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Mobile Recruiting – Jobs and resumes on your mobile
GoRecroot mobile recruiting toolbox at www.JobsandResumes.mobi
For Recruiters
Be at two places at once: An important talent sourcing to be initiated and meeting with a long term client - Hard to choose ? Do both with GoRecroot mobile recruiting.
For Job seekers
Busy work week, limited time to get to an important career step to be planned - create a quick resume and get your job search started
Spot lighter – specialty employer branding, recruitment advertising solutions
Tracting for your employer branding or recruitment advertising on your mobile. Responses to job postings and essential yield information available as Ad views
At GoRecroot mobile, you can:
Join GoRecroot – it is real quick and easy. All you need is your email ID for communication. Get started with a free membership and check out subscription pricing to derive more power.
To join, type in your email address, set a password and re-type the password as confirmation. GoRecroot terms and conditions apply
Sign in to your account at GoRecroot– if you already have a GoRecroot account. Use your sign in email ID, enter the password and you are ready to go Recroot.
Resume search or talent sourcing from the mobile – create a easy job order and get mapped resumes
Job search Career planning step 1 from your mobile – create a quick resume and get mapped job positions
Job order tracking JO (Job order) views is the total number of visits to your job order. This is counted from the date of posting of the JO at GoRecroot. This includes web, mobile, and widget views.
Resume response tracking Views is the total number of visits to your resume. This is counted from the date of posting of the resume at GoRecroot. This includes web, mobile, and widget views.
Favorites – You can mark specific job orders or resumes as favorites. You can then track activity on these favorites. With favorites, you can get to targeted information in quick time.
Visit www.JobsandResumes.mobi
Try GoRecroot mobile at the Mobile simulator here
Career planning cannot be output of a wizard. This is not an attempt to point you to your dream job position. The approach is to trigger your thought processes so that you build your career plan with the right input.
Job vs career: This can look like a mere play of words. Let us demarcate before we get into career planning mode. A career is the pursuit of a lifelong ambition or calling. A job is a stint of employment.
You can say, that a career is a collection of job stints. Yes, with one important underlying condition: that you allow good amount of time in each stint, and all stints come together to make a coherent plan. “Good amount of time in each stint”, “What is good amount of time?” – This varies with each job seeker, the company, the sector or domain that you are working on. Overall, we can say, that it is enough time so that you have learned and delivered results. However, if you keep building your career in stints, somewhere it can start looking ugly. Too many odd sized building blocks, different colors, pointing at different directions, do not build a useful structure.
Steps to creating a career plan:
1. The most important factor in creating a career plan is to determine your interests and skills. This is an important first step. Be sure that your interest comes from deep within and it is not hugely influenced by extrinsic factors.
2. When you think in terms of skills, try and get to an abstract level. Also, look at skill sets and not specific skills in isolation. You need to put together basket of skill sets that can complement each other and deliver a business result.
3. Let us qualify our interest with this example: I am skilled at inter personal relationships – let us break this down now. Am I good with communication? Can I communicate beyond medium of expression? How about languages? Which are relationship equations that I can handle well? Where do I fail? What I have learned in the last 2 weeks or a month, in this space. If you want to portray “inter personal relationships” as your core strength, you better evolve that by the week if not, by the day.
4. Once you have listed out skill sets (not isolated skills, but a set of skills that can work together), re-visit your interests. Is there a clear mapping? Repeat steps 1, 2, 3 & 4 until you arrive at a clear set of interests (which I could convert to a career plan) and mapped skill sets (with which I can deliver an impact in my career plan of choice).
5. Now you are ready to search for jobs. Just search, not apply yet. Read a bunch of open job positions, preferably global to start with, then narrowing down to target geographies. Each open job position lists requirements in terms of skill sets. See how this maps to your interests and skill sets. Now you are mapping your interests and skill sets to the job market out there.
6. Once you have short listed job positions – fast forward, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. Let us say, I map my skills to become a search engine optimizer. What do I become in 2 years, or 10 years. The answer is not: Search engine optimizer with 2 years or 10 years experience. You need evolve. Go ahead, search for resumes “search engine optimizer, 2 years or 10 years experience” – think if you can see yourself doing this.
7. You now have a career plan that maps, interests, skill sets, market opportunities and has some visibility into the future.
8. Reality is that there will be gaps. Your interests and your skill sets may not match on step one of your career. How well you bridge these gaps, and in what time frame is your pursuit. In addition, we should make provisions for levels of skill sets. As we see in this example: I am good with college foot ball, am an average player. I want to make it big – and here are skills that I need to improve: sporting temperament, tactical and fast running and so on.
9. An ideal balance point is when your job position, your career plan, your interests and your skill sets are in harmony. You will feel it when you have it – when you smell it, remember to make the best out of it. These can last for a few months or years. But, you should make these times a hallmark of your productivity and accelerate. When accelerating you are proactively disturbing this balance. The objective is to reach a higher level and regain the balance.
10. Try and conduct the above process over a few days if not weeks. When you have the conviction, pack it into your resume and, remember to show it in the interview.
There is some bad news for the recruiting world: job creation rates are slowing down to 6% - 4%. There is some great news as well: As global markets consolidate, recruiters get the fantastic opportunity to revamp their head hunting machinery. In addition, this is a great time to focus on the long-term value creation and on quality of hires, as volumes go out of focus. Here are some important aspects of value creation powered by GoRecroot.
Your business is focusing more on bottom line reality and less on top line activity. You need to do the same for your recruitment metrics: it is not the number of resumes, the number of phone calls or email, or even the number of interviews anymore. What matters is the number of positions filled and quality of hires. You created a job order over the weekend and have your mailbox flooded with responses. Are you thrilled? You should not be, in 2008 and moving forward.
What would be of relevance is how many of these resumes map to your job order. Your old recruitment toolbox (job portals, application tracking, and communication out reach) is designed to get you quantity without quality. If you are investing your time in resume data processing, you need to log out of this fool’s paradise now. Big biller recruiters have already exited the job board game.
Here are 5 aspects needing recruitment value creation and focus:
1. Time, cost savings, value creation with quality of hire
2. Specialized employment advertising and recruitment branding solutions
3. Trust building and interactive outreach methods to attract top notch professionals
4. Focus on and generating interest from quality, passive job seekers
5. Full utilization of your time, you cannot afford to be data processing
Focus is going to be on bottom line reality: value creation. Here are some examples of how GoRecroot’s features deliver value in online recruiting:
–GoRecroot has specialty recruitment advertisements and employer branding solutions. This means, you can stop relying on conventional banner ads that work like black boxes. GoRecroot ads and branding solutions inculcate how quality job seekers approach new job opportunities and how they communicate.
–Old world flat file searches based only on keywords deliver quantity and not quality. You could get quantum of preliminary results, but very little in terms of positions filled. GoRecroot approaches talent sourcing as mapping of job orders to resumes. GoRecroot’s intelligent talent mapping algorithm means tremendous time and cost savings. With this intelligent mapping, focus on well-mapped prospects and get to results faster.
–GoRecroot has a mobile recruitment toolbox available at www.JobsandResumes.mobi. You can sign up for free, create a job order, and initiate your talent sourcing. Do not be tied to your desk, go head hunt, go recroot.
About GoRecroot
For recruiters, GoRecroot (gorecroot.com) focuses delivering functionality value primarily through (1) recruitment ads (2) employment branding solutions (3) jobs to talent mapping (4) recruitment community value additions. Multimedia (audio, photo, video) enabled, multi modal (browser access, mobile access and downloadable thin client), multi geo (covers 100+ main geographies around the world), multi domain (over 40 business sectors and over 5000 sub sectors). GoRecroot payment processing is secured and powered by Google and PayPal. Subscription pricing for GoRecroot is linked closely to functional value delivered.
www.JobsandResumes.com is GoRecroot’s mobile recruiting toolbox.
About the GoRecroot Team
The creators of GoRecroot have been in talent sourcing and mapping since the 90s and have worked closely with recruiters and job seekers around the world. The intelligence behind GoRecroot is derived from hands on experience fulfilling scores of different job positions. The creators have their ears to the ground and have been listening closely to recruiter pains and tribulations. GoRecroot intends to continue its close-knit association with recruiters and thrives to play an active role in getting more progressive recruiters to the big biller club.
Press contact:
Gracer Motha
help [at] gorecroot dot com
www.GoRecroot.com
One of the facets of being progressive is keeping an eye on what business leaders are doing. So we ventured out, with our recrooter hats on. We wanted to see, what are functional benefits (read time, effort, money saving, results producing) from web 2.0 and all the buzz around re-emergence of online recruiting.
On one hand, gurus like Adler are snubbing transactional models in job boards. On the other hand web pundits are dumping social networking sites. Just to save us the clutter we put together a simple wish list. Like always, we want the best of both worlds - progressive recruiting tools, social networking based passive candidate reach out, and more.
Online recruitment is growing at (up to) 40% - so we want online recruiting. Off line work flow tools, we would like to avoid. We want web based accounts so that we can work together with as a team, with peers and with customer teams. Collaboration is the key.
Job order posting has got to be easy. As much we truly accept that garbage in - garbage out, still holds good for computing, we want to get started easy. We want easy job orders that can be filled up in less than a minute. Get us started.
We want a powerful recruitment tool box and web dashboard to run our business
We want interactive job orders, we want to talk to job seekers through our online job orders
Likewise, we want to hear our job seekers, we know that in recruitment voice is a huge trust builder.
We want intelligent job order to resume mapping. We do not want to waste time with linear job searches.
We want specialty recruitment advertising and branding solutions.
Tips to create an effective job order
• Mention time and date lines
• Introduce the company and the division, department or team involved.
• Give a clear description of the position. Use the right keywords or tag words.
• Describe responsibilities that come along with the position.
• Provide an overview of required competencies.
• Clearly indicate the required levels of education and experience.
• State whether it concerns a part-time or full-time job, for definite or indefinite time.
• Provide information on remuneration and terms of employment.
• Inform the candidate on the recruitment process
• When showing an overview list of vacancies, provide each vacancy with a clear title and a short summary.
OR,
Just forget it, go to www.gorecroot.com and the job order template takes care of this and more for you.
Here are important pointers to cope in changing business - economic conditions.
1. Job positions that involve duplications of skill sets are prone to be cut down.
2. Focus on value additions - if you are delivering mass quantities of common place talent, immediately focus on value additions. Non value added transactional operators and job boards will be cut in size.
3. More active candidates in the talent pool directly translates to greater demand for passive candidates. Can you reach out to passive candidates effectively? Is your job order to resume mapping software intelligent enough? Is your passive candidate communication multi media enabled and interactive?
4. Tough economic conditions create significant demand for specializations - 9/11 created positions in defense, construction, legal. Sub prime is creating positions for specialty real estate professionals or analysts in banking.
5. Recruiter collaboration and networking is important. You need to network synergies with fellow recruiters. Focus on recruiter splits and gain clarity on job order ownerships. When you share job orders, do it efficiently.
6. Recruiter time is under pressure. You need to select the right job order to pursue. You cannot afford to be hidden behind your desk data managing or formatting resumes. You need job order to resume mapping intelligence.
7. Sales is under pressure. You need to deliver results on the move. Learn up on mobile recruiting. Recruitment on the move.
8. When times get tough, the weaker recruiters will wash out with the tide. If you can weather the storm and find ways to gain market share and build your reputation, you’ll be positioned to grow as the market recovers.
9. Cash is king. Do not get into huge block commitment with old world talent sourcing or recruitment advertising models. Make sure your investments are going into services that link payment to results. Remember, you client will pay you for results, not for activity or traffic.
10. Changes in economy make for great lessons. Like they say, when the student is ready, the teacher appears.
Online recruitment, e-recruitment, employer branding, internet employment posts, online branding solutions - many different names for recruiters using the internet to search and source talent.
We call it ads & branding solutions for recruitment. Essentially you advertise as part of your talent or job search or you build a brand. A recruiter or staffing consultant builds a long term brand to source both job orders and talent. A hiring manager builds brand to attract quality traffic to his career site. Quality here is determined by how well his ad is targeted for, his keywords of choice. Or, it can be a job seeker showcasing his profile with a voice clip to solicit global positions.
How this any different from traditional online advertising?
In several ways:
1. Pay for impressions, pay for eye balls - are phrases that are severely admonished
2. Recruitment ads have quantified results - typically sourcing targets
3. Targeted - segmented advertising is essential for recruiting
4. Traffic is important - but it is not the end criteria
5. There is nuts and bolts of recruitment advertising, segmentation for example: drawn from handling unstructured data
6. Ads & branding is part of an overall solution that recruitment platforms offer - recruiters are looking at end results
7. Search, filter, select, schedule, verify, build trust are just some of the pieces that work behind your recruitment banner ad
It is by delivering value, that online recruitment services are weather proofing themselves in the post dot com burst era. A good section of the industry continues to be excited about social media and networking. While, another section is worried that all this noise about social networking is just blowing up another bubble.
Here are some growth factors of online recruitment measured in terms of Fortune 500 companies joining the bandwagon:
1999 - 33% or less
2003 - 94%
2007 - 100%
Revenues:
2003 - 3 billion USD
2007 - 16 billion
2008 - 20 billion (projected)
Let’s face it – recruiting is a challenging job. The better the challenge, the greater is the reward. If you do more than a million dollars a year, you belong to an elite club – big biller. We know that you want to be there and we put together a list of what you should do:
1. Wear a big biller attitude
2. What is the big biller attitude? Check out Adlerconcepts.com or BillVick.com
3. You need to handle a lot of data – and should be able to source, search, filter, connect, schedule and more
4. You should not be wasting time in data entry – as a big biller your time is better spent in networking and hunting
5. You need to know how to keyword search for resumes and arrive at your selected special bunch
6. You must be thinking: Move over resume search it is job to resume mapping time. You need an intelligent mapper
7. You need to be on the move – mobile access is very important
8. You need to get the word out, your job order cannot be found in just one or two job boards (no way)
9. Distribute your job order in style – your prospects need to know that you are looking out – you use widgets
10. You need sophisticated scheduling support – your recruitment time is very valuable
11. You need fantastic service and customer support backing – beyond just email support
12. You need to be smart about your budgets – free job order posting is a good to have
13. You are a brand – you are a fast track recruiter, you need specialty ads and branding solutions
14. Hot jobs, hot postings, recruitment advertising – all specialized to the hilt
15. Your customers (employers) depend on you – enable employer branding, put them on the spot light
You must be thinking easier said than done? Consider it done – above is a selection of features available at www.GoRecroot.com
Widgets by definition are a self-contained piece of code that you can move into, out of and anywhere. Widgets are one of the exciting ingredients of the new web (or web 2.0 or 3.0). In layman terms, a widget is a wrapper that help you distribute content.
For example, YouTube. At YouTube you upload a video, extract a link and post it in your website or blog, or you email the link to a friend. The recipient clicks on the link and watches the video. No large attachments, no need to download a player. A simple method to share video content. Now, we all know how YouTube is used and abused.
Talking about distribution of content, as relevant to talent sourcing and job searches - obviously both job orders and resumes form distributable content.
Eureka!? Not yet.
As a recrooter I would love to have a job order widget that I can distribute in the internet - especially in passive recruiting. I can post this widget in Facebook or Orkut. How will interested jobbers (job seekers) get in touch with me? What do they see when they click on my widget?
As a jobber, I would like to use this easy method, write a custom cover letter, attach my resume widget and distribute. In quick time, I can have detailed resume into several career sites. Right?
Why not try it out at GoRecroot
A particularly unique job order needed some ‘tweaking’. Couple of us recruiters and our good client met over coffee. We could not help over hear the next table - also recruiters (is this cafe a recruiter hang out or what?) were on to their banter. Their conversation was getting hotter than the brew. Long story short: Your job order, my resume, how do we split the income.
Our client asked, does that happen all the time. We volunteered a guess, on the negative. Heading back, we googled out “recruiter splits” and you would be surprised to a lot of dirty linen in public (IPs - so to say).
Green opportunities beckon - you have the job order, I have my resume archives gathering dust. We jump in, all in good will. When there is income to share, goodwill is under stress and, relationships split. What’s a good method:
1. The side that brings the opportunity takes the larger share (The risk is taken by this recruiter in dealing the business)
2. The person sending resumes is usually pulling out of the archives - not that there were hot hot resumes
3. If there are niche skills, or the recruiter is going out of the way to source resumes - discuss costs then and there
4. Basically agree on the split before sharing the resume
Wouldn’t it be nice if someone started job order sharing service? Apparently, somebody did…
GoRecroot - truly a service to go recruit
Our friend here has a good story. They almost lost a client in the process of splitting earnings.
Before:
Go to job board
Pay for a year
Search resumes, filter
Worry about accuracy, though nothing much could be done
Download resumes one by one
Or, depend on the job board’s over used and abused (to the extent of spam) broadcasts
Manual resume scavenging
Pull out email IDs and phone numbers
Call (and be surprised that the candidate has nothing to do with your requirements)
Scamper to get some schedules
Best case: 500 resumes ran through in a day, and some schedules with luck and the recruiting God smiling at us
Now:
Search (Oh we do not pay for access anymore)
Actually, do not search, map resumes to your job order, get ranked results (this is nirvana)
Preview samples, fine tune search again
Drill down to a good basket of 75 - that’s something that me and my peer can cover in an hour
Add your shortlisted resumes to your desktop
Download - do not bother - get the information you want from your resume (not data)
Generated a report of just phone numbers and name for us to call
Generate a report of skills and name for the interviewer (not resume dressing needed anymore)
We select candidates for skills not for their resume formats
Are you asking, where this can be done?
GoRecroot for progressive recruiting - True customer oriented eCommerce approach to recruiting services - That is truly a first
A peer in the MIS world was good to point out the the difference between information and data: Information is useful data. Coming to our world: resumes is data, qualifying, mapped resume is information. And, information is wealth. Amen.
GOING ONLY FOR BRANDING
Do you stick only to the top name job boards or portals? If yes, you are denying your chances of getting into specialized positions. Specialized groups or non-enterprise companies often steer clear of top names. Choose your resume posting based on the kind of recruiters that visit a given job boards.
OUTSOURCING YOUR JOB HUNT
If you are getting a peer or a consultant to do your job hunt to the level of making contact with a prospective employer - stop doing this now. You can get help to the level of someone gathering job order description or information for you. You make the connect - use the opportunity to create an impression.
RESUME BLASTING
Do you treat your resume like a promotional mailer? Distribute it all over the place or get a group email ID and broadcast? This means (1) Your cover letter or your resume is not customized for the job order in hand - Resume customization in lieu of arranging the skill sets for the given job order. (2) You do not follow up, there are employers who seek to measure your interest with the follow up method that you adopt. Plus your prospective employer or their job consultant knows that you are hunting around, which will reduce your market value.
Another aspect of mindless blasting is clicking the APPLY FOR THIS JOB button wherever you see it. When you submit your resume to a job where you do not have minimum qualifications - and you have a reason to doing so - make an offline connect.
75% of email traffic received by a generic ID such as careers@bestemployer.com is junk. If you rely only on email to get your next job - forget it. Your resume is probably in the junk folder.
PRIVACY
Do not write a tell tale resume with private information. We’ve heard enough and more about misuse of private information. Another aspect of privacy - using Internet at work to coordinate your job hunt. Wake up - Even a mom & pop street corner store can afford a network and a firewall in it.
INTERNET JOB HUNT BALANCE
You do not want to rely entirely on the internet for your job search. You do not want to deny the abundance of information that is available on the internet either. Depending on your skills and where you want to be working next, see if your target employers and their head hunters are hanging out in Print Classifieds or Job boards.
BEING COOL
Email is new age - it has been for over 15 years now:), but an email ID such as kewldude800@xyz.com is not a great identification. Also see what your social networking page is saying about you - from the eyes of a headhunter, hiring manager or recruiter. Please blogpost here about ‘Big Brother is Watching‘. Also your resume or your job hunt webpage is a business document, it is not your platform to express political views.
Balance 994 things you do not want in your job hunt come under ‘common sense application’. We do not want to question your CSA quotient by putting down all of those 994. (Actually, “6 things” as a title did not sound grandiose enough to attract your attention)
Thank you for blogging here.
Congratulations, you are one of the progressive jobbers who have realized that a voice Curriculum vitae is huge positive statement on your job application. Why? Because your resume is probably your best shot - and in many cases the only shot at you getting an interview. Typical busybee recruiter has under 2 minutes for a resume - if at all that. Your voice CV buys you some additional time, if you get some of the smarts:
Decide the approach for your voice resume: (A) I am going to present highlights from my resume (B) I am going to add information to my resume (C) I am going to build intrigue with a story or an achievement (D) What are attention grabbers - in a 1 minute voice recording you should have 3 or 4 attention grabbers.
Here is your check list:
1. I have a script before I can record
2. I have rehearsed and heard myself, I slept over the script and it looks good
3. Someone listened to my voice CV and gave me feedback (not a patronizing friend)
4. My voice CV adds value to my job resume - in 4 or 5 specific points
5. There is quantification of my achievements that a recruiter can relate to
YOU HAVE A GREAT VOICE, THEN
(not because you can sing in the shower or your friends thought so)
Do not get carried by the voice and try to sound good
Do not over stylize
Remember not everyone with a great voice made a great orator or a singer
NOTHING UNUSUAL ABOUT YOUR VOICE THEN
Good, focus on the content
Speak slowly, clearly
Choose words that make you sound better
Short sentences help you sound better
Choose to present in lists
Remember some of the greatest singers or orators did not have the best of voices
End note: Your voice CV is about your career and not your voice - So try one.
I HAVE A VOICE CV BUT DO NOT KNOW OF A PLACE TO POST IT?
Oh that’s easy
www.GoRecroot.com is one of the better places for a multi media career portfolio
Is this the end of the two page resume as we know of it?
There are some good reasons to say yes. With the introduction of online job boards, international recruiters and hiring managers have the real need to slice n dice through large volume of resumes at a pop. A digital resume portfolio is increasingly preferred over an emailed or snail mailed resume.
The essential difference: Provide career data in a marketable fashion in one neat package.
The best of new age job services actually provide a full service for the Jobseeker and often times for free. Job seekers are supported with the ability to follow and stay ahead of the latest trends in resume presentation with voice resume (or talking CV or audio resume), video resume (like one jobber put in a mini video of his training session in the curriculum vitae), multiple photos (good old profile shot, shot of jobseeker at work and, in a relaxed ambience).
All that creates a jobseeker branding and all through web 2.0 enabled easy-to-use technology. Jobseekers can post samples of work, recommendations and awards, video and much more.
www.gorecroot.com has some progressive resume presentation or resume builder features. Stopping by would be good use of time.
Make a voice resume or power your job order with voice.
Enjoying the anonymity of the internet in social networking? Are you revealing a bit more in Orkut, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, or BlogSpot? Extreme political opinions, photos, college pranks, “weekend” preferences and more?
An increasingly popular trend, graduates stepping out of universities and looking ahead for their first interviews are closing their social networking pages. Reason: Big brother is watching. Job hunters are increasingly conscious of anything they put into the online sphere—even e-mail, which, of course, can be forwarded to anyone.
These are not entirely paranoia. There is anecdotal evidence and some HR reports talk about corporate recruiters are Googling potential employees, having interns log onto social networking sites to check out an applicant’s profile, and using the online world as another way to check references. This trend, combined with the growing population of sites like Orkut, Facebook and MySpace, has many young people uneasy and unsure about how to navigate a new world.
B-school administrators and professors are beginning to advise students on maintaining a professional presence on social networking sites, in e-mail, on personal Web sites, and blogs. “Even if it’s password protected, recruiters have profiles, too, and can get into your groups.”
In a survey by AfterCollege.com a little more than 70% of the 60 students say they continue to post the same things they always did, even though potential employers might be taking a look. About 20% of the 90 employers who have so far responded to the same survey, say they investigate new hires by visiting social networking sites. A considerable 6% of employers say they’ve decided not to hire someone based on what they saw online, but another 26% responded to that same question with “no comment.”
To quote Roberto Angulo of AfterCollege.com “Students should be more concerned than they are”.
Truth# 1: All Organizations need to understand that: quality, productivity and employee retention depend heavily on employee satisfaction, engagement and fulfillment.
Truth # 2: Satisfaction, a good engagement, and mutual fulfillment depend on a good fitment.
Truth # 3: Good fitment is multi dimensional data, intelligent mapping and an important, guiding component in recruiters’ and the candidates’ gut. Is your job decision driven by the right fitment data? Intelligence in job to resume fitment.
Let’s take a look at some of these alarming reports, surveys
50% of employees are unsatisfied with their jobs – according to The Conference Board
25% of the US workforce reveals that they are showing up to collect a paycheck
90% of U.S. workplaces admit that there is some degree of uncivil behavior, demeaning jokes, backstabbing or bullying
91% of employees in Japan are disengaged at work – Published by Gallup
67% of Japanese reveal that they show up to pick up a paycheck
7 to 14% of employees worldwide are psychologically engaged at work and believe that they have a role to deliver – This from Management Issues News
58% of employees cite poor management as obstacle to productivity – This from Society for HRM
70% of organizations that do nothing to reduce employee discontent will suffer a variety of issues including legal disputes
40% of employees are dissatisfied with their work-life balance
Some pertinent questions and discussion points:
1. The job that we do, is it built on your strengths, What are your strengths
2. Did you select this job as a career step, or, are you just waiting here for the next ride to arrive
3. Do you have a 5 year plan? Is your step forward today in the direction of the plan?
4. Is your career decision an informed step from you, or, are you going by media trends, PR or your peer influence
5. Honestly, can’t you cut your day down to 4 or 6 hours if you would be free to get to – a game or a movie?
How can you contribute to the growth of the 7 to 14% of truly engaged global workforce?
The community is listening – what do you have to say?
Spiraling costs, be it office space, transport overheads or big time salary payouts in any industry headed for some costing / profitability realities - some new important questions will be raised. Especially in the area of human capital management. Unlike the past, when developing Human Resources for the sector, was simply a matter of hiring and on-the-job learning, today’s Knowledge professionals require companies to deploy ‘Best Practices’ that create a conducive environment for achieving customers’, personal and professional goals.
Talent sourcing and mapping would come under increased focus. Output from academia is not showing massive signs of industry or vocation orientation and, given that sector’s track record nobody is betting on overnight changes.
What is the global recruiter planning to do improve his sourcing smarts? Outreach is probably a given, with fat corporate budgets and multi channel tentacles. You now have all resumes parked in your email boxes - fine and dandy. What next? Good fitment is, often needle in the haystack.
Any experiences - fellow recrooters?
Any one talking about reversing trends and changes yet?
If you have been with a fast growing start up, boutique – specialty set ups or small divisions of larger enterprises these problems would look familiar terrain to you.
Until recently emerging HR practices largely ignored the small and medium business (SMB) challenges. Are they more complex than large enterprise issues – Probably, No. Are they easier to address? No again.
What makes it interesting?
*Time is of more essence in the SMB world – it means direct impact on revenue and often times survival
*There are several multi tasking individuals and teams – impact of a problem is typically multi dimensional
*Presuming that there is growth, almost everybody is busy with daily deliverance – there is typically no one focusing on beyond mid term HR management planning
*Good SMB HR will be tightly embedded small members – who could be vital links of the deliverance chain
*Budgets are of course limited
*Dirt swept under the carpet is most likely to show up – often there are no carpets (hiding places)
*Pace of change is fast – customer collaboration is lot more transparent (you cannot hide HR dirt)
*Relative old timers will see that the wave that they worked up could very well wash them out
*Looking at recruiting – SMBs face a larger risk – problem proposition:
*Recruitment brand building is not an option to source talent – brand building has to be a long term block by block effort
*Bad decisions could change the course of teams – given that fluff cannot be hidden between budget lines
*Given smallness of teams, SMB management recruiters are very cognizant of cherry picking
*And, cherry picking means time – at every level of recruitment
*A new team members is under pressure to deliver true results (couple of swanky presentations would not get the job done)
Critical elements are
**Commitment to mid term and long-term strategy: Assigning the right HR culture and priority across the organization. There is no point putting together best practices within a company whose business platform is unstable.
**Culture: Practice not because Lou Adler spoke about it, or HR.com had something written up there, ensure that it fits the company culture and the end target. Some best practices are highly effective but depend on a specific culture. Most practices need careful customization when they are copied from another organization.
**Focus: Driven by results, with ability to add incremental value. A measurable business profit, a sustainable model that will last
Communication: Consensus and commitment from across the organization. Understanding and commitment do not come when practices are imposed – top down. Percolation bottom up is a great way to implement changes
**Partnership and customer: Putting external customers first and deriving from new opportunities is very effective
Integrate Framework: All practices should work within an integrated framework. People process implementation work together to promote maximum results.
**Risk: Maintain a balanced degree of risk, SMB risk appetite could be higher, openness to change is greater, leverage the dynamism to produce best human capital results
**Continuous & consistent improvement: An effective unbiased (to the best extent possible) feedback loop, improvement and clear steps forward by the day, by the week and not just in annual strategy meetings
Does anyone have interesting facets to share, specifically in transitioning recruitment approach – small to medium transition days?
Over the last several years, the transformation from personnel administration, labour management, industrial relations, to human resource management is hopefully, more than a change in vocabulary.
The pressure to deliver exponentially is on the rise for most HR functions. Other job functions are calling for HR to become a “strategic partner” in transforming from a low-level expense center to a more visible and responsive investment center. One key dimension of this transformation is globalization - incorporating the perspectives, customs, and laws of other countries into effective HR policies.
Here are a few aspects of increased pressure and forced change:
Then: Recruiting was earlier a magazine ad or a listing in the company notice board
Now: You are in talent sourcing and head hunting
Then: Word of mouth got you enough candidates
Now: You need be networking in the recruiting community, have a referral bonus scheme and be a proficient head hunter
Then: It was a long term commitment to a job - at least the outlook was to get something, perform, grow, settle down and retire
Now: Short cuts, launch pad techniques, overseas assignment, blue glass influence is viral
Then: Businesses had a lesser people factor orientation
Now: Knowledge businesses, increases sales orientation, the need for super customer care have all made pretty much all businesses to be more of ‘People Organization’
Then: Manufacturing, retail, travel & tourism, banks, healthcare (hospital & medical, pharma) had people working in the same sector or domain for a career
Now: It is becoming acceptable for a banker to become a programmer, a pharma sales professional to be selling credit cards (may from a call center)
It is a multi sector, flat world - There are more dimensions, more challenges and a continual tightening (growing up) task at hand. Like we always say, interesting times. What would work be without all these - just paper and files.
The writer is a staffing solutions professional working in multiple domains
Attention progressive recrooters
Breaking news: GoRecroot has entered into a partnerships in Europe and US. This would bring in literally 1000s of job positions available for GoRecroot members worldwide. As a recrooter (executive recruiter - member at www.gorecroot.com) you can pitch your resumes and candidates for any of these global positions. These positions are not limited to information technology - but are spread over 30 sectors.
This simply means more revenue opportunities and exciting expansion possibilities.
Visit www.gorecroot.com and sign up or, contact help@gorecroot.com for upcoming partner - affiliate announcements. Please be sure to whitelist / add help@gorecroot.com to your address book so that these important business announcements reach your inbox and not get lost in your junk mails folder.
More information coming soon.
We all are aware of the time that goes in before we get to a decent set of interviews and hopefully some placements and revenue. Here is a list of cost items that can make or break your work on a job order (We have lost some and made some and focused attention on where we could be losing).
Cost of resume: Time, effort and money spent to get to the initial set of resumes - this by no means is ready to be sent to the client
Cost of quality resume (Pulling out a quality resume from a pile - either job board, headhunters network or our good ol’ database has become a fairly critical and expensive task). This includes all the time invested by your team in getting to the right resumes, validating the contacts and confirming schedules.
Cost of communications: Internet and phone
Resource costs: Payroll and incentives, gotta keep the team going
Resource overheads: Space, infrastructure, management
For a fairly well-oiled set up, yield could cost $200 per slot easily. If it is a niche skill, your client is picky or rem is not really the most attractive in business, we are talking way more than that
Views and opinions, anyone?
If you do not specialise you cannot value add.
Case A: Large team of recruiters multiple cities / states coverage, decent recruiting brand. Clients are willing to share open positions easily but are very clear that the expected output is just resumes. The message is clear from most clients, do not bother value adding.
Why? What can be clear value additions from recruiters?
Case B: Mid sized team, focused in one or two cities. Do not take ‘run of the mill’ requirements. Specialises in two aspects: Niche skills, high quality of resumes leading to very good yield ratios. Core strength is clearly in headhunting. Creating a network and managing relationships.
What are clear definitions of ‘quality of resume’?
What is your method to derive returns from your resume archive?
Have any of us tried audio resumes or voice resumes, video resumes - for specific positions?
An open job position requirement is sent to recruiters, the details are blurred, probably the job position itself was copy pasted from somewhere and tailored a wee bit. Of course there is a deadline. The recruiter has her own doubts about compensation matching up to skills. But there is a deadline and this is a challenge that the recruiter should take up, to prove her credentials and, perhaps an entry into the recruiter hall of fame.
Search job boards, portals, hit the network
There is electricity in the air with a good chance of the energy turning into panic
Assuming that a new open job position does mean that there are some unique (if not anything rare or nearly extinct) traits…
Freeze frame, and let’s ponder a few questions:
Why should all job order formats be the same
And more important, why should all resume formats be the same
Information that is relevant to make a decision definitely varies. Can anyone out here argue - debate that one resume format fits all?
Thats like, I would want to know technical skills of a merchandize manager or, want to know the sales targets of my payroll services associate…
But then, why do we take the one size fits all approach from all job services and portals?
Anyone working multiple sectors? Specifically non information technology recruiters? Shout it out…
There is synergy and opportunity in Recruiters around the world collaborating progressively. This blog is a platform for recruiters to come together, leverage on information, opportunities or just get jammin.
People Process Implementation: 3 common denominators for a bunch of us. The real problem uniting us: Talent sourcing. We all have come across the following statements frequently.
We’ve all had heard too much of :
“I want this job order filled like yesterday”,
“This resume is seriously outdated”,
“If this job position is about being on the phone, shouldn’t we rather hear the voice”,
“Resumes is not the problem, converting that to interviews and filled positions, the climb is getting too vertical”
“There are a few job portals - a lot of data, and that means a lot of data management, and time!”
“With all this and not mentioning other risks and guarantees, what is net margins really?”
Welcome aboard, post comments, be heard, be known in the global network of progressive recruiters. Your views matter and, you as a member of this community, in its own way can shape the future of this business.
GoRecroot.com is a progressive webstore.
What is progressive?
1. Talking, Walking CV - for those of us looking to get a better feel of the candidate beyond paper resumes
2. Fantastic searching and mapping - these guys have done up a algorithm that delivers - I was invited for a backstage pass while they are putting things together. I enjoyed and was surprised at some of the features bang on the buck.
3. There are some solid offerings for a recruiter network and for progressive recruiter communities. Community with the purpose of working together and getting generating revenue. Not just blogging away.
If you are:
In international (global) recruiting, a recruitment manager, professional recruiters,
recruitment agencies, staffing agencies, recruiting services, staffing firms,
executive search consultants, placement agencies, management consultants, recruitment careers, recruiter network,
corporate recruiters, headhunters recruiters, employment headhunters, professional headhunters, corporate headhunters, executive headhunters, executive recruiters, staffing services, executive search firms, management consultant
OR, if you are looking to get on to the web - go online with your staffing business without even sniffing a bit of any technology or geek stuff, this is your place.
Visit the curtain raiser at www.gorecroot.com and am told that the site will launch in the coming days - pretty soon. Keep your eye on this page for an update.
In the meanwhile, this fast growing blog and its dynamic community of recruiters are talking and listening. There is business to be had and some money to be made.
Cheers
It takes all of 5 - 7 minutes of your time and your chance to be heard in this progressive global recruiter network. Results of the survey can be shared with you basis your request at help@gorecroot.com. It is time well spent.
This is how us folks (we are a team of around 10 corporate recruiters) split our day, at the end of this blog we are talking about some tools that we are looking for
0830 - List of things to do, typically, new job orders - positions open, follow from schedules yesterday, follow up on no-shows. At around 9:00 we have the list of things for the day and we decide who is on to what for the day.
0900 - Feedback, specific issues, hurdles and a fine tuned plan for the day is ready
0930 - Reminders for interviews - making sure that the candidate is still on and the interview venue (internal or external) is ready with the interviewer or the tests. We ensure that by the interview check listed items have been readied. Different interviewers require their own set of information about the candidate before the interview and we keep that ready. And there is this whole discussion about good resumes.
1000 - Follow ups, phone calls for some of us, and others hit emails and job portals. On specific days we hit the phones earlier to give us a better shot at getting our point person ahead of the start of the day.
11:00 - Rain check of target vs actuals, fine tuning, alignment
1:00 - Lunch break 5 minute gang meeting. Re-alignment, some of us push lunch breaks to get in touch with candidates and make schedule.
Around 2:00 - Email blasts, more phone follow ups, team leader is hitting the floor to ensure that the day closes well
3:00 - Resume filing for open positions begins, fitment gaps are addressed, additional information fed in
4:00 - Hunt for resumes, while sales connects come back with information - means more things to do
5:00 - Majority of us hit phones and emails to ensure that candidates are gotten and schedules are worked out, we spend a lot of time doing this through the day, as you see. No shows on either side means a lot of our time goes wasted. Thats part of the game.
7:00 - Some of us have phone lists to make schedules, which is either carried over, a few of us stay back for a given day. The counter is to be ready for the next day.
What all of us like to do:
1. We like working on fitment - means we want our search to work sharply and not be sifting through junk
2. We hate that we have to manage loads of data - either electronic or paper - it hurts our efficiencies
3. We hate old resumes or outdated resumes
4. Scheduling and re-scheduling is eating more than 60% of our day - we would like that to be 20%
Anyone has notes for comaprison? Any tools or tips that will get things moving faster? Let’s brainstorm
HR in India had just about forgotten post y2k and dot com vaporization. 7 years is definitely a long time in Software and BPO parlance. We had all but forgotten that not long ago belts had to be tightened. Hardcore professionals, professional recruiters, and long term players enjoyed the digestion process.
Coming up now are the following challenges:
1. An industry force that believes that salaries grow 20 - 30% every year (perhaps twice a year would be good as well)
2. At least for India based companies, the government is talking about having the Techies pay some corporate tax
3. HR that is grapling with attrition issues - not really the rate, but the way it is done
HR in other verticals are commenting and do I see a smirk: You reap what you sow. Perhaps it is time to go back, close the loop and pull some good basics from Industrial Relations days.
Human Resource Management was (when it started a few decades back in India) just the better dressed + business drink version of good old Industrial Relations. Am just quoting someone who has been in business for 3+ decades now. Did we lose sight of objective somewhere in the middle? Somewhere when people were looked in 5 performance bands,
Comments anyone?
Any talking industry wide clean up acts yet? Isn’t it about time?
Had the opportunity of working with a group of academic research fellas. This research team wanted to measure the advent of internet in recruiting. More interesting, for those who are clearly hitting the net for recruiting, what were clear problem areas.
We all know that there are these large job portals throwing out a lot of big numbers. Millions of resumes and jobs. Now we all know that in the staffing world, having an archive of resumes and a list of job orders does not really mean business. Like my prof used to say, to write marmalade or cheese cake in a silver plate and licking it wouldn’t really taste as good.
In our (a small team of recruiters, who have spent a large portion of our recruitment budget monies on job portals) experience, hitting a job portal was only the beginning of the task. We weren’t really getting down to solutions. We were enthused to see how fellow recruiters felt about online recruiting. In other words, what is really wrong with online recruiting - job portals.
So here it goes - views from corporate headhunters, executive headhunters, executive recruiters:
1. Locking up of funds for upto a year in advance - No No
2. Restricting an account to one sign in or one user at a time - No No
3. A lot of resumes are stale - The response community said, we want fresh resumes
4. Scheduling is a pain in the neck, takes most of our work day and more - there are no features to help us out on this
5. Something like 80% of the sampled recruiters said, they would try out a new product - if it solved real pain areas
6. What is a real product - service - feature that can deliver a quality resume
Is anyone listening out there?
What are your experiences, fellow progressive recruiters? Can anyone share individual experiences? Am all ears.
So, how many job tips do NOT point at the passion element. None. The choice is unanimous, we are all looking for the passion in this lady or gentleman across the desk. We all agree and justify, if there is true passion a few kinks in the skill armour can be filled in.
I always looked for these:
The candidate was on time or a few minutes early
Had read about the company and the job position
Asked intelligent questions
Indicated that (s)he is planning career here
Is bright, articulate, accomplished
Knew how a bad day or week could be gotten over
The key questions answered well, at the point of making the decision I ask myself:
Is (s)he likely to pursue his mission at your company with true passion?
Can this candidate go-the-extra-mile with energy and dedication that leads to great things?
Or is his apparent zeal for the task ahead all sizzle and no steak?
Now experience teaches a few lessons. I shuffle past notes from interviews from the past. How many of my selections of 2005 and 2006 were on the ball, would make me proud now. Not many.
I seem to have a problem identifying true passion vs. enthusiasm or desperation to “land” this job. In this table, are at the beginning of a passionate career or, am I falling for an expert go getter.
True passion is difficult to hide. Someone passionate about work typically has a hobby or a personal pursuit that he or she is passionate about. Is there at least one topic that will bring a spark in the candidate’s eye? Sports, food, movies, travel, friends, gardening, politics - there must be something. Often passion in here spills over to work.
Is there a case study from the last job or from a few years ago that the candidate is willing to debate about? If you came from left field, would this candidate stand up for his position and yet learn or…
What typically caused extended days at work? Technical issues, we had to wait for someone, or we were so close to the target that we went all the way. We wanted to set a record for our team.
What was the best day at work? I got a promotion, raise, a holiday or we cracked a few year old problem, our customer could not hide his joy at what we delivered…
I realize that it is difficult: go getter vs. passion. You know what, thank God it is difficult. Let us recruiters have a few challenges to go get.
Discussion here.
It’s not 5 or 10, not even 20. A survey of global recruiters puts the estimate at 40%.
Almost all recruiters surveyed have confirmed that they have started investing more time in verifying authenticity of resumes.
Top lies are:
1. Dates
2. Achievements (stretching targets, increasing the number of people reporting in etc)
3. Education
4. Languages, skills
Seemingly harmless short cuts are permeating all levels - right up to the now infamous RadioShack story. And, companies are including statements of the cleansing acts in their annual reports to the stock market.
These short cuts are just that - so short lived. Like a candidate who had included couple of weeks of French grammar learning as, “Proficient in French” was stumped when the interviewer started en Francaise. Perhapse restricting to cheese and wine would have been more convenient.
All that, now we have the candidate and the employer in one table, the interview starts…In a few minutes its all over - the employer has found some holes in the resume. Often recruiters take the brunt of all these.
There are direct and indirect questions about: Did you doctor the resume?
I would love to hear from fellow professionals on hilarious and some serious situations in the lines of above.
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