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Friday, January 29, 2010

The Gatekeeper & 3 other Roles that Recruiters Play

Some job seekers don't fully understand a recruiter's role. They view recruiters as getting in the middle of their job search, preventing direct contact with the hiring manage(s) for available positions. Well this is actually true and these job seekers are going to have a long and frustrating search for their next job, because the vast majority of companies now use recruiters almost exclusively to facilitate the hiring process. These are 4 roles that recruiters play:

·         Corporate Representative

·         Gatekeeper

·         Educator

·         Negotiator

Corporate Representative

Whether you like it or not, the recruiter is the company's representative to the talents available. We are the "faces" of the company at events, job fairs, social networking, etc. The title “Recruiter” has changed and been given multi-layers in order to promote the benefits and advantages of working for company they represent. This evolution of change is an effort to attract the best and brightest job candidates. Recruiters' responsibilities have grown tremendously role as the job market has become more and more competitive. Some industries, where diverse talented candidates are difficult to find, the recruiter's job has taken on many characteristics of a marketing professional, trying to "sell" the talent on the company and get them excited about working there, regardless the reputation of the company.

Gatekeeper - Recruiter

The Gatekeeper source screens and submits you—the talent. This is particularly important to remember when you receive a phone call as the recruiter usually has the opportunity to speak with talent and learn a bit more about you and your interest. One of the biggest mistakes the talent can make is to be dismissive or impatient when speaking with recruiters. This is a very poor choice, as the recruiter will consider personal interactions with candidates as one factor in whether or not to grant an interview.

Educator - Recruiter

The Educator holds important information and knowledge of job opportunities. They can provide important details and insights about specific jobs and responsibilities, as well as provide a good overview of the company culture and what to expect when employed. The recruiter is also a source of information about salary, benefits and other aspects of overall compensation, which can be very important indeed when considering more than one job offer.

Negotiator - Recruiter

The Negotiator often is in the position to negotiate the specifics of job offers. They partner with hiring managers to ensure salary ranges are appropriate based on internal and external facts, and may also act as the primary negotiating contact for salary issues. Many companies, the hiring manager has to gain the approval of the recruiter in order to extend an offer or alter the terms of the offer extended. Bet you didn’t know that one!

Common Thread

The recruiter who plays each of these roles will vary from company to company. They may divide some of these responsibilities with fellow colleagues or HR partners. Either way, no candidate can afford to dismiss or ignore the role of the Gatekeeper. So if you hope to have a successful job search you may want to think twice about how you interact with a corporate recruiter.

Posted via email from Kay Kelison's Digital-Log

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Why Do We Blog?

Are you curious about blogging? Have a concept or idea? Do you have an opinion and you want to express or share knowledge that can be helpful? Here are a few things to know about blogging.

How many bloggers are there?

The thing to remember is that a blog is just a tool or to some a portal. There's really nothing special about it, no requirements for any particular capabilities for one to start a blog. Common usage is feel of a diary-like and allow comments from readers to be included, but its not required. Unlike social networks there are no groups or fan pages that need to be see how many members/followers. So, this means in reality it's basically impossible to estimate how many blogs or bloggers are out there and maybe that is a good thing since to some it might be to scary to jump in and create a blog of their own.

"However, if we hold ourselves to sites that have comments section and do allow user to add their feedback, we're still in the millions of blogs, people ranging from pre-teens to senior citizens, with the bulk of bloggers in their late teens to 50 or thereabouts."

Why do people blog?

"Why people blog, well, in my opinion is to have a voice, however small. Think about just like those who write fancy opinion columns for newspapers or journals, you too can share your knowledge, vent, etc. to the public. Still, there are many really smart bloggers who have interesting perspectives on the news, politics, sports, business, etc., people who wouldn't otherwise be heard in the typical media. "That's why I read blogs daily, in hopes that I can share my perspective on things.

How about you? dear blog reader (and, probably, blogger in your own right). How would you answer these three key questions?

How many bloggers are there?

Why do people blog?

Posted via email from Kay Kelison's Digital-Log

Monday, January 11, 2010

"UnFriend" - Makes You Think....

The word of the 2009 was announced as “unfriend” in the Oxford American Dictionary http://tinyurl.com/yzy6dw5

I start to think about how many of us like to think that we’re highly organized and efficient when it comes to our social network, there is in fact a lot we can do to make our lives easier and faster.

I’ve adopted some radical measures to streamline and improve my use of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and even my several Blogs.

1 – Cut the Number of People You Follow/Friend

The temptation when you first start using social networking’s its to embark on a ‘following rampage’. You add the sites you read, the bloggers you respect, friends, family, business colleagues and in return many of the people that follow wants you to follow them. This of course seems like a great idea at first, but you’ll find a tipping point – in my own case, by following close to 2000 people in Twitter alone, Social Networking has become nothing more than a never-ending deluge of noise, with useful and informative updates getting lost amongst the funny stuff. Even by setting up a aggregator on my desktop I am finding it ever harder to keep up and yet… addicting too.

I made the decision to cut back on who I accept, follow, friend. And It was time to ‘purge’.

Before hitting the unfollow or unfriend option in earnest, I realized it would be a wise idea to set myself some criteria for who I should keep in my network:

- Is this person I’m following/friending  bringing any real value to me?

- Is this person I’m following/friending  tweeting unique information and links?

- Does this person I’m following/friending me and if they do, do they ever communicate with me or re-tweet what I put out there? (GREAT DECISION MAKER FOR ME)

There is plenty of reasons of your own that you could add, but this is what suited me at the moment.

Next, I realized it takes me many hours to go through everyone using Twitter on its own. Thankfully there’s some great tools available to help you. I used Digsby (www.digsby.com)  this is what you get using this tool specifically.

When you log in to Digsby you automatically get logged into your numerous social networks (twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc) including your IM’s and emails. At this point… the plurge, start unfollowing or unfriending those in these locations.

2 – Effectively Manage the Remaining People You Follow/Friended

Once I’d got over what I’d done, it was time to effectively manage who I was left with.

This next step is very easy to undertake. Each application allows you to set up groups, whereby you can classify the people you follow/friended into distinct groups, such as ‘friends’, ‘colleagues’, ‘business’,  etc. In future when you get a new tweet/status update for someone you have allocated to a group it will appear in the appropriate group column. This way you can find and read it with less difficulty.

****Twitter now also allows you to set up lists as well, so you can group together people in a similar way.

3 – Be Prepared to Fall in Love with Social Media All over Again (don’t tell your significant other)

What I’ve described sound quite drastic, but trust me, if your social networks has become an out of control stream of status with mafia war that you can’t keep up with, it really is your only option… UNFRIEND/UNFOLLOW.

Since I made this choice to cut the number of people I follow/friended down to my comfort level of engagement, I’ve rediscovered my love for social medial.

Posted via email from Kay Kelison's Digital-Log