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Happy Recruiting!
Tammy Wirths
314.854.5002
twirths@sendouts.com

Are Utilizing Web 2.0?

Web 2.o defined: Web 2.0 is a trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to facilitate creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Internet penetration in the US has reached to more than 70% of the population (Internet World Stats 2007)
• More than 70 million weblogs (blogs) are tracked by Technorati
• 120,000 new blogs are created every day
• Facebook has more than 60 million active users and an average of 250,000 new registrants per day
• MySpace has more than 110 million active users, or 1 in 4 Americans use MySpace

I have posted an article below from the Fordyce letter that addresses social media and finding talent. Don't be left behind!

Donald Breckenridge, Jr.
Embracing Social Media to Find the Right Talent
by Donald E. Breckenridge, Jr. April 14th, 2008

Recruiters have traditionally relied on old-fashioned human “social networks” for decades. Now, job market trends and technology are combining to create a brave new world that recruiters need to pay attention to in order to compete for today’s top talent.

The migration of offline to online search for talent is evidenced in how the online job boards went from having virtually no recruitment advertising dollars to the more than $3 billion spent today. The newspaper recruitment advertisement industry’s revenues plummeted by more than 50% with two years (from $9 billion in 2002 to $4 billion in 2004.)

The facts that social media has democratized content creation and the demand for talent has yet to decrease are two factors that are quickly changing how companies are locating talent, especially that golden child – the ‘passive” candidate.

Content Democratization

The advent of Social Media and Blogs — such as MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube and the more professionally oriented Linked-In — are the result of enabling technology that allows for two things:

1. An easy way to create content (Website, Video) that does not require programming skills and;
   
2. An easy way to connect people’s content to each other through “friends” or “buddy” lists.
   

This means that content creation on the Internet is no longer in the hands of professional programmers or producers. Consider the fact that over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog, and more than 57 million read blogs consistently. Combine this with the fact that nearly 90% of companies said they think blogs will be more important for them in the next five years.

Talent Shortage, Anyone?

Recession woes are rattling even the most optimistic economists. Regardless of the immediate economic climate, the search for talented, highly skilled professionals will continue for the foreseeable future. The reason? The Baby Boom generation will first become eligible for Social Security Retirement this year. In the coming decades, scores of experienced professionals will be leaving the workforce and companies will be falling over themselves to find highly skilled professionals, especially in the areas of math and science.

Companies who will thrive in the coming years, are planning now for this erratic labor cycle of supply and demand, and are implementing workflow management and passive candidate sourcing strategies into their initiatives. The top talent of tomorrow will not be recruited by the methods used today (just think of what happened to faxing resumes). It will be a brave, new recruiting world that will involve social networking, blogs and more sophisticated sourcing tools in order to compete for top tier talent.

How to Mine Social Networks & the Blogosphere

The search for passive candidates now reaches into vast online social networks in order to find qualified candidates for those hard-to-fill jobs. There are essentially two types of social networks: Candidate Networks and Recruiter Networks. The leading Candidate Networks include MySpace, FaceBook and Linked-In, with niche networks springing up like Ning, Second Life and Jobster. These networks can be excellent sources for finding passive candidates. Recruiter Networks include several split-fee communities that enable recruiters to match job postings with candidates, usually for some type of placement fee.

• When it comes to blogging, corporate recruiters have been urged to get on the bandwagon and create their own blogs to do everything from interacting with candidates, to showcasing corporate culture and replacing static testimonials. If more than 70% of HR professionals and recruiters believe that employee referral is the most effective method of recruiting (Mercer Survey) than the emerging/new media tools are the new methods for corporate referrals and company endorsements.Social media can be easily incorporated into their recruiting practices:
  Create a social network for existing employees and alumni. Get your clients to create an employee blogging network. It’s a great recruiting tool. The best candidate will be ones that have researched your company, interacted with other employees online and have a feel for the culture. A great example of a passive recruiting blog post is Signal vs. Noise, which has been giving rave reviews by Jim Stroud. Encourage blogging from within to show the talent, to show the openness, to engage with future consumers of your employer brand. Another subset of this plan would be to start an alumni network, where a company taps into existing social networks like Classmates.com or LinkedIn which may already have communities of former employees connected.
  
• Produce a Viral Video and place it on YouTube. Sometimes the best way to showcase a company’s culture for prospective employees is through a little humor. And there’s no better way to promote humor than with a viral video on YouTube. Have a contest with your own employees to create a funny video that conveys why it’s great to work at your company, then post the winner on YouTube and link it to your recruiting site. An example of a wonderful, offbeat recruitment video for a T-shirt company on YouTube is the Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger.
  
• Initial Sourcing and Screening for Passive Candidates: Sometimes the best way to find a candidate is through social networks. Exploring candidates on MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn can provide a richer portrait of a candidate’s experience, interest and cultural fit, as well as the important personal connection he or she brings to the table. There are also sourcing tools out there that will allow you to easily import information you find on these social networks into your recruiting database for easy follow up.
  
• “Wiki” Your Company: Wikipedia is one of the most successful social networks on the Internet. It is basically an online encyclopedia of information that is updated and validated by the user community. Scores of professionals and laypersons write for Wikipedia, providing depth of content and links to relevant sites. You can get your company into the “Wiki” game by either posting your company as a link to a relevant topic, or by creating your own topic that incorporates your company’s interests.
  
  So, as an owner or manager of a recruiting or staffing firm, your best strategy is to embrace change (and encourage your clients to do so), making sure you are using new technology to accomplish those old fashioned objectives of finding and placing the best candidates faster. A little investment now could put you way ahead of the curve in the decades ahead.
  
  As president and CEO of Sendouts, Donald E. Breckenridge, Jr. provides the vision and strategic direction for the company. Mr. Breckenridge co-founded the company in 1999 with Richard B. Hall, currently the chief technology officer. Today, Sendouts provides the #1 on-demand software for the recruiter industry with more than 750 staffing firms and 5,000 recruiters worldwide. To learn more about Sendouts, go to www.sendouts.com or call (877) 309-5222.
  
  http://www.fordyceletter.com/2008/04/14/embracing-social-media-to-find-the-right-talent/#more-418

As always, embrace technology and make more money!

Call me learn more 314.854.5002

Tammy Wirths
twirths@sendouts.com

Why use an ATS?

Using an ATS will:
- Allow you to make more placements
- Add more time to your day
- Increase Revenue!

According to Mark Berger of SWAT Recruiting,

"There is only one answer to this simple question in my mind. To make more placements using a database than if you did not use one. If you can’t increase your revenues by using an ATS, then why use one? This is what you have to keep foremost in your mind in your search for the best automated solution for your office. Increasing productivity is one of the best reasons to have an ATS, candidate/client/recruiter communications is another, getting out of the paper-shuffling game is yet one more. There are many more. You don’t dare select a database product because of the cool bells and whistles it offers. A lot of software developers don’t understand this. Some systems offer more “glitz” than “meat.” I have noticed two basic types of database software vendors. There are software sales companies that have decided to jump on the ATS bandwagon. These firms typically do not have a strong background in our industry and simply do not have enough knowledge of the way our business works on a day-to-day basis to offer a top rated solution, although there are exceptions. The other type of vendor has developed a system based on years of successful recruiting and staffing experience. Some have even developed a system for their own use then decided to market that system to the recruiter market. It would behoove you to ask any potential database vendor what type of recruiting industry experience their executives have. Do they have any hands on recruiting and placement industry experience, or is it nothing more that software industry sales and marketing experience. Look at the way you do business now and look for a solution that allows you to do business in the same manner, just more efficiently. You should never have to re-engineer the way your office does business to conform to the workings of a database…it is the other way around. The database serves you. If it doesn’t, keep looking. As you evaluate one database versus another, be asking yourself a question:

Does this database make you money or save you money?

Let’s talk about ACT!, Goldmine and Outlook for a minute. These products are technically not Applicant Tracking Systems but are in the Contact Manager software category. All ATS’s are great contact managers but not all Contact Manager’s are great ATS’s. To this day many recruiters use these products, as they are quite excellent in doing their job of keeping the recruiter in touch with both their clients and candidates, however, unless you employ an expensive third party solution or add-in, these products don’t do a very good job of keeping track of job orders, resume submissions, client interviews and placements…integral parts of managing your desk or your business. They are not the worst solution…there are simply much better options available.

Are you still using Word and Excel documents? So are many others. Before databases, I did as well…had all my candidate submissions, interviews and placements recorded but each document was an island. Had to type the same thing over and over. No big picture here…no integration…no reporting. Probably a better solution than index cards but…will it put real money in your pocket?"

As always, call me to discuss!

Tammy
314.854.5002
twirths@sendouts.com

"The job of a headhunter is very different from that of a placement agency"

What is the difference in a headhunter and placement agency? A client of mine recently addressed this question in an article published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Just 12 heads, one a month.

As an executive recruiter, or headhunter, that's Bob Bishop's benchmark for a successful year's work.

Originally a photographer, Bishop established his one-man recruitment firm in July 2001. "It was, perhaps, the worst possible time," he said, describing the state of the economy. read the rest of the story . . .

Job Title "Google Speak"

I was asked an interesting question during one of my demonstrations of Sendouts last week. "Are there short character limitations on a Job Order title?" It appears that some ATS's severly limit the length of the title. According to Doug Berg the Founder/Chief of Gigster, "many of the boards and classified search engines have implemented a "Search in Title Only" feature, and/or have only indexed the job title content. This means that if your keywords aren't embedded into your job titles, you could be missing out on 50% or more of your potential online job seekers." In his article posted on ERE, Doug also mentions that most ATS's don't allow you to edit your post as they are pushed out to the job boards. This is certainly a question to ask as you are evaluating ATS's. Sendouts not only allows you to edit the Job Order title upon pushing out, there is also a large character field allowing up to 100 characters.

Doug also includes great tips on writing clear job titles and descriptions. Click here to view his article.

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug." Mark Twain

As always,

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Tammy Wirths
877.309.5222 x 102

Why Do I Need Errors and Omission Insurance?

Will placing that candidate put your personal finances at risk? Ninety percent of all recruiters don't have any coverage because they perceive the fees as too high. Below you will find a report by Bob Style, the General Counsel for NAPS, to shed some light on this topic. According to Conrad Taylor, President of NAPS, they offer a plan from CNA for around $1200 for NAPS members.

I talk to recruiters every day who look to me for advice and suggestions on best practices for tracking and placing candidates. I suggest you take the time to look into this before you are caught off guard.


WHY DO I NEED ERRORS AND OMISSION INSURANCE?

Most of you have heard, at some time or another, about the wisdom a purchasing an errors and omissions insurance policy. Judging from the number of staffing firms that do not have such insurance, however, it appears that many of you do not understand the risks you run every day in your business and, more importantly, that one misstep can be so costly as to spell the end of your business. Even winning a “malpractice” case can be prohibitively expensive. Remember, in the United States, each party pays its own legal fees, and in some of the scenarios below, it would not be unusual for these fees to run into six figures.

What are some of the cases which would typically be covered by an E and O policy?

The candidate lies on the resume. Whenever I ask a group of recruiters whether they believe that more than half of their candidates lie on their resumes, invariably almost everyone in the room raises their hands. Yet, almost all recruiters refer the resume, in one form or another, to their clients. Suppose the candidate has lied about work experience, educational background or dates of past employment, and your client states that had it known the truth about the candidate, it would never have hired him or her. So, the client states, you know that the resume most likely is untrue in some respect or another, you are the “expert” in this business, and you never told me that the resume you sent me is more likely than not untrue. Why shouldn’t you compensate me for being defrauded like that? Add to that the fact that the NAPS Code of Ethics states, in effect, that you are responsible for the accuracy of information you pass on about a candidate unless you disclaim such responsibility. (To find sample contract language disclaiming such responsibility, take a look at the NAPS/ASA Model Recruiting Agreement at http://www.recruitinglife.com/.) It is not at all clear that a court would find you liable under the above facts. What is clear is that employers are more aggressive than ever in pursuing recruiters for damages in these cases, and that the cost of legal fees turns even a victory into an expensive defeat.

You fail to disclose a candidate’s criminal record. A common complaint to which an E and O policy would respond is that you failed to disclose a previous embezzlement by your candidate, who then embezzled from your client. In these types of cases, it is not unusual for the amount embezzled, and thereby sought from you by your client, to run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have not seen court cases that discuss whether a recruiter has an obligation to check criminal records, in the absence of a contractual agreement to do so, and you may well win the case, but again at great expense. There is one federal court case which held that a jury could find a recruiter liable to its candidate’s co-worker who was raped by the candidate, after the recruiter failed to accurately disclose certain aspects of the candidate’s prior conviction for rape.

Your actions cause the candidate to lose his or her current job. Most typically, that would happen if you refer the candidate to a company which you do not realize is related to or affiliated with your candidate’s current employer, the word gets back to the employer that the candidate is looking around, and the candidate is fired as a result. I’m sure you’re smart enough not to refer your candidate to his or her current employer, but do you know all of the parents, subsidiaries or affiliates of the current employer? You might also become involved in litigation if you do a reference check on your candidate, and the person with whom you checked informs the current employer that the candidate is looking.

You place the candidate with a company which has a mass layoff or goes out of business. You’re supposed to be the expert here, the candidate will argue. You should have known, or knew and failed to disclose, that the company with whom you placed the candidate was on shaky financial ground. Now the candidate has quit one job and lost another, all because of all the glowing remarks you made about the client and the position in order to convince the candidate to take the job, and in order to earn a fee. Isn’t it understandable why a lawyer would advise the candidate to sue you in such circumstances.

The client reneges on its offer, after the candidate has quit his or her present job. Are you liable in such circumstances? I doubt it, unless you knew the client has a history of doing this. Isn’t this the client’s problem and not yours? I think so. Will you get named as a defendant along with the client, even though you will probably win? Very possibly.

To try to protect yourself against exposure to huge damage suits and expensive legal fees, you should do the following:

1. Review your contract to see if it is providing you with maximum protection
2. Review the various representations you make to candidates and clients to see if you may be making promises for which you don’t wish to be held liable if you can’t deliver. In particular, take a look at your web site. Are all the representations you make there true, or maybe more importantly, can you prove they are true?
3. Most important of all, purchase a good errors and omissions policy which will not only cover damages for situations like those discussed above, but which will also cover attorneys fees.

Call me with feedback!

Tammy
877.309.5222 x 102

My profile. . .

I am a consultant and advisor inspired by networking and creating highly productive environments for the Human Resource and Recruiting industry. As a former IT and Tellecom recruiter, I have a special interest in the art of relationship building. As a former owner of an IT consulting firm, I understand the complex dynamics involved in running a successful recruiting business. My role as an Account Executive with Sendouts allows me to utilize my background and experience to consult with clients on their special needs and expecations. I truly believe that there is no better Applicant Tracking Solution on the market today. Sendouts offers a complete solution for direct hire, staffing and HR clients. As a recruiting consultant and advisor, I welcome the opportunity to explore how we can partner to increase your placements and save you time.

Contact me!

Tammy Wirths
877.309.5222 x 102