Minnesota Headhunter

Free Webinar: Optimizing Your Job Postings

 

Minnesota Recruiters and Monster.com are hosting a free webinar tomorrow, August 31^st from 1-2 PM Central time titled “Optimizing Your Job Postings”.

You do not need to be a member of Minnesota Recruiters and heck, if you are outside of Minnesota and reading this join in on the session.

To register click --> Optimizing Your Job Postings

Webinar Information:

What do job seekers look for in a job posting? 

How do they search, when do they search, and what turns a job seeker into a potential candidate? 

By exploring seeker insights and best practices, we’ll answer all of these questions and more as we use best practices and data from Monster’s unique audience examine how to optimize your job postings to attract the best people.

Credit Checks Are Impacting Job Seekers? WCCO TV Interview With Paul DeBettignies

  
 
A few months ago after seeing an interview on CNBC and an article from SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management) on how some states are trying to limit this practice I wrote the blog post Credit Checks As Part Of Employer Background Checks: Fair?

Since that post Oregon has joined Washington and Hawaii in their ban of credit checks on most job reference checks.

A bill in Congress has been tied up in a committee for a little more than a year.

A question I often get is, “Should I say no?

My gut reaction is to say no but then in most cases you will be taken out of the running for the job.

Either way, you’re kind of screwed.

Some see a credit report as a financial resume. Sure there is some validity to this but as the “Great Recession” has taught us, bad stuff happens to good people too.

40% May Do A Job Search This Fall, Time To Start Talking About Retention

Maybe because I hang out with recruiters and HR folks who focus on recruiting I am missing out on the conversation but are there any circles talking about retention?

Not an article here or there but substance. Or a HR event topic?

Try this: you are hiring Software Developers (or accountants, customer service associates, project managers, etc.) so you post jobs on your site, place some ads, engage the referral network (and a number of other tactics) and start looking at companies in your area that you might want to hire from.

Common sense, right?

News flash: other companies doing the same thing.

Are you on their list of companies to recruit from?

So back to retention, what are you doing to keep your people?

Surveys show employee satisfaction is very low and here is the most recent one showing 40% of U.S. workers are thinking about a new job when they get done with the summer vacation season.

Beloit College Mindset List: Class Of 2014

Since 1998 Beloit College has put out a yearly list of things that describe what the incoming freshman class at college and universities have experienced culturally.

Having now stepped “Over the Hill” some of the items below freak me out. See when these kids were born I was more than half way through my college days.

As I get ready for another year of volunteering at the University of Minnesota this helps put into perspective why sometimes I wonder if I landed on Mars.

It also puts into perspective how cool and interesting they really are.

Mindset List for the Class of 2014

Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.

For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.

Facebook Gets 500 Million Users | Paul DeBettignies Interviewed On WCCO AM Radio

Back on July 22^nd after Facebook hit the 500 million user mark I was interviewed by Mike Grimm on HINESight on WCCO AM radio.

We spoke a bit about Facebook for personal and business use and the way companies are using it for recruiting.

Of course we found a way to inject Gopher football into the conversation. Mike does the radio broadcast for Gopher football.

Click the Play button to hear his show. Wait a few moments for it to load and then forward to the 58:20 mark. We go to 70:37.

 

Minnesota Recruiters On KARE 11 TV Give Job Seekers Advice

Last week during our Minnesota Recruiters Conference we were visited by Scott Goldberg @ScottGoldberg of KARE 11 TV (local NBC affiliate) who was curious about our event and how we could get some information out to job seekers about the job search and some additional tools they could be using.

That was easy enough after all we had 200 of us at the event and many companies who are doing some really cool things to better interact with candidates.

Interviewed:

Steve Lewis, Executive Director, Talent Acquisition at Deluxe Corporation

Kevin Gunn, Director Talent Acquisition & Development at ev3

Rebecca Warren, Recruiting Manager at General Mills

And me.

Employer Branding: Do You Really Have a BMW Or Are You Putting Lipstick On A Dodge Dart?

Talent Communities, Social Networks, SEO and Employer Branding are all the rage at recruiter and HR conferences.

I often wonder how companies put these things into practice after returning back to the office and wonder more about how does their audience, candidates, respond to them.

Let’s talk about Employer Branding. I think this is something that is vitally important regardless of the size of company, industry and location.

After all many companies are competing for employees to one extent or another. (maybe with this slow economy not as much as they used to or will be but you get the idea)

And it makes sense to differentiate one from the others.

Social Media Recruiter: WTF Is That?

Hold on a moment..... Nope, one more second.....

Sorry, I was trying to pull out the pen I shoved in my ear after hearing from a CEO who I have known for years say that a “consultant” suggested his recruiting team needed to hire a “Social Media Recruiter”.

My reply (and this is a direct quote), “WTF is a Social Media Recruiter?”

“I don’t know” said my CEO friend “but I am told I need one.”

Oh for the love of the Internet...

I cannot remember to the late 90’s was there such a thing as a “Job Board Recruiter”? I hope not and if there was it clearly did not last long.

“Job Board Recruiter” sounds absurd, right?

So does “Social Media Recruiter”.

Florida Search Firm: “No Unemployed Candidates Will Be Considered At All”

I have one thing to say to what follows (numerous times)... WTF

And a disclaimer: this ad we will talk about was posted on the search firm’s website, not Sony Ericsson who is the client.

OK, lets get into this.

The NBC affiliate in Atlanta, Georgia 11 Alive has this story that aired a couple of nights ago, Job Listing: Unemployed Need Not Apply

It shows how the Florida based executive search firm The People Place (I am intentionally not linking to them) had a job description that included text:

“NO UNEMPLOYED CANDIDATES WILL BE CONSIDERED AT ALL”

WTF???

Yeah I'm Young - And Awesome

Guest post from Dana Larson (Minneapolis, MN). Catch her on Twitter @dlarson15 and LinkedIn

Looking to hire a new marketing professional in your business? Don’t just look at their age - look at their qualifications.

I’m 25 years old. And I know that, to the rest of the world, that means I’m young. I don’t necessarily agree with this, as I just started wearing night cream for the wrinkles, but it is true that 25 is young.

I also have a great deal of experience in the marketing world. Graduating from a top journalism school in Minnesota with a degree in public relations and marketing, I joined a well-known and progressive online marketing agency. After three years of learning as much information about SEO, social media marketing, PPC, website analytics and online research as my brain could absorb, I joined a start-up software company as their marketing manager. Now in charge of all outbound communications and marketing efforts, I’ve helped increase rankings, awareness and conversations about our business, and signups for our product have increased by 500% in three months.