Campus Recruiters, Are You Looking for an Exciting Role? This Could Be It

 

When Did Recruitment Become Not About Recruitment

I did a blog post back almost 3 years ago back in February 2009 titled “Five Trends We May See Happening in Recruitment”. One of the points I made was that as Recruiters our role was becoming more involved in areas like branding and marketing as we become more proactive in our candidate search. Fast forward three years and I think that my forecast has more than come true. These days every company has a Facebook Page, G+ Page, Twitter Account and any other latest and greatest Social Media page that is out there. As Recruiters we have to be where the people are and we have to tell people our message.

One thing that has been on my mind though lately is when did recruitment become not about recruitment?

In an attempt to better connect and engage with communities of people (candidates) I think some companies are becoming so focussed on ‘friending’ or ‘liking’ people online that they have forgotten that as Recruiters we have hard targets like number of placements, interview to placement ratio, time to fill, etc… that we are responsible for. I think there is an increasing disconnect between the soft targets (branding) and the hard targets (numbers) that is occurring.

As companies strive to better engage with their online connections I think what is happening is that we are getting taken away to some degree from our recruitment objectives. I think some aspects of Social Media is making Recruiters soft. It is great to know what someone’s favourite movie is or what they had for lunch – but how does that contribute to their potential placement. It is important for a person to feel connected to a company before they join a company and are being courted but that has always been the job of Recruiters, we just used to do this on the phone.

I have been involved in different branding initiatives some of them have been successful, some of them have failed. The one thing that I think is important is not to hide your message behind the content or run initiatives mainly because it seems like a good idea to increase your online presence. Recruiters if you are looking to hire the best people be clear about that and say so, don’t run a contest in the name of recruitment if it does not help you find the best people out there. Don’t start a community to talk about everything and anything – keep it focussed on your end goals – hiring the best people in your market.

Social Media has been a huge part of my own individual success in recruitment I am not making these comments through a ‘that’s not the way we used to do it’ thought process. I started blogging in 2007/2008 to hopefully help people in their job search and to share with people information about Oracle to help them make an informed decision if Oracle was a place for them to work.

Candidate Engagement is important, you have to know your target audience, but I feel that online recruitment has focussed so much lately on branding/marketing that people have forgotten that we are hear to search for, identify and onboard the best candidates for our roles.

[Edit] I just pressed publish and thought to myself am I a crazy in this thinking? Let me know your thoughts.

 

This Family is Going Green With 20 New Solar Panels

The past few months have been busy: work, kids, the new dog, travel back to Canada, etc…. but during all this activity we have been researching and looking at getting Solar Panels installed in our house. Today our Solar Panel Installer finished the installation of our solar panels on our roof and believe it or not I am excited about this.

As a sidenote – if you are looking at getting Solar Panels in Melbourne, I can highly recommend Glen Clark. Out of all the people and companies we spoke to, he was by far the most thorough in providing details and information to us. It may be good sales skills, but he was the person who wanted us to make an informed decision instead of just trying to get our money. He delivered what he said he would and in the timeframes he said as well – we have been really happy going with Glen for this job.

So how did we end up getting solar panels on our roof? A few months ago, we received our electricity bill and it was higher than normal, and by higher than normal I mean almost double what is statistically has been over the past 2 years. So when we called our Energy Provider to ask about the bill and see if we can find out what happened – we pretty much were told “that’s what the bill is, tough luck” – or at least that’s how it felt anyway.

This one conversation with the Energy Company’s Customer Service triggered the thought in my head that I did not want to be in such a one sided arrangement. It got me thinking that the price of electricity is not going to go down, it is a limited resource that is only going to go up and as something that is controlled by a handful of energy companies they really are calling all the shots in terms of pricing and service. So in the end, thanks to my Energy Company for opening my eyes to this.

We got 20 panels on our roof which should bring our electricity bills to close to $0.00 and who knows we may be able to generate enough power to sell kW back to the grid. I like that  we are going to save money by installing these solar panels, I think they they are an investment that is going to pay for itself, but the great thing about going through this exercise is that it has caused us to really look at our electricity usage and see how we can be more efficient in our daily lives. Two big examples are that the beer fridge in the shed has been unplugged and the dryer is being replaced by a clothesline.

The savings are great, but it is also good to know we are being green and doing our small part to help the environment.

 

We Welcome a New Member to the Family

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.

 

Oracle Campus Recruitment is Hiring in India

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.

 

ATC Source Conference in Melbourne (Glen Cathey Presentation)

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?

 

ATC Source Conference in Melbourne (Jim Stroud Presentation)

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.