For Recruiters : How to Use LinkedIn for Free to Get Good Candidates

On my current position as HR Business Partner in a large multinational IT company I have been several times responsible with the recruitment of specialized candidates. Shortly after I was hired they asked me to find a few Linux guys that also spoke English plus French/Italian. Trust me this is not that easy to find.

After posting the ads several times on the best paid job portals and waiting for the candidates to apply I have realized that they weren't going to come to us that easily. I have realized that good IT guys are also a bit weird (please forgive me, guys, but like all geniuses, IT ones are out of the ordinary too) and are not actually open to new positions once they are engaged in a project unless you go to them and convince them that what you can offer is better.

I was desperate for CVs and at that moment I have discovered the magic of LinkedIn. I had very low knowledge of Linux, but I managed to find my good candidates. How can you do it and more than that - for free? LinkedIn offers great possibilities for job posting and searching, but as all large and famous portals, they cost a LOT. So, how can you do it for free?

First of all, register with LinkedIn. Fill in your profile as accurate as you can. A sloppy profile will always be rejected by groups and partners. Be professional and spend the necessary amount of time to fill in your information. It will be worth your time, trust me.

After you have created your profile (don't forget your picture to build your trust) search for groups. I have searched during my recruitment projects for keywords like "Linux", "SAP", "French speakers" or "Francais" for groups in French, or for various groups where IT recruiters met and posted ads. When you have a group you are interested in, apply to become member unless it is an open group where you can post ads and comments without joining. Don't give up if some groups don't accept you. Headhunters may be considered spammers sometimes and some groups focused on technical issues only may not want you.

When you get accepted - and I got accepted in most groups I applied for - post a job ad in the Jobs section or in the Discussions section if you ask for advice or are looking for connections or more than just CVs. All the jobs and discussions are sent periodically (daily or weekly) to all the members of the group on their email (unless they have unsubscribed from group news). The more groups you join, the better chances you have to reach a larger audience. Also select the most active groups or those with more members - LinkedIn offers you this information when you search for groups.

I am allowed to be member of maximum 50 groups, but that's OK as you can step out of a group and join another or rejoin the first one again anytime.

Good luck with the recruitment of difficult positions and please remember you can come back to me with questions anytime.

Kind Regards,
Geo

I had 4 interviews so far with a company. Does this mean I'm rejected?

NO. Unless you get the clear rejection phone call or email, you are NOT rejected.

There are 3 scenarios in your case:

1. They are testing you for more than one position. There are times when a company has more than one position open. You might have skills for more than one position and they want to see where you fit best. Sometimes the positions are in different departments with different managers and each wants to check you to see where you would perform best. It's ok to ask this question if you feel that they are interviewing you too much. They should tell you this information and not keep you in the dark.

2. You are considered for a middle level to senior position and more people need to see you. Getting everybody in the same room at the same time can be intimidating to the candidate. It's not advisable to have one candidate and 4-5 interviewers. Probably they all want to see you to decide.

3. You are being interviewed for a position in a company which requires candidates to go through several interviews and tests befor being hired. For example we hired in our company some French and English Linux engineers. They needed first to be tested over the phone in terms of language skills, then they came to the office for the IT advanced tests, then HR had a meeting with them, then their manager and finally the client who requested to do the final interview.

So, if you have more than one interview, it's not necessarily bad and if you have doubts and you need more information, it's ok to ask.

Recruitment and Selection Strategy: I Want to Work as a Recruiter. What Kind of Employer Should I Look For?

If you want to work as a recruiting specialist, you have 3 main types of employment you can look for. The final choice is yours.

Choice 1 - less risky and most comfortable - an ordinary company which has an HR Recruitment specialist position open. You will get a list of job openings and you will start recruiting. You will do mostly only recruitment tasks: posting ads, reading resumes, doing interviews. Maybe some presentations and recruiting events from time to time.

Choice 2 - medium risk and medium comfort - a recruiting agency. You will face 2 situations:
 - competitive, well-placed on the market agency where you will do mostly recruitment but at high volumes. You will work with multiple clients and a wide-range of positions. Great place to get lots of experience.
- smaller company, struggling to survive. Since agency recruitment fees are quite high, you will work for a company struggling to get clients. You will do recruitment but you may be involved in sales and searching for new clients. By client I mean - company in need of candidates to fill open positions.

Choice 3 - high risk and not much comfort, but great satisfactions in case of success - your own recruiting company. You will do part sales in search of new clients and part recruitment. If you are successful you may find someone in time to do the sales, the recruitment or both for you.

Good luck.

Recruitment and Selection Strategy: What Skills Do I Need to Be a Good Recruiter?

This is an extract from my book - A Career in HR - The Good and the Bod;


These are the skills you need to have or to develop in order to be a good recruiter:

Intelligence level over the average.

Highly responsible person – will be taking the initial decision concerning a candidate being rejected or selected for next stage. Someone’s fate depends on his/her decision, experience, skills, mood sometimes or state of fatigue.

Great decision taking skills – will take decisions concerning candidates being selected or rejected, will change the strategy in a project if things don’t go well on the initial path, will take decisions concerning recruitment channels and will be responsible for the success of decisions taken, will take decisions concerning partnerships with recruiting agencies (if to use or not and when since costs are very high).

Very organized person – will manage hundreds of resumes (sometimes thousands!), hundreds of candidates, will give hundreds of feed backs – all on time and to the correct candidate; will prepare daily, weekly, monthly and yearly reports.

Good communication and presentation skills – will give information to candidates, will deliver presentations to general public, and will represent the company.

Pro activity – will have to come with solutions for problems that haven’t yet appeared; will always be searching for ways to improve and make work more efficient.

Mature person – closely connected to the amount of decisions to take; will be responsible for own actions.

Strong analytical skills – will have to analyze resumes, recruiting channels’ efficiency, market reports, recruiting agencies’ reports; will be carefully analyzing a candidate’s skills and if they fit to the job or in the new team;

Flexibility – will have to change recruitment strategy as often as necessary to meet targets and deadlines;

Great time management skills – must be aware that requested resources and reports must be delivered on time;

Highly sociable person – will be working daily with a lot of people; must be sociable and must like interacting with people since there will be days with 14 interviews (situation not recommended by theory books, but different and inevitable in reality).

Some project management skills – can be given a project to complete by himself/herself and will need to organize available resources. I.e. it’s not possible for a recruiter to recruit a large team of let’s say 30 people alone. Ability to organize and conduct own work and available resources without too much supervision.

Professional attitude – represents a first contact between candidates and the company, can influence negatively or positively the company’s image on the market;

Some telephone skills – will be conducting from time to time phone interviews;

Some technical skills – will need to setup some software alone; will need to prepare and conduct a presentation with a laptop and video equipment alone in a different location than the company headquarters where an IT representative is available; will need to use a laptop, smart phone sometimes, conference equipment, video equipment, USB sticks, headphones, some software. A recruiter must be ready to learn how to use all these and how to make work easier.

Great resilience to effort – will be reading sometimes resumes at 10 pm at home; will be carrying a large laptop around, will be carrying presentation materials around, flyers and others. Will be asked to work overtime from time to time, at work or at home; will be asked to give up vacation if a new project needs to start and reschedule own family time.

Great resilience to stress – will have tight deadlines and huge volume of work from time to time; will have stressed managers who will ask for fast results for projects.

Useful Job Description for the Position of Recruitment & Selection Specialist

Here's a JD that I created for one the the employees in my team.

You can use it. It is created for a medium - size company, but can be adapted to small and large companies:

Key Responsibilities:

§  Coordinating the recruiting process;

§  Covering all new job openings as well as back fill requests according to specified deadlines;

§  Maintaining a good relationship with Universities and student organizations;

§  Promoting the Company via Internet ads, Job Fairs, other recruiting related activities;

§  Developing the list of recruiting channels;

Typical Activities

§  Working closely with the managers in order to receive and update job descriptions for all open positions;

§  Discussing and selecting the best recruiting channels for each open position;

§  Creating and placing ads on all selected recruiting channels;

§  Developing the current recruiting channels;

§  Promoting the company in students’ organizations, Universities and making the company more visible on the market;

§  Selection and screening of CVs/resumes;

§  Keeping the CVs database up to date;

§  Organizing and holding initial face to face interviews and testing sessions;

§  Coordinating the recruiting and selection processes;

§  Creating recruiting reports;

§  Providing training for all collaborators involved in the phone screens process;

Key Relationships

• Internal clients – contract managers
• External clients
• Employees

Measures of Success

• Successful implementation of HR initiatives;
• All open positions and back fills covered within deadlines;

Person Specification

Essential

• Graduate caliber with minimum 2 years experience in human resources (recruiting);
• Ability to critically analyze status quo and propose creative solutions;
• Maturity, high personal standards;
• Strong analytical, organizational and project management skills;
• Ability to influence both internally with colleagues and externally with clients;
• Proactive and assertive;
• Communication and presentation skills (especially in front of large groups);
• Fluent in English;

A second language (French/Italian/Spanish/German) – great advantage

Recruitment and Selection: Are You a Recruiter?

Here are some questions and tasks you can give to candidates at the interview if you are selecting a person for the human resources department to perform the function of recruiter:

1.       Please write below what recruiting and selection means to you.

2.       Can be recruiting considered a motivation factor?

3.       What are the main tasks involved in the job of a recruiter?

4.       What recruiting channels do you know?

5.       Please describe in details the recruiting process for the following project:

You need to hire 10 German and English speakers (German fluent, English medium) and 5 English speakers (English fluent) for a new client on the following positions:

1 team leader – English speaker

2 senior agents – 1 German, 1 English

1 administrative support – German

11 agents – 8 German, 3 English

           What are the steps you take, the channels you use and the time frames you consider suitable.

6.       Please describe in details the recruiting process for the following project:

You have a team leader position that is filled in by somebody in the team - promotion. How do you back fill the open position remaining in the team after the promotion? 

7.       Please describe in details the recruiting process for the following project:

You need to hire 3 fluent Italian speakers (with medium English) and Linux/UNIX skills.

8.   You are interviewing a candidate that says he has team leader potential but no real team leader experience. What questions would you ask that person in order to see their real potential for a TL position?

9.   One of your colleagues from sales asks you the following question: we would like to see if Iyour city has potential for hiring 5 fluent Portuguese speakers; if yes, what would be the time frames and the salaries that the candidates might accept. What do you do in order to answer this question?

10.   You need to hire 5 great sales agents. What questions would you ask at the interview?

11.   You need to assess if a candidate has good attention to details skills. How do you do that?

I will come back with more...

Recruitment and Selection: Funny Recruitment

Here are a few items that I considered funny from my experience as a recruiter. Please enjoy.

They include funny abilities that people consider they have, email addresses, funny job titles, and funny interview replies. All these have been extracted from real resumes:

Funny abilities:

“I unstress people”

“Observatory spirit”

« PC Knowledge: …Facebook… »

"Fisherman - advanced"

Funny emails (be careful what you put in your resume, the recruiter is attentive to details):

cupidon_boy35@....

angels_wish77@...

laryssa_happy@...

albisor1966@...

alexxia_etc@...

workmar2005@...

seghyc@...

rhadoo_coco@...

yo3gxc@...

zuzu@...

kempes64@...

irreplaceable_anna@...

bravo.ma@...

catanutz20@...

spyraly@...

alin_aka_zoner@...

pisi_just4you@...

vip_azzuro@...

bbanderas83@...

don_corleone477@...

ghitza_ghitzuka@...

crissy_motanel@...

adriana_gargarita@...

dexterboygenius2003@...

andreeaelena_blonda@...

rapid_25lyk@...

oannna_bruneta17@...

corasonXXL@...

ondskandixie@...

al.scarface06@...

b1g_snak3@...

hidden.whispers@...

mihi_pic@...

deadlybrunet@...

verutza_mea@...

follie20@...

dalila_scumpy@...

money_saby@...

buffy5…@...

lovleymetalgirl@...

luygy2007@...

tatajean2003@...

babe_ank@...

yo_4_cs@...

papy_1404@...

oanadanielamohamedsalem@...

glumetz1988@...

Funny online interview replies:

Q:Which was your biggest professional achievement?

A: My degree at informatique

Q:What's your biggest dream? Describe your ideal career

A: to know more and product money

Your biggest dream: general manager or DONALD TRUMP

Your biggest dream: to become priest (this was from someone applying for a management position)

Your ideal company: Orthodox Church

Your expectations in terms of salary, work environment: None

How would your last manager characterize you: Grade 8

Your biggest achievement: I graduated on time.

How do you see yourself in 5 years? Employed.

Your expectations in terms of salary, work environment: 100 EUR. Do you want?

Are you available to work in shifts?  (same candidate as above): sure for this amount I can even sell my mother.

What is your level of Linux knowledge and where did you use Linux: I have no idea about Linux.

What is your biggest dream? To work in an office surrounded by lots of papers.

What is your biggest dream? To be a police officer. (This from a person applying in a company where customer service is provided, no police work whatsoever).

What is the department you would like to work in (if you had only one choice) and why? I have MORE than one choice.

Funny work experience:

Work experience:

Position: jkggh2005-01 <> 2009-01 (4 years)
Company name: ethyrthjt, (Employees: Over 3000), HR

I don't have any yet.

Funny letters attached to the resumes:

Good day.

I would like to get hired in your company. I have all the requirements. I am not 90-60-90. I am waiting for an urgent response.

Engagement Strategies: Motivating Your Employees - Proper Recruitment and Selection

Please don't consider this title as confusing - recruitment and selection can be considered a motivation factor.
How exactly you may say? Well...here's what you can do in terms of recruitment to motivate employees:


1. Selecting the best candidates according to job requirements - this creates a good image and confidence about the HR department - people have the courage to come to you later on for advice, this makes sure that the candidates selected fit the team and work well with their team members, this helps create a strong team; the team manager has the possibility to choose his/her team members making sure the team is fit to work together. All these characteristics of a team motivate the team members.


2. Discussing with the candidates the strengths, weaknesses and career path for the job they apply for - this helps the candidates select the proper job by knowing all the pluses and minuses. They know what they are getting into and they don't get false expectations.


3.Telling selected candidates about salary and complete benefits package so they are aware of the full offer before accepting - this helps candidates with not having "surprises" later on after accepting the job. "Surprises" can cause people to resign sooner than expected. This will create more work for you (maybe you will select someone without thorough testing just to fill the jobs - be careful about this vicious circle), a negative atmosphere in the team and a bad image of the company.

Human Resources Mysteries: What Does a Recruitment and Selection Specialist Do?

As a recruitment and selection specialist you will be performing the following activities:

·           monitor open positions;

·          get involved in designing the recruitment plan for the following period together with the managers of each department in the company or the clients sometimes, plan which will include the number and type of positions to recruit;

·           help managers prepare job descriptions for the positions they have in their departments;

·           use the job descriptions to create and post ads on various recruitment channels;

·       select appropriate recruitment channel depending on positions open (skills needed, number of positions);

·           read the resumes received and compare to job requirements;

·           select candidates to be invited to interview;

·           invite and conduct a first interview with selected candidates;

·           prepare together with specialists and managers and set of practical tests to be given to candidates;

·           be part of the team assessing the candidates during these tests;

·           write down as much information as you can concerning candidate’s performance;

·           offer managers and initial list of best candidates for them to interview;

·         give feedback to selected and rejected candidates – type of feedback is chosen according to source of candidates – internal candidates will always receive face to face feedback, the external ones will receive phone or email feedback;

·         keep an updated database of all positions and feed-backs to use later during recruitment; this will help use previously rejected candidates on other positions or the same position after a while after skills have improved or most important of all, avoid embarrassing situations where the same candidate gets invited to a second interview, after being rejected after the first one the week before;

·         participate in public presentations at the University, conferences, student gatherings to introduce your company and recruit people;

·            participate in job fairs for students, fresh graduates or other skills workers;

·        get involved in the creation of promotional materials to be used for students and during official presentations, either alone or with the help of the marketing department;

·      manage relationships with recruiting partners like recruiting agencies, student organizations, University representatives, job portals contacts;

·         organize internal assessments either for an open position or for selecting candidates to be involved later on in development for a certain position – i.e. select internal candidates who have team leader potential, candidates who will be enrolled in leadership trainings;

·          prepare various recruiting reports;

·          prepare various recruiting estimations requested by managers – i.e. the total cost of recruitment for a team of 30 FTEs (FTE = full time employee), French speakers with Linux skills and the deadline for such a project;

·        prepare newsletters for candidates in database to keep them informed about new positions or changes in the organization that might interest them;

·             prepare recruitment policies and work instructions;

·             in some organizations contact the selected candidates for employment offers;

·           in some organizations conduct trainings of recruitment and selection with managers, internship students, other employees interested or required to participate (i.e. a technical agent who will be part of the final selection process for members of the IT team);

Recruitment and Selection Strategy: What Should a Resume/CV Include Mandatorily?

First of all, if you have no idea how a resume should look like, you can try this link:
http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/documents/curriculum-vitae

It's the link to the European Euro pass resume that most employers in Europe prefer. It's a clear, easy to use file that I personally recommend.

The main information to start a resume is:
- your name (full name, no nicknames);
- your address and contact information (be careful about emails - use a professional one, not foxylady21foryou@....com unless you are applying for video chat or something); recruiters check this;
- your nationality;
- your marital status;

The last two are not mandatory, but employers may ask about nationality to see if you need a work permit.
Marital status, children, religion, sexual orientation are not mandatory to offer and the employer is forbidden by law to reject you because of any of these. It's your choice to give them this information or not. Also, they are not allowed if you are female to ask if you are pregnant or if you plan to have any children in the near future. Pregnancy tests are also forbidden.

The next section of your resume should be the Professional experience. Some resumes have the section Professional objective before that and sometimes area in which you are interested to work in, but all those are not mandatory.

Coming back to the professional experience, you should specify the name of the employer, your position, the hiring date and ending of contract date. If you still work there, you should mention only hiring date. Besides all the above you should mention your responsibilities and achievements on the job. Try to be specific and adapt them to the specifications of the position you are applying for.

All your positions should be entered in reverse chronological order - meaning your current one first, not last.

If you don't have any experience, try to find something to put there - an internship, a volunteer campaign, a project you did in a team at the University. Try not to leave this section empty. Try to show that you tried to do something.

The next section is the studies section. Please enter all your studies in reverse chronological order mentioning the name of the studies provider, the time frames and the specialty/major you graduated or you are still following.

After long term studies, enter short term courses you had - all relevant courses in reverse chronological order. Don't offer too much detail and don't insert here courses that are not relevant to the position. An employer looking for a sales agent for example can't care less that you did a landscaping course unless you are selling landscaping products. Always think about how relevant the detail you are giving is for the position you are applying for.

A large CV is not ok. No recruiter will have the time to read. Keep it under 4 pages if you have a lot of experience and under 2 if you are fresh graduate or student. The largest CV I have ever received had 14 pages, it was for an Operations Manager position, it was relevant, but huge and I read below a quarter of it. I was desperately looking for CVs for such a position. Otherwise, I wouldn't have wasted my time. So be careful.

Additional skills: write here your technical skills - software you use, foreign languages that you speak (include only Advanced and Medium level not all languages that you know how to say "Hello" in), social skills, artistic skills only if relevant. Be careful that all you write here can be tested. If you say you speak advanced French and you don't, your CV will be rejected and you may never get another chance. Be honest and evaluate yourself correctly.

Other sections in the CV:
- prizes - keep it simple if you have to add it and write ONLY relevant information. Nobody cares that you had a first price in acting in kindergarten or in pottery class;
- Driver's license or other licenses - add only if relevant to the job;
- Hobbies - include in the CV. Some recruiters consider it relevant. However, keep it simple.

Please write to me if you have any questions. I am open for discussion.
Geo