On the positive side, many Indian universities — like the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management turn out some of the best technical and managerial talent in the world. There are also a host of second-tier schools that provide excellent graduates. And with the multinationals like Microsoft, P&G, HP, Satyam, Wipro and others having been established in India now for some 20 years, there’s a good-sized pool of experienced talent as well.

But all this comes at a price. Three factors in particular make recruiting difficult. These are:

Unreliability Of Resumes. A recent study by KPMG found that about 60% of employers complain about resume fraud and fake credentials among significant numbers of applicants. Five percent of companies have reported losses exceeding $2 million as a result. The situation is such that many universities are now starting to embed RFID chips in their diplomas to prevent fraud.

Hiring Losses. The Indian Chamber of Commerce estimates that one in three candidates who is offered a position and accepts does not show up for employment. This is partly the result of employment practices that can require an employee to have a long notice period — exceeding two months in some cases. That allows candidates a long-time to shop offers around or for their current employers to convince them to stay.

Uneven Quality. While candidates from top-tier Indian universities are equal to the best in the world, the quality drops off significantly with candidates from second- and third-tier schools. Employers often find that their interview to hire ratios are typically 10:1 or higher.

Employers also complain that employees have a very mercenary attitude, and leave their jobs for even small increases in pay elsewhere. A lot of this can be explained by understanding the cultural and economic conditions that exist in India. India is a poor country (GDP per capita is $2,600). Only about 10% of the population of 1.1 billion works in the “organized sector,” i.e., regular, stable employment with a private or public sector employer. The rest are self-employed or farmers. The IT and outsourcing industry collectively employs only 4 million people. In the scheme of things, that’s very little. A job in the organized sector is a ticket out of poverty, but requires a good education, which is difficult to come by. As an example, the ITs have a selection ratio of 1:60. Having the smarts to qualify in the entrance tests usually requires a private education, because the public education system leaves a lot to be desired. Consequently, the temptation to fake credentials is huge.

As to hiring losses, call it the revenge of the nerds. While frustrating, it’s perfectly rational economic behavior. What many consider a small increase can be substantial in India. An experienced SAP developer in Bangalore makes about $25K to $30K. The same job pays over a hundred thousand dollars in the U.S. So an SAP developer in India who’s offered an additional $3K would be foolish to not consider it, and irrational to not accept it. It’s not that people are mercenaries, it’s that they are not irrational fools.

Evaluating the quality of education is particularly challenging, because there is not a standard ranking. There are all kinds of lists but none that match the credibility of the one by U.S. News and World Report or BusinessWeek. The best institutions are well known and acknowledged as such, but the quality of education at second- and third-tier schools can be anyone’s guess. A study by the McKinsey Globe Institute had determined that of the 350,000 engineers Indian universities graduate, almost two-thirds are no more than technicians. The same is likely to be the case with graduates in other categories.

So there is top-flight talent available, but it isn’t just there for the taking. The best tend to gravitate to the brand-name employers. For others an active sourcing effort is needed to be successful. Posting on job boards in India is about as effective as it is here. But then no one said it would be easy. Dick Whittington eventually became the Mayor of London, but it wasn’t the day after he arrived.

Judging by what’s on display and what’s being discussed at some other HR tech conferences I’ve been to, HR technology appears to be geared more to the past than the future.

To be fair, technology products tend to be lagging indicators of needs, and HR technology is no exception.

Having said that, the lack of vision for products is substantial. Most of what’s on display at conferences is reminiscent of a Sears appliance showroom — lots of similar products in a few categories, with little changing from year to year. Truly interesting products are about common as a pro-McCain story in the New York Times. We’re still seeing products that have not fundamentally changed in 10 years. That gets reflected in awards — a few deserve them, but most seem to make it just to fill out the list. One company managed to win an award for a product that was just a repackaged product from another company. This is why the Nobel committee has never shown much interest in establishing a prize in this category. But that doesn’t stop people from coming. But that doesn’t stop people from coming to look at products. I’m reminded of the story of the small town where the high school football team had never won a single game, yet the stadium was always packed. When someone asked why people went the response was “just in case they do.” That sums up the situation with HR technology — there’s the hope that we just might see something interesting.

This year there are a few products that deserve recognition. The first is Talent Drive; this product solves the extremely common problem — one faced by every recruiter — of having multiple sources to search but no easy way to do it. Talent Drive integrates all job boards a recruiter subscribes to, along with hundreds of free ones, and allows them to be searched from a single, elegantly styled interface. Results are aggregated in one location and resumes can be matched to job requirements and ranked. Best of all, the product allows a user to create a single search requirement that is adapted to all the boards. The efficiency and productivity gains are significant. There have been others that have tried to do this, but not well. This product is designed for that neglected group of people — recruiters. We hear a lot about serving the needs of candidates (the Web 2.0 experience), and hiring managers (making ATS reporting simple), but little about those that do most of the work. Talent Drive one of the few offerings that actually makes their life easier.

Prophesy from eQuest is another. The product lets a recruiter analyze the effectiveness of job boards and provides a variety of metrics related to candidate responses. Now in its third version, Prophesy can allow an employer to focus its spending where it provides the most value.

A third product that I’d like to mention is Value Networks. This product would not be generally associated with talent management, but it can make a big difference to an organization’s talent strategy. Value Networks allows an employer to visualize and understand the informal network that exists in every workplace — that is, the real organization chart. This can help an organization understand how information really flows and who contributes value, which may be completely unrelated to their title or position within the organization. It helps highlight vulnerabilities and devise strategies to optimize information flows. The implications for talent management are obvious — talent strategies should be shaped based on an understanding of the value network, creating and filling positions that help optimize information flows.

These products have two things in common. One, they deliver tangible value that goes beyond automating a process, and can be measured in dollars and cents. In that regard they are very appropriate given the current economic climate. Second, small companies developed them. Real innovation is never a hallmark of any major vendor. Admittedly innovation in technology in general, and software in particular, is difficult. The U.S. Patent Office issued more patents to products in the category of hunting, fishing, and vermin removal in the last year than to software products in the entire 20-plus years that patents have been available for software. But it’s not impossible — as these three have demonstrated.

So if you’re looking for the future of HR technology the product bazaar may not be the best source of information. Perhaps another fixture of conferences — the obligatory “expert” panel — might help. Trouble is that what gets said is mostly of middling quality, based on spin put out by vendors, and dominated by discussions of what the majors are doing. You hear statements like “Vendor X is continuing to fill in their functional gaps and looks poised to take advantage of web 2.0.” Look at the content and the same could be obtained with a few keystrokes on Google. Truly innovative products are almost never discussed because the vendors are too small to tithe, er, subscribe to analyst firms.

There’s also the simple fact that the “experts” don’t use most of the products they are discussing and in general see too many demos to get anything but the most cursory understanding of them and the value they offer. They do have some insights into the situation that specific vendors are in and their likely future, but that is not stuff for a panel discussion. Few have the courage to make predictions about the future — better to say something innocuous couched in jargon to make it seem important, and be right than to make a bold prediction and be wrong. Sitting in on one of these is not unlike being stoned to death by popcorn.

I’ve long said that conferences having to do with HR technology should be on the same schedule as the Olympics. There really isn’t that much going on in the interim that necessitates having these more frequently. Let’s face it, despite whatever we may think of ourselves — this is HR, not astronomy or bio-tech. We’re not finding new planets or sequencing genomes. Then perhaps we’d see many more interesting products that really merit an award that’s worth something. Right now it’s like getting a hole-in-one — in mini-golf.

The Australian Parliament recently eased immigration laws with a goal of attracting more high-skilled labor. This was in recognition of the fact that given past and future decreasing birth rates coupled with increasing demand for skills will make skilled labor the quintessential scarce resource for the next fifty years. In this hemisphere Congress wisely spent the time passing resolutions recognizing July as National Watermelon Month and declaring soil an essential natural resource (it’s about time).

Change We Don’t Believe In

Complacency about attracting high-skilled talent can have severe negative consequences. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a growth of 40%, or over 500,000 new jobs in IT-related positions through 2016. Domestic supply is not enough to cover this need at current levels. The number of degrees granted across all IT-related categories is about 54,000 annually, and trending downward. Adding to the supply-demand gap is that the number of workers in the 55-and-older group will grow by 47% in the next eight years — approximately 5.5 times the 8.5% growth of the labor force overall, with significant numbers looking for early retirement. The direct impact of this is a reduction in GDP of several hundred billion dollars and billions in losses of taxes to the government. Indirectly, the impact from lesser innovation and output will only magnify these losses.

While our legislators seem to be gorging on spiked watermelon, other countries are treating issues relating to talent with far more seriousness. Many countries have liberalized their immigration policies for high-skilled talent. That poses a major challenge to America’s historic domination in innovation and attracting high-skill immigrants. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are the most aggressive; they conceive of immigrants as a source of economic growth, and consider highly skilled immigrants to be especially valuable contributors. Accordingly have long-standing immigration policies to attract them.

While a disproportionate number of skilled immigrants still come to the U.S., the numbers that are staying home or are going elsewhere is increasing. Over the last five years, the U.S. attracted an average of 73,000 skilled immigrants annually, down from about 107,000. That may still seem like a lot, but Canada attracted 56,000, Australia 20,000, and even tiny New Zealand managed to get 10,000.

The U.S. has had an extremely muddled approach to immigration and has done little to tilt the balance towards attracting high-skilled talent. As a consequence, barely 22% of immigrants are high-skilled workers. Other countries typically seek to have the highly skilled comprise 50 percent or more of total permanent immigration; the most recent figure for Australia was 65 percent.

The Audacity of Dopes

A big reason for lack of progress on changing immigration policies has to do with misinformation and myths pertaining to immigrant labor. Some stems from ignorance and some is nothing more than naked bigotry perpetuated by anti-immigrant groups. Some self-styled “experts” will indulge in any amount of demagoguery to further their agenda. For example, among the more ludicrous claims is that no education is required for any IT job; any programming language can be mastered in 30 days; and scientists and engineers possess no special skills.

These people often manage to find outlets for their rants, on certain news shows and even in hearings before Congress. The evidence they present tends to follow a fairly predictable pattern. It involves dubious statistics peppered with stories designed to evoke sympathy for their cause. A recurring theme is the case of some poor waif, who despite being brilliant, having excellent skills, and a great personality, is unable to find a job deserving of him. The sole reason for this unfortunate’s sufferings are all those employers engaged in a conspiracy to deprive anyone of a job if they can save a buck by finding a poor immigrant to do the work. What never gets mentioned is that immigrant workers make up less than 5% of the high-skilled workforce; in fields like IT, unemployment averages about 3% and wage growth has been consistent at about 3.9%. In fields like architecture and certain types of engineering, unemployment has averaged under 2%.

These numbers belie any claims that immigrant workers have negatively impacted employment or wages. Exceptions can always be found that prove the rule. The reasons a particular individual, despite being seemingly qualified, is struggling in finding employment is usually not because of a conspiracy among employers — it could be a case of misplaced expectations, a mismatch between the person’s skills and available jobs, or just an ability to interview well.

There are a lot of extremely talented and highly qualified automotive engineers who are out of work, but not because their jobs were filled by lower-paid immigrants. If there was even the smallest shred of evidence to support a claim that employers are systematically engaged in hiring immigrants to discriminate against citizens, then rest assured some state attorney-general would have turned it into a cause célèbre in her quest to become governor.

Losing the Edge

It isn’t just in attracting high-skilled immigrants that we’re ceding ground to other countries. The ability of the United States to attract foreign students is also deteriorating. The flow of students declined by about 70,000 per year after 2001, or some 25 percent, and rose elsewhere — in Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., and Canada. And this is likely to worsen as more countries enter the fray. We have no coherent national policy in regards to talent - either for developing or attracting. Without changes in our approach to talent, this is rapidly becoming a zero-sum game where there will be winners and losers.

Some of this was inevitable in a post-9/11 world. But we seem to have moved too far in the wrong direction, while ignoring the fact that other countries are not sitting idly by. Demands by industry that the number of H-1B visas available should be linked to gaps in supply and allocation of Green Cards should be tilted toward skilled workers are largely ignored. Then again, employers could just sign employees up for 30-day courses in programming and engineering.

But a successful negotiation doesn’t mean coming out on top with a low-ball offer that gets accepted. That can cause the candidate to get turned off and in the worst-case result in the candidate walking away. Even if accepted, it could leave the candidate with a sour taste in the mouth and essentially starting off with a negative attitude toward the employer. An overly generous offer on the other hand is a waste of the employer’s resources and can upset internal equity. Getting it right is not easy as few recruiters are trained in negotiating.

The number of books that have been written on negotiating can fill a large room — several thousand are in print. But an easier approach can be discerned from recent research at Northwestern University. A study by Prof. Adam Galinsky and his colleagues suggests that a powerful way to influence the outcome to be closer to a win-win situation is to view the situation from the candidate’s perspective — also know as the perspective-taking approach.

What this means and how it works is explained below, but the research has demonstrated that recruiters using such an approach consistently achieve the highest level of economic efficiency, without sacrificing their own material interests. They produce a better overall outcome for both sides.

Getting Inside the Candidate’s Head

The perspective approach means try to get inside the candidate’s head. To achieve an understanding of the candidate — their motives and likely behaviors — consider the world from their viewpoint. Basically, put yourself on their side of the table. This is not as ridiculous as it may appear. The research demonstrates that recruiters adopting such an approach achieve the best possible outcome close to half the time.

To be able to do this well recruiters need to do their homework before arriving at the negotiation. First, have an understanding of the likely issues. These always fall into three categories.

1) Distributive: issues for which the parties’ preferences are diametrically opposite. For example, the candidate wants a higher salary and the recruiter wants to pay a lower one.

2) Compatible: issues on which the parties’ preferences are identical. For example, the job location.

3) Integrative: issues on which the parties have different high and low priorities. For example, bonus and vacation time. The candidate may care more about the bonus amount because of a belief in her own ability to earn it. The recruiter may care more about getting the candidate to accept a smaller amount of vacation since that represents guaranteed income.

The solution to the disagreements is not to split everything down the middle, but rather to try and maximize the joint outcomes. That requires having a good idea about what makes the candidate tick — taking their perspective. Recruiters need to make an effort during the interview process to gauge what is important to a candidate. An assessment can help to fill out the picture, but even without that it’s important to pick up cues about what drives a candidate. That does not mean to ask questions that are unrelated to the job, but to probe for what a candidate considers important or not.

Head not Heart

There is a danger that a recruiter attempting to take the candidate’s perspective may end up empathizing with them — that is, show compassion for the candidate’s situation. Successful negotiation, especially where economic outcomes are involved, do not require having an emotional connection with the other party. The research demonstrated that empathizing recruiters achieved the poorest individual outcomes, and the gains went almost entirely to the candidates.

It’s better to “think for” than to “feel for” the candidate. It is more beneficial to get inside their heads than to have them in your heart.

Conclusion

Taking the perspective approach is easier said than done. It requires serious effort to try and understand a candidate, based on a lot of information that may not be readily available to the individual handling the offer negotiation. The more people who are involved in the selection process, the harder this gets, especially since most interviewers do a poor job of documenting what they learn about a candidate. Recruiters may also be constrained by the extent of flexibility they have in negotiating particular issues.

That being said, the Galinsky research does show that a failure to take a disciplined approach to an offer negotiation will produce a poor outcome for all concerned. Ultimately, organizations that fail to recognize this will suffer the consequences of losing good talent.

What few people know (and maybe even fewer care to) is that currently a fashion model coming to America has to compete for the same H1-B visas that every immigrant software engineer and developer does. This is a crisis. Summer is upon us and what are the editors of swimsuit editions supposed to do when visas run out on the first day they are available — take pictures in France and Photoshop in a background from California? Fast action is needed. Disaster looms. The fantasy lives of millions of teenage boys and voyeurs are in jeopardy.

Enter Anthony Weiner. The congressman from New York is riding (or taking the subway) to the rescue. Representative Weiner has sponsored a bill in Congress that would create a separate category of visas for fashion models, the P-4. If passed, the beauties would not be competing with the geeks and we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Weiner for President.

Jokes apart, the Weiner bill — HR 4080, does highlight a fundamental problem with U.S. immigration policy. With regards to talent we have no policy. What we do have are immigration laws dating to the 1940s that have been sporadically modified without much of a plan or any broader understanding of the strategic implications. That made little difference in the past with the U.S. being the best and, to some extent the only, destination for skilled talent.

While the U.S. is still a very attractive place, alternatives are emerging. I wrote about this in a recent article on increasing competition for talent from the European Union and other countries. The Blue Card program created by the EU is explicitly targeted at skilled workers, unlike the Green Card, which is predominantly a vehicle for reuniting families. Our immigration policy does little to attract high-caliber talent in fields like technology and sciences and does not differentiate much between categories of talent. There are no strategic underpinnings to support employers in the war for talent.

Take the H-1B program as an example.

The number of visas available — 85,000 — is an arbitrary number with no basis in demand. It has not been adjusted despite the fact that unemployment among high-tech workers is about 3% and there is no evidence whatsoever that skilled immigrant workers have any negative impact on the wages or the employment of domestic workers. Worse yet, H-1B visas are now allocated by lottery, i.e., at random. Need or the value of particular skills is not a factor.

Limited Options

There are some options available to employers frustrated with the situation. L-1 visas are one. These allow a company to transfer employees to the U.S. from their offices abroad for periods of up to five years. Employees must have worked for the company for at least one year before an L-1 can be issued. Unlike H-1Bs, there is no cap for L-1s.

Another option is the EB-5 program. Richard Herman of Herman Associates appraised me about this. Under EB-5, foreign investors can receive a green card if they invest at least $500,000 in a designated “investment center” and create 10 direct or indirect jobs, or $1 million outside the center. There are 10,000 green cards available under the EB-5 program, but only a small fraction get used; last year the program benefitted just 779 individuals. The program follows the lead of similar programs in Australia and Canada. That is why Microsoft has a development center in Vancouver that attracts a lot of talent.

Some communities are using the EB-5 program to create areas designed to attract immigrant talent —high-skill immigration zones. The Cleveland Council on World Affairs is leading a pilot initiative called the Talent Blueprint intended to bring together public and private entities to collaborate around the attraction of foreign talent and capital into Northeast Ohio. The region has over 10,000 openings for workers in fields related to bio-tech. Richard Herman and his associates are circulating among a large group of national thought and policy leaders the idea of Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities creating these zones to welcome both foreign talent and capital back to communities once known for their large immigrant populations that have now seen that high rate of immigrant influx migrate to places such as Atlanta, Silicon Valley, and Raleigh-Durham.

No Easy Solutions

The options described above are good ideas but they can have a small impact at best. The problem of talent shortages needs a comprehensive solution in terms of both domestic policy and immigration. But there is no one leading such an effort. Ideally there would be a cabinet-level position focused on talent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 1.64 million job openings for IT professionals between now and 2016. Yet, despite all the evidence that problems of supply are worsening, immigration policy for skilled talent remains entangled in political posturing and colored by issues of illegal immigration.

Organizations like FAIR and the self-styled Center for Immigration Studies, which make no differentiation between an agricultural worker and a software engineer, drum up wild theories about a gigantic conspiracy between employers to hire immigrant talent at-below market rates and deprive domestic workers of jobs. One of their more popular claims is that there is sufficient supply of domestic workers for high tech jobs. It’s difficult to square that with the fact that undergraduate enrollment in computer science programs has been in near free-fall since 2000, down by almost 50%. Another is that large numbers of H-1B visa holders become illegal aliens. But all that rhetoric does have some effect. When NAFTA was passed, the TN visa category was included only after the White House accepted demands that Mexican professionals not be given the same preferential treatment as Canadians. It took until 2004 to remove this bow to what some commentators described as the Titanic principle (first class gets better treatment than steerage).

The recruiting industry is not in a good position to influence this situation. The industry is not an organized lobby. No lobbying firm represents recruiting interests in Washington, while even North Korea and Ultimate Fighting are represented. Then again, it may not help much. Congress usually has matters of far greater national importance to deal with — such as investigating the New England Patriots for stealing their opponents’ signals, and the recently passed Primate Safety Act to ensure the proper treatment of monkeys.

On the last day of the ERE Spring Expo, over drinks in the Sheraton San Diego lobby, someone mentioned that we’re a few years away from a time when everyone will have access to all the candidates who exist.

This is not a stretch by any means. Subscriptions to the major boards and sites like Zoom and Jigsaw already guarantee that a recruiter has access to the most active candidates and the names of millions of others.

Companies like Acxiom claim to have details on 97% of the U.S. population. Today, few can use all these, but it’s not hard to envision a time when all that data will be available through some combination of tools to anyone willing to pay for it.

What Then?

Candidates have always been only fodder for recruiting processes. Having access does not mean getting hires. Until now, many recruiters have been able to exploit imperfections in the availability of information to get an edge. It used to be that search firms and recruiters kept databases (file drawers) with details on candidates they largely had exclusive access to.

Job boards and resume databases started to erode that advantage. We’re almost to the point where there is almost no exclusivity of information. What little gap is remaining will close soon.

Now it becomes a game of being able to leverage that information. When there is no advantage to be gained from information, those who will succeed are the ones who can execute the best.

Recruiting is a combination of art and science. Successful execution requires knowing how to combine the two.

This is best illustrated by the stock market, where there is near-perfect information available to everyone. Yet there are winners and losers. Size, experience, and resources are no guarantee of success. Just ask the people at Bear Stearns!

Similarly, for recruiting, the winners will be those who can best combine the artistic and scientific elements.

Define Your Process

The first, and perhaps most critical, factor for employers will be their staffing processes. I recently dealt with a company that was struggling to fill jobs, despite having lots of qualified candidates. The problem was that they have no process, relying almost entirely on their corporate brand’s drawing power to find candidates. While that may work in terms of generating volume, the lack of process effectively neutralizes any advantage the brand provides.

A good process means having a rigorously defined and managed supply chain that segments sourcing, assessment, and selection. The first stage, sourcing, should provide a reliable, repeatable mechanism for delivering candidates who meet the most well-defined requirements, in volumes that the next stage can handle.

Sourcing consists primarily of lead generation and screening, in numbers adequate to fill the initial pipeline in a hiring process. It includes targeted research (lead generation), phone calls (screening), and continuous feedback on the quality and quantity of candidates fed into the pipeline.

It is highly repetitive work, with efficiency gained from ongoing feedback further refining the research, and reducing the number of phone calls needed in the screening process. This feedback-refinement loop creates a higher percentage of acceptable candidates presented for interviewing.

Sourcing efficiency improves proportionally to the quality and timeliness of feedback. The key here is feedback. Quality control without feedback is not possible. Delayed feedback wastes time, but inaccurate feedback (or no feedback at all) dooms the effort entirely.

In particular, feedback fills the gap between the initial spec and what the hiring managers really want in a hire. As the spec changes, each bit of new information is detailed and added to research or screening criteria and shared across teams. This feedback-adjustment loop continues until a high percentage of candidates are acceptable to hiring managers. This codification is also critical if a process is expected to scale. This is neither art nor science, but the ordinary activity of constructing reliable, repeatable processes.

Getting Realistic

In their book Execution, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan write that strategic plans need to reflect the real world and link to operational plans. They also need to be tested for feasibility in the context of the organization’s capabilities. The point the book makes, unfortunately buried under a mountain of gibberish, is that organizations need to make plans that can be realistically supported with available resources.

“Realism is the heart of execution, but many organizations are full of people who are trying to avoid or shade reality.”

How many recruiting efforts fail because of unrealistic assessments of the capabilities of recruiters, access to talent, and the employer’s ability to manage the process in a time frame consistent with hiring needs? The recruiting infrastructure should support the strategy. The combination of recruiters, ATS, agency relationships, and boards should emerge from an evaluation of the organization’s goals.

All too often, decisions related to infrastructure are made piecemeal, using criteria unrelated to the needs of recruiting. A common example is selecting an ATS because of the vendor relationships in IT, not because of functionality.

Charan and Bossidy also advise striving “for simplicity in general.” Recruiters and recruiting organizations have a tendency to overly rely on technology and jump on every new fad that comes along because of the hype rather than any known or likely value.

For example, social networking and blogging may work for some people on some occasions, but many have little appreciation of how much effort is required or if the likely payoff justifies it. With blogging, most people don’t have enough interesting things to say on a regular basis to make writing a blog worthwhile, one that candidates would be interested in reading.

For most recruiters, the effort does not justify the value gained, except as an ego-stroking exercise. If the purpose of the blog is to provide candidates a realistic view into the workplace, then it would be the rare organization that has the courage to allow it to be written. Otherwise it would just be the usual drivel put out by most organizations that fools no one. Blogging makes for an interesting conversation and conference topic (how many sessions on employee referral programs and ATS implementations can you attend?) but it’s hardly a solution.

Keeping it simple means knowing what works or is likely to work and using that to maximum benefit. Recruiting success is not a function of how many tools are in use, but of using the right ones appropriately. Using something new just because it’s new is often a distraction that drains energy from other efforts, especially if it has not been preceded by an assessment of the likely benefits.

Putting the Recruit Back in Recruiting

The supply-chain analogy works up to a point for recruiting. Unlike a production process best managed with a just-in-time approach to raw materials, recruiters taking such an approach can only hope for the dregs left over in the talent pool.

With no information advantage, some recruiters are going to have to learn to recruit, perhaps for the first time. That means not expecting much from boards and getting more active. It also requires having a reliable supply. That means maintaining good metrics on sources of talent so you know what will work.

Joel Cheesman and a few other authors have recently written about the struggle that most employers have with leveraging even rudimentary Web functionality, let alone Web 2.0.

The tools and functionality will improve to make this all much easier, but these are just enablers. Without an understanding of what would make them useful (as opposed to just interesting) for candidates the impact they will have on recruiting will be little.

In a blog posting, Kari Quaas discusses the need to simplify processes, communicate with candidates, and use the golden rule: treat your applicants as you would like to be treated.

This is good advice, and it was true long before anyone heard the terms job board or ATS.

We may be in the midst of a recession with increasing unemployment and fewer jobs, but that’s not likely to have much long-term effect on shortages of talent.

We’ve all read about the aging of the population and other demographic factors. The likely effect of these on availability of talent has been extensively written about. But the problems are likely to be worse than we realize because of three factors: liberalization of immigration policies in other countries; more restrictive immigration policies in the U.S.; and supply of talent.

Pick a Card, Any Card

The European Union has just green-lighted the Blue Card. Modeled on the Green Card, the Blue Card (the color of the EU’s flag) will allow skilled foreign workers to work and live, along with their families, anywhere in the EU’s 27 member states.

Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong have implemented similar programs, following the lead of Australia and New Zealand. The goals of all these programs are the same: to attract skilled talent and divert some of the talent that flows to the United States.

Currently, 85% of global unskilled labor goes to the European Union and only 5% to the United States. In contrast, 55% of qualified immigrants head for the United States and only 5% to Europe. With the Blue Card, the EU hopes to reduce the imbalance.

The EU and other countries may well succeed because their criteria for handing out permanent residency permits and work visas are much more liberal than those in the U.S., and the procedures will be simpler. Some allow employers to hand out residency permits along with offer letters.

In the EU, for jobs where a citizen is not available, an immigrant would only need to show a degree and three years of experience. Recognizing the need to attract young talent to Europe, immigrants under age 30 would have even easier requirements in qualifying for Blue Card status.

Setting Out the Unwelcome Mat

Our system of providing work visas and residency permits leaves much to be desired. It can take five to 10 years to get a Green Card and the system heavily favors family ties instead of skills. The process is byzantine, involving multiple government agencies and arcane procedures. The number of annual work visas is still only 85,000 despite clear evidence of a shortage of skilled workers. For example, the unemployment rate in computer- and mathematical-related occupations is about 2.1%, or full employment when allowing for people in transition between jobs. Incredibly, the number of visas was actually lowered from 195,000 in 2004, to a level that existed 15 years ago.

In testimony before Congress, Bill Gates had argued for elimination of the cap on H-1B visas. But in pandering to groups like FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) and other isolationists, the solons in Congress, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen to do little about the problem.

The problem is mostly political. Anti-immigrant groups are opposed to any loosening of immigration standards, though immigrant workers make up barely 3% of the skilled labor force and disproportionately contribute to the economy. A quarter of all Nobel prizes won by Americans have gone to immigrants, and a similar proportion of IT firms were started by Indians and Chinese.

A study by the National Foundation for American Policy found that the average S&P 500 company creates five new domestic jobs for each highly skilled H-1B visa employee it hires. By raising the H-1B cap, Congress would insource jobs, allowing companies to fill vital positions and expand their operations at home instead of moving overseas.

Reductions in Supply

Even if the number of work visas is increased, the supply of talent is already getting diverted from the United States. From 2001 to 2003, applications from foreign students to American universities dropped by 26% while they increased in the United Kingdom (36%), France (30%), and Australia (13%).

A 2005 study by the Pew Hispanic Center revealed that temporary legal visitors (the vast majority are skilled workers and university students) dropped to 185,000 in 2004 from 268,000 in 2000.

There’s also a major increase in departures among skilled workers returning to their homelands. A survey by Duke University found that one in three new immigrants holding high-tech jobs in the U.S. plan to leave. Between 10% to 50% of the R&D staff of Indian and Chinese high-tech firms are returnees. The reasons are not hard to discern; with comparable jobs available at home, workers have lesser incentives to tolerate the long waits and uncertainty in the United States.

What compounds the problem is that the supply of talent is simply not adequate to keep up with demand, here or anywhere. The U.S. produces the highest number of engineers per million residents of any country in the world, but that’s only about 137,000 engineers with bachelors’ degrees every year.

Supply from elsewhere is not sufficient to meet all the demand. In 2005, Fortune magazine estimated that China was producing some 600,000 engineers and India 350,000 annually.

These numbers have turned out to be a fantasy. A report by the McKinsey Global Institute said more than half of those “engineers” would be no more than technicians in the United States.

The actual numbers are more like 351,000 for China and 112,000 for India. And that’s not likely to increase much, as it takes decades for a top-flight academic institution to get established and start producing quality talent. The Indian Institutes of Technology, considered among the best in the world, can only produce 5,500 graduates every year, more than 50 years after its inception.

The Future

There are some glimmers of hope. Representatives Gabrielle Giffords (D?AZ) and Lamar Smith (R?TX) have introduced bills raising the cap for H-1B visas. These are the Strengthen United States Technology and Innovation Now (SUSTAIN) Act and the Innovation Employment Act.

The SUSTAIN Act would temporarily raise the cap to 195,000 for FY 2008 and FY 2009, while the Innovation Employment Act would initially raise the cap to 130,000 and allow the cap to increase the following year if it is reached.

Raising the cap is necessary, but more should be done to make H-1B visas flexible. Their number should reflect the economy’s need for high-tech workers, not arbitrary limits set by Congress.

In general, Congress’ record on improving the situation is not encouraging. The last attempt to reform immigration, the Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy (STRIVE) America Act, adopted the worst features of other countries’ immigration programs. It would have been better called the Stop Companies Recruiting Effective Workers (you can figure out the acronym for yourself) America Act. Thankfully, it did not pass.

But prospects for recruiting are not good. The EU hopes to attract 20 million skilled workers over the next two decades as a result of the Blue Card program. That may be overly optimistic but it will undoubtedly impact the flow of talent to the United States. How much is anyone’s guess.

Without drastic action, the gap between demand and supply will continue to widen. Recruiting will only get much, much harder. If there’s a bright side to this, it’s job security for recruiters.

Innovations in recruiting have been occurring for over several millennia. I recently wrote about some in an earlier article about the Roman army. The Romans were by no means alone. Other societies (the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Chinese) also contributed to the developing recruiting practices, some of which are still with us today.

These practices almost invariably developed to support the recruitment of soldiers, since the army was the only formal organization of any size and consequence. These societies faced many of the same problems we have today: a shortage of talent, laws, and regulations that attempted to benefit one group over another, and the need to have a reliable mechanism for keeping their armies at the level of readiness they needed to achieve their goals.

As a consequence, they also developed practices around compensation, evaluation, and sourcing, to enhance the effectiveness of their recruiting efforts.

My earlier article on this subject was not meant to be the start of a series. The title was borrowed from the Mel Brooks movie History of the World, Part I. Apparently, hardly anyone picked up on that. I did receive a deluge of email from ERE readers who asked for a follow-up piece, and so I decided to write one.

Ancient Egypt

Formal recruitment practices existed as far back as 2686 B.C. in Egypt during the period known as the Old Kingdom. There existed a system for recruiting a militia from the nomes (tribes) and there were officials responsible for training and for logistics, which already displayed a high level of organization. By 1550 B.C., the period known as the New Kingdom, recruiting had become part of the formal duties of the king.

An inscription from the reign of Amenemhat II from Memphis (in Egypt, not Tennessee) included the requirement that the king was responsible for recruiting manpower for the kingdom’s needs. This required the Pharaoh to ensure that there were enough men of appropriate talent for an expedition to destroy Syria and other enemies.

Formal recruitment had become a necessity because the system of the tribes providing soldiers was unreliable in terms of both quantity and quality of talent.

Ancient Greece

The Greeks had huge needs for recruitment for their armies. The Hellenistic states were small, with small populations, and frequently at war. They relied heavily on mercenaries, which had to be recruited from elsewhere. By 35 A.D. large numbers of non-Greeks were being hired as soldiers.

Two types of recruitment were common in this period. It was either carried out by recruiting agents or through diplomatic channels and interstate treaties that included clauses allowing citizens to serve as troops for the contracting parties. These mercenaries were well-paid, and usually only hired for nine- or 10-month contracts.

The Greeks limited the term of the contracts of mercenaries because they did not want non-citizens getting too deeply involved in their society. It was the first guest worker program. But reality proved otherwise. Mercenaries were just that, mercenary?hired guns. Their loyalty was questionable, readily undermined by more lucrative offers. Integrating them into the regular army without proper training limited their effectiveness. There was a constant need to acculturate and train them, which was expensive given their short tenure. This ultimately forced a situation where these “temps” were more or less permanently domiciled within a state and given grants of land to keep them there. It was a way of securing a supply of troops and linking them to their employers.

Recruitment was a serious business. For many of the Greek states, their survival, and the lives of their citizens, literally depended on it. In one instance, in 318 A.D, Eumenes of Cardia, being faced with an advancing enemy, sent out a force of recruiters with large sums of money to hire soldiers from surrounding states.

To ensure the success of this effort, much publicity was given to the high pay offered and particular groups were targeted to hear about it. One recruiter went to Crete, because the population on that island was isolated and poorer. In a short time they had recruited over 2,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry.

Part of the reason the Greeks were short of soldiers was because of some restrictive laws and unusual practices. Laws in some cases limited much of the citizenry to working in only police roles. One of the more interesting practices was the requirement in ancient Sparta for a soldier to have an older male lover as his mentor! He was even fined if the older lover was not a reputable sort. Plato had made the case for this in his Dialogues that the best army of all would be made up of pairs of male lovers who “…when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world.” Apparently the policy in the Spartan army was “do ask, do tell.”

China

The contribution of the Chinese to recruiting was the development of formal employment testing. The Chinese had introduced a system of examinations for entry to the civil service as early as the seventh century A.D., but it was used to only hire a very small number of civil servants, and then only from the aristocracy. Starting in the 10th century, during the Sung dynasty the system was expanded to fill most positions and to recruit commoners.

The tests were long. First a candidate had to take the regional examination. It was closely proctored, recopied, assigned a number, and then graded. Only a very small number of candidates passed. Next came the metropolitan exam, taken at the capital city, which was also closely proctored, recopied, assigned a number, and graded. About 15% to 20% of the candidates passed this second exam (around 200 per year).

The exam was based entirely on the Confucian Classics. The candidates had to memorize the Five Classics, interpret passages, master their literary style, and use Confucian philosophy to interpret the Classics and construct political advice. The tests were so rigorous that the candidates who passed represented the very best minds in the country.

Statistically, it would be far easier for a person to be admitted into Harvard than it would be to pass the civil service exam in ancient China. The government bureaucracy represented the top one percent of the top one percent of the population in terms of talent, education, intelligence, and, above all, ethical training. Contrast that with what government bureaucracies are today, anywhere in the world. We’ve come a long way.

Conclusion

In researching this article, it has been interesting to learn how ancient societies developed recruiting practices. The reasons for these were not always the right ones, and in some cases, the effects were not positive. For example, a lot of labor law developed in response to problems with recruiting.

During the Middle Ages, shortages of talent and the problems with finding qualified workers gave rise to the first employment laws. The Black Death had ravaged Europe, with some countries losing as much as half their populations. This caused massive shortages of labor, and the survivors found they could charge a premium for their work and choose what to accept.

The result was the creation of the first labor law in 1350 that set wages and restricted mobility. Touted as a way to maintain stability, it was nothing but an attempt to reduce competition for talent and keep the working class in its place. Europe is still dealing with the legacy of that law seven centuries later.

Still, much of what occurred in recruiting was of positive value. It’s humbling to think that centuries ago, recruiters were doing what we do today. The next time you have a difficult recruiting assignment, think of that recruiter setting off across the Mediterranean to recruit soldiers on Crete, sending out town criers ahead of him to drum up interest. We have it easy.

The election this year is considered a watershed event in American politics. We have, at this time, three individuals who have a good shot at becoming president. While there are plenty of reports on who will best serve what groups’ needs, it would be instructive to look at who would be of most benefit to the recruiting profession.

To make this assessment as objective as possible, three criteria that affect recruiting will be used to compare the candidates: immigration, since it impacts the availability of labor; supporting a climate conducive to business, since business is the primary source of employment; and legislation that impacts employment, either making it easier or more difficult to hire an employee. Everything written here is taken from the candidate’s publicly stated position, his or her voting records, or information in the public domain.

Immigration

John McCain: The senator from Arizona has long supported immigration reform. He was the sponsor of the immigration Reform Bill of 2006. Had it been enacted, the bill would have made hiring immigrant workers easier, including a guest-worker program for temporary labor. On the campaign trail, he has adopted a less strident tone, but overall his support for reform remains firm. Rating: A-

Barack Obama: On immigration, Senator Obama’s positions mirror those of Senator McCain. His support for reform and a guest-worker program has been unwavering. But, he did vote to support a reduction in the number of guest workers who could be admitted, had the Immigration Reform Bill of 2006 passed. Rating: A-

Hillary Clinton: The junior senator from New York has a mixed record on immigration. She has strongly supported immigration reform, including a path to legalization for illegal aliens. She is the sponsor of the Civil Rights Act of 2008, which, among other things, would allow illegal aliens to collect back pay. Crucially though, she has not supported a temporary-worker program, which would address much of the labor shortages that lead to the demand for immigrant labor, especially in agriculture and construction. She, too, voted to reduce the number of visas that would have been available in a guest-worker program. Rating: B-

Support for Business

John McCain: The senator has an unremarkable record concerning business. He has supported programs targeted at enhancing competitiveness but, by his own admission, his understanding of economics is limited. For example, blaming pharmaceutical companies for high prices reflects a lack of understanding of the mechanics of a capitalist economy. On the plus side, he has been an advocate for free trade and open markets. Rating: B

Barack Obama: The senator from Illinois has not been around long enough to establish much of a record, so any conclusions on his support for business have to be drawn from his stated agenda. His positions are a mix of good and bad. He supports programs for job creation, investing in high-tech manufacturing, tax credits for research and development, and widespread deployment of broadband. On the negative side, he supports maintaining the openness of the Internet on the principle that network providers should not be allowed to charge fees to privilege the content or applications of some websites and Internet applications over others. He fails to recognize that allowing this would negate the need for the government subsidies he proposes to use to increase access. He also wants to expand FMLA to cover employers with 25 employees or more (down from the current 50) and make it paid leave. However well intentioned, this creates an extra burden to smaller employers that are responsible for almost 60% of all jobs. Laws like this are only a deterrent to employment. Rating: B-

Hillary Clinton: The senator has received considerable support from business, including over $12 million in contributions, mostly from larger companies. She does support programs that can foster a better climate for business. Her innovation agenda would provide billions for research on energy alternatives, funding for awards promoting technology innovation, and tax cuts for research and development. She also wants to fund incentives for students to enter math and sciences programs. While this is all good, the programs she supports are very narrowly focused and would do little to benefit small businesses which, as mentioned above, are the main creators of jobs. Also, technology is not the only type of innovation. McKinsey estimates that half of all productivity growth since 1995 has come from innovation in business processes, such as hyper-efficient supply chains, led by Wal-Mart. This kind of innovation was not even considered by most companies, and definitely not by the government, until it occurred. Rating: B+

Employment-Related Legislation

John McCain: The decorated veteran has had very limited involvement in employment-related legislation. The only clear example was his no-vote against the points-based immigration system that would have admitted workers based on a government-created formula. Rating: Not Rated

Barack Obama: Mr. Obama has some admirable qualities, but apparently an understanding of labor economics is not among them, as evidenced by his sponsorship of the Fair Pay Act. This bill has the laudable goal of ensuring that supposedly male-dominated occupations are not paid more than female-dominated ones. Should this bill become law, it would require employers to determine compensation based on assessments of social utility, not market demand. So, it could become necessary to ensure that nurses are not paid less than software engineers. Enforcement would be managed by the Labor Department that would set wage scales. This is how it was done in the Soviet Union. Even the Chinese abandoned such ideas decades ago. Rating: D

Hillary Clinton: When it comes to legislation that affects employment, the former partner of the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock appears to be mainly focused on legislation that can supplement her former colleagues’ incomes.

The Civil Rights Act of 2008, mentioned above, would eliminate existing damage caps on lawsuits brought under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act and add compensatory and punitive damages to the Fair Labor Standards Act. This bill would also make it easier to bring and win “disparate impact” lawsuits where discrimination in employment is alleged. Just being able to show a statistical discrepancy would be enough to claim and win a discrimination lawsuit. There would be no need to show that an employer’s hiring criteria are discriminatorily applied or used with discriminatory intent. This overturns several court rulings that have deemed statistical discrepancies to be insufficient proof of discrimination. The results of this legislation passing are obvious (as are the motivations behind it): It would force employers to abandon perfectly legitimate hiring criteria and also make them more vulnerable to litigation. More than likely, employers will respond by creating unique titles and apparently different jobs or, worse, creating quotas to avoid the possibility of ending up with a statistical discrepancy.

Mrs. Clinton is the sponsor of The Paycheck Fairness Act (similar to the Fair Pay Act) which would do almost exactly what the Fair Pay Act does. Apparently “35 years of experience” have been insufficient for the senator to understand that tinkering with a free market rarely works. Rating: F

Senators Clinton and Obama are the sponsors of the Fair Pay Restoration Act which, if passed, would eliminate any statute of limitations in many employment-discrimination cases. Your employer could be defending employment decisions from 30 years ago.

Conclusion

Lyndon Johnson once said that the bar to run for office was not very high. It only required that a person not be a convicted criminal or certified insane. While the current crop of candidates is certainly far above that, that they do prove that there’s no perfect candidate. The record is decidedly mixed and whatever intentions someone may have today may well flounder on the rocks of Congress. You can reach your own conclusions about who would make a good president. Perhaps you already have.

There are lots of jobs to fill; not enough candidates, and many are poorly qualified; arcane laws around hiring; and fierce competition for talent. Sound familiar? You could be a recruiter for the Roman army in the 4th century B.C.

In the collections of the British Museum, there is a decree signed by Julius Caesar in 55 B.C., promising a reward of 300 sestertii to any soldier who brought another to join the Roman army. This is the first known example of an employee-referral program. And, it’s a generous one at that: The amount represented a third of a soldier’s annual pay. It reflected how serious the Romans were about finding soldiers. They had the first known recruiters and faced many of the same challenges we have today.

Keeping this huge organization staffed up was no small task, since wars were common, turnover was high, and there was a constant need for soldiers and other personnel. In addition to soldiers, the army needed engineers, medical staff, surveyors, carpenters, veterinaries, hunters, and armorers, even soothsayers. As a consequence, the Romans created many of the practices we have today to get the best talent.

Finding soldiers was no easy task, as the Romans had high standards, were saddled with many arcane requirements in hiring, and had plenty of competition for talent. Anyone joining the army had to be a Roman citizen; capable of marching 18 miles while wearing the full uniform, armor, and weapons; and carry 60 pounds of supplies. Despite good pay and bonuses, the somewhat hazardous work environment meant that people did not flock to the army. So, sourcers traveled the length and breadth of the Empire to find suitable candidates.

But laws imposed by the Roman Senate made this task more complicated. A citizen could not just be hired into any position. Roman society was divided into five classes that determined where one could work in the army. The most wealthy, the first class, were the most heavily armed and were equipped with helmets and armor. They carried spears and swords. The lower classes bore lesser armament and weaponry; the fifth class carried no armor at all and was solely armed with slings. Needless to say, they didn’t see much action and their accomplishments were not the stuff of legends. They did perform the vital service of digging latrines, but that didn’t usually lead to being covered in glory. Something else maybe, but definitely not glory.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Following some major defeats to the Gauls (the only known record of the French winning a war unaided, and then they were fighting Italians) and increasing competition for employees as more of the upper classes preferred to work in business or other occupations, the Romans abandoned the class structure for recruitment. Soldiers could be any citizens who were fit and willing to fight. There were also special inducements for experienced soldiers, i.e., veterans.

But this was not enough to meet the needs of the army. Facing difficulties in their wars against enemies like Carthage, the Romans started accepting non-citizens into the army. Since the original purpose of this was to get soldiers for the first war against Hannibal the Barbarian, it became known as the H1-B program. Legions had to demonstrate that candidates met the requirements of being a soldier, were paid the prevailing wage, and no Roman citizens were available to serve. Most who survived the campaign against Hannibal stayed on to become citizens after completing a course in Latin.

Compensation

Since the work had the potential to lower an individual’s life expectancy or quality of life (losing one or more limbs was a common occurrence), pay had to be good to attract the best candidates. Soldiers earned 10-12 pieces of gold per year. Benefits of working for the army included substantial grants of cash or land upon discharge, worth as much as 200 pieces of gold, which was a really good deal and represented 15 years of pay for soldiers who, on average, served about 20.

The Romans certainly knew the value of deferred compensation. Many soldiers also received sign-on bonuses of a few pieces of gold and also a share of the loot from any successful campaign. Even failed campaigns were rewarded. Caligula, after his abortive invasion of Britain, gave all legionaries four gold pieces as a retention bonus.

The Employment Brand

Money and rewards were not enough to get people to join up. So, the army aggressively promoted its symbols, in particular a golden eagle above the letters SPQR, the abbreviation for “the Senate and the Roman People,” signifying that soldiers served these two groups. The Roman army’s symbols were held in awe and represented Roman honor, the recovery of which the Empire itself would go to war for (or so it was claimed). As part of joining the army, a soldier “received the mark,” most likely by tattooing (a benefit available to employees of Nike and Harley-Davidson today). This supposedly meant that a soldier had become part of an elite group. A secondary, though not minor, benefit was that it prevented desertions since deserters could be easily identified.

Temporary Staffing

It was not always possible to obtain the required skills from available candidates or from within the circle of accepted allies, and so the Romans found it necessary to hire mercenaries. Germans, Arabs, Armenians, Persians, and Moors were all hired to help with campaigns to the point at which they often exceeded the Roman legions. All the non-Roman forces, whatever their status, became known as auxilia, or aids to citizen legionaries. They were only supposed to be used to bolster the regular army for short-term needs, but as Rome extended her influence over more and more countries and was perpetually at war, these auxilia in effect became regular soldiers.

Rome found itself making demands on its forces and called an increasing number of different kinds of auxilia into her armies. One reward for being an auxiliary was Roman citizenship. Then, like now, there was not a standardized approach and not every group or tribe was treated alike.

Best Practices

For a long time, all hiring for the army was directed from Rome at the direction of the Consul or leader of the Senate. Provincial governors and commanders in the field had no authority to recruit anyone.

That changed around 50 B.C., when they were allowed to hire locally. Giving the “hiring managers” the authority to pick their own employees made recruitment faster and more efficient, and also made them more responsible for their own successes or failures. Loyalty of the soldiery was transferred from Rome itself to its commanders, the men who could provide them with the loot. This made the army more effective, since the soldiers had been chosen for the tasks their commanders were entrusted with and without regard to consideration for rules imposed by bureaucrats in Rome.

Conclusion

Two thousand years later, how little things have changed. We’re still dealing with the same problems in more or less the same way. There are lessons here. The most significant is that recruitment practices were developed and changed to meet the Empire’s needs for human capital. How little of our own laws support that. They are rooted in conditions and practices that, while not entirely having disappeared, are no longer as relevant today as they were when those laws were enacted.

Successful recruitment is a complex task. It requires knowledge of sources, creativity, and a willingness to make the changes necessary. How many organizations saddle their recruiters with requirements that have little to do with the companies’ purposes and goals? Hiring managers in the field are often supported by a recruitment team in a distant corporate office that has little appreciation of the conditions they face. Employee-referral bonuses are miserly and are doled out with all sorts of preconditions. The biggest changes we have seen in recruitment have been in technology, but not fundamentally in how we recruit.

Yet, for all the innovations in Applicant Tracking Systems, job boards, etc., we’re no better off than Caesar was in 50 B.C. Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them.

As practiced today, diversity is chiefly about improving the ratios of gender and race among applicants and hires. In a recent article, I discussed that while this may appear to be a worthwhile goal, the evidence from multiple studies demonstrates that this limited view of diversity is actually counterproductive. Instead of delivering any significant business benefits, employers experience mostly negative effects, such as higher turnover.

Achieving a net positive from diversity requires a strong emphasis on assimilation. An organization must actively work at ensuring that all candidates come to accept and share its values, mission, and purpose. If diversity recruiting is to be effective, it needs to be done differently.

The Hood Ornament

Diversity programs exist to advance the acceptance of minorities in organizations while providing those organizations with higher productivity, innovation, and a host of other benefits. But we already have affirmative action to cover the former, and there’s no evidence that any of the latter actually occurs. This does not mean that diversity is a bad idea, but that there’s no proof that it’s a good one.

The business case for diversity is very weak. No evidence exists to show that organizations that embrace diversity, as currently defined, perform better than those that don’t. The goal of diversity (i.e., hiring more women and “people of color”) is worthwhile only if one assumes that not enough are being hired in the first place and that it’s needed to counteract the effects of discrimination. But preventing discrimination is why we have laws that explicitly address it.

Some make the case that it’s important that an organization’s workforce reflects its customer base. But this is rarely relevant. Customers don’t make buying decisions based on the composition of the workforce of those providing them with goods and services. Can you imagine patients traveling to the Mayo Clinic because of its diversity instead of its expertise? For that matter, would anyone refuse to be treated at a hospital where the workforce was not representative of them? Customers usually have no way of knowing this. Product labels do not mention the composition of the workforce, and even when people do know, they don’t care. A lot of products sold in the United States are produced by workforces that are 100% Chinese, but that doesn’t hurt sales.

If this argument had any substance, we wouldn’t be seeing the continual increase in outsourcing of services to India. The composition of the sales force may be relevant to the customer base of large retail stores; but, the staff in such stores generally does reflect the customer base because most employees live within a few miles of the workplace, as do the shoppers.

Diversity is like an expensive hood ornament, out there for everyone to admire but serving no practical purpose. This is why so many organizations are not sold on diversity and do little more than pay lip service to its goals. Much of the reason for this is because the diversity movement has promoted it as a cause that should be taken on faith as a good thing, not to be questioned. It’s hard to take this seriously when the goals appear to be nothing more than diversity for its own sake. A recent article on a prominent diversity website mentions that companies should keep a watchful eye on managers that don’t care about getting diversity awards. Why that will help an organization do better at achieving its objectives is anyone’s guess.

This example is a perfect illustration of the problems that the diversity movement has created. Not embracing diversity is the equivalent of opposing it, with appropriate consequences for those who don’t. It would make more sense to find out if those who do collect such awards perform better than those who don’t. So, instead of a solid business case for advancing a social cause, we have fearmongering. No wonder that most companies do just enough to stay off the radar of such self-appointed watchdogs.

Improving Diversity Recruitment

If we’re serious about diversity, then we need to focus on what will make diversity programs and recruiting more effective. The research evidence shows that for diversity to work, assimilation is critical. That is, the workforce must be aligned with the values of the organization. Writing in “Good to Great,” Jim Collins makes the case that companies that do not hire people that share their values are not likely to succeed. Collins also writes that companies need a set of core values in order to achieve the kind of long-term, sustainable success that may lead to greatness. The leap from good to great occurs when employees are equally dedicated to the same set of values.

Recruiting processes should include a values assessment using a standard inventory such as the Lennick Aberman or others. The extent to which alignment with values should influence a hiring decision should depend on the impact the job has on the organization and the likely tenure of the incumbent. A major gap between a candidate’s and the employer’s values should be a reason to consider if the candidate could realistically achieve the results expected of him in a manner acceptable to the organization. At a minimum, there should be a discussion of values as part of the hiring process.

Metrics should also measure the extent to which candidates and hires share the organization’s values. Starting with the recruiting process, employees should be apprised of the organization’s values. This is rarely done in a meaningful way, and it is certainly not a component of diversity programs. Assimilation does not mean that individual employees need to lose their identities, but it does mean that they need to accept and support their employer’s purpose and values. Obviously, this is easier if an employee’s values do not conflict with those of the employer.

Diversity recruiting should be part of an overall program designed to ensure that an employer’s core values are supported by the workforce. If diversity recruiting just continues to be about improving the proportion of minorities in the applicant pool instead of selecting those aligned with values, then it’s not likely that employers will move beyond paying lip service to the concept.

Conclusion

Whatever happened to not being judged by the color of your skin but by the content of your character? Diversity programs turn that one on its head.

Defining diversity in terms of race and gender trivializes the concept. Diversity certainly has value in an organization in which different points of view and experiences can generate new ideas, challenge old ones, and provide a richer experience for all, but there is no logical reason to limit that to race and gender. If we continue with this, then let’s add a category to diversity recruiting for people weighing over 300 pounds (people of weight). That makes about as much sense.

As I mentioned above, since we already have EEO and AA, what value does diversity provide as currently defined? If the laws don’t work, then diversity isn’t going to do much to help. If they do work, then what is the point of race- and gender-based diversity?

I received a lot of e-mail after my last article, some of it very supportive and some highly critical, including some rather colorful remarks of a personal nature. Apparently, when it comes to diversity, a diversity of viewpoints is not welcome.

Interestingly, none of those that chose to dispute what I wrote provided a shred of evidence in support of their arguments other than to make rhetorical and morally posturing statements while claiming that any studies cited must be biased. I would wager that none of the people who opposed them have read the studies.

I am not opposed to diversity, but I don’t see it working as it exists today, which is a huge disservice to all concerned. If this particular emperor has no clothes, then he deserves to be called out. As a recruiting professional, I’d like to see diversity recruiting deliver results that matter. If it’s a program that many would like to support, then let’s do what it takes to make it genuinely effective.

Marvin Smith, project manager for Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, co-wrote this article.

Diversity is a subject of great importance to recruiters. Most organizations have some stated diversity goals. Larger employers have director-level positions and even entire departments devoted to the goal of increasing diversity. Corporations are estimated to spend over $8 billion annually on diversity programs. This all has a purpose, presumably that more diversity is better.

The theoretical “business case for diversity” is that in a global and racially or ethnically diverse marketplace, a marketer that employs a racially or ethnically diverse workforce is better able to understand the demographics of the marketplace it serves and is thus better equipped to thrive in that marketplace than a company whose employee demographics do not match their market’s.

Sounds good. So recruiters must strive to create a diverse pool of candidates and deliver the same to their employers.

Now comes a study that establishes that efforts to improve diversity, instead of delivering the purported benefits, manage to accomplish quite the opposite. The study, by Robert Putnam of Harvard, establishes that people in ethnically diverse settings aren’t drawn together, much less work better. Across workgroups in the United States, as well as in Europe, diversity (in terms of ethnicity, age, and other factors) is generally associated with lower group cohesion, lower satisfaction, and higher turnover.

This is consistent with observed facts. There is precious little proof that all the resources and effort devoted to improving diversity does anything more than give some people a warm glow and diversity trainers a paycheck. Hard evidence that diversity produces a wonderland from which flow creativity, innovation, and all sorts of other good things, is not there.

An Expensive Distraction

The case for diversity has never been strong. First, unless an employer engages in active discrimination, its workforce should automatically be diverse, given that the population is diverse. So a diversity program is basically a stand-in for affirmative action.

Affirmative action, at least, is based on legislation with a clearly stated purpose of redressing discrimination, but diversity appears to be built on a foundation of nothing more than good intentions, lacking a clear end goal. Wikipedia mentions that “no objective research support has ever been found for the ‘diversity business case.’” The Putnam study expands on an earlier study by Thomas Kochan of MIT that found no positive effects of gender or racial diversity on business performance.

The trouble with programs driven by good intentions is that they tend to cause facts to be given short shrift. What is the rationale that leads to the conclusion that having a workforce that is racially or ethnically diverse automatically creates more innovation or productivity? Logic would suggest that should be a function of the skills the workforce possesses. We aren’t exactly short of assessments to measure skills, so why use race and gender as a proxy for these?

Advocates of diversity claim that a workforce represents more than just skills, but also includes the sum total of their experiences, which are more likely to be diverse when the members of the workforce are diverse. That may be true if there was any proof for this claim, and then it would only have relevance if the experiences are somehow able to impact the results that an organization expects of its workforce.

More important, this only matters if the organization is in a position to take advantage of the diverse experiences of its workforce. It might well be the case that a racially or ethnically diverse workforce is better than one that isn’t, but without proof, how can anyone know? In the absence of facts to support the benefits of the program, diversity is little more than an expensive distraction for recruiters.

Diversity metrics are not much use either. They are primarily process metrics that focus on items like the proportion of candidate pools that are diverse and how well an organization has met its diversity goals in terms of recruitment, promotion, and turnover.

Redefining Diversity to Deliver Value

Diversity programs will not be abandoned as a consequence of the Putnam study. It would be the rare head of HR who has the courage to do so. Questioning the benefits of programs like diversity (which is really more of a cause) is generally not well-received.

Like with most good causes, calling them into question is typically interpreted to mean that the challenger is opposed to them. In the case of diversity, one risks being labeled as ignorant and narrow-minded at best or bigoted and implicitly racist at worst.

A critic of the Kochan study said the conclusions could only have been reached if those doing the study were not diverse (which was not true) since the results “defied logic.” No evidence to refute the results was offered.

These studies are not poorly conducted efforts with weak results; the Kochan and Putnam studies build on earlier studies and are the results of years of effort and draw on vast amounts of data.

Challenging a position is not the same as opposing it. If diversity is an organizational goal, then organizations should do what it takes to make diversity programs effective (i.e., deliver value). The first step should be to recognize what value diversity can deliver.

It’s a great vehicle for building trust between people. Trust is a necessary precondition for people to work effectively together. That is a desired business outcome. For organizations that are global, because of where they do business, diversity can help foster a greater understanding of other cultures and that in turn can promote trust.

This is not a contradiction of what was written above. A diversity program must have building trust as its focus, not some meaningless goal of building a diverse workforce for its own sake. How can this be accomplished? The Putnam study suggests that for a diverse group to be more cohesive requires assimilation. The group must have fewer differences and more in common with each other. It must become less diverse in terms of its values, purpose, and goals. That’s a tough pill to swallow; the core of most diversity programs has been the promotion of differences and the necessity of accepting them.

Some organizations have managed to do so. The Army is one such example. Admittedly, the Army is different in many respects from other employers, but much of the success of diversity in the Army has to do with an emphasis on shared identities and clarity of purpose. Contrast that with the typical company where it’s estimated that fewer than 5% of employees even know the mission statement (quick: what is your employer’s mission statement?).

Having a diverse workforce can also make it easier to recruit talent that is increasingly drawn from a diverse, global pool. A diverse organization is more attractive to potential employees. This has the value of addressing a real economic problem (limited supply), not a social one. But for the full value to be realized, the program must include a dedicated and focused effort at assimilation.

The evidence is overwhelming that promoting diversity without emphasizing assimilation is counterproductive. The Putnam study includes another interesting example. During the Civil War, the Union Army noted that among its units the greater the diversity (in terms of age, hometown, occupation, etc.), the higher was the desertion rate, that is, turnover. Given that the risks of punishment for desertion were very low and the casualty rate was very high, the only powerful force preventing desertion was loyalty to one’s fellow soldiers.

This fits well with present-day research by Gallup that shows that organizations where the proportion of employees who have a close friend at work correlates negatively with the level of turnover. That is, the higher the proportion of employees who have a close friend at their place of work, the lower the turnover for the employer.

What has this to do with diversity? The majority of a person’s friends tend to be from within their own racial or ethnic group. The exception to this is the Army, where the average soldier has many closer interracial friendships than the average civilian of the same age and social class. Clearly, shared purpose and identity are a factor in making diversity work. That doesn’t happen on its own. It requires an organization to dedicate itself to the goal of getting a diverse workforce to share and accept its values and purpose.

This does not mean employees need to be clones of some corporate ideal, but that they share the employer’s goals and not elevate their differences above it. It also means that employers also need to expand the definition of diversity to include people who have diverse viewpoints and experiences, regardless of race and ethnicity.

Sticking to a definition of diversity that is limited to demographics only betrays a lack of understanding of what being diverse means. The result of diversity should be different decisions that could change outcomes of business decisions. Diversity can result in better business decisions.

What Works

Diversity programs can deliver some value, but the programs need to adopt a different perspective and goals and explicitly recognize that without a focus on assimilation, they cannot succeed. Despite all that spending on diversity programs, the number of racial harassment cases filed with the EEOC has increased by 500% in the last decade. Given the weight of the evidence, employers would do best to rethink diversity and expanding the scope of the programs beyond just improving the recruitment numbers.

For recruiters, it means changing diversity recruiting to include some screening of applicants to assess whether they either share the identity and purpose of the workgroup they will join or demonstrate a willingness to do so.

The prescription for making diversity work has been known for a long time. E Pluribus Unum can apply to companies as well. The author wasn’t referring to employers but certainly had diversity on his mind.

When it comes to talent, you and your company have your own ideas about identifying the most valuable employees. That’s the way it should be, since your company’s need for talent depends on its strategy and circumstances. So it stands to reason that your company is in the best position to decide what talent is needed and when.

Now along comes the proposed immigration bill that, if it becomes law, will make that determination for many employers. This bill should be of concern to all those in the recruiting profession, especially those of you recruiting for advanced skills. Here’s why.

The bill’s key provision is a proposed points-based system for awarding work-related visas. A visa applicant would be evaluated on a 100-point scale, with about 50% based on employment criteria, 25% on education, 15% on English proficiency, and 10% on family connections. Minimum qualification: 55 points.

The bill proponents claim the current system gives the most weight to families and relatives and doesn’t do enough to bring in much-needed skilled professionals. This may sound like a good idea in theory, since it would favor people with more critical skills. But on closer inspection it appears that not all is as it seems.

An analysis by the Los Angeles Times showed that the proposed system can produce some rather odd results. For instance, an unskilled, illegal alien can score 21 points with three years of agriculture experience, while a legal skilled immigrant with an MBA, MD, or graduate degree gets only 20 points. Regulation of the points system would be managed by the federal government.

What this essentially means is that bureaucrats would determine what skills are important to business and industry, rather than the employers and, of course, you. So if your company wants employees who do not pass the points test, well, tough. The message from the bill sponsors to employers is: “Trust us, we know what’s best for you.”

Other countries’ experiences with a similar approach have been far from positive. Canada implemented a similar system in 1967. Under that system, a person did not need to have a job offer but just meet the requisite number of points (67). Points are awarded for meeting criteria in categories such as education, work experience, occupation, language ability, and age. Bonus points can be earned for “adaptability.” That is, if the applicant’s spouse is highly educated, or if the person has a relative in the country. (See if you qualify to become a Canadian).

Australia and Britain have similar systems. The limitation of this approach for awarding work permits is that it doesn’t allow for people with unconventional skills or those who might be highly skilled but lacking in professional qualifications. Under the Canadian system, Bill Gates would not qualify for immigration to Canada because he lacks a degree.

I suppose he could just buy the place if he really wanted to. Of course, if Bill really wanted to be a subject of the Queen, then someone in Ottawa would find a way to bend the rules to make it happen, regardless of what the points system allows for. Much the same would likely happen here, as was done for Rupert Murdoch.

Worse yet, these systems create huge backlogs of people wanting to immigrate but without jobs waiting for them. That is, employers are not necessarily looking for the skills they possess. If the system worked in matching people’s skills with jobs, then there would be no backlog.

Under the proposed U.S. bill, and with bureaucrats running the show, it is highly unlikely that the system will keep up with skills in demand. Given Congress’ propensity for being slow to act (immigration laws change on average every 15 to 20 years), we could also be stuck with a system that was antiquated before it even started.

The new approach would also perpetuate the games that are played with the current one when it comes to getting work permits. Anyone who has applied for an H1-B visa knows that it’s basically an exercise in creative writing. The applicant, or his lawyer, needs to convince the Labor Department that he holds a unique set of qualifications. So a job description is created that ensures that no one but the applicant is qualified for it.

The agencies certifying the applications have neither the resources nor the capabilities to verify or challenge them beyond checking educational credentials. And no one ever verifies that the person receiving a work visa actually does the work their application specified they would do. As many employers know, one of the surest predictors of turnover is the date an employee receives a green card. So if the new bill becomes law, immigration lawyers will just have to find creative ways to get over the points hurdle.

The current immigration bill should be of concern to all those in the recruiting profession, especially those recruiting for advanced skills. The shortage of skilled workers will continue into the indefinite future. A solution is needed beyond what exists today, but this is not it.

The current process is far from perfect, but this bill would just make a bad situation worse.

For anything to have value it needs to be measurable. In fact, in scientific circles it’s an article of faith that if you can’t measure something, it doesn’t exist. So the time it takes an electron to orbit an atom is precisely known in yoctoseconds (one quadrillionth of a second).

We’re a little short of that level of precision when it comes to measuring the value of talent. Knowing the value of talent in an organization can have major benefits. For one, it would let the organization know how much better (or worse) off it is than its competitors. It would also help focus recruiting efforts where they generate the most return on investment.

None of this should be news to anyone who reads ERE, but the problem has no easy solutions. That’s partly because it’s hard to define the parameters. Just what constitutes talent? Is it every employee in an organization, or just a few, and if so, which ones?

What about the context? Is an accountant who works for a company with 20 employees the same value as one who works for a company with 10,000 employees? Are the employees in a company that is growing worth more than in a company that is in decline?

In an earlier article I had written that the value of talent could be measured in terms of profit-per-employee. That has merit but is obviously useful only as a global measure. For the concept to be more useful, there’s also a need to be able to measure specific types of talent in an organization and address the types of questions mentioned above.

Evaluating Key Talent

Measuring the value of certain types of talent is easier than others. Talent that has highly visible contributions is the easiest. It was recently reported that the Yankees had hired Roger Clemens at a price that amounted to about $1 million per game. Clemens will cost the Yankees $26.1 million this year ($18.7 million in salary plus a $7.5 million tax the team will pay Major League Baseball for exceeding the salary cap).

An analysis by sports analyst Vince Gennaro shows that Clemens will likely add six wins to the team. Those six wins, if they occur, would catapult the Yankees from a projected 90 wins to 96. Based on MLB history, a 90-win team has just a 31% chance of going to the post-season while a 96-win team has an 81% shot. So adding Clemens to the roster boosts the Yankees’ chance of making it to the post-season by 50%.

For the Yankees, this has two benefits. First, increased revenue from ticket sales, concessions, television ratings, sponsorships, and postseason revenue. Those are estimated to be about $24 million or $2 million less than the cost of hiring Clemens.

Second, the significantly higher likelihood of post-season play will mean that the team can charge higher ticket prices in their new stadium opening in 2009. In total, the payoff for signing Clemens can far exceed the cost of signing him.

The same type of analysis can be applied to key talent in an organization. The definition of key talent can differ, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll limit it to C-level executives. Any C-level role is usually associated with specific profit objectives. The hiring decision frequently has an immediate effect on the stock price of a public company, providing some validation that talent has measurable value.

Using the same logic as above, value of a C-level executive can be estimated for the short-term from the likely profits generated, and for the long-term from the impact on stock price or increase in value of the company. The specifics of how to arrive at a valuation for the employee can be based on the employee’s past performance, and the employee’s ability to meet the profit objectives set for them in the past. This number needs to be adjusted to factor in the likelihood that the performance will continue.

For the Yankees, 45-year-old Clemens may well upset their calculations. Similarly, for an executive, factors like unfamiliarity with the industry, size of the profit objective, and even age can reduce the probability of achieving the profit objectives, and consequently lower their value to the company.

Context also matters. The Red Sox offered $8 million less for Clemens. But that was appropriate given what he would bring to Boston, estimated to be just four additional wins for a revenue impact of about $13.7 million. With no longer-term objectives, Clemens had far less value to the Red Sox than he did to the Yankees.

The same logic should apply when attempting to put a value on an executive. A company with ambitious goals has much more to gain from a highly talented executive than a company that has modest goals.

That was the rationale behind Ford’s decision to hire Alan Mullally from Boeing. Mullally had faced challenges at Boeing similar to the ones facing Ford, including improving customer satisfaction, manufacturing, supplier and labor relations, and fluctuating fuel prices. He also had experience leading a company on the brink and with eroding market share, as Boeing found itself after 9/11, while facing stiff competition from Airbus.

But with no experience in the auto industry, his value would be less than what it would be if he had come from the same industry.

Human Assets

Current accounting procedures essentially treat talent, however defined, as a cost walking around on legs. That’s largely because people do not fit the financial definition of an asset, and any measure of talent will require some judgment. Then there is the problem that those people in organizations most closely associated with acquiring talent (i.e., HR) often react negatively to the idea of measuring people and are ill-equipped to do so.

Finally, if people are to be treated as assets, then some will also become liabilities. You can’t very well have one without the other. The first step needs to explicitly recognize human resources as human assets. The Society for Human Resource Management, or SHRM, would have to become SHAM, but that’s a small price to pay.

Recently, I wrote about video resumes and their somewhat dubious value to recruiters. But a recent conversation with John Sumser has prompted me to expand on what I wrote, since maybe video resumes need a second look.

In my earlier commentary, I said I was unclear about anyone’s motivation for creating a video resume, given that the resume is often unflattering to the candidate. These resumes are amateur videos, usually produced without any script or editing and are far from the slickly produced ads for politicians. The overall effect can be the opposite of what a candidate intends; instead of impressing recruiters, a candidate may turn them off. Then again, well-produced video resumes don’t necessarily work either. (Just ask John Kerry.)

But video resumes are likely to grow in popularity, given their appeal to the crowd that frequents sites like MyFace, SpacedOutBook, etc. A video resume is the antithesis of a paper resume. And what is a paper resume but a document that has been stripped of all personality and is the fa?ade the candidate presents in hopes of ensuring that a search engine will lock on to the key words and move them to the top of the list.

When jobs are scarce, candidates make every effort to hide any sign they don’t fit. Show your authentic self, quirks and all, and you risk being summarily rejected. When jobs are plentiful, as they are now and are likely to be for a while, candidates know they are in the driver’s seat.

I’m reminded of the late ’90s when we last saw such a situation. At the time, a Fortune cover story featured a candidate who demanded as a hiring condition that his employer give him a place to bring his pet parrot to work. Problems ensued: the parrot didn’t like the employee spending time on the phone and would start screaming and biting. And it used the employee’s desk as a bathroom. Apparently it was worth it to the company; desperate times call for desperate measures.

The recession of 2000 to 2002 erased most employers’ memories of those days, given how candidates are generally treated today. So much of hiring resembles a game of liars’ poker, with each side trying to figure out what the other is doing while hiding some information about themselves.

Half of all resumes are estimated to contain some false information or outright lies. Employers routinely hide embarrassing facts about their organization or anything they consider has the potential to turn off a prospective employee. Candidates tolerate this when they have no choice, but with demand for candidates exceeding supply there’s no need for them to put up with it.

Enter the video resume: a manifestation of all that a candidate is. It would admittedly be easier for recruiters if candidates could just be slotted into nice little boxes and we didn’t have to deal with any outliers, but that is not going to happen.

Like it or not, we need to accept the new reality. That doesn’t mean we have to relinquish all control. The recommendations I made in my last article, such as demanding a transcript of a video resume, still apply. Our hiring processes will have to adapt to include these and that will not be easy. Creativity is not encouraged or supported by our systems.

I recall a visit to a resume-processing vendor who showed me a resume submitted for a marketing job at P&G. The resume resembled a box of Tide. It literally was a three-dimensional box. The vendor had no idea what to do with it. I assume the candidate never even made it into the hiring process. This is an extreme example, but the point is that we have virtually no capability to deal with anything that’s outside some very narrow boundaries.

This is exactly what we confront with video resumes today. Hiring is still very much a structured process and we have to make video resumes work within those confines. There are technologies emerging to address this need.

HireVue is one company that has launched a service that eliminates many of the barriers to using video resumes. Their process provides structure by limiting candidates to addressing specific questions, allowing for comparisons across candidates, and preserving a permanent record of the results. The service is really more of a video interview, but then a video resume is basically just an interview as well, with no structure. HireVue’s service gives the recruiter much more control, as well as an archive to help with in an audit.

Other solutions are also emerging. PeopleScreening gives candidates the ability to create a structured video resume and a virtual-interview wizard that walks job seekers through the most common interview questions. Once the job seeker completes the process, they can distribute both an attached resume and the video resume link directly from the PeopleScreening website. There’s even a teleprompter.

Video resumes will only gain in popularity. They may help employers hire better and have other benefits as well. Knowing that candidates are more than the sum of their work experience and education could even expand diversity to where it actually has some real relevance.

We may laugh at what many video resumes show today, but they will improve as standards develop as to what’s acceptable and technologies evolve to help staffing deal with them, as is already happening. What is certain is that they are here to stay.

I recently became aware of a recruiting innovation: the online video resume. The first site offering these is RecruiTV. Video resumes have been around for decades but had little popularity because of the logistics of creating, distributing, and viewing them.

However, now anyone can get a webcam for under $50. Distributing videos online is simple, so video resumes are going mainstream. While it sounds like an interesting idea, their value is somewhat questionable and in fact, could be downright detrimental to the recruiting process.

Defining the Video Resume

While a video resume introduces applicants on camera, the value such visual imagery adds is debatable. A te