Well, there isn’t any precedence yet, according to this StarTribune article.  Clearly the proper use of social networking sites during background checks for candidates is going to be a tremendously important legal topic soon.  This topic has been percolating for some time.  The article references an obvious starting point:

“We can suggest to employers that they include in their application process some statement that says ‘we do reference checking including use of information in the public domain’ and to make it broad enough that if they discover something online it’s fair game,” Ridley said.

I have always been one to note that the Internet IS a public domain so anything a candidate chooses to post online should be usable.  That only seems logical to me, but I know there are others who see it differently.  From the article:

Professional recruiter Gillian Gabriel said she doesn’t use Facebook in her screening process. Instead, Gabriel said, she uses sites like the professionally oriented LinkedIn where people often are looking for job and career connections. Gabriel also looks at blog connections posted on a candidate’s LinkedIn page.

“Whatever they put out there is fair game,” Gabriel said.

“Fair game” seems to be the preferred phrase for this topic.  Anyway, LinkedIn and blogs seem like a good starting point.  I would still choose to look at Facebook also.  I like to know as much as possible about a candidate and if it is online, I’m going to read it.  Just being real.

One last note that caught my eye from the article:

Schmedemann said employers are turning to social media because they “are under pressure to hire carefully” in an economy where there are plenty of job seekers and few jobs. “People fake their résumés much more than they used to,” she said.

Great point.  The difficult job market does lead to desperate acts.

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Breaking news from the big job board world (via press release):

Today, we are excited to announce that Monster has entered into an agreement to acquire HotJobs that will provide you with unprecedented access to job seekers and make Monster the leading site for job seekers in the U.S.
Upon the close of the acquisition, Monster will also enter into a multi-year strategic agreement with Yahoo!, becoming the jobs and recruitment engine on Yahoo!’s homepage for both the U.S. and Canada.

I’m not overly surprised by this news as I believe HotJobs has been fading fast over the past year or two.  I still believe the consolidation of major job boards is less significant than the migration to highly-targeted job boards.  Specialization is the future of job boards as they compete with networking sites for the primary channel to source candidates…in my opinion.

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I am hearing more discussions about incredibly large responses to sales job postings in this present economy.  Some of the companies I talk to are overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of resumes they receive.  I went back to look at an old article we wrote back in 2005 when the economy was in a much stronger position.  In today’s economy, the points are even more applicable:

If your ideal sale starts at the VP level, state in your ad that a needed skill is the ability to communicate at the VP level.  If your sale involves many competitors, state in your ad that the successful candidate is able to close deals in a competitively crowded market.  You get the idea – stay focused on the successes you desire from the salesperson in this role.  The primary goal of the ad should be to move the sales superstar to respond.  They should see themselves, or better yet their abilities, in the ad – the skills they possess today, their motivations to succeed and the parameters for success in the position.

The key is always to write the ad with the ideal salesperson in mind.  Often I read ads that are clearly just job descriptions posted my HR on a job board.  Some are amazingly bad – listing amount of weight one has to lift, detailed dental insurance plans, obtuse software references.  There is a time an a place for these things, but not in the approach ad.

I always tell our clients to view the hiring process as a sales call.  Imagine a salesperson cold calls you and starts doing a detailed data dump about a product or service.  The salesperson doesn’t even qualify you for need, they just start rolling.  I find overwritten sales employment ads elicit the same response from me.

The better approach is to think of your ideal salesperson when constructing the ad and write the ad using the most salient points to illustrate the position.  This will keep your writing to a minimum while staying on topic.

And the reason why this is important is defined in this Businessweek.com article:

Such employees are taking a “scattershot” approach to job hunting, sending resumes for openings whether they are qualified or not. That can create headaches for an HR organization. One executive I met with recently told me he had received 200 resumes for a top managerial position. Twenty of them were excellent, but the rest were well-crafted resumes of people who were in no way qualified for the job. Better filtering systems are going to be essential to streamline the hiring process and keep time and costs in check.

Write a better ad.

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The thought of retiring is going to be a novel idea in the near future, at least according to a new abcnews.com poll.  In a recent survey of Americans (my bold):

Half the population in this new ABC News poll thinks both job security and retirement prospects in the years ahead will remain worse than their pre-recession levels. Four in 10 also see worsened prospects for the availability of jobs and advancement, and, consequently, their own spending power.

No surprise there.  The second aspect regarding worsened prospects for the availability of jobs is phrased in a negative manner.  However, it is only 40%.  This effect occurs in these difficult economic times – times will never be as good as they once were.

I have seen this effect in some candidates recently which is never a good approach to landing a new job.  As a recruiter, I am not looking for a naive optimist – the times are difficult and sales cycles are extended.  Yet there are still deals to be closed and almost every opportunity will be highly competitive.  This economy separates salespeople from pretenders in a fast mode.

My recent sourcing activities have involved finding sales candidates who acknowledge the economy while expanding on the modifications they have made to their sales process.  Increased prospecting, budgetary qualifying, time-frame discussions, etc. are all important adjustments that should be forthcoming from strong candidates in this economy.

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I’ve written about this phenomenon in the past and I continually encounter it in many sales areas – the allure of experience.  In fact, I just talked to a recruiter from a different part of the country who focuses on sales hiring.  We talked a bit of strategy and I was just dumbfounded.

This gentleman focuses solely on finding someone with as much industry experience as possible.  His primary motivation – find candidates who can bring accounts with them.  No discussion about skills, no behavioral-based questions, no attempt at learning their style and motivation…just simple experience.

I am not even sure if he asks if it was successful experience.

My attempt to move the discussion to skills, talent and motivations was summarily dismissed by him and we ended up having a rather short phone conversation.

This conventional wisdom for sales hiring is persistent today.  My thought is this – what happens when the candidate pool decreases dramatically?  Highly-specific industry experience will not be prevalent.  What then?

Perhaps that is the day I am waiting for.

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This is a new trend, I think:

As unemployment numbers hit historic highs, “pink slip” parties are popping up in big cities around the country. Hundreds of axed employees are going to happy hour meet-and-greets, where one can enjoy a drink and discuss career prospects with eager recruiters.

People are finding creative ways to stand out above the pack. In order to get a job in this economy, people have to get out there. And while there are no guarantees of gaining anything more than good conversations and a few contacts, some pink slip attendees have had success in finding new employment. Pink slip parties offer those on the prowl for jobs a chance to share information among themselves.

“If you take your network and compare it to the network of a total group, you get access to more people – if you can help each other, it’s a win for everyone,” said John Challenger, CEO of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Pink slip parties are just one extension of social networking.

That is from the Career News newsletter.  Quite the creative idea as long as the parties include the “eager recruiters.”

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CNNMoney.com provides this article regarding 2009 hiring.  As you may expect, hiring is down and it appears more cuts are coming soon:

Of the 31,800 employers surveyed, only 15% anticipate hiring more employees during the second quarter, down from 16% in the first quarter and 26% in the same period last year.

About 14% expect a decrease in their payrolls, up from 13% last quarter and just 9% one year ago. Another 4% said they were undecided about their hiring intentions.

The net employment outlook, or difference between employers who plan to add jobs and those who expect to cut them, was 1%, down from 3% in the previous quarter and 17% in the year-ago period. That’s the lowest net employment outlook since the recession of 1982.

But what of those 15% who anticipate hiring more employees?

Alternatively, employers in construction and leisure and hospitality anticipate increased hiring as compared to the first quarter, Manpower said.

Only employers in transportation and utilities said they plan to keep hiring levels relatively stable for the second quarter, according to the survey.

Those industries would be a good place for jobseekers to look right now.

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You never quite know what you are going to receive from the Herman Trend Alert which makes it one of the more highly-anticipated newsletters in my inbox.  This week the topic is how many job postings there are presently – over 1.8 million.  Granted, there is far more to hiring than just the quantitative aspect, but the number surprised me.

Here is their intro (sorry, no link):

While job postings between January 2008 and January 2009 have declined in all industries, there are still almost 1.88 million jobs that require skilled workers. According to a release by Indeed.com last week, the industries that experienced the least contraction were Education and Healthcare. Job postings in these industries declined by nine and eight percent respectively.

And the bad:

Looking at job seeker trends in 12 major industries, Indeed.com’s assessment reflects major losses in the numbers of postings in most of the major industries. Not surprisingly, the greatest losses were in Real Estate (58 percent) with Accounting second at 53 percent. The numbers of postings in the other major industries Construction, Banking and Finance, Hospitality, Information Technology, Manufacturing, Media and Newspapers, Retail, and Transportation all dropped by between 43 and 48 percent.

The last point they make is indicative of the change towards information-based positions in this country:

The other side of this picture, often overlooked except by employers in need, is the demand for skilled workers. In fact the numbers of postings in this report totals to over 1.87 million. The recently unemployed will fill some of those jobs. However, others will continue to be vacant because we simply do not have the trained workers to fill them— even with a national unemployment rate of 7.6. Employers would do well to take this opportunity to reinforce their pipelines, through the schools or colleges.

That is sound advice.  I find it difficult to believe that in this economy there are still positions that will go unfilled due to a lack of qualified candidates.  If you are looking for a new opportunity, these vacancies would be a good place to start analyzing your skill set to their need.

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There is a common marketing approach used in recruiting that states some form of “we locate the candidates who aren’t looking.”  I suppose the hook is that we can find amazing candidates that you can’t find.  It’s a hook, I guess.  Anyway, here is one I received in an unsolicited email:

What we do is go after the best candidates & the elite that are not currently looking for a job as they already have one. We personally present and sell your specific company’s opportunity to their individual needs. Our clients find that these hidden candidates are more stable, more qualified and haven’t been interviewing all over town.

Stable?  More qualified?  How does one do this?  He talks about presenting and selling your opportunity, but not about qualifying candidates who can succeed in the position.  This fact is an important distinction.

I would be wary of any recruiter who attempts to sell a salesperson on an opportunity.  Have a discussion, look for fit, determine their abilities…the onus is on the sales candidate to sell you.  I would avoid any self-proclaimed sales recruiter who takes the aforementioned approach.

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Recently Cheezhead mentioned that online job ads are down again in November.  According to the Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series online job postings declined 70,200 to 4,369,200 in November.  Job postings for the September to November period were down 264,000.

The data they collected shows declines in the Northeast, the South and the West.  In the Northeast Pennsylvania lead with a decline of 19,900 postings and in the south Texas lead with a decline of 37,800.  Our state, Minnesota, had the largest decline in the midwest – down 12,600 postings.

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