Before we get to the future, a little history is in order. As part of the marketing for my retained executive search practice in the mid-1990s, I did consulting for dozens of mid-size companies through TEC (The Executive Committee) and YPO (Young Presidents Organization).

The primary focus of this work was the development of a strategic hiring plan that allowed companies to move from a loose entrepreneurial business to a more sustainable and well-run growing company. Pulling this off always required the CEO/founder to relinquish a major portion of his authority, the addition of a number of critical senior managers, and the implementation of scalable business processes for all core functions. As part of this, the independent free-wheelers had to either leave or join the team.

There is an obvious parallel here with how some corporate recruiting departments have transitioned into top-performing and highly productive business functions and others haven’t. Some more history: in the mid-1990s, corporate recruiting departments came into being. This started with the hiring of a few contract recruiters followed by expansion into full departments and the hiring of specialized sourcers and end-to-end recruiters. The goal at the time was to build an in-house search capability in order to reduce what seemed an enormous amount spent on external search fees.

The promise of the Internet was the catalyst for this, with the idea that candidate quality would increase, not suffer. On this measure it doesn’t seem like too many companies succeeded. Just one example: on a recent webinar (February 2008), I asked the 200+ attendees to describe their current major hiring challenges.

Following are some of the big ones. How many of these ring true for you?

1. Not enough quality candidates
2. Hiring managers not responsive
3. Getting top candidates just interested in interviewing is becoming more difficult
4. Compensation never seems to be enough
5. Too many unqualified candidates
6. Counter-offers being accepted at an increasing rate
7. Offers turned down more frequently
8. Trouble getting candidates to relocate
9. Advertising results are hit or miss
10. Technology hasn’t helped improve productivity

Surprisingly, these are the same challenges recruiters faced during the dot-com boom and bust, the pre-Internet days, the Clinton years, the Bush One years, and the Reagan years. Despite all of the technological advances, actual recruiting results have changed very little in the 30 or so years I’ve been in the recruiting industry.

Yet in the same time span, launching complex products from the idea phase to market has improved five to tenfold, distribution systems have evolved from hoping your product would arrive within a week or two to tracking its exact position anywhere in the world, and knowing a company’s current financial performance has gone from having to wait two to three weeks after the close of a month to real time.

In comparison, corporate recruiting seems to be stuck in a time warp. For a variety of reasons it’s still run as an entrepreneurial organization that hasn’t yet evolved into a well-functioning, predictable, and scalable business process.

Here are some of the stumbling blocks:

1. Lack of an end-to-end perspective. Hiring top performers requires the active engagement of sourcers, recruiters, hiring managers, and everyone on the interviewing team. Rarely does this team agree on actual job needs nor do they screen, interview, and evaluate candidates the same way. Each recruiter and sourcer does his or her own thing and even if a few are good, the lack of overall consistency prevents scalability. Some offers are professionally made, others are via an email or informal call. Collectively this results in too many unqualified candidates being seen, overlooking or incorrectly evaluating some fine people with many of the best opting-out somewhere along the way for preventable reasons. Common practices like this rank pretty low on the scale of efficiency when compared to a systematic business process. (Recruiting process articles.)
2. Little hiring manager accountability. No matter how effective a company’s recruiting and sourcing efforts are, it’s still up to the hiring manager to make the decision. So if you don’t get your hiring managers and everyone on the hiring team involved in interviewing, assessing, impressing, and recruiting, you’re building a bridge to nowhere. While many companies have gotten better on the front-end, the back-end is still problematic. The symptoms here are obvious: lack of understanding of real job needs, inability to accurately assess competency, overselling, under-listening, lack of preparation, lack of interest, using the lack-of-time excuse, under-whelmed candidates, and high-potential candidates turned away for superficial or emotional reasons. From what I’ve seen, about 20% of all managers understand the importance of hiring top talent and will put in the extra effort needed to pull it off. Another 20% will put in the effort with some urging, and another 20% require lots of guidance and enforcement. I’m not so sure the other 40% will ever get it right. Until hiring managers are totally committed to the concept that “hiring top talent is #1″ it will be an uphill battle. (Hiring manager articles.)
3. Technology not effectively utilized. Actually the ATS (applicant tracking system) vendors like Taleo and Kenexa, etc., are more than qualified to develop technology that dramatically increases recruiter and hiring manager productivity. The problem is not with the vendors, it’s with the buyers: the HR and recruiting leadership community. Most are very unsophisticated when it comes to understanding and using technology. Lack of guidance on the buyer’s side has caused the vendors to expend too much effort on solving the wrong problems. This is why technology is five years behind where it should be. One minor example: candidates should not still be using pull-down menus to search for jobs. Lack of progress on the technology front is why vendors like Jobs2Web.com and Indeed.com are needed to overcome existing inadequacies in most current systems. Recruiters exacerbate the problem by fighting, rather than embracing technology. Despite current flaws, existing technology can improve productivity when used properly. (Recruiting technology articles.)
4. Inadequate or inappropriate training. Just about every sales person selling a professional product or service must take and pass some type of formal training program. About 10 years ago, I was helping a major yellow page publisher hire sales people and learned that their entry-level telephone reps (a $25 thousand per year job) had to take three weeks of formal training just to learn how to take renewals. A complex system or service sale involving needs analysis and customized pricing requires significantly more training. Sales training is commonplace even when hiring experienced sales people selling similar products. Yet for recruiting, which involves career counseling, job analysis, the ability to accurately screen and assess people, market and competitive analysis, and the use of professional negotiating and closing techniques, companies leave the process to the discretion of each person hired. (Hiring manager and recruiting training articles.)
5. A weak or non-existent workforce planning process. A workforce plan is to recruiting as a sales plan is to sales as a product plan is to manufacturing and as a profit plan is to finance. In our most recent annual survey completed in December 2007, only 26% of the over 700 respondents indicated their companies used a sophisticated rolling forecast of hiring needs. A formal workforce planning process is a foundational step in making hiring top talent a systematic and scalable business process. This hiring forecast provides a means to effectively allocate recruiting resources. As I learned from my earlier consulting days, lack of effective planning and forecasting was one of the core reasons entrepreneurial companies had difficulty managing their growth. (More on workforce planning.)
6. Lack of effective leadership. While the above are important points to consider, the root cause of the problem is lack of leadership and direction at the HR and recruiting-management level. Someone always needs to take charge, champion the idea, create the vision and implement the solution. This requires the ability to secure and maintain executive-level commitment, the tenacity to implement complex cross-functional change despite resistance, and an understanding of the importance of strong scalable business processes, especially in the area of hiring top talent. Strong leadership is the one common characteristic I’ve observed in those companies that have successfully converted the idea that hiring top talent is not just a vision statement, but a repeatable, predictable, and scalable business process. (More on leadership.)

While implementing a business process for hiring top talent is no simple task, it’s less challenging than implementing an ERP system like SAP, or setting up a world-wide distribution system or merging two new companies together. If hiring top talent truly is a company’s #1 strategic objective, it should also be more important.

– Engineering services and accounting firms are among the employers showing the most interest in this year’s new college graduates, according to the Winter 2008 issue of Salary Survey. Other hot spots include consulting, financial services, retail, and petroleum products companies. Here’s a glimpse at the average starting salary offered by most employers:

• Engineering Services: $56,114
• Accounting Services: $49,085
• Consulting Services: $55,262
• Financial Services: $47,881
• Retail/Wholesale Trade: $39,586
• Petroleum & Coal Products: $59,227

– Speaking of petroleum careers, Oil & Gas Journal reports that encouraging new entrants to pursue petroleum careers is tougher in the West, compared with Africa and Asia, where the energy industry has a more acceptable public image and people compete for jobs in the industry. In particular, India and China produce thousands of graduates for the petroleum sector. The journal notes that global graduate supply is barely meeting the industry’s needs: between 2006 and 2010, the net supply of geologists and geophysicists entering the E&P industry is expected to be 60% and for petroleum engineers, 80%.

– The economy is not deterring employers from college recruiting plans, according to global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In fact, Challenger says interviews with several college career counselors suggest that college graduates will actually benefit from the downturn. Only 12% of companies have downgraded their college recruiting strategies and expect to hire fewer graduates than originally planned. And less than 3% of employers have cancelled campus recruiting visits or plans to attend job fairs. What about hiring trends? Challenger notes that 46% of companies plan to hire the same number of graduates as a year ago; 22% plan to hire more graduates; and 33% plan to hire fewer. (Challenger says companies hiring fewer new grads were already planning to trim hiring due to weakening corporate situations over the past year.)

– Did you know that nearly 30% of all college candidates attend schools with a population of fewer than 5,000 students? To help companies tap into the candidates at these schools, Honor Roll Online has consolidated the student population of the top small colleges, universities, and scholarship foundations in the United States. They say these efforts can help companies create and execute successful, cost-effective recruiting campaigns.

– Tom Halasz, the associate director of the Career Resource Center at the University of Florida, says current attrition levels suggest that college recruiting will remain strong as companies seek to replace employees leaving for other job opportunities, retirement, or to raise a family. Halasz says he sees a slowdown in construction and financial opportunities; instead of receiving eight to 10 job offers, seniors in the construction management program are receiving three to four offers.

Best Careers Site (Large) – JobsTodayOnline.com (The Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Best Careers Site (Small) – TriadCareers.com (The Greensboro News & Record)

Best International Site – CareerOne.com.au (News Digital Media)

Best Niche Site – LawJobs.com (American Lawyer Media)

Best Cross-Posting – CareerJournal.com /WSJ.com (News Corporation)

Best National Network Participant – MassLive.com (The Springfield Republican)

Best Online Media Kit – Working.com (CanWest Interactive)

Best Online Media Kit – NWJobs.com (The Seattle Times Co.)

Best 3 Vertical Site – HeraldNet.com (The Daily Herald Co.)

Have you ever asked candidates to come in for six, eight, or even 10 interviews? Does your culture demand that candidates answer weird and irrelevant questions like those infamous ones Microsoft used to ask about why manhole covers are round or how many eggs it takes to fill up a school bus?

These were so well-known that in 2003, William Poundstone published a book about them called How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft’s Cult of the Puzzle – How the World’s Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative Thinkers.

And in 2005, Vicky Oliver published a book called 301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions to help interviewees reply to the increasingly bizarre and unrelated questions that recruiters like to throw at them. Some of these questions are more useful as interrogations techniques than as legitimate interview questions that should have some direct relevance to the position.

Some organizations require candidates to participate in stressful group activities, dinners, or social events. Others apply rigorous selection criteria to acceptable candidates such as having attended a particular school, achieved a certain grade point average, or worked for a specific company.

These practices are based on two beliefs. The first is that by subjecting a candidate to a stressful or unexpected environment, a recruiter or hiring manager can determine the creativity or adaptability of a candidate. The second is that attendance at a particular school or the achievement of a high grade point average means that the candidate is smarter or more creative.

There is little in the psychological literature that supports these beliefs. A paper written by Robert D. Bretz, Jr., entitled “College Grade Point Average as a Predictor of Adult Success” published in Public Personnel Management Journal (Vol. 18, No 1 Spring 1989) states, “. . .empirical analysis . . . suggests that college GPA is generally a poor predictor of adult work-related achievement.” He goes on to say that “GPA . . . should not be assumed to be a measure of general intelligence.” And we all know employees whose GPA or academic performance was sub-standard but who are strong performers. We also know that thousands of employees who contribute at high levels did not have stellar GPAs in college, and in many cases, may not have even completed college.

In addition to whether or not you are chosen has little long-term impact on a person’s success. Many of the candidates interviewed by Microsoft and not chosen have gone on to other organizations and have been highly successful and productive. We also know that many who have made it through the tough processes at Microsoft, Google, and other companies that practice elitism in their selection processes do not necessarily fare any better or produce better work than those chosen by more traditional means.

Here are four good and bad things about practicing this elitist approach to hiring, and some reasons why it is so hard to not practice it:

1. Acceptance rates go up. If you want your candidate acceptance rates to go up, make getting accepted really hard and stressful. We all like to believe that we are special, gifted, or better than others. If we are asked to take some sort of test or go through an initiation process that supposedly selects the best, those who get accepted feel superior to those who do not. This belief, even when not supported by facts, is a motivator for people to accept an offer from you. The more exclusive the choice seems to be, the more rigorous the selection process (regardless of its rationality), the more likely a potential hire is to say yes to your offer. A recent book by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson called Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts carefully and clearly relates story after story about the power of belief in superiority. They conclude the section with these words: “The results are always the same. Severe initiations increase a member’s liking for the group.”
2. Short-term retention may go up, but longer-term retention may go down. While I have no empirical evidence to support this claim, I do believe that being part of an exclusive group of similar people at first makes life easier and fun. Social patterns, likes and dislikes, language, and academic experiences will be similar and compatible. Organizations that select employees with rigid criteria tend to have little diversity. Over time this can become a limitation. As an employee grows more mature and finds that she is competing against similar people with similar advantages or not progressing as rapidly as she would like, she may leverage the exclusivity and desirability that belonging to the organization has bestowed on her to get another position at the competition or to start her own business.
3. Hiring managers like it because it validates their superiority. Hiring managers are usually enamored of tough interviewing processes and rigorous selection criteria because it supports and underlines their own skill, insight, and wisdom. They can boast that they have chosen the most talented or gifted team of employees. It can also provide a sense of security: If I have the best people working with me, we must be making the right decisions. This is one of the problems that Enron encountered. They had so many smart people that no one believed they could make bad decisions. When selection is based to a significant degree on suspect interview criteria and unverified reactions to events, it is very hard to account for success or failure.
4. It provides a way to discriminate. Unfortunately, rather than creating workplaces full of contradictions and differences where creativity thrives, the practices described above create a workforce made up of similar people in thought, attitude, background, education, and belief in their own superiority. All real creativity occurs at the edge, at the juxtaposition of opposite ideas and experiences. The healthiest and most creative workforces are those where people are assembled almost at random. The creativity of Silicon Valley, for example, has been correlated to the influx of diverse people and ideas from all over the world. It was the coming together of these people that created the integrated circuit, the Apple computer, and computer games. Organizations should embrace diversity as a means to creativity and innovation.

In the end, good selection is based on matching candidates’ competencies and skills to the particular set of activities an organization needs to have completed or outcomes that need to be achieved. These competencies can be identified with a variety of objective tests and properly constructed behavioral interviews.

Whether someone can answer the manhole question, has a 4.0 GPA, or has gone to Harvard makes no difference at all to potential performance.

Now, instead of saying “Buy and Trade Business Cards” the Jigsaw tagline is “Complete, Collaborative Business Information.” The change reflects the evolution of Jigsaw, according to its co-founder and CEO Jim Fowler, who joined us in a podcast recently to tells us the company is broadening its reach.

In the 8-minute podcast, you’ll hear Fowler tell us that recruiters are the most active networkers among the 400,000 members of its community; that sales people are the biggest users; and that Jigsaw is going beyond what is on the face of a business card to include data about the employee’s company itself.

In the last several months, Jigsaw has rolled out new products specifically for companies. Jigsaw Team, introduced in September, is a corporate account shared among the participating employees. Jigsaw Clean is a service that cleans corporate CRM databases, discarding dated, departed and duplicate contacts and updating the ones still good.

It’s also added rewards for updating business contact information.

But all this activity doesn’t mean a change in focus for the company that declares its mission to be the mapping of every business on the planet.

Listen below to CEO Jim Fowler discuss where Jigsaw is today and what the future may bring.

The study of more than 2,000 remote workers and IT professionals from various industries shows that remote workers’ security awareness and online behavior may inadvertently heighten risks for themselves and their employers.

Spanning 10 countries — the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, India, Australia, and Brazil — Cisco security executives report that workers’ perceptions of security threats are softening. And more than 50% of IT respondents believe their remote workers are becoming less diligent toward security awareness, an 11 percentage-point increase from the year before.

These numbers come in the wake of The Computer Security Institute’s 2007 computer crime and security report, which shows that the number of financially motivated attacks (i.e., identity theft) surpassed “traditional” attacks (i.e., a computer virus) for the first time in the survey’s 12-year history.

“While working at home, people tend to let their guard down more than they do at the office, so adhering to security policies doesn’t always intuitively seem applicable or as necessary in the private confines of one’s home,” says John Stewart, Cisco’s chief security officer.

Still, remote access and distributed workforces are here to stay, Stewart notes.

“Businesses have the opportunity to benefit from productivity increases while preventing security risks from undermining them. This study provides intelligence and recommendations for understanding and minimizing risks as businesses allow employees to branch out beyond the traditional office. It explores their remote workers’ psyche and provides valuable information about their approach to security.”

Work Locally, Think Globally

Give them their freedom and they will love you for it, according to Michael Haaren, who writes the popular Rat Race Rebellion newsletter.

“The primary advantage to using remote workers is productivity. Almost every significant study shows that remote workers are more productive than office-bound employees. That productivity flows primarily from employee satisfaction and loyalty,” he says.

Indeed, an extensive review of 12,883 employees, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, adds to this theory. The researchers point to common-sense principles in why telecommuting makes sense: reduced stress, increased productivity, improved work/life balance, and better relationships with supervisors.

Haaren advises that corporations should not panic: remote workers do not necessarily cause massive security breaches.

“The anxiety stems primarily from new managerial processes rather than logistical issues. The primary risk of remote work isn’t a security breach, it’s entropy — a loss of team and corporate cohesion, energy, purpose,” he says.

“But any good leader can keep the glue firm with timely and meaningful face-to-face sessions. The trick is to know when and where to meet, and what to say when you do. That’s all,” adds Haaren.

That might be all, but this still means that companies will face new challenges as they find enough of these “leaders” to manage the impending boom of remote workers: research firm Gartner pins the number at 46.6 million telecommuters by the end of 2011.

“The key to enforcing online discipline — or any protocol — with remote employees is to tie the spinach to the lemon meringue pie: If you want to keep working offsite, follow the rules,” adds Haaren.

I’d forgotten the fun of Internet search.

I had a job come in during January. The position was for a senior-level manager in the R&D software group of a major storage business. The customer told me in the specifications that the person we were looking for was “an uber-geek who has the capacity and the desire to talk business to customers.” Further clarification pointed out that most qualified candidates “have blogs, or they’re named on the Web because they are conference speakers, award winners, or as with ____, have a brief profile of their background.” They were also likely to have been awarded patents.

It was apparent we weren’t looking for the average software engineer; what we needed was someone with many (in the range of 20) years of experience and the ability to be a spokesperson for a company or, in the least, a product line. “Chief Technologist” was one of the titles they were allowed to carry.

An “evangelist” type. We haven’t seen that word much lately. The word “evangelist,” according to many online dictionaries, points to a religious perspective. According to Wikipedia, a “Technical Evangelist” is “a person whose job or role is to promote technologies. This may be, officially or unofficially, on behalf of a company or organization or on a personal basis; for instance, open source evangelism. An evangelist promotes the use of a particular product or technology through talks, articles, blogging, user demonstrations, recorded demonstrations, or the creation of sample projects. The word evangelism is taken from the context of religious evangelism because of the similar recruitment of converts and the spreading of the product information through the ideological or committed.”

I noticed that the definition included the word “blogging” and this reminded me, humorously, that five years ago that concept would probably not have been included. How things change. Recognizing that this was a job that would require a sizable amount of Internet research on the front end, I got to work over the weekend. The following is my experience.

The first thing I did was visit LinkedIn for the low-hanging suspects, knowing that by using keywords found in the job description, I could cut closer to the bone as many of my targets were very large competitors of my customer. I was just as interested in the lower-level engineers I came across who had the specific keywords in their profiles (who says some of these don’t read like resumes?) as in the few titles that surfaced that appeared to be spot-on for what I was looking for. I needed 100 names, knowing that somewhere between this number and 50 would be what would be required for my customer to actually hire someone out of the bunch.

Why am I interested in the lower levels? Because they have bosses, and these bosses also have bosses, and it’s not too much of a challenge for a good telephone-names sourcer to agitatedly state to a harried gatekeeper: “I reached so-and so’s voice mail. Can you tell me, does he have a manager above him? And oh, by the way, in case I hit her voice mail, does she have someone above her?”

And bingo, I have it. But that’s not really what this lesson is about.

The customer had also graciously sent me a list of a hundred or so names that they had identified (some of these, by the way, were the same names I was surfacing on LinkedIn) with their internal notes as to the person’s skill sets. I cannot impress upon you enough how valuable this is. Not only will you, as a name sourcer, not duplicate your customer’s work, but you will also gain vision into the company based on the customer’s work already in place. In most instances, this will help you get in faster and more efficiently. (This is very dependent on how recent the work is. Anything inside of a year is mostly going to be good still.)

Before we go further, I should also confess that as I was doing LinkedIn, I was also doing patent searches on each company, using the refinement option in the patent search field to refine my results. It worked like a charm. I was uncovering and copying out those names (patent filers) at each company as I went along. I was also hatching some of the customer’s names as I did this, revealing to me that it had probably done this patent searching as well. Notice I said “some.” I was coming up with new names as well.

By going directly at those names that appear to fit the customer’s bill, you can pretty much closely identify others in those persons’ hemispheres that will also fill the order. After I finished the LinkedIn and patent capturing, I filtered the results against the customer’s sent work. There were several crossovers. Not a lot, but some. Peering closely at the crossovers, I decided to go at these first. I don’t know why I did this. I just did. Habit, I guess.

Pulling up my Google screen, I typed the person’s name in the box. I chose the patent holders first. If the name was unique enough, I typed it within quotations without the corresponding company that the person worked for. If it was not a unique name (and a surprising amount of them these days are not), I added the company’s name also. Voila.

On many of the results, other names came up. Seizing upon those names, I typed them in, one by one. (Do you see how we’re descending into the ethersphere?) Results on those names began to reveal all sorts of things, including revelatory blogs and titles. Once I had a batch of them assembled, I got on the phone and did my thing. Within a couple days, I had my 100 names, confident that any of them could fill the open requisition.

“But Maureen, we thought you were a phone sourcer?” I am a phone sourcer, silly, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the chase, the events leading up to the telephoning. When I first started name-sourcing, I relied heavily on Internet results. It mostly worked back then because not many people were doing it. Knowing that I am technologically challenged and that learning the ins-and-outs of Internet search would tryingly contest my limited abilities, I realized early on that if I was going to survive in this space, I’d better develop, as Gypsy Rose Lee’s mother used to say, a “gimmick.”

Recognizing my deadly propensity for verbally gathering information from people, I adopted, like the famous stripper, a self-mocking attitude that, at times, helps me put on pseudo-sophisticated airs in order to get my work accomplished. It works like a charm, too.

Here’s a scenario that recruiters and hiring managers are often faced with. You’re interviewing a candidate. The interview is mediocre at best, you’re not “wowed” by the candidate by any means, and they ask, “So, truthfully, how did I do?”

Every time I’m asked this question, I want to mimic the scene in A Few Good Men and say, “You can’t handle the truth!”

After all, we know that most candidates who ask this question really don’t want to know how poorly they did in the interview. Instead, they are feeling the recruiter out to determine whether they are going to get the job.

Candidates who ask this question are already at the point of self-discovery. That is, at least during some part of the interview, they questioned their ability to adequately sell themselves. However, despite your overwhelming urge to roast the candidate, this is when recruiters or hiring managers really need to be sensitive to the candidate and respond cautiously.

So what’s the harm in giving feedback? Is it a disservice to send them away with no feedback even when they ask you for it? What’s the big deal about telling a candidate that they had poor eye contact and lacked interpersonal effectiveness? Wouldn’t they want to know that they came to the interview improperly dressed? When is it not appropriate to tell a candidate that chewing gum throughout the interview is a big no-no?

I polled several colleagues about how they respond when asked the dreaded question, “So, how did I do?”

My “gut feeling” to avoid saying anything negative to the candidate was confirmed. One colleague said, “Spending more time up front in the interview and providing the candidate with a very detailed description of what types of answers you’re looking for” will drive their interview presentation. She went on to say, “Give them an example of a behavioral question, and the appropriate superstar response. This sets the expectation for them and increases the chances that you’ll get the type of information you need.”

Candidates should walk away from the interview feeling as though they were treated as well as anyone else. “They may not feel this way, especially if they are not receptive to feedback, and most interviewers do not want to focus on anything negative because it may become confrontational,” according to another colleague.

Wise Replies

Here are a few comebacks that several recruiters shared with me when asked, “So, how did I do?”

• “How do you think you did?” Although this puts the candidate on the spot, they most likely will stop probing for information about their interview.
• “Overall, I felt like you were responsive to my questions and I enjoyed meeting you.” This does not directly answer their question but it does allow the interview to end on a positive note.
• “Your skills and answers to the specific questions will be compared to the other candidates who are interviewing for the position.” Again, this doesn’t provide a specific response, but at least the candidate should walk away feeling that he/she will be given some degree of consideration.

A peer points out that being honest with the candidate is okay. For example, “This position requires five years of manual rating experience with a national carrier. I noticed you have only one year and it was with an agency.” Feedback of this nature helps to establish expectations throughout the interview, which hopefully will minimize opportunity for the candidate to ask for further response at the conclusion of the interview.

At any rate, from the candidates’ perspective, the interview process should appear seamless and fair. Recruiters and hiring managers should use good judgment when offering information to a candidate about their interview.

Typically, a candidate who comes across in a confident (not cocky) manner during the interview will most likely not ask the “how did I do?” question. Unless you are in a setting where giving feedback to prospective candidates is appropriate (e.g., at a job fair where no interviews are being conducted, though even then, use caution), err on the side of ambiguity and preserve a positive interview experience for the candidate.

So, how did I do? You can spare me the feedback as I’m no stranger to self-discovery.

The firm is actively seeking a sales-hungry new associate, a rainmaker with a solid sales background, something that borrows from the corporate world.

Unlike at most law firms, where a senior partner would take on the “rainmaker” role, the San Diego-based law firm wants to let its new hire run free to bring in new business, unshackled by billable hours and copious legal writing and research.

In fact, the job description notes that “Unlike a conventional associate position, your job performance will NOT be based on billable hours. You will be measured on your ability to effectively introduce our firm’s services to key clients.”

Lead attorney Pam Scholefield says her firm has no desire to follow “archaic unwritten rules that say a young attorney’s primary role can’t be a rainmaker.”

She explains that the ideal job candidate would be less interested in heavy legal research and writing and more interested in establishing a rapport with potential clients.

“It also helps that they have a good golf game; just ask any successful sales professional,” adds Scholefield.

Striking a Delicate Balance

Sales guru Lee Salz says this idea might work for some firms, but he worries that this method of hiring really means hiring for two separate positions.

“There is a fine line between maintaining a professional posture while at the same time being effective in bringing in new clients. It starts at the beginning. Firms should interview as they would any attorney, and then interview as a sales person,” he says.

“But why would you want someone who is going to do two completely different jobs? Do they want a stellar lawyer who is so-so on the sales, or a stellar sales person who is so-so on the legal side?” asks Salz.

Instead, he says, the firm could opt to hire a polished, senior-level sales person to represent the firm.

However, Bryan Weaver, business development manager at Scholefield Associates, says it comes down to a credibility factor.

“It takes an attorney to have the total credibility factor,” says Weaver. “We’re hoping for someone who is great at schmoozing. We’re envisioning someone like a GE sales person who goes after the business and wines-and-dines to get the business.”

While there is no such position as a “sales attorney,” Weaver says they’re hoping to come close in their search for their newest hire.

“Their job would really not be to dress up and litigate. Their expectation is a sales guy, PR person, as well as being an attorney,” says Weaver.

“Ideally, we want someone with a professional sales background who went to law school, and maybe came to the realization they’re not cut out to crank out briefs. They are personable and can apply what they know,” he says.

Ever since the unsolicited offer by Microsoft to buy Yahoo, recruiters have been literally “circling” Yahoo in a manner that would have to be labeled as aggressive even by Silicon Valley standards. The tactics vary from the relatively tame practice of “cold calling” into Yahoo in order to find nervous employees to the more aggressive “trolling” by recruiters outside Yahoo’s parking lot and in local spots where Yahoo employees hang out.

Even though Microsoft hopes to gain a significant amount of Yahoo’s talent through acquisition, a number of groups at Microsoft are not waiting. Already on the Internet you can find copies of emails sent by Microsoft recruiters to known top talent at Yahoo, offering them an opportunity to explore a Microsoft career in this time of uncertainty. Those interested in reading one such email can check out this blog posting.

However, the most aggressive approach has to be a firm that has aggressively posted “we are hiring” posters in the entrance way and in the bathrooms of the building that they share with Yahoo’s famous San Francisco “Brickhouse” innovation site. I call it “bathroom recruiting” and by the way, I’ve heard that it has already yielded results. The firms that are actively attempting to poach talent away from Yahoo range from the very small startup Cake Financial to the recruiting machine Google, which recently successfully hired away a key Yahoo executive, Steve Souders, their Chief Performance Yahoo.

The Majority of Hires Are Poached

If “bathroom recruiting” shocks you, it’s only because most aggressive recruiting approaches are kept secret in order to maintain a firm’s competitive advantage. If you think that poaching (the direct targeting of current employees from another firm) is rare, you would be totally wrong. I estimate that nearly 75% of key hires in major firms are directly recruited away from other talent competitors, and that nearly 100% of CEOs (that are external hires) are poached.

Sometimes the person is lured away from their current firm not by a corporate recruiter but instead by an intermediary (a third-party recruiter or agency), but the net result is the same. One firm gains a new employee and another firm loses a current employee as a result of a recruiter paid directly or indirectly by the corporation. Even the practice of recruiting away individuals is being superseded by a more aggressive approach, known as “lift outs.” In a lift out, an entire team is poached all at once (Yahoo once lost an entire team to the software firm Nuance). Some firms now even keep score of their poaching activities. They calculate what I call their “giveaway/take away ratio,” which tells the firm whether they successfully recruit away more individuals from their competitors than competitors successfully poach away from them.

Poaching is Becoming a Global Phenomenon

Because of the almost continual poaching between giants like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo, many individuals think that the United States is at the epicenter of worldwide poaching, but that wouldn’t be true. China, closely followed by India, would win the award hands down.

The widespread economic growth in China has made the demand for managers with experience working and managing in China stratospheric. In my many visits to China, I have learned about how firms literally “bid” for experienced managers with amounts of money that would double a manager’s present salary.

India is no slacker either in the fight for top talent. I once met a CEO in Bangalore who was willing to open a plant across the street from Nokia in Finland just to increase the likelihood of directly recruiting away their engineers.

In Europe, the mobile phone firm Vodafone recently poached one of Microsoft’s top executives to head up its new Internet services division. In Canada, EA once placed a billboard in the vicinity of a competitor in order to incite them to switch employers.

Since the late 1990s, U.S. firms that are perceived to be in trouble or those that are being threatened with a merger have been subject to aggressive “across the street” recruiting efforts. It happened to PeopleSoft right before the Oracle merger. One Chicago-area hospital recruiter confided in me that their hospital unabashedly placed a recruiting van with a large canvas sign outside of a competing hospital that was having labor trouble.

But Isn’t Poaching Illegal, Immoral, or a Cause of Global Warming?

Whenever anyone brings up the topic of poaching, there are invariably squeals from the timid or the un-informed claiming that it’s illegal, immoral, unfair, unethical, etc. It’s funny that much of the talk comes from third-party recruiters who get a majority of their recruits from among the actively employed population.

Even some corporate recruiting managers somehow think that it’s better (or less dirty) to “poach” employees from another company by using an intermediary, as if somehow using a third-party recruiter and poaching the talent circuitously is more ethical.

Such an argument is just silly. If you pay a recruiter (whether it’s someone on your payroll or a vendor) to entice someone to leave their current firm to go to your firm, you have poached an employee. Hiring someone else to do the deed indirectly still means that your firm has gained an employee and another firm has lost one.

Incidentally, poaching away employees is not illegal because employees are not “owned.” (Ownership by one human of another has been illegal since the Civil War). Today, nearly all states and all corporations embrace “at will” employment, meaning that at anytime, either party may sever the relationship with or without cause.

Poaching May Spur Competition

Some HR professionals or managers are reluctant to poach because they are afraid that other firms will retaliate. Unfortunately, if you act this way your fears are misguided and you are probably hurting your firm with your timid approach. Using this fear of retaliation logic, the products division of your firm wouldn’t offer new products that competed directly with a competitor’s product because that large competitor might retaliate and squash your firm’s new product! In the same light, your sales people wouldn’t compete head-to-head for the same customers out of fear of retaliation.

Competition is everywhere. Business people expect competition everywhere; only HR people see “ethical issues” that just are not raised in other business functions. I have difficulty understanding HR professionals who keep saying they want to be business partners. It seems that when they are given a chance to actually compete like a business-person, they fail to act like real “business people” do every day, and that is to compete in the marketplace.

Executives and senior managers actually enjoy competition. If you have the best jobs in the best recruiters, you really have nothing to fear because you’ll win more than you lose. It’s a recruiter’s job to provide their current team with the best possible talent, so it’s time to stop being a pacifist.

Recruiting great talent is always a fight (some call it the “war for talent” for good reason) and if you want the very best well-trained candidates, you really have no other option other than to poach from your competitors.

The other option, hiring exclusively from “non-competitors,” invariably means hiring candidates without experience in your industry, candidates from outside the region with high relocation costs, or those candidates without any relevant experience. Hiring unemployed people with out-of-date training or individuals from other industries means extra costs to the firm because of their slow start up and their long learning curve.

Poaching objectors should also understand that, whether you like it or not, large competitors in any industry are continually targeting the employees of smaller firms and those in trouble. Large firms in every industry invariably look at smaller firms as their “farm teams,” so if no one is attempting to steal your employees, either you have a great blocking strategy or you may have some pretty undesirable employees! Any company that has good employees needs to constantly battle to keep them. It’s just part of business.

HR’s Dirty Little Secret

Refusing to poach may actually be illegal. One of HR’s dirty little secrets is that senior executives routinely make “pacts” where they agree not to poach each other’s employees. On the surface this might seem okay, but the reason these “gentlemen’s agreements” are always unwritten is because they probably violate the restraint of trade principle.

By agreeing not to compete, they are essentially hurting their current employees by restricting their freedom of movement. Under the U.S. Constitution and U.S. law, employees are free to leave and go to any employer that they wish. When a firm agrees not to hire a competitor’s current employees, essentially what the firm is doing is legally limiting the freedom of its current employees.

Some unscrupulous firms attempt to “scare” their current employees and further restrict their freedom of joining a competitor by forcing them to sign odious non-compete agreements which are almost always unenforceable unless significant trade secrets are involved. Because no one can successfully hire them away, the current employer has an increased opportunity to poorly treat and underpay these individuals. Yes, competition forces employers to treat their employees better. A lack of competition allows employees to be abused because they have few options within the same industry or city.

As an employee, you might think that you didn’t get an interview at a competing firm because of some weaknesses in your work experience. Unbeknownst to most, the real reason they get no response are these secret, hideous, under-the-table non-compete hiring agreements.

The Benefits of Hiring Away Your Competitor’s Talent

If you’re unsure about whether you should poach, consider the many benefits that come from taking the best employees away from another firm. First, because they are currently working, they’re probably well-trained, up-to-date, and above-average employees. When you hire individuals from another firm, you get with the employee an understanding of your competitors’ processes, tools, and approaches.

Effective poaching will probably also force the competitor to focus more of their efforts on employee retention, which will in turn limit resources available to any recruiting effort that they might undertake against you.

Final Thoughts

Despite the inevitable whining that comes whenever anyone suggests that poaching is a positive thing, it exists and is getting more aggressive. You can either bemoan the point or accept it as part of the ongoing, continuous war for talent.

If you find yourself battling for talent, maybe it’s time to realize that in a war, you have to use aggressive tactics in order to win. Instead of blaming other firms for your current employees choosing to go elsewhere, instead look in the mirror, and blame yourself for not providing them with a superior opportunity. If you consider poaching to be war-like, so be it.

If Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft can practice it out in the open on a regular basis, I would instead label it as a standard business practice in the 21st century world of global recruiting. Any of you who think poaching away talent from Yahoo when it’s down on its luck is poor form needs to realize that it is being targeted not just because it’s weak, but instead because its human resource function and its managers did a world-class job in attracting some of the most desirable talent on the planet.

You see, it is extraordinary success that draws poachers, not weakness!

While surfing the Internet for information on a presentation, I came across a Toastmasters video of a guy giving suggestions on “how to overcome the fear of public speaking.” The example that he used to get his point across will certainly help you if you have to give a speech, but more important, it will help recruiters fill more jobs by emotionally connecting with both the hiring manager and applicant on every deal.

He indicated that in order to eliminate stage fright and deliver an effective presentation, the speaker must know both the subject matter of his speech and his audience. When that is established, the objective of the speaker is to simply share information that he likes about the subject that he wants his audience to know. And, because the speaker is convinced that his audience will like the subject, he will not only use words, he will also subconsciously employ eye contact, facial expressions, dramatizations, body language, and enthusiasm to emotionally connect with the audience.

Here is the example: Let’s say that you have a male friend who is single and is open to a meaningful relationship should the right female cross his path. And, it so happens that you meet a new friend, and after getting to know her, you realize that they would be interested in each other if they knew what you know. You decide to become a matchmaker and introduce your friends to each other.

To make the introduction, most of us would immediately pick up the phone and enthusiastically describe each person to the other as if he or she actually walked on water. We would describe everything that we like about each individual, emphasize the level of interest, and encourage a first date.

What is the likelihood of a first date materializing after such a compelling introduction? And what kind of influence would you have on the courtship if the first date was a success? This is also the job of a professional recruiter; he must emotionally connect with the hiring manager and the applicant to be successful in filling job requisitions.

A recruiter’s job is to sell two of the greatest products ever conceived: talent and opportunity. And, because of electronic technology (e.g., job descriptions, resumes, and emails), he is challenged in emotionally connecting with the hiring manager and applicant (i.e., buyers and sellers).

Let me demonstrate this challenge. Let’s say that someone from HR emailed to you a job description along with resume submittal procedures.

Job Descriptions

We know that the search process is typically initiated by the hiring manager. But, if the hiring manager is not accessible to the recruiter, the recruiter is forced to make an emotional connection with the person hidden behind the job description. And, most job descriptions are unexciting; they are no different than an insurance policy that consists simply of terms and generic verbiage. After you read the fine print, it’s all about work. Unless someone’s desperate for a job, who gets that excited about work?

The recruiter needs to emotionally connect with the hiring manager to bring the job description to life! If not, his presentation will be uninspiring. In making any presentation without fully understanding the scope of the job, the company brand, the accomplishments of the hiring manager, the strength of his team, and the specific role on the team, he will lose credibility with the applicant. More important, his job is at risk because he will be perceived as someone lacking competence by the hiring manager based on the lack or quality of resumes submitted.

A job description by itself is simply a request for resumes. To the recruiter, resumes are simply billboard advertising that individuals use to present an image to the world as how they would like to be perceived. To HR, resumes are screened profiles of only A-players who have the right skills, understand the role, live in geographic proximity, are underpaid, and are sold on the company brand. Because of disconnect in expectations, HR will always complain that recruiters need to do a better job of screening candidates, and recruiters will complain that HR is continuously changing the job description. In order to deliver quality talent, the recruiter must connect with the person hidden behind the resume. To do so, he must start by connecting with the person hidden behind the job description.

Email

Email has changed the way we communicate with each other; it is also a very efficient method in terms of productivity and time and cost savings. However, when used primarily to avoid direct conversations, it is the most damaging element in emotionally connecting the hiring manager with the applicant. Emails create disconnect for the following reasons:

• They are unreliable and may not reach the recipient’s mailbox.
• The message content is sender-focused, so its intent is often misinterpreted by the recipient.
• Words alone are faceless and voiceless; they take away from one’s sense of hearing.
• Words alone are generic; they place everyone on the same playing field and do not distinguish the individuality or true personality of the sender.
• Written words cannot detect or elicit a person’s true emotional reaction in real time.
• The thoughts behind the actual words are projected.

Recruiting is a relationship-building business in which one must continually practice his verbal and interpersonal communication skills to be successful. Any reason to interact is an opportunity to build on your relationship with that individual. Email, though convenient, is counterproductive when your job is to emotionally connect with individuals who you do not know on a personal level.

Before the Internet, recruiters successfully filled jobs without a resume or a job description. They did this by bonding with both the hiring manager and the applicant, and, as a result, the recruitment process was simply a friend referring a friend. Technology has created electronic recruiting tools that have changed the recruiting world; however, the misuse of these tools has created barriers in the emotional connection between the hiring manager, the recruiter, and the applicant.

This is something Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has had to grapple with, and he stated his opinions publicly on Thursday. He sent a letter to all employees, a note he called his “most difficult communication to date” but necessary in order to improve the current state of the company and reinvigorate sales.

The gist of his open letter is that Starbucks is cutting about 600 positions, a move that is not surprising in some circles. This includes the elimination of existing positions and open headcount, as well as the reduction of its current workforce. Within this context, Schultz notes that approximately 220 partners have separated from the company, and that nearly all were U.S. partners serving in non-retail support roles.

In an attempt to “step up to the challenge of being strategic as well as nimble,” Schultz adds that the company will reorganize from two divisions to four (Western/Pacific, Northwest/Mountain, Southeast/Plains, and Northeast/Atlantic). Each division will be led by a senior vice president, reporting directly to the U.S. president. Within each division, partners supporting store development, marketing, partner resources, and finance will report directly to their respective functions while still being accountable for results at the divisional level.

In other Starbucks news, the company is doing away with its lackluster warmed breakfast sandwich idea, and is also offering free Wi-Fi in stores this spring.

ChoicePoint is being bought by the British company that owns LexisNexis. ChoicePoint’s stock is up dramatically today, about 43%.

This Sunday night, after Barbara Walters’s tete-a-tete with nominees but before the Academy Awards are handed out, take a moment to consider who your ideal boss would be if you could choose from past Oscar recipients.

CareerBuilder.com recently did just that, asking 6.704 U.S. employees which Oscar-winning actor or actress they would most like to work for. According to the new survey, most prefer Julia Roberts or Tom Hanks as their ideal boss.

Other top vote-getters included Stephen Spielberg, Denzel Washington, Susan Sarandon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Reese Witherspoon, Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, John Wayne, Robert DeNiro, and Clint Eastwood.

In addition, the CareerBuilder.com survey discovered that 32% say drama is the type of movie genre that best describes their workplace, followed by comedy at 28% and adventure at 11%.

The good news for employers? Only 6% say their workplace could be best described as a horror or a war movie.

If you’re hoping for a bit of a distraction from your looming piles of work, ERE is here to provide some light-hearted relief with our newest invention: the ERE crossword puzzle!

After you complete the puzzle, let us know your thoughts, as well as feedback on its difficulty level or ideas for future puzzles.

I am always looking for trends or emerging practices that are changing, or at least influencing, the way we source and recruit talent. The Internet is the engine that drives all the innovation we are seeing and has already, in little more than a decade, revolutionized how we attract, find, assess, and even communicate with candidates and how they interact with organizations.

Over the past year, several applications and new tools have appeared that are both exciting and a little frightening. Some of them will most likely go nowhere. They are just too edgy to ever become mainstream. Others may turn out to be the dominant tools of the next few decades.

Here is a look at some that I see as significant. Please send me your ideas on what other tools, applications, or practices may emerge as key.

Web 2.0 Interactive Websites

As I wrote last week, the emergence of Web 2.0 websites is going to change the face of recruiting. We are finally seeing some really cool tools that allow any size organization to put up a great recruiting website. One of the best of the tools is provided by Standout Jobs. By using a flexible modular approach, a recruiting team can put together websites with video, pictures, blogs and many other applications. Take a look at Yoonew or Zurb for some examples of what they provide. Some organizations are also putting together career sites using Ning, which also uses a modular approach to website design.

Simulations for Screening

For a long time now, organizations have used paper-and-pencil tests to assess candidates’ personality, cultural fit, intelligence, and aptitude. Some of the tests have been adapted for the Internet, although they still emulate the old paper-and-pencil tests. Recently, online simulations have emerged, especially in assessing call center staff and other positions where skills are straight-forward and success measurable in quantitative ways.

Firms offering simulation advice or tools include Rocket Hire, a consultancy led by Charles Handler in New Orleans, a simulation for real estate professionals provided by Real Estate Simulator, Previsor, and FurstPerson, which specializes in call center screening simulations. The Shaker Consulting Group in Ohio is also developing some very interesting Flash-based simulations that mark the beginning of creating simulations for management and other positions. Some clients include CVS, Starbucks, Diebold, and National City Bank.

Candidate/Position Matching Tools

Right along with an increased interest in assessment are tools that will attempt to match candidates to positions. There are several similar tools in this category including JobFox, which has been around for several years, Itzbig, which I wrote about last July, and QuietAgent, which has also been available for several years now. The tools offer anonymous matching where neither the candidate nor the organization know each other until each has expressed interest. They all urge candidates to create extensive profiles that include screening and assessment data. The more complete the candidate’s profile, the more successful the matching process.

Over the next five years, we will see a steady increase in the number of tools and the amount of energy that will be used to apply more stringent competency criteria to positions to meet legal requirements and to improve the quality of hires.

The continued growth of social networks sped to the forefront of the news in 2007, and this year, it will continue to evolve as a useful recruiting tool. LinkedIn is the largest and most well-known among professionals, but young candidates are being wooed through Facebook and MySpace. Lots of younger folks gauge your brand and your “coolness” factor by whether or not you have a profile on these social networks.

The U.S. Marine Corps has a profile and has easily met its recruiting goals this year. KPMG’s video-based profile showcases the capabilities. Many hundreds of other American and international organizations have profiles as well. Individuals are also creating their own recruiting-oriented profiles, in effect online resumes, and are assuming that recruiters will search through them.

MySpace and Facebook are examples of “destination sites,” or websites that are visited every day. They become portals to connect with friends, to share ideas and communicate, to set up collaborative work spaces, to meet new people, and to look for employers. Smart recruiting organizations will be designing profiles and will be experimenting with ways to use these types of destination sites more effectively.

Recruitment Processing Outsourcing

RPO has grown in popularity this year as recruiting management figures out what should be outsourced and what shouldn’t be. Last year, many organizations made the mistake of seeing RPO as a cheap solution to their recruiting dilemmas. This year, there is a better understanding that RPO can be a real help in filling specific types of positions, may improve the speed to present a candidate and time to fill, but it may not result in lower costs. Small organizations are finding that the right RPO provider can replace their recruiting function and deliver great results. Like all outsourcing efforts, choosing an RPO requires good planning, specific goals, and a careful search for the right RPO firm.

RPO is becoming better defined and a non-profit association, The RPO Association is attempting to define and apply standards to the industry to improve acceptance and quality.

Emergent Worlds

Other areas of excitement include the use of virtual or emergent worlds, for example, Second Life. Manpower is an example of an attempt to use Second Life as a recruiting tool. The jury is still out on how this will evolve, but hats off to Manpower for leading the effort!

While this list is far from comprehensive, I hope it provides some food for thought and a bit of introduction to what is coming.

The election this year is considered a watershed event in American politics. We have, at this time, three individuals who have a good shot at becoming president. While there are plenty of reports on who will best serve what groups’ needs, it would be instructive to look at who would be of most benefit to the recruiting profession.

To make this assessment as objective as possible, three criteria that affect recruiting will be used to compare the candidates: immigration, since it impacts the availability of labor; supporting a climate conducive to business, since business is the primary source of employment; and legislation that impacts employment, either making it easier or more difficult to hire an employee. Everything written here is taken from the candidate’s publicly stated position, his or her voting records, or information in the public domain.

Immigration

John McCain: The senator from Arizona has long supported immigration reform. He was the sponsor of the immigration Reform Bill of 2006. Had it been enacted, the bill would have made hiring immigrant workers easier, including a guest-worker program for temporary labor. On the campaign trail, he has adopted a less strident tone, but overall his support for reform remains firm. Rating: A-

Barack Obama: On immigration, Senator Obama’s positions mirror those of Senator McCain. His support for reform and a guest-worker program has been unwavering. But, he did vote to support a reduction in the number of guest workers who could be admitted, had the Immigration Reform Bill of 2006 passed. Rating: A-

Hillary Clinton: The junior senator from New York has a mixed record on immigration. She has strongly supported immigration reform, including a path to legalization for illegal aliens. She is the sponsor of the Civil Rights Act of 2008, which, among other things, would allow illegal aliens to collect back pay. Crucially though, she has not supported a temporary-worker program, which would address much of the labor shortages that lead to the demand for immigrant labor, especially in agriculture and construction. She, too, voted to reduce the number of visas that would have been available in a guest-worker program. Rating: B-

Support for Business

John McCain: The senator has an unremarkable record concerning business. He has supported programs targeted at enhancing competitiveness but, by his own admission, his understanding of economics is limited. For example, blaming pharmaceutical companies for high prices reflects a lack of understanding of the mechanics of a capitalist economy. On the plus side, he has been an advocate for free trade and open markets. Rating: B

Barack Obama: The senator from Illinois has not been around long enough to establish much of a record, so any conclusions on his support for business have to be drawn from his stated agenda. His positions are a mix of good and bad. He supports programs for job creation, investing in high-tech manufacturing, tax credits for research and development, and widespread deployment of broadband. On the negative side, he supports maintaining the openness of the Internet on the principle that network providers should not be allowed to charge fees to privilege the content or applications of some websites and Internet applications over others. He fails to recognize that allowing this would negate the need for the government subsidies he proposes to use to increase access. He also wants to expand FMLA to cover employers with 25 employees or more (down from the current 50) and make it paid leave. However well intentioned, this creates an extra burden to smaller employers that are responsible for almost 60% of all jobs. Laws like this are only a deterrent to employment. Rating: B-

Hillary Clinton: The senator has received considerable support from business, including over $12 million in contributions, mostly from larger companies. She does support programs that can foster a better climate for business. Her innovation agenda would provide billions for research on energy alternatives, funding for awards promoting technology innovation, and tax cuts for research and development. She also wants to fund incentives for students to enter math and sciences programs. While this is all good, the programs she supports are very narrowly focused and would do little to benefit small businesses which, as mentioned above, are the main creators of jobs. Also, technology is not the only type of innovation. McKinsey estimates that half of all productivity growth since 1995 has come from innovation in business processes, such as hyper-efficient supply chains, led by Wal-Mart. This kind of innovation was not even considered by most companies, and definitely not by the government, until it occurred. Rating: B+

Employment-Related Legislation

John McCain: The decorated veteran has had very limited involvement in employment-related legislation. The only clear example was his no-vote against the points-based immigration system that would have admitted workers based on a government-created formula. Rating: Not Rated

Barack Obama: Mr. Obama has some admirable qualities, but apparently an understanding of labor economics is not among them, as evidenced by his sponsorship of the Fair Pay Act. This bill has the laudable goal of ensuring that supposedly male-dominated occupations are not paid more than female-dominated ones. Should this bill become law, it would require employers to determine compensation based on assessments of social utility, not market demand. So, it could become necessary to ensure that nurses are not paid less than software engineers. Enforcement would be managed by the Labor Department that would set wage scales. This is how it was done in the Soviet Union. Even the Chinese abandoned such ideas decades ago. Rating: D

Hillary Clinton: When it comes to legislation that affects employment, the former partner of the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock appears to be mainly focused on legislation that can supplement her former colleagues’ incomes.

The Civil Rights Act of 2008, mentioned above, would eliminate existing damage caps on lawsuits brought under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act and add compensatory and punitive damages to the Fair Labor Standards Act. This bill would also make it easier to bring and win “disparate impact” lawsuits where discrimination in employment is alleged. Just being able to show a statistical discrepancy would be enough to claim and win a discrimination lawsuit. There would be no need to show that an employer’s hiring criteria are discriminatorily applied or used with discriminatory intent. This overturns several court rulings that have deemed statistical discrepancies to be insufficient proof of discrimination. The results of this legislation passing are obvious (as are the motivations behind it): It would force employers to abandon perfectly legitimate hiring criteria and also make them more vulnerable to litigation. More than likely, employers will respond by creating unique titles and apparently different jobs or, worse, creating quotas to avoid the possibility of ending up with a statistical discrepancy.

Mrs. Clinton is the sponsor of The Paycheck Fairness Act (similar to the Fair Pay Act) which would do almost exactly what the Fair Pay Act does. Apparently “35 years of experience” have been insufficient for the senator to understand that tinkering with a free market rarely works. Rating: F

Senators Clinton and Obama are the sponsors of the Fair Pay Restoration Act which, if passed, would eliminate any statute of limitations in many employment-discrimination cases. Your employer could be defending employment decisions from 30 years ago.

Conclusion

Lyndon Johnson once said that the bar to run for office was not very high. It only required that a person not be a convicted criminal or certified insane. While the current crop of candidates is certainly far above that, that they do prove that there’s no perfect candidate. The record is decidedly mixed and whatever intentions someone may have today may well flounder on the rocks of Congress. You can reach your own conclusions about who would make a good president. Perhaps you already have.

The Peoria, Illinois-based manufacturer of iconic yellow tractors may hire hundreds of engineers and designers to work in a planned 100-acre research and development facility and manufacturing plant in Raleigh, North Carolina. The new facility would develop prototype products for the Caterpillar line of machines and engines.

The company may also boost its 700-strong North Carolina workforce by hiring at the Cary, Clayton, and Sanford locations.

In addition, Caterpillar has plans to open a parts distribution center in Waco, Texas, while closing two small distribution centers in Dallas and Kansas City by early 2009. The company will hire about 180 people to work in the new 500,000-square-foot Waco facility. According to Caterpillar spokesperson Rachel Potts, the company is moving the work to the Waco facility to meet warehouse and transportation needs.

Economic Soft Landing?

“The combination of what the Fed has done — a little late maybe, but very aggressively addressing the softening economy and what the federal government has just done with the stimulus package — kind of assures that we’re going to have a soft landing,” Caterpillar chairman and chief executive officer Jim Owens recently told Reuters.

“Whether it’s a mild recession or just a significant slowdown is not so important to me,” he said. “But the re-acceleration of growth later in the year going into ‘09, ‘10, I think, is a likely occurrence now.”

Owens pointed out that despite a soft U.S. economy, international growth matters most right now for the national economy.

Caterpillar, which manufactures construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, and industrial gas turbines, brought in over $44 billion in 2007. For 2007, Caterpillar exported more than $12.676 billion of products from the United States, a 20% increase compared to 2006 exports of $10.539 billion.

The company has more than 100,000 workers worldwide. It also has plants in Lafayette, Indiana; Aurora, Illinois; and China.

I was never very good in science class, which is probably why I’m not a doctor today. Yet, I remember vividly the exercise on heated atoms. The experiment started with a flask of water and a Bunsen burner. When the flame from the Bunsen burner was applied to the flask, the atoms would dart all over the place in excitement. The excitement was uncontrollable. The energy remained as long as the heat was applied. As soon as the Bunsen burner was removed, the atoms moved back to a static state. All movement stopped.

This science experiment teaches a lot about recruiting “passive” sales candidates (those not presently looking for a job). All companies want to recruit the top-talent salespeople from other companies. However, that talent is usually locked in pretty tightly. The top salespeople are the best earners of the company, so they probably aren’t looking to leave. What would get them to leave? How do you find these candidates? What would energize passive sales candidates to be excited about another opportunity?

Years ago, my father used to take me deep-sea fishing off the Jersey shore. When we went fluke fishing, we used one kind of bait. When we went blue fishing, we used a different kind of bait. Thus, you need the right bait to attract a particular type of fish. You certainly won’t catch a shark using a worm for bait.

Once the baited hook was in the water, the fish didn’t usually grab it in a way that allows you to reel them in right away. There was a dance. You had to make sure the fish had eaten all of the bait and was firmly on the hook. Professional fishermen talk about all of the different techniques involved with playing this game well. On any Sunday morning, you can find television shows on ESPN that walk you through the steps on how to select bait and tackle, as well as techniques to bring the fish into the boat.

So, what is the right bait when looking to catch passive sales candidates? How do you motivate them into action? There are two fundamental motivators of salespeople: fear and greed. Very simply, it’s just those two. Thus, the two types of bait for recruiting passive sales candidates are fear and greed. Sales managers use techniques to direct their sales team based on those two motivators every day. Guess what happens when a “greed” technique is used on a salesperson motivated by fear? Nothing! Thus, it is critical for the sales manager to figure out the right motivator for each of his team members.

The wrong bait is also an issue for sales recruiting. Many recruiters rely strictly on the “greed” motivator. “Come to our company, and you can make oodles of money.” That will work with some sales candidates, but certainly not with all.

As sales managers have come to recognize, there is an equally-sized population motivated by fear. I might argue that the “fear” population is larger than the “greed” one. For those folks, the “greed” factor does not motivate them into action. Some of you may be thinking that some salespeople are motivated by both, which is true. However, one of those two is more dominant. One of those two drives them into action.

As you can imagine, I talk to salespeople all the time. Most lament about the goings-on in their companies. So, I ask them if they are looking for another job, and they say no. Then, an event occurs, something that gets their attention, and they call me and say that “today” they have decided to make a change. That event is different for every salesperson, but it always falls into the category of either fear or greed.

To motivate a passive sales candidate into action based on fear, do your homework to effectively use fear as a motivator. The media provides most of the tools you need to do this well. Here are some examples of the fears salespeople have:

Leadership Change

As a whole, salespeople don’t like change. They like their territory and compensation to remain static unless they are getting more. When there is a change in leadership at the top, they get very uneasy about what happens next. Will the territory change? Perhaps the compensation plan will change?

Thus, top salespeople could be open to listening to you about a new opportunity. How do you know when there is a leadership change? The business journal of that city announces promotions/new hires at the management level of companies. A weekly read of this tool gives you new ponds for your fishing expedition. You also may learn that information from an active candidate who cites that as a reason for looking for another job.

Company Acquisition Rumors

For the larger companies, the financial news (print, online, television) broadcasts rumors like this. Whether the company is going to be acquired or is the “acquiree,” there is uncertainty in the sales team. Salespeople don’t like uncertainty. Post-acquisition, there will be changes to the sales team, but who will still have a job and who won’t?

Just like kids who, during the week before Christmas, wonder what is inside the wrapped boxes under the tree, salespeople wonder what their “gift” will be. For some, the uncertainty of the future is just enough to lead them to be receptive to a job exploration.

Company Financial Woes

Again, this information is shared in the financial news media. It is also in the local business journal. Salespeople panic when they hear this kind of news. For one, they wonder if their companies will survive. However, they also connect a few other dots. “If the company isn’t doing well, I bet it will lower the commission rate.” Or, “I bet they cut the size of the sales team. Even if I survive the cut, I’ll have to do twice the work for the same pay.”

Compensation Change

How can you possibly know when there is a compensation-plan change in another company? This information is certainly not shared in the media. When “active” candidates are asked why they are looking at other opportunities, they usually cite compensation-plan changes as one of those reasons. Hearing that should trigger a campaign to find the top performers of that company so you can apply your “Bunsen burner” tactic.

To motivate passive salespeople into action, you need the right bait. With research and technique, you can apply the heat that sends these candidates into a frenzy.