ITT Corporation completed its acquisition of Blakers Pump Engineers, a long-time distributor of ITT’s Goulds Pumps in Australia. Goulds makes industrial pumps for the chemical, oil and gas, mining, and power markets.

The company reports that the acquisition will strengthen its presence and capabilities in Australia, especially in the oil and gas and mining industries. The terms of the agreement weren’t available.

Blakers is headquartered in Perth, Western Australia and has been in business for more than three decades. The company provides process and industrial quality pumping equipment as well as technical and after sales services. The company currently has locations in Gladstone, Brisbane, Queensland, Sydney, New South Wales, Melbourne and Victoria.

Blakers packages, tests, commissions and services Goulds Pumps range of horizontal and vertical heavy-duty centrifugal pumps for the oil and gas, mining, chemical, refining, water treatment, pulp and paper and other industries. The company distributions ITT’s C’treat reverse osmosis watermakers to provide fresh water to offshore platforms.

There’s nothing like crafting a Boolean equation to find a software engineer with every single requirement and a few of the “nice-to-haves” only to discover that somewhere in those 193 characters you’ve got a tilde instead of a minus and now your list includes tons of coffee industry IT professionals, who may also know Java.

Even writing  a perfect Boolean string the first time isn’t quite so satisfying when you consider the time it took.

Scavado (nee AutoSearch) shortcuts all that string writing to cut to the chase, which,  (need it be pointed out?) is to find prospects that meet your hiring manager’s needs.

That’s kind of how Lori Fenstermaker came up with the original AutoSearch. A recruiter and sourcer who founded her own boutique RPO six years ago, she got tired of spending more time writing search strings than calling prospects. But instead of shrugging it off or surrendering to pure keywords, she hire a development company to build an automated search tool. It became AutoSearch, which she eventually licensed.

AutoSearch has now become Scavado, a name change that signals the launch of a campaign to move Fenstermaker’s creation into the mainstream of corporate recruiting. 

An early user of AutoSearch, Jim D’Amico, strategic staffing manager at Bissell Homecare, Inc., said the tool is one of those things you wonder how you managed before it came along.

“I love sourcing,” D’Amico said, but he prefers spending his time on the phone courting prospects. Scavado, he says, “shortens the sourcing cycle.”

“It’s a big time saver for in-house recruiters,” he says. With multiple reqs to fill at any one time, they need to source, qualify, and recruit prospects without delay. Scavado, D’Amico says, makes sourcing much more efficient for his recruiting team.

If all it did was to take keywords, integrate choices of things like geography, skills, and such from pull down menus, and generate a list of prospects, it would still be a valuable addition to any recruiting toolbox. But Scavado (Italian for excavate and suggestive of hunting) does so much more that Fenstermaker and her partner, Daniel Estrada, say it also has business intelligence implications.

One of its many features is the ability to search a site like jobs aggregator Indeed to see who else is looking for the same people you are. Check on your competitors and find out what kinds of jobs they’re offering. Scavado may have started out as purely a sourcing tool, but it’s been used by a private investigator to track people and by some companies for sales leads.

Simplicity of use is perhaps what recruiters like best, Estrada says. Skilled recruiters can enter a full Boolean string if they choose; most simply enter the job keywords. Either way, Estrada says, “There’s not a very steep learning curve with Scavado.”

It’s obvious, even from a quick demo, that Scavado was developed by an experienced recruiter for recruiters. Many vendors claim that, but Scavado delivers. For example, once Scavado develops a list of prospects, you get to review their basics and develop a list of “persons of interest” that, among other things, includes comments, and which can be exported.

It’s versatility, as much as its simplicity and time saving, are among the reasons Bissell’s recruiters find it so useful. One of his favorite features, says D’Amico, is the ability to generate alternative job titles. “That’s actually helped me a lot because we have ridiculous titles that correlate with nothing in the real world,” he says. Scavado will look at the job requirements to generate lists of other titles with the same requirements.

Another of his favorites is the email verification. After seeing a Scavado demo last week, I can see how it would make anybody’s list of favorite features. Once you generate a list of prospects, Scavado helps you figure out how to contact them. Emails, for instance, can be tricky and because no one wants to encourage spammers, contact information for passive prospects isn’t always available. But someone at their company has an address floating around. Scavado’s pattern finder will capture corporate email addresses so you discover the naming taxonomy. Figured it out? Now Scavado will verify that it’s a live address without you having to send an email.

From D’Amico’s point of view, Scavado has few shortcomings. Eliminating duplicate entries is one enhancement he’d like to see. A second, he offered, rather tongue-in-cheekly, is an auto-dialer “so I didn’t have to do anything.”

One feature I can see as a benefit is to enable customization of the sites Scavado searches. Google, LinkedIn, and a few others are  searched; Facebook, however, is not. Fenstermaker says that’s because FB is constantly changing its security settings. As much of a hassle as it might be, Facebook is becoming such an important part of the recruiting geography that it really shouldn’t be overlooked.

Nor will Scavado search the corporate ATS. Ideally, it would, even if candidates in the ATS are not the passive target group for which Scavado was developed.

Fenstermaker and Estrada said ATS integration “is on the radar,” as is giving users more control over the sites to be searched. Because Scavado is a SaaS product, as features are improved and new ones added, everyone gets them immediately. And implementation can be as quick as logging in.

What’s it cost? At $1,299 a year per user, D’Amico described it as “ridiculously inexpensive. The ROI is so fast.”

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., October 27, 2011 — ITT Corporation (NYSE: ITT) announced it was named among the top U.S. publicly traded companies in the 2011 Newsweek Green Rankings. ITT has been recognized for its commitment to environmentally responsible practices by the rankings since their launch in 2009.

ITT was honored as a leading company for its programs and policies to reduce overall environmental impact and was listed in the top 150 of all 500 U.S. corporations recognized. Since the program’s inception, ITT has maintained its spot on the annual rankings for the company’s continued commitment to sustainable, responsible practices.

The Green Rankings are based on an overall Green Score derived from three main criteria: environmental footprint, environmental management and environmental disclosure. To produce the 2011 list, Newsweek collaborated with leading environmental research organizations Trucost and Sustainalytic. The scores are based on a compilation of data and comprehensive assessment of each company’s environmental policies and initiatives. The results and methodology are reviewed by an independent advisory panel including experts in environmental practices and members of the business community.

25 October 2011

In rotary piston pumps, as the rotary pistons are responsible for the flow of the delivery medium, the specified geometrical shape of the pistons must be extremely precise and accurate. Two rotary pistons need to mesh exactly with one another as the pump rotates, with movement of the pistons terminating just before the wall housing. The life of the pump can therefore only be maintained if the piston surface fits precisely with the pump housing. This means that the whole of the piston surface needs to be measured and compared with the target shape to very strict tolerances. Qsigma GmbH based in Kassel, Germany, has developed a universal 3D measuring machine for these types of applications and Micro-Epsilon’s scanCONTROL 2700 laser profile scanner with a 50mm measuring range is used to record the shape or profile of the piston’s surface. For larger components, the profile scanner can be traversed vertically using a linear motion system. In addition, an optoNCDT 2200 laser displacement sensor from Micro-Epsilon with a 200mm measuring range is integrated to the Qsigma measuring machine in order to determine the precise position of the component. The optoNCDT 2200 sensor acquires 10,000 distance values every second, operating at a resolution of 3µm.The piston rotates during measurements. Only five seconds are required for an automatic inspection of the piston. After successfully scanning the surface geometries, the data is compared with those of the target object. In addition to rotary pistons, the system can also be used to measure other rotationally symmetrical objects.

Susan Strayer opened up the Recruiting Innovation Summittoday by telling attendees not to replicate anything that they learn today.

Say what!?

What that means, Strayer continued, is that the concepts that will be shared over the course of the event, held at Facebook in Palo Alto, CA, are guidelines and attendees need to customize the things they learn on how to bring their recruiting strategies to the next level based on what their individual companies and teams need — not just on what other people are doing.

Matt Millunchick, Technical Project Manager at Facebook, kicked off by sharing some stats about Facebook users this morning (800 million active users per month; 700 billion minutes spent on Facebook each month; 30 billion pieces of content shared… wow) that laid out the future of recruiting (and sourcing) innovation — it’s about data of course, but it’s about reaching people by analyzing and then appropriately applying that data into compelling messaging.

We compete daily for people’s attention with everything in their lives from family to media. People have more ability to filter out things they don’t care about or that they believe to be irrelevant, so we must get more and more creative in what we do to reach people where they’re at as opposed to making them come to us.

As sourcers, we are specifically tasked with these types of activities, as we are so often the first contact that individuals have with a company from an employment branding perspective. We find people in obscure corners of the Internet or via phone trees by dialing in to companies after hours. Finding them is half the battle — but not the part of the war for talent that will compel people to apply for our jobs. That comes with effective messaging and that is where the real innovation is these days. Millunchick mentioned that 60% of people find jobs through their friends. This could change the role of recruiting and sourcing significantly if (or “as”) this trend continues.

How could this happen? Well, from a sourcing perspective we already know that much of the actual ‘search’ portion of our jobs can be automated to a certain extent with a wide variety of tools and resources. (Sidenote: if you are a sourcer and you either don’t know this or don’t acknowledge this, there is a rock you need to crawl out from under.) Therefore, less of our function will involve the actual search and will begin to involve more of the engagement. As a result, it has become imperative for us as sourcers to have refined communication skills. This in turn gets the attention of the individuals we are trying to reach who are being pulled in a million different directions by life and all it involves.

Recruiting is no different. Post-and-pray isn’t going to cut it. Especially not through social media channels (post-and-spray). If you’re not participating in the conversation you are going to be forgotten quickly. Communication skills are essential in innovative recruiting as well as sourcing.

Coming back to the first session of the day with Millunchick, many of these people are spending a great deal of time on Facebook so it seems a natural place to either begin or include in a sourcing strategy. The thing to remember here, as well as any other social technology resource is to get involved. Converse. Let people know you are paying attention to them, and they will return the favor.

Eventually.

With social media engagement, you will find that you have to put a lot in upfront before you can start expecting anything in return. And as Matthew Lavery, Managing Director of Talent Acquisition at UPS said a little later in the morning, social media engagement is a marathon. Be ready for the long haul; but it’s worth the effort to put yourself ahead of the rest of the pack.

TUESDAY, Oct. 18 (HealthDay News) — People with lots of Facebook friends tend to have areas of the brain that are larger than those of online social network users with fewer friends, British researchers say.

The researchers found that the number of Facebook friends that students had correlated with the size of the gray matter in several areas of the brain.

The researchers found that the number of Facebook friends that students had correlated with the size of the gray matter in several areas of the brain.

“We were interested in understanding whether social networks and our participation in them is reflected in brain structure and function,” lead researcher Dr. Geraint Rees, a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellow at University College London, said during a Tuesday press conference.

“What we’ve shown is an association between the number of friends on Facebook and certain areas of the brain and the structure of those areas,” Rees said.

But, “a correlation doesn’t imply causation,” he added.

“Also, it is not clear whether the brain is hardwired for social networks,” Rees said. “It could be that people have a large number of friends on Facebook simply because the structure of these brain regions is larger, but it could be the other way around — that is, with people who have a large number of friends on Facebook, that might influence their brain structure. We cannot tell from this study alone which one of those two it is.”

The study was published in the Oct. 18 issue of theProceedings of the Royal Society B.

Facebook has more than 800 million active users worldwide, according to a university news release. People use it to keep in touch with their network of friends, but some networks are much larger than others. Some users have only a few friends while others have thousands, the researchers noted.

For the study, Rees and colleagues scanned the brains of 125 college students who used Facebook, then compared the scans with the number of online and real-world friends the students had. In addition, the researchers checked their finding with another group of 40 students.

Students in the study had an average of 500 friends on Facebook, but many had far fewer, Rees said.

The researchers found that the number of Facebook friends that students had correlated with the size of the gray matter in several areas of the brain.

One of the areas, the amygdala, is associated with memory and emotional responses. An earlier study found that this area was larger in people who had many real-world friends. Now it has been found that that’s also true for those with lots of online friends, Rees said.

In addition, three other areas of the brain — the right superior temporal sulcus, the left middle temporal gyrus and the right entorhinal cortex — were also larger among those with lots of Facebook friends, but the size of these areas did not correlate with the number of real-world friends, the researchers noted.

The superior temporal sulcus affects the ability perceive moving objects. In addition to memory, the entorhinal cortex is associated with navigation — including navigating through online social networks. The middle temporal gyrus plays a role in perceiving social cues, the researchers said.

Commenting on the study, Dr. Richard Isaacson, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said that “there is evidence now for a biological basis behind the variability we have seen in social networking.”

This finding could be part of the reason that some people are attracted to Facebook and some avoid it, he said. “Some people are really consumed by it; maybe we understand this a little better — this is really cool stuff,” he added.

(via LinkedIn’s Talent Connect Event Kicks Off Amid a Changing Social World)

LinkedIn said there would be surprises at its Talent Connect user conference in Las Vegas this week. The company didn’t disappoint.

During a keynote session this morning that had more in common with a Hollywood spectacular than sober recruiting kickoff, CEO Jeff Weiner wowed the audience of 1,800 with Talent Pipeline. Now it might be that the biggest applause — and some actual cheering — came when he uttered the magic word Free, as in free for those licensing LinkedIn Recruiter. But, those cheers would have been equally appropriate for the product itself.

Weiner left the driving to his VP of product, David Hahn, who tour-guided Talent Pipeline on five massive screens, demonstrating its ease of use, its utility, and a little less obviously, its potential to replace the most basic of ATS programs in use.

Hahn said the development of Talent Pipeline was driven by the challenges talent specialists face in managing pipelined prospects over many months. And not just prospects sourced from LinkedIn. Talent Pipeline, declared Hahn, is the single place to manage all your talent prospects, whatever the source.

What’s particularly special about Talent Pipeline is how it connects prospects and information. Any old ATS will take applicant resumes and sort them into a searchable database. More sophisticated systems provide notes fields, calendaring and scheduling functions, automated messaging, and the like. What Talent Pipeline also does is to pull information from a prospect’s LinkedIn profile, match up their connections, essentially building a portfolio private to the recruiter and tracking all activity between the prospect and employer.When a prospect in Talent Pipeline updates their LinkedIn profile, the recruiter is alerted. In the rare event that a prospect isn’t on LinkedIn, a profile-like portfolio is built from the resume employment history.

With the introduction of Talent Pipeline in the coming weeks, recruiters will see an “Add” button on their dashboard. That’s how the CRM gets started. If it’s a prospect sourced from outside LinkedIn, say a job board, the Add feature uploads the resume and the record is created. It is, pretty much, that easy, from what Hahn demonstrated.

LinkedIn’s product team obviously did its homework in designing the features. One example: Prospects can be tagged to make searching more precise. Keywords may still be a recruiter’s instinctive search tool, but the tags make it possible to organize candidates in ways that best suit the user. So while Hahn tagged his demo example of a software developer as “android” and “mobile,” there’s no reason a recruiter couldn’t decide to tag a prospect more granularly or use tags to create special groups of candidates, say “hot” for a candidate ready to make a change.

There’s a lot to like about Talent Pipeline, and if anyone missed its potential as a management tool, Hahn began his presentation by noting that despite all the sophistication of modern ATS platforms, they can all be a little clunky when it comes to managing prospect pipelines sourced from social networks, and elsewhere. He’s certainly right that an ATS isn’t going to pull in network connections, build portfolios, and offer referral opportunities. On the other hand Talent Pipeline isn’t going to replace the more sophisticated systems, those that can handle reqs and authorizations, distribute job postings, manage the corporate career site, and similar, higher -level functions. But then, LinkedIn’s primary focus was on a tool to manage prospects and pipelines, and that it seems quite capable of doing, especially since the price is right.

This first iteration has only limited messaging capability; that capability comes via LinkedIn Recruiter, so companies that opt to buy just the standalone version will have to find a way to communicate with their prospects. Exporting some of the data is possible, but not all of it, Hahn said.

That it can replace basic ATS platforms is an added benefit, though, Hahn said, it’s not a likely outcome. True enough in most cases, but Talent Pipeline as part of Talent Recruiter can easily rival the simplest systems. A few more bells and whistles, and LinkedIn could have an ATS product to offer.

Talent Pipeline begins to roll out in November as a beta product to select customers. It’s expected to become generally available in the first quarter of 2012. No price has yet been set for Talent Pipeline alone.

As LinkedIn’s annual user conference gets underway in Las Vegas today, it’s taking on an import that goes well beyond the quality of the agenda. This is its first conference since becoming a public company and the first since its dominance as the Internet’s leading business network was challenged — directly or otherwise — by such powerful brands as Google, Facebook, and Monster.

The sessions the company has planned for the three-day event are heavy on the training with a strong mix of sessions devoted to recruiting strategies and social media. The speaker lineup is first rate and the agenda promises enough variety and practicums that it should be easy enough to answer the boss’s “What did you learn?” questions.

On another level, though, the conference is spectacle, a physical manifestation of the reach LinkedIn has achieved into the recruiting world in just a few years. Founded as a sales and marketing leads business, LinkedIn has morphed into a jobs-focused social network. Today half its revenue — approaching $500 million — comes from recruiters.

But in just the five months since LinkedIn went in May the world has changed.

Google launched a social network, Monster launched BeKnown, a careers network, BranchOut, a startup careers network, announced a partnership with CareerBuilder, and, perhaps most significant of all, Facebook detailed sweeping changes to its 800-million-user social network that could trump the need for a separate business network altogether. Monster and BranchOut both built their career networks on the Facebook platform, leveraging the enormous traffic and engagement that the site enjoys. Both sites connected with LinkedIn as well. Even as it climbed past 2 million users, BranchOut managed to avoid problems with LinkedIn. Monster’s BeKnown, however, triggered a prompt rebuke from LinkedIn, which shut out both sites and some other, minor players. That didn’t keep either site from growing — BeKnown is now around 3 million registered users. It might, however, have marginalized them, since Facebook users tend not to provide detailed job histories and skill lists. Then, just a few weeks ago, Facebook rearranged the landscape, unveiling its biggest overhaul since breaking away from the college campuses that gave it life.

Part of this overhaul is to encourage users to share more details about their life and background, especially their career and educational experience. Chris Merritt, BranchOut’s GM of enterprise and VP of sales, pretty much shrugged off the LinkedIn dust-up when I spoke with him last week. Fewer than 20 percent of BranchOut users, he said, came to the site through LinkedIn. BeKnown’s project manager Tom Chevalier said even without the LinkedIn connection the number of users has reached 2.8 million monthly unique visitors registrants. The network is continuing to grow.

Up to now, the Achilles heel with the Facebook connection has been that it’s the place for socializing and not for careers. I’ve heard all sorts of numbers about how many Facebook users have entered what might be considered career information. None are entirely reliable, although the most reasonable came from a researcher who told me in a private conversation that many people enter just a school or their most current place of work. For that reason, LinkedIn is the place for recruiters to source candidates. Yes, recruiters are all over Facebook. As are the companies they work for. Yes, talent communities are being formed on Facebook even as you read this. And plenty of companies have well-developed pipelines with active conversations. Yet most of what passes for recruiting on Facebook is the posting of jobs. LinkedIn users, however, can be searched, sourced, and contacted by recruiters.

That was the state of affairs when LinkedIn went public in May and saw its stock shoot up to almost $123. It has since settled back, and was trading today around $86 a share. Soon, it will report its third-quarter financials. Analyst estimates are that the company’s revenue will approach the North American revenues of Monster and CareerBuilder.

Today, as LinkedIn opens Talent Connect, the company’s first major event since going public in May, it faces challenges to its favored place with recruiters. BranchOut’s Merritt said that “north of 75 percent of our profiles have education and work history.” That includes not only the BranchOut direct connections; 75 percent of their friends have detailed profiles, too.

As Facebook implements its Timeline and other parts of the so-called open graph, he said profiles will grow much more detailed. “Facebook is crowdsourcing more and more of your background,” he observed.

Months ago BranchOut introduced RecruiterConnect, the first tool for recruiters to easily source candidates and get referrals through the site. It hasn’t officially launched yet, but it’s coming. BeKnown, too, has product enhancements on the way. Badges are popular, and there’s likely to be more development around them. One certainty for development, says Chevalier, is company participation.

The next six months for BeKnown, he says, will be to learn “what drives frequent engagement with your career and for us to develop better tools to help do that.”

by John Zappe Oct 17, 2011, 3:10 pm ETn

Shane Snow is co-founder of Contently.com, an “agile publishing” platform for brands-turned-publishers and freelance journalists. Old school SEO pros cover your ears, or be prepared to adapt your craft: Search engines are changing, and social media is a huge part of that change. Bing, G…

President Obama held up a newly printed copy of his $447 billion American Jobs Bill today at the White House today and demanded that Congress pass it “immediately” in order “to put people back to work.”

“No games, no politics, no delays,” Obama said during a Rose Garden ceremony featuring a variety of workers he said would benefit from the legislation. “I’m sending this bill to Congress today and they ought to pass it immediately.”

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he appreciated Obama’s transmission of the jobs plan, but House Republicans need to study it first. That includes an independent cost estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, the speaker said in a statement, who also alluded to the 9.1% unemployment two years after a Democratic Congress passed a major stimulus bill.

“The record of the economic proposals enacted during the last (Democratic) Congress necessitates careful examination of the President’s latest plan as well as consideration of alternative measures that may more effectively support private-sector job creation,” Boehner said in a statement.

Teachers, police officers, firefighters construction workers stood behind Obama as he promoted the jobs package that includes new infrastructure projects, unemployment assistance, and tax cuts for business people to encourage hiring.

Noting that Republicans in the past have supported various ideas in the bill, Obama said “the only thing” that could stop passage is 2012 election year politics. Obama cited a newspaper story in which an unnamed Republican aide is quoted as saying, “I don’t know why we’d want to cooperate with Obama right now. It’s not good for our politics.”

“We can’t afford these same political games,” Obama said as he urged supporters to lobby for passage of the bill.

It was the third jobs speech for Obama in five days, including the weekend; the president also plans to discuss the plan during trips to Ohio and North Carolina over the next two days.

The Democratic National Committee is running television commercials in key states to promote the plan.

Obama said the plan is not about politics, and decried comments by Republicans who wonder how the jobs bill might affect the 2012 elections. Obama noted the next election — including his re-election bid — is 14 months away.

“The American people don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months for Congress to take action,” Obama said. “Folks who’re living week to week, paycheck to paycheck, need action.”

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., September 6, 2011 — ITT Corporation (NYSE: ITT) announced today that it has completed its acquisition of YSI Incorporated, forming a water-focused analytics business with annual revenue of approximately $300 million. YSI is a leading developer and manufacturer of sensors, instruments, software, and data collection platforms for environmental water monitoring, with facilities in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

“YSI’s product offering complements our existing water portfolio and enables us to better serve our global customers and build on our commitment to solve challenges that our customers face across the water industry,” said Gretchen McClain, president of ITT’s Fluid and Motion Control business, and future chief executive officer of Xylem, the new standalone water company separating in a tax-free spinoff from ITT later this year.

“YSI’s expertise in field and outdoor, environmental applications strongly enhances and broadens our analytical instrumentation platform,” said Chris McIntire, president of ITT’s Analytics business area.

YSI, with

 a legacy of invention and innovation, was founded in 1948, and reported 2010 global revenues of $101 million. Since 1990, YSI has demonstrated a commitment to its core values and good corporate citizenship through the YSI Foundation.

ITT Analytics is a leading manufacturer of premium field, portable, laboratory and online analytical instruments used in water and wastewater, environmental, medical, and food and beverage applications. The company’s meters, sensors, analyzers and related consumables are used every day by thousands of end-users worldwide to analyze and control quality in countless industrial applications where precise measurement is required. ITT Analytics’ products are sold under the globally recognized brands WTW, SI Analytics, OI Analytical, Royce Technologies, Aanderaa Data Instruments (AADI), Global Water Instrumentation, ebro and Bellingham & Stanley. www.ittanalytics.com

BOSTON, MA — August 18, 2011 — Seven Step Recruiting, a leading provider of outsourced recruitment services (RPO), today announced that HRO Today, the only publication dedicated to covering the outsourced human resources services market, has named Seven Step to its annual Baker’s Dozen ranking of major recruitment process outsourcing firms. The results were based upon a survey completed by more than 600 HR executives who are current buyers of RPO services.

In this year’s survey, more than three hundred RPO providers were rated on the breadth of their service, the size of the programs they manage, performance quality, and the quality of client service provided. Seven Step provides comprehensive RPO services and specializes in outsourced recruitment of high-volume, hard-to-fill positions.

“Reaching the top 13 of midmarket RPO providers validates Seven Step’s innovative team approach to talent acquisition,” said Paul Harty, President of Seven Step Recruiting. “We’ve experienced sustainable growth in clients and projects because we deliver cost-effective, measurable recruitment results, and we anticipate a rapid expansion of our business.”

“We’re particularly proud of the fact that we’ve achieved this industry recognition so quickly,” added Beth Gilfeather, founder and CEO of Seven Step Recruiting. “Since we launched in 2007, Seven Step’s focus has been on generating results far beyond what companies have come to expect in RPO. And while client satisfaction is our most valued reward, it’s gratifying to receive this marketplace distinction — especially as a relatively new player in the space.”

“The Baker’s Dozen RPO survey is the industry’s most credible perspective of top RPO firms because it is based on feedback from buyers themselves,” said Debbie Bolla, Managing Editor at SharedXpertise, publishers of HRO Today magazine. “The resulting rankings are a trusted way to identify the best RPO provider to meet a company’s talent acquisition needs. We congratulate Seven Step on its breakthrough performance.”

Founded in 2007 in Boston, Massachusetts, Seven Step has quickly become a leading provider of outsourced recruitment services that helps companies meet recruitment challenges regardless of volume, scale, resource constraints, compliance issues, or logistical hurdles. Unlike other recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) firms, Seven Step has developed a proprietary team-based approach to recruitment management that is flexible, scalable, and metrics-based from beginning to end. Seven Step is consistently rated very highly in customer satisfaction. For more information, please visit www.sevensteprpo.com.

by  Shannon Van Curen on July 22, 2011, 9:00 am

Creativity and innovation involve the process of creating something new or better. As sourcers, we are constantly brainstorming creative and innovative ways to find and attract candidates. From the new social media sites we join to the unique queries we write in search engines, the importance for creativity and innovation is stronger than ever.

There have been many theories on what sparks innovation and creativity, but one trending topic has been mobility in the workforce. As technology continues to advance, we have found ourselves in a period where flexibility and telecommuting have become more important than set hours and being on-site.

For my sourcing team and me, we tend to be more creative outside of the normal 8-5 work schedule. I have found that I write my best search queries before 8 AM or after an intense yoga session. I am also more productive in my home office. My top sourcer tends to be more productive between the hours of 3-7 PM, and rarely have I ever seen her before 10 AM.

As we see are starting to see companies shift outside the normal paradigm, there has also been an influx in remote opportunities for recruiters. Now, VPNs allow us to connect remotely, Skype lets us have face-to-face interaction, you can find just about anyone on the Internet, and mobile phones are advancing so quickly that you can work just about anywhere. In fact, you can almost recruit solely from your smartphone.

Mobility and flexibility are very important to my current employer. Our corporate phone is an iPhone and the majority of us have iPads. Since I’m always on the go, I rely on my phone for Internet usage and emails. To broaden my recruiting capabilities and to increase productivity, I use many different iPhone applications. I have found that these applications help save time and improve communication with my social networks.

To help your mobility and productivity, I have reviewed some of my favorite iPhone applications. There are hundreds of thousands of iPhone applications, so please feel free to add your favorites that I left off.

Mobile Application Review:

Power Search Utility– This is a must for every Recruiter/Sourcer. The Power Google application is basically a Boolean cheat sheet. From basic operators, to advanced modifiers, this application contains every Boolean term to help improve your sourcing skills. It even defines all Boolean operators and modifiers and gives examples on how to use each. Additionally, it has a direct link to Google that I find is easier to use than the actual Google application itself.

Bing– We all love to search on Google, but it is important for us to broaden our techniques on different search engines. My favorite search application is Bing, and not just because of the beautiful pictures on the homepage. It is extremely easy to use and offers all of its features directly on the homepage. The results application is very neat and clean. Additionally, the search bar always remains on top of the screen, which allows for your queries to be easily modified. Bing also has the social feature that lets you see updates from Twitter and Facebook in your search results. You can also check into Facebook and Foursquare directly with this application.

Global Recruiting Roundtable — If you like to stay up to date on the latest recruiting trends, then you need to download this application. The Global Recruiting Roadtable complies recruiting news from blogs and sites (like ERE.net) from around the world. It is very easy to read and allows you to share and comment on each story. Now you can quickly share your favorite ERE article with your social network on Twitter or Facebook with just a press of a button from your phone.

AutoSearch Mobile — This is a fantastic application that automatically does all of the advanced Boolean queries for you. Just enter a job title, skill set, company, or keyword and AutoSearch will source the Internet and retrieve matching resumes and profiles from 25 targeted cities. If you are looking outside one of those cities, you also have the option to search anywhere in the United States. AutoSearch browses sites liked LinkedIn, Twitter, Jobster, and Zoominfo. Hundreds of profiles, names, and CVs are returned in a basic search, which allows you to quickly expand your network and pipeline.

Craigslist Mobile Ultimate– This is an easy and simple to use application that allows you to search all cities that have Craiglist listings. You can quickly select your city and enter your category as “resume” — then let the sourcing begin! This application also allows you to reply or forward to each resume that you determine is a match.

CareerBuilder for Employers – If you have a CareerBuilder account, then you need this application. This is a great application that gives you access to candidates that have applied to your job postings. This application also lets you view and manage all of your job postings. The only down side with this application is that you can’t source. However, the application claims that it will soon allow you to run your saved resume search agents directly from your iPhone and view all results.

kgbpeople – This is one of the best people search engines on the application market. This application searches the Internet for information about people on social networks, blogs, and search engines. All in all, it garners information from 48 different sites. Though it uses a vast array of media, the results aren’t 100% accurate. Still, it is a fun application and is very user-friendly.

Portal Full Screen Browser – This application is extremely unique and very fun to use. Designed especially for research, it allows you to search Google, Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, Wikipedia, YouTube, Dogpile, and Jeeves. Functions on this application allow you to highlight phrases and queries in six different colors. Once you run a query, those phrases are highlighted in the web browser, which makes finding key terms on your phone very efficient. After your run your query, you can easily email web links directly from the application.

LinkedIn – Everyone should have this application! There is nothing special about this application; it’s just the world’s largest professional networking site at your fingertips. The LinkedIn application allows you to check updates, add connections, send messages, and even “bump” invitations with others who have also downloaded this application on their iPhone. It’s not the fastest application, but it is amusing and a must for every recruiter on the go.

Plaxo – This application came into handy when I first got my iPhone and was able to sync all 5,000 of my contacts instantly. This social media rolodex is great for managing all of your contacts from LinkedIn, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, and more. The Favorites feature also helps you save candidate information so it’s readily available when you need it.

Broadcast – Broadcast allows you to easily share messages and photos across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, SMS, and Email with one click of a button. This is just an entertaining and cool application. When you need to let your network know about a new job posting, this is an accelerated way to do so.

Bump – This is a great application that allows you to easily share information with others who also have this application. You can share photos, apps, music, message, locations, contacts, and calendar events and instantly connect on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can also send messages to others that you add to your Bump network. It’s the perfect application to use at networking events and conferences.

CardMunch – Tired of handling business cards? This application works directly with LinkedIn (in fact, LinkedIn owns this application). It’s a business card scanner that captures images of business cards and automatically transcribes every card for instant contact. You will never lose another business card with this application.

Dropbox – Ever have to send a resume from your phone? Dropbox allows you to easily save all documents from your computer to your iPhone. You can create multiple folders for various positions and send resumes easily to hiring managers. Dropbox even backs up all documents on their web site, so your candidate’s information is never lost.

DuckDuckGo – Another alternative to Google, DuckDuckGo is an excellent search engine that retrieves information in a neat and expedited manner. It’s a simple application that provides less spam and delivers relevant search queries in an instant. Its searches are based on relevancy and not personalization or socialization. The downside of this application is that it does not recognize all advanced Boolean terms and the search bar is not featured on the results page.

face2face – Face2face helps you manages all of your social networks in one application. This application manages your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, and Orkut accounts. You can easily exchange information, connect with friends, and post directly from this application.

What are your favorite iPhone apps for sourcing and information management? Share them in the comments below.

Do You Pass the Social Media Recruitment Test?