Recruiting Animal

How To Talk To Strangers

From: TimsStrategy.com

I spent an hour on the phone last week.  Getting my teeth kicked in.

And I have to tell you that I stumbled a bit.  Something I’m not used to doing.  I was out of my element.  Speaking to a radio audience that doesn’t care how much time I spend working with and helping people with job search and career strategy in my free time.  They just wanted answers.  Rightly so.

And if you listened to my appearance on the Recruiting Animal Radio Show you may have an interesting view of my personality and strengths.  Animal has a well-honed way of sweeping your feet out from under you.

But the places I stumbled were not his fault.  They were mine.  I was not able to answer some pretty basic questions he asked.  Ones that, I think, seem pretty straight-forward.  Not intentionally deceptive at all.

So now I’m here to answer the big one.  In full detail.  For the world to evaluate and comment on.  Yes: You.

His question to me:

How do you start, maintain and end a conversation with a stranger?

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Problem Searches

From: Insight Technical Solutions

In Praise of Hiring Managers by Bill Fester

This is a repost from a blog I follow called Recruiting Animal.  While I subscribe to his blog, I don’t know the guy. We work in different areas, and our potential for doing split placement work I suspect is probably nil. Most of the time, I don’t even get a chance to read his posts, but this morning I happened to notice one that hit home.

Since most of my posts are either directed to my area of specialty (process control applications and programming specialists), or toward helping people do a better job of finding work, it’s rare for me to comment on the hiring authority side of recruiting and search work.

I wish I’d written this. Not because I work in sales, or even in direct hire placement, but because this case is so symptomatic of searches that lead nowhere, that waste the time of everyone concerned (candidate, recruiter, client), and that hollow the craft of recruiting.

This is what many recruiters face in trying to locate and place a bonafide candidate. Ironically, just as I’d finished reading his post, I noticed an email from someone who needs to add someone to the staff, and “could I please just send some resumes”.

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