The netPolarity Blog

Sometimes it happens. You come across a candidate profile/resume that is so perfect for the job, that you will believe ANYTHING the candidate tells you. The combination of this hope/desire/need to fill the job coupled with the difficulty or desperation of the situation can sometimes cloud your vision.

Of course we want to find candidates that are a fit for the job. Of course we want them to be “The One”. 

But we should use our wiser powers of judgment and logic to figure out if the person is a right fit for the job.

We do this by asking what the candidate does vs. what skills they have. *

There is no shortage of candidates out there. Sometimes it can feel like you are trying to dodge bullets with the number of candidates who tell that you can do the job. Whether you source or recruit, the qualification of candidates should be dealt with throughout the hiring process.
For sourcing, you have to establish what the candidate is doing and how they are doing it. In other words, if you need a candidate that has:

“Ruby development experience for a PHP web application with UI experience”

Here is a Google search for this req. The focus should be on ruby development with front end web technologies like HTML, JavaScript libraries, and PHP.
Also, putting “Ruby by itself can be a loaded term, because many engineers just add that to their resume since it’s a hot technology. So instead, we add some other words to describe the use of Ruby in action.

(inurl:resume OR intitle:resume) (“ruby gem” OR “developed ruby” OR “in ruby” OR “ruby developer” OR “ruby application” OR “ruby framework”) php html (javascript OR “java script” OR jquery OR mootools OR dojo OR extjs OR “ext-js”) (ui OR gui OR “user interface” OR “front end” OR frontend)

So let’s say you find a candidate that has this in their resume:

“Programming Languages: C++, Java, C#, Visual Basic, XML, HTML, Javascript, CSS, Perl, Shell, Cobol, ADA, Erlang, Lisp, Haskell & Ruby”

Does that mean we have a match? Well, no. We have to qualify the candidate, if you even want to go that far into the process. Most candidates will put the technologies they are the most familiar with at the beginning of a list.

What we would like to see on the candidate’s experience is:

“Developed a web application framework in Ruby and PHP with front end components written in Jquery, HTML5, and PHP”
This is much better of course, because we can see the development experience in the languages that we want.
Now in either case with these resumes, you still have to qualify what the candidate is doing, what type of company and software they are developing, and how many years’ experience they have doing it.

If you decide to pursue either candidate, then you have to ask them the right questions about their experience:
“What have you written with the Ruby language?”
“What did the application do?”
“How many people or users did the application support?”
“Is the company still using the application?”
“Was this a research/school project?”
“How many lines of code can be attributed to you alone?”

Asking the right questions of the candidate is necessary. The candidates who are a better fit will be able to talk in depth about their work based on the questions you ask. The wrong candidates will not/cannot do that. The more you follow this path of detective work, the better you be at sourcing/recruiting.
I will be presenting at Sourcecon in Atlanta. I highly recommend that you attend if you are at all interested in learning about the secrets of sourcing from the experts.

I also conduct trainings for those who wish to learn how they can improve their sourcing skills and their technical understanding of job reqs. You can contact me for more info about training for sourcers & recruiters: markt (at) netpolarity (dot) com

- Mark

#sourcing #training #sourcecon #netpolarity

On our previous post, we shared with you the things we look for when hiring raw recruiting talent.

On the other side of the netPolarity equation — our flagship — is sourcing.

“Sourcers are of a different breed and it’s not as easy to spot one just looking at a resume or even interviewing,” netPolarity founder and President David Chuang said. “We use a different set of criteria when we look for sourcers.”

What do we look for in a resume? People who come from some type of technical background – IT, software development, QA – are great candidates to become Sourcing Analysts at netPolarity. Programming as a hobby? That works, too.

“Our sourcers process huge amounts of information,” David said. “We can teach a person advanced search methodologies, but he or she needs to be the type of person that enjoys sorting through massive piles of data all day long,” David said. “Not everyone can do that.”

“Sourcers tend to be more left-brained,” netPolarity President David Chuang said. “We look for analytical people,” David said. “It’s a little harder to spot a good sourcer than it is to identify a recruiter because the trait we are looking for isn’t always evident in a resume.”

If we must put a name to that specific trait we look for: geekiness. Recruiters are naturally curious about people, sourcers tend to be extra curious about technology and information. They get excited about the latest gadgets, the most recent software updates and they can’t help but tweak things.

“We look for that troubleshooting mentality,” David said. “They tend to be the do-it-yourself type. They are the types that will jailbreak their iPhones or spend a sleepless night working on a personal project.”

Exhibit A: Sourcing Analyst Chris Schwacofer’s Macho Man Randy Savage costume, which he worked on for weeks leading up to Halloween. He sewed the entire costume himself.

“Not everyone gets their sense of humor,” David added. “Their unique personalities definitely make netPolarity a more interesting place.”

This is quite true about the sourcing analysts we currently have at netPolarity. Exhibit B.

“I guess you can say they are the opposite of a recruiter. Sourcers deal with information, recruiters deal with people.”

netPolarity’s service delivery infrastructure, however, is still team-based so we can’t quite do away with interpersonal skills. They still have to partner with recruiters and their account executives.

“Forming teams with the right mix of personalities isn’t easy, but when done right, you get incredible results,” David said. “We’ve been doing this for years; we have it down to a science.”

Did you read this post and think, “that’s me!”? Send us an email and attach your resume!

As a leading supplier of IT talent to Fortune 1,000 companies, netPolarity recruits for some of the most competitive environments in the staffing industry. To be successful in our business, we have to get to the best candidates before our competition does, deliver the right skills for requirements, and to ensure quality, we have to nurture our assets: our candidates and contract employees.

While our competition struggle to deliver on all categories — speed, accuracy and quality — netPolarity does it with relative ease. This is largely due to our service delivery infrastructure. netPolarity is made up of various service delivery teams, each operating as individual business units. Each team comprises Technical Sourcing Analysts, Recruiters and the Account Executive.

Technical Sourcing Analysts are highly-trained hunters. Using complex techniques and the latest sourcing methodologies, they can find pretty much any set or skill combo our clients can conjure up. From there, our Technical Sourcing Analysts deliver the candidates to our Recruiters, who then qualify, test and validate the candidates’ skill sets.They are tasked with ensuring that candidates not only meet the requirements but most importantly, have a thorough understanding of the assignment to ensure a perfect fit.

From there, the Account Executive takes over and drives the hiring process forward. As the team leader and the client-facing point-person of the team, the Account Executive’s job is to ensure that everyone’s — the client’s, the candidate’s or the employee’s — needs or issues are met or resolved.

Each team at netPolarity pretty much has a distinct personality with its own sets of strengths, making our service delivery infrastructure a key ingredient in our staffing alchemy.

Meet E-Team, led by staffing veteran Elda Romero (top right).

“We are big on customer service,and our team has the perfect mix of people for that,” said Elda. “Kristal is so sweet and patient, and Tracy’s bubbly personality just brightens everyone’s day,” Elda said of her team members: Kristal Sellamuttu (top left), Chris Schwacofer (middle), and Tracy “Starburst” Vuong (bottom left).

The secret behind E-Team’s candy-like sweetness is their strong sourcing foundation: Technical Sourcing Analyst Chris Schwacofer.

“He’s always spot on when it comes to delivering what the recruiters need,” Elda said. “Because he gets it right, the recruiters can really focus on taking care of our candidates and employees.”

Our contractors under E-Team’s care show their agreement, complimenting Kristal and Tracy not just in quarterly surveys but in the continuous flow of thank-you cards they send to our office.

“You updated me through every step and with every conversation you had with the hiring manager,” wrote one netPolarity contract employee on a card to Kristal. “You MADE it different. I enjoyed working with you. You are very nice and good at what you do.”

Much thanks, E-Team, for indulging me in today’s photoshoot!

As we train more and more sourcers and recruiters under the MARS training program, we realized that the need for a certification was imminent. In an ever-competitive recruiting market, certification would not only give us a way to stand behind the students who have completed required coursework, it would also give them a way to distinguish themselves as highly-trained recruiting professionals.

There are three types of MARS Certification: MARS-Elite, MARS-ProS and MARS-TechPro. The certification type indicates the type of courses and tests passed to achieve the certification.

MARS-Elite
MARS-Elite is the top training certification one can achieve under our program.

To qualify for this certification, a candidate must meet one of the requirements below and successfully pass the final test.

• Any individual that attends and successfully passes netPolarity’s 4-week Sourcer/Recruiter Training Program OR a customized Corporate Sourcer/Recruiter Training Program
• Any individual that attends and successfully passes a corporate Sourcer/Recruiter Training Program (must include Advanced Sourcing Modules, Technology Modules, and Recruiting Modules)
• Passing the final test

What can you expect from a MARS-Elite-certified staffing professional?

• MARS-Elite professionals have the ability to source, find and rch ANY candidate no matter how unique or difficult the search may be.
• MARS-Elite professionals understand every major technical discipline & job function in the corporate world, and can comprehend emerging new technologies.
• MARS-Elite professionals have a complete understanding of the recruiting process, have the ability to cold call, have negotiating abilities, know how to close candidates, and have a comprehensive knowledge of legal, HR and compliance issues that may arise during the hiring process.
• MARS-Elite individuals are historically rated as top performers in their field and in the industry.

MARS-TechPro
MARS-TechPro is our certification for technical staffing professionals.

What can you expect from a MARS-TechPro-certified staffing professional?

• MARS-Pro professionals have the ability to source, find and rch ANY candidate no matter how unique or difficult the search may be.
• The MARS-TechPro certified professional understands major technical disciplines and job functions in the corporate world with a focus on specific technologies.

There are two ways one can attain the MARS-TechPro certification:

Option 1:

• Attend our 1-day Advanced Sourcing Class
• Attend two (2) Technical Booster sessions
• Pass the MARS Technical Sourcing test.

Option 2:

• Attend the Boolean Basics to Advanced String Creation webinar
• Attend the People/Email Sourcing webinar
• Attend the Social Media Sourcing webinar
• Attend the Xtreme Passive Sourcing webinar *or* Diversity International Sourcing webinar
• Attend two (2) Technical Booster sessions
• Pass the MARS Technical Sourcing test.

MARS-Pro
MARS-Pro is our certification for non-technical staffing professionals.

What can you expect from a MARS-Pro-certified staffing professional?

• MARS-Pro staffing professionals have the ability to source, find and rch ANY candidate no matter how unique or difficult the search may be.
• The MARS-Pro-certified professional understands Sales, Marketing, Professional Services, Financial Services, Supply Chain, Human Resources, Accounting, Project Management and their corresponding job functions in the corporate world, including a focus in specific verticals from the Pro-S Booster sessions.
• Potential employers can expect MARS-Pro graduates to be rated as top performers in their field and industry.

Hiring managers are sometimes under-appreciated people. They have the stress of meeting headcount for a company, doing it within budget, and if they are involved in the development of a company’s product, their team still has to produce on time. Sometimes the stress of these things combined can affect the communication between the hiring manager and the staffing organization.

If this is an issue for your organization, you may want to register and attend our upcoming webinar: How to Manage Your Hiring Manager, which we are presenting for FREE via TLNT-ERE.

In this session, we will talk about the things that every recruiter, staffing manager, HR professional or sourcer can do to make the most of the little time that they have with the hiring manager, including a checklist of what they should be walking away with from a req meeting. We will talk about how to write the best job descriptions, how to ask the right questions from the hiring manager, and the best ways to target profiles.

We will also talk about what to do when you hit road blocks. There may be times when you have to pitch a different candidate profile to a hiring manager. We will talk about when and how this can be successfully done. And we will also discuss how to deal with a candidate pool that is well out of your budget range.

Again, this webinar is free. Register via ERE by clicking here. We look forward to “seeing” you at this webinar!

While presenting MARS during last week’s SourceCon Wrap-Up and Networking Event, one of our guests asked what makes MARS training different from other, more established training programs such as AIRS.

I can rattle off lots of things that make our program different, but I’m not sure it’s fair for me to subject AIRS to a side-by-side comparison with MARS.

For one, AIRS is a certification program by a certification company. MARS is powered by netPolarity, a leading supplier of contingent talent to Fortune 500 companies nationwide. While we are known in the industry for the intensive training program we put our sourcers and recruiters through, training is NOT our main business. Training is the component of our business that allows us to quickly scale our organization to meet rapidly growing demand for our services, and MARS was born out of demand from our corporate clients who want to implement the same training program for their internal staffing teams.

How do you add a dozen requisition-ready recruiters and sourcers to your team to support new business? This is a challenge we regularly face here at netPolarity. We learned early on that the most cost-effective way to scale is through training. We hire entry-level recruiters and sourcers with little to no staffing experience, put them through MARS and they come out of bootcamp as Super Sourcers and Recruiters.

While that might seem like an exaggeration, I’m not kidding. We need our trainees to come out of MARS with super skills because this is what our staffing environment demands. We are a staffing agency that specialize in filling VMS requisitions. Those familiar with VMS would know that these reqs are not the easiest to work with. While there are staffing agencies who stay away from VMS business because those reqs have a reputation of being “unfillable,” we specialize in filling them. In fact, we are uniquely VMS-centric and have built our business around it. We’ve streamlined our processes to overcome the challenges that VMS present. We put our trainees through extensive technology training so that they can work on highly technical orders without the benefit of having direct hiring manager contact. We teach them complex and advanced sourcing techniques so that our sourcing analysts can fish for candidates where our competition isn’t looking. We teach them enhanced interviewing techniques to validate skills. Oh. And we teach them how to do all of the above in lightning speeds to beat competition without compromising quality.

netPolarity is not for the faint of heart, but it is where Super Sourcers and Recruiters are made. In fact, many successful staffing professionals in technology organizations such as Google, Facebook, eBay and NetApp started their careers as entry-level hires at netPolarity.

Another big difference between MARS and AIRS is that our instructors are full-time super sourcers by day, instructors by night. Again, it’s all about the environment. Our instructors oversee a weekly req load of about 500-600 reqs with a weekly incoming rate of 100 new reqs. If you can dream up a req, they probably have not only seen it, they have successfully filled many just like it. I doubt you can get more “real-world” than that.

In summary, the main difference between AIRS and MARS is that AIRS is a certification program and MARS is a sourcer and recruiter training program. Two completely different things, in my opinion.

Joining the team in June 2011, Lisa Amorao is netPolarity’s new marketing manager, blog admin and lead Twitter skipper. Lisa’s staffing industry experience spans more than 12 years, with roles in recruiting and account management leading up to her marketing career.

You can connect with Lisa on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter: @netPolarity.

I was recently chatting with the teller at my local credit union and she noticed that I am now depositing a paycheck instead of the checks made out to me as a consultant. I mentioned that I had  decided to go back into full-time employment after a 7-month sabbatical.

“That’s great you were able to get back to work when you decided to,” she said. “not everyone is as lucky. It looks pretty depressing out there, I keep hearing about layoffs everywhere,” she said.

Always trying to spread a little ray of sunshine wherever and whenever I can, I told my teller that we are actually experiencing the contrary. I explained that I work for a staffing firm and that we are hiring left and right for our Fortune 1000 clients.

She seemed confused. But I get it. With the news media trumpeting news of a volatile stock market, an ailing economy and high unemployment rates, industry outsiders find it difficult to believe that contingent staffing companies are actually thriving at this time.

The reason is fairly simple. Contingent staffing makes sense, and more so during uncertain times. And no, the reason isn’t so companies can lay off people in a few months or that companies are reluctant to “commit” to “permanent” workers.

Contingent staffing saves money. What some don’t seem to understand is that the cost of a hire is way more than a worker’s salary. There are mandatory employment-related costs — FICA, SUI, workmans compensation insurance, benefits, recruiting costs — all of which are taken on by the staffing firm for their contingent workers.

Contingent staffing allows companies to staff-up quickly while minimizing risks. Sourcing and recruiting for each position is a costly and time-consuming task that companies simply can’t cut corners on. A bad hire is no joke and can — on top of the cost of finding a replacement — cost a company thousands of dollars in lost productivity, disruption, not to mention risk of litigation when things go horribly wrong. Contingent staffing companies specialize in recruiting and screening people, so recruiting costs are minimized when a company engages a contingent staffing firm. Staffing firms also absorb most attrition costs and risks for our clients, and this allows them to focus on keeping things going.

Contingent staffing gives companies access to specialized skills that may be outside their core competencies for short-term initiatives. Our clients have the luxury of talent on demand. This enables them to get projects off the ground faster while keeping their costs down.

Contingent staffing gives companies workforce flexibility which is crucial in uncertain times such as the one we’re in now. Is the economy really in a recovery or is this just a short-term spike? By engaging contingent workers rather than hiring “permanent” ones, companies can bring people in now and get ahead of the game, rather than later when things are already in full-swing. Having to play catch-up can be costly, too, and a risk that companies simply don’t have to take when a cost-effective solution is available.

So go ahead, you can wallow in the latest depressing economic news about employment, or change your outlook and look at it from the contingent staffing perspective. Things do look better from here.

Joining the team in June 2011, Lisa Amorao is netPolarity’s new marketing manager, blog admin and lead Twitter skipper. Lisa’s staffing industry experience spans more than 12 years, with roles in recruiting and account management leading up to her marketing career.

You can connect with Lisa on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter: @netPolarity.

As the job market continues to recover, recruiters are in-demand again. The recruiters I know who fell victim to the Great Recession the last couple of years are not only working again, they are having to fend off other job offers.

Say what you will about the job market. From where I’m sitting, it seems there aren’t enough experienced recruiters to fill current needs.

On the flipside, however, this is also a time when “bad” recruiters get in and the rest of the profession gets categorized under the same umbrella.

I get it. I’ve had close encounters with “bad” recruiters, too. Having a LinkedIn profile, I get my share of phone calls and emails from recruiters who contact me for positions ranging from “UI engineer” to “mobile apps developer.” I see how a keyword search might have lead to my profile, but a quick glance would have told a layperson that I was not the developer they were looking for.

Not. Even. Close.

Having been around the staffing industry for as long as I have, I can say it’s really not the recruiter’s fault. A lot of “technical recruiters” are thrown out on the floor with very little training. I was one of them, some 13 years ago.

Recruiting, I was told, is a skill you learn on the job. Have a degree? Come on in, sit with one of our senior recruiters for a couple of weeks, and you should be good to go. Here’s a req, identify the keywords you need to look for in a résumé, and go fish.

I was fresh out of Jschool so ok, I had interviewing skills. No, it’s not the same, but I wasn’t afraid to get on the phone and talk to people. I learned about the technology skill sets I was recruiting for by talking to candidates. It took a while, but I had time and competition was nothing like it is today.

While that may have worked more than a decade ago, I can’t see it working now. The staffing industry has since gone through explosive growth and competition doesn’t allow for a learning curve. Technology is moving faster than ever. Not only are there new skill sets, new trends, new buzz words to keep on top of, hiring managers and candidates demand more out of the recruiters they choose to work with and are less forgiving of those who are winging their way through.

We have a technical sourcer and recruiter training class in session this month here at netPolarity and I had a chance to sit-in this morning. As I sat through just an hour of Mark Tortorici’s month-long class, I was thinking there’s no way the me of 13 years ago can compete with the newbies we are graduating these days. But enough of my personal insecurities.

A comprehensive training program can make the difference between a recruiter who delivers the best talent for your organization and a recruiter who has to choose from slim pickings. Most importantly, recruiters represent your organization to candidates and can make or break that employer brand you’ve worked so hard to build. Leading technology companies such as Facebook and Apple (my apologies for the shameless plug: both companies recently brought in netPolarity to train their in-house talent acquisition teams) know that they have to equip their sourcers and recruiters with best-in-class training if they are to remain competitive in Silicon Valley’s talent war.

Whether your talent acquisition team consists of in-house recruiters, third-party staffing firms or a combination of both, recruiter training is critical. I end this post with these questions: do you put your recruiters through a training program?  What kind of training do your staffing vendors give their recruiters before they put them to work on your requisitions?

Joining the team in June 2011, Lisa Amorao is netPolarity’s new marketing manager, blog admin and lead Twitter skipper. Lisa’s staffing industry experience spans more than 12 years, with roles in recruiting and account management leading up to her marketing career.

You can connect with Lisa on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter: @netPolarity.

Let’s face it. The media loves to hype the doom and gloom. People love drama and all the negativity is what drives up ratings! What is the latest dark cloud over the staffing industry? That the economy in the US has hit a soft patch, that the labor market hasn’t improved much and companies are still not hiring, that unemployment in May actually went up and is now standing at 9.1 percent.

It’s always interesting how outsiders view our industry given all the media hype and negativity surrounding it. I kid you not. Several months ago I met someone at a social function and I introduced myself as the head of a professional staffing firm. Upon hearing this, his immediate reaction was that he felt sorry for me for being in the kind of business that I am in. Little did he know that temporary staffing industry has been one of the few industries that has consistently generated jobs since October 2008 and is actually in the middle of a mini-boom, what I would also call a perfect storm.

Yes, there is a lot of uncertainty in the market place: the economies around the world seem to be slowing down. Who knows what’s going to happen to Greece and some of the European countries and their debt problems. And what about our own debt issues with all the money printing and our housing market which has just been confirmed to be in a double-dip? The reality, however, from the temporary staffing industry perspective, is that companies are hiring people. In fact, they are hiring boatloads of them. Yes, companies are running a little scared not knowing what the future has in store for them. So instead of hiring them as full time employees, they are hiring temps sometimes with the intent to convert.  In fact, we have Fortune 500 clients who are putting all of their full time positions on hold and re-opening their headcounts as contractors. The truth is that the economy has recovered somewhat and people are starting to spend money. As the result overall demand is picking up for products and services and companies are hiring.

Economic uncertainty? For sure. But for now, as far as the contingent staffing industry is concerned, as long as the clouds continue to gather around us, we can thrive in the middle of this perfect storm.

David Chuang is the President of netPolarity. David founded netPolarity in the midst of the first Dot-Com Recession in 2000 and has been challenging economic trends since.

You can connect with David on LinkedIn or email him: David at netPolarity dot com.

With more and more companies using MSP Providers (Managed Service Program) to run the entire supplier side of their business, staffing agencies have a pretty clear path ahead. It may not be the easiest one, but it is definitely laid out in front of them. Client companies choose the best MSP Provider and the VMS (Vendor Management System) software that fits their needs. The client companies go through the RFP process pretty regularly to add staffing vendors who can deliver, and remove vendors who can not.

I’m sure that everyone has heard the statistics, but let me reiterate them for those who do not know. At least 72% of US companies utilize a singular VMS system to manage their professional services, sourcing, and procurement. With so many companies embracing this young trend (apprx. 10 years old), it becomes a necessity for staffing agencies to pay attention and play the game. The separation of contingent workers from the client company takes care of co-employment issues that corporations have concerns about.

Succeeding as a staffing vendor for a client company is success many times over. By successfully making the right hires, managing the contingent workers, and staying compliant with HR & employment laws, staffing vendors can make a good name for themselves on the client company side as well as the MSP side. Client companies will appreciate the right hires and MSP providers will appreciate the partnership that the staffing vendor is providing. Success for the staffing vendor is ultimately success for the MSP as well. Staffing vendors that continuously succeed with MSP partners are given more consideration when the MSP partner takes on a new client company as a customer.

Of course, there is a flip side to this. If your staffing partners do not provide hiring solutions very well or if they mismanage their contingent workforce, then they make a bad name for themselves not only on the client side, but the MSP side too. When the time comes to cut staffing vendors or entertain the idea of adding new ones, the lower performing vendors will be the first to go. Companies regularly conduct vendor reviews, which is a good thing. By trimming the less performing staffing vendors, they make way for others that can come in and do the job better.