"Bulls-Eye" e-Cruiting! Make It Your Strategy.

The Internet continues to have a huge impact on the recruitment industry. If you received this e-zine, consider yourself a "Millennium Recruiter". Why? Because you recognize the advantages that the Internet can provide in gathering, managing, and marketing information effectively, and you embrace this medium in order to capitalize on its potential to thrust your business. If the Internet has become the pillar of your recruitment practice, consider yourself a "Guerilla". Wait! Not so fast…

As much as the Internet has facilitated recruiting, it has also frustrated many recruiters along the way. There are many HR chat and forum topics focused on "measuring the effectiveness of e-cruiting", and "what the 'best' site for xyz recruiting is". Generally, the confusion boils down to, "where will I get my best bang for my buck?" Aside from incorporating a new medium into the recruitment mix, recruiting is still recruiting. The real change lies in how we have chosen to use our new medium, or conversely, how it has altered our behavior. Successful recruiters are effective networkers. Above all else, recruiters are paid for whom they know or whom they get to know. That's networking!

I've watched recruitment behavior online over the last few years and it amazes me how often recruiters abandon traditional networking practices that have made them successful, once they take their practice into cyberspace. Worse yet, they expect it to yield them the same or better results and blame the medium when it doesn't. Traditionally, recruiters source candidates through generating referrals and cold calling. How often did they rely on advertising to fill an order before e-cruiting emerged? Generally, advertising is a corporate practice, not a headhunting practice. Referrals and recommendations are the headhunter's "go-to" method of generating leads. A legitimate shot at the bulls-eye! Online, recruiters are quick to post (advertise) their jobs on their favorite job-boards, and perhaps search a resume database or two. This traditionally "corporate" approach to recruiting overlooks the benefits of the more targeted "headhunting" model many have abandoned online.

Offline recruiters pick up the telephone and promote their opportunities to prospects verbally. Knowing how to network effectively they tend to do a good job of using adjectives and sell potential benefits of the opportunities and companies they represent. Online, recruiters favor 2-dimensional job descriptions that focus on duties and responsibilities and tend to abandon the idea of arousing the real motivators behind career changes…benefits! But then again who can blame them? They rarely had to write job ads in the past.

e-Cruiting has brought to life the notion of the "passive job seeker" which is generally regarded as the online recruiter's ultimate find. In comparison, the passive job seeker still lacks a pre-qualified recommendation, but shares with the headhunted candidate the fact that she is not actively job shopping nor has she been discouraged by an unfulfilled job posting.

Thankfully, more and more services are emerging that focus on training recruiters to utilize the Web as a means to network: generate names, titles, source resumes and get information layered deep in web sites, chat rooms, discussion groups, and forums. Recruiting is still all about networking. Learn to network effectively online and you'll concern yourself much less with what offers you the best bang for your buck, because you'll know. Nelson Abreu