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As many of you know — I announced it at the ERE Expo in San Diego — I’ve decided to bring recruiting back to recruiting. This is my new old mission. Somehow this has been lost in the past few years when overall candidate supply exceeded demand. Hiring top talent is not the same as finding top talent. While sourcing is a step in this journey, it is only a step, and one getting easier each passing day.

Consider this: at the current rate, by March 11, 2012, everyone will be connected by one degree of separation with everyone else either via LinkedIn or Facebook. (FYI: I define sourcing as the process of name generation only. If you pick up the phone and call a person who did not apply, and convince him or her to consider your position, you’re recruiting. If the person applied for a job and all you’re doing is qualifying the person, that’s screening, not recruiting.)

While sourcing is getting easier, recruiting these now-more-visible folks is getting harder. This will become even more challenging as the demand for top talent accelerates, and everyone makes a wholesale shift to contact the same passive candidates you’re contacting. In this case, good recruiting skills will make all the difference as to who attracts and hires the person. keep reading…

Double-digit revenue increases are being reported by the leading U.S. job boards. Dice and Monster, both publicly held, reported their first quarter financial results today.

Dice Holdings brought in $40.1 million, which was 49 percent over revenue during the same period last year. The biggest portion came from its tech board, Dice.com, which saw a 35 percent year-over-year increase. Its eFinancialCareers site grew even more aggressively. Revenue there was up 48 percent, the company reported this morning.

Monster reported its overall revenue was $261.4 million, a 21 percent improvement over the same quarter in 2010. That number includes an adjustment relating to the acquisition of HotJobs. Excluding the one-time charges, Monster’s revenue was $264 million and it earned 5 cents a share, beating the 3 cents per share average of analysts’ estimates.

Dice, too, beat Wall Street, reporting 9 cents a share, versus analysts’ 8 cents per share expectations. The Street expected total revenue to come in at $39.4 million, which Dice also beat.

Monster’s big tell on hiring trends is the 24 percent year-over-year increase in bookings. The $272.5 million is the value of job posting and resume contracts signed during the quarter. It’s a strong sign of continuing improvement in the worldwide economy, and solid evidence that companies expect to continue to increase their hiring. keep reading…

This week’s webinar with Lisa Rosser covered proven techniques for attracting military veterans.

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

Here’s a little tidbit from LinkedIn that might help you answer a Jeopardy question or fill the conversational lull between discussing the Dodgers takeover and Lindsay Lohan’s upcoming stint in the morgue: Peter, Deborah, Bob, and Sally are among the most common names for CEOs.

It’s probably a totally meaningless analysis, but LinkedIn managed to get some PR mileage (and yes, I realize I’m playing right into that) out of scouring the 100 million profiles to find the most common CEO names.

If the research department had stopped there, it still would have warranted a water-cooler mention. But the team must have really had fun, since it dug into the various occupations and functional areas discovering such gems as: keep reading…

It blows my mind how the subject and function of competitive intelligence falls by the wayside in most HR/recruiting departments. Just what exactly is competitive intelligence and what is it used for? Let’s start first by defining it:

Definition: the action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization (Wikipedia.org)

A couple weeks back, I participated in a webinar about strategic recruiting methods along with over 400 HR/recruiting professionals. During the call, the host took a live quickpoll on the topic of competitive intelligence; here is the question that was posed to the participants, “Do you know today how your organization’s recruitment performance compares to other organizations in your industry?”

After a quick minute of tallying the results, an overwhelming 70% of the participants did not know how their own organizational recruitment performance stacked up against their competition, which leads me to ask: why not? keep reading…

I’d like to offer early in this series an anecdote told about Benjamin Disraeli, one of Great Britain’s more flamboyant parliamentary members and conservative prime minister during Queen Victoria’s reign.

His main political rival was the renowned orator William Gladstone and four-times Liberal prime minister.

A young lady was taken to dinner one evening by Gladstone and the following evening by Disraeli. Asked what impressions these two celebrated men had made upon her, she replied, “When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England.”

Both Disraeli and Gladstone were politicians of extraordinary ability whose personalities clashed throughout their lifelong rivalries.

Gladstone’s style of debate was “torrential, eloquent, evangelical, vehement, and ‘preachy’; Disraeli’s, urbane, witty, and worldly, with a streak of romance as well as cynicism.”

What the tale above has always told me is that someone who is full of himself — even though brilliant — can be unlikeable as a result of pedestaling his own ego.

On the other hand, someone who is skilled in social interaction (as Disraeli was) understands the power of listening and how it translates in connecting with another human being. keep reading…

With some companies focusing more on internal hiring and beginning to look at new models of working, I’ve heard more comments and questions about “career development” and what that may mean for any given individual in today’s environment. Working in an evolving and ever-changing industry, in a fluid, global environment, how can your candidates get from here to there? How should they know when to make a move and what that move should be? Where is “there”?

Gertrude Stein is noted as saying “There is no there there,” and I am a firm believer in this philosophy. Although many people have succeeded and gone far in their careers using the traditional “ladder” method (simply moving up within their job family), I’d like to suggest that there is another way that can take your candidates way beyond “there”: the lattice. keep reading…

Our country has gone from conversations about how to recruit and retain quality employees in a market with low unemployment just a few short years ago to conversations about how to find a job in a market with record unemployment numbers.

What’s missing is the most important conversation, regardless of our economic situation.

No one is talking about what needs to be done by companies to optimize their organization with the highest number of “A” players possible. What percentage is possible? If done properly, 80-90%. In our current economic climate it is especially important to move away from mediocrity. The 80-20 rule, as it relates to sales, is just not acceptable if you truly want to be successful in today’s market. For those who aren’t familiar with the 80/20 rule, it says that 20% or your sales organization will produce 80% of your revenue. Is this really what you’re company is committed to? Have you considered the possibility of what your revenues would look like with 80-90% of your sales organization achieving quotas vs. 20-50%?

Optimization Checklist

These questions are just some that you need to be asking yourself. If you’re not asking these questions, you are headed for mediocrity or possibly even failure.  keep reading…

In a deal valued at $290 million, talent management systems provider SuccessFactors will acquire privately-held Plateau, one of the leading learning systems providers in the world. The deal was announced today.

The acquisition follows the purchase of Jambok last month. The startup, a “mobile video and social learning technology” provider, broadened the business collaboration tools that SuccessFactors has been promoting as part of its human capital management offerings, which it brands as business execution software.

Today’s acquisition, the largest the publicly-traded SuccessFactors has ever made, is a powerful addition to the company’s product lineup. Learning has been a weak link in an otherwise strong talent management lineup. Adding Plateau’s enterprise LMS capability now gives SuccessFactors an extensive end-to-end suite. keep reading…

Lawson Software, provider of a wide variety of business management programs including enterprise human capital management, will be acquired by equity investor Golden Gate Capital and its business software and services firm Infor, in a deal valued at about $2 billion. The official announcement was made this morning.

Lawson’s stock, which traded as high as $12.50 a share after Golden Gate and Infor made an offer last month, dropped $1.01 following the news. It was trading at $11.11 in mid-afternoon in New York, 14 cents below the $11.25-per-share purchase price.

The company, 11 percent owned by investor Carl Icahn, shopped itself around after the offer, according to Reuters, but found no takers. keep reading…

Our sister site, SourceCon.com, which provides news, knowledge, and information for the recruitment sourcing community, has revised its email subscription option and is pleased to let you know that it is now ready and available for registration. The new email subscription service, SourceCon Weekly, will deliver your subscription to SourceCon news via email each week on Thursdays. This new service will be replacing the old daily FeedBlitz email subscription service, and the hope is that it will provide a better user experience for you!

keep reading…

Two weeks ago, the team at KODA threw in the towel. With their goodbye, the Gen Y business connection site joined a long list of promising startups with sweeping ambitions to change the way that people find jobs that ultimately failed.

Except for the runaway success of soon-to-IPO LinkedIn (and arguably Indeed & SimplyHired), there have not been any huge startup success stories since the job board explosion of the late 90s. And even those successes have been more about efficiency then radical change.

There has been no lack of aspiring entrepreneurs in the recruiting space, especially in the last few years, as the startup scene has heated up. So why do we not have more success stories? More change?

Before his current incarnation as a Venture Capitalist at First Round Capital, Charlie O’Donnell spent two years as the entrepreneur behind Path 101, a startup that attempted to be a “guidance resource for your career indecision.” Today, when aspiring entrepreneurs approach Charlie for his advice on launching a startup in the recruiting space, he advises them to run, because in his words, human capital is a “bad neighborhood.” Aspiring entrepreneurs should read Charlie’s post carefully, because it presents some good reasons why they should choose greener pastures.

I’ve been observing the recruiting space for over a decade, and like Charlie, I get approached by lots of startups looking for advice. The best advice I can give — don’t make the same mistakes as the guy before you. Most startups make the same mistakes over and over again.

It’s Easy to Spot the Problems in Recruiting — but Much Harder to Fix Them

Everyone knows that recruiting is inefficient. It’s slow. It has been done in much the same way for decades. In other words, a classic target for disruption. keep reading…

It is hard to believe that it has been nearly 10 years to the day since Free Agent Nation was published, and nearly 14 years since the article by Daniel Pink graced the cover of Fast Company magazine. Since that time, a lot has changed, but given the inflection point we are experiencing with regard to the economy, the job market, accelerating recruitment challenges, as well as changes in recruitment and candidate behaviors, it’s useful to revisit the free agent discussion in light of what has changed (and what has not). keep reading…

Women have become the new workforce. There are now slightly more women workers than men, given the recession and the shrinking of the manufacturing and construction industries. They have less unemployment: In January of this year the unemployment rate for men was 8.8 percent, yet for women only 7.9 percent.

Additionally, women account for 51 percent of all workers in high-paying management, professional, and related occupations. There are now more women in management positions than men for the first time in American history, and it isn’t stopping anytime soon. Women are projected to account for 51.2 percent of the increase in total labor force growth by 2018. And, these are not exclusively American trends — they are also trends in Europe and many Asian countries.

More women are attending and graduating from universities. Men make up only 40% of the students in American universities while women are closing in on two-thirds of the university population and receive the majority of college degrees. No one is exactly sure why this is happening but we do know that boys are diagnosed more often with learning disabilities and are more likely to be expelled or incarcerated. Or it may be that men are disengaged and uncomfortable with traditional teaching methods. They often feel able to go off on their own, start a business, or just hang out with friends.

So what does all of this mean for your organization and recruiting?

Obviously there will be a growing number of well-educated women entering the workforce. A wise strategy would be one that began to actively seek them out, engage them in learning more about your organization, and provide them with enticements that are geared to their needs.

Most of our recruiting efforts are traditional, and that generally means weighted in favor of men. We assume that most employees are willing to work a “normal” 8-hour day and a “normal” 40-hour work week. We assume they want bonuses and blocks of vacation time. And we assume they are willing to play the political games that are frequently needed to get ahead. These include those beers after work with the boss, talking sports, cars, and participating in events after work.

All of these may not be good assumptions if you want to stay competitive and get the best and most educated people available.

Here are a few things to consider:  keep reading…

Talent managers are increasingly borrowing from the practices of casinos, which have a well-earned reputation for effectively attracting, engaging, retaining, and directing the behavior of their customers. Casino customers lose money, spend hours engaged, and in most cases leave satisfied and eager to return. The same design principles that keep casino patrons engaged are increasingly playing a role inside organizations.

Firms like Microsoft, Google, Starbucks, Facebook, and Pixar have successfully used physical layouts, food offerings, social settings, and perks similar to those found in casinos to attract, maintain, and manage their customers/employees. According to one study, the number of corporations that offer “outrageous perks” nearly doubled between 2006 and 2011. So before you reject the idea, learn more about it.

Understanding the Casino Approach to Talent Management

Time clocks, policies binders, and rigid work rules may have worked long ago with regard to keeping employees at their desks, but times have changed. The casino approach focuses on using positive factors and “productivity perks” to influence behavior, including: keep reading…

If you remember KODA as the clever,  irreverent, and often-entertaining Gen Y business connection site, you’ll be sorry to hear it’s gone.

It closed down officially a couple weeks ago. That no one much took notice until blogger, author, and LinkedIn champion Lindsay Pollak tweeted the news Saturday speaks volumes about the reach of the site. As tuned in to the Gen Yers as it was, Koda.us simply couldn’t get up the critical mass to really ignite.

The final blog post says nothing about the reasons for the closure, other than it came as a surprise to the staff. “The winds of change are swift,” says the final post, written by Lauren McCabe, who was Koda’s marcom specialist.

In truth, though, it had ceased to exist at the end of February. A note then said it was being taken offline while the team designed “a brand new product, one that is substantially different from the current version that you see today. As a result, we’ve decided to go “dark” while we build our new site.” keep reading…

College hiring is looking up, which is good news for this year’s graduating seniors who have had to endure three years of warnings about their future job prospects.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers last week reported that its survey of employer plans found them expecting to hire 19.3 percent more grads this year than last. That’s a significant improvement over their plans just seven months ago, when the prediction was for a 13.5 percent increase.

“This is the first time since 2007 that we’ve seen a double-digit increase in spring hiring projections,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. “That’s a good indication that the job market for new college graduates is gaining momentum.”

NACE also found employers are receiving fewer applications for each opening than they did a year ago, when they averaged 40.5. Now, they are getting 21 per opening.

That’s not because students are sending out fewer resumes. keep reading…

The company managing .jobs addresses is preparing to ask for amendments to its Charter, apparently so it can continue to permit the broadening of the use of the extension.

That development came in correspondence between attorneys for .JOBS registrar Employ Media, and the Internet’s addressing authority, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

In the recently released correspondence, ICANN agreed to an extension to May 6 for Employ Media to fix alleged breaches of its contract. (ICANN notified Employ Media it was in breach on Feb. 27  and gave it 30 days to address certain issues relating to who could get a .jobs address and what names could be used. A first extension to April 15 was previously granted.)

In the latest extension, approved last week, two conditions were set. The first is for Employ Media to submit amendments to ICANN by May 2nd. The second is that it stop issuing new addresses.

The letter notes that Employ Media is working with its partner, SHRM, to develop the amendments. The Society for Human Resource Management is the sponsor of the .jobs domain, and partnered with Employ Media in the early part of the last decade to convince ICANN to create the extension. That was done in 2005.

Emails to Employ Media and SHRM asking for comment have had not yet gotten a response, so it’s not possible to say exactly what the amendments might be. However, as there are specific requirements as to whom a .jobs address can be issued, as well as references to the use of company names in conjunction with the extension, the amendments will almost certainly address some of those issues.

Opponents of the expansion of the .JOBS addresses issued a sharply worded statement saying it “strongly disapproves” of the extension. The .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition, calling the matter “a test of ICANN’s credibility in the run-up to the launch of the new generic top-level domain (“gTLD”) initiative,” said ICANN should “compel Employ Media and its collaborators to cease their non-compliant conduct that breaches the .JOBS Charter.”

The statement says:

“Employ Media has already taken advantage of ICANN’s reluctance to take disciplinary action in response to what ICANN itself has identified as clear violations of the .JOBS Charter by maintaining — and expanding — the non-compliant “Dot Jobs Universe” program, which it operates with its alliance partner DirectEmployers Association at the universe.jobs website.”

The expansion the Coalition refers to is DirectEmployer’s addition of some 5,800 new job boards — added to the 30,000 or so it previously launched. These are focused at veterans and transitioning military and their families. They were launched in just the last few weeks, even as ICANN was saying the earlier issuance to DirectEmployers of non-company name addresses was a violation.

Says John Bell, chair of the Coalition: “ICANN’s reluctance to enforce Charter compliance despite the clear language of its own breach notice is reason for grave concern in light of the anticipated launch of the gTLD initiative.”

Jody Henderson of Scottsdale Healthcare discussed the advantages of video interviewing on this week’s show. Find out how video interviewing can save you time and money and allow you to get the right hire.

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

In response to that topic as an answer, a Jeopardy contestant’s correct question to host Alex Trebek would be: “What is the worst way to acknowledge an employee referral?” Anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of the phrase “tell ‘em to apply online” probably yelled: Wrong Answer! keep reading…