I decided to put a spin on the event to provide added value.

You see, we have local chapters of some great professional associations that many of us belong to, but the truth is that HR, Recruiters (corporate and 3rd party), Workforce Development Pros, Employment Specialists and College Career Services, we never get together across disciplines to meet one another and network. It seems it’s always for a meeting, seminar or conference and it’s difficult in those environments to find time to establish rapport, build relationships and learn how we can help one another.

And, we can improve how we work together and share best practices and resources… we can have fun doing it too.

So, won’t you join me and the other enthusiastic employment professionals who have already jumped on this incredible opportunity for networking and a cash bar? You are welcome and encouraged to forward this invitation to your network – to your co-workers, peers, colleagues, bosses, reports, wherever they may be – if they can crawl, walk, drive, fly or row in they will be most welcome!

Join us Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at River Grille in Plains on the deck overlooking the river.

Please RSVP and if there is something you would like to add to the event, don’t hesitate to let me know!

“I left a message and no one called me back.”

“They said I would hear feedback on my interview in 2 weeks and it’s been 4.”

These are the comments frequently heard from job applicants and candidates. Sure, it’s an employer’s market and a gazillion people apply for every position out there. Many of those who apply have no applicable experience and you feel they have wasted not only their own time but yours as well.

Sign of the times, people are desperate. They think if your company is hiring for that position maybe one is coming up they would qualify for and they’re doing the smart thing by getting their resume to you now. You know, being proactive, beating the crowd, showing initiative. Most people who aren’t recruiters don’t know how it really works and that secretly (or not so secretly) you are cursing them, calling them idiots for applying to jobs they’re not qualified for.

It’s often brutal on the job seeker’s end; the hunt, the wait, the rejection… and I have observed on many occasions, a holier than thou, I’m in charge here and your future depends on me attitude - from recruiters, that is far from professional. We could be on the other end of an ATS in a heartbeat.

We should always remember that…

Yes, it is highly irritating when someone overkills with follow-up to the point of being within 1/10 of an inch of being an official stalker. It’s horrid when someone files an unfounded EEOC claim of discrimination because they were not selected. It’s worthy of hazardous duty pay when a candidate didn’t deal well with being turned down and becomes verbally abusive or goes off the deep end of desperation and confronts you loudly in public, keys your car, or any number of illegal acts of vengeance (which always provide ample validation of your decision making skills).

But, none of that should desensitize us to the point of dehumanizing a process which should be just the opposite; engaging.

Here are 5 simple customer service tips to help ensure you’re not hurting people or the employer brand you’re representing:

Screening calls is fine, if you don’t want to speak with the person, send an email — but send the email.

In your communication use time lines so applicants know when they’ll hear by and that if they don’t it’s because they weren’t selected.

Be organized enough to use calendar reminders, post-it notes — whatever — to remind you it’s time to make those updates you promised.

Tone — Don’t ever show or express frustration or irritability with applicants.

Remember to thank candidates for thinking of the company as a prospective employer.

Check out what Microsoft does to make candidates feel special when they come in for an interview in their candidate experience lobby. Just imagine how relaxed and psyched for an interview one must be after a hands on experience playing with all the toys. Granted, not every company has that to offer. But, even a warm greeting and scrapbook of good times in the lobby to provide a glimpse of the culture is better than staring at 4 walls.

What candidate experience tips do you have to share?

Guest Post by Peter Lanc

Wedding day blues and getting a job what’s the difference? Not a lot…. Aren’t we all looking for superior performance?

I was speaking to a friend recently who is getting married.

She asked how she could know what it would be like after got married. I told her it’s a bit like my recruiting job. The candidates look great but how can I know what are they really like?

It’s all good up until the day, kind of like a probationary period, but as they say current and past performance is no determination of future success!

That’s got us thinking, so off to the bar we went for cocktails to muse over this delicate  topic. Over a few drinks we continued to ponder what would it be like to ask a soon to be spouse the following questions:

1. How can I be sure that you are who you say you are and that you’ll stay that way?
2. What will you be like when I am having a baby or mother in law troubles– will you stick around or move on?
3. Will you always remain as a high performer or will you (like the Who tune) ffffffade away….
4. How can I know you will treat my friends right even if you don’t like them and not have emotional outbursts and cause relationship problems?
5. Will you continue to put me at the center of your world and not go off with your buddies all the time?
6. Will you stay the course, not get bored and go somewhere else?

Oh and what about references!! That caused some chuckles I can tell you. Now would that not be something… Can you see their face when you say, “Give me 3 names of people who you have dated so I can check you out, I want to see how you were with them!!!”

Can you imagine the response? Well that’s not fair they will never give me a good reference because….. etc etc.

There were even more questions we thought of. Oh what fun we had, the more we had to drink the better and more incisive and personal the questions were that we came up with. Oh boy, well maybe some of us do this and some of us simply think it over cocktails, with our buddies and girlfriends.

I guess a job is a job yet it is much more and how many take the same time and thought over it as my friend who was getting married, and oh my those references!

Who would you not want your prospective employer to ask a reference of?  Just think, who are we really and for how long?  How many masks do we have and what shadow do we really cast? What are we really like? I mean really…

Its all so important, just like a marriage we have to be the right fit… all of the time!

Blake Cannon on some of the most pressing issues workforce facing military veterans from his most recent blog post:

No Skin in the Game — Why?

Here are a few of the immediate problems that need to be addressed right away

• There are an enormous amount of recently separated Veterans that have entered the workforce and there will be more on the way with the upcoming withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
• Most companies do not currently have a defined Veteran Hiring Program
• Companies hire differently today than they did after any other major military conflict
• Most organizations are utilizing Internal recruiters who typically have zero military experience (and that’s OK)
• External Recruiters – Companies typically will not pay a fee for Military Personnel with mixed backgrounds and experience – they do not consider Veterans fee eligible
• Hiring from websites does not work for Veterans
• Companies and the Public have a good outward message for supporting Veterans but they are not as a whole, willing to put any real skin in the game…
• A veterans true experience & knowledge is not always conveyed to employers correctly.
• Assessment Tools not available that relate to Military Personnel

Blake Cannon
Disabled Veteran, US Army and a Proud Recruiter!
blake.cannon@recruitveterans.com
@BlakeCannon

For instance, there once was a woman named Reina.….. It’s your lucky day for I will spare you the very gory details.

It’s not a common name in the US and it had been a few years years since I had been subjected to it. About 7 years ago as a call center manager I received a calendar appointment to interview a “Reyna”. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Immediately, all I could think of was there was no way I was going to deal with that even though I knew with 100% certainty that it was not the same person.

I got up and took a walk.  I needed air. And as I walked I talked with other personalities that reside in my mind and as we conversed and sorted it all out we came to the conclusion it was important to give this person a chance.

It’s not the same Reina so what are you worried about? She doesn’t even spell it the same way. You can’t judge a person by her name, don’t be ridiculous. What if you dismiss her because of something in your past that nothing to do with her, miss out on a great hire and do her an injustice? Just get over it.

I took some deep breaths, convinced myself to do the right thing and accepted the interview. Reyna turned out to have very high performance reviews over the next 5 years and in most respects really was a model employee.

This is a true story! I’m glad I recognized it wouldn’t be fair to judge someone on something that wouldn’t be performance related. Had I allowed my personal bias over a name to influence my decision it would have been a very big mistake.

What personal bias have you had to deal with? Was it difficult to recognize it existed? How did you overcome it?

How many job seekers even know what gatekeepers are and is it reasonable to expect they should?

I don’t think so…

Would you expect someone who focused on the job they had the past 10, 15, 20 years or more to know how to look for a job in the web 2.0 world? I’m talking about nurses, accountants, quality assurance analysts, paralegals, draftsmen, and even those in HR professions like benefits specialists, coordinators, etc. In fact, a lot of people do not use use the Internet, and many not even computers, in their jobs. Think manufacturing, transportation, construction and agriculture to name a few of the very important and fundamental industries that make the world what it is.

While so many of us are caught up in the “ether” of social media, the fact is, many more are not quite there yet and we don’t have a right to demand they participate or learn to love it.

I sent a co-worker a Google doc so we could work on it collaboratively. She sent an email back saying she absolutely refused to get create a gmail account because she does not want to “have an Internet presence”. She is a talented professional and spreadsheet whiz who simply refuses to go online. Her job never requires Internet use and those times she does use it she surfs anonymously.

One could argue that if she wants to move ahead in the world she should do what a few thousand recruiters using social media want. But, is it a reasonable expectation?

Another co-worker has flat out told me the Internet will be the downfall of mankind. I went in his office one day to show him the animoto photo video I created of a recent event. His computer did not have the required software installed to view it. His comment was that he only uses Microsoft Office products on the hard drive and has never used the Internet. He does not have a personal computer at home. He used to work for IBM.

This isn’t uncommon. I manage a human resources task force made of HR professionals in the community who, with the exception of one member, are leery and confused about social media. Very few of the companies they work for have a social media presence and none of them are involved, even those who are generalists and recruiting is a part of their job. The most they do is use major job boards.

I’m assisting a grad student doing her thesis project. She needed to make a contact with someone at a particular research company. I suggested she search my LinkedIn contacts and I would make an introduction. She asked what LinkedIn was.

I could go on and on. In real life is a different demographic than in the social media sphere. Online applications and assessments are scary to a lot of people.

This brings me back to cover letters and the recent dialog regarding them. Justin Hillier makes a case that the best way is the video interview in his Social Recruiting 360 blog in response to my post Standing Out in the Crowd, on the art and purpose of cover letters.

Two days ago I received a resume and cover letter from a downsized 15 year VP of a bank. I searched him on LinkedIn, he wasn’t there. I searched him on Google and there were some mentions of him in corporate newsletters. That was it. I doubt suggesting he ditch his finely constructed explanatory cover letter in lieu of a video production is the practical way to go at the moment.

What do you think?

There was conversation on best practices, the influence and use of social media, the candidate experience, how to make more money, and how the industry is changing. That’s right.

I’m not going to Sumserize the content or Boorman you to death with details.. Just know that more than 50% of the unconference content was about the imminent change coming down the pike created by efficiencies brought on by technology and client expectations.

Before the unconference I blogged on Vulcan recruiting.  The unconference further served to validate the post. Recruiters will become holistic practitioners, adopt new skills, consult on  how to attract, hire, onboard and retain human capital. They will continue to drive HR technology and innovate its use.

Practitioners caught up in the daily grind, fabulous at what they do but not in tune with new tools  and expectations that are being driven by the economic upheavals of the day, are at a disadvantage because they will not be prepared for new recruiting. Just a phone and a contact list quickly are becoming “not the only tools you need”.

Get on board the change train and enjoy the ride.

Dorothy Beach, MBA CIR PHR got me thinking. She posted a question on the discussion board of the LinkedIn Social Media Recruiting Group asking for opinions on the effect of social media on recruiting in the far future, 5–20 years down the virtual highway. My mind immediately took a journey to Wish List Lane and Technology Square. If you repeat something enough times and really believe it that makes it reality, right?

In my vulcanesque way of thinking, most everyone on Earth will be digitally literate and have their own domain which will seamlessly be linked to the various networks they choose to participate in. Job seekers and passive candidates  open to opportunities will be able to open their networks to candidate searches so they can be found. Job seekers will no longer need to proactively apply to openings.

Companies will conduct searches not job seekers. Recruiters will be consultants to companies hiring and perform more of a job profile / company fit identification role, write the job keywords and parameters and set up the newfangled ATS which will be on a cloud. Software will be coded to meet the requirements of highly specialized queries and it will crawl to find candidates profiles base on the distance you wish to search and import them into your database where you will be able to further refine your search. Boolean strings will be old fashioned and systems will be user intuitive and friendly.

Recruiters will narrow the candidate pool by refining matches and conducting 1st virtual screenings, recommend the top 3 candidates to hiring managers, co-conduct the interviews and assist in the decision making ad placement process. Recruiters, in their expanded consultant role may see new hires through their first 3 months taking an active role in the new onboarding process.

What’s your vision?

Johnny, you’re our star Admin Assistant and as part of your “other duties as assigned” I’m giving you a new project. I need to hire an Account Manager and we don’t have a budget to hire an agency to do it for us. You’re always on Facebook and Twitter, do some social networking and find me one…

Here is the job description. I have highlighted the keywords that are important.

Just set up a Facebook Fan Page — stream good stuff about the company, it’s free. Then, create a company Twitter account — tweet about it and search and follow similar people, be friendly and say good things about us, it’s free. Join some LinkedIn groups — post the job in the jobs sections, it’s free. Google free job boards — post it everywhere, they’re free.

Have the resumes sent to you and scan them for the keywords and 3 years of experience. Put the ones that match on my desk. I’ll review them and give the ones I like back to you to set up appointments for an interview.

Do a good job and I’ll take you out for pizza to that place you like down the street.

Does this sound far fetched to you?

The TechCrunch Europe post How free social media beat the recruitment consultants to death gives quite a blow by blow account of how companies are doing it. Though it may sting to read it at first, it brings up an excellent point for discussion.

“I think what the recruitment industry should take away from this is that prospective clients really can beat them at their own game, if they want to make the effort. The recruitment industry needs to recognise this and innovate… find ways of adding value… and justify/rationalise their proposition.”

Get out your value proposition.

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.