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Look at that bookshelf behind you, or just over your desk, and tell me what non-fiction books you see. By looking at the titles of professional or technical books you keep, I may be able to guess your specialty. If I tell you that on my shelf there’s a dog-eared copy of the “Standard Handbook of Power Plant Engineering,” by Thomas C. Elliott, and that “Power Plant Engineering,” by Lawrence F. Drbal, was the last book that I read, you would most likely be able to guess that my field is nuclear power engineering, or that at least I work closely with nuclear generators. Last year around this time Scott Hagen wrote an article for the ER Daily (Out of the Box Sourcing) about a little-known type of lead generation: finding people using online bookstores. Today I will take this subject to the next level by sharing some changes and making known to you additional information about this interesting method. On sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, we can learn individuals’ purchase history and at times read their opinions and commentaries about books. By analyzing this kind of information and cross-referencing it with other competitive recruitment intelligence data we gather, it is possible to identify individuals to target for recruitment. Finding just a name or, with some luck, an email address is enough to get started. To complete the picture we can use free online lookups like Ultimate White Pages, directories like PeopleSearch Deluxe, or information from business intelligence resources like Hoover’s Online, Eliyon, OneSource and others. So, how do we find an enterprise-wide, server-side java developer in online bookstores? Let’s look at an example. Starting from Amazon.com select “Books” from the search box on the far left, enter the keyword “J2EE” and click the “Go” button. As I write this I get three results under “Most Popular” and 33 total. Scanning briefly over them I see: “Core J2EE Patterns…” by D. Alur, “Professional Java…” by S. Allaramaju, and “Developing Enterprise…” by K Zaman Ahmed. All three seem highly technical, though I am no Java expert. An educated guess leads us to take a closer look at “Core J2EE Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies.” If it doesn’t appear on the top of the list simply scroll down until you find it. Clicking on either the title or image of the book brings us to a page dedicated to information about it. Of particular interest here are customers who have written reviews. Along the left column click on the link to “Customer Reviews” and you will see the first ten. So far I see that 26 people have reviewed the book as of the February 27, 2002. Scrolling down the list you will see reviews written by Daniel Lan, Robert, Vinit Carpenter and Thomas Paul, among others. These individuals didn’t just buy the book, they most likely read it and cared enough about the content to share their opinion with us. Some of the people who write reviews here have also written them on other items at Amazon. We can see which others they have reviewed by clicking on “(see more about me)” if it appears next to their name. Clicking on a link, like Daniel Lan’s, takes us to the “Personal Profile” which is in a box to the left. From Mr. Lan’s profile we see what other items he reviewed. He’s read several books on Java, XML and C++. Scrolling down to the bottom of the page you see he wrote 23 reviews. From here you can read number 1 through 10 and click on “Next” to see the others. Mr. Lan is in Canada, he seems like a well-read and highly technical person for us to contact. In the “Profile” window, just below his picture, is an “Add” button that allows you to “Add this person to you Favorite People List.” Please don’t do that now, we don’t want 20,000 ERE subscribers simultaneously adding poor Mr. Lan and flooding his inbox. If you have created an account with Amazon, which I highly recommend you do, you can add any reviewer to your list of friends. Once you add someone you can subsequently “Upgrade this person from Favorite to Amazon Friend.” Besides notifying them that you are now friends, prompting reciprocation, this gives you an easy way to track your newfound friend on your very own Amazon “Friends & Favorites” list as they progress in their book reviewing career. Additionally, this “promotion” reveals their email address in case it was hidden. Addresses in the Profile section are not always hidden. From a personal profile we can sometimes learn the reviewers’ email address and often read a little more about them. We can see a wish list of items they would like to buy or receive as gifts, view a list of their favorite people ó most likely fellow reviewers ó and even check out a “Listmania” list of their favorite books. I like the Wish List because it provides me an opportunity to send them an unexpected gift if I found it necessary to use a little “persuasion” for some reason, or wanted to earn their favor. Also in this same Profile box there may be interesting items in the “About me:” section. Going back to Mr. Lan as an example, click on the “See More” link in his About Me: profile and you discover our friend is a: “Sr. Software developer/designer, worked with C/C++ since eight years, worked with Java since three years, experience with OO design, design pattern and UML. Experience with n-tier architecture, J2EE, Ph.D in computer science, Sun certified Programmer and Developer for Java 2 Platform, IBM certified developer for XML and related technologies.” Contact Mr. Lan if you want to talk with a real Java expert! Be sure to keep in line with the website’s conditions of use. For example, Amazon encourages personal communication and discussion with reviewers, but some things it won’t tolerate are identity falsification, infringement of privacy, commercial “spam,” or mass mailings. Here are ten suggestions on what to do when contacting a book reviewer so you won’t violate etiquette or the conditions of use:

1. Be totally forthright about who you are, include your full contact information.

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There are many complex models that exist on how to organize the recruiting function. I have seen charts that covered horizontal page after page, carefully defining all the relationships. While these may be useful administrative tools, they don’t give you much traction when it comes to understanding whether or not you have put the function together well. What ultimately matters is whether things are getting done ó and done well. In many ways structure should follow strategy, or to put it another way, form should follow function. Once you are clear on a strategic direction for the recruiting function, it becomes much easier to determine whether things should be centralized or decentralized or balanced between the two. Here are a few rules to guide you in making decisions on how to organize your recruiting function. Rule #1: Be sure you have a strategy. I am amazed at how many staffing groups have no articulated strategy. When I ask a recruiter what the strategy of their group is, they often answer (if they answer at all) that the strategy is to hire people fast or something like that. While that may be a direction it is not a useful one. It’s like the airlines saying their strategy is to fly. Michael Porter at Harvard defines strategy as, “an integrated set of actions that a company designs to produce a sustainable competitive advantage and thus attain superior performance.” It may be simple, but it is almost always several pages outlining what the group is responsible for accomplishing and how they are going to do it. A strategy should contain three major elements: a look at the future (anticipation), a look at today (awareness), and a focus on what should be done (action). The act of looking ahead and predicting trends may be very useful in determining directions and structures. For example, if you predict that the economy will get stronger in the next few months, you may decide that hiring a few people into a central group to start doing sourcing makes a lot of sense. It is also critical to know how you are doing today and make changes to direction and structure, as needed, based on current feedback. Rule #2: Match the structure to the strategy. Structure should always reflect the strategy. For example, a recruiting function that is focused on hiring lots of call center staff and administrative support people might decide to centralize a small core group and outsource the bulk of the sourcing and screening to an external vendor or two. The central staff would coordinate the vendors, work to determine internal vacancies and act as the clearinghouse for hiring managers. Because the skills needed are easy to define and communicate, this model has worked well for many clients. On the other hand, if your staffing function is chartered with finding scarce talent ó those whose skills are in high demand and low supply, often from competitors ó a centralized sourcing group separated from the hiring managers might be a poor choice. When skills and talent are scarce, it takes a lot of negotiating and discussion to determine what the right person looks like. Knowing the job and the hiring manager become paramount, and administrative efficiency becomes secondary. Recruiters in these situations are best located at the side of the manager in decentralized or balanced organizational structures. Rule #3: Beautiful org charts are not important. Ultimately, structure is about the customer. I have seen very successful recruiting functions with very messy structures ó complex, varied, and mixed to the point that an organizational chart is almost too complex to read. One division of a firm may have a centralized structure because of the nature of the people they hire, while another may need a different structure. There is no need to have the same structure everywhere. What is most important is that the structure serves the customer’s needs and makes implementing the strategy easy. Some divisions may have strong feeling about how their recruiting is organized, and following their needs is sensible. Recruiters need to build connections between themselves and the hiring managers, learn about the business and changing talent needs, and always have the right people ready to be interviewed. Whatever structure makes this happen is the right structure. Rule #4: Structures should be flexible and changeable. And finally, many people believe that structures are things that should change rarely. I believe that the best structures, like strategies, need to adapt to changing circumstances. Occasionally I find people who are pushing against the tide to maintain an organizational structure that has outlived its functional usefulness. No one should think that a structure is something fixed and rigid. Good structures may include links to vendors and suppliers, to agencies, to free agents. Good structures can be built around ever changing teams or around individuals. Rather than spending days and days designing org charts, take a few hours and spend them discussing what needs to be done that isn’t being done or talking about what would make your group more successful and more appreciated. Time spent on those activities is more likely to build your credibility and success than how well you have defined everyone’s roles and reporting relationships. Stay loose and keep your eye on the customer.

Fewer speakers, fewer attendees, fewer vendors ó but no less substance, networking, or fun! I think everyone that attended ERE’s second annual ER Expo conference in San Diego last week will agree that it was probably the most worthwhile conference they have attended since, well, last year’s conference. Quality outweighs quantity anytime. Even the vendors, who, prior to the event, were nervously calculating their cost per attendee, will agree that this was a worthwhile event. The thought-provoking content truly challenged our thinking as to how we are approaching recruitment and retention strategies for today’s and tomorrow’s workplace. The speakers included a mix of new faces, like Peter Capelli, the director of the Center for Human Resources at Wharton, and Bruce Tulgan, the author of Winning The Talent Wars; as well as familiar faces like John Sullivan, Gerry Crispin, and Kevin Wheeler. All had something new, interesting, and worth noting to say. The days of conference “boondoggles” are over ó at least for the foreseeable future. As result, the attendees, while fewer in number than last year, were all there to learn something new. They seemed, on average, to be from corporations rather than staffing or search firms, and at more senior levels in their recruiting organizations. When polled, over three out of four indicated that they are actively recruiting or are gearing up for major new recruiting initiatives in the next 2 quarters. I even met a few recruiters who were at the conference actively recruiting additional recruiters. Apparently they were following the advice John Sullivan always gives: to recruit great talent you have to go to where good talent hangs out. No better place than the ERE conference. Here are a few of the key issues and insights reinforced by the speakers and attendees: 1. Recruiting and new hire orientation go hand in hand. While we all inherently know this, Peter Capelli and Bruce Tulgan provided strong rationales for paying attention to this notion and planning accordingly. Though he was talking somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Bruce commented on the irony of the fact that when valued employees leave the organization ó sometimes to go to competitors ó we throw them a big going away party. New employees, on the other hand, rarely get more of a welcome than the standard orientation necessary to fill out benefits forms. The first few weeks of a person’s career with a company are still part of the recruiting process and need to include a valuable orientation program. In a previous career, I worked in the marketing department of a very large consumer products food company. While I haven’t worked for that company for more than 10 years, I will never forget the welcome that I and all new recruits to the marketing department received during our first week. On the first day of work, we were met for breakfast by our immediate supervisor and taken to lunch by three or four people from our team. Our cubicles already had our name plates on them and were well stocked with business cards, monogrammed note paper, department and corporate telephone lists, pencils, pens, note pads, stapler, paper clips, and other necessary “tools.” Our calendars were filled with prescheduled meetings with individuals across all departments whom we would be interacting with on a regular basis. We were assimilated into the team as quickly as possible, minimizing the amount of time we felt like we were new hires. These small gestures go a long way toward building strong first impressions and higher first year retention rates (I stayed with the company five years and left for geographic reasons). 2. Turnover is not as much of a labor market issue as we would like to believe. Peter Capelli aptly pointed out that even in times of economic uncertainty, the most valued employees always have attractive employment opportunities presented to them. As employers, we have to quantify the value of high performance to our organizations, and we have to create strategies that will regularly reinforce that value. Peter’s research showed that organizations felt that the best programmers were 20 times more effective than average programmers. This means that a company would need to hire 20 average employees to replace that one great programmer. But companies rarely take appropriate steps to reinforce that value to the employee, nor do they take steps to help the average employee become above average. This lack of regular performance management leads to early turnover for the best employees. Bruce Tulgan reinforced this notion when he pointed out that great performers want to work on teams with other great performers. They have little tolerance for mediocrity. If they don’t feel that the organization is committed to maintaining a workforce that has the same standards for performance as they do, these top performers will leave. Often they will take other great performers with them. The loss to the company is tremendous. Not only does the company lose productivity that is 20 times better than many of the company’s other “people” assets, but they also lose all the knowledge and intellectual capital they have invested in the employee. The cost of this type of turnover is far, far greater than simply being “down one headcount.” The replacement cost (productivity loss, financial investment in recruiting, recruiter’s time) is typically higher than the cost of any program that reinforces a commitment to supporting high performers. John Sullivan pointed out this same notion in a somewhat different way. He related it to revenue dollars generated per employee. He asserted that high performers can generate as much as 100 times the revenue of poor performers. Companies need to do what it takes (i.e., spend the necessary money) to recruit, reward, and retain the highest performers. 3. There’s more to technology selection than meets the eye. There is no perfect “end to end” solution. One of the biggest challenges companies face is choosing the right technology to assist with the recruiting process. Notice the emphasis on assist. Too often companies lose sight of the fact that technology is a facilitator, and does not actually do the recruiting. Recruiting is about relationship building and human interaction. The speakers reinforced the fact that technology selection should be based on a thorough evaluation of how the tool will help facilitate the recruiting process as it relates to current or desired processes. Panelists from corporations like Johnson & Johnson and Wachovia Bank reinforced this fact with examples of their own experiences with technology (both positive and negative). Since no one product offers the perfect end-to-end solution (even though there are vendors who try to convince you of this), one of the key factors you should consider when selecting a solution is its ability to adapt and integrate with other technology. If you believe that your organization is moving toward tying together everything from sourcing to performance management into one system, then make sure the technology you select is on a platform that can be scripted to integrate. Most “add-on” modules to base systems are being developed for relative easy integration. Don’t take on the burden of technology selection and implementation alone. Bringing in a third party to facilitate the process, challenge your thinking, and offer an objective, expert opinion is most often worth the investment. It can help you from making a very expensive, poor decision. To summarize, the team at the ERE clearly delivered on the theme of the conference, “Survival of the Fittest.” All of the presentations motivated our thinking as to how we are going to create organizations that will survive the economic ups and downs of the coming years. Recruiting and retaining top talent is the most important ingredient to that survival.

When hundreds of thousands of Canada geese migrate from central Canada to Wisconsin and further south for the winter months, they are triggered by built-in mechanisms that tell them when to migrate, in which direction, and how far. Other factors like body fat, magnetic fields, the stars, and the sun influence the path the birds take to carry out their eating, nesting, and mating cycles. Oh, if a pattern like this were that clear and inherent when we talk about migrating resumes from one system to another! It would save recruiting and IT organizations a lot of time, money, and effort. But when organizations are the proud owners of a fat resume database (see my article How Big Is Your Black Hole?), implementation teams are faced with the pivotal question of whether to migrate or not to migrate resumes and other legacy data. The “migration” question has been asked ever since the first companies put resumes in one repository and then decided to change systems. Here are some of the most commonly asked questions in the migration-decision process:

1. Should we bring the resumes over to the new system?

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I must confess. Despite my protestations, I have been caught. The interviewing component of POWER Hiring is a behavioral interview. This is hard for me to publicly admit. At the recent March, 2002, ERE conference?? which was an outstanding event?? I was cornered by an aggressive behavioral interview user. After my session, she told me that since POWER Hiring requires candidates to provide detailed examples of past accomplishments, it is a behavioral event interview. However, in passing, she also recognized an important distinction. She couldn’t wait to try our approach out, since she felt that by spending more time on fewer accomplishments you’d gain more insight into real past performance. Not only would this be easier to do, she also thought that you’d be better able to match past performance to future performance. We then mutually agreed that POWER Hiring’s interviewing piece is both easier to use than traditional behavioral interviewing and it also takes it to another level of accuracy. If you’d like to improve your interviewing and assessment skills, here’s what she meant by all of this: The two parts of the POWER Hiring principles she was referring to were the “Performance Profiles” (the P in POWER) and the “Objective Evaluation” (the O in POWER). For quick reference, a performance profile is a list of prioritized deliverables that define job success (see my article on preparing performance profiles for more info on this). A performance profile describes the real job. It lists expected results, the key steps required to achieve these results, and the company environment. The environment includes items like pace, systems, tools, resources, and time pressures. A performance profile is the first step to an accurate assessment. This is the benchmark you use to evaluate a candidate’s past performance. The basic interview method we suggest is to obtain detailed examples of past accomplishments. Spend 10-15 minutes each on three or four major accomplishments during a typical interview session. This approach is described in detail in my article The Best Interview Question of All Time. With this detailed information about past performance, you can develop a trend line of individual and team accomplishments over a three to ten year timeframe. You can then compare this to the actual performance needs of the position. We then use a formal assessment process that ranks the candidate’s past performance on each of the expected performance objectives on a one to five scale. Into the one to five scales we factor the required skills, behaviors, and competencies. By focusing on performance first, we directly observe how a candidate’s skills, behaviors, and competencies have been used to achieve the desired results. Putting performance first is the key difference in POWER Hiring’s behavioral interviewing approach. Very quickly, you’ll find some excellent candidates who have achieved similar results using a different mix of skills, behaviors and competencies. By starting off looking for skills, behaviors, and competencies, you minimize your pool of top performers and inadvertently eliminate great people who bring new ideas and fresh thinking. The focus on performance first benefits the recruiter, hiring manager, and candidate in a number of important ways:

1. The recruiter and hiring manager are on the same page with respect to real job needs. By understanding the process used to achieve success, you have a better benchmark to assess candidate competency. We’ve seen an enormous reduction in assessment variability as a result of this process.

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My last article (Permission Marketing For Recruiters: Building a Targeted List) spoke about the concept of permission marketing and gave some specifics about building a list of potential candidates through networking and other means. Today, I’ll offer some content guidelines to help you use email to build a relationship with these candidates over time. As I mentioned before, permission marketing must be anticipated, personal, and relevant. Now that a growing group of potential candidates have given you permission to interact with them in this fashion, you have accomplished the first of the three tenets ó your interaction is anticipated. This does not mean the candidate is waiting for your email. But it does mean that when it comes, they are less likely to have a “who is this and why the heck are they emailing me?” response. What To Send There are basically two types of content that you should send to your permission marketing list: “actionable” and “informational.” Actionable content includes what marketers refer to as a “call to action.” It encourages potential candidates to do something, such as:

• Apply for a position

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Are your staffing requirements being addressed by your company’s overall IT strategy? Are the needs of HR ó and in particular recruiting and talent management systems ó on the IT “A” list? CIOs can be faced with a bewildering array of competing demands: resources need to be allocated to call centers, data warehousing, security, CRM and other initiatives. As a result, staffing automation technology can often end up well down the list of priorities. So how can you ensure that staffing gets its due in corporate IT plans? A Tale of Woe Recently, someone asked me, “What happens if the IT department is recommending the selection of a vendor that meets IT requirements but does not meet HR recruitment needs?” My immediate reply was, “Don’t agree to it!” Functionality is paramount. A tool that does not meet the recruiting needs of its users will quickly fall into disuse and end up as a poor corporate investment. But it may not be that simple. What if it is IT’s funding that is paying for the software? Without a doubt, it should not be IT’s decision, nor IT’s funding. So, how do you secure HR decision-making and funding for a staffing management solution? Become a Strategic Initiative The staffing function is often not seen as strategic. This perception needs to be combated. A staffing director has to impress upon C-level executives the strategic importance of successful staffing and the critical role it plays in the success of any business plan. Present a compelling business case including strategic targets and benefits, ROI, and business impact study. Make the right executive- or board-level case, and the funding will follow. We have been involved in many discussions within the staffing function of large corporations in which a common issue is HR’s lack of self confidence in its value. Understand the Technology HR management is often not conversant in computer technology, which can lead to the staffing solution decision being left to IT. Avoid this through self-education. Understand what characteristics IT considers important in enterprise software ó traits such as low maintenance, high security, and the ability to work well with the rest of the corporate IT infrastructure. Sometimes, IT values a certain trait more for its own sake than anything else. Make sure you understand the true significance of features that IT advocates, and how it adds value to your business function. Don’t be oversold on points that have little impact on creating a high-caliber recruiting function. For instance, an overemphasis on integration will bring little value if the system’s functionality is inadequate. Then it is only integration in a vacuum. The Low-IT Solution The application service provider (ASP) model of staffing management solution delivery is state-of-the-art. There are good reasons for a staffing department to select a staffing management solution delivered via an ASP, one of the most important being that an ASP places minimal strain on company IT resources. ASP-delivered software (also known as web-based software) is a low-impact IT solution, since there is nothing installed on the company network. ASP software is independent of the company’s hardware, operating system, and network architecture. With nothing to install on corporate servers, limited IT resources are freed up for other aspects of the corporate IT strategy. The implementation of an ASP can go ahead on its own schedule, not tied to the schedule of wider (often multi-year) enterprise software implementation plans. At the kick-off meeting for the implementation of ASP software, IT personnel are frequently present, under the false impression that they will have tremendous involvement in the project. When IT is overburdened, it is constructive to have a successful project that does not require heavy lifting on their part. You will usually find two types of IT managers. One wants to protect his or her team and his or her job, and wants to implement a client-server system or build it in-house. The other is the strategic IT manager who really thinks of the good of the corporation and considers functionality and how to reach business targets. That manager is consequently more open to ASP solutions. That begs the question, what is the role of the IT function? The True Role for IT IT is a business enabler, not an end in and of itself, so the real level of involvement by IT in your vendor selection is actually quite minimal. You might include one person from IT as an advisor to the selection committee, to tap his or her expertise when vetting the technological infrastructure of a proposed solution. As noted above, involvement from IT will be minimal during implementation and beyond, so their involvement in the decision should be correspondingly minimal. Taking Charge Do not let your decision process be governed by an IT agenda. Agree upon a rigorous and objective selection methodology with the right weighting of functionality and IT-related issues, and stick to the vendor that scores the highest. Make sure that the people who have the ultimate decision recognize the strategic view of the recruiting process. Do this, and you will make sure that the vendor you choose will partner with you to reach your corporate staffing goals. Staffing can often be subordinated to a broader company-wide IT strategy and implementation timeline. However, independence and freedom for staffing are important. The staffing department should not be tied lock-step with a company-wide IT strategy. Rather, HR should be free to seek out the vendor that will deliver the staffing solution that will perform the critical business function ó a function that may be your company’s greatest competitive asset.

Remember back in high school, when everyone seemed to follow the most popular athlete or cheerleader around? Not only did everyone follow these “stars” around, but everywhere they went suddenly became a “cool place.” Well, the same is true in recruiting. If you recruit noted professionals (known as “magnet hires”) to your firm, other people will follow them (as recruits to your firm) ó just like they did in high school. Recruiting magnet employees works on the same principle as magnet schools do in education: attract the best and everyone else will want to come. Incidentally, the magnet concept also works on a smaller scale when you hire a mentor or someone’s current boss. Once you hire one star, you are also likely to get additional recruits as a result of the magnet effect. Everyone Wants To Work at the “Cool” Firm In the Silicon Valley where I work, it is common for the best technical people to flock (almost like lemmings) to the coolest place to work. For example, at one time everyone flocked to HP. Then it was to Apple Computer, then to SGI, and lately, it’s been Cisco. Other geographic areas and industries have experienced similar phenomena. Once you are known as a “cool” company ó or what we call a “great place to work” ó recruiting becomes more of a sorting problem rather than an attracting problem. The magnet approach differs from the more traditional way most firms try to become recognized as a cool place, which is to build up the employment brand. Unfortunately, although branding (also known as image building) is an effective recruiting strategy, branding takes a relatively long time to have a positive impact on recruiting. Follow the Leader: Magnet Hires Fortunately, there is a quicker but equally effective tool for attracting a large number of talented people. It is known as magnet hiring. The basic focus of the program is to recruit magnet people, who by joining your firm will eventually cause others to want to join it also. Magnet people are defined as new hires who, by their mere hire alone, will bring a firm notoriety and additional recruits. In other words, because a “star” has joined the firm, others would also want to become an employee. The magnet approach is not restricted to recruiting. Marketing managers, realtors, and department stores have also successfully used the magnet concept to attract additional customers. If you have never seen the “magnet effect” in action, you probably have seen it in reverse, where a noted “star” employee leaves a firm, and as a result the stock price falls and others quickly begin to leave the firm (for example, as when Michael Jordan left the Chicago Bulls). How Does It Work? The basic principle behind magnet hires is that by attracting a few individuals (generally in key positions) a company will gain both notoriety and a stream of individual applicants who would also like to work at the firm. The expectation is that for every magnet hire a firm makes, it should be able to recruit up to 10 additional top performing individuals, who could not have been successfully recruited without the draw of the magnet person. Incidentally, well-known magnet individuals not only draw recruits to positions related to the magnets area of expertise, but they also attract top performers to unrelated jobs and other functional areas. Bringing in a “star” has numerous positive and immediate results in recruiting, but it has other benefits as well, because the ideas and experience a magnet brings may also help a firm to improve its product, its image, and its sales. Spreading the Word After a magnet is hired, it’s essential to spread the word immediately both in and outside the company. Normally the word is spread through press releases, and even in announcement ads in newspapers and industry publications. Announcement ads are particularly prominent in accounting, law, and other partnership firms. Recent examples of individuals who just by joining a firm have positively impacted the firm’s image and its ability to recruit include Lou Dobbs, William Shatner and Michael Jordan. Merely by joining an organization, these individuals caused their new company to become the “topic of conversation” within the industry. Magnet hiring in essence is the adoption of viral marketing techniques to recruiting. It is both an effective approach and in addition, it is relatively inexpensive. Identifying People Who Qualify as Magnet Hires Determining whether a person qualifies as magnet hire can be done using several different approaches. Some of the steps that can be used to identify the names of potential magnet hires include:

• Asking other “magnets” or industry luminaries to name them

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The other day I was thinking about the evolution of the online job searching and hiring process, and the thought occurred to me that the efficiency to be gained from any such system is only as strong as its weakest link. I am sure that many of us who are currently working in various aspects of the online hiring process (i.e., recruiting, candidate management, HRIS integration, online screening and assessment) have identified our own personal weakest link and are working to strengthen it. This article is dedicated to discussing my personal opinion of the weakest link in the online hiring process: the use of the resume as the primary currency in the online transaction between job seeker and employer. The Evolution of the Online Hiring Process The present state of evolution in the online hiring process can be viewed as having three major phases. I like to refer to these phases as the “providing” phase, the “processing” phase, and the “prediction” phase. A quick summary of each of these phases will help to provide a clear understanding of why I feel the resume is the weakest link in the online hiring process.

1. The providing phase. The evolution of online hiring began with the idea of using the web as a talent marketplace. During this early phase of evolution the focus was on using the web as a tool for providing information about candidates. The focus of the entire industry was on the new found ability to provide hiring managers and recruiters with viable job candidates from responses to online job postings and from the process of harvesting resumes from the web. In this phase all metrics of success seemed to focus on the sheer number of resumes collected. All that seemed to matter was the establishment of a resume pipeline. This mentality soon caused problems though, because the tools for processing the raw materials flowing through these pipelines were insufficient.

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Personality and job performance are often very misunderstood. For one thing, there is a tendency to look at personality and make assumptions about job skills. For another, there is a tendency to assume that “style” or “type” tests relate to future job performance. Both assumptions can lead to hiring mistakes. Evidence or Inference? Let’s think about personality-type tests (for the purists, I’m lumping traits, motivations, and attitudes into one big category to simplify this article). An applicant is asked to answer questions like, “Do you like to solve problems? Were you good at math and science? Do you enjoy puzzles?” We add up the scores and miraculously conclude, “This applicant is good at solving problems, excels at math and science, and enjoys solving puzzles!” Wrong? Right? Who knows? All we know is how the applicant described him or herself. Nothing more and nothing less. And it tells us nothing about whether he or she is any good at problem solving! This is the first fundamental error in using a pencil and paper test: we never really know if the person is telling the truth, let alone if the person really has the skills. If you ask managers to rate an employee’s overall performance, independent studies show that about 50% of the manager’s rating can be attributed to personality factors. Why? Here are some research summaries from independent hiring scientists:

• All other things being equal, managers are biased to give higher ratings to subordinates they like than to subordinates they do not like.

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How we organize ourselves often becomes a time-consuming political engagement that satisfies no one. Some organizations oscillate between centralized and decentralized structures almost as frequently as the seasons change, while others toy with networks and matrices and all sorts of variations. In the end we are struggling to balance and find political agreement on three fundamental needs:

1. The need to obtain and disburse resources

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Imagine you are the director of recruiting for a Fortune 1000 company. You have just completed what appears to have been a very successful implementation of a leading applicant tracking system (ATS). It was a major investment: six figures at least, maybe even seven. But the project was on time and close to budget; you have received accolades all around; the vendor uses you as a reference account; and you have been asked to speak at some upcoming HR conferences to share your success story. About nine months later you get a call from the director of EEO/diversity. She tells you that there is a problem with the reports. There are an inordinate number of jobs that were filled with only one applicant. There are an excessive number of new hired employees that do not appear on the applicant flow reports from the new, expensive system. An auditor will be coming in within the next two weeks, and you will need to go back and correct this data ASAP. Sound like a terrible nightmare? Over the past 12 years I’ve been involved in over 100 ATS implementations. Many of the projects I’ve worked on have been post implementation, taking place months or even years after a system has been installed. From my experience, I can tell you that this turns out to be a very common story. The reason? Recruiters aren’t actually using the applicant tracking system. Even when I am assisting clients in the selection of a new system, one of the most important factors is always “ease of use.” Of course, this is because the recruiters would not use the last system, leading most organizations to assume that the last system was “difficult to use.” But no matter which system you choose, it’s clear that getting your recruiters to actually use it is an important part of the implementation process. So why is it so hard to get your recruiters to use an applicant tracking system? In a nutshell, it’s because recruiters are creatures who follow the path of least resistance. In today’s e-world, all a recruiter really needs to be effective is access to the Internet, an email account (preferably using Microsoft Outlook), and a telephone. So even if you put the latest, full-functioning ATS, complete with all the bells and whistles, in front of them, if it creates more friction than those basic tools, you are already fighting an uphill battle. What can you do to avoid this phenomenon and still get a return on your investment? If you just inherited a failed implementation or you’re about to implement a new one, here are a few pointers I have found effective in encouraging recruiters to use the system:

1. Process alignment. I define this differently than a traditional process re-engineering. Sometimes companies will flip the applecart and reinvent their recruiting process completely, but still end up with lots of friction. The key here is to align your process, the roles of the people carrying out the process, and the technology so there is as little friction as possible. A good example here is when recruiters get blamed for not entering interview dates, even though the recruiter is not involved in scheduling or participating in the interview. If the interview scheduling is pushed out to the hiring manager and his or her admin, then so should the responsibility for updating the system. Recruiters are not data entry clerks, and they hate being treated that way. The goal is to align these components in such a way that the people involved in the process use the tools to get their job done ó and as a byproduct, the data you need is captured.

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If, by now, you have decided to place greater emphasis on the internal and external recruitment and development of potential leaders for your organization, keep the following in the back of your mind throughout the process:

• Leadership training and development is a continuous and evolving process. Having disjointed, one-day leadership seminars and random efforts to instill leadership principles is like having one-day brain surgery “how to” classes. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. There must be a commitment to a total and dynamic program, not a “hip new age” day of personal introspection and inspirational self discovery (“Attendees are asked to bring their own crystals and to leave ‘bad vibes’ at the door. Soy toast and herb tea served at breaks”).

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I get to work with quite a few senior HR people during the time they are proposing new HR or recruiting programs. Almost without exception, they seem totally surprised when their new “pet project” is massacred by a team of MBA financial analysts armed with a battery of what I call “questions from hell.” In case you are planning on proposing a new ATS or other HR program, you might use this checklist of questions to prepare for the inevitable bombardment from the “non-believers and naysayers.” Criticisms and Complaints You’re Likely To Hear From Management When new programs are proposed in HR, there are invariably a series of “it won’t work” criticisms that you will get from cynical managers and executives. These are concerns and comments that you must be able to anticipate and respond to if you expect to get any new HR program approved, particularly during these tough economic times. The most common concerns you’re likely to hear include: Business Issues: “It Impacts Our Business Results”

1. It doesn’t fit our business plan or model.

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One of the primary reasons a “recruiting black hole” exists is because many recruiting teams don’t realize where technology is supposed to stop and where they’re supposed to begin. But with all of the automation inherent in recruiting, it’s important not to lose sight of what the goal of all this technology is: to enable people to do their jobs more effectively. And recruiting, at its core, is a highly personal endeavor built on relationships. So how can technology be utilized to enhance rather than detract from these relationships? To start at the beginning, the “black hole” is a reference to what happens when a good candidate submits her information to your company, yet is never contacted. Here are two common scenarios:

• A good executive search firm or headhunter would call or email this individual immediately and begin establishing a long-term relationship in the hopes that they could fill a future opening.

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Now that the Federal Reserve has made public that the economic recovery is underway, we can start to consider the many valuable lessons that have been learned during the downturn. When the economy contracted over the last 12-18 months, a natural cleansing of recruiters and the recruitment industry as a whole occurred. It’s unfortunate that many people involved in our industry lost their jobs, but there is a silver lining to the downturn. The lure of quick money was very attractive for those that jumped on the recruitment wagon in the late ’90s without any true recruiting experience. But when the slowdown hit the economy hard, these same folks were usually the first ones out on the street looking for a new line of work. For those of us who remain, there are some valuable lessons that we should all take away from this recession:

• Experience is king. Anyone who is still involved in recruiting ó whether corporate or executive search ó has learned a few things from the slow economy. Recruitment can be a very rewarding and lucrative profession with the right market conditions. But when conditions are difficult, like what we have been experiencing these last few months, you learn how to survive. Surviving doesn?t mean making bad placements or hires, it means making all of your daily activities count. What I mean by that is that you had to go back to the basics (e.g., cold calling, networking, etc.) to find quality candidates in the most cost effective way possible. These have been hard times for many, but the experience that you have gained over the last year will make you better at your job.

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As part of our “Talent Driven Cultures” research project, we’re starting to implement aggressive diversity sourcing programs for some of our clients. As we do our benchmarking to determine what works and what doesn’t, some interesting findings emerge. One common theme is that individual tactical actions are less effective than a broad, company-wide program. Another is that ó except for one twist ó the best diverse candidates are no different than the best non-diverse candidates in deciding whether to consider or accept an offer. Here are the criteria they use. Diverse candidates look for:

• A great job filled with challenges, and opportunities to learn important skills, handle some interesting assignments, and over the course of the job, become better at whatever they do

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“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

- Charles Darwin We’ve been up and down, and now it appears we’re on our way back up. Our recruiting and staffing organizations have suffered through downsizing and budget cuts, which means it’s a good time to consider if we have the right infrastructure and process in place to handle the next recruitment wave. Ideally the answer lies in a convergence of great recruiting basics and technology that allows greater scale, reach, productivity and analytics. In today’s article, we review some simple recruiting basics ó from some great recruiters ó that can ensure recruitment success. Great recruiters have proven techniques and processes they consistently use because they work. These include where they source, how they begin every conversation, how they listen, gather information, close, etc. If you have special ways of taking candidates and clients through the recruiting process and they work, congratulations ó use them. But it does help sometimes to compare notes, and maybe even more so in today’s changing market and economic climate. Talking to several recruiting veterans recently, I learned they’re facing a recruiting world today much more consistent with the early 1990s versus the recent bubble. In the early ’90s, candidates did not move as easily as they had been previously, nor did companies make decisions as quickly. I asked these three successful recruiting veterans (and good friends) recently to divulge a recruiting tidbit ó the business ingredient that keeps them successful in business today. Read on, it might be interesting. Remember, I’m not telling you how to recruit ó just sharing a few ideas that work. It’s in the Numbers I started recruiting with Cary Tobolka in 1979 and worked with him through 1989. We worked in a national agency environment and recruited by the numbers. I had an interesting discussion with Cary recently about his business. He has multiple agencies, recruits in high tech, and has successfully made market transitions based on changing business environments. But he told me that this last change was different. “When we were faced with market changes in the past we never got away from the numbers,” he said. “We constantly measured how many calls it took to find the right recruit, how many calls were made each day, and did the same with the number of interviews it took to fill a position for both the client and the candidate. But in the past few years, the numbers got so low that we lost the need to measure. A position that took five to ten interviews to fill got down to two. Recruiting got easy and we lost focus on the basics.” Cary’s firm is doing well today, and he attributes his success to running his business strictly by the numbers ó quality numbers. His team’s daily activity is measured and qualified. Some of you I’m sure have never gotten away from these key measurements. And whether you’re an internal, external, or contract recruiter, knowing the activity metrics it takes to be successful and measuring daily is very important. Here are some of the metrics that Cary uses:

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No matter whether the economy is strong or weak, no matter the time of year, and no matter how much they are paid, many of our best employees decide to leave. The question we all grapple with is why. Why do people stay at a company or leave? What motivates such behavior, and how can employers motivate people to stay longer? What is a “good” rate of turnover, and how do we know who to entice to stay and who to let go? While this article cannot hope to answer these questions in any detail, let’s take a quick look at the subject and see what we find. First of all, when employees are asked why they leave, they usually give reasons like these: They want a better work/life balance, more money, a better opportunity for career growth, more independence and control over their own work, and of course, job security. For most of the past decade, employers have worked hard to give employees more time off and more benefits aimed at the family. They have increased salaries and offered stock options, enriched and enlarged jobs until some employees are now complaining that their jobs are too enriched, and offered employees more autonomy over the kinds of work they do, where they do it, and how they do it. More pay is “at risk,” meaning the employee has to perform to get it, and this is at least loosely coupled to job security. What is surprising is that turnover, which should be at an all time low given this slow economy, is about the same as always. Sure, the rate has slowed a bit and few firms are experiencing the 25%-20% turnover rates of the past two or three years, but people are still leaving ó good, valuable people that we want to keep. So the question becomes, what are the real reasons people leave and what can employers do about it? What’s important here is that no single factor in and of itself is decisive in causing turnover or in raising retention rates. Like so many others things, it is the systemic effect of several factors that leads to a final decision. People from different cultures respond differently to various factors as do those of different ages. Professor David Finegold and senior research scientist Susan Mohrman, at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California, presented a paper in the spring of 2001 at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, entitled “What Do Employees Really Want? The Perception vs. The Reality.” This paper presents research from a wide range of organizations, people, and cultures, and disputes many of the reason people commonly give for leaving. Some of their findings include the fact that security is generally only a major factor in those over 50, and that money is only a motivator is those under 30. For most employees in the in-between ages, other things play a much large role. Most employees want these four things in their organization most of all:

1. A clear and compelling strategy

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Discussions about the choice of an enterprise-wide staffing management solution have increasingly included the calculation of return on investment, or ROI. Assessment of ROI on a system implementation reflects favorably on the HR staff. It shows that the recruiters and other key HR stakeholders who comprise the selection committee realize the importance of carefully evaluating each strategic business decision. They understand, like members of all other departments in the company, the need to carefully analyze the expenses they authorize. They are thinking in business terms, and recognize that the solution they choose will have a direct effect on the achievement of corporate-wide goals including bottom-line results. They make the translation from the reduction in administrative effort, the decrease in hiring cycle time, and the benefits of process improvement into tangible payoffs. Take Action In some cases, though, the choice and implementation of a new staffing management system may be perceived as optional. In those corporate HR departments, inaction, procrastination, and delay are acceptable business practice. There is a lack of awareness that standing still is unacceptable in the competitive world of business; that companies thrive from acting, getting feedback, learning and adapting; and that continuous improvement is not just a theory applicable to manufacturing. They are not only missing the opportunity to realize the ROI of a new system – their inaction or delay is actually costing their company real dollars! Postponing action may seem to be a passive, no-risk approach. But when a company postpones the implementation of a staffing management solution, it is actively risking corporate assets. The competition is moving forward. The company may lose top recruiters who are demoralized by the lack of leading technology and vision. Dissatisfied hiring managers may perceive their HR department and recruiters as ineffective, old-school-technology laggards. The erosion of competitive advantage also extends to the loss of outstanding candidates due to the cumbersome existing recruiting process. In addition, direct costs for advertising, use of third-party recruiters, resume scanning, and processing will remain high. Make the Case So what are the economics of delay? What is the downstream cost of not implementing? In a sense, the cost of delay is the flipside of the ROI calculation. Every month you wait costs the enterprise the value of the delayed benefits for that month. Multiply by 12, and adjust for the cost of capital, and you can estimate your annual cost of delay. The numbers may be staggering, and will certainly go a long way towards convincing any skeptics that deferring a staffing management solution implementation is an expensive decision. In other words, inaction is a costly action. Some selection committees find themselves blocked. They’ve done a thorough evaluation and have chosen the best solution for their company, yet cannot get approval from the final decision maker. In that case, it’s important to understand the source of the resistance. Is there lack of buy-in? Is the ROI calculation and business case sufficient and clear? Are the cost/benefit factors well outlined? Are organizational power shifts in play? Is there fear of failure or apprehension about the success of a large project? Communicate the Benefits…and the Costs To obtain full buy-in and approval, it’s important to present the staffing management business case in language each audience responds well to. Recruiters will focus on tactical considerations, their current pain points. How will implementing this system improve their daily work? Illustrations of recruiting metrics and budgets, recruiter productivity and cycle times will resonate well with mid-level management. For C-level executives, talk in terms of the ROI of a skilled workforce and other top-level/bottom-line payoffs. Make the case that excellence in the hiring and deployment of human capital assets is key to corporate success and tied to the goal of the chosen solution. Articulate the ROI of your staffing management solution choice…and communicate the cost of delaying its implementation. At best, ROI analysis is considered as a key component of the selection process, not merely as an afterthought. It is an integral aspect of the overall business case – applicable to all levels of the organization. The cost of delaying the choice and implementation of a staffing management solution should be a significant consideration in the strategic assessment of your company’s staffing management future.