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.

While important, sourcing is only a step in the overall solution, yet it still dominates everyone’s energy and focus to the point of distraction. Somehow we’ve been seduced and collectively have lost sight of the “hiring top people” objective.

A small example of this “not seeing the forest for the trees” problem, and the lack of progress this causes, will set the stage for a rethinking of the problem. When you think about social media at the big-picture level, all it really is is pre-requisition sourcing: building a pipeline or network of prospects before a req is approved. Third-party recruiters have been doing this forever, so it’s not anything new. It just now can be done at scale. This is huge thing, but if everyone is doing it, nothing much will change in the long run, other than for those who do it first and/or best. I don’t want to minimize the importance of this first and best idea, but you can’t stop there. It’s just a step, and not even the first step.

As a metaphor for the ultimate solution, let’s assume that ERE decides to hold an ERE Hiring Top Talent Expo, say in 2013 or 2014. At this expo we’d have presentations and vendors covering a balanced mix of pre-sourcing and post-sourcing solutions, with the tradeshow floor organized by tracks.

In the first track, called “Pre-Sourcing: Organization, Planning, Marketing and Messaging, Customer Analysis, and Job Definition, ” things like workforce planning, defining real job needs, conducting market analysis, ensuring hiring manager engagement, developing a competitive compensation strategy, and diversity hiring planning would be covered. If you don’t do all of this planning and needs analysis before you start sourcing, you’re going to waste a lot of time, money, and resources reacting to events, seeing candidates you don’t need to see, and doing searches over again. The theme of this track would be “how to do it right the first time so you don’t need to do again.”

In the sourcing track, we’d want to add a sourcing strategy, planning, and measurement section. This would address the need to develop different sourcing programs by class of job, candidate supply/demand factors, internal/external and vendor management issues, and how to determine and track performance to optimize quality while minimizing costs. All of this is needed to ensure that the best sourcing approaches are defined before you start using them, and that they’re flexible and able to fully support the hiring needs by class of job. The theme of this track would be something like “use flexible sourcing to maximize quality, minimize cost and implement a just-in-time to hire program.”

Finding people is not the same as assessing or hiring them, so we’d also need to add a formal interview and assessment track. Not only would this include the best interviewing and assessment tools, but also a strategy and planning section. Fully engaging hiring managers is critical here, too. Most managers, even if they’re competent interviewers, aren’t very good at recruiting top candidates, especially those who have multiple offers. Worse, they all tend to use non-standard and non-scalable methods, reducing overall predictability and assessment accuracy. But even if they’re good at assessing candidate quality, most managers tend to hire people based on different needs (more short term) than the company’s (strategic, raising the talent bar), so solutions need to presented that balance this short vs. long term issue. On this front, one session sure to be a big hit will be “Why You Must Not Let the Hiring Manager Make the Hiring Decision.” The theme of this track would be “how to measure and maximize quality of hire.”

All of these tracks are a waste of time if you can’t hire a top person within your compensation targets and/or compete head-to-head with other companies vying for the same candidates. In this case, one could contend that the most important track of them all should be totally focused on recruiting and closing. Since there will never be enough money in the budget and there will always be a high demand for the best people, new ways of closing and competing need to be used that actually work and that everyone uses, recruiting and hiring managers alike. In a scalable business process, lone rangers need to be put out to pasture, and proven best practices used in their place. The theme here would be “best practices for putting together career packages, negotiating offers, and closing top people without giving away the farm.”

While the type of Top Talent Acquisition Expo as defined would go a long way to addressing the real issues in our industry, we’d need another day to focus on the technology issues involved in all this, and the metrics needed to see in real time what’s working, and what’s not. If technology does not keep up, we will all be forced to slow down. The theme of this section would be “using metrics and technology to be sure you’re doing what you want done.”

For the past 15 years we’ve been promised that a solution to hiring the best is near, but there’s no evidence that we’re better off today than we were back then. In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that what were offered actually caused the problems or made matters worse. Consider, now we need to use state-of-the art technology to manage more candidates we don’t want to hire, build expensive and sexy websites to keep up with the competition, rapidly upgrade to Web 2.0 to find and track more candidates we don’t want to hire, make sure we’re using SEO and SEM to make sure we’re found first by those we do want to hire and those we don’t, just to name a few things that have added to list of stuff to be done that doesn’t bring us closer to the goal of hiring better people.

Despite all of these so-called sourcing advances, the quality and accuracy of each individual hire hasn’t improved at all. From my position, as one of the elders in this industry, it seems we’re all getting snookered by the razzle-dazzle, losing sight of the real target. Perhaps all that’s needed to set us on a better long-term course is just changing the measure of success from finding great candidates to hiring great people. If so, I’m really looking forward to ERE’s Spring 2021 Expo.

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.

Whitman, Indeed’s VP of client services, was joined by John Younger, CEO and founder of Accolo, an RPO, in detailing where the HR and recruiting jobs are now and what the industry can expect in the coming months.

Especially for the “Where the Jobs Are” session last Thursday, Whitman offered up a look at the recruiting-related job posts. In the last 12 months, Whitman said, job postings for recruiters have increased 49 percent. HR jobs of all stripes have risen 37 percent during that same year.

The increase is not as stunning as transportation job postings (106 percent increase), but the HR category is ahead of seven other categories in percentage growth. It’s a sign that employers are, indeed, feeling more optimistic about the future. (The Business Roundtable survey found 92 percent of CEOs expect to grow sales in the next six months. Not one expects a decrease.)

With more job postings comes more interest. Because Indeed is a search engine and sends traffic back to the originating site, it can’t say how many people applied to each job. But it does track the clicks into each listing and for HR jobs those clicks jumped 59 percent since February 2010.

Curiously, clicks into the recruiting-related job postings increased only 25 percent during that same time.

Why that is, is anyone’s guess. However, it tallies with what Accolo’s Younger told the 100 or so session participants. Now is a good time to be looking for recruiting jobs, especially in IT, healthcare, and financial services. If you’re a “needle finder,” Younger may even want to hear from you, as he pointed to charts showing the rapid growth in sales jobs and the difficulty in finding top talent to fill them.

As an RPO, Accolo needs to track job growth by sector and geography so it knows what to expect and how to ramp up its recruiter force to fill reqs. Needle finders are in demand to fill reqs in sales, research, software development, and nurses.

On the other hand, Younger told the group, forget about it if you recruit sheep herders.

Check out the slides to see all the additional information on recruiting jobs as well as on resources recruiters can use to predict workforce supply and in recruitment planning.

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.

Here I examine a few of the common beliefs that most recruiters hold.

Interviews Are Critical to Make a Good Hire

One of the greatest myths of all is that interviewing is the best way to assess people. Numerous vendors provide interview training and promise that if you conduct interviews well you will select people who will perform better and stay longer. If you conduct highly structured, well-thought-out interviews consistently and apply what you learn, research shows that this is the case. But in my many years of experience, I find that interviews are done well only very rarely and most of them are little more than chitchats.

As I have written many times, only a combination of assessment techniques will really work — and then not perfectly. Research has consistently shown that by combining skills testing along with assessing for cultural fit and motivation, success on the job can be improved over interviewing. These tools are also cheaper and faster than the normal interview process which takes way too much expensive time of both recruiters and hiring managers. They are also far more defensible and objective than interviewing, which even when it is well done, is a highly subjective process.

Innovative approaches include using simulations, gaming techniques, and video. All of these make serious candidates engagement more likely and will lead to better end results.

If I were to skip anything in the hiring process, it would be interviewing. I would give assessment tests based on careful research on the needed skills and competencies as well as on cultural fit. Once there is a final list, I would let the manager select based on his or her face-to-face assessment.

Finding People Who Fit Our Culture Is Critical

But it may also be just as cost effective to simply hire people after a cursory screen for skills, experience, and culture fit. We downplay our own intuition way too often. How many times have you felt that a candidate would not work out, but were persuaded by test results or interviews that they would be a good hire only to find out later that your gut was right? Or, conversely, rejected a candidate for one manager who later makes a big splash for another hiring manager?

It is possible to over assess and over analyze. I see this especially with younger and less experienced recruiters who perhaps overly rely on tools rather than to take a chance. Creativity and innovation occur frequently where you least expect it. Candidates who do not fit the mold, so to speak, may become the ones who have the breakthrough ideas or who shake up the normal way of thinking to refocus a project or stimulate some new ideas.

The Candidate Is Your Primary Customer

There is a strong recruiter belief that the candidate is your customer. While there is no doubt that it is very important to market and brand your organization and the job to the candidate and to maintain impeccable relations, candidates are not your most important customer.

The hiring manager has always been and remains the key to your success. Recruiters who are not aligned to their hiring manger’s needs are usually not successful for long. By aligning yourself with the hiring managers and making sure they get the types of candidates they are looking for in timeframes they accept, you will ensure your own ability to continue doing good recruiting.

One manager I used to work with told me this: “I know what kind of person I need and I actually know several people that I’d love to hire. I am just not sure how to approach them. If you can get them interested and bring them in here, I’ll convince them to work for me.”

My job became simply a liaison — the go-between — and we were able to hire a number of great engineers as a team. I am sure you all have similar stories and experiences. When you are an ally and partner with a hiring manger, everything else seems to go smoothly. Your messages are clearer. Your assessment is more accurate. And your success is ensured.

Make sure your metrics, sourcing strategies, and selection tools are all acceptable to your hiring managers. Involve them and keep them informed at every level and you will get the budget and staff to recruit the best people. Branding and candidate relationships come second to this.

Technology Is Essential to Success

I love technology. Mr. Gadget is my middle name. But, you can successfully recruit with no technology at all. Any of us who began our careers in the B.C. era (Before Computers), are still comfortable with a manual system of filing, telephoning, and face-to-face conversation.

While I do not believe you should forego the tools we have, it is always good to focus on what is core: building relationships with hiring managers and candidates. Your first goals should be building networks, getting to know lots of people, and getting a brand in an area so people come to you. Known recruiters in an area are always successful because they can tap into a vast group of contacts and connections to find just what they need. The Internet and blindly sourcing in the dark may give you some results; they will never be as easy or as fun as those that come from your own networks.

Technology can aid that process and I do not advocate going back to paper and filing cabinets. I do recommend keeping a healthy perspective on what is important and never let technology get in the way of your core business of building relationships.

Always be a skeptic. Always question the common wisdom. Work out your own answers, march to your own drummer, and you will reap the benefits for a long time.

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.

While economists and investors consider the ADP numbers a sort of bell cow for the official U.S. Labor Department employment report typically released the first Friday of each month, the data doesn’t always track well. Part of the explanation is that the report from U.S.  Bureau of Labor Statistics includes government jobs. For months, now, that sector has been laying off workers.

Still, it’s a valuable indicator of employment trends. Alan Ruskin, an economist with Deutsche Bank, told The Wall Street Journal:

OK nobody is going to get too excited about a number that has proved such a poor indicator of employment changes in recent months, but the 3-month average of ADP has been above 200K for 2 months which is a comparatively rare event. This ‘feat’ was achieved only once in the prior recovery back in 2004, when the 3m average was above 200K for only 2 months.

Economists expect that Friday’s report will show employers added about 190,000 jobs in March, even as the unemployment rate inched up to 9 percent. February’s decline in the rate — from 9.0 percent to 8.9 percent — is considered a statistical aberration by many.

Whatever the numbers turn out to be, it’s now almost unarguable that the U.S. economy is growing jobs again, and that the momentum is picking up.

Note my use of “almost.” Residential construction and housing prices are stalled or down, and the Conference Board said yesterday that consumer confidence took a beating in the month, dropping from 72 to 63.4. There are other indices and measures that show similar ups and downs. But overall, the evidence is that employment is growing.

The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index was up in February for the fifth month in a row. The Index is a combination of multiple other indices, which, taken together, smooth out bumps in any one of them. Meanwhile, its Help Wanted OnLine report said 208,000 more jobs were advertised online in March than in February. Since December, the number of advertised openings has grown by 600,000.

That’s consistent with SHRM’s most recent LINE report. The recruiting difficulty indices for both manufacturing and service sector hiring took double digit increases in February compared to February 2010. However, the LINE report predicted service sector hiring would be down in March, on a year-over-year basis, while manufacturing would be up.

Friday’s BLS report will show how accurate those predictions were. The ADP report suggests hiring was up across the board.

Meanwhile, Challenger, Gray & Christmas said today that employers announced 18 percent fewer layoffs in March than in February. On a year-over-year basis, announced layoffs are down 39 percent. Says the global outplacement consultancy:

Overall, employers have announced 130,749 job cuts through the first quarter, 28 percent fewer than the 181,183 planned layoffs announced in the same period of 2010.  The three-month tally is, in fact, the lowest first-quarter total since 1995, when employers announced 97,716 job cuts from January through March.

The largest share — 46 percent — of the 41,528 layoffs the consultancy tracked during the month came from government.

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:

Pipeline Inspection Manager at Weatherford International Inc.
Houston, Texas Area | Oil & Energy

Production Manager, Asset Manager at GE Oil & Gas PII

Systems Analyst & Inventory Control Manager at Pipeline Inspection Company
Houston, Texas Area | Oil & Energy

Pipeline inspection at Universal Pegasus International
Corpus Christi, Texas Area | Oil & Energy

Pipeline Inspection Manager at Mustang Engineering
United States | Oil & Energy

Vice President USA, Canada, Caribbean at TD Williamson Inc
Tulsa, Oklahoma Area | Oil & Energy

Pipeline Inspection Manager at Weatherford P&SS
Houston, Texas Area | Oil & Energy

supervisor, pipeline inspection at Superior Well Services, Inc.
Tuscaloosa, Alabama Area | Oil & Energy

Pipeline Inspection at Edward Newman Consulting LLC
Greater Denver Area | Oil & Energy

Pipeline Inspection Tech at Weatherford
Houston, Texas Area | Oil & Energy

Pipeline Inspection Tech at Weatherford
Phoenix, Arizona Area | Infor

It turns out Ben pays $89 per month for the “Executive” level account and feels it is “well worth it.”

That very well may be but it doesn’t much matter in this instance because not only would we run down a whole lot of rabbit holes chasing Ben’s pipeline inspection dreams, we’d also miss the mark because pigging operations include but are not limited to cleaning and inspecting of the pipeline.

This is the kind of thing where so many searches jump the tracks and go terribly, terribly wrong.

What we “think” the client should take is not always what they will take.

We have to be terribly, terribly careful with this.

The targets Marianne had on the screen, she had been told, would be good places to find the types of people we needed.

Using them as a starting point, we went to Hoover’s and built a list.

Here is the information on the companies Hoover’s had data on that had the word  “pigging” in their descriptions.

It turned out that one of them was her client.

A good place to start on a search is to look at who the competitors are of your client.

The list included:

SPX Corporation
Charlotte NC  4,886.80M 15,500         Industrial machinery, nec
704-752-4400

T. D. Williamson, Inc.
Tulsa OK     456.69M     1,425   Oil and gas field machinery
918-447-5100

Process Pigging Systems, LLC
Cincinnati OH Single Location        2.00M         4       Process control instruments
+1-513-731-6005

Star Trak Pigging Technologies Inc Katy TX     Single Location        1.00M         9      Pipeline construction,
+1-281-599-7557

Pigging Solutions, LLC
Willard MO Single Location        0.31M         2       Hardware

+1-417-685-4018

Pinnacle Pigging Systems Inc
Pasadena TX   Single Location        0.10M         1       Oil and gas field services, nec
+1-713-920-2196

Aquilex HydroChem
Deer Park TX United States                    Sanitary services, nec
713-393-5600

It was obvious there were a couple large companies in this industry; they were listed first. The numbers you see listed on the second lines of each company are the gross sales and then the number of employees.

Eyeballing the first company, we see that SPX:

…controls the flow of multiple industries. The company operates from four units: Flow Technology (pumps, valves, other fluid handling devices); Test and Measurement (diagnostic tools, fare-collection, cable/pipe locators); Thermal Equipment and Services (cooling, heating, ventilation); and Industrial Products and Services (compactors, power systems, broadcast antenna systems, aerospace components). SPX focuses on global infrastructure development; end markets include power, petrochemical exploration, refinement, and distribution, as well as food/beverage, and tools/diagnostics. It operates in 35-plus countries with a sales presence in 150 countries. More than 50% of sales are generated outside the U.S.

The second company, T. D. Williamson, states:

T.D. Williamson must have known that a financial touchdown was in the pipeline when he founded his namesake company in 1920. T. D. Williamson, Inc. designs, manufactures, and maintains oil field machinery and systems including pipeline pigging, gas leak detection, pipeline inspection, plugging, tapping, valve and clamp, and cathodic protection equipment. The company also offers general pipeline, training, and turnkey services. T. D.Williamson operates a global network of sales offices and representatives. It has strategically located international service centers and/or manufacturing plants worldwide, including in Belgium, India, Singapore, the UK, the U.S., and Venezuela.

The others appeared to be minor players, but I thought we’d probably stumble across some others as we went along.

That’s what usually happens.

Looking more closely at SPX and Googling the terms spx pigging together we discern that the company has a division involved with pigging: GD Engineering®, an SPX company, offers a technology that allows the deployment of multiple pig launchers on unmanned platforms.

That’s what we want: the guys who go out on the sales calls who know what is required in the set-up. We find their website. The contact button reveals their locations and phone numbers for locations around the country:

GD Engineering
19191 Hempstead Highway
Phone 281-807-2818
Fax 281-807-2805

It also appears to offer up other companies for different products used in pigging:

Apex Instruments (for closures)
Girard Industries (for pig signalers)
Energy Equipment

We copy and paste all of them, along with their numbers.

All of a sudden we’ve expanded our list of targets with information that the targets themselves have provided on the Internet!

We also do a run on LinkedIn for GD Engineering. Nothing of any help comes up.

We move on.

Turning to T. D. Williamson we first do a LinkedIn search because we have the window open.

Lookie there: 108 results. Don’t get excited. One first name and last initial on the first one — a Talent Development Coordinator, Dallas B.

Titles only on every result after that first one!

That’s it (for me — your results may differ).

We refine and put the word “sales engineer” into the title box.

Nothing.

We remove the word “engineer” and leave “sales” in the box.

A mess of 12 comes up (no names among any of the 12, only titles!) but the majority of them do not look like they’d be much help anyway. Titles like:

Sr. Sales Rep. for T.DWilliamson — MIGHT know who we’re after, but who is it? And in what vertical? Pigging? No way to tell!

Service Center Supervisor — This person might know but again, who is it?

Business Development Mgr, Alaska at TD Williamson — Uhh … probably not

Marketing Communications, Lead Generation, Social Media, Search Engine Optimization, E-Marketing, and Website Management — Absolutely not

Global Web Publisher at T.D. Williamson, Inc. — Ditto

Manager Pipeline Solutions at T.D. Williamson, Inc. — Might know but who is it?

Senior Sales Representative at T.D. Williamson, Inc. Maybe but again, who is it?

Sales/Service Coordinator at TDW — Maybe, but…

Sr. Sales Representative at T.D.Williamson, Inc. — Probably knows, but…

Contracts Manager — Probably wouldn’t know but could. But who is it?

Operations Manager — Might know but…

Senior Buyer — No.

LinkedIn is basically useless to me at this point and I quickly lose patience with the exercise.

I turn to Google and look for the website. I want to know if it, like its largest competitor, also has a division that handles pigging.

It does — it’s called TDW Offshore Solutions and they have offices all over the country with the majority centered, from the looks of it, in the Midwest.

But there’s more!

Under “Events” there’ something called “Pipeline Pigging Conference.”

Man! I can’t wait!

I click on it.

NACE Corrosion in Houston

IPEIA in Alberta, Canada

Southern Gas Conference in Charlotte, NC

And more, many more.

I copy them all out and paste them, knowing that many of them will be valuable sources of additional target companies when we need them.

And we will.

But one of the best parts of that link above is the revelation at the site of terminology used in pigging, all keywords we can use to further our search. Words like:

- Hot Tapping & Plugging Services
- Freeze Plugging Services
- Plugging Isolation Services
- Cutter Repair Services
- Equipment Repair Services
- Hydrostatic Testing Services
- Drying Service
- Pigging Products & Services
- Online Cleaning Services
- Pipeline Cleaning Services
- New Construction Services
- Gas Leak Detection Services
- Turnkey Management Services

But in the meantime my eye drifts back up to that list of offices listed throughout the United States.

I nod towards it and say to Marianne, “Let’s start calling those.”

She sits up expectantly and reaches for the phone.

Then she hesitated and shrank back into her seat, drawing her clenched hand in to her chest.

Next week we’re going to finish Marianne’s lesson and also, this series.

I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed it.

P.S.  Yesterday when I was writing the IX article as I searched LinkedIn for the portions where I used LinkedIn, the only results I got were titles only.

Today the same searches are giving me (on the first couple pages) names, and then the info fades (as it does on unpaid accts) to first names and last initials and then to titles only.

Maybe it was a glitch in LinkedIn’s system yesterday but I can tell you this:

Several months ago I was one of the first who got results where the last name was represented only by an initial.

When I called it out in the sourcing circles I was told I must be imagining things.  Soon after everyone (who wasn’t paying) started getting them.

Sometimes I feel like a canary in a mine.

Are titles-only the near future of LinkedIn’s FREE search?

******

This is an ongoing series regarding phone sourcing. Here’s part I, part II, part III, part IV, part V, part VI, part VII, and part VIII.

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!

Customers usually know who their own competitors are and understand that those are the best ponds to go fishing in.

If you’re doing work for a third party recruiter sometimes they do not know and, worse yet, are reluctant to ask their clients for fear of not looking like they know what they’re doing.

They don’t always work exclusively in an area to know that area intimately.

Your job as a sourcer sometimes is to augment their knowledge in a manner that doesn’t destroy their fragile egos.

This is easier said than done sometimes but it is critically important that the right targets be chosen before beginning any sourcing assignment.

Extreme care must be taken here and if it means spending extra time to correctly identify the field then it behooves you to do it.

It will save you much time and heartache later!

When it comes to helping clients understand and use pre-employment assessment, my goal is to keep it real. By this I mean taking a practical, no-nonsense approach that views assessment for what it is: just another of the many pieces of data used to support informed decision-making (hiring) by experts (recruiters and hiring managers). My time at the latest ERE Expo fully supported this viewpoint and explains both why assessment is valuable and why it is often overlooked as a viable component in the hiring process.

To be honest, my overall take is that most folks in the hiring game really don’t care about assessment and don’t trust that it works. There are so many other things to attend to: branding, sourcing and managing candidates, candidate engagement and communication, and compliance, just to name a few. Why add another thing, especially when using it seems to involve a lot of hocus-pocus and can be a pain in the you know what? I don’t think I am being overly negative when I present the following observations:

Assessment is rarely included as a strategic part of the hiring process. It is most often used tactically — to fight fires, not to support bigger-picture business strategy. In most companies recruitment does not even give us assessment folks a seat at the table, leading to a lack of integration and focus within the hiring process.

Assessment is not viewed as a quality source of useful information. Many don’t fully understand what assessment is and how it works, leading to skepticism that results are not effective in helping them make good decisions.

Assessment is viewed as more trouble then it is worth. Many feel that assessment information just makes their job more complicated and can present extra expense while increasing legal risks.

Information provided by assessments is hard to understand and can be misleading. Many view assessment reports as tedious and not really in line with the language used by the business.

Assessment is not used to help with employment branding or candidate engagement. Assessment is not seen as a tool to help increase interactivity or provide differentiation for the company via a strong recruitment brand.

Assessment vendors are not well represented within the recruitment vendor community. There are a ton of other products and services that are required to support a hiring process and thus are more mainstream than assessment, (you can’t make hires if you can’t find any candidates).

I fully understand and respect these viewpoints. ERE Expos continually raise my awareness that hiring is no easy task and managing a recruiting function can be a real bear, but I’m here to tell you why the above observations are not always true, why you should care about assessment, and why the act of caring is easier than it has ever been.

Information is power. No, adding assessment will not allow you to be 100% effective in your decision-making. Anyone who claims it can work with even 50 or 60% levels of accuracy is full of it. BUT, assessment can add tremendous value to the decision-making process and can, when combined with other data and the judgment of experienced experts, help ensure consistent quality hiring decisions. Get over it: assessment is just one more tool in the toolbox (but it’s a power tool!). The good news is that we have 50 years of evidence supporting the fact that good assessment tools do work when used properly!

Technology is making it easier than ever. Yes, assessment is getting easier and easier to use, thanks to advances in technology and measurement science amongst the vendor community. This includes implementation and reporting. Both of these factors were once barriers to the use of assessment, as expensive and time-consuming local validation studies were required and reports were confusing. Most vendors now have unprecedented levels of flexibility for aligning content in painless fashion and have reams of data to support the effectiveness of these products. It’s a whole new ballgame these days when it comes to selection science and technology.

Strategy wins the day. Yes, using assessment strategically is a best practice that can help differentiate companies via their ability to hire applicants who fit with their company culture and who possess the traits required to fulfill strategic objectives. Of course tactical use has value, too, but those companies that are breaking down walls between functions can really begin to see the long term value it can provide.

Interactivity and assessment can be friends. Yes, assessment is an excellent way to help anchor branded experiences that are part of the application process, providing job seekers with a level of feedback that is beyond that of the current process. Brand gaming, realistic job previews, and other interactive tools for job seekers are the new frontier, helping the value of assessments take a quantum leap forward. While these things can be costly, they are a great way to break down walls between recruiting and other HR functions (see above).

Sleep well at night. No, assessment does not increase your risk of legal problems provided you use a good tool that has been implemented following best practices (such as those found in the Uniform Guidelines for Employee Selection Procedures). In fact, not using assessment at all places you at much greater risk due to increases in subjectivity of decisions and a lack of ability to link hiring process to job performance requirements.

There’s room on the tradeshow floor. Assessment vendors have a hard row to hoe, proving their value and helping potential clients to understand how their products work. There is tremendous value in what they have to offer and vendors need to step up and continue to invest in promoting awareness and creating exposure. There are lots of dollars to be had, despite the recent downturn. Those of us who do this for a living know that the scenario of many applicants for few slots is where assessment returns the most value because it allows users to be choosy.

I totally understand why assessment is not the hot topic or the belle of the ball when it comes to recruitment shows. There’s a lot to compete with and I am in no way advocating that shows like ERE focus solely on assessment. But I do feel there is room for assessment to move out from the shadowy fringe and into the light a bit more. My message to the powers that be in recruitment is, “Hey, give us a chance to help you keep it real! You’ll be glad you did!”

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

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.

As is typical of a not-for-profit professional association, SHRM’s largest expense is salaries. In 2009, it spent $37.1 million on compensation and benefits. In 2008, that amount was $36.3 million. In 2007, it was $32 million.

Of the total in 2009, 25 percent of the total comp and benefits went to just 30 employees, who earned a combined $7.1 million. SHRM’s highjest paid employee in 2009 was China Gorman, then SHRM’s Chief Global Member Engagement Officer. She was paid $635,701 that year, which was about $63,000 more than (now former) CEO Laurence O’Neil was paid.

By non-profit standards, SHRM’s pay structure is generous. Among organizations with incomes similar to SHRM’s, executives earn in a range from about $250,000 to $400,000 annually. That’s according to a database made available by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Charity Navigator, a non-profit, which maintains records on more than 5,500 publicly supported charities, puts the median CEO salary at $336,104 for organizations with incomes of $50 million to $100 million. Only at charities with budgets between $200 and $500 million is the median salary close to SHRMs. Charities that size pay their CEO $429,754 on average.

A third source, Economic Research Institute, says half the non-profits in employment related sectors with revenue comparable to SHRM’s  pay less than $284,259. At the top end, organizations with revenues like SHRM’s pay around $401,000.

The growth in top salaries has been brisk since 2007, when the return listed 11 employees earning $150,000 or more. In 2008, 26 employees earned at least that. And in 2009 that number was 30.  Most of the individuals listed in the report earn considerably more than $150,000.

SHRM was emailed asking for comment. The post will be updated when the response comes in.

990 IRS SHRM 2009 submission and analysis(2)
Last week the SHRM Members for Transparency circulated to its members and chapter leaders a summary of the 2009 tax return. The SMFT is made up of a large number of well known and respected former SHRM board members, executives, and current SHRM members at issue with recent actions by SHRM’s Board of Directors and its leadership.

Although the group would not comment on the information int he tax return, the group’s  emailed summary specifically points out the salaries of key members of the SHRM staff, the compensation paid to board members (which totaled $220,563), and detailed the amounts the organization is spending to support offices and staff around the world.

The group included membership numbers for the regions and a per member spending breakdown. The report said more money was spent supporting some 3,500 members in Asia, India, Canada, and Mexico than in support of the 70,350 chapter affiliated members in the U.S.

John Hollon,  Vice President for Editorial of TLNT.com, contributed to this story. Contact him at john@tlnt.com, and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/johnhollon

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.

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.

If you decide to initiate an effort to train managers on how to hire, these factors and their related negative impacts could be crucial in building the business case for training hiring managers and rewarding them for great hires.

The Costs of a Bad Hire

Most would agree that managers do an OK job when they are trying to fill the typical requisition. However, everything changes when you’re trying to recruit the most difficult and desirable candidates. When recruiting A-level talent, undertrained, low-skilled, egotistical, or disinterested managers can be a top factor in losing great candidates. In addition to losing top candidates, the resulting bad hires require more costly training, they take up more of their teammate’s time, make more errors, upset customers and are much more likely to require performance management. Some may accidentally be promoted into management positions, where they will repeat and perhaps exceed the recruiting mistakes made by their original hiring manager. Remember that if your company has high retention and low firing rates, the costly damage that a bad hire can do is likely to last over many years.

What Google Does to Limit the Damage of Weak Hiring Managers

“We do everything to minimize the authority and power of the manager in making a hiring decision.”

“Managers often want to hire people who seem just like them.” So… “hiring decisions are made by a group.”

–L. Bock, Google VP of People Operations

The Top 20 Reasons Why Managers Are Unlikely To Hire Great Candidates

The top ways that hiring managers can hurt or prevent great hiring are listed below. For easy scanning, I have bullet broken them into four categories, I) general factors, II) factors related to a manager’s hiring skills, III) factors related to weak management skills, and IV) factors related to a ego and inflexibility.

I) General Factors That Prevent Great Hiring

• A-level talent will not work for weak managers — when weak managers try to hire superior talent, they cannot succeed because top candidates can spot and accurately assess a weak manager even before applying by using their extensive professional or social media networks. If a top candidate somehow gets to an interview, their ability to ask probing questions to the hiring manager will bring out answers that will cause them to immediately drop out of the hiring process.
• Weak managers probably have weak teams — the very definition of a weak manager means that they are not capable of attracting and retaining top talent. As a result, when the top candidates meet and interact with their mediocre team during the interview process, there is a high likelihood that they will be immediately discouraged. Top candidates want to work alongside the very best teammates because they want to learn from them. A-level talent will also immediately realize that they won’t be able to achieve their goals while working with this mediocre team.
• Weak managers have limited resources to offer — because of their poor performance, missed deadlines, and failed projects, weak managers are less likely to have large budgets. Top candidates will inquire about the available budget and resources in the department and they will be turned off when they learn that the resources available to them are below average.
• Weak managers are likely to be assigned low-level recruiters — some recruiting managers have a policy to assign the best recruiters to the most important jobs and the best managers. The best recruiters themselves often lobby their recruiting manager for the opportunity to work with the best hiring managers who are likely to produce high-quality hires. Even though it’s not an official policy, it is not unusual for contract recruiters or the weakest and most inexperienced recruiters to be assigned to the worst hiring managers. This may occur either as a subtle form of punishment or because these recruiters are all that are left after more senior recruiters have their choice. No matter what the reason, without the support and coaching of top recruiters, the odds of a weak manager getting a great A-level hire are almost zero. Incidentally, is also true that external executive search and third-party recruiters are unlikely to put the most effort into a search that is unlikely to succeed as a result of the roadblocks put up by a bad hiring manager.

II) Factors related to a manager’s hiring skills and capabilities

• Weak managers fail to do candidate research — many managers, in this case, both the good ones and the weak ones, fail to do adequate research into the background and the needs of top candidates. But weak managers sometimes don’t even bother to review the resume before an interview begins. This “no research” approach might be OK for most average or active candidates (because they have “easy to meet” job acceptance requirements), but A-level talent haas extremely high expectations and a detailed list of requirements that must be met (and deal-breakers that must be avoided) before they will accept the job. The very best managers proactively identify and then meet each of the major job acceptance criteria of A-level talent.
• Weak managers are bad salespeople — a weak manager is certainly capable of selling an average active candidate. However, it takes a much stronger set of sales skills and knowledge of the current market to sell the currently employed, top performers, game-changers, and innovators. Weak managers fail to conduct research and are not up-to-date on the latest recruiting sales and closing approaches. As a result, it is unlikely that weak managers will be able to close most of the best candidates.
• Weak managers are unlikely to innovate during recruiting, driving away innovators — weak managers simply don’t innovate very often. That is OK in most cases because the average hire doesn’t expect anything unusual during the hiring process. However, A-level talent and innovators will view the level of innovation and technology usage (e.g. live remote video interviews, simulations, real problem-solving contests) that they encounter during the recruiting process as an indication of the rate of innovation and technology usage in the job and the firm. In addition, if they aren’t offered the opportunity to innovate during the interview, their capabilities will be undiscovered and their frustration will likely cause them to drop out of the recruiting process.
• Failing to do benchmarking and competitive analysis may result in noncompetitive jobs and offers — you cannot recruit in isolation, so hiring managers must be up-to-date regarding the benchmark standards for top candidates in the current recruiting market. Unfortunately, weak managers are frequently unwilling to spend the necessary time required to analyze what competitors are offering and to make adjustments to ensure that “their job” is compelling and clearly superior to what the competitors are offering. Weak managers are also unlikely to monitor a competitor’s hiring cycles, so that they can focus their recruiting during times when they can avoid direct head-to-head competition with competitors that possess a strong employer brand.
• Weak managers don’t know how to manage competing offers — if the A-level candidate is currently employed, there is a high probability they will get a counteroffer from their existing boss. Even if they’re not employed, top candidates are likely to get one or more offers from other firms. Unfortunately, weak managers are often inflexible and are not willing to even make a counteroffer. Those that are willing to make one, often lack the skills necessary to successfully negotiate with the candidate and their own compensation department. The end result is that candidates who are in the highest demand will be lost.
• Managers who are not up-to-date in their field frequently write poor position descriptions — weak managers are often behind the times in the latest tools, technologies, best practices, and approaches in their technical field. As a result, the job descriptions and the position announcements that these managers help to create or that they approve will signal immediately to exceptional candidates that this job will not be exciting or challenging. As a result they will not even apply for the position.
• Weak technical skills may lead to poor candidate screening — weak managers who are behind in their technical field will also make errors during resume screening. When they are asked to screen through a stack of “finalists” resumes who are presented to them by the recruiter, they may make serious errors in the ranking of top candidates. As a result of their low knowledge level, some of the top candidates may never be invited in for interview. Obviously their weak technical skills and knowledge will also come through during the interview.

III) Factors related to weak management skills and capabilities

• Weak managers are poor decision-makers — managers who make numerous poor decisions would have to be labeled as weak managers. It’s highly likely that a manager that uses a poor decision-making process for business decisions will also use a flawed approach to make hiring decisions. The net result will be that the best candidates may be screened out early or they will not be selected as the finalist.
• Weak managers are slow decision-makers — weak managers are often indecisive. Even if a manager uses a good decision-making process, if they are slow at making the final decision in hiring, it won’t matter because the best candidates will be gone weeks before they can make a final decision.
• A poorly managed interview processes signals weak management — weak managers often develop and execute weak interview processes. Unfortunately, top candidates will project your ability to manage them based on how well you manage their interview process. If the interview starts late, include weak interviewers, are disorganized, or they include inappropriate, illogical, or illegal questions, the candidate will likely assume that the manager who owned the process is a weak manager.
• Poor feedback during the hiring process indicates poor feedback on the job — if a manager is weak at communicating and providing feedback during the hiring process, most top candidates will assume that those weaknesses will also exist after they accept the job. Therefore you are likely to lose any candidates who receive mixed messages and slow or no feedback.
• Weak managers are more likely to be biased and to generalize – in some cases, managers produce poor business results because they use their own biases and generalizations to make judgments. Weak managers are less likely to understand the value of diversity and in all too many cases, they end up hiring people that look and act “just like them.” This may result in candidate slates with low diversity and below average diversity hires.

IV) Factors related to a ego or inflexibility

• “C” level managers won’t attempt to hire “A” level talent — Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, is a supporter of the premise that weak managers seldom hire A-level talent. They often don’t even try to hire superior talent out of fear that the new talent might challenge them or even take their job. Hiring talent with skill levels below them may increase their sense of security.
• Weak managers may overreach in their job requirements — weak managers are often unwilling or incapable of training and developing new hires. So in the cases where a hiring manager is willing to seek out superior talent, they often set the minimum job requirements or specs (skills, education, and experience) unreasonably high so that they will not need to train, coach, or mentor the new hire. Unfortunately, setting unreasonable job requirements will reduce the available talent pool, so few qualified candidates may be available at the salary the company can offer. At the very least this “overreaching so that they will need to coach” will make the recruiter have to look much further, and that alone will delay hiring. These unreasonable job specs may also result in an unfilled position.
• Weak managers may insist that the job remain unchanged — weak managers are often inflexible, unwilling to change, or to make an exception for any individual. This can be a problem because top performers, game-changers, and innovators already know that they are in high demand. And as a result, it is not unusual for this type of candidate to begin the interviewing process with an expectation that the job duties and the assignments will be negotiable. And as a result, they expect the job will be at least partially be tailored to their specific interests and needs. The arrogance of the hiring manager may cause them to refuse to even consider a change in the job. They might also refuse to even consider a change because they fear the possibility of having to explain to their current workers why this individual received something that they did not get.
• Weak managers may be incapable of making high salary offers — currently employed top performers, game-changers, and innovators almost always demand top salaries. Some weak managers are insecure and they certainly don’t want any team member making close to what they get paid. Others are simply not capable of successfully negotiating with compensation, so they never even try to get the highest salary offer. Even if they are capable, they often make no attempt to get the highest offer because once again they fear having to explain to current team members why this new hire is starting at such a high rate of pay. As a result, a level talent will frequently refuse to even consider what they view as a lowball offer.

Final Thoughts

Once you get over the shock of learning how much damage weak managers can do to hiring, you need to take action. The most logical first step is to provide every new hiring manager with hiring training and support information. That training would also be offered to the hiring managers with the weakest track record in recruiting.

As a second step, recruiting management should also consider implementing a service level agreement that spells out the specific expectations for both the recruiting function and the hiring manager. Hiring managers that don’t meet their SLA requirements would be provided no corporate help and they would be required to cough up the money to pay for a third-party recruiter.

A third action step, if you have the courage, is to prioritize your hiring managers based on their track record. Those hiring managers who earned the lowest priority would go to the bottom of the requisition queue and they would get the lowest priority in resources and recruiter assignments. Taken together, the shock of receiving slow service, having the least-experienced recruiters, or having to pay for third-party help may be enough shock to get these weak managers to follow the rules and to repeat the course covering great hiring.

One last thought: Why not take a trip over to HR and demand that it implements a “bad manager identification program.” If a weak manager is destroying your chances for recruiting A-level talent, imagine what damage they are also doing in the areas of productivity, retention, and innovation!

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.

She showed me a list of people who had obviously come from online; they had titles like sales managers, sales reps, and sales support with the occasional sales engineer sprinkled in.

It was the sales engineers we were after, I pointed out. It was right in the beginning of the job description.

“I know,” she admitted, disconsolately. “They’re just so hard to find!”

“What have you done so far?” I asked.

“Well, I looked on LinkedIn -- ,” she admitted before I stopped her in her tracks.

“You’re not going to find them on LinkedIn,” I stated, bluntly.

“How did you know?” she blinked, almost near tears.

“Because they’re not on LinkedIn, Marianne. If they ever were, chances are they’ve moved on and are not in the last reported place they listed.”

She continued to listen.

“Remember? LinkedIn rode the social media juggernaut and now — well, not so much.”

“Look — let’s do a LinkedIn search.”

She reached for her keyboard, and to my surprise LinkedIn flashed immediately up.

She was using it for her home page!

Ignoring that mistake, I told her to put the word “pigging” into the keyword box and the word “sales engineer” into the title box.

“Mark it current so we can see who has the title today,” I said.

“Now hit ‘search’,” I instructed.

Two results came up.

One — an “Andy V” — hadn’t worked in pigging since 1991, and the other, “Rick P.” listed himself as a designer for pigging products and as an application sales engineer but he had been with the same company for 19 years and was working in Alaska in the oil industry.

He had started his first job in 1975.

We all know what that means.

Come on, we do.

“I hate it that LinkedIn isn’t listing last names anymore,” Marianne remarked, seeming to ignore the paucity of resources being offered.

“Yeah, well, get used to it. There’s more of that to come,” I warned before telling her to change the title search’s “current” status to “current or past.”

Woo-hoo! Eight came up.

Just think.

Of 100 million “members” now on LinkedIn we can muster out only eight with “pigging” in their profiles.

Now, all of a sudden Rick’s last name came up — Rick Pruett — at the top of the heap.

But we all know what chance he stands.

Next came a John T. who worked for the same company but in Houston. He hadn’t worked in project sales since 2004 and now carried the title “Operations Manager.”

What are the chances he’d want to go back on the road 26 years after graduating from college with a B.S. in Engineering Technology?

Yeah, you guessed it.

Let’s not kid ourselves.

Next came Andy V. again and we all know what use he is to us at this point.

A smiling Chris P. showed up next and listed himself as a Consultant. It seemed he’d been working for himself the last 16 months.

Before that he was a “Global Sales Manager, Product Line Manager (Inspection)” and was also located in Houston.

Oh, but lookie there. He started school in 1971.

That ugly nemesis again — and, oh, he was in the oil business — not food.

It seemed nobody on the results page was in food.

Moving on, Richard Craig S. was a Corrosion Engineer in San Diego and we could see the connection topigging but it seemed he was also working with fuel lines.

“Not likely to be the same thing in the customer’s eyes and besides, who wants to move from San Diego to the Rust Belt?” I asked, deadpan.

She nodded her agreement.

Next up, Jason D. was now an Art Director, Multimedia Specialist, Art Guru in Florida, and what’s the point in even opening him up for inspection?

But let’s do it.

We’re on a wild goose chase anyway.

You tell me: do you see why he came up in the search?

I don’t.

Maybe this is why he came up in our search:

“From mingling with celebrities to guinea-pigging weird product or meditating deep in design, I always keep it interesting.”

Rock on Jason, but we’re going to move on.

Or not.

I just don’t have the strength it would take to investigate a “Territory Representative” at a company in Missoula, Montana that develops and markets cleaning, sanitizing, pest control, maintenance and repair products and services for the hospitality, institutional, and industrial industries who doesn’t even have the sense God gave a mule to fill out his profile let alone Peter R., a Business Development Manager at another oilfield services company.

We need someone experienced in the food industry.

There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

There are also no butts that I can see in any of the results so far that can put us remotely in the vicinity of what we need.

Marianne is discouraged but I’m not.

Next week we’re going to explore the opportunities LinkedIn did offer and we’re going to build on those few results using Hoover’s and a brief search engine visit to create a robust search that’s going to surprise you.

This week, though, you have a test to complete.

It’s not really so much a test as it is an opportunity for you to strut your stuff.

I want all of you online aficionados (and I know there are many of you!) to tell me what you’d do at this point.

I also want you few telephone sourcers out there to tell me how you’d proceed.

We all look forward to your advice.

This is an ongoing series regarding phone sourcing. Here’s part I, part II, part III, part IV, part V, part VI, and part VII.

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!

Phone sourcing is all about attitude.

It’s not what you say but how you say it.

Great phone sourcers say very little.

They know how to elicit the information they seek with the questions they ask.

They think about a sourcing job like a puzzle.

They sketch out the outer rim and then flesh in the interior.

Phone sourcing jobs go faster the further you get into one; just as a puzzle helps to build itself more quickly the more you work it.

“I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.” — Lou Holtz

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:

• Wanted Technologies, a company I talked about last fall, has launched what it calls a “hiring scale” for companies to measure the supply and demand of job candidates for a given job. In other words, how tough it’s going to be to fill a job. CEO Bruce Murray emailed me to say that this is a “new and distinct feature on top of what I showed you last fall … the Hiring Scale measures how hard it will be to source a position based on the supply of candidates and the demand from competing employers. It shows ‘red, yellow, and green’ based on the difficulty of filing the position.”

• Starbucks has purchased an ad associated with the #ereexpo hashtag on Twitter, in order for the company to recruit recruiters. What this means is that if someone’s checking out the stream of posts about the ERE Expo, they’ll see the Starbucks ad. Smart.
• Speaking of recruiting recruiters … one thing I’ve understood for a long time but not heard as explicitly as I did here last night: recruiting leaders from past ERE award-winning companies are telling me that one big result of their being finalists and winners has been multiple job offers. Expect more of that.
• New guidance on the ADA is out. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a lobbying group for business, has apparently given its OK to the rules. Meanwhile, on a similar topic, a new site has launched related the hiring, mentoring, and careers of people with disabilities.
• William Tincup believes a deal will soon be announced involving a major Learning Management System vendor acquiring an applicant tracking system vendor. Tincup says that Naomi Bloom is in agreement. Speaking of Tincup, Steve Boese captured a photo of his memorable booth.
• Kenexa’s business, its reps tell me, is doing “amazing.” The company also launched a new service for companies that want to hire a lot of people quickly. Beyond.com says it’s hot too, quadrupling it sales force this year from 7 to 28 people. A mid-size applicant tracking system vendor tells me, with not much of a smile, that business is “slow.”
• I’m hearing that Cognizant is hiring in very large numbers, like tens of thousands in the coming year, the majority — but by no means all — in India.
• Keith Watts, here from the big employment law firm Ogletree Deakins, tells me that attendees’ most common areas of inquiry relate to social media and discrimination; what liability you may face, for example, when you know from Facebook what an applicant looks like.
• PepsiCo’s launching a new mobile app for jobs-seekers. Right now, it includes Twittter feeds, blog feeds, and job listings, with the latter targeted to the location of the smartphone (or iPad) user. Expect more features as the year goes on.
  PepsiCo Careers Mobile Possibilities

All told, so far at least, the atmosphere is unusually upbeat, something I was just talking to LinkUp’s Adam Luckeroth and others about. There’s little time being spent on “Are things better? Are they worse? Are we there yet?” and mainly just talk of how to hire and onboard and retain employees better, quicker, and smarter.

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.

Best College Recruiting Program

Deloitte

Best Corporate Careers Website

AT&T

Best Employee Referral Program

Accenture

Best Employer Brand

Adidas Group

Best Retention Program/Practices

Cisco

Best Military Talent Program

Naval Sea Systems Command

Most Strategic Use of Technology

Informatica

Recruiting Department/Function of the Year

CACI

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.

In our experience, many recruiters understand this, yet they too need to act on it. (Referenced as “the knowing:doing gap.”) And their challenge is often to help the hiring manager (and the organization) understand it.

Another challenging reality is that the best talent may already be working. This is especially the case in fields such as healthcare, science, and technology. As an example, hiring clinicians who have management experience is a challenge for many healthcare organizations. It may also be the situation for the unique job requirements in your company. While the first challenge is finding qualified candidates, the bigger challenge is closing the deal and hiring them. The reason: they have options. Time is critical!

So, when a candidate or candidates are identified, understand that they will be vetting you as carefully as you are vetting them. Delays and perceived indecision will be seen as a lack of interest in their candidacy and they will quickly move along.

There are four critical points of contact for viable candidates, and they are:

1. Their first impression of you
2. Their first impression of the hiring manager
3. Their general impression of the organization garnered from interviews with other people in your organization and their travels within your organization
4. Follow-up

In hiring highly qualified people for your organization, there are no casual moments. Just because a candidate has agreed to an interview doesn’t mean they will be excited about and stay committed to your opportunity. All it means is that they may be ready to take your job if it is the best opportunity at the time for them and their career. If the candidate is greeted by interviewers who are late, unprepared, misaligned in interview approach, appear harried and rushed, and do not get back to the candidate (in a timely manner) with information they promised, there is a very strong likelihood that only the weakest candidates (with the least amount of options) will still be interested..

Once a passive candidate knows that they are attractive to other organizations, there is a very short period of time to make that hire. Candidates who were excited about your job can suddenly become enamored with the next shiny opportunity that comes along. Always assume they have other prospects in the pipeline. Don’t stall. You will undoubtedly lose that candidate to your competition.

You don’t have to settle. Once you have identified the type of candidate you are looking for, and are confident in your process, don’t get distracted or “over-process.” Ninety percent of the time, an interview process that gets dragged out results in no hire and the timeline gets pushed out. Not only do you lose the opportunity to grow your business, you also lose revenue. And even worse, the candidate may be hired by your competition.

If you find this happening in your organization, reanalyze your hiring process, discuss your challenges with the hiring manager and the director or VP of human resources, ask for feedback, and reevaluate. You are the catalyst. You are the person with the information. Use your influence to communicate effectively and factually the sense of urgency that needs to exist in a scarce talent resource market. Your organization and your customers will benefit.

this article was also written by Heather Cole

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.

I know that the era of Mad Men is long gone, but I believe using some of those old-fashioned approaches to doing business could be a positive differentiator in today’s blur of virtual, real-time, mobile, digital, 3.0 engagement. Many of my colleagues have also noted the change in the way sales calls occur; today customers feel like there is much less emphasis on relationship-building. If you’re selling something, or plan to sell something, here are some tips that may give you an edge in today’s crowded marketplace.

Don’t Let Our First Contact Ever Be an Electronic Meeting Invitation

I suppose the availability of contact information makes this incredibly tempting, but nearly everyone I spoke with while researching this article agreed that it makes a really poor first impression. I receive meeting invitations almost every day from perfect strangers, and I find it frustrating to try and figure out who is sending them.

Don’t Reach Out if You Don’t Know a Single Thing About My Business

People frequently call me asking me to review their approach to social media. I find that almost none of them have ever been to my careers website, reviewed my current social media platform, or even know what product my company makes or sells. The same technology that makes it so easy for these people to find my phone number and e-mail address could also be used to learn a lot about my organization and my business needs. I always wonder why people didn’t take a few extra seconds to look at my company web page before dialing the phone.

Don’t Read Me a Script

Or at least read it with some feeling! Many salespeople hardly even bother to say “Hello” before launching into a sales pitch. It’s obvious they are reading it, and words like “exciting,” “new,” and “amazing” are pronounced with the same lack of intensity as the rest of the script. I know cold-calling is an important way of establishing new business relationships, but that first impression is so important, and I often wonder if the company’s management has ever listened in on some of these conversations.

Tell Me What You’re Selling Right Away

As I’ve said all along, I like getting calls from people who have cool new things to sell me. But sometimes I’m not the person who is in the best position to make a decision about a particular category of product. The faster I can determine what it is you’re selling, the faster I can get you to the person you should be talking to. “Why don’t we just meet for 30 minutes and I can tell you about our unique approach” is not an efficient use of anyone’s time.

I Can’t Be Bought

Many people I know began their careers in an era where gift-giving was commonplace. I remember one company in particular that would send my former boss and his family into New York City for all-expense-paid weekends when trying to get additional business. Perhaps in direct response to what many of us saw in those days, most of the people I know who now run corporate recruiting functions have a completely different mindset, and gifts of any kind or value are given away or are simply refused. Many of us saw where being up for sale inevitably leads you, and are committed to doing things differently under our watch. If you don’t know your prospect, you might be unknowingly offending someone by offering gifts.

If I Don’t Choose to Engage on the First Go-around, Don’t Demand an Explanation

I try to get back to everyone who calls me, and close the loop. Sometimes people are selling a very expensive product I just don’t need. In these cases I send a nice note thanking them, and indicating that I don’t have any interest at the moment, but if my needs change I will certainly keep them in mind. After all, if I just purchased an applicant tracking system, I don’t need another one. Surprisingly, many salespeople respond with another request for my time, and demand a detailed explanation for why I made the decision I did. I find this awkward, and many others do as well.

I Don’t Want to Steal Your Idea

I once worked with the kind of vendor I genuinely love — one that had a great idea, a small group of committed employees, and was busily trying to grow the company. I was eager to help, and had even provided some customer insights that I thought would help make the product even more attractive to buyers. Just when things were getting really exciting, I received a note asking me to sign a pile of paperwork prepared by a lawyer that basically prohibited me from ever discussing anything I ever said, heard, or thought about this product. I understood the concern: protecting intellectual property is very important to a new business. But I would have preferred establishing the rules of engagement up front. I had no intention of stealing their idea, and most customers don’t plan to take ideas and start their own competing businesses.

Don’t Have Someone Reach Out to Me on Your Behalf

I find it amazing how many e-mails I get that start off “I’d like to schedule 30 minutes of your time to meet with our VP of Business Development.” I know many people you will never, ever do business with a company that employs this practice. Funnily enough, in my personal experience, it’s RPO providers who are guilty of this most frequently. If you can’t be bothered to reach out to me yourself when you’re trying to get my business, how accessible will you be when you already have my business and I have a problem? Working in this field has provided me with some thrilling opportunities to talk with some amazing people — business leaders, noted authors, and even genuine celebrities (when I’m selecting a keynote speaker for an event). Almost without exception they have interacted with me directly, and that personal touch always makes a positive impression.

If I’ve Had a Bad Experience With your Company in the Past, Telling Me “That Guy Is Gone Now” Does Not Instantly Fix Things

After years in recruiting I’ve seen it all: companies not delivering work that was already paid for, auto-renewal clauses hidden in contracts that then are whipped out triumphantly … after they expire, confidential information making it’s way to my competitors, etc. Since people and relationships are at the core of what we all do, it really stings when people violate our trust. Business relationships can be re-built, but that takes time, and empathy, and a genuine acknowledgement that something really wrong happened and won’t happen again. Simply glossing over something that compromised my business or cost me money in the past makes it difficult for me to believe things will be different in the future.

So, vendors: requisition volumes are up, the pool of top talent is shrinking, people are retiring, millennials are shaking up the workplace, and everyone is relying upon you to bring solutions to market that will help us sort it all out. We love the things you develop, adore bringing them into our organizations, and are proud when we partner with you and deliver a victory. Hopefully these suggestions will help you avoid encountering that “Man in the Chair” on your next sales call.

(Also, this isn’t a one-way-street. Let’s hear from the vendors out there about how we can be better partners with you.)

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.

Note: All times listed are Pacific Daylight Time

Thursday, March 24, 2011

• 8:15 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. – Welcome Remarks & Opening Keynote – Recruitment 3.0: Why traditional recruiters will be replaced by “emotional marketers” led by Matthew Jeffery
• 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. – Recruiting Excellence Award presentation & panel hosted by John Vlastelica
• 1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. – Mission Possible: How to Create a Comprehensive Social Media Recruitment Marketing Strategy led by Stacy Van Meter
• 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. – Social Media Strategy Secret Sauce: How Intel Makes Data-driven Decisions led by Allen Stephens, Keith Molesworth, Tiffany Peery from Intel
• 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. – In Treatment: The Complex Relationship Between Recruiters and Human Resources Generalists led by Jeremy Eskenazi, Mike Adamo, Susan Warner

Friday, March 25, 2011

• 9:15 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. – Welcome Remarks and Opening Keynote – Driving Integrated Talent Management in Turbulent Times led by Julie Fletcher
• 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. – Fire Away to ERE Legends Lou Adler, Dr. John Sullivan and Kevin Wheeler
• 1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. – 3 Key Insights Into Driving Change led by Melissa Mounce and Jason Warner
• 2:45 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. – Employee Referral Crossfire led by Master Burnett and Gerry Crispin
• 3:45 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. – A Vision for our Industry: From Pharaohs to Revolutions

And you can participate in the discussion virtually on Twitter by using the #EREExpo hashtag on all of your tweets. Whether you want to ask a question to a speaker or just join the conversation with both live and virtual attendees, all you need is a Twitter account and you are good to go.

I look forward to chatting with you over the next few days!

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.

It is these common interests, inclinations, or skills that differentiate them from all the others. It would be useful to look for these traits whenever you are trying to find more recruiters or to identify those most likely to add the most value.

These recruiters are not real people. They are composite people that I made up from some of the best I have seen and worked with.

Trait 1: Great at networking because they have a strong interest in people

I know this sounds trite, but it is true. Every great recruiter has a need to be around and with people. They like to meet new people and seek out opportunities to do that even when they are not recruiting.

Bill Warren is a great example. He began recruiting when he was just 23 and a new college hire. The college team asked him to help out on campus and he immediately put the network he had developed in his fraternity and social activities to work. As he worked in a technical industry, he put together an on-campus special interest group sponsored by his company. They sent engineers to talk and demonstrate uses for their products in applied situations. With the blessing of his boss, he was able to spend several weeks each semester in campus building the reputation of his firm and their research. Recruiting was easy after the first year and remains that way today. Bill, meanwhile at 28, has become a full-time recruiter, where he is quickly becoming a star. When you ask him why he is successful, he just says: “I like people and want to help them do what they want to do.”

His networking skills are massive both in person and online. He cultivates relationships and understands that all solid relationships are built on quid pro quo: doing something for someone who, in turn, does something for you. It is this give and take that makes for success, and he is willing to share his career advice, mentoring skills, and technical expertise. In return he gets the loyalty and commitment of many candidates.

Trait 2: Marketing and influencing skills

Sue Smith is ranked as the top recruiter in her retail organization. Hiring volume is aggressive and needs are changing all the time. Turnover is often high and seasonal hiring presents many challenges. She has to recruit contingent as well as full-time staff, and is involved in lots of internal politics.

Yet, Sue is able to ride these waves and still make progress. While she is a good networker, where she really shines is in influencing and selling. Sue aims to get candidates interested in the work, project, and hiring manager by identifying and communicating their positive aspects, pointing out challenges when appropriate, and generating excitement. She presents well-vetted candidates to the hiring manager whom she has “presold.” Through Facebook, email, and phone calls, she uses her networks as marketing channels and targets them for specific functions and sometimes even for specific hiring managers.

Trait 3: Personalizing and leveraging uniqueness

They transcend brand by personalizing each hire and each hiring manager. Each of these recruiters has found the power and importance of personalization. Rather than rely on a generic recruiting brand, they instead brand every job and manager as unique. They know how to steer the right candidates to the right managers because they have deep knowledge of the needs and capabilities of each through their networking skills and ability to influence. While each takes a different approach, there is lots of overlap and commonality between them. They can push and pull candidates and managers toward a mutually desirable end.

Trait 4: They use technology; they are not consumed by it

Neither of these recruiters is a technology nerd. They use what works for them and whatever they can understand. They make sure both candidates and hiring managers also understand and are willing to use the tools.

Bill does this by creating special interest groups that can be either virtual or face-to-face. He lets candidates and managers gravitate toward those that match their interests and abilities. He has leveraged more technology than Sue because his primary candidates are dispersed and distant, but he is not a “techno freak” in any way.

Sue uses technology to enable communication. She has the amazing ability to implement a technology seamlessly by starting out small, experimenting with a few candidates and hiring managers, and growing it slowly when it works. She probably spends no more than one or two days a month where technology is her focus.

Great recruiters are focused on getting results, but what is more important to them is that both the hiring manger and the candidate feel that they have had a real exchange of information and that both are comfortable with the decision. I am amazed that their candidates have few regrets about accepting a job and the short-term turnover is remarkably small. Hiring managers, too, are content and pleased with their hires.

The recruiting process is not about individual recruiters, though. It is about making good matches in a seamless and efficient way. Great recruiters figure out how to do this while appearing almost in the background. The greatest praise you can get is when the hiring manger says, “Wow! Did I make a great hire last week.”

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.”

For sure it is. And it won’t hurt that StartWire flags the jobs where updates are provided. Two comparable jobs. One has the update icon. The other does not. To which do you apply first?

Gerry Crispin, who has been making the candidate experience a cause celebre for the industry, gave the StartWire application update kudos in a blog post today. He also cited some of the other StartWire v.2 features, such as how it enables users to create multiple communities for job search networking.

If you tinkered with the initial version, you might not even notice some of the updates. Forman kidded about the “peas and Jello” improvements to StartWire, a reference to how he used to hide peas in the dessert to get his kids to eat their vegetables.

In version 2, Forman and his partner Tim McKegney, both of them alums from AIRS, rejiggered the page configuration to bring jobs to forefront. The “Ask the Expert” feature is now tied directly to jobs, with suggestions on the kinds of questions an applicant might consider asking.

(Ask the Expert is a Q&A feature that gives users customized, individualized responses from professional recruiters.)

A less-subtle change is that users can create multiple networks, talking to individuals one-to-one without public status updates. Or, of course, they can choose to go the public route. But in all cases, only the friends and contacts job seekers designate get to participate.

Forman walked me through the changes last week, and as he did so, it was pretty clear how much thought and research he and McKegney put into the changes they made. Remarkable at least to me was the Forman had conversations (email or otherwise) with 300 or so users, asking them all sorts of questions about how they use StartWire and what they wanted out of it.

Networking is important, Forman agreed, so StartWire tells a user who in their network works at an employer they’re interested in. “They decide if they want to contact that person and how they want to make that contact,” said Forman. “That’s peas in the Jello.”

Monster and CareerBuilder have tried to address the issue of the applicant black hole and to increase the transparency into the whole application process.

Apply through them to one of their advertisers and you can at least learn your application was delivered. A few years back, Monster began offering an expanded “Apply History” that tracks an application’s status — when possible, of course. Applicants can also compare their qualifications to others who applied using a Monster resume.

CareerBuilder has an even more extensive service. hireINSIDER gives applicants a fair amount of information about the numbers and qualifications of other applicants.

Despite their efforts, here we are in 2011, still arguing over whether even acknowledging a resume is a good idea. It has taken a Presidential order for the government to do that. So it’s refreshing to see StartWire make an effort to snatch some light back from the black hole.

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.

You tell recruit that the CEO is personally aware of their work and would really like a one-on-one meeting to discuss them joining the team. Sound outrageous? It might be if your recruiting leaders have failed to make the business case to your CEO on the value of recruiting top candidates, but not if your function truly delivers strategic recruiting.

The CEO option is an approach that has been used by many famous companies to land highly in-demand, non-executive talent for years. Some might recall the story of cell phones distributed by Microsoft to top students with Bill Gates’ personal extension stored in memory. Other CEOs who have accepted the challenge of chief recruiter include Jack Welch (ex-GE) and Jim Donald (Starbucks). The approach is currently proving wildly successful for Zynga, the gaming company undergoing phenomenal growth. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, recently donned the hat to recruit away a key leader from Amazon.com.

Why a CEO’s Involvement Works

If you’ve ever eaten at a high-end restaurant you know that it isn’t uncommon for the executive chef to visit the tables of VIP customers in hopes that he can influence them to refer their friends and return. Using the CEO in recruiting efforts is very similar. The act has been encouraged for years, but doesn’t happen nearly as much as it should. Some of the reasons why this approach is so powerful include:

• CEOs are great salespeople (usually) — it’s hard to ascend to the role of CEO without being able to sell a vision and market your organization’s ability to attain that vision. When effectively briefed about a candidate’s “job acceptance criteria” and “deal breaking” factors, most CEOs can close the deal. In the rare cases where the candidate doesn’t accept, they often come back month later.
• The feeling of a partnership and an impact — when I advise firms on this practice, I recommend that the CEO use a phrase similar to “I need your help. I know that with you and I working closely together, we can build an exciting future for this company.” The goal is to build the feeling of a partnership and a close working relationship that will directly impact the future of the company for many years.
• Straight from the horse’s mouth — talking directly to the CEO means that the candidate will receive direct unfiltered messages. That alone can be reassuring when they might not trust the word of a recruiter oblivious to the inside story.
• High probability of execution — the candidate knows that any promises that are made have a high probability of coming true because they are backed by the power, resources, and integrity of the CEO.
• Future access — the fact that the CEO will meet with a candidate now should leave the impression that they will have continuous access as an employee.
• Power by association — because everyone at the firm knows that the candidate met with the CEO, they’re likely at least initially to listen to them.
• Bragging rights — talking directly to the CEO is something notable that the candidate can tell their friends, even if they never accept a job. It’s an honor merely to be invited.
• Consorting with the enemy — once a candidate has met with your CEO they may be viewed as “damaged goods” or as a traitor by their current firm. Not wanting to face potential criticism as a result is another reason that the candidate might accept the new job.

What the CEO Can Do to Help

Once a CEO or senior executive agrees to help in a recruiting effort, there are a variety of roles and approaches that they can take. In addition to the initial one-on-one meeting other options include:

• Pre-recruiting calls — a call to the candidate commenting on their work or congratulating them for an accomplishment can set the stage for future recruiting.
• Meet me at a conference — a request to meet informally but discreetly at a conference they are both attending is a good way to start a relationship.
• I am flying in to meet you — telling a candidate that the CEO is willing to fly into their city and make a special trip to meet them is extremely powerful. An alternative approach is stating that the CEO will already be in the city on business, so maybe they could find time to meet.
• CEO invitation call — having the CEO call and invite them to the one-on-one meeting is even more powerful.
• Informal coffee — as an alternative to the formal interview in the CEO’s office, consider an informal talk over coffee.
• A handwritten note — sometimes a personal note in the CEO’s handwriting can make the difference. In some cases, a note to the spouse or partner can also be powerful.
• Drop in on the interview — something that takes less time but can impact the closing of a deal is for the CEO to stop by and merely introduce themselves during a standard on-site interview.
• Close the deal CEO call — after the offer has been made, having a CEO call in order to encourage them to say yes can be very powerful and hard to turn down.
• Come to my office on the first day — a final approach for “enforcing the deal” is to request that the new hire come by for a follow-up visit on their first day at work.
• Retention calls/visits — the same logic that works for recruiting also works on current employees who are at risk of leaving.

How to Convince Your CEO to Play a Role

Some CEOs are smart and automatically assume the role as “the chief recruiter” for the firm. In other cases it takes some convincing and building the business case. Some approaches to consider include:

• Others do it — demonstrate to her/him what other CEOs who they admire are successfully using this tool.
• Consider a pilot — offer to run a small-scale pilot program for a month in order to judge the results and the ROI.
• Show the impact on recruiting — show them the percentage increase in the number of difficult candidates who 1) accepted an interview and 2) accept the job as a result of the CEO being involved. Also, during onboarding, ask new hires with CEO involvement to rank the factors that influenced their decision to say yes. Report the importance of their involvement back to the CEO.
• Show the impact on performance — periodically report the superior business results, bonus percentage, and innovations produced by individuals who were recruited using this approach.
• Place limits — show them that you respect their time by setting a limit on the number they are requested to do each month. Also limit it to high-impact jobs and hard-to-recruit candidates for those jobs.

Final Thoughts

Most recruiting leaders have little or no contact with the CEO, so their initial reaction to such a program is often that it’s not realistic. However, in my experience the most resistance comes from within HR. CEOs are routinely called upon to influence key customers, key vendors and strategic partners, so it’s only logical that they play a role in recruiting too. While time management is a major concern, most CEOs actually enjoy and learn from the process of meeting with top professionals. A side benefit, they may learn that not everyone is dying to work at their firm and that the role of the recruiter is both challenging and important.