RecruitingTools.com » staffing

#Recruiting with Google Tools To Save Time

SourcerKelly — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:00:32 +0000

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In October I spoke at ProjectSAME (for you outside the DC Metro area that it the Staffing Alliance of Maryland Employers). The presentation was focused on my adjustment to my new work life as a Strategic Recruiting Manager after my former life as Technical Writer and Sourcing Researcher. And of course, paramount to this discussion was tools. Because now I’m in the throes of managing candidates, their profiles, contact and more. And to be honest, time is precious.

But Google helps, immensely.

Here’s my Core 4 that help me get my job done and I’d be lost without:

Chrome: If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written, you know I’m a nut about Chrome. I have about 5 extensions that I use regularly: Bit.ly, LightShot, See Google Similar Pages, ChromedBird, and ChromeIn. I only use IE now because of icims or the occasional webinar that requires it. That’s the only reason. When I can drop it forever I will.

Bookmarks: I used to believe in hyper organizing my bookmarks. But now I have 5 main folders:

Directories – have more than 200 just 60 days into the gig, so they earned a bookmark of their own
Team (that’s my team…data specific to their individual needs)
Search Strings (Templates stored first, favorites and works in progress fall in line)
Resources
Social Media Niche (I’m constantly on the hunt for niche sites…this helps me track them)

Docs: Brian Solis has a great quote… “Keep It Simple and Shareable” and that fits my team to a T. We have increased our review time and eliminated about a 100 emails a day just by sharing information via the cloud. It’s a beautiful thing.

Custom Search Engines: These are amazing. If you don’t know how to create one, go get training on how. The ability to target my search across select competitors, or industry organizations, or social networks or whatever is huge. And I don’t have to deal with all the other random results I’m not interested in. Completely friendly to all of Google’s unique operators too.

I’m sure there will be items that I tweak and drop over time. Part of my job is to figure out how I can get the most done in the least amount of time. And where free is available and quality is top notch, I’m there.

Check out Google Bookmarks “How To” **Note: This is not a recruiting example so you’ll have to relate this to recruiting**

eGrabbers LeadResearcher Pro…mass (and fast!) email location

SourcerKelly — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 21:00:17 +0000

This is not a paid endorsement. All opinions are that of the author.

Since I started my new job in recruiting and sourcing, I’ve been collecting directories and lists. Sometimes I source for them specifically, sometimes they just appear in my results as I’m sorting out keywords that will work. Either way I save them.

Some are small, 10 names tops. The largest one I have on file is 3,000+ and covers all executive levels within a targeted industry. Sometimes email and phone appear on these lists, sometimes not. Of course, I want to locate email addresses so I contact them for jobs that I’m recruiting for.

If the lists don’t have emails and phone numbers I have been known, on weekends, to spend a couple of hours downloading the list, and searching for that information. It’s boring. Tedious even.

But then I read this Egrabber Case Study about LeadResearcher Pro prepared by Marvin Smith. And said “Aha!” I won’t lie, I’m a fan of Marvin’s since he stopped by recruitDC last spring and thought his write up was interesting. And I had heard of EGrabber but never had the opportunity to demo their products. So with that information in hand I committed to a demo, which is no small thing considering it was going to involve 3 days of product testing plus a 60 minute phone call. That’s getting back to our recruiting time being precious, at that point I was hoping for some good results.

But it was worth it. I ran some of my largest lists through LeadResearcher Pro and was pretty impressed by the results. Twitter friends advised that I pursue results that received at least a 4 star ranking (LeadResearcher Pro delineates the quality of the email found on a 5 star system). And they were spot on. I let the system work on one of my larger lists overnight, and came back in the morning to find a good chunk of the emails I needed found. It might have taken me days with interruptions and other priorities to complete that list. And better yet, at least the structure of many of the emails had been determined. I could use that information to build on.

LeadResearcherPro is not free. It currently has a $1995 price tag. Up there for the small search firm but worth it when you’re working to uncover the hard to find candidate email addresses. Especially if you’re a data hound like me and you need a way to quickly locate email addresses, you might want to check out LeadResearcher Pro.

Free #Recruiting and #sourcing tool from Recruiting.com

admin — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 21:00:45 +0000

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Back in 2009 I began to speak with Recruiting.com about the re-launch of their site and their new free sourcing tool. We made mention of it but never shared a demo with the community. With that the video below will give you a quick overview. Recruiting.com provides sourcing and CRM software to assist with augmenting the staffing process.

Pros:

Very intuitive, runs quickly and I have only ever gotten frozen once. (May have been my system, but frozen nonetheless)
The filters are strong and when you make updates, it runs quickly
Standard LinkedIn searches return profiles which have given a lot of other tools trouble the past few months.
If you are running on a paid membership your results are easily parsed and recorded in the database for future use.

Cons:

It’s an automated search so you are limited to the search structure they have created on the backend
The scripts are standardized for mass consumption which will prevent you from getting very detailed. (You can make adjusts in your criteria during your search but the structure is already coded on the backend)

The LinkedIn App: High Volume mailing application: REMOVED

admin — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 04:31:54 +0000

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A few days ago we posted a review on a new app that allows users to mass email the results of their search on LinkedIn. The posting received an overwhleming response and alot of our readers found some value in the app. In the posting (Which is now removed) we asked that you use this tool at your own discretion and encouraged you to evaluate the tool prior to using it as it walked a fine line to violating LinkedIn’s policy on using 3rd party apps.

We spoke with the app’s creators directly to learn about the app and their roadmap and we were subsequently approached by the privacy team at LinkedIn and asked to remove the post and video as it vilotes their terms of service.

In good faith we removed the posting but understand that it’s our duty to bring unbiased reviews and that is what we will continue to do.

Here are some other LinkedIn Tutorials and articles that we can recommend:

The LinkedIn High volume Mailing App:

Sourcing Leads with LinkedIn Events:

Sourcing with LinkedIn’s advanced search features:

A Better Way to Search LinkedIn for Industry Experience:

How to search LinkedIn for Diversity sourcing:

Update your LinkedIn Search Strings:

Promiscuous Linking with Geoff Peterson:

Work hard on honing your soft skills!

admin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:10:41 +0000

Work hard on honing your soft skills!

As an outsourced recruiter, my main responsibility is to find qualified candidates – plain and simple. While Social Media Optimization is something that I am passionate [ahem, obsessed] about, I need to always stay focused on filling my reqs first, and proposing New Media solutions second.

While a lot of this might sound familiar to most of you, there are plenty of talent acquisition specialists that are overlooking the obvious and it is affecting their time-to-fill metrics and retention ratings. Since there is a new Twitter app or blog article highlighting a new technique coming out every day, let’s spend sometime to go over the basics of any successful recruiting campaign. New recruiters, listen up, this one’s for you!

If you have a large, untapped pipeline – why add to it?

This will sound familiar to you if you’ve ever been to Glen Cathey’s blog (booleanblackbelt.com – if you haven’t I suggest you do so immediately). It is a concept that I completely agree with. The key here is to identify the talent that is already in your ATS (or other candidate tracking software). It is not efficient to add to your pipeline if you don’t really need to. Start with Boolean search strings – they always bring me better results than the built in search engine, so they should be second nature to you. Also, don’t just look in the reqs that you are working on for that day – find older reqs that required similar skill sets. While some candidates apply to every req that posts on Monster, others might submit an application and move on. In other cases, candidates might apply to a job they “want” but aren’t ready for yet; reach out to them and point them to a position that is right up their alley. There are more job seekers than there are open jobs, and it is our job to find them and guide them in the right direction – and if you do, I can guarantee you will get major props when they interview with the VP of HR. Which brings me to my next point…

2. Make sure you are value-oriented.

Look for ways you can make an impact in addition to filling your reqs with top-caliber candidates. As a recruiter, you are on the front lines and should be aware of hiring trends. Also, if you’ve been doing this for a while, chances are you know exactly what candidates are looking for because you’ve had conversations with thousands of them. In my experience, I have dealt with many hiring managers who may have had unrealistic expectations of an ideal candidate (they want you to “chase the purple squirrel”, so-to-speak). It would be nice to get a tenured sales professional into an entry level sales role, but that is unrealistic. By building relationships with your hiring managers, you can offer insight into what could be a great hiring decision. Also, make sure you prep your candidates if they are granted an interview – they are representing your recruiting ability! Later on in the consideration process, make sure you work with the hiring manager and HR to ensure that an offer is sent out promptly (ever worked with a manager that wanted a month to think about it). By bringing in the best quality talent to your company, you will be recognized as an asset.

3. Always be aware of new tools and tricks of the trade.

Web 2.0 is a term that is tossed around frequently and rightfully so. Advances in interactive web content have changed the way that we communicate and these changes are directly affecting the way that companies position themselves online and attract new talent. Companies both large and small now have employee-managed blogs, Twitter profiles, YouTube accounts, and even live chats set up. These advances are both mutually beneficial for potential candidates as well as recruiters and hiring managers. Chances are if you are reading this, you already knew all that! My point? Be aware of these progressive new techniques and implement them if appropriate. If you are not finding the people you need, you should look at your existing methods and refine them before adding something new. However, if you are 100% certain that you have exhausted your search, definitely switch it up! Einstein said that insanity is, “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” While what you’re doing might not be insane, you get the idea.

As I was writing this, I read an awesome quote (which I obviously retweeted) from @zappos: The best businesses are those that have figured out how to combine profits, passion, and purpose.

Combine your passion and purpose for recruiting into a strategy that leads to a profitable hiring solution for your client or employer.

Cheers.

About Adam Fields:

Adam Fields is a RPO Consultant for Seven Step Recruiting in Boston, MA. He specializes in delivering high-volume recruiting solutions and is an advocate for customer-service oriented delivery. Adam is a young-gun within the recruiting community with only 2 years under his belt, but is rapidly developing a myriad of soft and technical skills. Adam’s passions are snowboarding, Subaru rally cars, and Twitter!

twitter: http://twitter.com/fieldsy4life
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/adamelliotfields
linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/adamelliotfields

This 4 Prong Approach – How Recruiting at Freeman Strategically Aligned with the Business

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:05:54 +0000

BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL PARTNERSHP

How Recruiting at Freeman Strategically Aligned with the Business

* This article is published for ERE

As the world’s leading provider of integrated services for face-to-face marketing events, Freeman has long been recognized for our ability to develop winning relationships with our clients that help bring about a customer experience like no other. Through teamwork and dedication, Freeman consistently leverages all its available resources to provide a one-of-a-kind experience for our customers. That same commitment to partnering became a primary strategy for the recruiting team, one of our most critical support functions. The recruiting function has successfully aligned its efforts and resources to meet the growing demands of the business through a partnership approach including effective communication with hiring managers, process improvements, fully utilizing existing technologies, targeted training and key metric development (see figure 1)

The Freeman Recruiting Team began implementing the partnership strategy by first examining its existing processes. This evaluation discovered that even though a firm foundation existed, each recruiter managed the recruiting life cycle differently. With this realization, each recruiter was charged with blueprinting their individual process. They presented their findings and through a collaborative workshop, developed a uniform recruiting work flow that created standardization at each critical recruiting touch-point. They also focused on increasing and improving dialogue with the hiring managers.

The impact of these changes resulted in the team’s ability to deliver a consistent and recognizable recruiting experience, facilitate increased communication opportunities with hiring managers regarding their position/candidate status, deliver a consistent approach from which accurate and objective metrics can be applied, and allow for dynamic job postings which increases candidate interest more than standard static postings.

After streamlining the process, the recruiters began to actively engage hiring managers at the point of requisition creation. Whether it was a newly created position or a replacement, the recruiter would contact the hiring manager to discuss specifics requirements outside of the existing job description, identify potential candidate leads or desired sourcing areas, and outline a delivery schedule for filling the position.

“We needed to more fully engage and understand the needs of our hiring managers in a way that made them a partner is the success of the recruiting experience” states Pamela Wills-Ward, Vice President, Employee Relations and Recruiting. These informal service level agreement discussions not only enhanced the recruiters knowledge of the impacted business area, but allowed them to better focus their recruiting efforts (i.e. targeting specific recruiting sites, following up on leads, prioritizing work load, etc.) and engage the hiring manager throughout the recruiting process. This process of setting expectations created an opportunity for both the recruiter and hiring manager to have ownership throughout the process.

With the process reengineered and hiring managers fully engaged, the recruiting team had a better understanding of the positions they were working and able to more quickly respond to the managers needs. This positioning allowed for the final phase of the process improvement effort, pipelining talent. With a better understanding of our business owner’s needs and a process that dramatically shortened our time to fill, the recruiters were able to become proactive instead of reactive.

The team leveraged its newly acquired knowledge to begin pipelining efforts to strategically source frequently needed talent. The pipelining implementation started by targeting critical business areas to such as Sales and Operations. Pipelining talent required new skills to be developed and utilized by the recruiting team. Time was sent shifting the current mindset from “filling” to “sourcing”, asking probing questions about a candidate’s potential versus ability to perform a specific task, and creating relationships versus selling a position (see Figure 2). Recruiters began to research candidates through various sourcing methods, developed comprehensive search strings and continued to work with our internal business partners to anticipate future opening for these newly sourced individuals.

With the process and sourcing strategy set, the Recruiting Department realized that it needed to maximize its existing technology to support and drive these efforts. The recruiting team identified that their current Applicant Tracking System (ATS) could be better leveraged to attract and manage candidates through the sourcing and hiring process.

The first action item was to update the posting language to generate increased applicant interest and higher click-through activity. Many of the jobs posting language had not been reviewed or revised in several years. Next the team developed reports that analyzed the productivity and efficiency of individual team members, the overall group’s performance and how well the recruiting resources (i.e. industry postings, job boards, etc.) were performing. These metrics were used for trend analysis, performance reviews, and budget modeling. Finally the ATS was thoroughly overhauled to ensure every resource it provided (pre-screen questionnaires, candidate ranking, compliance reporting, etc) was used to its fullest potential.

After the ATS was buttoned up, the focus shifted to analyzing the effectiveness of other e-tool areas such as job boards, social networking sites, niche industry sites and Freeman’s career site. A campaign was initiated to encourage employees to refer qualified individuals, whether a friend or someone they met at an industry event, by giving them “Recruitment Cards” which directed individuals to our Company’s careers website. This focus on our sourcing efforts resulted in a 30% increase in visits to our Careers site in a one-year period and an increased our applicant pool by 23% in the same period of time.

With the process streamlined and the support systems in alignment with the overall strategy, the next area the Recruiting Team addressed was education and training. The changes that were made through process improvement and increased utilization of our existing technology created education gaps that were bridged with targeted training. Training was focused on hiring managers and the first deliverable for this group was the creation of a Hiring Manager Guidelines booklet.

Each hiring manager was provided a readymade reference book that clearly articulated Freeman’s hiring process, provided helpful interview techniques and document templates for use throughout the hiring process. Immediately following the deployment of the hiring guide was a series of recruiting webinars which covered topics on our Company’s hiring process, available recruiting resources, interviewing techniques and specialized session such as “The Art of Closing a Candidate”. Our webinars not only provided managers with needed and condensed information, but also demonstrated the team’s commitment to partnering throughout the recruiting process. Each information-packed 20 minute webinar was given numerous times each month to allow for maximum participation. These sessions were well received because they provided necessary information while avoiding disruption to the daily activities of the management team.

The final of part of the recruiting maturation process was the creation of viable and objective metrics. Appropriate measurements needed to be developed to ensure continuous improvement in team and individual performance and to justify recruiting related expenditures.

With the goal of improving the partnering relationship, each hiring manager was given a survey to establish a delivery expectation baseline from which recruiting goals would be developed. A SWOT analysis was also completed. The newly initiated partnering approach resulted in a 94% overall recruiting department satisfaction rate.

The survey allowed the team to establish a goal of decreasing time-to-fill and in the subsequent year the team experienced a 55.3% improvement in this area which translated in 28.2% increase in hires for the year. These numbers validated the efficiency of the recruiting function and the value it delivers to the overall organization.

This four prong approach transformed the Recruiting Department from a reactive, inconsistent function to a proactive, knowledgeable business partner that specializes in talent acquisition with an emphasis on timely, effective, and desired deliverables. Through process improvements, training, maximizing technology and developing objective metrics, the recruiting team has been able to transform itself into a strategic function and value added department for all levels of the organization.

About Michael:

Michael Goldberg is the Recruiting Manager for Freeman, based in Dallas, Texas. Michael has over 17 years of overall HR experience with the last 10 focused on Talent Acquisition. He has been with Freeman for the last two and a half years and has been successfully able to build great recruiting partnerships and reduce time to fill by 50% over the last year and a half and maintain a Hiring Manager Satisfaction ratio of 95%. He spoke at the Kennedy Recruiting Conference in Las Vegas and will be speaking at the Kenexa World Conference this fall.

Contact info: Michael can be reached at either email address:

Michael.Goldberg@freemanco.com or recruitingforward@gmail.com.

You get what you pay for and you Pay for what you get

admin — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:23:40 +0000

Thanks to a Colleague of mine for this recent post. It’s a great article on the thoughts and theories behind hiring quality talent and distinguishing their market value. Please visit Jody Meyerson’s LinkedIn profile for more information at: Jody’s LinkedIn Profile

Written by Jody Meyerson

You get what you pay for. Conversely, you must be prepared to pay for what you get. This is abundantly clear to consumers when purchasing a product, such as a new car. Why, then, is this such a difficult concept to grasp when the product is a person, such as in the case of hiring a new employee?

To illustrate this point, let’s first look at education. How many times have recruiters heard, “this position only requires a Bachelor’s degree” in order to justify a lower salary for an MBA candidate? While that statement may be true, it is also true that the MBA candidate has a higher value in the marketplace and cannot be hired at a lower salary simply because the position doesn’t require an advanced degree. To put this in terms of a new car, imagine that you are in the market for a midsize sedan, but take a luxury SUV for a test drive and decide to purchase it. Is it reasonable to expect that you will receive the SUV at the price of the sedan, simply since you don’t “need” an SUV?

Now, let’s talk about experience. Take the case of an entry-level position, and imagine that you interview a candidate with five years’ experience and decide to extend an offer. It is a reasonable expectation that this experienced candidate will demand a significantly higher salary than you would have had to pay an entry-level candidate. To draw another “new car” parallel, suppose that you are looking for a new car with only the most basic of options. If you test drive and decide to purchase a “loaded” model, shouldn’t you expect to pay the price?

Finally, it’s important to consider market value and the basics of supply and demand. If the car you want to purchase is a popular new model that is in high demand, it is usually unreasonable to expect a significant discount. Similarly, if employees with certain educational and professional backgrounds are also in demand, why expect to be able to attract them by paying them less than your competitors are offering?

Today’s increasingly savvy candidates understand their market value. The best of them have interviewed with multiple potential employers and frequently have multiple offers on the table. And while most consumers expect to pay market value for a commodity such as a new car, many companies still expect to attract the best employees at bargain prices. The cost of not coming to terms with this is the loss of revenue associated with unfilled positions. To draw one last parallel, how many of us would rather pay fair market value for that new car than start hitchhiking to work?

No related posts.

Google Stop Words?

admin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:05:03 +0000

Did you know that when you are entering in search terms and phrases with Google, most of your terms entered are forgotten? That’s right! If you don’t know already, you do now. Google has algorithms that detect commonly used words such as: I, do, where, how… you get the point. These are called Google stop words. Google Stop words are simple words that hinder the relevance of your results.

For example: if you are looking for some information regarding layoffs, and you typed in “how many layoffs does merk anticipate?” Google will only search the following: Merk layoffs anticipate. Unless of course you quote the phrase. Either way your results get struck and are limited. In most cases “anticipated” would be left out as well since it holds no relevance to the indexed results.

Examples from Google that might illustrate this a bit better;

USE [lasik eye surgery]
NOT [documentation on lasik eye surgery]
USE [jobs product marketing Sunnyvale]
NOT [listings of product marketing jobs in Sunnyvale]

It is important for recruiters to know about how Google interprets search commands and stop words, because Google is so important for sourcing candidates. Make sure you know what you’re really getting when you recruit on Google…

www.BlogDigger.com

admin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:03:16 +0000

Blogs are great for recruiting and I’m sure you keep up with the blogs in your industry. So you use Technorati and you are tired of looking at the same site over and over? Well, here another good blog search that allows you to narrow your searches in a number of ways. The search capabilities are pretty tight and the results seem to be better than most I’ve used. Now, I have never spoke to the site’s founders but I did insert some copy as it appears below.

I particularly like the ability to search links and local blogs. This is a great recruiting tool to use when you are looking to narrow you search. It’s a young site but with the proper usage and feedback, we may have another billionaire developer on our hands. Check it out and comment back to let me know you thoughts as well.

www.blogdigger.com

Text as it appears on the blogdigger site

Blogdigger uses it’s vast collection of blog content in novel ways. Some of our most popular services are:

Media
provides RSS feeds of recent media content for many well known media types (WindowsMedia, MP3, QuickTime, BitTorrent) that support RSS 2.0 enclosures. Subscribers to the Media feeds are automatically pushed links to media content of their choice. Try Blogdigger Media search.

Groups
is a state-of-the-art online aggregator, providing RSS or Atom feed grouping into a single configurable page. A Group can be filtered either by blog or by keyword, and content is exported in RSS, RDF, Atom, OPML and OCS, making it the richest and most full-featured feed splicing tool available. Try out Blogdigger Groups.

Link Search
Blogdigger Link Search provides backlink checking, seeing which posts are linking to other online content, tracking the conversation as it evolves. Try Blogdigger Link Search.

Overall, Blogdigger seems like a very useful tool that makes recruiting with blogs a lot easier. It’s important for recruiters to keep up to date with their industry or profession through blogs, and hopefully this tool will be useful. Do you know any other useful tools or sites for keeping up with blogs or for recruiters to use?

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CruiterTalk.com

admin — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:44:35 +0000

Note: This is an old post that originally appeared on CruiterTalk.com, a site dedicated to recruiting tools and software tips and reviews.

Welcome to the new CruiterTalk.com! It’s a new site from an old blogger… The challenge is importing all of my blogs. It’s been giving me some problems but I prefer this platform, so until I figure this puppy out, I will have to deal with it.

So check it out… This site will now be dedicated to the challenges and technology of recruiting across all platforms. You’ll find some great reviews, videos, interviews and just some straight rants and raves. You’ll find a lot of talk about recruiting tools and software and other tech stuff for recruiters.

First off, I have to welcome the members of LIRN from our LinkedIn group! Over 3K strong and still growing. An I can’t forget the home town groups of PhillyRecruits.com. Be sure to check out all of the features as they grow and please take some time to communicate with each other n the new forum.

YES… I know there are 0 postings… Again it’s all new so lets make it look busy. Thanks again for reading and please TAG me and spread the word!