As an employer and as a job candidate, first impressions do matter.

The way you come across in your conversations and interactions, in person and online, will make a big impact on whether you get hired or find the ideal candidate. In the latter case, even if you are inundated with applicants, miscommunication or simply putting off the wrong vibe can mean that you end up with an employ who is considerably less desirable than if you had navigated the situation correctly. But knowing exactly how to manage early communications can be really difficult: it’s a tricky blend of personal and professional skills. The stakes feel very high, on both ends of the spectrum. So, without further ado, here are seven classic mistakes you should avoid.

In recent years, business owners and managers have been talking about a skilled labor shortage.

Top talents are thin on the ground, and there's no one to charge with brand missions. It was 18 years ago when The War for Talents described the competition for talented employees as a given, but companies still continued spending a fortune on recruitment agencies, latest sourcing technologies, and building an employer brand instead of stop making the glaring mistakes while recruiting candidates.

Yes, it's challenging to tailor the process so it would suit the diverse pool of job applicants. But, as a professional recruiter, you need to knock it out of the park for attracting top talents.

"Looking for skills rather than attitude," "poorly-written job ads," or "not asking the right interview questions" are copybook maxims already, so we won't focus on them here. Instead, let's take a look at more subtle but no less frequent and crucial mistakes you might be making while recruiting. 

Let's talk about productivity; it's something everyone is trying to boost, no matter your job, niche, or industry. However, it does look like, regardless of how we spend our days, we never seem to have enough hours in the day.   

Outsourcing is a hot topic that in some cases can become easily debatable. 

Even with a casual conversation about exploring the benefits of outsourcing for business efficiency, the comparison of its benefits or detriments has many points from both sides. Yet, when your company is looking at efficiency options, outsourcing still has many perks.

Of course, when you jump into the outsourcing discussion from a budgeting perspective, it becomes a much more sensitive topic with questions that arise if it should come from an offshore provider, or by a more recent trend selecting “nearshore” companies providing a similar but uniquely different alternative.

Being based in the U.S., often I’ve seen existing recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) companies or new companies describe themselves as “global” in the staffing industry.  More specifically, they present an outsourcing or offshoring solution that is “tailor-made” or “customized” to provide a recruitment service in a specific geography outside of their home country. But, do they actually provide global hiring?  

A Goldman Sachs recent report suggested the US economy is growing at a rate of 3.5%; or in other words — at twice the rate Goldman themselves forecast this time last year. Impressive reading for sure, but how does it translate into job creation in the U.S. labor market? What new opportunities are set to present themselves? And how easy will it be for businesses to find the right new hires as we move into 2019?

The way companies recruit people has changed in the past few years. In the current candidate-driven job market, candidates have the power in the recruitment process.

A good illustration of this trend is that 95 percent of the people businesses want to hire for critical positions are not looking for a job. As a result, recruiting people has become more expensive and time-consuming for companies. Employers are competing for the best candidates who are treated as customers. This had made effective recruitment strategies all the more important.

With the growing Me Too movement, the pay gap between men and women in the workforce is being brought into the spotlight. In 2015, American women working full time were paid 80% of what their male counterparts made on average, creating a pay gap of 20% (AAUW 2017). Some companies are striving to close the gender gap and have found that what they perceive and what is reality can be two very different things. Here are seven tips to help a company find balance in their workforce.

Talent Acquisition and RPO Leaders, picture this: you’re standing at the proverbial “alter” of business relationships, ready to sign the contract linking your future success and happiness to each other, promising to love, honor, cherish and be faithful, as long as you both shall live (or at least “love”).  So how can you be sure your new marriage will succeed?    

Once upon a time, in Silicon Valley, some pioneering modern tech companies decided to experiment with a new hiring model, which was collaborative recruitment. This technology consists of involving the employees themselves in the recruitment process. Today, the collaborative recruitment model has made its way beyond the Valley and is now becoming increasingly popular worldwide. Here, we will look at the reasons why the employees need to be involved in the hiring process.