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Thursday, April 15, 2010
In Our Busy, High-Tech World; Communication Reigns as King
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We’ve all seen the reports that employers are signaling plans to increase hiring in 2010. In fact, there’s a renewed sense of optimism out there that’s invigorating. According to CareerBuilder and USA TODAY’S latest nationwide survey of employers, 23 percent plan to increase their headcount in the second quarter, with more than 1/3 of that increase predicted to be in IT-related jobs. And with reports that rapid technology growth is one of the top five trends impacting the job market over the next 10 years—the tables are turning for those of us in IT.
With the economy poised to turn around, there are many things that have to happen to be ready to meet the needs of this changing climate. But what we have determined to be a critical component—in fact the foundation of all of our work—is strong communication. It’s one of the most critical pieces in everything we do.
I realize “communication” is a fairly broad term. What I’d like to share with you here are three simple tips we’ve found to be most helpful in ensuring top-notch communication with our clients and candidates; ultimately leading to a successful working relationship all the way around.
1. Commit to open communication. We have found that open, back-and-forth dialogue is so important. Be up front about this expectation at the beginning of an engagement. For companies hiring—share all details of a position right away. If you think there’s an aspect of the job that won’t be attractive, don’t wait until the 11th hour to share it. Knowing everything up front is critical. If you’re looking for a job, be honest with your preferences. Sometimes it’s the simple things like the hours of an opportunity or the commute that become major factors in a decision. Knowing all details on both sides of the table can avoid common experiences like these:
• “I would have taken that position if it were for $10,000 more”; or
• “The candidate we’re looking for also needs to have XX skill set,”; or
• “The commute is too long—I am only willing to drive 30 minutes to and from work.” 2. Determine the best mode of communication. There are many tools for communication these days, so determining preferences will save time and create a smoother process. Is your preference e-mail? Text or instant messaging? Cell phone? All of the above? Knowing how to reach your contact is important, especially during a time when people expect instantaneous feedback. 3. Remember relationships are important. The irony of communication is that while it’s critical to the success of any relationship, it’s really easy to let it become impersonal with the ease, speed and convenience of electronic communication. Don’t forget to pick up the phone or meet in person now and then for a live conversation. We have found that even though schedules are busy and time is limited, extra efforts like taking someone to lunch or scheduling a brief 15-minute update are appreciated and go a long way in helping make our suggestion in tip number one (commit to open communication!) easier to do.
We all have stories where we know if we had communicated a little more effectively the outcome would have been different in a positive way. At the end of the day, our job is more than sourcing candidates and churning out resumes. Anybody can do that—it’s such a small piece of the relationship between a company like EdgeLink and our clients and candidates. For win-win-win situations, we believe in the value of communication.
What works for you? Any successful communication strategies for keeping open dialogue between clients, candidates and/or vendors? We invite you to share!Labels: Industry Insight, Jeff Miller, Job Searching Tips
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Posted by EdgeLink at 9:54 AM | 0 comment(s)
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Thursday, July 16, 2009
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EdgeLink Amazing Race!
On Friday EdgeLink conducted its annual “half yearly” offsite meeting which gives us an opportunity to discuss our progress as a company half-way through the year. We take this time to discuss financials, accomplishments, challenges, as well as important company initiatives to focus on for the remainder of 2009.
After the meeting we had a team building event that was unlike any other we’ve had before. We decided to hire someone to organize an “EdgeLink Amazing Race” day to emulate to popular TV reality show. This competition included breaking up into teams of 3 or 4 and then racing to each marked point before your opponents do. Once you arrived at your next point your team would be required to perform a specific challenge in order to receive the clue for your next location. These challenges ranged from riding a pedicab through an obstacle course, eating a humongous glazed donut from Voodoo donuts, walking through the Keller Fountain, riding the OHSU tram, finding a random dog to jump through a “hoola hoop”, and many others. The finish line was at the Waterfront Park on the Willamette, and we followed that with happy hour at Paddy’s Irish Bar on 1st street. Here are a few pictures to highlight an incredible day!
 Labels: About EdgeLink, Jeff Miller, July 2009
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Posted by EdgeLink at 4:02 PM | 0 comment(s)
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Thursday, June 18, 2009
For Internal Reference Checks, Keep the Salt Handy
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There’s no arguing that references are an essential part of the hiring process. They offer valuable insight into a candidate’s workplace accomplishments and character. At EdgeLink, we conduct a thorough reference process when screening candidates, vetting their resumes and track records with former employers and educational institutions.
All that said, there is one kind of reference check (whether it’s positive or negative) that you should consider with a few extra grains of salt. It’s the informal, internal, word-of-mouth check many employers conduct by asking their own internal team members whether they know the potential candidate or have friends who have worked with the candidate.
Polling your internal talent to get the “street’s” perspective on a potential hire sounds like a great idea at first. You may learn insights directly from former colleagues and get an in-person perspective on the individual’s performance and workplace personality. But what may seem like a no-brainer, no-cost vetting effort rarely yields the most reliable insight. Here’s why:
Fair critique requires perspective.
To give a fair analysis of a candidate’s job performance, the evaluator needs perspective. While colleagues have day-to-day contact and often collaborate, they are not mandated with the task of measuring, critiquing and improving each other’s performance. An individual, who may seem to be extremely busy and hardworking, might turn out to be very weak at final delivery and execution when management takes a bottom-line look. On the other hand, some of the most productive employees try as they may, might not be achieving the standards required to be truly excellent in a role.
Supervisors who are responsible for the individual’s job performance not only have clearer insight into the work and results delivered, they have a personal stake in their employees’ success. That added stake adds more weight and more insight.
The less emotion the better.
People spend a lot of time in the workplace. It can be hard to get along with everyone, but it is also a place where strong friendships and loyalties are built. It’s hard to ascertain whether a word-of-mouth critique of a candidate is tinged by personality conflicts, shaded by the devotion of friendship or objective enough to yield real insight.
How reliable is the grapevine?
Few will argue that many misunderstandings occur through grapevine communications and second-hand accounts. As the degrees of separation between former colleagues and industry acquaintances increase, the chances of misinformation and misunderstandings clouding references rises as well. That must be factored in when gathering internal references.
You must account for change.
This final point is true with all references—people change. At EdgeLink, we know that the reference checks we conduct are excellent for fact checking: hiring and exit dates, work accomplishments, career paths across an organization, educational background, test results and workload. However, when it comes to workplace character (work ethic, team building skills, professionalism, etc.), we have learned that people change—sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.
Just recently, in fact, a client refused to interview one of the IT consultants EdgeLink had recruited due to a poor internal reference. One of the client’s staff members had worked with the candidate years prior and had not been impressed by his workplace professionalism. EdgeLink, on the other hand, had conducted extensive interviewing and reference checking and felt certain this candidate was a great match for the job as well as a highly professional technologist.
EdgeLink convinced the client to give the candidate a shot and encouraged the staff member who gave the reference to join the interview process. The client ended up loving the candidate and the internal staff member was also impressed by the interviews. The candidate was hired and has been a productive and valued team member ever since. The lesson: We all have our career high points and low points. Allow for the possibility that people can change in numerous ways, especially when significant time has passed.
So what do we at EdgeLink recommend? A ban on internal reference gathering? Absolutely not. We just want to remind business leaders and hiring managers to proceed with caution as you gather staff feedback prior to interviews and testing. Consider the reference information provided, the source and even structure interview questions to address any information you have learned.
Above all, don’t base a hiring decision on internal references alone. You run the risk of missing great hires or, even worse, hiring and investing in professionals who have great internal connections but turn out to be poorly suited to their new roles. Make informed hiring decisions by tapping into a rich portfolio of candidate information and conducting a thorough, neutral interview process.Labels: Mike Miadich, Recruiting Recommendations
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Posted by EdgeLink at 10:46 AM | 0 comment(s)
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Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Hiring in a Recession Is Easy, Right? Wrong!
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You know that we like the bright side of every situation at EdgeLink. In fact, we pride ourselves on making opportunities out of every challenge. But when clients ask us if the recession has made recruitment easier, we don’t dress up reality. Hiring top talent today is even harder than it was before the downturn began.
It’s counterintuitive but true. The growing numbers of job seekers have certainly resulted in a deluge of resumes across the desks of hiring managers everywhere. Quantity is up. The quality of candidates applying, on the other hand, has not skyrocketed because employers are holding tightly to their best performers and top innovators. Whether you have 30 resumes or 300, your ratio of qualified, sought-after candidates versus unqualified candidates remains the same as it was a year ago.
Should the fact that those towering resume piles (or bursting inboxes) only contain a few outstanding hires prevent your business from raising hiring standards? Absolutely not. Downturns are as much about opportunity as they are about challenge. They offer opportunities to advance far beyond the competition, opportunities to surpass customer expectations and opportunities distinguish your business from those paralyzed by recession fear through innovation and market leadership.
A business staffed with skillful, bright, committed and hardworking team members is one that can take advantage of the opportunities the recession presents and continue to build upon them well into the recovery. So we at EdgeLink enthusiastically encourage you to raise the recruiting bar and use the following tips to modify your recruiting strategy in order to find and hire the best of the best.
EdgeLink’s Recession Recruitment Strategy Tips
— Adjust your Clock. Be prepared for a longer hiring cycle. Remind yourself and business leaders that a great hire is a much sounder bottom-line investment than a mediocre hire that can fill the job but not fulfill high expectations.
— Be Finicky and Fast. If the cover letter is submitted and is weak or the resume has holes that give you certain pause, move on. Committing to finding the best hires means being willing to letting go of the average ones right away.
— Increase Interviewing. Even with the industry resources and state-of-the-art resume analysis tools we use at EdgeLink to identify talent, we are dramatically increasing our candidate interview numbers. Our interview rates have more than tripled since first quarter of 2008.
More interviewing is essential today because a greater numbers of applicant resumes will line up with your required profile in terms of skills and experience. Only a smart, efficient interviewing process will allow you to identify cream of the crop professionals who have the essential soft skills (communications, professionalism, team orientation, etc.) and character traits (intellectual curiosity, passion, drive) your business is seeking. To increase interviewing efficiency, EdgeLink suggests:
— Using short, pre-screening phone interviews to eliminate any problem candidates. If resources and time are short, work with a third-party recruitment partner like EdgeLink that has the technology, team and track record to quickly and successfully identify the very best candidates.
— Developing and using one standard, simple questionnaire for each position. Ensuring standardization of the questioning will make comparisons easier.
— Setting strict time limits and letting the candidate know why—the applicant pool is very big. By limiting the time to make an impression, you heighten the importance of each question and challenge the candidate to rise to the occasion.
— Integrate passive recruitment efforts. The best candidates in the marketplace are in jobs right now—succeeding at other companies. If you want to employ the best of the best, your recruitment strategy will need to include passive candidate recruitment, which requires networking and some headhunting on behalf of your recruitment team.
— Build a Bench. Even if you are not hiring right now, it’s a great moment to build a bench of enthusiastic potential hires you can turn to when a position opens up. Continue general recruitment efforts and keep an eye out for outstanding professionals at networking and industry events. Be sure to include your recruiters and recruiting partners in all bench-building efforts and make sure they are updated to essential changes, such as evolving technology platforms. The better informed your recruiting team is the better your hiring results will be.
As always, recruitment is an important challenge. However, in these tough economic and job market times, it’s a very good one to have.Labels: About EdgeLink, Jeff Miller
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Posted by EdgeLink at 3:45 PM | 1 comment(s)
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Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Thursday, February 28, 2008
We're #3!!!
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Oregon Business Magazine’s annual awards ceremony for the “100 Best Companies” was held on Tuesday, February 26th.  We are very pleased to announce that EdgeLink received the honor of being #3 best small company in Oregon to work for! Thank you to all the outstanding talent who make EdgeLink a great place to work and to all our clients who make this venture so rewarding! Labels: About EdgeLink, Jeff Miller
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Posted by EdgeLink at 1:14 PM | 1 comment(s)
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Monday, January 21, 2008
EdgeLink 2008 Kick-Off
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Last week we held our annual kickoff meeting at Big Al’s in Vancouver, WA and it was unlike any bowling alley we’ve experienced. Check it out at http://www.ilovebigals.com/ It has everything you could ever want in entertainment, such as bowling, billiards, an arcade. Flat panel TV’s are everywhere; it's a great sports venue. The first half of our day was spent discussing our past year of success as well as our vision/goals for 2008. This was also a great day of team building (see pictures) as we played EdgeLink style “Family Feud.” Later we dressed up into costumes and competed in the bowling lanes. Prizes were given to best overall theme, as well as individual and team scores!  
When push comes to shove I guess you can say we are a bunch of crazy individuals! Here’s to a successful 2008! Labels: About EdgeLink, Mark Schacter
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Posted by EdgeLink at 11:53 AM | 0 comment(s)
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