Last week I had the pleasure of serving as the chairperson of the Fall ERE Expo in Hollywood, Florida. During my opening remarks, I discussed five things that are “keeping senior recruiting leaders up at night.” The list seemed to resonate with the crowd at the Expo, as many took time to talk to me about it. It was created at a “Recruiting Summit” hosted by CareerXroads on August 17th in Oak Park, Illinois, and Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin get the credit for pulling many different responses together into these five coherent themes.

The survey, while not scientific in manner, included input from over 20 powerhouse organizations, including Wal-Mart, Lockheed Martin, Kimberly Clark, Lilly, Campbell’s, Limited Brands, Cargill, State Farm, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Target, and others. The five items, along with my commentary, are presented below:

Relentless Pressure to do More with Less

On this one it’s easy to respond, “Duh, welcome to Corporate America,” or “Duh, welcome to the global business landscape.” This isn’t going to change. But one basic and fundamental impact “confessed” by many at the Summit is the increasing fear of recruiter burnout. Activity is increasing, and team sizes have been reduced. Many recruiters have worked their tails off over the last few years in a difficult economic climate; this definitely includes our team at DaVita. Can we maintain (or restore) a more healthy work-life balance for our teammates?

For me, this was an “in my face” reminder that I, as the leader of the team, have to more proactively address this issue. I’ve not given it enough personal energy or attention, and I simply have to do a better job and step up to address the challenge. Please check back with me in a few months to see how I’m doing — perhaps at the Spring Expo, March 23-25 in San Diego.

Recruiter Competency Development

Some of the key thoughts from the Summit included: How do we as leaders ensure that we’re giving our recruiters the right tools and training to be more effective in a rapidly changing world? More specifically, how do we teach them to be more effective business partners — especially with HR generalists who don’t seem to want to play nicely in the same sandbox?

My add-on: it’s hard to develop meaningful competencies against an unknown target. If you don’t have a recruiter competency model, get one or build one. If you need help, talk to Linda Brenner or Kim Rutledge, or your internal OD team. If you’ve had one for awhile, perhaps it’s time to refresh your model. We are.

Increasing Diversity

Building more diverse leadership teams, creating a compelling value proposition for diverse candidate pools, and managing the burden imposed by the OFCCP and other regulatory bodies in reporting on diversity were hot topics. Lucky for all of us, Reggie Stewart presented a solid diversity construct during his keynote speech on Wednesday, and I’m ready to adapt it and start taking more definitive action. Thank you, Reggie!

Workforce Planning and Pipeline Development

“Scarce talent pools,” “retiring workforce,” and “increasing competition” were common themes from Summit attendees. “Where will we find the engineers we need?” “How many nurses do we need, and where will they come from?” As much as it gets mentioned, few seem to be doing the combination of planning and pipelining well. Major kudos to those who are. Larry Clifton at CACI is ahead of most of us. A big part of his success is that he keeps it fairly simple (think Econ 101): “it’s just demand & supply” analysis. Check out his Fall Expo presentation (and all the others).

Proving the Value of Recruiting

This one is closely tied to #1. When facing relentless pressure to do more with less, recruiting leaders have to step up their game and effectively make the case for more and/or different resources. This requires a combination of good metrics and good business acumen to sell the case for change. Many seemed to feel hamstrung by not having the right processes and tools to generate the right metrics. I’ve been fortunate: we’ve been able to invest in great tools and process at DaVita. For many, there is no easy answer, but if this is an issue for you and you’re looking for someone to brainstorm with, give me a shout. No promises, but I’ve had some success in building business cases and am happy to share.

In addition to “the numbers,” there is also the basic human principle that bad news travels faster than good news. If recruiting “messed up,” word gets around our organizations much more than when we hit a home run. Are we intentional enough in our internal communication to overcome bad press? I need to be a better story-teller; how about you?

My Closing Soapbox

Whether you’re a senior recruiting leader or a fairly new recruiter, what are you sensing in your organization? Are you experiencing these same things, or do other things “keep you up at night?” And more importantly, what are you doing about it? If you’re constantly saying that all-too-common phrase “it is what it is,” then let me politely suggest that you’ve already lost the battle. That is not the attitude of a great leader. You’ve accepted the status quo. You accepted defeat. Don’t give up! How about altering that cliché to say: “It is what it is, until I accept the challenge to go change it.”

Great leadership will overcome these challenges and we won’t have to lose sleep at night. My focus is sharper than ever and I’m ready to move forward much more decisively. Won’t you join me?

I want to hear from you. Let’s get a good discussion thread going in the ERE community by commenting on this post.

My leadership team and I put our heads together to put together the following menu of ideas to maximize your ERE conference experience. Hope you enjoy them!

#1: Attend a pre-conference workshop. I’ve done this twice, and this is a great example of “you get out of it what you put into it.” If you come ready to engage and share on important topics, you will walk away with a great experience. If you want to sit back passively and listen, I humbly suggest you don’t sign up.

#2: In advance, take 15-30 minutes to plan the sessions you want to attend ahead of time, and for each time slot have a backup if a session isn’t working for you.

#3: Write down the top two to three things you want to get out of each session, and list out some probing questions ahead of time (just like prepping for an interview). If these specifics don’t get covered during the presentation, then you’re ready to dig deeper. This will benefit you and all other attendees. It’s no accident that the best sessions are usually the most interactive.

#4: If you’re in a session and the presenter isn’t going into enough detail (or isn’t presenting real examples or real data), then politely challenge them; don’t be quiet! Speak up! Again, in the end, you, the other attendees, and the presenter will benefit from this feedback.

#5: Once you’re at the event, write down your key takeaways from each session and share them with others. Prioritize the top three to four items for follow up, and engage others to help make them happen, and help hold you accountable for action.

#6: Set a goal for a number of new, quality contacts to make. Challenge yourself to not just hang out with people from your organization. Start a contest on who can develop the most quality contacts.

#7: Similarly, identify people you want to meet ahead of time, and seek them out. For example, if you’re just dying to meet Dr. John Sullivan (I think one of my recruiting managers might be president of his secret fan club), or one of the other conference speakers, then reach out ahead of time and invite him/her to get together to talk shop.

#8: If you learned something that just blew you away — really impacted your thinking — write a post and share it with others (on your own blog or via ere.net). Writing it down will help solidify your thinking and subsequent actions.

#9: Attend the vendor fair and be prepared to share your pain points. Vendors love to hear “pain points.” You can use them to spark rich conversations and challenge your status quo.

#10: Listen to the award-winning organizations and set a goal — what do you want your team to win? We did this at DaVita in 2007 when we set a stretch goal to win the ERE “Department of the Year” award.  So it literally was a dream come true when we did in 2009.

#11: As I discussed in my last post, take time to think strategically. Block off the time on your conference calendar, both onsite and including your plane ride to/from Florida. If this suggestion is confusing to you, please see my previous post.

In closing, if you attend a great session, follow up with the speaker and tell them it was great, and why. And, start to think about (daydream about) what you can present. I personally did this in 2004, and then presented in 2006. There is power in diversity, and having fresh, new presenters at future events is no exception. Plus, it’s great for personal development and building your “personal brand.”

Please post your own ideas for maximizing your conference experience. I’d love to hear them.

Hope to see you soon in South Florida…

Take Time to Think Strategically

Years ago when attending a week-long management development class in the foothills west of Denver, I had the chance to participate in an interesting exercise. We were told to “go outside, walk around, and think strategically.” For the next hour, I meandered around in a daze, and my brain started to hurt. Was I really thinking strategically? How did I know for sure? Was I confusing tactics for strategy? What would I report on to the class when the exercise was over? Would others laugh at me and say “THAT’S NOT STRATEGIC!” Well, you get the idea.

In the end, the point of this exercise was simply that if you don’t separate yourself from the day-to-day minutia of your job (and life), it’s really hard to take a step back and think strategically.

During my career, I’ve attended seven ERE Expos (side note … I should propose a “Frequent Attender” loyalty program: attend nine conferences, get the 10th free!). Anyway, each one gave me a great opportunity to step away from the day-to-day craziness of running a recruiting team and deeply reflect on what we were doing, and where we were going. From personal experience, I can tell you that sitting on a beautiful beach in South Florida is a great place to do this reflection.

Here are three suggestions to get you started on your beachside strategic thinking:

1. What is my vision for my team (or myself) for the next one to three years? Have I articulated it to others? Can I even articulate it?
2. What are the top three things we (I) need to focus on to make this vision a reality?
3. How will I know that we’ve (I’ve) achieved the vision? Write down specific outcomes (preferably measureable) that you are shooting for.

Give yourself the gift of a little time away to think strategically. The ocean waves are calling out your name.

Build Your Professional Network

One of the absolute best things about attending an ERE event — OK, the best thing about attending an ERE event — is the people you meet. ERE has allowed me to develop a deep professional network of people who I can call on for ideas, a quick sanity check, or just plain old commiserating (“hey, you’ll never believe this…” stories) to share a laugh. Plus, this is a great place to socialize your new-found vision that you formed on the beach (see point #1 above). “Hey, I was walking on the beach last night and was thinking about … what do you think?”

When you attend, set a goal — not just to collect business cards, but to make quality connections. If you make five or more quality connections in a three-day event, I would consider that a solid success.

Additionally, don’t be afraid to be proactive. If there are people you want to meet — maybe one or two of the ERE faculty, or someone from a company that you respect, or someone in your industry — reach out to them ahead of time and let them know that you would appreciate the chance to meet with them, and why. This can pave the way for a productive face-to-face greeting/meeting in Florida. (Based on my experience, I would suggest that offering to buy a coffee or an adult beverage will likely increase your probability of success!)

Lastly, please don’t repeat the mistake I made several years ago. I was so heads-down/focused on my day job, that when my position got eliminated I felt very vulnerable because I had let my network go; it was weak, to say the least. I had spent all my energy for the corporate-good but hadn’t devoted much of it to my own good. It doesn’t take a lot of time to keep this in better balance, and for a recruiter, ERE Expo is a great place to start this rebalancing process.

Which is a nice segue to my final point …

Be Intentional About Your Personal Development

Similar to #2, it is way too easy to focus on your job, your team, your boss and your organization — and not take time for you. Nearly everyone has faced major challenges the last two years with global economic struggles (smaller budgets, bigger workloads, etc.) that have inhibited the time and dollars dedicated to personal development.

Get a copy of the conference agenda and circle in red which sessions are likely to have the most benefit to you. No need to wait until you’re there. Plan it out ahead of time. If time and/or money are an issue, then write down a simple business case and present it to your leadership. Show them what you want to attend, and how it will benefit your organization. Most leaders will respond positively to a well-constructed case. And then book early to save dollars.

Once you’re at the conference, write down your key takeaways from each session and share them with others. When I send members of my team to a conference, I expect them to develop a PowerPoint presentation to teach others. This solidifies the learning and increases the commitment to personal improvement/change.

Be intentional about building a better you. Then pass it on.

If you have any questions or comments, please respond to this post, or feel free to email me at tony.blake@davita.com. My next post will be “Tony’s Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Conference Experience.” I hope to see you in Florida in about 12 weeks.

Another confession. That is a major understatement. In fact, a year ago at the Spring ERE Expo I was totally annoyed by the “tweeting” going on during presentations. It was distracting. Twitter quickly became a four-letter word for me.

However, you can teach an old dog new tricks.

I’ve had a Twitter account for less than two days, but I see now clearly see the enormous potential for recruiting and branding. The morning after I set up my account and did my first tweet, a great blog post was sent to me, written by Jessica Meher. Very nice work, Jessica.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tonydblake. I’m planning on tweeting regularly about leadership, recruiting, DaVita’s culture, and random funny stories.

Along the way, just maybe I can do some “brand building.”

Some of my recruiters already have followers — they clearly “got this” before I did. Kudos to them. I’m thankful that we’re a great TEAM that learns from each other. Especially when their leader is (way) too slow to jump on the bandwagon.