That’s still less than the 100,000 economists were expecting, and it’s about a third of what the U.S. needs each month to bring down the unemployment rate.  The company, and Macroeconomic Advisers, its partner in the monthly report, also adjusted downward its July estimate to 109,000 from the original 114,000.

In ever-so-cautious language, the report says that the slow job growth in August is “at a pace below what would be consistent with a stable unemployment rate.” That means that should the trend continue, unemployment may rise.

Economists expect that when the official employment numbers are released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor, they’ll show the 9.1 percent unemployment rate unchanged. New jobs are expected to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 75,000 (Bloomberg News) to 80,000 (Dow Jones Newswires).

Meanwhile, The Conference Board this morning said new online job ads in August fell for the third consecutive month, dropping by 164,000. After rising sharply in the first quarter of the year, job listings have mostly been declining and now are only 308,000 ahead of the end of 2010.

“The Supply/Demand rate stands at 3.35, indicating there were just over three unemployed for every online advertised vacancy in July, the latest monthly data available for unemployment,” The Conference Board said in releasing the job ad numbers.

Monday, The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index showed a big drop in August, as consumers expressed pessimism over economic conditions and said he expected fewer jobs in the months ahead.

This morning, however, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas had some good news in its monthly jobs cut report. Announced layoffs, which have been growing, declined in August. The firm said “employers announced plans to trim 51,114 workers from the payrolls in August, a 23-percent decline from July, when the number of job cuts hit a 16-month high of 66,414.”

So far this year, employer  announcements total 363,334 job cuts, only 2.9 percent fewer than at the same point last year, said the company. Government and cuts in the non-profit sector accounted for 105,000 of those lost jobs, with retail, aerospace, pharma, and financial industries accounting for another 110,000.

The ADP report said the majority of the job gains in August came from small business. Employers with under 50 workers added 58,000 jobs. The biggest employers, those with more than 500 employees, added a mere 3,000 jobs.

The service sector added 80,000 jobs, while goods producers accounted for the 11,000 others. Manufacturing lost 4,000 jobs during August.

But as I examined some of my other supervisors, I devised a list, or manager playbook of rookie mistakes that I vowed never to repeat. Below I’ll walk through some of the things I have seen personally. The stories you are about to read are true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Alienating yourself from the team. Whether you’ve been hired externally to come in and take over an established group or been promoted from within, first impressions are key and they will follow you forever.

I had a manager — let’s call her Claire — who despite several invitations to come sit in the recruiting pit with her team to get to know us better, declined, only later to say that we were too “clicky.” New management will always cause fear and curiosity on the team. Connect with them as soon as possible so that you establish yourself as someone who they can approach and trust. If you don’t fully understand what they’re day-to day activities are, how you are going to be able to make suggestions on how to improve processes? The best recruiting managers I have worked for have been recruiters, so be prepared to roll up your sleeves and at least during your first couple of weeks, get on the phone, make offers, and share your best practices.

Jumping to conclusions. You might come in and take over a team, and there could be preconceived notions of those team members, whether good, bad, or ugly. Don’t make any rash decisions until you can fully assess each member and make your own judgments. Don’t feel pressured to jump on the bandwagon of what other peers are saying. I worked with a woman — we’ll call her Denise — who during our first team lunch made the comment that she had already selected top performers from her previous company that she was going to be bringing on board. With no current open headcount we were forced to assume that she was planning on cutting us out after only being there for a couple of days.

Even if you have a performance issue on your team, figure out the root of that problem. Nothing screams talented manager like someone who can turn an employee around and remotivate them. Make the effort to spend more one-on-one time with your team so that you can set the stage early that you are there to coach and mentor.

Having an ego. There is a difference between manager and recruiter, and I am not just talking about salary. Typically managers have more access to decision makers and have the ability to drive strategy – that being said, don’t make it something to throw in everyone’s face or something that you own all by yourself. Recruiting is a highly collaborative corporate function where processes and best practices change daily. Make a move in the right direction early by engaging your team in the projects that you’re working on and being transparent about them.

At one company I had a boss who at every meeting would sum up all problems with “I am working with leadership on a strategic plan.” What that plan was, I never knew, nor were I or other members of the team ever asked for our advice or engagement around such plans. Another theme of that supervisor was the good ol’ boys club approach of — I’ll just text our CEO, or I just had drinks with him — we’re best friends. You weren’t hired to start a frat or sorority. Often your team doesn’t have access to the leaders who you might interact with. Impress your team with how you’re driving initiatives forward, not just your relationships. If you are already one step ahead and do engage your team, make sure to praise them for their efforts and never take credit by yourself.

Forcing it. There are two schools of thoughts on this. On one hand you want to gain credibility by coming in with a magic wand and fixing problems. On the other, you really need to take the time to assess what the problems are and how to address them before making any major changes. I had just implemented an ATS at a company, and it was a huge hit with the recruiting team. It was a life saver! Then a new manager came in the picture (Dixie) and she quickly determined that our particular system wouldn’t do. A week later Dixie was still asking elementary questions about how our system worked — odd given that she was on board to change it out so quickly.

If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. If the current team that you are coming into is raving about certain areas of their work, then it’s best to focus your time on larger issues or roadblocks that are frustrating them. Meet with the team during your first week and create a roadmap of their issues. Take the time to investigate and share with them your plan on improving them.

Writing checks that you can’t cash. This is a pretty universal mistake that I have seen with several managers. They come in and half listen to the problems and assume that the current team either hasn’t been talented enough to fix them or not aggressive enough to get things driven forward.

I had an issue at a company where we couldn’t get movement on our very slow offer approval process; there were some major politics and engagement problems at the executive level. Our new manager, Trudy, came in with the gusto to force the hands of our CEO and CFO and promised us that the approval process would be re-engineered in no time. She was unwilling to accept the advice of the team regarding the underlying politics surrounding our leadership, and how those issues needed to be fixed first before any other changes could be made. Months went by and while the promises continued, the progress did not.

Take advantage of the tenure on your team. These employees are the ones that will know all the dark secrets of a company and can help you either navigate tough situations or give you the information you need to make realistic improvements.

I have used the above list as my guide and I am proud to say that I have been successful in avoiding most those rookie mistakes despite my rookie status in management. I have a team of recruiters that are highly capable, talented, and teach me new things on a daily basis. Not only do we have great camaraderie – we feel comfortable sharing ideas. So while I’ve avoided the obvious mistakes, it would be another mistake altogether to assume I know everything there is to know about management. So managers be warned: I’ll be watching and taking mental notes on what not to do!

So aggressive was the action on Monster in particular that its stock soared 21.45 percent today, leading the gainers on the S&P 500 Index. Monster’s shares closed the day at $9.91.

LinkedIn rose 6 percent today, closing at $87.49. Monday, LinkedIn was up 7.5 percent. Dice Holdings was up 2.16 percent to $10.40.

All three companies had a tough few days last week, with LinkedIn sinking on Thursday to $70.05, its lowest price since going public in May. It closed its first day of trading back then at $94.25, after hitting a high of almost $123 a share.

Monster, which has been drifting in the mid teens for months, started heading south in late July, closing on August 22 at a low of $7.13.  Friday, the stock began inching up, and Monday, despite news the company had replaced its CIO Darko Dejanovic, it continued to rise. Today, after the company reported that three of its senior executives cumulatively bought more than 87,000 shares, the stock took off. 

That news helped boost the stock price, giving the three — Chairman, President and CEO Sal Iannuzzi, CFO Jim Langrock,  and EVP Tim Yates — a one-day profit of more then $152,000. Keep in mind that all three men are holding other Monster stock bought or granted at a higher price.

Bloomberg’s take on the rise is that investors have more confidence than the population generally that the economy is improving, and that the President and Federal Reserve will encourage job growth.

Bloomberg quoted William Blair & Co. analyst Tim McHugh as saying of LinkedIn and Monster in particular, “The stocks had embedded a high probability of entering a recession, but have been rebounding along with the market on the hopes that we will be able to avoid the recession … The companies could benefit from economic stimulus or a jobs program.”

Dice, which sold for as much as $18.75 a share as recently as April, didn’t fall as much last week as either LinkedIn or Monster. Its lowest point was $8.51.

Friday, the Labor Department releases its August employment numbers. Economists expect only about 75,000 new jobs will have been created during the month, a sharp drop from July’s 117,000.

The 14.7 point drop in The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index is the largest since October 2008, at the very beginning of the recession when banks and investment houses were failing. The Index now stands at 44.5, its lowest level since April 2009.

Among the components that make up the Consumer Confidence Index is the jobs picture. There, 49.1 percent of consumers said jobs are “hard to get,” an increase from July’s 44.8 percent. The percent saying jobs are plentiful declined to 4.7 percent from 5.1 percent.

Asked about job growth, consumers were even more pessimistic. Almost a third of consumers (31.5 percent) expect there to be fewer jobs available in the next few months. Just last month, 22.2 percent expected fewer jobs. Employment optimists — those expecting more jobs in the months ahead — declined to 11.4 from 16.9 percent.

Pessimism is pervasive, The Conference Board found, with 24.6 percent of consumers expecting business conditions to worsen in the next six months, an 8.5 point increase from the July survey. Those expecting business conditions to improve — the glass-half-full group — decreased to 11.8 from 17.9 percent in July.

The Consumer Confidence Index changes monthly, as consumers react to fluctuating economic news and conditions. So it can be a volatile measure of current sentiment. The Board’s Employment Trends Index, which attempts to smooth out spikes, has been declining in the last several months. In July, it stood at 100.6, up 4 percent over July 2010, but down from the post-recession high of 101.8 in March.

Predictions of August’s job growth are also showing a lack of confidence. Bloomberg’s survey of economists says they expect, on average, that the U.S. economy added just 75,000 jobs during the month, with the private sector growing by 105,000. Government job cuts account for the difference. Unemployment held steady at 9.1 percent.

The official Labor Department report for the month will be released early Friday. A preview will be offered tomorrow by payroll processor ADP and its partner Macroeconomic Research. The National Employment Report only sometimes conforms with the government’s report, but it is still closely watched by economists and the investment community. Bloomberg’s survey says the average of economists’ estimates are for the report to show 100,000 private sector new jobs.

The experience reminded me how much responsibility hiring entities have to maintain the confidentially of the executives they interview. There are at least five areas where exerting caution is imperative.

The first is illustrated in the above story. Talking about candidates in public may cause undue vulnerability. While this may seem obvious to ERE readers, it may be so obvious that we forget our clients often need cautionary reminders. External to the company, someone from the press, the candidate’s current staff, their boss, a customer, or a variety of other interested parties could be within ear shot. Regardless of the motivations, many categories of eavesdroppers could benefit by exposing the candidate’s employment discussions. More than likely, that exposure would damage the candidate’s relationship within their current employer and adversely impact their career within that company.

There’s risk within hiring entities as well. One time, an employee within a hiring organization was friends with one of the external candidates. The current employee learned of a competing external candidate through the hiring executive’s imprudence and leaked that candidacy to the press. The exposure caused the individual to withdraw from the search; the friend lost a competitor, and the hiring executive lost his lead prospect.

The second and third areas of risk have to do with visibility of candidates’ resumes. Companies often make the mistake of putting executive candidate resumes in applicant tracking systems. Once a resume is in an ATS, it is visible to a host of people: human resources, hiring managers, varieties of recruiters. Rarely do these constituents understand or remember the sensitivities typical of passive executive candidates. I have known staff recruiters to call the office of an executive whose resume they found in their system, and announce to the receptionist that they have the executive’s resume and would like to discuss a job opportunity with him or her. These risks can be mitigated by tracking executive recruiting activity within a separate, restricted-access system; there are several specific to the profession that serve our needs better than traditional ATSs.

Third, limit the distribution of executive candidates’ resumes. Too often, when debriefing after a series of interviews, I learn that candidates saw the resumes of competitors on the interviewer’s desk. When feasible, distribute biographies instead of resumes during the search process — they do not scream “candidate” as loudly. Additionally, when sharing executive resumes, remove names and contact information. Not only does it add a layer of anonymity, but it also hinders others from calling the candidates without your knowledge.

The final two areas of caution have to do with visibility of candidates during the interview process. If your company requires visitors to sign a guest ledger, work with the receptionist or security to ensure that each of your candidates signs a blank ledger which is then removed from the stack of other sign-in sheets. This is especially important if you have multiple candidates interviewing for the same job on the same day. Further, limit your candidates’ time in the reception area. Otherwise, subsequent visitors may see your candidate’s sign-in. Additionally, I’ve known employees to scan visitor sign-ins to glean company intel; segregating executive candidate visitor registrations limits exposure to others both internally and externally.

Lastly, limit your candidates’ vulnerability during interviews. Refrain from hosting their meals in the company cafeteria or the company’s favorite nearby restaurant. Also, instead of having candidates move from one interview to another, keep them stationary (in a room that has opaque walls and doors) while your interviewers go to the candidates. This limits the candidates’ visibility to other employees in your company hallways. Also, if you are interviewing more than one candidate for the same search on the same day, make sure the interviews are in different areas, and the candidates use different dining and comfort facilities. Further, if they are overnighting, house them in separate hotels and recommend different restaurants to them. Each of these cautions will decrease the likelihood that your candidates encounter each other during your interview processes.

The bottom line is that you never know who knows who, you never know who is listening or watching, and you never know who is friend or foe with accordant agendas within the political and competitive realms of corporations. Exercising these basic cautions will help protect your reputation as well as those of your candidates’ and their interest in continued engagement with your company.

The majority of bosses in a new study admit they knew who they wanted to promote before the formal process got underway.

Published by Georgetown University, the study by Jonathan Gardner, COO and senior managing director of Penn, Schoen, & Berland Associates, found 56 percent of large company (with more than 1,000 employees) executives with more than one candidate for a promotion already had a favorite. After going through the evaluation process, 96 percent of those managers with a favorite gave them the job. Twenty-nine percent of the managers had only one candidate.

No wonder, then, that 78 percent of managers said their promotion decision was easy. And no wonder, too, that 92 percent say favoritism exists in most large organizations.

Remarkably, though three-quarters of the survey participants say they have personally witnessed favoritism where they work, only 23 percent own up to playing favorites themselves.

What is this favoritism? Gardner, the study’s author, defines it as: “Preferential treatment of an employee for assignments, credit, opinion, influence, or advancement on the basis of factors that do not directly relate to a person’s ability to perform his or her job function, such as background, ideology, or gut instincts.”

Despite knowing about favoritism in their organization or having practiced it themselves, 83 percent of the senior executives in the survey said it leads to poorer promotion decisions.

If you find this all has an Alice in Wonderland feel to it, consider that by a large measure the executives said job performance, leadership potential, job skills, and similar work-related measures were among the most important factors influencing their promotion decision.

The study goes on to detail what the executives considered important traits in a leader. Being a good communicator and ethical came out on top.

Regulations are strangling job growth

Businesses are sitting on about $2 trillion in cash. That’s enough to fund 27 million jobs, or reduce unemployment to near zero. So what’s keeping them from spending? The economy is slowing from what was already a very tepid recovery. But even with greatly reduced expectations, job growth coming out of the recession has been far below what should have occurred based on historical precedents.

For a clue why this is, look no further than the environmental impact statement report on the proposed pipeline to bring crude oil from Alberta to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas. The project is estimated to create more than 138,000 jobs and invest over $20 billion in the U.S. economy. However, those benefits have to be weighed against such critical factors as “the impact on beetles” — a subject of considerable study in the report, among other things. The report concludes that there is no significant environmental impact because of the project, but tell that to the beetles. Since they have no legal standing, the government has come to their defense. The EPA is doing everything and then some to block the project.

I’m From the Government and I’m Here to Help

When it comes to job creation, the government’s public position is completely at odds with its actions. Take the newly minted ozone regulations proposed by the EPA. The agency itself admits that (I kid you not) the technology required to comply with its standards doesn’t exist and that the benefits are based on highly dubious assumptions. And just what are the benefits that the EPA seeks to achieve? A reduction in the concentration of ozone in the atmosphere by 10 parts per billion. And just to drive home the point about how smart an idea this is, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson concedes that scientific support for the new standards is “limited” and any benefits to people or vegetation (yes, vegetation) may be hard to measure.

Conservative estimates of the impact of these regulations show that it will result in the loss of over a million jobs in the already reeling construction industry over the next 10 years, as businesses are required to invest close to $1 trillion to meet the requirements. The EPA projects that the new standards would force about 20% – 30% of U.S. counties into non-compliance, requiring them to spend on expensive emissions control technologies (yet to be developed) or failing that, take industrial capacity offline … in other words, force several hundred thousand people into unemployment. Well, we already have 25 million people unemployed, so what’s a few hundred thousand more? Who would even notice?

And the list goes on and on. We also have the boondoggle involving the National Labor Relations Board’s opposition to Boeing setting up a huge manufacturing plant in South Carolina, instead of Washington — since the South Carolina facility will be a non-union site. That the plant will create 13,000 jobs is apparently not a consideration for the NLRB.

These are not isolated examples. Regulations of all sorts exist today to limit just about any type of project. The President keeps talking about funding “shovel-ready” projects, but it takes between three and seven years from the time a project is conceived to the time the first shovel can get into the ground, because of regulations. Amazingly, the government is unwilling to even help its own agencies that want to do something about job creation. The pipeline project mentioned above is being championed by the State Department since the oil originates in Canada. It was first proposed in 2008, but three years later the project is still in limbo because the EPA refuses to accept the claim that there’s little impact on beetles, and a much greater one on humans.

But then, no price is too high to pay if it means fewer parts per billion of ozone or happier beetles.

Inc. ranks the companies, all privately held, by growth rate; the faster revenue increased over three years, the higher the company ranks. By that measure, HR staffing and services firm Nextaff was first among the HR companies that volunteered to participate. (Participation requires companies to divulge annual revenue, employee counts and growth, etc. Only some companies are willing to publicize that kind of proprietary information.)

Nextaff reported 2010 revenue of $72.1 million, a 1,167 percent jump over the last three years. In 2007, the company reported it generated $5.7 million with only nine employees. Now it has 12.

Of the top ten HR firms on the list, eight are staffing and placement firms, with several specializing in IT and engineering. That’s in line with the strong demand in the last 18 months for tech workers. It’s also evidence that employers turn to temps and contractors at the early stage of a recovery before committing to hiring permanent workers.

In 3rd and 5th place among the HR companies are Jobfox and BountyJobs, respectively. Both companies are familiar to recruiters.

Jobfox, launched in 2004 by former CareerBuilder CEO and founder Rob McGovern, is a network of networks where job seekers and jobs are matched, recruiters mingle with candidates, and referrals of friends who get hired earn rewards.

BountyJobs is a network of  pre-qualified headhunters and independent recruiters, and companies with reqs. Employers set fees and post jobs that interested recruiters can then bid on. It’s three-year growth of 881 percent, took it from $1.6 million in 2007 to $16.2 million last year, not only placing it high on the HR list, but 389th out of all 5,000 firms.

CEO Mike Hard, who piloted BountyJobs though the most turbulent economic years since the 1930s, emailed to say, “Fifth place is an eye-opener, but no HR department that regularly uses headhunters is going to be shocked at the emergence of BountyJobs and the category in general. When people hear about what BountyJobs does they say, ‘What took you so long?’.”

Hard attributed a big part of the growth to existing customers,  many of whom, he noted, are among the Fortune 500. BountyJobs, he said, handles the contingent search jobs of more than a third of the Fortune 500 employers in the U.S.

I also pinged McGovern, but haven’t heard back. However, the Inc. report placed Jobfox at 352 on the 5000 list. The company grew from $1.2 million in 2007 to $12.9 million last year, a 963 percent increase.

Besides the companies that described themselves as HR, the Inc. 5000 has others with extensive HR business and clients. Jobs2Web, the SEO firm that optimizes job postings and enhances their online visibility, is listed among the software firms. It’s $9.9 million in revenue last year was 824 percent ahead of 2007, ranking it 419 overall.

But is that communication actually happening? Often it’s not, despite the fact that job applicants are a source of employee referrals, and despite the fact that job candidates don’t forget their bad experiences when they look to buy consumer products.

I talk about this topic for about 11 minutes with Lisa Chartier of Alexander Mann Solutions, below.

“Insurance doesn’t cover this. I need a second job,” she said, matter-of factly and in the common-sense tone I have always known her to adopt.

We went on to talk about several other things — how the “guys” in her male-dominated industry don’t appreciate or are willing to pay her fairly for the tremendous extra volume of business she has drummed up for the sales team in the past three years she has been with the company she works for now.

Granted, that’s her side of things and there may be another.

However, at the end of our conversation she happened to mention that she had developed a business relationship with someone who hates the telephone.

“How does that work for him?’ I asked, laughing.

“It works fine because I do the phone for him. He comes here five hours a week and he sits next to me while I call his list of prospects and pitch his product.”

“When I get someone interested I say, ‘Let me see if Jack is available and I’ll patch him through.’”

“It works beautifully.”

“I bet,” I said. “What does he pay you to do that?”

“He pays me $50 for the five hours plus $1,000 for any sale he makes. “

I replied, “You mean to tell me he comes into your home, sits next to you on the telephone and listens (and learns) while you do business development for him?”

“He hates the phone,” she answered in reply.

I started to tell her that was way not enough money but then I stopped.

My brother told me an article he’d read that said Americans are willing to work for 25 cents an hour, so who am I to judge?

It works for her and it works for him so I left well enough alone.

“There’s your second job,” I volunteered instead.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Most people hate the phone. If you’re willing to not only do that for them but also demonstrate your skill while you’re doing it so they can learn from you — there are plenty of people who’d hire you to do that!” I almost shouted.

If you’d like her to do that for you, too — and learn from her while she does it — contact me and I’ll put you in touch with her.

She lives here in Cincinnati so you’d have to be close (if you want to learn from her at her knee) or be willing to come here.

OR you may see the value (like I do) and be happy for her to do your biz dev for you from afar.

I guarantee you’ll be pleased with her (your) results.

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

Those jobs are among the 10 toughest jobs to fill in the U.S., says Manpower’s annual Talent Shortage Survey, which also reports that 52 percent of the employers in the survey are having trouble filling jobs.  Only in Japan and India do more companies report talent hard to find.

Globally, a third of all employers say they have difficulty filling jobs.  Lack of experienced workers is the most frequently cited reason,  globally, as well as in every region in the survey. In the Americas, lack of experience was followed by a lack of skills.

Particularly surprising was the the rise in U.S. companies reporting hiring difficulty. In the 2010 survey, only 14 percent of companies reported problems filling jobs. Now the percentage has nearly quadrupled.

If it seems unlikely the hiring situation could have worsened so much so fast, part of the disconnect may have to do with when the survey was conducted – months ago, long before the current round of gloomy economic reports started coming out.

However, SHRM’s LINE report has been chronicling a similar, if less dramatic, rise in recruiting difficulty. The most recent LINE report says recruiting difficulty in the manufacturing area is up 11.2 points over a year ago. In the service sector, recruiting difficulty rose a more modest 2.7 points.

The LINE report authors attempt to make sense of the situation writing:

Considering that millions of people are actively seeking work and still cannot obtain employment in their industries, the rise in recruiting difficulty may be attributed to new or enhanced skill requirements for newly created high-level jobs.

Some jobs on the list, like sales jobs and engineers,  have historically been tough to fill. IT, though the jobs didn’t make Manpower’s list for the last couple of years, was sixth on this one, a consequence of employers upgrading systems and adding staff that needs to be supported.

The August IT jobs report from Dice shows the number of openings increasing by double-digits from a year ago in the top U.S. tech markets. In Boston, the number of tech openings jumped by 42 percent, eclipsing the rest of the country, including Silicon Valley.

However, even in tech’s holy land, companies are having trouble attracting workers. So acute is the situation in Silicon Valley, that some startups are unable to launch or attract investors, even when the concept has appeal. According to CNNMoney today: “Skilled developers are Silicon Valley’s scarcest resource.”

Briefly, it helps to think of organizations this way: you can hire and promote 100 people whom 20% are high-quality, 20% low-quality, and the rest so-so; or, you can hire and promote 100 people, of whom 90% are top-notch. The first situation is the norm. It’s what you get when obstacles get in your way. The second option is the exception.

It’s what you get when your obstacles are controlled and minimized.

#1 Overemphasizing Past Performance

Past performance is often used as a predictor or even a gateway for hiring or promotion decisions. Of course we all expect a candidate to do well in a past job; but, if the requirements of the new job differ, we have to use an additional set of tools to measure whether the candidate has additional skills. This is almost always the case when hiring someone for a new job; screening college candidates with no prior job experience; promoting individual contributors to management; promoting managers to executives; making job reassignments; and, so forth.

You can trust past performance for skills that transfer, but you’ll need new assessments to evaluate new skills.

#2 Lacking a Common Denominator

Organizations seldom have a reference point for comparing job skills (i.e., requirements) to human skills (i.e., KSAs). Recall the problems associated with a past space shuttle mission when European engineers used the metric system and U.S. engineers used the English system? Organizations must learn how to clearly define for each job the criteria associated with business necessity and job requirements (i.e., how it is to be done). “How” data serves as a bridge to candidate skills. Without a common skills denominator (i.e., a language of how to get from point A to point B) mistakes will be the norm.

It’s bad mojo when job requirements are written in the metric system and candidate skills use the English system.

#3 Focusing on “What” Instead of “How”

Recall the Wizard of Oz. The story is not about the Oz. It’s about how the characters got there. The same is true of performance. If you measure people by performance alone, you encourage using any means to achieve the ends. Results are always affected by being at the right (or wrong) place at the right (or wrong) time. This makes informed decisions a leap of faith. Good hiring and promotion depends on isolating and evaluating each candidate’s individual skills.

Performance is less about “what” was achieved and more about ”how” it was accomplished.

#4 Assuming People are Plastic

We have all seen newly hired and promoted employees turn out bad. We have also seen the difficulty of turning incompetent people into competent ones. It’s not news. People resist any and all personal change but expect others to be flexible. Organizations that try to make someone smarter, change their motivations, make them more sensitive, and so forth, will spend money but get little or no return from their investment. Can someone with a slight amount of job talent, be made better? Maybe. Can someone with no talent be transformed into a fully competent employee? Good luck with that.

If you want to climb trees, it’s easier to hire a squirrel than send a chicken to a workshop.

#5 Management Interference

Not everyone buys into rigorous selection systems. Many managers tend to think hiring expertise is conveyed upon promotion and strongly argue in favor of gut decisions. I emphasize almost every hiring or promotion decision is gut-based; the only real question is whether your gut is informed or uninformed. Professional hiring or promotion systems feed managers’ guts with objective, trustworthy, and reliable data.

An uninformed gut feeling is indistinguishable from eating bad seafood.

#6 Underestimating Financial Impact

Every below-average employee has a cost. It might be measured in turnover, mistakes, or low productivity. Professionals estimate costs of poor performance to be about 10% of annual payroll for unskilled jobs, 20-30% for semi-skilled jobs, and 40-50% for skilled and managerial jobs. Put another way, an organization with annual payroll as small as $500,000 could be squandering $50,000 to $250,000 per year. Imagine the sales necessary to offset that number! Better yet, imagine the effect on the bottom line by doing a better job hiring and promoting skilled employees.

Hiring and promotion practices won’t get better until they have a dollar value.

#7 Ignoring the Odds

Success in hiring depends more on reducing the odds of making a bad decision than it does increasing the odds of hiring a super star. The future is filled with uncertainties such as family problems, economic factors, and so forth. We can’t ever make perfect predictions. We can, however, make very sure each candidate has the right skills for the job. This is the odds game … focus on making the fewest mistakes, and the successes will take care of themselves.

It’s easier to win more often if you concentrate on making fewer mistakes.

The reason is simple: students now turn more often to faculty members for early-career guidance and advice on which employers to start out with. In a way, this might make university recruiting relationship management easier: just shift the primary focus to the faculty. For the time being, until the economy really rebounds, this would be an effective sourcing model. But when the economy rebounds, nearly a majority of tenured faculty at many top-tier universities will at least be eligible for early retirement, and the new relationships forged in those few years will take time to rebuild with new replacements.

Regardless of the function, the best strategic plans try to anticipate the potential outcomes of as many conceivable contingencies as possible. Not every contingency can be planned for, but an inability to anticipate the possible contingencies can sink any strategy in record time. In this case, if a company could leverage its need for a long-term university recruitment pipeline with a university’s need for replacing its faculty in the future, such a strategy could create a significant competitive advantage.

While the nation’s top companies have pushed to develop strong internship, entry-level, and MBA programs for college graduates, they seem to have abandoned one other university talent pool: the doctorates. Most PhD graduates each year leave their university to find positions either in industry, research organizations, or government. But what about the PhD graduates who seek to go right from the graduation dais to the professor’s lectern? If these candidates can be recruited to serve as limited-term employees — say, up to two years — before launching their academic career, then a new talent pool could be identified, something I write more about in the July/August Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership (ask Todd Raphael for a copy if you want one). Furthermore, if the aim of an industry-based postdoc program was to help target universities secure new faculty members, then placing its postdocs at those recruitment targets could create a whole new pipeline.

Developing strong relationships with passive candidates is particularly challenging because you must engage them in a dialogue they aren’t necessarily interested in having. Creativity is king when it comes to designing your strategy for attracting passive talent.

Here are some techniques I have used to differentiate CDW’s recruitment efforts, and engage the most talented passive candidates:

• Establish a genuine relationship. Engaging in a dialogue with a passive candidate is an art, not a science. Be personal. Be engaging. Be brief. Before I even begin to craft an e-mail, I research the candidate through sites like LinkedIn to find out more about their professional experiences, educational background, hobbies, and philanthropic involvement. I try to find common ground and make the initial e-mail conversation all about them. For instance, if we have coworkers who went to the same university, belong to the same fraternity/sorority, or are involved in the same charitable organizations, I try to make these connections right away. While doing this, I focus on engaging them in the opportunity by the end of the very first sentence. Remember that your e-mail is just one among hundreds they receive each week.
• Use a “human-interest” approach in all dialogue — in-person or on the phone. Once live communication has been established — either by phone or through a face-to-face meeting — uncover the motivations, aspirations, and professional job skills of the passive candidate. Focus on asking open-ended ice breakers that will allow the candidate to reveal their true self. One candidate I pursued was an active volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. Through my conversation, I was able to learn that the individual loved the camaraderie of the volunteer groups and felt rewarded after seeing a family move into a finished home. The individual’s love of working in a team environment and drive to see challenging projects completed indicated that he might be a great addition to our field sales department — where teamwork and dedication are critical.
• Know the job. If you do not have a solid idea as to the specific responsibilities of the position, a passive candidate will pick up on it. In hiring for field sales positions, my colleagues and I have spent a considerable amount of time with the field sales team to find out what characteristics and skills are needed to be successful in this role. In addition, I have also participated in on-site visits with our field sales team members to find out what our customers are looking for in an account manager. Taking the time to experience a position firs-thand gives you a solid idea as to what is needed for success, while also giving you an opportunity to gauge the culture of the particular department.
• Love what you do. Passive candidates can spot a fake. You must constantly look for ways to become a passionate fan of your organization. Ensure that your talents and passions are aligned with your particular job responsibilities. In an ever-changing, highly-competitive profession, you cannot afford to become stagnant.

Over time, I have found that sharing experiences from my 13-plus years at CDW is a very effective way to convey my passion for the organization. People tend to remember the personal stories they hear. Sharing one’s experiences also helps to establish a high level of trust with a passive candidate. A recruiter’s ability to convey enthusiasm and establish trust is paramount.

Remember, there is a good chance that your next game-changing hire won’t be found in the pile of resumes on your desk or in your e-mail inbox. By committing to a strategy and executing on these tactics, your organization can be well on its way to developing a tremendous competitive advantage and establishing a great environment in which to work.

A Kelly Services survey says  economic necessity, the desire for more freedom and flexibility, and age have driven up the number of workers not tied to a single company for their livelihood. It’s a dramatic change from 2008, when Kelly’s survey found 26 percent of workers describing themselves as free agents.

Also fueling the rise is the increasing reliance of American business on contingent and contract labor, say the authors of a whitepaper detailing the results. Companies, note Jocelyn Lincoln and Megan M. Raftery, “can scale up and down faster and easier by adopting more flexible workforce strategies.”

A significant driver is the economy. Respondents to the 2011 survey were twice as likely as their counterparts in 2008 to say they became free agents because they were laid off or couldn’t find another job.

That suggests, the authors say, that as recovery occurs, some of the newly minted free agents will return to a traditional employee role. However, “the trend toward more free agents is still very strong and is increasing worldwide. Accounting for differences in legislative frameworks and social and cultural norms, we estimate that the global free agent population is at
least 20 – 30% of the entire workforce, and growing.”

Recently, USA Today wrote about the phenomenon of well-established professionals abandoning comfortable jobs to pursue their own interests.  “Employees bid goodbye to corporate America” chronicled several workers, including two recruiters, who quit to follow their own path.

As the Kelly Services report makes clear, the move by knowledge workers to freelancer, contractor, consultant, entrepreneur or other type of free agency is not a generational issue. Gen X workers saw the biggest increase in self-described free agency. In the 2008 survey, 18 percent of the Gen X workforce so described its status. Now, 38 percent do. That’s a 111 percent increase in just three years, far ahead of the 81 percent rise among Baby Boomers and the 74 percent increase for the Silent Generation, all of whom have now reached retirement age.

Numerically, the Boomers and older workers account for the lion’s share of the free agent population. Together, they comprise two-thirds of all free agents, making the free agent group highly experienced and well educated, the authors write, noting:

More than one-third of all free agents have earned a master’s degree or higher, and compared with traditional employees, more free agents (77% compared to 62% for traditional employees) possess technical or professional skill set.

What does this trend mean for American business?

It means there’s a huge pool of available talent in nearly every discipline and industry for employers to tap. But it’s not automatic. Besides knowing how to reach these free agents, businesses need to understand what it is they want. For some, that demands a change in traditional practices.

Write Lincoln and Rafferty, “Organizations have to first learn how to adapt and integrate this flexible workstyle into their business processes and current company culture. This means forgoing traditional perceptions of employment.”

For the workers, money is only part of the equation. The Kelly survey found it’s the type of project and quality of work that most interests free agents, especially those with more experience and maturity. The third factor, after the nature of the job and the money, is the reputation of the company.

For companies wanting to  take advantage of the free agency trend, the authors make these recommendations:

1. Ensure that free agents are included in your overall workforce strategy;
2. Know how you are currently using free agents.
3. Evaluate departments, positions, and projects to see how they would benefit from free agent talent.
4. Understand the importance of your employer brand.
5. Develop options for current employees.
6. Understand the importance of properly classifying free agent workers.
7. Evaluate your workforce solutions partner.

These interview questions are used by permission from Job Interview Skills 101, the Course You Forgot to Take For New Grads and College Students.

Comment on any, or add your own interview questions to share in the comments section.

1. Tell me about a time when you were a member of a great team. What role did you play in making the team great?
2. Tell me about a time when you were given a task to accomplish without any direction.
3. Tell me about a time when you had to work with someone you did not get along with.
4. Tell me about a time when you felt that a decision was unfair. How did you handle it?
5. Tell me about a time when someone asked you for assistance outside the parameters of your job. What did you do?
6. Tell me about a time you had to multitask.
7. Tell me about a time when you were creative in solving a problem.
8. Tell me about a time when you were the leader of a team and the team disagreed with your decision. How did you handle it?
9. Tell me about a time when you were a team leader and had to mediate with members who disagreed with each other.
10. Tell me about a project that did not go well.
11. Tell me about a time that you worked hard to accomplish something but didn’t.
12. Tell me about a time when you suggested a better way to do something.
13. Tell me about a time when you had to handle conflict within your group.
14. You are a team member and you disagree with an important decision that you believe will have a negative impact on the project. How will you proceed?
15. Tell me about a time when someone told you that you had made an error. Describe how you would react and what you would say in your defense.
16. You are a new employee at our firm and I have asked you to speak to a group of 10 employees. What would you talk about and what would you say?
17. You are part of a team working on a project with a one-week deadline. The team leader does not seem to be on top of things and you are worried about reaching the deadline. What do you do?
18. How do you handle a crisis? Describe one that you handled well.
19. Describe one that you didn’t handle well and what you would have done differently.
20. It’s five o’clock on Friday and your supervisor gives you an assignment that needs to be finished by 8:00 am Monday morning. You have plans to be away for the weekend. What do you do?
21. Describe a situation that was a great learning experience.
22. Describe a challenge you faced in school and how you handled it.
23. Describe an experience that you felt was rewarding.
24. Describe a situation where you were mentored.
25. Describe a situation where you were given feedback on your performance that wasn’t what you had hoped for.
26. Describe a situation where you resolved a problem.
27. What would your last boss/manager say about you?
28. How would your co-workers describe you?
29. What do you think is the best part of working in teams?
30. What do you think is the worst part of working in a team?
31. How do you define “work ethic”? How would you describe yours?
32. How do you make decisions?
33. What type of people do you like to work with?
34. What motivates you?
35. Give me 10 adjectives to describe yourself.
36. How do you like to be managed?
37. Tell me about your best manager. Why do you consider them the “best”?
38. Tell me about your worst manager. Why do you consider them the “worst”?
39. What book are you reading now?
40. What books have you read about leadership?
41. Describe your ideal job.
42. What was the most creative thing you have ever done?
43. What are you most proud of?
44. How do you handle stress at work?
45. What would you liked to have done more of in your last internship?
46. What would you like to have done less of in your last internship?
47. Why did you choose your last job/internship?
48. Why did you choose your school?
49. If you could have done anything different during your college career, what would it have been?
50. What are your short- and long-term career goals?
51. In what areas would you like to develop further?
52. What skills did it take to succeed in your internships?
53. What do you know about our company?
54. What makes you the best candidate?
55. Why should we hire you?
56. What made you apply for this job?
57. Where else are you interviewing?
58. How would you describe client satisfaction?
59. What do you think is most important in great customer service?
60. What will you do if you don’t get this job?

V. Program Responsiveness Features

Being responsive to those who refer and the referrals they submit are critical features that drive program loyalty, participation, and engagement.

1. Rapid response to a referral is critical – a lack of responsiveness to employee referrals is the #1 program killer. The best programs set a target of getting feedback to the referrer and the referred individual within 48 – 72 hours of submission (Aricent & AmTrust Bank).
2. Expedited interviewing – some firms make a commitment to decide whether to interview/not interview all referrals within a week. Others make a more narrow commitment, which is to actually schedule an interview with all “A” quality employee referral candidates within a week of receiving their referral (Owens Corning).
3. Referrals must be tagged and the processing expedited – in the best programs, all referral applications are tagged in order to measure program effectiveness. In addition, the tagged referrals are given a priority for processing (i.e. fast tracked). This is necessary in order to ensure that both the employee and the referred individual feel like they are “special” (Accenture).
4. “On the spot” screening – consider developing a process where resumes collected at the referral desk undergo instant screening followed by instant feedback to the employee and the candidate (Tata consultancy).

VI. Communicating with employees and applicants

High-performing referral programs require frequent and effective communications.

1. Personalize and target your communications – broad communications addressed to all employees almost always produce disappointing results. Instead, develop customized or personalized promotions and campaigns. Write personalized e-mails, tweets, or Facebook entries to targeted job families, well-connected individuals, and top performers alerting them to critical needs in their area. Periodically push relevant job openings that require referrals only to the narrow list of appropriate employees (Amazon & CACI International).
2. Provide periodic employee notifications after a referral is made — employees are almost always nervous about whether their referrals were any good and what is going to happen to their colleague. The best practice is to electronically notify employees immediately when their referral is accepted/rejected, if the candidate is invited for an interview and when the candidate is finally hired or rejected.
3. Provide periodic feedback to applicants – prospects who have been referred are also frequently nervous about their chances. At the very least they should be electronically notified that there referral has been received and accepted. These notifications can also include an overview of what they can expect, including the steps in the process, frequently asked questions, and the likely timeframe before any decision is made.
4. Offer an online chat feature with employees – one of the best ways to reach busy and hesitant employees with questions about the ERP is through an online chat feature (Aricent).
5. Develop and use referral champions – a powerful way to inspire employees to refer is to use senior leaders as referral champions. These executive champions should participate in communications and help to explain to employees the importance to the business of the positions being recruited for (Accenture).
6. Consider a follow-up meeting after a great referral – after a great referral, schedule a follow-up meeting with the person. Goals include to hand-deliver the bonus, to thank them (and their manager), to identify and then learn from their approach, and to ask them if they know any other stars. (Amazon).
7. Provide direct feedback to employees on weak referrals — make sure that you provide feedback to individual employees who make weak referrals, so that they know what they did wrong and how to improve.
8. Keep top referral rejects interested – top referrals who were not hired because they lost out to an exceptional candidate should be kept for consideration of future openings. Your goal should be to develop a pool of these potential “future hires” and to build a long-term relationship with them by continually communicating through periodic messages or an e-newsletter. Also “push” future relevant jobs to them. In order to keep them excited, consider telling all A+ rated referrals who were not hired what specifically they could do to improve their chances.
9. 24/7 help desk – large firms with a high volume of referrals can open 24×7 referral help desks to provide information and to answer questions, much like a concierge (Tata and Aricent).

VII. Specialized referral approaches to consider

In addition to providing a broad employee referral program, it is also wise to consider implementing some specialized subprograms.

1. Proactively approaching target employees – most referral programs communicate using a broad impersonal approach; a superior proactive approach involves recruiters seeking out individual employees who have a high likelihood of making a quality referral for a specific job. Employees and managers are usually approached on a one-to-one basis (and often in person) and are asked to provide the names of a handful of individuals who fit a targeted set of criteria. Because the approach is personal and targeted, the response rate and referral quality are significantly higher. When top performers and executives are proactively approached, frequently they are willing only to provide “names” alone, with no follow-up or resume (Google & Aricent)
2. Boomerang referrals – this focused approach emphasizes maintaining a continuous relationship with high-quality former employees (corporate alumni) in the hopes of someday rehiring them through an employee referral. Top corporate alumni can also be asked to provide referrals (Aricent & Booz Allen).
3. Reference referrals – this approach emphasizes approaching the top references of last year’s top hires as referral sources. They are thanked for their helpful reference and asked if they “know anyone else equally as qualified.”
4. College hire referrals – because of their widespread usage of social media, college students are well-connected with other students in their field around the world. College referral programs have proven to produce excellent referrals for both interns and permanent hires. Last year’s graduates who you hired from key schools should also be proactively approached for names (Endeca, Aricent, & Intuit).
5. Onboarding referrals — make it a regular part of onboarding to highlight the employee referral program and to provide new hires with a referral information kit. Also make them aware that you have a recruiting culture and that they are expected to continually provide referrals. Each new hire should be asked to immediately provide top referrals from their former firm. (Aricent & Eli Lily)
6. Referrals for executive positions – because corporate executives are highly visible and accessible in today’s world of social networks, vacant executive positions should also be filled through referrals. In order to be successful, the executive referrals component requires an extremely high level of customer service and candidate experience. These “choose-your-own-leader” type programs can empower employees to get better leaders (Aricent).
7. Internal movement referrals – employee referrals can also be an effective tool for improving internal movement. Employees need to be rewarded for making successful referrals for key internal openings and managers must be rewarded for “releasing talent.” An internal recruiting team may also be used to speed up internal placements (Booz Allen, Sodexo, & Microsoft).
8. Offer letter referrals – this extremely aggressive program requires you to ask potential new hires to provide referrals as a condition for becoming an employee (FirstMerit).

VIII. Referral program technology

Globalization of referrals and the requirement for fast processing of applications mandate that programs use the latest in technology, which in this field advances by leaps and bounds.

1. Allow employees to submit using multiple platforms – provide your employees with multiple options for submitting referrals (web, email, phone, text). Providing multiple options can make it easier for busy employees to make referrals 24/7, while they are “on the run.”
2. Application website flexibility – the referral website should offer regular and expedited options. The first channel should provide the detailed information that first-time referrers’ need, but the second channel should be designed for experienced referrers, so that they can quickly jump directly to the referral submission page (Accenture).
3. A website that allows employees to track the progress of their referrals – an internal site can allow employees to continually track the progress of their referrals as well as their accumulated bonuses (Accenture and Aricent).
4. Offer referral program kiosks – because not all employees have continuous access to a computer, standalone referral kiosks often need to be strategically placed around the facility. These kiosks can be used to input referrals and to provide information about open positions. They can include advice, frequently asked questions, and a calendar of upcoming referral events (Aricent).
5. Online assessment tools – develop and offer online assessment tools so that the skills of referral candidates can be quickly assessed. Also consider another option of offering tools that allow the prospects to self-assess themselves before they agree to become a referral.
6. Online interview scheduling – develop a website that allows referrals who have been chosen for interviews to self-scheduling their own interview times (Alaska Airlines).

IX. Process management and the administrative aspects of referral programs

The effective administration of the ERP is an extremely important component for producing great referrals.

1. Proactively discourage weak referrals – help to avoid a clogged referral queue by developing a process that discourages “junk referrals.” Discourage your employees from referring their relatives, and strangers who “approach them.” In order to ensure that your employees are screening out weak prospects, require employees to thoroughly know and assess their referral’s work, their skills, their interest in the job, and their cultural fit. You can also require employees to rate their knowledge of their candidates on a 1 to 5 scale. Requiring this level of knowledge and assessment helps to make the employee own the quality of their referral, and it minimizes the wasting of hiring managers and recruiters time on weak referrals (Agilent & Aricent).
2. Establish referral targets for managers – managers and teams produce a higher percentage of referrals when they are provided up front with specific referral targets or goals for each quarter. Also rank managers from best to worst on their ERP performance (Aricent & Acumen Solutions).
3. Encourage internal competition – offering rewards for early-bird referrals (i.e. the first submitted) can foster competition and encourage employees to respond quickly. Holding contests between rival business ynits can also foster a competitive mindset around producing referrals. An employee scorecard that lists the employee’s personal referral success rate allows employees to continually track the progress of their referrals as well is accumulated bonuses. One organization sends their iRefer dashboard to all employees to encourage competition and to allow employees to contact top referrers for advice (Tata Consultancy & Aricent).
4. Continually monitor referral vendors – maintain continuous awareness of the services offered by the numerous established and emerging vendors in the referral area. Even if you don’t use them, be aware of the concepts, the technologies, and the outsourcing options that are emerging in this area.
5. You need dedicated program staff and recruiters – the best programs develop a referral team and assign responsive recruiters to specialize in referrals (Owens Corning, Microsoft, & Amazon)
6. Develop an SLA – you can increase the responsiveness of line managers by instituting service-level agreements that spell out expectations for both managers and the ERP program staff (Aricent & Tata Consultancy).
7. Develop a best practice sharing process – periodically survey or interview both new hires from referrals and employees (with successful and failed referrals) in order to identify what worked and what didn’t. Develop a formal process (i.e.  a Wiki, listserv, Facebook page, Twitter feed, or online forum) that allows employees to ask questions and to easily post and share best practices for finding prospects, building relationships, and selling prospects.
8. Monitor progress and continually improve using metrics – periodically assess the satisfaction of employees, hiring managers, and individuals who were referred. Other key metrics that should be tracked include new-hire job performance, new-hire retention, boomerang rehires, offer acceptance ratio, diversity referrals, and referrals as a percentage of all hires (Aricent & Accenture).

Some Benchmark ERP Milestones

Some “best in the world” metrics to compare yourself to include:

• Participation rate (% of employees with at least one referral): 71% -Aricent
• Percentage of all hires from referrals (with a bonus): 78% -AmTrust
• Percentage of all hires from referrals (without paying a bonus): 70% -AmTrust
• Employee satisfaction rate: 98% -Aricent
• Percent of boomerang rehires through referrals: 72% -Aricent
• Most globalized ERP: operates in 40 countries -Microsoft

Referral Program Killers To Avoid

If you expect great results, in addition to providing some of the above advanced features and best practices, you must consciously avoid the following 13 ERP killers:

1. An ERP that is slow to respond to referrals and questions
2. Delaying the reward/bonus payment for three to six months
3. Referral spamming of employees with too many messages
4. Failing to periodically re-energize the ERP
5. No ATS marking of ERP applications so that you can track program effectiveness
6. Equal rewards for all jobs
7. No feedback on weak or bad referrals
8. Individual recruiters are allowed to “ignore” referrals
9. Not tracking referral rates by manager
10. Too many rules and restrictions
11. Not weighting referrals based on the referrer’s track record
12. ERP applications are not given priority treatment in the recruiting process or ATS
13. ERP program manager turnover

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on HR be sure to check out TLNT!

In the first article in this series I defined six skills that a recruiter must possess in order to effectively recruit passive candidates. Collectively, they’re called the 6Cs. While all are important, some are more critical than others. Here are the results of a recent poll we took of corporate and third-party recruiters asking them to define the most important of the six skills. Here’s the link to the poll so you can participate yourself. You might want to do this before you read the rest of this article. This way your responses won’t be biased.

The top three vote getters in this poll were the need to articulate a Compelling message, the ability to quickly convert your job opening into a Career move, and the Conviction that you won’t give up despite candidate reluctance to move ahead. The least important — at least according to the poll participants — were the need to Control the conversation, the ability to develop deep Connections, and Closing the deal, without money being the primary driver. If you’re a third-party recruiter you know this is upside down. Controlling, Connecting, and Closing are the most important. Without these, Compelling messages, Career opportunities, and Conviction won’t get you any more hires.

I’ll give the corporate recruiters who took the poll a break here since I didn’t define the 6Cs other than using the description shown on the chart. So let me better define and demonstrate why Controlling, Connecting, and Closing are the most important.

Why Control is #1 on the 6Cs Hit Parade

When first approached by a recruiter, passive candidates make a quick decision to engage in a conversation based on a few core pieces of information.

These generally cover factors like job title, company, location, and compensation. However, when candidates actually accept an offer, or even seriously consider one, the factors used to make this assessment are not the same. In this case they focus on job content, growth opportunity, chance to make an impact, the hiring manager’s leadership qualities, the team, and of course, compensation. But even in this case, compensation is somewhere in the middle of the list, rather than at the top. There is where “Control” comes into play and why it’s so important that the recruiter understand it thoroughly (article).

Control allows the recruiter to bridge the gap between the criteria the candidate uses to first engage in a conversation and those used to make a career decision after having a full set of information. It requires a combination of appropriate questioning, the ability to smoothly address concerns, and the ability to instantly shift the conversation from short-term to long-term. This is an essential skill if you want to increase the number of strong prospects in your candidate pool. If you want to either recruit passive candidates or network with them, you must start with a thorough understanding of the 6Cs, but be a master at Control.

Why Closing the Deal Is in the Top 3 of the 6Cs

One could argue that closing is more important than control, and should be the #1 of the 6Cs (article). Consider that if you can’t close the deal, everything else you do is a waste of time, effort, and resources. Let me be perfectly clear on this point. Closing encompasses the actual negotiation with the candidate, getting the person to accept the offer on reasonable terms, and making sure the person considers your offer on all critical short- and long-issues. Making matters more challenging is the idea that the person was not looking for a new opportunity until you called. Under this scenario that person will likely get a counteroffer that’s more competitive than what you’re offering, or worse, the person will immediately start looking and find something else better. Under this scenario, the ability to hold the deal together and close effectively takes center stage.

The fact that only 3% of those taking the poll considered this ability most important dumbfounds me.

Why Connecting Deserves to Be in the Top Three of the 6Cs

Most of you know I do a great deal of work training corporate recruiters to optimize their use of LinkedIn’s talent suite of products through networking (article). What surprises me is that corporate recruiters still think of LinkedIn as a flat list of 120 million names of largely passive candidates. For an external recruiter, it’s a 360° interconnected 3D map of every single person in the U.S. (soon the world). The idea here is that rather than finding your ideal candidate directly, consider instead contacting someone who might know the best candidate, and then provide a referral. For example, I called partners in CPA firms to identify great controllers they’ve worked with in the past. I connected with buyers at major retail chains to find out who the best salespeople they know are. And I’ve contacted product managers to find great engineers they’ve worked with on launching new products. Getting a referral like this is even better, since these people they call you back right away. And even better than that, these people are all fully qualified, since this is how you initially got their name.

So stop calling people you don’t know as a primary means for finding passive candidates. Instead start networking with everyone you do know and have them give you two or three names of the best people who are directly connected to them. If you start doing this on every call, pretty soon you’ll realize that connecting is really how you source passive candidates. (We’re holding a series of webcasts in the next few weeks demonstrating how to take connecting to another level and why you should give your TPRs a hug, rather than banish them.)

The 6Cs are the quintessential skills for any third-party recruiter who expects to survive and thrive in the current economic environment. Corporate recruiters need to think and act like TPRs if they expect to have success finding, recruiting, and hiring passive candidates in any significant quantity. While corporate recruiters might have the ability to deal with passive candidates, I’m not sure they have the hunger for it.