Fresh Meat

Under Construction!

Scott Axel — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:27:53 -0400

Hello! It's been awhile but my blog will be coming back active again very soon - only under a different name - "Transplanted". My wife and I are about to embark on quite a journey as we are relocating to Belgium next month (this transition has been the main reason this blog has been so quiet over the past few months). My wife was recruited for an opportunity and we just couldn't pass it up.

So - I am now starting the process of no longer being a recruiter here and learning what it takes to be a recruiter in Europe! I'll be focusing this blog on my experiences - good and bad - during my transition and (hopefully soon) employment in the Belgian recruiting industry.

More to come soon!

Recruiting Center of Balance - Lessons from my Wii

Scott Axel — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:34:26 -0400

I am incredibly addicted to my Nintendo Wii - I'll admit it! I grabbed one of the few Wii Fit available last weekend and have only increased my addiction. When my wife convinced me try one of the yoga exercises yesterday - well... lets just say... yoga and I do not seem to get along. As I was told - the pose I did was a relatively easier one - but that did not matter... my back is killing me now. I need to stick to positions my body was meant to be in. Well - what does any of this have to do with recruiting? Who knows..

As I was sitting on my couch trying to figure out why I tried to do yoga - I started thinking about what was important in the Wii exercise. Almost every 'game' they have you has one underlying theme - center of balance. My center of balance seems to key in creating the most effective work out (hey! no picking on me for working out with my gaming system more than I do anywhere else, okay?!). So I started thinking (thankfully to myself - my wife thinks I am crazy enough already) about center of balance when it comes to recruiting. In order to have the most effecting recruiting experience - we must be in a state of recruiting balance. This is a list of what I could think of that I need to be in balance to create the most effecting recruiting effort for me

1) Client need: This is an easy one - there must be a need for my services

2) Candidate need: Easy one as well - I need to have candidates that need my assistance in their job search

3) Timing: Yes, all searches are "urgent" or they wouldn't need a recruiter - but I need to have adequate time to dedicate to sourcing, recruiting and managing my candidate relationships

4) Job Details: I don't need all of the details that my candidate would be doing - just the main points would be nice.

5) Compensation: I need the amount of time that I am going to put into a search to be financially beneficial. This is an area that I am not sure many like to talk about but is very important.

So here is my question - what is your recruiting center of balance? What do you need to have in balance to create a productive and profitable environment?

Please don't do this to your candidates!!!

Scott Axel — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:02:21 -0400

The more and more I hear from my candidates about their experiences with other recruiters the more I think some recruiters have the 'blob' mentality when it comes to candidates. "If I just push hard and fast enough they might land somewhere good".

Please take some time to get to know your candidates - what they are looking, where their true skills are... and you will be amazed at how little force you need to help them land in the right place!

On a side note - this blob thing looks fun!!!

What makes a great recruiter...

Scott Axel — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:39:26 -0400

I've recently had a few questions come up related to what makes a good recruiter. I've decided to make my answer as simple and open as possible.

PASSION

What is your one (or two) word answer?

So many internet postings - does anyone work anymore?

Scott Axel — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:43:47 -0400

So many blogs, discussion groups, linkedin group, ere forums - are people actually working?

I am shocked everytime I click on LinkedIn Answers and see the top "experts" of the week.. well over 100 answers each week.

I am surprised at how much time people spend on responses on ERE groups. I think some people might be spending hours writing emails. (if you are in my group - Ethics in Recruiting - please.. continue to spend as much time as you like!)

I have to blink twice when I see people with 20+ linkedin groups on their profile

I'm not sure on exact numbers - but I would guess that the number of ERE blogs have probably doubled since I started this one.

Here is my question - are recruiters actually working anymore? :) Okay - that is a bit of a stretch but it seems like as a group we are getting much more talkative online.. maybe even too much. I find it hard to keep up the writing that I like to do and I can hardly even imagine the time that it takes some to post like they do and keep paying their bills.

Am I the only one that has noticed this?

Well - since we have time to spare - let's listen to some good music. I absolutely love this guy and follow his youtube videos whenever possible.

Improved LinkedIn Visibility

Scott Axel — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 10:23:51 -0400

I am just wondering if anyone else has noticed a drastic increase in their LI visibility numbers lately. I've been using the status update feature (changing it daily) and have seen impressive results..

Your profile has been viewed by 20+ people in the last 1 day. In the last day, you've appeared in search results 97 times.

I've even gotten a few candidates already from this new feature.

Recruiting Spam

Scott Axel — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:20:00 -0400

This was a rather interesting recruiting related spam I recieved today...

Dear Scott Axel,

My name is Adam Mack. I came across your resume on Monster.com. Our Company would like to offer you a job of a customers account manager Work in this position assumes availability of Pay Pal account registered not earlier than 3 months ago. For detailed information in this issue, please emial me.

Sincerely yours,

Adam Mack

Maybe I should have this guy write a job description for me - this paypal account needed to get a job is pretty neat - maybe he is on to something!

Oy vey....

Having fun...

Scott Axel — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:59:43 -0400

Today I am having a little fun with my blog posting. There is nothing recruiting related - I just thought every now and then we all need a little break. So - enjoy the Ohio State University Alumni Marching Band with the current band performing the Quad Script Ohio. Quite a sight to see!!!! (I was not performing this year).

Go Bucks!!!!

Ethical level of LinkedIn Invites falling?

Scott Axel — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 23:26:19 -0400

Ethical level of LinkedIn Invites falling?

Who knows - I can honestly say - I am starting to get very annoyed with the quality of LinkedIn invites recently. I can no longer count how many requests I get that list me as “business partners” from companies I’ve never worked with (or in most cases, even heard of). What happened to one recruiting just wanting to connect with another recruiter? All of the phony “Larry has indicated you are a business partner at widget company” requests come from recruiters. Is this a hint of things to come? I know I haven’t been in this industry nearly as long as others - but - are we on a downward trend in quality of recruiter? I know I am only speaking about a small percentage of the recruiting world… but… is anyone else noticing this as well?

I’ve been “suspended” multiple times for having “I don’t know this person” responses from my invites - and while I am annoyed when it happens… I am not going to lie about how I don’t really know the person. There is a discussion on another forum where a respected member of the recruiting community has been bashed because he didn’t accept an invite from someone he didn’t know. What’s is going on with public networking?

For the record - I am an open networker - but please don't lie about knowing me. I will no longer accept phony "business partner" requests and click the dreaded "I don't know this person" button.

Okay - I feel better now… anyone else need a good vent about it?

Oh wait! I've got to have my YouTube video for the post. I think this is kind of fitting - but most entertaining if nothing else!

Why do you recruit?

Scott Axel — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:52:37 -0400

Today I had a candidate ask me this question. Needless to say - It's rare that I have a candidate who actually wants to find out more about me in the first call (most just want to know how much more money I can find for them - even if they are afraid to admit that is their biggest concern). I taken by surprise a little as I was ready to find out more about the candidate so I gave him the canned recruiter answer "I like to help people out". But is that really the main reason why I like recruiting?

Kind of.

If I were to give the answer right now (which I am) I would say I enjoy recruiting because I like long-term relationship building. I like recruiting because it's about the lowest stress level longer term relationship I can think of. I like when I have candidates that will out of the blue contact me to see what is going on.

Ask me again next week and it might be something different!

To keep my streak of random YouTube videos that are somewhat relating to my post.. you will need sound for this one....

Internet-Less Recruiting! Who is with me?

Scott Axel — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:22:50 -0400

Internet-Less Recruiting September 10th, 2007

I know - some out there probably thinking I am crazy for even thinking it.. but... If you ask yourself - honestly - how much time do you really spend online... do you like the answer?

I feel like this poor pooch most of the time...

So today while looking for Simon's LI question to see more user stats - I noticed that there are a lot of people that seem to answer a ton of questions. People are also asking a lot of questions. I'm part of two LI yahoogroups than get dozens of the same messages per day (If I see another person complaining about "open networking" I might lose my mind).

I love ERE - don't misunderstand this next comment... but some people.. must spend hours upon hours each day responding to some posts. I've seen some 10+ paragraph responses from the same person multiple times in the day (sometimes in the same hour if its a hot topic).

How much time are we spending online in forums, on networking sites, on discussion groups, boolean searching playing Wii sports (so addicting.. stay away!) etc... Probably way to much!

Knowing that I can't live without the internet.. I am gonna take the easy way out and say for just 1 day that I will not use the internet.

Okay - I'll still use the internet... but I am going to limit myself to the following website:

http://www.whitepages.com/

Since I no longer own an actual white or yellow pages.. this website will be the only website I'll be on.

No forums, no crazy boolean searches to find a random resume hidden 15 pages back in an archive of a website from 2001. Just me and my phone.

Who is up for the challenge with me? Lets see what we can accomplish without all the distractions. Participation is simple - respond to this post with a pledge to put down the mouse and pick up the phone for an entire day. Feel free to post your results after the day is over (I'll be posting as well).

Sounds like fun! :)

Hard to write... help needed! :)

Scott Axel — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 11:07:43 -0400

Maaaan - I have really been slacking on my blog this year. Sorry about that guys. But I am running into a very troubling (as far as blogging is concerned) roadblock.... I am actually happy at my current job. It seemed that in earlier position ideas for interesting blog popped up almost daily because I just wasn't happy with how something was going. Now - I am actually pleased with the process and the strategy my company uses. So.. now my blog ideas are running thin.

So my question is for you happy blogging recruiters (or happy blogger readers) - what is your motivation?

Luckily - I am going on a little vacation so that should help get the creative 'juices' moving!

New Year Not-Resolutions

Scott Axel — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 16:13:25 -0400

So I was sitting at my favorite bar this week drinking a nice smoked porter and I was trying to come up with what I wanted to accomplish in the upcoming year (okay.. I typically don't try to think about work too much while I am drinking, but as it turns out the beer I tried previously was very bad and I was doing as much as possible to remove it from my memory.

I decided to try to come up with my resolutions of things that I was not going to do this year.. Here are a few. Please add your not-resolutions as well! It is harder than you think...

1) I will not change companies again. Yea- this is a big one. I am sure those at my current company are somewhat happy to see this one at the top (atleast I hope..). It is a pretty tricky thing to do in this industry... find a company that a really fits my sourcing personality (whatever that means). In three years I have now been with three different companies. I guess I was more of a contractor than I would admit.

2) I will not chase every new internet fad/search methodolgy that I hear about. Sure, they are fun to learn about - but in reality... when I look back at how much time was spent, would I have been better off just learning about the new ideas that interested me the most and finding candidates with them?

3) I will not spend time on worthless candidates just because I like them. Yea, this is going to be a tricky one. I can name a few candidates I've sourced in the past few weeks that Phone Screened awesome for me, had decent resumes and then bombed hiring manager interviews more than once. I might think they are great candidates but, if in the end, the hiring managers don't like them (and there is no more selling I can do) I need to dump them!

Well those are my top three at the moment - please add some of your own.

End of the year 'blues

Scott Axel — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 17:17:18 -0400

Okay - so we are getting into the Holiday Season now. I just left so many voicemails I feel like the puppy above - and I know it is going to get worse! I'd like to get your thoughts on fun ways to make this time of the recruiting year worthwhile to pick up the phone! I know this is a great time of the year to work on next years business/recruiting plan, but I am interested to find out what fun things you guys out there might be doing to try to generate some candidates / interviews this time of the year.

(p.s. - is that not the cutest puppy ever?)

Are there more bloggers than readers?

Scott Axel — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 21:56:20 -0400

Maybe this is a random rant but as I have be scrolling through the recent blog postings I noticed a trend - less and less comments and posting relating to the individual blogs.

So let me ask a question... As a reader of recruiting related blogs ... what do you want to see? What is that triggers a spark to make a reader a commentator?

For me it is a simple answer. It needs to be an interesting topic. So that bums me out a little as I notice I have not responded to any of the other blogs in here. Ouch - the topics are interesting so why have I not posted?

Watch out though as I am now going to try to tie this into recruiting. What is the real motivation that our candidates have for responding to our phone calls, emails, text messages, smoke signals and morse code dots and dashes. It needs to be an interesting topic. Wow! that was easy to come up with that one (duh).

So here is my actual question for the day/week/until the next time I post. What do you do to make your topic interesting? Obviously from our point of view we wonder how it could not be interesting. A new chance at a new career, more responsibilty or even just an escape from a bad boss. The trick is making it sound more interesting then it really is I think. While I try every second not to sound like the salesman that I used to be a few years ago - I try to use humor as much as possible (everyone tells me I have an odd sense of humor) without detracting from the importance of the information I am presenting.

What is that you do to make the interesting topic a conversation instead of a one way street?

Veterans Day Tribute - Les Loken WW2 Vet

Scott Axel — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 12:18:31 -0400

I think we have the kinks worked out now.. Thanks to the ERE team for helping out!

For those of you not addicted to YouTube there has been a very interesting series of videos posted within the last month or so. It is a 5 part series of a 94 year old WW2 vet. I've listed the first part of the series here. Each of the other parts last about 8 minutes and pretty much take the viewer through his experiences from the first bomb at Pearl Harbor to post-war Japan. It is definitely worthwhile to listen

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVPfDN_ng5U

Part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThjWmLmVSAM

Part 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJpGxj5uT80

Part 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb6ElHeoFGo

To all the Veterans, Thank you!!

Am I the only one? - Probably

Scott Axel — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 19:21:36 -0400

Oh boy am I really slacking on my blog! It wasn't intentional I promise. I recently made a change of office scenery and now I find myself a dedicated candidate sourcer! Pretty fun eh? For me it is. I decided to make the change and (attempt) to become specialized in one are of the process as opposed to having my hand in all aspects of full cycle recruiting and selling. Am I in the minority of noticing a trend that some companies (obviously not all) are just asking way too much of recruiters? I know? some of you might read this and think its just a whine.. but really. While I am never one to bash former employers (and that is not the goal of this post) but I saw it in my former employer as well as stories I read in emails to me personally as well as on ERE groups. There was an expectation that not only could the recruiter pull A++ candidates out of thin air in 1 day but that they also had time to follow very strict (and nearly impossible) metrics while selling and bringing in new business. The entire process was entirely geared to only placing candidates ? not finding them.

Is this post mainly just a ramble of my thoughts ? Yes. But I do want to know if I am the only one who is seeing a similar trend in TPR.

What do you really use Job Boards for?

Scott Axel — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 14:22:30 -0400

Again, sorry for the delay in writing for this blog. It has been a very hectic time here and I will talk more about that in postings to come. You will just have to wait!!

I was thinking about this over the past few weeks as I have been talking to a lot of recruiters all across the country. Job boards. Why are we really spending, as an industry, a large chunk of our money on them? Do people truly find candidates from searching their resumes? Do postings really generate worthwhile candidates? For me, the answers to both questions are no.

A recent job posting I had on Monster.com generated over 2000 views, 200+ candidates hit the apply now button... and not 1 worthwhile candidate. The results did not surprise me as I expected this and the only reason I posted the job on the board was because my client did not have an account and wanted to give it a try (hey... it was on my dime - why not?)

Come to think of it I have found very few candidates on job boards ? period. What I primarily use them for is networking. If I am having a difficult time trying to crack the code of XYZ Company, I?ll search some resumes to see if anyone left there (or is still currently working there) and network with them. This is about the only substantial use that I see for the job boards. Is networking with the $$$ spent? I think so. Is it worth the time needed to filter the bad network sources from the good ones? In most cases yes.

I?d like to know from you guys and gals out there is if there are any other ways that you use the job boards? I probably should specify the general job boards only. Niche job boards I think are a different ballgame. What are your thoughts, ideas or opinions? Am I just missing the big picture? (always a possibility)

Career Cars...

Scott Axel — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:16:29 -0400

Okay.. I could not think of a good title for this one.. sorry. While I was stuck in traffic over the weekend looking at the shiny clean Cadillac CTS in front of me.. it got me thinking. What car is a recruiter's car?

I come from a family of salesmen.. a Cadillac always seemed to the car of choice. If I see another Lexus sitting outside of a loan Officer's office I will crack. Of course there are the pick up trucks for construction...

I am just wondering if there is a trend. I have seen a lot of BMW's in this industry. Personally.. I drive a Honda Element so in no way will I expect my box to the norm!

Respond back with what car you drive and please don't make fun of mine!!

Dishonest Hiring Managers?

Scott Axel — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 15:59:25 -0400

Okay... so there is a small chance that I have been slacking with my blog these past few weeks. It's the best time of the year here in Columbus, Ohio. It's Buckeye football time. I'll try to not to slack off again.. but.. no promises :)

Dishonest Hiring Managers? I know.. the idea makes no sense... nobody has ever had to deal with a dishonest hiring manager before. So lets just talk in theory. If you were dealing with one, how would you set them straight?

I've been put in a little dilemma which I will not get into too much detail (it's still going on) in which I strongly believe a hiring manager was not being totally honest. I did not end up getting the placement because of the dishonesty... but the potential the client offers seems to overshadow this one search. I am finding myself in a sticky question.. do I confront the person in question and resolve the issue.. or.. do I let it slide and cross my fingers hoping I get to deal with a different HM next time? Obviously there are pretty large egos at stake here. Different scenarios have been popping in and out of my head this week and none of them end in a way that makes both parties happy (internally and externally).

Thoughts? Ideas? Random Comments? Bring it on and Go Bucks! (sorry.. couldn't help myself)