Experts say job growth is expected this year and recruiters may step up efforts to find the right candidates.
But the ways in which they’ll find those workers won’t necessarily be traditional.
Will Boland, chief administrative officer for Sageworks, a Raleigh, N.C.-based firm that analyzes industry financials, said some recruiters would post openings on sites such as CareerBuilder, Craigslist or LinkedIn, but not all of them. The biggest frustration in posting jobs this way is the sheer volume of responses.
More employers are using social media sites such as Facebook to find candidates, while others are hitting the streets in search of workers.
Here is a sampling of recruiting methods from several business sectors:
ACCOUNTING/FINANCE: Kevin Suksi, a recruiter for consulting and executive search firm Accretive Solutions in Troy, Mich., recently posted a job to his Facebook friends looking for a logistics manager for a consumer products company in metro Detroit. The candidate needed trade experience in China.
While Suksi typically focuses on accounting and finance jobs, he will turn to Facebook when trying to fill something unusual.
“You just never know who knows who,” he said.
But for the bread-and-butter jobs such as chief financial officers or certified public accountants, he is more likely to use LinkedIn, the professional networking site.
“The group that we are targeting in metro Detroit is a pretty finite group, and we pretty much know who they are,” he said. “I think that our core value to companies is that we are able to get to people who are passive, who they wouldn’t get on their own.”
MORTGAGE: For jobs that require strong customer service skills, there’s nothing more effective than going out to find them at their current jobs, said Michelle Salvatore, director of recruiting for Detroit-based Quicken Loans.
“We’re doing a more rogue-recruiting style where we will send the recruiters out on the streets,” she said.
The company’s recruiters, for instance, will approach people who work at stores.
She says that up to 20 percent of hires are personally approached by her in-house recruiting team. Salvatore oversees 27 recruiters.
Her team also uses on-site job fairs and online job sites to find candidates, particularly for the mortgage banker position, which has the highest turnover of any job at the company. The company needs to hire 1,200 mortgage bankers a year to keep up with demand and turnover.
Quicken Loans is in a trial over a lawsuit from more than 300 people working as mortgage bankers in Michigan and Ohio who argue they should have received overtime pay from 2002 to 2006.
RETAIL: With 30 percent turnover, Wal-Mart is recruiting pretty much nonstop. Baldomero Silva, division human resources senior director who oversees Ohio, Michigan and parts of Pennsylvania, said much of the hourly and management recruiting happens at the company’s website, www.walmartstores.com/careers, and in-store kiosks.
For the three states, he’s looking for more than 30,000 employees a year. The company also recruits at job fairs in communities, colleges and military locations. And starting in June, Silva will be looking for 300 employees for its new store in Southgate.
GOVERNMENT: The U.S. Patent and Trade Office expects to start hiring in April to fill 100 patent examiner jobs and about 10 administrative jobs at its first satellite office in Detroit.
“We are looking at engineers,” said Peggy Focarino of the Patent Office. “In terms of locations, we looked at Detroit as a pretty rich environment. We’re not concerned about having a lack of applicants. Some of them have law degrees or practical experience.”
The area also has a high unemployment rate and a wealth of engineers. They will be chief among applicants for the jobs, which have an average $70,000 annual salary. The government also wants candidates with intellectual property experience.
Applicants for these and other federal government jobs must apply through USAJobs, www.usajobs.gov, the government’s job site.
MORE RECRUITERS USING SOCIAL MEDIA:
A 2010 survey by Jobvite found that social media are increasingly used by recruiters to find new employees. More than 600 human resource professionals participated in the online survey that found:
?73 percent of companies use social media to support their recruitment efforts.
?Among recruiters, LinkedIn is the most popular site, with 78 percent using the site to recruit, followed by Facebook at 55 percent and Twitter at 45 percent.
?65 percent of companies have dedicated social-media accounts with LinkedIn for recruiting. Another 39 percent have Facebook accounts for recruiting
Source: McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
