YourLeap, Taking the Work out of Recruiting

Monster takes a bite

2010-02-08T13:02:00.012-05:00

Monster and Careerbuilder have dominated the Job Board market for years. Dice has been a niche player and HotJobs has always been a smaller player. After Yahoo's acquisition, HotJobs has been considered an insignificant player. As a large buyer of all the Major Job boards for over a decade, I can personally attest to the fact that HotJobs was in no way a threat to Monster. If HotJobs was a threat at all, it was a threat to Yahoo's reputation.
The functionality and reach of HotJobs has not kept up with it's competitors. I found it interesting that Monster would buy HotJobs with unemployment hovering near 10%. Michael Dell once said that he likes to buy his competitors once customer at a time. Monster has been doing just that, they have been taking market share from HotJobs for years.
Monster would have been better served buying Indeed.com or LinkedIn, they would have added value and diversity to their portfolio. The purchase of HotJobs makes seems to make little sense in terms financially and in terms of market share unless Monster was trying to mask its bleak future earnings potential, thanks in part to Indeed and LinkedIn.

Business Development Manager

2010-01-22T14:18:00.000-05:00

Business Development Manager: "I am currently looking for a Business Development Manager in Philadelphia, PA. Let me know if this is a good fit for you, or let me know if you have a friend who is interested."

10 Job Hunting Tips for Recent College Graduates

2010-01-01T18:09:00.011-05:00

You're a recent college graduate, you're eager, you're hungry, but you're unemployed. Now what?

1.Make sure your resume is posted, or refreshed, on the to major job boards(Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs), school job boards, and association sites.
2. Make sure relevant key words, including courses are on your resume in the format that they would be searched. Employers use search tools to find candidates. If you don't have the keywords if the exact way they are searched your resume may not come up in the desired order.
3.Clean up your Facebook profile. There are tools like Xobni that allow employers to quickly view your Facebook profile. If you wouldn't like a perspective employer to see your spring break pictures or your Halloween costume, make those pictures private, or remove them completely.
4. Get on Facebook for adults: Linkedin.com. Create your professional profile and connect to as many friends and associates as possible.
5. Network, Network, Network. Getting your first job on your own is harder than ever. It's better to ask your parents and relatives for help finding a job, than to ask them for helping in paying your student loan.
6. Leverage. Use job board aggregators such as Indeed.com and create search agents on the job boards so you will be alerted immediately when a new job comes up.
7. Don't spend all day searching the internet, there is no end. Allocate a certain amount of time per week (8 hours max) to searching the internet. Spend time on to other tasks such as networking, job fairs and alumni events. Searching all day, everyday, wont create any new jobs for you.
8. Consider taking other courses or getting a higher degree. Filling in the gaps in your skill set will help make you more marketable.
9. Set reasonable expectations. Disappointment is a product of expectation, set reasonable expectations and expect that it will take longer than it has for graduates of previous years.
10. Be optimistic. Having a positive outlook not only relays well in an interview it keeps you energized and focused in your search.

Fred Dimyan is co-founder/CEO of YourLeap, Inc. Prior to YourLeap, Fred spent 17 years refining his skills and philosophy in technology staffing with several national companies. Fred has led staffing projects for several leading IT consulting firms, including Hall Kinion where he was Director of Recruiting. Fred also led recruiting projects at some of the most prominent employers in the nation, including Prudential Insurance, PepsiCo, and was a senior consultant at Gartner. Fred also served as a staffing advisor for Dice.com, the leading Information Technology job board.

Stock surge, higher than expected GDP, guess what's next?

2009-11-02T12:06:00.008-05:00

The recent surge in the stock market has been a phenomenal opportunity to invest. Those that had the foresight and the fortitude to get in when the market seemed darkest have been well rewarded. The employment market is a lagging indicator, but at some point will turn. Companies that invest in acquiring talent early will also be the best rewarded. Many companies are already taking advantage to the best opportunity in a lifetime to get top talent in a less competitive environment.
Like a friend who lends a hand when you're down, candidates will likely show more loyalty to companies that hires them when the market is down, that one that hires when the market is more competitive. Not only do companies gain access to a deeper pool, but companies are also able to negotiate more competitive salaries when the market is cooler. This further compounds the advantage for those who act first.
The stock market has already surged, the economy grew at a faster than expected 3.5% in the most recent quarter, prompting the fed to declare the recession over. Employment, a lagging indicator, is soon to follow. Companies that act quickly have a window of opportunity to get ahead of this curve.

Recruiting Opportunity Cost

2009-10-22T09:48:00.007-04:00

"Measure with a Micrometer, Mark with Chalk, Cut with an Axe"

Your company has made the difficult and possible risky decision of hiring. If you hire poorly, you're in deep water. If you hire a top performer, you're golden. There are few things more valuable to a business than finding top performers. This market offers the best opportunity most companies have to recruit top talent, EVER. Most companies will forgo this opportunity because their recruiting budgets are under a micrometer. They have to carefully chalk around where they will allocate their recruiting budget. What happens when the candidate pool comes up short? The cost of axing a bad hire, according to a recent ADP survey, is over $50,000.

Posting on one job board alone is often sufficient to get a pool of candidates. Sufficient does not cut it in this market. Companies can save money and further their business by maximizing their reach to candidates and hiring the very best person they can. To expand their reach, they need access to all the the major job boards, and have the time to filter through the massive amount of resumes they will receive. Fortunately there is a better solution, YourLeap.com gives its clients a cost and time effective way to access to all major job boards as well as over 300 niche job boards and give you access to over 150 million candidates.

YourLeap.com give you a cost effective option to take advantage of this rare, and possibly fleeting, opportunity to reach out to the most expansive candidate pool in recent history.

Candidate Spam

2009-10-21T13:35:00.013-04:00

The cost of sending a resume used to be the cost paper, an envelope and a stamp. Then it went down to paper and a fax. The cost of sending a resume is now nearly free. Less qualified candidates are now able to quickly and cheaply spam their resumes - getting in the way of more qualified candidates who are trying to catch the attention of hiring managers.
Making it costly to send a resume dramatically cuts down on resume spam. Testing is one of many solutions YourLeap had implemented to help companies find the best possible talent available. They have partnered with Kenexa to use of 300 assessments to test candidates. Testing helps two fold: it assess a candidates skills while helping to filter candidates.
Those who have posted an ad on a major job board can attest to fact that the vast majority of responses to being completely unqualified. Candidates frequently send their resumes to jobs they are completely unqualified for, but since their is no cost to applying, why not play candidate lotto, the tickets are free.
By filtering out candidates that aren't serious enough to commit time to test, as well as those that test poorly, YourLeap can spend more time further qualifying those candidates that can do the job. YourLeap clients not only get maximum exposure to the best talent pool in decades, but they can now spend more time with the best qualified candidates.

3 Tips Before You Make an Offer

2008-08-19T06:25:00.020-04:00

Rule 1: Get excited about your position.
Before you sell a candidate on a position, sell yourself on it. A candidate will never be more enthusiastic about the position than you are. Spend some time finding out what the positives are in the position and the type of candidate that would match best for it.

Rule 2: Make sure you have a good match.
If you're working too hard to close a candidate then take a step back and ask if this is a good match.
If you feel it's not a good match, spend your time working to find a better one.
If you feel it is a good match, work to express this to the candidate.
If you're not sure if it's a good match, you haven't qualified the candidate or position well enough, work to re-qualify.

Rule 3: Pre-Close a candidate. There should be open, direct communication before an offer is presented. You should have a clear idea of what the candidate is willing to accept. Example: According to our previous conversations, if we were able to get you an offer at the responsibilities, title and compensation we discussed are you ready to accept?
If yes, you've done your job.
If no, get things nailed down before you go any further. Candidates should have a paper offer letter after they verbally accept and before they give notice to their current employer, they may also want to clarify terms of employment/benefits. There are 2 other reasons candidates may ask for written offer letters:
1)They ask for the offer letter to buy time while shopping around for other offers.
2)They are using the offer letter as leverage to get a raise from their current employer.
If you feel a candidate is asking for one of the less savory reasons, then you should hold off until the candidate is ready. A job offer is active, and can not be made to another candidate, until a candidate accepts, declines, or it expires. Putting an offer out with little or no guarantee of acceptance can severely impact your time to fill the vacancy.

Fred Dimyan
Fred@YourLeap.com

RPO: Recruitment Puzzle Outsourcing?

2008-08-07T16:27:00.017-04:00

Hype: When it comes to sourcing candidates, RPO's often tell you how complicated and puzzling it is to find the right candidates, and then they tell you how they can offer you the best solution. They over complicate a simple problem, and then they help you solve it. RPO's promise you the best tools and usually claim they are proprietary to just them.

Reality: The most powerful sourcing tool is universally accessible. The Internet is the most powerful, transforming tool recruiting has ever experienced. There are over 100 million resumes on the Internet and that doesn't factor the even larger amount of candidates who use the Internet for their job search but don't post their resumes. Most companies don't realize the true power of the Internet because there are simply too many resources and too many choices. Companies have to balance the job boards with the time they have to navigate through them. Ideally a company should load both sides of the scale, but those with limited recruiting budgets are constrained.

Organizations who don't have all the pieces or enough time to put the pieces together, look to outsource to companies who already have the resources in place. Access to resumes and postings on the Internet is a commodity. Companies should look for maximize exposure to this commodity, while minimizing their cost. Selecting and managing an RPO, with all the cost and risk involved, often turns out to be a more expensive, more layered way to access that commodity. RPO clients are recognizing this, in fact two of the largest RPO's, Hudson and Spherion have reported decreased revenues in their most recent earnings and acknowledged that some of their clients are taking recruiting back in house.

What companies really need is a time and cost effective way to maximize their access to all the resumes on the Internet without giving up control of the process or adding risk. Given the proper pieces and the proper time, most recruiting departments can put the puzzle together themselves.

YourLeap, based in Stamford, CT has a unique approach to RPO. YourLeap gives you whats most valuable to you without all the fluff. They don't claim to be more valuable than the job boards, they feel that if boards were used effectively, many companies wouldn't need to outsource any of the recruiting process. YourLeap industry experts post your position and search daily on all the major boards and hundreds of niche boards. The results are easy to access by logging in to YourLeap.com and viewing the pre-sorted responses from all the major job boards, as well as the hundreds of niche boards they post to. YourLeap provides this to you in an easily scalable and cost effective way.

Passive Candidates, an Oxymoron?

2008-08-01T11:06:00.015-04:00

We all know what active candidates are, they have their resume prepared, they are on the major job boards and they are actively applying to jobs. What is a passive candidate? The common definition is that passive candidates are not actively looking and they have to be pursued.

Are candidates open to job inquiries on Linkedin.com, and other networking sites active or passive? The transition from passive to active is a click, literally.

Once a candidate prepares their resume, dusts off an old one, or reactivates it on a job board, they are now officially considered active. The second a candidate becomes active, he or she is a couple clicks away from accessing millions of opportunities on the Internet.

There is a perception that passive candidates are of higher value than active candidates. Doesn't that directly conflict with the belief that top candidates get multiple offers and choose among them? How could a candidate get multiple offers without sending their resume out multiple times? The reality is that both passive and active candidates are valuable. Instead, there should be two categories: Active and Ultra-Active. Ultra- Active candidates are on every job board and apply to many jobs they are not qualified for and they remain on job boards for a longer length of time.

Candidates that are too passive may also raise a flag. Being passive is not a good trait as an employee, why should it be a good trait as a candidate? After all, marketing yourself and maximizing your worth is a trait of motivated individuals. Companies should focus instead on casting a wider net, rather than narrowing the net to a specific set of candidates.

YourLeap, based in Stamford, CT helps companies cast the widest net possible to maximize their chances of attracting the best candidates, passive or not.

Metrics, Statistics and Marketing

2008-08-01T07:38:00.014-04:00

Monster claims they have over 25 million resumes, but Monster allows you to post different versions of your resume. So how many are unique and how old are they? CareerBuilder claims they have more page views than any other job board. Is that because more results are returned since they default at a 20 mile radius search vs. Monster's 15 mile default?

Recruitment Process Outsourcers claim they decrease your cost and time to hire. I have heard statistics as absurd as reducing average time to hire to 8 days. Can any RPO free up hiring manager schedules, remove vacations, and get all the decision makers together to decide? All while getting top talent, that is usually employed and busy, free to quickly interview and then decide within days?

Even more absurd: the notion that a RPO's proprietary database produces better results than all the major job boards. Just one major board, Monster.com had revenue of $1.4 billion last year. According to Gartner, the entire RPO industry, including all it's players are only a $1.3 billion market. If any single RPO's had a database more valuable than Monster alone, they would be better served getting in to the job board business.

There is a lot that companies have to filter through when deciding on RPO. Companies ask what resources can a RPO give you that they can't get themselves at some price? And is that price worth the risk?

YourLeap, based in Stamford, CT has a unique approach to RPO. YourLeap gives you whats most valuable to you without all the fluff. They don't claim to be more valuable than the job boards, they feel that if boards were used effectively, many companies wouldn't need to outsource any of the recruiting process. YourLeap industry experts post your position and search daily on all the major boards and hundreds of niche boards. The results are easy to access by logging in to YourLeap.com and viewing the pre-sorted responses from all the major job boards, as well as the hundreds of niche boards they post to. YourLeap provides this to you in an easily scalable and cost effective way.

Recruiting and Technology

2008-07-31T21:19:00.012-04:00

Recruiting and Technology, sometimes they just don't mix.

According to recent statistics, there are over 100 million resumes on the Internet. There are over 4000 job boards, although I stopped keeping count years ago. The cost a candidate pays for sending a resume to hundreds of jobs is a mere click.

Two decades ago, before email and unlimited calling were standard, most resumes came in via fax. If 100 million resumes were each sent to 10 companies, and it took 3 minutes to fax a resume and coversheet, at the cost of 20 cents a minute, it would cost over $600 million for candidates to submit their resumes. A lot of money now, and in 1988 the average home sold for $112,000 and a gallon of gas was 95 cents. The cost to send resumes via email today: close to $0. The cost has now shifted to companies who have to spend time filtering the resumes, all while paying for the job board access to get these resumes.

Estimates point to increased resumes, increased job boards, and easier access for candidates, thanks to job board aggregators like indeed.com and juju.com.

Organizations now have an answer that allows them to navigate through the increasing volume. YourLeap, based in Stamford, CT is emerging as a hybrid solution. YourLeap uses it's access to all the major job boards and hundreds of minor ones, to locate, contact, and screen through the clutter for companies.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing

2008-07-31T19:01:00.018-04:00

Companies consider outsourcing their recruiting because they are not always properly equipped to handle the entire recruiting process all the time. Recruitment Process Outsourcing companies claim that they will improve a company's time to hire, increase the quality of the candidate pool, reduce cost and improve compliance.

Economic cycles, business cycles, and the competitive landscape all affect an organizations hiring needs. Given the unpredictability of all these factors and the increasing speed which they change, organizations have a difficulty being properly equipped at all times. Ideally companies should be equipped for peak hiring, but that is costly and wasteful during non-peak times.

RPO can be an integral part of a strategic recruiting plan. Recruiting talent is the most essential function in a company. Recruiting, by definition, is how you get your top talent. In a talent based economy, there is nothing more important to most companies than their people. Recruit well, your company thrives; Recruit poorly, you'll lose to companies that recruit well.

The major components of the recruiting process are: defining the need, sourcing, screening, selection, negotiation and onboarding. RPO's want to take over part or all of this process. Lets dissect all the components.
Defining the need: a strategic part of the process, you're deciding what type of person and what specific skill set you need.
Sourcing: sourcing well is essential to having a candidate pool to screen through.
Screening: sorting through the candidate pool to quickly identify top candidates.
Selection: arguably the most important part, you are identifying the best match for your organization.
Onboarding: do this correctly and you save ramp up time and your candidate becomes acclimated and productive quickly.

Strategic parts of the hiring process should not be outsourced, they give your company the edge it needs to thrive. Outsourcing the tactical components, sourcing and screening, can help you invest time where you can leverage it best.

YourLeap, based in Stamford, CT has been successful in helping organizations invest time back in to the strategic part of recruiting while maximizing their sourcing efforts. YourLeap "Takes the Work Out of Recruiting" while giving you unprecedented access to all the major job boards and hundreds of minor ones. YourLeap industry experts then screen through all the responding results and sort them so you can spend your time where it pays off. Best of all with YourLeap, you need no lead time, resumes start flowing in within 48 hours and you are able to turn it on or off, based on your current demand.

Recruiting in a Downturn

2008-07-30T08:25:00.014-04:00

Many organizations feel that recruiting for talent is easier when the economy is struggling than when the economy is booming. When the economy is booming candidates have their choice of opportunities and can write their own ticket. When the economy slows and companies start to lay off, candidates become plentiful. Candidates that were previously passive now become active.

Let's first put things in perspective. Unemployment in the United States, currently at 5.5%, is low compared to the rest of the world. According to the CIA World Factbook, Canada has an unemployment rate that is almost 10% higher(6.0%) and Europe is over 20% higher (6.7%). Even with the current bump up in unemployment, 94.5% of the US is employed. Downturns, historically, have offered a small window where companies gain greater access to recruiting talent.

Companies that are investing in staff while others are downsizing have an opportunity to attract candidates that would not typically be on the market. The challenge is to distinguish between candidates that were let go because companies were cutting under-performers and the solid-performers that were let go as part of a larger scale attrition.

There is a difference between a good candidate and a good employee.... sometimes they overlap, but frequently they do not. Good candidates have their resume prepared, they have it posted on the right boards, they search efficiently and they have practice interviewing. Good employees may not have updated their resume in years and they don't use the job boards effectively or search them as frequently as they should.

Organizations who want to attract good employees have to bridge the gap: they have to use many boards to make sure they capture the few boards that good candidates are on, and they have to maximize exposure to their job to make sure it's seen in the window of time that the good candidates are looking. Maximizing exposure to your position is typically expensive, time consuming and hard to justify in a down economy.

Fortunately companies now have an alternative. YourLeap offers a robust solution and a cost effective price. YourLeap maximizes your exposure to all job boards while saving you both time and money. YourLeap industry experts post your position and search daily on all the major boards and hundreds of niche boards. The results are easy to access by logging in to YourLeap.com and viewing the pre-sorted responses from the over 100,000,000 candidates that are on the job boards they have access to, as well as the hundreds of major and niche boards they post to.

If you are investing in hiring while the economy is slow, it's worthwhile to insure the return on that investment by maximizing your exposure to candidates, and YourLeap offers you that tool.

Which Job Boards Work Best for Recruiting? All of them.

2008-07-28T17:27:00.000-04:00

All the major job boards are not created equal. They attract different candidates, in different ways and at different times. The only way you are sure to capture all the available candidates on the net is to use all the major and niche boards; use them all ways, by posting and searching; and use them all the time, by searching daily.

Until now companies have had to choose job boards, hope they chose correctly, and then find the time to properly utilize them.

YourLeap offers the ideal solution. YourLeap accesses all the major job boards, and hundreds of minor ones. YourLeap experts post your job and search daily for you. Companies no longer need to pick the right boards, or spend their limited time searching through them. YourLeap does the heavy lifting for you. YourLeap posts your job, searches over 300 resume databases, contacts the top matches, and has industry experts sort through all the responding results.

One major board may have an aggressive campaign one month and another board may attract more candidates the very next. YourLeap takes the guess work and the frustration out of the equation for you. Monster.com powers the New York Times job board and Dice.com attracts more passive, technology specific candidates. Careerbuilder has an affiliation with MSN.com and Hotjobs is owned by Yahoo. Do you want to guess browsing behavior when you need specific candidates quickly?

It is clear, there is no single board solution for all your jobs, but there is a single source solution, YourLeap.com. YourLeap covers all the job boards, in all ways, and all the time.

The Future of Recruiting

2008-07-28T16:34:00.000-04:00

There are misconceptions of what recruiting may look like in the future. The one I hear most often is video resumes will be the standard. A close second is that advancing technology will take place of recruiters soon. Lets take a minute to dispel these.

What is it that an EEO, OFCCP, ADA compliant organization can see in a video that they can not see in a text resume? What can they recognize in a video screening that they can not from a phone screening? Unless you feel we, as a country, will become significantly less litigious, I wouldn't expect videos to replace resumes anytime soon.

Technology has advanced greatly over the past decade, but has it made finding talent easier? Many will argue that technology has made things more difficult to find talent. There are more resumes on an ever increasing amount of job boards. Passive candidates are more difficult to find, and ultra active candidates are using white type (putting white words on a white background) to help the ranking of their resume.
We live in a talent economy, those organizations with the best talent fare best. If and when Google comes up with an ideal candidate algorithm (even they use recruiters now), will they let Microsoft, Yahoo or other competitors access this or would they keep it for competitive purposes?

One trend that is gaining traction are job board aggregators, such as indeed.com and juju.com. Organizations searching for talent have a tougher challenge, when they pay to increase job board access, they increase the amount of time to post jobs, search resumes and contact candidates. One company that is emerging as a hybrid solution is YourLeap.com. YourLeap uses it's access to all the major job boards and hundreds of minor ones, to locate, contact, and screen through the clutter for companies. The candidates that have expressed interest are rated in a simple, and easy to access method.

Take the Work out of Recruiting

2008-07-28T16:33:00.001-04:00

Recruiting and Sourcing, what's the difference? Large recruiting organizations and the best agencies know.

Recruiting is an art, it's identifying the right prospect, attracting them, and closing them. Not much different from sales, in fact, the best organizations view it as selling your company. Recruiting is the most valuable function of your company. Before you argue that it's sales or senior management, ask yourself how you find and attract your top sales people and managers: you recruit them.

Sourcing is a commodity. Sourcing is not recruiting, sourcing is lead generation and qualification. Sourcing done poorly, takes up time that should be spent with hiring managers and pre-qualified candidates. Sourcing, done properly, gives recruiters time to discuss strategy with hiring managers and feeds a pipeline of qualified candidates for recruiters to attract.

Most companies don't have the access to all the major job boards or the time to screen through all the resumes they may get from them. Fortunately there is a cost effective solution that takes the work out of recruiting, YourLeap.com. YourLeap gives your recruiters time to recruit. With access to all the major job boards and hundreds of minor boards, YourLeap experts post, search and filter through over 100 million resumes and deliver the results in a sorted, easy to access format.