Mobile Recruiting

If you're not familiar with Chris Hoyt, check out his blog The Recruiter Guy.

And, if you doubt the power of mobile recruiting, check out this less than a minute reality check about what is important to us these days.

Do you use mobile in your recruiting campaign?

Hip Hip Hooray for Cheezhead

Big news happened right after I got back from vacation. Usually it happens during my vacation, so I was pleased to be in the know just as it was announced once I got home. Joel Cheesman, of Cheezhead.com, the HR and Recruiting commentator and thought leader, has officially sold his company and taken the position of Senior Vice President at Jobing.com.

On a personal note, I'm really excited for Joel, since I consider him to be a friend. On a selfish note, I'm happy that the Cheez, and his lovely wife, Laura, will be in the same time zone as me for half of the year. On a business note, well, that has yet to be figured out. CoolWorks.com used mJob, a Cheezhead affiliated company, to create Cool Works Mobile, a website that is optimized for use on mobile devices starting in April of this year. I hope that this relationship won't change, but I'm sure more details will be known in the coming months.

Listen to the man himself in his interview with Jason Davis of RecruitingBlogs.com at the recent ERE conference down in Florida.

Find more videos like this on RecruitingBlogs.com

Anyhow, to Joel, this angel is proud of you. I look forward to hearing more about your new adventures in the desert. Since we didn't quite make it out to Cleveland, perhaps we can meet up at Grand Canyon National Park? Congratulations!

First Day in New Orleans for SHRM

Greetings from the Big Easy. This will be short and sweet since I got up WAY too early for my taste and only was home for 36 hours between the Cool Works Yellowstone / Teton adventure and taking off for NOLA. One could say my life has been a bit of a whirlwind. Also, in the midst of the 36 hours at home, I learned that all three of my photography entries made it into the juried photography show at the Shoreline Arts Festival. Yay me. I also did a lot of laundry.

Back to New Orleans. First, I'm happy to be here and to be sharing with other HR folks who could not make it to the 2009 conference. Merci beaucoup to the SHRM folks for giving me this opportunity. I am also thrilled to meet some of my long time twitter friends and other HR / recruiting bloggers whom I have admired for some time. Also, it's great to see "old" friends from previous conferences. No doubt, the virtual world is fantastic, but it sure is wonderful to have face to face conversations. I look forward to many more over the next few days.

I think the biggest take away I got today from SHRM directly was their influence in creating a standardized curriculum for HR students. They've created a template that has been implemented at over 100 schools across the U.S. This is a wonderful start. Certainly, when I was in college and already had an inkling that HR was something I wanted to do, the classes weren't there. I took one HRM class as a part of my business minor, but that's it. I'm glad to know that they're moving forward with this idea. Having a basis of knowledge in addition to what is tested on via the HRCI certification exams is good.

And, if you follow me at all, you knew that there would be photographs. They're not fancy, but you get the idea.

For real time updates, please follow me on twitter, or get the daily summary from here in New Orleans at the end of each day on this blog. Thanks for reading.

Blogging from SHRM in New Orleans

Just thought I would officially share that I'll be blogging from the annual SHRM (Society for Human Resources Management) conference in New Orleans later this month. I am looking forward to being surrounded by talented HR folks out there getting the job done every day. Plus, I get to hang out with many of my good HR and Recruiting friends, and other personalities, who I follow via social media like Laurie from PunkRockHR, Joel from Cheezhead, Erin from ADEPT HRM Solutions, Austin from MyFirstPaycheck, Sharlyn from HR Bartender, and many more.

I'm especially looking forward to seeing the HR Bloggers present on Wednesday, July 1st at 11:30am hosted by China Gorman and Sheryl Crow on Tuesday night. Woo Hoo!

Someone recently asked me what "former HR person" meant to me in my Twitter bio and jokingly asked if that meant I was a "recovering HR person." After a mini-conversation, which is easy to accomplish in 140 characters, I explained that I pay attention to HR, but it's not my day job anymore. So, I've updated my bio to reflect that I'm an "HR Spectator," as suggested by another tweeter, and I suspect that I'll always be one of those. HR is an incredibly fun and challenging career, and although I don't do it day-to-day anymore, I still admire those who do, and I do my best to keep my skills sharp to honor their efforts.

Give me a shout if you'll be at the SHRM conference or follow this blog or follow me on twitter throughout the conference to hear the latest and the greatest from the HR world.

Hope to see you in New Orleans!

Sometimes the Best Sell is the Softest Sell

One of the big mistakes that a lot of salespeople make is not understanding that most people don't like to be sold to. When you're selling to a salesperson, they generally like to be sold to as they understand and appreciate what you're doing, but most people get turned off by the hard sell.

Whirlpool understands that most candidates are not salespeople and will be turned off by a recruitment pitch that is hard sell. So one of the strategies that they employed is a soft sell recruitment video narrated by Reba McEntire in which she describes the partnership that Whirlpool has forged with Habitat for Humanity.

There's no hard sell in the video. There's almost no way of watching the video without getting misty eyed. And there's probably no better recruitment video out there and may never be one.



Article by, Steven Rothberg and courtesy of CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates seeking entry-level jobs and other career opportunities.

"Gen Y-ify" Your Recruiting Website

Okay now, this gal has got it right. I kept this article as unread in my Google Reader because I knew it would be a good one to savor at a later date.

Kristin Gissaro of Talent Mash, who was recently featured in an XtremeRecruiting.tv interview by Bill Vick, summarizes and provides solid examples of employers doing it right in attracting the younger audience, the infamous Gen Ys, who were born between 1980 and 1995. Kristin also points out that those in Gen X or Baby Boomers, who still want to be cool, will also be attracted to your site in the hopes of keeping in touch with the latest and greatest.

So read this:

It's Time To Gen Y-ify Your Career Site

You must read it. You should especially read it if you know that your employment website is just so-so, i.e. a computerized brochure as we like to call them at CoolWorks.com, or an afterthought of your marketing website.

Get with the times.

Make it fun.

Show off how cool you really are.

How do you do this? Well, let's start with the basics.

1. Feature a video of your employees having fun doing their jobs.
2. Feature photos of your employees having fun doing their jobs.
3. Feature stories of your employees having fun doing their jobs.
4. Get testimonials from your employees. Job seekers love to see someone like them who is having fun at a job that they may want to do. It's the "Well, if they can do it, I certainly can do it" factor.

Notice any repetitiveness here?

Get away from the statistics about how you are the #1 destination for your guests and instead explain why you are the #1 destination for your employees. Give solid answers to their "whys."

We've been thrilled with the growing number of individuals seeking to learn about the real world of seasonal work on our social network, My CoolWorks. It is common for members of the tribe to ask one another for the skinny on a resort, ranch or camp, because they already know what you told them, but want to hear about it from one of their peers.

What does this mean for you? It means that the more that your recruiting website acts like a peer to your prospective employees, the more knowledgeable your job candidates will be and the more likely that they'll apply. If your friend says it's a cool place to work, it MUST be.

Couldn't we all use a few more applicants and employees who really want to join us or be there?

73 Percent

More and more folks are using the Internet to find jobs according to a survey by The Conference Board. Of course this is something that we like to hear at Cool Works (tm) and we know it to be true because our clients find some great folks by using our website.

To read more about the The Conference Board's research, click here.

Currently on Cool Works (tm), the ski resort jobs are leading the charge paired with seasonal jobs in sunny climes like Florida. But, sooner that we all expect, summer jobs will be back again. Heck, we're half way to Halloween already. Where does the time go?

Retention = Re-Recruiting

You thought it was tough to find your employees in the first place, but lately it is getting tougher to keep them around. Recently on HR.BLR.Com, they posted an article citing Michael Jalbert, president of Management Recruiters International (www.mrinetwork.com), and he believes that bosses should think of retention as re-recruiting. See the full article here.

Some highlights:

• Spend some time reaching out to your employees and continue to challenge them.

• Bosses should assume that their best people are getting job offers from their competitors.

• Loyalty is a word that exists less and less in the business world.

• Periodically ask your employees some questions like the following to get a feel for whether or not they will stay with your company. Here are a few question examples from Michael Jalbert.

If you could make any changes to your job, what would they be?

In the morning, does your job make you jump out of bed or hit the snooze button?

What makes for a great day?

What can we do to support your career goals?

What can we do to keep you with us?

The key thing to remember is that your employees joined your team for a reason at the beginning of their employment. Keep finding ways to extend that relationship and never stop re-recruiting them.

Applicants are people too...

At this time of the year, it's likely that employers are seeking anybody to fill their jobs. There are a few types of applicants: those that plan ahead, those that plan way ahead and those that suddenly realize that "Wow. I guess summer is here and I need a job." You may even find people who didn't know that your job opportunity was just the thing that they weren't looking for. As a recruiter, you need to be savvy enough to address all of these types of people and remember that all of them want to be treated with respect, interest and just like a guest in your home, they want to feel cared for.

However, in the seasonal world I know it's tempting to stop recruiting the moment the season starts and when the off season arrives believe that it's time to take a break. But, in order to get the best candidates, not just those who can fog a mirror, it is imperative to always be a recruiter, all of the time. You never know when you might just find that perfect person to work at your lodge, camp, resort, ranch, etc. Good recruiters are recruiting all of the time.

Think of your own life. Doesn't it seem that when you are not necessarily looking for the love of your life, or the perfect job, or finding that place that you can call home, it finds you? Life is all about seeking opportunities and taking some risks, for in doing so you will find your reward.

Be good recruiters. Remember that paper or on-line applications represent people and they simply want to move their lives forward and have some adventures along the way. Don't dash their dreams by not acknowledging their interest. Be thankful. Say hi, write that email, give them a call that says "Thanks for applying!" Of course, you'll find people who aren't qualified for your jobs, but be nice about that too. Move them on to something that suits their skills better or advise them to acquire different skills so they can get that job in the future. Be brave enough to tell someone no. It's a whole lot nicer than letting them float in cyberspace wondering if their application got through in the first place. Be kind.

Successful recruiting campaigns are based upon and supported by recruiters who possess the following mindset. "Who can I meet today? Whose life am I going to change by providing an opportunity to work at my lodge, ranch, resort, etc.?"

Because really, isn't that how you would like to be treated?