Each year this event celebrates the creative use of technology at nonprofit organizations. The event showcases the impact that technology enables nonprofit organizations to have on community issues such as homelessness, environmental degradation, and poverty and youth violence.

Powerful Connections, our 5th annual event, will bring new focus on the groundbreaking work of our customers and community partners and how they make creative and effective use of technology in meeting their missions.

Powerful Connections

Friday, April 30th, 2010

7:30 – 9:00 a.m.

Meydenbauer Center, Bellevue

Registration and corporate sponsorship information can be found at www.npowerseattle.org.

PS – Ann-Marie is putting together tables now!  Contact her if you want to be included. aarcher@archer-associates.com or 425-869-6350

WBE was founded in 1979 as a non-profit organization offering women business and personal growth through networking, professional education, leadership training, mentoring and exposure to community issues, business trends and vital business concerns.

Check out its website at www.wbex.org.

Authored by Lisa Muller, recruiting operations manager, Archer & Associates

An ATS is a foundational and fundamental tool in your recruiting toolkit. The Applicant Tracking System takes your process and tracks and organizes it so you always know where you are with any given candidates, on any given day, for any given open job req!

Shopping the tools

Determining the best product for your organization and implementing it should be done early in company’s growth cycle as it captures valuable data and morphs into your pipeline as you grow. If you are already a mature organization, never fear, an ATS can very successfully be implemented!

How to determine the best ATS for you? You gotta go through all those darn demos. I know, it’s time consuming and a little tedious, but it’s important you have a feel for the user experience of the system, and make sure it aligns with your needs.

And speaking of needs, list out your must-haves and nice-to-have’s in a spreadsheet along with other critical criteria such as fees and training– something like this:

• Monthly user fee
• Installation Fee
• Any additional fees for training, adding customizations, data transfers
• Does it synch with Outlook?
• Is it customizable?
• Level of customer service?
• Does it have a CRM?
• Strengths/weaknesses
• You get the idea

The value of your ATS

Your pipeline is your recruiting goldmine! It helps you track candidates, develop relationships and have a go-to resource to start with when a new req opens. Plus it organizes your candidate data in an efficient, searchable way that makes it painless.

It also puts data and analytics at your fingertips: you can run recruiting metrics easily, analyze ROI for your sourcing efforts and track progress on any req, recruiter or candidate. It helps you catch trending around your interview process or identify trouble spots, which allows you to address situations early and find solutions before they become big problems.

Lastly, and very importantly, an ATS improves your public image!  By having your ducks in a row, candidates experience your recruiting function (and your organization) as a well-run machine.  Everyone wants to work for a company that has its act together!

“Not finance.  Not strategy.  Not technology.  It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”

The opening lines of Peter Lencioni’s wonderful book, ‘5 Dysfunctions of a Team,’ are just as important today as they were when the book launched in 2002.  This book is an easy read, tells a great story and is a good reminder of the dysfunctions that will undermine any team:

            Absence of trust

            Fear of conflict

            Lack of commitment

            Avoidance of accountability

            Inattention to results

When Archer has gone onsite with a customer, I’ve seen firsthand what dysfunction can do. I have seen dysfunctional teams cause delays, undermine c-level plans and commitments, and damage morale; all costing the client company thousands of dollars.

Teams are the machines that make every company work.  A good company is a reflection of its good teams.

If you haven’t read the book in awhile, pick it up again.  I’m not going to pitch any bookstore or online book-buying tool.  Just be sure to buy it, new or used…and use it!

Be sure your process…from sourcing to onboarding…is sound.

Authored by Lisa Muller, recruiting operations manager, Archer & Associates

When Archer & Associates is retained to work as a consultant or operationally with the client onsite, often the environment is dysfunctional.  The client doesn’t know why recruiting is so painful and disruptive; why the results are continually unsuccessful.  They just know it’s hard…and doesn’t work.

Archer’s first task is to analyze the existing process.  Why is the process of recruiting part of a best-in-class program?  Because a good process propels recruiting into a streamlined, professional function within your organization – it just makes you look good! And looking good has its advantages both internally and externally and ultimately makes your company more appealing to top talent!

Internal benefits

In many organizations, employee referrals as a way to find great candidates are critical.  Employees often network in professional organizations and social groups and are “tuned in” to the sometimes hard-to-find talent that is out there on the street.  When the recruiting process is chaotic and frustrating, no one wants to participate.  Employee incentives, no matter how lucrative, won’t work if they think referrals will be lost or treated poorly.  Being a department that is clear, organized and low-maintenance is a joy to work with…and a joy to refer your professional contacts to.

External benefits

Your company’s reputation as a good employer that treats people well resonates throughout the business community.  And it starts with how you find and bring new employees onboard.  A sound process sends a consistent message to candidates.  A sound process without turmoil and confusion improves the candidate’s impressions and experience.  It instills confidence, it shows respect, it performs on a consistent and measurable basis.

Don’t underestimate how critical the recruiting process is.  An audit of your process is well worth the effort and can net you saved time, saved ulcers…and found talent!

How do you get to “best in class?”  There are definable and measurable “best practices” that can, when employed (excuse the pun), result in effective and cost-effective recruiting and retention.  (In other words, finding and keeping the best people.)

 Your business may include 10 developers hunkered down in one room or hundreds of people telecommuting from around the World, but these best practices are scalable to any size company and adjustable to any industry.

When our clients engage us, Archer usually does an audit resulting in a gap analysis that identifies where each best practice point needs to be fixed, enhanced or happily left in place.

In blogs to come I’ll share each of these best practice areas.  From time-to-time one of my staff members may author the blog (I’ll give them the byline) because they are in the field living and working this process every day.

Stay tuned for Best Practice, Chapter I.

Once a month, Alicia Marie offers an interview opportunity and webcasts it to her many listeners.

On this particular day, Alicia and I discussed how to build successful teams in a market flooded with resumes.

If you are hiring, or considering hiring, this discussion will be interesting to you.  If you are out there looking for your next opportunity this interview may give you a nugget of information on how to separate yourself in the “flood.”

Nevertheless, you’ll enjoy it and enjoy Alicia Marie’s questions.

The link here will take you to her web site to listen: : http://profitconsultingco.podbean.com/2009/07/24/ask-an-expert-ann-marie-archer/

Happy Listening!

While I know I have a lot to say and that I’m a content expert in the field of consultative recruiting, it is only now that I’ve felt that the economy plus my personal and professional experience plus the state of business equals enough need for good information to take up your time. (Whew…it sounds like an algebra equation.)

So what will Ann-Marie’s blog be about and why should you check it out from time-to-time? My goal is to share with my blog readers, ideas, techniques….that they can use immediately (and over time) to improve how people are found, welcomed and developed.

The quality is up to me and my goal is that it has a positive effect on my readers. My promise is to be meaningful and thoughtful…and not just be the trivial meanderings of an idle mind.