Post: Apr. 9, 2019
When Johnnieanne Hansen began her role as Director of Workforce Development and Apprentice Coordinator for the Council of Industry her first priority was to recruit companies to participate in the newly formed Intermediary Apprentice Program. Her first order of business was to visit with member CEO’s and HR professionals to pitch the idea. What she heard from them, while not completely surprising, did raise some alarm bells in her head and prompted her to rethink her priorities.
“They loved the apprentice idea, they really did. They recognized that it was one solution to finding the skilled workers they needed.” Ms. Hansen remembers. “But they also said that they did not have the time to think about apprentices or to take on a project like that because they ‘need people now!’ So unless I was walking in with people on my shoulders for them to hire, they had more pressing recruiting problems.”
She prodded them further about how they were recruiting and where they were finding candidates. As she did so an idea began take shape in her mind that these small and mid-sized manufacturers, all different, yet all a little alike, could pool their resources to market careers with Hudson Valley manufacturers and develop a system to organize and manage candidates.
Thus, in March of 2018 the Collaborative Recruiting Initiative was hatched.
“In my previous positions as a recruiter and corporate trainer I had done some research into Applicant Tracking Systems. It occurred to me that the Council could purchase a subscription and make the service available to participating members.” Hansen said. “Hiring managers get a system where they can post jobs, sort and track candidates and get other resources and support throughout the hiring process. Posted jobs are distributed to over 100 job boards like: Indeed, Hotjobs, Monster, Zip Recruiter, LinkedIn and Glassdoor.”
Additionally, all the jobs are listed in one place www.HVMfgJobs.com and a social media marketing campaign is in place to encourage people to visit the site. The campaign is designed to target individuals most likely to be interested in careers in manufacturing.
“We thought that this might be a valuable tool for our members. A way to give them some resources that are otherwise not accessible to them, or at least cost probative.” Hansen added.
The program launched in March 2018 with 10 companies posting about 25 jobs. Today 29 participating companies keep roughly 100 jobs posted at any point in time at www.HVMfgJobs.com. There have been more than 100 positions filled in that time from nearly 5,000 applicants.
“It’s working.” Says Hansen. “Of course it could be better.” She suggests that more could be done to take advantage of the applicant pool and that marketing the positions and Hudson Valley Manufacturing, in general, could be stronger. “Every additional company that participates, every additional job that gets posted makes the program stronger,” Hansen said. “We’re good, it’s solid and it will be even better in 12 more months.”
All Council members are welcome to participate in the Collaborative Recruiting Program and its new pricing model will make it easier for any firm to participate. If you want to learn more visit https://careers.councilofindustry.org/manufacturing or email Johnnieanne Hansen at jhansen@councilofindustry.org
Post: Feb. 7, 2019
One of the cool features of the Council of Industry’s Collaborative Recruiting Initiative (CRI) is called “Job Target.” In enables jobs posted on our board to be sent automatically to specified Job Boards such as those at Colleges and Universities. In the coming months, we intend to use this feature to help you find the best interns for your company this summer.
We know that providing internships is one of the best recruitment strategies a company can have. It opens a channel from a school to your company, serves as a “get to know you” period where both parties get a chance to see if there is a good fit, while at the same time enables you to get some needed work done at your business. To help our members find the best intern candidates for this summer we will:
- Encourage companies participating in the CRI to post their internships on our site
- Offer non-participating companies the opportunity to place their intern posting on the site at a reduced cost
- Use “Job Target” to post these jobs on key college and University job boards such as SUNY Binghamton, Clarkson, RPI, SUNY Stony Brook, SUNY Buffalo and RIT to name a few.
Interested? We hope you are because together we can attract some top talent to the region and maybe get some of the young people who live in the Hudson Valley, but attend these schools, to find a meaningful internship with you. If you are a CRI participant all you need to do is post your job and we’ll do the rest. If you are not a CRI participant contact Serena Cascarano or Johnnieanne Hansen to get your intern job posted.
Post: Aug. 30, 2018
Hiring competent, high-quality candidates for open positions is a challenge for all organizations. In an effort to simplify the process for our members The Council of Industry recently began using the applicant tracking software, iCIMS. iCIMS allows Human Resource professionals to more efficiently manage the recruitment process, and helps lessen some of the challenges associated with filling open positions. Debra Sherman, the Human Resources Director at Fair-Rite Products for the last 19 years, started using the program 5 months ago and is extremely satisfied with the results.
Prior to using iCIMS Debra was using Excel Spreadsheets to manage her applicants, and filed resumes manually. She noted the difficulty with sorting through paper resumes and trying to remember which candidates possessed the qualifications she was looking for. During her search to find an applicant tracking system that met her needs The Council of Industry introduced her to iCIMS. The ease of use, and ability to simply search for specific skill sets listed on candidates’ resumes, sparked her interest in the software. She posted her first job on the system 5 months ago, which also published the position to Indeed, Monster, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and several other employment-oriented platforms. Since that date Fair-Rite Products has posted 17 open positions, received over 350 applications, and filled 10 of those positions.
Debra knew that the software was going to be a success when iCIMS helped her fill a position that Fair-Rite had open for over a year. She was struggling to find a qualified candidate to fill an Applications Engineer position, and had little success uploading the job to LinkedIn and other platforms herself. Once she uploaded the job to iCIMS she finally found the right candidate for the position, and filled the job in just a few short months. Debra believes that iCIMS played a big role in finally finding the ideal person for the job.
iCIMS has vast capabilities, and The Council of Industry continues to assist its members in understanding how to fully utilize the software in order to get the best results. Debra described the system as “robust” and likes that it gives her the ability to easily weed out non-qualified candidates. She also commented on the convenience of always knowing the number of candidates who applied for a job, having the ability to sort candidates by their commuting distance, reviewing the number of days it took to fill a position, and quickly emailing applicants through the system’s email templates. Debra believes that the ability to notify rejected candidates when a position has been filled is a common courtesy that was difficult, if not impossible, to do before she had access to the iCIMS automatic email templates. Now she can easily contact all rejected candidates with just a few clicks.
The success that Debra has experienced at Fair-Rite is a prime example of how beneficial the collaborative recruitment initiative can be for our members. Debra stated that, “The Council of Industry’s solution to our applicant tracking needs has been a huge success and has far surpassed my expectations.” Moving forward she hopes to fully eliminate the paper application with the help of The Council of Industry.
