I was just reviewing the predictions I made for 2011 written at roughly this time a year ago. Much of what I thought would happen unfolded as expected, except for talent management. I had thought there would more focus on integrating the employee development and recruitment functions, and more internal hiring. I still think that’s... [full article »]

Recruiting never seems to change very much. As I have often written, even with computers, smart phones, cheap video, big bandwidth, and years of accumulated experience, the way we look for people and select them looks very much the same as it looked 50 years ago. The question is: why haven’t these tools and technologies... [full article »]

I am not sure about you, but I am reading more and more about the power of “big data.” Forrester, McKinsey, and IBM have all issued white papers or reports in the last month or two discussing the impact that the analysis of big data will have on business. Big data refers to the totality of information available. This includes data... [full article »]

Recruiters and hiring managers love interviews. I have never been sure why that’s the case, but it seems to satisfy a human need for power and control. An interviewer has power to recommend for a job or not. Sometimes an interviewer has the power to actually make the hiring decision, and by holding a person’s... [full article »]

Negotiating the conditions of employment, hedging one job with another, being wary of accepting full-time jobs that put at risk other work or that compromise skill — those are becoming the normal patterns for accomplished professionals. Individuals are finding new freedoms and exploring their own capacity and taste for change and entrepreneurism. Some organizations are... [full article »]

There is going to be an exodus of workers soon from businesses all across the U.S. It seems that for all the work recruiters do at the front end, organizations are undoing it at the backend. Frustrated employees are seeking new opportunities in record numbers, but if you are prepared, your talent shortages may be... [full article »]

Have you ever hired that dream candidate who met every criteria of the position, was courted by the hiring manager, and who negotiated that huge sign-on bonus and then crashed and burned within a few months? There are hundreds of stories like this. Candidates with great education, experience, and who have worked for all the... [full article »]

Whether the economy is strong or weak, no matter the time of year, and no matter how much they are paid, many of our best employees decide to leave. The question we all grapple with is why. Why do people stay at a company or leave? What motivates such behavior, and how can employers motivate... [full article »]

Social Media Trends The first four months of 2011 have shown that social media is far from a fad. More and more ordinary people are joining networks, sharing pictures, uploading video, and opening their personal lives to friends and colleagues. Facebook now has well over 700 million members. LinkedIn is about to go public, making... [full article »]

Women have become the new workforce. There are now slightly more women workers than men, given the recession and the shrinking of the manufacturing and construction industries. They have less unemployment: In January of this year the unemployment rate for men was 8.8 percent, yet for women only 7.9 percent. Additionally, women account for 51... [full article »]

Technology forces forward movement. It makes us figure out what could be more meaningful or useful for people to do. Rather than dig ditches and plow fields by hand, we have machinery that makes that work faster and safer and frees individuals up to do work that machines cannot. Rather than take work from people,... [full article »]

There are a handful of beliefs within most professions that need to be examined from time to time for validity and accuracy. The medical profession believed for years that ulcers were caused by stress and certain foods. It took a modestly qualified medical researcher in Australia to prove that they were caused by bacteria and... [full article »]

Recruiting is unfortunately often a way station in a career. It is one stop on the way to becoming an HR executive or to moving on to other things. There are often very limited opportunities for advancement as a recruiter within most organizations, which further limits the number of people who choose to dedicate themselves... [full article »]

Recruiters have not paid very much attention to the quantitative side of quality of hire. We frequently talk about hiring manger satisfaction and other subjective measures of quality, but I don’t know of any recruiting function that has even tried to measure, quantitatively, the value or contribution of people who have been hired. I have... [full article »]

As the years have rolled by I have become increasingly aware of how poorly internal recruiting functions perform when compared to recruitment process outsourcing organizations or agencies. These have to make a profit or go out of business. They have to operate efficiently and continue to innovate and stay ahead of the demands or questions... [full article »]

Even though we are in an economic down cycle and unemployment in the U.S. is hovering around 10%, recruiters are still struggling to find people with the skills and experience their hiring managers are looking for. Partly this is driven by the commonly held assumption that these skilled and experienced people have been affected by... [full article »]

John Smith began 2010 with the hope that hiring would ramp up slowly over the year and that he would be able to re-establish his crackerjack sourcing team that was eliminated in 2009. He believed that sourcing passive candidates off the Internet would provide enough candidates, with very little need for job postings or agency... [full article »]

Maybe all you need for an attraction and sourcing strategy is a good game. The U.S. Army was one of the first organizations to pioneer video games for attracting potential recruits. A couple of years ago the Army launched its highly successful recruiting game called America’s Army, which has significantly helped raise recruitments. The Army... [full article »]

Platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and a variety of proprietary platforms are becoming core to successful recruiting, learning, relationship building, and marketing. However, most organizations are operating without an overarching strategy that defines how to get a solid and visible return from their social media approaches. Recruiters have become caught up in the technology... [full article »]

Most recruiters complain that they cannot find the top talent or the talent they really need. Despite efforts to build databases and talent pools, they still struggle. In some case, lesser qualified people apply, but not the ones they identify as best. In other cases, good people apply but want too much money, or otherwise... [full article »]