You would have to be clueless to not be aware of the turmoil on Wall Street these days. Banks, investment firms, insurance companies, and nearly every type of financial services institution is facing severe budget cuts, layoffs, and bankruptcy. This kind of turmoil makes even the very best employees rethink their current employment situation. When... [full article »]

There is a next-generation college recruiting strategy that is gradually making the traditional approach seem as outdated as phones with wires. I call this new approach über college recruiting (über is German for superior) because it is so aggressive. This advanced approach began emerging in the late 1990s and was most often associated with high technology... [full article »]

Last week, I highlighted the need for corporate college recruiting programs to include referrals by students and others to supplement a firm’s Career Center efforts. Part one covered the advantages that college referral programs provide as well as a few examples of benchmark best practices. In part 2, I will highlight some of the action steps... [full article »]

Employee referral programs are the most powerful tool in recruiting, routinely producing the highest quality and volume of experienced hires. Yet for some unexplained reason, most corporate college-hire programs don’t have a referral component. A few firms have pioneered in the college referral area. For example, the always leading-edge talent team at Intuit has produced amazing results... [full article »]

Part one of this series dealt with the business case of implementing a new college recruiting program aimed at moving the activity out of antiquated gallows of campus career fairs, campus career centers and the like, and into the modern era. This direct approach is aimed at reaching those who know and can influence the... [full article »]

Most university recruiting is pretty dull and ineffective! It takes little to no creativity or imagination to concentrate nearly 100% of a college recruiting effort on the events and activities formally sanctioned by university career centers. While the career event approach has primarily been the modus operandi for decades, it’s an approach seriously out of... [full article »]

The basic foundation for all recruiting is the ability to communicate and share information with potential candidates directly. In our modern, high-tech world, corporate recruiters have numerous channels they can use to communicate directly with candidates ranging from face-to-face visits to video chat. However, there is only one tool that provides a “single point of... [full article »]

Everyone in recruiting and employment branding strives to demonstrate to potential candidates the excitement that can be found within their organization. Most rely almost exclusively on “words” in paid advertising, brochures, and websites, but words are “so last year.” Each month, fewer and fewer people read newspapers and books, and more of us get our information... [full article »]

A significant part of my work involves giving presentations around the world on the hottest recruiting topics. It is an aspect of my work that I truly enjoy because it affords me an opportunity to continuously learn about where our profession is headed. Through speaking, I not only help companies understand the latest recruiting trends, but... [full article »]

Recruiting campaigns can be broken into two types: individual recruiting and group targeting. A less-known alternative, the group targeting approach focuses on attracting a specific group of individuals who share something in common (i.e., Hispanic software engineers or fabric patent holders). Group targeting is common in political campaigns and product advertising but is rarely used effectively... [full article »]

One of the hottest topics in talent management today is employment branding, in part because applicants rank brand as the second most influential factor when deciding whether to accept an offer. Just five years ago, less than 1:10 Fortune 200 companies had a dedicated role to manage the employment brand, yet today more than 1:4 Fortune... [full article »]

During hard economic times, it’s survival of the fittest. Yet many corporate recruiters fail to understand or acknowledge the cyclical nature of our business; every five to seven years, recruiters are let go en masse. If you work for an auto company in Detroit or an airline or a mortgage company, the time to prepare for... [full article »]

Corporate recruiting is an interesting field. There are no books entitled The Theory of Recruiting or Principles of Strategic Recruiting. As a result, most individuals in recruiting tend to make it up as they go rather than follow a more defined set of rules or principles. There is no formal body in recruiting that “codifies” the... [full article »]

Corporations around the world are missing an opportunity both to help their employees during their economic struggles and to build their employment brand image as an employer that cares. The foundation of this opportunity is the current surge in gas prices and other economic factors that are heavily impacting almost every corporation’s workforce. It’s almost impossible... [full article »]

Microsoft has a clever strategy to recruit away Yahoo! employees. For the most part, Microsoft has successfully relied on its strong employment brand and near-boundless opportunities to attract the best and brightest as opposed to seeking them out. That is, until recently, when Microsoft raised the level of its recruiting aggressiveness to the point where it... [full article »]

The basic process of interviewing candidates for open positions hasn’t changed very much in the last century, despite radical changes in how people socialize and interact both in and out of the workplace. Traditional interviews continue even though no one enjoys them! There is little argument that traditional interviews are time-consuming for all parties involved, often... [full article »]

When economic times are volatile and businesses are facing a downturn in revenue, many CFOs turn their attention to cost-containment. A logical place to start cutting costs is labor, given that in many industries labor costs account for an average of 60% of all variable costs. The volatility in the business climate not only dictates that... [full article »]

By Dr. John Sullivan & Master Burnett The subject of analytics is often discussed but rarely executed well, even in the most well-established talent management functions. [full article »]

I have been writing on the need for increasing the speed of hire for nearly a decade. During that time, many corporations have begun to realize the benefits of fast hiring. Unfortunately, too many rely on a single time-to-fill metric as their way of measuring hiring speed. There are many reasons why you should hire quickly... [full article »]

By Dr. John Sullivan & Master Burnett Employee referral programs are a lot like bottles of wine. Most companies have at least one, the vast majority of which are average or less than average, and only a few ever truly become exceptional. But the similarities don’t stop there. [full article »]