Devoted to recruiting, finding top recruits, and hiring tips and advice

The daily life of anyone who has managed to secure themselves a PA job is certainly never dull!  The main role of a PA has certainly changed over the last few years and PAs are now regarded as being practically the lynchpin of the management suite.

A good PA will not just organise their manager’s diary, but also ensure that calls are screened and that time is set aside not just for meetings, but to carry out essential duties.  PAs also act as a buffer zone between all those people who want to meet the boss or take up his/her time and it is often said that a good PA is practically worth their weight in gold.

Highs include successfully ensuring that difficult situations are dealt with appropriately, which often requires really quick thinking and even quicker actions, to ensure that the whole management office runs like clockwork.  PAs are also expected to be able to balance often demanding and conflicting demands on their time and when faced with these kinds of situations and having dealt with them appropriately, there really is a great high of job satisfaction.  Usually, promotion prospects are quite good as well, so anyone who bags themselves a pa job, could find themselves in the role of an executive PA in a very short space of time.

The lows of being a PA? Well mostly the lows relate to working under pressure, making important decisions on your own initiative and often being the one person who seems to be juggling about 10 balls in the air!  But even this kind of pressure can be a real high, because if you are ambitious, flexible and reliable, able to cope with a reasonable amount of pressure and still appear unflappable, then you will be not just a good PA but an excellent PA. And it is a field that offers you the scope to really demonstrate and then exploit your potential, which is quite rare in the employment field currently!

Having a productive talent pool is now considered as the best approach in terms of recruitment. This productive talent pool should always be cultivated and also be developed in order to maximize the benefits from it. How do you ensure a "productive talent pool"? Well, you could consider these clever sourcing strategies:

-referral networks
-tapping into Alumni communities
-revisiting stored CVs/Resume

The candidates gathered through these activities should be processed in one way or another in order to ensure that you maximize these people. Of course, you have to give back if you are going to consider these applicants. Here is an excellent suggestion on how companies could give back:

"If you are being clever about attracting candidates to your career site, then you MUST deliver to them a great candidate experience.  Whether or not you hire the individual, this initial contact with your company sets the groundwork for the long term communications and relationship that can be extended throughout that person's network as well."

Do you agree or disagree?

Image source: Stockxpert 

If your company is more into the "massive hiring" type then attracting fresh graduates is definitely the best strategy that you could implement in the company. One thing that you could do as recruiters is to have an "online" connection with fresh graduates since they are the ones who spend a lot of time online. Through establishing an online connection, you would be able to connect and communicate with them thus enticing them to apply to your company.

Here are some tips from Recruitment 2.0:

-Create a top-notch interactive graduate site that will get graduates’ attention and keep them coming back to your site.
-Get graduates to your web site and then have them opt in so you can communicate with them.
-Use professors, lecturers and assistants at targeted universities to help get students to your graduate site.
-If appropriate, “donate” your company’s products to universities. 
-Once students are on your site, keep them there and impress them with your blog, chat room, video feeds, podcasts, etc.
-You can use assessment tools to pinpoint top students, and give them special status as “fast trackers”.
-Create an e-newsletter to keep students up-to-date and create a positive impression of your company.

 

Whenever I use vending machines or ATMs, I usually ponder on a silly thought: What if someone was actually inside doing the transaction for me? As I mentioned, this was just one of the silly thoughts that popped into my head whenever I get tired of interviews. Imagine my surprise and glee when I spotted this picture:

Someone actually had the same thought as I am and translated it into a job ad! Clever, eh? This is just one avenue that job advertising could consider when they are actually thinking of having a different viewpoint when attracting applicants. Personally, I consider "unique" job ads is a great way to actually attract applicants because it would certainly caught their eye and would make them interested in applying.

To see more similar job ads, just click here.

As a recruiter, we should look more than just what the applicants have but also dwell more on what we reprsent as a recruiter in the company or recruitment firm.

Usually when we interview, we often look at the behavior of that person and we compare it to the position that they are actually looking for. The second thing is the "culture fit" wherein we are able to more or less predict that the person would actually fit in with the culture which the company and its people exhibit.

In order to put a balance in regards to my previous post entitled A Perspective of Recruitment Agencies, I am going to dedicate a post for the other side of the fence which are Recruitment Agencies.

This kind of business could either be more established during tough times in the economy or they could either be down due to the same reason. This post entitled Thank Heavens for the Recession really caught my interest as it talks about different strategies which recruitment agencies should consider in order for their business to keep up and running during these difficult times. Here is a very useful advice which was mentioned in this post:

"...get to know your clients better and go that extra mile. It is also a known fact that being small has major advantages over large corporations who can take months to make a decision, where as you can see what you need to do within an instant and make the necessary change."

You could actually consider it as simple but believe me, simplicity in the business actually works especially if you want it to stay for a longer period of time.

Image source: Stockxpert 

Recruitment agencies are often receiving only two kinds of reaction, you either hate 'em or love 'em. Personally, I don't really, really hate them but I think if you have the right business partner, your relationship would be really fruitful. In the case that your relationship with this recruitment agency goes bad then prepare yourself for a very bad ride.

I would like to share with you this particular write up which really talks negatively about recruitment agencies. Here is the top 10 reasons why it hates recruitment agencies:

1. Asking ‘What is your interview process’
2. Ring you up to tell you nothing
3. Asking to come meet us
4. Editing Candidate CV’s
5. Lying
6. Imaginary Companies
7. Spam
8. Removing Contact Details
9. Recruiting those they just placed
10. Lastly they are all scum

Every once in a while, we get one or two odd resume which contains information that are not so relevant or a resume wherein the grammar is way off thus projecting a different kind of meaning. This website actually focuses on the unusual and different kinds of resume and other recruitment-related topics which shows a different light in recruitment.

Let me share with you a favorite of mine:

"Herbert A. Millington
Chair - Search Committee
412A Clarkson Hall, Whitson University
College Hill, MA 34109

Dear Professor Millington,

Thank you for your letter of March 16. After careful consideration, I
regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me
an assistant professor position in your department.

This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually
large number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising field
of candidates, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.

Despite Whitson's outstanding qualifications and previous experience in
rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at
this time. Therefore, I will assume the position of assistant professor
in your department this August. I look forward to seeing you then.

Best of luck in rejecting future applicants.

Sincerely,
Chris L. Jensen"

In order to lighten your day, just read on.

Image source: Stockxpert 

Small companies when faced when big recruiting requirements should always have a solid plan or strategy in terms of fulfilling the requirements. One reason is because of the "small company" tag hence it could be viewed as an advantage or disadvantage for applicants.

Here is a good recruitment strategy for small companies as indicated in this article:

The best recruitment strategy for small company is to offer some kind of the benefit for its employees and business partners when they recommend a successful new hire. The employees like to recommend their friends as the employees for the company, when they are satisfied with the job and the job content.

To sum it up, referrals and headhunters are actually the best approach in hiring for small companies because these strategies could actually see results first-hand hence knowing that these sourcing ways have fruits. The only problem here is to actually find a way to promote referrals in the company and in finding the best business partner for hiring best candidates.

Image source: Stockxpert

Filling up vacant positions through internal job posting could actually help a lot as opposed to hiring external candidates.

Opportunities within the company should always be promoted and posting an internal job ad would certainly make your message get through the company employees. Personally. I always like to prioritize internal applicants especially for the positions that requires leadership and also knowledge in terms of the company. This is because more people that are hired externally has a better chance in terms of being productive with that kind of position.

One thing that recruiters could actually see as an advantage includes the following:

a. cost (it's much cheaper)
b. already a "tenured" employee
c. offers career path to employees


These 3 advantages alone could really make a difference in the company and actually doing an internal vacancy could make the recruitment process a breeze.

Image source: Stockxpert