Where are you from? Midlothian,VA

What is your education background? I have a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Elon University.

Where did you work before UDig? I was a General Manager at 2020 Communications.

How did you wind up at UDig and how long have you worked here? My cousin, Andy Frank, and his wife, Susan Frank, are the owners of UDig and gave me an opportunity to join the team over 2 years ago.

What is your favorite part of your job at UDig? The culture. I love coming to work every day. The environment is competitive with a work hard/play hard mentality. It is great to work for a small business where you can see how you impact the company day in and day out.

What is your the most challenging part of your day? Time-management.

Five things we don’t know about you… I’m a huge Carolina Panthers fan. I love to cook. I have 2 kids (6 months and 3yrs old). I am a music buff and I’ve never met a dance floor I didn’t like.

Have you thought about getting into recruiting? Now’s a good time, considering the demand for recruiters is at its highest levels in four years. While the U.S. unemployment rate is hovering around 8 percent, hiring managers are struggling to find the right people and are turning to recruiters to uncover the most qualified candidates.

But the role is full of misconceptions and unexpected challenges. I spoke to some experienced recruiters to learn about the mistakes they made earlier in their careers and what insights they would offer to new recruiters just starting out.

1. Recruiting Doesn’t Only Happen Behind a Computer

While recruiters can use the Internet as their primary tool for finding candidates, using it exclusively could limit their access to a wider, more diverse pool of candidates.

Jonathan Weems, a technical recruiter who’s been in the field for five years, says his biggest mistake as a new recruiter was assuming he could always find the best candidates online. He stresses that new recruiters need to network offline just as much. His advice: look for new groups and communities where you can engage in-person to find more people with the skills and qualifications you’re seeking.

“Also talk to employees within your own company, find out where they came from, and start building relationships internally,” says Weems.

“Those relationships are just as important as the ones you develop with job seekers, and you can leverage those co-workers as another channel for finding candidates.”

2. Use Multiple Tools to Source Candidates

With so many job boards and posting apps at a recruiter’s disposal, it’s easy for one to get overwhelmed by all the tools and technology. New recruiters sometimes fall into the trap of relying entirely on one or two tools–and using them in the same way–simply because they’re familiar with them or have seen some good results.

If recruiters are consistently achieving great results with a particular tool, like Monster or LinkedIn Recruiter, by all means they should continue using them. But failing to leverage other tools, could cause recruiters to miss out on a larger pool of candidates.

“Get out of your comfort zone and diversify the types of sites you use, the approach you use on the site, and the way you tackle a search,” adds Weens.

3. Use the Internet, Don’t Watch It

According to a Jobvite social recruiting survey, 89% of companies said they would recruit in social networks in 2011, and 55% would spend more on social recruiting. While companies are beefing up their social recruiting efforts, I think one could argue that recruiting has always been very social.

“The best people who are [recruiting] online were probably pretty good at it when social recruiting wasn’t really an issue,” says Lance Haun, editor of SourceCon and community director for ERE.net.

“They’re naturally social and they’re trying to have conversations with people. It’s just an extension of what they’re doing in real life.”

Even though recruiting apps can automate daunting tasks like posting jobs to multiple social networks, recruiters who don’t actively engage with job seekers are failing to take full advantage of those platforms.

“With all the active status updates and the constant stream of information on social sites, it’s easy to treat the Internet like TV and just watch it,” says Miles Jennings, CEO of Recruiter.com. “Successful recruiters don’t watch the Internet and social networks–they use them as tools to do more of what they do best: talking to people.”

4. Understand the Job You’re Recruiting For

Experienced recruiters say that finding candidates with the right credentials and experience isn’t always the hardest part about recruiting–it’s understanding the job that needs to be filled and the business requirements for that position.

For example, without any real-world experience as a software engineer or insurance claims processor, it can be tricky for a recruiter to know what to seek out in candidates for those positions. Beyond identifying relevant keywords to hunt for in candidate resumes, recruiters need to understand the business and what the hiring manager is really seeking in a candidate.

You can press the client to get more information about the position, but it’s more important to understand the business you’re recruiting for,” adds Jennings.

“It’s that hands-on knowledge that gives you the capacity to understand what hiring managers want, and gives you the ability to have a real conversation with a candidate as opposed to a job-req-qualification information dump.”

Recruiters can start by engaging with professionals in the field they’re hiring for to learn as much as they can about the profession. Go to lunch with them, ask questions, shadow their day-to-day activities on the job and take notes, because the things you observe will give you a better understanding of the kind of candidate you should look for.

What other tips, challenges, or misconceptions should they know about? I think we’ll begin to see a lot of newbie recruiters out in the field pretty soon. And the more we can prep them, the better.

Nineteen year old Sahil Lavingia’s latest design, Gumroad, seems to have the same general approach as Pinterest – an online community for everyone that satisfies a need you didn’t realize you had. In Lavingia’s words, “the best products totally surprise you because users are doing things that you have no idea about.” And Gumroad aims to do just that, granting users the ability to list and purchase just about anything imaginable in an online social marketplace – from music to books, artwork to recipes. And the best part? It isn’t targeted to any specific audience but instead aims to include everyone.

Gumroad allows users to assemble addictively pleasing visual representations all customized to express their own styles. I might need to keep my distance from Gumroad – if it’s nearly as captivating as Pinterest, it’s easy to get sucked right in.

Read more about Lavingia and Gumroad in Fast Company’s article.

Emily Kittrell, UDig Technical Recruiter

There is a segment of staffing organizations operating in a class by themselves – those that specialize in exceptional customer service just as much as the type of professionals they specialize in placing. These organizations understand the equal importance of who they place and how they place them. This translates directly into the way their employees naturally interact with both candidates and clients on a daily basis and ultimately how they behave in critical situations.

The smallest gesture can leave the largest impression on a candidate. A recruiter making a personal commitment and following through on returning every candidate voicemail or email within a short specified period of time can lead to candidate’s having a drastically improved experience with your organization over other firms. A recruiter who checks in with a candidate on Sunday afternoon to see if they need help preparing situational examples for an upcoming Monday morning interview can create a relationship changing impression. Taking the initiative to go the extra mile to help a candidate research and work through a unique health insurance requirement prior to starting a new position can create a candidate for life. These are all opportunities to provide a level of customer service above and beyond your competitors who are trying to survive on pure volume alone.

The same type of outlook towards customer service can turn clients into lifelong business partners. An account manager delivering on a commitment to solve a critical hiring need for a client against a short deadline over the weekend can win an opportunity for additional business. A recruiter who takes a call from a client and chooses to own that call/issue/request from start to finish can create a memorable experience for a client. The concept of “that’s not my department but I’ll transfer you” doesn’t exist inside these customer-focused staffing organizations.

A true commitment to customer service is a defined choice and starts with the leadership team in any organization. This commitment creates customers (both candidates and clients in our industry) who “demand” a higher level of customer service from the competition because they are used to getting it from your organization. Your company becomes the standard and it becomes increasingly difficult for competitors to match or exceed the service you provide.

The choice of how many “demanding customers” to have is made by each organization. We prefer to have as many as possible.

-Rob Havey, UDig Director of Recruiting

The report found that employers within a 30-mile radius of Raleigh are posting 1,120 jobs daily with an average salary of $79,000. That jobs number is up 50 percent from a year ago and nearly triple from the depths of the recession in March 2009. Salaries are up 3 percent from a year ago, Dice reported. The national increase average is 2 percent. The growth in jobs and salaries as reported by Dice dating back to 2008 are as follows:

• March 1, 2012: 1,120 jobs, $79,000 average salary;
• March 1, 2011: 747 jobs, $77,000 average salary;
• March 1, 2010: 548 jobs, $74,000 average salary;
• March 2, 2009: 402 jobs, more than $70,000 average salary; and
• March 1, 2008: 878 jobs, more than $68,000.

While the North Carolina unemployment rate is 10.2 percent, the Triangle’s jobless rate is 8 percent. Richmond ranked second in job openings growth at 40 percent followed by Houston and Sacramento at 37 percent and Kansas City at 30 percent. Rounding out the top 10 are: Portland, Ore., in sixth place with a jobs growth rate of 29 percent; St. Louis in seventh with 26 percent growth; San Diego and Boston tied for eighth place, growing by 24 percent; and, Denver in tenth place with its annual growth in technology jobs at 23 percent.

The good news is if you are in a technical field in any of these areas you should have lots of opportunity. Find a technical recruiter you trust and find out if you are in the best place you can be. If you have been in the same position for 10 years or more chances are you may be missing out on some great new opportunities!

-Mary Ammons, UDig Technical Account Executive

I think it’s fair to say that trust issues exist in every relationship. In our business, each individual relationship is different. Everyone has had different experiences with a recruiter and in some cases, no experience at all. So why do both recruiters and candidates have their guard up? In most cases, it’s the perception that recruiters and candidates are not always honest with each other and are not on the same side. It’s that simple. Current compensation, past compensation, motivations, reasons for leaving previous positions, juggling multiple interviews and multiple offers are all topics that can test the trust relationship. Good recruiters recognize that these things are very personal and challenging for some people to discuss openly - especially with someone they don’t know well.

The key is to realize that the interests of recruiters and candidates should be aligned IF motivations are appropriate. A recruiter’s core motivation should be to aid you in your job search and help you find the right fit for your next job. Recruiting firms are for profit businesses so they do make money when they place candidates in a position. This is no secret but should by no means be a recruiter’s motivating factor. Like most companies, in order to keep our jobs and stay in business, we need to maintain a certain level of profitability. Typically, recruiters productivity is traced right back to the bottomline. I can’t help you if I’m not making money for my company, because I won’t have a job! The reality on our end is that our days are filled with searching for candidates, calls, interviews, resume submissions, etc – all of this is part of our productivity. The challenge is to balance the organized chaos and hectic nature of our business with the needs of our candidates in order to spend quality time with them, build their trust, and understand their career goals. Good recruiters will not make you feel rushed or like you are just a number in spite of the daily realities on our end. Good recruiters will not push you to accept an offer if it doesn’t meet your needs.

As a recruiter at UDig, I strive to build long-term relationships. This requires me to understand your career history, career aspirations, and life goals. Yes, I said it, life goals. Our careers are married to our life goals whether we realize it or not. So take the time to analyze your current career state and come up with a solid job search strategy. If you want to work with a recruiter, take the relationship seriously and help build an honest relationship. Personally, I look for open, timely, and honest communication. I commit to being transparent in our process and conversations. I will never abuse your trust, and I pledge to give you the best career advice I can offer. I expect the same level of transparency. We are on the same team, with the same goal: to advance your life and career, and hopefully I can earn your trust and respect along the way.

-Andy Tullo, UDig Senior Technical Recruiter

Applicants in this type of situation are faced with a difficult decision: Should I give the company access to my profile and private life? And if I don’t would it cost me the job? In the company’s defense, they are trying to learn more about potential employees–whether or not they display good character, if they are engaging in any type of inappropriate behavior or posting negative comments that could damage the reputation of their business.

However, if an applicant’s profile and posts are private (meaning they are not shown in a Google search) then that person should not have to share their account information. If the general public cannot see any information, and the employee is not posting anything about the company or employees, then there is little reason to believe that the user’s account would be negatively impacting the company in any way.

It’s important that companies do their background work when hiring potential employees–but there are other ways to do it without looking over their shoulder and checking out their Facebook profiles. In the end, an applicant’s privacy outweighs a company’s “need to know.” If employees consent to this type of background check, where will the line of privacy be drawn?

This topic has certainly been in the news a lot lately so we wanted to get some opinions from our readers…

Apple is running a seriously smooth operation in their retail stores. Each employee has a distinct role to play, understands that role, and does his/her part to deliver the level of service we’ve come to expect from this powerful brand. All of this requires serious alignment of brand, business goals and people process.

Finding the right people to work in the stores is half the battle. There are things that Apple’s retail arm does particularly well in organizational development–things any organization could learn from:

1. Know your roles! Tightly-defined roles ensure that your employees knows exactly what he or she is expected to do, what others do–and what other roles they could move into. Those boldly-colored tees Apple Store employees wear aren’t just for looks–they designate the distinct role each employee plays. From Experts who assess visitors’ needs, and direct them to the right place–to Geniuses who speak your language when something’s wrong with your precious MacBook–everyone in the store knows his or her place.
2. Free Up Your Leadership. When your workforce is deployed effectively–with minimal room in the process for bottle-necking–managers spend less time wondering who should be where and more time keeping the machine in ship shape. Apple Store employees are busy delivering Apple-grade customer service, so it’s up to leadership to maintain the same level of awesome day after day. They’re doing more than managing the operation–they’re coaching staff, leading training, and driving sales.
3. Make Work Meaningful. When your employees know that what they’re doing matters, it’s easier to inspire them to do their best. And no one appreciates this more than the employees staffing the stores, who are on the front lines of the customer relationship. Apple would be hard-pressed to deliver their standard of service in retail unless their employees were satisfied with the level of employee engagement. 
4. Retain With Growth Opportunities. Many organizations are struggling to retain top talent, but how many offer a great opportunity for college grads to make something of themselves? Despite having a great job portal on their site with multiple open positions, Apple prides itself on promoting from within. For the twenty-something Expert with a Master’s degree who’s manning the entrance to an Apple store today (I could name more than one), that’s pretty encouraging.

A Lesson for Your Grinding Gears

Organizational development at this caliber doesn’t just happen–but it’s a necessary part of a thriving company culture like Apple’s. Getting to that level requires open dialogue between senior leadership and business partners–and human resources and recruiting. You’ve already got Experts, Specialists, Geniuses and Creatives in your organization. It’s up to you to find them, engage them, and let them know you want them to grow with you.

About the Author: Kyle Lagunas is an HR Analyst at Software Advice, an online resource for talent management software buyers guides, demos and more. He reports on trends and best practices in human resources technology.

• The first St. Patrick’s Day parade took place in the United States on March 17, 1762, when Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York City.
• Until the 1970s, St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland was a minor religious holiday. Modern-day St. Patrick’s Day celebrations were basically invented in America by Irish-Americans. Irish charitable organizations originally celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with banquets in places such as Boston, Savannah and Charleston.
• On any given day 5.5 million pints of Guinness, the famous Irish stout brand, are consumed around the world but on St. Patrick’s Day, that number more than doubles to 13 million pints.
• More than 100 St. Patrick’s Day parades are held across the United States. New York City and Boston are home to the largest celebrations along with some notable cities such as Savannah.
• There are seven places in the United States named after the shamrock (the floral emblem of Ireland) Shamrock, TX and Shamrock, OK.
• Sixteen U.S. places share the name of Ireland’s capital – Dublin. Dublin, CA, is the largest followed by Dublin, OH.
• There are 34.7 million U.S. residents with Irish ancestry. This number is more than seven times the population of Ireland itself.
• Irish is the nation’s second most frequently reported ancestry, ranking behind German.
• Across the country, 11 percent of residents lay claim to Irish ancestry. That number more than doubles to 23 percent in the state of Massachusetts.
• There are approximately 144,588 current U.S. residents who were born in Ireland.

UDig wishes you a safe and happy St. Patty’s Day!

To learn more visit…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick’s_Day

http://www.history.com/topics/st-patricks-day-facts

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110316-saint-patricks-day-2011-march-17-facts-ireland-irish-nation/

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, when you are assessing your career some things to consider are your current situation, the timing, and identifying your motivating factors. This prep work will help you in choosing which opportunities to pursue. You should be selective. You can’t afford to waste time interviewing just to interview. There is tremendous opportunity cost to your time and the company’s time if you are not serious. This could jeopardize future opportunities with that employer if the right fit comes along down the road. You can throw the timing off of your search if you lose a day or two pursing options that are not viable.

Rule number one. Be fair to yourself. Organizations need to perform their own due diligence when interviewing multiple candidates. Interviewing with multiple organizations to find the right fit for your career is not a bad thing, and should not hurt your candidacy.

Rule number two. Be honest with yourself, the company, and the staffing agency (if you are working with one). The only way you can buy some time is to be upfront with your search and where you are in process with other opportunities. Once you realize that an opportunity is not a fit, pull yourself out of the running. If you get an offer you are not interested in, decline it as soon as possible. If you have a high level of interest, convey your enthusiasm.

Rule number three. Get all the information you need from the interview process. The only way you are going to be able to make an informed decision is to have identified what is important to you and how it aligns with the positions you are pursuing. It is up to you to get all those data points from the employers you are interviewing with to make an accurate assessment and decision. Check out UDig’s Interview Prep Guide for more insight.

The trick is to balance the timing of your options. And once you have identified the right opportunity, be decisive and be honest with the companies you are interviewing with in your job search. Surprises are bad, looking after your own interests is not. This is your life and your career. If you know what you are looking for, trust your gut feeling. You do not want to put an offer in jeopardy just to look at other options if your gut is telling you this is the job for you. Companies can pull offers if too much time elapses. The perception is that by putting off answering an offer indicates lack of interest. In most cases, this is true. There has to be something about the offer or opportunity that is not making you jump out of your seat to accept it. You either need more information or you are not interested. Don’t put yourself through the stress of contemplating options that do not make sense for you.

At the end of the day, it’s all about making the right career decision. You should feel free to explore all the options you need in order to find the right fit. There is a way to add integrity to your job search, be fair to recruiters and employers alike and ultimately find an opportunity that fits your career interests and life goals. It is complicated and stressful, and hopefully you have the appropriate support through that process to be confident in your decision. Happy hunting!

-Andy Tullo, UDig Senior Technical Recruiter