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Most recruiters will say that making quality hires is their top priority, but they often fail to back up those claims by accepting accountability for the post-hire performance of the candidates they source. Recruiters cite limited authority over hiring decisions or training and supervision as barriers to accountability; meanwhile, managers say recruiters should be accountable for quality because they control the slate. To break the stalemate, recruiters must embrace each manager’s business objectives as their own and recognize both their accountability and authority for hiring top performers.

At Advanced Technology Services, Jim Hefti, VP of HR, took time-to-fill off the table, while holding the company’s recruiters accountable for first year employee turnover. He also gave the recruiters the authority to reject a candidate at any stage of the hiring process. How did the company’s managers react?

“They don’t like it, but they’ve learned to accept it,” says Hefti. “Our first year employee retention rate has improved by 3% to 5% and time-to-fill actually improved when we stopped focusing on the number of candidates we were submitting and started focusing on submitting quality candidates.”

It was just as difficult for recruiters to embrace their new responsibilities, according to Holly Mosack, ATS recruiting manager, but she says recruiters diligently educated managers that quality hires result from sound hiring processes, not massive quantities of interviews, and they persevered through the first six months. Then, both groups saw their first glimpse of improved first year turnover statistics, and they haven’t looked back.

Hefti also installed a talent management structure that makes performance management the joint responsibility of HR and managers. New hire performance is evaluated at 90 days. An HR talent manager gets involved if a new hire is not meeting or is not projected to meet performance expectations. Every time a new hire quits, or fails to meet his or her performance goals, recruiters, managers, and talent managers meet jointly to review what happened and make adjustments in hiring profiles, training, or supervision.

Managers’ satisfaction with the recruiting department is measured through a separate annual survey, because Hefti focuses on tangible measures and accountability that drive the company toward its business goals.

In a relatively obscure part of the state of Washington lies a relatively obscure lab, working to free America from its dependence on its few remaining global enemies, such as Iran and Venezuela.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory works on a few easy little projects such as saving the environment, reducing oil dependence, and preventing terrorism. Recruiting for the last one — preventing terrorism and nuclear non-proliferation — is the work of Rob Dromgoole.

“A modern-day moon shot,” he says of this lofty work. Eight different recruiters at the lab recruit for about 615 hires annually (about half of them interns/students), among a workforce of about 4,200. Turnover is around 6-8%, tenure about 11 years.

Many employees have doctorates, and many masters’ degrees. About half of the hires come via referrals. The rest are from direct sourcing, Monster, CareerBuilder, Facebook, LinkedIn, and from colleges.

Some of the lab’s favorite schools, particularly for candidates with graduate degrees: keep reading…

Employee referral programs play an immense role in the modern staffing function.

To drive better understanding of world-class employee referral program practices and support continuous improvement of a sourcing channel that has become the dominant source of quality hires for many organizations, we’ve assembled 38 questions raised during a recent webinar on this important topic.

This article is the second in a five-part series on updating your employee referral program. The first five questions were featured in Monday’s article, and today we continue with eight more critical topics. Look for the rest of the questions Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

6. How do you ensure that you are getting quality referrals and aren’t just talking with people who aren’t the top talent and may never be a fit for the company? keep reading…

By Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett

On Wednesday, November 12, 2008, more than 900 members of the ERE community converged online for a webinar led by ERE author, Dr. John Sullivan. The webinar focused on updating your employee referral program. The popularity of the topic during a time when many staffing organizations are facing tough situations speaks to the immense role employee referral programs now play in the modern staffing function.

While several questions were fielded throughout the interactive webinar, participants submitted more than 70 questions on issues relating to program design, program operations, reward trends, and impact on organizational diversity.

To drive better understanding of world-class employee referral program practices and support continuous improvement of a sourcing channel that has become the dominant source of quality hires for many organizations, our response to the questions submitted throughout the webinar will be featured in five separate articles this week. (Where possible, similar questions were combined to reduce duplication.) The first five questions are included below, and there are 38 questions total.

Our responses to the questions proposed draw upon our advisory experience with more than 200 global organizations, an in-depth research study detailing the practices of more than 240 organizations, and an end-user research study that examined the experience of more than 7,400 employees and their respective referrals from 28 different organizations. More detailed guidance on program design can be found in a Design Workbook written by Dr. John Sullivan and available at drjohnsullivan.com.

Those interested in truly developing a world-class program may also want to check out these past ERE articles:
Operating Referral Programs on a Limited Budget
Upgrading or Reenergizing Your Employee Referral Program
Employee Referral Program Killers
Budgeting for a World-Class Employee Referral Program
Metrics for Improving Employee Referral Program Effectiveness

ERE Community Q&A

The questions proposed during the webinar covered a great many aspects of operating an employee referral program including:

• World-Class Program Design and Features
• Program Reward/Bonus Trends
• Diversity Impact
• Using Technology to Support the Employee Referral Program
• Specific Program Mentioned During the Webinar

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Andrew J. McKelvey, the man who built Monster.com into a worldwide job search brand, died Thursday in New York City from pancreatic cancer.

In the 1990s, the 74-year-old billionaire fashioned what is today Monster Worldwide from a Yellow Pages advertising firm and two of the earliest online job boards, The Monster Board and Online Career Center. McKelvey got into the advertising business in 1967 when he founded Telephone Marketing Program, which would later lend its acronym to the fledgling advertising conglomerate, TMP Worldwide.

In the early years, the Yellow Pages advertising division was the financial engine for the business. But by 2003, in acknowledgment of the direction the company was headed, TMP Worldwide became Monster Worldwide. Three years later the division was sold off piecemeal with capital fund management firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson getting the North American portion.

By then McKelvey was on his way out as chairman and CEO of the company he founded. He resigned in late 2006 in the midst of an investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission into the backdating of stock options by the company. McKelvey later admitted to playing a role in authorizing the backdating and paid a cash settlement. Because of his already advanced cancer, prosecutors agreed to postpone further court action.

Less well known is McKelvey’s philanthropy. The Associated Press says that since 2001, he has donated $25 million to the Andrew J. McKelvey Lung Transplantation Center at Emory University in Atlanta and has given $3 million to the Andrew J. McKelvey Lower School at the Hewitt School in New York.

His McKelvey Foundation has supported over 600 college students across the country, and he has provided funding for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and for the Andrew J. McKelvey Campus Center at his alma mater, Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa.

McKelvey is survived by his children, Geoffrey, Stuart, Christine, Amanda, as well as six grandchildren.

At ERE’s conference last month in Hollywood, Florida, a panel of recruiters from Sodexo, Wal-Mart, and elsewhere, as well as an employment-law attorney from Ogletree Deakins, discussed the hiring of men and women who had served in the military. Here are some of the notes jotted down from that session — websites that might be useful. Thanks to John Amodeo and HireVelocity for compiling it.

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As we sit down for Thanksgiving dinner (here in the United States), let us be thankful for the new era that is dawning.

This economic slowdown is not just about the failure of our banking system or of the credit markets. This failure is a symptom of the major changes that are occurring as we enter a new century. The Depression of the 1930s redefined the agriculturally based banking and finance world and made it competitive and efficient for an industrial age.

We are now in a similar period.

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Reports are surfacing that Google has begun eliminating some of its 10,000 contract workers, trimming expenses in the face of a declining stock price and slow online ad growth. Included in that number, according to several sources, including Daya Baran, president of The Web Guild, are 500 recruiters.

The idea of redirecting recruiters toward internal movement and succession planning seems like a good one, but I’m afraid it is another dead-end recruiting street unless some basic principles are applied.

Wrong-Way Thinking

There is a common fallacy among a significant number of people that anyone can do anything: a good-looking applicant will make a high performing employee; a high performing employee will make a good manager; or, a highly skilled employee in Job A will also be a highly skilled employee in Job B.

Sorry, folks. We all know from experience this is general nonsense. Stories are legend about a top salesperson or technical whiz who failed as a manager; or, about a marketing whiz-kid who fast-tracked into the executive suite only to crash and burn on the job.

Let’s put this puppy to bed. The only time that past performance in Job A accurately predicts future performance in Job B is when both jobs are require virtually the same competencies. If Job B is different, requires more competencies or better quality ones, all bets are off. In fact, the only reliable way someone might even guess at future performance is to know the employee screwed up his or her last job.

Consider the Peter Principle. If you don’t know the term, either Google “Peter Principle” or look it up here. In short, Dr. Laurence Peter gave multiple examples of how employees tend to rise in the organization until they reach their natural level of incompetence. His message: every time that job requirements change — or an employee changes jobs — there is a strong probability that they will not be competent in the new role. Although Peter uses corporate ladder-climbing as his examples, his principles apply equally to all people holding jobs. The Peter Principle is a classic must-read for every recruiter or hiring manager.

In the next few paragraphs, I’ll explain why the Peter-Principle is alive and well.

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When the economy took a turn for the worse in October, many recruiters began fearing for their own jobs. The good news is that some companies are still thriving. To predict a company’s financial health and penchant for hiring, look no further than its customer base.

“This downturn is really a mosaic, not a uniform event,” says Kip Cassino, VP of research for Borrell Associates. “You can’t just look at the national trends to judge which industries or companies might be hiring; you’ll have to do some rigorous homework.”

Here’s an example of what Cassino is describing.

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You’ve read about them. You’ve heard about them at conferences. Glenn Gutmacher did a webinar (still available, scroll down) on them. In fact there’s even an entire conference dedicated to corporate social networks.

With the growing number of providers, starting a private label corporate network or participating in a MySpace or Facebook is about as easy as launching a blog. And just like a blog, social networks need thought, planning and work to be successful.

“It’s important,” says Karen Lash, regional director / interactive strategy at TMP Worldwide, “when you are engaging with the social networks that you do have a strategy.”

So what sorts of things should a recruiter consider before launching a corporate network? We asked Lash and Ryan Esits, senior vice president a chief talent strategist at NAS Recruitment, for their advice. Here, in 2 minutes and 48 seconds, are the basics: keep reading…

A former CFO and computer software executive is assuming the reins at Authoria (profile; site) in a move that may signal a drive to expand the company’s footprint through acquisition as well as organic growth.

James J. McDevitt has already taken over as president and chief executive officer, replacing Tod Loofbourrow, who sold the company in September to Bedford Funding, a private equity fund. Loofbourrow, who founded Authoria in 1997, will serve as chairman of its board of directors.

McDevitt comes to Authoria from CDC Software, a $360 million division of CDC Corp. and a global provider of enterprise software solutions and services to medium and large businesses. He joined the company in May 2007 as senior vice president and general manager of Global Services, its IT consulting and outsourcing division. He was promoted to chief operating officer in April 2008.

Charles S. Jones, managing partner of Bedford Funding and McDevitt’s former boss when the two were at Geac Computer Corp., praised him as a “proven executive who has a notable track record of defining opportunity and building businesses.”

keep reading…

Social networks like Facebook and others are good for building relationships and for keeping track of all 156,977 of your closest friends — but no one really gets hired from them, right?

Tell that to nGenera. It has hired 63 people through its employee and recruiter social networks, which accounts for 70% of its 91 hires since last December. For those 63 people, that means no job boards. No third-party recruiters.

nGenera started in March 2007, and acquired six companies in one year. The company’s products (while hard to understand from its website) include call-center software, incentive compensation software, simulation software, and more.

Katie Carty Tierney (pictured) manages the recruiting function for the Austin, Texas, company, which has just under 300 employees, most virtual. “Our recruiters were relying heavily on job boards in the past, and we wanted them to look beyond that,” she says. “They weren’t necessarily getting the right candidates. They weren’t necessarily getting the right matches. There was a lot of turnover. That’s not the way to hire people.”

keep reading…

Last Thursday, I got to spend some time with a great group of recruiters at the ERE Meetup in Dallas, TX.

We’re going to do more meetups in the coming months - they are a good chance for recruiters to hang out, chat and compare notes with their peers over a few drinks.

If you want us to come to your city or have any suggestions, let us hear it in the comments!

During tough economic times it is essential that every corporate function become more strategic.

Cost containment is easy and is by no means strategic, but leveraging limited resources and restructuring activities to accomplish things you couldn’t do previously can be. Unfortunately, most corporate recruiting managers and many line recruiters are more reactive and incapable of looking at staffing more holistically.

Managing strategically requires recruiters to think beyond immediate requisition loads and transactional sourcing; it requires that recruiters think more proactively, and identify strategic talent opportunities.

One opportunity that routinely presents itself during economic contractions is the opportunity to trade up the caliber of talent in the organization by swapping in top talent into roles currently occupied by average or below-average talent. For socialists and poor performers this strategy seems harsh, but for anyone who has ever played a competitive sport, it makes perfect sense.

As global markets open up, competition on every front in business is becoming more cutthroat. In an era where an organization’s sustainability and innovation capability are largely tied to acquiring, developing, deploying, and motivating talent, a talent-swapping strategy could mean the difference between mediocre business performance and explosive business performance.

What Is A Talent Swapping Strategy?

The concept of talent swapping is borrowed from the professional sports industry. In sports, winning is everything, and it is a common practice for team management to externally seek out a “superior” player in a key position to replace a struggling player. When the team finds an available star, they “SWAP” or replace their struggling player. After the swap, the team still has the same number of players (no additional headcount), but has also dramatically improved its chances of winning.

When applied to the corporate world, a SWAP (Strategically Waving Average Performers) initiative proactively replaces poor performers in a key job only when an arguably/measurably better candidate has been identified and successfully recruited by the talent management function.

Factors Making Talent Swapping Possible

Talent swapping is a strategy that can be employed anytime, but it is much easier for organizations during times of economic contraction for a number of reasons, including:

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Too many recruiters rush the closing process, trying to push the candidate across the finish line before the race has even started. If you want to win the recruiting game, stop the Hail Mary’s.

Instead, consider successful recruiting more like a well-planned football drive, where time of possession is key. If you’re not into football analogies, the idea here is that top people don’t make critical career decisions on the first call or after the first interview. And if you try to push too hard to get a commitment you’ll drive the best away. This is equivalent to a turnover.

With a great football weekend ahead, here’s what it takes to turn a successful drive into a touchdown:

keep reading…

You may know Steve Lavin from his broadcasts on ESPN or his former role as the head basketball coach at UCLA. Lavin recently spoke at the ERE Expo in Hollywood, Florida, sharing his anecdotes and wisdom with the audience. Although not a recruiter, his lessons rang true for everyone and there was much to take away from his game plan for overcoming life’s challenges.

Watch the highlights below.

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Organizations rapidly adjust headcount the moment orders slow. As early as last June, the statistics on Monster, CareerBuilder, and other job boards began to show a decline in postings and traffic. The number of jobs listed on corporate career sites also declined, indicating less demand.

I am not sure if recruiters noticed, but several analysts did. I recently read an analyst’s report that compared several high-tech companies on the number of open positions they had as an indicator of long-term earnings and profit.

Given that analysts are doing this, we should be, too. We should be very sensitive to what our own management is thinking, how orders are shaping up, what the sales team is projecting, and then adjusting our own efforts accordingly.

If you don’t have access to this information you have two ways to get it. First of all, go to your manager and ask him or her for help. They will hopefully share what they can with you or help you find it. Second, cultivate your own sources by making friends with someone in sales or another part of your organization where people have that “inside” information that gives you an early indication of how things are going.

With that information in hand, here are five specific actions you can take to increase the odds of surviving, and even thriving, in this down economy.

Action Item #1: Get in Shape

You can’t make much progress in building credibility with management until your own function is in good shape. Recruiters who saw the signs of a recession could have begun trimming the fat in their processes months ago. Get aligned with your management team and cut when they cut, slow down when they slow down, and show them you are aware and responsible.

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I passed my local library last night, and I took a few pictures of the display in the front window.

When the local library is pitching in to help people find jobs, I see it as a sign of the times.

What do you think?

Former CNN anchor Jan Hopkins presented an inspiring view of our economic struggles at the ERE Expo on October 29.

Although admitting that our current economic situation was unprecedented, Hopkins retained a positive outlook on the situation. Both looking to the past and to our future, she provides information on what has led our economy to the state it is in now, and what the recruiting industry must do to profit in these difficult times. Watch these highlights to learn more.
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