In the 1990s, the 74-year-old billionaire fashioned what is today Monster Worldwide from a Yellow Pages advertising firm and two of the earliest online job boards, The Monster Board and Online Career Center. McKelvey got into the advertising business in 1967 when he founded Telephone Marketing Program, which would later lend its acronym to the fledgling advertising conglomerate, TMP Worldwide.

In the early years, the Yellow Pages advertising division was the financial engine for the business. But by 2003, in acknowledgment of the direction the company was headed, TMP Worldwide became Monster Worldwide. Three years later the division was sold off piecemeal with capital fund management firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson getting the North American portion.

By then McKelvey was on his way out as chairman and CEO of the company he founded. He resigned in late 2006 in the midst of an investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission into the backdating of stock options by the company. McKelvey later admitted to playing a role in authorizing the backdating and paid a cash settlement. Because of his already advanced cancer, prosecutors agreed to postpone further court action.

Less well known is McKelvey’s philanthropy. The Associated Press says that since 2001, he has donated $25 million to the Andrew J. McKelvey Lung Transplantation Center at Emory University in Atlanta and has given $3 million to the Andrew J. McKelvey Lower School at the Hewitt School in New York.

His McKelvey Foundation has supported over 600 college students across the country, and he has provided funding for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and for the Andrew J. McKelvey Campus Center at his alma mater, Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa.

McKelvey is survived by his children, Geoffrey, Stuart, Christine, Amanda, as well as six grandchildren.

American Legion

Corporate Gray

Corporate sponsorships of the Army Reserve

GI Jobs

Helmets to Hardhats

Hire a Hero

Hire Vets First – arm of the U.S. Dept. of Labor

Marines for Life

Military Chefs

Military stars

MOA and ROA career fairs

NCOA career fairs

Operation war fighter

Recruit Army

Recruit Military

Transition offices

VetCentral

Working with ESGR and its Reserve Unit Listings

Wounded warriors

5-star employer recognition

This economic slowdown is not just about the failure of our banking system or of the credit markets. This failure is a symptom of the major changes that are occurring as we enter a new century. The Depression of the 1930s redefined the agriculturally based banking and finance world and made it competitive and efficient for an industrial age.

We are now in a similar period.

The nature of business and work is rapidly evolving. Organizational structure will become less hierarchical, more nimble, and flexible. Employees will begin to be treated with respect as investors — not assets or human capital. People are the most precious of success factors, and we each choose to invest our time and skills in an organization that respects and listens to us. When we are not respected, we move on. Entrepreneurship has grown rapidly in response to the lack of respect innovative employees have been given.

Look to see the finance system change to reward innovation. Look at small organizations with a global network or loosely allied suppliers and partners to dominate the economic climate of this century. It is the end of GM and other large, hierarchal organizations that were the model of efficiency in an industrial age.

Many of us will miss the familiarity and the rules of the past that gave us a sense of security and certainty. But surely this economic meltdown must signal to the most conservative of believers that times are changing.

Indeed, even our profession is changing fundamentally, although we are just beginning to see and understand those changes. The habits and skills we developed in a slower-moving, more certain 20th century no longer work so well. Our cheese has been moved, as the eponymous book says, and we will miss the familiar world of job boards, resumes, face-to-face recruiting, ringing telephones, cold calls, and classified ads. Technology and the Internet still feel unfamiliar and foreign to many recruiters, but we have entered a technology-dominated, virtual era.

But here are a few of the many things we have to look forward to:

1. Personalization of the recruiting process. Today every candidate is treated pretty much the same. Recruiters call that being fair, but I call it lack of customer service and concern. We are all individuals, and want our uniqueness to be understood and evaluated. Retailers and product manufacturers understand this and provide hundreds of variations on products to meet our individual needs. We will need to use technology to communicate with candidates better and more frequently and at a deeper level than we do now. We will have to tailor jobs to meet candidates’ qualifications rather than to keep looking for the “right” person for our standardized job profile. The whole matching process will become more dynamic and offer the candidate more choices. Social media will become the “home base” of recruiting, and the hallmark of successful recruiting organizations will be their ability to use social media well.
2. Development integrated with recruiting. When the supply of skilled and ready people is exhausted, which will be soon, we will have to look at developing people internally or hiring people without the skills we need and training them. Corporate resilience is marked by the ability to develop people with the skills they need to compete. Look at HP, IBM, and Procter & Gamble. Each of these firms has spent millions on employee development and each is successful — even in these dark times. I think there is a correlation. Integrated talent management will be a no-brainer for the HR people of this century. Being able to make solid decisions, based on data, as to whether a position should be filled with an external experienced person or an internal trainee will become a powerful skill.
3. Selling and marketing as important skills for recruiters. Even though it is harder than ever to see because of the slow economy, being able to explain to a candidate why your organization is better than another one will be a vital ability for recruiters to have. The candidate pool is going to get smaller, smarter, and more discriminating — just as the consumer pool has. Why would you buy one video camera over another? Mainly because of the powerful marketing and communication campaigns of their manufacturers. Candidates will seek out firms with good reputations and financial track records, as they are already doing. That is why lists such as the “100 Best Companies to Work For” are so popular. Candidates are literally shopping for jobs not, for the most part, taking whatever comes along.

The entire recruiting profession will look different, be run differently, use different tools, and be based on different assumptions than it was in the 20th century. And that’s good — because we will need new tools for the new problems of talent shortages, rising free agency, smaller firms, and rapid change.

Let us give thanks this week for the plentiful ideas and creativity that have contributed so much to America’s leadership in human resources, in developing human potential, and in continuously exploring the limits of our capabilities.

And may all of you have a peaceful, bountiful, and happy Thanksgiving.

Wrong-Way Thinking

There is a common fallacy among a significant number of people that anyone can do anything: a good-looking applicant will make a high performing employee; a high performing employee will make a good manager; or, a highly skilled employee in Job A will also be a highly skilled employee in Job B.

Sorry, folks. We all know from experience this is general nonsense. Stories are legend about a top salesperson or technical whiz who failed as a manager; or, about a marketing whiz-kid who fast-tracked into the executive suite only to crash and burn on the job.

Let’s put this puppy to bed. The only time that past performance in Job A accurately predicts future performance in Job B is when both jobs are require virtually the same competencies. If Job B is different, requires more competencies or better quality ones, all bets are off. In fact, the only reliable way someone might even guess at future performance is to know the employee screwed up his or her last job.

Consider the Peter Principle. If you don’t know the term, either Google “Peter Principle” or look it up here. In short, Dr. Laurence Peter gave multiple examples of how employees tend to rise in the organization until they reach their natural level of incompetence. His message: every time that job requirements change — or an employee changes jobs — there is a strong probability that they will not be competent in the new role. Although Peter uses corporate ladder-climbing as his examples, his principles apply equally to all people holding jobs. The Peter Principle is a classic must-read for every recruiter or hiring manager.

In the next few paragraphs, I’ll explain why the Peter-Principle is alive and well.

Little Observations = Big Assumptions

The world is a huge, complicated, and unpredictable place. If we had to investigate thoroughly every situation before making a decision, we would run out of hours in the day. So, evolution has blessed/cursed us with an unconscious tendency to make snap decisions based on something we learned earlier. For example, we consider taller people to be more skilled than shorter people (e.g., adults are always bigger than kids); we assume that best-dressed applicants will be better performers than other ones (e.g., we equate attractiveness with skill); or, we assume bad job experiences were the applicant’s fault (e.g., blame the victim).

We call this the halo/horns effect: or, use a snippet of data to form an overall opinion (i.e., a spelling mistake must mean incompetence; a charismatic employee is also a competent one; or, graduating from an Ivy League college is better than a public school).

Little observations often lead to big mistakes.

The Interview Hammer and the Applicant Nail

Ask any recruiter manager who relies on (unstructured) interviews and he or she is likely to swear by their accuracy. Look at any sales manager and he or she will say they are a good judge of character. However, when you look at the employees hired by the same person, you will wonder, “What was this guy/gal smokin’ when they hired the troglodites?

There is a major disconnect between being asking get-to-know-you questions and evaluating job skills; industry-wide research shows it to be about 50%. That is, interviews may screen out blatantly unqualified applicants, but it’s a coin-toss whether survivors have sufficient job skills. Ask yourself, did the person who interviewed/hired you really know whether you could do the job or not?

Any recruiter or manager who is only familiar with interviews (or a silly training test), is doomed to believe to think one tool can measure every job skill.

Job Funnels

Jobs are more than titles. They are more like an upside-down funnel. As a general rule, higher-level jobs need more and better competencies. Take sales, for example. A true professional salesperson has exceptional rapport building skills, is skilled asking the right questions at the right time, only makes presentations that fit the prospect’s needs, and can assist buyers to overcome the fear of making a bad decision.

Now, move the salesperson into a management role. The job requirements change significantly. In addition to individual sales skills, the person must become a coach, a planner, and a sales diagnostician. Skills that came naturally as a salesperson must now be broken down into hundreds of teachable elements. In addition to having the right skills, the new manager must be as excited with the thrill of the coach as well as the thrill of the close.

The following job roles point-out a few of these differences:

1. Individual contributors must have skills to do the job without assistance;
2. In addition to their individual contributor skills, first line managers must also be skilled at coaching, planning, and diagnosing subordinate shortcomings;
3. Mid-managers usually require skills in group influence, tactics, analysis, planning, and mentoring; and,
4. Executive managers are usually required to be strategists, navigators, and motivators.

We can’t always rely on job titles to describe job functions. I have seen occasions where a fancy title disguises an individual contributor, as well as complicated jobs with simple titles. The key to successful performance is to know what exactly what skills are required; then, use a variety of structured interviews, pencil and paper tests, and simulations that accurately evaluate them.

“This downturn is really a mosaic, not a uniform event,” says Kip Cassino, VP of research for Borrell Associates. “You can’t just look at the national trends to judge which industries or companies might be hiring; you’ll have to do some rigorous homework.”

Here’s an example of what Cassino is describing.

News reports frequently cite the construction industry as being highly impacted by the weak economy, but lingering below the surface-level macro data are some exceptions. Firms that build hospitals, schools, bridges, or power plants may have a healthy pipeline of projects around the globe. Customer demand for goods and services and geographic footprint determine how the economy is impacting each company or industry sub-segment and its economic outlook.

In addition to traditionally recession-resistant industries like healthcare and education, transportation and information services appear to be fairly strong during this downturn, according to Cassino, while recruiters will have to carefully research opportunities within the durable and non-durable goods manufacturing industry, because it is a mixed bag. Real estate is slowly being reignited by a buyer’s market, and when you get beyond Wall Street, even the financial services industry isn’t all bad.

Also, growth-oriented, mid-size companies may be a source of opportunities for recruiters with large-corporation recruiting experience and know-how.

Despite a few bright spots, recruiters are facing some headwinds. A search on the online job posting consolidator Indeed reveals 6,705 open recruiter positions nationwide, 3,937 of those in corporations and 2,744 in staffing agencies. Temporary help led all industries in the number of initial unemployment claims filed in October, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the entire industry accounts for only 787 open recruiter positions on Indeed.

The slowdown dovetailed with a decline in U.S. new job creation and a subsequent pullback by increasingly wary passive job seekers. The number of employed people planning to look for new jobs declined 7.5 % between Nov. 2006 and March 2007, and the numbers have since continued to decline, leaving recruiters to refill a dwindling number of vacant positions. Cassino’s view is that there won’t be a significant uptick in hiring until 2010 to 2011, mostly fueled by vacancies created by retiring baby boomers.

With the growing number of providers, starting a private label corporate network or participating in a MySpace or Facebook is about as easy as launching a blog. And just like a blog, social networks need thought, planning and work to be successful.

“It’s important,” says Karen Lash, regional director / interactive strategy at TMP Worldwide, “when you are engaging with the social networks that you do have a strategy.”

So what sorts of things should a recruiter consider before launching a corporate network? We asked Lash and Ryan Esits, senior vice president a chief talent strategist at NAS Recruitment, for their advice. Here, in 2 minutes and 48 seconds, are the basics:

James J. McDevitt has already taken over as president and chief executive officer, replacing Tod Loofbourrow, who sold the company in September to Bedford Funding, a private equity fund. Loofbourrow, who founded Authoria in 1997, will serve as chairman of its board of directors.

McDevitt comes to Authoria from CDC Software, a $360 million division of CDC Corp. and a global provider of enterprise software solutions and services to medium and large businesses. He joined the company in May 2007 as senior vice president and general manager of Global Services, its IT consulting and outsourcing division. He was promoted to chief operating officer in April 2008.

Charles S. Jones, managing partner of Bedford Funding and McDevitt’s former boss when the two were at Geac Computer Corp., praised him as a “proven executive who has a notable track record of defining opportunity and building businesses.”

In the press release announcing the C-suite change, Jones said Authoria, which Bedford acquired for $63.1 million, “sits squarely in a dynamic yet fragmented marketplace that presents significant opportunities for growth, consolidation and partnership. (McDevitt’s) first-hand experience in leading vertically focused technology businesses and his significant acquisition and integration expertise will play important roles going forward.”

Geac, like Authoria, was sold to an investment group. But unlike Authoria, its various business software units were split up and the company terminated. Before that 2006 sale McDevitt had served two tours with Geac. He was senior vice president and CFO of GEAC’s SmartEnterprise Solutions Division from 1997 to 2000 leaving to become CFO at Clarus Corporation, a B2B procurement software company that two years later sold off its assets. He rejoined GEAC in 2002 as senior vice president and general manager of the Performance Management Division.

The press release makes much of McDevitt’s experience building revenue while at CDC and turning around a faltering unit at Geac.

“Of particular note during his tenure at Geac was Mr. McDevitt’s turnaround of the company’s faltering Interealty business,” the press release says. Of his time at CDC it notes: “Mr. McDevitt was focused on streamlining the CDC Software business, building accountability throughout the organization, and integrating acquisitions. Within 18 months, the company reported record quarterly revenues… generated positive operating cash flows for three consecutive quarters; and improved adjusted EBITDA…”

Commenting on the change, Loofbourrow says in the press release, “With the infusion of capital brought in by Bedford Funding and the appointment of an experienced growth-driven executive as President and CEO, I am as enthusiastic as I have ever been about Authoria’s opportunity and market trajectory.”

“I am delighted to have been able to attract someone of Jim’s experience and caliber to the company and look forward to supporting him by sharing my product and market knowledge, focusing on the strategic challenges of the business, and transitioning key industry relationships.”

Authoria is no stranger to aquisition. In 2005 it bought Hire.com.

Tell that to nGenera. It has hired 63 people through its employee and recruiter social networks, which accounts for 70% of its 91 hires since last December. For those 63 people, that means no job boards. No third-party recruiters.

nGenera started in March 2007, and acquired six companies in one year. The company’s products (while hard to understand from its website) include call-center software, incentive compensation software, simulation software, and more.

Katie Carty Tierney (pictured) manages the recruiting function for the Austin, Texas, company, which has just under 300 employees, most virtual. “Our recruiters were relying heavily on job boards in the past, and we wanted them to look beyond that,” she says. “They weren’t necessarily getting the right candidates. They weren’t necessarily getting the right matches. There was a lot of turnover. That’s not the way to hire people.”

“How are you going to mine the network you already have?” Tierney asks. “Everyone’s got a network. Everyone in the world has someone they know. They’re not formal networks. They’re loose networks.”

nGenera’s plan wasn’t as simple as “let’s go put an ad on social-networking sites instead of Monster” (in fact, it wasn’t even very successful posting on Facebook Marketplace). It was more about building a culture where recruiters, and more importantly, all employees, spend their work time on social media. “If you’re discouraging people from developing relationships, they’re going to leave when the market’s better,” she says.

Employees were encouraged to explore and build out their social networks. It told them: “Go reach out to people you know. Go join Facebook. Go link out to people on LinkedIn. Join Twitter. In the long run it benefits you as much as it benefits nGenera.”

Meanwhile, the company reached out to alumni, as well as employees of legacy companies (predecessor companies). Tierney also started following people on Twitter who seemed to have the skills it was looking for. If it could “follow” those people on Twitter, those people could see who was “following them” — and perhaps take an interest. Tierney’s also getting her jobs sent out, for example, via AustinTXJobs on Twitter.

nGenera also uses Jobvite (not to be confused with Jobster, which Tierney tried but wasn’t thrilled about). Everyone has access to it — not just hiring managers and recruiters. They can look at openings, send them to their friends, track email conversations, and more. The company pays a flat, monthly fee, rather than a per-person cost.

Job boards aren’t dead at nGenera. Niche boards, in particular, have been used to look for people with OATS (Order Audit Trail System) compliance, for example. But, Tierney says, “I found that LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are giving me what I need.”

We’re going to do more meetups in the coming months – they are a good chance for recruiters to hang out, chat and compare notes with their peers over a few drinks.

If you want us to come to your city or have any suggestions, let us hear it in the comments!

Cost containment is easy and is by no means strategic, but leveraging limited resources and restructuring activities to accomplish things you couldn’t do previously can be. Unfortunately, most corporate recruiting managers and many line recruiters are more reactive and incapable of looking at staffing more holistically.

Managing strategically requires recruiters to think beyond immediate requisition loads and transactional sourcing; it requires that recruiters think more proactively, and identify strategic talent opportunities.

One opportunity that routinely presents itself during economic contractions is the opportunity to trade up the caliber of talent in the organization by swapping in top talent into roles currently occupied by average or below-average talent. For socialists and poor performers this strategy seems harsh, but for anyone who has ever played a competitive sport, it makes perfect sense.

As global markets open up, competition on every front in business is becoming more cutthroat. In an era where an organization’s sustainability and innovation capability are largely tied to acquiring, developing, deploying, and motivating talent, a talent-swapping strategy could mean the difference between mediocre business performance and explosive business performance.

What Is A Talent Swapping Strategy?

The concept of talent swapping is borrowed from the professional sports industry. In sports, winning is everything, and it is a common practice for team management to externally seek out a “superior” player in a key position to replace a struggling player. When the team finds an available star, they “SWAP” or replace their struggling player. After the swap, the team still has the same number of players (no additional headcount), but has also dramatically improved its chances of winning.

When applied to the corporate world, a SWAP (Strategically Waving Average Performers) initiative proactively replaces poor performers in a key job only when an arguably/measurably better candidate has been identified and successfully recruited by the talent management function.

Factors Making Talent Swapping Possible

Talent swapping is a strategy that can be employed anytime, but it is much easier for organizations during times of economic contraction for a number of reasons, including:

• Talent Availability – When unemployment is low, chances of landing a true top performer without a fight are low, but as unemployment rises, so do your chances. During economic contractions even top-talent magnet firms face challenges. As they shutter growth initiatives, cut development budgets, restrict internal movement, etc., the ties that once held top talent firmly in place loosen, enabling firms that couldn’t compete before to make a compelling offer.
• A focus on headcount – These days more and more CFOs have a background in accounting as opposed to finance, so cost-containment is in vogue. Across the board cost-containment strategies frustrate top talent, and theoretically cut recruiting functions off at the knees as requisitions dry up. A talent swapping strategy restores the need for recruiting and sends a message to top performers within the organization that despite cost containment the organization is working hard to advance working conditions and remove below-average performers that hold top performers back.
• A focus on productivity – In years past, the pressure from consumers for new products and innovations waned during economic contractions, but that is no longer the case. Product lifecycles have gotten shorter and shorter as demand for innovation has skyrocketed. As a result, organizations are under tremendous pressure to increase workforce productivity and innovation despite a contraction in their revenue streams.

The Advantages of Talent Swapping

The first obvious advantage of talent swapping is that it is a performance improvement strategy with a very clear objective, improving the organization’s overall ability to perform. However, there are a multitude of other advantages, including:

• It provides recruiting leaders with a rare opportunity during low hiring times to demonstrate positive business impact.
• It provides individual managers with a means to manipulate their team structure and capability without impacting headcount during a time when most changes are frozen. (During economic contractions underperformers are often kept on much longer than they normally would be because many managers believe that even a poor worker is better than no worker at all (i.e. a vacant position).
• It sends a clear message to all employees that continuous improvement of skills and ability to perform is as much an individual’s responsibility as it is the organization’s, and provides real consequences for those who ignore the mandate.
• It challenges managers’ reluctance to fire even the worst-performing employee by allowing them to postpone the hard decision to terminate a team member until a clearly superior replacement has been found and hired.

Swapping Must Be a Data-Based Activity

Not all managers have their organizations’ best interests in mind all of the time (some might argue that the vast majority of managers never have their organization’s best interests in mind, but that is another issue).

As a result, it is important that organizations employing a talent-swapping strategy rely heavily upon data when making decisions about where to apply talent swaps. Recruiting leaders need to work closely with hiring managers and the performance management function to identify key jobs that have incumbents in them, that after numerous attempts to improve their performance have proven incapable of becoming top performers. A business case must be developed with the full involvement of the manager, the performance management function, the recruiting function, an executive program sponsor (CFO/CEO/COO) and legal counsel for each swap proposed.

What About Legal Issues?

Whenever you release or terminate workers, there is some risk that they will become disgruntled and sue the organization arguing one thing or another. The key here is to make the mandate for the program known to everyone, keep the process free of bias, build a documented case for each transaction, and treat the outgoing employee with respect and dignity throughout the process.

Should your legal counsel or other in HR pose objections, it is important that senior leaders remind everyone that “it is not anyone’s job to tell the organization what it cannot do, but rather to find a way to do it!” While people are not machines, they are vendors and organizations routinely “swap” vendors and suppliers based on newly available prices, competencies, and services.

Action Steps

Talent swapping is relatively easy to understand and to implement. Some key action steps might include:

1. Begin by calculating the long-term economic consequences of keeping a below-average performer, compared to the increased performance level of an above-average performer (the difference is known as the performance differential). If you carefully calculate the dollar value of the performance differential between a top performer and the “targeted” below-average performer, you will often find that it’s two or three times greater, resulting in over $100,000 annual difference in output. Next, multiply the costs of keeping a weak employee over the number of years that the bottom performer is likely to remain at your firm to get the total dollar value of swapping an employee.
2. Develop a formal plan and get the necessary buy-in from HR, performance management, and your recruiters. Be sure and run it by a few operating managers to identify any potential issues or concerns they might have.
3. Get the CFO’s buy in for the talent-swapping strategy.
4. If possible, get a business unit head to conduct a pilot and to “champion” the program among their colleagues.
5. Develop a process for identifying the key business units and the jobs within them where replacing below-average talent with top talent can make a significant impact upon the business. Talent swapping is not appropriate for every position.
6. Within those jobs, work with performance management and individual managers to identify the weak performers to target. Work with “legal” to see if there are any further actions that need to be taken before the employee is deemed eligible for a SWAP. Include a diversity component to ensure that diversity levels are maintained.
7. Define the minimum skill set (skills, capabilities, and experience) that the potential new hire must have to become “eligible” for a SWAP.
8. Develop a continuous sourcing strategy for the targeted positions. Also be aware that using traditional employee referrals to identify candidates might cause problems if employees realize that by making referrals, they are helping to replace an employee who might be a friend.
9. Begin building a “who’s-who” list of the names of the top talent in your industry who might be amenable to taking one of your targeted jobs.
10. Conduct “relationship recruiting” with these key individuals from the list. This might mean calling them occasionally, periodically sending them an e-mail newsletter, or inviting them to your company’s events.
11. When you become aware that one of your targeted candidates is now available, recruit them and offer them a position. If they accept your offer, you then notify the performance management function to begin the release process of the current poor performer. When appropriate, and especially in certain international locations, consider offering the released worker a financial severance package for signing a legal release.
12. Bring the new candidate on board.
13. Continue the process until you have substituted top hires for each of your targeted positions.
14. Remember that you can also swap talent “internally” by moving top performers from low-impact to high-impact jobs.
15. Another option to consider is rather than waiting to release workers who are clearly bottom performers, instead shift them to a contract or contingency basis. This “temporary” status allows you to more easily release them if there is a need for a layoff, a performance termination, or a talent SWAP. If their performance improves, you can obviously shift them back to a more permanent status.
16. Run the metrics and then calculate the overall performance improvement and the dollar impact as a result of the improved performance of your new hires, compared to the released employee.

Conclusion

I often encourage managers to look at the best practices in sports management because there are few other fields where the value of having top talent is so easily seen and appreciated. In sports, the intense competition and publicity causes managers and directors of player personnel to identify and implement some extraordinarily powerful talent-management practices that can also be applied to the business world.

The talent SWAP approach is a prime example of one of those best practices. In sports if you have a losing team and you want to become a winner fast (because there are limits on roster size), often your first step is to change the players through talent swapping.

It’s no secret that managers are reluctant (to say the least) to fire workers (even bottom performers). Talent swapping makes firing more palatable to managers because they don’t have to act until a quality replacement is available. CFOs see the value of the program because it increases performance, without increasing headcount. Recruiting managers should support it because it provides them with an important and visible role during economic downturns, when recruiting can be seen as unimportant or unnecessary.

I urge you to consider adding it to your repertoire of recruiting strategies. Only socialist HR types are likely to be afraid of it, and you should never let them run your business. Instead of being reactive and waiting for requisitions to come across your desk, now’s the time to be strategic and proactive. Think about it, what could be more obviously beneficial to a firm then replacing a group of “Turkeys with Eagles!”

Instead, consider successful recruiting more like a well-planned football drive, where time of possession is key. If you’re not into football analogies, the idea here is that top people don’t make critical career decisions on the first call or after the first interview. And if you try to push too hard to get a commitment you’ll drive the best away. This is equivalent to a turnover.

With a great football weekend ahead, here’s what it takes to turn a successful drive into a touchdown:

1. Don’t fumble the kickoff. On the recruiting playing field this is equivalent to the candidate asking about the compensation first, or telling you she’s not interested. It’s also forcing a candidate to apply for the job before she can talk to someone about it, to get a better idea if the job is even worthwhile considering. For better kickoff returns, add a chat feature today to your career website and let your candidates IM a recruiter. Or add a series of FAQs about each job. When calling a candidate on the phone for the first time, whether the person’s active or passive, you must not discuss compensation under any circumstances for at least the first 10-15 minutes! The goal of the first encounter is to switch the conversation to career opportunity and away from compensation, or any other form of “not interested.” (Here’s an article with more on this critical step.) Rather than sell the job, your goal is to sell the next step. In this case, it’s a 10- minute conversation just to figure out if the job is worth getting serious about. A good kickoff return will give you great field position, and this is just as critical in football as it is in recruiting.
2. Get lots of first downs. While you might have a big 30- or 40-yard play now and then, this should be the exception, not the rule. If you’re relying on big plays to score, you’ll lose a lot of candidates who need to move slowly to digest what you’re offering. Force-feeding information at hyper-speed won’t work. A career move requires time for the person to digest the information. Nurturing the candidate along, suggesting another interview or discussion is how this information is best presented in order to be absorbed properly. This is why selling the next step is so important, rather than forcing the candidate to consider the job, the comp, and the location during the first call.
3. Prevent turnovers. Once you begin a drive downfield, don’t do dumb things that cause the deal to instantly fall apart. Recruiters who don’t know the job and managers who over-talk and sell too soon are two examples of recruiting turnovers. Managers who expect top performers to be excited about the job before they know anything about it are the most turnover prone. Turnovers can also be caused when members of the hiring team ask superficial question or are equally clueless about real jobs needs. Lack of professionalism at any step in the hiring process can result in unnecessary turnovers and the loss of some great candidates.
4. Convert your third-downs. Once in awhile you’ll only have one shot to keep the deal alive. For example, if the candidate says she doesn’t like the manager or the job isn’t big enough and wants to withdraw her name from consideration, you’ll have to come up with a big third-down play. In this case, ask the candidate if she’d reconsider if you made the job bigger, or if you could demonstrate that the style the manager used during the interview isn’t the same as his on-the-job persona. Of course, you then have to prove it if the candidate agrees to go forward, but that’s how you convert third-downs and keep the drive alive.
5. Keep the defense honest. Don’t tip your hand too soon. Overselling the candidate, over-talking, and under-listening are equivalent to telling the defense you’re going to pass on every play. This is no way to win a ball game or hire a top performer. Keep the candidate guessing, mention other top candidates, question the candidate’s breadth of experience, and excite the candidate with projects bigger than he’s handled in the past. This is how you keep the person interested throughout the assessment and recruiting process.
6. Time of possession is key. Don’t rush to close. Not only does the candidate need time to evaluate what you’re offering, you’ll increase your close rate by getting the person to invest more time in evaluating your opportunity rather than the competition’s. I suggest more interviews spread over a few days or weeks, rather than pushing them all into one day. Also add a take-home case study and a Profiles International online evaluation for all your candidates once you get serious. (Email info@adlerconcepts.com for information about the Profiles International online evaluation.) The case study allows the candidate a day or two to evaluate a problem likely to be faced on the job with the results presented in a formal give-and-take panel interview. The Profiles is a one-hour cognitive and behavioral style assessment and provides invaluable insight into the candidate. Not only are the results useful, but when candidates agree to participate in these time-consuming tasks, they’re expressing serious interest and increasing their commitment to you.
7. Know your competition. One size doesn’t fit all. Some candidates are interested in security, others want challenging projects, and some want career growth. Customize your approach depending on the candidate’s needs. We suggest a multi-factor close where the candidate rank orders his job requirements. Some of the items to be considered include work content, job stretch, job challenges, growth opportunities, company culture, compensation, security, the hiring manager, and team. (Send us an email, info@adlerconcepts.com, if you’d like to see the whole list.) With this custom playbook you can change your play calling at the line of scrimmage to ensure your candidate gets the information required to make a well thought-out final decision. Of course, evaluate the candidate across multiple factors as well, so stop the traditional series of one-on-one interviews that are both duplicative and exhausting. Instead, consider tours with debriefing sessions, group interviews, some intense one-on-ones, a take-home project, and a business lunch. Then formally debrief using a broad-based selection criteria. (Here’s the 10-factor candidate assessment form we suggest for this.)
8. Maintain a competitive edge throughout the drive. The key to effective recruiting is applicant control. This means staying the buyer from first contact through offer acceptance and final close. As part of applicant control, your job is not only to advance downfield, but recognize that first downs are earned by getting the candidate to agree to something significant at each step in the process. For example, don’t arrange the first interview with the hiring manager unless you get agreement from the candidate that she’ll be looking at the job as a career move with a modest increase in salary. Use the second round of interviews to gain more concessions, like a possible start date and informal agreement on the benefits package. Set the final offer meeting with the candidate agreeing to formally accepting within 24 hours. This is applicant control, and it essential for closing the best entry-level candidates as well as senior executives.
9. Don’t fumble in the red zone. You must score when you’re within sight of the goal line. Make sure you know where you stand compared to the competition on all critical decision factors the candidate is likely to consider. Giving the candidate the multi-factor decision form mentioned above ensures the candidate is looking at the job broadly, and you’re not surprised by their order of importance. This way during the drive to close you can use each subsequent interview step to cover each of these factors. Caution: don’t present the offer too soon or reveal your hand. You haven’t scored yet.
10. Score. Everything has been a waste of time if a candidate says she’s not interested or accepts another offer or counter-offer. Scoring in the game of recruiting means the candidate has accepted your offer on fair terms and shows up on the start date. The best way to score more often is to test every aspect of the offer before you make it. While it’s important not to fumble the kickoff, it’s more important not to fumble on the one-yard line. Before making the offer formal, review the terms in detail and ask the candidate if she’ll accept it on these terms if it’s formally presented without hesitation. If you sense hesitation, side-step the forward progression and find out the concerns. Then ask the person if she’d accept the offer if the concerns were satisfactorily addressed. Uncovering the candidate’s concerns before you make the offer is essential if you want to make more placements. Of course you’ll need to address the concerns to close the deal, but rushing the offer without knowing if the person will accept is naïve at best, and one sure way to lose more candidates than necessary.

Slow down and make more placements. While you want to move as fast as possible, the best people will not move faster than they can absorb the information. They’ll opt-out otherwise. It’s just like being pushed into buying anything that requires some significant degree of comparison shopping and evaluation. Build this slow and steady process into every phase of your recruiting efforts and watch your placement rate soar.

Fumbles, turnovers, incomplete passes, sacks, and failed third-down conversions are all caused by going too fast. Don’t sell the job, sell the next step.

Watch the highlights below.

I am not sure if recruiters noticed, but several analysts did. I recently read an analyst’s report that compared several high-tech companies on the number of open positions they had as an indicator of long-term earnings and profit.

Given that analysts are doing this, we should be, too. We should be very sensitive to what our own management is thinking, how orders are shaping up, what the sales team is projecting, and then adjusting our own efforts accordingly.

If you don’t have access to this information you have two ways to get it. First of all, go to your manager and ask him or her for help. They will hopefully share what they can with you or help you find it. Second, cultivate your own sources by making friends with someone in sales or another part of your organization where people have that “inside” information that gives you an early indication of how things are going.

With that information in hand, here are five specific actions you can take to increase the odds of surviving, and even thriving, in this down economy.

Action Item #1: Get in Shape

You can’t make much progress in building credibility with management until your own function is in good shape. Recruiters who saw the signs of a recession could have begun trimming the fat in their processes months ago. Get aligned with your management team and cut when they cut, slow down when they slow down, and show them you are aware and responsible.

The last several years of high demand for talent have allowed many recruiting functions to increase their headcounts, add tools and services that are not providing a significant return, and get sloppy in measuring efficiency. This is the time to examine every step in your recruiting process and see where you could be more efficient – in other words do more with fewer resources, less time, or less money. What are you spending on job postings? Could that be reduced? Could you switch to using targeted emails or some other lower cost methods? Where are you spending the majority of your budget? How could you reduce that by 10%? 20%? What can you stop doing that really won’t hurt you?

By prioritizing and cutting, refocusing, and rethinking everything you do, you will end up with a much healthier function. You will better weather the recession and be poised to aggressively deal with the boom that will inevitably come.

Action Item #2: Be Nice

Every act of discourtesy to a candidate will eventually be reflected in how they talk about you to other people. Employment brands are built on small acts – not on the big campaigns or websites. A solid brand is the accumulation of years of good deeds, happy candidates, satisfied managers, and authentic communication. Many candidates will be stressed and perhaps out of a job. They need honest feedback and guidance, if possible, on how they present themselves.

Firms that take the extra time to sit down with a candidate or send them an email and let them know their status, possibilities, and even strengths and weaknesses will reap many benefits in a stronger brand.

Action Item #3: Ruthlessly Focus

Target your marketing and sourcing only on the kinds of people you most need. Cut out or reduce all the resources you spend on marginal activities. For example, you might reduce the use of agencies that recruit volume candidates, stretch out the time to fill less critical positions, or try to use some of the new social networking tools to reach out to certain groups of candidates.

Look at internal hiring and see if there isn’t a way to improve the number of employees who move. Talk to management about increasing that number and decrease external hiring.

The goal should be to attract mostly the types of candidates you need and who are qualified. You can use this slower time to experiment on messaging, screening techniques, and on ways to get fewer but better candidates.

Action Item #4: Use Technology – Experiment!

As always, I harp on using technology whenever you can. Social networking tools can help you create and build relationships with candidates. Most are very inexpensive or free.

Experiment with better, more frequent emails to certain candidates on your shortlist; create a newsletter or blog to give interested potential candidates updates on your organization; and experiment with tools such as Twitter, Broadlook, or Checkster.

Action Item #5: Build Relationships

I am more and more convinced that posting job descriptions is an archaic process. While I have no doubt that the practice will live on for a long time, it is not the best, cheapest, or fastest way to find good people.

Using technology to develop relationships and to communicate regularly with a selected and screened pool of candidates is the key to your real success.

In general, you are going to find only a few of the people you need by posting on Monster or any other job board. The most successful recruiters use their network, ask employees (and others) for referrals, and focus on building communities of potential candidates. This is what agencies and headhunters have been doing for decades and it’s why they have been successful.

Learn from product and service marketing how to do a better job. Watch how some leading organizations are using social media to attract and recruit candidates. Begin to generate candidates from relationships formed online. Make it a rule of thumb that if you are generating hundreds of responses to a job posting, you are doing something terribly wrong.

I guarantee that if you do all five of these things in an organization that is well-managed, you will survive this recession and become an example of how to positively deal with stressful times.

When the local library is pitching in to help people find jobs, I see it as a sign of the times.

What do you think?

Although admitting that our current economic situation was unprecedented, Hopkins retained a positive outlook on the situation. Both looking to the past and to our future, she provides information on what has led our economy to the state it is in now, and what the recruiting industry must do to profit in these difficult times. Watch these highlights to learn more.

The pie chart below shows the percentages of the 4,000 recruiters surveyed who said that “recruiting is viewed as a strategic priority at my organization.”

Slightly better are the results below showing the percentages of recruiters who said “my organization values the work we do (in recruiting).”

The Roundtable suggests the following be done to reinvigorate recruiting (explored in depth in the December/January Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership):

• Building pipelines of critical skills
• Honing attraction and branding efforts
• Strategic talent planning
• Clarifying recruiting roles
• Training (and continuously developing) the recruiting team
• Maximizing selection efforts while maintaining candidate care
• Enhancing measurement and metrics.

Here are some excerpts from that upcoming Journal.

From John Worrall, Rutgers University (pictured):

“My back-of-the-envelope guess is the unemployment rate will be North of 7% in 2009. Do I expect it to be at depression levels? No, I don’t.

I think HR managers will be deluding themselves if they think there will be less competition for talent simply because the unemployment rate is high. There’s a temptation to let people go during downturns — the stronger the downturn, the stronger the propensity for layoffs. They would be well-advised to consider carefully how much they have invested not just in key people but across the management spectrum. They’ve invested a ton in training formal and otherwise. That’s gone if they lose those people in a recession. They might not get them back.”

Thomas Cooley, New York University:

“We’re looking at a recession that is probably going to last well into 2009. I think it will be worse than the recessions of 1991 and 2001. How much worse, I don’t think anybody knows at this stage. There are lots of reasons to be concerned it could be as bad as the recession of the early 1980s.

We are going to be going through tough times for HR departments. They are more likely to be shedding employees, rather than acquiring new ones. In the last recession, companies shed workers too quickly and found it difficult and costly to rebuild their workforces. So there’s reason to be a little bit cautious.”

David Smith, Pepperdine University:

“2009 is going to bring higher unemployment, which means from the standpoint of recruiting leaders more of a buyer’s market when it comes to labor. Take sufficient time to make sure you get the right candidates for positions. You can afford to be a little more choosey, picky, at this point. Be as smart as you can so you can in retaining your best and most product employees — those individuals whose intellectual capital is the key to the company’s success.”

James Bennett, George Mason University:

“We’re in for three-to-five years of rocky times, probably the worst economic times since WWII.

Nurses are still going to be hard to find. Truck drivers, not so much. Truck drivers can fairly easily be trained — three months, six months — that’s not a big deal. But nurses – there’s a lot of hands-on instruction that can only be done in small groups. It’s very expensive training.

Being a physician is a pretty good idea. Health care is a pretty good idea. Being a tenured college professor is a pretty good idea.”

On the positive side, many Indian universities — like the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management turn out some of the best technical and managerial talent in the world. There are also a host of second-tier schools that provide excellent graduates. And with the multinationals like Microsoft, P&G, HP, Satyam, Wipro and others having been established in India now for some 20 years, there’s a good-sized pool of experienced talent as well.

But all this comes at a price. Three factors in particular make recruiting difficult. These are:

Unreliability Of Resumes. A recent study by KPMG found that about 60% of employers complain about resume fraud and fake credentials among significant numbers of applicants. Five percent of companies have reported losses exceeding $2 million as a result. The situation is such that many universities are now starting to embed RFID chips in their diplomas to prevent fraud.

Hiring Losses. The Indian Chamber of Commerce estimates that one in three candidates who is offered a position and accepts does not show up for employment. This is partly the result of employment practices that can require an employee to have a long notice period — exceeding two months in some cases. That allows candidates a long-time to shop offers around or for their current employers to convince them to stay.

Uneven Quality. While candidates from top-tier Indian universities are equal to the best in the world, the quality drops off significantly with candidates from second- and third-tier schools. Employers often find that their interview to hire ratios are typically 10:1 or higher.

Employers also complain that employees have a very mercenary attitude, and leave their jobs for even small increases in pay elsewhere. A lot of this can be explained by understanding the cultural and economic conditions that exist in India. India is a poor country (GDP per capita is $2,600). Only about 10% of the population of 1.1 billion works in the “organized sector,” i.e., regular, stable employment with a private or public sector employer. The rest are self-employed or farmers. The IT and outsourcing industry collectively employs only 4 million people. In the scheme of things, that’s very little. A job in the organized sector is a ticket out of poverty, but requires a good education, which is difficult to come by. As an example, the ITs have a selection ratio of 1:60. Having the smarts to qualify in the entrance tests usually requires a private education, because the public education system leaves a lot to be desired. Consequently, the temptation to fake credentials is huge.

As to hiring losses, call it the revenge of the nerds. While frustrating, it’s perfectly rational economic behavior. What many consider a small increase can be substantial in India. An experienced SAP developer in Bangalore makes about $25K to $30K. The same job pays over a hundred thousand dollars in the U.S. So an SAP developer in India who’s offered an additional $3K would be foolish to not consider it, and irrational to not accept it. It’s not that people are mercenaries, it’s that they are not irrational fools.

Evaluating the quality of education is particularly challenging, because there is not a standard ranking. There are all kinds of lists but none that match the credibility of the one by U.S. News and World Report or BusinessWeek. The best institutions are well known and acknowledged as such, but the quality of education at second- and third-tier schools can be anyone’s guess. A study by the McKinsey Globe Institute had determined that of the 350,000 engineers Indian universities graduate, almost two-thirds are no more than technicians. The same is likely to be the case with graduates in other categories.

So there is top-flight talent available, but it isn’t just there for the taking. The best tend to gravitate to the brand-name employers. For others an active sourcing effort is needed to be successful. Posting on job boards in India is about as effective as it is here. But then no one said it would be easy. Dick Whittington eventually became the Mayor of London, but it wasn’t the day after he arrived.