Rockstar Recruiter Series: Cisco

My name is Elaine McCarthy and I am a Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist. On a day to day basis, I look after end to end recruitment at Cisco for Java, C++, Python, and QA professional (with other development roles thrown in) in the EMEAR market. I am extremely passionate about sourcing and finding the best technical talent in the market. I’m impressed when a candidate: Asks intelligent questions about our organization – this shows they are attracted to what we do at Cisco and have done their homework. Examples of such are when they ask about the team structure, development methodology that is followed and technologies that one will be exposed to. I’m impressed when a recruiter: Presents well-written job descriptions with a little punch. When recruiters reach out to headhunt me, I’m captivated when a job description is a little different. I also think the best recruiters know how to sell – both the job and the organization. I have been in the recruiting industry for: 10 years. Having worked for technology leaders such as Ericsson and Intel, I joined Cisco five years ago and have never looked back. I am part of the Professional Development Talent Acquisition team, but I’m lucky to have job rotated and gained experience hiring in the Graduate University Talent Acquisition team. Recruiting in the Graduate team is a little different as we are attracting early in career professionals. More time is spent building relationships with interns, Graduates and Universities to hire the best candidates for Cisco. I know I’ve done a great job hiring when: My candidate is fully informed in an interview. Of course, an added bonus is when I hire an Engineer who is performing very well and is still at Cisco years later. The biggest challenge recruiting candidates today is: Two things. First, Talent Acquisition professionals need to be more personal in their approach and tailor their method based on the type of role that they are recruiting for. For example, a sales professional possibly loves a headhunt call and the opportunity to network. Whereas an Engineer prefers a written email with details of the project and technologies used. Also, recruiting for technical skills has become so much more difficult due to huge demand for certain skills and a lack of candidates wanting to leave their current roles. I think a way to fix this is being more flexible in how we hire. By looking at hiring Engineers of all levels and offering the opportunity to work in any location, this may help in attracting more technical talent to companies. I stay cutting edge by: Continuously doing market research on who my key target companies are. I have expanded my knowledge from attending events and networking with other Talent Acquisition professionals and Engineers. The most recent event that I attended was CyberSecurity Expo in Bristol. I think  great event to attend would be the Openstack Summit in Vancouver. I am also relentlessly coming up with new techniques for attracting talent through social platforms and blogs. In 2015, I’ll invest more efforts in:  Social media. My aim is to further increase our brand awareness through social platforms. I feel as though Talent Acquisition pros and hiring managers are seeing branding as a more and more critical piece in the recruiting puzzle. By engaging candidates throughout their job seeking journey on social platforms, they can see that Cisco is a great company to work for. Executives see employer branding and recruiting as: Pieces of the same puzzle. As a Talent Acquisition professional myself, I’m very conscious of our brand. I’m also currently conscious of diversity initiatives in order to attract more females to Cisco. My job, as a recruiter, is to continuously improve how we attract candidates and sell the Cisco lifestyle. Ultimately, that involves getting our brand out there to the best candidates. I use Glassdoor because: With Glassdoor, we can all work together as an organization to see the challenges our employees face on a daily basis and try to improve these issues. Of course, I also use Glassdoor to see what people love about working at Cisco. A few of these include our flexible working options, working with cutting edge technologies and products, training programs and, of course, the free biscuits and coffee. My success is most closely tied to: My passion. Reflecting on my journey in recruiting to date, it all comes down to my love for sourcing talent. I love finding information and getting to know new people – these skills have helped me along my recruiting career. I could improve my reputation as a recruiter if I did this: By utilising Hiring Manager and candidate surveys and feedback more to see how well I performed during the recruiting cycle. This would ultimately help me work on any issues to improve my personal recruiting process and strategy.