Purple Squirrels, Innovators and Gamechangers

by Dr. John Sullivan, published at www.ere.net

If you’re not familiar with the term, a Purple Squirrel is the moniker that denotes an extremely rare and talented recruiting target. Purple Squirrels are valuable because they are extreme innovators. Once hired, they can change your firm’s capabilities, direction, and marketplace success almost instantly.

The benchmark Purple Squirrel was Tony Fadell, who conceived of the concept of the MP3 player while he was at Philips. But Apple recruited him away, allowing them to dominate and make billions in a product area (the iPod) where they had little expertise before recruiting him. This single Purple Squirrel acquisition made Apple billions and set the expectation for future market dominating innovations at Apple!

The most stunning thing, however, about Purple Squirrel recruiting is the fact that there is literally a zero chance that these valuable game-changers and pioneers can be recruited using the existing recruiting process at 99.5% of the world’s major corporations. For example, everyone would agree that Steve Jobs, even in his youth, was a Purple Squirrel, but the fact is that he was rejected by the recruiting process at HP, despite all his talent, simply because he had no college degree.

These purple squirrels are true pioneers with the capability of not only coming up with original ideas but also in successfully implementing them. Purple Squirrels are generally not senior executives, but instead, they are often mid-level employees in product development, technology, mathematics, social media, or the monetization of products and services. Each of these areas are essential for market domination.

For six reasons companies should develop a process for recruiting purple squirrels or more on why traditional corporate recruiting approaches fail, continue reading here.

How To Redesign Your Resume For A Recruiter’s 6-Second Attention Span

by mark wilson @ fastcodesign.com

 

THE AVERAGE RECRUITER SPENDS SIX SECONDS ON YOUR RESUME. 

SO THIS IS WHAT YOU DO.

It’s frightening. You’ll spend most of your waking life at a job, yet, according to a new study by TheLadders, the average recruiter spends just six seconds looking at your resume. By the end of that time, they’ll determine whether you’re “a fit” or a “no fit.”

“The only research that had been done in this domain was self-reporting surveys, which simply was not good enough for us to understand what drives recruiters’ decision-making,” Will Evans, Head of User Experience at TheLadders, tells Co.Design. So Evans led a study that followed 30 recruiters for 10 weeks. Or, more accurately, it followed just their eyes. Using eyetracking gear, Evans’ team measured what recruiters really see.

 

The result is this heat map tracking six seconds of someone’s attention span. (The darker the spot, the longer a recruiter’s eyes sat on that part of the page.) It’s absolutely jarring to see such a clinical view on resume analysis--a clinical view that Evans refers to simply as “a design problem.” Namely, it’s up to job seekers to design a resume that can fit within what are now known restraints.

“Both resumes and online profiles should have a clear visual hierarchy, following a format that matches recruiters’ mental model,” Evans advises. “To reduce the strain of visual complexity, focus on a balanced, grid-based design that gives affordance, has a natural rhythm, and tells a compelling story of steady progression in your career.”

He recommends liberal use of both typography and white space to enable effortless scanning of titles, company names, and education. And that approach makes sense when you return to our trusty heat map. The hot spots are routinely those left-aligned bold headings, and the recruiter’s entire workflow just cruises through the left side of the page. Meanwhile, any big blocks of texts aren’t read whatsoever.

So don’t consider headings pedantic; consider them what Evans calls “quick bursts of information,” or the type of information you can convey in a matter of moments. But at the same time, he also recommends to cut whatever you can.

 “A resume is not the time to write a screenplay or jam every activity or responsibility you have ever done in your previous roles,” writes Evans. “We firmly believe that a minimalist approach to the design that focuses on the most important data and removes all information that does not solve a recruiter’s or hiring manager’s need should be removed.” This minimalist approach should be supported from content all the way through formatting. And that means something very strange: To stand out, you actually want your formatting to conform. Even clever infographics should be cut. 

“Avoid unnecessary embellishment, or as Edward Tufte might call it, ‘chart junk.’ Visual elements that do not solve a recruiter’s need or goal should be removed,” writes Evans. “This may be somewhat controversial, but we have proven data revealing that visual resumes, images, and infographics are not a good idea--at least not at the initial screening part in the process. Save those for the hiring manager when you can present your portfolio and showcase your design acumen.”

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669531/how-to-redesign-your-resume-for-a-recruiter-s-6-second-attention-span

How Recruiters Use Social Networks to Screen Candidates

by Erica Swallow

Over the past few years, we’ve seen social media used in the job market in a number of ways — startups, small businesses and large corporations alike are diving into the socialverse to find top talent, and job seekers are likewise getting creative with social media.

Social media monitoring service Reppler recently surveyed more than 300 hiring professionals to determine when and how job recruiters are screening job candidates on different social networks.

The study found that more than 90% of recruiters and hiring managers have visited a potential candidate’s profile on a social network as part of the screening process. And a whopping 69% of recruiters have rejected a candidate based on content found on his or her social networking profiles — an almost equal proportion of recruiters (68%), though, have hired a candidate based on his or her presence on those networks.

Check out the infographic below for more results from the survey, including what details on a candidate’s social profile make recruiters tick.

 

Weekly Wisdom: What All Hiring Managers Need To Know About Contingency Search Assignments

Clients tend to view agency recruiters one of two ways: as trusted advisors and partners or as opportunists to be avoided whenever possible.  The recruiting industry has gotten a pretty bad rap but it’s not hard to understand why: unkept promises, unreturned phone calls, unanswered emails, resume “slinging” and poor adherence to best practices impaired even further by the high rate of employee turnover all damage the rest of the world’s perception of who we are, what we do and why we do it.

When the recruiter you’re working with seems to drop the ball, there is absolutely a good chance that the individual/firm you hired is a poor representation of our industry; however, there is also a chance that the root of the problem is a mutual failure to set appropriate expectations or one party’s failure to understand how the other does business.  

If you hire a firm on a contingency basis, (certainly not always, but) more often than not, you’ll get what you paid for: nothing.  And that’s not your recruiter’s fault.  We’re in a business where we are often expected to work for free and as a function of that, we are put in a position to re-evaluate the cost of doing business with individual clients on a daily basis.  Here are a few of the most common ways clients unwittingly “de-prioritize” their own searches:

Bargain Hunting

·   everyone loves a discount, but recruiters provide a valuable service and if you don’t feel the work warrants the fee, you don’t need our help yet

·   if you’re working within a budget, don’t try to negotiate the recruiter down to a below-market rate; instead agree to a fair fee and limit your searches to your team’s most urgent, most vital needs—we would rather work on two jobs we know you intend to fill than twenty we don’t

Radio Silence

·   if we have questions, answer them—take the time to help us collect the correct data before we begin the search so we don’t waste our time, your time or candidates’ time

·   when we submit candidates, evaluate them and respond with feedback promptly (24 hours or less); or at a minimum, acknowledge the receipt and set expectations for your reply

Slow Motion

·   time kills all deals; good candidates don’t stay on the market very long and when they decide to make a change they will explore all of their options—we need to be able to prepare candidates for any potential delays, but remember that no amount of preparation will save the hire if your top candidate receives another offer first (an actual offer beats a potential offer 100% of the time)

·   interview processes are a lot like dating; you can’t be afraid to show that you’re interested—the moment a candidate has reason to question your level of interest is the moment s/he begins talking her/himself out of wanting the job

When the client makes no cash investment in securing our services we are taking a gamble; that means if your job isn’t a safe bet, it gets less attention.  The best (FREE) way to mitigate that risk and get your job the attention you feel it deserves is to be more responsive than other clients—the second best way is to agree to a higher fee.  A good recruiter is motivated by the promise of results first; money comes in a close second.  Two for two pushes you to the front of the line.

And finally…

We only place as much importance on your search as you do.  If you need the job filled, you will make yourself available to us, you will make speaking with candidates and moving them through the process a priority and in return, you will see more recruiting activity, stronger candidates and faster turnaround.  The next time you don’t feel that your search is getting the appropriate response, evaluate what you could be doing differently to demonstrate the urgency of your need and put it to the test—the results might surprise you.