Hire Velocity’s Atlanta team focused on giving this past holiday season. The Atlanta team participated in the Gwinnett County Department of Family and Children Services’ Foster Children’s Christmas Program, generously providing the entire Christmas for a 3-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy.  The children received much-needed items like clothing and shoes but also received many wish-list items like a bicycle and an iPod.

The purpose of the DFCS Foster Children’s Christmas Program is to help hundreds of foster children who are suffering from disappointments, hurts, and frustrations to put aside those circumstances on a day intended to be most memorable for children. Thanks to the efforts of the Atlanta Hire Velocity team, two of those children had a much merrier Christmas!

The “name generation” service is a unique service which provides a company with candidates from a list of competitors that they select. Researching names from completive companies with this service can narrow down those candidates in positions with similar job functions. Using a wide variety of search tools, the name generation service provides as many names, phone numbers, and emails of the candidates who meet the required job specifications. Hire Velocity has the ability to take this a step further and provide companies with additional information in their reports which describe the candidate’s education or degree as well as their years of experience in a particular field.

This service can be beneficial in gaining a strong advantage over competitors as it has the ability to target those talented candidates who are not actively searching for a new position. Receiving a report that includes the candidates contact information allows the company to reach out to them and present them with the new opportunity. Other key beneficiating factors of name generation is that most HR departments don’t have the time or resources to be able to produce the information that this service can generate, which when choosing to outsource this to specialists with the tools and experience needed will provide optimal results for a company.

When you have developed a candidate pipeline you minimize the time between transitions of filling positions, helping to keep your company on track. Active recruiting also leads to an increase in brand awareness within a company’s industry. This helps your company to be the first to come to a candidate’s mind, making positions more desirable when they become available. In the long term developing a candidate pipeline will make a company stronger than it’s competition and able to fill positions quickly.

Hire Velocity has worked with many companies in the development of their candidate pipelines. By sourcing through hundreds of job boards and various social media sites, Hire Velocity can generate skilled candidates to fill crucial positions when needed. Working with a leading residential mortgage banking company recently led to over 1750 insurance agents, HR representatives, loan officers, and accountants hired.

With the Pure Sourcing service a multi-channel sourcing strategy is implemented.   This consists of an in-depth search conducted using a proprietary tool to search job boards and find resumes of the most qualified candidates. A list is generated that consists of those candidates whose skills and education requirements match each specific position.

Pure Sourcing is a strategy that Hire Velocity has been successful in using to find qualified candidates to fill positions in a number of companies. Utilizing the latest technology, social media websites and access to over 200 job boards, we are able to find top candidates who fit the positions you want to fill. This service simply finds and generates a list of those candidates that would be most qualified and does so without having to make any contact with them. This saves HR managers from having to weed through candidate resumes who are unqualified and allows them to focus on those with the skills and education required, saving the organization time, money and energy.

Some companies choose to have their in house HR department in total control of recruiting. They are in charge of taking care of every task in the process and in addition the company is faced with a number of costs associated with recruitment. Some of the important factors to take into consideration when calculating cost per hire with this approach are:

• · Job fairs, college recruitment, advertising, and job board posting and access costs.
• · Hardware that needs to be added in for candidate screening, from computers, to resume
     search programs and phones
• · The costs associated with marketing open positions
• · All training, on boarding and turnover expenses
• · Travel costs
• · Recruiters and managers salaries

HR departments are often faced with a heavy work load and the recruitment process demands a lot of invested time in order to find the best candidates for each position. In order to allow them to focus on their core responsibilities that will continue to keep the business moving forward, a company often chooses to outsource their recruiting. They do so through either a contingency or recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) agency. With a contingency recruiter they charge nothing until the position is filled but many find that this approach can be expensive for their company, costing anywhere from 15-30 percent of those hired salaries.

The companies who chose to partner with an RPO agency have found that they are able to get ahead of the competition using the specialists with the experience and the tools to find the best candidates to fill their positions. A 2009 study conducted by the Aberdeen Group found that 62 percent of the organizations that they surveyed who had used this outsourcing approach were able to significantly reduce their cost per hire while hiring valuable candidates for their company. RPO providers, such as Hire Velocity, have the ability to drive down recruiting costs for companies by as much as 50 percent. As an RPO agency Hire Velocity offers to do as much or as little of the recruitment process companies they partner with need. The Aberdeen Group study of roughly 200 companies also revealed that 77 percent of those who were using RPO were happy with the results and would recommend it to others. Outsourcing with an RPO agency provides results of hiring quality candidates that will add value to your company as well as have results that will significantly reduce cost per hire.

Private employers ramped up their hiring the most based on the results from the BLS report.  Business and professional services as well as retailers, hospitality and manufacturing all increased their hiring bringing the unemployment rate from 9.2 percent in June to 9.1 percent in July. Not only were more jobs added in these sectors but hourly wages also increased, bringing even more good news in the report. They rose up .4 percent, doubling what numbers were predicted previously. With July’s increase in jobs and hourly wage increase the report shows hope that these factors could help to put money back into the struggling economy by increasing consumer spending.

July’s job report comes out much better than expected and couldn’t have been released at a better time. After a rough week in the market and previous months of extremely low job reports the high number shows positive improvement for the future of the economy. Economists still say though that the number isn’t quite yet where it needs to be. More jobs need to continue to be added in order to keep up with the growing population, and many still fear that if the economy doesn’t improve soon that the U.S could ultimately fall back into a recession.

Over the past few years, the popularity of social media has continued to increase. Not only are well known sites like Facebook and LinkedIn expanding with each new active user, but entirely new social networking sites continue to be created. These websites have evolved from their original purpose as a social connector with friends, to a valuable tool in a company’s recruitment process. Recruiters have been learning more ways to strategically use these sites in getting ahead of the competition, but in doing so they can find themselves at risk of legal question in comparing the information accessed online in relation to their hiring decisions.

A simple Google search of a candidate’s name or a visit to their Facebook and LinkedIn page can reveal a lot about the person, providing an inside look into their life that you normally wouldn’t see on traditional job applications and resumes. In a January 2010 report released by Microsoft, 79 percent of those hiring managers they had surveyed used social media and online searches in their hiring, and of those, 70 percent had actually chosen to reject candidates because of the information that they had found. Knowing how to use these websites efficiently without accessing information that could lead to possible discrimination claims is crucial in the hiring process. With all of the available information at your fingertips, it is important that when choosing to integrate social networking sites in the screening of a candidate that the search remains relevant and nondiscriminatory. Recruitment agencies that set up a policy to follow standards set up by organizations such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act for screening candidates will have effective results. They also will avoid any future legal question that could arise finding that them guilty of violating laws such as the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act or others created to prevent discrimination in hiring.

In order to keep recruiting fair and avoid any question of a hiring decision there are a few key things to remember and techniques to have in place before searching the web. Establishing a strong recruitment policy along with prior education of these guidelines to those in charge of screening candidates (preferably someone who is not making the hiring decisions) is important. Making sure that these policies include what information can and cannot be included in making hiring decisions is vital in addition to creating a set list of what websites are to be used in accessing this information. Using social media to look into one candidate and not others puts recruiters in a questionable situation.  If  you choose to use social media to look into one candidate, it’s important that it is done with all others as well. Lastly, keeping documentation of all information to reference back to what was used in the recruitment process will be greatly beneficial to the company should any questions arise.

Social media is very valuable in the recruitment process when used correctly and integrated along with other screening tools. It has the ability to locate a large amount of possible candidates as well as provide valuable information. Those recruiters who are able to keep up with consistently changing social networking trends and have a strong knowledge of how to navigate these sites, position themselves above others; finding the best candidates possible, while staying clear of any potential discrimination claims.

Censky, Annalyn . (2011). June jobs report: hiring slows, unemployment rises. CNNMoney, Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/08/news/economy/june_jobs_report_unemployment/?cnn=yes

The size of many companies’ HR recruiting teams has decreased due to cost-cutting, providing many challenges in hiring. Most HR departments don’t have the time or resources to be updated with the latest recruiting technology tools and online social media channels. This is why many companies are turning to RPO as a solution. They have found that RPO providers have the ability to deliver to their organization results that their HR recruiters cant. RPO’s have the ability to hire top talent, fast, while achieving a more cost effect cost per hire. It also takes the added stress and pressure off of HR and allows them to focus in on other tasks within the company. RPO’s can handle a few of the recruiting tasks or they can handle the entire life cycle. For instance, an RPO can handle all out the sourcing and screening allowing recruiters to focus on the qualified and interested candidates instead of taking the time going through piles of unqualified candidates.

RPO’s have the ability to provide a company with valuable results. Due to the current economy, most companies are working with smaller budgets and decreasing the amount of hires allowed; therefore it’s important to keep a focus on quality rather than quantity of candidates. Leading organizations who have experience with RPO’s have recorded high cost reductions and/or greater efficiencies in the hiring process. Many have seen reductions as high as 85% in search firm fees and 87% in offline advertising expenses.  RPO’s continue to show results that include an expanded candidate pipeline, shortened cycle times, and reduced cost-per-hire. For hiring quickly, efficiently, and at a cost effective amount, RPO’s have specialists utilizing the latest technology and tools to fill crucial positions.

(2011, July). Workforce Management, 90(7),

With Passive Candidate Development, the recruiter directly sources talent from those currently employed and not actively in the job search process. Passive Candidate Development, also known as direct sourcing, focuses on finding qualified candidates currently in management positions from a list of targeted competitors. Once a list of names has been generated, candidates are identified and cold calls are made to each target candidate presenting the job opportunity. When the process is complete, qualified, available, and interested candidates are found to enrich a company’s talent pool. Sourcing specifically those passive candidates using this service will takes more time as candidates must be convinced to leave their current position. Using an RPO for Passive Candidate Development can take the time consuming and stressful pressure of the recruitment process off of the internal recruiters and Hiring Managers. This service has the unique ability to provide an organization with a higher caliber of skilled and qualified candidates than the company would normally come across with other forms of sourcing. With a focus on finding candidates currently employed in similar positions, this approach can find a diverse list of candidates within a similar industry and geographic area.

At Hire Velocity, we have had extensive experience using Passive Candidate Development for leading companies. Over just an eight-week period we were able to target 6,000 names, leading to 9 hires for a leading global management consulting firm. This significantly reduced their cost per hire, saving them about $8,000. Many benefits come with choosing to use Passive Candidate Development. Costs for high priced executive search fees can be reduced and new pipelines can be built with these types of candidates. This service results in a higher quality of hire and because of their specialization in the field, these candidates require minimal training.