What few people know (and maybe even fewer care to) is that currently a fashion model coming to America has to compete for the same H1-B visas that every immigrant software engineer and developer does. This is a crisis. Summer is upon us and what are the editors of swimsuit editions supposed to do when visas run out on the first day they are available — take pictures in France and Photoshop in a background from California? Fast action is needed. Disaster looms. The fantasy lives of millions of teenage boys and voyeurs are in jeopardy.

Enter Anthony Weiner. The congressman from New York is riding (or taking the subway) to the rescue. Representative Weiner has sponsored a bill in Congress that would create a separate category of visas for fashion models, the P-4. If passed, the beauties would not be competing with the geeks and we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Weiner for President.

Jokes apart, the Weiner bill — HR 4080, does highlight a fundamental problem with U.S. immigration policy. With regards to talent we have no policy. What we do have are immigration laws dating to the 1940s that have been sporadically modified without much of a plan or any broader understanding of the strategic implications. That made little difference in the past with the U.S. being the best and, to some extent the only, destination for skilled talent.

While the U.S. is still a very attractive place, alternatives are emerging. I wrote about this in a recent article on increasing competition for talent from the European Union and other countries. The Blue Card program created by the EU is explicitly targeted at skilled workers, unlike the Green Card, which is predominantly a vehicle for reuniting families. Our immigration policy does little to attract high-caliber talent in fields like technology and sciences and does not differentiate much between categories of talent. There are no strategic underpinnings to support employers in the war for talent.

Take the H-1B program as an example.

The number of visas available — 85,000 — is an arbitrary number with no basis in demand. It has not been adjusted despite the fact that unemployment among high-tech workers is about 3% and there is no evidence whatsoever that skilled immigrant workers have any negative impact on the wages or the employment of domestic workers. Worse yet, H-1B visas are now allocated by lottery, i.e., at random. Need or the value of particular skills is not a factor.

Limited Options

There are some options available to employers frustrated with the situation. L-1 visas are one. These allow a company to transfer employees to the U.S. from their offices abroad for periods of up to five years. Employees must have worked for the company for at least one year before an L-1 can be issued. Unlike H-1Bs, there is no cap for L-1s.

Another option is the EB-5 program. Richard Herman of Herman Associates appraised me about this. Under EB-5, foreign investors can receive a green card if they invest at least $500,000 in a designated “investment center” and create 10 direct or indirect jobs, or $1 million outside the center. There are 10,000 green cards available under the EB-5 program, but only a small fraction get used; last year the program benefitted just 779 individuals. The program follows the lead of similar programs in Australia and Canada. That is why Microsoft has a development center in Vancouver that attracts a lot of talent.

Some communities are using the EB-5 program to create areas designed to attract immigrant talent —high-skill immigration zones. The Cleveland Council on World Affairs is leading a pilot initiative called the Talent Blueprint intended to bring together public and private entities to collaborate around the attraction of foreign talent and capital into Northeast Ohio. The region has over 10,000 openings for workers in fields related to bio-tech. Richard Herman and his associates are circulating among a large group of national thought and policy leaders the idea of Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities creating these zones to welcome both foreign talent and capital back to communities once known for their large immigrant populations that have now seen that high rate of immigrant influx migrate to places such as Atlanta, Silicon Valley, and Raleigh-Durham.

No Easy Solutions

The options described above are good ideas but they can have a small impact at best. The problem of talent shortages needs a comprehensive solution in terms of both domestic policy and immigration. But there is no one leading such an effort. Ideally there would be a cabinet-level position focused on talent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 1.64 million job openings for IT professionals between now and 2016. Yet, despite all the evidence that problems of supply are worsening, immigration policy for skilled talent remains entangled in political posturing and colored by issues of illegal immigration.

Organizations like FAIR and the self-styled Center for Immigration Studies, which make no differentiation between an agricultural worker and a software engineer, drum up wild theories about a gigantic conspiracy between employers to hire immigrant talent at-below market rates and deprive domestic workers of jobs. One of their more popular claims is that there is sufficient supply of domestic workers for high tech jobs. It’s difficult to square that with the fact that undergraduate enrollment in computer science programs has been in near free-fall since 2000, down by almost 50%. Another is that large numbers of H-1B visa holders become illegal aliens. But all that rhetoric does have some effect. When NAFTA was passed, the TN visa category was included only after the White House accepted demands that Mexican professionals not be given the same preferential treatment as Canadians. It took until 2004 to remove this bow to what some commentators described as the Titanic principle (first class gets better treatment than steerage).

The recruiting industry is not in a good position to influence this situation. The industry is not an organized lobby. No lobbying firm represents recruiting interests in Washington, while even North Korea and Ultimate Fighting are represented. Then again, it may not help much. Congress usually has matters of far greater national importance to deal with — such as investigating the New England Patriots for stealing their opponents’ signals, and the recently passed Primate Safety Act to ensure the proper treatment of monkeys.

It’s almost impossible to pick up a newspaper or magazine and not read about the economic conditions that are putting a strain on almost everyone’s budget and way of life.

Rather than ignoring it or hoping it will go away, look upon it as a chance to “turn lemons into lemonade” and to further strengthen your employment brand image.

It has been common for corporations to offer benefits to their employees to ease their commutes or to help save the environment. However, the recent dramatic rise in gas prices provides corporations with an opportunity to really amp up their offerings, and to demonstrate to those they wish to attract and retain that the organization “cares” about them.

In fact, one study by Dr. Wayne Hochwarter, of Florida State University, found that high gas prices led to more stress on the job, thus impacting employee performance. In his research, Dr. Hochwarter found that one-third of the employees surveyed said they would quit their job for a comparable one closer to home.

Research by outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that 34% of employers had potential candidates who turned down jobs because of long commutes and added nearly 8% of employers report turnover caused by high transportation costs.

Acting now provides an opportunity to build your employment brand because the combined topics of gas prices, food prices, and the mortgage crisis are hot in the media. As a result, any bold action by a corporation is likely not just to be viewed positively by employees and potential applicants but also by those covering consumer confidence and spending in the media.

Efforts by employers to help workers cope with these economic factors will likely be written up in the press and in business publications. Not only would you be helping your workers, but you will also be building employee loyalty while getting free PR to further strengthen your employment brand image. It’s an opportunity that won’t last long, so it shouldn’t be missed.

Many firms have already been recognized for excellence in these areas, including Google, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco, Nike, and HP. There are many actions to consider, and I’ve separated the various options into broad categories below.

Promoting Drive-Less Options

The first group of options is relatively cheap, but they can have a significant impact on the amount of money your employees need to pay in commute costs. 12 “drive-less” options include:

1. Compressed workweek options. Offer schedules that allow commuters to reduce the number of days they come in to work. A 4-day, 10-hour workweek is the most popular, but some professions also use 3-day, 12-hour weeks. The key is to not just offer these programs, but to encourage individual managers to allow their employees to actually take advantage of them. If coverage is an issue, consider allowing employees to alternate on/off alternative schedules.
2. Work at home. A related option is to allow employees to choose on their own to work one or more days at home. In addition to saving commute costs, firms like Best Buy have found that telecommuting can generate up to a 35% increase in employee productivity, and research by the Gartner Group found up to a 40% improvement. Allowing employees to take periodic “planning” or innovation days where they spend their time thinking and planning for the future can also be an effective option. Benchmark firms in this area include Best Buy, Sun, IBM, Agilent, and HP.
3. Satellite offices. By establishing satellite offices closer to where employees live, firms can offer opportunities for employees to use restricted computer and communications networks that cannot be accessed remotely while reducing the mileage employees drive to and from work. Employees that need to use company equipment (but do not necessarily need to meet with coworkers) can decide on which days they will work from these remote corporate locations. Microsoft’s touchdown space is an excellent example of this practice; however, Sun is the benchmark firm in this area, locating offices on all major access routes into major metropolitan areas.
4. Bike/walk to work. This can both improve health (reducing benefit costs) and help employees save on gas. Companies can facilitate this practice by offering maps that highlight the flattest and quickest routes. They can also help by providing relaxed dress codes that allow employees to wear athletic clothes, as well as providing bike storage space and showers for their peddling employees. Walk to work or walk to mass transit location programs can have similar positive impacts.
5. Make all-day meetings remote. Rather than requiring everyone to commute to all-day meetings, use conference calls and Web-based tools to allow some workers to attend meetings from home. These options can also save airline travel costs. HP and Cisco are the benchmark leaders in this area.
6. On-site services. Dry cleaning, concierge, flowers, and take-out food can reduce the need for employees to run errands during lunch and after work. Also, consider vendor-provided gas-saving services like engine tune-ups and tire inflation. Google is a leader in this area.
7. Offer online training. This can save on travel costs. Also, consider offering university classes on-site, so that your employees can improve themselves without the increased costs associated with driving to a local university.
8. Reduce lunchtime and snack travel. For firms with few on-site lunch options, consider inviting lunch wagons that can sit in the parking lot. Other options include providing box lunches and snacks on site, as well as menus from local restaurants that deliver, shifting the cost of ordering out to the food provider.
9. Increase company car usage. Firms can help their employees reduce their personal gas costs by liberalizing or expanding the number of opportunities for employees to use company cars.
10. Job transfers. In organizations with many outlets (like retail), reduce employee gas usage by offering a one-time option to facilitate transfers to locations closer to the employee’s home. Consider offering internal “save on gas” job fairs where workers can meet with managers from other locations to see if relocation is a viable option that provides mutual benefits.
11. Shift the organization’s start time. In congested areas, starting your commute an hour earlier or later can result in significant gas savings as a result of fewer backups and less congestion.
12. Live close to work facilitation. Firms can offer services or work with local Realtors in order to make it easy for their employees to find apartments and housing close to the workplace. The leading firm in this area is Facebook, which offers an astonishing $700 per month salary supplement for employees who live within a mile of their headquarters. University Hospitals in Cleveland is also a benchmark organization.

Share the Commute

• Coordinate shared commuting. Firms can help their employees to both save on gas and tolls by facilitating employee carpools, van pools, or a company shuttle. In many large cities, tax breaks encourage corporate van-pooling programs. An additional benefit is the reduced need for employee parking. Microsoft, Yahoo, and HP are benchmark firms. Also, offer a company-sponsored shuttle bus from transit stations close to work or from strategic locations.
• Coordinate schedules. More individuals would share rides if they could share similar schedules with individuals who live close to them. This option requires you to work with individual managers to ensure that they make commuting part of their scheduling decision criteria.

Facilitate Opportunities for Cheaper Gas

• Negotiate group discounts. Because corporations with many employees have significant buying power, work with local fuel suppliers and individual gas stations to negotiate volume discounts for employees who use targeted stations. Incidentally, try similar options for bulk food items to help employees deal with the rising cost of food.
• Buy “company” gas. Some organizations have their own fueling facilities and these firms might be able to find a way to offer that gas to employees. By buying “gas futures,” firms can successfully hedge against future price increases (i.e., Southwest Airlines has successfully done this for its aviation fuel).
• Allow employees access to “fleet” stations. Some firms utilize gas stations that provide gasoline for fleet cars. Negotiate with their vendors to identify opportunities where employees can get gas at these low-priced fleet stations.
• Negotiate “buy” options. Use the company’s volume buying power to help negotiate lower-cost deals with vendors that allow your employees to lease or buy more gas-efficient vehicles. Vehicles might include scooters, electric segues, bikes, and compact or hybrid cars. (Note: there federal and in some cases state tax advantages associated with purchasing hybrid cars.)
• Subsidize mass transit. Offer subsidies to individuals who use mass transit. Some government agencies provide tax advantages to firms that facilitate the use of mass transit (others provide penalties to those that don’t).

Increase Manager and Employee Participation

Corporations can take specific steps to encourage both individual managers and employees to participate in gas-saving options:

• Measure and reward managers. Recognize those who are “commute cost” friendly; conduct an employee survey to identify the best.
• Executive participation. Have the CEO and senior executives actively participate in company programs (i.e., participating in car pools, biking to work, or occasionally driving the company shuttle).
• Gas incentives. Provide gas cards as incentives and rewards for top-performing employees and managers.

Miscellaneous Options

• Conduct a survey and ask employees what they think you should be doing.
• Benchmark other firms to see what else is possible.
• Allow compacts, hybrids, and scooters to park closer to the building to send a message that you care about the environment.
• Help them sell their gas-guzzler car or subsidize the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles.
• Add saving gas as a criterion for selecting new facility sites.
• Consider reducing nepotism restrictions so that family members can work together and thus, commute together.

Provide Employees with Opportunities to Earn More Money

Because rising costs are essentially lowering your employees’ “real” standard of living, provide your employees with more opportunities to earn more money during these tough economic times:

• Opportunity for overtime. Encourage managers to develop more opportunities for employees to work overtime to help them offset the rising cost of living.
• Pay for performance. Offer increased opportunities for performance-based pay. Although giving employees “more money” is always a high-cost item, if any additional pay is based strictly on improved performance, both firms and employees can come out ahead.
• Increase mileage allowance. The IRS has recently recognized a higher cost of gasoline by increasing the amount of reimbursement that it allows per mile traveled. Companies can help their employees by not waiting and increasing their mileage allotment immediately.
• COLA. A final option to consider is offering your employees periodic cost-of-living adjustments. Sometimes this is necessary in order to decrease your employees’ need to look for a second job (or even a job at another firm) in order to meet their family needs.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there are many options available to corporations. For the best impact, implement a comprehensive program with many elements. Not only will this approach have a larger impact on employees, but it also increases the odds of your effort receiving positive exposure.

The move follows a series of scandals at the company including the arrest of three Goodwill employees earlier this month for alleged violations of Japan’s employment security laws. The company’s website confirms the workers were later charged, and sources state that both the company and the employees paid fines totaling more than 1 million yen.

There were other media reports suggesting that the company may have its license to provide staffing services revoked by Japanese authorities, but those reports remain unconfirmed.

The Goodwill Group Inc. is the largest staffing provider in Japan and a majority owner of U.S. staffing company GW Premier America, which has annual revenues of more than $1 billion and operates under multiple brands in the United States and Canada including: Technical Aid Corporation, Talent Tree, Inc., Willstaff, Inc., and Advantage Human Resourcing Inc.

The Tokyo-based Goodwill Group’s shareholders voted on June 7 to approve a reorganization plan that includes the sale of 15.5 billion yen ($146 million) of preferred shares. Shareholders also approved a preferred stock sale to a fund set up by Morgan Stanley and Cerberus Partners LP; both firms are helping the company with its reorganization efforts.

I believe a company’s organizational values, its core values, culture, and mutual expectations, are a company’s best recruiting and retention tool.

Mutual Expectations

In relationships of every nature, including partnerships, joint ventures, service contracts and yes, marriage, the incidence of association failure can be traced in large part to the failure of the two parties to clearly understand, appreciate, and agree to mutual expectations upfront.

The employer/employee relationship unquestionably falls into this category. In fact, outside of a family, work relationships represent the greatest number of people involved. Yet few businesses formally establish clearly stated employer/employee mutual expectations!

The key to a company’s success is a reciprocal, balanced level of expectations between the organization and each of its employees.

Time was when the primary social and work contract in this country could be characterized as “show up, be reliable, do your job, and it’s yours until you retire. When that happens, we’ll continue to take care of you.”

But the erosion of this long-standing, unspoken social contract came about in the mid 1980s, when the burgeoning global economy created competitive pressures in the industrialized world, particularly in the United States. As a result, things began to move to a performance- and quality- orientation regarding the way in which a company viewed its fundamental relationship with employees.

Having built three successful businesses from scratch (the first local, the second national, the third global), I have established organizational values that have held up in both good and bad economic times. In fact, for 10 years before I sold my global company, it was considered the industry’s “employer of choice” for top professionals.

During the earlier days, however, we definitely spent our share of recruitment dollars and often settled for employees who exhibited less than 100% of our ideals. It was only after we established our organizational values (our core values, culture, and mutual expectations) that we hit our hiring stride.

That philosophy, or set of core organizational values, included a number of logical elements to employee/employer success. It wasn’t until we put those points down on paper and had prospective employees review them that we began to experience consistent recruiting success.

A few salient points of what employees could expect from the company: a competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits package; a clean, professional, safe and pleasant working environment; training that will help job performance and broaden career growth opportunities; a working environment that encourages individual initiative; commitment to diversity among staff and the fair treatment of all employees; opportunity to become stockholders within the company; and employee performance that will always be evaluated fairly.

On the other side of this mutual coin, here are a few company expectations of employees: open-minded, flexible and adaptive employees who are aware that change is a constant in the company’s competitive marketplace; self-directed, professional, reliable, career-oriented team players; a willingness to continually broaden knowledge and skills; and being a true company representative in speech and action.

Career development is another “best practice” recruitment tool. A successful company sees career development as an investment, not a chore. It should start on day one, with a comprehensive orientation program that includes a series of courses about technology, customer service programs, industry fundamentals, and evolution.

Since a full-time training staff is not part of the budget for most companies, “visiting faculty” and/or approved employee volunteers specified to address specific subjects could provide overview and training.

At my global company, a new employee would spend the first two weeks with various “faculty members” addressing the courses and various functions of the company.

Retention

Having invested considerable resources in recruiting, selecting, and developing high-quality talent, it’s logical that measures must be taken to keep these desired employees.

The primary retention motivator within the most successful companies is the company’s core values and culture, or its “organizational personality.” Looking forward to going to work every day with people you like and admire, taking pride in the organization, and performing work in a positive environment are fundamental and powerful retention tools.

If a company maintains an effective, appealing culture, its pay scale/benefits can be competitive, as opposed to very competitive. Put another way, if your organization is having trouble hiring or keeping desired employees, chances are your pay scale and benefits are not competitive, reflecting less than attractive organizational values.

Benefits should always be a reflection of a company’s core values. An organization needs to have a genuine awareness of the contemporary pressures of dual-income families, single heads of households, eldercare, and childcare. Believing this, we developed a PTO (paid time off) policy which stated that time could be used for any purpose, including vacation, illness, or personal needs.

The bottom line on pay and benefits is that if you have an ethical, practical set of core values and a culture that reflects them, you can and should be able to offer competitive pay and benefits. If you don’t, and want to upgrade the quality of staff, you must be very competitive. Benefits must reflect your integrated core values, culture, and mutual expectations.

Getting Benefit for Benefits

Over a certain period of time, however, employees may forget how good they have it. So keep your attractive pay and benefits package in the forefront of employees’ minds. Once a year, share with your entire employee family the facts about your company’s salary structure and benefits compared to the local labor market. If your pay and benefits package is good, make sure employees know and appreciate it.

The development and integration of comprehensive core values and culture, the cornerstone of organizational values, takes time. But once instilled, they become an organization’s heart and soul…and its key to successful recruiting and retention.

New I-9 Form Released…

U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services just released its new version of the I-9 employment verification form, so make sure to update your records. (You can download it here; note that the new expiration date in the right-hand corner reflects 6/30/09.) You can move to an e-file for these forms, and perhaps you should: employeescreenIQ says its data shows that more than 85% of paper I-9 forms are filled out incorrectly. And electronically verifying this step is certainly a “greener” thing to do, and companies like Verified Person, Inc. agree. Its CEO, Jim Davis, says his Verified Person I-9 solution “affirms Verified Person’s belief in promoting an HR process that benefits the environment.”

From Resume Fluffing to Conviction Bluffing…

The folks at employeescreenIQ also say one of the hottest background-screening trends centers around the importance of thorough background checks in a shrinking job market. In fact, considering the state of the economy, “the job market is destined to become even more competitive, which in turn could lead some individuals to stretch the truth in order to secure employment,” according to the company’s new list of 10 background screening trends. Also, employeescreenIQ says conviction rates among job applicants are on the rise, and points to a 56% discrepancy rate between what is reported on a resume and what is found when conducting employment and education verifications.

TMI on MySpace?

Does the idea of lurking on someone’s MySpace page make you yell, “Too much information!” or do you view it as a (lurid) source of quality screening? What about reading someone’s biographical data on LinkedIn? Though stylistically very different (LinkedIn is more button-down; MySpace is more, er, unbuttoned?), these websites provide glimpses into the backgrounds of hopeful job candidates. Just remember two things if you decide to spend more time on these sites: failure-to-hire lawsuits can be a real headache, be it from MySpace, Google, or any other website, and avoid “friending” Natasha Kone on LinkedIn at all costs.

Genie on a Job Board…

In the June 26 issue of WEDDLE’s Newsletter, by industry analyst Peter Weddle, he advises that the key to using the Web for employers and job seekers is to manage your expectations.

“What’s out of whack is our perception of what the Internet can and cannot do,” he says. Though, “this technology is probably the single most effective means of connecting” employees and employers, it takes time to work. He advises job-seekers, in particular, that “The Internet is not some genie,” nor is it “a magic carpet that can carry you off to employment bliss the minute you hop on. No, the Web for all of its reach and technological power is bound by the pace of the humans who use it at the other end–the employers and recruiters who turn to the Web to find new talent.”

Government Security Clearance…

Weddle also reports that ClearanceJobs.com’s recently released snapshot of security clearance salaries finds that those who have a security clearance earn 25% more than those who do not. This is not without hurdles, because “you have to be able to pass the intensive screening that’s involved in applying for a clearance, plus be in a job where a clearance is required for job performance. Even then, it may take a long time to acquire this advantage, as the backlog of Federal background investigations is already huge and growing,” says Weddle.

]]> http://www.ere.net/2008/06/26/the-new-i-9-form-and-other-screening-trends/feed/ 1 http://www.ere.net/2008/06/26/mid-year-review-suites-talent-management-and-social-networks/ http://www.ere.net/2008/06/26/mid-year-review-suites-talent-management-and-social-networks/#comments Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:46:28 +0000 Kevin Wheeler http://www.ere.net/?p=3258 As we passed the summer solstice here in the Northern hemisphere a few days ago, we completed our journey through half of 2008. It’s been a year where the economy, political environment, and nature itself have all stressed the rhythm of our daily routines.

Change most often occurs when systems are stressed and have to respond in order to survive. It is at the intersection of pain, technology, and economics that new products and services arise.

At first, these changes are frightening and require both learning and daring to adopt them. But once accepted and woven into the fabric of daily routine, they become indispensible. This was the case with applicant tracking systems and career sites on the Internet. And it is still evolving.

So far this year, I see at least four major trends emerging. There are probably more than four, but these are the ones I can make sense of and that seem big enough to warrant being called trends.

The first is the economy and what it portends, and the second is the maturing of the concept of talent management as a larger and more strategic field than recruitment. The third is in some ways an outgrowth of this, an evolution of applications from discrete products to suites that contain integrated and synergistic applications. Fourth is the growth and diversification of social networks as integral and ongoing platforms for sustainable recruiting.

1. The economy will impact recruiting and change the emphasis. Obviously, not all is well in the economic picture for 2008. Energy prices and weather issues have significantly changed the employment landscape. While employment will be robust in healthcare, energy, and retirement-related sectors, manufacturing, financial services, real estate, and transportation will continue to see cutbacks or freezes. People with management skills will be in demand. Many employers are expanding college recruitment and internships as a way to bring in potentially loyal and less expensive labor and to build a talent pipeline. There will continue to be a demand for technically skilled people such as engineers and computer experts. I believe that the number of recruiters employed by an organization will decline over the next two years, forcing recruiting leaders to retain experienced and technically savvy recruiters who can leverage the Internet to expand candidate sources and be more productive. There will be growth for those who have skills in employee development, training, leadership development, succession planning, and workforce planning, along with more usual recruiting skills.
2. The concept of talent management matures. While not a new concept, it has taken more shape and achieved credibility over the past few years. Most human resources functions now are using the term and use it to encompass such areas as competency analysis, performance & compensation management, onboarding, succession planning, career planning, and learning. Many HR departments are finding that merging at least recruitment and training makes a lot of sense and the leading-edge firms are integrating many of the other elements as well under one leader. By combining recruiting, learning, onboarding, and performance management, an organization can expect to see a tighter coupling between each of those elements and that should improve employee competence and output.
3. Talent management suites arise. Again, not a new concept but better executed are the numerous talent management suites that are now available from vendors that include Taleo, Vurv, Authoria, and Virtual Edge. These often replace the individual applications that HR departments bought and struggled to integrate with each other. They fit nicely into the new talent management structures that are appearing, but require HR functions to examine how they integrate the processes and functions within the organization. The applications are most effectively deployed when there is a single person or team that can establish common processes and enforce them through the performance management process. As headcounts come under scrutiny and costs are carefully controlled, any efforts to improve efficiency and remove waste will be rewarded. These tools, along with a restructured HR function, give human resource leaders the opportunity to move into strategic corporate influence positions.
4. Social networks will continue to mature. While certainly over-hyped and poorly used at the moment, social networks will become core to good recruiting and talent management. Applicant tracking systems suffered the same over-hype and poor use until recently. Now, most recruiters know how to use an ATS well and what to expect from one; the same will happen with social networks. To ignore social networks or dismiss them would be a mistake. LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, and the hundreds of other sites that have sprung up will mature and offer more tools for both candidates and recruiters. These are first-wave products and will evolve or disappear within a few years. Specialty social networks such as Affinity Circles are already showing what a more focused network can accomplish for recruiting. My own belief is that career sites will be eclipsed by social networking sites that are proprietary for each organization. Some firms are experimenting and using open platforms such as Ning or more focused platforms like Standout Jobs. Candidates will appreciate the ability to better explain their capabilities and showcase their accomplishments. Recruiters will appreciate the additional information and the ability to build a relationship, keep potential candidates connected and in the loop, and get references and make connections that were never before possible.

I think the remainder of 2008 will be a year when recruiters will be forced to build productivity and learn to better use the myriad technologies at their fingertips.

While the reactions are understandable, what’s not is why the advocates of diversity don’t do much to help their cause. Instead of making an effort to demonstrate where diversity can add value, the approach has been to keep insisting that diversity is beneficial for employers in general, without any proof to support the claim. It should be taken on faith that investing in diversity is a good idea and that questioning the value indicates opposition stemming from bigotry or ignorance.

A Solution in Search of a Problem

Diversity is EEO plus. Equal employment opportunity alone would ensure that there was diversity in the workforce for most employers. An employer would have to work very hard to reach a state of no diversity among its employees. With women making up 51% of the population, African Americans 13%, Hispanics 15%, and Asians 4%, the employer would need to be actively engaged in discrimination to avoid any diversity. Any employer that does so would not be around for long.

So what exactly is the problem that’s being solved by diversity? One person mentioned that companies should promote diversity because it’s the right thing to do. That reflects the mindset of many in the diversity community — do the right thing, suggesting that not doing so would be doing the wrong thing. That is why so many of these programs exist in a vacuum. They give no thought to the wider context in which organizations exist. All organizations exist for a purpose, and for companies the primary one is profit. For others it may be something else, but it’s not likely to be one to support a social program with highly questionable benefits.

Finding a Purpose

Organizations need a reason to invest in diversity. We know of one organization that has an aging workforce. With many employees planning to retire soon they are actively working to replace this talent with entry-level college graduates. Looking at the demographics of the better universities and disciplines shows that the student population is by definition diverse because the population reflects the best minds from around the world. To be successful in accomplishing its strategic objectives, this organization needs to be able to attract and assimilate this diverse population of students — otherwise it will fail. Second, its clients are diverse and demand not only world-class capability to fulfill their requirements, but they also want to work with an organization that promotes diversity. For them, doing this right means a competitive advantage when competing for revenue.

That’s a pretty clear-cut example of a reason why an organization will benefit from diversity. It’s focused on addressing a very specific need, which if not addressed will result in undesirable consequences, directly impacting the purpose of the organization. It also takes a comprehensive view — recognizing that the diversity effort would need to go beyond recruiting and also make an effort at assimilating diversity hires.

This is markedly different from the more typical situation where diversity programs are championed by HR with little or no input from line managers and no clear purpose or plan for execution. That produces some dramatic flourishes that have PR value but not much else. Recruiters are caught in the middle: forced to accept diversity-hiring goals that serve no purpose beyond making some metrics look better, but often failing in overall hiring because of unrealistic assumptions and no support outside HR. As many an HR generalist has discovered, many managers would prefer to be on the frontlines in Iraq than hear yet another diatribe on the subject.

Making the Business Case

A business case for anything starts with a problem definition. It includes a description of the proposed solution; an explanation of assumptions used as the basis for proposing the solution; an estimate of the likely costs; factors that may affect the outcome; measures of success; and a plan for execution. In the absence of these, it’s difficult to take the effort seriously.

Problems that may be addressed by diversity can include goals such as creating a product that requires the skills of a diverse group of individuals, winning or keeping a government contract, or attracting a diverse pool of talent. These problems are not universal by any means, and just finding more candidates that are diverse in terms of race and gender is no guarantee that they will be solved. A recruiting effort to find diversity candidates would need to determine if these individuals have the right skills, are willing to share in the goals of the organization, and possess the values of the organization or are willing to adapt. The business case would include a description of why and how diversity hires would deliver the benefits required, how much time it would take to realize these benefits, and what would be done to support the diversity hires to help them succeed.

The last is an essential and often overlooked part of diversity programs. There must be an effort to help diversity hires integrate into the new community and organization. One of the attendees in San Diego reported that they had difficulty in attracting and retaining diverse candidates in Denver. Many of those hired left because they were unable to find friends or social networks in the area. Given that the population of Colorado is overwhelmingly Caucasian, this should be no surprise. In the absence of social networks of particular racial or ethnic background, it becomes incumbent on the employer to create an environment that diversity hires are comfortable in. So the business case would also need to address how diversity hires would be assimilated. This may well be outside the capabilities of most organizations to do, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s necessary. If it’s not possible to do so, then the diversity program should recognize that success may be very limited.

Some organizations have done so — the Army, Deloitte, and Sodexo (the latter is written up in the July/August Journal). In each case, it has taken years or decades, a very focused effort, realistic goals, and clarity of purpose.

Conclusion

Diversity is not without value — in certain circumstances and for some employers. But there is no logic or evidence that supports diversity as a program that’s good in general, and none at all for limiting these programs to race and gender. If there was a real (or even imagined) social or economic problem that would be addressed by diversity, you can bet Congress would be all over it. The three presidential hopefuls have not said a word on the subject. Again, EEO alone would ensure that a workforce would be diverse, so mounting a special effort at improving diversity requires special circumstances. Those who have determined a need for diversity should make an effort to address all aspects of a program that can make a diversity initiative successful. Supporters of diversity would do well to take a businesslike approach to their cause.

An audience member in San Diego had asked what advice should be given to a newly hired Director of Diversity. The best advice would be to work with line managers in identifying problems that could be better solved by diversity and helping recruiters in getting aligned with those goals. That would include setting realistic hiring targets and developing a process to help diversity hires succeed. What not to do would be to preach the benefits of diversity without evidence to back up the claims and a strong rationale for investing in it. As many a missionary has discovered, getting converts is not easy, no matter how strong your own faith.

Personified (the new CareerBuilder subsidiary) has about 110 employees and is charging roughly $120,000 to do employer brand consulting, roughly $50,000 to evaluate a company’s applicant-tracking needs, and roughly $3,000-$10,000 monthly for outsourcing work, such as hiring people to staff a small part of a company. Mary Delaney, the endearing president of Personified (shown), says there’s a “very thick wall” between Personified and CareerBuilder to reduce conflicts-of-interest when companies are looking for sourcing advice and Personified is in the position of recommending and not recommending CareerBuilder. …

From the booth-size battles: Ultimate Software’s booth and People-Trak’s booth are surprisingly similar in size given that the former is a company with somewhere around a billion-dollar market cap. … People-Trak’s Jim Witschger, a former USC baseballer, says “I thought we’d see a lot of the whole gloom and doom thing” at the SHRM conference, but instead he found the opposite — people doing demos at his booth 15 minutes after the close Monday. He said the vibe at the conference was “very encouraging.” …

Enough talk of gloom and doom — onto boom: Jobing (a company we mentioned yesterday) held a blowout party Monday night, complete with fireworks off a barge near Navy Pier. It was a scene right out of … 10 years ago. …

Over at HRworks (profile), president Kurt Ronn says that companies are “falling asleep at the wheel” right now. Instead of using the slower economy as a chance to grab newly available talent they’ll desperately need soon, they’re cutting. Ronn realizes there’s pressure to cut costs and improve short-term earnings, but, he says, “you might as well miss it [earnings] a little bit more and get the talent.” He’s also working on some pilot programs with companies interested in hiring disabled veterans. …

Newlyweds AIRS (profile) and The RightThing (profile) seem to be adjusting to life together quite well. During the SHRM conference, the company closed a 6,000-hires-a-year outsourcing deal, and recruiter training is up about 10% over last year. Says AIRS prez Chris Forman: “Life is good in Internet sourcing.”

Imagine advertising for superheroes. There are a dozen steroid-pumped, ego-centric applicants sitting in your waiting room wearing masks, capes, and tights. Each hero claims to have saved the world at one time or another. You hire three of them. Six months later, how do you evaluate your quality of hire?

Evaluating quality of hire requires looking at performance in a different way. It requires mentally separating the “how” from “what.” The “how” represents what the superhero says or does and “what” represents the outcome. Here is the hard part to accept: evaluating quality of hire depends almost entirely on evaluating “how” the hero performed the job, not the outcome. Regardless of opinions to the contrary, “how” is the only part of the job under the hero’s control. It is the only thing separating one hero from another.

Here is an example that may explain this idea.

It’s a particularly bad time on earth. Asteroid showers are occurring periodically, keeping the super-heroes busy. When he was on duty, Clock-Man reacted by turning back time. On her shift, Wonder Woman pulled the asteroids into new orbits with her lasso. And when it was his turn, Superman flew faster than a speeding bullet, smashing them into smithereens. The “what” was the same for all three: reversing time. Using lassos and brute force were all examples of “how.”

What about evaluating the quality of hire? Let’s look closer.

Clock-Man’s action trapped the world into a year-long time loop. The world kept rewinding and playing back. The asteroids never hit, but the world missed celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas, causing turkey famers all over the land to go bankrupt. Superman decided to stop first at Starbucks. When he finally finished, the asteroids were too close to be completely destroyed and one piece broke off, annihilating New Jersey (starting a lively argument about whether New Jersey was a fair trade for a decent Venti Mocha Latte).

Wonder Woman was shopping for glassware and misplaced her invisible plane among the fine crystal. When she finally found it, was able to lasso the largest asteroid, but a small one evaporated Paris Hilton and a small platoon of paparazzi (although no one except Mr. and Mrs. Hilton seemed to care). Now can you evaluate quality of hire?

Evaluating quality of hire is based on the same elements as determining which applicant to hire…you have to decide beforehand “how” a job to be done. Looking only at results can confuse performance because there are so many other things that can affect them. Superman might have been successful if he was motivated. Clock-Man should have thought through the long-term consequences of time-tinkering. Wonder Woman might have been more successful if she would have recognized the problems associated with finding an invisible glass plane in a clear-glass factory.

Human performance always has three components: 1) an antecedent or event; 2) the candidates’ response or behavior; and, 3) the consequence or result. Folks call these the A-B-C of performance. The antecedent and consequence are the “whats” (i.e., the results). The candidate’s behavior is the “how” (i.e., what the employee said or did when confronted with the situation). “How” is what we use to define job requirements, select and promote employees, and evaluate quality of hire.

You can think of every job as having standards for motivation, organization, analytical thought, learning, and behaving. For sales jobs these might include competitive drive, time and territory management, sales development strategies, learning new products, making presentations, and so forth. Management jobs might include the motivation to direct and develop subordinates (instead of doing it yourself), achieving objectives, solving problems, managing the marketplace, and coaching skills. Jobs always have cognitive components and behavioral components.

The key to understanding “hows” is knowing which behaviors vary with the job holder, which are necessary for successful job performance and which are associated with failure.

Why don’t we more often use “hows” to evaluate employee and applicant quality?

1. “Hows” often occur hours, days, weeks, or even months before we see results. We either forget or overlook them.
2. Results are usually in-your-face singular events that command attention, whereas “hows” are more subtle and might occur together in clusters.
3. We look at results and jump to conclusions about “hows”, often taking them for granted.
4. Some people take credit for other’s “hows.”

I’m sure you can think of more, but people seem to have an intuitive understanding that how’s are important. But because most folks are not measurement experts, they get them confused. For example, let’s look at a sample list of recommended action verbs (i.e., hows) taken from a career-services center. They recommend using words like administered, analyzed, attained, chaired, contracted, consolidated, coordinated, developed, and strengthened. Unfortunately, if you are screening resumes or interviewing applicants, the only verb that even closely resembles a candidate-centered how is “analyzed” …the rest invite assumptions.

People are wired internally to make fast decisions based on little data. While this might be a good survival strategy, it leads recruiters and hiring managers to make huge assumptions about candidate skills. Negative information, for example, (e.g., a typo in a resume) leads us to assume the candidate is sloppy and inept. Positive information (e.g., high sales dollars) leads us to assume the candidate is highly skilled. A successful recruiter who knows how to identify and evaluate candidate “hows” will both recruit better candidates and be able to better evaluate quality of hire.

While many of the “twits” or posts on Twitter offer little clues or meaningful context, it’s possible to extrapolate a few juicy tidbits of information.

One such example is when people use the phrase “I work for” followed by the name of a company. This is a great technique on any search engine, but it’s particularly useful on blog search engines because people love to talk about themselves. With Twitter being a microblog (only 140 characters allowed in a post) the brief comments offer little other information. But this is one of those short phrases where the context tells us much more than the text itself.

For example, a search for “I work for Microsoft” reveals a few people like:

• ThatGuyNamedKen
• Tafelzoetstof
• Rickster_CDN
• rtvenge
• Lindsi
• Vriyait
• ClarkeZone

Among others, of course. Now, that in and of itself is not very revealing. Other than knowing where they work, you can’t really tell what they do…unless, of course, you see their other posts. For example, in one of ThatGuyNamedKen’s posts you find out on April 18 he got a job offer from Microsoft to be a “Support Operations Analyst.”

“Great, Shally, but now where does he live and how do I contact him?”

Well, that’s a bit harder. If you look at his profile, you can tell he lives in Winnipeg (Canada, of course). As for contacting him, though, unless you want to commit to some CyberSleuthing, it’s probably easiest to just “follow” him on Twitter. Then you can send him a private twit by texting 40404 with a message that starts with @thatguynamedken: followed with a short (140 characters or less) message.

• Peopleclick (profile; site) introduced Peopleclick Onboarding as an enhanced component of its talent acquisition suite. It integrates with the Peopleclick Recruitment Management System (RMS) and handles the usual forms and manager checklists. The cool part is that new employees can access the system even before they start to learn about details like parking, lunchrooms, how to find their office and even chat with their new colleagues.

• JobTarget (profile; site) announced service agreements with First Advantage Recruiting Solutions, Bayard Advertising, and Graystone Group Advertising. These recruitment advertising firms outsourced their job posting activity to JobTarget, the company says in a press release today. It’s a relatively new service specifically for agencies.

  It provides a number of features including a job board search engine, proposal creator, order status tracking, inventory management, login management, web proofs, and reporting. Besides reducing the cost for agencies, JobTarget designed the system to help agencies “mine their client activity to look for new service opportunities and purchasing efficiency opportunities.”

• Monster (profile; site) reported adding 11 more metro or market-leading daily newspapers to its co-branded media alliance program and said it will soon add three more papers. The new additions include the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a paper that only a few weeks ago joined the Yahoo!  newspaper coalition (a paper can join both). Monster also announced alliances with several more newspapers, including Ottaway Newspapers (the Local Media Group of Dow Jones & Company), the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The additions bring the total media affiliations to 200 weekly and daily newspapers and more than 100 television outlets.

• Yahoo! Hotjobs (profile; site) officially unveiled Smart Ads for job posting, a product enhancement that transforms job listings into display ads that can be tailored to active and passive job seekers across the Yahoo! Network. Yahoo! also announced Premium Company Profiles to offer corporate branding with rich media and company-specific content from the Yahoo! Network.The company release says: “Premium Company Profile pages offer employers the chance to showcase their company’s employment brand and drive more qualified applicants to their open positions. Working with popular Yahoo! properties such as Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Answers, each page comes with an added layer of information and insight about the company in addition to a full listing of positions available to job seekers.”
• Finally, we have the desk of the future from Oberon. The folks at Oberon describe it thusly: “The Walkstation is the combination of a fully integrated electric height-adjustable work surface with an exclusively engineered, low speed commercial grade treadmill. At a maximum speed of 2 mph, the Walkstation lets the user walk comfortably, burn calories, feel healthier and more energized-and all while accomplishing work that a person would normally do while seated.” We were mezmerized by the video Oberon created, especially where they’re all standing (treadmilling?) around a conference table for a meeting. We almost thought we were being spoofed, but no, this is the real thing. It was created, according to Oberon, by “Mayo Clinic endocrinologist James Levine, M.D., Ph.D.—a long-time advocate of NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) which is based on the premise that daily moderate movement is more effective in achieving weight loss and better health than is the power work-out.” Enjoy the video.
  

Monster is distributing donation cards in denominations from $25 to $10,000 that conference-goers then decide which of 23 charities gets it. One charity can get it all or the amount can be divied up.

“We’re really psyched about it,” company spokesman Steve Sylven told us, speaking from the busy show floor at McCormick Place. The usual assortment of pens, glow balls and other tsotchkes “have their place,” says Sylven, to whom we confessed we have a draw full of pens from a dozen shows. The “trumps are very popular,” he adds, referring to Monster’s Trumpasauraus mascot, which we also had until the puppy got at it.

This show, “We decided to do something different.”

The charities fall into several different categories include literacy and education, health, military support, environmental and others. The organizations include Doctors Without Borders, Children’s Defense Fund, the USO and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Monster calls the initiative “Doing Well By Doing Good: Put Our Money Where Your Heart is” and pledges to give away all $1 million by the end of the conference Wednesday. Should all the donation cards not be distributed the company will contribute the remainder. Unlikely Sylven thought. At the rate the cards are going, “They’ll all be gone.”

That is, until recently, when Microsoft raised the level of its recruiting aggressiveness to the point where it would have to be rated an “A” on the aggressiveness scale.

The first indication came prior to the initial merger offer to Yahoo, when its central sourcing team directly emailed recruiting messages to Yahoo engineers, playing on their concerns about Yahoo’s future. Just last week, they ran a full-page color ad in the paper announcing in bold type…“Microsoft has search jobs in the valley”.

There is no secret who the ad was intended for, despite daily defections from Yahoo there is still some top-notch talent inside the company that the competition would love to poach. No subtlety here!

Develop Talent, Hire Talent, or Buy the Competition

In nearly every industry, talent is the primary driver of both a firm’s capability and its capacity to perform. For firms that are growing, either holistically or through industry consolidation/expansion, there are really only three options to ensure access to talent.

Some companies opt to build or develop talent; unfortunately, development is often a “slow” option that provides mediocre results in a fast-changing world.

A second option, growth through mergers and acquisitions, allows the firm to increase its capabilities relatively rapidly as a result of “buying” or merging with a major competitor. It is one of the most common and fundamentally sound business strategies available, and one in constant use around the world. However, M&A is expensive, and often leads to defections of the very key talent you have liked to have retained. Mergers and acquisitions can be hostile or tame, something we have witnessed with Microsoft’s attempt to acquire in recent months.

When M&A doesn’t work, companies have yet another option, one that is less complex, less time-consuming, and much less expensive. This option is to poach away most, if not all, of the talent that provides the competition with its capacity to exist, something Microsoft is obviously doing in a very public way.

The “Neutron Bomb” Recruiting Approach as an Alternative to Mergers

The “Plan B” poaching strategy that firms should consider a feasible alternative to mergers and acquisitions focuses on using strong recruiting approaches to directly “poach away” the target firm’s key employees. This effectively gives you access to all of the capability that produced their intellectual capital without the internal drama that led to the competitor’s chaotic state.

I call this recruiting-based alternative to mergers the “neutron bomb” strategy, because much like the military’s neutron bomb after detonation, “the buildings” are left intact but the people are gone. (Yes it’s the same neutron bomb metaphor that earned Jack Welch the former CEO of GE, his nickname “Neutron Jack.”)

Microsoft not so subtly revealed its new recruiting emphasis by running a full-page color ad last week in the San Jose Mercury News (the key newspaper of the Silicon Valley). While it’s generally true that employed engineers don’t read newspaper career sections when they’re looking for a job, the act of placing a full-page ad garners buzz on the Internet, blogs, and social networks.

In that ad, Microsoft made it clear that it was investing heavily in search technology (the strong-suit of competitor Yahoo) and that it wanted to grow employment in that area. It also noted that it currently has over 2,000 employees in the Silicon Valley, thus indicating to potential Yahoo employees that relocation wouldn’t be necessary.

Advantages of Recruiting Versus M&A

If you have enough courage and a strong recruiting function, there are many advantages associated with implementing a “neutron” recruiting strategy in lieu of buying a competitor:

• Opportunity to select the best. Recruiting allows you to “cherry pick” the target firm’s key innovators, game-changers, and top performers in just the critical knowledge areas where you need help. With M&A, unfortunately, you have to acquire every employee, including unnecessary administrative staff and a significant number of slackers. While you can get rid of them post-acquisition, it’s a messy process. Using professional football as an analogy, in lieu of buying the entire team complete with its facilities, you would instead focus on recruiting away the best coaches and top quarterbacks, running backs, pass rushers, and wide receivers. In the end, you would have “cherry picked” a small number of individuals but a significant portion of the team’s capability to win.
• Avoid merger pains. When you merge two large companies, you must also merge different corporate cultures, business processes, and management structures. This integration is a major effort that can distract your employee’s attention away from the customers and the product. In contrast, when you recruit away a firm’s employees as individuals or in small, intact teams (known as “lift outs”) these new hires don’t carry with them as high a level of hope or expectation that everything will remain the same. Instead, these individuals immediately realize that they are expected to change and adapt to the existing processes and culture.
• No complicated negotiations or approvals are required. Unfortunately, firms have to get the government’s approval of any large merger, but you don’t have to get anyone’s permission to recruit away a firm’s key employees (this is because employees are not owned and are free to leave at any time. Consequently, there are few legal issues if your recruiting effort focuses on recruiting the individual employees for their capability and not the firm’s proprietary technologies. In fact, your recruiting effort can even be general enough that you don’t have to mention a competitor firm by name. For example, in the case of the current Microsoft recruiting effort, Yahoo’s current search and advertising employees already know that the recent advertising “deal” with Google carries with it the possibility that their job and their impact will be lessened at Yahoo. Merely letting the world know through advertising and word-of-mouth approaches that Microsoft is doing significant hiring and investment in a particular functional area is sufficient on its own to attract at least the interest of most of the targeted employees.
• Recruiting processes are already in place. Recruiting new employees is an everyday occurrence, so there are processes and staff already in place to handle any upturn in volume. In direct contrast, M&A activities occur infrequently and as a result, they require the firm to put together a new M&A and transition team each time they make a major move. If you have a strong employment brand (as Microsoft does) the odds of reaching your recruiting goals under this strategy are extremely high.
• No need to lay off. Under the M&A approach, you acquire every employee. Unfortunately, you may get a “surplus” with some weak employees or unnecessary duplicates. If you use the “neutron” recruiting strategy, you won’t need to plan for and execute the massive restructuring and the almost inevitable layoffs that are commonly associated with M&A. As a side benefit, it allows you to avoid the upturn in job-seeking among your most valued employees that research shows happens as a result of even modest downsizing.
• Recruiting may result in lower turnover. When you recruit new employees, you don’t have to give them the complicated and uniform stock option and severance benefits that are generally associated with employees acquired as a result of a merger or acquisition. Because these new hires were hired as “individuals”, the hiring package doesn’t have to be uniform across the board, as it is with mergers. As a result, you are able to negotiate a tailored package with these “recruited” new hires, which is more likely to directly meet their individual wants and needs (thus limiting the risk of future turnover). In addition, because these individuals were “cherry picked,” they are much more likely to stay with your firm because they have been selected to closely “fit” your corporate culture and your business growth areas.
• Others will follow. Fortunately, it’s not necessary for your recruiting function to initially target a huge number of employees. The reason behind this is the fact that once you successfully recruit away a company’s key leaders and influencers in a particular functional area, it’s highly likely that many others will choose to follow. Some will come on their own volition, while others will come as a result of referrals from newly hired employees.
• Leave behind damaged remnants. If you are successful in recruiting away a significant number of the targeted key employees, you leave your former competitor in a confused and often weakened state. This gives your firm an opportunity to move ahead rapidly, while your competitor must take time to regroup. This might seem harsh to some in HR, but remember, the business world is highly competitive and if you frequently use the phrase “war for talent,” it’s only natural that you would use more “war like” approaches when recruiting.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately, HR and talent management are seldom brought into a merger or acquisition situation until after the deal is already done. Even then, their primary role is just to smooth the transition into a single firm.

However, there is a role for talent management prior to the decision to even begin M&A activity. That role is to offer senior management the option of achieving almost the same results (gaining a large volume of quality, trained talent quickly) without the associated complexity and costs related to mergers and acquisitions.

In my experience, not very many Directors of Talent Management or Chief Talent Officers have had the courage to step forward and intervene before major merger plans are underway. However, because M&A activity is continually increasing, even in our troubled economy, now might be the time to make an exception and to propose the “neutron” recruiting option as Plan B.

Recruiting talent is a business function, and business activities get branded as hostile or aggressive all the time without the negative connotations that are often associated with aggressive or hostile recruiting. As global competition heats up and the balance of global economic power shifts away from the United States, recruiters are going to have to get over their personal objections and embrace business realities.

When filling a job order, most recruiters search through virtual stacks of resumes hoping one stands out, matching most of the skills and experiences listed on the job description. When calling a person, the recruiter attempts to gain this same information by first describing the job and then asking the person to describe his or her background. If there’s a fit, the selling process begins.

If you want to hire more top performers, this is exactly what you shouldn’t be doing.

A little understanding of human nature and solution selling offers some guidance on how to approach passive candidates and quickly get them more interested in what you have to offer. If you follow the instructions closely, you’ll even be able to get two to three great referrals on each call. You’ll want these, especially if you decide you’re not interested in pursuing the candidate.

In the last sentence, pay notice to who decides to move forward or not. It should be the recruiter, not the candidate. If you’re letting your candidates decide if they’re interested in your opportunity, you’re not recruiting, you’re just box-checking and order-taking. Making this decision is the first part of the applicant control process essential to good recruiting.

For the sake of brevity and making a point, let me narrow the passive candidate recruiting process down to two small, but critical, first steps. The first relates to a candidate saying they’re not interested in considering your opportunity, even before you’ve told them anything about it.

The second relates to those who don’t say “no” right away, but instead ask about the comp, title, and location.

I’m sure you would agree that getting past these two pivotal points will dramatically increase the number of top candidates you put into your pipeline.

Being familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs will give you some of the insight you’ll need to address these candidate roadblocks. Abraham Maslow was a mid-20th century psychologist who studied the behavior of high-performing individuals. In a 1943 paper, he suggested that people make fundamental and predictable decisions based on different behavioral needs. These needs range from primitive, e.g., requiring water or food, to being completely fulfilled. He separated these states into five distinct levels and referred to them collectively as a hierarchy of needs.

The first level had to do with satisfying basic human needs including biological, food, and shelter. The second level related to fulfilling security needs like a steady income and healthcare. The third level addressed social needs like friendship, intimacy, and family. The fourth level covered esteem needs including achievement, self-respect, and confidence. Maslow referred to the fifth and highest level as self-actualization, growing and becoming as well-developed as possible. According to Maslow, one could not move to a higher level until the lower-level needs were met.

While Maslow has his distracters, and this is certainly not a complete summary, knowing this basic “needs concept” can be useful when a candidate says “show me the money” or something equivalent. Instead of responding, you might ask the candidate directly where she is on her hierarchy of needs scale.

This probably won’t work in such a direct fashion, but these two comparable questions might:

“Considering your current and past few positions, which one gave you the most sense of personal satisfaction?”

Pause and let the person respond. Then ask whether this satisfaction was due to the type of work or the amount of salary. Phrased properly, this can only be answered with something about the quality of the work, not the money being earned.

Unless the person never had a great job or never did anything worthwhile, the candidate will select a situation that addressed a higher order or self-fulfillment needs. With this as the setup go on to ask:

“Under this basis, wouldn’t it then make sense to talk just five to 10 minutes to determine whether the job I’m working on provides both satisfying work coupled with a competitive compensation?”

Done properly, don’t be surprised if 90% of your candidates agree. Of course, you’ll then need to prove your case, but at least you’ve started conversing on a positive note.

I call this the Maslow advance. When confronted with a recruiter or any cold-call from a salesperson, a person’s normal reaction is to say no or ask questions that allow them to get out of the conversation as rapidly as possible. Good recruiters know this.

To overcome this roadblock you’ll need to use some type of decision-shifting question that allows you to engage with the person in a brief-but-meaningful dialogue. As you begin the discussion, don’t provide much information about the job other than a vague title. The key here is to get the person to tell you first about her background. If you describe the job first, you risk the chance the candidate will respond with a “not interested.”

The reason I call this an advance and not a close has to do with the concept of SPIN Selling. Knowing SPIN Selling will also allow you to overcome the “not interested” hurdle.

SPIN Selling is a sales technique developed by Neil Rackham and thoroughly described in his 1988 book of the same title. SPIN refers to a four-step sales process relating to first understanding the situation (S), determining whether there is a problem (P), figuring out the implication (I) of the problem and situation, and asking a need-payoff (N) question to engage the person in another step.

Rackham refers to this step forward as an advance, as opposed to a close. In larger sales or influencing someone into making an important decision (like changing jobs), obtaining more information in a logical series of steps is the key to ultimate success. Good candidates, especially the passive ones, tend to be reluctant to move quickly, so it’s important to engage with them in a series of conversations and interviews sharing more and more critical career and job information at each step.

Another aspect of SPIN Selling is to avoid asking questions that can be answered by a “no” or “not interested.” So for next time, don’t ask the person if he’s interested in a senior firmware job; instead, ask if he’d be interested in exploring opportunities on a new state-of-the-art project your firm is launching. Then get the person to tell you a little about himself (understand the Situation), find out if the person is fully satisfied in his current role (is there a Problem), find out if there is anything in the short term likely to change this (determine the Implication), and then ask the person if he’d be open to talk for 20-30 minutes to see if one of the opportunities you have open would be more satisfying. Of course, the last question combined the Maslow advance with Rackham’s Need-payoff question.

If you forget to do this, and the candidate says “not interested,” you might want to try the “deer in the highlight” advance and say something like “that’s exactly why we should talk.” (I heard this on one of Brian Tracy’s Nightingale-Conant audio selling programs.) This will get the candidate’s attention.

If he doesn’t hang up, but in the dead silence that follows, suggest to the candidate that he just made a long-term decision with short-term data. Continue by suggesting that if it could be demonstrated that your open position represented a great long-term career move, wouldn’t it make sense to discuss it for five to 10 minutes, even if the title isn’t exactly perfect? At least 50% of people will agree to proceed on this basis.

Now, while Maslow and Rackham can keep you in the game, you won’t make the sale unless your job truly offers a better career move than others the candidate is considering. For this you’ll need to have a thorough understanding of real job needs and future opportunities for the firm you’re representing. In addition, you’ll need to use subsequent phone screen and interviews to probe for gaps and voids in the candidate’s background. In this way, the interview can be seen as the SPI part of SPIN selling, with the N the recruiting part.

For example, at the end of the interview, convert a gap in experience into a test of interest by asking the candidate if she’d be open to meet the hiring manager if the job offered significant learning even if the comp increase was modest.

A series of methodical advances like this is how you can use SPIN Selling techniques and an understanding of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to engage more top performers and make more hires. Recruiting is a form of highly sophisticated consultative selling. Unfortunately, too many recruiters try to use transactional selling techniques and wonder why their candidates aren’t interested.

Here in sprawling Los Angeles, though the Bel Air/Beverly Hills elite continues to incorrectly claim that “no one in LA takes public transportation,” the MTA says that “Metro Rail ridership in May shot up 6 percent over May 2007, one of the highest one-month spikes on record.”

In May, more than 7.6 million passengers boarded the MTA’s two Los Angeles subway lines and three light-rail surface lines. The organization employs about 10,000 people, and is hiring engineers, Oracle programmers, and others.

In Chicago, the transit authority is hiring accountants, attorneys, database administrators, and, among other jobs, someone to collect intelligence on terrorism. Challenger, Gray, and Christmas says that the number of first-quarter Chicago passengers increased 5.7% from last year to a record 20.7 million.

Boston-area ridership is up 5-6% over last year.

Light rail use – such as a trolley — is way up in Baltimore, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and San Francisco. Meanwhile, use of heavy rail is up sharply in Staten Island. Bus ridership is booming in San Antonio and Denver. In the Seattle area, Sound Transit’s Bruce Gray tells me that hiring will particularly pick up if a ballot measure passes expanding the area’s transportation system. And Morgan Lyons of Dallas Area Rapid Transit tells me the agency will be hiring aggressively as the light rail system expands from 45 to 90 miles through 2013.

Public-transportation payrolls are sometimes set in stone through an annual budgeting process. In other words, if gas prices go up today, that doesn’t mean hiring goes up tomorrow. But I bet public-transportation employers will argue for increased staff as soon as they can get it.

Virginia Miller, a spokeswoman for the American Public Transportation Association, says that trends in public transportation are reversing itself in the sense that 50 years ago, there was rapid movement the other direction — from streetcars to cars. “There’s a demand like we’ve never seen, a sea changing going on,” she says. “It’s like back to the future.”

When we see a candidate who meets a large number of our pre-existing conditions for employment (i.e., a candidate who has gone to a school our hiring manager likes; has worked at a couple of well-respected companies; or has written the right key words on his resume), we have already hired him in our minds.

Interviews are examples of how easy it is to abandon the tools of objectivity, the scientific method, logic, and the rules of evidence, for our “gut” or for “chemistry.”

While there is considerable evidence showing that testing candidates is far more likely to predict successful performance, we still rely almost exclusively on interviews. Though numerous researchers have pointed out the need to gather a variety of data about a candidate, we generally settle for an application form and an interview.

Why are we so resistant to testing and other more objective sources of data?

Perhaps it is because our expectations, preconceptions, and prior beliefs pretty much always influence our interpretation of new information. Experiments conducted over and over have shown that we see what we expect to see and conclude what we expect to conclude.

Tom Gilovich, a Cornell University psychologist, writes:

“Information that is consistent with our pre-existing beliefs is often accepted at face value, whereas evidence that contradicts them is critically scrutinized and discounted.”

I was recently helping a hiring manager evaluate his staff for promotion. We carefully determined success criteria and agreed that the candidates had to meet those criteria for consideration. In fact, we spent quite a bit of time validating the criteria and ensuring that others agreed with them. We then tested his entire staff using highly validated, widely accepted tests of ability and potential.

As you might expect, one of his favorite people did not do very well on any of the tests. He struggled with what to do and finally decided that his own judgment was more valuable than the tests and promoted her. Six months later she was not performing, was not happy, and he was now faced with the task of demoting her or letting her go.

This is just one example of some general truths. If we are presented with evidence from a test that a person we really like is not very good at whatever skill we are looking for, we say that he must have had a bad test day or we find some other excuse to downplay the tests results because we want to hire him.

On the other hand, if the person had not gone to the right schools and not worked at the right companies, or had displeased us in some way, we would be more likely to accept the test results as accurate.

There are countless examples of how we deceive ourselves in the process of interviewing and screening candidates. We ask leading questions to elicit the responses we want: “You have made presentations to senior management, haven’ t you?” We ask references the same kinds of leading questions.

It is not that we don’t examine information critically. In fact, experiments have shown that we look at all the evidence quite carefully, but we subtly massage it to make it support our preconceived idea or wish.

If evidence seems negative of our desire, we find excuses for why the information is bad or we lower it in our priorities for making a decision. We do just the opposite for favorable information.

We also will find data to validate our choices later on. If a person is successful, we will tend to attribute that to our superior interviewing skills, but if they fail we will find other reasons. Managers and recruiters are expert at the art of scapegoating their poor hiring decisions. What is most interesting, is how often someone removed from the process predicts the end result well before it happens because they see things more clearly and do not suffer the same preconceptions.

The bottom line is that assumptions, beliefs, and interviews are very poor tools for selecting people for specific jobs. It is almost impossible to apply objectivity to the interview process or to rid ourselves of deeply held (and mostly unconscious) beliefs.

Here are three things you can do to make you more effective as a selector:

1. Become aware. While we cannot prevent our preconceptions from clouding our judgment, we can apply corrective measures. We can develop criteria for jobs that are based on competencies, not on beliefs that cannot be validated or objectively supported. We can apply the scientific method to the recruiting process, just as we do to most other processes. I highly recommend How We Know What Isn’t So by Thomas Gilovich at Cornell, and Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres. They are eye-openers to how easily we are duped and misled by seemingly objective evidence and by our own human nature.
2. Learn that superficial, circumstantial evidence is probably misleading and often wrong. Every court of law has developed elaborate rules of evidence to ensure that they get as accurate and well-rounded view of a situation as possible. Even with all of those rules and procedures, many innocent people still get convicted. Finding objective criteria and evidence takes time and a willingness to seek it out.
3. Use objective tools such as validated tests and multi-rater feedback. By starting with one or two well-known tools, we can refine and hone them to our exact needs until they are excellent at predicting success. Proctor and Gamble has been doing this for more than two decades with remarkable success.

When it is essential that people learn rapidly and perform at superior levels, you need objective and repeatable ways to judge candidates. No scientist would rely on interviews, feelings, or opinions to judge a scientific experiment. Neither should we in judging a candidate.

This is no longer the story, and it’s not just because the summer heat has kicked in. All the signs are that employers are cooling to the idea of hiring more staff. This is not a cause for immediate concern for third-party recruitment suppliers, or unrequited joy for HR departments, but there are signs of a general easing of skills demand.

The first source of comfort for HR departments is Hudson’s latest quarterly hiring report, which says professional hiring expectations in China have declined in the second quarter of 2008, after a prolonged and sustained rise.

The fact that Hudson even asked companies what HR policies they would implement in the event of a recession is a sign of the changes to come.

A serious hiring slowdown is unlikely at this stage, but the Hudson report found that 14% of respondents in China expected the country would face a recession in the next six months. This is fewer than in any other Asian country.

Meanwhile, Manpower’s recent results for China are largely in agreement with Hudson’s. However, they focus more on manual positions and show 15% are having difficulties filling positions.

This compares favorably with 2007, when 19% of companies had difficulties. The closure of so many low-tech textile and furniture plants in the south of China may be freeing up labor, exactly as the government had planned.

Training and Productivity

With all this in mind, it may be time to think about getting more productivity out of existing staff. If China has really reached the Lewisian Turning point, as many economists have suggested, then there isn’t any longer a choice about doing this. If China has not reached the Lewisian Turning point this year, then it will very soon.

Training is the obvious first step to productivity improvements. Surprisingly, over the past few years, training has not been an obvious solution. Many companies in China feel as though they are the training ground for everyone else in their industry.

The classic scenario is that once staff have received training, they cash it in for a salary increase and a bigger title with a competitor company. When they choose their next employer, needless to say, the cycle continues as there is no change in their preference for companies with strong training programs.

This scenario is not true for many staff in China, but it is true for enough people that it has become a constant topic of conversation.

With even a small reduction in hiring demand, the likely result is that staff are going to stay longer, so it actually becomes worthwhile to train them. Training then becomes a way to hold staff, and if you can hold them longer, hiring needs lessen. The negative downward spiral of hire-train-lose turns upwards so that you get to hire-train-motivate-retain.

Even in hot industries, like banking, there is a degree of caution in hiring right now because some banks have yet to receive their licenses to operate in China.

Media, PR, and advertising continue their seemingly inexorable meteoric rise, and we can still look forward to one-year tenures and 100% salary increases. If your training programs have skills overlap with these industries, you may still have to watch out.

Expectations underwent the steepest fall in the consumer industry, plummeting to 45% from 72% in the first quarter, so hiring in retail should be hit to some extent. At the same time, there is also strong demand coming from new retail players. Retail’s revolving door may continue revolving for a while.

The economy is slow, gas prices are through the roof, and it is causing problems everywhere. Employees are looking for jobs closer to home or something better to offset the recent pillage of their pocketbooks. Employees are looking for ways to cut costs, so help them do it before they look somewhere else.

Brand your business as the best in town and you will really set your brand apart during these tough economic times.

Although the goal of any company right now is to reduce operating costs, all while trying to maintain or increase profit, what if that’s not enough? What if the goal you have in mind right now is really going to hurt you in the long run? Would you be willing to take a risk? Increase while everyone else is decreasing? That is precisely what I am telling you to do.

Growth during a recession in order to promote your brand is important, and talent is the key to growth.

“It is well-documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good times.” –John Quelch, a professor at Harvard Business School.

This is true with respect to recruiting. Branding your company as the best place to work during a recession is critical to the process. Trust me, top talent is looking, especially now.

When you start to grab these players during a recession, it will positively impact productivity, so whether you are a search consultant advising clients, or an HR executive, you need to think about this scenario as a way to impact your business positively over the long term.

Branding Basics

Use a simple plan to brand your business as the place to work during a recession:

• Maintain or increase advertising for key employees (profit builders).
• Implement four-day workweeks to reduce operational costs without hindering performance or productivity.
• Provide greater choices for preventive health programs.
• Consider telecommuting for certain employees to reduce commuting expenses.
• Promote innovative employer value propositions, not standard benefits.
• Make a recruitment video and link it to your website, postings, and ads.
• Market these benefits rigorously.

Small- and medium-size businesses will benefit the most, but if you can provide an image that highlights stability, security, growth, and innovation during economic uncertainty, you will see a shift in the attitude toward your company.

As the great Morpheus says in “The Matrix,” there is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. Have a nice stroll!

–Meanwhile, Disney is sued for allegedly not hiring someone who didn’t have the “Disney look.”

–Who says the newspaper is dead? Well, I do, often. But Brian Hauswirth of the Missouri Department of Corrections tells me the paper’s the main reason why his career fair just surpassed all expectations. “When we ask people, ‘where did you hear about the career fair?’ the no. 1 reason is the newspaper,” he says. About 165 people attended the fair, he says, and about 103 applied for Corrections Officer 1 positions at a new prison. They still need to pass background checks, but Hauswirth says the results are “very promising.” Those with military experience make up about a quarter of corrections officers.

–Cellular South has completed a redesign of its careers site. It’s no EY site, but the company does use video to try to get applicants who fit its culture: fast-paced, challenging, competitive. It had Bernard Hodes (profile; site) help out (after realizing that consumer marketing and employment branding are cousins, not siblings, so Cell South can’t just use its in-house marketing folks), but still uses Sonic (profile; site) to track applicants.

Barb Miller, VP of human resources for the 1,000-employee company, one of the largest privately held wireless companies in the U.S., says the employees you see on the site are indeed employees, not actors, though Hodes and Miller’s team did discuss the idea of using actors (some Cellular South employees underperformed on camera, resulting in an SVP filling in at the end). Cellular South will measure results of the site through the “capture rate” (who leaves the site?); quality of hire (performance reviews, retention); traffic; and productivity (how many customers they can get with a certain number of employees). I asked Miller about the company’s snooze-inducing job descriptions. “You hit on something good,” she says. “That will be the next phase of what we do.”