It’s an easy-to-use method to apply for jobs through corporate websites without having to reenter the data for each different employer. Jobseekers create a profile once, then by logging in to ResumePal from any participating employer’s site, they just click to apply. When they change their profile, by updating their contact information for instance, ResumePal automatically updates the database of every participating employer to which they’ve applied.

“It’s very similar to PayPal,” says Toole, vice president, employer marketing at Jobfox, which developed the service. “It’s convenient for jobseekers, but there are significant benefits for employers too.”

Keeping candidate information current is but one of those benefits. Another is that the profile is configured to fit the employer’s database specs. A third is the reduction in application abandonment. Who hasn’t begun applying for a job only to quit part way through because the process was too long or complicated for the job being offered?

“Candidate abandonment on corporate sites and job boards will go down, because they already have a profile that gets submitted by clicking the link,” Toole explains.

Simplifying the process to encourage more candidates might not seem a benefit to all recruiters, but another feature, one born of Jobfox’ DNA, reduces the impact of getting minimally qualified applicants. Candidates using ResumePal are matched to all jobs in a company’s ATS, and the quality of the match is ranked. So even as a candidate applies for one position, a recruiter at the receiving end can quickly see where else that person might fit. And yes, the candidate also is told of these other opportunities.

The other nice part of this is that employers using certain brands of ATS technology need do nothing more than opt in to the free program. The heavy lifting has already been done by the vendors who have signed on to offer ResumePal: ADP, Kenexa, Oracle and Oracle’s PeopleSoft, SilkRoad Technology, and Softscape. Plenty of big names there, accounting for several thousand employer installations and jobseeker applications that reach into the seven figures.

“There will be other announcements,” Toole emphatically declared when we asked about some of the other vendors. If ResumePal works as advertised, the momentum for it will build, just as it did for PayPal, he adds.

Jobfox has certainly taken pains to help speed ResumePal’s acceptance. By offering it through ATS vendors, there’s no cost to employers. They simply choose to use it or not. Even when they do, candidates have the option of applying in whatever fashion the company previously used or by submitting a ResumePal profile. No ResumePal? No problem. The jobseeker registers for ResumePal right on the employer’s site.

Jobseekers already registered on Jobfox are automatically enrolled in ResumePal. However, the opposite is not true; ResumePal participants must opt-in to Jobfox. They might as well, however, since they’ll get a list of other jobs matching their interests and background and reach a broader group of employers.

While we think jobseekers will embrace a universal job submission system, and recruiters will appreciate the automatic candidate updates and matching features, even sliced bread has its tradeoffs. In the case of ResumePal, jobseekers have to complete a Jobfox-styled questionnaire to create a profile. Standard resumes alone don’t work. Plus, ResumePal isn’t open to job boards where a majority of the searching is still conducted.

The other, and far bigger challenge, is how ResumePal benefits Jobfox. Toole tells us that once recruiters begin to experience the job matching, they’ll be open to becoming Jobfox clients. We suggested that sounds a lot like a loss leader, and Toole agreed, up to a point.

“Once they (recruiters) see how this works we think they’ll understand the value of Jobfox and become clients,” he says.

Should this catch on (a major consumer publicity push is to happen later this year, says Toole) there is the potential to monetize ResumePal by charging jobseekers. For that to work, the big job boards would have to become partners, as would the remaining big ATS vendors. From a jobseeker standpoint, updating one resume or profile and then having it instantly updated everywhere would be a convenience and a billable value.

About two-thirds of companies use “time to fill” as a metric, a measurement that Stephen Lowisz, for one, pooh-poohs.

Tony Blake, of last night’s recruiting-department-of-the-year award-winner DaVita, says the “infamous time-to-fill metric is somewhat of a necessary evil in recruiting.”

But, Blake said today at ERE’s Spring conference, a better metric is “time to find.” This is the time beginning when a job request comes in, ending in the time the recruiter sends the candidate to the hiring manager.

“If it took five weeks to fill the job,” Blake says, “but if they sent the job to the hiring manager after seven days, the time-to-find is seven days. The great sourcers on our team are literally sending great candidates in the first 10-14 days of the process.”

By lowering registered nurse time-to-fill 15.1%, DaVita saved $5.5M in potential overtime and contract nursing costs, while filling over 3,300 registered nurse positions.

Where jobseekers browse MS Office templates for resumes, Monster’s name now appears prominently as the power behind the career information. A how-to job search video on the site includes both companies. In a section titled “Four steps to your next job” step one informs jobseekers:

“Monster.com and Office Online are teaming up to make the whole job search process faster and easier.

“Office Online provides templates for your resume and your cover letter, and Monster.com provides the Search and Submit features, so you can find the job you want and apply for it — quickly!”

What makes this clever partnership a coup is that Microsoft is a 4 percent owner of CareerBuilder, with whom it also has a traffic deal benefiting the newspaper-owned job board in Europe. This new partnership puts Monster’s job search in front of active jobseekers who, according to the announcement of the deal, last year downloaded “18 million career-related templates.” What that means in people wasn’t specifically detailed, but it is potentially in the millions. (comScore Media Metrix lists Microsoft’s network of sites as third most trafficked in the world in February.)

More, though, than even the job searching, are the resumes Monster can expect from this partnership. The Microsoft career site has a resume upload tool right on its front page and the call to submit a resume is reinforced throughout the channel.

While certainly some of the Office users searching for new resume templates may be seasoned jobseekers polishing up older resumes, a sizable number may be first-timers or those who have been out of the job market so long they don’t have a suitable resume. This means Monster gets to capture a new group of jobseekers.

“This is an innovative and powerful alliance among two global leaders,” said Ted Gilvar, executive vice president and chief global marketing officer, Monster.com.  “The combination of Microsoft Office’s resume-building tools and Monster’s job opportunities and career content will provide job-seekers with tangible help at a time when they really need it.”

Congrats to this year’s winners:

• Best College Recruiting Program – Ernst & Young
• Best Corporate Careers Website – Yahoo
• Best Diversity Program – Microsoft
• Best Employee Referral Program – Accenture
• Best Employer Brand – Ernst & Young
• Best Retention Program/Practices – American Cancer Society
• Best Strategic Use of Technology – Microsoft
• Recruiting Department/Function of the Year – DaVita

Of course, none of this could have been accomplished without the incredibly hard work of our esteemed judging panel who graciously volunteered hours of their time to go through the entries.

If you want to learn more about what they did, tune in this afternoon to the live stream from ERE Expo at 11:15 a.m. PDT to watch the special panel session where many of the winners and finalists (including Valerie Kennerson, pictured, from the American Cancer Society) plan on sharing information about their winning strategies and tactics.

Discover a Company’s Phone Number Prefixes

A telephone number’s prefix is the first three numbers after the area code. Often, the phone number for a company’s receptionist will have a different prefix than that of the direct-to-employee phone numbers. For instance, the receptionist might be 703-123-4567 whereas the employee numbers begin with 703-934-xxxx or 703-434-xxxx.

To discover the various prefixes, place the company name and area code in a Google search box and hit “enter.” If you’re lucky, you will come up with more than the main number as employees are often listed in various places with their direct lines.

I was recently researching the phone banks of a company that only used one prefix — the same one for the main number and employees. When this happens, it’s a good bet the “direct dials” are going to lie somewhere “around” the main number. For instance: The main number is 703 456 2000. Dialing 703 456 2001 and then 2002 and then 2003 will, many times, reveal employees seated behind those numbers. Pretty cool, huh?

I could tell looking at the Googled results that the numbers appeared to fall in the 5000, 6000, 7000, and 8000 ranges even though the main number fell in the 6000 range. This told me that I was probably dealing with a location that held 2-3,000 employees.

Call After Hours

The next thing you want to do is dial through a long list of consecutive numbers around the numbers you have found. The goal is to get the name associated with each number.

If someone answers, usually they don’t reveal their names. The best time to get the name is to call after hours and on the weekends when you are more likely to get voicemails.

Program Your Phone to Dial Repeated Numbers Automatically

When I am dialing through a long list of phone numbers that all begin with the same seven digits, I program these first seven numbers into my telephone to allow me to dial them by pressing one button.

What Voicemail Reveals

A few voicemails will contain not only a name but other information as well.

“This is Sheila Jones. I’ve begun my retirement but if you have issues with the WolfCamp project call so-and-so at the site at xxx xxx xxxx or so-and-so here at the main office. Her number is.”

“Hi. This is Mike Peterson. I’m traveling overseas on business and will be back in the office on March 31. The best way to reach me is my email — send me an e-mail at MPeterson@thecompany.sw.com and I’ll get right back to you.”

“Marcus Meters here, HR Manager for the southwest. I’m out of the office until April 6, but if your matter is urgent contact Sandra Morelli at xxx xxx xxxx or Elizabeth Southland at xxx xxx xxxx or Fred Kloppers at xxx xxx xxxx.” Man, is that the whole HR department, or are there more?

“Jim Delaney’s office. If you need to schedule some of his time, contact me, Rachel Evans, at xxx xxx xxxx.”

“I rarely check this location’s voice mail. To reach me, call my cell at xxx xxx xxxx. I’ll get right back to you.” (Oh, by the way, calling the cell number revealed the guy’s name!)

These tiny bits of information give you a feel for what’s going on inside a company. For instance, I found that all those people Marcus counted off fell within 10 numbers of his number. This is a pretty good clue that people who worked in the same departments shared extensions close to each other. This makes it easier to identify people with specific skill sets inside the organization.

Jim Delaney is important enough to have someone answering his phone and scheduling his time, so this is a pretty good indicator he is in upper management or maybe even a C level. Checking an information source like Hoover’s sometimes will reveal that (and the correct spelling of his name!)

By the way, Rachel sat three numbers away on the extension tree so this bolstered my suspicion that whole groups mostly hung together in the phone directory.

Mike Peterson was so gracious as to reveal the company’s email domain and that is of interest many times to the customer. He also told us his job includes oversees travel and is a hint that maybe he is engaged in project management? Sales? Business Development? Could be anything but those come first to my mind.

Cell numbers left on a voicemail often indicate that a person is working in a sales capacity.

If this kind of work is too time-consuming and monotonous for you, there are people out there who are dying to do this work for you. For about a buck a name you can capture a particular company’s telephone directory that includes names, direct-dials, a few titles, and some information that gives you an insider’s feel for a particular company’s location. Imagine what you could do with all that!

• Confused
• Frustrated
• Overwhelmed
• Bored
• Annoyed
• Anxious
• Insecure
• Disappointed
• Regretful

Lee, speaking at ERE’s conference in San Diego, says these are the emotions your employees ought to be left with.

• Welcome
• Comfortable
• Secure
• Valued
• Important
• Proud
• Excited
• Confident

I was a junior at Stanford University and the president of Stanford Women in Business, a pre-professional organization of 400 undergraduate women. I helped recruiters meet talented women in our organization, and I had recently thought of an idea for a startup to improve diversity recruiting. I named the startup Anapata, the Swahili phrase meaning to find, to obtain, to achieve.

I had come to the ERE Expo 2008 to learn about the recruiting industry’s technological advances and needs firsthand from the movers and shakers of the industry.

Arriving at the conference mid-session, I started my experience at the exhibit hall. It was here that I found the world of recruiting software. In traditional online recruiting, there were the big job sites — Monster, CareerBuilder, Simply Hired, and the like — followed by the niche job sites, such as the Ladders and AfterCollege. There was no existing company that helped employers with diversity recruiting. None.

The hot new category of companies present in the exhibition hall was social media companies, LinkedIn being featured first, immediately next to the door. In addition, social media companies were highlighted all over the conference. Clint Heiden represented VisualCV in the Startup Forum panel. A whole session was dedicated to using Diigo for social webpage marking. Penelope Trunk, founder of Brazen Careerist and a keynote speaker, shared her expertise on Gen Y and emphasized the necessity of online social media as a modern recruiting tool.

Social media marketing was a hot strategy that most companies already included in their budgets; however, social media recruiting was new and brilliant. The job search was no longer a sporadic and private chore but rather a social activity and a continual process. In other words, the norm was becoming a world in which candidates considered their careers not one path to a dream destination, but a lifelong journey comprised of many interesting stopovers that is navigated by creating and maintaining relationships with recruiters, mentors, and colleagues via online social media.

I was inspired. I was so taken away by Penelope’s grasp on social media recruiting that I waited eagerly after her talk to ask for five minutes of her time and hear her thoughts on my new idea.

The idea was to use social media to transform diversity recruiting. I would provide group management tools and professional networks for diversity organizations across the country. The majority of diversity organizations at colleges and graduate schools do not have the budget or means to create a strong website. This lack of online presence makes it unnecessarily difficult, if not impossible, for outside entities — similar groups at other schools, employers, recruiters, and non-profits — to find or collaborate with these groups. Anapata would provide a place for these groups to maintain their web presence and their national network in one place, and in doing so, groups would help their members discover more employers, mentors, and diversity-focused resources towards achieving their career goals.

Student organizations are crucial to recruiting. Active participants in these organizations are those students who take the self-initiative to learn and engage in a particular subject (be it finance, clean energy, or engineering). These students are often the visionaries in their field. And, as a bonus, their participation in these organizations teaches them the extra ingredients for success — teamwork, leadership, follow-through, and dedication. There are a few companies that focus on helping employers reach student groups — a popular one being AfterCollege, a company that provides targeted job boards for student group websites. Direct student group recruiting, building a long-term relationship with group members and hiring the right students, however, would be Anapata’s unique platform.

It was in the conference center bar with Penelope (literally on drink napkins) that the business plan for Anapata became clear. I had originally thought of Anapata as a Google-like tool for recruiters to easily search resumes and meet diverse students for particular job opportunities. However, my means and market were not well defined. Five minutes turned into two hours, and by the time Penelope left the bar, I had a smart executable business plan. Penelope encouraged the idea of using social media, namely student group management and networking, as my primary means for diversity recruiting. We also discussed a number of initial markets and decided to focus on the legal profession. Minorities are underrepresented in law more than in any other line of work in the country. What’s more, the use of web-based recruiting and online networks in legal industry is abysmal. I was ready to revolutionize. Meeting Penelope at the ERE Expo was one of the best things to happen to Anapata.

A year later, Anapata is now an online diversity recruiting platform helping employers find talented and diverse law students at law schools across the United States. Anapata provides professional diversity networks, targeted job opportunities, and sophisticated online tools (such as mentor matching and web-based job interviews) to help diverse law students find the right employment. In turn, Anapata has not only created a place for employers to meet diverse talent from across the nation, but has also designed sophisticated recruiting tools to help employers find diverse candidates based on geographic interests, work preferences, group affiliations, academic performance, and extracurricular activities.

Attending the ERE Expo was an incredible experience for me. I heard recruiters’ discussions on student outreach and diversity firsthand, learned about the new methods and resources for successful recruiting, and gained a “pick up the phone” advisor — Penelope — who made clear to me that she is the type of advisor who will always “pick up the phone.” In the coming months, I’m excited to expand Anapata not only into a larger office space but also as a service to diversity networks in other industries. I’m so grateful for the support of ERE and Penelope, and I continue learning from them both through this exhilarating journey and recruiting revolution.

Unfortunately, the questions are rarely asked, resulting in inefficient, ineffective practices.

Do not pose these questions periodically; incorporate them into your approach to build an engaging candidate experience, a more compelling offer presentation, and ultimately, a more productive hire.

Questions for Candidates (Aimed at Improving Offer Acceptance)

• What criteria will you use to evaluate and rank offers you receive? When you’re targeting currently employed individuals or talent likely to receive multiple offers (I would argue that is the only talent you should be targeting), it’s important to focus your recruiting process not only on assessing the candidates skills, but also on determining the factors that will weigh heavily in their decision-making when the process is complete. By identifying the decision criteria early on, you can improve how you position the opportunity you are recruiting for by maximizing the talking points around factors you can realistically deliver and readjust expectations around those you cannot. Too many organizations push through the process only to make a generic offer according to a template that doesn’t address the candidate’s expectations.
• What three things would make this job superior to your current one? If you are truly targeting top talent, chances are a good percentage of the candidates who make it to the offer stage in your process are going to get a counteroffer from their current employer. Failing to identify what factors would make the new opportunity better than their existing opportunity is setting the stage to focus solely on money should an offer battle ensue.
• Who will you consult prior to making a final decision about an offer? Research shows that individuals generally don’t make important life decisions without consulting close friends, colleagues, or relatives. Not knowing who will have your candidate’s ear makes it nearly impossible to predict what issues the candidate’s advisors may bring up. This makes it even more difficult to provide relevant information throughout the process that arms the candidate with positive information to remedy any possible negative issues that could arise.

Questions to Ask During Onboarding and Orientation (Aimed at Improving the Recruiting Process)

• Can you list the most compelling factors that led you to accept our offer? Once the deal has been signed, candidates, now new hires, have less motivation to couch their responses to questions in an effort to improve their chances of getting what they want, in essence, they are more honest. One of the best questions you can ask during this phase of the relationship deals with identifying what about the company, the job, or the benefits was so compelling that the candidate accepted the offer. Identifying what is and is not compelling (the next question) can help you refocus how to communicate about opportunities moving forward. You can talk up the good stuff, while minimizing focus on the not so good stuff.
• Can you list your concerns and any reasons that almost led you to say no? Again, this reversal of the previous question helps you identify what elements need to be either addressed or dropped altogether from your sales approach.
• What part of the process worked the best? What part was frustrating? If you want to improve the candidate experience, identify the aspects of the recruiting process that both engaged and frustrated candidates. Use this information along with statistics about candidates dropping out of the process voluntarily to determine what steps in your process need to be refined in order to convert more talent.
• What caused you to apply for the position? If you want to identify how best to allocate your sourcing spend, you need robust metrics to tell you what messages are driving people to apply and where they came into contact with the message (i.e., the source of hire and branding points that led to interest). Many organizations attempt to collect this information via their recruiters, but the data is often corrupted by lack of adherence to source coding policies.
• What other firms did you seriously consider or receive an offer from? This question is important for two reasons. First, it helps you identify your talent competitors, which often includes organizations that do not compete directly with you on the product or service front. Second, it helps you identify offer elements from other organizations that talent of interest to you find compelling.
• Who else should we recruit from your previous employer? Truly great talent loves working alongside other great talent and generally leverages some influence over colleagues they respect and value at their previous employer. Asking this question not only helps you target future recruiting efforts, it subliminally prods the new hire to actively position the organization as a great next step when they talk to former colleagues. If they’re enthusiastic, you might also ask for their help in recruiting the top individuals via the referral program.

Questions to Ask During Onboarding (Aimed at improving the Management of New Hires)

• Why did you quit your last few jobs? If you want to reduce future turnover, learn what was frustrating enough to cause your new hire to start looking for a new job and eventually quit their previous job. Once you identify these reasons, it’s wise to make sure their current manager knows what they are and develops a plan to prevent similar issues.
• Help me understand what motivates you and what your manager could do to help you be as productive as you can be? Asking new hires early on what motivates and frustrates them can provide you with an arsenal of information a manager can use to manage workforce productivity 1:1. While it would be great if managers would accept ownership for doing this naturally, numerous studies show they don’t!
• Where would you like to be career-wise in three years? This question helps you understand early on what expectations and future job aspirations may influence on-the-job behavior and likely tenure. By identifying what timeline a candidate/new hire has in mind, you can work to make sure you deliver career advancement opportunities in line with their expectations (i.e., before they start looking for someone else to deliver them). Also, ask what they would like to learn, which can be used to structure development and retention efforts.

Questions to Ask Candidates Who Dropped Out of the Process Pre- or Post-Offer

Delaying asking these questions for a period of three months significantly increases the likelihood of hearing an honest answer. If necessary, use a third-party vendor to capture this information as former candidates will have even less motivation to lie.

• Why did you drop out of the process? For those who dropped out of your hiring process early, ask them to list the reasons why they dropped out. Frequently, you will find that your recruiting processes are too slow or too frustrating to engage top talent.
• Why did you reject our offer? Most candidates will provide an answer to this question when they turn down the offer. More often than not, that answer has to do with money. Saying it is the money is an easy out — it doesn’t require as much courage as saying the hiring manager was a jerk, the job sucks, or the company doesn’t provide the right resources to enable employees to do the job they were hired to do. Several studies that have compared offers ultimately accepted by talent who turned down other offers reveal that rarely is the money difference significant. Other studies reveal that if you delay asking the question for several months, you are more likely to get an answer that doesn’t focus on the money.

Final Thoughts

The single-most important activity recruiters can do to improve recruiting effectiveness is to gather information that helps explain why the process is working when it is, and why it is not when it isn’t. By embedding these questions in your recruiting process, you can gain the information needed to radically improve the effectiveness of your efforts.

Hundreds of you are already in San Diego or en route for the ninth annual spring ERE Expo. However, there are still a lot of benefits to the entire ERE community around ERE Expo.

For starters, check regularly on the ERE.net article feed for posts from our editors and authors onsite in San Diego. If you use Twitter, make sure to follow @ereexpo and the hashtag #ereexpo for up-to-the minute updates from the show.

Also, several of the sessions will be live streamed right here on the ERE.net homepage. All you need to do is activate the Ustream box on the top of ERE.net during show hours to watch. Of course, we can’t recreate the entire experience of being there, but we still want to bring you a flavor of some of the valuable content being shared at the Expo.

Here is the rundown of what will be streamed live from the show. For more details on these sessions and speakers, view the agenda here. (Note: all times listed are PDT time):

TUESDAY, MARCH 31:

• 8:45 – 10:00 a.m. – Welcoming remarks & opening address from our conference chair, Michael McNeal from Intuit
• 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. – Trapped by Success w/ Scott Pitasky from Microsoft
• 11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. – Lessons learned from the 2009 Recruiting Excellence Awards (which are to be announced on Monday night!)
• 2:15 – 3:30 p.m. – How 20th Century Fox is using web-based onboarding for branding and retention w/ Garry Ellis from Fox Filmed Entertainment
• 4:00 – 5:15 p.m. – Integrating social media & web 2.0 into your strategy w/ Ben Gotkin from RSM McGladrey

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1

• 8:45 – 9:00 a.m. – opening remarks from Michael McNeal
• 9:00 – 10:00 a.m. – Morning Keynote Presentation: How the New President Will Affect the Outlook for the Economy, Financial Markets & Jobs w/ Dr. Robert Genetski, Sr. Management Director, Chicago Capital, Inc.
• 10:30 – 11:30 a.m. – Panel Discussion: Managing Change
• 1:30 – 2:45 p.m. – Social Media Marketing for Recruiting w/ Rob Humphrey from Veer Orange
• 3:15 – 4:15 p.m. – LEAN Recruiting w/ Cathy Henesey from Trane
• 4:15 – 5:00 p.m. - Closing session – the take-aways

On Monday night in San Diego, the winners of the 2009 Recruiting Excellence Awards will be announced, so watch the site to find out who won this year.

For those of you in the San Diego area who won’t be attending the full conference, make sure to try and come to the San Diego area recruiters meetup on Tuesday evening at the San Diego Convention Center.

A partial agenda is now available for ERE Expo 2009 Fall, which will be returning to south Florida in September. Book early to take advantage of the the big early bird discounts currently available.

Also stay tuned for more information about the first ever Social Recruiting Summit taking place on the Google Campus in June. There is already some healthy discussion around the topic taking place on Twitter so make sure to follow @socrecruiting to participate.

If you are in San Diego this week at ERE Expo and plan on providing updates to the community, please leave a note in the comments below with your blog address or Twitter account so others can follow as well.

Research is an oft-forgotten yet essential business tool and can save money, time, and resources. While the cost of entry for my basketball pool was only $25, the stakes are significantly higher when assessing the costs to launch a new branding campaign, career site, or national recruitment program. Small mistakes can create long-term headaches like high turnover, poor performance, or dropped conversion rates.

So before the next round of hoops begins, lets take a moment to look at some of the different kinds of research there are, and when it makes the most sense to launch yours.

There are three kinds of research.

Secondary. Secondary research already exists, and is therefore the least useful in helping you, since every project in unique. Your company, your culture, and your objectives are different from everyone else’s on your buddy list, so you can’t expect to have the same outcomes from similar projects that you launch. (Secondary research did however, account for my early success in the basketball pool.)

Quantitative. Quantitative research is often used as an independent survey tool, but it is most effective when used to validate the findings of your qualitative study. Think quantity, think survey, think slice and dice statistics. It’s much more objective since when the questions are crafted correctly, the answers are unbiased. The costs of running quantitative research surveys have come down considerably through online tools like SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang. The trick is getting the right analysis from the data. Make sure that you get a fair-size sample pool across geography and skill sets, if applicable to your project.

Qualitative: Qualitative research should be both the beginning of your discovery process as well as the launching platform for any next research steps. Bring in a small sampling of the “right” types of people and do a focus group, in-depth interview, or telephone campaign. The questions are open-ended and the answers are subjective. A trained moderator will probe to explore the deeper perceptions, opinions, and feelings about your topic. Think quality, ideas, and individual interpretation.

The costs of launching qualitative research vary, but expect a price tag of $3,000 to $5,000 per group, depending on the circumstances, and don’t make the mistake of going cheap and doing it yourself. You’ll be biased and won’t get good data from the effort.

Qualitative research using employees can help define: Internal culture; employer brand and value propositions; alignment of executive strategy with general population; and the strengths/weaknesses of your recruiting campaign among target populations.

Launching internal research using your own employees? It shouldn’t take more than two hours at the max. Get a skilled facilitator and have it off-site. The more people can rely on anonymity, the closer you’ll get to the truth.

Offer an incentive. These can range anywhere from a really nice catered lunch or dinner to $100 gift cards depending on the circumstances. If you’re doing a group with commissioned salespeople, consider that they might be losing revenue from possible missed sales.

Have a well thought-out discussion guide, but allow for the flexibility to go “off-road.” I’ve been involved in situations where from the moment the first group begins, I know I’m in for a bumpy ride. Whether there was a disconnect between assumption and reality or a significant event that shaped the course of the conversation, don’t worry if a group goes somewhere unexpected. Often that’s the precise outcome we’re hoping for because it demonstrates engagement of the attendees.

As in the adage “if it can’t be measured it can’t be managed,” research is the fundamental starting point of any new effort. For a cost of less than $20,000 and a window of 90 days, you’ll reap the benefits from new insights or a confirmation of gut instincts that ensures the successful outcome of your project.

As we enter a new and more challenging phase for the global economy, we’ve all seen a sharp increase in the numbers of capable candidates who are available. With a market like this, which should dispel any competitive fears talent acquisition teams feel, I think we have a great opportunity to re-assess how we relate to each other.

Our Problems

From my recent conversations with recruiters in other companies (admittedly all IT firms), it has become clear to me that the main challenges that we face on a day-to-day basis are not related to our ability to source appropriate candidates. Nor are we often faced with a race to hire a particular individual before the “competition.”

More often, the issues that demand our urgent attention relate to internal processes and systems. As our CEO recently said of Red Hat as a whole: “We are succeeding despite our processes.” I would suggest that this is something many of us can relate to.

The most vocal and audible advocates of solutions to our problems are often those third-parties who are keen to sell us something, be it an applicant tracking system, or managed resourcing solution, or something else entirely. Where such a vested interest is held, we cannot rely on any sort of objective assessment of the situation.

Where Are Our Solutions?

So if we shouldn’t turn to the vendors for insight into best practices, where do we look? The key to understanding how to improve our own systems is to look at what other recruitment teams are doing, and to learn from their experiences. In order to do that, we need to clearly define our own priorities. Is it more important for us to keep hiring managers happy, or to foster enthusiasm in our candidate community? Maybe there is a more tactical goal, such as a reduction in the usage of staffing agencies.

Either way, there is bound to be another organization who has confronted the same issues before. We all have valuable experience from our own time in recruitment, but we should also never pretend to know everything.

Knowledge Shared Is a Problem Halved

Our company has a cultural bias towards transparency, and I think the open source software model is something that our industry can draw upon. We are all striving towards similar goals, and we can really evolve talent acquisition as a commercial discipline if we pull in the same direction. The U.S. has a head start in this regard; in other parts of the world dedicated internal recruiters are not yet a common feature of the corporate landscape.

Through groups on LinkedIn and ERE, in-house recruiters are starting to connect with each other. If we are all going to evolve, we also need to contribute. Tell the industry what you’ve tried, or what you’re thinking of trying. Share what worked and what didn’t, and see how it compares with the experiences of other teams.

If we as corporate recruiters want to adopt best practices in our own areas, we need to identify what best practice is. We should not assume that the most painless procedures that we have used ourselves in the past are actually the best systems in the industry as a whole … but they might be.

Open yourself up to scrutiny. Sure, it might be a little embarrassing at first to hold your hand up and say “I’m a recruiter, and my processes don’t work,” but you’ll feel a whole lot better for it afterwards. And who knows, you could just learn something in the process.

Big deal, right? Yes, it is. His agent prospects have to have $50,000 in the bank and want to be their own boss. Ideally they’ll have some insurance experience in their background or at least have held a business leadership role. All of them are expected to foot the bill for their Allstate training.

Then, when they finally start selling Allstate’s auto, home, and life insurance, they’ll be independent contractors who will have to cover their office and living expenses until the business starts making money, which can take more than a year.

Now how easy does it sound? Riiiiiiight.

Even in an economy that has seen thousands of financial professionals laid off, Allstate recruiters have to work every angle to meet their 2009 goal. He oversees recruiting efforts for part of the country. A second senior HR manager oversees another team.

The methods include posting the opportunity on job boards, especially on niche sites like CivilianJobs.com, for reentry military, and BrokerHunter,where a video is available. His recruiters net leads from SalesGenie, ZoomInfo, and LinkedIn then email, and call the prospects. They do direct mail, email blasts, and career fairs. And they, or at least Owens, and other Allstate managers, talk up the company in the media.

In fact, the Allstate push to expand its agent force came to our attention through an angle we thought unusual. Allstate issued a press release about its recruiting efforts in Texas:

“Allstate has launched an aggressive recruitment campaign targeting professionals caught in the recent waves of lay offs and pay cuts. The company plans to sign-on at least 150 new agency owners across the Lone Star state by the end of 2009.”

Allstate’s Texas lead, Todd Martin (his official title is HR Business Partner), in a brief conversation told us the press release had the desired effect. It attracted dozens of inquiries from prospects, not to mention attention from media both in and outside Texas. “Calls, just like you,” Martin says.

The Allstate campaign is not unusual for the company. It’s been doing this for more than a few years as the company targets states and regions where it forecasts the best opportunity for growth. Texas is one of those areas.

What’s changed, Owens says, is that the recruiting is now done entirely in-house. The company hired 39 recruiters last year to do the prospecting. It’s too early, he says, to tell what effect that and the recession have on both the quantity and quality of the candidates. It takes five to six months to onboard the prospects and get them through the training.

So far, the response is “about the same” as in previous years, Owens observes, though, he notes, there are some geographical differences. Efforts in America’s troubled Motor City — Detroit — produced a noticeably bigger response than in previous years.

We didn’t find out how many prospects Owens and his counterpart, Susan Meehan, also an Allstate HR Senior Manager, figure it will take to get the 1,413 he needs, but it’s likely to be many times that number.

The company has AllstateAgent.com, where prospects are greeted with the headline “Become an Allstate Agent, Agent Opportunities for Entrepreneurs.” The entrepreneurial approach is emphasized throughout the site. There’s an entirely separate site for the personal financial representative opportunities. These are the ones requiring a securities license.

Which of the efforts produces the most candidates? The company’s referral program, Owens tells us. It typically pays bonuses of $1,000 to $2,000 for successful referrals, though there are occasions when the payout can reach $10,000. As you might expect, there’s also a twist to this program: In some areas, anyone is eligible for the referral bonus, employee or not.

The chart shows the percentage of companies adjusting their restaurant staffing levels, including reducing number of managers per unit, number of hourly employees per unit, or number of hours.

The data is from a People Report study of hundreds of restaurant-chain executives.

Fifty-one percent of companies say they’re reducing or planning to reduce the number of managers per unit, while only 34% are doing so with hourly employees. Also, 42% of the companies have reduced or plan to reduce the hours worked by their restaurant employees.

In addition to cutting staff, the study finds that most chains have either closed down a restaurant unit or slowed the pace of new openings.

Most of the job cuts and restaurant closings, the study says, “seem to be already in the past, which means we should see job losses in the industry starting to slow down.”

Some of them will most likely slip into history with little impact, but others will become the new way we do things.

Twitter is a recent example of an application that seemed of little practical use to recruiting until hundreds of people began to apply their creativity and developed interesting and useful ways to use Twitter for recruiting. It is being used by many organizations to announce new jobs to those potential candidates who follow them. It is used to help the recently unemployed stay connected and aware of open positions. It is used to communicate with a select group of prospective candidates or to students on a campus.

Here are three trends that I see as potentially significant. Please leave a comment letting us know what you are seeing, and what other tools, applications, or practices you think are emerging.

Simplicity in Sourcing

The first of the emerging trends is a turn to simpler and more basic ways to find talent. With a rise in applicants, many organizations are finding it less necessary to deploy search specialists or engage in complex sourcing strategies. They can focus, instead, on building their employment brand, often by using Facebook or some other social networking tool. They are also screening existing candidates better and are more focused on building a talent pool or community that can be tapped into as needed. In addition, many are tapping their own workforce for internal redeployment and for referrals.

All of this has reduced the need for in-depth Internet search and it has also lowered the need to post to job boards. In organizations with proactive recruiting teams, internal placements may reach as high as 15% while over 30% may come from referrals. With another 20% being sourced by third-party recruiters for reasons of confidentially or because the particular job is very specialized, only a small percentage needs to be sourced in other ways. A good social network page linked to an interactive career site can probably close much of that gap, leaving a tiny fraction to Internet search or job boards.

As I wrote in my article last week, a comprehensive talent strategy combined with internal development can reduce recruiting requirements significantly. I see this as a continued and growing trend, which ultimately means organizations will employ fewer recruiters but highly skilled in networking, relationship building, and who deeply understand the business.

Social Networks

We are seeing the power of social networking in recruiting growing faster than any other segment. Candidates are able to substitute their social networking profile for a resume at some organizations. Jobvite, an emerging applicant tracking tool listed by Gartner as one of its “Cool Vendors for Human Capital Software 2009,” allows candidates to link to their LinkedIn profiles. No need for a resume or to fill out anything. Jobvite also provides an organization a button to place on their career site that lets prospective candidates see the people in their network who already work at that organization. This provides candidates with ready-made connections into the organization as well as a source of information.

Social networks will become the ultimate sourcing and screening tools. Recruiters and particularly hiring managers will be able to see a more 3-D version of a person and get a much better sense of their past accomplishments and capabilities. But there are negatives, and many recruiters are concerned about candidate privacy and discrimination. The truth is, discrimination can and does occur in face-to-face conversations, in interviews, and even over the phone because of accents and the way people phrase things. Every new technology and application has to pass through a maturity curve, which is happening rapidly for social networks. Laws will change and policies will adapt to accommodate them.

I think that over time candidates will find that they are better treated and more completely able to present themselves than they can today. I think that as social networking matures, candidates will find themselves moving from a generic social network like Facebook to more specific ones aimed at an industry segment or a profession, and then perhaps to organizational-specific ones. We will have to wait a while to see what model eventually takes shape, but the roots are growing and resumes, traditional profiles, and static career sites will fade away.

Internal Redeployment

Smart organizations prevent the needless loss of talent by developing barrier-free internal transfer polices, by shifting talent and skills as jobs change, and by operating development and coaching programs to help employees successfully bridge skill and experience gaps.

They are also beginning to practice sustainable talent management — sizing the workforce for sustainability through good and bad times — and filling peak needs with temporary and contract staff. But sustainability is not just about numbers; it is also about having the right skills spread across all employees. This means development is continuous, internal movement common and often, and that a goal is for every employee to be able to function well in three or four different positions.

The natural result of this will be more focus on employee development, the rise of learning portals with relevant information and on-line training classes; the capturing of the knowledge of experienced employees on videos (using storytelling, talking about how projects were completed and barriers overcome, and by sharing technical knowledge that might be useful to those who follow); and connections to coaches and experts willing to answer questions or provide skill training.

We will see that more and more people will stay with a single employer for longer periods of time, as they find it easy to get refreshed and retrained.

I suspect that our colleagues on the HR generalist side could also do the same. Why is that? What causes the separation that sometimes exists between staffing and generalists? Why is it we work so well with some HR generalists and have a terrible time with others? What can we do to minimize the friction and maximize collaboration?

Staffing As a Center of Expertise

Historically speaking, in most organizations, staffing was typically one of a handful of core competencies commonly possessed by human resource generalists. In the 1990s, this shifted dramatically as HR became increasingly specialized and we saw the development of Centers of Expertise. These Centers of Expertise provided specialized support that was scaleable, cost effective, and capable of providing a higher level of increasingly complex functional support. They also allowed HR generalists to evolve to what was commonly referred to as a “business or strategic partner” role. So, good in concept, but why does it fail so often in practical application?

Role Clarity and Collaboration

There are basic tools that we use to help achieve role clarity. They include methods like service-level agreements; “RACI” charts to delineate who is “responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed”; or process maps that define processes and accountability. Often, the use of those tools can eliminate a big part of the dissonance that may exist between staffing and HR generalists. Sometimes, though, just defining processes and roles isn’t enough. Some generalists define themselves as the “broker” of all things HR for the internal client.

I’ve illustrated what I call the “HR Collaboration Model.” The first example illustrates the “broker” method with HR as the intermediary between staffing and the client. The second example is the collaborative model which works best since it empowers the HR generalist, enables staffing to work directly with the hiring executive (a key for successful staffing), and gives the hiring manager the support of both the Staffing Center of Expertise and their HR generalist. This is when staffing works best and I call it the “Power of 3″; more on this later.

The Process / Service Continuum

Another source of friction between HR generalists and Staffing occurs whenever either party takes an extreme position in what I call the “process/service continuum.” Some generalists adopt a position that says, “I’ll do whatever my client needs (regardless of process) because that’s my role.” Meanwhile, their Staffing counterparts can sometimes be equally inflexible by being overly process driven in a way that communicates “… regardless of what our internal client needs, we follow the process.” Of course, neither position is right. If you’re a generalist, you need to know when to consult or even disagree with your internal client. If you’re a Center of Expertise, knowing when to deviate from process is every bit as important as having a process in the first place!

Execution, Structure, and Communication

Like any relationship, the Staffing Center of Expertise & HR generalists cannot work well together without a basic foundation of “mutual trust.” So, here are three ideas to build trust:

• Execution: The Staffing Center of Expertise builds trust through effective execution, knowledge of the business, and over-communication on results (both positive and negative).

• Structure: Embed your recruiters into the business or function as much as your organization will allow. This means that they should be part of both the staffing team and an extended team member with the business and the HR generalist.

• Communication: The HR generalist is the person who most holistically owns the internal client relationship. Consequently, the Staffing Center of Expertise must over-communicate with the HR generalist on significant issues that arise.

The Power of “3″

I’ve come to believe that the fundamental reason human resources exists can be summarized in one word: talent. Everything we do really is about recruiting, retaining, or developing talent. Whether it’s our total reward system, our training infrastructure, or organization development processes, they’re here (and, as a function, we’re really here) to help our companies succeed through talent.

I’ve written a lot in this article about the differences between staffing and generalists but, of course, to our internal clients, we are all human resources. They don’t have the perspective of functional silos that we sometimes hold. Despite this, all too often we throw each other under the bus to our collective detriment.

When we work together as a team, the upside however is equally promising. Like most business issues, most staffing issues are not one-dimensional. Anytime I’ve encountered a significant staffing-related problem there’s almost always a combination of factors involved. The fact is that usually Staffing alone cannot solve these problems. We really do need an engaged hiring manager and a strong HR generalist partner to help us overcome the everyday problems and systemic issues we face in staffing. Without this teamwork, staffing is a very frustrating profession with little chance of success. On the other hand, with this teamwork there are very few staffing obstacles that cannot be overcome. That really is the “Power of 3.” It is the hiring manager, the HR generalist, and the Staffing professional working together in an organized, aligned way to succeed in recruiting the best talent.

It’s the type of teamwork that can make us a lot more effective and, while we’re doing it, we can have a lot more fun along the way!

The 34% is employee referrals. The 20% are recruiter-sourced. The 17% is from the company’s site, though of course that begs the age-old question about how people arrived at the site. The remainder: 15% job boards; 11% temp conversions; 3% internal transfers.

The chart’s not so unusual. What we like is that TiVo shares it with candidates on its career page. The DVR leader will speak (commercial-free) at ERE’s 2009 Fall conference in Florida.

For more on referrals, check out the May issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, where Accenture will be profiled. The company’s a candidate for an ERE Recruiting Excellence Award in the employee referral category (winner to be announced at the upcoming Spring conference).

Sjoerd Gehring, global employee referral lead for Accenture and a marketer by trade, led the design, pilot, and now the global roll-out of a new employee referral program for the management, consulting, and technology services giant. Gehring listened to employees, met their needs, and got a big return.

“In looking at the candidate referral process from a marketing perspective, it’s often focused on the needs of the HR department, not on the needs of the referring employees,” says Gehring. “The key is to listen to your employees’ expectations and keep their desires at the heart of the program.”

Gehring built a rapid rewards feature into Accenture’s plan, which pays the referrer a partial bonus of 10 to 20% (what he calls a teaser bonus) just for referring a quality candidate. The balance of the bonus is paid to the employee immediately, once the candidate is hired. His philosophy is simple: First, a referring employee is not an agency, so they shouldn’t be held accountable for vetting candidates. Also, it’s less expensive and more productive to encourage employee referrals by offering small bonuses than to pay agency fees.

During the Accenture pilot, referrals increased from 14% to 32% of sourced candidates over the prior year, and the number of new hires from referrals increased from 36 to 318 — all because Gehring offered quick bonus payments, with no strings attached.

by Todd Raphael and Leslie Stevens

Executives were asked, “How long, in months, can a top manager remain unemployed before it hurts his or her career?” The mean response was nine months, with a significant number saying 10 to 12 months.

employeescreenIQ says it found “an alarming 57 percent of requests for employment and education verifications were rejected when an electronically signed consent form was used.” The company, one of the largest global screening firms, conducts hundreds of thousands of these verifications for companies of all sizes, including several on the Fortune 500 list. In the majority of screens, the former employer or academic institution insists on first getting a copy of the subject’s signature.

Schools rejected electronic signatures 59 percent of the time, while employers were only slightly better, rejecting them 55 percent of the time.

“We find that most employers and academic institutions still want to see an actual signature before releasing information,” employeescreenIQ’s Vice President of Quality Service, Kevin Bachman, says in the announcement the company issued today. “If an HR manager can’t get the information they need to make a hiring decision, there’s the likelihood they could simply move onto another candidate.”

When we spoke with Bachman he told us there have been instances where a school requires a consent form be mailed and the verification results mailed back. But even faxing back a consent form plays havoc with the 24 hour turnaround time many employers have come to expect. employeescreenIQ advises its clients who absolutely, positively can not wait to obtain a handwritten signature on a consent form at the same time their prospect provides an electronic one.

We thought it odd that a faxed form was considered more reliable than an electronic signature, but Bachman says, “We are all conditioned to accept the scribble.”

Congress sought to change that in 1999 when it directed federal agencies to accept electronic signatures on the same terms  they did handwritten (wet) signatures. A year later Congress passed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act validating the use of electronic signatures for contracts and other legal documents in interstate commerce. Most states have followed suit. However, consumers can still insist on providing handwritten signatures, and the law doesn’t bar a firm from requiring a wet signature.

The acceptance of electronic signatures in HR is about on a par with the adoption of electronic signatures as part of electronic contracting. The International Association for Contract & Commercial Management found in 2007 that significantly less than the 45 percent of the surveyed firms which had adopted electronic contracting also accepted electronic signatures. Technology and software firms had the highest rate (45 percent), while none of the life sciences firms in the survey used electronic signatures for their contracts.

ATS vendors have also found clients having to scan in handwritten consent forms.

In the employeescreenIQ press release, ATS vendor iCIMS says it hasn’t seen any particular demand for e-signature capture and use. Instead, the press release quotes Susan Vitale, iCIMS director of marketing, saying:

“While we are open to pursuing more advanced E-Signature technologies, many of our clients are not demanding these alternatives. Instead, they are looking for printing, signing, and scanning capabilities, which we do offer today. Our platform allows for one-click access to view electronic iForms, such as background checks, in a Word version, which can then be printed hard-copy, signed off on, and then scanned back into the system very easily. While this is not necessarily optimizing the automation process, customers who pursue this route are typically less concerned with full automation and more concerned with viewing a ‘real’ signature.”

You all have seen me write a few times about relying on instinct and your sixth sense when sourcing. But if you don’t have a layered knowledge and experience in the sourcing process, your sixth sense and intuition are going to bring you nothing but a lot of trouble! Using your spidey feelings should only be a part of your expertise.

An unorganized, hit-or miss approach lies at the heart of many sourcing failures. This contributes to an extremely high cost of sourcing in many organizations that is nothing more than inefficiency, laziness, and unnecessary waste. If your sourcing projects begin with a finding of facts rather than a set of guesses your training and instincts while sourcing will serve you best.

Sourcing isn’t a dart game, though the “target” image is used by some in representing it. To hit that bulls-eye you must aim with a deadly accuracy, and that exactitude can only be achieved with a mastery of a certain set of activities. When you’re using the telephone for your sourcing labors, many calls “miss their mark” because they’re not pointed at the right targets. Dartboard sourcing is a good way to fail.

Usually a sourcer isn’t pointed at the right target because the sourcer has failed to ask of the customer what those right target accoutrements might be. “Ask the customer?” you might be thinking with horror. “They’re paying me to know! Why would I do that?” is the knee-jerk reaction of some. These sourcers couldn’t be more wrong. Your customer is paying you to ask the right questions, and most customers understand, and appreciate your curiosity, implicitly. I find that most of my paying suitors are more than willing to spend whatever time is needed to apprise me of the particulars of the sourcing task they’re setting me to.

I wrote a piece on sourcing here on ERE a couple years ago called “Help Me Help You.”

One of the questions I ask my customers in the “Help Me Help You” document that I revealed in that piece is who the person we’re seeking might report to and who that person might report to. This information allows me to skirt around the object of my pursuit on my reconnaissance missions gathering information about the sourcing target(s) I am seeking. Another important question (that is not contained in that 2006 piece) is who reports to the person we seek? Those persons are all conduits of information!

By calling the persons above and below the title strike* I am focused on I become privy to information that I am sure those persons possess. Who doesn’t know who they report to and who doesn’t know who reports to them? Many times it’s not even really those particular persons I talk to — after all, it’s awkward, isn’t it, to call and ask someone, “Who do you report to?” or “Who reports to you?” Those are not questions usually generated in the normal habitat. I talk to administrative assistants many times who support the particular group I’m after. Or I talk to the executive assistant of the C-level person over the group. Or I talk to the receptionist who can look above and below in an org chart for the persons I’m asking after. It’s not hard to ascertain if she can do this. You simply ask her. It’s all good, and I use whatever technique that works.

Another question in my “Help Me Help You” document addresses the actual plea to tell me what I probably do not know — the inside scoop, the dirt, if you will. I couch it in the following term: “Anything else you view as important and that you think I have a need to know.” You’d be surprised how many times this is one of the most filled-out portions of the questionnaire. And you’d be double surprised to know how often the information is of great value, even to an experienced sourcer. There’s a saying about the only dumb question being the unasked question. It couldn’t be more true than in sourcing!

Most of the success you will meet (or not meet) with as a telephone sourcer will be found in the pre-flight workup of each job. I tell my students that phone sourcing is like a plane coming down on the tarmac for a landing — the first thing you do is observe from on-high, and then you descend, straightening your wings as you do, and then you touch down. The success of that first “touch” is mostly contingent on the planning you’ve put into your job. If the landing strip isn’t correctly aligned, if the timing and approach of your touch-down isn’t strictly observed, if your wings aren’t level, you’re going to crash and burn!

Now is the time to hone your phone sourcing knowledge and skills like never before. When recruiting comes roaring back — and it will come roaring back — if you’ve been making assumptions and guesstimating when you make your unprepared sourcing calls and haven’t been doing exactitude plane maintenance and schooling, you’re going to pay a heavy price.

*Title-Strike: Titles vary depending on the size of the company, but in general, the bigger the company, the lower your title-strike should be, and the smaller the company, the higher the title-strike can be. In other words, a manager level in a $10-billion-sale company could be at the same experience level as a director in a $900-million-sale company or a VP in a $100-million-sale company.