Recruiting Animal

Aaron Rector, Director of Social Recruiting

Aaron Rector, a Director of Social Recruiting, was the guest on The Recruiting Animal Show on July 29, 2015. In case you don't know Aaron, he looks like Randy Fishkin and sounds like Jeremy Roberts. (I'm sure you know them well).

Anyway, my good friend, Maureen Sharib, says that I hate every show until I've listened to the recording. That's not always true but this one was in that territory.  Near the end of the show, I complain that I'm running out of material and I scold poor Celinda Appleby for not helping me out since social recruiting - the topic of our discussion - is her specialty.

But, then, I listened to the show and although I saw all sorts of questions I had missed, I still came up with 25 clips so it couldn't have been that bad.  In fact, some of the stuff I thought was particularly weak during the show were the parts I found most interesting the second time around. For instance, our strained conversation about Aaron's wedding video and the relationship of personal to professional posting on social media.

Aaron picked a song about a thug that I didn't like but I must say that he sang it himself and that was very unusual. Even more surprising was that Michael Cox joined in. He thought it was good music.  Also on board were Alejandro and Blake Cannon.

My introduction was about an important issue in recruiting right now: first contact emails. In the recording, final line has a stutter that blanks out the meaning. I said, "The planners say that one careful shot is worth more than ten wild ones."

Here's the full show on BlogTalkRadio. It's at the bottom of the clips, as well.

To copy the link to a clip, put your mouse over it, right click, then copy link location.

Animal - First Contact Emails - Intro 15 07 29 - 3 min

Aaron Rector - Song It's a Good Day - 3 min

Aaron Rector - Recruiting on Twitter - 15 07 29 - 4 min

Aaron Rector - Recruiting on Facebook - 15 07 29 - 3 min

Aaron Rector - Recruiting on Pinterest - 15 07 29 - 1:30 min

Aaron Rector - Videos on Facebook - 15 07 29 - 2 min

Aaron Rector - Amateur Video Used for Employment Branding - 2 min

Aaron Rector - How to Recruit via Video - 15 07 29 - 1 min

Aaron Rector - Employment Branding Videos - 15 07 29 - 4 min

Aaron Rector - Contrarian Employment Branding Videos - 15 07 29 - 1:30 min

Aaron Rector - Twitter Cards - 15 07 29 - 3:15 min

Aaron Rector - When Social Recruiting Start Small - 15 07 29 - 40 sec

Aaron Rector - I got my job on social media - 15 07 29 - 2 min

Aaron Rector - Social Recruiting for 3rd Party Recruiters - 15 07 29 - 3 min

Aaron Rector - My Social Media Strategy - 15 07 29 - 2 min

Aaron Rector - Is Inbound Marketing the Future of Recruiting - 15 07 29 - 2 min

Aaron Rector - Social Media does not drive people to jobs - 15 07 29 - 1 min

Aaron Rector - Applying via Mobile - 15 07 29 - 1:30 min

Aaron Rector - Disparate Impact - 15 07 29 - 2:40 min

Aaron Rector - Wedding Video on YouTube - 15 07 29 - 2 min

Aaron Rector - Getting Hired For Social Recruiting - 15 07 29 - 4 min

Aaron Rector, Celinda Appleby - The State of Social Recruiting - 15 07 29 - 1:45 min

Aaron Rector - Don't focus on being funny - 15 07 29 - 34 sec

Aaron Rector - Final Words - 15 07 29 - 10 sec

Animal - Thank you - 15 07 29 - 23 sec

Aaron Rector - Full Show - 15 07 29 - 60 min

 

Questions For a Recruiting Cold Call

From: Chadd Balbi (edited)

If a corporate recruiter is looking for someone very niche or has a high volume of positions to fill, she will call a 3rd party recruiter even if she would prefer not to.

But who she gonna call? The agency that has built a relationship with the company and understands their hiring needs.

You need to be talking about this stuff on every call you make.
If you are just asking to be kept in mind you are going to be left behind.

Why would they use an agency?
What do they look for in an agency?

When was the last time they used an agency?

What kind of candidates do they typically hire?

Is their business cyclical?
Is their current time to fill a problem?

How do they identify candidates?
What is the impact of an open position?

What are the current positions that are more difficult to fill?
Would they benefit from having access to your network?

 

A Bad Interview With Microsoft

From: Amin Ariani

I interviewed once with Microsoft right after graduation. My interview was scheduled with a guy on campus right at 12:00.

When I entered the room, completely prepared to code, he frowned and said "They scheduled someone on my lunch time?!"

Needless to say I completely lost my confidence and messed up the rest of the interview. He didn't even look up at me while asking questions.

 

Jeff Newman: How I Source

From: Jeff Newman (edited)

One of my favorite sourcing techniques is the targeted e-mail.   Let me walk you thru a campaign:

Step 1: Use an X-Ray Search to target a person.

Here’s one I use on GitHub. site:github.com (“front end” | Javascript) “joined on” “public activity” “San Francisco” -tab.activity

Step 2: Look them up on LinkedIn

Step 3: Communicate via social media

Comment on their blog. Tweet at them, Facebook friend them, find them on Quora, About.me --- reach them wherever there might be some non-professional info about the person.

Step 4: Send an e-mail that’s personal, funny, attention getting, original.

 

How serious is the candidate about moving?

From:  Camille Ricketts (edited)

Always ask, 'What are the chances you're going to be at your current employer a year from today?'

This question is so open-ended, you tend to get an authentic perspective on how they see their job right now.

 

Corporate Recruiting Should Be More Like Marketing

From: Daniel Chait (edited)

When you look at people in marketing, you see that they experiment.

They buy a bunch adwords. They bid on them down to the penny.  They track results and double down on the ones that are working.

You A/B test your headlines. You get hubspot to test your landing pages and see which ones convert.

You experiment and then the things that work you do more of.

But when is the last time you heard of someone A/B testing a campaign for a job ad? Or measuring their agencies or their referral programs?

We want to bring more of that automated marketing mentality to recruiting.

 

 

Frank Questions About Compensation

From: Camille Ricketts (edited)

Ask the candidate if she is considering any other companies.  If so, what kind of packages is she looking at?

It may seem like most people wouldn't volunteer that information but over 85% of candidates wind up giving those specifics.

Young people in particular will have the natural reaction not to tell you but you can talk them through it.

Make it clear that this data helps you and the company better understand your market. People are naturally inclined to be helpful.

This is also the best source of market data you could ask for — it's timely and comes directly from someone you know you want to hire.

It's extremely valuable to have these numbers. You might as well give it a shot.

 

Don't hire mediocre people, says Patty McCord

From: Patty McCord

One day I was talking with one of our best engineers. Before the layoffs, he’d managed three engineers, but now he was a one-man department working very long hours.

I told John I hoped to hire some help for him soon. His response surprised me. “There’s no rush—I’m happier now,” he said. It turned out that the engineers we’d laid off weren’t spectacular—they were merely adequate.

John realized that he’d spent too much time riding herd on them and fixing their mistakes. “I’ve learned that I’d rather work by myself than with subpar performers,” he said.

The best thing you can do for employees is hire only “A” players to work alongside them. Excellent colleagues trump everything else.

 

Culture: What they do vs What they say

From: Patty McCord  (edited)

I asked the CEO what the most important value for his company was. "Efficiency," he replied.

“OK,” I said. “Imagine that I work here, and it’s 2:58 PM. I’m playing an intense game of pool, and I’m winning. I estimate that I can finish the game in five minutes. We have a meeting at 3:00. Should I stay and win the game or cut it short for the meeting?”

“You should finish the game,” he insisted. I wasn’t surprised; like many tech start-ups, this was a casual place, where employees wore hoodies and brought pets to work, and that kind of casualness often extends to punctuality.

“Wait a second,” I said. “You told me that efficiency is your most important cultural value. It’s not efficient to keep coworkers waiting because of a pool game. Isn’t there a mismatch between the values you’re talking up and the behaviors you’re encouraging?”

It’s a particular problem at start-ups, where there’s a premium on casualness that can run counter to the high-performance ethos leaders want to create.

I often sit in on company meetings to get a sense of how people operate. I frequently see CEOs who are clearly winging it. They’re working from slides that were obviously put together an hour before.

 

Skills Trump Attitude Says Patty McCord

From: Patty McCord

Laura, our bookkeeper, was bright, hardworking, and creative. She’d been very important to our early growth, having devised a system for accurately tracking movie rentals so that we could pay the correct royalties.

But now, as a public company, we needed CPAs and other fully credentialed, deeply experienced accounting professionals—and Laura had only an associate’s degree from a community college.

Despite her work ethic, her track record, and the fact that we all really liked her, her skills were no longer adequate.

Laura reacted well: She was sad to be leaving but recognized that the generous severance package we were giving her would let her regroup, retrain, and find a new career path.

If we wanted only “A” players on our team, we had to be willing to let go of people whose skills no longer fit, no matter how valuable their contributions had once been.

Out of fairness to such people—and to help us overcome our discomfort with discharging them—we learned to offer rich severance packages.