The idea here was to increase the likelihood the candidate would not overvalue compensation as the primary decision criteria when selecting one job over another. Since compensation was rarely ideal, broadening the selection criteria this way was a very effective recruiting and negotiating tactic. This week I learned how to make it even better – have candidates rank order the criteria when you first meet them.

As I began to consider this and try it out, I ran across a study prepared by WFD Consulting in a consortium with some major U.S. corporations. Their findings revealed that employees and candidates have varying needs that change over time depending on where they are in their career and family life-cycles. While many companies have addressed these issues in terms of retention, few have incorporated them directly into the recruiting process.

To test this process, give your candidates the following list consisting of these standard job satisfaction factors. After a quick review, have them rank-order the list in order of importance to them:

• Type of work being performed.
• Importance of work being performed, recognition, and impact on the company.
• Career growth and advancement opportunities.
• Hiring manager and ability to be mentored.
• Quality of associates and team members from a professional and personal standpoint.
• Current compensation.
• Benefits.
• Overall job security.
• Long-term compensation.
• Company and culture.
• Company-sponsored learning opportunities.
• Work/life balance, commute.

In the past, I tended to assume a ranking with growth opportunity, the chance to make an impact, the job match, and the hiring manager at the top of the list. For those on the fast track this seemed to hold true over the past 20-plus years, but as the population ages and employee needs differ, it seems important to customize this ranking based on each candidate’s specific needs.

Here are the steps I would follow in using this type of job satisfaction ranking system in the recruiting and closing process:

• Step 1: Once some level of interest is shown in the job, ask the candidate to self-rank the factors. Early-on, if the candidate wants to focus on compensation, suggest that she should look at job satisfaction from multiple perspectives. This is a good way to introduce this multi-factor decision form. Ask the candidate to evaluate her current job on this basis and then ask her to evaluate the best job she’s ever had the same way. This will typically show a striking difference. Then go on to say that she should evaluate your job in this same multi-factor fashion. This alone will allow you to get more candidates interested in what you have to offer. Discuss the order on the list with your candidate from two perspectives. First, make sure the candidate has correctly understood what you’re looking for and is satisfied with the ranking. Next, ask them to justify their rankings. This will help you understand what’s motivating them to look and if you even have a chance of hiring the candidate to fill one of your open positions.
• Step 2: During the interview process have the candidate rank your job on each of these factors. Using this rank-ordered list as guide, provide the candidate the appropriate information in each category. This way, the candidate will have all of the information needed to make a thorough evaluation of your job opening. You might also be able to modify some aspects of the job, if possible, to match your opening to the candidate’s motivating needs. This will go a long way to increase your close rate.
• Step 3: Ask the candidate to compare your job opening to others the candidate is considering using this same ranking scale. Include the candidate’s current job in this comparison. This will help you better understand why the candidate is leaving her current position and what needs to be done to increase the likelihood the person will accept your offer. This information will help you fend off the competition and minimize the chance of a counter-offer.
• Step 4: During the final offer process determine where your company stands in comparison to the competition. As part of the negotiating process, don’t just focus on compensation when putting an offer together. Make sure the candidate considers all aspects of the offer in balance. This type of rank-ordered selection criteria not only makes good sense from the candidate’s perspective when evaluating different job opportunities, it also gives you and your company a head-start by addressing these needs in proactive fashion.

Over the next several months, we’ll be putting together a survey of recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates to better understand how different demographics affect this selection criteria. This will not only help in improving the hiring decision, but it can also be used for onboarding, performance management, and retention.

If you’d like to be part of this, sign-up for my Recruiters Roundtable discussion group. Feel free to comment regarding any factors that have been omitted from the above list and what you’ve discovered as the primary criteria your candidates use when making their acceptance decisions.

While this is somewhat of an experiment, my sense is that it will uncover a new recruiting process that will allow you to better match your job requirements with the candidate’s true motivating needs. In the process, you’ll probably improve quality of hire and make the negotiation less about compensation and more about opportunity, career growth, and work/life balance.

But smart organizations are foregoing the traditional campus activities, in favor of leveraging the Internet. In fact, if you want to attract and hire the best students, forget going to campus at all; it’s not necessary.

College students tell me they are confused by the entire recruiting process. Organizations on the leading-edge of technology are still using the most traditional of methods to recruit them.

While every student has a Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace profile, most companies do not use them in the recruiting process at all. Students are actually a bit surprised that recruiters seem to use recruiting tactics that their parents relate to better than they do. Many are involved in virtual worlds, take online webinars, download lectures as podcasts, and learn from virtual professors. Yet, they must listen to a hiring manager and watch a PowerPoint presentation about some company in a stuffy room on campus.

Unfortunately, recruiters’ belief in the efficacy of past practices is reinforced with surveys by a variety of organizations and institutions with a vested interest in the status quo. But if you take a few minutes to sit down and actually talk to students, you get a different picture of what they would like, what would impress them, and what would engage them.

As demand for college graduates continues to steadily rise, the supply and demand figures for college students should be warning that times have changed.

The number of college students is fairly flat, growing at perhaps 1% a year, and is projected to remain that way for at least another four or five years. Another little-noted fact is that more women than men are enrolled in college and, unfortunately for the high tech and engineering worlds, women don’t tend to major in engineering, mathematics, physics, or computer science. All of these fields are facing significant declines in enrollments and in graduates.

Also consider the students of all age groups graduating from virtual universities that have no campuses. These students are valuable resources for corporations that are currently almost untouched and unrecognized.

Facing these challenges, I don’t see how organizations can focus on just a few campuses or limit their reach to elite schools. Here are a half-dozen tactics to guide your virtual efforts on campus:

• Tactic #1: Become student-centered, not campus-centered. Create an employment brand specifically for students. Your goal should be to attract any student, from anywhere who has the skills and major you are looking for. Why focus on a handful of campuses when the Internet allows you to reach all of them?
• Tactic #2: Use social networks. Create a Facebook, MySpace, or other social network presence. KPMG in South Africa and IBM have created Facebook profiles that demonstrate what can be done to build interest and connect with students. And this is just the beginning of what is possible. By leveraging a customized Ning site, for example, you could create a network where students could invite other students and generate a viral marketing program for recruiting.
• Tactic #3. Create a dynamic, energetic, and exciting website geared to college students. This should be designed to inform and entertain a potential hire. It should allow you to gather enough information about the student so you can decide whether a face-to-face interview is in order. These websites should have video tours of your organizations, interviews about the positions you are hiring for, and lots of diverse information about why a student would want to work for you. These sites can also contain screening tools and allow students to build a profile or link you to their Facebook or other profile. Use the money you save by not going to campus to pay for this website. Combined with a social network presence, this can largely replace any need to go to campus.
• Tactic #4. Build a relationship virtually. Once you have connected with a student, use email, SMS, Twitter, or some combination of these to keep the student informed about your organization and also about the positions you have available and any other details about the recruiting process. Frequent Twitter updates to students who choose to follow you, or regular updates to a blog, can keep students interested for a long time. You can link to presentations about your organizations and you can email specific information to individual students as appropriate.
• Tactic #5. Build virtual job fairs. Virtual job fairs have become common and are even more useful if you have already established a talent pool of interested students with your social network profiles and website. There are a host of virtual job fairs and more organizations are discovering them.
• Tactic #6: Use every source you have vigorously. Ask every new graduate you hire to tell others on campus about your profiles and website. Get them to recommend a few friends and then pursue them with good virtual advertising and a telephone campaign. If you hire interns, use them as both in-person and online ambassadors to other students. Have them act as talent scouts. Ask employees to recommend family friends. The goal has to be to pursue every avenue to find students who meet the skill needs your organization has. Cast a very wide net and let your website and social network profiles be your filter.

There are many more ways to leverage the Internet for campus recruiting. Over the next five years, virtual recruiting will be commonplace, and organizations that still plod around campus with presentations and cheese platters will be viewed as the dinosaurs – the companies no one wants to work for.

Towers Perrin has also printed all of its recruiting brochures and materials on recycled paper and will distribute T-shirts embellished with the phrase “Go Green” to grads who attend the firm’s office recruiting events, according to recruiting director Jen Warne.

“We’ve tied an eco-friendly theme throughout our entire recruiting campaign, including our pending launch of a new page on Facebook,” says Warne. “It’s a clear demonstration of our corporate values, so we’re hoping it will differentiate us from our competitors.”

“Call and ask for the breakroom or — is there a cafeteria? Ask for that. Many times there’s a black wall phone hanging over a grimy desk with lots of post-it notes and writing on the wall. If anyone is in there, they might answer! These sites usually have a car wash section too — they wash the cars for these high-end customers here in the states before returning them after service. Ask for the ‘car-wash person.’ When you get him or her on the phone, tell him you’re in the wrong place — you know that — can s/he tell you who one of the technicians is, so you might ask for him by name? Chances are he will tell you. And then when he tells you one, ask for another, and then another. Be gentle with him. Don’t scare him,” I add last, chuckling knowingly to myself.

And then I surprised myself when I told him, “Walk the grid in your mind — think about who works where and what they know — then go directly at them…”

“Walk the grid.” I suppose this is another way of saying, “Become one with your target and imagine yourself inside your target, walking around the place, looking here and snooping there, all the while minding your own very real business.”

And then, as a further surprise in my day, I’m lying in bed that night surfing the channels and what comes up but the movie “Bone Collector.”

Still not putting two and two together, I click on it (it was an entertaining movie!) and the movie is at the scene where Denzel Washington (Rhyme, a crippled cop/teacher ) is telling Angelina Jolie (Amanda Donaghy, rookie cop) to “walk the grid” in order to collect evidence at a grisly crime scene. Rhyme recognizes a natural talent in Donaghy for the work and assumes a mentor position with her. Donaghy (Jolie), struggling with past trauma and an innate calling to obey Rhyme’s instructions, walks her first grid, collecting evidence that helps to ultimately catch the killer.

I’m reminded of the words that popped out of my mouth without thinking earlier in the day and sigh, knowing that on the morrow I will be compelled to obey what I think of as the calling in the cosmos, walking my own kind of grid in the composition of this missive.

‘Walking the grid” is a forensics term; one meaning is to scour a crime scene — to scrutinize it. The terminology is also used in computer and positioning terminology, but before anyone leaps to the conclusion that I will be talking about actual crime scenes — I will not be. I am using fanciful imagery for the purpose of explaining one of my sourcing processes from an observer’s perspective. This is an attempt to wash the reader’s mind of any value and/or value judgment and to recast it with the practice of probing and questioning; in other words, a “learning how to learn” technique.

Donaghy: “I can’t do this.”
Rhyme: “You can do it. Yes you can. Yesterday you stopped a train. You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it.”
Donaghy: “Don’t work me, Ryan. Just tell me what to do next.”
Rhyme: “Very slowly, walk the grid. One foot in front of the other. I want you to look around you now. Remember, crime scenes are three-dimensional: floors, walls and ceilings.”
Donaghy: “There’s a small piece of wood and what looks like some hair.”
Rhyme: “Alright, I’m going to walk you through collecting the evidence. You do everything exactly as I say.”

“Walking the grid” inside a target company means to “walk” through the front door of a company and freely investigate the environs in your mind. I always see the puzzled looks on the faces of my students when I say this in class. Not many people think to venture inside a company like this. Crime scenes are three-dimensional: floors, walls and ceilings. So are sourcing jobs.

The idea is that each “target” has similar characteristics. Depending on what’s going on at the site (headquarters will usually be larger and far busier than branch sites) each location will have pretty much the same activities going on. There will be, at headquarter sites for example, many times, marketing (including business development, alliances and corporate marketing), finance (including investor relations), some sales, many times R&D, most of the C-level executives and administrative staffs that it takes to support the various departments, sometimes support, operations (including maintenance), security, and last, but not least in our book, HR!

The one thing that 99% of them have is a receptionist(s) — also known as “gatekeepers” — on staff who meets the public onslaught at the front door. You and I are generally included in that warring horde, and you have seen me many times discuss how to deal with the gatekeeper, including envisioning what she looks like, what her environs look like, and what’s going on around her in the moments you are attempting to get and hold her attention. But what happens when you can’t deal with the gatekeeper? What happens when she won’t let you through?

In addition to the departments listed out above, company locations are also likely to/might have the following physical characteristics:

• brick and mortar exteriors
• doors
• individual offices of all sizes and character
• floors, walls, and ceilings
• levels
• elevators
• stairwells
• bathrooms
• breakrooms
• mailrooms
• conference rooms, large and small
• media rooms
• reception areas
• maintenance facilities
• security gates and guardstons and tons of office equipment
• cafeterias
• gyms
• childcare facilities
• dry cleaners and other services
• vending machines
• hallways
• whole campuses with several buildings
• parking lots
• sidewalks
• landscaping/lakes with ducks on them

Many, many other physical attributes but I think you’re getting the picture with what I’ve listed out above.

The idea here is to encapsulate in your mind what the joint looks like. Did you know you can go to Google Earth and “Explore, Search, and Discover”? That Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, and 3-D buildings for location-specific information? This function was formerly known as “Keyhole” and many a time I use it to get a bird’s eye view of a company location. With a glimpse I can see how many buildings a company has on its campus, where the parking lots are located, if they have a security detail cars must pass through, if the location appears isolated or not, and lots and lots of extraneous information I know you are having a hard time comprehending what this has to do with sourcing.

This visual information, coupled with the statistical information I get from Hoover’s and the location information I get from the company website, allows me to begin the “grid walks” in my searches at my individual targets. If I see that a company has 14,000 total employees (at Hoover’s) and 2,750 of them are at headquarters (yes, Hoovers tells you this!) and I see at Google Earth that the company’s headquarters has six buildings, I can pretty much infer that each building might contain separate (and whole) functions. When I call the front desk this information has many times afforded me just the familiar “ring” I needed in my pursuit.

Let’s say I called my first target company in the first morning of my search. Shirley answered and she wouldn’t let me pass with my normal approach. I note her name in my research document because I know I’m going to be calling back. I call her back the second morning. I do a change-up in my approach. I know that Shirley has answered literally hundreds of calls since last we spoke. She is not likely to remember me.

Hi Shirley. This is Maureen Sharib. I’m trying to reach Operations — they’re not in your building are they?

Oh, no Maureen — they’re in Building 5 — you need that number?

Yes, I could sure use it!

Here you go — Maria should answer — she’s the receptionist in that building.

In case Maria doesn’t answer, Shirley, can you tell me who heads up Operations over there?”

Sure! That’s Bob Jones…

And so it goes more often than not. This is part of what is called “competitive intelligence” and it’s not as hard as it sounds. Sure, it involves a good amount of legwork on the front end. This is the beginning of the work, and things evolve from this point. But, as you can see, it’s a methodical tracing on each and every search and if you do this, if you “walk the grid” at each of your target companies, I promise you results!

Here’s another scenario.

Hi Maria, Shirley gave me your number. I was trying to reach Bob Jones – is he in?

I haven’t seen him come in yet this morning. You want his voice mail?

Well, no, not really — maybe you can tell me — who supports him?

That would be Arleen — she’s not in yet either — it’s early!

I know. Has anyone in Operations come in yet?

Oh, sure, Pete Miller always gets here first — he went up just a few minutes ago — you want him?

That would be great, Maria, — before you transfer me, so I don’t sound so stupid when I get him on the phone, WHAT IS HIS TITLE?

More times than not she’ll fluidly answer after just such an exchange. But look what I gathered in two calls!

• The receptionist’s name at the main number (Shirley)
• Where Operations is located (Building 5)
• The receptionist’s name at Building 5 (Maria)
• The name of the Head of Operations (Bob Jones)
• His Administrative Assistant (Arleen)
• The fact that most people in Operations don’t arrive “early”
• The fact that Operations is probably located on an upper floor
• One Ops report and his title — and one guy who does arrive early (Pete Miller)

Before you think, “Well, that’s not so much” — let me beg your pardon. I didn’t go on in the exchange where I press Maria for more information about the inhabitants of the Operations department and if you’d seen me do it you’d more than probably be amazed. It still amazes me today when these exchanges deliver so much information.

The sourcing “trick” here is really no trick at all — it’s the willingness on the part of the sourcer to set each job up methodically and to “walk the grid” on each and every target in a search. It’s time-consuming and this is the real fly-in-the-ointment for many. It’s another reason why sourcing is a separate and entirely different function from recruiting. I see sourcing as creating a bridge between recruiting and marketing in the sense that so much competitive intelligence is uncovered in any one search that this information deserves its own unique conduit for utilization. Walk that grid when you’re thinking about setting up your own sourcing departments!

The company won’t say how many jobseekers posted videos, but it seems the participation rate wasn’t high enough to warrant CareerBuilder’s effort. Job board spokesperson Jennifer Grasz told us, “We’re always testing the market with new tools and services to enhance the user experience. If the response rates are not there, we’ll reevaluate whether the market is ready and focus energies on other areas to aid in the job search and recruitment process.”

CareerBuilder’s main resume pages are still online, though no longer linked from the site. However, Grasz said the jobseeker videos have been removed. Jobseekers can always post their video to a service like You Tube and include a link in the resume or cover letter they have on CareerBuilder. When an employer downloads the resume, the link becomes hot.

Recruiters have so far not shown any great interest in reviewing video resumes, despite robust discussions about their pros and cons. Grasz says, “We didn’t promote the service to recruiters. We were testing market-readiness and waiting until we built up a large enough database.” So there are no metrics that would help resolve the debate over recruiter usage of jobseeker videos.

The major job boards, however, are moving cautiously. Monster is testing a video resume service in India, where CareerBuilder also had offered its. (That, too, was delinked.) Jobing.com, one of the most aggressive promoters of the use of videos (by employers) not only has no plans to offer a video resume service, but a company spokesman said recruiters have shown no demand for them.

Still, jobseekers seem enthralled by the notion of being able to speak directly to recruiters. YouTube has thousands of resumes, how-tos, and related videos posted by hopeful jobseekers and those offering them advice. A New York City company, Reel Biography, offers a professional video resume service. And ERE’s 17 member Video Resumes group encourages recruiters to make use of videos.

So when we came across the announcement of CorporateGrade.com we were admittedly underwhelmed. But considered from the standpoint of it being part of a trend, the site takes on greater importance.

CorporateGrade.com is new and in beta, so it doesn’t have much in the way of content yet. But it’s easy to use and has a good bit of sophistication. Ratings can be anonymous, although the registration process does require a valid email address. Not that that’s going to deter bitter employees or ex-workers or even just someone out to sully a company. While that’s often the first objection raised by company officials (only the disgruntled participate in these sites), we found just the opposite to be true. CorporateGrade’s first participants appear to be a balanced lot, providing a good glimpse of life inside a company, a division or the office where they work.

Ratings have been around even before the Internet. But those were either compiled by an ambitious author (Places Rated Almanac, for example) or were limited surveys. The Internet expanded the reach, and opened the door to anyone who wanted to participate. Today, ratings have become so available and influential that a very high percentage of consumers both consult product reviews before making a buying decision and are influenced by what they read. Social media is increasingly exerting both an influence on decision-making and providing a way for consumers to offer feedback.

A single negative rating may have a negligible impact. (Or not. Remember the story of Night Clerk Mike?) But a company whose corporate culture doesn’t match its branding efforts is in jeopardy of being bypassed by top talent.

“… There is a growing group of highly desirable consumers using social media to research companies: 25- to 55-years old, college-educated, earning $100,000+ – a very powerful group in terms of buying behavior,” says Dr. Ganim Nora Barnes, senior fellow, Society for New Communications Research. She was talking about the study we referenced above. But her comment that “These most savvy and sought after consumers will not support companies with poor customer care reputations, and they will talk about all of this openly with others via multiple online vehicles” could just as easily apply to top talent.

Says Karin Lash, regional director, interactive strategy for TMP Worldwide, “Social media today allows unprecedented access to employees in your organization. So if you put a message out there and that experience is not the reality folks are going to find out very quickly.”

Think that’s just so much marketing theory? Here’s what a self-described employee at a Kaiser Permanente wrote on CorporateGrade.com about her workplace: “Kaiser is a good company but it’s just a name. Don’t go into a job there thinking about the name, it presents with just as many issues as the next.”

You can no longer expect the very best students to be found through career-center-sanctioned activities because the universities and the technographics of their student populations have changed. The increasing popularity of non-traditional academic programs like online degrees, night programs, weekend programs, and international programs, coupled with the fact that many students are now older and working full-time, means that many students just don’t have the opportunity to physically use the career center or even participate in career center events. In addition, the growth of Internet job boards and online career advice websites have eliminated the need for students to work through a tightly controlled process to reach employers who want them.

Today, if you want to identify, build your brand, and “pre-sell” the best students on employment opportunities with your organization, you need to go beyond the career center and build relationships with the faculty who know and have the ability to influence the decisions of college students.

The most common reason that college recruiting programs fail to attract the very best is focusing the recruiting effort on activities that have no chance of influencing or even reaching the very best. Usually these efforts work through the bureaucracy of campus career centers — an out-of-date resource that all but the most desperate of students learned to avoid decades ago. The informal name given to corporate recruiters who spend all of their time and resources at the career center by faculty is “seagulls,” because like the bird, these recruiters “fly in once or twice a year, drop a load of BS about caring, and then fly away.” Career centers are not academic program providers, so working solely with them can isolate you from the faculty and the academic programs. This isolated approach is okay if you’re targeting below-average students, but it won’t work if you want the top students from the high-demand academic programs.

Building a Competitive Advantage Requires a “Different” Approach

The very best recruiting programs, be they targeted at students or experienced hires, provide their firm with a distinct competitive advantage. Building that competitive advantage is difficult because almost all universities take an equal treatment approach to college recruiters, believing that every company and every student should have an equal opportunity. On the other hand, directors of college recruiting programs need to develop plans and approaches that provide them with better information and superior access compared to other firms.

One of the best ways to get an “inside track” on who’s who is to build long-term relationships directly with faculty. Close relationships with faculty are critical, because they, rather than departmental management or career center personnel, are the ones who really know and have relationships with the best students. Having taught at a university for more than 30 years, I can give you some insight into what it takes to get the attention of and to build lasting relationships with university faculty. I urge you to avoid the temptation of becoming just another “seagull” and instead, integrate yourself so that you eventually become part of the academic team.

The Advantages of Close Faculty Relationships

It takes sophisticated plans and a significant period of time to build close relationships with faculty, but the benefits that can accrue from these relationships are many and often include:

• Insights on top students. Because faculty teach, advise, and interact with students on an almost daily basis, they are more aware than most anyone about the skill levels and capabilities of potential recruits. They are likely to know whether a student has the competencies that you are seeking and especially whether they are innovators and team players.
• Ability to convince skeptical students. Because faculty members also serve as advisers, students often ask them for advice concerning which companies they should interview at and what job offers they should take. Establishing a relationship with faculty provides you with the ability to more accurately inform them about realities and influence what they may say.
• Recruit interns early. The career center works primarily with graduating seniors; however, faculty work with sophomores and juniors, so they can be beneficial in identifying and “selling” exceptional students early on as potential interns at your firm.
• Push employment branding messages through trusted channels. When faculty know about your firm and its best practices, they are more likely to use it as an example during class lectures, something that can have a profound impact on employment branding program success. Having credible faculty cite your firm during lectures and in assigned articles helps build your name awareness and positive employment brand image in a way that students have said affects them.
• Access to diversity. Diverse faculty (often with international backgrounds) have long been a support system for diverse students. Because they cultivate many relationships with such students, they are an excellent resource for providing advice on the best way to identify, recruit, and manage diverse and international students.
• Influencing the curriculum. When dealing with companies that recruit a great number of students, it is not uncommon to hear someone groan that college students today know nothing. While that isn’t entirely true, given the pace of change, it is entirely possible that students graduate with knowledge and skills that are slightly dated. Strong relationships with faculty provide corporations with an opportunity to influence curriculum and course topics. While you cannot force faculty to change what they teach, you can use the relationship to help them better understand where industry is now and where it is going to be. Most faculty want their students to do well in the business world, so they often consciously try to focus their teaching on the skills, competencies, and problems that graduates will likely face in industry.
• Garner research ideas. Building relationships with key research faculty can help to advance your firm’s own research and development work. Firms can learn from their existing research or build relationships with them, so that they target their research on your areas of need.
• Hiring faculty. Building relationships with faculty increases the likelihood that they might, at some point in their career, consider working for you. Employment possibilities might include working on a full-time basis, during a sabbatical, or during summer breaks.

Focusing on Academic Schools and Departments

When you decide to build relationships beyond the career center, some recruiting organizations make the mistake of targeting high-level university administrators. While it’s important to recognize that there are a few high-level administrators who really get to know students and their abilities, most are strong believers in “equal treatment” and will not offer additional help in recruiting no matter how much you may donate.

As a result, the best relationship building efforts should begin much lower in the individual colleges and academic programs. If you want a great electrical engineer, you need to focus on the College of Engineering and more specifically the Department of Electrical Engineering. There are some important exceptions, however, where you might have to look at several academic disciplines. If you’re looking for web designers or even programmers, you might find them in the engineering department but you could also find them in Arts, Broadcasting, or Communications programs. HR recruits will most likely be found in the HR program in the business school, but they might also be found in the psychology program.

Understanding Which Type Of Faculty To Target

Before you begin any program designed to build relationships with faculty it’s important that you understand the different groupings or classifications of faculty. This is because not all faculty members have the same interest and capability of helping you in your recruiting efforts. It’s a painful experience to spend significant time building a relationship with a faculty member, only later to find out that they have little first-hand knowledge of the type of students who you’re looking for. The first step in selecting faculty and others to target for relationship building is understanding the different groupings of faculty and what each group can provide. Some of the faculty groups and subgroups that you need to be aware of include:

Research vs. teaching faculty. Research faculty tend to be better known, and they are generally more senior in rank. They are often the “principal investigators” on research grants, which are usually listed on the university’s website. If you’re looking to recruit research staff for your firm, obviously you should start here, but be aware that their student contact is often limited to a few graduate and Ph.D. students. On the other hand, faculty who focus on teaching can teach as many as 10 times more students each semester. Teaching faculty also spend more time advising students, so they also have more opportunities to influence student decision-making when it comes to choosing a career. So if you’re looking for undergrads or master’s students, you should focus a significant period of time building relationships with teaching faculty. Identifying “teaching faculty” is relatively easy because they obviously teach more classes. Scanning the semester’s course offerings in the online “course schedule” and talking to teaching assistants (who can help you identify teaching faculty) are the two best ways to identify teaching faculty. Teaching faculty can also be separated into two groups. The first teaches primarily using lectures and textbooks, while the second group provides more projects, cases, and team problem-solving. This latter group of faculty are likely to be more aware of which students are leaders, good problem-solvers, and team players.

Tenured vs. tenure-track faculty. Professors who are early in their career are usually designated as “tenure-track” assistant professors. They are working toward tenure and as a result they have less time to focus on advising and teaching. Their laser focus on “getting tenure” also means that they are less likely to have any interest in talking to recruiters. Tenured faculty who are generally at the associate and full professor rank have been with the university at least five years and have lifetime job security. As a result, there is less pressure on them to focus exclusively on their research. Because tenured professors have more control over their time, they are generally the best to target for help in recruiting. You can identify an individual faculty member’s tenure status and rank in the faculty listing found in the university’s online bulletin, catalog, or website.

Part-time vs. full-time faculty. Between 40% and 60% of all faculty are full-time tenured or tenure-track. The remaining individuals who teach are known as lecturers or adjuncts, who generally teach part-time. Because lecturers cannot get tenure, they are often ignored by recruiters. Failing to build relationships with lecturers would be a major mistake, because at some universities, nearly half of the teaching is done by lecturers. Because of their high teaching load, their student contact is often among the highest of any faculty group. Because they work part-time, lecturers generally have full-time jobs in industry or have retired from industry. Lecturers do little research, so they have more time and interest in helping individual students. Also, as part-timers, they are often more willing to provide help closer to the outer “limits” of what universities will allow in the area of recruiting. You can find lecturers in the course schedule (they often teach at night) and sometimes they are also listed on the department’s website. Lecturers who are allowed to teach courses with relatively “high” course numbers are almost always among the best.

Honors vs. regular faculty. Some academic departments and programs have designated honors programs designed specifically for the very best undergraduate students. Often faculty who teach honors classes are specifically selected by the department chair because of their higher level of teaching rigor. Outsiders can’t always get a list of honors students before graduation, but faculty who teach honors classes automatically know them and their capabilities long before they graduate. If you’re looking for bright and driven students, it is critical that you identify and then build relationships with these key faculty.

Service-oriented faculty. Faculty are generally rewarded for excellence in three areas: research, teaching, and service. While most faculty focus primarily on research and/or teaching, up to 25% of full-time faculty really enjoy what are known as “service activities.” These service activities might include being a faculty advisor for a student organization or professional fraternity, running the internship or mentor program, coordinating “college-level” career or alumni programs, coordinating diversity/inclusion programs, or coordinating the tutor program. All of these service responsibilities involve significant student contact, so these individuals should become prime targets because of their broad exposure to the best students and their ability to influence them.

Deans. Many recruiting programs that are wise enough to target individual colleges within the university began their relationship building efforts with an attempt to get on the good side of the dean of the targeted college. Unfortunately, many college deans are too “detached” from day-to-day teaching to be able to offer very much help in the recruiting area. And because a significant part of their job is often fundraising, any help that they might provide will likely be provided with the expectation of a donation. In many cases, the most that you can expect to get from a dean are a few names and maybe an introduction to a few faculty members who might be around that day. As a result, I recommend that you spend little time with “the Dean” and instead focus on influencing the faculty and staff who work under them. You don’t want to get on their bad side, but you certainly shouldn’t expect them to be of much direct help when it comes to identifying and recruiting top students.

Department chairs. Department chairs are part administrators and part faculty. They shouldn’t be ignored even though their ability to provide direct recruiting help may be limited. In some cases, chairs teach few courses and do no major research and as a result, they can do little more than direct you to key faculty. However, in some cases, and especially in smaller departments, they are well aware of the names of the best students because they select them for scholarships, awards, honors, and for grad and student assistant positions.

“Non-Faculty” To Target

In addition to faculty members, other individuals who you should also consider targeting within the academic community include:

Grad and teaching assistants. At many larger universities, a significant portion of the undergraduate teaching load is handled by graduate students. They might be called research assistants, teaching assistants, or grad assistants. Some actually teach entire sections, while others merely assist professors who technically “own” the class. Although their time at the university might be limited to a few years, they should be prime relationship-building targets, because they see and work directly with students almost as much as some faculty members. Their relationships with students are particularly close because there is little age difference between them and their students. Not only do they know the best students grade-wise but quite often they know which students are the best team players and innovators. Incidentally, grad assistants, tutors, peer mentors, and professional club officers are often superstars themselves, so they should be prime recruiting targets. You can find the names of teaching assistants by looking in the course schedule. Other grad assistants can be identified by asking departmental secretaries or other grad assistants.

Administrative staff versus faculty. There are numerous program directors, managers, secretaries, and even student assistants who help academic colleges and departments operate. Most are extremely helpful, especially during academic breaks and during the summer. Some individuals like lab managers, IT managers, MBA coordinators, tutoring coordinators, and research directors are not only aware of the very best students, but in addition, they also have the capability of influencing them.

Coming Next Week in Part 2: Approaches and tips for building lasting relationships with individual faculty.

“Don’t we all,” says Karin Lash, regional director, interactive strategy for TMP Worldwide.

But, how do you do that? How do you build an employer brand?

We caught up with Lash and Ryan Estis, senior vice president and chief talent strategist for NAS Recruitment, who shared with us some of the essentials of effective brand building. Watch as these experts outline the ingredients for building a brand that will help you attract quality candidates.

Now what do you do?

Lucky for you, there’s no shortage of good choices. (Alas, there’s also plenty of bad ones, too, not to mention the CEO’s wedding videographer neighbor.). Large employers with big budgets that work with a full service recruitment advertising firm can simply turn the job over to the professionals there. But when that’s not an option, consider the job boards. In the last year, CareerBuilder (profile; site), Monster (profile; site) and others have joined Jobing.com (profile; site) in offering video branding services.

“Our clients told us they want video, but they needed help getting them done,” says Jason Ferrara, vice president of corporate marketing for CareerBuilder.com, explaining the company’s decision to launch a video service last year.

When it launched Video BrandBuilder in September 2006, CareerBuilder became the first major national job board to offer employers a complete video production service. But it certainly wasn’t the first job board to offer the service. To whom that distinction belongs is not clear; however, Jobing.com certainly has a strong claim to the distinction. The fast-growing regional job site began creating employer videos back in 2001 when they were produced by whoever on the (then) 10-person staff could work the handheld camera, including CEO and founder Aaron Matos.

Today, Jobing has what may be the largest library of employment videos of any job board in the world. Joe Cockrell, director of public relations, told us Jobing has 10,000 employer videos online plus another 15,000 community videos covering topics from “How To Tie A Necktie” to a feature on the Denver Urban League that was a finalist for a Webby in the online video category.

The employer videos are just what they sound like — employer branding videos that are part of Jobing’s subscription package. The community videos are produced by staff videographers in every one of Jobing’s 18 offices.

“Video,” says Cockrell, “is a very powerful tool.”

You can’t go to a recruitment conference these days or read a recruitment site without hearing about the importance of employer branding videos. Monster’s Eva Bitteker, video product manager, said there are four main reasons for having an employer video: to attract quality candidates; to surmount or promote geography and facilities; to convey a company’s value and culture; and to reduce turnover by offering a preview of the job.

“Some companies,” she explained, “do videos to get fewer applicants. They are looking for fewer, but higher quality candidates. By giving them a realistic feel for the job they can eliminate (the unqualified and the less than committed) jobseekers.”

Monster’s service is the newest and priciest of the three job boards, starting around $20,000. Jobing’s service is the least expensive: About $1,000 for an employer not on a subscription plan. CareerBuilder, starting at $5,000, falls in the middle.

Here’s a look at the service offered by the three job boards:

CareerBuilder

CareerBuilder’s pricing starts at $5,000, but that’s a rock bottom cost and it’s easy to spend more. Larger employers may want two or more videos to use for different purposes.

For your money you get a production team that will meet with key stakeholders to gather information, write a script, scout the locations, shoot the video, and edit it to 60 or 90 seconds. The turn around time ranges upwards of two weeks. For companies with multilingual needs, videos can be produced in almost any language.

Jason Ferrara, corporate marketing VP, called the production “a real collaboration.” Involve the C-level people, Ferrara says (as if you could keep them away!). “We counsel them to be successful,” he tactfully explained, answering a question about those awful situations when the boss wants to do all the talking. “We try to educate the employer on what makes a good branding video,” Ferrara says. “Reflect on what the company’s goals are; what impression they want to make on jobseekers and to look at things from that perspective.”

But if the CEO decides wisely or not to be in the video, Ferrara adds, “it’s not up to us to be the police.”

The completed video is owned by the company, which can use it however it sees fit, including embedding it on the corporate career site and linking it to CareerBuilder job postings. CareerBuilder hosts the video and handles the technical details.

Jobing

The first of the job boards to offer a turnkey video branding solution, Jobing is the only one to have videographers and editors on staff. The company prefers photographers with TV news experience, because they are accustomed to sizing up a situation and working under deadline. That’s why, says Jobing’s PR director Joe Cockrell, an employer can have a video produced in under 48 hours. (He told us of an auto dealer who ordered a video in the morning and it was up and online, fully edited and approved, by the end of the day.)

The Jobing process begins with an outside sales rep who gathers all the basic employer information, including the goals and those ’special’ requirements, like who gets to go on camera and who doesn’t. The sales rep briefs the videographer who formulates a plan, then goes on site. By then, a story line is developed, the video shot, and the edited work submitted for approval.

“As an employer, you’re giving jobseekers a look inside your doors,” Cockrell says. “That’s what our production teams work with an employer to accomplish.”

For employers with regular hiring needs who have or become Jobing subscribers, the video is included in the price of the subscription, which is as low as $500 a month. Employers with casual hiring needs can buy a video at the $200 hourly rate. Cockrell says that even with a team on site and the post-production work, the cost can come in under $1,000 for a 60-90 second video. At that price, even small employers can afford to have a video made and many do. One look at a Jobing site and you’ll see veterinary hospitals, trucking firms, municipalities, and security firms among such national firms as Wells Fargo and Citibank.

Employers own the video and can embed it on their career site and link to it from job postings, regardless of where they may run. Cockrell told us that some employers burn CDs of their video to use at job fairs and other events.

Monster

With a price tag of $20,000 or more, Monster’s video service is for the bigger employer with competitive or special needs. Monster partners with MadDash E-Media (profile; site) for video production and hosting services. Its teams are trained not only in videography, but are also knowledgeable about privacy and, of special concern to hospitals, patient confidentiality.

The MadDash teams can spend up to a couple of days at an employer site on a shoot, getting footage that can be edited to create multiple videos or to freshen an aging one. A producer meets with the client and stakeholders to scope out the location, participants, and the story the video will tell. The video team, which can number two, three, or more depending on the situation, put together the final edit.

Unlike the CareerBuilder and Jobing videos, those produced by MadDash are not completely owned by the employer. The employer has unlimited use of the video for two years, after which it’s taken down from the MadDash servers where the video is hosted.

Perhaps because of the cost and the time limit, videos on Monster tend to be more limited in number and dominated by the largest companies like AstraZeneca, Home Depot, and UPS. Of course a company doesn’t have to use Monster’s production service; independently produced videos can be used.

Bitteker, Monster’s video product manager, suggested that HR departments seek to have other departments share the cost of video production. “Videos can be used in a bigger campaign by the company. It’s not just an HR function, but a marketing function for the whole company,” she says.

• Non-compete clauses
• “Color tests”
• Internal recruiting
• Resume search/software tool
• Working from home
• Job board debate

Non-Compete Clause
Non-compete agreements are always a hot topic of debate on the ERE discussion boards. This week, Les Noonan wants assistance on updating his company’s non-compete clause. David Rees offers some practical advice: get a lawyer. Although not an advocate of non-competes, he understands that it can be a complex issue since most states have very different rules. He also wonders why “employers are willing to constrain the freedom of a departing employee for the purpose of protecting their financial interests.” Les agrees with David’s comments and clarifies his request. He is actually looking for advice on a non-solicitation agreement. He wants to protect the “time and money” his company has invested in their current clients. Seems like a fair request to David but Nick Cobb feels that companies need to focus more on retaining their current employees. Maureen Sharib directs our attention to a recent case in California that you might want to check out if you are facing similar challenges.

Wednesday’s Question of the Day
I wanted to know if anyone thinks “The Color Career Counselor,” CareerBuilder’s latest tool that links job choices to favorite colors, would benefit recruiting. David Rees does not feel that this tool is validated. “Can you imagine going to an interview for a career as a computer programmer and they ask you why you choose the profession and you say…’well…I have always loved the color green.’” He later takes the test and comes to the same conclusion. Paul Davenport agrees that it is just for fun, not based in reality. Stephanie Wolf disagrees and feels that this tool can benefit college students who may feel lost with a career decision. John Kennedy wants to know if there are any tests that can predict job-based personalities. You might want to read John Zappe’s article from August 13 on the topic. Just curious…did anyone else take the test?

Internal Sourcing
David Hafernik wants to know the general policy of “internal recruiting” in most companies. Can employers recruit away from another internal manager? Are there limits? Pam Claughton worked for a large bank that had strict rules around internal recruiting. Employees had to work for a certain amount of time before they could post their resume internally. However, recruiters had great success working with the hiring managers and their direct reports to locate candidates from direct competitors. Each employee was then rewarded with an employee referral bonus. JB Smith agrees with Pam and adds that “we posted all positions internally for the first seven days then posted for external candidates. Employees were still allowed to apply after externally posting.”

Resume Search/Software Tool
Amit N is looking to purchase “resume search software” that will search multiple job boards, and wants to know if anyone has suggestions. According to Ashley Schettler, the decision will depend on the specific industry. She recommends TalentHook for IT but needs a more effective tool for recruiting in health care. Ken Kimbrough disagrees. TalentHook is “superb” and should generate resumes for all industries. According to Ken, “if you had databases, sites, etc that you wanted to search, they would accommodate your desires without much hassle.” Carly Eriksen recommends AIRS Sourcepoint. Does anyone else have other suggestions? We would love to hear them!

Work From Home Jobs
This topic always interests me since I work from home! Mack Will is also interested in learning of any “legit work from home jobs other than virtual recruiting.” Apparently, this is a very popular nationwide topic. Tim Esse referenced a local CBS show that addressed the topic and Christy Grimske reminded us that Google’s “Rat Race Rebellion” publishes a weekly list of legit work from home jobs. Susan Carson and Cassandra Firnstah both shared success stories of a virtual advertising company run by a group of women, and a customer call center.

Monday’s Question of the Day
The debate on whether or not job boards are obsolete is still going strong! It’s not too late to post a comment.

A New York City law firm filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claiming Madison Square Garden discriminates against African-American job applicants by illegally using criminal history reports in making hiring decisions.

The EEOC complaint alleges that Carlene Clarke, 27, received an employment offer letter from New York’s Madison Square Garden in September 2007 which was rescinded a month later after a background check discovered she had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault more than five years earlier.

According to the press release issued by Outten & Golden LLP, which represents Clarke, the rationale for the complaint is that “use of criminal histories in making hiring and other employment decisions has a disparate impact on African-Americans.”

Outten & Golden attorney Justin M. Swartz said, “The fact is, about one in five U.S. adults has a criminal record, and a disproportionate number of them are African-Americans and Hispanics.”

An MSG official declined to discuss the complaint, but emailed us a statement saying, “Ms. Clarke pleaded guilty to assault. We conduct criminal background checks in order to ensure the safety of our fans and employees. This policy is not discriminatory.”

New York is one of only a handful of states that has laws specifically limiting an employer’s ability to exclude job-seekers with a criminal record. Federal courts have also extended Civil Rights Act protection to minorities with criminal records, requiring in the case of convictions for an employer to consider the passage of time, the nature of the crime, and its relationship to the position.

Whether or not Clarke’s complaint is upheld, Brian Poe, founder and CEO of ClearMyRecord.com, said the use of background checks to disqualify job candidates and dismiss current employees has become so widespread that it may be time for Congress to enact a Fair Criminal Record Reporting Act.

“A criminal record shouldn’t be a life sentence,” Poe told us. But with electronic databases that now routinely reach back to the sixties and even earlier, “something you did 20 years ago will hurt you today,” he adds.

Poe founded ClearMyRecord.com in 1999 to help individuals remove or seal criminal and arrest records and get mention of them removed from electronic databases. The site won’t help people whose arrest involved a sex charge or a minor, but it has helped thousands of others, including, the company reports, one person who won a presidential pardon this year.

Poe says his clients aren’t hardcore or career criminals, since states won’t permit them to clean their records. Most, he said, are minor offenders who made a mistake.

Typical, said Poe, is the case of a former police officer who was arrested for writing bad checks 18 years ago during a nasty divorce. The arrest has prevented the man’s hiring by other departments despite a clean record and steady employment in private security.

In another case, a career postal worker was fired after a periodic background check turned up his 1962 conviction for assault in connection with a Texas bar brawl.

It doesn’t take a felony or even a conviction to give someone a record. “These companies,” Poe said, referring to database firms that buy criminal and arrest records directly from the nation’s 50 states and 3,100 counties, “get all the records then resell them to smaller companies. Employers use these services and don’t (distinguish between) an arrest or a conviction.”

Because ClearMyRecord can’t help everyone convicted of a crime, Poe started Hard2Hire.org as a non-profit job service for ex-offenders. Since launching in June the site has grown to about 2,000 weekly visitors and, says Poe, several companies have agreed to consider hiring ex-offenders.

Poe explains that many companies with blanket policies against hiring ex-offenders may be willing to modify them in certain cases. “We go straight to employers and ask them about their policy,” he said, describing a give-and-take in which he’ll search for the threshold — say a 5- or 10-year-old property crime and clean record since — where a company might relent.

“We see this all the time,” Poe said, “where an old conviction is holding someone back. We need a Fair Criminal Record Reporting Act like the Fair Credit Reporting Act to keep one mistake from being a life sentence.”

A subsidiary of Virginian-Pilot Media Companies, a Norfolk, Virginia newspaper company, Landmark Destiny operates a job board for U.S. military personnel transitioning to the private sector and recently separated veterans. It will be merged into RecruitMilitary.com, a similar military-focused site.

Both LDG and RecruitMilitary also publish employment newspapers, distributing them on U.S. bases around the world. RecruitMilitary and LDG send their magazines to military bases for free distribution to transitioning personnel. RecruitMilitary publishes Incoming!, a six-page quarterly, and ships more than 50,000 copies to over 230 bases. LDG publishes Search & Employ, a 28-page bimonthly, and ships some15,000 copies to more than 75 bases.

Together the two sites have over 500,000 registered users. It’s not clear how many overlap or what percentage have completed resumes. Still, RecruitMilitary president Drew Myers said in the press release announcing the deal that the acquisition of LDG “greatly strengthens our company. We jump to first place in military-to-civilian job boards, matching our ranking in military-to-civilian career fairs. And the purchase gives us a highly competitive position in publishing.”

We couldn’t tell what ranking he meant. Even ignoring overlap, both sites together don’t come close to the traffic of Monster’s Military.com. Traffic metrics sites Compete.com and Alexa.com show Military.com far ahead in rank and visitors.

RecruitMilitary however, has been aggressively promoting its military career fairs. So far this year it has held 64 compared to 13 in all of 2006, its first year producing the fairs. The company produces career fairs in cooperation with HireVetsFirst, a part of the United States Department of Labor; The American Legion; and the Military Spouse Corporate Career Network.

RecruitMilitary also provides search services to companies looking for workers with military backgrounds.

However, there is only one tool that provides a “single point of contact” allowing the use of every form of messaging in use today at any time during the day and from any location. This tool, of course, is the immensely versatile smart phone.

Today’s modern smart phones pack more computing power than most computers did just a few short years ago. They can not only handle your basic person-to-person and conference voice calls, they can also interact with websites, publish blog posts, aggregate RSS feeds, send text messages, send multimedia messages, record/transmit video, record/transmit audio, send email from multiple accounts, take/send pictures, send and receive faxes, edit office documents, and interact with social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.

While many organizations empower their recruiters with smart phones, few build a corporate-wide recruiting strategy that leverages the phone as the hub of recruiter activity. Aggressively using smart phones requires forward thinking, something many recruiting managers who came up through the ranks as a transactional recruiter dedicate little time to. In organizations where technology isn’t pervasive and doesn’t permeate every process, the smart phone is seen as just a phone that happens to be mobile, despite its potential to be so much more.

With technology advancing at its current pace, there truly are few limits as to how the smart phone can be used to power a modern strategic recruiting function. Advantages as the primary recruiting platform include:

• The single source communications platform. Obviously, any tool that increases your opportunities to communicate with candidates via a channel they will actually pay attention to and respond to must be considered a valuable recruiting tool. However, so many tools exist that the average recruiter can easily become overwhelmed. Nearly all tools require consistent utilization to be effective; unfortunately, staying on top of blogs, email, voicemail, social network profiles, and the like can consume more time than most recruiters have. Because nearly all of the tools have their own interface, the recruiter’s time can become so fractured that it seems like headway never gets made. However, the smart phone can alleviate many of those frustrations by providing a unified interface to nearly every form of candidate communication. Rather than having to get multiple phone numbers, multiple email addresses, fax numbers, etc. from each candidate, the recruiter can send all forms of your messages to the candidate’s mobile phone. On the flip side, the candidate would also be able to use a single number to communicate with the recruiter.
• Access during idle times. Traditional messaging platforms like paper letters, phone calls to the office phone, and even emails have a low direct-response rate because they can only be received and read when someone is sitting at their desk or when they are on their computer. When you are in a meeting, you can’t answer the phone, check the mail, etc., despite the fact that the meeting maybe boring as hell and have nothing to do with you! Smart phones, on the other hand, enable you to receive and respond to messages pretty much anytime, anywhere. While I don’t advocate text messaging candidates about interviews while driving down the interstate, you could certainly do so if needed. In high-tech organizations, it is not uncommon to see BlackBerry’s messaging away during meetings and conference calls.
• Opportunity to communicate while the iron is hot. Many times your mind will process things while you are doing something else. You could be on a hike when you recall meeting the perfect candidate for a hot requisition several weeks back. Historically you would have to have waited till you finished your hike and made it into the office, but today you can whip out your smart phone, look him/her up on Facebook or in your CRM powered applicant database, and fire off a message in seconds. Not only does it make you more productive, it makes you more genuine. Potential candidates often put off visiting the corporate website because it’s simply not a viable thing to do when the mood hits. However, smart phones are accessible most of the time, in part because few would even consider venturing out to the grocery store, the gym, or to lunch without their mobile phone. A Web link or a message sent to a mobile phone has a much higher likelihood of being read and responded to because potential candidates can read and answer them when they are away from her desk and during “idle” times. Mobile phone users (as many spouses will attest) will respond to messages at night, on weekends, and during vacations. If you add up the number of hours where we can answer our mobile phone versus the number of hours when we can access our computer, the mobile phone wins by a 2 to 5 margin.
• A remarkably fast response rate. For some reason, mobile phone owners respond almost instantly to messages they receive. If you have been out to the movies lately on a Friday or Saturday night, it’s hard to miss the bright phone screen flips every few seconds when the theater is dark, regardless whether the movie is entertaining. It seems those from younger generations can’t even finish reading a message before they start responding. This lack of a “delay” in responding to messages is critical, because any time a candidate postpones responding directly, it lowers the probability that they will ever get back to you. As the pace of messaging accelerates both inside and outside the work environment, expectations for a quick response increases. Failure to keep pace with expectations will influence a candidate’s perception of your organization as a modern organization.
• Accommodating personal communication preferences. The next advantage of using smart phones as the primary communication platform for recruiting is its broad capability. It is no secret that some people prefer short text messages, others encyclopedia-length emails. Increasingly, video seems to be the communication method of choice for millions around the globe. Smart phones provide recruiters with a means to communicate with candidates via a channel the candidate most prefers. The fact is, if you want a message to be received “live” and responded to immediately, it helps to send it in a format that resonates with the recipient.

Additional Advantages of the Smart Phone as a Recruiting Platform

• The cool factor. Sending text messages, videos, etc., is viewed by many as “cool,” as opposed to traditional emails and voicemails. Utilizing texting jargon like LOL (laughing out loud) can also send a message that you “get it.”
• Global capability. modern 3G phones allow you to communicate wherever you are in the world. Candidates in Asia and Europe are extremely text-savvy, and using text messaging saves them money.
• The generation factor. Some generations, including my current crop of college students, refuse to use email and in many cases, even voicemail, but they love texting.
• Not blocked by corporate. The ability to use Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is critical for successful recruiting. However, many corporate CIOs foolishly block recruiter access to some Web and social network sites on their computer systems. Fortunately, they seldom block access through mobile phones, so access away!
• Brevity. The fact that mobile phones are utilized “on the run” forces everyone to be brief in their messages. This brevity makes both reading messages and responding to them easier and quicker. It also forces recruiters to be more concise in their messages.
• Lower cost. As mobile phone services get cheaper, there is less resistance to using “my minutes” on a job search than there was in the past. In addition, you save money because you can send the same text message to a large number of people at essentially no cost. In contrast, making the same number of individual phone calls would cost a great deal because of the staff time involved in making the calls.
• Differentiation. Because few firms currently use text messages and take advantage of the entire smart phone platform, it provides you with an opportunity to differentiate your firm from others.
• Less spam. At least at the present time, the volume of spam that drives users away from email has not inundated smart phone applications. As a result, they are more willing to open and read your messages.

Potential Uses in Recruiting

As you have probably already discerned, the smart phone has a broad range of potential uses in recruiting. Some of the uses you should consider include:

• Text messaging (SMS or simple message service). Sending simple text messages for a variety of purposes is a great way to communicate and service candidates. Many leading-edge organizations are using text messaging to introduce recruiters to candidates, set up interview times, answer simple questions, and direct new hires through orientation activities.
• Job opening alerts. You can proactively “push” targeted job openings to candidates.
• Event alerts. You can notify potential candidates about opportunities to meet with your recruiters at trade shows, seminars, and career fairs. Calendar requests are a great way to make sure the event is added to their calendars.
• Social networking. Nearly all of the major social networks have applications available for smart phones that let users send messages or check out what people are up to. As many social network users periodically micro-blog, using such applications to track candidates could be a great way of refining when and how you approach candidates.
• Text and reply information requests. You have probably seen advertisements on TV that allow you to text a single word to a five digit number to get more information about a product or service sent to you. Such systems can also be used to support applicants, candidates, new hires, and employees. For example, college students could text “internships” to 7XXXX to receive more information from your organization on current internship opportunities and instructions for applying. One popular provider of text and reply services is qtag.
• Physical world hyperlinks. Don’t worry if you haven’t heard about these yet, you will in coming months! Physical world hyperlinks are 2-D barcodes (similar to those printed on a self-service check-in boarding pass) that can be added to nearly anything in the physical world. What is different about these barcodes is that smart phone users can snap a picture of the barcode and an application on the phone will decode the barcode and take the user to the website encoded in the image using the browser on the phone. College students attending a career fair could snap a pic to be transported to a special page on your website to download free toys. Because each barcode can be encoded to pass on specific data, physical world hyperlinks can be used to more accurately track source of hire for candidates met in the field.
• Blog feeds. Keeping up with the vast array of content being added to the Internet daily is nearly impossible. Luckily, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs and have the new posts retrieved for you on your smart phone!
• Video messaging (MMS or multimedia message service). You can send short recruiting videos to excite and to show the “passion” at your firm.
• Podcasts. You can make recruiting podcasts available for download.
• Web links. You can send potential candidates recruiting links or Web links relevant to their profession.
• Temporary jobs. Filling temporary and contract jobs where you have a “sudden” need is easy when you can instantly send out messages to pre-identified individuals.
• Friends e-newsletter. Companies can put together a “friends” newsletter at virtually no cost. This newsletter can be used to build relationships with potential candidates by providing them with information about happenings at the company, its new products, and any best practices and innovations.
• Text message options on the website. Your corporate website should provide candidates with the option to receive text messages and all other communications on their mobile phone.
• CRM touch points. Mobile phones are an ideal way to keep in touch with candidates over time. Potential uses include sending birthday greetings, congratulations on an accomplishment, wishing students luck on their exams, or just sending periodic “hellos” to build relationships.
• Surveys/polling. You can send short surveys that cover a candidate’s interests or their job acceptance decision criteria. Mobile phones can also be used to vote (i.e., American Idol) or to get opinions from candidates or even from your recruiters. This polling process can also be used to update your database by periodically asking candidates if they’re still “in the job market?”
• Mini interviews. The mobile phone can, of course, be used for short telephone interviews and even short text interview questionnaires.
• GPS. Creative recruiters could even develop mechanisms to alert individuals when they are within close proximity of a recruiter, a job event, or even the location of a facility with a current job opening.
• Miscellaneous. Mobile phones can be used as platforms for recruiting video games, music, recruitment ads, trivia games, or best-practice sharing.

Best Practice Firms

Using smart phones and text messaging is quite common in marketing. It has widespread use in college sports recruiting and on large job boards, but in the corporate world, most firms have failed to develop a comprehensive smart phone recruiting strategy.

There are a handful of firms that have taken the lead, including Verizon, Fidelity, HCA, the U.S. Army, and Microsoft. Other users include Toyota, Shell, American Express, Accenture, Dell, NYPD, Wyndham Hotels, and RehabCare.

There are also several recruitment advertising agencies, text messaging services, RMS providers, and product marketing vendors which provide services and advice in this area, including but certainly not limited to NAS, qtags.com, Blast Companies, and CollegeRecruiter.com.

Final Thoughts

It’s hard to deny the fact that almost every individual you may want to recruit constantly carries a mobile phone. It’s also true that the capabilities of these phones have grown to the point where they can be used as a platform to send nearly every recruiting message, no matter what form it’s in.

What is needed now is for the directors of corporate recruiting to take a step back and develop a comprehensive strategy that takes advantage of the mobile phone’s capability as the prime recruiting communications tool. In my opinion, everyone will eventually reach that point, but the smart ones will do it sooner and with a more comprehensive and planned approach.

But more than a dozen years later, the problems in finding talent have gotten worse, not better. I’m going to suggest that sourcing is not the problem, and that much of the solution has nothing to do with seeing more candidates.

I equate hiring top performers as a business process similar to manufacturing. My early industry background was in high-volume consumer electronics and automotive components, so this comparison is easy for me to make. In a factory when you have excessive scrap you need to either buy extra raw materials or reduce the scrap rate. This is not rocket science, but somehow the obvious seems to be overlooked when it comes to hiring.

(Note: in this article substitute prospects or candidates whenever you read the term “raw materials.”)

When sourcing is viewed as a factory, with prospects coming in at the receiving dock and accepted offers coming out of shipping, you quickly notice two problems. One, the raw material is incorrectly specified or over-specified, and two, the process used to convert the raw material into accepted offers is based more on emotion than science.

In a factory, excessive scrap is usually due to a combination of bad material specs, inconsistent processes, and weak controls. In hiring, these are equivalent to weak job descriptions, managers who evaluate the wrong things incorrectly, and the lack of metrics.

This requires recruiters to find more raw materials than necessary. This becomes problematic when recruiters over-rely on boring advertising and unsophisticated selling techniques to attract a diminishing supply of coveted raw materials.

To make matters worse, when finalists are selected and offers are about to be made, recruiters and managers stumble through some clumsy closing process either paying too much or losing the candidate to a more professional and astute buyer. When viewed in this light, the idea of buying more raw materials or looking for more candidates makes no sense until the rest of the processes are fixed.

Here are 20 common non-sourcing problems (if you have more than 10, fix your sourcing scrap rate before you look for more raw materials):

• Job descriptions are boring.

• Managers over-specify skills, experience, academics and industry background.

• Application process is too long and top candidates opt-out.

• Managers don’t spend enough time clarifying real job needs.

• Managers refuse to see good candidates, because they don’t have exactly the right background.

• Managers exclude good candidates due to incorrect assessments.

• Managers don’t respond quickly enough when resumes are sent to them.

• Good candidates are unimpressed with our interviewing process.

• Good candidates are unimpressed with the hiring manager.

• Good candidates want to know the comp before talking.

• Passive candidates want to know the details of the job before even talking.

• Recruiters over-rely on skills and experience to screen candidates.

• ATS system is cumbersome to use.

• Candidates increasingly are rejecting offers or accepting other offers or better offers.

• We can’t attract the best people with our comp packages.

• Recruiters can’t smoothly handle most candidate concerns.

• Relocation is a problem.

• We can’t move fast enough to decide & make offers.

• Managers aren’t responsive or involved enough.

• We never have enough time to do it right.

Avoid Preventable Issues

How many unnecessary extra candidates do you need to find to overcome all of the good candidates who were lost for the above preventable reasons? Many of these non-sourcing problems are attributed to weak planning, lack of training, dumb policies, bad processes, and inadequate technology.

When viewed from this perspective, it’s apparent that there is a lot of non-sourcing stuff that can be done to help reduce the need to see more candidates.

But this is still only half of the problem. If you have more than 10 of the following sourcing-related problems, improving your scrap rate will help, but not enough to solve the problem completely.

Sourcing-Related Problems

• The quality and quantity of candidates from job boards is declining.

• We use the same sourcing methods every year.

• Our advertising is boring and out-dated.

• Our job ads are just cut-and-paste versions of our boring job descriptions.

• Ads are hard to find by top people who are casually looking.

• Ads are found, but top candidates don’t apply.

• Our ads don’t describe a compelling value proposition.

• Our ads are filled with disqualifiers and little about what’s in it for the candidate.

• Our ads are written to exclude bad people not attract good people.

• Our career website is difficult to navigate and search for jobs.

• We don’t use web analytics to track response by ad.

• We have not search engine optimized our site or our ads.

• Our ads don’t always come up first on the job boards we use.

• Good candidates say they’re “not interested” early in the process.

• We don’t get enough high-quality referrals.

• Too many voice-mails are needed to get callbacks.

• We make too many cold calls to passive candidates.

• High-potential candidates with slightly different skills would not naturally apply to our ads.

• Our CRM system and resume database is difficult to use and not very effective.

• Our employees don’t proactively seek out great people to refer.

Too many companies try to solve their hiring problems with a new sourcing-idea-of-the-month program. This is like applying a Band-Aid when major surgery is required.

Instead, think big and fix your scrap rate problems first and then start posting compelling ads in exactly the same places. Before you know it, your talent factory will be humming along.

Whenever I mentioned his name, many would respond, “Oh, John! He’s always helped me out when I had a problem.” Or, “He’s one of the best-connected people I know in the company. If you need something, he’ll know where to go to get it.”

He was smart, helpful, and connected, and that’s the formula we all preach about how to succeed.

Yet, John languished in a dead-end job that was 80% clerical. He was passed over for promotions and new opportunities because everyone assumed he was happy where he was and he never sought new positions. He did not manage up well, nor did he want to. He was hoping that he might be recognized for his skills and abilities.

While some might say he lacked ambition, what John really suffered from was a lack of self-confidence and an equal lack of encouragement. I worked with him and his boss, and we eventually found a position with more responsibility where he thrived. He sought out mentors from his network and he learned the key elements of the job in weeks. In the past, whenever we hired an outsider person for this type of job it took months for them to fully understand the intricacies of the job and who to go to for advice.

We have all known people like John. In fact, our organizations are filled with people with talent, skills, and connections who may lack the self-motivation or confidence to try something new. Many are pushed down by managers who use these employees to bolster their own weaknesses and others, like John, choose to not move.

But in times of change, economic downturns, or mergers, knowing who your best people are can affect product development, profits, and sales. Many times, this hidden talent is your lifeline to success versus failure. The challenge we all face is how do you identify these people and how do you “recruit” them into new positions with significant potential risk?

Here are some ways to find these people and some strategies for convincing them to make the move.

Simply Ask is Method One

Ask every hiring manager you work with to name their two or three best employees who are also the longest serving. Their recommendations may uncover some great talent. Combine that with active listening and I believe you will find many more talented people than you expected.

That is actually how I discovered John. His manager kept telling me that John would handle this or answer this question, and because John had been with him for so long, he knew all the ins and outs. This set off my radar and I made it a point to get to know John better.

Selling the Risk

Frequently, people like John are afraid to move because they are so deeply skilled at their current job that change is uncomfortable. They are afraid they will fail and lose their job or that they are not capable of learning the new skills required.

To sell them on a change you either have to provide training and coaching or offer them the ability to return to their old job after 30 or 60 days. This is probably the time it will take to find someone to fill the old position; anyway, so not much is lost. It is important to provide a transition step or process to ease their fears and increase the chance for success.

Why bother to do this at all? It’s very simply a matter of cost and benefit: the years that person has worked at your organization and the knowledge they have, and leveraging it to further add to the organization’s talent pool, you have saved thousands of recruiting and training dollars. No internal investment in these people is going to cost you as much as hiring an unknown person from outside.

Provide Internal Development is Method Two

Just asking may not be enough. Many organizations have offered low-risk internal development programs just to engage this type of individual. IBM and HP and many other organizations have over the years offered special training programs. These are often designed to fill some looming skill shortage in a fast, efficient, and usually successful intensive development process.

IBM used to ask managers to recommend employees who met certain basic qualifications for these programs. Then internal recruiters would explain the programs and enroll the employees with a guarantee of continued employment no matter how they did and a promotion if they did well.

Needless to say, this worked well and thousands of IBM managers, programmers, and salespeople came into their jobs through these programs.

The Benefits

Payback is huge and ongoing. Employee morale goes up and the word spreads to the street that the company takes care of people, trains them, and doesn’t spend excessive money on external recruitment when good people are under their feet.

Turnover almost disappears among those who are trained as the number of 25-40 year employees of P&G, DuPont, HP, IBM, and GE all attests.

Force Them to Appear is Method Three

The third way to find these people is to force managers to make promotions and move people up or out. General Electric may be the most famous example of this philosophy exemplified by their mantra to promote the top 10% and move the bottom 10% out.

While not everyone agrees with this, it does have its merits. It forces managers to think about who performs best and who has the skills and abilities to do more than they are currently doing. It forces these managers to convince their employees that a move is positive and it forces General Electric to have stellar employee development programs. But these programs are only as good as the criteria used for selection and the persuasive powers of the manager.

Recruiters have the responsibility of thinking about themselves as talent managers and strategists. Your job is to ensure the supply of quality talent to your organization at the lowest possible price. Finding those already inside your firm is the place to look first, not last, and developing the resources and processes to do this is becoming a critical skill for talent leaders.

Like white? Then interior decorating is for you. (Too easy. Everyone knows white goes with everything.)

How about if your favorite colors happen to be black and red and orange? Maybe you just really like Halloween. Otherwise, you are “The Evaluator,” says a press release from CareerBuilder (profile; site), which just added a color wheel (parked on the old CareerPath.com website) to help jobseekers better assess their personality.

Before we get scolded for making light of a serious assessment tool let us note that the Color Career Counselor has been scientifically vetted with the results published in the North American Journal of Psychology. You can read the paper here, but fair warning: it’s full of the kind of statistical analysis we avoided in college.

The CareerBuilder service is powered by the Dewey Color System, which uses color selection to determine your personality type and traits. These then suggest certain types of careers that others with smilar personalties have found rewarding and successful or which typically attract people like you.

Dewey offers its colors-based assessment to companies as a pre-screening tool, touting the Dewey Employee Predictor as “the world’s first nonlanguage-based test that defines occupational interest, workplace behavior patterns, styles, traits, and temperaments, as well as an additional 16 personality factors.”

Invented by Dewey Sadka, a veteran recruiter who founded and ran his own employment agency, Temp Force, he’s written several books on the use of color in personality assessment and employment. Sadka’s latest book is on using colors to find love. His clients include Georgia-Pacific, Honeywell and SHRM. And now, CareerBuilder.

Taking the test takes only a few minutes. And we will say this, the analysis was right in more ways than we would have thought. It helps if your monitor is properly calibrated. We couldn’t see much difference between indigo and blue.

Now about that black and orange and red thing. According to the CareerBuilder press release, those who picked those colors seek “the most efficient way to accomplish tasks. Using facts, compiled from past mistakes and successes, you deliver strong opinions with valuable perspectives that maximize the bottom-line.”

And the favorite color for that bottom-line presumably would be black.

While many recruitment organizations have created service level agreements that define the recruitment/hiring process and each parties’ (hiring manager and recruiter) responsibilities, many do not define and establish a “time-to-first-submittal” SLA. This SLA is what I believe to be the most important.

We (and others!) call this SLA: Requisition Received to “First Submittal.”

This is the time between receiving/qualifying the requisition from the hiring manager to the time you send over your first pre-screened, qualified candidate for consideration/interview.

Now I know that your manager will ask for/want more than “one” candidate (although it truly takes just one qualified candidate to successfully fill a position!), but we all know that a manager’s most anxious time is the time that lapses between giving a requisition to a recruiter and receiving the first applicant.

This time period (between req received and first submittal) causes the most anxiety/pain because of the “fear of the unknown.” Their thought process might be something like; “…I don’t know what is going on; I don’t know when I will see candidates; I don’t know when I will be able to get this position filled, etc.”

When applicant flow starts to come in, regardless of whether or not the candidates are the perfect fit, they rest easier knowing that “the ball is now rolling.”

You can avoid all this pain, anguish and anxiety, and most importantly — define expectations and improve customer service — by setting a realistic SLA. The process includes (but is not limited to) the following:

• Meet with the hiring manager and qualify the open position/requisition.

• Identify whether or not you feel there are internal candidates qualified to fill the position. If you believe an internal candidate exists, start the internal recruitment process/posting and set the appropriate service level that defines when you expect internal applicant flow.

• If you have to search externally, define (with the hiring manager) the position’s level of difficulty to fill:
o Standard, business as usual
o Difficult to fill
o Extremely difficult to fill

• Once you determine the level of difficulty (and get sign-off/buy-in from the hiring manager), define (with the hiring manager, if possible) your search strategy for filling the position. Educate them on how you will find (your action items/steps) qualified candidates for this position. While they might not care about what you need to do to fill the position, educating them on your search strategy will give them a better idea of how long it actually takes to identify, make contact, and pre-screen qualified, passive candidates (especially during the summer with folks on vacation, etc.).

• Now time to set your SLA:
o “Joe, based on the fact that this is a difficult to fill position, as we discussed, and that we don’t have any internal candidates and, honestly — since it is a new position — no external candidates in my pipeline, I want to set a realistic SLA. You should expect to see applicant flow by Friday, 8/19. Of course, as soon as I identify candidates that I think are qualified, I will send over ASAP. But I want to set a realistic expectation given the search, my search strategy, etc.”

• If for some reason you are unsure that you can not meet that service level, give yourself a “safety net.”
o “Joe, if for some reason I don’t think I will meet that deadline, I will let you know by COB Monday the 14th.”

If the only SLA you have ever established with your manager is; “…I will get working on it…” When they say, “I need it filled ASAP/yesterday…” don’t expect your managers to roll over and be happy with some of the SLAs you set (especially for difficult-to- fill and extremely-difficult-to-fill positions).

Anyone that has set this SLA will attest to the fact that many managers will still want candidates “yesterday.” With that said, over time, you can start to educate them on why it takes time to generate a slate of qualified candidates. Just as important, if you meet/exceed the SLAs you set, your hiring managers will start to appreciate your honesty regarding the situation. And most importantly, your hiring managers will trust and respect you more for setting them.

Without sounding like an Apple sales representative, I discovered that the iPhone opens up a huge playing field specifically for recruiters and sourcers who frequently travel, work in the field, or who work virtually.

The iPhone acts like a mini-computer, where users can access work email, use the Internet, read and produce documents, take notes, and stay organized all while on the run away from an office setting. The iPhone offers a view of the Internet that is exactly the same one would see through a web browser on a desktop computer. With new 3G wireless speeds and advanced security features, the iPhone is now also a very safe product to allow mobile access to systems, programs, sensitive files, key company information, and important documents.

With this in mind, the iPhone can significantly boost recruiter productivity and help to shorten the time-to-fill cycle for open positions. When a recruiter is moving between appointments offsite, the iPhone can access an ATS to update candidate information, grab key files on a shared drive online, or produce a report and email in a timely fashion to various managers and team members.

Major companies, in addition to popular social and business networks, have taken notice of the power and usability of the iPhone by offering “mobile” and iPhone versions of their websites, as well as downloadable software applications. These include LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, AOL Instant Messenger, Google, Yahoo, FriendFeed, Pownce, Salesforce, Oracle, and Digg, which all have various uses and functionality for recruiters and sourcers.

CareerBuilder has jumped on board as well, and offers an “iPhone” friendly application, although the early version is more geared toward job seekers. There are even applications which help iPhone users “record” their voice and take recorded notes to access at a later time.

The iPhone is the only product for recruiters and sourcers that offers such a unique and wide-ranging combination of tools in a small handheld device. Think about it. A recruiter can sit in the back of a taxi cab, flip through profiles on LinkedIn, check those potential candidates against an ATS, double-check these names in recruiting reports, call and screen the candidates, type, voice record, and update notes, and finally email resumes and a candidate presentation to a hiring manager. All this from one device.