KCRecruiting

What Can Blogging Do For You?

This post was originally posted at The People Management blog by Jim Durbin in February of 2007. 

If you're a regular reader of blogs but haven't taken the time to dive in and start writing, consider the career paths of several people who have taken that plunge.  Each of these individuals is involved in the recruiting space, and that industry has done well with recruiting blogs, but marketing, small business, PR, finance, product marketing, legal, and technology also have good stories.

This sample is not going to focus on companies that have done well with blogs, but rather the career paths of individual bloggers.  You want to know the ROI?  Here are some figures. 

Recruiting:

Joel Cheesman:  Joel, who writes the popular Cheezhead blog, runs his own business as a SEO consultant for recruitment marketing. Joel has been blogging just two years, but now says most of his new business leads come from his blog (not his website).  Joel speaks at conferences, starts contests, and just recently signed a sponsorship deal with JobCentral to pay him $100,000 over the next two years.

Harry Joiner: You'll recognize Harry because he's one of the authors of this blog, but he also writes for MarketingHeadhunter, his blog on his business as a, you guessed it, Marketing Headhunter. Harry is a friend of mine, and we talk about the impact of his blog on his business - I'll leave it up to him to quantify the amount - but he counts on his blog to bring in qualified candidates for him to place with his clients.   At $20,000-$30,000 (and up) a placement, any candidate that finds Harry through his blog is someone he didn't have to proactively solicit.

Paul DeBettignies: Paul writes for MNHeadhunter, his blog on technology, recruiting, and Minnesota.  Using his Typepad Platform, Paul brings in leads and posts his jobs as an independent recruiter in the Twin Cities.  Last year, Paul made three placements he could attribute to his blog.  That's somewhere in the neighborhood of $30-$50,000. 

Chris Hammond:  Chris Hammond is not a recruiter, but he is a DotNetNuke Developer, a skillset that is rare, but hot for many companies.  Chris writes on his ASP blog, as well as several other web properties, and when the principal of a local St Louis company found his writing, the principal tried to recruit him.  Chris has been ducking headhunters for years, but the knowledge that an owner knew enough about what he did and wanted him to work on DotNetNuke was enough to get the ball rolling.  He is now employed with the new company.

Jim Durbin - Finally, there is me. I was an account manager for a large staffing firm when I started my recruiting blog in 2004.  It was my fourth blog, but it was the first I applied to business.  Over the course of the next 18 months, I started writing for Recruiting.com and built up my audience for StlRecruiting.com, and was invited to speak at a trade show as a panel speaker.   The success of my blogs led me to leave my cushy corporate position and join my wife in her interactive marketing firm, where, today, one year after leaving the company, we can trace over $100,000 in billings to blogging and blog-related projects.   Blogging led my transition from corporate salesperson to successful entrepreneur.  This year, we expect to see the total billings from blogging to double (with a far greater return for our clients).

What's the ROI for individual blogging?  For recruiting, I'd suggest checking with one of the individuals above.

 

Paul DeBettignies: Paul writes for MNHeadhunter, his blog on technology, recruiting, and Minnesota.  Using his Typepad Platform, Paul brings in leads and posts his jobs as an independent recruiter in the Twin Cities.  Last year, Paul made three placements he could attribute to his blog.  That's somewhere in the neighborhood of $30-$50,000. 

Chris Hammond:  Chris Hammond is not a recruiter, but he is a DotNetNuke Developer, a skillset that is rare, but hot for many companies.  Chris writes on his ASP blog, as well as several other web properties, and when the principal of a local St Louis company found his writing, the principal tried to recruit him.  Chris has been ducking headhunters for years, but the knowledge that an owner knew enough about what he did and wanted him to work on DotNetNuke was enough to get the ball rolling.  He is now employed with the new company.

Jim Durbin - Finally, there is me. I was an account manager for a large staffing firm when I started my recruiting blog in 2004.  It was my fourth blog, but it was the first I applied to business.  Over the course of the next 18 months, I started writing for Recruiting.com and built up my audience for StlRecruiting.com, and was invited to speak at a trade show as a panel speaker.   The success of my blogs led me to leave my cushy corporate position and join my wife in her interactive marketing firm, where, today, one year after leaving the company, we can trace over $100,000 in billings to blogging and blog-related projects.   Blogging led my transition from corporate salesperson to successful entrepreneur.  This year, we expect to see the total billings from blogging to double (with a far greater return for our clients).

What's the ROI for individual blogging?  For recruiting, I'd suggest checking with one of the individuals above.

 

8.2 Million Jobs Created Since 2003

Call it propaganda if you will, but there's a reason why staffing companies are enjoying stock prices twice as high as they were a year ago.

8.3 million jobs created in the last 3 1/2 years.

Today,   The Bureau Of Labor Statistics Released New Jobs Figures – 132,000 Jobs Created   In June.  Since August 2003, more than 8.2 million jobs have been created, with more than 2 million jobs created over the twelve months ending in June.  Our economy has now added jobs for 46 straight months, and the unemployment rate remains low at 4.5 percent.

Americans   Are Working And Taking Home More Pay

• Real After-Tax Per Capita Personal Income Has Risen By 9.9 Percent – Nearly $3,000 Per Person – Since President Bush Took Office.

• Real   Wages Rose 1.1 Percent Over The 12 Months Ending In May. This is faster than the average rate during the 1990s, and it means an extra $729 in the past year for the typical family with two wage earners.

• The   Economy Has Now Experienced Over Five Years Of Uninterrupted Growth, Averaging   2.9 Percent A Year Since 2001. Real   GDP grew a strong 3.1 percent in 2006.

• Since   The First Quarter Of 2001, Productivity Growth Has Averaged 2.8 Percent.  This   is well above average productivity growth in the 1990s, 1980s, and   1970s.

• Purchasing   Managers Reported Manufacturing Expansion For The Fifth Consecutive Month In   June.    The Institute for Supply Management manufacturing index rose to 56 in June.

Midwest Income By Household In 2003.

Here's a wild statistic for you.  The median income for a full household in the Midwest in 2003 was $44,732.

Now median is not the average, it's the the midpoint in a series of numbers; half the data values are above the median, and half are below.

So when you're out looking for a job and talking about what you should make, take your earnings with a bit of salt. If it takes a bit of effort to find jobs that pay $90,000 a year, it's because you are making more than twice as much as half of the country makes as a whole family (including double-income households).

Just a thought.  Maybe it should be harder to find those jobs.  Although it should be easy to find people to take them. 

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.

Recruiter Salaries On The Rise

Sometimes being a Recruiter ain't all that bad.  A recent survey described ERE's Inside Recruiting says pay for Recruiters is rising faster than that of other industries.

According to the Bullhorn Survey - recruiter pay has risen 10% in the last two years.  Now for the money paragraph

While salaries varied greatly among survey participants, the average expected salary of staffing and recruiting professionals for 2006 was $82,000, excluding bonuses, according to the nearly 500 staffing and recruiting professionals from various industries in the United States and Canada who participated in the survey.

There's been a lot of talk disparaging the Talent War lately, but it seems the recruites on the front line are starting to see some benefits.

Of course, being experienced recruiters, I don't want any of you marching into your director's office demanding a raise.  You might send him or her an anonymous e-mail, though.