By Kathleen Smith
No matter how much things change, they stay the same. Recruiting is about developing relationships, and not just one type of relationship. Candidate relationship, internal hiring relationships and your colleague relationships for referrals and, heaven forbid, if you have to find another job. [Read more…]
Why recruitDC ?
By Pete Radloff
It’s the end of 2013, and as is customary with December, it’s a time for us to reflect back on the previous year. 2013 was a great year for me professionally and it was also a tremendous year for recruitDC. But recruitDC took on a new, deeper meaning for me this year.
I’m often asked why I participate in recruitDC and what the benefit is for me. It’s never an easy answer, mostly because there are so many reasons I’m lucky and proud to be associated with such a great organization. It’s great for networking, and learning, as well as getting to meet those people that you “only know through LinkedIn”. Earlier in my career, I always hoped I’d get to a point where I didn’t need to put my resume on a dozen job boards, or have to apply to a number of companies that I didn’t necessarily know too much about. I wanted to reach a point where I’d built up a strong enough network to be able to reach out to some key contacts and get introduced to some amazing opportunities. This year was finally the year that all came to fruition.
I was laid off in the summer, and as with anyone going through this, panic is usually the first feeling that sets in. That’s often followed by more panic action, lots and lots of action to keep the pipeline flowing and increase the number of opportunities available to you. With the network I had built over the years, through my past jobs and groups like Project SAVE and recruitDC I was able to get some great leads on opportunities, and wound up landing on my feet. (Yes, there is more to it, but grab me for a beer after the next event and we’ll talk)
So when someone who hasn’t heard of recruitDC or is new to the group asks me what the benefits are, here’s what I tell them:
- You’ll learn. A LOT. You’ll get insight and best practices from some of the best folks in the Talent Acquisition field. We’re able to bring in speakers and practitioners from all over the country.
- You can sell it to your boss. It won’t cost you $5000 to attend recruitDC. It’s local, you’ll be back the same day or the next day, and you don’t have to crush your department budget to get some professional development.
- You can start implementing right away. What you learn at recruitDC, you can put into practice right away, and start improving how your organization approaches talent immediately.
- You’ll meet great colleagues. recruitDC gives you plenty of time to mix and mingle, share best practices, and get to know others who can help you along the way in your career.
- You can build your reputation. By attending events, meetups and mini-sessions, you’ll be able to share your expertise that you’ve acquired over the years. Since we’re a grassroots organization, we’re always looking to promote our own local superstars.
- Opportunities to “Pay It Forward”. I was fortunate to have some tremendous talent surrounding me early in my career, and probably one of the best mentors I could have ever asked for. recruitDC provides a nurturing culture for people to seek out those who can help them get to the next level. There’s no substitute for great people looking out for your career.
There’s probably a dozen other reasons that I could share, but we’ve all got holiday cookies to attend to, guard, hoard, enjoy. so if you haven’t been active in recruitDC this year, I strongly encourage you to come on out and spend some time with us in 2014. And grab me to have that beer….I love to geek out on some recruiting talk.
Pete Radloff is a member of the recruitDC Board of Directors, and a recruitment consultant with NPR and exaqueo. You can connect with Pete on LinkedIn and on Twitter
Devoted To Educating Our Own
By Ben Gotkin
As we close in on completing our 4th year at recruitDC, I look back with tremendous pride with what we’ve accomplished. Myself and several others sensed a significant void in recruiter education and networking in the DC market and in the Fall of 2009, we decided to do something about it. Fast forward to Fall of 2013, and we’ve held 7 sold out conference events averaging 200-250 attendees. This year, we added to the opportunities to connect be producing 5 smaller Meetup events. Our website (www.recruitdc.org) was also launched, offering a steady stream of blog posts and information of interest to the local recruiter community.
recruitDC is a not-for-profit, grassroots organization staffed by volunteers, on the Board, supporting the Board, and supporting our events. What we do is a labor-of-love, as we all share the belief that the more the recruiters in our community get up and away from their desk, and out to learn, connect and grow, the better off the entire recruiting community will be. Better educated recruiters mean that companies are able to make better hires and deliver a better candidate experience, both of which have a significant impact on those company’s bottom lines, which ultimately has a positive impact on the local economy. Think I’m exaggerating? I don’t think so. Our local economy is primarily a knowledge and service economy, in the end, it’s all about the people, and companies need to make the right hires to optimize their success.
But we are not alone. For the past several months, I have been engaging in a conversation with my peers from local recruiter groups in other markets around the country. Each of these groups is independent and unique in their own ways, but ultimately we all share the same devotion to educating and connecting our communities. Our dialogue has been focused on what we can all learn from each other to enable all of us to continue to deliver great learning and networking events and opportunities. Last week in Las Vegas at the Recruiting Trends Conference, I met in person for the first time with my peers from groups in Minneapolis, Atlanta and Denver. It was a great experience, and started to lay the groundwork for the future. I am always energized by being around other recruiters. To be around others like myself who are energized and devoted to growing their local communities was pretty amazing.
We have one more event this Fall, which should be another great one. For the first time, we are hosting a conference event in Maryland, this time at the historic AFI Silver Theater. If you haven’t registered yet, seats are still available to connect with your peers and learn from local and national experts about recruiting analytics, mobile recruiting, effective influencing and social media. Please click the link below to learn more and register. Hope to see you there and we look forward to even bigger and better things for recruitDC in 2014!
recruitDC MoCo Sourcing Roundtable Meetup Recap
In 2013, recruitDC responded to the demand from the local recruiting community to provide more learning and networking opportunities by producing a series of ‘Meetups’ at various locations throughout Maryland and Virginia. The Meetups so far have primarily been free, brief, less formal events where 30-40 recruiters could get together for free to learn from each other and some of the area’s top recruiting professionals. 
On Thursday, September 26th, Aronson/Champion Recruiting hosted the 4th recruitDC Meetup of 2013 at their office in Rockville, MD. Sourcing was the topic-du-jour, and we took a new fun and interactive approach for knowledge sharing and collaboration on a variety of sourcing topics. Each table had a different topic with a local ‘rockstar’ facilitator including: candidate engagement (Pete Radloff), phone sourcing (Conni LaDouceur), LinkedIn (Caitlin Banks), Boolean search (Kelly Dingee), tech communities (Matt Duren), other social channels (Holly Bienia), pipeline development (Derek Zeller), and sourcing strategy development (Ben Gotkin).
Participants had the opportunity to participate in two table discussions over the course of 90 minutes, the ‘buzz’ was so great that it probably could have gone on all day. Some of the key learnings from participants through the day included:
- How to effectively conduct phone research and cold calls by being ready with your follow up questions and by using terms to make you sound credible
- Avoid using closed questions on a cold call that might solicit a yes/no answer
- Build a strong word-of-mouth brand through a great candidate experience and transparency
- The benefits of using the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar
- Using Rapportive to confirm email addresses and make easy connections to candidates social profiles
- Leveraging librarians at your local public library to help conduct research for you
- Using a ‘tilde symbol’ or ‘~’ in a Boolean search on Google gives you synonyms for search terms
- Google is best for xraying LinkedIn
- How Github profiles can demonstrate a specific level of expertise
- Using ‘whois’ when searching social or tech profiles
- Using Twitter search to find candidates
The feedback for this event was so positive that we are likely to use this format again for future Meetup events, so stay tuned. Also stay tuned for information on our next Meetup event, likely to happen in DC in the near future.
Don’t forget to register for the Fall 2013 recruitDC event at the AFI in Silver Spring, MD. You can get your tickets here!
Sourcing, You say? Join Us For a Meetup September 26th – Rockville, MD
Please join us for a morning meetup on Thursday September 26th from 8am – 10:30am in Rockville, MD. Come have some breakfast with your fellow purple squirrel hunters, mingle, and as always – LEARN!
Register today for the event on our Eventbrite site!
A very special thanks to our most gracious host, Aronson, LLC
