Fishing for Job Seekers Using the Internet

One of the most efficient ways of looking for human resource talent is tapping the World Wide Web. You could be looking only for a music teacher, account or a graphics designer. On the other hand, you could even be looking for a senior manager or a vice president. For an entry-level programmer, you can search on one of the job boards, but looking for a vice president may not be so easy.

Looking for Candidates

Over the past few years, Linked In, FaceBook, My Space  and other social networking sites have hosted a huge number of visitors who have built their profiles. Amongst them, you may find your vice president. Remember however, he may not be a job seeker. You would have to make contact with the person and develop a conversation. If the person interests you, you could request the resume and then you could initiate the rest of the process.

On the other hand, if you are looking for web designers to work for your company, you could well go to a job board such as www.monster.com or www.dice.com and launch a recruitment campaign. You may have to cough up a small fee but that is good value for money.

Most job boards allow you to advertise on them for a fee. You could consider that route especially if you have special requirements. For example, you want all your web designers to speak English and Spanish. Another situation could be that you want telecallers to speak English and German or French. You are not looking for translators and interpreters but persons who can speak these languages fluently. While searching on the job boards, it may not be possible for you to easily locate such persons because the keyword search may not go into this field.  You can plug in an advertisement, which precisely identifies your requirements.

Similarly, there are forums and blogs to consider. Many of the home business forums contain profiles of qualified professionals who would not mind a steady income flow while they work at their competency levels in a freelance capacity. People  on forums also are of the same category. In most cases folks on these forums and also blogs pass the word around about opportunities for others. This is another way to identify qualified candidates who may be interested in working for you either full-time or part-time.

Some Hiring Tips

We aren’t going to provide you some brilliant secret tips but well tried out practices. First, do a fair amount of pre-screening. Talk to the candidate first. If you are a one-person firm, you will want to talk to the person first. If you are a hotshot CEO, ask your secretary to talk to the prospective candidate, assuming your HR manager is unavailable.

If you are the HR head, the choice is between getting a resume first or talking to the candidate. If the person happens to be senior, always talk first.

During the conversation with the candidate, try and elicit as many details as possible. But you should know what to ask about. A good web designer should be able to demonstrate familiarity with tools such as FrontPage and DreamWeaver. Someone applying for a telecaller’s job should sound nice and know how to speak clearly. A senior prospect could sound either like a bubbly stream or a placid lake. If you have performed pre-interview screening, you can get much more out of the interview. In addition, costs are often reduced as these procedures may eliminate candidates who are not qualified to work for you.

Finding the Right Person

You must not ignore offline methods of looking for candidates, even though they are usually more expensive. In most cases, you should advertise in some way locally for candidates. In addition, in some cases, it may be better that you outsource the job to a firm, which specializes in head hunting. Remember  that employees are the backbone of a company. So whether you are a small company or a large organization, hire carefully. You will not have to fire anyone in the long run.