The Return of Recruiters
Will staffing professionals be the first or last to be hired as the economy recovers?

Amid accumulating signs that the Great Recession is moderating, companies that believe their core business is improving may begin to restore the employee positions they shed over the last several months.

Has the hiring begun? More to the point, are these companies building up their depleted cadres of staffing professionals in anticipation of employee hiring? Could the hiring of recruiters be, in the terminology of The Conference Board’s monthly national report, a leading economic indicator?

Experts’ opinions vary, but taken together their answers present a vision of workplace recruiting operations after the recession that will be quite different from the staffing models of a few years ago.

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So you still think Twitter is not useful? It is truly
catching on, check out today's humorous article in today's StarTrib

Minneapolis
Star Tribune Link to Article on Twitter

To get the true usefulness of Twitter I believe you need to
have the right applications. With that in mind, I highly recommend TweetDeck
http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/ .
It allows you to save search strings and store messages, saving you lots of
time. Try it out, you won't be disappointed.

An August 2008 DoubleStar report entitled “Current State of Recruiting -- A Function in Transition”, revealed the findings of a survey of HR decision makers conducted in mid-sized and large companies regarding the current state of their recruiting and staffing practices.

Among the key findings:

·          95% of organizations are operating without a dedicated sourcing function
·          28% of organizations reported that their recruiters are performing all of the sourcing
·          44% of organizations are engaged in some level of recruitment outsourcing
·          However, 82% of these [44%] organizations outsource less than 25% of their total positions
·          Biggest impediments are sourcing quality candidates and process delays caused by hiring managers
·          21% of organizations are using Web 2.0 tools for recruiting, with only 1% considering themselves experts

This is a fascinating report that provides other results including:

·          % reporting a dedicated sourcing function
·          % of companies reporting a requisition load exceeding 30 per recruiter
·          % of companies that say they have enough resources to meet staffing goals
·          Effectiveness rankings of outsourced partners
·          % of companies with an effective talent management function
·          % of companies with NO talent management function
·          More…

The full report, written by Harry Griendling and Whitney Collins is available in a free .pdf download here.

Posted 09/06/08 by Rick Deare on MNTRN.ORG

Do you consider yourself a good or great recruiter? How do you measure your success without knowing first where you stand? This presentation is focused on measuring your recruiting skills, how to acquire top talent research skills, and how to incorporate a new approach in how you hire critical talent.

I read "Hiring Secrets of the NFL" for the first time about a month ago and I've picked it up several times since to recapture the author's unique perspective on top talent selection .   I recommend it strongly for recruiters and everyone else interested in creating exceptional teams.

Google Search Tips:

Use search engines to gather intelligence about a company and individuals before placing your call.

The following uses a GE Modular Systems as the company for which intelligence is being sought.  So you have decided you want to sell to GE Modular Systems. Let’s begin the process of finding out everything we can from Google about GMS. 

First, let’s find some recently published articles on GE. GE Modular Systems/news  

Now let’s look for names and contact information within GMS. This is useful if you need to find the name of a person, a person’s name from a position title, or a phone number for a person in the company. Keep in mind that the information has to be in the domain (web site) for Google to be able to find it. First we will find a person’s name by title. Enter in POSITION TITLE site: domain.com. For example: CFO ge.com (Note: on a site this large you may have to add more qualifying terms such as CFO “Press Release” site:ge.com.)  

Next we will find out what we can about that person from information on the site. Type in: “Name of Person” site:domain.com, for example: “Keith Sherin” site:ge.com  

Now, if we haven’t found it yet, we can look for contact information for the person within the site. Type, contact + “Name of Person” site:domain.com, for example: contact + “Keith Sherin” site:ge.com  Advanced Searching 

You need to know a little more about the web to use these, and, you may come up empty. But, you won’t hurt anything if you try them. 

See if they have a phone directory online: inurl:phone insite:ge.com Or try, intitle:phone insite:ge.com We are looking for the word “phone” in the URL (inurl) or the title of a web page (intitle).  

While Google does not support full Wild Cards, it does support a Wild Card pair within quotes: “Director of *” site:ge.com This search would return all the directors listed on the site. And “John *” site:ge.com would return all the John somebody’s within the site. This search is very handy if you know the last name, but not the first name. Once you have a list of names, add another qualifier such as department.  

Not For the Novice 
Often companies hide information from the public in what is called a sub domain. Here is an easy way to see what sub domains are under a domain: in url:“*.domain.com” For example: in url:“*.ge.com” Notice the use of the Wild Card within quotes. This would produce a list of sub domains that can be searched using the steps above.  

You can use Google to obtain "blind" phone numbers/fax machines and tie them back to company. Search Google using this string “000-0000”(add area code without quotes or parenthesis).  

Also, webmasters sometimes use non-linked information in their URL addresses such as: anycomapny.com/phonedirectory …or any derivations such as “phone,” “address,” “phonebook,” “homenumber,” etc. Only the folks who are in the company know it is there, but a wiley person can sometimes get in and obtain the information.

WEBOPEDIA - www.webopedia.com

The only online dictionary and search engine you need for computer and Internet technology definitions.

WIKIPEDIA - www.wikipedia.com

Wikipedia (IPA: /ˌwiːkiˈpiːdiə/ or /ˌwɪkiˈpiːdiə/) is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. The name Wikipedia is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information.

Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference Web sites. There are more than 75,000 active contributors working on some 9,000,000 articles in more than 250 languages. As of today, there are 2,092,572 articles in English; every day hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles to enhance the knowledge held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia. (See also: Wikipedia:Statistics).

Visitors do not need specialised qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge; this means that people of all ages and cultural and social background can write Wikipedia articles. With rare exceptions, articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit this page link. Anyone is welcome to add information, cross-references or citations, as long as they do so within Wikipedia's editing policies and to an appropriate standard. For example, if you add information to an article, be sure to include your references, as unreferenced facts are subject to removal.

There is no need to worry about accidentally damaging Wikipedia when adding or improving information, as other editors are always around to advise or correct obvious errors, and Wikipedia's software, known as MediaWiki, is carefully designed to allow easy reversal of editorial mistakes.

Because Wikipedia is an ongoing work to which, in principle, anybody can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles more frequently contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation that has been recently added and not yet removed (see Researching with Wikipedia for more details). However, unlike a paper reference source, Wikipedia is continually updated, with the creation or updating of articles on topical events within seconds, minutes or hours, rather than months or years for printed encyclopedias.

If you have not done so, we invite you to take a few moments to read What Wikipedia is (and is not), so that you have an understanding of how to consult or contribute to Wikipedia. Further information on key topics appears below. If you cannot find what you are looking for, try the Frequently Asked Questions or see Where to ask questions. For help with editing and other issues, see Help:Contents.

facebook - www.facebook.com

Fastest growing social networking site on the net.  (Approx
upload photos or publish notes • get the latest news from your friends • post videos on your profile • tag your friends • use privacy settings to control who sees your info • join a network to see people who live, study, or work around you. 

LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com 

Networking is the name of the game.  Are you LinkedIn?  This free tool allows you to network with people you know and those you don't.   Expand your network with each new contact.  LinkedIn has job postings available also. 
 

Spoke - www.spoke.com

Business Leads | Sales Leads | Lead Generation | Business Directory | Find People | Contact Business People | Professional Networking | Business List Generation | Corporate Information | Recruiting | B2B Contact Information | Business Information | Fortune 500

Spoke provides online business-to-business contact information designed specifically to help individuals and organizations find people at their target accounts. Spoke's business directory and detailed contact information allows users to identify prospects, conduct company research and access the right people at all levels of an organization. Information on over 40 million people across more than 2.3 million companies gives marketers, sales people and recruiters the contact information they need to penetrate target accounts, including business email address, postal address, phone number, title, and job history. Spoke puts you in control of lead generation and sales prospecting by allowing you to search our extensive database and generate business lists like never before.