If you are going to start (or improve) a college recruiting program, it’s essential that you look at what most firms do with a cynical eye. Almost all college programs follow a cookie-cutter approach. They are run on emotion and tradition. Few, if any, have any hard evidence that they …

One of the primary ways of convincing applicants to work for your company is by building your brand as a great place to work. You can build your brand in a variety of ways: getting written up in articles and getting listed on great-place-to-work lists are two good examples of …

Any savvy recruiter is well aware of the economic downturn that is facing most industries today. If that downturn has not yet affected your job as a recruiter, let me assure you that soon it will. Where I work in the Silicon Valley, the wave of recruiter layoffs is well …

You can’t improve what you don’t measure, so metrics are a crucial element of great recruiting. I recommend three basic approaches to employment metrics. The first is a “dashboard” (like a car dashboard), which is so named because it allows you to continually monitor all of the vital elements in …

You have heard of email spamming, but it’s time to get ready for “resume spamming.” Resume spamming is the process where applicants use Web technology to deluge a large number of company websites with “volume applications” for almost every job in the company. Think of it, the time is rapidly …

Most recruiting strategies are relatively static and unchanging. Unfortunately, keeping the same strategies during an economic downturn that you utilized during an economic upturn can have a disastrous effect on your recruiting results. Often it’s hard to see a downturn in the economy coming, but the recent crash has been …

Managers frequently ask me, “What is the best recruiting source to use when you have no budget, little time, and don’t know much about recruiting?” Without hesitation my answer is…use reference referrals. The Definition of a Reference Referral A reference referral is quite simply asking the references (that were given to you …

If you want to dominate your competitors in the talent “war,” you need to act a lot differently than they do. If you expect to win more than a majority of your head-to-head “battles” for talent, you must take a deliberate approach to recruiting. The following 20 rules outline just …

I’m often asked, who are the “visionaries and thought leaders” in employment? In most professions, identifying the leaders is relatively easy. But it?s not that easy in recruiting. I have found after over 30 years in employment that we are a unique profession. Employment has no official “father or mother,” …

Recruiters are notorious for complaining about the lack of respect and cooperation they get from managers. Whether they are corporate types or external recruiters, both consistently blame managers for most of their troubles. Because I spend a great amount of time with corporate managers, I get to hear the other …