2013 has been an amazing year for recruiting, and more significantly, recruiting technology. Not only has there been a real shift in embracing new technology as it applies to outdated hiring practices, but these trends show no signs of slowing down even as this year comes to an end.…

To find the best talent, you have to be available to the best talent. These days, many of the candidates you seek are connecting to jobs via mobile platforms – and if you aren’t there, you’ll miss them!

The shift toward mobile recruitment makes sense. After all, nearly every person looking for a job has a mobile device, and more than two-thirds of them search for and apply to jobs using those devices. The job search has evolved from a stand-alone task to one of a dozen that…

I was fortunate enough to attend @BillBoorman 's #TruAustralia event in Sydney last week, and one of the tracks centered around the qualities we believe make a great recruiter.

The usual superlatives came up but a common theme was tenacity and or resilience.  In the end we agreed that these were two separate qualities; both important to the core elements we saw in other successful recruiters.  

It got me thinking, what would I request next time I order a perfect…

According to today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, the unemployment rate dropped a staggering .3% to 7%. In the process 203,000 new jobs were created. This brings the total to 1,235,000 new jobs created over the last seven months!

Job creation was across the board in most sectors including:

1. Transportation and warehousing creating 31,000 new jobs in…

Let’s set the scene: you’ve been yearning for the perfect candidate to swoop in to fill an open position (for what seems like ages) when you receive an interview invitation from HR signifying that your dream has come true. After going through the trouble of scheduling, you finally meet…

Let me be frank: even the best recruiters can’t save you from yourself.

You can fail at hiring. Maybe you’re even failing now.

“But Jenn,” you say, “I still manage to hire people. How can I be failing?”

You can be scoring a failing hiring grade and still do just enough to fill…

When I had to hire a recruiter (I've hired a few of them over the years, they know all the tricks so it's kind of hard), I'd always throw this question in there:

If you had to recruit for the same role for the rest of your career, what would that role be and why?

It's a stupid question,…

How To Spice Up Social Recruiting in 2014

Should you even bother to catch the Social Recruiting train that has left the station?…

In a previous article, I wrote how it doesn’t take much to call yourself an agency recruiter. Ask anyone within industry experience and they will tell you the same thing: a phone and access to a resume database and you can start selling yourself as an agency recruiter. Unfortunately it takes a lot more than…

Why did you ask?

My husband has a love / hate relationship with my career choice. Always has. I’ve been a recruiter longer than I’ve been Mrs. Ala, so this is not new to him. In fact, at one point early in our relationship I was THE go to recruiter in his field. People would slip him resumes on job sites and ask for my phone number after meetings. It’s not easy being married to me, and that was before all this social recruiting / LinkedIn / Facebook / blogging stardom. Poor Mr.…

Several years ago I walked into my favorite bookstore and was fascinated by a book on the shelf.What caught my eye was the bright orange cover and the band of duct tape across the cover. The book was Chip and Dan Heath’s first book titled “Made to Stick.” Since then I have been looking forward to reading their other works. It is no different for their newest work titled “Decisive.”

In Chapter 7 titled“Ooch”, they talk about a company which scheduled interviews for an open…

Summary: Although social technology advocates have been calling for the death of email for several years, it's still the dominant digital channel by which people in organizations communicate and collaborate. The role of email in our work lives should be reduced, however, both because of its own inefficiencies and the increased availability of better tools. Effective leadership is the key to…

The truth is that clients are deserting the recruitment industry in droves.  In many cases they are cynical about our value and skeptical about our ability to deliver anything they can’t get themselves. As we are all aware, they are building sophisticated systems, and hiring internal recruiting experts, specifically to cut out third-party recruiters. And the impact is real and being felt everywhere.

The RIB Report in Australia…

In practically all cases, an organization strives to identify and select the best person for the job.

Ads for open positions are overflowing with lists of requirements for experience and education in an effort to prevent those that don’t meet stated criteria from applying. Nevertheless, various statistics reveal the low ratio of qualified applicants versus immense volumes of unqualified…

Last week's post, "3 Hot Recruiting Trends We Should Shut Up About, Already" created a ton of comments…

Summary: Effective digital engagement is a never-ending challenge, and it's especially difficult for social media rookies. This post describes 12 practices - 7 DOs, 5 DON'Ts - that individuals and organizations trying to optimize their own approach to digital engagement should and should not employ. Additional suggestions and questions are welcome. 

Digital engagement…

If you Google time management techniques you get 99 Million results! Obviously a lot of people are searching for the Holy Grail and there are a lot of opinions on how to find it. Let’s make it 99 million and 1 by adding my 5 cents worth on “Time Management”.

Having sat in and even delivered my fair share of Time Management sessions I’ve often pondered why the penny drops for some however others go back to their messy desks and pending…

I was looking at a number of ways for recruiters to automatically post jobs and other content onto Twitter, LinkedIn and all the other social channels. There are lots of ways to do this and it is really very simple to set this up. I've put together a short video demonstrating how to use the free version of Hootsuite to schedule posts and also connect to an RSS feed to do this automatically.

While I'm using Hootsuite to automate and schedule my content it is very easy to see how this…

When your vendor talks about SEO for Recruiting, what they really mean is that SEO for Recruiting is one of those terms that sounds really cool, even though they have no idea what the hell SEO for Recruiting actually…

While recruiting is ultimately a rewarding profession, it's one that comes with it's share of stress and frustration. Many recruiters shy away from contract staffing because they think it will only add to their stress. But in fact, contract staffing can help relieve many common causes of recruiter stress, including:

1. Unpredictable income. This is the number-one source of stress for many direct hire recruiters.  No matter how many placements…