The changes don’t affect the standing of other job boards nor the 51 percent growth in the overall jobs category, which according to comScore was still the fastest-growing content category on the Internet.

comScore didn’t explain the error, except to say in a footnote to its chart, “The December 2008 Monster.com Job Search data have been adjusted upward from 3.7 million unique visitors to 6.7 million unique visitors due to classification of additional job search-related URLs that were not originally included.”

Even with the revision in the December 2008 numbers, Monster is hearing the footsteps. Once all but written off as a player in the recruitment market, HotJobs has dramatically grown its traffic through its partnership with about half of the daily newspapers in the U.S. as well as its higher visibility on Yahoo’s homepage and its channel position.

The comScore data shows HotJobs grew its unique visitor traffic 146 percent in December 2008 over December of 2007. Monster’s traffic grew 62 percent and CareerBuilder’s increased 78 percent. The biggest gainer, however, was SimplyHired, the jobs search engine. Its unique visitor count jumped 161 percent.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that Monster’s CEO Sal Iannuzzi told an audience of Wall Street analysts Thursday that despite the global recession, “… we feel it is a time to aggressively pursue the market share rather than retreat.” Spending on marketing, among other expenses, will push the company into the red for the 1st quarter of this year.

For the first time since 2004 Monster will air a commercial during the Super Bowl, at a cost of around $3 million per 30-second spot. It will go to head to head with arch-rival CareerBuilder whose “monkey” commercial of 2005 routinely makes the list of best Super Bowl commercials. Is the high price worth it? According to the website multichannelmerchant.com, CareerBuilder experienced a 89 percent traffic spike on the Monday after the game-day ad ran in 2005. The following year, CareerBuilder’s day after traffic jumped 71 percent to 1.45 million visits.

The word “social” has many definitions, but some of the more appropriate ones are 1) pertaining to friendly companionship or relation; 2) Seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; and 3) living or disposed to live-in companionship with others rather than in isolation. The point being that people use social media as a two-way street and to get a sense of community. To belong to a community one has to have something to contribute and be accepted as a member. A community is people interacting with each other. It requires free flow of ideas and thoughts. None of that is delivered by a corporate web page, which is essentially static. People do not invite companies to be their friends. The same is true for recruiters wanting to get hires off Facebook. Creating and cultivating a network to the point where one actually has a hire can take a long time, and the ROI can be impossible or very difficult to justify. It’s not possible to say that X number of hours spent networking will result in Y number of hires and it is not a replicable model.

The Amway Model

There is a very successful and proven approach to tapping the potential of social networks. This has been around for decades before there was Facebook. Companies that operate using network marketing — such as Amway, Avon, and Mannatech — build and work their networks by providing a little structure and the messages they want delivered along with incentives to get the results they desire. They know that their networks exist and thrive where they become communities. They are not clubs where anyone can buy a membership and get the benefits. The people that succeed at network marketing emphasize the social component. The same is true of Facebook. Active members have built their networks to form communities they want to be part of. It’s a two-way street, with lots of interaction, dialog, and sharing — elements that have been true of communities since there have been communities.

Employers wanting to tap social media for talent need to recognize and respect these realities. It’s not about putting up a web page — it’s about what you have to contribute. Therefore it’s easier to tap the networks that already exist — those of employees. Employees can be encouraged to write about their employer, their experiences at work, things the company is doing that may be interesting to others, and so on. Some ERP systems now offer functionality that allows an employee to directly post jobs to their Facebook page. But this requires flexibility and giving up control over what gets put on those Facebook pages along with the job postings. Many employers are accustomed to having all communication beyond the firewall restricted to the boring drivel put out by the PR department. The idea that employees can be writing, blogging, and putting out stories about their employer without review can give many an HR manager an acute case of dyspepsia.

I had one such experience where a company I worked with was so shaken by a blog posting I wrote that was critical of someone, that they created an entirely new corporate policy requiring all employees to have everything they wanted to put on a blog, a website, or any other medium approved or risk termination. Of course, not everyone is as paranoid or PC as this bunch — they would be uncomfortable about any writing that was critical of Bin Laden, on the outside chance he’s really a nice guy who’s been framed or badly misunderstood.

Don’t Kill the Goose

Succeeding at tapping social networks as a source of talent requires participating or contributing to what makes them popular. Many recruiters have limited time to create their own networks or spend time blogging. But in either case what employees do will be far more effective and, more importantly, far more credible and therefore better received than any hype that marketing can spin about the paradise that exists inside the corporate walls. This isn’t exactly a new idea — some employers have long allowed candidates to talk to current employees without any monitoring of the conversation to get a true sense of what it’s like to work there.

Trying to control or restrict that is an exercise in futility, better described as tilting at windmills. Of course that never stopped employers and others from trying. Employers tried for years to restrict their employees’ use of the web out of the fear that they would just waste their time, before finally giving in, by which time mobile devices had made the restrictions irrelevant anyway. The same will be true of social networks — the desire to control the lives of others is deeply ingrained and anything having to do with the web seems to turbocharge it — just look at China and most of the Middle East. Of course, as all that try it have discovered — such actions result in equally forceful opposition.

By embracing social networks and encouraging employees to talk up their employers, warts and all, any employer can turn their workforce into a big referral program that will dwarf any effort the recruiting organization can manage on their own. The key is to recognize that social networks exists first and foremost for the benefit of their members — to provide them a sense of community and meet their social needs. To reiterate — the value provided by a social network is that it is social. An employer that can’t understand this simple concept should best stay away from trying to tap social media.

“We don’t want to overreact,” Sal Iannuzzi said, referring to the worldwide recession and the belt-tightening going on everywhere. While Monster intends to be frugal, he said the company will “aggressively pursue the market share.”

Doing that, and making other one-time financial expenses, will cut into the company’s 1st quarter revenues, which are expected to be off over the same quarter in 2009, by about the same 16 percent as the last quarter of 2008.

The net result, Iannuzzi said, will make Monster unprofitable for the first quarter. That will turn around in the second quarter.

Iannuzzi’s comments came during today’s quarterly call with financial analysts to discuss Monster’s 4th quarter and 2008 financial results.

During the hour-long call, Iannuzzi and other Monster executives said they were encouraged by the response to the revamped Monster site that launched January 10th. Job searches are up, feedback from users has been positive, and even the clickthrough rate for ads running on the Monster network have doubled and even tripled.

The newspaper partnership has been a positive for Monster, Iannuzzi said in response to one analyst question. “As time’s gone on, things become more profitable,” he reported.

Both Iannuzzi and CFO Tim Yates spent time explaining the company’s acquisition of ChinaHR. In October, Monster acquired the remaining 55 percent  for $174 million, a price that was negotiated down from the original purchase terms.

The job board, one of the largest in China, has suffered declines along with the hit that country’s economy has taken causing an after tax loss of $3.7 million. Now, with Monster in full control, there have been some layoffs and other cost- cutting measures are being implemented.

Monster released its financials for 2008 this afternoon and the numbers give mute testimony to the impact of the worldwide recession on the recruitment market.

For the last quarter of 2008 Monster reported revenues of $290.7 million and earnings per share of 24 cents. This is off from last year and below analysts’ expectations, falling at the lower end of Wall Street’s estimates.

The biggest hit came in the company’s North American sales which were off 22.1 percent in the 4th quarter from the same quarter in 2007. For the year, North American sales were off 9.8 percent.

The silver lining, thin as it may be, is that the company managed to eke out a 1.5 percent increase in revenue for the full year, due mostly to a 17.9 percent growth for the year in international sales. However, the recession’s global impact began to be felt in the 4th quarter. International sales were off 14.3 percent, coming in at $122.8 million, just $12.3 million less than the  $135.1  million Monster generated in North America.

However the company’s operating expenses were almost $70 million more in 2008, which made a big dent in the earnings per share for the year. More than of half that – $40 million – is attributed for legal expenses in connection with the lawsuits arising out of the stock options backdating of several years ago.

Monster reported diluted earnings of $1.03 per share in 2008 vs. $1.12 in 2007.

Last year, Monster had $347.8 million in revenue for the 4th quarter and $1.324 billion for all of 2007.

Analysts had been expecting 4th quarter revenue in the range of $279.1 to $331.4 million with the average being $311.6 million. Earnings had been expected in the range of 21 to 33 cents per share with the average being 27 cents.

Monster, like most publicly held companies, reports numbers in a variety of different ways to make it easier for analysts to make comparisons. Numbers used here are from the company’s operations statements.

Our friends at Fistful of Talent just launched the pilot of their new FOTv show this morning.

There’s a ton of noise in the recruiting blogosphere these days, and Fistful is on a very short list of the blogs that have become my daily must-reads. Like everything they do, the pilot is fun and opinionated, and the production values set the bar high for everyone else in our industry who works with video.

I spoke with FOT Editor Kris Dunn today to learn more about the thinking behind the project and what we should expect in the future, and here’s what he told me:

• Kris is a big sports fan, and the format for the show was inspired by ESPN’s PTI.
• Moving forward, the plan is to produce the show weekly, and future shows will be much shorter — closer to five minutes in length than 20.
• While the pilot was shot with Kris, Jessica Lee, and Josh Letourneau, future shows will feature a revolving cast of FOT contributors.

FOTv – Show #1 from Fistful of Talent on Vimeo.

As I have previously written, video has become king. A recent report by Gartner predicts that 25% of all content will be delivered by audio or video by 2013. Those who want to gain mindshare and generate interest in their career opportunities or organization need to use some kind of interactive media — video, instant messaging, polls — anything that attracts and engages Gen Y. The most useful and powerful interactive tools include social networks — particularly Facebook if you are targeting college students — and even LinkedIn and Twitter — as well as video sites such as Youtube, Hulu, and AOLvideo.

Laura Short at Stout University of Wisconsin has created an interesting slideshow for college students giving them reasons to use LinkedIn and encouraging them to — because it is where you are. In this presentation she encourages students to develop a personal video and post it as a LinkedIn video. She also talks about the importance of a video presence.

As video is becoming the dominant form of communication, recruiters who stick with text-based career sites and even text-oriented social networks will find themselves in trouble if they are looking for younger candidates.

There are many services that produce videos and I have listed a cross-section of them in previous articles. But it is very hard to find any company doing something different enough that it may change the way we interact and communicate with candidates. All the social networks I am aware of are based on reading and writing. You have to create a written profile and list and bullet your experiences, education, and so forth. Recommendations are written. Resumes are written. Any interactivity is through asynchronous conversations (e.g. email), a smattering of instant messaging, and sometimes the ability to post messages, pictures, and videos and make comments.

There is, however, one company that has gotten my attention. It is U.S.-based and aimed squarely at college students.

It is called ThinkTalk Networks and, while it has not yet revolutionized the recruiting or social networking industries, it is thinking and doing things differently. ThinkTalk provides video-based career TV for college students. It allows organizations to make videos that are professionally produced that talk about their careers, culture, environment, and people. None of this is revolutionary.

What is different is that ThinkTalk is also an online video-based career community. On ThinkTalk students can ask questions of upcoming guests, chat with human resource professionals, and interact with students who have similar career interests using video. It has also developed a a TV broadcast network that includes over 175 colleges, and is growing. These colleges play a new 30-minute program that ThinkTalk provides each week to help it build their online audience.

What excites me is envisioning ThinkTalk becoming a social network where communication takes place with video used in a variety of synchronous and asynchronous ways. I can easily picture candidates and recruiters creating and uploading video content using webcams, professional studios, or cameras in laptops or cell phones. Gen Y will surely be attracted to that kind of site, and I imagine other age groups, even Baby Boomers, will too. After all, for most of us it’s a lot easier to talk than write.

Corporations and individual recruiters could produce their own videos. And, nicely produced videos become the equivalent of the musical videos singers produce and link nicely to the way young people think and act. Many of ThinkTalk’s videos have already been picked up by other sites such as AOL Video which shows their viral marketing potential. It seems more and more that any video posted to one site will end up on many.

But, ThinkTalk does more than simply showcase an organization: it also provides career guidance and inspiration through other videos they produce. In this interview with actor Emile Hirsch, students ask him how he got started and how he picks the roles he plays. The students become part of the show, get involved, and ask what they want to know. This becomes an educational experience as well as entertainment and information. I also see recruiting messages being integrated into product marketing and overall branding messages. Smart phones, like the iPhone for example, with their ability to connect to higher speed 3G networks become tools for watching, making, and spreading short videos. Already there is a video equivalent of Twitter called 12seconds which allows you to post — yes, you got it — 12 seconds of video.

Getting the word out about your organization, career opportunities, and culture will become more and more video-based over the next few years. I believe that social networks will quickly adapt and evolve into video platforms as it becomes ever more painless to make, edit, and post short video segments. It has taken growth in bandwidth and the development of higher-speed cell networks to power this revolution, but the time has come. ThinkTalk Networks won’t be the last of these innovative video-based services.

I spent most of it freaking out as I tried to connect to today’s webinar and listening to busy signals and dropped audio on my laptop’s speakers. The rest of the time I spent on hold waiting for technical support at GotoWebinar, the company whose technology we were hoping would power future ERE webinars.

We will not be using them again.

The virtual meeting room that we used was supposed to hold up to 1,000 people, and since we regularly get large groups of 500 or more on our calls this was important. This time, we hit 250 listeners on the call when the problems began.

GotoWebinar has no emergency line, and when I finally got through to them I was informed that they were “already investigating issues with that phone number.” When I asked to speak to a manager and said that it was urgent, I was asked for my number and told that I would get a call back. They did not ask for my name, and I am still waiting for the call.

My apologies to every person who was on the call and experienced the poor audio quality.

My apologies to those who could not even make it on to the call because they got busy signals when they dialed in.

Especially, my apologies to Jeremy and Dan who soldiered on through the webinar in spite of the technical issues — they behaved like the pros that they are and did not miss a beat.

Update: 1/29/09

Jeremy and Dan have been gracious enough to offer to repeat the webinar on Friday, February 6 at 2:00 PM EST. Register here.

Also make sure to check out the slides and a re-recording of the presentation below!

Many articles have been written about how to approach them, what to say to them, and even about forming long-term relationships with them.

While administrative assistants are usually the most difficult gatekeepers, receptionists can also be protective, asking your company and reason for calling. Even when receptionists are obliging, after speaking to them 20 or 30 times a day, they will start to recognize your voice.

Calling late to reach an after hours “auto attendant” feature that clicks over after 5:00 p.m. is used by some as an alternative. The problem with this is that the person you are trying to contact may have gone home, forcing you to leave a message.

The solution has typically been to find an extension for someone at the desired company, and then sequentially dial other extensions until you find the person or group that you are looking for. While this technique can work, it is very time-consuming and impractical in the extreme at larger companies. Also, many companies are aware of this tactic and will assign extensions in a more arbitrary manner.

Fortunately there is a way to directly contact almost anyone at any company, using little-known, but very useful features built into voicemail systems. Below is a brief summary of my findings.

All voicemail systems have the ability to transfer from person to person and reach automatic phone directories. Many of these will also give out extension numbers that are easily turned into direct dial numbers.

The first thing you need to do is get a direct dial number. Almost any one will do. This can be done different ways. The easiest way is to compare an office’s phone and fax numbers. If they share the same suffix (i.e. 415-989-3800 and 415-989-3801), then try dialing something around that number, like 415-989-3822. If you get an error message, don’t worry; I will address the issue of finding a direct dial number near the end of this article.

Once you get a valid extension (it’s key that no one answers, you must get a message), then you have everything you need to get started.

Every voicemail system is different, but certain keys on your phone will bring up different options in different voicemail systems. The first keys you should try though are the “*” key and the “#”. Try pressing them while you are listening to the person’s greeting message (always before the beep!). Your results will be different, depending on the voicemail system. For the purposes of instruction, let’s assume they have an Audix^TM system.

An Audix^TM system can be recognized when you hear the message “Your call is being answered by Audix.” There are exceptions to this rule, but it is easy to confirm this particular system. Before the beep, quickly press * and then 8 on your phone. If you hear the message “Enter the four digit extension and pound sign,” you are in an Audix^TM system.

Now the fun begins. With the keys you just pressed, you can now enter an extension and be transferred to the desk of the person you wish to speak to. After pressing *8 you have the option to press * and then 2 on your phone and you will hear “Enter last name and pound sign.” This will allow you to transfer by spelling their last name.

The real gold behind an Audix^TM system is its directory. After pressing *8 or *2, try pressing **6 (two asterisks and a six), and again you will hear “Enter last name and pound sign.” The difference this time is that instead of being transferred, the system will confirm the person’s name and give you their extension. After this it will patiently wait for you to enter another name. With this, one could literally collect extensions for everyone in their voicemail system.

I will provide a link at the end of this article for a reference card with instructions for other voicemail systems, but usually it is a matter of pressing * or # during the initial voicemail greeting and listening to the options it gives you.

Now that you have an extension, let me show you how to dial it directly.

Often it is a simple matter of replacement. For example, if a company’s main number is 650-327-8000 and the extension you have is 78239, then dial 650-327-8239. Other times it may have a different prefix. Take a look at the company’s fax number to see if it will “plug in” there.

Try seeing if it has a contact on its website for investor relations. This phone number will most likely conform to the other extensions.

If all else fails, Google can frequently give you the answer you need. Try searching using the company name and the area code, using the Google “-” operator to exclude the final four numbers of the phone number. Using the above example, you would search for: “XYZ Company” +650 -8000. This will usually yield direct dials for other people at the company that should conform to the extension you have.

The information provided in this article should give you a hint of the power of voicemail surfing to avoid gatekeepers. That being said, there are many, many more techniques and tips for surfing voicemail then we have space for here in this article.

I have made a PDF available on our website that will give you directory commands for other voicemail systems, as well as more tricks and tips, and more comprehensive instruction on voicemail surfing. It is free and no registration is necessary to download it. Just go to http://www.rwstearns.com/articles.php and click on the “Voicemail Surfing” link below the “Download .PDF” header.

Please be aware that companies can modify their voicemail instructions and new versions of voicemail systems also appear, so you may need to modify your techniques slightly at different companies or as systems are upgraded.

Grab your phones! Surf’s Up!

A Monster spokeswoman declined to comment on the number of records affected, but said it included some U.S. users. Monster’s non-career sites (such as Military.com), the European site JobPilot and sites in Asia Pacific and in Eastern Europe were not affected.

Monster has posted a warning on its homepage linking to a letter explaining the intrusion. Dated Jan. 23rd, the letter signed by Patrick Manzo, Monster’s Global Chief Privacy Officer, warns users they may be subject to “phishing” expeditions, where they receive emails from the hackers but appearing to be from Monster, directing them to download malicious software or provide additional confidential information.

A similar warning has been posted to the USAJobs site, the official job board of the U.S. federal government. The site is powered and managed by Monster; thus, the profiles and other data of its users may have been illegally accessed.

This happened after an August 2007 hack that downloaded 1.7 million user records, nearly all from the U.S. The security breach only became public after a security company posted the news to its website, forcing Monster to admit the intrusion days after it knew the breach occurred.

This time, it was Monster which disclosed the hack and provided details about the type of information that was accessed. The Monster spokeswoman said no resumes or customer transactional data were compromised. However, recruiters, like job seekers, are urged to change their password as well as keep an eye out for phony Monster emails. The posted letter contains additional guidance.

Monster received better marks this time for its reporting of the breach. NetworkWorld, a tech-focused publication for network administrators, analyzed Monster’s disclosure letter and compared it to the warning the company sent out after the 2007 hack. The publication had Roger Nebel, director of strategic security for FTI Consulting, review the Monster warning reporting that he considered it “adequate: Not bad, but could be better.”

“There are no details about how they were hacked, nor steps taken to prevent it again,” NetworkWorld quotes Nebel as saying. “While I don’t expect them to necessarily tell us gory details there should at least be some context, be it human error, a zero-day attack, vendor issue, etc.”

News of the attack has been widely published on tech sites and news sites in Europe and elsewhere, including in Turkey and India.

Employee-productivity differences have attracted their share of researchers. Most agree that folks in the top half of workers out-produce the bottom half by about 2:1 (i.e., it makes no difference if people are shuffling papers or making widgets). And, when managers and knowledge workers are examined separately, the productivity ratio rises to 3:1, 4:1, or higher (i.e., responsible jobs have bigger ratios).

Productivity is more than a mental exercise. It shows up as absenteeism, errors, reduced throughput, turnover, low morale, rework, an excess number of employees, and so forth. Productivity losses are also sneaky because they are not easily seen; yet, they translate into hard cash: between 20% of base annual payroll leaked for unskilled workers to 50% for skilled and managerial employees — enough to separate a successful organization from a flop.

Converting payroll leakage into gross sales can be an even bigger eye-opener. Twenty percent leakage, for an organization that pays out 1/5 of its gross sales in salaries and benefits, would require a 500% sales increase to balance the books. Want to do more scary math? Calculate the incremental sales necessary to offset a 50% leak in managers and professional salaries!

Enter Financial Chaos and Uncertainty

We are in serious financial times. Opinions vary, but experts estimate our financial stress will last throughout 2009 and perhaps into 2010. The prosperity party is over. Like the dot-com bust, the world changed virtually overnight.

We cannot do much about external economic factors except dig in and wait. But, we can do something about employee productivity, especially when it comes to intelligent downsizing.

Ah’ll be Baack!

There are two ways to downsize. Most managers are accustomed to the Rambo model: plunge into the organization armed with rocket launchers, machine guns, and grenades terminating anyone in the line of fire. At the end of the rampage, the gross payroll body count is reduced; but, since both high- and low-producers are terminated without regard to skills, the organization continues to live with its 20% to 50% cash hemorrhage. Rambo-sizing is the norm.

What about examining employee performance before making termination decisions? Everyone knows performance recommendations are part fact and part fiction. Promotions and performance ratings are almost always based on personality and popularity — not specific skills. Just examine organizations that Rambo-sized their workforce in the past. What effect did it have other than forcing fewer people to spend more time at work? Termination decisions done without future planning are like bloodletting to rid the body of bad humours … they are more likely to kill than cure.

Planning Ahead

If management takes the time and HR is able to competently manage the solution, downsizing can actually help the organization get healthy and stay that way. It’s more like Mr. Spock than Rambo. It is rationally based. It begins by clearly defining the skills the company wants to leave in the past and acquire in the future. Here is an example.

We’reAllThatMatters is a legend unto itself. Employees generally want to work there because they can brag about the big-name. Unfortunately, people (read customers) outside the organization have a different opinion. Employees often treat customers rudely and without respect. For example, even if We’reAllThatMatters’ buggy bookkeeping system overcharges a customer 400%, employees treat anyone who complains as if it was his or her fault.

Now the organization must cut back its workforce due to economic conditions. Should it Rambo-size its employees? Should it ask managers for their subjective opinions about who stays and who goes? Should it amputate whole divisions? Since We’reAllThatMatters’ has been around some time, a majority of terminated employees may be over 40, raising the possibility of a nasty class-action suit. What to do?

Rambo-sizing would be a serious long-term mistake. The payroll would shrink, but both skilled and unskilled employees would suffer the same fate. Customer-sensitive as well as customer-insensitive employees would be terminated equally. We’reAllThatMatters’ payroll would shrink, but payroll hemorrhage would continue unabated. Logical-sizing would be different.

We’reAllThatMatters would a take hard look at itself and honestly calculate the financial impact of poor customer service on future business. It would then develop some key job profiles containing both technical competencies to do the job as well as customer service competencies it wants to build and retain. When this is complete, it would move on to the next step.

Employee-Level Evaluation

Individual employees would have his or her performance objectively evaluated using the list of necessary competencies as a target. For example, customer-centric skills might be evaluated by gathering past examples of service (e.g., similar to behavioral event interviewing), reviewing performance appraisals (to the extent they might include relevant information), giving tests, administering surveys, and so forth.

The secret to success would be to evaluate the skill set of every employee using an objective standard based on the organization’s tactical plan. Results for each employee would be anonymized and independently reviewed by a few highly competent managers. Employees who matched the profile would be retained, and those who did not would be reassigned or laid off.

Smart-sizing could be done with competencies such as analytical skills to develop better problem-solvers, initiative to encourage operational improvements, teamwork to develop better internal working relationships, creativity to foster new ideas and designs … the list goes on.

Final Question

However, there is a price to pay. HR has to develop the skills to help managers analyze and clarify the skills needed. It has to become proficient in accurately measuring competencies (real ones, not garden variety stuff), and it has to professionally manage the process. Managers have a price to pay too. They must have the patience to work through the details of smart-sizing, dedicate the energy and commitment to making sure the process is followed, and be able to clearly define the future at the employee level.

The outcome of this initiative is a smart-sized operation; in other words, the skills of the employees are intelligently aligned with the objectives of the organization. Overall, this should result in fewer employees doing more work (because each employee will be more skilled), less turnover (because employees will be more satisfied), fewer mistakes, better quality, and so forth.

The final question faced by everyone in the operation is whether saving 20% to 50% of base payroll is worth abandoning Rambo-sizing for smart-sizing.

Companies such as T-Mobile and McKesson are stepping up to the plate by establishing a formal workforce planning process with a designated leader in order to achieve results. So, what exactly is workforce planning? How can it help organizations achieve these goals? And why should you care?

Workforce planning can help you strengthen and empower your role in the company by doing exactly what recruiters have been trying to do for the past 10 years: get a seat at the table. Workforce planning is a set of business processes which analyze the supply and demand of talent, ensuring that the organization has the right people in place to execute its overall business strategy. An effective workforce planning process allows you to:

• Understand current talent gaps
• Plan staffing and recruiting needs
• Help business leaders forecast revenue and operating budgets
• Drive business to partner with recruiting

Sounds simple? Don’t be fooled. Embracing the idea of workforce planning and implementing a strategic approach to your current and future workforce needs are two very different realities. Workforce planning fails when it lacks executive support, a clear methodology and business process, and the necessary tools and technology to execute the process. The workforce-planning process needs to correlate business strategies with workforce requirements. No easy task but one you should not ignore.

One important aspect to consider in workforce planning is your companies’ current level of maturity and the steps you need to take to become more strategic in your process. Mitzi Adwell of The Newman Group compares these different stages of workforce planning to driving a car. At the basic level, you are getting in your car and starting to drive with pretty clear direction of where you’re going — a staffing and headcount plan. At an intermediate level, you are looking in your rearview mirror to get a better understanding of the landscape around you (workforce analytics). At the advanced level, you are looking ahead and using your dashboard to gauge how you should proceed (strategic workforce planning with predictive modeling).

Stage One: Getting in Your Car

In the most basic level of workforce planning, companies are looking at current headcount in their organization. Some companies even take it one step further and look at forecasted vs. actual headcount in order to build staffing plans that close their talent gaps and keep them on target with their budgeted headcount. One challenge is that this level of workforce planning is often decentralized, viewing talent from the bottom up versus a top down view that prioritizes talent-sets from the most to the least critical to the business overall. This headcount analysis is performed in the individual business units and does not connect with the overall organizational business strategy.

More often than not, companies plan staffing and headcount on an “as-needed” basis when facing major external pressures or changes in workforce demographics. Volkswagen Group of America used this type of planning process when the company relocated its headquarters from Michigan to Virginia. Given that it planned to replace three-fourths of its workforce within a short timeframe, it was important to include a precise plan in short order to ensure the pipeline of talent and the timing of hires met its operating goals. Situational workforce planning like what Volkswagen did might help companies think about how to handle business plans with major talent implications. Of course the more you know and the earlier you know it, the more effective you can be at using more sophisticated means of workforce planning.

Stage Two: Looking In the Rearview Mirror

At the intermediate level, workforce planning looks at quantitative data analysis, including forecasted skills and competency needs. Companies look at a regular workforce profile with key data variables including demographic segment, compensation, turnover, and performance rating. Looking at historical trends of these variables and relationships between them helps companies to better understand their talent patterns and trends so they can incorporate that information into their talent plans going forward. Companies such as T-Mobile will rely heavily on scenario planning or “what-if” scenarios this year.

Scenario planning allows companies to prepare for different internal and external business conditions such as retirement, economic changes, and workforce demographic changes, and think through what strategies they will implement in order to overcome challenges they see through the ‘what if’ exercises.

Stage Three: Using Your Dashboard

While other levels of workforce planning inform business leaders about talent plans, a strategic workforce planning process integrates these plans with the organization’s business and financial planning. At this level, companies gain a deep understanding of their talent pipeline and how it aligns with the overall business plan of the company. Companies use technology to help map the talent needs and make more informed business decisions with cost implications.

How You Can Help Your Company?

Bersin & Associates, an industry research and advisory services company, is partnering with The Newman Group to publish a comprehensive research report on this topic. The goal of this study is to identify the current state of maturity in workforce planning processes, level of ownership, range of maturity in audiences served, processes included, and level of integration with other business planning processes.

We would love to hear from you. The survey contains 23 multiple-choice questions. Estimated completion time is 20 minutes. As a participant, you will receive a copy of the executive summary to be developed based on results of the survey and scheduled for release in March 2009. This is an opportunity to share what you know and receive great insight in return.

As we all know, the recruiting industry is always changing and we can certainly expect more new developments in the months to come. We’ll be taking a look at trends to see what kinds of big picture changes we can expect this year, and more importantly what this means for YOU.

Jeremy and Dan will be taking questions after the presentations to address your thoughts and concerns for what awaits us in 2009. We already have over 400 people registered but still have plenty of space so make sure to sign up today!

____________________________________________________________
When: Wednesday, January 28th
2:00 – 3:00 PM EST
Register Here
_____________________________________________________________

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at brendan@ere.net.

Progress: Graphic by rustybrick on Flickr (cc)

John and I were trading emails last week, and he asked me to elaborate on one of the comments that I made. I have been thinking about it ever since.

The recruiting profession is at a unique moment in time, and it’s not just because of the economy. We are at an inflection point where the tools and tactics that the vast majority of recruiters spend their budgets on is completely different from those being discussed and debated throughout the profession.

The last time I saw this was a decade ago. Even as early experimenters began using the Internet to bring talent into their organizations, the lion’s-share of corporate recruiting budgets still went to the newspapers, and it took the better part of the last 10 years for that to change.

That shift was driven by lower costs of publishing online, freedom from the space restrictions of a print ad, searchability, and the ease of access of online classifieds relative to their print predecessors. As a result, recruitment advertising shifted from one-way communication via print ‘broadcasting’ to doing the same thing online — the same model, but using the new medium.

Today we are seeing a shift from that online broadcasting model to a conversational model, one that is enabled by the social networks and Web 2.0 technologies.

There’s a relatively small group of very vocal (via social media, of course) experimenters out there right now who are testing an endless variety of Web 2.0 and social media tools based around the conversational model. Through trial and error, they are figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Most have very little to show at this point in terms of ROI, both because the tools are so new and because so much of their time and energy is necessarily wasted on those experiments that do not work.

These experimenters have an outsized impact on the thinking within the industry, and as their experiments bear fruit — generating hires for their organizations that demonstrably show the ROI of their efforts — they will drive more and more strategy going forward.

The companies that form the backbone of the online broadcasting model (job boards, job distributors, and the software companies that enable companies to manage their candidate flow) are already under siege by cost-cutting from their customers due to the difficult economic times. So far, I don’t believe that the early stages of this shift have had a large impact on the spending of their customers, and that makes it a particularly difficult time for them to adjust to a fundamental change like this one. But they have no choice but to evolve — the current plight of the newspapers illustrates what happens to those who are slow to realize when the old business models become obsolete.

In the past few weeks, you have read several articles with predictions about what to expect in the coming year. Now for your insights.

We are conducting our annual ERE Reader Survey. Take just a few minutes out of your busy schedule to help us out.

Why do we want this info?

All of the information on ERE.net is free for recruiters, and this would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors. By completing the survey, you are telling our sponsors who is in the ERE audience, which helps them continue to support us.

None of the information you provide in the survey will be used in any way other than in aggregate, so your contact information and your feedback is protected.

Simply click here and take the survey. It will just take a few minutes.

I appreciate your help and look forward to sharing the results with you in a few weeks.

By now, everyone’s most likely heard of the impending Employee Freedom of Choice Act that will make unionization significantly easier.

As a recruiting professional, have you contemplated what role recruiting can play in maintaining a “union-free” environment at your organization?

Think about it! What better way to ensure that an organization will remain union-free than changing the recruiting, branding, and hiring process so that your organization is more likely to attract new hires who naturally (without any direct influence from management) wouldn’t want to join a union?

Hiring For Tendencies Is a Common Practice

It is common to design recruiting and hiring processes to select individuals with certain mindsets or behavioral tendencies.

Southwest Airlines, for example, has been written up in numerous books and articles for how they successfully attract and hire individuals who naturally behave and act in a certain way. In the case of Southwest, its hiring process targets candidates who naturally put the needs of the individual customer before their own.

Southwest is not alone. A range of organizations, from the FBI to Disney and Google, have all designed recruiting processes that identify and hire individuals prone to certain behaviors and actions. So why not adapt that recruiting concept to focus on individuals who prefer an independent work environment?

The Time to Act Is Now

Now is the opportune time to act before union-related publicity increases to the point where the spotlight is continually on any union-avoidance activities and while most recruiting functions are facing a reduced hiring load.

Rarely do recruiting leaders have as much time as they have now to strategize and to reengineer their processes.

The goal is to redesign your recruiting and hiring processes in order to improve the chances of attracting and hiring individuals who, when given a choice, have a higher probability of selecting independence over “big brother” group action (i.e., unionization).

Don’t Have A Cow

Upfront, you need to realize that it’s ok for management to resist unionization. Most firms rely primarily on the “traditional approach” which focuses heavily on anti-union propaganda campaigns among existing workers.

However, there’s no reason why that approach can’t be supplemented by an effective recruiting campaign that proactively acts “on the front end” before workers are even hired.

Now, I’m not suggesting even for a minute that you go out and purposely hire only “union hating” new employees, because that actually would be illegal.

What I am suggesting is that recruiting can make a major contribution in maintaining your workforce’s flexibility and competitiveness by revising your firm’s employment processes so that they now include elements that “naturally” attract more independent-thinking workers.

Incidentally, I started my working career as a card-carrying union member and now as a professor, am currently represented by a union, so don’t automatically assume that I don’t understand the value unions can provide.

However, I would remind you that as an HR employee, if your executives choose to go down the “maintain a non-union environment road,” it’s your responsibility to make sure that recruiting makes a substantial contribution to that effort.

Start With Market Research

After getting management’s approval for the overall concept and strategy, identify the types of personalities, demographic groups, and regional locations where you’re likely to find a large percentage of “independent thinkers.”

Work with psychologists, sociologists, and market researchers in order to identify the types of individuals and the “traits” that are common among independent thinkers. After you better understand what it takes to excite and attract them, refocus your recruiting process and materials.

Refocus Your Employment Brand

The next step is to shift your “employment brand message” so that it better highlights the elements of working at your firm that would get the attention of your target candidates. That could include emphasizing the fact that your firm excels in flexibility and allowing your employees to make independent decisions.

In reverse, remember that an over emphasis on security, seniority, and great benefits in your branding campaign might actually attract individuals that prefer a unionized environment, where those features are often heralded.

But branding your organization with characteristics you cannot possibly deliver and have no intention of attempting to deliver will do more harm than good.

If you want to remain union-free and the employer attributes most likely to attract and retain a workforce committed to that status are not attributes that characterize your organization, you may just need to change!

Recruitment Advertising

Work with your recruitment advertising agency and vendors to see if they can help you in repositioning your recruiting collateral so that it focuses on attracting the type of individuals that you are now targeting.

The content of your ads, positioning of your ads, and your position descriptions as well might also have to be modified so that they better attract a more desirable target audience. A little research can help you find out whether you are more likely to find a higher percentage of your target candidates in specific demographic groups, age groups, geographic regions, etc.

Screening Processes

Tread lightly in this area, because you don’t ever want to directly confront the issue of whether applicants are pro-union. All you can reasonably expect to accomplish in the assessment area is to “screen in” a larger percentage of individuals who have characteristics and traits that make them both great workers and a preference for remaining independent.

There are, of course, numerous vendors that specialize in hiring for “fit,” so work with them to see if they have valid and legal ways to target your “assessment” toward traits that are shared both by excellent workers and by individuals with independent leanings.

One of the biggest complaints unionized labor voices about being in a union is that negotiated work standards and seniority-based pay systems are not fair. Focusing your assessment efforts to identify individuals who have historically been frustrated with organizations that define equitable as equal could be a good start. Of course, only if your organization doesn’t do that as well.

Other Employment-Related Approaches

Here are additional actions to consider:

• Increase the percentage of your workforce classified as contingent workers. Not only are contractors easier to release, working with them for a period of time makes it easier to assess whether they “fit” your independent-minded profile before you act to convert them.
• Re-design your employee referral program so that it educates your workforce about the types of behaviors and personalities that you’re now targeting.
• Begin targeting your recruiting at specific firms that are known for attracting and retaining employees that have a long history of independence.
• Work with consulting and law firms that specialize in maintaining a “union-free environment” to better understand best practices and what other approaches may be acceptable under the law.

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re facing unionization efforts or not, focus your recruiting efforts on these independent-minded workers because the traits they possess might by themselves be valuable to the business. Their willingness to try new things and to innovate is likely to be higher than many recruits.

If you’re going to act, now’s the time, before labor laws and policies change to make it more difficult to use recruiting as another “union-free environment” maintenance tool. If you are looking for an opportunity to act strategically and outside the box, this is it.

That’s the premise behind this new site with the odd name that has nothing to do with fish. In fact, confesses founder Ted Williams, “I wish I had a cool story about snorkeling and looking into a grouper’s eye when the idea went off in my head, but the name was chosen to be unique and memorable. Sure, a lot of people think it is dumb and it may make it difficult for us to market ourselves, but it fits with our strategy — create a remarkable experience.”

Simply put, GrouperEye allows companies looking for interns to offer a sort of tryout without making any commitment other than to award a $100 prize.

Cookthink is a case in point. The cooking-oriented website figured its recipe search tool was sufficiently unique that it could be licensed to others. But the small company didn’t have the resources to hire a marketing firm. So it turned to GrouperEye, offering $100, lunch with the founders, and virtual internships for a 1-3 page summary of a licensing business plan.

The deadline for submittals has not yet passed, so we can’t say how things turned out, but Cookthink co-founder Chip Brantley likes the concept.

“I like the environment that GrouperEye creates for recruiting,” Brantley wrote in an email. “We’ve used other websites for recruiting in the past, and it all feels the same. If GE (GrouperEye) can get good people, then I think the way the site’s set up will draw a lot of companies because of the format; you can learn a lot more about a student on GE than you can through a resume or even phone interview.”

That’s the idea, says Williams, who previously launched a video production firm mostly for fun. “Students receive the chance to get noticed for a job opportunity, cash, experience, and a tangible portfolio. Companies receive access to top talent, an employee screening mechanism, original ideas, and buzz.”

Intended to help employers find top students for their internships, GrouperEye doesn’t have to be used that way. Razume, a user-mediated, resume-building site, is looking for a plan to increase participation on its site. The best plan wins $100, but no internship. Razume, however, is the exception and getting great ideas on the cheap is not the objective.

Williams, only a year out of business school himself, said the inspiration for GrouperEye came from discussions with his friends who lamented the difficulty of getting noticed by companies. “You can ask any college student and they will tell you the system is dumb. Unless you have close to a 4.0 or know wealthy people who can hook you up with a job, finding a job is the wild wild West,” says Williams. “Companies need to discover and hire the best talent. Students need a way to get noticed for their ideas and originality.”

There are other sites for students seeking internships. Craigslist is probably the most widely used, but MonsterTrak, Experience, and Internships.com are also popular. None, however, takes the competitive tryout approach that GrouperEye does.

GrouperEye charges $199, which includes the $100 prize money. Eight employers have so far taken the plunge, including Motley Fool, the investment advice site. Williams says the company now needs to sign up both employers outside the Washington, D.C. area, where it’s based and expand to colleges and universities nationwide.

Up to now, he tells us, he’s focused on developing the product. “We firmly believe that the best marketing is creating a product worth talking about. Therefore, we have spent the majority of our time creating an experience worth talking about. We are just now making the switch from product-focused to marketing-focused.”

“Everybody loves the concept, but whether we can take this love and translate it into success is yet to be seen.”

It’s a challenge all right, but Williams knows right where to go for help. He posted his project to GrouperEye.

On the U.S. Army Web site, prospects can access podcasts, participate in discussion boards, chat online with active duty soldiers and recruiters, and watch videos which depict various Army careers and combat training. But the Army also gives candidates access to free war games, so they can virtually experience combat situations and assess their skills. The games resonate with millennial prospects, who average 17 to 24 years of age, and who are quite comfortable having a joystick in one hand and a mouse in the other.

“We use photos, tell stories, and recruits hear soldiers talk about combat in experience centers set-up all across the country,” says Lt. Col. John E. (Ed) Box, battalion commander, Chicago Recruiting Battalion, U.S. Army Recruiting Command. “In the experience centers, soldiers returning from combat relay their personal stories to recruits. We also provide virtual combat experience through the America’s Army website, which features free war game downloads for computers and the Xbox 360.”

The use of simulated training environments has grown in a number of industries for good reason; virtual training has proven to be effective and trainees are free to make mistakes, without creating dire consequences. Airline pilots have trained in-flight simulators for years and surgeons practice new medical procedures through a combination of hands-on and simulated experience. The military is highly advanced in its use of simulated training; applying the technology to the recruiting and screening process is a logical way to immerse candidates into stressful situations, so they can experience the environment and the emotions it evokes.

In the “See What It’s Like” section of the U.S. Air Force Web site, candidates can test their ability to refuel jets at 22,000 feet or fly with the Thunderbirds. The interactive tools comprise just a small portion of the tactics employed by military recruiters to achieve the increasing annual goals for new signees. Despite the obstacles of lengthy deployments and ongoing war, recruiters from the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps are achieving their annual recruiting mission by bonding with prospects, using carefully crafted messages and being brutally honest about military life.

This article is one component of a Web 2.0 and rich media demonstration. It consists of a variety of simple broad-reach tools including webinars, surveys, discussion walls, Twitters, and videos. The purpose of presenting the article this way is to demonstrate how an individual recruiter could expand his or her visibility using similar low-cost technology. As you read the article, click through to the links and take the action suggested. Then imagine how you could apply similar approaches to your job postings to expand both its visibility and interest.

As a example, start by texting the word “sourcing” to 96625 and take the instant survey. Then create your own survey like this and Tweet me at LouA with your quick take. Then create a similar process for hiring by asking your employees if they know a great person for a new hot job, or pinging your resume database asking prospects if they’d be interested in exploring a potential career move.

Now back to the article. It describes some of the latest Web 2.0 recruiting and sourcing tools and likely future trends.

You can rank yourself to figure out if you’re still a Neanderthal or a new ager. On this scale, if your still posting boring job descriptions on the major job boards you’d be considered a Web 1.0 stone-ager.

Those in the current Web 2.0 era are now successfully using search-engine-optimized talent hubs, and pushing jobs using teasers ads to targeted blogs and social sites. Integrating and automating all this stuff based on robust workforce planning and process control metrics is Web 3.0. Here’s an online survey you’ll want to take to more accurately benchmark your company on this sourcing evolutionary scale. You’ll also be able to see the instant results and figure out what you need to do to move up to a higher order of species. (We’re creating a survey like this to figure out the decision factors candidates use when selecting one job over another. Email me if you’d to participate. Also, comment on my recruiter’s blog.)

To start this benchmarking, consider how many of the following tools, techniques, and processes you’re now successfully using to source top performers. As you read the six categories, rank yourself on a 1 to 5 scale. Give yourself a 5 if you are training others or you’re now being interviewed by the mainstream media. Rank yourself a 4 if you’re a recognized leader in the recruiting industry. Give yourself 1 point if you’re thinking about doing these things. Assign yourself a big zero if you say it wouldn’t work at your company.

When you’re done, total your score. Less than 10 points qualifies you as a true Neanderthal. If you score more than 20 points you’ll probably get some type of award at ERE’s next Spring Expo. Regardless, whatever you score, figure out what you’d need to do in the next 12 months to get an additional 10 more points. Then focus on this to rebuild your recruiting department. It will be worth it.

Six Important Web 2.0 Plus Trends and Tools

An integrated social media engine: Facebook pages, LinkedIn networks, and pushing ads to appropriate blogs is fine, but not too automatic. A social media engine links all of your networks sites onto a common platform pushing teaser ads to sites most appropriate to your target candidate audience. For example, it makes sense to send compelling two-lines ads to power-engineering blogs rather than MySpace if you’re looking for people with heavy industry experience. MySpace and Facebook might be more appropriate if you’re looking for part-timers for your retail store or young adults just graduating. While many progressive companies are already doing these things, the automation piece is where the short-term action will be. Jobs2Web is the leading player here, so watch closely what these guys are doing.

Use of talent hubs and the phaseout of traditional job descriptions for advertising copy. I’ve made this prediction for years, and it’s finally coming true — the idea of posting individual job requisitions is archaic. The likelihood of the right person finding it is problematic, and even if they do, they’re so boring only the desperate will apply. Talent hubs represent the new thinking here. View a talent hub as a portal or micro-site for a group of jobs that’s marketed using the latest consumer advertising concepts and optimized to be easily found outside of the traditional career sites and job boards. The messaging needs to be compelling and access needs to be open, inviting, and warm, usually with some type of IM feature. While talent hubs are comparable to an integrated social media engine, they’re less robust and less costly to build and maintain. Shaker Recruitment Advertising seems to be one of the leading players in this area, with solid technology, combined with great messaging.

Developing a proprietary prospect database with automated CRM. On the surface this is a technology solution, but down deep it really has to do with involvement and interactivity. The strategy behind this is to build a personal prospect pool that is constantly nurtured using automated candidate management relationship tools. This is how you maintain the involvement. More advanced tools are on the way that allow you to create events which trigger some type of action, usually an email, but it could be a Tweet or text message. Prospects are notified when opportunities arise, and as long as the messaging is compelling, you’ll have a number of great candidates express interest. This concept is at the core of just-in-time sourcing.

Applying advanced consumer marketing tools for recruitment advertising. If you’re still posting boring ads, subtract 5 points from your total. Boring advertising especially on a job board is a waste of money. So if you want to continue to use job boards at least post ads that will attract someone’s attention. Here’s an ad that SimplyHired posted on their career site to give you a sense of how an ad should be written. Consumer marketing companies are the early adopters of this idea, since this is how they attract their customers. They know that targeted messages pushed to their audience creates interest. Here’s a big thing to think about on this point: don’t use your advertising to sell the job — use it to establish a connection. This is a paradigm shift in terms of where recruitment advertising is heading. Don’t sell your products first; create interest and demand first.

Reduce the time to find you. One of the most important competitive advantages a company or independent recruiter can have is getting the best candidates before everyone else. This is the driver of much of what’s described above involving the concept of “be found first!” When good people enter the job-hunting market they tend to call their close confidantes first. To tap into these early entrants a “call me first” strategy gives you a significant advantage especially if you have a great job available. After a week or so these people will start Googling for jobs or go to an aggregator like SimplyHired.com. To get a sense of where you stand on this early-bird sourcing strategy, start asking your candidates how long they’ve been looking. Give yourself a high ranking if most of them say “less than a week.”

Continuous change and time warping. When you think about what’s happened in the past 10 years, you realize that the rate of change is increasing, not slowing down. So if you have trouble thinking about what solution is best to implement, you need to step it up a notch. Not only do you have to start changing how you source, but also implement flexible technology and business solutions that allow you to adapt and change faster than your competition.

The recruiting industry has gone through a number of inflection points over the past 10 years, and it seems that they’re coming faster than ever before. Web 2.0 has been here for two to three years and many companies are just starting to employ some of its enormous capability for sourcing. Automation, optimization, and integration are the next big waves, which only a brave few have ventured this far.

While all of this technology can help, it still needs involved hiring managers and effective recruiters to make it all work. For a top person, changing jobs is a big decision, and the position selected will largely be dependent on the leadership qualities of the hiring manager combined with the career counseling ability of the recruiter. Fully integrating these high-touch components with the high-tech still seems to be a way off. Regardless, there are plenty of tools available for the individual recruiter to get started trying it all out.

I wanted to take the time to thank everyone who came. It was so nice meeting everyone and I hope that you had a great time. I know I definitely enjoyed it and loved my first time in Cincinnati (thanks to those who gave me great suggestions on places to eat!)

We would love to make these Meetups a more regular occurrence and from what I heard last night, I definitely think we will have to return to Cincinnati.

Thank you also to Taleo, for the wonderful goodies and for sponsoring the event. And a special thanks to everyone for spreading the word about our event, especially Amybeth and Jennifer.

I will be keeping everyone up-to-date on the Meetups right here on ERE, so please check back to find out when and where the next one will be.

Enjoy the photos and please leave some feedback below; I would love to hear what you thought!

Thanks again!!

P.S. We have had tons of suggestions for more cities to bring our Meetups to; all we need are some sponsors. If you are interested in sponsoring an event, or just have questions in general, please email me at melissa@ere.net

.

Not this time.

One month severance pay plus a couple of weeks unused vacation puts six weeks between him and reduced living. His wife works, and her job looks “pretty secure,” for now.

But he needs to find a job. Immediately interviewing, he’s finding that departments are looking for a new kind of recruiter — one who can do their own sourcing on the front end as well as bringing up the rear in hiring. It seems to me like a lot to ask, and maybe one of management’s forays into “let’s see all we can get” while the “gettin’” appears to be good. It smacks of greed to me but maybe I’m just sensitive on the issue, sensitized as I have been at all the recent media coverage of excess and waste among those with influence.

“Have you thought of doing anything else?” I asked. I could hear him brighten somewhat when he told me, quickly, in a pleasant-sounding stream, of how one of his secondary skill sets at his company was keeping some of its outdated equipment running — he was the go-to person, it seems, for the company’s “Help Desk” requirements.

“Do you enjoy that?” I asked. Quickly, and eagerly, he admitted he did but then added that going there would mean a drop in pay.

“But do you like doing that?” I pressed.

“Yes, I do,” he admitted.

“Then doesn’t that count for something?” I pressed again, trying to be gentle.

“It does, I guess.” I could hear he wasn’t wholly convinced but his mind was starting to ponder the idea.

“I think of this whole thing as a “reset” mode for all of us,” I continued. It’s not like some of us are on the outside and some of us are on the inside. We’re all in this together and whatever happens we’re all of us affected, together.”

“That’s true,” he agreed.

“It doesn’t make it easier, I understand,” I said. “But maybe, just maybe, some of us will be able to go in the direction of our dreams, as that old saying goes,” I continued, referring to Henry David Thoreau’s, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.”

We then talked about some proactive things he might also do: posting a “job-wanted” notice in a geographically-local LinkedIn group; attending some in-person networking events; getting active in the “groups” and “discussions” on the social/business networking sites like ERE, RecruitingBlogs.com, and Fordyce; contributing articles, remarks, and advice; and sourcing who was left in staffing at local companies and contacting them directly with his resume. Before we hung up I asked him to stay in touch with me. I told him I was interested in where he goes from here. And I am.