why recruiters do research to identify candidates is that their client’s specification (job description) is job #1 to fulfill. The recruiter would lose credibility by saying, “Well, I don’t have that, but I’ve got this other great guy for you to look at!” Myth #2: Recruiters act as “agents” for job seekers, especially executives. Truth #2: Recruiters make their money by securing hiring companies as clients. They are paid by the hiring company and their focus is focused on finding clients and fulfilling their clients’ needs…over and over again. Some recruiters are retained by a company in a contract with their fee committed up front and others are contingency recruiters, who are paid by the client only if the client hires their candidate. Many retained recruiters focus on executive level searches, approximately $150,000 per year base and higher, with exceptions, of course. As in any industry, there are various types of recruiters. Some really enjoy the engagement with prospective candidates or job seekers and others choose to invest their time elsewhere. Don’t take it personally. Myth #3: Recruiters have their own database that job seekers should get into. Truth #3: Yes, many of the larger recruiters do have a database that they can scan your résumé into. However, recruiters today understand that LinkedIn is the largest database in the world. What steps should you take? 1. No more than 5% of your job search efforts should be focused on recruiters. Do not expect a reply or a conversation as they will call you if and when there is a fit. Repeat: Don’t take it personally. 2. Introduce yourself to local recruiters as a small component of your job search schedule. The way to get on a recruiters “radar” is: To be mentioned or referred by respected individuals in the recruiter’s network about the quality of your work. By being known as a rock star (top notch high performer) in your current position â€" the word spreads quickly. To demonstrate that you understand how recruiters work and show respect for their time. To interview exceptionally well with them over the phone or face-to-face! Treat any interaction with a recruiter as if you are meeting with a hiring manager. 3. Be sure you have a brilliant profile on LinkedIn. Don’t wing it. Take the LinkedIn tutorials, type “LinkedIn profile tips” in your Bing or Google search bar and spend hours learning and updating your profile. You may learn ideas on how to improve your résumé, too, since the two should match. 4. Focus most of your energy on identifying the companies you want to work for and the role you want to perform next. Occasionally, when you contact a hiring company, they will send you to the recruiter they have hired. For answers to your questions, challenges or concerns, please e-mail me at aaii or add your comment here!