My Favorite Posts
Filed under: Research
Incriminating Google Searches – Widow Imprisoned for Searching ‘How to Murder’….from TrendHunter
Your Google searches can be the death of more than your unlucky spouse, as one unhappy housewife discovered. After her husband was murdered, her computer was sequestered and her recent Google search terms incriminated her, fingering her for the crime.
… prosecutors used the search results of a defendant to help with their case. Allegedly, a woman searched for “how to commit murder,” “instant poisons,” “undetectable poisons,” and “fatal digoxin doses,” days before her husband was murdered.
As the Daily Record reports the State Police digital technology unit testified yesterday about those search results. This is not the first time search results have been used in court cases. The latest is that a woman is accused of searching for a variety of incriminating phrases days before her husband was murdered. Among the searches were “How to Commit Murder,” “instant poisons,” “undetectable poisons,” and “fatal digoxin doses.” (dailyrecord)
When you’re working in an organization where there are more than 5 recruiters who need research done, it’s time to expand your research team! Any good researcher will tell you that they can effectively support 2 – 6 recruiters on their own. Any more than that and you’re getting stretched pretty thin. I couldn’t agree more!
Here are some thoughts that I have come up with as a compilation of consultation with seasoned researchers who have developed successful research teams within their companies.
I will use my own company, SearchPath International, as the example.
SearchPath’s structure looks kind of like this:
You can replace the ‘Franchise Office’ with your individual recruiters, or with your desk specialty teams. Our franchise offices are supported by our Corporate team. I am on the Corporate team, therefore I support the offices in their research needs. This is typically what support from Central Research looks like:
As one might imagine, this would be a tough thing for one researcher to manage. Not only do you have multiple offices, but multiple industries which only complicates the situation. Putting together a strong research team in this case is essential to thoroughly support all the industries and the offices.
There are several ways to combat this scenario. The first way would be to bring on more researchers and train them as general researchers. This is what it might look like:
This could get confusing if the researchers do not specialize in a specific industry, or if there is not one point of contact for the Central Research team. The researchers are simply given searches based upon their current workload or perhaps good relationships built with specific recruiters.
A second way of organizing the research team would be to assign a researcher to an arbitrary grouping of recruiters. Let’s say one researcher for every three recruiters, for example’s sake. Some issues arise in this situation:
- How do you group your research/recruiter teams? By related industry? By number of clients held by the recruiter?
- Do you train the researcher as a generalist, or have them specialize in one or two specific industries?
- If your assigned researcher is not available, what happens then? Do you turn to the researcher for another group? What if that person is already swamped?
A better organization of the research team could be represented by allowing each researcher to specialize in an industry or a job function. For example: a technology researcher would be able to support the IT hardware recruiter as well as the medical devices recruiter. A healthcare researcher would also be able to support the medical devices recruiter, and would also be able to help out a physician or nurse recruiter. Here is how this organization might look:
While this is a more specialized method of organization, it still can get confusing. In my personal belief, the best method of organizing a research team is to have one point of contact for all search requests. Think of this person as your proxy server. This individual, probably the team manager, receives all the search requests and distributes them. Distribution of the search requests can depend on a couple of variables:
- Area(s) of specialization of the researcher
- Existing workload and availability of the researcher
The nice thing about this model is that several of the specializations for the researchers overlap. This way, if one researcher is unavailable to take on a new search project, it can simply be distributed to another researcher who specializes in a related industry. Having researchers who specialize, in my opinion, is as important as having a recruiter who specializes. You become familiar with the players in your niche when you specialize and can therefore pinpoint companies, resources, and networks much faster when presented with a new assignment. When you are a generalist, while you can support everyone, you generally become a ‘jack of all trades and a master of none’.
I believe that most good research teams are laid out in a similar fashion as this last model. Design your team to have one, or a small handful, of contact points for the recruiters to send their requests to, who then distribute these requests amongst their team in order to complete search assignments in a more timely fashion. This will lead to more productivity, happier recruiters and clients, and more money in your pockets!
Filed under: Thoughts
I was shocked the other day when I jokingly called our new technical support manager “Nick Burns” and he did not understand what I meant!!! What!?!?! MOVE!! EVERY tech support person, or IT professional for that matter, should know who Nick Burns is! Then I remembered that he is younger than me and probably never saw those SNL episodes of Nick Burns, Your Company’s Computer Guy. For the sole purpose of educating all the young up and coming technology crew, here are some videos of the skit. In my honest opinion, you cannot classify yourself working in IT if you do not know who Nick Burns is!
Nick Burns with Jennifer Anniston
Nick Burns with Jamie Foxx
Nick Burns with Jackie Chan
Nick Burns with Calista Flockhart
Nick Burns with BillyBob Thornton
This is a pretty neat tool that I stumbled across today! Stealth Message is a secure messaging system designed for communicating sensitive and confidential information. It protects your privacy, allowing you to communicate in complete confidence with friends and colleagues.
- Encrypts your private messages
- Stores encrypted messsages anonymously
- Allows you to set security options, including self-destruct
- Automatically sends a message notification to recipients
- Prevents forwarding of messages
- Helps to prevent unwanted copying of messages
- Sends message notifications to your existing e-mail accounts
- Requires only that you and the receiver have access to e-mail and a browser
You can choose whatever user name you want, and you don’t even have to enter your email address in order to sign up. All you need to do is make sure that you and your recipient have agreed on a shared code to access messages sent through this system. Contact your friend or colleague prior to sending the message and agree on a secret code that only the two of you will share. You may always change it later (it is recommended you do this by telephone, in person, or through an alias e-mail address).
Here’s how it works:
You set yourself up with an account. Note: you don’t have to sign up with an email address if you don’t want to!
To send a message, you simply click Send A Message, type in your text (unfortunately it only supports simple text and not any HTML), and determine your security code. You can then choose Security Options: if you’d like it to self-destruct (so awesome!) or use anti-copying security.
Then, your recipient is notified by e-mail that there is a confidential message for them stored on the Stealth Message servers. They can click a link back to the Stealth Message site, enter their private code, and access the message. The first view of the message will be encrypted. 
The recipient will be able to click on ‘Decode’ in order to see the confidential message. If the sender has established the message to self-destruct, the count-down will begin once the message is decoded. Self-destruction can be as quick as ten seconds or as long as 30 minutes.
Once the countdown to self-destruction is complete, the message will ‘fizzle’ and become red, and the recipient will not be able to retrieve it. Even clicking back on the original link from the email will not restore the message.
From a sender’s perspective, you can actually track when your recipient receives the message, and if it has self-destructed or not. Or, if you prefer, you can destroy the message before the recipient reads it.
The messages are untraceable and there are multiple back-up security systems in place to ensure that the content of your messages can not be accessed except by legitimate recipients. Special options help prevent recipients from accidentally making copies, forwarding your messages, or allowing them to be seen by prying eyes. The only issue is that the technology is optimized for IE and Netscape browsers and some Opera browsers experience a Javascript handling error that corrupts the encryption code. Some Mac operating systems may also experience problems.
How is this a recruiting tool? Consider confidentiality and its importance with some high-level executives. This might be a good way to get information to these individuals without raising red flags to any of their associates. Confidentiality is an important thing and unfortunately there are some bad apples out there who don’t protect this for their clients or their candidates. With that said, you can also use this tool to send confidential correspondence to your hiring authorities. Say you are working with a client on replacing an executive, but that person is unaware that they are going to be replaced. You can use Stealth Message to ensure absolute privacy in correspondence.
Plus, I just think this is a really awesome tool – self-destructing messages, high level encryption, I mean this just plays on the fantasy of being a oo7 spy! Now, I can truly feel like Magnum P.I. on the internet….
I don’t even know when or how I came across this amazing site, but I am so glad that I did! Over the past month or so I’ve read so many insightful articles from Toby Lucich, Amy Winkelman, and Rick Turoczy. According to Toby, they started this blog because they “spent more than enough time frustrated with the shortcomings of corporate life. Work can’t just be about taking home a paycheck. Educated professionals need to find satisfaction in their work to remain engaged.” AMEN to that! As a fellow GenX’er (I think?….I actually think I am on the cusp of X/Y) I can relate to much of what these three talk about. For instance, here are some examples of recent posts to their blog:
- In This American Dream Job, Amy showcases stories of people with dream jobs that aren’t always so dreamy (something most young professionals realize a couple of years after leaving the educational world and joining the work world)
- In Hiring decisions, when mistakes keep on giving and giving and giving, Rick discusses the importance of hiring for your company not just to band-aid an immediate need, but to consider the future image that person will reflect of your company. He says that “person has your company on his/her resume forever. That person is forever a message to the market about your company.”
- In Gen-X Management, Toby talks about how GenX individuals need to be managed differently from their parental generation, and how in the future their managerial styles will reflect the way they were raised by this generation and their personal preferences as a result.
I urge each and every one of you to check out More Than A Living: it is a refreshing glimpse into the minds of young professionals who tell it like it is. Thanks guys! I look forward to more great stuff from you – keep up the good work!
Just finished reading a good article posted on JustJobs.com about why you should switch jobs every three years. As I approach 30 (sigh), I look at the rest of my generation and realize that our work culture is much different than that which our parents entered in their 20s.
Thanks to Terry Bean from the MLPF for making me aware of this!
This is pretty cool for anyone who *attempts* to multi-task while driving (drinking coffee, talking on the phone, eating a bagel, driving with your knees/elbows – hey, we’ve all tried to juggle at least 2-3 of these!). If you’ve ever had a brilliant thought and couldn’t find a piece of paper to write it down immediately, and later on you could not remember all the details, this is going to help you out! It will also help you out if you just need to remind yourself of something later on.
What Jott does is it allows you to call a toll free number from your cell and speak your message. That message is put into words and immediately e-mailed to you. It’s like a wonderful assistant that only leaves you when your cell phone is away. You can also import your contacts and easily message a group.
Some of the things people use Jott for:
- Remind themselves of important things
- Delegate tasks to people
- Communicate with teams in one step
- Record Expenses
- Record Hours billed, and for what
Visit http://www.jott.com/ and check it out!
Checkout physician jobs on TheRecruiter.com.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Check it out – birthday cam is live! If you have a Stickam account, you can add me as a friend to chat and say hello. Or, you can reach me on AIM at SPIAmybeth, or if you prefer, just leave me a comment! While you’re here, check out some of my posts as well!
Filed under: Recruiting
Jordan Rayboy, a former top-three national producer with $3.8 million career cash-in with Management Recruiters International, has opened a franchise office of SearchPath International. SPI is a Cleveland-based franchisor of talent acquisition professional services firms.
Redefining the mobile office, Rayboy and his new wife Jeska operate SPI Insider Search – currently from a 37-foot recreational vehicle – specializing in helping clients acquire talent for information technology sales, technical, and management roles.
“Jordan is widely recognized as one of the top recruiters in the country,” says SPI CEO, Tom Johnston. “He has helped build multi-billion dollar industry leaders and emerging venture capital-funded companies. We are privileged to have someone of his world-class caliber join our organization.”
Rayboy – just 27 years old – spent six years with MRI, where he was a Top-3 national producer in the Sales Consultants division in 2003 and 2004, and Top-10 worldwide producer in 2005 and 2006. He was both Regional Rookie of the Year and Regional Account Executive of the Year for the South Atlantic Region in 2001, and was Regional Account Executive of the year again in 2003 and 2004. Rayboy’s career cash-in totals more than $3.8 million, and he has averaged $840k annual billings over the last four years.
He also achieved the designation of becoming a Certified Senior Account Manager and was asked to speak on a panel of experts at the last two CSAM conferences.
After a successful career as an account executive, Jordan was looking for a change in lifestyle that would allow him and Jeska to travel more and enjoy more freedom. In August, 2006, the couple purchased a 37-foot Fleetwood motor home with a 27-foot car trailer to pack their jeep, motorcycle, and as much as they could take with them. Then they hit the road.
“While traveling, I became aware of the opportunity with SearchPath International through several friends and former associates who had recently bought franchises,” Rayboy said. “SPI’s business model was very appealing because of the lack of territory restrictions, which allows me to run a recruiting business based out of my RV while traveling America and abroad.” They’ve traveled to the Northeast and the Midwest, and have spent the bulk of their time in Texas and California and places in between.
“The operational support infrastructure gave me the confidence that I had the right people around me to ensure long-term success,” Rayboy adds. “SPI’s innovative technology platform enables a fully-functioning virtual office environment.”
Rayboy says the biggest attraction to SPI was the culture and spirit of the company – a young and growing organization where he could contribute to building it from the ground up. “It’s truly an innovative environment that encourages open sharing of ideas,” he says. “It’s a family-like atmosphere with a feeling of camaraderie and a common goal, where all the franchises truly want to partner together and help each other for the success of the organization as a whole.”
Cleveland-based SearchPath International is the nation’s fastest-growing franchisor of Talent Acquisition Professional Services firms, with 40 offices opened in its first 18 months, and more than 20 other partners committed to new franchises. SPI offers the most aggressive compensation plan in the industry, a revolutionary education platform, world-class technology, recurring revenue opportunities, equity participation and even ownership options.
SPI was founded in September 2005 by Thomas K. Johnston, a nationally-recognized search consultant, specializing in the human capital, staffing, employer services and healthcare industries. SearchPath’s services include executive search, interim search, recruitment process outsourcing, advertisement selection, consulting and training. If you would like more information on SearchPath’s franchise opportunities, please email us!
Some of you may have already cringed at the title of this post. Some of you however understand the importance of tooting your own horn! Excerpt from the book jacket of Brag!: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn without Blowing It by Peggy Klaus:
“In today’s competitive business world, bragging is a necessity – not a choice! Remaining quiet about yourself, or worse, downplaying your successes leads to being underappreciated, or even allowing others to take credit for your achievements. When done with grade and style, bragging promotes your best asset – you!”
Now, some people out there think that you should not have to brag; that a job well done will earn you the chatter that will get your recognized. In some cases, yes I absolutely believe this. I also believe that in some instances, you shouldn’t brag about what you do, such as in charitable giving. However, promoting yourself is important if you want to move up in your company or be recognized within your industry as a player. Others won’t necessarily do this for you so sometimes you have to have a “Yay me!” moment for yourself.
Understandably, if you are doing great things with your career, or in any area of your life for that matter, there will be others – coworkers, competitors, associates, family, etc. – who will see this as a challenge to their own ambitions (or lack thereof!). I like to call these people “crabs”. When a large number of crabs are in a bucket, it’s not necessary to place a lid on said bucket to keep them in. This is due to the crabs’ habit of pulling and tugging on one another, so that when one is about to escape over the top, the freedom-loving crab’s compatriots pull him or her back in. This term is often used to describe the behavior of subcultures in society who seem to do everything in their power to destroy the ambitions of those among them who wish to improve themselves.
To this I say – brag on! “Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius” (Fulton J. Sheen). Not everyone is going to like seeing you be accomplished. Just remember: if everyone likes you, you’re probably not doing anything worthwhile! There are many ways of accomplishing this that will also leave your reputation and integrity intact.
Do something noteworthy and tell others about it. This is a huge “duh” in my book. If you’ve accomplished something awesome, tell people! Just do it with class and not with arrogance. Shally Steckerl has created a wonderful collection of training materials and consulting services over the last several years. He’s done something worth promoting, in my book, and he does that! He posts on his blog and other blogs when he has new materials available and when he will be doing speaking engagements. I doubt there is a single person in recruiting/research who hasn’t at least heard of Shally. Barbara Ling is another person who has done something worth talking about. She has been in research longer than most people and has partnered with recruiters and researchers to promote her training services. Maureen Sharib’s famous email signature is a great example of self-promotion. Some people complain about it being so long – Maureen, I say make it longer! You’ve earned it.
Pull Marketing. The first person to introduce this to me was Joel Cheesman. I had the pleasure of dining with him while I was working in Cleveland last fall and he downloaded some really great stuff to me. His thoughts on pull marketing were to give away a little of your knowledge/expertise/product for free and it will bring people back for more (“pulling” people to you as opposed to “pushing” yourself or your product on others). This leaves them with a good taste in their mouth for you, and they will be more likely to spread good publicity for you. Word of mouth marketing is the oldest and most effective method of marketing out there. A perfect example of how Joel does this is his new wiki. On this wiki, he created a video going over some basic use of the site, but he mentions something on the video that struck me: part of his intention with this wiki was for people to use HIS good name and HIS site’s good ranking with Google, et al to promote themselves. This type of move is the reason why Joel’s name is on everyone’s lips and why he gets sweet deals like the partnership with JobCentral. (I encourage all of you to check this out at http://wiki.cheezhead.com/)
Get in the back pocket of someone who is an expert at what you do (get a mentor(s)!). No one who has accomplished anything worthwhile in life has done so without mentorship at some point. This is something that helped me personally. I have been an admirer of several recruiting researchers for several years, and I aspired to be as good at what I do as they. So, I simply reached out to them and asked for some of their time. I guarantee you, doing this with someone who is an expert in your own field will not only flatter that person, but it will also show them that you have the ambition to make something of yourself. Chances are, they were you way back in the day, hoping for a crumb from the table of someone they desired to be mentored by. Consider this also – most successful people will be willing to help someone who genuinely desires knowledge. Those who refuse to share their knowledge generally do not stay on top for long. These people, when they see your genuine desire to learn and grow, will be more than willing to put in a good word for you within your industry. They will be key in helping you become an expert yourself. The best way to thank them? Turn around and pay it forward by assisting others….
Read and comment on industry-related articles. Nothing flatters another person like acknowledging their work and complimenting them. By reading articles written by others in your industry and leaving comments (on a blog, shoot them an email, place a phone call, etc.) you will get your name in their mind. Usually, they will want to know who you are and what you do. This is a great opportunity for you to shine!
Start your own blog. I won’t go into much detail on this because there are others out there who can tell you more about self-promotion than I could through this, but creating a blog either for your own personal branding or for your company’s branding is a great way for you to present press releases, interesting tidbits, and personal plugs to get your name out there.
Interview others and promote THEM. I think Dave Mendoza does a great job with this. On his blog, almost every other day it seems there is an interview synopsis of someone with whom he’s spoken recently. Paul J. DeBettignies does this also on MN Headhunter by promoting positions and other blogs he enjoys. Jim Stroud, of course, with The Recruiter’s Lounge, does a fabulous job of promoting other people. Bill Vick’s XtremeRecruiting site is another example. Who doesn’t want to talk to Bill Vick? Having an interview with him, in the recruiting business, is a feather in your cap. These folks, among many others, have made it a habit of promoting OTHERS, and consequently draw a great deal of attention to themselves as well. Just recently, I saw a post from Bill about some cities around the nation that he will be visiting. I re-posted that on my company’s internal blog and the feedback was wonderful; everyone wanted to know how they could reach him to set up a time to chat.
Have a contest! What better way to draw attention to yourself or your company than to offer a fun contest. I wrote a post discussing recruitment hiring challenges a couple of months ago. Lots of companies are starting to adopt this as a method of recruitment. Rob McIntosh created buzz about Microsoft and about himself with his ‘find my dog’ challenge. Jim Stroud followed suit by presenting a similar challenge. Holding a contest like these will draw attention to you and/or your company. In addition, participating in a contest like this will also draw attention to you! I participated in Jim’s challenge and found his dog; that allowed me to be recognized as one of a few who accomplished this and promoted my name to others in the industry. I myself just held an NCAA basketball tournament pool and invited my network to participate. I had several folks who joined in to win a nice prize that was a collaboration of purchases and donations from experts within our industry. This created some friendly bantering in the pool as well as some name recognition not only for myself, but also for my prize contributors as well as the contest winner, so everyone who participated in this got their horn tooted.
Create profiles on professional/social networking sites and link, link, link! Probably the best way to promote yourself and get your name out there, in my book, is to just make yourself available by networking. I won’t list out all the sites where this can be done because this list is long, but sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Doostang, Xing, Second Life, SoFlow, and of course LinkedIn are all places where this can be accomplished. Once you set up your self-promotion, start connecting! And I’m not just talking with people….set up blogrolls with links to other people’s sites. Ask any SEO expert and they’ll probably tell you that you build stock in your rankings based on the number of links to and from your site. Dave Mendoza once again is an expert on networking using these tools. I don’t know how many folks he is directly connected with, but I’m sure it is several thousand and climbing. One thing here: don’t join a networking site if you do not plan to network. I am amused at some folks on LinkedIn who refuse a request because “they don’t know you”. Catch-22 – how are you going to get to know others if you don’t take the opportunity to get to know them? Just remember to connect with integrity and maintain good rapport with your connections; don’t exploit your network and promote with class.
These of course are only a few suggestions. You can also self-promote by attending conventions and seminars, doing speaking engagements, conduct training classes, and lots more.
And in following suit with my own suggestions here tonight: I will be doing a birthday self-promotion this coming Tuesday, April 10th between 8am and 6pm eastern. Yes, my 28th birthday! I’m going to do a live webcam for the day while I work so that I can get the opportunity to wave hello to those who have enjoyed reading my rantings on http://www.amybethhale.com/. Please feel free to stop by; the 3:30pm show is bound to be different from the 9:30am show!
