No Excuses: If HR Wants to Be Seen as a Strategic Business Unit, Then It Has to Start Acting Like One
I've seen that term "strategic HR" thrown around so much in recent months that I'm starting to worry it's slipping into buzzword territory – and there's no quicker way to ensure something doesn't get done than to turn it into a buzzword. Once that happens, all we have to do is say the word, invoke its power, and make everyone "ooh" and "aah" for long enough that we all forget to move on...
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Got an Interview? 7 Ways to Prepare Yourself Well – and Land the Job
You sent in your resume and references, and now you have an interview. What could be better? Most companies these days are laser-focused on identifying high-potential candidates who are interested in learning, growing, and earning more. In tech companies especially, the goal is to recruit candidates who have just graduated with computer science, design, and/or business degrees, as well as...
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5 Pop-Up Businesses You Can Launch in 7 Days
Many entrepreneurs enjoy the luxuries of time and healthy budgets when launching their new businesses. But for the 1.6 million Americans laid off or fired every month, time and cash are generally in short supply. It seems starting a business would be a bad move for them, right? After all, the fastest way to restore one's income – and make sure the bills get paid – is to go find a new...
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7 Ways Hiring Managers and Recruiters Can Work Better Together
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: The relationship between recruiters and hiring managers isn't always so amicable. Let's fix that: What are your...
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6 Interview Mistakes That Will Cost You The Job
You have an impressive resume, and you're certain that you're a great fit for the position. Unfortunately, that's no guarantee that you'll get the job. In my experience, too many job candidates blow their interview opportunities, wasting all that time and effort and squandering any goodwill they may have had. Don't be that candidate. Instead, read up on this five common interview mistakes...
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6 Things to Look for in a New 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: What would you say is the most important thing for a recruiter to look for in an ATS? Advanced search capabilities? An...
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The 4 Keys to a Winning Mobile Hiring Strategy
By now, you've probably seen the statistics. Depending on which study you consult, between 25 and 40 percent of all job seekers are incorporating mobile technology into their job hunt. Among those job seekers who own smartphones, the numbers are even more impressive. According to a 2014 Glassdoor report, 9 in 10 job seekers reported they would use mobile to search and apply for jobs in 2015....
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Get Found by Recruiters on LinkedIn: 13 Steps You Can Take Today
Decades ago, when a candidate was in transition, they would personally show up to a potential employer and fill out an application. Years ago, transition candidates would compile a resume detailing both the position they were seeking and their current and past job duties. Today, career transition is different. A resume is still the foundation of your search, but it is no longer a simple...
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Why You Should Never Badmouth Competing Employers to Your Candidates
When I was in sales, I was almost always in a competitive situation. Whether I was responding to a request for a proposal (RFP) or trying to develop a relationship with a prospect who was using a competitor's equipment, I became accustomed to not being the "only game in town." Although competitors can keep us on our toes and might even bring out our A-games, managing competitive threats...
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Top 9: Hiring Software Solutions for Small Businesses and Startups
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 9 Hiring Software Solutions for Small...
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Resume Objectives and Headlines: Outdated or Awesome?
The other day, someone asked me about objectives and headlines on resumes, and it got me thinking a lot about how I utilize these things when writing resumes. Today, I'd like to explore whether or not headlines and objectives are right for your resume. We'll start with a couple of definitions: - A resume objective is a statement on your resume that explains to the reader what your...
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What Employee Onboarding Needs Most: Heart
Starting a new job is a huge deal, full of unforgettable moments like finding a team where you belong and envisioning your brand new career with the company you've just joined. These moments are the ones that pave the way for a new employee's future at your organization. Unfortunately, however, most onboarding processes focus on the totally forgettable aspects of starting a new job:...
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How to Hire Remote Workers With the Right Skills
When looking to hire remote workers, a recruiter cannot simply apply the same guiding principles as they would to hiring in-office workers. Granted, the job titles and descriptions may very well be the same in both cases, but there are certain soft skills that remote workers must possess if they are going succeed in their roles. It is these soft skills that a recruiter must look for when...
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Are You 'Working Happy'? 11 Clues That You Are
We tend to have one of three attitudes toward our work lives: we really dislike our jobs and know it; we are rather neutral about our work – it pays our bills, and that's good enough; or we really enjoy our professional lives and know that we are in the right career. Sometimes, however, the lines between neutrality and true enjoyment are rather gray. How do we know if we are really in...
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9 Tough Hiring Obstacles Every Startup Faces
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: Hiring is difficult for most organizations, but it can be especially challenging for startups. What are some common...
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Why Independent Workers Don't Want W-2s
How amazing is the world that we live in today? Anyone with a smart phone can download one of hundreds of apps and begin working almost immediately. Thanks to technology and some savvy entrepreneurs, you can turn your own car into a taxi, use the tools in your shed to help landscape someone's property, put those television-mounting skills to use in other peoples' homes, walk a few dogs, or...
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5 Reasons You Need a Staffing Firm
Are more time, a deeper hiring pool, and more qualified candidates important to your Human Resources department? We'll wait while you give three resounding "Yes!" replies. Hiring a new employee is sort of like picking out an engagement ring. In both cases, you browse through a variety of choices before making the perfect choice. However, unlike the act of picking out an engagement...
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The Most Revealing Questions to Ask During an Interview
All entrepreneurs have given soliloquies about how finding great talent is our priority. Yet, we rarely take the time to craft the best recruiting processes. At Enplug, a tech company that builds digital display software for businesses, we found we were able to instantly improve our hiring process simply by asking better interview questions. It is hard to confirm the truth of a...
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6 Things You're Doing Wrong While You're Unemployed
For many people, finding work when you're unemployed can be incredibly difficult. Sometimes, it even becomes so difficult that unemployed job seekers give up all hope and quit the job search altogether. If you recognize that feeling – if you've been on the hunt for a new job for a long time without any success – then it may be time to look inward. You may be sabotaging your own efforts...
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How to Create Your Own Job (and Pitch It to Your Boss)
It can be frustrating waiting around for the next promotion or job opportunity when you are itching to get ahead and find your dream job. Why wait? Why not create your own job opportunity and pitch it to your boss? Yes, you read that right: "Create your own job." I swear, it in't as crazy as it sounds. Surely it makes more sense to have a go at creating your own job than it does to...
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The Importance of Showing Appreciation During the Dark Days of Winter
Now that 2016 has begun and we are facing those dark winter days – now that the weather is cold and there are no holidays in sight – it is time for leaders to take a hard look at how they can support and encourage their team members. This time of year is often difficult for workers – especially those who like the sunlight. These short, freezing days leave employees feeling "down" in...
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Achieving Company Goals Starts Before You Even Make a Hire [Infographic]
It doesn't matter what your company does or what its goals are: In order to achieve organizational success, every member of the team must work together strategically and at every step along the way. A new infographic from ClearCompany, makers of talent management software, takes a closer look at what strategic action means in a variety of contexts, from performance reviews to supporting...
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There Are No Drawbacks to Giving Your Employees a Living Wage – Just Ask Ken LaRoe
Ever since the Great Recession, banks have taken up a sinister place in the American imaginary. When you read the word "bankers," there's a good chance that it summons visions of Wolf of Wall Street-style greed and debauchery. Ken LaRoe, CEO of First Green Bank, knows this – but he also knows that it's not the whole story. "When society as a whole thinks of banks, they think of the...
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6 Skills You Need to Know For Professional Growth in 2016
Don't let a lack of time stop you from learning both the technical and the soft skills you need to boost your career. Check out these six tech skills that will help you boost your career and succeed in 2016. Each one is fairly easy to learn and will do wonders for your resume. 1. Project Management The meat of project management is ensuring that collaborative efforts are productive,...
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10 Revealing Interview Questions to Help You Select The Best Virtual Workers, Pt. 2
Virtual teams are no longer a differentiator. If you want to build a company that can outpace the competition, then virtual teams are now a necessity. If you are new to the virtual workforce game, you have some catching up to do. To help you get up to speed, I outlined five screening questions you can use to find top-tier virtual workers for your team. Today, I'd like to offer five more...
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Humanizing the Candidate Experience
Recruiting has never been easy, and with today's competitive talent marketplace, it's only become more challenging. To separate themselves from the pack and attract top performers who are looking for more than their next job, companies need a fresh approach to talent management – and it all starts with humanizing the recruitment process. The Talent Marketplace Is Changing In the...
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7 Types of People You Should Always Be Hiring
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: They say an organization can always use more great salespeople. But who else does your company always need to...
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10 Revealing Interview Questions to Help You Select the Best Virtual Workers, Pt. 1
Given increasing levels of global competition, today's startups need to be faster to market, more scalable, and more flexible than ever before. One way that many startups are achieving this agility is through the use of virtual workers. Research shows that telework grew by 102.1 percent between 2005 and 2014, with a lot of this growth being concentrated in the startup...
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Programmatic Media: The Future of Recruitment Advertising
If you've been in the job-ad buying space long enough, you know that every now and again a technology comes along that revolutionizes the way we run ad campaigns. Today, the new kid on the block set to fundamentally reshape the recruitment advertising landscape is programmatic advertising. What Is Programmatic Advertising? In a nutshell, programmatic advertising uses machine-to-machine...
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The Top 4 Ways to Retain Your Best Employees
Employee loyalty is a valuable asset for any growing company. Without the full support of your team, you will be hard pressed to keep your growth going. Furthermore, hiring new employees is often a costly endeavor, and overlooking your veteran employees can potentially drive up your turnover rates. So the question becomes: Once you've identified your best employees, how do you retain...
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Money Matters (Or, Stop Pretending Your Employees Shouldn't Care About Their Paychecks)
There's an issue that keeps popping up over and over again. I've got to be honest: This issue is one of my biggest pet peeves, and I've been hearing about it from so many people lately. Now, I'm fired up about it. What is the single fastest way to drive a great, hardworking employee to lose faith in your company? You got it – mess with their money. As much as an employee may love...
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When Interviewing, Do as a Salesperson Would Do
Job interviews are sales calls, or what our friends from Glengarry Glen Ross would call, "sits." Professional salespeople make naturally good job interviewees (not all, but most) because they understand that the principles of good selling apply to an interview situation. For anyone without formal sales training, here's how you can think like a salesperson to master the ever-confounding...
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Building a Network of Recruiting Partners
It's no secret that the war for talent is on and, as a result, good candidates are much more difficult to find than ever before. It's even tougher if you recruit in an industry that isn't known for paying very high wages: You have the challenge of finding the best candidates possible without the help of hefty paychecks. If you're going to attract great candidates under these...
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The 4 Traits of Successful Founders
People from all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels have established successful companies. No matter their personal histories, successful business owners tend to share some common characteristics. Studies from the University of California-Berkeley, the London School of Economics, and the University of Maryland, among others, reveal that most successful company founders possess the...
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The 25 Best Jobs in America in 2016
What do a data scientist, a nurse practitioner, and a construction superintendent have in common? All three of them hold positions that rank on the 2016 edition of Glassdoor's list of the "25 Best Jobs in America," coming in at No. 1, No. 23, and No. 22, respectively. Glassdoor's rankings are based on three factors, according to Scott Dobroski, associate director of corporate...
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How Automating Your Review Process Can Save You Thousands
Many companies have recently begun to reevaluate how they review employee performances, coming up with all sorts of potential improvements to the traditional performance review. But no matter what, most business leaders can agree on one thing: They need to know how well their employees are fulfilling company objectives. Increasingly, these two goals – more efficient, cost-effective...
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How to Analyze a Job Description Before Applying for a Job
You aren't going to get very far if you're blindly sending out your resume to whatever job openings you see. What you need to do instead is fully analyze a job description before applying. Doing so will allow you to determine whether or not you're the right fit for that company – and paying close attention to the job description will help you see the role and company for what they really...
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5 New Ways to Network at Your Next Conference
For those who, like me, attend conferences and trade shows often, networking can become mundane. We get used to doing the same thing over and over, from quick chats between meetings in designated coffee areas to huge parties thrown by conference sponsors at local nightclubs. And each morning, we get up and do it all over again. Due to the repetitious nature of conferences, I don't enjoy...
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Supercharge Your Career in 2016 With These 3 Resolutions
Before we left the office in 2015, we gathered around our big oak table, drank some bubbly, ate something round (it's a thing!) and scribbled down our New Year's resolutions for 2016. We then passed around a pink and gold plastic cup, smashed our resolutions inside, and spent the last hour of the 2015 work week sharing our resolutions. Maren Hogan asked us to go around the table and share our...
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Which Major Tech Company's Interview Process Sucks the Worst? [Infographic]
As a recruiter, you may find it easy to make the initial connection with a qualified candidate – but have you ever wondered what the process is like after that first connection? How long does it take? What hoops do candidates have to jump through? To find out more, we at GetVoIP studied Glassdoor reviews from software engineers at major tech companies and analyzed the hiring...
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Actually, Your Email Signature Is a Big Deal – So Do It Right [Infographic]
Be honest: How much thought went into your email signature? Probably not much, right? Add your name, your job, your company, maybe a telephone number or two, and voila: a signature. Except there's more to it. As CloudM points out in its new infographic, "Conveying the right corporate image requires thought." If you haven't thought much about your email signature, then you may be...
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Why Employee Wellness Should Be on Your Mind Right Now [Infographic]
According to a new infographic from wellness-focused tech company Limeade, the cold weather of January and February often leads to more employees taking sick days (for obvious reasons). Of course, one or two sick employees isn't such a big deal, but when the flu knocks half your office on its collective butt, that's when the bottom line starts hurting. So, what's an employer to do? A...
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5 Tips to Help You Love Your Job Again
With 51 percent of employees disengaged and 17.5 percent actively disengaged, it is now quite normal for people to hate their jobs. You have to go back to the year 2000 – when Gallup first started measuring disengagement levels – to find a point at which employees were unhappier than they are now. So, what are the options for this disaffected generation of workers? Some of you...
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The New (and More Effective) Way to Manage Your Startup Team
I hate managing by nagging. It's usually counterproductive, and it doesn't contribute to a great team environment. I've found through my own business and through working with others that managing by scorecards and metrics is a much better approach. It allows everyone to understand the organization's main objectives – and when scorecards and metrics are properly aligned with company...
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Building an 'Internal Brand': A New Approach to Keeping Employees Engaged and Fulfilled
Intrinsic rewards – like feeling fulfilled by the work you do, for example – are really important when it comes to engaging your employees. In fact, research suggests that employees who feel intrinsically rewarded by their jobs are more focused and effective at work than those who don't. But that isn't to say intrinsic rewards are entirely sufficient. You can't rely on them...
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3 Tips for Tackling Employee Turnover in 2016
Although it may seem more like a minor nuisance than a real issue, employee turnover can pose a real financial problem for companies. Aside from the decrease in overall productivity and the increased stress for remaining employees, employee turnover can also cause significant monetary losses. Check out these sobering stats: While the cost employee turnover varies from company to company...
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How to Ace an Unstructured Job Interview
You'll know when you're in a typical structured interview: The interviewer will be holding a questionnaire and referring to it quite regularly. The interview will be highly focused, which is, of course, the whole point. Because structured interviews are so common – 88 percent of employers use them – most career-focuses sites advise candidates to prepare for these situations. What...
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The Hurdle Between the Jobs and the Job Seekers
It probably won't come as a surprise to learn that I spend a considerable amount of time thinking about how to better connect people to jobs, particularly in the industries that we serve at Apploi (retail, restaurant, hospitality, and services). What continues to bother me is that we still have 8 million people unemployed in the U.S. and that teenagers have the highest unemployment rate...
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