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All of us have a stake in government decisions made to address the current economic climate. Whatever we do, the business community and investors need to see actions on the economy that inspire confidence and optimism to get job growth back on track.

At present, there is an economic stimulus bill under review in the Congress, submitted by the new Administration, that may reach $1 trillion in new spending programs. Are you feeling optimistic yet?

Since the 1980s, the U.S. economy has demonstrated to the world how to stimulate growth and job creation: low taxes, free trade, and low government intervention. For decades, such policies have kept unemployment rates lower in the U.S. compared to almost all first-world, industrial nations.

What happens when governments intervene in economies? Consider two examples:

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The worse-than-expected jobs report from the government today has so far done little to stimulate action on the stimulus bill that’s still in the taffy-pulling stage in the U.S. Senate. Even Wall Street pretty much shrugged off the news that 600,000 jobs were lost in January, the most since 1974. At midday the Dow was up 153 points, extending its Thursday rally on the strength of hope the U.S. Senate will approve something by tonight.

The monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics described the U.S. situation in surprisingly gloomy words for bureaucrats. Noting that the unemployment rate rose .4 points in one month — from 7.2 in December to 7.6 percent nationwide at the end of January – the BLS report said in its very first paragraph: “In January, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major industry sectors.”

The only job categories to show growth were Education and Health Services, up by 54,000 jobs, and Government, which grew by 6,000 jobs. Construction and manufacturing together lost 318,000 jobs.

The 11.6 million Americans now officially out of work represent mostly those still actively looking for work. Discouraged workers who have given up, even temporarily, looking for work, and those working part-time because they can’t find full time jobs come to almost 10 million more. If those workers were counted as part of the unemployed, the unemployment rate would be closer to 15 percent.

In Washington, Senate negotiators have trimmed somewhere between $70 and $80 billion from the stimulus bill, depending on when and to whom reporters were talking. The latest report from the Wall Street Journal says that a bipartisan group was working to get the stimulus bill closer to the $800 billion floor the Administration insists is the minimum it will accept. That would necessitate finding as much as $45 billion more to take out of the bill that by some estimates has mushroomed to $935 billion. However, negotiators expect the final cuts to amount to $100 billion.

There is one bright spot: Oil is down on the New York Mercantile Exchange to under $40 a barrel. That’s the first time since 2005 it has been so low.

The economy will recover some day. I’ll admit I was a bit overly optimistic in an earlier article this year. It must have been the New Year’s bubbly.

Regardless, it will probably take at least six months of planning, testing, and search engine equity before any Web 2.0 sourcing tools you implement will have an impact. So you might want to start today to figure out when you pull the six-month “before the recovery” trigger.

To get a sense of this, I developed a very crude forward-looking indicator. This has to do with the number of searches on Google including the word “jobs.” People looking for work will search on Google before going to a job board using a phrase like “Java jobs Dallas” or “nurse jobs Memphis.”

It’s a lot easier doing this rather than going directly to a career site or hunting and pecking on a job board. I’ve been tracking “jobs” on Google since September 2008 when the number of searches was 110 million. It’s climbed steadily since then, and in January 2009 reached a peak of 151 million searches.

I predict that when the daily rate per month stops increasing it will be a strong indicator of a turn-around in about six months.

This will be confirmed when the daily rate peak is reached and starts to decline. This is a sure sign of a recovery, which will be about three months ahead of a pickup in hiring.

So with this in mind, now is the time to begin the planning process.

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It’s hard to believe how fast time goes by when our days as recruiting professionals are easily filled with overwhelming amounts of day-to-day operational activity. As the days, months, and sometimes years pass, inevitably the dreaded question will come — “What’s our recruiting strategy for this year and the years to follow?”

The usual recruiting leader response: “Hmmm … let me get back to you on that!”

The more the global recruiting landscape continues to change and shift, the greater the need for recruitment planning. Recruiting strategy is probably one of the most misunderstood and misused terms tossed about in our industry today. Try asking your clients and colleagues to define the term, and we guarantee that you will get very different responses. Recruiting strategy means entirely different things to different stakeholders (line managers, hiring leaders, HR professionals, recruiting professionals). Try Googling the term or searching through respected and trusted recruiting industry resources. Good luck … you won’t find much of relevance or interest!

Whenever we get the chance, we put the recruiting strategy definition and conversation to test with industry experts and leaders. We usually spend a good hour or two talking about the tired-and-true recruiting hot buttons:

• Recruiting processes and policies
• Recruiting programs
• Candidate attraction and sourcing techniques
• Recruiting technology (ATS’s and career websites)

These things are most definitely enablers, tools, or drivers of your overall recruiting strategy, but are not in themselves an organization’s recruiting strategy. So what exactly is a recruiting strategy then, and how do we as recruiting professionals create one for the organizations we work for? We don’t claim to have all of the answers, but the working definition we discuss and circulate with our clients goes something like this:

“An organization’s recruiting strategy is a blueprint consisting of levers or enablers (structural and organizational delivery design, strategic programs, policies, and technology) that drive desired recruiting outcomes (quality of hire, world-class hiring leader, and candidate experience, etc.). “

Think of an organizational recruiting strategy as a framework or model — a blueprint to drive desired outcomes. A great place to start in creating your organization’s strategy is to define the desired outputs of recruiting. These outputs should be closely linked to your organization’s unique mission, values, and goals.

Your organization’s desired recruiting outcomes will most likely touch on some common themes:

• Better fit hires who are more productive and stay on the job longer (quality of hire)
• World-class hiring leader and candidate recruiting experience
• Ability to meet peak demand of recruiting cycle or reduce costs and overhead during slower periods
• Key recruiting metrics and reports are readily available

After you have successfully outlined your organization’s desired recruiting outcomes, start outlining potential drivers of these outcomes. Some common drivers are:

• Structural delivery options (in-source, outsource, hybrid)
• Recruiting organizational design (centralized, decentralized, hybrid)
• Recruiting talent level and competency
• Hiring leader and other stakeholder recruiting capability
• Recruiting processes and policies
• Recruiting programs
• Candidate attraction and sourcing techniques
• Recruiting technology (ATS’s and career websites)

One of the biggest challenges we are faced with as recruiting leaders and professionals is getting on the same page with our clients, internal or external. How we define recruiting strategy with our clients is critical to expectation setting. If our mission is to build best-in-class recruiting capability, then we need to think macro and educate our clients accordingly. Ensure that you are speaking the same language as other recruiting stakeholders, or be prepared for disappointment. Recruiting or HR should not be creating an organization’s recruiting strategy in isolation.

Get the business side of your organization actively involved in the creation of the recruiting strategy. The recruiting strategy should be presented and approved in the same fashion as any other critical organizational strategy, the sales and marketing plan, the financial plan, or the overall talent or human resources strategy. As successful recruiting leaders, we need to be as focused on the big picture plan and objectives as we are on the details of our day-to-day accountabilities.

A career fair with an international flair is coming to San Francisco later this month. No ordinary career fair, ICF’09 features companies from around the world with an especially large contingent of French firms and even including the Office for Science and Technology of the French embassy.

In years past, upwards of 1,000 engineering, science, or business management students and professionals have attended the fairs. In 2008 a third of the 1,300 candidates came from the U.S. But almost almost as many came from Asia. Another quarter came from Europe.

And what a smart group. In 2007, 55 percent of the attendees had either a Master’s or a Ph.D.; 28 percent were MBAs.

The job fair is organized by Apec (Association Pour l’Emploi des Cadres), a French agency specializing in the employment of engineers, managers, and executives. The agency has been running internationally-flavored events since 2002 and has a small team in San Francisco that manages the International Career Fair each year.

Among this year’s sponsors include LinkedIn, the provincial government of Alberta, Canada, the European Union, and Bundesagentur Fur Arbeit, Germany’s federal employment agency. At this point, the website lists 20 participating employers. Not surprisingly, the number is about half the 40 participants last year, though more are expected.

Why is unemployment higher than it has been for decades and massive layoffs announced daily? Is something going on that is deeper than a recession? In past recessions the general reason for layoffs is twofold. The first reason is to use the recession as an excuse to remove the less-productive employees. Every organization has employees who perform marginally, but are not bad enough to discharge outright in normal times. The second reason is because customer demand for the products or services has declined and there is no need for workers who have nothing to do. The underlying assumption is that at some point customers will return and the workers will be re-employed as before. That’s the reason unemployment insurance (in the United States) is limited to a few weeks. The expectation is that workers will be brought back or rehired elsewhere in a short time.

On the other hand, recruiters and hiring managers still report that it is exceedingly difficult to find workers for certain key jobs which include computer-security experts, computer engineers, pharmacists, health workers, and even senior-level executives. The time it takes to fill open positions seems to have increased, and hiring managers frequently complain that they have to settle for “second best.”

Is there something we don’t understand going on?

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More bad news on the employment front today as Spherion reports it lost $126.2 million in the last quarter of 2008, giving it a $118.5 million loss for the year.

The staffing and RPO company’s 4th quarter revenues were $507.5 million, down $74 million over the same period in 2007. For the year, Spherion reported revenue of $2.19 billion versus $2.02 billion the previous year.

“Challenging economic conditions adversely impacted our company’s performance during the fourth quarter,” Spherion President and Chief Executive Officer Roy Krause says in the financial release announcing the results. “Our focus on cash flow and containment of operating costs continues to improve our financial stability and flexibility during these challenging economic times.”

The revenue figures were below Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts estimated 4th quarter revenue between $518 million and $522 million.

The news, however, didn’t negatively affect the already battered stock price. Spherion was up 3 cents on the day to $1.37. The stock price has been as high as $7.08 in the last year, but began a downward slide in April before dropping precipitously in October as the extent of economic crisis made headlines.

In releasing its numbers, Spherion said, “The continuing economic volatility makes it difficult to predict with any certainty the amount of demand that will be seen in the market, and therefore management has elected not to provide revenue and earnings guidance for the first quarter of 2009. The company believes that a combination of existing cash balances, operating cash flows, and existing revolving lines of credit, taken together, provide adequate resources to fund ongoing operations.”

U.S. employees will get pay raises averaging 3 percent this year, dismal by historical standards. Around the world, pay’s getting chopped hard, but increases are still bigger than in the U.S. In the Asia-Pacific region, for example, raises will be reduced by an average of 1.7 percent, but that still leaves them at 5.2 percent. They’re being cut in Latin America, but people are still going to get double-digit raises, on average.

Hewitt Associates studied more than 2,000 companies representing more than 25 million employees in 40 countries at the end of 2008, and found them responding the following way to the weak economy:

Hewitt reports that “two-thirds of companies (66 percent) in Latin America, 62 percent of companies in Europe, and more than half (59 percent) of companies in Asia-Pacific are setting aside a separate pool of money to reward high performers.” In the U.S., 18 percent are offering retention bonuses to high performers, and in Latin America, 16 percent are.

Have you gotten that call lately? Someone you know, respect, admire, used to work with, contacts you to let you know they are in transition and was hoping they could submit their resume to you. Of course, we are used to getting those calls. As recruiters, it’s common, everyday business to receive unsolicited resumes. In the past, we were much more able to help, and at times, some resumes that came our way were absolutely great matches to some of our searches.

But things are different now. The openings are few and the calls from candidates are multiplying. We are now hearing from our own friends, co-workers, relatives, neighbors, people we really care about. How can we help when there aren’t any openings? It’s a new game out there, but we still can make a difference, if we take a bit of time. Even though we cannot directly hire these people there are still many things we can do to help tip the scales in their favor with their search.

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Like it or not social networking, the next logical extension of the connectivity provided to us by the Internet, is here to stay. We are still in the relatively early stages of exploring the various applications of social networking. While many of these tools are aimed at younger generations for whom connectivity is an essential part of living, it hasn’t taken long for folks in all manner of business to begin exploring how social networking can add value for them. Employment branding, research, sourcing, and networking are all greatly facilitated by anything that provides connectivity between persons who share similar interests.

As a relatively early adopter and a futurist, I have been doing a lot of thinking about how social networking may impact the world of pre-employment assessment. The first real application that we will see is the use of social networking to help provide accurate pictures of the culture (also called work values) within an organization. This type of matching is a big part of what we speak about when we discuss the “fit” between a person and an organization.

Matching job seekers’ cultural preferences to the culture of an organization is hardly new. However, the ability for individuals to provide data that can be used to create aggregate profiles is a game-changer when it comes to the concept of using culture matching to help facilitate fit. Most commonly, fit has been explored as a diad between one individual and a referent group within the organization. While these matches may be meaningful, they are somewhat static and one-dimensional.

One of the most exciting things about web 2.0 and social networking is the ability for large numbers of people to make evaluations or judgments about something in such a way that a relatively “true” aggregate picture of that referent emerges. This sort of thing has the flexibility to quickly account for changes in the aggregate as it is continually evolving. These aggregate profiles also keep things very honest and often provide a very good source of information for those looking into the relevance or value of something to them personally.

It is not hard to imagine how collective data about an organization’s characteristics, values, and culture could have major value for those who are thinking about working there. There are already a number of websites where one can get honest (albeit sometimes biased) narrative about what it is like to work at a company. Those of us who design tests know that there is way too much left to chance when using open-ended narratives as the foundation for decision-making.

But what if everyone involved filled out a standardized questionnaire that was designed to measure various aspects of culture?

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When I supported the contract side of recruitment, it was sometimes necessary to share with temporary employees feedback from clients. It was more likely the case I would need to coach the direct supervisor to improve their communication with the temporary contractor and often this had the effect of improving their communication with the rest of their employees in turn. As we all know, there are lots of passive-aggressive department managers out there!

I’ve had a lot of experience writing performance appraisals for employees and reviewing performance appraisals written by other managers for their employees. I’ve spent a lot of time coaching managers on how to give constructive performance appraisals. So, I’m not surprised that many managers don’t use performance appraisals appropriately as a tool to give feedback to their employees. Often, I’ve heard managers vent about employees who aren’t meeting their expectations. In nearly all instances, I found performance appraisals were either not given to the employee or were written in such a manner as to be counterproductive. Even the administering of an otherwise ‘OK’ written appraisal can be detrimental to changing lacking behaviors by how the manager gives the appraisal.

There are ground rules to giving an effective performance appraisal.

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Finally, the action on the field was more exciting than the commercials. The last time that happened was in 2004 when Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction exposed her breast on national (global?) TV.

Coincidentally, that was also the last time Monster ran a Super Bowl ad. Coincidentally(?) it was also the year that Monster’s commercial (costing $2.3 million to air) placed in the bottom five on USAToday’s Super Bowl Ad Meter poll. The next year, in Super Bowl XXXIX (39, for the Roman numeral challenged among us), CareerBuilder made its debut with two monkey ads that catapulted it into the top 10 best ads.

Now, five years later, Monster returned to the Super Bowl with an ad featuring a moose head in the boss’ office with the other end of the moose in the face of a (soon to be active) jobseeker. CareerBuilder finally abandoned its monkeys alltogether, running an ad that illustrated the symptoms of job fatigue, including punching a stuffed koala in the face.

Air time this year was $3 million for a 30 second spot.

Here’s the Monster ad, which USA Today rated 6.95, not far off the 7.37 the CareerBuilder ad got, but enough to put it eight positions behind.

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To most people, the Super Bowl is a fun event to watch. However, because the game is highly competitive and because only the very best teams make it to the event, there are some critical lessons that corporate managers and recruiters can learn from competitive sports and the Super Bowl:

Lesson #1 -“Minor colleges” produce some of the best players on Super Bowl teams.

It’s clear from examining the player rosters that most Super Bowl players don’t come from powerhouse football colleges. Some examples include:

• The Star Players. The four most notable star players in the game all come from non-football powers. For Arizona, star quarterback Kurt Warner came from Northern Iowa – Burlington and star wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald came from the University of Pittsburgh. For Pittsburgh, starting quarterback Ben Rothlisberger came from Miami of Ohio and running back Willie Parker came from North Carolina. Not a single one of these players former university teams made it into the Associated Press Top 25 rankings this year.
• The Remaining Players. Of the 112 active players on the final rosters of the combined teams, only four came from this year’s top college teams that are perennial powerhouses (i.e. Florida, Oklahoma, and USC).
• The Arizona Cardinals roster successfully recruited players from non-powerhouse teams like Louisiana-Lafayette, Kansas State, Richmond, Northern Iowa, Hawaii, Brown, Delaware, Fresno State, Tennessee State, Trinity University, UC Davis, Northern Iowa, and of course, Clarion!
• The world champion Pittsburgh Steelers roster includes players from such non-powerhouse university teams like Hofstra, Clemson, Kent State, Marshall, Tulane, Southern Mississippi, TCU, Northern Colorado, Syracuse, Rutgers, Indiana (of Pa.), La.-Lafayette, and perennial powerhouse…Tiffin.

Lesson #2 –“Experience” isn’t required to become a Super Bowl head coach.

At least this year, previous experience as a successful head coach isn’t a requirement for getting your team to the Super Bowl.

The best head coaches aren’t always the most experienced. You can’t say the coaches of either team this year are experienced, veteran head coaches. Neither has been a head coach at a Super Bowl before. Both would have to be considered as “inexperienced” head coaches (both are only in their second year of being a head coach anywhere in the NFL), and both are relatively young.

Mike Tomlin of Pittsburgh, the NFL Coach of the year, is only 36 years old (the youngest Super Bowl coach ever) and Arizona’s Ken Whisenhunt is only 44.

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There’s a cool new app from a young startup making its first foray into the recruiting sector. Released by San Mateo-Calif. Appirio, the Referral Management Solution connects Salesforce and Facebook to allow a company’s employees to pass along job openings to their Facebook friends and refer them to hiring managers.

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As you get settled in and plan out your calendar, here are a few things of note around the ERE world this week:

On Tuesday, our sister site FordyceLetter.com will be debuting it’s newest Fordyce TV show – Keen on Recruiting with Margaret Graziano.  No need to RSVP to this one, just stop by www.fordyceletter.com at 2:00 pm ET and join the fun.  If you missed the past ones from Jeff Kaye & Dave Nerz you can still view them here, here, and here.

On Wednesday at 2:00 pm ET, brand entrepreneur Frank Lane is presenting a free webinar on how to use the principles of killer branding to recruit real stars. Frank will take his years of branding experience with companies such as Neutrogena, S. C. Johnson Wax, and hundreds of others he has consulted for and apply them to the recruiting space.

Friday is the final day to take advantage of some early bird discounts for ERE’s upcoming events.  The $200 discount for ERE Expo 2009 Spring in San Diego from March 30 – April 1 and the $400 discount for Fordyce Forum 2009 in Las Vegas from June 10 – 12 both expire.

And if you haven’t already taken a few minutes to take our annual reader survey, I would appreciate if you can help us out!

Have a great week, and feel free to ask me any questions about these in the comments below!

If the gods of software development are kind, we’ll be launching a major revamp to all things social on ERE.net in the next few weeks. It’s given me the chance to look at every aspect of the site with a fresh eye.

As an exercise, I wrote up a draft of what I believe ERE.net is all about — our raison d’être.  Here’s what I came up with:

ERE’s mission: To facilitate dialogue and learning about talent acquisition.

ERE’s values:

• Sharing & Freedom of Expression. We built ERE.net to make it easy for all talent acquisition professionals to share their knowledge and learn from their peers. We encourage you to speak your mind because diversity of opinion makes the conversation richer for all. We don’t agree with every opinion on ERE.net, and we don’t expect you to either.
• Debate & Civility. We believe that the best ideas are arrived at through the crucible of questioning and debate. In order for this dialogue to flourish, there must be an atmosphere of mutual respect and assumption of good faith on the part of all the participants. Comment on the content, not the contributor.
• Transparency. In any dialogue, we believe in personal responsibility and accountability. If we are not willing to put your true names and reputations behind a statement, we believe that it should not be said.

It’s only a draft for now, and I’m putting it out there for feedback from the ERE community. Are there big picture values that I’m not including?

If you have suggestions, let me hear them in the comments!

Principles of Open Space: Graphic by deb roby on Flickr (cc)