Freedo !: Staffing

Green Recruiting Becoming a Force in Recruiting Interns and College Grads

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:43:02 GMT

Quote:

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of participating in the Kennedy Information 2007 recruiting conference in Orlando. Virtually every employer engaged in the recruitment of college students for internships and recent graduates for entry level jobs and other career opportunities was focusing their attention on two topics: recruitment videos and green recruiting.
As eloquently stated by John Sullivan,
The new thrust of green recruiting is proactive and focuses on making "greenness" a major element of your employment brand. Some of the reasons why green recruiting is becoming more essential include:
• Gen Y demands it. This generation has learned about the importance of the environment and recycling in classes since elementary school. They filter both product purchasing and job selection choices with their green mindset.
• College grads demand it. Al Gore is a hero on most campuses. Students, while they are on campus, demand that every aspect of their campus life leave a minimal "environmental footprint." On my campus, San Francisco State University, even the most conservative of all schools, the College of Business is developing a "sustainability" major to satisfy the student demand for integrating business and the environment. It has become so important that even starting salaries take a back seat behind "greenness" when students evaluate potential employers.
• Many job candidates care about it. Although no one has yet quantified the impact that being environmentally friendly has on recruits, if you ask candidates whether working for an environmentally friendly company is important to them, a vast majority will respond with an affirmative.
• Global candidates can be passionate about it. Some countries around the world are extremely passionate about the environment (Germany, Australia, and Finland to name a few). As a result, if you expect to recruit the best from around the world, you must be prepared to meet a growing set of eco-expectations as an employer.
More and more recruiters understand that recruiting is selling. It is selling the candidate on how compelling are the opportunities provided by your organization. And right now in the world of college recruiting few things matter more to candidates than the opportunity to good for their community and living and working green are inherent in that.
If your firm is green or if it can start to become green, then your firm will have a huge advantage on-campus if you are able and willing to communicate that (sell that) to your target market, the students and recent graduates. But don't tell them you're green if you're not because today's candidates are far too savvy to be fooled and far too likely to ridicule your organization in well read blogs and other forums that likely rank higher in search engine results than does your organization's own web site.
As Sullivan stated, "green recruiting is a chance to differentiate yourself in a recruiting marketplace where standing out from the crowd is already extremely difficult. Incidentally, not only does green recruiting improve your chances of attracting and selling candidates, it's also your chance as a recruiter to do your part to improve the environment by showing senior management the dollar impact it has on recruiting, retention, and product sales."

Back from holiday, with up9rade.com :)

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 13:33:27 GMT

In meeting with Prakash today, he asked me how's the break, I said, well, thinking about candidates all days. Just kidding...

Yes, looks like I had a colorful national holiday:

30th Evening, watched the fireworks in century park.

2nd AM, cash box & walking round streets.

5th PM, sauna in xiaonanguo.

6th PM, attended friend's wedding.

7th PM, yangchenhu crab dinner,just 1 :)

And all the rest of time, spent on www.up9rade.com , my first website related to daily works...

up9rade your IT career through up9rade.com

Why have true faith with Microsoft staffing?

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:07:56 GMT

I was sitting beside the test Mgr of Sql team in shuttle bus went home together yesterday.

He's a western, worked for Microsoft for 4 years, and before that, had worked for large & start up software companies.

He choosed to work in SQL team Shanghai voluntarily, now he leads the team for MDAC testing.

Over the chatting, he's pretty proud of: what we are doing now, is the best compares with Redmond did before. MDAC team wins the respect, we are the strongest. We own the component independently.

Why do you work for Microsoft:

I still believe Microsoft is the best place for programmer to go, only look at the huge product families, has almost everything. I have worked for different types of companies...

So, why I staffing for Microsoft?

First of all, because the bar is very high, and it won't be lowered because of hard to find great candidates...Of course, which makes staffing a challenging job, while, on the contrary, which builts the truth faith for Microsoft staffing: we have the smart people, great team, doing cutting edge products. Isn't it the best selling point to those great programmers?

Second:

You don't like to manage people, what your interests is in programming, fine, keep what you like to do, you own the engineer's title, yet could get paid by your contribution level.

You like to manage people, fine, from engineer, you could be development or test lead, group manager, product unit manager and vice president.

Current GM of STB Shanghai was a test engineer. Current GM of SQL China R&D team was a dev.

Third, we have the policy for internal rotation.

An employee worked for more than 1 year, he's eligible for internal rotation with his manager's approval.

And once he worked for more than 1.5 year, even his manager's approval is not required.

The policy, which means, if you are software development engineer of test for one product, free for you to go to another product group as software development engineer or a program manager.

Even, an HR could apply program manager's position as well.

We offer comprehensive opportunities for them to grow.

Based on above, I have confidence & faith in Microsoft staffing.

I have seem people chasing after opportunities, have not seem opportunities chasing after people.

Don't apply for a work, grab a chance to change the life.

You ready facing the change?

Back from Linux World

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:08:03 GMT

I backed from the 2 days' linux world last Sunday.

Besides first time be real standing on the Tian An Meng (this is the fifth time for me trip in Beijing), also learned what happened out sie :) and glad to know you nice people...

Show the pictures of that event, took by mobile, some are fuzzy...

Sponsors' list

Novel Suse Linux running games

vmware, on the other side of MS, they do not have offices China yet

Seminar

In front of MS Booth, guess what's the gift? : )

MS CRD

Entrance, what's the course today?

Lab of DIY

MS experts in lesson

I will be there

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 14:20:33 GMT

Microsoft will participate in the "Linux World 2007" event, this is the third time for Microsoft for joining this activities.

For the first time, Microsoft will have a "booth" (a seperated room for showcases/demo and experience our product), and I will be there.

I did a search in google for the keywords of "Linux World 北京", the first news is entitled with:

" 前来踢馆!微软参加Linux World北京站 "

I would think this is more like the game of media. I'm not in the right position to speak of the the activity and even the attitude of "Open Source" of Microsoft. (I attached the ticket of the event, so if you interested , you could come and see)

I want to say something from my personal perspective:

1. I'm an open source beneficiary, I have 4 computers, 2 of them (including 1 server) installed Redhat Center OS. I'm running web service based on the "LAMP", (Linux, Apache, Mysql, Php), for these 4 products, they are very cool, especially for php, provides a lot of flexibilities.

2. This topic is very sensitive, because I'm going to talk about linux & windows, they are all based on my own experience:

"我曾经尝试过用linux作为桌面操作系统，但是最终放弃了，主要原因不是因为应用软件太少，而是它的桌面美化，至少当时我尝试了不同版本以及方法，但是相比较来说，字体的效果和windows相比较相差太大。但是作为网络服务器操作系统，我的应用非常满意，非常少当机"

I have encountered with some challenging questions during interivews, for the kind of questions:

What do you think about open source and Linux?

Candidates may think is fun to ask Microsoft people this kind of questions.

Ok, here is my answer, just personal:

I like open source, Linux is cool. Microsoft Sever & Linux they have different focus areas, they are both very cool.

3. What do I come to this even for?

To learn, to feel.

We are not the best on everywhere, here not only means on technical, also, I want to understand, on the working environment & process aspects, what are the differences? and where can we make improvements.

Keep heart open, learn what's happening out of there.

I hope could have the opportunity of you, talk to me, and I will be on behalf of MS China R&D team, on the staffing perspective.

Here more pictures to come:

the booth: 1

the booth: 2

Get it printed and see me! I will sign there : )

staffing @ Microsoft, from HR perspective

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 14:11:28 GMT

I got a call from a friend who's a staffing manager in a multinational company, he said he needs something new for him, to help him think out of the box, upgrade the daily routing work.

"I have just finished an e-tracking system, with launching of this, the recruiters could track the hiring status real time" He said, "and I need to see is there any space I could develop".

Is not like we are at the age of "all of the invents could be invented, already been invented", frequently, we will feel kinds of bottle neck on personal career, same applies to staffing.

"Tell me the good things in MS, I heard you got very good candidate selection, testing questionnaires, and so on, share with me". I'm glad to exchange what I did here, and there's a huge place for him, worth investing times in, I told him.

"What's that though? Since I already implemented e-recruitment system, e-tracking, e approval system, every simple process of interview already be documented, what else left though?"

There are couple of simple examples I want to share:

1. Every of the win candidte passed at least 5 rounds interviews at Microsoft.

2. Every candidate hire or no hire, each of the interviewers writes detailed interview comments, which should be reasonable enough, because he needs to send to every of the other interviewers.

3. Hire first of all, for Microsoft, then for department.

4. Every single hire, candidate recieves interviews from the original department and and other departments, maybe cross functions.

5. The interviewer from none-direct deparments will never say no to the invitation.

6. Not everyone could play as interviewer, the interviewer within MS is experienced and "well trained" on how to interview.

7. When in doubt, hire or no hire, the rule is no hire.

...

I could list more like that...

So if talking about different on hiring between different companies, industries, first of all , the root cause is "how do the employer value his people". The root course could leads thousands of different activities in staffing.

"Most valuable assets is people", I know this is reallly working here.

The "buy in" from the hiring manager and management for staffing makes staffing different.

So, if you are in a reality of: hiring manager often puts unreasonable requests, interviewings are treat in hush, interviewers never give feedback in written... etc

That is not really rely on ourselves to make a change on the world, but, making efforts on this direction will never give you a feeling of "ok, I'm done, everything I could make to improve staffing service, I have done".

On the contrary, we could impact from a small group of hiring manager, but telling:

Compares with the desaster, endless problems brought by bringing in wrong people, it's definitely worthwhile to spend a little bit more time talk with recruiters, pay more attention on interviews.

And when we could make the change on the tough environments like above, staffing is no more headache.

You enjoy, you win respect, and you show the great value to the company.