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The following is an approximate transcript.
HEATHER: Hello and thank you for joining Episode 4 of Talent Connection, a podcast about connecting job seekers and employers, produced by Cachinko. My name is Heather Huhman, and I am the founder & president of Come Recommended, a career consultancy for young professionals, as well as the Career & Recruiting Advisor for Cachinko. I’m joined by my co-host, Tony Morrison.
TONY: Great to be here, thanks Heather. To introduce myself, I am the vice president of Cachinko. We are a social recruitment marketing technology company.
HEATHER: Today’s episode is “Best Practices in Recruiting Today.” Let’s get started. Tony, what are the best practices of recruiters today?
TONY: The basic requirement for any employer recruitment program is a search engine optimized career site with a comprehensive jobs listing directory. Insomuch as recruiting is marketing one’s jobs, the employer must feature critical jobs by highlighting the entry or emphasize with bold font. They should accept applications online, allow submission and accept formatted resumes online. With the technology available to us today, recruitment programs must enable their contacts to e-mail, tweet, or otherwise share a job with a friend. Passive candidates must be able to submit—and companies accept—confidential applications.
Advanced recruiting practices include responding to candidates and tracking engagement, especially of high quality candidates so that you can find them fast and connect with them before they move onto another opportunity. Employer sites should feature online job search agents and offer online, customized position assessment tools that help applicants to better understand the position and even deselect themselves and look for another job if they do not successfully complete the pre-assessment test.
The best practices are recruitment processes that are owned and controlled by the company’s own recruitment organization. These progressive talent acquisition professionals take charge of their own process and continuously improve how they market their jobs and engage candidates.
HEATHER: How are major organizations recruiting candidates?
TONY: Most organizations today post jobs on any number of job boards and wait for resumes to pour in from Monster, CareerBuilder, Dice, JobNetwork, etc. Job advertising is managed similarly to product advertising to consumers. Some major organizations have adopted social media recruiting and learned the value of nurturing contacts and having these active and passive job seekers follow the company waiting for the right job opportunity to be presented. Still others have learned that they can reach an even larger audience of potentially high quality candidates by tapping into the social and professional networks of their employees, contacts, candidates, and alumni.
HEATHER: Where are the candidates spending their time?
TONY: The obvious answer is reading job ads and filling out applications on the internet, right? Not so. I read a U.S. News & World Report survey last year that said that on average jobseekers spend only 18 minutes a day, five days per week searching for a job. My recommendation is that if you are a serious job seeker and you want to be a serious contender for a job, then make your job search your full-time job.
Even a passive job seeker, one who currently is employed and not necessarily looking for a new position but is open to new opportunities, should network a couple of hours a day. A well-networked professional will often times receive positive exposure and be presented opportunities without actively pursuing a new position.
Networking activities for active and passive job seekers include investigating the companies for whom you would like to work. Get to know the product, the latest company news, the management, and the organizational structure. Dig into your own personal and professional networks to identify people you know who have worked for the company or who may know someone who works for the company. Learn where the company advertises its jobs, and find content regarding the company’s recruitment process to understand better the types of candidates for whom they are searching. Spend your time learning everything you can about the company and you will be a standout candidate.
If the company is on Twitter, then follow their tweets. If the company has a Facebook page, then fan them, if the company has a LinkedIn profile, follow the company and maybe connect with current employees who participate in the same professional groups that you do.
HEATHER: How are passive candidates being targeted?
TONY: How many times has a recruiter contacted you and said, “I recently learned about this terrific opportunity doing ABC at XYZ company. Do you know anyone who might be interested?” Recruiters contact individuals at competitor companies to find and attract talent to defect to their company. That is how passive candidates are found most often these days.
Some recruiters believe that passive candidates are searching for opportunities on niche job sites and internet search engines and job aggregators. They may not have an up-to-date resume or active profile with a job board, but they will still search the sites for the right opportunity for them.
So passive candidates are sometimes found through what is commonly called the “post and pray” method. This is a passive, reactive recruiting technique.
Passive candidates are erroneously believed to be the highest quality candidate. The highest quality candidate may be an active or passive candidate. They are the individual who clearly demonstrates they have the attitude and aptitude necessary to work for the company in the required capacity and yield the desired results.
HEATHER: What are some traditional recruiting tactics that aren’t being used as much due to advances in technology?
TONY: Traditional and non-traditional recruiting tactics that are used and should be considered important recruiting and networking techniques include participation in professional organizations, social networking sites, industry forums, hobby forums, local community organizations and sites, newsgroups, alumni organizations, etc. Participation online and offline, in person, are important for both the recruiter to meet and get to know important people in their network, as well as for the job-seeking candidate.
HEATHER: Thanks so much, Tony. That’s all the time we have for today. You’ve been listening to Talent Connection, a podcast about connecting job seekers and employers, produced by Cachinko. For details about the next episode, please visit blog.cachinko.com.
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