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Hiring Guide for Small Business (Guide 3):
Get To Know The Recruitment Process

A job applicant becomes engaged with your organization as soon as he becomes aware of your company and motivated to apply in your company’s available career opportunity. So when you receive a candidate’s application, it is your responsibility as a recruitment officer to communicate that his file was received or is being considered or not for the position, and also the usual timeline of the recruitment process. Keeping your candidates connected throughout the recruitment process sets an expectation that your company takes part or adheres to good and fair open communication within the company.

The premise of the paragraph above is all about active engagement with your candidates circling about the recruitment process. In a recruitment process, I could say that the objective of it is “managing your candidates the right way”. How do you go about it?

It starts with application, second is the sorting, followed by aptitude testing, then setting of the interview, next is another sorting, and lastly the negotiation/final interview.

From the many qualifying traits of a recruitment officer, aside from having the capability to read a person’s personality and having strong analytical skill, organization is one of the most valued traits in human resources department. Imagine a day flooded with applicants and resumes?

When an applicant submits his resume, make sure that you go through his resume. Based from his qualifications, you can assess if he proceeds to the next stage of the recruitment process. After you have sorted the “short-listed” candidates, you can schedule a job pre-screening test or go straight to the interviewing stage. Just remember: when you screen or interview an applicant, make a quick note on your notebook if he is likely to proceed to the final stage of the recruitment process. And once you have selected your applicants down to two or three, you are now about to negotiate with him. Candidate negotiations is where you discuss with him what to expect in your company or pre-employment requirements like orientation.

Hiring Guide for Small Business (Guide 2):
How To Attract The Best Job Applicants

Job seekers don’t just compete for the position your company is offering, but companies compete, too, in finding the right – and probably – the best job applicants in the market. In fact, a strong job applicant is on the market for two weeks, then off the market for two years. So, it is important to attract candidates who fit your company culture and help your business grow.

How exactly do you attract job applicants? But first I should orient you on how job seekers make career decisions before I give away tips on how to attract the “highly coveted” job applicant.

It starts with them being aware. The more exposure job applicants have about your company, the more likely they are to recall the opportunities you are possible too offer them. Get your company out there as often and in as many ways as possible. With the current situation of the economy, using social media is the most cost-effective way to promote your company.

Once you get the job applicants’ attention, their interest shall spark. When they are interested, it is likely that they want to know more about your company, the position you have for open, and how the company culture is – and it also includes how good the management is, and how you compensate an employee’s hard work.

Interest then leads to motivation. Of course, when the job applicants’ believe they are fit to the job responsibilities your company requires, they will be driven to apply in the open position you have to offer, which is the last final aspect of a job seeker’s career decision.

SOME TIPS TO ATTRACT A CANDIDATE:

Know your candidates.
Get in the mind of your applicants. Know what they are like outside of your company’s interviewing room. Know their lifestyle and general interests. Know how they respond to job opportunities.

Create a message.
When you build a company’s brand name, you must have a solid message to disseminate the job market. For example, Company A is the “best place to work with because of having the best benefits.” And when you create a message, do not forget to reach them through available means in your office like using the Internet to source potential candidates or send them emails.

Utilize open-social communities.
Create a Facebook page or Linked In page and start spreading good messages about your company or if you have open positions in your company. Get the word out!

Try applicant experience.
Understand the recruitment process through a job seeker’s eyes – and shoes. Nothing beats personal experience; this way you can better engage yourself to the totality of building a company brand name.

Hiring Guide for Small Business (Guide 1):

Introduction:
Geek Evaluation’s Hiring Guide for Small Business is a definitive how-to-hire guide stacked with the latest recruitment tips and advices designed to equip you with information needed to make the smartest hiring decisions and hire the best candidate for your company.

Geek Evaluation understands that a recruitment process is never a one-size-fits-all solution. Each job vacancy in your company requires a specific amount of work experience and knowledge, and it requires a keen recruiter to sort out which among the active files are fitted to fill the open position.

Nevertheless, Geek Evaluation’s hiring guide shall define to you from ways to attract the best job candidates to how to create an effective and efficient plan for your employees’ success, which will enable you to improve or fine-tune your current recruitment process.

Guide 1:  Build your company’s brand name to job applicants.

Attracting the best, highest-quality of candidate is the foremost important step in creating a successful company or organization. The people you hire has the ability to make or break it. So it is vital that you are attracting potential employees who fits within your company culture and are dedicated to helping your company thrive.

Building your company’s brand name or “employment branding” is the process of creating a favorable image (e.g. “a great place to work with”) in the minds of your employees as well as job seekers. Once you have branded your company with positive perceptions, it becomes easier to attract better candidates or job seekers in general.

As the job market becomes competitive by the minute, employers should learn to brand themselves as a great company to work with. Below are five great tips to build (or rebuild) your company’s brand during or post-recession and hype your company’s name in the job market.

1. Do not neglect your company’s brand name. Your company’s name is one of your greatest assets during a negative economy. Building a brand name, however, does not happen overnight. It requires a repetitive and integrated campaign to send to all public. By maintaining a strong brand, job seekers’ will recall your company’s name at the top of their minds — and should they be looking for a job, they will think of you first.

2. Answer your candidate’s questions. Company culture, stability and longevity in the market, company reputation, career advancement opportunities, flexible scheduling options, and management: these are the factors important to all job seekers apart from the position they are applying for. Once you have identified your company’s key strengths, you can answer all the candidate’s queries without hesitation and without disinformation.

3. Working with a smaller recruitment budget? It’s about “reality bites!” Instead, make use of the situation to affix the budget laid out to your department. Evaluate or reassess the areas of your department that needs more budgeting, but make sure that your employees benefit, too, in the process.

4. Clarify which marketing activities your employees should focus on to drive the most revenue, and assess all marketing activities for return on investment. All other initiatives should be put aside until there is enough time available to focus on them.

5. Sharpen your vision. If you clearly position your company’s brand name, you will have a much better chance of shining through the clutter of all the other companies out there. Make sure you are meeting the needs of your candidates and employees but still being true to your corporate vision and mission.

Companies must realize that it needs “fuel” to keep the business running. And it is not about the cash flow, but having a critical foundation of research. Companies should never take a research department for granted especially if you promote products that are technology-bound.

With copious funding from corporate and venture-capitalists for commercialization, these research labs have made enormous contributions not just to technology but to the economy as well; including the creation of millions of high-paying jobs.

For example, Bell Laboratories (or Bell Labs) is the research and development organization of Alcatel-Lucent and AT&T. Their man-made marvels equally led to bringing better lives to all: invention of transistors, photovoltaic cell, Unix operating system, C++ programming, the first wireless local area network (WaveLAN), 56K modem, and the cellular technology. Without discovering such, where will the likes of Motorola, Xerox, or Cisco be? And where will we be without their mobile phones, photocopy and facsimile machines?

What started in the past continues today. America exported high-paying jobs to low-wage countries. We have stopped creating new high-paying jobs. But we should not underestimate the magnitude of creating more jobs. Outsourcing and extended recessions are not just the factors why there are stiff choices in the job market today. There is also the pressure of “value migration” or the the creation of new business models. What companies should realize is that economic situations like recessions should not overhaul how a company does business, but instead befit the situation to the company’s current needs. Again, you have to research and gather data before you lay-off employees. In fact, even in recession, there are companies that remain triumphant.

“Of the roughly 130 million jobs in the U.S., only 20% (26 million) pay more than $60,000 a year. The other 80% pay an average of $33,000. That ratio is not a good foundation for a strong middle class and a prosperous society. Rather than a demand engine, it’s a decay curve. As a nation, we have papered over our declining incomes by accepting the need for two incomes per household and by borrowing heavily, often against paper assets inflated by financial bubbles (dot-com and housing). In recent years, personal debt has grown much faster than personal income. In 1985 the ratio of household debt to household income was 0.7 to 1; in 2000 it was 1 to 1; in 2008, it was 1.7 to 1. We earned less, so we borrowed more. In 2007 we reached our limit.” — Adrian Slywotzky, a partner at management consultants Oliver Wyman, and has written books on profitability and growth (BusinessWeek).

A company’s success, so to speak, is driven by products or services widely appreciated and favored by the mass. When more people appreciates, more people buys and therefore create an exceptional contribution to the economic growth.

For instance, cars and petroleum boomed in the 1920s, movies and radio in the 1930s, appliances and television in the 1950s, pharmaceuticals in the 1960s, PCs in the 1980s, and the Internet and cellular technology in the 1990s. These era made exponential contribution to the economy as well as to those employed and job seekers.

So what about 2000? Alternative energy, biofuels? Green living? Nanotechnology? These are the words in the market, so why not these become a source of new employment to millions of job seekers. Why not fulfill the 15 to 17 million high-paying new jobs as estimated by economists. Do more research on these and maybe, it will materialize and thus will create more work for us all.

An economic downturn is inevitable. You never know when change is coming. When experiencing recession or two consecutive quarters of negative G.N.P growth can shake all enterprises’ department from operations and management to finances, and to human resources. When such happens, large corporations and small companies alike tighten their means including reorganizing their staffing. Some companies reduce staff members, others may implement a “hiring freeze,” others may try to look at hiring people internally with credible work background experience, or outsource jobs to freelancers or “virtual employees.”

After an economic recession, it is recognizable that the job market is also making adjustments. Before, companies outsource part of their business (e.g. customer service department) offshore to minimize cost. Now, after the recent global recession, companies outsource employees through virtual assistance programs online to continuously save on their company expenditures. In fact, this trend has spun a lot of attention from professionals wanting to earn more and companies wanting to save more.

True to the fact, the job market adapts to the current situation; always making an opportunity to uncontrollable shortcomings. And it is not just the industry that faces the challenges of recession and the effect of it. The companies, too, are experiencing it. Which is why the employed and the job seekers have treated the downturn as an opportunity to be versatile in the workplace.

As an officer in-charge of recruitment, finding the right person for a job requires more than a comprehensive resume. It also matters that you are able to interview an applicant not just on what is written in his resume but what he can do or contribute for your company.

Career objectives, scholastic records, academic achievements, skills, work history and character reference: these are the points in which you look for when searching for that right candidate. But how do you sort the good catch?

Finding the right candidate in this populated job market is to find someone who has a Vision. He should be able to envision himself as part of the company by helping it grow – by contributing what he knows and what he does best. Aside from his visions, he should possess a sense of Initiation. He should be the type of person who needs less supervision, thus he can manage his own time (Time Management) and tasks and deliver it in due time (Project Management). You might also want to look at how he deals with people. Check his resume if he’s part of any organizations. People involved socially are friendly people. They tend to be optimistic and can blend with different personalities. A person with social skills is not only an asset for your company, but they will also serve as an ice-breaker when work stress sets in. And lastly, of course, you need someone who is highly-skilled to perform the responsibilities the job entails. As this is the most crucial part of finding the right candidate, you must assess his employment history and previous work background.

Sometimes, I get fascinated that a person can be a writer and a graphic artist at the same time, or a skilled bookkeeper who knows how to troubleshoot a computer malfunction. So when interviewing an applicant, I always ask if he has other skills not written in his resume – this way I get insights about his personality.

Software development is a cutting-edge industry that can provide excellent compensation and career growth for anyone who is into programming and coding. But due to the recent economic recession, the industry trend has shifted offshore. Moreover, emerging markets in Asia like India and Philippines has seen this economic downturn as an opportunity.

Software development is profitable and productive in terms that software development companies in the west can lessen their operation expenses because software companies in the Philippines or India, for example, proposes “value” (cheaper rates and quality product).

Alongside this industry shift, another question that is usually raised is: which is better? Pre-packaged software or software done in-house? The answer is relatively depending on the end-user’s need. Usually, a software done in-house are customized. This kind of software relies on the need of the end-user. For example: a company has commissioned a software development company to produce a “transcribing program” that can be edited real-time by supervisors or employees. On the other hand, pre-packaged software like Photoshop has features that are already affixed with update done annually for its end-users.

The trend now is into custom software development. This way companies can add which specific feature or function they are into. According to research, most custom software developed are for companies engaged in data processing or conversion. One particular product that is considered a hot commodity is a “transcription program.” Such program can be integrated on both local network (intranet) and internet so that supervisors or managers can check-up, update, and follow-up on transcription projects on real-time.

So now that custom software development is leaning offshore, how do you know that software development companies employ software programmers or engineers competent for the job? These companies conduct programming tests or pre hiring tests and in-depth interviews, or conduct online software development tests, which is, by the way, gaining popularity in the industry.

Sounds very strange but this has been the case recently. Trina Thompson is suing her alma mater Monroe College in New York city for the $70,000 tuition because the school has failed to secure gainful employment for her. She claims that the college’s Office of career advancement was not helpful with her job search. Thompson is suing for an additional amount of $2,000 for stress caused by her inability to find work.

Not a very good example in this economy in US when 10% of population is with work and graduates who are passing out of college are finding themselves burdened with college loan and not in situation to pay that off.

If somebody would have asked me few days back this question , I would not have known the answer. But I always wanted to find about the technology and tricks used at high performance sites like  twitter , facebook and ebay.

During discussions with one of the colleagues, I came to know that core of  twitter has been written in Scala. And that set me going . Twitter had really high load going to 5000 tweets per minutes at times.

I really wanted to find out more about Scala and learn about it.

What is Scala ?

Scala is a general purpose programming language designed to express common programming patterns in a concise, elegant, and type-safe way. It smoothly integrates features of object-oriented and functional languages, enabling Java and other programmers to be more productive. Code sizes are typically reduced by a factor of two to three when compared to an equivalent Java application.

Many top-notch programmers and industry leaders have already been captivated by Scala. James Strachan even says that scala is the long term replacement of java and javac.

Find more about scala here

If I write it down today and say “I always told you so” , you would not believe me. But couple of years back while discussing with my friends and colleagues I was telling them that google has the best chance to give challenge to Microsoft in Operating Systems. It is not that google has best brains(I do not doubt that) but because it is following a very planned strategy. The reason for this was as follows :

When you own a computer , except all the computer game junkies and programmers most of us open up a browser ,surf internet, use MS office suites , email , listen songs or download pictures.

Since google had integrated its own application suite in the web, there was very little use of an Operating system. So why can’t a browser like Firefox(Chrome was not out then)not be installed  on Linux and sold to customers.

So on browser you surf internet , upload and share pictures. For work you can use google office suite which works very well within browser . So you do not need a full fledge OS.  A lightweight linux can be used and you save your $100 which you pay for OS.

And this I was saying before Chrome(Google’s browser ) was released.

Today google has announced they are launching Google Chrome Operating System in second half of 2010.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.

Read it here in google blog

Currently they are targeting net book , but no reason why it cannot be upgraded for laptops in coming years.

There is a lot of business learning from this piece of news and with what Microsoft has been doing for years. We will cover that in next post.