Recruiting Is Marketing – But What If You're No Good at Marketing?
By now, it's basically a truism: "Recruiters need to be more like marketers." The funnels are similar; the goals are similar; even the strategic functions of both departments are similar. But there's one huge problem: Recruiters aren't marketers. They're recruiters. As such, they haven't been trained as marketers. How can we expect recruiters to become marketers – and not just...
Read More
4 More Things Candidates Hate About Your Hiring Process
If employers want to attract top talent, they have to build hiring processes that serve both their own needs and the needs of the candidates they are trying to woo in the job market. Failure to provide a positive candidate experience can lead to higher candidate drop-out rates and more rejected job offers. Studies show that 34 percent of candidates base at least part of their decision to...
Read More
6 Things Women Leaders Look for in Strong Female Candidates
What do today's top female business leaders look for in strong female candidates? To find out, MBA@UNC – UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School's online MBA program – performed interviews with two highly successful women: Amy Palmer, the president and CEO of Soldiers' Angels, a nonprofit that provides aid and comfort to the men and women of the United States Army, Marines, Navy, Air...
Read More
8 Ways to Knock Your Next Job Fair Out of the Park
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA! Today's Question: Job fairs can be kind of odd, can't they? The purpose of this piece is to help job seekers navigate the strangeness and get...
Read More
Chief of Work: The C-Suite Hire You Didn't Know You Needed
Welcome to the new world of work. Culture and balance have stepped into the limelight where salaries and titles have once stood. "Work-life" has been replaced by "work/life." As Hari Ramanathan, chief strategy officer of YR Asia, put it, "People seek a holistic life: ... values and purpose are as important as money; working for social good is an option; and they want to be part of 'the...
Read More
Employee Competencies: Hiring for Jobs That Don't Even Exist Yet
Technology has radically altered the way we work, the way the global economy runs, and the way organizations of all sizes and in all industries operate. It should come as no surprise, then, that it has also changed the types of jobs companies need to fill in order to succeed, introducing brand new roles that that did not exist in the past and bringing highly specialized roles to the...
Read More
Be a Better Recruiter: 10 Simple Tips
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA! Today's Question: We're looking for some easy things recruiters can start doing right now in order to become better recruiters. Share your...
Read More
4 Things Candidates Hate About Your Hiring Process
It's hard enough to hire talent in the current climate. The last thing you need is a toxic hiring process that frustrates candidates. A frustrated candidate will be much harder to convert into an enthusiastic and willing member of your workforce. According to CareerBuilder, 34 percent of job candidates believe strongly that the candidate experience – be it positive or negative –...
Read More
7 Reasons You Don't Work Here
On a number of organizational design and CIO advisory projects, I've had the opportunity to help screen and evaluate candidates for jobs ranging from entry-level support to IT director roles. When I am in the office at Systems Alliance, I am also occasionally able to participate in screening candidates for open positions at our company. In the recruiting world, candidates are...
Read More
Avoiding Burnout: Why Your Company Needs to Support Work-Life Balance for All
We hear the phrase "work-life balance tossed" about quite frequently, but what does it really mean? How this concept is defined runs the gamut. For some, it means flexible work hours, paid time off, tuition reimbursement, and fitness benefits. For others, it means reduced travel time, cost-of-living raises, skills development, and short breaks throughout the workday. What makes for a...
Read More
4 Things You Need to Talk About With Candidates During the Interview
The reality is we're in a war for top talent. After years of employers having control over the job market, candidates now know they are in control. In order to hire your next great employee, you're going to have to adapt your candidate experience. One thing that often goes overlooked in the candidate experience is the communication between hiring managers and candidates during the...
Read More
3 Ways to Identify a Toxic Worker During an Interview
In a Harvard Business School publication entitled "Toxic Workers," Michael Housman and Dylan Minor explore a novel dataset regarding the actual performances and characteristics of many workers in different organizations. In doing so, they identify three prominent signals that are associated with toxic behaviors. Do yourself a favor: Take the following signals into account in your next...
Read More
7 Skills to Look for in a Clinical Research Manager
Hiring a clinical research manager is a challenge for even the most skilled and committed hiring manager. The clinical research manager is responsible for organizing and administering clinical research and will likely be involved in some capacity in the hiring of research associates and technicians who will carry out the day-to-day steps of a clinical research trial. Educational...
Read More
Unhappily Married to the Business? 4 Tips on Restoring Work-Life Balance for Entrepreneurs
One of the biggest challenges that you will face as an entrepreneur is maintaining work-life balance. According to a survey from The Alternative Board, 19 percent of entrepreneurs work 60+ hours per week, 30 percent work 50-59 hours a week, and just 19 percent work fewer than 40 hours a week. Of course, no one said that realizing your dreams would be easy. You'll need to burn a lot of...
Read More
4 Creative Ways to Use Your ATS
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA! Today's Question: The applicant tracking system is the workhorse of recruiters everywhere – but is everyone taking full advantage of this...
Read More
Recruiting Books: Top 10 Books for Hiring Professionals
Welcome to Top 10, Recruiter.com's weekly rundown of the best of the best in recruiting! Every Friday, we release a list of some of our favorite people, things, and ideas dominating the industry. From awesome tech tools and cool companies to great books and powerful trends, no stone in the recruiting space will be left unturned. This Week: Top 10 Books on Recruiting and Hiring Much...
Read More
3 Must-Have Tech Services for Every Growing Business
Starting a business used to require a lot of time and effort. All the paperwork needed to be filled out manually and submitted via snail mail. If you were lucky, you could go down to some clerk's office and submit the forms in person, but you knew it would be weeks before anyone looked at them. You cringed at the thought of your papers sitting in a wire basket on the end of someone's desk,...
Read More
5 Ways to Make Your Job Ad Stand Out
Last year, 83 percent of respondents in MRINetwork's "Recruiter Sentiment Study" said the job market was predominately candidate-driven. As a result of this candidate domination, organizations have to compete harder and harder with one another to attract top talent. And that, in turn, means traditional job ads aren't going to cut it. You have to find new ways to capture top talent's...
Read More
Are You an Expert at Job Hunting?
How many things have you truly mastered? For example, you must know how to cook to survive day to day. But does your food meet the quality of a professional chef's dishes? Similarly, you might like to travel – domestically and maybe even internationally. But how good are you at booking these trips? Good enough to book trips for others and charge for your services? In both of...
Read More
9 Things You Should Look for in a Mentor
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question on jobs data you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA! Today's Question: Many experts say that entrepreneurs – especially those who are new to the startup life – should look for...
Read More
7 Essential Onboarding Best Practices
Onboarding is as essential to the hiring process as your sourcing, application, and interview processes are. In fact, in some ways, onboarding is more important: Many companies can hire the best person in the candidate pool, but if they can't figure out how to make that person fit their job, it doesn't matter how good the candidate is or how quickly the candidate was hired. After your...
Read More
A 'Foolish' Guide to Employee Engagement
Most companies with hourly employees know that employee engagement is absolutely critical but largely lacking in many workplaces today. During the recent TDn2K Global Best Practices Conference, Tom Gardner, the CEO and cofounder of The Motley Fool reminded the audience that the average Gallup employee engagement score is 30 percent. Even if you're lucky enough to have an engagement score...
Read More
Be Aware of These Employment Law Changes in 2016
Employers in the United States should prepare for another year laden with shifts in labor laws. In the year 2015, new U.S. labor laws were systematically implemented on topics ranging from wages to workplace safety, privacy, and more. You should expect more of the same in 2016. Proposals on the table include more protection for white-collar workers, married LGBT couples, non-exempt...
Read More
Why Passion, Empathy, and Pretty Much Everything Else Matter More Than IQ [Infographic]
What's in an IQ? Not much, according to a proliferation of recent studies. In fact, by some estimates, an individual's IQ accounts for a measly 10-25 percent of their success in life. Now, many psychologists argue that emotional intelligence – otherwise known as EQ – is what really matters when it comes to successfully navigating both life itself and the workplace. Many...
Read More
4 Tips to Help You Find an Amazing Business Partner
Perhaps one of the most crucial hires that you will ever make is the hiring of a business partner. With many entrepreneurs working 50-60 hours a week, you'll be spending a big part of your waking life alongside your partner, which means you'd better be able to get on well in close quarters. You also have the added spice that if things go wrong between you and your business partner, you don't...
Read More
7 Ways to Get on Your Manager's Good Side
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA! Today's Question: Maybe you just started a new role at a new company and you want to make a good impression, or maybe you feel like your...
Read More
6 Things Employers Should Know About Working With Recruiting Agencies
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question on jobs data you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA! Today's Question: Some employers have never worked with outside recruiting firms before, but they may be interested in doing so....
Read More
18 Building Blocks to Help You Articulate Your Employer Brand on Social Media
If an organization has a well-defined employer brand on social media – which means more than just sending the occasional tweet out – then it will benefit from having a heck of a lot of fuel for social media, blogging, search engine optimization, public relations, and word-of-mouth when it comes to sharing job openings. In contrast, a plain job ad, by itself and not backed by a strong...
Read More
5 Signs That You Might Soon Be Fired
Being fired can be one of the most earth-shattering events of your working life, no matter the cause. It can leave you financially and psychologically devastated, and it can seriously harm your career. This is why a key skill that all workers must have – if they are to preserve their financial, emotional, and career stability – is the ability to spot the signs that they may soon be...
Read More
For Staffing Companies, the ACA's Employer Mandate Can Be Downright Baffling
When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law in 2010, it brought with it an Employer Shared Responsibility provision, also known as an "employer mandate." The mandate is fairly straightforward for average employers. Per the IRS, "For 2015 and after, employers employing at least a certain number of employees ... will be subject to the Employer Shared Responsibility. "Under the...
Read More
3 Experts on How to Get Leadership on Board With a New Tech Tool
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you'd like to ask about employment data? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA! Today's Question: Let's say you're an HR pro or recruiter who wants to convince the company to adopt a new recruitment...
Read More
Employee Engagement ROI: Don't Set The Bar Too Low
Nobody's disputing the value of an engaged workforce. Decades of research prove a connection between performance and employee engagement. The problem is so well documented that The Economist estimates 87 percent of C-suite executives recognize that disengaged employees are one of the biggest threats to their businesses. As a result, there's a billion-dollar industry that produces employee...
Read More
What CRAs Want in an Employer
The market for clinical research associates (CRAs) is competitive at the moment, and the demand for CRAs is expected to remain strong for the foreseeable future. Because of this – and because CRA roles are similar across employers – it's usually not that difficult for CRAs to change jobs. Therefore, employers would do well to learn what CRAs look for in an organization and try to meet...
Read More
5 Essential Tips for Building a Standout Resume
No two jobs are exactly alike – and for that reason, your resume shouldn't stay the same from application to application. Your resume needs to vary from job to job if you are going to prove to an employer that you are the right fit for their specific role. However, that doesn't mean you have to write a brand new resume for each job you apply to. You can get a step up on the competition...
Read More
Top 10: Companies That Win in Employer Branding
Welcome to Top 10, Recruiter.com's weekly rundown of the best of the best in recruiting! Every Friday, we release a list of some of our favorite people, things, and ideas dominating the industry. From awesome tech tools and cool companies to great books and powerful trends, no stone in the recruiting space will be left unturned. This Week: Top 10 Companies That Win in Employer...
Read More
6 Things Employers Want to See in Your Resume
When you're on the job search, you are a product. If you are going to sell that product to a recruiter or hiring manager, you have to answer the same questions that any company selling a product has to answer: What does this product do? How was this product made? How can this product benefit someone who buys it? How durable is this product? Why is this product better than a...
Read More
Say Goodbye to Recruiting Events, Resumes, and Traditional Job Applications
I recently wrote at length about some of the unique hurdles that companies hiring for service and support workers are faced with. In conversations with many retail, restaurant, hospitality, and service companies, we hear how defined hiring processes are often bypassed for the company's hourly and store positions. This is not terribly surprising, given the nature of the positions in the...
Read More
7 Mistakes You May Be Making on Job Applications
As anyone who has ever been on the job search knows, finding a job can be hard. Applying for job after job can grow pretty tedious pretty quickly – but maybe there's a reason you aren't getting noticed. I've made up a list of seven very common mistakes you may be making on job applications. Armed with this knowledge, you should be able to apply to jobs with your best foot forward and, at...
Read More
Are You Recruiting Executives with Blinders On? 3 Ways to Dig Deeper
When hiring for executive positions, employers are sometimes less stringent with the vetting process. The erroneous assumption is that individuals who hold executive positions are automatically trustworthy or that a typical employee screening will be sufficient. Sometimes executives are treated as if their experience, connections, education, and charisma can make up for any minor...
Read More
7 Myths About Entrepreneurship – Busted
Welcome to Recruiter QA, your dedicated platform where we delve into pressing employment-related topics with guidance from seasoned experts. Here, we pose the questions that matter, and the professionals provide the answers that enlighten us. Do you have a query you're eager to explore? We invite you to share it in the comments section. Your question could feature in our upcoming...
Read More
Why Banning Ex-Convicts From Your Firm Is a Bad Business Decision
You are in charge of screening applications and resumes at your firm. You see the perfect potential candidate come across your desk. She has the right combination of education and experience and is even a member of an academic honor society. In addition to all her educational experience, she has also operated a successful business while going to school full-time. Yet, as you flip through...
Read More
Major Blunders to Avoid When Pitching to Influencers (Especially at SXSW)
Having been to SXSW numerous times before, I was delighted to have had the opportunity to attend again last year — this time, with a company of my own. Having my own venture to promote made me feel both excited and strangely vulnerable. Amid all the meetings, on-camera interviews, and speaking engagement, I found myself keenly aware of certain individuals I should talk to and connect...
Read More
Get Hired! 7 Smart Ways to Increase Your Chances of Landing Your Dream Job
How close are you to landing your dream job? Do you know that, on average, 250 resumes are received for each corporate job opening? Or Monster receives as many as 427,000 resume submissions every week? In other words, the odds are already stacked against you when it comes to getting any job, let alone your dream job. With the right steps, though, you can give yourself an edge over...
Read More
Top 4 Qualities You'll Need to Gatecrash the C-Suite
The life of a CEO is not as coveted as it once was. Today, not everyone wants to rise to the top; in fact, many are content just to hang out on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder. This C-suite phobia should be welcome news to those of you who are aiming for the executive ranks. It means there's less competition out there for you to best. But that doesn't mean it will be easy: The...
Read More
Make the Leap: One Entrepreneur's Story of Turning Passion Into Profit
Growing up as a gamer (JRPGs are my thing, personally), I often dreamed about how I could parlay my love of Final Fantasy and Suikoden into a viable career. As you can probably guess, I never did figure out that secret. Sure – I'm happy being a writer, but I still lose weekends to the Persona series on the regular. Someone who did figure out the secret to turning a love for video...
Read More
How to Hire a Recruiting Firm
Hiring managers may balk at the idea of using a recruiting firm. But in highly specialized industries, like pharmaceuticals and medical devices, working with a specialty recruiting firm in the employment market can be the best possible approach to filling open positions. For example, a third-party recruiter is able to step in when a company is coping with any of the following...
Read More
Professionals Discuss: How to Improve Performance Appraisals
Performance appraisals are part of every company's operations (at least, we hope they are). Since the dawn of time, people have been reviewing each other, evaluating various actions, criticizing, offering advice, etc. In the workplace we call these actions "performance reviews," or "performance appraisals." A good manager will have innovative ways to conduct performance reviews, but...
Read More
6 Unlikely Places to Find a Job
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA! Today's Question: We all know about job boards, LinkedIn, and the like. But what are some of the more unlikely places where savvy job seekers...
Read More
