Internet Integration
From a recruiter's standpoint the Internet came into widespread usage in the middle nineties. Most recruiters, those that had been around for a while, simply added the Internet as a source of bona fide, revenue generating candidates. Other, newer recruiters began to use the Internet as their sole source of candidates. You would think after all these years of discovery, learning, trial and error, rip-offs, frustration, time wasting and money wasting we, as a group, would have a better handle on how to make the Internet work for us. Unfortunately, there is no one answer. There are so many different types of recruiting firms and so many different types of Internet products and services trying to find a custom solution can be a daunting task. Twice in the last month Fordyce subscribers have asked me if there is an Internet product or service available for a given task. Both times the answer was no, not to my knowledge. As always...workarounds are there, but not as easy to implement.
I remain a big believer in the fact that if used properly, usage of the Internet in almost any recruiting office can be extremely profitable. Usage of the Internet in my office changes as often as my client's usage of the Internet does. I have said this before but when our clients got onto the career hubs, we got off. When our clients ran Internet ads, we didn't. When the clients learned passive candidate recruiting techniques, we didn't do much Internet recruiting at all. Now...change is occurring again. There is evidently a consensus among most of our clients that the Internet isn't everything it was supposed to be. Cheaper than agency fees, for sure, when you look at dollars spent per hire but they are now realizing there is a heavy cost in wasted time and resources. In an earlier article this year I wrote that among 500 Internet job ads I looked at only 20% were run by companies that would normally be in our client base. The rest were agencies, staffing firms and other third parties. Sure, the clients spent a lot of money on giving their recruiting staffs advanced training in passive Internet candidate recruiting techniques. I once sat in an AIRS class myself with several trainees from large corporations. However, little did they realize the price they would have to pay in time and effort to properly follow the methods and procedures required to produce a genuine candidate flow. Then, to make matters worse for them, they actually had to talk with people that were not actively looking for another position, but simply had their resume on the Internet for their own pleasure. This is where recruiting experience, salesmanship, training, relationship development and other time honored techniques come into play. Granted, many a corporate recruiter has these skills and more but it is not as much their specialty...their vocation, as it is ours.
So...although Internet usage among our clients is here to stay these same companies realize that they are not going to be able to fill all their jobs with this resource. We have been getting job orders from companies for the first time in 11/2 years that use the Internet extensively but are now starting to pay fees again. So as not to compete with but complement your client's own Internet strategy I recommend a fairly broad approach for most recruiters wanting to use the Internet to increase their candidate flow.
National Career Hubs: Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs, etc. Honestly, I haven't recommended the usage of these services in several years. Once upon a time many clients of mine (ours) ran ads on these services and all my ads did was compete against theirs so I stopped for a while. I don't see as many client type ads on these services as I used to so maybe time to snag some candidates from this type of vendor. The resume databases are normally enormous and running ads on any of these services can be very productive. Although pricing is still high it has come down considerably in the last couple of years, offering more of a value for your money. Also, most have changed the way they count ads. Used to be if you paid for one ad for thirty days and the job closed a week after you placed the ad you were out of luck. These days, you purchase a slot for 30 days instead of an ad. You can change the ad copy in your slot as often as you like. A much better service. Still, not for everyone as these are all active candidates in contact with many other client companies and recruiters.
Niche Sites: There are literally hundreds of these on the Internet specializing in any vocation you can think of. You name it...there are specialty sites catering to it from Accountants to Zoologists (Biologists). It would behoove the vast majority of you to at least investigate those niche boards serving your specialty. These people reach out to attract the types of candidates their site caters to, often creating an industry portal to keep the candidates coming back. Pricing can be, but is not necessarily, less expensive that the national career hubs. I see ads on these sites run anywhere from $50 to $150 for a 30-day listing. The difference is that when you run an ad on Monster or another biggie you do get a lot of responses, although maybe not that many that are qualified. When you run an ad on one of these services, you may not get as many responses but the responses you do get, as a group, could be more qualified than the responses from the larger services. There are two excellent books that list and categorize niche employment sites. One by Peter Weddles (www.weddles.com) and the other by CareerXRoads (www.careerxroads.com). Also, Alexa (www.alexa.com) is a great site that lists and categorizes all types of web sites, including those that are employment related. Not only that but they rank them by traffic as well. Good information for potential advertisers.
Passive Candidates: Recruiting in this area has changed drastically since AIRS started teaching anyone who would listen advanced passive candidate recruiting techniques. In the beginning, everyone who could stand it typed their Boolean strings into all the Internet search engines and sifted through thousands of resume for free. Not too many do that any longer as there are a number of excellent tools available to do this for you. There are actually two ways to approach passive candidate recruitment. One is to use one of the tools. Not mentioning any names, we have reviewed a number of these products in this column over the years. These tools create the complex Boolean strings for you and then run your searches on multiple search engines simultaneously. They also search the Internet communities and newsgroups, areas many recruiters omit when conducting manual searches. They also screen out unwanted items like job ads and other non-productive results. Some also cull out duplicate results, leaving you with a clean list of prospects to contact. These services typically offer a monthly service running anywhere from under $100 to over $200 per month depending on features available.
Hiring researchers is another great way to take advantage of passive candidates. The tools mentioned above are a great time saver but when more flexibility is required, a researcher is the way to go. Frankly, I am generally against recruiting firms hiring their own researchers. It takes not only a strong commitment on your part to manage this function; you also have to keep them up to date on techniques with continuing training plus having to purchase a number of fairly expensive research tools. Most recruiters I believe could farm out their sourcing/research function and get more results for less money that it would cost them to hire, train and maintain their own person. The professionals that do sourcing and researching for a living are experts in this field, are continuously learning new ways to find Internet results and already know and use the most efficient tools available.
Website: I've said it before and I'll say it again. In this day and age if you do not have your own website yet you are missing an excellent opportunity to draw new candidates to your firm. The costs for a simple site are decreasing all the time. For a couple of hundred dollars per year you can find an ISP to host your site. Most any web professional can offer you two or three simple pages for a one-time cost of $100 or less. For a smaller operation, a few static pages to describe your company, your service, list a few job orders, list a few references, directions to your office, contact information, solicit resumes are more than enough. Instead of an email address that looks like you@aol.com or you@msn.com you add to your image and identity by having an email address with your own domain like you@yourcompany.com. It is a much more professional presentation, one that is expected these days.
In closing, first figure out what you want or expect out of the Internet. Higher quality passive candidates only or are you willing to deal with the competition for a piece of the active candidate marketplace? Are there niche sites catering to your recruiting specialty or will you get more for your money by running ads on the big boards. Is your website up and running, bringing in new candidates? Determine your budget, demo the top two or three products for each type of product or service you plan to use. Most agencies will end up with budget items for a few niche board ads, maybe a few national career hub ads, a passive candidate search tool, possibly a few hours a month billing to a researcher. Unfortunately, there is no one answer for everyone.
ConexPlus Update
ConexPlus, developer of an excellent ATS of the same name, ran a show special at the recent Missouri Association of Personnel Service fall conference. They have graciously offered to extend the special to the Fordyce Letter readers. For $995 you get 3 hosted, fully licensed users for one year. I am no math wiz but I believe that is less than $28 per month per user. The best pricing I have seen to date for this type of service. I haven't reviewed this product in at least a couple of years but look for an updated review next month. For more information you can visit their website at www.conexplus.com or contact Fred Sussman, VP of Sales at 314/495-0910 or via email at
freds@conexplus.com.
Ajob4Scientists.com
Do you recruit Scientists? I have not used this service but clicked onto their website and found they charge $77 per month to post jobs and search resumes. Doesn't take many placements at that price to pay off. Straight from their email:
Unparralleled Customer Support - Through Live Person you can chat real-time with a customer support representative. Receive instant help with searches and site functionality!
E-Mail Resumes - Send your favorite resumes directly to your e-mail inbox.
1-Click-Job-Alert - Send your job information directly to one or more jobseekers with 1-Click.
Save Jobseekers. When you find a resume you like, save it to your account. You will never have to search for it again.
Archive Jobs - Archive old jobs for future reference. Activate and Deactivate jobs as you need to so you can decide which jobs are searched.
Daily Agents - Perform automatic searches of all resumes posted within the last 24 hours while you sleep.
Quick Searches - Do quick resume searches to see if we have the candidates you need. Later refine them with more detailed information using our Advanced Search capability.
You can check out their website at www.ajob4scientists.com.
Press Release - AIRS Announces First Graduates of CDR Program
Wilder, VT - September 4, 2003 -- AIRS, the global leader in e-recruitment training, information and candidate sourcing tools, today announced the names of the first two graduates of its new Certified Diversity Recruiter (CDR) training and certification program. This pioneering training course was introduced by AIRS in early July 2003 and commenced on August 1, 2003. AIRS Certified Diversity Recruiter was developed in response to industry demands for a comprehensive certification and training platform that addressed the needs of recruiting professionals and employers concerned with organizational diversity initiatives.
To learn more about AIRS Certified Diversity Recruiter (CDR) training and certification program, please visit http://www.airsdirectory.com/products/specials/certification/ , call Julie Wall at 800-897-7714 ext. 1302 or email
press@airsdirectory.com.
TIP
Another great tip from Barbara Ling. Do you want free resumes from Google. Follow these steps and you will have plenty to choose from. Enjoy.
So you want to find resumes in Google? You're probably aware of the intitle: tag - you use it to specify words in titles that you'd like to see in your results.
intitle:resume unix
picks up all documents that contain the word 'unix' in the file and 'resume' in the title.
You can target your search by subtracting off the word 'submit' from your query (as in, you don't want pages that ask for unix resumes to be submitted!).
intitle:resume unix -submit
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=intitle%3Aresume+unix+-submit
What do resumes sometimes contain? The word 'objective'.
intitle:resume unix objective -submit
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=intitle%3Aresume+unix+objective+-submit
Did you know that some people prefer to put up their resumes in pdf format? You can go to the Advanced search like so:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=intitle:resume+unix+objective+-submit&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
and select only files in pdf format like so:
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=intitle%3Aresume+unix+objective&num=10&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=submit&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=pdf&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images
Try it! Be sure to copy/paste the above URL if it's broken up into two lines.
When searching for resumes online, always approach the process methodically. What words would likely be included? What would likely be left out? By taking your time to build your Internet recruiting approach, you might save days if not weeks on uncovering exactly the candidate you need. Take advantage of that.
You can find out more about Barbara's products for recruiters at her website, http://www.barbaraling.com or you can contact her via email at
btl@barbaraling.com.