International Recruiting

[HaleDN]

@gblack Having worked as a developer for the Church for 2.5 years now, I'm surprised at how many changes have occurred to the development organization: expanding, reorganizing, promotions, hirings, etc. Some of the problems you may have experienced were because the HR people were totally swamped at the time. Also with hiring manager having been changing (new hires or promotions), if you have found that you were not successful originally for a particular position, you might think about reapplying... because the hiring manager may have changed if the position has been open for very long.

Don't forget that it might be just an issue with how you are presenting yourself. You may try to rewrite your resume to more closely match the position you are trying to apply for. A general purpose resume may not adequately demonstrate that you are a good fit for the position you are interested in.

Good luck!

[Recruiter-p40]

LInked in is a cool service that allows you to link to individuals you know or have worked with in the past. It then allows you to make new connections through your existing network. Go ahead and try it by creating an account and then searching for me "Tom Welch". There are many Tom Welchs in LinkedIn but you will figure out which one I am. THen add me to your network.

Tom

We have had a lot of luck with linked In. At the Church, we currently have a contest (Beta) to see who can obtain the most (first generation) contacts. There are about 20 people participating. The amount of contacts the participants are gathering is amazing. The contest lasts for two months. At the end of the contest we will all see who has the most contacts and the won with the most wins. We then will all link up with each other. I imagine we will all have increased our contacts by a major amount. There are a few people who have eclipsed 140 in the first couple of weeks. We hope to be able to network with more LDS people around the country to help us locate technical talent. If you would like to network with me in Linked In, my name is Travis Lawrence, I work for the LDS Church. PS: Recruiters don't participate in the contest.

[Benjamin Kirato-p40]

I believe the best way to search for these talents is to work with Church schools and find out those international students majoring in IT, CS, CE. Give them an opportunity to intern with the Church in order to get familiar with the current projects and programs the church uses. Then, after completing their studies most of them will return to their home countries and the church can use them to help build the kingdom.
I am one of those students and have a burning desire to return home after my studies. If I had to get an internship with the church it will be a great opportunity and an asset for my self and the Church back home.

Sincerely
Ben Kirato

[dtaylor26-p40]

At my place of employment, our preferred method of producing senior talent is to grow it ourselves with by using junior talent- internships, entry-level, etc. Great for strategic level results, in 5+ years, but not quite what I suspect this thread is concerned with.

I'm all in favor of using as many social networking sites as possible to get the word out. While mySpace is a little too emo for me, it may have a place in this context- Facebook certainly does. Posting on popular job search sites as well may be of some value (Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, etc.), but that may produce more work than it's worth. While the clientele generally doesn't have the skillset, I would include as a matter of practice the Church's own employment centers and make sure listings there are current.

Another avenue may be CES- I know from experience there are some out there who interface better with technology than they do wetware, and maybe they'd be interested in developing the next PHP Tithing uploader.

$0.02, but probably only after it's been converted into yen.

[aquintanal-p40]

To match your yen, I thought I would use the little Japanese I know

Thanks for the suggestions. We do use LinkedIn for networking and advertise our open positions on career websites such as those you mentioned. We have launched a training program and are working on developing and growing our current employees. we are always open to new ideas.

thanks again!