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In earlier articles in this series, I made the contention that the average talent level of most companies hasn’t increased in the past 10 years. I contend that this is largely due to a follow-the-crowd or “blame some bureaucratic rule” excuse. keep reading…

I’m not a big fan of American Idol, but like a lot of people, I get sucked into the competitive aspects of taking a group of talented people and publicly narrowing it down until you have a single “winner.”

This got me to thinking: what can we take away from this kind of competition? Have we learned anything after nine seasons of watching a singing champion chosen this way?

Well yes, there are some pretty big lessons we can take away from American Idol — especially if you’re in human resources.

At its core, American Idol is all about finding and promoting the very best talent — something that HR leaders do for their organizations every single day. But, how the show ultimately goes about finding and promoting the best talent leaves a lot to be desired, and it raises some issues that every HR person should think about in their own talent development process.

So, here are three talent management takeaways I gleaned from American Idol: keep reading…

On this week’s webinar, mobile evangelist Michael Marlatt joined us to explain how today’s business world is becoming increasingly dependent on mobile technology. We took a look at the history of mobile, how it has been applied in today’s market, and how harnessing the marketing potential of mobile technology is more important than ever before. keep reading…

Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world. –Annie Lennox

I recently finished reading the book The Power of Nice. I especially liked this book, because not only was it written by two very successful women, it was written by people who work in the advertising industry. I work in the advertising industry, specifically in the niche area of human resource communications.

As I was reading this book, I felt reassured in knowing there are people who do believe that doing right by people and treating them with respect should be a given, and not an exception to the rule. What the two authors, Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, espouse in their book is similar to something that I read in the book How to Become a Rainmaker. Both books talk about how the importance of being nice is a good thing to do as a respectful human being and how this action can carry over into building and elevating your business relationships. What helped me to truly appreciate The Power of Nice was thinking about the people I have met during my career and the impressions they made on me, some of those impressions were good and some rather bad.

In this same vein is the multitude of comments, articles, and blogs I have read recently describing the way people are treated during the application and interview process. keep reading…

What is the importance of candidate experience to your recruiting process? How do you evaluate your candidate experience to understand its current impact, and how you will improve it? Gerry Crispin, principal at CareerXroads and keynote speaker at recruitDC, talked today about the three key questions to ask about the candidate experience before you evaluate and improve the overall candidate experience: keep reading…

As the nation and the world emerge from the depths of the recession, labor economists tell us that this recovery will be slower and bumpier than most Americans living today can remember. Like the Great Depression of the 1930s, this one will leave its scars on the economy and the national psyche. Employers will feel its consequences rippling through their workforce and their recruiting efforts, with effects lasting for years, if not an entire generation.

What are the consequences for employers? What are the long-lasting changes the recession has wrought on the recruiting and retention of workers? There are several, say industry leaders, vendors, suppliers and individual recruiters.

Foremost, probably predictably, is the need to rebuild recruiting programs. Beyond that, there are almost as many opinions concerning the recession’s impacts as there are people I asked about it. Some predict that the cuts to job board spending will be permanent; others say social media recruiting will become a key sourcing tool, others suspect it will never amount to more than a minor tool; most expect that recruiting will be held to a higher standard of performance and economy.

Out of all the predictions and expectations — those I solicited and those I came across in discussions and blog posts and even tweets — I distilled four broad trends. You can read about these in more depth in the July issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. For now, here’s a brief look at these trends. keep reading…

I’ve been raving for a good while now about the fact that the resume is doomed.

Lets take a quick look at the facts: keep reading…

July 13th. Circle it in your calendar, recruiters.

On July 13th, ERE Recruiter Meetups are going to be simultaneously run in cities around the U.S. It’s going to be a great opportunity for recruiters to meet and network with other recruiters in their area.

The Meetups are going to be locally run and organized by the people attending them — crowdsourcing at its best.

This means that we need your help, and here’s how you can pitch in:

• Visit the ERE Recruiter Meetup page and sign up for a Meetup near you. If you don’t see one in your area, start one up!
• If you know a great location (bar, restaurant, office) where your group can meet, add it to the Meetup.
• Help us get the word out! We don’t need a huge group in each city to get together, have a good time, and make great connections. It can be as few as half a dozen, but the more the merrier, so tell all the recruiters in your area about the Meetup!

…And of course, join us!

The last time I wrote about a product I found useful I got worked over pretty well. So you’ll pardon me if I’m little hesitant to say much about Jobvite Share. In fact, I’m pretty sure if I say how it can help you distribute and track the results of your job postings for free (really for free), someone will cite that as proof I’m in Jobvite’s pocket.

Now it’s not that I don’t want to be in someone’s pocket. (Preferably someone with deep pockets.) Unfortunately, no one has offered. And it’s cheeky, not to mention risky, to have to ask.

So it won’t be me that tells you Jobvite Share has matured a lot in the two months I first saw it at the ERE Expo in March. It was pretty cool then. Now, it’s even slicker. With just a few clicks you can send out a job post to your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn groups. Or send it to contacts from your address-book. keep reading…

When I was a kid, I watched adults get their teeth pulled and replaced by dentures. My kid-brain thought it was normal. When I grew up, my adult brain learned it wasn’t necessary to give up on your teeth. The same goes for most organizations. People routinely think reviewing resumes and conducting casual interviews are normal. After all, that’s the way it has always been done. But like poor dental hygiene, resumes and casual interviews lead to toothless results. keep reading…

The comment period to collect opinions on the future of the .jobs domain closes Friday. But a two-page ad in the recent Staffing Management magazine from SHRM seems to say the decision has already been made.

The ad promotes the use of the planned series of job boards by the DirectEmployers Association. Against a snowy mountain backdrop, the ad lists a sampling of 18 of the planned “thousands” of job sites, among them Tokyo.jobs and Governmentconsulting.jobs.

“Coming soon!,” the ad promises. “List your jobs for free at thousands of locations.”

Technically, however, both the promise and the Internet addresses in the ad are premature. Under the rules by which the .jobs Internet extension was authorized, such names are not allowed. The rules allow only employer names to be used with a .jobs extension.

Whether the thousands of job boards ever come, let alone soon, is still to be decided. A SHRM-appointed group (the nine-members are the Policy Development Process Council) is studying a proposal to open up the naming rules to allow Employ Media to sell or (in the case of the DirectEmployers plan) “loan” geographic, occupational, and combination names. keep reading…

Some recruiting directors don’t like it when I criticize them for not operating their recruiting function in a more businesslike manner. They fail to realize that the recruiting process directly impacts business revenues and it is at least as important as supply chain, lean production, and CRM. Many who are responsible for the overall recruiting process rely on their gut to determine whether the overall process is running smoothly.

In direct contrast, other major business process owners use a “data or evidence-driven” approach to determine not just whether a process is producing the desirable results but also to determine precisely at what step are the failures occurring. If you’re ready to shift to a more businesslike and data-driven approach that can help you pinpoint the “failure points” in your recruiting process, this article will outline what you need to do. keep reading…

The simple question I always ask myself when I see an organization advertising an open position is: “Why would I work for them?”

The answer to that question is the essence of employment branding, which I define simply as the amount of attractiveness an organization has to an average candidate.

Try this experiment: ask five of your family members or friends to tell you what they think about working for X, and name a few organizations, including the one you work for. My bet is that they will not have a very clear idea about whether any of them would be good or bad. They may have an opinion about the product or service, but not about working there.

When I ask people about working for a particular organization, the answer I usually get is that they have no idea whether it would be a positive or a negative experience. In other words, most organizations have no employment brand at all. keep reading…

If you haven’t already offered your opinion on the future of .jobs, the Internet address extension designed for corporate career sites, better hurry. Friday might be your last chance.

Then again it may not be.

The Society for Human resource Management is collecting opinions on the wisdom of loosening the restrictions on what names can be linked to a .jobs Internet extension. In a May 8th email, SHRM’s Gary Rubin, point man for the group’s .jobs involvement, said the comment period would last “about three weeks.” The period opened May 11.

However, on the website set-up by DirectEmployers Association, key beneficiary of changing the rules, the association’s leader says: “The open comment period is open for 10 days only, through Friday, May 21st.”

Who’s right? I don’t know. The SHRM public comment page is silent on how long input will be accepted. I sent Rubin an email asking about the duration, and a few other questions, including why comments are not being made public, but haven’t gotten a response.

DirectEmployers is pitching hard for the change. Its launch last year of several dozen job boards was the catalyst for changing the rules. keep reading…

Former ERE webinar host Madeline Laurano joined us this week to discuss the current talent acquisition system market and how it has changed in the last year. A lot of companies are beginning to invest in new technology again as the recession begins to lift, so we took a look at new trends that have emerged and which companies are innovating to offer the best service. For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

The U.S. economy is sending mixed messages again. Today, the government reported that new jobless claims rose by 25,000 last week, the largest rise in three months, wiping out the gains made since early April.

Meanwhile, The Conference Board reported a slight decline in its Leading Economic Index. The one-tenth of a percent drop in April may turn out to be an aberration, especially since the numbers are usually revised in subsequent reports. However, it is the first decline in a year and follows March’s 1.3 percent rise in the Index.

The decline was softened somewhat by the continuing rise in The Conference Board coincident index, a measure of current economic activity. That index was up .3 percent, the largest rise since November.

Says Ken Goldstein, economist at The Conference Board: “These latest results suggest a recovery that will continue through the summer, although it could lose a little steam.”

It was the jobless claims numbers that really rattled economists and added to the worries of a Wall Street already jittery over yet another drop in the value of the euro. The Dow was off about 245 points mid-afternoon in New York. keep reading…

Mike Nale is a victim of the recession. In less than three years he has gone from promising founder of a recruitment marketing agency in Oahu, to living in a pay-by-the-day room. Having long ago sold off his possessions and swallowed his pride, Nale depends on handouts from friends and the rare odd-job.

A few weeks ago he took the desperate step of sending a plea for money to his LinkedIn network.

“It was a slow, downward spiral,” he told me recently. “I could see it happening, but I thought, ‘It will get better. I’ll find a job. Something will come through.’”

At 6.9 percent, Hawaii’s unemployment rate is among the nation’s lowest. For Nale, though, it hardly matters. “I don’t know where the jobs are,” says the one-time Manpower recruiter who two short years ago was being interviewed for his launch of a jobs TV show for the Islands. “I was a recruiter. You would think I should know how to find a job.”

His last TV appearance was as the central figure in a news story about Hawaii’s unemployed.

Nale’s story may among the more desperate, but his difficulty in finding work is not at all unusual. keep reading…

The #socialrecruiting summit was a real blast and we’re looking forward to seeing you at the next one in Seattle (more details coming on that later).

Here’s what’s going on in the ERE community this week:

1. Nix the Laundry List: Job Ads That Kill
2. Enough with old school thinking about job hopping
3. How to Source from Facebook Status Updates
4. Who is entitled to the fee?
5. Concerns about data stored on US-based servers?
6. 7 Habits of the Highly Effective Social Recruiter

1. Nix the Laundry List: Job Ads That Kill

Kevin Jenkins writes about job descriptions as de facto recruiting advertisements. He posts, “Requirements intensive (i.e., laundry list format) job ads serve no purpose other than to undermine your recruiting effort. They are pointless; that’s because a properly written job responsibilities section always delineates the skills needed to perform the work required and it does so much more effectively.

What do you think about these sorts of advertisements?

keep reading…

In today’s get-it-fast, get-it-now society, we hear about things before we have an opportunity to read about them or see them for ourselves. As an established figure within the internship space and someone who runs on Pacific Standard Time, I always hear about internship news from someone before I have a chance to pull up the actual article.

You can imagine the texts, emails, tweets, and phonecalls I received the day the New York Times headline read, Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal. The irony of this article begins with that headline. If you were to pull up that article today, you would read a different and more correct headline: The Unpaid Intern, Legal or Not?

The title of the article is really what bothers me. keep reading…

Earlier this year I presented a financial model that demonstrated that on average, hiring a C+ person instead of a B+ person costs a company somewhere between 50 and 100% of the person’s annual compensation. This becomes a huge waste of resources if you do this more than once. For example, if you’re hiring just one $60,000 C+ person instead of a B+ person, the net loss is $30,000-60,000 per year. If you’re hiring 1,000 people and a third of them are ranked C+, collectively they’re costing your company $10 million-$20 million in pre-tax profit each year. You don’t have to be a financial analyst to suggest that your CFO and CEO might be interested in this level of recruiting and hiring malfeasance, as well as your stockholders, among others.

Now to make matters worse. keep reading…