Create Your Own Word Clouds

I decided to create word clouds based on my Linked-In profile, CV page and recent blog posts. The results are below.  Anybody can make word clouds like these, just go to Wordle, enter the text or site and start creating.

My Linked-In Profile

www.linkedin.com/in/erictcook/

My Curriculum Vitae

https://ecocinar.wordpress.com/about/

Recent blog posts

https://ecocinar.wordpress.com/

Hat tip to the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis for the idea.

Quality of Hire Metrics

In recruitment and business statistic circles, the term quality of hire is popular as of late. Many firms are discovering new methods to track and quantify this data.

One of the most important ways for a business to gather these statistics is by tracking the source of applicants. This white paper by Indeed should be required reading for recruiters and anybody who does recruitment advertising.  The article stresses the importance of quantifying your applicants based on source.  A quick comparison of average applications from Craigslist, Monster and Career Building paints a pretty clear picture of why the later two are in decline (provided by Craigslist though). Craigslist provides far more average page views for a fraction of the cost. Specialized job boards however are doing quite well in the recruitment advertizing market. To track your hiring metrics you need a feature in your applicant tracking system. If you still get resumes via email then you can tack them via a simple spreadsheet as well. Once a company has a good grasp of its recruitment statistics, the next step is too compare them with quality of hire metrics.

Quality of hire is a broad term but it can be any number that compares the hiring source, job expectations or qualifications with eventual results. For example Company Z hired 200 employees in 2011. Of those 100 employees only 50 stayed on through a full year. In that particular snap shot, the quality of hire would be 50% for the entire recruitment process. However that is only one simple method of evaluating quality of hire. Another method might compare quality of hire of external versus internally referred applicants.  A company could even compare the quality of hire between recruitment from different colleges, staffing vendors or job posting sites.  These statistics could be used to create mathematical models predicting success of applicants based on some specific qualifier. Smaller businesses should note that a small sample size is not enough to make assumptions and that correlation does not imply causation. At the very least though, quality of hire metrics can help evaluate better spending on recruitment advertising.

Additional reading:

http://www.shrm.org/Research/Articles/Articles/Documents/Whitepaper_Quality_of_Hire.pdf

Property Information

Is there a piece of property you want to know more about?  Zillow is a good free database of home prices and sale information.    However if you want to get actual owner information, then contact your local title company.  A title conmpany guarnatees the title and sells insurance regarding the ownership and quality of title to land.  In Oregon you can request a free “TRIO” from title companies for property information.    A TRIO is simply a record  of three things, the plat map, vesting deed and tax record.

A TRIO might also contain current ownership, sales records, deed, historical data such as property tax information, market value, assessed value, buyer history, sale price, year built, and other statistics.  The best part about this information?  Its FREE!  Just email a local title company for the county in which there is a property of interest.   Below is an quote that explains how this often works and what you are getting.

“Property title information is provided without charge in conformance with the guidelines by the State of Oregon Insurance Commissioner. This information is limited to records provided by the Assessment & Taxation Departments of a specific county or tri-county area.”

So technically this information is all available at your municipal property records office.  But who wants to sit there all day on those ancient computers.  A TRIO by email not only saves you time and paper but also records copy fees which are often not cheap.