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Something is terribly wrong. I can’t put my finger on its exact nature, but I know that America’s capacity for creating jobs and generating wealth is not functioning in most sectors. Several years ago we fell into a collective malaise, a societal depression from which we have yet to recover. The excitement of the new and the different is a thing of the past. Say what you will about the turbulent days of last decade ó the days of exponential corporate growth, internet hoopla, overvalued stock, inflated salaries, and endless opportunities real or imagined ó I never had so much fun in my life. Each day was an adventure, with recruiters and HR professionals running a hundred miles an hour just to keep up. Economists say that a turnaround is six months out. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. That prediction is utter nonsense, because a society that does not produce new jobs will always have a recessionary feeling for those who are no longer working. I have heard the “six months out” scenario ever since the bubble burst, sending developers to make coffee at Starbucks, marketing people to Home Depot, and recruiters/HR professionals to substitute teaching. Let’s depart from this rant and look at some tidbits of reality. Companies continue to lay off employees. According to economist Robert Hall, “Companies are continuing to shed jobs at a furious pace ó 525,000 non-farm payroll positions in the past three months alone. Since March 2001, when the recession began, the U.S. economy has lost 2.1 million jobs” (Wall Street Journal, 5/29/03). Consultants are starving. Search firms have been eviscerated. Professional service organization billings have plummeted, and few companies are investing in new technology. We are only inches from losing another major airline, with the most experienced veteran pilots leaving because their earning power has been so greatly reduced. Even biotech ó an industry that traditionally copes well with recessions due to the deep-rooted commitment of its investors to long-term thinking ó has been affected. Some people I know to be the best and the brightest throughout many industries have been unemployed for more than a year, some for more than two. Many of those who once had careers and positions with some degree of meaning are unemployed, underemployed, or lost souls trying to figure out what to do next as nothing they attempt seems to generate any traction. The range of emotions I pick up on extends from depression and isolation to anger and hopelessness. It seems that many people’s biggest nightmare appears to be coming true: there are bills to pay and no income with which to pay them. Those left behind and still working are terrified of becoming the next causalities. They are afraid to stay and they are afraid to go because mortgages have to be paid and the kids need shoes. A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal said, “A life without work does not work.” The calls I get for advice and help are endless and they only add credence to that quotation. The reasons for our economy’s collective misery are not clear (it is my opinion that we have, for reasons unknown, psychologically unplugged and are now just waiting for things to get better). However, I can tell you, despite popular opinion, what occurrences are not causing this unrelenting recession:

• 9/11 is not the problem. It is seared into our memories, but as a people, Americans tend to move on. There is no other intelligent option at hand.

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Top-performing, passive job seekers have always been the holy grail of recruiting. But recruiting teams are not always structured to actively recruit top talent, often opting for more passive, reactionary recruiting means. So how are leading companies and recruiting organizations structuring themselves in the future to actively recruit top talent? How are they redefining job descriptions and responsibilities within their teams? The winds of change are already blowing. Recruiting Top Performers Recruiting passive job seekers is not a black-and-white issue and is often prone to overgeneralization. We all know that not everyone who is currently employed is a top performer, and not everyone who is unemployed is an underperformer. So let’s take the active or passive designations out of the picture, and just focus on top performers. We can say a few things about these top performers without hesitation:

• They are most often not looking for work. If they are, they may have multiple offers to consider.

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When it comes to using technology to re-invent the hiring process, we have the job boards to thank for getting the ball rolling. It was job boards that created the fundamental shift in the way people look for jobs and the way companies look for people. Much of our industry has spent the past few years trying to either duplicate the functionality provided by job boards or build systems that allow companies to manage the downstream results of the changes created by job boards. But while job boards have certainly evolved over the past few years, their failure to evolve past the same basic model they have been using since day one has left companies and job seekers alike asking, “What have you done for me lately?” We are probably not alone in our opinion that job boards are falling way short of their potential when it comes to fulfilling their primary mission: routing candidates to the jobs for which they are most suited. We refer to this process of getting the right people into the top of the hopper as “sourcing” (traditionally sourcing also includes the act of actively finding qualified candidates; however, this article is not concerned with that aspect of the staffing process). On the candidate side, sourcing is the process that happens after a potential applicant enters the employment portal but before they hit the “apply now” button. On the recruiter side, sourcing is the process used to go fishing in a database of candidates who have expressed interest in a job or corporation. At the present time, the industry standard for sourcing involves a crude process in which visitors indicate the type of job they are looking for and use a basic keyword search to try and zero in on jobs of potential interest. Many job boards offer candidates the opportunity to provide a resume or build a profile, but this information is seldom used as a core part of the actual matching process. From the employer side, the matching sourcing does not look much different. Most sourcing requires recruiters to use keywords or phrases and general occupational “buckets” in order to try to find qualified candidates. The status quo for sourcing has proven to be highly inaccurate when it comes to routing people to the jobs for which they are most qualified and often results in “noise”. The status quo is a problem because:

• It creates extra work for parties on both sides. Why make candidates spend their time sifting through jobs that don’t even come close to matching their skills, experience, or interest? Why should recruiters have to waste their time sifting through piles of unqualified resumes? Why should your organization have to pay to screen out candidates who should have been filtered out at an earlier stage in the hiring process? The legacy of inefficient sourcing is an increased burden on the entire downstream hiring process.

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It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Thus stated, the road to litigation is often paved with the remnants of “good ideas” gone astray. I learned a long time ago the importance of, when confronted with a seemingly good idea involving any function of human resources or staffing, test driving it with the corporate counsel or “paying the piper” and having an outside attorney with an HR/staffing practice to review it. One of the more interesting approaches is to have that attorney review the concept and then come to your office and “depose you” based on a potential litigation spurred on by your idea gone astray. Or to bring an actual transcript from a real case based on a related or similar practice gone astray somewhere else. It’s amazing how quickly you can trip over your own good idea. One day in court (maybe or maybe not): Plaintiff’s Attorney: I understand that you take great pride in your corporate culture, and not only advertise it in your recruitment efforts but also instruct your hiring managers to look for those qualities in candidates. XYZ Recruiting Manager: Yes, that’s correct. You see we feel that… Plaintiff’s Attorney: Just answer my questions. It is your actions we are looking at today, not your intentions. You state that one of the qualities you seek in your applicants for full-time work is compassion. How do you determine if a person is compassionate? XYZ Recruiting Manager: Well, that’s a pretty universal concept. Plaintiff’s Attorney: You are telling this court you do not use tested, standardized behavioral questions with consistent anchors, used and documented uniformly, to insure your hiring managers are not using this subjective concept as a means of “working around” fair hiring guidelines and practices to reject objectively qualified candidates who fail to meet your so called “corporate profile”? XYZ Recruiting Manager: Well, no. You see, these are more “value ads” than strict requirements. Plaintiff’s Attorney: Oh really? Can I reject a candidate in your process for lacking “compassion”? XYZ Recruiter: Well, yeah, but you see… Plaintiff’s Attorney: In your process, is a person who served in the Peace Corps more compassionate than a person who gives their annual tithe to charity, or the person who participates in walks for animal rights? XYZ Recruiting Manager: In any of those cases, it would be easy to consider any of those applicants compassionate. Plaintiff’s Attorney: So, an inner city applicant, who had to work her entire life to save for college because Mommy and Daddy couldn’t foot the bills and never had time for altruistic activities, would appear as a non-compassionate person to you? XYZ Recruiting Manager: No, of course not… Plaintiff’s Attorney: Thank you! Now, returning to my previous question: do you have tested behavioral anchors with measurable and enforceable test standards for fairness to ensure your “corporate culture” is not just another word for “boys club,” or maybe even “young, attractive, hot in gym trucks, cute in miniskirt, European-descended, white boys or girls club?” XYZ Recruiting Manager: Look, all we were trying to do was ensure that certain qualities were recruited into the company that we feel contribute to the corporation’s success… Plaintiff’s Attorney: Were these qualities included in the initial job description as critical skills needed to be successful in the position? Can you quantify the process used to measure the presence of those qualities, and was it applied evenly and fairly in the determination of each candidate’s application? Can you prove that the process that developed these screening tools was not developed to deny jobs to minorities, females, physically challenged, senior, or other “non-corporate-culture” applicants? XYZ Recruiting Manager: No, of course not. These were not hiring requirements, these were pluses… Plaintiff’s Attorney: …for which your process would consider rejecting a candidate, based on your concern that despite their professional skills and demonstrated career accomplishments the candidate might not “fit in with the gang.” You have no scientific way of verifying that my client’s color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, previous military experience, or other non-country-club attributes were in fact the reason you felt they were not of “your culture.” XYZ Recruiting Manager: Look, we thought it would be a good idea to develop a set of standards… Plaintiff’s Attorney: Did you really think that we would enforce EEO/AA regulations, but ignore made up corporate requirements for “yuppified” candidates? Do you also require ski racks on Volvos with “We support junior league soccer” bumper stickers as proof of fitting in? The plaintiff rests their case your honor. Judge: The defense can call their first witness. Defense, you may call your first witness! Hello! Defense, are you there? XYZ, do you have a defense? XYZ Recruiting Manager: Could I have a glass of water please? Kind of harsh? Sure. Tilted in favor of my own argument? Of course. Totally fiction based and not likely to occur in the real world? Not a risk I am willing to take. You? I have never worked at a company or on a consulting assignment where at some point, early in the interview or negotiating process, some executive did not wax and wane about their unique and special corporate culture. It usually went something like: “We seek aggressive, intelligent, energetic, spirited employees with a young outlook on business!” I often wondered if there was a company out there equally proud of their culture consisting of, “Mealy mouthed, lackluster employees who strive to merely get by another eight-hour day without falling asleep.” Or does everybody make up the same or similar list of superlatives? Despite all the fuss and bother in the board rooms and corridors of power, I rarely, if ever, saw the impact or results of the korporate kulture concept survive all the way down to where the “worker bees” dwelled. Oh, they had their little empowerment tee-shirts and “we really care about you” mementos, and those about to interview a candidate were reminded to also make sure the person would fit in with the group. But it seemed to always stop right about there. The “Korporate Kulture Klan” has always struck me as a fairly harmless waste of time, as long as nobody truly believes it or takes it to heart in the hiring process (or documents it!). When corporate America seeks to set the personal standards for morals, ethics, and subjective attributes, watch out! Just what I want in my life: subjective behavioral guidelines from a CEO under suspicion of insider trading. Aside from the obvious potential for abuse of fair hiring practices under the thinly veiled mask of Korporate Kulture, I have some other fundamental issues:

• Proclaiming a fact not yet in evidence. Many korporate kultures are born in the HR/staffing conference room. They are as much based on wishful thinking or the search for snappy ad copy as reality. It’s not unlike Monet or Van Gough signing a great work of art before bothering to paint it. Having created the myth of completion, they invariably move on to “other agenda items.”

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Many major firms have experienced layoffs or implemented hiring freezes, and unemployment rates have crept higher and higher. Everywhere you go it seems like everyone is looking for a job. As a direct consequence, many corporate job sites are being inundated with resumes. Well-known companies like Microsoft, Intel, and Hewlett-Packard can receive upward of 50,000 resumes per month via their corporate job sites. For many corporate recruiters the days of relying on paper resumes are over, now that nearly everyone has access to computers and the Internet. A Smooth And Painless Process ó On the Surface The process of submitting resumes to corporate job sites seems, on the surface, like an excellent one. From the applicant’s perspective, job postings are easy to find and submitting a resume is cheap and inexpensive. The process is relatively short, and most corporate sites allow applicants to cut and paste their current resume, saving them a lot of data entry time. There is no limit to the number of times a candidate can submit their resume, so some candidates submit multiple versions. Firms with advanced applicant tracking systems send back automatic e-mails or postcard notices acknowledging receipt of the resume and thanking the applicant for their interest. It’s after the resume is submitted that the pain for the candidate begins. For the most part, candidates cannot go to the website to track the progress of their resume through the system. They never get a note saying outright that their resume will not be considered and why. Instead, applicants wait with great hope for a follow-up email or call asking them to come in for an interview. They wait because they assume that the process offers them a reasonable chance to get a job and because they rightfully assumed that recruiters and managers were reading their resumes. Unfortunately they often wait and wait and wait! The Dirty Little Secret The problem with this seemingly “perfect system” occurs when you look more closely and find out that the odds of anyone actually reading a given resume is often little more than zero! As an “insider” I obviously cannot name the names of specific corporations, but I know of several major firms where literally no one is reviewing resumes from the corporate job site at the current time. Let’s start out with a simple fact: Inside most major corporations, no live person actually reads resumes. Instead they are scanned into or entered directly into the candidate database by the ATS. Most systems do nothing with the resumes until they are specifically asked by a recruiter or manager to sift through them for a particular job opening. Resumes can sit in the database and literally never be read by an actual human being. Only if a recruiter or manager decides to search the database after the hundreds of thousands of resumes are electronically narrowed down to a manageable number (usually less than hundred) is it possible for someone to actually “read” a candidate’s resume. Why No One Is Reading Resumes Few corporations will admit to the fact that no one is reading the resumes submitted in good faith by applicants. Even bringing up the topic causes recruiting managers to run the other way. Any admission that resumes go unread would be a PR nightmare. From the corporate perspective, no one promised that they would read all resumes. Candidates “just assume” that there is some reasonable chance of getting a job through the existing corporate job site system. Unfortunately, the actual odds of getting a job through many corporate web sites approach that of winning the lottery. There is no single cause for these pitiful odds, but some of the major intervening factors include:

• Cutbacks. Cutbacks in the corporate recruiting function have been so dramatic that either no one is assigned or no one has time to scan more than a small segment of the resumes received each week. Recruiters who do search the database generally do it only one day per week ó and if a candidate’s resume didn’t come in that day, it will probably be lost in the volume of the thousands of resumes that will arrive before the next search day.

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