Recruiter Networking Group blogs

Managing Hiring leader expectation

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:38:00 -0600

I want to paraphrase a recent conversation I had with an “anti-Recruitment” Hiring leader who was going on about how the talent he sees is “crap” and it takes forever to get anything done “on time”.

Me – can you outline the situation you’re referring to
HL – I had someone quit and I needed to fill the role because the longer that role stays open the more revenue it costs us.

How are you managing your external search partners? Is a true open market the way of the future? Bounty Jobs certainly hopes so.

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:35:03 -0600

We have all been there before. Spending half our day fielding calls from our search partners, and the over half of our day avoiding calls from want-to-be search partners. Like it or not, as a corporate recruitment professional, search agencies and vendors are an essential component of our overall recruitment strategy. Most of us recognize the facts, but what strategies, programs and tools do you have in place to manage these vendors? How do we track their successes, failures, and account for their overall spend?

Talent and Economy

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:10:49 -0600

I was at a conference a few weeks back and met up with someone and we began to discuss “Talent” (who isn’t these days) and the person I was speaking with said that the buzzword “War for Talent” needs to be updated to the “War for Good Talent”. I had nothing to say so I thought I’d go on an adventure to see what other people are saying about this.

Recruiting is a process, Talent is a skill

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:26:48 -0600

We have all seen the recruitment life cycle time and time again, but, how many people are actually stepping outside of this cycled process and take a serious look at “Talent” and what that actually means?

Time to hire – 5 days,… good for you! Fast forward 1 year,… is this person still there, are they productive, are they exceeding expectations. If the answers are not positive, then you’ve wasted 5 days, you may never get back and cost the company a ton of money.

What Species of Recruiter Are You?

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:54:02 -0600

I must have interviewed around 200 recruitment professionals over my career. I am also guessing that I have had 50+ recruiter direct reports over these years. These numbers seem exaggerated for sure, but maybe not considering that most of my career has been spent in large corporations building and managing large insourced recruitment teams. A good chunk of my time over the last year has been spent interviewing and evaluating recruiters, only logical given that Granite Consulting is in the business of recruiting recruitment professionals for their clients. I like to think that I have learned a thing or two about recruiters, and am as qualified as any to make some generalized comments about the types of recruiters I come across.

Check out the new RNG job postings section - RNG is now the leading site for Recruitment opportunities in Canada!

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 07:40:47 -0500

RNG has partnered with Eluta.ca to bring our members the most Canadian Recruitment job postings anywhere. Currently there are over 100 open recruitment positions posted with top employers across Canada.

RNG is the top destination for Recruitment professionals in Canada to network. At RNG you can join discussion groups, ask questions, blog and share your Recruitment experiences, challenges and best practices, and now to find your next opportunity in Recruitment.

"What does a recruiter do"? - by Mr./Mrs. Business leader

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:43:56 -0500

Exhausted by the over use of “War for Talent”, all the talk about the “shifting demographic” and how recruiting is going to play a pivotal roll in the success of an organization, I wanted to ask the Business leaders where their heads are at as we enter into the “War for Talent during this shifting demographic”.

,….we send a job requisition down to the recruiter, who posts it on the boards, surfs a few “key word” resumes, they call a couple of vendors (to do their job), then it’s off to lunch or some “Recruiter Think tank” to discuss issues that “corporate Canada” is well aware of and waiting for answers!,… This is a snipit from a conversation that I had with a senior executive from a large Fortune 500 company here in Canada. This comes from experience as he spent 1 year in the organizations HR department as part of his rotation. I’m a little unclear as to what he’s saying,… are any of you in the same boat?

September employment in Canada Soars!

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:10:37 -0500

Finally, a piece of good news: Canadian employers created 107,000 new jobs in September, mainly part-time.

The employment numbers exceeded market forecasts, although the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.1 per cent.

Economists had been expecting a small increase in the number of new jobs, of about 8,000, after a modest 15,000 increase in August. They had also forecast a slight rise in the unemployment rate to 6.2 per cent from August's 6.1 per cent.

Sourcing

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:17:14 -0500

Come on People! What are recruiters doing to attract talent?

I’ve sat in circles with all levels of recruitment and, inevitably when we start talking about sourcing, the topic of “job boards” comes up. The general consensus is that the value is dwindling, some recruiters will still say “they are a necessary evil”. But more staggering then that,… this is where the SOURCING conversation phizzles out?

Anyone else in an Olympic mood these days?

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:55:52 -0500

It’s hard not to be in an Olympic mood these days. The passion and excitement of the competition and spirit of the games is hard to ignore. It’s hard not to feel that deep sense of National pride and throw on some red and white’s while we cheer from our couches for our favourite athlete’s in Beijing. The Olympics just have a way of suckering you into cheering through the wee hours of the night for some obscure fencing hopeful that you never ever heard of before.

The Candidate Experience - why all the buzz?

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:06:31 -0500

We have all heard the buzz of late around the “candidate experience”, but what the heck is it? Why is it important? Usually this is a conversation had in the context of the online application process, but the experience is much broader than that. The candidate experience is a sum of all the job seeker touch points with your organization including, but not limited to:

• The application process (online, paper based, other)

Are we Hiring for the Right Skills?

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:12:58 -0500

Before you read the post watch the video below, you'll probably get the gist of where I'm going with this post, but if you will dear reader, continue below once you have viewed the video.

TED | Talks | Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? (video)

So, I'm watching this video with my wife one evening and thinking to myself (as I usually do), how does this relate to Talent Acquisition. And I started thinking back to all the hires that I made over the years and those that were OK and not great hires and those that were super star hires....and you know what the difference was, you betcha, the level of creativity. But you see dear reader, as we train creativity out of people in school, we follow that up in the workplace, this of course according to Ken's talk makes absolute sense. After all we created schools in the Industrial Revolution to do what? Well, to make good workers, and really that goal hasn't changed, we're creating generations of good, compliant, corporate citizens (with all those great skills). Whenever I, and many of the other recruiters I know, meet with a hiring manager we ask them for the top skills for the job at minimum. We don't ask them about the people, about how they will add value to the organization, who will provide the next big innovation.....the next big idea....that will change the course of the company. To illustrate my point let me tell you a story....

Cool Facebook Hack for Recruiters

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:11:39 -0500

Here is a cool hack that I developed for Facebook, in case some of you don't know it already. So, one of the complaints that I often hear about when suggesting that you source from Facebook is that most of the profiles are not open, and you have to make a friend request to see if the person is the right profile...and if they don't accept etc, etc.... So I put my head to this problem and came up with a work around.

Top 10 signs that you are a career corporate recruiter

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 18:30:17 -0500

Hi everyone. Something different this week.......from the lighter side of recruitment. I thought a Letterman style top 10 list might be fun.

Top 10 signs that you are a career corporate recruiter:

10. You regularly use buzzwords like “passive candidate”, “talent acquisition specialist”, and “resume parsing”
9. You signed up for Facebook and LinkedIn the day they were launched
8. You have 286 LinkedIn connections, and they are all other recruiters
7. You wear nicer clothes to work than the CEO of your company
6. You think call display was the best invention since electricity
5. Your work day starts at the crack of 9:30am
4. Your lunch schedule is booked out until early 2009
3. You get annoyed when people refer to you as "that HR person"
2. You change jobs and companies every year

RNG Recruitment Workshops – off to a great start!

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:38:07 -0500

Last week, RNG and Granite Consulting held their first Recruitment Workshops in Vancouver and Calgary. The initial round of workshops concludes this coming Tuesday, June 3rd in Toronto (there are a few spaces left for last minute sign ups). Initial feedback from participants has been nothing short of spectacular, great turnout and great discussion. Not surprisingly, the hottest workshop topics to date have been building more powerful relationships with hiring managers and candidate sourcing. Participants took full advantage of the networking side of this event, and we saw many new contacts being made and lots of business cards being exchanged. Here are some snippets from our Western sourcing conversations that you may find useful: