Kennedy Recruiting Conference

More from the Kennedy Conference

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Thanksgiving was here and gone and it’s already December. Only 3 weeks & 2 days until Christmas, and then we will speed right into the New Year. Are you already thinking about your New Year’s resolutions? Dreaming about what you would like to be different next year. Thinking and doing are two different things.

As you think, and plan to do, here are a few more gems tweeted from the Kennedy Conference that might help you in your planning.

––36% of CEO's lack confidence in their own company's recruiting department (Steve Lowisz, CEO of Qualigence)

It seems inconceivable that CFO–types would actually want to be going through HR to secure their next position. But, when you play the Internet job search/job posting game, that is exactly what you get … unless it is a specific TPR (third party recruiting) listing, and those are rare.

Sitting in front of a computer searching for posted positions on public job sites is safe, and a HUGE timewaster, because it is ineffective and keeps you from doing the things that are effective and will move you towards that next position. Remember the old cliché, “if it looks too good to be true it probably is.” It’s true.

HR is a screen designed to filter out candidates who do not meet the list of requirements. They have no decision–making authority. Great candidates rarely succeed in this process. Even if they meet all the skill requirements there is still culture fit, work ethic, and track record of bottom line impact to consider. Bypassing HR gives great candidates a fighting chance.

–– Elements of a killer brand: Choice and expectation. Every choice that will be made will be based on expectation. (Steve Bonomo and Steve Fogarty, Adidas)

Expectation – People make decisions in life – and in the hiring process – based on emotion. And decisions about the brands with which we choose to associate are incredibly emotional. An assessment about you is typically made within the first 3-5 minutes of an interview. Think of the power your brand brings into that interview. They probably already like you based on the connection they feel – which is based on who they believe you to already be. Set the expectation.

Choice – The candidate gets to choose where he wants to go rather than accepting whatever is offered. What is different and unique about what you’ve done in your finance career that will position you from a place of power rather than commodity, and shift the paradigm to choice … yours?

Tweets from the Kennedy Recruiting Conference

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The Kennedy Recruiting Conference was held in Orlando last week and while I wasn't able to attend, some of the recruiters who tweet kept us updated. Here are some interesting stats tweeted last week:

—LinkedIn adds 35,000 new members daily. 41 is average age.

–If MySpace was a country it would have the 11th largest population in the world.

–11% of all all Internet time is spent on MySpace compared to 2% spent on Google.

–36% of CEO's lack confidence in their own company's recruiting department.

–90% of revenue earned by job boards comes from job posting and resume searching. Commodity products. They will go away.

I'll post some other comments, along with my thoughts about the statements, in the next day or two. Stay tuned!

Search Firms See Executive Hiring on the Rise

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The results from Execunet’s most recent Executive Employee Report indicate that executive hiring is trending upward.

“According to the report, the Recruiter Confidence Index (RCI) increased in October for the second consecutive month, once again bucking August’s report in which the RCI fell as a result of the mortgage industry’s sub-prime lending crisis. An overwhelming majority (81 percent) of executive recruiters are expecting an increase in assigments over the next three months.”

If you haven’t seen it, the full article appears in Manage Smarter.

While on the surface this looks like great news for executive job seekers, if you read my article following the Kennedy Recruiting Conference from last week then you know that this is much better news for passive, top–talent than it is for unemployed executives.

If you are unemployed and looking, you must understand your marketability and clearly articulate your value … and get out of the job boards … in order to compete with the coveted passive candidates.

For senior–level executives, resume saturation in the public job boards can be career suicide.

Recruiters on Resumes

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At the Kennedy Conference last week, our recruiter panel offered up the following thoughts on what they wanted to see in a resume:

––Results–driven contributions, not a listing of job descriptions
––Enthusiasm & passion (this is where branding becomes so important)
––Polished presentation
––Vision (strategic initiatives – start to finish)
––The ability to clearly communicate
––Reverse chronological format
––Tailored cover letter

One panelist said he loves the concept of personal branding as it "provides evidence that the candidate can get the job and do the job.”

One other speaker at the conference said this, and it speaks to the first item in the list … “candidates confuse performance with experience … without performance experience doesn’t mean much.”

Passively Social

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I just returned from the Kennedy Recruiting Conference in Orlando. This was a hotel full of “internal” recruiters … those folks who are employed in–house to source potential candidates for their companies. And the four words and two themes we heard over and over were …

–Passive Candidates
–Social Networks

What internal recruiters want is the coveted A–player who is currently employed. Where they go to find them are social networking and job aggregator sites like Linked In, Ziggs, ZoomInfo, and Naymz.

If you want to play the game, you need to get in the game. If you aren’t where recruiters are looking, you won’t be found by them.

Email me with “Passively Social” in the subject line for a copy of my full article on this topic.