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Tools and Techniques to enhance Recruiter Productivity

Recruiting by Intuition follow this blog post

posted by on July 29, 2007

It’s a proven fact that the recruiting industry is an age old industry vertical that has passed various iterations over the last 40+ years.  It is rather surprising that even with the advent of the technological penetration into every possible recruiting landscape my theory leads me to believe that recruiters in general seem to be recruiting by intuition. Let me explain what I mean.  I realized that this theory needs some sort of semi-scientific validation and hence started an informal survey of fellow recruiters (twenty three of them in total-corporate and agency-spread nationwide-with an average recruiting experience of 7 years and median billing of 130K for agency recruiters) to probe deeper. The results proved to be an eye opener of sorts. The tally:The results of survey can be divided into positive and negative implications. Positive results of the survey:·        85% of fellow recruiters are very well versed with leading edge sourcing techniques (thanks to sourcing gurus like Shally, Jim, and Maureen etc)·        90% were very confident of hunting, sourcing and building a pipeline of candidates for tough to fill jobs·        82% felt they could be very effective and help become client champions if they had better ways technologically speaking to objectively validate technical talent·        95% agreed that an on-line on-demand tool for objective technical validation will be welcome; more so because it will help them to confidently present a technical resume to a hiring manger or a client without have to guess, or keep their fingers crossed for a bite, and significantly help them in increasing their recruiting efficiencies. Negative results of the survey:·        83% of fellow recruiters said they do not understand the difference between commonly used technologies (example’s are Java scripting vs. Java, HTML vs. DHTML and leading edge technologies like AJAX, RoR, XML vs. XSLT, App servers vs. Web Servers, Relational databases vs. OO databases, Data warehousing vs. Data Marts etc)·        76% said they tend to fall back on key words rather than technical content for resume sourcing especially when dealing with junior to mid level talent-experience levels of 3-7 years plus or minus a year or two.  ·        85% said their screening is mostly based on assessing cultural fit, salary fit, and longevity of employment, reason for leaving, availability to join and other traits·        72% admitted that they are finding it extremely difficult to weed through the resumes of technical resumes since they all sound the same and almost every technical candidate tends to use the same buzz words for instant gratification·        74% admitted that they are not able to keep on top of the latest technological advances 

Good recruiters are capable of unearthing the hidden gems via sourcing, scouring, networking, mining etc, but once that exercise is accomplished successfully what are the odds that the pipeline built has genuine, validated technical talent? It almost seems like an exercise of no value.

We all tend to get hung up on the sourcing initiatives and seem to be clearly missing the point that the real recruiter’s "value add" is in submitting well qualified technical talent for open requisitions, jobs and not just building a pipeline or supply chain of candidates be it active or passive. Having said this I am a firm believer that the recruiter/head hunter’s job is to effectively channel the multitude of talent sources and funnel them in through effective filtration mechanisms. I am starting to conclude that increasing a recruiter’s productivity entails adding value to every initiative that a recruiter spends their core time in and one of the important aspects of a recruiters arsenal has to be his/her ability to objectively offer technical validation of a candidate he or she represents. I say it’s about time we look for tools that can help us do this or better yet start building one ourselves.       

 

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  • 1 point 8 months ago

    Dear Anil, Thank you for a lively post and some different stats which are always food for thought.

    It is interesting the concept of intuition in recruitment when more often than not to my mind and experience it seems that this features fairly low. Evidenced by �??85% said their screening is mostly based on assessing cultural fit, salary fit, and longevity of employment, reason for leaving, availability to join and other traits�?��?? At what point these areas are screened is not made clear is it on the resume alone or after they have spoken to the applicant. From here the screening criteria seems disturbingly basic.

    Most technologies are around searching and matching in some way shape or form a resume and then a person against a job spec. As you have illustrated yourself this matching often can fall short due to the lack of knowledge by the recruiter or hirer around what the actual position entails. As a result we see a growing trend of recruiters and hirers contacting prospective applicants they search and attempt to match via all these various channels. More often than not the applicants receive calls about in-appropriate positions to their needs because the person calling has limited knowledge about the position and necessary skills for the role. Also they may not be interested in what the actual applicant is looking for. I question then is recruitment becoming more like Telemarketing whereby we are calling people (who may not even want to be contacted) about something that they don�??t want and that is not relevant to them. If we have failed to understand their needs and what we are trying to sell them, it seems rather a poor approach with little to do with intuition, strategy or adding value.

    Is it more a case of going back to basics and worrying less about the new technology and more about good old research, information sharing, building relationships and service!

    Kelly Magowan www.sixfigures.com.au

  • 1 point 10 months ago

    Mike, Thx for your comments, and I am glad you see my point of view. I congratulate you on embracing the said philosophy and able to find a technical solution for an age old problem. I feel we are shifting the recruiting pardigm for good by incorporating advanced technologies and features. Anil Kasibhatla Founder http://www.Webcruiting.com

  • 1 point 10 months ago

    Unfortunately, this is a year old or so discussion about the merits of recruiting by the reality of specs, but I'll enter my comments on this relevant issue. In a nutshell, as a seasoned recruiter, I agree that recruiters need 'the tools to enhance' their recruiting know-how. Even though one may know all the technical intricacies of given position, in most cases it's impossible to fill numerous job orders by reading an even greater number of numerous resumes made of bit of 100's of numerous references to technical jargon, at times mostly semi-familiar to recruiters without, failing to do the best match. Qualifying and quantifying methodologies through intelligent software technology is a 'must' and it's available in many industries, yet not traveling through the highways of today's recruiting approaches. A well written program in Cobol or any other could add numerical values to all the jargon used in technical field and could be matched to databases of equally relational jargon to establish simple matching scores across multiple job orders in seconds. Why do have to read and decipher all the tech jargon when the right tools could shed the light for us in seconds.

    Megatrends,yeah most of us never read the book then, indicated the pathways for future technology over 20 years ago; nevertheless, most of the technology forecasted by the brilliant Mr Nesbitt still hasn't showed up at software of most High Tech recruiting firms,in general. We're still recruting with basic tools neglecting to develop e-human management systems and use the technology that is available. We at www.medxtaff.com took on the committment to develop such a tool; to have the software algorythm to read each resume, compare it to core specs and match 100% and facilitate the some processes to recruiters. Of ocurse, we only deal with specs from the healthcare industry, but the use intelligent software tech can be extrapolated to other industries too.

    Mike

  • 1 point 20 months ago

    Marc, First let me thank you for taking time from your schedule and reading through my blog. I am truly delighted! Just so you know I was a Systems Analyst 9 years ago, and had received my share of calls from Tech recruiters trying to recruit me. I didn't feel let down by any of them but was rather surprised that they were trying to evaluate me for a technical job when their understanding of technology was very limited. Some were quite good at selling the cultural and growth aspects of a given organization, where as others were all about matching key words with the spec they had in front of them. I was amazed at some of these reccruiters willingness and prowess to discuss technical jobs, but also felt that they could do phenomenally well if they had a tool that they could depend on for objective tchnical evaluation and rating. As I progressed through my professional recruiting career path (believe you me I spent my fair share in bull pens and recruiter training programs) I realized that a tool of this nature is more than essential for the recruiters arsenal. With the advent of Web 2.0 penetration I say we get ready for Recruiting 2.0. I also reqeuest we connect offline since I am collecting data on the issues related to technical evaluation/validation of candidates from fellow recruiters. Cheers an Happy hunting!

  • 1 point 21 months ago

    Anil,

    Here, here regarding your comments on a recruiters understanding of whether his or her candidate is really technically qualified for the job. I struggle with that daily. I have recruited for Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and others. And always after getting a few buzz words and the context of what the technical person should have experience in, it is a cross your fingers exercise when submitting candidates to a technical manager that you have not embarassed yourself.

    For exmaple, just yesterday I presented a 14 resumes for 3 open roles in our development group to the VP of development. Half of the resumes supplied were from my own efforts, half from agencies. I recieved a positive response from my VP on 3 resumes, 2 were listed as possibles and the other 8 were no's. And I hate this! In other areas I understand, I would strive for 80% acceptence rate of a resume with the same 80% ratio that a candidate interviewed would be made an offer. Matching reasons for leaving, motivations, salary expected are simple and does not require much skill in my opinion just asking the questions and the intuition of knowing if that person is being upfront or telling you what you want to hear. And usually with follow up questions you can guage their sincerity.

    I beg to differ with Shally on this regarding rates of open positions. Learning to use tools etc and building a pipeling of candidates is easy enough. Learining to use AIRS, LinkedIN, Jigsaw, Monster, Flips, Xrays, crawlers are all a matter of techniques. How do you the recruiter who may of a Bachelor of Fine Arts, screen a Java Developer and then present them to your client who is a Java Architect and have confidence that you know that candidate at least has a decent level of skill vs. fluff on resumes. I recently did a stint of recruiting SAP consultants, and because of the Big $ for SAP consultants there are a lot of creative resume writing going on with the buzz words used for search strings. Again the same pathetic results of really knowing how to qualify a candidate.

    This is a huge issue you have brought up. And you are right on point. Learning to use tools that gurus Shally, Jim and Maureen teach is one aspect of the job. How to market, present, candidate control etc is about people skills. Evaluating the candidates technical ability is the third. In the past this is so difficult for a lay person to do. We have considered having technical people on call to pay that would conduct a phone screen before presenting them to a client. In the past I have used Brain Bench which has a series of technical online tests for a candidate to take on-line. Great Question, where do we go, how do we as recruiters bring ourselves up to speed, so that when I present 4 .NET developers or any other technology that the feedback I get from my employer is I want to set a mimimum of 3 of those candidates for interviews and 80% once interviewed my employer is making a offer? I deal with agencies on a daily basis and therefore I have a constant flow of calls and resumes. The above reasons are why employers ask for resumes. They can not count on most recruiters to send candidates, if they could they would. I have worked with enough VP's and C level execs to know they are busy and for them to have time to go through countless emails and 20 resumes submitted by various sources to pick a handful for interview. If they could trust us on our ability to evaluate technical talent, they would rather say I have 3 times next week on my calendar for interviews. Contact my secretary with the names of the candidates you have and make sure to send a resume so I have a chance to review before their appointment. That in my opinion is what a employer would feel happy about paying a 20 to 30K fee for.

    I am surprised that your blog recieved such a limited response as if their was a way to unlock the key, anyone who would do so would make a killing and a whole pile of money and clients would line up at the door for your services.

    Marc

  • 1 point 23 months ago

    Shally, It was truly an honor to mention your reference in my Blog post. Keep in mind the percentage I was referring to are from fellow recruiters who have been exposed to the latest and greatest sourcing techniques out there including your webinars, and seminars and cheat sheets, AIRS training etc. Firstly I am in no way saying there isn't any need for learning or further exposure to mining the web. Secondly I wasn't trying to take away the importance of effective sourcing and pipeline building. My suggestion or informal survey results seem to point that candidate validation needs to be channeled some way along with piepeline building since this could impact the effectiveness of filling jobs. Please also keep in mind that the percentages I was referring to are part of the 23 recruiters that I approached and is in no way an indication of a formal survey of thousands of recruiters. Although I wish I get a chance soon to do a formal survey of thousands of recruiters. Anil

  • 1 point 23 months ago

    85% of fellow recruiters are very well versed with leading edge sourcing techniques (thanks to sourcing gurus like Shally, Jim, and Maureen etc)�

    Thank you for the most honorable mention!

    Question - I'd be curious to find out how that was tested? Based on the ammount of inquiries I'm getting for researcher workforce development, and their rapid increase, the need for skills development in this area is skyrocketing. My hope is that all my efforts to promote this industry have lead to an understanding of the need for skills development in this critical area but the statement that "85% of fellow recruiters are very well versed" means that somehow in a short period of time this high demand has been quickly filled?

    And also - "90% were very confident of hunting, sourcing and building a pipeline of candidates for tough to fill job.

    If 90% of recrutiers are able to build pipelines then my question on this statistic is why are so many jobs going unfilled? To take advantage of economies of scale many of my clients are bringing me in to build centralized research and sourcing organizatoins. In that list I'm including RPOs as well as mid-size and large multinationals, and the biggest gap in these teams has been the ability to get the organization to buy into pipelining talent ahead of demand. Just wondering how its possible for this to be such a huge gap yet 90% of recruiters are comfortable building pipeline for tought to fill jobs? And if they are so confident in building pipeline then why are these jobs tough to fill?