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I just finished my 10th year of ERE Spring Expos (March 23-25, 2011) and I left with a great deal of optimism about the prospects for our industry over the next one to two years. However, with that general positive underlying feeling about economic prospects, I also have major concerns that not much has changed since the modern-day recruiting jungle came to be, circa 1995. I hope I’m wrong on this Groundhog Day-like feeling (i.e., reliving history). First, let me describe my misgivings.

photo by Todd Raphael

The first biggie for me, is we — as an industry — including practitioners, vendors, and HR/recruiting leaders, hiring managers, and company executives, aren’t seeing the forest for the trees. This ERE Expo, as great as it was, was not a recruiting Expo; it was mostly a SOURCING expo! About 75% of the vendors were offering some type of new sourcing solution, with the one big exception, Starr-Tincup Advertising, offering beer, wine, and hard drinks.

Second, about the same percentage of the presentations were focused on sourcing, with the majority of these on how to better use social media. It’s as if solving the sourcing problem will solve everything else. This is exactly the same message I heard at the first recruiting expo I attended in 1998: the advent of job boards will be how we’ll win the talent wars. History is repeating itself. Somehow we’ve lost sight of the real problem we as recruiters face, and based on last week’s Expo, I suspect that’s we’ll be no closer to solving it by the time the 2021 ERE Expo rolls around. If so, I’ll be on some island in retirement.

As I see it, sourcing top people is not the problem; hiring them is. keep reading…

Thinking of changing jobs? It seems almost everyone is.

CareerBuilder says 15 percent of workers are actively looking, but 76 percent of the rest would jump ship if the right opportunity comes along. Given the acceleration in hiring, that right opportunity may come along sooner rather than later.

Manpower said this week that 16 percent of employers expect to add jobs in the second quarter, which begins tomorrow. When seasonally adjusted, Manpower says its Net Employment Outlook is a plus 8 percent.

CEOs are even more optimistic, a good thing since they are the ones to give the thumbs-up to hiring. The Business Roundtable’s CEO survey found 52 percent of them expect to increase hiring over the next six months.

So if you happen to be one of those active job seekers, or you’re just waiting for the right job to come along, you should know that HR jobs generally and recruiting positions in particular are trending up.

Next week, Indeed adds HR as the 13th category to its employment trends report. We won’t know until Tuesday what the March numbers show, but last week Indeed’s Jason Whitman gave us a preview at ERE’s Expo in San Diego. keep reading…

There are a handful of beliefs within most professions that need to be examined from time to time for validity and accuracy. The medical profession believed for years that ulcers were caused by stress and certain foods. It took a modestly qualified medical researcher in Australia to prove that they were caused by bacteria and could be cured with antibiotics. He spent fruitless years trying to persuade highly qualified, educated, and experienced peers that they were wrong. He would never have been hired by any major university or hospital.

This is but one example of the many times we accept tradition for it face value. Far better to be a bit of a skeptic and question everything that seems to be common sense or that everyone believes. keep reading…

Payroll processor ADP reported this morning that the U.S. added 201,000 private sector jobs in March, an estimate that bolsters expectations that Friday’s government jobs count will show an equally positive increase in hiring.

The estimate, based on payroll data from ADP’s half-million employer clients, is slightly lower than the 205,000 average of economists’ predictions. However, it is the second consecutive month of 200,000-plus private sector job gains, even after accounting for the downward adjustment in February’s job count from the initial 217,000 to 208,000.

The National Employment Report from ADP and its partner Macroeconomic Advisers says most of the hiring came from small and mid-sized businesses, which cumulatively added 184,000 jobs.

The service sector added 164,000 jobs in March, while manufacturing and goods producing businesses added 37,000 jobs each. keep reading…

Last week I told you we were going to continue Marianne’s story by exploring the opportunities LinkedIn did offer, and I promised that’d we build on those results and a few others using Hoover’s and brief search engine visits to create a robust search that would surprise you.

One of our readers, Ben Ness, SOSed Marianne (in Part VIII, Comments section) with the following:

I googled “pigging,” figured out it was the same as “pipeline inspection,” did a keyword search on linkedin using “pipeline inspection” and came up with 280 results who currently still work in this industry. And that is just in my network. The Internet is a beautiful thing. Marianne, if you arereading this, I hope this helps.

I asked Ben what kind of LinkedIn account he had, because when I put the words “pipeline inspection” into LinkedIn’s keyword box I got 280 results too, but guess what?

NONE of them had any names attached to them — only titles like: keep reading…

I just returned from the ERE Expo in San Diego. What a fun time. Recruiters really are a fun bunch of folks. Despite all the time I spent socializing, I still managed to walk away with some great ideas about assessment’s role in the game of making good hires. Here’s what was going through my head on the plane ride home (besides wondering what ever happened to the free pillows). keep reading…

Pam Strohmeyer of the Michigan-Ohio-Florida financial services accounting firm Rehmann talks about the challenges of recruiting on college campuses when you’re not Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and KPMG. She also talks about transparency in hiring — giving prospective employees a chance to call your current workers and ask what it’s like to work there.

Strohmeyer also explains the No. 1 thing job-seekers ask her the most, all in the video below. keep reading…

Like businesses all across the globe, SHRM had to dip into its reserves to cover expenses in 2009 when it came up $8.7 million short.

The organization’s recently posted 2009 tax return shows the Society for Human Resource Management spent $89.9 million in 2009, while taking in $81.2 million from dues, conferences, and advertising.

That compares to the $17.1 million deficit the organization ran up in 2008 when it spent $104.8 million, but took in only $87.7 million. In 2007, SHRM found itself with a $23.4 million surplus.

Because the data comes from tax returns (non-profit returns are public), some of the expenses allowed by the IRS such as depreciation aren’t out of pocket. So the actual losses on operations are less. In 2009, depreciation, depletion and amortization came to $3.6 million. However, that still meant a  year end cash deficit of $5.1 million. keep reading…

A mistake in hiring is more than just a bad hire.

It’s actually a chance to improve your recruiting processes, rather than blame yourself or someone else, says consultant Steven Balzac.

We talk about this in the video below, as well as about the part of the hiring process (screening, assessment, job description, job ad, interview) that’s the source of the biggest mistakes. keep reading…

Talent acquisition functions spend thousands of hours and millions of dollars designing processes to hire top performers, innovators, and game changers. Unfortunately few of those dollars or hours are spent fixing the biggest roadblock in recruiting A-level talent: weak hiring managers. Everyone seems to intuitively know that managers are the weakest link in any hiring process but few have had the time to research the topic and to identify the specific reasons how weak managers hurt the overall hiring effort.

As part of a larger project I’m currently working on (developing a “bad manager identification” orBMI program), I have been able to compile a long list of how weak managers hurt both the speed and the quality of hire. keep reading…

She sat quietly adjacent to me at the oblong table we used on the first day of training.

Her six coworkers all seemed to like her.

Her name was Marianne and she was a pretty 20-something and this was her second job after graduating from college.

She mostly didn’t say anything but she did answer willingly when called upon.

I sat down next to her at her desk on the second day of training.

She was scheduled after Max and she seemed organized and efficient when I sat down.

Her job was up on her screen and it was formatted exactly as I had asked the class to do it the day before.

She was quiet and attentive as she had been the day before.

I asked what we were looking for.

She answered that she wanted to work on a job that had been causing her quite a bit of stress.

She needed people involved in the pre-sales activity for a piece of pigging machinery that would be installed onto a food-manufacturing floor.

The client wanted them to live in the Midwest so they could travel around the country more easily than if they lived on one coast or the other.

Sound reasoning.

I asked her if she had found anyone. keep reading…

Word on the street from San Diego is that Accenture is about to launch a new employee referral program using LinkedIn. It’ll make it easier for employees of Accenture — a perennial competitor for the best-referral-program ERE award — to see who among their contacts, based on people’s profiles, might fit into various Accenture job openings.

The company has tested out the tool and is very bullish on it. Accenture’s Sjoerd Gehring will be speaking at ERE’s big annual fall conference in Hollywood, Florida (September 7-9) on using LinkedIn as well as other tools — such as smart phones — in employee referrals.

Some of the event this week is being streamed live. Here’s some more scuttlebutt from the conference and from throughout the recruiting world today:

keep reading…

A big congratulations to this year’s recipients of the ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards. They’ll be in the good company of past winners such as EY, Sodexo, DaVita, Starbucks, and Enterprise.

They were named today at the ERE Expo in San Diego. They also answered questions here from the audience, a super-interesting q-and-a session available online (see 10 a.m. on the 24th).

Beyond that, you’ll hear about the winners in multiple venues, including upcoming articles on this website, at this Fall’s conference in Hollywood Florida (September 7-9; expect to see Cisco, Accenture, Deloitte, and others on the agenda), and more.

You read about the finalists. Here are the winners. keep reading…

The job market has been picking up, and hiring managers are aggressively trying to increase human capital to reach their 2011 revenue goals. Having the right people in the right seats is key, and we see many companies take too much time when seeking to hire good talent. The most successful recruiters create a sense of urgency for their hiring managers, whose priority is acquiring top talent.

It is folly to assume there is an unlimited talent pool in this market. The current 8.9% unemployment rate (based on February 2011 data) is deceiving. First, the actual unemployment level is higher than the numbers suggest because of the number of people who have stopped looking for jobs. Also it is distorted. Many of the jobs that were eliminated during the recession are never coming back. So looking at unemployment levels alone will create the one thing you cannot afford to create: complacency. keep reading…

Those of a certain age will remember a very famous print advertisement that McGraw-Hill used to run. It was called “The Man in the Chair,” and featured an imposing looking gentleman sitting in a chair, staring intently at the reader, while the ad copy to the left of his picture read: “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know your company. I don’t know your company’s product. I don’t know what your company stands for. I don’t know your company’s customers. I don’t know your company’s record. I don’t know your company’s reputation. Now what was it you wanted to sell me?”

The moral at the bottom of the page was “Sales start before your salesman calls.” The message was straightforward: developing trust based vendor/customer relationships takes much more than a sales call, and the more you know about your customer up front the more likely you will be successful.

As requisition loads increase to frightening new levels, and because the ERE Expo in San Diego was approaching, I received dozens of inquiries from vendors eager to talk about their new product offerings. And while I love hearing about the latest and greatest tools and services, more often than not I feel a lot like the stern old man in the chair. keep reading…

Over the next few days, hundreds of recruiting leaders will be boarding planes and making their way to the 11th annual ERE Expo Spring conference.

But for those of you who can’t make it to the event in person, we have some exciting things planned for you on Thursday and Friday.

In addition to streaming the keynotes, general sessions, and several of the breakout sessions live, and at no charge, we have teamed up with Steve Boese and his popular HR Happy Hour radio show to bring you a world-class virtual experience. The live streamed programming will be available right here on the ERE.net homepage.

HR Happy Hour Live from ERE Expo will feature conference speakers, recruiting industry leaders, and some special guests for discussion, commentary, and ‘web-only’ exclusive programming. The special live streamed HR Happy Hour broadcast will give the viewer a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look into the ERE Expo, and will complement the numerous keynotes, sessions, and panels that will also be streamed live.

Make sure to clear your schedule for Thursday and Friday so you don’t miss any of the excitement from San Diego. The stream will run continuously starting at 8:15 a.m. PT on Thursday and 9:15 a.m. PT on Friday. During the lunches and breaks taking place in San Diego, HR Happy Hour Live from ERE Expo will fill the gaps with special programming.

For more information on what you can expect on the stream, click here. And read below for a list of the sessions that will be broadcast on the stream.
keep reading…

Recruiting is unfortunately often a way station in a career. It is one stop on the way to becoming an HR executive or to moving on to other things. There are often very limited opportunities for advancement as a recruiter within most organizations, which further limits the number of people who choose to dedicate themselves to doing it well. Success also requires abilities that are not necessarily the strengths of those who choose traditional human resources as a career. I have found that many of the most successful recruiters had no intention of working for or in HR. They were interested in sales, marketing, communications, or similar areas and found themselves accidently being asked to do recruiting.

If you take the time to talk to recruiters who have garnered a reputation for success, you will discover that they share a few traits in common. keep reading…

With upward of 60 percent of job applicants saying they never hear from the companies to which they apply, you’d think some enterprising recruiter would use that to their branding advantage.

Just how hard is it to have the ATS send an auto-response at least acknowledging the application. (Answer: Not hard. No ATS? Set up an auto-response via your email program.)

I don’t hear from a lot of job seekers, but when I do, it is almost always about the application black hole.

No wonder then, that the seeker-centric startup StartWire introduced today an application update feature as the centerpiece of its first update since launching in January.

For more than 1,700 employers, applicants will be able to find out, at a minimum, whether or not they got the job. For some employers, those who have turned on the applicant self-service features of their ATS, StartWire will offer more detailed status updates.

“The one thing we will absolutely be able to get is that they didn’t get the job,” says Christian Forman, CEO and founder. “That should be some improvement.” keep reading…

As President Obama weighs a sweeping new Executive Order that would establish a coordinated “government-wide effort to promote diversity and inclusion” throughout the federal workforce, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 has already formalized diversity efforts within the financial regulatory sector.

Such developments have led a growing number of experts to conclude that big government may be setting a new benchmark for big business in the United States — at least when it comes to diversity in the workplace. Consequently, now may be the right time for corporate recruiters to start removing potential barriers from the hiring process.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing either considering that the then-Nextel Communications Inc. reported a savings of nearly three times as much in turnover costs as it spent on a $1.2 million investment in diversity training back in 2003.

Largest Employer

“You can’t get around the fact that the federal government is the nation’s largest employer,” observes Eric Peterson, manager of diversity and inclusion at SHRM.

Peterson acknowledges that there is likely to be a ripple effect in corporate America from diversity activities in the federal government. “When smart organizations see this happening in the news and they see President Obama signing a lot of these policies into effect, they are going to take notice and say ‘this is the direction the country seems to be going in and we better respond to that.”

Allen B. Roberts, a member of the law offices of Epstein, Becker and Green and Managing Shareholder of the New York office, agrees the federal bureaucracy is setting the new best practices for businesses to follow with regard to diversity.

“In the instance of the (Dodd-Frank) statute and the new Executive Order, what you’ve got is not only someone out there saying ‘this is the new best practice,’ but also you’ve got some teeth with it,” according to Roberts, who co-chairs his firm’s Whistleblowing and Compliance Subpractice Group.

Interagency Council on Diversity and Inclusion

According to a draft of the President’s Executive Order obtained by The New EEO Source, the government plans to create a high-level Interagency Council on Diversity and Inclusion. Its mission would be to develop a Government-wide Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan. The Council would be co-chaired by the director of the Office of Personnel Management and the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

It would consist of the heads of 19 executive departments and agencies — including many of the government’s largest employers — and such other departments and agencies as the President or chairs may designate or invite.

“Our nation derives strength from its commitment to equal opportunity for all and from the diversity of its citizenry,” the draft states. “We are at our best when we draw on the talents of all parts of our society, and our greatest accomplishments are realized when diverse perspectives are brought to bear to overcome our greatest challenges.”

“For the federal government as an employer, a commitment to equal opportunity, diversity, and inclusion is critical. Securing and maintaining a diverse, qualified workforce is one of the cornerstones of the merit based civil service,” the draft states.

Dodd-Frank

Section 342 of Dodd-Frank is specifically aimed at financial regulatory agencies, and extends to “all business and activities of the agencies at all levels, including in procurement, insurance, and all types of contracts.”

It charges agencies to develop standards for increased participation of minority-owned and women-owned businesses in the programs and contracts of the agency, including standards for coordinating technical assistance to those businesses.

Section 342 specifically applies to agency directors of the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, each of the Federal Reserve banks, the Federal Reserve Board, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, according to Roberts.

E. Fredrick Preis, Jr., senior partner and head of the labor and employment section at the Lemle & Kelleher law firm, says private financial institutions are concerned by the provisions of Section 342. “Most of them already have diverse workforces to some extent. It’s certainly brought home to them that they need to continue to do so,” says Preis, whose firm represents management.

Recruiters Need Specific Goals

Organizations that follow the government’s lead on diversity will have to be very specific in defining program goals and expected outcomes — preferably up front, say experts. This should include keeping track of who is hired for a particular job and who is not hired. It should also include a method of tracking the source that was used to find each candidate and some method of measuring the effectiveness of various sources in achieving specific diversity goals.

Consider this scenario: you’re trying to recruit a star in your industry, but you’re having difficulty because they are treated extremely well at their current firm. You try everything in your recruiting toolkit, but the target still won’t budge. Because this is an exceptional individual that is slotted for a key position, you decide to use the “CEO option” that works every time. keep reading…