Jim Boesel's blog

With so much information at our fingertips I'm always amazed that any recruiter would still use hardcopy.  Granted its how we all learned the trade and old habits are hard to break but deep down inside, we all know this is obsolete thinking.  For those of you died hard hardcopy fan's, remember that feeling when someone else made a placement of a candidate you'd already had?  Just as painful is an organization having to pay an agency fee because they didn't realize they already had the candidates resume before committing to a fee.  Not to pour salt in an old wound in both ca

In a profession where you're judged in large part by your communication skills are you really cultivating them?  Today much our communication is via the Internet yet most people refuse to try to cultivate these important skills.  This is no different than someone poor verbal communication skills as in "Waz up wit dat"?

Instead of just recruiting, we should start thinking outside the box when it comes to Internet sourcing.  Everyone knows there's a wealth of information on the net but few, very few, really know how to source it.  A friend of mine going through a nasty divorce asked me to see what I could find out about his soon-to-be Ex.  His attorney was astounded with what I dug up and proceeded to ask me how I did it.  That's when it hit me, should sourcing be limited to recruiting?

This might be a bit painful to read, but the good news is -- if you address this -- you'll realize actual savings to your organization.  The savings could be from determining you don't need to replace your ATS, preventing agency fees for candidates you already had, and/or being able to accurately document the results of your ATS.

ATS processes were so complex that early adopters had to learn from their mistakes.  However, those early adopters have a distinct advantage if they take the time to learn from their mistakes.  Here are some classic mistakes:

LinkedIn can offer surprising leads when you're linked with people who ignore their default account settings.  When someone doesn't hide their contacts or profile updates, you get notified whenever they make a new connection.  If a competitive agency recruiter links with a new company, that could be a business opportunity worth checking out.  Sneaky?  Perhaps, but if the info is out there, you might as well use it.  I learned this lesson the hard way.

Being a recruiter these days might seem like selling ice boxes to Eskimos so you need to rethink your client strategy.  In the "dot com" boom era, anyone could be a recruiter because you only had to send out lots of resumes.  Theoretically, volume recruiting made sense but those days are gone and they're not coming back.  As a corporate recruiter, I was often amazed by many agency recruiters who had no clue what the candidate did or what they were qualified for.  This won't work anymore for several reasons.

A person buys the best hammer in the world only to discover that it doesn't change their ability to hammer a nail.  Sounds silly, yet companies that set out to buy what they've determined is the best ATS often find nothing has improved a year after installing it.  Their mistake is buying an ATS thinking it's a solution, when in reality, it's a tool only as effective as it is used.  The irony is companies who install ATSs often end up in worse shape than before, through no fault of the ATS vendor.

Managers don't hire resumes, they hire people.  Sounds obvious, but do you really practice this?   Far too much emphasis is placed on resumes, which are really not that important.  For the hiring manager, a resume is really a time management tool: no one gets hired from a resume.  They use it to identify the most desirable candidates to interview, but what they really want isn't the best person who's looking - they want the best person, period!

The desirability and hiring risk of a candidate's profile varies by type:

Today I got a request from arguably one of the top recruiters in the country and I almost fell out of my chair. When we first started recruiting together, there was no Internet or PCs. We just made tons of phone calls. The recruiter was asking me for the email address of someone she wanted to contact, to which I replied, "why not just call him?"