Thanks to all the job boards and other search channels now available, candidates are casting wider nets than ever before. They are pushing cover letters and resumes at an incredible rate, often applying for dozens of positions a day or more. In the process, they are making mistakes … annoying mistakes. Spelling and grammar have become casualties, and it seems no original thought is being put into resumes or cover letters. In addition to bothering corporate recruiters, it also impedes the candidate screening process, which slows down the hiring process.

You wouldn’t want to bring candidates in who are careless and inattentive to detail, but you still have to sift through error-ridden resumes to find the candidates you want. This isn’t just time wasted on every resume you’re not going to use; it leads to increased frustration that will affect your overall performance. Instead of letting these problems get in the way, it’s more effective to implement a strategy that changes the process entirely and helps you remain as productive as possible.

Use KGTiger’s BYTE solution to take the frustration out of our resume screening and candidate review process. Our team will conduct the preliminary review for you, weed out the resumes that would irritate you and identify the candidates who are worthy of your time and effort. The BYTE team will also format the resumes to your specifications, in order to make the entire process faster and easier for you and your corporate recruiting team.

Don’t let difficult or careless candidates slow you down! Put KGTiger’s BYTE solution at the front of your recruiting process and you’ll reclaim time and convenience that will ultimately make your team far more effective.

via The Customer Collective

The issue is one of litigation risk, and it’s a top concern for corporate recruiters all over the country. The wrong questions could cause a candidate to sue, costing your company both money and its reputation with clients (and future candidates). Even the best corporate recruiters slip up sometimes, often because they are so good at reading a candidate and managing the conversation effectively. Especially in the early stages of the corporate recruiting process, you need a way to protect your recruiters and your company. Structured interviews can be a particularly effective litigation risk mitigation tool.

Use KGTiger’s BYTE solution to manage your early-stage candidate screening and interviews. Our team will work with you to ensure appropriate interview questions and candidate survey questions are compliant with all relevant regulations. Our standardized approach will provide the results you need to determine which candidates should advance, while reducing your company’s exposure to risk.

Don’t let good intentions or a comfortable flow expose your company to a lawsuit. Use structured interviews to make sure the right questions are consistently asked, responses reported, and you’ll effectively reduce risks and lower the cost of candidate acquisition.

[via OpenView Labs]

Unemployment, on a broad scale, actually says very little about the talent market that’s relevant to you. Several factors influence available talent, and these are what matters most to your corporate recruiting team. On the list are:

• Skills and competencies
• Experience
• Location
• Demand among competitors

If you’re looking for a specific type of programmer (skills and competencies), for example, other economic circumstances may dictate you’ll also want the talent to be near the office where you have the open req. And, of course, and you want him or her to have the requisite experience. Further, if your competitors are interested in making similar hires, talent scarcity may increase.

Frankly, you need the right talent at the right place at the right time.

To help you and your organization understand the dynamics of targeted talent markets, engage KGTiger’s TMR solution. Our team will develop the talent market research reports you need to understand the employment and competitive talent landscapes that impact your hiring and retention strategies, enabling you to attract the best candidates available, even if other companies want to do the same.

Don’t guess – your talent needs are too important. Use TMR to learn the specific factors that could affect your recruitment strategy and adjust as necessary to maximize results.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

The early comfort and success of a new employee is directly related to his or her fit for the position you’re trying to fill. If you rush to complete the process or decide to settle for “close enough,” you may not have to worry about long-term problems: the employee may decide to start looking for a new job again before your worst fears can come true.

There are plenty of measures you can implement to get off to a great start with every new hire, from a well-planned orientation process to IT readiness. But, none of this will matter if you’re attracting the wrong people. So, make sure the talent pools from which you are sourcing candidates from are reflective of the skills, experience and personality that characterize your company.

Work with KGTiger’s STREAM solution to develop talent pools that will generate near- and long-term value for your company. We have developed specific techniques for creating concentrations of targeted talent that you can use to accelerate your recruiting and hiring processes. And, with a more reliable pool, the candidates who become employees will be both more effective and have a higher likelihood of staying through the first few months with your business.

Recruiting risk doesn’t dissipate with a signed offer letter or a first day on the job. You need to take steps throughout the recruiting supply chain to protect your company from a candidate’s buyer’s remorse. With KGTiger’s STREAM solution, you’ll address the challenge at the source.

[via Thomson Reuters]

So, how can a corporate recruiting team keep from being bolted onto a business unit that doesn’t understand it?

The key is to make your department as self-sufficient as possible – this will give your team the elbow room it needs and also show how the HR department as a whole can manage itself effectively.

To attain self-sufficiency, three factors are crucial: detailed market knowledge, operational efficiency, and broad reach. Work with KGTiger’s integrated suite of solutions and you’ll have the resources at your disposal to address these issues directly.

Using our TMR solution, your team will gain access to timely, carefully developed and focused talent market research reports that can help you understand the challenges and opportunities in your target markets more fully. With our BYTE solution, you can streamline your recruiting operation by taking the administrative aspects of the job and outsourcing them to a low-cost environment that will allow your team to focus on the aspects of recruiting that truly engage their skills and experience. And, our STREAM solution delivers rich talent pools that cut your time to source and provide access to higher-quality candidates.

If your department can stand on its own, you’ll have the space you need to succeed. Partner with KGTiger, and your team will be able to develop, execute and measure the results of your corporate recruiting strategy. Get started now, and you’ll never have to worry about corporate recruiting being left to you!

[via Harvard Business Review]

So, stop thinking like a corporate recruiter for a bit, and get into the mindset of those marketing folks down the hall.

This process starts with identifying your target talent market. Instead of talking to the masses and hoping the right people hear you, zero in on the specific candidates who matter most. Define your criteria, and work with KGTiger’s STREAM solution to develop talent pools consisting of the candidates who fit your position description closely. This is the best way to identify the passive candidates with the greatest potential for your organization.

Next, develop an approach for engaging your target market. This may involve preliminary outreach to engage this refined group of prospects and phone screens completed through KGTiger to narrow the field further, leaving you only the candidates most likely to resonate with your hiring managers. Your workload will be reduced significantly with this method.

Now that you have the best candidate leads, use the skills you’ve spent a career refining to bring the best person in the door as a new employee. This is what you do best!

The fact that you’re a corporate recruiter doesn’t mean you can’t borrow from other business disciplines. When it comes to engaging passive candidates, think like a marketing pro every now and then. You’ll find the candidates your competitors are missing.

Yeah, it’s been tough.

Fortunately, 2011 will be better. How do I know this? Well, that’s easy: you’re going to make it better. And, that starts with three corporate recruiting resolutions for the coming new year.

1. Resolution: be more efficient

Since your company probably won’t resolve to give you more resources, you need to figure out how to use those already at your disposal more effectively. Start by outsourcing low-impact administrative tasks using KGTiger’s BYTE solution to refocus your recruiters on the activities that make the best use of their skills and experience.

2. Resolution: improve candidate targeting

Spend less time talking to the wrong people in 2011. Instead of using traditional approaches to candidate sourcing, engage KGTiger’s STREAM solution to develop rich talent pools consisting of high-potential candidates. Invest your time in recruiting the candidates most likely to generate ROI for your organization.

3. Resolution: understand the talent market better

Much has changed over the past two years, and 2011 is likely to bring new opportunities (and thus, more change). You’ll need fresh insights to make prudent decisions. Work with KGTiger’s TMR solution to use careful and detailed research to understand changes in the talent market and how your company can respond to and leverage them to gain a competitive advantage.

Then, the position is frozen temporarily.

You see nothing but missed potential, as this candidate is likely to become frustrated and look for opportunities elsewhere. Before you give up and accept the loss, though, consider what you can do to keep the candidate engaged. If he or she really wants to work for your company, it may take only a bit of planning to keep the opportunity alive.

This won’t work for everybody, but if your company has a strong employment brand and a unique work opportunity, you can take action to extend a candidate’s shelf life and keep the career conversation fresh. The key is candidate cultivation.

Open with frankness: explain the full situation to your candidate, and be totally honest about the timeframes involved. At the same time, try to get a sense of his or her level of interest in the position and your company. If the response is positive, candidate cultivation steps are more likely to be effective. Develop a plan for staying in touch with the candidate until the hold on the position has been lifted.

Working with KGTiger’s BYTE solution, you can execute your cultivation plan without having to deviate from your core day-to-day responsibilities. Our professionals will provide your candidate with regular updates on the position and conduct periodic, conduct short and informal surveys to gauge continued interest levels. If the lead starts to go cold, we’ll alert you so you can reengage with high-touch measures.

The action you take while the job market is slow will define how your company handles the next economic recovery. Use KGTiger’s BYTE solution to keep high-potential candidates engaged, and you’ll win the war for talent before it starts.

Headcount is coming, and this will doubtless put a strain on recruiting departments that have been tasked to run unusually lean following the financial crisis and ensuing recession. According to the report, 34 percent of Chief HR Officers expect to see headcount increase in North America over the next three years, with a variety of international markets showing even more potential.

The challenge, therefore, is to figure out how to fill the coming open reqs without having to grow the corporate recruiting team unnecessarily. Operational efficiency becomes crucial, consequently, which means deviating from traditional operating models … something corporate recruiting departments have rarely committed to doing.

Efficiency starts with streamlining how you source talent and follows all the way through employee on-boarding. To begin effectively, use KGTiger’s STREAM solution to improve candidate identification and sourcing. We can work with you to define position descriptions and scour the talent market for the best possible candidates for your company’s needs. Instead of using traditional recruiting channels, which can be time-intensive for limited results, our team uses proprietary measures to alleviate the burden on your staff and accelerate results – as well as corporate recruiting ROI.

Get ready for a heavy workload, and meet it with a smooth business process designed to attract and secure the candidates that would benefit your company most. With KGTiger, you’ll rise to the efficiency challenge – and reap the benefits.

[Source: IBM]

Employees, as a rule, don’t like to leave their jobs. A recent article in Business Insider observes:

How would you feel if someone called you a “quitter”? My guess is – not good. You might feel hurt, guilty or upset. You almost certainly wouldn’t feel proud of yourself.

People put enormous pressure on themselves to succeed, and it can be difficult to overcome this, even when the reality doesn’t square with self-perception. So, to attract a frustrated passive candidate, you need to include a mechanism for helping him or her get past this.

A savvy approach is to build it into your screening process.

Work with KGTiger’s BYTE solution to conduct your preliminary phone screens for passive candidates. Early in the process, we can include behavioral questions that speak to a candidate’s challenges in getting things done at his or her current position and structure the interview in a manner that not only indicates it isn’t the candidate’s fault but provides compelling reasons that position your company as a better alternative.

Winning a high-impact passive candidate requires the right approach. Since nobody wants to be a quitter, we can help you position your company’s talent needs as fresh opportunities for success. Make it easy for your passive candidates to get excited about what you have to offer, and your next key hire is easier to secure.

[via Business Insider]