It’s the political season in America, and the pundits are busy coining terms for population groups that will have an impact on the vote. The best known example of these designations, of course, is the “soccer mom,” a genus whose power at the polls is legend. And more recently, we’ve heard of “national security moms,” a group that remains concerned about hearth and family but also raises questions about the country’s foreign policy and war on terror.
In the spirit of such anointments, I’d like to recognize another group that also has a powerful vote, not at the polling station but in the homes of the best candidates for your open positions. I call this group the “career advancement moms,” although I acknowledge that a more politic term would be “career advancement spouses.” Anyway, you get the point. This group includes the partner of the person you most want to hire.
In many cases, “career advancement moms” will influence the evaluation of your opportunity, and you’ll never even know what issues they raised, what concerns they emphasized, or what position-pro or con-they took. And because you don’t know any of that, you lose all control over the dialogue. In essence, you’ve spent all of your time and money convincing a person to come to work for your employer, and that person is only one-half of the decision-making team. The other half-those “career advancement moms”-haven’t heard a word from you and thus form their impressions of the opportunity from incomplete or, worse, in accurate information.
What should you do? I suggest that you turn the dialogue into a conversation. Here’s what I mean.
Top quality candidates are almost always employed and exercise great care in managing their careers. They know that change is unsettling and, these days, also often fraught with risk. As a consequence, it is very difficult to convince them to leave the familiarity and security of their current employment situation in order to take another opportunity, no matter how appealing. To give yourself the best chance of success, craft a recruiting experience that is persuasive and compelling to both of the parties who will evaluate an offer: the individual you want to hire and their partner.
NOTE: I am pleased to announce that TrueCareers.com is hosting a complementary breakfast series around the country at which I will present my seminar on 3rd Generation Online Recruiting. The sessions are open to the public and the first 30 registered attendees in each city will receive a free copy of my 2003 Recruiter’s Guide to Employment Web Sites. For a complete list of locations and dates and to sign up, please click here. I get a chance to visit with you every two weeks via this newsletter, but here’s a way for us to meet face-to-face. I hope to see many of you there.
Section Two: Site News
Christian & Timbers, a global executive search firm, polled 148 executives at public companies and found schizophrenia in the executive suite. On the one hand, 46% of the respondents reported that their companies were understaffed; on the other, 42% say they do not expect to do significant hiring for U.S. operations in the next year. Just as sobering, only 23% thought their company was staffed correctly and an astonishing 31% held the view that their companies were overstaffed. They clearly haven’t visited the HR Department lately. Anyway, those numbers may, in part, explain why this has been a “job loss” recovery.
ExecuNet, a site specializing in executive-level job and networking opportunities, announced the launch of RecruitSmart, a suite of services for companies seeking senior level talent. The feature includes (a) a Talent Bank with the resumes/profiles of candidates earning an average of $195,500; (b) a Sourcing Network comprised of executives who have volunteered to help recruiters source candidates and clients in specific companies, industries and functions; (c) a Job Manager that enables recruiters to post jobs on the ExecuNet site; (d) a Toolbox with salary reports and other research resources; (e) the Market Trend Watch, with proprietary information on the latest trends in the executive labor market; and (f) RecruitSmart Today, a monthly newsletter about the recruiting industry.
HotJobs, the Yahoo! employment site, has launched a Diversity Center to help companies attract and hire job seekers from diverse backgrounds. The new Center is linked off the HotJobs home page and offers a range of features, including corporate diversity profile pages, brand spotlights, studies and articles on diversity topics and message boards for networking. The Center was established in response to the growing importance of diversity in organizational performance. Indeed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 50% of all new additions to the labor force between now and 2010 will be diversity candidates.
SHRM.org, the site of the Society for Human Resource Management, announced the results of a recent poll of employer-supported vacation days. It found that companies, on average, offered 6.28 days of paid vacation and 13.24 paid days off to people who had been with the organization less than one year. People who had been with the organization five to less than ten years earned 15.18 days of vacation and 22.04 paid days off, while employees who had been with the organization ten or more years accumulated 18.65 days of vacation per year and 25.30 paid days off. Wall Street has taken to patting corporate America on the back for its “impressive productivity gains.” Compare these figures to companies in Europe, where employees regularly earn 60 or more days of paid vacation, and it’s not hard to figure out where those productivity gains are coming from. Now, don’t get me wrong … I’m not saying that the European model is better-we work in a competitive global economy after all-but I am suggesting that you can wear people down and out, if you don’t give them a meaningful level of time away from the job.
WEDDLE’s, a research and publishing firm specializing in human resources, released the latest results of its job board and career portal research. It found that the following sites were no longer in operation: EngineersonNet.com, Mechanical Engineering (www.mechengcareers.com), Industry Week Career Center (www.industryweekcareers.com), ITSalesResumes.com, Sales.com, SalesGuyCareers.com, SalesHead.com, SalesRepCentral.com, SalesSeek.com and SalesWorkz.com.
Section Three: Site Profiles
Site Insite … how well do you know the Web’s 40,000+ job boards?
If you were looking to recruit a dentist for a growing dental surgery practice in Detroit, which of the following sites would likely give you a pain in the jaw?
When recruiting an auto repair technician for a major garage in Boston, which of the following sites might leave you spinning your wheels?
If you had an opening for a scientist in your fast growing agribusiness, which of the following sites might leave you starving for candidates?
(answers below)
Site Spotlite … from the pages of WEDDLE’s 2003 Guides and Directories
(a part of the McGraw-Hill Construction group)
Post full time jobs: Yes
Post part time/consulting jobs: Yes
Distribution of jobs: National: USA
Fee to post a job: $151-200/posting
Posting period: 30 days
Can posting be linked to your site: Yes
Resume database: Yes
Number of resumes: 4,000
Source of resumes: Direct from candidates
Top occupations among resumes: Engineering, Management
Other services for employers: Auto notification of resume-job match, Banner advertising, Special area for HR professionals, Status Reports: banners/job postings
Answers to Site Insite: