The Evolution of Talent Acquisition with GitHub's Maisha Cannon

How many recruiters can say they’ve recruited everyone from rocket scientists to retail store managers and was one of the top contenders in the World’s Greatest Sourcer competition? Not many, that’s for sure, which is why it was such a thrill to have Maisha join this week’s Hiring On All Cylinders.

Hosts Rob Stevenson and Vivek Reddy chatted with Maisha about how much talent acquisition has changed since she first got her start over 15 years ago, which means far less cold calling and sorting paper resumes, and far more digital sourcing wizardry. Maisha also took time so share why her new gig in Strategic Talent Sourcing and Engagement at GitHub has been such a nice change of pace. But that’s not all.

How to Leave a Lasting Impression on Tech Candidates

I have a good friend who was a software developer at Apple for eight years, and during that time he helped launch the iPhone, the iPad and many other notable products. Yet you’d never know it. Nowhere online will you ever find his name and Apple in the same place. Why? To stave off the constant influx of recruiting messages packing his inbox. 

For the majority of recruiters, it takes us every trick in the book to drum up enough qualified candidates to fill a technical role. Cold emails just won’t get the job done anymore. Here’s how to build a winning technical recruiting strategy by leveraging contacts you already have and by tactically sourcing hard to find candidates through in-person recruiting.

The Five Essential Steps to Creating An Employee Referral Program

Referral programs are the single best way to net quality hires in less time. Referrals are more likely to be hired than non-referral candidates, complete onboarding more quickly, have higher retention rates, and generate more profit than non-referral hires. You may already have a referral program, but a few tweaks here and there could make all the difference. Here are five essential steps to creating (or refreshing) a referral program.

Hiring For Authenticity with Entelo’s VP of Operations Jill Witty

“We are who we say we are,” says Entelo VP of Ops Jill Witty. This week she joined the Hiring on All Cylinders cast for a discussion of how Entelo practices what it preaches when it comes to company culture, and how the company looks for those qualities in new hires.

What Job Candidates Are Actually Looking For

It’s the million dollar question: What do candidates really want out their jobs? Why? Because understanding what candidates look for in a role allows you to anticipate how to set yourself apart from other companies and what makes people excited to stick around long-term with your team.

Spoiler alert: According to Indeed, the major job criteria that matter to candidates are compensation, location, and flexibility. In other words, if you aren’t offering competitive rewards package, a manageable commute, and flexible work remote options, you might be in for a tough search. In fact, flexibility is now the third most important factor to workers, with 51 percent of those polled attracted to their job because of it, so make sure you’re keeping your policies up to date.

But that’s not all. When it comes to your hiring process, you’re also being evaluated by your candidates.

How To Write Killer Recruiting Emails in 5 Steps

Effective writing is an underrated aspect of recruiting. We constantly discuss the ins and outs of finding talent, but the outcomes of your outreach will depend in large part on your ability to communicate with candidates. All the strategic sourcing in the world won’t get candidates to respond to badly written, poorly conceived emails.

Why Sourcing Parties Are Your New Best Way to Find Talent

No matter the job, finding good candidates is a bear. Everyone from a restaurant manager to a startup CEO to a hiring manager at a Fortune 500 company will tell you so. The modern economy demands highly specific, hard to find skillsets that all too few (readily hireable) people possess. It’s up to recruiters to bridge the gap.

The Four Best Resources for Brushing Up On Boolean

Boolean logic is one of the savvy recruiter’s most basic, yet powerful tools. That’s because Boolean search is applicable to every platform you use to source talent, whether it’s Google, Twitter, or Facebook. Using Boolean search well not only helps you find more top talent, but it also hones in on specific candidates that fit your location or skillset criteria.

Why You Need to Make Recruiting and Hiring a Team Sport

Hiring stellar talent takes planning, constant communication, and solid execution. You can’t just send recruiters into the fray with a job req and expect good things to happen. No individual can know it all. That’s why the best hiring occurs when everyone is on the same page and working together. Here’s how to jumpstart your hiring with a healthy dose of teamwork.

10 Things Not to Do in Your Pitch Emails

Pitch emails are your first touch point with candidates and ideally they begin a long, fruitful conversation that’s mutually productive.

The stronger the pitch, the more responses you will get, and the bigger your pipeline will grow. As we’ve said before, your pipeline is your lifeline. Here’s a guide on what not to say and do in your candidate emails so that you can recruit like a pro, and hire like a boss.    

What the Oscars Can Teach Organizations About Hiring Strategy

The world’s most glamorous trade show kicks off this Sunday and millions of people will be glued to their televisions.  Yep, it’s that time of year again: Oscars season. If you’re a movie buff, the Academy Awards is can’t-miss TV of the highest order – but what does that all have to do with recruiting? Well, these movies have a lot to say about the world we live in right now, and the world we live in right now has everything to do with recruiting.

Not quite convinced? Read on.

The 9 Best Productivity Apps for Recruiters

Recruiting requires constantly managing competing priorities. Even the most organized, Type A recruiters can struggle to get it all done. You could drink 10 cups of a coffee a day while you grind from 8 am to 8 pm, but that’s not sustainable. The key is maintaining your efficiency and productivity (and sanity) every day. Since you only have so much useful time, your best bet to be a task-crushing, goal achieving, recruiter extraordinaire is to leverage new tools, in particular, apps.

10 Traits to Look Out for in Every Candidate Before You Hire Them

It goes without saying that companies are only as good as their people. Recruiting and hiring is still more art than science, which means 100% certainty is hard to come by. What we do know is that new hires are high risk, high reward. The good hires happen when recruiters, hiring managers and team leaders are all in lockstep with each other, and that happens when you establish the criteria by which you’ll judge all new hires, no matter their reference or skillset.

The Best Tech Literacy Tools for Non-Technical Recruiters

It’s a recruiting fact of life: Hiring for technical roles is a slog. Beyond the core difficult of finding enough talented candidates, you also must endlessly parse Stack Overflow and GitHub pages, and figure out what “code ninja” ever actually means. Once you’ve gotten through that rigmarole, how do you know if your candidates are the real deal or not? A recruiter who doesn’t know the difference between Ruby and Python is gonna get played. So, what is a non-technical recruiter recruiting for technical roles supposed to do? Learn some basic technical skills, of course. Here’s how.

5 Habits Every Recruiter Needs for Killer Results

“All our life is a mass of habits,” wrote philosopher William James. Habits, both good and bad, play a powerful role in our lives. Consider your habits at the office? Coffee, Facebook, check email, read the news, grab a snack. Which actively contribute to your success or inhibit it? Now, wipe the slate clean, because we’ve got five daily habits to drive your productivity and keep you recruiting like a rockstar.