Best Practices are so yesterday! They are sourcing and recruiting techniques designed for a time that has passed.
Next Practices are strategies and tactics for winning the real War for the Best Talent – the one you actually face today and will face tomorrow. They modernize your approach to:
- Job Posting
- Social Recruiting
- Candidate Engagement
- Optimizing the Candidate Experience
- Managing Your Own Recruiting Career
so you maximize your success.
The book is composed of short, straight-to-the-point essays that can be read in ten or fifteen minutes and still transport you to a whole new dimension in the state-of-the art for recruiting and sourcing talent. With titles like Become a Talent Whisperer, Post-Social Recruiting, The Inconvenient Truth of Recruiting and Don’t Post a Job, Advertise Respect, they are sure to entertain and enlighten you.
So, don’t recruit with yesterday’s techniques. Get Next Practices and start recruiting right now with the next generation of recruiting mastery.
The book is due out on Amazon later this month, but you can preorder it now and be one of the first to receive it. Click here to place your order.
A Double Gold Mine
I’ve previously written about the untapped gold in an employer’s resume database, but now, there’s even more evidence to support my contention. Resume databases are often discounted because they are viewed as a repository of the long-term unemployed. Well, now there’s a study which demonstrates that those who have been out of work for a lengthy period of time are just as productive on-the-job as those who are quickly rehired.
An employer’s resume database is typically the place where job seeker credentials go to die. According to countless surveys, many recruiters ignore the database altogether or give its contents only the briefest consideration. As a result, once a person’s record is consigned to the database, their odds of being selected for an interview, let alone hired for an open position are slim and none.
We now know that’s a mistake for two reasons.
First, those whose resumes have been consigned to the ignominious underworld of the applicant tracking system database often include both the runner up for the position to which they applied and the person who turned it down because the timing or some other factor wasn’t right for them. In other words, the resumes in that database can and often do identify people the employer itself has recognized as competent and worthy of consideration.
Second, those resumes may also identify people who have been unemployed or only able to work part time for an extended period, yet are just as likely to perform at an acceptable level as those who found work without a long break in employment. Bloomberg News recently conducted a study of six employers in almost 90 locations in the U.S., and found no statistical difference in the caliber of work delivered by the two groups of workers.
Moreover, the resume database isn’t the only place where unemployed but capable workers are overlooked. According to an experiment run by researchers at the University of Toronto, the University of Chicago and McGill University, there is also a bias against first-time applicants with lengthy periods of unemployment. Researchers at the three schools submitted 12,000 fake resumes for about 3,000 jobs, and found that those with eight months of unemployment were 45 percent less likely to be called for an interview as those with just one month out of work.
Managing Metrics of Success
These days, the performance of recruiters is often carefully measured and evaluated. Employers use a range of metrics for their assessment, but the two most common are time-to-fill and cost-per-hire. Assuming adequate quality – which is defined differently in each organization – employers want recruiters to fill openings as quickly as possible and with the least expense.
If that’s the definition of victory in the War for Talent, tapping an employer’s resume database is the perfect strategy for achieving it. There is no outlay of money for posting jobs, searching profiles on social media or engaging a staffing firm. And no less important, there is no time lost to using such resources. The resumes are right there at your fingertips.
So, what’s the downside to tapping a resume database? First, of course, recruiters have to get past any bias they may have about the long term unemployed. If the Bloomberg study isn’t enough reason, they should take a look at the people they know – former colleagues or coworkers who have been unable to find a permanent position in today’s job market – and consider the talent that’s been wasted as a result.
Then, recruiters have to invest the time and effort to change the perceptions of their customers. Hiring managers also view the long term unemployed as substandard applicants so they too will have to have their misperception corrected. And the best way to accomplish that is by bringing such candidates into the zone of consideration. Put them on the interview list and give them a chance to prove themselves to the hiring manager. The research indicates they may well prove they have the right stuff.
Thanks for reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com
A One-of-a-Kind Recruitment Tool
WEDDLE’s Directory of Employment Web Sites is a one-of-a-kind database of job boards, social media sites, career portals, aggregators, employment-related search engines, job ad distribution companies, recruitment blogs and other recruiter resources. Its 9,000+ entries are organized by occupational field, industry, geographic focus and other specializations (e.g., diversity, veterans).
If you want to:
- Develop a pinpoint targeting strategy for your recruitment advertising,
- Identify the best social media sites for connecting with top talent,
- Improve the quality of the applicants you source online,
- Sell products and services to job boards and other employment Web-sites
- Sell products and services to job boards and other employment Web-sites
then the WEDDLE’s Directory is for you!
2014 User’s Choice Award Winners
If you’re tired of reading the pundits’ picks for the best employment sites on the Web, here’s the alternative you’ve been looking for.
Each year, WEDDLE’s hosts an online poll for job seekers and recruiters to vote for THEIR picks of the best sites. We call it the User’s Choice Awards.
To see the 2014 winners, click here.
To cast your vote for next year’s winners, click here.
The Recruiting Resources You Deserve
The best recruiters use the best resources to get the job done. And, when it comes to reaching top talent online, their choice is clear. It’s WEDDLE’s Books. Get yours today!
WEDDLE’s Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet. This is the 11th edition of the Guide the American Staffing Association called the “Zagat” of job boards and social media sites.
The Talent Sourcing & Recruitment Handbook. This is Shally Steckerl’s tell-all guide to his sourcing secrets and cybersleuthing for hard-to-find talent.
WEDDLE’s Guide to Association Web Sites. This book details the recruiting resources and capabilities that are available at the Web-sites of over 3,000 professional and technical associations.
Finding Needles in a Haystack. This one-of-a-kind guide lists over 25,000 keywords and keyword phrases, across 5,400 job and position titles in 28 industries and professions.