It seems to me the odds of posting a job on LinkedIn resulting in just a handful of candidates are near nill — assuming of course it is a real job that pays real money and not a get rich quick scheme. I would bet a wad of money on that and I don’t generally bet my green. In fact, in 2011 — when the US average number of resumes received per opening is 200 , I’m trying to figure out what would prompt LinkedIn to ‘guarantee’ only 10 applicants?

I don’t expect LinkedIn will have a queue of refund requests, considering its wimpy and almost comical wager.  I do think they made a brand management error in not showing some confidence in their services and should have upped the ante to be at the very least closer to the national average.

What guarantee do you think LinkedIn should have made?

At first thought the concept of having conversations with all the players involved seems like a simple no brainer. However, generally we’re so focused on our niche areas of expertise and professional intelligence we tend to guard industry and insider information closely and not think to invite others around the table for coffee.

But not Paul, that’s not his style. He plans to get candidates involved and talking about their job searches, recruiters about the industry and employers about their expectations. Chatting with him he said that one of his professional highlights is memories of when he was recruiting and would get a rush every time an applicant was made a job offer and accepted. He said it wasn’t just because he made money but because he had a hand in giving someone a fresh start in a position that they really wanted.

He has a lot of questions to ask, kind of reminds me of Larry King’s style. Ask questions, sit back, listen and learn. Questions like:

What has happened to full life cycle recruiting (recruiting has become like a production line)?
Why are candidates the forgotten equation in everything?
Why are people judged immediately because of what a social media profile says or what they look like?
Have Baby Boomers spoiled their Gen Y children to a point that most can’t find employment after graduation because they don’t have any prior work experience?
Is the recruiting field over-saturated?
Should recruiters be credentialed (with something other than SPHR or PHR) like used to have to be in NJ when it was mandatory for recruiters to pass a state test?

Whoa… those are some heavy questions for contemplation and discourse. I’ve been invited to be a guest on November 3rd to discuss one of today’s hottest recruiting topics, social media v.s. picking up the phone. Sounds intellectual, I like it.

When Paul started his new business he said that from day one the company pledged to give a percentage of earnings to charities helping people less fortunate and unemployed. It’s posted on the recruiterreqs.com website that they are part of the Agents Paying Forward Network. Visit the site and on the related links tab you’ll find there are a number of helpful networks for both recruiters and job seekers. I expect to see The Ex-Recruiter posted there very soon!

The Ex-Recruiter debuts live October 20 at 12:00p.m. EST with a half hour introduction. The weekly show moves to a 1 hour time slot on October 27th from 12:00p.m. to 1:00p.m. Up and coming episodes feature Candidate Uproar with guests  Janice and Jeremy Worthington, Job Search Coaches,   Gen Y advocate, J.T. O’Donnell and in case you didn’t catch it above, yours truly.

Good luck to Paul Paris on his new venture and be sure to call in with your questions and comments!

Career paths can be amazing journeys and I wanted to know how a law school graduate ends up with the dream of having the the premier information source for college students, grads and recent graduates who are seeking employment, continuing education and business opportunities. He graciously agreed to an interview..

SR: I was a law clerk for a year with a trial court and had been hired for an appellate court clerkship the second year but I decided to accelerate my plans by going into business a lot sooner than five to seven years after graduation. I had figured that I’d practice law for the experience and then either start my own business or join someone else’s but I didn’t like what the practice of law was doing to some of my friends and I was a lot more excited about the world of business than the world of law so I let the appellate court judge know that I wasn’t going to show up, he hired a replacement, and I started my business part-time while I was completing my trial court clerkship.

I wondered what type of internship experience he had in college and what he thought of it looking back.

SR: I had a number of career-related positions but virtually no one had “internships.” It just wasn’t a term that was used that much back in the 1980’s. One of the best jobs that I had was after my sophomore year when I spent four months working as a highly paid temp in London. It was my job to help a national retailer that had virtually no computers figure out how to computerize its management compensation review system. They wanted to formalize the process to make it more fair and figured that it was the logical time to computerize that portion of their business so I created a Lotus 1–2-3 database with loads of easy-to-use macros so their secretaries could keep it up-to-date and I trained them on how to do that.

Working so closely with institutions of higher education that are concerned about placement for their students, I asked Steven his thoughts on how the average career services office on campus meets the needs of students seeking meaningful internships.

SR: Unfortunately, the average career services office does not come close to meeting the needs of the vast majority of its students because the vast majority of students never give the office a chance. Nationwide, only about 15 percent of students even step foot into their career service office and I’ve heard estimates that fewer than five percent actually find internships or jobs upon graduation through their career service office. The problem is much more with the students than the offices as the offices tend to be staffed with dedicated, well trained, and professional people but they’re fighting a losing battle in trying to lead that horse to water and make it drink.

Living and breathing the transition from college to career, I wanted Steven’s opinion of what they could do better.

SR: I would like to see career service offices return to becoming placement offices. If they don’t, I suspect that within a decade many colleges will outsource that function to outplacement agencies like Lee Hecht Harrison. It will be cheaper and I think that the students will be more likely to use a service like that in part because their parents will recognize the value better.

From law school to career development and transition, there had to be a path that led Steven to collegerecruiter.com. It turns out that his entrepreneurial spirit developed early on, as a student.

SR: I created a small business in college that published a map for my school. I generated the revenues through the sale of advertising around the borders. I then resurrected that business after graduating from law school. To diversify revenues, I added an employment magazine in four major markets across the country in 1995 and then the Internet came along so we added a web site in 1996. That gradually took over the business so by 2000 we had stopped publishing the maps and magazines.

After 14 years in the business, 9 of them exclusively internet based, I was curious to know the impact CollegeRecruiter.com has on college students and recent graduates from Steven’s perspective.

SR: CollegeRecruiter.com is one of the valuable tools available to college students searching for internships and recent graduates searching for entry-level jobs and other career opportunities. We help hundreds of thousands of students and grads each month better prepare themselves for the job hunting process and their careers as well as help match them up with leading employers.

Finally, I really wanted to know the vision for the future of the company and its product. Could the leading job board for college students hunting for internships and recent graduates looking for entry level jobs and other career opportunities continue to innovate and evolve?

SR: I would like to see CollegeRecruiter.com be widely recognized by those in college recruiting as the dominant college job board and I believe that we will get there within a few years because we focus on the needs and wants of our candidate and employer users AND we’re continually adding and improving the tools we make available to both groups. Most job boards are stuck in this rut of selling job postings and resume searching and very little else. We sell job postings but it is far from our biggest product by revenue and we stopped selling resume searching 1.5 years ago to protect the candidates using our site from identity theft and other such issues.

Just for fun I wanted to see how Steven would craft his career into a Twitter resume… just for the heck of it.

SR: Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, the leading job board for college students and recent grads.

Many thanks to Steven for sharing his interesting career path and vision for the future.

Cyber-vetting is an important area of study for employment law and organizational communication because of its potential to affect identity(ies), work and organizational practices, including selection and socialization.

Cyber-vetting is a process by which organizational representatives use freely accessible information gathered from online tools or sites such as search engines or social networking communities to gather information about (potential) employees.

What Recruiter or organization wouldn’t want to save time and money and have a third eye?

Having insight above and beyond a background check has always been a painstaking process. Calls to employment references no longer yield the results employers look for in our litigious society. Employers are too afraid to speak and all you’re likely to get are dates of employment, title and possibly a salary.

However, it’s not illegal to ask an employer or ex-coworker about the work ethic, quality of work, and any other habits you would care to know about before further considering a candidate. So, what’s the difference in getting the information from a voice over the phone or digitally? In my opinion, not much. If a Hiring Manager or HR type does decide to spill the beans of undesirability you’re liable to get a dose of subjectivity that will leave you with your eyebrow raised just as high as might the hairy scary things you find staring you in the face on your monitor.

However, your monitor isn’t likely to have duct tape on it like the Manager’s lips do.

What’s important is what you do with the information you learn.

Recently 2 very telling studies were released. Peopleclick produced a complimentary eBook, Social Networks and Employment Law, by Dr. Lisa Harpe of the Peopleclick Research Institute and CareerBuilder partnered with Harris Interactive to survey over 2600 hiring managers and HR professionals about their use of social media.

While I recommend you take the time to view both studies, in a nutshell as they pertain to cyber-vetting, they both confirm what we already know. It’s happening. In fact, CareerBuilder.com reported an increase in Hiring Managers pre-screening applicants from 22% last year to 45% in 2009 and another 11% planning to start in the near future.

So why the controversy about cyber-vetting?

Take a look at your organization and where within it you find the least progressive, most conservative element?

While some are maverick cybernauts in the Wild Wild West of social media recruiting, the majority are voyeurs holding back, peeking out from behind a thinly veiled recruiting cloud waiting for corporate attorneys to give the go ahead or the first publicized lawsuits to put a complete cabosh on cyber-vetting.

Have no fear.….

In the U.S., Federal anti-discrimination regulations provide the guidelines you currently follow in your recruiting and hiring practices, right? Apart from providing for what they are intended to do, guarantee fair hiring practices, the cool thing about these regulations is that they do not stipulate how you attract or screen candidates, just that you treat them all the same. Just like you do now, if you are still using more traditional methods.

To ensure you don’t do something potentially career damaging, unfair to to candidates and illegal, no matter how you source, attract, engage and screen candidates, follow these laws enforced by the Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to the fullest extent.

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act – prohibits discrimination based on race, color, sex,
  national origin or religion. This federal law covers private employers, state and local
  governments and educational institutions with at least 15 employees. Protections
  have been extended to include discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, sex
  stereotyping and sexual harassment.
• Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) – prohibits employment discrimination
  based on disability. Employers may not inquire about disability prior to an offer of
  employment and must make reasonable accommodations to persons with disabilities.
• Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) – prohibits employment
  discrimination based on age, particularly protecting individuals 40 and older.

Federal Contractors additionally need to adhere to this law, enforced by the Office of Federal Contract
Compliance Programs (OFCCP).

• Executive Order 11246 – prohibits discrimination based on race, color, sex, national
  origin or religion. Also requires federal contractors to monitor their personnel
  practices and take affirmative action where indicated.

If you are not working under U.S. law, it would be ultra prudent to check out the regulations in Timbuktu or wherever you happen to be. I don’t know, I feel compelled to say that. It’s a CYA thing.

Optional digression: Do you think there is benefit to checking out Tahitian employment law? If I’m blogging tomorrow about cabana boys bringing exotic tropical drinks to my hammock strung between 2 palm trees you’ll know that osmotic transport is not strictly endemic to science, it has practical applications  too.

Now that job seekers know that we’re out there looking at them (and I don’t believe that even one doesn’t), many make tremendously good use of social media to market themselves as viable and desirable candidates. In fact, Recruiters and HR are out there tweeting and blogging tips on how to maximize a job seeker’s social media presence.  Are Recruiters and Hiring Managers to ignore these gems too, or just the transgressions? To see one you must see the other. Why would you think it’s OK to attract and source but not look?

There may be things you are not thinking of in regard to documentation. For example, if you are asking candidates to friend you on Facebook and connect with you on LinkedIn, are you documenting that? Aha! It’s a form of communication and just like you would document phone calls and save any other electronic communication with the candidate this isn’t any different.

Tip: Screen captures are a lot easier than typing.

Read the reports and do some searching on cyber-vetting, check with your corporate attorney, find out how companies with corporate policies on this subject are managing it. In other words, educate yourself to CYA, and protect your company and candidates.

Have fun, be fair, and check out socialseek, a cool new downloadable app I recently came across and like.

P.S. Thanks to Carmen Hudson, aka. @peopleshark for the suggestion to blog on this topic.

Students and alumni of 5 local colleges and universities were invited to attend. I’m really happy with the 329 booth views. The result was 29 resumes submitted. I reviewed them and selected 17 to respond by virtual interview to the 3 screening questions I selected.

Frankly, I’m baffled at the fact only 1 student submitted a completed interview! Most of the other companies and organizations participating didn’t go as far as I did with the webcam and whole 9 yards, they just put up a few paragraphs and called it a day.  They’ll just collect resumes and call applicants back the old fashioned way.

My excitement has been kind of deflated. I was encouraged by the virtual job fair company that set it up that all college students have webcams on their laptops and the response would be great.  I did have a voice mail from someone who said she tried but had difficulty uploading her video responses. I called her back and left her a message and it ended there with phone tag.

There is a contact us button on the site but no help desk number for immediate assistance. Are applicants having issues and giving up or what?

Have you participated in one of these as an employer or job seeker and what was your experience? I need to know if I scared away the applicants away with my video or if there’s an issue. Help!