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Every once in a while, I like to drop links to my clients to let them know we're thinking about them.
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Ways To Get Noticed In Seattle As A Recruiter
If you are a recruiter in Seattle, and are looking for work - don't be afraid to shoot me an e-mail. I don't actively recruit up here, but I may be able to hook you up with some of the people you want to be speaking with.
And if you're a company in Seattle looking to hire recruiters - if you're willing to try something different, you should shoot me an e-mail as well. I'm not going to blithely post boring positions, but I'm willing to interview you on why a recruiter would want to work with your company.
And if you want to get in front of candidates, or show up on search engines, a recruiter interview with me still the best way to go. The contact e-mail is up there on the right.
Using Facebook To Recruit: Film At 11
The event is set. May 21st, I'll be hosting a live webinar on Facebook recruiting through hireability. The session is called,
The explosion of Facebook as a social networking tool is challenge and a mystery to recruiters. Unlike LinkedIn Plaxo, Facebook users aren't looking to be contacted in a search for jobs. They certainly don't want to be headhunted, until they're ready. Jim Durbin, a social media expert takes a look at Facebook from the eyes of an experienced staffing professional, and provides live, actionable training on how to use Facebook to increase placements.
In a session that combines sourcing, contacting, and referral generation, Mr. Durbin shows recruiters how to navigate the tricky waters of social networking.
The event is a paid webinar - the cost is $89, and it will be 1:30 p.m. EST/10:30 a.m. PST, and will cover sourcing, filtering, connecting, reference checking, and referrals in Facebook. Most training sessions are full of theory - this webinar will be a walkthrough of screens and search terms on an actual job search.
There'll be Cross-promotion at socialmediaheadhunter and my other recruiting blogs Charlotte, StlRecruiting, and KC Recruiting, as well as the social networks and social media circles. If you announce the event on your blog, be sure to send me an e-mail, and I'll link to you from this PR5 blog.
I Feel Terrible I've Neglected You
Sometimes I feel this way about my local recruiting blogs. I'm so sorry to neglect you, but other people ar paying me, and I want to go hang out in Silverlake.
When Is An Offer Letter Not An Offer Letter
One of the advantages of a blog is to be able to air dirty laundry about the staffing profession. There are a lot of good recruiters out there, but there are also a number of shady operators.
This is one of those stories. It is true.
A recruiter sits down with a candidate for a Java development job, and after asking questions about background, projects, skills, and salary requirements, asks the very important question - "where have you already interviewed, and who else have you worked with?"
The candidate replies with a few companies, and then tells the recruiter that they have an offer letter in hand, so it's best if the recruiter organize any interviews as quickly as possible.
"An offer letter," the recruiter asks? "If you already have an offer, it's going to be difficult to get you in somewhere else and get an offer before yours expires. Do you want that other job?"
The candidate replies that he has an offer letter from the staffing firm.
The recruiter pauses, and asks if the candidate has the letter on him. The candidate does, and the recruiter begins to read a 2 page offer letter from a competing firm. In the fine print of the letter, the company says, "Contingent on a successful interview and an employment contract, ____ _______ is hereby offered a position as a ____ _____ for the sum of $_______."
This takes the recruiter back a bit. He's never seen a pre-offer, offer letter before contingent upon a successful interview and an employment contract. That's because there's no such thing as a pre-offer offer letter. Of course the firm would hire the contractor if their client wanted to use them. What kind of guarantee is that?
Shady paperwork, often many pages in length, is a big warning sign for candidates. Paperwork happens after a recruiter has found you a job. Anything you sign before is a "leash" that the firm is using to make your behavior confirm to their needs, instead of yours.
Viral Video: Crossbows And Moustaches
Crossbows and Moustaches is a buddy cop parody that pits Bruce and Steve up against a crime lord touting a drug called Mutagen X. The series has nine episodes, and they get progressively funnier. This is the first.** You can watch them from Flektor, or all nine can be found at MySpaceTV. If you embed it on your blog, forward me an e-mail and I'll link to your page from brandstorming.com (as long as you're not a spammer). *The content is adult, and may not be safe for some workplaces.
Recruiting Trends Webinars
I have three webinars coming up in the next month. The first will be February 19th at 12:00 CST for the Human Capital Institute. The topic I'll be covering is Talent Scouting and Social Networking: The New Employee Referral program. To register for the 60 minute webinar, click on that link.
The second event is the Recruiting Tour De Force, March 6th and 7th, where I'll be presenting with Shally Steckerl and Margaret Graziano We had a successsful event in San Antonio at the NAPS conference, and we're revisiting the event on the topic of What's Next For Recruiting. Shally, Margaret and I cover the hot trends in recruiting from the standpoint of practioners.
No dull theory here. We'll teach you how to make money and hire more people. The cost of the event is $89.97, and you can sign up at either of the links below, or by sending me an RSVP to jdurbin@durbinmedia.com.
Shally has the event linked for the 6th here, and the 7th here. Margaret writes about it today on her KeenHire blog.
To help us out, link the post or make an annoucement on your own page. I'll be happy to link back to anyone who advertises the events and sends me a note.
Top Notch HR Professional In Portland
Lance, better known as the HR guy in our circles, is looking for a new job in Portland. He and the missus moved out to Oregon, and he's looking for a position that's closer than the remote work he's doing now.
As far as career transitions go, this is about as good as it can go. I love the company I am leaving, the company loves me back and doesn't want me to go but outside circumstances are forcing us apart like a corporate version of Romeo and Juliet (minus the double suicide). Those circumstances are a fabulous job my wife got...250 miles away. The last six months involved me telecommuting but HR is one of those things where something gets lost in the distance. Ultimately, they need an HR guy (or gal) on-premise and I really want to work with someone besides my cat. So while I help in transition, I also have the pleasure of seeking a new position.
The best part about this is applying some of the things I didn't know when I first started job seeking a long while ago. For one, I have started by reaching out to my network instead of just mindlessly sending out a resume to every HR job in sight. I've already received a few leads along those lines. The next thing I am doing in conjunction with reaching out is...well, this. I am blogging about it. I know I have readers in Portland, OR and others who may be familiar with the area as well and I would love your tips and leads on anything HR/recruiting in Portland! Networking events and similar types of functions are also appreciated.
Lance is an excellent blogger (he just won the Best HR Blog at Recruiting Blogs), and if you're in that area, or know people that are, reach out to him and give him a hand. You'll look good doing so. His contact e-mail is at the link.
Recruiting Roadshow In Seattle
John Sumsers' Recruiting Roadshow is coming to Seattle in 2008. The Minneapolis and Dallas Roadshows were huge successes with sellout crowds of local recruiters. This is the explanation behind the Roadshow.
The Recruiting Roadshow is an experiment.
Over the past several years, I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to see what working level recruiters are actually doing. Our industry has grown and matured in some interesting ways over the last decade. The result is an interlocking set of networks occupied by seasoned recruiters who have been in the business for seven to ten years. They occupy much of the visible universe of people who make buying decisions in the industry.
My bet is that they also have a hard time seeing the realities at the root of the game.
For a very long time, we have all behaved as if Recruiting were a profession that is practiced identically from setting to setting. Years of monolithic tools (job boards, Applicant Tracking Systems) reinforced the notion.
The trouble is that the labor market is different from town to town. Differing levels of demand, differing levels of supply and deeply differing manners and procedures. While the senior ranks are somewhat globalized, the real labor market is excruciatingly local.
For the most part, the sellers of new Recruiting tools behave as if the marketplace were homogeneous. Nothing is farther from the truth. The methods and techniques of Recruiting vary from hamlet to hamlet. It is beginning to be the case that online tools serve to illuminate the differences.
The goal of each individual Recruiting Roadshow is to cause members of the local Recruiting world who may not have easy access to the industry’s network infrastructure to have access to each other. In other words, the networking that happens at every Recruiting Roadshow is more important than any content that is distributed.
We hold Recruiting Roadshows in order to make it possible for new Recruiters to network with other new Recruiters.
The motto of the Roadshow is to bring physical community to online networks. If you can't do that in Seattle, where pray tell can you?
I promise to keep an eye on the schedule, and post information here.
Tricks To Getting Ahead In The Modern Workplace
This one is an old trick, but a good one. If you're a Gen Y employee, and you want to be well-liked in the corporation, I have two pieces of advice for you.
The first, is to carry a clipboard. Don't carry a huge one, but everywhere you go, have a clipboard with a piece of paper in it. Managers like people who look busy. Having a clipboard makes you look busy. Even if you're just heading to the restroom, take a clipboard, and it will look like you're hurrying to a meeting. When raise/promotion time comes, your boss will certainly remember.
The second bit of advice I have for you is to walk fast. I'm serious. People who walk fast, even if they are headed to the coffee machine or outside to get a smoke, have two advantages. The first is power. If someone stops you, the appearance of stopping takes so much effort, that the person stopping you must have a good reason. Everyone sees it, and assumes that you are an important person doing important things. The visual effect is priceless. Then plays into advantage two, which is no one asks you to do stupid things if you look busy. Clicking on a mouse doesn't fool anyone these days - but walking fast, still does the trick.
So you're a fast walker with a clipboard. You're headed for promotion, but there's a big roadblock. Your fellow employees now hate you for being a hard-working kiss-up who is trying to look like a manager. The solution:
Worm your way into the hearts of human resources, and be the person, who drops off checks on your floor. People who have live checks are by definition the cool ones in the company. So cool, they can't pay their bills, and have to cash their checks each week, unlike the ones who get direct deposit. When you hand someone their check, you're like Santa Claus, and everyone likes Santa Claus. Take it from me - no one dislikes the person who brings the checks.
Three ways to get ahead in the corporate world. You heard it here first.
