Grammy Award-winning songstress Alicia Keys recently had a problem, and surprisingly, it wasn’t much different than what a lot of HR professionals face daily. She needed to hire a new head blogger but didn’t know how she’d comb through mountains of resumes posted on Monster.com.
Luckily, the folks at Monster had been anticipating her dilemma, because it mirrored that of so many businesses during the recession. In early 2010, Monster launched “6Sense,” a new technology program to help companies screen resumes.
Keys and her staff applied it to 8,500 resumes, which were whittled to a stack of 75 qualified applicants. But the story gets better: Of those 75, only 15 applied for the job. The rest were highly qualified bloggers that didn’t even know that the job had been posted. They just happened to have their resumes on Monster, says Monster Vice President of Public Relations Matthew Henson.
Keys’ situation is illustrative at a time when many HR professionals question whether job boards like Monster are dead. After all, they are so inundated with resumes because of the recession that the task of sifting through the pile is unimaginable. But experts who help companies with online recruiting say job boards are far from becoming obsolete. While the statement would be true if job boards stayed the same, some have been willing and able to adapt to their customers’ needs. If anything, the tools they are implementing underscore the importance of their service.
“I don’t believe job boards are dead. They’re transforming,” said Elaine Orler, president of Talent Function Group LLC, a talent acquisition and consulting firm in San Diego.
“They have to change their behavior like every other type of media has had to change its behavior, much like we left classified ads in papers 15 years ago for everything online,” said Orler, who is a member of the Society for Human Resource Management’s Technology and HR Management Special Expertise Panel. “Now we’re shifting how [we’re] using those things online. Job boards are now reinventing themselves just like corporate recruiting did over the past 10 years.”
However, Orler said: “There’s a lot more hay on the needle, and recruiters still have to sift through every strand.”
Even with the tools that job boards are putting in place, how does an HR department work through the pile of job seekers? Orler said an online recruitment strategy has to be inclusive, meaning that recruiters should understand the new tools available, should examine small industry-specific job boards and should learn to use social networking sites LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
Surfing the Tsunami
Monster predicts that hiring will accelerate, but unemployment remains high. The result is “an overwhelming tsunami of resumes,” Henson said. “We recognized this would be a challenge, so we spent the greater part of the recession investing in a technology solution, acquiring the company that created it, and then rolling it out. It’s a patented search technology that is different than classic search tools.”
Monster’s “6Sense,” sorts automatically and sweeps through thousands and potentially millions of resumes to deliver a few targeted matches, Henson said. For example, three resumes might be nearest to a top score of 10—ranking at 9.7, 9.8 and 9.9. Recruiters can compare these resumes for the skill sets specifically needed. That’s how Keys and her team found her new head blogger.
Another thing Monster developed that is unique is its Career Ad Network, which turns an ad into a “behaviorally-targeted syndicated ad.” Its purpose is to get “passive job seekers” that otherwise might be missed. For example, a restaurant company that needs a head chef in Boston will have a chef-targeted ad on professionally related cooking web sites, such as blogs.
Don’t forget the “silver bullet” of any recruitment strategy: employee referrals, said Razor Suleman, CEO and founder of I Love Rewards Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. The company creates web-based rewards and recognition solutions that engage employees. Its software includes a recruitment tool.
Suleman said in 2009, Marriott awarded 2,000 points to each employee every time someone they referred showed up for a job interview. Marriott found that one in 12 referrals turned into a hire. So Suleman employed the same strategy at his company, which resulted in 2.3 referrals per employee. He created downloadable software that enables other companies to use the same points system. Suleman has found that within 30 days of its usage, his clients have been able to see the same types of results.
“I’m not knocking Craigslist,” he says of the popular advertisement site. “But if I put a posting on Craigslist, I will get 200-plus applications crowding my inbox. The amount of time to filter through 200 applications is enormous, but with our solution, one in 12 people who are referred will be a successful hire,” Suleman said.
Niche Job Boards
In addition to using the large job boards, recruiters should tap niche sites, said Jeff Dickey-Chasins, owner of thejobboarddoctor.com. He’s worked with numerous job boards and HR-related sites for about 20 years and is a veteran of the job board, publishing and e-learning industries.
“There are the large boards, and then there are the niche boards. They can be defined by profession—just to oil and gas marketing people for example—or to a particular geographic region—just for Providence, R.I.,” Dickey-Chasins said.
Look for the sites that post industry-specific ads and that have a professional networking arm, like the National Black MBA Association Inc., the Society of Women Engineers or the Black Data Processing Association. That way, the ad will be viewed by members of good standing who are qualified to be in that particular group and have known contacts or qualifications in the industry, he said.
Social Chatter
Although many people think the jury’s still out on tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, each has a unique role in recruiting, said Orler and Dickey-Chasins.
LinkedIn, said Orler, is “not developed as a recruiting product, but it has a network out there for recruiting. LinkedIn could become a job board, because people can say, ‘That’s my professional profile. Check me out there,’ ” she said, adding that it’s easy to see professional references and validation of a person’s employment history there.
Facebook is geared to friendship and personal relationships and might not be as useful, she said. It’s understood at the outset that “there’s no expectation for professionalism,” Orler said. “You get what you get. You may hear about their cat or see them brag about their dog and pass their family photos of when they were 3.”
As for Twitter? “It’s a little more of the Wild, Wild West,” Dickey-Chasins said. “There are companies out there that broadcast jobs out to Twitter, and job boards do the same thing. It’s no different than running a search ad. The problem is, if you’re on Twitter and looking, you’ll see it. But if you’re not, the nature of Twitter is that you probably won’t.”
There’s the added wild card factor—that Twitter is highly conversational. If you post on Twitter, be prepared to get responses. “You may not be able to control the conversation,” Dickey-Chasins said. “If you’re on Twitter, someone can rant. It’s a minefield, but it can also be productive if you put in the time for it.”
Heidi Russell Rafferty is a freelance writer and editor in Kentucky. She can be reached at randrwriting@gmail.com.
Related Articles:
A Brave New World for Employers and Recruiters, SHRM Online Technology Discipline, June 2010
A New View on the Job Market: Recruitment Videos, SHRM Online Technology Discipline, October 2007