First, employers must have a strategic quantifiable recruitment plan. This plan should focus on using every means available, including what I call “power networking”; to identify any and all individuals who personally believe they can perform the job.

The second part of the solution (where the breakdown often occurs) is providing a fair and consistent method for screening and accessing those candidates based not only on their resume, but on the hiring manager’s view of their past experience, skills and those behavioral traits which are most compatible for the role. In my experience if your plan can meet both of these criteria, you will have the ability to filter those candidates with true talent (including those with under utilized assets) from those who will produce only mediocre results.

I think most HR professionals would agree with this concept, but find their challenge in the ability to manage the tactical aspects of sourcing at this scale and the time that is required to effectively screen and assess the huge volume of candidates that are available in today’s global marketplace. In fact, many I speak to feel so over-tasked that they neglect investigating other solutions that may significantly reduce their cost per hire and time to fill rates.
At TalentVelocity.com we are attempting to electronically bridge the gaps that occur when a company’s Human Resource manpower simply cannot accommodate the sourcing and screening aspect for the enormous volume of candidates that will be present when a job is marketed appropriately. We look like a job board, but perform like a recruiter.

While we currently have free job posting available to everyone,but the real value we provide is with an employer paid service called Job Opportunity Management (JOM). This web based process is so effective that we can actually guarantee that the employer will identify at least 3 candidates that meet the individual hiring manager’s criteria in 30 business days or less. I would encourage you to check us out at talentvelocity.com. I would also welcome your thoughts and feedback on this vision and product.

Or maybe the proper term is disconnect. In many organizations the HR department is removed from the actual business. When a job opens, it is from the candidates HR gets that one is – or is not – selected.

I rarely if ever see HR staff at tech networking events, like Tech Cocktail for example. Rather than going up to Monster or some other site to pull resumes based on a search criteria, they should be developing their own database of candidates. And if someone sends a resume to a company saying they are interested in working there, they should truly file that resume in their database, not just make an empty process.

Also, I see Kickstart as a good add-on to a service like LinkedIn, not as a standalone service.

mp/m