Your resume database is your enemy

A lot of companies (and placement agencies) collect and maintain their own database of resumes, in the mistaken belief that this will help them identify the right talent faster. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Let me illustrate this with an analogy.

Assume you are running a pharmacy (drugstore/apothecary), and 75% of your stock is past its use by date. Assume also that you add your new stock into this same inventory and mix it up. Now tell me, do you think your shop will meet the demands of your customers, be profitable, or efficient?

Answer's very clear, isn't it? So how come you don't believe the same is true with your resume database. Each resume is equivalent to say, a capsule of medicine. It ages, obviously, because the resume is a static document which is nothing but a snapshot of the profile of a person at the time it was written. Its typical use by date is three months from the time it was written. Now if you have a steady stream of resumes being added to your database and you maintain these resumes for exactly 1 year in your database, that means that at any given time 75% of your database is outdated!

Collecting fast expiring resumes and storing them locally is the worst thing you can do. It's like hoarding perishables!

Now you may ask "what's the alternative? I still want to keep the list of people interested in joining my company and I need ready access to their skills and competencies".

Lucky you, there is an alternative. It's called Live Resumes and it's available on jobsbyref.com. Simply put, a live resume is a resume in your database that is accessible to and maintained by the candidate. Did I hear you just say "Wow! Why didn't anyone think of this before"?

And that's just one of the features that makes jobsbyref.com unique. If you are a placement agency or an employer, check out jobsbyref.com. You will never need another site for any of your talent identification and acquisition needs.

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My interview in Bangalore Mirror

Bangalore Mirror has carried my interview today in the business section (5th June 2009). You can check it out here. Sphere: Related Content

Demand more pay - get fired sooner

Many people used the last boom period to vastly inflate their salaries - by hard bargaining, threats, and strategically timed and frequent jumps. Today, when companies are looking to cut costs, these people stick out like white elephants and are invariably the first to get the boot.

Here is something I've been advising people for a long time. When you negotiate your salary, have a realistic idea of what you are worth to the organization and aim for that.

In order to arrive at your realistic worth, take the following into consideration:

1. Market price
Find out what people like you are generally getting. Ask around, check with your peers, class mates, and professional recruiters. Read industry reports. Don't go by heresay. The hike your friend's friend's neighbour's son is supposed to have got has no bearing on what you should realistically expect.
2. The current demand for people like you
Is there a great demand for people with your qualification and background? Is this temporary or do expect sustained demand?
3. The current supply of people like you
Are there many people like you available in the market? Are your skills easy to learn? Can people be trained quickly and inexpensively to do your job?
4. The value you will directly bring to your employer
Wherever possible, this should be in terms of direct revenue.
5. What the future holds
Does the market for people like you fluctuate in your domain? Is this a temporary phenomenon? Remember, nothing remains the same for ever.

I am not saying don't take advantage of a situation, just don't take undue advantage. I can't spell out the distinction between advantage and undue advantage, but like the Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart once said about porn, "I know it when I see it"

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Proliferation of my profile

Image by frankdasilva via Flickr

Today my social profile is distributed and duplicated across multiple social networking sites - facebook, myspace, twitter, orkut, xing,... the list is endless. I don't think I will be able to keep them all synchronized and up to date. However, it is still only my social profile, so I guess it is not earth-shattering.

But imagine how it would be if the same were true about my professional profile. If a potential employer sees different versions of my resume (which is the same as my professional profile, or should be, in my opinion) on different sites, what would she think?

What I need is a place to store my single definitive professional profile and a way to control access to it tightly. I must be able to say "Here is my latest resume. You will be able to use this link for the next 3 days to see it. By the way, I have hidden some of the information that is not relevant at this stage, so if you need any other information, let me know". I must be able to pull the plug on the link even earlier if I want to, or I should be able to show more information under the same link, or even have it password protected. That's the kind of control I would like to have over my resume, to start with.

What do you think?

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On alternate careers - An interview with eminent photographer G. Venket Ram

My interview with advertising photographer G. Venket Ram has just been published in the career advice section on JobsByRef.com. Really inspiring.

Go here to read it. Sphere: Related Content

Using technology to improve referrals

In the previous post, I promised to show how technology can make the referral process even more effective. So here goes. Instead of the usual wordy blog post, I have decided to use some diagrams, for a change.

First, let's look at the standard referral process.

In addition, using his network, the active candidate can identify and enlist the help of the right referrer from within the potential employer's organization.

And finally, when a candidate applies directly, the company can use the network of its employees to find the employee closest to the candidate and enlist that employee's support in sussing out the candidate before making the offer or even taking the recruitment process forward.


As you can see, technology can be used to dramatically improve the performance of referral based recruiting by making the already active participants, that is the company and the candidate, push the passive actor perform his role as the referrer.

Simple! Sphere: Related Content

What is needed of a referral based job site.

In the previous post, we saw why many of the referral based job sites have not succeeded. In this post, let us see what a good referral based site needs to provide in order to be effective.

Mandatory:

1. The ability for the company to inform its employees about job openings within the company
2. A facility for the employees to forward the job opening to their friends
3. Support for the candidates to apply for the job opening through a selected employee(referrer)
4. The ability for the company to track which employee has referred which candidate, so that referral bonuses can be properly disbursed.
5. The ability for the company to collect, aggregate and easily filter through all the candidate so as to be able to identify the right candidates.
   
6. All other facilities of a job site, including the ability for companies to search for candidates, and for candidate, to be able to apply for a job directly.
   

Nice to have:

1. A facility by which all members (of the site) can bring their network on line so as to enable themselves and their friends to find the right referrers.
2. A site that is not just a job site (where people register only to look for a job) but is a comprehensive career related networking site that ensures that companies are also ready to have their employees registered (as their presence on the site helps in the referral process).
3. An ability to find referrals through the network of friends' friends.

Rather straight forward and simple, don't you think? Well, this is all that is required to technology-enable the existing manual referral process. But with technology on our side, it would be very sad to if we were to just limit ourselves to duplicating a manual procedure.

In the next post, we shall look at how technology can be used to make the traditional referral process work even better. Sphere: Related Content