We've moved!

Friends and colleagues: Our blog has moved to a new platform for 2011. Please check us out at recruitingtoolbox.com/blog.

You'll find a cleaner interface, more social media sharing tools, a new commenting system, and better articles as we welcome Jason Warner to Recruiting Toolbox.

We will continue to publish posts that help corporate recruiters and HR leaders hire the best talent, as well as share information on key conferences and free webinars that help you grow your skills.

• Please go to recruitingtoolbox.com/blog and enter your email address in the "Subscribe via Email" box on the right hand side to continue to get our posts delivered to your inbox.
  
• Or just click here: Subscribe to Recruiting Toolbox Blog by Email
  

Please continue to send us ideas for post topics.

Today we posted a great overview of a very funny careers site. And Jason's speaking on a free webinar tomorrow with some colleagues who will talk about some important recruiting trends. Interested in learning more? recruitingtoolbox.com/blog

Thank you!

Funny, 2 minute video: Recruiter, fill my req by New Year's!

Check out this fun, short video we made about the challenges of December recruiting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKFyDKv1ynU

Join us Sept 23rd in Seattle for our 6th Annual Recruiting Conference

6th Annual SMA Seattle Staffing Symposium

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 • 8:00 am – 5:00 pm
Meydenbauer Center – Bellevue, WA

We hand-pick our favorite speakers from all the national recruitment and staffing conferences, bring them to you locally (Seattle/Bellevue) for a full day, and offer the entire program to you for a FRACTION of what you’d pay at ERE, SHRM, and other national conferences. You can bring your entire staffing team for the price of sending 1 person to Kennedy/Onrec!

• You’ll hear top rated, national conference speakers share best practices for the real world.
• You’ll connect and reconnect with hundreds of local and regional colleagues.
• You’ll have the opportunity to speak to vendors who will help make you look good.
• And you’ll have fun.

All of our speakers promise to be enlightening, real world, sometimes-challenging or edgy, and fun. Our distinguished speaker line-up includes:

• Carol Mahoney, former VP Talent Acquisition at Yahoo!, Opening Keynote “Relevant Leadership: Influencing the Future of Talent in Your Organization”
• Scott Pitasky, Corporate VP of Microsoft’s Talent & Org Capability, “Don’t let a good crisis go to waste”
• Eric Jaquith, Recruiting Operations Consultant, “Productivity Tips, Tools and Strategies to Add an Hour Back to your Day”
• Steve Lowisz, Author, International Speaker and CEO of Qualigence, Inc., "Conference Room or Cubicle – What Type of Recruiter do You Want to Be?"
• Elaine Orler, Talent Management Strategist, Consultant and Trainer, "Top 10 Talent Technologies of Tomorrow - Available Today!"
• Laurie Ruettimann, highly entertaining Chief Blogger on Punk Rock HR, Closing Keynote “Recruiters, Recession, and Recovery: You Define the Market”
• John Vlastelica, Sr. Director, Global Talent Acquisition at Expedia, Master of Ceremonies

Pricing:

• SMA Seattle Primary or Secondary Chapter Members = $249
• SHRM Members (and not SMA Seattle Chapter Members) = $279
• Non SHRM Members = $299

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN: www.smaseattle.org!

Hope to see you there!

Access important files on the go - from your phone? Yes!

You are mobile
If you're a busy recruiter, you're probably on the go. Interviews, hiring manager meetings, project meetings, and candidate meet-and-greets at coffee shops make up a good chunk of your week.

You need access to info
Compensation ranges, job specs, benefits info, org charts, latest press releases, and standard interview questions can come in handy. And, if you meet someone who's background is interesting, sending them an instant email with details on a job or your company (i.e. a quality pdf of a best-company-to-work-for article) would be cool, right?

There's a great way to access and share info on the go
I've been using dropbox, an online file storage, syncing, and sharing site, for over a year now, and I love it. You can securely access an entire folder (or folders - even your entire "My Documents" on your PC) right from your mobile phone (iPhone, Blackberry, Android).

How would you use it?
You can view and read that spreadsheet with your comp ranges, the benefits summary with detailed premium cost info, and more right on your phone. And - get this - you can email anyone a link to that file right from the app, even if it's a huge 20MB file! And, when you update that file back at your PC in the future (or add a new file to that same folder), it will automatically sync to your password-protected private folders, fully accessible from your phone.

Check it out
I don't get paid to promote dropbox (or any vendor/product), I just love their service. It's free for up to a 2gb account (2,000 MB is a lot, people!). You may want to check it out.

Here's the link to get an extra 250MB (on top of the free 2gb):
https://www.dropbox.com/

A thought about strategy...

I've returned to a corporate recruiting leadership role. And you know what? I've been thinking a lot about strategy lately.

I've been helping companies with recruiting strategy for years...and even have an extensive recruiting manager/leader strategy training program put together. You know what's missing? Something simple. And obvious.

The most strategic decisions you make everyday as a recruiting leader has very little to do with how you organize your team, how you build your social media presence, or how you engage the business. The most strategic decisions you'll probably make today, this week, this month are simply the decisions you make about where you spend your time.

If you're in a corporate role, you can spend an entire day in meetings, in one-on-ones, on the phone with vendors, or - more likely - putting out fires.

Where you choose (yes, choose! you are in control!) to spend your time is your strategy.

As a recruiting leader in this economy, you probably don't have all of the resources and budget you need to do everything. How you prioritize your time - not what you say is important, but what you actually invest your time in - will likely predict your success (and your function's or company's success) more than almost any other type of decision you make.

• Where are you spending your time now?
• Are you declining enough meetings?
  
• Are you saying no to some short term fires to ensure you have a real plan in place?
  
• Are you investing enough time engaging the business to understand their needs, or are you in HR meetings all day?

I can speak from experience that it's easy to get sucked into too many meetings.

What are your ideas to stay focused on what matters most? What's your strategy for ensuring you get to what really moves the needle? How do you rise above the noise to ensure you're leading? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

2010: Hope to see you in person!

First, a belated Happy New Year to you!

Quick personal update
2009 was a fantastic year. Business was amazing, I was able to work on some really interesting projects with some big global organizations and some small start ups. I got healthy. And, in late October, I accepted a phenomenal opportunity to return to a corporate leadership role as the Sr Director, Global Recruiting with Expedia.

Events in 2010
Here are some of the places I'll be in 2010. I hope to see you in person!

• I'm honored to be the MC and Chairman of the 2010 ERE recruiting conference in San Diego this March.
  
• I'll be speaking here in Seattle at the SHRM Washington State Council Annual Conference, also in March.
• I'll be hosting Kevin Wheeler's Future of Talent regional event at our Expedia headquarters in April.
  
• I'll be MCing our annual Staffing Management Association Staffing Symposium in Seattle in May.
  
• And I'll be speaking - for the first time - at SHRM's big annual conference in San Diego in late June.

Here's to a great 2010 to you and your team!

Free Recruiting Trends Webinar - prepare for the economic turnaround

Join Kevin Wheeler and I on October 21st at 10am PT/1pm ET as we explore the critical issues you need to consider as you prepare for 2010 and the (assumed) economic turnaround. This facilitated panel discussion will focus on the key questions you need to answer to prepare for the recruiting work ahead. We'll discuss possible answers to questions like...

• How to prepare your departments and hiring managers for 2010
• How to drive the right workforce planning conversations
• How to engage the candidate communities you recruit from ahead of the need
  

Learn more and register (free!) at Kennedy's RecruitingTrends.com site.