Despite an unsteady national economy and an unemployment rate hovering around 4 percent, some Richmond-area companies say their candidate pools aren't drying up.
"A lot of people have looked at the economy and said, 'Gosh, there are so many people that companies are laying off,' and there still are a lot of companies laying off, but there are a lot of companies hiring, especially in the Richmond market," said Tom Eggleston, regional staffing manager at SunTrust.
Eggleston was one of 150 recruiters and human-resources professionals from central Virginia businesses and the Greater Richmond Partnership who attended the Richmond Recruiter Roundtable yesterday morning at The Place at Innsbrook. Recruiters who are heavily involved in hiring at their companies or in bringing new companies to Richmond got a look at new methods of using the Internet to find qualified candidates.
Chris Forman, the chief executive officer of AIRS, a company that specializes in training recruiters, demonstrated new Web sites and people searches, including ziggs.com, gigablast.com and pipl.com, that recruiters can use to locate "passive" candidates - those not actively seeking a new job.
He also talked about searching online blogs to find people with job-specific skills.
Forman said AIRS isn't seeing slowdowns in hiring on a national level, pointing out that "150 recruiters showed up this morning to learn how to find people, not how to lay people off."
In December, the unemployment rate in Richmond rose to 3.5 percent, up from 3.2 percent from the month before. Despite the shaky stock market and some economists saying the U.S. is headed toward a recession, recruiters say job candidates seem optimistic about the future.
"Candidates don't seem to have much apprehension," said Jason Bratton, senior recruiter at Capital One. "I guess they're assuming the market will rebound, and I'm sure it will."
Despite new methods of locating job seekers, some companies still rely on current managers "continuing to tap your employee population for referrals," said Chris Jordan, recruiting director for Genworth Financial. "Referrals are our number one source for hiring."
Companies also continue use to job fairs as they increase Internet-based searches for recruiting.
"Recruiting has to be a culmination of a lot of different avenues," Eggleston said.
Recruiters' tips for seeking jobs
-- Get your resume on Internet job sites and read help-wanted ads in newspapers.
-- Identify a list of companies you are interested in. Make yourself known to those companies, and try to build personal networks with people who work there.
-- Search company Web sites for job openings they have posted. Some aren't advertised online or in newspapers.
-- Employee referrals remain a common and often-used practice by companies when filling a job. If someone you know works for a company you're interested in working for, ask him to refer you to the recruiter.
-- After an interview, be proactive - don't wait for someone to call you back. Follow up with your recruiter or hiring manager after an interview.
Contact Jeremy Slayton at (804) 649-6861 or jslayton@timesdispatch.com.
Originally published by Times-Dispatch Staff Writer.
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