PharmiMike

Applicant Tracking Systems

PharmiMike — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:00:20 +0000

What do you think is the best Applicant Tracking System out there?

I’ve just come across this: https://www.zoho.com/recruit/ - it seems quite comprehensive

With junk tweets, Twitter has no future

PharmiMike — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:19:15 +0000

Going through the weekend emails, I get a bunch of @suchandsuch has followed you on twitter. Looking at these, it appears that a large proportion profess to be ”online marketing gurus” or “entrepreneurs”, a large number have absolutely nothing to do with my business or what I’m interested in. They are just playing a numbers game. “The more followers I have the more important I must be, so if I follow thousands, they will follow me” . Over the weekend my followers included Tennis Updates (I hate tennis), Womens Apparel, (erm..), A bistro somewhere in the USA, numerous business consultants, coaches and entrepreneurs, musicians in New York etc etc.

Personally I don’t agree with follow whoever follows you, so I rarely follow back.

So, Twitter is turning into just “marketing noise” with more and more “junk tweets” , with more and more people shouting about their products and services, in its current form I don’t think it has a future as I don’t think anyone can successfully follow more than a handful of people without spending every waking hour online and wading through the junk .

Plus, I’m always dubious of Twitter accounts that follow more people than have followers. To me it smacks of desperation to get followers.

Unless Twitter works out where it’s going, I predict it will be gone in 2 years

Groupme for recruitment / jobs

PharmiMike — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:21:38 +0000

I’ve been looking at Groupme.com and it seems a very simply way of communicating with your friends using mobile / pc. What I like about it is the simplicity to create groups and then start conversations with specific groups. It can default to SMS is you are using a phone and don’t have data signal, so you dont miss out on important messages.

Can this be used for recruitment?

Well maybe, I’ve started a couple of groups to play with and I’ll see what they can do. Set up is very easy!

Ignore your emails

PharmiMike — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:09:46 +0000

In the “old days” your working day was not driven by emails. These days, how many of us spend our day responding to emails and trying to fit in the work we want or need to do, around the demands that land in our in box every day.

So, here’s a radical idea. Ignore your emails. OK I don’t mean ignore them completely, but manage them. Try opening your emails at set times of the day. For a start, NOT first thing in the morning, otherwise that sets you off on the wrong path for the day. How about 10:00am? That’s reasonable. I’m quite sure that most things will wait an hour before action, and if it’s really that important, someone will probably phone you anyway!

Once you’ve read your emails, deleted the junk, delegated whatever you can, and made a list (on paper) of the actionable tasks – turn off your email program’s auto send/receive. That way you won’t be distracted by even more emails before you’ve completed the tasks you’ve just started. Only switch it back on at your next “online” time. How about 1:00 or 2:00, then again at 4:00. You’re still reading your emails 3 or 4 times a day, which should be enough for most people!

Taking this approach, I believe you’ll now have an extra hour or so “free” each day, so you can start to do some of the things that YOU need to do. Write that blog entry, finish off that project, proof read that article, even read the latest news. Or plan that new project that’s been on the back burner “when you’ve got the time”. If you now have 1 hour a day “extra”, you’ve got yourself almost another working day each week… use it wisely!!

Facebook App – Talent.me

PharmiMike — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:00:13 +0000

I’ve been looking at the Talent.me application for Facebook. I’ll do a more complete review at some point, but in essence:

It’s trying to be a cross between facebook and linkedIn. Indeed it runs as an app, and pulls in your personal data (if you let it) from LinkedIn. Its all pretty straight forward, and ultimately creates a profile page with network, endorsements and a job search powered by Indeed. The jobs unfortunately all appear to be US based, and the searching is basic.

Interestingly however, you can add yourself (for free at the moment) as a recruiter by setting up a recruiter account …. a recruiter tab will then allow others to find you, read your profile and see your jobs. The most active / endorsed recruiters get priority by the looks of it. Users can also search for recruiters by location / industry / talent etc. Once found they can subscribe to you (I assume they get updates when you post something interesting) and connect to you too.

Employee Referrals May Be Even More Effective Than We Think

PharmiMike — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:21:32 +0000

Employee referral programs may produce more hires — perhaps many more — than surveys would suggest. Over the years it has come to be accepted that the average number of new hires coming from employee referral programs is somewhere between SHRM’s 24 percent (for non-exempt positions) to about a third. Some programs do much better.

There now comes evidence that the hires from employee referrals are undercounted. “Referrals permeate the recruiting process more than we think,” says recruiting consultant Gerry Crispin, a CareerXroads principal.

He and his partner, Mark Mehler, surveyed their clients and others about employee referral programs and found that most of the 50 respondents have a referral program, most pay a bonus of some kind, and on average 28 percent of their external hires are referrals.

How to create a motivating working environment at home

PharmiMike — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:47:40 +0000

I have been re-arranging my home office over the weekend and though that this was quite relevant:

http://smashingshare.com/2010/01/19/10-tips-to-create-a-motivating-working-environment-at-home/

Time for another rant – email unsubscribing

PharmiMike — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:52:27 +0000

Each day I, as well as everyone else on the planet, get a whole bunch of ”junk” email. Most of this is fairly harmless promotional stuff as all the enhancement drugs and Nigerian 401 scams have been filtered out by the time I get them. But in any case, each day, as part of my routine, I try to un-subscribe from a few of them, in the misguided hope that my “wanted:unwanted” email ratio will not continue to grow exponentially. However, as I have numerous email accounts (which I don’t believe is unusual these days) I forward all my accounts to gmail. Its convenient, includes powerful spam filtering, can be accessed from anywhere, and of course is free.

The problem (and the rant) comes when :

I click on the unsubscribe link – and I’m forced to login in order to “change my preferences” – usually of course, details are long forgotten, thus initiating a painful “forgotten password” – wait for email – login – change preferences sequence. Not only is this a waste of my time, it also annoys the hell out of me and makes me hate the organisation I am unsubscribing from even more!
or.. I receive an email with an unsubscribe link. Yet, when I click on it I am forced to add my email address. Or it simply creates an email back to the remove@ email address. However, if like me, your various email addresses end up in the same place, you have no idea which one the offending item was sent to in the first place! OK, check the “To” field. Nope, often this is a generic email that means I was simply BCC’d into a bunch of old junk email. No way to unsubscribe. Surely every email system these days uses a unique ID to identify me in their list, so that a simple click can remove me!? – Apparently not.

It should be compulsory for every “marketing” email to include a single click unsubscribe.

Is LinkedIn recruitment the killer app?

PharmiMike — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:22:02 +0000

It seems that LinkedIn has set it sights on Global Domination. At least in terms of “recruiting”. With 120 million members, its already a pretty big database, and yet LinkedIn is setting its sights big! They are aiming to have the GLOBAL workforce as their membership and to make the resume the business card and the Rolodex obsolete. They’ve been increasingly realising that recruitment is the killer app!

Watch this to see how serious they are

Keynote – LinkedIn Talent Connect – Oct 2011

What does this mean for the recruiting world? OK, its “only a database” and OK, there is no human interaction, but it has massive implications for the recruitment industry.

The Remote Workforce is Changing

PharmiMike — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:03:03 +0000

http://mashable.com/2011/10/10/remote-workforce-changing/