The one you’re talking to of course. Everyone knows this, right? Here’s the thing – I had an epiphany today and it kinda hurt. I was talking with one of my agency partners and offered to send his boss an email to give him some props – he’d sent some great people and really helped me out in the past few weeks. As it turns out he’s up for a promotion so it was very timely. As I was drafting this email and congratulating myself on being such a nice client, I realized why I like this…

I used to work for a staffing agency. A good one at that. One that tried hard to recruit good consultants, who, on the whole, tried hard to do a good job finding the right people for their clients. But I always had the feeling that I was nothing more than a middle man. I didn’t really add much value other than to do the donkey work the client could have done themselves if they had access to our database. My job was really a glorified cv sifter, searching through tons and tons of…

Almost every week I see another blog post or story about a trend, product, or development that will doom job boards. Let’s be honest – writing about the death of any institution, especially one used by millions of people worldwide, is a great way to gather eyeballs and readers.

But as I was considering my latest snarky…

Since 1981, I have worked with over 3000 hiring managers across the United States.  Most of whom have never been trained how to effectively interview.  If they haven’t been taught how to interview, they certainly have not been taught how to select the best fit.  Therefore, they bring their own unique interview techniques and questions to the interview party.  Of course, the candidates bring their own special treats to the interviewing party; and I will share some of those also.  Doesn’t it…

As the Recruiter’s Career Coach, I sometimes think that I have seen it all.  Then I get that next phone call from a Recruiter scrambling to find a new position.  As Recruitment Professionals we are the experts on everyone else’s career, but what happens to our own?

Here are just a few…

Some things in life are so obvious, we just can’t see them. And it shocks me how few people understand what the important part of ‘social media’ or ‘social networking’ actually is.

The exciting aspect of the boom in social technologies is not the technology at all, (Sorry geeks). It’s the ‘social’ part.

And the core rules of socialising online are the same as socialising face-to-face.

Pandering flattery offline can be easily detected, and only…

“Plan your work.  Work your plan.”  I’ve seen those words attributed to the great Green Bay Packer Football (not futbol) Coach, Vince Lombardi.  Trainers have applied those words to all sorts of training exercises, generally in business.  Why are they universally understood?  The quote applies to all areas of our lives.  It especially applies to successful recruitment programs.

What is the basic premise of Behavioral Interviewing?  Once we find a way to be successful…

"Our firm's growth was twenty percent last year, and I'm still frustrated," he said. He was a new client, running a $30 Million a year fee-based professional services firm in San Francisco. His frustration wasn't based on a monetary or a revenue issue. It was a performance issue. To his competitors, at least those who were still in business at the end of 2003, his growth was enviable. But he knew his staff wasn't performing at their peak levels. In fact, they were underperforming. "How can I…

Have you experienced a situation like this at an early-stage interview--you're excited to be there, a bit nervous expecting the difficult questions to be fired at you, but the interviewer is doing 100% the talking?

Then toward the end of the interview, you ask if he wants to ask you any questions, to which…

Social media and social recruiting are very busy words and phrases as many try to tame the savage beast. However, social recruiting has an appendage that is growing in strength and on the horizon.  In 2011, Potentialpark surveyed more than 30,000 job seekers and 350 employers worldwide.  19% of job seekers used their mobile devices (phones, pads) with a complementing but low 7% of employers having a mobile version of their career website and 3% with a mobile job…

I'm a no excuses kind of guy, I really am. I love sports (die-hard Celtics fan, born and raised in So Cal), and I'm just not the kind of fan to blame losses on officiating or injuries as some fans do. Bad call at the end of the game cost you the W? Maybe you should've built up a bigger lead before the end of the 4th quarter. Your starting center goes down with a knee injury in Game 6 of the Finals (a la Kendrick…

Improve your candidate experience during the hiring process with these 10 tips:…

Plato, a great philosopher, student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle called the study of numbers the highest level of knowledge. Numbers can be divided into groups, demonstrate relationships and are used in religion, superstition and mythology.  Numbers have been identified as the purest form of communication that crosses the boundaries of languages, understanding and perception.  Numbers are woven into every aspect of humankind and critical to life on earth.  But have you ever been…

Your recruiting content and messaging can have a tremendous impact on how many candidates as well as what type of candidates are applying to your company.  It’s important to track and understand what types of content are working in promoting the right behavior and which messaging is falling flat.

When you look at all the content you create in your recruitment marketing strategy it exists in a…

(reposted from Make HR Happen 5/21/2012)

No, you didn’t miss the two preceding parts of this series. They will come later. It appears that most of the discussion whirling around us is about improving the candidate experience during the recruiting and interviewing phase. I contend that Part 2 is important, but there is also…

This blog has taken me two months to write. I have rewritten it three times and this makes the fourth attempt. The problem is that every time I put my thoughts on paper it looks self-serving and that is not my intention. So, I will start off by asking the reader to take me (as a third party recruiter) out of the equation and try to see the intent of this blog – which is making your company look great while recruiting new hires.

Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well, let me give you two real…

So you want to be a corporate recruiter... I'm not even going to ask why. Now that I’m about a month away from my one year anniversary, I've learned a thing or two about how to survive this adventure. As with any career there are pros, cons, and pitfalls to avoid. One thing I know for sure - recruiting is recruiting - no matter what side of the business you're on. If you're serious about going in house, I hope you're as lucky as I was to find a place that you can actually enjoy…

Each day I speak with recruiters about Social Media who shares their enthusiasm about using this channel for sourcing. The next question is – how soon they should expect to get profiles and where all they can post the jobs. Social Media is being viewed as a next best thing in recruitment as well as a “magic wand” which will produce profiles from thin air!

There is a definite wave about “Social Recruiting” in the air which needs a proper understanding, strategy and implication rather…

Here is our weekly feature in which we share the top articles we enjoyed from the past week about recruitment marketing, social recruiting and anything else in the recruiting space. In this article, we’ll be talking about mobile recruiting, recruiting on Pinterest and others, Career Sites, disagreeing with Buddha and conference commandments.

Here are the articles our that interested us this week (in no particular order),…