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As many of you know, I host a monthly metrics discussion group (see below if you’d like to participate) for corporate recruiting managers. In our last session, we introduced two key topics:

1. The most important metrics to track and why.

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Every so often I write about the benefits of doing a job analysis to discover critical job competencies. No sooner are the electrons dry than I hear from one or more folks who politely point out that a job analysis is no longer necessary. They explain that a consortium of people have already banded together to build a common list of competencies; some trade group or a government project already did the work. The implication is that I’m pushing some unnecessary egghead agenda. Is this true? I’ll let the reader decide. Competencies: Is the Name Enough? The purpose of competencies is to define requirements of the job. This may be to improve hiring quality, clarify expectations between manager and jobholder, or build a training curriculum. But the name is not important ó it is the application and representative job activities that define it. Take for example, problem solving ability. This is a popular competency that applies to most jobs. Almost everyone knows problem solving is important, but the name is only the start. Smart people need to know how problem solving differs for an engineer, an auditor, a salesperson, or a clerk. How about an engineer who designs bridges? Roadways? Sewers? How about an engineer who designs bridges in the desert? Mountains? Coastlines? It is helpful to know that problem solving is required for the job. But it is even more important to realize how problem solving is applied on the specific job. It takes more than a diploma and a competency to produce a capable employee. Competencies: Equally Important? Sometimes I hear about people averaging together competency ratings to get one overall pass/fail rating. Averaging may seems like a good idea at the time, but not all competencies are created equal. For example, is the competency of problem solving more, equally, or less important than the competency of written communication? You’re starting to catch on if you answered that it depends on the kind of written communication involved. Writing official standards which other people might follow, for example, could be highly critical; writing memos and emails may be less important. Can these subtleties be captured in a great big list of generic job competencies? Are Jobs With the Same Title Identical? We mentioned earlier that jobs with the same titles may or may not be the same. In almost every organization I work with, I hear the same mantra, “Our jobs are different.” In many cases they are right. The jobs have entirely different cultural expectations. I once worked with a public utility, for example, where, because of the long-static nature of the industry, people were highly risk-averse. On the other hand, I also worked with a utility faced with plenty of competition, where a person with the same job title would have to be more entrepreneurial. Organizations that use content validity (i.e., the content of the test resembles the content of the job) are expected to rank-order competencies so the most important ones rise to the top of the list. This usually changes from company to company ó and sometimes from department to department. Are Managers’ Expectations Alike? I once worked for a manager who thought I walked on water (he was very insightful and perceptive). Unfortunately, the poor guy got caught in a corporate reorganization and was terminated. His replacement was a first-class… (you fill in the blank). The replacement bragged consistently about his accomplishments, had stolen confidential documents from his last employer, never called department meetings to discuss plans and goals, and became furious when asked for guidance. In the eyes of this manager I could do nothing right. Did the job competencies change? How would these differences be accounted for in a generic competency list? Does Everyone Share the Same Business Plan? There is a false belief that your competition knows more than you do. I suppose this is easy to believe, but as someone who travels from one company to the next, you would be surprised how many big-name organizations you would NOT want to emulate. Some, for example believe in cutting the bottom 10% of their workforce each year regardless of performance; others cannot decide on how many fatal accidents per year they will accept. Some believe it’s a good idea for people to compete with each other for internal resources; others think isolating recruiting from HR is a good idea. Some believe interviews are not tests; others have separate, and totally incompatible, competency lists depending on department. I could go on, but the bottom line is your competitor probably knows a whole lot less than you think. Want some free advice? Be your own best-practice organization. Adverse Impact, Anyone? There is a budding social activist on every street corner looking for a “just cause” (i.e., one that will advance his/her personal ambitions at someone else’s expense). The Uniform Guidelines (the only best-practice model I could recommend) says before you use someone else’s competencies or validation work, you should verify that your own job is highly similar (i.e., do a job analysis). This is not a silly idea the government invented to make our lives more complicated. It means someone thought common sense had to be legislated; that is, organizations should be certain “what they want” is “what they get.” Since big organizations should be monitoring adverse impact anyway, and since ignorance of the law is a sorry excuse for unfair hiring practices, no organization should be so confused it needs to reference an outside standard to define its internal workings. Conclusion Think of external competency guides in the same terms as the self-help advice you read about in magazines. They can serve as guides, a source of ideas, or an incentive to action. But using them as a substitute for best practices is a sure sign of worst practices.

Who needs to be satisfied with the results of the recruiting or staffing department? This is an important question, and one that may decide if you keep your job, get your budget, or find satisfaction in what you do. While metrics are important, we often measure the wrong things. We don’t always identify our customers as well as we should. Just as a politician has to satisfy many constituents and spend lots of time balancing one group and one set of issues with another, so do you, the recruiter. Recruiters have many constituents, including the immediate boss, the head of human resources (or whatever function the department reports to), the hiring manager, candidates, perhaps the CEO, the management team, and even your fellow recruiters. Then there are recruiting vendors and contractors, too, who are part of any complete list. Given this long list, it seems impossible to satisfy them all. One wants speed while the other wants cost control. One wants it “her” way and the other wants it “his” way. And recruiters, more than most other HR people, feel torn and unsure of whom they should focus on and who the ultimate “boss” is. Many recruiters I have spoken with align themselves most closely with the hiring manager. They focus on making her happy, in the belief that the hiring manager is the real customer and the only one that really counts. I have seen recruiters go outside their own department operating principles to satisfy a hiring manager. I have seen them fight for a salary level that the compensation folks think is wrong but the hiring manager is willing to pay. And I have also seen many recruiters find themselves out of a job because their immediate boss feels they are not team players and are not contributing to the overall strength of the recruiting department. While the hiring manager is obviously one of your primary customers, making him happy should not be your only priority. Mistakenly attaching yourself to one or even a few hiring managers can make you look pretty silly. Here are five reasons why becoming too close to the “customer” can be a mistake.

1. You lose objectivity and are unable to help the manager look outside his or her box.

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Many things are shaping the business, employment, and recruiting landscape for 2003. The economy is still kicking us in the pants and has been since the third quarter of 2000. It’s been getting worse. And with so many economic driver manipulations, there’s a lot of confusion about which way we’re going. So, in broad brush strokes, here are the forecasts of what the new year holds for business and recruiting. How Long Until Recovery? Recovery is going to be weak and long in coming. Coupled with that is the fact that many investors are now extremely wary of what both businesses and government are telling them. Investors, consumers, and businesses are being extremely cautious about new spending. This means that salaries will be relatively low all year long. Raises and bonuses will also be low, if given at all. New employment numbers will be the same ó low. Employers are making the most of existing resources and cutting costs in order to lower overhead. Those cost-cutting endeavors include terminations, use of seasonal help, outsourcing projects, and having basic, core staff do several jobs. People are generally working longer hours. The typical work week is now between 55-70 hours; some reports show as many as 80. Compensation will increasingly be based on salaried positions rather than hourly in order to reduce the amount of overtime pay expended by employers. The Internet and internet technology is not a short-range phenomenon. It is our jet to the new way of doing business. As such, it will affect all departments of all sizes of organizations. Tech jobs will continue to grow in order to attend to the need. But expect changes in how the tech jobs are structured. The head of technology at a company will have a large staff, but most of it will be contract workers. Because we’re going through our own Crash of ’29, there’s fortunately only one way for us to go ó up. But it will take a long while before we get to up. And we’ll need to use a lot of strategies to get there. There is a lot of speculation on whether there will be a war. Historically speaking, wars in recession and depression periods brought unemployment numbers down and appear to have some direct correlation to economic upswings. Interestingly, the only time in U.S. history that war was not an answer to nationwide unemployment and economic depression was circa 1820. That depression was severe but was overcome in a relatively short time. None of the research I attempted to do on this provided any information regarding what programs were implemented during that period that were part of the recovery. We would be wise to look to that period to learn the lessons and repeat the process. Other Important Economic Factors 1. Work Product A renaissance in work product and quality is happening. Awareness of the need for attention to details will become more acute as more people rely on their products to serve multiple purposes for longer periods of time. We’re going to return to holding standards high ó for work product, customer service, and choosing those who will lead, those who will do the work. 2. Entrepreneurial and Leadership Skills There will be an emphasis on thinking like an entrepreneur. Workers will need to realize that their part in the workplace is to create a consumable good that will bring about a profit that fuels the livelihood of the business. Line or staff, they will need to take into their considerations about workplace issues how they affect the bottom line and profitability. Time away from work, time spent on extraneous projects, is time and profits lost. Managers will begin to speak of profit centers again, and the words “team player” and “team work” will resume their importance in the workplace vocabulary. 3. Collaborations and Combinations to Maximize Specialization People are going to need to work smart. That means focusing on what they do best and specializing in that. The next prudent step in this formula will be to outsource what cannot be done internally at a reasonable cost. People are also going to realize that it is imperative that they collaborate by forming consortiums where possible. These will keep overhead low while still maintaining productivity and employment. These combinations with others who do have the expertise to do the work quickly, accurately, and with a fast turnaround time will lead to better product and greater reach for more. There’s going to be a lot more small- and medium-sized businesses that whittle down to core in-house staff as they outsource the bulk of their work and allow telecommuting in order to reach the Internet marketplace. This will also reduce costs, in addition to relocation expenses. 4. Team Work and Flexibility As companies keep reducing their numbers, importance on teamwork will be emphasized, as said earlier. There will also be an increased need for knowledge sharing so that many (or all) of the team members can step in to help with a project in short order and keep it going to completion or else step in to run the project if necessary. 5. Accountability, Ethics and Sarbanes-Oxley The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was signed into law on July 20, 2002, as part of Congress’s efforts to combat corporate and accounting fraud. Sarbanes-Oxley Act accountability and reporting is a buzz concept now. What still remains is to develop a concept of the heart of the Act ó creating reports with fiduciary accountability. What also needs to occur is the establishment of ethical practices that are supported through every part of the organization and no negative repercussions for reporting questionable practices. Until that awareness is manifested, and the practices necessary to support it are put in place, Sarbanes-Oxley will go the way of other initiatives that become paper checklists without an appreciation for their purpose and essence. In regard to Sarbanes-Oxley, we will have a lot of superficial activity in its name throughout the year. But the pressures that are brought to bear on those who report malfeasance or errors will continue to be borne on their shoulders. Those who wantonly engage in the improper conduct will continue to thrive but under a new version of the same old game. The underground practices that discourage the Act’s purpose are still very much entrenched in business conduct. Retraining in not only how to report to government agencies but also business ethics and social responsibility will become part of the lesson plans of universities, worksites, human resource departments and the rest of our business landscape. There will be a lot of pointing of fingers at those who have the appearance of impropriety. Education about recognizing actual signs of wrong doing will become part of the workplace training, most likely initiated by each company’s Human Resources department. Recruiters will be held up to as much scrutiny as lawyers and (now) accountants. Ethics will be in the fore for all of 2003 and much of 2004. Whether people actually practice what they pontificate will be interesting to see. 6. Diversity Work will increase in global emphasis. Diversity will no longer be a desirable; it will be a necessity. The fallout from the September 11 attacks ó racial panic and distrust ó that was just a few years after similar reactions from the Oklahoma City bombing, shows us that we cannot judge entire groups by the actions of a suspect few. Individuals will need to be judged on their own merits. Baby steps are being made in this area. Giant strides should have been the pace. Momentum will rise. Also in the diversity arena, Middle Eastern races are going to have a lot more attention and opportunity. Blacks are going to continue to be spoken of in public as a population that needs to be included. Retention and promotion issues will continue to plague that population in the negative. Blacks are traditionally viewed as inherently inferior and passed over. Only an elite cadre are the exceptions, who stand now as examples to the masses. But it is understood that they are the exceptions. It would be good for this cadre to be seen as the norm, but that is, like breaking the glass ceiling, still on its way. Hispanic and Asian populations are making comparatively significant inroads in acceptance and advancement in the workplace. That progress will continue. It will take proving oneself to be a professional, well-learned and skillful, to create the open ground for not just these diverse populations but also for women, the disabled, older workers, and the others who fall into this category. 7. Acceptance When we focus on the specific that is peripheral to the real need, it predominates and should not. The correct perspective in diversity issues is not on what a person is, but on what they are able to do to create opportunity and profit for the organization. This is starting to happen. Little by little, 2003 will show us that the craftsperson creating the results is what we want and need. When that thought process is accomplished, acceptance will follow. I continue to be a strong believer that the Internet is forcing us to be color-gender-ability-age blind, so that we accept the one who delivers the quality product or service rather than questioning non-business-related personal characteristics. The Internet is also placing great importance on how well one can communicate with others of different cultures. Communication and negotiation skills will increase in importance. 8. Domestic and Workplace Violence Because the social stresses impacting us are so great, because people are working more hours for less return on investment of time and energy, because of tensions regarding potential foreign attacks and a generally heightened state of uncertainty, tempers flare easily. Overlooked qualifications, forgotten return phone calls, and lack of response because of the glut of applications will all take their toll on the workplace and in the home. There is now more awareness of how these can spark out-of-the-ordinary responses. And these situations act as agar for already festering situations that bring violence and abuse to the workplace. Fortunately, businesses are becoming more aware of how abuse affects them physically, fiscally, and financially. They are taking steps to become aware, proactive. More training will be provided regarding how to recognize and handle the potentially violent situations. More importantly, greater emphasis will be placed on using communication and good managerial skills to prevent workplace violence and abuse. A Big Kettle of Fish This is a broad view of 2003. The work and employment scene isn’t isolated to wage and hours any more. It encompasses a much broader scale. But there are keys to success. Sharpen skills. Use knowledge to strength company and professional growth. Communication skills and diplomacy are imperative. It doesn’t matter who the communicator-diplomat is. What is important is that they are excellent at what they do ó they are leadership material. Combinations, not working solo, will be critical to survival.

Have you ever thought how HR and recruiting technology can help with corporate diversity spending initiatives and programs? Read on to find out how vendor management services (VMS) technology for HR and recruiting departments can help companies achieve these corporate diversity spending objectives through the acquisition of contingency labor. What Is Diversity Spending? Diversity spending is the aggregate value of purchases in the acquisition of materials and services from minority vendors and suppliers, in relation to a company’s overall spending. These minority businesses are usually designated or certified with a M/W/DBE (Minority/Women/Disadvantaged Business Enterprises) or SBE (Small Business Enterprises) status. The goods and services classified under diversity spending initiatives can be unlimited ó from offices supplies to catering services to contingency labor. Historically, diversity spending efforts have been the responsibility of procurement or supplier diversity departments. Many of the larger, publicly held Fortune 1000 companies have strong programs to help diversify their spending in an attempt to at least offer an equal opportunity for these M/W/DBE suppliers to participate. Other companies have gone as far as to designate a percentage of overall spending for M/W/DBE companies in order to level the playing field. While these programs stand alone as excellent initiatives to promote supplier diversity within companies, finding the qualified suppliers that can compete and provide these services is another obstacle. The vast majority of M/W/DBE’s historically have been privately held, smaller suppliers and vendors with limited resources and infrastructure. Many of these suppliers do an excellent job in servicing small- to mid-size businesses, but find it a challenge to service larger, more complex organizations. Smaller M/W/DBE companies can get lost in the bureaucracy and logistics of larger conglomerates. A Fortune 500 may open up the field to provide the opportunity for M/W/DBE’s to participate, but their complex internal processes and sheer infrastructure size alone can eliminate interest of these types of suppliers. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. But I have found this to frequently be the reality, particularly within the staffing industry, as smaller, regional M/W/DBEs try to compete with the majors for a piece of Corporate America’s business. There are a few national M/W/DBEs with the infrastructure and experience to service Fortune 1000 companies, but these companies comprise of a small fraction of the overall market of diversity staffing suppliers. Why Is VMS Technology Important to Hr Professionals? As most of us know, it is estimated that anywhere between three to five percent of the country’s workforce is contract or contingency labor. During recovery, that number typically increases, as some full-time workers once downsized usually come back into the workforces as contract or contingency labor. Some Fortune 1000 companies estimate the volume of their contingency labor spending to be in the billions of dollars. Some of the more progressive companies have organized and reviewed the way contingency labor is not only acquired within their respective organizations but also tracked and reported through the use of technology. This is where the use of VMS technology can make a significant impact in not only reducing direct supplier costs, but also help achieving diversity spending objectives for a company. The first solution is the most obvious, but we’ll state it for the uninitiated. There are several VMS providers that not only provide a good tool and service for the acquisition of contingency labor, but also are M/W/DBE companies! Again, they make up a small fraction of all VMS providers, but they are out there. In an earlier article for ERE, I mentioned the five different elements of an enterprise VMS solution ó namely 1) requisition management, 2) vendor management, 3) time and expense capture, 4) consolidated billing/invoicing and 5) management reporting. Let’s focus on the consolidated billing piece for a moment. Through consolidated billing, a VMS vendor usually manages the contracts a company has in place with their staffing suppliers. This relationship is more of a partnership around the billing process. Since the VMS provider consolidates all approved contractor time and expense, the VMS will usually manage the entire billing process. In short, the VMS receives payment from the client for all contingency labor spending and, in turn, pays all the staffing suppliers. Now, if your VMS provider is a M/W/DBE, you have an opportunity to capture a significant amount, if not all, of the spending under one roof. For example, if your company does, say, $100 million in contingency labor spending through the VMS provider, then your company has the opportunity to capture all of those expenditures as diversity spending, as long as the billing is going through the vendor’s technology. Some companies I have worked with do up to $500 million in contingency labor spending annually and are able to reap the benefits of consolidated diversity spending under a M/W/DBE provider. The bottom line is, by doing what your business would normally do anyway ó such as the acquisition of contingency/contact labor ó you can help your company achieve diversity spending goals. Tracking Diversity Spending Even if your vender is not a M/W/DBE, there is still an opportunity to at least track the diversity spending of your staffing suppliers. First, diversity spending can be captured particular to those staffing vendors that are minority owned. Since there is a far greater supply of staffing M/W/DBEs than VMS M/W/DBE’s, at least some of your contingency labor spend can be tracked and captured as diversity spending. Having a VMS in place guarantees this spending to be captured real-time with a high degree of accuracy. Without a VMS in place, this spending can still be captured, but it is generally a manual process that involves ongoing participation from several different parties in the billing process. If there are any errors in coding, tracking, monitoring, and reporting with staffing suppliers, A/P, or Disbursement, Supply Chain, HR, etc. ó then tracking of your company’s diversity spending will be inaccurately reported. Normally, each invoice, whether manual or electronic, needs to be specially coded in order to designate minority suppliers. What VMS technology does is to automate this process on the front-end, so all diversity spending is captured at approval, usually on a weekly or monthly basis. Capturing this spending real-time supports the reports-on-demand feature of this technology. Companies can report under the VMS technology at any given time the percentage of diversity spending in relation to overall spending at any moment. In conclusion, HR and recruiting folks have the opportunity to make a greater impact on diversity spend initiatives with the use of technology in today’s world than ever before. By rethinking the way your organization acquires contingency labor, you’re likely to find greater positive impacts on your organization than you originally realized on your first pass of the technology.

I continually get complaints from managers in “bad weather” areas in the northern U.S. and Canada who claim that it is impossible to recruit top talent because these regions just don’t have the drawing power of other areas. I find it startling that such beautiful cities as Minneapolis, Seattle and Vancouver are among the most frequent complainers. Small-sized firms as well as organizations located in other rural areas often share the same “hard to recruit” complaint. Is it possible to recruit top people to these isolated or “bad feature” areas? Can you overcome perceptions of winter blizzards or constant fog? The answer is yes, but it takes a special strategy to pull it off. Just as the less popular kid in school must take a different approach to get a date to the prom, recruiters in unglamorous places cannot use traditional tools and expect to achieve success. This article highlights the advice that I give to those managers in “nowhereland” on how they can overcome their perceived disadvantages and become a magnet company. Four Elements of Successful Recruiting in Unglamorous Areas If you’re trying to recruit people to difficult areas or to “no name” companies, there are four basic elements to a successful strategy:

1. Find those with an established connection to the area. Recruit people that already know your area because they used to live, attend school, or vacation there, or because they have a family connection to the geographic area.

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It is my contention that the only way to systematically hire superior people is to clearly define superior performance before beginning any new job search. In Part 1 of this two-part series, the idea of using a performance profile instead of a job description was introduced as a means to accomplish this. This is the P in the POWER Hiring interviewing and recruiting process. The benefits of using a performance profile include more accurate assessments, a bigger pool of top candidates to choose from, significant reductions in time to hire, and?? by clarifying expectations upfront?? a more highly motivated and competent workforce. Over the last 25 years, I’ve come to the conclusion that every job has six to eight key performance objectives that determine on-the-job success. This is what separates the best, highly motivated employees from the average employees. While the hiring manager needs to take responsibility for determining what these are, the recruiter can play an important role in facilitating the preparation of these performance profiles. Following is an shortened example of a performance profile for a software developer. As you can see, it differs from a typical job description by listing what the person taking the job must do to be successful, not what skills and experiences the person must have. In this way it defines the job, not the person. This fundamental difference has a domino effect in the way candidates are sourced, assessed, hired, and subsequently managed. Performance Profile for Software Developer, Quick Version

1. Complete software design, writing high-quality, efficient code to meet project deadlines.

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The “resume crush” of the last two years has sent many of you scurrying to find new applicant tracking systems that pre-screen and rank candidates on job-specific qualifications as they apply. This has probably done wonders for your overworked and shrinking recruiting staff, who now only have to look at the top 25% of candidates coming in versus reading each and every resume. But how has the shift in our priorities affected the candidate experience today? By solving one set of problems, are we creating another? Recently, I presented to a group of job seekers on the topic of online job search techniques. An interesting thing happened during the presentation: it turned into a revealing discussion on what it’s like to be a candidate. In a follow-up conversation, one job seeker in particular told a compelling story that I think is worth sharing. Mary Ann was working for a well-established online media company, and was steadily promoted until she became a director of international operations three years ago. She was laid off a few months ago, when the company decided to focus solely on its domestic operations. There was no longer a role for someone with her background in the new, more streamlined operation, and so she has been actively looking for work for a month and a half. As she’s been in the process of searching for a job for the first time in many years, I thought it was particularly fascinating to hear an expert in operations analyze how recruiting departments operate. Not all of her feedback is related to technology, but her insights give us a great outsider’s perspective of the effects that current processes and technologies are having on many job seekers.

• “Searches seem too narrow. If you don’t have a certain job title on your resume, or an exact number of years experience, you won’t be considered for a position despite a clear match between the requirements and your qualifications,” she said. Another candidate I spoke with called it “buzzword bingo.”

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People are hungry for leadership. Emerson said, “Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.” Sad but true; good and effective leadership is a scarce commodity that takes an uncommon and gifted soul to act as its provider. From where within the organization will the next group of organizational leaders emerge? Don’t let the simplicity of the question mislead you. We all know the rules, but they are brittle at best and dysfunctional at worst. Presidents and CEOs are the leaders, but for the love of all that is decent, look at where they have lead us. If I were a CEO today, I would seriously consider hiding under a rock until some of the odious events of the past two years are forgotten. Regrettably, but perhaps well earned, the respect for the CEO has been replaced with contempt, disrespect and suspicion, as we wonder what really goes on behind closed-door meetings. (Doubt me? I can assure you they are, in one way or another, planning the organization’s future, and not coincidently, your future as well. How good does that make you feel?) Power is, to a great degree, the result of position. This is a painful and lopsided paradigm, because position does not guarantee the ethical utilization of power. With this in mind, stretch a bit and imagine the following: the emergence of a new type of leader, one who has managed through influence and is now graduating to a position of leadership utilizing influence once again as the tool of success (not an easy thing to do, but the best always rise to the occasion). Followed to a plausible and sound conclusion, perhaps tomorrow’s great leaders will be those good people who are involved in the recruiting and HR function. Looking at the organization from 5,000 feet, I have always viewed senior management as the ego of the organization and seen the HR function as its super-ego ó the conscience, if you will, emerging as the seat of ethical behavior and providing a strong and influencing sense of right and wrong while steering leadership towards doing what is ethically and morally correct. (For the record, I am not a Freudian. I am a Skinnerian but will always adopt another position for the sake of metaphor.) Now for the problem. Senior HR still does not often have a seat at the executive table, and the reason is elementary. The perception of its value is simply not great enough. You and I might not agree with this precept, but that does not matter. The price of admission is value. Consumers pay for value with dollars. Organizations pay for it with respect, status, and pecking order. Now for the solution. How do we demonstrate the value necessary to get a seat at that all-important executive table? Let’s, as an example, look at how finance has managed to do it, as their perception changed from that of bean counter to organizational partner. Finance has achieved this admirable position by adding value. In this case, by partnering with senior management and developing monetary roads to support organizational objectives. This is a grand and measurable value. As a result or it, they have earned their seat. Is there any reason why we cannot do the same thing? Picture my vision: an organization where recruiting provides the acquisition of human capital and HR coaches senior management on developing an infrastructure/culture that supports organizational greatness (I love the concept of “organizational greatness.” I’d also love an email on your vision of what it means for an upcoming article). I believe we can create value equal to that of finance by helping the leaders actually lead. Imagine recruiters and HR professionals as the ultimate internal consultants supporting leadership in the decision and implementation process! Doing well by doing right. Does it get any better than that? This is, of course, easier said than done. But if you consider the following six guidelines as a roadmap to a seat at the executive table, you may become a part of the team that never realized how badly they needed you.

1. Fine tune your radar and ESP, and be aware of what the rank and file is thinking. This knowledge is very important and counts far more than what senior management is thinking. If the rank and file decides not to show up at work for a week (sometimes called a strike), senior management would not be able to do their jobs if their lives depended on it. (Doubt me? What do you think would be more damaging: if the senior executive team at General Motors all resigned, or if the entire workforce resigned?)

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Some emails or attachments contain viruses. The damage they can potentially do to your organization is staggering, and therefore we have no reason to debate the need for firewalls and anti-virus protection. The consequences of inaction outweigh the cost of taking action and accepting some restrictions regarding access. Why shouldn’t the same concern exist for other potential costly “viruses” you may allow into your information system, like unverified information? Whether this information is tainted due to negligence or the result of the subversive marketing strategy of a “sinister” competitor, the source and quality of the information you download cannot be accepted at its face value simply because it was out there. If you are going to increase your use of the web (and mostly likely you already have been for several years now) to compensate for the elimination of in-house knowledge or experience, then your ability to establish guidelines, policies, quality control, and verification steps to control the use of data is as important as updating your virus definitions. Step 1: Intellectual Inventory In any project, before you can determine where you need to go, you must first establish exactly where you are. You need to gather your staff and begin the process of a skill inventory ó a “no kidding or beating around the bush” skill inventory. Based on education, previous job responsibilities, certificate training, mentoring, and seminar and research experience, determine who in your organization possesses the greatest knowledge in the following general areas:

• Benefits

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What is the most popular item to look up in the traditional yellow-pages phone book? According to a market research survey (conducted by Knowledge Networks, Inc.), the most popular category is “Restaurants.” Number two is “Medical Doctors,” followed by “Auto Parts.” What can we surmise from the popularity of these categories, where inquiries run in the billions? One interpretation could be: People are eating so much that they get sick, and therefore need medical care, and good reliable transportation to get to the doctor. In any case, since restaurants is the most popular category, wouldn’t it make sense to make the restaurant section much easier to use, maybe by making it color-coded with special typeface and larger print in the yellow pages? In fact, the telephone book industry could transform the entire phone book by focusing its design on popular or high traffic items. The web has certainly grasped this concept, with sites such as Yahoo! that prepackage popular categories for easy navigation. If we look at all the recruiting activities in an organization, there are many things that can be focused upon, from making sure the new hire has a spiffy new computer plugged in and ready to go on the first day of work, to overhauling the employee referral program. So given the array of things in which to invest Time, Intellectual capital, Money and overall Energy (we’ll call these resources TIME), how should an HR or staffing manager prioritize budget and resources for the coming year? There are typically several strategies to TIME allocation each year. One is to do the same thing as last year, give or take a budget increase or decrease. Another is to incorporate the initiatives that didn’t make it into last year, making room by cutting other initiatives. Other strategies involve incorporating one-time projects, like system implementations, as well as changing sourcing budget allocation away from cost centers such as agencies. Where’s Your Focus? Like the phone book restaurant section, there may be something in your recruiting operation that could warrant more focus this year. But you may not really know what it is unless you conduct a deeper analysis. Here’s a suggestion. Make a list of all the activities within your recruiting operation. Divide these activities into the following categories:

1. Process/Program

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“Change is the progress by which the future invades our lives.” ó Alvin Toffler, introduction to Future Shock, 1970 Our industry has been going through a dramatic transformation over the past 10+ years. It began with the Internet and has developed to a level of sophistication that many did not think possible. It’s time to take a moment to realize what has been accomplished. It is no longer enough to talk and write about the future or what could be. It’s time to realize a transformation has begun and that many organizations are reaping the benefits of advanced recruiting technology and processes. Companies today are experiencing dramatic recruitment results through advanced talent management processes, technology and solutions. Some recent examples:

• A software company hires 21 account executives from their private talent community of 60,000 prospects in three weeks. Results: Fast time to fill, quality candidates, no agency fees, and a very happy VP of Sales.

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I’ve been a recruiter, recruiting trainer, and recruiting consultant for 25 years. Before that (when I worked for a living), I had 12 different jobs in 10 years with three different Fortune 500 companies. During this 35-year span, I’ve either hired to work for me, or placed, well over 500 people, conducted over 2,500 interviews, and debriefed over 5,000 candidates and hiring managers. Although I didn’t know it then, for the first 20 years I had little idea of what I was doing. I just knew that hiring top people was very important. How to hire top people became clear about 15 years ago. By then, I’d noticed that the managers who consistently hired the best people all used a similar approach to find, interview and recruit people. Interestingly, these common approaches were independent of job level, job function, the level of the hiring manager or the industry. There was one underlying theme to their approach and five specific practices. The common theme was a personal commitment by each of these hiring managers to only hire the best. How they accomplished this eventually became the POWER Hiring principles described below. Performance Profiles: If you want to hire superior people, first define superior performance. You must get everyone to agree to what the person taking the job needs to do to be successful, not what the person needs to have in terms of skills. Objective Evaluation: Past performance is the best predictor of future performance. If you know what you’re looking for, it only takes four questions to determine candidate competency and motivation. Wide-Ranging Sourcing: The best are different than the rest, and you must use different proactive techniques to find them. Sourcing is marketing, not advertising. Emotional Control: More errors occur during the first 30 minutes of an interview than any other time. To minimize these emotional biases, measure first impression at the end of the interview. Recruiting Right: Recruiting is consulting, not selling. The best take longer to decide, consider more variables, and decide with others. You must offer a career opportunity, not just a job. For the past 15 years, we’ve trained thousands of recruiters and hiring managers to successfully use POWER Hiring. The key to the success of POWER Hiring has been the absolute focus on performance at every step in the hiring process. This is P in POWER. It starts by preparing a performance profile. A performance profile is not a job description listing skills, duties, required experiences, and responsibilities. Instead, it describes what the person taking the job needs to do to be successful. It defines the job, not the person taking the job. Over the years I’ve discovered that every job, big or small, has five to eight deliverables which ultimately determine job success. Here’s an example of a traditional job description compared to a performance profile for a sales position:

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Yesterday: “Get me someone who likes a challenge, enjoys traveling, and can sell big-dollar products!” Tomorrow: “What a disappointment! Never even came close to potential! Good thing he/she quit before I fired ‘em!” Anything familiar? When I managed a sales staff, I repeated those words so often that they became a personal mantra. I never knowingly hired a low producer, but somehow they managed to slither past our many interviews and screening systems. These folks were very good at getting themselves a job, but seldom delivered on their promise to sell product (although they did seduce a few employees and tried to market our accounts to the competition). Needless to say, I lost thousands in sales opportunities and irreplaceable time. What went wrong? Developing a Performance Matrix This part may sound simple. But believe me, it is much deeper and more complex than one could imagine. Sales jobs have four “clusters” of competencies (they really aren’t “competencies,” but we’ll use that term for clarity) that directly affect performance. I’ll describe them below, one at a time.

• Mental ability. The first cluster includes the mental ability to learn and solve problems. Mental ability includes things like successfully learning the product line, using that information to solve customer problems, seeing the big picture, special technical knowledge, and so forth. Complicated products and complex markets require more mental ability. A hiring system that does not accurately measure mental ability will produce salespeople unable to quickly learn the product, grasp the big picture, or who have trouble understanding client needs.

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There is an ancient Greek myth about the god Sisyphus. He betrayed the other gods and was condemned to endlessly push a rock to the top of a mountain. At the top, the rock would fall back down and Sisyphus had to push it to the top again. The Gods knew that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. I often wonder if this isn’t what has happened to recruiting. We seem to do the same tasks over and over again, often knowing that these tasks are not very productive or even very useful. Despite new tools, creative ideas, and a surplus of candidates, most recruiters are locked into the practices of the past. One of the strongest and most change resistant recruiting practices and tasks is the resume and the review of the resume. I recently spent some time with a person who is developing digital portfolios or, in simple language, more comprehensive and specific ways to electronically capture and communicate candidate information. Portfolios can include data from a variety of tests, extensive work histories with verification criteria, examples of past work, testimonials, and other information that make it easier to evaluate a candidate upfront rather than through a serious or time-consuming and expensive interviews. There are several companies that offer some type of portfolio designed for recruiters, but according to most reports recruiters are resistant to using them. My contact mentioned meeting with numerous recruiters and with a few third-party agencies only to be rebuffed and even scoffed. Most of them felt the portfolios were too long, that no one would read them, that the candidates wouldn’t compete them, and that their applicant tracking system could not handle them. The resume is still king, it seems, hard as that is to believe. Let’s take a look at the resume for a moment and examine why it is so popular. There are four reasons that come to my mind.

1. It is familiar to everyone?? candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers. This means we all feel “qualified” to examine a resume and draw conclusions about the candidate from it, even though experience and psychologists can show how poorly we do in evaluating people from them.

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Integration is the systematic tying together of separate enterprise applications. Considerable work may be required for two enterprise applications to be integrated successfully. The software and data have to be made to mesh without any slippage or miscommunication. Accomplishing this requires an agreement about how the transaction or data exchange will be accomplished. Open Standards An “open” standard is an industry blueprint meant to ensure that competing products work together. An open standard is a published standard that is possessed by no one and used by all. Anyone can inspect, criticize, or suggest enhancements to an open standard, and any changes must be made by consensus. As more companies adopt an open industry standard, the easier it becomes for them to communicate, without the need for costly customized data interchanges. A proprietary standard, on the other hand, is typically owned by a corporation. Its internals cannot be inspected; its users must license it; and the owner of the standard can change it at will. In the past, companies that purchased enterprise software systems submitted to the data standard of that system for all its functions. Although companies were not in reality “locked in,” data exchange or migration was cumbersome and costly. Software solution assessment unfortunately became an extension of status quo solutions, instead of a true evaluation to identify the best solution available on the market. XML XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a language that can be used to develop open standards. XML is a flexible way to define information formats, so that two information systems can share the data in a common, consistent way. XML allows a company to define a common language for the exchange of data between two systems, regardless of how the data is structured internally in each system. HR-XML HR-XML is an effort by a group of vendors and service providers to formulate an open standard for data communication between companies, to be adopted by the whole of the HR community. The mission of the HR-XML Consortium is to spare employers and vendors the risk and expense of having to negotiate and agree upon data interchange mechanisms on an ad-hoc basis. By developing and publishing open data exchange standards based on XML, the Consortium provides the means for any company to transact with other companies without having to establish, engineer, and implement many separate interchange mechanisms. The HR-XML initiative (www.hr-xml.org) is working towards an HR-specific vocabulary for the exchange of information between different human capital management systems (see my previous article detailing HR-XML). By developing an open standard based on XML, the HR-XML initiative will enable companies to move critical HR data without having to engineer costly and time-consuming ad-hoc interchange mechanisms. The emphasis in human capital management is shifting towards viewing HR processes as part of a supply-chain, linked together electronically. HR-XML increases the efficiency of information flow up and down this HR supply-chain. Integration A staffing management system does not function in isolation. For true end-to-end functionality, a staffing management system integrates with other Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS). Data gathered on new hires in the recruiting process flows into the employee system, handled by conventional HRIS applications such as Peoplesoft or SAP. Open Choices Open standards, such as HR-XML, enable different software systems to share data with relative ease. Data migration no longer needs to be the key driver for decisions on system choices. Single vendor solutions no longer keep their corporate customers tied to them because of trepidation about proprietary data formats, data transfer, and integration. The viable options for HR system choices include modules from large HRIS vendors alongside specialized offerings from best-of-breed solution providers. The true decision can then be made on benefits coming from functionalities and not from fear of heterogeneous dataflow. The keys to success in the future are universally agreed-upon standards such as HR-XML to increase the speed and reliability of integration. HR departments are free to choose expert solutions that best meets their needs and align with their corporate goals and vision, unencumbered by concerns about data integrity and integration into broad enterprise-wide systems.

Layoffs involving senior experienced staff and the proliferation of free but untested online information both continue to grow in the HR/staffing community. Does this pose a potential quality control problem? Try this scenario out for size: At yesterday’s staff planning meeting, the HR/staffing representative was tasked with the mission of developing a reliable list of legal and illegal interview questions, which is to be placed on a simple handout for all hiring managers to use to train their interviewing staff. Being the survivor of the previous two years of bloody headcount slashing in the HR/staffing departments, the HR/staffing representative involved has limited practical experience in developing policies or procedures. So she turns to the web to fill the knowledge gap, in the form of:

• Sending emails to equally inexperienced peers

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Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list came out last week, and if your firm isn’t on it, your recruiting and branding strategy can only be judged as a failure. Why, you ask? It is simply because there is no other action or program that has as dramatic an impact on a company’s long-term recruiting than being highly placed on the Fortune list. The results for this year include Edward Jones and The Container Store, repeating their #1 and #2 finishes respectively of last year. Other firms that were highly placed or that made a significant improvement in their rankings included Xilinx at #4, Adobe Systems at #5 and Wegman’s Food Markets at #10. Because each of these firms has excelled in developing their people programs, they are assured a high volume of quality applicants. Advantages of Being on the List The advantages of being on Fortune’s list include:

• Building your employment brand. Nothing will get you noticed among potential applicants as a great place to work faster than getting on the Fortune list. In addition to being noticed by those who actually read the magazine, getting on the list also guarantees that your firm will be highlighted in several industry and local publications, because getting on the list invariably means that reporters and journalists will call your firm to ask how you handle different human resources management problems. All of this publicity adds up to significant name recognition that becomes your “employment brand.”

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The sourcing strategies and tactics you decide to use are fundamentally a function of the economy and the supply of available candidates. In previous articles, we’ve used a model to demonstrate how to design your sourcing processes to attract the active and partially-active candidates. Before describing some ideas for developing sourcing programs for passive candidates, here’s a quick review of that model. As many of you know, I host an online discussion group where we explore these topics in great depth. It’s exclusively for those in recruiting or HR management, and is sponsored by POWER Hiring, Staffing.org and ERE. If you’d like to be part of this group, send me an email (lou@powerhiring.com) for all of the details. I’ll be presenting much of this information at ERE’s Expo 2003 West in San Diego in March, and would like to meet you there. This is one event you won’t want to miss?? if you plan to be on the leading edge of recruitment management. The diagram shows the comparative size of the active and passive candidate pools. The basic premise is that as the economy strengthens, the number of available top candidates in the active pool will shrink and more costly sourcing programs targeting passive candidates will be necessary to find strong candidates. In a slow economy, great advertising, a great career website, strong systems and a solid employee referral programs should be sufficient to meet most of your hiring needs. This is pretty much a high-tech Internet solution (see Part 1 of this series). As the economy strengthens, it’s important to develop alternative sourcing programs that target the partially-active candidate. These are those candidates that are employed, but who will casually explore something if it’s attractive. The keys to hiring from this pool are more prominent advertising, reducing the hurdles to apply, compelling job descriptions, and processes in-place to ensure immediate personal contact with a recruiter. For partially active candidates, the sourcing solution is a balance of high-tech and high-touch (see Part 2 of the series) Sourcing the truly passive candidate involves more high-touch work?? so the quality of the recruiter is more important than advertising, the career website, or tracking systems. Professionalism is the key, not speed. It’s important to design every phase of your sourcing process by first understanding the mindset of the candidate you’re targeting. The best candidates are different than average candidates, and this is the first difference that must be taken into account as you design your sourcing and hiring systems (see my article on why the best are different for more on this important topic). The gap between the best and the rest is further widened when the candidates are passive. Here are a few of the important things you should consider when building sourcing processes for top passive candidates:

1. They’re not looking for jobs online. Great advertising won’t work unless it’s part of a grand networking strategy.

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I firmly believe that 2003 will be a breakout year in terms of the number of businesses that will adopt online screening and assessment tools as part of their web-based hiring initiatives. This makes perfect sense, because, as I have said many times, the infrastructure of the Internet and the changes it has brought to the hiring process offer some amazing possibilities. In fact, the marriage of Internet technology and assessment tools has fundamentally altered the employee selection process, and will continue to do so. A big part of the evolution of new technology-driven employee selection practices involves continual challenges to the established rules for “best practices” in this area. The advent of new technology often forces changes in the status quo and creates the need to “push the envelope” in order to facilitate change. I like to view this type of change from an evolutionary perspective. That is, those new ideas and systems that can show value and are proven to be legally sound will be developed and continue to evolve while those that are not able to do so will perish. The strategies used to “validate” tests and assessments used for selecting employees offer an excellent example of this evolutionary process at work. Validation is an essential area when it comes to employee selection. Using an assessment without solid validation evidence is like skating on thin ice, both from a legal and financial standpoint. The use of technology to create new models for employee selection has necessitated that some changes be made to traditional validation models. While some of these models will provide the DNA on which the systems of the future will be based, many others may represent evolutionary dead-ends. What Is Validation? The terms “validity” and “validation” can seem confusing to those who have not spent a good deal of time studying employee selection techniques. Don’t worry, though, there is no need to be intimidated as these terms really aren’t that complicated. Simply put, “validity” means nothing more then the assurance that a test or assessment is measuring what it is supposed to be measuring. Another way of looking at validity is to view it as the “accuracy” of a test. “Validation” is simply the process (or processes) used to establish proof that a test is accurately measuring what it is supposed to measure. When it comes to employee selection, validation is critical for two major reasons:

1. It an important part of establishing the legal defensibility of a test or assessment.

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