Archive for March, 2010

Today, I spoke with the brilliant, Recruiting/Social Media Consultant, Eric Jacquith.  My next post will feature my review of his session at Sourcecon, and a few professional insights as well.

Later, I will review Glen Cathey‘s session about Sematic Search and Artificial Intelligence.

In addition, I will write an informational post about my guests on Monday 4/5 Compassionate HR blogtalkradio program.  The “Monster” show promises to be quite the eye opening experience.  The show will be expanded from the 30 minutes to 1 hour to accommodate the extraordinary information that my guests will share about corporate philanthropy, and the joy of volunteer work in the community.  My guests include Lew Karabatsos the Vice President, Corporate Philanthropy and Workplace Communications for Monster Worldwide; John Kofi Sanful is the Executive Director of Career Gear, and Suzanne Elliot, Executive Vice President of Resource Development and Strategic Marketing at Dress for Success.

I have so many exciting things in the works and I look forward to sharing all of them with you, so stay tuned.

Last month, I interviewed Geoff Peterson for The Master Sourcer Series. Since that time, he’s presented at ERE, and conferences around the US. I suggested everyone follow him on twitter, and facebook.

He lead a session about mobile recruiting where he taught participants how to “mobilize” their sites using their phones, matchbooks, and IPad tablets. Peterson trains recruiters about linkedin (where he has more than 10,000 connections). What follows are his answers to my key interview questions:

1. How did you get started in the recruiting industry?

About ten years ago I was looking for my first job out of college, and got a call about an open technical recruiter position in Pittsburgh. I asked “what does a recruiter do?” Now, ten years later, here I am still working in the recruiting field.
 
2)      What type of education, skills, knowledge and abilities must a person acquire to become a sourcer/recruiter?

In my personal experience, I don’t think there is a special degree that is mandatory to get into recruiting and sourcing and do it well. If you have a curious nature, a tenacious appetite for research, and a natural sales ability, you should be able to do well. People skills I think are the one key component you need to bring to the table in this profession because you are dealing with a lot of unique and different people daily. I think self-education is important as well. I’ve always strived to learn more, reading industry publications, combing through blogs, digging through books, and networking with others.
 
3)      Tell me about your career trajectory?

Started out as a technical recruiter with Ciber, then went off on my own path for the past several years, owning my own recruiting and sourcing services company called General Lead. Through my company, I’ve had tremendous opportunities to work with the likes of IBM, UnitedHealth Group, ADP and several other clients in various staffing capacities and roles.
 
4)      What do you find most satisfying about your job?

I enjoy helping people find jobs because it’s rewarding. I especially enjoy technology and how you can apply it to better yourself, your company and your clients. Using the latest in social media and mobile strategies has greatly improved my recruiting and sourcing abilities. Specifically, I now have better access to prized passive talent in the market with programs I’ve developed over the years.
 
5)      What is the most frustrating aspect of your job?

I used to get frustrated not being able to help everyone find a new job. Working with candidates = investment of your time. I probably receive 250-300 new resumes each day from job seekers. That’s around 100,000 new candidates I get every year. This has to do with the fact I have very visible profiles in several places online. I encourage candidates to reach out to me. It’s impossible to believe I can place every one of these folks, let alone screen them. This is why I created RecruitChute, which is a resume delivery service where I try to connect job seekers directly with other recruiters looking for talent. It’s free for recruiters to use if interested.
 
6)      What sells the most on your website and why?
I’m not sure if I’m out to “sell” anything on my websites, (General Lead, GeoffPeterson.com, RecruitChute, etc). but rather am trying to help, educate and offer my services. RecruitChute is the site that does this well. My personal site, GeoffPeterson.com, gives good background information on my experiences as well as recruiter and sourcer education.
 
7)      What sets you apart from the pack?  Why should clients do business with you verses someone else?

My vast experience with sourcing programs, social media and technology, including mobile devices. I have very solid experience finding both active and passive talent from sources and means that most other recruiters do not use. My current talent pool (in dozens of disciplines) is in the million plus range and growing daily. I wrote a book last year titled, The Sourcer’s Playbook, outlining some of the key ways to find talent online today.

For more information about Geoff check out his site: http://geoffpeterson.com
 
 

TRU EVENTS launches its first US Unconference April 19-20 in WI. The Unconference trend-it’s all the rage! What is an unconference? An unconference is a facilitated participant-driven face-to-face conference around a theme or purpose, says Kaliya, author of The Unconference Blog. The unstructured sessions, the encouragement of open dialogue and debate, and the intensity of meeting with like-minded people is invigorating. Bill Boorman, and Geoff Webb co-founders of the Tru Events bring this international sensation to the United States.

I am delighted to lead a track at TRU USA about Compassionate HR, and the importance of steward leadership. As Gerry Crispin said, world class recruiters are not just people who are good at their jobs. They are professionals who are doing great things in their community. What I’ve learned since I launched my blogtalkradio program is that people who are engaged in volunteerism be it through their industry, or by participating in global humanitarian efforts, experience a huge emotional paycheck. I believe there is a causal relationship between corporate supported humanitarian efforts, and employee retention, attraction, motivation and recognition. In future posts, I will share research that supports my claim.

I’ve been waving the flag of steward leadership, and this was validated when I attended the ERE Expo in San Diego last week.

In future posts, I will chronicle the companies and individuals who spoke about their humanitarian efforts. Corporate responsibility is not just a buzz word. It’s compassion in action.

As a part of my presentation at TRU USA, I will share detailed accounts about the inspiring experiences of the companies, and people who are doing spectacular things in their communities. Whether your volunteer efforts are local, or global, every act of kindness counts.

How do we empower our workforce? Help them to feel apart of something bigger than themselves. It doesn’t cost a dime to organize a day of volunteering at your local soup kitchen, shelter, or unemployment office. As human resource professionals, each of us can do our part.

Just say yes to service, you’ll be glad you did.

Please consider coming to TRU USA. The unconference planners are willing to offer you a $100.00 discount. Use this code (BILL01) when making your reservation.

Please share what your company is doing to rally your employees behind volunteer efforts in your community.

You can’t go anywhere in the recruiting industry without hearing two names uttered: Gerry Crispin and Glenn Gutmacher. Master consultants, they lead our industry with the vision of leadership. Glen and Gerry equally impressed me because of their commitment to developing our future leaders. Not just in our industry, but in many industries, Crispin and Gutmacher wave the flag of corporate responsibility.
Compassionate HR is committed to shining a light on great leaders doing great things. In the words of Gerry Crispin, Board member of ERE: “World Class Recruiters are not just people who are good at what they do, they are individuals who are doing great things in their communities.”

Tune in this evening and hear their stories. Glen was kind enough to post the following paragraph on Arbita’s website:

Beyond Job Boards on CompassionateHR Blog Talk Radio

Glenn Gutmacher
Arbita’s Glenn Gutmacher and recruiting industry guru Gerry Crispin are the guests on the next edition of the popular online radio show, Compassionate HR, hosted by Margo Rose (also known as HRMargo). The topic will be “Beyond Job Boards”, the methods behind the popular webinar developed by Glenn and Shally that help job-seekers expand their methods for finding full-time or project work by using completely free online methods. Gerry is involved because he invited Glenn to present the webinar for the alumni association of his alma mater, Stevens Institute of Technology (one of several universities whose alumni associations have raved about Glenn and this webinar). Together, they will talk about this innovative example of how world-class recruiting research / sourcing methods can be flipped to benefit the job-seeker community — techniques that are 100% free to job-seekers to implement — in a way that scales better than 1-on-1 career counseling (though that’s very important work, too!) and open the discussion to other ways that recruiters can give back as well.

Login on Monday, March 22 at 7:30pm US Eastern Daylight Time / 4:30pm US Pacific to listen and/or ask your questions at

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/comphr