3 Daily Practices to Elevate Your Internal Recruiting Practices

At the very basic level, a successful recruiter creates the opportunity for talent to connect with their clients. So how does a recruiter make sure they’re doing everything they can to accomplish their job? If you are an internal recruiter or a hiring manager looking to add pipeline to a critical role, here are three things we do every day, without exception!

1. It’s all about your people. Phone calls and networking are essential! Set a goal to speak personally with at least 30 people every day. These can include prescreens, first interviews and touching base with your network. Make these conversations often and personal - how are their kids, their pets, and - of course - their jobs? Quick touches make the deeper conversations much less forced, more sincere, and FUN! Who wants to talk to someone boring about another boring job!?! At Talented Recruiting we love sending personalized notes when we can! Do some networking every day, and follow up when someone reaches out to you - this can be hard when you’re already so busy! Set time aside every day, even if it’s 30 minutes. You might miss a day here and there - you know if you miss one day, you need 45 minutes for the next two. If you are having a great call, don’t forget to ask for referrals!

2. Track your success. Know who you’re matching, how long it takes, and where the matches are coming from. Watch how long you spend on the phone and emails and social media. Track it all and find the patterns. Don’t abandon one form because others are better - contact is essential and it’s what this work comes down to. But focus your time on the most productive areas, and for those areas that aren’t as successful, hone your time and get the message to an art form! It will increase the success while minimizing the time you put into it.

3. Always improve yourself. There’s so much to learn - read the latest books, keep up with the latest technologies, and listen to the great business minds. You’ll never know everything and you shouldn’t let all you do know keep you from learning more. And this advice isn’t just about work! If you’re all work and no play, you won’t be at your best while working. Nurture your personal goals, get all the vacation time you can, enjoy your friends and family, and step outside of the office! Even when you have to work a little too much, find ways to make it fun. Love the theater and scored tickets to Hamilton? Invite a client. (We did, check out photos here!) Got the big table reserved at a hot new restaurant? Invite clients. There will be periods when you feel like you don’t have much work-life balance, and as long as it’s brief, that’s okay. Make the work fun!

So what are some methods and practices you use as a recruiter to meet your own definitions of success? What works and what has failed? Let us know in the comments; we’d love to hear what works and doesn’t for others!

TR Weekly Roundtable

This week we talked about how to identify our core values and find the right organizational fit for our values. Christine had this to say about it:

The blog post mentions grabbing a piece of paper and spending 10 minutes identifying your values. It’s a small doing, but I think there’s a lot to be said. For me, a few of my own values consist of giving my 110% every single day at work, clocking in on time, and owning up to my mistakes. I know this is what drives me, and makes me feel good as a person. When I write it down, it helps me focus on what’s important and helps re-affirm what matters to me. I don’t always give it my 110% at work, nor do I find it easy to admit to my boss when I’ve made a mistake. However, because I know these are my core values, I work that much harder to make sure I hit those core values the next time around.

As recruiters we have to practice what we preach, and we work hard to stay true to our own values so we can help our candidates find the right fit for theirs, and our clients define their values and bring in matching applicants. 

Thanks for checking in with us! Next week we'll discuss three daily practices to elevate internal recruiting practices - recruiters won't want to miss that!

Define your values and find your purpose

You can tell a lot about an organization by their values. The best matches are made when values align. If you are career searching, and are looking for meaningful work, there is no better place to start than by identifying your core values. Would you rather deliver exceptional work or is it more important to reach the project deadline? While a simple statement, it can radically change your employment experience from one that feels good to an everyday battle. Life is better when your personal values mesh with your company’s. If you value self-actualization, you might not fit into a traditionalist company. If you value fun, a team who focuses on rigor and long hours won’t be your dream position. Fear not if you don’t find a 100% match but rather a fierce complement; the strongest teams are built on diversity. Each unique mindset brings different experience. Abl Schools intentionally seeks a wide range of diverse backgrounds to make sure multiple viewpoints are represented in the product.  

To identify your values, grab a piece of paper and 10 minutes of time. What makes you happiest? What “drives” your work? How do you hit your “flow”? What work and personal accomplishments are you the most proud of? How are you most satisfied? For each of these questions, identify in both your career and personal life what you are doing and who you are with when you experience them. What other factors are present? If your proudest moment wasn’t the time you received some amazing award for a project you poured sweat equity into, and instead it was the recognition your team received for a small project everyone worked together on, guess what - you’ve just identified a key value. Perhaps teamwork matters to you over competitiveness or being the best.

Try to identify 5-10 core values in no particular order, combining any that go together easily (independence and fun could be adventurousness!). Now prioritize them. Focus on your first two. In choosing between challenge and support for example, would you go your own to do something no one else has ever accomplished, or would you seek stability in smaller challenges that keep you close to your network? Compare each one until you have them in a priority order.Do the highest values make you proud? Would you stand by them even if you were in the minority? You’ve found them if the answers to both questions are “yes.” Adjust as necessary.

Your first four or five values are the ones you’re going to want to prioritize in looking for a good organizational fit. Different companies will look slightly different with the same values, and similar companies may choose different values. You can also read a lot into a company based on how they present their values. Dropbox has five values, mostly centered on teamwork and work quality, but the fifth is a picture of a cupcake. Everyone loves cupcakes - but what does it mean? It represents a fun office. This is so unique - we all love cupcakes and who doesn’t want fun - but just the graphic instead of words is indicate of how outside the box Dropbox thinks. That’s a very informal and super-creative atmosphere. You should know immediately from the way they speak whether you’d fit in there or not. At Thumbtack, a platform that builds local economies by connecting locals with tasks to complete with professionals seeking clients, one value is “Go!” and two others are “[k]now our customer” “[m]ake each other better.”

Now that you’ve identified your core values, you’ll have a clearer sense of your direction and at which companies you truly belong and can provide value to - and don’t forget, you want a good match because the right company builds you as much as you build their product.

Is Your Hiring Bias Cutting Out the Best Candidate?

Have you ever come across ideas that radically change all the things you’ve thought you were doing right? Lou Adler’s Hire With Your Head did that for me early in my career. A long-time recruiter with two bestselling hiring guides under his belt - one for the hirers and one for the hirees - Adler has been teaching workshops on his hiring methods for more than two decades, improving the processes of more than 40,000 recruiters. He is most famously known for his way of rewriting Job Descriptions in the form of Performance Profiles.

In Hire With Your Head, Adler describes a repeatable scenario in which the most suitable person for a position is beaten out by the candidate with the best presentation and interview skills. This makes us wonder. Is your best candidate the HBS grad looking to upgrade after an unsuccessful run at a hot new upstart?  Or could it be a college dropout with the most amazing portfolio you’ve ever seen. (Fun fact, Zuckerberg, Gates, and Jobs all were college dropouts!)  Indicators for success aren’t the candidate who carries themselves the same as you, wears a power color, or speaks on your level - those are social distractions that distract from solid substance. At Talented Recruiting, of course  we fully learn your culture and aim to present candidates who match up. We also measure drive and tenacity and uncover experiences and skills that make even tighter fits under the surface. Where did the candidate start versus where they are now, and was that by being handed every tool possible or was it through their own self-motivation, hard work and determination? What is their vision and how do they demonstrate leadership?

Adler describes snap judgements hiring managers make and warns against them. Some interviewers appreciate an affable chatty candidate who easily asks questions. They ignore negatives and overestimate strengths, making a sales pitch instead of evaluating competency - all because they “clicked” with someone.

Funny enough, research shows there isn’t a correlation between interview skills and on-the-job performance. A candidate’s nervousness, which may lead to poor eye contact, lack of composure, and rather unimpressive answers, affects first impression. Unfortunately this performance anxiety might just be the deal breaker in terms of landing a dream job! You want to see confidence in your candidates but the truth is that confidence isn’t always the right indicator. The interview is to collect more information. Adler says the biggest secret to success in hiring is to avoid our natural judgment tendencies and refuse to make a hiring decision within the first thirty minutes of an interview.

To get started on hiring with YOUR head, the first step is to rewrite the job description so that it describes the projects and work that needs to be done, instead of a laundry list of skills gathered from multiple job postings on the internet. (I see you out there!) The interview should be designed to map the candidate’s experiences and to show challenges and successes. Adler admonishes hiring partners to put personal feelings aside when analyzing, and RESIST MAKING A JUDGEMENT FOR 30 MINUTES. I have tried this method out myself -  it works!

If you like what Adler has to say in Hire With Your Head, follow him on LinkedIn, where he posts a few times a month with articles for job seekers and hiring managers alike. He’s one of our favorite resources!

TR Weekly Roundtable

This week I sat down with TR’s recruiters and asked them their own thoughts on how they create a culture of urgency within our organization. Here's what they had to say!

Christine: The first is keeping each other accountable. Sometimes before I can execute on a task, I will need something from Danielle or vice versa. We utilize resources such as Asana to assign tasks to each other, and check-in calls to debrief on action items we need to complete. We’re a small team, so the things we do individually will 100% affect the other person, and it’s important we constantly check-in to make sure each person is carrying their weight and delivering results. Secondly, as a remote company, consistent motivation can be hard to come by. Sometimes, we will put off action items we know we need to complete. During these moments, Danielle & I will often call each other to verbalize what we need to do, and then do it together. Even if it’s miniscule, like staying on the phone with one another, that itself creates a culture of urgency in the workplace because you have someone keeping you accountable in real-time. It works surprisingly well :)

Danielle: Sitting on my desk is a mug that reads “Everyday I’m hustling”, and it pretty much describes my day. From the moment I wake up my schedule is packed. I tell my team that our job is like the game Whack a Mole. When we get a new client or opportunity to work on, the clock starts ticking to find our dream candidate. We know by the time we are on the search, our client’s product growth is stymied and their time is being wasted in the wrong areas. They need qualified, available and interested candidates ASAP.

Straight from our recruiters - our culture of urgency is fostered with constant communication. We know our clients need us now so we make every effort to deliver immediately. 

Have a great weekend, everyone! We’ll see you again on Monday, and you can check us out again on Tuesday, when we discuss how Lou Adler and his book Hire With His Head have shaped us as a recruiting agency!

Creating a Culture of Urgency Now

Movers and shakers in the world are a diverse bunch but they have one thing in common: a sense of urgency. We all have the same 24 hours in a day; the difference is what we choose to do with it. Marie Curie, Steve Jobs, Beyonce, and your most hated and beloved politicians probably don’t seem like peers, but there’s one thing they’d agree on - time is valuable and it can be incredibly fruitful. So in a world of distractions, complacency, and epic naps, how do we overcome the malaise and noise so that we can be successful?

Leadership and Change expert John P. Kotter knows something about success - when he’s not teaching at the Harvard Business School, he’s founding management consulting firms, conducting speaking engagements, or writing a bestselling business treatise (he’s up to twenty works so far). He defines urgency as “a combination of thoughts, feelings, and actual behavior. The thoughts are [great opportunities and great hazards]. The feelings are a gut-level determination that we’re going to do something now...And the behavior is this hyper-alertness to what’s going on. It’s a sense of coming to work each and every day with a commitment to making something happen that’s on the important issues. It’s a sense you give off to other people that, we’ve got to get going on this because it’s so important.”

In his 2008 book “A Sense of Urgency”, Kotter identifies four tactics to establish urgency:

1. Show the outside world - Hiding away the external opportunities erodes motivation and exhibits fear of competition. If your workplace culture says “we know best”, the feeling of superiority and expertise creates a false sense of security that slows work product. This is why competition is healthy.

2. Move with urgency yourself - A manager who doesn’t display urgency won’t see fast results. You need it done, let’s go! Walk the walk without being overbearing. You’re efficient and confident and you believe your coworkers and staff to be of equal ability.

3. Find the opportunity in crisis - Every cloud has a silver lining, and in a culture of urgency, you’ll find it. Bad news is just a learning experience, and making that failure visible means you can solve the problem. Leverage it to break through complacency in the workplace. A setback is upsetting but they occur - so learn from it and make it a success. Frequently miss deadlines in the office? Cause a scene and fix it. Create a timeline for working toward deadline that identifies the breakdowns early and gets things out on time - even early!

4. Put the change-resistant folks in their place - Hopefully you inspire them and their “place” isn’t outside of your company. But there is always someone who doesn’t handle change well, and change is necessary for growth. Get them excited for all the new things coming too - you might have to let them hang on to a few familiar things, but you probably have a few momentos on your desk too. Look at their resistance as needing a feeling of security, provide it for them, and shake their comfort zones just enough to get everyone in the right direction.

Okay, but what are some concrete actions to create this culture of urgency using these broad tactics? In simpler terms, they really come down to just a few principles - don’t procrastinate, solve problems quickly, and focus on goals. Every action in your workplace should center around these ideas. When the problem, task, or goal is on the radar, create a plan and make actionable tasks to work toward the resolution.

Kotter says a true culture of urgency is rare - “[i]t has to created and recreated”. It’s simply not the natural order of things because it requires too much energy to sustain when not motivated by ambition. But the alternative is mediocrity. Transformation and growth therefore require a cultivated sense of urgency and leaders must plant the seed organically. He argues that it’s more necessary now than ever before because change is happening faster than it ever has - to keep up with the world, we have to move faster.

So in a world that revolves around change and transition, the days of corporate complacency and caution are over. There is no more status quo - unless that status quo is some  level of comfort existing in uncertainty, with the opportunities and wisdom that come from it. Procrastination breeds failure while urgency creates success, but it isn’t necessarily that simple - there’s something to be said for planning, but then there are over-planners who it turns out are just afraid of failure and so never get started. Some simply need support or guidance to catch that contagious sense of urgency, and that’s where leaders’ attitudes are fundamental. Not only are you a mover and a shaker in this new world of constant, rapid change, but you don’t leave your team behind either.

TR Weekly Roundtable!

This week I sat down with TR’s recruiters and asked them their own thoughts on the topic -

How do you ensure that you’re finding the candidates your clients are looking for?

Here’s what they had to say!

Christine: Patience and vetting! When I LinkedIn source for candidates, I sometimes have to sift through 20-25 pages until I find those 10 A+ candidates. Even then, they still might not be the perfect fit. No one is going to nail a search on the first try, or even on the 4th or 5th try. Be patient, listen to what clients are looking for and adjust your search accordingly. Feedback and criticism can be hard to take, but they are key you are trying to find the candidates our clients want.

Danielle: I agree; another thing we do is look at our clients’ negative reviews too. All of our clients are great, don't get me wrong, but not everyone is a good fit and there are going to be people who don't work out and have criticism, constructive or otherwise. If I have a great candidate who fits exactly what my client is looking for but I get the vibe he's super-introverted - just as an example - then I see three negative reviews for my client from people who wanted to go their own and didn't function well with a lot of collaboration, the candidate I found won't be the right fit. I keep searching.

And there you have it - we match to what the client wants but we find just the right candidates by considering their personality fit too. There's a place for everyone and a fit for every opening, and we’re the ones to put them together!

Have a great weekend, everyone! We’ll see you again on Monday, and you can check us out again on Tuesday, when we talk about creating a culture of urgency in your organization!

10 Quick and Easy Ways to Build Your Employer Brand

What's the secret to recruiting great employees in a job seeker's market? One of the best things you can do is master your employer brand.

Like consumers, job candidates are shopping around for the best offers. They want jobs that fit their goals, desires and lifestyles, at a company they know and trust. Whether you're actively hiring or not, you should always take advantage of opportunities to "sell" your company to potential employees, and make the idea of working for you irresistible.

Here are 10 simple ways to boost your employer brand and get your name out to the industry's top talent.

1. Update your careers page. An up-to-date careers section on your website, complete with job descriptions, benefits overviews and a glimpse at company culture, is the first step to making a good impression with job candidates who look you up.

2. Encourage employees to post about and tag your company on social media. Your current employees have the potential to be your greatest ambassadors. When there's a fun company-sponsored event happening, or something exciting is going on in the office, (gently) remind employees that they are welcome to share the news with their social networks.

3. Implement an employee referral program. Employees who really love working for you will want to tell their job-seeking friends about your company. Make it worth their while with an incentive, such as a small bonus or gift following a successful referral hire.

4. Identify and engage with passive talent. Passive candidates are much more likely to take your call if they know who you are. Follow and establish relationships with your industry's top talents so they know you're paying attention to their work.

5. Participate in industry Twitter chats. Twitter chats and other social media forums can expose your company to a much wider audience of industry professionals while simultaneously establishing you as a field expert.

6. Share relevant news on social media. Show that you know what's going on in your industry by sharing and commenting on the latest happenings.

7. Launch (and publicize) a charity initiative. Corporate social responsibility is a hot topic in the business world. Consumers and candidates alike want to see your company doing some real good in the world, so partnering with a charity organization or doing volunteer work can only bolster your image as an employer.

8. Make your mission crystal clear. Today's professionals want to know that their personal values align with those of their employer. Proudly share your company's mission to attract like-minded employees who will support and believe in it.

9. Share "behind-the-scenes" photos. A picture is worth a thousand words, so give potential candidates an inside look by posting photos from the company social accounts of your headquarters, social events and cool projects you're involved with.

10. Hire a great recruiter. Between our industry experience and far-reaching professional networks, recruiters can help publicize and evangelize your company to the candidates you most want to reach. We'll do the heavy lifting; you just focus on building a company people want to work for.

Moving Up: What Employers Want In a Senior-Level Candidate

by Danielle van Asch Prevot

At Talented Recruiting, my clients ask me to find candidates for a wide range of senior roles, from product managers to directors of design. Companies tend to need more help filling these types of jobs, and it's not hard to figure out why: The higher up you go, the more specialized your skills and abilities need to be. Employers expect a learning curve at entry level, but by the time you move up to management, you need to prove that you already have what it takes to lead a team.

If you're ready to move up the ladder and take the next step in your career, here's what employers and recruiters are looking for in high-level candidates.

Management experience. It goes without saying that if you're applying for a director or executive position, your resume should include a decent amount of prior management experience. Even if you didn't have "manager" in your previous title, be ready to discuss any leadership roles you were given and what kinds of responsibilities came with it.

Strong communication skills. It may sound cliche, but the ability to communicate really is a universal job requirement. In just about every position I fill, my clients specifically request candidates with good communication skills, and it's especially critical at the senior level. Leading a team requires you to clearly articulate not only what tasks have to be done, but the overall company goals and mission that will motivate employees to do their best work.

Up-to-date industry knowledge. Companies expect a lot from their senior-level employees, and if they're going to hire you, they want to know that you take the initiative to expand your skill set. Stay up to date on your industry's latest software developments and tech trends so you can confidently discuss these with a recruiter or hiring manager. Bonus points if you can provide work samples on your portfolio demonstrating your use of current programs and apps.

Concrete accomplishments. When it comes down to it, businesses want results above all else. What have you done in your current or past jobs that had a measurable impact on the company? Share specific data points to really illustrate your accomplishments. Words are nice, but numbers paint a much clearer picture of what you can do.

Cultural fit. Today's employers place a high premium on how well a job candidate will integrate with the existing company culture. Entrepreneur reported that employees who fit the culture tend to stick around longer, which can save companies tens of thousands of dollars in turnover costs, so hiring managers really want to make sure they get it right. It's true that you can't fake a cultural fit, but you can do some research on prospective employers and try to understand what their company culture is all about. If you feel you embody what they're looking for, be prepared to talk about your shared values during the initial phone screening and in-person interview.

Great references. A hiring manager may think you look good on paper, but they're going to want validation from someone who knows what you're like as an employee. Once you've gotten permission to share their contact information, include at least two or three individuals who ranked above or at your level who can back up any claims you've made on your resume. And choose your references wisely: An impressive reference list isn't the most important factor in the hiring process, but having somebody in the C-suite at a well-known company vouch for you can make a big difference. Remember, your resume, portfolio and professional network are powerful tools that can help get your foot in the door at the company of your dreams. No matter what kind of job you're searching for, use these tools to your advantage to sell your best qualities.

Next Steps: What to Do When You Find the Perfect Candidate

As a recruiter, I know how frustrating it can be to scan through resume after resume without finding a good one in the bunch. That's why it's so easy to get over-excited when you come across an applicant with a great work history who hits all the criteria on your hiring checklist.

This person may look good on paper, but before you consider extending a job offer, there are a few steps you should follow to make sure they really are the right fit. To minimize frustrations and wasted time for all parties, here's what to do once you've found an ideal potential candidate.

Conduct a phone screen. Whether you choose to do this yourself or entrust the task to a recruiter, your first step is to get the candidate on the phone. Speaking with a person directly gives you a lot more insight into their personality, attitudes and thought processes than going back and forth over email, but a phone call is much less of a scheduling commitment for both parties than an in-person interview. Knocking out some initial questions during a screening will help determine whether this candidate is worth that time investment.

Review any additional materials. You likely already checked out a candidate's social media profiles and portfolio website before you contacted them. But go back and revisit these materials after the initial phone call, this time with a keener eye. Does your impression of the candidate after speaking with them align with the image they present online? Is there anything surprising or concerning that you missed the first time around? Looking at these profiles and portfolios with a fuller picture of who the candidate is may change your mind, for better or for worse.

Ask for and check their references. Most career experts now advise job seekers not to include the words "references available upon request" on their resumes because they should already know to prepare one just in case. If a candidate can't supply any contacts, or is hesitant to do so, this should raise a red flag for you. Once you do have their reference list, reach out to any or all of the people on there (but do stick to the list: I have seen too many hiring managers compromise the trust and privacy of a candidate by reaching out to unauthorized "back door" references that they know personally). The hope is that you will receive glowing reviews about your candidate, but if anyone is surprised to hear from you or seems less than enthused about the candidate's performance, you might want to move on to another applicant.

Bring them in for the interview. If your candidate has passed through the first three steps and you still want to hire them, now is the time to schedule a formal interview. By this point, you should have a pretty good idea of how well the candidate could handle the job, so use the in-person meeting as an opportunity to evaluate their cultural fit and social skills. On Monster.com, writer Steven Hunt said to look at a candidate's self-awareness, sensitivity to others, social intelligence and self-control, as a deficit in these areas could indicate a "problem employee" who will cause interpersonal issues among your team.

Gather opinions from your team. After the interview, anyone who met with the candidate should be able to weigh in. You may think they're perfect, but candid feedback from the people who will ultimately be working with this person will ensure that you're not seeing them through rose-colored glasses. If your team approves, then go ahead and make that offer.

The path to finding the right candidate for a job can be a long and arduous one, but it's worth it to do your due diligence and not rush ahead with the first qualified resume you see. And don't forget, you can always make the process easier with a recruiter on your side. While the final decision is up to you, we can start your hiring process off strong with the right candidates, and guide you through all of the above steps. Learn more about what we can do for you on the Talented Recruiting blog.

Winning over the Passive Candidate

When you're looking to fill a job, there are two types of candidates you can consider. The first is the active candidate, one who directly applies to your open position and expresses interest in working for you. The second is the elusive, but sometimes much more valuable, passive candidate. This person is currently employed and may not be looking for a new job, but could be swayed by the right opportunity or right relationship. What is the differences in approaching these two potential hires?

Headhunting has long been a method for finding the right candidate, but in today's age of social media and constant connectivity, the game has completely changed. While cyclical, we are in a job seeker's market, and many industries are seeing heated battles to get the cream of the crop. It's also getting harder to locate the right people: According to the 2016 LinkedIn Global Recruiting Trends report, 46 percent of employers say their biggest hiring obstacle is finding candidates in high-demand talent pools.

I am often asked, “How do you find great passive candidates?” Recruiters have extensive personal and professional networks. I love keeping in touch with people I have worked with. I also make it a point to help out where I can. Just this week I have two in person meetings with different ex colleagues looking for expert recruiting thoughts for their start-ups, a call with a past candidate to strategize on asking for a raise, and a happy hour to discuss basic foundations for laying out a strong engineering culture from the start. CEO, Carolyn Betts, of Bett’s Recruiting summed it up perfectly “Recruiting is a relationship business”. For me, helping connect friends and colleagues is a huge perk of the job.

It's not always an easy journey, though. The more skilled and experienced a person is, the more companies there are that want them, and it can be tough to get their attention. These passive candidates know their worth and have no problem ignoring your emails requesting their resume and work samples if they don't think the opportunity or employer is the right fit.

A phone call with a passive candidate is huge a win in the modern recruiting process: means they're at least willing to hear you out. Candidates value transparency and time. Sometimes, I suggest to my client that they take a meeting, or a phone call before we have an updated resume or portfolio. By the time a candidate has prepared these things, they are ready to start sending them to other companies. Passive candidates will procure these items quickly once they feel there is a viable opportunity.

If you're fairly new or are just starting to gain traction in the industry, it's unlikely that the top talent has heard of you. They may be skeptical of taking a risk on a company that's less established.  To compensate for your lack of "buzz", the most successful of my clients, come out of the gate strong, telling the story of their company journey, their vision and paint the picture of how the candidate’s background fits in, and what sort of career growth they can expect from making a move.

Passive candidates are not impossible to attain, but it does take a little extra work to convince someone to switch horses. With a great recruiter to help you find strong passive talent and the right strategy to win them over, you just might find yourself interviewing the best people your industry has.

5 Easy Ways to Improve your Design Resume

by Danielle van Asch Prevot

In just about every industry, designers are in high demand right now. Whether they want graphics, websites or mobile apps, companies are looking for someone with an eye for aesthetics, along with the technical know-how to bring their visions to life.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, web development jobs in particular are growing at a faster-than-average rate of 27 percent, so finding opportunities to apply to is the easy part. The bigger challenge for talented design professionals is getting noticed in a crowd of equally talented applicants, all with the same skills and qualifications you have.

The key to catching a hiring manager's eye, quite literally, is a resume that really stands out. Designers are in the unique position of being able to use their application as both a summary of their experience and a sample of their work. The following tips can help you improve your resume, and your chances of landing an interview.

Play with the layout. If you're still using a standard resume template typed in Microsoft Word, use this opportunity to break the mold and show off your skills. Instead of a Word document, create a uniquely formatted resume using a program like InDesign, Illustrator or QuarkXPress. A pop of color and clean-but-bold font choice, for example, will give the reader an idea of your personal style.

Link to your portfolio. Perhaps more so than in any other field, designers really need to have a current digital portfolio. Any prospective employer will want to make sure your style is the right fit for their projects. Provide them with an easily accessible link to a website housing your most recent work. This is another opportunity to showcase your design skills: Make sure your website is aesthetically pleasing with fully functional links and pages, and skip any samples (especially older ones) that don’t accurately reflect your current work proficiency. Utilize your network and have a fellow designer look over your site and critique it before sending out the link on your resume.

Emphasize the right experiences and skills. This is good advice for any job seeker, but in the design industry, it's especially important to read the job description and tailor your resume accordingly. Many tech-focused design jobs require candidates who have experience with specific programming languages and software applications.  Keeping that in mind "skills" sections are boring and often ignored by recruiters and hiring managers! Instead of listing out searchable terms and buzzwords, make sure your skills are show throughout your resume in your accomplishments

Demonstrate results. Did the website overhaul you worked on at your last job lead to a significant traffic boost? Or maybe the ad campaign you designed for a client brought in a ton of sales leads. Hiring managers like to see concrete, quantifiable results, and numbers speak louder than words. Back up your claims with some statistics from past projects to show them what you're capable of. "Increased pageviews by 200 percent with site redesign" sounds a lot more impressive than "updated company website." Normal everyday tasks don’t make you shine, so cut them.

Cut the clichés. Terms like "results-driven" and "detail-oriented" might seem like they'd appeal to corporate minds, but the truth is, we're sick of seeing them. These words show up on every other resume an employer reads, and they've lost their impact because of it. An article on The Muse cited a survey listing some the vague, overused resume terms that recruiters and hiring managers hate, including "go-getter," "team player" and "strategic thinker." Instead, go for strong, action verbs like "achieved," "improved" or "created," all of which can easily be paired with the results/statistics we mentioned earlier.

Creative fields like design are highly competitive, and it might take some extra effort on your part to keep your application moving up the chain. But with a couple of resume tweaks and a positive attitude, you'll be well on your way to getting the design job of your dreams.

Recruiters: Your most important hiring relationship

By Danielle van Asch Prevot

If you've worked with a recruiting agency in the past, then you already know the basics of how it works: You tell the firm about the position and the type of person you want, and the recruiter goes out and tracks down the perfect candidates.

It's not hard to see the advantages of using a recruiter for your staffing needs. Reviewing resumes, screening applicants and scheduling in-person interviews can be exhausting, and a recruiting agency helps you cut down the time you personally have to spend on preliminary hiring activities. But there's another important way recruiters can enhance your hiring process, and that's the ongoing relationship they build with you, the client.

Good recruiters don't just find candidates; they listen to your needs, tailor their talent scouting approach, and offer their expertise to help you make the best possible hiring decisions. In essence, they create a constant feedback loop that gives you greater insight than you could likely get searching for candidates on your own.

So what goes into building a recruiter-client relationship? Here's what the right agency can bring to the table.

We know your industry. Specialized recruiting firms have invested a lot of time and resources into learning an industry inside and out. We've seen what kind of candidates get hired and succeed in companies similar to yours, and we know what skills and experiences would make a perfect match for the type of role you want to fill. We also know what kind of talent you need to stay competitive, because we see industry hiring trends as they unfold.

We know where to look. Recruiters have access to a wide range of resources to help you find the right person for the job. Candidates are on job boards, social media sites, online forums and even in your professional network. If you were handling the hiring process yourself, you might be overwhelmed at the prospect of searching through all of these different sources, but we have the time and expertise to do that for you. More importantly, we might know of a place or two you wouldn't have thought to look yourself, leading to even more qualified candidates.

We evangelize your company. If your company is smaller and only has a few employees, you may not have the networking power to talk yourself up to potential applicants. Even with inbound flow, you risk missing out on the best passive candidates if you don’t have a personal connection to them. A well-connected recruiter is linked to the top talent in your industry and geographic area, and knows which individuals would be the perfect match. We get excited about supporting our clients and their missions, and feel personally tied to their success, so we’re more than happy to spread the word about your opportunities to the people we know.

We can give you an unbiased opinion on candidates. We all work hard to remain objective when evaluating candidates, but even the best of us may experience what’s known as a hiring bias. This means unconsciously favoring candidates who have a similar background to their own, and possibly rejecting those who are qualified from a skills perspective, but have a personality or background that may not instantly connect with you. A recruiter looks at your talent pool from an objective, outside perspective. We'll let you know which candidates we think are right (or wrong) based on what we know about your company, its culture and the position we're helping you fill.

When you sign on with a recruiting agency, you're getting more than just candidate leads. Recruiters are natural connectors, and we take pleasure in maintaining long-term personal relationships. We take those relationships very seriously, and our clients either start out, or end up as friends. We truly care about your ability to succeed, and because of that, we're able to give you the tools, tips and candid feedback you need to make an informed decision about every hire you entrust to us.

 

Need a Referral? Make Your Info Easy to Forward!

By Danielle van Asch-Prevot

When you're looking for a job, a referral from a company insider can be the difference between your application getting pushed to the top of the list rather than buried in a growing pile of resumes. If you've taken the time to build genuine relationships, most of your professional contacts would be more than happy to help you out by passing your resume on to someone they know. But that's the thing: They probably don't have time to do more than just "pass it along."

Asking for an introduction or recommendation means you're asking that person to stick their neck out for you, knowing that, if you fail to impress, it could reflect poorly on their reputation. That puts your contact under a lot of pressure to come up with some talking points that will wow the appropriate person, and unless you've worked closely and directly with your referrer, this can be an awkward, difficult and time-consuming task. Therefore, it's in your best interest to make it as simple and stress-free as possible to forward your information along.

The trick is to send something that's easy for your referrer to cut, paste and forward. This not only alleviates some of the burden on them, but also gives you more control over the message that ultimately ends up in front of the hiring manager. Here are a few smart elements to include in your email to the person who's giving you a job referral.

An intention paragraph. Think of this as a brief, informal cover letter. Craft a few sentences about why you're interested in the job and what skills and experiences make you a good fit. This is your chance to make the case for yourself and give your referrer a better idea of how to talk about you to the supervisor or HR manager.

Your resume. This one should be obvious, but people forget to include attachments (or accidentally click "cancel" instead of "attach") on emails all the time. Before you hit send, double check to make sure your resume is, in fact, attached. You don't want to paint yourself as someone who's forgetful or inattentive to detail.

Website links and work samples. You don't need to overload your email with additional materials, but links to your personal website, LinkedIn profile and/or online portfolio should be provided for the hiring manager's convenience. This person will likely be doing some research on you before they decide if you're a fit, so why not save them a step and give them as much information as possible? It's appropriate for the position, say you are a UX designer, be sure to send a link to your portfolio, as it is standard practice for hiring managers to want to see your design work. The less back-and-forth there is, the faster the hiring manager can determine if you're going to get an interview!

Gratitude. Don't forget to thank the person who's referring you. It may not have taken them much effort to draft a short email and hit "send," but they're still doing you a favor and giving you a leg up that you may not have otherwise had. Be sure to express your appreciation to your referrer and, indirectly, to the person who will eventually review your resume.

You might feel funny requesting a favor if you're not used to it, but know that it's okay to ask for help. Getting ahead in your career is all about who you know, and in today's culture of networking, people higher up the ladder are usually willing to pull some strings. Remember, the easier you make it for someone to help you, the more likely they'll be to oblige.