I joined twitter May 3, 2008 and can't believe it's been three years already! Early on I chose to follow about 100 people that interested me. Originally I reasoned that I may be able to keep up with the tweets of about that many people. I found even that was impossible and just dropped in and read a few pages of tweets whenever the mood took me. I never played the "I'll follow you if you follow me game" and publically tweeted that I…

Well here it is! A possible Top 10 list based on all the responses to my request to build a list together:

#1 Get on LinkedIn, develop a network, and find advocates at the companies where you want to work.

#2 Build relationships, not just…

In the corporate world, the staffing department is almost always part of the HR department. Over the years, some protagonists have argued that the staffing department should be separate to HR. That discussion is not the subject of this particular post. This post is about the relationship between the staffing department and HR, a relationship that is often tenuous at best and a relationship that often doesn't work as well as it should.

Staffing is responsible for…

Years and years ago, my first agency recruiting job was with Source Services Corporation now known as Kforce. My first week there they sent me to training in Dallas where we spent a couple of days learning what the experts thought we should know. I remember quite a few things from those days but one thing struck me as strange. The old war horse recruiter, he described himself that way, said that customers don't do business with the company. They do business with the…

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 course. Clearly, right now, he isn't the player he once was. Frankly, given what…

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 most of all the structure of your organization. What is…

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 boss I never had is extremely loyal to the team.
• The best…

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 collect and analyze.

1. Source of hire data is really…

From: Hiring Manager

To: Corporate Recruiter…

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 minimum

of…

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 to open positions. Bonuses range from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. I wonder…

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:

Have a crisp, clean resume that shows what you're studying, when you plan to…

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 hackneyed lines. Back in the bad old days, when aluminum siding…

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 I was following. what have I learned?

twitter is not a popularity…

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 trend and Animal is…

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. Where I work we disposition every job that a candidate applies to. That…

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…

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…

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…