According to MarketWatch.com, social media is a really big deal, especially since they suggest that 60% of employed professionals interested in a job change don’t even bother to put their resumes on job boards these days. These professionals are, however, present and active on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media sites. Being able to strategically use all available Internet hiring resources is what it takes to find individuals who have the skills and talent you are looking for, but who aren’t necessarily actively looking for a job.

In Comes NetSourcing

We are thrilled to introduce to you our newest offering, NetSourcing. It’s a revolutionary way to mine for talent on the Internet that taps the best tools social media has to offer. While “active recruiting” methods like placing job advertisements can be a great way to find the right candidate for your open position, with today’s technology and the breadth of available social networking options, the search for talent can truly take on a new, targeted approach. The best practices for finding talent these days include “passive recruiting”—attracting and inviting individuals who may have the exact skill set you are looking for, but who aren’t actively involved in looking for a new job right now.

With NetSourcing, hireVision will conduct various types of outreach using social media tools and job boards to specifically target individuals in your area(s) of interest and invite them to consider your position. By reaching out directly to prospective candidates, we take advantage of the ripple effect created by social networking, and increase the odds that you may find the right person to meet all of your unique hiring needs. Consider it this century’s version of “employee referrals” but with a much further reach!

hireVision does not employ unskilled placement agents; we are a team of highly educated HR professionals who work in your best interest to seek out talent that meet your requirements, vs. seek out candidates to make a placement. We also don’t receive placement fees or commissions, so you only pay for the work we do.

NetSourcing can be bundled with our DirectView Hiring Management Services, or it can be a stand-alone service. The choice is yours.

For more information about NetSourcing or any of our other Hiring Process Management or HR Partnering Services , please contact us at 610.443.0119 or email us.

We’ll be posting more information on the topic of social media talent mining here on our blog over the next few months, so be sure to follow us on your favorite feeds.

We are talking about the three P’s of a successful hiring persona:

• Professionalism. Whether it’s your own in-house HR staff or a recruiter, these people are often the first taste of your business that a job seeker will have. If those that represent you are not professional on the phone, in person or via email, what does that say about the rest of your company? Do you know if your recruiters are punctual for appointments? Do you know if they are asking inappropriate questions on your behalf? You should!
  
• Politeness. Even the most talented hiring managers and recruiters in the world can blow an opportunity if they are rude to a prospective applicant—and what if this is happens on a public social media platform? The way things go viral on the Internet these days only makes matters worse for your brand and reputation if a particularly unfriendly exchange occurs.
  
• Preparedness. Not knowing how to answer simple inquiries about the job or department in question can make an applicant wonder whether the presentation of the position they are being given is accurate. And what if the person in charge of your hiring process doesn’t ask the right types of questions to engage the candidate about your business? Turning off a great candidate by not knowing enough about your company or industry can cause them to hesitate if you do end up offering them a job. Your position might not seem like the best option to them.
  

 ”It can be really valuable to ask for feedback from applicants about their experience during the hiring process,” Bonnie Levitt, MSW, PHR,  hireVision’s Director of Hiring Management. “You need to know if job seekers are getting a bad vibe about your business and take steps to correct that issue.”

Our Hiring Management and DirectView Services can help you with your vital pre-hiring processes. Contact us today for a frank discussion about your company’s unique goals and needs.

What would you do if you could drop everything and take a vacation right now? Beach it? Hit the slopes? Spa pampering? Tell us!

Happy Friday, everyone!

 (FYI: Your participation in this poll is completely confidential and does not auto-subscribe you to anything. Just have some fun!)

Luckily, there are things you can do to protect yourself now, and in the future, as you and your company move forward and take advantage of all the tremendous things social media has to offer in the digital age. From having a clear social media policy in your company handbooks to staying on top of the latest legal issues that affect your industry.

Don’t Miss Our Social Media Seminar Presented with Tallman Hudders & Sorrentino!

Social Media: Learn the Latest Rules & Regulations Necessary to Protect Your Company

(a Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce event)

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Lehigh Valley Country Club

2319 South Cedar Crest Boulevard

Allentown, PA 18103

Registration begins at 11:15 am – 12:00-1:00 pm Program

$49/member; $79 non-member

Social media is all the rage lately, but it can be a double-edged sword, potentially exposing your company to a variety of liabilities and lawsuits.  In this rapidly changing field, it is vital that you and your company know the latest regulations. What policies must you craft to best protect yourself and your organization? How can your company be active in social media while minimizing your legal exposure?

Leading this high-level conversation will be:

• Scott Allinson, Attorney, Tallman Hudders & Sorrentino (The PA Office of Norris, McLaughlin & Marcus, P.A.)
• Edward Easterly, Attorney, Tallman, Hudders & Sorrentino (The PA Office of Norris, McLaughlin & Marcus, P.A.)
• Tina Hamilton, President, hireVision Group
• Moderated by: Mike Schlossberg, Vice President of Member Relations & Applied Technology, The Chamber

This Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce event will.

Click here for more details and a registration form.

Well, we can’t help you with the tongue twister, but we can recommend a great blog post about how to deal with employees who complain and moan a lot. It’s over at Julie Kay’s Developing Leaders Online, and both the article and the conversation in the comment section are enlightening. Kay suggests that managers take the “coaching approach” instead of jumping in to resolve every issue for their employees. This may be more time consuming on the front end, but instead of developing a workplace culture where whenever there’s a mild conflict your staff instinctively runs to you to solve it, they will instead use their own conflict resolution skills to take care of the issues themselves. Our favorite tip:

Ask quality questions rather than providing suggestions and solutions. This will show them you are listening, help them to think things through, and keep responsibility with them.

“Listening and leading your workers towards finding their own solutions pays off in the long run in productivity, workplace satisfaction and reduced stress for everyone,” says Tina Hamilton, PHR, hireVision’s president and CEO. “Besides all that, there’s a self-satisfaction one gets from taking responsibility for his or her own problems and tackling them in a positive way, and learning that skill will go a long way for your employees both professionally and personally. Guiding people through that learning process is really a sign of a good manager.”

Of course, when big problems or issues arise, it’s a manager’s job to handle the crisis. But for the smaller problems that tend to be more interpersonal in nature, having a workplace culture than expects employees to resolve issues in a positive, productive way themselves is a huge plus for everyone.

Want to create a workplace environment that promotes productivity and growth at you company? hireVision’s HR Partnering Services provide the assistance and support your company needs to achieve these goals. Contact us today for an honest discussion about your HR needs.

New Year’s Eve is just a couple of days away. It felt like the last twelve months just flew by for us here at hireVision. Did it feel that way for you, too?

If you haven’t already done so, please take a moment to let us know what is on your human resources radar for 2012 by filling out the short poll below. Your answer will be anonymous and no personal data will be collected about you. Your input will help us continue to generate interesting and useful blog and social media content.

Thank you for your input!

Need help with managing your pre-hiring process or with getting the most out of  your company’s talent? hireVision’s Hiring Process Management Services and  HR Partnering Services can help. Contact us today for a frank discussion about your unique human resources needs.

How often do we get to collectively weigh in on the effects of holiday indulging, let alone the reporting on this subject? (Besides, we are still in shock that “Frosty the Snowman” has, at the time of this posting, only received one lousy vote on last week’s “Favorite Holiday Made-for-TV Special” poll. It’s hard to be overly cheerful when faced with these cold, hard facts.)

In any event, please take our one-question poll below.  And have a wonderful Christmas weekend!
Take Our Poll
To check out the CNN.com article on Holiday myths, click here.

 (FYI: Your participation in this survey is completely confidential and does not auto-subscribe you to anything.)

Got another 30 seconds? If so, please take our 2012 outlook poll, “What will be your biggest HR issue in 2012?” We’d love to know your perspective. Thank you!

Who, me a micromanager? Ha, ha, ha…that’s a laugh. I just take a hands-on approach to overseeing my team. That’s all. Right down to the type of font they use on their monthly reports. Helvetica, 12-point. Looks great with a 1-inch boarder all around the page. And no hyphens. Hate the hyphens…

No, seriously. My employees love getting a little unsolicited extra help from me. All the time. On everything. No need for them to problem solve or create. Or think too much about stuff on their own. Seriously. No worries…

I’m all about the team. My team. Doing things my way, because we all like it. It gives us predictable results. We love it. Really, we do…

We’d like to interrupt these managerial daydreams with a reality check: Micromanaging can hurt your workforce in more ways than you think. If control issues are hampering productivity and employee satisfaction, it may be time to rethink your management style.

According to a great blog post over at Harvard Business Review called “You’re Probably a Micromanager”, by Ron Ashkenas, managers can sometimes be driven to exercising too much control over a project or people because of anxiety and insecurity, perhaps due to a lack of knowledge about the subject matter, inadequate training, or insufficient experience. Oftentimes, these well-meaning bosses are not even aware of how controlling they’ve become. Managers may also fail to realize that some people work better with less managerial attention than others do. Some employees also have different expectations about what they want from a manager than what their supervisor may think they do. What one person might feel is helpful support can be perceived as controlling micromanagement to another. It can be a real downer for employees who take the extra attention from their boss as a lack of faith in their abilities or respect for their talents.

This is more than just about morale, though. “Micromanaging can stifle competency in a manager when the employees become too dependent on his or her involvement to be productive in their regular activities,” says Tina Hamilton, PHR, president and CEO of hireVision Group. “Micromanaging can also keep a company from growing because it prevents streamlining, reduces calculated risk taking and discourages innovation.”

Want to create a work environment and culture that promotes productivity and growth at you company? hireVision’s HR Partnering Services provide the assistance and support your company needs to achieve these goals. Contact us today for an honest discussion about your HR needs.

Why, yes, it is! That means, among other great things, it’s time for a new hireVision holiday poll. Last Friday’s poll asking which is your favorite holiday movie has closed, and here are the top results:

(Click here to see the complete poll results.)

And now on to this week’s poll:

 (FYI: Your participation in this poll is completely confidential and does not auto-subscribe you to anything. Just have some fun!)

Got another 30 seconds? If so, please take our 2012 outlook poll, “What will be your biggest HR issue in 2012?” We’d love to know your perspective. Thank you!

OK. Maybe we are pushing it. But, a recent story on the Apple guidelines over at PC World did give us the opportunity for a teachable moment here on our blog. You see, Apple had put in place specific guidelines prior to an incident where an employee posted negative comments about the company on Facebook. The comments were reported to managers, and then the worker took the matter to an employment tribunal. The tribunal upheld Apple’s decision to fire the worker. They sited the clearly documented company policies and codes of the conduct that employees are expected to follow when using social media and blogs, and the actions in question were seen as serious enough to merit disciplinary action according to that documentation.

This subject is a hot-button topic right now for good reason. Regardless of how you as a manager or business owner view the issue of freedom of speech vs. protection from libel and other forms of defamation, one fact remains the same: You and your company will be better protected against endless and/or costly litigation with a well-written social media and blogging policy in place. If you don’t believe us, just do a quick Internet news search and see for yourself.

Learn More About It

Tina Hamilton, owner and president of hireVision Group, will be part of an expert panel that includes attorneys Scott Allinson and Edward Easterly of Tallman Hudders & Sorrentino presenting “Social Media: Learn the Latest Rules and Regulations Necessary to Protect Your Company” on Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at Lehigh Valley Country Club in Allentown, PA. This Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce event will open at 11:15 am, and the presentation will run from 12:00-1:00 pm. ($49 for LVCC members; $79 for non-members)

Click here for more details and a registration form.