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I’m looking forward to the conversation in San Diego at ERE. (There’s still time to register if you hurry). With any luck, we’ll do something really interesting. I hope that the articles to date will provide a framework for discussion and brainstorming. The session is at 3:15 on Wednesday the 17th. I’m interested in seeing how long it can go.

My presentation will take about 6 or 7 minutes. The rest is conversation. I’m of the opinion that this sort of thing is better done by conversation than a presumptuous lecture.

We’ve covered a broad range of topics in the series to date: Geopolitics, Demographics, Automation, Health Systems, Infrastructure, and Performance Management as a Lifestyle. It’s been a whirlwind tour through a range of possibilities. The idea behind scenario planning is stretching your mind to the point that you can see opportunities and vulnerabilities that you can’t discover otherwise.

As if to underline the energy price scenario ($200 oil), crude prices have moved up about 15% in the past month. Soon the rest of the country will be enjoying $3 gasoline like we have in California. Even so, the point of scenarios is not a crisp set of forecasts. The idea is to get at the underlying structure of possibility.

Here’s the real headline. Disruption is coming to a recruiting operation near you. And, soon. keep reading…

Productivity change in the nonfarm business sector, 1947-2009

How different is what you do today from five years ago? Are you able to find and hire top-notch people faster than before? Have you invested in systems, technology, and process improvements to lower costs and improve the speed to find and present qualified candidates? If not, you are clearly lagging behind those who have, and will have a tough time catching up. The corporate recruiting world is soon to be under full assault from the third-party and RPO world.

The evidence shows that increases in productivity significantly lag the investment in tools and process improvements. We normally first use new technologies to emulate what we already do in another way. It’s only after significant time that we begin to find new and innovative ways to use the tools and adjust our processes accordingly.

An example is the introduction of the typewriter. In the early days of the typewriter a manager would dictate to a stenographer who would take shorthand and then use the typewriter to create a document. This took two people and three steps. It took decades before we got to the point of eliminating the stenographer by having the manager learn to type and enter the document directly. But when this occurred, the profession of stenographer disappeared (as did shorthand), efficiency went up, and the number of people an office needed went down. While this is a very simple example, it illustrates what I mean: It takes a lot of time from the introduction of a new technology for people to learn how to use it and to adjust processes and structures.

From the 1970s through the mid-1990s organizations globally were investing heavily in computers and software and everyone assumed that because of those tools, productivity would soar. For anyone old enough to remember, that did not happen, and lots of economists called this the productivity paradox. It seemed that no investment in technology, computers, or software caused any major change in productivity. Then, around 1995 everything changed. Suddenly productivity began to climb. It has now settled back into a comfortable 2.4 percent per year growth which is still greater per year than before 1970. The great lesson is that investments in technology and process improvements pay off — but it takes time for that to happen.

Recruiting has seen no surge in productivity, and corporate recruiting functions may even be losing ground as the talent market becomes more complex and employer needs change. Relative to most other functions in an organization, HR and recruiting have made little investment in technology and even less in process improvements. A recruiter from 1970 would be very comfortable in most corporate recruiting departments today except for learning to use the computer.

My concern is that recruiters have been and still are too focused on the short term to see that investments they make today will eventually pay off — and pay off tremendously. If you have not made the investments, you are not only behind, but it may be impossible to catch up. Being able to use technology requires a learning curve that early adopters get from the beginning. Look at how hard it is for a middle-aged person to grasp the power of social media or to fully realize the capabilities of the iPhone compared to someone younger who has been working with these technologies from the beginning of their careers. Time is not our friend when it comes to adopting technology, so early investments pay off the most.

Here are a few ideas on what kinds of investments you should be making: keep reading…

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Here’s what’s going on in the ERE community this week:

1. Are you clueless about diversity recruiting?
2. Developing and nurturing candidate relationships
3. Working for a boss that doesn’t know recruiting
4. Monthly retainers for recruiters
5. How common is a draw in commission based sales positions these days?
6. Featured group of the week: Independent Recruiters

1. Are you clueless about diversity recruiting?

Sarah Welstead writes, “Age discrimination in the workforce is still prevalent, but it’s based on obsolete information.  The 50+ group is the fastest-growing demographic on the Internet; they’re more productive than younger counterparts (fewer sick days, less-frequent turnover); and our own research found that almost 85% of them had cellphones (and almost 10% of them were using Blackberrys every day)!

What is your take on diversity recruiting? Weigh in on Sarah’s post. keep reading…

The Brazen Careerist has launched an interesting experiment in social recruiting, introducing what the site and its founder Penelope Trunk call a “social resume.”

Aimed squarely at the young Gen-Yers for whom Brazen Careerist was designed, the social resumes allow these early career professionals to offer hints at their potential. Besides all the usual biographical stuff of a traditional resume, these social resumes provide a home for the professional musings and business ideas of the participant.

keep reading…

“Job growth is about to begin,” The Conference Board declared Monday. In the second quarter, says Manpower. “We are already seeing evidence,” insists the Association of Executive Search Consultants.

Even coming upon the heels of a robust labor report last week (that fueled a Wall Street mini-rally) these pronouncements probably won’t do much for the pessimists, but for recruiters, consider the collective news a call to reveille. keep reading…

Recruiting is clearly not for everyone. Its demands can be extraordinary and its customers unrealistic. Its candidates not entirely truthful and its reward often just the self-satisfied glow of a job well done.

By its very nature, recruiting often creates a sense of contrast and contradiction. Hiring managers want the perfect candidate for the lowest price; candidates want the perfect job for the highest price and the government attempts to legislate a fair and level playing filed. Stuck between these conflicting forces, egos, and politics, is the recruiter: a person who is charged with the overwhelming task of identifying, attracting, and hiring the people required to create a great organization. (What is a great organization?)

Here are a few characteristics required to successfully do this job? keep reading…

The most powerful recruiting advertisement I’ve seen in the last two years didn’t originate from Google and it wasn’t found on a social media site; instead it was a “take your breath away” billboard designed to attract a single person.

Usually billboards are a complete waste of money, but this one dared to go where no one has gone before. We’ve all seen the famous 1916 James Montgomery Flagg portrait of Uncle Sam with the caption “I want you for the U.S. Army,” but imagine if instead of a generic message you passed a billboard or poster bearing your name, your image, and a message specific to you, i.e. Nicole Pollock “we want you!” There is zero chance you wouldn’t pull over immediately just to stare, but chances are you would have already learned about it through calls and text messages from your family and friends. Such a startling communication would even cause people who didn’t know you to take notice and to wonder about both you and what kind of organization would be so bold to attempt this type of recruiting.

The roadside billboard was only the beginning of a broad reaching “one-to-one recruiting” campaign launched by Wilkes University to land a single student. In addition to the billboard, it added personalized messages to pizza boxes at the local pizza shop, signs on top of local gas pumps, pre-screening ads in local movie theaters, directory signs in the local mall and even localized ads on MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central. The campaign turned everyone in the community that interacted with Nicole Pollock, the student of interest, into a stakeholder/influencer of her decision, which was ultimately “yes.”

The marketing firm, 160over90, hired by the university, clearly understood the value of the seldom used but powerful one-to-one approach. While not appropriate for every vacancy, the cost of a one-to-one campaign pales in comparison to the value of getting a top performer into a key role. Even if you are not ready to engage in an effort as bold as Wilkes University, there are components of one-to-one recruiting that can bolster any effort. keep reading…

Here is what is going on around the ERE.net world this week:

• Sign up for this week’s free webinar on Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. ET, Going from Good To ‘Elite’!: Becoming an Elite Recruiter, led by David Szary from the Recruiter Academy. David will discuss the competencies, skills, attributes and work habits of elite recruiters.
• We are just a week away from turning San Diego into the recruiting capital of the world as hundreds of recruiters are set to converge on the city for SourceCon and ERE Expo 2010 Spring. If you aren’t able to make it there in person, make sure to keep your schedules clear next week as both SourceCon and ERE Expo will be live streaming many of the sessions right here on ERE.net. Visit the websites for times and agenda information and stay tuned for more about which sessions will be streamed.
• You can also follow and take part in the conversations taking place in San Diego on Twitter by following @ereexpo and the #ereexpo and #sourcecon hashtags.
• Just last week we announced that the third #socialrecruiting summit will be taking place at Best Buy HQ in Minneapolis on May 17. Join the conversation at the only event which cuts through the hype to tell you not WHY you should be using social recruiting tactics, but to help you learn HOW you can successfully implement them into your recruiting function. Check out the agenda and session leaders today at socialrecruitingsummit.com and reserve your spot today. Don’t wait too long, space is limited and the summit has sold out in the past.
• For those of you on the search and placement side of the business, you will want to get yourself to Las Vegas from June 9 – 11 for the fourth annual Fordyce Forum. Brought to you by our sister publication The Fordyce Letter, this is the conference for big billers to talk about how to consistently earn five and six-figure fees. Check out all of the information and book your spot at www.fordyceforum.com.

9.7 percent and holding steady. Net job loss in February 2010: 36,000. Net job loss in February 2009: 726,000.

That’s the top line of the monthly Labor Department’s employment numbers for February. The results surprised most economists who had been expecting a higher job loss because of the snowstorms that crippled big parts of the U.S. last month.

The good news, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, is that but for the weather, the numbers would have shown an increase in jobs during the month. Citing Morgan Stanley economist David Greenlaw, the Journal says, “payrolls would’ve increased sharply last month — and would be expected to show strong growth in the March (employment) report.”

So take that you naysayers and prophets of doom. The U.S. may not exactly be booming, but it appears those predictions of job growth in the second quarter of 2010 are spot on. keep reading…

At the ERE Expo in San Diego, March 15-17, 2010, I’ll be describing what it takes to be a true corporate headhunter. This is a recruiter who can go head to head with his or her external rivals without compromising quality of hire or time to fill. To pull it off though, you’ll have to break some company rules and break from tradition. In the process you will probably aggravate your comp, compliance, legal, and I/O departments, at least at first. Hopefully, your recruiting manager will intercede and act as a buffer as you plow ahead making a positive contribution.

Before you know it, your hiring managers will be carrying you on their shoulders as you begin to consistently deliver far better candidates than your external rivals. Without unnecessary and contrived restraints you’ll also be finding more diverse candidates, passing every EEO and OFCCP audit and eliminating every wrongful hiring or discharge lawsuit. Within a year even the comp, I/O, and compliance departments will be singing your praise as you bring in more top performers without breaking the compensation budget. (The legal department might be a bit smaller though, since it will have less to do.)

Now to get started with my confession, which will soon become yours, you’ll need to get a sense of the hiring manager support you’ll soon be getting. As an example, here’s an email we just received from a former hiring manager client:

Many years ago Lou hosted an offsite manager event for Synaptics. A few months later I left Synaptics to found a startup with two good friends.It was a fantastic opportunity to take the Adler approach and apply it to a company on day one. I think Lou would be proud to know how much of an impact he has had on our organization four years later.

(Note: Synaptics is a major developer of touchpad technology, and the person’s new company is a well-known, rapidly growing social networking company.)

With this as a backdrop, here’s the short version of my confession, as to how I transformed from being a corporate recruiter into a more successful corporate headhunter. (Caution: go slowly as you try this out. This is only an overview. I’ll provide the longer version and more of the tactics at the 2010 Spring ERE Expo.): keep reading…

Up at 6am. 15 points. Hit the snoozebar once. Minus 5 points. Brush your teeth for three full minutes. 50 points (with a bonus from the toothpaste maker). Right-sized healthy breakfast. 25 points.

Arrive at work on time. 25 points. Attend all meetings on time. 75 points. Make meeting contributions recognized by peers. 100 points. Return all emails and phone calls. 25 points. Healthy lunch. 30 points. Walk after lunch. 50 points. Make five calls (or widgets or requisitions or whatever) as described in objectives. 40 points. Stay 1/2 hour later than usual. 25 points.

Take public transit home. 70 points. Watch TV (an enormous point bonanza). Bush teeth for three full minutes. 50 points (with a bonus from the toothpaste maker). Get in bed early enough to earn the well-rested points bonus in the morning. – Adapted from Design Outside The Box

It’s the logical extension of performance management programs. By coupling frequent-flyer style points systems, game design, and performance management, the world has become points crazed. Work performance is ranked along with every other aspect of life.

The points system allows companies to identify and harvest their true fans. They compete in every aspect of life for the opportunity to build an “authentic” relationship calibrated by measurement. Payment for the consumption of advertising, which in 2010 is already somewhat expected, has exploded into a global preoccupation. keep reading…

If you are wonky about economic indicators and labor market stats, this is your lucky week. No fewer than than three reports came out today; one came out Monday; a fifth — the highly anticipated monthly unemployment report — is due out Friday morning.

Today’s reports, considered a harbinger of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ unemployment report, are decidedly positive in that “less bad” way we’ve been seeing since late summer.

The most authoritative of the reports came from the Federal Reserve, which reported in its so-called Beige Book that “economic conditions continued to expand” in February, despite severe snowstorms that held back activity.

The book,  a summary of economic conditions in the 12 Fed districts, said consumer spending increased, though the snowstorms had a limiting effect. Loan activity was “soft,” said the Fed. “Most Districts indicated that banks remained cautious about lending.”

Not surprisingly, the Fed reported an uptick in hiring or a slowdown in layoffs in some of the federal reserve districts, but “labor markets generally remained soft throughout the nation, which resulted in minimal wage pressures.” keep reading…

Did you know that ERE has a group on LinkedIn? Check it out!

Here’s what’s going on in the ERE community this week:

1. The only danger in mobile recruiting?
2. Is your recruiting quaint?
3. Talent acquisition metrics
4. The big disconnect
5. Whose responsibility is it to check references?
6. Featured group of the week: Recruiting leadership forum

1. The danger of mobile recruiting? Not doing it.

Kristine Rhodes writes “Recently, I asked my client partners why they declined using mobile marketing as part of their recruiting strategy in 2009. I heard everything from “It’s just hype,” to “It’s intrusive,” to my personal favorite “It’s dangerous.” So I thought I’d share some quick facts to dispel the myths, and provide a few ways to ease into a mobile strategy.

Are you trying to get mobile recruiting initiatives completed this year? Take a look at Kristine’s post and add your own comments.

keep reading…

I have spent days with clients who are struggling to find a balance between the demand being placed on them and the resources they have. While this is a very old story, it is being written in a new way. Prior to this recession, most organizations were willing to add people — whether contractors or regular — without much issue. The focus was on time to fill and perceived quality, not on cost or sustainability.

Today is a different time and the focus for many CEOs is building a sustainable organization that can avoid the layoffs and bad branding that accompanies them. They are at least hoping for a workforce that is balanced between regular employees and those who work part-time or as contractors or consultants. Every recruiting vice-president, director, and manager should have a similar objective.

Having a lean workforce means having the right team and working seamlessly with RPOs, third-party recruiting agencies, and contract recruiters. It means redefining what an internal recruiter does and what skills they need to have. And all of this depends on the soundness of your recruiting processes and technology backbone.

In the scramble to get competitive over the past few years, many recruiting functions accumulated technology and threw together recruiting ideas and processes with little coordination or deep thought. When you are in the midst of a war for talent it becomes very difficult to approach things in an orderly or careful way. You think, someday I’ll take the time to integrate, evaluate, and eliminate. Well, the time has come. keep reading…

I saw a tweet this morning:

Coffee is the second largest item of international commerce in the world. The largest is petrol.

It got me to thinking (as many Twitter remarks do). Both are types of fuel and both can be argued to be drugs. My mind raced across the words to pull some lesson about telephone sourcing from them and settled on the fact that “names” are a raw material that, like oil and coffee beans, can be transformed into a commodity that fuels a staffing process like no other activity I can think of. One of the acronyms attached to the word fuel is “combustion.” Raw names can combust your staffing results.

Many years ago, when I first started sourcing, I’d harp and harp at Bob (my husband) that what TechTrak really needed was a database. It would drive me crazy thinking about these “names” I was uncovering on a daily basis and the growing pile beckoned me, over and over, to think about them, almost unceasingly.

“Think about it, Bob! These are names of people in the world somewhere. These people possess valuable skills (raw material) that others can use. The knowledge in their heads is priceless. It’s a shame to let them just fall away without capturing them (and the information they possess) in some sort of database that can be used for other things…” It kept me awake nights.

“But databases are a lot of work…” he’d remonstrate, looking up from the book he was reading. “Who’s gonna put all that info into a database?” he’d demand, adjusting his easy chair. Then, in 2003, LinkedIn launched with the brilliant idea of putting the world to work and one of my reasons for living (to torment Bob telling him so) was born.

LinkedIn is so simple. It’s just a database that collects names using the voluntary efforts of others — the raw material that sits in the ground until it’s pumped out and transformed into a wildly popular commodity. To do this, however, you have to grasp the enormous potential that lies within the raw material and you have to have the skill to unlock it. Most people don’t have that skill: the ability to communicate.

As hard as it is to understand in this day and age of “communication” in one way we are more isolated than ever. keep reading…

Where have all the .JOBS job boards gone? Gone to enhancements and improvements every one.

DirectEmployers took down its job boards a few weeks ago, while it makes changes to the platform.

Bill Warren, executive director of DirectEmployers Association, blogged about the changes his team is making to the platform listing four specific areas — social media integration, accessibility, job posting — tagged for improvement. These are in response to feedback DirectEmployers has received since the first sites launched last October.  A fifth reason he cited was “Building out tens of thousands of additional domains.”

In a conversation this morning (Pacific time), Warren told me the original expectation that January would be the official debut was a little too ambitious. As late as meetings January 28 and 29, Warren was still predicting the imminent launch of 25,000 .jobs domains.

But refinements arising out of discussions at those two meetings, attended by a handful of recruiting leaders, including Peter Weddle and Gerry Crispin, postponed the launch.

“It’s quite a project, as you can imagine, ” Warren told me. keep reading…

Spock of Star Trek fame was famous for pointing out things that were completely illogical, which leads me to believe he would have had a field day examining corporate recruiting practices. Of all the things that we do in corporate recruiting that are difficult to logically justify, my vote for the least logical is use of the “best available talent” model. When most organizations characterize their approach, they leave out “available” and say that they recruit the best talent, but the truth is they often hire what they perceive to be the best among the shallow pool of candidates who happen to be looking for a job when the job becomes vacant or is newly created.

Illustrating the Problem and the Opportunity

Two years ago I co-authored a book entitled Catch Them if You Can with Canadian recruiting leader Greg Ford. Greg had the great idea to educate managers about the critical success factors of top talent sourcing by sharing the lessons all great recruiters eventually learn through a narrative rich with fishing analogies.

For this illustration, assume for a moment that you like to fish (this may be easier for some readers than others), and that you have access to a lake that is open year round and regularly stocked by the local fish agency. Using a logical thought process, you have several factors to consider before you head out, one being when to fish. Four options come to mind: keep reading…

While assessment can be beneficial in most situations, it is better suited for some scenarios. I’m going to highlight a few situations for which I feel assessment really is a good fit.

There are all kinds of assessments (anything used to evaluate an applicant and make decisions using the results of this evaluation is considered an assessment by the U.S. EEOC) and my purpose is not to make specific prescriptions; rather it is to present some food for thought. So, if your answer to any of the questions below is “yes,” consider using some form of assessment. keep reading…

Update: Citibank issued a statement this afternoon apologizing for the blocking of fabulis, saying: “Citibank sincerely apologizes to Mr. Goldberg for this misunderstanding. This situation had nothing to do with the content of his web site and any comments by our staff to the contrary were incorrect; we are reviewing what happened. This was a technical issue about missing documentation that is required for new business accounts. Once we resolved the situation, we unblocked the account immediately.”

In our last episode Jason Goldberg, the erstwhile founder and CEO of what was once Jobster (now Recruiting.com), had moved to Germany as chief product officer for Xing. The business-oriented social networking site bought Goldberg’s startup SocialMedian for $4 million at the end of 2008 and he went along.

To bring you up-to-date, the ever-restless Goldberg left Xing a year later after it was acquired. He moved back to New York to oversee the development and launch of yet another startup, fabulis, a social networking site for gays. His blog has the details.

Goldberg is now back in the news, blasting Citibank for freezing his company’s bank account. keep reading…

For a nice overview of the scenario planning process and this project, take a listen to this podcast. Then, brace yourself. This scenario is somewhat disturbing.

In the beginning, they thought it was the flu. As the school year started, complaints of fever and respiratory problems stretched the capacity of the health care system. Fall is a busy time in countries with relatively modern health care. This time was different.

As September dragged on, fatalities multiplied. By the middle of October, three million people, virtually all of them children, had died from the Pandemic. The desperate programs to create a working vaccine produced failure after failure.

In November, the American death toll was nine million. The rate was doubling each month. Other countries in the Northern hemisphere were experiencing similar levels of decimation of their children. The damage was smaller in the southern hemisphere because the health care and education infrastructure is less developed.

By Christmas, half of the school-age population, 18 million children, had succumbed to the mysterious disease. Fifteen million mourning families. Infrastructure overloaded beyond imagining. keep reading…