Tag: Recruitng 2.0

Layoffs and Restructure at Google

January 20th, 2009

JoblessGoogle announced on their blog recently that they’ve not only reduced the number of contractors they’re employing but they’re now reducing the number of recruiters on staff by about 100:


    Our first step to address this was to wind down almost all our contracts with external contractors and vendors providing recruiting services for Google. However, after much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organization by approximately 100 positions. #

Also, they are displacing up to 70 engineering employees by closing offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden, Alan Eustace, SVP engineering & research said.

In a Wall Street Journal story commenting on the changes at Google, Jessica Vascellaro reports:

    Google spokesman Matthew Furman said the closing of engineering offices in Texas, Norway and Sweden wasn’t motivated by cost cutting and that Google will offer jobs to the 70 employees affected by the changes. Alan Eustace, Google’s senior vice president for engineering and research, wrote in a blog post that the moves would help Google better coordinate its efforts across different geographic areas.Mr. Furman added that the 100 recruiters let go represents less than a quarter of Google’s total recruiter population. “Overall, we will be working with [those recruiters] to try to locate them other jobs at Google,” he said.

    He said that the company didn’t have plans to announce any further cuts at this time. In recent months, Google has taken measures such as reducing the hours of its food service and giving employees cellphones instead of year-end cash bonuses.

Popularity: 45% [?]

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Posted in Economy, Firing

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Calendar: Personal Branding Summit – Free Nov. 8 2007

November 6th, 2007

Got a phone?

Get registered for an incredible Personal Branding teleconference happening Thursday (two days from when I am writing this) and includes an incredible lineup of speakers from all over the world.

This conference is FREE, but you must register, and then get on the phone during the section you want to learn.

From the website:

To mark the 10th Anniversary of personal branding, on November 8th we are providing 24 free teleseminars with experts in the field of personal branding. Anyone in the world with a telephone will be able to participate in this live event.

This event has content streams for career success, entrepreneurial success and talent management. So, whether you are a corporate professional, an entrepreneur, or a HR manager challenged with the need to attract and retain great people, you will take away actionable knowledge from attending.

Check out the Speakers and Panelists which includes Utah entrepreneur and job-seeker advocate Jason Alba.

Popularity: 34% [?]

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Posted in Hire POWER!, Management tools, My Side of the Desk, New Job Transition, Personal Development, Talent Management, Tools & Resources

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Calendar: Blogging for Business Conference Monday

October 18th, 2007

The Blogging for Business conference will be next Monday. Click below to see the Rocky Mountain Voices vidcast with Matt Reinbold and Brad Baldwin

B4B

Popularity: 27% [?]

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Posted in Calendar, Personal, Tools & Resources, Utah, Utah Living

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How to Use LinkedIN

September 14th, 2007

Jason Alba, who created the Jibber Jobber Career Toolset, recently wrote a book, “I’m on LinkedIN –Now What??“. Well, I just bought my copy and noticed you can get yours on Amazon… if you want.

Review pending… as soon as I consume and digest all of Jason’s delectable networking knowledge.

Popularity: 53% [?]

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Posted in Firing, Getting Hired, Hiring, Jobsearch, Know The Ropes, New Job Transition, Personal, Personal Development

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LinkedIN: Im Gonna Have to Block You

August 30th, 2007

Asking people to join your network may be hazardous to your (network’s) health.

Recently, LinkedIn, the granddaddy of all business social networkins sites, added some good features, trying to help people get and keep connected.  I am strongly in favor of LinkedIn, and I am glad they made some changes to keep up with the pack… but fear of spam and network abuse has them wielding their swords a little early, in my opinion.

Monday, I presented the incredible benefits of using LinkedIn to my team, including a few new recruiters, only to find out that I wasn’t allowed to invite anyone to my network because I had been “restricted”.

Through my emails back and forth with LinkedIn, I learned that I apparently had 5 people that I invited to connect with me that said “I Don’t Know Robert Merrill”.  That is enough to be blackballed, and I was restricted from my account until I fessed up, put my tail between my legs, and agreed to be a good citizen in their network.

At least they didn’t ban me like facebook would have. But that’s NOT THE POINT.  I still demand that I didn’t do anything wrong, but the LinkedIN invitation accept/deny tool is faulty and ENCOURAGES false-positives:

LinkedIn Flag Buttons

This (above) is a screenshot from LinkedIN’s invitation accept/deny screen. Note that there is no button that say, “No, I don’t want to connect” or simply “Delete”.

False Positives?
Think about this:  If a contact who knows me, but (for whatever reason) doesn’t want to CONNECT with me on LinkedIN (maybe our relationship is too passive, or they don’t want to be associated with “a recruiter, eww”), then they have NO option to just say “no”.

Here are your options for an invitation you DON’T want to accept:

  • Clicking “Archive”, but the idea of an archive means “This will still be around for you later and may bug you or take up needless space”
  • Clicking “Flag as spam” is clearly something they would do if they thought I was wantonly inviting everyone with an @ sign.
  • Clicking “I Don’t Know Robert Merrill” is the only logical option for:
    • NOT connecting with me AND
    • Getting RID of the invitation out of my inbox so I don’t have to manage it any more.

Proof?
Sure.  My account is proof.

I ACTIVELY manage my network and I ONLY invite people I have at least communicated with by email, if not in person (most often).  There is NO WAY I sent an errant invitation to someone I don’t know… yet I still received five “I don’t knows”, thereby forcing the bar to be lowered on my citizenship in the LinkedIn community for a time.

LINKED IN — PLEASE ADD A “NO” or “DELETE” button to this screen!

Popularity: 34% [?]

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Posted in My Side of the Desk, Tools & Resources

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What Must I Change?

August 15th, 2007

This is an intentionally OPEN question, and I am seeking brutally-honest feedback.

Ram Charan's Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don'tI am reading Ram Charan’s Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don’t, and I admit it’s got me thinking.

 … really thinking.

Just getting into it now, but I am deeply curious about exactly what’s going on out there in the minds of business-owners and hiring managers working hard to staff their IT and IS departments.  Surely, if any industry needs to watch for fast-moving changes driven by technology, it’s technical recruiting.  In other words, how is the business of recruiting and hiring technically-savvy people changing… or how should it change?

  • Are there ways you (as a business person or as a job-seeker/candidate) consume or collect information about people/companies that you wish your recruiter would use?
  • Are there tools/procedures that would simultaneously:
    • Increase your desire to use professional recruiters
    • Deepen our value to your business-needs, enabling better relationships and better ROI/recruiting-dollar you spend?
  • Question: The iPod changed music consumption/media buying, and Google Ads changed media buying.  What’s the killer-app for next-gen recruiting going to be?
    • Facebook/LinkedIn and the rest social networks are tools, but they don’t RECRUIT.  I will have a hard time buying “facebook!” as an aswer here.
  • Many companies in this area have an “HR Generalist” that handles recruiting among the 15 other full-time jobs they hold.  This usually means hiring managers are left with DIY recruiting if they really want to find someone right and soon.  But… why!??
    • Aren’t you better serving your company and customers by doing your job, not recruiting?
    • Isn’t it much cheaper for your company to spend a one-time recruiting fee versus 4-6 weeks of your salary being spent on
    • So, what are the critical factors keeping you from outsourcing your recruiting needs?

I look forward to your comments!

Popularity: 13% [?]

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Posted in Better Recruiting, Hire POWER!, Working With Recruiters

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EVENT: Speaking on Mid-Career Development at PLUG Wed. 8-7

August 7th, 2007

Provo Linux User's Group

Wednesday this week, I am speaking on Mid-Career Development at the Provo Linux User’s Group, which meets at United Online in Orem (directions, etc).

Date: Wednesday Aug 8, 2007
Time: 7:30 PM
Location: United Online

PLUG:
This month we have a unique guest presenter coming to PLUG. Robert Merrill from SOS Technical is coming to address the group. Robert is the Technical Account Manager for Utah county. He will be discussing mid-career development, including:

  • What are recruiters good for?
  • Why are recruiters HATED? (Open source-style feedback loop).
  • Careering.
  • How to be irreplaceable (protect yourself against layoffs).

Robert has a background as a programmer and web developer. Like many of us he was caught in the dot-com burst. Frustrated with recruiters that undervalued his position and never got him a job, Robert set out to tackle the way business was done. Come take advantage of this unique opportunity that may significantly change your career. Bring your suggestions regarding Open Source and technical recruiting in our area. Come learn the secrets of salary negotiation and more. See you there!!

NUPM:
6:30pm – Meeting details were not returned in time, but if you’re a monger you instinctively know where to be and when. If not, just follow the camel.

I am looking forward to the chance to talk about the frustrations I’ve had on the candidate’s side of the recruiter’s desk, and how I would do it all differently today, if I could.

I am also enjoying the feedback I am getting on Why Geeks Hate Recruiters (which is still open for comments, please!)

Popularity: 24% [?]

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Posted in Calendar, Getting Hired, Jobsearch, Know The Ropes, My Side of the Desk, Tools & Resources, Utah, Utah Living, Working With Recruiters

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Network With Meaning

July 18th, 2007

Gapingvoid: The Rules Have Changed. Except For The One About You Being Useless.Dave Slusher of Evil Genius Chronicles has had enough with the newest, shiniest social networks clamoring for his attention:

People invite me to services all the time. They want to connect to me on LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook. I appreciate that anyone cares and I get a little warmth from the sentiment. I’m not joining anything that I’m not already a part of though. People ask me why I’m not on FaceBook since that’s the cool, hot thing. That’s precisely why I am not. I’m not interested in coolness or hotness. I am interested in friends, true friends that matter to me and that miss me when they don’t see me for a long time.

He goes on…

Life is short and true friends that will go to the mat for you are scarce. The energy spent in chasing some sort of glorious future from service to service is friction in my life, not any sort of addition.

And I agree.

Though my logins to social networks has exploded over the last few months (in my quest of being at the crossroads of good people ready to make a change in their careers), all of them have a detrimental effect of the value of each network. I use them, but I like them all to play nice.

  • MySpace and Facebook are so similar now, one of them is irrelevant.
  • Twitter does cool things for me because it can follow me and keep me communicated wherever I am. I want it integrated into the other tools more (facebook is kinda-doin’ it)
  • LinkedIn is the granddaddy of work-related social networks, and I appreciate it’s size and the improvements I recognize they’ve made.

Facebook was way better before it turned into add-my-new-application-that-bugs-everyone-in-your-network-book. I am glad you can do it, but I don’t like logging all the way in to find out that it’s just another ho-hum app that people install, then remove 30 seconds later. I know, it’s glittery right now and everyone’s trying to get ahead of the next Joe, but when the glam wears off it will go back to doing it’s job… helping people connect.

I especially like getting notes from within my social network asking me to go join someone else’s social network. How does that make sense?

At the end of the day, it’s about connecting people to people. If Web 2.0 is about disconnecting the CONTENT from the INTERFACE (APIs, RSS, SOAP, AJAX, etc), then the social networks must learn to play nice with each other or they will eventually lose out.

I want a social network that lets me:

  • Blog on my own blog and it all works together. I don’t want to blog on YOUR blog. (duh)
  • Know WHO and WHAT should be in my network via smart autodiscovery and Microformats (XFN/FOAF) culled from what I blog about, what I link to, what feeds I read, etc, etc).
  • Post short messages like twitter that get blogged and published pro actively to people who care to receive them.
  • Allows people to access my status via ANY instant messaging app and also message me the same way.
  • Ditto the above for SMS, too.
  • Instantly get my contact details to their email app, cell phone, or whatever.
  • Share my likes and dislikes, favorite links, music, blog posts, movie reviews, even money.
  • I can post pictures using any number of drop-dead simple tools (sms, email, IM, drag-drop) and they are logged, tagged, geocoded and published to those who care.
  • Simple, easy interfaces like Tumblr that make my “stuff” look interesting enough to read once in a while.
  • I can host it and customize it and monetize it in thousands of ways. Share the revenues made when I recommend a product, service or even display what music I like and it causes people in my network to purchase something.
  • Helps me manage inbound communication (email, sms, whatever) through proactively knowing who is important to me thanks to my past interactions with them.
    • Give my closest associates more priority than people I don’t know… but don’t BLACK/WHITE list… that’s not granular enough.
    • Give me abilities to dig deep into my inbound messaging… able to deal with information on a relationship-based level.
    • If I’ve got five minutes in the airport to check messages, only tell me what’s most-relevant to me. After I’ve handled those, then it’s OK to share stuff on the next tier of relevance, etc, etc, until it’s all been deal with and triaged, GTD’d, etc.

Whoever comes up with that network, please send me an invitation and I will forward it to everyone in my address book. lol.

Popularity: 23% [?]

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Posted in Personal Development, Tools & Resources

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Year of the Vendor Manager?

July 3rd, 2007

Adam Smith, Author of Wealth of Nations, coined the phrase Invisible Hand to explain how capitalism allocates resourcesYet another large Utah company is moving to a vendor manager solution to help them (hopefully) rein in their contingent workforce management. This makes no less than three I know about over the last few months.

These company’s websites are full of boastful, synergistic qualities they bring to the clients they service:

  • Contractor Compliance, W-4 and 1099.
  • IT Services
  • Outsourcing support
  • Payroll Services
  • Timekeeping and tracking
  • Multiple recruiting vendor support
  • etc, etc, etc.

This appears on the surface to be win-win, except for one key-critical side of the table:

The Staffing Service(s)

I have yet to find someone in my company, or someone in my network, who LIKES vendor managers when you’re working from the supply-side of the equation. A few things that seem to go unnoticed:

  • Vendor managers are yet another layer of bureaucracy that deadens the potential for true relationships.
    • That means the quality of candidates will not have the same focus as thy otherwise could.
    • That means the Vendor Manager gets the praise when things go well, not the staffing service that provided the people.
  • Vendor managers often lop huge percentages off the rates for their suppliers, showing instant cost-savings to their client. It makes them look really, really good to their client (and some people in the client company will look really, really good to upper-management!)
    • But that causes a shock to the supplier’s market, which already operates on razor-thin margins. To take drastic cuts in fees and still hang in there is a risky proposition at best, one (I can tell you personally) that is met with stern criticism from the supplier’s management.
  • Vendor managers charge their fees to the suppliers. That makes the whole thing FREE.
    • But noting the above bullet, that suppliers are already cutting costs, this just seems to add insult to injury. Some have told me it feels like doing business with the mob. You gotta pay on both sides of the equation… and that hurts.
  • The idea of “perfect competition” sounds great from the vendor’s side. Have everyone FIGHT to submit the right candidate! Then, you’re sure to get the right one.
    • But the sheer facts of this process requires there to be an arm’s length relationship between the vendor and the supplier… deadening the relationship and loosening the focus on quality candidates (see bullet 1)
    • Plus, in a market like this, when you’re also being cut off at the knees by low margins AND fees (see above), it’s excruciatingly tempting to seek recruiting opportunities elsewhere.

The bottom-line, I believe that the same Invisible Hand that drives companies to want Vendor Managers to help them keep everything in line will also drive those very same suppliers to find additional business revenue streams and alternative sources to send their very best candidates.

Sure, I am seeing this from my own side, but that’s my job. WHAT AM I MISSING? I’d love to hear of a contingency recruiting firm that has actually seen a Vendor Manager step into their client relationship and IMPROVE things.

Your reply??

Popularity: 14% [?]

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Posted in Hire POWER!, Management tools, Working With Recruiters

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LinkedIn Listening?

June 28th, 2007

Look, I am not saying I started this, but according to what Mashable’s saying, the marketplace is moving fast enough away from LinkedIn and closed-wall applications in-general, that it appears they may be actually implementing some of the stuff I complained about 18 months ago.

(Via Mashable): LinkedIn is feeling the heat from Facebook’s platform strategy: realizing it could lose its dominant position in business networking if it doesn’t act, founder and Chairman Reid Hoffman said on Friday that LinkedIn will provide open APIs “within 9 monthsâ€?. Most likely, it’ll be much sooner (and it’ll need to be – 9 months is a long, long time on the web).


Find San Francisco jobs at San Fran Jobs.

Popularity: 16% [?]

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Posted in Know The Ropes

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