Tag: Linkedin

Do You Know Why You Want It?

Posted on by The Organic Recruiter in Employment Value Proposition, Hiring, Latest News and Articles, Military, Millennials, Uncategorized

why-you-do-itAs we move into December and hear the pitter patter of feet running to make their wish lists, we too quietly ponder what we’d like for the holidays and in 2017. After all, haven’t we all been good girls and boys?

During a conversation with one of my best friends this last weekend we discussed the entertainment business he works in. Our conversation was about how the original ideas of some TV shows get lost because the executive producers start fighting over who has the best notes. By the time it gets to the editor, the initial idea of the show is lost.

No one says it better than Simon Sinek in his book “Start with Why”.

Without the Why you have lost your What. If the producers had stopped to remember why they were creating the show, they would not have lost the What. What was the purpose of the show and why? Could the show have been more successful if the judgement was not clouded by ego?

Every day we go after the shiny bullet or the cool new toy that everyone is talking about on Facebook or any other social media or blog. Whether it be the latest ATS such as Workday or Greenhouse to the ever changing LinkedIn. As a society we are always getting sold into the pretty tool because it helped solve someone else’s problem. The question is: will it solve your problem? Are you chasing your own solution or what someone has told you is your solution? Do you know what your Why is? Why are you doing whatever it is?

Companies boast being “military friendly”. Why does the company want to be military friendly and how has the company achieved it? Was the purpose to check a box or was it to reach out to veterans to offer thanks and help transition him/her back into a civilian job? I once sat at a bar with a recruiter and in conversation with a stranger, she learned he was a vet. She immediately reached out to give her business card and offered to help. She mentioned military.com and how it had helped many vets in her network find a position. In my opinion, that’s “military friendly”. Simply posting a position on a supposedly “military friendly” site does not equate to being military friendly. What site is that? How many veteran viewers does it link to? What efforts does that site do to reach out to veterans? What else is the company doing to reach out to the veterans?

What is your why? If you have a wish list, what is on it and why is it there?  Are you looking to appease shareholders? Is it to attract the right talent? Is it to do the right thing at the right time? Is it to increase your ROI of time, money or retention?

you-why“Start with Why” explains how to inspire with ideas rather than product. Simon Sinek goes on in his 2 of his 3 theories being:

  • The Golden Circle:
    • Sinek states, most people in a company know what they do; less people know how they do it; and hardly anyone knows why they do it
  • The Celery Test:
    • If you’re at a grocery store getting food for your health food business, could someone look at your groceries at the checkout line and immediately know what you’re all about?  If you’ve purchased soy milk, chocolate, pudding, and celery the answer is no.  If you’re just purchasing the soy milk and celery, then yes.
    • In business, if you’re not passing the celery test, if you can’t walk the walk after talking the talk, you’ve lost credibility and frankly damaged your integrity.

People buy Apple products because even before Tim Cook, Steve Jobs would only speak on the Why long before he showed you the what.

The founders of Southwest Airlines knew people would love to fly with them because they built their airline on the Why they wanted to fly, rather than just getting to their destination through crappy service.

What’s on your list this year? Why do you want it?

Let’s talk about your Why.

~The Organic Recruiter | Co-wrote with Candy Store

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.

sourcecon-tweet

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.

vin-and-puig

Some Special connections I made and you should too:

~The Organic Recruiter

New LinkedIn Recruiter – Is It Worth The Big Bucks?

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

Without sounding like I am speaking ill of my competition, I want to preface this that I use LinkedIn everyday and I admit I pay $25 a month because I am grandfathered in on the top level-account for dirt cheap so it makes for a great business expense.

This all being said, I agree a ton with the article below as I find hundreds of prospects a week without paying much (my $25 for LinkedIn gives me merely a few contacts), but remember Linkedin is a brag sheet and does not give you the whole story of the candidate / prospect you are looking for.  Also, it takes a ton of work to validate the information.  Coupled with LinkedIn, I use a ton of Chrome extensions as well as Monster (I work here), TalentBin (phenomenal tool, owned by Monster) and gosh darn it, awesome boolean skills.

To the writer’s point, here is a google string I used to use for Java Developers in LA.  And if that isn’t enough, here is one using a backdoor to LinkedIn, albeit gives me 3,800 to my google 223. Now you do your own math of efficiency for time to fill and cost of a recruiter.  Do you want to wait for 3,800 potential developers to open your inmail when it takes upwards of 50 days to get them to respond and half of them go into their social box if they have gmail.

Even if I didn’t work for Monster, I would still say TalentBin, pound for pound is the best choice if you were to pay for anything.  it gives you access to over 400M profiles and 70% of them have either personal emails and phone numbers or both as well as all their social footprints and why they are perfect for your job.

~The Organic Recruiter

By  | SourceCon

It’s safe to say that while some recruiters would argue LinkedIn Recruiter is worth big bucks, there are many others who would say that LinkedIn Recruiter is not worth the time of day as most of the data can be found by anyone for free online these days. So why pay the big bucks?

There was an ambivalence within me when I attended a LinkedIn event two weeks ago where they showcased their next generation LinkedIn Recruiter product. I wasn’t sure if the product was as good as they say and I wanted to find out what all the hype was. By the end of the product demo, I must say I was not convinced.

So according to the LinkedIn, the new product is much simpler, faster, and more intuitive to use. LinkedIn Recruiter essentially is an advanced search engine that finds profiles using parameters such as job titles, skills, and company names. It will show you other terms you can add to your search and provide you a list of potential profiles, helping you quickly review the matches for your open job.

If you have a potential employee in mind (assuming they are on LinkedIn) simply enter their name and LinkedIn Recruiter will guide you in building your search. For example, if you were to search for Java Developers, LinkedIn Recruiter will automatically generate a list based on top skills, companies, location and more. If you can’t find who you’re looking for, you can narrow the search by adding sections based on elements within the profile (e.g. school, current company, years of experience, etc.).

I guess many of you reading this are thinking – If the next generation of LinkedIn Recruiter is so intuitive and is able to do all these by itself, then it must be pretty cool and really is worth the big bucks!

However, it’s not all conquering as they make us recruiters believe.

The Challenge

As a recruiter, you must have realized by now that candidates are an innovative bunch and they express themselves in many different ways on LinkedIn. Have a read of this blog I had written and you will know what I mean.

Think of all the available LinkedIn data produced by these candidates as the haystack, keeping in mind LinkedIn today has 450 million profiles globally, and all the targeted profiles in your search as the needles. The haystack is getting bigger by the minute, therefore, the needles are getting buried deeper and deeper. Even now, some of these needles are making themselves “ghosts” so you and I can’t find them, hence, your targeted profiles are becoming harder to spot by the minute.

Even if you had gone through the haystack, how can you be sure that have you found all the needles? With all the variation in the data, are you certain you haven’t missed any potential needles (or profiles) during your search?

Can you rely on LinkedIn Recruiter to do this for you? I don’t think so, well not to the level you need.

Let’s forget about LinkedIn Recruiter for a moment.

Remember that the process of candidate searching is all about data retrieval and pattern recognition.

It’s a systematic approach to:

  1. Gather your requirements (what you need to search for)
  2. Run your search
  3. Review your results
  4. Identify the patterns and false positives (e.g. exclude terms you don’t want)
  5. Modify and re-run your search
  6. Continue the above 5 steps until you get it right and are confident you haven’t missed anything

It’s about the Execution

You can have the fastest car in the race, but if you don’t have the skill to steer it around the track without crashing, then having the best car is not a guarantee you will always win the race.

Now apply this analogy onto LinkedIn Recruiter. Sourcing is more about how you execute your search by following an iterative/systemic approach rather than just keying parameters into a search field. I know that practicing iterative/systemic approach in my search whether using LinkedIn Recruiters or my free LinkedIn account will enable me to uncover the profiles most can’t.

For me, I will always trust my search capability and don’t see the need to pay LinkedIn the big bucks, even if they have a much simpler, faster, and more intuitive search function. It’s free all the way for me.

What about you?

This post originally appeared on the ATC Blog.