As a mentor of mine often says, "If you’re not tooting your own horn there is no music!" Those whose livelihoods depend on externally focused relationships such as corporate recruiters all understand the power of reference selling. In any economy there is an enormous level of comfort in a candidate’s journey when they get unsolicited recommendations from other satisfied candidates – it’s simply called "credibility by association."

In today’s economy, in which organizations are slashing their HR and recruiting functions, the ability to differentiate yourself is imperative.

When I work with professional service providers, such as recruiters, I often ask about their current or perspective outreach efforts. Recently, a recruiter complained that although she had extensive industry experience and subject matter expertise, she was seldom tapped into for higher-level engagements. So naturally, I asked her "what are you doing to package, market, sale, and proactively reference her value add, within the company?"

When she gave me a blank stare, I offered what I consider five best practices to reference selling and a way to effectively "toot your own horn."

The Five Best Practices of How to Most Effectively Reference Sell Within Your Organization:
More. . .

Dillistone Systems Presents A Giant Leap in
Passive Candidate Sourcing Technology.

Manage contacts, build candidate pipelines, create organization charts, all while using The Research Zone to identify and import – from the web – target company intelligence as well as candidate profiles, executive biographies, and more!

To experience how FILEFINDER will help your company find, recruit, and manage the best talent, email sales@dillistone.com or call (201) 653-0013.

Gone are the days of valuing consistency over entrepreneurial spirit. Today’s companies learn to manage the delicate balance by hiring employees who, regardless of their position, are infused with the ideals of entrepreneurship.

As recruiters, we have been accomplished stewards of our company’s culture. It has been an easy task to quickly ascertain, through skillful interviewing, whether a candidate presents as a skill set and cultural chemistry "fit" for the organization. In the past (which may be as recent as 2008) desirable candidate attributes sounded like a laundry list of consistent behaviors that assured 1) the candidate’s ability to succeed as a team player, and 2) that the candidate did not make waves while doing so.

Enter the economic crisis of 2009, and the criteria for hiring once viewed by recruiters as effortless have vastly changed. The pre-layoff staffing patterns of organizations have been drastically altered. In these de-layered organizational models, we find certain characteristics that mark a warning for those of us charged with casting the net for the company’s future human capital. Organizations emerge as leaner, under more scrutiny, and more accountable for shareholder (and in some cases, government) value, all while charged with out-performing the competition if they are to survive. These mandates come at a time when management and front line employees are reeling from cutbacks and the change in the way business needs to be conducted going forward.

Consistency hiring outdated
To move beyond the cubicle culture so pervasive in today’s large companies, it is important to realize that senior managements’ past hiring practices may very well have led to the level of rampant employee disengagement we see today. By hiring to a profile of consistency, corporations ensured a compliant employee base, who in reality is detached from the broader business issues of the organization. The resultant loss of productivity is tragic, and has led to the downfall of far too many companies and jobs across the nation.
More. . .

• Site Allows Green Job Employers to Post Jobs
  In an effort to make the green job search more professional and user friendly, United Green Jobs (UGJ) offers a free employment website for potential employees looking for the right green job as well as employers looking for the best candidate to fill a vacancy. The Web site seeks to promote environmental awareness and help more organizations and individuals become successful with an easy to use site that connects both the "green" employer and employee.…
• Reducing Cost Cutting Plans: Companies Foresee Economic Recovery
  U.S. employers' efforts to battle the recession through cost-cutting actions such as layoffs, hiring freezes and salary freezes may have peaked, according to an update to an ongoing series of surveys by Watson Wyatt, a global consulting firm. In fact, most companies are planning no further hiring freezes (67%), organizational restructuring changes (65%) or even layoffs (53%), according to the survey. Although the majority is not planning any further salary reductions (89%) or salary freezes…
• Outsourcers Grab New Green Jobs
  Despite being proclaimed as hard-to-outsource, green technology jobs are being created faster in India than America, according to the 2009 Green Outsourcing Report, an annual industry study by research organization, Brown-Wilson Group. US businesses focused on recession survival strategies have offshored more than 22,000 new green tech jobs as a direct result of seeking stabilized energy and labor costs through outsourcing their technology. "The Indian market is creating clean tech jobs offshore because private entrepreneurs,…
• More...

• Webinar—Tactics for Trimming Employment Costs
  April 30, 2009
• Executive Search Summit Spring 2009
  May 5th, 2009
• Webinar—Using LinkedIn to Maximize Recruiting Efforts: A Step-by-Step Guide
  May 7, 2009
• Kennedy Information's Recruiting 2009 Conference and Expo
  May 19th-22nd, 2009
• More...

• HR Coordinator—Avon, CT
• Recruiting Manager—Charlestown, NH
• Recruiting Analyst—Minneapolis, MN