Is Your Resume Going Into Spam Oblivion?

This excellent article discusses the major problems with this issue. While you can’t eliminate it completely, it contains some good tips to reduce the issue.

Another Established Personalized Service Put to Rest by Macy’s

Marshall Field’s was slaughtered, now Macy’s killed the personalized stationary in the store too. It’s interesting how much this relates to recruiting.  

Personal stationery makes you feel like you’ve arrived. For the person on the receiving end, opening the envelope is like opening a gift.

The ladies of the Personalized Stationery Team were like fairy godmothers. They knew their products, their manners and what was appropriate for every occasion. They helped customers create a first impression that made a statement before the recipient read a single word.

It could easily take hours to choose stationery, which is nothing when you consider it can take years to use it up. A few weeks after placing an order, the stationery arrived in the mail, appropriately. Inside the cardboard mailing boxes were the stationery boxes themselves, sturdy, tasteful yet fancy. The stationery fit perfectly inside its box. The paper was bundled with a sealed paper ring, the envelopes underneath neatly stacked like folded laundry.

It then goes on to say:

The online stationery shopping experience promises the full dose of isolation and frustration. There we’ll be, staring at the computer screen, clicking down endless selections of paper, trying to discern on a flickering screen the true texture and weight of paper, wondering what color it will it be in real life. No one will be there to suggest the perfect color of ink, or a squiggle or flourish or icon that will turn mere paper and ink into a personal trademark.

Sounds to me like an exact replica of what is happening in online recruiting, a working process has been replaced with and isolating and frustrating process that doesn’t bring true thought leaders into leadership roles. What is the quality of the paper and sentence structure - who is this person? We need to put the most talented hiring managers back into the final selection of sourced resumes before recruiters call.

Recruting Best Practice : Brightcove

At 11:10PM EDT today, I got an e-mail from an actual Brightcove employee in Boston, yes actually living in the same time zone in the company, reading and then replying to my resume!

Let me repeat, a real live person was reading my resume and physically at 11:10PM!!! Wow!!!

This tells me some things:

1) The odds of Brightcove beign a long-term success just rose significantly in my view by the way they conduct business

2) They might find and hire thought leaders and not drones hired from keywords. Good for them.

3) My desire to be a part of this organization is stronger than it was before this interaction.

Thanks for the reply…I look forward to the next step in the conversation when appropriate. Jeremy Allaire should be proud.

A Simply Beautiful Blog Post…Perhaps Best of 2006

I’d like to nominate Kathy Sierra’s post “Knocking the exuberance out of employees” for best blog post of 2006…

It’s interesting to see a few companies starting to change here, but it is too slow! It would be *great* to see a conversation on the solution to this issue.

Cutting Edge Sourcing at Fox Interactive Media

Human Capital Management, HR Technology Conference 2006 #9

Virtual Edge Software: Roger Coker – VE Pilot:
- Zero-Talent Outages
- Succession not Replacement
- 360 view of talent pipeline

Fox Interactive Media: Conrad McGinnis

50% Professional
35% College
15% Other

FIM Talent Sources
35% Employee Referral Program
25% Direct Sourcing
15% Job Boards
25% Our Career Website

1400 Employees based in the US currently

Traditional Sourcing Method
- Old Media Mentality
- Dated and geared to film and TV
- Limited to local universities

New Strategic Sourcing Strategy
- Targeted to Tech
- Tech tools for better communication
- Global versus local
- Recruiting structure – Personnel
- CRM – VE Pilot

Search Engine Marketing – overall has found Google to be most effective

Why Search Engine Marketing?
- Reach Active and Passive Candidates
- Inclusive and Broad Approach
- Pay for Performance
- Workforce Planning
- VE Pilot

Other Tools:
- Fox Careers Site
- Myspace Careers Site

Reference Checker and Sourcer are separate

Frees up recruiter to build relationships with hiring manager and candidates

Training and Networking Events:
- Recruiters must know the business
- Recruiters need to spend more time in front of the desk than behind it
- Recruiting teams are true partners in moving the business forward

Employee Referral Program
- Myspace friend branded
- Ticket themed logo for concert – B.Y.O.F.
- Increased cash incentives
- Teaser campaign

Tracking Referrals
- Keeping track of individual job referrals
- Link track (like affiliate marketing campaign

Creating Global Recruiting at Time Warner

Human Capital Management, HR Technology Conference 2006 #9, Time Warner - TWX

A fabulous introduction of Maggie Rubey Lynch, Corporate VP, Worldwide Recruitment & Executive Search, Time Warner by Deb Besner, CEO of Brassring opened the session (Time Warner uses Brassring for their employment/jobs portal), Lauren Levine a member of Maggie’s team also participated in the session.

Areas of best practice:
- Time Warner has an in house executive search practice
- Operate on a business unit basis, country specific candidate experience
- Outstanding partnership between IT and HR – a model for any other company

270 recruiters globally, no centralization prior to 2003

TM Divisional Feedback re Recruitment Needs:
- Quality Candidates
- Fast Fills
- Superior Service
- Ease of Process
- Client Group Ownership
- Strategic vs. Reactive
- Cost Savings
- Ability to Identify / Move Internal Talent
- Ability to Identify Top Tier Diverse Talent

Spend time on the front end selling and partnering with people to make it work

Business & Recruitment Feedback:
- Recruitment support at more levels that just senior
- Research support at more levels than just senior
- Diverse Slates
- Internal Mobility
- Tough to fill discipline specific

The mission:
- Create holistic recruitment team
- Leverage in-house expertise

Deeper Dive:
Attrition by Division
Types of roles by Division
Volume of Recruitment Efforts
Structure of Recruitment Teams
Expenses – Internally / Externally
Recruitment Systems

Action Steps:
Design and build scalable infrastructure
Identify top Recruitment Professionals to move the recruitment objectives
Streamline Processes and create efficiencies
Understand where investments are producing a return
Be true business partners
Know our business and identify growth areas to anticipate recruitment needs

Four Critical Areas:
Executive Search
Strategic Sourcing
Research
Recruitment Operations

Integrated Recruitment Teams
Recruitment Director (headquarters)
Client Group Recruiters (anchored in Operating Units)

“Beyond the resume” – transferable skills, diversity or experience – it’s about process and having a conversation about where you want the position to go. (Stated a different way, why use an ancient job specification?)

Results:
100% Utilization by all Divisions
1,496 Search / Research Assignments
Cost Savings of $48 Million
48% Females Hires
41% Diverse Hires
Increased internal mobility from 2% to 35%
Created a first time external revenue stream by conducting external search

Getting legal team to agree across divisions was the biggest challenge

(Human Capital Management, HR Technology Conference 2006 #9, Time Warner - TWX)

Checkster.com - some more hints

Yves Lemusi is interviewed in this podcast, I met Yves at the Onrec recruiting conference. He is an interesting guy and I’m very interested to see what he has in store for this startup.

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