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Most of us know people who have a knack for expressing strong opinions on topics without having to rely on any actual data or factual information. This tendency to make unsupported claims about the “truth” is particularly prevalent in emerging fields such as online staffing. You don’t have to look far to find individuals who will make authoritative statements about how online staffing must be done on the basis of few facts other than personal conjecture and anecdotal evidence. This article addresses one particularly dangerous myth that has plagued online staffing virtually since the design of the first internet based screening system: the myth that online assessments should be limited to a very small number of questions and should take less than 5 to 10 minutes to complete. I suspect this myth was originally expressed as someone’s informal opinion about the ideal length of assessments. But over time I have noticed that this myth tends to be most frequently repeated by people selling screening tools that just happen to have very few questions and take less than 10 minutes to complete (what an amazing coincidence!). The “10-minute myth” appears to be based on an assumption that using longer assessments will cause candidates to drop out of the hiring process. But what little systematic research has been done in this area suggests that most candidates do not hold strong opinions about how long assessments should or should not be. In fact, most professional applicants will spend substantially more than ten minutes completing online assessments, provided that they are interested in the job and that the assessments are perceived as job relevant^{1 2} (iLogos, 2001; Mael et al., 1996). Although this data is admittedly anecdotal, in my experience working at a variety of major organizations that use staffing assessments taking well over 60 minutes, and I have not once heard of a professional applicant dropping out of the hiring process because the assessment was too long. Research conducted with hourly applicants reveals similar findings. An analysis of data from 29,000 hourly applicants found that it was not the length of assessments that led to drop-outs, but instead the nature of the content³ (Unicru, 2003). Almost all of these hourly applicants answered as many as 100 personality type questions (e.g., “do you like to take risks?”) without dropping out midway through the questionnaire. In contrast, a much larger percentage of applicants dropped out of the hiring process when asked a single question about their willingness to provide reference information, take a drug test, or submit to a background check. In sum, its not the number of questions that lead to hourly applicant drop-outs, its the nature of the questions. In sum, empirical research studying applicant behavior does not support the belief that using online assessments longer than 10 minutes will cause more applicants to drop out of the hiring process. However, if staffing professionals persist in promoting the myth that online assessments should take less than 10 minutes, it’s possible that candidates may eventually start expecting applications to take 10 minutes or less. At this point, the 10-minute myth will change from a simple misguided assumption to a major limitation that staffing professionals have needlessly imposed upon themselves. The possibility of the 10-minute myth becoming a reality poses a major risk to organizations seeking to effectively identify and match candidates to jobs. Many of the most scientifically valid and useful online staffing assessments require between 30 and 60 minutes to complete. These tools often cannot be shortened without severely damaging their accuracy. Staffing organizations that limit themselves to 10-minute online assessments will not be able to get the information they need to make accurate hiring decisions. The best way to ensure this does not happen is for staffing professionals to take a firm stance when it comes to assessment length. This stance can be rooted in two empirical findings:

1. There is a wealth of personnel selection research indicating that time spent collecting scientifically valid online assessment content during the hiring process results in much more effective hiring decisions.

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Very much like a roadmap you use when traveling, a recruiting strategy tells you where, when, and what you need to do in order to meet organizational goals. More specifically, it gives the recruiting department (and the recruiting professionals in it) a focus and a direction. A recruiting strategy gives recruiting managers guidance about what they should do more of and less of. It also helps ensure that everyone on the recruiting team understands the priorities of the business and how recruiting can have an impact on the business. That’s why, when putting together a recruiting strategy, it’s important to make sure that the process you use to develop the strategy is logical and straightforward. 16 Steps in Developing a Recruiting Strategy There are no shortcuts in developing a recruiting strategy. It takes a logical process and numerous inter-related steps. Each of these steps are outlined below. 1. Determine accountability for the strategy. Start the recruiting strategy development process by appointing an individual to manage it. Clear accountability for developing and maintaining the appropriate recruiting strategy must be made clear the very beginning. This individual and the team they select will manage the planning process, but it is critical that they should not own the process or the final strategy. Great strategies cannot be developed in a vacuum. In order to have a successful strategy, recruiting managers, recruiters and recruiting support personnel throughout the organization need to feel that they “own” both the process and the resulting strategy. If they don’t, there is a strong likelihood that they will either ignore the final strategy or not understand it. In either case, the net result will be that it will not be completely implemented. Similar to a plan for a family trip, the strategy needs multiple inputs from individuals with different perspectives and “power bases,” who can help identify roadblocks and steer the strategy team in the right direction. Once you have assigned accountability and assembled your team, I recommend that they utilize these remaining steps as a guide for setting goals and developing your recruiting strategy. 2. Identify the business and overall HR goals of the firm. It’s important to realize upfront that recruiting priorities and goals can’t be set independently; they are dependent on already-established business and HR goals and objectives. When reviewing your company’s business and HR goals, be sure that your recruiting strategy is in a similar physical format and that the recruiting goals are closely aligned with or are clearly related to the already-established corporate and HR goals. To identify overall business goals, review the firm’s overall business strategy created by the board of directors or your executive management team. If you have the time and the access to it, it’s important to review this overall business plan and strategy to ensure that you understand where the business is going. Another source for identifying key business goals is your CEO’s bonus plan. In almost all cases, whatever the CEO or senior officers are measured and rewarded on is, by definition, what is most important to the firm. Of course, if you closely “mirror” them with your key recruiting goals, you help to guarantee that your recruiting goals will directly support the highest priority business goals. Follow a similar process in order to identify the established HR strategy, goals, and plan. I must warn you upfront that the majority of HR departments have no written strategy or strategic plan. As a result, it’s difficult to assess whether your recruiting strategy, strategic plan, or even your goals are in line with what the overall HR function is trying to do. Don’t let that deter you though; your efforts in recruiting might spur the rest of the HR department to follow your lead. When developing your recruiting strategy, it is also important to limit your attention to only the highest priority business and HR goals and objectives; otherwise, you are likely to get bogged down with too many goals and thus increase the likelihood of confusion and the possibility of spreading your recruiting focus too broadly. 3. Identify which business goals and which business units you wish to impact. For each major business goal you believe you can impact, you need to cascade down to recruiting to identify any possible links or connections between recruiting programs and corporate goals. Some recruiting departments go even further and prioritize different business units, product areas, managers, or even jobs, based on business priorities. The recruiting strategy then directs managers to provide priority services and extra resources to those prioritized areas. Identifying goals you can impact means that you need to eventually translate these business goals into recruiting strategies and actions. For example, if the business goal is “Grow XYZ business by 20% in six months,” the recruiting translation may include:

• Prepare to hire 20% more people

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Recruiting has changed significantly in the past three years. Technology, an option or a novelty three years ago, is now the foundation of good recruiting practice. Virtually all major organizations have a recruiting website and an applicant tracking system (ATS). Many are adding screening and assessment technologies and enhancing how they communicate with candidates and hiring managers. Chat rooms, blogs and social networks are all in use, but not yet common. We are at a crossroads, best characterized by the opening sentence in Charles Dickens’s famous novel, A Tale of Two Cities. It almost seems that he was speaking directly to us more than 100 years ago as he wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.” But as we sit down for Thanksgiving dinner (here in the United States) tomorrow, I hope we can find it within ourselves to be thankful for what we do have. We have much before us ó exciting stuff, but challenging and demanding as well. This economy is slowly improving, and many recruiters report heavy demand for new candidates. In the service sector, as well as in key engineering and computer fields, hiring is robust. Congress just raised the cap in the number of immigrants who can be given an H1-B visa because the entire allotment was used up on the first day of the government’s fiscal year! Who says we aren’t hiring engineers and software experts? What these mixed messages and the confusing economic news we hear means is that we are entering a new century and dealing with the changes in the nature of business and work that it has already brought. A door has opened and let out the comforts and habits of the 20th century. Many of us now miss its familiarity and the rules that gave us a sense of security and certainty. Indeed, our profession has changed fundamentally, although we are just beginning to see and understand those changes. The habits and skills we developed in a slower moving, more certain 20th century no longer work so well. Our cheese has been moved, as the eponymous book says, and we miss the familiar world of paper resumes, face-to-face recruiting, ringing telephones, cold calls and classified ads. Technology and the Internet still feel unfamiliar and foreign. But here are a few of the many things we have to look forward to:

1. Personalization of the recruiting process. Today, every candidate is treated pretty much the same. Recruiters call that being fair, but I call it lack of customer service and concern. We are all individuals and want our uniqueness to be understood and evaluated. Retailers and product manufacturers understand this and provide hundreds of variations on products to meet our individual needs. We will need to use technology to communicate with candidates better and more frequently and at a deeper level than we do now. We will have to tailor jobs to meet candidates’ qualifications, rather than looking for the “right” person for our standardized job profile. The whole matching process will become more dynamic and offer the candidate more choices.

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A few questions, if I may: Do hiring managers run screaming when they see you coming? Do they pray for death each time you drop another 50 or 60 resumes on their desk? Does the team you support break down into deep shuddering sobs each time you have been chosen to fill their openings? (Were you last to be chosen in a game of stickball as a kid? So was I.) Tell me folks, does this sound like your life in corporate America? If not, you must be doing something right. If so, I have just the fix to turn those tears into cheers and have them throwing rose petals at your feet each and every day. If you want to be the best recruiter you can be, loved by all whom you serve, adopt the following 10 precepts as part of your day-to-day recruiting efforts ó and you’ll be on your way to being your organization’s new darling.

1. Be absolutely sure you really understand the hiring priorities of the organization(s) you represent. Do this by asking the hiring manager the following question, using these exact words: “What are your current priorities in terms of filling these positions?” Take notes and repeat back to the hiring manager what you think she said. Then race forward and put resources into trying to fill the highest priority positions first, the less important positions second, and the least important positions last. (Beware of the hiring manager who says they are all top priority. That may be true, but some positions are always more important than others, so press for clear priorities.)

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In Part 1 of this three-part article aeries, I defined recruiting strategy and the benefits of having one. Here in Part 2, I highlight the 12 essential elements of a comprehensive recruiting strategy. 1. What are your primary goals? (Why hire?) The first element of recruiting strategy is to determine “why” you are hiring outside people. First, you must determine your firm’s business goals and then what recruiting can do to contribute to each of them. Some of the more common business reasons for hiring include:

• Replacements for turnover

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Diagnose before prescribing. Every first-year med student learns this simple admonition. It should be applied to business decisions more often. In an attempt at quick improvement, we often try to implement solutions without enough information. This situation is not exclusive to HR/recruiting. Root cause analysis can help eliminate this problem. Root cause analysis is a method of digging deep to uncover the real cause of a problem rather then relying on superficial information to make decisions. I suspect that the reason why the hiring process has not improved much in the past 30 years is that too many of these solutions have been tried without enough of the digging deep. Some examples will help illustrate the problem and the solution. Example 1: Declining Monthly Sales Problem: Salespeople are complaining that competition has reduced their prices, eroding sales everywhere. There is evidence supporting this claim. Solution: Introduce an aggressive new pricing program to stop the loss in total unit sales. Of course, as a result, total revenue declines along with profits. A root cause analysis could have shown that the competitive product wasn’t of comparable quality, and the customer would have to replace the product more often. In this case, the company should have introduced a quality-based message addressing lifetime product cost, not just the cost of individual units. Not knowing the real cause of the problem often gets managers to take the wrong action, worsening the situation. Lack of any evidence of long-term improvement is a great clue that a corrective action isn’t working. Unfortunately, too many managers assume that lack of improvement means they should have been more aggressive in making the initial change ó and, in this example, prices would have been reduced even more. Of course, the root cause analysis could have proved that the pricing problem was real: then the company would need to develop some other means to stay competitive. Regardless, using minor information to make major decisions is a typical problem of many managers and executives. Here are some HR/recruiting examples to consider. Do any sound familiar? Example 2: Offers Being Rejected as Uncompetitive This is a fairly typical problem as companies decide to target stronger ó and more passive ó candidates. It’s also more common as the economy strengthens and the demand for certain types of hard-to-find candidates increases. Stronger candidates, especially those you have to recruit and those that are gainfully employed, tend to want significant increases in compensation. Above-average candidates with multiple offers also find themselves in stronger bargaining positions. One of two things typically happens as compensation packages get bigger or offer rejection rates increase. Either the company decides to pay more, or it doesn’t. Neither approach is warranted. This is especially true if a root cause analysis wasn’t conducted to determine the real underlying problem. More often than not, the problem is not compensation. More likely, the problem has to do with the scope of the job. A top person is likely to demand more compensation if a job isn’t seen as big enough or doesn’t offer enough of a challenge. This is often due to lack of understanding of real job needs. Rather than increasing compensation, the better solution might be to increase the scope of the job, or better still to just describe the real job in terms of projects, challenges, and opportunities. Often, this will be enough to minimize the need for a larger-than-normal comp increase. Top people always view the opportunity for growth in balance with compensation. If the job sounds like every other job, all you’re left with is comp as a negotiating tool. Example 3: ATS Underperforming Most companies have some level of frustration with their applicant tracking system (ATS). The vendors always consider this a training issue, with the refrain, “If only recruiters would use the system properly, all of your problems would go away.” In response, distraught companies complain, buy bolt-on solutions as short-term fixes, develop some kind of external workaround using Excel, or look for another vendor. A root cause analysis would have revealed the real problem. In this case, it’s probably caused by a hiring workflow process that should never have been automated in the first place. Compounding the problem is an implementation plan that didn’t have much planning, a weak search engine in the ATS, and many users who aren’t good recruiters or those who actually shun technology. Collectively, the problem is far bigger than any of the short-term tactics typically taken. In this case, companies should first evaluate their hiring process to see what works and what doesn’t. With this benchmark, ATS functionally should be reduced until all of the basics are in place with a target of obtaining 100% user adoption. At a minimum, this must include a robust search engine that allows a recruiter to separate the best candidates from the rest without ever having to open a resume of one of the leftovers. If you find yourself or any of your recruiters wasting time looking at too many resumes, you’re experiencing one of the underlying problems described above. You might want to conduct your own root cause analysis before changing vendors or buying another short-term fix. Example 4: Not Enough Diversity Candidates Everyone’s looking for more diverse candidates. Most think the problem is twofold. The first relates to sourcing ó not enough diverse candidates are being seen ó so there is a mad dash to find more diverse candidates, using every variety of sourcing technique companies know. When this doesn’t solve the problem, there’s another mad dash to convince hiring managers that they’ll need to lower their hiring standards to meet their diversity targets. Neither will help much. The problem is more than skin deep. A root cause analysis will probably reveal that the reliance on traditional job descriptions as a filter is the real problem. A list of skills, academics, experiences, and responsibilities actually preclude the best candidates from ever being considered, including diverse candidates. For one thing, just because someone has the correct background doesn’t mean that he or she can do the work. For another, there are many people with comparable experience or potential who can do the work, but who are automatically excluded from consideration using the classic job description as a filter. To reach this important group, it’s better to define the job based on what a person needs to do or accomplish, rather than the skills they posses. I refer to this as a performance profile. Every job has six to eight performance objectives that define performance. For a product manager, it might be to develop and meet tight deadlines or create a product plan. With these performance objectives as a guide, look for people who have had some type of comparable experience. This will open the field to a broader group of candidates. For example, for branch executives in the fitness industry we found strong candidates in healthcare, hospitality, and retail. Their common strengths were running a small business, building teams, local marketing, and one-on-one selling. Example 5: Too Many Hiring Errors Companies have been implementing behavioral-based interviewing training for the past 20 or 30 years. Surprisingly, these same companies have not seen much improvement in the quality of their hiring decisions. Yet when confronted with high turnover or underperforming new employees, the typical solution is still more interviewing training. While hiring errors are reduced somewhat, managers typically need to see more candidates, and quality is generally not much better. In this case, a root cause analysis would have revealed three underlying problems.

1. The problem is more a sourcing issue than an interviewing problem. If you’re not seeing enough good candidates, a new interviewing program won’t help. In fact, most interviewing training programs are designed to prevent hiring mistakes ó not assess the skills of top performers.

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Another year is coming to an end, and it is the time when many of us take a look at what we have accomplished and make plans for future improvements. I thought I would take the opportunity in this column to list some of the relatively simple things you can do make your recruiting efforts more effective. None of these recommendations need an investment in any technology other than the Internet and a recruiting website, and none of them should require a large amount of money. As is true for so many things, it’s your effort, focus, and time that really make a difference not money, equipment and technology. These can often get in the way and prevent you from seeing the important things for the sake of the details.

1. Survey all hires within the first three months and ask them why they said yes. Identify statements, practices, and behaviors that were particularly attractive to them as candidates. Also probe into what could have been done to make your brand stronger and your organization more attractive.

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The last time I wrote about validation, you would have thought I was taking a public position on stem-cell research, partial-birth abortion, or teaching evolution in the classroom. The fact that some people would even challenge good validation procedures was, for me at least, a complete surprise. Validation means making sure that pre-hire test scores accurately predict performance. How can your argue with that? Yes, Virginia, interviews are pre-hiring tests. People get screened out by interviews. This means interviews are like every other form of pre-screen test: they should be validated. Otherwise, how can an interviewer know with any degree of certainty whether folks who pass interviews can do the job? Coming to grips with interviews as tests gives most people a headache because it forces them to come face to face with hard data rather than soft opinions. It makes no difference if an interviewer is 100% convinced of the accuracy of his or her interview technique if there is no feedback or hard evidence to support it. Why? Because human decision-making is flawed. Some people, for example, are convinced that flying is significantly more dangerous than driving, when exactly the opposite is true. Others believe they can win the lottery when there is a much greater chance of being hit by lightning. Just as surprisingly, although there is an embarrassing number of low producers on most payrolls, hiring managers still generally argue that “they know ‘em when they see ‘em.” Basically, recruiters must always be aware of the flaws that affect human decision-making. People tend to readily recall information that is vivid (i.e., a major accident) or recent (i.e., happened within the last few days, weeks, or months), that confirms existing opinions (i.e., we “stereotype” people), or that is readily available (i.e., we see it every night on CNN). Flawed decision-making in recruiting leads to flaky job standards, hiring the wrong people, and rejecting the right ones. It is a major reason why Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and the Department of Labor wrote the 1978 Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. Anecdotes Are Examples of Flawed Decision-Making I know a brother of an aunt who knew an actress who had a good experience with a shopkeeper who hired people using the “Seems Like It Might” (SLIM) performance test. In fact, the “Seems Like it Might” company proudly markets the fact that recruiters have a SLIM chance of making a good hiring decision based on their test results. Many people who avidly support certain tests do so because they think the test accurately predicts individual performance. When they are probed, we discover there is absolutely nothing except folklore and superstition to support their opinion. These opinions are not fact; they are homilies and anecdotes. They serve us well when there is nothing important at stake, but cost our organizations millions in lost productivity when they affect hiring decisions. We really need to rethink our profession and hammer home the point that this is not a “learn as you earn” job. Questions and unfounded recommendations about “best” interview questions and generic interview-workshop competency lists indicate an embarrassing lack of professional knowledge. Imagine a group of physicians asking questions about where to find sharp scalpels, engineers asking for recommendations about building materials, or policemen asking about the best bullets for shooting suspects. Based on feedback and questions in the public forum, one would think that setting clear job standards before starting a job search was akin to discovering cold fusion. How does a professional become more professional? Read the right books. Go back to school for a semester. Read the research. Do anything backed by good sense. But stamp out the idea once and for all that this business is as easy as giving an applicant a silly test. Want a good doctor? Find one with medical training. Want a good architect? Find one who has experience in construction. Want a good recruiter? Find one who knows how to set job standards and who can fairly and accurately measure applicant skills. Correlation Is Not Causation Suppose the National Enquirer published a nice ten-question hiring test. Furthermore, suppose we gave that test to our high producers and averaged their scores. Is that validation? (Do alligators make good house pets?) Correlation means there is an association between two variables, i.e., high producers tend to be mentally sane. But correlation is not enough. Recruiters need to find causation. Does sanity cause high production (causation)? Or do high producers tend to be sane (correlation)? Toss all your training tests in the closet unless you know, for certain, that the content they test for causes productivity. Styles as measured by the MBTI, DISC, Enneagram, Social Styles, and so forth, might occur more often among certain job holders, but life is too complex to assume style causes productivity. This is critical to remember because, while hiring managers might embrace an intuitively attractive test today, if is does not predict performance, it will fail over time. Recruiters need to know that “what is measured” equals “on-the-job performance.” “Getting to know the applicant” or playing amateur psychologist is pure bush league. Remember that blue eyes and blond hair might be correlated, but one does not cause the other. Cutting Through the Dreck Suppose we accept that 1) causation is the only way to accurately predict performance and, 2) our test content is a pre-cursor to job performance. Our next question is how to prove (i.e., validate) the test and arrive at good cut-off points. This takes a thorough knowledge of statistics and experimental design. For example, we have to define what to predict. Is it supervisor ratings? Performance appraisals? Three-sixty survey results? No, these are probably filled with error and subjectivity that would yield untrustworthy results. We have to find “hard” data that is hard to fake, something we know we can trust. Okay, let’s suppose we have the right kind of hard data. What’s next? We need to compare test scores with on-the-job performance. We can do this several ways:

1. By giving the test to everyone who applies, hiring them all, waiting until we get performance data, and comparing test scores with job performance.

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Changes are coming to our profession, changes that mean your job may no longer be safe ó unless you can prove your business value to your customers. At the moment, outsourcing seems like a distant threat, but you need to take notice of it. More and more companies are doing it, and once momentum builds, change happens quickly. Ignoring the signs now could put your job in jeopardy down the road. Why would companies outsource rather than use their highly qualified in-house specialists? Mainly because recruiting professionals are not willing to sell themselves. They are not actively displaying their strategic value. Does the following comparison-shopping scenario seem familiar to you? At Store A, the salesperson learns little about what you want but gives you plenty of irrelevant product information. Store B’s salesperson, on the other hand, gets to know your needs. She explains why her store’s product will benefit you and provides relevant data to help you make your decision. You wind up buying the product from Store B, even though Store A’s product may be better. Of course, you will never end up knowing, since the value of Store A’s product was never effectively conveyed to you. Consider how your own value as a recruiter is being conveyed to your customers. Your hiring managers may perceive your skills as good, but their perception of you as a strategic partner is probably poor. You probably work extremely hard for them. You know your company like no one else, and you can find, assess, and sell to the best candidates out there. But beyond your ability to fill positions, do hiring managers really understand your value? I would venture to say no, particularly if you are providing minimal or irrelevant strategic information. As 2005 approaches, we are constantly hearing about emerging trends. Blogging, online assessments, and another frightening trend…outsourcing! You think to yourself, “There is no way outsourcing will catch on. Recruiting has been the same for decades. I am irreplaceable. My employer will never outsource my role.” Unfortunately, if you aren’t selling your role strategically, you are setting yourself up for quite a shock! If an outsourcing vendor is providing facts and figures demonstrating a guaranteed statistical return on his customers’ money and you aren’t providing similar information, you are placing yourself at a disadvantage. Your hiring managers may like you personally, but business is business. They care about their bottom line. Unless you can clearly demonstrate your impact to their business, they will not understand your relative value as a partner. This may cause them to consider outside resources (vendors) who have positioned themselves more effectively. The outsourcing trend is gaining momentum. In a 2000 survey of 225 employers by Buck Consultants, 38% of respondents had outsourced recruiting, up from 8% in 1996. I don’t see this trend dying, as outsourcers continue to convey their value proposition to business leaders. Few recruiting leaders are doing the same. So what can you do to allay this potential disaster? The answer is simple: build your own value proposition. Display your strategic value as a business partner by providing your customers with meaningful metrics. These are not, however, the same metrics we all know as measures of recruiter performance. You must start using metrics that are relevant to your customer. You must measure beyond what your organization does (which is tactical). In other words, you must be strategic. Most recruiting leaders measure what they think is relevant, which is the performance of their recruiting staff. Unfortunately, they report the same metrics to their hiring managers. This is a mistake! Just as Store A’s salesperson in our example above did not give information about the product that aligned with the customer’s needs, you do not want to give information that is irrelevant to your hiring managers. They will stop listening! So what information is relevant to your hiring managers? Three things:

1. Can we hire people when they are needed?

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When I meet with directors or managers of corporate recruiting, I routinely ask them a simple question: “What is the name of your recruiting strategy?” Almost without fail, I get one of two basic responses, either, “We hire great people,” or a just blank look. The first is a horrible answer in that it’s not really a recruiting strategy as much as it is a goal or bland statement. It fails to identify where and when you recruit these “great people,” and how you identify them. It also provides no differentiation, because clearly no organization (other than perhaps the DMV) starts out trying to hire “bad people.” The blank look is unfortunately the most common response. I used to be shocked when it happened over and over, but I’ve grown accustomed to the fact that most recruiting departments not only don’t have a name for their strategy, they have no strategy at all. Keep in mind that these are not line-level recruiters, but recruiting managers, the same individuals who frequently exclaim in meetings that they want the recruiting function to be more strategic. The simple fact is you can’t be strategic without having a clearly defined strategy. Now, I happen to think I know a little bit about strategy. As an advisor, I have helped design strategies for a number of leading corporations in the area of human resources and staffing in particular; I teach strategy to business students at the university level; and I have written a book on HR strategy (Rethinking HR Strategy) that many business leaders have adopted as a bible for new HR. All of my thoughts and knowledge on strategy were formed via observations made during my three plus decades in human resources. During this time I have been continually shocked by the number of recruiting professionals who:

1. Can’t even define the term “strategy”

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We spend a lot of time talking about a lack of qualified people, especially in relation to the coming workforce shortage. But I’m going to argue that aspects of this shortage is artificial. In fact, we have two overlooked, overlapping populations that are a rich source of qualified personnel. Both exist and are awaiting exploitation at this very instant. The In-House Talent Oversight Back in June, at ERE’s Metrics Symposium in Los Angeles, ER Daily author Kevin Wheeler pointed out that a rich, and often overlooked, source of talent is in-house personnel. No doubt some have toned down their resumes in order to get a shoe in the door. But too often, once a person is hired, they find themselves doomed to being pigeon-holed in that same position for the rest of their organizational lives. Opportunities for which they are profoundly qualified go to new hires or others already in those echelons simply because no one bothered to look a little deeper into the existing talent pool. The lost opportunity costs of promoting existing in-house talent is multiplied by the costs of external advertising, recruiting, and interviewing. Talent acquisition costs can be saved by looking deeper within the existing talent base. In-house personnel are not the only group who constitute a lost opportunity. Frequently disregarded are the in-house under-employed. As we leave behind the dust of the New Millennium Depression, we need to survey our internal potential talent pool landscape ó the under-utilized one, that is. What we’ll discover as we move toward full employment is that there is a thick layer of under-employed right in front of us. In many instances, they became part of the typically overlooked strata because they took a common sense approach to living ó they vied for and accepted a position below their past experience as a means of covering the minimum living standard while the economic storm clouds dissipated. Here’s what frequently happens to this segment of the workforce. In order to save dollars, workers are asked to work longer hours or more hours per week. As the work/life ratio becomes nearly non-existent, morale slips and thoughts of going elsewhere ó where there will be appreciation for “what I have to offer,” and pay in accordance with the many roles the candidate fills ó become cemented as a more reasonable option. Too seldom we ó nay, I would say never ó ask the forward-looking question: “But do you have experience in doing…” during the interview. Getting the answer to this critical question will reveal the gold mine we have sitting before us. This is a gold mine that can significantly cut recruiting and training costs because the experience and know-how already exist. The need to groom for promotion is negligible. All that’s required is a short period of orientation so that the new hire learns the organizational methods before they move into their proper position. In this regard, another ER Daily author, Lou Adler, pointed out in his Los Angeles Hiring 2.0 workshop in July that the basis for many of our lost quality hires is using traditional measures rather than performance-based methodologies that demonstrate comparable experience and ability. Lou explained that when we begin using performance-based methodologies for screening and interviewing candidates, we will open a greater candidate pool that is more inclusive of not only women but all manner of diverse candidates. According to Lou, “Many people can perform the job with a different mix of skills by demonstrating competency in comparable rather than identical accomplishments.” So it is advantageous for us to view not only our candidates, but also in-house talent, with a view toward comparable experience. The oversight of assuming complacent satisfaction with low-rung opportunities gives short shrift to both sides of the hiring desk. It is a better practice to consider whether the candidate has developed the desired skills through non-traditional avenues and via comparable experiences, not just the standard. The prudent move is to learn more than whether the candidate can use a copier and type more than 35 words per minute. This is the time to cull through some of those old interview notes for the candidates who did not reveal in their resumes that those other five to ten years of experience were in positions of responsibility, successfully interacting with government entities, writing reports, managing budgets, cutting costs, turning profits, and having staff that reported to them. If interviewing questions about that type of background weren’t asked or the expediency caused that oversight, a good remedy is to keep an interviewing checklist with items on the order of:

• Promotion interest

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Most of the time, managers have trouble clearly explaining what kind of person they need to fill a position. They submit a requisition to the recruiter that contains generic skills and competencies that apply either to almost all good candidates or only to those with highly specific and narrow skills. The typical phone call goes something like this: “I want to open up a req for a process engineer,” says the hiring manager. “Okay,” the recruiter replies. “Can you tell me a little more precisely about what the person will be doing or what project they will be assigned to?” “They’ll be working on the new Factor X process,” the manager says, “writing the specifications for the equipment, helping the team design the basic process flow and so forth.” “What are some of the specific skills or experiences that they should have had?” “Oh, I don’t know,” says the manager. “They probably should have been part of a start up project like this somewhere. They should have at least three years experience and a degree in chemical or biotech engineering.” And so forth… Unfortunately, this is not very helpful. While the manager may sincerely believe that she knows just what she wants, it’s frequently the case that she really doesn’t know. This is especially true if the position is a new one. But even when dealing with a replacement, managers rarely take the time or exert the effort to reassess the skills and experience of the previous person and decide if this is what will be best for the future. As a recruiter, you have to have a process for getting the information you need from the manager. You also need to develop a reputation for taking time upfront to define the competencies and skills of the employees that are going to make this manager successful. When you work with a hiring manager and lead her through a step-by-step process, you will actually be helping the manager create the interview guide for assessing candidates and for improving the chance of hiring the right person for the position. Here are a handful of suggestions about how to help your hiring manager analyze each position and more carefully define the skills, experience, and competencies they really need. None of these are easy to execute, and all require you to gain the trust and time of the hiring managers. You will have to invest time and energy into this process and take the risk of being rejected or brushed off. It will be to your credit and future success to push back and not give up. 1. Spend the time it takes to know your company’s technology, products and services. As simple and basic as this seems, very few recruiters know enough about their organization, its business goals and needs, and what kinds of people will help them achieve those goals. Learn everything you can about your organization and the departments or areas you recruit for. Firms that have a stable base of recruiters who have taken the time to become well versed in the language and technology are much more effective. But if you and the recruiting team are inexperienced at this organization, get the basics down by taking a tour, chatting with selected experts, maybe even “shadowing” one of your hiring managers for a day or two. Really good recruiting teams train themselves by offering brown bag lunches and inviting key employees to talk about what they do. Focus on the business needs more than on recruiting techniques. 2. Interview current incumbents. Take the time to find individuals in your organization that have the same or a similar position to the one you are recruiting for (or will be recruiting for). Try to pick those employees who are rated highly and who the manager would try hard to keep. Ask them about their background, skills, education, and interests, and how they got hired. Do this with enough people and you will have a pretty good profile of what kinds of skills lead to good performance and where these people can be found. Really good agency recruiters have been putting together profiles like this for years. A free lunch can be a great way to get an inside track on a hard-to-find candidate. If there are no incumbents, network. Find similar people in another company and offer them a lunch or dinner in return for suffering through your questions. This activity alone can be all you need to become much more effective. Investing a few hours in investigation and detective work can pay off in being able to find the right people a lot faster. Once you have the information from an incumbent, take this back to the hiring manager and see if she agrees. By taking time to engage in a discussion about what you see, what the incumbents think, and what the hiring manager believes. You can get much closer to developing a profile that reflects the real skills, competences, experiences and attitudes that matter. 3. Develop a good interview to get the information you need from the hiring manager. Gather a few recruiters together and develop a template of questions that will guide you in an interview with a hiring manager when a position is opened. Take the hiring manager to lunch, or set up a 30-minute meeting, and use that time to conduct your interview. Make sure it has questions about why a particular skill or trait or educational level is needed. Ask the manager to point out some really good performers currently working for her and then go interview those people to find out what their profile is like. If you find that the profile you develop is way off base from the hiring manager’s perception, be sure to sit down and go through the discrepancies step by step. Work out why the manager’s perception is so far off from want you found, and try to get the manager to accept ó even on a trial basis ó a new set of criteria. This is one of the most common issues recruiters face. To be successful you have to be able to negotiate and sell to the hiring manager. 4. Educate the management team about the market and the limited availability of skilled people. While this can be looked upon as an excuse, a well-structured presentation focused on facts can also be taken in a positive way. It can show that you are on top of things, understand the market, and have a strategy in place to deal with the issues ó provided you can have their cooperation. CFOs make the market situation clear to the CEO and the rest of the management and also have suggestions for dealing with whatever market situation exists. You have to do the same. The biggest mistake I see is that the education is perceived as whining, because many recruiters offer no suggestions on how to deal with it. The best people are always hard to find; many are leery of leaving one employer for another one that may be no better. Make sure you explain to managers that their ability to convince the candidate will depend on how clearly they can explain the job and the exact duties the person will be expected to perform. 5. Do not accept a shallow and useless job description. By accepting the shallow set of requirements we often get from the hiring managers, we reinforce that it’s okay. We have to reasonably push back using some of the techniques I have described. If you accept these poorly thought-out criteria, you will waste time and be accused of not being able to find the right people. This will only work against you in the end. Recruiting is a partnership between you and the hiring manager and it is, perhaps unfortunately but truly, your responsibility to change it. The ability to analyze a position and then match candidates against the requirements accurately and quickly is one area where you can add value and be perceived as an asset to the hiring manager.

There are a number of entertaining, and potentially valuable, stories regarding cross-cultural blunders that have been made over the years, particularly in the business world. One of the most interesting I heard recently concerned an advertisement for a washing machine that was being marketed in the Middle East. The advertisement consisted of three frames: the first frame showed a pile of dirty laundry, the second showed the washing machine, and the third showed a pile of clean clothing. After the advertisement was shown in the Middle East, however, it was observed that sales did not pick up; indeed, sales were extremely low. Then the company realized that in the Middle East, people read from right to left, not left to right. What people were observing in the advertisement was clean clothing becoming dirty after going through the washing machine! In a previous column, I discussed sources of candidates with cross-cultural skills and experience. In this article, I discuss how to ensure that your organization has employees with the requisite cross-cultural skills. It’s helpful to note that cross-cultural skills are not just needed for someone who is going to be an expatriate. Indeed, most organizations in the U.S. have employees from many different cultures. In order to be to be an effective supervisor, it may be necessary to have high levels of cross-cultural skills. Make Versus Buy There are two ways to assure that candidates have the appropriate cross-cultural skills and experience. The quickest way is to assess applicants, using the appropriate tools, to determine if they have these skills and experiences. I will refer to this approach as the “assessment” approach. An alternative means, however, is to provide the appropriate training and development activities to assure that candidates obtain the requisite cross-cultural skills and experience. In that case, you will select candidates based on their ability and motivation to learn about cross-cultural skills. I will refer to this as the “training and development” (T&D) approach. Of course, it may be quite possible to blend the assessment and T&D approaches by selecting candidates who have demonstrated a modest level of skill in this area, while at the same time, creating a T&D framework for further developing their cross-cultural skill level. The Assessment Approach to Cross-Cultural Skills For nearly 100 years, HR experts have conducted extensive research on a variety of assessment tools, ranging from structured interview techniques to psychological testing. The vast majority of this research, however, has been conducted in domestic (i.e., North American) settings. Based on this research, behaviorally-based interviews are likely to be among the most effective ways to select people. For a variety of reasons, I strongly recommend that you use structured interviews, where all applicants are asked a common core set of questions. There are two popular approaches to behaviorally-based interviews. One approach, often referred to as the behavioral description interview, or BDI, focuses on work-related situations that the candidates have been involved in, and how they have conducted themselves in those situations. The underlying premise of the BDI interview is that “past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior.” These kinds of interviews are likely to be effective in predicting cross-cultural skills. Depending on the nature of the position, here are some examples of BDI questions that may be useful in assessing cross-cultural skills:

• “Tell me about a time when you led a team with members from diverse cultures. What was the most difficult problem you faced? How did you address the problem? What was the outcome?”

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This is the final installment of a three-part article series on how recruiters and HR professionals can begin to talk and think like CEOs. Being more like a CEO is important if you ever hope to improve your status within the corporation, and it might also help you get additional funding. At a bare minimum, CEOsexpect (and many in fact demand) that everyone in their organization begin to at least think and act just like them, and there’s no exemption from this rule for recruiters. I described some of the numerous CEO attributes that you can emulate in Part 1 and Part 2 of this article series. Here are a few more. Risk Taking CEOs love to bet on almost anything for fun, to show that they are good at taking calculated risks. Some CEOs will literally say that they are “betting the future of their corporations” on some of their major decisions. CEOs get major kudos and bonuses when they produce business results. Unfortunately, it is difficult to produce striking results without sticking your neck out and taking some significant risks. It’s important to realize that CEOs don’t take wild risks, nor do they admire those who do. Instead, they demand that the risk-taking process be stringent and controlled. This means that all major risks are calculated in advance, and only risks that fall within an acceptable range are taken. CEOs also demand that should any risk result in a failure, there must be immediate learning and then feedback to ensure that others will not repeat the same error. CEOs measure risk taking not by your success rate but rather by your failure rate. One manager I know at Intel, for example, actually expected two out of three projects to fail. A high rate of failure for sure, but he saw a high failure rate as a requirement for a high rate of learning and an indication that his employees were stretching, but not breaking, the limits of business practice. Lesson Learned Unfortunately most corporate recruiters are not risk takers. In fact, they make accountants seem like wild and crazy people. For example, they frequently outsource the important executive level jobs, in part, to avoid the risk of failure in the visibility that comes with it. This is unfortunate, because with successful risk taking, you get the opportunity to earn great rewards and recognition, as well as an opportunity to fail (and learn form it)! Corporate recruiters don’t like statistics, and therefore they don’t usually calculate the probability of a candidate’s success or failure. Unfortunately, most are more than willing to settle for the “safe applicant” (i.e. the candidate with the most education and experience) rather than to take a risk on a candidate with a higher potential return. This risk-averse practice would seem strange to some CEOs, who were not stars in college or who started firms with little job experience (Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell come to mind). A recruiter’s interest in avoiding risks generally results in the almost immediate rejection of any candidate who dares to be innovative or creative in their resume or interview. The first step in becoming a risk taker is to begin talking about and calculating risks. The risk involved in any candidate or new hire should be calculated based on past hires and discussed. Risks are normally measured by the probability of success for a particular decision and the dollar consequences of the success or failure resulting from that decision. Once recruiters begin to understand the value of calculated risk-taking and lose their fear of risks, they then need to realize that there can be a high ROI from raising your level of risk taking in recruiting. For example, instead of going after the easy-to-get candidate in the active category, recruiters should be encouraged to attract candidates who have a lower probability of accepting (currently employed top performers) but the potential for a high dollar impact, should they be convinced to apply and accept. Rather than recruiting the “vanilla” candidate, you should begin to focus on the hard-to-get superstar candidates. Taking a calculated risk on the difficult to attract and the difficult to close is what great recruiting is all about. For example, recruiting high school players like Kobe Bryant can be a high risk endeavor, but it’s also one that can have “wow” returns. If you land the next Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, or Shaq, the risk will be worth it. If you do fail, learn to immediately do “failure analysis,” which is the process of identifying whether the source, the assessment process, or the selling process was the cause for the candidate failure. Once recruiters know the risks and see how failure can actually make you better, others recruiters will see the improved results and they, too, will gradually begin to increase the level of risks that they are willing to take. Other high risk but high return recruiting approaches include poaching from direct competitors, internal executive search, hiring the bright but less experienced candidate, and bringing in “magnet” hires. Key words: Probability of failure, failure analysis, risk analysis, risk averse, and calculated risks. Global Thinking and Capabilities Even the CEOs of small-sized companies long ago realized that they must think globally. It turns out that even if you don’t sell products around the world, it’s almost impossible to produce or assemble a product without utilizing global components. As a result, CEOs have become the leaders inside their corporations in espousing the need to globalize. They see global thinking and acting globally as necessary requirements for all. As a result, they have zero tolerance for anyone, including administrators and overhead types, who doesn’t educate themselves about the global economy and then act to take advantage of their global opportunities. Recruiting the very best in your immediate geographic region is rapidly being replaced with the goal of recruiting the very best from every country around the world. The need for global diversity will also be a prime driver of both future business and recruiting success as businesses see the need to hire individuals that reflect and think like their global customers. Lessons Learned When it comes to globalization, corporate recruiters are in the dark ages. While baseball, the NBA, and the NHL have been recruiting players from around the world with great success for years, most corporate recruiters wouldn’t have the slightest idea about how to recruit top talent outside of English-speaking North American. It’s a sad fact, but even in global organizations, corporate recruiters frequently do little or no recruiting outside of U.S. borders for U.S.-based jobs. If you expect the CEO to listen to you, you must learn to act and think globally (like they do). For example, no one in the NBA thought to recruit players from China until Yao Ming changed the rules forever, and now international players are approaching 40% of the players in the NBA. The first step in becoming a global recruiter is to begin reading about global business. That means reading what CEOs read, which quite often includes the Economist, the Financial Times, the Herald Tribune, the Asian Business Review, as well as global industry and functional journals. Once you expand your understanding of the global world of business, the next step is to identify international companies that are known for their high quality of talent and global recruiting practices (IBM, HP, GE, Shell, Ikea, Nokia, Siemens, etc.). Recruiters should make benchmark calls as the first step in learning to understand the different approaches to recruiting (and retention) that are taken in other countries and regions. If you meet initial resistance, offer to teach them a U.S. practice in trade. If language is a difficulty, try email, because there are numerous free programs that will translate the written word. Recruiters should also visit the many different corporate and recruiting websites that include international candidates and jobs to learn how their approach differs from the different regional approaches around the world. CEOs do a great deal of international traveling, so recruiters should seek out similar travel opportunities both in their business and personal life. When you begin presenting senior managers with top candidates from the international operations of major competitors, you will immediately begin to see their initial surprise, but almost immediately, you will also gain the respect of these senior leaders. The key to success in international recruiting is to begin to think like international soccer teams. When you do, you too will learn that the very best teams that consistently win championships recruit the best people from literally every individual country around the world. Key words: Global opportunities, international poaching, predatory hiring, global reach and mirroring your customer population. Speed There are few more consistent things over the history of mankind than the fact that the speed of everything has continually increased. From walking to bicycles, to cars to airplanes and eventually to rockets, everything continually gets faster. CEOs appreciate the value of time more than most because their free time is so limited. They love to fly on the fastest planes and often drive the fastest cars. CEOs are aware of this progression of speed over time and as a result they expect everything in the corporation from product development to supply chain and even hiring to continually get faster. Speed in every aspect of the corporation is essential to CEOs, because they realize that the first entry into many markets is the ultimate winner. Look at Amazon and eBay as prime examples. In addition, getting there first generally means higher margins and higher market share, both of which are difficult for competitors to cut into. In short, speed has become a major competitive advantage. And internally, if you are fast and first, you will invariably get the CEOs attention. Lessons Learned Unfortunately, few things in recruiting are fast. When a key player gets hurt in the NFL, for example, within one to three days they are replaced. Although some organizations measure time to fill, taking 60 or even 30 days to hire candidate is certainly not “fast” in most managers’ eyes. Recruiters should know that speed is essential in getting top candidates, because top candidates are on the market for such a short period time (as little as one day). If a recruiter is attempting to think and act like a CEO, they must both measure and continually improve their speed in responding to candidates and in hiring people in as little as one day. In order to gain a competitive advantage, recruiting departments must also be the first in the industry to utilize new recruiting tools and approaches. Once everyone copies you and begins using the same tools, your unique approach quickly become a common one. Being first and fast will win you many more battles in recruiting than being slow and cheap. Key words: First entry advantage, time to market, time for a competitor to copy, time to fill, and the time value of money Conclusion You don’t have to drive a luxury car or have a corner office in order to think and talk like a CEO. The first step in impressing a CEO is understanding what they care about, which invariably revolves around increasing revenue, profit, stock price, and their own personal bonus. The next step is to understand the personal characteristics that they admire. These characteristics include risk taking, competitiveness and the ability to prioritize. The final step in becoming more “CEO like” is demonstrating that you understand and can emulate key business success factors, which include increasing customer value, speed, and having a global capability. It’s obvious that if you ever want to be a CEO, or even if you just want to impress your current CEO, you need to immediately change the way you think, talk, and act. Unfortunately, most corporate recruiters have no desire to be a CEOs, and very few even take the time to understand and to emulate their CEOs. Understanding and impressing your CEO is essential if you expect to get sufficient resources to be able to do great recruiting and to become a great recruiter yourself. The time to start is now. Start by reading books written by famous CEOs. While reading, note their language, the analogies they use, and their unique approaches to business. Next, seek out your own CEOs speeches from the PR department or your corporate website. Try to identify what they think is important and how they use analogies and a particular set of words to make their points. Also try to identify their biggest problems and information needs. Then work closely to make a contribution in those areas. If you follow the “lessons learned” highlighted in this article, in no time you’ll find yourself thinking and speaking like a CEO. Eventually, you’ll begin to act like just like one too!

“This is deja vu all over again!”

ó Yogi Berra, circa 1965 A few years ago I wrote an article on the importance of using networking as a primary sourcing tool. The essence of the article can be boiled down into the following key principles:

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At one time there was a popular folk song called “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” You might remember it (it’s okay to hum along if you do):

Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing…

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There is an uneasy triumvirate in today’s organizations: human resources professionals, recruiters and hiring managers. Managers complain that recruiters aren’t responsive. I also hear human resources professionals complain they are not consulted and that recruiters often don’t really understand the hiring manager’s needs. In some organizations, hiring managers simply bypass both and go directly to third party recruiters who are outside the firm. They do this because these agency recruiters meet three requirements:

1. They are perceived as experts who have access to the right candidates.

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In Part 1 of our article series about pushback on hiring managers, we discussed why pushing back on a hiring manager is necessary for recruiters’ credibility, top end results, and ability to hire the best candidate. Let’s now explore some real examples of pushback and see how it can be done in a way that is both tactful and effective. Before deciding to pushback, the recruiter must understand that not every battle is worth fighting. If you are going to push back, the outcome must add value. If you’re mulling over pushing back on a given situation, consider the following conditions as guidelines:

• You as the recruiter must believe the hiring manager’s plan for the candidate, i.e. the process or the course of action being proposed, is flawed.

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The way that CEOs and senior managers talk and act is quite distinctive and easy to notice. Because I have had the opportunity to be a CEO, and also to meet many CEOs of major corporations throughout my career, I have grown to understand the distinct way they think, act, and talk. After meeting them, listening to their speeches, and reading their books, it is clear to me that most CEOs at the very least expect (and many in fact demand) that everyone in their organization begin to think and act just like them. They think and talk distinctly different than most HR people (by a mile)! This article series is designed to educate you about how CEOs think and talk and how you can take that information and use it to change the way that you, as a corporate recruiter, think, act and talk. Picking up where we left off in Part 1, here are some more CEO attributes that you can emulate: CEO Measurement and Reward Criteria After money and sports analogies, the next element of CEO language to develop covers the board of directors’ and the CEO’s reward factors. CEOs are not unique in that everyone pays a lot of attention to what they are measured and rewarded on. But because the amounts of their rewards are so high, CEOs are particularly focused on meeting their goals. Know the top five problems your CEO is currently facing (listen to their speeches, track their meeting agendas, ask their direct reports or their admin, or just ask them). If you want to act like them you must know the performance criteria that are used to determine their bonus and against which they are evaluated by the board of directors. In order to identify them, either ask their direct reports, their administrative assistant or ask someone in compensation. The head of finance or any large business unit manager would also know. They might even be in the annual report. It’s also important to know the board of director’s evaluation criteria because CEOs strive to make their bosses happy. If all else fails, look closely at the annual report, for it contains a narrative description of the major goals and accomplishments of the corporation. Lessons Learned Everyone likes people who share the same priorities, so recruiters need to focus their time and resources on impacting the CEO’s primary goals and rewards. For example, if a CEO is rewarded based on excellent corporate customer service ratings, it is important for recruiters to focus their time and resources on key customer service jobs in order to hire “top performers” in customer contact positions. Smart recruiters will go even further and begin to measure customer satisfaction among their applicants and hiring managers in order to emulate the behaviors that senior management considers important. If CEOs are rewarded for high margins, it is also important to demonstrate the “performance differential” (output differential) between average employees and your new hires in order to demonstrate that recruiting is having a high impact on margins. Key words to adopt: CEO/BOD (board of directors) reward criteria, CEO strategic goals, strategic measures, increasing stock price Increasing Shareholder Value CEOs can get highly repetitious with their language. They follow certain word fads for months on end. I know several CEOs that sound like a broken record (or a skipping CD for the younger set). It seems like every sentence that they use contains the phrase “increasing shareholder value.” They repeat this mantra like it’s the only thing that matters. And in most cases, that actually is all they care about! Not only do they themselves care about adding value, but they expect everyone in the organization to focus on activities that increase shareholder value and to minimize activities that don’t impact this important value area. When it comes to defining shareholder value there is no need to be subtle. It means increasing the firm’s stock price. Stock price comes even before profits for a variety reasons, but mostly because the CEO’s bonus for high profits is relatively small compared to the huge economic value of their stock and stock options. CEOs listen to, admire, and fund anyone who can make a direct contribution to increasing the firm’s stock price. Raising the stock price is the Holy Grail of capitalism. Another way to visualize the stock value of recruiting is to imagine yourself as a recruiter for a major league sports team. If you worked for a football team and you were recruiting new team members, it would be crystal clear from the outset that recruiters and the recruiting process would have a significant impact on the team’s future success. Recruiting even a few superstars would not only make the fans (customers) happy, since watching a losing team costs the same as watching a winning one, but it would also clearly raise the overall value of the team if it were to be put up for sale. Lessons Learned Some in recruiting would argue that we can not impact either share price or customer satisfaction. I find that argument irrelevant, because whether you believe it or not, it is still prudent to continually use these words in your everyday business and recruiting conversations. Most corporate recruiters assume they can’t impact the stock price and as a result, they don’t even try. Unfortunately for them, that can be a career limiting decision. The consulting firm Watson Wyatt HCI demonstrated a direct connection between firms that do excellent recruiting and increased stock price. You don’t have to look to an external source to identify the economic impacts of recruiting. An organization with even a 10% turnover rate will turnover half of its workforce within five years. If you hire bottom performers as replacements, your organization could be well on its way to bankruptcy within a five-year period. If you wish to increase the shareholder value of an organization, the place to focus your recruiting efforts is on mission critical jobs and senior-level executives, because they both have a greater opportunity to impact the stock price (some market analysts value senior management recruiting and retention at contributing up to 20% of the value of the company). Other key jobs that impact profits and shareholder value directly include product development, marketing, branding, sales, and research and development. Recruiting managers can also work on increasing the company’s “employment brand” strength and recognition, which in turn can not only improve recruiting and retention but also significantly impact product sales and the value of the overall product brand. The final, but most important, lesson to be learned is that recruiters need to constantly talk about increasing shareholder value. The use of these two words alone demonstrates a clear understanding that the primary mission of any corporation and its CEO is to increase the stock price. Key words to adopt: Stock price increase, market value, market capitalization, brand value Increasing Customer Value CEOs like only one phrase better than increasing shareholder value, and that is increasing “customer value.” The two phrases are related, so feel free to utter them in the same sentence. When CEOs speak of customer value, what they mean is that it is essential to the corporation’s success that you continually meet or exceed the customer’s needs. Some CEOs even have higher expectations, in that they first want to educate their customers about expanded possibilities that the customers might not have anticipated (new kinds of services and products you can provide that they have yet to realize they can use or need). After educating your customers, a CEO expects you to meet those “educated” customer needs. When CEOs speak of customer value, what they generally mean is an increase in product features or services that would differentiate your company’s products from its competitors. It’s difficult for any firm to maintain a lead in product features because competitors can and do copy them so quickly. CEOs are leaders and they like to be first in almost everything they do. As result, anything that recruiters can do to improve product development and cut time to market is something of high customer value. Lessons Learned Few recruiters pay much attention to adding customer value. Some recruiters even define their customers as managers and candidates rather than external customers. This is a serious mistake, because managers are sometimes hire inferior people to make themselves look good. Instead, recruiters need to keep the needs of the external customer in mind when identifying the best candidate for the firm (rather than one individual manager). Great recruiters also hire for the long-term needs of the firm, often in spite of a manager’s desire to meet their selfish short-term needs only! Recruiters can positively impact time to market (a key customer and shareholder satisfier) by minimizing the time that priority jobs are open. You can shorten this time by developing candidate pools for these critical jobs. In addition to minimizing vacancies, it is also important that the very best people are hired into product development, customer service, and time-to-market-related jobs. Recruiting can also increase customer value by identifying and screening in creative and innovative individuals in jobs related to marketing and product development. Even though every job description invariably includes the word “innovation,” it is critical that the recruiter and the manager provide more accurate assessment processes (most assessments processes are so rigid that innovators are screened out for being “too different”). It takes a radical shift to insure that the people you hire are not only qualified and experienced, but also capable of producing more innovation and advanced product features than current employees. Another step for the recruiter is to look at all elements of the time-to-market chain to see if any of the weak points are caused by slow or weak recruitment. Focusing on “customer value” jobs is quite often difficult though, because these customer impact jobs are not always easy to identify. Another problem is that these jobs are, in many cases, not managed by the most powerful managers in the corporation. For example, finance and IT managers might be relatively powerful within the corporation, but they generally have a small impact on product development and customer value. In contrast, call centers and counter help might be low paying jobs, but their impact on customer value and satisfaction is extremely high&nbsp:ó so recruiting needs to focus on hiring great employees here. Recruiters need to continually talk about increasing customer value. The use of these words alone demonstrates a clear understanding that no corporation can prosper over the long term without making their customers happy. Key words to adopt: JD Power, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, economic value added, and customer delight. Prioritization CEOs are bombarded with requests for meetings, advice, and the use of their limited time. As a result, CEOs learn rapidly that you can’t do it all. Instead, you must identify priorities, ignore some requests, and delegate the rest to others. The first step is to identify a CEO’s direct reports. For example, if HR doesn’t report directly to the CEO, then it obviously is a low priority with the CEO because CEOs want control and input from only the highest priority areas. Other high priority areas might be highlighted in their annual employee message or in the annual report. Another indication of corporate priorities can come from the budget, where obviously the managers and business units with budget increases are the ones that the CEO sees as high value. A final way to identify the CEO is by looking at whom they spend most of their time with. Anyone whom the CEO meets frequently with is a high priority, and vice versa. Lessons Learned One of the first things that I see when I visit recruiting functions is that there is little or no attempt to prioritize jobs, managers, or business units. It’s such a direct contrast to the corporate offices, where everything is prioritized. If recruiters are to learn to think and talk like CEOs, they also need to prioritize their efforts, resources, and budgets, and make sure that they are in line with the priorities of the CEO. I recommend that you go directly to the CEO (or senior management) and show them the jobs, managers, and business units that you are focusing on. One 10-minute visit can save you hundreds of hours of wasted time on recruiting low priority jobs. In a highly political organizations, you probably will have to go through channels, which can sometimes results in a blurred message. If all else fails, identify the corporate priorities and make your own judgments about which business units and which jobs that get a top priority. Once you prioritize, be sure to assign your best recruiters to those high priority jobs. Give them more budget and handle their requisitions immediately. Recruiting must demonstrate that it thinks and acts with its priorities aligned with those of the corporation and the CEO. The first step is to” talk the talk and make sure everyone is aware of your high priority areas. The second step is to ensure that your recruiters don’t “peanut butter” their time by spreading it evenly over every job. Individuals who can not prioritize should be labeled as “socialists,” not “capitalists” like all CEOs are proud to be called. As a result, you must enforce priorities and even demand that low priority jobs get little or even no resources. All of this might seem harsh within HR, but it’s quite common for low priority items to get a zero budget allocation form the CEO’s office. Jobs that are frequently prioritized by the CEO often include their direct reports, product development, branding, marketing, R&D, and sales. Recruiters should also attempt to recruit senior executive jobs rather than outsourcing them to search firms. The advantage of doing it in house is that you not only get exposure among senior executives, but it also becomes clear to everyone that when you bring in top talent whom no one thought it was possible to recruit, you can become a visible hero very quickly. Lower level, low priority jobs can be outsourced with little or no negative impact on your image. Key words to adopt: Prioritization, the 80/20 rule (20% of the people produce 80% of the results), zero-based budgeting, aligning priorities