Don't be a hostage to your job search!

Over the course of the last several months I've met with job seekers who when looking for new opportunities seem to carry frustrations they've had with previous employers with them in their search for a new opportunity. In essence, leaving them hostages to their previous employers and potentially keeping them from the opportunities they might receive. To move past this frustration, I've recommended job seekers meet with career counselors to help them work past this emotion so their present and ready for the new opportunity when it arises. It's like that old adage, as soon as one door closes another door opens. If you've got the door cracked open even just a little bit, it’s not shut, so as a previous job seeker myself, I recommend you, shut the door so your new door opens.

YOU'RE a GREAT BRAND - Share what you do with others NOW!

Job searching has changed. Technology has allowed job seekers to access opportunities all over the world. Because of this, branding yourself utilizing technology is central to your job search. How do you do this successfully? First, think like a recruiter. Go to where recruiters are and make sure your information is available to them. Great examples of this are sites like LinkedIn or facebook (fb). LinkedIn and FB are websites that recruiters use to find people. Secondly, ask yourself what information about you is listed on these sites? If it's not what you want people to know about you start by building your brand. You as a brand is your sales message that outlines the skill sets and or experiences you bring. Build your brand message by defining the experiences you have which differentiate you as a candidate. Interestingly enough, this same strategy is what recruiters are using to find great candidates so as an applicant use this information to your advantage and share what you do with others.

Recruiting in the world of Web 2.0 - where in the #@!! do you begin?!

Even though it's been a while and there's been a lot going on I thought it was high time I started sharing out my experiences. First, we all know recruiting has changed. We've moved from the job boards to job board aggregators to now blogs and groups that help employers push out their jobs to the candidates their targeting.

Welcome to the world of Web 2.0 folks! Let’s get moving to the world of 2.0 and beyond….

Web 2.0 is a combination of blogging sites, group pages, websites, and on-line communities all of whom have outlets for you to share your opportunities with audiences you might be targeting. The next question becomes which sites, pages or on-line communities do you start sharing your opportunities with? This ladies and gentleman is the million dollar question… Let’s start talking strategies and leveraging the world of technology to get us the best and brightest today and tomorrow. Stay tuned for more information... =)

Winning the war on talent... - finding the best of the best to work for you!

I was talking with a friend today about her new job which she's been working at for about 4 weeks. In talking with her she was ecstatic about the position. Not only because she'd found an opportunity, but because she found the "right" opportunity. She was excited because her job matched her skill set, her experiences, what she wanted out of new role and she was also working with a group of folks that she was genuinely interested in learning from. Because of these elements she's genuinely excited about her new gig.

As Recruiters it's our job to align opportunity with talent. Taking this a step further, it's our job to also align the desire and motivation of talent with opportunity. When we do each of these things, you then have applicant like my friend, who is excited and enthused at coming to work every day.

Even though it's only week 4 in her new role I'm betting that because her desire and motivation are aligned to the opportunity she's committed to she's definitely going to be there awhile. Because of this, they have a talented employee who is fully committed to the organization which also means they have an employee who is focused on doing her best work for the greater good of the company. Isn’t this ultimately, what having the best of the best means?

Why does a clear recruiting process matter?

Providing a great candidate experience means you're able to articulate to applicants your recruitment process. Without a clear process in place, candidates will have varied experiences that may or may not be great. A clear process allows you the opportunity to pinpoint where a candidate's experience might've gone awry.

The question now becomes, where do you start when you’re creating a clear process? My recommendation - begin with the end in mind. In other words, start with the goal. Ask yourself or your team what do you or your team want you’re process to achieve? Also, think about your goal in quantifiable terms. Meaning, how will you know whether or not you’ve achieved your goal (so once you’ve defined the goal ask – is it measurable)?

Finding top talent means prioritizing what you do - how to do this when you're on point to do everything...

Prioritizing time becomes an essential part of what we do... Having a mission outlined for your talent organization allows you the ability to make decisions that are focused on your core function. Creating your mission is the first part of this journey.

The quest for creating a great employer brand continues - it's part 3 in the series! =)

Don't knit pick ideas. We're at a point in our employment brand process where the ad agency has created mock ups of our potential site. This is a great place to be, although, we're now, picking apart the little things. Case in point, we've gone back on forth on colors and placement of items on the site which in the grand scheme of things are keeping us from looking at the bigger picture.

Big picture we need a site and brand that speaks to the kind of applicant we're targeting. So the colors and placement of items on the site are important as it relates to the folks we're targeting. If we're not keeping them top of mind we're not prioritizing what's important to the audience we're targeting.

To reiterate creating a GREAT employer brand means you're considering the following:

Audience + Organizational Values + Technology = A Great Employer Brand

So remember keep this formula and your Audience top of mind!

Unveiling OZ - A simple guide to implementing a sourcing model: Part 1

There's a certain mystique about sourcers that is similar to oz in the story the wizard of oz. OZ was this mysterious figure that knew all. Sourcers have this way of finding candidates that is definitely OZ like. Sourcers have great research skills and are able to grasp the perspective of a candidate like no one else I've ever seen.

The ability to find candidates and put yourself in the mind of the candidate is the work I'm focused on today. Simply put, I along with a team of folks are tasked with proposing a sourcing model for the organization.

To do this, we've started by identifying the premise or focus of work (it's the what we want a potential sourcing team to do). We're also looking at resources we have in place to help accomplish some of this work.

This is step 1 of our journey. Although we're at the beginning stages, we have a solid foundation to begin meaningful conversations about our potential body of work.

My plan is to use this site to document our progress to create a "how to" for organizations looking to create internal sourcing teams.

Giving back is just as important as finding the right applicant!

How many of us fell into recruiting as a line of work? I've talked with a number of folks and no one I know started out their college careers believing they'd be a recruiter. What if someone talked to you about a career in recruiting when you were in high school or even middle school, would you still be on the path you're on today. I was watching a story on the Today show about a book called "Citizen You". It's a book that inspires folks to give back and change the world. It does this by asking people, to try something. Citizen You reminds us that change happens one step at a time and one thought at a time. I was moved by the concept of Citizen Teachers which helps middle school students "connect the dots between schools and the real world." When you get a moment, inspire others and check out the website below.

http://www.citizenyou.org/blog/entry/welcome-to-citizen-you/

Creating a great employment brand... Part 2

A day or 2 ago I talked about creating great employment brands. I wanted to continue this conversation because the organization I'm with is in the midst of this work. In my last conversation I stated you needed several components to create a great brand.

Components of a great employer brand:
Audience + Organizational Values + Technology = A Great Employer Brand

I also believe you need a really clear idea of what you like. For instance, I was chatting with colleagues about revamping our own employer brand and each of us had a different perspective. As a result, the expectation we had of the agency we were working with definitely varied depending on who you talked to. To work through this potential conflict we discussed the kinds of career sites each of us liked and rated each site on a continuum where we identified great sites, good sites, and sites we agreed were ones we didn't want to emulate. From that conversation there was alignment on the kinds of sites we liked and the message we wanted our site to convey. This experience has taught me that part of creating a great employment brand is aligning peoples thoughts on what they like so as a group you have a cohesive idea of what you want your brand to convey. Without this alignment, we're like hiring managers who wait for the right candidate without identifying the kinds of skills or experiences the candidate needs in order to be considered "right".

Data can be your friend... Even if you're in HR...

I attended a networking function where an organization was sharing out their recruiting practices. They discussed their organizational structure and the work their recruiters do. It's at this function I learned more about the power of data. This group utilized data to justify resources and support for initiatives. Case in point, they revamped their employer website and spent about $500K doing so. They were able to get the monies for this revamp because most of their hires come from their own career site(this organization drives about 5M visitors to their website annually). The data they'd gathered provided decision makers with the insight they needed to support this initiative. In short, I learned data not only provides decision makers the insight they need to make decisions but it also helps teams get resources they need to do their jobs successfully which in turn helps meet the broader goals of the organiztaion. As a result, our role as HR professionals is to provide data that helps drive decision making. This may sound like common sense but it's still a practice we must work at refining. So if you're reading this, remember, data is your friend, even if you're in HR, so continue to use it to gather the resources you need to achieve the goals of the organization.

Creating a great employment brand & how to get it right... The first time.....

My organization is currently revamping its employer brand and its been a truly fascinating process.  You look at great brands and you think to yourself what do I like about brand X, Y or Z.  From there, you explore how to incorporate the things you like from these brands as part of your own brand. The elements we're currently exploring are videos and widgets as a way to share out our story. Interestingly enough, I'm also learning that we have to take a step back and ask ourselves who do we want, what are these folks like, who are we as an organization, and what can we provide that sets us up as a leader where the folks we're targeting are drawn to us and think of us first as they start their job search.  Based on this experience, I've created a formula for creating a great employer brand... (ps - know this is a work in progress and is subject to change)

Audience + Organizational Values + Technology = Great Employer Brand

Part of successful recruiting means forecasting - right?!

I met with a couple of hiring managers today to forecast their staffing needs.  Interestingly enough, our conversation moved from forecasting to discussing the challenges their group was experiencing based on their current needs.  As a recruiter, our role is to find and acquire talent.  To do this effectively, recruiters need to understand the businesses they support.  Good recruiters get that an unfilled need is tough on the business, great recruiters get the impacts an unfilled position has not only on the business but on the people who support that line of business.  Today, I met with hiring managers with the intent of hammering out a forecast in 2010.  Fortunately for me they had a different intent, they actually helped me move from good to great because they provided me the perspective I needed to better understand the impacts their current staffing need has on both the patients and the employees they serve.   Based on this experience, I learned that I'm still figuring out what being great looks like and thankfully, I'm open to learning so I'm excited to know that this experience was just the tip of the iceberg.  Happy Friday!

Had to share - a great story of a candidate experience...

My sorority sister has been job searching for the past year.  Its been a rocky road for her but I've been so proud to see how well she's handled it and how great she's come out of this experience.  We've all heard of peoples' stories about how tough it is to find new roles.  I remember when Hard Rock was hiring, there was a line around the block with folks just waiting to fill out an application at 7am.....  Yup, that's what I said, 7am..

Christina, my sorority sister interviewed for a job a couple of weeks ago and recieved an offer that she's accepted, which is fantastic and she's ecstatic about the opportunity.  Her experience stands out to me because of the interactions she had with various recruiters.  She'd been searching for an inside sales job and her resume listed this experience although her resume detailed her account management expertise so most of the calls she received were focused on outside sales as a result she was definitely getting calls but not for the kind of opportunity she was targeting.  She got a call from a recruiter who shared with her that she had some great experience and he wanted to consider her for an outside sales role.  Christina politely declined and he followed up by finding out the kind of opportunity she was targeting.  She shared with him that she was targeting an inside sales role and he stated she should revise her resume to reflect this, in doing so, she'd taken his advice and low and behold a couple of weeks later she's being contacted for inside sales opportunities.

Christina is an awesome girl and the company she's going to is sooo lucky to have her.  I'm glad she crossed paths with a recruiter who had the expertise and the savvy to share with her what she needed to do, in order to get the role she wanted.  Kudos to all my fellow recruiters who take an extra minute to share information and provide constructive feedback to folks who might not even be looking for it.  Know that each and every time you do this you're helping someone who would appreciate the assistance.  As a recruiter, I know what we do is sometimes thankless, but I know day in and day out all of you do fabulous stuff so I encourage you to keep doing what your doing because everyday it makes a difference to phenomenal folks like Chrisitina.... Take care and I wish you all well!
Ann Marie   =)

Jobfairs and Technology - my how things have changed?!

I was at a job fair today recruiting rehab students and there was a rehab company that had video clips of their therapists at one of there clinics.  The clip outlined what their therapists do and the kind of treatment they provide.  It was definitely neat, particularly because they were the only company that utilized technology as a way to showcase what their folks do and what it's like to work there. 

As a recruiter, I may not have the intimate knowledge of my business units that the hiring managers do, but having something like this, to help showcase a day in the life of X would be awesome because it provides someone who is looking for a role the insight he/she might be looking for from a practitioner's point of view.  In the ideal world, you're at a job fair with folks who are part of the line of business you support.  If not, why not have a hiring manager share your company's story or what its like to work in her/his area as a back up. 

Based on my experience there today, know my next goal will be to incorporate technology as part of our job fair stuff.....  Stay tuned.... =)

Developing a sourcing philosophy...

Let's say you're interested in getting your team to source more, what do you think is key in getting them to participate in this activity?