Jon Gundersgaard
Sr. Technical Recruiter at Seagate Technology
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• Community Volunteering: I have spent a lot of time at Inner Light Ministries which is an Omni Faith outreach ministry and am active in a men’s group. I am part of a Vipassana meditation group. I am part of a Multiple Sclerosis support group.
• Office/Cell Number : (831) 9-319/831 332-265
• Personal Email: jgunders@sbcglobal.net

PART ONE: Meet Jon Gundersgaard: 30 Years of Corp Staffing Expertise, Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis

The interview with Jon attracted an overwhelming response. His life story is one of challenges and hope, and a real passion for our industry. In continuing with our efforts to spotlight his contributions, we continue with the second installment of our initial discussion and share his insight of over three decades of expertise. Jon is one special person, endeared by many privileged to have worked with him and to have been in his circles. His input initiated the Disability Candidate Experience Survey, and for that and so many other reasons we thank him for inspiring all of us.

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?

JON: If you mean how many are hired who simply apply by themselves it is not a large number. About 35% of our hires are referrals. The rest come from various sources. Technical people need to be found and do not usually come to a website. We have used job boards in the past but they are becoming less productive. LinkedIn is becoming a major source and we are working to expand our tool kit so we can go find more top candidates.

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

JON: Employee referrals is the most in the U. S. but I do not know exact numbers.

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?

JON: People who just apply would be the lowest cost because there is no cost but the quality is not high. Employee referrals is the next lowest cost at about $1500. LinkedIn is the most effective for passive candidates at about 2-3K per hire. I have found some top managerial and technical people on LinkedIn.

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

JON: We look for engineers and technical professionals from the disk drive industry.

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

JON: We do not have any formal sourcing training. We get a lot of training on use of our internal systems and I get training anywhere I can which includes numerous Webinars from many different sources. We are planning to have more formal training in the near future.

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?

JON: LinkedIn which I have used internationally and we have made hires is APAC and EMEA as well as the U. S. We have a corporate account and I have posted jobs, used groups and sent thousands of emails to passive candidates. We have used Google, Yahoo and Bing. We have posted on numerous niche boards for specific skills. We use specific boards for APAC and for EMEA.

Six Degrees: What tools did you first encounter early in your recruitment career?

JON: Since my first recruiting was 30 years ago I do know how much would be relevant today. We ran lots of newspaper ads, screened candidates and hand carried resume’s to managers to discuss candidate skills. I kept a folder for every job and filled it with hard copy resume’s of top candidates.

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?

JON: I thought more people would be really excited about the job opportunities I had to offer. I did not realize how much I would have to sell the job and the company and how much I would have to know about the job itself.

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.

JON: I expect to facilitate chance at my place of work by bringing state of the art social media sourcing tools into our organization and build processes which allow recruiters and sourcers from anywhere in the world to support hiring managers anywhere in the world.

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

JON: The best practice that I adopted was the use of LinkedIn for recruiting. It was very new
at the time though almost everyone uses it now.

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

JON: The greatest frustration is communicating with managers around the world to get exact descriptions of what they want in a candidate. It is also frustrating to learn to use all of the new sourcing tools available. I always feel like a rookie with social media.

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

JON: Probably changing directions too often. Many places come up with great ideas but then move on to other great ideas and do not implement.

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?

JON: I really like the satisfaction of finding the right person for a job and the right job for a candidate.

Six Degrees: What one thing do you ideally hope to accomplish in 2008?

JON: Nothing in 2008 since it is over. In 2010 I hope to become a skilled international sourcer. I also hope to become a very skilled social media recruiter who can do a lot more than I can today.

Six Degrees: Anything you want to plug?

JON: Just the company I work for. Seagate is a great place to work.

This article was originally featured on ERE

I feel so lucky that I am still working after 27 years with it and love every day I am alive.
Jon Gundersgaard

Yesterday, I featured an interview of Jon Gundersgaard, a thirty year veteran of the HR/Staffing Industry. Jon’s compelling life story as someone who was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and has been in a wheel chair since 1995 initiated a discussion with friend and mentor, Gerry Crispin, Chief Navigator at CareerxRoads. Jon’s depiction of a life well lived, and intense productivity as a valued member of his staffing organization; missing work only 6 months in the last 30 years was provacative. Here was a perfect personification of an industrious, talented element of today’s workforce who served as a critical member of his team and was a productive contributor to society as a whole – despite a serious malady. As a paraplegic, his disability was a sidenote, to an otherwise determined approach to keeping his sourcing and recruiting skills up-to-date with the latest techniques and tools available. The story speaks likewise to a broader workforce effected by blindness, deafness, and other differently-abled categories.

A few days after meeting Jon, the thought of such inspirational people weighed on my mind at the airport as I was returning from the ERE Conference. I texted initial inquiries to Gerry in reference to other individuals within our industry with handicaps that have yet to be highlighted. The text evolved into an in-depth dialogue that broached related topics such as the candidate side of the equation; Wounded Veterans, deaf or blind software engineers, etc.

Gerry’s interest also stemmed from a gig he did with Mark with their client, National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) at Rochester Institute of Technology under an IBM grant nearly a decade ago. NTID graduates were, at the time, not benefiting by the run up in interest in hiring new engineering and computer science majors. They conducted focus groups with recruiters, students and working graduates and identified several choke points in the recruiting process that unintentionally filtered disabled candidates out.

As the saying goes, “the Rest is History” – The end result was Gerry’s idea to develop a survey with Mark Mehler which was launched this week, designed to answer the following question:

‘Are Employers who are approached by jobseekers with requisite skills, experience and knowledge but who happen to have a disability, prepared to assess their ability (and not be distracted by their disability) given the decade long shift to digital protocols?’

To be succinct, “How prepared are you for jobseekers who happen to have a disability?”

Corporate EEO statements routinely professes to focus on hire-ability and not be distracted by disability. The following survey developed by Gerry Crispin and Mark Mahler, attempts to see what this “ground floor” looks like to someone with a disability.

We invite Corporate Staffing Leaders and teams to participate in this worthy cause to learn more about industry efforts address Disability Candidate Experiences. Your answers to questions about how your firm accommodates disabled prospects in the HIRING PROCESS (not the job itself) will absolutely be kept anonymous.

CareerXroads will be the only one with access to your contact info. Your firm will NOT ever be listed as having participated. We require your contact info however to ensure a) no duplicates, b) a representative sample is acquired and c) to invite you to a private webinar that will share the results before they are published.

Feel free to contact Gerry Crispin at CareerXroads to address any questions or concerns you may have.

Your assistance in enhancing the viral reach of this effort is to be commended. The special nature of this endeavor has attracted the combined forces of Arbita ACES, Starr Tincup, ERE, John Sumser, and Peopleclick. We thank everyone, including you our audience for doing your part in forwarding a link on this story to your respective Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter etc accounts. Old school email to your fellow co-workers and staffing leadership is always a sure fire way to attract with precision as well.

All my best
Dave Mendoza

From time to time I get interesting articles sent my way from other industry experts and this week one of those really caught my eye. It was a white paper from the Institute for Corporate Productivity (14cp) about minority recruiting.

Having wrtten an article fo ERE about this last February (Using the Internet to Expand the Diversity of Your Candidate Pool) what caught my attention most was their observations on where diverse candidates come from. Here’s a summary of what they say:

• Internet and employee referrals are the two most widely used methods for diversity recruiting.
• The most effective programs, in order, are college internships, targeted colleges, leadership development programs and mentoring programs.
• Companies need to be aware of how different ethnicities search for
  jobs:
  • Hispanics use friends or relatives to find jobs more than other ethnic groups
  • Blacks are more likely to use public employment agencies
  • Asians are least likely to use public or private agencies

  Want to view Shally links to Diversity related, White Papers? READ THE REST … HERE …

By Dave Mendoza, Master Cybersleuth, JobMachine Inc.

To Connect directly with Diana Johnson Hightower on Linkedin, simply click here and insert her email:
dlj @ ti.com

Featured Speaker: Diana Johnson Hightower, Diversity Staffing Manager, Texas Instruments, May 10th, Thursday, Kennedy Conference & Expo, Las Vegas Hilton
Creating and Deploying a Leading Edge Diversity Staffing Strategy

What a sincere pleasure I had to finally meet Diana in person after at least 4 years of corresponding with her in some form or another. She has an infectious personality. She has been a “go to” person at Texas Instruments, always welcoming, always exchanging an idea or networking to make things happen and this spirit was evident in person as it has been over the several years I have been fortunate to correspond with her. I also want to thank Diana for that big wave that put me at ease at the podium at Kennedy Expo as I prepared to moderate the blog panel. Diane can count me among her biggest fans.

Diana Johnson, Texas Instruments,presented on the design and implementation required to develop a successful Diversity Staffing process. She outlined the necessity of diversity and due diligence efforts to secure support for your program among upper and middle management and build credibility throughout the organization. She elaborated on diversity sourcing strategy and methods both for landing strong diverse talent and for measuring your success.

To be a world class company, attracting and developing the best talent in your organization is Priority One. As technology brings people closer together, our environment becomes more diverse. And while workers from all backgrounds are merging into the global marketplace, businesses are being challenged by a shortage of talent and by the need to integrate a wide range of cultures. In response, today’s most competitive and successful organizations are integrating Diversity Staffing into their recruitment programs as a highly effective strategy for improving candidate quality.

Diana has worked at Texas Instruments for 20 years. Diana has spent her career in marketing, operations and management, where she has won numerous awards, including five consecutive TI Society of Excellence MVP awards.

Diana has been featured at numerous national conferences, speaking on such topics as negotiating, building winning customer relationships, leadership and mentoring. Diana was selected as an initial inductee into the TI Diversity Network (TIDN) Diversity Champions Hall of Fame. She has been instrumental in championing mentoring programs across TI.

Diana is currently the Diversity Talent Advocate at Texas Instruments. In this role, Diana is responsible for driving TI’s diversity sourcing efforts across all business units

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