Recruiter's Essential Tips

Screening resumes is an inevitable process that has gained a lot more significance since recession. The global recruiting scenario has hardly changed with job cuts still happening around, pushing the unemployment rate to 9.5% - the highest since 1983. So why should resume screening become all the more important? The reason is, job cuts have lead to tens and thousands of resumes floating around in the job market targeting for a job. But the irony is that there are only a very few job openings as the employers are now very cautious with respect to hiring; they need only the “Best Talent.” It is the recruiter’s responsibility to carefully screen the resumes and find the best talent for their clients. With stiff competition all around and stringent time constraints, the recruiters need to manually wade through huge stacks of resumes to pick the right candidates. This eventually takes a lot of time and resources. There is a possibility that you might also miss a potential candidate. So, ho

Source: eGrabber Newsletter How adept are you at using Web 2.0 technologies to reach or find the best candidates? More than 30 percent of adults, in the U.S., between 25 and 34 years, create online content (blogs, video uploads, etc.) on a monthly basis. If this population's characteristic is a representative of your target, then are your sourcing practices in sync with them? What kind of online content do you produce to attract prospective candidates in this population? You can use these technologies to be more persuasive, to better assess and engage candidates. One characteristic of this population is that they prefer to watch rather than read. You can create video ads that make a compelling case to a candidate on why they should join your organization or apply to a job ad. Your videos can show the workplace, details about the position, feedback from existing employees in similar roles, etc.

Source: eGrabber Newsletters Recruiting is very much a sales activity - you try to convince candidates to buy your company's or client's employment value proposition. So, it only makes sense to adopt any good sales and marketing technique for things that you do. One such good practice is the use of trigger words; phrases that can make your job ads and postings very attractive and powerful. Usually these are phrases that get your prospective candidates excited - that in simple terms, explain a hard-to-describe benefit and so on. The best way to identify trigger words for a job posting is by talking to employees in that job role. If you wish to attract top talent in the industry, talk to top performers in the company first. Pay rapt attention and capture the exact words they use to describe their job and its benefits. Such phrases or words can be priceless. Get them to say what makes their job and the company exciting. Next, use those exact phrases to craft your job ads.

Screening resumes is one of the most crucial processes involved in recruiting, particularly in a situation where the number of resumes outnumber the number of job openings. In the current scenario, recruiters receive thousands of resumes for a few job openings. Hence, the recruiters need to be all the more cautious in choosing the right candidates from the huge pool of resumes. As a recruiter, how will you handle a similar situation like this? Imagine you receive thousands of resumes for a few hundreds of job openings and you need to screen and short list candidates from different locations with different skill sets. If you are screening manually, how long will it take to finish the project or how many additional resources would you need to employ to finish the task? Manual screening is not only time consuming and strenuous but also increases your expenses. Moreover, there is every possibility that you might miss a potential candidate. So what is the solution? An automated resume scree

Source: eGrabber Newsletters You might sometimes have the tendency to get stuck by a single title that your client (company) may use to describe a job position. In today's industry, job titles are changing frequently. For example, software programmer, software developer, software engineer, etc. are different job titles for the same job function. So, unless you use all the related titles in your search, you are likely to miss out on some good candidate leads. One way to find all relevant job titles is to first search the career sites using the (only) job title given by your client. Take note of the job titles that come up. Most sites provide a "View similar jobs" link beside the job titles in the results. Clicking that link will get you a series of similar positions categorized by Freshness, Overlooked, Relevant, etc. Under the Relevant category, you will find jobs similar in content to the position you are searching for. You can include all such relevant job titles to exp

When hiring is strong, most recruiters are so busy that they find it tough to take time out for training. But, even the most seasoned recruiters need to have their skills refreshed from time-to-time. So, you can use the current market conditions (of slow hiring) to the best of your advantage by honing your skills in each of the following areas: - online sourcing techniques (including use of social media) - networking (both online and traditional) - interviewing strategies and methods - interpersonal communications - expertise in using the applicant tracking system, and more... Not every recruiter or organization will need to train on all of the above. But, training in any one or more of these tasks will definitely equip you for the present and the future.

MySpace Classifieds is actually one of the resources, least used by recruiters looking for job postings. Here's how you can search job postings on MySpace Classifieds: 1. Go to http://www.classifieds.myspace.com/job/ 2. Enter your search criteria in the Search tab 3. Choose the location and click on Find it! Another similar, but underutilized and powerful resource to search job postings is the Google Base . In both these, you will also find options to refine your search based on industry, work experience, employment type, education, and more. Use these two sources to get new job postings.