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Nate Swanson didn’t have a whole lot of good to say today about Kenexa, believing that “the company continues to move further down a failing software strategy.”

Swanson says Kenexa blames, among other things, the strengthening U.S. dollar for its lowered projections, but he says that “we believe Kenexa’s real issue is that it’s trying to do too much. We believe this is creating confusion with customers and field sales reps, negatively impacting customer support, stifling innovation, and in general, making it very difficult to execute consistently in a more difficult competitive environment.”

He adds: “BrassRing will continue to run as a standalone product. We believe this decision will diminish innovation, placing Kenexa further behind best-of-breed vendor Taleo, and ultimately result in a product portfolio that is increasingly expensive to service and support.”

Meanwhile, Swanson issued a positive report on StepStone, saying, “We believe StepStone is uniquely positioned within the emerging human capital management market. In many ways, the company, in our view, has done what Monster should have done several years ago — combine a low-cost customer acquisition tool in its job board properties with a suite of high-value human capital management applications. While cross-selling between the company’s two businesses has only just begun, we believe there is a significant potential opportunity to do so, especially selling high-value, recurring revenue human capital management applications that tend to be stickier.”

“Happiness is an emotion associated with feelings ranging from contentment and satisfaction to bliss and intense joy.”
“Wikipedia.

Do you have problems keeping your internal clients happy? Do you arrive at work first thing in the morning dreading e-mails and phone messages from certain hiring managers? Do you ever have the urge to chase some of your internal clients around the office with a blunt instrument while screaming something like, “More candidates? I’ll give you more candidates you miserable &*%&*,” as they scatter in fear of their lives? Does any of this sound familiar?

If this charming reality is even a part of the story of your recruiting life, you can change that story by adopting a radically innovative mindset and you can do it today. I urge you to consider the following fact: it is not your job to make your internal clients happy. Never was and never will be. You might have thought it was because we were all trained to think that way, but that is not our goal from a business perspective. Our real objective is to present them with two or three qualified candidates who could be hired. End of story. If your internal clients are not happy after that, the problem is theirs, not yours, because you have done your job.

Let’s take a closer look at this concept of “happy.” Consider the following words: “profit, objective, performance, leadership.” The omission of the word “happy” in that group of words is not accidental. That is because those are business-oriented words, whereas “happy” is an emotional state of being. As recruiters, making people happy is not our job. Good, proactive, and effective recruiting is our job. Locating, attracting, and presenting candidates for the positions we are trying to fill is our business, and that is the only business with which we are involved.

Taking it one step further (Sorry I’m on a roll…) Keeping internal clients “happy” is a fool’s errand. Recruiting is difficult enough. Crazy expectations, poor response time, and un-communicated changes in requirements just scratch the surface of the recruiter’s typical day. We roam the halls with this creepy feeling that a good many of our internal clients are not happy. We struggle to do the best we can; we locate and present qualified candidates; yet, we still have this sinking feeling that they are not happy. Forget happy. Just do your job as a recruiter and that will have to be good enough.

With that in mind, let’s see how we can execute on this new way of doing business.

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Is your company’s recruiting video boring? If you didn’t think so before, you might think it’s a yawner after you check out Liz Claiborne Inc.’s new recruiting video “Runway of Opportunity” (embedded at the end of this article). When Helene Richter, director of talent operations for Liz, set out to create a recruiting video that matched the energy of the company and the fashion creativity pitched to consumers in the company’s clothing ads, she watched a lot of recruiting videos. Her conclusion: “They were sometimes humorous, always educational, but mostly boring, and certainly not artful,” said Richter.

Richter teamed up with Yahoo! HotJobs (profile) creative director David Lam and created “Runway” which features Liz Claiborne’s chief creative officer and mentor from TV show Project Runway, Tim Gunn.

Lam approached several clients late last year about creating recruiting videos as part of a Yahoo! HotJobs pilot program, and Richter jumped at the chance. She also came up with the video’s main concept and the basic script. Richter said that the video’s production costs would typically average $20,000 to $25,000; she received a discount for being part of the pilot program.

Besides revealing the company’s creative side, Richter also wanted to show prospective applicants that not everyone who works in the fashion industry looks like Kate Moss and that a typical day at Liz doesn’t begin with a cry of “gird your loins” as it did when Miranda Priestly arrived at the office in “The Devil Wears Prada.”

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Robert Genetski, a speaker at ERE’s conference next Spring in San Diego and whose financial forecasts have been spot on, says that if the U.S. government behaves itself, we could turn the corner by year’s end.

Genetski says the nation’s current economic problems are due to a number of factors, such as a “collapse in the housing market caused by overspeculation”; the Fed’s rock-bottom interest rates that made it so attractive for people to overspend on real estate; and “the government persuading banks to lend people money even though they couldn’t pay it (back), even though the homes weren’t necessarily located in the greatest areas.”

He says the “housing correction is not yet over” and could be somewhere around a year away, and declines could be somewhere around another 10%.

What’s really getting under Genetski’s skin is the government’s stimulus program (Dave Barry sums it up succinctly). “Once again our government came in and tried to help us,” Genetski says. “I think they made the situation worse.”

That’s because, Genetski says, the government had to borrow $170 billion to pay for the checks, and “there’s only so much credit out there, which made credit even tighter than it otherwise was … the checks were of course a one-time thing and the economy is weaker.”

Now, Genetski says, “we don’t know what the government has up its sleeves for its next move. Another stimulus package will delay any recovery. As long as the government doesn’t do any further damage, we will see some relief by the end of the year.”

“I know the economy looks very weak at the moment,” he says. “(But) by the end of the year you will see signs it’s not as bad, people are starting to spend. Recruiters really want to be prepared for when that thing starts to turn around. Don’t look at the situation of the moment and say, ‘Let’s freeze everything.’ Those who do aren’t going get the workers with the skills that they want.”

Merrill Lynch, he predicts, will shed a lot of people as part of B of A. Whole departments will get slashed, and “some people who are very good and very talented will end up being available.”

Employee referral programs are the most powerful tool in recruiting, routinely producing the highest quality and volume of experienced hires.

Yet for some unexplained reason, most corporate college-hire programs don’t have a referral component.

A few firms have pioneered in the college referral area. For example, the always leading-edge talent team at Intuit has produced amazing results with micro-cash bonuses (over 50% of their hires from one university came from their student referral program).

And Endeca found that Harvard and MIT students were willing to make amazing referrals with the promise of a flat-screen TV as a reward. Bold, but effective!

Not having a referral program as a key element of your college recruiting effort is a missed opportunity because no group of potential candidates are more connected with their peers than college students.

And the stronger the connections, the better referral programs work. Students connect through social networking sites, text messaging, online forums, face-to-face in classrooms, at social events, and in student organizations. If you understand their social connections, it’s relatively easy to develop a formal “college hire referral program” that can supplement your career-center efforts and produce a majority of your intern and college graduate hires.

Think about it, you can have others do more than “half of the work” in college recruiting (by making referrals), which frees up time and resources to focus on the other half.

The Referral Concept

The basic premise of all employee referral programs is that “the very best” know other top individuals. They get to know them because top performers learn from and compare themselves to other top performers. Professionals are constantly talking to each other on the phone, through text messaging, and Internet forums.

Shifting the focus to students, it’s clear that the best students know other top students because they identify them and compete against them in classes. They also meet each other in social situations, in student groups and clubs, in honor societies, and of course, online.

All referral programs work by getting others to share with your recruiters the names of the top individuals that they know. By merely asking or by offering a small incentive, they will likely share these names.

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I wrote a rather controversial article last week comparing Obama vs. McCain using our 10-factor evidence-based assessment system. The stated purpose of the article was to propose that Presidential candidates should be vetted just as rigorously as any candidate for any job.

The underlying purpose was to demonstrate the point that many important decisions, especially hiring decisions, are based on invalid assumptions, false impressions, personal beliefs, and lack of objective data. (Join this Ning Recruiters Roundtable network to submit your views.)

With this article as a starting point, let me offer some expert advice on how to make really bad hiring decisions:

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Kenexa is taking a beating on Wall Street today, losing 27 percent of its value as of 2 p.m. Eastern time, following an announcement Wednesday by the talent management software vendor that economic conditions are slowing corporate HR buying.

The company’s stock was off $5.89 as of 2 p.m. EDT, selling for $16.14 as buyers reacted to the company cutting its earnings estimate by 9 cents a share. Previously, Kenexa said it expected to earn $1.52 to $1.55 per share for the year. Wednesday, it told analysts and investors it would be in the range of $1.43 to $1.46.

“The macroeconomic environment continues to be challenging, and as a result we have seen an increased number of project implementations that have slowed or been delayed,” said Rudy Karsan, Kenexa’s CEO, in a prepared statement, released prior to a conference call with analysts that was held after the market closed Wednesday.

He also attributed part of the reduction to the changing exchange rate. “The strengthening of the U.S. dollar since the end of the second quarter has created an additional headwind considering the fact that international operations are the fastest growing segment of Kenexa’s overall business,” Karsan added. The company opened an office in India this year and has an office in London. It is headquartered in Wayne, Pennsylvania.

For the third quarter of the year, which ends Sept. 30, Kenexa expects revenue of $54 to $56 million, operating income of $10.3 to $10.6 million, and per share income of 35 to 36 cents. This is a reduction from the previous revenue estimate of $57 million to $59 million, operating income of $11.4 million to $11.8 million, and per share earnings of 38 to 39 cents.

“Sumak was a dream candidate. He graduated from MIT with a Masters degree in electrical engineering. He had 3 years of experience working for a large defense and commercial electronics firm, and he was willing to relocate. But he insisted on sending me resumes filled with photographs of his family. He even sent me some currency from his home country because I had mentioned that I thought it colorful.  He told me and the potential hiring manager all about his family connections back home and how those might be useful to us, and when he learned that I was single, he insisted that I at some point meet his sister! I was actually afraid to recommend him for fear I would be in trouble.”  – Senior Recruiter, large defense contractor

“Rapinee was sure she would be offered the position we had open because she had the highest GPA possible from her home university, which was rated the best in her country.  She also came from a titled family and her father was a very important businessman with government connections. She was reluctant to interview at all and answered my questions in a superficial manner. She thought she should just be offered the position!  I was so angry (although I did not show it) that I immediately decided not to pass her excellent resume on.”   – Director of Technical Recruiting, Semiconductor firm

These two vignettes illustrate issues that can arise when recruiting someone from another culture. While most North American recruiters have a basic understanding that people are different, most assume that the person being interviewed has been “westernized” and knows our operating principles.

It is usually a shock when either overt or subtle behaviors begin to show how different our cultures can be. Even recruiters who have lived abroad and have experienced other cultures are often caught off guard by the actions of candidates who seem very much like us and have excellent academic and experiential credentials.

I teach courses in cultural competency and have lived and traveled extensively in other countries for half of my life. I speak other languages and I am married to someone from another culture. Still, it is often surprising how often I react in negative or positive ways to the cultural differences that are increasingly part of our life.

Those of us who are in urban, coastal areas work with people from other cultures on a daily basis and are often deluded into thinking we are cultural experts. Yet, we get surprised as much as anyone else. As organizations expand their recruiting to other countries and as different cultures mix, being culturally competent is critical to recruiters’ success.

North American recruiters tend to operate under a number of assumptions and unspoken rules. Here is an incomplete sampling of some of them:

• Interviews are more or less formal affairs and exchanging personal information or getting “chatty” is frowned upon as unprofessional.
• Degrees are only important for a short time after graduation. By the time someone has been out of school for 3 years or so, the kind of work they are doing and where they are working plays a greater role in deciding who to hire.
• Where someone went to school, where they are from geographically, and who their parents are plays little role in selection.
• Family is not discussed during the recruiting process except in a general and superficial manner.
• The fact that a candidate has been a favorite of the boss or that s/he has received special praise or recognition internally is either frowned upon or of minor importance.

However, each of these may be deemed very important to those from other cultures. Many cultures place great importance on family connections, titles, and schools. Bringing these up in the interview is expected and necessary in order to gain the favor of the recruiter.

Anthropologists divide cultures broadly into those that are collectivist and those that individualistic.

Collectivist cultures are family- and group-oriented. We in North America are brought up in a very individualist culture where accomplishing things independently of others is considered a virtue.

However, in collectivist cultures, such as those in most of Asia, the opposite is true. So showing your commitment to the family and the group is important to them.

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Yahoo asks itself four questions when sourcing candidates of different generations.

• Where are they?
• How do they want to receive information?
• What makes them respond and engage?
• What’s the same and what’s different about the generations?

Carol Mahoney, Yahoo’s VP of talent acquisition, talked about the questions today at an HCI event. For Gen-Xers, Yahoo is focusing more on career sites as well as recruiting events. For younger applicants, the emphasis is on social networking (Twitter is big among Yahoo hiring managers) and a long courting process. “They do not want to just drop in and get their info and go,” she says, of millennials. They want to be courted. It’s more than information. It’s a relationship.”

This courting includes friends and family. In India, Yahoo laid off what Mahoney says was a very small number of people, and many were placed in other roles. But it was “such a huge deal” in India that Yahoo had to explain the layoff to families of wary job candidates.

With generational differences in mind, Yahoo has redone its career site. On the upper left, for example, the quick job search is aimed at Gen X-ers who don’t want to beat around the social-networking bush. In contrast with most career sites, which could put a wild boar to sleep — Yahoo has done it right, actually using the career home page to excite people about working at the company. (Its older versions, Mahoney, who arrived at Yahoo five years ago says, were “appalling.”) You leave the site with the impression that a Yahoo job involves doing something important, something that has an effect on people.

There’s more on generational recruiting from this webinar:

A couple of weeks ago there was an ERE article comparing recruiting to dating. I recently had an experience of a different nature. I was on a plane returning from an engagement and a man named Ted sat down next to me. He spent the next 90 minutes trying to save my soul.

This was a waste of time.

Not that my soul isn’t worth saving. But it was a waste because I am very firm in my religious beliefs and am not about to change them because of a 90-minute conversation with someone.

It was not an unpleasant conversation. He seemed like a delightful man and we laughed at times as we talked. He was not going to change my mind, but I did respect his commitment. His dedication. He did not let go. Our flight took off at 5:45 in the morning and he was in full swing. He started the conversation before he had his seat belt buckled and he kept it up even as people were deplaning.

He was recruiting.

I was impressed with his zeal. Then again, he is recruiting for a very important cause. It occurred to me that he probably started up these conversations whenever he traveled. He was always looking for recruits, and to put this in recruiting parlance, he is frequently looking for “passive candidates.” He never rests in his search, as there are always openings in his organization. Was he effective? Not with me, but I wonder how many people he has successfully recruited. Lots, I would guess, from the extent of his travels. He has been all around the country and all around the world. He finds people wherever they are. That’s his mission, and that’s what his organization needs.

What’s your mission? Professionally speaking, what are you trying to accomplish? There’s a lot we can learn from Ted. Are you constantly recruiting? Do you strike up conversations with people on planes, in malls, or at events? Are you always trying to meet new people? In the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross” the sales manager says selling is as simple as ABC: Always Be Closing. There are lots of similarities between selling real estate and recruiting, but that’s for another article.

Perhaps we need to create acronyms to remind us how to be successful recruiters. Maybe, if you’ve been finding yourself lax in the networking department, your ABC is “Always be connecting.” If your pipeline is drying up and you’re feeling frustrated, JKL – Just Keep Looking! Or NOP – Never Overlook Possibilities. But don’t compromise your standards. Remember PQR – Persistent Quality Recruiting. But be sure to MNO – Make Numerous Overtures if you’re going to EFGH – Effectively Find Good Hires. OK, I mean, okay, maybe I’m getting carried away, but we do need to remember that candidates don’t always present themselves neatly at our office door. We find them when and where we least expect them.

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Korn/Ferry’s doing better than expected, results R.W. Baird analyst Mark Marcon calls “a clean beat” of expectations. The stock was up sharply Tuesday.

Some thoughts in an email from Marcon on the world’s largest executive search company.

Average fee/search increased a very strong 15%.

Growth is clearly decelerating — from +26% in FQ2, +22% in FQ3, +16% in FQ4.

Futurestep also had a solid quarter, and continues to make good progress of improving its operating margin. Revenue increased 22% and operating margin expanded from 8.1% to 9.2%. (Futurestep is the RPO division; it’s about 14% of the company.)

North America and EMEA, two largest segments, were significantly better than expected, while Asia-Pac was disappointing. The only real negative was Asia-Pac.

South America performed well, but is small.

Korn/Ferry’s top executives also talked about the business, the economy in general, and more, during a conference call.

In recent discussions with recruitment leaders, they have conveyed their frustration around motivating/encouraging their team members to implement new recruitment tools and techniques learned from reading articles, blog posts, recent training events, webinars, etc.

While I’m sure we all aspire to have the discipline to implement new things that will ultimately make us better recruiters, it’s easier said than done.

To help with this dilemma, a lot can be learned from our friends at Seattle’s Pike Place Fish market. For those of you that have studied the Fish! Philosophy, you learned that the employees at Pike Place Fish Market created a super satisfying work environment by implementing four key ideas (aka The Four Steps of the Fish! Philosophy):
• Play
• Make their Day
• Be there
• Choose your attitude
While all are very important and excellent steps, incorporating “play” within your work day can dramatically improve implementation of new ideas/tools/techniques and, most importantly, overall improvement.

Let’s face it: playing and contests are more fun than work.

In spirit of recruiting performance improvement, here’s an example of a contest you could implement with your recruitment team to help improve their sourcing and time management skills. While the playful contest outlined below might be a little wordy and a tad cheesy, it could be a lot of fun and drive a huge ROI for the time invested by you and your team.

Recruitment Decathlon

The Recruitment Decathlon is a contest combining 10 recruiting events. Events will be held over the next 90 days and the winners are determined by the combined performance in all events. Performance is judged on a points system outlined below.

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Part one of this series dealt with the business case of implementing a new college recruiting program aimed at moving the activity out of antiquated gallows of campus career fairs, campus career centers and the like, and into the modern era. This direct approach is aimed at reaching those who know and can influence the truly valuable students who wouldn’t be caught dead in a career resource center.

The proposed approach is one that all but the very best talent acquisition functions scoff at, not because it isn’t possible, but rather because it isn’t easy. Beyond the business case, part one outlined the major players corporate recruiters can leverage on college campuses to reach top talent and detailed the benefits of the approach.

Now, in part two, the attention turns to the steps and activities needed to implement such an approach.

Developing a Formal Relationship-Building Process

Today, if you want to identify top students, build your brand, and “sell” the best students, 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 these students. Once your firm makes the decision to build long-term relationships with faculty, the next logical step is to develop a formal process that you can use to build these relationships in many diverse academic programs.

Who Should Have The Relationship?

Although recruiting managers can help develop and manage the overall process, recruiters are not the best ones to build relationships with faculty. Instead, the best people to build the relationship with faculty are your program directors and your hiring managers.

Directors are the first choice because not all individual managers hire graduates every year; however, directors and GMs will likely have some hiring in their organization each year.

Because senior managers are often domain subject experts, they have a better chance of having advanced education in the subject and being considered as “equals” by faculty. They also know the latest jargon, tools, problems, and opportunities. In addition, because senior managers control significant financial resources, faculty often look upon them more favorably because they could potentially offer research support and funding.

Create a Relationship-Building Template

This roadmap can guide the relationship-building process for all managers across the firm. Include the steps to take, the best practices, common errors, and the metrics for assessing the strength and the success of their relationship. The recruiting department should also provide training, advice, and guidance so that individual managers can minimize the time they spend on these recruiting relationships.

The “relationship building map” should support localization, so that the final approach best fits the type of university that you’re targeting (i.e., top-10 schools, other research institutions or teaching institutions, as well as public vs. private schools). Differences should also be allowed for international universities.

Process steps should cover identifying the faculty to target, how to communicate with faculty, and what are the current best practices for getting faculty to play nice. The key here is to utilize multiple approaches and reach school employees and staff who recruit the most influential individuals within their academic program.

Also, develop a macro-level communications process that minimizes the chances of duplicate efforts on individual faculty members and best practice/problem sharing processes among those building relationships. Add metrics in order to demonstrate the success of the process and its ROI.

Finally, put together a “toolkit” of approaches that allows an individual hiring manager to pick and choose from among the many available approaches and techniques. Rather than putting together a strict “program,” offer choices and the opportunity to learn from their successes and mistakes. This allows managers to “own” the relationship-building process, which is the No. 1 critical success factor for relationship-building programs.

Rule #1: Don’t Embarrass the Faculty Member

There is a lot of “emotional baggage” associated with building relationships with faculty. It’s also true that some practices that are fine at some institutions are frowned upon or even banned at others.

In case of doubt, don’t assume; instead, find out. If you try something that creates waves, be prepared to modify your approach so you don’t embarrass the faculty member. In most cases, they can’t be fired but they can catch flak from other jealous or politically opposed faculty members.

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OK, we lost 84k jobs, with June and July revised upward by 56k. Puzzling indeed with Q2 real (after inflation) GDP growth revised upward from 1% to 3.3%. How could this be? Last month we seemed to be turning the corner in job losses — only 51,000 with downward revisions of previous numbers — and now these numbers are going backward again.

The government loves to watch its rear-view mirrors, second-guessing the numbers. Q4 GDP last year was just revised down to -0.2% after the two usual revisions during Q1, which finally agrees with what the rest of us have known all along — we suffered through some sort of recession.

Ah, shades of the last slowdown after 9/11 when six months after the fact, these ‘certified geniuses’ finally agreed we did indeed have a very short recession. This time around it’s much milder, with job losses less than half of the 2001-02 numbers.

Another indicator, weekly jobless claims, a healthy 320k in January, averaged 370k a month February-July, moving over 400k in August, 444k this week — also showing a mild sort of recession.

85k jobs lost per month during Q1, 75k during Q2, and 71k so far in Q3 — it defies a healthy 3.3% economy. The cuprit? Productivity, up 4.3% in Q2, but 2.6% in the last year. Since GDP grew coincidentally at 2.6%, it takes the same number of workers today than a year ago to effect 2.6% growth. How could this be, as we all know a-million-plus were added to unemployment rolls, gave up, or went to part-time? Mostly, it’s the million who returned usually to Mexico, usually due to the residential building slowdown.

Looking at the 6.1% unemployment figure: is it the worst in five years, or is it? Rising from 5.0% in April, the July and August jumps can be attributed to benefits extended by three months, with one more month of unemployed not dropping off the rolls. In October the upward pressure should subside. And if oil prices
continue to crash, lower unemployment is indicated.

Finally, the dollar is on a roll, having recovered 12 months of losses, basically because Europe and Japan are six months behind us in Q2 GDP -0.2% and -0.6% recessionary readings. And with the Chinese stock market off 62% in the last year, despite the Olympics, investors see a rough road ahead there too.

Until next month.

The Australian Parliament recently eased immigration laws with a goal of attracting more high-skilled labor. This was in recognition of the fact that given past and future decreasing birth rates coupled with increasing demand for skills will make skilled labor the quintessential scarce resource for the next fifty years. In this hemisphere Congress wisely spent the time passing resolutions recognizing July as National Watermelon Month and declaring soil an essential natural resource (it’s about time).

Change We Don’t Believe In

Complacency about attracting high-skilled talent can have severe negative consequences. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a growth of 40%, or over 500,000 new jobs in IT-related positions through 2016. Domestic supply is not enough to cover this need at current levels. The number of degrees granted across all IT-related categories is about 54,000 annually, and trending downward. Adding to the supply-demand gap is that the number of workers in the 55-and-older group will grow by 47% in the next eight years — approximately 5.5 times the 8.5% growth of the labor force overall, with significant numbers looking for early retirement. The direct impact of this is a reduction in GDP of several hundred billion dollars and billions in losses of taxes to the government. Indirectly, the impact from lesser innovation and output will only magnify these losses.

While our legislators seem to be gorging on spiked watermelon, other countries are treating issues relating to talent with far more seriousness. Many countries have liberalized their immigration policies for high-skilled talent. That poses a major challenge to America’s historic domination in innovation and attracting high-skill immigrants. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are the most aggressive; they conceive of immigrants as a source of economic growth, and consider highly skilled immigrants to be especially valuable contributors. Accordingly have long-standing immigration policies to attract them.

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Here we are in 2008, soon to be 2009, and almost a decade into the 21st century. The Internet is maturing: it’s been around for ordinary people to use for almost 15 years and has already earned its place as a technology and a social movement as important as electricity.

Most recruiters, corporate or agency, have finally developed career sites and use the Internet for attracting, sourcing, and communicating with candidates and clients. The website is the bedrock of an effective recruiting practice, and while it may still be possible in local or niche markets to avoid it, for mainstream and volume recruiting a website is essential. In this article I am assuming you already have a decent website that has interactivity, video, audio, and other graphic material and updates frequently. That is old news.

But, to get a jump on your competition and to attract the savviest candidates, it takes more than a good website and good recruiting skills. Here are four essential tools for success.

Tool #1: Facebook or MySpace

You should have a personal and a corporate presence on a social network. I have only listed Facebook and MySpace because they represent the largest share of the social networking world in the United States and a significant percentage outside the U.S. If your organization has global operations and recruiting needs, then there are networks for China, India, and many other places that you should also consider.

College students and most other young professionals turn to these networks for information about you, to ask their friends about you, or to join a community of practice that you have created.

IBM DB2 developers have a Facebook community developed and maintained by IBM. KPMG in South Africa has developed a Facebook page to attract and communicate with potential candidates.

The U.S. Army, faced with massive recruiting challenges, has numerous Facebook and MySpace pages. Some of the pages act as testimonials or provide videos of real people talking about why they joined the Army. Other pages are focused on fun experiences such as simulations of driving a tank or on gaming.

However you use these networks, you will be exposing your brand to thousands of potential candidates who, at least to some degree, will judge their potential work experience by the quality of the content. That’s why these pages have to be done thoughtfully and have to connect to the type of viewer and what they are expecting to see and hear.

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In the quest for quality hires, talent acquisition leaders often spend considerable time extracting DNA from the company’s top performers in hopes of cloning the outstanding workers. After reviewing performance goals and synthesizing multiple data inputs, line managers and recruiters collaborate to craft tightly honed hiring profiles for each position. Next, it’s up to the recruiter to source the candidates, which is a critical step in the process, because sourcing plays a vital role in achieving quality of hire (a topic explored in depth in the October Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership).

Targeted sourcing is the second step in hiring top performers, as shown in this chart (click to enlarge) illustrating the complete quality of hire process, from Taleo Research.

Most recruiters instinctively return to the same source when searching for candidates, because historically the source has produced a quick response from a large number of prospects with the required skills. But a deeper dive into employee turnover statistics and performance ratings might result in some surprises about the quality of the candidates secured through each source, according to Andrew Carges, vice president of worldwide talent acquisition for Success Factors.

Carges says that he found first-year turnover was high for employees sourced through agencies, during his experience at SuccessFactors and in his previous roles as a talent leader. A closer review as to why those employees left revealed that many had a history of job-hopping, and he concluded that employees represented by recruiters were frequently hunting for new opportunities and had easy access to other positions. Now he evaluates source effectiveness and its impact on quality of hire.

“To drive quality of hire, compare the employee’s first-year performance rating to their hiring source and the cost of hire,” says Carges. “It’s something every company can do to evaluate the effectiveness of the hiring source in delivering top performers and value.”

(See the example of hiring-source analysis provided by SuccessFactors.)

Managers frequently request candidates with previous industry experience because they believe it’s a predictor of on-the-job success. That hiring criteria often limits the sources recruiters can tap to find experienced prospects. A review of the employees’ actual performance ratings and the competencies possessed by top performers might be the first step in shifting the hiring paradigm, which in turn opens the door for new sources of hire.

At R.L. Polk & Co., a review of the company’s top performers revealed that previous industry experience had little correlation to job performance, according to Jay Marshall, manager of talent acquisition. In fact, the requirement accelerated the cost of hire because candidates came from a boutique industry and often had to be enticed with higher salaries.

And at the same time, industry dynamics were changing, forcing employees into more business-facing roles that required different skills. As Marshall dug a bit deeper into what was really making employees successful, an entirely new profile began to emerge.

“When I looked at the behavior behind the performance, it was driven by teamwork,” says Marshall. “The bottom line is that it really altered what we were looking for, and now we look for team players with strong business acumen. That opened up many new candidate sources, and our average cost of hire has dropped $10,000 in the last 24 months.”

Today, Marshall says he no longer worries about how long it takes his team to hire new employees or how much a new hire costs, because by focusing on quality of hire, he has improved all the recruiting metrics at Polk.

In my last article on onboarding, titled “Your Onboarding Program Needs A Pair Of Fresh Eyes,” I shared a rather humbling personal experience. In the article, I described the mistake I made that was analogous to the one many employers make in their employee orientation and onboarding processes:

They forget to examine their orientation and onboarding process from the perspective of their new employees.

This creates two problems for employers interested in creating an onboarding process that leads to maximum employee retention and engagement:

1. They don’t realize the negative perceptions they inadvertently create through mindlessness — perceptions that can lead to employee retention problems or diminished engagement.
2. They forget how confusing, complex, and daunting things look to someone without institutional knowledge of “how things are done around here.” Because of this, processes that might seem obvious and easy to navigate if you’re an “old pro,” are anything but to the newcomer. Thus, they inadvertently dampen the new employee’s enthusiasm by adding unnecessary frustration and anxiety.

This is why you must borrow the “fresh eyes” of your new employees. They can see things you can’t.

I was reminded of this — and the impact of careless orientation and onboarding — by an interview I did recently with a former college senior, who, as part of a business class, participated in a bank’s orientation program. Here are some of his observations, along with a bit of commentary.

Since he requested anonymity, I will refer to him as “Brandon” as I share his observations.

keep reading…

Last month, DoubleStar conducted a survey to determine the current state of recruiting practices in a cross-section of organizations. The survey was sent to recruiting leaders and decision makers in mid- to large-sized organizations across all industries. The results are not a summary of best practices but a snapshot of current actual practices as they exist today.

The findings (full report available) are interesting. For example:

• 95% of organizations are operating without a dedicated sourcing function. Further, 28% of organizations reported that their recruiters are performing all of the sourcing.
• 44% of organizations are engaged in some level of recruitment outsourcing. However, 82% of these organizations outsource less than 25% of their total positions.
• The biggest impediments to recruitment success are the ability to find quality candidates and process delays caused by hiring managers.
• Only 21% of organizations are using Web 2.0 tools for recruiting, with only 1% considering themselves experts. LinkedIn and industry-specific sites were reported as being the most effective.
• The most commonly tracked recruiting metrics are time-to-fill, time-to-start, first-year turnover, manager satisfaction, and cost-per-hire. Few organizations reported tracking more sophisticated measures.

The survey’s overall results show that recruiting is a function in transition from older practices to more modern ones.

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Retailers have a sale, manufacturers slow production, but what can recruiters do with all those excess candidates? A few talent acquisition leaders are fast becoming inventory-management gurus and they are pursuing innovative ways to deal with all those extra candidates.

“We didn’t add any staff because responding to candidates didn’t add more work — we just changed our process,” says Catie Cowher, candidate experience leader for Recruiting Strategy and Initiatives at Wachovia Corporation.

Wachovia posts some 600 to 800 openings per week on its website, which includes both newly created positions and vacancies, and averages 10,000 applicants. According to Cowher, rejected candidates receive an e-mail informing them about their status and the reasons behind Wachovia’s decision. Most candidates are declined early in the recruiting process, following a resume review by a recruiter. Nearly 90% of applicants responding to job postings at Wachovia are declined. Giving candidates immediate feedback about their status was a process change that served up numerous benefits.

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