Simon Meth's Blog (33)

The final round of the 92nd PGA Championship is being played as I begin to write this. Tiger Woods started the day tied for 31st place. Unless you've been living under a rock you probably know more than you want to know about Tiger's fall from grace. We all learned about Tiger's personal life, his wife, his two children, and a succession of other women. We've watched his performance on the golf c

So you've recruited that brand new recruiter or staffing assistant to join your corporate recruiting team. If you've done your job right, they will come with all or most of the skills and experience necessary to be successful at your company. However, there is a wealth of information that they will need. No matter where they have worked before, they will need to understand all your processes, procedures, policies, and mo

If you're like me, you've had quite a few bosses over the years. Some were good, some were bad, some were great, and some you'd rather forget. So what makes a great boss? Now I'm completely aware that the challenges I've faced with my bosses over the years say at least as much about me as it does about them. That being said, let's take a look at the hypothetical best boss I never had.

• The best bos

Corporate recruitment departments are usually extremely busy places. The focus is mostly on filling currently open requisitions. Satisfying the internal customers' immediate needs is paramount. Large quantities of fascinating data can be collected during that process but seldom are. My experience is that even when that data is collected, it is rarely analyzed.

Following are some ideas about what to c

From: Hiring Manager

From: Simon Meth

To: Hiring Manager

Date: April 4, 2010

Subject: How to work with your recruiter to hire great people!

We’ve been working together for some time now and I’ve noticed some things about how that is going that may be helpful to share with you. My intent in doing this is to foster increased communication between us so that we can hire the right people, exactly when you need them, with the mi

Popular opinion is that employee referrals are the #1 source of hire in a corporate environment. I believe that to be true. But are employee referrals the #1 source of quality hires? I doubt it! Following are some thoughts from my own experience. Your mileage may vary.

Companies often pay a referral bonus to encourage employees to refer their friends and former colleagues

I spoke recently at UCSD on a recruiter panel for engineers and last week I attended a career fair at SDSU. A few weeks ago I was at BYU. So I've spoken with students recently and many of them want internships this coming summer. Following are some ideas that may help:

Ha

I'll be in your area tomorrow. I could see you at 10 or 11. Which would you prefer?

If I could show you a way to increase your salary by 50%, would you be interested?

I was given your name by someone who highly recommended that we speak.

I've been working a confidential search for a direct competitor of yours.

We've all either used or been on the receiving end of these ancient and hackney

unless you've been living under a rock you know what twitter is and probably have a twitter account. since I first blogged about twitter in May, 2008 (see I'm a Twit), I have experimented, tweeted, and followed and removed some people

Women rule on twitter. Maren Hogan has 17,039 tweets. Shally Steckerl has only 1,227 tweets. Shally is much more visible in other forms of social media. There's something about twitter that suits Maren. She is open to sharing just about everything in her life and we just lap it up. Of course there is always someone who bucks the t

Some candidates are pests. They just bug you. These are the folks who work hard to take up as much of your time as they can. Here's how to identify them and how to deal with them:

1) Pests apply to every job on your corporate job site. They reason that if applying to one job is good then applying to 200 is even better. They don't realize that this is a sure fire way to be identified as a pest. Whe

Don't do it! Yes, that's right, don't do it! You may hate your current job or there may be a declining demand or zero demand for your skills in our current job market. But does that mean that you should throw the baby out with the bathwater? I think not. Now, there are lots of career counselors, resume writing experts, life coaches, and other well meaning folks who will help you figure out what skills you have that are transferable to new careers. But is that the best approach? Read on to fin

After many years in corporate recruitment I've learned a few things. At least I think I have. Read the following ten things I've learned and see if they resonate with you. Please add some things you've learned as a comment.

1. Hiring managers often complain about not receiving enough good resumes from you but they often either don't review or don't respond to the resumes you send them.
2. Candidates apply to jobs that they have no business applying to. I'm a plumber so I'll ap

I was talking with a career counseling client the other day. He's a smart guy with a PhD and loads of great high tech experience. And still there were some basic things about his resume that were hurting him. So I got to thinking about that and wondering about how widespread this phenomenon is. As a corporate recruiter, you could say that I look at resumes for a living. I've got loads of experience reading resumes and I see all sorts of funny things each day. At least they would be funny if t

Exactly what personality, competencies, and experiences make a great corporate recruiter? No one person could possibly exhibit all of the qualities on this list. Each of us will exhibit some of the qualities but not all of them. The opportunity is to notice the areas where you excel and those areas where you could develop yourself.

Before we dive into the list, a quick word on the major sources of this information: I posted questions on

One of the most reliable indicators I've found for the employment market is job postings for recruiters. It stands to reason that if companies are hiring recruiters they are planning to add to their staff. I post corporate recruiter positions in the Jobs for Recruiters forum on Recruit

I blogged recently about Things I believe in the Recruitment Space in which I asserted that Human Resources doesn’t get the respect of upper management because it doesn’t deserve that respect. Before I expand on that thought, please w