If Your Company is Not Growing in 2010, You will be Hiring

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brajeshwar/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Huh? Let me explain.

According to this Annual Study From Robert Half International and CareerBuilder Provides Preview of Post-Recession Job Market

55%  of employees polled plan to make a career change or go back to school when the economy recovers.

This means companies will be hiring next year as the people that were hunkered down waiting out the downturn move to the companies hiring for growth,  and the less attractive companies will be hiring to replace attrition.

Either way, companies should be preparing to scour their talent pools for those receptive to considering a move.

In the survey, forty-seven percent of hiring managers cited under-qualified applicants as their most common hiring challenge, followed by the reluctance of qualified candidates to leave secure positions (22 percent).

What we will see is an even greater discrepancy as things pick up,  between the companies doing well and the ones not so fortunate. For the more attractive opportunities, the percentage of qualified candidates will go up along withl the competition for them,  as people initiate the job change they have been contemplating for six months. The good candidates that are on the street will be quickly absorbed when the market turns. Thus leaving the less attractive companies that are backfilling attrition with an even harder task of finding qualified candidates.

The message here is clear, start making preparations to address your hiring needs for 2010.

Do you really need that 7 page form from your ATS vendor? Don’t you kinda have to be desperate to fill that out in the first place? You might want to rethink a process that is so laborious.

Do you want to continue to advertise on job boards or will the newer trend toward Pay for Performance  make more sense for you?

How are you leveraging your employee networks to reach candidates with a higher probability of a match?

Whatever means and tools you have in your satchel, dust them off and get ahead of the game.

Do you think this survey reflects conditions in your market? let us know…

Thanks to Our Sponsors of the Eric Ries Talk @MIT

Eric Ries came to Boston for a talk at MIT on Nov 19th. Approximately 250 attendees came to see Eric and learn about the Lean Startup methodology.

We would like to thank the organizations that made this possible, and in doing so, demonstrated their commitment to start-ups and the innovation economy here in Boston.

Hosted By

Platinum Sponsor

from Polaris Venture Partners

Gold Sponsors

AV Sponsor

Atlas Venture hosted a mixer afterward that was attended by many in the start-up community.  The free beer and appetizers went quickly. Eric Ries was kind enough to come and meet the audience and hang out for a while.

Many thanks to Eric for making the trip to Boston, which we hope will be the first of many.

The Return of the Picky Candidate

As usually happens when things are looking up and companies are hiring once again, people are picking their head up and smelling opportunity in the air.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshuaommen/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

At Genotrope, we have recently seen a different type of candidate exploring available opportunities . These candidates are proven producers and will  have multiple options to choose from when they change jobs.  These candidates can afford to be picky.

In the past year, pent up curiosity has taken a back seat to keeping your head down and powering through the crash of 2008, but as we slowly emerge from the downturn, so do people looking for their next new opportunity.

Remember how the tide turned in 2004 and there were more positions to fill than available candidates?

Take a look at this chart of VC investment from 2001 to 2009 from a post by Fred Wilson.  Venture Investing Chart from AVC See how the ramp is much steeper coming off the bottom this time?  Does this mean the market will turn even faster and go from a more normal market to one of a scarcity of quality candidates much quicker? I don’t know, but I do know that companies should understand that things are going to change and  make the adjustments required to adapt to the new market conditions.

If you remember what happened in 2004 ish, the pent up desire to make a job change resulted in a massive shift left as 20%  or the best and more frustrated employees moved to greener pastures. In the coming upturn, companies can expect to lose some of their best talent in 2010 if they don’t create an environment that attracts top talent to stay and nurtures their development.

The recruiting process will also require improvement, like replacing the current ATS, Applicant Torture Systems, requiring multiple forms and questionnaires to be filled out online, and losing the best applicants in the process.

It should get better for hiring when the “player” candidates begin to interview, but how long will it take for them to get very picky and create a competitive environment that has swung very much in their favor? For a period of time, you will see a better quality candidate among the large quantity of resumes. After that the quantity will diminish and the competitive market will return.

The best a company can do is be prepared to take advantage as the “picky candidates” become available, by making your company attractive and the application and interview process streamlined, decisive and effective.

What is your company doing to take advantage of the changing job market and the return to normalcy?

Have you invested in building a targeted talent pool? Do you know which sources provide the highest quality candidates with a high probability of hire?

Genotrope Gets Some Ink

We were pleased to see Genotrope receive some positive press in a recent Mass High Tech article.

Hiring strategies shift toward social media

We have been watching the number of positions available at start-ups creep up by about 100 every week for the past month and a half, indicating the end of job depletion and the beginning of a return normalcy.

Our timing might be right on the money for a change. We just introduced the new job posting functionality for companies and user ability to find jobs at companies within their professional graph, as hiring increases but the need to keep costs low is still high priority.

Genotrope a Featured Company for Virtual Min August 12th

Genotrope is a featured company at the upcoming Mass Innovation Night because our focus is Boston area emerging technology companies and entrepreneurs. One of our main features is a database of Communications, Computer, Software and Web companies presented in a Genealogical fashion. The other is a Directory of Boston Venture Capital companies. Both have proven very popular with our users.

Here is a bit about our concept.

The Genotropic approach to recruiting. geno- : genus : kind kin : a group united by a common interest or common characteristics or affinity tro-pism : a natural inclination Simply put, companies are comprised of individuals that share some common traits, goals and backgrounds. They have been attracted to their companies because of these affinities and will be inclined to move to the next company that offers them a similarly comfortable environment.

We hope to improve on the current offerings in the online job market, with an Affinity Job Search tool that focuses on matching you with companies rather than jobs. Matching culture and fit rather than buzzwords.

Community contributions will at some point overtake our editors valiant efforts to populate the company database. When that happens, we will have a micro-chunkable database of much value to the users. Stay Tuned.

Major Rollout of Job Postings and Search

Although we do a new build almost every week, today we have rolled out major new functionality.

We believe heartily in the process of “finding the company first and then the job”. But it is swimming upstream against an industry that is built around the job posting.

Candidates look for jobs and Companies want to post jobs. So instead of fighting against this fact, we have released job posting capability.

Now companies can register with Genotrope and manage their company record, post news as well as create and edit job postings.

The difference is that now when Candidates are viewing the list of job posting the Genotrope Icon will be present in the job listing to indicate companies where the candidate also has an affinity match through their professional graph. These jobs will be the better fit matches when compared to matches done strictly by position or industry.

Along with the new job postings, we have added major new search functionality.  Both Browsing and MyGraph mode on the FindJobs page can be searched by zipcode proximity, Industry and Company Status. This means you can slice and dice the company database to find very specific matches, such as all B2B companies with a series A investment that are 25 miles from my home town.

One last thing, registered users will notice the new home page not only displays All Recent Job Postings, it also shows the New Jobs from Companies in your Graph.

These changes reflect the fact that the job market is picking up and Genotrope’s increased focus on helping People and Companies connect.

Thanks to Ganesh and his team for a release well done.

Register Company New Feature

Now it is possible to register your company in Genotrope. Once registered, your company administrator is now the only one able to add or update information to your company page.

Registration if free and allows companies to more actively target potential candidates. We currently offer sponsorship of our home page, VC Directory and blog.

In the future we will introduce a subscription model which will include job postings.

The Talent Target page shows the list of companies connected to yours through our graphing algorithm. Users with these companies in their work history will be updated with your company’s news and jobs and receive a feed of this information.

The Hiring Target section allows your company to reach users at competitors or companies deemed to have quality potential candidates that are not in your Company’s Graph. Once added users with these companies in their work history will be updated and able to view your companies news and jobs and receive a feed of this information.

Make sure to frequently add Press or news announcements as well as jobs from your website. This will maintain a steady stream of information going out to your targeted talent pool.  Add your career or job page to these links. Use the title Careers, and the link will always appear at the top of the list. Otherwise entries are in  chronological order.

Search by Location New Feature addition

We are pleased to announce that now you can filter Companies by proximity to your location on your Find Jobs page.  The default zipcode is taken from your profile.

We have also added the ability to filter by Industry and Investment status on both the MyGraph and Browsing lists. That is the good news.

The bad news is that not all companies have address information in their records. We are working hard to populate that information. Please lend a helping hand and add company address info for your company as well as when you are browsing around the database.

A Few Problems after Switch to New ISP

Our move to a better service provider has gone smoothly. There may be a lingering issue with the redirect, but that will be cleared up soon.

Unfortunately, some of our new features have regressed, with some build mishaps.

One of the new features is the ability to filter your FindJobs list based upon location. We hope to restore the  location filter later on this week.

Thanks for your patience. If you find any other problems, please let us know.

Web Innovators 20 was a great event

We had a good time and met some great people at the premier networking event in Boston for web startups.

Web Innovators Group has grown from a small gathering in 2005, of a few entrepreneurs in a bar to the large event it is today. Around 700 people attended last tuesdays WebInno 20 event.

The line up of companies was stellar, and we were fortunate to be a part of the group.

Thanks to David Beisel of Venrock for including Genotrope as a sidedish presenter.