ERE.net

Last week I introduced this series by talking about how general business changes have rendered what many might consider traditional strategy development in talent management more of a hindrance to organizations than a benefit.

I did not say that strategy is not important, or that delivering a strategic impact is not important, but rather implied that how most organizations are approaching talent strategy today is out of touch with the times.

As the general business environment has become more turbulent, and technology combined with consumer demand has driven significant shortening of most product lifecycles, the complexities of delivering really strategic impact through talent management have ballooned. While competency management systems, career path planning, and multi-year development cycles may have made sense decades ago, that simply is not the case today.

Organizational agility is something the majority of human resource functions are not designed to enable or support. In fact, most traditional HR systems, including those in talent acquisition, hinder agility by imposing rigid control structures with process cycles that take months and even years to execute.

You can’t hit a moving target that changes location unpredictably every six months using processes that take 18 months to execute!

In this installment, I expand beyond the six capabilities of agile talent management introduced in Part I by talking about the critical elements of such a strategy.

However, before launching into the elements, let’s first take a look at a few examples of agile talent management in action.

keep reading…

Despite the economy, most recruiting professionals I speak with are busy. As the head of global recruiting for Expedia (I have returned to the corporate world!), I can tell you that we’ve never been busier. Candidate applications are up more than 100% from last year, recruiting budgets and teams are smaller, but the business is growing, not shrinking like you might expect.

I feel like we’re on the cusp of another breakout period for our profession. Good stuff is ahead, and I’m excited to be part of it. As a regular ERE speaker, I’ve enjoyed networking with and learning from my colleagues over the past five years, and I’m thrilled and honored to be your ERE conference chair and MC for the Spring Expo March 15-17, 2010. keep reading…

Monster CEO Sal Iannuzzi, who was in a breakout session at the recent White House jobs summit, is telling the Administration that employers should get help to mitigate the expense of bringing on a new employee.

While such help could vary, Iannuzzi gives the example of a job candidate currently getting $15,000 annually in unemployment benefits. If the government instead contributed that $15,000 to an employer who could provide, say, a $50,000-a-year job, it would, he says, reduce the cost and risk for employers. “Onboarding is very expensive, and employees come with heavy costs,” he says. “No one wants to hire and let people go. That’s one of the worst things a company can do from an economic and from a morale standpoint. Grants or tax credits, in some way, shape, or form, mitigage risks to companies for training or onboarding people — government picking up part of the tab of that training.”

The White House divided summit-goers into breakout sessions. Iannuzzi’s track (a bit over an hour, which, ideally, he said, would have been much longer) was mainly about training, education, community colleges, and other hands-on hiring issues. Toward the end of the session, to take one example, the subject of the lack of nursing educators came up.

In addition to Iannuzzi’s suggestion for some sort of onboarding assistance, he also believes that some TARP money should be used to get banks to loan more money, especially to small businesses, with the U.S. government guaranteeing the loans. “An extremely critical thing is to free up credit markets to get them to invest and hire,” he says. “Getting credit out there which has been very hard to come by is very, very critical.”

Iannuzzi is collecting additional economic ideas from Monster employees and will be submitting them to the Administration. keep reading…

Adversity is a great teacher, and the past year will certainly be one of the most adverse and professionally difficult that we will ever experience.

It has been a year of paradoxes and contradictions: unemployment is soaring, but many organizations cannot find the qualified people they need. Rather than restructure work or rethink how work gets done in order to find people, we continue to seek people to work in traditional ways. More people are looking for part-time, temporary, or contract work, yet only a tiny percentage of companies are looking for these type of people. We know that being discourteous to people creates negative branding and is morally questionable especially when so many are unemployed, but we have perhaps never been as discourteous to applicants are we are now. Energy costs have fluctuated wildly and global warming is a topic on every agenda, yet most organizations and people prefer face-to-face relationships rather than asking people to save energy by working from home.

Here are four lessons we should have learned this year. keep reading…

I was listening to Fred Wilson speak at the Social Recruiting Summit about a month ago and found myself wondering what a venture capitalist was doing speaking to a bunch of corporate recruiters. Of course his involvement in the funding for web 2.0 companies such as Twitter and Indeed is a natural connection to a conference aimed at using social media to recruit, but the world of a corporate recruiter is so much different than that of VC. As we neared the end of his presentation I decided to let him attempt to draw the connection for me. keep reading…

In a blog post of less than 300 words late Friday afternoon, Google announced changes to the way search results will be reported. From now on, the results of an identical keyword search could be different for each user.

It’s been the case for some time that identical searches have produced slightly different rankings in the results depending on the searcher’s country or, in some cases, city. It’s also been the case that users with Google accounts get customized search results, based on their search histories. keep reading…

Early Greek mythology tells tales of sailors lured by Sirens. Their sweet music mesmerized the sailors and led them to believe that the illusion was reality. Ultimately, those sailors who blindly followed the tunes crashed their ships on the rocks and their boats sank.

Sirens lure business executives and small business owners too. The song that the Sirens sing has one line … “Promote my top salesperson, put six people underneath them, and generate six times the sales.” And, like the sailors, many business executives and their companies have been led into harm’s way. keep reading…

In case you haven’t noticed, the economy has gone to hell.

It’s been up and down like a yo-yo for the last decade, a fact that led Time to declare the first decade of the new century “the decade from hell” in a recent cover story. If you work in talent management or HR, this yo-yo pattern certainly isn’t news to you. Surprisingly enough, it’s times like these that present the best opportunity to become more strategic as more managers open their minds to alternative solutions to improve productivity, save money, and move their organizations forward.

This article is intended to get you to rethink your current talent management strategy and to change it so that it better fits turbulent economic conditions and trends that are most likely to stick around for awhile.

Times Change; Strategy Isn’t What it Used to Be

As a professor of management in a college of business, I must remain knowledgeable on economic trends and the strategies organizations can leverage to survive and, in many cases, thrive during various economic situations. While some might argue that a PhD is needed to understand the complexities of the global economy, it doesn’t take a great deal of education to realize that for as long as man has recorded details on trade, there have been oscillating cycles of growth and decline.

If you’ve been around for a while, you might remember the recessions of 1970, 1975, and 1983, followed by growth spurts in 1977 and 1984. Despite blips here and there, the U.S. economy and Western economies in general have grown at a relatively stable rate for some time.

However, if you look at the deviations in growth, you would note that since 1983, the cycles of economic growth and decline have become much shorter and for the most part less severe.

keep reading…

Rejoice. Do a happy dance. Say “Hallelujah.” Again. “Hallelujah.” The unemployment rate has dropped to 10 percent. Job losses for November were 11,000, the lowest since Dec. 2007, the last month that the number of jobs in the U.S. actually grew.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which released November’s jobs numbers a few hours ago, also dramatically scaled back the numbers for September and October. Job losses initially reported for those months — 219,000 and 190,000 respectively — were revised to 139,000 and 111,000.

Economists had been expecting that November’s report would show job losses in the range of 114,000 to 125,000 and an unemployment rate unchanged from October’s 10.2 percent.

The numbers caught them off guard, with many cautioning that a single break in an otherwise unrelenting pattern of triple-digit losses may be a sign of a genuine turnaround. Or it may be just an aberration. keep reading…

In a previous article, I suggested that most companies don’t have a formal hiring strategy in place that drives planning and decision-making. As a result, some default strategy predominates how hiring is done; generally, some mashup of competing ideas. Typically this is hiring manager-driven with individual managers determining who gets hired.

Few managers are great at this, and many can’t attract top talent. Lack of oversight and an audit trail complicates the organizational need to get better. Adding to the mashup problem is the comp group determining the pay ranges, the OD group describing the interviewing methodology, and the recruiting department trying to drive down costs while letting each recruiter do his or her own thing. Unless the company is an “employer of choice,” the performance of a mashup hiring strategy is uneven, with the best candidates bypassing the “approved” process entirely, sneaking in the back door.

This is unfortunate, since the impact on company performance of better people is undisputable. A maximize quality of hire strategy coupled with appropriate processes and used by everyone throughout the company, is an essential component of long-term company success regardless of current economic conditions. As part of this, HR/Recruiting should be responsible for ensuring the strategy is implemented properly.

The focus of this article will be on describing the financial impact of this type of raising-the-bar hiring strategy. keep reading…

Matt Ferguson doesn’t see pay for performance replacing the pay to post model for job boards anytime soon, if ever. Nor have the job aggregators had much of an impact on the business.

Rather, says CareerBuilder’s CEO, it’s social media in all its forms that poses the biggest threat to the job board industry. The “biggest threat and the biggest opportunity,” he said in a conference call Wednesday with a group of analysts and others. keep reading…

Reports out today may be foreshadowing optimistic news Friday when the U.S. Department of Labor issues its monthly jobs numbers.

Economists are expecting that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will report that between 114,000 and 125,000 jobs were lost in November. If the BLS numbers come anywhere close to the lower end, it will be the smallest job loss since the recession began in December 2007.

The reports, including a Federal Reserve assessment saying the economy in most parts of the country “improved modestly,” come a day in advance of a White House jobs summit Thursday. A broad group of top CEOs, small business owners, academics, and economists will huddle with President Obama to discuss how to reverse the job losses and start growing work.

While the losses have been diminishing, they are seemingly unrelenting. This morning the ADP National Employment Report said 169,000 private sector jobs were lost in November. It’s the eighth consecutive month of declines in lost jobs and the lowest loss since July 2008. keep reading…

I don’t personally know Carmen Hudson. But I’d like to.

I heard her speak at a conference a few years ago and last month caught her presentation at the Social Recruiting Summit. Both times I came away with two thoughts: How am I ever going to remember everything she shared, and what’s the secret to her energy and enthusiasm?

She’s a stylish dresser, says Dave Mendoza, with a special love of shoes and a dream of entering the World Series of Poker. She’s on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and too many more to list. Her blog, PeopleShark, is aptly named for a recruiter who is a  recruiter’s recruiter.

A quick Google search — Sorry. In deference to her that should read “A quick Yahoo search” — and you find page after page of listings for her conference appearances, her interviews, her recruiting advice, and, now, her new gig as founder and CEO of Tweetajob. keep reading…

Good people know that even in a recession, they can find another position.

In fact, signs point to increased opportunities for currently employed people with specific skills and experience, and many of your top performers are most likely being actively recruited without your knowledge. As the stock market improves, so do attitudes about hiring. Every day I see signs that companies are starting to hire selected people more aggressively than they have over the past six months. Google has (or had) openings for 200 recruiters; do you wonder why? Facebook is ramping up hiring; wonder why? Even in Silicon Valley, the keenest firms are hiring people even when they don’t really need them!

Facebook, Google, and others continue to hire large numbers of top people for two reasons: first of all, to keep them from the competition. Top people employed by you are not going to be contributing to someone else’s’ success; and second, they are “stockpiling” talent to have it ready when things start growing again, which is already starting to happen.

In many areas, including healthcare, telecommunications, marketing, computer security, and computer engineering, demand remains strong. Biosciences and pharmaceutical companies are hiring, as are the movie and media industries despite layoffs, recessions, and slumping consumer demand.

So what can recruiters so about retention? Isn’t it a fact that once people are hired they are out of your hands? While this may be the case in some firms, I believe for most of us there are several ways to help your organization keep the best people and help yourself by reducing your workload and keeping your internal networks alive.

Most basically, you can make a real difference in any employee’s attitude who you have helped to hire. Employment is about relationships, and the strongest relationships are built on trust, respect, and open communication. As a recruiter, you most likely have an advantage with the employees you helped to hire. You spent time with them, got to know them more deeply than many others in the company, and may have given them advice about accepting offers or on how to deal with an interview. By simply checking in with these folks, you can get a sense of their mood, concerns, and what the issues are they may have with the organization. You may be able to change negative attitudes or to pass on information that might help “save” one of them from leaving.

But here are a few other things that you can do, as well. keep reading…

I ran ads using CareerBuilder.com (June & July 2009) and LinkedIn (October 2009) to see which one produced the most resumes and the resumes with the closest match to the job requirements. The positions I posted on LinkedIn were for a production supervisor and a production control and planning supervisor for Amico’s Bourbonnais, Illinois, plant and a plant manager position in Lafayette, Louisiana. The positions posted on CareerBuilder were for an inside sales rep, sales estimator, and a purchasing manager for Amico’s Bourbonnais, Illinois, plant and for an outside sales rep for the Southeast.

I defined a qualified resume as an individual who met the education and experience requirements of the posting. If a candidate did not have the education or experience required, their resume was not considered qualified. An example might be a resume where the candidate did not have a degree or did not have the minimum experience required in the job posting. As for the cost, to run one ad on LinkedIn cost $195 and the cost of a CareerBuilder ad was $360. Both sites give volume discounts, but for purposes of analysis I used the cost to run just one ad on each site. After screening each resume I determined the number of resumes that were qualified and those that were not and calculated the cost per good resume. keep reading…

Our webinar series was joined by Kristen Carroll this week, who shared her expertise on how to update your talent acquisition strategy for the healthcare industry. For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

Kevin Wheeler joined us on our webinar series to discuss global workforce trends and what recent developments may mean for recruiters. For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

Most managers share the fear of hiring a bad fit, no matter how technically qualified the candidate might be. Unfortunately, most attempts to measure fit suffer from a fatal flaw: that being the way cultural screening questions are asked.

Too many managers and administrators-turned-recruiters ask binary questions that make it easy for candidates to guess the most desirable answer. For example, they may describe their group’s team dynamic and ask if it is the type of environment that the candidate finds suitable. Fortunately, there is an alternative type of question format known as “forced choice” that can be used by those in recruiting to garner a much more precise and insightful candidate perspective on cultural issues.

The Problems with Binary Questions in Interviews

Many of the questions asked during interviews can easily be classified as binary or yes/no, true/false questions. While they may be posed in an open-ended fashion, it is clear from the phrasing and tonal inflection what response is desired.

In other cases, the questions probe the existence of behavioral characteristics that any candidate would need to be an idiot to deny.

Examples of obvious “yes” questions:

• Are you a team player?
• Do you work well under pressure?
• Do you share our company’s values?

Unless you are interviewing Homer Simpson, questions like those listed here will result in fairly predictable responses. By asking a question that allows a simple yes or no answer to be provided, you make it way too easy for the candidate to misrepresent themselves and to give the answer that they think you really want.

Consider Forced-Choice Questions

If you wanted to obtain a more precise answer to an important “fit” or preference question, shift to a forced-choice question format. This format requires the candidate to rank a series of possible responses in order of desirability.
keep reading…

The New Jersey SHRM council and eight other state HR groups have been honored for their innovative programs addressing local workforce challenges.

keep reading…

Wouldn’t it be great to have access to an off-the-shelf, easy-to-execute morale-boosting program, one that includes two “employee engagement killer apps”? Given how challenging—and important—it is these days to keep employee morale high, wouldn’t it be great to have this morale boosting program, and not pay a fortune for it?

Well you can.

It’s called: keep reading…