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.

Here are some interesting stats by way of a LinkedIn survey we conducted in late 2010, to validate this point. First, only 8% of the fully employed professional pool of candidates were actively looking and open to considering a lateral transfer. Another 10% were causally looking, but only interested in a better job than the one currently held. Everyone else needed a significant bump in compensation or a significant career move to even consider engaging in a conversation. Without a big employer brand, recruiters need to make the case that the jobs they’re representing offer something better. This is the first step in real recruiting.

As part of this “bring recruiting back to recruiting” mission, I put together this quick list of things modern-day recruiters need to be able to do to recruit top passive candidates. While they’re all important, which ones would you select as your top three?

1. Know the job
2. Know the industry and competition
3. Partner with the hiring manager
4. Market the job via voice and email
5. Network, network, network
6. Accurately screen and assess talent
7. Recruit and influence top prospects
8. Negotiate and close the offer
9. Don’t take no for an answer
10. Sell a career move, not a lateral transfer

Your top three might be different, but here’s mine.

Although the ability to partner with the hiring manager is essential, it’s second on my list, since in order to be a partner you need to know the job. That’s why knowing the job is first on my list. Third on my list is not taking “no” for an answer. To some degree these three in combination with all of the rest all represent a chicken-and-egg-type problem. (You can download a flyer with a more complete version of this Recruiter Circle of Excellence you see in the graphic, including a ranking scale, on the Recruiter’s Wall.)

Without knowing the job, there is no way either a hiring manager or a top candidate will respect your judgment or be swayed by whatever eloquence you manage to muster. Without knowing the job, persistence won’t help much, either. It will be like pushing on a rope. While there’s more to it than this, this is the reason I consider real job knowledge as No. 1.

Job knowledge is not simply knowing the list of skills and responsibilities listed on the job description. It’s understanding the actual work the person actually needs to do to be successful. For example, having a CPA, 5-10 years in corporate reporting including SOX, and strong international reporting experience is not knowing the job. Moving the company to the international financial reporting standards in two years, building a team of eight staff and professional accountants to assess and upgrade the current, cumbersome domestic SEC and SOX reporting process, and quickly developing a worldwide set of accounting policies, is knowing the real job.

Without this type of detailed job knowledge, you’ll get little respect from the hiring manager, and top people with other things to do will dismiss you out of hand. Of course, to obtain this critical information you need to get it directly from the hiring manager. One way to better understand the job is to ask these questions during the intake meeting:

• What are the big things the person will need to accomplish in order to be considered a top performer?
• Why would a top performer who is not looking, who is fully employed, and has multiple opportunities, want this specific position?
• What are the biggest challenges the person will face on the job?
• What are the big areas of leadership and/or strategy the person would need to successfully handle?

After you have these answers, then go through every critical skill on the job description and ask, “What does the person need to do with the skill as part of the actual job?” For example, for strong communications skills, you might get something like “make weekly presentations to the design review committee.”

If the manager asks why you need to have this information, tell him or her that this is the information passive candidates who aren’t looking need to know in order to decide if they just want to enter into a conversation. Then as a real zinger, ask the hiring manager if he or she would agree to see a person who could perform all of the work listed, but didn’t have exactly the same background listed on the job description. If the manager says “of course,” you now know the job. In parallel, you are moving toward partnership status.

If the manager says no, persist and ask the questions again, or read this article before you ask the questions again. The key: do not start looking for a candidate until the hiring manager says the real job as defined is correct, and also agrees to see all candidates who have done comparable work. Otherwise everything you do afterwards will be problematic.

With this “new age” job profile in hand, start contacting passive candidates and ask this question: “would you be open to talking about a possible career move, if it was significantly better than what you’re doing today?” They all will say yes. If not, persist and ask the question word-for-word again. When they say yes, you must then get these candidates to tell you about themselves first. Use this time to determine if the candidate is highly qualified and would see your job as a career move. If so, recruit the person. If the person is not perfect for your spot, network and get three names of some great people who are perfect. This is where persistence and all of the other skills listed in the Recruiter Circle of Excellence above will come into play. But if you don’t know the job, and aren’t a partner with your hiring-manager client, all of the persistence and skills listed won’t help much.

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.

Indeed, Monster expects hiring growth to continue, predicting that its bookings for the current quarter and for the year would be 20-25 percent above 2010.

Bookings grew across most industries “across North America and all the regions across North America,” said James Langrock, executive vice president and chief financial officer, commenting during the company’s quarterly financial conference call.

Despite the strong first quarter numbers, Monster’s stock took a hit in after-hours trading on the tepid financial guidance the company offered for the current quarter. The stock was down 4 percent following the end of the analyst call.

Monster said it expected revenues in the $250 million to $260 million range, with earnings of 6 cents to 10 cents a share. On average, analysts are expecting earnings of 9 cents a share and revenue of $269 million.

One reason for the cautious projection is uncertainty over government hiring. With the federal budget in play, and more government layoffs expected, Monster CEO Sal Iannuzzi told the analysts that spending on employment with Monster could be “a little bit lumpy at times.” While government revenue — about 10 percent of Monster’s North American revenue — is expected to grow at about the same rate as overall revenue by the end of the year, the current quarter could be as lean as the first, which saw only a 1 percent increase.

Dice, meanwhile, closed up 3.4 percent, as investors took advantage of robust growth projections from the company. Wall Street was expecting $41.5 million in revenue for the current quarter and $173.1 million for the year. Dice predicted it would handily beat both numbers, coming in at $43.5 million for the quarter, and $177 million for the year.

Privately held CareerBuilder shares only its North American revenue, which it said was $150 million, 13.6 percent above the same quarter last year.

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

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:

• “Sales professionals tend to have short names, around four letters (like Chip, Todd, and Trey).”
• “Engineers tend to have longer names, around six letters (like Rajesh, Jeremy, and Andrew).”
• “U.S. professionals in the food and restaurant industry tend to have longer French names (like Thierry, Philippe and Laurent).”

I’ve got my own ideas on correlation. Salespeople, (at least the good ones, in my experience), focus on developing relationships and nurturing a friendly, casual, “guy or gal next door” persona. Chip, Todd, or Cathy just sound more best-friend-informal than Theodore or Cathleen.

And the French sounding name for a chef? Do we really need to discuss that one? (Although it would be more fun if just once I walked into a restaurant and Gordon you-know-who was there in the kitchen, dishing about the running of the place.)

Anyway, the remarkable PR people at LinkedIn turned to an onomatologist for an explanation of the name associations.

“Typically hypocorisms, the shorter form of a given name, are used in intimate situations as a nickname or a term of endearment,” said Dr. Frank Nuessel, the editor of NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics (a publication of the American Name Society) and a professor of classical and modern languages at the University of Louisville.

“It’s possible that sales professionals in the U.S. and male CEOs around the world use these shortened versions of their name as a way to be more approachable and accessible to potential clients. Interestingly enough, female CEOs appear to prefer to use their full names and not nicknames, which could signify that they want to be taken more seriously and want co-workers to think of them in a more professional light.”

So now, there you have it. An official, professorial explanation for the short form usage of names by salespeople and CEOs.

Of course I couldn’t leave well enough alone, so did a little data digging myself. Not surprisingly, I found that many of the popular CEO names were also popular baby names. Deborah was popular between 1951 and 1956. Carolyn didn’t make the top five list, but Carol did.

John (of which Jack is a variant), was big for years, petering out in the early 70s. Ditto for Robert.

Considering that the average age of a CEO is around 56, we might just be seeing a correlation between popularity of baby names and the aging and career progression of the cohort.

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?

When I contemplate the concept of competitive intelligence and how it can impact a company’s recruitment strategy and performance, I cannot see how more companies are not incorporating this subject into a core strength of their recruitment strategy. I began to think further into some other industries/professions that I have strong interest in, where competitive intelligence is the starting point for strategies and plans.

Professional football is the industry at the top of my mind when it comes to competitive intelligence. NFL teams step on the field every Sunday during the regular season with real-time intelligence of the opposing team’s playbook, tendencies, tricks, coaches, and players. They want to know ahead of time what the opposing team may do: what play will they run, and what personnel package they will have on the field, for example. They want to gain the advantage on the competing team. NFL teams typically spend the equivalent of a few days watching film, studying pictures, and reviewing playbooks and players before the first game whistle is blown. Former head coach Jon Gruden went as far to make it a point to know what types of shoes the opposing players were going to wear.

Companies that sell products use competitive intelligence on a massive scale and on a daily basis. A perfect example is the competitive intelligence war in the soda industry. Coke & Pepsi are two industry leaders that use demographics, psychographics, consumer data, research, and numerous other data sources to locate their ideal consumers and then target consumers in various methods. So why is competitive intelligence not a larger part of the recruitment functions of companies? Why did 70% of HR/recruiting professionals on the webinar have no idea what their competitors are doing?

There are numerous tools and resources available to help companies and organizations gain competitive intelligence when it comes to the recruiting function. For example, there are reports available that provide real-time business intelligence for the marketplace. If you don’t know where to look or how to get your hands on these reports, there are agencies out there that specialize in such technology and can help you. Cutting edge HR/recruiting departments use such reports and intelligence to analyze employment trends, gather competitive intelligence, forecast economic conditions, and source hard-to-fill positions.

The same principles of competitive intelligence can be use within the recruitment functions and activities of companies. Using competitive intelligence can provide a dashboard of the competitions strategy. Give your organization a recruiting advantage. Use competitive intelligence to gain a step up on the competition and beat your competitor to the talent you desire. Don’t be one of the 70%’ers that are lost in the sauce.

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.

Disraeli’s genius lay in assembling and expressing ideas in writing. That’s not an easy thing to do when you’re talking all the time.

I can just see the two evenings in perspective: A darkened candlelit walnut-lined dining room with Georgian crystal, and fine, sturdy Worcester china paired with gleaming English silver and the participants in formal dress.

There’s a slight discernable patter as servants hover in the background and the quiet, distinct murmur of tableware being expertly served and removed sounds through the room just under the buzz of the table conversation.

On the first evening a young woman is seated next to an elderly gentleman who is gesticulating grandly with his wine glass and becoming ever more boisterous as the evening wears on. He talks about himself and his accomplishments and in general, focuses the conversation on himself, pedagogue that he is.

She consumes everything on her plate and leaves the table feeling stuffed and uncomfortable.

The next evening finds the same young woman seated next to a man with his shoulders slightly hunched, head tilted in toward her, listening intently to her answers to his questions while he attentively and deftly handles his knife and fork. The woman is the center of this man’s universe for the evening and his attentiveness is causing her to bloom far beyond her ordinary borders.

She eats little of what’s on her plate but leaves the table feeling stimulated and excited.

This story is often told about communication. Two intelligent, eloquent men with two completely different (connection) results!

By making a conscious effort to focus on others — to practice attentiveness — you’ll find that all the parties to the conversation enjoy themselves.

If you ask far more questions of the other person than they ask of you, you’ll experience a meaningful and connective dialogue and the other person will remember you for how you made them feel.

You’ve all heard the old common sense adage; “God gave you two ears and one mouth so you can listen twice as much as you talk.”

If there’s one simple element to successful communication, it’s listening.

This doesn’t require amazing social skill.

It just requires keeping your mouth shut and not one-upping the other person’s story — not telling yours at the expense of another’s.

In general it requires keeping your finger off the trigger of your mouth.

It’s all about how you make the other person feel.

Bringing the concealed carry class insight into this, my instructor said, mid-morning, talking about bullet caliber, “The bigger hole’s better.”

The bigger hole you can make in the other person’s heart — the more you can touch their feelings — the more you can connect with them at this basic human level — the more fruitful your communication will be.

You have to get at close range for this to happen.

You’ve got to get up close and personal.

Communication is all about feelings.

That’s what we’ll talk about next week.

(Intro; Part 1 on communication techniques)

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.

The lattice method is a way of moving up in your career by moving over to adjacent work, work that touches on what you are currently or historically doing, but brings some new twist to it. Ask your candidates to think of their overall career: what themes do they see emerging? Are they a bridge (connecting people)? Are they a builder (of process, products, teams)? Are they a collector (of information, of ideas)? Ask them to think about those themes, what they have done in the past, and what “adjacencies” those skills may touch.

If, for example, throughout their career they have noticed that they excel at building (processes, policies, teams) and they have been in program manager roles, perhaps they could consider becoming a recruiter (where they would build teams, manage priorities, and create a process for culling down the candidate pool) or an account manager (where they would build knowledge stores of information for their customers, and help them navigate processes).

Thinking about these adjacencies can lead to a varied and fulfilling career because it can span across industries, functions, and job titles. It allows your candidates to try new things without completely leaving their well-tested skills and expertise behind: a perfect way to bridge the gap and get from here to there. This is a method that not only works for advising your candidates, but can also be taken to heart in your searches, too. Are you searching for people with skills and expertise versus just that 1-to-1 experience? Are you considering their adjacencies as a creative match for a hard-to-fill role? (By the way, you can use this for your own career development as well.)

I’ve moved from sales to consulting to business owner to program management in both large multinationals and startups in the technology, financial, culinary, and arts & entertainment industries. What interesting and unusual career paths have you had? What about your candidates? Sharing these stories with each other helps to reinforce that others have also taken “risks” and tried something new. More often than not, there are success stories on the other end of an interesting climb.

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. 

1. Have you calculated the costs of your hiring errors over the past two to five years? This is truly the only way to know how many millions of revenue dollars you’ve lost.
2. Do you really know what type of people you’re looking for? Have you created a specific, measurable job spec using your current and past A players as the benchmark? Is the executive team aligned with regard to revenue and growth plans and how the sales organization directly helps to bring this revenue plan to fruition?
3. Are you clear on your corporate culture, and have you put a process in place to assess candidate fit with your culture?
4. Do you have a plan in place to assess your current employees and remove all your under-performers, as well as a timeline in which to complete this task?
5. How are you finding candidates? If you employ an internal recruiting organization, are they posting ads on job boards or actively searching out quality candidates? Are you using contingent recruiting firms to find your candidates? Have you retained a firm for the search?
6. Are you paying your internal recruiters at the same level you pay you’re top salespeople? If not, do you actually expect a 60-80k/yr recruiter to have the ability to find and attract a 300-400k/yr performer? If they had that ability, they’d be working for themselves, not for you.
7. Do you have a plan to retain top talent?
8. Have you created a list of questions, both open ended and closed, to qualify the competencies you require of your sales executives and management?

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.

Once it completes the integration, SuccessFactors will have a lineup rivaling that of competitor Taleo, which bought Learn.com last year to strengthen its learning system and enhance its talent management product suite.

Taleo, publicly held like SuccessFactors, has been busy buying up companies in the last few years in a quest to expand and improve its products and establish itself as the leading soup-to-nuts provider in the human capital space. Among its purchases in the last few years have been Vurv, JobFlash (an IVR provider), talent acquisition tech provider Cytiva, and World Wide Compensation.

Not to be outdone, SuccessFactors bought workforce analytics firm Inform Business Impact a year ago, and Danish analytics company YouCalc last fall. It also bought CubeTree, maker of business collaboration tools, last year for what could turn out to be $50 million.

In a blog post when Taleo bought Learn.com, analyst and consultant Josh Bersin detailed three positive impacts from the deal:

• “The acquisition will accelerate the trend toward market consolidation.”
• “This move will expand the size of the LMS market itself.”
• “This move will accelerate the market demand for integrated people management systems.”

Now, in the press release announcing the acquisition, Bersin is quoted saying, “SuccessFactors’ acquisition of Plateau brings together the market share leader in talent management with one of the market leaders in learning management to create a global powerhouse in end-to-end talent management software.”

The deal — $145 million in cash and $145 million in stock — is expected to close this summer.

In addition to announcing the purchase, SucessFactors also released its 1st quarter financial report. The company reported earning 1 cent a share, beating analysts’ estimates that it would break even. For the same quarter in 2010, the company lost $3.7 million or 5 cents a share. It also offered second quarter estimates of $69-$70 million in revenue, about $4 million more than analysts estimated, and said it expected to break-even.

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.

Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, Lawson focuses on specific industries: healthcare, services, public sector, equipment service management & rental, manufacturing and distribution,  and consumer products. As an ERP developer, its programs touch all critical areas of company operations including finance, supply chain, asset management, manufacturing ops, and human capital. It’s 4,500 customers span the globe, with a strong concentration in North America and Europe. At the end of 2010, it acquired HR services provider Enwisen for $70 million.

When the deal is complete, which is expected in the third quarter and must be approved by shareholder vote, Lawson will be folded into Infor, a company HR technology guru Naomi Bloom called an “ERP graveyard.” Writing last month about the bid by Golden Gate and Infor, Bloom said, “This is where old software goes to die, to be milked for its installed base’s maintenance revenues with only modest, ongoing upgrades, doing just enough to retain that installed base.”

She concluded with this lament about Lawson’s future: “I hate that this proud company, with an important legacy of industry focus, strong HCM products, and management integrity, may well disappear into Infor — a very sad ending indeed.”

No word on layoffs, support, or related issues.

While making the switch over to the new subscription service on the website, the existing daily FeedBlitz emails will continue to be sent over the next couple of weeks while existing subscribers update their accounts. Please take a moment to register for the new SourceCon Weekly email newsletter here.

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If you have any interest in sourcing, Internet research, telephone sourcing, or pretty much anything that relates to recruitment research, SourceCon.com will feed your hunger for knowledge. It takes just a minute to register for an account. All that is needed from you is a little information — your name, your role, your social security number, your ATM pin (just kidding…hehe) — and you’ll enjoy these benefits:

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Some questions you may have:

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• OK — I’ve signed up for the new weekly email subscription. Why am I still receiving daily emails from the old service? If you are an existing subscriber, both newsletters will continue to go out simultaneously for a couple of weeks in order to accommodate the switch and give everyone plenty of time to register with the new service. You will continue to receive a daily email from the existing FeedBlitz service, but you’ll also receive the new SourceCon Weekly newsletter. Don’t fret — this will only last for a week or two to provide everyone with ample time to register in the new system.

Don’t forget: you need to register with the new service in order to continue receiving your email subscription. Please go here to set up your new account.

Please let me (Amybeth Hale) know if you have any questions about the new email subscription service; hope you enjoy the new format!

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.

In fact, it’s so easy to see that hundreds of startups have tried — and failed — at most of the “obvious” ideas in the space.

Job Matching? Dozens of well-funded startups have tried. Better Applicant Tracking System? Even more. Online/Social Employee Referrals? A graveyard.

For startups in the recruiting space, it’s not enough to identify the pain points. Everyone has known most of them for decades. You need to know the exact reason why your approach will succeed where others have failed. Even more importantly, you need to be able to effectively articulate that reason to your potential customers.

Hire a Sales Force

HR is a stereotypically conservative department inside most companies, and they are now your customers. You can either spend your time trying to:

1. change the culture of an entire profession,
2. ignore it because your idea is just that powerful, or you can
3. acknowledge that the conservatism exists and treat it as just one more obstacle to overcome as you conquer the world.

There’s a strong engineering- and product-centric culture in the startup community. That’s powerful, because it creates innovative products that can become the foundations of great companies.

But in many cases it also comes with a “build it and they will come” ethos. In a market of consumers or early adopters, that may make sense. But I cannot think of a single major recruiting success story that was achieved without a very large sales force. If you can, let me know.

However many salespeople you think you’ll need, take that number and double it. Then double it again.

Immerse Yourself in the Recruiting World

As an entrepreneur, you probably have immersed yourself in startup culture. TechCrunch. Venture Capital. Pivots. Hacker News. Angels. Deadpools. Mashable. The startup ecosystem is infinitely more exciting than the HR ecosystem.

Understand that all of this is foreign to your new customers.

When you launch your product on TechCrunch, it may help you get your next round of funding. It may land you at your next hot startup.

It will not open doors to the vast majority of your potential customers.

As of the day that you found your company in the recruiting world, you need to immerse yourself in the peculiar culture of the people that are now your customers. You need to understand where they get their information, and their day-to-day challenges. Their frustrations. How their bosses evaluate their successes and failures.

But if you are serious about making your recruiting company succeed, make sure it is visible in a place where your future customers will see it. And the vast majority of your future customers are not immersed in startup culture.

Oh, and read this.

And Now for the Good News

Nobody is more aware of or more frustrated with the lack of innovation in the recruiting space then those who have made it their profession. There is a hunger among recruiters for new ideas and fresh approaches. In fact, sometimes it seems that in order to get talked about in the profession, all something needs to do is be labelled “NEW!!!”

Your challenge is in translating that hunger for the new into action. The profession has seen many companies making many promises come and go. I hope that this helps you become one that sticks around.

As I work with companies and talk with HR and talent acquisition executives, it is surprising that even today there remain deeply rooted social and organizational norms within even progressive companies regarding a concept of talent ownership.” It has been one of the more surprising artifacts I’ve observed in consulting: even now, organizations maintain a substantial amount of outdated, sometimes-unconscious thinking with regard to a concept that is clearly been eclipsed. This despite the fact that more companies are moving to an HR model of ‘end to end’ talent management. Many do not address some of the underlying organizational principles that need to change in order to compete in today’s New Talent Economy. The concept of talent ownership is one such example: many companies still insist on supporting regulation and rules-based HR policies to control for internal movement. A common example is restricting internal talent from applying for internal opportunities until they have been in their current job for x months. This is completely incongruent with the free-agent economy that exists today.

I’ve said many times, “If you are not recruiting your own people, you are the only company that isn’t…”

That has never been truer than today as social media has created innumerable entry points for recruiters and non-recruiters to reach people in your company. Yet company after company maintains policies that erode the concept of a laissez-faire talent economy internally. They restrict their own employees from changing jobs even as the world around them has evolved to be a free agent nation.

I do understand the practical implications of policies to balance the needs of individuals versus the broader needs of an organization. Clearly things don’t work well if workers are changing jobs every three months. So here are some ways to create programs that work in today’s talent economy.

• Create an internal talent marketplace: The talent marketplace outside of your company is becoming increasingly more efficient. For example, the “findability” of talent has never been easier. How is the talent marketplace inside of your firm? Many accounts suggest the process and approach to finding and landing a job inside of your company is more difficult than doing so outside of your company. If companies like Kayak are shortening their external recruiting process to seven days, how does your internal process stack up? Can internal talent sign up for new jobs to be delivered to their inbox? Is your process clearly communicated, concise, and have face-validity? If not, why not?
• If you must have term limits, change the structure of term limits: I’m a large fan of laissez-faire talent principle, but in practice, inside of an organization where hierarchy and structure and policies help drive efficiency at scale, they can be useful. So instead of enforcing term limits based on tenure, enforce term limits on the number of times people can move in a given period. Most companies set policies that require people to remain in roles for ~1 year before they can move.   Which essentially suggests “we own you.” A smarter solution is to set guidelines that people can only move three times within an X year period. This provides flexibility while balancing the broader needs of the organization.
• Use social media internally: It’s obvious that recruiters are gaining leverage from social media. How are you doing so within your organization? Creating groups and tranching internal employees into segments makes sense. Do you have an internal social media strategy? Are you using tools like LinkedIn and Facebook to drive engagement and syndicate information (and human connection) across your organization. If not, why not?

As usual, sound off in the comments.

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: 

It’s just good business strategy to hire women. With women becoming the majority of the workforce, it is just common sense to find better ways to attract and engage them. More and more startups are now led by women and more are moving into the ranks of senior leadership.

A number of organizations including HP and IBM have designed specific strategies to attract women. One organization, Cigna, has invested 2 million dollars to recruit and develop executive-level women. Pepperdine University found that the Fortune 500 companies with the best record of promoting women outperformed their competitors by anywhere from 41 to 116 percent.

And, a recent study by Catalyst shows that companies with the highest representation of women in their senior leadership had better financial performance as a group than those with the lowest number of women. Yet, women only account for 14% of the boards of Fortune 500 in the U.S. France and other European countries have now mandated that boards will be 40% female.

Are you finding the women you already have? Many recruiters and hiring managers are not actively seeking out the women already working in their organizations. Internal hiring and development of women are cornerstones of improving your brand image. Each recruiter should focus on making sure that a diverse slate of candidates that includes current female employees whenever possible is presented to hiring managers.

By making it a policy to help women move up and across the organization you can enhance your brand image and consequently your ability to attract more women.

You need to make sure your brand is friendly to women. Very few organizations take the time to examine their brand messaging to see how it appeals or doesn’t appeal to men and women. Women often feel undervalued, unappreciated, and underserved by recruiters and organizations. There is a subtle expectation that they should react to things and have the same approaches as men do to situations and events.

It is very important to think about the overt and covert messages that come through when someone thinks about your brand. Messages that may appeal more to women than men are those offering flexible work time or that talk about a friendly and collaborative workplace. Socially responsible organizations are also important to many women. Imaging needs to show women in a variety of roles and testimonials and interviews with women showcase what you are doing. Women need to see and hear that their work will be rewarded and appreciated and that the expectations are not less for them than they are for men.

You should relook at all your HR policies and practices. Numerous surveys show that women are looking for very different benefits than men. Some of the specific things they are looking for include job sharing, part-time telecommuting, flexible business hours, and paid and unpaid work interruptions for child care and elder care.

Women are also looking for non-hierarchical organizations with a reputation for collaborative decision-making. If your organization, like so many, has a lot of men at the top this may be a problem. But often lower down there are women managers and women-led teams that offer that collaborative environment. Every recruiter should understand how women contribute to their organization and what roles may be most attractive.

Ignoring women, thinking they are the same as men, assuming we all want to same things are very dangerous practices. Beginning to tailor your strategies and tactics to the dominant workforce makes good sense to me.

(Stats are from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics unless indicated otherwise.)

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:

1. Enticing food — includes free, often gourmet food (DreamWorks, Skype, Netflix, Zynga, & LinkedIn) snacks and a large variety of drinks. Offering abundant coffee and caffeinated drinks both to provide a stimulant for productivity and to increase opportunities for co-worker interaction.
2. Unique office designs and facilities — creative office designs and furniture provide perks and innovations that not only excite recruits, but that also make it comfortable for employees to put in lots of hours. Three Rings for example designed its office to look like the Jules Vern Nautilus submarine, including a 20-foot long squid tentacle cushion and giant portholes.
3. Events — onsite events that are fun can proactively encourage creativity and cross-functional collaboration. Zappos holds both product design contests among employees (e.g. to design a new Adidas shoe) and toga/chug parties.
4. Policies — the absence of silly policies allow employees to create wild workspaces and workstations (Pixar and Google). Some organizations allow employees to bring their pets and children, which further reinforces a message of freedom and creativity. Perks like free beer and wine demonstrate unambiguously that the firm treats employees like mature adults.

Impacts of the Casino Approach to Talent Management

If you think that offering perks like a dress-down day or support for childcare makes your firm appear “modern,” think again. Numerous large and small firms in almost every industry have evolved beyond dated 20th-century perks to offer those more akin to the casino-based talent management model. “Outrageous” perks are primarily recruiting tools, but they have a much broader impact on a wide variety of both candidate and employee behavior. Some common impact/goals for the casino approach are listed below:

• Improving recruiting — although nearly every firm states in its recruiting and employer branding materials that they are “different,” the outrageous perks offered under the Casino approach are much more likely to be talked about. Offering free food/snacks, a relaxed physical environment (Zynga) or even letting employees bring their dogs to work (Google and Kimpton) send a clear initial message that you really are different from traditional firms like IBM, GM, and GE.
• Getting them to come to work early — offering a free breakfast (Twitter, Netflix, & Digg) gets employees to come in early. Infusionsoft offers a cereal bar and Pixar is famous for its free “wall of cereal.” Free shuttles, ample bicycle storage (Three Rings) and onsite shower facilities (Springbox) can also encourage workers to come in early. Some firms have even offered valet parking (Microsoft and Google) to get their employees to their workstations faster.
• Keeping them at work — by increasing the number of hours that an individual is physically at work, you increase the likelihood that they will actually work more hours and that they will interact with different employees. A free gourmet lunch (Facebook and Google) and ample snacks decrease the need to leave the facility for nourishment. Onsite facilities like car care (Cisco, SAS, and Google), allowing dogs, an onsite laundry (Google) and a huge swimming pool (Pixar) take away many excuses for leaving the facility. Adding frequent during- and after-work events like speakers (Google and Facebook), parties (Zappos) and movies (Pixar) keeps them at the facility longer. In perhaps the most outrageous illustration of the casino approach, Facebook during its first few years offered a $7,000/year bonus for employees who lived within a mile of their headquarters in order to encourage employees to come the work even during off hours.
• Increase collaboration — increased cross-functional collaboration is a primary factor in increasing the speed of innovation. By using architectural features (Google, Sun, and Pixar) and even timing the food lines (Google), firms can increase the likelihood that this valuable collaboration will occur more frequently. Other features like free shuttle buses (Google, Microsoft, and Genentech), sports facilities, and free movies (Pixar) can directly increase collaboration. Companywide ski trips (Google & Odin Technology) can be used to provide additional chances to bond and collaborate.
• Increase retention and decreased poaching — most talent management professionals realize that free food, gyms. etc. can directly impact employee retention because they offer desirable features that no other company can match. But perks like a free lunch (Skype, LinkedIn, and Zynga) also have another benefit in that by keeping employees at the facility, they minimize the chances that an external recruiter can take them to lunch and recruit them away.
• Reinforce your message of freedom innovation and creativity — it’s quite common for corporate value statements and websites to extol the firm’s culture of freedom and creativity. However actions speak louder than words in this area. For example, providing free alcohol to employees causes most in HR to “lawyer up,” but for firms that want to be seen as “different,” it provides another opportunity to treat employees as mature adults. Numerous firms have joined this trend by either providing kegerators or refrigerators full of beer and wine (Twitter, Yelp, Door Number 3, Crowdflower, Bluespring Software, Barkley Advertising, Digitas Health, DPR Construction, and Three Rings). Google’s “martini blowout” party sent out a distinct message just by the name of the event. Conservative individuals within HR may disapprove the concept but nothing demonstrates that your firm is “different,” creative, trusting, and tolerant clearer than providing alcohol.
• Improved health and productivity — in addition to keeping employees onsite longer, offerings like onsite gyms (Oracle, Chesapeake Energy, and Nike), providing organic food (Google and Facebook) and onsite healthcare facilities (SAS and American Pipe) can lead to better employee health, lower insurance rates, and reduced costs related to sick day usage.
• Impressing customers — especially at startup firms, bold and outlandish office designs and furniture can also impress visiting customers and investors. They can show potential customers that creativity and innovation permeates the entire organization.

Final Thoughts

The goal of this article is not to provide a list of all the new and what many consider to be “outrageous” perks that firms are beginning to offer. Instead, the primary goal is to make you aware that these new adoptions are based on solid research and behavioral principles. To the untrained eye, the “outrageous” offerings that we have all heard about might appear to be simply extravagant employee perks, but nothing could be further from the truth. Firms like Google approach talent management as a science, not an art. The best firms that have adopted elements of this casino approach have conducted a thorough ROI analysis in order to demonstrate to skeptical executives that the benefits in productivity and innovation far outweigh the costs and the risks.

You should also note that although many of the firms listed are Silicon Valley firms, the practice has spread to many other geographic areas and industries. The final lesson for all in talent management to learn is that the 20th century model of work/life balance is gradually being replaced by a model that purposely blurs the line between work and life, to the benefit of both the employees and the shareholders.

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.”

Koda had promise and $3 million in angel dollars. Launching in the summer of 2009, into the worst recession since the Great Depression 80 years before, Koda aimed squarely at the young worker. It’s a crowded market, but Koda declared itself a different kind of site. It was a place where the entry-level Gen Yers could establish a professional presence, providing a personal — in some cases a very personal — look into who they are and they promise they hold.

“KODA is more professional than Facebook but more personal than LinkedIn, letting both sides of the hiring equation get to know each other,” declared co-founder and CEO Jeff Berger in the launch announcement.

Alas, the economy was bad then and is only starting to look better now. As I wrote in a launch announcement then, “Although KODA reports having relationships with some 350 companies and non-profits, the majority on the site say they aren’t hiring and have no listed jobs.”

That didn’t appreciably improve. But it didn’t keep the site and its young writers from doling out career advice that was direct, and sometimes brutally honest. One I recall suggested networking while doing yoga, surfing, playing basketball, and other such activities. Silly, until you start to think about the meaning behind it: networking can happen anywhere, anytime.

Fortunately, the blog is still online. Check out the Gen Y wisdom there while it’s still available.

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.

NACE found the total number of applications companies receive from seniors is up 45 percent over 2010.

According to a survey by Beyond.com conducted between February and March a third of all seniors had already sent out more than 41 applications in pursuit of a job. Over half the seniors had sent out more than 20 applications.

Global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas says its own analysis shows the spring 2011 college recruiting season will be the strongest since 2007.

“Entry-level hiring has not returned to pre-recession levels, but this year’s graduates should find markedly improved job-search conditions. Colleges and universities around the country are reporting increased on-campus recruiting and surveys of employers indicate more graduate hiring, as companies rebuild their bench-strength after massive layoffs during the downturn,” says CEO John A. Challenger.

The consultancy pointed to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the 20-24 age group saw the largest employment increase over the first three months of 2011. Employment among 25- to 34-year-olds and 35- to 44-year-olds each grew by less than one percent, and employment among 45- to 54-year-olds fell by 1.1 percent.

Campuses across the country are also reporting increased visits from recruiters, according to the Challenger analysis, citing reports from the University of Michigan, Texas Christian, and the University of California-Berkeley, which returned its annual job fair to a two-day event.

Even with the improvement in college hiring, Challenger warns that finding that first job won’t be easy. Hiring improvement is not uniform across all disciplines. A broad, 4,600-company survey conducted at the beginning of the school year by The Collegiate Employment Research Institute predicted a 10 percent overall hiring pickup for students graduating with a bachelor’s, driven by large employers and small firms and fast growth companies.

The report predicted MBAs will struggle, as the Institute saw little growth there. The hottest opportunities will be for top students in accounting, computer science, e-commerce, marketing, math, public relations, economics, entrepreneurism, and even liberal arts.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas also points out that besides competing against each other, seniors are also facing competition from last year’s grads and even those from two and three years ago, who may have had to take jobs outside their field.

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.”

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

One of the most frequently discussed issues in the talent acquisition arena is the pursuit of the ever-elusive passive candidate. While many definitions exist about exactly what or who qualifies as passive, in this context it represents a talented individual capable of immediately adding value. Such an individual may or may not be evaluating new employment alternatives, yet they tend to be open to learning of possibilities worthy of their consideration.

With limited resources and an interest in finding the right cultural and skill fit, employers often rely on employee referral programs to incentivize current workers to help them acquire new talent. Not only can this be part of a cost- effective recruitment strategy, it tends to produce leads to others in the industry resembling existing, successful employees. If managed well, referral programs can create win-win arrangements and build an endless pipeline of talent.

Cliché or not, countless organizations tout some version of a message claiming their employees are their most valuable asset. Thus it is logical for that sentiment to appear prominently on corporate career web pages where applicants are directed to view and apply for employment opportunities.

Even if there is no monetary reward or formal program for referrals, many of these valued human assets discuss their work in social settings which opens up opportunities for professional networking contacts to become interested in that business and corresponding career options. In those cases, the company benefits from a semi-known commodity while the referring employee takes pride in potentially helping someone land a desirable job.

When a person actively looking for employment or someone just curious about making a change reaches out to one of their contacts at a company, it usually means they are hopeful about circumventing the DMV-esque experience involved with applying through a standard ATS. Keeping that in mind, one might expect employers to be falling all over themselves to provide some type of accelerated process to put preferred or referred candidates on a fast track to decision-makers.

Absent a short-cut, when the referring employee has the misfortune of passing their referral to a less-savvy recipient, they encounter a dead end in the form of “tell ‘em to apply online.” That instruction is the equivalent telling someone craving fettuccine alfredo right now, that there is a 45-minute wait at Olive Garden. While it still sounds tasty, they may decide that a mass-produced chain restaurant meal is not necessarily worth the hassle of sitting around until the flashing, vibrating, take-a-number disk gets activated.

Whether too hungry to wait for food or not interested enough to jump through random job-seeker hoops, when faced with inconveniences or delays, most people instinctively search for more accommodating choices.

An employee who refers a friend that gets instantly rejected or redirected is less likely to try again. Both the employee and their referral will probably question how valued they really are or how serious that employer is about attracting and retaining top talent.

A better approach would be to minimize steps needed for someone inside to initiate contact with the referred candidate. From there a designated person should establish whether a preliminary match for a current or future need might exist.

At that point, the referral could be invited to officially apply online if they so choose. Or, at a minimum they would go on their way feeling pleased that they were treated to a courtesy screening conversation. The referring employee would receive confirmation that their employer appreciates them enough to follow through with them and their contact.