November 2001 Column

In the cover story for last month’s TFL (Options, 10/01) publisher Paul Hawkinson offered what, in our opinion, was a very timely suggestion that we might take a better look at our client’s needs and sell them what they want or need, rather than what we want them to buy. I think this is timely as in many of our previous articles we have written about how our industry might be changing, at least for now. We have written that our client’s now fully utilize the Internet for many job openings we were previously able to fill. One of my clients now has a two employment Web sites. One open to agency openings and another for direct hires, containing many jobs we are not allowed to submit candidates for.

I recently spoke with two companies in the St. Louis area after having noticed they were running Internet recruitment ads. Neither big players with small IT shops but both have paid fees in the past. I was told by the IT manager of one medium sized company that he received 200 plus resumes for his NT Administrator ad, another larger firm received over 400 resumes for a similar position. Yes, I could try and sell around that by telling them both that each and every one of their respondents are no good but that probably wouldn’t be true. My guess is that both companies will be able to hire someone from the large response they received.

So what are we left with at this stage? OK…everyone agrees we need to make more marketing calls, turn over every rock until we find the next job order…the company that is NOT advertising on the Internet…the job opening you can’t fill on the Internet…the company that truly values and needs our service. They are out there and I do agree, let’s keep making those calls. Meanwhile, what else? We have rent due. Do we throw up our hands and give up? Don’t think so. These companies that are now using the Internet more than they are using you do have money…that is not the issue…the issue is where they are spending that money. Make sure some of that goes to you.

Both of these managers had to spend countless hours reviewing these hundreds of resumes and both reported heavy phone calls from people not at all qualified for the position. Although the ad itself is fairly inexpensive, especially compared to an agency fee, when all the time is added up and multiplied by the hourly rate of the IT manager, the savings are not as large as you might think. Although both were probably successful in obtaining a qualified employee, both expressed frustration with the large response and a lot of wasted time in the process. There is an opportunity here.

Getting back to last month’s cover story …I am going to mention just a couple of the items Paul discussed last month and then offer some ideas as to how you might market this or a similar service to your client, who already knows you and trusts you.

Use these words. Your clients will love it and really think you know what you are talking about. Hopefully, if you have been reading our columns for the last three plus years you have taken some training, read a book, at least read our tips and are able to provide some of the services mentioned here. Can you sell your client that you, with your advanced Internet recruiting training and years of recruitment experience, ability to quickly weed out the good from the bad, pay you for 5 to 8 hours of work at a decent hourly rate instead of running an Internet ad? Yes, they will pay more up front but you’re a salesperson…right? You must sell against the total cost of running the ad, not just the cost of the ad. Also keep in mind that no ad or sourcing agreement guarantees a hire. It is an agreement that a specific job will be performed for an agreed upon fee.

Although you probably don’t realize it, you could probably, with some authority, maybe some training or research time on your part, offer to create new or improve existing processes or personally perform services (for a flat or hourly fee) for sourcing for both targeted and pipeline (on-going) searches, corporate Web site assessments, job postings strategy assessments (internal/external), external career site account assessment, and/or executive recruiting. If you can’t do it yourself there are many within easy reach that are experts in this area. Just like a split placement…the client rarely knows there was another agency involved. Here you market the service to your client, have any reputable sourcing firm perform the work on a subcontract basis. It’s you all the way.

Again…use these exact words. This can be a service in addition to those mentioned above or stand-alone. Sourcing only identified a possible candidate. Once identified, the next step is to take over the candidate screening, candidate communication, candidate tracking, interview facilitation, interview follow-ups, etc. Let’s say they simply can’t give up their Internet ads. Try and sell this next…that you will be more efficient in reviewing the hundreds of ad responses, interviewing the top ten and referring the top three. Another hourly project.

Anyone that thinks that we are suggesting in anyway to try and replace our permanent placement services with anything mentioned above doesn’t know us very well. What we are trying to say is add a couple new products to your lineup. Don’t waste the call or relationship. Next time a client says to you that they have no money for fees start asking the questions. You will discover opportunities where you did not think they existed before.

Wade Haught and Mark Berger, your TFL Internet Recruiting column co-authors for the last several years, are going commercial. We will continue to write this column until we are thrown out on our ears but until then we both invite you to visit our new Web site at www.swatrecruiting.com.

Our flagship product, SwatSearch, is a powerful, passive Internet candidate recruiting tool that allows users to search millions of resumes on the Internet using multiple search engines simultaneously. This advanced search technology was commissioned to provide an easy to use interface for searching the Web, Virtual Communities, Companies, Associations and Trade Groups, and Colleges and Universities for resumes while at the same time making sure this product was affordable to most recruiters. This search engine also filters out 95% of unwanted clutter, wasting much less time that with other products. While some competing products may offer more bells and whistles, for $99.00 per month you get the same or better results than you do with products costing twice that or more. For a free demo and trial fill out the demo form on our Web site and we will sent you a user name and password and answer any questions you have.

In the near future we will be offering specialized, Web-based Internet recruiting training courses and recruiter oriented Web sites design services. Undoubtedly, we will be offering ways for third party recruiters to augment their income. There are also a number of public pages with general information of possible interest to Internet recruiters. We hope this will be a Web site offering recruiting support services to a wide variety of users, including Fordyce readers.

We would also be most appreciative of any comments about our site. Although it is open at this time,
it will be a work in progress for a number of months to come I am sure. If there is anything you would
like to see we would like to know about it. Please email Wade or Mark direct or via the contact page 
on the Web site.

Also for this month I am happy to write about Recruiters Alliance, a fairly new professional on-line recruiting and split network for third party recruiters and employment agencies. Current members consist of retained, contingency, contract and temporary staffing agencies. The organization was founded and is operated by former and retired recruiters and staffing professionals. The foundation of the Alliance is built upon their extensive experience of the staffing and employment industry.

Their President, Bryan Weis told me that other that the annual fee, there are no further charges for facilitating splits. He stated that this network is designed to be a low cost, bare bones split network. Recruiters Alliance lacks the bells and whistles of the major networks. They view the network as a compliment and incremental service to the existing networks as opposed to competition, since they do not have other services such as resume database, web page development, applicant tracking, etc.

When you join you select one of more mailing lists to belong to. At this time the following industries are active in splits: Sales/Marketing, Technology/Computer, Medical/Dental, Executive, Engineering, HR, Finance/Accounting/Insurance, and Legal. They currently utilize listservs to facilitate the splits. Members email their available job orders and candidates to the list and it distributes the information to other list members via email as well.

Anyone interested in a basic Internet recruiting education for a reasonable price should check this out. My contact for this review was Jason Burton, President of Personnel Partners Network, Inc. You can reach Jason via email at jasonburton@personnelpartnersnetwork.com with any questions or comments. Visit the Personnel Partners Web site at www.personnelpartnersnetwork.com for more information on other recruiter resources.

I see two primary services offered at this site. One is a premier job board evaluation service that offers objective analyses and evaluations of job boards written by independent specialists. They also offer an automated, point-to-multipoint, job posting that allows you to post jobs to as many job boards as you want by filling out just one form. They also offer a monthly newsletter from their in house e-recruiting analyst discussing recruitment and HR trends.

If you already have posting packages at job boards, WhoToChoose.com can customize your account so that they will work in sync with your current package.

Using their eValuation Station, you can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of all the most popular job boards - plus some less known job boards that could be excellent choices for your job postings. Evaluations are performed on an ongoing basis by specialists in online recruiting.

They provide an easy to use job posting engine that enables you to quickly post any job you choose directly from your desktop: point-to-multi-site Job Posting to just the job boards you want. Post to Premier, Niche Boards, Geographical, Diversity, College, others as well.

Using the WisePost Manager you can manage all of your posted jobs (add, modify and delete jobs). Also, by clicking on a link you can see your job on the actual job board site for confirmation. Another possible benefit, consolidated invoicing…you will receive one invoice for all your postings to the various job boards.

Another key benefit: not needing to setup separate accounts with the job boards (you can post to numerous services from one interface, then receive one invoice). You just need one, with WhoToChoose, easily post Single Jobs or Packages, setting up a Business Account for frequent posters, and the ability to reorder job posting packages direct from the WhoToChoose.com site.

Pricing is simple…you pay whatever the going rate is for the ad itself, plus a $25.00 transaction fee, regardless of the number of job boards posted to. The transaction fees go down from there based on volume.

For more information, you can visit their Web site at www.whotochoose.com or you can contact Tyler Toby, Marketing Director for details at 781-398-0155 x238 or tyler@whotochoose.com.

HOTJOBS.COM

According to Media Metrix, HotJobs is often the leading career site in America…more hits than Monster.com some months. More hits than CareerBuilder and Headhunter combined. But if you look at their homepage (www.hotjobs.com) and check out the employers you notice a lot of the Fortune group plus many smaller firms as well. This is not normally the type of site that we would write about in this column, one that caters to our own clientele, but they have a fairly new service, HotJobs Agency Exchange, that does cater specifically to third party recruiters wishing to hunt resumes, post job orders, post resumes for employers to see, and split placements with other member agencies.

You can log onto the services home page at www.hotjobs.com/agency and see some of the member benefits and take an on-line demonstration. This is actually a Web-based application where you can enter candidates for all to see and enter jobs for potential candidates to see. You want to do a good job on your profile as their 14,000+ corporate recruiter clients can see it.

The Candidate Manager is where you can add and profile your candidates. You can mark each candidate as private, meaning for your own use or you can mark a candidate searchable, giving employers and other search firms. You can also submit candidates for openings and email candidate profiles to clients from this area.

You also have a Confirmation Page, listing candidate profiles that you selected for submission to a HotJobs.com member. With the Candidate Tracking module, you can track the progress of candidates that you have submitted. The status, submission time and record of attached notes are all displayed. They also have an Assigned Jobs module, where other search firms or employers can send you job orders that they would like your help with.

The all-important Search Page allows you to search for member jobs and search for candidates in your candidate manager. Click on the search jobs link and use at least one of five search criteria to find jobs posted to AgencyExchange by HotJobs.com member companies. This is a proactive approach to finding jobs for your candidates.

A major portion of your monthly fee is in the ability to search for resumes in the HotJobs database. This is also done from within the Agency Exchange application. You can search through candidate’s who have elected to make their resumes available to you. Enter your candidate search criteria and click to find your next placement.

Finally, the Job Manager, where you add and manage the job openings you have to fill. Refresh the posting date to keep your jobs current, change the status from viewable to private as your assignments change, even edit the details of your postings, and replicate them when you have multiple openings to fill.

For the purpose of writing this article I was offered access to their system for a weekend. This is a common arrangement but typically does not offer the opportunity to properly review the actual process of submitting candidates and/or jobs to the system in order to assess the results. I was able to search the resume bank but was unable to view resumes newer than 90 days, possibly a demo user control. One would probably have to actually join the service for a month or so to see and use all of the features in the service.

All in all…not bad. As I said before we normally do not cover the large, corporate-oriented Web services but since these people evidently recognized the value of third party search firms as prospective clients (which other large service do not) then created an entire service catering to our industry I thought some space in this column was warranted.

Pricing? Somewhat high at 10 job slots and resume database for $825/month; 5 job slots and resume database for $650/month; or $500/month for the resume database only.

Anyone interested in more information can contact Michael Burke, their Senior Account Executive via voice at (212) 672- 1563 or via email at mburke@hotjobs.com

FYI to any recruiters working logistics, engineering, sales, accounting, admin or IT. Straight from the email pile. Check their Web site for more information.

TIP

Ever use the NOT command when searching for resumes using the major Internet search engines? If not, you are probably wasting a lot of time review search results clutter that doesn’t make you any money. In AltaVista it is actually AND NOT that you use at the end of your search string. You would normally start with your standard resume searching string, and then add skills and / or geographic keywords, run your search and wade through the results. Notice a large number of results contain non-resumes…this is where AND NOT comes in. You might notice a lot of job ads in your queue. We want to get rid of these by adding, at the end of the search string: AND NOT (employ OR submit OR apply). These are terms normally found in employment ads, not resumes. You actually create your AND NOT list on the fly by looking at your results queue, determining what types of pages you do not want in the results and then adding specific terms to remove the offending pages from your results.

November 2001 Column

MORE OPTIONS

HOTJOBS.COM

TIP