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Mother Recruiter on SearchWarp

Lesa Caskey ⁽⁴⁶⁾ United States

Lesa Caskey

Brick Elm LLC

What Price for Recruiting Superstars?

Posted Tuesday, September 22, 2009 (61 days 1 hour ago.) Viewed 28 times.

Recruiting superstars are fairly common, though to be on a team with one can feel like a unique experience. These internal recruiters are great at filling open requisitions, but have a bad habit of neglecting every other area of the recruiting process. Management, fellow recruiters and hiring managers tend to have a love-hate relationship with these folks; they love the numbers, love the time-to-fill and celebrate the placements but loathe the unavoidable clean up of everything left in each placement's wake. Unfortunately, when we look at how much time is spent cleaning up after recruiting superstars and managing the fallout from their loose tactics, we find that they often cost more than the value of their placements.

I refer to such recruiters as being "rogue" because they foremost lack a commitment to processes that serve the department and ultimately, the business. The areas that are neglected by rogue recruiters include entering data into the system (ATS/CTS), following up with candidates who were not placed, sharing and otherwise communicating important information with their team and/or hiring managers and respecting their support staff's time and workload.

Neglecting to enter data into the system is the most heinous of recruiting offenses, as the information belongs to the company who employs the recruiter, period. There should be no phone call, phone screen or interview that does not get noted somehow, as failing to do so is the equivalent of stealing from a company. How many times have we heard recruiters on our teams ask one another "Hey, do you remember that guy? The one who interviewed with so-and-so? What happened with that?" because there are no notes in the database. The scenarios go on and on with recruiters reaching out to people only to find themselves in conversations with candidates that are difficult to navigate, waste an extraordinary amount of time and ultimately make the company look unorganized and inefficient. And what happens if the superstar quits or becomes incapacitated in some way? The information should not be lost with the recruiter; information is the commodity of the department. We would never expect or allow a bank teller to neglect to enter a transaction and accept excuses to the likes of "I'll enter it all in the computer tomorrow".

Following up with candidates who do not get placed is another area where our department dollars go running out through the cracks. Candidates who are engaged to any degree need to be followed up with so that the company can maintain a good reputation in the candidate marketplace and keep themselves open for referrals which are rocket fuel for recruiting ROI (return on investment). Candidates who are left to wonder what happened will likely develop a negative impression of the company and will share their story with their family, friends, co-workers, other recruiters and the online community through social media and blogs. The fallout from this negligence is a guarantee that there are great professionals out there who will never apply for a position with your company because of what they heard about the process.

Rogue recruiters tend to have great focus and large egos. This unique combination in a recruiting team creates a vacuum of information with the rogue recruiter who does not feel it necessary to share information with the team, management or hiring managers. For instance, if there are two recruiters reaching out to one candidate, the rogue recruiter will not only neglect to enter it in the system, but even knowing about the other recruiter's efforts, will not let that recruiter know about an upcoming interview. Another example is when the recruiter does not inform a hiring manager that their new hire will not be starting, has delayed their start or has come upon an obstacle to starting. This is not out of malice or ill intent; it's just a by-product of someone who is very focused on their own efforts and objectives. Such behavior causes discord between the recruiting department and the business units they support, creates problematic scenarios for the recruiting team itself and ultimately costs the department money in both time and effort spent attending to the toes that have been stepped on.

The support staff in a recruiting department may include sourcers and administrative assistants who are often caught in the whirlwind of activity initiated by the rogue recruiter without regard to process and procedures. The rogue recruiter will often times neglect to enter key information into the system which then causes the support staff scrambling to get everything done in time to coordinate an interview or prepare to onboard a new hire. These instances are very disruptive to the support staff who are generally carrying a heavy workload to begin with. The fallout from such chaos is that every other process in the works for other recruiters gets delayed, task items get overlooked and the support staff becomes agitated and possibly disgruntled and who can blame them? The costs associated with constant chaos are innumerable and fall under the categories of wasted time, turnover and reputation.

It's so important that recruiting departments hold their recruiters accountable for following processes and procedures. No one recruiter should make or break a department and a recruiting department should never be at the mercy of any one recruiter. With the right processes in place, the department should be able to operate successfully through any number of circumstantial changes. Time is money and at the end of the day, businesses exist to do one thing: make money. Attending to the bottom line from every perspective is the key to improving and increasing the ROI for any department, including recruitment. It will never be a profit center, but it can be an efficiently run operation the not only supports the business, but propels it forward through consistent best practices. Rogue recruiters appear to do a great job for the business, but when we add up all of the time spent dealing with the chaos they cause, we often find that they do not serve the business in a cost effective manner and that having a different recruiter who is capable and efficient will take the organization a lot further as they naturally attend to increasing and improving the department's ROI.

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Graduation to Employment - A Roadmap

Posted Thursday, May 21, 2009 (184 days 17 hours ago.) Viewed 73 times.

Congratulations, graduate! You've accomplished a lot over your student career and you're ready to reap the rewards of a hot-off-the-press degree. The studying and homework are over, right? Wrong! You'll need to use your same dedication and hard work to identify and land the job that will pay the bills and ideally launch your career.

Most people would advise you to start by writing your resume. I disagree based on the assumption that you don't have any professional experience. Working part time at Starbucks or Denny's doesn't count as professional experience in my book and I highly recommend leaving those kinds of jobs off of your resume entirely, if possible. I recommend you start by reading as many job descriptions as you can get your eyes in front of to get a feel for how employers address their needs and how they word the requirements for each job. To find descriptions to review, use any of the job boards such as CareerBuilder , Monster , HotJobs , etc.

Be sure to also do web searches based on the types of jobs you think you're going to apply for and include the word "resume" in your search. The search engine will return results for resumes of people doing the job(s) you want and you should read at least a few of them to get a sense of how these folks represent themselves and which responsibilities they feel are worth presenting on a resume.

To put you in the correct frame of mind for job searching, let me start by bursting your bubble a bit: employers don't care about your degree unless you are qualified to fill the position you are applying for. Put another way, if you don't have professional experience getting paid for doing a job similar to what the employer is looking for, then your resume will not be considered, regardless of your education. I know it's hard to accept, but it's the truth so the sooner you embrace the search for the challenge that it is, the quicker you will find a position that will satisfy your expectations.

Let's visit the topic of expectations for a moment so that you can know what to expect and prepare yourself accordingly. Odds are you can expect the following to be true when potential employers consider your resume:

You will not be considered for positions that manage people outside of the fast food or retail industries

You will not be considered for senior level positions within a team that has multiple levels of positions (i.e. junior, associate, senior, etc.)

You will be considered for junior level positions

It will be assumed that you will accept less money because you are a recent graduate

It will be assumed that you will work harder than the rest of the team because you are a recent graduate looking to prove yourself

It will be assumed that you will offer more value in the areas of computer and information skills to offset your lack of professional experience

Now that you know what employers see in a recent graduate and you've taken a look at the available jobs and resumes of people actually qualified to do those jobs, you're ready to start putting together your resume. Be sure to have your contact information prominently displayed so that recruiters and managers don't have to hunt it down (Go ahead and put it at the top where we all expect it to be; you won't lose creativity points for it). I recommend not doing an "Objective" section because there's no good way to phrase your desire to be compensated for working and contributing in a fun, creative environment without sounding like you're registering at some store for your graduation gifts. Instead, create a "Qualifications Summary" section where you'll list the skills you possess that will be attractive to an employer such as leading brainstorming sessions, creating processes/procedures, delivering a completed product or project, etc. You can create this section as a bulleted list or in paragraph form.

Since you're focusing on your value as opposed to your experience , you'll want to use key phrases gleaned from job descriptions and other resumes (not plagiarized) to present your attributes and knowledge in a like manner.

Search the job sites mentioned above as well as the employment office of your college and search the web for local/regional job boards in your specific geographical area. Get creative with your search words and leave no stone unturned. Make sure your social media sites are clean no profanity or nudity, and definitely keep your messages grammatically correct whenever possible. Stay focused on your search and before you know it you'll be off to your first day of work.

Good luck!

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The Cover Letter Conundrum

Posted Tuesday, January 13, 2009 (312 days 21 hours ago.) Viewed 23 times.

It's safe to say that at least 80% of cover letters never get read. The level of the position being applied to has a lot to do with it because of course, there is more at stake per hire for more senior level (higher paying) positions. Even then, the resume is the vehicle by which all of the information should be delivered and anything else is simply "other". My opinion is that if the resume doesn't deliver the message the candidate hopes then the resume needs to be rewritten. A wonderful cover letter will not make up for a lousy resume for anyone.

Consider that most applicant/candidate tracking systems do not have a place to store cover letters so they are rarely included with a database profile to external agencies or internal HR/recruiting groups. On the off chance that there is a place to save it, the odds of a recruiter opening a document in addition to the resume are slim to none. Most recruiters are reviewing 100+ resumes for each position they recruit for. That's not for each placement they make, that's for every single position they work on whether they fill it or not. The sheer volume of information makes a strong case against the notion of recruiters taking the time to read cover letters.

After all of that negativity, let me address three scenarios where a cover letter is appropriate. The first is when the job posting requests one specifically; there's not a lot of help for that one. Second is when a resume is being sent to an email address as opposed to being submitted through an online form. In this instance, the email message is the cover letter and should take a few moments to highlight qualifications, skills, availability and interest. And by all means, it should be written professionally with correct grammar and punctuation. The third is unfortunately when you are a senior level professional. These folks should have a boilerplate letter (at least) if for no other reason than to demonstrate their written communication skills.

Cover letters that are not in email should still be fairly short and direct so as not to detract from the resume itself. It's not possible to eliminate all redundant information, but keeping it to a minimum is a good idea. The letter should follow standard business letter format and include the following: An introduction that speaks about the resume objectively as a document for review and consideration, a paragraph that summarizes qualifications, a paragraph dedicated to availability and interest and a business sign-off such as "Sincerely" or "Kind regards". Beyond that information you run the risk of detracting the interest of the reader, as the good stuff should all be in your resume.

It's tough to know that something you will spend time creating will most likely not even get considered, but when it's appropriate to send one you don't want to be caught without one. Everything about resumes and cover letters is subjective with no one solution satisfying everyone, so it's best to have your bases covered in the event that someone might be reading.

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