In Part 1 of this two-part Blog, The Sourcerer provided ideas and suggestions concerning the kinds of information you might want to collect and assess from candidates applying on-line to an open job.  Once the data you need has been identified and collected from each candidate, it becomes necessary to weigh the information provided from the candidate to determine who most closely matches the credentials of the “ideal person” for your position.

To handle this correctly, you need to indicate the relationship of each data point you collect against the answer you have judged as “ideal” for the candidate you want to hire.  For example, if you indicate that a college education is “required” for this position, every candidate with a college education is judged appropriate for the job, while any candidate with less than a 4-year degree would not receive credit for this specific attribute. 

 For every educational need, every skill, every past job or industry request, every type of background or past working experience you believe to be important, the candidate applying needs to be automatically judged, against your needs and against all the other candidates who are applying.

 If you have a number of “desired” attributes, you need to provide your screening system with a score (use of a 1-10 scoring with 1 equaling “Not Very Important” and 10 equaling “Extremely Important” works very well).  Candidates who score close to or above whatever number you select are rated higher than candidates who score less than the number you chose.

 As the candidates’ responses are weighed and scored by this automated screening system, they should be available to you for viewing with those who most closely match your criteria appearing first.  Every time a new candidate applies, the system must “re-shuffle” the results so the candidates appear in order from most to least qualified based on your criteria.

 When you have an “avalanche of candidates” for a job opening, the scoring and listing of every candidate who applies from closest to least close match can save your HR Staff a ton of time by significantly reducing the need to read unqualified resumes.  Reviewing the answers to text questions of the candidates who are strong matches can totally eliminate tedious, time-consuming per-screening calls.  

 A high-quality on-line screener should have additional options available as well such as:

• Ability to ask “Yes/No” questions such as “Are you currently legally able to work in the United States?”
• Option of asking questions that require text answers so you can get an idea of the candidate’s ability to express him/herself in writing.
• Ability to ask every candidate about behavioral traits and to rate themselves on any specific trait, using a 1-10 scale to help determine the candidate’s potential cultural fit in the job and/or in your company
• Option of attaching a resume for the prospective employer to review
• Ability to review each candidate’s submissions in summary or in detail
• Ability to print and forward candidates to others in the company for further review
• Ability to place candidates into folders for further processing
• Option to select and send follow-up e-mails to candidates singularly or in groups

 There is a great deal of thought and planning that must be part of a comprehensive screening system to give the user maximum flexibility and a tool that will service the requirements of the company regardless of the job that must be filled.  And to perform these tasks at a cost that most small to mid-sized companies can easily afford.

This time it is The Sourcerer who has a question and could use your input.  Is Social Media interfering with your business?

I haven’t been involved with the use of social media for recruiting candidates and business relationship building  for all that long now (Talmax does now automatically feed to both Facebook and Twitter).

I think the idea of using the relationships that exist on the social media sites to “touch” people who might not be currently looking to change jobs is an extremely useful idea.  It can save an employer a ton of recruiting dollars and identify candidates not available through traditional recruiting methods.

I think that the use of social media sites to develop additional business contacts works very well…perhaps too well.

I think that’s great, and useful and smart and… here’s my problem… since I’ve become more active in the use of social media , my inbox has been “attacked” by a multiplicity of people and vendors trying to get my attention, promoting everything from logo hand-outs to accounting software.

My inbox is becoming so inundated with e-mail, I’m missing the really important messages I WANT to read and I’m spending over 2 hours a day wading through messages and not having the time I need to read those publications I really want to follow.

If that’s true for The Sourcerer, I’m pretty certain others are experiencing the same problem. And that says nothing about the enormous number of e-mails that go directly to my SPAM and Junk Mail boxes.

Partially because I’m in the developmental stage of business with Talmax and partially because I’m still attempting to learn more and more about social media, I don’t really want to ignore a message if it might contain useful information.  And so, my Blog readers, I’m asking you for solutions that might help alleviate this problem.

Is social media interfering with your business?  If so, what are you doing about it?

A reader recently wrote the following to The Sourcerer:

“I’m responsible for hiring and I’m finding that I am bombarded with stacks of resumes very few of which meet my hiring criteria. What can I do to attract better candidates who more closely match my needs?”

You know it is really easy to make mistakes when you are sourcing candidates…unless you begin the process prepared.  Attached is a brief guide for managers to help with your hiring process.

In summary, The Sourcerer recommends that you:

• Create a hiring plan that really works
• Prepare a compelling job description that will attract the talent you need
• Control your recruiting costs and maximize effective candidate sourcing

  This article will also offer solutions to the mistakes that lead to spending too much on your recruiting efforts and offer ways to avoid hiring the wrong person because you have attracted the wrong candidates.

 Click here to read more.

 The Sourcerer received the following inquiry last week…”We are having trouble attracting candidates to our company’s career site.  Can you help? ”        

 You bet!  To solve this problem you first need to take a hard look at your current career site. The purpose of a well-designed Career Site is to save your company money. The money you save comes from cutting your recruiting costs when you have open jobs to fill. To attract the quality and quantity of candidates you need you must have a career site that:

• Attracts the caliber of people you need to hire
• Provides the kind of information that candidates want to see
• Generates sufficient traffic to satisfy your sourcing needs

 A carefully crafted Career Site can attract high caliber talent while cutting your recruiting expenses by 50% or more. 

Read more…

The owner of a mid-sized marketing company recently asked if I thought posting jobs on major job boards like Monster or CareerBuilder had become a waste of time and money.  His e-mail said: “With so many people unemployed right now, I’m afraid I’m going to get inundated with unwanted and unqualified resumes if I post an opening on one of these gigantic job boards” Do I agree?

 The Sorcerer’s answer: No and here is why…

 Media guru and recruitment consultant, John Zappe, recently quoted job posting distributor, eQuest, who said that CareerBuilder and Monster are still the most requested sites for advertising job openings. Companies looking for people use these sites because that is where the vast majority of job seekers register.

Even though a candidate may sign-up on specialized and/or local job boards, that same candidate will register with one or more of the major Job Boards to be certain that he/she has the maximum amount of exposure to potential employers.

 That means that candidates, both talented and not so talented, will respond to an appealing job posting, often in significant numbers.  Recruiters, Hiring Managers and HR professionals learn to dread the affliction known as “resume fatigue” when it becomes necessary to review a large number of candidate resumes for an open position.

 Is there a solution for “resume fatigue”? 

You bet, it’s called Talmax.  Check it out!