Tag: hiring manager

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.

Gone in 6.0 Seconds

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

That’s how long it takes a recruiter to go to the next resume if they spent some time on yours.

According to most articles in the last 5+ years, recruiters spend no more than 6 seconds to disqualify you. So you better make an impact quick. Ladders wrote: Recruiters spend 80% of their six-second scan looking at these 4 areas:

  • Name
  • Current Position: Title, Company, and Dates of Employment
  • Previous Position: Title, Company, and Dates of Employment
  • Education

I am curious, I created a copy of my resume in the same 1 sheet format that is circulating with Yahoo!’s Marissa Mayer. Hers is getting mixed reviews, mostly good, but from the traditional, old schoolers I am seeing they are not so excited about it. From the more progressive, creative recruiters it is getting much praise.

my-experience-2016 (b)How do you put detailed accomplishments; numbers; accolades; history; culture fit; education; philanthropy and other details into a 6 second read? I am not quite sure that can be done.

So what do you do to get the recruiter’s attention quick because they do not have time to go through your 4 page resume? Some would say call the recruiter but the recruiters will tell others how that annoys the heck out them. Others would say use your network. I recently sent an email out to 164 recruiters I know in my network asking for help for a friend. I received 4 responses back. These guys and gals are busy. Getting back to you on a hope, is not that easy. In my case it was 2.4% return.

It’s not they don’t want to speak with you. It’s more about having 30 jobs to work on, hiring managers saying where are my resumes while turning down the ones the recruiters spent hours interviewing, prepping and dissecting their skill-sets. As well as sourcing like crazy and spending 6 seconds on your resume. We cannot blame them for not getting back to everyone, although it would be nice. But the best way to get noticed is to be noticed.

How quickly do you get noticed in a crowd? If you are in an analogue world without a smart phone, I am sure you do not find your friends at a concert so easily. Same with your resume. The analogue, dot-matrix format your resume is in is quite frankly just that…out-dated.

Now I am not saying throw pictures of your family and pets on it, rather I am saying find a way to professionally get the recruiters to notice you. Once they call you, get them to know who you are and how you are perfect for that job as it is their job to sell you. Ask them what the manager is looking for that is not plainly written in the job description. Then have some backup ready to articulate that in 6 seconds so when the recruiter sells you, it pops out.

Getting the interview is the hardest part as it is like professional baseball. You have so many divisions, in our case levels of people to impress. But if you know where you are awesome and equally important, you explain in detail where you may have failed or lost an account / project, then you are ahead of the curve.

The challenge is to get noticed or you will be gone in 6.0 seconds.

~The Organic Recruiter

Are You Doing Your Part For Your Military Initiative?

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Diversity, Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Interviewing, Military, New Job

 

Fleet week 2Every year I get excited to hear about Fleet Week and often wonder what it would be like to go to one. Fleet Week is a United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and United States Coast Guard tradition in which active military ships recently deployed in overseas operations dock at major cities for one week. The crew members have the opportunity to enjoy the local cities for that week while the public can take a guided tour of the ships.

This year, in fact today, was my first time as LA is having its inaugural Fleet Week. We at Military.com / Monster.com have the opportunity to team up with the office of Mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles (thank you Blas Villalobos and Lorraine Perales) to be a part of a celebration of our servicemen and servicewomen who protect the seas for us. As an organization that that truly believes in our servicemen (military.com) and my own personal advocacy to help (brother served in the Army for 28 years), I find myself privileged to walk the hanger, cruise the outskirts of the ships with the likes of the men and women that serve.

One of my personal goals have been and always will be is to serve the ones who serve us to make sure they are gainfully employed after serving a career (short or long) in the military. So today my goal was to share our transition app as well as our military skills translator with the military, veterans and equally important, the spouses. Our families of the United States Armed Forces have skill-sets that are unparalleled to most. Our problem in talent acquisition is we don’t speak their language and it takes too much time to work with them to figure out how they fit…or rather fit in (culture is for another article).

In LA County, 3% of the population is comprised of veterans, while 11% of the homeless population is a veteran. This equates to 2,733 of our homeless brothers and sisters are the folks that served you proud in the military.

Now Military.com is one of the few places to go to for a preventative measure for our military (and spouses) to be proactive about their career in the afterlife of service so they are not stranded and underemployed after separation. There are a ton of tools to prepare for transition and we have some of the best.

My brother used to recruit for the Army more than 10 years ago and we all know the big draw for young adults is they will have the skills to do any job they want when they get out. The unfortunate truth is when they transition out, albeit they have the skills, they do not and cannot (self-doubt) get the job they are qualified for because there needs to be a better bridge between recruit and separation. Then on the flip side, recruiters (in the civilian world) do not have the time or the patience to see where these candidates are qualified for the job they applied for, therefore pass on them.

I am not advocating that recruiters take their own time to learn MOS (military occupational specialty) codes, however I am asking for you to open up and grab the tools to learn what they do and have more patience. Because I tell you, they can blow away some of your current staff and they can also add some new light and flavor to your culture.

To learn more about what Mayor Garcetti’s team is working on to  help our homeless veterans, please go to www.lamayor.org/ending-veteran-homelessness for more information. I encourage you to reach out and see how you can help. If you are not from LA, inquire what your city is doing to help the veteran homeless predicament.

~The Organic Recruiter

10 TIPS TO MANAGING INTERVIEW CANCELLATIONS AND NO SHOWS

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

by Katie Calhoun | February 16th 2016

Ever wonder why your candidates are cancelling or gosh darn it, no showing?  Don’t just blame them, let’s take some accountability and in return take action.  Below are some causes.  What kind of effects are you willing to create?  ~The Organic Recruiter

As the war for talent has once again heated up, candidates are no longer willing to wait long for interviews. Before you pull your hair out, take a moment to consider the candidate’s point of view. On the other hand, young candidates may be fearful and intimidated.

Why would you care if they don’t show up? You’ll just move on to the next person on your list, right? Whether experienced professionals or college grads, job candidates today are focused on one thing: finding the company that gives them the best feeling and makes getting hired easy.

It’s important to note that the best way to prevent cancellations and no shows is to truly invest time in building rapport with a candidate, selling the job opportunity to the candidate, and gaining a firm buy-in from them regarding their interest in working at the company.

By building rapport with a candidate, you can earn their trust, learn about their career goals and how those goals align with the current opportunity.

It’s equally as important to be able to articulate what the career path is in the company, so you can provide candidates with a bigger picture of where this current position might lead them.

Another thing that makes a difference is to truly understand what the candidate’s salary requirements are and how that relates to the position being offered.

If the candidate’s request is too far out of range, do they still want to interview for a job that offers less money? If so, it needs to be vetted with the candidate, otherwise you risk having them decide at the last minute that the pay cut won’t work.

Are they truly willing to relocate? How committed are they to that decision? Learn as much as you can about what are deal-breakers for candidates to ensure that only candidates who are truly willing to work the job, where it’s located, for the salary offered, are the ones who interview.In addition to that, here are 10 practical tips to help reduce candidate cancellations and no shows:

    1. Reduce interview lag time – Work with hiring managers to schedule interviews as soon as possible. Try not to go beyond two weeks. Don’t let someone else be faster than you.
    2. Coach hiring managers on the importance of not rescheduling interviews – Rescheduling gives candidates the impression that their time is not valued. They will interview where they are clearly wanted.
    3. Set expectations up front with candidates – Find out if they are interviewing elsewhere. Open a dialogue to gauge their true interest level in your company and what factors they weigh as priorities when considering and accepting offers. Ask them to notify you if they need to cancel or withdraw from consideration and provide contact information to do so.
    4. Provide flexible, upcoming interviewing schedules – The best candidates receive many interview offers and often have tight schedules to work around. How can you make the process easier? Can you interview over Skype? Phone? Offer after-hours or weekends? Offer flexible, pre-determined interview options to get on their calendar right away.
    5. Keep communicating with candidates – Schedule an email or text message campaign so that candidates hear from your company with interesting information every few days before the interview. Also, provide candidates with answers to questions, interview prep, what to expect at the interview, etc. And reinforce why your culture is a great place to spend their careers.
    6. Confirm interviews more than once – Email and phone candidates to confirm their intention to attend the interview. But don’t just confirm. Welcome them as you would a guest. Let them know how much you appreciate their time and interest.
    7. Text candidates – Millennials especially communicate by text message. This is an effective way to confirm and also to solicit feedback if they do not show.
    8. Build a stronger bench – If you normally present three candidates and find that you are experiencing a high rate of cancellations or no-shows, consider presenting five candidates to make up for it.
    9. Find out why candidates are dropping out – It may be hard to do, but if you can survey those who cancelled or failed to show, you’ll gain valuable insight into what factors are playing into this phenomenon. Was a recruiter rude? Did the timing just not work? Were they treated better somewhere else? Did they feel unprepared? Ask questions and report on it on a regular basis.
  • See the silver lining – Ultimately, candidates who fail to show or call may not be the most considerate or dependable employees. Be thankful that their behavior showed up early and prevented you from a potential bad hire.