Since December 2007 when the recession began, 7.2 million jobs have been lost, the Labor Department said. About 5.9 million Americans had been out of work for more than 27 weeks last month, representing 38.3 percent of the total unemployed. According to the government’s broadest measure of unemployment, the ‘Real’ Jobless Rate: 17.5% Of Workers are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The number dwarfs the statistic most people pay attention to—the U-3 rate—which most recently showed unemployment at 10 percent. In addition, the average duration of unemployment touched a record 28.5 weeks.

On a personal note, 2 of my neighbors just received notice of a pending layoff at their jobs. A few days ago I visited one of them and reverse engineered a few methods I use to find passive candidate contact information in favor of identifying recruiters and corporate staffing executives to suit my friend’s job search needs. We initiated the effort with the development of a competitor listing as compared to his present employer. Once we identifying companies with local offices within the Denver Metro area, we then searched various social networks, and recruiting tools; specifically for recruiters and staffing managers, etc. Next we identified the primary office number of each contact and then reviewed common email constructs. Essentially, we consolidated what would have been week’s worth of unorganized, random employer information into less than an hour of work. I can sincerely state, my friend’s face was visibly relieved and he transformed into a far more positive and motivated job seeker. One the principal tools we used was my trusted Zoominfo account. Whereas other sites and tools have components of each of the steps I mentioned available to use, Zoominfo was capable of aggregating the data, provide web reference data and was even able to export selected contacts relevant to my friend’s job search.

It seems Santa was observing the process and spreading cheer and goodwill to humankind, because what I just described is now being made available to the masses thanks to the paying-it-forward efforts of Zoominfo’s corporate team and Dave Perry, the pied piper of Guerrilla Job Search Boot Camp. It is the one two punch, one-stop collaboration between one of the leading authorities and evangelists of effective job seeking and one of the largest lead generation tools in the industry.

ABOUT DAVE PERRY

David Perry, author of Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0, discusses the latest tool available for job hunters – ZoomInfo’s FreshContacts.

David Perry is renown as a respected thought leader, published author, and recruitment blogger. He speaks with the credibility of being a Big Biller, and as an evangelist for the methods and technologies we foresee as encompassing Recruitment 2.0 I have blog linked, emailed, and had the pleasure of meeting with Dave and breaking bread at industry events. Within each venue, he has made a lasting impression as a formidable industry leader. I am now glad to call him my friend. Dave has been a passionate advocate for job seekers, writing and speaking at countless venues to educate the unemployed and seeking career transition. Dave shares my belief, that what makes our industry noble is that we literally help put food on the table of those we serve. He has brought his savvy branding skill sets to this endeavor, recently asking Starbucks to get involved with job hunters by giving away a copy of his “Put America Back To Work: Guerrilla Job Search Secrets Revealed” 2 hour DVD to every unemployed person in America.

Dave was kind enough to share the scoop on his innovative collaboration with Zoominfo’s FreshContacts product, telling me “this is a tremendous Game Changer.” He elaborates:

“For most people the hardest part of finding a job is figuring out who to talk to. FreshContacts puts ZoomInfo’s database of 5 million companies and 45 million people at their disposal. In Detroit we took several job seekers in to new opportunities in 7 weeks – well ahead of the national average of 28.7 weeks. Part or our success was teaching them how to identify the right hiring manager. With FreshContacts in their hands we believe we can knock another week off the time it takes to find and close a deal. The game changer for job hunters is combining guerrilla job search tactics with access to information so they can hunt effectively in the “hidden job market.”

How it Works

Expanding the world’s most comprehensive source of intelligence on people and companies, ZoomInfo is broadening the way it collects data by offering business professionals an opportunity to contribute contacts in exchange for free access to the company’s growing database of 45M people and 5.5M companies. Using a free downloadable plug-in, job seekers can quickly and safely trade their contacts for two months of unlimited free ZoomInfo access. The FreshContacts Microsoft Outlook plug-in automatically uploads the user’s business contacts in a matter of minutes.

FreshContacts empowers job seekers to:

• Find and Research Potential Employers: Search for companies by geography, industry, size and up to 20 other criteria.
• Prepare for interviews: Access in-depth profiles on hiring managers to learn rapport-building details about their job history, professional affiliations, academic background and interests
• Expand their network: find former colleagues, classmates, and others who are in new and interesting jobs and careers.
• Get in touch: Access fresh contact details — phones, phone, email and mailing address — to make a connection and promote themselves.
• Get Creative: Identify top executives who work for their previous employer’s competition or colleagues who are now gainfully employed.

FreshContacts observes the following practices to ensure the integrity of its data and the anonymity of its users:

• Business contacts only — FreshContacts disregards any contacts that have a consumer email address such as gmail, hotmail, and Yahoo!
• Contributions are anonymous — the source of contact information that is used to add or improve information in Zoominfo’s database is kept anonymous.
• Opt-Out — All contributed contacts are scrubbed for CAN-Spam compliance. As always, everyone added to Zoominfo’s database is offered the opportunity to opt-out via email, web or toll-free number.

From a recruiting perspective the story gets more interesting. Fresh Contacts will enable ZoomInfo to evolve its data collection model to improve data quality and add contacts by enables business professionals to swap their business contacts in exchange for two full months of unlimited free access to all 45 Million of ZoomInfo’s contacts.

You may be wondering why ZoomInfo has agreed to give away a 2 month subscription for FREE. Well, it’s a simple win-win situation: you get the value of the ZoomInfo database of 45 million professionals at 5 million companies, and in exchange, you allow your contact records to improve the size and quality of the database, which in turn helps everyone else who is using it! This combined with a contributing community of over 900,000 people updating their own profiles daily will greatly expand the reach and accuracy of ZoomInfo’s intelligence on businesses and people, in short, adding a secret weapon to your passive candidate pipeline development. This Christmas season, however, they have opened up a comprehensive tool motivated by compassion for those who have been effected throughout this severe recession.

Yes my friends, the staffing industry and its patrons are indeed, still a noble profession.

About ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is the most comprehensive source of business information on people and companies in the world. ZoomInfo is used by sales and marketing professionals to find leads, recruiters to uncover talent and by business professionals to find detailed information on people and companies. ZoomInfo’s semantic search engine gathers publicly available information from the Business Web — millions of company websites, news feeds and other online sources — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, then automatically compiles it into easy-to-search and easy-to-read profiles. ZoomInfo currently has profiles on more than 45 million people and 5.5 million companies, and its search engine adds over 20,000 new profiles monthly.

More than 6 million people search www.zoominfo.com every month. And over 3,000 customers, including Yahoo!, Microsoft, Oracle, PepsiCo, and 20 percent of the Fortune 500, subscribe to ZoomInfo’s premium service products. ZoomInfo is privately held and based in Waltham, Mass.

ZoomInfo also hosts Follow The Lead, a B2B sales and marketing blog that delivers the latest insights on prospecting, sales intelligence, closing, recruitment, CRM and database management.

Please enter your email address so that we can send you your PowerSell account information. Email:   Please provide me with a free 2 month subscription to ZoomInfo PowerSell. In return, I allow my contacts to be included in the ZoomInfo database via the FreshContacts Swapper.

Six Degrees from Dave reminds you to register for Broadlook’s “Sphere of Influence” – FREE Webinar series. I receive no financial compensation for my support, – I am a proud user of their tools and I attend their webinars regularly for the latest sourcing, candidate development, and client building tips. The presenter is Broadlook’s CEO Donato Diorio — a practitioner as well as a cutting-edge, recruitment technology subject matter expert.

If you haven’t made it to an SOI webinar before, now is your chance! Today – Learn to dial for candidates like the top billers!

Click here to register for the Sphere of Influence Webinar (TODAY) Tuesday, December 8th at 3PM CST (or)
* 1PM PST
* 2PM MST
* 3PM CST
* 4 EST

In this webinar, you will learn the prerequisites to applying influence to further your sales efforts as well as:
* What is Sphere of Influence, it’s origin and history?
* How to get 3x or even 9x the results from your phone calls.
* What constitutes influence and what are influence points?
* What are the new venues of contact information that will get you to yes faster?
* How to send impactful emails that get read
* How to get return calls from your voicemails really!
* Here is what one of the past participants said about the Sphere of Influence webinar:

“I have been looking for a way to work smarter and avoid the cold calling and add more quality and value to my recruitment research. Your * SOI approach is the tool I need. Thank you!”

AGAIN, CLICK HERE TO REGISTER while seats last!

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

As owner of a top billing placement firm, and founder of Broadlook, Donato Diorio brings a unique perspective. Along with Dan Hughes, Broadlook CoˆFounder, they bring insight into the how to grow your business through Sphere of Influence communications as a recruiter.

Best Wishes,

Dave Mendoza
Six Degrees from Dave

Reaching SMBs Via Increased Insights & Contacts The Target Of ZoomInfo Data Upgrade
As powerhouse brands from financial services to manufacturing look to pare their operations, small to midsized firms are emerging as a big opportunity during the economic downturn. According to industry data, small businesses have created 60% to 80% of the net new jobs added since the mid-1990s. To address this sector, ZoomInfo recently unveiled enhancements to the SMB and midmarket company portion of the Waltham, MA-based company’s database of more than 45 million people and 5 million companies.

ItExaminer.com
March 10, 2009
Microsoft and Zoominfo ink CRM integration deal
Microsoft has agreed to integrate Zoominfo’s business information search engine into its Dynamics CRM. The new feature is expected to help businesses identify fresh leads, expand intelligence on existing customers and create targeted sales campaigns. According to CSO Insights, the sale average rep spends 2 hours preparing, researching, servicing for every hour spent selling,’ Zoominfo president Sam Zales told IT Examiner. ‘Zoominfo’s strategic partnership with Microsoft Dynamics CRM as well as Sugar CRM and Salesforce makes sales teams more efficient by equipping them with information on 5 million companies and 45 million people right within their CRM system.

TechCrunch
March 7, 2009
ZoomInfo Scores Deal With Microsoft To Integrate Search Into CRM
Leena Rao of TechCrunch provides an overview of ZoomInfo’s integration plans with Microsoft Dynamics. ZoomInfo’s search engine has proven to be a useful tool to incorporate into CRMs because its research capabilities help identify new sales leads, expand data on existing customers, create more qualified leads and provide a single data source to integrate sales and marketing teams. Sugar CRM and SalesForce.com are also using ZoomInfo’s comprehensive search capabilities within their platforms.

TopNews
March 3, 2009
ZoomInfo, Microsoft collaborate for integrating search into CRM
In collaboration with Microsoft, the business information search engine ZoomInfo will be amalgamating its wide-ranging search technology with Microsoft’s Dynamic CRM platform. The broad spectrum of the ZoomInfo search engine, which helps locating industries, companies and people, has already worked its way into a couple of other CRMs – Sugar CRM and SalesForce. com – and has proved its potential as a noteworthy source for a good business model.

BtoB Magazine
March 3, 2009
Zoominfo enhances SMB, midmarket b-to-b data
Business information provider Zoominfo has announced enhancements to its small-and-midsize company and midmarket data, with such additional details as company descriptions, revenue, number of employees, locations and other information on public, private and noncommercial organizations.

eweek.com
March 3, 2009
ZoomInfo Offers SMB Marketing, Sales Data
Nathan Eddy of eWeek discusses the news from ZoomInfo surrounding the enhanced company data. The new features gives SMB and midmarket company data that provides additional breadth of coverage and depth of insight — including descriptions, revenues, number of employees, locations and other information on public, private and non-commercial entities. Chip Terry of ZoomInfo and Tim Clark, a sales representative with the Tom James Company are quoted in the story.

SemanticWeb.com
March 3, 2009
Zoom Broadens Semantic Indexing Capacity
Zoom Information is finding more business potential in the semantic indexing capabilities behind its ZoomInfo business information search engine making its data broader, fresher and deeper. The company this week unveils a new service that helps sales representatives mine small and mid-sized business prospects — an increasingly coveted audience given the downturns in the fortunes of many bigger companies. Chip and William are quoted throughout the article.

MassHighTech.com
January 23, 2009
Zales builds ZoomInfo by building customer service
Mass High Tech features an interview with Sam Zales in The Mover section of the publication. MHT reporter, Amber Gay provides detail on Sam’s background, experience and discuses his priorities for making ZoomInfo successful in a tough economic climate. “I want to help make sure the company remains customer focused and that we continue to listen to our customers,” said Sam Zales. “I also want to make this a great company for the employees.”

Selling Power
January 12, 2009
How Sales 2.0 Helps Sales Professionals Qualify Leads
Selling Power features ZoomInfo in an article that highlights the importance of using Sales 2.0 tools to make sales professionals productive. Chip Terry is quoted saying “Targeting qualified prospects (and avoiding those who aren’t likely to become customers) is particularly important during difficult economic times because there’s less room for error, according to Terry. “The more you know about a prospect, the more likely it is that you’ll sell to that prospect,” he points out.”

CIO.com
January 9, 2009
The Two Websites Every Job Seeker Needs to Join
Personal Management columnist, Meredith Levinson discusses the advantages to using ZoomInfo and Linked-in for finding a job and recommends claiming your profile. Author of Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunters and the blog Guerilla Job Hunting, David Perry highlights how important ZoomInfo is for the recruiting industry to find candidates. “The reason ZoomInfo is important is because every recruiter in America looks to ZoomInfo first if they’re looking for any information on an individual contributor.”

About ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is the most comprehensive source of business information on people and companies in the world. ZoomInfo is used by sales and marketing professionals to find leads, recruiters to uncover talent and by business professionals to find detailed information on people and companies. ZoomInfo’s semantic search engine gathers publicly-available information from the Business Web – millions of company websites, news feeds and other online sources – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, then automatically compiles it into easy-to-search and easy-to-read profiles. ZoomInfo currently has profiles on more than 45 million people and 5 million companies, and its search engine adds over 20,000 new profiles monthly.
More than 6 million people search www.zoominfo.com every month. And over 3,000 customers, including Yahoo!, Microsoft, Oracle, PepsiCo, and 20% of the Fortune 500, subscribe to ZoomInfo’s premium service products. ZoomInfo is privately held and based in Waltham, Mass.

Claudia Faust, Founding Partner, Improved Experience LLC
RecruitingBlogs.com Profile
Company Website: www.improvedexperience.com
Company Blog: www.improvedexperience.typepad.com
Linkedin Profile
Facebook Profile
Email: claudia@improvedexperience.com
Phone: 954-692-3553 OR 877-344-4300

Meet my friend Claudia Faust, Independent provider of recruiting services including executive search, professional staffing and passive candidate sourcing. As a recruiter and leader of corporate recruiting organizations for 14 years, Claudia Faust brings her passion for people and analytics to hiring and retention. Over the years she has recruited and managed staffing organizations for globally recognized brands such as T-Mobile USA, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Sprint PCS, and Burger King Corporation; her expertise includes executive search, staffing, recruiter development and training, metrics development and implementation, workforce planning, recruiting technology and vendor selection.

Claudia took this opportunity as a featured member in our interview series to do something those who know her are quite accustomed to: she shared of herself for others, and in the most personal, poignant way. When you venture forward, her responses regarding home and history, – be it children, marriage, and career, – she shares the type of deeply personal and introspective flashbacks that good friends do on a warm summer night sharing a few spirits under a full moon. When all is said and done, you leave refreshed and empowered someone cared enough about you to entrust a part of themselves. For anyone who knows Claudia, it is a familiar take away in what it is to befriend her. She is entirely authentic and even more formidable if you recognize her wisdom is not solely pertaining to a certain day in a week.

Truth be told, I look forward to conference season each Fall and Spring, it gives me an opportunity to see friends new and old, and in each venture I get a hug from my friend Claudia and that endearing smile that is so sincerely welcoming. Claudia is many things, not least among them a class act and someone who so consistently provides value to her industry. More importantly, Claudia is a friend to something far bigger than you or I – she is a confidante and mentor to the daily visitors of RecruitingBlogs.com, not to mention the spotlight featured guest sharing “Wednesday Wisdom”

Improved Experience builds feedback portals to help companies measure and improve the engagement and retention of their best talent. From earliest contact and throughout the employment life cycle, the Better HiresTM suite of products measures and benchmarks critical indicators of workforce engagement, employer brand, and recruiting effectiveness. Improved Experience products are real-time and subscription-based, utilizing patent-pending survey technology. Sales, operations and customer support are provided from Dallas, Miami and Copenhagen

Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world, Claudia.

CLAUDIA: I currently live in Plantation, Florida, about 10 miles inland from Fort Lauderdale. I say “currently” because my husband and I speak often about other places we’d like to live, and who knows where we’ll be five years from now.

My husband is a brilliant, kind, wonderful engineer, and we’ve been married for three years; it took me forever to find my match (you’d think that as a matchmaker I would have been better at choosing a life partner for myself, but that wasn’t the case for me), so he sits firmly at the top of the list of blessings I count every day. I also happen to think he’s the cutest boy in the world, but that’s another story.

I didn’t know my husband when I moved to Florida six years ago, and the story of how we met is too good not to tell you. At the time I was actually dating someone else: an Italian Count I had met while on a cruise from Venice to Istanbul; I dated the Count for over a year while thinking long and hard about what I wanted next from my life. In the summer of 2003 I decided to leave T-Mobile and step headlong into his world; we traveled frequently between his homes and businesses in Italy and south Florida for many months before I concluded that this nomadic life was not for me; I missed my kids and my friends, and even my work — alas, I was living someone else’s fairy tale; it seemed only fair to acknowledge it and move on.

It was the middle of January by then, and I had a choice: I could return to Seattle, or stay in Florida for a while. I chose the second option (no brainer), and took a condo on the beach for a much-needed sabbatical. It was a life-changing four months: I ate when I was hungry, slept when I was tired, and even recruited a bit here and there to replenish my savings account. But mostly, I walked the beach for hours every day. Family and friends came to visit, and I began to feel like an improved version of my old self once again.

It was at sunset on one of those beach walks that I had a chance meeting with the cousin of one of my neighbors, a dark-eyed Turk with a quiet smile and a European accent wasn’t easy to place (turned out to be Denmark, where he had spent many years on his own journey). We chatted for a moment and then I went for my walk, returning an hour later to discover that he was gone, but a note in a bottle was carefully tucked into my sandals. The rest, as they say, is history; we were married two years later at sunset on that same beach, and my life feels like it has come full circle.

Our blended family is split between two continents: in Denmark it includes a son, two daughters, and four amazing grandchildren, and here in the US, two sons and two more amazing grandchildren. Note the underscore on amazing , and yes I do love being a Grammie.

Last summer our family expanded again with the adoption of three feral kittens that have since domesticated well and taken over both the house and our hearts. Life suits me just fine these days.

SIX DEGREES: Tell us about a day in the life, what is that eclectic past time that makes you tick? Make us believe, Teresa “We Hardly Knew Ye!”

CLAUDIA: Travel is perhaps the most visible pleasure for me – it doesn’t matter where I go or how I get there: I can be packed in a heartbeat, and if I forget something they probably sell it there too. There are so many beautiful places to see in the world, and fascinating people from every culture to meet. How can my feet not itch to start the next great adventure?

I’m not athletic by any stretch of the imagination, but my interests are eclectic; I like to bike, ski (the jet-, water-, and downhill variety), snorkel, sail, and go for road trips in my Z3 (straight six, open road, let the big dog eat…you know what mean). I’ve also started working on a dive certification this year because the Bimini Road is both in my back yard and on my Bucket List. I love baseball (to watch, not to play); hate pub crawls (although hanging out for a while is lots of fun); love dancing (took belly dancing lessons my first year in Florida); and learned to hate golf the minute someone insisted I had to keep score. Pretty much a classic Gemini.

SIX DEGREES: How many years have you been in the staffing industry?

CLAUDIA: It feels like a lifetime, but it’s only been 14 years. Even though I’ve run a software company for several years now I still tend to think of myself as a recruiter first.

SIX DEGREES: How did you get started in recruiting?

CLAUDIA: I took a job at an executive search firm in Seattle back in 1995. The owner wanted to train someone to do candidate development for his clients in the wireless telecom industry; I spent the next two and a half years working beside him on what I like to call my hands-on MBA. I didn’t know much of anything about how big business worked before I met Marc, and I soaked up everything he was willing to teach me. It was an excellent education, and I’m thankful for it to this day.

In 1997 my curiosity about the software industry drew me to a consulting firm that placed contractors at Microsoft; it was my introduction to technical product development and the “back office” side of the Internet, and I grilled the developers and architects I placed there to understand how all the parts fit together. This is where I also accepted what a geek I am at heart: my recruiting library contains books like “C for Dummies,” and “From Cloud to Code” that opened for me the world of a well run software organization.

There was no shortage of recruiting opportunities in the late 90s in Seattle; I was recruited to Amazon.com next (where at one point my work load exceeded 400 requisitions); rather than obsess over the obvious, I mostly focused on sourcing and headhunting executive talent for new lines of business. This part of my job was pretty funny, by the way. Recruiting as a function was new to Amazon at the time and there wasn’t a lot of respect for the role there yet. So I was instructed to “go find candidates for the executive team to talk to” – but new business lines were so top secret before launch that I wasn’t even allowed to know what they were. So calls to prospects were interesting to say the least (“Hello Fortune 500 Executive, we’re looking for exceptional leaders with full P&L experience to lead business lines that I can’t tell you about or I’ll have to kill you. Interested?”). Lucky for me the Amazon.com brand was powerful even then, and the doors that it opened with candidates were truly amazing.

In 1999 I joined yet another great Seattle company, T-Mobile USA, where I had the good fortune of leading Corporate Talent Acquisition for several years. If my time at the executive search firm was an experiential MBA, T-Mobile was my final exam. TMO was in a massive growth mode that year that came to a screeching halt when the Internet bubble burst in the economic recession of early 2000, and then rebuilt with locomotive speed in the years that followed.

TMO gave me hands-on experience as a recruiting leader; I worked with an amazing team of recruiters, and had a front row seat to the effects of both good and bad HR and recruiting practices on every functional area of the business. It was, as Charles Dickens penned, “the best of times and the worst of times” as the company grew from fewer than 10 thousand employees to more than 22 thousand in four short years, and simultaneously grappled with stunning turnover rates in many departments. There’s a silver lining to every cloud though, as what I learned there became the catalyst for product development that would follow at Improved Experience.

SIX DEGREES: Tell us about your company, “Improved Experience”

CLAUDIA: Improved Experience is the company I founded with Alise Cortez in 2006, to provide enterprise feedback solutions for HR and recruiting.

Some of my biggest frustrations as a recruiting leader came from the incredible lack of data (and data collection systems, for that matter) that were available to feed the decision making process when allocating recruiting resources, or planning outreach initiatives. It occurred to me that if I could somehow capture feedback from all of the stakeholders in the hiring process – candidates, new hires, hiring managers, recruiters, even my boss sometimes – and present it in a simple and compelling way, I could put critical business intelligence into the hands of recruiting and HR leaders to measure and improve business performance.

So we built an online “feedback portal” technology – a diagnostic platform that measures and manages perception in the hiring process, after onboarding, and throughout the first year of employment. It took two years to finish the engine and the interactive survey technology that feeds it. Since then, we’ve released two products: Get Better Hires, a tool that explores candidate and new hire feedback and engagement; and Make Better Hires, a tool that explores feedback from the internal business customer about Quality of Hire, recruiting services and support, and talent market conditions.

SIX DEGREES: What single event had the most impact on your career?

CLAUDIA: I don’t think that for me it was a single event; rather, it was the opportunity to see recruiting from so many different perspectives: executive search, contract agency, corporate recruiting and corporate leadership. Each has its own unique drivers for success, and that understanding has powerfully impacted my view of recruiting as well as the business solutions my company offers today.

SIX DEGREES: Do you have a mentor?

CLAUDIA: I’ve been fortunate to work for some great companies along the way, and some very smart people. Janice Dilworth hired me at T-Mobile, and I still consider her a mentor; I wasn’t sure if it would work so well at the beginning, because she was a veteran HR administrator and I had a lot of assumptions about HR that came from years of working in a third-party environment (the old “us versus them” mindset). Janice trusted my expertise when it came to setting a bar of excellence for the team, and I came to deeply to trust her abilities to set broader strategy and protect us from the politics inherent in really big, rapidly growing companies. I learned not only from her knowledge, but by her example.

SIX DEGREES: How do you personally expect to facilitate change within our industry?

CLAUDIA: I truly believe that if something can be measured, it can be improved. My work at Improved Experience is about leveraging perception to improve business performance. By creating a mechanism that collects and reports this data in a transparent and compelling way, we can deepen communication between all of the stakeholders: the internal business customers who drive the hire, the recruiters who make it happen, and the talented candidates and employees they want so dearly want to attract and retain. And if that helps to solve the problem of the dreaded black hole in recruiting, while building stronger businesses, I think we’ll have accomplished something amazing.

SIX DEGREES: What inspires you as you continue in your career?

CLAUDIA: I’m inspired by people who don’t give up, ever. Churchill once said, quite simply, “Never, never, never quit,” and I think that that is perfectly said. I’m inspired by the part of the human spirit that rises in adversity, that stands its ground, that finds courage, that clings to hope.

My youngest son spent ten years in the hell of drug addiction; watching in horror, I was there with him. My first year as a recruiter was his first failed attempt at recovery; he was 14 years old at the time. He tried again to get clean when he was 18, and failed again. At 22 he tried a third time; 60 pounds under weight for his six foot frame by then, we all knew that he didn’t have many chances left. He finally did it, and remains clean and sober 4 years later.

People who don’t give up are rock stars to me.

SIX DEGREES: What is your next career goal?

READ MORE HERE

By Dave Mendoza, a Recruiter/Sourcer who Happens to be Passionate about Economics

MONEY QUOTE: Oct. 7, 2003. NY Times

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

In a recession the staffing industry is the first in line to suffer its immediate impacts, with mass, upfront layoffs and attrition. In 2000 I marked the last recession starting in the last year of the Clinton Administration on April 15th while I was in Las Vegas at a Convention hailing the dotcom boom. I saw the bust as I heard the NASDAQ crash that afternoon. Manufacturing and export revised data have since established a pre-2001 origin for that period, which was exacerbated by 9-11 thereafter. The present financial crisis however has a far longer paper trail and it has been my mission to pinpoint the primary architects, and establish the particular legislative circumstances of the so-called “greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.”

I should emphasize that it is a non-partisan, critical review … but if the trend is slanted, I can’t help redefine the facts of who did what and where the money came from that coincided with significant legislative behaviors. The chips fall where they may. Yes, sourcing search engines as a cybersleuth has other advantages – it helps you understand broader forces at play effecting workforce decisions.

Jeff Poor of the Business & Media Institute (9/24/2008 4:00:57 PM)
asked “Are journalists playing favorites with some of the key political figures involved with regulatory oversight of U.S. financial markets?”

According to a 2003 NY Times article, “New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae”, the “Bush administration … recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

The plan was an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

”There is a general recognition that the supervisory system for housing-related government-sponsored enterprises neither has the tools, nor the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and importance of these enterprises,” Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the House Financial Services Committee in an appearance with Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, who also backed the plan”

“The proposal is the opening act in one of the biggest and most significant lobbying battles of the Congressional session. The HUD provision was pushed mostly by Democrats but had been accepted by Oxley and Baker as a compromise needed to move the bill forward.”

“…. concerns about regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which buy mortgages from lenders and repackage them as securities or hold them in their own portfolios.”

At the time, the companies and their allies beat back efforts for tougher oversight by the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or the Federal Reserve. “Supporters of the companies said efforts to regulate the lenders tightly under those agencies might diminish their ability to finance loans for lower-income families.”

Company executives said that the company preferred having the president select some directors. The company is also likely to lobby against the efforts that give regulators too much authority to approve its products. …..Fannie Mae, which was previously known as the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie Mac, which was the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, have been criticized by rivals for exerting too much influence over their regulators.

If you read the contention of the Business and Media Institute’s report, it argues that the Democratic House Financial Services Committee Chair, Barney Frank, promoted GSEs while former ’spouse’ was Fannie Mae executive, and blocked regulatory reform legislation submitted as of 2003 citing low-income qualification issues (precisely the source of present foreclosure demograhics.)Prominent Democrats ran Fannie Mae, the same government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) that donated campaign cash to top Democrats. And one of Fannie Mae’s main defenders in the House – Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., a recipient of $40,100 in campaign donations from Fannie since 1989 – was once romantically involved with a Fannie Mae executive. Today on various news channels he contends it was “Wall Street Greed” .. but neglects to mention his own prominent role in protecting the banks from regulatory reforms, and support of the Uptick Rule

Frank said he supported giving Treasury responsibility for making sure that Fannie and Freddie operate in a manner that doesn’t pose a risk to the economy or taxpayers. But he opposes giving Treasury the right to approve or disapprove business activities. He said he worries that Treasury would sacrifice activities that are good for consumers in the name of lowering the companies’ market risks.

”The regulator has not only been outmanned, it has been outlobbied,” said Representative Richard H. Baker, the Louisiana Republican who has proposed legislation similar to the administration proposal and who leads a subcommittee that oversees the companies. ”Being underfunded does not explain how a glowing report of Freddie’s operations was released only hours before the managerial upheaval that followed. This is not world-class regulatory work.’

Top Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008
(Follow The Money – Big Bank Protectors AGAINST Regulation)

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have also strategically given more contributions to lawmakers currently sitting on committees that primarily regulate their industry. Fifteen of the 25 lawmakers who have received the most from the two companies combined since the 1990 election sit on either the House Financial Services Committee; the Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee; or the Senate Finance Committee. The others have seats on the powerful Appropriations or Ways & Means committees, are members of the congressional leadership or have run for president.

1. Dodd, Christopher J (D-CT) $133,900
2. Kerry, John (D-MA) $111,000
3. Obama, Barack (D-IL) $105,849 (Current President)
4. Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) $75,550
5. Kanjorski, Paul E (D-PA) $65,500
6. Bennett, Robert F (R-UT) $61,499
7. Johnson, Tim (D-SD) $61,000
8. Conrad, Kent (D-ND) $58,991
9. Davis, Tom (R-VA) $55,499
10. Bond, Christopher S ‘Kit’ (R-MO) $55,400
11. Bachus, Spencer (R-AL) $55,300
12. Shelby, Richard (R-AL) $55,000
13. Emanuel, Rahm (D-IL) $51,750 – Now Chief of Staff, Pres. Obama
14. Reed, Jack (D-RI) $50,750
15. Carper, Tom (D-DE) $44,389
16. Frank, Barney (D-MA) $40,100
17. Maloney, Carolyn B (D-NY) $38,750
18. Bean, Melissa (D-IL) $37,249
19. Blunt, Roy (R-MO) $36,500
20. Pryce, Deborah (R-OH) $34,750
21. Miller, Gary (R-CA) $33,000
22. Pelosi, Nancy (D-CA) $32,750
23. Reynolds, Tom (R-NY) $32,700
24. Hoyer, Steny H (D-MD) $30,500
25. Hooley, Darlene (D-OR) $28,750

Includes contributions from PACs and individuals. 2008 cycle totals based on data downloaded from the Federal Election Commission on June 30, 2008.

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By Dave Mendoza
Adjunct Faculty, JobMachine.net

Part 2 of 2

Irina Shamaeva,
Partner, Brain Gain Recruiting
office (510) 233-9493
cell (415) 699-9841
Email
http://www.linkedin.com/in/irinashamaeva
• RecruitingBlogs Profile
• Linkedin Profile
• Twitter link
• Facebook Profile
• Irina’s Personal blog
• Groups: “Boolean Strings”

Six Degrees: How many applicants at your present employer do you estimate are hired from your corporate website as compared to how many are hired through referrals?

Irina: As a third party recruiter we do publish our job openings and do get referrals. It’s hard to say but probably about 3% of the hires come from referrals, and very few people apply on our site. (The site helps split partners, though; we work with them quite a bit.)

Larger percentages of placed people come from web sourcing; LinkedIn; theladders.com and a few other sites; split partners.

Six Degrees: What is the source of the “Most Hires” collected from at your present employer? (In terms of Quantity #)

Irina: Most hires for us in the last couple of years have come from theladders.com. The site has a large population of people with 100K+ salaries. Searching there is somewhat tricky. I think we are able to find candidates that others don’t.

Six Degrees: What is the source of your “LOWEST COST OF HIRES” – (least amount of invested resources for the easiest hires, regardless of quality) at your present employer?

Irina: Sourcing using Google, LinkedIn with the help of Broadlook Contact Capture, and jigsaw is all free. The only investment is my time but I can work very fast. I’d like to add that we only place quality people.

Six Degrees: What talent niche groups do you target and are these particular talent areas specialized under your review?

Irina: Back when we started our recruiting practice, we mostly placed software engineers and managers, and pretty soon also added jobs at financial companies that were not necessarily in programming such as Quants. Later, we switched to placing high level consultants for full time jobs at the Big Four companies as the core of our business. We place SAP, Oracle, Peoplesoft, Siebel, etc., and also Strategy and Change Consultants up to an Associate Partner/Senior Manager level. In 2009 we will be also working on Government-related consulting jobs related to finances, security, and IT. We always welcome job orders in software (Java, C++, etc) since it is my and Julia’s background.

Six Degrees: What types of training in sourcing/recruitment are available to you and have you taken advantage of?

Irina: I have done little training. I follow posts on Dave Mendoza’s site, ERE, RBC and other online places quite a bit and have learned a lot.

Six Degrees: What recruitment software tools do you use in your day to day recruitment activities & do they translate effectively within all of the different countries where you recruit?

Irina: We recruit in the US, nationwide. The specialized tools I can’t live without are Broadlook Contact Capture and eGrabber Resumegrabber. I also love Broadlook Diver. I use MS Outlook, Word and Excel quite a bit to manipulate and sort the data that I collect online. I use Google and other engines, of course, and Google Desktop. I also use some more technical tools such as wget from GnuWin32.

Once in a while I play with new tools I come across such as Chunk-It or Xobni.We use Sendouts for an ATS, subscribe to www.recruitalliance.com, and keep our site on www.1and1.com; the only significant expense for us is theladders.com membership.

Six Degrees: What tools (technology or old school file folder, for example) did you first encounter early in your recruitment career?

Irina: When I started as a software engineer in 1982, my computer was the size of a large chest of drawers and its 29MB disk was very hard to lift. The text editor was command-oriented: you needed to type, for example: “change w for e” to replace one symbol. When I started as a recruiter, most of the current technologies were around.

Six Degrees: How did your expectations of being a recruiter compare to the actual, first time you got on the phone or in the cubicle? In your opinion, how do people’s assumptions about our vocation differ from reality?

Irina: The recruiting profession has a very low barrier. We all know that some people do recruiting brute force without learning about the specific area they are hiring for. Therefore, many hiring managers (at least in the software development) assume that recruiters have no clue about finding the right engineers. It takes some effort to overcome the prejudice when you talk to a prospective employer. (I should admit that when I was a hiring manager in the corporate world, I was sure I would do better than a recruiter in finding resumes. I wasn’t friendly to cold calls by recruiters.)
It’s often hard to work with people who have a different perspective about what constitutes a good resume. I remember at the beginning an internal recruiter at a huge telecom company didn’t want to accept a Java engineer’s resume because it didn’t have the word “software” on it, and the job description did.

That said, I have had the pleasure to work with smart, mature, and professional employers and partners, and this experience has been even more interesting and educational than expected.

Six Degrees: Worst mistake, biggest goof, lousiest practice you thought would fly but didn’t…and how that was a learning experience?

Irina: I probably made a goof or two in my recruiting practice. The worst mistake was not to start doing this sooner!

Six Degrees: How do you personally expect to facilitate change within our industry, and/or at your place of work? If you started that process, outline the problem, your solutions, and the vision.

Irina: Facilitating change is never easy and requires leadership skills. I hope to facilitate change in the industry by educating others about things I know well. I may eventually start designing software that would make recruiting easier. I feel that recruiting software, with very few exceptions, is not of the greatest quality, mostly in terms of usability, sometimes is just buggy, and lacks useful functionality that should not be hard to implement. We’ll see.

Six Degrees: “Best practice” you are most proud of developing (now or in the past) in your recruiting career?

Irina: The best practice we follow is not to get stuck if something doesn’t work or isn’t fair but move on and feel positively. I guess it’s not very specific to recruiting but certainly helps.
Another best practice is to keep everybody involved in the recruiting process (employers, candidates, and partners) up to date.

Six Degrees: What are some of the frustrating aspects/obstacles to your day to day as a staffing professional and in general?

Irina: I feel frustrated when a significant effort leads nowhere; for example, a difficult job opening gets put on hold as soon as we find a great candidate. One has to move on, though.
Sometimes I get bored spending too much time reposting jobs at different places, reviewing resumes that have nothing to do with the job opening and doing other unproductive things that could be
either better automated or avoided. Most of the time, though, I feel happy about what I do.

Six Degrees: What are the most common themes of strategic and/or tactical mishaps involving past or present HR/Staffing org?

Irina: The lack of communication with some employers has been a problem in the past. To work well, a third party recruiter like us needs to be informed about submitted candidates, any change in requisitions, etc. If we have to repeatedly ask the employer to get feedback on a submitted resume, or a recent interview, that hurts everybody in the process. We are lucky that our current main client is very good about feedback.

Six Degrees: Considering all of the frustrations you have experienced in your career as a recruiter, — what inspires you as you continue in your career?

Irina: The second half of 2008 was hard. We had people go all the way through interviews just for the jobs to be put on hold. I am sure many have similar experience. Nevertheless, I feel that we are good at what we do and feel optimistic about the future. We may have to modify our business to keep being successful. Adaptation to change is necessary in any business. We are open to mastering new skills, inventing new ways to find new clients and the right candidates, and expanding our industry coverage.

Six Degrees: What one thing do you ideally hope to accomplish in 2009?
Irina: I’d like Brain Gain Recruiting to become a preferred vendor for more consulting companies, in particular, working in the public sector (and remaining in the private sector, too). With the number of very qualified candidates in the ERP/SAP/Peoplesoft/Oracle and Strategy consulting space we could work out well for more employers. The quality of our work is very high.
I would also like to continue sharing my knowledge and technical skills with the recruiting and sourcing community. It is a way for me to be creative and I enjoy it. I may teach classes, write blog posts, run more competitions, create new types of events, etc.

Six Degrees: Anything you want to plug?

Irina: I wish everybody good luck in 2009!

Six Degrees: How Are You Going To Change The Recruitment Industry?
Irina: I believe that everybody involved in the process of hiring would benefit from being better educated about the process. I am interested in facilitating sharing and exchanging knowledge in the recruiting community. Right now I am helping recruiters gain technical knowledge for better search of candidates on the web. I also talk online about good software products related to recruiting. If recruiters learn to master web search and collection of the right resumes and contact information, their work will be more productive and more fun. Some future ideas include teaching recruiters how to get going on their own. I am also interested in educating candidates on effective job search and application. If candidates only send us resumes that qualify, and recruiters only send candidates jobs that are good for them, everybody would benefit.

“Irina is a master in Internet Sourcing, whose skills rival that of any thought-leader I have encountered. After spending 30min on the phone with Irina it was clear I was dealing with an expert. It isn’t everyday I find someone with more technical depth then myself; in the world of recruiting, and Irina is certainly my senior. I would offer my strongest recommendation to any organization that is looking to enhance the skill-set of their sourcing organization, and learn tricks that I have not seen anywhere. Simply stated she is brilliant.” August 25, 2008
David Sadler, Recruiting Consultant , Avanade Inc.

“Irina Shamaeva is known to me since many years. She has always been very helpful and candid in sharing her knowledge of recruiting and providing tips, tricks, guidelines, suggestions, mentoring and support which is way beyond than you can expect from any other fellow of the industry. She is very senior in recruiting industry and has a great depth of knowledge about a wide range of Web 2.0 tools that automate the recruiting processes and make them efficient. I hope she will continue to share and extend her vast knowledge with other recruiting fellows through various business/social networks and forums and I wish her all the best and huge success in her work at Braingain Recruiting.” November 19, 2008
Asif Akhtar Nizami, Sr. Technical Recruiter , FSD Solutions