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Are our hiring processes built upon a pillar of salt? I was thinking about this while stuck in L.A. traffic recently, and it became clear to me that we’re solving the wrong hiring problem.

Consider this: At their core, hiring systems

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It seems like all we hear about these days are metrics. Advances in ad hoc reporting have given us applicant tracking systems that can now tell us how many candidates in our database are Hispanic, left-handed, or even chew spearmint gum. But there’s something really, really important that we’re missing: reliable, relevant return on investment data on our advertising. The unique challenges presented by recruiting are beyond what traditional advertising metrics can ever hope to measure. Traditional Advertising Metrics in Consumer Advertising In consumer advertising, metrics play a very important part of the media buying process. Due to the nature of consumer advertising, these metrics seek to measure much different things than recruiting metrics would. For instance, a traditional consumer or B-to-B marketer usually seeks to measure:

• Impressions: The number of individuals who were exposed to your advertisement.

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In our last article (Do Online Pre-Screening Tools Really Work?) we discussed the growing use of pre-screening tools and identified eight “half truths” associated with pre-screening tools. In this article, we provide some guidelines to help readers manage the risks associated with the use of pre-screening tools while maximizing the effectiveness of these tools. Following these guidelines won’t guarantee that pre-screening will achieve all the marketing claims made by pre-screening vendors, but it will help ensure that pre-screening provides maximum value to your staffing process. The guidelines discussed in this article are organized into four categories, each of which are detailed below. Category 1: Integrating Pre-Screening into Your Staffing Process It is important to understand that pre-screening be viewed as one step in a broader strategic process for sourcing, screening, and selecting candidates. Pre-screening is not a magic bullet that will solve all of your staffing problems. Rather, it is a critical component that will help you address some specific problems you may be facing (i.e., resume overload, lack of a systematic process for evaluating candidates, etc.). When deploying pre-screening it is important to clarify requirements and manage expectations about the purpose of pre-screening within this broader system. A failure to do so can result in unmet expectations, increased resistance, and other forms of organizational backlash. Paying attention to the following guidelines can help you avoid these problems.

• Emphasize the strengths of pre-screening. Pre-screening can efficiently screen out applicants who admit to lacking job relevant skills, experiences, or qualifications. This can reduce applicant pools by 50% or more, which is a tremendous value when dealing with large volumes of candidates. Pre-screening can also be effective for finding candidates who possess highly specific and unique qualifications (e.g. speaking Inuit or having experience using a tunneling microscope). These are the main reasons for using pre-screening. Mention them early and often.

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August has almost ended (and I was just getting ready for it to start!). The economy seems to be improving a bit, and hopefully more jobs will be created as we enter fall and winter. If you are interested in seeing what other recruiters are facing today, want to know how many requisitions they are dealing with, or are just curious about how recruiting functions are dealing with the issues of the day, you’ll want to take part in the short survey below. This is the second one we have done in the past 18 months, and I will report the results to all of you here in this column over the next couple of weeks. Because this is a repeat survey, we will have comparison data so we can see what has changed. In order to make it easy for you to complete, I have put the survey on the web. You can access it by simply clicking on this link or by typing the following into your browsers: http://www.glrsurveys.com/ere/0803/ It should only take five minutes of your time to complete and will give all of us a more complete picture of what’s happening out there. I will summarize and report on your answers to these survey questions over the next two weeks, and many of the questions will become topics for columns that will explore the issues in more depth. If you have ideas for articles, I am always open to suggestions. Just send me an email at kwheeler@glresources.com. If you think your recruiting function has done something different, faster, cheaper, or more efficiently than usual, let me know as well. Thanks.

After covering some of the main tenets of Six Sigma in previous articles in this series, I am going to throw another term at you: Lean. You might be thinking to yourself, “Lean? My budget and headcount have been cut so lean that I’m amazed we can still get anything done!” While the term Lean might seem rudimentary at first glance, it isn’t. This is a concept that, like Six Sigma, was originally developed in a manufacturing environment and can be successfully applied to other service functions like recruiting and hiring. Rather than just trying to get by with less, Lean offers an organized and sophisticated approach to speeding up operations and improving metrics like time-to-fill. What is Lean? While Six Sigma translates into reduced errors, less variation, and increased customer satisfaction, Lean translates primarily into speed. Lean seeks to reduce the cycle time of a business process by eliminating things that do not add value and reducing the costs associated with these (e.g., eliminating unnecessary steps in a requisition approval process, or eliminating the costs of re-sourcing for candidates who were lost because they were left hanging too long). To clarify, Lean is a whole methodology unto itself, and some organizations take this approach without ever utilizing Six Sigma. The combination of these two approaches though (referred to as Lean Six Sigma) is a perfect blending of quality and speed. Value Mapping A key tenet of Lean is to map out processes and figure out where efficiencies can be created. This means literally drawing out a flow chart of your recruiting and hiring process and associating time with each step. While this might seem a bit literal, taking the time to do this can be helpful in visualizing how your organization’s work really gets done. While recruiting is not as systematic as manufacturing, the process is often less structured than it could be. Taking into account the fluid nature of the business, a more efficient method can normally be created. After a complete process map is created, some key questions are asked at every step:

• How can we do this quicker?

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article by Dr. John Sullivan & Master Burnett Last week’s column, Why Branding Is Important In HR, inspired a number of you to write in with questions regarding the impact of using outsourced providers in HR on both your corporate and employment brand. Because many of you shared similar issues, this week we wanted to address methods you can employ to make sure your corporate and employment brands are not undermined by the use of outsourcing. Recapping Why Branding Is a Critical Discipline in HR One of the most pressing reasons why branding is becoming a critical discipline within HR has nothing to do with what many accept as the historical role of human resources, and everything to do with how the game of commerce has changed in the ever-expanding global economy. The simple truth is that most of the levers (product features, price, position, and promotion) firms used to use to distinguish their firm and their products in the marketplace are largely ineffective in today’s market. Product features, for example, can be easily mimicked in a fraction of the time it took the original innovator to introduce the feature. New channels of distribution, including the Internet, make it possible for nearly every firm to get their product in front of the customer with equal visibility. Many CEOs now realize that, while they have always believed their workforce was one of their most valued assets, in today’s economy it can literally mean the difference between success and absolute failure. The increased visibility on the workforce, and its role in differentiating the firm, places a number of new pressures on the human resource function, long an organization that through politics has focused more on efficiency and functional goals versus corporate objectives. Today’s world-class human resources professional must not only execute the administrative side of HR to the nth degree of efficiency, but also design, develop, implement, and manage people programs that demonstrate an impact on people productivity. Nothing the HR function can do will provide an impact on firm productivity more than making sure the workforce consistently exceeds the expectation of the customer as established by your corporate brand at every point of contact. In short, it is up to the workforce to communicate and execute your corporate brand to your customers, and that requires more from them than most current HR systems enable them to provide. Employees Must Live the Brand In every industry, employees serve as the primary “channel” used to characterize the brand during direct contact with the customer. But in most companies, employees don’t understand the corporate brand or what is needed from them in order to help customers experience it. To make matters worse, many companies have developed practices that drive behaviors directly in opposition to the desired brand experience. Rectifying all that we have done wrong, and reestablishing HR to facilitate having an impact, will require:

• A workforce that understands the customer service distinction you are attempting to provide and that believes in providing it.

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As many of you know, I advocate (and use) a policy of sourcing that emphasizes semi-candidates. Semi-candidates are either semi-active candidates who look on the job boards infrequently, or semi-passive candidates who don’t look at all ó but want a recruiter to call. I suggest minimizing sourcing active candidates, since the administrative and data management aspects overwhelm the system. True passive candidates, as a rule, should also be avoided. They require too much convincing and too many top-notch recruiters to easily scale up for a corporate recruiting department which already has too many assignments to handle. Semi-candidates, on the other hand, are the sourcing sweet-spot. There are plenty of top people in these groups who can easily be found and hired with well-designed systems and well-trained recruiters. In these previous articles in this series, I made the case that by using systematic sourcing techniques, hiring top talent could become a Six Sigma business process:

• These Secrets of Semi-Sourcing Will Change the Way You Find and Hire Top Candidates Forever

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This article will take you down a slightly different path. Instead of the thinking of yourself as a hiring practitioner, become a customer. Now, fast-forward to the drive home tonight. Ready? Look up ahead. There’s a mall! Let’s stop and do some shopping and relieve some pent-up stress. Have you noticed that some retail stores are a little more fun to visit? That some clerks are a little more helpful and seem to know more about their product line? That some places really care about helping you? Does this kind of personal treatment encourage you to buy more? Shop there more often? Recommend the store to friends and relatives? Good. You have first-hand experience of what hiring the right retail employees can deliver: larger sales, more return business, greater customer loyalty. Retailing is a tough business. Retailers have to sit and wait for buyers to find them. Nowadays, plenty of people blame poor retail sales on the economy, but a recent Time Magazine article described how retailers are often their own worst competitors (Bill Barol, “Just Take the Money!” Time Magazine, July 2003). Barol cites examples from some of the nation’s largest retailers, illustrating how they organize store layouts, build attractive displays, create self-checkout systems, and conduct major ad campaigns to increase business ó only to have employees treat customers like a pimple on prom night. Yep, the same retailers that spend heavily on physical layout persistently hire clueless or rude employees. Barol advises retailers “not to let their ads write a check their stores cannot cash.” In other words, don’t waste money bringing customers to the store if employees aren’t selected for customer service. Why does this happen? Retailers and customers are often running on different tracks. To illustrate this point, we put together a few strategies retailers use to sell merchandise. It would be interesting to see how much you agree with them. What Do Customers Want? Rank-order the following eight strategies according to what you expect from a retailer. It will be easier if you start with “8″ being the most important, then “1″ as the least important, then “7″ as the next most important, then 2 as the next least important, and so forth. Do not use the same number twice. __ a) Store easy to get around

__ b) Salespeople who know the product line and can answer your questions

__ c) Attractive displays and layouts

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Succession planning is the fastest and cheapest way to get a well-qualified person into an open position. Unfortunately, very few organizations have a well-thought-out or well-executed succession planning program. CEO egos, most people’s dislike of thinking about a time when they won’t be in a position, fear of competition, and time pressures all work against putting robust succession planning in place. Organizations that do execute well have long histories of leadership succession and strong financial performance. General Electric, IBM, Proctor and Gamble and many others underline how effective planning for future leadership can be. Succession planning makes sense. People promoted internally have a track record. Everyone has a sense of how experienced, skilled, and competent they are. Other employees know how well the person fits the culture of the organization, and the decision to transfer or promote someone is based in part of this ability to fit in and be accepted. Internal people have more credibility with their peers and with their bosses because they relate to the organization’s history and have had common experiences. None of this is trivial at all, as many (perhaps most) new hire failures can be traced to the lack of cultural fit and acceptance. Our question is whether or not recruiters should play a role in succession planning. Today, they are mostly are uninvolved (or even uninterested). In discussing this with many recruiters, I have come to the conclusion that the three reasons below are the key to why they have ignored the process and have not been champions of it. First of all, most recruiters have an external focus and rarely even think about filling a position internally. Many anxiously wait for any mandatory internal posting process to end (mostly without any internal candidate coming forward or being chosen), so that they can get on with their external search and hire. They are reactionary ó not strategic ó and love the challenge of finding someone outside. Secondly, if there is a succession planning process, recruiters are rarely part of it. They are not brought in by the HR team or line management. Most HR generalists and line managers also think of recruiters as externally focused. most recruiters are afraid of succession planning. Many fear that if the process were really successful, they would lose their job or be reduced to hiring entry-level people. These recruiters enjoy the interaction with technical professionals and the ego boost of seeking out high-level executives. Entry-level recruiting is often left for junior recruiters. However, as the economy picks up and as talent shortages increase, recruiters may find that their best chance of survival is to become knowledgeable about succession planning. Here are a few tips on how to become involved in (or even how to start) the process in your organization. 1. Explain why recruiters should be part of the process. Recruiting is not only about external candidates. Creating talent pools internally and helping your organization assess employees can save time and lower overall recruiting costs. You can turn your own tools and skills into assessing the internal workforce and making recommendations of people for various positions. Everything we do with external candidates can (and should) be done internally. Skills and cultural fit assessments, analysis of past performance, reference checks, and experience can be used to create internal, pre-qualified pools of candidates for many positions. When openings occur, managers can tap into this pool and quickly find the right person without ever going outside. The recruiter’s function is to make sure that the talent pool exists and contains the best people your organization has, each earmarked for the variety of possible positions they could fit into with little to no development. Robust programs will even have assessed candidates who have potential, but who do not yet have the expertise or experience for a particular position. These may be the people chosen for development programs. 2. Help your organization define a talent philosophy. I have written many articles on talent planning, and at the center of these articles is the admonition to articulate a talent philosophy. What do I mean? Very simply, try to write a few sentences that describe to anyone what the principles are that are key to your organization’s hiring. For example, do you primarily hire mid-level professionals and promote them to more senior positions? Or does your company not believe in development of employees at all and hires only experienced and qualified people at all levels? Does your organization bring in college hires? Why? How do they get promoted and how quickly does it happen? Is skill and competency, compensation, or cultural fit the primary decision factor in hiring someone (almost always, one of these is king)? By knowing what practices and philosophies underlie what you do, you can gain insight into what should change and, perhaps, even get a sense of how to change it. In my experience, most organizations have a weak understanding of their own philosophy. Only a few, like General Electric and P&G, for example, have a very clear approach and solid, aligned internal systems that make it clear how to get promoted and who gets the most heavily recruited. The recruiter’s job should be to help make sure that internal promotion and transfers are a key part of this philosophy. 3. Be persistent. Ask the VP or director of HR about succession planning. Their answer will be very revealing about the overall organizational approach to internal growth and development. If they believe there is a good program in place, explain how you might contribute to making it an even better process. If there is no program, volunteer to be part of a team to create a succession planning process. The basic process is little different from external recruiting ó it’s just that the search is internal, the assessments can be even more robust, and the talent pools are very similar to any you might create for external candidates. If you would like more information on creating a succession planning process, send me an email at kwheeler@glresources.com. By tapping into the current workforce better than before, by vigorously making internal people the first stop in filling in any position, and by applying the tools and skills you already have, you can expand your role, improve your own chance of succession, and contribute real value to the people in your organization.

Most recruiters know that networking is a great way to meet new people and generate new candidates. With the face of recruiting changing and the number of networking events on the rise, understanding how to network in person as opposed to just on the phone is another tool that can be of great value. Besides, much networking takes place even at events that are not designed solely for the purpose of networking, such as corporate trainings, parties, social events, symposiums, conferences, etc. People attend networking event for all different reasons. They attend to find jobs, find consulting assignments, find candidates, find people to talk with, find information, or find mates. Sometimes they go just to get out of the house. Most people however, go to networking events with a specific purpose in mind. If you are looking to achieve success in your mission at the event, you must become a successful at networking. How successful you are depends upon how well you play the game ó how easily you can move from person to person and feel comfortable doing it. Successful networking is like watching tennis on television. It looks easy until you try it yourself. For some people, networking holds all of the appeal of going to get a root canal. It fills so many of us with fear, anxiety, and angst because we are stepping out of our comfort zone. We do not know what to do, what to say, and how to behave. With this truth firmly in mind. and armed with the understanding that action conquers fear, the question is simple: “Where do I begin?” The answer is also simple. You research the event, pre-register if it seems to be applicable, bring a friend as a safety if you feel more comfortable, put on a big smile, and dive into the crowd. I suggest that you leave your fear of rejection home. Everyone is there to meet others, so the idea of rejection really should not come into play. Understand that networking is a farming event; a friendly and safe place to meet, greet, make new contacts, and exchange information. (For the very timid among you, Susan Roane has done a number of books and tapes on networking and methodologies for working a room. They are wonderful and can be found on Amazon.) One last thing before we get into networking. Many recruiters are gregarious and outgoing on the phone, but not all that good in a room full of strangers. This is not a criticism, because going to a place where no one knows you is no easy thing. It may be a bit unnatural for you; but after a while, things do change, and believe it or not, it will become easier. It may never be fun, but I promise, it will become easier. With the explanations and preliminaries out of the way, here is what I call the “short course” on networking. If you take this information to heart, use it and make a real effort at the networking events, the results just might surprise you:

• Bring business cards. This might seem obvious, but the number of people who do not bring business cards to these events is shocking.

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A question that seems to be popping up more and more in the minds of recruiters and general HR leadership is, “Why should branding be important to me? I work in HR, not marketing.” In proposing my response to this question, I must admit that just a few short years ago my answer would have been significantly more limited than it is today, in that branding in HR has traditionally been limited to the employment function. But while employment branding has always been a topic of great interest to many leading recruiting professionals, including myself, the importance of mastering the concepts and skills behind branding have much greater implications for HR professionals in the “new economy.” A Shared Responsibility Is Arising It is no secret that success in business relies upon excellence in execution. While corporate leaders have historically looked to other functions, such as product development, marketing, and sales, to drive corporate success, today more and more eyes are looking to HR for help. The reason for this newfound reliance on HR stems from a decrease in the effectiveness of the traditional levers marketing organizations used to differentiate a firm and their products. Marketers have traditionally used “the 4 P’s” (product, price, position, and promotion) to set the products of their firm apart from those of the competitor in the market place. However, in the new economy, product features, pricing, and positioning become almost irrelevant as competitors can now mimic and upstage your efforts in very short periods of time, thanks in part to innovations in technology and reductions in global barriers. While this development forces marketing to become more and more branding oriented, it also forces corporate attention on other avenues that can be used to establish and maintain a corporate brand in the marketplace. Most corporate leaders and professional marketers now admit that one of the few (if not the only) channels left to communicate the corporate brand to customers is the employee, and the customer experience they are capable of providing. Customer service is a factor that is largely influenced by the quality of the workforce, which in turn is largely influenced by the quality of recruiting and workforce management systems developed and maintained by HR. Your Workforce Lives Your Brand Companies opting to distinguish themselves in the market through customer service require a workforce capable of providing a notable positive difference in customer experience versus that which a competitor can provide. Providing such an experience as a means to communicate and support your corporate brand requires several key factors be in place, including:

• A workforce that understands the customer service distinction you are attempting to provide, and that believes in providing it.

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Two of the most common questions I am asked about online screening tools are: “Who is going to emerge as the financial leader in the online screening and assessment market and what will they do in order to generate their revenue?” and… “What is the size (in dollars) of the online screening and assessment industry?” While I am usually able to answer most questions I am asked with confidence, I always have trouble fielding these two particular questions. I’m not afraid to openly admit that I am unable to even begin to answer the second question. I will leave that headache to a full-time financial analyst. But I do think I can do a pretty good job of answering the first one and this article is where I will make my first public attempt to do so. I’m hoping that my answer to question #1 will help some analyst somewhere to come up with a better answer to question #2, so I can offer a better answer then the ever-unpopular “I don’t know.” Why Is Question #1 Hard To Answer? So who is going to emerge as the leader in the online screening marketplace, and how will they generate revenue? There are several reasons this question is difficult to answer. They include:

1. Market fragmentation. The market is very fragmented. Assessment has found a home in many different places, making it hard to view the market as one whole entity. The varied way in which different companies use screening and assessment tools as part of their product offerings makes comparing related revenue like comparing apples to oranges. Assessment is just one product for some companies with many other revenue streams.

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How can any recruiter possibly provide a responsive, high-quality recruiting experience and personalized customer service? Recruiters I have spoken with complain loudly about the hundreds, even thousands, of resumes they receive weekly from unqualified candidates. The most common comment I hear is, “I wish I could reply to every candidate, but if I did I would not be doing my job!” Candidates, on the other side of the fence, feel that they rarely experience common courtesy from recruiters. They feel ignored, snubbed, forgotten, unappreciated, and unevaluated. We all, I believe, want to provide candidates with great service. We all know that those who have been ignored, dismissed as not qualified, and otherwise treated with discourtesy will not forget the experience and may never recommend our firm to friends or apply again ó even when they may be an excellent choice for a future position. Every act of discourtesy will eventually be incorporated into the overall reputation and “brand” of your organization. As they say in the customer satisfaction business, for every customer that tells you they are satisfied, there are at least three dissatisfied customers who just haven’t said anything. The same applies for candidates. So what does the overworked, overwhelmed recruiter do? How can you provide responsive service in the face of huge numbers of resumes? Here are three tips that might help. 1. Don’t post the usual job descriptions. I have taken an excerpt from a job description I found on a website that is representative of many I see every day. The questions I ask is who, with even a modicum of technical ability and a dash of experience, would not feel qualified for this job. There are no specifics, no details, and no firm requirements:

You’re looking for more than just a job in Information Technology. You want a career that challenges your IT experience while giving you the freedom and support to succeed. Look no further than Company XYZ. Our Professional Services offerings span the entire application lifecycle, giving our customers a complete solution and our employees the opportunity to excel on all platforms. With our technical focus and emphasis on delivery, we strive to hire experienced information technology professionals with broad skill sets and the desire and versatility to learn new businesses and skills. We are selective in hiring and serious about retaining those we do hire. “We are looking for candidates with the following attributes:

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It is a well-known fact that fewer firms are hiring these days. And while most organizations have trimmed back their recruiting function to its barest bones, throughout corporate America there are recruiters still in their jobs, at their desks ó bored to death. While many are using this time to catch up on paperwork that never got completed, to research new tools, or to keep their sourcing database up to date, others are looking for things they can do to help ease the onslaught of need when their firm or industry recovers from its current state of slumber. This is a listing of employment practices a recruiter might consider to fill their activity void, and help prepare for economic recovery:

1. Do a survey of all top employees and ask them why they accepted the job when they were hired. Also ask them what they think the top selling points of the firm currently are, and what might concern them if they were just joining the organization.

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There has been a steady decline in average cost per hire in corporate North America over the past several years. In this article, I’ll discuss some factors that contribute to the trend. I’ll also answer this important question: Does a decline in the average cost per hire mean that staffing is getting more efficient? Cost Per Hire Cost per hire is a well-known metric, calculated by dividing the total staffing costs by the number of hires. Total staffing costs break down into fixed and variable costs. Fixed costs include recruiters’ salaries, staffing infrastructure, and overhead. Variable recruiting costs are made up primarily of sourcing costs, but may also include agency and assessment fees if applicable. Among the 1,460 organizations participating in the 2002 Staffing.org survey, the average cost per hire was a few dollars under $4,000. This figure represents a decline of nearly 37% in average cost per hire compared to 2000, when the reported average was $6,342, and a decline of 11% since 2001 ($4,522 per hire on average). What explains the dramatic decline in average cost per hire in North America? Since sourcing represents the largest single outside expense in the cost of a hire, it makes sense to look more closely there. Candidate sourcing is undeniably changing. Newspaper revenues from employment classified ads have been dropping precipitously for a decade, as online venues such as job boards become the chosen media for candidates and corporate recruiters to connect. Even within the online world, though, the media mix is changing. Corporations are sourcing talent from the traffic coming to the corporate website. In 2002, 83% of Fortune 500 companies posted jobs and accepted applications on the corporate careers website, up from 71% in 2000. Sourcing on the corporate site has brought about decreased reliance on commercial job boards. In our study “Where the Jobs Are,” iLogos Research found that postings on corporate career websites outnumber postings on job boards by a factor of three to one. As corporations implement robust candidate relationship databases, sourcing costs will decrease further by better marketing of opportunities to candidates sourced in the past. Ultimately, corporations may adjust or reduce reliance on volume sourcing methods as the quantity (and quality) of candidates mined from its proprietary database rises and other sourcing methods become more targeted. Staffing Efficiency Ratio An alternative metric to cost per hire is the “staffing efficiency ratio.” This ratio is calculated by dividing total staffing costs by the total compensation of the positions recruited. That is, one takes both fixed and variable staffing costs incurred over a period and divides by the sum of the starting salaries of all the positions filled over the same period. Though not completely insulated from differences in geography, industry ,and job function, the staffing efficiency ratio is a better metric than cost per hire for comparing the financial performance of recruiting across companies. Staffing.org found an overall staffing efficiency ratio of 11.6% in the group of companies participating in its 2002 study. In other words, the average staffing function cost the corporation $11.60 for every $100 in salary of those recruited. The Staffing Efficiency ratio has dropped each year that it has been measured by Staffing.org, with a value of 16% in 2000 and 13.6% in 2001. With cost per hire dropping for three years running, it is no surprise that there is also a downward trend in staffing costs represented as a proportion of total salaries recruited for. To put the staffing efficiency ratio into perspective, it is interesting to compare an internal staffing function to third party agencies. A typical agency fee is in the range of 25% to 30% of the first year salary of the position being filled. In that sense, staffing efficiency ratio represents the ‘fee’ that an average internal staffing function would charge back on a cost recovery basis. Considering it this way makes clear the premium one pays for an outsourced service or a quality process. When analyzed by industry, size, and region, substantial differences in staffing efficiency ratios emerge. One pattern appears to be that larger organizations have a lower staffing efficient ratio than smaller organizations. Large companies enjoy higher volumes, with greater repeatability among hires, and possibly enjoy certain economies of scale with respect to recruiting overhead and infrastructure. Cost and Quality Does it make corporate economic sense to decrease the cost per hire as much as possible? Reducing headcount in the staffing department, cutting back on testing and assessment, or implementing poor staffing technology all have one significant impact on the company: they reduce yield quality of the staffing function and consequently have an adverse effect on corporate productivity. Without any reference to quality or productivity, both the standard cost per hire and staffing efficiency ratio metrics gives only a partial picture of staffing performance. The true measure of staffing efficiency should be not how much it costs to hire a certain level of total salary but how much it costs to hire a certain output in productivity. Being more cost efficient is a good goal in staffing. However, you should not get too focused on a single metric, nor should you take your eye off the ball on quality. Slavish devotion to cost per hire or the related staffing efficiency metric will have an adverse impact on company efficiency. Whenever I see a company embarking on a cost containment campaign, I make a point of asking, “What are you sacrificing?”

Author’s note: One of the things I enjoy most about writing for ER Exchange is not just seeing my name in cyber-print (although it is ego reinforcing), but the feedback I receive from readers. That includes not only those who respond favorably, but those who disagree or feel that I missed key or critical points. It also includes those who recommend ignored topics or complain about overdone issues. I sometimes disagree with those comments, and I am sometimes disappointed that “the point” was missed (by my omission or the reader’s), but the inputs are never ignored. We are all victims of the fact that we are only issued one brain, and that brain is all too often limited by our own failings, prejudices, experiences, emotional or visceral knee-jerk responses, or time constraints on personal and professional development. But we are compensated with two eyes and two ears, a hint from the creator of the relative value between observing and listening as opposed to talking ó four input devices versus one output device. So if you have ever been tempted to respond, favorably or negatively, to an author’s article, do so. It makes a difference. But I digress. Now, back to Part 2. Snap decisions based on partial information, when presented with a predetermined bias, are okay if all you want to do is become a future executive. But if you seek to be accurate and make decisions that truly have impact and not merely respond after the fact, then more careful review, research, and dispassionate observation for the purpose of discovery are essential and required. Trend analysis is not for those who suffer from short sightedness or seek “microwave” solutions to “slow bake” problems. It is a careful review of trends and not merely the consideration of all things based on the situation du jour or the core beliefs of the boss of the hour. To many in HR/staffing today, discussing or even exhibiting concern over a pending labor shortage during the current recession is not unlike worrying about a potential famine during a feast. Others assume that this is a non-issue due to the retreat of so many professional jobs offshore, as if that represents an unalterable law of physics akin to gravity. To those who think in terms of the obvious, and not the underlying issues the obvious obscures, I offer the following examples:

• Glacier awareness. During the ice age, the glaciers spread from their current narrow confines to cover most of the northern hemisphere. During the unusually long winters, the glaciers progress could be measured in miles. However, during the short periods of relative warmth each year, they would recede a fraction of the distance gained. Thus one could say on a bright, sunny day in 12,000 B.C., “See, the ice is receding!” But if that person did not move away from the face of the glacier before the colder seasons returned ó well, keeping food frozen would be the least of their worries. “Inevitable” is not a measure of the time required for an end result to occur, nor is it a guarantee of a constant measured progression toward that outcome. It is merely a statement of that outcome’s eventual transition from “pending” to “arrived.” The current recession is not evidence of a labor shortage reversal. At 3% unemployment in the 1990s, companies scrambled and doubled salaries to meet, barely, staffing goals. At 6% unemployment, many companies feel a false sense of security as pertains to talent acquisition. Can we truly feel secure in the labor pool’s ability to meet future staffing needs with only a three-point separation between feast and famine? As we say in New England, “The glaciers haven’t disappeared; they’ve just gone back to get more rocks.”

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This was going to be an article on how to systematize one-on-one recruiter skills. It would have included topics like how to increase your effectiveness with hiring managers and how to become more of a career counselor to top candidates. With this information, recruiters would control every aspect of the hiring process ó placing more top people more quickly. Hiring managers would trust their judgment and top candidate would never voluntarily opt-out of the process, even if they had other opportunities. I was then going to show how these one-on-one skills could effectively be tied together into a seamless recruiting process. Now, that would have been a great article. It still will be ó but not today. Something more important just happened that needs your attention. You might have caught this headline: July 31, 2003. Gross domestic product jumped to 2.4% in 2Q from 1.4% in 1Q. Weekly jobless claims stay below 400,000. A key manufacturing index rises strongly. Also: Mortgage rates hit 9-month highs. Paradoxically, the implication of this makes recruiting one-on-one skills even more important. Here’s why: From a hiring systems and recruiting perspective, July 31, 2003, was the last day we had to get a jumpstart on the recovery. Hiring is about to take off, and from now on we’ll be reacting to events as they unfold. As a result, strategically, what everyone does to get ready for the impending recovery and hiring boom should be number one on the priority list. Number two will be a tactic. If you’re a CEO, line manager, recruiting manager, or an HR executive, it’s to make sure you have the best recruiters working for you who know one-on-one recruiter skills. They’ll be the key to every company’s ability to hire top talent during the first phase of the recovery. Even those who have delayed implementing any new advanced hiring programs due to lack of budget, time, resources, etc., can still come out heroes if they immediately take heed of this advice. Here’s why: From this point forward, hiring top people will get progressively more difficult. If you’re not seeing enough top candidates now in a slow economy, how hard do you think it will be in a recovering economy ó without making fundamental changes? In a recent article, I made the case that semi-active and semi-passive candidates were the candidate pools you needed to target. These are the top people who are now overworked, underpaid, underappreciated and frustrated. On bad days, they look for jobs on the job boards. On any other day, they will take a recruiter’s call to explore new opportunities. However, they’re all ready to move now, once they collectively agree the economy is back. Watch out for the stampede. Companies should now be establishing formal sourcing programs to take advantage of this window of opportunity. It will close again once everyone gets their new jobs. In an economic recovery, semi-active and semi-passive become more active ó looking for new jobs as opportunities become more plentiful. Their pent-up frustrations have an outlet ó new opportunities ó so they become more aggressive in looking for them. As a result, turnover increases as the delayed migration to apparently greener pastures begins. The earth is starting to rumble. Recruiting departments need to get ready for it. Those recruiting departments that have been aggressively upgrading their recruiting systems and recruiter tactics will have an early lead in hiring the initial batch of great talent that is about to come on the market. Everyone else will have an uphill fight. Regardless of who’s in the lead right now, in the end the difference-maker will be the company with the best recruiting team. Proactive recruiting departments are now working feverishly to get all of their new hiring initiatives underway. This includes developing workforce plans (don’t forget to double your employee turnover rate as part of the calculation for new hires), totally revamping recruitment advertising programs, developing continuous sourcing programs, and creating proactive employee referral programs to target semi-active and semi-passive candidates (to name a few). Recruiters are the glue that hold all of this together. The best semi-active and semi-passive candidates will have multiple opportunities. They will require more information and more hand-holding. Recruiters must be able to provide convincing information why your job A is far more compelling than jobs B and C. This is why recruiter one-on-one skills are so important. Hiring the best is not a financial transaction. It’s not about checking boxes, and going to compensation and getting an offer. It’s about crafting a career opportunity that’s compelling, compensated fairly, and positioned to provide the hot candidate information to convince him or her that there is nothing better out there. This is what the best recruiters do every day, and what all corporate recruiters must do if they want to compete for top talent. You will not be able to handle the increased activity with your current crop of recruiters. Not only will job openings increase, but turnover will add another 50% or more to the open requisition list. To obtain your share of the best talent, not only will your recruiters need new skills, you’ll need new recruiters. If you want to have a systematic end-to-end hiring process in place by August 5, 2004, plus be able to handle the increase in workload, this is what you must do in the next 45 days:

1. Get more resources. You’ll need to make a business case for this. Here’s how. Start the proposal with the latest economic good news. Then put together a reasonable workforce plan for the next 12 months. Figure out productivity levels for your recruiting team in order to determine how many recruiters you’ll need to add. Compare the added cost of these recruiters and associated systems and support to the cost of not having positions filled on time. This is an easy case to make. Email me if you need help on this.

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We keep looking around at the labor supply and wondering how job seekers are being affected by current market conditions. The question across the recruiting and HR discussion boards is how the workforce is reacting to these conditions. We’re also wondering why it’s so difficult to find qualified, experienced people. These are excellent issues to ponder and develop theories about. One way to get the answers is to ask the population. But an even better way to develop a true appreciation of what is happening is to see it from the job seeker’s perspective ó that is to say, to put yourself in the shoes of the job seeker to find out exactly what is going on. It’s sounds quite noble to spend a few days or a couple of weeks playing job seeker, especially if you’re pretending to be an executive-level candidate. But it’s another thing entirely to put yourself in the shoes of the majority of the workforce and taste of their bread. From December 2002 to June 2003, I did exactly that, and I have some revelations to share. In Part 1, I’ll report on my findings from December 2002 to February 2003. Part 2 will report on my findings from February to June 2003. A Slow Market In the past, I’ve talked with my audiences about getting started again when all of the past resources are skimpy or no they longer exist. My recommendations were based on 1999 market conditions. I revisited one of these resources ó a skilled labor agency. Other resources I used were print and online classified ads, and as well as some temporary agencies. Overall, the picture was not very promising. Things were either sluggish at each juncture or else an exercise in futility. Here is some of what I learned about each resource, from the job seeker’s perspective. Skilled Labor Job Shop The usual scenario at a skilled labor agency is register, take a safety test, and then become qualified to be sent out. There are few, if any, background pre-qualifiers. Experience is not an issue. Education is not truly necessary. It isn’t important whether you have a Ph.D. in nuclear science or a bachelor’s degree in business or homemaking. It isn’t even important if you’re still working on your GED. But the ability to follow instructions is important. Completing the registration and successful performance on the safety test are preliminaries that serve as screening tools to determine whether one is qualified to be sent on an assignment. Once one is registered, the next step is to go to the agency before the doors open at 6 a.m., sign in, and wait to be called to go out on a job. The wait may be short. The wait may be long. If there is no assignment by 10 a.m., it’s certain that no day labor will be available. The only option is to try some other resources, come back for the evening shift, and try again the next day. In 1999, a handful of people did a lot of sitting, but most were sent out to work. Registered laborers who want to work for the day show up at the agency door around 6:30 a.m., sign in as ready and available for work that day, and then wait for the dispatcher to send them out based on client calls for workers. Of the 30 or more laborers waiting to do things such as distribute flyers, janitorial duties, factory or construction work ó or any other low-education, labor-intensive opportunities ó about 80% were sent out. If there was additional work and the laborer performed well, the employer asked them to return the next day. Sometimes the assignments ran for a week or longer. One-day assignments are paid on the same day. If the assignment ran for a longer period, pay was at the end of the work week. The remaining labor-ready job seekers still in the job shop after 10:00 a.m. are not qualified for one reason or another. Accuracy, speed, professionalism, adaptability, motivation are all determinants for repeat employment. Amount of experience with the type of work required is another. Many times, trainee level experience is sufficient. Those who were not sent out one day may present themselves the next day or on the next shift (beginning at 4:00 p.m.), use another job shop, or search for other types of work. There is no stigma for not being employed on any day. The mix of candidates is diverse. In 1999, they were predominantly black men, followed by a small handful of Hispanics, and then whites. There were women as well, mostly Hispanic. Many of these people were still working on obtaining their GED. There were some exceptions who had more than a high school education or more than a bachelor’s degree. Those with degrees were prudent enough to not list that information on their application. New Market Profile In the late part of January 2003, these expectations changed. The number of labor-ready candidates is now more than 45, closer to 50. Due to the nature of the work offered by the job shop, the attire is still durable work clothing suitable for construction work. The weather dictated use of knitted caps to protect from rain and cold. Clusters sat together, biding their time by reading newspaper articles to one another or talking about different issues. Slang English is the common language. I registered around sunset in order to be available for work the next day. The job shop staff is bilingual, English and Spanish. They are courteous and businesslike with candidates. One of those who reports back from the day’s work talks with the desk clerk about his pay. A clarification is requested. Another speaks up for the first by using formal English. Everyone’s attention and expectation of the new speaker snaps up significantly. Appearances in the job shop are not what one should expect and the job seekers are living down to their expectations in order to be hired out. The next day, I presented myself. My name is place on the sign-up list at the bottom of the second page of single-spaced lines. The morning group of job seekers is similar to the one from the previous night. I stand out like a sore thumb and busy myself with composing on my laptop as I wait to be dispatched. Another job seeker also stands out. He appears to be in his early 20s. He also sits quietly with his own reading material ó The Wall Street Journal. As it turns out, he is new to California. He’s moved to Los Angeles from New York or Massachusetts. He’s an actor. A friend told him about an interesting article in the Journal and he’s trying to find it. The Journal is his regular reading material. He’s been registered with the job shop for some two weeks or so. The time stretches into 9:30 a.m. and no names have been called for dispatch. The young actor gives a parting, “Good to meet you,” and moves on to another place. My laptop is packed up. I lingered a short time to talk with the morning desk clerk and scan the candidate sign-up sheet. Only three names are crossed out, indicating people who were sent out on work assignments. New names followed mine at the bottom of the second page and begin a third one. “The lines through the names indicate who was sent out?” I ask the desk clerk. She confirms the correctness of the observation and responds by saying, “Things are really slow right now.” “When do you think things will pick up?” “Truthfully, probably not until the middle of March. I hope!” “That long?” She nods and agrees that is a long time, observing that the pick up is only speculative. Print Classified Ads The number of opportunities being advertised in print classified ads is sparse. I’m looking for jobs with easy entry that provide at least something close to poverty-line income or more. There is one situation that is so easy that it becomes a deterrent. The company seeks people who can do presentations and demonstrations. They pay during the training period. Even something that is a reasonable facsimile of a resume will be accepted. The intake representative confides that the manager never looks at the resume anyway. They just need some sort of paper on file; everyone gets hired. In fact, they want people to come in so that they can get hired and paid. There is a group interview and orientation. Once hired, the candidate is taught how to make presentations to companies so that they will buy artwork. The details begin to sound like raising daisies. Yes, getting hired is more than easy. But this cattle call sounds as though there is no legitimate career opportunity and may be a straight commission situation in the long run. It also sounds like a situation where termination or layoff is just as easy as getting hired. Best to side-step this. Other ads result in calls not being returned. Several follow-up calls result in finally contacting a few of the advertisers. Although the positions are now filled, it appears the probationary employee is not working out and will likely be replaced the following week. Given what I’ve learned from the places where I actually made contact with a human ó not a voicemail service or recording ó I’m put off. None of these situations sound like real opportunities. I’ve found no paying work. Online Classified Ads It seems that if the print classified ads are low, there must be a lot more online classifieds available through the Los Angeles Times. Why not take advantage of my dial-up and explore them? Online classifieds are truly an experience. There are a lot of listings, all over the country. My search offers up results across the United States. Eventually, I’m down a path completely unrelated to what I want. I’m in new counties and states and a different field. I’m lost and bewildered at the results and extremely discouraged. This is not a viable option for a job search. Incidentally, it looks like the medical field has a high demand for employees of all classifications. They can even apply online! Temporary Agencies Many of you readers are executive recruiters, whether in-house or third-party. Many of you are in recruiting- and staffing-industry-related fields. And a great many of you are temporary staffing professionals. You read these columns and know the authors. So it is with a high degree of trepidation that I embark on the next phase of my research ó checking out what using a temporary agency now entails. After several calls, it looks like the way to get into a temporary agency is now a matter of faxing my resume, submitting it online or sending it by email. At least there are several ways to get one’s foot in the door. Once through the transom, the resume will be screened and the candidate will be called in for the usual run of screening tests and interview. So far this sounds like there may be some hope of getting work. I have two options on what to submit now: 1) the real, complete background, or 2) the toned-down, dumbed-down background. I’ve already gone down the latter path. It resulted in a quick job at a low level and even lower wage. It also resulted in a job, not a career, that had an extremely low glass ceiling. The decision is made to go down the first path this time. The difficulty is that all of my records are gone and I cannot remember exact or even approximate dates, much less places. An informal question to some of my colleagues has revealed that a person in this situation will be viewed as manufacturing their background or else trying to hide something. This is not encouraging. A career summary is dashed off that contains approximate dates. It’s three pages long and still incomplete. It needs refinement. Time is scarce so it’s submitted as is. Ten to fourteen days pass and my contact person has not responded by phone or email. I call back and am told that the office is still in the process of reviewing resumes. If there’s a fit, they’ll call me in for an interview. I’m still waiting. Slim Pickin’s So here’s the picture. Layoffs in all industries are high, so there’s a glut of people looking for work. The other side of the picture is that employers are laying off in order to cut costs. That then means they are trying to deliver product to customers by using limited resources and stretching past their reasonable limits in order to do so. Day labor opportunities are no longer a quick fix solution for employment income in our present economy. In fact, unskilled labor opportunities are just as sparse as all of the others. Finding paid work is going to require a lot more creativity and work at sniffing out the fruit of the work cornucopia. At one time, it was possible to check the classifieds and find at least some paltry offerings where the advertiser returned the phone call. Now, advertisers are either too cavalier or too busy to bother to reply to voice messages. There could be even more explanations for the lack of response. Obviously, there are some messages that are getting a response. If that were not so, calls two weeks later would still result in no answer. Yet by that time there is an answer, albeit one by a perturbed employer who may be looking for a replacement. While there appear to be many more opportunities online, the ability to search them is challenging. One needs to be a pro at Internet and research techniques in order to stay on track and find exactly the right job titles in the right geographic area. This is not the strategy to use for job- and site-specific searches. For now, online classifieds are a great source of examining the field to get a general idea of what’s happening. Otherwise, they’re useful for those who are willing to relocate. Even temporary agencies, which at one time were the first bastion of semi-skilled and educated support workers, are formidable as far as getting a shoe in the door. Although there are ads and yellow page listings, many of the agencies have closed. Of those that still cling to life, there are many screening layers before one actually sees the inside of the office in order to actually talk with a placement agent. In the 1960s and ’70s, all one had to do was walk into these offices and complete the application form. Next was take ó and pass ó a battery of standard tests: a simple typing test along with one in spelling, filing and simple mathematics. An hour or so later, one could walk out armed with a time sheet. Many times, an assignment for the next day was among the registered temp’s arsenal. Now, some type of resume is mandatory just to be considered for getting invited to come in and take the battery of tests. The employment scene is not encouraging. At this time it is a place for the stalwart and hearty of will.

Selecting salespeople is a real challenge. As I wrote in earlier articles, salespeople tend to be masters of first impressions, and sales managers tend to fall in love with people who present good first impressions. We see this all the time when managers insist on making hiring decisions based on “gut reaction,” even though (as they tend to forget) gut reactions produce just as many sales losers as sales winners. Is gut reaction (GR) any good? Yes and no. GR is silly when it is based on subjective opinion (“I know ‘em when I see ‘em”). But GR is valid when it is based on facts (“She demonstrated learning ability, persuasiveness, customer service,” and so forth). Half and Half This leads us to half-full or half-empty hiring strategies. Most recruiters and hiring managers tend to use the half-empty strategy. That is, they scan resumes and ask questions, secretly waiting to hear something negative. You disagreed with a manager? You did not get along with a coworker? Say the wrong words, admit you are human, mention your boss was a cross-dresser, or suggest you worked less than 60 hours each week in a dead-end job ó and you get the pre-hire kiss-off. Half-empty strategies work on a “take away points” premise. They tend to be the norm when there is no clear idea about what is needed, when different interviewers have different expectations, when you have to resort to comparing one applicant with another, or when you don’t have trustworthy tools to accurately measure applicant skills. Gut reactions are “half empty” strategies because they are almost totally unsupported by hard facts. I once knew a consultant wannabe who taught half-empty behavioral interviewing techniques to hundreds of trusting clients. He advised each of his workshops to start the interview by giving everyone a passing score, then look for evidence to raise or lower it. Quite a strategy, huh? By default, applicants who didn’t screw-up automatically passed the interview. Bad science! Why didn’t he get called on his poor tactics? He produced a lot of money for his company right up until the day he retired. Impact on clients? An abundance of employees who “passed” the half-empty test. Half-full strategies, on the other hand, start with knowing exactly what to look for, using different tools to measure each critical skill, measuring each skill at least twice, and having trustworthy scores that accurately predict performance. Half-full strategists start with an “empty glass” and “fill it up” with points. It takes more than a good impression to get hired with a half-full hiring strategy. It takes hard evidence from multiple sources. Is there a magic source of tools and techniques you can purchase off the shelf to do this? Unfortunately, no ó although, you might find something located near the do-it-yourself surgery workbooks and the do-it-yourself criminal defense team manuals. Connecting the Dots People often ask what they can do to get a line manager to shift from a half-empty (“I know ‘em when I see ‘em”) to a half-full hiring strategy (“Show me hard evidence”). I suggest one or more of the following:

• The bottom dollar appeal. Get them to rank order all the salespeople from high to low, calculate the average per-person production of the bottom third, calculate the average per-person production of the top two-thirds, subtract the difference, and multiply by the number of salespeople in the bottom third. That figure represents the money lost from half-empty hiring strategies (i.e., ones that let in too many incompetent people). For example: Salesperson 1: $1,000,000

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Like many of you, I always thought employee referral programs were great for myriad (I love that word) reasons. Just a few of those reasons are:

• You get to interview candidates someone inside the organization knows.

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