Overview -The HR process and risk:

The process known as ‘on-boarding’ is the translation of a member of the public to an employee and covers the elements that span from first contact through to employment and ongoing review. Each time; deficiencies, holes, gaps and margins for error are introduced and the company’s risk envelope gets bigger. Any seasoned HR professional knows that the goal is ‘risk management’ as’ risk elimination’ is simply not possible.

Areas of systemic risk:

Systemic risks are those that feature in a business process that increase the surface area of risk on a per candidate basis. As the business risk grows the risk envelope also grows exponentially. The upside of systemic risk is that you can dissect the risk into individual steps in the process. Each one of these steps can be likened to the carriages of a train. The task in hand is picking up each carriage one by one and moving it from the old track to the new one.

Process improvement:

Having a flexible business system means that you can develop the modules of your application to suit your business case and as your business case evolves you can adapt your ‘in place solution’ around the dynamics of your responsibilities. Some important phases in the process are:

• Pre contact – does your process / brand publish clear guidelines of what are the risk management steps in the on boarding phase?
• Candidate job application – does the applicant receive or acknowledge access to your process and policies? (privacy, OH&S, spam, etc)
•  Screening questionnaires – does the candidate submit information on themselves that is able to be correlated with other candidates and read and understood by hiring managers and recruiters?
• Screening qualification – does the hiring manager or recruiter go through the screening results with the candidate to qualify and validate the candidates responses?
• Interview process – are clear instructions given to the candidate about what the company process and expectations are in terms of risk and process? Remember a “star” candidate who is not aware of and complicit in your risk management processes is not worth the risk.
• Candidate testing and evaluation – is interview feedback and job requirements used to drive the reference checking and testing phase of the process?
• Candidate induction – Once the prior steps are complete the candidate is induction ready. If a candidate fails at risk mitigation measures then they are not worth the expense of induction (for the company or the candidate)

Moving from a process to a cycle, risk minimisation does not stop at the candidate on boarding process. That is just one vector. The workplace is a dynamic environment and new sites, jobs and tasks regularly present. A company adept at managing risk will have processes for cataloguing work sites and jobs which will entail a corresponding knowledge resource being created in their business solution.

The key linkage between coal face processes (the ones that the day to day activities of the business employ) and the risk management system is essential. Working with casual risk casual employees present significant challenges to the risk management process as they are often allocated to different work sites and roles as the needs of the business dictate. Even if they are always working in the same role they might be required for different shifts with different supervisors.

Many of us look at our work place as a desk and a coffee cup with “the boss” in his/her corner office. It is easy to accept our mundane stability and relative safety as the norm. One of the areas that even the best risk managers overlook is the monitoring of individual casual employee’s different jobs, shifts and tasks. It may be that an employee might have consistent performance across many different jobs and sites but may be unsuitable or not competent and others. It is essential that the business system does distinguish between the roles that individual casuals are able to perform so that they can be allocated safely.

Ideally the process of matching them to certain jobs can be blocked on the basis of information captured in the business system. On boarding staff is a costly and involved process. Done well it will minimise risk and provide a significant return on investment. It is however crucial that this investment is not lost – a business system cannot differentiate between individuals, jobs and risk in an accurate and structured fashion.

Risk and RecruitOnline:

All of the processes that have been touched upon above exist within the core of RecruitOnline and can be used to maximise the benefit of your on boarding process from a risk minimisation and process efficiency point of view. If you want to know more then please contact us.

Next time you are at the gym and rowing – or doing some other exercise that you can safely close your eyes doing – do this test. Set a distance goal in your head say 150 metres and shut your eyes then try to open them when you have passed your goal. Chances are you will open them when you are about 1/2 way towards your goal.

This has a lot to do with the perception that we have about the work we put in and the results it delivers. In the gym example its easy to get distracted on your exertion and guess that you have achieved far more than what you really have.

Business can be quite similar too – we sit down at the start of the quarter and plan our goals, strategies, tactics and actions. After a few days we have everything laid out and we get to work. If you are anything like me you love what you do and its easy to “shut your eyes” and punch through task after task. The danger is that your plan might not be delivering the rewards you anticipated and your effort might be wasted.

Best practice is to have regular reviews that test the validity of your planning assumptions and correlate them to the actual outputs that you expected in quantifiable measures (increase in number of customers, increase in total sales, increase in sales in X territory of Y product, reduction in quality issues, etc).

• They feel that they could make more money than as an employee
• They don’t like the direction that their employer is taking the business
• They have a passion for a specialisation or niche that they cannot follow under their current circumstances.

Whatever the initial motivation for considering setting up on your own recruitment business, I would like to stress that it is not an endeavour to be taken on lightly or without seeking appropriate professional advice, including your lawyer and accountant. Many new ventures struggle because the owner did not do effective groundwork before they began.

Before you begin:

Your existing contract:

You are probably employed in an existing recruitment firm and have a few years of success, preferably with supervisory responsibility, under your belt. The first thing you need to consider is your current employment contract. If there is a restraint of trade – what is the duration and what restrictions will it affect? One example is an Accounting Recruiter working in Insurance / Finance sector – is there leeway for you to develop a business in other sectors (eg: Accounting within ITC, Manufacturing, Government, etc) while you wait for your no-compete to expire?

The most important thing you take with you from job to job in the recruitment industry is your integrity. The last thing you want to have happen is to misjudge your current employers response to your plans and get into brand slagging competition with your previous and potential client base. One way to get around this potential issue is advise your ex-employer that you intend to honour your employment contract. It is crucial to make sure that you have legal advice before testing any of the clauses in your employment contract.

As a side note: Even if your lawyer says that the contract has more loopholes than grandma’s knitted sweaters you need to decide if it is the right thing to do to oppose it. Your work mates – the people you leave behind – are potentially people you may want to work with down the track. If you are perceived to act without integrity you can say bye bye to drawing on those relationships in the future. Relationships are what keep recruiters in jobs.

Your market segment:

There are many ways to partition a market. You can be generalist or specialist, you can have a vertical (Insurance: Receptionist to CEO)  or a horizontal (“Accountants”). People often have strong opinions about what is the “right way”.  The one and only “right way” is to consider as many factors that affect your market in terms of supply and demand, both internal and external, as you can and make an informed judgement call.

Surely you can’t be a generalist on your own? : This is often the case, why would a recruiter have credibility in Health & Engineering & Finance? If you have a limited geographic market – a country town for example – then you are probably going to develop a business around the constraints of the local talent pool and the needs of local businesses. There’s no point being a specialist Accounting recruiter when there are only 4 accounting branches in town.

Vertical is the way to go: Vertical is great if you have a track record in the whole vertical. This means that once you have got a client on board you can sell to all the levels of the business, so in effect the selling activity can ease off and you are more likely to be billing quicker.

There are a couple of downsides.

1. You can be overly type cast to your biggest client which may make their competitors reluctant to do business with you.
2. You can get tied to a client (you’re only one girl | guy!) and if another firm comes in over the top you loose your biggest revenue base in one day. OUCH!
3. You are open to death by 1000 cuts (ok 3 or 4 really) from horizontal based businesses. If you have the Insurance client sewn up (Call centre, Accounting, Sales) and a horizontal niche business takes away “Accounting” it can create a void – a capability deficit perception that cuts your “grass roots” revenue base from your “cream”

Horizontal means credibility: True but it also means that you have to sell to more people to create an effective brand. Whilst the vertical might get 5 jobs with one client and it takes them 5 visits to land that client; as a horizontal you have to 25 visits to make 5 placements in 5 clients.

The upside is that you can generally charge a premium for your work and have some insulation from individual client’s hiring cycles.

Its going to be easier to develop your candidate brand as you have more adverts & messages in the same spaces. This could mean that working on a “candidate floating” / “reverse marketing” business development approach will generate revenue quicker.

The obvious pitfalls are that vertical players can pitch for the entire business as a “package” and offer price incentives and perhaps have a delivery capability at every level (including yours). The other downside is sullying candidate perception by misinforming them about job opportunities. The last thing you want in a niche is for candidates to get a perception that you are not advertising real jobs. If you are seeking “registrations of interest” then make sure the candidate is aware of it up front.

Business planning:

There are countless business planning methodologies out there so take a read of a few and create one that fits your own understanding and direction but also take time to learn what each heading means. HINT: If you are not learning new terms, skills & concepts in setting up your own business then you are probably skipping some important details.

One place to look for inspiration for business planning is venture capital firm’s web sites. These people tend to publish easy to understand pitching tools that cover off most of the important details. Its a great way to put together a “pitch” for yourself (and if at the end of it you can’t sell it to your friends / family / accountant then you probably need to tweak it in some way).

Plans don’t survive contact with the market: No matter what you plan is you will find it will change and needs revisiting. Some people condense the key points of their plan into a single page and always have a copy in sight. Plans by nature are big and complex beasts and do need to be tamed, my technique (no I didn’t invent it I just use it)  is as follows:

• Goal: What am I trying to achieve? [and why]?
• Strategy: What are the collection of assumptions and expectations that lead me to the prediction of achieving my goal?
• Action: What is the critical strategic path? itemise each step in the journey.
• Tasks: Take each step and make into a list of tasks. Scan your tasks horizontally to see what activity can complete multiple tasks in multiple steps.

Ultimately we only ever actually “do” tasks. This is a really important thing to remember when its month 3, the phone isn’t ringing and you have no jobs on. If you are seeing all of your goals slip away from you then either your plan was broken to start with or more likely you are not focussing on the tasks, the tasks that deliver the actions, steps that make up the strategy, and the strategy that delivers the goal.

….that’s enough for part one.

Remember you can do all of this without having to re-mortgage your house or take out a lease; it might even be that you decide not to open your own firm but have a clear picture of what you want to achieve in your current job.

The way I think about business is to review new ideas and see what “fits” with my business, pre-dispositions and talents. I couldn’t help being impressed with this portrayal of the Battle of Trafalgar when taken as a lesson in business leadership. I’m going to try and re-phrase a few lines and hopefully convey the lessons that I picked up along the way.

Firstly lets start at the end.

If the measure of victory in battle is inflicting casualties on the opposition then Nelson was 8.5 times more successful than his opposition.

Always have a measure of success in business, if you don’t keep a score then it doesn’t count.

“…The prevailing tactical orthodoxy at the time involved manoeuvring to approach the enemy fleet in a single line of battle and then engaging in parallel lines….One of the reasons for the development of the line of battle was to help the admiral control the fleet. If all the ships were in line, signalling in battle became possible..”

Understand the role that communication plays in your business, identify the problems you face,  in the main, they are the same ones that your competitor faces.

“….His solution to the problem was deliberately to cut the opposing line in two. Approaching in two columns sailing perpendicular to the enemy’s line, one towards the centre of the opposing line and one towards the trailing end, his ships would break the enemy formation in half, surround one half, and force them to fight to the end…”

In business there are times when you need to dare to be different. Some plans don’t allow you to be “half pregnant” and require you to reach for decisive outcomes and not a status quo.

Nelson demonstrates a clear plan that is simple to understand, simple to communicate, with clear goals. In business success is often the product of a small number of small clear objectives being met. Avoid making the job harder than it needs to be by adding unwarranted complexity.

“…Nelson hoped specifically to cut the line just in front of the flagship; the isolated ships in front of the break would not be able to see the flagship’s signals…”

Don’t attack to defend; attack to achieve clear goals. Look for opportunities that are compounded by circumstance. In business, in a limited market, push for preferred supplier agreements and make it more difficult for competitors to hold ground. Each sale you make removes market from them compounding the double edged effects of more revenue and less competition. Make them react to your plans.

Nelson identifies that communication is king and identifies this weakness of his proposition as a vulnerability in his competitions and, more to the point, he exploits it.

“…The plan had three principal advantages. First, it would allow the British fleet to close with the Franco-Spanish fleet as quickly as possible, reducing the chance that it would be able to escape without fighting…”

Business plans don’t belong in desk draws, they belong in the domain of action. Don’t put off business success by making plans. Plans are not about driving to the boxing ring, they are about swinging punches.

“…Second, it would quickly bring on a mêlée and …the British were likely to prevail…”

“…Nelson knew that the better seamanship, faster gunnery, and higher morale of his crews were great advantages…”

You have to know your organisational strengths and to know this you need to know your people and have faith in them. If you don’t have faith in them then why are they here? Assess your people in terms of skills, experience, credibility, attitude against that of your competitors.

“…Third, … the enemy fleet would have to turn back … and this would take a long time…”

Get your competition to react to your plan of attack. Anticipate what they will do and decide what you are going to do about it.

If you have set up preferred supplier agreements, will your competitors drop prices to win back business? Do you have a “value selling” capacity in your sales force or are you going to react to your competition?

“…The main drawback of attacking head on was that as the … ships approached, the Franco-Spanish ships would be able to direct ….. a raking broadside fire to which they would be unable to reply. In order to lessen the time the fleet was exposed to this danger, Nelson had his ships make all available sail. This was yet another departure from the norm…”

Identify weaknesses in your plan especially if they give advantages to your competition. Think through how you will go about countering them and don’t be afraid to break the rules or innovate.

Nelson uses speed to minimise the risk to his fleet. Speed and timing can cause competitors who are slow to react miss the opportunity to exploit your situational weaknesses.

“…Nelson was also well aware that French and Spanish gunners were ill-trained, would probably be supplemented with soldiers, and would have difficulty firing accurately from a moving gun platform…”

Know your competition and their people. Understand the messages and tactics that they will use. Try to see the “battle” from their perspective.

“…The Combined Fleet was sailing across a heavy swell, causing the ships to roll heavily and exacerbating these problems. ..”

Know the business environment and how it applies to you and your competition. If there is an environmental factor that you can use to deliver advantage then use it.

“…Nelson’s plan was indeed a gamble, but a carefully calculated one….”

Be prepared to take risks but only carefully calculated ones.

“..During the period of blockade … Nelson instructed his captains, over two dinners aboard Victory, on his plan for the approaching battle. The order of sailing, in which the fleet was arranged when the enemy was first sighted, was to be the order of ensuing battle, so that no time would be wasted in forming a precise line…”

Get your business leaders to know your plans. Get them to completely understand their role and the value of their contribution. Collaborate, share, motivate and lead. Most of what happens in your business is not done by you so make sure that your message is conveyed throughout the organisation.

“..Nelson was careful to point out that something had to be left to chance. … he left his captains free from all hampering rules by telling them that “No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.” In short, circumstances would dictate the execution…”

No plans survive contact with the enemy. Make sure your business leaders – whilst aware of and committed to your plans – are going to have to use their own initiative and tenacity to prevail.

Try to dilute the whole plan into a single action statement. “If your people are making 10 new business calls each day then we are going to hit budget”.

“…Nelson was mortally wounded during the battle…”

Understand that commitment to business success doesn’t come without a cost. Often it is the team that puts in the most hours and dedication, often at the most personal cost, that ultimately prevails. For many business owners and managers this means time away from family and friends. Nelson was leading from the front, leading by example and ultimately he paid a costly price for success.

What makes a good Recruiter?

There are many things that make a good Recruiter and one aspect is confidence. Without a Recruiter having self belief that they are great at their job, they are going to have difficulty. If you talk to your candidates & clients with an air of confidence and sense of “being in control” of the situation then you would expect things to go well. But what if your client and candidate were both Recruiters themselves? To paraphrase, what if everyone you dealt with thought they could do your job better than you? Welcome to the domain of the R2R specialist.

How do you get in to R2R?

One thing that is common in the R2R space is that these professionals often cut their teeth in the mainstream Recruitment industry. In other words these people at one point go from being your competitor to your business or career partner. That’s a big leap of faith that the consumers of their services are having to take to foster trust with them.

The R2R consultant I spoke with the other day was one of my biggest competitors when I worked a desk but it didn’t take long to realise that she was a lot more connected with the people in the industry and their brands than I was. Part of this came from her 17 years of work in the industry and subsequently from moving into R2R.

When working with a R2R firm – take your own advice!!

How many times as Recruiters do we tell our candidates to develop relationships with their consultants and view them as career partners? And how many times do we just “touch base” with the people in the R2R space just to keep current about trends in our career space (and as hiring managers, our candidate market) ? Not many.

I’ve spoken to many R2R consultants in Australia and New Zealand and the message is clearly how candidate driven their job is. In many traditional environments whilst reverse marketing forms a part of the role, the abundance of placements come from clients orders. In R2R it is the opposite.

What does this mean for a candidate?

If you are looking at your options then you can either troll the job boards and react to the adverts as you see them or you can talk to a R2R specialist and see what they have to say. Every time you send an email application to a Recruitment business you have to rely on their confidentiality and information security practices. At least when you deal with an R2R consultant you have a degree of privacy prior to deciding if you want to pursue a relationship with them.

Best practices:

Speak to a number of R2R firms and grill them about how they can help you. With any luck you will connect with a Recruiter who not only understands “you” but also wants to be your advocate in the employment market. These people speak to hundreds of people like you in many, many businesses. Just like when you fill a role they are not just looking at a “job” they are looking for a “fit” too.

If you don’t like what you experience then vote with your feet and move on to the next firm.

Want to make contact with an R2R firm without giving up your privacy? See Below.

What does this mean for a Recruitment Consultancy?

If your brand does not have any connection with R2R people then they don’t know much about you. How do you expect them to promote your firm to candidates if their knowledge of your company is something between slim and non-existent? As Recruiters yourselves you know the value of going on a client visit to build relationships. Perhaps it’s time to grab a coffee and pick the brains of your local R2R consultant to work out how you might work together.

Face facts if they place a “gun” permanent recruiter with your firm then you can expect that the costs of recruitment will be covered in the first month ( ? /  fortnight / week).

You can’t logically be open to the notion of reverse marketing to your clients unless the door is open to be recipients of this practice yourselves.

Best practices:

Make sure you know who is in your area and they know about you and the sort of people you hire. Join their LinkedIn groups and other information channels (Twitter, Blogs, etc) so that you know where their business is at. Often leaving things like recruitment to the last minute can put pressure on the process. By investing time now you might find that they are better able to help in a time of your need.

Recruit Online & R2R

We manage a few Recruitment / HR groups on LinkedIn and often make introductions between people looking for work and our recruitment colleagues (R2R and hiring managers). We find that whilst we like to help, we could do this better.

How to make contact with R2R without compromising your privacy:

We have set up a web site that allows you to login with your LinkedIn ID and browse R2R jobs in Australia and New Zealand. No information is stored by us unless you want to make contact with an R2R firm. The minimum information we need is a valid email address and this is not shared with anyone unless you choose to share it.

1. Login here:  www.recruitonline.com.au/linkedin
2. Browse the jobs
3. Find one you are interested click: “Write a message to Recruiter”
4. Decide if you want to reply privately or share your details
5. Alternately you can click “Apply” and submit a traditional application

Why would I want to use this site?

1. You learn about the R2R people out there without worrying about getting your name on someone’s list
2. You can see the sorts of jobs that are being advertised in your space
3. If you are a hiring manager you can “mystery shop” R2R people to see how they work from a candidate perspective prior to engaging one

I have questions about my privacy:

Ask away: www.linkedin.com/in/piersrowan

I have an R2R firm and would like to have my jobs listed:

• It’s free
• Just send us the form found here to kick things off: www.recruitonline.com.au/r2r.screenshots.beta

Anything else?

At the moment we are working with our developers and R2R partners to enhance the site. If there are any changes made to the working of the site we will let you know. At no stage do we retain your LinkedIn authentication information or access to your LinkedIn profile.

A complete LinkedIn profile will contain your complete resume which includes work history, skills, and a swag of other stuff. When you make connections on LinkedIn it is possible to see other people’s connections – in fact LinkedIn will provide information on the degrees of separation between you and any profile you look at. Profiles can be public or private and its up to the user to choose what level of information they wish to share about themselves.

Recruitment plays a big part in LinkedIn’s discussions (read their IPO to see how much LinkedIn want to jump into this market).  So the question needs to be asked, what should I put on the site and what should I avoid?

Profile Picture:

People like happy people. If you think that a down trodden and sad face will make people jump at the chance to share an interview cubicle with you then think again. Make sure that your picture coveys a degree of warmth.

Wear work clothes. If you are wanting to use LinkedIn to gain access to clients or employment offers then remember the people “hire / buy in their own image”.  Sure you might look great in a penguin suit tuxedo from your mates wedding but is it relevant to your employment? Fine if you are a waiter or tailor but not OK in some other cases.

Pick your setting. A mate of mine has a picture of himself in a sharp suit, grinning and lounging on a couch. Everything in the picture says to me “I’m going to have your money soon” but since he is a high profile lawyer in New York the picture suits his job in a “get what you pay for” way.

Having a picture of you in a recreational sense might not work for you either. You might think that a picture of you abseiling says “active mind, active body” but someone else might read “…I’d rather be doing something dangerous rather than working…”

Email Address:

If you are using LinkedIn to represent your company then why would you use your personal email address? Apart from the message it sends it can also mean that if you don’t check it you miss out on business opportunities. People will often find you on the Internet using Google and one of the first hit will be your LinkedIn profile. You need to make sure that if a potential client emails you that your response is timely.

Groups and Discussions:

There are many groups out there and not all of them are of any value. It is a tiny minority of people that consistently post content to social media and LinkedIn is no exception. Many groups suffer from poor quality membership that just can’t be bothered participating. Beats me why they join a group in the first place.

Open vs Closed Groups

Open groups mean that the content can be found on Google and is available for anyone with a LinkedIn account to read. Closed mean that the content is only available to people who have been granted membership to the group.

There are many topics that are discussed in business that require a certain amount of understanding and perspective to facilitate an open exchange. As a bad analogy: When you have a strategic HR meeting you don’t have everyone from the factory floor / administration / sales / IT  present or listening in? Closed groups give a degree of security to the members that allows them to assume a certain level of cohesion within the group and a degree of privacy.

Warning: Closed or open – don’t post anything that you can’t back up if it was copied and pasted into the wild.

Contributing to Discussions:

• Be honest – what you post is you after all
• Be polite
• Be tolerant of other people’s points of view even if you do not agree
• Be clear – give people a chance to get your point
• Be relevant – try to stay on topic

If its your first post to a group it never hurts to say it. Often people welcome the idea of greeting new members and it makes a good impression. When you choose to respond to a discussion make sure that you understand and read the thread. By reading the last post and responding to it you can be seen to just rehashing other people’s points and not really contributing anything to the discussion at all. Worse still is that if you are responding to an inaccurate or off topic post you could come across out of touch and foolish. Its worth taking the time to read through a couple of discussion to et a picture on who are the major contributors and a sense of the culture & tone of the group.

Master tip: There is nothing wrong with being wrong but everything wrong with not admitting it. Leaving a discussion when you opinion has been compromised leaves a bad impression. However when you acknowledge and concede a point it can open doors for you. Phrases like: “I didn’t see it that way”, or “I have never come across that scenario before, thank you for pointing it out, I’ll bear that in mind in the future” can help to mend perceptions of you.

To Connect or Not To Connect:

This is a biggie and it comes down to who you are and what you are trying to achieve with LinkedIn. LinkedIn prides itself on cultivating a membership based on real connections. Ideally they would like members to have a degree of sincerity and connection about a relationship, such as past business dealings or direct engagement, prior to hooking up on LinkedIn.

For some you will see a limited collection of contacts who meet this agenda. For others you will see staggering numbers of connections and often the term “L.I.O.N” – Linked In Open Networker  – basically some one who accepts all invites.

When you post updates to LinkedIn they appear on you connections’ home screen. This means that if you are trying to cultivate a market place then having a large network helps in getting your message out there.

Master Tip: Link your Twitter account to your LinkedIn account so that your messages goes even wider.

Master Tip: When making connections, especially within groups, change the invite message from the default text. If you want to make an impression here is your chance (you never get a second chance to make a first impression do you?). An invite might be: “I saw your post about opportunities in the Healthcare sector and I share your interest in this area. I’d like to connect to discuss opportunities to collaborate”

Always assume that any connection you make is going to be seen by every one. If all of a sudden every connection you make is a recruiter then people will probably think that you are looking for a new job. That might have undesirable consequences.

Beware the untrustworthy 3rd party application!

There are many sites coming online each day with “Login With LinkedIn” buttons. In each case you will have to give permission to the application before you go any further. Once you have then the application will have access to your profile and the profiles of all your connections.

Harvesting this data is a 100% breach of the terms of service set by LinkedIn and in an ideal world should not happen. But the operators of the sites can. If you don’t know the people behind the site then proceed with extreme caution as you may be violating the privacy of not only yourself but also of the people you are connected to.

Master tip: Don’t sign other people (your connections) up for any 3rd party sites. The other day I got an email from a site saying that a connection of mine had rated my skills. Since I’ve never met the person I was offended that they would feel that they were in a position to rate me.

Me on LinkedIn

Everyone has can have a public profile, here’s mine:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/piersrowan

If you are looking for a group in Recruitment / HR that is closed, managed and spam free then I recommend:

Australian & New Zealand Recruitment Network

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=110213

In today’s recruitment world we know the value of working with fewer numbers of better quality candidates. While it is quite feasible to have a box of cards on your desk and make a lot of money… why would you? These days there are an abundance of software tools that can automate the process and add efficiencies that cannot be matched by paper based systems. The question to ask is which one is right for your business?

Selecting software for your business can be a daunting task, there are so many things to think of and each of the questions and answers change depending on the size and nature of your business. If you are an Executive Search firm then you business might be driven by permanent placements,in the recruitment to recruitment space the focus is on the reverse marketing of candidates and if you are a multi-branch health business you need to have a system that can handle high volume, single day bookings for multiple divisions.

When starting the conversation in your business about what system you want you should establish what are the current systems you have and what parts you want to replace. For example if you already have a payroll and invoicing system do you really want to replace them? If you do, then you will need to decide if you want a complete suite from one vendor or if you want to integrate different solutions from multiple vendors.

One of the benefits of a completely integrated solution is that you will have one central account manager or relationship manager and you can expect that all the parts of the system will work seamlessly together. One of the drawbacks is that you may have to deal with limitations in one module because you are “locked in” to all of them. Large systems that involve every staff member from recruiters through to accountants are going to require a significant deployment investment that includes significant training. Make sure that if you are going down this route that you look past the sticker price and clearly identify the costs of training, hardware and support.

Software should compliment your business process and address needs at every level. So the first thing you need to do when selecting a system is to get “coal face” stakeholders together and work out what parts of the system are essential for you. This is the specification or the “spec”. In drafting the spec don’t be surprised to have the CFO and the receptionist in the same meeting. Or to look at it another way: do you want a system that doesn’t have financial oversight or a system that is cumbersome at the data entry level?

The key contributors to your spec should include stakeholders from: Recruitment, Sales, Administration, Finance, Marketing and IT. If your business has an number of divisions you will want to make sure you are evaluating the recruitment process from each one’s perspective. You then need to write a feature list and rate each item as required, important or desired perhaps in a spreadsheet with a tab dedicated to “Recruiting’, ‘Sales’, etc.

Take your spec and email it to the software companies that you are interested in. If they can’t be bothered responding to it then they probably are not that customer focused or your needs do not suit their offerings. You should put your efforts into making a spec and sending it out prior to engaging with software sales people.

If you are starting a business then you are probably going to want a web based system. This will mean that rather than spending time setting up and installing software on your PC or server you can most likely get up and running right away and leave the “IT” to someone else.

There are hundreds of web based systems out there and more coming online each day. These range from older systems that have been “web enabled” to purpose built applications. The benefits of web based systems include working from anywhere, no hardware costs and often ongoing updates. Some systems allow you to have a fully integrated web site and others the vendor just places you logo on their page. One of the potential drawbacks is that you can only access your system when you have an Internet connection, however these days to be in this situation you would probably need to be on a remote island, most likely on holiday and probably do not want to be working anyway!

If you are looking at a web based system then the sort of questions to ask include:

• How does the solution integrate with social media like Facebook and Twitter?
• What are the contract lengths?
• What happens to my data if I want to stop using your system?

Rarely does any software meet 100% of you desired criteria so another important factor in selecting software is looking at how much it is able to be customised to your needs. Ask your vendors about what sort of things they can add. Often you can get some customisation “thrown in” at the commissioning of the system.

Regardless of the size and nature of your organisation the selection of software should be a detailed and well thought out process. You need to evaluate the risk and benefit of each factor that compels you to make a selection. By using a clear specification and involving as many stakeholders as possible you will not only have a clearer picture of what your needs are but also more staff “buy in” at deployment.

In the online job advertising markets in Australia and New Zealand there are a small collection of jobs boards that dominate, such as www.seek.com.au and www.trademe.co.nz.

Traditionally “everyone” knew that to get a job or find a candidate you went to these epicenters of online advertising and a connection would be made.

As we have progressed, we have found that the information wants to be free [1].  It doesn’t care if you are the original content (job advert) producer or if it was passed on through the various networks of the Internet.  The other day I Tweeted out a job for a new client on the Twitter account I manage for them. The next day my friend Google found it on some obscure web site in rural Queensland.

One thing to accept about the Internet of today and tomorrow: You cannot control your content.

Many of the bigger brands camp out in the EGN (early general news) section of our newspapers. They will tell you (and their clients that are footing the bill) that this is a great way to gain access to the passive candidate marketplace. These are candidates who weren’t really looking until your advert writing gold sprung forth before their eyes.

So if the passive marketplace is such a great place to find candidates, what does it tell us of our friends in rural Queensland and the content of ours that they are re-posting? In the battle for passive candidates, if the EGN section is nuclear warfare to the dead tree readers then surely micro content aggregation [1]  is death by 1,000 cuts? If your message is leaking out here, there and everywhere then how much propagation does it take before the value of the EGN is eroded?

I have to admit my bias here; my cat has more current exposure to newspapers than I do. I tend to consume other media (online & radio) for news and information.

What is this content aggregation that you speak of?

Content aggregation is where sites and services take other people’s content and massage it into their own offering. One example is: http://www.careerjet.com.au/

In times gone by, some of the big web sites didn’t like this as it meant you were not going to their site and viewing their other adverts. This is a terrible argument as it meant that you pay for an advert on their site and they stop it getting out on the Internet. Nice one.

Social Media

Some see social media as a relatively new way of marketing. From a business perspective, it is a way of raising brand awareness, having a conversation with the public and delivering content, for example job adverts. Social media implies a web site with high traffic (or an integration of such a site into another one [3]) that allows relationships to be made and content shared and commented on.

This content aggregation idea within social media sits on the shoulders of giants. On the Internet many different technologies have attempted to get messages out. One of these was RSS feeds. This technology was based on the idea we would all have a client (like our email program) and draw feeds in from around the web into one ‘list’ of content we were interested. Anyway, it turns out that we are too lazy for that when there are other more ‘fun’ or particle ways to achieve the same thing.

Probably one of the most interesting part of modern communication is that message sizes have decreased significantly. In days gone by adding volume to an advert gave it substance and made it stand out in the newspaper. Now we have 140 character limits on some message providers so we have to abbreviate and get to the point.

What does this mean for Recruiters & HR personnel?

You have to come to terms with the technology involved and how to use it. For example, in Twitter you use ‘#something’ to create a link from the text ‘something’ to other posts containing the word ‘something’. You might use it like this:

• #job #Perth Perm role for #Accountant finance industry ….

If you don’t bother to read the abundance of literature and training sessions on using social media then you will miss the point and it could have implications that range from just being ineffective to corporate embarrassment. For Twitter, read this: http://business.twitter.com/

There are probably hundreds of courses and seminars our there on this topic. One example is: “The Essential Social Media for Recruitment program developed by www.insidejob.com.au ” which kicks off in March.

And beyond…

Another point worth considering is that the online world won’t ever go back to the ideas of yesteryear. It is fashioned and refashioned by the young and will always move on beyond how we currently communicate. No one has the luxury of sitting back and defining that language or dictating to every community on the Internet what is the “right and proper” way to draft a message.

Perhaps in a few years time, the job ad above will be Tweeted out as “#j-WAP.AC$” and that will make perfect sense to everyone!

Promotion below…..

How does Recruit Online use social media on behalf of its’ clients?

Recruit Online is a Recruitment, CRM, ATS and DMS system. It is a large suite of online applications that work well with multi branch companies but also automates a number of tasks which mean that sole practitioner’s and small businesses can utilize the latest technologies to promote their brand and their jobs.

The the most obvious way that we encourage social media integration is by providing candidates with the opportunity to link and share every advert on our clients’ web sites to all the leading social media platforms. This is the first step in putting the jobs on the social media map.

Also, we have had good success with using Twitter to slice open channels in the online community and deliver the specific messages of our clients. Typically we open an account for them and configure their Recruit Online system to regularly go through their jobs and tag them up (with #tags) and send them out. This is a fully automated service but still allows them to hop online and add their own conversations to the information flow.

Another part of the service is that we re-post our clients’ jobs to our own jobs board and it too has its’ own Twitter account. Over time all the jobs are sent out from more than one source. This means that the content aggregating sites out there are more likely to pick up on the trail and repost their jobs.

You can find out more about Recruit Online here: http://www.recruitonline.com.au/

Piers Rowan – Director @ Recruit Online

[1] – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free

[2] – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregator

[3] – There are technologies which allow you to manage your social media site from another (perhaps smaller) site. For example you can send your LinkedIn updates out via Twitter from the LinkedIn site. There are many sites that allow you to connect back to a social media platform, including Recruit Online, using features labeled: “Log in with Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn”.

In this environment there is a requirement to have all Recruiters motivated to sell their services on an ongoing basis. One of the tools in the management mix is that of commission payments. Financial incentives fall into a few broad categories:

• % of Gross Profit when budget is achieved
• Fixed $ per period when budget is achieved
• Fixed $ per milestone (for example a new client bonus)

One of the biggest questions in commission schemes is should you pay individual or team based commissions? The answer is (as always) it depends. Some points to consider are:

• Is “the team” a branch or business unit within a branch or a state or a nation?
• Does “the team” have the ability to be rewarded for their efforts or are they “carrying” other members of the team (who are out of their control)?
• If you have a high volume temporary business and your staff are on individual commissions, will you foster an environment of teamwork or will it lead to factions and candidate hoarding?
• If you have one team going great and others failing, will you end up paying out $1,000′s in commission but be loosing money on a national scale?

This list goes on and on and the reality is that it depends on what sort of culture your business is, what size it is and what you want to achieve with it (grow, consolidate, sell, etc).

Debunking the 3 x Salary myth:

There is a common idea that is bantered about that as a rule of thumb, Recruiters should bill 3 x their salary. This rule is reflective; meaning that if you create a notion that “3 x salary” holds water then your Recruiters should expect to be paid $100,000 when they bill $300,000 in a year. Therefore in some circles this theory is a loaded gun that Managers should be careful of.

For example if you have a Sydney office and decide to open a Melbourne branch, it is going to mean that your Sydney office is going to fund the Melbourne office for 3 – 24 months. This means that the amount of surplus in the business available to channel back into commissions is reduced. By not planning effectively you may find that you have a two sided cost battle on your hands; on one side you have a successful business that needs to be fed, and on the other you have a start up that you need to pour cash into to get going.

We have put together a calculator to help you get the idea of a few different scenarios on your business. The ’3 x Salary’ rule does work to some degree however there are some cases where it does not. As with all rules of thumb it is designed to give a good guess which works in many cases and to that end it is OK, however if you have a multi-branch and growing organisation – particularly if it is in different markets, locations and sectors – then I would suggest that you consider the effects of head office costs to a greater degree than the ’3 x Salary’ model allows.

What does this calculator do?

You enter some information about your business make up (or desired business make up) such as:

Branch Information:

• Consultant salary
• Administrative salary
• On costs of employment
• Branch rent
• # of consultants / administrators
• # of branches
• Other branch costs

Head Office Information:

• Accountant / Management salary
• Payroll salary
• Insurances & Legal costs
• Other costs
• On costs of employment (Super. WC, PRT, etc).

Sales Information:

• Ave Gross Profit per hour
• Ave Permanent placement fee
• Ave # of temporary staff / clients
• Target gross margin or budget
• Ave # of permanent placements / Client:

The calculator will give you a break down of the costs and the considerations of the 3 x Salary model, ROI model and budget target model. It will also give you some examples of results depending on Recruiter performance. In the real world you cannot expect to have every Recruiter hit target every time so it is prudent to consider the effects of different levels of performance on your business. The following scenarios are presented:

• If 100% of recruiters hit target
• If 80% of recruiters hit target & 20% hit 2/3 of target
• If 50% of recruiters hit target & 50% hit 2/3 of target
• If 20% of recruiters hit target & 80% hit 2/3 of target
• If 50% of recruiters hit target & 50% hit 1/2 of target
• If 50% of recruiters hit 2/3 target & 50% hit 1/2 of target

Please take a look at our commission calculator tool.

I can look up doctor, secretary, toolmaker, lawyer, baker, logistics manager but I can’t look up resourcer – it’s a made up / pretend word.

What is a resourcer [2]? As far as I understand (and it varies from place to place) it means: “…a recruitment consultant who doesn’t do sales…” These are typically people either entering or reentering the industry who get to go home on time and don’t get paid as much as their colleagues with sales responsibility.

I think the role of “resourcer” is a key one but really what does it say about our own self importance when we think that making up or using fake words is appropriate (and then criticising resume grammar ?  What does it say to the consumer of our services when they are most likely ignorant of the meaning implied by this word?

Sometimes we need new words for new things like Internet, aspirin and biodiesel; but seriously, does this job warrant such attention? Other new jobs like “Help Desk” seem to have gotten by without a fancy new word entering our diction haven’t they? “Help Desk” could have easily been “Turnitoffandonagainer” but the IT industry seemed to avoid that little gem.

Perhaps there are alternatives:

• Resource Consultant
• Assistant Consultant
• Consultant Assistant
• Recruitment Consultant
• Recruitment Coordinator
• Junior Recruitment Consultant

My point, whilst unavoidably flippant, is simple:

As the professionals in the HR/Recruitment industry, is it not a key requirement that we communicate effectively? If so, when introducing new terms to an industry, don’t we encourage an arms race of made up job titles that ultimately confuse candidates and employers in equal measure and make our jobs even more difficult as we wade through misleading job titles on resumes and in job descriptions?

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[1] – There are a number of dictionaries that give very “colloquial” definitions that may offend some. But the mainstream ones we checked included:

• http://oxforddictionaries.com/
• http://www.google.com/dictionary
• http://dictionary.reference.com/
• http://www.thefreedictionary.com/
• http://dictionary.cambridge.org/
• http://www.yourdictionary.com/
• http://www.onlinedictionary.com.au/
• http://www.webster-dictionary.org/

[2] – One Resourcer I know describes herself as a “Junior” consultant who will be promoted to “Recruitment Consultant” when she has enough experience. Another is doing all a Recruitment Consultant’s tasks without doing the sales. A business owner I spoke to said he wanted a Recruitment Consultant but didn’t want to pay for one.