The post Get Recruited: Upcoming Brazen Recruiting and Networking Events (June) appeared first on Brazen Life.

But did you know Brazen also partners with popular employers and universities around the country to put on virtual career fairs and networking events?

Our platform allows talented candidates to connect directly with recruiters, hiring managers and other decision-makers to see if there’s a match with a particular company or organization. Doesn’t that sound more civilized than applying to a standard job listing and never hearing anything back?

Many of our partners ask us to bring the best job candidates to these events, which means YOU have a chance to get recruited. This is your opportunity to take a step up in your industry and transition into your dream job.

Want an invite to our next event? Sign up for our newsletter, and we’ll keep you posted!

Get psyched about these upcoming events

This month, an impressive roster of employers, universities and organizations are hosting events on the Brazen platform. We’re excited to partner with Bryaman Construction, Geico, Raytheon Engineering, Intuit, and many more impressive employers who are looking to chat one-on-one about open positions — as well as make hires.

On the university side, we’re working with University of Rochester, Ohio State, Villonova, DePaul, Penn State, LaGrange College, Virginia Military Institute, and more to host networking events that help alumni and students make valuable connections. Don’t you want to be in on this goodness? Sign up for our newsletter to get on the invite list! If you’re with a university, employer or other group, click here to host your own online networking event. We’ll be in touch right away!

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Get Recruited: Upcoming Brazen Recruiting and Networking Events (June) appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Find Quality Job Applicants: Use This Simple Trick to Make Sure They Really Want the Job appeared first on Brazen Life.

The interesting part is that applicants must complete a writing test to even be considered for the position. In Sethi’s words, “This test will cover your ability to compile existing IWT material into engaging and useful articles and write in the IWT ‘voice.’”

After reviewing similar articles on the site, applicants are asked to draft a post on “How to Network with VIPs.” They then must submit both an outline and a finished draft of around 850 words.

So… What does this mean for hiring managers?

The fact that this is the first step of the application makes it unique. Many hiring managers use writing tests or case studies to narrow down a handful of qualified applicants — but doing it from the get-go is an interesting approach.

The benefits are clear. Only people who really want the job would take the time to write an original 850-word piece on the off-chance they might be selected for an interview, right?

The downside: It’s also possible some qualified candidates wouldn’t apply because of the additional work involved, especially if you’re not a well-known brand like Sethi’s. But hiring managers could easily argue that if an applicant isn’t willing to go full-throttle to earn the position, they probably won’t be a go-getter on the job, either.

When you’re looking for the right candidate, a test like this could act as a free and easy way to separate those who care about your brand and message from those who don’t. You’ll know every application that lands in your inbox is serious — with hardly any extra work for you.

What do you think? Recruiters and hiring managers, have you tried this technique before? Do you think it would help you hire the right person?

Susan Shain is a travel blogger who loves helping people discover adventure through international travel or alternative careers.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Find Quality Job Applicants: Use This Simple Trick to Make Sure They Really Want the Job appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post 4 Must-Read Hiring Tips for Newbie Bosses appeared first on Brazen Life.

If you’re in a position where you’ve been operating solo for a while, but you need help with the day-to-day operations, you might seek someone with similar skills to your own, but who can be your right-hand as the business grows. Alternately, you might be well-equipped to run the venture, but you need someone with a set of expertise you don’t have so you can broaden your offerings.

Either way, hiring your first — or any — employee has legal, personal and professional considerations to bear in mind.

Finding the perfect candidate

All of the above doesn’t matter until you can find the perfect hire. As an entrepreneur, you may not have a robust LinkedIn following you can advertise to, and your industry contacts could be limited. You might be leery of someone who’s quick to jump on the startup wagon; lots of people are looking for job security and like the comfort of an established business.

Start by mining your network. Put it out there that you’re looking, and have a specific and thorough job description ready. While you don’t want to poach an employee from someone in your network, you can use your network as a source for referrals.

Attending industry conferences or trade shows can also be a great way to find an employee. Use your personal social media network. You never know when a friend of a friend could be looking for a job and can be a great fit.

Share your vision

If this is your first hire, your company’s “culture” might be undetermined. But you should have an idea whether you want someone who will come to work in yoga pants or who will be more business casual. You also must be confident the employee is someone you trust in a client-facing capacity. Especially for small businesses, each person is a face of the company.

Even if you’ve hired someone to do back-end work, the reality is that if you need her in a pinch to interface with a client or the public, you should be confident she’ll represent your brand the way you want to be represented.

Try to ask questions that get to the heart of your candidate’s core philosophies. Ideally, you want someone who will complement your style, help you to grow as a businessperson and not butt heads. It’s not necessarily someone who will blindly follow you over a cliff, but who will add perspective to your growing business.

Dig deep

Entrepreneur gives a piece of advice that might run contrary to what you’ve heard before: Don’t trust your instincts. Trusting your gut is great in some circumstances, but conduct due diligence in hiring. If you wouldn’t buy a house with a handshake, don’t hire an employee with one, either.

Although you might get a great vibe from a candidate, do as thorough a background check as you can. You might be tempted to save a few bucks and search online for criminal records, verification of education and other background essentials, but the Internet is full of manufactured or doctored documents.

If your employee acts in a way that harms someone, you can be liable for those acts. Criminal records and other records can be fakes, though, and so can background check companies. The three trusted background checking companies are Sterling Global Background Checks, Intellicorp and Kroll. Like the “big three” credit reporting agencies, these companies are established and reputable.

Know the regulations in your industry. For example, if you’re operating a child care center, an employee likely needs to undergo additional background checks. If your employee will be driving certain classes of vehicles, other regulations need to be followed. These vary state to state, so know how to properly screen your employees based on the job description.

Certain questions are off-limits in an interview, but remain mindful of verifying your candidate’s immigration status. The U.S. Department of Labor has a wealth of resources to help you navigate the nitty-gritty of hiring.

You might need a few tries to get it right

Just like you’ve been hired for a job only to discover a few months later it wasn’t what you expected, you might hire someone who’s not the right fit. It happens. If you’re planning to sign an employment contract, make sure you can terminate the employee at-will any time. You can’t fire someone for discriminatory reasons, or for reasons that violate public policy (e.g., the filing of a worker’s compensation claim).

Hopefully, if it’s not a good fit, both you and the employee will recognize that, and it’ll make the transition smoother. If you do make a poor hiring choice, reflect on what went wrong, what you could have asked during an interview process that would have helped uncover what was problematic, and what you should have looked for but didn’t.

As an entrepreneur, you’re bound to make mistakes, but use them as opportunities for growth so that you can do better next time.

Noble McIntyre is the founding partner and owner of a personal injury law firm, McIntyre Law based in Oklahoma City. He’s dedicated to making his community better through his partnership with Lawyers Against Hunger.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post 4 Must-Read Hiring Tips for Newbie Bosses appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post 4 Recruiting Difficulties Startups Face and How to Fix Them appeared first on Brazen Life.

Don’t fret, though: there are ways around these challenges. You just have to be innovative. Since you’re in the startup world, that shouldn’t be a problem for you!

Here are four common recruiting difficulties startups face — and how to fix them: (Click here to tweet this list.)

1. You can’t offer huge salaries or benefits

If you don’t have a lot of money for huge salaries or rockstar benefits packages, you’re going to have to offer perks and make your company a destination, a place people want to work for over other companies.

Follow this Geekwire advice: “The true art of recruiting is combining knowledge of the company’s unique culture [to the candidate’s personal goals] so that both parties succeed and prosper together.”

First, focus on making your company a place that people will be happy to work in the long term. Emphasizing a collaborative work environment and an open-minded culture may set you apart from bigger companies. Make it clear you’re willing to discuss perks like stock options and flexible vacation time.

Then try to offer some sort of benefits package, even if it’s not the most comprehensive one around. If you don’t want to handle the intricacies yourself, use a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) like TriNet to sponsor and administer benefits and a company like Zenefits to handle the details.

2. You don’t have the budget for multiple job boards or a dedicated recruiter

You may not have a recruiting budget, but you have something even better: your network. And networking is the most important way to successfully recruit startup talent.

This is one great reason it’s worth building a strong social media and email presence for your company — you can use those channels for recruiting. If people are already connected to the company, they probably respect what you do and might be interested in working with you.

As a small company, you have the added advantage of being able to hire quickly. While more established companies may take months to finalize an offer, you’ll know pretty quickly whether someone is right for you and be able to make decisions without a lot of red tape. Use this to your benefit, and present an offer within several weeks of meeting a candidate — job seekers always appreciate that.

And don’t forget: your team has a network, too!

As recruiter Hong Quan says, “It’s everyone’s job to grow the company.” Let your team know who you’re looking for, and maybe even offer small bonuses (or just lots of thank yous!) for successful hires.

The most important thing? Don’t wait until you desperately need to find someone to fill a position — that’s too late. Always be networking, and always be recruiting.

3. You don’t have a lot of time to recruit new employees

Recruiting can be time-consuming, especially when you’re looking to bring in top talent. It takes time to look for candidates, screen them, and tend to the dozens of emails you’ll likely receive when you post an open position.

That’s why we created an online recruiting platform — to save recruiters (and other people connectors like alumni leaders) time and money. Like many of our clients, we use our own event platform to recruit for our company because it allows us to chat one-on-one with candidates right from our own office. It has that personal touch, but without driving to meetings or setting up lots of candidate calls.

This lets our whole team jump into an online event and chat with dozens of candidates in one or two hours. We all see average ratings for each candidate, and we can make decisions on who to bring in for an interview based on unbiased data. It’s also nice to have our entire team weigh in on the hiring process, so everyone has a stake in the new employee.

4. You’re not a big-name tech company

How can you compete with the Googles and Facebooks of the world? By appealing to the hopes and desires of the candidate.

As Paypal co-founder, Peter Thiel, says: a “talented person will join your startup because your startup is working on an interesting and important problem.”

By showing the candidate how she’ll be directly involved in solving a problem, and changing the world, you’ll be able to “engage in conversation that transcends job requisitions, company culture, and compensation.”

You might also highlight that the candidate will have more input and reach at a growing company, serving as a big fish in a little pond rather than the other way around. Remember, you’re not just selling a job — “You are selling a bold vision and an exciting experience.”

What other difficulties have you faced while recruiting for your startup? How have you solved them?

Ryan Healy is COO and Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist. Follow Ryan on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post 4 Recruiting Difficulties Startups Face and How to Fix Them appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Face It: You Need Young Talent. Here are 3 Ways to Get It appeared first on Brazen Life.

But how can you attract the right Millennials to work for you? The hard-working and innovative young minds whom everyone is competing for?

You may be thinking of the flashy offices and free lunches offered by tech startups — but even if you can’t provide these, don’t despair. By understanding what makes Millennials tick, you can adjust the structure and workflow of your company to attract (and keep) them.

This Entrepreneur article on “Millennial-proofing your office” explains three sold ways to nab the top talent you need:

1. Take advantage of new technologies

Millennials are always hip to the newest tech tools and gadgets, and they expect the same of their workplace. Make sure your processes are digitally up-to-date, and that you’re utilizing technology in a modern and efficient way.

2. Focus on collaboration and teamwork

Today’s young workforce wants to sit at the table — and have their voices heard. Make this happen in your company with everything from collaborative team meetings to open workspaces.

3. Be flexible and open-minded

It is no longer the era of boss = king. Give your employees open channels through which they can easily offer their input, and be flexible with work arrangements — for example, allowing employees to work remotely one day a week.

According to the article, “This fosters a culture of trust and can be very beneficial for employee/employer relationships.”

Whatever it is, remember that enticing Millennials to join a company takes more than a ping-pong table and snazzy chairs — it takes a workplace where they can do what they’ve been doing for the past 20+ years: grow.

What methods have you found successful for recruiting and maintaining Millennials? If you’re a Millennial, would these three tips apply to you?

Susan Shain is a travel blogger who loves helping people discover adventure through international travel or alternative careers.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Face It: You Need Young Talent. Here are 3 Ways to Get It appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post How to Hire a Sales Rep Who Will Hit Your Revenue Goals Out of the Park appeared first on Brazen Life.

When I think back on what’s important in sales, a few “rules of the road” have served me well. Here are five things that you should think about during the hiring process.

1. Hire more than one sales rep

One of the biggest tips goes beyond the boundaries of dealing with a sales rep. It has to do with how businesses grow and learn. Essentially, no matter how good your first rep is, you won’t understand what’s going on with sales until you have two or more salespeople to compare to.

The first rep is your test case and the other is a control case. In other words, you track progress by comparing how the two reps are doing.

Hire more than one rep and keep careful track of who’s doing better and why. You’ll learn what’s going on with your sales processes: whether your products sell themselves or not, and whether it’s the rep, the product or the marketing that’s leading to individual results.

2. Figure out a pay structure

Another big issue is how your reps will get paid. You don’t want to cut too much into your profit margin, but you want to incentivize selling. How do you do that?

A lot of successful leaders use commission structures or other alternatives to create motivation in a sales force. And remember, commissions don’t have to be flat. Creating higher commission levels for higher sales levels is a big incentive. You can also mix and match commission and base pay or hire for a trial period.

3. Hire a challenger

Sales is all about personality. You want someone who can handle rejection effortlessly. Any salesperson who can’t shake off the negativity isn’t going to work in the field.

A winning sales personality means confidence — enough confidence to question anybody, even the boss. Your best sales reps will keep you on your toes. And you want someone who’s going to do the same to clients. Look for resilience, assertiveness and overall confidence in the person who’s going to be repping your stuff.

4. Research that person’s history

Aside from being a good judge of character and going with your gut, you can get a lot further in hiring the right sales person by researching what he or she has done in the past.

You might see great numbers or excellent work on past projects, but red flags may come up, too. Little lapses in work history, few to no references and questionable workarounds on a resume – all are cause for concern. Do your due diligence to make sure you don’t get burned later. (Click here to tweet this thought.)

5. Hire someone who knows technology

Robocop wouldn’t be impressive without his laser gear, robo-vision and everything else, and any professional isn’t as powerful without modern tools of the trade. Industry-specific mobile apps, a great digital dashboard for communications and an innovative customer relationship management platform enhances what a sales rep can do for a company. You want somebody who can use these tools to put your business in the limelight.

All of these considerations are going to be helpful when you’re looking at your shortlist and trying to read the tea leaves on who’s going to take your company to the next level.

Mike Kamo is the VP of marketing for Strideapp. Stride is a Cloud-based CRM and mobile app that helps small- to medium-sized agencies manage and track leads, as well as close more deals. They can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post How to Hire a Sales Rep Who Will Hit Your Revenue Goals Out of the Park appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Get Recruited: Upcoming Brazen Recruiting and Networking Events (May) appeared first on Brazen Life.

But did you know Brazen also partners with popular employers and universities around the country to put on virtual career fairs and networking events?

Our platform allows talented candidates to connect directly with recruiters, hiring managers and other decision-makers to see if there’s a match with a particular company or organization. Doesn’t that sound more civilized than applying to a standard job listing and never hearing anything back?

Many of our partners ask us to bring the best job candidates to these events, which means YOU have a chance to get recruited. This is your opportunity to take a step up in your industry and transition into your dream job.

Want an invite to our next event? Sign up for our newsletter, and we’ll keep you posted!

Get psyched about these upcoming events

This month, an impressive roster of employers, universities and organizations are hosting events on the Brazen platform. We’re excited to partner with Apple, TriNet, KPMG, Edward Jones, and many more impressive employers who are looking to chat one-on-one about open positions — as well as make hires.

On the university side, we’re working with Penn State, Carnegie Mellon University, Virginia Military Institute, UPenn, University of Iowa, and more to host networking events that help alumni and students make valuable connections.

Don’t you want to be in on this goodness?

Sign up for our newsletter to get on the invite list!

If you’re with a university, employer or other group, click here to host your own online networking event. We’ll be in touch right away!

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Get Recruited: Upcoming Brazen Recruiting and Networking Events (May) appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Hiring for Your Organization? 5 Tips for Attracting Top Candidates appeared first on Brazen Life.

But maybe it’s time to look in the mirror. Have you ever considered that your recruiting practices might be wasting people’s time, confusing applicants and driving away top candidates?

Leading organizations focus on all the touch-points with their customers, suppliers and, yes, candidates. You need to start caring more about your candidate’s overall experience and exceeding their expectations. Here’s how:

Offer clear and specific job descriptions

Deliberately vague-sounding job descriptions irritate candidates. They make it seems like you don’t know what you’re looking for, haven’t spent enough time to profile the job, or that you’ve hastily cut and paste from another job you filled. Poorly written job descriptions give a bad impression.

Great recruiters don’t take shortcuts. (Click here to tweet this thought.) Instead, use specific language. Sit down and write a list of tasks included in the job. Remember to explain what’s in it for them, as well; it’s not all about you. Applicants will self-screen if they don’t like what they see, which will save you time later.

One of worst things you can do is to go through the motions of advertising a job when an internal person has been chosen or the deal is already complete. Job seekers have enough stress without being exposed to ghost openings.

That doesn’t mean there’s never a time and place for an open-ended job posting, but tread carefully.

Make it easy for qualified candidates to apply

The trend is to require prospective candidates to apply online, usually through a Web portal. That’s great if it works. If this is how you receive applications, however, you should try it yourself, noting exactly how long it takes to upload a resume (and hope it doesn’t crash or hang). Any frustrations you feel will be felt even more by the applicant, and if it takes too long, he will walk away. Ask yourself: Is my application process too tedious?

Also make sure to confirm receipt of applications, as that’s not only polite but also necessary to show you have it on file. The candidate needs to know the application didn’t just fall into a black hole. This is the single most voiced complaint by candidates, so take it seriously.

Speed up the end-to-end process

Some hiring cycles take months on end. Look for bottlenecks where you can take time out of the process. Candidates have other opportunities, too, and you don’t want to get to selection time only to find the person you want has a better offer.

Be honest and upfront, letting candidates know about how long it will take from start to finish and how many interviews they’ll likely will have to endure. One way to limit the inconvenience, cut costs and speed up interviews is to use video or Skype, especially for out-of-towners.

Communicate… and then communicate some more

Keep your candidates in the loop every step of the way. You can even call them when you have no real news, as applicants always appreciate knowing where they stand.

Where possible, use the candidate’s preferred method of communication. Don’t call them at work; instead, leave a message or text and ask them to call you back, not forgetting to add your contact details. (It happens.)

After an interview, give some feedback, even if to simply say goodbye. Email is fine, just keep it short and professional and address the candidate by name. No one wants a “Dear Sir or Madam” letter.

What candidates hate most is the dreaded silence. Tell them the next step and make sure you follow through as promised. Do what you say you will do.

Treat the hiring process as a marketing opportunity

Candidates can be customers and customers can be candidates. Give them open access to you, as it lets them feel like they are in control of the process. The goal is to leave your applicants with a warm feeling of your organization, even if they were ultimately not successful in their application.

Social media provides an open platform and is the first stop for disgruntled or poorly managed candidates. The last thing you want to see is your company being trashed on Twitter or Facebook for failing to meet expectations.

Do your best to give every person who wanders across your job advertisement an easy road. A good test is to ask a colleague — or, even better, your manager — to apply and see how long it takes.

Your hiring process should be simple enough to attract people who are not even looking. That’s when you’ll find the best candidates, which will make both them and you happy.

Elaine Porteous is a freelance business writer with a specific interest in HR strategy and talent management. She writes for niche trade journals and creates content for corporate websites.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Hiring for Your Organization? 5 Tips for Attracting Top Candidates appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post How to Create Job Ads That Attract the Right Candidates appeared first on Brazen Life.

Don’t feel bad; most job ads are. Of course, it would probably be nice if the ad attracted perfect candidates. If it conveyed your culture and spoke directly to the perfect person and compelled them to apply.

And it can happen. You just need to figure out how to master recruitment advertising. Here are the guidelines:

1. Stop rushing

The primary reason most job ads aren’t effective is that they’re rushed out the door. Hiring managers toss a job description together and hit “send” before they even reread what they wrote. Recruiters take that job description, jam it into an ad format and publish as quickly as they can.

But rushing your work leads to sloppiness and carelessness. It was true in grade school, and it’s true today. If you need to create a job ad, stop, breathe, take your time and make sure you reread it before it goes out the door.

2. Spend time on the job description

If your job description is terrible, your job ad will be terrible too. If you invest time to make sure the job description is clear and matches the company’s tone, you’ll be a giant step closer to a non-crappy job ad.

The best job descriptions contain:

• Separated requirements and responsibilities. “Three years of experience” doesn’t belong next to “day-to-day website maintenance.”
• Language humans use. At least the humans you’re targeting. If you’re targeting lawyers, you’ll probably sound more formal than if you’re targeting startup folk.
• An awesome company description. In a few lines, candidates should get a feel for the company and the people it employs.

Once you’ve completed your first draft of the job description, run it through a quick check to make sure it’s accurate and contains enough information.

3. Think like a growth hacker

OK, you’ve taken a deep breath and written a job description that isn’t awful, but you’re not done yet. You’re less than halfway there. Now you have to take off your writer hat and put on your growth hacker one.

In growth hacker mode, think hard about how to craft the job ad to get the best results. You’re focused on metrics like views, clicks and conversions (in this case, that’s applications).

To optimize views, make your ad search friendly. Look at different networks and job boards to see how search and keywords affect results. How you optimize for views will depend on the platform. LinkedIn displays search results differently than The Ladders — each network is different.

To get clicks, focus on the title of your job ad. It’s like your subject line in email marketing: You need to excite someone to click open. If your title says “Junior Software Engineer for Engineering Firm,” you might get nothing but yawns. Spice it up. Stand out from the crowd. Don’t be afraid to take risks, and A/B test your titles to see which performs best.

To get conversions, ensure your job ad reads well and clearly conveys your message. You did a lot of this when you wrote your job description, but now think like a candidate. Skim the ad. Did you “get” it? Was it interesting? Even better, have someone (like a candidate) skim it and tell you their impression. You might find yourself rewriting a bit.

And make it easy for candidates to apply. The best-optimized job ad in the world is useless if it’s hard to apply.

4. Location, location, location

Time to change hats again. Remove growth hacker and put on real estate agent — a virtual agent. Your well-crafted and optimized job ad won’t help if your target candidates can’t find it. (Click here to tweet this thought.)

Do a little online research. Tons of articles and discussions focus on where sales, marketing, accounting and tech candidates look for jobs. A quick online search for your role and industry will help you figure out where your job ad belongs. Once you know, post it there.

Being a recruitment advertising master does take more time and effort than posting a few rushed paragraphs on the most popular job boards. But taking the time to master recruitment advertising will get you something special: the right candidates and the certainty you didn’t waste your time.

Michael Overell is the CEO and co-founder of RecruitLoop, an online recruitment marketplace based in San Francisco and Australia. A former McKinsey Consultant, Michael is passionate about startups, health and technology. He surfs when he can and rides a bike most days. Follow him @mboverell.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post How to Create Job Ads That Attract the Right Candidates appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Get Recruited: Upcoming Brazen Recruiting and Networking Events (April) appeared first on Brazen Life.

But did you know Brazen also partners with popular employers and universities around the country to put on virtual career fairs and networking events?

Our platform allows talented candidates to connect directly with recruiters, hiring managers and other decision-makers to see if there’s a match with a particular company or organization. Doesn’t that sound more civilized than applying to a standard job listing and never hearing anything back?

Many of our partners ask us to bring the best job candidates to these events, which means YOU have a chance to get recruited. This is your opportunity to take a step up in your industry and transition into your dream job.

Want an invite to our next event? Sign up for our newsletter, and we’ll keep you posted!

Get psyched about these upcoming events

This month, an impressive roster of employers, universities and organizations are hosting events on the Brazen platform. We’re excited to partner with GettingHired, LGS, DC Business Leadership Network, National Labor Exchange Military Career Fair, and many more impressive employers who are looking to chat one-on-one about open positions — as well as make hires.

On the university side, we’re working with Columbia Alumni Association, UPenn, Lehigh University, Oregon State, University of Kentucky Alumni Association, and more to host networking events that help alumni and students make valuable connections.

Don’t you want to be in on this goodness?

Sign up for our newsletter to get on the invite list!

If you’re with a university, employer or other group, click here to host your own online networking event. We’ll be in touch right away!

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Get Recruited: Upcoming Brazen Recruiting and Networking Events (April) appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post 5 Common Mistakes Recruiters Should Stop Making Right Now appeared first on Brazen Life.

At the beginning, you feel confident because you’ve got the people, the ideas, the contacts and the means. You open your doors to the world, sure in your knowledge that you’re the best dang recruitment company on Earth, and whamo. Your business falls flat on its face.

Where did you go wrong? Were your contacts not as good as you thought they were? Was the market simply not ready for your consultancy? It could be both of those things, but more likely than not, you were doing something wrong.

Don’t worry, we’ve all made mistakes. The important thing is to learn from them and move on. But if you’re aware of what some of those mistakes are before you make them, you could save yourself a lot of time, money and stress.

Here’s a handy list of the most common mistakes new recruiters make:

1. You’re naive about your clients

You might be the best recruiter who’s ever lived. You might have so much confidence you believe they should be building monuments to you on Capitol Hill. But you’ll never get anywhere if you misjudge your position with your clients.

All too frequently, less-experienced recruiters get blasé about their client base. Don’t assume you have loyal clients for life who won’t go looking for a better offer. And definitely don’t assume they won’t cheat on you with a rival agency.

Clients may well be loyal to you or to your brand, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be doing their own searches or looking to other agencies to see if they can get a better deal. First and foremost, clients are consumers. You need to be mentally prepared for them to jump ship if they find what they’re looking for elsewhere.

2. You demand perfection

We should always strive for perfection in our work, right? Well, yes, but you don’t want to become too consumed by that search for perfection.

If you aim to be a company that only caters to top talent, you run the risk of sabotaging your own client base with a too-stringent screening policy. Your goal should not be to scan someone’s resume and toss it because it lacks certain buzzwords or is too light on experience. Recruiters should look for the positives in anyone who walks through their door. (Click here to tweet this thought.)

See what you can work with in every candidate. For example, you might be able to sell a client as a great prospect for growth if they fall slightly short of the ideal criteria. You need standards, but if you apply them too stringently, you’ll be left with a tiny client list.

3. You’re too cheap

If you’re just starting out, it may seem sensible to do the recruitment equivalent of an opening sale — cut your prices lower than your competitors to bring in more clients. But this isn’t always the best idea. In fact, being cheap has the potential to result in catastrophe.

First, the discount you’re offering will hit your profits. Second, recruitment is an oversaturated market already. If you start undercutting, someone else will come along and undercut you. All of which leads to point number three: It’s unsustainable.

Unless you’re willing to initiate a race to the bottom, set your prices according to what value your clients will derive, not just what other low-rate agencies are offering.

4. You move too slowly

While you want to make sure clients are the right fit without diving in too quickly, recruitment is one of the most competitive markets on Earth. For every opening you’re chasing or every employee you’re desperately trying to headhunt, a trillion other agencies are doing the same, only faster.

Speed is of the essence in this game. If you’re not one for adrenaline, then you’re probably in the wrong line of work.

5. You’re too stingy with your costs

For any new business, monthly costs are a source of obsession, constant worry and brain-busting headaches. But if you cut costs at the expense of building your bottom line and expanding your client base, you’ll go nowhere. Focus on the top line and leave the worrying to someone else.

Starting a new recruitment business is always a scary prospect, but one with the potential to bring great rewards. Make sure you leave the naivety at home, don’t become obsessed with costs or perfection and keep your momentum going, and you should do fine.

Have you recently started a new consultancy? What trials and tribulations did you face and what nuggets of wisdom did you gain? Let us know in the comments below!

Adam Smith works for Talent Puzzle, a recruitment agency recommendation site that deals with a variety of generalist and specialist recruitment agencies to pair the right employer with the right agency. For more advice for recruiters, check out their blog.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post 5 Common Mistakes Recruiters Should Stop Making Right Now appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Work (or Want to Work) in Recruiting or HR? Join Us for This Free Networking Event appeared first on Brazen Life.

We’ve got an event for you!

On Thursday, March 20th, at noon EST, we’re hosting a FREE networking event for the Brazen community, with a focus on professionals who work in RECRUITING and HR.

That means if you work in recruiting or HR — or you want to work in recruiting or HR — you should join us!

Click here to register.

Our community is full of ambitious young professionals — hustlers, creatives and entrepreneurs who understand the importance of having a job you love. We want to help you meet one another, so you can rely on the support of your peers as you navigate your own career. We’ve organized this networking event online and during your lunch hour, so you can attend whether you work for an employer or have your own business.

Most importantly, this will be FUN! Remember, Brazen Careerist originated as a social network, and we still believe relationships are the foundation of a successful career. As an added bonus, this is an opportunity to try out Brazen’s software, the same awesome platform we use for recruiting events.

How It Works

It couldn’t be easier to join this event. Register now, and we’ll send you a link to join us on Thursday, March 20th.

During the event, you’ll be paired with multiple participants from around the region, country and world for several rounds of seven-minute, text-based chats. We’ll even save those conversations for you so you can revisit them later. After the event, we encourage you to connect with any interesting people on your favorite social networks; that will help you turn your chat into a mutually-beneficial relationship.

It’s like online speed dating, minus the awkwardness.

Hope you’ll join us!

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Work (or Want to Work) in Recruiting or HR? Join Us for This Free Networking Event appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Recruiting Strategy: Get More Phone Referrals with These 5 Simple Tips appeared first on Brazen Life.

People you’re referred to will be more receptive to hearing about the opportunity you’re calling about. They’ll also be more likely to be a high-quality job candidate since one of their colleagues recommended them to you.

The following five steps will maximize the number of referrals you’re able to get over the phone:

1. Ask the right questions

Don’t ask yes or no questions when trying to get referrals over the phone. A question like, “Can you recommend anyone who’d be a good fit for this opportunity?” is too easy to shut down with a simple “no.”

Instead, ask questions that can’t be countered with a one-word answer. For example, you could ask, “Who do you know who’d be a good fit for this opportunity?”

Another way to get more referrals is to be specific about the type of person you’re looking to be referred to. If you ask someone to name the best engineer they know, it’s entirely possible nobody will come to mind. They’re not blowing you off if they say they can’t think of anyone; you haven’t asked a question specific enough to make them think of somebody.

The goal is to ask a question narrow enough to put a person’s name in their head. After that, it’s a matter of getting them to give you the name.

Using the engineering example, here are a couple detailed questions that could help the person you’re speaking with think of a specific person:

“Who’s the best engineering manager you’ve ever reported to or worked for?”

“Who’s the best engineer you worked directly with at your previous company?”

2. Use silence to your advantage

After asking the right questions, the worst thing you can do is cut into the silence and fill the space with nervous chit-chat while waiting for an answer. Ask specific questions as described above, then be quiet.

During this silence, the person on the other end will be thinking about your question and will be more likely to give you a name if you let them take their time. The silence also puts pressure on them to think of a name.

If you speak again before allowing three to five seconds for this silence to occur, you’ll either distract the person you’re speaking with or you’ll give them an easy way out by taking the pressure off them.

3. Use networking as a fallback

If somebody is reluctant to give you a colleague’s name (often due to the location of a position or level of the position), say you’re hoping to network and connect with as many qualified people as possible for this opportunity.

You should be able to get names from people even if they’re unsure their colleague would be interested in the job.

Here are some good networking questions to ask if somebody is hesitant to provide you with a colleague’s name:

“Who did you have in mind? Even if they’re not interested, they might know somebody else who would be.”

“Who do you know who’s well-connected within this area and could point me in the right direction?”

“Who can you refer me to who’s well-networked within this field?”

4. Help them before asking them to help you

People are more willing to go out of their way to help you if you’ve done the same for them. (Click here to tweet this thought.)

If somebody isn’t a good fit for a particular job or if they decided they’re not interested in a specific position, focus on finding other ways you can help them before asking them for referrals.

You can discuss what types of opportunities they’d like to hear about in the future so you can keep them in mind for other jobs you come across. Tell them you’ll keep their resume on file and will let them know as soon as you see anything that could be a good fit.

After this, it’s a lot easier to ask for referrals, and you’ll be more likely to get a positive result.

5. Get multiple names

The best way to get referrals as a recruiter is to obtain as many names as possible once you identify somebody willing to refer you to their colleagues.

Not everyone will be willing to refer you to someone, so when you do find somebody who’s willing to give you a referral, this last step is crucial.

After you’re given one name, ask one of the following questions:

“Great! Who else comes to mind when you think of that person?”

“Thanks. Who else do you know with a similar background I could also speak with?”

Biron Clark is an executive recruiter specializing in the biopharmaceutical industry. He’s also a career advice blogger and founder of www.careersidekick.com. You can find him on LinkedIn here.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Recruiting Strategy: Get More Phone Referrals with These 5 Simple Tips appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Recruiters: When Should You Consider Open-Ended Job Postings? appeared first on Brazen Life.

But what if a job ad included none of that information? What if the job ad looked like this “Open-Ended Job!” from media company Upworthy?

No job title? No candidate specifications? What’s up with this weirdness?

We reached out to Melissa Trahan, Head of Talent at London-based Passion Capital and previously a recruiter for Massive Health and Facebook, to figure out why a company would opt for such an ad and what sort of results they should expect if they do.

Should your company recruit this way?

The utility of open-ended posting, Trahan says, depends on the size and focus of the company:

Small startups have very real limitations when it comes to hiring — they can often only afford the roles they truly need, and they usually don’t have a full-time recruiter to handle the administrative stuff, like sifting through text-heavy applications to find a person they don’t even know if they need. Early startups often struggle with knowing what people they need vs. what people sound like they could be good to have around.

While these sorts of ads may expand the possibilities for a small startup, the distractions may outweigh the benefits, Trahan adds:

In theory, an open approach like UpWorthy’s could help them determine their needs, but the noise of it could well be a distraction. For companies that have the ability to hire at a faster pace and have full-timers on board to handle that process, this kind of application could be a really fun way to diversify the pipeline and potentially create new roles.

If you’re recruiting for a bigger business, it might pay to go for it.

Ambiguous ad seeks creative, flexible candidate

Open-ended ads may also be most appropriate for environments that require a lot of creativity, much like UpWorthy’s, Trahan notes, as the very act of responding to such a posting signals comfort with ambiguity — generally a plus at startups that are still too small for much structure and demand team members wear many hats.

“Perhaps this form of application is really just an audition for the creativity it takes to succeed in their environment,” she suggests.

What’s the bottom line? If your business has the HR resources to sift through what’s bound to be a highly mixed bag of applications and the sort of culture that would welcome the unconventional candidate, perhaps it’s worth a try. (Click here to tweet this thought.)

If roles are tightly defined or resources are so strained little time is left for recruiting, maybe give an open-ended job ad like UpWorthy’s a pass.

Have you ever tried posting job ads like this? Did they work for you?

Jessica Stillman is a freelance writer based in London. She writes a daily column for Inc.com, contributes regularly to Forbes and Women 2.0 and has blogged for CBS MoneyWatch and GigaOM, among others.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Recruiters: When Should You Consider Open-Ended Job Postings? appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post 7 Reasons the Smartest Recruiters are Flocking to Online Networking Events appeared first on Brazen Life.

We’ve come a long way from crowded hotel ballrooms and folders stuffed with resumes. More and more recruiters are using online events to find qualified candidates for the positions they want to fill. Suddenly, your best candidates are all in the right place at the right time, which means you can save time finding them.

If you haven’t caught onto this trend yet, it’s time to add online networking to your recruiting schedule or replace some of your in-person events with online ones. (Click here to tweet this thought.) Online networking allows you to go beyond your social media strategy and promote one-on-one engagement with potential hires. Even better, the convenience of online networking will win you over in a flash.

Not convinced? Here are seven reasons to try online networking to fill openings at your company:

1. It’s easy and convenient

Forget booking travel, schlepping boxes of swag and getting mediocre sleep on hotel mattresses. Online networking events allow you to connect with candidates without ever leaving your office — or even your house.

2. It’s the best way to meet qualified candidates

The candidates you’ll find at online networking events are tech-savvy and willing to try new methods of communication. Now, aren’t those exactly the kind of people you’re hoping to hire? We thought so.

3. You’ll meet more candidates without spending all day on your feet

Avoid getting stuck chatting with a candidate who just doesn’t fit your mission. Use the timed structure of online networking events to your advantage. With just a few minutes to connect with each candidate, you (and your potential hires) will be forced to get down to business.

4. It’s easy to access candidates

Online networking puts qualified candidates at your fingertips. You may even find you have access to a wider range of candidates — including those who may not be able to sneak out of their current jobs to meet you or attend an in-person info session.

5. Online networking events can promote your brand

Ready to recruit? When you host an online networking event, your company’s visual branding will be front and center. Candidates will get a taste of what your brand is all about just by attending the event.

6. Your candidates will be at ease

Job fairs and recruiting events can be nerve-wracking at best (and social anxiety nightmares at worst). Online networking takes the pressure off attendees, who can then focus on what matters most: their qualifications and experiences.

7. It shows off your innovative side

Look at you, using the latest technology to reach potential employees through the Web. You know the power of the old-fashioned meet-and-greet, but you’re willing to embrace new methods as well. Candidates will appreciate your willingness to experiment and admire your accessibility. And guess who might also be impressed? Your boss. That can never be a bad thing.

Ryan Healy is COO and Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post 7 Reasons the Smartest Recruiters are Flocking to Online Networking Events appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Recruit the Best Candidates by Nurturing Your Talent Pipeline appeared first on Brazen Life.

For those of you new to recruiting (or who’ve been trying to cut the mustard as a recruiter), a pipeline is your go-to, steady stream of viable candidates. It’s made up of people you’ve met who made you pause and think, “Wow. This person would be great at my organization someday, somehow. I have to stay in touch with them.”

Your pipeline could be made up of rising star college students you’ll want to hire after graduation or IT pros who need just the right opportunity to relocate from the West Coast. A pipeline often includes people you’ve sourced and contacted. They aren’t quite ready to make that next step, but are open to keeping in touch.

In sales-speak, think of them as prospects.

But building a pipeline isn’t just about gathering lists of names and email addresses. It’s how you nurture those relationships over time, because you never know when the right opportunity will come along. Here’s how to do just that:

1. Ask to stay in touch

Assume nothing when it comes to recruiting. Pipelining is no exception. Once you have someone engaged in a conversation and before you hang up the phone, ask if it’s OK to stay in touch. Then do so.

2. Connect via online networks

It’s so easy to connect through LinkedIn with most professionals you meet. More recruiters are using Facebook to connect, too. So take the first step and send a request that includes a personalized note. Then periodically comment and like information they share.

3. Join your talent community

If your organization has a talent community, encourage your pipeline peeps to join it. Oftentimes, doing so will mean receiving monthly newsletters or other company news. If you don’t have a formal, opt-in community but have a Facebook page or LinkedIn group, offer that as a way to get the inside scoop.

4. Grab coffee together

If you recruit nationally or globally, grabbing coffee at a local java joint is probably not likely. But if you’re in the same town or plan to attend the same upcoming conference, pick a time to meet up.

Put a face to the name and email address. Use the 50 percent rule during your meeting to develop rapport. Take your relationship to the next level.

5. Pick up the phone

As long as you’re not stalking your pipeline, picking up the phone to check in is a good idea. Quarterly? Biannually? It’s up to you. Use your best judgment. Though as soon as you have a new job req that could be of interest to someone … boom, give them a call.

6. Make people feel wanted

People want to feel wanted. Recruiting top talent is no exception. (Click here to tweet this thought.) Think of other ways you can nurture your pipeline.

At my organization, we have a library of e-cards our recruiters can send to people they’ve met. There’s even a birthday card for when Facebook tells us it’s someone’s special day.

Shannon Smedstad is a recruiting leader with a love of employment branding, social media and coffee. You can connect with her on LinkedIn, Google+ or Twitter.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Recruit the Best Candidates by Nurturing Your Talent Pipeline appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post 7 Tips for Recruiting the Perfect Candidate at Your Next Online Career Fair appeared first on Brazen Life.

If you’ve ever tried recruiting via online career fairs, you know the value of using this new technology to find the best candidates. Just like in-person recruiting, online recruiting is most effective if you have a strategy, a plan for evaluating candidates and getting the most out of your time at the event.

Since we’ve run hundreds of events over the last few years, we’ve seen how top recruiters use online events to find and entice the exact type of candidates they’re looking for. Here are a few strategies that consistently work well, ideas you can apply at your next online recruiting event:

1. Talk to as many candidates as possible

To find the candidates best suited for the positions you’re recruiting for, talk with as many people as you can. This is your chance to get a lot of quality interviews under your belt in a short period of time!

Just think: no need to walk the last candidate to the elevators, take them to lunch before you even know whether you click, or even waste time on 10 minutes of small talk. In fact, at Brazen, we see value in time limits, with eight minutes as the sweet spot. That’s just enough time for you to see whether each candidate is a good fit, and enough time for the candidate to want the job — but short enough to make sure you don’t miss your lunch break.

2. Prepare standard questions and answers

Before the event, open Microsoft Word or Google Docs and type out answers you expect to use frequently and questions you think you’ll ask more than once. When you’re ready, copy and paste them into the chat window. By having these questions and answers ready, you’ll be able to speed up the conversation and move onto what really matters for hiring.

3. Break the ice

Just because the event is online doesn’t mean everyone’s less nervous than in-person events. Use the chat to put candidates at ease and share fun facts about your organization. You can even add these ice breakers to your file of prepared questions and answers so you’re not scrambling to come up with ideas.

Something like, “Thank you for participating today! I’m as happy to meet you as I am on Doughnut Day here at XYZ Corp,” followed up with, “What’s your favorite type of doughnut?” makes interacting with you less intimidating for the candidate.

Plus, the interviews will go more smoothly when everyone’s relaxed and able to present their best self, which means you’re more likely to walk away with the perfect candidate in your virtual file.

4. Take advantage of the platform’s tools

Every online career fair platform has built-in tools to make recruiting easier. Take a few minutes before the event to familiarize yourself with them so you can get as much as possible out of the time you have with candidates.

Brazen’s platform, for example, offers ratings for candidates, notes and a dashboard. Take a moment after talking to each candidate to give them a rating between one and five stars and jot down your thoughts; those notes will come in handy later.

When the event is over, use those ratings to choose which candidates to follow up with. The dashboard makes it easy to identify the top candidates, and your notes will help you strengthen your initial connection when you follow up.

5. Use digital content to make your brand stand out

Adapt your promotional materials to the medium. At an online event, you want solid digital content that informs the job seeker about your organization and sets you apart from everyone else. Videos, PDF downloads and employee testimonials are all excellent options.

6. Have your employee ambassadors participate, too

Online career fairs make it easy to get others on your team involved because they can participate without leaving the office. If you’re hiring for a specific position, ask your top talent to help recruit. As a bonus, being able to talk with current employees is appealing to candidates. If you’re hiring engineers, for example, letting the candidates talk with your top engineers can go a long way toward bringing your favorite applicants on board.

7. Follow up

Just because the event is over doesn’t mean your work is done. (Click here to tweet this thought.) Don’t forget to follow up with your top candidates! While some recruiters might sign off from the event having added a new member to their team, most will need to follow up to seal the deal.

If you spoke with a quality candidate who isn’t a good fit for the positions you’re recruiting for at the moment, stay in touch. You never know when a position will open that would utilize that person’s skills. Use the data you collect during the event to populate your talent community — and keep them informed of new openings or other online events.

Ryan Healy is COO and Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post 7 Tips for Recruiting the Perfect Candidate at Your Next Online Career Fair appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post How to Take Your Recruiting Skills from Good to Great appeared first on Brazen Life.

If you’re a good one, people might take your call and they might listen to what you have to say. But mights don’t have guarantees. (Click here to tweet this thought.) That prospective hire might also hang up.

Leave good behind and become great with these six steps:

1. Listen

Someone once said successful communication is 80 percent listening and 20 percent talking. This applies more than ever when you’re recruiting people. Stop the sales techniques and stop talking. Listen to what your client wants, and when you start approaching people for the role, listen to them, too.

Invite them to share more information with you, and they’ll probably do so happily. By knowing more about the role and the people you’re considering, you’ll be more knowledgeable when making choices and picking the correct candidates.

2. Don’t be “that guy”

You know the one. The person who calls when you’ve specifically asked them to email. The person who phones at 5 p.m. even though you requested morning contact. Pay attention to those details and people will warm to you faster and be more willing to cooperate.

The best recruitment consultants don’t swoop in overly brazen; they establish the relationship first. They find out the best time to call (because who wants to get caught while they’re at their desk at their current job?), and they play to their candidates’ rules instead of their own.

Show you care and people will invest in your skills and your ability to find them a job.

3. Don’t kid yourself

Don’t assume candidates are desperate for jobs and you can throw anything their way, even if it’s only remotely linked to what they asked for. When people are job hunting, they’re likely in contact with a few recruiting companies.

It’s like dating. Make sure you always stand out for the right reasons. If a candidate is great, fight for them because within a week or so, someone else might snap them up.

4. Go the extra mile

Don’t rely on the same old techniques for finding candidates. Great recruiters scan the Internet and job market all the time for opportunities and people who might be a great fit for the role in question.

Use social media. Sites like Twitter and LinkedIn are fantastic choices for tracking down people searching for roles. You can filter out tweets by specific keywords, use Chrome plugins like TweetDeck and track tweets that might mention things like “job hunting London.” Be as specific as you can for more tailored results.

5. Attend industry events

It can be easy to hide behind a computer during your day job, but the great recruitment consultant is someone who immerses themselves in their industry. Research industry get-togethers, conferences, meetups and fairs and get yourself down there.

Introducing yourself in person and being the go-to person for recruitment in your field is where you want to be and what you want from your career path. Hand out plenty of business cards and don’t be shy about it. The more, the better.

6. Practice your phone manners

Remember when you’re chatting that there are real people on the other end. It sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised by how much of a skill it is. Don’t ramble without taking a breather. Introduce yourself and let them do the same, as you would in any conversation.

Practice this at length before you get on the phone with anyone, and you’ll notice how much your communication and relationships improve.

Sean Revell has been writing about how employers can find, source and converse with the right candidates and advising job seekers on finding the right careers via Leisure Jobs since 2008.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post How to Take Your Recruiting Skills from Good to Great appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post 10 Tips for Hiring Your Ideal Digital Marketer appeared first on Brazen Life.

Hiring a digital marketer isn’t as easy as it sounds, which is why these 10 tips will help you pick the right person:

1. Don’t demand too much

Many of the best digital marketers have taught themselves a lot of what they know. It’s typical to write job postings with a long list of desirable traits as well as essential ones, but try to leave the desirable traits off if you can. You don’t want to risk deterring the perfect candidate with an almost impossible list of demands.

2. Determine their expertise

A wide range of skills come under the digital-marketer umbrella, which is why you need to define what your candidate can do. Do they have an in-depth understanding of SEO practices? Which social networks are they confident with? How do they feel about creating graphics or making videos? Are they a good all-arounder or specialist? And don’t forget to ask yourself: What do you need?

3. Ask for examples and proof of experience

Digital marketing skills and specialties can vary from person to person, and no two candidates will take the same approach. During the creative recruitment process, ask applicants to show examples of their work, either by submitting examples prior to an interview or bringing them in as part of the interview process.

4. Look beyond the resume

Many of the best business marketing techniques have become valuable in relatively recent years, and few people have digital marketing qualifications that show proof of their skills.

Instead, get to know the person behind the resume. (Click here to tweet this thought.) Look at their experience, but remember to look for passion and a genuine interest. Swing the conversation toward a successful or unsuccessful marketing campaign you’ve seen, and ask for their opinion. If they genuinely care, it’ll show.

5. Check their social media accounts

Whether candidates like it or not, employers scan social network profiles to vet them. Digital marketers should know that better than anyone. If their profiles are public, it’s worth seeing what they’re posting.

If they’re complaining about previous employers or work and discussing their drug habits, steer clear. A good digital marketer will know better than anyone that what they post online should be treated as being a public message.

6. Ask for their opinion

Traditional interview questions give candidates an opportunity to tell interviewers about their hobbies, interests and experience. They’re useful as an extension of the resume, but not great if you want to know what drives your candidate and where they believe marketing techniques are headed.

Be prepared to ask their opinion about common marketing practices, and don’t forget to ask what they think about the way you’re doing things at the moment.

7. Do a trial run

To get an idea how your chosen digital marketer will fit into the team and how efficiently they’ll work, consider asking them to work for a trial period. They’re looking for a job that’s the right fit, and you’re looking for the right employee, so they should see a trial period is mutually beneficial. If things don’t work out, you’re under no obligation to retain them.

8. Go slowly

Don’t rush to employ the first person who looks like they might know what they’re talking about. And don’t employ someone who doesn’t seem right because no better candidate has come forward. Don’t be afraid to reject every applicant and try again with a new list of candidates.

It’s far better to wait for the right person than to risk employing a digital marketer who could damage your brand.

9. Choose a recruitment agency — carefully

Working with a recruitment agency could save you time. You’d only receive pre-qualified applications instead of dealing with hundreds of people who might not be suited to the role.

It might help to look for a specialist agency — staff at a marketing recruitment company are more likely to know exactly what you’re looking for and be able to identify clues in resumes that might indicate whether or not someone has the required skills and experience.

10. Reject unsuccessful applicants properly

It might seem odd to consider unsuccessful applicants, but it’s an important consideration if you’re hiring a digital marketer. A polite rejection email to let them know they’re welcome to apply for future positions can go a long way toward softening the blow and encouraging them to continue liking your company.

A spurned digital marketer has incredible power if they want to criticize you online and leave your reputation in tatters. After all, they know how to use the Internet to get their message across.

Do you have any of your own tips to add? How would you hire a digital marketer? Alternatively, if you’re a digital marketer, what would you suggest to employers? Comment and share your opinion.

Nick Taylor writes guides for recruitment companies and employers, helping them to make the most of the recruitment process.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post 10 Tips for Hiring Your Ideal Digital Marketer appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Want to Really Get to Know a Candidate’s Abilities? Hire on a Trial Basis appeared first on Brazen Life.

To us, this arrangement makes sense — we work in open source software, which is a decentralized product. Outsiders were dubious. “That works great until you’re at 10 or 15 people, but when you get to 30, it falls apart,” they’d say. Then we passed 30 people, and we started hearing that the magic number was 100 people. Then people said Dunbar’s number — 150 — would be the point at which it didn’t work. But we keep blowing past these thresholds; we hired more than 100 people in 2013.

But we don’t do it the way most companies do.

It all starts with the way we think about work

In a lot of businesses, if someone shows up in the morning and he isn’t drunk, he doesn’t sleep at his desk and he’s dressed nicely, it’s assumed that he’s working. But none of that takes into account what he’s actually created during the day. Many people create great things without living up to those norms. We measure work based on outputs. I don’t care what hours you work. I don’t care if you sleep late, or if you pick a child up from school in the afternoon. It’s all about your output.

This arrangement isn’t for everyone. But a lot of people like the autonomy we offer, and that’s important. So we’ve arrived at an unorthodox hiring system that serves our needs perfectly.

Hiring by audition

Before we hire anyone, they go through a trial process first, on contract. They can do the work at night or over the weekend, so they don’t have to leave their current job in the meantime. We pay a standard rate of $25 per hour, regardless of whether you’re applying to be an engineer or the chief financial officer.

During the trials, we give the applicants actual work.  If you’re applying to work in customer support, you’ll answer tickets. If you’re an engineer, you’ll work on engineering problems. If you’re a designer, you’ll design.

There’s nothing like being in the trenches with someone, working with them day by day. It tells you something you can’t learn from resumes, interviews or reference checks. (Click here to tweet this thought.) At the end of the trial, everyone involved has a great sense of whether they want to work together going forward. And, yes, that means everyone — it’s a mutual tryout. Some people decide we’re not the right fit for them.

Overall, we end up hiring about 40 percent of the people who try out with us. It’s a huge time commitment, coordinating the short-term work being done by job applicants, but it leads to extremely low turnover. In the past eight years, we’ve had maybe 10 people leave the company, and another 25 or 30 we’ve let go. So it’s a system we plan to keep utilizing.

Today, I spend at least a third of my time on hiring. And even though it’s a small part of our process, I still look at every resume the company receives and do the final interview for everyone who joins. Nothing has the impact of putting the right people around the table. The aphorism is true: You can’t manage your way out of a bad team. We’ve done experiments to find the best way to hire based on our unique structure; your business can do the same.

This post is adapted from a talk by the author at the December 2013 Lean Startup Conference and originally appeared on Harvard Business Review. Visit their Insight Center on Talent and the New World of Hiring for more.

Matt Mullenweg is the founder of Automattic and creator of the open source WordPress software.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Want to Really Get to Know a Candidate’s Abilities? Hire on a Trial Basis appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post How Recruiters Can Snag GenY Candidates by Video appeared first on Brazen Life.

For instance, many Millennials can easily navigate their way around social media. Most have at least one social networking account, so it’s not crazy to imagine GenY leads the social media recruiting revolution.

But when it comes to Millennial talent, social media isn’t the only game in town. What about online video?

The relationship GenY has with online video may be a lot more serious than you might think. Many Millennials spend as much time watching online videos as they do tweeting and Instagramming pictures of their lunch. In fact, half of Millennials watch online video every single day.

As a recruiter or hiring manager, it makes sense to connect with GenY in a format that they feel comfortable using. Six out of 10 employers already use online video interviews in their hiring process. Should you follow suit?

Consider these benefits of video interviewing:

Candidates feel comfortable in a familiar environment

You know the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words?” Well, it’s doubly true when it comes to moving pictures. Millennials grew up with visual media in the age of television, the Internet and tablets.

Just look at the rapid growth of visual media on the Internet, from using GIFs to represent emotions to the startlingly rapid growth of Pinterest, the image-heavy social network.

Visuals are important, especially to Millennial candidates. Video interviews allow employers to speak to Millennials using their own language. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)

Weed out bad-fit candidates faster

Video interviews can help you form a personal connection faster than the traditional hiring process. Normally, you don’t see a candidate until one of the final steps of the process. You only sit down face-to-face with candidates for an in-person interview after the long process of weeding through resumes and slogging through time-consuming phone screens.

If most hiring managers know within 90 seconds if they will hire a candidate, why drag it out? Cut out those inefficient middle steps and get to the personal connection faster.

Through a video interview, you can pick up on those nonverbal cues like eye contact and body language that tell you so much about a candidate’s potential.

For instance, in a one-way video interview, candidates record their answers to your questions on video. Watching these video responses can help you narrow down the confident candidates who will fit into your company culture and cut those who are clearly not quite right for the job.

Save both interviewers and interviewees time

Hiring is already a time-consuming process for everyone.

It’s likely many people are involved in making the final decision on who to hire. Each interviewee gets wrung through a marathon day of interviewing and has to answer the same questions repeatedly. Each member of the hiring team has to meet each candidate separately, cutting into their own work productivity.

With a video interview, you save everyone time and stress.

The top five candidates no longer need to come into your office to connect with everyone in your company. You can record real-time video interviews for later, eliminate the duds, then share the best and brightest with your whole hiring team.

Show candidates your company embraces new technologies

To attract the very best talent, you need a top-notch company brand. Utilizing video interviews in the recruiting process lets talent know your company embraces new technologies.

The streamlined video interviewing process proves that your company isn’t afraid to think outside the box with technology. For tech-savvy Millennials, the company’s ability to use new tech trends early in the hiring process shows you’re committed to moving forward and not stuck in the phone-screen past.

GenY has already started to dominate the job market, so your company can’t afford to ignore effective recruiting tactics that hone in on the best and brightest candidates. Use new technology like video interviews to connect faster, improve your company brand and hire the best people for open positions.

What do you think? Are you using video interviews to hire great Millennials? Share in the comments!

Josh Tolan is the CEO of Spark Hire, a video-powered hiring network that connects job seekers and employers through video resumes and online interviews. Connect with him and Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post How Recruiters Can Snag GenY Candidates by Video appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post This Simple Rule Will Make You a Better Recruiter appeared first on Brazen Life.

It’s easy to set goals with these metrics in mind, but what type of day-to-day adjustments will improve these numbers and allow you to reach your goals? Let’s start with one easy step.

The 50 percent rule

The 50 percent rule says you should make sure the candidate is speaking at least 50 percent of the time in each conversation you have with them. (Click here to Tweet this rule.) Fifty percent is a bare minimum or baseline. If the candidate ends up talking 70 to 80 percent of the time on a phone call, that’s great.

Do you talk more than 50 percent on your calls? Some recruiters are above 75 percent. Start noticing your ratio and work toward bringing your number below 50 percent. The easiest way to change this ratio is to ask questions and listen to the answers, and not interrupt.

How can one minor change improve nearly every area of your recruiting? The 50 percent rule allows you to build more rapport with each candidate you speak with.

It’s natural to want to talk at least half the time on a phone call. You have an urge to talk, and the candidate does, too. Whoever talks more will probably walk away from the call feeling more satisfied and comfortable. Whose comfort is more important to you?

Rapport is essential

Rapport gives you credibility. Learning to be a better listener early in the recruiting process helps you build trust with each candidate down the road. You’ll have a better understanding of their concerns, and you’ll have more influence when you make suggestions in the later stages.

This relationship is what makes candidates pay attention when you explain why it might make sense for them to take a lateral move or why the job you have for them is a better opportunity than the position they’re considering. Without this connection, you’ll have less control as the interview process moves forward.

Strong rapport will help you work with candidates to overcome obstacles and deal-breakers. The end result is that you’ll place more candidates in jobs.

Additional benefits

Being silent for a larger portion of each call has some additional benefits.

Most recruiters talk too much, so you’re going to sound different if you use the 50 percent rule. Candidates will notice your ability to listen, and you’ll separate yourself from other recruiters, especially the newer ones.

When asking for referrals, a bit of silence after your initial question encourages the candidate to think harder and put more effort into coming up with names. Resist the urge to start talking again if you haven’t heard an immediate response.

This is true in other parts of the conversation, too. Don’t be afraid of silence. The 50 percent rule gives you more time to think during each conversation. This can help you come up with ideas to overcome objections or handle obstacles that arise.

All of this will result in an increase in the number of candidates who allow you to submit them for jobs. Of the candidates you submit, a greater percentage will become placements, and you’ll earn far more money as a recruiter.

Biron Clark is an executive recruiter specializing in the biopharmaceutical industry. He’s also a career advice blogger and founder of www.careersidekick.com. You can find him on LinkedIn here.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post This Simple Rule Will Make You a Better Recruiter appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Get Recruited: Upcoming Brazen Recruiting and Networking Events (January) appeared first on Brazen Life.

But did you know Brazen also partners with popular employers and universities around the country to put on virtual career fairs and networking events?

Our platform allows talented candidates to connect directly with recruiters, hiring managers and other decision-makers to see if there’s a match with a particular company or organization. Doesn’t that sound more civilized than applying to a standard job listing and never hearing anything back?

Many of our partners ask us to bring the best job candidates to these events, which means YOU have a chance to get recruited. This is your opportunity to take a step up in your industry and transition into your dream job.

Want an invite to our next event? Sign up for our newsletter, and we’ll keep you posted!

Get psyched about these upcoming events

This month, an impressive roster of employers, universities and organizations are hosting events on the Brazen platform. We’re excited to partner with LGS Innovation, Clipper Magazine, Cellular Sales, Deloitte, and many more impressive employers who are looking to chat one-on-one about open positions — as well as make hires.

On the university side, we’re working with Columbia Business School, Lehigh, Villanova, UPenn, Eastern Michigan University, Greenville Technical College, University of New Hampshire, and more to host networking events that help alumni and students make valuable connections.

Don’t you want to be in on this goodness?

Sign up for our newsletter to get on the invite list!

If you’re with a university, employer or other group, click here to host your own online networking event. We’ll be in touch right away!

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Get Recruited: Upcoming Brazen Recruiting and Networking Events (January) appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Just Say No: 6 Recruiting Practices You Should Avoid appeared first on Brazen Life.

“SoMoClo” (or Social/Mobile/Cloud), a term heard often at the recent Wisdom Conference, is enabling businesses to automate many processes, while simultaneously adding value to a job that is, and always has been, all about people.

However, as recruiting evolves, we need to recognize that some “best practices” are just plain hogwash. Recruiters don’t like them, hiring managers don’t have time for them and candidates actually hate them. If you’re like many companies, nixing these six “worst practices” can actually accelerate your hiring cycle and your candidate experience.

Think the following “people” practices make sense? Think again…

1. Hire slow, fire fast

While there is something to be said for this particular platitude, I think many have taken it out of context. Perhaps a better phrase would be “Measure twice, cut once.”

The goal is for hiring teams to think through decisions, not to put applicants on some eternal carousel of meetings, assessments and group interviews. If you’re hiring for anything other than an executive position and you can’t make a decision on a candidate in within three interviews, you’re probably guilty of this worst practice.

2. Candidate pause patrol

Did someone make it to the final round, but you want everything “just so” before extending the final offer? Big mistake to wait. Waiting discourages candidates, as well as the team that’s anxious for their arrival. (Click here to Tweet this thought.) It also leaves a bad impression in a job seeker’s mind about how agile your company may really be.

What’s more, if they recognize they’re attractive to you, but you don’t seal the deal, they’re likely to pursue greener pastures while you’re passing around paperwork.

3. Miss America syndrome

Trying to find the perfect candidate who will blend seamlessly into your organization is like an average-looking guy on Match.com who’s holding out for Miss America to appear. It’s not going to happen. (And by the way, your organization isn’t perfect, either!)

Instead, consider candidates who have potential to grow into the role. By demanding a 100 percent fit, you might bypass many 80 to 90 percent candidates who could be ideal with the right team and some training. Even worse, if you wait around to find your unicorn, desperation may eventually force you to hire an even less desirable candidate.

4. Lowballing

This practice doesn’t make you look smart. It makes you look cheap. The logic is plain and simple. When you consistently offer low salaries and haggle with new employees over the lowest common denominator, they will resent you, and your employer brand will suffer.

No one needs statistics or industry surveys to understand this point. The miniscule amount of money you may save through killer negotiations will be overridden by the fact that you’ve destroyed priceless goodwill — even before a new hire steps foot in the office.

5. Squeaky wheel gets the grease

This one confounds me. It seems we all like to post articles on Facebook that remind us, “If you have to tell people you’re powerful, you’re really not.” However, all too often, we choose to hire the first candidate who walks through our door singing their own praises.

What could that mean in the future? The braggart, the credit stealer, the one-upper, the complainer — no one wants to work with these personalities, yet many hiring managers and HR pros react positively to this kind of behavior in interviews. Stop. Check yourself. You can do better. Unless you’re hiring for sales positions, consider the unassuming, the humble, the team player who easily shares credit with others.

6. Show me, don’t tell me

Well… sort of. This practice is hard to follow. It’s about showing up in the right place with a compelling value proposition. If you can’t make the job attractive to the right kind of candidates on their preferred channels (blog, job ad, video, in person), you’ll find yourself considering only applicants who are desperate for anything.

While letting candidates opt themselves out of the selection process is a smart way to whittle the pool to a manageable size, don’t forget to emphasize reasons why qualified individuals should want to take on this position at your company.

What hiring practices make sense?

In nearly every facet of business, crowdsourcing, collaboration and best practices are a good thing — until they’re not. Innovation is rare to come by, so it’s a better bet to formulate your own candidate profile by studying successful workers within your organization.

Create a hiring plan with a reasonable timeline. Then build appropriate candidate evaluation criteria and share that information with the rest of the hiring team. This approach will allow you to let go of the nefarious six “worst practices,” and it will create a solid blueprint for managing candidate expectations. Boom! Done.

Do you agree with these recommendations? Share your opinions and ideas in the comments below.

This post originally appeared on TalentCulture.

Raj Sheth is the Co-Founder of Recruiterbox, an online recruitment software and applicant tracking system designed especially for small businesses. Raj is a graduate of Babson College and spent the first three years of his career as a financial analyst with EMC Corporation in Boston. You can find some of his brief rants on the Recruiterbox blog.

TalentCulture is a vibrant open online community, driven by professionals who share a passion for innovation, collaboration and a desire to advance the world of work. Join their #TChat Events every Wednesday from 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. EST, or join the ongoing conversation anytime at #TChat on Twitter.)

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Just Say No: 6 Recruiting Practices You Should Avoid appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post 5 Simple Fixes for the Toughest Recruiting Challenges appeared first on Brazen Life.

Here’s how to solve a few common recruiting issues:

1. Candidates are harder to find

Talent shortage aside, attracting candidates is a whole new ball game these days. Job boards, career fairs and a standard “we’re hiring” message on your website just aren’t enough. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)

Work with your marketing and PR teams to ensure your social media presence is strong and has a substantial following. Come up with creative ways to announce job opportunities.

For example, at GrubHub Seamless, where I lead the people team, we include messages about joining our team throughout our product, from when a hungry diner places an order to when they get a confirmation and receipt. News of open positions reaches people who are familiar with our brand but maybe never thought about our company as a great place to work.

2. Candidates aren’t qualified

The perennial recruiting challenge: you seem to attract tons of candidates, but they lack the skills you need. According to the Job Preparedness Indicator, only about 17 percent of employers find candidates who present the skills they need to fill open positions.

To begin, take a closer look at your job descriptions. Do they accurately describe the skills and qualifications required? Are you asking for qualifications that are nonexistent or too lofty? Are you putting too much emphasis on the amount of experience or education?

Help candidates visualize the role by highlighting day-to-day tasks and skills necessary to do the job. Involve current team members in drafting these positions so they’re as accurate as possible.

Another opportunity to find great candidates is to source internally. Taking the time to train a hardworking, dedicated employee for an open position could be the right move, and it sends a message to all employees that the company is willing to invest in its employees.

3. Candidates disappear quickly

Perhaps you’ve already experienced the disappointment of extending an offer to a candidate, only to find they’ve accepted another. Or, worse, the candidate is no longer interested. Top performers don’t stay on the market long, and the longer the time between interview and offer, the less excitement candidates can begin to feel about the position and your company.

With criticism sites like Glassdoor.com sharing firsthand accounts of a company’s hiring process, recruiters must consider the candidate experience. Take a moment to map out the experience at your organization, from the moment a prospect learns of a job opening to the end of the new hire process. This means getting everyone from recruiting coordinators to hiring managers on board with the process and timeline.

Is your application and interview process too lengthy? Do you set reasonable expectations for when a decision will be made? Do you let a candidate know when they’re no longer being considered? A Candidate Experience Awards Survey of 8,500 job seekers found that one of their biggest job complaints was an employer’s failure to communicate their status.

4. Candidates want more than a paycheck

It’s easy to offer competitive salary, but the ability to offer a vibrant and engaging environment is a new benchmark for companies vying for top talent.

Employee perks are one area that can be used to create a work environment that empowers, motivates and enriches employees’ work experiences. Health benefits, flexible work schedules and education subsidies are some of the top perks companies offer to strengthen their commitment to employees and give them a competitive hiring advantage.

Another perk that’s getting increased attention is food. At GrubHub Seamless, we conducted a nationwide survey of nearly 1,100 full-time professionals. We found that 60 percent reported more food at the office would make them feel more valued and appreciated by their employer.

While free food all the time is unrealistic for most companies, the occasional catered meeting, pizza party or sweet treat can bring a smile to everyone’s faces, while also bringing them together to talk, collaborate and form meaningful relationships.

5. Candidates dismiss your company

In our highly connected world, news about how companies treat their employees travels fast. If your company has had layoffs, cuts in compensation or general bad press, its “employer brand” may be suffering. Repairing the image may be necessary to get top talent to consider your company.

Look to your employees to help you with the effort. If your employees are happy, they’re more likely to help build new relationships for the company, share positive news and help with the recruiting process.

Consider a referral program as an incentive for your employees to bring in their contacts, who will most likely make excellent hires. Stay on top of employee engagement by conducting surveys or using other forums or vehicles to collect feedback and take action on what you learn so your people strategy remains focused on the areas of greatest impact.

Karen Miller is the Vice President of the People Team at GrubHub Seamless, the leading online food ordering service that makes it easy to feed the office where she is responsible for defining and executing Seamless’ people and HR strategies.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post 5 Simple Fixes for the Toughest Recruiting Challenges appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post How to Boost Your Employee Recognition Program and Attract Top Talent appeared first on Brazen Life.

Your employees probably aren’t looking for anything outlandish; they just want to be acknowledged for their hard work. And that will go a long way. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)

As a leader, make it a regular practice to provide recognition to your team. Recognition may not always involve positive reinforcement. But it always serves a purpose. Many benefits come from effectively displaying recognition.

It’s a matter of changing the way you recognize your employees — not with a repetitive “thank you” and “good job” — and the goal you have for that recognition.

Recognizing employees is about taking the time and effort to see what they’re doing well and vocalizing that to them. It’s about being timely in your feedback, as well as relevant, detailed and fair. More importantly, you should be adding value back to your employees.

Are you helping them reset their expectations? Are you showing them what makes them valuable to your organization? Are you helping them become a better version of themselves? If recognition can inspire them to continually find opportunities to self-teach — by learning and progressively developing themselves — that makes recognition worth giving.

Recognition has many benefits, both for individuals and the organization. Below are some highlights:

1. Engagement

Showing your employees their value while giving them goals to pursue will increase engagement. This feedback gives employees personal purpose and accountability, making their work meaningful. An engaged employee is more productive and loyal; they become an ambassador for the company.

2. Retention

If another company’s recruiter contacted your employee about a job opening, what do you think your employee would say? Recognition increases the chances of employees being loyal when it’s time to make a pro and con list for leaving or staying.

Recognition can add items like this to the pro side of the list: My leader values me. My leader takes time to develop me. My leader sees my hard work and trusts me with new tasks and projects.

3. Productivity

Motivation and engagement are the driving forces behind productivity. Recognition can fuel this fire. Getting your employees excited about what they’re doing by showing them that what they produce matters will ensure they continue operating at a high level. It’ll cause them to work harder to reap the advantages that go along with that.

4. Development

Recognition may not always be about the good. How are you helping your employees by not telling them what needs work? For the best results, take the time to talk to your employees about what they’re doing well and point out where they can improve.

Without suggestions of how to keep growing, your employees might not feel motivated to keep learning. And developing an employee can be a leader’s proudest accomplishment. There’s nothing better than watching your employees get promoted because of the skills you urged them to learn.

For your employees to gain something from the recognition, understand what form of acknowledgment they value. Some organizations think monetary incentives are the only way to recognize employees for their efforts. But is signing a bonus check making the most of the opportunity to motivate, engage and inspire?

You should gather insights about your employees as individuals and professionals through casual conversation and one-on-one meetings. Continuing to develop these relationships allows you to pinpoint how your team values recognition. For some, recognition through shout-outs on company newsletters, team calls or social media lights them up.

Others get excited about incentive trips or a visit to headquarters. Some would rather be recognized by being able to work on different projects or with special committees that permit them to utilize skills otherwise untapped in their current role.

Genuine, constructive recognition will not only help define your company culture — it’ll allow you to attract, retain and develop top talent.

Kim Pope is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for WilsonHCG, a top global recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) and human capital consulting provider. Connect with her on Twitter @KimPope and on LinkedIn.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post How to Boost Your Employee Recognition Program and Attract Top Talent appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Hey Recruiters, Want the Best Candidate for the Job? Ignore Job Titles appeared first on Brazen Life.

When interviewing hundreds of people and looking through thousands of resumes, we tend to pay too much attention to job titles. But does a job title tell you everything about the candidate? Does it actually determine people’s capabilities and work experience?

Job seekers are often told you shouldn’t keep your job title from holding you back, which is true when it comes to an employee’s responsibilities at work. But in terms of getting the job they desire, they can’t avoid the fact that the number one factor every recruiter looks at is their job title.

It’s time to look out of the box.

Here’s why you should ignore job titles:

1. You might lose the opportunity to hire bright people

Postgraduates who’ve been working part-time during their studies probably won’t have managerial positions on their resume. But what have they learned? Time management, teamwork, working under high pressure, good communication skills and maybe even supervising a small team.

Having knowledge and some experience might be more beneficial than a fancy title on a resume. (Click here to Tweet this thought.) These candidates have enthusiasm and initiative to change the world, to make things happen and to prove themselves. But without a job title, they don’t get a chance. And you lose the opportunity to hire people who want to work, not just people who need to work. It’s no wonder nearly one in 10 new graduates is unemployed.

2. Job quality will suffer

When hiring people in managerial or executive positions, it’s very easy to make a mistake. People get comfortable and too confident because of good job titles. They know their value on the market.

Make sure your company can house a job for every task. If not, this one person who comes to work as VP of Sales might also need to work on customer service and business development. Is that person ready for it?

3. People with the best job titles don’t always have the best knowledge

Let’s say you’re filling a position for the head of collections for a debt collection department operating on the foreign market. This kind of position requires very good know-how about markets, industries, laws and regulations. You also need to be part of a team, which means you must do the dirty work yourself, but at the same time be able to motivate people to make calls and achieve targets.

If drinking coffee, reading newspapers and sending out a few emails every day mean managing a debt collection department, it should be no surprise if debts are still outstanding. Test your candidate’s capabilities and make sure he’s the right person for the job, even though he has similar experience on his resume.

4. You’ll end up hiring a team instead

Why can some people do the work of three and some can’t? Because they never have. Make sure the person has the capability to do others’ jobs to fill the holes temporarily. It’s all about efficiency.

For example, when hiring someone to manage a call center team, that person must know numbers. If you’re not familiar with numbers, you can’t establish an efficient team. Your company will end up hiring even more people because the person in charge has no idea how much time it takes per person to do one task.

5. You have more managers than they have subordinates

Be careful when reorganizing your company’s structure. I’ve seen a company organize a team so that there was one manager for every two people. Is this efficient and cost-effective? You don’t always need to hire managers to be managers. You can promote your existing employees and hire more subordinates.

If you can’t find the shining star on your team, hire someone with great knowledge and some experience, but pay more attention to the character and capabilities of this person. When it comes to team leaders, the team must accept and respect the leader.

We once hired a customer service manager who had a pretty good job title and, according to her resume, good experience. But she didn’t earn respect from the team; she couldn’t impose herself. Having a good title previously didn’t matter to the team.

Think like a job seeker when hiring people. Candidates know what they’re capable of, what their experience is, how they can use their experience in their new job and why they’re the best for this job.

Even though they don’t have the job title, give them a chance to prove themselves. Don’t rely only on the resume — do some additional work. Use social media, LinkedIn and Google Hangouts to find the best candidates. Look at what the person has done and what they talk or write about. Forget the job title and see what can happen.

Triin Linamagi is a co-founder and marketer at Bahoui and CVProfs. Previously, Triin helped to start up several businesses, being responsible for business operations, marketing and managing the customer service departments.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Hey Recruiters, Want the Best Candidate for the Job? Ignore Job Titles appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Recruit Smarter By Delving Deeper Into the Behavioral Interview appeared first on Brazen Life.

Oddly enough, what’s offered to most recruiters is simply a template with a bunch of “behavioral questions.” To conduct an effective behavioral interview, what you do with the answers is far more important than the questions you ask. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)

Here are three easy tips to get the most out of behavioral interviews:

1. If at first their answer doesn’t succeed, ask, ask again

Behavioral interviewing is based on the belief that past behavior is a predictor of future performance. The key words here are “past behavior.” Too often, candidates have a tendency to respond to questions hypothetically. But that only tells you what the candidate thinks they would do (or thinks you would want them to do) in any given situation, not what they’ve actually done in a similar situation in the past.

If a candidate can’t think of a real example, broaden the parameters of the question. Suggest they give an example from their personal life instead of a professional example. You could also try rewording or paraphrasing the question to help a candidate who’s stumped come up with an acceptable response.

2. Know your ideal answer before you ask the question

Interpreting responses to behavioral questions can be tricky. These questions are typically multidimensional, so the answers can be complex and misleading. Some candidates are also adept at this sort of interviewing and have practiced the art of sounding eloquent while avoiding giving a real answer.

Each specific behavioral question is typically meant to assess a particular skill. Having a good idea of what you’d like to hear (similar to creating an ideal performance profile) will help you hone in on the competency or skills you’re assessing.

For example, consider the question, “Tell me about a time when you’ve failed at work.” Answers may range from “I’ve never failed” to some version of, “I’m human and I’ve made many mistakes.” The candidate may describe a mistake with negligible impact or give an example of a huge blunder.

Ultimately, the actual mistake they made doesn’t matter. The ideal response includes three components: details of the mistake, remedial action taken to correct it and any steps taken to prevent the same mistake from happening in the future — which is the most important part. Very few candidates get to the second or third parts of the answer without prompting.

3. Dig deep to make this interview really count

You’ve probably sifted through volumes of resumes and profiles to find a few candidates worth getting to know. You might have also invested time in intermediary steps such as phone screens to create a short list of candidates you want to bring in for a behavioral interview. So make it count. Ask follow-up questions to probe deeper. Ask clarifying questions to understand the context of examples the candidate gives.

Be curious, but don’t interrogate. Make it a conversation. Assure them there are no right or wrong answers. Some answers may not impact a hiring decision, but may simply indicate areas where training or coaching are required.

Above all, aim to disarm the candidate. After all, you’re trying to get a glimpse of how they behave outside the interview setting. If it’s worth going through this process, it’s worth doing it right.

Deepa Barve is Sr. Recruitment Leader at SSOE Group, an architectural and engineering consulting firm. Deepa has more than seven years of recruiting experience in engineering, healthcare and hospitality and has authored career advice articles on www.examiner.com.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Recruit Smarter By Delving Deeper Into the Behavioral Interview appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Get Recruited: Upcoming Brazen Recruiting and Networking Events (November) appeared first on Brazen Life.

But did you know Brazen also partners with popular employers and universities around the country to put on virtual career fairs and networking events?

Our platform allows talented candidates to connect directly with recruiters, hiring managers and other decision-makers to see if there’s a match with a particular company or organization. Doesn’t that sound more civilized than applying to a standard job listing and never hearing anything back?

Many of our partners ask us to bring the best job candidates to these events, which means YOU have a chance to get recruited. This is your opportunity to take a step up in your industry and transition into your dream job.

Want an invite to our next event? Sign up for our newsletter, and we’ll keep you posted!

Get psyched about these upcoming events

This month, an impressive roster of employers, universities and organizations are hosting events on the Brazen platform. We’re excited to partner with Freddie Mac, American Physical Therapy Association, Dice, Corporate Gray/MOAA, Cellular Sales, Corporate Executive Board and many more impressive employers who are looking to chat one-on-one about open positions — as well as make hires.

On the university side, we’re working with Georgetown, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, the University of Alabama Huntsville, and more to host networking events that help alumni and students make valuable connections.

Don’t you want to be in on this goodness?

Sign up for our newsletter to get on the invite list!

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Get Recruited: Upcoming Brazen Recruiting and Networking Events (November) appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post 3 Free Interview Tools Recruiters Should Use appeared first on Brazen Life.

Forget resorting to asking those age-old, boring interview questions and start digging into exactly who people are and what they can deliver with these three free interviewing tools:

1. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a relatively new tool interviewers use to assess candidates with material relevant to the interview. With SurveyMonkey, you can test your candidates on pertinent subjects, or you can provide the entire interview process via survey.

SurveyMonkey comes packed with features to help you comb through candidates, including charts and graphs for easy analysis (complete with file export options), 15 different question types, easy response collection and more.

The free version of SurveyMonkey promises a free 10-question survey with 100 allowed responses per survey. This is perfect for an employer that wants to assess candidates on specific subjects. Paid subscriptions allow unlimited questions with unlimited responses, among other features.

2. Google+ Hangouts

No interviewer should conduct an interview without considering Google+ Hangouts for the job. Google+ Hangouts is free and is also viable for professional employment interviews. Google+ Hangouts makes it easy to connect to your candidate, no matter where they are, and assess them as you would in person.

The group conversations feature allows you to interview several candidates at once. It’s similar to a real-life group interview and eliminates the need for multiple video conversations with each of the candidates.

You can even address your interview candidates at set times using On Air for live streaming. If candidates happened to miss your announcement, you can save the recording and share it with the absent users.

Google+ Hangouts is available for most smartphones and devices, so you can log on from practically anywhere to connect with your prospective employees. If your candidate lives far away, Google+ Hangouts is also perfect for getting an idea of how professional they are in person.

3. TypingTest.com

Lastly, you should use TypingTest.com, especially if you’re planning on hiring for an IT or customer service job. TypingTest.com is a basic tool that offers options for testing candidates’ typing abilities. The free version has a quick download with a typing test and a printable diploma. After a candidate has used the software, instruct them to scan their diploma and email it as an attachment.

A paid version comes with more options for employers. You can design your own typing test candidates can take via a Web browser.

At any time, you can log in to your account and grab detailed reports and results about applicants. Subscription times are limited, meaning you won’t get charged for more time than you really need. If you want to extend your subscription, you can edit your account details and specify that you’d like an extension.

You should never go without tools that can make your interviewing job easier. (Click here to Tweet this thought.) Whether you use one of these tools or combine all three, you’ll find that your stress load will decrease, and you’ll have an easier time finding the best fit for your position.

Annabelle Smyth is from BambooHR, a Web-based, easy-to-use HR system for small to large companies. Track applicants, record PTO usage and store employee data with one simple system and zero spreadsheets. Take their HR software tour today to see how it works.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post 3 Free Interview Tools Recruiters Should Use appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Recruiters: How to Quickly Craft the Perfect Attention-Grabbing Job Ad appeared first on Brazen Life.

You may prefer to crawl under your desk and have a good cry, but that’s not very professional. The best you can do is waste as little time as possible, get straight to work and craft the perfect job ad to get your point across.

It saves so many headaches and problems down the line, yet a huge number of recruiters still post ads that confuse potential applicants and drag out the process of finding the right candidate.

There’s no doubt the right ad is an important and effective first step. The question is, how do you do it?

Don’t beat around the bush

It’s an absolute necessities to be as clear about the position as possible. Many recruiters complain they just can’t find the right hires — you don’t have to be one of them. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)

In crafting your job ad, follow these guidelines:

• Be clear with what you want and what qualifications are required.
• Are you looking for a circus performer with a rare talent for taming lions? Make sure you put that in the description.
• Describe the ideal candidate’s experience, education and skills.

If the job is specific — like a mechanical engineering position, for example — it’s essential to state the technical knowledge needed to attract the right person. This may sound like rudimentary knowledge, but you’d be surprised by how many nonsensical or vague job postings are out there.

Put yourself in a busy and overwhelmed candidate’s shoes

Your job ad should be concise. Nothing’s worse than reading an ad as long as a Stephen King novel. People have short attention spans and a lot on their plate, and there’s no guarantee they’ll read through to the end of your post.

And if no one even reads the ad, how can you expect anyone to apply?

• Be direct and upfront. No one wants their time wasted.
• Experts always tell job seekers to sell themselves, but recruiters need to act as salespeople, too.
• Don’t deliberately confuse or be unclear. If possible, share the location, salary range and other “deal breaker” specifics.

Go to where your candidates are (don’t make them come to you)

The way you post your ad placement can also make or break whether it gets seen by the right people. Are you hiring for a heart surgeon with several years of emergency room experience? Then don’t post your ad in a place that generally caters to job seekers looking for freelance work.

• Be mindful of your desired audience. It’s unlikely every qualified applicant will search up and down the Internet trying to find you.
• Make good use of the space you have.

Treat your job ad like the first impression that it is

Finally, don’t make it impossible to apply. Many companies feel like they must put applicants through a proverbial minefield of obstacles just so their resume gets reviewed.

• Employers should make clear what’s needed to apply and, most importantly, how to apply. Do you require a cover letter with specific salary requirements? Should applicants send their application to a particular email address? Writing that in the job description will save time.
• Remember, this is the applicant’s first impression of the company. To attract top talent, be sure to mention perks and helpful information that might get them excited about working for this particular company.

Most recruiters would agree that having a great job ad is the first step to attracting ideal hires. With millions of people looking for a job, being able to focus on methods that will offer you a better shot at finding the best employee is important.

Recruiters don’t want to look inefficient, so it’s best to make the job ad crafting process as clear and concise as possible. It doesn’t hurt to make the job application process easy, either. With these simple steps, you’ll be well on your way to matching the perfect job with the perfect employee.

Natalie Alex is a personal finance writer, instructor, marketer and recruiter. Read more about her story at debtandthegirl.com.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Recruiters: How to Quickly Craft the Perfect Attention-Grabbing Job Ad appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Recruiters: Transform Your Company Culture So Employees Recruit for You appeared first on Brazen Life.

This opening in the market creates fierce competition, which makes it difficult for companies to attract the talent they want. The pain of a wrong hire can be greater than the pain of hiring no one at all.

Taking the steps to find the absolutely perfect person for the job and the company has never been more important. Too many companies think of hiring as an external process. But the first thing they should do is to look internally at their own employees and culture. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)

Today, the best candidates are those who are well-connected, often to the best employees at your company. The traditional job-search process — where candidates find job postings through newspapers and online job boards — isn’t enough anymore. The most successful companies know the best form of recruitment advertising is word of mouth, with top employees referring the best candidates.

So, what does all this mean for your company’s recruiting tactics? It’s actually simpler than you might think: Recruiting must start internally.

It’s a departure from the past, but old recruiting methods simply won’t attract the candidates your company wants. By following these steps, recruiters and HR professionals can make company culture part of their strategy to attract top-notch candidates.

1. Get in every one of your employees’ faces

Fifteen minutes can make a big difference. That’s how much one-on-one time, at minimum, managers should give each employee on a regular basis. It’s the best way to understand an employee’s expectations of the job and get feedback on what they like and don’t like about their work.

Sure, employee surveys are a good option to understand basic employee attitudes, but nothing substitutes a personal meeting. Remember, we all have — or can make — time for the things we deem important. This should be one of them.

2. Make sure employees know where this relationship is going

Up until about 30 years ago, it was common for people to stay with the same company for their whole career, partly due to a sense of loyalty they felt toward their employer. But today, employees’ loyalty is based on their perception of their employers’ loyalty toward them.

So how can companies prove their loyalty to employees and prospective hires? Through proper performance management and investments in career growth. It’s not just about offering job tasks that align with their skills, but the promise of a future at a company that will inspire them.

Every employee should have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities. It’s essential that these are transparently communicated along with performance standards. Employees should always know exactly where and what they need to do to improve and grow.

This will give them a sense of value, trust, achievement and, ultimately, loyalty.

3. Don’t put all your GenY eggs in one basket

There’s a lot of talk about the difference in generations in the workplace, and some of those generalizations may be true. But that doesn’t mean all GenX employees are interested in flexible work-from-home arrangements or every Millennial is concerned with the social consciousness of their employer.

Everyone needs or wants different things. So find out what your employees want, not just what they “have” to have. Ask them to define their personal definition of success, then help them map out how to get there.

For any business, regardless of size or industry, success hinges on its talent. If you create an environment where you have chronic turnover or poor culture, you’re not only losing valuable employees; you could also ruin your chances of being a referral source for other desirable candidates.

Creating an internal culture that nurtures and encourages employees creates a word-of-mouth advertising effect that will be more valuable in attracting great employees than a traditional job ad ever could.

Rich Thompson is Chief Human Resources Officer at Adecco Group North America, part of the world’s largest recruitment and workforce solutions provider. He is responsible for all areas of HR for the North American organization, including talent acquisition, talent management, training and development and compensation and benefits.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Recruiters: Transform Your Company Culture So Employees Recruit for You appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post 3 Management Skills Hiring Managers Can Learn from Video Games appeared first on Brazen Life.

Yes, I’m serious. If you’re responsible for training Millennials, you need to get smart about dopamine.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter released as a response to everyday events like completing tasks, eating and solving problems. Everyone craves these experiences because the reward is addictive and reinforces the behaviors that cause it.

Even if they don’t realize this, Millennials have been trained for job performance because of the way video games use this system. Game designers understand the power and psychology of the dopamine reward system and incorporate it into gameplay, literally making their games more addictive.

As Jamie Madigan writes on Psychology of Games, “Dopamine is a chemical that’s released when we encounter something pleasurable, like a piece of fruit or a Legendary Mighty Weapon for our Barbarian. The chemical is hugely important for learned behavior and motivation to persist in a task, since when it’s released certain brain cells go bananas and make us feel good. Maybe even euphoric.”

Most traditional training programs completely ignore these natural chemical responses. They’re sending a generation addicted to dopamine rewards into a state of withdrawal.

If you want to successfully train Millennials, you need to act like a game designer. (Click here to Tweet this thought.) Build in and reinforce reward systems to produce a dopamine release when you recognize your young employees’ task completion and small wins.

Incorporate these three key principles into your training program to improve your success rate with Millennial employees:

1. Develop a consistent reward system

Every training program needs a process to regularly reinforce your trainees’ progress. This keeps them engaged and moving forward and reinforces the dopamine payoff they’re programed to expect.

At companies I’ve started, we have bonus structures built around clear goals that everyone knows about. Some are easy to attain and some more difficult. This ensures our account executives get the chemical benefits of achieving a goal at a semi-regular pace.

2. Dangle the “pot of gold” reward

Dopamine released at regular, predictable intervals loses its effect. But random drops of rewards maintain and heighten its effects. This is motivating and wires trainees to expect a big reward — they just don’t know when it will happen. A big, random event sends their dopamine production into overdrive. They wonder what they can accomplish to trigger it again.

At all my companies, we play a song to let everyone know someone won the “pot of gold reward.” It gets everyone buzzing. They know it can be for any random accomplishment, such as good phone skills or just a great attitude. And anyone can receive it.

This way, it’s hard to expect not only when you will be rewarded, but also what you’ll be rewarded for. Our employees love it, and it heightens the anticipation and chemical payoff of the reward.

3. Realize generational differences aren’t just chemical; they’re also cultural

Random rewards can certainly produce dopamine for Millennials, but don’t ignore the cultural elements Millennials also find rewarding. A relaxed work environment, new challenges, social engagement and meaningful work that makes a difference also drive these employees. It’s a balance between rewarding ideal behavior and creating a place where your employees want to be.

When my management team was just focusing on company culture, we had happier people who enjoyed the social aspects of our workplace — but it didn’t make them better at their jobs. It takes a combination of both approaches to improve performance and retention.

As a manager, you can decide to ignore this concept, but you’d be doing your employees and your company a disservice. You have the responsibility to help your employees reach their full potential and not waste their time or yours. By understanding and tailoring your training to how your employees are wired, you can better help them be successful.

Bobby Campbell is a successful entrepreneur with a deep understanding of how to monetize emerging digital markets. He’s CEO and founder of several leading digital media companies, including 3 Interactive, AdKarma and Division D.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post 3 Management Skills Hiring Managers Can Learn from Video Games appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post For Busy Recruiters, Here’s a Less Stressful Way to Hire Freelancers appeared first on Brazen Life.

Here are just a few reasons why recruiters are looking to freelance talent for projects both large and small:

1. Freelancers are happier

According to the 2012 Freelance Industry report, 90 percent of freelance workers are happier than they were at their former, more traditional jobs. So if you hire a freelance employee, it’s likely you’re recruiting a talented worker who really loves what they do — and you know passion often translates into hard work and dedication.

2. Freelancers are experienced

The same Freelance Industry Report found that 34 percent of freelance workers have 10 or more years of experience. To recruit these people regularly, you’d most likely have to open a deep pocket and get ready to hand over a large paycheck. However, you can tap into this talent pool without the high price tag by recruiting freelance talent on a per-project basis.

3. Freelancers can save you money

A Stanford study found your company can save about $2,000 per employee by allowing staff to work from home. (Click here to Tweet this stat.)

From the recruiting angle, hiring freelance workers allows you to widen your search parameters to out-of-town talent without paying for airfare, hotel accommodations or relocation expenses. Because freelancers can work remotely, you still jump the skills gap and get the best people while shelling out less money.

How to use video interviews to hire the best freelancers

You might be sold on recruiting freelance talent, but just how do you connect with far-flung superstars and busy multitasking professionals?

This is where the video interview comes into play. While meeting in-person is always ideal, many freelancers just won’t have the time or means to come into your office for a face-to-face conversation about the position or the project.

So what do you do? Turn on your webcam and start interviewing! Whether your candidate is extremely busy or located on the other side of the globe, video interviews are a good tool to form a personal connection with smart freelance workers who can add real value.

Here are two benefits of using video interviews to connect with freelancers:

1. Location is no obstacle with online video

Video interviewing helps recruiters with one of the most pressing problems associated with telecommuters, virtual workers or out-of-town talent: geographical distance. If a talented candidate is located several states (or countries) away, it can be hard to connect personally and get a real feel for the candidate. This makes it hard to determine whether a candidate can work well in your company culture or aligns with your corporate vision.

Thanks to the video interview, you can now connect as personally as you would in a traditional face-to-face interview. In a live video interview, you can interact with talent in real time and evaluate nonverbal cues and communication skills. You can connect with a candidate on the other side of the world as easily as one on the other side of your desk and ensure you’re hiring the right person for the job.

2. One-way video interviews help juggle complicated schedules

A great aspect of freelance workers is how they’ve become masters of their own schedules. The downside of this organizational prowess is that many freelance workers find their schedules packed to the gills. This might not give them much time to connect personally in the recruiting process, but you want more than a phone call or email chain to determine whether your freelance candidate will be the right fit.

Since a one-way video interview is asynchronous, it can be scheduled around even the most packed calendar. Candidates answer written employer questions on video, and answers can be recorded from a laptop computer or even a smartphone. This allows even the busiest freelancer to make time to interview and allows you a more personal feel for them than a list of accomplishments on a resume.

As the economy remains tough for employers and candidates alike, more talented workers will turn to a freelance lifestyle. Embrace this talent pool and use the video interview to connect personally and find the best and brightest for your company’s projects.

Have you hired freelancers? Do you use video interviews to connect? Share in the comments!

Josh Tolan is the CEO of Spark Hire, a video-powered hiring network that connects job seekers and employers through video resumes and online interviews. Connect with him and Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post For Busy Recruiters, Here’s a Less Stressful Way to Hire Freelancers appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Recruiters: How to Deal with Interviewing 10 People a Day appeared first on Brazen Life.

Real talk: It’s tough to be exposed to so many people with different problems, personalities and stories. Your immediate reaction may be to get frustrated in many situations. Fortunately, you can avoid getting to that place of irritation so you can do your job properly. Try these tips:

Stick to systematic interviewing

It’s easy to get so wrapped up in talking to people you forget you’re just interviewing them for a job. Before you know it, you’ve spent an hour talking to one candidate who may not even be a good fit. Meanwhile, three others are waiting in the lobby.

As a recruiter, you have a job to do: go through as many people as it takes to find the right candidate for your client. The only way to do that is to have some sort of system or structure for interviews. That way, you get what you need as quickly as possible so you can move on to the next one.

Structured interviews are great for systematic interviewing because questions are based on what the employer is looking for. But there are plenty of other methods, too.

Be picky with your schedule

Just because you’re a recruiter and need to see a lot of people doesn’t mean you need to bend over backwards to accommodate a candidate’s schedule. Otherwise, you’re going to drive yourself crazy when they show up late without calling, decide not to show up, get there an hour early, want to come in on weekends or drop in without appointments.

If a candidate can’t get their appointment straight with a recruiter, what makes you think it will be any different when you send them to your client? In fact, there’s a high chance they’ll be just as flakey with the employer, too.

Set specific times for interviewing, be clear about when you’ll allow leeway (you’re not a monster; emergencies happen) and set rules for what you will not allow.

Don’t get too attached

You’ll meet candidates who have horrible stories, some you’ll feel empathy for and plenty you’ll want to help even though you know you can’t. Other candidates will infuriate you to no end, sometimes even to the point of kicking them out of your office.

This process can be emotionally draining and can cause you to lose focus, cost your company money and, most importantly, make you feel horrible all day long.

There’s nothing wrong with sympathizing or getting angry when it’s merited, but you do need to have clear boundaries with yourself when dealing with so many people every day. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)

Understand the difference between sympathizing and getting wrapped up in the situation. It’s your job to figure out when you’ve crossed that line.

You may have to go through a lot of bad apples to find the perfect fit for your client, but knowing your boundaries will help you tremendously in getting the good ones faster. Remember, employers hired you for a reason: so they won’t have to do your job themselves.

Amanda Abella is a writer, speaker and life coach who combines her recruiting background with life coaching to help clients get clear on their career desires and how to go after them.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Recruiters: How to Deal with Interviewing 10 People a Day appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Recruiters: 7 Reasons You’re Failing to Find Quality Candidates at In-Person Career Fairs appeared first on Brazen Life.

Simply filling a booth at a college career fair doesn’t promise you the interest of talented soon-to-be graduates. Even so, on-location career fairs are still one of the top recruiting and hiring methods when it comes to recent graduates.

But listen up: students who successfully use career fairs to land their internship account for only 3.8 percent of students. That means the majority are using traditional networking and online job sites to land their internships.

So what gives? Career fairs at colleges were once an outstanding way to connect with students, but this no longer seems to be the case. It’s probably because you’re failing to attract and engage the right kind of students during your attendance.

Here are seven ways your company may be failing when attending in-person career fairs:

1. You don’t have a strategy, or the one you do have is poor

Passing out free pens isn’t going to land you an exceptional intern. (Click here to Tweet!) Start by taking a look at your hiring needs and strategize accordingly. Do you plan on accepting resumes from intern candidates at the job fair? Will you be screening candidates upon meeting them? Do you know exactly what you’re looking for in your intern candidates?

If you can’t answer these questions outright, it may be time to hit the drawing board.

Plan in advance to ensure you’ve got your recruiting and hiring strategy locked in before you even set up your booth. If you’re interested in screening or interviewing students at the career fair, contact the college’s career service center to schedule a room to do so.

2. You’re just not connecting

Who are you taking to the career fairs you attend? If your answer is less-engaged staffers or employees who have no association with the college, you’re probably not going to connect well with students. You need a knowledgeable and engaging staff to spread your message and gain the interest of career fair attendees.

The right employees for staffing your career fair booth should fall into the following categories: alumni from the college you’re visiting, those who may have started out as interns, employees who are willing to speak about their personal experiences and day-to-day happenings, or the manager of your internship program.

3. You aren’t showing them what you’re made of

Students want to know why your internship program is the best. Find new ways to share the awesome elements of your program with students. Rather than just talking about the great experience you’re providing, bring along actual work your interns have completed.

For example, your previous intern may have created and presented a knockout marketing plan during their time with you. Bring along your laptop and allow students to take a look at the work that’s come out of your internship program.

If you’re feeling extra creative, consider setting up a Google Hangout or Skype session with some of the current interns or employees at your office and leaving it open during the career fair. Allow interested students to virtually say hello to the office or ask them questions.

4. You haven’t spread the word

If you haven’t informed students you’re coming, how will they know to show up? Get the attention of students you want by reaching out prior to the career fair. Send out email announcements to specific departments, student organizations and even professors or advisors to ensure you’ll have a good turnout.

You can also let students know you’re on campus by making announcements on your social media accounts and tagging the university.

5. You’re not leaving your mark with something extra

Tight intern recruiting budget? No problem. Pieces of employer swag, like pens and t-shirts, aren’t going to draw in the best students, anyway. Instead, focus on attracting and engaging students with interactive games, puzzles or challenges.

If you’re looking for a hyper-creative visual communications major for your graphic design internship, consider challenging them to design something on the fly within a given time frame. If you like what you see, reward them with a chance to interview after the career fair.

6. You have no idea what your competitors are doing

There’s no better way to entice potential interns like topping your competitors’ internship programs. Do a little research and find out what they’re doing in comparison to your own internship program.

If rotational internship programs or virtual internships are all the rage in your sector, it’s time to refresh what you’re offering students. Your competitors have probably already tapped into the wants and needs of students, so make sure you’re also following suit.

7. You never follow up

Stop waiting for the students you met to head home and immediately apply for your internship listing. Start taking down the names and contact information of students you’ve met — yes, even the ones who didn’t really impress you — and send them an email to thank them for attending, direct them to your internship listing and link to your social media pages.

For the students who really left their mark on you, immediately set up an informational interview based on their availability.

Career fairs offer a golden opportunity to get in touch with qualified and eager talent. But simply showing up isn’t enough. Use these tips to ensure your company doesn’t fail during a career fair opportunity.

Ashley Mosley is Community Engagement Manager of InternMatch, an online platform connecting the best intern candidates and employers. Connect with Ashley and InternMatch on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Recruiters: 7 Reasons You’re Failing to Find Quality Candidates at In-Person Career Fairs appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Recruiters: The 3 Important Questions You’re Not Asking Candidates appeared first on Brazen Life.

I try to warn them, but how can I? I’m the new recruiter. Paul takes the offer and starts work immediately. He’s fine the first few weeks, but he never looks happy when I see him.

Soon, problems come up from all sides. Colleagues file formal complaints, and his work deteriorates. I would have loved to say, “Told you so.” But since I knew no one would have listened to me, I did what I had to do. I quit that recruiting job at a major consulting company.

Some companies don’t realize that assessing skills only gives you a one-sided picture, which can lead to a bad hire. (Click to Tweet!) To develop a more comprehensive picture of a potential candidate and improve your hiring process, focus on these three factors: motivation, abilities and personality.

1. Motivation

Our motivations are the deeply embedded reasons we behave a certain way. They appear on both a conscious and subconscious level. They are created by internal and external factors that stimulate our intensity of desire and energy to be interested in a certain task. Motivation is the most important determinant of a good fit.

Ask the candidate these fundamental questions: What do you like to do at your job? What environments, stress levels and team dynamics make you excel at work?

Take Paul, for example. Paul was excited about the job he applied to, but he wasn’t excited about the company he applied to. Most people who work at the company where Paul applied are driven by joint values, challenges and creative team activities. Paul, on the other hand, was motivated by strict deadlines and brutal statistics to fulfill his daily tasks. It wasn’t the right environment for him. His negative energy was visible and led to problems with his colleagues.

2. Abilities

Abilities stand for a person’s mental and physical capacity to do a particular job. This term also includes the skills and knowledge they’ve acquired and developed through experience. It includes their potential for learning new skills, too.

Assessing abilities in the hiring process is a crucial activity. Surprisingly, when it comes to abilities, the foundation and framework is more important than the qualities the candidate already possesses.

To learn more about a candidate’s abilities, ask: What are the things you’re exceptionally good at at your job?

Back to Paul. His abilities shined. Paul not only had all the fundamental abilities needed for the job and an excellent track record, but also the capacity for learning. His abilities were the only factors assessed during the hiring process. And even though he performed flawlessly in the abilities category, the greatest skills and the highest knowledge still made for a bad hire in the end.

3. Personality

Personality is what makes us who we are. It’s the core of our character and is deeply coded in our system. It’s the particular combination of emotional, attitudinal and behavioral response patterns of individuals to their environment. Partly genetic, partly formed through our experiences, personality is unchangeable (at least on the job level).

To get a feel for someone’s personality, ask: Are you happy and comfortable in your role at the company?

Paul was more the bootcamp type of employee who enjoyed a structured way of working. He never understood the company’s values because they were not communicated to him. Paul’s communication occurred on a different level. He focused on individual achievements and a clear hierarchy. His personality was not a good fit for a creative, social and innovative environment that thrived on joint decision-making and shared ideas. This created tension between Paul and his coworkers and eventually led him to leave the company.

At the end of the day, the convergence of three factors — where motivations, abilities and personality overlap — is what leads to ultimate success in the hiring process.

Mona Berberich is a Digital Marketing Manager at Better Weekdays, a Chicago-based company that has developed a platform to help HR leaders source, screen and develop talent based on job compatibility. Contact her on Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Recruiters: The 3 Important Questions You’re Not Asking Candidates appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post How Recruiters Can Help Technical Candidates Ace the Interview appeared first on Brazen Life.

While many companies do have peers conduct some portion of the interviews, other non-technical staff will likely also be part of that process. Their input is crucial. Getting them to give high marks to your candidate can be critical in who eventually gets the job.

So, to help sway those non-technical interviewers (and maybe even some of the technical ones!), review these tips with your candidate so they can better connect with people during their interview and make a good impression.

1. Remind candidates to introduce themselves and make eye contact

This one seems obvious, but it still trips up technical candidates time after time. When called into the interview, they get up from their chair, scamper into the room and grab a seat like they’re reporting for oral surgery.

Make sure your candidates know their first introduction leaves an impression and is an incredible opportunity to connect with the person they’ll be talking to about the job they want. So they should be nice!

They should smile, make eye contact, shake hands and say the name they prefer to be called. They should remember the interviewer’s name, repeat it and strive to be pleasant. It only takes five seconds, but these actions set the tone for the rest of the interview.

2. Encourage them to take their time and slow down

This is a pervasive issue among smart technical candidates. Many tech folks talk fast. Often it’s the challenge of wanting to say a lot and cover all points they think are relevant. But a fast-talking candidate gives a nervous and frantic impression.

People connect with someone who seems in control of the situation and associate that control with leadership. Tell candidates to take their time and think about the question before starting their answer. Encourage them to match the same pace as their interviewer.

They should make sure the interviewer acknowledges their points and leave the interviewer time to interject questions, clarifications or even suggestions and compliments. A good interview is one where the dialogue moves along naturally.

3. Tell candidates to open up and share something personal

Yes, this is a job interview. Yes, they want to understand a candidate’s qualifications to port the company’s COBOL application to Android and make it a First Person Shooter—but they also want to understand a little about the candidate and how they will fit into the team. So encourage candidates to share a little something about themselves.

Perhaps they could mention their love of mountain biking and how they noticed all the bikes parked in the hall. Or they could discuss their love of silent movies and how thrilled they were to see posters around the office. Remind them to be selective and connect to something they know about the company, the team or the office.

Though candidates should be personable, they don’t need to overshare. They might not want to talk about how they spend most weekends chugging Red Bull and playing WoW in a custom latex Orc suit… Save that until after they’ve cleared the probation period.

4. Encourage your candidates to actively engage with their interviewer

Yes, your candidate is the focus of the discussion, but they’re also trying to connect with the person—not just the job. Encourage your candidates to listen and ask follow-up questions. When the interviewer asks them about their hobbies, they can reciprocate with similar questions.

This provides valuable information about their values and interests and how they may spill over to their work life. But remind candidates to avoid dominating the questioning, which could put the interviewer on the defensive. They should think of it as a friendly game of table tennis; they want a nice rally, not an aggressive smash fest.

5. At the end, remind them to ask about next steps and close politely

If your candidate has done everything suggested above and made a great impression, they don’t want to destroy their progress by ending poorly. Tell them to let the interviewer control the pace and timing; when they’re moving to close, let them do it gracefully.

They should be sure to thank the interviewer for their time, mention how much they enjoyed the discussion, ask about next steps and request the interviewer’s card if appropriate (it usually is). As they leave, they should make eye contact and shake their interviewer’s hand. They shouldn’t bolt out of the office like Bill Gates off the set of The Daily Show! Remind them to check in with HR to see if they need anything else or should meet anyone else.

These items might seem simple but often seem to befuddle the technical candidate. Taking a little time to review these tips with them can make a huge difference in how frequently companies say yes to your candidate.

Rob Masson is the co-founder of Virtual Atomics, a staffing and consulting firm specializing in technical candidates. He’s also a confirmed geek and is just as proud of his ability to shred code as his talent in schmoozing at a networking event. Reach Rob at robert.masson@virtualatomics.com.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post How Recruiters Can Help Technical Candidates Ace the Interview appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post How Recruiters Can Use Google Hangouts to Find the Best Candidates appeared first on Brazen Life.

Many job seekers are now using video conferencing to connect with employers and recruiters and to explore companies and career options. Can you guess which social media site works well for an almost limitless variety of staffing solutions, like sourcing interns on campus, interviewing top candidates and enhancing employer brand? Where can you go to conduct information sessions for candidates from anywhere in the world and introduce the work and company culture?

Google Hangouts, that’s where! It’s the versatile new tool recruiters are eagerly incorporating into their recruiting processes and job seekers are using to “do the homework” on the companies where they want to work.

Hangouts are a feature of the social media site Google+, and they’re  fun and easy to learn with Hangout Helpers, sessions held every Saturday to show new users how to use Hangouts.

How can you use Google Hangouts for your own recruiting? Here are a few ideas:

Highlight job openings

Hold monthly Hangouts to discuss current job openings, and invite hiring managers to participate and talk about their company culture and workflow. You can focus on one job or multiple jobs, but stick to a regular monthly Hangout, coordinated with people from the companies with the openings.

This will attract active and passive job seekers and students looking for internships. Make your recruiting Hangouts do double duty and record them to post on your (or your client’s) blog, website or social media platforms for non-attendees to view.

Hangout on campus (without leaving your desk)

Google Hangouts are a great way to visit college campuses and recruit for new graduates and college interns without spending a dime on travel and accommodations.

Contact advisors and professors in academic programs related to the positions and companies you’re recruiting for and ask about speaking to students through Hangouts. Get face time with top students in the programs that relate to the positions you seek to fill.

Offer to discuss the positions, the employers and the work expected of new hires. Remember to offer advice on resumes, portfolios, interviews and other valuable job search information in on-campus Hangouts. If the company seeking to hire has any alumni on staff, ask them to join the Hangout and discuss the company culture and why they chose to work there.

Use Hangouts for interviews

Save time and money in the selection process by using Google Hangouts to conduct screening interviews and pre-interviews. Use Hangouts to conference with candidates sourced from LinkedIn, Facebook, forums and other areas. Invite candidates to discuss their skills and experience, and invite the hiring manager and several key personnel from the company to discuss the work and the culture.

Once you’ve narrowed down the pool of candidates, the recruiter, hiring manager or an interview panel can use the private Hangout feature to conduct confidential interviews.

Google Hangouts provides the flexibility and cost-effectiveness missing from old school face-to-face interviews for candidates and employers in different geographic locations.

Create live YouTube broadcasts

Get together with the hiring manager and the employees who will work with the new hire and conduct an informal Hangout. You can talk about the job opening and company culture and then stream it live on either your or the company’s YouTube channel.

Live broadcasts are an excellent tool to communicate openings and candidate searches, build the employer brand and build your candidate pool. Ask for referrals, give specifics about qualifications for openings and present contact information for candidates to get in touch.

These are just a few ways Google Hangouts can help you build relationships with candidates, save time and money, improve your recruiting process and build your employer brand. If you really want to go the extra mile, enhance the effectiveness of your Hangouts by promoting them on your other social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and post Hangout recordings on your blog or website.

Have you used Google Hangouts for recruiting? Let us know how it went in the comments!

Andrew Greenberg has over 17 years’ experience in talent acquisition in both corporate and agency environments. He is the founder and Managing Partner of The Recruiting Division, a leader in US-based RPO recruitment solutions.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post How Recruiters Can Use Google Hangouts to Find the Best Candidates appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post A Smarter Way to Recruit That Will Help You Place More Candidates appeared first on Brazen Life.

Why do so many recruitment inquiries fail to achieve the desired response?

With a rather low barrier to entry, many employees in the staffing industry tactlessly push their service onto prospective clients without adding meaningful value.

 Let’s take a closer look at how those interactions transpire through a lazy recruitment strategy we’ll call the “flood approach”:

The flood recruitment approach

• Less advanced recruiters (LARs) get so excited about picking up a new job that they rush off a client call to start sourcing candidates who could lead to a placement.
• Assuming they’ll find an ideal candidate with a few buzzwords, LARs input generic search terms into a candidate aggregator and find a large volume of candidates who feature those buzzwords anywhere on their resume.
• Eager to get things done as quickly as possible (faster placements = faster commissions), they flood hiring managers with dozens of these poorly sourced candidates for evaluation.
• As a result, clients find themselves wasting time checking out a mixed bag of candidates they could have found just as easily by spending 20 minutes in front of the same candidate-aggregating tools.
• Because the process has not been effectively expedited, hiring managers realize the partnership is useless. As a consequence, the candidates are also shafted because the hiring manager didn’t have time to pick out the gems from a pile of otherwise inappropriate resumes.
• Having been burned, those clients and candidates start ignoring future recruitment messages to avoid wasted time, energy and frustration.

Let’s dissect why this went so wrong. While many human capital specialists can become trusted marketplace consultants, the baseline value add in the recruitment business is optimizing time efficiency.

Consequently, recruiters would be well-advised to master an approach to the craft that places small, elite handfuls of qualified candidate leads in front of hiring authorities rather than the fast, sloppy flooding technique.

And that takes agility.

The agile recruitment approach

“Agile software development” is a top-trending technique in Information Technology that promotes continuous planning, testing and integration.

This approach is exactly what the recruitment space needs to move away from the flood methodology.

With that in mind, let’s adapt principles from the agile manifesto to the staffing industry and analyze why this approach is so valuable:

1. In agile development, “business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.”

In agile recruitment, there must be consistent communication between hiring managers, recruiters and candidates.

This principle explains why a five-minute job order call yielding a generic laundry list of requirements doesn’t cut it. Rather, recruiters need to develop a clear picture of an ideal candidate by asking a lot of detailed questions, listening carefully to the answers and using that information to guide strategy.

With that foundation in place, recruiters will not only understand technical skills requirements but also the hiring firm’s interview process and culture—both important factors that dictate the appropriate candidate pool and tools for preparation.

Further, recruiters also need to spend quality time with candidates (preferably over the phone and face-to-face) to be sure their experience, values, salary expectations and interpersonal skills align with client needs.

And while flooding clients with dozens of resumes isn’t helpful, clients do still want some choices. Consequently, recruiters should ensure they’re getting continuous feedback on candidate performance to not only keep candidates informed but also ensure their sourcing approach evolves as more information emerges later in the process.

In short, until there is a signed offer letter and the candidate is set to start, communication between everyone involved should be continuous.

2. In agile development, recruiters “welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.”

In agile recruitment, it’s critical to adapt to changing client requirements.

In recruitment, things change all the time. Take money, for example. Oftentimes, hiring firms will realize their budget restricts the original salary for an open position, drastically altering the candidate pool.

Similarly, hiring managers may realize, after seeing a handful of candidates, that the ideal hire needs to come from a specific industry.

Countless other factors might change as the process progresses, and recruiters who aren’t prepared to roll with the punches as requirements shift risk becoming irrelevant additions to the hiring equation.

3. In agile development, “simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential.”

After a recruiter has digested all the relevant information and iterated as necessary, bearing the job spec is interesting and pays according to market standards, the ideal next step is to present hiring managers with between four and eight pre-qualified candidates who could all be good additions to the client’s team.

In short, internal hiring managers are capable of posting ads, sourcing on LinkedIn, getting referrals and screening candidates—they just might not have time to do so efficiently.

Consequently, when a recruiter can help hiring managers simplify their lives by doing the legwork properly, the partnership has become mutually beneficial.

One of the biggest complaints in the staffing world is that recruiters are selfish, that they ignore everyone else’s needs while doing whatever is necessary to benefit themselves.

Agile recruitment instead puts the focus on what benefits clients and candidates. When the focus is shifted off what’s easy for a recruiter to what’s valuable for the client, positive outcomes become sustainable.

Sure, the flood approach may yield the perfect candidate early in a generic search, but the likelihood of repeating success that way is highly unlikely.

By contrast, agile recruitment yields consistent results with recruiters plugged into the specifics, simplifying the complex and helping complimentary professionals find one another.

If this approach were standardized, the rate of successful connections would explode.

Ben Weiss is the digital marketing strategist for Infusive Solutions, one of the premier IT staffing firms in New York City specializing in placing Microsoft-centric technical professionals and helping clients fill mission-critical IT seats with great speed and precision. Follow him on Twitter @InfusiveInc or at Facebook.com/InfusiveInc.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post A Smarter Way to Recruit That Will Help You Place More Candidates appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Body Language Tricks to Help Recruiters Nail Video Interviews appeared first on Brazen Life.

Luckily, PGi/iMeet put together this great infographic to help both sides of the interview table (or, in this case, screen) understand the rising importance of video interviews and how to make sure you nail them:

Have you participated in a video interview before (on either side of the screen)? What tips do you have for others?

Infographic by PGi/iMeet.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Body Language Tricks to Help Recruiters Nail Video Interviews appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Why Recruiters Should Look Beyond Education Requirements to Fill Open Positions appeared first on Brazen Life.

You are in a difficult position—we get it.

You have a position that needs to be filled yesterday, and a horde of applicants who are basically indistinguishable from each other. So, understandably, anyone who doesn’t meet the ever-raising bar can be immediately discarded.

No degree? Toss ‘em.

No internships? Shred ‘em.

No relevant experience? Forget about it.

We get it. You’re a busy person. But you’re also a person with power—more power than most to change a situation which is squeezing recent grads and newer grads right out of the job market.

And it’s such a waste.

Lots of brilliant, talented, innovative, creative, diligent people lack one or more of the features mentioned above, and they are passed over again and again because they didn’t have the funds or interest to acquire them. Remember that higher education is a privilege not everyone has or is suited for.

And you, hiring manager, are in a position to change a bit of that, to help correct the imbalance, to level the playing field a little. The current system of education leading to debt, credential bloat, low wages, fear and insecurity doesn’t help anyone, especially not companies that need top people to stay innovative.

I ask you—no, I beseech you—to take a chance on someone without the credentials.

Here’s why:

1. Experience comes in all shapes and sizes

The best doesn’t always come attached to a diploma.

Think about the job you need filled. Unless it’s a position upon which lives literally depend, advanced education might be a plus but isn’t going to make or break someone’s ability to do the job well.

The candidate will let you know they can do the job by customizing their resume for the position. You might notice insightful comments about your industry in their cover letter, the way they highlight their most relevant experience (even if it isn’t in your field) at the top of their resume and how they describe your position in their summary. All of those details will tell you exactly how the candidate intends to be useful to your organization.

2. Skills can be taught, but passion and talent can’t be

Someone can have every degree in the book and 10 years of experience, but if they’re just not interested, they will never be the great employee you need.

Remember that every task that needs to be done can be taught to anyone, but a talent for connecting with people, for example, or organizing information—those are inherent. Curt Coffman and Marcus Buckingham of the Gallup corporation wrote a great book about this topic called First, Break All the Rules; it will change your life.

Look for applicants who have done interesting things outside of your industry. Anything that indicates innovation, creativity, great people skills, organization and diligence is a great sign that the applicant will bring those same qualities to your organization.

3. You’re starting with a blank and eager slate

And there are no bad habits and unreasonable expectations to boot.

When someone comes to you without a lot of experience, they don’t have any bad habits to break, which can save tons of time and money. Plus, everyone knows, understands and accepts that an entry-level worker costs less than someone with years of experience.

You can use this to your advantage, all while helping a fresh face grow into an indispensable team member who will never forget that your company gave them a chance. They will know coming in that they can’t command top wages (until the status quo changes, anyway) and so may well be willing to look at alternative compensation or benefits. They’ll also work hard to gain the experience needed to be more valuable to your company.

Look for applicants who are upfront about their credentials or the lack thereof, especially if they provide compelling reasons why they aren’t necessary. It takes moxie to apply for a job when you don’t meet all of the stated criteria. When candidates make an effort to stand out and get your attention anyway, there is almost always a reason.

Of course, I’m not saying to swing entirely to the opposite side! There’s nothing wrong with having a good education, but it’s not necessarily an indication of anything other than having attended a college or university. Perfect fits for that job you need filled exist all across the education and experience spectrum, and a candidate who at first looks unqualified may have exactly the right mix of passion, talent and ability to get the job done.

I’m asking you to keep an open mind—even if it means a little more work sorting through resumes.

Megan Dougherty runs a blog all about money acquisition and wrangling for the young, creative and underemployed called Paying for Life. It’s still in pre-launch, but if you’ve got any little income gaps to fill, you can download her free list of 20 Ways to Make at Least $30 Tomorrow.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Why Recruiters Should Look Beyond Education Requirements to Fill Open Positions appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post 5 Tips for Recruiters Who Want to Hire Strong Salespeople appeared first on Brazen Life.

As a recruiter, you’re responsible for ensuring that your company has the right staff in place to achieve these goals. One hurdle that recruiters must overcome is finding the right salespeople who don’t embody the stereotypical pushy nature that tend to drive customers away. But all recruiters know that hiring the right staff is a feat that’s easier said than done.

Sometimes resumes and interviewing skills aren’t enough when it comes to figuring out whether a job candidate would make a great salesperson. Here are a few tips to help recruiters hire good salespeople:

1. Set guidelines and establish a detailed process

The first step to ensure any interviewing process runs smoothly is to establish a detailed criterion of what you will judge candidates on. By identifying what you want in a sales candidate, you will have set guidelines to help you assess each interviewee in a fair manner. This will also reduce hiring mistakes.

It’s impossible to recognize whether someone will excel in a position if you yourself don’t understand the position and what it entails. Learn about the entire sales process from beginning to end before interviewing candidates.

2. Spend time screening candidates

Spend a significant amount of time carefully screening candidates through resume evaluation and brief phone interviews before requesting an in-person interview. By spending more time reviewing candidates’ credentials ahead of time, you save yourself from wasting time interviewing candidates who aren’t qualified for the position.

3. Avoid placing too much weight on things that don’t matter

When interviewing candidates, be sure you look at a balance of qualifications to ensure you’re giving every candidate an equal opportunity. Follow your company’s protocol, but also identify the best person to fill the position. Just because you and one candidate connect over your love of golf doesn’t necessarily mean she’s the right person for the job. Likewise, even if you and another candidate don’t share interest in the same hobbies, he could still be the most qualified.

Focus on what really matters for the job. Never place too much weight on someone’s appearance, background or where they went to college (or if they went to college) at the expense of strengths that exhibit successful selling techniques.

4. Pinpoint strengths and weaknesses

After successfully interviewing multiple candidates, it’s time to analyze each one to determine the best possible fit for your sales team. Measure each candidate against your criteria and against each other. Write down their strengths and weaknesses.

Remember, everyone is not a natural salesperson. Learn how to recognize when an employee is not a good fit for a certain position or customer. See if you think any of the weaknesses you pinpointed can be built upon and improved through training. Look for areas where you may need to allow time for the person to work. Consider the sales training course opportunities and additional support that your company may offer.

5. Inform candidates of your decision

After you’ve thoroughly checked a candidate’s references and have decided who you want to hire, follow through with all the steps for every interviewee. If your company doesn’t have such a plan set in place, formalize a procedure to ensure that every candidate is contacted in the same fashion.

Make an effort to promptly inform individuals who were not hired. Be honest and upfront about your decision. Consider whether you want to give candidates you did not hire the opportunity to apply for other positions that are currently open or positions that may open in the future. How you communicate with future employees or people you decide not to hire is extremely important and can greatly affect your company’s reputation.

Recruiting is a costly and important task that plays a huge role in creating a profitable company. Use these tips to ensure a successful recruiting process.

Kelsey Grabarek works for Dale Carnegie Training, the training company founded on the principles of the famous speaker and author of How to Win Friends and Influence People. Visit Dale Carnegie Training online to learn more about leadership training.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post 5 Tips for Recruiters Who Want to Hire Strong Salespeople appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Why Telecommuting is the Best Perk Recruiters Can Offer appeared first on Brazen Life.

Redefining success is the current theme in today’s workplace, with more workers seeking what Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington recently coined “work/life fit.” This is the philosophy that workers—especially women—need and want more autonomy and control over their work environment, including work-from-home arrangements.

Study after study shows why telecommuting is the gem of all benefits. In a report from Global Workplace Analytics, more than half of hiring managers surveyed say GenY is more difficult to recruit and retain, but they’re particularly attracted to flexible work programs. And a poll of 1,500 technology professionals revealed that more than one-third would take a 10 percent pay cut for the opportunity to work from home.

So why do employees want the option to telecommute?

Workers who are able to take advantage of telework programs are generally happier, stay longer and have fewer unscheduled absences. Apart from attracting a younger workforce that desires to work remotely, offering telecommuting can also help recruiters expand their talent pool to include people with disabilities, who often can truly reap the extraordinary benefits and flexibility that remote work brings—especially if they can’t physically get to an office every day.

Just think about someone who has multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that affects 400,000 people in the US. It has no cure. Having MS means a person can have some perfectly normal days, and other days where it’s difficult to walk. The ability for an employee to telecommute spares her from having to take a sick day, and signals the employer’s commitment to supporting her and other people with disabilities in the workplace. She’s more apt to stay longer and be happier.

Here’s proof: In a recent survey from Think Beyond the Label, a nonprofit working to increase job opportunities for people with disabilities, eight out of 10 workers with disabilities say they would prefer the option to telecommute to other sought-after perks such as free meals and flexible spending programs. In the survey, telecommuting was the second-ranked workplace benefit after paid time off. Also, 17 percent of respondents say they telecommute to accommodate a disability, while a larger portion—37 percent—say their employer allows them to telecommute, revealing that job seekers with disabilities look for employers that are tuned into shifting workplace ideals.

“People with disabilities, like anyone else, look for jobs that offer strong workplace benefits such as telecommuting,” says Barbara Otto, principal of Think Beyond the Label. “By offering telecommuting, employers can cast a wider net for talent and open up more full-time employment opportunities to this group,” she says.

Otto cites Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2013, where eight of the top 10 companies offer telecommuting options, and DiversityInc’s Top 10 Companies for People with Disabilities, where flexible work options are a criterion for the award.

For example, Ernst & Young, the global professional services firm, offers flexible work programs. “Anything we can do to enable our people to make them more productive, regardless of ability, is integral to our business,” says Lori Golden, Abilities Strategy Leader. “This includes providing them with the right physical environment for their needs as well as the tools they need.”

And it’s a strong recruiting strategy too; Golden says younger workers in particular are “more accustomed to asking for what they need.”

Telecommuting can work in the employer’s favor, too

Telecommuting is often cited as a productivity enhancer—workers save the long commutes to and from the office and don’t have to interact with chatty coworkers if they’re busy. Plus, technology, including assistive technologies and devices, makes everyone work faster and more efficiently.

The Think Beyond the Label survey revealed that nearly three-fourths of people with disabilities believe telecommuting makes them more efficient in their jobs. A good example is someone who is paraplegic, uses a wheelchair and needs help getting ready for work. They may also need to use public transportation if they don’t drive a car, which can add hours to a workday. While their brain works fine, their legs might not, but that shouldn’t stop them from having meaningful work.

The benefits of hiring a person with a disability are enormous, says Otto. People with disabilities have had to adapt and creatively solve problems that others haven’t faced, and thus have innovative thinking and fresh perspectives that organizations need and that are valuable for product development, marketing, employee recruitment and enhancing teams. “I like to tell businesses that if they want someone who thinks outside the box, hire someone who lives outside the box,” Otto says.

That’s not to say that a person with a disability needs to telecommute to hold a job. Then again, neither does a Millennial. The message is that to cast a wider net for talent, to be seen as an employer of choice and to keep employees happy on the work-life balance scale, telecommuting gives employers great leverage—and a direct path to the workplace of the future.

Suzanne Robitaille is the founder of abledbody.com and a recognized writer on disability issues. She is the author of The Illustrated Guide to Assistive Technologies & Devices.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Why Telecommuting is the Best Perk Recruiters Can Offer appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post 5 Essential Lessons for Recruiters Who are Eager to Fill More Positions appeared first on Brazen Life.

A staggering 3.8 million open jobs are up for grabs, yet 70 percent of hiring decision-makers say it now takes longer to find a qualified candidate to fill these roles, according to a new Aerotek report, Retain or Recruit. In July 2009, it took an average time of 15.4 days to fill a position, and by December 2012, the average had risen to 23 days.

So what can you do to reduce the time it takes to find the ideal candidate and retain them once you’ve got them?

1. Make an offer they can’t refuse

Retain or Recruit found three out of five employees would leave their current role for a competitive offer.

That doesn’t necessarily mean offering more money, although that definitely makes an offer competitive. It could also mean offering wider and more comprehensive benefits, more vacation leave or opportunities for travel abroad. It’s worth taking the time to find out exactly what job candidates are looking for.

2. Tempt candidates with training

Of the employees who were not likely to be tempted by a more competitive offer, the prospect of employee training and development was enough to make them consider the option.

It’s not always about more money in the bank; young professionals in particular often prioritize their long-term personal and professional growth. That’s why another way of hooking them is putting your money where your mouth is and offering to…

3. Provide the training

While every single one of the hiring decision-makers surveyed agreed training is important, only half have a formal employee engagement program focused on employee development. Worse, a third don’t have a training program and don’t plan to have one.

Opportunity for growth is essential for GenY workers, so why not think about setting up a program or two?

4. Team up

“But I haven’t got time,” you’re probably screaming at the screen. It’s true that investing in training and development programs will cost you time as well as money, but it’s likely to pay dividends in the long run.

By identifying partners that can alleviate the time spent locating and interviewing candidates, you can use this time to focus on training and developing the employees you already have. Not only will it keep them happy and engaged; it’ll make your offer all the more tantalizing to potential recruits.

5. Manage your expectations

When it comes to new hires, one third of hiring managers expect more from the new kids in the office, despite half of respondents saying they have less time to train new employees.

You can’t have it both ways! Yes, you should expect your new recruits to be ready for action, but if you don’t invest in developing their skills and inspiring them professionally, you can’t expect this to happen overnight, if at all.

Bear in mind that graduates may not have extensive experience in the workplace, but they are fresh, hungry and keen to learn, so capitalize on this enthusiasm and make use of it!

Amy Noble is a freelance writer, copy editor, proofreader and general grammar-obsessive living in London, England.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post 5 Essential Lessons for Recruiters Who are Eager to Fill More Positions appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post 7 Ways Recruiters Can Effectively Manage Remote Workers appeared first on Brazen Life.

The question, then, is not whether we have the right technology to simplify the process of virtual communication—it’s how to effectively manage workers.

With these seven tips, you’ll be on your way to effectively managing your virtual workforce in no time.

1.  Establish clear roles and responsibilities

When employees aren’t present in the office, it’s especially important to agree upon clear roles and responsibilities anchored in the company’s vision. A great starting point is letting the employee establish a list of each day’s essentials that define her role with the company. While this is a rather easy task, it’s often neglected and assumed to be clear.

2.  Create aligned goals

Any strategic plan begins with clear goals. Project management software, such as Basecamp, is great for creating overall visibility of goals. Find software that allows you to comment and have discussions online so the employee working remotely has a resource to stay up-to-date.

3.  Insist on clear communication

Communication can easily get lost in the stress of the day, especially when your employee is out of sight. Having a set time where you always catch up helps you foster clear communication and helps those who are remote stay in touch.

4. Focus on collaboration

The heart of an organization’s ability to innovate is rooted in collaboration. Virtual workers miss out on small talks over coffee and chats in hallways. Nevertheless, there are activities to boost collaboration. Advise your employees to spend 30 minutes a day speaking to one of their coworkers. With no clear agenda, this can often lead to simple small talks. But it can also lead to innovation. Plus, it’ll resolve the “out of sight, out of mind” problem.

5.  Reconceive the physical workspace

If you have virtual workers in one region, it makes sense to arrange coworking spaces, or urban hubs, to create cultural alignment, idea generation and fellowship. Flexible, communal and transparent workspaces can benefit your company and employees. And if you don’t have the resources, companies that offer collaborative workspaces such as Coco are continually growing.

6.  Reconstruct workflows

Highly specialized people working from home need on-demand, easily accessible and centralized systems that provide controlled access of knowledge and information. This includes investing in intuitive technology such as Infosys that relies on the popularity of social networking sites to connect virtual workers around the world.

7.  Recognize individuality

The more you’re able to tailor tasks and responsibilities to individual work preferences, the more you’re able to motivate and engage different work personalities. In today’s world of corporate guidance and overall compliance, our recruiting practices must be flexible to respond to individual needs and wants. Flexible hours, relocation, travel and commission are just some factors that enhance our value proposition.

We can’t stop the shift in the workplace. But by following these tips, you can be closer to your virtual workforce and gain more insights into the aspects of their business day you can’t control.

What’s your secret to effectively managing your virtual workforce? Do you work for a company that does a great job in easing your online contribution?

Mona Berberich is a Digital Marketing Manager at Better Weekdays, a Chicago-based company that has developed a platform to help HR leaders source, screen and develop talent based on job compatibility. She is a researcher and writer covering HR, career growth, talent management and leadership development.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post 7 Ways Recruiters Can Effectively Manage Remote Workers appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Google Now Thinks Those Brainteaser Questions Are A Complete Waste of Time appeared first on Brazen Life.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Google Now Thinks Those Brainteaser Questions Are A Complete Waste of Time appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post How Recruiters Should Leverage Social Networks to Find the Right Hires appeared first on Brazen Life.

This concept is vital to the recruiting game. When looking for the best new hires, HR professionals need to identify a key group of exceptional people who will drive their recruitment efforts. This group should be well-connected to potential new hires, highly informed about the needs of the company and motivated to locate top talent.

In the past, hiring managers often relied on headhunters and job boards to help them fill roles. Today, dependence on those tools is trending down, and HR is increasingly able to look to their colleagues for referrals.

Employees have a firm grasp of the company culture, and they understand the demands of the job. And thanks to social networking, employees today are also connected to hundreds of people in their own or related fields of interest.

If properly motivated with a reward program, employees can post job vacancies on their own social networks and locate a strong pool of potential candidates: their own friends, former classmates and past colleagues. They can function as the all-important 20 percent that “tips” the trend and makes it successful.

Six degrees of good recruitment

As Kevin Bacon fans know, “six degrees of separation” is the theory that everyone is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world.

The theory is based on a 1967 experiment by social psychologist Stanley Milgram, in which Milgram distributed letters to 160 students in Nebraska and asked that the letters be sent to a certain stock broker in Boston who was not known personally to them. The students began passing the letter to anyone they believed to be socially closer to the stockbroker, and on average, it took six links to deliver each letter. Gladwell’s “Law of the Few” was influenced by a key finding of this study: just three friends of the stock broker acted as the final link that resulted in the delivery of the letters.

These individuals, called “Connectors,” are particularly important in the context of social recruitment. Connectors are people who love knowing people, enjoy interpersonal communication and are usually also charismatic and in-the-know.

Companies should identify those employees who are Connectors in their own lives and tap into that base. Most Connectors would love the opportunity to help others and be an integral part of the hiring process.

Today, with one billion Facebook users and over 100 million LinkedIn profiles, you could argue that we have all become Connectors. Any employee has the ability to publicize a job opening to thousands of potential candidates and to reach ideal candidates with just a few degrees of separation.

So, how can you use these concepts from The Tipping Point to recruit more successfully?

• Create attractive, informative job postings for employees to post on their social media profiles.
• Develop a great employee referral program that rewards employees for actively sharing information about job openings.
• Identify those employees who are Connectors in their professional and personal lives.
• Consider social media networks as an important part of your recruiting strategy.

Tal Moran is Co-Founder and CEO of Tomigo, a social recruiting platform that leverages your company’s social connections to hire top talent.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post How Recruiters Should Leverage Social Networks to Find the Right Hires appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post To Recruit Better Candidates, Stop Talking About Company Values appeared first on Brazen Life.

Take PriceWaterhouseCooper as an example. Their company values are “Excellence, Teamwork and Leadership.” They’ve even grouped them into a little triangle so you see how their values fit together.

Has anyone ever decided to apply for a job because they are driven by excellence, teamwork and leadership? Unlikely. And the minute an employee sees those corporate values in a Death By Powerpoint session, they’ll probably close their eyes and imagine they were somewhere else. (On a beach, probably.)

But there’s a “but.” There’s always a “but.” Company values are not engaging for many reasons. Imagine if they were, though. Imagine the pulling power of company values that actually mean something, that differentiate your company from your competition—so you can recruit the best possible candidates.

Here’s how to recruit new employees who really care about your values:

Start with one defining word that represents your company

Think of Apple—what’s the one thing they’re known for? Innovation. Everything at Apple starts with innovation, then goes from there. That one word attracts people to buy Apple products, and the same word attracts candidates to work for Apple.

If you can sum your organization up in one word, what would it be? For PriceWaterhouseCooper, it could be something like “rigor.” Excellence and teamwork are not particularly interesting, because these are givens in any successful organization.

You can start with something like excellence, but then you need to hone your focus and ask “Excellence in what?” Forget vanilla values everyone else can lay claim to. Find one word that really defines your organization, and use it as the cornerstone of your company values. That word should speak to both candidates who are a good fit for your organization and your best-performing employees.

Strive to be a company that can grow potential employees’ careers

No one accepts a job because they believe in the company’s “excellence.” So why did they join?

Among the many reasons, you’d find job satisfaction, career progression opportunities, pay and benefits. All of them entirely self-serving. Nobody joins a company solely to help the company grow—that might be part of their motivations, but people also join for their own professional benefit.

It’s important that, as a recruiter, you aspire to represent your organization as a place people want to be a part of. You aspire to go somewhere, and you aspire to grow. The implication is that your aspiration will rub off on your candidates—you can give them the opportunity to not just pay the rent, but to develop either internally or eventually with another business. You’re a stepping stone (everyone is; get over it), so be a good one. Discuss career paths openly, even if those paths lead out of your business.

Build your recruiting practices around your true values

Rather than hoping your values might engage employees or encourage someone to come and work for you, use them as the basis for recruiting. Anyone can say they believe in your brand values, but do they actively live and breathe them? I work for a digital marketing agency, and if candidates aren’t blogging or tweeting, they aren’t a good fit for us. They can have all the skills in the world, but if they don’t live and breathe digital, they won’t fit in.

If you’re going to build an organization that’s true to its values, then recruitment is at the very core of that approach. Marissa Mayer knows this, which is why she insists on interviewing every candidate at Yahoo herself. Her aim is to overhaul Yahoo’s working culture, and that starts with its people and their own values.

Remember: it’s not all about you; it’s about them

I believe we have to turn the company-focused approach on its head. Companies are stepping stones along the way to someone’s retirement. People move on all the time; teams change, merge and float off into separate entities. Leaders change, even visions and values change. So instead of “cascading down” values and objectives, think of “radiating out” values.

Think back to Apple and innovation. Recruit people who match your vision, not those who tick the skills boxes. Because nobody cares about your company values…they care about their own!

Gareth Cartman is a digital marketer based in the UK. He spent several years working for one of the largest global HR outsourcers and previously worked in publishing.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post To Recruit Better Candidates, Stop Talking About Company Values appeared first on Brazen Life.

The post Recruit More Millennials By Understanding Their Mindset appeared first on Brazen Life.

As businesses and startups look for ways to recruit high-quality candidates from Gen Y, they should take a look at the mindset of Millennials to gain better insight into the aspects of their business they should sell to those sought-after applicants. A Spring 2013 study from oDesk and Millennial Branding, “Millennials and the Future of Work,” resulted in an infographic and Slideshare that showcase how Millennial workers view work and the workplace in general.

Here are the highlights:

Freelancers, Entrepreneurs and a New Mindset

According to the oDesk report, 90 percent of Millennials surveyed think being an entrepreneur means having a certain mindset rather than starting a company. Aspects of this mindset include being a self-starter and risk-taker, someone who “spots opportunity.”

It isn’t just the definition of entrepreneurship that is experiencing a shift. While many consider starting their own business and being an entrepreneur as a risky endeavor, 57 percent of Millennials say being an entrepreneur is entirely a good thing, and 58 percent classify themselves as entrepreneurs.

Freelancing is another area of business that is on the rise, and more and more Millennials are looking for ways they can work from home and on their own schedules. The flexibility of freelancing with respect to choosing where and when to work, as well as the potential earnings, are all reasons people show interest in freelancing. Many believe Gen X is best suited to run today’s businesses, but many from Gen Y (66 percent) think they are ready to do so.

What Millennial Workers Really Want

Businesses and their processes are constantly shifting as CEOs, CMOs and executives look for ways to become more efficient, boost their bottom lines and scale their businesses. While a business shouldn’t have to make a multitude of changes based on the wants of Gen Y hires, if your business is looking to hire Millennials, there are a few ways you can appeal to top candidates.

Business.com references the top benefits Millennials want now. By focusing on what Millennials really want and how your business can meet those needs, you can attract top Gen Y talent. These wants include:

• Freedom: 89 percent of those surveyed want freedom to choose where/when they work.
• Independence: 57 percent of Millennials quit their jobs to work for themselves.
• Choices: 66 percent responded that the ability to choose the type of work they do was the reason they would like to quit their job and work for themselves.
• Change: 82 percent of survey respondents did not find the idea of only having one job for life appealing.

A Shift in the Workplace

Many Millennial workers prefer to work from home and find the flexibility offered by freelancing appealing. While some companies such as Yahoo! are requiring more workers to come into the office, others are offering more flexible work hours and locations to their employees.

Regardless of where your business falls in terms of work hour freedoms, it’s hard to deny that a shift is taking place in the general workforce and in workplace of many businesses. Forty percent of the oDesk respondents agreed that the standard workday is going away, and 18 percent  strongly agreed. IDC found that by 2015, the world’s mobile worker population will reach 1.3 billion, representing 37.2 percent of the total workforce.

As more and more Gen Y workers enter the workforce and management roles, these numbers could continue increasing. A shift for more workplace freedoms and work hours flexibility is taking place worldwide.

What are your thoughts on Millennial workers and their view of entrepreneurship based on this survey?

This post originally appeared on RecruitingBlogs.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Recruit More Millennials By Understanding Their Mindset appeared first on Brazen Life.