Minnesota Technical Recruiters Network :: Index

Stay Relevant at Any Age

2010-07-29T09:14:13-00:00

Does anyone talk with each other anymore - anyone under age 30, that is? We have employees who sit in adjacent cubicles who IM and email each other all day long. Sending an email is so easy compared to picking up a phone. After all, if you call, the person has to be available and you have no record of the call or the response. I learn about pregnant nieces and engaged nephews on Facebook. Sure, the news would have eventually found its way through the family, but Facebook is so immediate - and convenient - and they are all chatting with their friends there anyway.

...

Read Full Post

Source: http://humanresources.about.com/b/2010/07/29/stay-relevant-at-any-age.htm

Recruiting Passive Candidates -- How to Get Top-notch Referrals

Lou Adler — 2010-07-29T13:06:42-00:00

Without question, having a large LinkedIn network is a competitive advantage for any recruiter working on hard-to-fill positions and hard-to-find candidates. This advantage is lessened dramatically with LinkedIn Recruiter, since it includes complete visibility to the 70mm+ people in their network. Since this full-visibility product is off-limits to TPRs, it levels the playing field somewhat for corporate recruiters. But this is not as significant a disadvantage as it would seem to those of us who have to find top candidates the old-fashioned way — networking. Getting pre-qualified referrals from people who will call you back is the real secret of recruiting passive candidates.

With this in mind, I'd like to offer a few of my favorite passive candidate recruiting secrets.

Networking Secrets of an Old-time Headhunter

Network in 3D. While the names on LinkedIn are great to have, getting the names of their best connections is even better. As you begin your quest for great referrals, don't just consider peers. Consider those who these people have mentored, who mentored them, who they most likely worked with on cross-functional teams, and who they regularly work with outside the company, including vendors, customers, and consultants.

Track your effectiveness. Don't waste your time. Networking is not about dialing for dollars. Instead, track how many people call you back, how many are interested in talking about your position, how many are qualified for your opening, and how many referrals you get per call. If you're not tracking this daily, you can't get any better, since you won't know what to work on. If you do track these metrics, you'll soon discover that great referrals from well-respected people can increase your productivity 5-10X. That's why the first name found on LinkedIn is not nearly as valuable as a referral from one of these people.

Get three referrals on each call. The most important metric you can track is how many high-quality referrals you get on each call. You need to become adept at getting these names. Make sure you highlight the fact that you don't want to know anyone who's looking. Instead, ask the person for the best person they know who's absolutely not looking, but would be open to discussing a potential career move. Thinking in 3D helps here. For example, I've called buyers at major retailers looking for salespeople, product marketing people looking for engineers, ad agencies looking for product marketing people, and CPA partners looking for CFOs. The key is not to hang up until you have three great referrals if the person you called isn't appropriate for the job at hand.

Don't call people who won't call you back. Great people will call you back if you mention the name of another great person. That's why step three is so important. Track your callback rates. If you make sure that 80% of the people you call are warm, pre-qualified referrals, your call-back rate will be 75% or better. If you just make outbound cold calls, your callback rate will be closer to 25%. This is a huge difference in productivity.

Only call people who are worthy. While getting people to call you back is important, if they're not worth talking to, it's a waste of time. That's why it's important that you pre-qualify the referral. Just ask the person giving you the name why the person is a top-performer. As far as I'm concerned, a worthy person is someone who is either qualified for the job or knows someone who is.

Leave professional and career-oriented messages. Whether it's a voicemail or an email, suggest you'd like to enter into a discussion regarding what could potentially be an important career move for the person. You must include some substantive proof as part of the message, not hyperbole. For example, "You might have heard that we just merged with XYZ Resources, and are looking for a product manager to lead the first integrated development project. I'd like to chat with you to see if this could offer a significant career move for you." If you can mention the name of the person who provided you the referral you will more than double your callback rate. Hyperbole — "the greatest position in the world" — will cut it in half.

Create instant careers. If you've asked the person if they're open to discussing a possible career move and they answered yes, don't tell them much more about the job; instead, get them to first tell you a little about them. This is essential. As you quickly go through the highlights of the person's work history, look for gaps in the candidate's background your job fills. This could include staff size, scope of the project, impact the person can make, exposure to management, and the like. Mention these as reasons to proceed in the discussion. Of course, if the gaps are too big, or non-existent, smoothly switch your focus to getting three referrals.

Don't take "no" for an answer. In addition to doing everything described above, you also need to be adept at overcoming objections. These cover the range from I'm not looking, what's the comp, I'm happy where I am, to I'd don't like the industry, your company has a bad reputation, and I don't want to relocate. It's impossible to put 20 years of advice into a single paragraph, other than to say that persistence is the key here. If your position represents a true career move, you owe it to your hiring manager, yourself, and the person on the phone not to give up until the person has the information needed to compare your job to what they're doing today or whatever else they're considering. Don't give up until they do. Even if the person decides it's not a true career move, you'll still be able to get your three referrals.

Recruit first, network second. You'll increase your networking productivity by directly recruiting the person first, rather than calling the person on some "networking" premise. To me this later approach should only be used when calling someone who clearly is not a candidate for the job. Recruiting the person first allows you to find out about the person's background before revealing much about the job. This allows you to determine if you should recruit the person or get referrals. You also establish a different relationship once the candidate has shared some confidential information with you.

Become SWK (someone worth knowing). Top prospects want to stay connected with top recruiters who handle important jobs. To become SWK you must know the job, the hiring manager, your company, your industry, and your competition. You need to be seen as a reasonably objective career counselor who is only willing to proceed if the job represents a true career move. You know you're SWK if you get unsolicited referrals from top people in your area of expertise who want to work with you and give you other top referrals.

What's great about LinkedIn and its Recruiter product is it gets you in the major leagues on day one. This is an invaluable gift. Regardless, since everyone will soon have access to the same information, your ability to convert a list of names into hot prospects and great hires is the real difference-maker. In my mind, this is the essence of great recruiting.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/erearticles_louadler/~3/BWP9gf-3gm0/ Lou Adler

Develop Your Company Code of Conduct

2010-07-28T09:45:37-00:00

A company Code of Conduct is a written collection of the rules, principles, values, and employee expectations, behavior, and relationships that an organization considers significant and believes are fundamental to their successful operation. A company Code of Conduct enumerates those standards and values that make an organization remarkable and that enable it to stand out from similar organizations.

...

Read Full Post

Source: http://humanresources.about.com/b/2010/07/28/code-of-conduct.htm

Need an Employee Gift Policy?

2010-07-26T19:02:29-00:00

Do you have an employee gift acceptance policy? I struggled writing my new sample employee gift policy because I have such mixed emotions about gifts to employees.

Some employee gifts ...

Read Full Post

Source: http://humanresources.about.com/b/2010/07/27/need-an-employee-gift-policy.htm

Want High Performance Employees?

2010-07-26T07:58:35-00:00

If your goal is superior, high performance employees who are focused on contribution and continuous improvement (and I sincerely hope it is), you need to manage people within a performance management and development framework. When you implement each of the components recommended, you'll ensure the development of the superior workforce, the high performance employees, you seek.

...

Read Full Post

Source: http://humanresources.about.com/b/2010/07/26/want-high-performance-employees.htm

JOB BOARD FOR FINDING MORTGAGE PROFESSIONALS

2010-07-26T07:46:03-00:00

HI RB,

HOPE YOU ALL ARE DOING GOOD.

I am here again looking for help -- Can any one suggest best job sites for hiring Mortgage Professionals

Job Like

1) Loss Mitigation

2) Appraisers

3) Mortgage Underwriters

4) REO and Loan/Service Consultants

PLEASE SUGGEST SOME GOOD JOB SITE SPECIALLY FOR MORTGAGE PROFESSIONALS

Source: http://www.recruitingblogs.com/xn/detail/502551:Topic:1017095

Internal Client Communication Challenges

2010-07-26T07:46:03-00:00

I'm doing a series of presentations for National and State SHRM organizations over the next 12 months. Entitled, "Managing the Search Process," the presentation focuses on a consultative approach. I'm very interested in your stories, good and bad about communication between the internal hiring manager and the corporate talent acquisition professional. What went wrong; what went right; what have you learned as a result. How will you communicate with your clients in the future? What are the major challenges you face on daily basis that stand in the way of delivering top candidates quickly.

Tim

Source: http://www.recruitingblogs.com/xn/detail/502551:Topic:1016846

GM innovative? When it comes to student hiring, yes.

2010-07-26T07:46:03-00:00

GM hasn't exactly done much to further its reputation for innovation in the past few years, but there's one area where the company has shown a surprising willingness to try innovative new approaches: student recruiting. Recognizing that the traditional approach of sending recruiters on campus visits and then hiring those who could best recite their pre-rehearsed stories during interviews was not necessarily the most effective way to find the talent they needed, GM has taken a new approach of sponsoring competitions among students, identifying the best ones based on their performance, and bringing them into the company.

The approach has been particularly effective in finding talented young engineers to work in GM's electric vehicles units. Young talent is particularly critical in these divisions as older engineers tend to be more wedded to the traditional ways of thinking about internal combustion engines and less likely to create the kind of innovation GM desperately needs. Recent college grads with fresh perspectives who are hungry to make a difference are helping to shift the GM culture to be more dynamic and innovation-focused. GM hired 55 graduates from one competition called Challenge X, a student competition to design a green hybrid vehicle. Of the 55 student hired, all of them have remained at GM since, surviving the bankruptcy and associated layoffs. The successor to the Challenge X competition, EcoCar, has also been highly successful, producing 16 student hires for GM to date.

Competitions such as Challenge X and EcoCar can be particularly effective recruiting methods for companies because they allow employers to see first-hand what the students are capable of and what their work style is, two factors which are not easily garnered from reading resumes and asking standard interview questions. The competitions also help them to identify the students most passionate about the type of work GM does and serve to increase the excitement and interest among students about GM and the auto industry in general.

Jon Reifschneider is Founder & CEO of 31Projects, an online platform that helps companies find and recruit top students through competitions and short-term projects.

Source: http://www.recruitingblogs.com/xn/detail/502551:BlogPost:1016657

Monday Morning

2010-07-26T05:45:38-00:00

I’ve collected a whole bunch of stuff to give away. I have a gift certificate to Ruth’s Chris, a bunch of gift cards to Michael C. Fina, some gift cards from Global Giving (so you can feel like a champ), and a few books laying around my office. Join my Facebook group because it’s the [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PunkRockHR/~3/7aLnAAzqCiU/

Weekend Stuff

2010-07-25T15:37:41-00:00

Here’s my narcissistic list of things that I need to cover. I contributed to an ebook called What I Know About Getting a Job. At first, I declined the opportunity. I don’t believe in working for free. Penelope Trunk asked me to reconsider and I decided that my relationship with Penelope trumps cash. This is [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PunkRockHR/~3/2HxRxf51NMw/