Surprisingly, most sales managers make the same bad decisions, regardless of the product or industry.

Here’s the list of where most sales managers go wrong. Start eliminating these error-producing behaviors and just about all of your sales hiring mistakes will go away.

• They think their job is unique. They’re not. There is a common sales process behind each one, that when understood can be used to benchmark any candidate’s past performance against.
• They overvalue first impressions. First impressions don’t predict performance. People with great first impressions are frequently incompetent and people with marginal first impression often have a track record of great success. It’s best to measure first impression at the end of the interview and then determine how the candidate’s first impression affected their performance in consistently achieving quota. From what I’ve seen, the best sales managers don’t worry about first impressions, they worry about the candidate having a track record of achieving good sales results selling similar products, to similar buyers, in similar situations.
• They overvalue their gut or instinct. This is only acceptable when the sales manager has a track record of hiring all top performers who all make quota in combination with very low department turnover. Emotions, intuition, or instinct are poor predictors of on-the-job success. A track record of past performance selling similar products or influencing similar buyers is a great predictor.
• They don’t know the job. Sales is a process that starts with lead generation and ends at closing. Certain aspects of the process are more critical than others. If a sales manager doesn’t know what these are, it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to accurately assess them in the candidate. As a result, the sales manager shifts the decision criteria to first impressions and gut instinct.
• They assume they’re great managers. Most great sales people aren’t great managers, yet this is the person most likely to get promoted. It takes a great deal of work to build, develop, and manage an effective sales team. As part of the assessment process, the sales manager has to assess the fit between her style of management and how each person on the team needs to be managed. This directly relates to Hershey and Blanchard’s situational leadership model.

Flipping this over, here are some things you need to do to achieve better results hiring sales reps:

1. Know the sales process from beginning to end before ever interviewing another candidate.

Whether the sales cycle is 30 minutes long or months, there are some typical steps that ultimately determine how successful the sales rep will be. Breaking your company’s sales process into these steps enables the sales manager to identify the critical drivers and then assess the candidate’s past performance against these. At a broad level most sales processes can be categorized into these big segments:

• Prospecting and lead generation
• Qualifying the lead and conducting needs analysis
• Proving your product’s worth in comparison to the customer’s needs
• Preparing some type of offer or proposal
• Closing and negotiating the offer

Of course, there are multiple variations to this depending on customer need, the complexity of the offering, the type of buyer involved and how the buying decision is made, the dollars involved, budgets available, economic conditions and competitive positioning, to name just a few.

A performance profile summarizes these details in the form of a series of prioritized performance objectives including specific results and time frames. For example, a performance objective for a sales rep developing a new territory might have an objective like, “within 30 days prepare a detailed territory plan including target clients to meet.” A similar performance objective for a outbound telesales person might be, “within 30 days after completing the training convert 35% of all sales calls into minimum $100 orders.”

Once these performance objectives have been determined put them into priority order. The top two or three (out of 6-8) tend to become the critical success drivers. For example, conducting needs analysis with a decision-maker might be relatively easy, with the real key to success being the ability to get past a gate-keeper and arrange the meeting with the decision-maker. It is essential that the members of the hiring team understand these critical success drivers and then hone in on them during the interview. (Here’s more information on how to prepare performance profiles and interview for a wide variety of sales positions.) From what I’ve seen lack of understanding of real job needs is the primary cause of bad hiring decisions, not only in sales, but for all jobs.

2. Benchmark the candidate’s performance against the performance profile by asking about these issues:

• Get specific details about how the person managed the process and how well they did.
• Find out their track record of making quota and how they recovered when things went sour.
• Walk through the sales process at a few major successful accounts and compare this to yours.
• Walk through the sales process where the person was unsuccessful and compare this to yours.
• Find out how the person learned the product line and compare this to yours from a complexity standpoint and the amount of training provided.
• Go step-by-step through all of the team issues including managing and processing leads, orders, and pre- and post-delivery issues.
• Compare your typical buyer to the types of buyers the candidate successfully handled.
• Find out how successful the candidate was working for different sales managers, ask about their styles, then compare these to the hiring sales manager’s style.

3. Benchmark the candidate’s past performance to the performance profile, especially against the critical success drivers.

We use our 10-Factor Candidate Assessment template as a guide to evaluate the candidate against ten factors we’ve seen to be strong predictors of on-the-job success.

For sales, the primary keys to an accurate assessment include a comparison of the sales process, the types of buyers involved, the sales cycle, the complexity of the product and associated terms, and the degree of competition. Of course, the behavioral issues can’t be ignored including persistence, learning the product line, organizational skills, and team leadership, among others, but these are secondary to having a track record of sales success in a comparable situation.

4. Assess managerial fit.

This is probably the most important, yet it is almost always overlooked. A sales manager must be dedicated to training and developing his or her sales team. This requires significant direction, on-the-job training, constant follow-up, the ability to motivate others, and involved planning.

In situational leadership terms these are the classic Director and Coaching styles. A self-managing Delegating style rarely works in sales, especially for a new hire. A Participating style involving territory planning and target account tactics would be appropriate for an experienced sales person who can achieve his goals with limited direction and support.

From what I’ve seen too many sales managers aren’t as involved as necessary to keep their teams on track. If a sales manager isn’t willing to devote 100% of her time to developing and managing her team, even it’s comprised of good people, it will underperform. That’s why choosing the sales manager is the first step in getting the sales hiring process right.

As part of the sales hiring process, we also recommend the use of some type of cognitive and behavioral questionnaire for all finalists. While there are many of these tests around, we’ve been using Profiles International’s for over 20 years with great success.

Knowing that some type of formal test is being used keeps the interviewers more focused, increasing overall assessment accuracy.

Hiring sales people is relatively easy if you don’t get emotionally involved. This alone will eliminate many common hiring mistakes. Regardless of your underlying sales process, the process of hiring great sales people is exactly the same whether you’re selling ERP software or part-time vacation villas. That’s the real secret to hiring great reps.

In a press release announcing the filing of the suit in federal court, TempWorks claimed Avionte “pirated significant elements of TempWorks source code and database design and made use of proprietary TempWorks marketing materials.”

Avionte founder and CEO John Long dismissed the lawsuit as a publicity stunt by the company where he was once president. “We vehemently deny this. Not only didn’t we steal a single line of code, it’s physically impossible for us to have.”

He said the controversy between the two companies has been going on for months, but it wasn’t until Avionte sued TempWorks in state court late last month alleging interference with its customers that the federal suit was filed.

“We told them we’d submit both sets (of programming code) to a third party evaluator and stand by the results. We even said we’d pay for it,” but they never responded to us, Long told us.

TempWorks executives couldn’t be reached. But in the press release Founder and CEO Gregg Dourgarian said of the decision to sue, “It’s only fair to those who have invested in a career or a business relationship with TempWorks that we confront in a court of law those who might attempt to plagiarize years of our hard work.”

The press release pointedly noted that that the four founding partners of Avionte are all former TempWorks employees. Long was previously president of TempWorks and one of the company’s original employees. His partner and Avionte Chief Technology Officer Phi Ngo had been a senior analyst at TempWorks. Sandeep Acharya, Chief Operations Officer, had been TempWorks director of consulting services. And Samar Basnet, chief software architect at Avionte, had been a senior software analyst for TempWorks.

A few other of the 17 Avionte employees are TempWorks expatriates, a situation which can’t help relations between the two Eagen, Minn. companies. Avionte, like TempWorks, is a staffing software vendor offering a front and back office solution that integrates with Outlook and back office financial programs. The company was founded in 2006.

The 60-employee TempWorks, founded in 1994, also offers payroll funding and processing for staffing firms and a disaster recovery service.

We should all use the pause in the hectic pace of the past few years to begin and frame the future we want when we emerge. And we will emerge. I am not sure when, of course, but within a few years we will be back at the global hiring process with renewed vigor and increased challenges.

The cry we all heard over the past five years has been that there was no time to plan, think, experiment, or implement new methods. Most of us used the methods we were comfortable with but just worked harder, longer, and faster than before. This is the opportunity to figure out how to do things differently.

Be Strategically Bold; Tactically Careful

The first step in dealing with the current situation is to sit down and plan out a 3-5 year strategic plan for the future of your recruiting function. Envision a new tomorrow where you can use the technology, processes, and learnings that have emerged over the past decade. Some of the technologies and tools include such things as social networks, blogs, wikis, and candidate relationship management tools.

The processes that have shown promise include less-restrictive internal mobility practices, real time candidate assessment, virtual job fairs and other virtual recruiting techniques, as well as more authentic candidate engagement using online communication tools.

This strategic planning process should be formal, should involve your team and other employees as well as outside people, if that is acceptable in your organization, and should be designed to force yourself and others to think outside the usual assumptions about talent and recruiting. If you have any budget, it would be wise to engage a facilitator who is experienced in this kind of activity. They can make the process robust and much more valuable.

By formulating strategies that use these tools and practices, you can emerge from our current morass with a roadmap for quickly trumping your competition.

At the same time, you need to act right now with fiscal caution and show your management that you are a responsible manager.

This means finding ways to conserve your budget by lessening the need for contingent labor, perhaps, or by reassessing your current practices and challenge why you do whatever you doing the way you do it. Try to find ways to be more efficient, without spending money. Cut back, but cut back where it will do you some good from a strategic perspective. For example, by reducing staff right now, you can position yourself to implement technology or bring in a person with a different skill set once things recover.

Your job is to balance today with several possible recruiting situations in the future.

Envision a New Workforce

The really best recruiting and talent leaders will sit down with management and have some open discussions about the desired workforce of the future.

Every recession is an opportunity to recalibrate, learn and decide on what skills and competencies are most likely to be needed as we emerge from this recession. I have lived through a few recessions now and one lesson I have learned is that out of each come new needs. As we emerged from the September 11 mini-recession, it was clear that security was the new issue and that we would need people with experience and skills not only in physical security but also in data and financial security. By anticipating these needs, recruiters could have had an edge on any competition.

Once you have even a blurry picture of the skills and competencies you may need, you can begin sourcing for these kinds of candidates and begin to populate a talent community with people whom you are getting to know and who are getting to know you.

Collaborate and Learn

Your third step is to collaborate and learn from your peers and from experts in the field. This is a golden opportunity to attend webinars, which are mostly free, catch up on the blogs you have wanted to read but didn’t have time to, and make a few phone calls to friends, colleagues, and others you may have heard of.

These calls can be partly social and partly learning experiences. Ask what they are experiencing, what they are doing to use this gift of time wisely, and what tools and practices they are considering. I have always found this kind of networking to be one of the best ways to learn about emerging trends and to get a calibration on where others are.

Everything you hear and learn can be used as part of your strategic planning process. You can get these colleagues to demonstrate what they have done and you can even experiment with many of the technologies for free or for a small amount of money. One of the best things about the past five years is how inexpensive software has become. There is really no excuse to not try blogging, wikis, or even social networking tools.

Focus on Candidate Engagement

The final step in your plan for the future is to carefully, authentically, and regularly communicate with all the best candidates you have. Experiment with tools like blogs, email, newsletters, Twitter updates – anything that might engage and stimulate the many potential candidates you should already have in your talent pools.

If you neglect them or just tell them that there are no openings now, you lose a resource that you have spent lots of time and money finding and developing. Better to be honest with them, let them know exactly what your situation is, and keep them updated regularly.

Invite the best to join you in a monthly phone call update (just like your financial people do for the analysts) or hold a quarterly webinar. Anything you do to maintain the connection with your candidates will pay itself back when times get better.

Economies will recover and the emerging world will be different and more challenging than ever. Use this precious resource of extra time wisely and well to frame the future you want.

Russia’s unique culture is — perhaps surprisingly — not such a big issue in recruiting there. In the U.S. we tend to think of Russia as a very foreign place, yet Moscow is in Europe and culturally is not so dramatically different from Western Europe. According to Julia Repryntseva, compensation & benefits and talent director for Alcoa Russia (a company profiled in depth in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership), the cultural differences between Russia and Western Europe are no larger than those between, for example, Germany and the UK.

What might be a bigger surprise are the enormous differences in compensation between Moscow and the outlying areas. In the U.S. we expect salaries in the big cities to be higher than in rural areas, but managing regional salary differences is mainly a matter of fine-tuning. In Russia, pay levels in a village may be less than half what is paid in Moscow. Recruiters need to be very aware that the location of the job and the place the applicant is coming from will have a huge impact on what makes for an attractive starting salary.

As in the U.S., job boards are important for sourcing, although rather than Monster and CareerBuilder, the big boards in Russia are Headhunter and Jobs.ru. What is surprising is that it’s hard to find engineers using these job boards. Engineers typically work in the plants, not offices, and as a result are not as plugged into the Internet as we would expect. Other sourcing methods, such as newspaper ads, are needed to reach engineering applicants.

It’s hard to predict how recruiting in a foreign market will differ from recruiting in your home country. The key is to recognize that basic assumptions (such as that all engineers will be Internet-savvy) may prove false in other markets. Going in with an open mind and speaking to people with experience on the ground is essential for successful recruiting outside the U.S.

The same approach should be taken when reaching out to veteran and former military candidates. We touched on skills translation briefly in this article. The ownership for understanding how to translate skills falls on both the recruiter and the candidate. Companies and recruiters who really go after veteran and military candidates also know that they need to go above and beyond to understand and build a significant relationship bridge for the candidates to their hiring managers.

Military rank and education is the second layer that I delve into as a recruiter when assessing a former military candidate on top of the technical skill base. We know the drill as recruiters: what can this person bring to my company or client? It may seem like a long, drawn-out process when looking at all the pieces separately, but we are polishing up our skills so we can see the diamond.

RANK

Here is a very generalized over view of the rank structure in most military branches:

Enlisted

Enlisted grades E1-E4 are considered a learning and leadership development phase in most branches of service. E5 and higher ranks have significant leadership responsibilities and are given a formal title of Non-Commissioned Officers under the command of an officer. Even though the NCO ranks below the most junior officer, most senior NCOs, those with many years of time in service, have a vast depth of leadership and technical experience far beyond a Junior Officer.

Commissioned Officer

Commissioned Officers are military members who hold a commission from an Officer Training Program and a command role in the military hierarchy structure. They are leaders and can be likened to any mid- to high-level corporate manager depending upon rank and structure of the branch of service. As with the NCOs, the officers make decisions involving millions of dollars of government resources and the lives of hundreds of people. General Officers are those who demonstrate extraordinary leadership skills and are the executive level — CEOs if you will — of their respective branches of service.

The numbers of people and dollars managed will vary depending upon rank and assignment. A recruiter should quickly see how valuable both the Enlisted and the Officer candidate is whether transitioning directly out of the service into civilian life or discharged and applying to your company.

EDUCATION

The military loves education! From the moment a recruit steps on those yellow footprints, the entry point at USMC Recruit Training, Parris Island, SC, they are learning.

Formalized skills and leadership training begins from day one and the military begins the process of transforming a piece of coal into a diamond. Let’s be honest: stereotypes abound when we talk about our military candidates. I’ve heard from various sources that they are uneducated because of their technical position as a machine gunner or tank operator. This couldn’t be farther from the truth and is simply a lack of education on our part as recruiters.

With rank and career progression, an advanced level of professional and military education is typically expected. Here are some examples and a great resource for you to be educated!

Let’s look at just a few of the possible schools and what they provide to your military candidate:

Basic and Advanced Non-commissioned Officer Courses provide the same training across the board in primary and advanced leadership. With this one piece of formalized training you have a candidate who has been taught, should understand, and display these principles: dependability, decisiveness, integrity, initiative, knowledge, tact, loyalty, unselfishness, and a host of others. (See Marine Corps Leadership Principles) Successful and timely promotion in the military will depend upon exemplary application of these traits in the management of ones self and team.

eArmyU Program is a fantastic way for the junior enlisted solider to enroll in college while serving with the flexibility to complete their education online. With the continued advancements in online learning, the E-1 through E-4 candidate may have leadership training along with a college degree they earned while working full time.

Air Command and Staff College provides education to all services in the air and space operations. This college is a rigorous 10-month program designed to move that mid-level officer into a higher-level command with more analytical and problem solving command skills.

Along with understanding how to translate technical skills from your military and veteran candidates, be sure to get up to speed on what education has been part of their military experience. When you understand their career progression in the rank structure of the military you are also able to quickly identify and correlate a general level of management to your positions.

As staffing professionals we should never underestimate the power of a bad attitude to undermine the recruiting process.

If we as staffing professionals are not able to connect with people at their level and really listen, understand, and sometimes let them vent, then we can never truly meet their needs and ultimately, as recruiters make quality hires for our organizations. This requires recruiters to separate themselves from everything and focus solely on the hiring process.

The pervasive spirit of “it’s about me” has deluged the recruiting industry; self-promotion and marketing has quickly taken over the goal of a great candidate experience. A person spends a majority of their time at work; choosing a new career, job, and company is a major life-impacting choice that branches out deep into the family roots. We as staffing professionals have been given the greatest gift: to guide someone through that process. If a candidate says that he has spoken with his wife and now isn’t the right time pursue this opportunity due to the impact it will have on his family, will you still press him to continue in the process?

Before I move on, let me say I have struggled. Fears, Uncertainty, and Doubts (The FUDs) affect everyone. Dealing with ambiguity and an uncertain work environment can be one of the greatest challenges faced by a recruiter or sourcing professional. Your company could be one of the lead stories on Valleywag or the lead story on CNN.com or you could hear rumors of layoffs in the hallways. It has been my experience that recruiting is one of the first groups to be impacted by layoffs. It’s difficult to not think about that during challenging times.

Before Wetpaint, I was recruiting for Yahoo out of its Bellevue office during the Microsoft, Carl Icahn proxy battle period. Yahoo is an incredible company with great people and with interesting and challenging positions, but of course the news impacts the way I had to approach recruiting from sourcing to hiring. We still had to make hires, regardless of the current situation.

My father worked for IBM for 30 years in sales. Sales is very much recruiting, and recruiting is very much sales. He approached each sale by overcoming the FUDs: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. With the news swirling about regarding Microsoft and Carl Ichan, I approached each candidate from the FUD perspective. What were their fears about considering a position with Yahoo? I addressed the uncertainty and we discussed their doubts.

Below are some of the ways I recommend to deal with the FUDs when a company is facing uncertainty.

Candidate Perspective

Listen to the candidate’s concerns

Come prepared

• Check and see if the company provided talking points. Read them before a candidate conversation so it doesn’t sound like you are reading from a script.
• Incorporate previous feedback about the current situation.
• Address concerns before they arise. I started off a conversation by talking about the current situation and addressing the issues. It’s easier to point out the elephant in the room than to ignore it.
• Know in advance what can and cannot be said about the situation.
• Seek support from your manager and team.

Increase the Personal Touch

• Make the extra call, send the additional email, or take time to write a note to mail.
• Make them feel welcome during the interview process. Be sure to meet with your hiring teams in advance to share the challenges and develop solutions/answers.
• Listen every step of the way and respond acknowledging their concerns.

Bring in Your Hiring Managers, Directors, or VPs

• Nobody can sell the role better than the team, and the manager, director, or VP are a great asset.
• Set up a special lunch or after-hours meeting.
• Understand why current employees came to the company and why they are staying.
• Give the candidate a tour of the office. This will help them develop a picture of how they could fit into the culture and what a day at work would look like for them.

No offer deadlines

• Soften the “must accept date,” but continue to affect change by steering the candidate in not-so-overt ways.

Empathize

• How would you like to be treated? What concerns would you have?
• Realize that this is a hard decision for the candidate.

Your Perspective
Remember why you came to work there:

• Was it the people?
• Was it the products? Do you use the company’s technology or services?
• Is it your manager?
• Was it the challenge?

It’s OK to be discouraged; just don’t let it show

• Be professional at all times, even if the walls are burning down around you, stay focused.
• Focus on the end goal. The bumps in the road are just bumps in the road.
• Focus on the hire always.

Treat Yourself

• Mix up work hours if you can. Break the routine.
• Go out to lunch or go wireless if it’s a nice day and get outside.
• Change up your workspace, change chairs, add or remove pictures, and add things you enjoy.

Things to Avoid

• Avoid reading the blogs, news etc.; stay on mission.
• Don’t get caught up in rumors and gossip; you have a job to do. Do it.
• Don’t take it personally, it’s a job.
• Don’t stay too long. Know when you have done everything you can, but leave on a good note.

Problem solved? Not exactly … the conversation turned political and heated up this past week when Amanda Blazo and others recommended using an RPO firm operating in either the Philippines or India. Charles Hillman was left asking, “Why utilize an India based RPO when there are a ton of quality researchers right here in the USA that can do the job.” Jeff Altman responds with a call for patriotism…why aren’t we creating more jobs in the United States? Hope Blaythorne argued that we are in a global economy, and encouraged cooperation with overseas markets. While Josh Letourneau supported Jeff and noted that many of the responses in favor of outsourcing come from outsourcing vendors. According to Josh, “Arguing about whether offshoring is good or bad isn’t going to solve the problem — it’s overall job LOSS that is the issue (which comes in many forms), and I hope we can figure out a solution.”

Where do you stand on this issue? We would love to hear from you…

Unethical Competitors
Who knew recruiting could get so ugly?

Laura Nyp has a competitor who sends her great candidates who “ditch their interviews at the last minute without any warning.” Jill Gilliland, Paul Lipman, and Joseph Ray offer some simple advice that many others echo … stop working with them! Joseph Ray and Pam Claughton recommend doing your homework on both the client and the candidate. The reputation of a client can turn off a candidate before the interview process. Tracy McKenn and Jim Cargill want to know more … Is Laura sure the competitor is sending these candidates? What would be the motivation? How long have they been working together. We would love to hear an update, Laura!

Employer-paid Benefits
Tami Heyden wants to know what potential candidates would look for in a benefits package. What are the pros and cons of employee vs. employer-paid benefits? Peter Raloff’s company offers 80% of employer-paid benefits plus three weeks of vacation time … not too shabby for the D.C. area. However, Scott Robinson and Pam Claughton feel that companies can do better. Scott had a candidate who accepted a job where the employer paid 100%, in addition to country club membership, company cars, and flex time. Hmmm….are they hiring? Pam feels that 100% coverage is a “huge selling point.”

I Am Sensing a Freaking Out
Maureen Sharib is … from people in the industry. Times are tough and Maureen is noticing dramatic cuts in departments. I have been talking to companies that are “going back to basics” and cutting anything that doesn’t fall under recruiting basics (i.e, campus recruiting). Jim Constantine and Karla Baierl warn us of the negative impact of the media. “Keep your head down, deliver great value, and ride it out!” is Jim’s advice to staying afloat. Amanda Blazo would agree with Jim and shares a positive story in the construction industry. Maureen concludes by reminding us that “those recruiters that don’t embrace the fact that we’re in a sales business are gonna have a hard time.”

Monday’s Question of the Day
The discussion last week about keeping recruiting costs down is still hot this week … what’s your strategy?

A spotcheck of several publicly traded HR vendors showed most of them were off by at least as much as the overall markets, all of which closed down. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 370 points, a 3.58 percent drop that was actually considerably improved from the 800 points the Dow was down at one point Monday. The NASDAQ was off 84 points for a 4.34 percent drop.

In the last 90 minutes of trading the New York Stock Exchange saw a sharp upturn that recouped some 400 points. The rising tide lifted most boats, including the shares of publicly traded HR recruitment, staffing, and tech stocks. Even so, among the companies we checked, only Monster (profile; site) was up on the day, closing at $14.81, up 6 percent. Dice Holdings (profile; site), like Monster a job board, was down 7 percent to close at $6.05 a share. Workstream (profile; site), which owns 6FigureJobs.com, closed at 7 cents a share, a 12.51 percent plunge for the troubled company.

Among the HR tech vendors, Taleo (profile; site) was down 9.77 percent to $16.07, while competitor Kenexa (profile; site) closed at $12.94 for a 5.75 percent drop.

Some of the staffing companies performed better, a relative term considering the size of the market drop. Manpower, for instance, was down $1 to close at $36.92, a drop of 2.64 percent. Kelly was off 3.38 percent, down 60 cents to $17.13 a share.

There may yet be more bad news. In after hours trading prices began declining again.

Ask five people, and you’ll get five definitions. Look for resumes, and you’ll get hundreds of people doing vastly different things.

Mark Bielecki is trying to clean it all up with a new site, Joblish. (And you thought startups had used up every possible fanciful variation of the word “job”!)

It sounds more complicated than it is. Employers can fill out some drop-down menus as to what they’re looking for — let’s say, for example, that the employer wants these four things in a candidate:

• a functional area of engineering;
• the R&D department
• division head reporting to chief executive
• supervising 10 or more people directly.

The employer picks those four attributes from the drop-downs, and generates a code that looks something like this:

joblishDENERBE

Job candidates who fit that criteria will, in theory, have added the code joblishDENERBE to their resumes or LinkedIn pages or elsewhere, and employers searching for joblishDENERBE can find them.

Like so many new ideas, the success of this one will depend on getting a critical mass of both job candidates and employers to use the codes.

For great recruiters, this is an historic opportunity that can’t be missed. The elite of the elite are teetering — firms that have for decades had their way with the best talent from around the globe. If you haven’t already developed a recruiting plan to poach the best individuals and yes, even intact teams, there is no time to waste.

Target Top Performer and Innovator “Survivors” Who Hate Stagnation

The obvious recruiting move would to be to target the thousands of financial professionals and MBAs who are about to lose their jobs. While that is OK, if you want to land a true “find,” my recommendation would be to instead target the “survivors.” Survivors are those top performers and innovators who are almost guaranteed to still have a job because they are so valuable. Normally these extremely high-value individuals would be untouchable by corporate recruiters outside the financial industry. However, for a brief period these top performers and innovators will be considering other opportunities because these individuals have difficulty coping with the frustration that comes with frozen budgets, cost containment, limited risk-taking, and the politics of mergers and acquisitions. These top performers and innovators are so good that they will almost certainly survive any buyout, merger, or even a bankruptcy.

This state of uncertainty and stagnation doesn’t bother most employees because they are just happy to have the security of a job, but top performers and innovators hate stagnation. They want to be “in the competitive game” constantly. They don’t want to take a break from the competition. Take Tiger Woods, as an example. If he was on your golf team but senior managers decided with little notice to play no matches for the next year, what would his reaction be? You could assure him till you were blue in the face that he would have a job and a paycheck, but it would matter little; Tiger wants to play against the best every day.

Great players and great employees want to be competing every day. They want to try new ideas and face new challenges. And that can’t happen in an organization where budgets are frozen and executives are laser-focused on trying to restore stability. Anytime an organization freezes hiring, pay, promotions, or budgets, the loyalty of top performers and innovators shrinks immediately.

Perhaps an example will help to illustrate the point. I know an exceptional top performer who had worked only at great high-tech firms from Intel to Cisco. Eventually, he moved to an emerging firm because it promised him fast decision-making and the opportunity to innovate on the “bleeding edge” of technology. He was energized and excited and he threw himself into the opportunity. But suddenly, with no warning, he abruptly quit one day. I was startled because he was so excited about the opportunities and challenges that he faced. So, I asked him: ‘Why the sudden turnaround in loyalty?’ He said, ‘I had no choice, because they froze all development budgets for the next year.’

Because I work at a university where budget decreases come on a weekly basis, I was puzzled. I asked him why the budget freeze was such a big deal; after all, it wasn’t a cut, only a freeze. He answered without hesitation, ‘I couldn’t stand the thought of not taking risks and innovating for an entire year. The stagnation would kill my spirit!’

He made a year with no budget increases sound like an eternity, but to him it was.

Corporate recruiters are always talking about becoming more strategic, but unfortunately few find the time or develop the courage to take advantage of strategic opportunities when they are presented with them. While the turmoil on Wall Street is a terrible thing, it has presented stable companies with cash in the bank a very rare opportunity. Not only is it a great time to recruit top talent away elite firms, it is also a great time to swoop up smaller- and medium-sized firms that rely on credit to fund operations because credit will be in short supply. Acquiring companies for their talent is not a rare occurrence; unfortunately, it is rarely one proposed by corporate recruiting functions. Truly strategic recruiters should understand the employer pecking order in the labor markets, the business models of talent competitors, and be able to build a short list of “labor investments” that offer great return.

Action Steps for Identifying Top Performers at Troubled Firms

Identifying who you should target to “poach” is easier than you think. Here are some tips on how to do it:

1. Remember: don’t look on layoff lists. Stars will still be employed.
2. Use social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) to identify individuals from these firms. Ask those who you do identify to help you out by naming others.
3. Search blogs written by employees at target firms for the names of top employees.
4. Ask your own employees and especially new hires if they know any top performers and innovators at your target firms.
5. Use “names” search firms (research firms have ways of identifying these individuals). There are numerous research firms that, for a relatively small fee, will provide you with the names and the contact information of anyone at a target firm if you know their title.
6. Identify famous or well-known individuals by running their “Google score.” Key people always have high Google scores. They can be found by searching for major technical terms or job titles, along with a firm name.
7. Search seminar, association events, and trade show brochures for speakers who come from these key firms. These survivors are likely to be authors and/or speakers.
8. Offer an increased referral bonus (bounty) for the next few months for top-performer referrals from these key firms.
9. Purposely include a representative from key competitors in your interview list for job openings. During the interview tell them that you assess top talent in part by their ability to “name other top talent.” If the same names appear across multiple interviews, you are getting close.
10. Contact former employees at these key firms and ask them for names.
11. Ask suppliers, customers, and consultants who work with your firm for names.
12. Use sites like Jigsaw (which collects business cards) to identify individuals with key job titles at these firms.
13. Use executive search firms that specialize in these industries.

Selling Them on Your Firm

Once you identify the individual, obviously you still have to convince them to make the switch from an unstable firm to a stable one. Some tips that might help you include:

• Put together a portfolio of arguments demonstrating that your firm has the resources and the executive support to invest in innovation and new ideas.
• Put together an interview team of executives and innovators who excel at exciting and “selling” others on the vision of your organization. Use this team to convince your target to make the move.
• Expand your offer letter process to include information on the type of resources, budget, and opportunities that the new hire will have if they accept your offer. Make whatever promises you need in order to convince them that a switch to your firm offers challenge and financial support.
• Directly ask your candidates what they would need to be successful at your firm, and what it would take to convince them to make the shift. Obviously, you need to use that information to better “sell” the candidate.

Final Thoughts

In a competitive business environment, recruiters must learn to be proactive and seek out opportunities to hire truly exceptional individuals. The turmoil that is resulting from the current financial crisis will affect not just the well-known firms that are going through bankruptcy and mergers, but also many tangential firms that will freeze their budgets and limit innovation as a result of the crisis.

If you have the courage and the ability to act quickly, now’s the time to cherry pick a handful of the survivors and bring them into your firm. Incidentally, if you’re successful, it is highly likely that each one will also bring along a handful of top talent with them, making the ROI of your initial recruiting initiative even higher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Version two of the popular Perpetual Sourcing web-based sourcing and CRM system was released last month. That might not ordinarily be news, but the enhancements and improvements are the result of a collaboration of Todd Davis, who developed the program, sourcing guru Shally Steckerl, and vendor Intelestream.

“This product is especially unique due to the level of industry expertise found at its core. As a senior recruiter with companies such as Microsoft, Google, Starbucks, and Yahoo, Todd Davis offered his knowledge to help us create his ‘dream solution.’ Shally Steckerl, founder of JobMachine consulting has also played an intricate role in collaborating on this project,” reports Intelestream’s Director of Marketing Stafford McKay. “It’s great to be right in line with the best practices taught by the experts.”

Davis has described Perpetual Sourcing as a pre-ATS applicant tracking system. An apt description for a system designed for the passive candidates found through LinkedIn, Spoke, Hoovers, Jigsaw, and ZoomInfo, all of which the system can automatically assess. It also can help source candidates via the search engines, managing your search strings for you. It also helps with OFCCP and EEOC compliance, by saving search histories, including locations searched, search strings used, and candidates sourced .

Because it is a CRM tool, it also manages contacts with the candidates. It synchronizes with Outlook and has direct email campaign capabilities.

Perpetual Staffing is based on SugarCRM, the commercial open source customer relationship management software that is in use worldwide by customers as varied as GoDaddy and North Carolina State University.

Davis developed Perpetual Sourcing in 2007 and offered it through PerpetualSourcing.com before transitioning the operations earlier this year to Chicago-based CRM consultant Intelestream.

Organizations are devoting more time to the onboarding process and employing more creative and exciting techniques in an effort to get their newly hired employees productive sooner and to lay a foundation that will help retain them.

In fact, employees who have gone through some sort of onboarding process above and beyond the usual process of filling out paperwork and choosing benefit plans report feeling better connected to their colleagues and to the company culture. This translates into a loyalty that keeps employees from turning down offers that tempt by simply offering more dollars.

There are at least three reasons that orientation or assimilation programs are becoming popular.

First of all they help new hires feel that they are part of a larger organization and that they are important. By introducing new employees to senior management and by spending time to build in them an appreciation of the organization’s past and future direction, these programs create a sense of security and comfort.

Second, they help convey the culture of the organization so that decisions get made that are more in line with accepted practices and that help the organization function more smoothly. When senior-level employees explain why decisions were made or how a result came about, they are also conveying the cultural values of the organization. By building roots from the beginning, people flourish and understand better why things are the way they are.

And, third, they expedite getting the new hires up to speed and productive. Some new hires take up to a year to reach full productivity, especially if their jobs depend on interacting with many other employees or in linking work from different parts of the firm. Inexperienced employees, especially college hires, can have long learning curves that can be significantly shortened with good upfront education. This is where an internal social network or some other Internet-based tools can expedite their connections and bring different people with similar needs together.

The best onboarding programs have several characteristics.

First of all, they are fun, not overly formal, and engage employees. Make sure you develop a program that has substance and that addresses serious issues effectively, but do it in a manner that is interactive and fun. Some organizations are using the Internet to facilitate the experience and provide the new employee with the corporate history, the values of the firm, an overview of the strategy and fiscal goals. This is often delivered in a video. Videos can be used to provide an overview of the finances by the CFO, for example, and a greeting from some senior-level executive. Many offer tours of the facilities via video narrated by an employee.

All of these tools and activities set a stage for productive, aligned, and focused work. Don’t assume that employees are just going to “pick up” all the things they need to know to be successful in your firm. What is obvious to you may be very obscure to someone just walking in the door.

Second, good onboarding programs may extend over several months. After an intensive 1 to 2 day session up front to start things off, subsequent activities may extend over several months at periodic intervals. Some programs include rotational assignments; others may include special projects that are designed to expose the new employee to parts of the company they would not normally have any contact with. For example, an executive could be given as assignment to find out something about the manufacturing operations that would require her to actually go to the factory and gather data. This way she sees how other employees work and begins to get a feel for the culture in action. Scheduling events out several months gives you the opportunity to get into topics in an in-depth way that short programs cannot.

The third thing effective onboarding programs are good at is getting the manager to be part of the onboarding process. Surveys show that the relationship with the manager is one of the most significant in an employee’s work life.

Most employee turnover is ultimately caused by that relationship (or lack of it), which makes the ability to assimilate new employees a core competence of managers. An employee’s immediate manager controls all career progression, educational opportunities, and the assignment of projects. So a manager who takes time to discuss issues with a new employee, who shows concern over that person’s assimilation, and who knows what the employee can do and wants to do, will make wiser decisions and build loyalty over time.

The manager should be included as part of the onboarding process. Some firms have the managers attend a session designed to provide the employee with an initial set of goals — perhaps for the first 30 to 60 days. Others include the manager in team-building exercises or have a luncheon where the manager sits with the new employee. At the executive level, the CEO can invite new hires to dinner at his or her home or set up a special quarterly new executive dinner and reception. The key is to make sure the manager has a real role in both the formal process of onboarding as well as in the informal one that happens every day.

And finally the best programs offer coaching and mentoring to new employees right from the start. Again, research shows very clearly that providing a mentor who can offer insights into the corporate culture, who can explain the organizational structure and help the new employee understand why things get done in the way they do, is a major contributor to increased productivity and lower turnover.

These mentors should be individuals who are exemplars of the kind of behavior and results orientation your firm would like all its employees to exhibit. The role of these mentors can be very simple — as simple as going to lunch once a week with the new hire to show them the ropes and transmit some of the tacit culture that is never articulated or often even acknowledged in formal sessions. These mentors are the vehicles to educate the new hire, and they should be trained to serve as listeners who can intervene quietly with a manager if an issue arises. They need to be respected and well-networked in the organization.

Onboarding in tough times becomes an essential tool for building engagement and improving retention.

Many companies are not prepared to go through the offer step of the process. As a result, they damage the relationship with the candidate. This leads to one of two unfortunate conclusions. Either they lose the candidate or the candidate comes on board, but with scar tissue. Applying some of the best practices from the sales world into a sales talent screening program helps to avoid that scenario.

The offer stage of the hiring process parallels the proposal phase of sales. Best practices in sales say that you don’t present a proposal until a thorough needs analysis has been completed. If a sales person is presenting a proposal to a prospect, he has acquired the information needed to design a solution, has discussed budget, has a full understanding of their solution requirements, and has set an expectation on pricing. This is certainly the case if the salesperson is going to be successful in winning the account.

Looking at this process in relation to the offer stage of the sales talent screening program, many of the same best practices from sales hold true. During the screening program, information needs to be gathered from the candidate to determine their financial requirements. Unfortunately, many sales talent screening programs focus exclusively on screening the candidate for fit, but do not consider the needs for the offer phase of the process. This leads to a last-minute scurry to mine the information from the candidate, or they design the offer blindly. Neither of those are best practices for the offer stage.

In sales, it is said that if you are going to lose, lose early. This prevents you from making a huge investment in a relationship that will not generate revenue. The parallel to screening sales talent is understanding the financial requirements of the candidate early enough to stop the process before over-investing in the relationship. There is no point in continuing a process with a candidate who requires a compensation level 25% above what you can offer. This probably seems logical, but hiring executives rarely focus on this as a de-selection element early in the process.

Just like discussing pricing with a prospect, the financial-needs discussion requires finesse. The candidate knows that you are asking questions about their financials, just like a prospect knows a sales person is fishing for budget information. The better-skilled salespeople tell their prospects, “I don’t want to waste your time by getting you excited about a solution that will not fit in your budget constraints…”

In much the same way, this discussion can be had with the candidate, “I don’t want to excite you about an opportunity that might not be a match for your financial needs. As you look at making a change in position, what thoughts have you given to your compensation requirements?”

With continued finesse, you can dig further into the mix of salary versus commission. Some candidates may rebuff this discussion as they feel the information will be used against them. In some instances, they are justified for having that concern. Hopefully, that is not the case in your company. We’ll come back to this point later. The bottom line is that the two goals of this phase are to gather information that allow you to formulate an offer and to de-select those candidates whose requirements exceed your financial package.

In sales, the proposal phase should not be like a magic show. The prospect should not be shocked by what is included in the proposal. In essence, the proposal is the documentation of what has already been discussed. No surprises. The same holds true for candidates. The time to review the compensation plan details is not after they are hired, or even at the offer stage. The compensation plan should be reviewed at the point where you have a genuine interest in pursuing the candidate and they have a complete enough understanding of the company that they will be able to comprehend the compensation plan.

One of the core requirements associated with any process is that it is measurable. The offer phase of the sales talent screening program should be measured statistically to determine effectiveness. The key statistic is number of offers made versus ones that are accepted. If the acceptance level is less than 80%, the process should be reviewed by asking the following questions.

1. At what point of the process are the candidate’s financial requirements reviewed?
2. When it is known that the candidate’s financial requirements exceed the package, is the candidate removed from the process?
3. At what step is the compensation plan reviewed with the candidate?
4. In what level of detail is the compensation plan reviewed with the candidate?
5. How often is the initial offer to the candidate rejected, and subsequently, negotiated successfully?

The last question in the list above ties back to my opening position about damaging the relationship. Again, this ties back to lessons that can be learned from sales. Many years ago, a procurement training specialist shared a pearl about the counsel he gives to salespeople who ask about pricing strategy. He said, “Provide us with the best pricing that you feel comfortable providing and either way you are happy.” This always puzzled salespeople so he explained further. “If you provide your best pricing and are selected, you are happy because you won the account. If you are not selected because we found lower pricing elsewhere, you are happy because you would not have been happy at that price point. Again, either way you are happy.”

Consider this when making an offer to the sales candidate. Develop an offer based on what was learned from the candidate that represents the best offer you are willing to make. Early in the process, tell the candidate that you don’t negotiate offers, but rather put your best offer on the table upfront. It demonstrates a professional message to the candidate and reduces their fear of attempts to lowball them. When companies negotiate offers, while they may “win” the candidate, they damage the relationship. This person is onboarded with the worst scar tissue of all, a lack of trust. The salesperson will always be on the lookout for the company to try to cheat them.

As with any component of the sales talent screening process, preparation is the key to success. Organize your team and design a process that achieves your desired results. This will allow you to create longlasting, fruitful sales marriages.

Web 2.0 Candidates Are:

• Faster. Candidates can gain access to more available jobs within minutes on any day.
• Smarter. Access to salary, compensation, and corporate performance data is everywhere.
• More Connected. Social networks help candidates identify insiders at any employer before or after they apply for any position.

Web 2.0 Candidates Are Faster

When job boards came on the scene 10 years ago, they made accessing available job information much easier for candidates. No more digging through the classified section of the Sunday newspaper, crafting up witty cover letters on fluorescent letterhead to get attention and postal mailing resumes. Remember when we’d put our fax numbers on our ads? Come on: how many candidates really had fax machines in their houses? Today, there are “job aggregators” such as indeed.com and simplyhired.com which put all the jobs from multiple job boards into a single search engine that stream directly into any candidate’s personal home page on Google via RSS feeds every day.

I think one of the main reasons that recruiters are after “passive candidates” is that we think we have more time to get them through the interview process, versus “active candidates” who machine-gun apply from job boards to a dozen jobs on any Monday. With the latter, we have to get them setup with an interview within 24 hours and make a hiring decision within two to four days. That’s how fast the market is moving with so much job data available online.

Web 2.0 Candidates Are Smarter

In addition to having access to an ocean of jobs, most candidates tap into salary and compensation data via sites such as payscale.com and/or salary.com. Not to mention that the younger generation of workers aren’t shy about sharing their comp levels in the lunchroom or over beers, unlike our parents’ generation who considered salary discussions to be so taboo they would only share this information with the IRS when filing their annual tax returns.

Many recruiters have candidates show up with a salary report printed from one of these salary sites and demand that their pay be at or above the level on the report. Candidates don’t care if our job descriptions aren’t perfectly matching the ones on those websites; they just see the numbers and get an expectation that’s usually out of line with our compensation levels. Regardless of how you handle this situation in your interview process, employers are under pressure to know how their pay grades compare to other major employers in their markets.

Web 2.0 Candidates Are More Connected

Remember when you would get an applicant resume, see which companies a candidate previously worked for, and then quickly find which of your internal employees had worked with the applicant in the past, in order to get “inside information” to determine if they were a good or bad prospect? (Never mind that 51% of people will comment positively or negatively on someone because of how they liked their personality — and not their actual work performance.)

During the interview process, candidates were lucky to run into a former colleague in the hallways. Or if they get lucky in the interview, they will discover who they might know in common with the interviewing managers and try to discover which “moles” they could find within the prospective company, which would help them do their own due diligence on the employer — not to mention that they will try and gain advocates to help them get the job should their interest grow.

Well, because of the growth of social networks (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Jigsaw, and many more), the minute most candidates apply for any job (and sometimes even before they apply for a job), they can now instantly see who they know at any prospective employer, all the way back to their old high school or college buddies.

This tilts the access of information toward the candidate community — who can now see if there are bad previous bosses or old enemies working within your company, which they may wish to avoid. The candidates’ reasoning will be if your company hires personalities the candidate disliked, it indicates that your culture prefers those types of individuals, which will have an impact on your employer brand whether you get a chance to enter the conversation or not.

This puts a new pressure on employers to create a working culture that will attract these more web savvy candidates. These Web 2.0 candidates don’t believe most of our career sites’ language about having an exciting work environment. They want to find out for themselves (via networking) what it’s really like to work within the sub-cultures within our company, which are driven by management personalities and business cycles which are exciting to certain candidate types, and a turnoff to others.

But many folks predict that it’ll be increasingly harder to find qualified applicants to fill job openings, especially when it comes to white collar, managerial, and professional-level jobs. We have all dealt with numerous situations where the age-old “mirror test” (hiring anyone who is breathing and thus has the ability to fog a mirror) is the only thing required to fill a position. In such cases, it’s harder to make an argument for using something that will actually serve to further reduce the number of applicants to be considered.

Assessment can have value even when one has few applicants to chose from or even when there is a shortage of qualified applicants. Below are five good reasons why it still makes sense to use assessment, no matter what the labor market looks like.

Reason 1: Assessment can be part of a good sourcing and branding strategy

Assessment has begun to occupy new places within the hiring process. Over the past five years we have seen it begin to be folded into the job searching and matching process. Assessment is a great way to help match job seekers to openings that are a good fit for their background, skills, and values. Even in a tight labor market, job seekers can still benefit from some direction to help them make important decisions about what jobs and organizations are right for them.

Compelling employment branding is the first part of the equation here. Much employment branding seems to be a regurgitation of the same old song and dance. What company doesn’t value diversity? What company doesn’t care about the environment? Assessment can help us to get past the fluffy, generic employment branding stuff and get right to the heart of the matter: matching people with the right employment situation.

Recently, assessment has become a key ingredient in “values matching,” a branding and sourcing strategy that can really make a difference. Values matching will continue to be a hot area because job applicants wants to ensure they “fit” with the culture and value of the organization. Assessment is an excellent way to provide a index of “fit” that can be used to help applicants to understand how well what they may fit with an organization, or even with a specific role, job, or workgroup within that organization.

Organizations that fill their hiring funnel with applicants who possess congruent values and have some degree of fit will find it easier to be sure they hire persons who have a good chance of sticking around longer and being more productive. Values matching can be used as part of an initial sourcing strategy by including it as a key element in the creation of job profiles used to match applicants with openings or as part of the search process on corporate web sites. Even if there is only one applicant for a position, if that applicant is a good fit, hiring them represents a good decision for all parties involved.

Reason 2: Assessment can still provide insight needed to support good decision-making

Suppose there are only two applicants for one open position. Whomever is making the hire still must make a decision between the two applicants. The decision-maker can still benefit from having some data to better understand each of the applicants from which they have to choose. Most employment decisions are made using resumes and unstructured interviews. These are the two most common tools available to hiring personnel. While both of these tools do have some value, they function best when used in conjunction with information that can help those doing the hiring to read between the lines. Assessment is a perfect tool to help those making hiring decisions to better understand each candidate. Informed decision-makers are more likely to make accurate decisions than those who must make decisions in the absence of good data.

The results of even a basic assessment can provide decision-makers with additional data points to help them make a more accurate decision. The number of applicants one has to choose from does not alter the idea that informed decision-making is the way to go. So, even in a tight labor market where one is lucky to have even a few applicants, it’s still valuable to provide decision-makers with tools to help them better interpret subjective information such as resumes and unstructured interviews.

Reason 3: Assessment can help you hire for potential

One common strategy in tight labor markets is to shift focus from hiring for a specific set of skills, abilities, knowledges, etc. needed to do a specific job toward hiring for potential. In such cases a few key abilities or characteristics are identified and applicants are evaluated based on their ability to bring this valued “raw material” to the table.

This change in focus allows the organization to hire those who may not have had the exact experience needed to do the job for which they are applying, but who have what it takes to learn the job. Such a strategy requires a strong focus on training and development. Still, such a program allows organizations to take a broader focus when looking to fill open positions. College recruitment and hiring programs are an excellent example of this. Hiring individuals straight out of college allows companies to fish in a bigger pond. Assessment is an excellent way to assess potential. Basic cognitive ability and problem-solving assessments provide an easy way to identify individuals who have a basic set of tools that will allow them to be an asset to the organization. Setting up such a program can often be less complicated than developing an assessment program that is tied to a specific job. There are tons of good quality, off-the-shelf assessments that have been created with the specific goal of measuring general constructs. These can be plugged right in, with less up front work than may be required to create a job specific test battery.

The idea of hire-for-potential, train-for-success is an attractive proposition in a tight labor market.

Reason 4: Assessment can support onboarding and development

Assessment is also a valuable tool because it can provide a good initial picture of an applicant’s developmental needs.

Most assessment providers have the ability to create an initial development report based on the results of an applicant’s pre-employment assessment. Even if there are few applicants for a specific job, using an assessment as part of the hiring process helps the new hire hit the ground running. Assessment data can help with onboarding by allowing the new hire’s manager to have a good idea of developmental needs on day one. This information can be used to create an initial development plan and to provide a baseline for future performance management and development activities. Such a strategy can also have a positive impact on things such as commitment, satisfaction, and turnover. Research has demonstrated that good experiences during the onboarding period can have a positive impact on each of these important outcomes.

Reason 5: Assessment can help the organization to better understand itself

You can’t expect strong results from the use of assessment without a clear understanding of what needs to be assessed, and why. Usually, this involves spending some time to take a look at both personal and organizational factors that must be addressed using assessment. More sophisticated implementations involve the ongoing use and development of an organizational competency model. Such a model allows the organization to define the key elements required for success across all jobs as well as for each specific job.

While this is not always easy, taking the time to break jobs down into the components required for success provides the organization with important insights about what is required for success. This information is valuable for hiring, but it also has value for other important processes such as development, training, and succession planning. Going through the effort required to anchor a good assessment program has value because it helps the organization learn about itself. This learning extends beyond the ability to identify key determinants of success. Using assessment properly requires a good bit of learning and experience. Why shy away from assessment during a time that can provide valuable hands-on experience? By choosing to use assessment in good times and bad, companies can gain experience that will benefit them in the long run.

No matter how many applicants there are for a given position, hiring the right one should be the result of an informed decision making process. The information used to support this process should be directly related to the various things required for success at the job and the organization. This is a universal truth. Those organizations that begin to cultivate this mindset will realize a significant long-term advantage that extends past the value of good hiring, into the realm of developing, managing, and retaining talent.

Wise decisions, considering that only 23 percent of the companies surveyed intend to add full time workers in the next three months.

These are some of the findings reported in CareerBuilder.com and USA TODAY’s “Q4 2008 Job Forecast” released today. The report was based on a survey of more than 3,000 hiring managers and HR professionals and over 6,100 workers in private sector companies nationwide.

The number of companies saying they would be hiring in the last quarter of this year is 8 percent lower than the 25 percent who reported adding staff between July 1 and today. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive between August 21 and September 9, also found that 14 percent of companies had layoffs during the third quarter. That was 40 percent more than the number predicted in the “Q3 2008 Job Forecast,” a sign, perhaps of the worsening economy.

In fact, in a footnote to the forecast released today, CareerBuilder warns “The ‘Q4 2008 Job Forecast’ survey was conducted before the full financial crisis became known and so may not fully reflect the effects of that crisis.” That helps explain why the survey again found that only ten percent of the companies expected layoffs in the fourth quarter; 63 percent expect no change in their permanent, full time headcount.

“Employers are maintaining a conservative approach to recruitment as they maneuver through a weaker economy that has produced its share of casualties,” said Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder.com. “Certain sectors such as IT and Healthcare are still showing solid job growth while others struggle with reorganization, cost containment and other measures to stay afloat.”

The widespread corporate caution toward hiring presents opportunities for recruiters who, in most industries, will have less competition. The 3rd quarter forecast found that while most companies were not taking advantage of the talent inventory to make changes in their workforce, 26.4 percent were using the opportunity to replace low performers with new talent. Of course, sourcing candidates will be more challenging given that almost 80 percent of workers do not expect to make a job change in the next year. That may be why 24 percent of the HR professionals and hiring managers reported open positions they have been unable to fill.