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How I Recruit - Laura Frances Merin

In this episode of RecTech: How I Recruit - Laura Frances Merin is a talent acquisition and people operations professional specializing in high-growth startups. She launched her recruitment career with Robert Half and recently served as the Head of Talent for Cue Connect, and these days serves as a People Operations and Recruitment consultant for startups in New York City and Boston.

Laura is passionate about identifying, developing, and coaching sparks of talent, and loves nothing more than helping people map out their next career steps.

Favorite Recruiting Tools

StackOverflow, Greenhouse (ATS), Angelist, Indeed resumes.

Quotable

"I fell into recruitment...I used to do 100 calls a day, that is something that sticks with you...being really comfortable with the sound of your voice, and asking people for things and pivoting on the fly you're gonna get a lot better a lot faster than you think."

Show Topics

  • Typical day like recruiting for startups in New York city?

  • Biggest challenge about recruiting for startups?

  • How do you keep up with technology in order to recruit for it?

  • What’s your pitch when you first contact a candidate?

  • Let’s talk tech...favorite ATS over the years/worst ATS over the years?

  • What other tools are part of your day to day recruiting?

  • Describe a typical InMail...subject line, what do you say?

  • How much cold calling do you do?

  • Your last 3 placements...where did you find them online?

  • Of all the people you have placed over the years which one was the most satisfying and why?

  • Advice for new recruiters?

Special thanks to show sponsor Jobs2Careers!



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Interesting reads from the HR tech landscape

Here's a short list of some news and views coming from the HR tech landscape.

THE FUTURE OF DICE: my pal Jeff Dickey Chasins writes about his former employer, the job board Dice.com and its future. Its an interesting look at whats happening to them and the "big" job sites in the market. Check out my comment at the end.

Read Full Article

TOO MANY RECRUITING TOOLS? Tim Sackett says we are forcing too many tools onto recruiters. There is certainly truth to this statement.

"We start out with a bunch of recruiters and some phones. That’s not enough we need to add some other stuff, these recruiters need tools! So, we give them email and an ATS. Then comes the job boards, postings, InMails, etc. Might as well automate background checks and references. We really need to fill the pipeline, here comes sourcing tech!

Wish we had a way to get our messages out to candidates more effectively! CRM, branding technology, data analytics, SMS messaging, etc. Just keep adding more tools! That’ll a fix it Except it doesn’t!"

Read Full Article

WHATS NEXT IN HR TECH? Too early to tell says analyst Josh Bersin. It is impossible to predict but he does have a few thoughts. "Next year I anticipate seeing more vendors here discussing wellness and work/life balance. From our data we know 45% of millennials consider a healthy work/life balance to be their top priority, so we can expect more tools based around this."

Bersin also anticipated a rise in rapid feedback software. "We used to operate a system that offered feedback once a year at appraisals. But in reality this is way too little feedback. We can expect to see a rise in tools that offer fast feedback on everything the employee does."

Read Full Article



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Podcast: Jim Milton from student career platform Portfolium

Portfolium is a new student focused site that helps employers target college students and recent grads. I chatted with him by phone to get his take on the new platform, how students view the job search and what they'll be doing with their new round of venture funding.

The RecTech Podcast is sponsored by Jobs2Careers



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November RecTech Insider

It's November 1st which means it's time for another edition of the RecTech Insider. Here's a look at what made news in the past month.

NEW LAUNCHES

WhoIsHiring is a clever site that aggregates startup jobs around the world. The unique angle — a map that shows you exactly how many jobs are in a particular area. Full article.

SHRM Launches Diversity Jobs Sites for veterans, diversity and disability.  Three new specialty websites have launched within its online career center focused on creating an inclusive workforce launched with the help of Direct Employers. Full Article.

Glassdoor Releases "Know Your Worth" Beta salary tool. Do you know what you're worth in today's job market? Know Your Worth calculates your estimated value in today’s job market with the entry of a few personal characteristics - current job title, employer, current salary, location and years of relevant experience.  See it here.

GigBigWig: (startup) individuals will get the opportunity to become verified in the industry in which they plan to work. Companies will pay a fee for referrals, and job-seekers, after being screened, will be able to create a public profile to increase their digital visibility. Full article.

LocalX (startup): The majority of applicants on LaborX do not have college degrees, but are skilled in IT. LaborX features video resumes of these candidates. Based in Massachusetts. Full article.

Stack Overflow, the community site best known for providing answers for all of your random coding questions, also has a thriving jobs board and provides services to employers looking to hire developers. Today, the team is expanding the jobs side of its business with the launch of Developer Story, a new kind of resume that aims to free developers from the shackles of the traditional resume. Full article.

Facebook at Work is now Workplace, launches for all companies starting at $3 per user each month. Its the new intranet for employers. Full article.

LinkedIn debuts Open Candidate to help recruiters understand which candidates are ready to make a move. Full article.

Top HR Products of 2016 Announced at 19th Annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition - Human Resource Executive Announces Winners of Top HR Products of 2016 Awards: Human Resource Executive® magazine, the premier publication focused on strategic issues in HR, recently announced the 10 winners of its Top HR Products of 2016 Awards, an annual award competition to uncover the best new HR products.  Read more here.

Gig is Another Tool for Free Lancers to Find a Job and Get Paid Quickly. The startup wants to Make It Easier for Millennials to Pick up Casual Work in Catering and Hospitality: Have we reached peak gig economy yet? Probably not, but when a startup calling itself Gig launches, we are definitely making headway. The London-based company offers a platform targeting millennials who want to pick up shift work in the hospitality and retail sectors. As well as enabling you to find and book work through the app, Gig’s headline feature is that once a shift is completed, workers automatically get paid within 24 hours. Read more here.

ACQUISITIONS

RecruitMilitary a job board and job fair provider has been acquired by staffing firm. Press Release.

Jobhuk, a recruitment marketplace based in NY has been acquired by Compunnel Software Group. Press release.

NEW FUNDING

Industry a hospitality based job board raises 2 million in new funding. Full article.

HigherMe a new hiring startup, is announcing that it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. It’s also brought on some big names as customers, including Dunkin Donuts, Panera Bread — and most recently, fast food chain White Castle. Co-founder and CEO Rob Hunter (a past owner of multiple Marble Slab Creamery locations) has said that when employers hire hourly workers, location, availability and personality are often more important than past experience — but those things aren’t really reflected in a traditional résumé. Full article.

AnyPerk, a startup that helps companies like Salesforce and Virgin America offer their employees discounts on things like movie tickets or fitness classes, has received $11.5 million of new investment capital. Full article.

Restless Bandit, a new company from Goodman and his co-founders, is looking to give companies a way to easily find the best candidates that have already applied, rather than companies having to sift through those existing resumé piles with keywords and the like. Taking a similar approach to how LinkedIn scoured the Internet (and LinkedIn, of course) for new candidates, Restless Bandit finds the highest-potential candidates for roles with statistical modeling. The company said it has raised $8 million in a financing round from GGV Capital and Toba Capital, and it previously raised $2 million in a seed funding round. Full article.

Source{d}, a Spanish startup using AI to match developers to jobs, raises $6M. Full article.

Atipica raises 2 million to take the bias out of hiring. Article on USA Today.



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Podcast: The Recruitment Queen Jennifer Schultz

Jennifer Schultz runs the local recruitment site RecruitmentQueen.com. Last week I spoke at her annual HR Summit in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. After the show I sat down with her and asked her about her business, her background and her strategy for helping employers hire.

RQ provides a full suite of recruiting services which every kind of job board should have. She goes way beyond job postings.



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Slew of HR Tech and recruiting related domains for sale

If you are looking to start a new HR tech product, job board or other recruiting service these 76 domains I was just altered to may be a good find. You can find them all listed on this webpage, below is a screenshot for what they are like.



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HarQen's new explainer video

We just helped the team at HarQen relaunch their new explainer video. Their old one was becoming outdated and they contacted us for a new look. Now the phone & video interviewing platform has a sharp new look.

Want one of your own? For less than $1,000 we can get you a great looking whiteboard explainer video. Contact us today or call Chris Russell at 203-572-2053.



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Pics from HR Tech Expo

Last week HR Tech happened in Chicago. Here are my pics from the week.



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How I Recruit - Ben White From Titus Talent (audio)

As part of the RechTech podcast we will be interviewing recruiters in the trenches to get their thoughts on how they recruit and what technologies they use to be successful. As the first recruiter to appear on the show I'd like to introduce Ben White from Titus Talent. Ben is an experienced sourcer who talks to us about how he finds candidates online.



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October RecTech Insider

Here's a roundup of recruitment technology that has made news in the past 30 days.


NEW LAUNCHES

Facebook at Work set to launch. Like an Intranet for your business.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/27/facebook-for-work/

Impraise: New NYC startup lets you give your coworkers anonymous feedback

http://www.builtinnyc.com/2016/09/20/impraise-tech-modern-performance-review

TILR: Cincinnati startup launched a new app over Labor Day weekend designed to connect business owners with on-demand employees and circumvent the lengthy recruitment process. The way it works is rather than having a company or employer post a job, review resumes, screen potential temporary employees by phone, interview them in-person, make a hiring selection and then onboard them, the employer tells Tilr what it needs and the app will find the right person for the job.

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2016/09/06/cincinnati-startup-launches-the-match-com-of.html

HiringSolved will soon unveil what it considers “Siri for recruiting,” an artificial intelligence assistant for recruiters. His name will be RAI, pronounced like the name Ray, and standing for “Recruiting Artificial Intelligence.” The company has been working on it for five years, and is still perfecting it. The gist of it is you’d ask recruiting questions to a Chatbot-like system. So, instead of checking off a bunch of boxes, you’d type something like, “I need to find 10 female developers with experience using WordPress, within 10 miles of Milwaukee.” 

http://www.eremedia.com/ere/a-cousin-of-siri-is-coming-to-the-recruiting-field/

LinkedIn has given a facelift to its desktop publishing platform to encourage more post engagement from its professional user base.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/linkedin-unveils-its-new-blogging-platform/

LinkedIn: A year and a half ago, LinkedIn plunked down $1.5 billion for Lynda.com, the huge online learning site. Today, at an event in its San Francisco office, the company introduced LinkedIn Learning, a set of new features that incorporate Lynda.com courses into LinkedIn itself, so that members can find and take courses, see which ones their connections are taking, and otherwise learn skills that are useful to their careers, all within the context of LinkedIn. They're available starting today.

https://news.fastcompany.com/linkedin-rolls-learning-into-its-network-continues-to-dream-big-4019822

Joberate releases tool that indicates job search activity.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/09/06/this-software-startup-can-tell-your-boss-if-youre-looking-for-a-job-2/

Indeed is taking aim at Southern California's high tech market, with the launch of its Indeed Prime in the market. According to Indeed, the service--specifically targeted at technology talent--will give employers access to a "curated pool" of people, based on coding skills, education, and work experience. The Indeed Prime service--unlike a typical job board or resume bank--specifically screens and prequalifies professionals with technical skills, such as software engineers, developers, UI/UX designers, and product managers. Indeed said it specifically launched the service in Los Angeles due to the high demand for techical professionals in the market.

http://www.socaltech.com/indeed_targets_tech_talent_in_los_angeles/s-0067041.html

CKR Interactive, a leader in recruitment marketing and communications, aims to reinvent the way employers engage talent with a newly launched visual job description service. In an increasingly competitive recruitment landscape, it is imperative for organizations to continue exploring new and innovative ways to attract top talent. As candidates job search preferences and needs evolve, so must the strategy to engage them. Visual.jobs


ACQUISITIONS

CareerBuilder is up for sale according to TEGNA, its owner. Speculation is that another staffing firm will buy it.

http://www.eremedia.com/ere/careerbuilder-put-in-play-by-its-broadcast-owner/

Glassdoor Acquires Brazil’s Love Mondays to Expand Into Latin America: Earlier this year, Glassdoor raised $40 million at a $1 billion valuation; and now it is putting some of that investment to use to grow internationally. The employee review and job-search platform has acquired Love Mondays, a startup based out of Sao Paulo that also lets workers post reviews of their workplaces. It’s even been described as “the Glassdoor of Latin America”

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/08/glassdoor-acquires-brazils-love-mondays-to-expand-into-latin-america/

Shiftgig, the mobile on-demand job marketplace has acquired BookedOut, a Chicago-based start-up that matches workers with hourly gigs. The acquisition adds 10,000 more vetted workers to Shiftgig’s network and should help the company as it competes nationally.

https://www.aimgroup.com/2016/09/21/shiftgig-buys-bookedout/ 


NEW FUNDING

Jobbio, a career marketplace out of Ireland Raises $5.6 Million to Connect Employers with Jobseekers: Jobbio, a careers marketplace that connects employers with jobseekers, has raised €5 million ($5.6 million) in a series A round

http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/07/careers-marketplace-jobbio-raises-5-6-million-to-connect-employers-with-jobseekers/

Portfolium a site where college students create profiles has raised $6.6 million to help students get jobs.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/12/portfolium-raises-6-2-million-to-get-college-students-into-jobs-where-theyll-kick-butt/

Stella, a New York-based personal job recruitment platform, has raised just over $10 million in new VC and debt funding, according to a regulatory filing. Backers include CRV. www.stella.ai


MISC

Jobcase is now claiming 50 million members nationwide and brings in about 1 million new visitors a month. They are being billed as the 'linked for those not on linked".

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/jobcase-linkedin-people-not-on-linkedin.aspx



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