You’d think that with all the talk about a Talent War, about the shortage of incoming workers and Boomers suddenly becoming even more desirable, it’d be easy for candidates to find great jobs. Figure out what you can do; find an opening - BANG! Job.

But what if there are so many jobs (or at least advertisements for jobs) out there that candidates spend all their time wading through nonsensical offers to “Work From Home!” and “Be YoUr own BosS.” What if, in the War on Talent, job seekers aren’t even sure where to send their resumes? It’s no wonder so many talented candidates tell us they’ve had difficulty finding worthwhile opportunities.

A post today on The Hire Sense offers some interesting (or terrifying, if you’re a candidate) information about the sheer volume of online job ads. Citing a recent study by The Conference Board, the post claims that “the total online job ads were 4,374,400 in May,” up 9,000 from a month ago and a whopping 29% from the same time last year. California led the pack with 705,200 job ads, and our own Texas came in at around 368,400. The report itself (PDF) states that around 412,500 ads were for healthcare and over 1/3 were for Management and Business/Financial positions.

Not so long ago, tzbig’s Jim Hammock wrote here that the volume of resumes and contacts sourcers and recruiters receive often makes it difficult to do their best work. Those sourcers and recruiters are experienced HR professionals whose main job is to find and place talent. If their job is made difficult by volume, imagine how insurmountable that volume must seem to candidates who are essentially amateur job seekers.

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Of course it’s true that we put on different faces for different situations. You’re a different person talking to your spouse than you would be in front of a police officer, for instance. You speak one way to a VP of Sales and another way to a third-party recruiter. However, in a world increasingly defined by the ubiquity (a word we’ve now gotten to use twice in just a few posts) of information on the internet, the distances between some of those identities are shrinking fast. Candidates are realizing that an employer can have fast access to various versions of their identity, and for some that could mean lost opportunities… or could it mean access to the coolest jobs?

Think about all the recent buzz on video resumes. Lots of people are talking about how video resumes can show a “real” you, about how they can go viral and grow your network exponentially, about how hip and fun and cool they are. A video resume (of sorts) by a guy named Matt Bennett has become pretty popular in the blogosphere because of its zany approach. Joel Cheesman admits here that it’s “clever” but wonders, “Is this stuff getting people jobs?”

On the other hand, Kristi Young argues here that video resumes can accurately target the right kind of audiences for candidates seeking a specific work culture:

“Sure it’s a little over the top, but if one hiring manger out there digs it then I guarantee you this guy just landed his dream job with his dream boss. Matt will certainly get the last laugh!”

However, in a comment on her post, Tom Schmidt argues that “video resume does not integrate into present hiring processes especially at the top of the candidate selection funnel.” In other words, don’t expect a video resume from the next C-level candidate you try to place.

Similarly, many candidates may have a professional blog or website in addition to more revealing personal ones. Ryan Healy of Employee Evolution, in a post on Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist, points out that websites and social networks “are blurring the lines between personal and professional life” and “there is no reason these lines should not be blurred.” He goes on to say that

“If the world already knows what we do in our spare time and we are all able to be completely open about our interests, thoughts and ideas without fear of retribution or not being hired then we can bring our whole being to work everyday.”

John Sumser also argues that “helping people understand your biases and loyalties makes all of the difference in the world” and that “transparency” and “reliability of the information” are becoming the most critical business factors. He reminds us that, in our own Recruitosphere, we create alter egos for ourselves like The Recruiting Animal, Cheezhead, Mr. Moustache and The Chad. Can we really claim surprise then when we find out that our candidates have various personas as well? If they exhibit characteristics of a real person (meaning less-than-professional for some of their 24 daily hours), are we less likely to hire them?

Arguably not, especially when “89% of employers asked, said they would watch a video resume” (according to a Vault survey via Human Capital Considerations). While, according to the study, only 17% had actually watched video resumes, many more have scoured MySpace and/or the blogosphere for mentions of candidates. We’d like to know: are you finding information that slams the door on candidates, or are you rewarding outside-the-box creativity and honesty? Leave us a comment with your take on candidates’ multiple personas.

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There are so many great metaphors for a “high-volume” approach to doing things: The Shotgun approach, throw it at the wall and see what sticks, casting a wide net. However, they all kind of suggest a shrugging acceptance of whatever results you happen to get, as if “Well, at least I got some response” is a good way to be successful.

Consider high-volume applications, for instance. We’ve written here before about how the efficiency of the interwebs creates job discovery headaches for recruiters/employers and candidates alike. The sheer speed and volume with which resumes can be sent, applications filled out and contacts - well - contacted means that quality talent sometimes got lost in the crowd. A recent post on Jason Warner’s excellent blog, Meritocracy, reminded us that the problem needs to be brought back under the scrutiny of candidates if they ever want to find a great job.

Warner, a head of staffing in one of Google’s many branches, laments the fact that the “old ways” of applying for jobs aren’t necessarily any better than the “new ways” since the new ways have created their own set of unique challenges. Instead of mailing a few, targeted resumes; making a handful of cold calls or dropping in on a specific contact (as they once might have), candidates now flood the digital inboxes of everyone and anyone out there who might have an opportunity for them. Warner says that:

it is now so easy to apply for a job that more people apply for many more jobs, which means that recruiting teams at companies across the world now have to review a significantly increased volume of unsuitable resumes, which creates monumental inefficiency in the overall system.

Without a method for accurately matching truly qualified candidates with opportunities, recruiters, HR groups and traditional job boards are letting lots of talent slip through the cracks. It’s not their fault, exactly; they’re just at the mercy of an incredible volume of applications.

Since candidates send out so many resumes and applications, they rarely have the time to tailor those documents to the specific needs of the business, do in-depth research or follow up as well as they should. Basically, they’re unable to construct what Harry Joiner calls a central selling theme, “one simple, relevant theme surrounding WHY a candidate is the best fit for the organization” (from Marketing Headhunter). Without that focus (which can’t happen if a candidate is just blasting resumes out there by the handful), there’s very little chance that any accurate matching between talent and need, or what we call quality career connections, will occur.

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[Daily post from itzbig] How to discover a better job (Now in two easy steps!)

The truth is that, for talented candidates, finding a better job - or even the best job, a dream job - is often simply a matter of starting off correctly. Step one: forget a lot of what you think you know about job discovery. Step two: make sure you know what you actually want. See? Two easy steps.

cheezhead : vertical search = better roi?

“Vertical search is beginning to hit a critical mass in terms of traffic numbers and awareness (although revenue numbers to support such businesses are still be in question). As much as it should be celebrated, it’s also cause for concern.”

ON THE JOB:The mystery of the daytime idle: Why aren’t you working?

“There are helpful statistics to shed light on the out-and-about. In 2005, 14 percent of San Franciscans 5 and older reported a disability — nearly 100,000 people. Over 40,000 people were self-employed. Almost 70,000 were in college or grad school. Stereotypes about the contemporary human condition aside, a great many people don’t inhabit cubicles.”

RecruiterMagazine: Referral Schemes

“Businesses throw away millions on recruitment by not encouraging their employees to refer people they know, according to new research by Capital Consulting. The research shows that only 18% of employees work in organisations which encourage them to recommend friends or acquaintances, despite 24% knowing someone they could refer straight away.”

JobMob: Yoda’s 5 Tips to Kill Job Search Stress

“This is a no-brainer. The longer a sore goes untreated, the more painful it will become. Think of being stressed as having a mental sore. If you follow these tips as early as possible in your job search, you may even avoid that mental sore completely but it’s never too late to start.”

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Today’s title is a little tongue-in-cheek, but only a little. The truth is that, for talented candidates, finding a better job - or even the best job, a dream job - is often simply a matter of starting off correctly. Step one: forget a lot of what you think you know about job discovery. Step two: make sure you know what you actually want. See? Two easy steps.

OK, maybe that’s a little over-simplistic, but a lot of the classic “best-practices” for finding a great job just aren’t especially productive any more. Take networking, for instance. Sure, you can do great networking at conferences, trade shows, mixers, or even at your favorite pub. However, a growing number of recruiters and employers out there are adopting a Web 2.0 approach to networking. A post at Web Worker Daily lists “multi-channel communication” as one of the best ways to network today. That means participating in blogs, learning what Twitter is all about, and finding a comprehensive online hiring network.

Once you’ve established those contacts, stay on their case. Well, give them room to breathe, but only just enough. An online network has the potential to grow quickly and without bounds. But, just like the hiring world sources candidates, candidates should carefully weed out contacts that might not be ideal and focus in on ones that seem to have greater potential. On her KaleidoBlog, Susan Strayer lists two reasons for screening in this way:

1. The fewer contacts you focus on, the more likely you can spend more time getting to know them.
2. The fewer companies you focus on, the more you can learn about them, get to know multiple people inside the company.

She then recommends “appropriate stalking” as a means to focus on and maintain the contacts and promote yourself.

Perhaps even more important than reconfiguring your rules is figuring out exactly what you want. Shweta Khare recommends determining what your career goals are and comparing them to your personal goals, but you have to figure out answers for both. And remember that the answers don’t necessarily have to line up. Your personal goals may be very different than your career goals, but you should try to determine what they are. Khare says candidates should think about how much (or little) their present job engages or even inspires them. Is it making the most of your skills? Could you be more productive in a different environment? How so?

If your current situation is turning you into a Quiet Working Professional, maybe it’s time to more actively seek out some new opportunity. That’s when those new networking skills from the beginning of this post are going to suddenly become so important.

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[Daily post from itzbig] When is a job board at its best? - Part 2

Here’s where itzbig’s network comes in. We’ve done the research and seen the missed connections between candidates and employment opportunities. We’ve designed it so that recruiters and employers share their needs, both current and ideal.

How to Change the World: The Nine Biggest Myths of the Workplace by Penelope Trunk

“I liked Penelop Trunk’s interview so much that I asked her for more material. Here’s her list of the nine biggest workplace myths: ‘1. You’ll be happier if you have a job you like. The correlation between your happiness and your job is overrated.’”

My Global Career: Is it Time to Ping “Your” Recruiter?

“Almost always, recruiters work for employers not job seekers. A typical misconception is that although many recruiters can and often do offer career advice, technically they’re working for the other side. You don’t want to convey to them a lack of confidence about your job quest because […]”

TIME: Finding Jobs for Vets Back Home

“Young vets who need help finding work are getting it online. Over the past year or so, Internet forums connecting veterans to jobs have multiplied. […] But one statistic is encouraging: unemployment among veterans ages 20 to 24 is down from a recent high of 15.6% in 2005.”

Talent in China: China Hiring Dangers

“So let’s put this more directly. In China the biggest corporate problem by far is hiring. If you are looking at surviving in the China market you need to understand the challenges that you face as you try to build a talent pool of excellent people.”

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As we wrote about yesterday, there are several ways we wanted to improve the function of job-boards. Take the fabled Black Hole effect for instance: where a candidate submits all the right information but never gets any feedback. There’s a lot of talent out there falling into that black hole. Conversely, some job boards are so big that they overwhelm candidates with contacts – some worthwhile, some bogus. About this flood of information through technology, Howard Adamsky, President of HR Innovators says “the downside to this will be that a candidate can only get so many e-mails and phone calls before they become totally non-responsive” (from his post on ERE). Without major technological shifts, there’s just no way to guarantee accuracy and validity in the opportunities posted on traditional job boards.

That’s where itzbig’s network comes in. We’ve done the research and seen the missed connections between candidates and employment opportunities. We’ve designed it so that recruiters and employers share their needs, both current and ideal. The “current” needs get quickly and accurately matched with candidates, while the “ideal” needs put you in a position to source ahead of demand. In other words, when the end-all, be-all superstar for your ideal needs comes along, you get connected just to see if it is, in fact, too good to pass up.

And the talented candidates out there get the same quality exposure. They share what they’re looking for, and give us information about skills, experience and education, while we protect their anonymity. It will eliminate tons of compliance exposures, as candidates get accurately matched with needs, and begin a one-on-one relationship with employers who need someone with exactly their talent. There are definitely good and bad aspects to traditional job boards. We think we can make them more effective for discerning recruiters. Whether you’re looking for a candidate for a great opportunity or a talented worker ready to land the dream job, we think you owe it to yourself to come check us out.

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[Daily post from itzbig] Use talent’s “tech smarts” as a recruiting tool

Talented candidates expect tech-based communications (internal and external) and digital-media-driven HR sites. However, even more importantly, more and more candidates bring digital media skills to the table, and if you’re not presenting them opportunities that take advantage of those skills, you’re likely missing out on a lot of quality talent.

AdlerConcepts.com: Job Satisfaction as a Recruiting Tool

“In Performance-based Hiring, we talk about the 30% solution - offering candidates an opportunity that is 30% better than their current job. That 30% is composed of job stretch, long term career opportunity, and compensation.”

The Cenek Report: A Challenge for the Fortune 100 Best Employers

“Wouldn’t it be great to see firms of all sizes in the annual parade, or better yet, to base inclusion on third-party survey data, say from JD Powers, that validates the level of employee engagement (and not just satisfaction)in their workplaces?”

Employment Digest: IT Managers Face Crunch in Filling Open Positions

“The IT job market is improving nationally, according to several recent reports on technology employment trends. At the same time, though, it appears to be getting harder for employers to recruit people to fill the job openings they have.”

The Hire Sense: Simple Sign Of A Schmoozer

“One respondent today simply started talking about his skills which didn’t even approach the traits we listed in our ad. This behavior is often indicative of a schmoozer salesperson or sales manager.”

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While it may seem to some that our use of the phrase Quiet Working Professionals is mere marketing spin applied to the old phrase “passive candidate,” there is actually a very sensible logic behind it. In fact, that logic demonstrates a need in the HR and recruiting community to update not only some of our terminology but also our techniques and technologies in attracting quality talent. To do that, we have to understand what’s at stake in the coming war on talent, what quality talent needs from employers and what makes a candidate “quiet.”

In a recent post about our use of the phrase, Colin Kingsley of RecruitingBloggers.com claims, “I can’t tell how QWPs are different from passive candidates, except that ‘the old methods of reaching them don’t work any more.’” That last part is a quote from our blog, and it is one of the most clearly distinguishing factors between passive candidates and quiet working professionals. It’s difficult to reach them because, as Colin says, the “solitary common trait of passive” candidates is that “they are not interested in switching jobs right now.” A passive candidate is satisfied with their job just enough to not actively search for another, so the old standard means of recruiting just don’t effectively reach them.

The trick is to understand how those candidates differ from QWPs. The difference is in a QWP’s latent desire for “something more” out of a job. A passive candidate is satisfied with their job and unwilling to participate in the very real stress of a placement process. However, a QWP, while not actively looking for another job, longs to be challenged in ways that their current employer doesn’t offer. A post on Sytematic HR claims that this underlying sense that a job is just OK or mediocre is why the best HR departments develop multiple career ladders. The post explains that many professionals who like their jobs aren’t necessarily interested in traditional advancement within their organization. They aren’t “on the market,” but they’re quiet (internally and externally) about their advancement needs.

Yesterday’s passive candidate was tucked safely into a world of lifetime employment, retirement plans, and far more candidates than jobs. This was particularly true in the highly skilled employment areas and with emerging technology companies springing up everywhere.

Today with mergers, acquisition, off-shoring, outsourcing, layoffs, and the usual personnel issues that can impact someone’s employment status surely we agree that most working professionals are in a different place. There need to explore possible opportunities that I might need at a moment’s notice are far more prevalent than in the days of the passive candidate who had no intention of changing jobs unless someone really enticed them.

So everyone today needs a Plan B. They need a way to discover alternate employment options that meet their specific requirements at this point in time. And they have to be ready in case the need for an change in employment occurs.

Colin suggests that “most of the passive candidates out there will magically turn into active jobseekers” and admits that “offering people a lot more than they’re worth to get them to switch” can attract them while unfortunately contributing to the last-in/first-out cycle. That’s great advice if you’re a fan of those magical conversions. If you believe that – at some point – passive candidates will become so disgruntled with their employment that they will decide to become active candidates. You also have to believe that your recruiting ability will be able to overcome the animosity they’ve developed for their employer so they don’t carry it over to the job in which you want to place them. That seems to open the door for yet another new phrase: Passive Recruiting. Of course, it doesn’t sound like it’ll place many candidates.

Understanding the unspoken needs of the Quiet Working Professional can put a recruiter in a position to source ahead of demand, to have opportunities in place that actively foster in QWPs a sense that a better job or means of the right kind of advancement awaits. Understanding those needs is going to help recruiters reach QWPs and make one-on-one connections with them so that placing them becomes a reality instead of a hope based on magic.

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