Ever need a phone # quickly? Use Google!

Type in: phonebook: firstname lastname state abbr

Try it out - (if the person's is listed somewhere of course);

Also, while there are many ways & many tools to do this, if you need an email format for a company, type in Google:

"email * * companyname.com"

(Use quotes and replace 'companyname' with the actual co you are trying to find email address formats for. As you scan the results, it will give you email patterns/formats for that company - such as firstname.lastname@company.com or firstinitiallastname@company.com, etc)

- by Gary Cozin

How I Made 3 Hires with Twitter in 6 Weeks

Article by Megan Hopkins (Full story available on Boolean Black Belt )

Twitter Hire #1

I posted my first requirement for a .Net developer and (I’d have to check my Twitter diary to be certain…and yes, I kept one…stop laughing. No, seriously. Stop.) waited for any sign of life on the other end. It seemed like 17 minutes went by (again, that’s in the diary) and then finally, someone RT’d (“retweeted” for all you newbies) my Tweet. “Holy crap!,” I thought, “This is working.”

Eventually, I had several people retweeting my post that day and by the end of the day, I had five referrals, three interviews, and…wouldn’t you know it…a placement…with a great .Net talent I never would have known otherwise. This is when I started to really believe in the power of Twitter. The fact that this candidate saw my Tweet because someone I didn’t know reposted it blew my mind. I was addicted. So addicted now, in fact, that even as I write this blog post, I am Tweeting about it…well, that and how my dog smells like corn chips.

Twitter Hire #2

My second placement happened much like the first one. I had a position come in that I was on the fence about – partially because I was slammed…and partially because I’m a dev-loving snob (this position was infrastructure…ick!). In any event, I updated my Twitter followers on my newest need and it got retweeted several times. I’ve found it helps to ask for a Tweet to be retweeted but more on this in a second. This was position was slower to fill (it was a “purple squirrel”) but about a week or so after I posted it, I got a message from a candidate (and now Kforce contractor) that was interested.

It seemed he had just been laid off unexpectedly and was now on the market…and was just the purple squirrel I thought I’d never (ever, ever) find. He emailed me his resume and within four hours we had him driving up to Jacksonville from South Florida to interview face to face. He received an offer a day later and he started work the following Wednesday. This was a particular success for me because he was an out of area candidate that I would have never met otherwise, he was one of very few that had his skill set, and it was a perfect match with a brand new client (that coincidentally, came from a Twitter lead). @OrlandoTechNuts was feeling pretty darn good about herself at this point.

Twitter Hire #3

My most recent placement is the one that gets me most excited. I had been recruiting (or stalking) this candidate for about a month (at least!). He was absolutely dead on for a position I was working on (again with a new client) and for some crazy reason, he would not answer his phone, and he would not return my hundreds of voicemails and emails. I briefly contemplated showing up at his house but I was advised against it (seriously…or not). I had just about given up on this candidate (apparently he was too good for me) when I got a direct message on Twitter about a job I had tweeted.

My contact had a friend that was looking and was looking for a reputable recruiter to work with and he saw the RT of my position. He was interested. Well, wouldn’t you know if that the candidate that was interested was the very same candidate that I had been chasing down and losing sleep over (yes, I get very involved in my job). Looks like @OrlandoTechNuts now had the upper hand. For a moment, I thought about acting like I was a jilted ex-girlfriend and not calling him back…but, I am a recruiter. We’ll always call back. Long story short, he FINALLY answered his phone when I called and we got him a job (and a great one!) within two weeks.

Twitter Hire #4 is in the Works!

Stay tuned! I’m very close to getting my fourth Twitter hire in the next week. Assuming our client doesn’t go MIA (again…gotta love that, right recruiters?), I should have another great dev talent working very soon. Like the others, this was a guy that I had never met, nor probably would ever meet, because he is a passive channel candidate and not on the boards…and frankly, he wasn’t too keen on recruiters (until @OrlandoTechNuts got to him, that is!).

Following the right people (and having the right people follow you) along with tweeting relevant information is a great way to build your credibility and it can effectively separate you from the hundreds of other recruiters out there – that is what really helped move this potential hire along.

How to Use Twitter in Recruiting

I look back now and kick myself for not being open to Twitter sooner. It took a while to get Kforce onboard and unblock it for me but once I got going, I was not going to stop. Twitter has become such an integral part of my every day life (even outside of work) and I’m not sure what I’d do or how I’d effectively recruit without it at this point. Sure, I’d manage (after all, David Dunkel didn’t have Twitter and somehow he managed to do ok), but I would not be able to touch nearly as many people and connect with my community as deeply as I have.

Your use of Twitter needs to be approached like any other aspect of recruiting or sales. It is a long term investment and you really have to care to grow and develop your relationships. One of the most common concerns I hear from candidates is that recruiters seem to be all about instant gratification. They tend to view talent as a commodity and lose sight of the fact that they are working with people. The relationship is not important and there is a strong need to take your “kill” back to the den as quickly as possible.

If you go into it (it being Twitter, in this case) thinking, “What am I going to get out of this and how soon?” you might as well stop now. Chances are you aren’t going to walk away with an immediate “reward”. I think the majority of my success has stemmed from actually caring about the connections I make and what is going on in my (IT) community.

I try my best to contribute daily (and this time I’m not referring to my Tweets about my smelly dog) and demonstrate that I am very much invested in my community. It never hurts to be engaging. Ask questions, respond to Tweets that interest you, and basically, take an active interest in what your fellow Twitter folk are doing. It has to be more than just posting a job opening you have. It never hurts to RT other people’s Tweets, either. That goes a long way.

Now, when you do decide to Tweet your positions, make sure those Tweets count. Make sure you don’t use all 140 characters (that is a pain to RT…and I learned that the hard way in the beginning) and if you want others to RT your positions, ask for it. I always do and people are more than willing to oblige.

Of course there is also the risk that Twitter can drain all of your time, but so far, even though I heavily rely on it, that really hasn’t been an issue. I do keep it up all day at work…and on my phone…but I check it once an hour or so to see if there is anything relevant I can comment on (or occasionally heckle some of my dev friends) and then I post something as I feel like it. I’d say if you added up the collective amount of time I spend tweeting, it is around an hour or so per day. Considering that I’m a full time recruiter who works about 60+ hours a week, that’s a relatively small investment and the rewards have been huge…plus you make some pretty interesting friends along the way.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, I really don’t think there is just one way to leverage Twitter successfully. My experience was very much trial and error and so far, I’ve managed pretty well (other than making a few rookie errors). Like anything, stick to the basics. Remember that relationships are king and you can’t make a withdrawal if you never make a deposit. If you keep this in mind as you Tweet, I promise you will be right on track to make 3 hires in 6 weeks using Twitter too. Trust me. After all, I am always (almost) right.

About the Author

Megan Hopkins is a senior technical recruiter working for Kforce in Orlando. She specializes in recruiting .Net developers and is very active in the Microsoft development community, regularly attending events such as Orlando.Net User Group and the Tampa ASP.Net MVC Developer User Group at Microsoft - she’s also the exclusive sponsor of these groups and several more.

Impact of Recession on Search Firms – Singapore context

Disclaimer: This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer - Joe Neitham

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Economic slow down, Financial Tsunami, down turn, recession, call it what you like but we seems to be heading for a definite period of persistent rise in uncertainties in the days ahead. We are experiencing what some would even call the worst recession since the Great Depression and the similarities between the Great Depression and the current recession aka Credit Crunch recession are very similar. Much like the credit crunch today, the Great Depression began with a stock market crash and the eventual meltdown of the financial system. The bad news for us is that the current recession is not over yet by anyone’s imagination and the longer the recession prolonged the closer we are to a state of deep and painful depression.

From recruitment perspective, recession does have direct consequences on recruitment plans and the severity of the recession dictates the surge or decline in recruitment activities. We are today probably experiencing the half way point of recession as it is expected to prolong till 2013 as seen from surveys around the globe.

As such, measures taken by different organisation across varied industry, in preparation for the bad times to come, ranges from the mild to the drastic – pay cut, hiring freeze, lay offs and retrenchment are the buzz words today.

Here at home in Singapore we’ve seen and heard of organisation such as CLSA resorting to pay cuts in order to avoid retrenching their staff and in most financial institutions we are seeing hiring freeze (at least in most part of the business) as the norm of the day such as JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, Standard Chartered Bank, etc. Retrenchment as the last resort is underway at DBS (Nov 14, 2008 The Straits Times), Citibank (Nov 19, 2008 Biz Times), HSBC (Wall Street Journal - Nov 17, 2008), Merrill Lynch (Oct 22, 2008 The Straits Times), UBS (Oct 22, 2008 The Straits Times), Standard Chartered Bank (Oct 29, 2008 The Straits Times). I have a feeling that we’ve not seen the last of such retrenchment activities in the banks as mentioned above and some of these banks will continue the next round of lay offs soon if not in the immediate future.

Outside of banks, some of the organisation that has taken lay offs route are Motorola, Nokia, GAP, NOL, AIA, IM Flash Tech., YKK, Allied Technologies Ltd. The list is expected to grow as many organisation need to resort to trimming their staff strength in order to sustain.

In the midst of all the doom and glooms around it is still heartening to know that organisations here such as Singtel and NTUC are declaring not to resort to lay offs, while banks like Barclays, Standard Chartered bank, and ANZ are still hiring actively if not aggressively.

Types of search firms

The past few days I’ve been meeting up with few recruitment consultants and I guess their interpretation of the current recruitment scene varies from one to the other and that’s purely because of the space in which they operate. Typically we have the following types of search firms here in Singapore –

Executive Search Firms: These are the true search firms where they only take on retained search. Typical search firm will have a strong Research team with strong market mapping capabilities and they do not have any particular industry that they limit themselves to but on roles – only senior management level. Some of the leading search firms in Singapore are -
· Egon Zehnder

· Spencer Stuart
· Amrop Hever Group
· Heidrick & Struggles
· Russell Reynolds

Recruitment Consulting Firms (Hybrid – Contingency/Retainer): These are firms that are strong on contingency however most will also take on 10%-20% retainer jobs. Consultants here are strong on end-to-end consulting and 2-5 consultants will share 1-3 researcher (only name generation and market mapping) and in some cases resourcers (Identify and shortlist candidates – email/phone/face-to-face). Focus on middle to senior level candidates. Some of them are -
· Talent2
· Hudson
· Robert Walters
· Derwent
· Korn Ferry

Recruitment Agency (Contingency - Contract/Perm): These are agencies that are typically focused on verticals and most of them are in Information Technology. Traditionally they only do contracting where they outsource engineers to client site and manage their payrolls. Lately, few of these agencies do not wish to miss out on the lucrative contingency business so they have dedicated consultants that only do permanent placements. In such places, often they will have dedicated Sales/Business Development (client facing) team that are supported by strong Resourcers in the back office. Some of the leading agencies are –
· A-IT
· Optimum
· Comtel
· Emerio

Trends in recruitment process

Recruitment Outsourcing:

In the past 2 years alone we have seen a rapid growth in recruitment outsourcing, also known as HRO(Human Resource Outsourcing), RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing), TAM (Talent Acquisition Management), etc and basically to quote the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association

, "Recruitment Process Outsourcing is when a provider acts as a company's internal recruitment function for a portion or all of its jobs. RPO providers manage the entire recruiting/hiring process from job profiling through the on-boarding of the new hire, including staff, technology, method and reporting. A properly managed RPO will improve a company's time to hire, increase the quality of the candidate pool, provide verifiable metrics, reduce cost and improve governmental compliance.”

Some of the organisation that are outsourcing their recruitment functions in Singapore are –
· Credit Suisse to Alexander Mann Solutions
· Barclays to Resource Solutions/Robert Walters -
· Deutsche bank to Alexander Mann Solutions
· UBS to Talent2
· Merrill Lynch to Talent2

Corporate/In-house Recruiters:
For sometime now we’ve had HR folks taking on recruitment as a sub function and unfortunately these does not work well when you are recruiting in volumes. Some of the banks in Singapore that are increasingly relying on in-house recruiters are – ANZ, JPMorgan, Standard Chartered Bank, RBS, etc. Most of these in-house recruiters are from search background with many years of end-to-end recruitment experience under their belts. Obviously, they know what they are doing and they will definitely give some their vendors a run for their money.

Talent management solutions:
Most of the big banks here these days have implemented Talent management solutions in the recruitment process. Some of the leading solutions that are in used here are -

· Taleo (Clients: ANZ, Credit Suisse, JPMC),

· Brassring (Client: UBS),

· Recruitmax (Client: Barclays),

· JobsDB Dimension (Client: SCB).

Preferred Supplier Panel:

Gone are the days when banks will utilise the services of any and every recruitment firms out there. These days’ banks are more selective with whom they want to associate themselves and whose service they would like to avail. Thus was born the Preferred Supplier List or Panel, where out of maybe 70-90 firms only 10-20 are short listed to be included in the panel. Every in-house recruiter as well as the hiring managers is generally mandate to only use those agencies that are in the list.

Banks that uses Talent Management Solutions invariably will have their preferred supplier list and the system will not allow you to submit resumes if you are not in the panel as a registered user.

The future of recruitment industry

As more and more organisation engage on developing their own in-house resource capabilities their focus then will be to hire directly and reduce dependencies on headhunters/recruitment agencies in the long run. Today many in-house recruiters are well equipped and trained on direct sourcing through different mediums for both active and passive candidates – Networking tools(LinkedIn, Facebook, Zoominfo etc), Job site Database search (eFinancialcareers, Monster, etc), Googling (using Boolean strings), etc. What this translates to is substantial lost of requirements for recruitment agencies. The future of recruitment industry therefore will be decided by those firms/agencies that are willing to evolve and adapt to the changing demands of the industry. Added to this, recession will result in the number of jobs being drastically reduced and everyone therefore will be forced to fight for the few jobs that are available and survival will very much depend on getting those few available jobs from the client and filling them.

- Agencies will have reduced job sheets: Fewer jobs due to recession and those that remains most of them will be filled by in-house recruiters. Only hard-to-fill niche or senior roles will be given to agencies.
- Agency to focus on building strong search capabilities: To fill those hard-to-fill niche or senior roles agencies must equip themselves with strong search capability to beat the fierce competition and stand out from the rest.
- Smaller/boutique agencies driven out of business: In the interim smaller agencies who are without any serious requirements will be left out, eventually they will have to close shop due to lack of funds. However, those smaller agencies that are focus on contracting with more than 50 contractors will survive at least for the period when the contract still runs.
- Only the big boys with strong capital reserves will survive: The big Recruitment Consulting firms with diverse portfolio will survive and ride out this rough patch as they are not dependent only on few particular clients in particular industry/sector.
- Strong relationship + strong delivery capability will thrive: In the end, it all boils down to the depth of ones relationship with clients because relationship will help in requirements coming to you. However, relationship alone does not suffice and what will set a survivor apart from the rest will be the strength in their delivery capability – high percentage of successful job filled against number of jobs.

Is your firm geared up and prepared for the long haul and ready to ride out the recession? What plans of actions are being put in place not only to survive but excel in these challenging times?

Should the negative trends continue for the next two quarters number of consultants will find themselves in the deficit from which recovery will be a difficult task. I believe that this will eventually result in many consultants losing their jobs sometime during the end of 2nd and beginning of 3rd quarter of 2009 and many cowboy agencies will also be force out of business. So how each companies responds to these new economic conditions will ultimately “separate the wheat from the chaff”.

On the bright side, experience and big billing consultants will not only survive but continue to do well and for them pots of gold waits at the rainbow’s end and this is what we know as “survival of the fittest”.

PS: Feel free to share with everyone your thoughts and take on this topic by leaving your comments here or you may write in to me confidentially at neitham(at)gmail(dot)com.

***Happy hunting folks***

Asian Talent Conference Announces Inaugural Talent Management Conference in Singapore

[PRESS RELEASE]

Conference speakers to share trends, insights and best practices to help organisations find, motivate and keep their best people

SINGAPORE, August 18, 2008 – Asian Talent Conference (ATC), an exciting new collaboration between the leading corporate recruitment and talent management experts from Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, announces the launch of their first ever human resources conference organised in Asia, themed “Finding the future: fresh new ways to source, develop and retain talent” which will be held from August 20-22, at Grand Copthorne, Waterfront Hotel Singapore.

The 2008 Asian Talent Management Conference has been designed to give attendees the knowledge and skills needed to ensure that their talent strategy is well aligned with their organisation’s business goals and objectives. At the conference, attendees will also gain insights into the future of HR, emerging trends, technologies and practices that are making organisations more successful and more profitable.

“Talent is THE challenge of this century and it will become more and more difficult to find, attract, hire and retain the people that organisations need for success,” said Trevor Vas, chairman of Asian Talent Conference. “Thus the HR function is becoming increasing critical and this conference will provide attendees with opportunities to gain insights on how leading firms are overcoming the talent challenges faced. “

Keynote speakers at the conference will include Miranda Rivers, Extras Casting Director of Lord of the Rings & King Kong; Sanjay Singh, Vice President of Human Resources, Whirlpool; Christine Deputy, Vice President, Partner Resources for Starbucks Coffee Asia Pacific; and K.A. Chang, Executive Vice President & Chief Human Resources Officer, Singapore Exchange Ltd.

Prior to the conference, attendees can take an optional master class that addresses the topic of “Sourcing for Critical Candidates”. Presented by Shally Steckerl, the world’s foremost expert in online candidate sourcing, this is a one-day, practical workshop for all levels of Recruitment Consultants and Managers, designed and delivered by a team of experts renowned for their innovation and skill in the strategic application of online recruitment tools and breakthrough strategies.

Programme details and registration information are available at http://www.atcevent.com/sg.

[Note to editors: Members of the media are welcome to attend the sessions at no cost; please contact Julia Lai at 6303 8461 (desk) or 96382284 (mobile) to register]

End -

Sourcing of Critical Candidates - Masterclass (Singapore)

Singapore - we are indeed fortunate that Shally Steckerl, the Chief CyberSleuth of Job Machine and the world's foremost expert in sourcing candidates will be here in our shore for the inaugural Asian Talent Conference between the 20th - 2nd August, 2008. During this conference, Shally for the first time ever in Singapore will be conducting a one day only Sourcing of Critical Candidates - Masterclass . Shally will be supported by the likes of Kevin Wheeler - celebrity author and keynote public speaker on talent management and Trevor Vas and Martin Warren from down under.

They will be here to answer questions such as:

• How can I source quality candidates?
• What are the most advanced and effective sourcing methods?
• How can I optimise my sourcing time?
• How do I identify and connect to quality candidates?
  

To join the Australasian Talent Conference in Singapore please visit -http://www.atcevent.com/sg

:: The History of Sourcing - Jim Stroud

Kudos to Jim Stroud, Searchologist for his pathbreaking work on "The History of Sourcing". Generations to come will remember this great work that Jim is trying to accomplish here.

As it is a continual work in progress, any and all contributions are welcome. Simply drop an email to jimstroud@jimstroud.com.