But the role is full of misconceptions. To give new recruiters a leg up, I spoke to some experienced recruiters to learn about the mistakes they made and what insights they'd share with new recruiters in the field.

1. Recruiting Doesn't Only Happen Behind a Computer While recruiters can use the Internet as their primary tool for finding candidates, using it exclusively could limit their access to a more diverse pool of candidates.

   Jonathan Weems, a technical recruiter who's been in the field for five years, says his biggest mistake as a new recruiter was assuming he could always find the best candidates online. He stresses that new recruiters need to network offline just as much.

   "Also talk to employees within your own company, find out where they came from, and start building relationships internally," says Weems.

2. Use Multiple Tools to Find Candidates New recruiters sometimes fall into the trap of relying entirely on one or two tools--and using them in the same way--simply because they're familiar with them or have seen some good results.

   If recruiters are consistently achieving great results with a particular tool, like Monster or LinkedIn Recruiter, by all means they should continue using them. But failing to leverage other tools, could cause recruiters to miss out on a larger pool of candidates.

3. Don't Just Watch the Internet, Use It According to a survey by Jobvite, 89% of companies said they would recruit in social networks in 2011, and 55% would spend more on social recruiting. While companies are beefing up their social recruiting efforts, some could argue that recruiting has always been very social.

   "The best people who are [recruiting] online were probably pretty good at it when social recruiting wasn't really an issue," says Lance Haun, editor of SourceCon and community director for ERE.net. "They're naturally social and they're trying to have conversations with people. It's just an extension of what they're doing in real life."

   Even though recruiting apps can automate daunting tasks like posting jobs to multiple social networks, recruiters who don't actively engage with job seekers are failing to take full advantage of those platforms.

   "Successful recruiters don't watch the Internet and social networks--they use them as tools to do more of what they do best: talking to people," says Miles Jennings, CEO of Recruiter.com.

Employees want to feel that their good work is appreciated and appropriately compensated. However, 7 out of 10 do not believe that there is a clear relationship between their pay and their job performance. Let's investigate this further.

1. Although technically impossible, most employees believe that their performance is above average. Each, therefore, believes that he or she should be paid above average. But this, of course, is impossible.

2. Most employees feel that they are not adequately paid compared to those performing similar work in other organizations. They, therefore, also believe that their pay is below the level of their job performance.

3. Employees often perceive that there are poor performers in their organization who are earning as much if not more than they earn. They thus conclude, "If that lazy so-and-so is still here, they must be under-paying me for my good work."

4. Supervisors don't have the know-how or guts to differentiate between poor, average, and above average performers. They take the simple way out and give everyone the same pay increases each year.

5. Our employee surveys consistently show that employees say that tying pay to performance is very important to them. We have found this to be particularly true in unionized organizations where the union has negotiated contracts that require their employer to tie pay increases to years of service rather than performance.

Read the Full Story]]> tag:www.net-temps.com,2012:/blog//2.180 2012-04-26T19:52:32Z 2012-04-26T20:11:35Z

In fact, our 30+ years have taught us that when it comes down to the finish line, practical, hands-on, on-the-ground experience trumps theory every time. Does that mean that education isn't valuable? Absolutely not! Your degree will give you just one more rung on the belt, especially if it is in your field.

Having said this, here are some tips to keep in mind when discussing your education - both on and off your resume.

Read the Full Story

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Consumer-loan delinquencies fell across the board in the fourth quarter, the first time that's happened in eight years, according to the American Bankers Association in Washington. Banks have reduced leverage, with financial-institution debt as share of the economy at its lowest level in a decade. And corporations are flush with cash: The ratio of liquid assets to short-term liabilities is the highest since 1954, based on data compiled by the Federal Reserve.

Read the Full Story]]> tag:www.net-temps.com,2012:/blog//2.178 2012-04-11T17:53:31Z 2012-04-12T14:18:38Z

This Podcast describes how to facilitate that kind of interview every time. Well, maybe not every time, but most of the time. If your interviewer is a real jerk, you can only do so much. How to deal with jerks in the interview process is covered in a separate Podcast. Most interviewers are wonderful, nice people, but there are a few assholes who are real jerks trying to hide their own insecurity.

The Typical Job Interview

Let's imagine we are observing a typical job interview where the candidate does not ask questions. The interviewer begins by saying, "Tell me about yourself." The applicant provides an excellent response with a 60-second overview of his/her skills that relates directly to the position. After the response, the applicant sits quietly waiting for the next question. The interviewer asks the next question which is followed by a nice response from the applicant and then more silence. This one-way interrogation ritual continues for 40 minutes. The last 5 minutes of the interview are reserved for applicant questions. The interviewer begins this phase by asking, "Do you have any questions?" The candidate says, "No, I have no questions at this time. You have done an excellent job of telling me about the position and the company." Read the full article]]> tag:www.net-temps.com,2012:/blog//2.176 2012-03-29T13:16:30Z 2012-04-13T18:24:00Z

The ASA Staffing Index is reported nine days after each workweek, making it a virtual real-time measure of staffing employment trends. ASA research shows that staffing employment is a coincident economic indicator and leading employment indicator.

In my former life as a recruiter (also affectionately referred to as "headhunter"), I received hundreds of resumes a week from all parts of the country. The statement that a person's resume gets a 15-second read is not far from the truth. In fact, 15 seconds is a generous assumption. In reality, a resume must capture the recruiter's attention in the first five seconds to avoid the round file. Candidates can greatly improve their chance of catching the recruiter's attention by following three simple rules:

1. Use the correct format
2. Include plenty of quantifiable accomplishments
3. Sprinkle liberally with appropriate keywords.

The first rule, use of correct format, is crucial. There is one, and only one, proper resume format for recruiters -- chronological. Recruiters do not have time or patience to figure out the complexities of a functional resume. To recruiters, time is money. A second danger of using a functional resume is that recruiters automatically assume the candidate is attempting to hide something. This assumption is universal. No job-seeker on earth can hide unpleasant facts within a functional resume. Recruiters are trained from the start to pick up on any possible "red flags" that identify the job seeker as an undesirable candidate.

Read the full story ]]> tag:www.net-temps.com,2012:/blog//2.173 2012-03-06T18:53:11Z 2012-03-06T19:19:26Z

 To begin with, there are many differences between the two types of services beyond the superficial difference of how the recruiter is paid. In some ways, a true retained search practice resembles a temp agency more than a perm-placement business, for the simple reason that both use a "division of labor" business model.

For example, in a large retainer practice, a search director will delegate the research and screening to a support staff, in much the same way an account manager or sales manager will delegate the "recruiting" function to a staffing coordinator. In contrast, the vast majority of contingency recruiters do their own research and screening to fill their job orders.

Regarding payment terms: A retained executive search is defined as an exclusive project undertaken on behalf of a client to identify and screen suitable candidates for a particular position. Typically, the estimated fee is prepaid in three 30-day installments. An open-ended payment schedule with the majority of the fee contingent upon "successful completion" is not considered a retained executive search. So, if you receive a $1,000 "engagement fee," your service is really a contingency search with a cover charge.

Before you decide to offer retained search services, first look at the level of candidate you're associated with. Rarely are retainers paid for positions that pay less than $100,000 annually. So if you deal in mid-market or "commodity" candidates such as engineers, accountants or programmers, it's unlikely you'll do much retained work. And you should consider yourself lucky.

I've found that retained searches to fill mid-level or non-management positions usually aren't worth the trouble, and often end in disaster. From an economic standpoint, you're risking an open-ended commitment of your time, but at a fixed rate. The money may be guaranteed, but if the search bogs down, you're stuck working for a dollar an hour. To complicate matters, many lower- or mid-level hiring managers fail to put forth the effort necessary to attract suitable talent, and lack the sense of urgency to effectively close qualified candidates.

- Bill Radin

Bill Radin is one of the most popular and highly regarded trainers in the recruiting industry, and has trained many of the largest independent and franchised recruiting organizations, including Management Recruiters, Dunhill, Sanford Rose, Snelling and Fortune Personnel. His speaking engagements include the NAPS national conference, the annual Kennedy Conference, and dozens of state association meetings and network conventions, including Top Echelon and Splits.org. The Radin Report is published monthly.