Webinar, After the Fall of Chimes
Didn’t mean to fall off the radar, but I have been dealing with a family medical situation that has been taking up quite a bit of time. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled blogging soon, including work on the VMS workgroup. My apologies to those who have been looking for updates and my heartfelt thanks for those who have e-mailed me well-wishes.
In the meantime, the Human Capital Institute and MyBizOffice are sponsoring a FREE webinar this afternoon on the Axium bankruptcy and its effect on the VMS industry. It’s this afternoon at 3pm Eastern.
You can register by clicking here.
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A thought on how job boards advertise
Someone brought me some swag yesterday from Careerbuilder.com promoting their spot for the Super Bowl. Millions of eyes will see the ad, but why do I get the feeling it’s going to be one of those is-your-boss-a-moron commercials?
Sure, there are people who leave their current jobs because they are unhappy with their current employers, but how many recruiters actually call candidates and ask them “do you hate your job?”
In my experience I actually get a bit turned off by a candidate when they start talking about how unhappy they are or how much they deserve but are not getting. Even worse if they start boss bashing.
So why subscribe to job boards that attract candidates this way?
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Housekeeping Notes
My blog has gone down off and on due to the amount of traffic that has come through in the last week.
You can subscribe to my blog as well through a feed reader which might be a faster alternative for some of you: Click here to subscribe to the feed.
I’m hoping to get the VMS Workgroup up and running by tomorrow. I do have a mailing list going. You can e-mail me or you can leave a comment if you’d like to get notified when that’s up.
I upgraded my Wordpress installation over the weekend and I might have missed something which is why you’re getting an error message when you submit a comment. Your comments are getting through though. Thank you.
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Hindsight
I was looking through my e-mails today and I couldn’t help but get reminded of this post. This post was prompted by one phone call from a VMS provider, who was a bit irritated that I was writing my VMS series.
I explained that I was just trying to open up a dialog and create a whitepaper for industry best practices. He shot me down and said “that’s noble, kid, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen.” He then proceeded to tell me that I was doing this because I’m coming from the agency side and I’m anti-VMS…and the VMS providers know what they’re doing…and trying to come up with best practices is just a futile attempt by agencies to resist the VMS trend.
While other VMS’s have been open to dialog (a lot have left comments on my list and some have e-mailed me offering to collaborate), this particular provider was ticked. I always wondered why that was.
He was a VP at the now-defunct ECG.
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Recruiting and social media
I went to the Lunch2.0 event yesterday at Netgear and was chatting a little bit with LinkedIn’s Community Evangelist Mario Sundar about social media and employment.
LinkedIn is becoming quite popular with recruiters these days because it allows them to tap into passive candidates who are not otherwise available on Monster or Dice. And as other social networking sites (MySpace, FaceBook, etc)become more mainstream with job seekers publishing more information in these sites, recruiters are also starting to tap into them not just as a resource for candidates, but also to research their candidates.
In addition to social networking sites, there are also new services popping up targeting the job seeker/recruiter market. A lot of them are designed to make the recruiting process more personable through the use of images, video and reference tools to allow the prospective employer to see the candidate beyond their skill set.
We already do this in recruiting. They are called in-person interviews. But social media allows recruiters/employers to see a more complete view of things that may not be mentioned in their resumes such as their personalities and communication skills before they even proceed to the interview, so in theory, shouldn’t social media be a valuable tool for recruiters?
In theory…yes. But in a litigious society, maybe not so.
Remember the old recruiting days when we used to toss out resumes that had pictures attached because employers didn’t want to be exposed to for racial, sex or age discrimination suits? Never mind that the photos were unsolicited? In the world of blogs, MySpace and FaceBook, pictures don’t have to be attached, they can be easily found via a simple Google search. If a candidate is not hired for some reason and a potential employer appears on that candidate’s site traffic report, can that person claim discrimination? “I applied for a job and employer A came to my blog, saw that I am Asian and decided not to hire me.” What about video resumes on YouTube or ResumeBook?
I mentioned this concern to Mario and he mentioned that this was actually one of the reasons LinkedIn members do not have the option to upload photos as part of their profiles — because the company recognizes that LinkedIn is used not just as a networking tool but also as a recruiting tool.
LinkedIn also has a recommendation tool that allows clients, partners, co-workers and bosses to comment about a person’s quality of work or credentials. I think this is a great tool because it allows recruiters to do a reference check before even possibly contacting a candidate. But as a former recruiter I seem to also remember widespread corporate policies prohibiting managers against giving references to former employees. Now…LinkedIn, despite it being a “professional” networking tool, is still a personal tool so I guess the point here is that social media definitely blurs the line between what is official and what is “personal.”
At the risk of being redundant, if recruiters/employers don’t find it on LinkedIn, it takes but two seconds to find it elsewhere.
I won’t offer any opinions here, other than to say that I am at a wait and see state. It would be interesting to see how the staffing and employment industry adapts to new trends in technology and social media.
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A contingent staffing-specific blog
There are over 9,000 (and counting) staffing firms in the nation yet there is very little online conversation happening about the industry. While some staffing firms are already involved in offline discussions and collaboration with each other, the majority are still in the “every man for himself” mindset. Some stick to it for completely valid reasons. The staffing industry is a fiercely competitive market.
In the meantime the communities we serve has evolved into something that highly values transparency and collective intelligence. Several years after blogging took off there are still very few blogs in circulation that relates to the staffing industry. Several years after Wikipedia was born, there is still a bare page that serves worthless information to someone who wants to learn about the staffing industry. I won’t go into details right now about why I think these are not good signs, but I will say that these show that while everyone can agree that there is a ton to talk about, we aren’t discussing it either.
And this is why I am opening up this blog. To discuss my thoughts on what is going on in the staffing industry and hopefully lead the conversation.
If you made it here, thanks for coming and please excuse the dust. I have smoke coming out of my head from all the issues I’d like to open up for discussion here. Stay tuned.
Oh. And speaking of collective intelligence, I’m actively looking for other staffing industry blogs (I’ve been looking, and looking, and looking. There are plenty of HR blogs, but virtually none specifically for contingent staffing) to link to on my brand spanking new blogroll. Please leave your suggestions in the comments. I did find contingentstaffing.org. Unfortunately they have not updated since May of 2006. I’m going to read through the archives and try to figure out what happened.
Lisa out.
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About This Blog
Lisa Amorao is currently the Marketing Programs Manager for ATR International, a Silicon Valley-based contingent staffing firm.
Lisa has held roles in recruiting and sales before moving on to her current role in Marketing.
The opinions expressed here are her personal opinions and does not reflect those of her employer or any of its clients.
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