Using Social Networks to Check Candidate References

Good article – bad title – today at PC World on a hot topic. I personally don’t check references online but because I do a lot of advanced boolean searches for candidates on search engines, I see some things about people that I normally wouldn’t see in my applicant tracking system. The bottom line is…we live in a transparent world and candidates looking for jobs need to be aware of what they allow people to see about themselves. What do you think about this topic?

___________________

Recruiting with Social Networks is Iffy – PC World
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/164012/recruiting_with_social_networks_is_iffy.html

In March, I railed against employers who use the Web and social networking sites to screen candidates for jobs at their companies. I argued that it’s unfair for employers to base professional hiring decisions on personal information about candidates that they discover online. Such a use of the Web and online social networks is also potentially discriminatory, I noted in Job Seekers to Employers: Stop Snooping.

So when I recently read about a bank in Texas that prohibits internal staff and external recruiters from using social networks in its recruiting process, I was pleased to learn that at least one company refuses to use the web to snoop into prospective employees’ personal lives.

For Houston-based Amegy Bank of Texas, the decision to ban the use of social networks from its hiring process was primarily driven by the CEO’s desire to avoid “legal landmines”, according to an article on Law.com via Texas Lawyer. Even though employers can legally troll social networking sites for information on prospective employees, they can still get into big legal trouble if they eliminate candidates from consideration for the wrong reasons. For instance, if an employer disqualifies a candidate for a job after finding out via the books on the candidate’s Amazon.com wish list (turned up via a search engine) that she wants to get pregnant, the candidate could sue the employer for discrimination.

Amegy’s CEO also established a ‘no social networks in recruiting’ policy out of “respect” to potential employees (and, presumably, to their personal lives), according to the article. (I should note, as does the article, that Amegy is investigating low-risk ways to incorporate professional networking sites, such as LinkedIn, into its hiring process.)

I think Amegy is being smart about limiting the use of social networking sites in its hiring process, and I hope more employers follow the precedent the bank is setting. Banning what amounts to online snooping will prevent costly and time-consuming litigation and will demonstrate that employers respect job seekers’ and employees’ privacy. It won’t negatively impact employers’ ability to quickly find talented candidates. Let’s not forget that employers have been able to do this just fine for years without online social networks.

Whether you agree or disagree with me or with Amegy, I recommend reading Texas Lawyer’s article. It’s a quick, easy read that takes you through the CEO’s thought-process on this controversial issue. It also clearly explains the myriad legal pitfalls associated with using social networking sites for recruiting, not to mention the systems and processes Amegy has put in place to enforce its policy.

BountyJobs.Com Continued…

So it’s been a while since my last post but my blog traffic is up by like 9000% so I’m thinking that people have somewhat of an interest in what I have to say…so I’ll continue.

Since my last post the economy has tanked leaving guys like me in a feast mode with candidates. The candidates who wouldn’t talk to me 6 months ago, won’t stop calling me for a job. Interesting dynamic. My headhunter calls for new business and repeat business are also at an all-time high. So I’m back to working with BountyJobs to manage the madness.

I recently met at my local hangout with the new Director of Corporate Accounts – Tom Walsh – who was on a mission of gathering customer insights. He did a great job of asking how I use the site and actually turned some of my suggestions into applications within a couple days. Not sure how he did it – but he did.

He also listened when I, and other customers like me, said that we want ATS integration. So this morning, I had a call with their tech guy who has integrated our system with theirs so that we’re not opening up ourselves to OFCCP worries and it streamlines my workflow. Very impressed with how far they’ve come with tweaking their offerings to meet the needs of people who see the value but can’t get it to work within their process.

Although I still haven’t made a placement through the site, I’ve had several candidates come through that were interviewed. I probably would have had a hire recently but the position was put on hold until 2010. But I’m continuing to use BountyJobs and with the new ATS integration, will be more likely to put additional jobs on the site.

My major issue is still with vendor quality so I’m going to see if I can’t think up some ways that I can bend a little bit to get better information to the headhunters so they can do a better job of sourcing. My biggest concern is that most of the vendors seem to be cherry picking from the big boards — which we already do so I end up with a lot of duplicates and low-quality candidates. Anyway…I’ll keep using the site and keep updating as new improvements are made.

As always, stay tuned…

The opinions expressed in this blog are mine and mine alone and do not represent the opinions of my employer.

BountyJobs.Com…The New Frontier Of Recruiting? Part 2

It’s taken me about 6 months to begin writing this piece because just when I was about to start, BountyJobs upgraded some features and I wanted to be able to test drive them before commenting. I guess that’s what it’s all about….always be in Beta.

So this post will deal with the initial signing up on BountyJobs as an “Employer”. I won’t go into signing up as a “Headhunter” because I don’t operate in this space, but I will tell you that I have two Headhunter friends who had a VERY difficult time getting ahold of someone at BountyJobs to sign up. No return calls or emails. They have since signed up, but it wasn’t easy.

Now on to the concept for those of you who haven’t used BountyJobs.Com before. The idea for me was simple: Centralized Vendor Management.

BountyJobs.Com gives you a chance to work with multiple vendors, outside of your preferred suppliers, without having to sign a new contract, do an intake call, tell them about your company, blah-blah-blah…the whole new recruiter song & dance. Some companies actually use BountyJobs to manage ALL of their vendor activity (or so I’m told). So the potential here to save time is great, but let’s go further to see if it really does….

BountyJobs makes you sign their master search firm agreement which is similar to whatever you use, but outlines that they are the middleman and assume no risk but will process the payments and take a cut of each one — from the pocket of the Headhunter. And the cool part is, you get to set the fee: 15%, 20%, whatever. So you can actually cut fees without having to negotiate contracts with Headhunters. If they want to work on your job at 10% they will. If not, they work on other jobs. By the way – you can ask BountyJobs to add into their contract some of your legal terms and they will. Everything is negotiable…just the way a free market should be. It took us a couple months to customize the agreement but that was our process not theirs.

Once we were up and running they were helpful in getting our first 10 jobs posted on the system. They push for you to put multiple jobs because the more that get filled, the more money they make. That’s the model.

I was excited when the Headhunters started requesting the right to work on my open jobs. I’ve used a lot of similar services like Guru.Com and it’s always exciting when the bids start rolling in.

Although I loved the concept and the ease of use, as soon as the bids started coming in I started to notice a key flaw in this whole idea — the quality of the Headhunters will make or break my experience.

It was really clear to me from the start that some Headhunters were thorough in the explanations of who they were and why they wanted to source candidates for us, and then others didn’t provide any information. But that’s where my right to choose comes in. Since it’s an open market, I get to select which companies (or independent recruiters) to work with and which one’s will get the “rejection notice”. It’s kind of like selecting candidates in my applicant tracking system. And if I really wanted to be picky (and had the time) I could call and interview each vendor — but that’s not the point here. The point here was to save time and make it a more efficient process.

This was the experience I had on the first day of use with BountyJobs.Com. My next post will include more details on days that followed. As always…stay tuned.

The opinions expressed on this blog are mine and mine alone and do not reflect the opinions of my employer.

BountyJobs.Com…The New Frontier Of Recruiting?

There are a lot of bloggers out there that like to be the first person to announce a new and cool technology for recruiting. I love those folks because they help me stay abreast of the ever-changing face of recruiting technology. I, on the other hand, think of myself as an in-depth end-user so when I write about something, I’ve used it thoroughly and can give my unbiased opinion about whether it worked for me or not.

So having said that…BountyJobs.Com is by no means a new technology and I’m not the first to write about it. But I will say that I’m probably the first to write an indepth piece about how it works or doesn’t work for employers and recruiters. While it’s not new, I think it’s a Web 2.0 concept that’s underutilized amongst my peers.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I always get excited when I find out about a new recruiting technology that makes sense to me within the first 15 seconds of hearing about it. That doesn’t happen often when you’re dealing with Web 2.0 technologies.

So about a year ago, I started hearing about this BountyJobs thing and I must admit I ignored it because I thought the advertisements were kind of cheesy and their name needed some work….but overall — I wasn’t ready for another “Job Site”. I ended up learning more about BountyJobs.Com on a PodCast and wanted more info. At the same time, I found out through my employer that one of their sales reps had been hounding her to sign up. Finally, she reluctantly set up a conference call and asked me to sit in – because I’m in to this kind of stuff.

Within a few minutes I was sold on the idea but my boss was not. You see, when you work at a big company, you tend to think about “legal” first before you think about “innovation”. Plus she was having a bad day. Long story short, after 2 months of back-and-forth through “legal” we finalized the “master agreement” and signed up. More on that later…

The next few posts will take you through the “back end” of BountyJobs.Com from an employer’s perspective. I’ll tell you the good, the bad and the ugly from the inside out.

Web 3.0 Recruiting Not There Yet

I spent the last couple months really digging deep into the candidate side of Web 3.0 job hunting and I have to admit, I’m just not convinced that it’s ready for “prime time”. There is some great thinking and some great technology behind the existing players like Jobfox, Climber and Vitruva, but I’ve asked around, I’ve played with them and I’ve read some other blogs — I just can’t seem to find large numbers of individuals who have found success.

Now as much as people bash the “big boards” like Monster and Careerbuilder, I still think they’re an effective means of sourcing for internal corporate recruiters and a good way of finding jobs for job seekers. I work “on the inside” and the majority of our hires come from this method. I get an endless supply of emails and mailers about technologies that claim to “revolutionize” recruiting and I aim to check them all out because I have an open mind. My Agency connections tell me all this stuff is junk, but don’t kid yourself Agency Recruiters…that’s where you’re getting your candidates from too. I know this because I ask all my Agency candidates how they were found. I’ll address that in my next post on Open Market Recruiting.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not giving up on this technology. In fact, I have high hopes. The ideal situation would be a MERGER between the big boards and a provider of this 3.0 matching technology because the problem is not that the technology doesn’t work, there’s just not enough people using it. The sign-up takes too long and the number of companies putting their jobs on the site is too low. That’s a recipe for candidate and company abandonment.

So for now, I’ll leave this topic and move on to an area of Social Media Recruiting that I’ve been studying quite intensely for the last 3 months….Open Market Recruiting. I’ll take a look at BountyJobs.Com, Dayak.Com and if anyone else has any suggestions of other companies to review…please let me know. Thanks!