On the U.S. Army Web site, prospects can access podcasts, participate in discussion boards, chat online with active duty soldiers and recruiters, and watch videos which depict various Army careers and combat training. But the Army also gives candidates access to free war games, so they can virtually experience combat situations and assess their skills. The games resonate with millennial prospects, who average 17 to 24 years of age, and who are quite comfortable having a joystick in one hand and a mouse in the other.

“We use photos, tell stories, and recruits hear soldiers talk about combat in experience centers set-up all across the country,” says Lt. Col. John E. (Ed) Box, battalion commander, Chicago Recruiting Battalion, U.S. Army Recruiting Command. “In the experience centers, soldiers returning from combat relay their personal stories to recruits. We also provide virtual combat experience through the America’s Army website, which features free war game downloads for computers and the Xbox 360.”

The use of simulated training environments has grown in a number of industries for good reason; virtual training has proven to be effective and trainees are free to make mistakes, without creating dire consequences. Airline pilots have trained in-flight simulators for years and surgeons practice new medical procedures through a combination of hands-on and simulated experience. The military is highly advanced in its use of simulated training; applying the technology to the recruiting and screening process is a logical way to immerse candidates into stressful situations, so they can experience the environment and the emotions it evokes.

In the “See What It’s Like” section of the U.S. Air Force Web site, candidates can test their ability to refuel jets at 22,000 feet or fly with the Thunderbirds. The interactive tools comprise just a small portion of the tactics employed by military recruiters to achieve the increasing annual goals for new signees. Despite the obstacles of lengthy deployments and ongoing war, recruiters from the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps are achieving their annual recruiting mission by bonding with prospects, using carefully crafted messages and being brutally honest about military life.

Cocq’s vision was to move IBM away from its collage of recruiting and hiring processes to a single global process, with only slight variations for each region’s culture. He also wanted to drive passive candidates and applicants toward the company’s recruiting Web site to reduce agency fees and print ad expenditures. But could a site that features one main recruiting message resonate with a globally diverse audience? Surprisingly, Cocq discovered that the answer to that question was yes.

“We found that universally, people are interested in social issues and career advancement; they want to know that their work matters and that it accomplishes something for society,” says Cocq.

In June, the company launched its new careers Web site which features this message: Come work for IBM and make a difference. But while the message may be universal, the way the message is communicated to each user is unique. The concept is to hook candidates and entice them to return to the site, by allowing each user to create their own Web 2.0 experience. Candidates are invited to join online communities or collaborate online with IBM employees after submitting an application. They can also share online content about IBM and comment about it through a link to an IBM page on the Digg Web site or receive an opt-in newsletter.

“Our new site features a single landing page and then redirects prospects to a number of subsites or micro sites based upon their interests and preferences,” says Cocq. “While the overall message is designed for universal appeal, we’ve adapted how we’re driving traffic to the site to meet each country’s Internet viewing habits.”

Listen here

At Advanced Technology Services, Jim Hefti, VP of HR, took time-to-fill off the table, while holding the company’s recruiters accountable for first year employee turnover. He also gave the recruiters the authority to reject a candidate at any stage of the hiring process. How did the company’s managers react?

“They don’t like it, but they’ve learned to accept it,” says Hefti. “Our first year employee retention rate has improved by 3% to 5% and time-to-fill actually improved when we stopped focusing on the number of candidates we were submitting and started focusing on submitting quality candidates.”

It was just as difficult for recruiters to embrace their new responsibilities, according to Holly Mosack, ATS recruiting manager, but she says recruiters diligently educated managers that quality hires result from sound hiring processes, not massive quantities of interviews, and they persevered through the first six months. Then, both groups saw their first glimpse of improved first year turnover statistics, and they haven’t looked back.

Hefti also installed a talent management structure that makes performance management the joint responsibility of HR and managers. New hire performance is evaluated at 90 days. An HR talent manager gets involved if a new hire is not meeting or is not projected to meet performance expectations. Every time a new hire quits, or fails to meet his or her performance goals, recruiters, managers, and talent managers meet jointly to review what happened and make adjustments in hiring profiles, training, or supervision.

Managers’ satisfaction with the recruiting department is measured through a separate annual survey, because Hefti focuses on tangible measures and accountability that drive the company toward its business goals.

“This downturn is really a mosaic, not a uniform event,” says Kip Cassino, VP of research for Borrell Associates. “You can’t just look at the national trends to judge which industries or companies might be hiring; you’ll have to do some rigorous homework.”

Here’s an example of what Cassino is describing.

News reports frequently cite the construction industry as being highly impacted by the weak economy, but lingering below the surface-level macro data are some exceptions. Firms that build hospitals, schools, bridges, or power plants may have a healthy pipeline of projects around the globe. Customer demand for goods and services and geographic footprint determine how the economy is impacting each company or industry sub-segment and its economic outlook.

In addition to traditionally recession-resistant industries like healthcare and education, transportation and information services appear to be fairly strong during this downturn, according to Cassino, while recruiters will have to carefully research opportunities within the durable and non-durable goods manufacturing industry, because it is a mixed bag. Real estate is slowly being reignited by a buyer’s market, and when you get beyond Wall Street, even the financial services industry isn’t all bad.

Also, growth-oriented, mid-size companies may be a source of opportunities for recruiters with large-corporation recruiting experience and know-how.

Despite a few bright spots, recruiters are facing some headwinds. A search on the online job posting consolidator Indeed reveals 6,705 open recruiter positions nationwide, 3,937 of those in corporations and 2,744 in staffing agencies. Temporary help led all industries in the number of initial unemployment claims filed in October, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the entire industry accounts for only 787 open recruiter positions on Indeed.

The slowdown dovetailed with a decline in U.S. new job creation and a subsequent pullback by increasingly wary passive job seekers. The number of employed people planning to look for new jobs declined 7.5 % between Nov. 2006 and March 2007, and the numbers have since continued to decline, leaving recruiters to refill a dwindling number of vacant positions. Cassino’s view is that there won’t be a significant uptick in hiring until 2010 to 2011, mostly fueled by vacancies created by retiring baby boomers.

Jobs4MyFriends, a new Facebook application created by Appirio, is one of the first applications created on the new platform. It extends a company’s ability to use employee networks to generate referrals, according to Ryan Nichols, Appirio’s VP of product management.

Yet recruiting source representatives say they rarely hear from corporate recruiters, only receiving infrequent calls when a recruiter needs to fill an immediate opening.

Says Bev Principal, assistant director of student employment services at the Stanford University Career Development Center: “If I meet with a company representative during the summer, and receive information about its entire breadth of career opportunities, not just the immediate openings, I can pass that information along to students during career counseling sessions or I’ll remember to invite that company to participate in specific career events here on campus.”

Principal says she regularly e-mails students about recruiting events, and sends a monthly newsletter to engineering students. If she has information to share about an employer or its job opportunities, she passes it along.

John Weitzel, internship coordinator at El Camino College, says that employers are often disappointed in student turnout when they schedule a last-minute campus recruiting event. He starts promoting the retail holiday job fair, for example, when students first return to school in mid-August, and companies like FedEx and Disney set up campus recruiting visits a year in advance. FedEx is on the students’ radar screens because it recruits on campus every Monday.

“Not every student knows what they want to do when they finish school,” says Weitzel. “If I know Northrop Grumman has jobs other than engineering, like grant-writing and marketing, I can talk about those opportunities with students who seem suited for those careers.”

Even sources that provide experienced candidates can be better used through proactive planning. Olin King, site manager for the West Covina office of the California Employment Development Department, says that employees who lose their jobs due to offshoring receive special benefits and retraining, and he can sway them toward specific courses — if he knows local employers have hiring needs.

“We can set-up recruitment sessions, where we’ll line up the candidates and employers can come to our office to interview,” says King. “There are opportunities for employers to provide career advice to 300 experienced workers at our older and wiser seminars, which cater to job seekers 40 and older. We also bring education and employers together to fulfill specific needs in the community, but the only way to do that is through collaboration, and I just don’t hear from corporate recruiters.”

The Army Reserve Employer Partnership Program was launched in April, and 48 companies have signed agreements guaranteeing an interview to interested reservists, who are either beginning or ending their duty or who want to change careers. In exchange, the Army is providing training and in some cases even customizing the curriculum to meet the needs of private employers.

“A good example of how we’re adapting our training to help meet the hiring needs of private employers is what we’re doing with truck drivers,” says Col. Dianna Cleven, who manages the partnership initiative for the Army. “Army truck drivers drive under some pretty austere conditions, and we’re talking with the commercial licensing authorities to make sure Army drivers can pass the commercial certification test.”

After conferring with employers, the Army Reserve is focusing on providing additional training courses for careers and trades where candidates are in short supply. It’s even considering adapting its West Point leadership curriculum to provide private-sector managers who are also reservists with leadership training.

Cleven says that employers should expect and prepare for the reality that reservists will be called for duty, because the demand for their services is not expected to diminish anytime soon. Currently, active reservists can be called to serve 12 to 15 months once every five years.

It’s the first partnership between private business and the Orange County registrar, which has been actively soliciting corporate sponsors to provide volunteers. The registrar also expects to fill 2,300 poll worker positions with local high school students, up from 1,400 in previous elections, according to Brett Rowley, community outreach manager.

“Besides serving the communities where we do business, we know Gen Yers are attracted to companies that demonstrate social responsibility, so we think this adds to our value as an employer,” said Julie Green Rommel, Orange County communications manager for Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo employs 3,000 people in the county.

The U.S. Census Bureau recruited 3.7 million applicants and hired 1 million temporary census-takers for the 2000 Census, which was the largest peacetime recruitment of American workers in history; the goal for the 2010 Census is 3.8 million applicants. The 2010 hires (explored in more detail in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership) are likely to be a little older and more ethnically diverse than the last, because the population demographics have shifted since 2000 and the bureau maintains a goal of hiring contingent workers that reflect the local community.

Based upon data compiled by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, these will be the major demographic shifts from 2000 to 2010 that the bureau must address through its diversity hiring initiatives:

• Between 2000 and 2010 the number of people who are between the ages of 45 and 64 will increase nearly 30%.
• The Hispanic population will grow 34% from 35.6 million to 47.8 million.
• The African-American and Asian populations will outpace the growth of whites.

Census Bureau leaders say there’s no magic bullet for meeting the recruiting numbers and the diversity goals, so recruiters from local census offices will be out in force at churches, community centers, and schools. But given the aging population, the Bureau has also taken steps to tap pools of retirees and a diverse applicant base.

“I requested permission to hire retirees (federal government annuitants) and that rule was changed beginning this calendar year,” says Tyra Dent Smith, chief of the human resources division for The U.S. Census Bureau. “The annuitants will be able to work without any offset to their salaries.”

In addition, Dent Smith applied for other waivers that will allow federal employees to moonlight if they wish to work as part-time census-takers. People receiving federal assistance will also be allowed to work without benefit offsets.

In preparation for the main event, the bureau runs a series of dress rehearsals and test censuses.

• Show off creative sourcing techniques. According to a talent acquisition leader at a major New York bank, some of Lehman Brothers’ top talent was off the market before the ink was dry on the bankruptcy papers. Recruiters will need to demonstrate that they have a network of contacts in competing firms and can reel them in.
• Provide metrics showing your value. Corporate recruiters from the big Wall Street firms will need to demonstrate their value or be willing to take a haircut to land a new job, especially if they relocate. New York salaries outpace the rest of the nation, according to Crain’s, and the current shakeout is certain to drive those down.
• Explain how you can hold the line on costs. “Businesses are looking for cost-of-hire reductions,” says Kevin Huston, director of service delivery for TalentFusion. “Corporate recruiters will need to show that they have successfully driven down the cost of hire to be marketable.”
• Go where the jobs are. Healthcare, education, and government have been stable throughout the economic slowdown, and the mid-size suppliers of goods and services to companies within each industry have also been hiring. They require aggressive recruiters who can deliver candidates without the benefit of a powerful recruitment brand. Life sciences and renewable energy were hot industries for executive search firms during the first quarter of 2008. The security and logistics industries are also projected to continue hiring. The outsourcing industry is stable right now because some clients haven’t been hiring, but RPO bid activity is robust and the industry may pick up some new contracts from reorganizing financial services firms. Huston says that sometimes RPO firms absorb the company’s corporate recruiters when they land a new engagement, but those decisions are contract-specific. He cautions that salaries are often lower than at corporate recruiting jobs. Staffing firms are always eager to land a hot recruiter, but if you want to work in search, you’ll need contacts because you’ll be expected to bring in job orders and candidates. “Search firms expect you to work a full desk, so recruiters will need to come in the door with clients in their pockets,” says John Pelconin, a contract IT recruiter assigned to State Street Bank. “Information technology is pretty hot, but it’s saturated, so you’ll need some good skills to compete.”

And then there is financial services. Not every bank is in trouble. Some regional banks and commercial banks are still doing well, and accounting firms have been hiring. The government’s mortgage bailout operation may also offer some opportunities for recruiters who want to stay in the industry. The Wall Street Journal lists the projected industry survivors.

Richter teamed up with Yahoo! HotJobs (profile) creative director David Lam and created “Runway” which features Liz Claiborne’s chief creative officer and mentor from TV show Project Runway, Tim Gunn.

Lam approached several clients late last year about creating recruiting videos as part of a Yahoo! HotJobs pilot program, and Richter jumped at the chance. She also came up with the video’s main concept and the basic script. Richter said that the video’s production costs would typically average $20,000 to $25,000; she received a discount for being part of the pilot program.

Besides revealing the company’s creative side, Richter also wanted to show prospective applicants that not everyone who works in the fashion industry looks like Kate Moss and that a typical day at Liz doesn’t begin with a cry of “gird your loins” as it did when Miranda Priestly arrived at the office in “The Devil Wears Prada.”

The company has been opening new retail stores and creating real jobs for real people; many of its 10,000 jobs are in typical support functions like IT, accounting, and marketing.

“We wanted to show our brands and a representation of the wide variety of careers you can have here at Liz Claiborne,” says Richter.

The video features actual employees talking about their jobs and career paths at Liz, but the highlight is a 30-second clip of a mock fashion show where employees listen to a motivational speech by Gunn and then bound down the runway.

So far, the video is delivering the goods. It’s loaded on the Liz Claiborne website and advertised on Yahoo! HotJobs and StyleCareers. As of mid-July, Richter said the video had received about 6,000 to 7,000 views on the Liz Claiborne website and another 6,000 views on HotJobs. At a job fair held just last week, Richter said the longest applicant lines were at the Liz booth and Gucci. But, besides energizing applicants, the video has also motivated the company’s employees.

“Despite the difficult economic times, our company is poised for growth, so the video has really been a motivational tool that has energized our existing employees as well as applicants,” said Richter.

Targeted sourcing is the second step in hiring top performers, as shown in this chart (click to enlarge) illustrating the complete quality of hire process, from Taleo Research.

Most recruiters instinctively return to the same source when searching for candidates, because historically the source has produced a quick response from a large number of prospects with the required skills. But a deeper dive into employee turnover statistics and performance ratings might result in some surprises about the quality of the candidates secured through each source, according to Andrew Carges, vice president of worldwide talent acquisition for Success Factors.

Carges says that he found first-year turnover was high for employees sourced through agencies, during his experience at SuccessFactors and in his previous roles as a talent leader. A closer review as to why those employees left revealed that many had a history of job-hopping, and he concluded that employees represented by recruiters were frequently hunting for new opportunities and had easy access to other positions. Now he evaluates source effectiveness and its impact on quality of hire.

“To drive quality of hire, compare the employee’s first-year performance rating to their hiring source and the cost of hire,” says Carges. “It’s something every company can do to evaluate the effectiveness of the hiring source in delivering top performers and value.”

(See the example of hiring-source analysis provided by SuccessFactors.)

Managers frequently request candidates with previous industry experience because they believe it’s a predictor of on-the-job success. That hiring criteria often limits the sources recruiters can tap to find experienced prospects. A review of the employees’ actual performance ratings and the competencies possessed by top performers might be the first step in shifting the hiring paradigm, which in turn opens the door for new sources of hire.

At R.L. Polk & Co., a review of the company’s top performers revealed that previous industry experience had little correlation to job performance, according to Jay Marshall, manager of talent acquisition. In fact, the requirement accelerated the cost of hire because candidates came from a boutique industry and often had to be enticed with higher salaries.

And at the same time, industry dynamics were changing, forcing employees into more business-facing roles that required different skills. As Marshall dug a bit deeper into what was really making employees successful, an entirely new profile began to emerge.

“When I looked at the behavior behind the performance, it was driven by teamwork,” says Marshall. “The bottom line is that it really altered what we were looking for, and now we look for team players with strong business acumen. That opened up many new candidate sources, and our average cost of hire has dropped $10,000 in the last 24 months.”

Today, Marshall says he no longer worries about how long it takes his team to hire new employees or how much a new hire costs, because by focusing on quality of hire, he has improved all the recruiting metrics at Polk.

“We didn’t add any staff because responding to candidates didn’t add more work — we just changed our process,” says Catie Cowher, candidate experience leader for Recruiting Strategy and Initiatives at Wachovia Corporation.

Wachovia posts some 600 to 800 openings per week on its website, which includes both newly created positions and vacancies, and averages 10,000 applicants. According to Cowher, rejected candidates receive an e-mail informing them about their status and the reasons behind Wachovia’s decision. Most candidates are declined early in the recruiting process, following a resume review by a recruiter. Nearly 90% of applicants responding to job postings at Wachovia are declined. Giving candidates immediate feedback about their status was a process change that served up numerous benefits.

Cowher cites anecdotal evidence that she’s received through feedback from applicant surveys that making quick decisions and informing candidates about their status has not only improved the applicants’ experiences with Wachovia’s hiring process, but more specifically their perceptions about Wachovia recruiters. The bottom line is that candidates don’t view unresponsive recruiters as overworked — they view them as incompetent. A surprise benefit is that declined candidates often refer a qualified colleague, after gaining a better understanding of the job requirements through post-declination feedback. Wachovia recruiters spend less time fielding calls from candidates requesting a status update, and have a better handle on the inventory of viable candidates.

In addition to informing declined candidates about their status, Wachovia refers them to other employers by including a link in the e-mail to the AllianceQ website.

AllianceQ pools candidates and shares them among member employers. The company has been building inventory since the end of May. For every 1,000 rejection e-mails sent by member companies providing a link to AllianceQ, 25% of applicants have clicked on the link and 89% have then completed a profile, according to the firm’s managing director Phil Haynes.

“We don’t make any judgments about candidates, and our feeling is that we don’t own them,” says Cowher. “Timing has a lot to do with whether someone is hired — or maybe they just don’t have the skill set we’re looking for.”

Although there’s no formal referral system in place, major Seattle employers Starbucks, Washington Mutual, Weyerhaeuser, and Microsoft sometimes refer candidates to each other, according to Rhonda Stickley, director for recruiting and staffing at Weyerhaeuser, especially when candidates align with positions offered at the other firms. Stickley adds that there has been some internal discussion at Weyerhaeuser about sharing retiree pools among several area employers, which has started a discussion within her team about managing excess human capital inventory more effectively.

In some companies, qualified candidates are referred to other managers when they aren’t a fit for one position, and some recruiters stay in touch with surplus hirable candidates through newsletters, phone calls, and touch campaigns. The key is that all resumes are reviewed when submitted and candidates are sorted into categories. Then the candidates are quickly informed about their status so databases remain pure, searches result in a slate of viable contenders, and relationships are built and maintained through the recruiting process.

“Dealing with surplus candidates or even inventory management is a challenge in our industry, and the bottom line is that we’re not doing it very well,” says Denny Clark, director of the Thought Leadership Institute. “The good news is that we’re going to see much better technology coming down the pike which will help with the problem. Another solution that I believe we’ll see more of, is a restructuring of the recruiting function so that more people initially screen candidates and stay in touch with passive candidates, so their status remains current in the database.”

Towers Perrin has also printed all of its recruiting brochures and materials on recycled paper and will distribute T-shirts embellished with the phrase “Go Green” to grads who attend the firm’s office recruiting events, according to recruiting director Jen Warne.

“We’ve tied an eco-friendly theme throughout our entire recruiting campaign, including our pending launch of a new page on Facebook,” says Warne. “It’s a clear demonstration of our corporate values, so we’re hoping it will differentiate us from our competitors.”

Both CEOs also acknowledged that some existing RPO customers have ceased hiring or have opted to take recruiting back in-house, causing a decrease in RPO revenues for both companies during the recent period.

Despite what he called a severe pullback from two clients, one in telecommunications and the other in the airline industry, Spherion CEO Roy Krause said the company will continue to invest in RPO, adding that while proposal activity has increased, it’s taking longer to close new deals.

Jon Chait, chairman and chief executive officer for Hudson Highland Group, said that so far, the company’s 2008 revenues have been bolstered by a strong global economy which offset declining demand for staffing services at U.S. customers. Now, he says the slowing economy appears to be spreading, most notably to parts of the U.K.

Chait also noted that the current economic cycle differs from prior recessions, resulting in a change in many of the classic recessionary patterns experienced by staffing firms. In previous recessions, economic contraction led to a recession, which resulted in more full-time employee layoffs, reduced demand for direct-hire placements, and finally a reduction in temp workers later in the cycle. The current cycle is similar to the 1995-1996 era, where slower economic growth produced an initial reduction in temp workers and slower direct-hire decision processes, but not the large numbers of layoffs or the recessionary decrease in permanent hiring activity. He said that skill shortages are continuing to fuel the demand for full-time workers in specific jobs and industries; however, candidates are reluctant to change jobs.

“We see candidates exercising caution,” says Chait. “They are wary of being the last one in the door and then the first one out, if things get worse.”

Both companies also announced recent SG&A cuts in response to the weakening economy.

In May 2006, President Bush committed that he would curtail illegal immigration and improve border security. A key part of his strategy included adding 6,000 new border patrol agents by the end of 2008. Abbott agreed to head up the agency’s recruitment function and take on the challenge of sourcing 180,000 applicants to meet the hiring quota of 6,000 new agents.

Abbott’s story sounds like it has all the makings of the first reality television series featuring the survival strategies of talent acquisition leaders.

New agents must be under 40, pass a physical fitness test, a medical exam, a background investigation, and demonstrate that they have the ability to learn a foreign language. Once they are hired, agents are assigned to work the border between California and Texas. After reviewing data from numerous sources and creating a prospective agent profile, Abbott’s strategy was to cast a wide net for applicants; in particular, he wanted to focus on mid-size cities where the demographics indicated there were large numbers of residents who fit the agent profile.

“In cities where we have a Border Patrol presence, the people know us and we have a positive image,” says Abbott. “But when you get into a city like Indianapolis, we don’t have a visible presence and what they’ve heard about the Border Patrol may not be all positive. Our first goal was to educate the public and inject ourselves into that market.”

Abbott engaged an outside firm and created a new employment brand that would not only drive a positive image of the agency, but educate prospective agents about a typical day on the job. Many of the new recruiting materials (like the video embedded below) blend applicant education with a Hollywood feel. To create recruiting messages that would resonate with the target audience, Abbott talked to current agents as well as external groups, then used the feedback to refine the messages until they were spot on.

“We solicited feedback from outside groups who gave us their perceptions about the agency,” says Abbott. “We wanted to understand what those perceptions were and then match our message up against those perceptions, so we weren’t creating materials in isolation.”

The agency reaches its target audience through a variety of media. The comprehensive recruiting and employment branding initiative (to be examined in more detail in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership) has a look and feel that says big-budget-meets-strategic-workforce-analytics. So far both the tailored messages and the strategy appear to be working, because Abbott says the agency is hitting its 3,500 weekly applicant quota and is on target to meet its 2008 hiring goal. Of course there’s no pressure when the President sets your performance goals in front of the entire country.

“It’s the same here as it is anywhere else,” says Abbott. “If you don’t meet the numbers the same thing will happen to you in this job as would happen to you in any job.”

The fact that most companies now acknowledge applicants by sending a generic e-mail is actually a significant improvement, according to the CareerXroads 2008 Mystery Job Seeker Survey, because some companies still don’t reply to applicants at all.

Annually since 2002, CareerXroads has engaged a mystery shopper, who applies online at the 100 companies named as the Best Companies to Work For by Fortune. This year, a record 78 employers sent an automated e-mail response after the mystery shopper applied, 22 didn’t respond at all, and only a handful maintained any type of communication with the applicant after the initial e-mail. In some cases, only the return e-mail address identified which company actually responded.

“The best and the brightest employers are starting to get it,” says Mark Mehler, co-founder of CareerXroads. “They are updating their technology so candidates can click in and see where they are in the process and they are making their online application process friendlier, because job seekers will go where they can apply in an easy manner.”

“Never Underestimate Negative Chatter”

A lack of empathy for the candidate was one of the first things Kristen Weirick changed, when the director of talent acquisition for Whirlpool launched an initiative focused on improving the candidate’s experience.

“Every candidate who comes into contact with your organization is a prospective customer,” says Weirick. “There’s an old paradigm out there among some HR folks and managers that this is an employer’s market, so applicants have to conform to our process. In reality, the application process is really an extension of your employment brand. You should never underestimate the impact of negative chatter in the marketplace.”

Weirick says that she’d heard stories about candidates’ mixed experiences with the Whirlpool recruiting process, so she knew there was room for improvement. She also realized that every applicant is a potential customer, because they all buy appliances. A poor experience with the company on any level could linger with the candidate and influence their decision the next time they purchase a home appliance.

Weirick focused on improving the experience for those applying for the company’s approximately 6,500 U.S. salaried positions. She separated the candidate experience into three buckets and focused on improving each candidate’s experience at every stage of the process.

“The applicant experience starts with their first touch point,” says Weirick. “If they apply on the website, visit our booth on campus or at a career fair, they get an e-mail response that sounds and feels like the Whirlpool candidate experience we are trying to achieve. Their communication is customized, based upon their experience level.”

Candidates who progress to in-person interviews are picked up at the airport by drivers, tour the surrounding community, and then tour the Whirlpool campus. First-time interviewers are thanked for their time and gifted with Whirlpool portable utensils; those who progress to a second interview receive a portable appliance and a thank-you note delivered to their homes.

“The third step is the close,” says Weirick. “Regardless of what happens, we want that candidate to feel good about their experience with Whirlpool, so we train our recruiters how to extend offers and regrets.”

Mehler says he often advises reluctant recruiters to turn down applicants by leaving voicemail messages during lunchtime or after hours. He estimates that 17 to 18% of applicants who interview in-person never receive final disposition about their status in the hiring process.

PepsiCo is one of several companies installing Web-based technology designed to extend the company’s employment brand into the courtship phase by allowing candidates to view their status in real time, according to John Delpino, director of executive staffing. Other companies are installing systems that provide instant feedback to candidates, as they submit responses to online qualifying questionnaires. The Web-enabled system (developed in-house) stops the hiring process immediately if the candidate’s response eliminates them from consideration, and the system then furnishes the candidate with a reason for the termination of the hiring process.

Weirick says that a lack of expertise, technology, or time just isn’t an excuse for recruiters failing to give candidates updates about their status or feedback as to why they were rejected.

“Most of the time when we extend regrets, we think we’re helping the candidate,” says Weirick. “Even if we’ve just conducted a phone screen, that candidate will receive a personal phone call and receive feedback within a couple of days; we don’t send an e-mail.”

At Whirlpool, recruiters are given extensive training about what type of feedback to give applicants and how to give it. Then, following the conclusion of the hiring process, every applicant receives a 20-question e-mail survey soliciting their perceptions about the hiring process. Weirick says the survey results are 90% positive, with only an occasional howler, and the feedback helps her measure the company’s progress toward the goal of extending Whirlpool’s employment brand through the entire hiring process.

“We think of ourselves as ambassadors for our employment brand,” says Weirick, “Our goal is to make sure that even those applicants we decline maintain a strong loyalty to Whirlpool.”

It’s no wonder applicants often have bad impressions of the hiring process, according to Joe Murphy, vice president for Shaker Consulting Group, because employers start out taking information from applicants, when they should be giving them information first. In fact, Murphy says that hiring processes which demand up to an hour from applicants, while giving them no insight into how well-suited they might be for the work or the environment, sets the stage for dissatisfaction.

Murphy’s firm pioneered the Virtual Job Tryout, which gives candidates an interactive preview of the job, the performance expectations, and the company’s environment, allowing applicants to decide if they want to invest up to an hour of their time applying. By recreating parts of the job online, such as giving Starbucks’ managerial candidates a preview of the operating statements, applicants can decide for themselves if they are well-suited for the position.

“When candidates are able to make an informed decision about a prospective opportunity, it improves their experience,” says Murphy. “Now they aren’t wasting time filling out applications and being frustrated by a lack of response, and companies aren’t collecting huge amounts of data that quite frankly, they’ll never use.”

A more selective outsourcing approach allows vendors and employers to tackle each function independently, understand the requirements, and then customize the implementation and refine the processes before moving on. At least for now, that’s the direction managers are taking.

“Comprehensive outsourcing of HR administration hasn’t worked out as expected for either party,” says Mark Marcon, senior research analyst and director for Robert W. Baird & Company, Inc. “I think most of the vendors under-estimated the costs and the profitability of these contracts, so there’s been significant pull-back and a more selective adoption approach.”

A survey of 182 U.S. companies by consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide validates that selective, rather than comprehensive H.R. outsourcing is the clear preference among employers, with 6% of the respondents indicating they plan to outsource recruiting in the near future.

Recruitment process outsourcing is increasing, despite the macro outsourcing trends, according to Marcon. More staffing providers are offering outsourced recruiting solutions to customers, and many have made acquisitions of existing RPO firms to enter the market. Because RPO is still a fairly new concept, a standard service model has yet to emerge. The flexibility to customize services under the contracts, such as only outsourcing hiring processes for hourly workers or contracting strictly for exempt personnel sourcing, is enticing early adopters and easing the trauma of handing over the services to an outside provider.

Software as a Service

With as much as 80% of the early adopter market already penetrated, HR technology firms, including applicant tracking system and talent management providers, are consolidating and offering new products for mid-size companies in order to boost revenues. Employers have been waiting for leaders to emerge in the highly fragmented space, and thanks to a slowing economy, the process seems to be well underway.

“What’s hot is software as a service and talent management suites via SaaS,” says Marcon. “Everything else is cooling.”

Software as a service, which consists of hosted software solutions accessible via the Web for monthly subscription fees, reduces the financial barriers to entrance and opens the door for medium and small companies to manage talent through automated solutions. Access to more sophisticated tools may level the recruiting playing field between large and small employers. Taleo’s new product release is further validation that solution providers are looking for growth outside the enterprise marketplace. Taleo Edge was unveiled at the SHRM conference and is targeted toward the mid-size market, which Taleo defines as employers with 2,500 to less than 10,000 employees.

While industry consolidation may be a good thing in the long run because the surviving vendors will be financially stable, and customers may finally receive the comprehensive talent management suites they’ve been seeking, Marcon cautions talent acquisition leaders to review a prospective vendor’s financial strength before committing.

Says Marcon: “Right now talent acquisition managers should absolutely select vendors based upon their ability to withstand a protracted downturn.”