Just a thought
Richard's thoughts on managing development teams.
Monday 9 November 2009, 9:59 AM
Hiring and job boards
If you are an IT recruitment specialist then you need to know a little about IT. If you are asking for a set of skills, you should understand what you are asking for. Is there a list you are given and you just run through it randomly ticking boxes? Be realistic about what you are asking for and the salary that is being offered. Someone with 5 years experience in Java, C++, VB, Ruby on Rails and php, Oracle is not really going to be an expert in all of those. As a candidate, I would wonder what sort of application I would be working on.
Most importantly, if the role is permanent, don't tick the contract box. How difficult is that? Do you think that getting your job posting in front of more people, no matter if they are looking for that type of work or not, is likely to get you the candidate that will land the job?
Recruiters - if you are going to try to charge 15% - 25% of someone's annual salary, you need to raise your game.
And one last tip for recruiters - don't add things to the candidate's CV. You will be found out when the candidate is interviewed.
PreviousComments on this post
Some interesting thoughts Richard and it has certainly long been our belief that users are going to soon get irritated by the number of spam messages sent to them on Linkedin from recruiters. The site is basically one great big CV database for recruiters and a valuable tool for them and it is a matter of time before some users get fed up with this.
With regards to the job boards, I would have to disagree. We have used them since 2000, and will continue to use them alongside other recruiting tools such as linkedin, SEO, online communities and our own internal database. By our reckoning over 80% of our placements are as a result of job boards (advert responses or cv search), it is about the recruiter understanding the vacancy and the technologies involved (not about which source the candidate comes from) and making sure that we have thoroughly screened the applicants.
To say that the bottom 25% of candidates come from job boards would be incorrect. I would say that the bottom 25% of agencies don't understand how to use job boards correctly and that it is just one of many tools that they should be using to find the most suitable applicant (and not the only one).
We look to test our candidates using an Online Testing provider who offer access to over 200 technical tests. This is an excellent way of us determining which candidates are suitable and adds value at an early stage of the recruitment process.
Best Wishes
Matthew Iveson
CV Screen Ltd - the IT Recruitment specialists
http://www.cvscreen.co.uk
