David's Journal on Tap

After we had Joshua almost 3 years ago now, Melinda and I thought that was as big as the family was going to get – 2 adults and 3 kids, that is more than enough people in one house and plenty to keep busy with. It turns out we were wrong – today we have welcomed a new family member into the house and what a learning curve it has been for all of us.

The past few weeks we have been talking with Beagle Rescue Victoria about adopting a beagle. Many of these beagles through no fault of their own have been left without a home or without a place to stay. I had some great conversations with Tam from Beagle Rescue about which beagle may be best suited for our family and vice versa.

Today Tam from Beagle Victoria brought “Tash” to meet us at our house. Tash is an older beagle between 6-8 years old and what a great girl she is.

Tash was living on a breeder’s farm until she stopped producing enough of a litter to be “cost effective”. I am hoping Tash can now relax and enjoy her days a bit more and have some fun with the kids. Mel and I both thought that the girls would be the ones who would be all over Tash, but Joshua and Tash have been playing together all day and getting into mischief together, this could be trouble!

Having a dog (and a beagle at that) will be a lot of extra work and responsibility for all of us, but I think it will be a good experience for all of us and its a great chance to give Tash some stability from what could have been an uncertain future.

Last week I attended the ATC Source Conference here in Melbourne. I had the chance to talk to and listen to Jim Stroud. As you can see from my previous post – Jim spoke about Recruiting and Sourcing via YouTube. Fast forward to this week and here I am looking to find another Campus Recruiter to join our Team in India. I am working with one of my colleagues in India and she is helping me source for candidates, but I thought what a great time to put into practice some of the things I listened to Jim talk about last week about using video for recruiting.

I think the recruitment landscape is going to change in the next 5 years and I think candidates will be searching for jobs in a different way than what they do today. So with this position that I am looking to hire I think someone who shares this thought with me and who wants to look at different ways to find great people for Oracle would be great in our team, so I figured rather than posting a standard Job Description, why not try something different to try to get a different result.

So this afternoon I took my iPhone and rather than provide candidates with a written Job Description I thought I would do a video Job Description outlining a little bit about the role and what I am looking for. It is not complete but I think from a candidate perspective it gives a better feel for me and what I am looking for more than a written Job Description on its own would.

Note: I quickly realised that either I need to learn video editing or I really need to find somebody who can help me with video editing.

I am not sure if I will find our next Campus Recruiter via this video or not. I hope I do but if I don’t that is ok this video is just one means I am using to find the next member of our team. Bill Boorman was also at the ATC Sourcing Conference and one of the things he mentioned that stuck in my head is – “don’t be afraid to fail – Fail often, Move on and Fail Cheap”. It was good motivation and Bill reinvigorated me to try something that no one else is doing to recruit (ok maybe saying no one is a bit of an overstatement). You only fail at something if you don’t try – I know it sounds a bit corny but I think it is a good saying and a good outlook to have.

Here’s the plug: If after watching this video and reading a bit about my thoughts, if you think this is the right opportunity for you please get in touch and let’s discuss.

Glen Cathey – forget boolean and think information retrieval

I am at the #ATCSource Conference in Melbourne today and have written a quick blog post reflecting on some of the things that Glen Cathey has spoken about. He is the 1st speaker of the day – I hope I have the writing energy to write other blog posts for the other speakers who are scheduled later in the day.

Glen Cathey spoke about control and how much control Recruiters have when they are mining information and reaching out to candidates. This got me thinking that most of the good Recruiters I know who always hit their target and who always seem to get the right person for an open role tend to by nature be control freaks. This is not necessarily a reflection on Glen’s talk about data mining – but more so about work ethic. Good Recruiters know what they are looking for and when they find it they tend to control the process from beginning to end. They close the loop and make sure there are no surprises for either the candidate or manager. That is they ensure candidates are interested in the job, they ensure managers are available to interview, they ensure feedback is given after a meeting, they ensure candidate and manager know salary expectations and pay scales – the more that a good Recruiter controls the recruitment process the fewer surprises you get at the end of the road when you make an offer and the higher your hit rate is going to be.

Back to Glen’s presentation:

There are 5 Levels of Talent Mining:

1) Keyword/Title Search – pretty much what is says you are keyword searching – it works but it’s not a big deal. Example: “Java Developer” AND Melbourne. These can be automated

2) Conceptual –  Using related terms and concepts to find people: for example: Ruby on Rails OR ROR OR rails OR “Ruby on rails”

3) Implicit – searching for and identifying what isn’t explicitly mentioned

4) Natural Language – Searching for responsibilities and keywords, not just keywords and titles. For example “responsibilities” = verbs and nouns – things such as “I close” or “I sell” – this targets what people do not what they write about themselves

5) Indirect – searching for the wrong people to find the right people. Talk to someone under/over qualified and ask for referrals.

Recruiters: when you are looking for your ideal candidate – don’t just stop at a simple LinkedIn search (the 1st step of talent mining), your competitors who are listening to @glencathey are digging much deeper into the same talent pool and finding the people are not by just doing a 1st level search. Yes this takes more time commitment but to find the right person isn’t it worth the investment?

Jim Stroud talks about how to recruit on YouTube

Jim started his presentation at the #ATCSource Conference and started talking about the 7 Reasons why you should recruit on YouTube (this feels eerily like a David Letterman Top 10 List – but it works). Anyway in no particular order here are the Top 7 Reasons to recruit on YouTube

1) The people are there – YouTube has a huge audience and with the uptake in people using mobile devices the thinking is that people will use YouTube to get information more and more.

2) Universal Search – ah ha – just like Glen mentioned previously – do a keyword search in YouTube for the skill set you are searching for and you can see who is looking for those type of videos for example: Java Programmer. You can also do a google search with the site:youtube.com string3) Free Statistics

4) Low Cost using a Flip Camera (well now it would be an iPhone) – it’s real and its a powerful message. The more real your videos are the more believable they are. Nobody believes an actor reading a script

5) It evens out the competition – Corporations do not use video to recruit – Why not get a competitive advantage!!!! It is a big opportunity, nobody else is doing it – why not get on board now

6) All the cool tools that are available: You get a mailbox, you can send video email. Statistics – I have had a YouTube account for a little while and while I have not used it much – I had no idea it had this capability. The depth of the statistics is great and I love that you can send a video email via your webcam to people you want to talk to.

7) Return on Investment – YouTube delivers results – how many views were generated, how many hires did we make from those views. I have not looked in-depth at the statistics on YouTube but from what I have seen today you can really drill down information. It will also increase your search engine ranking.

I am believer in using video for recruitment myself. I think it is going to get more relevant in the coming years, especially with the uptake of mobile devices. This presentation today has been a real eye opener for me – I have always had video on my mind but this presentation from Jim has really given me the motivation to get more involved in this space.

This blog post was originally written on David Talamelli’s Blog.

To say it has been a busy 3 months is an understatement (yes it has been almost three months to the day since I last posted on this blog). Things have been busy for me from all angles – the family and I went back to Canada for a number of weeks in June, I changed roles within Oracle at the same time, I have caught up with old friends and family and we have had 3 birthdays during all of this as well.

I downloaded the Everyday Application a few months ago and used it for most of this time. The premise is that you are meant to take a photo of yourself every day for well whatever period of time you want to. There were a few bad hair days in the mix for me but this App was fun and if I had the patience to do it for a few years it would have been more interesting seeing the changes.

Anyway back to what I have been up to. Going back to Canada was fantastic. It had been 5 years since we were last in Canada and we all had a great time catching up with friends and family. While I love living in Australia and the life we have here, we all really settled back into Canada very easily and into old friendships and relationships without skipping a beat. Mel and I were even able to spend a weekend in New York without the kids which was great!!

Work wise it has been busy for me as well. I have recently started a new role here at Oracle and I am loving the new challenge and opportunity. One of the things that I love about working at Oracle is that there can be so much learning and development that you can do if you want to. Sometimes it involves stepping out of your comfort zone but that is what growing is all about.

Working in such a dynamic company creates opportunities to develop yourself and continue to grow and learn. I am still working in our Recruitment Organisation, however I am now focussed 100% on our JAPAC Campus Hiring initiatives. We have a great Campus Recruitment Team and I am excited at getting the chance to work with everyone and build on the success we have already had.

The last 3 months have been busy, hectic, challenging and fun all at the same time and I think that is why it has gone by so quickly!! I am looking forward to next 3 months and hope they are just as good.