Archives
|
Visit Jobster | Jobster for employers |
 |
 |
« congrats to zillow... | Main | a ceo's ultimate pain »
this guest post is by gretchen ledgard, as part of the recruiting blog swap.
When sitting down to write this blog post, I
made a quick list of similarities between Jason’s company and my company:
Jobster and JobSyntax, respectively. Let’s see. Besides our cutesy plays on the
word “job” (whoo ... we’re both clever!), what else do we have in common? For
starters, both companies have a “golden” CEO: Goldberg for Jobster; Goldring
for JobSyntax. Both companies call the greater Seattle area home: the hip Pioneer Square for Jobster; the even more hip
East East Side for JobSyntax. And both companies love doggies: Jobster here
and JobSyntax there.
But one common bond that ties Jobster and
JobSyntax together is our fundamental belief that a company’s strongest
advocates in recruiting great talent are its existing employees. Jobster
provides the tools to assist employees in managing and expanding their networks
to reach target talent pools, and JobSyntax provides the strategies and
coaching to help employees use these and other resources to, well, reach target
talent pools.
What’s interesting – and I wonder how much Jobster has
encountered this same attitude –
is that a lot of companies still seem hesitant to enlist their employees’
assistance in the sourcing and marketing stages of the recruiting process. As I
dig deeper into various companies’ recruiting practices, I’m realizing more and
more just how divided recruiting often is from the rest of the business. The
problem goes both ways. Business groups are content to leave the recruiting to
someone else, and recruiters rarely partner with their clients to feed the
talent pipelines. There’s no meeting in the middle.
The companies I work with realize that, on
some level, they need to strengthen their recruiting practices. Once we start
peeling back the layers, we often discover this lack of partnership between the
recruiters and the employee base is a major contributor to slow productivity.
Now, I know we all have core
responsibilities. A recruiter’s job is to recruit, just as a software
engineer’s job is to, well, engineer software. Many of the companies I’ve
coached track their engineers’ billable hours. One hour recruiting means, at
least in the short term, lost revenue. So how do you meet in the middle?
One way is to incorporate recruiting into
employees’ existing activities, such as participation in professional groups,
industry events, and online forums and blogs. Another way is to definitely
utilize tools like Jobster (and I’m not sure saying that because I’m writing
here). J This is where recruiters can meet their
employees halfway. These tools allow recruiters to work behind the scenes in populating
job descriptions and templates, directing employees how to use these tools, and
even managing incoming volume from outreach efforts. Employees can then act as
the catalyst to reach target candidates. Employees expend minimal energy;
applicant volume increases; and everyone is happy. A nice little partnership,
no?
So, yeah, it’s not rocket science, but I
have been surprised (but not shocked) at how much separation I’ve witnessed
between recruiting and business groups. But even more so, I’ve been extremely
surprised at how difficult employers think it will be bring these two
groups closer together. In reality, it’s not all that hard, and a closer
partnership can get you that much closer to the hire.
gretchen
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/278353/5516397
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference meet me in the middle, by gretchen ledgard:
