Dear .jobs,

This is a hard letter to write – but I know it must be done.  It seems like just yesterday when we first met – but its been almost 5 years.  In that time, I always wanted to believe in you and think what you were saying was true.  I was young and hopeful and really did think that you were going to change the world.

I’m in my 30′s now, .jobs, and while I still wish for that youthful love and world conquering idealism I once had with you – the dream has faded – partially because of the reasons I pointed out in 2007 on the mis-steps and marketing errors and pricing structure and lack of buy in  and ….  but I still hoped for your sake I was wrong.

I know we had some moments of glimmer and you told me about all the wonderful things you were going to do for me.  But now, its just sad.  The time to strike was hot a few years ago and the relationships are lost.

I’ve moved on .jobs.  I’ve seen that love .com and I shared was real and the “Ohh Shiney” stuff that you offered was not real.   He does what he says.  He shows up in google searches.  His domains are only $6.99 with a discount code at GoDaddy.  He gets hits because its where my job seekers want to go.   We are happy, our career sites are thriving.    Please stop and leave us alone.  Leave SHRM alone – they are getting this social media thing finally figured out – please let them focus on that.

Sincerely,

Me

PS.  Thanks to @jobboarddoctor for his post today on ERE which made me get all worked up over this issue again.  Read it.  He’s right.  Only 1 winner.

This article originally appeared on the HireVue blog and in this month’s issue of THE VUE, HireVue’s monthly newsletter. To sign up, go to theHireVue home page and scroll down to the newsletter sign up on the right.

Without great employees even companies with the best products can struggle to be successful. But in the mix of all of those resumes and names that come through your door, how do you actually measure candidate quality? Measuring candidate quality can be broken down into three distinct parts of the hiring process:

1) Pre-Screening
2) Interviewing
3) Post Interview

The pre-screening phase is one of the most critical and where untrained recruiting teams (and poorly designed process) often miss high potential candidates.   In this phase, the actual measurement is frequently managed in a much more quantitative way through Applicant Tracking systems or other tools that do pre-employment screening, the dreaded “knock-out” questions or through a series of more open ended interview style questions.  While these pre-screening methods are effective, and relatively proven – they can leave the door open to over look high-potential candidates or those that would have highly transferable skills. That’s why whenever possible I recommend more interactive pre-screening methods including phone screens and especially the virtual type video interviews that allow hiring teams to see candidate’s thinking on their feet as their responses to those pre-defined knock-out questions are recorded and stored for review. Companies like HireVue have made this extremely simple and cost effective.

The second phase, the Interviewing phase, is where the actual candidate quality can be determined.  It is where you can see (or hear) a candidates passion for your organization and the position, see the cultural fit for yourself and determine a match.  It is where you can truly learn about the success and failures they have had – and how they learned from each of them.  It is the most important part of the process and also the most time consuming. The power of a solution like HireVue is that it actually allows you to reach a wider set of candidates with less manpower behind the process and lets the recruiting team focus on evaluating the quality of a person’s answers on a particular topic or question in an effective and efficient way.

The final phase, the post-interview phase, was traditionally thought of as the most reliable when it came to determining candidate quality.  Unfortunately, many companies have stopped the practice of speaking freely about past employees and candidates have learned to share only the very best of their references with a company.   In cases where a reference does speak negatively – other questions have to be addressed – was it a bad company/job fit, was there a personality conflict, are there other extenuating circumstances that would explain why your star candidate wasn’t a star at 1 of his last 3 companies?

Even for companies who follow this process measuring quality can be pretty subjective since it depends so much on your company culture, the needs of the job and the expectations of the hiring manager. At the end of the day, making a successful hire means depending on your people. To do this, you need to make sure to give them every opportunity to bring their knowledge and experience to bear in every stage of the hiring process without crushing them under the weight of the work. I see video playing an enormous part in that over the coming years. It allows your hiring teams to see more, evaluate quicker and at a higher level of accuracy and, if coupled with the right tools, collect feedback and gain consensus far more efficiently. Video tools can be enormously helpful, but they will never replace the highly skilled recruiter. They are the actual moving parts of the company that get things done, win the wins and manage your culture.

That’s right – I had the pleasure to talk with the cool crew over at Recruiter Earth and share my take on the HR Technology Conference and the future of technology.  Well, as much as can be done in a 4 minute segment.  So make sure you head on over and check it out!  (Just click on the picture!)

And yes, I know I sound like I am 12. And no, I don’t think this picture will ever go away.  I’m stuck with it forever.

I was in a generous mood apparently as I gave shout outs to Hirevue, SmartSearch, GreenJobsInterview, Rypple, Jobing via Joel Cheesmanvia mjobs Mobile Technology (which you all know I am a fan of and if you don’t read my post What Happens in Vegas Doesn’t Always Stay in Vegas or I got some Joel Cheesman Love) and  HRMDirect and more.  I also said the phrase HR Geeks and that our industry keeps repackaging the same crap and adding new marketing.  I’m not sure if Recruiter Earth will have me back after my 12 year old sounding interview – but it was fun!

In what has to be one of the most hyped and coveted things that I have happened to be a part of, I am left with an overwhelming since of – REALLY?  I mean really, that is the Wave.  That is what I waited for an invite for?  I am hoping this is like my first experience with twitter where I was amazing underwhelmed because of the lack of other people I knew on it.  But as of today, it just feels like the overwhelming disappointment I had this weekend when watching Where the Wild Things Are.  *sigh*

I should get over my issues with reading directions since with this all I have to do is watch a video.  Or I can just go and read the “complete guide to google wave” (7 pages long) here.  But the real question is why is this just not intuitive?  Are we not to the point where software can be cool and intuitive?  I mean, there are a lot of really geeky people waving with me and the comments I am hearing are mixed at best.

So…PROVE ME WRONG!!  I am on the wave @ ImSoSarah (SarahW79 and ImSoCorporate were both taken grrr….)

Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure there WILL be some great things that come out of it.

Unless Apple decided to compete head on somehow and came out with a better designed product that I could use on my iphone.

The Talent Management Panel provided one statement by Nike’s John Schroeder that totally blew me away and made me wonder why in the world the other vendors in the room (with giant development budgets) didn’t jump up and run out to build the next generation of performance management software.  Nike made a point that they should be using the social networking internally in order to manage the relationships and create a global enterprise – not seem so big.   In the grander scale – what better way to be able to track what someone is actually doing, projects they are working on, and their job satisfaction than a social network.  The next generation of employee’s and many of those in the current generation have been brought up around social networking.  The annual 360 performance review will not be the standard in the future.  It isn’t the process that is going to keep a generation of entrepreneurial minded people employed and engaged at your organization.  The single statement made such an impact that I actually pulled out my laptop – wrote a full business plan and designed a new evolution of Performance Management software while I watched the rest of the session.

During the same session Bill Kutik raises the question about social media use.  He says he is “sick to death” of its discussion in recruiting since it is a no brainer, slam dunk to do  – how else are you using social media?

• Jay Smith from Target says to use social networking in Onboarding  to find who is like you, skills like you, etc
• Andy Valenzuela from Dell says to use social networking for project management, mentorship – find/connect w/a mentor in the org, internal updates – tech details etc instead of sending hundreds of emails.  Built in sharepoint environment and includes IM technology to really connect with them – see if they are online, at their desk, etc.

There are a lot of blogs on all the stuff around HR Tech – so I’m going to post on the sessions that really made a big impact on me…more to come…