Social Networking, is it important to way up your career ladder? I guess today its not "Who You Know", but most imp is "Who Know You"...

Meeting the right people at the right time can help the candidate to find their dreamed position.

Take for example websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, Viadeo, Ecademy, etc, places where you meet with professional from all over the world. I lost in touch with my old friends of MBA and school I would have never discovered them till the time I searched them on social networking sites. Its definitely a powerful tool in today's market to network in the right manner.

Its beneficial to both business where we find talent and to applicant to increase their visibility to recruiters and find different job opportunities. I am very heavy user of social networking sites and they help me to dig deeper into an area of expertise that’s very specialized, and the more it is specialized, the more helpful that type of social networking is.

People who are on these networking sites with good connections have a significant advantage when you are thinking of career progression as they have choice of people who can in turn be their employers with good job opportunities.

Please share your thoughts.

We Recruiters on earth day…

In my last company, one of my coworker was a environmental recruiter and has always inspired me by her thoughts that being green is good for business. All of us have made a caption in our email signature “Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail” to be a part of this green revolution.
At one end environmentalist, technologist are making an effort to make earth go green, pollution free and stressing on to save trees and not papers.

How we recruiters can play a vital role in this process:-

Managing recruitment online rather on papers.

If interviewing candidate is not a local candidate than try using Video interviews, online tests to reduce travel and cost of operations.

Make career section of your website to go green thus emphasizing environmental values of your company.

Organize virtual Job fairs, webinars.

On company website make a section where candidates can make online portfolios rather than bringing it on papers.

I m presenting today half of my blog in green color to make a mark on this EARTH DAY.

Please suggest your thoughts.

What should be a laid off investment?

I was reading property news today that now is the real time to invest, interest rates have been dropping, and some say they may drop further. So if investors want to make good profit in future and a real opportunity for price appreciation then invest now. At the same time analysts are talking to invest in equity or unit trust for a mid to long term to get better returns in future.

What about a job seeker who has been laid off few months back, what should be his/her investment?

After some brainstorming, let’s see if this helps:-

• Time to reconnect with your ex-colleagues, bosses and with your clients.
• Time to invest in volunteer jobs, part time jobs matching your skill set.
• Time to invest in your own business, may be a small one or may be freelancing.
• Time to invest in Networking.
• Consider it as a break from your career to assess your skill sets and identify areas you can improve while searching for a job. Benchmark yourself.
• Select a career where there is no crowd, stand out.

As a matter of fact, I am also not busy as other years, so here I am with my recruiting blog to connect with you professionals across different industry.

What are your views? Please share your thoughts.

We are in hiring freeze?

I know it's recession time where layoffs are everywhere and companies are very cautious in hiring staff at the moment specailly from external recruiters. A very common answer which you will get from your client or a prospective client in today's scenario is "we are in a hiring freeze". I have been knocking doors of some of the companies marketing candidates for some of their key strategic positions which they are advertsing from quiet sometime but still not hiring from external recruiters.

What should be the strategic approach of a recruiter in 2009, its time for me to do some real brainstorming:-

Regardless of the slow down in the economy, there is still work that needs to be done.

• It has been time to re-tool their Employer programs, get to know your market better and look at your costs and redesign it.
• Whenever making a call to client, make sure every call is different and unique to that client, ask what issues they are having, be a partner rather than a recruiter,
• Special deals for more exclusive business.
• Exclusive candidates and a better marketing.

I have learned one good thing from my recruitment experience is that it's not the number of vacancies I found, it is the number of interviews I booked for candidates that counted. I realised quickly that out of 5 companies I would place 3 of them , it never failed. I guess it's the time to redesign my strategies to get those 3 interviews...so what i am doing now...Go Richa Go....I will catch up again to share how it goes....

Who is the boss in your own team?

In one of my jobs, one team member consciously or unconsciously was playing the role of an expert; he wasn’t a team leader though. He was playing role by criticizing ideas of people instead of helping them which according to me doesn’t help.

I always wonder why do people show this attitude, do they have something special to offer?. In a company where there is a belief on team work, everyone has something special to offer and company should value these experience and expertise. If one of the team members is critical of others then help them with your knowledge instead of criticizing them. I don’t think so isolating yourself by acting superior will help, one of the rules of the team work is “Respect everyone as a person and value the different qualities of people on the team”.

Please share any comments if have any?

How long my Resume should be?

Resume Writing might sound to you a very common topic but I couldn’t hold myself in bringing up this topic after attending one of largest Job Fair in Canada called “National Job Fair” where I was appointed as a Resume Critique Consultant.

I would say 50% of the job seekers came up with one question - the length of resume? Shall I fit my resume to one page, is this a golden rule? or How my vast experience would fit into a single page resume?

We really don’t know who came up with this one page resume formula but most of the job seekers live with the same principle and still not sure.

According to me there is no hard and fast rule of keeping resume to a one page unless you are pursuing a career change and your experience is not relevant to your new objective.

Working as Sr. Recruiter my job is to shortlist the best qualified resume for my client and so far my client’s golden rules of short listing any candidate are:-

• Relevant experience,
• Achievements,
• Confident tone & positive language,
• Don’t lie,

I don’t see one page resume being effective in today’s cut throat competition especially if you have above 6 years of experience, I would say at least two page resume justifies any job seeker experience.

Resume is your marketing tool and I suggest to people to keep resume concise and focus on your accomplishment which could prove to be a key selling point. Also, make sure that every word in your resume should sell your value to a prospective employer.

If you are still not sure how to make your resume then please write to me at mailto:recruitmentdiary@gmail.com