Taking to heart the message CEO Sal Iannuzzi has been touting that users are as important as recruiters, the company is set to roll out a new look and new features on January 10th. Monster was previewing some of what’s coming at its well-trafficked booth, and what we saw suggested the kind of career and succession planning tools found in higher-end talent management systems.

“It’s a seeker-centric appoach,” Monster’s VP of Client Adoption, Eric Winegardner, told us during a tour of the features.  There were no live demos because Monster’s development teams are still making tweaks.

But the slides showed tools that should appeal to passive candidates, as well as the traditional active seeker.

In three steps, a worker could learn what rungs others in the occupation have taken up as they worked their way up the ladder. Using the benchmarking tool, a candidate can learn how they stack up against others. Using the Career Snapshot, a worker could research related occupations by title, skills, and the like.

Just like a quality talent management system, Monster’s tools will help career-minded workers do a gap analysis and see what they need to do to ready themselves. The advantage Monster has over any single company is that it taps a database of millions of resumes to create aggregate pictures of career movement for nearly any occupation and industry that exists.

Where it doesn’t have the data, it reaches out to get it, pulling in things like average salary for a searched occupation in the specific geography. Every job, Winegardner tells us, will have salary data — if not from the employer, then salary ranges Monster will provide.

We asked Winegardner about the integration of the job-matching technology it bought when Monster acquired Trovix. Winegardner laughed. Almost everyone who he talked to asked the same question. “It’s coming,” he said. Some parts are there now, others will begin to appear in December, but the complete integration won’t happen for the Jan. 10th launch.

There are also some changes coming on the recruiter side. One of the more useful is the matching of candidates to job postings based on keyword. It won’t replace resume searching, but it will prove useful to smaller companies since they’ll be able to see resumes and then decide if they want to buy access to the candidate.

Winegardner said that 90 percent of the user experience — seeker, especially, but recruiter as well — will be changed. And Monster will get a new look. No previews there, since the design is still being developed. But he did give us a hint: What users get might very well be a personalized homepage.

Judging by what’s on display and what’s being discussed at some other HR tech conferences I’ve been to, HR technology appears to be geared more to the past than the future.

To be fair, technology products tend to be lagging indicators of needs, and HR technology is no exception.

Having said that, the lack of vision for products is substantial. Most of what’s on display at conferences is reminiscent of a Sears appliance showroom — lots of similar products in a few categories, with little changing from year to year. Truly interesting products are about common as a pro-McCain story in the New York Times. We’re still seeing products that have not fundamentally changed in 10 years. That gets reflected in awards — a few deserve them, but most seem to make it just to fill out the list. One company managed to win an award for a product that was just a repackaged product from another company. This is why the Nobel committee has never shown much interest in establishing a prize in this category. But that doesn’t stop people from coming. But that doesn’t stop people from coming to look at products. I’m reminded of the story of the small town where the high school football team had never won a single game, yet the stadium was always packed. When someone asked why people went the response was “just in case they do.” That sums up the situation with HR technology — there’s the hope that we just might see something interesting.

This year there are a few products that deserve recognition. The first is Talent Drive; this product solves the extremely common problem — one faced by every recruiter — of having multiple sources to search but no easy way to do it. Talent Drive integrates all job boards a recruiter subscribes to, along with hundreds of free ones, and allows them to be searched from a single, elegantly styled interface. Results are aggregated in one location and resumes can be matched to job requirements and ranked. Best of all, the product allows a user to create a single search requirement that is adapted to all the boards. The efficiency and productivity gains are significant. There have been others that have tried to do this, but not well. This product is designed for that neglected group of people — recruiters. We hear a lot about serving the needs of candidates (the Web 2.0 experience), and hiring managers (making ATS reporting simple), but little about those that do most of the work. Talent Drive one of the few offerings that actually makes their life easier.

Prophesy from eQuest is another. The product lets a recruiter analyze the effectiveness of job boards and provides a variety of metrics related to candidate responses. Now in its third version, Prophesy can allow an employer to focus its spending where it provides the most value.

A third product that I’d like to mention is Value Networks. This product would not be generally associated with talent management, but it can make a big difference to an organization’s talent strategy. Value Networks allows an employer to visualize and understand the informal network that exists in every workplace — that is, the real organization chart. This can help an organization understand how information really flows and who contributes value, which may be completely unrelated to their title or position within the organization. It helps highlight vulnerabilities and devise strategies to optimize information flows. The implications for talent management are obvious — talent strategies should be shaped based on an understanding of the value network, creating and filling positions that help optimize information flows.

These products have two things in common. One, they deliver tangible value that goes beyond automating a process, and can be measured in dollars and cents. In that regard they are very appropriate given the current economic climate. Second, small companies developed them. Real innovation is never a hallmark of any major vendor. Admittedly innovation in technology in general, and software in particular, is difficult. The U.S. Patent Office issued more patents to products in the category of hunting, fishing, and vermin removal in the last year than to software products in the entire 20-plus years that patents have been available for software. But it’s not impossible — as these three have demonstrated.

So if you’re looking for the future of HR technology the product bazaar may not be the best source of information. Perhaps another fixture of conferences — the obligatory “expert” panel — might help. Trouble is that what gets said is mostly of middling quality, based on spin put out by vendors, and dominated by discussions of what the majors are doing. You hear statements like “Vendor X is continuing to fill in their functional gaps and looks poised to take advantage of web 2.0.” Look at the content and the same could be obtained with a few keystrokes on Google. Truly innovative products are almost never discussed because the vendors are too small to tithe, er, subscribe to analyst firms.

There’s also the simple fact that the “experts” don’t use most of the products they are discussing and in general see too many demos to get anything but the most cursory understanding of them and the value they offer. They do have some insights into the situation that specific vendors are in and their likely future, but that is not stuff for a panel discussion. Few have the courage to make predictions about the future — better to say something innocuous couched in jargon to make it seem important, and be right than to make a bold prediction and be wrong. Sitting in on one of these is not unlike being stoned to death by popcorn.

I’ve long said that conferences having to do with HR technology should be on the same schedule as the Olympics. There really isn’t that much going on in the interim that necessitates having these more frequently. Let’s face it, despite whatever we may think of ourselves — this is HR, not astronomy or bio-tech. We’re not finding new planets or sequencing genomes. Then perhaps we’d see many more interesting products that really merit an award that’s worth something. Right now it’s like getting a hole-in-one — in mini-golf.

High-Level Observations

• The rise of talent management. This seems to be the age of  “talent management” when it comes to the use of technology in HR. I saw a ton of companies offering “talent management systems.” These platforms use technology to cover a broad footprint of key HR areas/functions such as branding, recruiting, onboarding, learning, development, and communication. Talent management products are starting to provide HR practitioners with a technology based backbone that will allow them to integrate major HR functions. The integration of more functions into one platform is a trend that can have significant value given the traditional walls that tend to exist between the major areas of HR in larger organizations. There seems to be variation in the functions offered by the various talent management platforms as well as some gray area around what defines a talent management product. These gray areas are nothing new, and are indicative of the nature of an industry-wide trend that is causing vendors to jump on the bandwagon. While my overall thoughts about talent management products are definitely positive, one wonders how many vendors have just dubbed themselves as “talent management” providers to be trendy, and have not significantly changed their products.

• ATS Not Hip Anymore. Is it just me, or does there seem to be a significant decrease in companies selling products referred to by the term “ATS”? I could not help but think that much of the momentum in the use of hiring and technology seems to be in the idea of the broader, strategic, idea of talent management and less in the more tactical area of applicant tracking. The concept behind applicant tracking and its related functionalities are still of great importance; it just seems that the term itself is losing favor as traditional ATS functionalities are being baked into other products such as advanced screening/assessment management platforms and talent management systems.

• Goodbye paper resume. It seems that there is continued movement toward removing the resume from the hiring process. This is definitely true of the paper resume, but there is a broader movement afoot to deconstruct the resume and extract the types of data it usually provides (i.e., skills and experience). Key information about candidates is being collected via other opportunities in the search and application process such as the creation of detailed profiles that have fields that guide the entry of important candidate information in a standardized format. Parsing, another method of deconstructing resumes, seems to be continuing to evolve as a means of extracting important data from resumes. Resume deconstruction methods allow for much more efficient searching, and matching between candidate data and important job requirements. These methods are part of an overall trend that will see the integration of a variety of candidate information into a digital platform that will allow it to be standardized, categorized, and compared to key requirements for a job or career. While we have a long way to go toward the complete death of the resume, technology is helping us to continue the slow march towards the inevitable.

• Web 2.0 is hot. It almost goes without saying that the latest in HR technology is leveraging the benefits of easy access to information, communities, and data that are at the core of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 was everywhere at this show. It seemed to me that the applications of web 2.0 seemed to be concentrated more in the space of performance management products, but there is no doubt that it is having a large impact on the thinking of those creating recruitment-oriented products as well. I saw a heavy focus on the use of social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook and on products that provide companies with platforms on which to build communities. The data-driven nature of web 2.0 provides a good deal of promise for the area of recruiting and hiring.

• We’ve come a long way. The products I saw at this show provide a sign of continued progress and evolution that seems significantly more advanced than the products available five years ago in many ways. While the core function of many products may remain the same, we are continuing to develop new ways to connect people and information. The products I looked at seem slicker, cleaner, and more usable than ever before. While it is often hard to cut through the smokescreens when one is looking at products on the tradeshow floor, the overall level of tech-savvy seems higher than ever. I was able to see firsthand the positive impact of technology on a variety of recruiting- and hiring-related products. Of course keeping up and separating faddish technologies from those that truly are game-changers will continue to be a challenge in years to come.

Assessment-related Trends

• Assessment is still an outsider. While there were a decent number of assessment vendors at the show, as an overall area of HR technology, assessment is still a very small piece real estate. This makes sense to me given the problems that organizations seem to have in understanding the value assessment can provide.

• Two directions of evolution for assessment. Technology is helping assessment to slowly evolve in two directions. The first of these involves assessment being integrated into the functions provided by bigger, broader systems and products such as job boards, ATS, and talent management. Embedding assessment into other products makes sense when one understands that the core value of assessment is to provide information that can be used in conjunction with other information to support informed decision-making. Pre-employment assessment actually may have the most value when it is an integrated part of a process-based approach into which its results are integrated. This trend has been very slow to develop, but we will continue to see a trend toward embedded assessments. The second direction in the evolution of assessment is toward the productization of assessments to be sold transactionally. While assessment has been sold transactionally for decades, the present state of evolution leverages millions of data points to help provide a new level of clarity about what content predicts certain traits, behaviors, and outcomes. This evolution allows for off-the-shelf products that are more accurate than ever before, while providing documentation to support the relevance of these products for specific jobs.

• Hello, talent management providers? Assessment seemed to be conspicuously absent from the slate of services provided by most talent management systems. While assessment is part of the deal for some of the big players in talent management, it does not seem to be a core part of the concept at this point. This is upsetting given the value assessment can have, not only during the hiring process, but throughout the entire employee life cycle. Anyone who considers themselves to be a player in the realm of talent management should strongly consider embedding quality assessment tools.

• Platforms evolve nicely. The software platforms that accompany pre-employment assessment products are evolving nicely. I refer to these as “candidate management systems.” Today’s candidate management systems offer many of the functionalities once seen only in ATS products. This evolution should help support the value proposition of assessment as products become easier to use and provide additional decision-making support.

• Simulations still lacking. While there has been some definite positive movement toward the creation of more advanced simulations, we still need to be pushing ahead in this area. While there are some nice simulation products currently available, the future of hiring will continue to move toward the increased use of simulations. Not enough steps are being taken toward the development of truly innovative and unique simulations. This is an artifact of a lack of buyer interest and the absence of “killer apps” that are needed to allow simulations technology to advance.

When it comes to HR technologies that support the recruiting and hiring process, we are moving in the right direction and have come a long way over the past five years. The technology level available for assessment both as a core process and as a supporting cast member is more advanced than ever. However, there is a lot more that we can be doing to integrate assessment into the products that seem to be marking the trends in HR and technology. Assessment still seems to remain the misunderstood stepchild of HR, which is a shame since there is so much evidence for the value it can have. I remain optimistic that assessment will continue to be brought more tightly into the fold in years ahead.

So as ERE Expo keynote speaker and ESPN analyst Steve Lavin warmed up the crowd at Expo on Thursday morning, it was unclear how his theories on people management — on really building a solid team — were applicable to his audience.

Lavin started the game slowly, but as he shared his passion and outlook on choosing the right people, his passion became palpable. He’s not talking ATS, he’s not talking ROI, and he’s certainly not talking time-to-fill metrics.

But what Lavin knows – and knows well – is sticking to a core belief system and applying motivating tips to help you create your own winning, successful teams. Here are traits of winning people for a winning team:

• Eternal learners. Pick candidates who have the following traits: an appetite for knowledge; a natural curiosity (”If you’re not naturally curious, practice it and raise your level of consciousness; listening is a skill!”); a thirst for finding a better way; and avid readers.
• Passion. Pick candidates with enthusiasm, zest, and zeal. He quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson on soul: “When it breathes through intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through will, it is virtue. When it flows through affection, it is love.”
• Bounce back. People who achieve at the highest level have resiliency. Find applicants who can overcome any obstacle.
• Mentors. Lavin had a dream to coach college basketball, so he put pen to paper and wrote to “the Jeffersons, Franklins, Lincolns – the founding fathers of basketball. There is something about receiving the snail-mail letter with a nice stamp. I have every letter I have received from John Wooden over the years!” As you refine your thinking, writing, and speaking, he suggests it will improve the effectiveness in your vision and getting others to buy into that vision.
• Physical. At some point, he says, start on that path of good health, even if it’s incremental and 10 minutes a day, then 20 minutes. “Physical health will impact everything else. The physical has to be there!” he says. Encourage this in yourself and in your team.
• Gratitude. Give thanks every day of the week, he advises. “If you have gratitude, you have grace and perspective. Humor and humility also come out of grace,” he adds.

Dr. John Sullivan is scheduled for broadcast at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, talking about recruiting during the downturn. Krista Bradford will discuss passive candidates at 3:15 p.m. Eastern. Also look for a panel called “How well do you know  your company?” at 1:30 p.m. Eastern.

Also on the agenda from the “posh” Westin but not broadcast: Coke’s talent-acquisition director; AIRS; a session on building pipelines of candidates, by the Recruiting Roundtable; Tony Blake, who has written a killer article for the Journal; Mr. Ted’s demo of its new ATS; and the vendor smackdown — where “job-matching” sites will strut their stuff.

As for yesterday (which, was in a sense, a cloudy day): Jobfox’s Rob McGovern released a white paper PDF warning that hiring won’t stop even in this slower economy); Kevin Wheeler said it will be “economic suicide” for companies to insist on keeping jobs in the U.S. that could be outsourced; attendees talked about the challenge of attracting out-of-towners who can’t sell their homes; Penelope Trunk and Jason Warner talked blogs; and speakers touted new tools like the Insider Referral Network and Ping.fm. On Wednesday, the focus was less about the slowdown, and more about passionate recruiters leading the way in their companies.

The value they put on the table should ensure that they have an edge in keeping their jobs, but in actual practice things don’t work quite so well.

The Chosen Ones

The methods that are used to evaluate whether someone has high potential are many and varied, but they generally focus on two issues: capabilities and desire.

High potentials are people who have shown that they have what it takes to succeed. Often they do this by succeeding, but many are assessed at an early stage in their career, and this is done using a combination of their manager’s evaluation, a psychometric test, and some form of assessment center process.

Combined with this high level of capability, The Chosen Ones also have a desire to move up through the ranks in their company. This is seen from the general high pace with which they approach every job or task assigned to them, and also a stated preference on their part for a high level of career growth.

The advantages of being a high potential is usually assumed to outweigh the risks, and few would ever think about these risks. But being chosen is not necessarily the boon that many people assume it will be. It does not constitute any serious level of protection against being laid off.

The Real World

For a start, high potentials have to suffer a degree of resentment from other company employees. Their decisions are not always perfect (whose decisions are?) so it’s a bit like being set up for a fall. If they make a mistake, or just do not excel sufficiently, the reaction will often be: “See, I told you. What’s so special about this guy?’

Average performers can operate without this level of scrutiny. If they succeed they will be noticed. They have the advantage of the opposite reaction: “Who’d have thought that John could have … Wow!”

Most business nowadays is a matter of teamwork and cooperation, so a high potential’s efforts can easily be thwarted if any number of colleagues publicly support their initiatives, but privately hinder them. If the organization is sufficiently hierarchical that high-potentials develop a degree of entitlement, this can really be a serious problem.

The other concern that people have with the high-potentials is also a teamwork issue. Often, people who succeed in one team are promoted to another as a reward and, surprise! surprise!, they fail at the new job. This is the promote-the-best-Salesman-to-be-the-Sales-Manager-scenario. Sometimes it works, but more often than not it fails.

So high-potentials already have a higher level of risk built into their career because they are promoted often, and to different departments. Every time they are given a new challenge they face this risk.

High-potentials also tend to be rotated around different departments in the early part of their career, and if the economy turns sour while they are still in this process, they can lose out badly. When the decision is made to fire, HR staffers and senior managers are going to have to choose between specialized, experienced average players, and high-potentials with a broad range of shallower experiences across business lines.

In addition, the high-potentials tend to be on bigger salary packages. In an economic downturn, terminating three or four very well-paid people affects the bottom line a lot more than terminating three of four average players. When you add in the fact that the average players have probably worked for their division for many years, and have built a strong network of connections, then the choice is not always much of a choice.

Finally, high-potentials have a stated preference for fast career growth. In any downturn, such as the one we are experiencing now, companies are simply not going to be able to deliver on this career growth.

HR and line managers are faced with the prospect of disappointing a person with high expectations, and this is not a choice most people want to make. High potentials are seen by other staff as being a bit ‘high maintenance.’ Why go through the difficulty of trying to satisfy their impossible demands when you have many average players who will be more than happy to fill the less-than-stellar roles that will emerge during the downturn?

Expecting the Unexpected

So if you have been chosen, and you staring out the window of your well-furnished corner office, pondering the “challenging situation” of the poor souls in your company who will soon be printing resumes, think again.

Remember the old joke. If you are in a room full of people who are talking about ‘The Patsy,’ and you don’t know who ‘The Patsy’ is, guess who ‘The Patsy’ is?

HR and senior managers may not be as enthusiastically in your corner as you think. Watch your back.

“We want to let everyone know about us,” explains JuJu’s Euan Hayward. Around since 2006 (with the JuJu brand) and with respectable visitor numbers, Hayward says it was time for the company to reach out to recruiters. “This is our first booth experience.”

A job search engine with roots in the late 90’s, JuJu is nearly identical in concept to the better known Indeed and SimplyHired, both of whom are also at the Expo here in Hollywood Beach, Florida. Like them, it “scrapes” job postings from commercial and corporate job boards making a jobseeker’s search a one-stop effort.

Does the world need another vertical — or meta — job search site? Hayward thinks so. “There are some additional opportunities,” he says. “Innovation is not dead in this market.”

There was other evidence of innovation on the show floor.

Take CareerAthletes for instance. Much to my disappointment, it’s not a job board for athletes at least not in the way I was hoping (”Quarterback wanted for NFL team”). It is, however, a means for companies to hire college athletes for more typical jobs, such as in sales, marketing, engineering, and the like. It is the product of a merger between Career Athletes and Athletes4hire.com.

Working through college athletic departments, CareerAthletes provides a branded networking-oriented site for the athletes and former athletes. The focus is on community, and a site might include alums of a particular sport mentoring current athletes and sports news and similar types of content. There’s also a job board, which is supplemented by a resume-like database of the college’s athletes, which, over time, can grow to be quite extensive.

What sets CareerAthletes apart is the company’s campus-based orientation for the athletes. “We’ve done over 800 on-campus presentations,” company CEO Chris Smith says. “We are hands-on with the athletic department.” These presentations, made to the athletes, include on-the-spot sign-ups for the site, ensuring their participation and availability to recruiters.

At the other end of the showroom, AllianceQ was making a first appearance. A consortium of several large employers, AllianceQ enables these firms to share resumes of employees they don’t hire. Besides cutting the cost of sourcing candidates, the resume-sharing opportunity can salve the sting of rejection. Before sharing a resume, the candidate has to agree. And not every candidate is shared. Participating companies get to decide whether they want to share a particular resume — a precaution against losing a hot prospect for whom there may not be a position just now.

There are also at least three companies exhibiting here that focus on helping employers market their jobs through search engine optimization, a term which means tweaking a Web page in such way as to improve its placement on the results a search engine returns.

We’ve seen Jobs2Web (profile; site) before. It helps employers manage their websites and job listings to increase visibility and traffic. Also showing at the Expo are SEO4Jobs and OptiJob. Both create microsites for job listings, with OptiJob focusing exclusively on the individual job posts and SEO4Jobs also providing some additional careersite optimization.

I asked OptiJob’s VP of Business Development Chad Hensler what he has been hearing from recruiters. “It’s a mix,” he says. Most recruiters understand the value of a high Google ranking, but many are uncertain how those search results (typically called organic search) differ from search engine marketing (which, in this context, means paying for a position on the search results page).

“We do a lot of explaining,” Hensler adds. “This is a critical part of recruiting.” Not to mention having some fun. OptiJob is giving away toy rockets that fire a good 20 feet straight up.

Jonathan Duarte of SEO4Jobs was even more of an evangelist. He says search engine optimization and search engine marketing are things recruiters absolutely need to know about to be competitive. “We’re getting a lot of (recruiters) stopping to ask us all sorts of questions.”

And then he pitched a workshop on the topic at the next ERE Expo, which comes up the end of March 2009.

She talked about the world economic conditions and her own challenge selling a home after four years on the market for less than the mortgage balance. She illustrated the negatives and positives (yes, there were and are some) of the creative financing that is fueling the financial collapse, but which also enabled a young couple to buy her parents’ home with 104 percent financing.

“Imagine,” Hopkins told the audience of about 400 as she referred to President Bush’s call for a world financial summit, “we’re talking about rebuilding the financial structure of the world.”

For recruiters, Hopkins said, the economic conditions mean:

• Morale needs to be boosted, especially among workers whose options and 401(k) plans have taken a big hit;
• Compensation plans need to be rethought;
• Plan for the possibility of more mergers and acquisitions;
• Difficulty in recruiting workers who have stable jobs;
• Growing interest in unions, fueled in part by the security of pension plans.

Now is the time for HR to be more proactive, Hopkins says, to “take a seat at the table, closer to the power.”

Turning to the audience, Hopkins began an interactive exchange, asking about the challenges recruiters were facing.

One recruiter said he finds it hard to attract experienced manufacturing workers because they can’t sell their homes to move. Turning to the “Wisdom of the Crowd,” a theme conference chair Jason Warner of Google sounded earlier, Hopkins coaxed solutions from the group, including one where a company seeking to relocate workers from a community looks for companies bringing workers into the community to work out a house swap.

Warner, in his introductory comments, encouraged recruiters to look for solutions by tapping into the collective wisdom of the group. Putting the economy in perspective, Warner of Google took the stage this morning flashing images of Time magazine covers from years past. Those dealing with economic conditions hailed from recessions past with headlines remarkably like those of the past several weeks.

How Can We Improve Our Ability to Hire Right the First Time?

The two most common hiring traps are hiring in a hurry and hiring the resume rather than the person.

Companies that don’t have succession plans in place or that fail to practice cross-training often rush to relieve the pain of the empty chair. Businesses that ignore the hiring process in the interest of expediting it are far more susceptible to missing important clues that could otherwise prevent a poor hiring decision.

Articles from Harvard Business Review, Spherion, and Kenexa report that more than 65% of all candidates do not prepare their own resumes and more than 45% of job applicants misrepresent the credentials on their resumes with one or more “tall tales.”

A third and very common hiring trap is to hire based on a job description. These typically list a subjective interpretation of required job skills and experience. By highlighting only hard skills, they leave out the most critical elements such as key performance objectives, behaviors, values, character traits, and soft competencies — the defining criteria that lead to effective performance.

There is tremendous pressure on hiring managers to keep their organizations fully staffed and productive. But, how does one meet these demands without falling into hiring traps?

What is an Internal Hiring Process, and How Do We Create One?

If you hire someone you don’t really know, for a position you have not thoroughly defined — chances are neither the person, nor the position will deliver. Hiring the right people right from the start requires implementation of a comprehensive internal hiring process that selects the best and eliminates the rest.

Importantly, it all starts with benchmarking. Whether benchmarking the role, the top performers in that role, or benchmarking key traits of the best performers in the company as a whole, the first step is creating the model of what right looks like. Companies that take the time and effort to do so fully understand not only who they need, but why they need them. These are the companies that excel in the employee selection process and the capacity to build a “dream team.”

What “Right” Looks Like

Before you evaluate your immediate needs, evaluate the company and team. This is called the Internal Human Capital Inventory & Assessment, and involves:

Evaluating your core culture:

• Acknowledge your corporate values.
• Assess the character quotient of your company.
• Identify the non-negotiable character traits or core values for your company.

Evaluating your current team:

• Identify your key players and what innate abilities and traits make them successful.
• Identify what’s working on the team and what isn’t.
• Identify what elements are missing on the team that, if present, would make a positive difference.

Implementing a system for evaluating and selecting new hires and internal promotions:

• Establish a hiring protocol and train everyone on the hiring to use and follow it.
• Create companywide candidate-screening ground rules.
• Create a role-specific hiring benchmark for every role. Focus on the key performance indicators as they relate to the corporate strategy. Then isolate the core functions that the candidate would need to perform. Define the behaviors, values, habits, attitudes, and abilities of the ideal candidate. List the skills and experience required to limit ramp-up time.
• Validate and select the right assessment tools.
• Create behavioral-based interview models for each role in the company.
• Establish a decision-making matrix (a weighted chart with a point value for each part of the puzzle, experience = 5; behaviors =10; skills =7, habits =15, values/motivators =15).

And ERE’s Expo is being broadcast this year on www.ere.net. Today we’ll plan on streaming on www.ere.net the following (among other videos):

• Jason Warner, from Google

• Jan Hopkins, former CNN anchor

• Kevin Wheeler (tour of the recruiting world)

• Gerry and Mark’s panel on cutting-edge technology

• Michael Marlatt on the future of recruiting

• Mike Beckman from Freddie Mac

and others.

That means most candidates are lost as soon as they stumble on one of these sites, Crispin told a pre-conference workshop at ERE Expo on Tuesday.

As you contemplate your own system, check out a few other insights Crispin shared with attendees:

On virtual career fairs:
“I see some pieces to this, but I don’t see it adding value to the candidate experience. If the company doesn’t provide any additional data or value, in the end, it doesn’t add value to your candidate experience,” he says. 

He points out that Phillips has the “most interesting approach” to this, with a series of people willing to talk to you.

On checking your careers site:
“I challenge any company to check their own jobs at least once a month,” he says. Many sites, he says, lose credibility with broken links, outdated job postings, etc.

On internal movement:
More positions are filled with internal employees than any other source, he says. 

“It is kind of fascinating to me,” he admits.

The most important thing is a map on the corporate careers site to show how people move within organizations. Look at source of hire, be transparent, and let people choose to come to you.

“You say you develop employees, but not a single company in the United States publishes internal employee movement. Most won’t even reveal it to their own employees,” says Crispin.

“The only company I know that does it in a transparent way inside their company is Pepsi. Every month they publish how many people were promoted from division to division, level to level, etc. Those figures are then broken down by race and gender,” he says.

On managing job expectations:
“You have to be able to say why you come and why you stay,” he says.

He points to RIM’s site, as well as KPMG’s site.

At KPMG, for example, prospective applicants get deep data in terms of a profile of an individual and why they are there.

“Different value propositions can let you search on profiles of partners. If that person isn’t like me, it’s very simple, and I can navigate it quickly, and that adds a lot of value to me,” he says.

Unfortunately, it appears to be taking Google and Firefox a long time to update their records and clear our website from the flagged list. We have requested a review of our website and are currently awaiting a response back. Apparently the process can take up to a day, so we’re hopeful the warning messages will have disappeared by Wednesday morning.

We’re very sorry for the inconvenience and confusion this has caused some of our readers. We’re hoping we can find a way to work with Google to eliminate this kind of disruption to our users in the future.

Update: Probably ten minutes after I posted this note, Google cleared the warnings and everything is running smooth. Again, sorry for any confusion or concern this caused anyone.

Dozens of recruiters are attending these special workshops and pre-conference events. In all, some 800 registrants are expected over the Expo’s three days. It formally kicks off Wednesday morning when conference chair Jason Warner of Google offers his welcoming remarks.

Today’s pre-conference sessions are focused on recruiter skills. Judging from the attendance and some of the comments, the world economic condition has not had much of an impact on the recruiters.

Hands down the biggest attendance was at the sourcing workshop run by Shally Steckerl and Glenn Gutmacher. There, some 50 recruiters from the U.S., the Netherlands, and elsewhere, learned the secrets of Internet sourcing and such remarkable bits of information as only .18 percent of the Internet is accessed via search engines. (The rest is in password protected databases or otherwise similarly hidden.)

Here’s a tip from the session: Want to find resumes that keywords don’t turn up? Use the command intitle:. Too easy for you? Then the afternoon’s Master Level Sourcing workshop is for you.

Across the glass walled atrium of the Westin Diplomat Resort and Spa, Ron Katz was teaching techniques to connect and vet the candidates you recruit. President of Penguin Human Resource Consulting, LLC, Katz was talking about the differences in interviewing Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials. To develop rapport with Boomers, “Show respect.” With Gen Xers, “Answer their questions — cut to the chase.” And with Millennials, “Sell the opportunity.”

Elsewhere, Dr. Robert Rodriguez, assistant dean of Kaplan University School of Business, was teaching about the Latino culture and methods of reaching the Latino talent pool. He also showed examples of best practices from a variety of companies, including Target, Aetna, and General Mills.

Three other workshops during the day are focusing on Strategic Talent Planning, The ROI of Talent Management, and a CareerXroads session taught by Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler on how to turn prospects into candidates by building relationships.

Tonight Monster sponsors the welcoming reception and silent auction.

If you can’t be here in Hollywood Beach, you can still see parts of the conference live online at ERE.net.

Someone suggested that it might be interesting to read a scenario out of my journal and the specifics of keeping such a journal, and what goes in it. At first surprised, I soon grasped the interest potential in reading a behind-the-scenes synopsis of a phone sourcer’s day. So, to wit:

Writing about your sourcing experiences in a journal gives you the opportunity to read back over your process releasing new ideas along the way. This is how I started communicating my processes — for years and years, when I had a particularly good day (or a particularly bad one!) I’d sit down and write out what happened. I’d do it in a script format. This is where many of the scripts I use as examples in my training came from.

One such day’s entry turned into a script that I used to demonstrate the effectiveness of acquiescence when sourcing. I advise that it’s usually best, when you’re in the early stages of contact with a Gatekeeper, to follow her suggestions until the two of you have established some minor rapport that allows you to “take over” at some point in the exchange and begin to direct her actions to achieve what you want. The following entry is from 2005.

August 6, 2005
Received job for Market Research Director in a.m. Good customer. Wants persons involved in market research at a target list of pharma/biotech companies. Looks like the old eye-dropper with an initial lavish budget of 35 names — told him for this position he’s going to need a lot more. He knows that but said his client is new to the names-sourcing concept and wants to see what it gets him and may come back to us for a second phase of work if he likes what he sees initially. <sigh> Time is of the essence (as it always is). He’s sent a couple dozen companies with the remark:

“It might make some sense to start with some of the smallest companies on the target list, and leave the real biggies for a later phase. They have a LOT of market research people, whereas some of the less-huge companies might have a group small enough to be manageable for us … “

He wants me to start first on the U.S. headquarters as that is where market research people are most likely to be concentrated and then next go out to the divisions. I don’t think time will permit much if any of that, certainly not in this first phase of work. He further instructs:

“He’s trying to fill a position as a Senior Director of Market Research, so his best prospects, and our highest priorities, will be SR. DIRECTORS, DIRECTORS, and ASSOCIATE DIRECTORS … as opportunity permits, he would also like us to flesh out levels below that (MANAGERS, and ANALYSTS).”

If I got all that we’re talking a couple hundred names — easy — out of the majority of these companies. In particular he wants people from any therapeutic area/business group, but has particular interest in people working exclusively, or partially, in the following three therapeutic areas: Oncology, CNS (Central Nervous System? — I hate it when they use abbreviations) and Addiction-Dependent Drugs.

Addiction-Dependent Drugs? That’s new. Ask for better definition …

Client would like e-mail addresses — not gonna happen. He has sent along a packet of names that includes market research people from the target companies with the remark that many are old — this means many will be gone or have moved to other functions higher up on the title level or maybe even now working in other areas. In addition there appears to be some marketing/product management people that either now work or have worked in Oncology or CNS. These people, or their administrative assistants, would know who the market research people are assigned to those therapeutic areas of interest.

Customer has tagged some of the target companies with an asterisk (*) to denote priority companies — many of them are large companies — start with the “smaller” of the “large” companies.

***
Those were my notes before starting the job and the following is the lesson formed from these notes.

A recent search for “Market Research Directors” in pharmaceutical companies demonstrates the power of acquiescence. Pharmaceutical companies have become increasingly difficult to navigate — but there are ways.

In I go, starting with my older research, LinkedIn, Spoke and other Internet results. I found as much (if not more!) elsewhere on the Internet as I did on LinkedIn, and much of my old research (and the customer’s) was outdated. But the Internet and LinkedIn stuff was especially valuable on this search. (By the way, I no longer use Spoke — I find Spoke these days to be nothing more than a repetition of LinkedIn residents.)

I Googled in different variations on the company name, along with the words director, manager, VP, “market research,” oncology, CNS, central nervous system, and addiction, and I looked up the drugs the companies produced in these verticals and Googled their names as well. In addition I added “area code/prefix” of locations I knew to be appropriate for the different locations within each company. I gathered above and below the title strike because some managers will have moved into director positions — after all, Internet research can be notoriously dated.

(Title strike refers to the level you want to “strike in” upon for your open position; in other words if you have a director position open, you’ll probably want to source managers for an upward move. Titles vary depending on the size of the company, but in general, the bigger the company, the lower your title-strike should be, and the smaller the company, the higher the title-strike can be. In other words, a manager-level in a $10-billion-sale company could be at the same experience level as a director in a $900-million-sale company or a VP in a $100-million-sale company.)

VPs will many times have administrative assistants or, better yet, executive assistants supporting them who may be willing to tell you who reports to their boss just to get you out of their hair and into someone else’s!

I generated a broad field of names (probably 300 or so) across 20 companies. Then I began the “drill in” process. One of the big hurdles was wading through all the answering machine nonsense nowadays when you call these companies. Usually I hit zero immediately when I hear that hated, “Stop and listen to this message. .. ” I don’t have time to “stop” for anything. “Zero” usually takes you to a live operator.

The following are a couple exchanges I had within the companies with the receptionists. One demonstrates the technique of acquiesce I have referred to above.

At this first company, I had no relevant names to “get me in.” I called — these pharma companies take a long time to answer nowadays!

“ABC Pharmaceutical Company, Missy speaking.”

“Hi Missy, this is Maureen Sharib, can you please transfer me to your market research department?”

“Which one, we have many?!” she gleefully announces.

“What different ones do you have, Missy?”

“Oh there are so many! I don’t have time to tell you — I’m on the switchboard — what is it you’re trying to accomplish, maybe I can help you that way?”

“I’m trying to reach someone in market research regarding oncology … ” I trail off, hoping she’ll pick up on my need. Notice I just give her one area of interest. To give her any/all of the vertical requests would probably ring her suspicion bell. At this point she does interrupt me:

“Just a moment, please” and before I can object she ejects me into their telephone transfer system, at the end of which I hit someone’s voice mail. Not knowing who it was or what it was, I write down the name of the person (Jeanette Owens) from the message; I also put the questioning remark “Market Research/Oncology?” after the name because you just never know. The line disconnected, not allowing me to “zero out” to the receptionist. Wasting no time, I call back in immediately. Missy answers again.

“Yes Missy, this is Maureen again. Well, that didn’t help, I hit someone’s voice mail — was that oncology market research?”

“Yes, it was — did you leave a message?”

“No, I didn’t leave a message with Jeanette, I didn’t know who she was — is she the Administrative Assistant for the department?” I casually ask. Notice I am repeating names (first) back to her. This is usually one of the first steps in establishing the “rapport” I mentioned earlier.

“Yes she is,” Missy affirms.

I silently replace the “?” with “AA/oncology market research” in my notes while simultaneously taking this bull by the horns.

“Missy, is there anyone else in the department we could try; is there maybe a manager, or even a director, you know, someone who heads the department, you could transfer me to?”

Missy hesitates. I wait, not too expectantly, because many times at this point (in pharma especially) I’m turned away with something to the effect, “If you leave a message with the AA she’ll return your call; that’s all I have,” at which point I usually acquiesce, agreeing to be transferred to the AA again, knowing that my response to her voice mail will be to “zero out” and hopefully get transferred to someone else in the same department or to a different receptionist who might be more helpful. In sourcing, hope springs eternal.

Sometimes it works that way, but again, sometimes it doesn’t. After which, I move onto the next company, vowing to come back to this one using my newfound knowledge about its oncology market research department to my advantage, which usually helps me get in — the different day/different dollar theory. Missy did just as I thought she might when I ended up back at her desk. “You’ll have to leave a message with her,” she informed me in a clipped tone. “All-righty-then,” I think to myself as I move onto the next target.

This job’s first phase concluded with 35 names out of a dozen of the original target companies, many of which were on the “priority” list. I put a note in the job that we had only “scratched the surface.” The end client was well pleased and ordered a second phase of work. I ended up delivering about 100 names out of 17 of the original target companies.
******
This actually happened as I have recounted it above. By the way, anything you see me write about sourcing is taken from my actual experiences, and much of this is material recorded in my journals. As you can see, this particular exercise was time-consuming on the front end but very effective. As you get further into the job, and work with and off your gathered information, it gets smoother and faster. The names become more prolific as the job advances; this rarely happens at the beginning of a job. You need to be organized and tenacious. You have to be gutsy and pick up that telephone and ask for information! There’s no other way — at least I haven’t found it yet. If you have, let me know!

While you might have heard speculation to the contrary, they continue to innovate, particularly in the area of employment branding, where they maintain global dominance. Several years ago, I wrote a broad case study on Google recruiting that highlighted its overall approach, but I didn’t go into any depth about the company’s bold approaches in the area of college recruiting.

In this article, I’ll highlight some of the creative things that Google has tried in college recruiting, including its latest triumph, the amazing Google College Ambassador Program. (If you missed the original case study, or would like to revisit it, you can find it here.)

The King of Employment Branding

The recent collapse of the banking and financial markets has subdued much of the consulting and investment banking competition that Google once faced on campuses. Despite some turbulence, the high-tech industry is still a shining light in this economy, and Google is by far most students’ number-one choice of employers among high-tech firms.

Recent research reveals that 45% of engineering students would like to work at Google. Even outside of high-tech, Google’s employment brand still shines. It was recently selected as the number-one ideal employer among all undergraduate students by Universum. In their most recent study, 17% of the students participating selected Google, up from 13% last year. Those leads will undoubtedly be lengthened next year following the implementation of their new and innovative College Ambassador Program.

The Google College Ambassador Program

The number-one weakness of all college recruiting programs is their inability to maintain a “continuous presence” on campuses throughout the academic year. Every firm is forced by travel expenses and a finite supply of recruiters to limit the number of days they can have a recruiter on any particular campus.

Because of the cost, recruiters typically fly in, spend a few days, and then fly out. As a result of this “here today gone tomorrow” approach, some college recruiters have even been labeled “seagulls” because they are viewed as “flying in frequently, dropping a load of crap, and then leaving.”

Even Google has realized that it cannot afford to park its recruiting staff on every key campus for enough days during the year to really make a difference. As a result, they developed an “on-campus ambassador” program that I predict will soon be copied by many other major firms.

The premise is simple. Instead of periodically flying in representatives, why not recruit individuals who are already there (students) and convert them into ambassadors?

These on-campus ambassadors or representatives can then act on the firm’s behalf every day they are on campus. They can put together events and generally help spread the word about Google as a great place to work.

Some of the benefits of this “ambassador” approach include:

• Credibility. Because ambassadors are students themselves, what they say is more credible and believable to other students. This allows them to effectively spread both goodwill and recruiting- and product-related information.
• Knowledge of the campus. Because they have been enrolled at the school for years, they know the school’s culture and the best communication mechanisms.
• Enthusiasm. By recruiting enthusiastic students, the firm has an opportunity to take advantage of their energy, enthusiasm, and extensive social networks. Obviously, this enthusiasm could be picked up by other students and it would likely spill over to their work representing Google.
• Low-cost. Because the Google product and employment brand are so strong, students are willing to volunteer their time just for the opportunity to work with Google. Ambassadors will be given a small budget for expenses, communications, and events that they must operate within. They also get to share in the free food at Google events or what Google provides during exams. They also get free Google gear, numerous contacts at Google, and an opportunity to put “serving in a leadership role” for Google on their resume.
• Relationship building. Because they already regularly interact with faculty, presidents of student organizations, and other students, these “reps” can quickly build relationships and influence others far better than any time-crunched recruiter.
• Educating Googlers. These campus ambassadors also serve as a direct point of contact for Google teams. In their liaison role, ambassadors can advise Google employees and recruiters about their unique campus culture and the interests and needs of their fellow students, which are of course, different at every campus.

The program gives the firm an expanded campus presence and an immediate competitive advantage over Yahoo!, Microsoft, Facebook, and IBM (though QUALCOMM pioneered this concept).

I predict the program will get thousands of applicants and it will significantly further Google’s lead in building its college employment and product brands, but only time will tell.

16 Other Google College Recruiting Innovations

Google’s College Ambassador Program is just the latest in a string of what can only be called “bold and outside the box” approaches that Google has utilized over the years. College recruiting is a field that can be characterized as almost universally bland and one dominated by a “follow the leader” strategy.

Google stands out because it uses an array of tools and approaches, including:

1. Google games. Google is famous for holding competitions between noted schools (including Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, and Harvard). Often these competitions include Lego games because Google’s founders are fond of them because they once used Lego bricks as the external expandable casing for one of their early hard drives. Even today, they can be found all around the Googleplex.
2. Billboards. Google used highway billboards that included a math “brain teaser” to excite and eventually recruit math majors.
3. Contests. Google is clearly the #1 firm in using external contests to get ideas and to recruit and assess potential candidates. Their worldwide “CodeJams” are PR magnets as well as being extremely successful candidate and idea generators. Other Google contests have included Google Space, Android, and its famous “Summer of Code” which received over 7,000 applicants this year.
4. Focus on high school students. The best college recruiting starts early in order to capture the loyalty of young minds before other firms have a chance. Google’s “Highly Open Participation Contest” demonstrated Google’s support for the “open source” concept. It also received extensive PR and it successfully involved over 400 high school students this year.
5. Pizza during exams. Google championed the concept of giving free food and pizza at major universities during final exams. The message to students is clear: “we think like you and we understand your needs, so here is free food when you need it the most.”
6. Green recruiting. Google is committed to its green employer brand and demonstrates its deep commitment to sustainability (i.e., solar panels on its headquarter’s roof, its free WiFi shuttles, free bike repair, its subsidy of employee-purchased hybrids, its focus on electric cars).
7. A fun place to work. It’s easy to find stories on the Internet about Google’s “fun” practices. They include free food, pajama day, movie day, martini blowouts, bring your dog to work, and most important, its “20% free time.” Google even made fun of the ubiquitous “aptitude tests” that all college students have to endure when it developed GLAT. Which is a humorous takeoff on aptitude tests put together by Google Labs. Their “testing on the toilet” even makes on the job learning stand out from the traditional.
8. The value of top talent. Google leads the way in “Topgrading,” the practice of trying to hire 100% “A” players. This focus is partially driven by their bold move in quantifying the value of recruiting and retaining top talent (one top-notch engineer is worth “300 times or more” than the average).
9. CEO and founder talks at campus events. Google is among the handful of firms that have calculated the recruiting value of having senior executive speak on campus. Google also encourages employees to give talks at student professional organizations and to bring real Google problems into the classroom (a Google manager visits my management class each semester).
10. Practical training classes on-campus. Google has designed and supported actual courses related to “cloud computing” that become part of the curriculum offerings in order to educate as well as to attract and assess college students (Internet scale program).
11. Blogs. Google excels at encouraging its employees to blog. These blogs make learning and asking questions about Google products and recruiting much easier.
12. Videos for recruiting. Google has created some of the most powerful and most watched recruiting videos.
13. Faculty relationships. Google hires a large number of PhDs (on the premise that they enjoy exploring areas that no one else has explored). To accomplish this, they have developed a network of direct relationships with several hundred professors at major schools.
14. Campus buildings. Google placed buildings and staff on or near college campuses (i.e., Michigan and ASU) to improve their campus visibility. This “expensive to copy” practice also provides both students and faculty with the opportunity to work directly with Googlers and on Google projects during the regular school year.
15. Friends of Google. This tool creates an electronic email network of people who are interested in Google and its products (but not necessarily interested in working for the company). By signing up these individuals and then periodically sending them emails about the firm’s products and events, Google can build a relationship with thousands of people.
16. Internships. Google has an outstanding internship program that hires hundreds of interns each year. The program has an excellent conversion rate to permanent hires. Interns in Mountain View can hang around with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin during the company’s regular Friday evening fireside chats. They can also participate in bowling nights, scavenger hunts in San Francisco, ice cream socials, and bay cruises. Interns also get to hear free on-site talks by various business and Internet icons.

Still Room for Improvement

Eventually, even Google’s vaunted recruiting machine will be challenged by Facebook or some other aspiring firm managed by individuals who are also passionate about recruiting. So, if Google is to maintain its dominance, it can’t be complacent.

Instead, it needs to work on some areas that are still weak within college recruiting. Those areas that need improvement include “remote” college recruiting, a formal student referral program, better college metrics, and a more focused approach on new technologies that can be applied to recruiting like social networking, texting, wikis, and video games as recruiting tools.

Final Thoughts

If you think fancier posters, glossier brochures, or better pizza at information sessions will work, think again. These approaches are “so last year,” and only a few firms (E&Y, Enterprise, Qualcomm, and Intuit come to mind) have even attempted to move beyond the traditional into more exciting and productive strategies and approaches to college recruiting.

If you’re not among these elite firms in college recruiting, now is the opportune time to ramp up recruiting on campus because the economy has demoralized the competition. Don’t let the down economy distract you; instead, use Google’s boldness to inspire you to greatness!

The ERE team works hard to introduce new aspects to ERE Expo every time we run one. Last show, we experimented with Twitter, running a live feed on screens in the front of the room so attendees could share their comments with the entire audience. (You can still follow the official ERE Expo twitter feed here).

On Wednesday morning, and throughout the ERE Expo, visitors to ERE.net will be able to share in our latest ERE Expo experiment. We’ll be broadcasting large portions of the conference for free, live on the home page of the site! You’ll see a live video feed from many of the sessions, and also be able to share your thoughts about the presentations with other recruiters via chat.

Nothing is the same as being at the event, but this is our way of saying thanks to you for being visitors to the site. Enjoy, and let me know what you think once we start broadcasting — I will be hanging out in the chat as often as I can during the show!

It’s the first partnership between private business and the Orange County registrar, which has been actively soliciting corporate sponsors to provide volunteers. The registrar also expects to fill 2,300 poll worker positions with local high school students, up from 1,400 in previous elections, according to Brett Rowley, community outreach manager.

“Besides serving the communities where we do business, we know Gen Yers are attracted to companies that demonstrate social responsibility, so we think this adds to our value as an employer,” said Julie Green Rommel, Orange County communications manager for Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo employs 3,000 people in the county.

Our part in this is developing a new method of assessing Managerial Fit when hiring from the outside. We all know that the development skills of the manager are critical in ensuring a new employee’s performance, so this might be something useful to consider whether you’re a recruiter or hiring manager.

In this same vein, using the concept of Managerial Fit and Situational Leadership might also be something to consider if your company is increasing its emphasis on internal mobility. It could help increase the number of top-performing current employees transferred into significantly different roles.

The concept behind Blanchard and Hershey’s leadership model is that the manager needs to adapt their style based on the current skills and developmental needs of the subordinate. The model categorizes management styles into these four levels:

• S1 – Directing: providing specific guidance for the task with direct and immediate follow-up. This is useful technique for a subordinate who has little skills in the area of need and lacks confidence.
• S2 – Coaching: providing an appropriate level of training and follow-up, but giving the subordinate some latitude in getting the job done. This is a very interactive two-way approach which is also useful where the subordinate needs external motivation to complete the task as well as some training.
• S3 – Participating: the manager assigns the tasks, provides some direction, but leaves how the task is done up to the subordinate. This technique is appropriate for a skilled person who might need some support and guidance in getting the job done.
• S4 – Delegating: in this case the manager assigns the tasks with the expectation that the subordinate will get it done with little follow-up. This is an appropriate technique to use when the person handling the tasks is fully competent and highly motivated.

The Situational Leadership model defines the developmental needs of subordinates into four broad categories based on competence, confidence, and motivation to do the work.

As you’ll see, these classifications are very-task oriented, so a person might vary in ability and motivation from strong to weak across all job needs. This requires a successful manager to adapt to the subordinate’s needs given the specific task.

This is critically important from a hiring perspective, since many candidates are hired without a clear understanding of real job needs.

Here’s a quick description of the four development levels of the subordinate:

• D1 – Low Competence, but High Motivation. The person wants to do the work, but requires significant direction and training. An S-1 Directing style of management is best for this type of person.
• D2 – Some Competence, but Lacks Motivation. The person can do the work, but needs external support to complete it successfully. An S-2 Coaching management style is appropriate here.
• D3 – High Competence, Variable Commitment. The person can do the work, and is highly motivated to do most of it. An S-3 Participating Style is best here, with the manager providing support for tasks the subordinate doesn’t find satisfying or where the person lacks confidence.
• D4 – High Competency, High Motivation. An S-4 Delegating is required here. The manager needs to provide minimal direction and follow-up. These people are the ideal hires for critical tasks where time is of the essence or where training is not available. However, too much direction and follow-up can be demotivating to the person, so the manager’s style is an important consideration when hiring someone at this level.

In some form, lack of Managerial Fit is often cited as the primary reason why new hires underperform. This is primarily due to the fact that most interviewers emphasize skills, behaviors, and generic competencies rather than motivation and specific competency to do the work. The Situational Leadership model offers a means to address this huge void.

Measuring manager fit can be relatively easy to assess if a performance profile is used when taking the assignment rather than a traditional skills and experience-based job description. A performance profile defines the top six to eight performance objectives required with the tasks classified into levels of importance.

For example, a critical task for a product manager might be to complete the product design spec with engineering and marketing within 90 days after starting. A less critical task might be to upgrade the product launch process within six to nine months. By categorizing tasks this way, candidates can then be assessed based on a competence, confidence, and motivation scale by task. Managers can then determine if their management style fits with the candidate’s development needs.

At the extremes an S-1 Directing style is a terrible fit if the candidate is an extremely competent and motivated D-4. Equally bad is the combination of an S-4 Delegating Style with a D-1 candidate who, while highly motivated, still needs lots of training and support.

Rather than describe each combination, here’s the 1-5 ranking scale we’re starting to use to better assess managerial fit:

• Level 1 – Bad Fit: on the critical tasks the candidate’s development needs are inconsistent with the manager’s situational leadership style or time needs are too pressing.
• Level 2 – Adequate Fit: the new employee is competent and motivated on some of the critical tasks and the manager is capable of supporting the new employee on the others.
• Level 3 – Good Fit: the new employee is competent and motivated on most of the critical tasks at a D-3 or D-4 level and the manager is capable of properly supporting the employee on all of the other and less critical tasks.
• Level 4 – Very Good Fit: there is a great match between the new employee’s developmental needs on all of the critical and non-critical tasks and the manager’s preferred situational leadership style.
• Level 5 – Perfect Fit: not only is there a great match between the new employee’s developmental needs and the manager’s situational leadership style, but the fit enhances the capabilities of both from a team standpoint.

Download our sample 10-Factor Candidate Assessment template as a starting point and incorporate Managerial Fit as one of the 10 factors. Here are a few ideas on how you might want to begin assessing managerial fit:

1. Complete a performance profile for the job and classify each objective as absolutely critical, somewhat critical, and less-critical.
2. Determine the manager’s preferred or dominant manager situational leadership style for each task and if there is time for much training or coaching. If not, you’ll need to hire someone who can deliver the results with limited management direction. This is a critical issue, so don’t minimize this point.
3. During the interview, get detailed examples of something comparable the candidate has accomplished for each critical task. This allows you to determine the developmental needs of the candidate for each task. Our two-question Performance-based Interview has been designed with this task focus in mind.
4. Be very careful about hiring someone to work for a manager who is heavy on the Directing and Coaching style. Highly competent and self-motivated people are turned-off when given too much direction.
5. Assess managerial fit using the above 1-5 ranking scale.

As a recruiter, I would expect my candidates to be a D3 or D4 on each critical task, unless the job allowed for sufficient training and coaching. In this case I would offset experience and high motivation with high potential and high motivation. I’d be OK recommending someone who was less motivated if the tasks were not critical to ultimate job success.

I’ve used this model in the past to walk away from certain assignments where I knew the lack of managerial fit was a recipe for failure. In this case it had to do with working with very dominant entrepreneurial leaders who were looking for top performers, but weren’t willing to give them the latitude to succeed. This is one of the reasons small companies never become big until the founder leaves.

Email me directly (lou@adlerconcepts.com) if you’d like to participate in a few trials on using Situational Leadership and Managerial Fit as the basis for better assessing competency. This is an important management development area that can be used not only for new hires, but also for increasing the success rate for employees transferred internally.

Hewitt’s survey of 411 large companies revealed that 42 percent of companies “are revising their salary budgets and variable pay spending strategies related to the economic downturn or because of increasing cost pressures.” Of that 42%:

• 49 percent plan to reduce variable compensation payouts
• 66 percent will cut bonuses by more than 10 percent in 2008
• Salary increases will be about 3.1 percent in 2009, or about 1 percent smaller than they would have been.

Thirty-eight percent of companies are reserving part of their salary-increase budget for their highest performers. And 23 percent are creating supplemental, discretionary incentive pools for high-performers. Another 20 percent are offering employees retention bonuses for them to stay a certain amount of time.