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Straight Talk for the Recruiting Profession


Interviews

Interviews, Technology

Your Clients Are Video Interviewing and So Should You

by on Mar. 28, 2013


Video interviewing

Video interviewingWith the popularity of video interviewing soaring on the corporate side, now is the time for agency and independent recruiters to give it a try.

The advantages of using video to meet and vet your top candidates are obvious: convenience, no travel required, and speed. Less obvious is the opportunity to see how well your candidate performs in front of a webcam, something that will never show up in phone screen. That’s no small detail considering fully 80% of the largest employers in the U.S. — those with 10,000 workers — use live video interviews at least sometimes.

Why? Cost is the number one reason companies use video interviews, according to a GreenJobInterview survey. Of the corporate leaders surveyed, most of them in HR, cost was cited by 88% of them. Second, cited by 56%, was improved time to hire.

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Interviews

How To Understand and Interview Military Veterans

by on Mar. 15, 2013


Army guy - freedigital

Army guy - freedigitalEditor’s note: Veterans can make excellent employees. Their military experience gives them an appreciation for discipline, provides leadership experience, and teaches them skills that may not be readily apparent to civilians. In this article,August Nielsen offers guidance on understanding veterans and how their military experience translates to civilian work.

When the same peer group surrounds an individual for an extended period, movements, actions and language of that group become second nature. Often times, this is seen in members of the United States Armed Forces.

With this in mind, Human Resources professionals should understand that it is common to witness specific lingo or actions that have become second nature during their tenure in the military. And, as many members of the Armed Forces return home to a progressively competitive civilian job market, you will see more terms, MOS numbers (Military Occupational Specialty codes), and job descriptions that may catch you by surprise.

To ready yourself, read further and learn how to prepare a superior interview experience for both the veteran and yourself.

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Closing, Interviews

The Parable of the Two Principals: A Tale to Share With Clients

by on Feb. 14, 2013


Lone woman at conf table - freedigital

Lone woman at conf table - freedigitalShe’d found her calling as a teacher of kids with special needs. She loved her job, and enjoyed working for the person who’d graciously given her a start. She was constantly engaged, challenged, and acclaimed in this role.

Her commute to work, however, was two hours roundtrip; 10 hours a week, 40 hours a month in freeway traffic. For personal, economic and safety reasons, working closer to home made sense if she could find an equally rewarding position, and boss. After much encouragement from friends and family, my daughter Ryan reluctantly decided to explore alternative job options.

Ryan attended a district?wide job fair for the school system within her home community. She quickly went through second and third interviews, and was invited for final interviews for open positions at two nearby, high?quality schools.

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Interviews

6 Interview Tips To Help Your Candidate’s Star Shine

by on Sep. 25, 2012


fordyce-default

Candidates must be well prepared for their interviews in today’s competitive job market. Recruiters who go through the effort to source, screen, and submit the résumé of a qualified applicant must also take time to prepare him or her for upcoming interviews. Leaving this part of the recruiting process to chance could result in the loss of a placement; and possibly even a client or two.

When I was in HR, I once had a recruiter send me a candidate who didn’t even know the title of the position she was being interviewed for. She was completely unfamiliar with the company and had no clue what the role entailed. Needless to say, she didn’t get the job and I never used that recruiter again.

Here are a few quick and simple tips for you to help your candidates with interview preparation:

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Interviews

When Looking At Fit, Even CFOs Want A Sense of Humor

by on Aug. 7, 2012


CFO Sense of jumor survey

Candidates and hiring companies have at least one thing in common: Both are looking for the perfect match.

Skills, knowledge, and experience are the tangibles to determine a functional fit within an organization. Aspects of values and personality may determine one’s ability to adapt to an organization’s culture. Recruiters, human resources professionals, and hiring managers understand the value of assessing a candidate’s potential cultural fit. Poor cultural fit is something that cannot be resolved with training.

Cultural fit goes beyond simply getting along with fellow workers. For example, according to an Accountempts survey, “Nearly eight in 10 (79%) chief financial officers (CFOs) interviewed said an employee’s sense of humor is important for fitting into the company’s corporate culture.” That is important to the employer and the employee. If you are going to spend more than 40 hours per week working, you want to be with people with whom you can relate.

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Interviews

Vetting Your Prospect Using Behavioral Interview Techniques

by on Jul. 29, 2012


Chart- behavioral characteristics

The work we do with our clients begins with a focus on defining, in quantitative and qualitative terms, what constitutes success in the position. The result is the finalization of the position’s critical performance outcomes (usually somewhere between four and ten). This step must be properly accomplished before you can establish job-related, performance-based selection criteria. Once these have been established, you can move forward with the candidate assessment process.

For accurate assessment, properly constructed, behaviorally-based selection techniques may require you to use a combination of various interviewing approaches and questioning styles that will allow you and your client to evaluate not only the candidate’s skills and abilities but also the characteristics listed in the chart, and most importantly, Motivations.

Properly developed and utilized, behaviorally-based selection techniques will provide you with honest, accurate, and timely information on which to predict behavior and assess the candidate’s “can do,” “will do,” and “fit” for the position and for the organization.

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How-To, Interviews

Dazzled By the Interview, You Might Lose That Fee If the Star Is A Narcissist

by on Apr. 26, 2012


Interview pic

Narcissists do better in job interviews than the rest of us. And, if a recent study is any indication, they’re getting hired more often than the more modest of us.

How can it be that a trait most of us consider obnoxious can actually improve the chances of someone acing an interview?

Simple, says Peter Harms, assistant professor of management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a co-author of a study to be published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. Most of us are entirely too modest about our accomplishments. While we might start off promoting ourselves and talking about our accomplishments, as interviewers press us, we tend to ease off on our self-promotion.

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Fees, Interviews

The Best of The Fordyce Letter 2011, #1 — I “FIRED” My Candidate…and Still Closed $27k

by on Dec. 30, 2011


yourefired

Editor’s note: Brian Kevin Johnston’s article was the most popular article on The Fordyce Letter in 2011. It originally ran in March.

I “fired” a candidate during the interview/offer process, and I am 100% convinced the only reason I still earned the fee was because… (are you listening?) I emotionally “checked out” of the torment and refocused my efforts on the things in my business I could control, which were sourcing and recruiting candidates for other searches on which my firm was engaged. After nearly fourteen years as a third-party recruiter, I have learned a thing or two about candidate or client control… IT DOES NOT EXIST!

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Interviews

5 Candidate Cover Letter Strategies That Rock

by on Dec. 16, 2011


image source: Bruno Covas

Creating a compelling cover letter that will highlight your candidate’s expertise and entice hiring managers to make contact for an interview is a skill that every good recruiter must have. I have several close colleagues who are recruiters; they continuously ask me for advice on how to create really compelling cover letters. I thought I would share some of the strategies that have proven most effective when crafting a compelling cover for candidate submittals.

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Interviews, Relationships

The Art of Negotiation – Prepare for Battle

by on Nov. 7, 2011


salary-negotiation

Since 2008 we have seen businesses fail, jobs lost, inventories cut, marketing budgets slashed, and lots of markdowns. Over the past year however, life has seemingly resumed again. People are starting to buy extravagant items, businesses are getting back on track, and, if you don’t read the news on a daily basis, you’re feeling pretty good about life.

However, a new trend has recently popped up and it’s not a simple matter. Perhaps being in the executive search universe, we are more focused on it, but it cuts across all sectors, functions, and companies. I call it the “Art of the Negotiation.” And it’s not just playing out in the courtroom anymore.

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