A Boston Technical Recruiters Blog

What is the best way to manage recruiters in your office? While some manager prefer a heavily hands on approach others are much more hands off. When does the hands on approach become too burdensome and curb the natural productivity of a recruiter and when does excessive hands off development lead to recruiter failure and potential burn out?

The best way to manage recruiters is with a limited hands on approach that does not stifle their natural creativity yet does not leave them with a feeling of “survival of the fittest”. Manager A will hover over his recruiters and demand that certain productivity markers be met. He will harp on these numbers daily, often coming around to make sure that the call volume is not sinking and that the submittal machine is in full swing. This manager will be keen on forcing the recruiter into his mold recruiting on positions that may or may not be good strategic fills. The most positive note of this style is that the recruiter will feel that the manager is there for him and will stay on his toes in terms of performance and actual labor input. One negative side effect is that this recruiter will not be able to recruit creatively and will find ways of foiling the statistics, whether by submitting unscreened candidates or calling though the white pages without focus to fulfill their quota.

The lax manager on the other hand will sit back and watch the machine run. If one cog in the machine is not operating at the production level, this manager will dully note this occurrence and will passively attempt t correct the behavior. At times, the manager will give no input into how the performance should be improved but will merely state that performance is not up to par and will leave it at that while the floundering recruiter will be left to wonder about what exactly is going on and why his numbers are not matching up to the company totals. The hand’s of manager will hire new employees and instead of hovering over them and ensuring smooth integration into the machine, will let them sink or float. IF the recruiter begins producing so much the better, if the recruiter flounders then a new body will be brought in to replace the dead weight.

The most effective method of managing is to fuse these two approaches and attempt to isolate the causes that are the destructive forces within each style. The perfect manager would bring on a new hire and coach them in the ways of the business. Even seasoned recruiters need this approach for the machine they are leaving is seldom the same machine that they are entering. The hand holding should depend on the maturity of the recruiter. If the manager hovers too much, the recruiter may become dependent and be unable to perform independently when weaned from the initial care of the manager. If the recruiter is let alone and allowed to continue his previous style of recruiting without early correction, the recruiter may waste valuable time in applying the wrong style to the current machine without proper adjustments. While senior recruiters should be encouraged to develop their own style within the confines of the recruiting strategy of the company, new recruiters should be supported until they are comfortable.

Survival of the fittest is a sound strategy for creating cut through recruiting practices and while it makes for effective sales people it undercut the team mentality that many companies are attempting to enact.

Thus a manager should be neither too hands off and reliant on numbers, nor too restrictive and vigilant of every phone call a recruiter makes. A golden rule should be to monitor progress without overly strict interference and harmful criticism that may jeopardize the employee team relationship by appearing to single out recruiters based solely on unsound statistical analysis.Technical recruiting and online entrepreneurship blog

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The year 2005 must have been a slow one for recruiting agencies; at least it felt that way as I stumbled from interview to interview never quite landing the job. I don’t know why I suddenly decided to quit my sales job and become a recruiter, its just like a childhood dream that you never quite knew about that suddenly awakes and throws you into something interesting.

My first encounter with a staffing agency had been in 2004, specifically with Creative Financial Staffing in Boston. A buddy of mine facilitated the hire that ended 3 week later with a pleasant “they will not be requiring your services” phone call from the recruiter. Apparently, I had dug up some really nasty collections issue that the supervisor did not want revealed (true story confirmed by insider).

So fast forward to 2005…

The summer was hot, maybe because I was running around in a nice suite from agency to agency trying to build a case why a young hard working graduate from Brandeis is a good bet. Yet I kept falling on my face. My Dad had bought me a really nice suit to help me out, but it just wasn’t doing it for me.

I interviewed with Robert Half, where the manager was the biggest ass you will ever meet, his name was Luke and he later became the division head of that great company. He told me I was a job hopper and that if I could hold on somewhere for more then a year to call him back. I actually did. This was just out of curiosity, by that time I had 35 people billing for me and had absolutely no desire to ever join Robert Half. But I digress…

I interviewed at Winter& Wyman in Waltham(later they tried to directly recruit me) then I went across the street to Sullivan & Cogliano. Undeterred, I interviewed at KNF&T in Boston, what amazed me about that company was the utter lack of men… anywhere. I managed to sneak into Sapphire for an unrelated job and tried to sell myself to the technical recruiter there by telling her that what I really wanted was “ to do what you do”. That must have freaked her out, recruiting being the competitive kill or be killed that it is J.

Then there was Maxim Staffing, they had a hole in the wall office, then to Apex Systems, better office still no offer. There was Ascent Consulting and lunch with my Dad who works in the same office park…. Then Resource Options in Needham, the way they described who they placed really turned me off.

I even interviewed at Time Warner for a collections job! Now I hate collections and anything to do with accounting and cubicle desk jobs, but hey, desperate times call for desperate measures! I went to SEDO.com, a reputable startup thinking they might take me for a sales guy, but alas, I didn’t come across as one.

And finally, when I despaired, and decided that maybe the world of recruiting had turned really was not for me, I interviewed at Total Technical Services in Waltham. I thought the interview went well, but just in case, I got myself a server job at the local Ground Round. This was something I wanted to do anyhow, just to level with everyone else who had done it. It seemed like such an All American thing to do. Kinda like joining the Army 5 years before!!

So I trained for 5 shifts and on the 6th shift they told me “sorry buddy, you’re not picking this up fast enough, we’re gonna have to let you go.” Holy crap! I just graduated from one of the best schools in the US and I wasn’t picking it up fast enough? That warm fuzzy feeling from before about the Ground dissipated rather quickly…

So here I was, 24 years old, no money, no job, and my Dad was wondering why he just paid an extortionist amount of money to Brandeis! Seems funny now… wasn’t funny then. I had been job searching for 2 months with nothing to shop but a pink slip from the Ground Round of all places!

To the rescue came a phone call from Total Technical saying that they wanted to bring me onboard! To say that I was pleased would be one hell of an understatement. Even the fact that they were offering $9.33/h with a 10k draw didn’t dampen my enthusiasm… I got in the door!!

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Author Byline: Franchise Information & Discussion at Franchisespeak.com
Author Website: http://www.franchisespeak.com/young-chefs-academy-discussion

Have you ever said, “I love kids. Is there are career for me?” Most likely the ideas that come up all have to do with teaching. Here are some other careers that might be for you, that you might not have thought of.

PEDIATRIC NURSING: A rewarding but possibly stressful choice. If you can handle the bad days there will be many good days where you get to see children get well. A medical career can be great, but a medical career focused on kids, can be amazing.

FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHY: Do you have the skills to make children smile? Photography is hugely popular as a college major, and family photography is one of the great careers that awaits an outgoing and friendly photographer. Making a child comfortable enough to open up and pose for, often long periods of time, can be just what you’re looking for.

SCHOOL GUIDANCE & SOCIAL WORK: Having a patient and caring attitude might make you perfect to deal with educational disabilities, such as attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), to mental health disorders with children. You can gain great satisfaction from helping students who aren’t doing well or succeeding in public school, all the way to helping someone get accepted to the college of their dreams.

MUSEUM EDUCATOR: Giving kids the opportunity to experience history, science, aviation, and more through hands on interaction can be a great fit for someone who wants to work with kids and have a chance to do research.

KID FOCUSED FRANCHISE: Kids are busier than ever, because of extra curricular activities. Many kid focused businesses have sprung up to fill the need. You can start a discussion on one of interest to you at franchisespeak.com and hear from current franchisees to see if starting your own business might be right for you. Kid focused Young Chefs Academy Franchise Discussion is going on right now here.

Here are a few other job titles you might like to research as well — Librarian, Recreational therapist, Child-care provider, Camp counselor/director, Kids Fitness Instructor, Pediatric dentist/dental hygienist, Pediatrician, Children’s retail store clerk/ manager, Birthday Party Entertainer.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

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A dead lock. This occurs when two transactions wait for each other to unlock data.

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A lock gives a transaction exclusive use of a data item for the duration of the transaction. This is important so you do not run into concurrency control issues where two or more users are trying to perform queries on the same set of data. There are several levels of locks known as lock granularity starting with the database-level lock that prevents access to the entire database, this is followed by the table level lock that locks an entire table, a page level lock locks a disk page and is the most frequently used DBMS locking device. A row level lock locks the row, while the field level lock allows transactions to access the same row.

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Concurrence control ensures Serializabilty in a  multiple user database. The first common problem is lost updates which occurs when data an operation from T2 uses un committed date from the same table of transaction T1. The uncommitted date problem arises when two transactions T1 and T2 are executed concurrently but the T1 is rolled back after T2 used data from T1. Inconsistent retrievals occur when a transaction calculates aggregate functions while a second transaction updates those functions in real time.

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Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability, and Serializability(ACIDS).

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E-commerce is a relatively new invention as far as commerce is concerned and therefore has not completely stabilized. There is a vast amount that people do not know about e-commerce; it’s possibilities and it’s risks.  There are also a large number of people that do not know about e-commerce at all.

The internet has grown by 215% in the last 7 years and even this growth through out the world encompasses only 17% of the total population.[Int] Considering the figures from [Int] the opportunity for e-commerce is astounding and at the same time the risks and destabilization factors are just as great.

Simply because we can cite a couple of companies that have survived the .com bust and prospered such as Yahoo, Google, and Amazon.com, we cannot say that e-commerce has stabilized. There is no way of knowing whether it has stabilized or not.

[Lev99] illustrates that it was the human interaction that drove the rise of civilization and eventually the internet and it is this very same force that will keep e-commerce from stabilizing completely. Some businesses will never be able to transfer all operation to e-commerce simply because of the human interaction factor that humans desire. You can send an email, but it will never be as effective as a phone conversation; while a video conference will never replace throwing back a few cold ones during a business deal. As long as every business is not able to completely operate on the internet without the bricks, e-commerce cannot be considered to be a stable operating medium for a business.

Nevertheless, e-commerce is essential for the success of modern businesses because of the pervasiveness of technology and the current drive toward automation. The internet enables e-commerce to span the globe and to give companies reach into corners of the world where access was impossible previously. To leave out e-commerce form a business model could be a devastating mistake.

E-commerce security also has a long way to go before it stabilizes. Firewalls and even biometrics can be defeated with clever exploits and social engineering opening the way for significant destabilization within e-commerce. There is nothing in ecommerce resembling the vault at Ft. Knox. Even NSA computers have been hacked and White House websites defaced. Until security on the internet is stabilized e-commerce can hardly be said to have stabilized.

[Int] internet World Stats

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

[Lev99]Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger, “the cluetrain manifesto”, 1999, http://www.cluetrain.com/

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A derived metric is obtained directly from metrics in a dataset used by the document, by combining two or more existing metrics for the purpose. Derived metrics permit the dynamic application of calculations to a document without requiring new metric definitions.

For example, if your dataset contains the dollar sales for a particular region, and you want to view the same data in millions, you could create a derived metric with a definition of Dollar Sales/1,000,000.

A derived metric:
•    must be a compound metric. The reverse is not true—a compound metric does not have to be a derived metric.
•    must use metrics from the same dataset. If the new definition demands metric data not readily available, the information cannot be obtained dynamically, as the dataset must first be re-executed.

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