Move the Recruitment Needle

Let's Get Some Dialogue Going!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:01:00 +0000

Hi everyone. I know I've been slacking off on this blog. I told Ted I would get back in here and start sharing again. Between running my firm and finding time to take classes, write my blogs (yes plural), manage an active network and run a household I'm pretty tired.

But I am now glad to be part of the International Recruiting Society (not a real name). I have landed a few clients after reaching out to my network for advice and tips on recruiting outside of the US.

As I was visiting the CNBC website, I came across an interesting video I wanted to share. They are clips of a summit where the two opposing sides were debating on whether or not the Middle East is effectively grooming and tapping into their human capital. I hope it facilitates some discussion.

Enjoy!

Invest It Forward Debate At the World Economic Summit

For- http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=758162659

Against- http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=758162665

Panel Discussion- http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=758139418

What are your thoughts?

Adrienne Graham

SixDegreesfromDave.com Receives 4 Industry Recognitions :

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:08:00 +0000

My good friend Dave has shown the way in how to build a popular blog! Congratulations Dave on your success

SixDegreesfromDave.com Receives 4 Industry Recognitions :

1) HireAbility, "Best Recruitment Blog of 2007"

2) RecruitingBlogs, "Best Overall Recruitment Blog of 2007"

3) RecruitingBlogs, "Best Recruitment Industry Blog of 2007"

4) HR World, "the top 25 HR blogs of 2007" (#3) http://www.hrworld.com/features/top-25-blogs-121907/

PRESS RELEASE

Dave's recruitment blog SixDegreesfromDave.com spotlights HR industry leaders, sourcing gurus, global staffing practices and social networking. It was recently honored with 3 awards: RecruitingBlogs.com's "Best Overall Recruitment Blog of 2007" & "Best Recruitment Industry Blog of 2007, and HireAbility's "Best Recruitment Blog of 2007." In addition, it was listed #3 out of 25 of the best blogs of 2007 by HRWorld.com. His site also received most votes for Best Recruitment blog of 2006 at Recruiting.com.

BIO

Dave Mendoza is a Master CyberSleuth and Affiliate Partner of JobMachine, Inc. He is one of the top 50 networkers worldwide on Linkedin with over 12,000+ connections, and a reach of over 8.5 Million by 3rd degree.

Dave's recruitment blog SixDegreesfromDave.com spotlights HR industry leaders, sourcing gurus, global staffing practices and social networking. It was recently honored with 3 awards: RecruitingBlogs.com's "Best Overall Recruitment Blog of 2007" & "Best Recruitment Industry Blog of 2007, and HireAbility's "Best Recruitment Blog of 2007." In addition, it was listed #3 out of 25 of the best blogs of 2007 by HRWorld.com. His site also received most votes for Best Recruitment blog of 2006 at Recruiting.com.

Dave has been active in the staffing conference circuit. He served as a Moderator for a Three Part webinar series and oversaw a panel on behalf of Kennedy Information/ Expo on the topic of Blogging for Talent, Branding and Web 2.0 Relationships, in addition to having Co-Presented at both an Kennedy Expo workshop ("A Sourcing Guru's Guide To Hacking Linkedin") in Las Vegas and ERE in San Diego as a workshop Co-Presenter, "Master's Session, Advanced Sourcing." He also contributed training on Advanced Sourcing workshops as an Affiliate Partner with Shally Steckerl's JobMachine Inc., the industry's foremost provider of Passive Talent research methods.

Dave welcomes Linkedin invitations and can be reached by email at ldavemendoza@gmail.com

He has over 60 recommendations listed within his Linkedin profile, http://www.linkedin.com/in/davemendoza

You can learn more about Dave in the following blog articles:

http://sixdegreesfromdave.com/media

http://sixdegreesfromdave.com/speaking-engagements

http://sixdegreesfromdave.com/testimonials

Recruitment Videos - Navy Seals

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:59:00 +0000

Very cool recruiting campaign by the US Navy Seals. Got to this one through Jim Stroud

Best Wishes and happy recruiting in 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:00:00 +0000

Google to take on Facebook?

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:58:00 +0000

December 17, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Google Inc. over the weekend quietly announced Google Profiles, which provide a way for users of various Google products like Google Maps and Google Reader to offer information about themselves to other users.

The announcement got some bloggers twittering about a possible future foray by Google into social networking. A Google Profile will initially include basic points, like a user's name, photo and location, and can include other information, like a person's profession.

"You control what goes into your Google Profile, sharing as much (or as little) as you'd like," Google noted on a Web page with a brief description about Google Profiles. "Use multiple Google products? Soon your Google Profile will link up with these as well."

Anyone can see a user's profile, the site noted, and if a user includes his full name in a profile, it may be returned in Google search results for that name.

The new Google Profiles are already available in Google Maps and Google Reader and will be added to other Web applications, noted Ionut Alex Chitu, in a post at the Google Operating System blog.

"It is not a stretch to see that these profiles are the perfect host for your activity streams, and your public activities could become a part of the profile (uploading photos to a photo album, bookmarking Web pages, posting a new blog post)," Chitu wrote.

Sepideh Saremi, a blogger at search engine optimization company Reprise Media, noted that this move, combined with Friday's announcement that Google Reader has been linked to the Google Talk chat feature in Gmail to help users better share content with friends, shows that Google is moving closer to building a social network.

Google is chipping away at rival Facebook by "leveraging the dependency Google users have on Google products and building a social network that integrates these products," Saremi wrote.

"Facebook, which tends to annoy its finicky user base by rolling out features that don't necessarily have the user's best interest at heart, should also look to Google when it wants to implement changes to its site," Saremi added. "Google is rolling out its own social features methodically, explaining them clearly, and respecting their user base by saying they will make changes per user feedback. Google's evolving social network platform will absolutely rival Facebook, and probably sooner than anyone realizes."

LinkedIn Group - Passive Recruiter Unite

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:14:00 +0000

You’re invited to join the "Passive Recruiters Unite" Group on LinkedIn. Joining will allow you to find and contact other "Passive Recruiters Unite" members on LinkedIn. The goal of this group is to help members:

Here’s the link to join: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/36140/7A871C03AB14

The use of LinkedIn groups

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:11:00 +0000

Recently LinkedIn initiated the LinkedIn groups as you know, that's why you are here. They actually didn't initiated it as it already existed but they made the whole process much easier. At the time I initiated a group for Agilent employees and Alumni and it was a painful process to get that done. Anyway, that is not the reason for this entry.

I believe it to be great that you can create these groups and that through this you can connect and share ideas (again very obvious). However, I started testing in how far other groups had any criteria in carefully selecting their members and it became very clear that 80-90% of the groups are not. Only the alumni groups (especially from MBA's and professional organizations) are very restrictive in their selection. All the others simply accept everybody.

I started to feel like a boyscout with all the badges so I took a lot of them out of my profile but I'm now the proud and active member of:

and the list keeps on growing :-) I'm particularly proud of being a member of the Chinese entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, a group which is really dear to my hart ;-).

message: let's make sure this group stays focussed and doesn't become a "me too" club like so many others. What do you feel is the value of groups?

LinkedIn groups - Independent Recruiters

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 12:55:00 +0000

And yet another recruiter group :-)

Independent Recruiters

Linkedin Group - Shally Steckerl

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:16:00 +0000

One of the great sources on the internet is certainly Shally Steckerl. If you ever have the opportunity to take one of his trainings I would certainly advise you to do so. He may get carried away a bit when he is on to something but he is great.

Join his group on Linkedin
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/742/47ED820E8D6B

Making sense of job seeker behaviors

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 12:39:00 +0000

From the ridiculous to the nonsensical
It’s the job seeker’s behavior that can be the most unpredictable and often times most amusing. In a recent large survey project, the Selection Forecast 2006/2007, we surveyed more than 650 hiring managers asking them to tell us the most outrageous job seeker behaviors they had encountered. The responses were stunning. The questions that job seekers asked or actions they took during the job interview ranged from ridiculous, to offensive, to often making no sense at all. Here are the ‘best’ responses:

An applicant brought in his high school yearbook to show me that he had been voted ‘Most Popular Male.’
Asked about future goals, interviewee said, ‘I want your job. How many years do you have left?’
The applicant asked me to excuse some of her replies as she was still a little hung over from the weekend. It was Wednesday.
The candidate showed up to the interview sick, shook my hand before I knew she was sick, and indicated that I would probably catch the flu within a week after our interview.
The applicant said that for a sales job he would play golf every day to meet prospects.
An applicant said that he couldn’t work with women. (The interviewer was a woman.)
The applicant said, ‘I’m here mostly to get experience for applying to jobs.’
The applicant said, ‘I’ve already accepted another position but I thought I may as well still turn up to this interview just in case this was a better paying job.’
I had an applicant whose tooth fell out during the interview.
An applicant said, ‘I had a dream and a fairy told me I should work for your company.’
An applicant said, ‘I need a job but I don’t really want to work.’
I was asked by an applicant what I fantasized about and he emphasized that he did not want to know about my career fantasies.
I was interviewing an applicant for a Bakery position and was told that she was allergic to flour.
In the midst of the interview the candidate belched in my face and laughed and said, ‘better that it came out of the attic than the basement!’
An applicant said, ‘My greatest contribution to my last job was showing up.’
One candidate said if she could be an animal she would be a cat because they are lazy and lie around all day.
An applicant interviewing with American Express said, ‘Thank you for this interview, I have always wanted to work for Federal Express.’
An applicant said that they were applying for this job because they were about to be fired.
The applicant drew me an artistic picture to say thank you.
When asked what made the individual the best person for the position, she stated, ‘Just look at me.’

In tough recruiting times when qualified job seekers are scarce, we may need to hire ‘the best of the rest.’ Hopefully, more job seekers will pay attention to the abundant advice available on how to best represent themselves in the interview so that we can get back to the ‘normal interview’ instead of trying to hide a chuckle and say, ‘NEXT!’

LinkedIn Group - SixDegrees from Dave

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 12:09:00 +0000

If you want to become a member of another great group on LinkedIn here's your opportunity to become part of SixDegreesfromDave.

Hi

You're invited to join the "SixDegreesfromDave" Group on LinkedIn. Joining will allow you to find and contact other group members on LinkedIn. The goal of this group:

* "A focus group of fellow evangelists who value the development of building Passive Talent Relationships as a means of enhancing Best Practices, Meeting Pipeline demands, and building value in community. Let's Build ideas in the Web 2.0 arsenal in the War for Talent"

Benefits:

* Ability to "People Search" among fellow members
* Avoid using InMail credits, in favor of an Introduction among fellow members
* Accelerate careers/business through referrals from fellow Group members
* Know more than a name - view rich professional profiles from fellow enthusiasts of "Passive Talent Relationships"

Here's the link to join: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/37511/3DC0233041F8

Hope to see you in the group!

PS: You can also view the associated blog to my group daily:
http://www.sixdegreesfromdave.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dave Mendoza
Master CyberSleuth Consultant
Dave Mendoza & Associates, Inc.
A JobMachine, Inc. Affiliate
O: (720) 733-2022, C: (714) 235-1004
ldavemendoza@gmail.com
http://www.sixdegreesfromdave.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/davemendoza

Humor - Job pitches by candidates

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:58:00 +0000

While conducting job interviews is invariably a time consuming exercise, what employers learn about the candidate is quite enlightening say findings of a recent poll developed by Accountemps, a specialized staffing service for temporary accounting, finance, and bookkeeping professionals. According to the survey, executives were asked to describe some of the most unusual pitches given by job seekers explaining why they were the best candidate for the job. Notable responses to this question include:

- an allergy to unemployment;
- having applied for a position three times,
- the job seeker considered it was only fair that he got the position;
- while the candidate had no relevant experience, his friend did;

and leaving the best for last, one person brought his mother to the job interview and proceeded to let her do all the talking.

What is the funny stuff you hear?

source: http://www.recruitingtrends.com/online/news/

US Recruiting vs EMEA Recruiting

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:20:00 +0000

Hi everyone.

This is my first post on this blog. I thank Ted for inviting me to participate.

Briefly, I am a 15 year recruiting veteran in the U.S. I have a passion for what I do and I am always looking to learn more and grow. I have emersed myself in continuing recruitment education here is the U.S., but for the last 3 years I have been on the search to learn about recruiting practices abroad. I have been taking language classes and researching as much as I can about the various countries I would like to eventually recruit in.

I read many forums and blogs and the general consensus is that there are many differences in recruiting practices here and abroad. I have reached out to many Recruiters via Linked In and ERE to try to determine exactly what the differences are. I have learned in my career that there is no one correct way to do things. Even though I have been recruiting for 15 years I am always learning new things. There doesn't seem to be much on the internet regarding recruitment practices outside of the U.S.

If there are a few people out there who would be willing to share their knowledge on this blog I would truly appreciate it. One point that is constantly made is the availability of resources similar to ERE is limited. What can be done to rectify this? Has anyone tried to create forums to rectify this? What could I, as a U.S. Recruiter contribute to such a forum? How can we begin to assess the clear and not so clear differences in practices? What are some typical processes for the recruitment function in organizations abroad? Have there been Recruiters who have patterned their recruitment practices after U.S. companies? What are some things that can be done here in the U.S. that are not acceptable in EMEA? Are the internal recruiting teams actively involved or do most companies rely on third party agencies? If agencies are used, how involved is the in-house team?

As you can see, I am full of questions and have a tremendous thirst for knowledge. :) Of course, I'm not asking for direct answers to those questions right now. But they are at the forefront of my mind when I do research. I am sure there are others who share the same quest as I (on both sides of the pond). I would love to see a collaborative effort to bring cross-international training to fruition for both sides. SHRM is a great forum, but I find it limiting in the recruitment area. So let's start talking about it. You never know where it may lead.

I would love to be able to exchange ideas and offer advice to my fellow recruiters. I thank Ted for allowing me to join this blog and I am looking forward to learning and sharing.

Adrienne Graham
Atlanta, GA, USA

Experience with Experteer

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:17:00 +0000

Has anybody got experience with https://www.experteer.com/?

The focus on 60K+ jobs and I spoke to a headhunter in Germany who told me that it works very well.

thanks!

Hiring Metrics - TAT

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:05:00 +0000

Recently I've been thinking about hiring metrics a lot (yes, very exciting stuff :-) and the more I thought about Turn Around Times (TAT) where we measure the time it takes to fill a req from getting it approved to getting the offer accepted, the more I started wondering whether that was actually a very good indicator for your performance.

It does not say anything about how good you are at managing the workforce plan which I my eyes is a better indication of the strength of your staffing organization. Besides that it's a one-size fits all and all exempt positions have a target of 60 days.

One of the problems we run into is that there is a bit of disconnect between the business plans and staffing and we are always the last one to hear the headcount plans. Hence, we always are surprised by new hiring projects and then are struggling with the deadlines as the managers for some reason still think that you can open a can and the candidates will crawl out. I did some searching and came across this one:

Time: The Time metric is the Actual Time-to-Start divided by the Contracted Time-to-Start and multiplied by 100 to yield a percentage. Outcomes of 100% or less indicate that new employees are starting on or before the contracted time, while percentages over 100% indicate that recruiting efforts are taking longer than expected.

Time = (Actual Time to Start / Contracted Time to Start) x 100

What are you using in your company and what do you think about this metric?

What's your Niche?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:31:00 +0000

Many successful recruiters have developed niches in their attempt to become more specialized and more effective. Has anyone out there followed this lead and become specialized to one type of technology or industry. What is your niche?

EMEA recruiter blog goes live!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:26:00 +0000

Welcome to the blog of EMEA recruiters! This is the place to share experience about recruitment in Europe. Enough blogs on sourcing and AIRS, ZoomInfo and stuff on Sourcon 2007 but very little on how we source in Europe, what do we think of Monster here, or Stepstone or any other job sites. How do we deal with diversity in Europe. How can we best recruit in Poland, Romania or in the crazy Dutch labor market. This is the place where you can talk about stuff that your partner in life doesn't understand and finds utterly boring :-)

Everybody can become a co-author on this blog. People that are a member of the EMEA recruiter group on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/36902/6D93A971DA34)
are already added as a co-author. If you happen to come to this site by accident and you want to participate, simply send me an email (tedmeulenkamp@hotmail.com) and I will let you in. That is, if you are a recruiter.

Some basic house rules;

1) This blog is for recruiters to talk about recruitment. It is not intended to sell your services or boost your company. You will be kicked out if you do so, sorry to be harsh but I would like to keep this blog nice and clean.

2) On this blog we try to respect each other and each other's opinion. Being rude or disrespectful means you get kicked out.

That's it! Nice and simple right.

I would of course recommend that you reach out to each other on LinkedIn and grow your network.

Jim Stroud gives more international exposure

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:51:00 +0000

Wow, the interview with Dave Mendoza is leading to international fame. Even the great Jim Stroud mentions our interview!

Where will this end? An invitation to the White House is becoming more and more likely ;-)

European Recruiting Institute

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:41:00 +0000

just the other day I came across a message from the recruiter network in the Netherlands. It talked about the European Recruiting Institute http://www.recruitinginstitute.eu/

Obviously very interested in this material as I'm developing a global training program for all Agilent recruiters I decided to check out what it was all about. Turns out that this is a purely Dutch initiative led by a recruitment agency together with an educational institute. That of course directly makes you wonder about a potential hidden agenda of the recruitment agency. How much indoctrination will they try to push through by marketing all the material and showcasing their stuff? Why are they calling the the European Recruiting Institute where there is nothing European there? anyway, perhaps I'm just having Monday morning blues so let's have a look.

Any way, I decided to have a closer look and it actually looks pretty nice. Well, unless you find it surprising that the site is actually one static page and that you have to download a pdf for more information. Any internet sourcer would already raise his eyebrows, right?

There are 3 levels to start at: entry, advanced and master (well that's how I read it). The entry level seems to be designed for people who absolutely have no clue about recruitment. Topics: the importance of recruitment for an organization, the recruitment process from a-z (is there one generic process?) and then some bits and pieces on how to write a job profile, how to interview (STAR) and some stuff on the legal side of things. Program seems nice for a beginner but I doubt that anyone with 2 weeks of experience is really going to be blown away by this.

Second level seems a bit more serious but still seems a bit theoretical: recruitment planning (welcome to the world where your planning will be obsolete within 2 weeks), the different forms of recruitment (agency, corporate, head hunter etc) branding and sourcing. I don't get any feeling in how far recruiters will actually be trained on these topics and especially on sourcing I'd be interested to learn what material they will show (just sourcing on the average Monster database or are we going deep on Google and Live.com)

The Master level is for recruitment managers and unfortunately that one seems to be kind of theoretical as well: mission and vision of the organization, doing a recruitment SWOT and developing a recruitment strategy. They do organize workshops and work sessions so I hope that the learning will come from best practices.

It seems that the effort is nice but I'm very curious to hear from the experiences of participants whether this is just a way to sell more recruitment processes or something very serious where recruiters can learn something for real. They mention that the professors are top recruiters from all over the world but fail to provide any names, the one thing that might have given their program a bit more "cachet"

The big question is whether the recruiters feel that such a "degree" would add something to their curriculum or not. Would you be interested in do this?

International Fame through Six Degrees for Dave

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:26:00 +0000

Thanks to Dave Mendoza I'm achieving international fame!

A bit of insight in the ways European Staffing works (well at least how I see it)
SixdegreesfromDave
The nice side effect is the multitude of requests for linkedin connections! 3200 right now and increasing rapidly. Now I need to start thinking about how I can better leverage all those contacts and get more hires out of them.

Sourcing/Recruiter Training

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:52:00 +0000

Posted a question on LinkedIn 3 days ago:

For sourcers/recruiters: What is the very best candidate sourcing training you ever had?

I'm responsible for training our global staffing team and one of the key competences is sourcing. We are looking at various options but I would appreciate some feedback. Is AIRS good, Shally, Adlers bootcamp etc?

Got a lot of replies: the results are below - any other suggestions?

www.risetrends.com (Barbara Ling)

www.jobmachine.net (Shally Steckerl)

www.recruiting-online.com (Glenn Gutmacher)

www.cyberrecruitingsecrets.com (Judy West)

www.jimstroud.com (Jim Stroud)

http://www.recruitersnetwork.com/resources/index.htm (Brian Weiss)

http://www.xtremerecruiting.org (Bill Vick)

http://www.homebasedrecruiter.com/

http://www.semcoenterprises.com/ (focuses on IT)

http://www.artofrecruiting.com/

http://www.airsdirectory.com

http://www.kennedyinfo.com/audio/

Maureen Sharib (www.techtrak.com)

Scott Love’s

Danny Cahill

Jeff Skrentny and Greg Doershing

www.billradin.com

first blog, so exciting!

noreply@blogger.com (Ted Meulenkamp) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 11:51:00 +0000

oh yeah so here it is. the blog for corporate (Agilent) recruiters. Share your knowledge!