What is the benefit of leveraging online communities as well as tools like the Sales Drive test?  It can save you LOTS of time and weed out poor candidates who look good on paper.

Hiring in a “2.0″ World
Today’s Hiring Process
We’re in the process of hiring for several positions here at Mzinga. Given the fact that we are a company focused on building community for other businesses, the thought occurred to me that I might start practicing what we preach in the world of recruiting. In order to do this, changes to the existing process need to be made.

Like many other companies, here’s what our basic hiring process looks like today:

• Open a job requisition
• Write job description
• Post job description
• Take in resumes
• Call/e-mail back potential candidates
• Interview leading candidates
• Hire the best candidate (in a perfect world at least)

Don’t get me wrong, you can obviously get good candidates this way. For instance, when I needed to hire a marketing manager a year ago, I followed the process above and posted my job description to one of the oldest communities on the Web i.e. Craigslist. The result was impressive - 30+ resumes in 48 hours and several qualified candidates. However, what was broken about the process is that I ended up spending the better part of two weeks doing interviews. This go around, I don’t have that same luxury so I need to find a better way to locate the best possible candidates with the right skill sets.

What’s Broken | How to Fix It
The two biggest issues I have with the process I’ve outlined above is one, it’s hard to really learn much about a person from a resume. Personally, I’ve been professionally employed for nearly 20 years now and I’ll be damned if 3-4 pages in a Word document can do just to my experience during that time. Seth Godin talks more about this problem in one of his recent posts (thanks to @drthomasho for passing that post along.)

Now I understand that this is a necessary evil but that’s where the power of community and social networks can really augment the process. In today’s world:

• Why not see what my friends have to say about me on LinkedIn?
• Look at what’s been written about me (good or bad) on Google search results.
• Check out my writing style and thought process on my work and/or personal blog.
• See who my professional and personal contacts are on Facebook.

My other issue I have is that even if someone looks great on paper, they may not be great in person. Now short of perfecting video conferencing (even that can be gamed), there is no substitute for a face-to-face meetings. However, if I could get a better sense of who someone is first beyond the 25-30 bullets they’ve used to sum up their career, I may be able to weed out people earlier on in the process. Conversely, I may be end up NOT weeding out someone that would have been cut early because I loved their blog or I know two or three of their colleagues.

What’s in this for Me/Us?
If this works I:

• Can eliminate at least two or three steps from the hiriing process.
• Don’t need to pay a broker - I can post on my communities (Facebook, Twitter and Craigslist)
• Should have a much higher success rate with whomever I hire because I’ll already know a lot about them.

What’s in this for You?

• A competitive salary
• A great job in a hot market
• 401(k) plan
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• You get to work with me!

For companies looking for best practices in b2b lead generation who wish to improve the way they acquire new customers, Find New Customers is the place to go.  CSO Insights says companies need to improve the way they generate leads and implement processes for business to business lead generation.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is a demand generation expert and sales leader, as well as the President of Find New Customers, a lead generation company, who helps businesses create lead generation campaigns and continually publishes the best lead generation ideas, so his readers can determine the best lead generation strategy to find new customers.  He can be reached at (516) 284-4930 or mailto:[email protected].