There's just no getting around it. Times are tough. The economy is in crisis, businesses are struggling, previously secure workers are now fearful of losing their jobs. The emotional impact can be great, leading to feelings of anxiety and depression - and a concomitant loss of focus and creativity. The potential effects on work performance consist of reduced productivity, innovation, and overall employee morale. Yet there is opportunity for growth in the midst of these economic hard times. While it might go against intuition, success in difficult times calls for holding true to basic tenets of effective behavior. With the proper attitude and approach, you can indeed thrive in uncertain times. In the interest of full disclosure - and to give credit where credit is due - I have to thank my 5-year old son for the inspiration for today's tips. For it was during a delightful Sunday afternoon together - filled with game-playing, puzzle-assembling, artwork and general enjoyment - that my attention was drawn to the power of the basics. Here are a few tips I'd like to share with you:
Work as a team. Whether you're putting together a Spiderman jigsaw puzzle (as we were) or advancing a new product to market, there's nothing like the power of collaboration. Working together allows for faster progress and more creative solutions.
Be accountable. If you've made a commitment, stick to it. And while you're at it, hold those around you accountable, too. My son didn't waste a moment taking me to task when I tried to divert him from his much-loved game of Candyland. "But Mom, you promised!" And so I did.
Be supportive. When your coworker or report does something well, give him a well-deserved pat on the back. If he's uncertain and needs a little encouragement, offer it up. I can't tell you how lovely it was to hear my little guy comment on my drawing by saying, "Mommy, I love your work."
Share resources. Lean times can mean limited access to valued resources. The temptation might be to get what you can for yourself and your team, even if that means leaving others empty-handed. Yet sharing resources (in my case, taking turns with the yellow crayon) with others means they're far more likely to do the same for you.
Refresh yourself. Stressful times can take a profound toll on your physical and emotional well-being. Don't forget to take some time to refresh and reenergize yourself at regular intervals. Your approach to refreshment may differ from my 5-year old's (snacking on Cheerios and chocolate milk), so find what works for you. Then do it.
Be flexible. Challenging times call for flexibility and a willingness to do things differently. You may have to take on new responsibilities, modify your schedule, or work with a different set of people. Letting go of disappointment (for my son, that meant not finding his favorite program on TV) and being open to new opportunities will help you gain credibility as a resilient and cooperative team player.
Finally, at the risk of sounding rather Pollyannaish,
Be positive. Even the worst of storms passes with time. Remaining optimistic, grounded, and focused on the future will help you weather the hard times and move bravely ahead. I was so proud of my son, who had been feeling somewhat under the weather, when he declared, "I'm sick but I'm happy." Now there's an attitude that will serve him well in both good times and bad.
Source: JobDig.com by Liz Bywater
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Studies show that Marketing Execs Struggle to Show ROI- How about You?
Marketing executives are under increasing pressure from CEOs to show a return on investment for their programs, but many are struggling with complex processes, technological difficulties and internal resistance to measurement systems, according to a report from The Conference Board.
Because measuring marketing return on investment (MROI) is still relatively new, many executives say they lack the technological and institutional tools necessary to measure their programs, the study found.
Lack of resources, lack of connection with performance objectives and inadequate focus are some of the primary sources of frustration. Major barriers to implementing MROI programs - largely related to issues of business infrastructure - include problems with data availability or integrity (47%), technology/infrastructure (41%), resource dedication (39%), and methodology/know how (22%).
This holds true for recruitment advertising initiatives as well. Are you eating through your budget with no solid results to report back to your boss? Are you purchasing online job board contracts blindly and just hoping that you make the hires needed to justify your spend at the end of the year?
Allow us to help. NAS can work with you and your account reps to collect all of the (back-end) job board data and develop analytic metric reports delivered to you each month for your review and consideration. The information from the analytics will allow us to see which jobs/boards are providing you the greatest ROI for specific jobs/locations, as well as any red flags that need immediate attention. This information will provide essential information for planning where to most effectively place current job openings, as well as providing you insight for renewals in 2010. Then when your boss asks to see the ROI, you no longer have to shrug your shoulders in defeat.
Contact your NAS representative for more information.
Source: “Marketing Execs Struggle to Show ROI”, marketingcharts.com, Jan. 22, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Are You a Web 2.0 Wannabe?
If you don’t invest in finding tomorrow’s candidates today, you’ll become history.
This article is one component of a Web 2.0 and rich media demonstration. It consists of a variety of simple broad-reach tools including webinars, surveys, discussion walls, Twitters, and videos. The purpose of presenting the article this way is to demonstrate how an individual recruiter could expand his or her visibility using similar low-cost technology. As you read the article, click through to the links and take the action suggested. Then imagine how you could apply similar approaches to your job postings to expand both its visibility and interest.
As a example, start by texting the word “sourcing” to 96625 and take the instant survey. Then create your own survey like this and Tweet me at LouA with your quick take. Then create a similar process for hiring by asking your employees if they know a great person for a new hot job, or pinging your resume database asking prospects if they’d be interested in exploring a potential career move.
Now back to the article. It describes some of the latest Web 2.0 recruiting and sourcing tools and likely future trends.
You can rank yourself to figure out if you’re still a Neanderthal or a new ager. On this scale, if your still posting boring job descriptions on the major job boards you’d be considered a Web 1.0 stone-ager.
Those in the current Web 2.0 era are now successfully using search-engine-optimized talent hubs, and pushing jobs using teasers ads to targeted blogs and social sites. Integrating and automating all this stuff based on robust workforce planning and process control metrics is Web 3.0. Here’s an online survey you’ll want to take to more accurately benchmark your company on this sourcing evolutionary scale. You’ll also be able to see the instant results and figure out what you need to do to move up to a higher order of species. (We’re creating a survey like this to figure out the decision factors candidates use when selecting one job over another. Email me if you’d to participate. Also, comment on my recruiter’s blog.)
To start this benchmarking, consider how many of the following tools, techniques, and processes you’re now successfully using to source top performers. As you read the six categories, rank yourself on a 1 to 5 scale. Give yourself a 5 if you are training others or you’re now being interviewed by the mainstream media. Rank yourself a 4 if you’re a recognized leader in the recruiting industry. Give yourself 1 point if you’re thinking about doing these things. Assign yourself a big zero if you say it wouldn’t work at your company.
When you’re done, total your score. Less than 10 points qualifies you as a true Neanderthal. If you score more than 20 points you’ll probably get some type of award at ERE’s next Spring Expo. Regardless, whatever you score, figure out what you’d need to do in the next 12 months to get an additional 10 more points. Then focus on this to rebuild your recruiting department. It will be worth it.
Six Important Web 2.0 Plus Trends and Tools
An integrated social media engine: Facebook pages, LinkedIn networks, and pushing ads to appropriate blogs is fine, but not too automatic. A social media engine links all of your networks sites onto a common platform pushing teaser ads to sites most appropriate to your target candidate audience. For example, it makes sense to send compelling two-lines ads to power-engineering blogs rather than MySpace if you’re looking for people with heavy industry experience. MySpace and Facebook might be more appropriate if you’re looking for part-timers for your retail store or young adults just graduating. While many progressive companies are already doing these things, the automation piece is where the short-term action will be. Jobs2Web is the leading player here, so watch closely what these guys are doing.
Use of talent hubs and the phaseout of traditional job descriptions for advertising copy. I’ve made this prediction for years, and it’s finally coming true — the idea of posting individual job requisitions is archaic. The likelihood of the right person finding it is problematic, and even if they do, they’re so boring only the desperate will apply. Talent hubs represent the new thinking here. View a talent hub as a portal or micro-site for a group of jobs that’s marketed using the latest consumer advertising concepts and optimized to be easily found outside of the traditional career sites and job boards. The messaging needs to be compelling and access needs to be open, inviting, and warm, usually with some type of IM feature. While talent hubs are comparable to an integrated social media engine, they’re less robust and less costly to build and maintain.
Developing a proprietary prospect database with automated CRM. On the surface this is a technology solution, but down deep it really has to do with involvement and interactivity. The strategy behind this is to build a personal prospect pool that is constantly nurtured using automated candidate management relationship tools. This is how you maintain the involvement. More advanced tools are on the way that allow you to create events which trigger some type of action, usually an email, but it could be a Tweet or text message. Prospects are notified when opportunities arise, and as long as the messaging is compelling, you’ll have a number of great candidates express interest. This concept is at the core of just-in-time sourcing.
Applying advanced consumer marketing tools for recruitment advertising. If you’re still posting boring ads, subtract 5 points from your total. Boring advertising especially on a job board is a waste of money. So if you want to continue to use job boards at least post ads that will attract someone’s attention. Here’s an ad that SimplyHired posted on their career site to give you a sense of how an ad should be written. Consumer marketing companies are the early adopters of this idea, since this is how they attract their customers. They know that targeted messages pushed to their audience creates interest. Here’s a big thing to think about on this point: don’t use your advertising to sell the job — use it to establish a connection. This is a paradigm shift in terms of where recruitment advertising is heading. Don’t sell your products first; create interest and demand first.
Reduce the time to find you. One of the most important competitive advantages a company or independent recruiter can have is getting the best candidates before everyone else. This is the driver of much of what’s described above involving the concept of “be found first!” When good people enter the job-hunting market they tend to call their close confidantes first. To tap into these early entrants a “call me first” strategy gives you a significant advantage especially if you have a great job available. After a week or so these people will start Googling for jobs or go to an aggregator like SimplyHired.com. To get a sense of where you stand on this early-bird sourcing strategy, start asking your candidates how long they’ve been looking. Give yourself a high ranking if most of them say “less than a week.”
Continuous change and time warping. When you think about what’s happened in the past 10 years, you realize that the rate of change is increasing, not slowing down. So if you have trouble thinking about what solution is best to implement, you need to step it up a notch. Not only do you have to start changing how you source, but also implement flexible technology and business solutions that allow you to adapt and change faster than your competition.
The recruiting industry has gone through a number of inflection points over the past 10 years, and it seems that they’re coming faster than ever before. Web 2.0 has been here for two to three years and many companies are just starting to employ some of its enormous capability for sourcing. Automation, optimization, and integration are the next big waves, which only a brave few have ventured this far.
While all of this technology can help, it still needs involved hiring managers and effective recruiters to make it all work. For a top person, changing jobs is a big decision, and the position selected will largely be dependent on the leadership qualities of the hiring manager combined with the career counseling ability of the recruiter. Fully integrating these high-touch components with the high-tech still seems to be a way off. Regardless, there are plenty of tools available for the individual recruiter to get started trying it all out.
Source: Are You a Web 2.0 Wannabe by Lou Adler, ere.net, Jan 23, 2009, 5:06 am ET
This article is one component of a Web 2.0 and rich media demonstration. It consists of a variety of simple broad-reach tools including webinars, surveys, discussion walls, Twitters, and videos. The purpose of presenting the article this way is to demonstrate how an individual recruiter could expand his or her visibility using similar low-cost technology. As you read the article, click through to the links and take the action suggested. Then imagine how you could apply similar approaches to your job postings to expand both its visibility and interest.
As a example, start by texting the word “sourcing” to 96625 and take the instant survey. Then create your own survey like this and Tweet me at LouA with your quick take. Then create a similar process for hiring by asking your employees if they know a great person for a new hot job, or pinging your resume database asking prospects if they’d be interested in exploring a potential career move.
Now back to the article. It describes some of the latest Web 2.0 recruiting and sourcing tools and likely future trends.
You can rank yourself to figure out if you’re still a Neanderthal or a new ager. On this scale, if your still posting boring job descriptions on the major job boards you’d be considered a Web 1.0 stone-ager.
Those in the current Web 2.0 era are now successfully using search-engine-optimized talent hubs, and pushing jobs using teasers ads to targeted blogs and social sites. Integrating and automating all this stuff based on robust workforce planning and process control metrics is Web 3.0. Here’s an online survey you’ll want to take to more accurately benchmark your company on this sourcing evolutionary scale. You’ll also be able to see the instant results and figure out what you need to do to move up to a higher order of species. (We’re creating a survey like this to figure out the decision factors candidates use when selecting one job over another. Email me if you’d to participate. Also, comment on my recruiter’s blog.)
To start this benchmarking, consider how many of the following tools, techniques, and processes you’re now successfully using to source top performers. As you read the six categories, rank yourself on a 1 to 5 scale. Give yourself a 5 if you are training others or you’re now being interviewed by the mainstream media. Rank yourself a 4 if you’re a recognized leader in the recruiting industry. Give yourself 1 point if you’re thinking about doing these things. Assign yourself a big zero if you say it wouldn’t work at your company.
When you’re done, total your score. Less than 10 points qualifies you as a true Neanderthal. If you score more than 20 points you’ll probably get some type of award at ERE’s next Spring Expo. Regardless, whatever you score, figure out what you’d need to do in the next 12 months to get an additional 10 more points. Then focus on this to rebuild your recruiting department. It will be worth it.
Six Important Web 2.0 Plus Trends and Tools
An integrated social media engine: Facebook pages, LinkedIn networks, and pushing ads to appropriate blogs is fine, but not too automatic. A social media engine links all of your networks sites onto a common platform pushing teaser ads to sites most appropriate to your target candidate audience. For example, it makes sense to send compelling two-lines ads to power-engineering blogs rather than MySpace if you’re looking for people with heavy industry experience. MySpace and Facebook might be more appropriate if you’re looking for part-timers for your retail store or young adults just graduating. While many progressive companies are already doing these things, the automation piece is where the short-term action will be. Jobs2Web is the leading player here, so watch closely what these guys are doing.
Use of talent hubs and the phaseout of traditional job descriptions for advertising copy. I’ve made this prediction for years, and it’s finally coming true — the idea of posting individual job requisitions is archaic. The likelihood of the right person finding it is problematic, and even if they do, they’re so boring only the desperate will apply. Talent hubs represent the new thinking here. View a talent hub as a portal or micro-site for a group of jobs that’s marketed using the latest consumer advertising concepts and optimized to be easily found outside of the traditional career sites and job boards. The messaging needs to be compelling and access needs to be open, inviting, and warm, usually with some type of IM feature. While talent hubs are comparable to an integrated social media engine, they’re less robust and less costly to build and maintain.
Developing a proprietary prospect database with automated CRM. On the surface this is a technology solution, but down deep it really has to do with involvement and interactivity. The strategy behind this is to build a personal prospect pool that is constantly nurtured using automated candidate management relationship tools. This is how you maintain the involvement. More advanced tools are on the way that allow you to create events which trigger some type of action, usually an email, but it could be a Tweet or text message. Prospects are notified when opportunities arise, and as long as the messaging is compelling, you’ll have a number of great candidates express interest. This concept is at the core of just-in-time sourcing.
Applying advanced consumer marketing tools for recruitment advertising. If you’re still posting boring ads, subtract 5 points from your total. Boring advertising especially on a job board is a waste of money. So if you want to continue to use job boards at least post ads that will attract someone’s attention. Here’s an ad that SimplyHired posted on their career site to give you a sense of how an ad should be written. Consumer marketing companies are the early adopters of this idea, since this is how they attract their customers. They know that targeted messages pushed to their audience creates interest. Here’s a big thing to think about on this point: don’t use your advertising to sell the job — use it to establish a connection. This is a paradigm shift in terms of where recruitment advertising is heading. Don’t sell your products first; create interest and demand first.
Reduce the time to find you. One of the most important competitive advantages a company or independent recruiter can have is getting the best candidates before everyone else. This is the driver of much of what’s described above involving the concept of “be found first!” When good people enter the job-hunting market they tend to call their close confidantes first. To tap into these early entrants a “call me first” strategy gives you a significant advantage especially if you have a great job available. After a week or so these people will start Googling for jobs or go to an aggregator like SimplyHired.com. To get a sense of where you stand on this early-bird sourcing strategy, start asking your candidates how long they’ve been looking. Give yourself a high ranking if most of them say “less than a week.”
Continuous change and time warping. When you think about what’s happened in the past 10 years, you realize that the rate of change is increasing, not slowing down. So if you have trouble thinking about what solution is best to implement, you need to step it up a notch. Not only do you have to start changing how you source, but also implement flexible technology and business solutions that allow you to adapt and change faster than your competition.
The recruiting industry has gone through a number of inflection points over the past 10 years, and it seems that they’re coming faster than ever before. Web 2.0 has been here for two to three years and many companies are just starting to employ some of its enormous capability for sourcing. Automation, optimization, and integration are the next big waves, which only a brave few have ventured this far.
While all of this technology can help, it still needs involved hiring managers and effective recruiters to make it all work. For a top person, changing jobs is a big decision, and the position selected will largely be dependent on the leadership qualities of the hiring manager combined with the career counseling ability of the recruiter. Fully integrating these high-touch components with the high-tech still seems to be a way off. Regardless, there are plenty of tools available for the individual recruiter to get started trying it all out.
Source: Are You a Web 2.0 Wannabe by Lou Adler, ere.net, Jan 23, 2009, 5:06 am ET
Monday, January 26, 2009
In case you have been living under a rock- Internet is King!
In just a short period of time, Internet usage in the United States has steadily evolved from a mere curiosity for many and an interest for only the tech savvy, to a mainstream form of communication for most Americans. Internet penetration has more than doubled in the past 10 years, reaching nearly 73% of the American population.
As the following statistics show, the characteristics of Internet users are as diverse as the U.S. population itself:
As the following statistics show, the characteristics of Internet users are as diverse as the U.S. population itself:
- Over half of Americans now have a high-speed Internet connection in their homes,
compared to only 5% in 2000. - The Internet draws an ethnically diverse crowd, with 11.4% of the Internet population
being Hispanic and over 20 million African Americans going online. - Once considered a male-dominated media, the Internet now attracts a comparable
number of women. - Use of the Internet is beginning to out-pace traditional media, as evidenced by the fact
that Generation Y spends more time online than watching TV.
The implication for employers is clear. The Internet has emerged as a core channel for attracting and acquiring new talent. Advances in Web 2.0 allow employers to build brand awareness and engage both active and passive candidates through employer videos, blogging, social networks and viral marketing campaigns - all mediums of communication that were only imagined a few years ago.
The additional implication of importance for employers is that the growing use of the Internet
across various demographic groups makes it the medium of choice for many talent acquisition campaigns. Recent gains in use by women, Hispanics, African Americans, and Baby Boomers demonstrate the Internet’s potential for reaching across the entire spectrum of the talent community.
As you will see below, with the vast diversity of the Internet itself comes great opportunities to reach and communicate with A-level Talent across the globe.
- Social Networks- Connect with job seekers on their own turf
- Search Engine Optimization/ Search Engine Marketing- make sure that when candidates are searching, your company is the first employer that they see
- Employment Video- Show job seekers who your company really is and why they want to work for you
- You Tube- Allow your current employees to tell your company’s story
- Blogging- Tell candidates how rewarding it is working for your company in your own words
- Online Banner Ads- Get in front of passive and active candidates, while branding yourself as an employer of choice
- Online Job Boards- Let us help you come up with the best combination for targeting key talent through our Interactive Days and Online Contract Management
- Email Campaigns- Go Green. Instead of direct mail, target specific candidates for your hard-to-fill positions through email
- Electronic Job Fairs- Pocket the money that you would have spent on traveling and reach even more qualified candidates across the world
- Candidate Relationship Management- Communicate with candidates in live time through RSS feeds to personal homepages, live recruiter chat, podcasting and live video solutions
For additional insight on ways to use these trends to your maximum advantage in talent acquisition, please contact your NAS representative.
Source: Internet Usage in the United States, NAS White Paper, Jan. 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
NAS develops first analytic tool to measure advertising ROI for both online and offline advertising
Cleveland, OH (PRWEB) January 19, 2009 -- NAS Recruitment Communications, the leader in HR consulting, employment branding and interactive recruitment marketing, today announced the release of NAS Total Source Tracker. This revolutionary HR metrics suite will set the standard for the next generation of sourcing strategy, online investment allocation and process improvement. The NAS Total Source Tracker, an end-to-end HR metrics solution enables improved investment allocation, sourcing strategy (including traditional media, search engine traffic, job board aggregators, social networks etc.), lead generation and candidate experience through the careers portal into the ATS!
Stephan Kruger, NAS VP Interactive, is excited about the release of the new HR Metrics Suite. "Simply stated," he says, "you can't improve what you can't measure. The HR metrics provided by this tool is vital to any recruiting strategy, allowing clients to measure not just online but total campaign effectiveness. Those results--including exactly how many candidates from each external source actually apply--are what will drive improved investment allocation in future recruiting strategy.
Kruger points out that in today's competitive market, it's essential to have the HR metrics tools necessary to analyze the real effectiveness of job boards, social media, search engines, and the candidate experience on the career site.
"You need to be able to validate where you invest," he says, "analyze your current recruiting strategy, and, finally, identify opportunities for process improvement. The Total Source Tracker sets you on a direct path to improving your conversion ratios." More information on how you can use the Total Source Tracker to optimize your HR strategy is available at http://www.nasrecruitment.com/HomeArticles/TotalSourceTracker.html
Stephan Kruger, NAS VP Interactive, is excited about the release of the new HR Metrics Suite. "Simply stated," he says, "you can't improve what you can't measure. The HR metrics provided by this tool is vital to any recruiting strategy, allowing clients to measure not just online but total campaign effectiveness. Those results--including exactly how many candidates from each external source actually apply--are what will drive improved investment allocation in future recruiting strategy.
Kruger points out that in today's competitive market, it's essential to have the HR metrics tools necessary to analyze the real effectiveness of job boards, social media, search engines, and the candidate experience on the career site.
"You need to be able to validate where you invest," he says, "analyze your current recruiting strategy, and, finally, identify opportunities for process improvement. The Total Source Tracker sets you on a direct path to improving your conversion ratios." More information on how you can use the Total Source Tracker to optimize your HR strategy is available at http://www.nasrecruitment.com/HomeArticles/TotalSourceTracker.html
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Please Join KC Student SHRM Committee for a Recruitment Social
SHRM-SCKC
Recruitment Social
January 30th, 2009
4:00pm to 6:30pm
The Granfalloon
On The Plaza
608 Ward Parkway
Kansas City, MO 64112
On The Plaza
608 Ward Parkway
Kansas City, MO 64112
Email:
shrm-sckc@hotmail.com
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
You're Invited!
Your corporate career site has more impact on your recruiting efforts than any other single component of your sourcing strategy. That’s because every aspect of your sourcing strategy (job boards, banner ads, e-cards, print, radio, etc.) has one call to action: For more information, visit our website. But once you’ve driven your potential applicants to your site, what are you doing to sell them on your organization?
Join us for a complimentary webinar hosted by Caroline Slomski, Internet Strategist with NAS Interactive.
Join us for a complimentary webinar hosted by Caroline Slomski, Internet Strategist with NAS Interactive.
Eleven Elements which Boost Career Site Performance
Discover the role your career site plays in your recruitment efforts and how to best communicate your Employment Value Proposition online.
Discover the role your career site plays in your recruitment efforts and how to best communicate your Employment Value Proposition online.
Wednesday, January 14th at 2:30 EST/1:30 CST
To join webinar: http://www.nasuniversity.com/elevenelements/
Dial-In: (888) 378-1550
Passcode: 2164688335
Participants will be eligible to receive a free 22-point site review – valued at more than $2,000.
Please RSVP to Lauren Garten at lgarten@nasrecruitment.com by 5:00 on Tuesday, January 13th.
Dial-In: (888) 378-1550
Passcode: 2164688335
Participants will be eligible to receive a free 22-point site review – valued at more than $2,000.
Please RSVP to Lauren Garten at lgarten@nasrecruitment.com by 5:00 on Tuesday, January 13th.
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