AIRS
Search Lab Fall 2000
Seminar Review
AIRS,
the industry leader in Internet recruiter training, has revamped the AIRS I and
II course, their foundation building classes on Internet recruiting, into a new
course called the AIRS Search Lab. I
attended one of the first sessions of the new course on October 2 and 3 in
Dallas, TX as the basis for this review. Information
on the class, class schedule, and pricing can be found at http://www.airsdirectory.com.
The
name of the course denotes the obvious difference from the old AIRS I & II
format - this is a hands-on lab class. The
lab I sat in was capable of seating about 33 people (we had about 20 students)
and was built as a professional training environment. Each
student had a good computer and there were 2 large projection screens at the
front of the class so every student could easily see the instructor’s PC
screen to follow along on exercises, as well as to view PowerPoint slides
covering training topics.
My
class was fortunate to have 2 AIRS instructors present – Laura Stoker and
Senior Trainer Susan “Suz” Oxford. Both
instructors were knowledgeable, practical and enthusiastic in their presentation
of the training material. Normally
only one instructor will be present in this course.
The first day is intense, covering most of the old AIRS I & II
material (a 2-day class crammed into 1 day), so come to class well rested and
ready to run hard. Thankfully,
there were plenty of examples and exercises so the instructors could ensure
students were capable of performing the techniques independently.
Students
were issued the AIRS Search Lab course manual and followed it throughout the
class. This is the best course
manual yet out of AIRS. It is built
around AIRS Chief Instructor Bill Craib’s search philosophy of “find one,
find them all”. Chapters covered
in day one of the lab include The
E-Recruiting Landscape, The Internet Blueprint, The Desktop Toolkit, Web Search
Toolkit, Searching Across the Web, AIRS Search Tools, AIRS Power Tools,
Searching Resume Banks, and Searching Virtual Communities.
My personal favorite from day one was learning about Backflip, an
Application Services Provider (ASP) that offers a Web-based browser that can be
shared by a team of researchers, regardless of whether they are using Netscape
or Internet Explorer. It even
synchronizes with your local browser! I
also can’t rave enough about the new AIRS Toolbar browser – it is awesome
and incorporates a rich tool environment at the researcher’s fingertips,
including a Boolean Box – a feature similar to that found in the AIRS Search
Station. I was planning to build my
own browser configuration, but the AIRS Toolbar is so good, that a serious
Internet recruiter can use it as the foundation and build out from there with
their customized links or bookmarks. Chapters
covered in day two of the Search Lab included: Searching Targeted Companies,
Searching Targeted Colleges, Searching Targeted Organizations, Searching
Targeted Events, Searching Targeted Groups, Contacting Candidates and Building
Relationships, Review of AIRS Key Concepts, and the AIRS Continuing Programs.
Both days included great tips from the instructors on “beyond the
basics” techniques and problem solving approaches… Even as an AIRS Certified
Internet Recruiter, I found myself taking pages of notes.
The instructors of this new course attempted to engage students in using
score cards kept in many chapters of the manual, but the concept really never
caught on with our class – I suspect it will catch on and become popular as
AIRS gains experience presenting the new course material.
Lunch
was catered at the lab on both days – various kinds of sandwiches, chips, soda
(pop, as we used to say in St. Louis), and deserts.
Attendees
should be computer and Internet literate prior to attending.
I think that the students were much more computer and Internet savvy than
students in the AIRS I & II classes I attended in 1998.
Most attendees kept up with the class and didn’t get bogged down on
basic issues like browser navigation, keyboard shortcuts, and mouse techniques.
Students were encouraged to bring their actual search assignments to the
class and use them during exercises. Students
were shown how to save their search results and take them back to the office
after class. It was great to see the class getting excited as they
searched for and found candidates for actual search assignments during the
class. The instructors roamed the
lab during exercises helping students on their work-related searches and used
these opportunities to demonstrate the application of techniques taught in the
class to produce meaningful results.
I
would send anyone that wanted a solid foundation in the best Internet training,
tools, and post-seminar support available in the industry today.
I would seriously consider hiring anyone who had attended this class
recently and had no prior Internet recruiting experience as a junior Internet
recruiter. Like AIRS I & II, the key is to practice the techniques
in one’s daily recruiting. Knowledge
retention and ability to produce results will fall off sharply without practice.
I believe that a recently trained Internet recruiter has to use the
techniques daily to become proficient. Thankfully,
if you do get rusty, AIRS has a great customer service department to assist you
with questions and the new class manual is much better suited as a reference
guide than the previous AIRS I & II manuals.
The cost is $2,290 per student and includes the 250-page manual and AIRS
search tools – like egrabber that I enthusiastically endorsed in a previous
article. If you’ve been waiting
to take an Internet recruiting class, you can’t go wrong with the AIRS Search
Lab. Call for information at
1-888-999-8844 or email AIRS at seminars@airsdirectory.com.
More
Step 2 – Setting it up some more
In
case you are just tuning in, last month I continued my series of articles on the
selection, implementation and use of an Internet based database program,
Sendouts.com. I wrote most recently about the set-up, training and
implementation phase of this project but as of the last article we had not yet
gone live on the system. I had expected to be live with about three weeks to go
before this next article deadline but actually had only a few days to actually
use the system before writing this article. Three days or so is not long enough
to get a good feel for how the program works, features, positives, negatives,
etc. so I am going to expand this series from four to five articles. What took
so long was the data conversion process, which is now complete. There is a lot
of ‘mapping’ involved in the conversion process. This is when we say which
fields in our existing database show up in which fields on the Sendouts
database. When I last wrote we had just completed the first conversion. On
inspection we realized further data conversion was necessary. Actually we
converted our data a total of three times to make sure that each field in our
existing database matched a similar field in the Sendouts database. This process
took a couple of weeks and is responsible for the delay in actually getting to
use the program a whole lot prior to this article’s publication. I will
continue next month with a comprehensive report on the Sendouts features and
usability. Meanwhile…I certainly can share a few other items.
We
have been pleased with the feature-rich interface. You open up to the integrated
calendar, which not only handles any appointments but also prompts you to
contact each candidate prior to an interview for a ‘interview prep’ and
prompts you to contact both the client and candidate after the interview for
follow up. Also, when you enter a new candidate, you can automatically search
all of your open job orders for matches, which are ported into a centralized
screen that can be viewed by all members of your company. When you advance the
person from a match to actually sending the resume…the program handles the
email for you, using Outlook, and posts the submission to both the Sendouts
database and your Outlook log. You have easy access to all of your open job
orders, active candidates and sendout information.
More
to come…
TIP
OF THE MONTH
Zip
Code Search
Want
to find a candidate in a very specific location, like the loop in Chicago or
South Bay in the San Francisco Bay area? Try a zip code search. Here is an
example of a search in Dallas' Telecom Corridor for a Java person using the Alta
Vista search engine:
In
the Advanced Search mode, type:
(title:resume*
OR title:cv OR title:bio OR title:"curriculum vitae" OR title:homepage
OR url:resume* OR url:cv
OR url:bio OR url:”curriculum
vitae OR url:homepage) AND 75038 AND java
You
could identify a larger area by searching several zip codes at the same time by
typing: (75038 OR 75039 OR 75040). Just remember to put parentheses around your
zip codes and use OR operators to separate them if you use more than one zip
code).
The
search of 75038 yielded 6 hits and upon looking at them, one actually sent one
to a manager for review.