Employee Management for Small Business. Lin Grensing-Pophal

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СКАЧАТЬ out of hand. It’s not at all unlikely for a qualified person to make the rounds in person rather than submitting an application.

      Similarly, you should give due consideration to all résumés received when you are making hiring decisions. Give the same consideration to all applicants regardless of their source.

      3.9 Job hotlines

      If you frequently have positions open, it might be a good idea to set up a job hotline where potential applicants can call in to check on job openings. Establishing a hotline is simple and requires a minimal investment in terms of time and money. All you need is a telephone line tied to a recording of available positions. Beyond this you need only advertise the existence of the job hotline and make sure that you keep advertised positions up-to-date.

      3.10 The Internet

      The Internet (in particular social media) has dramatically changed the landscape when it comes to recruiting employees. More and more employers and hiring managers have turned away from classified advertising and even job sites like Monster.com in favor of other options, including the use of social media applications such as LinkedIn and Twitter for both active and passive recruitment.

      Only a few short years ago, most companies focused on the local newspaper — or, for some positions, regional or national trade journals as the best sources of job applicants. All that changed, though, when online recruiting became prevalent and companies began turning to the Internet to search for candidates, using their own websites as well as the many online job boards for recruiting. Today, these job sites proliferate, but they are finding themselves challenged by social media, a rapidly emerging opportunity that HR professionals and employers are turning to for recruitment.

      There are, no doubt, more people using the Internet than ever before. No longer frequented only by “college kids,” the Internet is now relied upon by a vast number of individuals, spanning every age and interest group imaginable. And, over the past 12–18 months, social media sites have virtually taken the world by storm — it’s difficult to open a paper, turn on the TV or talk to a friend or colleague without finding the word “Twitter.”

      The benefits of online recruiting are cost, convenience, and reach. More people can be reached more quickly and more cost effectively than through the more traditional classified ad route. Ads can be posted in “real time,” pulled, or changed at a moment’s notice. And, online recruiting can help to minimize administrative burdens for the Human Resources staff. Having job information online, readily accessible at any hour of the day or night, helps to cut down on calls to the HR departments asking about openings. HR departments can also automate their recruitment processes, downloading résumés received online into databases that can be accessed by managers and used to streamline tracking and response time.

      The “big boards” — like Monster.com —have fallen somewhat out of favor with recruiters, primarily because of the massive amounts of responses that are received, many not appropriate for the job advertised.

      But, there are other online options that can prove fruitful for companies large and small. First among these is your own website. Your website is a natural starting point for posting available jobs. In addition, your site offers you the opportunity to share information about your company, its benefits, its culture and philosophies, etc. In short, it is your opportunity to “sell” your company as a great place to work and to encourage interested people to submit an application. Many sites also offer the ability for job seekers to request updates when jobs for which they’re qualified become available. This can be a great way to stay in touch with candidates even when you don’t have any immediate openings.

      Beyond your own website, there are countless opportunities to share job postings through the websites of other related organizations — or sites that represent areas job seekers may be looking for certain types of positions. Trade associations, for instance, often list jobs that their members have available. When placing traditional print ads, many publications also now offer the opportunity for both print and online ad postings.

      Because much of the recruiting you do is likely to be locally oriented, consider local sites that may offer opportunities to list jobs, or to link to your website’s job listings — local newspapers, the Chamber of Commerce, and universities and technical colleges are just a few possibilities.

      When recruiting online, you need to have the same familiarity with the sites you’re using as you would with any technical or professional journal you advertise in. Who are the users of the site? What are their characteristics? How frequently is the site accessed? How widely does the site advertise?

      Don’t overlook the “little details” either, like telling potential applicants how to contact you. Do you want resumes sent to you as email attachments? In what format?

      Even when using your own site to post jobs — especially when using your own site to post jobs — simply including job listings on your site isn’t enough to generate response. You need to make sure that potential job seekers know that this information is available. That means promoting your site — consider the use of Rolodex cards or post-it notes with your web address and take advantage of other traditional print media (i.e., direct mail, notices on statements, etc.). Include your web address in all of your traditional job opening advertisements. Most importantly, make sure that your listings are up-to-date and that you’re responsive to the inquiries that you do receive.

      The tools you use should be driven by the audience you’re trying to reach and their personal habits. Classified ads in local papers still play a place for some companies in recruitment. However, it pays to stay on top of other options, especially those — like social media — that are no cost and which may prove useful in reaching new demographic segments, e.g., millennials.

      There is no question that there are a lot of places you can advertise open positions. The challenge, though, is to narrow down those possibilities to the few that will yield results. Even a free listing has costs associated with it — your time in particular. It pays to test the value of various online options. Keep track of where your applicants are coming from and where they’ve seen your ad, just as you would when using traditional recruiting methods.

      3.10a Social Media

      Social media and social networking are “all the rage” these days, of course. But beyond the purely “social” aspects of sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, does social media represent any legitimate business value? In the area of recruitment, it seems, it definitely does.

      Even in November of 2006, National Public Radio had a spot on its “morning edition” about social networking and its benefits from a recruiting stand point. Today, these sites are becoming increasingly relied upon by HR departments as a source of job candidates. In fact, three-quarters of hiring managers check LinkedIn to research the credentials of job candidates, according to a Jump Start Social Media (www.jumpstartsocialmedia.com) poll on how social media is being used in the hiring process. Of the hiring managers surveyed, 75 percent use LinkedIn, 48 percent use Facebook, and 26 percent use Twitter to research candidates before making a job offer. When sourcing job candidates, 66 percent of hiring managers visit LinkedIn, 23 percent visit Facebook, and 16 percent use Twitter to find job candidates to fill openings.

      Jobvite, a San Francisco-based provider of next-generation recruitment solutions, published the results of its second annual Social Recruitment Survey in 2009, which found that employers are more satisfied with the quality of candidates from employee referrals and social networks than those from job boards. As a result, companies intend to invest more in these cost-effective candidate sources in 2009, rather than job boards and other traditional СКАЧАТЬ