director of recruiting

Update

Just wanted to give everyone an update on what's happening. As I posted recently, my little side project turned into a bigger thing than I expected. Yes, that's right, a bacon-flavored seasoning has taken over my life.

So far...

• We've sold over 16,000 bottles from our website to people in all 50 states and 22 countries, plus several thousand more to stores
• We've been picked up by AOL Food, Slashfood, MSN.com, The Stranger, Serious Eats, the Seattle Times, PC Gamer (who named us their Wonder Gear of the Month this month), Seattle Metropolitan, Seattle magazine and even WWE magazine and have been on ABC Radio, KISW and KOMO in Seattle, and dozens more stations as far away as Louisville, KY
• Bacon Salt has been picked up by over 120 stores in Washington and Oregon (our website is not up to date yet, but a big one just went through with a 70-store Kroger affiliate called QFC, and we're being trialed for a 180 store chain called Meijer in the midwest)
• We're working our way into foodservice - we've got orders and have built business relationships with Sysco and Food Service of America, two of the top 2 food service distributors in the country
• We continue to use social media like Myspace, Facebook and YouTube to get the word out as well as our blog. You can view our promotional video that we're using with stores here: www.baconsaltmovie.com.

In the near future, we're launching something called Operation Bacon Salt, which will send free Bacon Salt to the troops in bacon-less countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. Overall, this has easily been the most fun I've had in my career (no offense to any previous employers). 

Despite my radio silence, I've been keeping close tabs on what's happening in the recruiting industry. I'd love to hear from you, email me at dave@talentsparkconsulting.com. 

Director of Bacon

The last month has been an interesting time for me.

As I mentioned in a previous post, a friend and I recently soft launched a seasoning product called Bacon Salt to family and friends. We intended it to be a fun side project driven by our love of all things bacon. Here's what's happened since:

• We've been deluged by orders (now over 2,500 of them for a total of 10,000 bottles sold) from all over the world (18 countries and counting).
• Word is still spreading. To date, we've gotten RAVE reviews from our initial customers which was an important market potential litmus test for us and a lot of word of mouth and blog posts (over 80,000 Google references to "bacon salt" and counting). BBQ forums, college football and basketball forums and even very unrelated ones like a Subaru owners forum, a site called The Straight Dope and a surfboarding forum have been helping us spread the word, just to name a few. There's even a Bacon Salt Society in Charlotte, NC.   
• More recently, we were featured in The Dalles Chronicle in Oregon, which was then picked up in the Culinary Institute of America's newsletter, which has now led to another deluge, this time from chefs that are interested in incorporating the seasonings into their menus. In short, some really big opportunities.
• Yesterday, we made the front page of MSN.com under popular searches/hot topics. Another big deluge of orders.
• Big brokers and distributors - the people who take products to market in the food industry and who previously wouldn't return our phone calls - are starting to call and email us asking for samples and conversations.

When you have a good product, there's a really short window to capitalize on buzz and get it out in stores before someone else comes in and tries to steal your thunder. Given the size of these opportunities, I've made a decision to step out of the recruiting world for a few months to give it a go - which has led to some funny and very ironic conversations recently (imagine saying to a Fortune 500 company, "I can't take this recruitment technology consulting assignment because I invented Bacon Salt." with a straight face).

So... I'll be off the grid for a few months at least, maybe more depending on how the next quarter goes. I'll check in periodically, and will try to post some entrepreneurial notes and updates on this blog every once in awhile that are relevant to the recruiting industry (at this point all I can say is Craig's List rocks for small businesses, my cost per hire so far is less than $25 and my quality of hire is stupendous).

There's definitely a chance that I could fail spectacularly in this new venture and come right back to the recruiting industry in 3 months. Or, as Hank Stringer has suggested to me when he tried Bacon Salt, I'll end up being a food magnate. If you see Bacon Salt in a store near you, you'll know it was the latter.

Wishing you all luck in your endeavors, and keep your fingers crossed!

Catholic Church recruiting in Second Life

The newest entrants to recruit in Second Life may be missionaries from the Catholic Church according to Reuters. Read the article here.

QuietAgent sends an email to millions?

I wonder how many people got this same email I got yesterday? QuietAgent a brilliant concept, although I do have questions about how successful their user interface (try signing up on their site - it's a bit difficult to navigate through) is in capturing profiles. Regardless, they seem to be the only company that's gone to the pay-per-qualified-interested-applicant model - and with their cost structure, it's worth a look when you have an opening.

------------------------------------

Dear David,

We know that 90 percent of alumni aren't looking for a job right now.

We also know that everyone will consider the right job offer, especially if they could do it in secret!
We're pleased to announce a new career service as part of your Glenbrook North High School Alumni Online Community, brought to you by QuietAgent. It's an anonymous Job Offer Agent that allows you to always be in the market for a better job.
QuietAgent's unique service is designed specifically for people who are happily employed. It's fast, it's free and most importantly, it's secure and confidential. You choose whether to engage with potential employers who think your profile is a perfect fit for their company. These potential employers won't know who you are until you respond to their inquiry.
To 'secretly' join in under 45 seconds for free, click here, or visit your Glenbrook North High School alumni community.
Regards,
Member Services at Glenbrook North High School Alumni Online Community
More Information:
QuietAgent is the only safe and anonymous way to always be in the market for better job. Even if you're happily employed, this is for you!

• It's free and takes just 45 seconds
• Nobody knows who you are
• Nobody knows you're looking
• You don't search for jobs
• You don't get any spam
• Your 'Job Offer Agent' does all the work for you

Click here, or visit your alumni website at:  http://www.GraduateConnections.com/olc/pub/GLHS to join.

New technology alert: Resumefit

I met with Tom Schmidt, the founder of Resumefit, a candidate-facing assessment tool, not too long ago. I was intrigued by the possibilities their business model presented, specifically the idea of candidates getting "pre-assessed" before they applied for a job. They're still pretty early on in their evolution, but I am still completely intrigued by the concept.

Competency-based and personality-based assessments today work for employers to help them weed through applicants, and cost them a pretty penny as you multiply it out over the large volume of candidates they often get. But what if candidates bore some of this burden? Could it solve a major problem for them, i.e. getting noticed for a position by providing third-party, objective data that shows how qualified they are?

This is exactly what Resumefit is focused on, helping candidates use assessments as a way to differentiate themselves when they submit their resumes. Imagine what a difference it could make if a candidate came to you and said "Here's my resume, and here's how well my personality and workplace competencies fit this job profile." That could be a marked improvement over a standard, traditional resume, which usually tells you absolutely nothing about how good a person is at their job.

Another problem out there waiting to be solved is the "firehose" of resumes that employers get - which might be reduced by using this type of approach to help candidates decide whether they should apply in the first place. An enterprising job board would be wise to check out the solution and see if there's a way to build it into their platform - the possibilities and value that could be delivered could be huge.

And now for something completely different...

Jason Davis is on to my side project.

About 5 years ago, I came up with a really simple idea: what if you could take zero calorie water and put all those great electrolytes and antioxidants in there that people crave when they're in athletic events or when they're sick? The result - Vitamin Water, which sold to Coke for over a billion dollars this year. Except it wasn't me that sold it.

I tried to keep my wife away from the newspapers and business sections on the day of the sale, but she eventually saw it. So she made me promise the next time I had a great idea that I would jump on actually doing it - which I made my New Year's resolution. No matter how crazy it was.

Yesterday, a friend of mine and I launched something fun but kind of nuts. It was based on an idea he told me about while we were on a Jobster Tour early this year in January - and the more I thought about it, the more I liked it - if you could make everything you eat taste like something, what would it be? For some reason, Homer Simpson's voice immediately came into my head: "mmm... bacon." When I told my wife, she had one word for me: "Yes."

So that's what we launched yesterday, thanks in large part to a lot of friends and family that helped out: J&D's Bacon Salt, a zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian and kosher-certified seasoning that makes everything you eat taste just like real bacon. It might be the most random, most unusual thing I've ever done - but it seems to be working. On our first day open for business, we had over 100 orders, a bunch of online forums popped up, and the sales keep coming in from all over the country. We're also going to launch in about 100+ store locations and on Amazon.com in the near future, with more coming soon. For now, you can buy from our website if you're interested.

And for those of you that have asked, I'm not giving up my day job. I'm still in the recruiting game!!   

Why so many recruiters blog

The challenge with the recruiting blogosphere for many is just keeping track of the sheer number of voices that exist within it. Many people just end up reading one or two of their favorite blogs and periodically link to interesting blog posts referenced elsewhere; some use a blog aggregator or feed; others ignore the blogosphere altogether. I'm somewhere in the middle - trying to contribute but not trying to get sucked in too deep.

So why are there so many recruiting blogs? I think I have a possible answer (perhaps not the only answer, but it's a working theory). It goes like this:

1. Recruiters know the hiring process better than anyone.
2. Recruiters know that publishing interesting content helps them get found by employers, helps add context to their resumes and provides interesting fodder for discussion during an interview.
3. Recruiters know that blogs help them connect with other people with similar interests that can help them find gigs down the road.

In short, I think that so many recruiters blog because they know that it helps them get jobs. Granted, some of the more inflammatory blogs actually might hurt peoples' chances of finding work at certain companies - not to pick on anyone, but The Recruiting Animal comes to mind, although it could be argued that even the Animal gets some gigs or splits out of his efforts. Or maybe he's just completely insane... who knows?

I believe this is a case of recruiters knowing their domain better than the rest of the general public, who may eventually catch on and start building more of their own blogs in other industries (lawyers, for example, already have a significant base of bloggers). What do you think?

Is your CEO doing THIS? GE's is.

Saw an article recently about General Electric's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, in the Washington Post. An excerpt:

If globalization were put to a popular vote in the United States in the current political climate, it would lose, General Electric Co.. (GE.N) Chairman and Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt warned on Friday.

"If you put globalization up for a popular vote in the United States, I think it would lose 60/40," he told the India Institute of Technology Alumni 2007 Global Conference, a Silicon Valley event attended by thousands of India's top academic and business elite.

Immelt's remarks came at the end of what was largely a corporate recruiting speech to attract top-flight engineers and managers to join GE.

What's striking about this is that Immelt has taken time out of his schedule to help GE recruit top flight engineers and managers overseas to join GE. And it appears that he was successful, as the event was attended by thousands of top academic and business elite.

When's the last time YOUR CEO hit the recruiting trail? The war for talent is on, and as Immelt proves, your CEO might be your best recruiter.

Vancouver Police Department recruiting in Second Life

An unlikely employer has started using Second Life for recruiting purposes: the Vancouver Police Department. The approach was modeled on a school recruiting initiative from the Great Northern Way Campus in BC, which has built a replica of their college campuses in Second Life as a student recruiting initiative. From the Vancouver Sun:

The rationale for the sci-fi approach to recruitment is simple, says Insp. Kevin McQuiggin, head of the department's tech crimes division: If people are on Second Life, they're likely to be web-savvy, a quality the police department is looking for in new recruits.

This kind of reminds me of a call center recruiting campaign I worked on years ago in the beginning days of the Internet. The employer I worked with needed computer skills, and we figured that if someone could use the Internet they would already be demonstrating these skills. The return was huge, and the technology created a sort of hiring bar that ensured that only minimally qualified people came to them.

Yet there's an even more important set of reasons for VPD's foray into Second Life: getting ahead of cyber crime. While they're not quite ready to police avatar behavior, the VPD wants to better understand the ways new technologies might be used one day to commit or warn of crimes in the real world before they happen.

"Any new media that comes out, any new form of communication, crime is going to migrate there." That's where the virtual recruitment seminar will help, he says."As we move into the future, we're going to need people who understand technology -- that are conversant with it, that understand the impact of it and understand how to use it," McQuiggin says.

Even if you're not planning to recruit in the metaverse any time soon, it would be wise to at least understand it. 

The only thing that matters in online recruiting

In the course of my consulting work, I meet with a lot of companies in the online recruiting industry at various stages of growth. Some have just a seed of an idea. Others have already built some technologies. And still others have a concept and some funding to play with.

Time and again, I'm reminded that there's really only one thing that matters for an online recruiting vendor, just one thing that is virtually guaranteed to grow your revenue and attract customers. The answer? Candidates. If you have the candidates that the employers need, the employers will follow. In the job board space, Monster figured this out before anyone else (go big on consumer advertising and support it with a great technology infrastructure to handle the traffic). In the social networking space, LinkedIn figured this out first (create a great user experience for your members that grows virally and the employers will follow). 

Whether you're an employer looking at a new technology vendor (other than infrastructure technologies like an ATS or, to an extent, a CRM) or you're a VC firm looking at funding a company in the red hot online recruiting space, I would suggest looking pretty hard at a company's candidate acquisition plans before looking at their technologies or their business model. As in LinkedIn's case, one may beget the other, but that's an exception more than the norm.