Should You Start A Career In Recruiting?

Most recruiting professionals seem to have fallen into their career by chance, luck, or fate. You don’t often (if ever) hear kids saying they want to grow up and be a recruiter. Recruiting also isn’t typically the first thing on the tip of your tongue when you’re thinking about a new career path. So where do recruiters come from? How are they made? Are some people just born to be recruiters?   

There’s no doubt that recruiters are passionate about what they do. They love tracking down great talent and making placements. The satisfaction of a good match keeps them going. You have to be in tune with the industry in order to survive in it. And maybe that’s not something you can learn or be taught. It’s possible that some people are just innately predisposed to be recruiters in the same way that some individuals are born to be natural leaders.

So if you’re thinking about starting a career in recruiting, ask yourself if you already have the following traits… or if a friend of yours is thinking about getting into the industry, ask them if they have these traits that maybe you take for granted in yourself:

 ◦Invested in Success: To be successful in recruiting, you don’t have to be some kind of megalomaniac or be hell-bent on “success,” whatever that means. However, you do have to care very deeply about professional advancement and peoples’ careers. You have to be invested in candidates and companies, which means caring about job satisfaction, personal issues, and career advancement. This translates into your own work as well – recruiters have to always be expanding their knowledge-base and connections. Recruiters have to believe that jobs, work, and professional success matter deeply to people’s lives and they must believe in the possibility of improvement.

 ◦Self-starter: In recruiting, no-one’s going to stand over your shoulder or hold your hand while you make phone calls. Only the independent will prosper. It’s up to you to research the right candidates, make the calls, set up appointments, push the interview, etc. If you have anxiety over talking to strangers or thinking on your feet, recruiting might not be the industry for you.

 ◦Detective: Love a good mystery? Recruiters need to love detective work. The issue in recruiting is that it’s really not like fitting together puzzle pieces. You don’t know exactly what you are looking for. You have to be able to take a rough idea and then hunt it down – recruiters “get” the position, and then identify the match when they see it. It’s an odd skill set, really – you have to be comfortable with using inexact and changing clues to find people, that are also unpredictable and unreliable. You have to be comfortable with this imprecision, but more importantly, enjoy the hunt for something as elusive and changing as human talent.

 ◦Strong Communicator: Are you persuasive? Do you know how to say the right thing at the right time? Better yet – do you know how to listen? Recruiting isn’t about finding any old candidate of the street and getting them to sign on the dotted line, it’s about finding the right candidate for the right job. Your decision making process will be largely guided by the questions you ask and the answers you receive.

 ◦Driven by results: Sales makes the world go ’round – or at least it needs to make your would go round if you want to stay motivated. If you get excited about the quality and quantity of your work, then recruiting might be a great career choice for you. While you can certainly teach someone to make sales or drive customer behavior, you can’t force them to love it – that’s a passion you need to have inside of you. Recruitment, whether corporate or agency, is large self-directed: you will get out of recruiting only what you put into it.

 ◦Free-Wheelin’: It is always said that over analysis has killed many a placement. Recruiters have to be able to “get out of their own way” to make connections. Could you look at a resume and in twenty seconds be comfortable with whether or not that person might be a right fit? Recruiters are essentially brokers: this means finding the right fit and bringing two parties together.Highly analytical people tend not to do well in recruiting, as there is a high volume of input (screening resumes) and output (talking to managers, setting up interviews.) If you spend a lot of time over-thinking everything, this high input/output scenario is a difficult proposition.

While you can train a good recruiter to become a great recruiter, the initial building blocks need to be there for that person to cut it in recruiting for the long term. Without passion and an ambitious attitude, most people get frustrated with the job and give up. There’s a reason the industry has such a high turnover rate – fresh recruiters just don’t last. It takes a special and unique kind of person to succeed in recruiting.

If you’re in recruiting and love your job, be thankful that you found the profession or that the profession found you. If you’re thinking about getting into recruiting, do some soul searching before you dive in – recruiting isn’t for everybody, but for some people, it’s the only field that makes sense.
http://www.recruiter.com

Choosing Between Making Money and Doing What You Love

"If you're really passionate about what you do, but it's not going to make you a lot of money, should you still do it?"

What a great question! It seems like just about everyone who has ever addressed a graduating class of high school or college seniors has said "Do what you love, the money will follow."

Inspiring. But it is true? Couldn't you do what you truly care about and very well go broke, as the question above (recently sent from one of our readers) implies?

Based on the research we did for our book, we're convinced that when you're heading into the unknown, desire is all-important. You simply want to be doing something that you love, or something that is logically going to lead to something you love, in order to do your best work. That desire will make you more creative and more resourceful, and will help you get further faster.

And, it will help you persist. When you're trying something that's never been attempted before — beginning an unusual project at work, or trying to get a new business off the ground — you're going to face a lot of obstacles. You don't want to be giving up the first time you encounter one. But, let's be real. None of this guarantees wealth, or even financial success.

A friend of ours was hanging out at a bar with a few fellow professional musicians after a recording session, talking admiringly about another musician they all know. One of them commented on how fortunate it was for this musician that his music was commercial. In those four words, you will find an enormous truth. We all have our music and there is no guarantee that anyone will buy it. Absolutely none. These are two entirely separate things.

So this reader question attacks us straight on and says, in essence, "I have the desire, but I am pretty certain it's not going to lead anywhere that's monetarily profitable. Now what? Should I still go ahead?" Of course you should.

Now let's qualify the answer a bit:
If you can't afford to do the thing you're passionate about — for example, if you do it, you won't be able to feed your family, or it would keep you from graduating college (which is something you think is more important than whatever you're passionate about) — then no, you'd better not bet your economic life on it. A basic principle concerning how you should deal with an unknown future is that every small smart step you take should leave you alive to take the next step. So, make sure you attend to your lower order Maslow needs of food and shelter and the like.

But even this doesn't mean you can't work on your passion a little — even if it's just for 15 minutes a day. And you should! Why?

Research (such as The Power of Small Wins that ran in Harvard Business Review May, 2011) shows that people who make progress every day toward something they care about report being satisfied and fulfilled.

We're in favor of people being happy. And we're also in favor of provoking people into pursuing happiness. The nice thing about this reader's question is that it might get people who have — by any objective standard — more than enough money to reconsider whether they want to continue to do things that are not making them happy, just because it'll make them more money. More often than not, these people say, "Once I get enough money, I'll do what I really want to do. I won't worry about the money." But somehow, they never get to that point. Time is finite. The question might be enough to get you to reconsider how you're spending it.

And of course, the assumption embedded in the question could be wrong. You might, indeed, end up making money if you engage in your passion, even though you currently think you won't. Remember, the future is unknown. Who knows what people will buy, or what you might invent after your very next act. At any moment in time, you are only one thought away from an insight — an insight that can change everything.

As we said in our previous post, when you are facing the unknown, they only way to know anything for sure is to act. When you are dealing with uncertainty — and whether you are going to make any money from your passion at this point is definitely an uncertainty — you act. You don't think about what might happen, or try to predict the outcome, or plan for every contingency. You take a small step toward making it a reality, and you see what happens.

Who knows? Even the smallest step can change everything.

So take those small steps. You might discover that your passion does, in fact, make you money. After all, who knew you could make huge amounts of money figuring out a way to connect all your friends (Facebook) or make a better map (pick your favorite GPS tool).

Even if you don't, you want to spend part of your day doing at least one thing that's making you happy. Otherwise, something is terribly wrong.

by Leonard A. Schlesinger, Charles F. Kiefer, and Paul B. Brown
http://blogs.hbr.org/

How Do You Identify The Perfect Staffing Specialist? How Do You Measure Success?

The perfect candidate for your client’s temporary job is sitting in right in front of you. You know this. But how do you prove it? And how do you prove it to your clients?

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. For decades, Human Resources departments have used established metrics to measure their own performance. So it’s somewhat surprising to me that so many staffing firms – even the larger ones with multiple locations – aren’t doing the same thing.

It’s surprising because a good system for self-measurement can be doubly useful for staffing and recruiting. You can use it to make your own staffing firm more efficient. Plus, you can get a much clearer idea of who the perfect temp candidates are.

But it’s only somewhat surprising because the most commonly-used metrics are not foolproof. Here’s a quick look at some of them:

 ■Time-to-Hire. This is a good metric to show clients who typically want positions filled RIGHT NOW. However it’s dangerous, because it encourages you to fill a position fast – as opposed to filling it with the best resource. That can cost your client a lot of money in training and quality assurance, and ultimately cost you both the resource and the client.
 ■Retention/Turnover. How long are your placements staying with their employers? These are good metrics, as they can shed a lot of light on costs associated with recruiting, hiring and training. You can use them to prove, for example, that a client is better off leaving the position open for an extra month rather than hiring too fast.
 ■Cost-Per-Hire. This compiles all of the expenses related to hiring, including advertising, sourcing, technology, drug testing and many more. In fact, a taskforce led by the Society for Human Resource Management operating under the auspices of the American National Standards Institute is developing a universal CPH standard which is currently up for second review. It does not, however, measure any expenses after the hire.
 ■Performance. Many organizations use a general survey-style method for measuring the “quality” of an employee, such as a performance rating based on a scale of one to five. The problem here is that what people say and what they do are often very different. An evaluator who’s in the mood to award a “5” one day might be more inclined to award a “3” the next, and even then there’s often no clear action to be taken on the results.

Perhaps a more practical approach, for yourself and for your recruits, is to focus on KPIs (key performance indicators).

KPIs are related to your specific business. They should always be tied to your business goals, actionable, consistent and trackable.

For example, let’s use common staffing KPIs tracked by the American Staffing Association. These might be:
 ■Resumes received
 ■Sendouts per employee
 ■Number of placements
 ■Hours billed per employee
 ■Length of service by recruit
 ■Gross margin per salesperson

For determining the perfect temp candidate, it’s great to know your client’s KPIs. Your client might measure success by:
 ■Hours per employee
 ■Total production by employee
 ■Employee absences
 ■Total business cost per employee
 ■Total cost per project/initiative

This is important: once you’ve got the right KPIs down you can combine them into what tells you the most, at a glance, about how your recruits are performing and how you are performing for your client.

It’s important because none of your KPIs will tell the complete story. An employee who is absent the most may not be the least productive. A low number of sendouts might mean you’re slacking off; it could also mean that you’re consistently getting it right the first time. You need to combine them to get a full picture.

But here’s the most important part. It will no doubt get me in trouble with HR mavens and other math-oriented professionals.

People are not numbers. No matter how hard we try, they never will be.

None of these metrics help you measure the perfect temp candidate that’s sitting in front of you right now. So it’s vitally important to balance the knowledge you’ve come up with through hard numbers and your unmeasurable instincts. Because if you bring in good people in the first place, many of the reactive measurements later on will take care of themselves.

In a recent New York Times article, author Robin Black said: “I have to stop worrying about numbers. I have to reclaim the ambiguous part of my own intelligence.” There has to be a subjective “gut” feel to what you’re doing, too. Nobody has ever come up with a formula to quantify creativity or drive or persona (see point #6 here). Sometimes you just know.

That’s your job.

And if you’re doing it well, you’re probably dealing with numbers – matching the client’s KPIs to the candidates’ qualifications.

At the same time you’re operating in ambiguity, looking for specific strengths and identifying weaknesses in your recruits that will allow both the recruit and the client to grow. You’re making an informed judgment call.

www.staffingtalk.com

Smart Choices: Hiring the Right People

Need an office manager or a front-desk person? Pay and benefits are important but a successful search may depend more on patience. Physicians — most of whom are accustomed to making quick decisions — often don’t put enough time or thought into hiring, says Elizabeth Woodcock, an Atlanta-based practice management expert.

“Until physicians come to realize that they are leading multimillion-dollar businesses, they will tend to hire the wrong people,” Woodcock says.

Wrong as in promoting the longtime staff member who’s easy to work with but who may not have the ability to lead the staff, learn the complexities of a large-scale business or influence customer satisfaction.

In order to hire the right person for the job, follow a structured approach and don’t make these common mistakes when making hiring decisions.

• Don’t read the resume and/or determine the interview questions for the first time while the candidate is in the office. Do prepare thoroughly by developing interview questions that get to the heart of whether the candidate can do the job. Here are a few sample questions to guide your evaluations of potential employees:

1. Customer service: “Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a patient complaint.”

2. Priority management: “Tell me about an occasion when you had two doctors or bosses ask you to do conflicting tasks. How did you handle this dilemma?”

3. Response to office politics and gossip: “Tell me about a time at work when a co-worker complained to you about other employees or office policies and procedures, concluding with ‘Don’t you think so too?’ How did you respond?”

• Don’t jump to a conclusion about a candidate in the first few minutes of the interview…then spend the rest of the interview validating your opinion. Do remain objective and balanced.

• Don’t complete an interview without having a good enough understanding about a candidate to make a selection decision. Do end your interview when you can make a selection decision about the candidate.

• Don’t do most of the talking. Do allow the candidate to do most of the talking.

• Don’t describe the job at the beginning of the interview. Do describe the job after you have determined that the candidate has the competencies to do the job.

• Don’t sequence interviews with each interviewer asking the same questions of the candidate. Do have each interviewer ask different questions.

• Don’t ask each candidate interviewing for the same job a different set of questions. Do ask each candidate the same set of questions so you can compare them equally.

• Don’t forget key points about the candidate later. Do take good notes.

• Don’t ask only close-ended (“yes” or “no”) questions. Do ask open-ended questions.

• Don’t allow interruptions (i.e., phone calls and people walking in) to interfere with the interview. Do schedule the interview during a time when you will not be interrupted.

• Don’t hire a candidate who may have falsified information. Do make reference checks.

• Don’t ask discriminatory or inappropriate questions, like, “When did you graduate from high school?” and “Do you have someone who can take care of a sick child?” Do ask questions that are relevant to the job requirements.

Finally, take your time to select the best person for the job. The results of your decision can affect office morale, customer satisfaction, your free time and the bottom line.

http://www.recruiter.com/

Working with Recruiters

Working with recruiters is the next best thing to working with hiring managers. Recruitment professionals know their clients and they pride themselves on knowing their candidates in the hopes of making the right connections. In order to make this happen there are a few things you need to know:

TELL THEM EVERYTHING:
When building a relationship with a recruiter, this is no time to be shy. Recruiters need to know everything there is to know about you and what you are looking for in your career, i.e. salary, perks, specific employers, etc. Building an effective relationship with a professional recruiter starts with trust and honesty, so be forthcoming with your requests.

FIND OUT EVERYTHING:
Relationships are a two way street. When working with a professional recruiter you need to know as much about them as it relates to their capabilities and ability to help you secure employment. Do a thorough background check on the recruiter and/or the company. Review all the social networking sites where the recruiter does business and if they do not recruit via these new mediums, be aware; it might mean that they are not keeping up with workforce trends and new recruiting practices.

COMMUNICATE OFTEN:
Unfortunately securing a recruitment professional does not mean you will secure employment immediately. There can be a lot of waiting involved. Sitting still and waiting for the phone to ring is not an option for you. You are part of the communication equation and you must take an active role in all aspects of your career.
Approach your job hunt like you already have a job. If you see something online, hear about it on a website, see it on the news – contact your recruitment professional and collaborate with them on a game plan. Good recruiters are savvy and well connected, like real estate agents. They tend to know where all the hot properties are. However, they can not be everywhere, so the more hands they can have working in your favor the better.

BE REALISTIC:
Understand that you are not the recruiters’ only client. Schedule standing meetings no matter how short; just get them on the calendar. Recruiters understand your urgency however they have other clients asking for the same things. Work with your recruitment professional to set realistic goals that are effective and actionable.

http://www.recruiter.com/

80% of today’s jobs are landed through networking

I read an entry on the Personal Branding Blog  which stated, “According to ABC News, 80% of today’s jobs are landed through networking.” This percentage of networkers represents smart jobseekers who understand that looking for and finding work takes...work.

They understand that personal networking coupled with online networking will yield better results than spending the majority of their time on Monster.com, Indeed.com, Dice.com, CareerBuilder.com, and other job boards.

Smart jobseekers attend networking events consisting of jobseekers, business owners, professional associations, meet-ups, etc. However, networking events are not smart jobseekers' only, or even major, source of networking. They also utilize their rich network of former colleagues, friends, relatives, neighbors, acquaintances, and others; or start the building process…and keep it going once they’ve landed a job.

Experts like Martin Yate, Knock ‘em Dead: Secrets & Strategies for Success in an Uncertai...,  will tell you that companies want to hire from within first; only when there are no appropriate internal candidates will they rely on referrals from employees (who get a bonus for a successful  hire) and people who will approach them through informational meetings. The latter category of jobseekers (you) have the benefit of getting known before the job is "officially posted."  "...employees who come to the company 'known by us' in some way are seen to be better hires and thought to get up to speed more quickly and stay with the company longer," Martin writes. And this includes you. This is where relentless networking comes in, whether you contact someone at a company so they can get your résumé to a hiring manager, or you contact a hiring manager in your desired department to set up a meeting.

Pam Lassiter, The New Job Security, understands that networking can be daunting, particularly for Introvert types, but encourages jobseekers to do it, "Using your networking wisely is a muscle you can exercise and develop if you haven't already. Outplacement and alumni career services surveys report that 65 to 85 percent of jobseekers find their jobs through networking...."

Some jobseekers misunderstand the purpose of networking. They think it's all about them. They constantly ask without giving, which is the quickest way to drive away potential allies. People who have the true networking mindset realize that they should first help others, before thinking of themselves.

The bottom line is that helping other jobseekers will help you. Paying it forward increases your odds of landing a job. And, there are plenty of great networkers who will help you, as they realize they'll eventually get help from others. They are patient and determined.

Here's what one of my customers, who recently got a job, told me about proper networking: "Have a conversation with people [as opposed to] giving them a 30 second commercial.  It's not about 'I need a job.'  Have a really good conversations with a few people at an event and listen to what their needs are. Think of how you can really connect with them and support them vs. just getting a business card."

Networking only makes sense, so I’m perplexed as to why some jobseekers don’t embrace it. I know that personal networking means going outside one's comfort zone, particularly if you’re an Introvert (as an Introvert, I know the feeling). Developing the attitude that “I just have to do it” will help you over the hump.

http://www.recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blogs/80-of-today-s-jobs-are-landed-through-networking 

Working with Recruiters Made Easy

Your average job seeker just doesn’t “get” what a recruiter does. This is apparent to anyone that’s ever heard a friend or relative complain about a recruiter “not finding them a job.” If you’re planning on working with recruiters or with a staffing firm, here are a few things to keep in mind.

Tips for Working with Recruiters

• Recruiters don’t find people jobs: The average job seeker has it all mixed up – recruiters don’t go out and find jobs, recruiters find candidates. They match candidates with open positions given to them by their client companies. Recruiters are tasked with filling these job requisitions. If you’re planning on working with recruiters, understand that they are often looking for very specific types of candidates – don’t get offended if you don’t match.
• Recruiters are part of the bigger picture: With this in mind, job seekers should embrace one or more recruiters as part of their overall job seeking strategy – not as an end-all solution. Professional networking, social media sites, and other job seeking channels should still be utilized to maximize individual job leads. Job seekers should recognize that recruiters can open additional doors for them and are inevitably part of the larger job market landscape.
• Recruiters and job seekers need to work together: It’s all about teamwork. Job seekers should be honest about their credentials and in turn, recruiters will work hard to push their profile towards befitting opportunities. Be open and upfront about your current compensation and future expectations and recruiters will get the interviews rolling. If everything works out, the recruiter makes a placement and you get a new job – both sides win when there’s mutual respect and understanding.

All too often, job seekers throw themselves at recruiters and expect royal treatment. Candidates have a hard time accepting the fact that recruiters don’t work for them, but with them. Recruiters always have your best interests in mind (and they want you to get hired), but they can’t make individually tailored jobs appear out of thin air.

Seeing eye-to-eye with recruiters isn’t all that complicated when you use their services as one of many valuable resources in your job seeking toolbox. If you are looking for a job, make sure you pursue every avenue available to you – and that working with recruiters in the correct fashion is part of your job search strategy.

http://www.recruiter.com/

Social Demographics: Who’s Using Today’s Biggest Networks

More than 66% of adults are connected to one or more social media platforms, but who exactly are these people?
The infographic below, created by Online MBA, breaks down the demographics, including education level, income, age and gender of social media users, along with other miscellaneous facts.

Some sites’ users are more demographically alike than others. One thing is the same for most social sites — college students, or those who have completed some college, represent the majority on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Digg and Reddit. Among Facebook users, 57% have completed some college, and 24% have earned a bachelor’s or master’s degree. Although, people 45 and older make up 46% of Facebook users.

Social media sites are also seeing a gender split — women use social media more than men. More women are on Facebook and Twitter. About 57% of Facebook and 59% of Twitter users are women.
Women gravitate toward Pinterest and young, techie men hang out on Google+. Pinterest has the heaviest gender imbalance — 82% of users are women, who pin crafts, gift ideas, hobbies, interior design and fashion. On the other spectrum, Google+ is dominated by men (71%) and early adopters, engineers and developers. About 50% of Google+ users are 24 or younger.

LinkedIn reports an even ratio of men and women — 49% over age 45 — who use the site to connect with other business professionals.

Most people use social media to stay in touch with friends and family, and more are doing so while on the go. About 200 million Facebook users check their Timelines from their mobile devices every day.

Check out the infographic to see all the statistics.