SAN DIEGO—Evidence of an end to the recession is starting to mount. In response, organizations must make sure they have strategies in place to sort through a predictably huge influx of resumes and ensure they are reaching out to the right talent pool, said Jamie Minier, president of The RightThing, a Findlay, Ohio, recruitment outsourcer.
Speaking June 28, 2010 at the SHRM Annual Conference, Minier urged organizations to continue reaching out to candidates through widely known Internet job sites such as Monster.com, CollegeRecruiter.com and CareerBuilder.com. But in addition, many employers are having success advertising posts through niche sites aimed at specific industries. Pharmaceutical employers, for instance, are relying increasingly on sites such as MedReps.com and BioHealth.com. Employers looking for engineers are having luck with sites such as JobTarget.com and CrunchBoard.com.
In addition, savvy recruiters must learn to tap into the increasingly large talent pool that spends time on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. “You want to be out there. You want to be connected,” she said. Recruiters can make their online connections more efficiently using social networking management tools such as iGoogle, Ping.fm and NutshellMail that send all social networking communications to a single site. Recruiters are having success reaching candidates by using text messages that, at a minimum urge them to check out an announcement on a web site.
She urged recruiters to maximize their use of search engines such as Google and Bing to find corporate organizational charts that can be invaluable for obtaining job leads, particularly for specialized talent. Many org charts, along with corporate contact lists, can be found online by using multiple search terms such as “.pdf,” “org chart” and the name of the position being sought.
Nevertheless, even with the edge provided by the Internet, Minier insisted that there still is no substitute for making cold calls to passive candidates.
“In this business, you still have to be prepared to do a bit of selling,” she said.
Rita Zeidner is a senior writer for HR Magazine.