Dig Deeper on Reference Calls with these 3 Starting Points

Let’s be honest: chances are most references aren’t going to say anything negative about the candidate. If that’s all you’re looking for you’ll potentially miss out on some valuable “unwitting testimony.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to hire engineers (or non-engineers) for startups (or for larger firms) so long as you aim to gain fairly illuminatory—or in the very least refreshing—feedback.

Coming up with a structured framework for reference engagement is the best way to achieve this objective.



5 Pressing Recruiting Challenges of 2014

There’s little doubt that new challenges will arise for recruiters in 2014. Dynamics in the recruiting space are susceptible to market fluctuations, education/technology trends, and occasionally paradigm-like shifts.

Inspired by Dr. John Sullivan’s post on ERE, “The Top 25 Recruiting Trends, Problems and Opportunities for 2014”, I wanted to outline some significant challenges recruiters can expect to confront and overcome in 2014.



Recruiting: an Art or a Science?

The question of whether recruiting is more of a learned, measurable science, or a subtle, somewhat innate art continues to inspire healthy dialogue to this day. As recruiting methods evolve and pairs technology with good-old fashioned human outreach, what we're likely to see is a combination of these two schools of thought.

Adaptive recruiting is going to require the retainment of art-infused practices, while also openly embracing a crafty application of scientific methods.

How can this be done?

Around the year 2000 most people in the recruiting industry were asking themselves, and one another, if recruiting online was a viable method. Within a couple years that question had been answered, and the next question revolved around how can technology revolutionize the practice of talent acquisition.



Solving the “Talent Equation”

Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder.com, networked with two business school professors: Prasanna Tambe (NYU Stern School) and Lorin Hitt (University of Pennsylvania Wharton School) to write The Talent Equation: Big Data Lessons for Navigating the Skills Gap and Building a Competitive Workforce.



Startup Hiring: Nonsensical Tips

Is startup hiring like dating? While there are some similarities, here's a comedy skit on "Hiring Tips" from Vooza that elaborates a bit further.



Misha Glenny: “Hire the Hackers!”

Misha Glenny provides some unexpected (and let's face it rash) conclusions on what to do with quality hackers in his Ted Talk “Hire the hackers!” :



Rebuttal: Why Big Data will Shape the Future of Recruiting


How do you see it: a fruitful intersection or two one-way streets?

Many technologies navigating the big data recruiting space are still brand-new, and one simple reality has left some to focus on uncertainties rather than the promise of cutting-edge candidate insights: there are still technical and philosophical questions that need to be answered about the methods and analysis. “Talent Analytics” (big data’s role in Human Resources and recruitment practices) is a concept, and novel methodology, that may inspire trepidation and skepticism—leaving people to question its ethics, insights, and future utility.

Joyce Lain Kennedy, in “Big Data: Recruiting future or fad?”, presents two distinct viewpoints on the issue, while offering her own doubts as to whether there is a scientific foundation to the process. Kennedy highlights the opinions of Dr. Wendell Williams, managing director of Scientific Selection, as an umbrella assessment of skeptics and critics.

Williams’s main point is that big data metrics are about numbers and not about (the “little understood”) human performance on the job. The concern is that the data will only reflect past performance—having little relation to how an employee acquires knowledge, thinks critically, makes decisions, and communicates effectively within a new company. In short, he argues that the data has the potential to confuse things and, more importantly, hiring managers don’t have a way to gain direct correlations between specific skill-sets and accomplishments. “Absent the full story, big data will just be another short-term HR fad.”

While it’s not easy to navigate all of the hype surrounding big data, it’s important to note again that big data in recruiting is just getting off the ground—and perhaps our focus should shift toward all the new questions that are being answered every day.



Breaking Down the Best Mobile Recruiting Tools: Part 2

This is part two in a series breaking down several prominent and useful tools for mobile recruiting. As the shift to mobile browsing becomes more and more prevalent, it is crucial to formulate a recruiting strategy for engaging with candidates across many different devices. Part 1 of this post can be found here.

Ark

 

 

Ark launched in the summer of 2011 with the intent to bridge the gap between google and social media networks by functioning as a people search site. This fall, they've introduced their mobile client, which can most aptly be described as a mobile version of Rapportive. Need to do research on a candidate, or for that matter, anyone in your inbox on the go? Rather than navigate over to whichever social platform, Ark brings links to your target's social profiles directly in to your email client. Ark's mobile tool is perfect for refreshing your memory on a contact before you craft an email, or doing research on candidates while on the go.

 

LinkedIn Work With Us

LinkedIn recently dove into the mobile game with the introduction of two tools, Work With Us and Recruiter Mobile. The former allows you to essentially place an ad in your employees' profile, showing profile viewers a relevant job opening at your company and encouraging them to work with the employee whose page they are browsing. Leveraging the page views of your employees is an exciting new development that can greatly increase your reach and tap in to the coveted networks of your already trusted workforce.



How to Build Your Company’s Career Page

Talented candidates will arrive at your career page for a number of reasons. Perhaps your API was recently featured in Programmable Web, they saw your ad on LinkedIn, or typed your address directly into the toolbar precisely for the purpose of perusing your career page. The goal of your site must be to attract and sustain all of these onlookers, regardless of how they landed there.



Entelo Event: Mobile Recruiting Fireside Chat

In the recruiter's never-ending endeavor to find and attract top talent, one must consider all avenues of outreach. Desktop browsing is quickly becoming a thing of the past, and most candidates are doing their job hunting from smartphones or tablets. As a result, it is crucial to develop and execute a recruiting strategy that caters to those browsing on the go.



Biggest Startup Recruiting Fallacies

Although your young company may have an exciting product, great investors, and a few brilliant team members, recruiting in the early stages of a startup can be extremely difficult. In this post, our Director of Customer Development, Vivek, explains some common misconceptions about early recruiting.



Announcing Integration with Jobvite!


Entelo is thrilled to announce our new partnership with Jobvite, the leading recruiting platform for the social web! This integration will allow users of Jobvite's industry-leading CRM, ATS, and social recruiting software to benefit from our vast database of over 18 million IT professionals. Leveraging Entelo's extensive search functionality with Jobvite's start-to-finish recruiting suite promises to bolster the pipelines and simplify the workflows of our mutual customers. Check out an excerpt from the press release below , and head on over to DigitalJournal for the full text.



Can LinkedIn Fix the InMail Response Problem?

As any recruiter will testify, reaching out to a potential candidate through LinkedIn can be frustrating and sometimes fruitless, as top talent are inundated with dozens (sometimes hundreds!) of messages and aren't motivated to sift through the noise. In this well-received Quora post, Entelo's Jon Bischke explains how LinkedIn might tackle this issue.



Onward and Upward: Entelo’s New Office!

Last week, team Entelo packed up all our monitors, desks, and furniture, and moved out of our old office. We're currently settling in to our new digs: a bright, spacious area right by San Francisco's 4th & King train station. We still have many boxes to unpack and new furniture to assemble, but we're all very excited about our new home and thrilled to see the place come together over the next few weeks!



Recent Recruiter Academy Additions

Last month, we launched Recruiter Academy-- a resource aimed to offer insight and education to recruiters of all levels--with the intention of regularly updating existing courses with new material and also building out the resource with additional courses. Here's a quick look at a couple recent updates we've added: