Should We Take a Vacation??

I read an interesting question posted on the LinkedIn Questions and Answer Board about whether vacations are basically non-existent in these troubles times. It was amazing the response was 100% for the employees taking their vacations more then ever. I totally agree with them based on the fact that we are more stressed then ever and our production will defiantly suffer if we don't enjoy a little time off.

Obviously recruiters are never totally on vacation, but bringing your laptop, cell phone, and sitting on the beach will always be less stressful then at your desk ;) Is your employer encouraging you to take time off or expecting you to work through the economy woes?

Is Recruiting Harder in a Bad Economy?

The answer is actually yes and no! Lets look at both answers and why each would be correct.

Yes:
1) Alot more candidates are available and in the market for a new position. Quality candidates are being laid off every week or they fear a lay-off coming. Companies are slow, financing isn't available for their next big project, and they are making tough decisions to let people go.
2) More and more recruiters are going out of business which means less competition for the rest of us. Not to mention alot less companies are hiring as well.
3) The answer is an absolute yes if you work as an internal recruiter because candidates that you normally wouldn't be able to target from your competitors are now on the job market.

No:
1) Alot less jobs orders which means you need to market constantly if your going to stay a float.
2) Companies are now finding quality candidates to fill their positions from job boards instead of paying fees for those passive candidates that outside recruiters would normally source for them.
3) The companies that are doing well are still skittish when it comes to paying fees because no one really knows when the economy is going to turn around and they fear a bad hiring decision.

Free Resumes

I've seen this question asked a few times recently and I wanted to make sure I addressed the issue for recruiters who can't afford to join an expensive job site like Monster, Careerbuilder, or Dice. There are some free sites out there for you!

Here are some of the free resume sites I have come across:

Page Bites
Gad Ball
Craig's List
Dev Bistro
Oodle

Free Executive Resume Sites:

The Ladders
Rite Site
Executive Resumes

LinkedIn

I'm sure most people have heard of the professional networking site, LinkedIn. I personally spend at least a quarter of my awake hours on it sourcing and tracking down candidates for my office. It is a great site for many reasons! The #1 reason is without a doubt because it is a site that allows you to find passive candidates easily. The amount of work that used to go into sourcing passive candidates was crazy from making ruse calls, asking for referrals, begging people for names, etc. Then LinkedIn started and all of a sudden we did a quick search and there they were, these candidates that hid from us for so long with their profiles attached!! If you are not using LinkedIn as one of your primary tools you need to start an account today and start linking with as many people as you can! The more people you link with the more names that you will be able to get from your search results. Oh and by the way, send me an invite too and I'd be happy to accept. You can view my profile by clicking the link above the about me section.

Accepting a Counteroffer

So your candidate is thinking about accepting a counteroffer and you need something to backup your story that accepting it would not be a good idea. I found this great article on Counteroffers that all of us should save and send to our candidates before a counteroffer is even presented to them. By the time they are given a counteroffer from their present employer it maybe to late. You can find the article here.

Recruiting Resources to Use

Its been a very busy day today with problems popping up constantly so I haven't been able to post much. I wanted to jump on here quickly and let everyone know of some other resources they could use to learn from.

Some good groups to join include these:
Hire Ability
Entire Recruiting
Some good blogs to read include:
The Day in Recruiting
Recruiting Online Spaces Live
And I'll throw in a Salary Comparison Tool for you to use:
Indeed Salary Comparison

We all should learn something new each day. I hope these sites make it a little easier to find the right nugget. I'll be back later. Thanks!

Best Networking Sites to Use

I wanted to get together a collection of networking sites recruiters and sourcers could use to link and find candidates. I'm only aware of 10 of them worth yours and my time. Here they are in no particular order:

LinkedIn - LinkedIn is the best networking site with over 19 million professionals registered.
Spoke - Spoke gives you access to over 35 million candidates from over 900,000 companies. Basically you give a candidate or hiring manager's info and you get one in return of your choosing.
MySpace - Believe it or not this site has alot of places to find candidates with different groups to join and a handy search you can use to target them.
Facebook - This is a good site to find people as well and has a huge following of people signed up.
Orkut - Orkut is google's networking site and another good one to use when sourcing candidates.
Fast Pitch - I really like the design and style of this site. The only downfall about it is that you can't really do much without upgrading to a paying membership.
Ecademy - A smaller site then some of these giants with only about 150,000 candidates, but who knows might have the one that you need! They do offer advantages to you for every 10people you invite too.
Ryze - Another good site that alot of people haven't heard of with about 500,000 members.
Konnects - This site allows you to connect with many different groups/communities that allow you to access the right people you need.
Naymz - This site allows you to build a page and gain an online reputation. Its a cool site and could be helpful for some of you.