The first reminds me of that expression about drinking your own Kool-Aid. It’s a video starring Human Factor International’s Managing Director Jeffrey Jones. Human Factor International is an executive coaching and transcultural leadership training firm. The company says its process “is designed to help executives close the gap between where they are and where they want to be in their personal and professional lives.”

Now watch the video and you’ll see why I extracted that phrase from the company website, though I don’t believe HFI meant to imply the process accelerates at 32 ft/sec squared.

Besides Jones, Asia Pacific Director of Business Development Phil Guo, and Media Director Thomas Irre took the 61-story jump off the Macau Tower. The press release the company sent says, “The three made the leap in keeping with an HFI principle that breakthroughs frequently occur when you’re outside of your comfort zone.”

While we’re watching videos, here’s the Fan Favorite from among those submitted in response to CareerBuilder’s call for user-created commercials.

CareeerBuilder launched a contest last spring offering a $100,000 prize for the best user video, which it would then professionally produce for use during Super Bowl 2010.

Hundreds of entries were submitted, which are here on YouTube. CB decided that three of them were so good it awarded each a grand prize check. The three winners, the fan’s choice, and the contest rules and other details are available here.

At least one of the videos will be shown during the game on February 7th, as CareerBuilder makes its sixth consecutive Super Bowl appearance. You may recall its debut for Super Bowl XXXIX when CareerBuilder hit the ratings and critics jackpot with two monkey ads. The company — actually, its ad agency, Cramer-Krasselt — dovetailed it with an online viral email campaign called Monk-E-Mail, so successful it’s still active on the CB site.

Cramer-Krasselt and CareerBuilder later had an acrimonious divorce when a subsequent Super Bowl “Survivor” takeoff ad campaign failed to produce similar results.

Monster is reported to have bought one commercial, which AdAge implies will focus on its “Director of Fandemonium” contest. AdAge says CareerBuilder’s one commercial buy will air during the second quarter. The 2010 Super Bowl ads, which are nearly sold out, reportedly cost between $2.4 million and $3 million for 30 seconds.

CareerBuilder, BTW, was rated 26th on Glassdoor’s list of the 50 best places in the U.S. to work. When you figure that Glassdoor is a place where the disgruntled can rant freely (and often do), that’s quite an achievement.  Matt Ferguson, CB CEO, got a 78 percent approval rating.

Fortunately, it isn’t terribly difficult to communicate better. It does, however, require recognizing that emotion, not logic, is the driving force, and it requires starting now — not next week, next month, or next year. If you wait until people are leaving, it’s too late.

So how do you highlight someone’s contributions? I offer more, detailed suggestions in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, but for now, I suggest the following in brief.

Take the opportunity to praise them in public. Note that this does not mean comparing them to others on the team; that only creates resentment and embarrassment for all concerned. Talk about the importance of the effort they’ve put in, and find small ways of demonstrating your appreciation. It doesn’t have to be fancy, especially in a time of tight budgets. Honest appreciation goes a long way.

The next step in keeping people is to make sure that their contributions are not just recognized, but are also important. Visible contributions that are not valued by the company are not going to be very compelling. Likewise, contributions that someone does not perceive as important will not serve to keep them at the company.

A cousin of mine worked for NASA in the early 1970s. He was part of the team designing the space shuttle. Due to security issues, he and his team had no idea what part of the shuttle they were working on; it was the quintessential “clean room” project, where they would be given instructions and specifications, but no context. When the day of the grand unveiling arrived, he found out that he had been designing the door lock. He walked out of the unveiling and out of NASA.

If you want to keep someone, make sure you frequently highlight how their work fits into the long-term vision of the company. Help them see that their work matters to the team and the company. Build a sense of partnership and status. They’re not a hired mercenary; they’re a trained professional providing valuable services. Again, demonstrate appreciation whenever possible. Find ways to reward people for their efforts, but don’t make the rewards the point of the work.

Make people feel competent and appreciated. No one likes being reminded of embarrassing incidents, of failures, of things that didn’t work out well. On the flip side, practically everyone loves to be reminded of successes. As the old saying goes: nothing succeeds like success. As the lesser-known corollary goes, nothing keeps people at your company from leaving like the feeling that they’re in an environment where they’ll be successful.

Although the corollary lacks the pithy ring of the original saying, it is nonetheless valid. Create an environment where people can see their own competence and measure their own success toward creating something larger than themselves, and you’ve gone a long way toward keeping them at your company. And, of course, providing opportunities for growth also helps build that feeling of competence and further increases the attractiveness of staying. An additional side effect is that the more competent people feel, the more secure they feel. The more secure they feel, the harder it is for someone else to pry them away.

So yes, in the end it really is all about communications, provided that you are communicating the right things. Think about how you are communicating the following things:

• Your recognition of the contributions of your employees
• Your appreciation for their contributions and the personal sacrifices they are making
• Your own enthusiasm, excitement, and positive vision of the company and its future
• The goals of the company and how each employee fits into bringing those goals to life
• The common ground and ideals that will unify your team
• The information your employees need to work and grow most effectively
• The feedback that will make your employees feel successful

If you can address those seven points, odds are you’ll keep your top people as the economy improves.

It’s not a going-gangbusters report, so don’t spring for the top-shelf toasts. CareerBuilder’s survey of 2,700 hiring managers and HR professionals found 20 percent of them expect to add full-time employees in the new year. Last year 14 percent expected to hire. Still, that is a 43 percent.

Meanwhile, only nine percent are anticipating layoffs, a 44 percent decrease from the 16 percent last year who told CareerBuilder they expected to cut staff in 2009.

A positive sign to be sure. But with 61 percent of the respondents saying they foresee no change in staffing levels (10 percent didn’t know what to expect), job recovery is going to be measured in single-digit improvement.

“Although 20 percent of employers plan to add headcount in 2010, up from 14 percent last year, they still remain cautious in regards to their hiring,” says CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson. “We’re headed in the right direction but should not expect to see actual job growth until at least Q2 2010.”

Consumers must be sensing that the economy is improving, since the Consumer Confidence Index inched up again in December. The Index rose to 52.9 from an adjusted 50.6 in November.

The Index is a composite of various measures of consumer sentiment. Among them is an index of Expectations, which measures how the 5,000 households who are surveyed each month see the near term future. That index rose significantly in December to 75.6 from 70.3 the month before.

Other measures tempered that rise, including greater pessimism about current economic conditions.

However, the number of people expecting job growth increased to 16.2 percent from 15.8 percent, while those expecting fewer jobs decreased to 20.7 percent from 23.1 percent.

The Conference Board’s job availability report for December won’t be out until next week, when a number of other economic measures including the Monster Index, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly employment report will also be issued.

An early indication of how the job market looked in December was released by Adicio, provider of CareerCast job board software and operator of the CareerCast network, and Job Serf, a job search outsourcer.  The CareerCast.com/JobSerf Employment Index rose two-tenths of a point in the month to 73.9. That may not sound like much, but December is typically a down month for job listings so any increase is a positive.

How did recruiting fare over the decade? Did things get better for recruiters and candidates?

The decade began with the hope, maybe even the expectation among most recruiters, that the Internet would change things profoundly. Many of the writers and experts on recruiting predicted that candidates would be better served, that workloads would be more manageable, and that costs would go down.

As it turned out, neither the average cost per hire nor the average time to present a qualified candidate has changed much despite the introduction of all the tools that the Internet made possible. Applicant tracking systems were supposed to make it easier to keep track of candidates, present better candidates, as well as for a recruiter to qualify them. Yet, good candidates are rare and hiring managers complain regularly about seeing candidates who do not measure up to their expectations. Recruiters still can’t find good candidates, even when they have stored resumes or contact data in the multitude of systems that have been created to make this easy. Communication — now so easy with email and CRM — is as bad as always. Candidates are complaining more than ever of being neglected, and most remain in the dark about their status.

Toward the end of the decade social networking appeared and became the new buzz. Recruiters had tools that would give them unprecedented access to candidates and make it much easier to create talent pools and stay in touch with candidates. Recruiters eagerly adopted Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other tools as the new panacea, feeling perhaps that if the Internet couldn’t fix their problems, then social media would.

They too have been disappointed, because the Internet, applicant tracking systems, CRM, and social media are tools that enable knowledgeable, skilled recruiters to do a better job. They are not, in themselves, solutions to anything and will not magically make anyone a good recruiter.

So What Makes a Good Recruiter?

The best performing recruiters are those who have three characteristics: (1) they have a deep knowledge of the industry they are recruiting for; (2) they have built relationships with the right people; and (3) they have learned and practice the skills of good salesmanship.

Deep Industry Knowledge

There is a myth that anyone can recruit for any industry because the Internet and social networking tools make access to people and information ubiquitous and easy to get. There is some truth in this. Certainly having access to resources such as Hoover’s and Wikipedia helps. The ability to scan hundreds of newspapers and news sources can generate leads and provide insight into what is happening in an industry. It is possible, with lots of time and energy expended, to put together a list of people to contact and screen. But how to screen and what to ask then becomes a bigger challenge, one not easily bridged with technology.

Investing in learning about and digging deeply into an industry makes all the difference. Nothing replaces years of interaction with a spectrum of people in an industry. I spent almost 20 years in the high-tech, semiconductor industry, and through those years built technical, cultural, and personal knowledge and contacts that made it much easier for me to find people, get referrals, assess referral quality, interview candidates, ask the “right” questions, and provide hiring manages with much better potential hires than someone whose only knowledge of the industry is the Internet and few phone calls.

Never underestimate industry knowledge and experience as a major factor in recruiting success. The Internet and other tools make it much more convenient to stay in touch and maintain relationships, but they do not by themselves make anyone a good recruiter.

Relationships

Most successful headhunters and executive recruiters will tell you that their success comes from who they know. When an opening comes across their desk or computer screen, they can reach out to someone for a referral or as a potential candidate. Rarely do these people have to use exotic Internet search techniques. They have spent time getting to know well-positioned people who can provide information and give them leads. These leads, combined with industry knowledge, make decisions faster and easier.

I believe that it is here where recruiters can use the Internet to their advantage. Recruiters who build talent pools or communities put in place good rules for who gets invited into the community, and using the communication tools that now exist (IM, email, CRM, etc.), can build good, virtual relationships with many people. Unfortunately, few recruiters take the time to invest in learning about the people in these communities. They tap into them only once in awhile and spend more time adding people to the community than they need to.

Practice Good Salesmanship

Recruiting is sales. It’s that simple and anyone who expects to succeed in any decade has to understand this. Good salesmanship is made up of industry and position knowledge, a belief that what you are selling is valuable and exciting, an ability to understand the candidate and what his or her needs and interests are, and the skill of closing: overcoming objections and coming to agreement.

These are tough skills to develop. They take years of practice. Good recruiters are coaches, consultants, and psychologists. They need to not only sell candidates, but also hiring managers and only a small number of recruiters are good at this. Lack of salesmanship is the greatest weakness in our profession.

I cannot build a house no matter what tools you give me because I lack basic knowledge of carpentry. I cannot operate on your body, fly an airplane, or build an integrated circuit because I have no basic knowledge and no skills in these areas.

Technology is wonderful and I am an advocate of using every tool there is. I think the Internet, social networking, and all the other pieces of technology are game-changing for our profession. But, only if they are applied by people who have the basic skills of recruiting. My hope is that in this dawning decade experienced and skilled recruiters start to leverage these tools wisely and that we begin to improve the basic measures of time, cost, and quality that have eluded us this decade.

The only mention of his departure came in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The 8-K report (a reference to the SEC provision requiring publicly held companies to report unscheduled material events and changes) says Kramer’s resignation was effective immediately and “did not involved any disagreement on any matter relating to the Company’s operations, policies or practices.”

Kramer is CEO and board vice chairman of Griffon Corp., a $1.2 billion building products and advanced telephonics manufacturing company. Before taking that job in 2008, Kramer had been president and a director of casino owner and operator Wynn Resorts.

According to Forbes.com, Kramer earned $301,701 in cash and stock from Monster in 2008.

Neither Kramer nor a Monster spokesman could be reached.

Just before Christmas, TechCrunch reported that Delicious founder and former Yahoo executive Joshua Schachter discovered that searching on his name on Google brought up a recruitment ad for Yahoo. He announced in a tweet saying “yahoo’s running recruiting ads against my name. classy.”

Schachter joined Yahoo when it bought Delicious in 2005. He left three years later, part of a mass exodus of top talent that left the company reeling .

Turns out that Schachter isn’t the only ex-Yahooer to find ads popping up on their Google search results pages.  TechCrunch said PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf is among the keyworded.

No comment yet from Yahoo.

Speaking of Yahoo, CEO Carol Bartz confirmed what has been an open secret: HotJobs is for sale. peHUB reported last summer that HotJobs was being shopped, but Yahoo wouldn’t confirm the report, though Bartz had indicated the company was weighing its strategic importance.

Now, though, Bartz told an investment conference earlier this month that Yahoo would sell HotJobs “if we got a decent price…”

What might that price be? Bartz didn’t say, but probably not enough to make a significant difference to the $6 billion (in revenue) company.

Last I heard, HotJobs was at least a contributor to Yahoo’s bottom line, netting around $50 million annually. That number is probably a little higher, since that figure is more than a year old.

Selling HotJobs is not going to be easy. Dice took a look. Monster supposedly also has. Don’t know about CareerBuilder, but I would have to assume the company at least kicked the tires. May have even done a bit more, since HotJobs has an extensive newspaper partner network and CareerBuilder is a newspaper-owned holding.

To make sense, any deal would have to include a traffic agreement with Yahoo and the newspaper partner network. HotJobs is the job channel for Yahoo.com, which is the world’s biggest traffic destination. Yahoo funnels traffic to HotJobs from links on the site while the several hundred newspaper partners do likewise.

(Yahoo used to maintain a list of its partner sites, as most job boards do. But the link now returns an error message. That may be part of a general corporate indifference to the site. The press center link to “Press Releases and Info Flashes” hasn’t been updated since 2008.)

It’s December 2009 and it’s the end of the “decade from hell” during which the recruiting and talent management function endured some ugly times. Rather than bemoaning what happened, why not take a few minutes or so and rethink your approach to recruiting. The topic for this particular think-piece is corporate power and why recruiting seems to have so little of it.

Thought-provoking question #1 — Is it true that on the corporate “power scale,” recruiting falls well below where it deserves to be?

My basic premise is that when it comes to power and recognition, the recruiting function should be one of the most important business functions, ranked right up there in importance with finance, product development, and sales, but for some reason, it is funded poorly and often underappreciated.

Fortunately there are a few exceptions; a few stark examples of situations where recruiting is so important that it is classified as a mission-critical business function. Two industries where recruiting is certainly “king” include both college/professional sports and the entertainment industry. It’s obvious to everyone in these industries that if you attract a major recruit like A-Rod, LeBron, or George Clooney, you haven’t just recruited a good employee, but instead you’ve changed the revenue stream of the company for a significant period of time. As a result, sports teams and entertainment moguls put huge resources into recruiting. In direct contrast to corporate recruiting, when their teams or studios are doing poorly, they put even more effort and resources into recruiting top talent.

The point that I want you ponder is that in the corporate world, there’s something in the way that we currently conduct recruiting that puts us well down on the mission-critical scale, in spite of our actual impact on corporate performance. If you agree with this premise, below you will find some points that might explain our relatively weak position in the corporate world.

Thought provoking question #2 — What are the top 10 characteristics that make functions powerful in the corporate world?

It’s possible for a business function to go from powerless to mission-critical merely by changing the way it acts. Supply chain is certainly a great example of that dramatic transition. For years it was known as purchasing, inventory, and transportation and under that overhead approach, the three functions received little attention, recognition, or resources. However, once it began to use technology, metrics, and to demonstrate its dollar impact on corporate revenues, it became a corporate darling and rose to the top of the power scale. The question is, “are there common factors that cause the most powerful corporate functions to receive the lion’s share of corporate resources?” I recommend that you come up with your own list of these “power factors” within your organization. But I am providing you with a list of the top 10 critical “power factors” that I have found to be consistent differentiators between the powerful and the underfunded.

1. Focus on revenue impacts: Process results are reported in dollars, demonstrating their impact on revenue.
2. Show impact on strategic goals: Process goals and results are unambiguously linked directly to strategic business goals.
3. Competitive advantage: Results are directly compared to the results of competitor firms, in order to ensure that your firm retains a competitive advantage.
4. Prioritize: They prioritize their efforts and focus on creating strategic impacts.
5. Proactive: They seek out opportunities rather than waiting and reacting.
6. Metrics: The functions are managed and decisions are made based on numbers and strategic metrics.
7. Manager’s reward: Their results are an important component of executive bonus formulas.
8. Innovation: Their rate of innovation is among the highest in the corporation.
9. Technology focused: They use the latest technology.
10. Reporting: Their actions and their results are reported as an integral part of the standard business and financial reports are read by executives.

Thought provoking question #3 — Does our current conservative approach to recruiting essentially doom us to a weak power status, or are there actions that can be taken to increase our status?

Below you will find a few recommended actions and some thought-provoking questions for each of these 10 power factors.

You must demonstrate revenue impacts: is there any doubt in your mind that recruiting a key innovator, a top salesperson, or a great branding person directly increases corporate revenue? Incidentally, is this impact not just for one year but for many years as the new hire stays with the organization? If we can agree that there is a major business impact as a result of strategic hiring, what exactly is preventing you from working the CFO’s office to convert the impact of recruiting into dollars? Why doesn’t your team calculate the difference in performance between a great and a mediocre hire in the same position, in order to make the business case that demonstrates the tremendous revenue lost as a result of weak hiring processes. Have you calculated the correlation between excellence in hiring and improved workforce productivity and business results?

Tying recruiting goals to business goals is essential: most recruiting functions rely on tactical goals like reducing cost per hire and monitoring the number of positions filled. Does it make sense that such narrow and functional goals would appear insignificant to senior executives? Their goals are to increase sales, improve market share, increase customer satisfaction, and to innovate in the product area. Does it make sense to work with the people who set the overall strategic business goals to ensure that everyone sees the direct connection between what recruiting does and those goals? What is keeping you from converting your goals, so that they directly match those of the business? For example, let’s look at the business goal of increasing sales. Is it possible to demonstrate how great hiring in the sales function can directly increase sales? Well, if that’s possible, why not change your recruiting goal so that the strategic impact is clearer? Does the goal of “hire 75 people” resonate the same to senior executives as this goal: “increase sales performance by 12% by hiring 17 top-performing salespeople away from key competitors”?

Focus on beating your competitors: it’s no secret that most recruiting functions are inward-focused, while most executives are laser-focused on aggressively crushing their competitors. Would your power position improve if you demonstrated to executives how you were also extremely competitive and as a result, you directly monitored and then aggressively countered the recruiting strategies and actions of your major competitors? What are the barriers that are preventing you from demonstrating that your company’s sales, product development, and innovation rates are measurably superior to your competitors’ because your recruiting practices are superior to your competitors’? Why don’t you conduct a competitive analysis on a regular basis to see where what you do is inferior to what they do? And shifting back to the sales example, why haven’t you demonstrated how aggressive recruiting on your part can hurt the sales of your competitors? Do you purposely target the best salespeople at your competitors? In head-to-head competition over top sales candidates, what percentage do you win?

Prioritize and focus on high-impact areas: just like sports teams, all powerful functions prioritize their customers and their services in order to put their limited resources to where they can have the most business impact. Football teams focus on hiring quarterbacks, and movie producers focus on landing one or two marquee stars. In direct contrast, most recruiting functions treat all positions and hiring managers the same. They process requisitions based solely on the date of the requisition. Executives already prioritize products and business units; what is preventing you from doing the same? Would you gain more respect and increase your business impact if you instead identified the most critical business units and jobs? If you focused your hiring on revenue-generating positions, would you increase revenue? Does it really make sense to put your best recruiters on low-impact jobs and commodity business units?

Shift from reactive to proactive: most recruiting efforts can only be classified as reactive, meaning that you react only when a recruiting requisition opens up. But wouldn’t your power position improve if you shifted to the more desirable proactive mode? What if you shifted recruiting to a continuous “pre-need” mode, where you proactively seek out available talent rather than hoping that it might be conveniently available at the exact time when you have a position open? If you understand the superior approach of a we-find-them capability compared to posting jobs and hoping that the best will find you, have you considered a most-wanted list where you continually target top industry people throughout the year and react quickly when they are available? What’s keeping you from alerting your managers when top talent becomes available? Maybe you should study and learn from sports teams, where they purposely increase their focus on recruiting when performance is down?

Metrics: not a single one of the most powerful business functions make decisions based on emotions or past practice. From finance, to IT, to marketing and supply chain, they all rely heavily on “decision metrics” to continually improve. Most recruiting departments failed to generate a single metric in important areas such as:

What is your continuous improvement rate in recruiting?

What is your failure rate in hiring?

What are the critical success factors in world-class recruiting?

As a result, maybe the time has come to stop listening to HR metrics people (who almost universally “don’t get it”) and instead to begin to talk to business metrics experts. Why is it that it after all the work you’ve put into designing metrics, no one pays attention to them — because they’re all historic and they don’t help with actual daily decision-making?

Managers need to be rewarded for great hiring: like it or not, managers have learned over time to laser-focus on the things that are measured, reported, and rewarded. Even though HR controls compensation and performance appraisals, most managers are not rewarded significantly for great people-management. If people are your “most important asset,” why aren’t managers measured and rewarded for effectively using that asset? Yes it’s a tough battle, but if promotions, raises, and bonuses were tied directly to people results, wouldn’t managers then come to you for help in improving these areas?

Innovation must permeate the function: the most powerful functions innovate continually and at an amazing rate. Rather than waiting for funding before they innovate, they instead innovate first in order to get more funding and recognition. Is it true that within HR, cutting costs and avoiding errors is more beneficial to your career than risk-taking and industry-leading innovation? Is using Facebook really innovation? What is the rate of innovation within recruiting? When was the last time that a business function came to recruiting in order to learn about effective innovation processes? Are you guaranteeing continuous innovation by recruiting continuous learners on your recruiting staff, and do you have formal processes for identifying the “next practices” in talent management before everyone else adopts them?

Being technology-driven is essential: the most powerful functions love technology because technology is essential for speed, globalization, innovation, and improved decision-making. Do your recruiters misuse or avoid technology because they are too closely tied to tradition? Does buying an ATS system and using only a few of the features qualify as being technology-driven? Why don’t you use technology in interviewing, assessment, employer branding, and onboarding? Does your technology allow you to do 100% remote hiring, or can you prove that your technology increases the quality of your hires?

Your results must be reported to all: visibility is essential for obtaining and maintaining power. If recruiting results are reported only to HR, your results, no matter how spectacular they may be, are likely to remain a well-kept secret. Have you worked with the CIO and the CFO to ensure that your results are embedded in standard financial reports? Are managers with poor recruiting results embarrassed to see their name at the bottom of a ranked performance list? Can your executives and managers see each month how excellent recruiting results correlate directly with excellent business results? When recently hired individuals are recognized for outstanding business accomplishments, do you step forward and remind everyone that it was your process that made it all possible? Finally, what actions must you take in order to ensure that recruiting metrics receive the same visibility and recognition as inventory, time to market, and market share metrics?

Some Final Questions To Ponder

If your brain isn’t already spinning with thoughts, ideas, and questions, here are some additional questions to further stimulate your thinking.

• Do you vary your recruiting approach and strategy between different business units that are in completely different growth modes stages in their business cycle?
• Do you have a plan that would allow you to dominate your industry in talent management?
• Do you let individual hiring managers use their short-term perspective to decide what competencies your organization will have? Or instead, do you make an effort to educate senior managers about the future competencies that are needed throughout the corporation?
• Does your lack of integration make the hiring process a hodgepodge of disconnected events, rather than a seamless process?
• Why is the only “solution” that you offer hiring new employees? Why not offer options including substituting technology for people, hiring contingent workers, and getting ideas from non-employees through contests?
• Have you quantified the negative impact on product sales from mistreating applicants who may also be current or future customers? Does your candidate experience equal your customer experience on the product side?
• Have you analyzed why within HR, OD, leadership development, and succession planning received more emphasis and recognition than recruiting?
• Do you even have a forecasting capability within recruiting? Do you have a plan for when the economy suddenly improves? Is your recruiting process agile, so that you can meet the diverse recruiting needs of the different regions around the world?
• Do you identify and track the many bad and negative things that appear in social networks and on the Internet about what it’s like to work at your firm? Have you demonstrated the impact that a great employer brand has on your firm’s stock price?

Final Thoughts

The key success measure of any “think piece” is that it makes you uncomfortable with the status quo. This particular article focused on the disparity between the power that we should have compared to how little power we do have, and it should have encouraged you to think about action steps for recruiting to gain its rightful place among the corporate power elite. Maybe action steps on how to improve your relative power should be a topic at your monthly or annual meeting. Finally, you should also notice that the approach that I’m recommending is based not on whining or demanding recognition but instead on how to act differently in order to influence senior management. The goal is for them to finally recognize what we already know, that nothing improves the performance of an organization faster than hiring a significant number of top-performing innovators into key positions!

Our model is a high-risk, high-reward type of opportunity that offers great financial success once you reach a certain level. Traditionally HR has not been involved at all in the sourcing and recruitment of these individuals. That all changed when in fall 2008 Lockton engaged in a sales recruiting experiment that I was fortunate enough to get involved with.

Senior management selected five markets to target to find successful C-Level B2B salespeople. Basically, we were going to hire some great top-level salespeople and teach them our industry. The types of backgrounds were fairly stringent with regard to minimum amounts of experience, documented exceptional levels of success in sales at the C-level, amounts of revenue produced per deal, community involvement, and other factors. They then partnered with two search firms that varied greatly in their approaches. One of the search firms was very research-based and very selective in who they contacted and targeted and ultimately presented to my company. The other firm was much more industry-specific and took a “smile-and-dial” type of approach that has had some good success with several of our locations. My supervisor got me in front of management as an internal option to see if I could have any success. I was the litmus test and was given the smallest market to try to develop some candidates.

We spent $60,000 with the two firms in four markets that produced one live interview and phone interview. I set up six interviews in my initial market that resulted in one hire and was then quickly put on to two other markets that resulted in four hires out of the eight total hired across the country.

What led to being successful in this initial search, when the firms that do this for a living were not?

There are a variety of reasons for this, and I’m writing about them in more detail in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, but it boils down to several main ones.

First of all, I know my company very well. I have studied our industry extensively and have asked a lot of questions about the various pieces of it. I am able to effectively communicate what it is that makes our company unique and what type of person it appeals to. Second, I asked a lot of questions on the front end. When I first got involved in this project I met with four of our successful salespeople and asked them why they joined my company, what obstacles they had building up their business, and a whole lot of other questions in order to gain a good understanding of the value proposition. I wanted to know what type of person this opportunity would appeal to and who it would not. I wanted to know the toughest thing about it, as well as the best things about being in sales at Lockton.

Finally, I physically traveled to the office I was working with and got their buy-in by showing I was working with them and in their best interests. This was most likely the biggest reason why this project worked: that I traveled to the office I was working with and got an understanding from them of what would work in their office. It is one thing if senior management wants to do something, but another to get the buy-in from the office that it is actually affecting. By doing this I was able to find out what would work there and what wouldn’t. The senior folks in that office were very candid about who they would (and would not) take a chance on hiring.

I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t believe search firms can do a good job. They can. It has been my experience from being on both sides of the fence that the right group can be a true partner with a corporate company. If they do many of the same things discussed here, such as getting to know the business very well, than they can and should be successful.

Take Your Time

High achievers want to get results now. If you decide this is something that is worth pursuing and would be of value to you and your company, realize it will take time. You have to think of it as building a search practice within your company. To build any well-regarded practice, you need to start with an initial successful search and build on it. Make sure you have a supervisor who is in your corner and believes in your abilities. If you work with someone like this, they will do their best to get you in front of the decision-makers when the opportunity presents itself. When you do have a chance to get involved with a senior-level search, jump on it with enthusiasm and a well-thought-out plan. Once you are able to show that you can be successful in this role, the word will get out and more people in your company will want your assistance on the next search. And the next one. And we all know you can’t beat a great referral built on a previous success.

Ernest Feiteira picked up on an item I posted and started a conversation about the value of such recruiting tools. A couple others chimed in about the ROI, something I’m looking into for a future article.

At this point in the discussion, there’s no resolution to the question of how you would calculate the ROI.

However, Down Under, the Aussies must believe that outsourcing their military recruiting pays off because they have been doing it for some years. I know that because I talked with a Manpower spokeswoman about a press release announcing that the Milwaukee  firm just won a $200 million recruiting contract from the Australian  Defence Force. 

In the release, Commodore Tim Barrett, director general of defence force recruiting, is quoted saying: “Manpower’s capability in managing and delivering large-scale and complex recruitment services is necessary to attract the calibre of military recruits that we are looking for. The breadth, nature, and complexity of this recruitment program can be considered critical to national security.”

The nation of 21 million people has an enviable problem. Its unemployment rate has been declining for years and is somewhere around 4 percent for 2009. (Incidentally, the Aussies think that’s a recession.) Even though its total military force is only about 53,000 active duty, the military has been hard-pressed to find enough volunteers to fill its ranks, especially when it comes to certain types of jobs that are in demand in the civilian sector.

The problem is so acute that a newspaper analysis a few months ago reported the Navy didn’t have enough submariners to staff its six submarines.

“By any measure,” says the report in the Australian, “the latest figures on recruitment from the Defence Department make for depressing reading.”

Manpower will employ 300 people to manage what it’s calling the “largest and most complex” RPO project in the world. It’s an end-to-end recruiting contract, that includes marketing and promotion up through onboarding.

The transition is already underway with the official launch set for February. Incidentally, it’s worth taking a look at the ADF recruiting website. The videos may not be as action-packed as some of the U.S. Army’s, but the ones I watched give you a pretty good idea of the nature of the jobs the military is looking to fill.

A just-completed mid-term report by  Crowe Horwath’s strategic sourcing leader, Michele Porfilio, shows that in the first six months of the company’s fiscal year (which begins April 1) 20 percent of the hires came from  non-traditional recruiting methods.

Those methods include search engine marketing and optimization, the use of job aggregators (principally Indeed and SimplyHired) and social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. For company purposes, those sources are grouped as either SEO/SEM/Job Aggregators or Social Networks.

The cost of the hires who came in through these sources is about a third of what the company spends on job boards.

“I would say,” Porfilio reports, “that overall, we’re getting better candidates from these social media sources and we have a much better ROI.”

Porfilio shared some of the findings from the report, which she prepared for the company’s Social Networking Advisory Council. Merely having such a group puts Crowe Horwath among the social media leaders. A CareerXroads survey of its mostly blue chip, Fortune list clients found fewer than half had a social media committee.

The CareerXroads survey is more extensively discussed in a report on social media that will appear in the January issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. The report focuses on how companies can inexpensively employ social media in their recruiting programs, and discusses the components of a social media recruiting strategy. Case studies are also presented on how Crowe Horwath and Hyatt Hotels use social media in their recruiting programs.

Overall, she says, the percentage of candidates applying as a result of these non-traditional sources has more than doubled since 2009.

In an earlier conversation, before the report was completed, Porfilio said Crowe Horwath began developing a systematic social media strategy a year ago. For FY 2010, she estimates the company will spend about 30 percent of the recruiting budget on social media and networking sites as well as on optimizing the company’s jobs to make them more easily found on search engines.

“The ROI from this,” she says now, after preparing the mid-term report, “is very good.”

In two charts that include numbers through November, it’s clear enough that job boards may yield the most number of applicants by far, but employee referrals are the single biggest source (35 percent) of hires.

Job boards are next at 22 percent of hires. The two non-traditional categories together account for 15 percent. These two categories include search engine marketing and optimization, the use of job aggregators (principally Indeed and SimplyHired) and social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Social networking sites alone yielded almost 4 percent of the hires.

Though most of the dollar amounts are proprietary, Porfilio shared one data point from the report: About 5.5 percent of the hires at Crowe Horwath were sourced from Indeed.com. The cost of those hires averaged $1,600. That compares to an $8,500 cost of hire from one of the major job boards.

Even though, she says, she has “decreased my spend drastically in the job boards, there is still a need for them … Will we still be using Monster? Yes, until it becomes completely irrelevant, if that happens.”

Personally, I wouldn’t even know him if I saw him.  –Estragon, Waiting for Godot

Some years ago I was sitting in a product design meeting. The discussion kept circling around some particularly knotty issues that no one in the room actually knew much about.

In one sense, this wasn’t a serious problem given that the company was still actively hiring and there was a recognition that more people were needed. Someone finally commented that we’d have to make sure to hire someone with the particular expertise in question, and in one fell swoop, that task was assigned to a non-existent person. Again, this is not necessarily a problem … yet. It became a problem, however, as the meeting progressed:

“We don’t have anyone on the team who can handle […technology…] either.”

“That’ll be the next hire.”

“Wasn’t the next hire supposed to be […original problem…]?”

“We’ll need someone who can do both.”

And so it went, with each problem that came up being assigned to the same non-existent person. Each problem would be dealt with when the right person was hired. Unfortunately, each individual present had a very different idea of what that right person looked like and the necessary skills that he or she would possess. Those who have ever read a college catalog might have noticed the vast number of courses in a wide range of subjects taught by Staff. Well, by the end of that meeting, Dr. Staff was probably the only person who could have handled the job.

More recently, I was conducting a training exercise. The exercise was focused on leadership, negotiation, and creative problem-solving. Part of the structure involved people being given a problem and a list of names of people who might be able to help them. Only some of those people are actually present. The objective is to figure out alternate solutions that do not involve the missing people. What was particularly fascinating is that every time I’ve conducted this exercise, a significant number of participants become fixated on the missing people, convinced that if those people were present, all the problems would immediately evaporate. They spend the entire exercise waiting for help that never arrives.

When I ask at the end, “Why do you think that [missing] person will actually help you? What if they have their own agenda?” the participants are taken aback. They had never considered the fact that Godot might have his own wants and needs, even if he should happen to show up. I’ve run this exercise with managers, college students, psychologists, engineers, and so forth, and the same behaviors emerge every time. In each case, the person who is not present becomes the repository of the hopes and dreams of the rest of the group. In the end, that “person” has become a tool whose only purpose for existing is to solve the problems of the group.

The difficulty, of course, is that the longer this behavior persists, the harder it is for the organization to find anyone they are willing to hire. First, none of the people they are looking at actually fits the mental image that they’ve developed: a person with some of the desired skills is simply not recognized or passed over for a future someone who will have all the skills. Unfortunately, Dr. Staff is a very busy person, and is somewhat less likely to show up than Santa Claus. Also, Dr. Staff is not only expected to show up eventually, but to be totally and completely enthusiastic about working for the company. People who do not exhibit that mindless enthusiasm are deemed to be not serious candidates.

Hiring, however, is a two-way street: part of the job of the existing employees is to help get the candidate excited about the company. To be fair, the search rarely lasts forever. Eventually, people get tired of interviewing candidates and someone does get hired. Often, though, it’s the last person to walk through the door, as opposed to the most qualified of the people who came through.

A Focus on Goals, Objectives

Start by focusing on goals and objectives. What are you trying to accomplish? How will you know when you’ve succeeded? View the job from the perspective of goals, not skills. Quantify what you’re trying to do and figure out how you’ll recognize someone who can accomplish one or more of those major goals.

Second, look for people who have a track record of getting things done. Remember that there are often multiple solutions to any problem. The skills you see as necessary only represent one possible path. People who are good at solving problems in a particular field may well find other solutions that will be more effective. Good problem-solvers are also the most likely people to acquire skills when they need them, whereas people who just have skills might not be good at solving problems.

Next, look for passion and enthusiasm when they talk about the work they’ve done and the problems they’ve solved. Don’t worry about whether or not they’re enthusiastic about this company and this job. If you’re offering them the chance to do what they love doing, that’ll come quick enough.

Take the time to find out what they’re looking for. Don’t make the hiring process all about you; make it about them. After all, when you make someone an offer, you want them to accept it. Take the time to connect with the candidate and give them every opportunity to feel that they’ll enjoy working with you.

Finally, periodically check and evaluate your progress. Make sure you’re not looking for Dr. Staff or waiting for Godot.

And I keep thinking tomorrow is coming today. So I am endlessly waiting. – The Counting Crows

Not everyone celebrates Christmas, but as it falls at the end of the year, it is an opportune time to take a minute and to thank those who have helped you throughout the year. While executive recruiters used to get huge paychecks and bonuses, corporate recruiters in most organizations can only be classified as under-appreciated.

Hiring managers, often busy trying to meet end-of-year deadlines, rarely find the time to send out a well-written thank you or take you to lunch to express their gratitude for all the work that you’ve done on their behalf.

New hires are acclimating to their job, which more often than not isn’t exactly what they thought it would be, so thanks are not on the top of their minds.

Every year come December, I start to envision what it would be like in a perfect world where the efforts of corporate recruiters were recognized with a real thank you. Recruiters may not get as many “thank yous” as they deserve, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that recruiters have a profound impact on people’s work and private lives.

A “thank you note” from a grateful new hire…

I just wanted you to know that you are my hero!

The Christmas season is an ideal time for me as a new employee to say thanks to the people who helped me get this new job in this competitive job market. Specifically, I want to thank you, “my recruiter” for:

• My self-confidence: the way you treated me during the hiring process built up my confidence. My daily life is better because you helped to remind me of my many strengths and capabilities.

• My job: I have a great job and a paycheck during a time when many well-qualified individuals don’t. I owe you big time because you recognized my unique talents and guided me through the complicated hiring process. I am no longer under-appreciated by my former firm, or worse, unemployed. Both my family and I are happier and more secure, thanks to your hard work and trust in my ability. Our house will be secure and there will be lots under the Christmas tree because of you.

• You were the face of the company: applying for a job is a lonely task that is full of uncertainty, but you were my first and primary contact. Rather than being an adversary, you treated me like someone who was “special” (maybe you treat everyone that way, but honestly, I felt like I was the only applicant for the job). You were always there when I had a question, and you skillfully calmed me down so that I could perform at my best during the hiring process.

• Finding me: thank you for finding my name in the boundless confines that make up the Internet. Your ability to search out details about me and learn about my interests from dozens of sources was exceptional.

• You built a relationship: I got to know you through Facebook and Twitter, which made it easier for us to share the truth with each other. If it were not for that social network relationship and your strong convincing skills, I’m not sure I would have ever taken the time to apply for a job that seemed so different than what I was used to.

• Identifying my capabilities: even though you might have been faced with hundreds of resumes of people applying for my job, you kept mine at the top of the pile. I now realize that I should have spent more time improving my resume, so that my skills and experience came through more clearly, but your superior sorting skills found traits, experience, and potential that others might have overlooked.

• Coaching me: thanks for helping me through the hiring and interview process so that my strongest attributes came through for all to see. Even though my interview skills were a little rusty, you were my champion and coach.

• The candidate experience: I have certainly been through numerous other interview processes in my career, but none seem to be as closely tailored to my needs. I never felt like I was being grilled, and before every step of the process you explained exactly what I should expect. Even if I wouldn’t have gotten the job, I would’ve remembered the positive way that I was treated and I would’ve become an even more enthusiastic customer of your firm.

• Answering my concerns: you probably knew that I was nervous and uncertain after the final interview. Your honesty and openness convinced me that you did your best to ensure that the offer I received was highly competitive and fair.

• Helping me get acclimated: you could easily have moved on after I accepted your firm’s offer, but instead you remained available when I had questions. When you showed up and welcomed me on my first day and made sure that I got up to speed rapidly, you once again proved that you were more interested in my success than in just filling a job.

I also wanted you to know that because of your professionalism and the information you provided me about the firm, I now go out of my way to tell colleagues at other firms that this firm is a great place to work, in no small part because of you and the way you treat applicants and employees. I hope to make several employee referrals during the next year as a result of the information you provided and the way you treated me. Thanks again for all that you’ve done; I’m proud to be your coworker!

* * * * * * * * * *

A “thank you note” from a grateful hiring manager …

I just wanted you to know how much you impacted my business success!

The end of the year is an ideal time for me to say thanks to the people who allowed both my team and I to be among the most productive and innovative within our organization. Specifically, I want to thank you, my recruiter, for all that you do to make me successful as a manager, including …

• Understanding the processes: in the past, I’ve been guilty of procrastinating when it comes to recruiting, mostly because I found the process to be confusing. However, I want to thank you for taking the time to help me understand the complex requisition, recruiting, and hiring processes. With your coaching and guidance I have successfully avoided hiring delays and legal issues without having to read endless recruiting policies and manuals. You help me understand why some of the steps that I thought were bureaucratic actually helped to contribute to a higher quality hire.

• Sourcing: thanks for consistently identifying so many top candidates. Without your advice, I would probably still be running newspaper want ads. Thanks for educating me about the new approaches to recruiting, including social networks, blogs, and direct sourcing using Boolean search strings. Without them, I would have missed most of the best and brightest candidates who you sourced. The percentage of qualified candidates that you presented to me was so high that I could have picked up a resume when blindfolded and still ended up with a superstar.

• Being so responsive: thanks for your responsiveness. Even though you have a huge requisition load and a dozen hiring managers to service, you consistently found a way to respond rapidly to my questions and calls.

• Tolerance: thanks for your tolerance and understanding during the many times when I let you down. That includes when I wasn’t available for interviews and for the countless times that I took forever to sort through the resumes you sent me. I now know that you can’t do your job effectively unless I as a hiring manager do my part.

• Position descriptions: thanks for your help in improving the position descriptions that I create. I realize that without your coaching and advice, many of these descriptions would be so dull and off the mark that I would have never attracted a single top candidate.

• Innovators and game-changers: my team is now one of the most innovative in the industry in no small part as a result of you. Many thanks for demonstrating to me the large business impact that innovators can have over average hires. Without the numerous tips on how to successfully hire these hard-to-understand innovators, I might have settled for average hires.

• Global capability: even though over 50% of my business came from overseas, I found myself lost when it came to recruiting talent from around the world. I never would have understood the complexities and the keys to success without your guidance and advice. My team now has broad global capabilities as a result of your hiring expertise.

• Follow-up: thanks for following up after my hires were completed, in order to ensure that the new employee started off at full speed. Your continuous coaching and help also resulted in lower new-hire turnover rates. You could have stopped helping immediately after they said yes to our offer, but fortunately for all, you didn’t.

• Curbing my enthusiasm: thanks for subtly, but effectively, pointing out the weaknesses in many of the candidates who I was enamored with. Sometimes I got so emotionally involved with a candidate that I couldn’t see their weaknesses without your help.

• Metrics: you have successfully demonstrated to me the cost of a bad hire and the tremendous value add of a great hire. As a result, I am now no longer willing to settle for the mediocre level of talent that I used to hire before you began helping me.

• Diversity: without your help, my team could never be as diverse and inclusive as it is today. The high degree of diversity among my team allows it to be more creative and to identify problems and opportunities from multiple perspectives. This diversity also helps my team understand the needs of our diverse customers, which further improves our products and services.

• Help with the generations: thanks for coaching me about the differences between the many different generations that candidates come from. You helped me understand their different needs and what was necessary in order to land and keep them on my team.

• Closing: thanks for your help in understanding what it takes to “sell” so many top candidates. Fortunately, with your coaching and guidance, we have been able to land so many exceptional candidates that I could never have sold on my own with my limited sales knowledge and abilities.

• Employment brand: I now realize that without the strong external image and employment brand that you and your colleagues have helped to build, few top candidates would seek out our firm. I just wanted you to know that I am continually approached at conferences and events by top talent whoare already excited about and sold on our firm. Our firm is a talent magnet as a result of your branding efforts, and as a result of your convincing, I now try to spread the word myself through my blog (which you helped me with) and my Facebook connections.

• My business results: Thank you for the impact you’ve had on my business results, the recognition, bonuses, and the promotions that I have received as a direct result of your competencies in hiring. Your advice and occasional cajoling have resulted in enough great hires to almost guarantee the success of my team. The people who you have identified and helped me hire have such exceptional capabilities that I routinely exceed my business goals with embarrassingly little effort.

I also wanted to apologize for all the times during the last year that I might not have taken hiring as seriously as I should have. Thanks to your efforts, I now realize that in business, just like in sports, even a mediocre manager can succeed when they are provided with a recruiter and a hiring process that continually provides exceptional talent. I now confidently enter into new business and product areas knowing you will somehow find and land the exceptional talent I require in that field. Thanks again for making me look good.

Final Thoughts

During turbulent economic times, it’s easy to become disillusioned as a recruiter. Even though a few think of recruiters as little more than “requisition jockeys,” you and I know that the work we do makes a huge difference. If we get it right, we change people’s lives and our company’s results for the better.

However, if we get it wrong, we also realize that we can hurt not only candidates but also our organization’s shareholders. So, even if you don’t receive a single thank-you card like the ones illustrated above, take a step back as the year comes to a close and applaud yourself for a job well done.

Happy holidays and once again, thank you for making a difference!

If you get to these top people first, you’ll have no competition, and they’ll be much easier to recruit since they’ve already made the decision to pursue a new job. However, it’s what you do when you first connect that will determine whether you’re successful or not in hiring them. This involves a number of critical recruiting key skills. These are described below.

If you’re a recruiting manager, evaluate your current crop of recruiters and any new hires to determine whether they have these skills or the ability to learn them. If you’re a recruiter and you want to hire more top performers, you need to be exceptional in these areas. As you’ll see, hiring top performers without paying unnecessary compensation premiums requires great recruiters, great opportunities, and great hiring managers. Without these, it just becomes a numbers game. But as Chicken Little, or some other similar authority, once said, “the early bird catches the worm, as long as you have a good fishing pole.”

Passive candidates and those just entering the job market — the early-birds — are a different breed of prospect. For one thing, they’re not desperate. This changes the game entirely from those who have been looking for more extended periods of time. More important, if they’re good, they’ll be very choosy and they will get multiple offers. But since you’re first, and if you play your cards well, you should be able to reel in these top performers in greater numbers than those recruiters who find them after you do. In this case, your competition has to play catch-up. This is a great position to be in. But to pull it off you have to be an exceptional recruiter. Here are the key recruiting skills needed to turn these top candidates and prospects into great hires.

Recruiting Skills Required to Turn Hot Prospects Into Great Employees

1. You must be able to walk very slowly, not run. People who are fully employed and very strong always have options, even when you get to them first. Most important, they will not move fast. They want to evaluate the situation and compare it to others that will come along. They will give more value to the long-term career growth opportunities than the short-term issues. Good recruiters know they must move slowly, not selling the job, but selling the idea of a staged series of steps where information is mutually shared, all leading toward the best career move among competing alternatives. Moving too fast is a turn-off. It’s equivalent to making a passive candidate complete an application before you talk to the person.
2. You must be able to instantly convert your job into a career move. Passive candidates and early-birds don’t need another job; they want a better job, generally some type of significant career move. If you don’t know the job at a detailed level, you’ll sound like a used-car salesman selling smoke and mirrors. Knowing the job allows you to ask a few questions early in your conversation to see if there are any gaps or voids in the person’s background that your job fills. If you can fill enough of them, your job becomes a career move. For example, if the budget or team the person has managed in the past isn’t as big as your opening, you have a tremendous chance to excite the hot prospect. Doing this with flair, sophistication, and aplomb is essential, but it all starts by preparing a performance profile with the hiring manager. Without this, assume you won’t be hiring too many great people.
3. You must have exceptional verbal and written skills. Top people need to see the recruiter they’re using to advise them as someone credible. This means you need to speak well, have a complete understanding of the job (the performance profile), your company, and your industry including the competition. This includes preparing well-written emails and professional advertising copy. If you’re not comfortable speaking to people you don’t know who are more senior to you organizationally, you’ll not be able to influence them to consider what you have to offer.
4. You must understand human behavior. Candidates’ job requirements change depending on how long they’ve been looking and how desperate they are. You need to find this out right away. If a candidate is not looking, but open-minded, or has just started looking, you need to recognize that the person wants career-oriented information, not detailed job specific information. I wrote a few articles on Maslow a while back that provide some insight on how to adjust what you say and what you do based on where the person is in their job-hunting process. If you don’t modify your approach with this in mind, it’s comparable to selling a hammer to a plumber, or a laptop to someone who wants a smart phone.
5. You must be a partner with your hiring manager client. Good hiring managers — those who can attract and hire strong people to work for them — are an essential element in hiring more talented people. Good recruiters come next. Eliminating job descriptions is number three on the prerequisite list. Four is recruiters and managers working together, both having a completing understanding of real job needs, trusting each other to accurately assess candidates and jointly working through the recruiting process. If you don’t have all of these elements in place, you won’t be able to hire stronger people unless you have a great brand, an excess supply of top talent, and a willingness to spend more than necessary to convince people to accept your offers.
6. You must break some rules. If you want to hire top performers who you’ve found in the sourcing sweet-spot, expect to break from tradition and aggravate some people. For one thing, ignore the job description. For another, ask for forgiveness, not permission, from the comp department. Top people are not part of the average population. They make more money, have less experience, and won’t play by the rules. So you can’t either, if you want to hire them. If you’re uncomfortable with this, you need to only handle candidates who have responded to your ads. You won’t find many top people this way, but you’ll sleep better at night.
7. You must get the candidate to sell you. Selling isn’t recruiting. Paying salary premiums isn’t either, or playing hard-to-get with a person who’s desperate. Anyone can do this. Presenting a career move in a persuasive manner in order to get a top person who’s fully employed and/or has multiple offers excited enough to tell you why he or she is a perfect fit is recruiting. Being able to pull this off is the key to hiring more top performers. It requires that you know the job, use the interview to look for career gaps, and ask respectful, but challenging questions, that encourage candidates to present in-depth insight into what they’ve accomplished. By staying the buyer this way, you’re able to establish and maintain applicant control.
8. You must determine if you’re interested in the prospect, not the other way around. Most recruiters waste so much time calling up top people — both active and passive — making a bumbling pitch about a job opening, hoping for a statement of interest from the prospect. If not, they move to the next name on the list. If the person says yes, they then qualify the person and hope the person is reasonably good enough to send to the hiring manager for an interview. This is a very low yield and time-consuming process. By presenting your opening as a career move, you’ll be able to get the candidate to describe his/her background before you give too many details. Done properly, you’ll be in a position to determine if you’re interested in the candidate for the opening, rather than the candidate making this decision. This is one of a number of critical steps involved in maintaining applicant control.

You know you’re getting better at maximizing the use of time when top prospects tell you they just started looking or are not looking. If you’re determining interest, you can either then decide to move forward at a slow-but-steady pace, or obtain two to three great referrals if you decide they’re not qualified. Since you’re a partner with your hiring manager clients, 100% of your candidates will get interviewed. Since managers are using performance profiles, not job descriptions, to determine competency and fit, fewer candidates will be excluded for bad reasons or superficial interviews. Since you’re offering career moves, rather than non-descript jobs, fewer candidates will voluntarily opt-out of the process along the way.

On top of this, with a career move as the focus, fewer candidates will be screened out at the beginning and fewer offers will be rejected due to monetary reasons. Collectively, this is how you hire twice as many top performers in half the time. Of course, these are rules you must not break.

Initial jobless claims rose to 480,000 for the week ending Dec. 12, from 473,000 the previous week. It’s the second week in a row that new filings increased. However, the four-week moving average fell for the 15th week straight. The Labor Department says on average, in each of the last four weeks, 467,500 new claims for unemployment benefits were filed.

The Labor Department report says 5.186 million Americans filed a continuing claim during the week. That’s an increase of 5,000 from the previous week, but over the previous four weeks, the weekly average of continuing claims was down.

The company launched Fresh Contacts a month ago offering participants two months free access to the ZoomInfo database just for uploading their personal contacts. Upload one or one thousand contacts, it’s all the same – two months’ access to the 45 million contacts and 5 million company profiles ZoomInfo claims.

Without a doubt, it’s a shot over the bow of competitor Jigsaw, which built its leads business on an early faith in crowdsourcing.

But as you’ll see shortly, there could be more afoot here than a front-on challenge to a competitor.

Enlisting users to provide content is not unknown at ZoomInfo, where the subjects of its machine-created profiles have long been able to correct and update them by “claiming” them.

But this wholesale pitch to users is a first for the company that built a business by aggregating personal and corporate information. Spiders quarry nuggets from all over the visible Web, which are then assembled into profiles.

“The center of our success is technology, and it always will be,” CEO Sam Zales told me at the outset of a GotoMeeting presentation Tuesday. “The secret sauce is really how we connect the dots.”

Even as he was saying that, he was introducing the company’s three-legged stool, which, besides the spidered, processed, and packaged profile content, and the “claimed” profiles, now includes the user-uploaded contacts.

The Fresh Contacts program is one of those win-wins. ZoomInfo gets fresh and updated contacts for its database. Participants, many of whom are expected to be job hunters, get free access to the database, which can make the difference between a resume in an ATS and one that goes directly to a hiring manager.

The contacts themselves get to say yea or nay to being included in the database.

This third leg of the stool is no doubt giving Jigsaw some indigestion. Founded in 2003 on a faith in crowdsourcing, Jigsaw built a community of loyal players who earn points by uploading or correcting contacts. You can buy contacts or trade your points for them.

Like ZoomInfo, it has company data, crowdsourced and presented in wiki style.

Both companies have their limitations. Jigsaw’s contacts are pretty good. The carrot-and-stick reward system tends to keep them fairly accurate. But voluntary contributions of business-card info means the bigger the company, the better the data. Smaller companies, where there are fewer players in the Jigsaw system, are less well-represented and what info there is tends to be staler.

ZoomInfo spiders keep its data fresh, especially the business intelligence. The downside, though, is that machines aren’t very good at telling one John Doe from another. And then there’s the matter of individuals and companies who make an effort to hide addresses and direct dial contact info from the search engines and the “leads” companies.

What if, though, you could combine the self-correcting mechanism of a Jigsaw, with the machine updating of ZoomInfo? And what if somehow you could convince everyone they just had to maintain a personal profile, the way LinkedIn has?

Sam Zales

I ran that scenario past Zales as we were talking. There’s no doubt, he said, that users can mediate spidered content to improve its accuracy. They do that on Wikipedia very effectively. And spiders more quickly can keep a profile fresh and current.

But building a social network such as LinkedIn’s is not easy. That may be why Zales was emphatic in saying, “I want to be clear that we don’t want to be called a social network.”

LinkedIn, he told me, is a complimentary service to ZoomInfo. You can research companies and individuals on ZoomInfo, then go to LinkedIn to see if there is someone in your network who can help open a door to the company or the contact.

Still, something Master Burnett joked about at the Social Recruiting Summit is germane here. Burnett, who’s managing director of John Sullivan’s consulting firm, was poking fun at the digitally illiterate executives who run America’s companies when he said that their LinkedIn profiles are stuck at around 12 percent complete.

That struck a chord when I mentioned it to Zales. ZoomInfo’s spiders could build those profiles and keep them fresh, while the execs would only have to police them.

They can do that with their ZoomInfo profile now, but few do. After three years, not quite a million profiles have been “claimed” by their owners. LinkedIn hit 50 million profiles this year, all of them created by their owners.

See the potential? Zales does. I asked him if my scenario was behind his curve or ahead of it.  “You’re right there,” he said, somewhat ambiguously.

While ZoomInfo might not aspire to be a social networking site, there’s no reason it couldn’t partner with one.

If that’s the direction Zales is taking the company, he didn’t let on. In fact, the Fresh Contacts program, as it is currently structured, is all about growing the ZoomInfo contact database, rather than building a community. At the end of the two months of free access, users have to start paying if they want to continue. At $1,000 a year, the casual user and the job hunter will bow out.

But Zales is a savvy business executive with a background in marketing at American Express and B2B online sales. So he has not put an end date to the Fresh Contacts program and told me it could continue, perhaps with some changes.

Perhaps with something akin to a community?

For the first time in years, there are new things to be said about the quality and quantity of internship programs. Interns should run social media campaigns. Employers should advertise for interns on Twitter. An entire unit of interns should be brought on to achieve A, B, and C.

Internship programs are on the rise. Take a look back before looking forward. Yes, many improvements can be made to any internship program. But, how is your company’s internship program to begin with? How does it run? Do the students enjoy it? What do they get out of it? Are employees properly using interns?

I question the current internship programs at companies across the United States. I question if all employees, from CEO to entry-level assistant, are really aware of their internship programs and how they run. Are clear goals defined within the company to outline the purpose of hosting interns? How are these students managed and used on a day-to-day basis?

With that in mind, here are some suggested quick fixes to your internship program:

1. Every employee at the company must be kept in the loop. The CEO of the company should be aware of the internship program and what role the young minds play within the company. Entry-level employees, secretaries, and all administrators must be aware of who these interns are and what they should be doing. This will better communication among employees and also create a secure environment for the interns to operate under.
2. Assign the role. A specific employee needs to be in charge of the internship program and provided with the additional title of “internship coordinator.” Having one person in charge of this company will avoid departments finding interns on their own and will create a central source for internship communication.
3. Have yearly intern meetings. Meetings should be held at least once per year to define appropriate intern tasks. An employer is wasting their time and energy creating an internship program if the interns are going to sit around and do nothing. Their time should be used wisely to build a beneficial experience for the student and for the employer.
4. Start an internal conversation. Ask employees in all departments what they need and how they could put interns to work. Interns are legally supposed to be “assisting” and/or performing “vocational-like tasks.” Research, organization, and database management are very popular intern tasks. Teaching interns to perform this kind of functionality will increase the efficiency of most departments while educating students on the behind-the-scenes components of any business deal or transaction.
5. Set limits and boundaries for interns. Remember, when you are dealing with an intern, you are more-than-likely dealing with a parent. Review the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act before bringing interns into the workplace. This agreement is supposed to protect interns from illegal situations. Keep intern tasks appropriate and business-related. The intern is most likely working for free, and they are taking the internship to learn about the specific industry. The company must provide an education environment and days filled with tasks that will help the interns learn about their future. Interns who run personal errands all day go home upset and frustrated. This does nothing for the company or the student. Set boundaries with all of your employees and list tasks that are not appropriate for interns.
6. Be a Mentor. There are several ways for employers to go above and beyond the traditional internship experience. A mentorship program is a great extension of the internship program and provides a beneficial experience for both interns and employees. Each semester, assign an intern to an executive at the company. They should meet once at the beginning of the internship and briefly in the middle of the internship, and the company can host a big mentor/mentee luncheon to celebrate the end of their internship. These are programs that don’t take too much additional time or dollars to create.

What is even more interesting than the actual volume of candidates is the response I hear from business leaders as to how they are dealing with this issue.

Overwhelmed

The most common response is that corporate recruiters are now overwhelmed by the number of resumes they must review. ATS systems are bursting at the seams, with unqualified applicants who are taught to apply to every posting available in order to get their resume in front of a recruiter. Once again recruiters have to focus on the transaction of recruiting. They don’t have the time to develop the right relationships with the right candidates for the right time.

Speaking with the SVP of talent acquisition at a large financial institution, she indicated that her staff of more than 100 recruiters only review the first 30 to 40 applicants (on average) per requisition. They eliminate the remaining due to the sheet volume they must review. Whether organizations admit this openly or not, this is a common practice today that results in recruiters missing many exceptionally qualified candidates who did not happen to be one of the first 40 to apply to the position or posting.

Although a real issue, being overwhelmed can be dealt with by adding additional resources to properly review all the candidates who apply. Expensive? Yes. Possible? Also yes. Smart? Definitely yes.

Over-hiring

A second theme currently pervasive among business leaders at all levels is the concept of over-hiring during poor economic times when candidates are plentiful. As I recently listened to discussions about this topic on Sirius radio, I began to grow concerned about the impact this will have on the long-term success of certain organizations. The commentator was interviewing the chief operating officer of a large manufacturing facility located in the southern United States, who was extremely proud of the fact that he only hires candidates with a bachelor of science degree in Manufacturing or Engineering. On the surface this sounds like many organizations. The difference is that these positions were primarily production floor operators with an average wage of $12 per hour.

This well-respected COO went on to say that his organization is taking advantage of the current economic conditions by over-hiring and under paying at all levels within his organization. He continued by stating that he recently hired a plant manager who most recently was the president of his closest competitor, at a salary level that was less than 60% of his previous compensation.

I began to wonder how prevalent this attitude is today, and what the impact will be tomorrow to these same organizations. As I reflected on a number of meetings I had recently with company executives who were of like opinion to this COO, I picked up my cell phone, called into this executive’s organization, and asked for the plant manager! Within 10 minutes I was engaged with this president-turned-plant-manager, discussing his current circumstances and long-term career outlook. As I spoke to this individual (let’s call him ‘John’), I soon found out that there were many others like him within the organization who were considered over-hired and grossly underpaid.

John and these other individuals are currently learning how the organization operates, who their customers were, what their long-term strategy is, and even learned certain proprietary manufacturing methodologies used by the organization. John went on to explain that a large number of the current employees were just waiting for the opportunity to leave their current employer as soon as the economy improved, leaving the COO to find replacements, train them, and potentially lose a substantial amount of intellectual capital.

I realized after my conversation with John that the United States may find itself in an employment situation not unlike what we experienced in 2005 and 2006. Companies across the country were struggling to find the “right” candidates for the “right” amount to sit in the “right” seats on the bus. Many organizations who have taken advantage of this over-hiring mentality risk having a mass exodus of experienced talent leave their organizations as the economy improves. It might not be this month or next month. But the economy will improve, and these candidates will find better paying jobs closer to their skill levels and expertise. These companies may pride themselves on saving money at the time, but they aren’t thinking of the amount of time, money, and productivity wasted when new talent has to be hired and trained … again!

After speaking with John, I continued my search for information and validation and began speaking to both executive and middle management candidates who are either contemplating a job change or recently accepted a position that could be considered beneath their current skills and/or abilities. The overwhelming theme was that they are basically biding their time until the economy improves, at which point they would be seeking more meaningful employment. I heard comments that included “I am only here until a position opens up with our main competitor,” or “This organization has shown their lack of commitment to me by taking advantage of my situation; I will be gone in a matter of months.”

Although shocked by many of these comments, I began to understand their perspectives and began to wonder about the impact a mass exodus of candidates could have on some of these organizations. The bigger question is: what can organizations do to avoid circumstances such as these and protect themselves from a potential loss of talent and intellectual capital? In speaking with these candidates, they would tell you loyalty is built on two basic principles:

1. Fair Compensation: This does not mean pay equal to what a candidate had in the past in better economic times. Fair compensation is a fair wage for the work being performed and the impact being made on the organization with planned and incremental increases based on hitting specific and defined objectives. Being fair in tough times will create a level of loyalty that is vital, tremendously strong, and virtually guarantees the employer will keep their top talent as the economy improves and qualified candidates become sought after.
2. Honesty: If you are over-hiring a candidate for the short term, tell them. Most candidates stated they were OK with knowing that the role could be temporary, or there was little room for real advancement. Honesty from the employer regarding the circumstances of the positions and the financial situation of the organization goes a long way to building a dedicated and loyal workforce, even if for a short time.

If you are going into the market with a short-term view and the intent of over-hiring and underpaying due to the economic conditions, start preparing for future fallout and loss of employee loyalty. If you value your employees and are focused on long-term gain, being fair in such an economy will pay large shareholder dividends in the future.

There is some truth to the saying: “Short-term pain leads to long-term gain, and short-term gain often leads to long-term pain.”

Despite a slowdown in new business, most vendors have been able to continue to generate revenue from their existing client base. Vendors who have assessments that can be used for both hiring and development are finding their ability to diversify beyond hiring to be a serious asset. This makes sense given the fact that many companies have chosen to invest more in their existing employees instead of investing in hiring new ones.

Many vendors I have spoken with have taken this past year to concentrate on developing new products and ideas to ensure they are ready to hit the ground running once things start to pick up. From what I have seen, the evolution of assessment tools has continued in a very positive direction.

Most of my conversations with vendors over the past few months have been more positive then they have in some time. Everyone is starting to see some movement in a positive direction, with pipelines starting to fill up with increased opportunities.

I am a glass-half-full kind of guy. So, here are a few reasons why I feel very optimistic about what we can expect in terms of assessment uptake in 2010.

New Vendors, New Products

I have seen a number of new vendors pop up on the scene in 2009. To me this means that people are continuing to invest in the idea of assessment and what it can do to help add value. While the marketplace has many players already, competition is a very good thing. Also, every vendor is a bit different, and not all are a good match for the needs of every situation. So, more product offerings and differentiation means more options for the consumer. The downside of this trend is of course that, as has always been the case, not all vendors offer products that meet the standards that must be upheld for sound science and compliance. So, now more than ever, it pays to do your homework when it comes to choosing an assessment vendor.

I have also seen a number of nice new products from existing vendors and think that as consumers of assessment re-visit the idea of using assessment, they will find that there are more products then ever to choose from and that these products are continuing to evolve.

Increased Focus on Linkage to Business Results

Vendors are finally starting to get the idea that they should sell products based on business results. There continues to be an increased focus on using business terms and providing real-world ways to measure ROI from assessment. This is the exact type of philosophy that is required for assessment to gain credibility and increase its stock amongst consumers. It’s essential to provide ways to clarify the bottom-line impact of assessment. Although slow to evolve, the continued shift in focus to thinking of assessment in terms businesses understands is helping move perceptions of assessment from that of an overly complex academically based mystery to a solid tool for improving business outcomes.

More Transactional Products

Assessments are becoming increasingly transactional. This trend has been unfolding for several years now, but I noticed a significant increase in the development of off-the-shelf assessments that are tailored for specific jobs or industry verticals. There are several reasons for this: These assessments are easy to “plug in” to broader technology-based solutions and are thus easy to sell as add on value-adds. Assessments are just one piece of information collected during the hiring process. Using assessments to provide a sketch of a few characteristics critical for a job and not asking them to provide an in-depth dossier makes it much easier to add a more general, off-the-shelf assessment.

In the past, I felt that off-the-shelf products were often too general to really add value, given the fact that jobs often look different within different organizations. With a solid decade of web-based testing under our belts, we have been able to greatly accelerate our understanding of what works and what does not. The insight we have gained from literally tens of millions of data points has allowed generalized off-the-shelf assessments to be more accurate then ever.

Finally, transactional assessments are very appealing to small- to medium-sized businesses, a segment that represents tremendous untapped potential. This group often does not have resources required to create customized tests but can still benefit from assessments. Since highly transactional products can be sold entirely without human interaction, they represent a nice additional revenue channel for many vendors.

Continued Integration of Assessments

Another trend that has been continuing to unfold over the past decade or so is the integration of assessment into other products. Almost every ATS has experience with integration, and many are continuing to take the initiative to offer their own integrated suites that include assessment tools.

Talent management vendors have not focused on pre-employment assessment to a great extent thus far. This is bound to change shortly.

The more accurate generalized assessments become, the easier they are to insert into other products that have a broader footprint across the employee lifecycle. Increased understanding and development of assessments that can be used for both pre- and post-employment purposes will also help to ensure uptake.

A Final Note About Progress and Doing it Right

Since day one, the integration of technology has definitely made the old-guard academics in the testing world a bit nervous. In many cases such feelings are justified. The value of assessment lies in adherence to a strict set of guidelines for test development and usage. The trends I have noted above may seem at odds with these requirements to folks who are from the old school. While proving ROI of assessments and the business drivers for using assessment may seem at odds with the roots of testing, nothing could be further from the truth. It would simply not be possible to show real ROI without ensuring any assessment was measuring the things required for successful job performance. Any vendor of quality assessments understands this and as such should have a dedication to upholding the proper standards for assessment.

The legitimate vendors out there get it and are continuing to do their best to strike a balance between doing it right and making it easy for the end user. As with any other field, survival and progress requires that we adapt and evolve. Part of this is the continued meshing of the science of technology with that of psychology. The continued evolution of assessment will see it move in a direction that makes it increasingly easy to use and understand and this will serve as a significant force in its increased popularity.

Wow!

We really do live in a world of lowered expectations when news like this is considered cause for celebration. I guess it’s all relative. The news must be good because it isn’t so bad.

Wow!

So while some see bad news as good news, we still have 10% unemployment and an anemic recovery. But have no fear: the government has a solution. After all, it doesn’t take much to create jobs. According to the government’s own data on the effects of the stimulus, an order worth $890 to Moore’s Shoe Service in Kentucky resulted in the creation of nine jobs. And a Minnesota company that makes lawn-care equipment created (or saved) 50 jobs for $1,047. So, between ordering some more boots and lawn mowers we’ll have the unemployment problem solved. And for good measure we’ll have the “Cash for Caulkers” program: a tax credit for weatherizing your home.

The Definition of Madness

Apparently, ovens weren’t the only places turkeys were being cooked up over Thanksgiving. One proposal being seriously considered is another stimulus package. Since the first two were so successful in lowering unemployment all the way from 7% to 10%, another one is obviously the way to go. I’m reminded of someone I worked with who was failing at some task and told me that her solution was to re-double her efforts. The definition of madness is to do the same thing and expect a different result.

The last stimulus package did help bring the economy back on track, but it has not done anything of consequence to address the most critical requirement for long-term growth — job creation in private industry. Long-term, permanent jobs are simply not being created. Already, with construction projects funded by stimulus dollars coming to an end, construction firms are again laying off workers. The U.S. now produces fewer private sector jobs than it did a decade ago. In October, private sector companies employed just over 108 million U.S. workers, a million fewer than in October 1999. The one place where jobs are growing consistently is the government. The Feds have hired 25,000 people in the last six months.

With more than 65% of the economy dependent on consumer spending, the only real basis for a return to a robust economy is job growth in private industry. The only program being considered that can help with this is the tax credit for employers. Further spending on more bridges, roads, and boots is a stopgap arrangement that does nothing to create private sector jobs. What’s worse is that jobs created by government spending use money that would have otherwise been available to private industry. And private industry is far better at spending it in ways that create jobs than the government is.

No Good Deed Shall Go Unpunished

The incentive to create jobs in private industry is low. Employers create jobs because they expect to see a positive return on the money they spend. Right now all the spending by the government is going to lead to higher taxes, which are already being promised. Throw-in the costs of the healthcare legislation, cap-and-trade, and who knows what else, and higher taxes are guaranteed. Why bother with investing in any activity that creates jobs if the returns are going to be taxed away?

What’s needed is letting business’s creativity flow and eliminate uncertainty caused by burdensome legislation. That doesn’t seem to be what Congress and the White House is supportive of. Their desire is trending toward creating some kind of an industrial policy — favoring some businesses more than others. The push for “green jobs” being the most obvious example, despite the fact that green technology has no potential to create widespread employment for decades. When the government starts picking winners and losers, all sorts of good ideas will be lost, because the choices are made based on political considerations (imagine that).

With all these great ideas floating around I’m surprised Congress didn’t accept Larry Flynt’s proposal for creating jobs by bailing out the adult movie business. Now that would be stimulating.

America’s Army

When you’re recruiting for an organization where the expression “taking potshots” is no mere idiom, you have to be innovative in your approach, not to mention cutting edge to reach the 17-25 year olds who are your (pardon the expression) target.

No wonder, therefore, that the U.S. Army has been using video games as a recruiting tool for years.

Now comes a report from GameSpot, a site for news about the digital games industry, that puts the 10-year-cost cost of developing and managing the Army’s free PC games called America’s Army at $32.8 million. The original cost to develop the first version of the games was budgeted at $7 million.

An entirely new version — America’s Army 3 — was released in June, and almost immediately the Army cut ties with the game’s developer. GameSpot reported earlier the Army will take over future development and game management.That will be handled by an Army unit formed in 2005 specifically to oversee development of the game.

Head2Head

This Canadian RPO and headhunter has a new video out that will make no friends with newspapers or job boards. Who cares, though. It’s a lot of fun and, ironically perhaps, it may be the most honest career video ever made.

“Stop putting in print ads. Stop posting on job boards. You may as well set fire to your money,” says an aggressive, sharply dressed gent who at first look might be an arms dealer or a central casting FBI agent.

That’s the opening scene of “What Can 60 Hours Do For You?” For the next 4 1/2 minutes you’re treated to snapshots of a 60-hour recruiting marathon to fill a req for a client where “failure is not an option.”

The credits claim that Head2Head staff wrote and produced the video. The parts were also played by staff members who should all get Oscars for their acting. (Or was it acting?)

Take the 4 minutes and 53 seconds to watch and enjoy. And then you tell me if it doesn’t nail headhunting. Still want to be a recruiter?

Vault.com

Vault, the venerable career information site that was an early leader in providing job seekers help in researching a company and building a personal network, has been struggling this year.

Erik Sorenson called it “stiff headwinds” driven by the faltering U.S. economy. In a memo earlier this month to the remaining staff at Vault, he described 2009 as a “period of right-sizing the company.”

Sorenson, the former president of MSNBC who became CEO in 2007 when Vault was acquired by Veronis Suhler Stevenson, has now stepped aside. His replacement is Claude Sheer.

In looking toward 2010, Sorenson said in the memo, “We need to beef up our senior management and strengthen our strategic efforts by bringing on someone with different knowledge, skills, and interests whose experience and passion is in growth platforms, strategic partnerships, and Internet deal-making.”

The change was effective on Dec. 7th. Sorenson is now Vault chairman and a consultant.