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.

What does a good third party recruiter do to partner with corporate recruiters?

Jenifer Lambert - a Pinnacle Society recognized, top rated executive recruiter - recently interviewed me for her Recruiter Earth radio show. It was unscripted and live, and she asked some tough, frank questions about the keys to partnering with corporate HR.

I joked that I know that, for many third party recruiters, HR stands for "human roadblock". But I also shared some insights into what the best, most effective third party recruiter partners do - and should do - to work with (not against) their corporate partners in HR.

You can listen to the interview here:
http://recruiterearth.com/forum/topics/elevate-with-jenifer-lambert

I'd love your comments. What do you think is the key to a great partnership between corporate HR and search professionals?

Explore legal issues of using facebook/myspace and the web to recruit

Do you wonder whether it's legal to use information found on the web about a candidate to make a selection decision? I mean, the candidate or prospect put that picture of himself drinking for everyone to see, right? And his comments about his last employer and "hot co-worker" should be fair game for our use as HR/recruiters, right?

Join us next Wed, 9/16 in Seattle for a special lunch seminar which will explore the legal issues of using sites like Myspace and Facebook to screen candidates.

“Landmines, Pitfalls and Potential Law Suits – Understanding the Risks of Using Search Engines and Social Networking Sites to Screen Candidates.” Featuring Lester Rosen, Attorney at Law

Learn more and register at www.SMASeattle.org

Wednesday 9/16 Seattle 11am-1:30pm

45% of Employers Using Social Networking Sites to Research Candidates

A June 2009, 2,600 hiring manager survey from Careerbuilder found that 45% of employers are examining your online, social networking presence (especially Facebook) to learn more about you before they make a hiring decision.

Well, we probably knew that this was happening. Apparently, it's up from 22% last year. Again, no surprise that it's rising. But still...

More interesting is that 35% claimed to have found information on a site like Facebook that caused them not to hire someone. 35% is huge!

What kinds of things caused them to reject a candidate?

• Over 1/2 found inappropriate photos or information.
• Almost 1/3 said they found evidence of poor communication skills (What? Do we need to ensure we use 'you're' instead of 'your' and 'its' instead of 'it's' appropriately, or never use slang or PG-13 language even when we're casually writing with friends?)
• 14% said they rejected someone for using an emoticon (:<

But, 18% also said they used online content about candidates to justify their hire. They liked what they saw, and found it to be a major positive influence on their hiring decision.

So, lessons learned? The careerbuilder article has a list of 5 dos and don'ts. Basically,they say be very aware of the messaging you're putting out there about yourself - your personal brand, and maybe your next job, is at stake.

Learn Best Practices for College Recruiting: NACE Web Conference

College Recruiting Best Practices: Online Conference, Aug 11-13, 2009

I'll be presenting at my first NACE conference in a few weeks. My topic will be How to Leverage Your Hiring Managers. We'll discuss how to lead, how to set managers up for college recruiting success, what tools they need to effectively interview, select, and sell candidates, how to engage and reward managers, and how to leverage SLA conversations to set and manage expectations. I'll also be part of the opening keynote session on The Future of Recruiting.

I'm excited to hear great speakers like Kevin Wheeler, Gerry Crispin, and Steve Lowisz talk about social networking, the future of recruitment, metrics, and more.

Details are at: http://www.naceweb.org/education/2009recruiter/default.htm

Hiring Top Performers - Overview Article

How to Avoid Hiring Mistakes and Select Top Performers

I was asked to write an article for the WTIA (Washington Technology Industry Association) Executives Forum (designed for non-HR leaders). While most of you reading this blog entry already practice these best practices, I thought I'd share it with you in case it's the type of thing you'd like to share with the execs you work with. It's a good short read on what leaders can do to prevent hiring mistakes and hire the right people.

Whether you're an emerging small company or a large technology leader, every hire counts...especially in this economy, where headcount is so precious. So, what should you focus on to...

• Avoid hiring mistakes?
• Structure your interviewing process to yield the best hires?
• Leverage your interviewing strategy as a selling strategy?

Full article here:
http://www.washingtontechnology.org/community/forums/thread/615.aspx

Free Webinar August 19th - ERE presents "Help Me Help You" with John V

Help Me Help You
How to help your Hiring Managers Succeed

John Vlastelica will present a free 1 hour webinar based on his popular ERE 2009 San Diego Session focused on how corporate Recruiters can help their Hiring Managers succeed.

Learn more, and register for this free event, here:
http://www.ere.net/webinars/help-me-help-you.asp

Details:
August 19th, 11am PT, 2pm ET

Learn...

• The 4 things the most successful Hiring Managers have in common
• How to talk to Hiring Managers about their role in a way that positions you as a partner
• 20 specific, tactical best practices to help managers succeed throughout the key stages of the recruiting process

Hope to "see" you there!

External Recruiters: Get More Business

I was asked to share some insights into what third party recruiters can do to get more business in this economy. So, I thought back to my time in the trenches as a recruiting leader at Amazon during the last downturn, asked clients and colleagues (corporate recruiting leaders) about their current approach to leveraging agencies/search firms, and pulled in a friend and colleague who runs a staffing firm and trains external recruiters.

Jenifer Lambert and I wrote this paper to help third party recruiters gain insights into the corporate recruiting world and learn:

• How to demonstrate value and gain business in 2009
• How to uncover opportunties
• How to answer "Why should I pay a fee?" questions from clients

You can download part 1 of this short paper here:
http://www.recruitingtoolbox.com/resources/papers.htm

How are you leveraging third party search firms - if at all - in this economy?

Background Check Vendor Checklist

Considering a new background check vendor?
I completed a custom benchmarking study 18 months ago for a client, and asked 20 major employers about their background check policies, processes, standards, and plans for the future. 50% said they were relatively unhappy with their current vendor.

There's a lot of firms out there. I was networking with people from a firm (ESR) based in California yesterday, and I asked them some questions about the differences between the firms in their space. (Their President was one of my favorite speakers at the Kennedy show I was at a few weeks ago, and we're bringing him to Seattle to speak to us on Sept 16; watch www.smaseattle.org for details in the coming weeks).

They pointed me to a 22 question checklist that highlights key questions you should ask any background check vendor you're considering. I thought it was an objective list, so thought I'd share it.

http://www.esrcheck.com/diligence-audit-current-provider.php

Are you pleased with your background check vendor? What makes them work well - or not so well - for you?

p.s. Note: I don't have any commission relationships with any vendors of any kind. I certainly have opinions about firms and people in our space, but my opinions are not influenced by commissions or kickbacks.

Prepare for your Recruiter Interview

Do you have an upcoming interview for a new recruiting job?

Top 5 Things You Need to Do to Prepare

1 Know your results.
It shocks us how few recruiters know how many hires they made in the last month or the last year. Even fewer know how those numbers compared to other recruiters. As crazy as it sounds, simply knowing this information will put you light years ahead of most recruiter candidates. (p.s. Put this information on your resume, so that it's easy to recall during the interview)

2 Know where your hires came from.
Whether you use your company's ATS/Talent Management System, or a simple excel spreadsheet, you should track and pull source information on your hires before you interview. Most recruiters guess where their candidates came from during the interview, which doesn't build confidence in the interviewer that you know how you spend your time - or how you should spend your time - to find them great people. Obviously, most companies are listening for your ability to focus on the right, high ROI source for the job. Be prepared to walk through your strategy for sourcing common candidate types via the web, social networking tools, referrals, networking/cold calling, etc. Show how you keep agency fees low and leverage your toolbox to be uber productive.

3 Know your close rate.
It will impress most interviewers if you know what your offer:hire rate is, and how that compares to other recruiters in your company. All companies want to hire good closers. Great companies want to hire recruiters who know the levers that predict close rate. So, if you end up interviewing with a great company, know why your candidates declined and the steps you regularly take to pre-close candidates.

4 Know your business, and how it differs from theirs.
We have to practice what we preach. You should know your current/old company's people-competitors and products inside and out . You should also research the company you're interviewing with. Differentiate yourself by knowing more than just what products or services they offer. You should also...

• go on to their /jobs site and see what kind of people they hire
• read their latest press releases
• try out their product or service (when I first interviewed at Amazon.com in early 1998, I made sure I bought a book online before I went in to the interview, and I'm glad I did, as they asked me a lot of questions about the customer experience)
• talk to anyone you know who works there (leverage your linkedin network) to learn about their growth plans, recruiting culture, and recruiting pain.
• identify their people competitors (leverage linkedin to see where their current employees used to work, and where they went when they left this company)
• read any company or employee blogs you can find, and see if glassdoor.com has comments about what it's like to interview or work there
  

Interviewers are absolutely blown away when recruiter candidates ask smart questions about their business, or relay examples that seem incredibly relevant to their company. The best interviewers are trying to answer one core question while they're interviewing you: How likely could this recruiter repeat the success they had at company X here at my company? You must help them answer this question by highlighting how you've overcome challenges or met goals that are similar to what you'd find if you worked for this new company.

5 Prepare examples.
Don't wing it. Spend some time writing out a few examples of your accomplishments, and review them the night before the interview. Practice saying them out loud. Most companies will ask the "tell me about a time you had to..." questions as they try to gather evidence that you can source, assess, and close candidates, and appropriately account manage - and push back on - difficult hiring groups. Quality examples that highlight your strengths is what gets you hired.

Join us at our 5th Annual Staffing Symposium in Seattle, June 3, Amazing Speakers

Hi - We're holding our 5th Annual Recruiting Conference on June 3 in the Seattle area. Our SHRM Staffing Management Association of Seattle (SMA Seattle) group puts on national-conference-quality events each year for <$300.

We have an amazing speaker lineup, including the heads of talent acquisition from Microsoft and Expedia. And one of the best speakers I've ever heard - Penelope Trunk, who will bring an irreverent, funny look at Gen Y.

Details and registration info: www.smaseattle.org

I'll be MC'ing again this year.

Some of our distinguished speakers include:

* Scott Pitasky, Microsoft Corp VP, Talent & Org Capability. Every recruiting leader (and recruiter!) wants to know what the head of global microsoft recruiting is thinking! He's very smart, and an incredible presenter. (He was also a keynote speaker at ERE in March)

* Penelope Trunk, Boston Globe Columnist, Brazen Careerist, Avid Blogger. Take an entertaining and engaging trip with Penelope into the world of Gen Y. She's hilarious, irreverent, very smart, and very, very direct; prepare to be challenged. (One of the best speakers I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot)

* Eddie Pate, Consultant and former Director of Diversity at Starbucks and Microsoft.

* Janel Canepa, Consultant and former HR and Recruiting Leader at i2, Ariba and Cisco Systems. Learn how to stay relevant and engaged in a changing recruiting landscape from someone who has built unbelievably effective recruiting machines in Silicon Valley.

* Kristin Graham, Expedia Sr. Director, Recruiting / Communications. Kristin brings a true product marketing and branding orientation to the way she thinks about recruiting and social media.

Hope to see you there!

John Vlastelica
Co-Founder, Past President, and Strategic Advisor
SHRM's Staffing Management Association of Seattle

The most condescending (and funny) cover letter ever!

A friend forwarded me this cover letter found during a resume search on a major job board. I've deleted a few links to protect the identity, but this is some funny stuff!

Step 1. Recruiters, headhunters, search people, and those with itchy email trigger fingers... PLEASE READ THIS.

NO, *REALLY* PLEASE READ THIS here:
I am looking ONLY for an Agile Mentor, Software Development Lead, Team Lead, or Development Manager position ON THE EAST SIDE (uh... this means Seattle area, in Washington STATE). I am no longer an individual contributor (even though I am really good at it). I only work on Agile teams - that means Scrum or XP or LEAN.

Just to clarify... I don't do VB or Delphi, and no, I won't work on the east coast, midwest, or in foreign countries [except maybe for ONE MILLION DOLLARS]. Also, I am not a DBA or QA person. I probably won't be interested in Java opportunities, and if you even say "perl" I will collapse and evaporate into a pile of dust.

OK now. DID YOU REALLY READ THE ABOVE? If not, go back to step 1...

Please do not contact me unless your job matches the above description. If you don't know what Agile is, please move along.

Now, IF YOU MUST... please contact me via E-Mail only - NO PHONE CALLS. If you resourceful people do manage to find my number (again), I will probably hang up anyway :-)

OK, good, you DO need to email me. Great! Now, I politely request that you please send me as complete a description of the position as possible, mentioning all the specifics you have that tell me why I might be interested. Please no more mails like "we have something we think you'd like, please contact us ASAP!" - those hit the big /dev/null in the sky.

My full resume is a C# program I wrote, and is always and forever online (and updated regularly) at [link] - feel free to bookmark it and/or "save a copy as a word document" from that web site (don't ask me how to do this by the way).

Thanks, and now, perhaps you might want to review Step 1 just one more time... ;-)

10 Best Practices for Screening Tech Resumes and Candidates

Too Many Tech Applicants?
While your company may be laying off or freezing headcount in most areas, you're probably still hiring technology workers. If so, check out this new Best Practice guide Dice asked me to write. And feel free to share it with your Hiring Managers.

• Learn 5 techniques for filtering out the unqualified resumes, and focusing your energy on the most qualified IT/technology applicants
• Learn 5 techniques that will improve your phone interview effectiveness, and lead to better on site interviews

More best practice guides at www.RecruitingToolbox.com

Now here's a different kind of job posting (smile)

I love funny job postings. You can often tell whether a firm has an HR person - or not (probably the case with this one).

Here are some snippets from a craigslist posting (it is still live on the site as of today, but it may come down soon).

Intro includes...

• We don't want standard solutions; we want solutions so ridiculously unconventional that we shake the time space continuum.
• We want someone that can shine of truth. Illuminate Darkness.
• The Search for Truth will start with your Search Masterpiece. We just want to be there when it happens.

Requirements include...

• 3+ years experience developing in C and/or Ruby with AJAX; or you can be one of those weirdos that refused to learn anything past Fortran
• Proven track record of building Core Search Technology at another company; other acceptable places include: your garage back in Palo Alto, CA in 1998 or that dream you had.

Personal Characteristics include...

• The successful candidate will reject setbacks
• Childhood dreams of being a Rockstar are not necessary for this job, but we will question your humanity.

And my favorite part.

TO RECRUITERS:
We have come to terms that you will spam us.