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Massachusetts HR officials
use
more than one approach to recruitment
 With
an unemployment rate hovering around 2 percent, Massachusetts
firms are facing the same problems as the rest of the country
- finding candidates for their open positions. But businesses
like New England Research Institutes, in Watertown, are working
hard to increase their chances of landing top employees. "Like
most companies in Massachusetts, NERI tends to be doing a
lot of different types of recruiting," recruitment manager
Robert Assarian says. "There seem to be more jobs than there
are people. We have implemented a lot of innovative plans
and done a lot of sourcing." Besides using print advertisements,
resume mining, direct mailings and Web sites, the company
also has participated in college career days and job fairs
to locate more recruits. One of NERI's most successful solutions,
Assarian says, has been its employee referral program.
Another
tool used by the company, which has about 220 workers, is
a system it designed to locate and sift through prospective
candidates. With it, NERI can get recruits and resumes more
quickly. "We have automated the whole recruitment process,"
Assarian says. "We are trying to streamline the whole process."
By doing that, he says, the organization also hopes to keep
down the rising cost of recruitment.
Currently,
NERI's largest necessity is for research scientists with a
master's or doctorate degree, says James Revaleon, vice president
of human resources. Finding candidates means utilizing all
the resources at his disposal. "If we used just one approach,
we wouldn't meet all our needs," says Revaleon, who has worked
at the company for six years and has seen first-hand how far
recruiting has evolved. "Four years ago, there were a lot
of people in the job market. You could run an ad and get a
lot of responses. You can't just put an ad in the paper now."
The
Massachusetts job market is a competitive one, but both Assarian
and Revaleon believe the state has plenty to offer prospective
employees. "The quality of life in the metropolitan Boston
area where we are located is good," Revaleon says. "There
is culture, sports, diversity and leading universities and
hospitals." Plus, Revaleon adds, there's NERI, a company that
studies what causes certain health and medical issues, including
HIV, AIDS and breast cancer. "Our motto is 'No research without
therapeutic or policy benefit,' " Revaleon says. "I think
that's one thing that makes us attractive to people. We're
not in it for the money. Our research benefits mankind."
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