Reference Checking

I hate but also love checking references. I hate them because in all the years that I have been recruiting, no one has ever asked me to contact a bad reference. I love them also because I will normally check anywhere from 3 to 5 references on every candidate and I almost always find that 1 or 2 of them are also interested in hearing about new opportunities. And when dealing in a niche area like Oracle Apps, every new potential candidate I can find is a huge plus. Also, when I was doing business development efforts in my earlier contract staffing services days, I also found that some of the managers who acted as a reference for a candidate also made good sales leads into a new client.

But, this normally takes time that I find I don't always have, so it is still a pain to have to call someone to ask them what they know about the candidate I am looking to employ when I know they are not going to tell me anything bad about the person. Of course, there have been times with a little leading, where I have confirmed a perceived misrepresentation on a candidate's actual experience but I try not to do ask too many leading questions to purposely try to disqualify the candidate. I only do this when I have a strong suspicion that the candidate is not all that they seem. Just last week I had to do this. Candidate told me he was a Functional Implementation Lead and instead, it turned out that the only role played on the implementation by this candidate was training the users on how to work with the application. That is a far cry from actually doing the module set-up and configuration.

Perplexed

One of the nice benefits of being a recruiter is that as long as I can connect to the internet, I don't necessarily have to be in the office 10 hours a day. Of course, if I would cough up the bucks to upgrade my home connectivity to higher than dialup, it would be much easier to work from home more days than I currently do.

Couple things in the last couple of weeks have perplexed us. First, it was the apparent unavailability of good experienced Functional FinApps candidates when we needed to add a couple more to our staff. Now we are seeing the same thing with trying to find a good Procurement Functional candidate. It makes me wonder what will happen when the Oracle market really start heating up. And it just isn't AST that is experiencing this. All the firms that I talk with that recruit in the Oracle Apps arena are experiencing that same thing.

That is my goal for this week, to find a couple of potentially good Procurement candidates and get them started in our interview process.

My Marching Orders

For today I have one central focus - to come up with one or more potential candidates who are strong Functional Implementation Consultants with Oracle FinApps (GL/AR/FA/AP/CM) and also a strong PO/iP Functional candidate.

I'll start with the low hanging fruit first from resume sites like Monster, Dice, OraSearch, OraPeople, etc. I think I've already tapped out my database though. Then I wind up surfing the web through various search engines to see what I can unearth.

Today will be a long tedious day!!

Feeling Good

What a nice feeling when you find a good candidate, they stay in play throughout the entire interview process and then accept your offer.

Two new Functional Financials Consultants have accepted our offers, a Sr. Technical Consultant, and a new Business Development Manager as well. This week is really looking up.

Now, if I can just repeat this pattern over the next few weeks, I'll be all caught up.

I need to figure some way to make time to get some training on the workings of Oracle Apps and the ins and outs of implementing the different modules so that I sound more knowledgeable when I am interviewing candidates. I am the first line of approval and then we have one or more of our existing consultants do a peer level interview to determine how strong a candidate might be. Then final test is the interview with our Sr. Management staff. Too many weak candidates are getting pass my interview so I need to have more knowledge about the apps to catch these and not waste the time of our other staff. But when I do find one that is good and the follow-up interviews confirm they are good, then I can bask in the glow of success. Or at least until the next urgent need comes up.

Day One - Entry Two

Thought someone might be interested in seeing what openings I have. They are always posted on the careers portion of our website: www. astcorporation.com but I'll also list them here.

***Financials Functional Consultants (GL/AP/FA/CM)
***Purchasing/Encumbrance Accounting Functional Consultants
***iProcurement Functional Consultants
***DBI/BIS (FinApps - Functional) Consultants.
***CRM Functional Consultants (Telesales/Marketing Online/Sales Online/TCA)
***Technical Developers - (iProcurement - AK Developer/XML Gateway/Punchouts)
***Technical Developers - FinApps (Forms/Reports/Workflow/Interfaces)
***Discoverer/BIS Analysts

Our current staffing model is to hire full-time salaried staff. Relocation is not required but the ability to travel nationally on a weekly basis in support of assigned projects is normally necessary (normally Monday through Thursday). As needed, we also provide candidates with sponsorship for H-1 visas transfer and Green Card work authorizations. We offer our employees competitive starting salaries, annual bonuses and a very comprehensive benefits package.

Day One - Initial Entry

Well, I am seeing everyone else with their own blog so I thought I'd give this a try to see what might come of it. This is my very first post and as time progresses, I'll either refine my comments to specifics topics, openings I am working with, or maybe just general thoughts on the State of Affairs for the current Oracle Apps Employment World.

For today, I'll be brief as I have other items to still add to this blog to make it more complete.

My frustration today is that what a few months ago seemed to be a plentiful supply of experienced Oracle Financials Functional Implementation candidates on the market looking for full-time salaried work has now virtually disappeared and has been replaced by candidates who may not be the best qualified or candidates that are only interested in working in a contract role. Of course, there are always plenty of 3rd party corp-to-corp candidates who's resumes change for every time they get submitted by the firm holding their H-1 to a new possible position. I think in one case I received 3 different resumes on the same candidate by different firms for 3 different positions that really had no similarity between them other than the candidate's name and where the candidate went to school. Everthing in between was taylored for the ad as I had it posted on the web.

Fortunately, where I am at now, we do not use any corp-to-corp contract staff. So the 30-50 blind resumes I get daily from these 3rd party firms just automatically go to my trash file without me even having to see them.

It is hard for me to imagine that there are so many current Oracle Financials implementations taking place that I can't find even a few good experienced Functional candidates who have implemented the core FinApps Modules (GL/AP/AR/FA/CM). I am finding a good number of Ind. Consultants who are in between projects but again, either fortunately or unfortunately, where I am at now we do not use contract staff of any kind unless our back is up against the wall or we do it at the request of a client to bring back someone they know from other projects.