A cover letter and resume will be enough to make a job seeker an applicant for federal employment. That’s not to say an essay will never be required — just not as part of the initial application.

The Center for Human Capital Innovation thinks enough of this step that it’s hosting a “Hail and Farewell” ceremony and reception to mark the day. The director of the OPM himself, John Berry, will lead the event.

As the Center describes it, “The ‘Hail’ is to welcome the use of cover letters and resumes in the federal hiring process; the ‘Farewell’ is a sendoff to the requirement of KSA essays for initial application.”

These essays detailing a candidate’s knowledge, skills, and abilities have been such an important part of the federal hiring process that a cottage industry developed to help candidates. Just like the resume-writing business, a candidate could hire out the crafting of a KSA paying anywhere from $100 on up.

The new procedure will no doubt put a big dent in that business, but it will help assessment vendors, since the expectation is that government agencies will rely more and more on assessment testing to make hires. In fact,tops on the OPM’s list of help for federal agencies is an extensive “Assessment Decision Guide” covering the breadth of issues involving assessment testing of all kinds. Written for government HR professionals, the guide is worth reviewing by private sector recruiters looking for a grounding in the use of assessments, it’s that thorough and clear.

So much of a sea change is the elimination of the KSA essay program that three of the government’s largest assessment providers — PDRI, HumRRO, and Aon Consulting — joined together in the Alliance for Hiring Reform to collaborate with the OPM and federal agencies on expanding assessment use.

“The President’s executive mandate of May 11th states Federal government agencies will no longer use written narratives as an application tool after November 1st. That means they need something else,” explained Elaine Pulakos, COO, PDRI. She was the driving force behind creating the alliance, explaining in an interview that though the three companies compete for business, the task of educating federal recruiters and HR professionals about assessments and working with them to develop tests was too large for any one company.

“Most government agencies,” Pulakos says, “do ‘tell me,’ not ‘show me’.’ — Tell me what you’ve done. Tell me how you’ll do it (the job). — That’s not good candidate assessment. Now, because of the changes the President ordered, they will be looking for different tools.”

OPM will soon launch a pilot program using assessments very similar to those in use by the private sector to evaluate candidates for a dozen of the most commonly recruited positions in the government.The program is targeted to entry-level position and each of the companies in the Alliance is participating in some fashion.

“We want a well-rounded applicant,” explains Pulakos, who says the assessments will not only measure skills and knowledge, but behavior, aptitude, and other relevant traits.

The point of the pilot prgram, Pulakos explains, is to demonstrate the predictive value of the tests to the federal agencies that have previously relied on the KSA essay to evaluate candidates. The program will also be used to validate the tests. Down the road, hiring managers will be surveyed on their opinion of the effectiveness of the assessments.

Some federal agencies — the FBI, CIA, State Department, and a few others — have used assessments as part of the vetting process for years. However, the bulk of those receiving the 10-12 million annual applications, relied on the essay. Switching to an assessment, even if they create their own, is going to have a nationwide impact.

“Millions of people will be taking assessments who never did (before),” Pulakos says. “It could indeed have that impact of increasing the use of assessments.”

Bookings, which are the contracts for job postings and resume access, jumped 26 percent, while revenue came in at $228.8 million, a 6.7 percent increase over the same period in 2009. Deferred revenue also grew, jumping 18 percent over the same period last year.

Investors ignored Monster’s 5 cent a loss share. It was due to expenses associated with the HotJobs acquisition, which closed during the quarter. Without those expenses, and not including the $7.7 million in HotJobs revenue, Monster would have earned a penny a share.

Sal Iannuzzi, Monster’s chairman and CEO, was almost ebullient during the evening conference call with analysts. Monster is on the right track, he said, reporting that its investment in its 6Sense technology is paying off, with Power Resume Search capturing some 45 percent of the search bookings. The Career Ad Network is growing, he said, with plans in the works to expand it into 14 international markets in the coming months. 

Iannuzzi predicted a “strong and profitable 2011,” emphasizing the profitable, promising that half the company’s incremental revenue would go to the bottom line. The goal, he told analysts, is to eventually get the company to a 25 percent margin.

Of course, all of those plans could evaporate should the world economy reverse course. While Iannuzzi admitted to being a “little gun shy” considering the conditions of the last two years, most economists expect steady, if slow, improvement. Actually, so does Monster, which predicted that the current (4th) quarter would continue to see a robust growth in bookings — somewhere between 27 and 32 percent growth over last year, including HotJobs’ contribution.The company expects to earn 4 to 8 cents a share in the quarter. The average of current analyst estimates is 5 cents a share. Monster also lowered its full year loss forecast to between 5 and 9 cents a share.

Meanwhile, Monster’s closest rival CareerBuilder reported North American revenue of $143 million, a 5.9 percent increase over the same quarter in 2009. The privately held company volunteers only some numbers. It doesn’t report its international sales or other revenue, nor does it disclose its expenses. The company, owned by newspaper publishers Gannett, McClatchy, and Tribune, and Microsoft, is profitable.

Dice Holdings, owner of IT job board Dice.com and other leading niche sites, is scheduled to report its 3rd quarter results on Tuesday.

• College recruiting programs should be much more social-media-oriented, with fewer on-campus interviews involving large numbers of people who may not fit the company’s culture and needs anyhow
• Recruiters should get more objective feedback and much less subjective feedback. Record recruiter voice mails to assess telephone skills.
• Use internal employees’ networks and contacts more, and encourage them to spread the word of your company through their networks. This may sound both common sense and commonplace, one participant said, but recruiters think this is happening more than it is.
• From the panel of college students: remember that this is a business of people. Again, this isn’t a novel idea, but it’s easy to forget when so much of recruiting is electronic.
• Explore video interviewing options (a Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership article on this topic is in the works)
• LinkedIn, while valuable and wildly popular, isn’t universally used by college students
• When recruiters text people at all hours of the day (9 p.m. on Monday night, for example), that’s an indication people at the company have a work/life that’s out of balance
• Social responsibility is highly desired by some students looking for jobs, and perhaps need to be highlighted more on corporate career sites
• Recruiters should be as transparent as possible and share with their peers their tools and techniques — not just what they did but how they did it and what they used to get it done. Also, recruiters should share with their peers both what didn’t work and what did work.
• Search engine optimization is effective in sourcing for nurses, as is the website Indeed.com
• Remind employees of how they came to a job and a career in the first place. Employees who enter healthcare, teaching, and other professions often do so because of a passion, and as the passion fades amidst their day-to-day work, it can help to reinforce the connection of their job to people’s lives.
• Onboarding doesn’t have to be expensive to be done well, or at least better than the status quo at many companies

A Bloomberg survey before this morning’s release found economists expecting initial claims would rise an average of 3,000. The Department of Labor did revise its preliminary number for the week ending Oct. 9 from 452,000 to 455,000. Even with the adjustment, October has seen a decrease of more than 15,000 in initial filings. The 4-week moving average, a way of smoothing out weekly bumps in the data due to holidays, weather, and other causes,  was 453,250, a decrease of 5,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 458,750.

Next week (Nov. 5) the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its initial employment survey for October. The closely-watched report details the current status of employed and unemployed workers in the U.S. based on surveys of businesses and residential households. Early predictions are that the unemployment rate will remain at 9.6 percent, while private sector jobs will grow in the range of 60,000 to 70,000.

In addition to the BLS data, investors and economists are also carefully watching the Federal Reserve board, which is scheduled to meet Nov. 3. It’s anticipated that the board will announce an asset purchase plan.

Navy veteran Ted Daywalt, of the job board VetJobs, suggests you employ a veteran and that you don’t stick them in a menial job way below their worth.

That’s the message from two experienced global recruiters today at the ERE Expo in Florida: Raghav Singh, a familiar ERE author who has helped staff organizations in Switzerland, Japan, China, India, and elsewhere, and Kim Rutledge, a Dell recruiting leader turned consultant who has managed Latin American recruiting.

Singh notes the following from a recent Towers-Watson Survey:

• In the U.S. and the UK, a competitive salary is the most sought-after quality in a job.
• Germans list “challenging work” as most important to them in a job.
• Career advancement is the top goal of job-seekers in Brazil, India, and China.
• A convenient work location is a big lure in Germany and the UK; less so in the U.S. and UK.

Rutledge has strong relationships in Brazil. She notes that the types of email blasts that work in the U.S. probably won’t work there, as the country is more relationship-oriented, and referrals are even more effective than they are in the U.S. “It’s a very face-to-face culture,” she says. LinkedIn is nice, but for Brazilians the online relationships generally won’t last as long as the U.S. before it’s best to move it to a more personal conversation.

Rutledge says English-speaking skills are weaker in Brazil than in many other South American countries, and it’s best to use Portuguese-speaking recruiters. Hierarchies are important in Brazil. “It’s very much top-down,” Rutledge says. “They go up their chain for what are sometimes paternalistic concerns, in my very North American mind.”

In Brazil, relocating people isn’t as easy as Americans might think it is. What seems like a simple move from one city to another may be thought of by an employee as a Manhattan-to-Oklahoma sort of move from one subculture to another.

She also talked about Panama. Labor costs there are very low; it reminds her of India, where the educational system and government infrastructure could be better, but the country is very attractive to Nike, HP, Dell, some banks, and other companies with call centers and other operations. Rutledge says the Panamian market favors very “old-school” recruiting. Online recruiting lags behind Brazil and the U.S. The postal system is weak; in fact, some people don’t even get regular mail the way Americans know it, if they don’t pay for it.

“The appetite for career growth in Panama is unbelievable,” she says. Companies are more interested in a company than expertise in a field; someone might move from human resources to a very different department rather than move from one HR job to another.

In Mexico, Rutledge has found that security concerns make it more difficult to find information about people. Also, Mexico City has a formal culture where people are often much more dressed up than an American tourist might think if their view of Mexico is what they’ve seen are the flip-flops found in a beach town. She had to watch how she communicated when in Mexico City because the more formal relationships, where trust builds a little more slowly than perhaps in the U.S., took more nurturing.

Mexico’s a country where a mobile recruiting campaign can work. The challenge is finding the right names of people to contact; for that she says you’ll want to rely more on local databases than on big global sources such as Monster.

“Brands rule” in India, Singh says. It’s a lot harder to get quality people if you’re not a big-company, whether a big Western name or a big Indian multinational like Infosys. If you lack a big brand, he says, “you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back.” As Singh has said before, there’s a myth that India offers a bottomless pit of talent. In reality, there aren’t as many great colleges as there are in the U.S., and someone who calls themselves an “engineer” may be defining the word in a wide variety of ways.

The difference in income between companies is huge in India, he adds, with big, well-known and well-respected companies offering a big premium.

Resume fraud is “rampant” in India, he adds. Of course, resumes are notorious for exaggerations, but “not to the extent” you’ll find in India, he says. Some top schools even embed a chip in their diplomas to prove they’re the real thing.

Chinese-language skills are a must for recruiting in China, he says. Even people who speak English often have a weaker command of the language than businesspeople in many other countries. Also, you need to be “extremely explicit” to candidates in China about what to expect on the job.

Job descriptions shouldn’t leave out something an employee will end up doing, as they’ll end up quite surprised their expectations weren’t met. Singh said sales job descriptions can be challenging; engineering descriptions less so.

Each year — for three decades — recruitment ad agencies and corporate recruiting departments from around the world have entered their best creative advertising campaigns in the Creative Excellence Awards, to be judged by marketing and human resource professionals.

A full list of categories is available online; a full list of the 67 winners is on the Creative Excellence Awards website. For now, here’s a partial list: those companies that won category grand prizes.

Motor coaches used by Air Force reserve recruiters

Dansker Award

Agency: Blaine Warren Advertising

Client: Air Force Reserve

Print Advertising and Promotions

Agency: Blaine Warren Advertising

Client: Air Force Reserve

Non-print Advertising and Promotions

Agency: Blaine Warren Advertising

Client: Air Force Reserve

Best Multimedia Campaign for a General Audience

Agency: TMP Worldwide

Client: Enterprise Rent-A-Car

College Communications

Agency: TMP

Client: Verizon Telecom

Employee/internal Communications

Agency: Workware

Client: Waste Management

Special Award

Agency: J. Morrison Group

Client: Event Cinemas

Global Communications

Agency: Maximum Employment Marketing Group and Publicis Amsterdam

Client: Royal Netherlands Army

Media/publishing

Agency: Shaker Recruitment Advertising and Communications

Client: Jacksonvillejobs.com

Diversity

Agency: Alstin Communications

Client: Christiana Care Health System

Self-promotion

SnagAJob.com

Speaking here in Hollywood, Florida at a meeting of the IAEWS, Weddle said he has high regard for the organizations on the other side of this issue — the DirectEmployers Association and SHRM — but that he and his allies such as the Newspaper Association of America, the American Society of Association Executives, and the American Staffing Association believe “this whole exercise is flawed.”

In his conference session — “The Truth About the .Jobs Affair” — Weddle said the following are myths about the proposal to expand .Jobs beyond its original use, which was to be only in conjunction with employer names:

• “This is good for employers.” If that’s true, Weddle asks, why is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposed to it?
• “This is good for veterans.” But, he says lining up against the proposal is the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and other military hiring organizations.
• “This won’t violate trademarks.” Weddle says the European Trademark Owners Association opposes the proposal. Weddle gives an example also of NativeAmericanJobs.com, a small job board, that he says has spent a decade building its brand. In the last four or five months it has begun to be confused with the new NativeAmerican.Jobs, which is an entirely different site.
• “This is just a U.S. issue.” Weddle notes that non-U.S. boards and companies like Jobstreet, JobServe, Onrec, Seek, and Workopolis are all opposed.
• “This is only a problem for for-profit companies.” Weddle says non-profits representing chemicals, hospitals, physicians, and others are all on his side.
• “This is an issue for niche job boards that can’t compete.” CareerBuilder, Monster, Dice, and Jobing are all opposed, he says.

Weddle announced that the Governance Committee of ICANN is midway through a 90-day window in which it’s reconsidering its decision. He argues: 1) Sponsored dot-jobs addresses shouldn’t be used for purposes that were never intended, and that the original charter was for .Jobs to be used with company names; 2) The process thus far offers little hope that future expansion — more names being given out — will be fair; 3) And, as mentioned, trademark rights aren’t being respected.

ICANN could change its mind during its reconsideration period. Or, it could merely announce that it’s thinking of changing its mind, and open the decision back up for further review.

Its story has all the earmarks of a potential thriller: Jason Goldberg, former White House aide with a penchant for blogging and Prada fashion, launches clever recruitment startup that foreshadows coming social media explosion. Over the four years of his stewardship he convinces venture capitalists to keep lending him money — $55 million in all — burning through nearly every penny, until departing after laying off almost half his 150 employees.

Investor group brings in entrepreneurial banker Jeff Seely who drops the name Jobster, then sells off most of the assets to Zapoint. Then in July, a few months later, the few remaining assets and the Recruiting.com name are sold in a quiet deal to Arizona job board Jobing.com.

Oh yeah, there’s more to the story, like how Jobster came to acquire Recruiting.com in the first place. (Maybe we might even find out why, since Jobster mostly ignored the site that Jason Davis of today’s RecruitingBlogs.com worked so hard to build.)

The movie might even hint at why Jobing kept the purchase quiet, until Seattle reporter John Cook, discovered the sale and blogged about it Monday. Even now, a day after the news broke, Jobing is mum about the deal, the terms, and its plans for the site. Recruiting.com gives no evidence its ownership has changed. It still lists Seely as CEO and promotes the CRM software that is a legacy of the Jobster referral platform.

Aaron Matos

The stealthy purchase is not typical of Jobing. Since being founded in 2000 by CEO Aaron Matos, Jobing has grown organically and by acquiring smaller job boards, which were all publicly announced. In September 2009 Jobing bought the irreverant and well-trafficked recruiting blog Cheezhead. The deal brought its owner and principal commentator Joel Cheesman to Phoenix, where he is Jobing’s SVP of technology services.

Yet, in many ways Matos is the very antithesis of Jobster’s Goldberg. He doesn’t blog. His tweets are infrequent and more likely to be about restaurants and Phoenix sports teams than about recruiting. And he avoids personal publicity. Last year he told Workforce Management magazine, “I like being private. We enjoy the fact that it’s difficult to figure out what we’re doing—as long as my customers don’t have the same problem.”

Brenner advocated what’s called an “assessment center” approach. Originally developed in 1956 for AT&T for hiring/promotion screening, assessment centers are intensive, multi-part testing and evaluation processes.

To make them work, Brenner says you’ll need several things.

Linda Brenner

You’ll want to have a clear understanding of the core competencies required for success in the job, whether it be for a recruiting coordinator or a director. You’ll have to have the ability to simulate those competencies, and to objectively evaluate the range of performance from fair to poor. Lastly, you’ll need to go in with the intention of taking action based on the results of the assessments.

One participant in today’s workshop said her recruiting department used an assessment-center approach, and realized that some results surprised her — and some did not. The people she thought were the “good sourcers” did indeed turn out to be good, and the “bad sourcers” did measure poorly. Across the board, however, among many of the company’s recruiters, interview skills fell surprisingly short.

How Time’s Spent

Brenner said that figuring out how recruiters spend their time (a topic she has written about before), and whether that’s creating the results you’re looking for, is a good thing to start thinking about when examining your metrics and moving to an assessment-center approach.

Indeed, one workshop participant said her recruiters spend about 50% of their time “babysitting clients.” Another said her recruiters spend 40-50% of their time on scheduling. One of Brenner’s clients will get some huge number of applicants, like 1,000, for relatively low-level jobs, a deluge that can suck up a lot time that could be spent otherwise.

Kim Rutledge

Similarly, Kim Rutledge, an ex-talent acquisition director at Dell who conducted the workshop with Brenner (and who now works at Brenner’s firm), said she has seen recruiters spend large amounts of time — some of which could be more automated — on background checks.

Anyhow, what should recruiters do with their time? Rutledge asked this of workshop participants, whose answers included:

• Most time should be spent sourcing and pre-qualifying candidates
• A sizable portion of time should involve acting as a consultant to clients
• Recruiting teams should make sure the company’s technology is working efficiently and efficiently (said one participant, who’s company is moving to Kenexa).
• Strategic issues, such as workforce planning, should dominate

Most Important Behaviors

In addition to the discussion of time management, Brenner and Rutledge said companies should ask themselves what the most critical recruiting behaviors and competencies were. Some answers from participants:

• Ability to influence others
• Ability to identify talent
• Listening
• Business acumen
• Creative thinking
• Relationship-building
• Driving results
• In some companies, the ability to change and be flexible
• Interviewing
• Negotiation
• Change-management

Most Important Skills

Attendees then listed the skills they think are most critical in recruiters. Some common answers:

• Cold-calling
• Sourcing
• Conversion of candidates
• Selection of candidates/assessing talent
• Engaging candidates and clients
• CRM management

Brenner and Rutledge suggested that — after you make these two lists for your company — you winnow it down to a list of the five or so most critical items.

What “Great” Looks Like

At this point, Brenner suggests companies build a simulation to measure these most critical items. If sourcing, for example, is designated as critical, you could build a simulation for a district manager job, asking recruiters to build a sourcing plan to find district managers who are passive job seekers, ultimately identifying three to six passive candidates with as much information as they can get on them.

You’ll need to be able to measure results, Brenner says: to know what “great” looks like. As an example, a five-point scale could be used to measure how well someone did on the sourcing simulation. If merely posting a job-board ad was their solution, they’ll end up closer to a one. If their approach to finding the passive candidates was varied and creative, involving networking, references, the Internet, professional organizations, and more, and they could explain how the information they got on the passive candidates made them relevant to the open job, they’re going to be closer to a five.

That’s an example of a simulation for sourcing. Assuming “selecting talent” was one of your most important recruiting traits, you might set up a simulation for, say, a marketing manager, involving talent selection. Assessment-center participants would read information about the company and the role, review resumes, choose the most qualified, prepare for an interview, sell the company to the candidate, and more.

You’d evaluate whether the person prepared well for the interview; followed a clear flow; probed appropriately and effectively; sold the company well and had a strong “close”; and explained and defended well the decision to move the candidate forward.

Brenner suggests giving assessment center feedback as soon as possible, and providing coaching to participants one on one. After that, recruiters can get a development plan with specific goals, timelines, success measures, partners available for coaching and feedback, and more. Leaders should hold recruiters accountable for building plans and showing progress.

Assessment center data can be sorted by best-to-worst score, or by tenure in role, or tenure in the company, by function, by geography, and other ways.

As has become the norm for all of our events for the past 2 years, we will be live streaming many of the sessions for free for those of you who can’t make the trip.

Of course we can’t bring you all of the benefits of attending the events live in person like the tremendous networking and access to our expert speaker faculty, but if it is not an option for you to be there in person, clear your schedule for Wednesday and Thursday so you can take advantage of the stream.

This year, you will find some new ways to participate in the Expo, including a way to submit questions directly to the speakers during the sessions — both via email and phone. Everything will be taking place at www.ereexpo.com/2010fall/live/, so make sure you bookmark that page!

Here is a schedule of what sessions will be streamed: Note: All times listed are EST

Wednesday, October 27

• 8:45 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. – Welcome Remarks from chairperson Tony Blake
• 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. – Keynote Presentation: Building a Diverse, Multi-Generational Workforce Resulting in Innovative Solutions and Outstanding Service, led by Reggie Stewart
• 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. – Panel Session: Recruiting’s Transformation with Andrew Gadomski, Mike Boissonneault, Melissa Mounce, Jim Schnyder
• 11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. – Your Employer Brand: Is it more than just a logo?, led by Heather Polivka
• 2:15 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. – Going Glocal, led by Chris Hoyt
• 4:00 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. – 10 Steps to High-Yield College Recruiting, led by Kevin Wheeler

Thursday, October 28

• 10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. – Panel Session: Meet Your Job-seekers, with Gerry Crispin, Mark Mehler, Abel Alvarez, Steven Monzon, Ben Waychoff, Madilyn Holland
• 1:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m. – Creating an Integrated Global Recruiting Function, led by L.J. Brock
• 3:15 p.m. – 4:15 p.m. – How the Talent Acquisition Function Must Change to Remain Viable and Relevant Beyond 2010, led by Carol Mahoney

For those of you who use Twitter, you can also join the conversation with attendees and others by following the #ereexpo and make sure to use that when participating in the discussion.

A big thanks to our live stream sponsor InsideConnector for helping make the live stream possible.

What we’ve seen from the ERE community has been great so far: Almost 1,400 participants in over 200 locations worldwide have participated in local networking events making it one of the largest meetup groups on Meetup.com. You can see some of the pictures on our Facebook fan page from the last events.

We’re looking forward to seeing you all at the next ERE Meetup on Wednesday November 17th, 2010. As was the case in the last one, we need your help organizing them in your local area. Here is how you can help us:

• 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!

We hope you can join us again!

Allowing frank language on your website sends a message to cynical jobseekers that lawyers, PR people, and corporate invertebrates have not been allowed to completely reduce your messaging to 100% corporate blah blah. Messages that contain “authentic factors” are more likely to be read and believed.

Unfortunately, most corporate career websites violate most if not all of the rules of authenticity, an act that encourages job seekers to completely skip past all content and simply apply without regard to their fit.

Corporate Credibility Is at an All-Time Low

Younger readers might not remember it to be any different, but prior to the 1960s, many corporate messages were taken on face value as being true. Following the Vietnam War, Watergate, numerous corporate scandals, mass layoffs, and large corporate bankruptcies, trust in the employer and what employers “say” in particular is all but gone. Prior to the advent of the Internet and social networking tools, finding out what others knew and comparing stories was much more difficult, but today it’s standard practice to trust your network more. Like it or not, if you want to influence talent, you must become an expert in authenticity and you must accept that most see the content on your existing site for exactly what it is … crap.

10 Factors That Make Your Recruiting Content More Authentic and Believable

The best way by far to assess the authenticity of your recruiting messages is to ask your top applicants to rate the believability of each individual content block, published on a 1 to 10 scale. However, if you don’t have the time or resources to conduct an assessment, the following list of factors will significantly add to the credibility, believability, and authenticity of your recruiting messages.

1. Employee stories — short but powerful stories about the experiences of individual employees that bring to life the possible experiences a new employee might someday encounter. Stories that highlight how the entry-level worker or the powerless become successful within the corporation are especially impactful.
2. Include data — any time you include real numbers or statistics you open yourself up to challenge, but the possibility of being proved wrong is a positive authenticity factor. Side-by-side firm comparison charts are especially powerful because they will be automatically challenged somewhere online by your competitors.
3. Show some weakness — after employee stories and data, the most powerful authenticity factor is to be frank about an error or problem. Failing to acknowledge past events, negative circumstances, etc. actually damages your reputation more than being honest and forthright about them. Acknowledging weakness also makes your organization look more real, because as we all know, no one person or company is perfect.
4. Average employee blogs — candid blogs written by your “average employee” can be a major contributor to authenticity if it is not edited or censored in any way. Blogs that include personal experiences, stories, and negative elements are the most powerful and most likely to be read. (Linking to blogs hosted outside your corporate IT infrastructure indicates that you respect employee rights and are comfortable promoting their unedited perspective.)
5. Access to employees — nothing says that your employees are loyal to your firm better than putting an employee’s complete name and title (and maybe even an e-mail address) in a profile or picture. Making it easy to contact them and verify their message shows that your firm is comfortable and that your words were not “planted into their mouths.”
6. A chance to comment or ask questions — providing an opportunity to challenge a message or to ask individualized questions builds authenticity because it adds two-way communications and it demonstrates a firm’s responsiveness. Corporate product sites are good for benchmark learning because they contain many more authenticity factors then corporate career sites.
7. Outside opinions and links — anytime you provide third-party assessment you automatically increase your credibility because you are providing a second opinion from a neutral party (i.e. ERE Excellence Awards, “Best Place to Work” rankings, etc.) Providing direct links to outside information sites or social network links (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube etc.) can also send a message that you are not afraid of outside opinions or information.
8. Candid language — even though it will make some HR people nervous, it is OK to occasionally use frank language and blunt words in your messages. Including texting acronyms and references to prominent external events and cultural phenomena can also add authenticity.
9. Authentic job descriptions — most job descriptions are actually written to satisfy legal standards, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they turn out not to be exciting or to add to your credibility. Job descriptions that show a combination of excitement, challenge, and difficulty will be much more powerful.
10. Help tips — job searches make everyone nervous, so companies that go out of their way to provide company-specific information on what specifically to expect, what they’re looking for, and frequently asked questions quickly earn authenticity points. Generic information and tips add no value.

10 Factors That Damage the Authenticity of Your Recruiting Content

There are negative elements or errors that by their mere presence take away from the authenticity and the believability of your overall recruiting message. If you don’t want your recruiting message to be classified as sterile, plastic, scripted, or “all hat and no cattle” avoid these negative elements.

1. Perfect pictures — including even a single picture that is overly “perfect” can tarnish your message. Avoid pictures that appear posed, include people that look like actors, pictures with a perfect diversity profile, and even a single “plastic” smile.
2. Catchphrases — few things kill the credibility of a message faster than a handful of trite overused phrases that mean little. Phrases like “the experience changed my life,” “our people are our most important asset,” “great benefits,” “we live our values,” and “boundless opportunities” actually hurt your credibility. Omit these phrases and instead provide stories, examples, blogs, videos, or data that more convincingly demonstrate that your words actually translate into actions.
3. Videos produced by corporate — videos that appear to be professionally made or edited simply come across as propaganda. A selection of jittery employee-made videos that include minor faux pas send a completely different message.
4. Not being current — nothing says a firm is out of date more effectively than having outdated material on their website or failing to mention current relevant events. In the same light, failing to use technology on the site (i.e. slow loading, broken links, no mobile phone applications etc.) or failing to highlight technology usage at the firm can reduce applications from technology-savvy applicants.
5. Uniformity and consistency — a long-held law of branding is to remain consistent, but unfortunately being overly uniform can hurt your authenticity. If the design of your different career links are too uniform or consistent, it indirectly sends a message to potential employees that your firm may be overly controlling, rigid, and intolerant of creativity.
6. Press releases — press or news releases are by definition corporate PR and they are automatically not authentic. Including a link to them as a major source of information on your career site is a mistake of the first-order. Instead, provide links to actual articles and news stories located on neutral sites.
7. Two-word descriptions — nothing sends a clear message that your HR programs are “ordinary” then a meaningless short description like paid vacation, vision plan, educational benefits, sick leave, etc. Most readers automatically know that when you fail to highlight program details that would allow comparisons between companies, you are not offering anything out of the ordinary. In addition, if you are offering exceptional benefits, you just missed an opportunity to be authentic.
8. Overdoing history — although it’s important to provide a snapshot of the history of the company, overdoing it can send a message that the company is more focused on the past than the future. As a result, adding future projections or highlighting future directions can add both excitement and authenticity.
9. Diversity words — if you include a link to diversity and inclusion but that page includes only words and a few pictures of diverse individuals, you have missed opportunity to be believable. Credible diversity includes numbers, ratios, awards, and customized information designed specifically for diverse individuals. Incidentally, the same rules also fit sustainability claims.
10. Cultural statements — saying that your culture is unique without providing specific details, examples, and comparisons sends a message that you are prone to broad generalizations without backup proof. Providing stories that illustrate how your employees act differently in common situations is a much more powerful approach.

Final Thoughts

If after reading this checklist, you conclude that these might be great authenticity factors but in your experience “no one does it this way,” you would be mistaken. Corporate sites like Microsoft and Google provide excellent examples of how to be more authentic and believable. There is a wide and ever-widening gap between average firms and those rare firms that have learned the difference between posting a corporate message and having that message read and believed. Unfortunately, with the continual decline in corporate image combined with the growth of social networks and independent websites that directly confront and directly counter corporate messages, the believability of corporate blah blah will continue to decline.

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

Some of the questions are of the “what did you know and when did you know it” variety. A few are flat out hard to understand why they were even asked, or why the staff and board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers wouldn’t independently know the answer.

For example one of the first questions on the list asks: “At the time of the 5 August 2010 Board meeting, did Employ Media intend to allow registrations in the .JOBS sTLD from persons or entities not meeting the .JOBS Charter registration requirements?”

The oddity of that one seems obvious. Here’s another:

“Do you confirm that the amendments approved by the ICANN Board on 5 August 2010 do not change the Charter of the .JOBS sTLD? If not, please explain how you believe the .JOBS Charter was changed.”

This one seems like something the board should have known itself before the matter ever appeared on the Aug. 5 agenda. That’s when, during a meeting by telephone, the board voted 11-1 to approve the request by Employ Media to allow it to offer bulk and auction sales of .jobs domains with non-company names. (There were two abstentions.)

The matter is highly contentious, in part because .jobs was originally planned as an easy way for job seekers to find specific corporate career sites and an easy address for recruitment marketers to promote. So, when ICANN approved the creation of .jobs, it allowed only company names to be used in conjunction with the extension.

After a few years, only about 15,000 of those addresses were ever issued. That’s when the registrar — Employ Media — floated the idea of allowing other names to be used: specifically occupational, geographic, and combinations.

A plan to create tens of thousands of job boards was tested out last year, run by the DirectEmployers Association. The entire background of what happened and how SHRM came to be involved in approving the program can be found here.

Eventually the job board industry mobilized, launching a letter writing campaign during ICANN’s public comment period in July, which, by the organization’s rules, precedes a board action. However, in a staff report, the points raised in the more than 200 opposition letters were reduced to a few paragraphs. On Aug. 5, the ICANN board approved the expansion of the allowable names and Employ Media’s plan to offer them in bulk, with whatever was left offered at auction or, finally, on an individual basis.

Barely two weeks after the vote a .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition formed, petitioned for reconsideration, and in a singularly rare occurrence, got the Board Governance Committee to agree to consider whether to reconsider. (Got that?)

That brings us up to the present and the request by the Governance Committee to Employ Media for answers to the 13 questions. There’s no obvious precedence for this, since there doesn’t seem to be any previous reconsideration request that made it to this point. So it’s anyone’s guess whether the committee would have asked any questions if it hadn’t been prodded by the Coalition.

On Oct. 14th the group sent ICANN’s committee seven pages of questions it had prepared for Employ Media. The cover sheet says: “The Coalition believes that the answer to these questions strongly support our view that the .JOBS Phased Allocation Program cannot be implemented in compliance with the .JOBS Charter.”

None of those questions made it onto the list of 13 ICANN sent. Some bear a resemblance, but otherwise it appears ICANN crafted its own.

I emailed a request Thursday to Employ Media’s point man, Ray Fassett, and CEO Tom Embrescia asking if they had yet responded to ICANN, what they would say and what they thought of the questions.  Haven’t heard from either.

Staffing and recruiting tech provider VCG Software has been acquired

Bond, a publicly traded company on the London exchange, is one of the largest providers of staffing software in the world. It also serves corporate recruiting offices with its Bond Talent recruiting program.

VCG, founded by the merger of two companies in 1991, specializes in the staffing sector. Pointwing is the company’s modular library of recruiting services, which includes a resume search, sourcing tool, job board, and ATS. StaffSuite is a complete front office tool set.

Bond’s acquisition of VCG strengthens its presence in the U.S., where it has a foothold. Out of an office in Minnesota, it marketed its StarSearcher, an ATS targeted to the smaller employer, since rebranded Bond Talent. Bond Talent is now its flagship ATS for corporate recruiting. Enhanced with additional features, primarily to streamline administrative functions, it was relaunched earlier this year.

I spoke with Tim Giehll, president and CEO of Bond Talent in the U.S., when we were at HR Tech last month. We talked extensively about Bond’s human capital ‘supply chain’ strategy and the elements the company had in place or would be releasing soon. The solutions are all web-based, and most of them are currently available.

Bond Adapt, eEmpAct, and Vantage (for executive search) are some of the original staffing programs and are in use by several thousands customers globally, including Manpower. Bond Talent is the talent management component. Still coming is Bond HR, an ambitious expansion into HRIS with performance management, workforce planning, and comp and admin components.

What the acquisition of VCG means for its existing customers in the long term wasn’t detailed. However, the announcement seemed to say the VCG product line will continue to be offered.

“The clear synergies between the two companies and their respective offerings provide us with the confidence that no changes to brands, products, company structure or delivery of the products are required,” said Bond’s CEO, Steve Russell.

And now would be a good time to start thinking that way. Just last week the Pew Research Center reported that 85 percent of Americans own a cell phone vs. 76 percent who have a computer. Among the 18-29 year group, 96 percent own a cell phone.

Pew didn’t report the percentage of smartphone usage in this latest report, but earlier this summer another Pew survey found that 40 percent of adults use their phone to access the Internet, IM, or email.

That report also found cell phone use for things other than voice communications were higher for Blacks and English-speaking Latinos. Cumulatively 87 percent of the two groups own a cell phone versus 80 percent for whites. Half (51 percent) of the Latinos surveyed use their phone to access the Internet, while 46 percent of Blacks do. The survey found only 33 percent of non-Hispanic whites do.

Part of the explanation may be that Blacks and Latinos own computers at lower rates than do whites; 67 percent of Blacks and 70 percent of Latinos own a computer compared to 79 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

Obviously this has implications for diversity recruiting and for meeting the needs of a diverse workforce. Indeed, in many ways recruiting was ahead of the mobile trend. The first use of mobile by recruiters was SMS to alert candidates to opportunities. Candidates still had to access the posting via a computer to get the details and to apply. Today, job alerts are commonly sent via Twitter. It’s a feature offered by all the largest job boards and most of the major company career sites.

So sophisticated has mobile recruiting become that a job-seeker tweeted an interesting possibility can access the listing and even apply entirely by smartphone.

Then there’s the social networking aspect. comScore says that 74 percent of smartphone users accessed a social network with either an app or by browser. That’s practically a dead heat with search (73 percent). One telling data point that recruiters should be mindful of in their social media strategy: 31 percent of all smartphone users who access a social network did it via an app; 43 percent used their browser.

Earlier this month CareerBuilder announced an expansion of the mobile services it first launched two years ago. iPhone users, who account for 1.6 million searches on CareerBuilder and 115,000 job applications monthly, now will see jobs in their field of interest near where they happen to be at any given moment. They’ll also be able to actively search for nearby jobs, apply for them and view their application history, even create a new resume.

Android users also get many of the same capabilities. They can now search for jobs, use the advanced search functions, including geo-location, apply, check their application history, and create a resume, among other functions.

If you have any doubt about the market for mobile uses, CareerBuilder said it will build mobile career sites for its corporate clients. A mobile site is different from a typical website in that it has been optimized for viewing on small cell phone and smartphone screens.

The announcement about this new service says: “Recruiters can post jobs through their smartphones and leverage company employees as mobile ambassadors. When employees access the site through their mobile device and email jobs to contacts, it becomes hard-coded as a referral that the company can track. “

The Four Primary Recruiting Styles and the Impact on Quality of Hire

1) The “Farmer” — aka the “post and pray” or the Dilbert model. This type of recruiter reposts the job description with the hope a good person will apply, does not challenge hiring managers to understand real job needs, has only basic knowledge of the company and industry, uses skills and experiences to screen candidates, follows the rules, and makes excuses when someone complains about not seeing enough good people. The primary target in this case is the active candidate who somehow found the posting. If you have a strong employer brand and candidate supply exceeds demand, this style can actually work.

2) The “Transactional” — aka the used car salesman – makes lots and lots of calls, looks for someone with almost the exact skills as the job description, and hopes someone says yes. This is the aggressive variation of the Farmer, with a focus on harder-to-find candidates that requires some recruiting skills to influence the candidate. The prey here is some candidate between active and passive who meets the basic skills of the job. While not too efficient, this style can actually work as a result of sheer effort and audacity. If there is a good candidate with the right skills somewhere out there, the “Transactional” will eventually find the person. My primary concern with the Transactional is that top people — those in the top-half of the top-half — move at a far slower speed than the transactional recruiter wants, and are often missed in the rush to make the next call.

3) The “Technocrat” — aka the technocrat — is up on all of the latest cool sourcing tools and Boolean search techniques and is profound in his or her wisdom, but down deep is more a sophisticated Farmer with a GPS and iPad on the tractor. The prey here is a candidate on the margin who has just decided to look, or has some deeply buried resume just waiting to be found. While Technocrats can unearth some great talent, few are able to personally draw them into the fold and get them hired without the help of a strong employer brand, a great hiring manager, or a great recruiter. Quite frankly, I have no problem with this type of tag-team approach, if that’s what it takes to make the great hire.

If a company, due to factors like employer brand or industry buzz, can attract top performers, then the types of recruiters described above are more than sufficient. On the other hand, if the supply of top talent is far less than the demand, or if the company must proactively seek hard-to-find people, than the above recruiting styles will prove ineffective. In this case, the company must either rely on the Corporate Headhunter style as the recruiting model of choice. This fourth recruiting style is defined below:

4) The “Corporate Headhunter” — aka the go-to recruiter who gets the job done — this person is a strong networker, gets great referrals, is up on all of the latest company and industry news, challenges the hiring manager when taking the assignments, screens on potential not skills, keeps the best engaged throughout the process, and can close by balancing compensation with opportunity.

This complete corporate headhunter bag of tricks is not required for every job or every organization. From an organizational standpoint it’s more important whenever the company’s self-attracting power is weak. From a job standpoint, it’s particularly well-suited when top talent is required to fill critical positions or when candidate supply is far less than demand.

Yet even with a solid brand and a talent-rich market, there are two core skills all corporate recruiters should learn in order to improve their performance on a Quality of Hire basis. (Note: in a recent ERE article I defined Quality of Hire as how well the new hire met the performance needs of the job.) In my mind, overreliance on the job description in combination with an inability to differentiate between the high potential and fully-qualified is a key weakness of most corporate recruiters, regardless of their dominant style.

The problem I have with job descriptions is that they define average performance and average performers. Early in their careers, the best people tend to get promoted more quickly or get assigned bigger projects. As a result, they tend to be lighter on a years-of-experience basis and get overlooked using a traditional skills/experience resume screening process. This effect is worsened when job descriptions are used as advertising, since even fully qualified top people won’t apply since they aren’t interested in a lateral transfer. High-potential candidates won’t apply either since they are apparently “not qualified” on an absolute level of skills basis.

To remedy this dilemma, I suggest that recruiters ask hiring managers what the person would need to do over the course of the first year in order to get into the top half of the top half. I refer to this list of 5-6 performance objectives as a performance profile. Then ask the hiring manager if he or she would at least be willing to see a person who has achieved similar results, even if their skills and experience aren’t exactly what’s described in the job spec. Few managers resist this.

Tossing the job description aside also requires a different approach to screening. For this I suggest a two-step approach, first determining if the person is in the top-half of the top-half and second, if the person is a reasonable fit for the job. Each step takes about 15 minutes on the phone.

To quickly determine if the person is in the top-half of the top-half, I’ve created what I call a super competency. It combines all competencies into one big competency. In this case it’s called the Achiever pattern. The idea behind this is that rather than look for a bunch of hard-to-measure individual competencies, look for the results or impact of these competencies as part of the work history review. High-potential people get promoted more rapidly, get more recognition, get bigger bonuses, are assigned to more important projects, have more visibility with upper management, have more patents, write more whitepapers, take on more leadership roles, and are more well-known in the industry, among other similar indicators. This is the Achiever pattern. Since the pattern starts becoming evident in high school and college, you can use this filter regardless of the position level.

Once I find the Achiever pattern I then ask the candidate to describe the biggest task, project, or accomplishment they’ve handled most related to what’s described in the performance profile. If it’s comparable from a scope and complexity standpoint, I present the candidate to the hiring manager as a high-potential person worth meeting. Getting the hiring manager to meet the candidate is where most recruiters fall short. That’s why the performance profile is so important. It switches the criteria from skills to performance.

Hiring more Achievers should be the primary goal of all recruiters. It starts by becoming a Corporate Headhunter. If you’re a recruiting leader I’d suggest start hiring recruiters who can challenge hiring managers, who are willing to call people who aren’t looking and engage with them in a career discussion, and who can fight hard for their candidates who are Achievers, especially those who have a different mix of skills than listed on the job description. In the long run these are the people who will be running your company in the future.

Allyson Holbrook, Fidelity marketing director, HR MarCom, says that Fidelity is getting about 1,000 monthly views on the college recruiting brochure. Holbrook’s initial plan was just to update the normal company brochure. As she looked into it more, she realized the brochure was expensive, wasn’t even handed out by recruiters all of the time, and sometimes ended up in a trash can even when it did make it into a candidate’s hands.

So Fidelity rebuilt its brochure for both print and online, and made it more interesting than most.

The print version, which Fidelity finished about a month ago, is a little like a map, with a full poster-size quiz. Online, the brochure, which went live this week (see lower right at this link), is, as Holbrook says, “online wizard meets Cosmo quiz.” It was made with help from Nxtbook, a digital magazine company.

The site offers a quiz with answers that introduce candidates to the company’s culture and value proposition. One question, for example, asks:

Looking for innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit in a company?

A: Yes, I’m looking for a company that will challenge me and listen to my ideas.

B: Innovation can mean failure, and who wants to take a chance?

C: I hate change. Things never get better anyway.

Fidelity’s website asks people if they’d like to join its “talent community.” This is a great thing — something people like Microsoft’s Marvin Smith and Omowale Casselle have written about, Deluxe’s Stacy Van Meter will talk about at ERE’s conference next Spring in San Diego, and so on. But I’d hoped to know a bit more about this online form before putting my information in. Is it a real community, or more of a Fidelity database? What will happen to me once in this community; for example, will I be getting a newsletter?

Holbrook says the company thus far “has not had the bandwidth to develop a more robust CRM strategy.” In other words, she and Fidelity are still, understandably, working on building out this community.

Fidelity has also created a new mobile site, which is an optimized version of its career site. When accessing Fidelity’s career pages from your mobile phone, you should be served this simpler site (though with my Droid, I seemed to get the standard Fidelity site).

Anyhow, with the mobile site — put together with help from Jobing’s Joel Cheesman – you can search for jobs, email yourself the listing, and apply when you get to your PC. You then apply from your PC for a job via a Jobs2Web mirror of Fidelity’s site, which eventually sends you into Fidelity’s Taleo applicant tracking system.