JobBurner Employer HotSpot

your burning recruiting questions

gretchen — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:06:00 GMT

mostly crossposted to the campfire blog

I've been writing job search and recruiting blogs for a few years now, and at some point, I've probably blogged about every topic out there. Sometimes I focus on advice; sometimes it's interesting chatter out in the blogosphere; sometimes it's just my own observations. But I want to hear about what you want me to write about. I can pontificate in a vacuum all day but if I'm not giving you the content you want or need, there's not much point.

So what do you want to know? Do you want sourcing advice, marketing advice, interview advice? Do you have specific questions? Do you want me to pass along hot job search or recruiting tips or stories that I read across the web - or have you seen all this before? Should we talk about other interesting recruiting tactic are out there? Do you want to share your own experiences through this blog? I'm here for you - so let's talk about what you want to.

I do have one goal for this blog, and it's that I want to provide information that is just as relevant to a non-HR minded developer who may be hiring a few folks as much as it is for a professional recruiter. There's recruiting advice blogs galore, but I've always felt it's important to arm non-recruiters who care about and have to recruit (that's all of us, really!) with the tips, tricks, and tools necessary to get the job done. That's my 2cents. :)

gretchen

HotJobs posts on Craigslist; Monster says "no way!"

gretchen — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 19:19:00 GMT

Golly. Everyone is all in a tizzy today over HotJobs posting one of their openings on Craigslist. As Dave Manaster says, from a recruiting perspective, this is a non-story. It's ridiculous to think that a company could successfully recruit from only one channel - and yes, even if that one channel is their own ... And as someone who is working with a job board while also consulting with employers and job seekers, I would NEVER suggest you put all your eggs in one basket. Job and candidate searches are multi-faceted processes. If you are an employer, you need to be driving traffic through job boards (yes, more than one), employee referrals, events, your own website, outreach campaigns, targeted sourcing, etc. And likewise if you are a jobseeker.

On another note, I recently noticed that Monster expressly states that competitors can't post their jobs on the site: "All Users agree not to ... post any jobs on any Monster Site for any competitor of Monster or posting jobs or other content that contains links to any site competitive with Monster." Gee, talk about touchy. None of the other big boys have this rule, and Monster even lists it very first in their "prohibited uses" section ... ahead of less important items like, I don't know, falsifying biographical information, promoting pyramid schemes, or reverse engineering the site? Hey, if HotJobs - or even Monster for that matter - wants to post over here on JobBurner, we welcome you. As long as your jobs are tech focused, of course. ;-)

cross posted to the campfire blog

What irks you about resumes?

gretchen — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 23:24:00 GMT

I asked jobseekers the same question about job descriptions over on the CampFire Blog, so I figured turnabout is only fair.

What just really annoys you about resumes and makes you want to scream "WHY??!" at the screen? You know the feeling.

For me, it's usually the "marketing" things - like leading with a really lame objective, formatting in a bad Word template, or including way too little or way too much info ... but I think I'm a bit more tolerant than most. Chime in and share your horror stories.

Behave like a good guest blogger

gretchen — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 22:15:00 GMT

I frequently talk to recruiters who want to start their own blogs but don't know what to write about or whether they even have anything interesting to say. Blogging is definitely one of those things that either clicks or it doesn't. It can be tough to commit before you get into it - but it's hard to determine if you've got what it takes until you actually start. A tough situation.

One of my suggestions to first time bloggers - or even experienced bloggers who want to get into the "job blogging" space - is to seek out opportunities to visit an established blog as a "guest blogger." This can be especially effective if you want to write about recruiting or hiring topics, and you know a friend or colleague who already has an established blog which reaches your intended audience but may not already cover that material … like if you are a technical recruiter and your hiring manager writes a tech focused blog. Why not take the opportunity to contribute content to the hiring manager’s blog while also testing out your own passion, interest, and talent? It’s a win / win ... if you behave yourself. :)

If you do plan to guest blog, Darren Rowse’s How to be a Good Guest Blogger can get you started. Having participated as a guest blogger and welcomed guest bloggers onto my site, I’ve definitely experienced the finer points of guest blogging etiquette, and Darren offers six basic tips which involve knowing your audience, being respectful of your host’s space, and, of course, adding value.

Good tips to check out.

Via //engtech

Target your job marketing

gretchen — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 23:32:00 GMT

Seth Godin on Marketing your job, one of my favorite subjects. :)

I love how Seth can say so much with so few words. Couple key points here that I totally agree with:

1) Getting the word out versus getting the word out to the right people. Seth uses the example of viral videos that may create buzz - but do these videos create buzz with the folks you want to attract? It's like the age-old sourcing metaphor of fishing ... are you fishing with a big ol' net or fishing with a spear? The spear fishing may be harder and it may take longer - but in the end, it's probably going to help you catch the fish you wanted in the first place.

And 2) word of mouth marketing. Something I've been writing on quite a bit lately it seems. This is sort of like the "if you develop it, it will come." Hey, hire great people, promote a great culture, provide great jobs ... guess what? That's your marketing right there. Word of mouth is HUGE in the job arena - especially when you start talking about a niche like tech jobs. If you are doing something great out there, jobseekers will know.

Have a great weekend!

gretchen

Business intelligence tools for your recruiting process

gretchen — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 20:29:00 GMT

Last night, I attended Improved Experience's launch of their new product, Get Better Hires, the first in a suite of business intelligence tools designed to help companies gather real time information on their recruiting process and practices in order to provide a better candidate experience. Zoe and I were lucky to have a sneak peak at their product a few weeks ago.

Now, I'm not here handing out endorsements - but you probably know that I'm fascinated by the marriage of technology and recruiting (an incredibly "human" experience and process.) 99% of the time, I think technology only further mucks up a company's quest to strategically recruit high quality talent. But when there is truly useful technology out there (I'd like to put the awesome features Shane and team are building here at JobBurner in that bucket:), I get really excited .... and Improved Experience excites me. If you care about identifying and implementing long-term solutions, I'd encourage you to check them out. And no, no one is paying me to say that. Just thought I'd share. :)

gretchen

What's in a name?

gretchen — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:59:00 GMT

10 company name types: pros and cons.

I thought this was interesting from a recruiting perspective. This article breaks down categories for technical (web 2.0 and traditional) company names ... like real words (Apple, Amazon), compounds (Bloglines, Facebook), and puns (Farecast, Writely). Naming - for companies or even product code names - is also something to consider from a recruiting perspective, too. Does the name convey the right image to the people you want to attract? Can they and others pronounce it correctly? Can they explain the name to their moms? :) And now that you have the name, can you put a fun spin on it from a recruiting perspective? (like calling your employees "Yahoos" or working at the "GooglePlex." ). And how can you turn a boring name fun again? Just something to think about.

gretchen

Targeting your job description

gretchen — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 19:09:00 GMT

Over on the CampFire blog today, I wrote a post about why and how your resume should be relevant to specific employers and jobs. I don't like to let employers get off the hook with this one either. :) Just as a sloppy, vague, or quickly thrown together resume doesn't do the trick in enticing you to contact a candidate, bad job descriptions (and oh boy, are they out there!) do nothing to convince a jobseeker to apply for your role. Zoe wrote a great post about how to write better job descriptions earlier this month. Among her pearls of wisdom: proofread, appeal directly to the jobseeker, get creative, keep it short and sweet, and stay way from internal language.

But just like my advice for jobseekers, how do make your job description relevant for your reader? Most importantly, you need to determine whom you are trying to attract and what makes them tick. If you are reading this blog, you probably want to attract technical talent. But specifically what type of technical talent? Some questions you may wnat to ask yourself include:

At what stage in his/her career is my ideal candidate?

In what type of company (size, culture, industry, etc) does my ideal candidate currently work? ... or What type of university (size, culture, prestige, etc) does my ideal candidate current attend?

What type of daily responsibilities might my ideal candidate currently have?

What type of career aspirations might my ideal candidate have?

What types of qualities might my ideal candidate be looking for in his/her next employer?

Where might my ideal candidates gather professionally ... or personally?

And so forth. :) The better you can profile your target candidate, the more effectively you can appeal to his or her prior experiences and future desires. It's all about knowing your audience, and if you can't answer these questions, it may be time to do your homework.

Happy hunting!

gretchen

The value - and downside - of passion

gretchen — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:51:00 GMT

Curt Rosengren asks one of those questions that makes you think: Are you afraid of passionate employees? "Passion" is the one of the top 3 things you usually hear that employers from their idea candidates, yet at the same time, a now passionate employee might realize their passion actually lies somewhere else and may take off down the road. It's one of those age old catch-22s of the employment industry. It's like when you train your employees and give them rich experiences - and they go off and get a better / different job leveraging the skills you taught them. Just one of those things that makes you go hmm. :)

gretchen

Selling the candidate

gretchen — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 19:51:00 GMT

The Hire Sense links to an article entitled Don't Make These Top 10 Selling Mistakes and discusses how these lessons apply to the hiring process. But the lessons aren't just about how a candidate can better sell himself ... it's also important to think about how you - as a recruiter, hiring manager, or interviewer - are selling your product ... a job opportunity with your company or specific team. It's important to be prepared and project the appropriate image whether the candidate is a slam dunk or not. Interview candidates take their interactions with interviewers very personally, and I've seen more than my fair share hesitant to accept a great offer and opportunity because of a single interaction with a negative or ill-prepared interviewer. These are all great points to keep in mind when putting your interview sell recruiting strategy together.

gretchen

The great talent shortage

gretchen — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 00:53:00 GMT

Talent shortage! Talent shortage! Oh my! There just aren't enough good people to hire! Sound familiar? I think we've all felt the pain of trying to find top quality people for open jobs. It seems the market is flooded with talent ... but for some reason, that talent just doesn't seem good enough. I have never believed in a true "talent shortage" ... and I still don't. It's more of a perceived talent shortage due to the rapidly changing talent landscape and the lack of knowledge by the people who should be in the know (recruiters, hiring managers, interviewers ... me and you) about how to adjust to that changing landscape.

Over on ERE today, Lou Adler discusses some factors behind the (perceived) talent shortage, and I think these are all great points to keep in mind when you are searching for and evaluating your next star employee. The talent is out there ... you may just be slicing the pool more thinly than you thought ... or blanketly treating everyone the same. Not that those are wrong approaches per se (it's ok to narrow your pool as long as you know what you're getting yourself into), but before you decide who you want to target and how you plan to target them, keep these points in mind:

Everybody is competing for the same talent pool. As a result, only the most aggressive competitors will get a bigger share of a shrinking pool. (This is the Darwin part.)
The demographics are for real. The first of the baby boomers are turning 60 this year. I know a few, and some wouldn't mind working at Starbucks or McDonald's (since it now has better coffee).
There is a difference between the generations. While there is no difference in work ethic, there certainly is in the types of work each generation prefers and their attitudes and ambitions.
The hidden job market is no longer hidden. Pre-1995, top people had to find a recruiter to get good jobs quickly. Now most jobs below $250,000 are available for all to find. This is an example of Thomas Friedman's "flatlander" argument that information is now accessible to everyone. (Not advertising jobs might be an option worth exploring.)
The passive candidate pool is no longer hidden. Anybody can find the names of just about anyone within an hour or two. People are joining ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, FaceBook, MySpace, and Yahoo! 360° so they can be found.
Jobs are changing faster than people are being trained to fill them. This exacerbates the overall talent shortage since it takes longer to train people to meet current needs.
Workforce mobility is on the rise. In part this is because of economic cycles and in part because of changes in attitude (listen to Jimmy Buffett for more on this) about work. There is no longer a stigma to leaving a company every year or so. Work is now being designed with this concept in mind.
The shift to hire more corporate recruiters has worsened the problem. The more recruiters you have, the more turnover you'll get since everyone is stealing from everyone else more often.
The line between passive candidates and active candidates is blurring. Passive candidates now start checking out other opportunities once they find out another company has some interest in them.
Technology has not evolved as rapidly for recruiting as it has for other business functions. For example, think about the disruption the OFCCP ruling has had on company reporting. I suspect that if some top distribution person from WalMart led an OFCCP reporting project, it would have been handled with relative ease. It's certainly an easier IT project then JIT inventory and cross-docking.

gretchen

Listening to your audience

zoe — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 16:07:00 GMT

Anyone of you hiring managers or recruiters reading Rob Walling's blog? Rob is a software developer by trade, but spends his time writing about hiring, motivating and managing software developers. His insight is intriguing and his reach is far and wide. It's great to hear directly from people living the job everyday what makes them tick and keeps them going. I also find the comments from the readers particularily helpful. This is a great way to spend time listening to your audience which can help you refine your messaging to candidates through your employment brand. Some of my favorite articles are:

Personality Traits of the Best Software Engineers

Nine Things Developers Want More Than Money

An Open Letter to the Software Managers of the World

Enjoy!

zoe

Evaluating and interviewing technical candidates

zoe — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:59:00 GMT

Any good recruiter or hiring manager will agree that finding great technical talent these days is hard. Besides possessing exceptional technical skills many of us are also looking for candidates that have great interpersonal skills, business savvy and the ability to fit into our corporate culture. Given all these requirements, what should we do to make sure we've found the right match? Here are a few suggestions that might help as your are making your decision.

Be objective...B-E O-B-J-E-C-T-I-V-E! - This isn't easy when you click with a person as soon as they walk into your office. I know I have been guilty of this on occasion, but I am here to be your cheerleader in doing this with each candidate for every position. The first step is to make sure you can get past the first impression reserving your judgment for after the interviews are over. The next step is to develop a set of objective questions that you can use to evaluate candidates on both their technical and non-technical skills. Determine what you are looking for and make sure your questions are open ended providing you with the opportunity to probe deeper into areas that you may need more information. You don't have to be robotic in making sure you check each question off your list, but do be sure that the candidate doesn't leave you with lingering questions. After your interview, sit down and either write out your impressions or share them with your hiring team. This will help you analyze the person and see if others agree with your findings.

Consider a pre-screening process - I've heard of a lot of companies spending time, and more importantly money, to fly candidates in for interviews only to find out that they are not the right match for the position. Worse yet, ever have to fly someone out again because they didn't meet with everyone or you didn't get as much information as you hoped during the interviews? I have always found phone screens to be helpful in vetting out candidates either on technical merit, business skills or in other areas where there isn't a match (product development interest, relocation etc). When working with hiring managers it worked great to have me ask a few technical and behavior questions to evaluate for basic skills and then have a hiring manager or team member get on the phone and dive deeper into technical projects and skills. This usually averaged about 1-2 total hours of our time between setting up the call, conducting the screen and then making the decision. In the end though, it saved us from making the wrong decisions on flying people out or wasting whole days on interviews with candidates that clearly weren't a match or interested in the job.

Try out different interview models and methods - We walk a fine line in making an interview process too rigorous and turning away candidates (we've all heard the stories about Google and Microsoft) and not spending enough time evaluating candidates. I can't tell you what's right for your business, but what worked best for me was having candidates evaluated and interviewed by more then one hiring manager or team member. Keeping the rules of being objective in mind, the group would get together and split up topic areas to cover with the candidates. We'd try to have each candidate come in within a few days of each other and then share our impressions of each candidate in a wrap up meeting at the end of the interview sessions or real time throughout the day. We could make hiring decisions on the spot and extend offers the same day if needed to close high priority candidates. But, you should try different models to see what works for you and your company. The key is to make sure the process answers all your questions and helps you make an informed decision.

Think about a probationary period for employment - Donald Trump does it, why shouldn't we? Even though we went through a vigorous interview process with candidates I always felt a little like we were jumping into a marriage after only one date. I wish that we had considered a trial period or apprenticeship, especially with junior candidates, were both parties had an opportunity to evaluate the job and performance on the job real time. It's definitely a risk and not something that every company can consider, but it could end up saving everyone time, money and heartache in the end.

What about you? What do you think has worked best when finding and evaluating the right people for the job?

Good luck!

zoe

Do you care about lies on candidate resumes?

zoe — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 17:36:00 GMT

Hot on the heels of Gretchen's post regarding online fabrications in job search, Forbes posted an article directed to job seekers about lying on resumes. It details statistics on how many people actually fabricate positions and accomplishments on their resumes when applying for various jobs. Apparently, more of us are willing to indulge the facts on our resumes then we are willing to admit.

What is more alarming is how corporate America seems to be blind to these misrepresentations and fails to conduct proper background checks or, shockingly, fails to ask simple questions that may uncover the lies that are perpetrated on these resumes. It's really embarrassing to uncover those resume lies down the line especially when it comes to executive level candidates. I've seen it happen to some of the best recruiters and hiring managers and man is that painful.

So as a check to all the employers out there, are you doing your due diligence when interviewing candidates or perhaps taking that to good to be true resume at face value? Or do resume lies even matter?

Looking forward to hearing you talk back!

zoe

Shameless plug for audio conference on blogging

gretchen — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 00:32:00 GMT

Just wanted to let you know that on Thursday, Feb 15, I'll be joining Dave Mendoza of JobMachine and Joel Cheesman of HRSEO for part two of Kennedy's series on Blogging Your Way to Recruitment Success. Dave will be moderating while I'll be discussing blogs from a content management perspective (demographics, case studies, program best practices, etc) and Joel will cover how to drive traffic through your blogs to your jobs (SEO, RSS, etc). You can register for the audio conference here. Or just ask me questions via this blog. I'm pretty easy.

On that note, did you know that when you register for a free JobBurner account, you also become the proud owner of your own blogging space. Hmm ... imagine what you could do with that .. :)

gretchen