Comments on: Best Recruiting Practices from the World’s Most Business-like Recruiting Function, Part 5

By: Michael Moretti

Michael Moretti — Tue, 09 May 2006 08:32:00 +0000

Thomas,

As it happens I was fortunate enough to spend some time speaking with Dan Hilbert some time ago to help complete a series of Webcasts that were done at HR.com. Deb McGrath our CEO did a multi part Webcast with Dan and discussed his strategy at length. I was able to sit in for Deb for one of the Webcasts while she was travelling and was amazed at what transpired during the presentation (if you visit the online events section of hr.com and look under archives you’ll find the webcast series there).

Dan certainly has a great story but as he’ll tell you this is not rocket science. If you listen to the whole story you’ll see that the primary driver for him was a belief that this would work based on seeing how other departments do basically the same thing to drive their deparments.

He’ll admit openly that he failed a few times and decided that the only way to make this work was the same way everyone else made it work. Hard work.

It’s also a false assumption that he had buckets of money and limitless resources. He did one thing…he sold the ‘C’level on the idea based on a lot of homework and learning about the business. He also took it upon himself to take courses and teach himself the basics of analytics etc…

This was a smallish company in a very competitive industry who had just as much competition for talent as many of the other more prominent verticals that we hear about.

This was no cakewalk by any stretch of the imagination. The clear difference is a simple one. Where others would have looked at the journey ahead and suggested it couldn’t be done, Dan instead looked at is as an opportunity and made it work.

I’ve interviewed a number of HR people in the last few years at HR.com and while I have met others who have great success stories to tell no one made quite the impression in as short a period of time as Dan Hilbert.

In my humble opinion Dan deserves all the accolades he gets and more.

By: Thomas Zhou

Thomas Zhou — Sat, 06 May 2006 07:50:00 +0000

To be frankly, I like reading this series of articles and trying to figure out if that experience can be copied or implemented within our firm (a middle size 3rd party agency).

While I do see some Valero practices interesting and some metrics numbers are beautiful, but I kept wondering what that might cost me (or some small to middle size companies)?

To achieve all these, you are not only need a leader like Dan Hilbert, but also some good resouces: financial, human being and other support team. The moeny spent on automating system, the turn over rate within the recruiting team (I don’t know how big the team and how many of them failed to meet Dan’s standard) and enormous corporate support (like IT, logistics). It’s fortunate to be in Valero, a rich company that can afford to expriment new HR practices under Dan’s leadership.

This model is hard to be copied even by other big company’s HR. I see one of the main reason is the leader factor, Dan knows, lives with and can speak numbers in front of other senior executives at very top level. But very few HR executives can match his business experience and skills.

By: Allison Boyce

Allison Boyce — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 05:30:00 +0000

While I can certainly appreciate the perspective of Dan Hilbert on the future, I often wonder whether thought leaders in recruitment ever stop to physically watch a manager try to work within an automated recruiting environment. It is my experience as part of the corporate recruitment teams at Oracle and Texas Instruments, as well as a recruitment business partner to many startups, that the poor managers trying to use the systems need some ‘pixie dust’ to actually facilitate this robotization of the recruitment function. Since VPs and Directors don’t have admin, and are already completely under water in terms of expectations/time/etc, I have watched them agonize over ‘Self Service Apps’ in Oracle HRIS/ATS, or PeopleSoft at TI and for it literally be like pulling fingernails off to get them to use the systems.

Also just because someone is a manager or a Manager/Engineer doesn’t mean that they can attract and land a top person AND I don’t think that a #1 person is going to log onto to your system and fill out a test or a form. Now you may think I am a delusional headhunter who is in denial but I have literally watched perfectly competent managers at Technical Companies who are Engineers completely lose it interfacing with SSO and PeopleSoft AND basically approach recruiting as ‘if they don’t want to work here, that’s their tough luck’ and get all huffy and give up.

I do believe Guerilla Recruiting and headhunting is an ART and will never go out of style. I do believe that you can build a SLA with a manager that is High Touch and Automated on some levels and measurable. You CAN and we do use metrics to measure quality of hires, time to fill, people poached vs. people lost AND explain it to a CFO. But you can’t tell me that with our product being people that an automated response is going to fill 90% of requirements. Maybe 60% but not top experienced hires who are proven performers at target companies. As far as Globalization, you may be surprised to learn that the bargains in engineering and accounting dissipate over the years (based on my first hand experience at Oracle) and the quality may not be there.

I have designed and manage a successful RPO to augment corporate recruitment functions and that is a reality. But it is a little early to be Chicken Little and say that the sky is falling on all of recruiting. We need a massive Skills’ Upgrade of the feet on the street to build People Skills not Technical Skills of a majority of recruiters to meet the challenges at hand. But this is coming from a Civilian…

By: Clayton Cook

Clayton Cook — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 02:00:00 +0000

Firstly I would like to express how much I have enjoyed reading this 5 part article. I have looked forward to each update and haven’t been dissappointed.
I don’t have a lot of time, so will make this brief.
I agree somewhat with the first reply. I have been involved with the Recruitment / HR industry for 12 years+ and while all of this experience has been in Australia I am qualified to comment.
Moving Recruitment / Staffing to a business model is common sense, however to suggest that it becomes a ‘formula’ or ‘automated process’ is simply unfortunate.
A large part of Recruitment / staffing can become automated and utilise low to medium quality recruiters, however this is purely looking at getting average to good candidates ONBOARD and not getting the best.
Valero’s methods WILL NOT get the best candidates in a tight market, it might get the occassional ‘good’ candidate.
On-line screening, assessment, automated processes will work in high unemployment rate environments with lazy HR personnel wanting the computers to do the work.
In Australia (like other countries) our unemployment rate is around the 5% level. Good candidates are working and are PASSIVE job seekers. They need to be SOLD the position or something needs to grab them. They simply WILL NOT apply for a position unless it is as EASY / SIMPLE as possible.
If your company branding is so strong that you are number 1 and everyone wants to work for you – you might have some success.
Corporate HR’s preference for automation and the tendancy as a result to become LAZY and take the attitude ‘they’ll do it if they want to work for us’ will continue to boost the market for recruitment professionals.

My two cents.