1) CHURN: Corporate churn is good for recruiters- it increases job security.

2) CONTINGENT LABOR: Benies get more expensive for employers and they become increasingly “gun-shy”. Nothing really new here.

3) SHOW ME THE MONEY: I said this a few days ago- if you want to try and be a jumped up bean counter/clerk with a fancy title, be my guest and good luck to you.

4) RETURN OF THE WAR: A relatively small number of positions (We never seem to talk about sourcing nurses here.) and superstars always in demand. Coming up with effective new ways to get them is a great way for recruiting process consultants and recruiters to make money. The key word here is “effective”.

5) DIRECT SOURCING: Why does anyone consider this a meaningful topic of general discussion anymore? When you can hire high-quality sourcers (both telephone and internet) for around $10/hr, why do WE need to *know how to do it better? Are we that broke that we can’t afford it, do we plan on competing in the marketplace against low-wage sourcers, or is there a belief that the small numbers of high-level “Osama in a Cave- Type” searches are enough to keep a substantial number of Western sourcers working at a middle-class level of income?

*As opposed to knowing how it’s done.

6) JUGAAD (an improvised or jury-rigged solution; inventiveness, ingenuity, cleverness): If I understand this properly, since we don’t have enough resources in recruiting, we’ll get executives from other areas to show us how to do it effectively “on the cheap”. Can we try that in THEIR areas?

7) NEGATIVE EMPLOYMENT BRANDING: Traditional corporate branding is obsolete- it’s in the hands of the employees and candidates through sites like Glassdoor
(http://www.glassdoor.com/survey/start_input.htm?showSurvey=REVIEWS). Treat your employees
and your applicants decently, and hope for the best; you can’t rely on your marketing drones and shills as much anymore

8) TOOL OBSOLESCENCE: Tools to do what? IMHO, tools should help us to eliminate, automate, or outsource routine, low-touch, low value-add components of the recruiting process to allow recruiters to concentrate on creative, high-touch, high value-add processes. They should relieve us of unpleasant tasks as opposed to allowing us to do more of them.

9)OBSOLETE TALENT: Aka, “we pay you too much”. No surprises here. Why don’t we start outsourcing some of our CXO positions to China- their companies are doing great and I bet they make a lot less than ours do!

10) RETENTION: As mentioned in 1), churn is good for recruiters and retention is bad- it gives us less work to do.

11) APPLICANT EXPERIENCES: If you/your recruiters are too busy, hire a Virtual Assistant for $12/DAY to make sure that all applicants’ experiences are professional, if not pleasant. If your company isn’t prepared to pay someone less than the cleaning staff earns to make sure they leave a good impression with applicants, then THEY REALLY DON’T CARE, and the word will get out (see above).

12) SOCIAL MEDIA: There are only 24 hours in a day- what’s the best use of your time? Do YOU need to find new ways of getting hold of people? (See above.) How about doing recruiting activities that can’t be eliminated, automated, or outsourced? How about becoming a “Solution Recruiter” who enables the client’s work to be done, and not just a peddler of walking, talking widgets for sale or rent? How about working to develop tested, verifiable Generally Accepted Recruiting Principles (GARPs) which really work, and aren’t just what someone like me SAYS they are so they can make some ill-earned lucre? My suspicion: the latter options require a lot of hard work, requiring rational thought and soul-searching, while hearing about the ”the new new thing” doesn’t.

Once again, Dr. Sullivan, I really appreciate your columns-
they make me think!

Cheers,

Keith “Lots of Opinions and Some Facts, Too” Halperin

I enjoyed these two the best.

“The return of the War”: The use of the word “war” is appropriate.

“Show me the Money”: Staffing/3rd party search industry model works (which is quietly being adopted by forward thinking HR EXECS/Leaders-but most won’t admit it and giving it fancy terms like “lean/six sigma recruiting”), much like professional-sports… If you don’t produce, you dont have a job.

Thanks again, Brian-

Here’s my hope in 2010 that HR and/or the CFO will begin to measure Sourcing effectiveness differently. They could start by defining recruiter/sourcer roles better. They could begin to measure sourcing’s impact by the economic value make by top hires which directly affect the top line AND bottom Line. They could measure on quality instead of quantity. They’d look at the real cost of RPO or offshore and see if it really did work.

Great sourcers who make game changer hires that increase revenue or cripple a company’s competitor(s) are still perceived as less valuable than average recruiters who make high volume, “low” skill set hires. In a lot of corporate recruiting, HR and Accounting are still measuring sourcers and recruiters on hires, cost per hire (recruiter salary/hires = CPH) – not on Top and Bottom Line impact. I think a takeaway from 2009 is go to the companies that ‘get’ Sourcing and Recruiting isn’t a post and pray function. And take the game changers with you on your way out!