Tag: candidate

A Speedy Sourcer’s Guide To Conquering The Intake Session

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Hiring, Interviewing, Latest News and Articles, Tools, Uncategorized

There are many ways companies want to set up their processes to find the right people. From finding the people,to who talks to them first and how many people are in the interview process. One thing is for sure, you need to hire people. So why is it taking so dang long? This is the first time I read an article from Nicole Nespeca and I find myself to be in love with what she has to say about sourcing.

Time to fill is taking far too long. You can blame it on the supply (just ask me for supply and demand information), the economy or even the election for some weird reason. But I think it is time for some reflection and accountability that you are just getting in your own way.

Let’s look at the 5 techniques Nicole has put in front of us and see if that makes it easier for you to make that sound decision quicker.

~ The Organic Recruiter

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By  Sourcecon

Now that the election is over, we no longer have to listen to donkeys or elephants. However, if you are a sourcing professional, you probably don’t mind purple squirrels and pink elephants and the PETA-approved hunt. Consequently, you will need to do the quintessential intake session and must prove just how valuable you are to your company’s talent acquisition team.

So where do you start? Should you read the job description first and start researching, or wait until you speak to with the hiring manager? Every recruiting paradigm is different and therefore will continue to shift. Some talent acquisition teams have intakes between the sourcer and the hiring manager and some are with the aligned recruiter only. The most advantageous are with the hiring manager and recruiter as it’s more streamlined. Anticipating the needs of your hiring manager and/or aligned recruiter is crucial to your success in finding the right candidate.

Here are five speedy techniques a sourcer can do to master the intake meeting.

  1. Forget about refreshing your Facebook page every two minutes, you need to research as quickly as possible before the intake session. I recommend focusing on market intelligence, specific demographic candidate pools, and the potential difficulty of the search.

Primarily, you must research the demographic of the open position as well as the candidate supply and demand. You can get this free data from Salary.com, Glassdoor or just by using a search engine. You want to know what the market looks like. Research this before the intake so you can speak to the statistics of the candidate pool and how you will circumvent any supply challenges. You want to come to the intake session armed with as much information as possible. This leads to my second action you should as a subset of research.

  1. Remember the old adage “In a race, I never look back?” Well, ironically it’s just as important when knowing your competitor.

Know your competitors and the market intelligence of the industry you are hiring for.  Sourcers are quick studies. They are fast and know how to speed read. One must be able to do this expediently prior to the intake session. Understanding the back story is pertinent to the search. You will impress the hiring manager and recruiter alike if you know what companies are downsizing candidates that could fit into the open opportunity. Furthermore, gaining knowledge as to where to find untapped talent is paramount.

  1. Use past resumes to source candidates in the future. Nothing compares to reading a resume in terms of learning about a person.

Once I reviewed a resume that had “Atari” as a skill. Until I saw that, the candidate looked like a match for the open requisition. You need to see resumes of previous candidates to succeed in a hire. Consequently, please get the resume of the person in the position being filled and read it carefully. Use the keywords in that resume to make Boolean searches and resume matches on social media. If the hiring manager or recruiter doesn’t have the resume, you can usually find it in your company’s ATS. If it’s a new position and therefore no resume exists, ask the hiring manager what keywords you should look for in your search and where the hiring manager has hired from previously in terms of competing companies to your own.

  1. Lighten your link’s load. It only takes two seconds to make a Bitly.

Every sourcer should construct a Bitly link because it makes campaign drivers and website pages much shorter for sharing on social, email, and SMS and directs applicants to an application typically. I highly recommend you write a catchy social media blurb to drive prospective candidates to your open requisition. When speaking with your hiring manager and recruiter on the intake you should share the blurb you will use on social media and ask them to share the same blurb. Leveraging another’s network is significant in giving visibility to the open requisition.

  1. “Organizations, schools and trade shows…oh my” as I say in my best Wizard of Oz impression.

When summarizing the job on the intake, make sure you ask about any organizations, schools or trade shows the team hiring might belong too. Part of being a good sourcer is uncovering lists of candidates online from job fairs or symposiums for example. In order to find these types of lists, you must delve deep into the hiring manager’s repertoire. Also, connect on LinkedIn with your hiring manager. Not only is doing so good for building a relationship, but it also allows you to see your hiring manager’s connections which could yield a hire.

Researching fast prior to your intake will help you establish credibility right away with your hiring manager and recruiter. You must perform this due diligence in order to be effective in hiring. Coming to the intake already understanding some of the challenges involved and then sharing resolutions to circumvent these issues will impress on the intake. Coming prepared is tantamount to being a successful sourcer. And all triumphant sourcers study and educate themselves on each position they recruit for. I hope these five tips will help you nail your next intake and if you can get a hold of an old Atari to play after a hard search, even better.

Time Management For Sourcers And Recruiters – Resume Reading

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Hiring, Interviewing, Monster, New Job, Uncategorized

I’ve written a few articles on the importance of knowing your candidate because unfortunately, your hiring managers consider these awesome people as a resume and not an actual person. And you as recruiter spend 6 seconds on a resume if the candidate is lucky. Why is that? Not enough time, patience or the formatting is bugging you? I don’t know your answer, but these are the top ones. Kevin wrote some great points in managing your time.

This article has some good tips to manage your time but time-management is the most important tool you can use. You are missing great people and without a semantic tool (like Monster has a number of them), you’ll need to rely on your boolean prowess and great ctrl+F. But remember, that doesn’t mean you know the person behind the not-so-pretty resume.

Please practice time-management and get to know the piece of paper.

~The Organic Recruiter

timem-700x467By  Sourcecon

We first started with Time Management for Sourcers and Recruiters – Schedule Building which, discussed how to plan your day to be effective and efficient. In this article, I will go through various techniques that will help you be even more effective and efficient for better time management that I am sure will increase productivity for you.

In our business one thing we must do is read a resume, in doing so we are expected to decipher the “code” embedded in the resume, compare work experience to the requirements from the hiring manager, and decide to or not to call/email the candidate. Then after we have all of our notes we need to make a decision if this is a viable candidate for the opening. This is a process that is repeated on every candidate we come across.

This is very time-consuming. Now that you have built your daily schedule and are staying on track with that schedule which you’re already seeing yourself being more effective and efficient, now we need to take it up a notch. Follow these proven steps in order to do just that.

First, after you craft that beautiful award winning Boolean string and enter it into whichever job board you prefer, you return a list of potential diamonds, and now the issue is to go through as many as candidates possible and build your list. The issue we all have is time, so why not use it to our advantage.  One thing we are all guilty of is getting sucked into the words on a resume or maybe the format is horrible and we’re just lost in translation. You need a two-minute sand timer.

When you pull up that list of potential diamonds and compile a bunch of resumes to filter, flip over the two-minute sand timer. You shouldn’t spend more than two minutes viewing a resume. Our attention on one aspect loses its ability to decipher new information after about two minutes and we need to take a minute to reset. With timing yourself you don’t get lost and develop the ability to say, yes this candidate looks great on paper, I still have a few questions regarding some of the experiences and technologies, or this candidate is not on the right track of what we are looking for.

As time goes on once you get the repetition down you will see yourself having time left out of the two minutes and becoming a resume reading legend.

Second, when you are getting ready to start using your timer and reading resumes, make sure you are prepared to understand the technology and what the surrounding words should be. Here are some red flags that will arise questions on candidate profiles:

  • Titles
    • A title is either what they want to be called or what they are given upon hire. This can be miss leading because each company may have a different ranking system however if you see someone progress from a help desk tech to a system engineer, to a desktop support tech, to a senior project manager, then there are some immediate red flags there.
  • Tenure
    • Look at the dates. Months and years are huge. If someone is only in one to two month positions for several years that raises a concern for a hiring manager that is looking for a stable candidate. If someone has gaps in the resume for more than six to nine months that is also concerning, but should be discussed with the candidate to dig deeper.
  • Description
    • This is where the research comes into play. If someone lists themselves as a project manager, they should be describing project manager work in that role.
  • Technologies
    • Candidates who put EVERY technology they have EVER worked with may just be looking for fluff. Tech is changing so fast that something they did in the 90s is irrelevant today!
  • Education
    • If your hiring manager requires a degree in a certain field of study views this first. Be sure it is listed and aligned with what you’re looking for.

Another cool trick is Ctrl + F (Find) which I’m surprised a lot of people are not using. Each opening role we have listed three to five skills that are MUST HAVES. A quick way to filter through other than the highlighted words on the resume from your Boolean string is to use Ctrl + F and pull up alternative spellings. You would be surprised what you may miss.

For example when candidates love abbreviations or alternative spellings so they are “hard to find:” Manager – Mgr or Mangr; SaS – S@S, $a$, or $@$; Citrix – Zen, ZenApp, ZenDesk, XApp, or XDesk etc. Now you may be thinking, well how many candidates actually do this? Who knows, but I have seen them and wouldn’t have found those candidates without doing just this. If you are searching for a hard to find skill set and need to take a different approach craft two Boolean strings, one narrow and one broad.  When you pull up the candidates that are found using the broad string, this is a tip that may work best with that.

If you are searching for a hard to find skill set and need to take a different approach craft two Boolean strings, one narrow and one broad. When you pull up the candidates that are found using the broad string, this is a tip that may work best with that.

I’m confident with this best practice you will see yourself being more successful with resume reading and utilizing the limited time you have to be more effective and efficient.

Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Honor, Integrity, Personal Courage

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Diversity, Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Latest News and Articles, Military, Monster, New Job, US Employment Numbers

It is Veterans Day next week and time to figure out if we are as loyal to them as they are to us. Military.com and Monster.com have many ways to help you with your loyalty. Because waiting to help them may in many ways be too late. Like Mayor Garcetti in Los Angeles (largest population of veteran homeless) has begun with the assistance of Military.com, he is trying to end homelessness of our Veterans. Let’s join the forces and do our part.
~The Organic Recruiter

By  Sourcecon

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The 1st Infantry Division of the US Army has a saying: “No mission too difficult. No sacrifice too great. Duty First!”

Over 30,000+ veterans are placed in corporate America each year and there are over 7,500 companies that do the hiring per year of those military individuals. What is even more impressive is that these military officers do not even have online job seeker profiles like those you see daily on the web boards like Monster or Dice. What tops everything else is that these amazing individuals who defend our freedom look to us as civilians in their transition into the corporate environment. However, there are stigmas that they have to fight just the same.

One stigma is the negative stereotype. First are the assumptions and stereotypes about members of the military that make some employers reluctant to hire them. About one in three employers considers post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to be an obstacle in hiring veterans, according to a survey report by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). In particular, seven percent of post-9/11 veterans are estimated to be suffering from PTSD, according to the U.S. Army.

Another stigma is how skills can be mismatched or misunderstood by a hiring manager. Hiring managers can easily understand a resume that shows any technical skills whether it is Java or .Net in a related field. What hiring managers do understand and how it correlates to corporate is the skills that a battery fire direction officer or artillery specialists can bring to an organization.

When speaking to a field grade army officer (with a specialty in tanks), who asked for obvious reasons to keep his anonymity, he gave a firsthand account of what the interview process is like for a military veteran. Now keep in mind this is an individual that brought in new equipment (mostly paratrooper equipment) for an army corps and has an MBA from Duke, a prestigious university.

“I interviewed with a few large companies that are looking to hire vets. I think I received interest from them because of my vet status. HR wanted to talk to me and their MDs (and even one CEO of a fortune 500 company) liked me. So I got through many rounds of interviews but then I went to talk to the direct hiring manager and my potential future boss. They needed a plug and play a guy that had experience doing the job (corporate finance, pricing, operations management, etc were some of the jobs I interviewed for). This happened over and over again. That was an obstacle I had to overcome in finding employment.”

A lot of companies have veterans programs. From a top-down perspective, it makes sense and sounds even better. Hire veterans as they offer great skills and attitudes that will add to our company and in the long run, it will make us look good too. There are some companies that are doing their part to help in the hiring of military veterans. In 2016, Union Pacific Railroad hired approximately 3900 new employees of which 15 percent were military veterans, where military experience was more relevant than certifications earned. JPMorgan Chase hired over 40,000 new employees in 2016, where approximately 15 percent were military veterans.

The question remains, how can other companies follow suit? First would be to educate management of the companies so that they are not scared that a few months ago this person was killing someone or seeing others killed, and now they have to integrate them into their “team.” There might even be hiring managers cannot comprehend what really goes on in the military, but they get the college and internship type of experience, so they hire what they are familiar.

There are some companies that have gone the additional mile and have set up assistance programs as well. AT&T has helped launch the 100,000 jobs mission initiative to hire 100,000 veterans and transitioning service members by 2020. Even GE plans to hire 5,000 veterans over the next five years through its “Hiring Our Heroes” partnership to sponsor 400 veterans’ job fairs this year.

Another company, Orion International is a firm that spends over 11 months with each military candidate before they are even hired, to ensure the best possible match for each company and candidate. Orion represents 34 percent of military technicians and technical NCOs separating from the military. A Naval officer from Pennsylvania explained how helpful it is to have someone, a company that can help make the transition that much easier though daunting.

 “To have a company willing to stay with you every step of the way was extremely comforting. I was transitioning out of the Navy and my wife had family here so I needed to find a way to get a job locally. Not too many companies looking for a naval officer. There were coaches that shared with me the proper interview techniques and the things not to do during interviews. It’s a blessing.”  

In November of last year, the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics found that veterans had a lower unemployment rate at 3.6 percent than Americans overall, who faced a rate of about five percent. This reflects ongoing efforts to train members of the military with valuable job skills before they join the workforce, new initiatives by businesses get veterans jobs and the slowly changing attitudes among everyday Americans about the value that former service members bring to the workforce.

In a time where there is increased the level of violence, political deceit and increasing cost of living we need to find solace in those that put their lives on the line every single day for us to even have a living, to have the ability to speak our mind. When that military personnel leaves the armed forces and transition into civilians looking for employment just like those that haven’t served we need to stand up, recognize and do what we can for them as they have done for us. Hoorah!

 

The 1%ers and Their Poetic Sourcing – My SourceCon 2016 Experience

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, Latest News and Articles, New Job

 

hackathonOn a very poetic weekend for this Los Angelino as our greatest baseball announcer was sent off to retirement from 67 glorious years of telling stories like no one’s business; he is sent off with a walk-off home run.

This gives me joy as I am here to write about a bunch of other all-stars from the recruiting and sourcing world of which I work with daily. Last week I had the great fortune to go to SourceCon for my second time in as many years. I got there, not as a vendor, but as a user. You see, I spent nearly a decade as an IT recruiter in the staffing world and always* believe once a recruiter, always a recruiter (*if you stay up on your game). So my goal, when I left and started selling recruitment services was to always recruit and stay fresh on my game.

Being a rep that touts free recruiting tools and ideas to their clients seems counterproductive, however I feel it lends credibility and confidence in what I sell as well. So suggesting for the last 5 years to my clients they should attend SourceCon has been a no-brainer to me. Now having been the last 2 years, I can tell you these sourcers are the 1%ers in our industry.

The last 2 years have confirmed I am still on my game but what some of the things these guys and gals pull off is just amazing. I affectionately call these 1%ers the Ultimate Geek Squad. From tools to tricks to Chrome extensions, they have it all plugged in. Admittingly, they do say they use media, job ads and databases, just a lot smarter and don’t depend on the post and pray model of sitting around ands waiting for candidates to flow in as they want to beat you to the rock stars.

Kerri Mills from Indeed was one of my favorites (yes, I loved one of my competitors). Six Secrets to Sourcing Like a Grandmaster was well…masterful. Her ideas of hyper-personalization should be locked in your brain forever, even after (gawd-forbid) you leave recruitment. This idea is “stop templating your messages”. Find out more about your candidate and make them feel like they are the only one you want to hire EVER. She is not saying she does not use templates. You just don’t know it because she is a poet to what she knows about you.

So as I sit here and romanticize the similarities of the Ultimate Geek Squad and their correlations with the great athletes and play by play announcers (like I have been spoiled with like Chick Hearn and Vin Scully of the LA great), I want the world to know that recruiting isn’t, “where are my resumes” or “I pass” with no explanation. Rather, it is all about these ridiculously talented sourcers who find these amazing people and transform them into even better candidates. Like Kerri spoke of when she said, “oops, I got lazy and did not pick up the phone to her hiring manager to which he said I pass”. Then Kerri, who knew this candidate better than anyone, refused to lose this rock star and called the hiring manager and said, “no, you are not going to pass…you will interview him for the reasons of…”. The candidate turned into a hire because Kerri was the grandmaster that knew WHY her candidate was amazing.

Fast forward to the evening Hackathon (dang late after a long conference day) where the eager and the best of the best converge on a challenge to be the next Grandmaster by competing on a req challenge merely to get to the best 16 in the room and eventually the best of 2016. It was awesome to see all these brains get together to geek out to see the best chance to find best 6 candidates and their search strings first. From that point, the 16 are found and hardly anyone left in anticipation for who was to win.

My reason for this part is not who won but the fun of open-source recruiting and how passionate these competitors were. The fact that each person had so much love and so many people wanting to help, it brought back the feeling of love for the game and how fun it is to win as a team and willingness to receive input from others. Recruitment is a team sport and we forget that when our hiring managers are hounding us for “more resumes”. Remember, we at SourceCon are the 1%ers, not coordinators slinging resumes. We have passion for geeking out to find the best PERSON for the job, not as many resumes to get the hiring managers off our backs.

Day one is not over as I haven’t talked about the networking. LinkedIn in is the online professional network of choice, but meeting my sourcing heroes like Shannon Pritchett, Editor, SourceCon, ERE Media, Stacy Zaper, Netflix and Dean Da Costa, The Search Authority to name a short few was priceless. You can have 3,000 connections on LI but talking to these greats just makes it worth it.

As we go into day 2, my favorite speakers were Jenny DeVaughn, Senior Director, Internal Communications, ADP and Maisha Cannon, Global Talent Strategist, GitHub whose presentation on From E! To Google – Missteps, Metrics and Methods just had me at the edge of my seat.

First, let’s talk about Jenny and the idea of taking a chance.  Jenny’s story about ‘do what you want to do at whatever cost’ was hitting me right in the heart through her presentation of Learn From My Mistakes – Don’t Be a Basic ‘Brander’. Her story as a single mom and taking chance was exhilarating because no one with little support can take a plunge into independence. Yes she now works for a huge company, but the fact she tried her own thing was pure inspiration.

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Lastly, there was Maisha who was truly a treat and so warm on stage talking about a common theme of being unique and personal. To borrow one of her acronyms of ADD, be authentic, different and delightful of which she was to an exponential degree.  Going back to one of my initial thoughts of people aren’t resumes, Maisha focuses on knowing these candidates and equally important, having the hiring managers on strategy sessions (you call them intakes) and making sure the hiring manager is engaged weekly. To quote her reply to my tweet from her, “Craig. If the HM [hiring manager] says 45M a week, it’s a good time to say…We have a problem.”

In closing, my take-away from SourceCon and the great athletes and sports announcers of old is let’s respect the people that have laid the foundation, work on making it greater through open-source and always remember, candidates aren’t resumes, it’s the story you learn about your candidate that is poetry to the candidate and hiring manager. Let’s follow the steps of the great Vin Scully after 67 years of poetry for the Dodgers and make all our players legendary.

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Some Special connections I made and you should too:

~The Organic Recruiter

THE 10 BEST INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO ASK

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, Latest News and Articles, New Job

by Dona DeZube, President at DeZube Publications Corp.

No one wants to be told they sound like a broken record, so I won’t say that to you. I will however share with you why these questions will streamline your interview process and allow the best to be identified faster.  Remember, your candidates have been to this rodeo before.

If you are new to recruiter or a recruitment Jedi, I am here to tell you there is no perfect way to interview, but asking the wrong questions make your Time-to-Fill longer and you frustrate the hiring managers with not-so-good candidates.  My hope is you can pepper in a few, if not all, of these questions in your game. ~The Organic Recruiter

The best interview questions tell you about the person behind the resume, revealing the job candidate’s personality, strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, skills and abilities. The best interview questions also benefit job seekers by giving them an opportunity to speak to details that don’t fit on a resume.

While a savvy interviewer always includes questions tailored to the position, our list of the 10 best questions works across a variety of industries and job descriptions:

  1. From everything you’ve learned about this role, me and our company, tell me how you feel you’d make a contribution.

This interview question sorts people into two categories: contenders and also-rans.

  1. Why should we hire you?

This sets them apart from the intense competition in today’s job market.

Faced with a big stack of resumes telling a similar story, this question helps you determine the best candidate.

An interviewee who does a great job explaining how her unique experience, education, industry credentials, and personal interests will power your business will do the same thing for your company once hired. 

If you could start your career over again, what would you do differently?

Asking a candidate to explain the major decisions he has made, highlighting the positive and negative, reveals the person’s ability to make calculated decisions based on past professional and personal experiences.

It also lets candidates share their vision for the future and their ambitions.

  1. When I contact your last supervisor and ask which area of your work needs the most improvement, what will I learn?

“No amount of finesse will influence this answer because when the supervisor is brought into the conversation, the candidate knows the truth will come out anyway. Essentially, it’s the same question as ‘what is your biggest weakness,’ phrased in an unexpected way.”

  1. Describe the best boss you ever reported to.

This is a great interview question because it tells you about past relationships.

 Tell me about what motivates you. 

If what drives the interviewee matches the position and your corporate culture, you have a winner.

  1. What frustrates you?

When the candidate then talks about past frustrations, he reveals details about his personality, diplomacy skills and ability to work on teams.

  1. Tell me about the toughest negotiation you’ve ever been in.

The best negotiators answer this question by laying out both sides of the problem and then explaining how they aligned the issues or followed a process to a mutually-agreeable solution.

  1. How do you involve your staff when an important company strategy decision needed to be made? 

The candidate’s answer tells you whether a manager is secure enough to involve others in strategic decision-making, says Jayne Mattson, senior vice president, Keystone Associates, Boston, a career management firm.

  1. Where do you see yourself in five years?

With this question, it’s not what the candidate says but how she says it that’s important, says Joey V. Price, CEO of Jumpstart HR, a managed HR services firm in Washington, D.C.

“If you see someone’s eyes light up at the thought of the future, then you can tell this is a very ambitious person who knows where they want to go and will do everything in their power to help ensure your organization gets them there.”

For the complete article – http://bit.ly/10bestInterviewquestions