I was recently read a report by The Adler Group and LinkedIn's Recruitment Insights team titled “The Job-Seeking Status of the Fully-Employed.” The whitepaper included metrics from a survey they conducted in September of 2010 seeking a better understanding of the job seeking behavior of professionals in the U.S.
83% (4,543 people) of the respondents in the survey categorized themselves as “fully employed,” but not “self-employed.” The whitepaper then made the statement that “this is the group most companies want to target for hiring purposes.” We'll pause here because it's important to note that there wasn't anything in the study that backed this statement statistically, it was just an assumption on the part of the writers. An assumption most likely steeped in experience, but an assumption never the less. It is a popular notion that the fully-employed are the most desirable candidates, and a fact that the unemployed have more difficulty finding work than the already employed, but it's worth considering, do the fully-employed always make the best candidates? My experience is that more times that not, but certainly not an absolute. I'll let you ponder that question, and we'll move on to other findings of the study.
1. Most fully-employed are not actively looking for jobs, but most are “open to discussing opportunities.”
2. If someone is actively looking, finding them early in their job-seeking process drives up the overall “quality” of candidates.
3. If you want to target the fully-employed when you recruit, you aren't going to find them on “static” job boards.
4. The more active a fully-employed job-seeker, the more “junior” is their tenure.
5. The vast majority of fully-employed Senior Managers are not actively looking.
6. Just because someone is fully-employed, and says they are not looking, that does NOT mean they are completely satisfied with their job.
The predominant message in this piece was, if you want to recruit the fully-employed, passive-seeker then you need to adjust your recruiting strategies in order to target those professionals (and be aware that most of the solutions out there primarily attract the active job-seeker and unemployed). ”With 60% of the fully-employed professional workforce either “tiptoers” or “explorers,” most corporate recruiting departments need to focus on ways to proactively influence and convert these harder to reach candidates.”
Does that messaging ring a bell? Since 2008, Local Eye Site (LES) has been committed to and executing upon a strategy that gives employers in the eye care industry a very easy way to recruit both the active and passive, employed and unemployed eye care professional. Jobs posted to LES primarily reside on localeyesite.com, and we get our fair share of the active job-seeking eye care professionals to our site. However, what LES provides beyond your posting on localeyesite.com is what truly sets up apart.'
About Local Eye Site
The LES Power Network includes career pages on ATPO/JCAHPO, ASORN, Review of Ophthalmology, Review of Optometry, 20/20 Magazine, Vision Monday Magazine, SightNation, Review of Optometric Business, and more.
As a VisionWeb customer, the best news is that you may post to localeyesite.com, get access to the LES Power Network, and recruit active and passive candidates at a discount! VisionWeb customers may post their position on localeyesite.com for $280 (normally $295). Congrats!
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Isn't it great when you can actually look forward to going to work and seeing the people you work with? That's such an important part of having a great team. At VisionWeb, we are lucky enough to say this is true about our team - we really have a good time with our coworkers, and our colleagues in the eyecare industry. Lucky for us, someone got it right when doing the hiring! We so related to one of the recent blog posts on this topic from our friends at The Optical Vision Site, which is a fantastic industry blogs if you aren't already familiar. It's so good we couldn't help but post it for you:
We read an article about hiring mistakes in U.S. Vision‘s Supervisor Support and we would like to share some of it with our readers:
Hiring the right people is critical for any business but especially for a small company with relatively few employees (like an independent optical retailer for example). Hiring mistakes not only waste time and money, they create a ripple effect that impacts other employees and your optical business. Here are a couple of hiring mistakes you might want to avoid:
1. Hiring friends and family. Some employees will overstate a family member's qualifications when making a recommendation. Their heart might be in the right place, but their desire to help out a family member doesn't always align with your need to hire great optical employees. Plus friends and family see each other outside of work too, increasing the chances of interpersonal conflicts. The smaller the company the greater the potential impact. And one more thing: Two siblings in a five-person business might just wield more power than you.
Instead: Either set up an appropriate policy , like “no family members in the same department”, or do an incredibly thorough job of evaluating the candidate. In general establishing a following a policy is the cleanest solution if only because you will never appear to favor one employee's request to interview a friend over another.
2. Hiring for skills rather than attitude. Skills and knowledge are worthless when not put to use. Experience is useless when not shared with others. The smaller your business the more likely you are to be an expert in your field; transferring those skills to others is relatively easy. But you can't train enthusiasm, a solid work ethic, and great interpersonal skills – and those traits can matter a lot more than any skills a candidate brings. According to a study by LeadershipIQ only 11% of new hires fail in the first eighteen months due to technical skill deficiencies.)
Instead: If in doubt, always hire for attitude. A candidate who lacks certain hard skills is cause for concern; a candidate who lacks interpersonal skills is waving a giant red flag.
Try and avoid the Biggest Hiring Mistakes – you will be glad you did!
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