It’s entirely possible you heard the news. Possible. Certainly, if you work in the recruiting industry, it’s definitely possible. Maybe even highly so.
Anyways: Randstad (big giant Dutch recruitment process outsourcing company) bought (former) big giant US job board company Monster.
Which is interesting.
This acquisition may benefit Randstad – the integrations are going to be fascinating – and there’s nothing wrong with that. If they really keep the Monster brand intact, it’s going to be tough long-term (and I don’t see them doing that). So, if it’s not to create an entire separate product company, and it’s me at Randstad, I’m doing this for a simple reason.
Growth, through (a modest) diversification.
The RPOs have had several years of growth in the EU and Asia-Pac, but were more stagnant in the States and Latin America. They’ll likely slow in the EU (political and economic instability may hinder job growth), but continue to scale in Asia-Pac, as hiring by scale vs quality is still more the need for many of the larger manufacturers. The larger RPOs have been retooling internal processes lately, seeking innovations in models, technology, offerings, etc. On the technology side alone, many, if not all, of them are dealing with legacy contracts from clients, have to work with disparate ATS’s due to their client base, often don’t do CRM internally, etc. Because of this, they don’t have the ability to get a strong handle on source tracking, SEO, etc etc, because their data is in multiple places.
Ranstad’s move makes sense, in this context. If they want to rip out a number of internal, hodgepodge systems, and replace them with something new, unified, and efficient (not to mention being able to provide this suite, at a cost, as a service to clients), then they have two options: build from the ground up, or buy an existing stack and adapt it.
Here’s why I think it adds up. First, Randstad is buying a stack that has some tested technology across most of the recruitment cycle. I say most of, for a reason. There are a couple important gaps.
Roughly, define the recruitment process as starting with “we need to hire someone” to end with “they started”. It’s everything in that gap. Monster’s tools hit at pieces of that process (sometimes over and over) – they’ve got workforce planning tools to get the job opened, advertising and research tools to find people, a CRM to keep track of leads, a career site hosting product for you, and an applicant tracking system (ATS) so you can track people as they apply and move through your process. The issue is… not all of it works well, or necessarily together. There are still issues with integration across the tools. The CRM is a challenge, to say the least. And – strangely – the ATS and career site hosting offerings aren’t even Monster-owned products.
That’s right: two of, one could easily argue, the most important parts of the overall hiring process, are not Monster. They’re HRSmart, owned by . HRSmart no longer works very well (source tracking is minimal-to-nothing, career site occasionally goes offline for hours – sometimes an entire day, etc). We’ve been urging Monster to work on the issues, but… well, not their product. And the products owners are Deltek, which is simply a private equity backed acquisition play that is not investing in development. So they’re not gonna fix it.
I see a possible future. If Randstad completes their acquisition, they’ll have some holes to fill in the offering stack. Notably, ATS and career site. Randstad invests in recruitment technology, and there’s an opinion out there that it’s simply as a way to test and potentially acquire technology firms. One of their investments is a platform called gr8people: a career-site product, ats, and CRM all in one.
Again, if I’m doing strategy at Randstad, I’m sliding those products into the stack, and shoving HRSmart out. Heck, I’m looking at my entire portfolio, and saying “can we really step up, and offer a working ERP that focuses purely on TA? It makes sense, right? You get your own internal ERP running, since it can track the vast majority of your product cycle; can offer a full stack to your clients; and get all that anonymized data in one spot, finally, where you can begin to build data models.
Here’s the rub for you, the HRSmart user: this doesn’t happen tomorrow. You’re still stuck with a platform that’s frustrating, and not going to get any better due to the integration. You may get access to the Randstad stack at some point, but it’s going to come with costs (higher fees, unlikely you’ll be able to just buy career site hosting & ATS, pressure to go RPO).
If it’s me, and now I’m just me, the guy who used to run Talent Acquisition at a few places, and thinks about this stuff way too much, I’m going to want to hear about options if I’m an HRSmart customer. Heck, I may just want to hear about options because I don’t like my current platform. If only for safety, to make sure what I’m doing makes sense (there are a loooot of options out there right now).
Can I Help?
Since I’ve been there, and feel your pain, I’d love to make an offer (paying it forward, since I’ve been given similar help in my time).
Call me. Well, or e-mail me for times, and we’ll set something up. A half-hour chat, about where you’re at, and what are your options. I’ll pontificate, probably, but mostly there will be good advice, and probably some laughs. A shared war story. Or two.
Here’s the info: Phone: 617-488-9444
E-mail: martin@hireclix.com
So, first off: let me say that working at HireClix is like working with a bunch of people you love, all of whom just want to make recruitment marketing better.
Wait: it’s not like that. It is that.
Recruitment marketing thunder-buddies for life.
Thing is, we decided it was time to start talking more publicly about the new group we’re setting up. We’re gearing it around the idea of being a Sherpa for our talent acquisition clients, helping them find the top of whatever mountain they’re climbing, silent partners who know the best paths, and tools, to help them succeed. We’re playing with names for the new group (Sherpa is in the lead, but Recruity McRuitface, and Tequilla Cobra are strong contenders – that may tell you a bit about our culture, too: very boring, and buttoned up…).
We’ll offer a number of service, and more to come.
The Strategic Consulting Services will include…
Talent Acquisition Architecture & Design
Recruiting Systems Review and Selection
Recruiting Process Transformation
Applicant Tracking System Audit & Optimization
Recruitment Marketing Audit & Assessment
Customized Strategic Services
Meantime, we just issued a press release. I’m blatantly using my blog’s SEO to give it additional life. I’d be thrilled if you shared it around. And, if you happen to work for, say the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, or – heck – the National Enquirer, feel free to republish (btw, if you’re with the latter publication, yes, that was Elvis, and no, Bigfoot was not drunk at my New Years Party – that was the Yeti, because: sherpas).
…a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum. Wait… hang on, scroll past the picture.
Right then. The thing is, I’m in recruiting, and I get to conferences. A few weeks ago, at the Indeed Interactive conference, Jessica Miller-Merrell, and I got to talking at the bar, as people do. We were talking about all sorts of stuff (as people do). Our backgrounds came up – how we got to be where we are in our careers at that point in time. As I was talking about things, she said “You know, I don’t think a lot of people know how deep your background in the industry goes – you need to fix that. You should definitely write about it.”
I said I would. But I didn’t mean it. Or at least I didn’t think I did. I’ve made the same promise before, about writing in general – Jeff Newman is probably pissed about it, in his affable way. My college advisor gave up years ago.
I suspect my mom has given up, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. And that’s a two-way street, Mother!
(This guy hasn’t given up. But he’s a hopeless romantic.)
ANY-who. Then, this thread showed up on Facebook. I’d link to it, but you may not be able to read it. Here’s a screen grab, just to give a sense:
There were many sincere responses. People opened up about loving to help people. About bringing real change to an industry that has a bad (and, frankly, oft deserved) bad reputation. Improving the candidate experience. Changing lives. Changing how business is done.
And I, one of the industries awkward court jesters (there’s always at least one), wrote this:
I mean, it was kinda true.
But I felt bad. Flip, flippant, too cool for school.
Plus I’d promised to write about it.
AND, legitimate work reason: I need to sell my skills now. Because I am now a Consultant. That’s right: capital. Freaking. C. Baby. At a real company – a cool one, at that.
So… here it is: the story of RecruiterMoe (erm, that’s me – by way of starters: Moe was a childhood nickname from my godmother, I am a recruiter, and that Twitter handle happened be very available for some shocking reason…). Not the whole damn thing, mind you – I aim to leave a little mystery. So just the first chapters fleshed out, how I went from “Shit. I majored in writing poetry??” To somehow becoming someone who knows things people are willing to pay to gain access to. Holder of secrets and pathfinder of sorts. I’ll close with a sales pitch. Because: Consultant.
A genuine industry sherpa. Who woulda thunk?
Chapter 1: Zero Dark Recruity
College was interesting. Tucked away in the far far north of the States. Lots of characters, time spent in the deep woods. Then wrapping up in London and Europe. I bumbled around for a few years – argued with Franciscan monks about God. Moved to the South for a girl. Ran a bookstore. Things got Tennessee Williams level complex in my love life. Ran my ass back up to the North in a GTI that was a souped up and way too fast… I loved that car.
Tried my hand at publishing. The GTI and I parted ways at some point. Blown clutch, and trying to fund a business booking rock and hip hop acts around Boston made for a hard choice. Possible I should have chosen the car, possible not. Got to hang with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Perry Farrell, and this guy who called himself Moby. Almost got into a fist fight with the lead singer from the Lemonheads. Fun times, but bills to pay…
So… soon, I’m looking for a job. I have a stutter & talk way way way too fast.
I went looking. In the newspaper. That’s right: I. Am. Old. Monster was just emerging from under a router in an HR companies server room (I am not making that up) at that point. Newspapers had all the jobs.
I found an ad. It did make me laugh. And I found CPS – this client focused, ethical, old-school recruiting agency. Decided to use the word fiduciary in round 2 of my interviews, just to see if I could, because I thought it was funny.
They made me an offer. I think it was because the branch director was an obsessive reader of great books, and hated TV. We got to talking about books in the interview.
About that speech impediment? Making a living at full commission, on the phone (so: voice only) made a ton of sense.
Seriously: I wanted to force myself to talk slower. Fear of not eating, and being evicted, seemed like decent motivators to me at the time. Plus if I did it right: money. I was sick of eating ramen noodles, and praying I didn’t get sick, since, hey who needs health insurance, amiright? (Thanks for not being President yet, Obama… could have used your help). Over the next 5 years, I was trained in a few things:
Service, to clients and to candidates, is a granted privilege (that’s the company motto)
Screw that up, by being dishonest or cutting corners, and you’re don’t deserve to be a recruiter
I thought that was how all recruiters felt (I was, sadly, very wrong)
Mistakes happen – just own them when they do
Money isn’t the most important thing, but it helps pay bills – just don’t make it everything
Talk slower… No, Martin: slower
I had a girlfriend who hated how I talked to her when I was on the phone from work “You talk so normal.”
I knew I’d won something at that point
I also convinced them that using e-mail was okay. And that the Internet, and e-commerce companies, were okay to do business with.
Chapter 2: Internet and Ecommerce Companies Are Not Always Good to Do Business With (Or: what they hell is that sound? It sounds like something popped… like a million VC-backed companies crying out in anguish all at once, and then… nothing)
2001-2005 quite literally sucked at a business level. On a personal level, I got married and became a dad. Took a lot of the suckage out of things, and replaced it with this blissful exhaustion. My wife was generally freaked out at the roller coaster a full commission recruiter’s income becomes when the economy is in free-fall. I left CPS and took an outside sales job selling agendas and 7-Habits curriculum to school districts that were watching their budgets get slashed every minute. Managed to increase the territories sales – I am not sure how I did this. I drove a fantastic old brown Legacy wagon named Midge.
One day, I saw my future, and… no.
Chapter 3: Once More, Into the Breach
I missed the hell out of recruiting. I’d been so good at it. It was fun, I got to meet new people, learn about all kinds of businesses, and I could support a family. Decided to go back in.
I wanted to try out corporate – no idea why, aside from a vague feeling that being a hired gun gets tiring. And I was curious. On the agency side of the world, corporate recruitment gets ridiculed. I wanted to find out if all the snide comments were true.
But then I got to thinking that there was no company in the world that would hire me into corporate, with the economy still shaky, what with me having been out of the game for a few years. So I went and talked to a bunch of agencies, found one that seemed promising, and took a desk.
I didn’t like it. The thing at CPS was all about ethics and service. That we checked references thoroughly on candidates before submitting them, verified college degrees, all of it. If we found out something bad, we did not submit them. Period. We could call and talk through the issue with the client, if the candidate had a strong enough background and whatever we’d uncovered seemed potentially reasonable, but it was never to be done as a sell. Our job was to protect our clients, not make money and run. And that went to candidates, too – bad clients who didn’t treat their people well were verboten. The idea was that behaving this way, paying it forward, would come back as a benefit – a long game. You’d hear from clients, as well as candidates, quite often “You people at CPS are just different from any other recruiters I’ve ever worked with – you seem like real people.”
It was naive of me to think that was the norm. Turns out, most agencies will tell their people: “If you find a bad reference, bury that shit and find a good one. Tell the candidate to never bring it up. Also, you found out they lied about their degree? Only submit them to clients you know don’t do degree verification. Get the placement.”
I really didn’t like it. I couldn’t do it, and decided to leave.
At the same time, I was reading this new (to me) site, called ERE. Lots of great info on recruiting, trends, etc etc. People who seemed to believe in recruiting as a calling. A way of doing good, while making a living. Cool stuff. One day, while reading it, I saw an ad for a company called ZoomInfo. I liked their tech, and got a demo. I was also in the habit (still am) of checking out interesting companies for fun. I’d recently written Big Ass Fans a fan letter (yeah, pun intended), and gotten a bag of swag as a thank you. I was thinking about doing the same with ZoomInfo, when I realized they were 1 goddam mile from my house.
1 mile. So, I went to their career site. They were looking for someone to run corporate recruiting! I’d never done that before. But, I figured, at one point I’d never ridden a bike. Or kissed a girl. There’s always a first time, right?
You know what I did? I wrote the Mother of all Cover Letters. It was beautiful. I wish I still had it (this was pre-Cloud, and it’s likely on a hard drive in some dusty corner). Bryan Burdick, who I suspect is a genius, was the new COO there. He loves good writing, and he appreciates a great cover letter.
He hired me. It was time for me to hang my guns up, and ride out of town.
Chapter 4: Goodbye Shane, and Hello Sheriff
To tell you the truth, Bryan’s brilliant. I also suspect he’s insane. He’d just hired a guy whose entire recruiting experience consisted of working on the agency side, recruiting actuaries and accountants, to build internal recruiting at a fast-growing internet start-up. Not only that, but the CEO had the classic engineering-CEO disdain of HR. So, it was up to our controller and me to be HR. Bear in mind: I’d only been in an HR department once, years earlier, and it was to get yelled at.
Have you met me? There is no way I should ride shot-gun on an HR department. I mean, when they told me they were thinking about doing sexual harassment training, I quipped “There’s a class for that? I thought that stuff just comes naturally to some people.”
We were hiring software engineers – and not just web-devs, but experts in natural language processing, AI-driven, big-data search. Before those skills were at least relatively common in the software community. In a location that was nowhere near Cambridge or Boston. In an office park in a remote corner of a suburb. The subway did not, and will never, go there. Hell, the nearest bus stop was blocks away. And they wanted shiny kids from MIT.
We were also hiring marketers. Sales reps. Product managers. Executives.
Oh, and, over 4 years, maybe 3 accountants.
Like the GTA sheriff above, I decided to get scrappy (no, I didn’t shoot anybody – thought about it, but didn’t go for it). Since I was a department of one, I needed to use tools, I figured, to increase my destructive power – err, reach. So, I decided an ATS was a good idea.
(Btw, day 1 on the job? Nobody was expecting me. My boss wasn’t in yet. My desk was covered in a layer of dust, the light didn’t work, and the IT guys – who I rapidly came to love – had no idea I was starting, so hadn’t set up my desktop yet. Also: I had a used desktop. Not a laptop.
One of the first things I created was an onboarding plan).
I knew jack-shit about corporate. About software. About, hell: Excel.
When the Director of Core Dev said “We need to create some reqs,” my first thought was “Wrecks? I know about getting wrecked. Maybe he wants to go binge drinking?”
Luckily I knew how to fake it, and figure it out fast. Plus – turns out, not knowing what I was doing was an advantage. I didn’t know any better. Figured what I was doing was normal.
So… I found an ATS. Shopped around, did bake-offs. In the end, Colin Kingsbury had a solid one called HRMDirect that fit our needs. So I learned how to implement an ATS. Which meant not sleeping for a while, but: learning experience. We were a startup, figured that’s how we did it.
There were a lot of reqs. That’s right: I’d figured out what the word meant (thanks you Google). Hell, I’d gone and created a req-approval process that included service-level-agreements with the hiring managers, all done paperless. So I was sourcing. Prepping candidates. Scheduling interviews. Checking references. Making offers. Assessing, and training, interviewers on interviewing. Created an offer letter doc and process. Full-boat recruiting.
And… I was doing content marketing. Without any clue, I was doing inbound marketing before HubSpot was even a blip. It wasn’t genius. It was just me assuming “This makes sense, this will make my life easier, I’m assuming everyone else is doing this because it makes sense. I have so many reqs. Holy shit I need more candidates! Whadda ya mean you want a weekly dashboard for the exec team – aaargh….” Finding a way to multiply myself mattered. I was encouraging our employees to blog (this was 2006 – blogging was this random new thing – I know, I know… amazing how quickly things age…) Getting their names out there, tied back into our career site. Creating thought leadership everywhere we could that candidates we wanted might see it. Set up a blog on my side, too – the one you’re reading.
It seemed pretty clear that a blog that was all just reposted jobs would be.. boring. Like a radio station that was all ads – not content. So I decided to make mine about career advice, with the occasional post about ZoomInfo (like, every 5 or 6). I found a widget that could pull in freshly published jobs into a sidebar on the blog, from our carer site.
We set up an employee referral program, and worked with Marketing to create buzz (proud to say that at its peak, we were over 60% employee referrals).
Oh: and the career site got rebuilt. That was fun. Learned about A/B testing. Site maps. Created a voice for our employment brand in the process. It doesn’t look the same anymore – I still think mine was better.
Rock Stars: that may be my fault. Not sure. All I know is, I was up one night, late, and needed a generic description. I didn’t want to miss great people once I’d pulled them into the site, just because they didn’t see an opening. So… I was watching the show 6 Feet Under. One of the characters called the other “You’re such a rock star!”
It seemed cool at the time. Different. I wrote a description called “General Rock Stars”. It got blogged a bunch as a great example of how to do a job description. Next thing I knew…
Look: I never called anyone a ninja. Or guru. But, rock stars is something I caused, or at least helped accelerate: mea culpe. I just liked the line in the show…
Along the years, I kept trying on hats: designed & project managed a physical expansion of our headquarters; stepped into product marketing when we laid off our recruitment product marketing team; did some of the aforementioned HR stuff; worked a booth at conferences with our sales team; gave some talks to recruiting teams, helping schlep our products. Wrote copy (I’m fond of the summary I wrote here). It kind of goes on from there…
End of the day, I took an offer for a package, when the company shrank in 2010 – and it was perfect timing. I’d done a ton. Learned a lot. Had fun, got tired, did it again. But it was time.
Chapter 5: And This is Where I Start to Leave You
Look, you’re read a lot. If you’re still here (hi Mom). So thanks. I promise this starts to wind down.
After ZoomInfo, I kept going. Started my own business – Talent MatchUp – helping with talent products, career site design, branding, sourcer training.
Realized I was faking it. Went to Paris. Did a bunch of thinking on bridges.
Paris was fun. And it gave me time to think about consulting. I knew I enjoyed it, and that I had information, and leadership, to offer, but that I wasn’t fully baked yet.
Chapter 6: PreBirth of the Cool Consultant
Here’s some advice: If you’re hiring a consultant, make sure they’ve actually done your job (or something equivalent) before. If they haven’t led TA, built a department, hired & fired… if they haven’t implemented an ATS that they then had to live with, haven’t built and run processes that – you guessed it – they had to live with… how can they help you do that? Consultants who haven’t taken arrows, spears, and blows to the head as a result of their decisions cannot help you avoid those types of injuries. They lack the nuanced information that comes with doing the job. That’s what I realized in Paris.
To get to that point, where I could feel legitimate in my advising, I focused my company on being a mini-RPO for one major client, who I could get to know well, and advise, and prepped myself to go back inside. Joined, and then as head of global TA scaled a company from under 100 employees to close to 450, helped lead their international expansion, lived part time abroad, built teams & managed them. Then went to PwC. Learned about massive corporate, about matrixed environments. About OFCCP compliance – and what it’s like to live in that environment, and the subtle ways to work there. Helped them transform their recruitment technologies.
I built skills, in other words. Because, I wanted to be able to give advice that came from actual experience. Advice that would help, and create value – because as I’d learned several chapters back, that’s the long-game. Not spending 6 months at a client, hand them a deck with high-level buzzwords and bill them 6-figures (that happens, and people let it happen).
Chapter 7: C for Consultant (or: Bring the Noise, Bring the Pitch)
We’re building something bold. Funky. Fresh. The team here is brilliant – I’ve used them as a vendor in the past, and the contrast with the TMP’s of the world is shocking. Service matters to me, as does expertise – if that’s not clear already. This team lives and breaths those attributes. They’ve built on that, and the client list is scaling rapidly – Fortune firms are moving over, and others are trying to end contracts to do the same. They know how to help companies improve recruiting technology efficiences, are service consultants for some of the leading ATS & CRM platforms, build creative, etc. It’s a solid offering. With my joining, we’re setting up a service that will provide practitioners with real world advice and guidance around talent acquisition, particularly technology. How to gauge its effectiveness. How to untangle the spaghetti mess of legacy systems. What tools to invest in towards the future, and what the future looks like. How to get their purchases approved.
Need to write an RFP? We’ve got real-world experience there. Want to do a pilot, and measure it? Done that over and over. Need a perspective on why you didn’t select the tool the Managing Director’s wife’s cousin built that “He’s sure we’ll want to use – oh, and he told me that he’s in talks with all of our competitors”. Lived that, can help you be ready with docs, decks, whatever you need for air cover. Heck, you can even make us the scapegoat – that’s our job. We will help you look amazing.
So… yeah. This was supposed to be acres shorter. Became a bit of a ramble, wound up with a sales pitch (hey, I’m excited, okay?). You can reach me here: martin@hireclix.com
I’ll leave you with this. Complete non-sequitor, but he is America’s finest actor.
So, I was on Stack Overflow (I like it there). The keychain “feature” Apple offers drives me nuts from time to time (or, maybe it’s just the sketchy way Chrome saves passwords…), and I was looking for solutions. Came across a question on the topic, with a highly rated answer. The answerer, a guy named Amro, has a blog.
Long(ish) story short, he has a solid post from about a year ago, about how to hang onto your employees – particularly the tech talent that’s all the rage these days. Bunch of good thoughts, but the one that sticks with me is “Employees don’t want to feel like “resources.””
Bingo. I work with someone who refers to our colleagues as resources. I’ve never once heard them say “colleague”, “employee”, or even “human resource”. A cog in a factory, a robot welding a car, a cow in a freaking farm: are resources. People aren’t. People, btw, absolutely know who refers to them as resources – and, feel the same level of loyalty to that company as, say, that cog does to its factory.
Want to retain people? The bells & whistles, benefits and pay, matter, but they stop mattering the minute you try and turn those people into “resources”. Want to know how they feel? Here:
Cut. It. Out.
Seriously. Shocking that it’s still going on – and, my peers in the HR & Recruiting communities have a share of the blame. Fight the power, etc etc. Make sure you capture data on work-life balance both when you’re recruiting as well as during exit interviews. Tie that into why people are leaving your company, and add in how often it comes up as a pain-point when you’re talking to candidates. If you can reduce turnover by 10%, multiply that times your cost-per-hire, and you can make a pretty quick case to your colleagues about treating people like, well, people.
*Also – and as an aside – Amro’s a great example of why it pays to have some level of presence online, and in your field. He’s now thought highly of by a company in his space, that’s doing very cool things. This is how you maintain a career, people.
Just to follow up on my previous post, here’s the official job:
Senior Talent Acquisition Specialists – Mobiquity – Boston and NYC Offices
Are you interested in being a key part of a new recruiting department – one that’s focused on 21st Century recruiting? Inbound-marketing oriented, utilizing the most cutting edge tools available today, a team that will invent practices and approaches that will be emulated by other recruiters?
Want to change the world (of recruiting, at any rate)? Want to have fun while you’re at it, as part of a highly respected team that works for a company that gets how important recruiting is?
Then, what are you waiting for? Seriously: skip reading the rest of this if you understand how unique that all is, and apply. Now. Toot suite, and all of that. And (or), reach out to Martin Burns, Director of Talent Acquisition: www.linkedin.com/in/martinburns/
The idea is: you get it, too. You’re a recruiter, and you think that’s pretty darned cool. You’re proud of what you do. You want to be valued, given lots of room to experiment, and take pride in helping build a company. It’s what you do.
Recruiting for a services company is fascinating: the number of moving parts, dynamic nature of the business, and how important it is to hire the absolute best makes it a unique environment for recruitment. Layer in a start-up, rapidly scaling tech company on the cutting edge of the next wave of technology, and you’ve got a unique challenge. Mobiquity is a professional services firm working with the Global 2000 to create innovative mobile solutions and apps that drive business value. Combining strategy, user-experience design, app development and backend integration, Mobiquity delivers solutions that span the entire mobile ecosystem, driving business innovation and competitive advantage. The people are key – and, so is recruitment.
Here are some bullets….
Roles & responsibilities
Be awesome. Funny helps, too.
Create, and maintain, talent pools of appropriate candidates for a group of roles you’ll own – heavy on the tech side, but likely to include a mix of marketing, sales, G&A, etc
Treat your candidates like people – because, that’s what they are. Get back to them on time, be honest about their status, don’t overpromise.
Partner closely with hiring authorities, making sure you understand what they need, and keeping up active communication with them throughout the hiring process.
Create engaging recruitment-marketing, from job descriptions and live events, to campaigns that drive candidates to the company.
Research & source from unique corners – you’re not on Monster: you’re on GitHub & Stack Overflow.
Prescreen candidates: you find it a point of pride that when it’s time to make an offer, you know exactly what it will take to close the A-player you’re looking to bring onboard.
Gather input from subject matter experts across the company – you’re probably a sponge by nature. You find learning fantastic.
Set up related campaign workflow, tracking and alerts within the CRM and marketing automation systems
Track, analyze and communicate to stakeholders about candidates, the hiring market, and what it will take to keep a pipeline of A-level candidates engaged and – ultimately – hired.
Qualifications & experience
At least 3-5 years of experience in a fast-paced recruitment environment
Ideally, you’ve worked corporate and agency sides of the business
Experience working with an ATS – we use JobVite, but that’s not required, everything’s teachable
You like people – and, they tend to like you…
Solid writing skills – you have fun creating engaging copy and job descriptions
Did we mention a sense of humor?
Organizational skills help – but, not rigidity. You need to be comfortable with a bit of chaos. It’s spicy.
In putting together a job description/ ad for the talent acquisition professionals I’m looking for, I wound up writing a manifesto. Not sure it’s what I’ll run with, but I like it. Kind of a lot – thought it deserved life somewhere, and since I have this handy little platform available to me, I’m going to take advantage. Please, feel free to pass along, dissect, disavow, dissemble, diagnose… just, don’t duplicate (unless you’re willing to pin the blame on me). Never was a fan of copycats.
In any event: I’m building a team. It’s going to be fun. There’s loads of potential, a great platform, some interesting challenges, and support from the executive team. Don’t expect me to breathe down your neck, but do expect me to help you when you need it. I know I need people in Waltham (near Boston), Redwood City (that’d be near San Francisco), and I’ll probably need somebody in Gainesville.
Senior Talent Acquisition Consultant
Ever want to be part of building something extraordinary? Now’s your chance.
Why Join Mobiquity? Why Now? Because it’s Your Best Move, and Now is When it’s Available
There’s a reason why thought-leaders like Andrew Hiser, the pioneer of human-centered software design, have joined Mobiquity. It’s because they see the future becoming the present: Mobile changing everything.
It’s the 5th Wave. The world in your pocket. Applications that tell doctors how well your medication is working as it passes through your body, to ones that alert a restaurant that you’ve pulled into their lot and are ready for you to walk their take-out to them.
Apps that help drug addicts recover, and apps that will help you retire wealthy.
We’re not talking about flinging birds at pigs anymore (fun as that is). We’re talking about changing how people behave, how business gets done, and how we will shape the future.
Mobiquity is at the leading edge of the wave. Positioned to define the future of mobile, a name that will become as familiar to the world as the names of the biggest successes out of the Internet wave.
Talent Acquisition Makes it All Possible
Without solid talent, organizations stagnate and fade away. Without the greatest talent, organizations can’t surge, can’t become the key leaders in their space. Our job is to make sure that happens. We seek real recruiters. Budding talent acquisition thought leaders. We get the big It: that it’s always about the people. That A players hire A players, while B’s hire C’s, C’s hire D’s, and well… then you get to F. Failure.
Our role is to find the A’s, engage with them, excite them, and help them through the hiring process. We’re matchmakers to the Nth degree, but we’re also business people. We use marketing, social media, talent pools, innovative sourcing & research, and a degree of sales skills to attract the very best. We never cut corners, we don’t lie, harass, or avoid hard truths: we are the A-players of recruitment.
We Are Looking for You
Join us, if you see recruitment as much of a calling as a profession – if it’s your passion, as much as your paycheck. We’re going to blow some things up. You should find that exciting. You should feel process is a tool best used lightly. You should be funny. Funny matters, in this role and in life.
If you’re sitting there, thinking “holy crap – I’ve been looking for this!”, you have the next step in your journey to greatness: Find our Talent Acquisition leader, Martin Burns (you can use your mad Boolean to do that right now, or just scroll down a bit). He’s looking for people want you to share some new skills, try new approaches and make some mistakes along the way, and to grow into leaders in our game-changing, rapidly evolving profession. His goal is to make sure you get the opportunity to do all of that.
Make the Best Move – Join Mobiquity
You can find Martin all sorts of places: mburns@mobiquity.com. 617.851.7277. twitter. linkedin. facebook. etc, etc…. You’re in the game. You get it.
Funny, how life goes. A few weeks ago, I was buzzing along, running Talent MatchUp & working with a great client called Magenic. I’d been working onsite with them for a little over two years, and it was great. Smart people to work with, a nifty little model that I think may be a significant part of how we do recruitment in the future, and I’d become friends with many of the people there.
All that said… something was missing.
That’s not unusual, of course. You spend a few years doing the same thing, and you can start to feel a bit stale. The work had become fairly routine, I was in a pattern, and… I hate that. I’m not someone who’s good at rinse-cycle-repeat, and that’s where I’d gotten myself. Not that the work didn’t have its fun challenges, but still. I wanted something harder.
Like many entrepreneurs, I don’t know how to say “ahh, this is good – don’t mess it up.” On the contrary. I honestly think I exist to mess things up. A little bit of chaos, of weird, seems to suit me. It’s probably why the Absurdists have always resonated with me. Why I felt so at home the first time I stepped into the ICA. Why I find comfort in The Fairy Fellers Master Stroke.
Safety isn’t exactly in my power alley.
So. Last Tuesday, like I do from time to time (and, you should, too), I reached out to my network. Said something along the lines of “I’m sure you haven’t, but if you’ve heard of my dream job being open, could you let me know?”
See, here’s the thing: sometimes, when you speak into the Void? The Void also speaks back to you.
In this case, it was my friend Steven. He’d heard of something. Something that was Really Cool. Perfect. Insanely great. So, like I’m always telling people they should do, I took the resume I routinely update (you should, too), and shot it to him. He made an intro to their insanely great Chief People Officer. We had coffee. She’s insanely great.
So’s the team that she lined up to meet me on Monday. They’re really great. Winning dream-time kind of people. A smart idea, and first to market. Profitable in their first year. An inspirational founder who has multiple successes under his belt. Big goals, and smart plans on how to achieve them. I really wanted in.
So… yeah. It happened. The big IT. Susan (the Chief People Officer – did I mention, insanely awesome?) asked me to come onboard, and build their recruiting department. I think I hesitated for…. no. Nope, didn’t hesitate. Couldn’t. Took the job.
So, in my rambling way, I’m very (very) happy to announce that I will be joining Mobiquity later this month, as their Director of Talent Acquisition. I’ll be rolling up Talent MatchUp in the meantime, since Mobiquity is going to be scaling hugely, and will need all of my focus (along with the recruitment team I’ll be building). It also means that Magenic will be looking for an experienced talent acquisition specialist for Waltham (know a good one? send ’em my way, and I’ll treat ’em right).
Mobiquity is going to be big. They’re a year out of the gate, and already a leader in the mobile space – and, with IT directors now saying that mobile spending will be growing by 50% in 2013, that’s a good place to be. The executive team is impressive. Well planned expansion underway. They’re – wait, _we’re_ going to be hiring. A lot.
If you – or, someone you know – is looking to get in early with a game-changer, this is it. Find meanyway you can, and let me know who you (or they) are.
Short term (ie, yesterday, if possible), I’m looking to hire several experienced Sales Executives for New York and Philadelphia, as well as a Client Partner for New York. I’m going to have a lot more to share, soon (developers, developer, developers….G&A. Marketing. Recruiters…). Stay tuned.
Also: the career site needs some work. Which I find geekily exciting. Just bear with us for a brief bit.
Had an interesting experience a few weeks ago, around compensation and salary.
One of my clients, who I do a placement or two a year with (so, not my bread & butter, but consistent, and I like them), liked one of my candidates. One thing they look for is information on salary history. I’m ambivalent about this, personally. There are way too many variables (start-ups pay very little, hedge funds overpay, women and minorities are often discriminated against, the candidate may/ probably will lie, etc etc). Still, they’re the client, and I go along up to a point.
All that said, this candidate refused to play. When I pressed him for some comp info, he said flat-out “what they pay for the role they have, should be based on the work that _needs_ to be done, not the work I have _already_ done. As long as the quality of my prior work is sound, they should make me a fair offer based on that, and go from there.” Even when I went for a “Fine, I get that – at what point should they walk away from making an offer? When to I tell them they’d be insulting you? What’s your bottom, bottom line?”, he refused to budge. Wanted to see what they had to say.
So: bravo. I love it. He must be underpaid, and he’s trying to change that. This is a negotiation technique, that if you’re feeling confident that you can get an offer, is a decent approach. It takes some stones, and the ability to miss an opportunity if they don’t blink, but it can keep you from getting “tethered” if you’re underpaid at your current employer.
By tethered, I mean you get tied to a salary and can’t get much more than that. IE, you’re making $85k, and you know that’s low. You tell your prospective employer this. You don’t know it, but they can go as high as $110k for this role. But, by telling them $85k, they’re going to come in as close to this number as they can when they make the offer. They’ll factor in a bump, generally, and some might say “I want him/ her to come in excited, so we’ll make it a nice bump”, but don’t expect – at best – more than 10%, or $94k. They may even come in much lower, around $90k, with the expectation they’ll have to go up to $94k. You’re tethered to that $85k.
By not giving a number, if they want you, they have to assume the worst: that you were making close to their cap of $110k, and they have to come in around there to get you. They may still come in low, but you’re room to negotiate isn’t tied to your current salary. It’s tied to their imagination, and that’s what you want.
So. The faux pas. After all this, the client came back and said $105k”. They thought it was fair, based on the work they needed done, it was a par with the rest of the team who were doing similar work, and they’d bought some salary surveys and they were slightly above the regional average as it was.
His response? “But… that’s less than I’m making now”. I’ll admit, I almost screamed at him right then.
The take-away, for me, is know what your work is worth. If you’re making more than most, don’t hide that all the way through. You may want to soft-peddle it a bit, or wait til later in the process, because it can scare some people off, but don’t hide it completely – you’ll shoot yourself in the foot. On the reverse, if you’re woefully underpaid, know you can get more, and go for it, you might try asking to get paid what they think you’re worth, not what somebody else thought about you.
So, here’s a random message I just got from a recruiter with CyberCoders:
Hi Martin,
Have you filled the .NET Developer position? I have great candidates that I would like to send to you ASAP. It is FREE for you to review and even interview my candidates!
And, if I fill a position (any position) with your company in the next 90 days, I will GIVE YOU A FREE IPAD 3.0!
Oh, boy! A _free_ ipad. 3.0! Oh, wow! I’m just… so completely nonplussed.
Couple things our friend could have done here. First, check to see if I’m a corporate or agency recruiter. Granted, I’m a weird hybrid of the two, but still. There’s probably a better way than saying ‘your company’. Also, what “.NET Developer” position is she referring to? I don’t have one advertised. I’d love to talk with a few, of course, as I can generally help them find groovy new jobs, but I don’t have an open role posted. (Note to self: post some ads). What I’m hearing is the sound of a desperate agency recruiter, spamming people on LinkedIn. Which, I hope, isn’t effective.
Also, I’m still trying to figure out why CyberCoders thinks it’s a selling point that “It is FREE for you to review and even interview my candidates!” For those of you who aren’t in the business, it’s always free to interview an agency’s candidates, unless it’s a (somewhat rare, and almost always at the exec level) retained search. And, I’ve never heard of a retained search for a .NET Developer.
Final note to our pal: pry the exclamation mark off of your keyboard. Put it in the trash.
design, branding, sourcer training.
HireClix
Good to Know 