The Internet’s addressing authority has ordered the manager of the .Jobs domains to fix problems with how it issues addresses within 30 days or face the cancellation of its contract.

The Notice of Breach from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers includes a sharp rebuke of both registrar Employ Media and its partner SHRM, both of whom ICANN accused of establishing restrictions on the use of .Jobs address so “loose” they “appear to exclusively serve the financial interests of Employ Media and SHRM.”

ICANN also suggests that the .jobs Universe of job boards is contrary to both the rules and intent behind the creation of the .jobs domain in the first place.

“It appears that Employ Media and SHRM, through the Direct Employers Association, intend to use the .JOBS TLD primarily to compete with other internet job boards. Such use is inconsistent with the purpose stated in the .JOBS Charter and represented to the ICANN community,” the letter says.

The four-page letter to Employ Media says the changes made last year to the agreement creating the Jobs domain were “exploiting broad wording within the Charter to justify a fundamental change which inures benefit to SHRM and Employ Media, at the detriment of some participants of the human resources community…”

“Employ Media and SHRM failed to establish any meaningful restrictions on what types of people or entities may register second-level domain names within the .JOBS TLD. By not establishing any meaningful restrictions on who may register second-level registrations in the .JOBS TLD, Employ Media put in operation a TLD where anyone can register names, thus defeating the purpose for which the sponsored TLD came into existence.”

UPDATE: SHRM issued a brief statement saying only: “SHRM was as surprised as I am sure you were at the apparent reversal of ICANN’s prior decisions.  We need to get clarification from ICANN before making any further comment on this matter.”

Meanwhile, Employ Media says it views “the substance of this notice to be a surprising reversal of position and contradictory to prior decisions issued by (ICANN’s) Board of Directors.”

“Further, ” says the note posted on the company’s .Jobs information site, “we find the claims contained in the Notice to be utterly without merit.  We will continue to vigorously defend our position while we work with ICANN staff to resolve the matter at hand relying upon the language of our registry agreement. We plan to publish our formal response to ICANN at our web site located at www.goto.jobs in the near future.”

The balance of the statement deals with some of the history of Employ Media’s efforts to expand the use of .Jobs beyond its original mandate. Beginning in 2009, Employ Media moved to allow non-company names to be used in conjunction with the .Jobs extension. Beginning in October 2009, DirectEmployers Association launched a series of job boards with addresses such as Boston.jobs and nursing.jobs.

Under the agreement with ICANN, such uses were not allowed. When ICANN questioned the new addresses, the sites — tens of thousands were planned — were taken offline while Employ Media sought to modify its terms. This required it to appeal to its partner, Society for Human Resource Management, which approved the expansion in June. Later, over the objections of a coalition of job boards, associations, and others, the ICANN board voted to allow it, endorsing Employ Media’s plan for distributing the additional addresses.

The .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition sought reconsideration of the Board’s action. But that, too, was rejected. However, the reconsideration committee said the ICANN staff should “closely monitor” the way the new .jobs addresses are issued. The committee wrote, “Given the highly disparate views presented by the parties involved with the Request (for reconsideration), the BGC is not at all clear that it has a full picture of how Employ Media intends to implement the Phased Allocation Process.”

Detailed background on the controversial changes and the launch of some 40,000 job boards with .jobs addresses is available here.

The .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition, which opposed last year’s changes to the .jobs agreement, applauded the ICANN action and says it vindicates the coalition’s argument that the .Jobs Universe of job boards is not a permitted use of the .jobs domains.

Coalition chairman John Bell said, “We are confident that ICANN will follow through on this demonstration of its commitment to enforce its rules and take all necessary and appropriate actions to terminate the non-compliant Dot Jobs Universe as soon as possible.”

Emails have been sent to Bill Warren, executive director of DirectEmployers Association, Gary Rubin, SHRM’s .jobs leader, and to Employ Media asking for comment. No responses yet from SHRM or DirectEmployers.

If you missed the news last summer (June 2010) about the growth of this practice, then you might be scratching your head and thinking to yourself, ‘that’s crazy.’ However, for those that follow trends and deal with job postings daily, it’s clear that postings increasingly contain some variation of the phrase “you must be currently employed in order to be considered.” For example, a posting made last week to CareerBuilder by an Alabama restaurant chain made the requirements crystal clear by putting the word “currently” in all caps.

“Must be CURRENTLY employed as a restaurant manager”

Finding examples of the phrase in use is not difficult; postings can be found on all of the major job posting sites including Monster, CareerBuilder, and Craigslist. The increased usage of this practice can most likely be attributed to a growing percentage of unemployed persons who have remained unemployed for more than 18 months. While not a proven fact, many assume that prolonged unemployment leads to deterioration in skills and knowledge, or obsolescence in roles where knowledge becomes obsolete quickly. Refusing to consider the unemployed is not a practice limited to a few professions. In my research, I found ads for manufacturing roles, medical provider roles, and law firms.

This practice raises a great deal of emotion among both the unemployed and advocates of social responsibility. While I have never recommended this practice, corporate recruiting managers should examine both understand the benefits and drawbacks prior to dismissing/adopting it.

Drawbacks of Refusing to Consider the Unemployed

There are more negative arguments associated with the practice than positive ones, including:

• A smaller talent pool — in some cases, layoffs are designed to eliminate poor performers and those with obsolete skills first. However, facility closings also contribute to unemployment, and this hiring restriction would cause you to miss former top performers who were released do the facility closure. If skill obsolescence is the issue driving the restriction, managers need to remember that it is possible for the unemployed to maintain/improve their skills through classes, reading, and self-directed learning. Is also true that some skills like customer service do not deteriorate a great deal during long periods of unemployment.
• Potential legal issues — although the practice is not illegal (unemployed people are not a protected class under U.S. law), it may certainly result in an adverse impact if the unemployed population is disproportionately made up of protected individuals.
• Employer brand image — this practice may result in a barrage of negative comments and questions from the media, your socially conscious customers, and even your employees. Most firms remove the restriction when the press begins to call.
• Lost sales — if the unemployed have been, are now, or will be future customers, you can expect your sales to be negatively impacted if there is a large amount of negative publicity.
• Desperate people will ignore it — because unemployed people are “hungry,” it is highly likely that they will work hard and be loyal. It is highly likely because of that hunger or desperation that many of the unemployed will simply ignore your limitation and apply anyway. As a result, you may still have to sort through almost as many applications.
• It runs counter corporate social responsibility “talk” – while many firms that claim to be socially responsible rarely move past talking about it, if your firm truly tries to be socially responsible, this practice would most definitely violate all adopted standards.
• Missed tax breaks — if you refuse to hire the unemployed, you will miss out on some significant tax breaks.
• Lost wage rightsizing opportunity — skills increase and decrease in value, but rarely do firms adjust wages downward. Refusing to hire the unemployed, who would be more likely to accept a reduced wage, ignores an opportunity to help adjust real wages to actual market value.

Obviously the ability to adopt this practice and the impact it would have varies around the world and from organization to organization. Government agencies and not-for-profit organizations would never consider such policy, and firms that count the unemployed among their key customers would suffer more economically post adoption.

Benefits of Refusing to Consider the Unemployed

The primary driver of refusing to consider the unemployed is a desire not to hire someone whose skills have grown rusty, who has lost their contacts, or that possesses outdated knowledge. Some of the other benefits driving adoption of this practice include:

• Reduced new hire time to productivity — hiring individuals who are sharp and “not rusty” means that the new hires will reach their “minimum productivity levels” much faster.
• Reduced training costs — if new hires have obsolete skills and outdated knowledge because of their long period of unemployment, the organization would need to invest more in training (compared to currently up-to-speed individuals), thus raising costs and lowering the ROI of the hire.
• Current contacts are needed — in some jobs, contacts and continuing relationships are essential. Although it is unfair to assume that all unemployed fail to maintain their contacts, it is also sometimes true that key individuals don’t have the same interest in maintaining relationships once someone loses their title and power.
• Knowledge of current technology is needed — in jobs where large enterprise-wide technology (both hardware and software) is continually updated, working knowledge of the latest generation of technology is required. Unfortunately, unemployed individuals cannot easily maintain their fluency on technology that is not available to someone outside of a corporation.
• Reduced recruiter workloads — reducing the number of applicants (because of recruiter or hiring manager bias against the unemployed) lightens the workload of both recruiters and hiring managers. Because every applicant has the right to file a complaint or to sue, reducing the number of applications could conceivably reduce your legal risk. For resource managers who must calculate the likelihood of success, the question must instead be “what percentage of the unemployed are top performers and is the ratio high enough to justify the cost and time involved.” In a resource-limited process, probabilities must rule over emotion.
• Increased learning from competitors — hiring exclusively from among those currently employed increases the chance that you will learn about a competitor’s current best practices during interviews and upon hire. If you want to proactively “hurt” or learn from a competitor, hiring its best current employees is clearly superior to hiring individuals who may not have worked at a competitor previously.
• An abundant talent pool — even if firms exclude the unemployed, in most states 90% of the population is still available to them as potential hires.
• Lower turnover rates — currently employed individuals are at least theoretically more likely to take a job and stay in it for a while. The unemployed, because of their weak economic situation, may be “forced” to accept any job initially, then may trade up the moment better opportunities arise.

Final Thoughts

All good recruiters should know what the competition is up to. Whether you agree or disagree with this particular practice, the concept of restricting applications to save time, money, and to avoid legal issues is here to stay. Organizations have begun to learn the most effective and legally viable methods to reduce applications from applicants who have no real probability of reaching the interview stage. Restricting applications from the unemployed is a controversial approach, but others do exist. Realistic job previews, more distinct job descriptions, discouraging text on the application, and requiring applicants to pass a preliminary assessment screening are options for reducing not-qualified applicant volume.

“We have been beta testing allowing users to upload their resume,” Indeed CEO Paul Forster said in an email. “That is all I can say at this point.”

Jason Davis of RecruitingBlogs.com first tweeted the news this morning.

Until now, Forster’s site, like its competitor SimplyHired.com, has indexed job postings from corporate career sites and job boards, including all the majors. Many of them, in fact, provide a daily feed of their listings, finding the two sites a valuable — and free — source of traffic.

Indeed ranks 3rd in the U.S. in traffic; SimplyHired is 4th. The leaders are CareerBuilder and Monster. However, with 13.1 million unique visitors in January, according to comScore, Indeed had more than twice the traffic of HotJobs, which is now part of Monster.

That makes it a formidable player, although both job search sites have scrupulously avoided head-on competition with traditional job boards. Until now, neither has accepted resumes. And both have stayed away from the usual job board pay-to-post business model, offering a pay-per-click premium service.

As a result, many job boards not only provide their listings to Indeed and SimplyHired, some of them are also among their better customers, buying positions on the sites for select ads to drive traffic.

In response to my question about whether this resume beta test changes the relationship with job boards, Forster commented:

I’m not aware of any feedback from job boards on this. We have always seen job boards as partners and don’t see that changing for any reason. We provide job boards with a lot of free, organic traffic and many of them are sponsoring their jobs with us to drive additional traffic. We also enable job boards to display our sponsored jobs as backfill to their own jobs, which improves the job search experience for their users and generates revenue for them.

A pipe dream just a few years ago, now both are possible following yesterday’s decision by the International Organization for Standardization.

“A major milestone was passed,” says Lee Webster, SHRM’s director of HR standards. “There’s a lot of work, but we’re on the way.”

What the ISO approved was an application by the American National Standards Institute to develop globally applicable HR standards. It’s a companion effort to the one underway now to create HR standards for the U.S.

Lead by SHRM, the first standard — to create a uniform way of measuring cost of hire — is working its way through the public comment process. That closes March 18th. Depending on the comments and suggestions that come in, the proposal could become a standard by the summer.

Led by Webster, SHRM began the standards process a few years ago, applying to ANSI to create a body of minimum standards for the HR profession. ANSI is a private, non-profit organization that accredits industry standards for products, services, processes, and people, now including HR.

Although ANSI is the technical lead in the application for global standards, it’s SHRM that is leading the way. In the U.S., SHRM is the standards developer, and has multiple volunteer groups developing standards in the areas of diversity, measures and metrics, and staffing and workforce planning. It was the latter group that developed the cost per hire standard.

Webster says it’s likely the cost per hire standard will be the first one to be proposed to ISO. As in the U.S., ISO standards development is a long process. A proposed standard is reviewed by a technical committee, potentially composed of a representative of all 156 member nations of the ISO, but practically only a few dozen may choose to participate. Public comments are also solicited. Also as in the U.S., the comments must be addressed and may lead to revisions in the standard. That then starts another public comment round, until, finally, the ISO accepts the standard.

While cost per hire seems fairly straightforward — some 36 comments have been received so far, most endorsing the standard or suggesting additional financial components — the standard Webster is most excited about is one dealing with valuing a company’s human capital.

Former SHRM CEO Susan R. Meisinger wrote about it recently in her HR Executive column. If a metrics standard for human capital valuation can be developed and accepted by the financial community then, wrote Meisinger, “we will enter a new frontier for the HR profession.”

It’s no easy task, agrees Webster. “The (volunteer group working on it) might not be able to agree. But we’ve got some great people working on it. Not just HR professionals. We have professionals from finance and investment,” he says.

“If we can develop a standard,” he says, “It’s no longer whether we should have a seat at the table. We are there.”

That’s where permission marketing comes in. Coined by best-selling marketing guru Seth Godin, it has included opting in for newsletters, requesting catalogs, or signing up for e-mail updates. Now, innovations such as Facebook Connect and Google Buzz have ushered in a new era of permission marketing. These and other emerging services can provide you with additional opportunities to connect with your chosen audience.

For example, look at how the Huffington Post has led the way. Readers give “permission” by registering for the site with their Facebook or Twitter IDs. The Post then customizes their user experience based on information in the reader’s profile, news feed, and Facebook Likes. In return, the reader can now easily share stories from the Post with their Facebook and Twitter friends, leading to true social marketing.

Bertelsmann, a multinational media company, allows candidates to sign into its career site using Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

Three reasons to incorporate permission marketing into your next recruitment campaign:

1. Permission marketing creates a group of self-selected candidates who want to learn more about the company. This stands in contrast to “interruption” marketing, in the form of e-mails, banners, or Facebook ads. No matter how relevant or well targeted, many candidates still see these unwanted messages as spam.
2. It allows your brand to build a relationship with candidates over time. Candidates who have given permission have expressed their willingness to learn about a brand and don’t require aggressive, one-shot promotions to grab their attention. This lets you educate the candidates about the company’s employer brand, benefits and opportunities.
3. It strengthens a sense of community and identity, and thus works especially well in company intranets. Since permission marketing specializes in non-anonymous volunteers, it can work especially well in building relationships with a company’s management, employees, and staff. In fact, every B2E (brand-to-employee) strategy should include at least one element of permission marketing.

Start using permission marketing in your current campaigns, whether through traditional opt-in communications or new services like Facebook Connect or Google Buzz. You’ll maximize your resources, greatly increasing your rate of return. You’ll also gain new information about your target demographics from their profiles. Most importantly, you’ll cut through the noise of interruption marketing and convey a personalized, anticipated message to a more receptive audience.

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

But how do you sort through the stack to create your short list? (I’m deliberately ignoring the issues of availability, interest, and candidate affordability.)

Like most recruiters and software ranking systems, you look at skills, years of experience, types of projects they worked on, career progress, and the like.

What if you could also factor in the opinion of their peers? Suppose you could see how their peers rated your prospect’s solutions to problems that befuddled other programmers?

That’s the idea behind the revamped careers site on StackOverflow. It’s a popular Q&A coding site, where programmers can post their programming challenges and see what solutions others offer. Responses — and the questions, too — are rated by the programming community, and result in a reputation score.

It’s akin to Facebook “likes,” though the standards are higher. Much higher, as anyone who has ever dealt with programmers knows.

StackOverflow leverages these scores, presenting them on candidate profile pages. It also displays their top answers, as decided by the community votes.

TechCrunch, which first wrote about the overhauled StackOverflow careers site the other day, called the inclusion of reputation scores “huge, imagine if Quora highlighted the hours people put into answers to help find them jobs.”

There’s certainly a lot to like in having peer reviews. But the system also has some cautions. Newer members of the community might be every bit as good as someone with a high reputation score, but they simply haven’t been on long enough to build one. Or, some developers might choose to post only occasionally.

High reputation scores require not only good questions and even better answers, but frequency.

Nonetheless, it’s a useful supplement to the standard resume/project portfolio. Plus, the careers site conveniently also notes whether the candidate is active or passive. Searching is fairly traditional: skills, location, type of position (i.e. fulltime, contract, etc.), geography.

You can test it out for free. Or source candidates for a week for $500 (prices range up to $5,000 for a year).

I have some observations about sourcing as a result of talking to many people there and watching the presentations of others. My idea was to put on my “management consultant” hat and make some suggestions that I think could advance the body of knowledge as the “sourcing” function attempts to step out and create an independent identity and “community” affinity.

People used terms like “sourcing industry” and “sourcing profession.” However, from what I could see, the term “sourcer” has a different meaning to each individual depending on how they think about the role of sourcing in the overall recruiting process.

Achieving a reasonable level of verbal precision and role clarity about sourcing is an extremely important cornerstone for future growth — especially if we want to use words like “industry” and “profession” in the same breath as “sourcing.”

This article is focused on beginning the dialogue to help achieve more verbal precision and role clarity for sourcing. That’s the cornerstone; taxonomy –classification. Part Two will describe an idea for better assessment of candidates for various sourcing roles, once they are defined. Part Three will suggest a way to finally determine the ROI of different sourcing methods employed by the different types of sourcers in their day-to-day work. Finally, Part Four will offer a method of calculating the ROI of various sourcing training programs.

Toward More Verbal Precision and Clarity

Right now we have three basic types of sourcers; Internet, phone, and a “hybrid” of both. There needs to be a much better definition of the difference between an “Internet” sourcer and a “phone” sourcer. I would prefer to coin new terms that are more inclusive and descriptive of the actual activities a sourcer performs. My suggestions are “All Media Sourcer,” (AMS) and “Human Contact Sourcer” (HCS).

The “All Media Sourcer” (AMS)

All Media Sourcing includes Internet searches of all relevant destinations and social networking sites. It also includes internal searches—electronic or otherwise–of accumulated resumes, databases, business card collections and attendee lists, etc. It may even include observing a potential candidate or source to candidates interviewed on television or radio or quoted in a hard copy publication.

In All Media Sourcing, the focus is on the mastery of all forms of media and specialized search techniques and algorithms that identify job candidates or sources to job candidates. In its purest form there is little or no human interaction between the “All Media Sourcer” and job candidates or sources to job candidates.

The “Human Contact Sourcer” (HCS)

Human Contact Sourcing is very different from All Media Sourcing. It includes customized, Sourcer-To-Candidate (STC) human interaction via email, text message, instant messaging, internet forums, and interactive social media communication. It also includes direct phone calls to switchboards, gatekeepers and to individuals at work, at home or via their cell phone. Human Contact Sourcing also involves face-to-face human interaction at meetings, conferences, trade shows and “meet ups.”

In Human Contact Sourcing the focus is on the mastery of direct human interactions that yield job candidates, sources to job candidates, and even competitive intelligence gained from those human interactions. In its purest variant it includes little or no All Media Sourcing activities.

The AMS/HCS “Hybrids”

There may not be a “pure” AMS or HCS professional, but they serve as useful endpoints on the spectrum of sourcing activity.

Sourcing hybrids come in all sizes and flavors along the AMS-HCS spectrum. Many sourcers say, “I do both types of sourcing.” For those who truly do both types of sourcing in equal amounts, we could legitimately call them ‘Pure Hybrids.” But there probably are not too many of those. A “Pure Hybrid Sourcer” who must have strong expertise, ability, and motivation in both areas, is equally comfortable in both, and should logically command the highest compensation.

This type of sourcer employs whatever activities are called for at a given point in a search to achieve optimal results.

The question then becomes, “Well, if you aren’t a Pure Hybrid Sourcer, then what relative mix of both types of sourcing do you employ in your work?”

My observation is that the vast majority of sourcers are primarily All Media Sourcing-focused but do some aspects of Human Contact Sourcing work as well. They may find a candidate profile on LinkedIn or via a complex, brilliant search algorithm, then call the company switchboard or send an email to verify that the candidate is still employed there. That would be a hi-AMS, lo-HCS Hybrid Sourcer. These types of sourcers are often out of their comfort zones when they are asked to be relatively assertive on the telephone or in face-to-face situations.

Naturally there are hi-Human Contact Sourcing professionals that do some background checking via all media sources prior to initiating human contact. They would be hi-HCS, lo-AMS Hybrid Sourcers. These types of sourcers are often out of their comfort zones when asked to execute complex “whiz-bang” search algorithms. I believe these types of sourcers represent a distinct minority in the overall sourcing community.

The “Sourcing Spectrum”

So the “sourcing spectrum” could be depicted as follows:

Clearly there are different “competency levels” depending on the type of sourcer. In the model presented above, there are at least five that present a healthy starting point for further analysis and discussion.

In the absence of accurate survey data (which is needed), I would hypothesize that the current frequency distribution of the global sourcing community population would be skewed 75% or more to the left of the “Pure Hybrid” in the All Media Sourcing regions.

The Need for Rigorous Job Analysis

In order to discuss and define competency levels for sourcers in general, still deeper investigation must be performed.

Job analysis must define processes, activities, and competency levels for both All Media Sourcing and Human Contact Sourcing roles, and for the various hybrids. When I conduct job analysis it is a brain-draining process of questioning incumbents in jobs, “what do you do,” “why do you do that,” “how do you do it,” “for whom do you do it,” “how do you report it,” etc.

The goal is to identify and articulate 7 to 11 job functions in a role. Typically if there are fewer than seven functions then they need to be broken apart (or there is not enough job). If there are more than eleven functions they need to be combined (or there is too much job).

The resulting position description uses all action verbs; i.e., “identifies,” “finds,” “contacts,” “reports,” “determines,” “calculates,” “presents,” etc.

Has such rigorous job analysis been performed for sourcers? If so, an online discussion of it would probably be of great interest to the “sourcing community/industry/profession,” which was our starting point in this article.

It would also make for a most interesting presentation at a future SourceCon.

photo from newyorkjets.com

Another exciting Super Bowl has come and gone. Congratulations to the Green Bay Packers, the new Champions of the National Football League. Not appearing in the Super Bowl this year was, the infamous or famous, depending on how you view them, New York Jets, who unfortunately came up one game short for the second year in a row. Although they didn’t make it to the world’s largest football stage, don’t let their shortcomings take away from what they have accomplished over the last two years.

I attribute the majority of the Jets’ success to its head football coach, Rex Ryan. Love him or hate him, Ryan has built both a strong personal brand and a team brand in his own image: that of a tough, tenacious, outspoken, hard-nosed, defense-first team. I would argue that over the last two years, no coach has been more outspoken with the media than Ryan. But deeper than his outspoken character is the personal branding that Ryan has accomplished. He is now known as one of the top coaches in pro football with confidence in his team’s ability to play and win tough games.

So what can we take away from Ryan?

He speaks up and holds true to what he believes in. His brand is that of confidence, strength in his coaching ability, and the belief that his team will get the job done. In the NFL playoffs, the Jets went on the road and beat two of the top teams in the league, the Colts and Patriots. Ryan had predicted his team would defeat both.

The company that has set the bar extremely high in the employment branding world is none other than Southwest Airlines. Pilots dancing, flight attendants singing, baggage handlers rapping … are you serious? This is just pure brilliant use of its employees as recruiters to share and sell its corporate and employment brand. They aren’t afraid to call out the competition and have fun while doing so. Moreover, its career site is aimed at attracting individuals searching for an opportunity beyond the average job. Southwest promotes a career that is fun, rewarding, exciting, and interesting with a company that is committed to the happiness and well-being of its employees.

For companies and organizations looking to attract talent, have the confidence of Rex Ryan, perhaps even a little cockiness in your organization. Use the vision and leadership of Southwest Airlines, have fun with it, be bold, and brag to the world about why you are an employer of choice. Furthermore, make it known that your company is a force to be reckoned with in the recruiting/employment world. Establish talent networks so broad that individuals will be knocking down the door to come work for you when a position opens up.

If you are not sure where to start, start by building your depth chart with strong partnerships and tools. Locate, partner with, and use an agency, consultant, or expert who can deliver visionary employment branding, leadership, and initiatives. Lastly, don’t be afraid to compete, even if you are a smaller organization and feel as if you are competing with Goliath — just as Ryan’s Jets did. Giants can be defeated!

Let me start by saying that Vision drives who we are, what we do, and how we do it. This is a classic but important lesson in the art and science of talent acquisition.

My career has serendipitously taken turns and roads that have ultimately driven me to make Vision (capitalized throughout for emphasis) a part of my life and my work. As a left-brained engineer I am compelled by data, analysis, numbers, processes, and strategic tools to always achieve whatever my work desires. But, as someone who will always view himself as a recruiter in the core — that is, a specialist in the science and art of selling Vision, my right and more perspective-driven brain demands that I always consider the larger picture in all that I do. It’s a never-ending conflict between the two hemispheres.

This ongoing, internal conflict that I’ve lived with for my entire career has been instrumental in both my work-life and beyond. It has consistently forced me to always ask tough questions and to encourage others to do the same: Who am I? What do I want? Are human actions random or are they part of a precise series of factors predisposed to theories of the physical sciences? (Yep, I really asked myself that one time, but I couldn’t answer it! Shocking!)

One thing I now truly and deeply believe and can provide ample empirical evidence to support is that Vision can be one of the greatest drivers of work and life for any who choose to create it and adopt it.

A few weeks ago, my Egyptian friends and associates implemented a Vision that they had long possessed. That Vision has driven them to extraordinary lengths and extenuating circumstances. Their Vision spoke of human rights and dignity. It spoke of democracy and universal values that can never be denied. It spoke of a free society and the right to self-determination. And it spoke of many more things that we in America take for granted.

Centered in their Vision and hidden in the crevasses of their actions was the task of recruiting: That is, the task of acquiring those who shared or agreed with their Vision. Is too much of a stretch to define it that way?

What is recruiting, other than the passing on of a particular idea or vision of the future? “If you work with us, you will have more time to spend with your family” one might say. “If you join our organization you will make a better salary that will allow you a more comfortable life, less stress, and more resources to do the things you want to do, when you want to do them,” another would argue.

Aren’t these Visions in their own right? Recruiting, at its core, when performed strategically, is nothing more than the promotion and selling of a vision to provide value to one or more entities. That entity can be a person, a team, a whole organization or a whole country, and the value can be reciprocal.

Yet, we as recruiting leaders often do not have a vision of our own even though so much depends on our actions. So much as it is relevant to the course of our departments, our organizations, our industries, our countries and ultimately humanity itself depends on our ability to recruit the best talent.

You see, when we recruit we do not create automatic success for the organizations or groups that we recruit for. So much of the success depends on the decisions that are made by the people we help provide to our clients, employers, etc.

But, we do create the possibilities of success. Actually, we not only create them, we have a virtual monopoly on them.

Let us define a “possibility” as the potential to achieve a given goal — that is, the chance we can achieve it. Nothing revolutionary here! Let us use this definition for this example.

You are the VP of talent acquisition for a successful and fast-growing company. The CEO decides that we have to move into a new market, specifically China, as soon as possible. She asks for a meeting with you. In that meeting she asks you “How likely are we to be able to start a China branch by the next quarter (from the talent perspective)?” You, being the savvy recruiter that you are, ask, “Well, what do we need, what can we afford, and how much resources can we dedicate.” In other words you’re asking if this is a true priority. Your CEO says, “Whatever it takes.”

The Great Pyramid of Giza, built for the Pharaoh Khufu

You go back to your office, perform your incredible analysis, create a plan, and you review it with your CEO. Basically, it’ll take a lot of resources, a lot of time and effort, but you’ll be able to do it in the time required. Good Job! You are #awesomeness!

At the same exact time your twin sister/brother, in the same exact position, with an almost identical company at almost the same time, and the same conversation with their CEO, responds differently to the CEO’s question. This savvy recruiter replies “Oh. We’re ready now! We’ve been recruiting individuals with Asian market experience, and some are fluent in Mandarin. Additionally, we’ve been working closely with HR to identify knowledge and training gaps in anticipation of this move.”

Yes, both scenarios depend on a lot more than just recruiting (e.g strategy, leadership and talent management), but the key point is that recruiting for the second case created possibilities that did not exist for the first case because of the Vision that existed before the decision was made. One company can move to China now and the other has to wait. Recruiting the right people for the second case allowed the company to have an extra possibility for success than the first, and when the CEO made the right decision (hence, expansion to China) the possibility was seized and became a reality. Science fiction? Not really!

In this case its very clear to me that recruiting does control the possibilities that talent could seize if they make the right decisions, and that when Vision is inserted those possibilities are maximized.

So what does this have to do with us? And what does it have to do with the world at large?

The earliest recruiters were themselves ones who provided visions to their candidates. The Pharaoh Kings were tasked with the recruitment of their subjects into their national building projects. Many of the wonders of the World were built first by building human infrastructure to sustain the development of global symbols, which are forever known throughout human history. History itself is filled with some incredible recruiters. So from Pharaohs to revolutions it doesn’t make a difference, recruiting is always central.

How can many of us, then, not see the relationship between what we do every day and its effects on the course of human socio-economic, geopolitical evolution?

It doesn’t have to be a Wonder of the World, nor does it have to be a national or global symbol, in order for us to know that we are essential in managing humanity’s path. It could be the non-profit recruiter who recruits talented volunteers and professionals to raise and create awareness for a disease that has taken the life of many. She/he is directly involved with saving lives.

It could be the military recruiter who recruits individuals who protect our nation and keep us safe, while re-habilitating many members of our society. It could be the technology recruiter who recruits engineers and scientists to create a fun product that brings joy to the lives of millions of people who would otherwise be miserable. These are all social changes in which we play a nominal role and in which we can influence so much.

But now we come full circle: How can we provide these Visions (higher salaries, protection of our nation, cool technologies, helping others) to our candidates when we ourselves do not have a Vision of our own?

Really! Why do we do the things that we do? How can we provide something that we ourselves do not possess? Vision!

The members of the recent Egyptian revolution recruited an entire society to their Vision of the future. They did it using the social media tactics that we ourselves employ in our daily lives. And their result was a tech-savvy, driven, emotionally intelligent, team-oriented, and humble sourcing sample that provided the foundation for true and lasting social change. Many of them wouldn’t know the first thing about recruiting, as we do. They simply had Vision and allowed it to be self-propagating.

Presenting gifts to the god Horus wearing the double crown (white crown of Upper Egypt, red crown of Lower Egypt).

For an organization that wishes true success built on the timeless foundation of top talent, the lessons that can be learned from this are exceptional. Though, the most important lesson is Vision and its necessity for those who wish to change the world for better, even if it’s the small changes that one might falsely think are insignificant.

I have so much more to say about this in the upcoming ERE Conference in March, where I will provide you with my Vision and ask you to provide yours.

We’re about to embark on the actual calling that is an integral part of the training.

It’s 8:15 a.m and my MagicMethod student and I are all cozy sitting next to one another in his cubicle with his phone and his screen before us with his worksheet pulled up .

It’s an Excel doc. Remember, I had asked everyone, the day before, to set the following day’s work up in Word.

I work in Word because it’s easy to manage and I can easily navigate it when I’m on the phone; filling it with notes and information from each call.

I find Excel exceedingly jumpy and confusing and the last thing I need when I’m on the phone is to become flustered because I can’t handle the document in front of me.

Handling Gatekeepers is hard enough.

But, as I said at the end of last week’s lesson, that’s our challenge for today.

Remember, the day before in the day-long MagicMethod classroom portion of the training I had instructed each student to pick one of their open positions that was causing them heartache and choose a list of target companies we’d be likely to find potential candidates in.

I asked each student to set those target companies into a document along with their addresses, their phone numbers, faxes, website addresses, and bios on each.

I was facing very little of that on the Excel document in front of me, but as I had chosen the path less traveled we were about to forge on.

As he had already told me he was working without a job description, I asked him what the title was for the job we were about to embark on.

“Well, they’re called pipeline engineers but the trick is we have to find them for the Marcellus Shale reserves in the Appalachia area. I’ve looked on LinkedIn and there are a few but most of them are in Texas and Oklahoma.”

“What companies do you want to target?” I ask.

He then showed me the hodge-podge listing of the major players in the industry but it appeared that most of them had Texas or Oklahoma numbers.

I asked if he’d found any numbers in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, or New York because a quick Google glance was revealing to me that these were the states that held the Marcellus Shale.

“A couple – there,” he pointed.

What I was also learning in this first five minutes googling “Marcellus Shale” was that this is a pretty new industry — many companies were just beginning to build presence in the region.

This means that workforces are going to be relatively new and, in all probability, scarce.

“You say you found some pipeline engineers on LinkedIn?” I asked.

“Yeah, but most of them are in TX and few want to move to Appalachia. The winters are nasty and the culture is different and it’s very hard to get them to move.”

“That’s understandable,” I think to myself, remembering the summer trips we made as kids to Appalachia to visit my mother’s relatives. Much of the area is hard-scrabble and carries the reputation of being backward and remote.

It also has a distinct and rich background but that’s another discussion for a different day.

“What’s this paying?” I ask.

“About $150,000 for a guy with 5-plus years of experience. The problem is there are few in the area with five years of experience.”

“I can see that,” I nodded.

“They’ll take less experience,” he gulped out last.

“That’s good,” I thought to myself.

“They better,” I added, to him.

He seemed to relax, sitting back in his chair, as if the worst part was over.

He had no idea that we were just beginning.

“Okay, let’s get started,” I said as I picked up the phone and dialed one of the few numbers in one of the right area codes. I had quickly discerned that 412, 724, and 878 looked to hold the most promise for companies already in play in the area.

His phone had the ability to listen in on my conversation with a special jack and I had extracted a solemn swear from all of them that none of them would breathe an extraneous breath or issue a hapless cough while I had someone on the phone.

The number was answered by someone working in a trailer at a drilling site. The man who answered told me the only pipeline engineer he knew came out once every three months or so from Oklahoma and he could give me the Oklahoma main number. My heart sank but I forged on and asked him that person’s name. He readily gave it to me. I asked if he knew his phone number. He said it was there somewhere and could I wait a minute? I heard rustling like he was looking through papers.

“Here’s his card,” the guy said. “You want his cell or his office number?”

“Both,” I answered.

As he gave them to me I tried to enter them into one of the Excel boxes but messed that up so I quickly grabbed a pen and scribbled them down. I asked if there were any other companies he knew working in the region, and he rattled off a few. I scribbled those down as fast as I could too, thanked him, and hung up.

I turned to my sourcer and told him it would be worthwhile calling the one pipeline engineer we did gather on the call and that maybe because he was already visiting the area a few times a year he might be amenable to listening to a discussion involving a permanent move.

“Yeah, I could try,” he answered. I could tell he didn’t hold much hope in that suggestion.

“More importantly, he might know some pipeline engineers working and already living in the region,” I said.

I then instructed my sourcer to enter all the info I had written down into his document while I waited.

He obediently did just that.

When he finished I said, “Let’s call that one,” spying a 724 area code attached to a company that appeared to be one of the major shale companies already at work in the region.

A company VoiceMail answered that included an invitation to cruise their names directory. For now I ignored that sweet promise and pressed zero, hoping to talk to a live person.

A young chirpy girl named Lisa answered.

I identified myself and then asked her if they had a pipeline-engineering department at her location.

“We have pipeline engineers — six of them,” she offered.

“We don’t have a “pipeline engineering” department. We’re kind of casual around here. They do all sit together though,” she chirped. “Will that work?”

“It sure will,” I thought to myself while casually asking, “Are any of them in today?”

“I saw Jim come in a few minutes ago. You want to try him?” she offered.

“That would be great, Lisa. What’s Jim’s last name?” I prodded.

“Walters. Jim Walters,” she repeated.

I heard something.

“Does Jim have an extension or a direct dial?” I asked.

I glanced sideways at my sourcer. He looked frightened. I closed my eyes and focused on my target, refusing to allow his fear to creep into my delivery.

“127” she answered, not so chirpy this time but more a shade of caution in her voice.

I threw the dice. I could feel the window closing.

“In case I can’t reach him, who are the others I could try?”

“I’m not allowed to give out names here at the front desk. If you have a name I can transfer you,” she said, sounding just a tad bit embarrassed and suddenly towing the company line.

“That’s okay, Lisa. I understand,” I consoled. Can you transfer me to Jim?”

“I’d be glad to. Have a nice day!” she chirped again, suddenly brightening and then transferring me obligingly to Jim’s line. I was met with Jim’s VoiceMail, as I so often am. I waited to listen to his entire message. It was an old one that included a holiday greeting for the period of time he was going to be away, just past. It also included his cell phone number just in case I needed to reach him in an emergency and the names and numbers of two others who might be able to help me in his absence.

I scribbled it all furiously, listening intently.

When I hung up my companion let out a long sigh.

“Man, that was scary!” he almost shouted. “Woo-hoo!” and threw his baseball cap into the air.

Like I tell people over and over, phone sourcing is simple — but it’s not easy.

Few believe me.

“I couldn’t believe she told you they had six pipeline guys there! How do we get them?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” I said.

Stay tuned and next week you’ll find out!

******

This is an ongoing series regarding phone sourcing. The beginning of this project is here.

Subsequent portions will appear weekly.

Here is this Tuesday’s Phone Sourcing Tip; it is also listed in the ASK Maureen group here on ERE

I hope you’ll join and contribute to our discussion!

Most phone transfers end up in VoiceMails. This is a fact of American corporate life.

Here is an interesting recent LinkedIn discussion on the topic.

Always ride out the transfer and listen to the message on the other end. Many times it will hold extraneous information that will help you in your sourcing efforts!

They’ve posted more than 100 messages on YouTube, saying things like “The only commercial that actually made me laugh hard,” and “That is the funniest commercial. I love it.” To be sure, there are some tasteless comments, and several from individuals complaining about the plight of captive chimps.

But the Parking Lot monkey commercial is on its way to being as big a hit as the original monkey ads were back in 2005 when CareerBuilder made its Super Bowl debut. Then, the three commercials ranked in the top 10 of the most popular game show ads. A later addition to the campaign, Monk-e-Mail went viral, with tens of millions of users sending messages in a matter of months.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B-Vu94Sd4M

In an effort to thwart CareerBuilder’s latest efforts, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is promoting Monster with an ad on its homepage that says “Even Monsters Don’t Abuse Animals. Visit Monster.com for a Cruelty-Free Job Search.”

“Monster pledged five years ago never to use great apes in its commercials, so that’s who compassionate jobseekers need to support,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Those other guys support an industry that takes ape infants away from their loving mothers and ends up dumping them at seedy roadside zoos.”

Monster didn’t respond to an email about the PETA effort. CareerBuilder had no comment. In the past, CareerBuilder said the chimpanzees in the ad “were treated with respect.

“During the production of our ad, we followed strict guidelines to ensure our chimpanzee stars were treated well and not harmed in any way. We hired top trainers known to provide the highest standard of care for their animals.”

Stats provided by CareerBuilder suggest that — protest or not —  the ad has been effective. Besides the post-gamed views of the ad, it spurred a 12 percent increase in traffic to CareerBuilder on the Monday and Tuesday after Super Bowl Sunday. The number of Facebook fans was up 410 percent, and the company ranked 8th in media coverage of its ad.

The primary factor in a successful attack is speed. –Lord Mountbattan

Jason Warner has been thinking a lot about speed lately. Since reading his terrific article, so have I. If we indeed might be at the beginning stages of a frenzy that relates to hiring, then speed will quickly go from a luxury to a biological imperative — an urgent component to success that has to be encoded into the DNA of every recruiter who needs to get the job done. As such we will have to look at speed in a whole different light: not as a means to cut corners but as a tool and a mindset recruiters must adopt if we are to be successful in generating the hires necessary to support organizational objectives. Bottom line? Run faster.

First things first. No conversation about speed can exist without a preemptive strike at the forces of darkness … a stake into the very heart of those individuals who will counter this argument with supercilious and sanctimonious dialogue, reminding us of our fiduciary responsibility not to sacrifice quality for speed — as though both of these essential elements are somehow mutually exclusive. This is of course correct. We must never sacrifice quality for speed. However, to these individuals who preach endlessly about quality, I must ask a few simple questions.

What is quality? Who determines it? How is quality measured? (Quality to me? Employee gets the job done — end of story.)

Now we can move on. I was born and raised in the agency business. First thing I learned? Move fast. In an article written for The Fordyce Letter entitled “’I’m Sorry I Didn’t Call’ and Seven Other Reasons to Fire a Client…NOW,” I give eight reasons to fire a client. Such favorites include:

Clients who do not return phone calls.

Clients who do not respond to submitted candidates.

Clients who change the requirements every 20 minutes.

Clients who “have no time.” (This one is my favorite…)

Clients who do not get back to you after a candidate interview, and a few more you can find in the original article.

Sadly, corporate recruiters can’t fire a hiring manager. (Yes I know, the fantasy is so sweet.) You can, however, increase your speed by helping them to increase their speed if you let them know why it is their best interest to do so. Be advised that you have a better chance of getting them to move if you present the upside for them as opposed to the upside for you because most do not care what’s in it for you. Three reasons to move faster, all wrapped up in a conversation to educate them on the importance of speed.

We look bad if we can’t make a decision. (“Bad” is the polite version of the word I hoped to use.) When you, as the hiring manager, are in a hiring mode, you have many sets of eyes on you and those eyes are making judgments. Taking three years to hire an employee makes you look bad. You are a manager and running a business. Act like the leader we pay you to be. Do your due diligence, make a decision, and fill the position. Bam, done!

“I am not sure — I want to mull it over.” We do not mull here. Mulling is for apple cider or for companies that have hiring managers with too much time on their hands. Mulling is for choosing a wallpaper or for those with zero sense of urgency. Hiring is a dynamic and critical activity that is closely tied to success in business. Have all of the information you need to make the decision? Good, let’s get it done!

Need more info? No problem! It is perfectly OK for a hiring manager not to be able to make a decision because they do not have enough information. I applaud the desire to acquire more information as required. Don’t fully understand the candidate’s comp or responsibilities? Confusion on titles or number of direct reports? No problem hiring manager! Just tell me, what information do you need to make this decision? Let me know and I will get it for you. (Ask the question just like that!)

Can you see how this works?

Can you see that you are clearly pressuring the hiring manager to move more rapidly?

Can you see that someone might even get mildly annoyed with you? I can, but in reality, it does not matter. What are they going to do — fire you because you pressured hiring managers to hire good candidates? Possibly, but the chance they will fire you because you can’t get the hires done is far greater.

Are you ready to run faster?

Perhaps the most interesting are in energy, manufacturing, and robotics.

Brenda Weitzberg is the founder of Aspiritech, which is offering services to employers looking for test software, hardware, websites, applications, and computer bugs, using her staff of Asperger’s employees.

Barbara Bissonnette

On the podcast below, Weitzberg talks about employing people with Asperger’s. Also on the line is another expert: Barbara Bissonnette. She specializes in coaching and advocacy services for individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome, and consults with employers about how to get the most out of these employees.

DirectEmployers Association, operator of the 40,000 site strong .Jobs Universe, says its network of job boards has welcomed more than half a million visitors in the first three weeks after its launch.

The 550-member association launched an initial few thousand sites the second week of January, and has added thousands more since. The sites are all on the .jobs domain and were the focus of a lengthy battle over the use of geographic, occupational, and combination names in conjunction with the .jobs extension. (The background is available here.)

In its announcement, DirectEmployers said the job board network has some 800,000 jobs from more than 89,000 employers and is growing rapidly. Employers can list jobs at no charge. These are then redistributed among the sites according to the location of the position, and the nature of the job.

DirectEmployers offers this example: “A Providence Health & Services listing for Nurses in Seattle will be distributed to multiple relevant websites, such as www.seattle.jobs, www.nursing.jobs and www.seattlenursing.jobs.”

Those sites all branch off the main site, USA.jobs, which is where the job searches are conducted. not directly accessible.

According to Compete.com and Quantcast.com, two independent traffic measuring sites, USA.jobs received significantly under 100,000 unique visitors during the last four weeks.

Quantcast put the number at 88,300 unique visitors for the period Jan. 19-Feb. 18.  Compete put the number at 20,776 uniques for the month of January.  (The sites don’t offer compatible time periods for comparison.)

DirectEmployers may be counting traffic differently than either of those sites. I sent a note asking the contacts listed on the announcement for clarification of the visitor count. I’ll update this post when I hear, which DirectEmployers says will be next week.

The Quantcast counts, according to DirectEmployers, don’t correctly reflect the actual traffic because Quantcast code is not installed on all 40,000 of the .jobs sites. The 500,000 unique visitors was counted by Google Analytics. (See the update at the top of this post.)

But when it comes to working the other direction — that is, sourcing placements and req –, the choices are pretty limited.

Now along comes BrightMove with a tool that turns resume sourcing on its head. Instead of searching for candidates to match a req, BrightMatch goes out and looks for job postings to match candidates you have in house.

How an agency might use BrightMatch is as obvious as it seems.

Say you have a particularly great candidate with unique skills, but no current req in house. With BrightMatch you can search thousands of corporate websites — more than 20,000, says BrightMove COO Mike Brandt — to see if there’s a match.

Find one, pitch the candidate, close the deal.

BrightMatch does the heavy lifting. It will parse the resume, extracting the keywords, then search all the sites or only some — you can set the parameters as narrowly or broadly as necessary.

Staffing agencies can use BrightMatch for a little biz dev well before a contract ends. Take a group of programmers nearing the end of a project. Instead of parsing a single resume, enter the skills they have in common to quickly discover what possibilities are out there. With luck, you might just be able to keep the team intact. Or at least keep some of your programmers working.

The results BrightMatch brings back are ranked and can be filtered automatically or manually. Says Brandt: “We use the concept engine normally for finding resumes to reverse-engineer the skills and related terms in an applicant’s resume. We then use those skills to return a result set by relevance, including geography, automatically.”

It’s a cool tool, especially given this economy where hustling is the minimum necessary to stay in business and the more efficiently you use staff … well, to finish the sentence would be to state the obvious.

BrightMatch is part of the company’s core products, and not available as a stand alone. But, Brandt says he’s thinking about making it available to corporate HR so they could offer it as a consolation prize to their unsuccessful applicants.

Job seekers can do something similar by searching Indeed or SimplyHired or even Google, though without a good Boolean string, Google results could be overwhelming. Which is why I asked Brandt if BrightMove might turn this into an app and sell it to job seekers.

“I don’t see us selling it to seekers. We might give it to them but I/we wouldn’t feel right charging a candidate,” he says.

BrightMove has a more ambitious goal than a single app or tool.

“Our goal long term,” says Brandt, “is to create a full lifecycle for agencies and firms that allows them to find potential jobs, get contacts, and then skill market to those contacts through one interface.”

It’s a worthy goal, particularly if that single search interface includes, as he says, internal databases and external sources, including social networks. Adds Brandt, “Our next versions will have integrations to over 30 social networks, email services, calendar services, and contact sites like Plaxo so that a recruiter can work from one place and still leverage it all.”

I’m just a recruiter, not some Ph.D., OD guru, or stat-type, but over the years I’ve developed a theory about interviewing that seems to work 84.27% of time. Using it for the past 25 years, more than 84.27% percent of my candidates have been called back for second round interviews. Ninety percent of these pass whatever “questionnaire” is thrown at them ranging from the Gallup intense and expensive assessment to the Profile’s International all-in-one, and everything in between. Even better, one gets hired for each job.

So based on this, I’m going to continue to rely on an interviewing approach I call the Two-question Performance-based Whole-Brain Interview (2QPbWBI, for short).

Note: I’ve been assigned a back room at the ERE Spring Expo if anyone would like to discuss or challenge these statistics. In fact, I might even interview someone using these techniques in a group session if we can get a volunteer.

Whole Brain Interviewing

“We would like to live as we once did but history will not permit it.” –John F Kennedy

I was instantly impressed by the tone. By the anger and edgy urban feel. The tag line gave me shivers as the Super Bowl’s “Imported From Detroit” spot knocked me out — an up front, in your face blast from the Motor City. The message? Absolutely gorgeous and ice cold simple. We Are Back. Yes indeed! I too love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Being a boy who loves cars, I have always been a fan of Detroit and made reference to it very specifically in Employment Rage. Case in point: Quoting from a special report in Time magazine, October 5, 2009: “By any quantifiable standard, the city is on life support. Detroit’s treasury is $300 million short of the funds needed to provide the barest municipal services … The murder rate is soaring, and 7 out of 10 remain unsolved …the unemployment rate is 28.9 percent. That’s worth spelling out: twenty-eight point nine percent.” Clearly, as goes the car industry, so goes Detroit.

We have lived through a grisly two years. The causalities have been monumental and the casualties have been deep. Homes, careers, dreams, and marriages — gone. Enough. Enough of what has been because the past is a bucket of ashes.

The time has come to focus on what will be. To find a new sense of pride and a new sense of purpose and a new sense of hope for all we can do to create a vibrant and durable American economy.

Let me go on record here and state the unpopular. I am an American. I care about this economy because this is where my mortgage is and this is where I have to go to work every day and this is my economic reality. My goal is to make this country great. I wish no country ill but I will not stand for one more scintilla of effort or expense that speaks to apologetic economic policy.

As for recruiting, I can only say that the time for new and fresh thinking in leadership is here and now. The time to step out front to meet, embrace, and support the stunning proclamation and galvanizing message of “Detroit is Back” will not wait. It will not wait for waffling on sourcing vs recruiting conversations. It will not wait for endless arguments on the relative merits of ATS’s. It will not wait for measurements or metrics or Tweetups or quality of hire or blogs that whine and bicker, as this stuff is, to quote Covey, “the thick of thin things.” The window of possibility for creating greatness will not be open forever. We need exemplars who will design and create inspired and effective recruiting models that dovetail with senior management to support organizational objectives and create success. Failure to do this is not an option.

But what of the singular recruiter? Can you tap into your inner leadership ability and affect this change? I believe so. For openers, recruiters need to focus on leadership-oriented activities and think long term as opposed to transactional-oriented activities while thinking short term. Do you understand the business of the people for whom you recruit, or do you just match qualifications with specifications? The first makes you a person who can offer insight and observations. The second makes you an errand boy.

Going further, leadership comes from each of us exercising our ability to do what we know is right as opposed to doing what is expedient. Leadership-oriented thinking come not from titles conferred but from a sense of purpose and mission. Churchill said, “the price of greatness is responsibility.” Does the opportunity for greatness interest you?

Finally, go along to get along no longer works. A cute aphorism of a time gone by, we need to cut it loose. The recruiting leader in you needs to worry less about politics and more about substantive dialogue that touches pain points and fixes what is broken. The politics of friendship and nepotism failed millions in our current recession. The next recession will be worse.

Capitalism, democracy, and Americanism itself are clearly in danger as globalization levels the playing field. The days of doing well simply because we are Americans is over. History tells us that every great society since the days of Mesopotamia has fallen. Is this to be our fate? I do not know but I do know this: Things will not get better until we employ the leadership thinking we possess to rebuild our country. JFK said it best; “I do not shrink from this responsibility, I welcome it.” Do you welcome it?

Things are starting to loosen up in the talent marketplace. Candidates are now comfortable changing jobs. Jobless claims are dropping, as is the unemployment rate, but there are not a huge amount of new jobs being created (yet). So The Great Churn of 2011 has begun, as employees (including recruiters) start to change companies after having hunkered down for the last three years. And this is putting increased pressure on corporate recruiting departments, most of which have been cut in ways we haven’t before seen. My prediction is that 2011 will be a tough year for most corporate recruiting departments.

Which brings us back to speed.

Not the I ride fast motorcycles kind of speed, or the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, or other more illicit connotations.

I’ve been thinking a lot about speed as it relates to the overall performance of recruiting operations, and how in this economy, speed is a source of competitive advantage, and should strongly be considered as a strategy for 2011.

There are three primary interdependent variables when it comes to optimizing recruiting operations: Speed (or Time), Cost, and Quality. Generally speaking, corporate recruiting departments are only able to optimize for two of the three at any one time. There is almost always going to be one of these three components that gets traded away in favor of the other two. For example, if you want to hire high quality talent very quickly, it’s going to be very expensive.  Conversely, if you don’t care so much about quality, you can hire very quickly at very low cost. There are a never-ending series of trade-offs happening between speed, quality, and cost.

Most organizations would be well served to think through these tradeoffs as part of their longer-term talent strategy. Because in practice, organizations talk a lot about optimizing for quality, but in practice most organizations optimize for cost. Until they get behind in their staffing plan, and then they optimize for speed by hiring more search firms because the pain of unfilled vacancies becomes too great. We’ve seen this as recruiting departments across the world have been whittled to bits and are now being asked to deliver with insufficient capacity.

There is a strong argument for focusing on speed: speed, in many cases, breaks the tradeoff model described above. There are many ways to preserve cost and hiring quality and still improve speed. With operational discipline, recruiting organizations can (relatively) easily impact the speed of their process. And doing so will lead to improved recruiting yields. And reduce the average net workload per recruiter required per hire. Which preserves recruiting team capacity while increasing throughput. Indeed, increasing speed reduces cost per hire for these reasons… hiring faster is less expensive.  This is why speed should be an area of focus for 2011. Getting candidates through your recruiting process quickly is a great area of focus as we head into a more competitive talent marketplace, while recruiting departments are being rebuilt and are currently stretched.

Here’s a real example: Back in the late 1990s, I was in charge of recruiting for a technology integration consulting firm. We were relatively small (several hundred people) but frequently competed for talent with Oracle, Anderson Consulting, KPMG, and other large, multinational firms. We won far more than our fair share of the available talent, and mostly we did it with speed. We out-executed our competition by implementing a more efficient and speedy recruiting process. Our goal was to give recruits that we wanted to hire a job offer before they left our office on the day of the interviews. And we frequently did so. Of course the recruiters and I needed to prepare candidates for this, and handle objections, and complete other due diligence in order to make it happen.  To use speed as a competitive advantage, you just need to be materially faster than your competition. Which in some industries is not that hard to accomplish. Speed is always relative.

The other upside is that speed is generally required to hire the “best of the best” talent: the talent that doesn’t ever look for a job. The truly exceptional talent won’t settle for a slow, arduous process. For these candidates, speed is actually part of the selling process.

It takes organizational discipline and concerted focus, but most recruiting teams can, with little cost, and with zero impact on quality, improve the speed of their process.

Here are some ideas to help focus your thoughts on speed as a recruiting strategy:

• Start making changes in recruiting process with jobs that are mission-critical to your business. This will pave the way for hiring teams to buy-in to potential changes, and also allows you to more clearly articulate and illustrate the improvements. So choose the recruiting processes related to the jobs that if left unfilled, would create the most negative impact on your  organization. Where there is pain you will find motivation.
• Next, find advocates in the line business that will help with execution. This shouldn’t be a hard sell, particularly if you frame it as, “I am hoping to implement some changes so we can fill your jobs faster, without increasing costs or diminishing quality, and I am looking for a partner in the business who will help me.”
• Once you have found an advocate in the business, task them with helping quantify the cost of vacancy for these key roles. This will help you frame up the “before” and “after” business impact.
• Then, measure the duration of time it takes from candidate engagement to final selection decision. Don’t do this in aggregate with average time to fill or other broad-brush stroke metrics. Instead, follow a few actual candidates through the process, and put yourself in their shoes, so to speak, by considering the process from their vantage point. Pay particular attention to the duration of time between interactions between the candidate and your organization, and measure each of those time-segments carefully.
• Finally, re-evaluate the business reasons that are creating the cycle time in each segment, and re-engineer the process in ways that reduce the wait time. For example, one easy way to shave days or weeks off most recruiting processes is to schedule interview days with hiring teams in advance of generating candidates, and then slot the candidates into predetermined interview days.

All of this to say that speed is a great area of focus for 2011. There is more reading, and five more operational tactics and recommendations related to speed here.

As usual, sound off in the comments.