Fundoo Recruiter

Need for an Event Section in Job Portals

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:05:00 +0000

Job portals have been doing great work in creating a virtual meeting place for both employers and job seeking candidates.Though with arrival of social recruiting methods, some of us have started doubting their usefulness in future, still I think Job boards are here to stay.Only they need to incorporate new options that can bring more value for both parties, make job/candidate finding process easier and less burdensome.

When I look at a job portal's web-design(both recruiter page and candidate page), I find it to be filled with lot of options. Many options are quite helpful yet there are many options which are not quite required and they unnecessarily clutter the page.

If we look at job search options all job sites give options to search jobs based on companies, skills, experiences, salaries, location etc (i,e:1, 2, 3 ). We can search job putting an individual option or mix of some, which is quite useful.

However there is a very important feature, which can be equally useful for employers as well as candidates and still is missing from job sites .

I am talking about an 'Event' section.

To explain, let me take an example.

Lets take, I am a software engineer. And I am looking for change. However, due to busy work schedules I can't attend interviews on working days. I can either attend interview on weekend or some day when I have applied for leave.I can surely check what all jobs matching to my skills are available in the market. But how am I supposed to know what interviews are happening on my free day? For that I may need to call/mail many employers , which is a tedious task.

Just imagine, if job site has a section called 'Event', which has fields like recruitment drive date, skill, experience, location etc. All I have to do is put my preferences on the required fields and click on search button, and I can know what all recruitment drives are happening in my town on a specific day that are matching to my skill sets.Lets take, next Saturday , I am free. I just have to check on Saturday,what recruitment drives are happening in my town that match my skill, experience etc. If it is a walk in, I can directly go there with my resume. And if it is a scheduled drive, I can apply for the job and inform about my availability.I feel this can ease job search a lot.

Now lets have a look at it from the employer's side. Suppose we are a software services organization.We are currently having huge requirements and we want to close positions soon as project is about to start. So,We plan for a recruitment drive next weekend. Till now,there is no proper channel to announce the event.We either send mail to job mail groups or give advertisement on paper(which can be expensive) or post details on job posting space in job sites. There are chances that candidates might overlook it.Here 'Event' section will come handy.

So with 'Event' options , what I have to do is, fill recruitment drive date, interview slots, required skills, Job description, and experience, venue detail etc fields and post it.This will give clear communications to all job seeking candidates.Candidates who are looking for change and free on the required date will directly apply here.

It is a win win situation for both employers and candidates.And looking at the current trends where most of the companies are preferring recruitment drives to meet their mass hiring need, it can be a boon.I wont be surprised if it becomes one of the most used features on job portals soon.

I hope some job portal comes across this article and adds this option in their site. :)

Naukri, Monster, TimesJobs : Anybody listening...

Dear readers,Please tell what do you think of this suggestion.

Naukri.com's Facebook Page Review

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:40:00 +0000

In today's world where social media has become a part of our day to day life, many companies are putting efforts to attract business and customers from these tools. Out of all social media tools Facebook seems to be much ahead of others, so it becomes obvious for organizations to use it properly for corporate communications.

Facebook(FB) with huge user-base provides great scope for brand promotion. In india also facebook has surpassed Orkut as the most popular social network site.Many indian companies are using FB for branding activities.On this context I was checking Naukri.com's facebook page.

Here is a quick review-

Though I am not sure when they started this page, but their 1st post appeared on 24th sept, 2009. So that means it is up for more than 1 year.

Info page is decent where they have mentioned about their company and it contains their url id also.

For last one year the number of posts from Naukri.com is only 15, which is very less. So they seem to be neglecting this page.

However the plus part is they are not spamming followers time-line. All their posts are relevant.Mostly they have done postings when they have new updates, release of their jobspeak info,video of their TV ad etc.

Once they have put a contest also. Contests are good way to attract more followers. But the sad part is they have not followed it up with another post announcing the winners.This should have been corrected.

Despite putting posts few and far between, they have managed to gather 1274 followers in last 1 year , which is quite decent number.

Naukri.com is no doubt the most popular Job Portal in India. if they give more focus to their fan page, they will be able to make a good follower base here. It can help them connect with their customers in a better way and they can communicate their messages and gather feedbacks easily.

Fake Interview Call in the Name of Tech Mahindra

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:21:00 +0000

For few days I have been getting mails from someone who claims to be mailing from HR team of Tech Mahindra. There is an attachment with the mail which says that, I have been shortlisted for some HR position in Tech Mahindra and they want me to attend a interview on some specified date.

Mail Shown From Inbox

Mail Body

I have uploaded the whole letter in image format. Please open it in separate tab for full view.

Attachment With All Details

Now the interesting part is they want me to deposit Rs.9650/- in some bank account that they have mentioned in the mail.

Firstly, no respectable software company will ask for security money to any candidates.
Secondly,the communication mail id they have given is appointment.techmahindra@gmail.com. Techmahindra has its own domain and they don’t need to create separate gmail id for their HR needs.

So, obviously this mail is fake.

Now the person has guts to give his mobile number also!

If anybody has received such mails, please don’t go by it. These are activity of some fraud people who want to get money from gullible candidates.

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Why I Like Naukri's RSS Feed Feature

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:30:00 +0000

As we know RSS(Really Simple Syndication) feed is a great way to find website updates in your desktop or Web Reader without going to the website again and again.

RSS ICON

I used to browse through a lot of sites to gather information. It was really painful to check individual websites or blogs for new updates. Then I found Google Reader and ever since I get to check all the new updates of my favorite sites in the reader in-box.Things have become easier and less time-consuming for me.

Job-seekers check Job portals religiously to find new suitable jobs. It can be painful sometimes.In order to solve this problem, now job portals are giving RSS feature(albeit less used) where you can get new job updates in your reader without going to the portal each time.

Here I checked this feature for India's two most popular Job Portals, Naukri and Monster.Both portals have categorized jobs feeds by functions like IT , Finance and Accounts, Human Resource etc. Once you subscribe to any of these categories to your feed reader you can get new Job updates in your own system.

Monster Job Updates RSS Feed


Naukri Job Updates RSS Feed

Link to Naukri Job Updates RSS Feed:

http://jobsearch.naukri.com/mynaukri/mn_newsmartsearch.php?rss=1

Link to Monster Job Updates RSS Feed:

http://jobsearch.monsterindia.com/category/rss_index.html

However, I have an issue with this feature. It has got some limitations. The categories decided by the portals like, Accounts and Finance, Human Resource etc are quite generic and will give feeds of new jobs across locations and experience . So out of lots of job updated only few will be of your use.

However Naukri portal has a lovely solution for it. Apart from the above mentioned RSS feature Naukri also has an RSS feature in the search page. Here first you can give a search according to your choice, for example: [Key word:(Recruiter or Recruitment) Exp:3 yrs Location: Bangalore]. Then once you get the results, on the upper right corner you can see an RSS feed icon. If you click on that icon, you can add the search result to your reader. Now the great part is this feed will only give new job updates matching to your search preference. In this case only recruiter jobs, with 3 yrs experience with job location as Bangalore will show into your reader.

Naukri Job Search Page RSS Feed

Now all you have to do is - give a Job search, add the feed to your reader and daily check new jobs in your reader inbox. As simple as that.A great tool for job seekers.

I have been using this feature for quite some time and I can vouch for its usefulness.

If anybody is using this feature, kindly give me your feedback.

Interview Questions For Recruiters

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:24:00 +0000

Hi Recruiters,
Here I am posting a collection of questions frequently asked to recruiters during interviews:

Tell me about your current role ?
What is the first thing you do when you get a requirement?
What are different methods of sourcing you use?
What is your sourcing strategy for different level of experiences?
How different will be your strategy for volume and niche requirements?
How effective is Mass Mail and Job Postings in portals ?
How to use Job Postings and Mass Mail effectively?
How do you use Linked-In for recruitment ?
What is your resume sent to shortlists ratio ?
What is Boolean search and how do use it(with an example)? (Ref)
How effective are social networking sites for recruitment?
What are the different technologies in which you have sourced profiles till now ?
How many positions do you close every month?
Have you done headhunting ? How do you do it?
Give an example where you went extra mile to close a difficult position?
Which part of recruitment process life-cycle do you like most and why ?

Questions are collected from my own and friends' experiences. Keep checking this space cos I will keep adding more questions here.

Hope you guys find it useful.

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Funny Reply From A No-Show Candidate

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:37:00 +0000

Hi Recruiters,

You must have come across funny candidate replies with bad English many times. Here is one:

Enjoy!!

Hi _______,

This is ____ _____, I am extremely Sorry for not able to attend the interview yesterday at ____ . Actually I am going to attend the interview but unfortunately I had met with an accident near Hitech city Cyber towers and not able to attend the interview yesterday. I am not in a position to go for the interview at that time, because my Dress was torn and totally spoiled and my legs are bleeding with blood.

If possible please schedule it by this weekend

Once again i am sorry.

_____ _______

Wren and Martin must be 'crying with tears' somewhere. ;)

RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) - The Future of Recruitment

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Sun, 30 May 2010 18:29:00 +0000

I was thinking of writing about RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) model for sometime.While doing some research I came across this interview of Sanjay Shelvankar(vice president -Talent Acquisition at MindTree Consulting) published in Businessline in March 2009, just after MindTree won five out of seven awards in Annual Recruitment and Staffing Best in Class (RASBIC) Awards ceremony. I knew I had to share it with you all.

Just to inform, Mindtree has implemented RPO model for it's hiring needs in India quite successfully.

Here Sanjay explains in details about RPO , it's advantages and associated risks. A must read article.

Please explain how an RPO vendor is different from other recruitment partners (non-RPO vendor model)?
The difference is actually that between the sky and earth. A recruitment partner is usually one of many resume sourcers (contingency hiring organisations) and in some cases may also supply contract recruiters to the client. The recruitment partner usually works in conjunction with the client’s existing recruitment teams and other sourcing vendors. Most often, the planning, processing and almost all the strategic areas of recruitment are retained by the client-side recruiter team. In this model, accountability is not passed on fully to the recruitment partner and the commercial model followed will at best be a fixed retainer fee that may or may not have a variable bonus component.
RPO is the complete ‘process’ outsourcing of recruitment. This means that the RPO vendor holds complete accountability for transforming the client’s processes and is ultimately responsible for all areas — tactical and strategic. The commercial model is a full-risk switchover to outcomes/value-based pricing, a clear departure from the traditional no-risk retainer fee model.

How is the effectiveness of the RPO vendor measured?
When we defined RPO, we realised that it would be relevant to an organisation only if it links its payments to value created and/or outcomes achieved. The challenge was to quantify the value/outcomes in detail so both parties were satisfied that they were getting a fair deal. At MindTree, it was relatively easy to get here as we had begun measuring our recruitment effectiveness internally before we implemented the RPO model. We have identified eight critical-to-quality (CTQ) items that we will monitor in the RPO engagement, namely, the fulfilment index, source mix, no-shows, offer to joining conversion rate, turnaround time, screening to interview selects, cost per hire and effort per hire.

How does RPO help in reducing the cost per hire, effort per hire and the overall candidate-job fit? Can you talk about the MindTree experience?
Since the RPO vendor takes responsibility for the entire recruitment team and its activities, the recruitment team’s direct (salary) costs are first transferred to them. Apart from this, there are at least six different cost items such as sign-on bonus, employee referral payouts, walk-in events, travel and logistics costs, etc, that are transferred to the RPO vendor.
Besides the cost-transfers, the RPO team structure ensures optimal usage of resources and there are incentives to increase productivity and minimise effort-loss. Since the RPO is accountable for the entire process, there is an incentive to continually innovate and realise process improvements rather than being content playing the paper-pushers.
The RPO vendor handles all hiring requisitions and passes them on to a preferred sourcing vendor. This ensures that there is a deep discount on the industry average of 8.33 per cent consultant payout on each joinee, ensuring that the cost per hire is significantly lower than before.
Candidate-job fit which is the ultimate deliverable is the most difficult to achieve as requisitions from our internal customers are not as clear and unambiguous as we want them to be.

Does RPO help in bringing in a JIT (just-in-time) hiring system?
RPO definitely enables JIT hiring. Our average processing time from receiving a resume to rolling out an offer is 5.6 days. This period includes tasks such as screening, arranging the interview logistics, taking the candidate through three levels of interviews and rolling out the offer letter. So, technically, we have the candidate ready to join us in a week’s time. But the JIT does not work this way as the candidates have to serve their notice periods with their previous employers; this is usually 45-60 days.

What are the drawbacks/risks associated with the RPO model?
While there are many upsides to RPO, like everything else, it also has its share of risks. Some indicative risks are: If the RPO vendor is a wrong choice it translates into a serious single point of failure; the RPO vendor in theory should have high process awareness and maturity to enter the corporate as a change agent. As it stands, there is a lack of this key ability. Like in the IT offshoring business, many first-time outsourcing organisations think that they don’t need to stay engaged once the process is outsourced. The client must watch for complacency, especially when the RPO vendor gets into the annuity business frame-of-mind. Then, getting profiles of passive job-seekers is an issue. Besides, there’s the issue of inadequate training: Since the team is predominantly on-site, RPO vendors might not invest in their team’s training.

Please tell us how bringing in an effective RPO system helped you get the recognition at RASBIC?
Out of the seven categories that are part of the RASBIC awards, MindTree won awards in five categories. These were in the areas of innovation in recruitment and staffing, technology adoption, paradigm shift in thinking, strategy and vision. Apart from this, we also got the overall best recruitment and staffing organisation of the year award.
RPO is a like an organ transplant. If it is not planned and executed properly, it has the potential to push back talent acquisition capability in the client organisation. To ensure that the RPO succeeds, we had to implement more than a dozen processes and quickly bring them to maturity.
Today, more than 95 per cent of all talent acquisition activities at MindTree are automated — this includes getting all our stakeholders onto a common platform where they can access on-demand, real-time information. We had highlighted all these in our award entry and I guess the industry saw that we had done something out-of-the-ordinary and felt that we ought to be recognised.

Article Courtesy: Businessline

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India's Most Connected Recruiters on Linkedin

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:23:00 +0000

Current post is inspired by this post from Glen Cathey where he has compiled World's top 25 most connected recruiters in Linkedin. I thought I should also make a compilation of India's 25 most connected recruiters in Linkedin.

So here is it.

Process is same as he has adopted. I searched for anyone in India with current title as current title: recruiter OR recruiting OR recruitment OR sourcer OR sourcing OR talent and sorted out results on the basis of number of connections.Total number of results are 27,187.

I found out-In order to come in top 25 you ought to have more than 4000 1st degree connection.

Please click on the snippets to go to the respective profiles.

Please check where do you stand.I am a newbie with very less connections ,so I can't compare my self with them.

Please click here to see full results.

Congratulations to all, who have made to the list.

Indian IT Companies Yet To Use Twitter as a Recruitment Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 06:09:00 +0000

Every now and then we read in media about how Indian companies are adopting social media for various purposes like branding and PR, sales and service etc.
It intrigued me to check how they are using Twitter for a very important function: Recruitment.

I searched for Job/Career channels of Indian software companies in Twitter and here is what I found :

1) Copmany name:            TCS
    Official Twitter account: @followtcs
    Job/Career channel: NA

2) Company Name:            WIPRO
    Official Twitter account: @Wipro
    Job/Career Channel:      @WiproCareers (381/1494)

My observation: Few walk ins are posted.Average 4-5 tweets per month.In the current upswing in market I am sure they have hundreds of open jobs.

3) Company Name:           Infosys
   Official Twitter Account:@Infosys
   Job/Career Channel:      NA

4) Company Name:           Mahindra-Satyam
   Official Twitter Account:@mahindra_satyam
     Job/career Channel:      NA

5) Company Name:            HCL Infotech
   Official Twitter Account: @hcltech
    Job/Career Channel:       @HCLTechJobs (0/494)
    My observation:             Not much active recently. Last tweet on Jan 7th.

6)Company Name:            Patni Computers
   Official Twitter Account: @Patni
    Job/career Channel:    NA

7) Company Name:           Oracle Financial Services(Previously I-Flex):
   Official Twitter Account:@OracleFS
   Job/Career channel:      NA

8) Company Name:           Mphasis
   Official Twitter Account: Could not find one

9) Company Name:            L&T Infotech
   Official Twitter Account: @LnT_Infotech
   Job/Career Chanel:        @Infoknights (7/122) [added later]
    My observation:             Not much activity.

10) Company Name:         Capgemini
      Official Twitter account:@Capgemini
      Job Channel:               @capgeminijobs (14/194)

My observation: Few jobs have been posted but still not much activity.

As you can see, most of the big IT companies in India dont have a job channel in Twitter. Even if some have , they are not using it actively and effectively.Whoever is using it, they are not forming the job tweets properly - either location or some other keyword is missing or no hash tags(#) etc.

This pushes me to think:
Do Indian IT companies feel twitter has not grown in India sufficiently to be used as a recruitment tool effectively?
Or They are yet to feel the potential of Twitter fully?
Or Indian recruiters are not very Tech Savvy ??

Or Few companies which have Twitter job channel are not getting desired results?

I agree that traditional methods like job posting and resume sourcing from job boards, job posting on newspapers, taking help from recruitment agencies are still pretty effective. However looking at the phenomenal growth rate of new social media and the additional advantage they bring, I feel companies should start using these tools as an additional source to find candidates. I know many recruiters who use linked-in as a sourcing tool .But Twitter is yet to catch their fancy.

New Job Share Option For Recruiters in Naukri

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:14:00 +0000

Naukri has recently added a new feature for recruiters - when you are about to finish a job posting a window appears which allows you to share the job in different social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Brijj.I have earlier mentioned that Naukri has already started many twitter channels where they share job links for specific skill sets.

So,I feel this too is a timely and welcome step.

When there is a huge discussion going on whether social media will take over job portals as the major source of recruitment for organizations,job portals have to find new ways to reach more audience.What they can do is, use social media to share their job links.This way they can spread the reach of their jobs significantly.Now social media will complement job portals instead of posing competition.Naukri has realized this and already working on this line.

This new feature by Naukri will encourage organizations to open their official accounts in different networking sites(if not done till now) and use them to share their jobs.This is the beginning of changing recruitment scene in India and it will lead other job portals to follow the steps.

In fact I think Job Portals should give a "share" button with every job post(like we use in blog posts) , which can be used by both organizations and candidates to share jobs in their networking sites.[Update]Apparently both Naukri and Monster have share option in their job pages.My mistake.[Update]

Twitter, Recruitment and Future

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:10:00 +0000

Recruitment through twitter is still in experimental stage. Recruiters around the world are trying it in their own ways and results have been varying. Once in a while we come across nice insightful articles where recruiters explain their learning and also give their view on future of twitter-recruitment.

Recently I came across an interesting article by Matt Alder of Recruiting Futurology .

First let me explain the basic plot of his article and then I will express my views on the matter.

Here he means to say that - with so many people posting their jobs in twitter , in future all the available jobs from different organizations will be open in twitter world. This will create a huge open access job database(he calls it :Job Cloud) as compared to close access databases of current job boards.The candidate will only have to search with keywords in twitter search or customized job search tools like Twitjobsearch and find his choice job easily.He is envisioning that some websites will come up which will put the jobs available in twitter in a more systematic way and provide tools to candidates where they can filter and find their required jobs.

Well,Mostly I agree with his opinion.

We all talk about how organizations should start their job channel on Twitter,attract candidates to follow them, keep them engaged through interaction and keep posting jobs time to time.Free job posting.Why to pay job boards for each job posting when we can do it for free? Well, in this whole issue we are ignoring convenience of one very important party here-Candidates. Just imagine with every organization starting their own job channel in twitter, how many channels should a candidate follow to keep himself updated about new suitable jobs? Ain't we expecting too much from candidates? So is organizations posting their jobs in their twitter channel a bad idea? Will their job postings get desired exposure and response?Can they make big follower base?

What can be a suitable soultion for both parties involved - candidates and organisations?

Well ,One solution I can think of is Twitter job sites like Tweetmyjobs, Tweetajob. These sites post job tweets for lots of clients and they have separate channels dedidated to different skillsets.So a candidate can follow his skillset based channel and get all suitable jobs in his stream.No doubt organisation has to pay to these sites per job tweet, but I believe the charges are pretty less and organisations can get large number of readymade followers for their jobs!

Second Point: Is organizations posting jobs in their twitter channel still a good idea?

My answer would be YES. Whenever you post a job in Twitter , it comes into open world for all to see and find out. In future candidates will use Twitter search more and more to find suitble jobs(as Matt Alder says and I agree) , and if you have given proper keywords while posting the job, you will find some customers.Any good response is useful, so no harm in posting. My only suggestion is not to depend entirely on your job channel.

Again, one more issue is regarding threat to job boards from Twitter and other social medias-In my opinion job boards will never die. They provide highly targetted customer-base(who are looking for job) and have got loads of feature that makes process easier for both the parties. And for the recruiters who hate boards because of too many irrelevant responses- what is the guarantee that you will get less or no irrelevant responses from twitter job post? In fact odds are same in both the cases. In my opinion in future job boards should integrate with twitter and start their own skill based channels. While posting a job in board, they should cross post it in twitter with the link. This way twitter can compliment job boards by driving more traffic and maximising the responses.

I would be eager to know your responses. Please share your opinion in comment section.

Activity of Popular Indian Job Boards on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:39:00 +0000

Recently I was checking the presence of Popular Indian Job Boards on Twitter and their activity.

Here is what I found:

Presence of Indian Job Boards in Twitter

Clearly you can see, Naukri has been the most active among among all the job boards in terms of using twitter as a branding tool as well as in terms of spreading information about new jobs. They have created 5 twitter channels based on different skill sets ie@naukri_java, @naukri_mktg, @naukri_online, @naukri_hr, @naukri_it .Whenever a job is posted in Naukri, they share the link in related twitter channel.A java engineer can follow their @naukri_java channel and be updated about all the java related openings posted in Naukri. Apart from this they have their corporate account @naukri also where they share new information about their company.This account is basically for their branding purpose.Interestengly they are organizing contests in twitter for their followers too!

Talking about other Job boards, Times Jobs has an official account@times_jobs where they share link of their official blog's new posts, which I think is very limited use of the medium.

Coming to Monster, I dont think Monster India has any official twitter account(they have their international account of course). I found one Monster India account(@monsterindia) in Twitter, but looking at the passiveness there, I am not sure whether it is authentic or not.

Jobs Ahead and Shine.com don't have any Twitter account.

With advent and spread of new media entities like Facebook and Twitter, organizations are more open to using social media for their hiring needs and thus reducing dependency on job boards.

In India however, not many companies have Job channels in twitter till now.

But before it's late,Job Boards should pull up their socks.There are many twitter specific job sites in the market and they are doing pretty well.So I think, Job boards should also start their Job channels and spread their jobs through Twitter. This way they can do the job posting for their client on twitter apart from their own site which will give the jobs more visibility and thus they can serve the clients better.Client will also be happy!

Naukri has already started on this line. Lets see when others follow the suit.

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How to use Twitter for Recruitment (Recruit with Twitter)

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:35:00 +0000

How to use Twitter for Recruitment

Rise of social networking sites have changed the technology space completely. The latest blockbuster in this space is Twitter- a micro blogging site which enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. It has grown up very differently from its initial purpose- updating what you are doing currently. Now people follow each other, share information and important links, have healthy discussions here. It allows you to stay connected in real-time. It is estimated that currently twitter has a user base of more then 7 Million.

From initial days networking has been an important part of recruitment. So now it is time to use social and professional networking tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook to help us in recruitment process.

How social networking sites can be used for recruitment:

Increase your network.
Publish your jobs.
Dig out good candidates.
Share good info about your company and build brand.

Here I will discuss how we can use Twitter for recruitment.

1) Make an official twitter account (It’s free!!)- be it an individual, company or consulting.

2) Follow potential candidates.

3) Engage in useful conversation.

4) Share information about latest happenings about your company. It will help in brand building.

5) Post open jobs from your twitter account.

a) You can’t post the whole JD in Twitter (Remember 140 character limitation). So I suggest posting the whole JD in your website and adding its link on your twitter job post. Candidates will go to the website and post their resume there. Then you can call them and get more information.

b) Please remember- make a specific protocol for your job postings like: Java Dev, 3-5 Yrs, Bangalore(………link………..).

c) Use # tags along with important keywords, which will help candidates search it in twitter search easily like: #ITJOB Java Dev, 3-5 Yrs, Bangalore(………link………..).

d) Reply to all the responses and queries and interact with the responders.

Ideal job posting in Twitter

6) One of the best features of twitter is retweet. Candidates can retweet any job if they like and it will be circulated among their followers. So a good attractive job posting can attract very good responses.

7) You either use same account for corporate information and job posting purpose or you can have a separate account for job postings.

Job Search result in Twitter

There has been many discussions regarding the effectiveness of recruitment related efforts in twitter. Some feel these mediums are over hyped and don’t give much result. While, there is a league of recruiters who believe in social media tools for recruitment.

I believe every new source to find good candidate is helpful for recruitment process. Again the rapidly growing user base of twitter is its strong point. You just can't ignore it anymore. Only you need to learn how to use it suitably to help your recruitment needs.

Now-a-days there are many twitter-related job sites like Twitmyjobs,Tweetajob,Twitjobsearch etc who tweet jobs on behalf of you and give many customized services to job seekers and recruiters. You can try them out too.

So, enjoy recruiting through Twitter and please give me your feedback.

#Some more useful resources on same topic:[1], [2], [3],[4],[5]

@fundoorecruiter

Google Buzz and the Buzz Around it!

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:13:00 +0000

Google unveiled its new social networking feature Google Buzz recently and it has already taken the web by storm. Whole WWW is filled with 1st person experiences, reviews, apprehensions , admirations and predictions. Buzz is a social feature which is integrated with Gmail.So you will find a tab called Buzz below inbox in your Gmail account, where you can share photos,links, messages or any other update with all your followers or some selected people. One advantage that Google has here is the already established user base of Gmail. As buzz is integrated in Gmail, the Gmail-users will automatically use it. So it will also include the not techie types into the social wave who were not kicked enough to log into a separate Twitter and other social networking sites, but have a Gmail account.

Buzz is easy to use and not complex like Google’s earlier social offering Wave.

With passing time, people will discover Buzz more and more and with it they will find good uses of it.

Can anybody suggest how candidates can use it effectively during his job finding process??

I can think of one use as of now:

# Form a Gmail group with your friends who are looking for similar opportunities. Ask them to do so, too. When ever anyone of you finds any good job related link, share it here.Easy and targeted! It will remain shared with in the group and not to all. This way you can help each other. What say?

I know we can do it through mail also. But buzz is new and in fashion my friend!

Here we have an advantage over Twitter: When you share any link in twitter it comes in stream of all your followers, right. In most of the cases the link may not be useful for everybody. So it is up to the user to click on the links he wants to follow. In Buzz you can chose people whom you want to share the info or update.

Explore the Buzz and please share the new and useful usages you find.

Fundoo Recruiter

Monster Acquires Yahoo HotJobs for $225M Cash

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:45:00 +0000

Recently USA's premier job-site Monster acquired another popular job-site Yahoo Hotjobs for a deal of $225 Million cash. As part of the deal Monster will power Job listings of Yahoo for three years.

I feel it is a win-win deal for both the companies. Because Yahoo had been trying to concentrate on its main business i.e: internet products for sometime and in the process they are trying to offload businesses that are not aligned with their primary business.So this is a good deal for them.

On the other hand Hotjobs being a part of Yahoo had the benefit of Yahoo brand-name. Thus it was a very popular job-site. Now Monster can leverage from its traffic.This deal will increase Monster's market share significantly.

Fundoo Recruiter

Happy Days Are Here Again!!

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:34:00 +0000

By citing a survey by international recruitment firm Antal International, Times of India has recently posted an article which says that Indian Inc is hiring very aggressively.Among the surveyed firms 71% said they are hiring now.

"Manufacturing & auto sectors along with the traditional IT, FMCG, pharma companies have ramped up hiring, against what we witnessed in our previous survey. Increased hiring indicates that the need for exceptional talent is now ever more," Devasia added.- Source

Well, it is a very good news for recruitment industry.No one can forget the difficulty recruitment industry faced during recent recession. Most of companies across all sectors had stopped hiring. IT and some other sectors were directly affected by US financial meltdown and didn't have much projects. But firms in other sectors also stopped hiring as a precautionary measure.No one was sure how long it was going to stretch.

No hiring means no business for recruitment firms.Many consultings could not survive the storm and shut down.Arranging operating cost became difficult.Different cost cutting measures were taken. Some had to take hard steps like salary cut and in worst cases lay offs.

But now things are getting better. Storm has passed by. Market is optimistic. Most of the companies are hiring and of course thay need recruiters help. :)

I am sure we all have learnt our lessons from the recession. Lets start again- this time with more vigor, equipped with new skills!

(I had not noticed that Achyut Menon of Options had posted a similar-themed nice post with the same title before me. Pls go through that also.)

Fundoo Recruiter

Indian Recruitment Industry - An Overview

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:15:00 +0000

Indian recruitment companies can be divided into 5 types:

Recruitment Consultings (Permanent)
Staffing companies(Contract)
Executive search firms
Software companies also sending employees on contract
Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) companies

Recruitment Consultings: If you search in any metro city in India you find thousands of small consultancies who work on lateral reqs. In most of the cases they operate in small officies with employee strength of 5-15. Such consultancies are generally dependent on some specific big MNCs, who dont care where the resumes are coming from. Whoever closes the position gets the commission. Now the sources of resumes are same for all ie: Job boards and service is also similar- which increases the compitition further.And due to too much of compitition consultancies agree to work for very less commission- in some cases 4-5 % also. As they are playing in very less margin, they can't hire good recruiters and neither they can aford to pay recruiters well.Recruiters dont get proper training, which affects performance and their service to candidates.No surprises that many candidates complain of bad service from consultants.

Apart from these There are few 100+ strength professionally managed recruitment firms, who maintain quality in terms of service to clients and candidates and create a brand for themselves. Even they manage to get premuim commission due to their service.

Staffing Companies: Staffing companies basically keep people in their payroll and let them work with client for specific contract. Here the company charges some specific amount every month for the candidate frm the client. Due to volatile market scenario especially after recession Indian companies are getting more and more eager to hire people in contract through some third party vendors. This is helping in booming of such contract staffing companies. Salary standards for recruiters are not very great here also. But this trend is going to pick strongly in future because it suits to market situations. Contract staffing is very popular in manufactoring and services sector.

Executive Search Firms: Again in india executive search firms have generally a strength of 5-15 people. But in this case they hire for very high level candidates ie: CEO, Marketing head etc , so revenue is quite premium. Basically experienced people from diverse sectors join executive search firms and use their network to close positions.Their compensation is best when compared to recruiters in other types of recruitment companies.

Software companies also sending employees in contract: In bangalore especially you will find many companies where they have their software devision where they work on client projects, At the same time they send employees to client place as contract employee. There are many small and big companies in this field.

RPO companies: There are not many companies in india which works exclusively on RPOs. Mostly big consultancies take it up as another practice only. RPO is also another sector which is picking up fast in India.

Whatever may be the type of offering, We want more big size professionally managed recruitment firms in India, which can help in building standard practices, set new benchmark in terms of service, bring in new innovation in recruitment processes and can attract good candidates to join recruitment industry by offering good career prospect.

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Different Types of Recruitment Models

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:04:00 +0000

Different companies have different hiring needs. So depending on level of engagement, exclusivity, long term prospects and other factors many different recruitment models are followed in the market.Here I will try to explain them.

Different recruitment models:

Contigency Hiring
Retained Search
Exclusice Requirements:
Recruitment Process Outsourcing(RPO)
Outplacement
Executive Search

Contingency Hiring: In contingency hiring whenever a company comes across any requirement it gives it to many consultants at the same time and asks all of them to send resumes.Only the consultant whose candidate is offered gets money from the company. Here recruiters don't get any assured and fixed salary. Their revenue depends entirely on whether they can make offers or not.As risk factor is high here, consultants charge more percentage for such type of recruitment. generally company pays in terms of a specific percentage of CTC of the candidate. This is the most prevalent way of recruitment.

Retained Search: Here a recruitment consultant works exclusively for a specific requirement and payment is divided into two parts.He is paid a fixed amount by the company for search activity. It is called retainer fee. Other than that if he makes offer he gets more money. For recruitment of senior executives like CEO,Sales head very focused approach is required , so this method is preferred.

Exclusive Requirements: Sometimes companies give some requirements exclusively to recruiters. Here recruiter assures the client to close the position within specific date. if he cant close the position by that time he needs to either close the position with lesser commission or bear some other penalty.All the conditions are clearly decided before the contract. Here percentage of commission is less than contingency hiring because there is no competition.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing(RPO): RPO model is gaining lot of popularity recently. Here a company outsources whole recruitment process to another consultant. Some people from the consultant side seat in the company itself and manage the whole process by themselves. The sourcers can either sit in the client place or in their own office. Here RPO partner is responsible for closing all the requirements. They take care of the whole recruitment process right from sourcing,scheduling, interviews, offer to joinings.The benefit for the company is that- they don't have to manage their own recruitment team which reduces costs. But on the other hand risk is high, because if consultants don't understand the company culture and hiring plans properly it can get disastrous also. So companies should be careful while choosing recruitment partners.Because we are talking about high scale and longer duration engagement here.

Outplacement: Outplacement came into picture during recession period. Here If a company wants to lay off some people employees to cut costs, they can hire a consultant to place those employees in other companies. The recruitment cost is borne by the current employer.Outplacement is not very popular till now.

Executive Search: Executive search teams only focus on senior level ie: CEO, CTO, Sales head and similar kind of requirements. Method of sourcing for such positions are quite different from junior level requirements. Here number of potential candidates are less and they don't prefer to show their resume on the portals. So head-hunting, searching in networking sites and personal networks help a lot. For such requirements commission is much higher. Executive search teams do retained search activity also.

Other than the above models recruitment can be divided in other two types.

Permanent recruitment
Contract or Temporary staffing:

Permanent staffing: Here after recruitment the candidate stays in the company payroll as a permanemt employee.

Temp staffing: In case of temporary staffing/ contract staffing the candidate remains in the payroll of the consultant and works with the company for a limited time period. Companies generaly prefer this model if the project is small or uncertain. Again it reduces their long term costs also. So this model is gaining good popularity now a days.

Both permanent and temporary staffing can be applied to all the above recruitment models.

I have tried to explain different recruitment models followed in the market. Please mention you suggestion and feedback in the comment sections.

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Simply hired goes social with Linked In, Facebook and twitter integration.

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:55:00 +0000

Simply Hired, the largest job search engine network, recently announced some new social job search features through integration with Linked IN, Twitter and Facebook.

Lets have a look at them.

They have introduced two main features:
1)Linked in Mash-up
2) Share with Facebook, twitter and Linked-in contacts.

1)Linked In mash-up: Suppose you come across a requirement for which you are interested. You just have to click 'Who do I know' button and it will show people who are in your network in linked-in and they work in the same company who have the job requirement.In my opinion this is a great tool, because you can ask your contacts in the company to refer you for the post, which increases your chances.

2)Share: Here you can share good requirements with your contacts in twitter or facebook or linkedin. I have only one problem with this feature. When you share the req in Facebook or twitter it will be seen by all your friends or followers, out of them it may not be useful for 95% of people.

Social media is buzz word now. So this new features will definitely give boost to popularity of Simply Hired.I think all job boards will also start these features very soon.

Fundoo Recruiter

Applicant Tracking system - Zoho Recruit

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Till now many of the recruitment consulting companies in India use spreadsheets to track applicants. But looking at the amount of information(email id, contact details, schedules, status) to be maintained and updated, using a applicant tracker system is a much better choice.Now a days there are many such applications are available in the market which helps in managing the recruitment process.But many of them are either costly or not convenient.

Recently Zoho lunched an online applicant tracking system called Zoho Recruit. Earlier it was a part of Zoho People, but now they have introduced it separately.For people who don't know, Zoho is and Indian start up with a range of products in online office application systems.

Main Features:

You can source candidates from multiple sources and do initaial filtering quite easily.It has its own resume database.
You can keep track of the cadidate through out the interview process.you can schedule interviews, send mass mails, update ststus and keep notes in the application.
You can publish jobs on your site through Zoho recruit and attract resumes directly from candidates.

Useful for: It is definitely helpful for corporates as well as recruitment agencies.

Cost: It comes with both free version and standard edition($12/month/user).

Verdict: It looks to be good. Independant consultants and recruitment agencies who are looking for a good applicant tracking system can definitely check out this one.

Fundoo Recruiter

HighTea from Timesjobs

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:06:00 +0000

HighTea from Timesjobs

Recently I came across one article in Timejobs blog where they have summed up 10 new features they introduced in 2009. Many of the features are enhancements or modifications of what was already there but some are new and good. One feature that I particularly liked is HIGH TEA.They introduced this feature in March 2009.

High Tea is basically a live webchat event where jobseekers and recruiters can have a live chat session with a senior HR manager from some reputed company on a scheduled day.

How does it work?

1st of all you need to register in Timesjobs site.

On the scheduled day and time you can send your question via chat box. The moderator will shortlist relevant ones among all questions and pass on to the guest. The guest can be in front of the system chatting himself or he can be on phone(most of the time) where he answers and moderator will type the answer for you. All this happens live .All questions and answers are visible on the screen.

Information regarding new sessions are available on their official blog .

I believe this initiative is good for candidates, recruiters and corporates also. Candidates and recruiters can ask queries regarding job-market and interview processes and have an idea of what corporates are looking for. At the same time corporate HR managers can participate as the guest and share their ideas. Here it can be a good promotion for their companies also.

Among the main Indian jobsites Naukri, Monster and Timesjobs, I can see Timesjobs giving a lot of focus to social media.But while searching for their official blog I came across not one , not two but three sites!!!- [1], [2], [3]. Many articles are cross-posted in them. Running an official blog is a good step but three blogs can at best divide your audience. I hope they have a better reason for this.

Fundoo Recruiter

Fundoo Recruitment Trick #2

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:09:00 +0000

Fundoo Recruitment trick #2

(Slice Search)

Suppose, you are working for a client who wants 3-6 yrs candidates and they can offer exp+2 lacs max salary(i:e-3 yrs guy will be offered max 5 lacs).

How do you do such search?

If you put exp 3 to 6 and max sal 6 lacs in your search, along with relevant ones you will also get profiles where a 3 yrs guy is getting 6 lacs salary- which we don't want.

Any other option to get most relevant resumes ?

Well..

Lets divide the whole search into three parts.

3-4 yrs (max CTC 4 lacs)
4-5 yrs (max CTC 5 lacs)
5-6 yrs (max CTC 6 lacs)

Here we divided the whole resume pool into three parts according to experience and CCTC. 1st search will give you candidates wth 3- 4 yrs experience and having max CTC 4 lacs.Their ideal expectation will be around 5-6 lacs, which is justified.

Other searches will also give relevant results.

Nothing new, isn't it ?

Fundoo Recruiter

Indian Recruiter Blogs Directory

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:50:00 +0000

Indian Recruiter Blogs Directory

About:

Indian Recruiter Blogs Directory is contains a list of good recruitment blogs created by Indian recruiters.

List:

Recruiting and Sourcing Secrets

Recruiters World

Recruitment Sourcing

Rambling Recruiter's Blog

Options in India

Fundoo Recruiter :)

RecruitAwesome

My advance apologies if I have missed your blog.This is just a beginning. Kindly send your blog URL to my mail id fundoorecruiter@gmail.com and I will be glad to add you.

Note: Till now I have skipped blogs which post jobs.Will take a decision on them later. Again there are many wonderful HR blogs which contain occasional recruitment posts. For the time being not included them also.

Boolean search explained for recruiters

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:48:00 +0000

Boolean search is a very important tool in sourcing from job boards or search engine. Using Boolean search you can filter out irrelevant resume from the resume database and retrieve resumes with required skill sets. It eases our sourcing effort to a great extent.

Boolean search works based on logic.

Here I will try to explain how to use Boolean operators effectively to extract most suitable profiles from resume database.

Here are two cases out of which I will take one and make an effective search string using Boolean operators.You can take the other case or think of a case on your own and try to use Boolean operators for it. This will help you learn it better.

Case 1: We are searching for candidates with core java and multi threading skills and Unix or Linux or Solaris platform experience but he should not have worked in telecom or networking domain.

Case 2: We are looking for sales managers in insurance domain but he should have retail experience not institutional or corporate sales.

Main Boolean operators:

•    AND is used when we want both skill sets such as X AND Y
•    OR is used when we want any of the available options i.e.: X OR Y OR Z
•    Bracket/parentheses () is used when AND and OR functions are used in same string. i.e.: X AND (Y OR Z). The above search means X is mandatory and either of Y or Z will do.
•    Quotation mark”—“is used when we are looking for exact phrases i.e. “technical architect”. This search will find resumes with exact phrase “technical architect” written in them.
•    NOT- NOT is used when we don’t want a specific word in a resume i.e.: (X AND Y) AND NOT Z.

(Pic Courtsey: Naukri)

Here, I will take the 1st case:

1)    If we put a search - Corejava AND multithreading, we will find profiles where all these words are mentioned i.e.: all the candidates might have worked on corejava , multithreading .

2)    Now the problem is - there may be many profiles where people would have written corejava as core java and multithreading as multi threading or multi-threading. We don’t want to miss any of them. So how do we accommodate them? Here OR function comes handy. We can change our search string to - (Corejava OR “Core java”) AND (multithreading OR “multi threading” OR “multi-threading”).

3)    But we are looking for people who have worked either unix or linux or solaris platform. So now the string becomes (Corejava OR “core java”) and (multithreading OR “multi threading” OR “multi-threading”) and (unix OR linux OR solaris) .

4)    Now we are looking for people who have worked in core java, multithreading in unix/linux/solaris platform but he should not be from telecom or networking background.

So the search string we can use is (Corejava OR “core java”) AND (multithreading OR “multi threading” OR “multi-threading”) AND (unix OR linux OR solaris) AND NOT (telecom OR networking).

Now this is a strong Boolean search string which covers all the aspects of the case. Here the results will be lesser in number yet most relevant - exactly what we want.

As I told you earlier, only reading will not do. Take an example and try using the Boolean operators one by one. Look at the results and analyze them. You will find out the pattern very soon.

Some recommendations:
• When ever searching for any skill try to put all the alternatives a candidate could have used to mention that skills set i.e. (multithreading OR “multi threading” OR “multi threading”). This will make your search more robust.

• Use NOT operator carefully. For example: You have mentioned NOT X where you don’t want people who have worked on X skill. Here the search will remove every resume where X is mentioned even once . As a result you may miss some people who have worked in your required skill sets and casually written X once or twice somewhere in there resumes. So before putting NOT operator, think of all the outcomes.

Boolean operators are not as complicated as they are thought to be. After all you have to learn only 5 operators. Remember how many formulas we used to practice in math class in school!

Portal or internal database have huge number of resume of all skill sets. So the key lies in finding the right resume quickly. Strong Boolean skill will help you achieve that.

I have tried to explain how to use Boolean logic in recruitment sourcing as simply as possible. Still if you have any doubt or you think I have missed something, please inform me in comment section or through mail.

Note: I have written Boolean operators in capital letter. But in most job boards you can use small letters also.

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Fundoo Recruitment Trick #1

noreply@blogger.com (Fundoo Recruiter) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:01:00 +0000

Fundoo Recruitment Trick

Suppose you have got a requirement JD and you are not able to understand the role properly. What is the next step for you?

Call the hiring manager and connect to some technical person in the client and discuss with him. Right!

Wait!

We have a simple trick, here.

Log into any popular job board; put a search for a candidate with required skill set from the same client who has given you the requirement. 70% of times you will find somebody who is working with your client for the same project. Now don’t call him!

Just go through his current project and understand his work profile and the skill sets required. You will have a better understanding of the req .

How is it!

I am sure many of you already do it, but still thought I should share it for the new comers.

Fundoo Recruiter