With such a competitive job market right now, it’s pays to be creative. One solution I have used with success to reach out to job seekers is to use video emails. A company called Accelstream offers solutions for inserting video messages in your emails - and I have found that they do get a better rate of return (response from candidates) than the average “text only” emails. With a camera, record a message‚ describing your open job opportunity and why the candidate‚ would benefit from working for your company, load it up to Accelstream and add the video to your email.‚ It’s pretty straightforward to use and easy to get going. It shows great initiative on your end to the candidate, and the subscription services Accelstream offers‚ are fairly cost-effective.

This is what will show in emails that you send out:

A video screen pops up from there when you click on the video frames in the email. The video starts playing automatically. The screen is customizable - where you can insert your company logo, pictures, text and contact information.‚ 

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There‚ are a few video examples on the Accelstream site to get a feel for what they offer. Try a campaign‚ for one job opening you have and see what kind of results you get. ‚ 

…XBOX LIVE. OK, indulge me for a moment will ya.

I recently got an XBOX 360 and got signed up for the XBOX LIVE which allows you to play video games online with or against other gamers from around the globe. I never thought in a million years that this would be a place to recruit someone. But sure enough, while I was into a game last night, I found myself thinking just that. Hey now, quit laughing over there. No seriously - let me fill you in.

Last night there were over 500,000 people online in the XBOX LIVE community, with a vast majority of those numbers from the U.S. When you sign up, you set yourself up with a screen name, much like the way you would when signing up for any other networking community, like MySpace for instance. While playing, you wear a headset, and over the course of your gaming, you talk to the other people you are playing against (some good and bad talk mind you), but there is ALOT of dialogue there. You find yourself asking questions such as “Where you from BATMAN 320?” or “What do you do X-MAN?” XBOX LIVE actually makes recruiting easy believe it or not. You have the ability to add friends to your personal list and re-connect with them each time online (so you can build some rapport). You can also have one-on-one chats in the online lobbys outside of the games. In addition, you have the ability to look into your “friends” lists as well, and see who they know (easy way to introduce yourself to new people then).

What do you think the demographics are on the people who are playing in XBOX LIVE? My thoughts are these are people who like technology and perhaps a large percentage of them would make excellent candidates for open technical positions, if you know how to talk to them. What are your thoughts?

I have been using Talenthook for over a year, and give it my endorsement despite having to pay for a license each year. Talenthook is a resume search tool that allows you to simultaneously search several job boards, career sites or free resources out on the Internet. Talenthook is a great tool to use for recruiters and sourcers because you can can get a “snapshot” of all candidates available out on the major areas a recruiter uses - for instance, pay sites such as Monster, Dice or Careerbuilder, in addition to many other sources. Talenthook has many of these sources already listed in their database. All you need to do is plug in a username and password, type in key words, locations and date ranges for each search, and let Talenthook “peel back” those resumes. From there, you can run an email campaign to all candidates in your search, or simply go through each resume and determine how to proceed. It’s a huge time saver because Talenthook logs in and grabs all the relevant resumes and puts them into one area for you to search across. The searches are usually fast as well. Another benefit is to set-up an “agent” in Talenthook that will run continuous searches for you or your team.

Here are a few example screen shots:

Alexa is a company that ranks websites based upon Internet traffic. Alexa has long been the standard for determining where companies and websites rank on the web - in other words which websites get people to click onto their site, which pages they view, how long they are there, and how many different “unique” visitors each site receives at any given time.

For the recruiting industry, this site is important, because in order to fill positions, we want to go where lots of people are. You can determine where to invest your time, energy and money by using this site. Alexa is also a great way to find new sites that are gaining popularity and which are losing favor among the web world. You may even discover a new site to use for recruiting that you previously have not heard of.

The Alexa “Top 500 Sites” list lets visitors scroll through and view each site and see the statistics.

Alexa offers a toolbar which can be downloaded for free. This toolbar comes in handy as you click onto new websites and get the ranking and statistics right at the top of your web browser. I recommend downloading it.