Candidate database: Keeping it healthy

In my last post on candidate databases "Review your candidate database", we talked about the Johari window and how candidates have a tendency to slip into a black hole and the database becomes non productive.

Here are a few pointers on countering this tendency and keeping the candidate database healthy

1. Strategize and Plan
First and foremost activity is to have clarity on what you want in your database and Why i.e. Identify the need for having a database. This will ensure that your database gives you ROI.
Pool your manpower forecasting to determine your need to identify current and future Candidate requirements
Perform a skill gap analysis to ascertain where your database is shallow and where it is effective

2. Identify info criticality
Parsing is a major pain when capturing candidate details and parsers will miss out on a lot of information. Manual entry of all the information is not feasible due to the time it takes. It is essential that you identify “MUST FILL” info and “GOOD TO FILL” info. The meaning of MUST FILL could change with each stage of the selection and screening process. Ideally by the time the candidate reaches the second round all the information should be captured

3. Assign responsibility
Break the task of updating candidate records. It will be too much for one person.
Candidate: Allow him to update his personal details, qualifications, work history. Give them a login.
Sourcer/recruiter: While qualifying the candidate for a job, the sourcer/recruiter can fill the candidate summary sheet, defining the candidate. Will make it easy to search candidates.
Interviewer: Skill Ratings in a predefined format. Will get appended to candidate summary sheet

4. Track and review
a. Periodic reviews: Periodically review the database for its relevance to current and prospective openings. A concentrated third party effort would be advisable.
b. Track deviations: Set candidate record quality standards within the system and flag deviations.

5. Engage and Involve
a. Make it interactive. Don’t just give a form to candidates for filling in. give them a system which is interactive. A system that can tell them the status of their application, jobs matching their profiles, Interview dates and venue. Some tips on guidance and counseling will be the extra mile
b. Respond: Never ever hide behind workload and not respond to a candidate. Always communicate. Use templates, if required but keep the candidate informed.

6. Keep it relevant
a. Rank/Rate: Systematically rating a candidate on a particular skill, job or domain is required if you want to keep the database relevant. Else, you will never know. If the candidate, sourcer/ recruiter and interviewer, play their roles this is possible assuming your database supports such ranking
b. Let go: your size of database is only as big as the number of relevant candidates you have in it. Remove candidates that are not relevant.

7. Keep it feasible
a. Automate: Without automation, it just won’t be feasable for you to keep your database healthy, no matter what your volume.
b. Recruiters mindset: Recruiter/Sourcer doesn’t like to fill forms or sheets. He is better of searching and speaking to candidates. Try to keep the data filling part to the minimal and tune the workflow of the system to the workflow of the recruiters. You will need their support to make the system work. Sell them the value of the database.
c. Search tool: Ensure that the system has a decent search tool, tuned towards the fields or data that your team is filling in.
d. Budget: There is a lot that can be done... And overdone. Ensure that you keep a tab on the cost and the ROI.

8. Ensure use
Use strategies to ensure usage
i. Make people aware:
ii. Establish and publish process
iii. Review use
iv. Enforce/Coerce

The most important aspect of keeping a database healthy is to continue using it…. If not in use, will not be useful!!

Links
Candidate Database System: A perspective?
Review your candidate database

Lifecycle of a candidate record in a database

If you don’t have a candidate database, you should have one quickly. If you have a database, you need to make the most of it. With the speed with which it can become decadent, you need to keep an eye on it all the time.

Candidates entering the system have got two status
• Application status
• Database Status

Application status: Refers to the status of the candidate against a particular job. Eg : Screening, LI, L2, Candidate Reject, Offer etc. Most of the times, this status will be updated and majority of candidate activity will be updated.
Database status: Refers to the status of the candidate within the overall database. It is the stage in the lifecycle of a candidate. Taken as a whole this essentially reflects the usefulness of the database and the responsiveness of the candidates

The Candidate Lifecycle

The Candidate Lifecycle stages
Cold stage: In this stage the candidate has either not been engaged or has become unresponsive for period of more than a year’s time. Most of the candidate records sourced by sourcers/recruiters would ideally enter the system in this stage. The dead log or unproductive candidate records should be weeded out from this stage as part of periodic cleansing

Warm stage: Advert responses coming directly into the system, candidates through career portals, referrals and vendor profiles would enter the system at this stage. These are interested candidates. They will remain in this stage till they become irresponsive, are not relevant to any current or near future requirement, irrespective of they being selected to move ahead for the requirement, they have been sourced for.

Hot stage: This stage candidates have been spoken to, are keen to be assessed for a specific requirement which currently exists within the system

Hold stage: In this stage the candidate is not to be contacted by the Sourcer/Recruiter. It could be due to certain escalations in terms of validity of record (time, manual flag), candidate debarred, no poach agreement…

The candidate record will fluctuate through these lfecycle stages. It is equally important to remove candidates, as it is to keep them updated.

Related Links
Candidate Database System: A perspective?
Review your candidate database

Linkedin Employee Referral engine- an ethical issue?

An employee referral engine from a big social network has finally landed.

Why a referral engine?

The most prominent challenge in employee referral is that mostly it will happen through chance encounters. Not many or in most case not any employee will proactively find friends or associates who fit the job opening. For an employee referral to happen following have to prudentially happen together

1) Know someone who is looking for a job
2) The job seeker says that he is looking out
3) The referee remembers that a matching job exists

Thence I call employee referrals as a result of chance encounters.
If something could eliminate the chance aspect of the encounter, the referral volume will multiply exponentially and as the LinkedIn tool puts it “turn all of your employees into powerful sourcing agents.”

Ethical challenge

No doubt it will be a big boost to sourcing, but there is a challenge, can call it a moral, or ethical challenge.

Employee Referrals are people referred and is it right to refer someone you don’t know well enough? Would you recommend someone for a job if you can’t vouch for him? Have we taken the willingness of the employee for granted? Is referral about getting more reliable and productive candidates, aloowing the employee to select his colleagues and other jazz about traditional referrals or is it just another sourcing channel.

One argument is that we are just tapping into the first level network of the candidate, but in today’s world of online networking, how well do we know our first level connections?

Would love to see how Linkedin deals with this issue and how the ground rules of employee referrals change

Related posts
Social Media Optimisation in recruitment- Employee referrals

Review your Candidate database

Having a massive pool of relevant candidates at hand is becoming critical and all recruiters/sourcers ideally work towards building this goldmine. I am sure you will agree

Lets look at this database as a system which has negative inertia and will have the tendency to deteriorate over time. what use is a candidate, who has not been contacted for more than 6 months?

To ensure that the database is healthy and appropriate and relevant continual and systemic interventions are required. The following model gives a perspective on how to look at your datbase and determine how your networks/companies candiate pool stands

Database system can be reviewed along the following parameters

Availability: Access to the relevant people
Searchability: Ease of retrieval by the relevant people
Relevance: value of the record to the relevant people.
Completeness: the amount of relevant information available
Credibility: The accuracy of info available. It will erode over time

The following illustration depicts how the candidate pool will get slotted in different stages depending on availability and searchability.





The candidate pool can be segregated in 4 parts depending on Availability and Searchability
1) Open: this part of the database is the most active and productive. It constitutes of candidate records that are publicly available to all relevant parties and easily searchable against a given requirement.
2) Hidden: This part is most of the time outside a Common database and limited to excel sheets, emails, notepads and social networks and accessible to an individual as his personal network. Nobody else is either aware or has access to this pool. There is a greater likelihood of these candidates to slip into the Black hole depending on how structured, searchable and relevant the record is to ongoing needs.
3) Blind: This part of the system is similar to the hidden part with the only exception that this is somebody else’s personal network and not accessible to the user. If the candidate record is not searchable for a relevant requirement due to incomplete or inaccurate data or lack of search capability, the record will fall under this category.
4) Blackhole: It is the natural tendency of a record to slip into the Black hole. A proactive process and approach needs to be in place to prevent this from happening. The Blackhole can’t be measured, but is essentially an inverse reflection of our ability to close candidates with respect to time.

Points to remember
A database should be continually tracked for candidates slipping away from Open stage and proactive and reactive steps taken.
You should never have all the candidates always in the Open stage. This indicates your pipeline is not healthy enough for future requirements, or the candidates are not relevant enough to be closed.
The Blind candidates are the easiest block to be moved to an Open Database. Success in moving this block will also indicate the level of user buy-in towards using the system
The Unknown candidates are your biggest risk. The fact that you don’t know them, gives your competition and advantage over you
The Hidden candidates are your treasure trove. They are candidates with whom ether is already an established relationship/contact. Mining them systematically will be the key to success.

Related Links
Candidate Database System: A perspective?
Lifecycle of a candidate record in a database

Social Media Optimisation in recruitment- Employee referrals

Internal Referrals

Internal Reference are considered to one of the most effective way to get a stable man power with a very good branding alongside. Most of the companies encourage IR by providing a good incentive schemes and a various promotions. However, it has been observed that, most of the employees tend to forget or loose the focus on any job posted as they are busy with their current day to day works.
Approach
1) A Job Roll will be created for the jobs in pipeline and all the employees will have a unique login for the same.
2) Employees can publish their respective job rolls on their social networks, sites, blogs etc.
3) Whenever any one applies through those job rolls, the respective employee would be entitle to IR schemes with a proper tracking system.
4) Any time employee can see their respective IR incentives and also the pipeline referrals generated though their job rolls.

External Referral tool
External Reference are also considered in some of the organization from their ex employees and even with some external sources. This is also done with a good reference scheme or some promotional events. The approach will same as for internal referrals. The only difference will be to add a payment solution (electronic/cheque) similar to google adwords, etc.

Recruitment technology at work

CV formatting
The client will be able to choose from an existing format or a customised format will be generated. Dataminers will enter the CV into a specified template and the system will automatically convert the given data into the desired client format

CV Parsing
Users will enter the CV in text format. The tool will automatically convert it into database fields and enter into the system

Quality system (QMS)
Critical incidents and profile parameters logged into the system. System will generate quality profiles of client in relation to their comfort level with company

Resource allocation system
One point of resource allocation to all individuals and reports on resource utilisation


Job board
Group of Niche Job boards with possibility of group subscriptions. Build a string of niche job boards, . Link it to a social networking site and feeds coming in from Vacancy tracker. Later link it to Salary benchmark, Training, Resume writing, video resumes and other potential services.

Passive Database
Database of contacts found using internet and telephone research. Can be sold along with CV search subscriptions on Job boards


Knowledge Library
Structure the resources and technical information in a database for easy retrieval

Email generation software
Use functions to derive potential emails and verify emails using email verifiers and mass mailing techniques


Social networks
Social networks including features like, forums, discussion,voting, blogs, videos, chat around specific industry sectors, jobs. To be tied with Job boards for jobs. Where we don’t have a job board, we tie it with Vacancy tracking feeds

Imagine, going to eBay to buy an RPO service!!

Process outsourcing has always had a transformational approach where parts of the process are outsourced, without disturbing the process itself. Traditionally offshore RPO solutions have been provided on an effort basis model i.e. per seat/per day.
To make solutions more competitive and beneficial to clients, IRPO is moving towards a Transactional, Product based approach, where they will invoice clients on Deliverables like (per name/per CV/prequalified contact... etc.)

How would companies benefit from such an approach?

The deliverables would be set up right from the beginning itself.
Client would pay for only that which you receive.
Workforce flexibility/scalability is guaranteed. Where previously you were utilizing one resource per day, now you can utilize any number of resources.
Spikes can be countered effectively.
Quicker turnaround time can be guaranteed.
Better bench utilization at vendors end.

Taking their SAAP (Service AS A Product) model to a new extreme IRPO is building an E commerce site where customers could buy CV’s, Interviews, vacancies etc using the portal.

Let’s see how it comes out...

Coresourcing

Linkedin Learning Centre

I am sure you must have noticed.... for those who haven't, have a look at Linkedin's "Learning Centre".

It gives a detailed review on all the features that Linkedin offers and how best to utilise them to your advantage.

This will help in looking at your Linkedin network differently at make it more effective.


Links
"Linkedin's Learning Centre".

Coresourcing

Your Next Hire: The Social Media Sourcing Specialist

Donald Breckenridge Jr talks about the information overload on recruiters in this digital age and a need of Social media Sourcing Specialist to counter it in his article " Your Next Hire: The Social Media Sourcing Specialist".

He mentions some basic and intuitive resources and tools to get started and talks about restructuring the current staffing firm model, where sourcing specialists will work hand-in-hand with recruiters to provide well-researched, qualified candidates based on a variety of resources – both online and offline. This allows the recruiter to focus on income-producing activities.

RPO firms like OS2i provide sourcing services which include both Job board and Passive Search.

Internet Passive Sourcers harness Social media and online databases to generate candidates.
Telephone names sourcers are on the Phone all the time getting past gatekeepers to generate candidates which may not be available on the net
Prequalifying/Prescreening experts will contact the canddiate to do the initial Prescreening
Recruiters can then take over the candidate and spent most of their time in closing deals or geerating new business

The beauty of this approach lies in the way the team functions. Its like a relay race. If they work together, give their best and pass on the baton properly, its a sure shot Winner



Link
Your Next Hire: The Social Media Sourcing Specialist
Donald Breckenridge

OS2i

Four Reruiting tools

Kevin wheeler in his post "Four required Recruiting tool" talks about the Famous Four recruiting tools.
1) MySpace/Facebook
2) Linkedin
3) Twitter and
4) Personal Blog

Mention of blogging as a tool, is the one that has made me think in a new direction

Links
Four required Recruiting tool: Article

Recruiting / Sourcing Via Twitter

Ritesh nair has posted a tip on using Twitter in his article Recruiting/Sourcing via twitter

Following is a list of Boolean operators that you can use

(Alternatively, you can use the advanced search form to automatically constuct your query.)

Operator	Finds tweets...
twitter search	containing both "twitter" and "search". This is the default operator.
"happy hour"	containing the exact phrase "happy hour".
obama OR hillary	containing either "obama" or "hillary" (or both).
beer -root	containing "beer" but not "root".
#haiku	containing the hashtag "haiku".
from:alexiskold	sent from person "alexiskold".
to:techcrunch	sent to person "techcrunch".
@mashable	referencing person "mashable".
"happy hour" near:"san francisco"	containing the exact phrase "happy hour" and sent near "san francisco".
near:NYC within:15mi	sent within 15 miles of "NYC".
superhero since:2008-05-01	containing "superhero" and sent since date "2008-05-01" (year-month-day).
ftw until:2008-05-03	containing "ftw" and sent up to date "2008-05-03".
movie -scary :)	containing "movie", but not "scary", and with a positive attitude.
flight :(	containing "flight" and with a negative attitude.
traffic ?	containing "traffic" and asking a question.
hilarious filter:links	containing "hilarious" and linking to URLs.

Links
Article
Twiiter search operators
Twitter Advanced search
Twitter Search tool
Searching twitter: helpful tools

CV Gadget: People search tool

CV gadget is a Cool tool to find out people across various databases and networks like linkedin, myspace, zoominfo, xing, ebo, facebook.

Use this tool essentially to find people across the net and verify information posted across networks. As any other names search tool it is not very useful if the person you are searching for has a common name. Its unability to search on location or any other criterion makes it tougher to search. Hopefully some day, we will have a "boolean search string" capability on it.

Links
CV gadget

Happy hunting
Core sourcing

Use of Mobile phones in recruitment

Effective Recruitment is all about relationships, be it with the clients or candidates. What could built better relationship than clear, precise and timely communication. New age Mobile phones or Smart Phones have provided us with an effective communication platform.

Dr Sullivan writes about how these Samrt phones provide a “single point of contact” allowing the use of every form of messaging in use today at any time during the day and from any location.

Read the article "The Mobile Phone: The Most Effective Recruiting Communications Platform" on ERE.

Links
Article

Streamlining online recruitment with technology

In his article on Express Computer Nivedan Prakash elaborates on how Online recruiters are now able to leverage the latest technological advancements to streamline the whole hiring process.
He has given an birds view on most of the technologies, incorporated in a usual recruitment process with exception of Passive Sourcing.
e.gSocial networking sites, passive search engines have been left

Overall an informative article. Happy reading!!

Links

The Article: Streamlining online Recruitment

Googlepedia

Googlepedia is a completely free Firefox extension written by James Hall.

To install, download the file to your computer, then drag into Firefox. Alternatively, you can download from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2517

Shows you a relevant Wikipedia article along with your search results. Clicking links in the article will trigger new Google searches, making it a very useful research tool.

Features

• Turns internal Wikipedia links into Google search links
• Uses Google's I'm Feeling Lucky(tm) feature to find relevant articles
• Links images directly to their full-sized versions
• Removes Google AdWords
• Can be expanded to take the full width of the page
• Uses your local language Wikipedia based on the Google language
• Hide button to disable Googlepedia
• NEW Firefox 3 support
• NEW Interface translated into 7 languages - Chinese, German, Japanese, Polish, Czech, Dutch and Portuguese.
  

Will add a review soon

Tools to find phone numbers

Jim stroud has filled up a desperately needed space talking about technology that helps Sourcers...

Find below a tremendous post on "50 ways to find a telephone number"

Thanks Jim:)
Coresourcing

Job board with mapping utility : Zubed

Jim Stroud has written an informative and careful article on Zubed Jobs : a job board with a mapping utility.

Employers and Job seekers can now get in touch with each other using location and skill search for Free.

Dont think that geograhical mapping will make any difference to the quality of resumes on the job board, it would definitely increase the ease of search.

Read the ERE article "Zubed Shows You the World and the Jobs"

Gmail enhances security feature

Gmail has introduced a new Security feature that will let you see how many computers your account is open on. It also allows you to sign-out remotely.

Read more about it on gmails official blog

Another thumbs up for google security after it recently moved its security policy on the homepage.