In his career, Riges has been involved with five start-ups in HR Technology and Executive Search in New York, London and Australia.  Riges’ uncanny knack for staying ahead of the curve saw him launch Australia’s first social recruiting and employee referral platform delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS) called 2Vouch.com. A serial entrepreneur, Riges has often conjured up ways to use new and mainstream technologies in the pursuit of talent.  A subject matter expert on talent acquisition and proactive recruiting, Riges possesses an acute grasp of the big picture with a strong focus on how to leverage technology and the social web to achieve talent acquisition, talent attraction and talent management objectives.

Riges resides in Melbourne, Australia.  No doubt he will be a tremendous resource to our customers and a wonderful addition to the Avature global sales team.  You can email Riges directly at riges dot younan at avature dot net or connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.

Dear Michael,

I came across your profile and feel you could be a match for a position I am working on. Our client is a founding-stage startup in the SaaS HR, Resource Management and Business Execution Software sector. We are seeking a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) to develop, refine and roll out the company’s marketing strategy and plan to the global market. This is both a strategic and “hands on” tactical role, requiring a prior successful track record in innovative market strategies, unconventional inbound marketing campaigns, a rapid product adoption cycle, and growing brand recognition. You will lead key initiatives while defining and managing the necessary steps to launch and grow the company toward global market success.

Reporting to the CEO, the CRO will be a part of the company’s founding executive team and will be responsible for leadership and management of all global marketing activities. The core objective will be focused on developing the commercial success of the SaaS product, and generating rapid awareness and demand in the marketplace. In addition, the CRO will shape the brand, and position the company as the emerging leader in SaaS-based HR and Human Capital/Resource Management arena. Previous participation in and contribution to successful VC funding of a San Francisco Bay Area venture is a plus.

If this sounds like you, and the kind of opportunity you have been seeking or hoping for, please send your resume and cover letter to: xxxxx@xxxxxxxstaffing.com

I look forward to hearing from you,

Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx

Some of you may be wondering why I would have a bone to pick with this inmail.  Seems to be well written.  And I agree that it is.  But has this recruiter thought through who the recipient of this inmail will be?  I doubt it.  Her client is looking for a Chief Revenue Officer so the first thing she should be thinking about is who that person is, what they like, don’t like, what their day looks like, etc. –  the things marketers think about when they discuss relevance.  Relevance is the secret sauce in effective engagement.

So lets examine the inmail again.  She opened up with one sentence acknowledging me – that she came across my profile.  Congratulations Ms. Recruiter, you can search LinkedIn.  My profile tells you quite a bit about my career.  So instead of writing one or two more sentences about my profile – acknowledging that I have sales leadership experience in HR software, that I’ve worked in start-up environments, etc, etc, etc, all the things her client is looking for – she spends the next two paragraphs with an obvious copy and paste from the job description (the JD could have been provided as a link to the job their careers site).  So now assuming that I’ve read two paragraphs in an inmail from someone I don’t know (which is not likely anyway) she then closes by asking me to send her my resume and cover letter if I’m interested.  Are you kidding me?!?!  I’m not even close to considering a new job and am senior enough for her to recruit me for a CRO position and she’s asking me, as a next step based on her two paragraph email, to send her my resume and cover letter (which I don’t even have).  I’ve never met her, don’t know her, don’t know anyone that knows her, know very little about the job and nothing about the management team at the company, etc.  Hell, I don’t even know who the company is!!  And she wants me to blindly send off my resume and cover letter?  Yikes!  No thanks.

So take my advice and stop using LinkedIn inmails as a lazy way to blast out a message to a bunch of people.  You’re not doing yourself any favors.  Being social means creating value for the network before  you take from it.  Take the time to build relationships and understand the person and make sure they know you’ve taken the time to understand them.  It’s an intimate thing so treat it like that.  Get smart and make the message about them and their career first and the job you’re pitching second.  It’s classic consultative selling technique – discover the prospects needs first and then position the product accordingly.  And never ask for the business too early or you’ll blow the sale.  In other words, don’t ask a prospect for their resume and cover letter in your first inmail.

When Mike’s not thinking about cutting edge technology in recruiting (which isn’t very often) you’ll find him cheering on his hometown sports teams from Buffalo, NY, hanging out with his wife, two kids, and dog Louie, or playing an occasional round of golf followed by grilling and drinking some hopped up craft beer from a local brewery.

We’re thrilled to have Mike on the US sales team and look forward to his contributions towards Avature’s growth.  Mike can be reached at mike dot owcarz at avature dot net or connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.

Given the complex business challenges of recent years, we’re sure you’ll agree that success as a Talent Management professional has required unusual creativity and vision. With that in mind, this year’s annual conference provides an abundance of learning and developmental opportunities that focus on a variety of recruiting, talent management and leadership issues that are critical to your business. This year’s program promises to be both educational and entertaining. And, of course, you will have the opportunity to meet, network and share ideas with many of your colleagues from around the world.

For further information about the event, including the agenda, and to register online, please click here.

Social Portal – The Living Database

Any portal, whether you’re using portals as a careers site, microsites, or landing pages, now allows candidates to register using their social profile from LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google+.  And we’re planning to add Xing and Viadeo shortly.  The candidate selects which social profile they want to use by selecting that sites favicon (the little icons for Facebook, LinkedIn, and G+ shown above).  That prompts the candidate to authenticate with their username and password for the social site and grant permission to access certain elements of their profile – contact information, updates, etc.  Once completed, the candidate then completes any other information you want to capture from them in the form (e.g. years of experience, areas of interest, locations of interest, resume upload, etc.).  They click submit and they are now in your Avature database.  The beauty of this however is that now you can view their social profile inside the Avature system on their record – and you’re always viewing their most recent information.  Additionally, if the candidate updates any of their information on their social profile on LinkedIn, Facebook, or G+ we record that in the Journal on their record.

Mobile Portals

Mobile is probably the hottest topic in recruiting today (along with social).  The world of talent acquisition, and rightly so, is scrambling to make their web content – i.e. careers sites – mobile friendly.  No need to list the reasons why here as there are plenty of data to back that up – it’s simply where more and more of the world is doing their browsing.  With Avature, any portal you have can be made in a mobile friendly version – your careers site, microsites, or landing pages.  And by any portal, we mean any portal.

If you’re interested in hearing more about these two portal options – for any of your existing Avature portals or if you’re new to Avature – please email sales@avature.net.

Chris Hogan joins Avature as Vice President of Sales, Midwest based in Chicago, IL where he will be responsible for new business development in the region.  Chris is a recruiting software veteran having previously worked with the Avature management team at HotJobs.com and most recently with Talent Technologies as Regional Sales Director and with The Newman Group as a Managing Consultant.  Chris brings a deep understanding of recruitment software and strategy to the Avature team and, more importantly, to his customers that will benefit from his breadth of knowledge in the space.  Connect with Chris on LinkedIn.

Chrissy Baker joins Avature as a Strategic Account Manager based in Charlotte, NC where she will be working closely with several of Avature’s enteprise customers helping them to gain maximum ROI from the system.  Chrissy came to Avature from First Advantage where she was an Account Executive in the Hiring Solutions Group.  We’re thrilled to have her as part of the Avature family and look forward to all that she’ll do in partnering with our growing list of customers.  Connect with Chrissy on LinkedIn.

Kelsey Sampson joins Avature as Western Regional Sales Manager based in Portland, OR where she will be responsible for new business development in the Western US.  Kelsey joins Avature from legal process management company Exterro,  where she was Regional Business Development Manager; eDiscovery & Compliance.  Kelsey is a natural when it comes to technology, brings an outsiders perspective to the talent acquisition landscape, and loves innovation – a perfect match for Avature!  Connect with Kelsey on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter.

Setting up a Sourcing Function using Avature as the Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) – Presentation Transcript

Setting up a Sourcing Function at Raytheon using Avature as the Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) Presentation by: Justin Clem, TA Manager Raytheon THE BUILDING OF RAYTHEON’S TALENT COMMUNITY

1. Where we were in 2010; Post and Pray – For the most part we had a working ATS that utilized smart post to cascade our openings to the online job boards (Monster, clearance, dice, etc.). While this will continue to be a valuable part of strategy it is not the only part.  Career fairs and Networking – Each career fair we attended was under the guidance of finding one maybe two people that were a fit for current openings. The event would be defined as a success even though we did not capture the other 2,498 people that may have come to our booth.
2. The Purple Squirrel Analogy So what is a purple squirrel? It seems that everyone has a different definition. I would define a purple squirrel as a candidate with a capability/competency/skill set so niche that there are 100 or less people in your specific search area that can do the job.
3. So why Avature? Avature is the only Enterprise CRM built for recruiting. Their highly flexible CRM lets us customize our instance specifically for us to help drive sourcing strategies and upgrade the candidate experience. Their dashboards and interactive portals generate better talent pools and higher quality pipelines for every assignment
4. What is tagging? Tagging could be the single best functionality of Avature. It allows you “tag” profiles that you import into your CRM. You can add as many tags as you think would be relevant. The CRM allows you to search and report on them later.
5. Leveraging Events In 2010 we would go to an event and come back with 1 or 2 good resumes and that event would be considered a success. Today when we go to an event we create a specific flyer with a specific QR code and link. That QR code and link will import everyone who stops by our booth into the CRM and allow us to tag them with the specific event name so we can better track the event’s ROI. LEVERAGING EVENTS
6. Landing Pages Industry research shows that you lose 50% of your applicants each time they make a click. The average ATS takes 5-8 clicks to apply online. With a customized landing page all applicants can join your talent community with one click. You can also customize the fields specifically for your organization.
7. LANDING PAGES- Mobile Messaging On the previous slide you may have noticed that we asked the applicant for their cell phone provider (not required). By having their cell phone number this allows us to send them a 140 character message as we have the email nomenclature to all the cell phone providers.
8. Resume Spider The efficiencies gained in utilizing Avature’s web resources truly are incredible. Imagine if you could enter in search criteria into a web interface that searched all of your resources at once (Ladders, Monster, Dice, etc.)
9. Email Campaigns What would a CRM be with out a communication strategy? Avature utilizes drop box technology which allows you to create and update profiles just by sending an email to the drop box. Additionally, when you send out mass communications to targeted segments of your talent community, Avature actually allows you to track the results of the email campaign including which links were clicked.
10. Targeted “Sniper” Searches Avature allows you to scour the open web for profiles and/or resumes through their web resources. The best thing about this functionality is the search pages are cached and the search criteria and results will be archived for the OFCCP.
11. X-Ray So what is x-ray exactly? X-Raying web sites allow you to gain access to public information without going through the intended flow of the website. A good example of this is if you Xray LinkedIn, you will gain access to more profiles than ones you are connected to through your personal LinkedIn account.
12. Using Promoted Tweets Raytheon has entered into an agreement with Twitter and their promotional tweets. This allows us to bid on certain hastags or trending topics to promote our tweet at the top of the list.
13. Alpha Force Although we have set up a specific sourcing function, we philosophically believe the recruiter should still have a high sourcing capability. Alpha force is a group of rotating recruiters that work on a live difficult search and are mentored by the sourcing team. Each recruiter is tested at the end of the quarter to ensure they comprehend the sourcing training they received.
14. Rules of Engagement To ensure our sourcers are deployed on the right searches we implemented “rules of engagement”. These rules define which functions and position levels are critical enough to qualify for additional sourcing support. Additionally these rules outline an approval flow for sourcing support.
15. Building a talent community with a sourcing function is a valuable and necessary strategy within any talent acquisition department. At Raytheon we are still refining our sourcing practices as we have not arrived yet, but we strongly believe it takes all of these components to succeed. Please send all of your questions to: [email_address] or @Justin_Clem