Recruiter

Are you using the internet to try and recruit staff? Or perhaps you are simply looking to research the competition? In today’s economy everyone is clamouring for recognition online be it through a Twitter account, using Facebook, LinkedIn, or through search databases.
 
It is much easier for you as an employer to get the dirt on your potential future employees and your competitors if they are using these accounts – even if they don’t realise it. There are many out there who have lost that crucial job because of a flippant comment on a social media site.
 
More on this at How Employers Screen Candidates on Social Media (Infographic).
 

The Swedes are brilliant recruiters. Even when they are down under and use an advertising agency. In this case The Monkeys (agency) helped the Sydney, Australia IKEA store recruit new employees with an innovative method.

The concept

Career instructions were printed and placed inside the famous IKEA flat packs. Customers literally delivered the mailer to themselves. They could then also share it with friends and family. Not only did it talk directly to those who love the brand, it created a whole new media channel â the flat packs themselves.

The results

The result was no less than 4285 applications filled with 280 of those hired, all the while the project incurred no cost of its own. Very clever idea and on top of the new hires, it certainly got IKEA and their agency lots of free exposure. A very good recruitment case study in other words. Perhaps something for Home Depot, B&Q, Homebase and Brico Depot to emulate?

I say tomato, you say tomaydo. I spell potato, you spell potatoe. Winston Churchill famously said that Britain and America were two nations divided by a common language. So common in fact, that 'creative' is the no. 1 buzzword on both US and UK LinkedIn profiles.

 
But what about our favorite topic hera at The Undercover Recruiter, the recruiters themselves? What do they have in common across the pond and what differs? Thanks to our friends at Bullhorn and via our friends at 4Mat we'd like to publish an infographic that addresses just this.

 
One striking difference is of course the fact that the UK has lots more recruiters in proportion to its population. We would venture to guess that half of the recruiters in the UK are based in Greater London and serving the UK, EMEA and sometimes the world.

There’s no question the software industry is growing by leaps and bounds, and with it comes a need for top software talent. As a result, the recruitment industry has grown dramatically, and over time, has come to require more complicated tools (from the likes of LinkedIn and more) that make it easier to track down candidates. Yet this evolution has become a double-edged sword, as it has created an industry plagued by non-technical “headhunters” who rely on “spray and pray” techniques to find the needles in the haystacks.

Sounds peachy right? Well, maybe not for one important side of this equation. Today’s technical talent is faced with a barrage of unsolicited, unpersonalized and poorly targeted emails that seems to be pissing them off. Some report up to 12 emails and voicemails a day, and others are even contacted through their work phones– all by headhunters they have never talked to, and seemingly don’t even take the time to look at their CV.

If sentiment on HackerNews is any indication of the state of things, developers and designers feel so inundated with poorly-targeted and unsolicited volume that 54% of developers on HackerNews say they would avoid recruiters at all cost, 44% said they would use them but don’t expect much, and 2% said they were really useful. Impressive [data by GroupTalent]. In general, these builders don't want to deal with the bad signal to noise ratio so they say they usually ignore them completely. That isn’t always as easy as it sounds...

Jorgen Sundberg of social recruiting specialists Link Humans in London recently shared his pearls of wisdom on LinkedIn and recruitment for the new version of Recruitment Juice.

In this first video, watch him talk about the main do's and don'ts in using the Recommendation Engine on LinkedIn:

- Focus on decision makers within client companies: avoid mates recommandations, back to back recommandations or indebted recommandations.

- Don't have more than 5 to 10 recommandations! Although, if you live in North America, volume of recommandations has proven to be important.

Don't hesitate to sign up for Recruitment Juice Lite for free, where you can find more of those episodes and really great content for recruiters!

For more on LinkedIn Recommendations, check out How Business Recommendations on LinkedIn Can Help Your Job Search.