Don Charlton

Don Charlton is a Web entrepreneur, developer and speaker. His company, TheResumator.com,, helps employers hire with confidence. Contact him at don@theresumator.com.

Articles by Don Charlton

Recruiting and Staffing

The Essence of Savvy Recruiting: Getting Top Talent For Bottom Dollar

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Start-ups and small businesses need creative ways to recruit top talent.

The same could be said for any size company, but the smaller guys need to find talent in a different way. If your company has three employees, the next person you hire is effectively 25 percent of your entire staff.

That’s a big deal. But how does a small company find the rich talent they need on their restrictive budgets?

You gotta be cheap and you need to be good. Pitch your company with the things that don’t carry a price tag. Read more…

Talent Management

How to Avoid Hearing “That’s Not in My Job Description”

job-description

“That’s not in my job description.”

Many frustrated employees have muttered that phrase. Due to some pretty sloppy examples of job descriptions, the sentiment could ring true.

The phrase can pack a punch, too. Dive into what it means exactly and much of the time, you find an unwillingness to adapt. Sometimes a job well done doesn’t resemble the job for which you were hired though. That doesn’t mean the job can go undone! Read more…

Recruiting and Staffing

What TV’s Law & Order Can Teach Us About Interviewing

law & order SVI season 12 mariska hargitay chris meloni s key art

TV cops have it all figured out. Just watch their interrogations.

One guy comes in strong, slamming his fists on the table and screaming like a madman. Whoa. Just as the suspect gets nervous and thinks he could be in danger, in slides the softer cop.“Take the deal, I understand,” the nice cop says while his partner grimaces at the perp. “Do what’s best, I’ll help you.”

Then, BAM, the suspect admits to everything one or two commercial breaks later. It’s like legal clockwork. The good cop-bad cop routine never fails and it makes great fodder for retired rappers. Read more…

Best of TLNT, Classic TLNT

The 3 Most Hated Interview Questions – and How You Can Juice Them Up

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To Our Readers: This week, TLNT is continuing our annual tradition by counting down the 35 most popular posts of this past year. This is No. 22. Our regular content will return Wednesday January 2, 2013.

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When you’re asking interview questions day in and day out, it’s easy to fall into a rut.

Even the most intuitive and engaging hiring managers may find themselves rattling off the same set of stock questions every day, and thanks to Google, these prompts are less effective than ever before. Applicants search online for common corporate hiring questions and then simply memorize their responses. It’s hard to learn anything about your candidates when they’re telling you exactly what you want to hear. Read more…

Recruiting and Staffing

Social Media Screening: Here’s How to Use it in Your Hiring Decisions

Social-Media-Background-Screening

You’ve probably had friends whom you wished would stop using Facebook or Twitter for just five minutes.

After all, who needs to see 12 new pictures of someone’s dog every hour, or hear about how so and so’s love life is still on the rocks? A hiring and staffing manager who’s trying to make hiring decisions, that’s who.

People use social networks to share snippets of their personal lives with friends and family, but hiring and staffing departments also view the material. According to CareerBuilder, 37 percent of companies use social networks to research job candidates, and 12 percent of businesses use the websites to look for reasons not to hire someone. Read more…

Recruiting and Staffing

4 Hiring Tips You Can Pick Up From a Reality TV Show

Hoarders

Do your online hiring practices need an intervention?

You may not think you need help, but neither do most of the guests on A&E’s hit show Hoarders. Sure, guests might admit to not being tidy, but their 22 feral cats are well-fed, and climbing over stacks of Reader’s Digest is wonderful exercise, so why is everyone making such a big fuss?

If your recruiting efforts are becoming increasingly fruitless, unsustainable practices and your overall approach could be holding you back. Luckily, some of the same tips experts use to shake hoarders out of their denial and get them back on track can help you do the same for your hiring efforts.

First, admit you gave a problem – then try these tips. Read more…

Recruiting and Staffing

Should You Hire Based on Accomplishments, or Potential?

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“Potential” is a word recruiting analysts use to describe job candidates who have the talent to become top performers but who aren’t guaranteed to make full use of their abilities.

So what does a company do?

Hire an unproven talent who might be the next Steve Jobs, or select an impressive candidate whose potential is fulfilled and who is essentially risk-free? Surely a company would make the safest of hiring decisions and choose a proven performer. Or would it? Read more…

Talent Management

Hiring Remote Workers: Does It Make Sense For Your Organization?

Remote work

When Elance surveyed 1,500 business owners, 73 percent of employers said they planned to hire remote workers within the year.

As the survey results prove, the increasingly digital world in which we live and work is rapidly changing – and company hiring decisions are changing along with it. More and more business owners are filling their workforces with employees they may never meet face to face.

Should your company hire employees to work remotely? There’s a lot to consider before you decide. Read more…

HR Management, Talent Management

Employees Love It, But Does a 4-Day Workweek Work For Your Business?

4-day workweek

Business owners, do your employees work a four-day workweek? If you answered no, you’re not alone.

The business world has evolved in many ways over the past few decades (for proof, just watch any episode of Mad Men), but one tenet of common corporate practice has held true: most workers still punch their digital time cards at 9 and 5, for five straight days.

Is the traditional five-day workweek the best choice for your recruiting efforts, your employee retention goals, your budget, or your day-to-day productivity? More and more business owners are arguing that it’s not. Read more…

Recruiting and Staffing

5 Red Flags to Watch For When You’re Selecting Employees

Red flags

Mastering the art of employee selection is no easy task.

It requires the interrogative skills of Detective Elliott Stabler, the easy charm of Don Draper, and the intuition of a Shakespearean soothsayer. And after your recruiting team has attracted enough applicants, sorting through them to determine who has the most experience and the most potential takes some serious heavy lifting.

Sure, every once in awhile, a candidate will make your work easy for you by arriving to an interview drunk, by having a completely blank work history, or by being vastly underqualified for the position, but many times you’ll find yourself facing a group of qualified applicants. Read more…