ERE.net

I’ve got an in-depth, 2,800-word article about implementing talent acquisition systems coming up in the November Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

For now, let me give you some of the highlights. keep reading…

Some old standbys used to attract and keep execs are not being relied upon as frequently, according to an ExecuNet survey of 476 search firm consultants and corporate human resources professionals.

Here’s the data comparing this year and last. keep reading…

Review your senior leadership positions. You might take the top 2% or 10%; whatever is a logical method to review your organization’s top tier talent. It might be that you review all director and above positions, or VP and above. You may wish to review only positions in a certain pay grade and above. (By the way, I’ve got a more in-depth article on executive pay coming up in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.)

As you review these positions, find out if there is a person or persons in the organization who could take that individual’s position should it become vacant. Document who could fill the void, and/or make note if there is no one who could fill the position, should it become vacant. You might also make note of any imminent retirements in any key positions over the next few years as well. Once complete, you will have a clear understanding of which positions you need to plan recruiting for and when that recruiting might be coming online. Make this a subset of your strategic workforce plan.

After you complete this top talent succession planning exercise, compute the following ratio: keep reading…

Still waiting on Adidas. Meanwhile, Fidelity has gone live with a new careers site, which has been many months in the making. It’s most proud of the “Meet Our People” section of videos; there’s a link to that part at the bottom middle of the site. Let me know what you think of it. keep reading…

Imagine being able to unleash the hidden talents and untapped skills of every single one of your employees?

Imagine if every single one of your employees, from front-line staff to senior management, was 100% engaged, doing the work they were cut out for, contributing to the success of your organization by focusing on their core competencies.

Can you envision the collective power you would unleash? No laggards … just a company filled with rising stars. Absenteeism would drop instantly, worker defections to your competitors would cease entirely. Entire departments would start exceeding quotas.

You would become a preferred employer, and employee recruitment would be an exercise in picking the talent you wanted. Better yet, what if I told you this can be achieved and without the tremendous cost and resource drain of investing in hard-to-measure training programs? That long-sought-after seat at the management table would suddenly materialize for you.

Does this sound too good to be true? Well, it’s not. There is a beautifully simple tool called a “human capital development audit” that you can implement immediately to achieve these results.

Here’s how it works: keep reading…

Who’s talking about your company? What are they saying about it? How can we influence that?

The astute Shannon Seery Gude of the company Bernard Hodes says that employers aren’t always looking in the right place for answers to that question. They’re looking at Google Alerts, perhaps. Maybe Glassdoor. But, she says, they often neglect the Indeed Forums. “Look for your company and see what’s going on in the forums.”

She suggests searching for “working for IBM” – filling in your company name for IBM.

(I also tested out the use of quotes, by putting “working for Google” in quotes to sharply limit my results. And I couldn’t resist trying a search for Hodes.)

“What we will often find is the No. 1-returned search result in Google comes from the Indeed forums,” she says. That means job-seekers are ending up on Indeed, so recruiters should, too.

Joshua Kahn (who goes by twitter.com/joshuakahn on Twitter), spoke this afternoon at the social recruiting summit, talking up some of his favorite ways to geek out. Kahn works for Accenture, mainly on the Best Buy account. keep reading…

In the June Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, I’ve got an article about strategic workforce planning — a multi-functional discipline encompassing several human resources functions spanning a long-term planning period.

You’ll get much more detail there, but I wanted to whet your tastebuds with this sample paradigm for a workforce plan. keep reading…

Congrats to my buds at Yahoo for winning ERE’s prestigious 2009 award for best corporate careers website last week. This accomplishment is particularly impressive in light of the type of questions they had to answer as part of the evaluation process. “How has the site has paid off or contributed to improved profits, better employees, and other quantifiable outcomes?” This was no beauty contest; it was about hardcore metrics and making a measurable difference in the greater business strategy.

Since I wasn’t part of the judging process (maybe next year), I don’t have their answers, but as a researcher, I do have lots of questions and so should you. Your company’s career website is the hub for all applicant traffic and you should be asking yourselves the hard questions about how it’s measuring up. keep reading…

I wanted to start by thanking everyone who attended last week’s ERE Expo conference in San Diego, those who actually made the trip, and the hundreds of you who watched streaming live on ERE.net.

It was great to see the social media world, especially Twitter, come to life from the many people ‘tweeting’ live, up-to-the-minute posts during the presentations. You can still access the twitter stream to see some of the insightful tidbits shared by all of you.

For some other follow-up thoughts, check out some of the blog posts here, here, and here.

Naturally, we’re not done talking about it either. John Sullivan is working on a further look at some of the award-winners. And Tuesday on ERE.net we’ll offer tips for your careers website in hopes you can win next year’s site award like Yahoo did this time around. Accenture (employee-referral winner) will be featured in the May Journal, and the American Cancer Society will speak this Fall.

Speaking of the Fall: If you weren’t able to make it to San Diego, our annual ERE Expo 2009 Fall conference is approaching. Still a few weeks to take advantage of our big early bird discounts as well so check it out soon.

Here is what is going on in the ERE world this week:

• On Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. ET, our sister site debuts its newest Fordyce TV show – Living the Dream with Jordan Rayborn. Jordan has taken working virtually to the next level. Often called the RV Recruiter, this big biller works wherever his heart and business take him, and typically some of the most beautiful places in the country. This episode will be coming from the hill country outside of Austin, TX. See more about the show and Jordan’s story here.
• Also, in The Fordyce Letter world, the third annual Fordyce Forum is returning to Las Vegas in just a few months. If you are in the search and placement side of the business you won’t want to miss this.
• On Wednesday, sign up for this week’s free ERE webinar — 2009 Sources of Hire: What is Different in Today’s Market and Why You Should Care, led by Gerry Crispin from CareerXroads.
• Did you see that last week we announced the launch of our newest event – Social Recruiting Summit? The agenda is still being completed, but see where we are now and register for the early bird discount. If you are on Twitter, make sure to join the discussion by following @socrecruiting.
• A few weeks ago, we asked for your help as we are getting closer to launching the new community side of ERE.net. The other day we added some new features and are getting even closer! Here is your chance to help us help you develop the most valuable community in the recruiting industry, so take a look and let us know what you think!

Have a great week! If you have any questions about any of this feel free to leave them in the comments below.

A valued customer asked me to ferret out 1,000 names and numbers from a satellite office of a large company (22,000 employees total). I’ve done this work for him before — I’m not sure but I suspect he uses the work for sales development, the theory being that these people all have well-paying jobs in one of the more healthy sectors of our economy.  He has ordered many of these custom-developed directories from me before, so whatever madness is behind his methodology it seems to work for him! This is how it’s done. keep reading…

Lately, the word Boolean has become very popular among web sourcers and recruiters. (As you might know, I am fond of it myself!) For some, “Boolean searches” seem complicated. Others wonder what the big deal is since Boolean simply means AND, OR, and NOT applied to keywords.

Let’s try to find some clarity. I’ll write about Google here. Though other search engines are similar in many ways, each has its own syntax, somewhat different from Google’s.

Google syntax does, of course, implement Boolean logic, though in a limited fashion. It’s not what I want to talk about here; I’d like to talk about the additional, “non-Boolean” part of Google. Google syntax (shall we call it Googlean?) contains much more than an implementation of Boolean logic.

There are operators and special characters that instruct Google on how to use keywords in a search string. One doesn’t need to learn about all of the operators to become successful in one’s searches, but adding a few operators to your search will help quite a bit. Here I’ll cover some operators that I think are a must for a serious web sourcer’s toolbox.

Part 1 of 2 “Googlean” and Special Characters

keep reading…

Here’s what companies are offering in severance pay, according to a study by Right Management.

keep reading…

At ERE’s conference last month in Hollywood, Florida, a panel of recruiters from Sodexo, Wal-Mart, and elsewhere, as well as an employment-law attorney from Ogletree Deakins, discussed the hiring of men and women who had served in the military. Here are some of the notes jotted down from that session — websites that might be useful. Thanks to John Amodeo and HireVelocity for compiling it.

keep reading…

All-too-slim majorities of recruiters feel that their organizations view recruiting as strategic and valuable, according to data from the Recruiting Rountable.

The pie chart below shows the percentages of the 4,000 recruiters surveyed who said that “recruiting is viewed as a strategic priority at my organization.”

keep reading…

The most-used recruiting metrics, from a new study by The Newman Group, in conjunction with ERE, of 500 recruiting and staffing professionals of varying company size.

keep reading…

A number of organizations are recruiting in Second Life. They are realizing significant branding benefits by recruiting in a virtual world. The real question is, How successful at recruiting employees? The challenge becomes more acute for those attempting to find talent outside of the IT world.

A common theme that I usually hear when I discuss recruiting in Second Life is “Second Life is great for technical organizations recruiting young IT talent like Java programmers, but it really would not address our needs.”

There are many reasons why non-technical organizations can benefit from recruiting in SL. Most organizations would agree categorically across industries that there is a growing demand for a technically proficient employee base outside of the IT department, especially as more baby boomers head off for retirement and web 2.0 applications proliferate in the enterprise. There is a compelling benefit to having access to a geographically diverse pool of candidates during these tumultuous economic times, when fuel costs are exceedingly difficult to manage as well as travel budgets. Value is also realized by branding and screening in a virtual world that is typically the domain of leading organizations.

There are also numerous arguments that can be put forth as to why non-technical organizations will not be successful recruiting in SL. There is limited information on either technical or non-technical employees who have actually been hired through an interview conducted in SL. There should be more information readily available if this was a frequent occurrence. Virtual job fairs and islands of employment are not well-known, and I’m sure many job seekers have no interest in engaging in a virtual world. Even if a non-technical person did find a job fair and decide to participate, there is the challenge of operating within SL. It takes time to become adept at controlling your avatar and getting the right appearance for an interview.

What type of employees if any are being hired in SL?

keep reading…

In the quest for quality hires, talent acquisition leaders often spend considerable time extracting DNA from the company’s top performers in hopes of cloning the outstanding workers. After reviewing performance goals and synthesizing multiple data inputs, line managers and recruiters collaborate to craft tightly honed hiring profiles for each position. Next, it’s up to the recruiter to source the candidates, which is a critical step in the process, because sourcing plays a vital role in achieving quality of hire (a topic explored in depth in the October Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you a recruiter constantly away from your desk and unable to keep up with the recruiting cycle? Do you find yourself trying to find, evaluate, and recruit candidates while on the go? If this sounds like you, get an iPhone, and get access to everything you need right in the palm of your hands.

Without sounding like an Apple sales representative, I discovered that the iPhone opens up a huge playing field specifically for recruiters and sourcers who frequently travel, work in the field, or who work virtually.

The iPhone acts like a mini-computer, where users can access work email, use the Internet, read and produce documents, take notes, and stay organized all while on the run away from an office setting. The iPhone offers a view of the Internet that is exactly the same one would see through a web browser on a desktop computer. With new 3G wireless speeds and advanced security features, the iPhone is now also a very safe product to allow mobile access to systems, programs, sensitive files, key company information, and important documents.

With this in mind, the iPhone can significantly boost recruiter productivity and help to shorten the time-to-fill cycle for open positions. When a recruiter is moving between appointments offsite, the iPhone can access an ATS to update candidate information, grab key files on a shared drive online, or produce a report and email in a timely fashion to various managers and team members.

keep reading…

For most recruiters the make or break moment comes at the end of the process, when it’s time to negotiate the offer. A successful negotiation means that the process concludes with a hire, and the recruiter rides off into the sunset.

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.

keep reading…