Jobscience receives award from Salesforce.com

Jobscience was awarded "Best Recruiting App of 2009" based on Customer Satisfaction! The award is given by Salesforce.com, as Jobscience is available on their AppExchange. Thank you to all of the customers who made the honor possible! To learn more about TalentStaffing, please visit: http://tinyurl.com/JSstaffing

Using social (and “professional”) networks should be a common practice among recruiters. Just the other night I used my knowledge of social network sourcing to generate a handsome list of candidates for a client. I personally use LinkedIn as my professional networking site. You can say that Twitter is my a networking tool as well. Facebook is all about me and the friends and family I associate with. Very savvy recruiters learn to take advantage of these sites by joining groups and becoming fans of organizations.

There are many ways to take advantage of social networking sites. Here are some ways that recruiters can use social networks to their advantage:

• Establish your own business profile
• Build business-relevant networks
• Maintain a networking interchange
• Make new connections
• Conduct candidate searches
• Find new business
• Research people and companies
• Real-time communication
• Expand visibility and influence
• Develop information exchange portals

This list is not exhaustive by any means. With functionality and benefits like those on the list, it is no wonder social networking has been widely adopted by recruiters. Jobscience even integrates their ATS and strategic sourcing tool with today's most popular networks including: LinkedIn, MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, etc.

You would be amazed at the amount of information that is accessible within seconds. Invest in yourself and career and join a social network. The experience and networking will be valuable.

Using This Time to Become Strategic

This week I was asked by my company (Jobscience) to facilitate webinars on advising recruiters to become more strategic during this economic slow down.  We asked the attendees what changes were their HR leaders making in their function now that hiring freezes, reductions in force and budget cuts seem to be the norm.  I was shocked that very few of these recruiters were actually taking the time to prepare for the labor shortage once the economy turns the corner.  It isn't because the industry is not telling them to prepare.  But much like the corner prophets warning for the end of the world go unheeded so is the advice of the wise recruitment consultants and teachers.

What should you be doing during this time.  Here are a few suggestions that I've picked up during my recent readings and webinars:

• Make sure your website or at least your career site is optimized for the jobseeker who searches opportunities using Google, Yahoo, etc.
• Start now by developing talent communities and establishing relationships with those passive and active candidates to call on later.
• Make a genuine effort to partner with your hiring managers and/or customers to understand their needs.
• Clean up your job descriptions and make the worthy of a look by the jobseekers.
• Populate your descriptions and career site with key words that matter.

If you don't take this time to prepare for the future you will find yourself at the bottom of the food chain wondering what happened.

Does News Print Advertising Really Deliver

This week I was the presenter for one of my company's webinars called Active Sourcing.  During this webinar the audience and I discussed the different types of sourcing typically done noting the difference between active and passive sourcing.  Of course the number one passive sourcing strategy was advertising in newspapers.

When I look at today's job market I see the need for jobseekers to be as productive as possible.  So online job hunting makes sense, saves time, and saves gas.  Why would anyone want to pay for an ad in a newspaper?  At one time I worked as a recruiter for a large healthcare system.  When I joined this organization it was spending over $250,000 per year in paper advertising.  After three years I had reduced the advertising to less than $60k and even increased the amount of jobseekers applying.

How did I do this?  First I listened to what other people were doing.  Next, we purchased an ATS from a company called Jobscience.  We had to provide a lot of education to the hiring managers who felt recruitment wasn't doing their job if they didn't see the job in the newspaper.  If you are still using newsprint as a means for sourcing, take that money and invest in Google Ads or Job Boards.  You're just throwing away money if you continue.