Okay, I've had enough. I'm tired of looking at bad resumes. I estimate that I've personally looked at over 50,000 resumes by this time in my career and my intolerance for bad resumes has driven me to write a six page guide along with a resume template. I hope that this makes the world a better place - at least the world of anyone involved in the hiring process.
I'm calling it "The Six Second Resume Guide and Template" based on some research that I stumbled upon done by The Ladders. The gist of it is that recruiters spend six seconds reviewing a resume before making a fit/no fit determination. This is true in my personal experience. Granted, some executive level positions might get a bit more eye attention before moving on, but in this job market, six seconds is about all you'll get. Here is a link to a summary which also links to their full research: http://info.theladders.com/our-team/you-only-get-6-seconds-of-fame-make-it-count
Check out my guide and template at thesixsecondresume.com and let me know what you think. Together, we can end the blight of the bad resume!
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Do you need Sologig if you have a Careerbuilder Resume Database License?
My Careerbuilder license just came up for renewal. During my negotiations with the account rep (you know the ones where I tell them I want to pay less and they tell me I should pay more and I end up paying the same as the previous year?), I was pitched a subscription to the Sologig resume database. I expressed my concern about niche sites to my account rep, but she promised me that there were people on Sologig who I wouldn't find on Careerbuilder. She even gave me a one-month trial to prove it to myself.
Armed with licenses to both the Careerbuilder and Sologig databases, I set out to do some comparisons. I'll keep this short because not much more needs to be said: it's not worth adding Sologig to your Careerbuilder license. At all. I tried multiple locations with multiple key words. Everyone that I found on Sologig was also on Careerbuilder. EVERYONE. I'm assuming that Careerbuilder sucks in the resumes from Sologig to bump the size of their database. So save your money and stick with Careerbuilder.
Armed with licenses to both the Careerbuilder and Sologig databases, I set out to do some comparisons. I'll keep this short because not much more needs to be said: it's not worth adding Sologig to your Careerbuilder license. At all. I tried multiple locations with multiple key words. Everyone that I found on Sologig was also on Careerbuilder. EVERYONE. I'm assuming that Careerbuilder sucks in the resumes from Sologig to bump the size of their database. So save your money and stick with Careerbuilder.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Do you need LinkedIn's Talent Solutions Service?
When LinkedIn first introduced it's Hiring Solutions product back in 2008 (I think), my crew and I evaluated the product only to find it disappointingly expensive with minimal bang for our buck. After reading this informative article (http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/05/linkedin-talent-solution/) on LinkedIn's Talent Solutions service, I was intrigued enough to request a demo. After all, if it represents 57% of their revenue, it's got to have some serious bells and whistles, right?
LTS, as I'll refer to it from here on out, sits on top of your personal profile - meaning that the interface is basically the same. When you search for people, the search results still show to what degree you are connected to them and some highlights of their profile. What you get with the addition of LTS are search results that are not limited by your connections. So for example, if you have a small personal network and do a search for a "Network Administrator," you may only get a few results that are first, second and third degree connections (up to second degree with a basic account). With LTS, the demo showed 729,000 results because it searched all 225 million profiles regardless of personal connections. I can see how this would be helpful for recruiters who are new to LinkedIn yet are competing for the same talent with recruiters who have larger personal networks (I have 23k at the time of this post). I ran the same search after my demo to see how my search results compared to LTS's. I also had 729,000 results, so there was no benefit for me there.
LTS gives you a second inbox in order to separate your personal use of LinkedIn from your business use. With LTS, you get 50 InMails per month (which can accumulate up to three months worth) which you can use to bulk email people that you select from your searches. With a free personal account, you don't get any InMails. With a Business account, Business Plus account and Executive Account, you get 3, 10, and 25 InMails per month respectively that also accumulate, but you aren't able to bulk email without LTS. I don't send InMail often, but this could be reason enough to purchase LTS if you spend a lot of time proactively recruiting on LinkedIn. In fact, one of the selling points mentioned in my demo was that LTS allows you to get away from job board subscriptions (think Monster and Careerbuilder).
A few other minor features: With LTS, you can save profiles to folders and therefore have limited ATS functionality. You can import spreadsheets with candidate information and your imported information will show up in future searches. I couldn't really see the benefit to this, but maybe that's due to my setup. If you save searches, you can get alerts when new people join LinkedIn that match your saved criteria - helpful if you frequently hire the same skill sets but don't have the time or interest to do regular searches. You can do this without LTS, but you're limited in the number of saved searches you can have (3, 5, 7, 10/week depending on subscription level).
My rep spent some time telling me about job postings, but there didn't appear to be a difference between how they work with LTS and if I bought them with a personal account.
The cost of an annual LTS subscription is $8,700 for a single user. Bottom line - if you want to be a LinkedIn power user but only have a small personal network, this is great solution. If LinkedIn is just one of your tools and your personal network is large enough to give you good access to talent, you can get by with a free account or one of the premium accounts.
Recommendation 1: Keep growing your personal network - especially in your field. The larger your network, the less your need for LTS.
Recommendation 2: Identify which sources are generating the bulk of your hires. If it's LinkedIn, you may be able to save money by purchasing LTS and dropping traditional job boards.
LTS, as I'll refer to it from here on out, sits on top of your personal profile - meaning that the interface is basically the same. When you search for people, the search results still show to what degree you are connected to them and some highlights of their profile. What you get with the addition of LTS are search results that are not limited by your connections. So for example, if you have a small personal network and do a search for a "Network Administrator," you may only get a few results that are first, second and third degree connections (up to second degree with a basic account). With LTS, the demo showed 729,000 results because it searched all 225 million profiles regardless of personal connections. I can see how this would be helpful for recruiters who are new to LinkedIn yet are competing for the same talent with recruiters who have larger personal networks (I have 23k at the time of this post). I ran the same search after my demo to see how my search results compared to LTS's. I also had 729,000 results, so there was no benefit for me there.
LTS gives you a second inbox in order to separate your personal use of LinkedIn from your business use. With LTS, you get 50 InMails per month (which can accumulate up to three months worth) which you can use to bulk email people that you select from your searches. With a free personal account, you don't get any InMails. With a Business account, Business Plus account and Executive Account, you get 3, 10, and 25 InMails per month respectively that also accumulate, but you aren't able to bulk email without LTS. I don't send InMail often, but this could be reason enough to purchase LTS if you spend a lot of time proactively recruiting on LinkedIn. In fact, one of the selling points mentioned in my demo was that LTS allows you to get away from job board subscriptions (think Monster and Careerbuilder).
A few other minor features: With LTS, you can save profiles to folders and therefore have limited ATS functionality. You can import spreadsheets with candidate information and your imported information will show up in future searches. I couldn't really see the benefit to this, but maybe that's due to my setup. If you save searches, you can get alerts when new people join LinkedIn that match your saved criteria - helpful if you frequently hire the same skill sets but don't have the time or interest to do regular searches. You can do this without LTS, but you're limited in the number of saved searches you can have (3, 5, 7, 10/week depending on subscription level).
My rep spent some time telling me about job postings, but there didn't appear to be a difference between how they work with LTS and if I bought them with a personal account.
The cost of an annual LTS subscription is $8,700 for a single user. Bottom line - if you want to be a LinkedIn power user but only have a small personal network, this is great solution. If LinkedIn is just one of your tools and your personal network is large enough to give you good access to talent, you can get by with a free account or one of the premium accounts.
Recommendation 1: Keep growing your personal network - especially in your field. The larger your network, the less your need for LTS.
Recommendation 2: Identify which sources are generating the bulk of your hires. If it's LinkedIn, you may be able to save money by purchasing LTS and dropping traditional job boards.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Top 5 Reasons Recruiters Don't Call Back
After a year and a half hiatus, I figured it's time to start picking the blog back up. I definitely enjoyed the break, but I also missed contributing to the pool of recruiting knowledge. For my first post since August '08, I'll keep this one brief and simply give a link to a great article that I found yesterday on lorenaslist.com. It's also an excellent site for the job seeker.
http://www.lorenaslist.com/refresh/templates/blog.php?id=47&refer=archive
http://www.lorenaslist.com/refresh/templates/blog.php?id=47&refer=archive
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)