Recruiter Today | Recruiting Trends and Tips for Recruiters - Page 160

Why It's Still Good to Recruit Purple Squirrels

Purple squirrels are mythical creatures rarely spotted in nature and seemingly rarer in the corporate world. They're those perfect job recruits supposedly impossible to find so some have stopped hunting. They might still be worth pursuing. The term has been around for a while. According to the Urban Dictionary, "For all practical purposes, there is no such thing as a 'Purple Squirrel;' not in...

Staffing Firms Get Ready, 2014 Will Keep You Busy

The post-holiday season tends to be a slow time for people across the country. Shopping stalls, home-improvement projects freeze up, and everyone from UPS to the post office experiences a lag in activity. However, the same cannot be said for people who work in staffing firms. People are always looking for employment (especially in this economy with a 6.7 percent unemployment rate), but the...

How Reliable is Social Media Background Checking?

The advent of social media and the willingness of people to share information about many aspects of their personal lives via social media has created a whole new means of assessing job candidates. We all know it is as social media background checking and most employers do it and many could be considered folly in not doing it. Why? Because, research from CareerBuilder in spring this year shows...

Should Staff Demotion Be a Key Talent Retention Strategy?

Now, to many of you, this may seem like scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of a talent retention strategy. That is, taking failed mediocre employees, hiring them back into lower positions, and making an industry or conscious strategy of it. But it's not as crazy as it sounds for two reasons. First, a Wharton study shows that internal hires tend to outperform external hires and are...

3 Tips for Speed Reading Resumes

Resume sifting can be a laborious and time consuming process, but its vital that it is done in an effective and efficient way. One way to do this is to use an applicant tracking system with powerful semantic keyword searching technology to automatically sift through hundreds of resumes and rank and short-list them according to how well they match the role. Of course, many successful smaller...

Innovative Staffing Practices: A Look Back at Recruiting & Our Love Affair with Technology

Recruiting has it roots in processes and workflow management, much like an assembly line where job openings are created due to employee turnover or a new position, as production exceeds what's expected for one employee. Constituency in hiring is key because of boring yet necessary things like employment law and compliance. These are essential to the success of a healthy business, one that's...

HR Didn't Have to Deal With That In the Good Ol' Days

Technology, tools and roles aren't the only things about HR that have changed rapidly over the years. Nowadays, HR has to deal with issues that don't really have precedent. Many HR professionals are going to have to draft policies on things that they've never had to worry about before, and tweak them as these issues become more commonplace in the office. Legalized Marijuana As of...

A Smartphone Can Be Like a Glass of Wine

Granted it wasn't a job interview, but once during an interview with a prominent community bank CEO, I kept my smartphone out on the conference room table where we were meeting. I explained to him my wife was expecting our second child any day and I needed to keep my phone handy. Maybe under the same circumstances during a job interview at a restaurant, the use of a smartphone could be...

What Makes Google Great

Some interesting news spread around the world today. Walter Isaacson, the author of the best-selling biography "Steve Jobs," offered his opinion on the world's greatest innovator—but it wasn't about Jobs or his beloved Apple, Inc. Apparently, Isaacson has deemed another company as the greatest innovator around the globe—Google. The story goes: Isaacson believes Google is more...

Jobaline.com Releases 2014 Trends Forecast, Hourly Jobs and Mobile Job Search to Increase

Mobile hourly-jobs marketplace, Jobaline.com, recently released its trend forecast for 2014. The forecast highlights four major trends for the upcoming year, which all suggest that now is a critical time for companies to embrace mobile technology and streamline their hiring processes. The four trends for 2014 include: 1. Stronger Hourly Job Market Jobaline.com research predicts that 2014...

How to Convince a Reluctant Expatriate to Work Overseas

As businesses expand their global reach to exploit new and emerging consumer markets and talent rich resource pools, so there is an ever increasing need for employees from to relocate internationally on expatriate assignments. In fact, research from Weichert Global Relocations shows that 93% of companies are expecting global relocation volumes to increase or hold steady over the year. As most of...

'Adopt-a-Bot'—Your Hedge Against the Empty Nest Egg Syndrome

Already retired, about to retire, wish you could retire or smart enough to plan far ahead? Adopt a robot to protect or generate your retirement income. Take one into your home as a companionable child surrogate if you are retired or younger DINKs . It will be one you can put to work without running afoul of any child-labor laws. It's an idea. The challenge is in the details. So, let's get...

6 Outrageous Job Perks—and the Companies that Offer Them

Take a second and pretend you're not in that cubicle. Pretend you're working for one of those insanely popular companies whose main goal in business seems to be to make their employees happy. Facebook, Google and Zappos are always in the spotlight for their employer brand, but here are a few perks that you may not have heard of. Cisco Offers Acupuncture Cisco's state of the art fitness...

Recruit People Who Don't Want To Be Recruited

It's happened to most recruiters: They have found the right candidate for a position but that person doesn't want to leave his or her current position. What's it going to take to get that candidate onboard? Some effort, according to Peter Weddles, but it's not impossible. Weddles, a veteran CEO of three HR consulting companies, wrote at his website, Weddles.com, that most passive candidates...

9 Pieces of Crowd Pleasing Content to Fire Up Your Talent Community

Talent communities are 'here' and they come in many shapes and forms: Linked-In company group, twitter streams, CRM systems, or a hosted and active forum/wiki/blog within the company site. In truth, the exact form of a talent community is a debate for last year, it no longer matters. What does matter now is that companies gather together and maintain an active and engaged social community of...

Innovative Staffing Practices: How Employers Stay Ahead [Infographic]

What company doesn't want to get ahead in 2014? To help ensure employers are successful this year, Recruiter.com has created a new infographic as part of January's Featured Series on "Innovative Staffing Practices." "How Employers Can Stay Ahead," shows how hiring employers are staying ahead of the game this year. A big thank you also for this month's Innovative Staffing Practices...

Don't Get Better at Interviewing, Get Freaking Fantastic at It!

Each step of the hiring process can undoubtedly be improved upon, but interviewing seems to be the one area that the majority of recruiters and hiring managers really need to invest more effort and thought into. The average recruiter will have 22 open positions and well over 3,000 resumes to review at any given time. That equates to a lot of time and resources just to get to the interview process...

Is Netflix the Emerging Leader in Human Resources Advice?

Netflix, the immensely popular online streaming video company, has become almost as popular online for its human resources advice as it is for "Orange Is the New Black." Its advice has been viewed more than 5 million times on the web. Patty McCord, the former chief talent officer at Netflix, wrote about the company's success in an article in the January/February 2014 issue of The Harvard...

Using Photoshop to Land Your Dream Job

I just love when I read success stories. And by "success" I mean when a person actually has the opportunity to live out their passion(s); when someone's job/career is the one thing he or she loves the most. I love these types of stories because, sadly, they aren't very common. In fact, a Gallup study found that 70 percent of the American workforce is disengaged and uninspired at work....

Glassdoor Releases List of Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions for 2014

According to Glassdoor's 2013 Q4 Employment Confidence Survey, more than one in five (22 percent) of employees reported that seeking new employment is among their top career resolutions for 2014. And to help job seekers prepare for the interview process, jobs and career community site Glassdoor recently released its annual list of Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions. The list was derived from...

Do Job Shares Really Work?

With an increasing desire for flexible working, from both the employer and employee side, there is a growing interest in the concept of job sharing, which is when a full-time job is split into two and performed by two people. However, job sharing is far from the norm and there is a general reluctance by organizations to use job sharing as there is a perception that job shares are relatively...

EmployeeScreenIQ Launches 5th Annual Survey, Seeks HR Professionals' Feedback

It's that time of year again. Global background screening provider, EmployeeScreenIQ, is currently looking to discover the top issues that concern today's HR professionals through its fifth annual survey measuring trends in employment background screening. Last year's survey received nearly 1,000 responses and the screening company hopes to double this number in 2014. All HR professionals,...

3 Tips For Hiring In High-Turnover Industries

Hiring for a high-turnover industry is no picnic. In fact, it probably feels like you're always in the process of recruiting. Fields from hospitality and retail to customer service and call centers suffer from high turnover, with great talent often leaving shortly after you've filled an open seat. According to a survey by FurstPerson, the average turnover in a call center is about 40 to 50...

Nation's Economic Improvements Gauged in MedZilla's July Employment Report

The Medzilla.com Employment Report for July 2013 highlights the job growth experienced over the past 18 consecutive months, the decrease in layoffs, overall salary increases, and rising investor confidence. Working off of the recent job's report released by the Department of Labor, MedZilla reports that 195,000 jobs were placed on the job market as adjustments were made to the previous two...

5 Ways to Get Your Cover Letter Noticed in 2014

Do You Even Need a Cover Letter? According Lisa Vaas, writing for The Ladders, fewer than 10 percent of HR departments actually scan cover letters, preferring to look at an applicant's resume first. However, that doesn't mean you can dispense with the cover letter entirely. "Most hiring managers have denied interviews to candidates qualified by their resumes," says Vaas, "but...

5 Lesser Known Forms Of Hiring Discrimination

Most well trained recruiters are aware of the all the forms of illegal discrimination that should be eradicated from the hiring process. In the US, the more commonly known forms of discrimination are: age, disability, equal pay/compensation, National Origin, Pregnancy, Race/Color, Religion, Sex and Sexual Harassment. Pretty much every body knows about these and, of course, it is important they...

Attract Talent with these 4 Top Trends

The Job Search Television Network (JSTN) recently released a whitepaper, "Top Trends in Talent Attraction for 2014." The paper offered great data and recruitment trends that I know will benefit any hiring manager, recruiter and/or HR professional. But, before we jump in, let's examine why these trends are so important. It's obvious why any employer would want to invest in talent...

Service Illogic: When Employees Have to Defend the Indefensible

What happens when illogical company-policy makers and front-line customer service employees have to mount a joint illogical defense of indefensible, patently absurd or at least seriously flawed practices and thinking? The result: a perfectly absurd customer storm—and a severe test of customer-service rep training standards, guidelines and willingness to defend the indefensible. Here's an...

Transition: When a Job Turns into your Career

You have been with a job for over five years, and you know all the ins and outs. The business model is becoming clear: You can start to see avenues of growth for your company that it's not using and, now, you're getting frustrated that your ideas are going unnoticed. Every day, you go to work proud of what you accomplish, even if the job isn't in the field you always thought you would work...

My Foot in the Door's Graduate Career Search Platform Enhanced with University Portal

College graduate-focused job placement company My Foot in the Door has announced the release of University Portal, a software expansion to the company's graduate career search platform. The enhancement grants college administrators access to performance metrics about current students and alumni relating to job searches and career successes. The University Portal offers university leaders...

4 Tips to Stop Being Boring on Social Media

Recently, LinkedIn reported the top 10 words overused by recruiters and chances are you could guess at least one of them. Top 5: -Responsible -Strategic -Effective -Organizational -Expert Is this because all recruiters are looking for similarly responsible applicants? Probably. Or is it because there are only so many words that one can apply to that patiently qualified lead?...

Orion Partners Survey: HR Transformation Largely Viewed as a Failure

According to a survey by Orion Partners, just 22 percent of HR professionals feel that HR transformation has been a success, even though nearly nine in 10 HR departments have been restructured or transformed within the past three years. Other key data obtained in the survey include: • 71 percent of HR employees reported that their function does not use a decision-making process based on...

5 Ways the Internet has Changed Recruitment Forever

Believe it or not, it has now been over 100 years since the first recruitment agency in the UK opened its doors. It seems like a long time – and indeed it is. Whereas some industries could go 100 years with very little changing by the way of structures and processing, the recruitment industry is one that has had to adapt and change hugely. If you were to look at things back then (or even...

How to Assess a Candidate's EQ During Interviews

Countless studies are beginning to show the positive link between Emotional Intelligence and high performance, that is, a higher EQ will lead to higher performance. In fact, there is a growing body of research making the case that EQ is a more important factor than IQ or technical ability in determining the success of a candidate. Two studies in particular emphasize the importance of EQ as the...

Research Posits that Almost 900,000 Workers Will Abandon Post after Exchanges Open

The University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, with contributions from Columbia University and Northwestern University, has released new research indicating that up to 900,000 U.S. workers may leave their jobs once insurance exchanges open up. Workers most prone to such a move are those who are in the workforce primarily as a means of obtaining healthcare coverage. This group of workers...

Is Google Trying to Invade Your Privacy?

Google recently made a huge announcement that it planned to purchase Nest Labs, the maker of innovative Internet-connected devices for the home that are controlled with a smartphone. The mega-company plans to pay $3.2 billion for Nest—a pretty hefty sum for a company that seems to deal in an industry (home improvement) totally unrelated to Google. This is precisely why people have been...

7 Ways to Keep Employees Motivated

Nothing says "we appreciate you" like taking part in the company culture. The culture of a workplace is as important to your bottom line as the deliverables or services rendered. Without a good company culture, you risk high turnover, a lack of a shared enthusiasm and reduced productivity. "If your staff believes that they matter, that their opinions matter, the company soars," Tom...

Give Your References a Heads-Up When Applying for Work

While cold calling may be a successful path to getting hired for a new career, it's not a good idea for your references to get a cold call from a human resources person checking out your background. It's an important part of the job-hunting process to have your references ready and be prepared to give references. Arne Fertig, writing at U.S. News and World Report, says, "While most of the time...

Talent Generation Software from Talemetry Enhances Sourcing and Relationship Management

Talemetry Inc., a provider of recruitment tools for finding, attracting, and engaging talent, has announced the release of its enhanced cloud-based talent generation software. The software enables employers to search and source candidates for multiple role types from multiple locations, improve candidate relationships, streamline the job-posting process, and build career sites. Enhanced features...

Dying for a Chance to Get a Cheat's Job

Many people die defending their principles. Bizarrely, however, some die defending what looks like a lack of principle. Dying to defend a claimed right to cheat seems to fall into the category of fatal defense of seemingly unprincipled behavior—and that's precisely what has happened to some students in Bangladesh during periodic riots in defense of a claimed right to cheat on their...

Snagajob Reports Hourly Job Seekers Resume Job Hunt Amidst Improved Optimism

Snagajob's Counter Intelligence: The Snagajob Service Industry Hiring Report indicates that job seekers are returning to the job market as confidence in landing an hourly job improves. The company's related Reactivation Index report found a 3.8 percent increase in the number of job seekers having reactivated their job search after a three-month period of inactivity, over one year prior. The...

Robert Half Survey: Greatest Small Business Hurdle is Finding Quality Talent

A recent survey by Robert Half has concluded that finding appropriately skilled employees is especially difficult for small businesses as 60 percent of small business owners reported finding highly-skilled professionals for their jobs as their biggest hiring and management challenge. Just about 20 percent of surveyed business owners said maintaining employee morale and productivity was their...

How to Grow Your Staffing Firm in 2014 [Infographic]

Spark Hire, the online video resume and interviewing platform, wants to help firms be successful in 2014. That's why the company has created a new infographic, "How to Grow Your Staffing Firm in 2014," to help equip firms to do just that. The infographic offers six essential steps necessary for firms looking to expand. They include: 1. Invest in human capital The infographic...

Five Standard Tools for HR Departments in Large Companies

Great tools and technology are no longer perks in large HR departments; they have become standard. As the HR technology industry explodes, these tools are more affordable and effective than most of us in the industry could have predicted. More than Video Interviewing A survey we conducted in 2012 concluded that almost six out of 10 employers with 1,000 to 5,000 employees use remote video...

3 Things "The Wolf of Wall Street" Can Teach You About Job Hunting

I watched "The Wolf of Wall Street" this past weekend, and let me tell you, it was three hours of insanity. To give a brief background for those who haven't seen it, the movie is about Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), an over-the-top, "druggie" stockbroker who makes a fortune dealing in stock market manipulation. The movie details his rise to wealth and power and all the...

Can Tattoos Hurt a Job Applicant?

While society in general is more accepting of tattoos, even neck tattoos, some employers are still uncomfortable with the thought of hiring someone sporting visible ink decorations. To show how society's view of people with tattoos has changed, comedian Rob Delaney does a standup routine about neck tattoos. He says, "Remember in the old days, if you saw someone with a neck tattoo, you thought,...

Zappos Has Ditched Its Management—Should you?

Many of you will be surprised by the news that Zappos has decided to ditch its managers or management hierarchy in favor of a flat organizational structure. This is nothing new in itself, but what makes it so intriguing is that Zappos, the darlings of innovative HR practices, have decided to make this move into this pretty much uncharted territory. It's not hard to see why Zappos, the same...

Dissatisfaction Causing Manufacturing Workers to Seek New Jobs, says Monster

A Monster.com survey has revealed that workers in the U.S. manufacturing industry are highly dissatisfied with their jobs and are likely to be seeking new jobs. Nearly one-half of survey respondents expressed dissatisfaction with their current job while only 34 percent were confident in finding a new position. Nearly three-quarters also agreed that it is more challenging in the current labor...