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Archive for May, 2007 City commissioners in Sarasota, Florida, did not hire Susan Stanton to serve as the new city manager.
While most city council meetings across the country receive little fanfare for their hiring choices, the decision not to hire Stanton has received widespread media attention.
The former Largo, Florida, city manager was fired in February after admitting to plans for a sex-change operation.
Despite Pulte Homes’ well-designed corporate career website flashing, “Are you looking for a company that will double in size over the next five years?” the truth is a bitter pill to swallow for approximately 1,900 current employees nationwide.
As part of a restructuring plan designed to reduce costs and improve operating efficiencies, Pulte Homes said it is eliminating 16% of workers (approximately 1,900) in marketing, construction, administrative, and other positions.
Severance packages will include one week’s salary for each year of service, with a minimum of four weeks, with healthcare benefits paid for the same number of weeks, according to a Pulte spokeswoman.
Parts 1 and 2 of this article discussed how a tight labor market impacts the importance of hiring decisions and explored ways to adjust selection standards to account for smaller applicant pools. This last section discusses how to deal with the increasing importance of matching jobs to candidates’ work goals.
One of the biggest shifts that occurs in a tight labor market is the degree to which candidates can emphasize different personal goals when considering employment opportunities. In a loose labor market, most candidates are primarily concerned about meeting basic life goals that require having a paycheck. In such a market, companies may get away with an employment value proposition that basically says, “We have money and you don’t, and if you do what we ask then we will pay you.”
Despite a dwindling federal workforce (some statistics show that of the 1.9 million federal government workers, 44% are eligible to retire by 2010 — including 60% of senior managers), CareerBuilder.com says it sees more than 1.2 million job searches each month for government jobs.
And federal government employers are competing with both the public and private sector for top talent and are becoming more aggressive in attracting qualified candidates to their agencies.
These are just two of the reasons why CareerBuilder launched a new site, WorkforAmerica.com. The site is intended to help expedite the recruitment of qualified workers for federal government positions.
The red, white, and blue home page lacks a lot of bells and whistles, but it does a good job of laying out numerous links to government job advice, government job search tools, government news, and a list of the top-10 new federal government jobs.
Part 1 of this article discussed risks associated with arbitrarily lowering hiring standards in reaction to applicant shortages caused by a tight labor market. The article did not say that hiring standards should never be lowered, but that they should be lowered cautiously and systematically. This part of the article discusses methods for doing this.
When a company decides to lower its hiring standards, what it is fundamentally doing is decreasing the concern placed on addressing one or more of the following questions about candidates:
More corporate boards are keeping base salaries steady while adding other perks (i.e., bonus payments, stock options, restricted stock awards, long-term incentive plans), according to ERI Economic Research Institute.
The May 2007 ERI/CareerJournal.com ERI Executive Compensation Index suggests the average dollar amount of executive bonuses has increased 119.9% since 1997, while base salary for the top executives increased by just 37%.
(Apparently, not every business executive thinks like Mitt Romney.)
Anyone involved in staffing knows that we are in the midst of a labor shortage. The reasons for this are complex, but ultimately come down to the fact that the number of skilled workers entering the job market is not keeping up with the growing number of jobs in the economy. This shortage is exacerbated by increasing numbers of job vacancies created as baby boomers start leaving the full-time workforce.
This three-part article discusses strategies for making effective selection decision in the current tight labor market.
While multi-tiered and complex, there are certain staffing-related elements of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act that recruiters and staffing departments nationwide should monitor.
The pending immigration legislation would do many things, including the hiring of thousands of additional border patrol agents; instituting the new “Z” worker visa; and adopting new deportation provisions.
Perhaps the most interesting element for the staffing world is Title III, which would create a mandatory employment eligibility verification system to electronically verify the eligibility of every worker in the country.
Title III touches on document verification requirements; records that must be kept by employers; protections against discrimination; ID theft prevention and privacy protections; information sharing; and other miscellaneous policies.
According to the pending legislation, Title III “would make it unlawful for an employer to hire, or to recruit or refer for a fee, or continue to employ, an alien for employment in the United States knowing, or with reckless disregard, that the alien is unauthorized to work.”
In essence, this employment verification system would determine whether an individual’s identity and employment eligibility is consistent with the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security records.
Yet Jim Babka, co-founder of Downsize DC, says database errors might find “tens of thousands caught in a system where there is an error holding them back from employment, and they’ll have to deal with the customer service from hell in the bowels of Washington, DC.”
This also means that for employers who do find desirable candidates, “a red-tape snafu might hold up that hiring,” says Babka.
Verify, Verify, Verify
The main issue is to really confirm that everyone is qualified, according to Robert Meltzer, chief executive officer of VisaNow.
Meltzer urges companies to take verification very seriously, noting that “hiring departments can’t go through the old verification process; now they have to make sure it’s not a bogus Social Security card,” he says.
Beyond streamlining how best to investigate workers’ documents, he also says companies need to take the time to create all required policies.
One such policy change would require employers to retain copies of documents related to verifications and any correspondence relating to an employee’s identity or employment eligibility.
In addition, the legislation would require every employer to submit employee data for new hires to the federal employment verification system. (The system would start out on a voluntary basis until mandatory participation is required.)
Originally published February 27, 2006.
One of the most common arguments against launching an employee referral program has to do with the lack of budget for such a program. Many recruiting leaders and line managers are familiar with the stories of outrageous employee referral bonuses, and multi-pronged program advertising campaigns that cost serious money. The stories have helped perpetuate the perception that without hefty financial support, an employee referral program cannot be successful. That’s not the case. Approximately two-thirds of the employee referral programs in existence operate without a dedicated budget. While many of those programs produce mediocre results, there is proof that programs operating on a limited budget can produce world-class results. A number of best-practice firms have found that it is possible to operate the employer referral program on a limited budget or even with no budget all, if you know how to market and motivate employees. This article covers how referral programs can operate without breaking the bank. The Referral Bonus The largest expense item for most referral programs is the referral bonus. Approximately 90 percent of the programs I have encountered use some form or monetary incentive, the largest of which I have seen recently is $40,000. While that might seem extreme, keep in mind that for some positions you would most certainly pay more than that in advertising and executive search fees. The evidence is clear: Bonuses do positively impact referral rates. But it is also clear that there is a diminishing return as bonus amounts escalate. The average bonus across all industries for full-time hires is approximately $1,200. However, as I stated earlier, it is possible to operate a successful program without paying a bonus. FirstMerit Bank, for instance, set industry standards in referral rates without paying a bonus. The rest of this article will focus on some tools and approaches that you can use to get excellent results without spending a lot of money. (Note: Someone once said that everyone has a price, a statement that has profound relevance to referral program managers. The truth is that if your organization is a great place to work, what you will have to do to motivate employees to participate is a lot less than if your organization is a less than desirable employer!) Tips on Getting Great Referrals Without Large Cash Bonuses If you stand back and look around, there are lots of examples of people doing altruistic things without the promise of a cash reward. For example, many people regularly donate their time to charities without any expectation or thought of remuneration. Getting employees to participate in a referral program without referral bonuses requires that you think like a charity. To get someone to do something, whether it is to refer a friend or colleague, or to accept a job, requires that they perceive a positive exchange in value for what they are giving up. Again, value can be generated in numerous ways. If you can’t use monetary bonuses, find something you can use; it can be as simple as an honest thank-you or as complex as a raffle for non-monetary prizes such as a reserved parking space or cubicle by a window. The Best Option ó Use A “Give Me Five” Program Traditional referral programs are great, but you don’t need one in order to gather some of the best names possible (as recruiting prospects). Most referral programs are “passive” in that they don’t seek out individual employees and ask them to participate in the program. A more proactive approach is to actively seek the out the best people in your organization and directly ask them to contribute the names of the best people they have worked with. I call that program “Give Me 5″. The best thing about this program is that most people will participate without ever expecting a bonus or reward! The program is based on the fact that all of us come across some extremely talented people in our daily activities, but rarely do we take the time to notify recruiters or initiate a referral conversation. Employees know in their minds who these stars are, but need a trigger to stimulate the conversion of that talent from contact to candidate. Using this approach, an HR generalist or recruiter attends a regularly scheduled meeting of employees. With the permission of the meeting sponsor, the HR person simply approaches key individuals during breaks and ask them directly to help “build the team” by thinking back and providing the names of the five:
On January 3, 1978, I became a contingency recruiter working for a small, highly regarded, two-person search firm (I was number three). This was a pretty odd job to take at the time, since I voluntarily left my spot as VP and GM for a 300-person automotive parts manufacturing company. Somehow, working 80 hours per week didn’t seem worth it.
That first morning, Mark, at the time probably one of the most successful contingency recruiters in the country, told me the key to successful recruiting was applicant control. I didn’t really know what he was talking about, and I only made one placement in the next five months.
Tao Deng, HR director for Google Greater China, lists the items that should be part of a strategy for acquiring people, training people, and rewarding people.
Deng, speaking in San Francisco on the second day of a conference on HR in China, has also worked for other private companies such as AstraZeneca.
I. TALENT ACQUISITION STRATEGY
Boardroom verbal brawls are one major factor for increased CEO turnover at the world’s largest companies, with power struggles getting worse.
The number of CEOs leaving because of conflicts with the board increased from 2% in 1995 to 11% between 2004 and 2006. In Europe, boardroom power struggles drove 22% of CEO departures in 2006.
This data comes from a new Booz Allen Hamilton report, which finds the average CEO tenure increased to 7.8 years globally in 2006, with CEOs in North America averaging 9.8 years on the job. The study says Asia-Pacific reached its longest-ever average tenure of 9.5 years. Europe experienced a decline to 5.7 years.
In addition, the CEO succession data showed that corporate boards have made two fundamental shifts in CEO selection and oversight. First, boards are becoming less tolerant of poor performance. Second, they are more likely to split the roles of CEO and chairman, while recruiting chairs who have not previously served as a company’s CEO.
Steven Wheeler, Booz Allen’s senior vice president, calls it the “era of the inclusive CEO, who embraces and reflects the concerns of board members, investors, and other constituencies.”
If there is one phrase that almost every recruiter, hiring manager, and executive uses, “We only hire the best people” would be it.
While there are a few variations on this, it expresses the universal desire we have to be part of a successful organization. And we believe that it is only by hiring the best people can we do that. In the United States, particularly, we have equated best with factors such as which schools someone attended, what prior organizations they were employed by, and how verbally articulate they are in the interview.
Ray Zhang knows something about the Chinese talent hunt. The HR director for PepsiCo in China gets calls from headhunters himself almost every other sunrise.
Zhang, speaking at what has been billed as the first-ever U.S.-based conference on HR in China, describes the Chinese workforce as belonging to two groups: “turtles” and “rednecks.”
Turtles are returnees from education abroad; about a million Chinese have gone abroad for education in the last 30 years, and only 30% have come home. The advantages of hiring turtles, he says, are their communication skills, thinking and problem-solving skills, their international view, and their understanding of different cultures. They tend to have strong presentation skills and “high social maturity.”
Chinese managers used to “blindly worship the turtles,” he says, but have since come to their senses.
Rednecks, as he describes himself — and the word comes without the negative connotations as it’s used here — are educated and developed locally. Their strengths, he says, include familiarity with local customs, on-the-ground experience, and a willingness to start at the entry level. They grew up in one or two cities, have “low social maturity,” are used to executing well but not communicating as well, and have worked with a smaller number of people — their classmates. About 20% to 30% can’t find jobs upon graduation.
If a turtle expects a $10,000 to $15,000 salary, Zhang says, a redneck expects $5,000 to $10,000.
Making the move from a cost center to a profit center is a daunting task that most talent management and recruiting teams don’t attempt. Yet when the economy shifts, and it will again, this might be the most important thing you can do today to ensure that your budgets don’t get cut, your staff doesn’t get slashed, and your department isn’t decimated.
When TMP Worldwide approached Sodexho about attending its first job fair in Second Life, the food-services giant saw it as a great opportunity but figured the virtual event would appeal mostly to a young, college-age crowd.
The Sodexho team says it ended up being quite impressed by the amount of experience people brought to the job fair.
“We went in with our eyes wide open,” says Arie Ball, Sodexho’s vice president for sourcing and talent acquisition.
“We were thrilled with the number of people who were interested and the quality of candidates. The assumption by many was that it would be college students; we didn’t know how it was going to work,” she says.
In fact, most candidates had five to 15 years’ experience.
“One candidate had 32 years of experience with a food-service background. Most candidates had hospitality backgrounds, though some folks had other backgrounds,” says Anthony Scarpino, Sodexho’s senior director of talent acquisition.
Candidates came from all over the country, “from San Diego to Maryland,” adds Ball.
“Unlike other career fairs, with lots of recruiters involved, we didn’t have to ship things and load them up, or pack and unpack boxes,” she says.
Appealing to Candidates, Corporate Recruiters
TMP advertised the career fair, but Sodexho also did advertising on its end.
“We posted jobs specifically for the job fair, with a full description. We had banner ads on the Internet that we had converted to the job fair. And we also sent two e-blasts with our job-board partners,” says Scarpino.
Sodexho (also a finalist for Best Diversity Program at the 2007 ERE Excellence Awards in San Diego), says it had over 100 candidates who expressed interest, but like any career fair, “you do have some no-shows and some who won’t work out, but we were happy with the number and quantity of the candidates who came through,” says Scarpino.
Sodexho wound up forwarding 14 promising candidates on to local hiring managers. The team also says it met several candidates, including a host of technology candidates, with whom they will arrange a series of follow-up interviews in Second Life.
The food and facilities management services company has more than 120,000 Sodexho employees in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, but “we’re thrilled when we get 14 atany job fair,” Ball adds.
Article by Charles Handler and Mark C. Healy
Many ERE readers are aware that there are several different types of scientists who study the interaction between humans and the workplace. Among this small but illustrious group are several types of psychologists, including those of the industrial/organizational variety (i.e., I/O psychologists).
The San Francisco Chronicle has announced it is laying off 25% of its newsroom staff by the end of the summer.
About 100 positions are being eliminated at the Hearst-owned newspaper.
Those affected allegedly include 80 reporters, photographers, and editors, as well as 20 employees in management positions.
A new service is filling the “voting void” that will leave many an American Idol fan in withdrawal once the current season ends.
Instead of judging singers, however, TalentSpring is a new online job board that uses a peer-rating ranking system to vote on resume quality.
Other job seekers rank the resumes, with each resume sorted to allow for a “best-to-least qualified” ranking in industry-specific job categories including marketing, sales, finance, and computer programming.
In part one of this series I highlighted the many reasons why you should include remote college recruiting as part of your college hiring strategy. In part two, I will highlight action steps, tools, and approaches that you can use to identify and sell top college students remotely.
In a relatively obscure part of the state of Washington lies a relatively obscure lab, working to free America from its depen... more »