Minnesota Headhunter

Unemployed Need Not Apply: Is It Legal?

My usual disclaimer: I am not an attorney and I do not play one online.

Back in June of 2010 a search firm representing a client posted a job on a job board saying

“NO UNEMPLOYED CANDIDATES WILL BE CONSIDERED AT ALL”

I wrote this blog post about it including a screen shot of the ad

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

Here is an image of part of a Craig’s List ad from a few weeks ago:

Survey: Only 8% Of Companies Say IT Graduates Are Ready To Work. Who Is To Blame?

Well this certainly adds fuel to the industry fire that most schools are not turning out IT graduates that are ready for the “real world”.

SHARE, a professional association for IBM users, has some survey results:

Closing the IT Skills Gap: 2011 SHARE Survey for Guiding University & College IT Agendas.

Here are some highlights from the executive summary:

• 25% are concerned about the technical aptitude of job candidates

• 40% are concerned IT hires are not sufficiently prepared to perform jobs within their companies

• 44% say at a minimum there are notable gaps in skills.

• 8% would rate their IT hires as “well-trained, ready to go”

There are more statistics about jobs and skills in demand so be sure to click the link above.

Who Owns Your LinkedIn And Social Media Profiles?

A reminder before getting started that I am not an attorney, I do not play one online and anything I say here is not legal advice rather the opinions and thoughts of a recruiter and soon to be company owner.

Do you see the storm clouds on the Social Media horizon? HR pros, recruiters and yes marketing, public relations and sales folks should be seeing them for sure.

That storm brewing is over your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other accounts. (links to my profiles)

You own them right?

Not so fast.

If you are using your personal accounts during business hours, doing company business and on company resources (computer and internet) you may be opening yourself up to some issues.

Better stated, your employer may be thinking that they have some claim to your profiles.

While I am specifically thinking about the non competes many recruiters on the search and consulting firm side have to sign we are now seeing policies being put in place for employees of all skill sets.

Recruiting: Monster vs LinkedIn vs Social Media

The last few weeks (and this happens 2-3 times a year) I have seen increased chatter about what are the best recruiter tools to use and many people pick sides.

And I ask this question: Why?

Usually the folks who pick sides have money in the game:

• Companies with an earnings report and/or their sales teams

• Trainers in one tool or another

• Pundits flapping their jaws and computer keys

This time the sources of the conversation came from:

LinkedIn files for IPO, reveals sales of $161 million (CNN Money.com)

Recruiters Rethink Online Playbook (Wall Street Journal)

Should Monster Be Afraid of Social Networking? (CNBC)

Monster CEO Fires Back (CNBC)

Hiring Minnesota IT Pros? Need A Hand? Call Me

It is time for me to practice what I preach. I tell people all the time they need to market themselves be it as an employee, consultant, employer or a business.

I say that you need to let people know you are available and if not know, build the relationship for down the road.

Disclaimer: I hate doing it for myself.

No really, I hate doing it.

Oh the irony...

But here I am in what might be the first time on my blog saying this, if you are:

• sourcing and recruiting IT professionals and could use a hand...
  
• working with search and consulting firms and they are not delivering...
  
• hiring a team of IT folks...
  
• wanting a relationship with a recruiter who is about relationships and not transactions...
  
• stuck on a “purple squirrel” search and want someone to dedicate their time to it...
  
• looking for someone to do a training session, half or full day for your recruiter and HR team...

... give me a call or send me an email.

One Reason Why I Use Social Networking Sites To Source And Recruit

I was doing a recruiter training the other day for a Minneapolis software company and after talking about the why and showing the how of social network sites I noticed one of their hiring managers sitting in the back of the room with his arms crossed and giving off a bad vibe.

So I took a deliberate pause, one of those awkward ones and then asked if there were any questions, thoughts, comments or wanted to challenge me on some of the content.

There were questions and comments, a lot of them, but I could not provoke the hiring manager to speak up.

I took another awkward pause and as I was about to move on to another topic the hiring manager leans forward and says:

“But why do we go to these sites? We have a career page, we post jobs on different job boards and we do other things too...”

A senior recruiter cut him off with:

“Yeah and how is that working for us? Our talent pool does not know who we are. We are passive in everything we do. We wait for people to find us and they are rarely who we want to be hiring.”

Anecdotal Analysis Of The Minnesota Job Market Q3 And Q4 2010

Over the past six weeks between Recruiter and HR events, meetings with senior management in companies of all sizes and industries, what I hear from job seekers and what I see from job postings here is an anecdotal analysis of the Minnesota job market as we end the 3^rd quarter of 2010, ready???

I don’t have a (definitive) clue.

My Magic 8 Ball has a cracked lense and some moisture has gotten in there making it difficult to see the answer to my (all of our) question.

Yep, that’s what I have come up with.

Hold on here is some information you can use to come up with your opinion and do me a favor, tell me what you are seeing.

Please note that this is not scientific and specific to skill set, industry, education attained or salary range unless otherwise stated. But it does come from enough varied sources that I feel comfortable giving an opinion.

What I know I know:

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.

Memo To HR, Recruiters And Job Seekers: Social Media Is Here To Stay

We can debate all day about how significant and to what degree Social Media, Social Networking and the Web in general will be but we should be able to agree that it matters now.

And it will matter going forward. Unless of course the Internet dies in which case I am guessing we are all screwed anyway.

Focusing on my Recruiter, HR and Job Seeker friends many of whom still think this stuff is a load of crap I hope that you are starting to see the light now.

No, I do not think Social Media is the “Silver Bullet” that will cure our hiring and finding a job issues.

Yes, I absolutely believe it is a (major) tool we should be using when recruiting and job seeking.

Absolutely, it matters who you are recruiting/job searching based on experience, skill set, location and industry.

But to think this does not matter is a major failure.

Paul DeBettignies A Panelist For Human Resources Executive Council

I have accepted an invitation to be a panelist at the Human Resources Executive Council meeting April 15^th, 2010 to be held at the McNamara Alumni Center on the campus of the University of Minnesota.

The Human Resources Executive Council is made of Minnesota companies who have 1,000+ employees or $100M+ in revenues. Companies included are 3M, Best Buy, Delta Airlines, Ecolab, General Mills, Honeywell, Land O’Lakes, Medtronic, ShopNBC, Target, Travelers, U.S. Bank, United HealthGroup and others.

This is an evening dinner, reception and education event the evening before HR Tomorrow 2010

No Longer Available

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:

From: Brett Stevens

Companies now have to put on their “selling shoes” to the candidates.  They need to articulate the positive points of the company, culture and the position; create some excitement with the candidate.   Companies are so busy “screening out” that they forget to “screen in” candidates.   We no longer can assume that we have the only position open in a poor economy and candidates should be grateful for this position.

Within the last two to three months candidates are interviewing for one or more positions at the same time.  We no longer have the luxury of “taking our time” to find the right candidate.  The “right candidate” is now coming to the interview while engaged in two to three other opportunities.