RECRUITING - Building the Right Team, With the Right Stuff, in the Right Way

This is a great article that touches on the steps that should be considered when searching for a new candidate to join your team.

Read more - Power Team

The problem recruiters run into by expediting the hiring process is basing decisions primarily on hard skills and job description, that is, hiring the resume instead of the candidate. Key elements should be considered when selecting an addition to your team. This includes performance objectives, behaviors, values, character traits, and soft competencies. When it comes to the hiring process it is important that recruiters evaluate the company and its employees. This could include benchmarking the top performers or key traits of the company's best performers. Gathering this information puts you in control of the hiring process and improves your company's chances of developing that "dream team"-one that you specifically targeted due to the results of your company performance research. Have you found these steps to be successful in your hiring process? Let us know your experiences.

INTERNET - The Candidate's Virtual Experience

Elaine Rigoli has a blog posted on ere.net that I came across the other day. This is an excellent article on how your company can better present itself to candidates. It covers virtual/interactive approaches, your career site, internal employee movement and job expectations. This also offers up some very good examples of what companies have running right now.

Read More - The Candidate's Virtual Experience

I do agree with the statement on virtual job fairs being without value unless new information is being introduced to candidates. To defeat this in a real-time interactive way, why not host online Q&A session between candidates and current employees. Let the questions be asked and answered fully. Topics might come up that you never realized held so much interest for your candidates. It offers a learning tool for both your company and your candidates.

BRANDING - The Recruiting Animal: Your Communications Need A Consistent Tone

This is a short and direct post about the importance of maintaining your brands image. It makes a good point about the branding of a company carrying over to those who act as the companies voice.

What are your thoughts? Have you ever been surprised by a company because of one face they display and being met with something completely different?

Maintaining the overall company environment is extremely important when recruiting and retaining candidates. Make sure requirements are clear and the atmosphere of the company is clearly displayed to help eliminate the short term turnover.

Read more - Brand Consistency

ONLINE - YouTube tosses 10-minute limit to show full TV episodes

Read more - Don't Bore Your Audience

This might not reach out to recruitment yet, but I wanted to offer a word of warning for those creating recruiting videos should the 10 minute limit be eliminated for general postings.

Just because the time limit is there doesn't mean your candidates have the patience to sit through a 20 minute recruiting message.

Keeping the videos short and focused help to drive points home without losing the attention of your audience. Most candidates are looking for a straight forward delivery of information reviewing who the company is, what they can offer them and how the candidate can contribute. Think more along the lines of TV commercials and don't try to shove too much information into one video. Split the topics up and let candidates choose what to watch based on what is important to them. If you are interviewing people, let each have their own one minute video and in the video description leave a clear explanation of who they are and what they do. This lets your targets have a clear path to the information they are seeking and helps to cut back on the amount of people who give up half way because they have to sift through loads of information to find what they want.

It is a little different once you have your candidates in the door and sitting with you as you display an employee video, though it is nice to try and limit those to 10-15 minutes so they don't get distracted.

GENERATION - Keep Pace with Older Workers

I came across this great article about working with the older generation and what an asset they are to a company and it also offers things to keep in mind when they are a part of your workforce. The article also covers how to work with challenges encoutered as well. Is it a great write up and well worth the time spent reading.

Read more - Keep Pace with Older Workers

ONLINE - Great online post - Want Ads Don’t Have to Be as Dull as Dirt

I came across this posting today:

Want Ads Don’t Have to Be as Dull as Dirt
Here’s a want ad for a coder we’re looking for at iFractal. Skills are the price of entry; but interviewing is all about fit.

Funky Code Medina
You know how to rock rapid development. You know PHP, MySQL, CSS, HTML, and Javascript. (And you know all the rest of the letters of the alphabet.) You know the difference between group programming and group think. You think about users, and not the Kurt Cobain type. Server-side means more to you than “May I take your order.” You like clients and client-side code, too. You know Web 2.0 user interface like the [you know the cliche...and we're not looking for cliche].
You know versioning. You get teary-eyed when you hear the words “I’m a Mac.” You’re a code freak, but not a freak. And by that, we mean you can have all the tattoos and piercings you want. You just can’t wear a beret and act like a coding artiste. You like to work fast, but meticulously. You know web standards, coding style standards, and the old standards like “That’s Amore.”
You learned all that tech weenie stuff at a prestigious school. Or in your parents’ basement. It doesn’t matter…but you know that stuff like some people know their favorite pair of jeans. Dogs and small children like you. You have friends beyond your guild in World of Warcraft. You’re curious, you’re smart, and gosh darn it, people like you.
We’re looking for you. If you know why we titled our request, that’s bonus points. If you don’t know why, that’s equally great. What we want is a really great coder who will fit here.
We have a consulting firm in Rittenhouse that does stuff for companies that you know. Companies that advertise on your TV (or on Hulu, if you’re more into that). We think things up, we build them, and they like it. We don’t mess around and we don’t delay. We like to see our ideas get used right away.
Now we have a big idea that we’re rolling out. Seems like a crazy time to be expanding, right? Not us. We thought up a big idea and we’re gonna rock the market. And you’re gonna rock the code.
So, get on your fixie, stuff your Mac into your Timbuk 2 messenger bag, and roll on over. We’re gonna ask you some hard questions. But if you are able to snatch the pebble from our hands, Grasshopper, we can guarantee that you’ll be working with some of the smartest people you know.

Oh. We pay for lunch, too.

If you know someone who fits the bill, here’s the link to get to us.
Posted on October 17, 2008 by Frank Roche Filed Under Recruiting

via: http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2008/10/17/want-ads-dont-have-to-be-as-dull-as-dirt/

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