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Dear Recruiter’s Coach ~ My Bosses Are Married To Each Other

Dear Recruiter’s Coach,

I work as a Recruiter at a small staffing agency for a husband and wife team who do not have the same view on the best way to do things. They disagree on how I should do on everything, from the best way to qualify candidates to how to handle client negotiations.

I am stuck in the middle.

I do not feel comfortable telling them that they need to communicate better with each other and that they should come to me with an actual plan of action, instead of giving me conflicting direction. How can I get them to realize that I need them to be on the same page in order for me to be a successful Recruiter?

Sincerely,

Stuckinthemiddle Recruiter

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Dear Stuckinthemiddle Recruiter,

Reporting to a husband-wife team that doesn’t agree makes for a very difficult day for you.  To say anything directly to either one about the business is almost the same as pointing out the problems in their marriage, even though it may be the truth.  On the flip side, if they do not acknowledge and deal with this problem, they jeopardize losing you, clients and possibly their company.

To reduce the worry about addressing the issue, perhaps consider your bosses not as a husband-wife team, but rather as two people who are looking for the best way to share supervisory authority for the company and your work?

Call a meeting of your management team to discuss how to optimize your effectiveness. It is very important you do not express an opinion about why they might be giving you conflicting instructions. Just describe to them exactly the situation that you see. Give them specific examples of times that you have been confused about how to proceed and what the consequences were for the business (missed candidates, late postings, etc.). Then suggest possible alternatives.

Remember, you are the expert on yourself, and what you need to be a successful Recruiter.  Sharing this information with the husband-wife team, along with stepping up to take on the responsibility of getting things done will enable you all to be successful.

Cheers,

Rebecca B. Sargeant

The Recruiter’s Coach

CNBC Reports Obamacare Drives a Bull Market In Staffing Agencies

By: Drew Sandholm                       

 

A “red hot bull market” is currently being driven by the pending implementation of Obamacare next year, Jim Cramer said Thursday.

 

A Play on America’s Employment Market

The Affordable Care Act will require companies that employ more than 50 full-time workers will either need to provide their employees with health coverage or pay a penalty. Mad Money host Jim Cramer, weighs in.

Although President Barack Obama signed the health care reform bill into law on March 23, 2010, many of the changes to the health care system won’t take effect until 2014. Per the reforms, companies that employ more than 50 full-time workers will either need to provide their employees with costly health care coverage or pay penalties of up to $3,000.

“That’s why businesses of all sizes are now searching for ways around the law and the easiest way to avoid paying these expenses is to hire more temps,” Cramer said. “Since most temp assignments are just three to four months long, the temp agencies are unlikely to get hit with the full brunt of the law.”

Large or small, Cramer said companies of all sizes will likely try to get around Obamacare by replacing their full-time workforce with temps.

“And even though Obamacare only kicks in starting in 2014, companies need to start making these adjustments now because the law has a 12-month look back or measurement period for the purposes of figuring out how much each company will be on the hook for,” he said.

For investors interested in the temporary staffing space, Cramer suggests “best of breed” Robert Half International. The company boasts high gross margins, strong growth opportunities, Cramer said. Its stock currently trades at 19 times earnings with a 20 percent long-term growth rate, beating its competition.

Although Robert Half’s stock has had a big run of late, Cramer said “this move has only just begun.”

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Published: Thursday, 17 Jan 2013 | 7:23 PM ET

See Orginal Post and Watch Video at http://www.cnbc.com/id/100389422/Obamacare_Drives_a_Bull_Market_In_Staffing_Agencies

~~~~ Aloha Friday ~~~

For all of us working this Friday in a winter wonderland, check out how they celebrate the end of the work week in Hawaii!!!

Must watch video ——>      http://youtu.be/SYxnXMYHMPY

I hope you had a another GREAT week!  We’ll see you Monday!

Rebecca

The Recruiter’s Coach

The Millennial Recruiter Is Going To Kick Your Ass

Over and over again, and everywhere I look… I am hearing and reading that the 21^st Century Workforce is going to be demanding, “flexible hours and flexible work arrangements.”  If you think Corporate America is not ready for it, I’ll let you in on a little secret…Staffing and Recruiting Agencies who have access to the latest trends and the best technology have been hanging out with The Ostrich Family at the Annual “Head Burying” Party.

90% of Agencies still demand that their internal Recruiters to show up in an office from 8 am to 5pm, Monday thru Friday.  This mentality is old fashion and out of date! The shift in Staffing and Recruiting Industry from a “brick and mortar” environment to virtual environments is long overdue.  With the Millennial generation nipping at our heels to enter the workforce, Agencies will be forced to shift their thinking.

As a Business Owner or a Manager, what are you to do?

The only way to get anything done and ensure profit in an environment where we offer our internal Recruiters “flexible hours and flexible work arrangements” is to manage them by productivity.   Currently, agencies using quantifiable productivity levels to measure their internal Recruitment Professionals are:

• Eliminating the day to day “drama distractions”
• Attracting and retaining a better quality Recruitment Professional
• Proving having Recruiters working virtually is more effective and profitable for the agency.
• Empowering Recruiters to work outside “traditional” work hours, enabling the Recruiter to provide better service to client and candidates.

When a business owner is comfortable with holding people accountable to the numbers, the freedom to work flexible hours and flexible work arrangements will no long be a stumbling block to a virtual environment.  The real question is, are you willing to change, or is the next generation going to beat you into it?

RecruitingBlogs Posted FREE Access to TheLadders

Thank you RecruitingBlogs.com for doing this ALL for us!!!

**************************************************************************************************************************************

Hi Everyone!

 Each month we like to send free tools to the RecruitingBlogs community so that everyone has the opportunity to search like a pro. If you haven’t heard, TheLadders now has a completely free way to source candidates at any level. 

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 You may know TheLadders as the leader in $100K+ candidates. But now, you can also use TheLadders to find candidates for your professional jobs at any level, starting at $40K.

All the best, Noel – RecruitingBlogs

Join TheLadders: http://bit.ly/TheLadders1-8

Orginal Post – http://www.recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blogs/free-sourcing-from-theladders-rbc-offer

Make Your Weekend More Awesome By Eric Barker

Sure, weekends are for relaxing, but it can turn into too much of a good thing. Eating and drinking in excess or watching hours of TV might sound like good ideas at the end of a long week, but they have negative physical and psychological consequences. Writer Eric Barker lays out the best ways to make your weekend happy and healthy.

For the most part, don’t trust your instincts

Ever eat or drink too much, feel awful, then do it again…and feel awful again? As counterintuitive as it may sound, we’re actually pretty bad about remembering what really makes us happy.

Reading Harvard happiness expert Daniel Gilbert’s bestselling book Stumbling on Happiness my main takeaway was this: Much of our unhappiness springs from the fact that we’re terrible at accurately remembering how things made us feel in the past, so we make bad choices regarding the future.

In Gilbert’s own words (and backed up by many studies):

We overestimate how happy we will be on our birthdays, we underestimate how happy we will be on Monday mornings, and we make these mundane but erroneous predictions again and again, despite their regular disconfirmation.

When most of us have leisure time, do we do what truly makes us happy or do we opt for what’s easy? Easy wins it most of the time.

Studies have found that American teenagers are two and half times more likely to experience elevated enjoyment when engaged in a hobby than when watching TV, and three times more likely when playing a sport. And yet here’s the paradox: These same teenagers spend four times as many hours watching TV as they do engaging in sports or hobbies. So what gives? Or, as psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi put it more eloquently, “Why would we spend four times more time doing something that has less than half the chance of making us feel good?” The answer is that we are drawn—powerfully, magnetically—to those things that are easy, convenient, and habitual, and it is incredibly difficult to overcome this inertia. Active leisure is more enjoyable, but it almost always requires more initial effort-getting the bike out of the garage, driving to the museum, tuning the guitar, and so on. (via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work)

The things we frequently choose to reduce stress are often the least effective:

The APA’s national survey on stress found that the most commonly used strategies were also rated as highly ineffective by the same people who reported using them. For example, only 16 percent of people who eat to reduce stress report that it actually helps them. Another study found that women are most likely to eat chocolate when they are feeling anxious or depressed, but the only reliable change in mood they experience from their drug of choice is an increase in guilt. (via “The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It)

So what works?

Spending time with friends on the weekends definitely helps: a large portion of the weekend’s effects is explained by differences in the amount of time spent with friends or family between weekends and weekdays (7.1 vs. 5.4 hours). The extra daily social time of 1.7 hours in weekends raises average happiness by about 2%.

But you knew that already. What are we missing?

Research shows that “mastery experiences” are also key to helping people recover from the work week. So what’s that mean? Doing stuff you’re good at and trying to get better. Maybe that sounds like “work” to some people but research shows we’re happier when we’re busy, mind-wandering makes us unhappy, and watching TV for too long is depressing.

Mastering a skill is stressful in the moment but makes us happier in the long term.

People who deliberately exercised their signature strengths on a daily basis—those qualities they were uniquely best at, the talents that set them apart from others—became significantly happier for months.

When 577 volunteers were encouraged to pick one of their signature strengths and use it in a new way each day for a week, they became significantly happier and less depressed than control groups. And these benefits lasted: Even after the experiment was over, their levels of happiness remained heightened a full months later. Studies have shown that the more you use your signature strengths in daily life, the happier you become. (via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work)

This has been shown repeatedly in research studies. So practice a skill this weekend! Do what you’re good at and get better. Become an expert.

What else works?

There are other things that help us decompress:

According to the American Psychological Association, the most effective stress-relief strategies are exercising or playing sports, praying or attending a religious service, reading, listening to music, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside for a walk, meditating or doing yoga, and spending time with a creative hobby. The least effective strategies are gambling, shopping, smoking, drinking, eating, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and watching TV or movies for more than two hours. (via The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It)

And wouldn’t it be great to have some luck this weekend? Luck isn’t magic. It’s been studied and there’s a science behind it. The secret to being luckier is to be open to more opportunities, to interact with a large network of people, to break routines, and keep a relaxed attitude toward life.

The week isn’t that bad

Studies show the saddest day of the week is actually Sunday. The research is pretty consistent—Mondays are never that bad and Fridays aren’t that great. So why do we still not like Mondays? Because you’re focused about how you predict you’ll feel, not how you actually feel in the moment.

If you are dependent on your weekends to bring you happiness, you may want to look for another job. Studies show that people with good careers don’t experience as much of a boost on the weekends—because they don’t need to. Weekends make much less difference for people who work in open and trusting environments. They simply exchange one set of friends for another on weekends.

How can you make your weekends more awesome? | Bakadesuyo

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Orginal post can be found at http://lifehacker.com/5941170/make-your-weekend-more-awesome

LinkedIN says: “Our Solution isn’t for You.”

Recently, I received a call from the top notch sales team at LinkedIn with an “amazing offer.”  They wanted to share with me a special tool that was only offered to Corporate Recruiters.  They further explained that it was being offered to “select third party recruiters.”  Hitting all the right buttons a sales person should, I of course jumped at the chance to hear about this silver bullet and booked an appointment. 

Like a kid waiting for a new toy, I imagined all the things I could really use from LinkedIn.  I mused on the ability to export phone numbers from my contact list, the capability to search and export only a section of my contact list, or even the access to email more than 50 people at a time.

Finally the time comes. The Sales person opens the call by asking me how I currently use LinkedIn.  Excited I jumped in and said, “If I can’t find the person in my 5,000 contacts.  I go to Google and x-ray LinkedIn.  As soon as I find the person I like, I pick up the phone and call the person at work.”

The silence from the sale’s person was deafening, I actually thought the call had dropped.  The next thing I heard from the sale’s person was, “If you called me at work, I would be pissed.”

Laughing I said, “You would be pissed because I called and said ‘Hello?’” 

After some heated back and forth, we found as much common ground as an Ex-Corporate Recruiter (the sales person) and a Third Party Recruiter (me) could find. Getting his sales call back on track he got around to asking if I ever used “inMails?” 

Poor sales guy…

InMails?  Who needs inMails?  By LinkedIn’s own statics, they show the average user only checks their LinkedIn account twice a month.  Since time kills deals, I simply go and find the person’s company email address and use that.   

Here is the icing on the cake:  Upon hearing that, the LinkedIn Sales Person concluded that I was “Too far outside the box for our solutions to work for you.”

Utterly shocked, I asked him, ”Recruiters everywhere believe LinkedIn is the be-all and end-all of recruiting.  And by doing the basic things Headhunters have been doing for years, you’re telling me that your high priced inmail solution is useless?”

He actually said, “Yes!”

To Recruitment Professionals everywhere – Do you really need to spend money on LinkedIn?  Start asking yourself what value you are getting out of the tools you have been sold, and whether or not your own efforts pay bigger dividends.

Get a Harvard Education in 15 Minutes

Who has time to sit down, read up and figure out the latest trends in Social Media? 

Not me!

But, what I do have time for is a great 15 minute podcast from Harvard Business Review.

http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2012/12/boost-your-productivity-with-s.html

One thing I did learn about was “EverNote.”  It sounds quick and easy to use.  I am going to give it a try this week, I’ll let you know how it works out next Monday.

Have a Productive Week!

Why Is Work / Life Balance So Important?

Rule #1 for Recruiters being coached by me is “You must strive for work/ life balance.” 

This great video from Bonewend on Youtube demonstrates it very well…check it out and let me know what you think 😉

http://youtu.be/H9brT4tU-sE

Have a GREAT Friday!!!