My banter is worn out from being on the phone with [name removed to protect the guilty] today, hammering home the client/candidate control idea. I tell him that we don’t have control, but we disagree.

Having been on the phone with the same guilty party, having had the same discussion with the man, I knew just what she was saying. You might have the illusion of control, but it is a diaphanous as the most transparent negligée. What you can have, in fact, what you want, is an open honest relationship without any games!

One of my problems with the current thing we call capitalism is that it doesn’t allow for the idea of a trade as opposed to a sale. Someone has to profit, which means someone has to lose. I am a big fan of the works of Robert Anton Wilson - he talks about it, via the guise of Hagbard Celine, in the Illuminati! Trilogy:

In the same mathematically reciprocal way, profit implies loss. If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trade: neither of us profits and neither of us loses. But if we exchange unequal goods, one of us profits and the other loses. Mathematically. Certainly.

By: gingerjoys

So, first you’re saying, wait, didn’t this start out about Client/Candidate Control? Then, you’re saying are you some sort of Hippie Pinko Commie Socialist Liberal? The answer to both those questions is maybe. My point is we aren’t selling a product, we are offering a service. Our expert level skills are the “product” doing something someone else cannot. We get paid for the search, for the process management and for the delivery on the Start Date. (Oh, and 90 days after on average). Who profits? Ideally everyone, from the candidate who has a new opportunity, to the client who has someone to perform needed tasks, to you earning your commission and/or salary. There is nothing wrong with profit when a service is what’s for sale as there is nothing tangible, noting physical that we can define value by. There are many things wrong about how some people try and make a profit on services though. Which is how we get back to the idea of control, both client control and candidate control. If you are “losing control” of either side, well, you have already failed. You aren’t offering a service, you’re pimping a product. You aren’t giving equal value, you’re selling a lemon and calling it a Cadillac. We deal with Human Beings, not Automatons.

With that in mind, what can we do as the middle person, to make sure everything goes smooth? Easy like Sunday morning is far different then CONTROL. Here are a few things I suggest:

1. To Thine Ownself be True: With clients and candidates always be yourself. We all have different masks we wear, we are all our own Zelig, that’s is part of being someone who can live in society. However, try to be as close to who you REALLY are, as you can be. It won’t get everyone to be your friend but personal connections make the difference, not just in recruiting, but in all relationships. Plus, Bullshit Stinks and is very noticeable in mixed company
2. O this learning, what a thing it is!: Listen and Learn, then look it up and come back with questions. You are hunting a skill set you have never touched before… Call someone whose resume matches and ASK. Admitting ignorance is the first step to gaining knowledge. Plus, who doesn’t like to talk about their specialty? Hell, I love it so much I write a monthly column for free!
3. I have cause, and will, and strength, and means To do’t.: This is a hard one for me, personally. It is something I struggle with on every call. Ask those tough questions where you are afraid of the answer. How does it stack up against what you have now? How do you feel about taking 10k less? How do you feel knowing that the entire board of directors was just indicted? How do you feel about adding 20 minutes to your commute? We all think we know the answers… We are all afraid of the answers…. Yet, get it out there. Get your red flags out early, they’ll be there if you ask or don’t ask. Ignorance of a problem doesn’t make it go away
4. Knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven: That line about looking it up in number 2? Something I have noticed is that not everyone understands that everything is now out there… and that everything that isn’t will be out there someday. Just ask Brownie, Pippa Middleton or anyone left at News Corp. Be aware of all the negatives and positives of your openings, your clients and candidates. You can be sure everyone else involved will be googling it. If you address it upfront and clear the air, it is not going to pop up and bite you.
5. Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so Let us keep with the looking it up theme: Because you can find positive things to talk about as well… It’s a dual edged sword, friends. It’s also the best tool to help do the first thing on the list. I am lucky (or cursed, I don’t know anymore) with an insatiable curiosity, so I can always find a way to connect on a personal level.

I am more than happy to go on in this vein for some time, but it really boils down to while you cannot control anything, you can try to have the best knowledge so you can confront any challenges when they raise their head. The best way to know these challenges is to make your relationships transparent, honest and clear. That will give you the answers you need to guide and steer, but never mistake it for the illusion of control.

“A Journey is like Marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck

The Deal Might Be Going to Hell, But At Least I’m Enjoying the Ride The Undercover Recruiter - Probably the Best Recruitment and Career Blog in the World.

How important is mobile for your recruitment process? Check out these ways this phenomenon is changing the way businesses big and small hire candidates:

Employers Can Watch Video Interviews On The Go

Mobile recruiting is changing everything about the way employers hire, even the interview. Now candidates can record answers to written questions from their mobile devices, making the job interview as portable as the application. Employers can then watch these video interviews anywhere, meaning the interview process becomes easy to work around even the busiest schedules.

- Josh Tolan, Spark Hire

Mobile Optimization Helps Reach The Busiest Candidate

Mobile is on the rise and employers are now updating their hiring process to better reach talent. This channel has become an optimal way to reach the well-connected, busy job candidate. Employers are seeking new ways to optimize their content, emails, and job postings for mobile interfaces.

- Nathan Parcells, InternMatch

Helps Build Employer’s Brand Kudos & Provide The Best Candidate Experience

By: Elysia Communications

As mobile surpasses desktop, candidates expect hiring managers to keep pace. Employers should ditch phone screens in favor of mobile video interviews. Smartphones and tablets make video interviewing faster, more intuitive and improve the user experience for candidates.

- Rupert Sellers, CEO & Founder, Compact Interview

Being Smartphone-Friendly Makes An Impression On Candidates

Passive candidates often invest a significant amount of time researching a company before they pursue a job opportunity. Because they currently have a job, they may only be doing this off-hours on their smartphone or tablet. Companies must ensure that their website is mobile-optimized to properly make an impression on those folks.

- Jason Pinto, Director of Marketing, CBG Benefits

Mobile Recruiting Is Determining The “Who”

By: Mobile Cell Phone Review

Mobile accessibility has enabled employers to connect with more passive, on-the-fly candidates that they were otherwise unlikely to engage, to deliver more personalized messages that wouldn’t have otherwise been noticed, and to communicate with prospects on their terms vs. the employers’. Safe to say the existential ‘War for Talent’ has become a little more intense.

- Russell Schramm, VP Talent Acquisition for the Americas, Philips

What do you think? How else is mobile recruiting changing the hiring process? Let us know in the comments below!

RELATED: Mobile Recruitment: The Facts and Figures [INFOGRAPHIC]

How Mobile Recruitment Is Changing The Hiring Process [5 Ways] The Undercover Recruiter - Probably the Best Recruitment and Career Blog in the World.

Without tenacity all of our passion and motivation will just be lip service.  Here is what others have said about tenacity:

1. Leonard Brody – “Pure unadulterated tenacity”

This clip by Leonard Brody at World Entrepreneurship Day sums it up is perfectly. There still needs to be a true passion within you to lead your own charge. But this needs to be matched with what he calls “pure unadulterated tenacity”. I love what he says about being willing to take 10 punches to the stomach and get up ready to take the 11th!

[youtube=http://youtu.be/loez8xnxKZI]

2. Garr Reynolds – “Anything of real worth will take much struggle and perseverance”

In Japanese there is the saying “Fall down seven times, get up eight”.  It is a proverb that demonstrates Japanese resilience and tenacity – you continue to get right back up no matter how many times you get knocked down.

Garr Reynolds wrote about this in his Presentation Zen blog after the huge earthquake and tsunami devastated the Tohoku region of northern Japan. Garr reminds us that:

By: Peter Asquith

there are no quick fixes in life and anything of real worth will necessarily take much struggle and perseverance. Success does not have to be fast – what’s more important is that one simply does their absolute best and remain persistent.

3. Steve Ballmer – “Don’t have passion, have tenacity”

A recent Forbes article by Brian Solomon offers billionaires’ tips for new graduates from the likes of Oprah, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and others. The one that jumped out for me was what Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, had to say:

By: John Loomis

Passion is the ability to get excited about something. Irrepressibility and tenacity is about the ability to stay with it. You get some success. You run into some walls. You try a formula for a new idea, a new innovation, it doesn’t work. And it’s how tenacious you are, how irrepressible, how ultimately optimistic and tenacious you are about it that will determine your success.

4. Steve Jobs – “Stay hungry. Stay foolish”

By: skitty25

Steve Jobs’ reference to this message in his infamous 2005 Stanford University commencement speech capsulizes tenacity in my mind. By staying hungry we push ourselves to achieve great things, and by staying foolish we throw caution to the wind to take the calculated risks needed to continue on our path.

Be tenacious and leave your mark

Tap into your passions to build your personal brand, but more importantly have the tenacity to leave your mark in everything you do.  Even in the face of criticism be ready for that 11th punch in the gut, get up 8 times after falling down 7, be irrepressible, and always stay hungry, stay foolish!

RELATED: The Secret of Personal Branding

Tenacity For Your Personal Brand [4 Lessons] The Undercover Recruiter - Probably the Best Recruitment and Career Blog in the World.

Software development roles are amongst some of the non-core roles that we recruit for. These candidates do not necessarily need to come from a competitor, but do require very specific technical skills.

I have decided to focus this article around software developers, as from past experience I have found these to be amongst the most difficult positions to fill. Below are some of the issues that can make recruiting technical specialists so difficult:

1. Saturated market place: there is a massive number of software development vacancies available.
2. IT agencies: there are a huge number of IT agencies in the UK, in line with the huge demand for IT professionals. This means there is more competition for candidates and it is harder to retain staff. These agencies are also able to specialise with technical roles, as internal recruiters will often have to cover multiple disciplines.
3. Understanding: It can be difficult to really understand the kinds of developers that are required. It is far more than finding a buzzword!

A great way to start the recruitment process is to spend some time discussing the role with the hiring manager and have them explain the role in more detail (in a way that anyone can understand, a challenge in itself sometimes!) I have been in a very lucky situation where I have a good relationship with our Senior Architect, and he met with me and explained the different kinds of technologies and types of developers, for example: front end, back and the different frameworks, programming languages and database languages. You will often find that that architects and developers are more than happy to explain the different kinds of software development and this can be the best way to gain a better understanding.

Once I had spent time accessing the vacancy with the line manager, it was time to start sourcing some candidates. The main channels we use for direct sourcing are:

• LinkedIn
• CV Databases (Monster, Reed)
• Existing network
• Social Media (Predominantly to increase awareness of the position)

A job specification will often give keywords, for example “.NET.” Just typing .NET however into a CV database, isn’t going to help! Hence the first stage with the hiring manager is important, to highlight a set of key technical skills.

We will also use some of the other methods below, to draw candidates to the role:

• Job postings: Stack Overflow, cwjobs, ITJobBoard, LinkedIn, Company site
• Slideshare: Software Development PowerPoint for Slideshare (gives more detail on the position)
• Referral scheme: Especially important to make any other technical staff aware of any referral scheme that may be in place.

It is just as important to screen the candidates correctly, as it is to find them. The Solution Architect came up with a great way of measuring a candidate’s competency with key technical skills. Even with a good understanding of the role, it is hard to know whether the candidate is as good as their CV states.

He told me to list the key skills for the role, and ask the candidates to rate themselves between one and ten for each of the technical skills. Again, candidates can obviously rate themselves however they like, but it is an interesting question to ask. Often, if a candidate stumbles on the one of the skills, you know that they are not comfortable with that particular skill. It also gives the hiring manager a better indication to the candidate’s confidence.

By: alice

After the candidate has been screened by me, I always ask the hiring manager to conduct a short 10-15 minute telephone interview with the candidate, again, asking them to rate their technical skills. If a candidate passes both stages, they can move to a face to face interview. At this stage, it is vital to run a formal technical test, either written or online. We run a written test and find this reveals the candidate’s true technical ability. We also conduct an HR interview to access the personal fit; obviously this is vital with all potential employees.

Hopefully by following this process, the line managers will receive a higher number of relevant CVs, and the sourcing can be more focuses and time efficient. These roles can still be notoriously difficult to fill, but with the full support of the hiring manager and a structured recruitment process, these roles are possible to fill directly. Even if you are not a technical specialist!

How to Recruit Tech Talent [For Non-Tech People] The Undercover Recruiter - Probably the Best Recruitment and Career Blog in the World.