Helios Recruiting Blog

Welcome! This blog will provide you with the best practices and needed advice on resume writing, interviewing, tips for researching potential employers, techniques on finding the right people and finding the right opportunity for your growth. Our mission is to share best practices with those involved in talent management and provide current tips and trends to our readers.

In the coming days and weeks, we will cover many topics, but I wanted to start with trends that will shape tomorrow’s talent searches for firms. The same practices can be used by job seekers to see where they should be posting resumes and the best places to connect and network with Talent Managers. The first action that any recruiting team needs to tackle is to create a competitive advantage in their space.

How can this be done? Our recruitment practice subscribes to the philosophy that the quality of an organization’s talent will have a direct correlation to its success. We will share some of the ways we have become the “go-to team” for our clients. Having a team of consultants, each with their own niche or specialty, is an added resource to your internal HR team, and will help you build and establish a workforce environment that creates a competitive advantage.

Use your resources wisely

Using Social Networks is new, needed, and effective. However, when used incorrectly it is a tricky policy. In order to be effective, firms not only need to have a presence, but a policy that is well suited to their needs and that works for them. If you encourage employees as individuals to connect with others and share their own information, they will expand their following, but not drive people to your firm.

It is important when using social media to make sure the branding of your firm is consistent and that you do not have multiple employees using the same media, in the firm’s name. An effective way to transform or shape this is to encourage senior management and recruiting staff to have a work account. Using a professional account on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and The Ladders allows your team to have their own following. Candidates of various job skills and locations can follow your firm or your firm’s representative. You also encourage better communication between your own internal recruiting team and senior management.

At Helios, we typically incorporate social media in our searches and particularly LinkedIn. Job boards may have revolutionized recruiting, but many of the larger services, although useful, have become weighted down with resumes of unqualified candidates. Sometimes it is more time consuming to run a complex search on a larger board or really find candidates in the top talent pool our clients are interested in. While job boards are still an avenue of candidate sourcing, they now take a back seat to more strategic and innovative ways to build a superior candidate pipeline.

Generate buzz!

It is important to create targeted social and traditional media buzz designed to attract top talent. We no longer rely on just being known or doing only traditional passive/active recruiting strategies. To be successful requires the ability to use several strategies and build a consistent presence. By using the tools in social media, like event notification and scheduling, immediate updates, and location check-ins, you not only invite but include your followers in your company’s news, events, and successes, and really form an identity that people will relate to.

As we still rely on the old faithful niche websites, industry associations and event networking, we also look to search “aggregators” {which are search engines} such as Indeed, Simply Hired and JobSniper.

Other sites that can offer recruiters, firms, and prospective employees potential employment profiles are jobfox, Itzbig and My Perfect Gig, which are popular because candidates and employers remain anonymous until there is a firm, mutual interest between the two parties. This creates a venue for the passive candidate to entertain opportunities without having to commit or risk being identified by their current employer as a candidate. For firms, it gives you the means to interact without having to know a specific opening. You can locate and interact with people with specific skill sets, locations, levels of experience, and really see what they are looking for and how it is a match to your firm.

A Look Ahead

At Helios, we are expanding our Candidate stream to LinkedIn, our recruiting team, corporate blog and Twitter. The ability to connect and network through these avenues seems endless. This is the main factor to LinkedIn’s job listing service having tripled in revenue in one year. With industry blogging, we are now able to set up email alerts through RSS feeds which can lead to new and more defined qualified candidate pools.

Social media is ever-changing and it is critical to understand leading trends to stay ahead of the curve. We are hoping that each member of our team could add “Social Media Development Manager” to their title very soon! We will continue to use these methods and others (hence the consultant rears their head for the fee to create a searchable and customized database of qualified candidates for our clients. The bottom line is each team knows their industry and corporate needs. Marrying this information to the tools in social media and fostering a team whose main goal is to improve will allow you to form best practices. Being committed to the highest quality in human capital will allow you to unleash the potential of your workforce and gain that competitive edge.

Welcome to the new era of candidate sourcing!

So, what is it that you would like to know?  Please let me know what questions you have (general or specific is fine) with regards to getting hired in today’s economy…. and stay tuned for regular updates!

Listen to Kathy Albarado on Executive Leaders Radio

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Preventing the Snow from Wrecking Havoc on your Business

Yet another day of blizzard conditions. That was a word that was barely uttered in the Washington area in previous winters, yet now it appears to be commonplace. So what actions should one take to proactively combat what there is no denying mother nature? I came across this blog post from Joe Mechlinski, of EntreQuest, a colleague and trusted advisor and I encourage you all to read it. Good, good stuff packed in here (yes, pun intended)…Let us know how you are creating opportunity out of this weather!  Click Here

~Kathy Albarado

No One Path

Recently Women in Technology (WIT) celebrated the lives and accomplishments of 48 women who had been recognized by the WIT Leadership Awards over the last 10 years.  Inspired by WJLA Anchor Maureen Bunyon, a book was recently published entitled “No One Path–Perspectives on Leadership from a Decade of Women in Technology Award Winners.”

Last week Maureen led a panel discussion featuring a line-up of several of these exceptional women profiled in the book.  The panel included: Deloitte’s Linda Keen Solomon, CGI US-India President Donna Morea, White House National Economic Council Senior Advisor and SBA Administrator Ginger Lew, eCommerce Industries founder Paula Jagemann, DoD’s Anne-Marie Hartlaub-Kesseg.

The topics they discussed ranged from social responsibility, to innovation, forging a career path, how they took advantage of opportunities to excel and what recommendations they would have for girls and young women today who are preparing to enter the workforce.

One of the many things that amazed me about these women is their genuine authenticity.  Paula Jagemann made a comment that resonated. “Innovation is recession proof.  In times of recession, entrepreneurship is on the rise.”  She is a prime example of her philosphy, growing a business to $100M in revenue that germinated from her own experience as a consumer and her creative desire to improve that experience for the masses.The title of the book unfolded and became apparent as each interview took place.  These women leaders have accumulated significant accomplishments and yet there was no ‘one’ path for any of them. Like Donna Morea, President of CGI US and India believes, “The more interesting careers are the ones that blaze a trail rather than follow a path…the path is really only seen in retrospect–when one turns around to look back.” The book is available at Amazon. com, http://www.amazon.ca/One-Path-Perspectives-Leadership-Technology/dp/1439245002 I encourage you to check it out! Their stories will inspire you. ~ Kathy

Communicating Low or Non-Existent Salary Increases

Average salary increases for 2009 are forecasted between 3.1% and 4.1% in separate studies conducted by HR consultancies Hewitt Associates, Mercer, and Buck Consultants. At the low end of the spectrum, the Hewitt study found that base salary increases at 411 large U.S. companies surveyed are projected to be 3.1% — the lowest base salary increase projection since just after September 11, 2001. How do organizations address lower-than-usual (or non-existent) salary increases and/or bonuses while maintaining a positive morale and an energized workforce? The answer is to COMMUNICATE.

The organizational compensation philosophy should be clear at all times, although this becomes increasingly important during challenging economic times. Is compensation performance based? Tenure based? Or dependent upon operational factors or some combination? Information should be communicated early and honestly to avoid surprises. Some organizations may hesitate to communicate compensation decisions that fall short of employee expectations for fear of attrition, but consistent, clear, and early communication will help to establish trust and prevent voluntary turnover.

Top management should first communicate any compensation-related decisions and the rationale for the approach being taken by the organization. This will lay the groundwork to make subsequent discussions between managers and their staff less challenging. If the organization has a bonus program directly tied to organizational performance, communication should be consistently provided regarding the status of progress toward financial targets. Read more