StlRecruiting

Hiring A Recruiter Is Tough

I'm working with a client in the Northwest looking for a senior  recruiter, and it's a difficult search.  Recruiters are easier to find than salespeople, and gauging their track record is a lot easier, as past performance for recruiters almost guarantees future performance.  The problem?  If they're good, it's very difficult to get them to move.

Good recruiters make six figures.  There's just no getting around it.  You only need 25-40 people on contract (depending on the comp plan) to make it to 100K, and once you're there, you just need to maintain that.  1 placement a week is the goal, and once you've reached that level, you'll never go back.

That 100K is a psychological mark.  Back in the 90's, it was the holy grail, announcing that you had made it.  Inflation and time have made it less valuable, but it's still an important benchmark. The problem?  What firm wants to pay 100K in a draw?  So you're left trying to get someone to take a huge pay cut, or you're left looking for luck - someone moves (no rolodex for the city), a company shuts down (economy is bad), or the best AM left because all the contractors were laid off.  And how many times does that happen?

Not to mention, the price of a recruiting hire is 25% of the base, but the base is usually much lower than the first full year comp, which means you're working at a cut rate.  As I said, it's tough.

At least you know how to screen them. They do what you do...   

iPhone,Therefore I Am

The keypad makes this slow, and I fear the grammar, but the photos and the ease of use is unreal. I'm also only paying $25/month more, and the data plan on Sprint would have cost as much.

Impact Of Social Media: Lecture Wednesday Morning

If you're signed up, don't forget tomorrow, Wednesday, is the lecture on social media at Washington University.

Here's the link to the google map to Whittaker Auditorium.  It's on the corner of Big Bend and Forest Park Parkway, caddy-corner from the Kayak Cafe.

Feedback is appreciated

Impact of Social Media On the Modern Corporation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: marketing interactive)

The link is found here, and has been corrected for the background.

Structural Negotiation In Recruiting Sales

I'm reading a book on negotiation, and it covers the importance of negotiating with decision makers.  The example given is that of a car dealer, where the salesperson actually has no authority to make the decision on a deal.

If you've ever been annoyed when a car salesman leaves to go speak to the sales manager, it's helpful to remember that the salesperson isn't actually the decision maker.  The process is set up so any negotiations have to be "run up the flag pole for approval."

In the book, the correct negotiating tactic in these situations is to do an end run to the decision maker, which got me thinking about the way that recruiters tend to make an end run around Human Resources to get to the hiring manager.

Clearly, HR isn't the final decision maker on hiring a candidate. The manager is. But the manager is in a weaker negotiating position, as they need the candidate, and thus may be open to price manipulation as they value the candidate for their impact.  Human Resources in this instant is a shield put up to protect the company from high pressure tactics.  The implicit promise of company-wide business, and the threat of gaining no business (or breaking the deal) puts the company in a better overall negotiating position, as Human Resources doesn't feel the personal pressure to hire a particular candidate.

The war between outside recruiters and Human Resources is sometimes seen as unnecessary, but it's clearly a structural barrier put in place by corporations to blunt recruiting salespeople.  Going around HR is a good tactic, but a risky one, as it's flagrantly pitting internal divisions (line managers versus HR) against each other. 

The truly interesting piece is that the success rates of the strategy have little to do with the efficacy of the salesperson, and everything to do with the comparative internal position of the hiring manager versus the human resources employee.  And in a further note of irony, the more successful the strategy, the more likely that the balance of power shifts to human resources over time, as the hiring manager is always in a weaker negotiating position, and thus is open to less economic candidate choices.

Go Sign Up For RecruitingBlogs.com

I don't often make demands of you the readers, but I was looking through RecruitingBlogs.com, the social network for Recruiters that has seen amazing growth (11,000 members), and there are only 26 Missouri recruiters.

That's crazy - I have more Missouri readers than that.  We need to boost our numbers, and get in on a forum that gives you fantastic information, helps you connect, do your job better, get hired, win prizes.

Seriously. Recruitingblogs.com.  Add me as a friend when you get there.  If we add 50 people from Missouri, and you friend me, I'll put your names in a hat and draw a name for a $50 gift certificate to Bristols.  If we add 50 more, and you are already a Missouri friend, I'll put your name in as well.

The Effect Of The Anheuser-Busch Merger On The St Louis Staffing Market

InBev did it.  They came in and merged with the All American brewery, amidst the beating of breasts and rending of garments from St Louis loyalists.  It's a fact of globalization, but it's a tough blow for a city that keeps losing household names to global mergers.

Do the household names matter?  St Louis has a lot more here than the Fortune 500 headquarters.  We have a stable, loyal, conservative workforce, decent housing prices and transportation, and a reasonably relaxed state and local government.

So we'll be okay, but there will be changes, and one of those changes is the local information technology staffing business.  AB-MSG is the umbrella organization for all of the IT at AB.  They started swallowing up smaller divisions like the brewery, the theme parks, packaging several years ago, and employed at their peak, some 500 contractors to add to their 500-700 employees.  That's a lot of contractors, and the result was a vendor list of the top staffing firms in St Louis.

The problem?  Working with AB is a bit like working for Walmart.  They bring you a lot of revenue, but once you're in, you're terrified of losing their business, and scramble to put your best people on the account.  You've heard of the 80/20 rule?  80% of your business comes from 20% of your clients?  With AB, for several firms in St Louis, 80% might be a bit low.  One Client shops aren't that strange in the recruiting world.  When an account manager has a good client, you want to work with them as much as possible, and there was definitely a ego piece to working with AB.  Contractors liked it, and so did you friends and family.  Anheuser-Busch was the holy grail of employment in St. Louis.  That was true for a long time for both full time employees and contractors.  It wasn't just the two cases of free beer.   

So what happens now? Patrick Thibodeau of Computer World writes about the possible impact of the merger.

The future for Anheuser-Busch's IT may be in outsourcing. In 2005, InBev outsourced its IT functions, including its data center, to IBM and its global communications infrastructure to BT Global Services. More than 160 InBev IT employees were transferred to IBM. InBev followed that move a year later with further consolidations as it moved to shared services.

InBev's decision three years ago to outsource its IT department fits with a general trend of companies deploying IT outsourcing to help prepare for mergers and acquisitions, said Linda Cohen, an analyst at Gartner Inc. "It just makes the deal easier," she said. And unless an acquiring company is experiencing problems with its current outsourcing relationship, merging firms will often extend their outsourcing arrangements to the acquisition. "Once you start outsourcing, you tend to do more of it," she said.

InBev likes to use managed outsourcing, which could mean IBM, Accenture, EDS, or another company coming in and running the show.  Anyone who has been through a merger like that knows it doesn't work out for the staffing firm.  Margins have to be squeezed to accomodate the new managed service, and when margins are tight (which they are), the only recourse is to cut the contractor or drop off the vendor list.

Getting Recruiting Bloggers Into Newspapers

I got started as a recruiting blogger going through newspaper employment sections.  The advice that was given was so incredibly bad that I felt the need to call these syndicated columnists out on the carpet.

From interview weakness questions to negotiating salaries, columnist advice in newspapers is embarrassingly bad.  It's the symptom of distance.  Syndicated columnists don't look for jobs the same way that the people who read the employment section of the newspaper do.  They're far removed from the actual, day-to-day employment process.  And it shows.

I'm a long way from writing furious scribes on this topic here and at recruiting.com, and my choice of topic has moved from candidate-focused to business focused, but there are a lot of fresh and not so fresh voices in the recruiting blogosphere that day in and day out are providing fantastic advice to the average job-seeker.

I'm talking about people like Jason Alba and Chris Russell and Louise Fletcher, who regularly put out fantastic advice that peels back the problems of employment process and helps people get jobs.

Ironic E-mails From eGrabber

eGrabber sent me what looks like a bulk advertising solicitation this morning. It's pretty funny, as they are promoting a tool that grabs contact information from the web.  I don't mind businesses sending me information - my role in the online recruiting community has been one of breaking news, evaluating products, and building  buzz.  It is strange when I get bad e-mails, though, and I post this only as an instructional lesson.

  Hi, (Your formatting is off.  The Hi is too far to the right- and don't you know my real name?  If you're  bragging about contact information, shouldn't you at least use my real name)

I am Smith, a Marketing  Associate at eGrabber, Inc (www.egrabber.com <http://www.egrabber.com/> ). (Come on, we know this isn't your real name.  Why go through the trouble of writing a name down if you're not going to be a live person?)

eGrabber is the leading Silicon Valley-based provider of data  capture automation engines. eGrabber's tools quickly capture contact  information found on web sites, emails and other places and transfer them to  ACT!/GoldMine/Outlook for immediate follow-up. (I like that you call yourself the leading Silicon Valley provider.  I wonder if there is a provider in Duluth, MN that is better for me?)

I am looking for  Advertising/Partnership opportunities to promote our products (through banner  advertisements/ stand alone email ads). (what is a partnership opportunity?  Are you offering me a chance to buy into your company?  And why use slashes instead of and/or, it's annoying/poorgrammar.)

We have a newsletter subscriber  base of 55K, and our audience will be a good fit to promote your  products.(You have an extra space after subscriber.  And if you don't even know my name, how do you know what products I'm selling.  How do you even know I'm selling products?)

Let me know if we could work out some sort of a barter deal  (or) a co-registration deal. I am pretty sure that both our organizations can  benefit immensely from a venture of this nature. Please feel free to reply to  this email. I look forward to hearing from  you.

Regards
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Smith  - Marketing Associate - eGrabber Inc

Barter?  Look buddy, I take cash, not chickens in payment for my services.  I do agree you can benefit from my services, but maybe an editor or some live person checking your e-mail would be a better first step.  For a company that says they are expert at finding contact information, you've just provided a very poor example of gathering contact information.  I don't know what site or what company you're trying to pitch to, but a little homework upfront would have made a difference.  I do have products to sell, but there's not a chance I'd let you in on it if you take so little care with your e-mail marketing.

Tell you what.  Smith, if that's your real name, if you are reading this, contact me, and we'll talk about changing the piece.  If you were serious about partnering, I would think you at least have an interest in reading the blog.  If not, and Smith is an imaginary name, well, consider us to have an imaginary partnership, and I'll put up an imaginary  banner ad for you. 

Recruiting Tools 2.0 Workshop

I'm going to change the way you recruit, in less than 5 minutes a day.

My new webinar on August 12th is about Recruiting 2.0 Tools.  We're going to surf the world-wide web and repurpose social media tools to use in recruiting.  Calendars, video slideshows, click-to-call sites, and microblogging are all on the menu.  This will be like nothing the recruiting world has ever imagined.

Sign up for 1:30 EST, August 12th at Hireability.

Recruiting 2.0 Tools Workshop:  5 Minutes A Day To Change The Way You Hire

Jim Durbin is an expert in social media who connects companies with results-driven candidates. As a consultant and business owner, Jim has worked with over 40 companies to deliver integrated marketing solutions using blogs, social networks, widgets and video.

In this 90 minute webinar, Jim demonstrates a step by step walk-through of the hottest Web 2.0 applications, including Twitter, FriendFeed, Meebo, YouTube, Flikr, Skype, Jajah, and more.  This is no dry presentation. We’ll show you how to easily manage entire social media campaigns in less than five minutes a day, using free tools that connect you with hundreds of the right prospects in your market.   

Everyone's talking about Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, but these sites can take a substantial upfront investment to yield results.  In this one of a kind presentation, you’ll learn how to interview candidates over video, create click-to-call job orders, promote positions through microblogging, and build a referral system that requires no maintenance.   The best candidates are getting smarter about looking for work. They're using the power of Web 2.0 to connect with hiring managers and other great candidates, and their personal networks often shun recruiters as unnecessary middleman.  Using specialized knowledge learned in this webinar, you can get to those spaces and identify yourself as a savvy recruiter faster than your competition can post a job on Monster.

Marketing Position With Established Design Company

I'm working with a small business located in St Louis that is looking for a marketing whiz to take their substantial competitive advantages and turn them into new business leads.

This 10 person company is run by an entrepreneur, and has seen steady growth for the last five years, with positive cash flow, a well run operation, and a reputation for service and quality.

The company sells a high-end design product that retails in the $20-$25,000 range.  The company currently only uses Yellow Pages and Direct Mail, although they have used multiple marketing packages in the past.  Your monthly marketing budget is $15-20,000.   

This is an internal position at the home offices in South County. The office is moving to a more central location in the next year (they're looking), and remote work is possible.

You need 5 years of broad-based marketing experience with small businesses, selling a high-end luxury product or design services.  Experience with direct mail, media buying, online marketing, and copywriting is essential.  Your creative and web design services are taken care of, which leaves you responsible for vision, strategy, tactics, and execution.

You must be a result-oriented marketer with the ability to explain what you're doing without marketing speak.  I'd say detail oriented, but you're the type of person who labels their sock drawer, so asking you to document what you're doing shouldn't be that hard.

And if you can't forecast and track the ROI of your program, then you probably shouldn't be in marketing anyway.   

If you're interested and want to hear the salary range, send an e-mail titled Design Marketer to socialmediaheadhunter@gmail.com with a description of your experience marketing high-end products to the consumer.