The most likely answer to that question is no, because nearly 90 percent of the attendees at the “Workforce Planning” workshop at today’s ERE Expo in San Diego said their companies only had basic workforce planning models in place, and those traditional models don’t forecast human capital needs based upon possible future business scenarios.

“Too often the first step in the workforce planning process happens when the requisition is received, and that’s too late,” said Ed Newman, president of the Newman Group, who facilitated the workshop. Newman says that intermediate-level workforce planning combines workforce analytics with scenario modeling to look at how future business circumstances may impact retention and future hiring needs.

An example of the “what if” modeling strategy cited by Newman was the golden handcuffs scenario, which contemplates the impact of future stock prices on the company’s executive compensation plan. The model projects scenarios where the company’s executives might be vulnerable to poaching based upon future stock option vesting dates at a range of stock prices.

The most advanced level of workforce planning dovetails talent plans with business and financial planning, thus enabling organizations to achieve a comprehensive workforce plan that’s aligned with the business strategy. This high level planning facilitates business decisions. Only two attendees said their companies were currently planning at an advanced level.

An example of when advanced planning capabilities are required is when companies upgrade talent and employee skillsets to meet competitive pressures. A workforce segmentation plan defines the positions that are critical to driving the new strategy and those that are not. From there, the gaps in the workforce are uncovered and employees can be sourced, developed or redirected to meet the new business model.

“It’s important to understand the business strategy at the most finite level, so you can align the workforce plan, identify the gaps, and then build action plans to close them,” says Newman.

All talent gaps are closed in one of four ways according to Newman:

• Build:develop internal talent to fill openings

• Buy: acquire talent externally

• Borrow: augment headcount with contract or temporary labor

• Bounce: planned attrition

In the afternoon, the workshop attendees participated in hands-on exercises led by Mitzi Adwell, talent management practice leader for the Newman Group. Participants forecasted hiring needs, prioritized talent acquisition schedules, authored plans to close workforce gaps, and aligned workforce analytic fundamentals with business plans.

Practical application of the skills seemed to be just what the attendees wanted, because Newman says that all workforce plans must be updated at least quarterly to maintain efficacy, so having a strong comfort with the required skills is vital. Newman further commented that no matter how detailed the analytics, the plans are largely based on estimates, so if it takes HR one year or longer to complete the plan, it will be outdated before it’s implemented. Given the fact that the majority of today’s hot jobs didn’t even exist in 2004, HR professionals need to hone their workforce planning skills, because the only constant in business is that shift happens.

But you also know what happens when a person comes along who does not meet your expectations. Sure, this person is no superstar, but they’ll fill the position and maintain the status quo.

Which version of the above scenarios happens most at your company? Are your days filled with chest puffery bravado or feelings of blasé compliance? There has to be hope for a middle ground of sourcing success. So if we can all agree that the “employee model” is in need of a serious overhaul, where do we start?

Using a little sleuth-like eavesdropping is one approach. Bumping into sourcing experts is even better.

That’s why it’s so cool to be listening to Lou Adler speak at the ERE Expo in San Diego right now. Here are some of his gems:

• “It’s what you do with what you have, not what you have that counts. A performance profile matters. If I listened to the job description, instead of making 487 placements, I would have made 150 and been an ‘adequate’ recruiter. I became a very good recruiter because I didn’t listen to my clients. I didn’t compromise on performance though.”
• “Active candidates are hungry for any job; you don’t need to do much to improve this candidate base, which is about 15% of the population. Semi-passive candidate represent about 30% of the market, and less active candidates who want a better job make up about 35%. The remaining “very passive” market makes up about 20%.”
• “Which pool are you targeting with your online advertising? If you look at the dynamics, most people are going after active candidates. What do you think is the best pool? Where is the sweet spot?”
• “Top people share the following traits: multi-talented/flexible; show consistent results; need little direction; exceed expectations; and work well with the team.”
• “Who hires passive candidates? It’s hard as heck. Are you defining your ideal candidates? So who is your ideal candidate, and what is the person doing now? Where does he or she work, and what is the person’s title? Do you even know what kind of recognition this person has received?”
• “What factors would cause your ideal candidate to be interested in your offer? Does your current messaging meet this person’s needs? Who does this person know in your company? How could you get to this person online?”

If Lou’s advice leaves you sitting there clueless about who this person might know at your company or even how to meet this person’s needs, it’s obviously time to develop your own cache of ideas. So what are your answers? And what are you waiting for?

On the 80-20 rule:

Find out what the most critical 20% of jobs in your company are. “The 20% the CEO is really concerned about, that sweet spot. You have to be great at producing top talent in that sweet spot and good at everything else.”

On competencies and diversity:

So many pilots now are female, but there was the time when “people assumed you had to be in the military, you had to be a fighter pilot …” to prepare yourself for a pilot job. But when you break down the job into core competencies, you can identify what’s really needed to do the job, and those experiences and skills aren’t exclusively male.

On panel interviews:

“Panels can work very well if you have the right structure. The only caution is what you don’t want is ‘groupthink.’ Be cautious. Make sure your hiring managers aren’t thinking that everyone has to agree to hire the candidate. That’s the route to non-recruiting.”

On managing meetings to review candidates and similar meetings:

“Smart executives let everyone else go first … if you go first, what you’re going to say colors what everyone else says.”

On the relationship between HR and line managers:

“HR doesn’t own talent. They own talent. We’re here to help, we’re here to facilitate, but at the end of the day,” managers own it.

Davis is the writer of some killer articles for the print Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership (for leaders in recruiting), as well as the author of the online article about the role of the hiring manager in recruiting.

One of the first lessons that many third-party recruiters learn is one borrowed from the sales profession. The lesson basically teaches that as intermediaries between the organization and the applicant, the recruiter has to work diligently to equalize expectations between the two parties if they want to have a realistic chance at closing the deal and converting the applicant to an employee.

During the courtship, the recruiter needs to help establish expectations in the applicant’s mind about the nature of the work the job entails, the work environment, the resources that will be made available to the employee, and of course, what compensation the employer will likely offer. The recruiter must also work to establish expectations with the hiring manager regarding the applicant’s fit for the job requirements, their work ethic, and of course, what type of offer would be required for the applicant to seriously consider employment with the organization.

It’s a delicate dance, and when performed well, can bring applicants’ expectations down to earth, while bringing hiring managers’ expectations in line with reality.

Unfortunately, in today?s fast-paced recruiting climate, most recruiting processes are administration-centric, implying that they are not designed to close the deal with top talent, but rather to ease the administrative complexity of the hiring process. Establishing expectations is a practice long since tossed out the door by corporate recruiters, but one they should consider bringing back.

An Ever-Expanding Chasm

In a book entitled The Support Economy, the authors write: “People have changed more than the business organizations upon which they depend. The last 50 years have seen the rise of a new breed of individuals, yet corporations continue to operate according to logic invented at the time of their origin, a century ago. The chasm that now separates individuals and organizations is marked by frustration, mistrust, disappointment, and even rage.”

This chasm is overwhelmingly evident and growing in most recruiting departments. In an era where someone can move funds from one banking institution to another using a simple application on their mobile phone, notify all of their friends of their exact GPS location with the click of a button, and plan a party coordinating services from dozens of vendors using a single website, it seems ridiculous that it takes 40-plus minutes to apply for a job with a single organization. It’s even worse that these applicants then get nothing in return but a generic email notifying them that their application was received.

Expectations Unset

If you have ever gone to the movies more than once to see a new release on premier night and gotten to the theater just a few minutes before the movie was scheduled to begin, you most likely entered the theater with the expectation that your seats, for lack of a better word, were going to “suck.” When you ended up sitting between two groups with loud children while your date ended up sitting three rows back in the seat with gum stuck all over it, you didn’t like it, but you understood why. In this scenario, past experiences helped set your expectations.

Now let’s consider a different scenario. A new restaurant opens near your office, and all week you have been hearing people rave about the quality of the food. One day for lunch, after hearing all of the positive reviews, you opt to try it. You walk in and are seated promptly, and all of the service staff seem very attentive. They take your order quickly, after which you begin to salivate already thinking about the wonderful food you just ordered and all of the positive reviews you heard. Ten minutes pass and you start to look at your watch, 15 and your right foot begins to tap, 20 and you start to look around. By the time 30 minutes elapses, you have moved well past anticipation and are frustrated and disappointed.

Realizing your discontent, the service staff steps in. After voicing your concerns, they inform you that unlike many restaurants, all ingredients are prepped to order and that all dishes cooked to order in an effort to maintain the highest quality standards. They go on to inform you that on average it takes the kitchen approximately 40 minutes to produce each order. You leave angry, upset, and hungry, primarily because no one equalized your expectations.

You walked in with one set of expectations, which you didn’t communicate, and the restaurant operates under a set of expectations, which they didn’t communicate. When combined, these created a significant chasm in customer experience.

Whenever expectations are not set upfront, the customer in any scenario is likely to set expectations beyond those which can be met by the party providing the goods/service, a rule of thumb that often leads to customer disappointment!

Preventing Applicant Frustration, Mistrust, Disappointment, and Anger

Preventing ill feelings among applicants resulting from their expectations not being met is truly easy, just stop treating them like crap! However, since that isn’t likely to happen, try equalizing expectations upfront with applicants and candidates about what they should realistically expect with regards to your hiring process.

While they still may not like the process, customer service studies repeatedly prove that customers, when educated what to expect, will stick through the process longer.

Think about it, when you dial in to a call center and learn that average hold times are seven minutes, are you not more apt to wait, and less disgruntled when they finally answer than you would normally be after waiting on hold for seven minutes without a warning?

Simple Statistics Will Do the Job

Providing data to help equalize applicant expectations isn’t difficult and doesn’t require a degree in advanced mathematics. To get started, consider these simple statistics:

• Total applicant volume. Contrary to popular belief among recruiters, releasing this statistic is not tantamount to sharing a trade secret. Inform applicants that in the past year “x” amount of applicants have applied. Add which percentage were selected for phone screens, how many advanced beyond the phone screen to an in-person interview, what percentage made it to the final round of consideration, what percentage were offered employment, and what percentage were contacted regarding an alternate position for which they did not directly apply.
• Process cycle time. If it takes three months on average for you to generate a hire, say so. While it may be embarrassing (it should be), releasing this statistic helps candidates understand why they may not have an offer on day two following their submittal. If you really want to be customer-centric, break down the cycle time with a detailed timeline that educates applicants about what your process looks like.
• Source statistics. Letting applicants who really want to work for your organization know they may be more likely to garner an interview if they attend an event or are submitted by an employee as a referral is a great way to allow them to circumvent the design flaws in your archaic process. Simply indicate what percentage of hires come from each source or express it as a ratio. For example, 26% or 1:4 hires applied for the position via our website, or 9% or 1:10 hires approached a recruiter during an industry trade show.

The statistics don’t have to be complicated, and sharing them poses no risk with the exception of embarrassment. If you have the data, and your recruiting workflow varies by job family, location, etc., publish the statistics relevant to the job being applied for.

Final Thoughts

Just like progress bars on multi-page online employment applications and anticipated hold time notices on call-center holding messages, publishing simple statistics about the yield and cycle time of your recruiting process can do a lot to reduce applicant frustration.

While your applicant database from a recruiting perspective may be nothing more than a data store on a mass of people you will never hire, it could also be a data store full of customers more apt to continue buying your organization’s goods and services, if only they were a little less frustrated with you as a potential employer.

Will doing it solve all of your problems stemming from a disconnect between your process and society at large? Probably not, but it may help a larger percentage of the Web generation tolerate the antiquated approach a wee bit longer while you catch up.

Job boards all generally present listings the same way: Job descriptions are matched to a jobseeker’s keywords. The results are then displayed in order of posting date. Now, Yahoo! HotJobs (profile ; site) is starting to display the results in terms of relevancy, meaning that the recency of a listing is less important than how it meets both the jobseeker’s criteria and Yahoo!’s own algorithms.

The company calls the new system REAL, which stands for relevance, engagement, availability and location. Some of these elements were already being used to present results. Jobseekers on HotJobs, and on other boards, have long been able to search by locale and job title, adding keywords to narrow the results.

Now, Yahoo! has finessed its search system to consider:

• Relevance: Matching text in job titles and descriptions to the keywords candidates use;
• Engagement: Measuring how well candidates respond to the job listing;
• Availability: Determining that the positions displayed are still unfilled;
• Location: Showing jobs in a location of interest to the candidate.

The better a job posting fits the criteria, the higher it will rank in the results list. How Yahoo! will determine if a job is filled is not clear, but the other criteria will depend on how well recruiters write job descriptions. To help them, Yahoo! has posted a REAL Playbook detailing dozens of tips to get better results from their listings. Among them are such suggestions as: keep postings short, 150-250 words; avoid “gimmick” headlines in favor of plain descriptive job titles.

In announcing the new search results system, Yahoo! said it has already resulted in 25 percent more applies per posting, a metric that measures volume, but doesn’t necessarily translate into applicant quality.

However, Jeff Kinder, senior vice president and HotJobs general manager, says, “Yahoo! has shown that relevance matters in search results, and it’s powerful to apply Yahoo!’s search technology to HotJobs and see immediate and significant performance improvements. We believe Yahoo! HotJobs has a distinct advantage as online recruitment evolves and insights and technology play increasingly important roles.”

O?ver sourc?ing syn?drome: the need to find more candidates than needed caused by inappropriately eliminating the good candidates you already have.

This article expands upon one I wrote recently on the serious topic of over-sourcing. If you’ve ever lost a good candidate because someone conducted an inaccurate interview, someone on the hiring team didn’t like the person’s personality, or a top candidate decided not to pursue your opportunity, you’ve experienced over-sourcing syndrome.

Sadly, the problem is not going away, or even getting better. It’s based on the idea that we (recruiters, recruiting managers, and HR leaders) spend far too much effort, training, money, and resources than necessary on sourcing.

There are many other hiring problems that need fixing that would eliminate the need for recruiters to find unnecessary extra candidates to complete assignments. It’s comparable to buying extra raw materials to deal with a scrap problem, rather than fixing the scrap problem.

When the hiring process is examined from an end-to-end perspective, at least half the problems in hiring good people can be attributed to bad job descriptions, incorrect assessments, managers who have no idea of how to recruit, and recruiters who have trouble influencing and closing top performers.

The remaining problems have to do with not finding enough top people. Solve this by using better advertising, better marketing, and better technology. Perhaps the most dramatic way to solve the problem is to become the top-performing company in your industry and get on one of Fortune magazine’s “Most Admired” or “Best Employee” lists.

Then you’ll have all the best candidates you need. The problem will then just be to screen out the bad ones. With an abundance of top people, it doesn’t matter if your scrap rate is high.

However, for most companies to even have a shot of becoming “Most Admired” for something, you’ll first need to improve your end-to-end hiring problems, rather than just focusing on the idea that seeing more candidates is the solution to your talent woes.

With this mind, let’s start by categorizing the causes of over-sourcing syndrome into these big buckets:

• The use of traditional job descriptions to attract, screen, assess, and recruit top performers.
• Problems associated with the hiring manager and the interviewing team.
• Anything related to less-than-stellar recruiter skills and capabilities.
• Technology-related challenges, especially ease-of-use.
• Administrative roadblocks like dumb comp rules and incorrect legal edicts.

I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but I want to start this tirade with the idea that using job descriptions to recruit, source, assess and hire top performers is a complete waste of time.

Job descriptions that emphasize qualifications and experiences are useless and counter-productive on a number of levels.

First, top people who are fully qualified won’t apply, since there’s little incentive do the same work again, except for a big comp hit.

Second, using skills and experiences as a screen also automatically excludes great people from other industries with a different mix of comparable experiences. Making matters worse, most ads are hard to find and filled more with disqualifiers than attractors. Relying on a job description as the basis for advertising turns off the most highly qualified candidates.

Now consider high-potential, A-level, fast-track candidates. These are the exact people you want to see and hire, but based on the minimum qualifications listed in your ads, they’re not qualified, and are asked not to apply.

Even if they do apply, they’d be excluded by some recruiter or questionnaire because they didn’t have the “right” qualifications. While companies all say they want to see A-level candidates, their business processes, especially the over-reliance on skills-based job descriptions, prevents this from happening, other than on a by-exception basis. When skills are used as the basis for attracting and screening candidates, companies, by default, have set themselves up to exclude the best and only see average candidates.

So if you want to eliminate this humongous non-sourcing bottleneck, stop posting job descriptions where good people can see them. Instead, convert your job descriptions into performance profiles and these performance profiles into creative and compelling advertising. Here’s a group of articles that can help you do this.

While using job descriptions come up first in preventing companies from hiring enough top performers, second is hiring managers and the interviewing team. As proof, just imagine how many more placements you’d make if it weren’t for hiring managers. (FYI: this was facetious.)

Performance Profiles Can Encourage Good People to Apply

Here are just some of the ways that hiring managers and interviewing team members prevent companies from hiring good people:

• They over-rely on traditional job descriptions on who they’ll even see.
• They are unresponsive.
• They won’t spend time with the recruiter explaining real job needs.
• They are poor interviewers or have too narrow a focus.
• Much of their assessment is based on intuition, gut-feelings, personality, and favorite questions.
• They’re unimpressive and turn off good people.
• They don’t know how to use the interview to recruit top performers.
• Members of the interviewing team all describe the real job differently.

Getting managers to use a performance profile instead of a job description can minimize many of these problems. The key is to have managers first clearly describe what the person taking the job needs to do to be successful. Then force them to develop an employee value proposition (EVP) by asking, “Why would a top performer with all of the experiences listed want this job for the compensation package being offered?”

This totally changes the nature of the conversation when the recruiter takes the assignment. (Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to take the assignment.) Many managers will be more open to see a different mix of candidates as a result and they’ll be in a better position to assess and recruit them as well.

From what I can tell, managers can only assess candidates accurately when they understand the difference between the real job (the projects and typical tasks involved) and the job description.

In combination with the EVP, it gives them the foundation to present a compelling case to a top performer. The next step is to make sure everyone on the hiring team is singing from the same song sheet. Here are a few articles that help you work with hiring managers in converting job descriptions into something useful.

Curing over-sourcing syndrome starts by eliminating job descriptions, using performance profiles, and getting hiring managers to own the real job and EVP. These steps alone will solve half of your non-sourcing related sourcing problems. In subsequent over-sourcing articles I’ll provide some ideas on how to eliminate the rest.

The decline in available talent coupled with the increase in worldwide demand will not be solved by better sourcing alone. Even in a downturn, the demand for top talent is accelerating. Hiring the best is a multi-faceted problem that is getting more and more challenging.

From what I can tell, few HR and recruiting executives have fully grasped the scope of the problem, and even those who do are reluctant to tackle the problem head-on. To me, this might be the biggest non-sourcing problem of them all.

If you’ve been tasked with finding new foreign employees at the managerial level or with a highly specialized knowledge, you’re probably keenly aware that the demand for H-1Bs is exceeding the current supply of 65,000 annually.

But are there alternatives available, and if so, how do they work?

Solutions provider Visanow says there are definitely alternatives, and one option is the L-1 visa. The Chicago-based company says this is because there is no cap on the number of L-1 visas issued per year.

The L-1 visa was designed as a temporary visa option for specialized workers employed by multinational companies. It has expanded in popularity with an average of 315,000 being issued over the past three years, the company says.

“The L-1 visa was originally designed to allow multinationals or foreign companies that are affiliated with U.S. organizations to hire managers, executives, or employees with specialized knowledge,” says Visanow chief executive officer Robert Meltzer.

Watch Your Step

Companies should be warned: this increase in popularity also means that the government has started cracking down on L-1 visa applications.

“It appears that the L-1 applications are now being subjected to higher scrutiny in the application process at some of the service centers by the USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] application reviewing officers, particularly IT consulting companies and even more so, Indian IT consulting companies,” says Meltzer.

“Both the L-1A and L-1B have very clear and specific requirements, so there is a lot on the table for the CIS to review to determine if the case fits,” he says.

The L-1A is used for hiring managers or executive-level positions while the L-1B is for hiring foreign workers who have specialized knowledge of the company’s product and its application in international markets or have an advanced level of knowledge of processes and procedures of the company.

Meltzer says applicants need to provide as much information and documentation as possible to help the adjudicators understand the position and its requirements.

“USCIS adjudicators are not usually familiar with the nature of the specialized or advanced knowledge, so applications have to be as specific, detailed, and thorough as possible when speaking to the employee’s skills,” he says.

As in any situation, some employers may be exploring and trying the L when it’s not the “best” solution.

“With the limit on H-1Bs, many companies are encountering un-chartered waters in regard to hiring the skilled foreign workers they need, especially with the increased employment focus on IT and tech workers,” he says.

“Depending on the individual and specific job duties, the L-1 can be a great fit. For others, it’s not going to work and the USCIS will see this through the extensive requirements that must be met for an L application,” says Meltzer.

After all, the federal government is fighting similar battles to what is happening in your organization — a surge of retirement-age analysts, supervisors, and managers are departing — and the government is probing the private sector to fill this critical shortage of senior-level specialists.

A newly issued report analyzing hiring trends for new employees at the grades 12, 13, 14, and 15 in fiscal year 2005 shows that the government hired more than 12,000 new upper-level workers, or 39% more than the 8,600 employees of the same rank hired in FY 1990, preceding the workforce downsizing of the 1990s.

Rusty Hiring Practices

But don’t give up the good fight for workers just yet. While your organization likely uses a variety of tools to find candidates — from the Big Three job boards, to smaller niche boards, to using your company’s corporate career site, to networking and beyond, the government is still posting jobs with myopic perfection.

The report shows that 21% of respondents said they could not easily find federal job vacancies. To put this in perspective, the government almost lost out on one-quarter of its workforce by posting nearly all job vacancies on one site, USAJOBS, the government’s job-search portal.

The report, “In Search of Highly Skilled Workers: A Study on the Hiring of Upper Level Employees from Outside the Federal Government,” suggests that federal agencies rarely use other tools to ensure they have a highly qualified, diverse applicant pool.

Survey responses show that 45% of upper-level workers rely on word-of-mouth opportunities. In comparison, only 23% of respondents first learned about their federal job through USAJOBS. Even fewer new hires first learned about their jobs through newspaper, journal, or magazine ads (2%) or from a federal recruiter (1%).

Government Service Has Retention Strengths

Even though it seems as though the private sector is better at finding new workers, the government seems to have an advantage to keeping the workers happy for the long term.

So if you think your retention tools are sharp enough, it might be time to reconsider. The report finds that upper-level new hires greatly prefer their agencies’ workplace flexibilities, such as telework and alternative work schedules, more than at their previous non-federal jobs. The workers also find federal work more challenging than their private-sector jobs.

A good amount of the respondents think that working for their new agencies gives them a better chance of making a difference. They also viewed their agencies as more ethical than their previous employers.

Some of the other tricks up the government’s sleeve include compensation flexibilities (amended in the Federal Workforce Flexibility Act of 2004) such as offering to:

• pay recruitment bonuses and relocation allowances.
• set initial salary at a higher rate than the lowest rate for a given grade based on superior qualifications.
• pay off some or all of the employee’s student loan debt.
• allow new employees to accrue leave at a higher rate by crediting directly related work experience gained elsewhere.

Last week, I presented a short case study about a recruiter named Maxine. After just a few weeks of employment, she was being criticized by her boss for not getting many open call center positions filled and for spending too much time trying to create a profile of the successful person. She wanted to know more; her boss wanted action.

I asked several questions, and asked you to respond with your own thoughts. Here are the questions I posed with some of your responses and my own comments.

The Questions

How can Maxine satisfy her boss and hire high-quality people? Is it even possible to do this? Can she profile candidates without alienating them or her boss? If you were Maxine, what would you do in this situation? How can Maxine succeed?

Most of you who responded had strong opinions about what Maxine should do. I categorized your responses into three areas: (1) those who felt she should spend time to understand the corporate culture and build rapport and improve the communication she has with her boss; (2) those who felt Maxine should just get to work and post/fill the open positions; and (3) those who thought she should build a job profile and do a competency analysis about the strong performers. A few of you thought she should just quit and look for a different job.

Know the Culture and the Hiring Manager/Boss’s Expectations

A significant percentage of you (35%) felt that Maxine’s main problem was not taking the time to fully understand the expectations of either her boss or the hiring manager or the culture of the organization.

Success in recruiting is often dependent on the amount of trust the hiring manager has in your ability to find the right people quickly. One reason why hiring managers are inclined to look more favorably upon a candidate submitted by an agency than by an internal recruiter is because of the trust the manager has in the quality of the recruiters and in the screening and assessment process of the agency. Agencies spend time and money to create a brand and build that trust. It doesn’t happen overnight.

Maxine is new to this organization and has not built any relationships or established a personal “brand.” In fact, with her reluctance to fulfill the hiring manager’s expectations, she is already beginning to create a negative brand for herself.

One of you said, “Since Maxine’s new to the job, it’s critical that she work on developing a good relationship with her boss. Talk with the boss to get her perceptions of the department and the hiring manager.”

Another wrote, “I see the hiring manager’s expectations to be the cornerstone of doing the job successfully or not. For the beginning this would be my main focus.”

She must also know the culture of the organization. One wrote, “It is apparent that she does not understand the culture of the organization that she is hiring for. This needs to be a top priority for her and should be a top priority for the hiring manager.”

Maxine also made the mistake of thinking that management cared about the level of turnover. In an organization of this size and type, 200 open positions and 100% turnover are most likely looked upon as normal. One of you said it well: “I would say that Maxine’s first mistake was assuming that the company was concerned about its level of turnover for sales staff, especially within the first few weeks of her working there.”

Get the Job Done

One of you responded with this to-the-point suggestion, “FILL THE ORDERS based on the current, already acceptable, standards. Over time, Maxine may raise those standards if it is possible to do so . . .”

In fact, most of you (46%) felt that her only job was to hire people. One of you said, “Put simply, for this initial round of hiring, I would put bodies in seats. Given the short deadline, there isn’t time to analyze anything and it doesn’t sound like anyone within this organization wants to hear about it right now anyway.”

Recruiters are hired to find and hire good employees. Maxine clearly forgot this and began right away to spend time and energy on issues that, while important and ultimately needed for success, are not germane to the short-term needs of the hiring manager.

One of you wrote, “I believe that if Maxine wants to keep the job, she needs to recruit as her manager wants her to.”

Another wrote, “If I were in Maxine?s place, I would stop overanalyzing and start working the system as it is.”

Gather Data

Some of you (12%) also felt that if Maxine wanted to reduce turnover she needed to build a profile of the good candidates and do a job analysis. One wrote, “If I were Maxine, I would have a heart-to-heart with my manager to explain why and how profiling can help.”

And another said, “Review core skills sets required for the position and [see that the] job descriptions are appropriate and review the hiring process, including the Interview Guide.”

While I believe this is eventually a necessary step, if Maxine does not fill positions quickly, she won?t be around to do this analysis.

In Summary

If Maxine is to be seen as a top performer, and if she wants to build a strong reputation within the organization, she will need to take a balanced and prioritized approach to her problem. She needs to have a good reputation with her hiring manager. One respondent said, “Maxine seems to have forgotten a cardinal rule of being a good corporate recruiter: Your hiring manager is your client, and you must keep your client happy.”

I completely agree.

But she needs to hire people, and hire them now! She has to take the actions the organization expects, whether they are what she thinks are best or not, and then systematically and carefully move toward a better understanding of the competencies and skills of the best performers and to a methodology of assessment. To do that in her first few weeks, without any hiring success, is the formula for defeat.

One of the respondents gave a very balanced view of how Maxine might proceed: “As suggested by her boss, Maxine should start by posting her requirements on job boards.

Having done that, she would have in place a steady source of talent from which to short-list candidates. In the interim, she can also talk to existing employees and understand the reasons for such high turnover. She can also speak to those who have been in the organization for more than a year and understand from them as to what motivates them to stay in the organization and perform consistently.”

And a final reader response that sums it all up:

“Maxine’s error lies in not understanding and aligning with the organizational dynamics at work here. To transition from a pure ‘efficiency’ model to one that allows her to focus on quality (of which decreased turnover is a component), Maxine needs to start over, first building a superior candidate pool within the constraints of the current model. Once she has surpassed the organization’s expectations, she’ll hopefully have the capital to begin a serious change management effort focused on building quality into the process. Without that capital, she cannot garner the executive (or line management) support required to accomplish real change. With it, she can develop a plan that includes both a vision and sense of urgency, both required elements for leading change.”

Maxine may not be the best fit for this company, but she could be successful if she’s willing to make a few alterations to her priorities and accept the realities of working for this organization.

Thanks for all your many great responses.

I’m sure you read “Top 10 Indications That You Are a Dinosaur (Old-School) Recruiter.” Sullivan is correct when he reminds us that change is a constant in our profession and that we must change with the times or fade away.

But as I read that article I thought, I’m not that old yet! Well, time to start a blog. Then the strangest thing happened. Someone else wrote another article that said just the opposite! Howard Adamsky’s view on “Recruiting, Innovation, and Thinking Differently” left me pondering which approach would suit me best.

Certainly, both Sullivan and Adamsky have created a very interesting juxtaposition. At January’s meeting of the Arizona Professional Recruiters Association, almost 100 recruiters from all over Phoenix showed up to hear several tenured recruiters present their opinions on the subject.

One thing was immediately clear: Not one recruiter in the building had yet hired someone they met on MySpace. Now, I’m not saying MySpace isn’t a reasonable tool to help find people. I just question how much time and effort you would have to put in to get one hire.

Any recruiter who relies on any one set of tools is doomed to fail. I’ve recruited for large companies, small companies, and those in between. Give me a phone, a pen, a pad of paper and an Internet connection, and I’ll find you hard-to-find people. I’m able to do this not because I have a blog, but because I dig under stones and find people who no one else has.

The best recruiters I have ever worked with have a knack for finding names, hidden sources, getting referrals, and making things happen. ZoomInfo is a fantastic tool if you have the gumption to use it right. ZoomInfo lists just about every CEO and every other executive officer at every company in its database. How many of those people have you called? If you called 50 CEOs and could creatively build a relationship with a few of them, how many referrals could you get? And how many of those CEOs might think, wow, I want this recruiter to work for me!

There is a simple solution to the problem of the best way to find candidates, and it does not (yet) require all of the new gadgets cited by these experts. If you are a good recruiter, if your CEO loves you, if your numbers show that you fill lots of positions and your hires stick around, you did it because you had a large bag of tricks to draw on. You knew that, even though you posted the job and got a few good resumes, you still had to search for more. That’s where your bag of tricks comes in.

If I were to drop all of the techniques that have made me successful and switch to just new technological tools, I would fail. My number of hires would plummet.

To be a “rock star” recruiter, you have to do three things:

1. You have to be able to build a relationship with a stranger. You can practice this anywhere. Try getting into a reasonable discussion with someone in an elevator or in line at a sandwich shop. See what you can learn about them. Make some judgment calls and probe lightly with an open-ended comment and I’ll bet you that you can strike a nerve and get them interested in talking to you. Tactfully manipulate the conversation in a way that gets you the information you want. Who knows: you could be talking to a dot-net developer at the software company across the street. After all, they eat lunch at the same place you do!
2. You have to be good at selling. You’re not selling vacuum cleaners or water filtration systems. You’re selling a new way of life. If you have a candidate interested in talking to you, you have let them know that your motivation is to be their advocate. After all, it makes no sense to get someone into a job only to have them find out you sold them a bill of goods. Besides, I want their referrals. Conversely, never oversell a candidate to a manager.
3. You have to have the knack of finding hard-to-find people. In any given year, you have several types of hires including slam-dunks, referrals, and direct responses. But to be a rock star recruiter, you must have some hard-to-find hires. These are the passive candidates who were not even looking for a new job. You might have seen their names in the paper, read articles or white papers they wrote, come across a quote from them on a product?who knows. You might even have found them using some of the newest technology. But no matter what, to be a 100K+ recruiter, you have to be good at turning over stones.

Successful recruiting is just that simple. You are a recruiter. You have a bag of tricks. Some recruiters do just enough to get by. Others go beyond and use all the new tools and gadgets. Still others rely on tried-and-true methods that work (and effectively at that!).

I propose that before we jump on a bandwagon, or conversely, ignore it totally, we realize that the answer is somewhere in the middle. You just might get your next hire from MySpace after all.

— Despite what is happening at Bear Stearns, NYC-area students are hungry for their bite of the Big Apple, with Wall Street jobs in the highest demand. Results from the Universum IDEAL survey of six area undergraduate universities reveal that both Goldman Sachs (24%) and the financial services industry (29%) are tops. In contrast, undergraduate students outside of New York are more interested in Google as the ideal employer, and the government/public service sector as the ideal industry. NYC-area students also value compensation packages the most (40%), compared to the general population, which prefers work/life balance (39%).

— The Universum survey also reveals students’ preferences when it comes to gathering information about employers, with career fairs coming in first, followed by internships, company websites, online job boards, and coming in fifth, company recruiters at school. The students say the information they prefer the most at career fairs includes material on internships; current job openings; career-development opportunities; the actual recruitment process; and mentoring.

— MonsterTRAK, the student division of Monster.com, released its sixth-annual nationwide survey of employers and college students. New graduates may be disappointed, as 73% expect to receive two or more job offers upon graduation. However, employers are being cautiously optimistic, with 59% planning to hire 2008 graduates in the spring or summer, a decrease of 17% year-over-year, while 29% of companies are still unsure. One-third of employers with hiring plans will increase the average salary for 2008 graduates to $39,500, up from $36,000 last year. Recruiters should note that only 57% of new grads think base salary offerings are of great importance, with 81% ranking growth opportunities as very or extremely important, and 79% seeking a job that offers personal fulfillment.

— Many engineering graduates are seeing larger-than-average salary increases, with a 5.7% boost since last year, raising their average offer to $56,336. Salary Survey, a quarterly report published by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, says chemical engineering grads are seeing the biggest increase since last year. The increase for chemical engineers is 6.2%, bringing their average offer to $63,749. Civil engineering grads are seeing a 4.8% increase, to $49,427; electrical engineering grads are seeing a 3.5% increase, to $56,512; and mechanical engineering grads are seeing a 3.4% increase, to $56,429.

— Think it’s hard getting across to Gen Y? A new survey of more than 2,500 senior HR and training executives finds that companies are twice as likely to report difficulty reaching Millennials than any other employee group. The new data, from Boston-based Novations Group, shows that 18.9% of respondents reported problems with Gen Y/Millennials. This figure is more than double other groups, such as off-shore employees (7%); older employees (5%); and recent immigrants (2.5%). So just what is the best way to communicate with Gen Y this hiring season? Novations urges recruiters to avoid gimmicks and not to expect tried-and-true ways of communicating to work. Younger employees are more “jaded,” so skip the gimmicks. “Take part in a two-way discussion, and don’t try to wow them with a fancy presentation. Don’t be afraid to turn the meeting over to your team, leverage their know-how, and take your own notes. Use less technology, and eliminate it all together for meetings with fewer than 50 employees,” says Novations executive consultant Michelle Knox.

Scouring the Web for information on individuals and companies, ZoomInfo gathers it, indexes it, compiles it and presents it in a neat package. Like many search engines, the work is done entirely by computer. So it has limitations. Still, ZoomInfo makes it a snap for recruiters to develop candidate lists simply by entering their criteria.

But, says Tad Goltra , VP and GM of ZoomInfo’s recruiting business unit, recruiters have found plenty of other ways of using what is rapidly becoming the largest business search engine in the world. “Recruiters are a big part of our business,” says the former Monster exec.

Talking with ERE recently, Goltra shared these innovative uses and talked about plans for making ZoomInfo even more accessible to non-corporate recruiters.

Each time we interview a prospective employee, we not only question the recruit, we question ourselves. Am I talking to a candidate who would become an asset to the company? This candidate looks good on paper and is in a best-behavior mode, but will he or she be a good match to support our organization’s goals? Or is this a potential company saboteur?

As recruiters, we have the daunting job of selecting employees who can deliver what an organization defines as its on-brand activity. We want to avoid an employee who doesn’t fit in, who will be unproductive, criticize management, provide substandard service, or undermine a company’s internal culture and its promise to its clients. These are traits we’ve identified as workplace “sabotage.”

If you think the word “saboteur” overstates the situation, consider the potential damage a saboteur can inflict on your organization: squandered recruitment costs, decrease in productivity, harm to company reputation, inadequate customer service, and negative workplace morale. Ultimately, these behaviors also chip away at your bottom line.

Distinguish Champions from Saboteurs During the Interview Process

Employees play a critical role in the success of the company by carrying out its values and establishing a culture of engagement and success. So we need to communicate to recruits what will be expected of them and, most critical, identify the characteristics we’re looking for and weed out potential saboteurs.

Each organization calls for a different set of behaviors and personality traits. Identifying these behaviors (and recognizing the absence of these traits) in the recruits we interview is a weighty challenge, but I’ve found the following practices to be effective:

1. Develop a list of desired behaviors that match your company’s brand promise. Beyond the job description and corresponding competencies, identify personality features reflected in the company’s mission, vision, and values and its promise to its customers. No matter what the level of the job, to become a champion, an individual must also pair well with your company’s values and goals. A company focused on achieving product excellence, for example, requires innovation, a passion for quality and constant improvement. Customer intimacy, on the other hand, calls for traits that include respect for people, teamwork, caring, listening skills, and the ability to anticipate. As we all know, we can teach job skills, but change someone’s personality or values, well that’s a different story. It’s not a new thought, but I’ll say it anyway because it’s so important: Hire for attitude and train for skill.
2. Evaluate the attitudes of your champions. To arrive at the traits and behaviors necessary for the success of your business, consider the champions within your own company: the high achievers who set the standard for quality. What behaviors have caught the attention of their managers and others? What words capture the positive aspects of their personalities? What do these employees value in the workplace? Use what you learn from this examination to question and evaluate your recruits during and after an interview, seeking the same “champion” traits, and thereby avoiding the hire of a saboteur.
3. Enlist your champions to recruit champions. Select some of your champions to be recruiters. They know and are a part of the brand culture, and can attract or identify other like-minded applicants they see as a good fit. Provide them with a compelling referral card, to be used discriminately. The card should include a clever copy line and call to action that has a sense of immediacy.
4. Provide full disclosure. Make sure you thoroughly provide candidates with the values/culture of your company and its expectations (work hours, dress code, holidays, pay structure, customer-service expectations). At the Disney “auditions,” a recruitment video lays out all the rules, all the do’s and don’ts, along with information about the company’s heritage, mission, and values. This is followed by a self-selection component, asking, “From what you’ve learned during this interview, is this the right job/company for you? Do you think you are right for the position/company?” This gives the recruit a chance to bow out and likely has saved the company from someone who wouldn’t have fit in (i.e., a potential saboteur).
5. Think outside the interview. I know of recruiters who make the most of every minute a highly qualified candidate is in the building. Through a bit of informal sleuthing (i.e., planting an observer in the lobby to listen to candidates introduce themselves to the receptionist, watching them as they wait to be called to their appointment), they notice the candidate’s speech and behavior and report back to the interviewer. On a smaller scale, some recruiters ask the receptionist about how recruits announced themselves when they arrived and whether there was anything notable about their behavior while they waited. Did they look carefully at surroundings, turn on the TV, talk to other candidates, or talk on their cell phone? Southwest Airlines may be the leader in hiring for attitude, putting a heap of effort into finding new hires who match the Southwest formula (humor, teamwork, energy, and friendliness). Southwest’s “vice president of people” uses a group interview as part of the process to assess personality. In addition to watching how members of the group interact, she might ask a dozen participants to tell the group about when their sense of humor helped them, or what their personal motto is. It is not so much the answer; it’s the way a person answers the questions.
6. Place candidates in a real-life situation. Carrying the practice of identifying desired traits a big step further, companies such as McDonald’s and Embassy Suites develop job-related scenarios as part of their hiring process. Applicants’ answers can be evaluated according to whether they are consistent with corporate goals. Referring to Disney again, recruiters set up a scenario in which a young park guest drops his ice-cream cone. The recruit is asked what he or she would do as a park employee observing this event. One answer: Clean up the spilled ice cream immediately to prevent people from slipping and to maintain the park’s cleanliness. Another answer: Take the child (and parents) to the closest ice-cream vendor to replace the cone. Which answer do you think is considered “the best” in the Magic Kingdom? The recruit who arrives at the latter answer shows that he or she understands the brand promise and likely has what it takes to become a brand champion. Pr?t ? Manger, a New York (and UK-based) business that sells healthy takeout food at reasonable prices, takes the following approach: After the initial interview, strong candidates are asked to work for one day in a Pr?t store and are evaluated based on the Pr?t “desired attitude.” At the end of the day, only about 20% of candidates are found eligible for the position.

We are all faced with the same dilemma. We need to be able to detect the future success or future failure of a candidate. We like to think we have good chemistry with the people we hire, but don’t go with your gut feelings about whether you and the recruit have good “vibes.”

From start to finish in the recruitment process, we need to seek personality traits that run parallel to company goals and culture and behaviors that reflect brand champions.

by Dr. John Sullivan & Master Burnett

It’s no secret that employee referral programs are proving themselves around the world to be a highly effective and efficient channel for sourcing quality candidates. While many employers are drawn to the source based solely on attractive cost-per-hire predictions, those savvy enough to measure the impact post implementation are finding out that candidates sourced via referral are more apt to:

• Meet job requirement expectations.
• Accept offers more often.
• Meet minimum standards of productivity faster.
• Perform better long-term on the job.
• Turn-over less often.

While on average only 1:3 firms measure the economic impact of these factors, those that do can easily attest that employee referral programs produce one of the highest ROIs in the HR function and possibly even the enterprise.

Past experience with ERPs, success stories in the media, and unrelenting demand for top talent has led nearly every major company competing for talent on a global level to either initiate a new program or reinvigorate an existing program in 2008. One question that nearly everyone is asking is “How should we budget for a world-class employee referral program?” It’s a great question.

World-class programs elevate program execution to an art form with scientific precision, and carry out a number of activities that average programs often overlook or discount.

Those activities have a cost associated with them, some of it fixed, some of it variable. Our research found that the average-performing program, one that produces approximately 26% of all hires, had a cost per hire (inclusive of bonus amounts paid) of $2,306. The top-40 performing programs invested more, paying out nearly $5,855 per hire on average, and that difference had nearly nothing to do with the reward.

In 2006, it took hiring 38% of all hires via employee referral to make the top-40. By 2007, that percentage had grown to 46%. If early statistics prove indicative, by year’s end it will require hiring more than 62% of all hires via employee referral to rank among the best in 2008.

$3,549 Well Spent

Some people see the added cost-per-hire to run a world-class program and immediately think it would never work in their organization. Other, more strategic recruiting professionals, see the added cost-per-hire and start to wonder what return warrants the added investment.

In 2006, Booz Allen Hamilton surveyed 73 major employers, and 88% found that hires made via employee referral performed better on the job than candidates hired via other sources as measured by their companies’ performance appraisal systems. If those systems were valid, that performance must be worth something, right?

Based on that statement, we looked at the companies with top-40 ranked employee referral programs and asked them to complete a statistical analysis of their programs’ performance, looking in particular at the factors mentioned in the opening of this article. While not all 40 completed the analysis, those that did found some startling numbers.

The following chart presents the minimum and maximum observed data points between employee referral program hires and hires by all other sources combined with respect to each of the measures previously mentioned.

If you have ever spent time as a line recruiter, a few of these data points should have jumped out screaming at you! At the very least, applicants via the ERP were 13 times more likely to meet job requirements, and 17% more likely to accept an offer. Immediately that should register a recruiter time savings, but think of the time savings for all managers and employees involved in the assessment process!

Start tacking on the savings related to decreased turnover and increased productivity and you can easily see why companies with top-performing programs are not pinching pennies.

How Top-Performing Programs Spend the Extra Money

1. Applies dedicated resources. Every one of the companies with a program in the top-40 had a dedicated program manager in place to drive the strategy and execution of the employee referral program by the end of 2007. The smallest company in the top-40, employing just over 3,000 employees, has a dedicated team comprised of a program manager, communication specialist, and full-time recruiter. The average number of dedicated ERP staff per employee in top-performing programs is 1:1,390.
2. Has a documented strategy. Most employee referral programs are managed in an ad-hoc employee opt-in manner. Such approaches limit the strategic value of the program by failing to incorporate program drivers that create activity when needed most in the most needed areas. World-class programs coordinate program execution with the overall staffing strategy and workforce plan to drive the volume necessary into the process to create the output volume of hires needed based on traditional yield model analytics. Our research demonstrates that programs that lack the proactive management element are more apt to fill the ERP pipeline with candidates who approach employees asking to be referred versus employee sourcing and selection of top talent.
3. Has specific goals and objectives. Because most programs lack formal management, it is not uncommon for the average program to have no specific goals. The absence of such goals leave program communications, reward structure, and program evaluation baseless. World-class programs determine probable participation rates by various demographic strata; set targets for program performance; establish tracking metrics; and leverage the data to drive decision-making around participant experience.
4. Places emphasis/priority on mission-critical jobs using differentiated communications and rewards. It’s great when an employee refers a friend who they would like to work alongside, but that doesn’t mean the company has a need for that person at that time. Truly strategic referral programs attempt to drive traffic into the program by leveraging demographically targeted custom communications and differentiated rewards. While they may still leverage companywide communications from time to time, the bulk of ERP-authored communications in top-performing programs is directed at the team/department level and frequent in nature. Most top-performing programs deliver targeted messages weekly regarding hot jobs, tips for identifying talent, sharing success stories, etc.
5. Prioritizes referrals. This is based on three elements: quality of the referral source; the position being referred for; and competitive intelligence drivers. Remember: Homer Simpson knows people, too! World-class programs prioritize response to referrals based on what is needed most by the company. If Employee A has a phenomenal track record for referring candidates the org hires, then his referrals should be fast-tracked. Likewise, if Employee B has referred 100 candidates, none of which the org has ever hired, he/she should be banned from the program! However, at times the org may also want to prioritize response based on competitive intelligence needs. Candidates often give up lots of info during interviews, info which when aggregated can have significant strategic value to senior leaders.
6. Periodically adjusts communication strategy based on employer brand and positioning strategy. Most programs communicate stale, generic messaging and do it for long periods. The human mind is insanely powerful at filtering out patterns. How long after a new billboard is installed along the freeway do you continue to notice it? Communication approaches should last no longer than 90 days and be tied to the audience. A few messages can be organization-wide, but most should be department/function/location centric.
7. Uses a viral marketing engine to drive engagement and disseminate selling stories. You could pretty much take messaging from Company A and put Company B’s name on it and no one would know the difference. Messaging that originates in HR is often so generic that it is immediately ignored by the educated masses we seek to influence in recruiting. World-class ERPs coordinate their efforts with the employment branding program to develop an inventory of “Wow!” stories that are so compelling they spread virally. Such stories truly differentiate an organization in such a way most competitors cannot compete. These stories provide an arsenal of things for employees to share in social settings and to leverage when approaching a potential recruit. (If you can’t think of any such stories for your organization, you should quit!)
8. Uses a combination of push/pull techniques to manage flow of inbound referrals. Some percentage (between 12% and 23%) of employees will voluntarily refer someone at some point during their tenure with the organization even if the organization doesn’t have an ERP. The secret is to manage the process such that at least 25% of the organization is participating annually.
9. Provides extreme customer service. Employees are special people, we already know them and can evaluate their performance, yet we treat their friends and colleagues like crap, often just like we treat applicants walking in off the street. All referrals should receive a custom response within 72 hours of submittal. The referring employee and the referral should receive status communications at every step in the process, including a communication upfront to establish the process and likely timeline so as to set expectations. Our research shows that more than 72% of employees who have participated in their companies’ ERP program found the experience unpleasant. More than 68% were not likely to participate again.
10. Uses existing information to minimize assessment steps. ERPs are all about the perception of special treatment. World-class programs leverage any and every piece of existing information about a candidate to minimize the assessment steps needed, making it look like the organization is skipping steps in their otherwise tedious process.
11. Uses technology wherever possible to provide 24/7 service. While a few of the top-40 programs are purely human-powered, many are leveraging home-grown technology systems and customized ATS systems to enable customer-service 24/7. If you have turned off the module that allows employees to track referral status in your ATS, turn it back on and start populating it with real feedback. The one caveat to using technology: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES FORCE EMPLOYEES TO USE THE REFER-A-FRIEND FUNCTIONALITY IN MOST ATS SYSTEMS THAT DOES NOTHING MORE THAN SEND A URL ASKING A REFERRAL TO TORTURE THEMSELVES BY COMPLETING THE SAME GENERIC APPLICATION AS EVERYONE ELSE! Instead, make it easy. Use a simple form asking for contact info, how the employee knows the candidate, what makes them think the candidate would be a good fit for the role/company, and whether they would be willing to vouch for the candidate as a quality hire. (Nothing will reduce the amount of chaff in the referral system more than asking that last question!)
12. Has extensive metrics to monitor/diagnose the process and program. Self explanatory!
13. Rewards all activity. Most programs send a generic, automatically generated thank-you note upon submission. Unless a hire is generated, that is often the only communication a referring employee will ever get. World-class programs seek to drive program participation and that translates into rewarding all activity in such a way that employees are not motivated to refer for reward sake, but feel valued by the process.
14. Has open participation to all stakeholders. Lots of stakeholders related to the organization can source top talent, but most organizations limit participation to existing employees. World-class programs allow former ee’s, consultants, contractors, shareholders, etc. to refer.

Putting a Final Figure Down on Paper

As consultants, we learned a long time ago that what one company can do with $100,000 would take another organization five times as much (think government). The secret to budgeting for a world-class ERP is working backwards. Ask yourself the following:

• How many hires are projected for the next budget cycle (growth + attrition)?
• What percentage of hires would we like to generate via the ERP: 35%, 46%, 70%, or more?
• To realistically be capable of delivering the experience outlined in the section about what top-performing programs do differently, what resources would be required in your organization?
• Estimate the cost for each resource identified and total them up.
• Now add about 20% to cover things you might have overlooked and you’ll have a decent budget for year one.

Final Thoughts

Most organizations really miss the mark when it comes to managing their employee referral program. The biggest mistake they make is trying to do it cheap and thinking that employees will understand when they never hear anything back.

Managed correctly, ERPs can have significant impact on an organization’s capacity and capability to achieve their strategic objectives, two things anyone who has ever spent time in operations will tell you are key. Sure, it may seem like managing the program well will make recruiters less necessary, but in reality, it proves that recruiters can work smarter and demonstrate strategic-level contributions.

TheLawyer.com is reporting a “feeding frenzy” by recruiters for the approximately 100 attorneys in Bear Stearns’ compliance department, most of whom may face layoffs once the buyout by JPMorgan Chase is completed. Most of the attorneys are in Bear Stearns’ fixed income department, with additional legal support in areas including litigation, vendor contracts, and employment.

At present, Bear Stearns’ entire legal and compliance division counts about 475 people.

The phone rings. Someone on the other end says he or she wants to build (or buy) a Web-enabled hiring test. Let’s say it will be for salespeople (generally the caller is a recruiter or HR manager, but sometimes he or she is a gopher).

After discussing the idea for a few minutes, I make a few suggestions. These always include following the ‘Guidelines’ to make sure the test is based on job requirements and business necessity and following the ‘Standards’ to make sure the test actually predicts job performance.

In almost every case, the caller is aghast at the work that needs to be done.

“All I want is a test!” they say.

“You want one that works?” I ask.

“Yes. But that’s hard!” they say.

“What’s your point?” I say.

On the other end of the phone, my keen bat senses hear muttering about me being a “jerk,” then dialing someone who will sell them the “mother of all tests”?one the vendor promises will work, regardless.

Why All the Fuss? A Test is Just a Test, Right?

The Guidelines and the Standards are not “nice to know” (i.e., limited to eggheads, legal eagles, and companies with U.S. operations). They describe how to define and evaluate job skills. That is, they first recommend test users define critical elements of the job based on job requirements and business necessity; then, they describe three ways to make sure test scores accurately predict performance (e.g., criterion, construct, and content validation).

Let’s reiterate. Step 1: Define job requirements and business necessity. Step 2: Make sure the test is predictive and stable.

Clear definition and evaluation is good for the hiring organization and good for the applicant. This principle works in all cultures and countries. So, if you plan to use a Web test, it’s a good idea to know the test actually separates qualified applicants from unqualified ones.

If you don’t get anything else, patch this into your screensaver: the only people who think it is too much work to follow best practices are people who don’t know how to do it.

But, no harm is done, right? Wrong. Highly effective hiring tests that claim they have no adverse impact or have been “validated” by the U.S. EEOC are as legitimate as the email announcing you won the lottery in Botswana.

Bad tests are really bad news for employer and applicant alike. A bad product backed by good-sounding marketing claims is still a bad product. And whether the user is in the U.S. or not, the test consumer, not the vendor, lives with the consequences of test use!

So, even if the vendor claimed his test was validated to grow hair on bald applicants, transform ugly employees into movie stars and cure morning breath, it would be your problem, not the vendor’s, to prove it.

Cause and Effect

There is a good reason why sailors advise passengers not to spit into the wind. The same is true for feces, fans, and bad tests. Eventually, even clueless test purchasers learn a weak test does not work as promised. You see a test that is not based on job requirements and business necessity, nor validated for the specific job, is designed to pass too many wrong applicants and fail too many right ones. It will show up on the job. That’s why the Guidelines and Standards are so valuable: they define exactly how to identify, qualify, and use a test that contains the least amount of error.

The bottom line is no matter how many years a person has been a recruiter; no matter how smooth his or her marketing campaign; no matter how certain he or she is about being a recruiting expert; and no matter how famous their organization, the ‘Guidelines’ and ‘Standards’ set the bar for measuring job skills.

Let’s examine how the ‘Guidelines’ and ‘Standards’ work for a sales position.

Sales Hiring 101

First, any method of separating qualified from unqualified applicants is a test. And “assessment” is just another word for “test.” We assess resumes, application forms, and applicant skills. The vast majority of organizations, unfortunately, use a two-step assessment process. Step one: use an interview to screen out most of the riff-raff. Step two: let the job screen out the rest. The two-step process explains in large part why 20% of salespeople generally produce 80% of the sales. Only riff-raff were screened out pre-hire.

Screening out riff-raff is easy. All you have to do is get to know the applicant, examine earnings statements, and dislike his or her personality. Normally, organizations screen-out 3.5 applicants to get one promising employee. On-the-job performance screens another one of two. Over time, this makes the final hiring ratio about 7 to 1. Riff-raffing is the norm and riff-raffing is expensive.

Let’s look at the cost of using the job as an assessment in terms of training, travel expenses, management coaching, and salary for six months. We’ll be conservative. One week training = $2,500; sales travel expenses = $100/day for six months or $12,000; coaching time = 15% of manager’s time or about $6,000; and, six months’ salary and benefits = about $36,000. This totals about $56,500 per salesperson (ignoring recruiting fees, lost customers, empty territories, and so forth). Bottom line? In round numbers, riff-raff assessment costs upwards of $50,000 for each lost salesperson.

Error-Free Hiring?

Mistake-free hiring is pure fiction, but doing a better job screening is not. First, you have to fully understand your specific sales job and the critical skills that separate the successful from the unsuccessful salesperson. This kind of information is seldom obvious. It does not come from generic tests, averaged scores, and calculating group norms. Generic norming is bad science. It serves as an example of wrong-headed test practices.

A trustworthy and reliable test involves in-depth understanding of critical job functions, measuring every critical skill area at least twice, doing a formal study to confirm scores predict job performance, and monitoring adverse impact. In professional terms, this is called job analysis, validation, multi-trait-multi-method assessment, adverse impact monitoring, and continuous improvement. If it sounds like a good way to do business, it is. If it also sounds like hard work, it is.

In the next few paragraphs I’ll briefly describe what to look for in a sales selection system.

Professional Job Analysis

As mentioned above, a professional job analysis does not consist of giving everyone a questionnaire and comparing top-performer scores to bottom performers. This is the first sign of buyer-beware because it makes some huge and often wrong-headed assumptions.

It assumes an equal playing field. That is, all productivity results are equivalent. New accounts, customer service, market conditions, and expanded accounts are all rolled-up into the same category: productivity. In some cases, overall performance might even be complicated by (gasp!) skillful manipulation of numbers. Separating salespeople into top and bottom producers based on sales dollars is a sure clue the analyst does not understand sales.

Suppose you are like most folks in the hiring business and you expect your test to accurately predict job performance before you commit big bucks to salary. By definition, your test should measure something that causes performance. If you give one big test to everyone without knowing explicitly what you want to evaluate, you fall into the “correlation or causation” trap. As an example, ice cream sales and shark attacks have a strong positive correlation. Does that mean shark sightings cause people to eat more gelato? That Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey is a poor shark repellent? Or perhaps sharks have a seasonal business they don’t want people to know about? Homegrown questionnaires often confuse correlation with causation. Just remember: Unless water-born ice-cream is proven to attract sharks, one does not cause the other.

A good job analyst knows how to identify key skills that make the difference between successful and unsuccessful cold calling, repeat sales, strategic selling plans, customer service, and so forth. In many cases, they may involve totally opposite skills. Treating sales production as a discreet measurement point is like putting fruit salad in a blender, pressing the annihilate button, and testing the puree for peaches. A professional job analyst knows key information can only come from people doing the job, not from supervisors or aggregated production data.

Let’s say the analyst has done his or her homework. Now what? The hiring manager does not have weeks or months to evaluate applicant skills. Unless the hiring manager uses the hire-and-hope strategy, sales skills have to be evaluated in minutes or hours. If we have done our job right, we will know the mini steps that lead to maxi results.

Bottom line? If the analyst asks you to lump producers into groups and gives them all the same test, you are about to see your money pour out the door.

Does the Test, Test?

The only test that is worth anything is one that works for your job in your company, not one that worked for the company across the street, or a job with the same title, or matches a nationwide norm, or even a company in the same industry. It has to work for you.

Sometimes a validity study can be transported from one job to another, but that is only if you know for certain the two jobs are essentially the same. But if the market is different, the company environment is different, products and services are different, customers are different, or sales cycles are different, then how can any reasonable person claim XYZ scores predict cold calling, customer service, or sales expansion for your position based on one that is entirely unknown? Doesn’t that seem a little far-fetched to you?

The only time you can trust that another test will work best for your organization is to compare the job analysis from the other test to the job analysis for your job. If the two jobs are essentially the same, then use it; if not, you “pays your money and takes your chances.”

Give a generic personality test to salespeople and see what shakes out? Get ready to see a great big pile of belly-button lint.

Our Test Does Not Discriminate

In the U.S., at least, large organizations and Federal contractors are not supposed to reject qualified applicants based on age, gender, race, and so forth. This is called discrimination; but there is something else called adverse impact. What does adverse impact have to do with discrimination?

The legal definitions have subtle overlap, but for the purposes of this article, let’s assume discrimination generally means that an organization intentionally discriminates against certain kinds of job-qualified people?in hiring, promoting, training, and so forth. While adverse impact generally means the hiring system, even though it is job-related and professionally validated, unintentionally discriminates. In lay terms, think of discrimination as intentional and adverse impact as unintentional. For any better definition, see your local labor-law attorney to explain the details.

I consider discrimination unethical. Everyone deserves a chance to work in a job for which he or she is qualified. But here is where things get complicated. Government agencies examine discrimination at the group-level. Hiring managers don’t care much about group performance. They care about individual performance.

This raises a problem that all hiring professionals need to consider. By way of example, suppose 200 people apply for a job. One hundred are Lilliputians and 100 are Yahoos. At the group level, 70% of the Lilliputians are hired, while only 40% of the Yahoos make the grade. At the individual level, there are quite a few Lilliputians who are miserable workers, just as there are quite a few Yahoos who are top performers.

From the organization’s viewpoint, they only hired job-qualified people. From the government’s viewpoint the company discriminated against the Yahoos.

Who’s right? It’s hard to tell, so the government examines the organization’s:

• Professionally developed job analysis (to show hiring tools are based on job requirements and business necessity)
• Professionally conducted validation study (to show hiring tests and interviews accurately and consistently predict performance)
• Pass and fail results for Yahoos and Lilliputians at each step of the hiring process
• Proactive efforts to develop tests with less adverse impact on Yahoos

As long as the company has done its homework and followed generally accepted hiring practices as outlined in the “Uniform Guidelines” and “Standards,” it is not in trouble and will have hired all the best and most diverse applicants.

So what’s the problem? Some vendors claim their tests have no adverse impact. But research consistently shows hiring tests for jobs requiring problem-solving ability almost always does have an adverse impact when examined on a group level. Competent test vendors know this. Incompetent ones don’t.

Automated Resume Screens

What recruiter or hiring manager has not seen a brilliant resume developed by a blatantly unqualified candidate? And what about the marginal resume presented by a remarkable applicant? At best, a resume includes Kodak-moments recalled by the resume writer. At worst, a resume is an exercise in creative fiction.

Think about it. Every applicant is motivated to write just enough words to garner an interview. While every hiring manager wants to find someone who was an exceptional performer in the exact same job at another company doing the exact same work. Generality goals meet specificity objectives.

Sophisticated applicants know how to pepper the resume with keywords and qualifications that may be fact or fiction; different hiring manager’s screen resumes using totally different criteria for the same job; and, everyone makes massive inferences based on snippets of data. So. Tell me again. Other than keeping a few programmers in work, what is the benefit of automating resume searches?

Back to the Beginning

So here we are, back at the beginning. Tests are abundant. And if all you want to know is a score, anyone test will do. Good tests, however, ones that accurately predict job performance, are rare. You can trust a good test to produce good employees. You can tell the difference by following a few guidelines.

Avoid vendors that emphasize their non-discrimination aspects, “legality” or industry-wide applications. Assuming their claim is accurate (and I have yet to see one what was) users are responsible for their own test use. Vendors are off the hook.

Avoid vendors that want to give their test to two groups of producers and use the results to predict job performance. These represent bad science. Scientifically, this kind of study can only show whether the two groups are different, but it does not tell you why. And it does not tell you about individuals within the groups.

Avoid tests that are based on self-reports. Self-reported answers can be faked. They cannot be validated by outside sources. Self-reported tests are similar to resumes. They represent things the test-taker wants you to know about him or her. Making decisions about hard skills based on self-reported data requires a huge leap of faith that is generally wrong half the time.

Ask the vendor for a report showing he followed the ‘Guidelines’ and ‘Standards.’ This is your only assurance the test will be job related, based on business necessity and accurately predict job performance.

Web-based testing is in the same category as medicine was 100 years ago when heroin was good for you; there was no such thing as anesthesia; injections were unavailable; radioactive water cleared the mind; opium was a relaxation agent; blood-letting was commonplace; linseed, mustard, and soap were used as cure for infection; and sugar of lead was a common treatment for diabetes.

Let’s all work hard to move hiring into the 21st Century.

Last year, stock at Bear Stearns, once the fifth-largest investment bank in the United States, sold for $170 a share. And about one-third of the bank’s outstanding stock is owned by its own employees, the same workers who may see pink slips in the near future.

James Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, addressed Bear Stearns executives for 45 minutes on Wednesday evening, explaining that while “No one on Wall Street could have anticipated this,” he anticipates that many of Bear’s 14,153 employees will lose their jobs as a result of the deal. He noted that JPMorgan executives will try to keep the best performers as they move to integrate the two firms.

Hungry for Bear Brokers

Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Smith Barney have already offered some Bear Stearns brokers attractive packages with signing bonuses.

In response, JPMorgan Chase executives are reportedly offering retention packages to top Bear Stearns employees, which include bonuses, loans, and other financial assistance.

Beyond the brokers, however, are the thousands of other employees in administration, operations, marketing, and other departments.

JPMorgan Chase is expected to keep Bear’s prime brokerage, global clearing platform, equities, and energy trading businesses. David Trone, a managing director at investment bank Fox-Pitt Kelton, says workers involved with trading and securitization of prime mortgages (loans to high-quality borrowers) will be the most protected.

However, there may be overlap between the two companies’ fixed income and investment banking divisions. Trone predicts that less than one-third of workers in the fixed-income trading division will keep their jobs, and about half of Bear’s investment banking and equities workers are likely to get cut.

Legal Woes, Severance Plans

While the deal will cost about $270 million, JPMorgan chief financial officer Michael Cavanaugh explained on a conference call Sunday night to investors that deal-related costs would total $6 billion to handle potential litigation and severance costs.

And “potential” has never been a more accurate description of what is about to transpire on Wall Street.

The firm is already facing several employee-led class-action lawsuits that claim that because executives waited too long to reveal the firm’s financial health, Bear Stearns stock was artificially inflated, leading to this collapse. A Bear Stearns spokesman was not available for immediate comment.

Savings Collapse

Most employees have been paid in stock share bonuses in recent months. With about 35% of New York City’s wages derived from Wall Street jobs, the New York City economy is bracing for the worst.

As comparisons are being made to Enron, many employees have lost their main nest eggs.

The Economist reports that Bear Stearns encouraged many workers to buy shares after it went public in 1985, and today, employees own about one-third of the bank’s outstanding stock. Employees were prevented from selling shares, according to the Economist, because an earnings announcement was coming.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I believe we would be sold for $2,” one shell-shocked trader told the New York Times.

While these workers await their fate, perhaps they can brush up on works by Shakespeare. JPMorgan CEO Dimon, who essentially holds these workers’ fate in his hands, once said Shakespeare is even better than Freud in showing you the characters you are dealing with.

“In tough times like these, you see more of the good and more of the bad in people,” he told the New York Times in November 2007.

“You can go for a long time and be fooled by people’s behavior, but Shakespeare gives you insights that help you understand the people you are dealing with. I don’t relate what’s happening so much to the market as to how people behave. You want to know that in the foxhole with you is a person of good character, that they have a true north.”

Maxine is in deep trouble. She was hired 12 days ago as a recruiter to work with a manager who had about 200 call center requisitions to fill in a 90-day window.

The positions weren’t unusual or particularly hard to fill. In fact, over the past few months, new college graduates, several retirees who were youthful and had the requisite skills, and a handful of experienced former call center employees had been hired with varying degrees of success. Yet turnover is an issue; it runs to more than 100% each year.

At first blush, Maxine felt confident she could meet the challenge and fill all the positions. After all, she was an experienced recruiter and the skills the manager needed were basic.

The training programs the company had put in place were quite well-received and met the need to ensure everyone was capable. This training was supplemented with an excellent online support center with access to FAQs and other help.

Maxine figured she could round up some recent college hires who hadn’t gotten their dream job but were smart and energetic, or she could get a few more of the retirees to consider returning to work.

Now, 12 days into it, things look different. The hiring manager hasn’t liked anyone she has brought in and has complained to Maxine’s boss about her inability to meet his needs. She obviously feels this is completely unfair as she has only been on the job for a short time.

However, her boss says, “Maxine is too focused on process and hasn’t even posted anything on the job boards. All she wants to do is dig into what the hiring manager’s requirements are.” He goes on to say that as far as he knows, the hiring manager just wants her to “. . . find me good, smart people, and I’ll train them what to do. I don’t need to have everyone psychoanalyzed.”

This company has over 1,000 employees, all located in the United States, with sales of more than US$1 billion. The average age of the employees is around 35, with only the CEO and a few other top managers over 40. The hiring manager is close to Maxine’s age, hovering around 30. There are a couple of recruiters who focus on other types of hiring needs, including IT, but they are not very friendly and stay on the phone almost all day.

The company has a good reputation for customer service and is very proud of its high standards of service. Customers find that response times are reasonable and that their issues get resolved quickly. This is a big difference from many other companies that Maxine has worked for. She feels it is necessary for her to really understand the competencies needed and assess candidates against those competencies.

This company has real-time performance feedback for call center reps, and they are always aware of how well they are doing compared to other call-center staff. They get paid partially on how quickly and on how well they resolve customer issues. Those who have been at the company for more than a year make great pay and have a balanced work life.

New employees, however, face the daunting prospect of meeting the time and quality demands of the position, and many leave. Maxine really wants to understand why some have stayed and what their profile looks like so she can look for others with a similar set of skills.

The issue is how can Maxine satisfy her boss and hire high-quality people? Is it even possible to do this? Can she profile candidates without alienating them or her boss?

If you were Maxine, what would you do in her situation? How can Maxine succeed?

I will collect your responses and print some of them (anonymously) in next week’s article. I will also provide an expert opinion about what Maxine should do.

Both groups are now acknowledging that they need to pick up the slack when it comes to planning for their financial futures.

A new report released by the Divided We Fail group and the American Savings Education Council shows that while 86% of Gen Xers and Gen Yers know they should be more prepared for a “rainy day,” most are surprisingly clueless about how to make that a success.

Need proof? The survey of 1,752 young people shows they know more about their iPods (40% very knowledgeable) than they do about filing their taxes (26%), buying a home (21%), investing outside of work (15%), and saving for retirement (15%).

Even though 75% of respondents in the “Preparing for Their Future: A Look at the Financial State of Gen X and Gen Y” report claim that saving for retirement is a personal financial goal, most grade themselves poorly when it comes to saving money (42% gave themselves a D or F) and investing their money outside the workplace (47% gave themselves a D or F).

“The good news is that they realize how the retirement landscape is changing and are confident that they can achieve their financial goals, the bad news is that they know more about making their iPod work than making their savings work for them,” says Nancy LeaMond, executive vice president of social impact at AARP.

Best Interest at Heart…or Not?

The Divided We Fail organizations (AARP, Business Roundtable, National Federation of Independent Business and the Service Employees International Union) say employers should be a part of the solution to better equip all generations.

The survey shows that 48% agree and 52% disagree with the statement, “employers generally have their employees’ best interest at heart.”

And 47% agree that “people your age feel loyal to employers,” while the remaining 53% disagree.

Divided We Fail notes that companies can work toward helping more workers agree with those statements — and thereby up retention rates among star-powered workers — by enhancing workplace benefits.

The survey found that 94% place a high value on workplace health insurance; 88% place a high value on retirement savings plans; 89% place a high value on matching or contributing to a retirement savings plan; 78% place a high value on wellness plans; and 77% place a high value on company-supplied financial education/advice.

Mommy, Daddy Still Matter

But kids are still kids. The survey finds that 70% still prefer to turn to their parents for personal finance advice and guidance.

More than one-third of both generations — 36% — say their parents are their primary source of advice. Younger respondents, those in Gen Y (50%), are nearly twice as likely as Gen X (26%) to cite their parents as their primary source.

But maybe that means Gen Y are more family-oriented, as the survey shows 43% of Gen Yers expect to help their retired parents financially, compared to 33% of Gen Xers, despite the fact that Xers would have parents further along in their retirement years.

Innovations in recruiting have been occurring for over several millennia. I recently wrote about some in an earlier article about the Roman army. The Romans were by no means alone. Other societies (the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Chinese) also contributed to the developing recruiting practices, some of which are still with us today.

These practices almost invariably developed to support the recruitment of soldiers, since the army was the only formal organization of any size and consequence. These societies faced many of the same problems we have today: a shortage of talent, laws, and regulations that attempted to benefit one group over another, and the need to have a reliable mechanism for keeping their armies at the level of readiness they needed to achieve their goals.

As a consequence, they also developed practices around compensation, evaluation, and sourcing, to enhance the effectiveness of their recruiting efforts.

My earlier article on this subject was not meant to be the start of a series. The title was borrowed from the Mel Brooks movie History of the World, Part I. Apparently, hardly anyone picked up on that. I did receive a deluge of email from ERE readers who asked for a follow-up piece, and so I decided to write one.

Ancient Egypt

Formal recruitment practices existed as far back as 2686 B.C. in Egypt during the period known as the Old Kingdom. There existed a system for recruiting a militia from the nomes (tribes) and there were officials responsible for training and for logistics, which already displayed a high level of organization. By 1550 B.C., the period known as the New Kingdom, recruiting had become part of the formal duties of the king.

An inscription from the reign of Amenemhat II from Memphis (in Egypt, not Tennessee) included the requirement that the king was responsible for recruiting manpower for the kingdom’s needs. This required the Pharaoh to ensure that there were enough men of appropriate talent for an expedition to destroy Syria and other enemies.

Formal recruitment had become a necessity because the system of the tribes providing soldiers was unreliable in terms of both quantity and quality of talent.

Ancient Greece

The Greeks had huge needs for recruitment for their armies. The Hellenistic states were small, with small populations, and frequently at war. They relied heavily on mercenaries, which had to be recruited from elsewhere. By 35 A.D. large numbers of non-Greeks were being hired as soldiers.

Two types of recruitment were common in this period. It was either carried out by recruiting agents or through diplomatic channels and interstate treaties that included clauses allowing citizens to serve as troops for the contracting parties. These mercenaries were well-paid, and usually only hired for nine- or 10-month contracts.

The Greeks limited the term of the contracts of mercenaries because they did not want non-citizens getting too deeply involved in their society. It was the first guest worker program. But reality proved otherwise. Mercenaries were just that, mercenary?hired guns. Their loyalty was questionable, readily undermined by more lucrative offers. Integrating them into the regular army without proper training limited their effectiveness. There was a constant need to acculturate and train them, which was expensive given their short tenure. This ultimately forced a situation where these “temps” were more or less permanently domiciled within a state and given grants of land to keep them there. It was a way of securing a supply of troops and linking them to their employers.

Recruitment was a serious business. For many of the Greek states, their survival, and the lives of their citizens, literally depended on it. In one instance, in 318 A.D, Eumenes of Cardia, being faced with an advancing enemy, sent out a force of recruiters with large sums of money to hire soldiers from surrounding states.

To ensure the success of this effort, much publicity was given to the high pay offered and particular groups were targeted to hear about it. One recruiter went to Crete, because the population on that island was isolated and poorer. In a short time they had recruited over 2,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry.

Part of the reason the Greeks were short of soldiers was because of some restrictive laws and unusual practices. Laws in some cases limited much of the citizenry to working in only police roles. One of the more interesting practices was the requirement in ancient Sparta for a soldier to have an older male lover as his mentor! He was even fined if the older lover was not a reputable sort. Plato had made the case for this in his Dialogues that the best army of all would be made up of pairs of male lovers who “…when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world.” Apparently the policy in the Spartan army was “do ask, do tell.”

China

The contribution of the Chinese to recruiting was the development of formal employment testing. The Chinese had introduced a system of examinations for entry to the civil service as early as the seventh century A.D., but it was used to only hire a very small number of civil servants, and then only from the aristocracy. Starting in the 10th century, during the Sung dynasty the system was expanded to fill most positions and to recruit commoners.

The tests were long. First a candidate had to take the regional examination. It was closely proctored, recopied, assigned a number, and then graded. Only a very small number of candidates passed. Next came the metropolitan exam, taken at the capital city, which was also closely proctored, recopied, assigned a number, and graded. About 15% to 20% of the candidates passed this second exam (around 200 per year).

The exam was based entirely on the Confucian Classics. The candidates had to memorize the Five Classics, interpret passages, master their literary style, and use Confucian philosophy to interpret the Classics and construct political advice. The tests were so rigorous that the candidates who passed represented the very best minds in the country.

Statistically, it would be far easier for a person to be admitted into Harvard than it would be to pass the civil service exam in ancient China. The government bureaucracy represented the top one percent of the top one percent of the population in terms of talent, education, intelligence, and, above all, ethical training. Contrast that with what government bureaucracies are today, anywhere in the world. We’ve come a long way.

Conclusion

In researching this article, it has been interesting to learn how ancient societies developed recruiting practices. The reasons for these were not always the right ones, and in some cases, the effects were not positive. For example, a lot of labor law developed in response to problems with recruiting.

During the Middle Ages, shortages of talent and the problems with finding qualified workers gave rise to the first employment laws. The Black Death had ravaged Europe, with some countries losing as much as half their populations. This caused massive shortages of labor, and the survivors found they could charge a premium for their work and choose what to accept.

The result was the creation of the first labor law in 1350 that set wages and restricted mobility. Touted as a way to maintain stability, it was nothing but an attempt to reduce competition for talent and keep the working class in its place. Europe is still dealing with the legacy of that law seven centuries later.

Still, much of what occurred in recruiting was of positive value. It’s humbling to think that centuries ago, recruiters were doing what we do today. The next time you have a difficult recruiting assignment, think of that recruiter setting off across the Mediterranean to recruit soldiers on Crete, sending out town criers ahead of him to drum up interest. We have it easy.