It is too easy to become a recruiter…

My article, “A great idea that will never happen…” was featured in the July edition of Online Recruitment Magazine. Visit the website to download a free copy: www.onrec.com

Here is a snippet…

It is too easy to become a recruiter. I suppose that can be said for a variety of disciplines, but I would wonder how closely those positions affect the bottom line the way recruiting does. A company is powered by its people and the gas of that engine is recruiting. Staffing professionals know this, C-level executives are aware of the fact and likewise savvy investors who bet on the jockey rather than the horse they ride on. However, across many organizations the staffing department is grudgingly regarded as a resource of necessity that is wholly unappreciated. To make an unfair comparison, recruiters are often thought of like Firemen; well appreciated in times of fire, but forgotten otherwise. Sure, there are organizations that give lip service to the value of recruiting, but consider these questions. How often does the CEO of your company wander the cubicles of the staffing department to personally congratulate their contribution? When was the last time the staffing department was given kudos in a press release from upper management? When the stock goes up in your company, is staffing cited as a factor?

Recruiting overall suffers from bad publicity (or the lack of a significant amount of good publicity) reflected in the unspoken accolades from above and the occasional disdain from candidates. What do I mean? If a candidate is unemployed, unhappily employed or under-employed, then a call from a recruiter is a welcome God-send. Conversely, if the candidate is comfortable in their present role, such solicitations can be a nuisance. Furthermore, consider those recruiters who engage unqualified candidates and handle their candidates haphazardly. The end result is a negative impression of a certain company and a black eye on recruiting in general. It would seem that when recruiting (in any discipline) you have to contend not only with the requirements you are trying to fill, but also the biases of recruiting coming from all concerned. Fortunately, I have a strategy for turning this around.

Simply put, serving as a recruiter does not carry the prestige of being a doctor or lawyer; neither high school nor college students decide early on to become a recruiter. (How many graduate programs offer an intensive training in recruiting?) It has been my observation that people tend to “stumble” into recruiting and therein lies the issue. Returning to my initial statement, it is too easy to become a recruiter.

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Sorry, I only hire good-looking people.

Hmmmm… Maybe this guy was just shopping for dating prospects and only preferred blondes to women who look like Naomi Campbell? (left) Check this out…

A former San Francisco cosmetics sales manager, who said she was punished for refusing an order from her boss to fire another woman and “get me somebody hot,” can take her lawsuit to a jury, the state Supreme Court ruled today in a case that sets new standards for retaliation claims.

In a 4-2 ruling, the court said Elysa Yanowitz’s allegations, if true, would show that L’Oreal illegally retaliated against her for opposing sex discrimination by a general manager at the giant cosmetics firm.

Yanowitz, an 18-year employee, was L’Oreal’s regional sales manager and chief of marketing for Ralph Lauren fragrances in Western states when she tangled with general manager Jack Wiswall during a 1997 tour of a San Jose department store. According to her lawsuit, Wiswall told her that a dark-skinned sales clerk was “not good-looking enough,” and directed her to fire the woman and “get me somebody hot.”

During later visits, Yanowitz said, Wiswall kept asking her why the woman had not been fired, and at one point

5 Fields that pay women more than men

My research for Why Men Earn More uncovered twenty-five differences between what men and women do in the workplace. Here’s the rub. Everything men do leads to more money; everything women do leads to more balanced lives-and usually, to better lives. So you don’t just want to imitate men.

The road to high pay is a toll road. The trick is discerning which tolls are worth it. For example, working outdoors in the rain and sleet is a disadvantage for most people, but many park rangers choose the profession precisely because they love the out-of-doors. Here are ten tips for you and your daughter to consider. Most lists are slanted toward female executives, but women-like men-come in all education and skill levels, so this is a diverse list.

Five fields that pay women more than men and also provide excellent opportunities are:
Speech language pathologists ($45,000 women; $35,000 men; women make 29% more than men)
Statisticians (35% more than men)
Advertising and Promotions Managers
Motion Picture projectionists
Dental hygienist

READ: WorldWIT – Women. Insights. Technology.

You have to give him credit for creativity…

Frustrated with your job search? Why not stick your resume on a tee-shirt and walk around the city with it on? What kind of results can you expect? Check out the story of one guy who did just that…

READ:Damn, I Need A Job

Need a job? Indeed you do…

The New York Times Company announced today an investment in Indeed, Inc. (www.indeed.com), a search engine for jobs that enables job seekers to search millions of job listings from over a thousand Web sites. The Times Company, Union Square Ventures and Allen & Company, LLC are together investing $5 million for a minority interest.

“We are pleased to join Union Square Ventures and Allen & Company in backing Indeed, an innovative new firm that provides compelling job search capabilities to Internet users,” said Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president, digital operations. “The Times Company has strong help-wanted franchises in print and online, and we believe it is important to invest in new technologies and services in this advertising category.”

Indeed is the most comprehensive search engine for jobs, adding over 110,000 new jobs per day – more than any other job search engine. Indeed includes jobs from over 1,000 unique sources, encompassing company career pages, major and niche job boards, national and regional newspapers, and hundreds of associations. Indeed indexes all new jobs from each source every day, making it the freshest and most accurate source of jobs on the Web.

READ: Indeed unveils most comprehensive search engine for jobs | Indeed.com

Yeahhh, boyyeeeee!!!

I have a question. How many ways can you re-engineer your skills and make it in new industries? Here is an example to inspire you.

Tupac and Biggie, move over. A new hip-hop feud is brewing that glamorizes not guns and ‘hos but Java and secure encryption algorithms.

While gangsta rap is seen as celebrating the violence and aggression that claimed two of its brightest stars, “geeksta” rap is a hip-hop genre celebrating coding skills and school grades.

Also dubbed “nerdcore,” this branch of hip-hop is for geeks, by geeks. Geeksta rappers adopt the same combative verbal-assault stylings of their forerunners, but bust rhymes about elite script compiling and dope machine code.

The term was first coined in 2000 by nerdy New York rapper MC Frontalot in a track of the same name. Nerdcore now refers to artists waxing lyrical about topics as disparate as engineering and Lord of the Rings.

In recent months, the field has seen a growing number of releases from computer science labs, where egocentric grad students show off their Ph.D. credentials in tracks like “Have to Code” and “End of File.”

“The stigma that was once attached to computer geeks and role-playing nerds is diminishing incredibly fast,” said “digital gangster” Bryce Case Jr., aka ytcracker. “It has almost become trendy to have skills on a computer. Rather than guns and ‘hos, I speak about DDOS attacks and camgirls.”

The self-proclaimed “#1 greatest computer science gangsta rapper ever” is MC Plus+, a geeksta leading light whose moniker comes from the C++ programming language.

The Purdue University, Indiana, Ph.D. candidate and “CS pimp,” whose album Algorhythms was recorded with pirated software, calls himself “the Tupac of the computer science world.”

READ: Rap Marketing Comes to Nerdcore

I am now a cartoon!

For those who don’t know, I occassionally blog on the “Technical Careers @ Microsoft” blog with Gretchen Ledgard and other Microsofties. We recently added cartoon image of ourselves courtesy of Hans Bjordahl of Bug Bash. Here is a snippet of my latest entry there which introduces me to the audience.

Hi! My name is Jim Stroud. Most folks call me Jim Stroud, so feel free to do the same. I have been known to find quality candidates like a chocolate covered millionaire with a fist full of shoes finds women, but I suppose that is subjective. Online Research, Recruitment Strategy, Viral Marketing and Recruiting are all ingredients in my resume; add a pinch of creative writing and a dash of entrepreneur to the recipe and you will have a Jim Cake. (Yummy! And non-fattening.)

READ: Meet Jim!

TUTORIAL: Did you get my email?

Does this job make me look fat?

“Luckily, most jobs send out signals about how right they are for you — or not,” says Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric and author of “Winning.”

“These signals apply to jobs at every level of an organization,” Welch writes. “You can be right out of school, a middle manager trying to move up, or a senior executive looking for a top pick.”

In “Winning,” Welch has created a list of the most important signals to be aware of and how to read them:

People

Take it as a good sign if: You like the people a lot — you can relate to them, and you genuinely enjoy their company. In fact, they even think and act like you do.

Be concerned if: You feel like you’ll need to put on a persona at work. After a visit to the company, you find yourself saying things like, “I don’t need to be friends with the people I work with.”

Opportunity

Take it as a good sign if: The job gives you the opportunity to grow as a person and a professional, and you get the feeling you will learn things there that you didn’t even know you needed to learn.

Be concerned if: You’re being hired as an expert, and upon arrival, you will most likely be the smartest person in the room.

Options

Take it as a good sign if: The job gives you a credential you can take with you, and is in a business and industry with a future.

Be concerned if: The industry has peaked or has awful economics, and the company itself, for any number of reasons, will do little to expand your career options.

Ownership

Take it as a good sign if: You are taking the job for yourself, or you know whom you are taking it for, and feel at peace with the bargain.

Be concerned if: You are taking the job for any number of other constituents, such as a spouse who wants you to travel less or the sixth-grade teacher who said you would never amount to anything.

READ: TIP SHEET: Careers — How to tell if job fits right

The blind leading the business…

Twenty visually impaired graduates will attend a two-day event to help them build confidence and make more successful applications for jobs in professional careers.

The event, organised for the fourth time by the charity Blind in Business and supported for the second year running by SHL, world leader in objective assessment, will take place at SHL