Hi there everyone. Sorry to make my first "real" post a question, but I couldn't find the answer to this anywhere in the forum archive.

How many people here have to assist clients with hiring? Not necessarily hiring va's, mind you, but all sorts of positions? After having gone through several job searches myself I was pretty confident I could deal with craigslist boards and sifting through resumes and the like, but it has been a real challenge to find appropriate candidates (especially for IT-related clients, etc). Then again, virtual assistants aren't recruiters. Or are they? Has this ever fallen under anyone else's work scope?

What a great question...I've had a client ask me to assist with this and I did to a certain degree: preparing the text for the ad, rec'ving and weeding through replies to ensure they had followed the requested procedure, sending an 'autoreply', etc. but when it came to the actual interviewing and hiring the client managed that herself as she wanted someone local (to work in her shop) and I was halfway around the world at the time so wasn't going to be able to interview on her behalf.

All in all, it wasn't one of my favorite things to have done but it was a great learning experience. I don't see why, if it's a service you enjoy providing, you couldn't handle this kind of thing virtually...

I'm curious now to know of any other members who do handle this service for clients on a more regular basis?

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Interesting thread! I never thought about doing this kind of service. It's probably not something I would do myself, however, if it's something you enjoy then by all means, why not?

The best thing about being a business owner is that you decide what kind of service you want to provide, doing things that you enjoy!

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Brenda A. Jones
www.brevos.com

Well now, recruiting is big business. Absolutely the kind of thing that can be done virtually. I think top-notch recruiters are very well compensated. Check it out if you like it!

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Mary H. Ruth/Virtual Writing & Communications
http://www.writingVA.com

I am fairly new to the world of VA's but not to HR & recruiting. I can tell you that most of the time that the compensation for recruiting as an industry standard are a percentage of the candidate's salary if placed in the position. Most of the VA's that charge by the hour would really be short-changing themselves. Just FYI

Dionne

I did a little bit of hiring ass't at my last job and I was considering making it an official part of my offerings since no one seems to want to do stuff like posting to job boards, sifting through emails and resumes, etc. Most of my experience runs similar to Tess'.

Tillerstale, you are right, generally speaking va's are not recruiters and do not have the rolodex a recruiter would have. You might consider this too much work but my last boss taught me to make relationships with good recruiters that were knowledgeable about our industry -- in that case product development. Then when hiring time comes all you have to do is make a call, rather than posting to craigslist and dealing with that.

I also found far more luck in recruiting marketplace sites like dayak than in job sites like monster; they put you in touch with recruiters directly, enabling long-term relationships, while allowing you to set custom fees (ie, saving money). In terms of ROI I think most employers would rather go the recruiting route than the job board route. Although it puts a lot of space between the employer and the candidate -- the recruiter is the middle man between them and the va is the middle man between the recruiter and the employer. Hey, whatever works

Thanks for the suggestions, guys...this gives me some ideas and even a few resources to check out. Hopefully my little hiring adventure goes well!

As another side to that, if you are proficient in research and have the proper programs, you can also get into background checks for employers.

These days, employers are doing everything from a criminal background check to a financial/credit check. There are programs available to purchase that allow you access to files on employers behalf.

Just make sure you get a copy of the signed form from the potential employee allowing a background check before you perform one.

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Shauna Reed
Keystone Promise Virtual Assistance
Blog: Creative Writing Resource

Originally Posted by tillerstale

Hi there everyone. Sorry to make my first "real" post a question, but I couldn't find the answer to this anywhere in the forum archive. How many people here have to assist clients with hiring? Not necessarily hiring va's, mind you, but all sorts of positions? After having gone through several job searches myself I was pretty confident I could deal with craigslist boards and sifting through resumes and the like, but it has been a real challenge to find appropriate candidates (especially for IT-related clients, etc). Then again, virtual assistants aren't recruiters. Or are they? Has this ever fallen under anyone else's work scope?

I have two clients that I assist with hiring indirectly. One client is an executive recruiter and the other is a Sales Vp, who is constantly recruiting. For the latter, he sends me resumes and make the initial call to see if they are interested and then set up the initial interview. With the first client, I handle a lot of the backend work for her, once candidates are identifed. This includes verifying degrees.

HTHs!

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Doreen R. Patrick, MVA, ACS, CIVA
www.virtualbusinesspartners.net

I have a client I could do that for, but that's because she used to be my boss and I am so much better at finding the right people than she is. When I hire, I get qualified, good people. When she hires, she generally hires "friends" (people she met once, but she knows they have the basic qualifications) and we end up with an interesting cross section of society, but not a generally employable group.

If another client wanted me to write and weed through resumes, as long as it wasn't for a highly technical position, I'd be more than happy to do it. I just don't know how to figure out which technical stuff is BS and which is truly important, so I don't want to be responsible for an obviously bad hire.