Category Archives: Recruiting

Facebook 2

By johnsumser | Published: January 4, 2008

(January 04, 2008) Research tool vs connection tool. That’s  the difference between Zoom Info and other social software services, I think. I’m learning a lot about Zoom. That makes my experiments with Facebook all the more interesting.Somewhere in my web reading yesterday, I noticed one of those quotes that gets me going. Roughly, “Experts say that 40% of your hiring should be through referral networks.” I’m not sure that I have any idea what that means. As usual, the experts went unnamed.

A network involves people who you can call to get things arranged. A network is a potentially collaborative web of connections and recommendations. A network is made of people with whom you have connection.

Facebook manages to give the feeling of intimacy and respect in a way that I have not seen in other online communities or social software toolsets. Somehow, the protocols of offline friendship are maintained and the feeling of closeness is fungible.

(I should note that my children are a little less than perfectly happy about my entre. I understand this to be a reflection of the dynamic I am trying to describe. Facebook manages to create a sense of home-iness. It cements networks with a feeling of immediacy.)

There are several interesting applications available to prospective employees. Steven Rothberg’s CollegeRecruiter.com has a number of applications including a search interface and a flow of the latest internships.

Ageneral search on the word “jobs” produces an enormous windfall of opportunity.

I am planning to get to know the Jobster application over the weekend.I

John Sumser. – © 2008 Two Color Hat, Inc. Santa Rosa, CA

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Thank You Notes

By johnsumser | Published: December 21, 2007
(December 21, 2007) There are a lot of people to thank for this past year. Starting and building the momentum of the Recruiting Roadshow took a lot of effort from a lot of people. Shifting from my comfortable home at interbiznet took support and energy. Bearing up under the new scrutiny at Recruiting.com took some patience and the muffling of two layers of duct tape.
A number of good friends fed me with a straws (through the tape) at the difficult times. It’s good to have and build friendship as a part of making a living. My work is colored by the people who nourish me with their stories about the recruiting world, their ideas about what it could be like and their hopes for bigger and better times.  
I’ve always been fortunate to have relationships with people who start companies. As an entrepreneur who thinks about strategy, it seems pretty normal to inhabit a world that mostly includes other leaders who build businesses for a living.
Over the years, I have seen a thousand good tricks for making things happen. This year, though, I may have been shown the ultimate trick. 
Steven Rothberg, you may know, is the hard working founder of CollegeRecruiter.com. Very, very few people in our industry work as hard or as persistently as Steven. Through sheer tenacity, he built CollegeRecruiter into the powerhouse it is today. Steven spoke at both the Dallas and Atlanta Recruiting Roadshows.
Somewhere along the line, Steven sent me a wonderful had written Thank You note. It was short, sweet and very thoughtful. I was astonished by the way it changed my perception.

As far as I can remember, it was the first time ever that I had received one. Writing thank you notes is part of the conventional wisdom about doing business. I assumed that it was theory from people with no experience until I got Steven’s note.

As you can see, I remember the note very clearly almost six months later.

Steven got me started. I’ve been following his lead and hand writing Thank You notes. What’s amazing is the effect it has on me.

Thank you, Steven.

John Sumser. – © 2007 Two Color Hat, Inc. Santa Rosa, CA

Also posted in All, Atlanta, Dallas, Friends, John Sumser, Minneapolis, Networking, Roadshow People, Steven Rothberg | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments closed

What We’re Learning

By johnsumser | Published: December 19, 2007

 (December 18, 2007) The Recruiting Roadshow dominated my attention during 2007. With highly successful events in Minneapolis, Atlanta and Dallas, there’s a ton of information to sift through as the model goes through a refining process. Here are the first half dozen of the emerging themes:

  • New Market: When asked, over 95% of Roadshow participants have never attended a national trade show like ERE, OnRec, Kennedy, IHRIM or HRTech. This is one of the most surprising findings. The regulars on the trade show circuit inhabit a closed universe. What’s actually happening in the trenches is other than you’d guess if you only follow the shows and the online stuff.
     
  • It’s Really Local: There are people working in the industry who are smarter, broader and more interesting than the standard crew of industry celebrities (myself included). They are working to solve Recruiting problems in their cities and towns and are only vaguely interested in national trends or generalizations. Local speakers generate much more enthusiasm and response than national speakers at local events.
     
  • Schwag is a Currency: One of my Recurring nightmares is that I am being chased by a Recruiter at a National Trade Show. She’s got a bag full of colorful giveaways (schwag). She wants me to stamp her bingo card so she can win the raffle. She wants my schwag but isn’t vaguely interested in learning more about me. People who have never been to a trade show value schwag differently. They think of it as a gift. It means more.
     
  • Local Leadership is Critical: Poor Paul DeBettignies. (His motto is “Blame no one. Expect nothing. Do something.”) The Roadshow he produced in Minneapolis (with lots of enthusiastic help) seems to be catching on. Independent of our efforts, the second Minneapolis event was executed flawlessly and very well received. This means more work for Paul. Building infrastructure is not a one shot deal. This will be an area of really big innovation in our 2008 schedule.
     
  • The Training Deficit is Killing Us: There simply is no broad based training available for the Recruiting Industry. There are, indeed, noble experiments and small institutions. The universe of working Recruiters (between 500,000 and 900,000) have extremely limited access to professional development. At the very minimum, 10% want more now. The Roadshow illuminates this need.
     
  • Cynicism is a Barrier to Entry: The timeshare sales mindset (fee vacation if you listen to an arm twisting pitch) sullies possibilities. Many participants were simply shocked to discover that there was no hard sell to be found. As word of mouth picks up, the reputation for a PBS style approach will gain traction quickly.

None of this means that trade shows are anything less than critical to the functioning of the industry. Sometimes, I have the feeling that I am holding a lit match in a massive cave. The question is how to reach a majority of the industry not whether one method is better than anothr. Roadshows and tradeshows are different things for different audiences.

John Sumser. – © 2007 Two Color Hat, Inc. Santa Rosa, CA

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