it's ALL about the experience

Banish Lowball Offers

We had the pleasure and privilege of sharing some of our recruiting thoughts with Frank Sennett, Editor of Employee Recruitment & Retention. He asked us to provide a pet peeve in recruiting -- and something many people take to be conventional wisdom but that we find to be a myth.  Here's our example, as permitted for repost/print by Frank.

A pet peeve that certainly ranks high on the list is employers who extend low offers to start the negotiation process in a highly competitive market.  The logic, as it has been described to me, goes something like this:   A manager (often relatively new at hiring) falls in love with a candidate.  Along the way, the recruiter learns the candidate's wage history and expectations, calibrates it with current market conditions, and coaches the manager about an acceptable price point.  Check—the desired amount is in the budget range.  The candidate is primed to receive good news...and then the hiring manager offers well below the price point because he or she wants "room to negotiate."  It's like watching the final tragic seconds of overtime in a basketball game where the deciding point is up in the air: he aims, he shoots...HE MISSES! 

In the spirit of setting up the new hire up for optimal retention, isn't it more efficient to approach the offer as a whole interaction that includes up-front discovery of needs, transparent calibration of company resources, and a resulting agreement on the number?  Great candidates always have other options (especially in a competitive market), and the price of low-balling isn't just the loss of talent; it's also the viral negative effect of word on the street about how your company does business.  Recruiting the next person gets more difficult as a result.

Technorati tags: salary, recruiting, negotiation

 

Are You Really Going to Apply Online?

The following is a BlogSwap guest post from Jim Durbin of StlRecruiting.com.

So you want to find a job, and the first thing you do is sit down at the

computer and start searching Monster for jobs. You flip through hundreds

of posted positions, merrily clicking Appy Now buttons and forwarding your

resume to what you can only assume are hungry recruiters waiting for a

resume to come to their attention.

Is that what you imagine? A room of listless monkeys sitting around

waiting for a resume to pop up on your their desktop, with bells ringing

and alarms shrieking and a bright red light in the room spinning as the

manager says, "Stellar Candidate Number 863124 just submitted to an open

position! This is the one we've been looking for!"

Now let's be honest.  Didn't some of you, maybe just a little bit, imagine

this is what happens when you apply online through a job board?  That job

description speaks to you man, it fits you so well it's like the manager

was inside your head when she wrote it, and sure the qualifications list

the need to be fluent in Mandarin Chinese but is it really that hard to

learn?  You made it through four years of Mrs Tingle's high school Spanish

surely you can pick up some Chinese, and by golly they'll train you if

it's that important.

Are there any of you that just know this job was meant to be...yours,

meant to be yours, and clearly the universe made this job pop up in front

of your computer screen on this day.  Why, you almost didn't turn on the

computer today, but something told you that you should sit down today and

look for work, and wow - look what happened - you're here to apply to the

job.

On the other side of the internet, you can see what's happening.  The

recruiter gets your resume, glances at the title and is intrigued.  The

name seems so familiar, but they can't place where.  It's  little bit of

deja vu, it is. The recruiter reads the resume, (the world's best!

resume), and almost falls out of the chair.  He grabs for the phone and

calls the hiring manager.  "Cancel all your appointments, a stellar

candidate just applied for the job!"  The recruiter hangs up and mouths a

silent prayer to whatever beneficent deity put this candidates in front of

them.

But not everyone falls into that category.  Maybe you're not the naive

type who thinks there's someone on the other side of that terminal for

you.  Maybe you're a volume type of guy.  Volume works - ask any

cold-calling salesman.  Every "NO" you get takes you that much closer to a

"Yes."

So what do you do?  You submit a resume to every position a company posts

in the hope that the recruiter will read the resume, call the CEO, and

demand a new position be created for the talented resume that just came

across the desk. Sadly, even CEO's send their resumes to online job

postings. Need a Help Desk candidate? Send a CEO resume!

Not satisfied with blasting your resume eight times to the same recruiter

from one job board - you bounce around every board you can find, burning

up your keyboard with multiple resume submissions, sure that if one person

doesn't like your resume, maybe another one will.  It's all just one big

crap shoot anyhoo!  Am I right or am I right?

It may seem harsh - but clicking submit on an online application is like

sending your picture to a hundred suitors and begging for a date.

Companies don't have the resources to process the hundreds or thousands of

resumes that come through the pipeline every year, and many times your

resume, the one you spent weeks getting just right, is never read.

That's right. It's never even looked at. If it's opened, it might be

printed. If it's at the very top of the pile on the recruiter's desk, it

might get passed to a hiring manager. If they have time, the hiring

manager might glance over it - and if you have the perfect resume (which

differs for every manager), you might get an interview.  Do you know the

odds of that happening?

So What's A Job-Seeker To Do?

Be smart.  Use the job boards to find the companies that hire in your

field and then find something about them.  Find people inside the company,

or call the switchboard , and make sure that if you send your resume to

someone, that you've spoken to them and they are expecting it.

Don't ever send a resume to anyone that you haven't spoken to.  I mean it.

There are no monkeys and no bells and whistles to help you.  This is your

final warning.

Jim Durbin is the Director, Corporate Communications for the Durbin Media Group (www.durbinmedia.com)  He writes several local recruiting blogs and has a book coming out later this year on surviving unemployment.  This post is part of the College Recruiter www.collegerecruiter.com) and Recruiting.com (www.recruiting.com) Blogswap.  Jim can be reached at jdurbin@durbinmedia.com

Technorati tags:  college recruiting, job application