In the search for the ideal candidate with the perfect history, recruiters tend to use Google more and more, to find some irrelevant information on the candidate. While, despite the constantly increasing number of products offered by Google-labs, the results are for sure not always what they should be. Explaining the Google-algorithms would take us too far, still, the technology only indexes public available information, being, information which is to be found on the surface of the web. The two-eyed robot doesn't index dbases, does not search, Schoolbanken, Flickr's nor does she find information hidden in online dbases. When we want to search those dbases, we need a technology that can search in this so called ‘deep web'. This deep web-content is estimated to be at least 500 times the volume of the known web.
My personal favorite is Pipl.com, a next-gen search-engine, which checks results from different networks, completed with Google-results. This on a national and international level. To measure the power of Pipl, one should launch a search on blogger and professional networker An De Jonghe.
Ziki.com goes one step further and gives, next to the search-options, the possibilities to identify with the results. In other words, similar to most social network-sites one can create a profile and modify the results a little. Here as well, it's worth checking An De Jonghe and to compare the results with Pipl.com.
In the Netherlands, the new engine Wieowie.nl started recently, in general it's quite similar to Pipl.com with the remark that country-choice is limited to The Netherlands and that the results are linked to typically Dutch web 2.0-sites like Hyves.nl, Schoolbank.nl, but also LinkedIN and YouTube. New in regard to the others is the ‘WoW-factor'. The purpose is that the number of connections one has in LinkedIN and/or Hyves together with the completeness with your profile on Wieowie.nl defines one's importance in the web 2.0-world.
Still in beta-testing GoshMe, more news when it comes available.
It speaks for itself that one should interpreter the results with care. Just like in general searches, in person-searches the reliability of information is not always clear, and the risk for attaching a certain outcome to another person is imminent. So we would like to refer to Article 5.1 (in Dutch) from the Application Code from the NVP (de Nederlandse Vereniging voor Personeelsmanagement en Organisatieontwikkeling), code stipulating that when a recruiter is gathering information on an applicant, that this info should only be used if relevant and if so, it has to be discussed with the candidate.
Do you conduct research to the online life of your candidates? Plz let us know.
Current market-conditions pose the ICT-sector experiences more and more difficulties to attract good candidates. Recruiters, as your humble servant, have to use all their experience & creativity in order to find the ideal candidate being at least three-lingual, having a master or engineers-title, understanding ICT and its logic, but also understanding what the business-users want and being socially skilled enough to understand their logic.
As we’ve seen during the last decade, things are rapidly evolving and so is recruiting. The time we could rely on a job-add in one or another newspaper, ask the mass of sollicitants to send us their curriculum vitae (CV) and a handwritten motivation-letter is far away and will never come back. So we have to adapt, which we did, but in stages, and not always fast enough. First we adopted the typed letters send by snail mail, later on we discovered the advantages of e-mail and we saw the first steps of the jobboards. Off course some of them where smart enough to hook a cv-dbase to these jobboards and so companies got a real new channel of finding resumes. They paid a fee to all major boards, hired trainees and let them search in these dbases.
While the other evolutions still relied on the basic logic of placing an add and receiving cv’s, the resume-dbases made the switch from purely passive waiting for incoming candidates, to a more active search for the good candidate. And so HR-departments got more power to find exactly the candidate they wanted and so to give their company a competitive advantage.
Since the rise of the resume-dbases, the web has changed tremendously, we saw the shift from the one-way communication from computer to user, to the interactive Web 2.0, but only very few, pioneering recruitment & selection-departments are following. In a previous piece I tried to attract attention to Jobs in Brussels, as far as I know, the first real Web 2.0-enabled jobsite, but there are other, still underestimated possibilities. LinkedIN for instance, in Belgium more than 99.400 users are registered, a large part of them working in ICT, but if we look at the number of jobs posted in Belgium we only find some 46 vacancies (two of them for the Flemish Parliament) . One of my contacts took the test, yesterday I got the question to forward a very generic Unix-admin job to my contacts, I selected three of them, and already the same evening two of them sent me a mail to thank for the opportunity and to let me know they applied. Wow!
Did you know Ziki, the search-engine specifically aimed at finding people, or do you prefer to look in del.icio.us for those people having some specific technology bookmarked? What about your Second Life-presence or did the hype not deliver what it promissed? Do you know you can post jobs on the Bejug-site (BElgian Java User Group), ok still in bèta, or are you more looking for the ITSMF-profiles?
Did you ever use LinkedIN or any other interactive web-tool to recruit, and if yes what were the results? Plz let me know.
Heeft u het ook gelezen? Visa kwam het ons recent nog es onder de neus wrijven, in Amerika, mogen bedrijven sollicitanten afwijzen op basis van een te hoge schuldgraad. Kandidaten die in slechte papieren zitten, zullen het geweten hebben... "Neen, mijn excuses, maar u kunt ons niet betalen." Of was het toch omgekeerd? Navraag van HRlog.nl.nl leert dat ook in Nederland de lage kredietwaardigheid kan meespelen. In ons eigen Vlaanderen speelt het, bij mijn weten, (nog) niet, maar tellen andere zaken.
Hoe reageert u op een pas-afgestudeerde kandidaat die in z'n master-opleiding economie ieder jaar mooi een eerste zit behaalt, maar er niet in slaagt zijn thesis af te werken, niet in zijn laatste jaar, maar ook niet in het (thesis-)jaar daarna en vervolgens wel tijdens een tweede thesisjaar. De kandidaat behaalt uitstekende test-resultaten, levert een goed interview af en toch blijft de klant hameren op die verloren jaren. Terecht of niet? Of wat met volgende; een ex-collega had de gewoonte bij kandidaten te informeren of ze al ooit es gescheiden waren. Een ‘ja' hield dan in dat de ontrouwe in kwestie een zwak inschattingsvermogen had.
Misschien moeten recruiters maar es leren vijf positieve en vijf negatieve eigenschappen van zichzelf neer te pennen, ik wil niemand uit zijn / haar illusie helpen, maar die vraag heeft nu echt wel iedere kandidaat voorbereid. En ja hoor, hun voornaamste tekortkoming is altijd dat ze zo... ‘koppig' zijn, maar dat houdt dan ook in dat ze zich echt zullen vastbijten in hun job. Of wat dacht u? De praktijk leert dat rekrutering en selectie geen exacte wetenschap is, er zijn honderden redenen waarom een kandidaat wel of niet kan slagen in een job en als recruiter kun je maar een beredeneerde gok maken.
Geen enkele methodologie geeft zekerheid, de betrouwbaarheid van de meest gebruikte wervingstool is bedroevend (het sollicitatiegesprek), de betrouwbaarheid / validiteit van andere tools als persoonlijkheidsvragenlijsten is nauwelijks beter. Ja, het competentie-gerichte interview en assessments gaan de goede richting uit, maar worden zelden tot in de perfectie toegepast. Zolang we daar geen mouw aan passen, laten we de weg open voor would-be recruiters, amateurpsychologen, CV-exegeten, kredietwaardigheidsonderzoeken en grafologen allerhande.
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