KCRecruiting

Asking for Referrals In A Job Search

One of the keys in generating sales referrals if asking your referrer to think in terms of pictures.  Human beings think in terms of context, so if you can successfully generate a picture in the head of your referrer, you are more likely to get a good referral.

Wrong:  "Do you know anyone that wants to buy a car at a good price?"

Correct:  "Let me ask you about the people in your office.  Do you think any of them might be interested in getting a car at a good price?"

When applied to the job search, try to get your referrer to think in terms of decision makers instead of general terms.

Wrong:  Do you know anyone looking for someone to work?  Is your company looking to hire?

Correct:   Do you know anyone in the Marketing Department?  What about HR?  Is there someone you know who regularly hires?

Finally, make sure you take the referral into your own hands.  If you were a salesperson, you wouldn't let your referrer try to sell your product, so why would you let a job referrer take your resume and try to sell you?  If you want the referrer to help, have them call ahead or send an e-mail to the contact letting them know that you are calling.

And don't forget the thank you.

How To Hire a Recruiter

Are you looking for that seasoned recruiter with the ability to dig deep into companies, lock-down candidates, and provide two or three names for every open position, regardless of salary range?

So why do you post a boring job posting that only attracts malcontents from other agencies, unqualified jr recruiters, and the occasional techie who thinks recruiting is easier than working on that server all hours of the night.

Spice up your job posting and your recruiter searching with the following ideas.

1) Go to User Groups:  Good recruiters are out in the community after hours looking for passive candidates at user groups and tech functions.  If you are looking for someone who will take the extra step of meeting candidates on their turf, wouldn't the best place to find one would be at those meetings?

2)  Try being honest in your job description:  If you have three account managers and only one recruiter, announcing that you are short on recruiters may sound scary, but what better way to pluck a good recruiter from a company that has the exact opposite problem? 

In this case, it's not enough to say you have open jobs - take a chance and tell the recruiter candidate why you have open jobs, and you are already ahead of the company that puts out the same posting every week for six months with no results.

3) Try putting in an accurate salary range.  Recruiters can read between the lines - and they know what competitive salary means (it means as low as you can negotiate the recruiter while promising big bucks if they are successful).

4) Be upfront about non-competes.  More on this later

5) Be proactive - have your current staff do a search just like any other open req.  Split a real fee ($10,000) between the person you hire and the person who found them.  A good hire will make that money back in a month.

and most of all - Think about what you can offer, not what you want to get.  It has to work better than your current efforts.

The Problem of Timing

We like to think that staffing is the result of a carefully prepared plan of action that begins with identifying job requirements and budgets, and moves steadily through interviews to an offer and a start.  There is a sense that we somehow control the process, or that we can control the process without the circumstances of life interfering.

I have no official statistics, but I wonder how often chance is the biggest factor in employment.  Does the race go to the swiftest, or the luckiest?

Two top candidates are brought in for interviews.  One has a pipe burst in their kitchen in their home and gets only an hour of sleep the night before.  The second, less qualified candidate sleeps like a baby.  The sleep-deprived candidate is also a person of high moral standards, and makes no excuses for his interview.  The well-rested candidate doesn't do great, but how hard is it to beat someone who didn't sleep the night before?

Who gets the job in this case?  Or worse yet, what if the pipe bursting occurred at 8:00 and the first candidate has to cancel a 9:00 interview?

We get these stories all the time in staffing - parents dying, cars breaking down, flu striking a family and once, just once, an arrest following a bachelorette party.

As a hiring manager - what do you do?

Anecdotally, my experience is that when something is going bad, it tends to only get worse - so if a candidate has more than two misfires in the time I'm working with them, I'm real nervous about giving them a third chance.

It's not particularly fair, but in a business where intuition counts for so much - I've learned that disaster tends to breed disaster when you're living on the edge. And too many people are living on the edge.

Should we have disaster recovery plans for candidates?  And is our process geared towards finding the best candidate, or the one who is untouched by unkind Fate during the interview process?

We like to think that staffing is the result of a carefully prepared plan of action that begins with identifying job requirements and budgets, and moves steadily through interviews to an offer and a start.  There is a sense that we somehow control the process, or that we can control the process without the circumstances of life interfering.

I have no official statistics, but I wonder how often chance is the biggest factor in employment.  Does the race go to the swiftest, or the luckiest?

Two top candidates are brought in for interviews.  One has a pipe burst in their kitchen in their home and gets only an hour of sleep the night before.  The second, less qualified candidate sleeps like a baby.  The sleep-deprived candidate is also a person of high moral standards, and makes no excuses for his interview.  The well-rested candidate doesn't do great, but how hard is it to beat someone who didn't sleep the night before?

Who gets the job in this case?  Or worse yet, what if the pipe bursting occurred at 8:00 and the first candidate has to cancel a 9:00 interview?

We get these stories all the time in staffing - parents dying, cars breaking down, flu striking a family and once, just once, an arrest following a bachelorette party.

As a hiring manager - what do you do?

Anecdotally, my experience is that when something is going bad, it tends to only get worse - so if a candidate has more than two misfires in the time I'm working with them, I'm real nervous about giving them a third chance.

It's not particularly fair, but in a business where intuition counts for so much - I've learned that disaster tends to breed disaster when you're living on the edge. And too many people are living on the edge.

Should we have disaster recovery plans for candidates?  And is our process geared towards finding the best candidate, or the one who is untouched by unkind Fate during the interview process?

Fortune Cookie Idea

Imagine an HR department where the recruiter, when meeting a top-notch candidate, says, "I shouldn’t be the first one talking to you, let’s go get the hiring manager."

Interview with Doug Burris

I had the opportunity to interview Doug Burris and Grant Gordon of Intronic Solution Group on where their company is going and what makes them different in the recruiting space.

The interview is here at StlRecruiting.com

You ought to check out Doug's answers - we're working on adding him as an author to the KCRecruiting site, and you're going to hear more from him.

Thinking about Starting a Recruiting Blog?

Shannon Seery of Exceler8ion gives some great pointers on what it takes to start a recruiting blog.

Among her suggestions:

Frequency:

Frequency. This is an issue where every blogger needs to figure out what works best for them. The more often you post - the better your traffic. For those of us that work during the day and/or blogging is not a sanctioned part of the job - keeping up that kind frequency can be hard. There are bloggers that have to be disciplined about it and set aside a specific time every day or every week to blog. My posts tend to happen on the weekends or after my kids are in bed - so between 10pm - 2am

Save your big Announcement for when you have something to read:

Build some content before you proactively notify the blogosphere or search engines that you have a blog. 5 posts is a good rule of thumb. You may even want to do a little future content programming by making yourself a list of topics that you hope to cover on your blog. While there are posts that come during moments of pure inspiration - most bloggers get to a point where they ask themselves - “so now what do I write about”? It is bound to happen - that is why there are so many blogs that have “gone dark”. If you’re really going to be a ‘blogger’ - it gets into your blood and you will work through those moments. How you work through that is a moment of truth for bloggers.

To her 10, I'll add -

11. Don't be afraid of failure.
12. Read as many other blogs as you can to get a feel for etiquette.
13. To start a lively conversation join a community of other people by linking their posts and leaving comments. 
14. Be curious.
15. Have a point.  You have areas of expertise - display them to the world!  If you are a recruiter, maybe your point should be convincing top candidates to keep you in their rolodex as their first call when they are looking.

KC Jobs: Local Job Board

There's always been big money in job boards.  I have little doubt that archaeologists will one day find cave paintings that when properly scrutinized, will give us a rich view of the employment situation of the late homo habilis.

This guy probably will have something to say about it.

Properly translated, the site will probably read:

Job postings available:
Basic Registration: one rabbit skin -  Single Job Posting carved on tree:
Premium Registration: three rabbit skins - Unlimited Job Postings and access to special premium postings (Inside the Cave).

If you think a 45 day posting is good, how about 20,000 years?

If you're in Kansas City, there's no need to paint on cave walls - as there are plenty of sites that cater to the local needs.

KCJobs, for example.  It's a pretty simple site - claims 35000 monthly visitors in the KC area.

Monthly - hmm - that's about 1200 a day (is that uniques, page view, or hits, I wonder).  Still, that's 1000 people a day that are looking for work, and they are all in KC.

Anyone currently using the site that's willing to vouch for it?

Sourcing Database: Recruiting Fly

Sourcing is one of the best ways to improve your number of hires.  Sourcing for many years was considered part of a recruiter's job responsibilities, but the type of experience and personality that makes a good sourcer doesn't always mesh well with the needs of the modern recruiter.

This is why many of the world's top companies have turned to professional sourcers, added sourcing departments, or subscribed to database online to find lists of people for recruiters to call. 

One of the newest tools out there is a Candidate Sourcing tool provided by the Recruiting Fly Website.

It's called Talent Search.  It's free, and it's fabulous!

The engine searches these sites

jobster.com  zoominfo.com  linkedin.com  naymz.com jobvertise.com ryze.com  ziggs.com  repvine.com  thingsicando.com

And gives you the results.  One stop shopping.  Free tool.  Go and Do LikeWise.