The Link: http://bit.ly/d78aSW

Gerry Crispin alerted me to the work of an Intern to Shaker Consulting Group in Cleveland, Ohio a few weeks ago. Joe Murphy, a principal of that firm.

Shaker Consulting Group developed an excellent survey of 29 questions that delves into the details of what a candidate might reasonably ‘expect’ from an employer.

The results will be public and not sold nor used for marketing. They have about 200 responses but the ‘n’ is too small given the various ways they want to cut the data and getting to jobseekers is not a trivial task.

I find the cause to be a good one and anything we can do to assist the job seeker experience is incumbent upon us to try and to pass the word as widely as possible.

Please take this job application process survey and tweet about it to spread the word: http://bit.ly/d78aSW

TWEET:

@davemendoza Applying for a job online? Please take this job application process survey: http://bit.ly/d78aSW Via @GerryCrispin

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

What happens in Vegas stays in Las Vegas? Jason Davis, “Uncle” Gerry Crispin, and I will be hearing about this for years to come, but when Jay Dee throws a party for RecruitingBlogs.com, this is what you get – Thought Leaders never hesitating once at the chance to have fun, hats and all.

At RecruitingBlogs.com it’s a simple formula: Information + Entertainment = Infotainment Recruitment. How do you experience it? Easy, visit the site, look at your top right and sign up and perhaps you will be a Gerry Crispin Dancer someday.

I made all my dreams come true that day …. I am hanging up my dance shoes … for now … until the next RecruitingBlogs.com RecruitFest Party at a city near you.

View my profile on RecruitingBlogs.com

By Dave Mendoza, Master Cybersleuth, Affiliate Partner, JobMachine Inc.
(720) 733-2022

You may ask, what happens within Six Degrees from Dave? It’s Social Networking In Action. My friends, Gerry and Jennifer, exemplify this process on a daily basis and in particular, did so, in a recent online conversation which sparked the “Ask Uncle Gerry” Series.

Well all too often I have the pleasure of introducing equally passionate practitioners within our staffing industry and in the process have the good fortune of observing magnificent examples of best practices being shared within the exchange.

It would not be the first time I forwarded an inquiry to Gerry “the Godfather” Crispin which he thoughtfully considered and instructed everyone within the correspondence chain with his decades of wisdom as one of the foremost thought leaders of our industry.

Gerry Crispin, Chief Navigator at CareerXroads Colloquium, is an industry trend setter and a personal mentor I am thankful to call friend. To emphasize the point, if there was a Gerry Crispin fan club, I would be Chapter Chair for Denver. He is committed to writing, researching and sharing his adventures, opinions and data about evolving staffing models with the HR profession, clients and friends. Together with his business partner, Mark Mehler, he strives to observe and influence new and evolving models that aspire to world-class, measurable standards and satisfy every stakeholder. He is passionate about how firms design and build staffing processes, the technology to enhance them and the systems to manage them. Gerry wants to know more about the ‘playing fields’ where candidates and employers meet and he is more than a little curious about how they treat one another: how Job Seekers ‘game’ their next career move while Employers tout their latest opportunities.

Gerry is constantly on the lookout for stories about staffing challenges, benchmarks, and results as well as the people who live the stories they tell. He lives and breathes an ideas factory my friends.

Today, it is time to share the wealth and observe social networking in practice creating new and valued relationships and transferring knowledge across continents, thousands of miles part. I’ve known Gerry through ERE and Shally “Elvis” Steckerl, and I met Jennifer Candee at ERE GLobal in Amsterdam. Today, witness a master at work and a prominent American expatriate staffing leader in the UK share thoughts and develop a bond before your very eyes. Behold:

Jennifer Candee, Head of Talent Acquisition at SABMiller Asks:

Dave,

I’m looking for statistics or other relevant trending details on increase in traffic and acceptance to UK careers websites…

SABMiller plc in the UK is trying to sort out our EVP increase since 2005 and would like to take into consideration the trending increase of candidate’s comfort with applying online on FTSE 500 corporate careers websites.

I’m having difficulty pinning down any relevant documentation of stats around this trend. Any direction is appreciated.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Uncle Gerry Responds::

Hi Jennifer

Dave Mendoza thought I might have some thoughts on the subject of stats showing acceptance of UK sites among quality job seekers.

I have some thoughts based on several trips over to the UK

First, if you are to find any stats at all I expect you’ll find them at www.onrec.com. David Hurst, Onrec’s founder is also very approachable and a font of knowledge about job boards particularly in the UK.

My personal opinion is not so favorable. I believe the reason so little information exists about sources of hire in the UK is because there really is only one major source: Agencies… and then everything else is second.

I believe that nearly 70% of professional level job seekers are placed by agencies. The point is that job seekers know it and are much more likely to read an ad in the paper or online and call their agency than they are to apply directly.

Yes, job seekers are traveling to more job sites for leads but no, I don’t believe the result is more hires from job boards. Until companies are willing to advertise a job and boldly declare that they will ONLY consider applicants who apply directly, there will be little headway and the UK market will be incredibly limited. Contributing to the problem is that the folks who help write and distribute jobs online and in the papers are ALSO third party recruiting agencies and have they have no incentive to improve their advertising capabilities to the detriment of their headhunting business. This is not the case in the US. In the US only 5% of hires come agencies. You can do the math.

In my humble opinion any company that tackles the issue must do it head on and declare how they will keep candidates who apply directly a) informed about their qualifications, b) informed about the company’s continued interest…or not and c) offered constructive feedback on how to become more competitive for future positions. Do that and you will be measuring candidate comfort in a way that will drive your competitors crazy. All of it is possible with technology but it is not a trivial initiative.

Best of luck.

Gerry Crispin, SPHR
Chief Navigator, CareerXroad

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jennifer Candee Responds:

Gerry,

Thanks for taking the time on this. For a little background on me, I’m from the US and relocated to Guildford, United Kingdom over 2 years ago. That said, I’ve turned our internal recruitment operation around and over 80% of our hires are coming from OUR direct sourcing and headhunting tactics vs. agencies. That said, it is possible in the UK but I agree, there aren’t many doing it. Therefore, from our direct sourcing through professional networking sites and otherwise, our careers site has more candidates being driven to it as word of mouth is worth a thousand words. Candidates know they can come to us directly as well and we’ll get them into talent pipelines for future talent if we do not have a role but the candidate is great.

Mainly we were just trying to sort out…which we have, how much of the traffic on our site can be most likely to be driven by awareness of our employment brand since 2005 and not from “trending” of a bit more online acceptance by candidates. While we do subscribe to totaljobs – we do so with the understanding that its again, more for employment branding purposes than it is to actually get quality candidates. But if companies don’t participate, it won’t change.

I completely abhor the notion in UK and other countries that its impossible to find candidates without an agency. Than why do the internal recruiters call themselves recruiters? Go figure. As we’ve proven that it does work at plc, we’re now starting in in house talent acquisition team of 11 for mid – exec level management roles in S. Africa. And guess what? The whole team has been directly sourced by yours truly. Even in a location where they stated that there is very little online action and that wouldn’t work. People can be so closed minded. It only takes one!

Sounds like you and I should chat … we are like minded folks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Uncle Gerry Responds:

Fabulous Jennifer. Your comments should be shared and Kennedy, ERE or SHRM conferences would love to have an international firm describe how they are breaking through the choke hold that agencies have in the UK.

Deloitte, Agilent, BP and several other MNCs I know well (with large investments in the UK) are also making headway but overall there is a long way to go.

In the US and Canada my partner Mark Mehler and I facilitate small group meetings (no more than 40) that are vendor free to tackle thorny issues like the one we’re discussing. I write scenarios around these challenges and have the leaders who attend break up into teams to brainstorm solutions. You might want to try that approach with your colleagues in the UK who have a similar interest and energy to break through. I’ll solicit interest among my colloquium members and pass contact for their UK counterparts who might be willing to engage and pass their info to you.

I’m sure our paths will cross sooner or later.
Best to you.
Gerry Crispin, SPHR
Chief Navigator, CareerXroad

NOTE: For more on the CareerXroads Colloquium go to http://www.careerxroads.com/colloquium/colloquium.htm.

View my profile on RecruitingBlogs.com

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By Dave Mendoza, MasterCybersleuth, Affiliate Partner, JobMachine, Inc.
(720) 733-2022

Thank you to Bill Bargas Diversity.com and Ethan Bloomberg JobTarget for supporting sixdegrees at the ERE events this past week and additional thanks to ZoomInfo for their continued support of ERE Foundation and our efforts at Sixdegrees.

I am happy to report that ERE Fall in Washington DC last week, Oct. 17-19, 2007, was exceptional. For all those who set their budgets for conference season, ERE Expo is a must. I had an opportunity to learn from, exchange ideas with, and dine with some of the top Thought leaders in the industry in the hall ways, conference rooms, and after hours of the event.

Recruiting. Talent management. Process improvement. This recruiting conference delivers it all.

Now in its seventh year, the ERE Expo conference series has helped thousands of corporations develop and sustain world-class, industry-leading recruitment and staffing functions and gained a reputation for outstanding speakers, a world-class agenda, and outstanding networking opportunities for recruitment and HR executives from global corporations.

ERE Expo 2007 Fall in Washington, D.C., explored a broad range of issues including managing relationships with hiring managers, aggressive recruiting, the recruiter’s guide to navigating corporate politics, recruitment process outsourcing, onboarding, and other topics that are affecting the global recruiting industry.

From Starbucks and Microsoft to Disney and Dell, the ERE Expo has assembled the industry’s leading speakers who can help attendees stay ahead of the competition and learn about the newest technologies and trends.

More than 20 cutting-edge sessions and workshops to keep your recruiting skills sharp. Thursday morning kicked off with a bang as Jim Larranaga, head basketball coach at George Mason University — who shocked the country in 2006 by leading the first small school in 27 years to the NCAA Final Four – shares his secrets of success through eight simple steps to recruiting and retaining talented people.

I particularly found Microsoft Staffing Manager, Kevin Stakelum, delivered an exceptional presentation, “Managing Recruiters Remotely” It was a timely and informative event. He offered suggestions, on determining whether a staffing organization should diversity the geographic locations of their recruiting workforce.

In addition, I heard an insider’s view as to how — in a very short time — the team at Disney has accomplished what some companies take decades to achieve. Anne Ceruti, presented, as the Disney VP who leads recruitment for corporate professional hires, campus relations, enterprise recruiting-technology implementations, and the upcoming re-launch of Disney career portals.

An exciting addition to their lineup was ERE’snew “Meet The Candidates” panel, where you will have an opportunity to hear the personal and professional goals of today’s top MBA students. Moderated by Gerry Crispin, this panel will give you a unique insight from today’s cream-of-the-crop candidates. From a trilingual investment-banking student who has visited 15 Chinese companies, to the president of the International Business Association who hopes to secure a consulting job, and many more, the panel offered an honest account of what today’s stellar candidates are thinking and what they really want from your companies.

Their next event, ERE Expo 2008 Spring, is in San Diego on March 31 – April 2, 2008.

Leading recruiters and staffing executives in our industry gain access to a daily exchange of best practices, blog articles and social networking aspects on ERE.NET and it is a pleasure to meet each of you I correspond with on ERE at the Expo twice a year.

It is also worthy to underline the achievements of its Charity arm, ERE Foundation. Dave Manaster, ERE CEO, has had a deeply sincere passion for this children’s charity and he has succeeded yet again with Jason Davis, Founder of RecruitingBlogs.com and Recruiting.com to develop a series of charitable events that are memorable and unique. At each of the last ERE Expo events, sponsored poker tournaments have been organized to raise funds for children’s causes. Dave Manaster has covered all the costs for the tournaments taking place at ERE conferences so that all of the money raised goes to the foundation. To date, nearly $40,000 has been donated to ERE foundation and HOPELAB.org

Jason Davis spearheaded an initiative to create buzz and direct sponsorship from the Staffing Industry’s leading vendor technology, job boards, and consulting companies – creating a substantive organizational capability where none existed before to involve industry players in extraordinary events benefiting our industry in a manner without comparison in scope or ambition.

I want to take this opportunity to thank each of the following companies for going the extra mile to give back to the Staffing Industry so generously and consistently:

ERE Media
JobTarget
ZoomInfo
Diversity.com
JobCentral.com
HotJobs
TheLadders
Monster
SearchWizards
Jobster
SimplyHired.com
BountyJobs.com
EA
CortexHR
HireVue
JobDig
MyStaffingPro

See you all in San Diego.

PS: Yes Jason Davis won yet again, his 4th win at a Poker Tourney he organized. And yes I accidentally managed to get to the final table of champions yet again. Sometime soon Jason will give me a play by play on how I managed to do so. Good times.

View my profile on RecruitingBlogs.com

LinkedIn | Bio | MSN | Skype

By Dave Mendoza, MasterCybersleuth, Affiliate Partner, JobMachine, Inc.
(720) 733-2022

Blog, “The CareerXroads Annex”
Linkedin Profile
Client List
ERE Expo Blog Reports:
ERE Thursday -10am – Disney
ERE – Thursday – 9am

Everyone who reads SixDegrees… knows I am a huge fan of Gerry Crispin, Chief Navigator at CAREERXROADS He has been a personal mentor and friend of mine, and from a broader perspective – a staffing industry legend without equal. He lights up any room he walks into with his sincere warmth, sage words and ever modest demeanor for someone of his stature. Few practice friendship so well, and with so little ado, and yet with such impact among past generations and present. He is the person who calls to check on how your family is doing, the one who sets you straight, and the person who makes a dining experience rich in learning experience.

Gerry Crispin and his business partner, Mark Mehler, are the personalities behind CareerXroadsâ„¢ and the CareerXroads Colloquiumâ„¢. Between the two of them, they have worked for more than 50 years in career planning and placement, contract recruiting, executive search, recruitment advertising and human resource management.

Since 1994, these Internet Recruiting Pioneers have formed a thriving international consulting practice that works closely with many of the world’s most competitive corporations to better understand and adopt cutting-edge, recruiting technology solutions to their staffing strategy and process.. They are experts in recruiting technology methods and also known as seasoned speakers around the world on Best Recruiting Practices.

ERE EXPO: “Meet Your Candidates”

Dave Manaster, CEO, ERE Media, Inc., always promotes an innovative format at each of his events. Last week, at ERE Expo in Washington DC, Gerry Crispin, Chief Navigator, CAREERXROADS, moderated one of the most interesting panel discussions I have seen to date at last week’s ERE Expo. Top graduate students got on stage to provide the general assembly a first-hand look at what the newest entrants into the workforce want out of a job, a career, and a life.

NOTE: ERE Expo 2008 Spring: ERE will return to San Diego for the 8th annual ERE Expo 2008 Spring conference and exposition, March 31 – April 2, 2008 at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina

View my profile on RecruitingBlogs.com

LinkedIn | Bio | MSN | Skype

Compliments to our friend, Jim Stroud, at jimstroud.com

Great Job Jim!

Gerry Crispin, Partner at CareerXroads, evaluates the worthy possibilities of Evaluating Competency via Video:

“I want to see …. video segments that air comparisons of individuals against specific questions and specific issues. See them examine/discuss some aspect related to the competency of the experience they’ve had, and then pull that information, side by side, take it to the hiring manager and say “here is the crux of these two candidates. Before we bring either of then in let’s see how they respond to these key elements of the job”

Courtesy of VirtualJobTryout/Shaker Consulting Group

Anyone who has read this blog knows that Shally and I revere the sage advice and expertise of Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler. I have given Gerry, in particular, full credit for encouraging me to put my strategy proposals in writing and to contribute to the industry in a substantive manner. Shally may be the master of all that is sourcing, but Gerry was the Recruitment Industry’s Moses before Shally became the sourcing guru’s Elvis.

Gerry Crispin and his business partner, Mark Mehler, are the personalities behind CareerXroadsâ„¢ and the CareerXroads Colloquiumâ„¢. Between the two of them, they have worked for more than 50 years in career planning and placement, contract recruiting, executive search, recruitment advertising and human resource management.

Since 1994, these Internet Recruiting Pioneers have formed a thriving international consulting practice that works closely with many of the world’s most competitive corporations to better understand and adopt cutting-edge, recruiting technology solutions to their staffing strategy and process.. They are experts in recruiting technology methods and also known as seasoned speakers around the world on Best Recruiting Practices.

All hail the CareerXroads Colloquium, we are all but students. Today, a few pearls of wisdom from our good friend:
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Sources Of Hire: Trigger for Staffing Data Integrity & Credibility
By THEE Gerry Crispin

Mark and I are in the midst of collecting source of hire data from about 50 large companies for the 6th year. Typically we acquire data on 150,000- 300,000 hires. We push to complete the collection phase of this work during January each year- more to examine the integrity and credibility of the staffing function’s data collection process than to highlight any specific result…or even claim the inviolate nature of the result. Anyone who has read last years’ analysis knows we are extremely critical of the data and the limited conclusions that can be drawn from our study… as well as other studies http://www.careerxroads.com/news/SourcesOfHire05.pdf.

Of course this doesn’t stop lots of vendors and consultants who engage us to broaden or deepen our study by asking about their specific niches in the hiring process or, to add additional categories of “vertical search engines” and the like. Sometimes they even argue the issue by pointing to (PR) releases masquerading as studies that quote numbers (typically traffic numbers) but more often guesses as if these “proofs” we’re all we needed to make their “unique and significant” contribution real.

While we would love to include every question and possible cut of source of hire, Mark and I respond privately, enjoy debating the issues of what to inlcude…or what not to. Fortunately, we do not have to deal with even perceived conflict of interest and it is one of the reasons we do not accept underwriting or sell advertising (our business model is tied to facilitating corporate staffing knowledge).

When we begin to look at the source of hire issues each year, we can certainly hypothesize about the hot new tools and channels available to firms to fill their openings but, the operational question is always “Can and do they measure it?” We only include questions that a majority of competitive firms can answer…and even then…

We speak with dozens of staffng leaders privately before we start and are still amazed, even today:
- how little confidence staffing leaders have in their source of hire data.
- how few specific sources (versus categories like “print” or “internet”) are actually collected.
- how poorly the ATS designs are to enable recruiters and recruiting leaders to improve their data integrity (as opposed to how wonderful the reports of fatally flawed data look)
- how few are the firms who can convert traffic to hires
- how no one is able to collect and analyze the synergistic effect of multiple sources of hire.
-how infrequently the self-report data is confirmed or checked by IP source, recruiter inquiry, or onboarding survey.
- how few the firms are that perform ongoing business analysis on their sources and alter their subsequent investments as a result.
- how much data (5%) is missing even among the best of firms.

There are exceptions and many of these are the ones who eventually supply the data we use. We speak with every participant (who publicly remain anonymous) to look under the hood.

We will share what we learn in February and discuss the results on a few (free) webinars that Linkedin, Zoominfo, SHRM and others have agreed to conduct (Only our survey participants will get a deeper level of discussion in a private webinar.)

READ MORE HERE(and don’t forget to add his site to your RSS Feed!!!)

Interested in having Mark Mehler or Gerry Crispin present at your event?
Contact Mark at 732-821-6652

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