Office Home And Business 2010 Key blog fishing-wit

[englishg9o]

Earlier this week, I posted an overview from the technique Zoë and I have been working on. As a part of this proposal,Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise, we discussed the “gap” in most corporate recruiting plans and recommended a solution to fill this void.
So what is the gap? As I see it, there are two predominant schools of recruiting philosophy: volume recruiting and niche recruiting – or as I liked to call them “fishing with a net” and “fishing with a spear.”
The volume model – This model requires the fisherman (aka recruiter) to cast a large net out into the sea of fish (aka candidates). A recruiter may cast this net through such activities as posting open positions, attending career fairs, or mining job boards and internal databases. In short, the recruiter wants to the get the word out in order to return as many responses as possible. From there, the more difficult job becomes sifting through the daily catch to decide whom she should keep and whom she should throw back.
The down-side with the volume model is two-fold – and almost a catch-22. The churn and administrative overhead required in sifting through these candidates is enormous. Not only does the recruiter have several resumes and profiles to review, but once she narrows the field, she must interview candidates at a very frequent rate. The outcome is fast-paced, reactionary work and little time left for additional fishing. And here comes the second down-side: Since the recruiter must spend so much time sorting through her catch, she only hooks the “active” candidates. I talked about active and passive candidates a couple months ago, but basically, active candidates are aggressively looking for a new job while passive candidates (though they still may be interested in potential job opportunities) are not engaged in a full-on job search. Since the volume recruiter relies on an applicant pool which consists of those who apply to her openings, meet her at career fairs,Office Home And Student 2010 Key, and post their resumes on job boards, she is missing out many other qualified but less visible candidates.
The niche model – Back to my metaphor … this model requires the fisherman to swim through the deep waters of the sea and only attempt to spear those she thinks are appropriate for consumption … think Rupert from Survivor. She begins her search with very specific criteria (“I want a blue fish with green gills”) and returns with only the fish she seeks.
Spear-fishing recruiting is often regarded as the more advanced from the two recruiting techniques. However, I think a recruiter;s success in a job depends on the competencies and interests of that recruiter. Volume recruiting requires a recruiter with strong time management and organizational skills as well as a sound ability to screen resumes and candidates. This person also has to remain active and positive while plowing through a massive amount of work. On the other hand, niche recruiting suits those who enjoy extensive research,Office Home And Business 2010 Key, internet mining, cold calling, and networking. The rewards are few and far between, but when you seal a win, you make a lot of people very happy.
The down-side of niche recruiting? Back to my fishing metaphor … if the spear fisher is looking for a blue fish with green gills but instead spears a blue fish with red gills, chances are she;s going to throw that fish back, even if that fish may make an excellent dinner for the family next door. Likewise, niche recruiters; sights can be so narrowly focused at times that a lot of great candidates can get lost in the shuffle.
I,Microsoft Office 2010 Home And Business, of course, am totally generalizing in my statements. First, I think there are great volume recruiters who find the time for passive candidate sourcing and great niche recruiter who know how to route the right candidates to the right jobs, but a lot times, these activities don;t happen. I also believe some organizations have the ability to execute these strategies in conjunction with one another. For instance, Microsoft;s College Recruiting team does a good job of casting a wide net with the college candidate community (career fairs, job postings,Office 2007 Enterprise, etc) and then executes targeted spear fishing tactics within that pool (networking, referrals, etc).
Ok – that;s all for a Friday evening. It;s pizza and beer time. Later on, I;ll give you more detail about the types of activities I think can fill this space between volume and niche recruiting. Basically, it involves buying an aquarium and lots of fish food …
gretchen