Recruiter's Essential Tips

Many of us post job ad like a classified ad. We should definitely agree that classified ad does not influence passive candidates. Effective job ad should be able to convince passive candidates. Passive candidates are employed always so the job ad must avoid some generic content and list out the factors that matter most to them. Recruiters have to list out the competitive advantages in their ad. Passive candidates always look for career advancement. A job ad will turn out more effective if the top performer of the organization can give his/her thoughts. Recruiters can actually discuss with the top level performers in the organization before posting a job ad. I would be discussing more on "Effective Job Ad" in the future posts.

Career Fair helps you to promote your organization's recruiting efforts. Students being the big crowd, you can easily promote your employment oppurtunities and begin screening candidates from different academic majors and degree levels base don your recruiting needs.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters Peopleclick is a global workforce acquisition provider. They deliver a holistic solution to help companies attract, acquire, and deploy a productive and diverse workforce. Visit Peopleclick web site for more information.

Recently, CNN.com carried an interesting article about the impact of online resumes. The opening paragraph from the article is as follows: The art of the job search has undergone seismic changes in the digital economy. As broadband coverage pervades in even developing nations, job-hunt sites and online resume listings have multiplied around the globe. Employers are being snowed under in a digital storm of resumes as technology eases the speed of sending CV's and resumes. Source - CNN.com With millions of candidates posting resumes online, finding qualified candidate has remained a daunting job with, or without technology. "Too often" says Lou Adler, President of Adler Group, a training and consulting firm,"excellent candidates slip right under the radar while poor candidates wind up being interviewed and sometimes hired." As the deluge of online resumes grows, the ability to rapidly zero in on the relevant candidates is critical to recruiters and having the

As I was reading the post of Chris, I thought I should write more on hiring tips. Here is one tip where I tried to relate recruiting with marketing If you are trying to sell a product, How do you get customers to buy your product? You will create a website and explain the product benefits on your website and do search engine optimization to make sure visitors can find out about your product. Similarly if you want to hire good candidates you need to create a corporate website, list down the job description and it is important to create a space for the company to explain why good candidates should work for you and make sure candidates are able to reach you.

Think of someone that you trust. I mean really trust. Now, think of something that you really need to get done, or an important project that you need to do for work. Can you trust that person to get it done for you? The answer is probably yes. Isn't this what you really want in a future employee? You need to be able to trust him/her to be able to get tasks done, and projects completed in a time specified manner. You can hire someone with a Ph.D. and all of the skill in the world, but if they are a total flake, then they are not going to be a good employee. You need to be able to trust this person to be doing the things they should be doing, when they should be doing them. That's what makes up a good employee.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters Resources you can use – HR-Guide.com HR-Guide.com contains links for a host of important HR related issues including process and selection, compensation, benefits and safety. Check out the HR-Guide.com website to see how it can help you.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters The Notes tab in contact managers like ACT! and GoldMine is a great place to store transcripts of phone calls, emails, interviews or any kind of correspondence with candidates. Storing this kind of information and referring to it once in a while helps you understand the candidate better. This enables you to make the right hiring decisions.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters EmplawyerNet is the preeminent job opportunity and career development site for the legal community. It provides invaluable recruitment tools to lawyers, law students, paralegals, employers and law schools. You can get more information from EmplawyerNet website.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters There are many times, in this day and age of social networking, people tend to share just a bit too much about themselves. One quick way to check on a candidate is to run that person’s name through a search engine. The common phrase is "googling" but you don't have to use the Google search engine to do this. If you are using Google, you simply put the person's name in quote marks into the search text box. For instance, "mark e. berger" If you were going to use the Live search engine you would type in this - mark.e.berger - using dots in between the words instead of quote marks. If it is a common name you might want to use other keywords that fit the individual. There are many employers these days that are using this practice as one of their screening methods. You should take this step before they do. It only takes a minute and offers a bit more peace of mind about a referral.

Most recruiters waste too much of time screening the unqualified resumes. According to a recent edition of Human Resources Management Daily, in a survey of 5,000 corporate recruiters and hiring managers, 92 percent said they were inundated with irrelevant responses from an on-line job posting. 71 percent indicated that most of the resumes they received did not match the job description. With hundreds of emails cluttering the mail box everyday, recruiters are unable to screen the qualifying resumes from a huge volume of irrelevant responses. A good technology solution could help the recruiter in the screening process. ResumeGrabber Pro is one such solution that helps recruiters increase recruiting productivity, by automating resume screening. ResumeGrabber Pro was designed with an insight to automate the resume screening by highlighting the competency factors like skills, experience, knowledge preferences. This excellent tool has always helped the recruiters in comparing the candidates

Source: eGrabber Newsletters eGrabber recently announced the release of a new Passive Candidate Recruitment Tool – ResumeFinder 2008 , the newest entry to their line of recruitment products. ResumeFinder allows any recruiter, regardless of training or ability, to quickly locate the resumes of passive Internet candidates using the Google search engine. By simply entering a keyword or two you can see ResumeFinder go after those hard to find passive candidates for your tough assignments. Its integration with your browser makes installation easy without having to spend thousands of dollars per year the competition charges for similar features. You can use ResumeFinder to: Search the Internet for keyword-specific resumes Search the most popular Internet communities for resumes Search specific geographic areas for any skills

Christopher Scott is the President & Founder of A Day of Hope as well as an AmeriCorps*VISTA Member working out of the United Way in Modesto, CA. A Day of Hope is a non-profit organization that delivers hundreds (soon to be thousands) of food baskets to needy families for Thanksgiving. As an AmeriCorps*VISTA Member Christopher works with non-profit organizations in Stanislaus County helping doing capacity building and creating sustainable systems for find, recruiting, and retaining volunteers. An avid blogger, Christopher is always trying to find new ways to reach out and help more people. Whether it be by delivering a food basket on Thanksgiving to a needy family, speaking about non-profit leadership to a small group, training a non-profit org. on volunteer leadership, or just being a mentor to someone else that wants to have a positive impact on the world. On May 23, 2007 A Day of Hope was awarded the Greatest Achievement Award. Beating out over 80 other clubs and organizat

Source: eGrabber Newsletters The Notes tab in contact managers like ACT! and GoldMine is a great place to store transcripts of phone calls, emails, interviews or any kind of correspondence with candidates. Storing this kind of information and referring to it once in a while helps you understand the candidate better. This enables you to make the right hiring decisions.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters A preliminary group interview to shortlist candidates is sometimes time-efficient and effective, if you have many candidates turning up for an open job position. Show a power point presentation of the company to the group and follow it up with a question-and-answer session. Finally, end it with a short interview with each candidate. Invite the strongest candidates back for an in-depth interview. Such a mechanism not only saves time but also gives you a chance to observe how candidates behave in a group.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters I manually go through hundreds of resumes daily to screen the best ones for open job positions. This takes up a lot of my time and I sometimes miss out good resumes. Is there a way by which I can quickly screen resumes , so that I can spend more time interviewing and short-listing the best candidates? ResumeGrabber Pro 5.0 enables you to screen and sort hundreds of resumes by city, state, zip code and years of experience in no time.Just enter the resume keywords and click ‘Grab’ in ResumeGrabber toolbar. It will screen all resumes in your Outlook, system folders, Google and show up only those that matched your keywords.You no longer have to open each resume to find out whether it meets your requirement. You can now screen hundreds of resumes in minutes, which would have otherwise taken you hours to do. Download your 10-day trial version at no cost and see the magic work for you.

Phil Willson is a 12-year veteran of the recruiting industry with a diverse background spanning retained and contingent executive search, candidate sourcing and research, and Internet-based entrepreneurism in both the United States and Asia. His company, Kalypxo Unbundled, operates a baseline sourcing service through the website SourceSimple.com.

Any hiring manager or recruiter knows that the intent of a resume is to market a specific candidate. Jobseekers sit down and spell out the stories of their careers, doing their best to mold the dry facts into an exciting and positive yarn. You can pick up the resume, read it over, and fairly quickly determine whether the candidate is a good fit for your position. Within seconds, you can toss the resume on top of the 'A' pile, the 'B' pile, or the 'Are You Crazy?' pile. However, if you stop there, you've just thrown away the baby with the bathwater. Resumes are a unique insight into the world outside of your office walls. They contain far more than just the details of one person's work history. With just one resume, you can build an entire recruiting campaign. With 10 to 20 resumes, the world is yours. Passive Candidate Sourcing Many resumes contain references, complete with names, titles, and contact information. That's an obvious opportunity for pas

Adding to the previous post, I'm listing down two websites for diversity recruiting found on the web. LatPro.com - Latpro is a online recruitment website for Hispanic and bilingual professionals. LatPro helps employers and recruiters to find professional candidates with language skills,international experience. HireDiversity.com - HireDiversity is one of the leading online service for diversity recruitment and career development. HireDiversity offers the full spectrum diversity database in the industry. It offers the following services - custom memberships, resume access, job posting,and corporate branding campaigns utilizing online & print advertising. HireDiversity also assist recruiters in their hiring efforts by providing pre-screening, entry-to-senior level, diversity professionals.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters Diversity recruiting is becoming increasingly important as the world turns global. Organizations have learned that if they want to operate around the world they must be able to recruit and retain individuals who are "different" than those who are in the majority.From a broader outlook, it's important to recruit diverse individuals not only because many corporations must operate facilities at multiple locations around the globe, but also because they need diverse-thinking individuals to design products that will be in high demand in every major country. In a global economy, having a diverse workforce is no longer an option. It has become an absolute requirement for success.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters Networking with your employees, top candidates, industry experts, vendors and customers will help you find the best talent. The best people rarely look for jobs because they are happy where they are. Now, if you want them, you must offer your job in terms of success and deliverables, thus presenting them with greater challenges and subsequent unparalleled rewards.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters HR.com is committed to providing information, tools and resources that you need to successfully manage the people side of business. Check out the HR.com website for more information.

Recruiters should include all the criteria that the candidates require to apply. Explain more on the goals to be achieved. This will allow the qualified candidates to demonstrate how they would be able to do the job. Analyze on educational qualifications and work experience. Your criteria should not restrict the candidates to apply for the job. It is most important to group the essential criteria and the desirable criteria. Monitor the responses to the job description. Review job descriptions based on the responses.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters Contact managers like ACT! and GoldMine have in-built email applications that enable you to keep in touch with candidates, eliminating the need for an external email application. Now, you can have the candidate database, details and communication channel in one place. You can send group emails, set filters, create templates and utilize a lot of other features that will boost your recruiting efforts.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters Splits.org is an association of independent recruiting firms working within the semiconductor, networking communications (datacom/telecom), wireless and optical sectors of the North American high-tech industry. Visit Splits.org web site for more information.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters Spending too much time on entering candidate details into my database is tiring and time consuming. At the end of it, I am left with absolutely no time and energy for my recruiting activities. Is there any way to do away with this troublesome process? With ResumeGrabber , all you need to is highlight the resumes you want and click. The candidate’s contact and resume details are instantly captured into your database, leaving you enough time for your recruiting activities. ResumeGrabber processes resumes in any format and works with ACT!, Outlook, GoldMine and online ATS. Download your 10-day trial version as you read and start recruiting more.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters One of the primary reasons candidates leave a job earlier than expected is that they were given a very rosy description of the job and the company. Though it's natural to do that, it could backfire when candidates realize that the job is not in tune with what was portrayed. So, present the real picture to the candidate. Touch upon both the positive and negative aspects of the job. This way, the candidate knows what to expect and is better prepared.

Interview Questions Knowing exactly what you want to accomplish by hiring a marketing manager is the first step in developing the right interview questions. If you want to brand your company, look for a person who has done this successfully in the past. A few questions you might ask: 1.How do you prepare a marketing campaign? (The answer should contain specifics about how they determined the target market, what type of campaign they decided on and why.) 2.How do you determine whether the campaign was successful or not? (How did they measure success? What was the cost per customer lead? How much did sales increase as a result of the campaign?) 3.Tell me about a project that you brought in on time and under budget. 4.What sort of experience do you have in public relations? (PR covers much more than press releases!) 5.What associations do you belong to related to marketing? 6.If we wanted to add "X" to our product line, give me an outline of how you could best introduce it to th

In the next few posts, I would be publishing the tips written by Terri Robinson for hiring Marketing Professionals Resume Pre-qualifying In screening résumés for marketing professionals, some things should send up a red flare if you see them: 1. Short periods of employment . Less than a year at a company can mean nothing in today’s world of "dot-bombs," but seeing several short periods could be cause for concern. Many candidates thrive in the fast-paced world of the start-up, and will accept positions with them again and again in spite of a setback with their previous employer. 2. Titles that don’t reflect growth . Was the candidate a VP in one period and then Marketing Manager in the next? Many start-up companies use titles that don’t reflect the true responsibilities held by the employee. Or perhaps they found after hiring that the person didn’t have the expertise needed for the job, and so demoted him or her to a lesser job. A candidate that has moved from company to compa

This tip was written by Terri Robinson. The article is reprinted from recruit2hire.com Hiring the right marketing professional can mean the difference between sinking and survival to your business. Hiring the wrong marketing professional can be worse for your business than hiring NO marketing professional! Many sales professional résumés say "Sales and Marketing," but in reality they have done only sales and perhaps designed a brochure or two. It’s important for you to understand the difference between sales and marketing: 1. Sales is everything you do to get the prospect to buy your service or product. Sales usually involves tactics and logistics, and involves the prospects actual decision-making process. 2. Marketing is everything you do to find and position the prospects for a sale—to get them to that decision-making point. Marketing is more strategy than tactics. Author Bio Terri Robinson, President - Robinson & Associates, a recruiting company that specializes in sal

Employment 911 provides an “All in one” solution for job seekers, recruiters and employers. With their free web based address book, calendar, organizer and email you can keep track of your applicants from anywhere in the world. Their resume search feature automatically sends you resumes, every time a new job seeker posts a resume matching your requirements. You can get more information from Employment 911 website.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters I manually go through hundreds of resumes daily to screen the best ones for open job positions. This takes up a lot of my time and I sometimes miss out good resumes. Is there a way by which I can quickly screen resumes, so that I can spend more time interviewing and short-listing the best candidates? With ResumeGrabber Professional you can screen resumes in no time. Just enter the resume keywords in a search box and click the ‘Grab’ button on ResumeGrabber toolbar. It will screen all resumes in your Outlook, system folders, Google and show up only those that matched your keywords. You no longer have to open each resume to find out whether it meets your requirement. You can now screen hundreds of resumes in minutes, which would have otherwise taken you hours to do. Download your 10-day trial version of ResumeGrabber at no cost and sprint your way to recruiting success.

"To accomplish its current pace of hiring about 10 new employees a day, Google has assembled a formidable hiring machine. Its recruitment department includes as many as 300 freelance recruiters who are helping it to identify who's who in software engineering, according to three people involved in the effort." read more | digg story

This article was written by Terri Robinson. The article is reprinted from recruit2hire.com Recruiting for an employee to fill your position can be a frustrating and time consuming process. From writing the ad, which has to be exciting and challenging to attract great people, to the actual interviews with likely candidates, your time is guaranteed to be stretched to the maximum for a period of time. Here are 5 tips to help you hire a great employee: 1. When you review a resume, look for length of time on the job: a candidate with several short- term employers (less than a year) could mean a lack of commitment on their part. Of course, with all the recent lay-offs, it could just mean they got caught in the fallout. It isn't necessarily a given that they were laid off because the company was cutting back. Star performers are not laid off if the company can avoid it. Be sure to check those references carefully, especially if the company is still in business. You don't want someone

Recruiters have to monitor the response to their job ad regularly. A job ad will result in poor response if the ad description is not good or if the job ad is not posted in the right category on the jobsite. Job Sites has more traffic with the candidates looking out for more vacancies. So if your job ad is posted in the wrong category or if the description is not attractive, your response rate will be very low. Post the job ad in the most appropriate category and monitor the response to the ad frequently. Check for the quality of the job ads. A job ad well written will definitely win good candidates.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters When you interview, focus more on what you ask than what you say. This helps you to break the ice with candidates, especially the shy and reserved types. For instance, asking questions like "Why do you want to work with us?" or "Why do you want to change your job?" help you in determining whether they actually want to work with you or not. Similarly a question like "Why did you leave your previous job?" helps you understand their career prospects as well as the reasons for leaving that job.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters Many companies find hiring temporary employees handy. One of the popular recruiting strategies is to hire a qualified and competent contingency employee who could be subsequently made permanent. It is important to know how to identify and hire temp staff who will perform well. Look for those who are quick learners and self-directed. They should also be able to adapt quickly to a new work culture easily and be flexible.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters Your job description should define success, not skills. So, the next time you send out a recruitment ad, make sure your job description talks about what candidates can achieve with specific skill sets. Shifting the focus to opportunities and growth is bound to attract the best talent. Highlighting what candidates need to achieve with a particular set of skills gives the impression that your company is seeking high performers and go-getters. Such an approach will also position your company differently in the job market.

A very short article about Recruitment Strategy. read more | digg story

Nice article by Jon Cheplak on using a recruiting website to recruit real estate agents. Good read for company owners and brokers. read more | digg story

Source: eGrabber.com Candidates are customers till they become employees. Deal with them the way you interact with your customers. Respond to their inquiries, tell them how they fared in the interview and ask them “how did we treat you?” during and after the process. Also, try to find out why they rejected your offer, in case they decide not to join you. Part ways amicably and you never know, they could be working with you in the future!

Source: eGrabber.com If you are a small firm, limited resources and experience reduce the scope of your recruiting activities. You need to adopt a more personalized hiring strategy to attract talent. Some inexpensive recruiting methods at your disposal include re-hiring your former employees, having a strong employee referral program, getting contacts from new hires and rewarding managers for great hiring and retention.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters Since employees are likely to hop jobs, it is important to take adequate steps to prevent it. Considering counter offers is one way to handle this. Ensure always that your counter offer addresses and benefits the employee’s career development. Never make a counter offer solely for the company’s benefit. Selfish counter offers will only delay an employee’s decision to leave. If you cannot make a counter offer to match the other company’s offer, be creative in structuring the offer and include benefits that surprise the employee.

Lou Adler (lou@adlerconcepts.com) is the president of The Adler Group, a training and consulting firm helping companies find and hire top talent using Performance-based Hiring(sm). He is the Amazon best-seller author of Hire With Your Head (John Wiley & Sons, 3rd Edition, 2007) and the new Nightingale-Conant audio program Talent Rules! Using Performance-based Hiring to Hire Top Talent (2007). Adler is a noted recruiting industry expert, national speaker, and columnist for a number of major recruiting Internet sites including SHRM, ERE.net, Kennedyinfo.com and ZoomInfo.com. Adler’s early career included executive and financial management positions with The Allen Group and Rockwell International. He holds an MBA from UCLA and a B.S. in Engineering from Clarkson University, New York. The author of my previous post " Why You Must Implement an Evidence-based Assessment Process " was Lou Adler. To read his other related articles, Visit www.adlerconcepts.com/resources/

How to stop losing good candidates for bad reasons - by Lou Adler Source : ere.net There was an interesting story in the July 19 edition of Time about Dodge & Cox, the San Francisco-based mutual fund company. Here's the opening paragraph. You might want to take the same approach they use when investing in stocks as you do when assessing your candidates: The money managers at Dodge & Cox have heard the adage that a camel is a horse designed by committee. They politely disagree. Their horse, you see, keeps winning. Each of the firm's four mutual funds has from nine to 18 portfolio managers, and everyone gets equal say in which stocks and bonds to buy and sell. "The investment business is permeated with the lore of the individual. We think that's a bad way to manage money," says CEO John Gunn, one of many decision makers. "There are a zillion independent variables, and it's very hard for one person to think about them all." If you've ever l

Source: eGrabber.com First impressions are largely based on the personality of candidate and not substance. The moment you have decided to accept or reject a candidate based on ‘first impressions’, your evaluation process shuts down. You still go through the motions of asking questions, and use the answers to either support your first impressions or ignore them if they seem to conflict. The key to effective hiring is to move beyond this "first Impressions". After you interview a candidate, wait for a day before you inform her about the results.

To fill the open positions the first step is to understand the job description. The next step is to identify the in-house professionals to accomplish the recruiting task. The recruiting professional has to come up with time line required and job ads to place in the classifieds, Internet, etc. The recruiter can pick up the key individuals and assign specific tasks like contacting shortlisted candidates,scheduling interviews, perform reference checks.

Naturally, a recruiter can add value to a business by presenting only those candidates who are most suited to the position - from a technical and a personal perspective - it saves everyone time and effort. The employer sends a recruitment request to the recruiter for the positions to be filled. For this recruitment request the recruiter looks in the talent pool to evaluate the available talents and then specifies the recruitment plan, for example which target group should be given preference, where to advertise, and so on. Depending on the recruitment plan, the recruiter may publish the vacant positions in external media. The candidate looks at the internal job board or external media for advertised positions, and applies for the positions that he or she is interested in. Applications come in by the bucket load. Recruiter has to read through all the resumes to find the right candidate. Of course, a good technology solution for a recruiter will assist in the process. Software can be us

I have always thought that it doesn't matter what you are doing, you always have to, 'Win' people to your cause. Whether it be recruiting a new person, fundraising, interviewing someone, or finding volunteers you always have to 'Win' people to your cause. This can be very useful when interviewing people for a position at your company or non-profit. The objective is to get the interviewee to 'want' the job as much as possible. If you can 'win' that person to your cause as much as possible, then he/she is going to be much more appreciative of the job, and do a better job. 'Winning' someone to your cause is almost like selling, you need to sell that interviewee on why your business or non-profit is the best one in the whole world, and how this position that they are being interviewed for, is the best one that is available. Start by making a list of all the reasons that someone would want to have the job that you are offering. What is great about

Entering scores of resumes daily into my database is an overwhelming task. How can I make it simple and fast, so that I get enough time to recruit? Try ResumeGrabber. It captures resumes in any format at one go and enters them into your database, eliminating all the manual data-entry steps. ResumeGrabber extracts all relevant contact details and job skills from a resume and automatically creates a contact in ACT!, Outlook, GoldMine or web-based ATS. This leaves you with more time for recruiting, while ResumeGrabber does all the resume data-entry work for you.