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Thank You, recruitDC

May 5, 2017 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

By Pete Radloff

I’ve been very lucky in my career. Luck played a part in how I even got into recruiting. It played a part in my having some of the best mentors and teachers that you could ask for over the course of a career. Because of my appreciation for all of this luck, I’ve always wanted to pay it forward, to use a phrase. Turns out, I wouldn’t have to wait long.

In 2010, I attended the first ever recruitDC, at Wooly Mammoth Theatre in D.C.. I lucky enough be asked to be on a panel about sourcing tools and techniques with some people that I greatly admired. And while I knew a good number of the attendees, I met so many people there, that it was hard to keep track of everyone. I would later find out through various conversations with people, some years later, that they had also been in attendance. It was a whirlwind event, but one that I took away a great deal from.

I walked out of the first recruitDC conference feeling as though I had just been handed the keys to the kingdom. I had innumerable new tricks to apply to my sourcing and recruiting, and new (to me) tools to test out. I was in a bit of recruiting-geek heaven, and to borrow a phrase from my friend Stacy, “I knew I had found my people”. I knew that for as long as there were more of these, I’d be one of the first to buy tickets. After all, as much as I wanted to attend national conferences, there was never a budget for that. And up until now, I hadn’t seen anything with that depth of content at an event at a local level. Hooked.

I was invited to join the Board of Directors for recruitDC in 2011. I immediately jumped at the opportunity to help shape and grow an organization I was very fond of. Heck, I’d get to work with Bob Corlett again. That in and of itself was enough to make me say yes. It turns out, that I got so much more out of it than I had ever expected. To be honest, I’ve been on the Board for longer than I’ve been at any job. and in that time, we’ve accomplished a lot.  

Fast forward to now, my last event as a Board member of recruitDC. I’m not one for sappy good-byes, but I cannot stress enough how thankful I am for the opportunity to have been on this great ride. I’m proud to call each of the board members – past, present & newly elected – a good friend. I’m emboldened by the mix of new and familiar faces at each and every conference. I’ve always believed that a connected community is a strong community, and the recruiting & sourcing community in DC is one of the strongest that I know of. 

May 25th is just around the corner. And, in a bittersweet way, I’m really looking forward to this event. The sessions are filled with great information and we’ve pulled together a strong mix of talent from the D.C. area and the country.

To those who haven’t yet come to recruitDC, or are on the fence:

Find a reason to come to the conference. It is worth the investment of time to grow and expand your network – just ask anyone who has come to a recruitDC event before. Don’t expect one day to solve all your recruiting & problems, but rather let it add to the body of knowledge that goes with you wherever you go. And no matter what happens professionally, your community is still there. And the reqs on your desk? They will still be there tomorrow too, but maybe you’ll have some better tools and tactics to fill them with. 

I hope to see you there on May 25th, and hope that your experience with recruitDC is as meaningful to you as it is to me.  And that is due to the community. 

So…thanks recruitDC. 

P.S.  – Click to buy tickets

 

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, DC Area Conferences, recruitDC Conference, recruitDC Events Tagged With: Community, Conference, recruiting, sourcing

Source Houston – Texas Takes Over

April 14, 2017 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

Ed Note:
At recruitDC, we want to actively support our sister organizations across the country, whose aim is to bring great training and content to recruiters in their local area. With the advent of ATAP, a national movement is underway, but the local organizations are the lifeblood of the grassroots movement. 

Today, we wanted to share some info on Source Houston, which is taking place next week, on April 20th. To purchase your tickets, visit their Eventbrite site

Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States, and there or over 2.1M people in Houston proper with another 4M people in the surrounding suburbs.  Almost 30,000 people here in Houston say they are in the business of hiring people. I bet there are exceedingly intelligent recruiters here in Houston that push the limits of what can be done every day. I’d also put money on the table that some recruiters that want to learn more about our industry, network with like minded people, grow in their careers and take it to the next level.  Dollars to donuts that both of those types of recruiters would love the opportunity to share and learn in a welcoming place. This is why WE created Source Houston and that includes you (even if you’re not in Houston).

The beginning…

Source Houston came together with like minded recruiters and sourcers here in Houston. We all came from different industries, but were facing similar problems in identifying and hiring talent. So we problem solved. We started collaborating over google hangouts for brainstorming and bouncing strategies off each other, and soon working lunches and meetups ensued. We were having fun too! Working together with others who shared our interests (and struggles) made us better collectively, and we fostered great friendships in the process. Together we discovered a wealth of information, ideas, and techniques that benefited everyone in so many ways. As the old saying goes, rising tides raise all ships!   

The knowledge is here…

As this is being written, a recruiter or sourcer is playing lights out at their desk, crushing goals every day. There is a leader in talent acquisition making innovative changes and streamlining their processes. We want to hear from them and share that knowledge because it only makes us better. Our industry is evolving rapidly, and while the fundamentals remain true, tons of new recruiting and HR tech is introduced almost daily. We have professionals that have taken the stage at national recruiting conferences to share their expertise right here in Houston. Alaina Rivas, Monali Parmar, and Natalie Dunphy to name a few. But what about the recruiters and sourcers in the trenches, getting things done on the daily? What knowledge can they bring to the table? That know-how and best practices are right here in our back yard. Our goal is to leverage the expertise here in Houston in the areas of sourcing, recruiting, talent acquisition, and social media to attract talent to our organizations. So let’s build and share together..

Accessibility

Not everyone can take half a week off of work or have the budget  to attend some of our favorite recruiting conferences like SourceCon, Talent42, or ERE. Not many companies have a training and development plan for their TA teams. That is why it’s important to invest in your own development and collaborate  with other recruiters locally. Own and hone your craft. There are some outstanding knowledge based sharing events all over the country, but rarely do they come to Houston. We aim to change that. Our conferences, meetups, and workshops are all designed to maximize the time spent there. No travel means less time away from the desk, families, and more importantly, we keep things simple and fun. We are holding out next conference at a brewery… enough said.

#RealTalk

We all have networks when it comes to our daily roles. I noticed that I am networked “well” in Houston, but, I haven’t spoken to many of them for over a year. Some of the greatest business relationships come from the cultivated acquaintances. Having a robust network of industry colleagues and leaders is another great way to find your next role or opportunity. Plain and simple; a networked recruiter is a good recruiter. We invite you to join our community. Take place in the conversation, share what you know, learn something new, and have some fun doing it!. We also stay connected through social media for continuous learning far after our conferences have ended.

Recruit Like You Mean It…

Our motto is recruit like you mean it. Collaborating with your local peers could bring you the game changer you’ve been looking for your day to day or your career. Inversely, you could end up providing that to someone. Recruiting is more than just LinkedIn and an ATS. It’s about relationships, leveraging the right tools to make those relationships, and taking the candidate experience seriously. Are you willing to start your own community?

                   

About the Authors

Jason Vogel is a Sourcing Manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and a founding member of Source Houston. He is part of a national Sourcing Team whose focus is to identify, engage, and build a talent pipeline of passive candidates and convert them to active applicants for the firm to hire.  Jason has 20 years of recruiting experience as an agency and in-house corporate recruiter.

 

Arron Daniels, Recruiting Sourcer at H-E-B and Founder of Source Houston,(specializing in technical & non-technical recruitment, and everything in between – a true firefighter when it comes to recruitment!) Arron started his recruiting journey in the military – recruiting military & signal intelligence and transitioned out of the service into a Sourcer role during his agency days in Houston – You can catch Arron contributing to Workology, Recruiting Daily & SourceCon

 

Megan Calimbas is is a founding member of Source Houston and is currently a Sourcing Manager with PWC. She is a wellspring of knowledge in recruiting and she has led projects and teams for many high profile companies. Megan specializes in talent identification and has been in leadership roles developing sourcing teams as well as an individual contributor. You can find Megan contributing and speaking with ERE Media.

Filed Under: Other Conferences, Uncategorized Tagged With: recruiting, SourceHouston, sourcing

The 7 Fastest-Growing, Highest-Paying Jobs

February 10, 2017 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

By Gloria Martinez

If you have an English degree, you might remember the warnings of, “You’ll never make a living with that!” (Nicer commenters might have suggested you look into teaching.) Who would have guessed that the demand for content writers with search engine optimization savviness in the digital era would put writers in such high demand—and enable them to command such high salaries?

However, that’s just one option for a fast-growing, high-paying job. You’re no longer necessarily locked into career paths based on your degree, and there’s a lot of overlap. For example, “martech,” the blending of marketing and technology, is a relatively new job title that requires skill sets in very different realms.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) compiles data to showcase the fastest-growing jobs in the U.S. For women looking for a job change, it’s a great resource—and perhaps inspiration for not just a change in company, but role.

Fastest-Growing Jobs

●       Wind-turbine service technician: By far the fastest growing job through 2024 at a rate of 108% faster than average, it’s clear that the demand for alternative, clean energy is intense. The average salary is $51,050, and usual entry requirements are on-the-job training (no degree required). Some technicians attend technical/vocational training schools.

●       Occupational therapy assistants: Coming in at number two, these professionals earn an average of $57,870 per year, and the job growth is 43% faster than average. An associate’s degree is usually required as a starting point, followed by technical training programs averaging two years of additional study.  In addition to knowledge in health and sciences, the best assistants also have compassion, are physically fit, and are communicative.

●       Physical therapist assistants: Earning $55,170 per year, PT assistants often have a background in physical fitness and are perhaps personal trainers (though it’s certainly not a requirement). With a job growth 41% faster than average, and all states requiring at least an associate’s degree, it’s a popular yet fast-track career. You’ll also need an additional two years of training and physical strength to carry out job responsibilities.

●       Home health aides: This career is growing 38% faster than average, and offers an average salary of $21,920. However, no formal education is necessary, and on the job training is very fast-paced. Some home health aides are drawn to the career out of empathy as well as the option to customize hours and work in a person’s home rather than a facility.

Other fast-growing job roles include commercial truck drivers, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, statisticians and ambulance drivers. Healthcare has always been an industry steeped in high demand and job security.

High-Paying Jobs

Prefer to focus on a job change for higher pay? U.S. News reported in early 2017 on the current highest-paying jobs that don’t require a degree. (The highest-paying jobs that do require a degree usually entail advanced degrees leading to a career as an anesthesiologist, surgeon, or other tract that requires extensive time and funding to achieve). For those looking for a fast change in 2017, here are the highlights from the report:

●       Radiation therapist: With an average salary of nearly $85,000 and no college degree required, this is by far one of the most lucrative of careers that allows for a fast transition.

●       Nuclear medicine technologist: Such a lofty title might sound like you need an M.D., and the average salary of $74,990 is nothing to scoff at, but no degree at all is needed. What does the job entail? Injecting minute amounts of radioactive chemicals into patients to help doctors diagnose conditions.

●       Dental hygienist: You can earn an average of $72,720 per year while helping patients improve oral hygiene. A certification is often required.

Again, the majority of jobs are in the healthcare field. If you really want to go for the gold, 2017 could also be the year you apply to medical school—anesthesiologists are the highest-paid professionals according to Business Insider, with an average annual salary of $246,320.

 

Gloria runs WomenLed.org, which aims to celebrate women’s achievements in the workplace. She believes that while women have made many advancements toward “shattering the glass ceiling,” there is still much to be done. It is her aim to help increase the number of women-led businesses by educating others about the topic.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: healthcare, Job Seeker, jobs

Old School Sourcing Still Works!

February 7, 2017 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

By Tony Palm

During his presentation at the recruitDC 2016 Fall Event, Steve Levy said (I’m paraphrasing here), “. . . to be effective, sourcing HAS to connect with candidates where they are”. He even suggested to reach college students, consider posting ‘tearaway’ flyers in campus buildings where computer courses are being taught, or outside campus hang outs. My initial thought was, no way would that work with today’s young professionals. But I just couldn’t get the flyer idea out of my head; kinda like an ear-bug, it just kept coming back. 

Currently I’m working on a staffing contract for Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Washington to place government employees into positions at 7 different installations across the National Capital Region (NCR). These positions require skilled labor experience, and for obvious reasons, prior Navy service would be a BIG plus. The challenge is getting the information out to those veteran and transitioning sailors in a way that is informative AND capture their attention. Even with my extensive network of active duty career counselors and veteran employment assistance groups, getting the word out to the individual warfighter is a daunting task.

Enter Levy’s tear-away ad ~ Using WWII recruiting posters which I modified for my purposes, I created these two flyers; the results have been AMAZING! I’ve been delivering them to ships and SEABEE commands all over the NCR as well as down in Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Now I recognize not everyone has access like this old retired sea-dog, but anyone can find the “Standard Distribution Mailing List” for every military branch with a quick G-search and mail flyers to each command. But the biggest response so far has been from posting them on different Navy-centric group pages on Facebook.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the numbers I’d generate from the social media effort using these flyers. Although I did remove the contact info tabs at the bottom. Since launching this (advertising) campaign in late December, I’ve received 26 resumes, screened 18, and have submitted 13! Only 1 candidate has been interviewed thus far, but the federal government isn’t known for short “time to hires” . . . just sayin!

For me, the take-away from Steve’s presentation is to make sourcing personal and FUN. But who would have believed it could also be so effective?

Make it a GREAT day!

Tony Palm, President, TP&A LLC

 

Tony Palm is a long time recruitDC volunteer, veteran staffing leader in the DC area, and President of the Veteran-Owned Tony Palm & Associates.  He is a former US Navy officer, and well-entrenched in the Military community here in DC. Connect with Tony on LinkedIn or Twitter. 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Military, Old School, sourcing

HRCI Credits For Fall 2016 Event

December 1, 2016 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

Many people have inquired about the HRCI credits for the Fall 2016 event. We’re happy to share those with our attendees. 

 

In order to receive the code for HRCI credits, please email us and we’ll be happy to send it to you.

Email recruitDC

Filed Under: recruitDC Conference, recruitDC Events Tagged With: HRCI Credits, recruitDC event

Session Recap – Maren Hogan – Employer Branding for Dirty Jobs

November 28, 2016 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

ed. note: Because there was so much information to capture in Maren’s presentation on November 17th, we wanted to make sure that we could provide you with some more details. Enjoy! 

 

So many times, we find ourselves listening to how one giant company with an abundance of ping pong tables and fat jack stock options found itself on the receiving end of tons of lovely Glassdoor reviews and adoring candidates.

I am happy for those companies of course and I won’t lie and say that building a recruitment marketing strategy for them isn’t super fun. I mean, who doesn’t want to work for a company with free dry cleaning and a rock climbing wall?

At the very least, many companies in the service sector are offering things that many companies simply can’t compete with:

  • WFH days or telecommuting
  • Flat hierarchies
  • Or a pleasant work environment

While these are nice to have, there are many places where people have to work to continue to push our economy forward, that are dirty, nasty, and downright boring. You can’t have a ping pong table in a slaughterhouse and you can’t work from home if you’re a forklift driver. You can’t have a flat hierarchy if you work for a government contracting agency that spends ALL its time trying to figure out if you’re a SQL Programmer II or III.

I always tell my employees when they come to work for me that it’s going to be hard. And not a little bit hard like selling jeans, or Oreos or marketing a sports drink, but really freaking hard, like selling a quarter of a million dollar HRIS to every person in the org it touches; from the daily user to the person writing the check. THAT’S hard.

Just like B2B marketing is straight up harder than B2C marketing, recruitment marketing is harder when the sell is harder. How could the sale be hard? Here are some common difficult to market jobs or workplaces:

Unsafe or hazardous working conditions. While we’re no longer living in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, there are still jobs that are inherently dangerous. They may surprise you!

  • Airline Pilots
  • Fishers and Fishing Workers
  • Loggers
  • Roofers
  • Trash Collectors
  • Farmers
  • Structural Iron and Steel Workers
  • Drivers/Truck Drivers
  • Electrical Power Installers
  • Taxi Drivers and Chauffeurs

How about gross jobs or dirty jobs?

Many of those same jobs fall onto this list. Trash collectors, preppers at a nail salon, working the kill floor at a slaughterhouse, working with industrial dyes. You name it!  These are jobs that lack an intrinsic value proposition, or do they? More on that later.

Then there are boring jobs. Data entry, call service centers, and of course, sometimes recruiting for government or cleared jobs fall into this category.

Finally, you have places that are hard to recruit TO:

It boggles the mind that we spend all our time at conferences trying to figure out how to solve the competition issues in Silicon Valley when many of us are recruiting for jobs and locations that look nothing like it. I’m from Omaha, and at the same time as everyone I meet at this conference gives me a blank stare when I tell them that, our city and state currently have an unemployment rate of 3.6%.

Now that we’ve determined what these jobs look like, let’s talk about HOW to build a brand and a marketing strategy to recruit for them. As we’ve already determined, these jobs have to be filled, so let’s fill them!

Find Your Value

Well, it starts with the value proposition. I know I mentioned earlier that these jobs often don’t have an intrinsic or obvious value proposition, but they do have one.

For example, a trash collector may seem like a job I would never want to do, but for someone, having their afternoons free, physical activity, the chance to be outdoors and more, are all benefits.

No matter how difficult it is, determine the values your job will potentially give applicants. A blog post by RJ Morris, discusses how he successful did this during his time recruiting for a light industrial firm.

Early in my career, I took a turn doing light industrial contract recruiting. Temp work for lots of warehouse workers, forklift drivers, mechanics, etc. Physically demanding, low wages…these were tough gigs, and recruiting for them was a bear.

Boiler room environment, fast pace, demanding clients, low margins, high tempers.  “Hey, R. J., we need a third shift warehouse tech, three week assignment, starting tonight at 11 pm. Go get em.”

All of the jobs were hard to successfully recruit for, but by far, the worst job we worked on was to place folks at a food color company. The company’s model was to bring temporary employees in before offering them full time roles, and their first job was in the color mixing area. It was appropriately nicknamed the “Blender.”

Imagine fifteen workers, mixing powdered and liquid colors in huge vats with long oar-like paddles, twelve hour shifts at a time. The powdered color floated through the air everywhere. At the end of the shift, the guys (all were guys) had semi-permanent tie dyed tattoos.

These were industrial strength food dyes, used to make the different colors of Skittles, for example. Apparently, when you worked with them for twelve hour days, they also dyed skin.

It took a guy 30 minutes of scrubbing with Lava Soap to get the stains off.

He started with a 55% voluntary attrition rate. How did he turn it around? By asking who was already successful in the position. Morris looked at the numbers and realized that after 3 months, attrition dipped to 12% and then after one year, it was a mere 5%. So he started asking questions:

  • Why would anyone want to work in this job?
  • What’s the benefit to the employee?
  • What types of people will respond to that offering and where can we find them?  

He spent time at the company, interviewing new and tenured employees and found out that if you HAD the chutzpah to stick around, you stuck around for good. Did it make his job easier? No. But the numbers kept getting better. The company had realized their value proposition was to promise a better future, if you could make it today:

Come in, get along, work hard, don’t whine and you’ll get rewarded.  If you complained too much or did not get along with your Blender Buddies, you were out. If you lasted six months, the company offered you a full time role, including benefits and a decent raise.   Most importantly, employees rotated out of the Blender after one year.  No more blue arms and orange ears.  We just found the value proposition.

At Red Branch Media, we did something similar with a survey project with a large pharmaceutical company. While the company was an employer of choice in their HQ city, they wanted to compete for scientists near Harvard and Stanford, meaning the tactics they’d used as “the only game in town” before were going to be less effective. Plus, their pay was going to be less competitive in these areas.

To find out what types of people were successful in the role, we surveyed employees at all levels of the company to determine what made them successful, both inside and outside the company. And, while I am generally not one for anecdotal data, we did dive deep to find out what made them happy. The values rang through loud and clear, from sales people who had never set foot in HQ, to those who were safely ensconced within the building. We used those values and articulated them throughout the recruitment marketing campaigns. For these people, it wasn’t about big money, or even the benefits, it was about making a difference in people’s lives through medication.

Find Your Value

TO DO:

  • Survey Employees
  • Ask Questions
  • Create a Value Prop for THAT Job
  • Make Positives out of Negatives

Get Your Values Straight

I have no control over what people offer by way of compensation, or how they treat employees or contractors once they’re brought on board. However, I do know when a company cannot offer benefits like work from home or a
short commute, or even a safe or pleasant working environment, there are ways to reward them internally. As a recruiting professional, you can make a case for why employers should explore wellness programs, revamp their bonus structure or offer other benefits to workers who can’t have the more traditional stuff.

For example, an owner of a warehouse that packs and ships unconventional and risque items tries to foster a family atmosphere in the office and warehouse and buys his 11 employees lunch on Mondays and Wednesdays. Plus his company offers raises, health insurance and an informal atmosphere where employees can dress as they wish and listen to the radio all day.

Ask yourself, your employer, or your client if there is something you can do to offset some of the negative brand equity of working that gross, ugly or dirty job.

Get Your Values Straight

TO DO:

  • Find Ways to Make It Up To Them
  • Highlight In Postings
  • Be an Advocate
  • Find the ROI

Find Your Audience

Much of this is standard but keep new audiences in mind. The average age of a government employee is 47 years old, but over one-third of the current job market consists of Millennials, and they are expected to make up 46% of the working population by 2020. These statistics are already affecting the pool of cleared candidates, so being prepared to hire and manage a younger workforce is key.

Now, how do we get these kids to pass a security clearance? Present it as a challenge.

Millennials are more likely to be drawn to challenges that have tangible results, which includes successfully navigating the vetting process of security clearance. When communicating with younger workers, highlight the specific skills needed to make it through the clearance process, encourage them to rise to the challenge, and remind them that the reward is an in-demand clearance status. Also, giving current college students an opportunity to intern with your company allows you to gauge the skills of individual candidates and can give you confidence that a costly clearance sponsorship will be worth the time and investment.

–Olivia Landau

If you’re not already, seek out passive candidates, competitive candidates and of course, veteran candidates. While these are great networks to tap into for cleared jobs, they can also be useful for jobs that are less than ideal.

When we worked with the world’s largest protein company, we quickly realized that behind the fancy pants name, was a string of slaughterhouses located in some of the most remote and boring locations in the world. Which makes sense, you don’t want a slaughterhouse in your backyard now do you?

Anyway, we realized as we were defining our candidate persona, that many of them had things in common with a military recruit. Here’s that persona:

These are often people who grew up in or near a rural environment, wanted a family and valued a college education. The recruitment marketing strategy encompassed many things but military stood out with good reason, as did restaurant managers. We knew those groups also valued similar things, had some overlap in their backgrounds and also understood living in remote locations or third tier towns (bases).

Find Your Audience

TO DO:

  • Identify Audience
  • Build Personas to Speak To
  • Find Overlap

Get Your Channels Together

Recruiting on cleared and niche boards is absolutely a great idea. But when reaching out to millennials for ODD jobs, consider the source. It’s easy to spend a lot of money for very little return when it comes to recruitment advertising. So when you’ve got your buyer persona complete, think about what that person does. When we recruited for plant supervisors at the aforementioned plant, our initial plan included diversity initiatives on campus and mobile phone advertising for internal candidates to promote from the floor. Guess what?

Diversity was NOT going to happen from a gender perspective and having a phone on the kill floor is a fireable offense. Whoops? So what did we end up with?

  • A robust career fair plan supported by social and resources for career centers
  • Meet and greets and curriculum support for their schools of choice
  • Geo-location around universities that had the degree programs they were most likely to recruit from
  • Spotify advertising on study and country station
  • Bathroom advertising…yep
  • Table Tents
  • Lunch Room Announcements
  • Revamped LinkedIn Careers Page
  • Separate Career Site that focused on location benefits

While some of these might seem shockingly old school, it worked! We got all 55 positions filled in 9 months. So, when you think about marketing, even recruitment marketing, think about where your candidates go (college bars, career centers, the lunchroom) what they need to know (which classes to take, how to achieve security clearance, how to interview, any risks associated with the job) and what they are consuming (on-demand streaming content, flyers, facebook, billboards and heaven help me, Snapchat).

Of course, you can also reverse engineer this information. For the guy trying to get workers for his novelty sex toy business, we can safely avoid, say, Christian radio stations or the Panera Bread where your aunt always goes.

Get Your Channels Together

TO DO:

  • Where are they?
  • What do they do?
  • What are they listening to?
  • What are they reading?
  • How can you solve their problem or meet their need?

Be Honest (and Funny!)

Okay, writing job requirements is one thing…and writing job advertisements is an entirely different thing. I always say it’s the difference between a shoe ad in your favorite magazine and the description on the side of the box. Size 7 WIDE Black Heel. The latter is the requirement, the former is the ad. Let’s talk about transparency in advertising. Transparency means you don’t sell a job that’s not there:

 

“Want to work in a dirty and messy warehouse that is full of weird and embarrassing stuff that people buy online?”

vs

“We need a team player to foster warehouse synergy.”

Building out a job description for a gross, dirty or non-glam position means you have to create a clear picture of what it’s going to actually look like. It may not be fun, it may not even be comfortable but if you sell it as something that it isn’t, people will walk.

Realistic job previews, where you honestly tell people what the job entails, will create a condition where more peopl
e will not take the job, but the ones who do will be much more likely to stick around. You need to find the right person for the right job.

–Industrial psychologist Jeffrey Saltzman

Conversely, the people who apply DO want the job, because you’ve stated the risks or downsides right up front! I use this all the time in my own agency, because while we’re a marketing firm, it’s not glamorous. In fact, most days it’s downright boring.

Be Honest (and Funny!)

DOs:

Be honest. If the work is hard, say so. Our work is. It’s nothing like Mad Men. We spend a lot of time typing away at keyboards with our headphones on. I won’t tolerate loads of chit-chat, or sitting on one’s laurels. In fact, one section of our interview process is titled: This is the part where I scare you.

Point out the positives. When I tell people that we’re in a quiet work environment and everything we do is posted on the company intranet, it can scare them. So at the same time, I also focus on how the office is always empty by 5 pm or how we have a company wide eating meeting on Friday. Other plusses people rarely think of? The ability to use your phone on the job, lack of oversight, casual work environment and the chance to create your own schedule.

Create an awesome headline. You don’t have to lie to create a great headline.

“This Sales Job in Dallas is Shagadelic” worked to attract 50 awesome JC students for an entry-sales job for the Yellow Pages when the first Austin Powers movie came out. @LouAdler

Use their motivation as a sales tool. Motivations can be as simple as wanting to be outdoors or as complex as doing one’s patriotic duty. Whatever it is, make sure you use it to weed out undesirables AND pull in those who have a keen sense of what motivates them.

Learn, Do, Become. In RJ’s example in the dyeing factory, one key motivator was the stability and benefits a person would receive if they “ran the gauntlet”. In the case of an RBM medical client, we use things like referrals and leaderboards to encourage people to take new assignments and build their skill base. This has the added bonus of adding performance expectations and goals right in the job ad.

Tell a story. This can be about big goals, overcoming an obstacle or about the prospect’s future path. Whatever it is, it negates the need to discuss the need for a master’s degree or proficiency in thus and such. If you can tell a compelling story about the position or the company, it makes you job recruiting someone there (even if it’s gross or in BFE) that much easier.

Add a step. This may go against everything you’ve ever known to be true. But adding a step can take out the undesirables and loop in those who deserve your first consideration. Start with a quick email and then follow up with a call. While the person may still be in your ATS, at least you know their level of interest if they’ve taken the time to do the extra step (whether it’s email or whatever).

Don’t:

  • Add a laundry list of skills.
  • Use adjectives that can apply to literally anyone. Self starter comes to mind.
  • Add in your generic boilerplate (if you must, at least do so at the bottom)
  • Avoid the obvious with stupid titles
  • Forget to say what makes this job special

When important jobs are advertised cafeteria-style like this, with the garnish being the only differentiator, even the semi-desperate make the decision to apply based on location, job title and the company’s brand name. When they accept these jobs the size of the compensation package then becomes the prime negotiating factor. This is always the case with commodity products in a buyer’s market.

–Lou Adler

A Clear and Present Stranger

Knowing where to advertise is great. Knowing how to advertise is great. Understanding your value prop is also great. But none of these things alone are going to bring people to your door eager to working your terrible, difficult job. So, here are some other things guaranteed to help boost your business.

Career Fairs. It’s not just BEING at career fairs, it’s doing them right. It vexes me when people pay for a booth at a fair and then just make the marketing budget whatever it took Joe from campus recruiting to get there AKA his Hertz budget and a lunch at Applebee’s. For our meatpacking client, we totally rebranded their swag (so it was stuff students would actually keep) and built out a booth that was as informative and approachable as possible. We also use social media, email and referrals to get people to the booth. Once there, we made sure our career site was mobile ready so we could guide them through the process without unnecessary awkwardness.

Poaching. One organization developed 15-second low budget but intriguing commercials to air at a local movie theater near their headquarters.The same organization created a mobile hiring center with a cheap RV to drive to targeted competitors during the lunch hour. You can set a Yelp review to go to your careers page or test the mood at the local watering hole. But poaching in this sense, is legal.

Create puzzles. Creative challenges or contests can help you uncover top talent. But don’t just create a puzzle, put it out there! Think websites, wraps on company cars or billboards. Challenges can include hackathons, photo contests or even trivia. Dyson recently released a challenge hidden inside a recruitment video on its website.

Be Smart. Look you’re recruiting for clearance, high level jobs, and I’m recruiting for loggers, industrial warehouse workers and people who shoot cows in the head. Maybe the Valley can afford to blow off contractors if they mess up, but we’re dealing with a different deck, so make it easy on your prospects.

Make it easy for a candidate to apply, and give them a second shot if they botch an initial contact. I’ve spoken with many recruiters who say they give candidate one chance – if that individual blows off a phone screening or fails to submit the appropriate paperwork, they’re done. That strategy may work in less in-demand industries but if you’re vying for competitive talent you’re going to have to give a little wiggle room. Keep in mind that a passive candidate has anothe
r full time job. If they get pulled into a meeting and miss a phone screening, see that as a sign of their commitment to their work – a skill they will bring to the table with your company.

 

 

Maren Hogan is a seasoned marketer and community builder in the HR and Recruiting industry. She leads Red Branch Media, a consultancy offering marketing strategy and content development. A consistent advocate of next generation marketing techniques, Hogan has built several successful online communities, deployed brand strategies in both the B2B and B2C sectors, and been a prolific contributor of thought leadership in the recruitment and talent space.

Maren’s websites include www.redbranchmedia.com and www.marenated.com

 

Filed Under: recruitDC Conference, recruitDC Events Tagged With: employment branding, Maren Hogan, recruitDC event

Fall 2016 Speaker Preview – Will Staney

November 15, 2016 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

This week, I’ll be headed Washington D.C. to speak at recruitDC’s 2016 Fall Conference. My session will be about attracting top talent with an unknown or misunderstood employer brand. Whether you’re a startup or established organization you may have a misunderstood brand where the market perception is different from your actual company culture and employee experience. In both cases, trying to compete with the Googles and Facebooks of the world to attract and hire top talent may feel like an impossible tasks. But it doesn’t have to be.

In my session I will share four key components you need in order to build a great talent attraction strategy to help transform your employee brand. Those four components are developing a compelling EVP, sharing authentic stories, empowering your employees as brand ambassadors, and building your marketing machine.

Developing a compelling EVP

The EVP or Employee Value Proposition is a simple, overarching statement that ultimately becomes the essence of your employee experience and employer brand commitment. This is one of the most important steps because it lays the foundation of how you communicate what’s unique about your company as an employer. So before you launch any employer branding efforts, take time to really build out your EVP.

Tell authentic stories that resonate

The key is to give your candidates an insider look into your company, and paints an authentic and accurate picture of what life is really like working at your company. So for example, ask your employees to share what they love most about their job, the impact they get to make on your customers through their work, how their job contributes to the company’s mission, and what makes them proud to work to work at your company.

Empowering your employees as brand ambassadors

Employer branding is as much an employee engagement strategy as an external talent attraction strategy. So before you start any employer branding efforts, you really need to take a hard look at your company culture first. Is a great culture that your employees feel proud to talk about and share with their friends? If not, you need to fix that first.

Building your marketing machine

Once you’ve got your EVP research, you want to start defining your audience and creating your candidate personas – by company level, organization level, and even at the job level. For example, when meeting with your hiring managers, asking questions beyond work experience and education level that they’re seeking, and learn more about the types of personality that perform best on their team, where their team goes to learn online, what sorts of events and conferences they attend, etc.

To learn more join me on November 17, 2016 starting at 10:30am at the recruitDC Fall 2016 Recruiting Conference. Register here. 

Filed Under: recruitDC Conference Tagged With: recruitDC event, speakers, Wil Staney

Fall 2016 Conference – IMPORTANT PARKING INFORMATION!

November 14, 2016 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

The Fall 2016 recruitDC event will be located at the Bethesda North Marriott Conference Center located at 5701 Marinelli Rd, North Bethesda MD 20852 – conveniently located next to the White Flint Metro Stop on the Red Line

If you plan to drive to the event, please note that due to construction at the conference center, recruitDC attendees will park at an off-site location. Attendees should park their cars at 6130 Executive Blvd, Rockville, MD 20852 – a lot that is about 0.5 miles from the Conference Center. As you approach the parking location, there will be signs directing you to the “Conference Center Parking” area within the lot. At this location, flaggers will help you find a convenient spot. There will be a designated area where shuttle buses will pick you up and take you to the event. Please be sure to get a parking ticket.

Once you arrive at registration, you will be given a voucher that will allow you to exit once you return to the parking lot. 

Our hosts at the Bethesda North Marriott have worked hard to make this process as easy as possible for you as they deal with the construction. We apologize for any inconvenience, and hope that this information helps make things smooth for you. 

 

Filed Under: recruitDC Conference, recruitDC Events Tagged With: Event Details, recruitDC event

Engaging Human: Speaker Preview – Steve Levy

November 2, 2016 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

Late last month, I traveled to New Zealand to speak at RHUB NZ – left New York at 6PM, arrived in Auckland at 8:30AM Wednesday morning, departed Auckland on Saturday at 2:20PM, and finally arrived home in New York at 4:15PM Saturday. So in one week, I missed a Tuesday and experienced two Saturdays. 

But on Thursday morning I ate breakfast at The Ugly Bagel.

Without WiFi, I was left to ponder a delicious sandwich and listen to the morning sounds called Breakfast in Auckland. I heard three different conversations about coding projects, one fella discussing UX design in between bagel bites, and 2 folks talking retail and dating. I smiled and thought to myself just one thing… “This place is a sourcing goldmine.”

At the conference, one of the first things I asked was if anyone recruits at The Ugly Bagel.

Crickets.

Seems as if many involved in sourcing and recruiting are still performing their identification and engagement of people using traditional methods; nothing generally “wrong” with these approaches but are there other ways to spread the word of your openings, your organization, and its opportunities?

My goal is to introduce you to (a) sources of people – both digital and analog – that are non-traditional and perhaps far less traveled, but are nonetheless geysers of greatness, and (b) a model of engagement that produces higher response rates. This is where employment branding meets sourcing, and it is instrumental in helping you develop talent networks and sustainable talent pipelines for your roles.

Steve Levy is well respected as one of the best sourcers in the business, combining old school and new cool technologies to identify and engage exceptional talent – and actually knows those mythical “purple squirrels.”

Levy, a member of the RecruitingBlogs Editorial Advisory Committee who has been referred to as “the recruiting industry’s answer to Tom Peters” has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Most Social Human Resources Experts on Twitter;

Follow Steve On Twitter @LevyRecruits or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Filed Under: recruitDC Conference, recruitDC Events Tagged With: recruitDC event, sourcing, Steve Levy

Fall 2016 Speaker Preview: Dave Galley

October 24, 2016 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

On Becoming an Applicant Fracking System: Look Deeper

 

Do you recruit for the same basic positions, over and over? Do you search in a very specialized niche, with a limited pool of potential candidates? Maybe both? Whether you’re a search novice or a Boolean badass with a list of all the best search queries typed out in Excel, you can still find yourself in this situation: there’s no one new to contact about your current req. So, what do you do when you’re stuck, when it seems like you’ve already contacted “everyone”? That’s an excellent question, and I’m glad you asked! 

My talk focuses on identifying the best ways to get those hard-to-reach candidates from the bottom of the pile to the top of your search results. People you (and probably your competitors) have been missing during your searches. I’ll also be talking about how to take this approach one step further to identify new sources of information that you might not have considered, but should! The presentation answers two questions I hear from every new client. 

1)    “Could you please avoid using ______ for your research? We’ve already contacted everyone good from there.”

Umm… sure? There are always other sources we can use to find the professionals our clients want. But it’s a frustrating request, because ten times out of ten, I find awesome candidates from ______ (whatever site that is) who my clients haven’t spoken to, and never would have uncovered, which brings us to,

2)    “What are some new places to source candidates? We’ve exhausted all the usual resources, and need some new ideas.”

A closely related question, and it comes up again and again for the same reason as the first question: because candidates are terrible!

They don’t seem to get that as cool they might think it sounds to their fellow audit nerds, recruiters are searching for SOX, maybe Sarbanes-Oxley, but almost never SarbOx! Don’t they know that we need candidates with FPLC experience, and no matter how many proteins they’ve purified via HPLC, we’ll never find them without the more specialized acronym? That poly is a common prefix and -graph isn’t even in the top ten most common words it modifies? How hard is it to fill out every single one of your online profiles? To keep track of every site that recruiters are using to find professionals like you? To continually update and tweak your resume, so it has the most contextually appropriate keywords? To generate reams of publicly available online content that we can use to evaluate them before we ever pick up the phone? What are they doing? Don’t they want us to find them?!?

You’ll pardon, perhaps, a bit of tongue-in-cheek venting, because you’ve thought something similar yourself at least once in the last week. But it’s true that, while it’s a lot of work, that can be what to takes to ensure your resume gets found by everyone you might want to see it. Unfortunately, only the most active candidates, or the most public figures, in a given field will come close to doing everything on that list. So we need to cut those candidates a little slack and learn to fill in a few blanks for them.

When we’re searching our ATS, or our job boards, or social media, or whatever it is we’re using to figure out who to call next, we need to keep in mind that no one sets out to get a job by asking “How can I make life easier for recruiters?” Since they’re not putting themselves in our shoes, we have to step into theirs. We need to take it for granted that even the lengthiest resume will be incomplete, and learn to see what isn’t there.

For example, you may already know that 95% of active military personnel are US citizens, along with an even higher percentage of retired and reserve forces. So, when a job board doesn’t include a search for “US citizen” as an option, you can run a search for former military personnel and be reasonably sure that the results include citizens. Do you know how many veterans explicitly state their citizenship status on a resume or online profile? Significantly fewer than 95%! Or how about this: LinkedIn has about 1.18 million US-based members with a second copy of their profile written in Spanish. Only a little over 13 thousand of these members have the keyword “bilingual” anywhere on their profile. That’s just over 1% of likely Spanish-English bilingual members who can be found using the most obvious keyword.

Those are just two of the many examples I’ll be talking about in my presentation, “Applicant Fracking Systems.” Come on down to recruitDC’s Fall Conference and check it out!

 

Hi! I’m Dave Galley, and I hate third part speaker bios. You know we write them, we know we write them, why not be up front about it? Along with my awesome business partners at Brain Gain Recruiting, I spend pretty much all my time either helping other people find top talent, or teaching them to get better at it themselves. Through our training brand, the People Sourcing Certification Program, we’re advancing the sourcing profession with standardized training and testing. In my free time, I like break recruiting software and help vendors put it back together. I’m not hard to find online (in fact, that’s your first test!), but if you need a starting point, I tweet intermittently @theDaveGalley.

 

Filed Under: recruitDC Conference, recruitDC Events Tagged With: ATS, Dave Galley, recruitDC, recruitDC event

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