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Cost of hire is one of the most elementary of recruiting metrics. Yet if you’ve ever tried to do the math, you’ve discovered just how treacherous it can be.

Now comes the draft of what may become a national standard for calculating the cost per hire metric. After 18 months of work, a blue-ribbon group of volunteers is looking for public comment on the 43-page document they developed, which details two types of measures — one for internal use and one for external comparison with similar, other employers.

The draft of the proposal by the Cost Per Hire Workforce, led by Jeremy Shapiro of Morgan Stanley, is available here. Comments should be made at the same place. There’s a link at the top left of the page. The deadline is March 18. keep reading…

Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett returned to our webinar series this week to discuss the advantages of narrowcasting through social media.

As opposed to the old broadcasting model of communication, narrowcasting allows you to target your candidates more carefully through social media for better results.

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

In a recent ERE article I made the contention that if you wanted to convert a corporate recruiting department into a competitive internal executive search group, you had to first develop the hiring process recruiters would use, before you hired the recruiters. This is primarily attributed to the fact that the external executive search business model and most of the processes they use are fundamentally different than, and often in conflict with, a corporation’s.

With this “ process first” mindset, the solution to this dilemma is to start with a process that maximizes QoH and then find recruiters who are fully capable and motivated to implement this process. keep reading…

As a technology lover and futurist, I spend time at each new year thinking about the trends shaping the future. It’s cool to look across my experiences in aggregate and gain a feel for phenomena that are real and meaningful. So without further adieu, here’s what I see unfolding in pre-employment assessment for 2011. keep reading…

This is the final piece in a 3-part series exploring the negative impacts that social media is having on recruiting departments across the world, and offering strategies and tactics to mitigate this downside exposure for corporate recruiting departments. As always, reading the first two articles is recommended before diving into this one.

In Part I, we explore the Social Gap … the gap in expectations created by the intersection of social media with what is a highly transactional process designed to be reasonably efficient and effective and scalable, at least at most companies. This is primarily a gap of expectations, because most corporate recruiting practices are currently incongruent with supporting the social graph. In part II, we discuss the issues related to Social Proof, and how social media is fueling the reputation economy which places far more pressure on organizations to create candidate marketing impressions that are true.

The third problem that social media creates for recruiting is The Back Door Problem: keep reading…

What should we make of this morning’s National Employment Report?

It should be considered good news that the report estimates 187,000 private sector jobs were created in January. After all, the average of the various guesses by economists was 140,000, according to Bloomberg News, which does a monthly survey.

But within minutes of the release of the ADP sponsored report, stock futures dipped, and then, when the market opened in New York at 9:30, the Dow began to pull back from Tuesday’s high. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal published a blog post headlined “ADP Jobs Report Shows Hottish Job Market – But Is It Hot?”

There are probably as many reasons for today’s stock market fluctuations as there are headlines, so it wouldn’t be fair, nor accurate, to suggest any significant linkage between today’s market action and the ADP report. keep reading…

Dice had a great day on Wall Street today. Its stock closed at $14.95, up 14.5 percent on the day.

Depending on what expense items are considered, the job board company either met analysts expectations or came in just below. This morning Dice reported earning 8 cents a share on $37.9 million in revenue for the fourth quarter of last year. The revenue beat analysts’ estimate of $36.9, but Yahoo Finance reported the consensus was for the company to earn 10 cents a share.

However, Dice met the estimates when expenses of an acquisition and a stock offering are excluded. (One-time costs typically are not included in Wall Street’s estimates.)

Ignoring Wall Street for the moment, Dice had a great year overall. Its net income for 2010 — $18.9 million — was 17 percent higher than for 2009. For the 4th quarter, net income rose almost 50 percent, $5.7 million from $3.9 million the year before. keep reading…

Cytiva, the Canadian talent acquisition technology company, is being acquired by Taleo.

The $11 million (Canadian; $11.1 million U.S.) deal is expected to close early next quarter. When complete, the purchase will bring Taleo some 250 mid- and small-market employers, strengthening that sector of the company’s business.

Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Cytiva started in 1995 as a tech-sector job board, introducing its SonicRecruit ATS several years later. Over the years, Cytiva has added modules for onboarding, performance management, and others, retaining its focus on talent acquisition. All Cytiva software is true SaaS.

Michael Boese, Taleo’s SVP of its small- and mid-sized business group, said Cytiva is a good fit for Taleo, in part because both companies are focused on SaaS technology provisioning. And because Cytiva’s focus in the SMB market is where growth opportunities are strongest. keep reading…

“What’s thorough sourcing?” you ask.

“We’re doing that!” you hope think.

Are you?

Thorough sourcing is when you are confident you have everyone inside a specific company (or companies) that you can contact for your open opportunity.

It’s when you have a list of names along with their titles (and hopefully their direct dials!) that you can sit down and call through and pitch your position to.

Many of you are dealing with some very hard-to-fill positions.

Candidates are not answering your ads.

They’re ignoring your social media call-outs.

You’re not finding enough of them on the job boards and when you do find them on LinkedIn you can’t get in touch with many of them or they don’t answer your e-mails.

You’re not taking things far enough. keep reading…

This was the seventh year of the ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards, but it was the military talent category, added for the first time, that was mentioned by more judges than any other category, as employers searched for creative ways to attract the many returnees coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq.

One judge (Rob Dromgoole) wrote on Facebook:

Finished voting for Recruiting Department of 2010 and Military Recruiting Program of Year 2010 for ERE. Lots of great applications. I’m humbled by how great some programs are.

And another (Gerry Crispin) emailed to say about the “military talent” category:

EVERY ONE of the Public and Private Companies and Agency firms who submitted to this category are winners. They are ALL engaged in ensuring that an underutilized but highly prized segment of our population is getting up to bat for jobs and competing for openings.

The judges took this project seriously, some showing me the spreadsheets and algorithms they created to keep track of their entries and sending me feedback on what worked and what didn’t.

As always, you’ll hear a lot more about the finalists throughout the year. At the Spring conference in San Diego, the winners will be announced, and you’ll be able to ask them how they did it, how they overcame challenges, and so on. We’ll also talk about them more on this site, in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, on the ERE.net site, and we’ll ask some to speak at ERE’s Fall Conference in Florida (September 7-9, 2011).

This year’s finalists, in alphabetical order within each category:

keep reading…