KCRecruiting

Newspaper Recruiting Guru

Joe Grimm was one of the panelists at the ERExpo on the topic of Ask The Bloggers.  Joe is a newspaper recruiter for the Detroit Free Press.  His job is to find copy editors, reporters, and the other journalists that make up a big city newsroom.

Talk about specialization.

Joe, in addition to being one heck of a nice guy, knows just about everyone in the newspaper biz.  That was his job - to network with journalists.  So what did he do to improve his personal network?

Why, he blogs of course.  Ask the Recruiter, while defined by Joe as more of a Q and A,  uses blogginng software to run a column on recruiting questions.   Covering such issues as references, using printouts as clips (the question is whether a printout of a newsstory is acceptable instead of using the actual newspaper article - it's a news recruiting question we don't often get), and other journalist specific quetions, Joe has increased the reach of his network, the approachability of the Detroit Free Press as a newspaper, and his sourcing pool.

Not bad for a dead tree recruiter.  What can you do with your expertise?

Staffing Site Review: Kforce

I used to work for a third party staffing firm by the name of Kforce. They treated me well as a salesperson, but ultimately, I left to start my own business.

Today, I had occasion to look for a Kforce Office in St Louis, as I was passing a candidate on to that local office.  I searched "kforce staffing st louis" and the only good result was the main site Kforce.com.

I went to the office locations tab, and guess what? There is no listing on the Kforce.com website for an office in St Louis.  There is also no listing on the Kforce.com site for Kansas City.  Sorry, no results were found.

How could this be?  I know for a fact that there are offices in Creve Coeur, MO, and Overland Park, KS.  Ahhh, says the smartest of you.  If you search Creve Coeur and Overland Park, you can find the offices.

Yes, I can.  But how can candidates, who are maybe only given the name of the company, supposed to find the local offices if the company doesn't even take the time to create  decent search on their own site?

Does your company website make it hard, or easy to find you?

Recruiter's Roundtable at Hallmark

I had the fantastic experience of giving a short talk at the Recruiter's Roundtable yesterday.  Man, is Hallmark a sweet place to work for creatives.  We hope to do some series on what it's like to work there, but Franki, my wife, was absolutely blown away at how Hallmark nurtures the creative impulse.

We had a lovely meal with Donna Turk, the Director of Creative Recruiting Services, her husband, Jacob Turk, whose running against Emanuel Cleaver for the 5th District US House Seat, and Doug Burris of Intronic Solutions, the connector who brought us all together.

If you're looking for a fantastic place to eat, the Grand Street Cafe had impeccable service and the best crabcakes we've had in a decade.

Blog Case Studies: Carl Chapman

Small Business Owners often ask why they should blog, and recruiting branch managers are even tougher.

"What is the value of blogging?" they ask.

Carl Chapman shares his results and reveals hard numbers in a blog case study from Dave Mendoza.

Monetarily, the blog has helped drive, directly, well over $50K in business and another $120K in yet to be filled contracts since the beginning of this year. This is a measure of the direct impact to just my search firm.

I wonder if KCRecruiter and KCHeadhunter.com are available.  Don't miss the chance to hear me speak this Thursday at the Recruiter's Roundtable at the Hallmark Corporate Headquarters.

Using A Staffing Blog To Hire Internet Savvy Salespeople

Are you looking for salespeople in Kansas City?  What is your basic strategy?  If you are like most companies, you'll post a notice on your website, tell your sales and sales support employees you're looking for more salespeople, and you'll post a job on one of the job boards.

Resumes will come in, and you'll make a selection of the best candidates.  Or rather, you're make your selection from the best candidates that happened to apply to your job posting, read your website, or know of your current employees. 

So let me ask - do you really think that the best salespeople are answering ads off job boards or happen to know your sales coordinator?  Are you really getting the best candidates, or are you getting the best of those who happen to find you?

If you're hiring top salespeople, chances are they found you.  A good salesperson knows how to prospect, knows how to get to the decision maker, and knows how to close.  So the question is why you're hiring people that send you a resume before talking to a decision maker.  Do you buy from salespeople that send you a proposal before they get you on the phone?

So what do you do?  You find ways to attract the right kind of people to your careers site.  You make the careers section speak to them.  You make it exclusive.  And you give them a reason to find you.

Three short sugggestions.
1) Start a Sales blog:  Brag on the people who make quota.  Get clients to rave about your company.  Present Case Studies.  Promote contests.  Offer direct contact to salespeople who call in. 

2) Define what you want in a salesperson:  Most job descriptions have no imagination.  If you use the word hunter in your job spec, do you know what you are asking for? Are you paying a hunter what they want to make, and does the rest of your salesforce already hunt?

3) Promote from within:  If you have someone who knows your products internally, give them a shot.  Salespeople succeed and fail for a multitude of reasons. Don't assume that you want hairgel when someone with indepth knowledge of how your company sells may be the elephant hunter you're looking for.

Pay Raises For Candidates

One of the frustrating things about working for a public staffing company is the metrics behind your billing rate.

Gross Profit Margin is the name its given in most places, and it's the percentage of the billing rate that the staffing company collects as profit after paying the contractor's salary, taxes, Social Security, Medicare, Insurance, and Expenses, but before commissions are paid out to the recruiter and salesperson.

Gross Profit Margin is a loathsome master, because it prevents you from taking into account the individual worth of a contractor, and instead focuses on percentages, reducing each contractor to a number.

When you're working for a firm that totals in the hundreds of millions of dollars, some measure is required to keep profits in line. But is GPM the right measure?

10,000 Reasons To Start A Recruiting Blog

Harry Joiner is a friend of mine, and I knew he was mad talented, but I'm still in awe over his latest milestone.

10,000 candidates have downloaded his v-card from his recruiting blog, MarketingHeadhunter.com

When I first saw Marketing Headhunter in 2005, I figured that here was a new media expert who got the whole blogging and recruiting thing.  I was wrong - Harry was just trying out some new things, and the Marketing Headhunter was his attempt to differentiate himself from the pack.

Today, that has all changed.  The brand, the name, and Harry's recruiting talents have combined to make him a search engine powerhouse, and while I won't share his secrets, I can tell you that Harry is running circles around his competitors with his online profile, and he now has an automatic candidate lead generator that is demographically targeted at the best and brightest marketing executives.

Don't think those v-cards are just for show - Harry is making placements, and he now is that social media marketing genius that has learned to let the web work for him.

Where are the rest of you?  If you would like to learn how to build an online profile that helps you close more business this year, contact me about meeting you May 15th-17th in Kansas City.  jdurbin-(at)-durbinmedia.com

Recruiter's Roundtable May 17th

I'll be in town at the invitation of Doug Burris and the Recruiters Roundtable to give a presentation on the use of recruiting blogs in hiring candidates on May 17th from 3:00-4:30 at the Hallmark corporate headquarters. .

Franki and I will actually be in town for four days (from Tuesday-Friday), as we are meeting with a few prospective clients, so if you are looking for social media consulting, blog consulting, Web 2.0 consulting, or website design, we'd be happy to speak with you.

Our Website:  http://durbinmedia.com
Our blogs:  http://brandstorming.com, http://lifeinaventicup.com

We're seriously considering coming to Kansas City for a couple of months this summer just to change our environment a little, and working with clients in KC would be kinda nice.