Electronic Recruiting 101
2007 Edition
By Shally Steckerl
I have been wanting to review this book for quite some time and am very pleased I was finally able to do so. Electronic Recruiting 101, by my friend and associate Shally Steckerl, chief cybersleuth of JobMachine, is to be considered the “bible” of all recruitment sourcing or researching books. There is so much information packed into this book, it is difficult for me to even know where to begin. This 228-page tome has everything and anything you ever wanted to know about the world of electronic recruiting.
Unlike most authors, who jump right into the technical aspects of electronic recruiting, Shally starts at the beginning, taking a proper requisition and then talking a bit about the hiring process itself. So many sourcers and researchers do not understand that every search starts with the requisition and goes from there. He talks about the talent landscape, the difference between prospects, candidates, and applicants, and recruitment scalability. He does a great job, as many authors before him have tried to do, in explaining the difference between passive and active candidates. Then he takes that a step further by offering much-needed ideas on how to make that initial approach.
Other topics he touches on include email issues, job postings, interviewing, candidate testing, applicant tracking systems, RPOs and BPOs, international recruiting, diversity recruiting, CRMs, relocation issues, how to hire sourcers, and recruiting metrics.
He has a great section on research fundamentals, a must-read section before you begin the research process. This covers finding top-level executives, résumé sourcing, search engine rules, using multiple search engines, building Boolean strings, and using search engines, and then offers many examples of strings he has personally used with success in his searches. He talks about meta-search engines, searching communities, weblogs, blogs, ISPs, newsgroups, social networks, and also using RSS feeds. He goes into the pros and cons of referral networking, talks about domain searching and link searching, and offers a number of international sourcing techniques. He also offers some information on using spiders and robots to make your life a little easier. Shally follows that up with a section on software and recruiting tools, computer tips, and research tips.
To tie it all together, his last section on references offers a terms glossary, an Internet history, guidelines on Net etiquette, reference tools, and a bit on working with other recruiters. He offers a list of Internet recruiting trainers for those who feel they need a bit more, then a number of industry-specific site listings and another list of industry-specific job sites.
This book should be “standard issue” for any researcher, sourcer, or recruiter’s desk. Published by none other than The Fordyce Letter, this book retails for $295 and can be ordered directly from the TFL website (www.fordyceletter.com).
HireDesk ATS
By Talent Technology
I am very pleased to be able to offer The Fordyce Letter readers this ATS review this month, as I discovered what a great option this could be for those seeking a powerful and very flexible solution. I had been hearing about HireDesk for a number of years and had been asked about it many times, so it was high time to take a closer look.
This product is geared toward small and medium-sized recruiting and staffing firms but has all the bells and whistles of the products the larger firms use and pay a lot of money for. It is a 100% Web-based system accessed easily by any Internet browser from any location, all for a very competitive pricing schedule.
The program opens up to a “recruiters dashboard” with a snapshot of all your activity – candidates, lists, jobs, clients, activities, and emails. Your home page is completely customizable, offering you the ability to pick and choose the features that are important to you. On the left side of the screen is a familiar Windows Explorer navigation tool that offers a “tree” view, allowing you to get to anywhere in the database from anywhere in the database. Very intuitive. Overall, one of the strong points I noticed was that they seem to have one of the most flexible/configurable interfaces in the business. You can not only configure the home page but also actually pick and choose the individual data fields you would like to see on each screen that you use.
Their product supports a number of recruiting revenue streams and workflows, including temp, perm, retained, client specific/recruiter specific. These workflows can drive metrics in different ways, depending on the metrics created for each specific workflow. Clients may have the need to post jobs to multiple “branded” websites. Talent portals are very easily integrated into your website – again, highly configurable.
They offer what is known as a Conceptual Search. In addition to the standard field (all data fields are searchable) and résumé searching, Conceptual Search allows you to automatically rank candidates against entire job orders, or compare against other résumés. The system will display the most relevant matches at the top of the list.
Their database is fully integrated with an included service that allows you to post your open job orders automatically to your website. Candidates then apply to a specific job, and those submissions are held for your approval before being permanently added to the database. Another feature I really like is Net Interviews – you can easily create custom, job-specific assessments that can be completed via an application process on your company website, sent via email, or via a recruiter interface on behalf of the candidate. Choose from a library, or create your own. Then you can rank candidates on the basis of results. The assessments are “branded” with your company logo and can be sent as part of a candidate profile to clients.
They are one of the very few ATS vendors I know that offer a completely customizable reporting function. This feature allows you to easily create custom reports on any information within the program. Reports have the ability to do drilldowns, sorting, calculations, statistics, charts, graphs, and much more.
As I mentioned before, their pricing seems very competitive. They offer a range of $65 to $99 per user per month based on features and setup. This is a range below that of many of their competitors offering similar features.
Anyone with an interest in more information on this great resource can visit the website at www.talenttech.com, or you can contact Alan Nappier, regional sales director, via email at anappier@talenttech.com or via voice at 1-866-747-3375.
WinTheView
Candidate Interview Preparation
I recently had a walk-through with what I think is a very interesting and innovative new service for the recruitment industry. WinTheView, a service developed by recruiters for recruiters, is a Web-enabled interview strategy by Digital Career Services. Basically, recruiters arrange for their candidates to go through an Internet-based interview preparation process that assures that candidates are able to communicate interest in the position, communicate to the client their fit for the job requirements and why they are the best candidate for the position, and have the opportunity to ask company, industry, position, and interview specific questions. Although this is a fairly new service, WinTheView has been available in an offline version and at least several hundred candidates have used it successfully, increasing the placement-to-send-out ratio dramatically.
The process results in a printed and bound document (pdf) that candidates take with them to the client interview. This document can also be presented to the client by the recruiter. I can see where this would differentiate candidates from other contenders by showing a high degree of interview preparation. It would also undoubtedly raise the confidence level of the candidates. From the client side, it shows candidate motivation and enthusiasm.
The WinTheView people say that hiring managers are very enthusiastic about the process and are complimentary of the candidates that show the enthusiasm, commitment, and motivation to prepare so thoroughly for an interview.
Recruiters can sign up for a monthly fee that allows an unlimited number of candidates to go through the process. For more information on this service, anyone with any interest can visit the WinTheView website at www.wintheview.com or contact Ken Diamond, founder of Wintheview.com, via email at kjdiamond@wintheview.com or via voice at (866) 941-0700.
Sourcers Guild
There is a fairly new group in town, the Sourcers Guild, dedicated to the art of names sourcing. At present they are a Yahoo group with a daily message containing posts from recruiters across the country asking questions about and offering answers to a wide array of issues relating to this topic. For those who don’t know, names sourcing is the activity of finding people with specific titles within specific organizations. This can be accomplished both via the Internet and by telephone.
Names sourcers who belong to this guild are highly professional and dedicated members of their industry. In this group you can learn how to conduct names sourcing and also locate someone to conduct a names sourcing project for you.
Members of the Sourcers Guild receive:
– discounts on training and educational materials
– cost savings in other group membership opportunities
– referrals from industry looking for names sourcers to perform projects
– access to posted sourcing assignments in the Database section of this site
If you’d like more information about becoming a member of this group, contact the Guild Guide, or moderator, Maureen Sharib, via email at Maureen@techtrak.com or via voice at (513) 899-9628.
Tip
I thought it might be appropriate to steal a tip from Shally’s book for this month’s tip. There are so many in there, I am hoping no one will mind my offering this one to the masses. In his section titled Results in Ten Minutes or Less, Shally offers many examples of search strings for different types of passive candidates. Here is one of his tips for sales recruiters:
contact sales.manager IKON 770
In the example above, he is looking for sales managers (the dot between sales and manager forces the search engine to look for that exact phrase) from the IKON office supply company. The 770 is to find people in the Chicago area. He also uses the contact keyword in the hope that the names he garners will have some way to contact the person on the page. To use this in your office, simply swap out the company and the area code and use other keywords that suit your needs.
Good luck!!
Mark E. Berger, CPC, AIRS CIR, has been in recruiting since 1979. He is currently a partner in Ramsey Fox, Inc., an IT services firm, and has been there and at its predecessor, M. E. Berger & Associates, since 1986. He has been heavily involved in Internet recruiting and is an expert on recruiting and sourcing products, services available on the Internet, and how these products add to the bottom line. Mark’s interests include successfully integrating both computer and Internet recruiting technology into a traditional recruiting environment. He has taken AIRS I and II training and has obtained the AIRS CIR designation. Mark is also on the board of directors for the Missouri Association of Personnel Services. He can be reached at mark@ramseyfox.com. His website is www.swatrecruiting.com, and we recommend that you visit it to see archives of his articles and information offerings exclusively for recruiters.