In Part 1 of this series, I explored and challenged the practice of traditional candidate pipelining.

Some people may have interpreted my last post on the subject to mean that I don’t believe in any form of proactively building candidate pipelines. That would be incorrect. Anyone that really knows me knows that I am not a black/white, either/or kind of guy.

What I am is the kind of guy that will tell you that anyone who says there is only 1 way to do something is ALWAYS wrong, because there is always more than 1 way to do anything. I’m also the kind of person who wants to find the BEST way of doing a thing – I am not satisfied to do things “the way they’ve always been done,” nor will I blindly accept what other experts tout as best practices.

There is always a better way.

The comments I received from Part 1 in the series were fantastic! They gave me significant insight into what many of the industry heavyweights think – and it’s obvious that traditional candidate pipelining is alive, highly valued, and practiced often.

At the end of Part 1, I mentioned that the ugly truth is that proactively pipelining candidates ahead of need has many intrinsic limitations and hidden costs that no one seems to want to think or talk about.

So let’s talk about them.

The Hidden Costs of Pipelining Candidates

No one seems to attach a value to all of the time and effort it takes to develop and maintain Work-in-process (WIP) candidate inventory – a pipeline of candidates that have been sourced, screened, evaluated, and “kept warm” through ongoing relationship management.

But don’t kid yourselves – there is a heavy cost associated with all of this work!

Building and maintaining a traditional pipeline of candidates requires quite a bit of time and effort. First you have to source well qualified candidates who closely match the forecasted/projected requirements – this often means a mix of phone sourcing, internet sourcing, social recruiting, and network/referral recruiting.

Then you need to screen and evaluate the potential candidates to verify that they are in fact good at what they do. After that, you’ll have to stay in regular contact with them to maintain a relationship and stay abreast of any changes in their situation and motivators.

Multiply this effort X 20, 50, 100+ candidates and simply the relationship management aspect of recruiting becomes the single largest time consuming aspect of pipelining candidates.

There must be some value being provided by all of this work being performed to proactively find, screen, and build and manage relationships with candidates for whom you don’t currently have a need, right?

From the comments I received on Part 1 in this series, I can tell many seasoned recruiting veterans certainly know the value that candidate pipelines generate for them.

However, the real question is what value is a recruiter providing to their customers – both candidate and client (hiring manager) – by all of this pipelining activity?

That question is trickier to answer than most people think. It’s actually a pretty deep question, and it can’t be answered by you. Value can only be determined by your customers – both candidates and clients. I’ll be dedicating a whole post to this concept in the near future.

Waste

I think that a large percentage of the time and effort associated with proactively building WIP candidate pipelines (candidates that have been found, screened/evaluated, and kept “warm”) is pure muda.

Muda is a Japanese term for an activity that is wasteful and doesn’t add value or is unproductive. One of the key steps in Lean production and the Toyota Production System is the “identification of which steps in a process add value and which do not. By classifying all the process activities into these two categories it is then possible to start actions for improving the former and eliminating the latter.”

It’s been a LONG time since I’ve written about my theories of Lean Recruiting – I honestly worry that it’s not a topic most people are interested in reading about because it is definitely “outside of the box” of traditional recruiting. However, I feel that Lean production concepts (including JIT sourcing/recruiting) will be a big part of the future of recruiting and staffing.

“Lean production is a practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Basically, lean is centered around creating more value with less work.” Now can you see why I’m such a Lean nut?

And remember – we’re not talking about the value to YOU, we’re talking about the value to your customers – candidates and clients.

The 5 Deadly Wastes of Candidate Pipelines

The activities associated with proactively building and maintaining work-in-process candidate pipelines involve 5 of the 7 wastes identified by Lean/TPS: overproduction, inventory, defects, over-processing, and waiting.

Overproduction

This happens each time you engage more candidates than needed to deliver to your customer. Proactively pipelining candidates ahead of need almost always leads to overproduction. Chances are you’ve never looked at it this way.

Inventory

A proactively built pipeline of WIP candidates is inventory and requires time and effort to maintain. Sitting in the “relationship maintenance” phase does not provide a real value for the candidates or clients, and what happens when the positions you pipelined candidates for never get approved or never become available?

Defects

According to Lean, a “defect” is something that does not conform to specifications or expectations.
I’m not suggesting that the people themselves are defects. However, candidates that are proactively sourced, contacted, screened, and with whom a relationship is maintained that do not ultimately match the actual hiring need are defects of the pipelining process. Defects arise whenever job specifications/requirements change from forecast, rendering pipelined candidates no longer qualified, or when candidates are no longer interested, available, or when their motivators change change away from your opportunity.

Forecasts are never perfect – they can’t be. Positions and requirements change, and people don’t stay interested or available forever.

Over-processing

Over-processing occurs any time more work is done than what is required by the customer. Screening and building and maintaining relationships with candidates that will never be submitted to a client/manager can be seen as performing more work than necessary. Are your customers (candidates and clients) requiring you to maintain relationships with a large number of people who will likely no longer be available or interested or even qualified when you actually have a need? 

Waiting

Whenever candidates are not being advanced through the recruiting and hiring process, they are waiting. In most traditional recruiting processes, a large part of a candidate’s life is spent waiting to be moved forward in the process. Maintaining relationships with candidates is not moving forward – it’s a holding pattern, which for many candidates, is permanent.

This is What I’ve Got vs. This is the Best Candidate

One of the biggest issues with building candidate pipelines/work-in-process candidate inventory is quite insidious.

What does a recruiter do when they’ve built a deep candidate pipeline and a specific hiring need finally becomes available? They will go to their candidate pipeline of course. 

At first glance, this seems like the logical thing to do – they’ve spent all of this time and effort building their work-in-process candidate pipeline – so why wouldn’t they start there? However, when recruiters do this, what they’re essentially doing is going through their inventory – what they happen to have on hand – which they produced not in response to this specific and “real” need, but a more general forecasted need.

Does this sound like a process designed to produce the best candidate at the right time?

I’ve watched many recruiters push their inventory. In many cases, after sorting through their candidate pipeline and determining who is still available, interested, and who actually fits the opening(s) – they may have had some candidates to submit to a client/hiring manager. However, the probability that the “best” candidates in their pipelines were still available and interested was low.

The issue here is pushing candidates just because you have them, without asking the critical question of whether or not they are actually the best candidates you can find.

Opportunity Cost

One of the opportunity costs of developing traditional candidate pipelines comes in the form of spending time and effort following up with candidates and checking to see if they are still available, interested and qualified rather than simply going out and finding the best candidates available.

When that position finally opens up for which you’ve been pipelining for – your first order of business is to make contact with everyone in your pipeline to see who is still available, who’s still interested, and who actually fits the job specifications. This can take a lot of time and effort – time and effort that could arguably be better spent simply going out and finding the best candidates you can, rather than checking your inventory.

And what happens when none of the best candidates in your pipeline are available, interested, or even fit your current hiring need?

Perhaps the reason why many recruiters seem to have too little time to find more and better candidates is because they’re spending so much time maintaining relationships with their candidate pipelines rather than trying to find the right people.

The Alternative to Work-In-Process Inventory

Now that we’ve taken a critical look at traditional pipelining – proactively building work-in-process (WIP) candidate inventory – let’s take a look at another way of viewing candidate inventory.

If you recall, work-in-process inventory is comprised of candidates that a recruiter stays in routine contact with, without a specific and current need. This is what many refer to as the relationship maintenance phase. It’s called “work-in-process” because they’ve been “processed” (sourced, contacted, and screened to some extent) and they also remain “in-process” as long as the recruiter maintains routine contact with them.

So could there be a form of candidate inventory that is not “in-process?”

Yes – I’m glad you asked!

Raw Material Inventory

I believe that resumes and/or candidate profiles (ATS, social networking sites, etc.) that sourcers and recruiters have access to and have the ability to retrieve on-demand are essentially candidates in their “raw material” form.

A raw material is something that is acted upon or used by human labor to create some product. To paraphrase Merriam Webster’s definition, raw material is material that can be converted by processing into a new and useful product: broadly – something with a potential for improvement or development.

“Raw material” candidate inventories consist of readily accessible resumes and/or relatively detailed candidate data (ATS solutions, resume databases, LinkedIn, etc.). These are people who have been identified as potential matches for current and/or future hiring needs based on their candidate data, but no time or energy is spent in an effort to build and maintain a relationship with these potential candidates prior to actual need.

Now, before you go thinking that I am commoditizing people – I’m not.

Remember, the resumes/candidate/social media profiles are the raw material – NOT the people they represent.

So What’s the Alternative to Traditional Candidate Pipelining?

I know it’s not easy getting people to question “the way it’s always been done.” That’s why I’ve spent so much time thoroughly exposing some of the intrinsic issues associated with traditional candidate pipelining.

Now that I’ve shown you a different way to look at candidate inventory (WIP vs. raw material), in my next post I will explain Just-in-Time sourcing and recruiting, under what conditions it can be achieved, and why it’s superior to traditional candidate pipelining.

I’ll also reveal what I believe is the ideal method of pipelining candidates.

Yes, I know that it might come as a bit of a shock to hear that I do believe in building candidate pipelines, especially after the thrashing I’ve given to proactively pipelining candidates ahead of need. However, the method of pipelining I’ve used to be highly productive and to provide maximum value to both candidates and clients isn’t traditional pipelining.

Speaking of value – In my next post I’m thinking of exploring what the true value is that recruiters provide candidates. Here’s a hint - it’s not pipelining. Because when you really get down to it, pipelining primarily helps YOU, not the candidate.

But more on that next week.

Last Tuesday, Chris Dannen wrote an article on Fast Company giving a brief analysis of Weber Shandwick’s study which found that big companies just don’t get Twitter. At least, that’s what they say. Dannen followed up with an assessment that perhaps companies need a dedicated tweeter who won’t stick just to tweeting about ‘brand awareness’ but also bring more personal flavor to it:

“To succeed on Twitter, I’d bet that companies need do no more than ask those questions–and then hire that person to tweet about anything but brand awareness and product news. Twitter is so popular because it’s so personal and so direct; give one person the keys to your brand’s castle, and they’ll go out and connect. But don’t try to drag the whole board-room table.”

I disagree with this, and I wanted to respond to this post here on my blog in hopes of bringing more attention to the post and soliciting more feedback on this issue.

I have to wonder if individual user accounts who tweet on behalf of these companies were taken into consideration in Weber Shandwick’s study, or if the only Twitter accounts that were considered were officially endorsed accounts, created by the companies themselves. I for one know that many companies have employees who represent them, on a rather official basis, but they aren’t ‘branded’ as a company account because the companies realize the need for personalization of their Twitter presence.

Furthermore, each company is going to have a different purpose for using Twitter. Some perhaps don’t need/want to engage there. Anyone who understands marketing and social media strategy knows that the shoe doesn’t fit everyone in the same way. I saw that the Weber Shandwick study discusses that briefly.

As to the original question of this post, I don’t think a dedicated “tweeter” could/should be a full-time job at this point. It should be part of many people’s jobs, not just one person. The idea of having one dedicate person reeks of the antiquated “spokesperson” concept, and if you take a look at the way business is done today, there is never just “one voice” of a company any more, especially not within the walls of social media.

I think it’s better to ask several people, who understand your company (i.e. NOT a brand-new intern), to participate in some degree. This doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t, in my opinion) rest solely with one internal team or individual. It should be a collaborative effort – after all, if the purpose of a company being on Twitter is to engage, shouldn’t the entire company be represented, not just one person or group of individuals which has decided that they ‘own’ the company’s social media presence? (a whole other issue itself…)

How about you – what do you think about this? Should companies hire a dedicated tweeter or team of people whose sole function is to tweet (and I’m sure engage on other social media)? Leave your thoughts in a comment below.

The other day I was given a free report to try out from Myprofile.  They are based in Australia but are looking to service the UK market with their Jobprofile product.  One advantage of this for recruiters is that no accreditation or special software is required - they are all done online.

When I completed the questionnaire it only took me about 12 minutes (mind you I have done a fair few of these over the years!).  The results are sent as a PDF. Mine was eight pages long.  The product uses style identifiers (driver, promoter, supporter and analyser).  With each person normally being a combination of two styles (if you are interested I'm a Promoter Driver). Once the report has identified your style it talks about the job strengths for each style, lists career options (mine included many roles I would consider myself suited to), things that you value and things that annoy you, interview tips and suggestions on ways to "adapt" (ie, what to do about your weaknesses).
 
I thought the report could be especially suitable for personal or career development and I've already recommended it to someone who was looking to make decisions about a career change.
 
They are currently offering a free trial so that you and a colleague can assess the product for yourselves: http://www.myprofile.com.au/jobprofile/trial_request.htm

All I can say is “Wow”. Thank you for supporting me in the start of the #trulondon enterprise. Before giving my thoughts and recap on the event it’s important to give a big shout out to the track leaders who worked so hard to make the event work. I think you all did a fantastic job in keeping your tracks and events alive. It is much easier to stand in front of a powerpoint presentation and preach, there’s also a lot more hiding places. Judging by the number of learning points taken away you did a great job of inspiring others to share and experiment. Well done!
My highlight was when a group of track leaders set up the secret track. Totally impromptu and exactly what an unconference is about. No agenda and open discussion. More of this next time please!
Thanks also to @RadicalRecruit, not only for jumping on a plane and sharing your sourcing secrets but also for inspiring me to do it in the first place following Recruitfest09 and to @JillElswick who also hopped over the pond to be the official twitter journalist. An event now goes well beyond those attending with so much interest globally in whats going on. The power of the hashtag brings the event live to so many, and the twitter journo is essential in this. The world is a much smaller and closer space.
I must also give thanks to Barclays Commercial for providing a perfect venue and to our sponsors H.B. Rida who made the event possible and even sent a few of their companies.
Enough thanks, I’m reading a bit like an oscar winning speech and on with my take-aways in no particular order:

1: Gen Y is a state of mind and not an age.

Been trying to define this one in to a box for a while. This was a real light bulb moment. I embrace new technology and communication tools. I’m constantly looking at change and new business models and practices in recruiting. Despite being an old bloke I actually think I’m Gen Y. (Although I don’t live with my mum anymore!)

2: My network has changed considerably.

Not so long ago I hung out almost exclusively with Recruiters and attended recruiting events, read recruiting journals and was interested in all things recruiting. Twitter has changed my network significantly and the attendee list at #trulondon reflected this. About 1/3′rd recruiters, 1/3′rd corporate recruiters & HR & 1/3rd vendors, job boards & digital media experts. That tends to reflect the mix that is in my network. This mix does not fit in to the traditional networks of HR or even Recruiters. Previously, the only times we are likely to have communicated is during the process of either selling to or buying from one another, and would have crossed the road to avoid being seen in the same place.
When it comes down to it we share the same issues and problems and we want the same outcomes, just for different reasons. I believe this new community is great for all of our self development and will lead to a combined market and more combined business offerings. The community needs different levels of communication and consideration of what expertise you can bring to other disciplines. A view from outside your direct community also helps us to understand how our potential customer base views us, and will only strengthen the business offering.

Following beer and chinese I conducted a late night/early morning track with @radicalrecruit & @1ntelligence and we have coined the term “Social Human Convergence” to describe this new space. Look out for more on this.

3: Video is an underused medium to get your message out.

Very few of the attendees were using video to spread the word. It’s a more personal mediunm than the written word and has lots of potential for building personal brand. I’m still not convinced by Video C.V.’s as being effective (I much prefer audio), but a consistent video message really personalises what you are saying. On my part, I’m commiting to add a weekly video to my blog. 5 minutes of musings and chat. Be good to see more people doing this to get an even closer association with their followers because the message is viewed as so much more personal. Thanks to @Lisascales for this.

4: The UK has great blogs but not great bloggers.

A blog needs to be consistent and updated 2 – 3 times a week to have any real effect. The readers need to be able to pick up the theme in the opening lines. I’m thinking I need to work on this in order to properly promote my thinking, and in turn my content. Probably the number one skill a good blogger needs is the discipline to post when there are so many other distractions in social media. Britain lacks good bloggers that post often enough to build following. I’m a big fan of Sirona Says from @Andyheadworth and he is rightfully recieving critical acclaim. When I look at the blog 3 things stand out for me: Content, variety and consistent postings 3 – 4 times a week. I don’t see many other blogs, if any, matching this in our space. I see some great content from time to time but not enough on a regular enough basis to build following. If #trulondon can spawn even 3 more blogs to rival Andy then it will have been a great success. I’m thinking of running a blog carnival in December to get things started.

5: You need great service and products to match great social media.

The bigger your brand in social media the more open you are to critical comment when you don’t deliver. This is also why “listening” to what is being said by searching your name/brand in applications like tweetdeck or addict-o-matic is so useful. You can’t control what is being said but you can respond positively. Thanks to Paul @Carveconsulting & of course @Mattalder (The Addler) for this one.

6: Employer brand no longer exists.

I didn’t get in on the Recruiter cast debate on this but it did get me thinking. I’m looking forward to the debate when it goes out on Wednesday. Look out for it.

My thoughts on this after I had contemplated @Siteadvisors question is that he is probably right. Social media opens access to all that is being said about an employer directly or indirectly, but most of what is being said is being said by the employees directly. (There are Facebook groups dedicated to this.) In my opinion, social media makes personal branding much bigger than corporate branding unless you are a giant in the Pepsi or Coke mode. Most of us aren’t. It’s key that you are listening to what your employees are saying about you. You can influence this by reacting appropriately, changing things and getting the right things said about you by the personal brands within your organisation. Employee engagment is key in this and has more to say about how attractive you are to potential recruits than the glossy websites.

7: The recession has thrown up lots of new models for delivering recruiting.

The shake up from the recession has changed client needs in selecting suppliers. Top of the list is value and differentation. Among these are flat fee recruitment, charging for time and not result low cost job posting service with response handling, job boards that network and bring in the job seekers, referal networks with split fees paid for referrals and many more. This reinvention of the recruiting market is of real interest to me and is how I see recruiting evolving in order to withstand the challenge of corporate recruiting and social media. Is this a knee jerk reaction or more than that as the majority are still off social networks. I don’t have the answers yet but now I have the questions.

8: A Resourcer is not the UK version of a Sourcer.

In the U.K. a resourcer is largely responsible for finding candidates on c.v. databases and Linked in, a sourcer does much more than this. A sourcer identifies and profiles targets, builds organagrams and much more and has a whole bag of tricks to find them. This was largely new to everyone at #trulondon (with the exception of our own @thesourceress). I see this as being a discipline that should be better developed over here and have my thinking hat on over how this can be achieved with the help of @radicalrecruit.

9: Social Media is best served live.

#trulondon has further enhanced my belief that social media is best delivered in person. That means making sure you are creating networks that you talk to whether by phone, over a coffee or better still at events. Twitter and other channels brought together the attendees (and the track leaders for that matter) but the real networking took place in person. The big difference I see is that the getting to know you stage has already taken place which means you can get straight down to the talking. From a commercial point of view, I have already made a few deals as a result of the event that probably never happened without it. Make sure you are talking to and meeting your network as often as possible.

As a last thought, the Feburary event will have a wrap up tracks for the last hour to crystalise learning and help with putting actions in to practice. I will be sending out feedback forms this week but please keep sending your blogs, comments and pictures. You can always post here if you don’t have a home blog yet.

Date on Feburary event is out next week. hope you can make it.

Thanks for being ambassadors!

Bill

If you have been following this blog for a while you would know that I am always looking for the next thing. I have been doing the same thing with using social media in business.

Social Recruiting has a lot of buzz at the moment. How do I know there is a buzz, well 200+ people attended the Social Recruiting Summit in New York City last week, we have almost a full house at the ATC Social Media event, RecruitTech 2009 had social media as a primary theme.

But let us take a step back, for most social recruiting is just about using social media as another marketing channel. A terrible waste in my eyes.

My definition of social recruiting is:

• Using social media tools as part of the recruiting process
• Building a community of potential candidates
• Engaging with candidates as people not numbers

From an employer’s perspective recruitment is about fueling organisational growth, renewal, building the most efficient and sustainable business. This can only be done through personal relationships and cultural fit. (Yes there is a bit of sales and marketing in the mix but that is just attraction, the rest of the process is all personal.)

This brings me to Doc Searls’s recent blog post “Beyond Social Media“. If you do not know Doc Searls you should, also you should read the book he co-authors 10 years ago, Cluetrain. In the post Doc raises several very good points.

• Twitter is now as necessary to tweeting as Google is to search. It’s a public activity under private control.
• Most other popular activities online are not owned by anyone, they are public.
• Personal and social go hand-in-hand, but the latter builds on the former.
• Today in the digital world we still have very few personal tools that work only for us, are under personal control
• Individually-empowered customers are the ultimate greenfield for business and culture.
• What we’re not doing because “social” everything is such a bubble of buzz right now

Are we really finally about to enter the age of Brand You or is it another 10 years away? If the individual is now the key to business and culture what does that mean for:

• The recruitment process?
• The HR Management practices in your average corporation?

I hear recruiters complaining they do not have time to develop relationships with candidates or use Twitter etc. But what happens when the candidates are developing that relationship with a potential hiring manager or potential peer? Where do recruiters add value in this transaction?

For HR the issue is just as difficult. When employees view themselves as individuals who own the ideas, conversation and intentions to create the “business”. How do structured learning and development programs remain valid in an era of so much open information? How do you keep employees engaged? How does that traditional compensation plan survive?

I could go on, but I hope you get the picture. So if what Doc Searls is saying, “individually-empowered customers are the ultimate greenfield for business and culture”, is true then the companies who first leverage these concepts will be the ones we are talking about in 5 years time. Just as recruiters now marvel at Microsoft and the like who all started on their paths in around 2005.

Twitter recently released Twitter Lists which allow you to group people together based on whatever subjective categorization method you want. For example: since its rollout I’ve been made a part of 107 lists, including: Networking Rockstars, Human Capital Peeps, Movers and Shakers, Gators (go Tebow!), and my favorite – Women. (I looked down and checked; yup, that’s an appropriate group for me to be in)

This is great that Twitter has created these lists – however, Twitter is a bit late to the game with this upgrade, and there are some limitations/downsides to its current functionality. For starters, I’ve had “lists” of people in my TweetDeck groups since 2008. I know other Twitter apps have also provided the opportunity to categorize our flocks of tweeple. In addition, when you ‘follow’ a list, all you’re following is the list. And to the best of my knowledge, in order to view the list updates, you actually have to go TO the list instead of having it automatically update like with TweetDeck groups. You can’t subscribe to an RSS feed of the list yet, either, like you can for individual Twitter users. (unless you know how to manipulate Yahoo Pipes) AND – if you want to actually follow the people in the List, you know, so they can DM you and so forth, you have to manually click through each person and follow them. I don’t know about you, but I’m too lazy busy to do that these days.

Of course, you also can’t ’share’ your TweetDeck groups so Twitter Lists has a leg up here. But I found something better a couple of months ago, long before Twitter launched its lists feature…

My list-builder of choice is a sweet little service called TweepML. TweepML is “an XML format used to represent a list of Tweeps (Twitter users).” Basically, you can add people to a list, share the generated link, and allow other people to actually follow those individuals, not the list itself. In addition, you can add buttons to your website to provide an easy one-click follow to all of the people on the list, or you can select who on the list you want to follow by checking the box beside a name.

The best part is that I’ve actually found a great way for the two of these listing services to play together! A very cool feature that TweepML has is a quick import tool, so if you have a link to a page with a list of Twitter users that you want to add to a list (let’s say, oh, a Twitter List) it will automatically extract the Twitter users from that site and put it directly into your list builder.

For example: we recently had our first Bellingham Social Media meet & greet, and I wanted to create a list of people who were interested in the group on Twitter. I created a Twitter List of these people, copied the URL, and pasted it into the field that TweepML provides to automatically find Twitter users:

I finished creating the TweepML Bellingham Social Media list and posted the link up on our Facebook group page so that everyone there can follow each other without having to constantly click through to the Twitter list. Simple, quick, and no extra steps!

Now – something that would be even more of a value-add would be an integration between TweepML and say TweetDeck to automatically associate people from a certain list with an existing group….how ’bout it guys? Can you make that happen?

LinkedIn’s been busy.

I don’t know about you, but I have always wondered what LinkedIn was going to do with all of the deep/rich data they capture with every profile that is created on their site.

With the release of 4 new dynamic search refinements that are now available to users of LinkedIn’s Recruiter and Recruiter Professional Services, we gain some insight.

LinkedIn contacted me last week and gave me the honor of an exclusive sneak peek into what users of their 2 premium recruiter offerings will be able to take advantage of to quickly find more relevant candidate search results.

LinkedIn has definitely been busy, and they apparently appreciate the value of human capital data – maybe as much as I do.

Data = Intelligence!

With every LinkedIn profile that is created, valuable candidate and company data is captured, including overall years of employment, years of experience with most recent employer, and years of experience in most recent role.

LinkedIn is able to harness the latent power of this kind of information, and they refer to this as “derived data.” That’s because when people create LinkedIn profiles, they are not prompted to directly produce this data. However, LinkedIn is able to derive/calculate it from the information people enter into their career history because the data is there.

This isn’t too dissimilar to resume parse, search, and match applications that “derive” current employer, years of experience, and most recent experience from resumes when they deconstruct them through the resume parsing process and subsequently make this data specifically searchable.

LinkedIn’s 4 New Dynamic Search Filters

What users of LinkedIn’s Recruiter and Recruiter Professional Services offerings now have the ability to do is dynamically refine search results by:

Overall Years of Experience

Years at Most Recent Company

Years in Most Recent Position

By Group (coming really soon!)

What’s the Big Deal?

Sourcers and recruiters know that the ability to search for people with a minimum years of experience is a very nice feature. When the position you’re sourcing and recruiting for requires a minimum of 10 years of experience, sifting through all of the search results of people with less than 10 years of experience is essentially a waste of time. If you need 10 years of experience – you should only get people with 10+ years of experience.

Also, it’s very convenient to be able to refine search results by people who have been in their most recent position for a specified period of time. This feature can help sourcers and recruiters avoid (if they so choose) profiles of people who have been in their most recent position for less than a year.

Have a hiring manager or client that doesn’t like job hoppers? LinkedIn’s got your back. Now you can search for people who have been at their most recent employer for a minimum period of time that you can specify.

I know I’ve had my fair share of clients/managers who did not hesitate to tell me they preferred candidates who’ve been with their employer for 3-4 years or more. If you have access to either of LinkedIn’s 2 Recruiter offerings, now you can target these people with the click of your mouse. That’s cool!

X-Ray searching

What’s that? “So what?” you say?

Yes, you can search LinkedIn for free using a free account. However, you’re limited to viewing the names of those people who are in your network, and you won’t have access to the 4 new Dynamic Search Refinements.

Yes, I also know that any sourcer/recruiter worth their salt can search LinkedIn for free using Internet search engines such as Google to X-Ray and view any public profile.

But that ability comes at a price. The price is paid in the form of more false positives and imprecise results that come from the intrinsic inability to execute very targeted searches when searching unstructured data.

With X-Ray searching, you’re unable to control current company, exact location (beyond a 50 mile radius metro area), reliably control current titles. With X-Ray searching, you’re also unable to refine your search results by overall years of experience, years of experience with most recent employer and in most recent role.

Do You Really Need a LinkedIn Recruiter Account to Extract Value from LinkedIn?

Of course not.

However, those with LinkedIn Recruiter access will essentially have a competitive advantage over those who do not in that they can more precisely target candidates with specific career histories. The sword they use to slice and dice human capital data will be sharper than those used by people who subsist on searching LinkedIn for free. Premium users will be able to extract more value from LinkedIn more quickly, and more precisely than those searching LinkedIn for free.

Remember, the value of data (in this case, human capital data) lies not in the data itself. Simply having access to data is not enough – this is something that people who claim sourcing is dying or dead don’t really understand.

Extracting value from data is directly tied to the ability to quickly find exactly what you want – retrieve highly relevant search results that closely match the intent of your search (not just the search terms – there’s a big difference!). 

And these 4 new dynamic search refinements from LinkedIn help you do exactly that.

What the Future Holds

I have a feeling that these 4 new dynamic search refinements are only the beginning of what LinkedIn is planning to with the data they have on hand. I can only imagine the possibilities – and I can think of a few that are quite exciting!

Disclaimer:
I don’t have a LinkedIn Recruiter account, nor was I compensated in any way for this article. LinkedIn didn’t even ask to proof/approve this post before I published it, and for that unconditional extension of faith and trust, I sincerely thank Esteban and Francois!

We have 32 sites who fulfil the shortlist criteria*.  If we have missed someone there is  a "free text" box where you can enter their details.  For obvious reasons I've had to exclude our own blog!

So, if you want to select your favourite recruitment focussed blog in the UK please click here.  Voting closes 6pm 14th December 2009.
 
We will announce the winner in the last newsletter of 2009.  They will receive a lovely box of wine from our sponsors: Harbour ATS.

*Shortlist criteria:
a) Recruitment focussed
b) Established for at least six months
c) Having posted at least once a month in the last six months
d) Having posted since the start of October

About our sponsor: HARBOUR® ATS is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) built for today's business needs and considering today's Internet - for both candidates and employers. Flexible, quick to deploy and with high integrity ROI reporting, this is Applicant Tracking as it should be. www.harbour-ats.com

Twitter is a great leveler and a real indication of where your brand stands. The reality is that some people like you and value your comments, some people don’t. The instant feedback element is part of what i like about the channel, as well as the opportunity to enter in to conversation and get feedback quickly. As twitter, and twitter use has evolved then the conversations and relationships on and off line have got closer and some real business relationships have been formed. When i spoke in Dallas at #Talentnetlive and at Recruitfest09 in Toronto, it was noticeably different that 80% of the delegates knew me or about me on some level without ever having met me. This is how social media has really changed the way we network.

Of recent, I’ve started following all the news from conferences worldwide. A recent blog by @HRMargo highlighted this, how twitter has enabled her to feel a part of many conferences that she would otherwise have been either excluded by budget/location or knowledge that it was taking place, the learning was exclusive to the lucky few who attended. I have recently organized #trulondon quite a low budget. The marketing has been almost exclusively via twitter, using the #trulondon hash tag and a wide number of blogs written about the event and we have managed to attract 12 top names in social recruiting as track leaders including Geoff Webb (@radicalrecruit) from Canada. This level of international marketing would have taken years and many thousands of pounds/dollars pre twitter. 

We all have our own views on how to build an effective following and maintain it. For me it is about conversation, contribution, helping where you can and sharing. For me, i make a regular habit of promoting my followers within my network and passing on links that i think might be interesting. I do this by retweeting links that interest me that i think could interest my network. I also retweet jobs in social recruiting that i see because i know that some of my followers are actively looking now and they may have missed it. My network is also international with about 70% of my followers being based out of the UK, and as a result i like to promote UK bloggers that I’m interested in and vice-a-versa. Through social media (and skype) the world is a shrinking place, and there is lots to be learnt from all cultures and recruiting markets. I see this as probably the biggest benefit of being involved in social networks, bigger than the business and brand opportunity is the self-development that comes from this instant library of bloggers and advisors in my twitter stream. If i like it, i want to share it.

There we come to the nature of twitter. Some people will simply not like your style, personality, volume or any number of other things. With a big following you can’t please everyone or you become pretty sterile, and how far away is changing your image from being unauthentic? The same people that talk brand image equally talk authenticity and originality. My advice is that consistency is the key, retaining a distinctive style. With nearly 3000 followers it seems to work o.k. for me. in the process i will lose some followers. without wishing to sound arrogant about it, i would invite anyone that does not like my style to unfollow, it’s really quite easy. That for me is one of the appeals of twitter, you choose who you want to follow and who you don’t, exercise that choice.

What prompted this blog was the comments from Peter Gold on a blog i wrote quite a few months ago in another group.

Peters comments were:

“Maybe you were not on the list because you just RT everything anybody else says – where is the value to anyone in that? 100 tweets doesn’t make you good; 100 cold calls but not one new vacancy – what would be the point? You’ve some way to go Bill.”

Rather than be upset by this, it got me thinking about the comments, should i change how i tweet or continue as i do for the reasons outlined? i actually apreciate people being open and critical, even when they clearly have not read the full blog and subsequent comments. My conclusion is what is outlined at the start of this entry. I may well have a long way to go, we all do and if my followers were decreasing i might be concerned but thats the beauty of twitter, if you don’t like what i do, don’t follow me or put me on your list. we all have that sanction and long may it continue.

To everyone in my network please retweet often. send anything you think might be interesting, i welcolme it and thank you for sharing. By sharing and engaging with your followers, and promoting others as well as yourself you build a trusted and valued network.

What are your thoughts on the best way to build a following and the value of a retweet? A great discussion for the social media circus track on Thursday. comment freely, i have broad shoulders.

------------------------------

OK, so i am an observer and some might say active participant in the "recruitment industry needs to change" rhetoric/mantra.  The twitter feeds and blogs are full of pearls of wisdom on how the industry needs to change and how bad the world is.  Does appear that these people (and my guilty hands are up) are talking to each other and not changing a damn thing, after all they and I, like people who agree with me/us, we're only human!  But it's not the people who agree with us that we need to change but those that don't...the big question is how the hell do we change them!

Well, I believe it is by role modelling the change, by setting the benchmark and not compromising...so at Chemistry we are looking at every process and making sure that it lives up to the standards by which we preach.  It'll take time, and will probably (short term) cost us some cash  but if we are going to Twitter and Blog about this stuff we have to do it, we have to "be the change we want to see" (that's not my line, little guy, glasses went by the name of Ghandi i think).

Some of the areas we are whiter than white on, seriously if we were any whiter, i'd rename us Bold or Mother Teresa, except they wouldn't be at all catchy or on brand.

Others we need to tighten up on, our first area is candidate feedback.  

I know this because we recently cocked up and worded a "reject" email too bluntly, we were trying to be "different" but on reflection it lacked empathy...we take this seriously, so i personally worded an apology to all 103 rejected applicants and sent them 1 by 1 from my email account, it took 2 hours, it was important so it didn't matter how long, just that it got done with thought and care.

The response was phenomenal, it was an outpouring of unfiltered emotion, mostly in utter disbelief that a recruitment company would be so professional and dare i say it "caring" but also to a person, they questioned why they had been rejected as they were convinced they had the right experience?

So i reviewed each and every applicant again, my conclusion? We were right to reject all of them, based on the CV we received.  So i called a couple of them and lo and behold, these were good candidates...just with monumentally shit CVs, I mean bloody awful.  

The conclusion is that there are a lot of very good people who are being poorly served by their CVs, in most instances these CVs have been written for them by outplacement firms (must blog about them, awful :-)) or recruitment companies (god forbid).

So the question is do we "preach" that it's not good enough or do something about it...well guess what? We did and we are doing something about it.

Firstly over the last month or so I have been taking time out of an evening to give people advice on CVs, two of these people within 4 weeks of changing their CV had multiple interviews and both are now in new jobs (they had both been unemployed for months)...so the advice was working BUT how do we scale the process.

Well, as of next week, we will be running the first Chemistry CV Clinic, using Webex,  job seekers will receive free feedback on their CVs and how they present themselves, it will be a Q&A and practical session.  We will then run a follow up session with them to track progress and provide additional support if needed.  We plan to hold these every week for as long as people need it. 

We ain't doing it for the money (it's free), we are doing it because if we are brave enough to spout off about how crap our industry is, we better have the commitment/balls to do something about.  So it's not brave but it might just be Chemistry :-)

R

PS: if anyone would care to join us on this venture and scale it even further, we would love to form a gang...minus the parkas and vespas...so just a "trying to change the world of recruitment" gang...we can work out the uniform later....

PPS: If you are looking for a new role and would like to be included in one of the sessions, email Rowan, at rowanw@thechemistrygroup.com

###

Resume Forensics by Jim Stroud

RESUME FORENSICS: Strategies and Tactics for finding millions of resumes and passive candidates on the world wide web for free.

As the end of the year looms, have you considered your budget for the following year? Are you realizing that as you make your workforce decisions, you may very soon need to scale your recruiting efforts accordingly? In this recession, are you equipped to do more with less? If you are not planning for the future, the best time to do so is now. Now you can get the results of 100 hours of online research to learn where to find the resources you need for quickly building a pipeline of talent in various niche industries.

In his 45-page report, “Resume Forensics,” Searchologist Jim Stroud shares the following:

• Where in the world can I find the most online resumes for free?
• Where in the world can I find the most online CVs for free?
• Which search engine has the most resumes indexed?
• Which search engine had the most industry-specific resumes indexed?
• Which search engine delivered the most relevant search results when seeking out resumes?
• How many free resumes were collectively indexed on Google, Yahoo and Bing?
• Which resume searches worked the best on Google, Yahoo and Bing?
• How many passive candidates skilled in Computer Science are online?
• Where is the best place to find passive candidates skilled in the most popular computer languages?

Plus get easy to follow instructions on how to perform the following:

• How to source passive candidates from popular and obscure Social Networks and online forums.
• How to find free resumes on Google
• How to find free resumes on Yahoo
• How to find free resumes on Bing
• How to find free resumes online that most Recruiters overlook

NOTE: The tutorials have been simplified even further with the addition of several TinyUrls. In other words, after explaining the process of sourcing a particular skillset, a Tinyurl is given so you can view the exact method used to find that results. For example, go to your browser and type in this web address: http://tinyurl.com/example229 You will be taken to an example of how to find CTOs on Google.

###

Click here for more details about Resume Forensics and a REALLY great deal I am offering for a limited time.

(In all modesty, this is a great use of a Training budget!)

Tweet This Post

###

Resume Forensics by Jim Stroud

RESUME FORENSICS: Strategies and Tactics for finding millions of resumes and passive candidates on the world wide web for free.

As the end of the year looms, have you considered your budget for the following year? Are you realizing that as you make your workforce decisions, you may very soon need to scale your recruiting efforts accordingly? In this recession, are you equipped to do more with less? If you are not planning for the future, the best time to do so is now. Now you can get the results of 100 hours of online research to learn where to find the resources you need for quickly building a pipeline of talent in various niche industries.

In his 45-page report, “Resume Forensics,” Searchologist Jim Stroud shares the following:

• Where in the world can I find the most online resumes for free?
• Where in the world can I find the most online CVs for free?
• Which search engine has the most resumes indexed?
• Which search engine had the most industry-specific resumes indexed?
• Which search engine delivered the most relevant search results when seeking out resumes?
• How many free resumes were collectively indexed on Google, Yahoo and Bing?
• Which resume searches worked the best on Google, Yahoo and Bing?
• How many passive candidates skilled in Computer Science are online?
• Where is the best place to find passive candidates skilled in the most popular computer languages?

Plus get easy to follow instructions on how to perform the following:

• How to source passive candidates from popular and obscure Social Networks and online forums.
• How to find free resumes on Google
• How to find free resumes on Yahoo
• How to find free resumes on Bing
• How to find free resumes online that most Recruiters overlook

NOTE: The tutorials have been simplified even further with the addition of several TinyUrls. In other words, after explaining the process of sourcing a particular skillset, a Tinyurl is given so you can view the exact method used to find that results. For example, go to your browser and type in this web address: http://tinyurl.com/example229 You will be taken to an example of how to find CTOs on Google.

###

Click here for more details about Resume Forensics and a REALLY great deal I am offering for a limited time.

(In all modesty, this is a great use of a Training budget!)

Tweet This Post

Hi everyone, I’ve written this article to help you understand and use the different types of Tweets you can use on Twitter. Hope you enjoy.

1. Classic Tweets.

“What are you doing right now?”

This type of Tweet is simple and describes what you are doing. Don’t described what you are eating. Too many people do this because they can’t think of anything else. It’s boring!

You can make the most basic Tweet interesting by saying what you think about what you are doing or explaining why you are doing it. Don’t just say “Going into a meeting” or “Taking a siesta”. Instead try “Going into meeting to present our new product” or “Need a siesta. Worked all night on this new product presentation”. You get the idea.

2. Opinion Tweets.

Keep your opinions focused on topics that impact your industry. Don’t avoid these types of tweets for fear of causing conflict. People without opinions look impersonal, companies without opinions look impartial and plain BORING!

From a public relations perspective, I would recommend that you keep your opinion Tweets supportive of positive topics. Tell the world your thoughts about news items and general current affairs are good. Lots of people search twitter for keywords surrounding current news items. Talking about these in your Tweets can help you gain followers.

3. Mission Accomplished Tweets.

Tell people about what you’ve just done. When you announce that you’ve just completed a project or action, you are basically saying to your followers “What do you think of this?” Try to keep a blend of personal and business “Mission Accomplished Tweets”.

4. Entertainment Tweets.

People follow people they find informative. They also follow people they find entertaining. This type of Tweet furthers your personality, lightens the mood and makes you a fun person to hang out with on Twitter.

5. Question Tweets.

Can you help me do something?

Simple or complex questions requiring technical experience are fine. They allow you to engage with your followers. They can also be great conversation starters. “What do you think about this topic or problem?”. Using these types of Tweets every now and then is a great way to check how engaged your followers are. If you get people responding, you’re on the right path. If you don’t get people responding, it’s time to look at your approach to Twitter and the type of followers you have.

6. Picture Tweets.

Contrary to popular belief you can share pictures on Twitter. There is a ‘catch’. You have to have your pics stored online (like flickr or picasso). Try twitpic. Open an account, choose the image to upload, describe it and tag it, then add your message. This will then be broadcast as a tweet. It will appear in your timeline with your message and a link to your pic. Nifty hey?

Try getting a good mix of all types of Tweets. You’ll soon see which work best for your followers. Make up your own types of Tweets as well. Have fun with Twitter, that’s what’s there for.

Cheers,

Kohlben Vodden

Marketing4recruiters

Email: Marketing4recruiters@gmail.com

Blog: http://www.marketing4recruiters.wordpress.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/marketing4recs

LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2317988&trk=hb_side_g

Facebook Page: http://bit.ly/CH2bz

Last Wednesday, I wrote a post about how I believe that sourcing is not dying, but evolving. I ended the post with a teaser about what I believe sourcing will evolve into in the coming years. I certainly don’t think the need for the skills which sourcers possess will go away, but I feel like other aspects of a sourcer’s repertoire will become more in-demand as our communication methods continue to change.

As I mentioned last week, human interaction is an integral part of any profession that falls into the same classification pool as sourcing, talent attraction / acquisition, recruiting, HR, etc. To ignore the fact that our jobs are very ‘high-touch’ would be foolish, no matter how deep into the technical aspect of sourcing we may be. In the coming years, and I think especially over the course of 2010, I see sourcing taking on a huge role of proactive communication. Since the accessibility of information via social networks keeps getting easier and easier, I believe being a good relationship-builder is going to go up in value. Please note: I do not believe this means that sourcing will inevitably equal recruiting. The reason I know this is because not all recruiters know how to build relationships. You all know what I’m talking about – we all know at least one recruiter who is a script-reading robot with the interpersonal skills of a rock.

Sourcers who are good communicators are going to be the goodwill ambassadors and (I hope Glen will forgive me for this) the talent pipeline builders. Sourcing is going to take on a very proactive marketing-type role, involving such things as interaction in discussion forums, posing questions on LinkedIn, writing for and selecting content for a company blog, getting involved in the Chamber of Commerce, attending networking events, and getting the word out about either their companies or their clients.

We have seen throughout the history of recruiting how important building true relationships is, and sadly I feel that recruiting, and thus sourcing, has become more transactional in recent years. Sourcing of the future will move away from the transactional and more toward the strategic, as people become more web savvy and numb to blanket messaging. Sourcing, I believe, will begin to take on more of a proactive than a reactive role. Since more of the technical search aspect of it can (and will) be automated, this opens up a window of time to start being proactive. Consider this: traditionally, sourcers wait to research until they receive a search request from a recruiter. I think the future role of sourcing will be for sourcers to continually have their ‘antennae’ up for good talent, and to also take the opportunity to start developing those initial relationships so that when timing is appropriate, the recruiters can approach them warmly with job opportunities.

There is no cookie-cutter mold into which a sourcer fits. At SourceCon 2007, during my presentation about what true research is, I stopped for an interactive portion and polled the audience of researchers for their educational and professional backgrounds. I asked 5 people to share, and not one of them had the same educational OR professional career path. So, when thinking about who would be the best types of people to hire for this future sourcing role, two in particular come to mind. They might surprise you a little:

• Public relations specialists: In the ‘entry level’ years of PR, traditionally individuals will conduct research and create ‘pitch lists’ for their companies or their clients. While they’re honing these research skills, they are also taking lessons on pitching, managing campaigns, and client interaction from their senior coworkers. Translate this into a sourcing role: you’ve got someone who knows how to find the right people, and then who knows how to interact with them professionally and get them excited about a company or a job opportunity.
• English majors: I am the daughter of an English teacher, and I used to help Mom grade her students’ grammar papers. But earning a degree in English goes well beyond knowing proper grammar – you learn to master the high standards of accuracy, clarity, and finesse of the language as well as information synthesis, summarization, and analysis of literature. As search engines strive toward semantic comprehension, a person who has studied sentence mapping and understands the historical progression of the meanings of various words and phrases will be able to pair this with searching a social network to find the right people. And with the increasingly lackadaisical attitude toward proper grammar and punctuation in communication due to spellcheck and text message abbreviations, someone who has mastered these skills will be highly sought-after in a role where good communication is so crucial.

I have mentioned the PR job description in a couple of blog postings, discussing the similarities between its and recruiting’s job duties. English, on the other hand, I would guess is a bit of a surprise to some, but I truly believe that will be a sought-after major in the coming years.

As we observe and experience the change in our job functions, let’s not forget the importance of knowing the basics. Understanding Boolean will always be key to successful sourcing. But understanding the rising value of strategic proactive relationship discovery and development will help you evolve with the position. Work on GOOD networking skills. Start learning about semantic search. Educate yourself on professional communication skills. Study the people who really know how to cultivate relationships. And don’t believe for a second that sourcing is dying – it’s just getting a facelift.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not perfect by any means. I got a C in my English final exams. I never won a spelling bee, and I couldn’t tell you the difference between a preposition and the subjunctive. And no Rove, I am not Smarter Than a Fifth Grader. There’s a decent chance you may encounter mistakes in this blog!

My issue is with poor written communication in a professional sense. Every recruiter sees the sloppy resumes that come through every day, riddled with spelling, formatting and grammatical mistakes. Seriously, Microsoft Word should be idiot-proof, but it clearly isn’t. The automatic spell checker isn’t subtle, it puts a little red squiggly line under your word. It’s trying to tell you that you are missing an “i” in the word liaise (possibly the most incorrectly spelled word on resume’s around the world)!

I used to work in the world of rec to rec, and it astounded me how many recruitment consultants had poorly written resumes. Which leads me to wonder do these consultants not care what sort of resume comes their way? I couldn’t possibly have even considered them unless their experience was so impressive that it neutralises the carelessness.

Perhaps it’s Facebook, the advent of text language or falling education standards, but it seems to me that people are increasingly losing the ability to properly formulate the English language. Or perhaps we simply don’t care as much anymore. It really isn’t difficult to differentiate between your and you’re and there, their and they’re.

Obviously, if you have an unimpressive resume or cover letter, chances are you are not going to get a second look. Everybody knows that. However it amazes me that when people do get a job, many times their written presentation takes a back seat. As recruitment consultants, most of us put a lot of effort into dressing well, looking well, and presenting confidently on the phone. All that may be in vain if your follow up email and subsequent communication with your client is poorly written.

It doesn’t take long to review your email before sending it, run a spelling and grammar check, and read it back to yourself. Don’t waste all your previous hard work with a sloppily written communication.

Well, as the famous South African golfer Gary Player said, ‘The harder I practice, the luckier I get!’

So, even though advice on public speaking is commonplace, I thought I would share what I have learned about presenting powerfully. And I am not only talking about formal speeches. Most of us have many platforms where getting a message across is important. A staff meeting, a client presentation, a farewell speech. Here are a few things I learned, and I practice ’til this day.

• Prepare every word. With so many years experience of public speaking, it’s true I can stand up and ‘wing’ a passably good speech. But mostly, I don’t! I prepare every word of a major presentation, typing the whole thing out. On the day itself, I may well ad lib big chunks. I go where my mind takes me, and to the audience it may look as though a 60 minute presentation was done without a single note. But I have the security of knowing I can refer back to the full transcript. It is my ’safety device’, and it’s a key psychological aid.
• Plan your key points. Your presentation needs structure. Work out what it is you really want to get across to your audience. It may only be two or three key points. Make those clear and communicate them hard and often.
• Tell stories. People love true stories. Anecdotes that support your key points. Make sure they are true, relevant and sometimes funny. I include them all the time, and years after the presentation, people remember the story.
• Don’t tell pre-planned jokes. Unless you are Jerry Seinfeld, don’t do it. It’s a rare skill to tell a joke well, and almost always they fall flat and are not quite appropriate anyway. Humour is good, but best off the cuff and always self-deprecating.
• Rehearse like crazy. I admit it. I rehearse my speeches, aloud and many times. I time them, so I know I won’t be rushing to meet the allotted time allowed for the presentation. In earlier days, my long suffering wife would be asked to hear every speech before ‘D’ day. And her feedback was noted and changes made. I practice the punch-lines of pithy stories and I make sure the words flow. Maybe these days I don’t put as much into rehearsing as I did before, as I have 25 years experience of public speaking now… but I still rehearse every speech at least once.. all the way through.
• Start strongly. Write your opening lines carefully and rewrite then until you like them a lot. Make sure you start strong. It grabs peoples attention. It also gives you confidence to know you have captured the audience early. I remember once starting a speech with a quote from the Business Review Weekly. It went something like “60% of people in this room today are currently failing in your current roles”. I then went on to elaborate and explain, but I had their attention early!
• Even prepare for the ’small ones’. Giving a farewell speech? Announcing a new policy? Explaining the monthly team results? Prepare as if it’s a major speech. Work out your key points and prepare a strong opening. List who to thank or congratulate. All these small occasions build your brand, your leadership credentials and allow you to influence morale and opinion.
• Use PowerPoint sparingly. I use PowerPoint, but mostly as a teaser. Words are few and just give a taste of what I am going to elaborate on. If I use a graph or chart, it’s very sparse and just shows a trend or direction that I will explain orally. No detail. If you use a PowerPoint, make sure 90% of the audience time remains focused on you, 10% on the screen.
• Warm up. Seriously, before every speech I “warm up”. Just as a footballer warms up the muscles about to be used in battle, so must a speaker. I find a quiet place (hotel room or at home before I leave) and practice tongue twisters. Say these fast and repeatedly, ‘Red lorry, yellow lorry, green lorry’. Then try “She sells sea shells on the sea shore”. Over and over, until you can get them word perfect at speed. Guess what? When you hit the podium there is no stumbling over words and your brain and tongue are in synch!
• End strongly. Sum up your main points and end with a phrase or thought that people take away with them. It takes planning, but it’s important to leave them with a key message.
• Prepare the logistics. I take a copy of my speech in my briefcase and another in my suitcase if it’s an interstate trip. I have the powerpoint on my laptop and on a memory stick. I bring both to the venue. If my laptop does not work for some reason (it’s happened)! I can memory stick it on someone else’s. I make sure I know the location of the presentation and I plan the trip there, so I know I will be on time. The last thing you want is to be flustered because you lost your notes, your power point is on the fritz or you arrive 10 minutes late.

They say public speaking is the number two fear human beings have, after death! It does not have to be so. A little hard preparation before your speech will save tons of perspiration during it.

When it comes to writing, Recruiters are like PR consultants!

They are taught a formula for how they write their job advertisements (or press releases for PR consultants) when they first start their careers.

Unfortunately for both of these groups of professionals, what they are taught is normally ineffective and dead boring. But no one challenges the status quo, because “that’s the way it’s always been done” or “I don’t have the time spend on writing interesting advertisements” or the most common excuse “I get results why should I change what I do”.

That last excuse really concerns me.

Yes, you obviously get candidates responding by writing advertisements the same old way you always have.

But, what about the candidates who overlooked or dismissed your advertisement?

How do you know who you are missing?

Well, a lot of the job boards will give you stats on how many times your advertisement appeared in the search results, how many people viewed it and how many applied. My point is that when a recruiter actually bothers to look at these stats they will no doubt find large differences in the stats. Most recruiters I know don’t even look at these stats. The ones that do, merely pass off the large volume of candidates who viewed the advertisement but didn’t apply as “we ruled them out by the criteria we placed in the advertisement”. Does this account for 100% of the people who viewed it but didn’t reply?

No it doesn’t, I’ve read so many advertisements that have really made me cringe. Here are a just a few of the reasons why:

Some are just position descriptions that have literally been copied into the advertisement.

Many don’t give essential decision-making information like location, salary range, size and reputation of the company.

A lot of recruiter advertisements are 50% about the recruitment company and not the clients company. Worse still this “corporate fluff” about the recruitment company is at the very beginning of the advertisement.

Some are just plain boring.

It’s time to change the way you think about your job advertisements.

This article is the first part of a series I will write about using copywriting and advertising techniques in your job advertisements to get more responses, better quality responses, improve brand awareness and get people talking about your recruitment company because of the amazing advertisements you write.

I’ll give you easy to follow and implement techniques in the coming articles in this series. In the meantime, I want you start asking yourself the following questions the next time you go to write a job advertisement:

Do you really know your target audience? What are their buying motivators?

What aspects of your company, your client and the job is appealing to this target audience?

How will working for your client improve the readers life?

That’s all for now. If you have any particular questions about writing job advertisements please get in touch and I’ll be sure to cover these topics in the upcoming series.

Cheers,

Kohlben Vodden

Marketing4recruiters

Email: Marketing4recruiters@gmail.com

Blog: http://www.marketing4recruiters.wordpress.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/marketing4recs

LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2317988&trk=hb_side_g

Facebook Page: http://bit.ly/CH2bz

Earlier this week Twitter and LinkedIn announced a partnership whereby you can now share updates between both services. Given that according to Pew Internet & American Life Project a total of 19% of American online adults have posted a status update this change is significant.

Firstly it will give all those professionals on LinkedIn who feel they do not have time for Twitter a chance to create a Twitter presence that complements their LinkedIn profile.

Second Twitter users who want to provide their professional LinkedIn profile with a bit of fresh content can do so. But this is the trick.

Most people with a LinkedIn profile want to keep it professional, well the folks at LinkedIn and Twitter have thought of this.

You can set up the integration so only Tweets with the hashtag #in appear on your LinkedIn profile.

All of this new content on both platforms is a gold mine for Recruiters and Employers.

How?

Many people keep their LinkedIn profile a little restricted from a public point of view, with their status updates appearing in Twitter you can now get a better view on what they are doing. But it is the integration from Twitter to LinkedIn which has the most potential. If people are using LinkedIn as their digital resume, tweets appearing alongside their professional background will allow recruiters and employers to gain a far greater understanding of a candidate.

To be honest the UK recruitment bloggers I know are a great bunch, always willing to help each other. So as Louise launches her UK Blogger of the year, the fighting gloves come off to win this converted accolade.

But before I cast my vote I thought I would check out my own blogroll, to see who is missing and although I do not want to include more to the list and thereby limiting my chances I certainly feel that some of the below are worthy of your vote. A few of which may be under the radar as they focus on their own recruitment sector, which in my humble opinion is what a recruitment blog is all about, well that is if you are still a recruiter of course!

So just a few more to consider are as follows:

careerplayer All about careers and videos
hjafands plain and not the best design, but functional updated regularly and includes their latest vacancies, making sure they get found on Google of course. Mike if you need your blog updating let me know
freshminds talent excellent site well structured and well written
legal recruitment an excellet blog, often gets missed as it is aimed at the legal profession
Mr Resourceful written by Nic Tomlinson of HTS Specialist Recruiters, sorry Nic just noticed you moved your blog, Oh a link to your own company would be a good idea!
Prefio Aimed soley to the property market, although I find it a little confusing in its layout, not very blog looking if you get my meaning
View from a Hill Sue Hill’s recruitment blog, again well written but I am surprised she has no link going from her blog to her website, missed opportunities!
TFPL recruitment blog Recruit in Knowledge and Information, says it all really
The Blunter Headhunter Now I am surprised this one isnt on the list, as it is one of the more controversal

And the ones who have seemed to have lost their way

Bornto Advise Not written since july

Tag Recruitment blog An example on how it can go wrong 5 posts then that was it!

But of course if you feel I am still worth a vote then please feel free…

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Recruitment Juice Press Release

ISSUED 12 NOVEMBER 2009

RECRUITMENT JUICE LTD PROUD TO ANNOUNCE THE FIRST EVER ‘JUICE LIVE’ EVENT “BOOST YOUR NEW BUINESS DRIVE” SEMINAR

Recruitment Juice Ltd, leading supplier of innovative DVD training programs to the recruitment industry, is building on their success with the addition to their product portfolio of their first live seminar event.

The event, which will take place on Tuesday 12^th January 2010 in central London, will be presented by Roy Ripper, host of their DVD programs and will focus purely on transforming the way recruiters approach new clients and generate more business – a topic close to many recruiters’ hearts working in today’s market.

“We hope the event will offer a great opportunity for recruiters to network, learn new strategies and techniques and get a massive motivational boost for their new business drive in the New Year. The seminar will be really high-impact and full of energy as we want the delegates rushing back to their desks desperate to use their newly learned skills and get started on new business!” said Roy.

Presenting alongside Roy, will be author and sales motivational speaker Gavin Ingham, who has been well known for over ten years for his inspirational and compelling approach to sales training.

Matt Trott, Director of Recruitment Juice commented, “We are extremely excited to have secured Gavin’s involvement in this event as we know he will bring something truly unique to the program. We are also very proud to have Dan McGuire, Managing Director of Broadbean Technology, hosting the welcome address and delivering some of his entrepreneurial flair to the delegates as he did when he appeared as an ‘expert’ in our second DVD series.”

For full agenda details and further information on the event visit http://www.recruitmentjuice.com/juice_live.htm or call 08700 677 567.

The event is proudly sponsored by JobShop HQ – www.jobshophq.com & Broadbean Technology – www.broadbean.com. Media Partner – UK Recruiter, www.ukrecruiter.co.uk.

For interviews or more information please contact: Dee Parker, 08700 677 567, 07909 644 105, dee@recruitmentjuice.com

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The argument in this blog was that the internet has enabled accessibility to candidates that would never have been possible before the internet revolution. Therefore by posting a few ads and doing some poking around on LinkedIn HR team can now source candidates directly and cut out the middle man.

This argument is sound if you accept that a recruiter is merely a way of sourcing or aggregating candidates. However, here is where I (predictably) disagree. I believe previously organisations used recruiters because they had lots of cards in their rolodex (I'm a bit young to have seen one, but I have been told about them) and could provide them with access to their networks. Now that organisations can directly source candidates fairly successfully the question becomes, as quite rightly asked in the blog I read, what is the recruiter for?

The answer (in my humble opinion) is about selection rather than sourcing. Recruiters need to become experts in selecting candidates, they need to be better than the client at predicting which candidate will succeed in each role in each company. Sounds ridiculous?

It shouldn't, the recruitment processes of most companies (CV based interview) is about 25% accurate (according to research conducted by the CIPD). The job of a recruiter is not to find the candidates but to help the client select the right person for their business. The British Psychological Society has shown that by using the right psychometric tools and behavioural interview techniques hiring accuracy can be raised above 75%.

Therefore if you're a recruiter and you want to stay ahead of the game you need to up skill big time. Recruitment consultants of the future will not be the salesman of old flogging candidates to anyone who'll have them; they will be a mix of occupational psychologists, management consultants and project managers.

If you are an organisation currently using recruitment consultants, you may want to have a chat with them about what tools and expertise they are using to select candidates. If the answer is 'I've been doing this for years, I know a good one when I spot one' then I suggest you go looking for a new one!

Anyway back to my original point, I don't believe the increasingly easy access to candidates the internet offer will be the death of all recruiters, however, as Darwin so aptly figured out years ago, it will kill off those those who don't adapt and quick! As Rupert Murdoch put it "The world is changing. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow."

Rowan

I’ve seen the topic “sourcing is dying”, written in a couple of different forms, in a couple of articles over the last year. Without any disrespect to my colleagues who have penned these writings, I must disagree with your sentiments. Here are some of those articles:

• Digging Into RecruitingBlogs.com v2.08: The Death of Sourcing (February 2009)
• Is Sourcing Dead? (March 2009)
• The Death of Sourcing (November 2009)

Sourcing is not dead; it’s not dying; it’s not even on a respirator. It’s simply evolving.

Where sourcing over the last several years has been about finding the hard-to-find folks by manipulating complex Boolean strings, with the growing popularity of social media technology, finding profiles, resumes, and contact information online has gotten easier. But this absolutely does NOT mean that sourcing is dying. All it simply means is that information availability is changing and the role of sourcing must change with it. This is not unlike any other job function – when certain aspects of a job function become automated or simplified, it means that other aspects of that function grow in importance. Hence, leading to job function evolution.

Sourcing is not just about digging up information, regardless of what some (including myself! yeah I admit it) have said over the years. Any profession that falls under the umbrella of recruiting, talent attraction, talent acquisition, HR, or however you want to classify it, contains an element of human interaction. Thus, communication plays a role, with varying degrees depending on where you stand. With the automation of SOME parts of sourcing, the communication aspect of the role is being amplified. Notice the emphasis on “some”, because you cannot, and SHOULD not in my opinion, automate personal touch.

With social media technologies becoming more mainstream tools in a sourcing toolbelt, the difficulty of finding people is diminished. However, as Glen Cathey states in his article, finding people is easy, but finding the RIGHT people is hard. We’re not just sourcing for a needle in a haystack these days. With the economic downturn and unemployment in the double digits now, we are all of a sudden searching for a needle in ten haystacks. Though finding people in general has been made easier, we still must find that right person.

With that being said, I believe that over the next several years, sourcing will evolve into a new role – retaining of course the technical elements of Boolean search, but to a smaller degree. With tools that can automatically generate complicated Boolean search strings and query multiple search engines or networks at once, much of the technical knowledge needed to be a successful sourcer can be automated. I will stress here that knowing advanced Boolean as a sourcer is still, and I believe always will be, a must. You wouldn’t want a teacher who didn’t know her ABC’s, or a physician who couldn’t pass basic anatomy, would you?

So, what will sourcing evolve into? Well – in the interest of encouraging you to come back and read more, and just because I love the suspense, I’m going to leave you hanging until next Monday Stay tuned for part 2 on the Evolution of Sourcing.

I am sitting here looking at mypeoplebiz.com in a kind of amazement really, when you consider they launched back in May and find that 6 months later they have only 32 vacancies available, tells me they are doing something wrong

OK there may have been some criticism at the time from Sirona, but at the end of the day the concept is fine and is different enough to succeed. If you then consider Ford are offering just under £6,000 as a placement fee to any agency who can find a Inventory Parts Manager, surely that shows there is some potential.

I am thinking someone at the company isn’t selling this service they are just waiting for clients to call them, how difficult is it to say to the HR Manager “How would you like me to stop the 100 of calls a month from recruiters and at the same time never miss a quality candidate” on top of this wouldn’t it stop the problem of duplicate applications?

Correct me if I am wrong, thousands of companies use agencies, they all want to save cost or be seen to use alternative methods to find candidates, then why has mypeoplebiz only got just a dozen or so clients.

A standard recruiter could achieve more than this on his or her own, it cannot be that difficult to sell!

Obviously it will not suit every company, but 32 vacancies I ask you, even I could do a better job.

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Twitter and LinkedIn are announcing a deal tonight that will allow LinkedIn users to publish status updates to their Twitter profiles and pull in some or all Twitter updates to their LinkedIn accounts.

In the announcement video recorded by LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Twitter’s Biz Stone, both talked about how Twitter is great for business. What did they mean, though? They meant it’s a marketing platform, a way to get your message out further, etc. If you have something you want to say to everyone on LinkedIn, why not say it on Twitter too?

What does this mean for Recruiters? A hell of a lot!!! Most recruiters are very well versed with LinkedIn and many still shy away from Twitter. This deal means that once you set your LinkedIn account to feed to a Twitter profile, you don’t have to worry about learning Twitter. This is what a lot of people are saying and yes at one level it means you can simply push your LinkedIn updates on Twitter. But unless you make the effort to learn Twitter, become part of the community and build a strong following, it will be fruitless.

Check out some of my previous article on Twitter to learn how to make the most out of this up and coming networking force.

Cheers,

Kohlben Vodden

Marketing4recruiters

Email: Marketing4recruiters@gmail.com

Blog: http://www.marketing4recruiters.wordpress.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/marketing4recs

LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2317988&trk=hb_side_g

Facebook Page: http://bit.ly/CH2bz

The causes of workplace violence are many and varied. However, the chances of having a workplace violence incident in your facility will be greater when there is a hostile atmosphere. High stress workplace environments also lead to work place violence issues.

Often domestic disputes and other outside influences such as drug deals and other outside interests play out in the workplace. While these outside factors may be out of our direct control, there are ways of reducing their impact on the operation.

One precursor of workplace violence that needs to be carefully controlled is horseplay. While workers need to have freedom to express themselves, horseplay can quickly get out of hand and have dangerous if not fatal consequences. I suspect injuries due to horseplay are severely under-reported due to the nature of the interpersonal relationships.

In order to reduce the chances of a workplace violence incident, you need to create a safe and empowering work environment. Employees who feel good about themselves will not feel the need to increase their self worth by bringing down others. Workplace bullying and workplace violence go hand in hand.

Promoting good team work where each person’s value in inherent in the system will help everyone feel better about themselves. A quality employee performance system will also help aid employees self esteem. The better and more valuable employees feel about hem selves the less likely they will be to attack others in a effort to improve their status. Also, people who feel good about them selves will not attract violence into their lives.

A belief in some form of lack is usually the basis for workplace violence. When people feel that there is not enough money or not enough time or more often not enough recognition to go around, they begin to attract violence to themselves so that they can become a victim. Or they may lash out at others in defense of some supposed injustice.

Many workers feel that intimidation is the only way they can feel good about themselves. They like to harass other workers, especially new hires. If these people are rewarded for teaching and training new or slower workers, they will get the self esteem boost they need with out resorting to the hazing that leads to violence.

As managers, we can find ways to boost the self esteem of our workers. I once had an electrician who, while very intelligent, had difficulty getting along with his fellow workers. He would get belligerent when people questioned his intelligence and the other workers become fond of finding ways to make him look bad. I put him in charge of developing our lock out tag out plan.

He felt self worth because he had been asked to perform sun an important task. Other people were forced to work with him because the procedures he developed they would have to follow for posterity. They also began to respect him because they saw the amount of time and research he had to put into each procedure. After only a few days into the project the hazing and arguing peacefully disappeared.

Another worker I had liked to harass new workers. He had been with the plant from the day it opened and loved to show off his expertise. He refused to follow new safety rules and generally made life miserable for a lot of people. My boss wanted to find a way to early retire him and the union even tried to get him fired.

I put him in charge of training new workers. He got the recognition he deserved. He began to feel good about himself and his contribution become valued to both the company and his fellow workers. He could be the hero trouble shooter without having to cause problems in the first place. Through this simple job restructuring, both the company and the employee benefited. So did all his co workers.

When dealing with specific problem employees, you need to get to know them and make an effort to understand their values. The need to feel valuable and important is universal. Finding ways to help people feel good about themselves will not only help reduce violence in the workplace, but will benefit productivity as well.

By creating a safe and validating work environment, employees will feel good about themselves. Make sure they know what is expected of them and be consistent in the response when employees fail to meet expectations. Expect only the best from your employees and do what you can to remove the blocks to their best performance.

Good, solid policies and procedures are critical to maintaining a safe work environment. When everyone knows what is expected of them and knows how to do their jobs, every one will feel better about themselves. They will inherently know when they are doing a good job without the need for constant supervision. People who feel good about themselves will not act violently toward others nor will they attract violence onto themselves.

While the causes of workplace violence are varied and complex; preventing workplace violence is as simple as addressing these key areas. Make sure employees are rewarded for working well together. Make sure employees feel they are making a valuable contribution and make that value known to others. Make sure people know what is expected from them in the workplace and be consistent in the implementation of the policies and procedures.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Mike Strawbridge is a Performance Improvement Coach who loves helping people achieve what they truly want in life and business. To learn more about how to improve the safety and productivity of your workplace, see http://www.strawsolutions.com

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The causes of workplace violence are many and varied. However, the chances of having a workplace violence incident in your facility will be greater when there is a hostile atmosphere. High stress workplace environments also lead to work place violence issues.

Often domestic disputes and other outside influences such as drug deals and other outside interests play out in the workplace. While these outside factors may be out of our direct control, there are ways of reducing their impact on the operation.

One precursor of workplace violence that needs to be carefully controlled is horseplay. While workers need to have freedom to express themselves, horseplay can quickly get out of hand and have dangerous if not fatal consequences. I suspect injuries due to horseplay are severely under-reported due to the nature of the interpersonal relationships.

In order to reduce the chances of a workplace violence incident, you need to create a safe and empowering work environment. Employees who feel good about themselves will not feel the need to increase their self worth by bringing down others. Workplace bullying and workplace violence go hand in hand.

Promoting good team work where each person’s value in inherent in the system will help everyone feel better about themselves. A quality employee performance system will also help aid employees self esteem. The better and more valuable employees feel about hem selves the less likely they will be to attack others in a effort to improve their status. Also, people who feel good about them selves will not attract violence into their lives.

A belief in some form of lack is usually the basis for workplace violence. When people feel that there is not enough money or not enough time or more often not enough recognition to go around, they begin to attract violence to themselves so that they can become a victim. Or they may lash out at others in defense of some supposed injustice.

Many workers feel that intimidation is the only way they can feel good about themselves. They like to harass other workers, especially new hires. If these people are rewarded for teaching and training new or slower workers, they will get the self esteem boost they need with out resorting to the hazing that leads to violence.

As managers, we can find ways to boost the self esteem of our workers. I once had an electrician who, while very intelligent, had difficulty getting along with his fellow workers. He would get belligerent when people questioned his intelligence and the other workers become fond of finding ways to make him look bad. I put him in charge of developing our lock out tag out plan.

He felt self worth because he had been asked to perform sun an important task. Other people were forced to work with him because the procedures he developed they would have to follow for posterity. They also began to respect him because they saw the amount of time and research he had to put into each procedure. After only a few days into the project the hazing and arguing peacefully disappeared.

Another worker I had liked to harass new workers. He had been with the plant from the day it opened and loved to show off his expertise. He refused to follow new safety rules and generally made life miserable for a lot of people. My boss wanted to find a way to early retire him and the union even tried to get him fired.

I put him in charge of training new workers. He got the recognition he deserved. He began to feel good about himself and his contribution become valued to both the company and his fellow workers. He could be the hero trouble shooter without having to cause problems in the first place. Through this simple job restructuring, both the company and the employee benefited. So did all his co workers.

When dealing with specific problem employees, you need to get to know them and make an effort to understand their values. The need to feel valuable and important is universal. Finding ways to help people feel good about themselves will not only help reduce violence in the workplace, but will benefit productivity as well.

By creating a safe and validating work environment, employees will feel good about themselves. Make sure they know what is expected of them and be consistent in the response when employees fail to meet expectations. Expect only the best from your employees and do what you can to remove the blocks to their best performance.

Good, solid policies and procedures are critical to maintaining a safe work environment. When everyone knows what is expected of them and knows how to do their jobs, every one will feel better about themselves. They will inherently know when they are doing a good job without the need for constant supervision. People who feel good about themselves will not act violently toward others nor will they attract violence onto themselves.

While the causes of workplace violence are varied and complex; preventing workplace violence is as simple as addressing these key areas. Make sure employees are rewarded for working well together. Make sure employees feel they are making a valuable contribution and make that value known to others. Make sure people know what is expected from them in the workplace and be consistent in the implementation of the policies and procedures.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Mike Strawbridge is a Performance Improvement Coach who loves helping people achieve what they truly want in life and business. To learn more about how to improve the safety and productivity of your workplace, see http://www.strawsolutions.com

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Last week I wrote about how I learned to use Boolean search to leverage information systems to quickly source candidates, and I challenged the concept and practice of building candidate pipelines.

Amybeth Hale commented on my post (thank you – you inspired me to finally write this one!) and mentioned that she was puzzled by the mention of the fact that I never pipelined candidates. I’ve literally never had to. Not for the rarest skillset, the most challenging under-market compensation, the highest security clearance, 3rd shift, 100% travel - I’ve successfully recruited for these and more from scratch. Honestly, I’ve never known any other way.

Amybeth feels that my experience may be somewhat unique and this might not be replicable by other sourcers, recruiters, or recruiting organizations. I’ll agree on the first part – that my experience may be uncommon – I’m undeniably a product of the specific environment and circumstances under which I entered the recruiting industry. However, I have to respectfully disagree on the second part. I won’t apologize for it (nor would Amybeth want me to), because professional debate is a good thing, and we should all welcome it! There’s no critical thought or learning involved if we all agree on everything. 

On the surface, pipelining candidates and building candidate inventories seems to be just plain and simple common sense. However, sometimes what just “feels right” may in fact not actually be the most effective and efficient method of doing a thing.

Thomas Edison (I’m a fan) once said, “There is always a better way.” My goal has always been to find it. Whether it comes to quickly finding great candidates, creating voicemail and email techniques to get the non-job seeker to respond, developing candidate closing and control techniques, implementing effective time and activity management, etc. - I want to be using the BEST possible way to do a thing. Don’t you?

Keep an Open Mind

I know I am in the minority in my view of candidate pipelining – I’m going to ask you (most likely in the majority) to have an open mind and not just simply “stick to your guns” and what you know/what you’ve been taught. If you are a passionate candidate pipeliner and you’ve built a successful career around that practice – congratulations!

However, be aware that there are other ways to be successful in recruiting, and they might actually be more efficient and/or effective. You’re reading the words of someone who’s been highly productive and successful without ever having to pipeline a single candidate, I’ve never had the benefit of a hiring forecast, and I’ve outperformed all candidate pipeliners I’ve worked with head-to-head on the same positions consistently – even when they’ve had a head start! 

How was I able to do this? That’s the good part - there’s a science of sorts behind the success, and it IS trainable and replicable.

Get ready for a paradigm shift – I’m going to move your cheese.

So What is Candidate “Pipelining” Anyway?

I think it’s critical that we first come to a common definition of pipelining candidates. While on the surface we may all appear to be talking about the same thing, we may not be – so to remove any confusion, let’s settle upon David Szary’s definition of developing candidate pipelines: “A pipeline/network of talented professionals (active and/or passive job seekers, pre-screened or not) that you regularly communicate with regarding opportunities with your organization. A pipeline of candidates, that when an opening comes up, you can immediately contact and engage in discussions about the opportunity and/or to network.”

That seems to be as good of an explanation of candidate pipelines as I’ve come across – let me know if you have any refinements or suggestions. I also agree with David’s assessment that most hiring managers have unrealistic expectations (having a candidate pipeline is the magical answer to all challenging hiring needs) and that pipelined candidates are always available (when in fact they are highly ”perishable” – regardless of their job search status).

Work-In-Process Inventory 

Developing a pipeline of candidates is essentially the development of a candidate “inventory” in the sense of supply chain management – candidates are “held available in stock” for ready access. Furthermore, the cache of candidates built through proactive pipeline recruiting can be classified as a specific type of candidate inventory: work-in-process.

Work-in-process is a production/supply chain concept, used to describe “unfinished” inventory in a production process - this inventory is ”either just being fabricated or waiting in a queue for further processing or in a buffer storage.”

A group of candidates that a recruiter stays in routine contact with, without a specific and current need (essentially what Amybeth refers to as relationship maintenance), is essentially a work-in-process (WIP) candidate pipeline. 

When most recruiters talk about proactively pipelining candidates – they’re really referring to building work-in-process (WIP) candidate inventories. Candidates in a work-in-process pipeline are typically people identified by a sourcer or a recruiter as people whose work history/experience somewhat closely matches the kinds of positions that an organization typically recruits for. Once identified, these candidates are contacted and screened (to some extent).

These are candidates that are waiting on further “processing” (screening, interviewing, networking, etc.), or essentially remain permanently “in process” – a relationship is maintained with them indefinitely, as the vast majority of these candidates never become a “finished product” (are never hired).

Candidates in a WIP pipeline may be active, passive, or not even looking, and may or may not precisely fit any current hiring needs. However, time and effort is expended to build and maintain a relationship with these candidates to be ready when an opening does arise, or when the candidate’s situation changes and they become available, or to simply network with to gain intel and referrals.

Building Candidate Pipelines is a “Push” Strategy

By definition, candidate pipelines consist of people that are contacted and communicated with without a current need – the whole point of a pipeline of candidates is to have a cache of candidates ready before a specific need arises.

This is what is referred to as a push-based strategy - one in which batches of a product (candidates) are created, not in response to an actual/current customer need, and are processed and “pushed” downstream (in-process) whether there is a need for the specific product produced or not. Push systems often result in the production of large inventories of product that perish (expire, are no longer available, etc.), or are never “sold” (fully finished/utilized/hired, etc.).

The “Logic” Behind Candidate Pipelining

On the surface, pipelining candidates seems like an excellent solution to the challenge of having well qualified candidates available when you need them.

The idea is that if you build a cache of strong candidates before you need them, you will surely fill positions quicker in the future when the need arises. The belief behind building candidate pipelines is that time and energy invested on the “front end” (aka, “proactive recruiting”) can lead to significant time savings later, and perhaps even better candidates due to having more intimate knowledge of the individuals (from the ongoing recruiter/candidate relationship) you are pipelining than you would have with candidates you just identified and contacted for the first time once a hiring need arose (”reactive recruiting”). 

The Need For Candidate Pipelines

For many recruiting and staffing organizations, proactively building talent pipelines is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that appropriately qualified talent is available when the actual need arises. It appears to be the ultimate answer to the question of, “What will we do if we get an opening for which we do not have any candidates?”

I think it is very important to examine exactly why most organizations and recruiting professionals believe that building candidate pipelines is the only answer to filling open positions. 

This may seem too obvious, but no one ever seems to directly address it, so I will say it. I feel that most recruiters must proactively recruit and build candidate pipelines simply because they are unable to deliver high quality and well matched candidates within 24-48 hours of receiving a hiring need from scratch without a pre-built candidate pipeline. In other words – most people simply can’t do it any other way.

Is there an Alternative to Pipelining Candidates?

Although most recruiters are unable to deliver high quality and well matched candidates within 24-48 hours of receiving a hiring need from scratch without a network of pipelined candidates – it doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Just because developing candidate pipelines is “the way it’s always been done” doesn’t mean it’s the most effective or efficient way to identify and recruit candidates and fill positions in a timely fashion. 

The ugly truth is that proactively pipelining candidates ahead of need has many intrinsic limitations and hidden costs that no one seems to want to think or talk about.

There’s always a better way. You’ll just have to wait until next week to read about it.

I know this isn't recruitment specific but I still thought it might be of interst.  I got some stats through from Hitwise the other day about the top 10 websites in the UK ranked by market share of page views in September 2009.

They are

Facebook 14.5%
Google UK 5.8%
eBay UK 5.5%
YouTube 2.5%
Windows Live Mail 1.9%
Gmail 1.7%
Bebo 1.5%
Yahoo! UK & Ireland Mail 1.1%
Google 0.9%
Google UK Image Search 0.9%

In September Facebook was actually the second most visited website in the UK after Google UK (www.google.co.uk), but because users view a much larger number of pages per visit, Facebook was the clear leader in terms of page views. UK Internet visits to Facebook increased by 86.1% between September 2008 and September 2009, and have more than doubled over the last 14 months. During September, Facebook accounted for almost half (49.2%) of all UK internet visits to a social networking website.