MYU (CEO), Doug (Recruiter) and Joe (ReachingTalent) prepare the meat for fajitas.

Bryan (Senior Recruiter) and Jimmy (COO) make sure the beer is well taken care of.

Kim (NITRO Research Analyst), Jennifer (Talent Acquisition Coordinator) and Alysia (Talent Acquisition Coordinator) pause for a picture.

Our friends and co-sponsors at the Austin Technology Council, along with MYU, Cory (VP of Talent Acquisition), Hank (Stringer Executive Search) and Jimmy.

Mmmmm, BBQ.

Hank, giving an animated speech as MYU adds his two cents.

Molly (Recruiter) brings around samples to our guests.

Say cheese, Novotians!

It keeps getting better and better! I can’t wait for the Tailgate to roll around next year! You can see the rest of the pictures at our Picasa page.

(As is to be expected, Myu’s fajitas were decadently delicious.)

Blackbird Tees has a line of shirts tailored for those on the job hunt. Their Resume Tees will let you showcase to the world your accomplishments in a concise, neat package. You might be standing in line for a concert and get recruited. It’s also a great conversation starter. How convenient!

While my friends and I were in college, Facebook exploded. We all got one and expressed our geeky selves through them. We made groups for Pirate Ninja Zombie Robots and posted pictures. Granted, this wasn’t the only way we made our presence known. We have/had our blogs, websites, podcasts and email. But in the social networking arena, Facebook reigns supreme in effectiveness and ease of use. Best of all, you could get all the scoops on your friends without having to visit individual sites. Snazzy! Of course, we have RSS now as well. (Speaking of which, did you subscribe to this blog yet? You should keep yourself updated on RPO news.)

Facebook used to require a college email address to sign up. I remember there was a link to “Request Facebook for your school!” This kept the spam accounts to a minimum. Now registration is open to anyone. You can make friends with Lindsey Lohan, Martha Washington, and Vin Diesel. You have the option to be very selective about who friends you, and can reject that connection if you so choose.

LinkedIn is the social networking site for professionals (but deep down, it’s very similar to Facebook). I suppose you could create a fake account for LinkedIn, but the professional accountability component tends to deter spam accounts. What would be the point? If LinkedIn had gone through with their April 1 2008 gag, that would result in even fewer spam incidents. Like Facebook, you need not connect with someone if you don’t want to.

Facebook is completely free, unless you want special add-ons. LinkedIn’s basic level is free, but upgrades are available: one can pay for inMails to reach out to new people, and they have a corporate account program. LinkedIn does what it’s designed to do quite well: it puts people in touch with each other and turns a profit. Facebook has controls in place to deter the kind of web-weaving that is encouraged on LinkedIn. However, the recruiters at Novotus are a tenacious group. As with any new tool, the early adopters reap the biggest rewards. I would be interested in seeing long term candidate-point-of-origin metrics on these two groups.

The crux is an evaluation is about how well a tool works. From my experience, a recruiter is far more likely to find a candidate on LinkedIn than Facebook. Why’s that? Well, LinkedIn was designed to find business contacts, plain and simple. Facebook was designed to keep up with friends. Facebook does have a few groups centered on getting jobs, and people are free to promote whatever they want to their groups, but it’s not the key to what they provide. But that’s one of the great things about Novotus; we find ways to make technology work for us. The next time you’re on Facebook, add the Novotus group.

Duh. So is Gen X. In fact, so are several baby boomers I know. (My neighbor, for example, talks to her mother on Skype every day.) I just think it’s funny that there are some companies just now realizing they need to replace their printable PDFs with dynamic career pages – but I’m glad they are coming around, because it really alleviates some of the pain of looking for a new career.

I’m guessing some of these companies lack the internal staff to develop such career sites that could be so much more compelling with videos, blogs and podcasts – who has time and skill to develop career sites like the one at Superior Energy, for example?

Fortunately, there are companies who specialize in this, like, of course, Novotus‘ own ReachingTalent. Seeing ahead of the curve, we knew candidates would soon demand a better way, and companies would respond. They have, and we’re glad to have the resources to help them when they can’t help themselves. Now, if we could just figure out a way to help candidates and employers read each other’s minds. Stay tuned…we’ll be getting to that next.

From what I can gather, the recruiting world thinks the new generation is a collection of simpering, whiny brats, clinging to Mommy and Daddy, and howling at the slightest criticism. I’ve heard anecdotes about hiring managers refusing to hire a Millennial, Gen Y, or (as my mother affectionately calls them) The Me Generation, because they are too busy or don’t want to take the time to instruct and coddle the newcomers. They’re offended by the high maintenance new employee, and the kids’ inability to take lumps and suck it up.

This riles me, as it’s incredibly discriminatory. Eschewing entire classes of graduates purely because of a perceived cross-generational attribute is stereotyping. In addition to that, a few companies (for example, Office Depot, Enterprise Rent-a-Car and the U.S. Army) have special information for parents whose offspring are applying for jobs with the company. The Army has a website devoted to the subject, while Office Depot and Enterprise mail information about the company to parents of new employees (with employee permission, of course). I can understand the armed forces reaching out to parents to bring in recruits, but public companies? I think these offers for information are fueling the “helicopter parents” hype, and further sensationalism.

I giggle at the phrase “helicopter parents”, a happily bandied about term, of which there has been little actual research. The most I’ve been able to find on the subject have been informal polls. These parents are everywhere at once: baking pies for the PTA bake sale, chaperoning field trips, writing their children’s college entrance essays, calling professors to harass them about their children’s performance, calling their (adult) children’s bosses to get the low-down on performance, and still finding time to hold their own jobs and lives. I’m not saying the phenomenon doesn’t exist, but that there is little reason to fear that your next hire will come with Mom and Dad in tow.

My parents certainly weren’t that overbearing, and if any of my friends had parents so involved, they’d be mortified to admit it. I assume that these children of helicopter parents never learn to set appropriate boundaries, but their chances to do so would have been limited. When your every move is scripted, and your day planned by a person who sees you as an extension of their self-worth, it’s nigh impossible to learn those skills. Does that mean the instruction falls to the next organization they affiliate with? Or should this be taught in colleges? I can see it now: the 8am class of “Standing on Your Own Two Feet, and Other Life Skills” has three students attending, and the other 20 simply have Dad call Professor Mercer to argue a better grade.

I could be the beginning of Gen Y (1981 – 2000), or in the middle of the MTV Generation (1975-1985), or Cold Generation Y (1980 – 1985), or the very tail end of Generation X (1962 – 1982), or an XY cusper. Terminology surrounding generational studies is fluid as mercury. It’s impossible to attach a list of potential attributes to every member a group born over a 20-year span.

So, how does this all fold back to recruiting? It would be a recruiter’s job to flesh out exactly what a hiring manager is looking for; in addition, many hiring managers look to their recruiter for guidance and education. When a recruiter and a hiring manager have a trusted partnership, the hiring manger gets the best possible people for their job, even if they are young, and require different direction than the hiring manager received. One of the strong talents with Novotus is that our recruiters take time to educate the hiring manager. It’s above and beyond a stack of resumes, and into a realm of honest communication, and the sharing of our knowledge base.

The other option is to not hire anyone below age 30 for the next fifteen years, but then you’d be missing out on all the great talent and creativity of youth. American companies thrive on innovation, and ambitious graduates have it in spades.

It’s also a great way to earn a visit from your friendly EEOC auditor.

Who cares? My colleagues. Almost every single file that is on my computer is also on the wiki, which is accessible to them, and all the notes I have taken are recorded there as well. Forget attachments. When I email someone a bit of information, I send them a simple link.

This quote by our CEO Mike Mayeux is what prompted me to dig deeper: “We found that it [the wiki] was great way to capture people’s knowledge so over time, the person coming in behind them can benefit from their experience. So as knowledge evolves, the new information is over written on the previous information so you can see the evolution of it.”

It’s amazing, the current and valuable information I have learned from my colleagues as well as the decreased training time I needed to do my job. It’s like a great big brain.

Coming from a company with a limited grasp on the power of a knowledge database, I see very clearly how a simple collaboration tool can improve the entire business process.

For a closer glance at how we use the wiki and operate as a business, visit this blog: Angel Investing in Austin: Mike Mayeux of Novotus – Purveyor of the Knowledge Base.

-Jada Brazell

Marketing Coordinator

There are millions and possibly billions of job descriptions out there. Some with eye catching titles that compel you to want to click and find out more, and some with titles that compel about the same reaction as stumbling upon Star Trek episode 397 on a Sunday afternoon. The only thing that could get me to watch an episode of Star Trek is if the alternative was watching NASCAR on Fox! (Sorry, all you NASCAR fans )

In all seriousness though, I have nothing against NASCAR, Captain Picard’s irresistible bald head, or reading rainbow man with the X-Men visor over his eyes. The point I am trying to prove is that we are no longer in the days where there are 5 basic channels to watch. Now there’s Direct TV, and with literally hundreds of channels to choose, from the likes of The Disaster Channel, Farmer’s Almanac TV, Shower Channel, and Taxidermy TV, the challenge here is not simply getting people to surf to your channel, but to surf there and STAY! In a society that almost ignores status quo and adores “shock factor”, it is only appropriate that you start to dole out the shock factor and tailor our job titles, and job descriptions to compel candidates to 1) Click on your job ad 2) Read the job description 3) Take Action – AKA – Apply for the job!

Have you ever seen one of Ron Popeil’s infomercials? Probably most well known for his Showtime Rotisserie Oven, he’s sold over $2 Billion worth of glorified microwave ovens. Over the year as I’ve watched the Showtime Rotisserie commercials, I’ve learned 3 essential things that he’s mastered. 1) How to quickly grab your attention and create excitement in what is essentially a commodity– An Oven! 2) How to keep your attention. 3) How to compel people to take action and BUY!

In this series entitled “How the Showtime Rotisserie oven taught me how to make compelling job descriptions”, I will walk you through the key elements of creating a compelling description. Our goal here is not to cause a controversy, but simply to re-think the way things have been done and approach job descriptions in a way other people aren’t. After reading this series articles, you will walk away with the tools to separate yourself from the millions of other job descriptions out there, and create some “WOW” factor. The benefits to you as a recruiter are 3 fold. Save Time. Save Money. Save Frustration and endless hair pulling. Unless, of course you’re a trekky and going after the Captain Picard look.

-Johnny Chang

Recruiter