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.

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.

Unfortunately, here is a look into what I saw: typos and misspellings on resumes; zero mention of accountability; inconsistent information; absent information from previous jobs; half-completed resumes; and six out of seven resumes were from recruiter wannabes. The sad part is that some of the wannabes took more time to position themselves than some of the veterans.

If you are a serious player, and you want to separate your candidacy from the sea of competition, I suggest you take your job search seriously, even if it is for a contract recruiter role. Take your time. Who you are being in your job search is a reflection of who you will be on the job.

Read the ad or job posting in full. If asked, answer the questions concisely and accurately; in recruiting, time is money. If there are instructions to follow, don’t demonstrate what a rogue you are. These days recruiting has lots of processes, and the bigger the company, the more risk involved. If you cannot follow the application instructions, you are sending a message that you can’t assimilate to their ways of doing things.

On the other hand, if you follow the instructions verbatim and don’t do anything above and beyond — like using some creativity in your communication or application — you may be sending a message that you give just what is asked and nothing more.

If you are applying for a job with me, look me up, find me on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and talk to me in my language. Don’t address me by Dear Sirs when my name is Margaret. When I get resumes like that, I can them immediately. I have never met a ‘Sir’ named Margaret. And it tells me you don’t care.

Typically a person hiring a recruiter is someone who has done the job before, and done it well, so they are expecting you to blow them away with knowledge, pizazz, terminology, and technology. If you are applying with me and I am a recruiter and we both share a common recruiter language and use the same type of vernacular, I expect you to use that to your advantage. Recruiting is a form of sales; show you know that by positioning yourself in the right manner.

Do your homework. Find out what company you are applying with, go to your browser, type in the company’s site, and look at who is requesting your services. Tailor your application and response to the buyer.

Job searching is a sales process. You are selling me on why I should invest in you.  That takes positioning, discernment, listening, questioning/probing, and salesmanship.

Remember, who you are being in your own search process is indicative of how you will conduct your searches for your new client, or if you are a rookie, who you are being in your job search is an indicator of how you will function in this role for others. This seems easy enough to understand; however, sometimes when we are too close to something, we catch a case of running on automatic, or a case of entitlement. We forget the game we are playing. We also forget that in this game, it is always about winning. Winning the game means working. Losing the game means keep looking, or keep on trucking to the next gig, until that gig runs out.

A real recruiter in 2008 lists accomplishments, numbers of jobs filled, time-to-fill measurements, submittals, or interviews to hire. Great recruiters know their retention rates and their percentage of good hires. In third-party recruiting, a successful recruiter knows their billings, per month, per quarter, if not per week. They also know their sendout-to-placement ratio and their job order-to-fill ratio. A solid recruiter knows their fill ratios and their (fall off ratio) misery index.

As with every profession, people are evaluated by their performance; our performance in this industry is about quality of hires within a given time frame. There are a few other important metrics, yet none as important as whether this person filled the jobs with good people and whether the hiring manager/new employee was served within an acceptable time frame.

Another element of taking your search seriously is the level of effort you have put forth in personal competency development. What have you done to increase your awareness of the marketplace? What have you done to improve and expand your capacity to identify passive talent? If your biggest claim to fame is running an ad on CareerBuilder, scanning the resume and forwarding it to your client, you are in a bit of a pickle. While that sometimes might work, it is nothing to be all that proud of, unless you are spending a significant amount of time screening, assessing, and evaluating that talent, with considerably more tools than your gut instinct.

If you know how to and enjoy sourcing passive talent through using social networks and Internet mining tools, like Broadlook or Jigsaw, brag about it. Include your percentages of hires using passive candidate streams and social networks.

If you are a farmer of people and you use your personal and business community to continually generate passive candidate flow and you have your very own ‘affinity network,’ then brag about that as well. If you have a list, a database of candidates, live and usable candidates, hell that is something to brag about. You come armed and prepared to generate maximum results in a minimal amount of time.

Taking your job search and your career seriously means continually upping your level of service offering and depth of service. If your thing is sourcing, do it fabulously. Invest in your own development, learn the systems, learn the technology, and apply it. After all, you buy clothing, fine wine, and jewelry, so go buy a new way to source candidates, sign up for that $500 training, and then learn everything you can and apply it the second you get out of training. Brag about the results you produced.

If your bag is full-life-cycle recruiting, take that seriously and learn about the new wave of candidate selection tools that are being adopted into many company’s hiring processes. At the Onrec conference, a group of English business folks told me that 85% of all companies in their countries use behavioral interviewing, as well as competency and personality assessments to validate their hiring choices and create new employee development programs. I do not think the U.S. is there yet, but due to the financial and business strategy consequences of poor hiring practices, I believe many more are on that path.

If you are not getting better, you ought to get out, because before you know it you will be replaced by someone who is a lot more willing to do the same job for a lot, and I mean a lot less. If you like the business, live like you will be engaging in a job search, and stay ahead of the curve. Keep track of your results, operate with integrity, don’t make placements you know won’t work out, create solid contacts and networks, and learn everything you can. Always position yourself the way you want to be perceived.

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

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

Like white? Then interior decorating is for you. (Too easy. Everyone knows white goes with everything.)

How about if your favorite colors happen to be black and red and orange? Maybe you just really like Halloween. Otherwise, you are “The Evaluator,” says a press release from CareerBuilder (profile; site), which just added a color wheel (parked on the old CareerPath.com website) to help jobseekers better assess their personality.

Before we get scolded for making light of a serious assessment tool let us note that the Color Career Counselor has been scientifically vetted with the results published in the North American Journal of Psychology. You can read the paper here, but fair warning: it’s full of the kind of statistical analysis we avoided in college.

The CareerBuilder service is powered by the Dewey Color System, which uses color selection to determine your personality type and traits. These then suggest certain types of careers that others with smilar personalties have found rewarding and successful or which typically attract people like you.

Dewey offers its colors-based assessment to companies as a pre-screening tool, touting the Dewey Employee Predictor as “the world’s first nonlanguage-based test that defines occupational interest, workplace behavior patterns, styles, traits, and temperaments, as well as an additional 16 personality factors.”

Invented by Dewey Sadka, a veteran recruiter who founded and ran his own employment agency, Temp Force, he’s written several books on the use of color in personality assessment and employment. Sadka’s latest book is on using colors to find love. His clients include Georgia-Pacific, Honeywell and SHRM. And now, CareerBuilder.

Taking the test takes only a few minutes. And we will say this, the analysis was right in more ways than we would have thought. It helps if your monitor is properly calibrated. We couldn’t see much difference between indigo and blue.

Now about that black and orange and red thing. According to the CareerBuilder press release, those who picked those colors seek “the most efficient way to accomplish tasks. Using facts, compiled from past mistakes and successes, you deliver strong opinions with valuable perspectives that maximize the bottom-line.”

And the favorite color for that bottom-line presumably would be black.

If you work for an auto company in Detroit or an airline or a mortgage company, the time to prepare for layoffs has already past. For the rest of us, the time is now to improve your job security.

While recruiting can be a team effort, it is also essential that you take some time to be selfish in order to protect your own career.

Here are 15 concrete steps to improve your job security as a corporate recruiter:

1. Make the business case for the department. Before you start being concerned about your own job, consider building up the reputation of the recruiting department as a major contributor to corporate success. The best approach is to lead a team that builds a strong economic case for the direct dollar impact recruiting has had on business revenue (work with the CFO’s office to make those calculations credible). Help the department demonstrate the catastrophic recovery time required following the last dramatic reduction in the recruiting function. Not only will this effort help limit departmental layoffs, it will also demonstrate to recruiting leadership that you know how to make a strong business case and that you’re doing your part to support the team. Build the case for continued hiring during tough times because of the wealth of talent that is available. Demonstrate to managers the high quality of hires who can be obtained by poaching the very best from firms that have been weakened by the economic downturn.
2. Be recognized externally. If any recruiters are to remain, those who have received external recognition for their excellence traditionally have been much more likely to be retained. External recognition can include winning awards (like ERE, RASBIC, or Optimas) or becoming an officer in professional recruiting associations like EMA. Write articles for the leading recruiting websites (like ERE.net) and the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. Speaking at local and national recruiting events can also improve your credibility internally as well as your visibility externally at other corporations that might consider hiring you.
3. Focus on growing business units. Most corporations have learned the value of continual hiring in certain key strategic business units even while simultaneously laying off employees in others business units (ask someone in strategic planning to point out the growth areas). Focus on requisitions for these key business units or consider a transfer so that you become the assigned recruiter for one of these growing business units, because this will decrease your chances of being laid off. If you can impress the GM of that business unit by producing some significant recruiting results, they might agree to go to bat for you with your director of recruiting. If you make yourself indispensable, some business leaders might be willing to actually fund your position during down times.

4. Identify the decision-maker. Who would make the layoff decisions within recruiting and HR? Strengthen your relationship with them and make them aware of your successes.
5. Become the “go to” person. Identify critical areas where the recruiting department will need to be strong in the future and become a leader in that area. Proactively make recruiting leadership aware that you are the person who can be counted on to be a project lead (before others) in critical “new” or hot areas of recruiting.
6. Increase your visibility. Identify and become involved with any high-profile projects that are underway at your company (within recruiting, HR, and in the business) and try to take on some type of leadership role on those teams. The more visible you are to management, the more likely it is you’ll be recognized for your contributions to the company. Obviously, becoming valuable to the business and to the broader HR department will improve your chances of survival. If you’re bold, do your own calculations to demonstrate that you have a high ROI to the firm. Also, provide recruiting management with a list of your company’s top performers, innovators, and award-winners that you have recruited.
7. Be a global recruiter. Despite an economic downturn, there will still be recruiting needs somewhere around the globe. If you become an expert in recruiting in one of those geographic areas (or if you show a willingness to transfer to an international office), you can increase your job security.
8. Become future-focused. Forecast for future problems and trends in global recruiting, generational recruiting, CRM, baby boom retirements, employment branding, recruiting technology, and metrics. Incidentally, if you demonstrate your expertise and convince senior management that the recruiting “lull” will only need to last over a short period of time at your firm, you might save both you and your colleague’s jobs.
9. Start a blog or be active in online forums. Writing a periodic blog that covers recruiting and how to get a job at your firm can help your company’s recruiting efforts dramatically. In addition, writing a blog sends a message internally that you are knowledgeable and that you know how to use the Internet. You can use metrics from the blog to demonstrate its popularity. Being active on Internet recruiting forums can increase your visibility both internally and externally. By answering questions and proposing new ideas, you make it easier for your boss to see the breadth and depth of your knowledge.
10. Train recruiters. Individuals who can successfully train new recruiters have an obvious value at firms that will need to hire and train “rookie” recruiters after the downturn.
11. Offer to go on a contract basis. Sometimes volunteering to work on a contract basis will provide you with income during a time when your organization is unwilling to invest in “permanent” recruiters.
12. Sales is an option. Great recruiters are, by definition, great salespeople. During down economic times, great salespeople are still in demand. As a result, consider transferring to a sales job until recruiting jobs return within the firm.
13. Transfer into HR. Unfortunately, great recruiters don’t always “fit” within the less-aggressive HR department. But if you’re looking for security, it’s an option to consider until recruiting returns. Avoid OD and training because they are often cut dramatically during corporate downsizing.
14. Become an expert. Make everyone aware that you are an expert in critical areas of recruiting that are unlikely to be totally eliminated (even after the recruiting department is decimated). Some of those areas of expertise that are likely to be more secure include employment branding, employee referrals, technology, metrics, social networking, and internal movement, among others.
15. Use budgets to stay current. Before the recruiting budget gets frozen or cut, take advantage of any available funds to upgrade your skills and employability through recruiter training (i.e., AIRS), seminars, and conferences.

Increase Opportunities

Although risky, here are some steps if you decide to leave early:

• Target growth firms. Identify the firms in your industry or region that are likely to continue growing, in spite of any economic downturn. Benchmark with them and build relationships with recruiting management there to increase your options.
• Build your networks. Great recruiters are experts in networking and now is the right time to utilize your networks to help judge your future employability.
• Target customers and competitors. If your firm’s customers and competitors see the excellence of your work, they are more likely to consider picking you up after a layoff.
• Think consulting. If your firm allows it, do some external consulting (even for free) in order to improve your skills in case you later want to become an independent consultant.
• Consider third-party recruiting firms. This only works if you’re really aggressive, but building relationships with the vendors that your firm currently works with might increase your options.
• Consider relocation. Even during severe downturns, there is intense recruiting going on somewhere around the world. Because most international firms realize that U.S. recruiting expertise is some of the best, your chances are good, if you are willing to relocate and you have strong language skills.
• Consider a little vacation. The war for talent has been a real battle and any recruiter worth his or her salt has earned a little vacation! If you saved your money, you can wait out the recession until recruiting returns.
• Post your résumé. It’s often a good idea to test the market before layoffs get out of hand. Use sources and methods that can be successfully hidden from your current employer. If you’re risk-adverse, at least talk to some laid-off recruiters with similar expertise to get some idea of what the market is like.

Early Warning Signs

Don’t be naive or caught blind-sided. Now is the time to begin assessing the risk of potential layoffs and to determine “where you stand” in the potential layoff order.

Some possible action steps include:

• Work with finance, budgeting, and strategic planning types within your company in order to determine when and how severe the budget cuts may be. Examine previous down cycles to see what indicators were accurate “predictors” in the past. Review your own firm’s financials, 10Ks, stock price growth, sales and production forecasts, and external analyst reports to assess your firm’s stability.
• Look for early warning signs of turmoil like merger activity, scandals, pay freezes, promotion freezes, travel freezes, and purchasing freezes for nonessential items. Also view the exit of senior managers and major players as an early warning sign. Use your network within HR to see if anyone is exploring RPO outsourcing options. Be especially cognizant of any activity involving “WARN” notifications (Government mandated layoff notices), or soliciting outplacement vendors. Obviously, major cuts in requisitions or actual hiring freezes must be looked at as a possible “beginning of the end.” Finally, look at similar firms in your industry, because they might be early indicators of what is likely to happen at your firm.
• Look at your own awards, recognition, seniority, performance appraisal, customer service ratings among managers, and forced-ranking scores to estimate your own survivability. If you’re really bold, sit down with your recruiting leadership and ask what you can do to assess your position and then to improve it.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately, I’ve known hundreds of recruiters who were forced to abandon recruiting permanently because they were either “naïve” or they waited too long to be proactive in building their job security and employability.

Like it or not, recruiter layoffs are coming. If you love recruiting as I do, take steps now to ensure that you have a long career (without interruptions) in this exciting field.

• “I just happened to fall into recruiting.”
• “I wanted to try something new, so I figured I’d give recruiting a whirl.”
• “I was asked to recruit at a job fair and really enjoyed the experience, so I decided to make the move into recruiting.”

How many times have you heard similar comments when talking to recruiters or interviewing prospective recruiters for your team? I’m guessing just as much as I do, which is quite a bit.

Now, how often have you heard these lines:

• “I grew up wanting to be a recruiter.”
• “I selected my university specifically because of its excellent recruiting development program.”
• “I wanted to carry on the family tradition of being in recruiting.”
• “I had several recruiting job offers when I graduated.”

Again, I’m guessing you’ve heard these lines just as much as I have, which is hardly ever.

Recruiting has an ever-present, non-discriminating welcome mat at the door, with talent coming in from a multitude of sources. Unlike physicians or attorneys, who amass deep academic knowledge in their fields and are required to fulfill testing, licensing, and practical experience requirements to formally practice, recruiting is an open-door type of field. With the right attitude, aptitude, drive, and personality, the possibilities from where recruiting talent can come from are endless.

There are scores of talented individuals who have extensive expertise in a variety of fields and real-world settings; fortunately, they decided on their own to put their skills and talents to use in our space.

Serendipity is a great thing, but it is not a sustainable formula for success in breeding recruiting talent without at least some help. What are we doing to excite people about recruiting as a career and drive them to our door?

And for the talent we do have, how are we keeping it in recruiting? Are we setting out to influence individuals’ career choices and attract people to recruiting versus waiting for luck to deliver? Isn’t it about time we put all the strategies and tactics we use for our clients to work for our own field?

We’ve had some help already. With the War for Talent showing no signs of abatement, recruiting has become a sought-after profession for some. But “some” is not enough. It’s time for us to take up our own cause to make recruiting a destination and not a drive-by career or one discovered by happenstance.

Here are seven suggestions to help us in our own cause:

1. Simply put, recruit for recruiting. We spend much time extolling the virtues of the jobs our clients pay us to fill to candidates. And what about for our own jobs? Do we invest even a fraction of the effort? When talking to students who may be undecided about a career choice, highlight recruiting. It’s an excellent way to learn a business and what it’s really like to be in a specific role. After all, when it’s one’s job to know the role and the ideal candidate to fill it, one can virtually ‘try”a new role without ever having to “buy” just by staying in recruiting and working on a variety of interesting jobs.
2. Promote the talent-acquisition part of the talent-management field. Yes, there is such a thing. There is a core body of knowledge that defines talent acquisition, from laws that shape how we recruit to cutting-edge strategies and technologies that talent scout pioneers are testing out every day. Get schooled in recruiting and learn the basics (especially if you “fell” into recruiting and never received formal training). Attend forums and classes sponsored and conducted by recruiting subject-matter experts such as ERE, AIRS, and SHRM. Educational opportunities abound, so don’t overlook them. Even seasoned veterans in the space benefit by keeping up with how the profession is evolving.
3. Get certified. Consider becoming certified by the Human Resources Certification Institute; there is an entire curriculum dedicated to workforce planning and employment as part of the certification. AIRS and several other reputable institutions offer certification programs as well. Although perhaps sometimes used more as status symbols than for their true purpose of conveying deep expertise, accreditations and certifications in any field mean a lot. As recruiters, we know what it means to an R&D hiring manager when they see the initials “PhD” or “MD” after a name; it is no different when an HR or other business leader sees AIRS-certified or PHR following a recruiter’s name.
4. Strive for excellence in every aspect of the recruiting process and focus on quality over quantity. Recruiting can be quite lucrative, but it’s a double-edged sword. One can make money recruiting the “good” or “bad” way. Demonstrate integrity, good judgment, commitment to excellence, and innovation in how you recruit, and success will come. This doesn’t mean don’t be competitive and don’t take risks; it means that if are you in recruiting to make a fast buck by placing warm bodies, it won’t take long for your technique to be exposed and your clients to abandon you. Bring more credibility to our art; don’t undermine it by lackluster efforts and results.
5. Coach and mentor others, including those not in recruiting. Every individual is a talent scout, no matter what the field. Everyone knows great people, so coach everyone on how to turn knowing great people into matching great people with great opportunities. Chances are you will net a few great individuals yourself by raising their awareness of recruiting and helping them feel the passion it brings.
6. Share your expertise with others. Many articles on ERE are focused on the “how,” but not everything works for everyone. The goal is to share knowledge so colleagues in the field can have the most robust information to help make strategic choices in recruiting. Recruiters know their clients and industries best; share that expertise. You don’t have to be a writer with a column on ERE; it could be as simple as influencing a hiring manager to pilot a new way to attract biostatisticians to the company. Sharing knowledge with others, whether clients or colleagues, will contribute to raising the level of professionalism and credibility of our field. Ultimately, it demonstrates to all that recruiting is a destination and a profession.
7. Got ‘em; keep ‘em. Given that some folks don’t plan to come to recruiting in the first place, there’s a likelihood they may not stay when they do come. Recruiting is not for everyone; let’s not be naive. But educate people enough about the possibilities and you just may help turn a “stint” in recruiting into a lifelong, fulfilling career for a talented individual. Build a career ladder in your organization so recruiters won’t feel they need to look elsewhere to advance or develop new skills. Pay your recruiters right, give them development, reward them heartily for their results and contributions, and you just might get them to stay.

Unlike that relative we all have, talented recruiters can be the visitors we don’t mind making themselves at home in our place. And when they do come, do your part to give them every reason to stay.

You would probably be very surprised to know what the CEO of your organization thinks about you. Rather than having a negative view, most CEOs I have spoken with believe you have almost magical powers. They assume you know where talent is located and how to find it. They assume you are well connected to the business goals of the organization and are striving to find candidates who are good cultural and technical fits.

They also assume you know the language of business and both understand and speak it fluently. It is a language centered on business concepts and a handful of assumptions they make daily. Many of our issues may simply be that we don’t speak or understand that language as well as they think we do.

For example, CEOs instinctively move toward the action that will maximize profits and minimize costs or expenses. To them, this is as basic as breathing, and they often don’t consciously even realize that they have moved in that direction. However, many recruiters and HR professionals focus more on process or on how a candidate feels about a given action, and they emphasize these over profits in presentations and conversations.

For example, I might hear a recruiter say, “I felt that the extra time spent with that candidate was worth it because he will now say nicer things about us to other potential candidates.” A CEO might instead phrase it this way: “Spending a few extra minutes with the candidate could result in our firm making two or three additional hires because of the positive comments we’ll get. That would mean we’d be able to spend less on advertising and make hires faster.”

They are really saying the same thing, but the focus and the language are different.

Here are four other things a CEO thinks about you:

CEOs Think You Know and Respond to Their Business Priorities

A business priority is defined by Ram Charan, Harvard business professor and author of an outstandingly valuable book called What the CEO Wants You to Know, as “the most important action that needs to be taken at a certain point in time.”

Sometimes, this is hiring people as fast as you can; other times, it’s hiring only the absolutely A+ players. And sometimes, it’s not hiring at all. Priorities can change quickly, and CEOs expect that you know that and are prepared to react accordingly. Most CEOs would be shocked to learn that their recruiters or their HR department had not anticipated a change in priorities and made adjustments. If we are connected to the business strategy and understand the priorities of the business units we support, this should be automatic. Yet, how often do you find yourself scrambling to get on board well after a situation has arisen?

Having an Investor Mentality

Do you think the same way an investor in your company would think? Your CEO has to think like an investor and make choices, even unpopular ones, that give investors confidence. CEOs have learned how to balance internal needs with investor sentiment. They focus on improving business processes and finding ways to cut costs. They assume you think and act the same way. They are actually confused when you request expensive tools (e.g., Applicant Tracking Systems and Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS)) without showing how they will add to the profits or improve the investor perception.

Their focus is often on how an investment will add to the bottom line or how a decision will save costs. You have to understand that your CEO thinks you are doing the same.

Focus on execution and on saving money, and present the request for the HRIS as a way to reduce the need for support staff. Show how the system pays for itself over some time period and, if the math doesn’t work, drop the idea.

Quality Counts More Than Ever

Yes, every CEO I know believes in and supports total quality. General Electric’s Six Sigma program and the Black Belt training are ubiquitous. Again, your CEO most likely will assume you are also emphasizing quality and establishing your own “black belts.” Have you asked yourself what an absolutely first-rate, 100% “defect-free” recruiting process would look like? What would it “buy” your organization? Have any of us used this slower time to think about this and begin to set up a Six Sigma recruiting process in our firms?

Knowing How You Fit into the Strategy

The CEOs I work with assume that all departments know how they contribute to the big picture. You are expected to present what you will do to help the firm achieve its strategic goals, imperatives, or whatever you call them. Talent strategies are critical to every organization. If the CEO cannot get the talent she needs to execute a strategy, the strategy will fail and, along with it, the organization. That is why I see some firms challenging recruiters and HR when it comes to formulating and carrying out a talent strategy. They are looking at you to lead the effort.

You must know how you fit into the overall vision of the firm, and you must show how you can contribute to achieving business success. That means showing how what you do will increase the profits of your organization.

While it may be comforting to know that CEOs are more positive about you than you thought, you have to earn this continued respect. It will take continuous focus and communication to ensure that your CEO maintains that impression over the next few months of economic turbulence.

“California needs more engineers to achieve the improvements to our roads, schools and other infrastructure that voters envisioned when they passed the Strategic Growth Plan bonds last year,” says the Terminator in a day after Christmas message.

How many is more? 20,000 in 10 years, according to the press release that reads, well, like even the government writers are on strike.

While the governor’s office churned up statistics projecting a shortage of 40,000 engineers by 2014, the number is a little shaky. A 2003 Rand Corporation suggested the U.S. was not lagging as far behind other countries in the production of PhD engineers as the hand-wringers might fear. Then last year, The Wall Street Journal’s CareerJournal.com carried this comment by Richard Tax, president of the American Engineering Association, “Companies are looking for a five-pound butterfly. Not finding them doesn’t mean there’s a shortage of butterflies.” The context was that companies are looking for engineers with so many credentials and so much experience and ignoring those without it that it makes it look like there’s a shortage.

Note that we are talking engineers generally. Mechanical, structural, civil and other engineering specialties, while hardly a dime a dozen, are no where near as in short a supply as are computer and electrical engineers.

California’s plan to increase the number of locally grown engineers won’t be fully outlined until after Schwarzenegger’s State of the State speech on January 8^th. However, the press release offers a glimpse of the plan which includes establishing programs specifically for military veterans with engineering training at the state’s graduate and undergraduate schools; the creation of an engineering education council to generate more private funding for the public universities and colleges; and, enhancing the charter school program (a California experiment turning over public schools to private groups) to encourage the expansion of private High Tech High to build out engineering-focused charter schools throughout the state.

As experts in careers, those of us involved in human capital are well aware that most people usually change careers several times over their lifetimes. That’s a given. This applies to candidates as well as the people who recruit them because we, too, are counted among those with multiple careers. But the really cool thing is that each of those changes presents an opportunity for even greater success.

That’s why I am here today to build on the theme from my article about candidate spotting. Today, we’re focusing on career spotting, or scanning the horizon for changes in your environment that will lead you to that next better thing, while at the same time scanning your history for unique experiences and insights that give you a competitive advantage.

I am a “woman with a past.” I find a certain delicious humor in the phrase as it implies, well, I won’t go there. Let us just say that I have lived, and thankfully, it has been an interesting life. One reader, aware of my former career as an award-winning investigative reporter and television journalist, asked me to talk about how I came to change careers.

While I could say I laid out a tidy career plan and that my move to executive search was exactly what I had planned, that would be untrue.

Rather, I had invested every ounce of my being into become the best reporter a reporter could be, and I woke up one day and discovered the industry had changed. I spotted a trend (someone had moved my cheese). In response, I made an adjustment that ultimately allowed me to capitalize on the opportunity.

I started my news career shortly after Watergate, inspired by reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. At the time, there was nothing cooler than extracting information from highly placed sources in secret meetings in a darkened parking garage. But by 1997, television news had become a shadow of its former self. Investigative reporting was a costly, highly litigious pastime, prone, if not designed, to upset the powers-that-be.

Moreover, television news had seen a fragmenting of its audience from the days when the triptych television networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC dominated the news. By then, with the advent of cable, the audience had been scattered like buckshot across 200 channels.

In response, producers no longer decided to lead the news with the most important story of the day, but rather with the story they felt you most wanted to hear. That was so not what I had envisioned and while I could argue on behalf of journalism and the better story, it was an argument I wasn’t going to win.

So I left, went back to college, and ended up at Columbia University surrounded by kids who were born around the time Reagan was elected president. I had a blast. Ultimately I had to return to work and so a friend suggested I assist her with candidate development in recruiting. I had no idea that there was research aimed at recruiting. I was delighted to learn about something I could do from the comfort of my own home.

Moreover, much of the work seemed easy in comparison to what I used to do. It is far, far easier to call someone to offer them a job than to explain you are investigating them. Then I started applying my investigative expertise to identifying and ultimately recruiting executives and technologists, spinning in my computer-assisted research acumen, and my business was born.

One might say I fell into recruiting. But rather, I practiced the art of career spotting, which involves the following steps:

1. See career change as opportunity: capitalize on it. Everyone gets downsized, even recruiters. Industries contract and expand. Markets have up and down cycles. What worked yesterday doesn’t always work today. Instead of focusing on what you have lost, focus on what you stand to gain. It doesn’t happen overnight. You may have to mourn the loss of a former career, workplace, and co-workers, if not the loss of a former identity. For the longest time, it felt weird to tell people I worked in executive search. Now it feels weird to say I was a TV journalist, though that investigative background gives our practice a competitive advantage.
2. Read the tea leaves: read the newspapers. To career spot, you must be aware of the business world’s ever-shifting sands. Industries expand and contract, markets have up cycles and down, and what worked yesterday doesn’t always work today. You must be ever-vigilant and anticipate where things are headed. When you see a critical mass coalesce, or spot a pattern that resonates, it’s time to take action. For our business, it may mean realizing when we’re entering an economic downturn and refocusing or repositioning business in much the same way investors rebalance their portfolios.
3. Realize that you are your own competitive advantage. Everyone is an individual. Everyone has their own special set of strengths and weaknesses. The trick is to capitalize on your strengths by aligning them with the trends you’ve observed in Step 2. I’m not saying this as a general platitude, as a generic warm-fuzzy, or as a Hallmark card bon mot. Rather, I’m suggesting you go beyond resume text and consider themes that have emerged over the course of your career. Examine your successes as well as the flip-side of your failures for the hidden strengths you may have embedded in them. During my journalism career, I was extraordinarily idealistic about the Fourth Estate and frequently jousted with my superiors, advocating for a great story and for the greater good. Was I a total pain in the derri?re? Definitely. Would I do it differently if I had it to do over again? Definitely. But the passion, determination, idealism, and depth of concern I had about advocating for doing the right thing were simply building blocks that were in their formative stages. Years later, it all came together when I rebranded our search firm and human capital intelligence practice “The Good Search,” the first search practice committed to serving employers-of-choice.
4. Blink. Trust your instinct: use it to guide your innovation. Trust your gut. The older I get, the more I realize that if something feels wrong, it probably is. Moreover, we may be hard-wired for intuition, for profound knowledge and intelligence on a subconscious level. You still need to be educated, and to advance your training through conventional means. Often the thing that makes the difference between success and failure or between success and blow-the-roof-off super-stardom is trusting your inner wisdom.
5. Spark a revolution: become more evolved. If you haven’t failed lately, then you may have gotten too content operating in your safe zone. If you find yourself blaming others, circumstance, or other outside factors, you’re wasting energy and valuable time. Instead, capture the lesson contained in every challenge you encounter. Not to go all New Age on you, but increasingly business people are turning to meditation as a way to become more present and aware as they engage in business. Being fully present and devoid of distraction makes you more successful. You don’t have to do yoga to get there. Other forms of exercise can put you into a meditative state, and biofeedback devices can as well.

Honor one’s past and use every lesson contained therein as recruiters. The lessons might come from childhood as an extension on the thesis, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. (Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people.) The lessons can come from relationships with significant others or from raising children. They can come from failure and loss as much as they come from success and acquisition.

The secret to career spotting is developing symphonic awareness by noticing emerging and repeating patterns, the themes and counter-themes, the harmony as well as the dissonance. In the end, it empowers each of us to serve as conductor of one’s vocation and avocation.

Quite often, recruiters ask me to recommend today’s best books and blogs. I’ve compiled some links to blogs that are a bit out of the recruiting mainstream and are not written by recruiters. These blogs provide you with a slightly different view of things and often from a wider perspective as well.

Out of the hundreds of books that are published every month, only a very few make my list. I try to recommend books that I will refer back to and that carry a message that isn’t faddish. The three I list here are all keepers.

Blogs

The Future of Work written by Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware contains powerful commentary and research on how the way we work is changing. They document everything from work/life balance to telecommuting and explain the trends and issues that crop up.

These two have been working and documenting the changing workplace for several years. They have case studies and numerous examples of new styles of organizational structure as well as new ways that people are working. Every recruiter is going to face candidates and hiring managers who are in conflict over work styles, time, and place. This blog may help you (or them) better understand and find solutions to these clashes.

Fast Company, the magazine that probably best documents the emerging world. It covers everything from how we are changing work, travel, food, and clothing to how talent is changing. It offers excellent and insightful information on a range of topics, including talent and recruiting.

For insight into how the generations clash and mesh, Russ Eckel’s blog Generations at Work is essential reading. Russ discusses everything from the emerging millennial culture to mentoring.

Perhaps the funniest and most controversial of generational bloggers is Penelope Trunk (who will be speaking at the ERE Expo Spring 2008 in San Diego). Her blog, Brazen Careerist, is also the title of her recent book. She offers Generation Y career advice that is bold, fresh, and definitely her own! Take a look and see what you think.

For those of you interested in social networks Fred Stutzman, a PhD student in Information Science, authors an excellent blog called Unit Structures. His posts are deep and thoughtful and have links to many other blogs and resources of information on social networking.

Another commentator and researcher on social networks is Danah Boyd, a PhD student at the University of California at Berkeley. Her blog, Apopenia, has recently carried a fascinating discussion on the sociological difference between Facebook and MySpace.

Books

Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk

Penelope is the blogger I mention above. Her new book has been selling like hotcakes as it is the first I have seen to begin defining how young people are approaching the search for work.

Although written as an advice book for young job seekers and college students, it offers insight and fun commentary on our current employment practices and on what is emerging as the 21st century view of work and life. She outlines 45 new rules for success, many of which I am almost certain you will either agree with or absolutely disagree with. Penelope leaves little room for the cautious person in the middle. Her views are powerful and challenging.

Career Distinction by William Arruda and Kristen Dixson

This book’s subtitle sums up its main message: Stand out by building your brand. Similar in theme to speeches and books by Tom Peters, it advocates the concept of developing a strong personal brand.

Chapters cover topics such as how to define your “brand community” and how to tell your brand story. They help you understand how to use career-marketing tools and assess your online identity.

With the growing use of search engines to look for people and the rise of social networks, it is critical to know what your online identity looks like and what people are going to find about you. An interesting and useful addition to your knowledge as a recruiter.

The Future of Work by Thomas Malone

Most everyone who works in a corporation participates in discussions about work, hierarchy, org structure, and leadership. He predicts that we will move to much less centralized organizations as we move into this century. He discusses how technology has already reduced the need for central structures and how it has opened up the possibility of decentralized communities and organizations defined by markets.

Along the way, he discusses the future of work and workers. He advocates defining jobs much more broadly and allowing people to cultivate new skills through experimentation and discovery. He says “let a thousand flowers bloom” in order to foster the creativity and innovation that will keep organizations competitive. If you have time to read only one book as this year draws to a close, consider this one. It is easy to read and filled with solid research (Tom is a professor at MIT) as well as thought-provoking ideas on the future.

I hope you find some of these useful, and I am always looking for some recommendations of good blogs and good books from you as well.

Companies spend millions of dollars a year trying to develop compelling employment brands by interviewing current employees, surveying external job-seekers, and validating the conclusions they draw from the data. But even after all that, there’s no guarantee that the brand statement will perfectly reflect what an organization offers potential employees.

If branding is that difficult for a company with money and resources, how in the world can you and I figure out what our own brand is, let alone try to publicize it to our customers, without consultants, ad agencies, or budgets?

Fortunately, it’s easier than you might think.

This morning I went to my “Rolodex” of business contacts (really a stack of business cards held together with a rubber band!) and randomly chose three. As I pulled them out of the stack, I wrote down the first word that came to mind:

1. Sleazy. This is the agency contact who always calls me to demand placement fees for people we sourced through our own careers website. Even though we stopped working with this guy a long time ago, we can always count on him to weave some extraordinary “six degrees of separation” tale designed to convince me that he is ultimately responsible for the hire.
2. Incredible. This is a woman who supervised another department at a company where I used to work. She was so smart and innovative I volunteered to take on any project of her choosing just for the privilege of working with her. I still marvel at how much I learned from her.
3. Innovative. This is an IT consultant I worked with for several years who is always able to think of a clever solution to any problem, and consistently delivers it ahead of schedule.

Let’s face it: no one probably deserves to be reduced to a single word, and each of these people undoubtedly exhibits behaviors contrary to the labels I’ve given them. Nonetheless, over time, this is the label they’ve earned in my mind. What label have you earned in the minds of your customers?

A popular phrase among the self-help profession is “We teach others how to treat us.” Do you find your HR partners claiming credit for your best hires, yet find yourself saddled with blame for hires you were not even involved with? As an agency recruiter, do you have problems getting your resumes to the right people? How is it that the new hire in your department, who has very little prior recruiting experience, became so successful so quickly?

Perhaps the problem is your brand. Just like a company, everyone has a brand, whether they like it or not. The challenge is to learn what your brand is and then position yourself such that you emphasize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

Gather Data and Assess Your Current Situation

People, like companies, have both positive and negative qualities. As a first step in the branding process, most corporate initiatives start with an assessment of some sort. This is accomplished through the use of focus groups, surveys, or individual interviews.

Similarly, when you’re attempting to learn about your personal brand, it’s also a good idea to find out how your “customers” perceive you. You can certainly ask a trusted colleague to share their thoughts, but I recommend one of the widely available 360? assessment tools. In a pinch you can also use a free Web-based survey tool.

Regardless of how you do it, it’s important to learn what you do well, what you don’t do well, and what your customers’ overall impression of you is.

Determine What Makes You Unique

I remember being assigned to a business group as its new recruiter. Every person I talked with had the same thing to say: “I’m sure you’re a good recruiter, but, alas, no one will ever be as good as Darla was.”

Darla was this group’s recruiter several years before, and despite having worked with several competent recruiters since, the entire team was unable to get beyond the fact that their beloved Darla was now gone.

It would have been easy to start acting like Darla to try and get that client group to like me, and that’s in fact what they really wanted. However, as I probed a bit, I learned that Darla’s style was very different from mine. Darla hired nearly all her folks using agencies (not necessarily a bad thing, but not in alignment with our department’s strategy for that function).

Also, she always asked the hiring managers what they thought about a particular candidate first, and would respond the same way each time: “Isn’t that amazing, that’s just what I thought!” No wonder everyone liked her! I realized quickly that such a style just wasn’t me.

My style is more analytical: “You have expertise and I have expertise. You define success this way, and I define it that way. You want this outcome, and I want that outcome. Let’s design a process up front that will get us both what we want, and allow us to measure how we’re doing along the way.”

They certainly never liked me as much as they liked Darla, but what was important is that we hired some great people into that business who were sourced internally, and I also earned the respect of the hiring managers.

Advertise and Embrace Your Idiosyncratic Differences

The best recruiters I know tend to unabashedly let people know what makes them unique in the way they approach their job. Adopting a professional style that’s not “on brand” for you can make you look insincere, unconfident, and unprofessional.

To hiring managers looking for an opportunity to challenge the “current recruiting model” for their own political gains, such a flicker of weakness is like blood in the water. I’ve seen it result in phone calls to supervisors, power plays by HR generalists, and frustration on the part of recruiters who begin to question their own abilities.

There are many different recruiter styles, and they all can be effective. For example, we all know the recruiters who are loud, brash, and direct a never-ending stream of resumes at their customers. Some of the resumes are worthless, but they just laugh that off and send over even more. Their customers adore them, and over time they start to focus that barrage of resumes and zero in on the correct skill set.

We also know the more cerebral type of recruiter, the one who thoughtfully goes back to their workspace for several days, triumphantly emerging with a single, perfect resume in hand. Can you articulate your own recruiting style?

Communicate and Reinforce Your Brand

Once you understand how your customers perceive you, and develop a style that plays to your strengths, let people know what to expect when they work with you:

• “You’ll be hearing from me by phone several times a day. I like to keep you informed as we work together.”
• “Let’s set up a face-to-face conversation each week to review the resumes I’ve sent you, and agree on next steps.”
• “I’m only going to send you the resumes that meet your exact specifications; otherwise, we’ll just waste time. I need you to be very specific about what a candidate must have and must not have.”

Take time to point out the things that make your style unique as you develop working relationships with your customers. The confidence that you project will result in confidence on the part of your customers. That allows you to focus on your job, and get people hired, the ultimate victory.

In the past few months, I’ve been working with organizations that are talking a lot about the internal mobility of employees. They want to know how employees should be selected for movement and what criteria should be followed.

Many HR professionals and hiring managers look at internal mobility as something they should control and as something that is somewhat independent of the employee’s wishes or timeframe.

Alas, back in the good-old 20th century, employers could call the shots. After all, there were quite likely to be more than one good candidate in the wings. HR wrote policies that restricted movement and placed lots of conditions such as length of service, criticality of the job, and so forth on any employee’s potential move.

Bosses had to be notified and had to give their permission. Bureaucracy was king and what the employee wanted didn’t matter much.

The world has changed and employees are more and more in charge of their own careers and timeframes. They have choices of employers and, while most would rather stay in familiar territory, they are much more willing to move on when they have to than they were a decade ago. There is little in life that is fair and the days of stability and loyalty in corporations are over.

The labor market is tight for skilled people and even for those who are semi-skilled. I’ve started to notice “For Hire” signs in every store, restaurant, and office I’ve been in over the past three months. The signs advertising positions are often larger and more colorful than those that advertise the products.

Let’s face the truth: keeping your good employees and letting them find opportunities that satisfy them is not only a good strategy, it may be an essential one for success.

Employees Are Not Assets

First, we should not characterize employees as assets, as many firms do, and treat them in a way that makes them feel as if they have no choices. Employees cannot be owned, taxed, depreciated, or disposed of as machines or other tangible assets can be.

They have become important investors in our organizations and they freely choose to share their expertise and skills with us or not. Each employee has a built-in return on investment meter that is constantly sampling the atmosphere and deciding if she is gaining or losing from a continuing association with the firm.

As long as the employee feels that they are gaining, they don’t look for different jobs. But in this job market, whenever the balance shifts even slightly, employees become vulnerable to any offer that may present itself. Hence, the value in having managers who have a history of good employee loyalty and low turnover.

Usually when an employee wants to apply for another position inside the firm it is because they are looking for a new challenge, aren’t happy with their current assignment of boss, or feel that the new position will offer more of a return on their investment.

To deny them the opportunity and to place some HR policy in their way is not only a sure way to lose them to someone else, it is also just plain dumb. Happy employees who are being treated as investors will be unlikely to leave.

Here are four things every organization and HR group should be doing or should have in place today:

1. Abolish limiting policies. Remove policies that limit or control how or when employees apply for positions within an organization. Every employee should have the same employment-at-will opportunities inside the company as exist in the open marketplace.
2. Encourage employees. Companies should make it a policy to encourage employees to share expertise and skills broadly. After all, it is the networking interconnectedness of our employees that adds value and allows us to develop new products and generate new ideas. Creativity does not arise in stable, rigid, and change-adverse organizations. The most exciting new concepts and ideas come for small firms where people wear many hats and move between responsibilities such as the dot-com companies of Silicon Valley.
3. Empower recruiters. Let recruiters work just as freely inside as outside the organization and let them work on back-filling positions that may be vacated by an employee who is moving on to something else. If a recruiter knows that an employee is leaving for a new position, they can help the manager find someone else for the old position at almost the same time.
4. Let employees test positions. Create policies that allow employees to try out new jobs for a short time to see whether they like it and can do it well. Let employees share their job with someone else so they can sample more than one kind of work or more than one project. Foster a spirit of sharing expertise and skills, not of owning the mind and body of someone.

The policies that restrict or limit transfers and change within an organization are leftovers of the 20th century organizations that are hierarchical, paternalistic, and slowly fading away. A 21st century organization removes barriers and builds networks that power creativity and growth.

That’s according to the findings of a global recruitment survey released by Accenture, which polled more than 4,100 job seekers in 21 countries in North and South America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region to identify the most-valued career goals of both entry-level and experienced job seekers.

The findings indicate that challenging and interesting work is the most important characteristic that job seekers look for in prospective employers, selected by 60% of all respondents.

The potential for recognition and reward for their accomplishments was a close second, selected by 58% of respondents.

Rounding out the top five characteristics of greatest interest to job seekers were opportunities for fast career growth (44%); indications that the employer is well-established and is likely to have long-term prosperity (42%); and indications that a company has a particular focus on its people (42%). ?

“We found that what is considered important to potential recruits was remarkably consistent across geographies,” says John Campagnino, Accenture’s global director of recruitment.

“Also notable was the fact that while we know from our own employees that corporate social responsibility and diversity are important employer characteristics — things our employees demand and place high value in — the research also validated what many of us intuitively know: namely, that more tangible benefits such as rewards and recognition are most important from an external recruit’s perspective.”

Chances are, many readers of this article completed the statement before reading the answer. Why, then, do so many companies continue a practice that sales executives deride? A vacuum of viable career options, unset expectations, and a culture of “earning your stripes” are just a few of the answers that plague sales organizations today. Unfortunately, there’s not much research based on the performance data of managers who have been promoted from top performing sales reps versus those who were either moderate sales reps or had no sales experience

However, there’s ample data to prove that the behavioral profiles of those who succeed in the two roles are dramatically different, meaning that those who succeed as sales managers are not the same as those who succeed in direct selling. A seller’s business attitude heavily influences his ability to succeed. If an individual possesses a progressive attitude about business in general by seeking to use new strategies and techniques in his role and always striving to reinvent his work, he has a leg up on other salespeople. On the other hand, a strong sales manager seeks a more conventional approach, in which success relies on what is proven instead of on the latest fad.

Another key difference is a star salesperson’s need for stress in his or her environment. For better or for worse, our data shows that higher levels of stress are conducive to top performing representatives, while more moderate levels are needed by managers. Spend one day in most sales organizations where a top performing rep has been promoted to manager and you’ll see a nearly manic environment in which tactical and strategic changes are the only constant. While the team may be able to adapt and change, these are not practices that lead to results. While the things that make a salesperson successful are related to culture, personality and cognitive skills are more important for a leader.

One example of these leadership skills is verbal reasoning ability. Without the ability to rapidly and effectively process and communicate information, the chance for success is diminished. This is connected to the importance of “mental flexibility” or one’s ability to “think on his feet.” While not as critical for the rep, the leader must be able to rapidly think through scenarios and adapt to a changing environment to maximize performance. Interestingly, as substantial as the differences are, similarities exist as well. Both top salespeople and top sales managers need something called “leadership impact,” which is willingness to take action when the situation requires it. Basically, can one take charge and lead naturally? Both star salespeople and star managers must possess this in abundance. A sales representative must lead the prospect, while a manager must lead the team. All of this discussion of behavioral characteristics really boils down to one simple fact: You must understand the differences between successful salespeople and managers to understand how to (or if you should) promote. What if the top performing salesperson is not the right fit for a management role? Are you necessarily going to lose him or her to another company’s sales management opening? Not if you’ve thought through suitable career path alternatives for the sales professional. You’ve got to have a place for top sellers to advance. Too often, the alternative to management is more cold calling with a higher commission level.

Other paths could include more strategic prospects such as national accounts, project-based leadership in which a sales rep manages an ad hoc sales team to land one client, or training and mentorship opportunities. Whichever components you include in your sales professional career path, it must be thought out and communicated. Too often, a senior sales executive or HR professional believes that these options exist while field sales reps have not been adequately sold on why this may be a smart career move for them. Selling your sales team on why progressing their careers along a sales professional line instead of management must start early - as early as the initial recruitment process. It comes down to setting adequate expectations at the start and following through with your actions. The reason why most sales people expect to one day be promoted to managers is precedent.

Unfortunately, this is still the most common practice in companies. “Sell your heart out and one day you’ll manage a team of your own,” is the motto. You can change this by informing all sales candidates, pre-hire, that this is not the practice in your organization. By carefully illustrating that there are other good paths for their careers besides management, and by showing clearly what those options entail, you can help the potential rep select the most appropriate role for him or her. When combined with constant reinforcement of this message at review time, a deliberate decision can be made by both rep and manager on the best course for the rep’s career. To promote the sales managers who will drive your company’s bottom line growth, you need to understand the unique role of the sales leader and what type of person is needed. You must then provide options to retain those who are great sellers but stand little chance of success as a manager. And, you must communicate and sell the alternatives to your current and future team members.

But today’s savvy Gen X and Y employees (the bulk of whom you’re hiring) quickly need confirmation from their new employers that they made the right choice. Throwing them into the fray to see what happens can no longer be the litmus test for determining new employee fit. What new employees really need are the skills to quickly succeed in their new jobs and build platforms for continued success. Here’s a look at five critical skills that support immediate and long-term employee success. You might think that some of these are basic or common-sense. That may be true, but my experience is that most companies aren’t doing them.

Goal-Setting Skills

To prepare new employees for success, you must ensure that they know what is expected of them and how success is defined. Once your new employee is clear on his objectives, he can begin to identify goals that align with the company, project, and his personal objectives. Help your new employees define six- and 12-month objectives so that they have a roadmap and clear direction. As part of this process, make sure their goals are realistic and milestones are identified. Milestones are critical to ensure they are on track to success, and they provide valuable check-points for managers. When helping your new employees set goals, remember the following:

• Set goals that are realistic and provide a challenge.
• Set goals that do not contradict other goals.
• Set goals that are within their control.
• Set goals that are positive and reflect what they really want.
• Write down the goals.

Time Management Skills

The importance of time management is not just meeting deadlines and showing up for work on time. Effective time management skills communicate to others that your new employees are focused, reliable, consistent, and professional. Time management skills ensure that new employees are prepared to handle the pace, demands, and changes within their jobs. To help develop your new employees’ time management acumen:

• Clearly articulate priorities and deadlines.
• Provide guidance and experience regarding how your company treats time. Is the culture fast-paced or slow? Do people show up early or late to meetings?
• Provide time management resources such as a PDA and calendaring software.
• Review the projects that employees will be working on to ensure that enough time is allocated to appropriate areas.
• Provide feedback supported by observations regarding time management practices.

Knowledge Management Skills

Your new Gen X and Y employees bring a fresh perspective, a unique body of knowledge, and a desire to learn and grow their skills. In order to make the most of their experience, ideas, potential, and learning needs, create an environment where your new employees can make contributions and learn in return. Identify areas of interests and create opportunities for learning. A fully contributing and growing employee is a happy employee.

• Help your new employees identify areas where they have job-applicable knowledge.
• Work with employees to identify ways to effectively contribute what they know.
• Provide insight into the company culture and “how things get done.”
• Identify five to 10 people your new employees need to meet as part of their jobs. Make introductions.
• Work with your new employees to identify areas of interests and knowledge development.

Team-Player Skills

Retaining new employees requires that they are quickly made to feel a part of the team. This means more than providing them with list of team member names. Give them insight into how the team functions and how your new employees fits into the mix. Help your new hires develop their team skills:

• Articulate team members/key coworkers’ roles and how each role is interrelated or independent.
• Identify how your new employee’s roles play a part in the larger group.
• Provide standards of team behavior and protocol for how the team works together.
• Pave the way for introductions to team members/key coworkers.
• Provide feedback based on observations regarding how your new employees are building and reinforcing relationships.

Professional Image Skills

Successfully retaining your new hires require that they fit into the culture of the company. Spare them the challenges of making their own mistakes by helping them navigate the company culture. Help them articulate their strengths and build their communication skills. Assist new employees by helping them sharpen their image skills:

• Share information about the image of success in your company.
• Explain behaviors that get rewarded as well as pitfalls to avoid.
• Help your new employees identify their strengths and what they want to be known for in the company.
• Provide feedback on how your new employee are communicating (physically, behaviorally, and verbally) based on your observations.

The above should be done whether or not the job market is strong or soft. Companies are faced with a workforce that will make the choice to leave if they feel they are not prepared to succeed.

So here it is: A hot job market for recruiters again, and young recruiters’ hearts lightly turn towards thoughts of career progression. But the problem with assessing your career in recruiting is that recruiting is a very complex function. Rarely does someone perform all the aspects of it by themselves. In fact, there are ten distinct facets in recruiting which interlock to get the job done. Even if you are a sole proprietorship recruiter working from your laptop and cell phone, you aren’t likely to be doing it all. (I am referring to strictly recruiting tasks — not making coffee, which, quite properly, belongs to the barista at the local coffee purveyor/wireless network emporium where you probably spend some work research time.) Here they are, one to ten, in no particular order. Start by checking the one, or ones, you really like to do and crossing out the ones you don’t. The ones you feel lukewarm about can stay for now, but really, do you want to do something you aren’t passionate about for the rest of your life? If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life at it, why waste the next year or so?

1. Networking. This is something that people either love or hate. If you are neutral about networking, you haven’t really tried it. This could be due to not knowing where to go to find people to network with. There are professional networks (including recruiter and HR organizations), social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Ryze, and some organizations that provide both. ERE is one with both: Between the networking opportunities on the website and at conferences, everyone’s covered, even the very shy.
2. Negotiating and closing the deal. This is an art. When it’s done well, it’s like magic. Everyone walks away feeling satisfied, and the results can be measured in bottom-line numbers. If you like this, you only like it when you are winning. Can you tolerate when you feel you aren’t winning. More importantly, can you turn a loss into a win?
3. Grooming the candidate. This is another art. You know that every candidate, even the most perfect one, can be improved for presentation to your customer. You take great pride in the small but important enhancements you make as you shape your candidate up a bit, smoothing out those tiny wrinkles and making sure he or she is well-rehearsed and accessorized for success.
4. Cold-calling. This may be part and parcel of your job and you may dislike it, but before you write it off, ask yourself this question: Is it the actual calling I don’t like, or the fact that I have all this documenting, recordkeeping, and reporting that consumes all my time that really irks me? If it’s the environment rather than the task that you don’t like, consider what it would be like if you just had to talk with people all day and never had to make a note.
5. Organizing. On the other hand, you may dislike the asking-people part and love the documenting, reporting, and management part. Most people who are really good at one are really not good at the other, so if you’ve checked cold-calling and organizing, you are one of the more self-reliant people in this world. That can be an advantage in some environments, but it will likely make you less of a team player.
6. Sourcing. Sourcing is a bit like treasure hunting. You turn over a lot of earth, sometimes with something that looks like a detailed strategic plan and sometimes with just your gut instinct to guide you. If this is your top choice, the plans you make are often useless, but that gut instinct of yours often leads you to unexpected treasure, the kind you didn’t know even existed. That’s the nature of the natural sourcer.
7. Pre-qualifying. You take the time to learn what’s needed, but if you can’t get just the right person, you can see the possibilities in someone who is “almost right.” You are great with assets, human or otherwise, making sure you get them where they’ll do the most good and you even like to do it on time.
8. Matchmaking. Time isn’t your strong suit, so your assignments are often late, but you love it when you make it happen. You share the joy in the “perfect match” whether that’s to fill a position, set friends up for a date, or pass on the name of your ace plumber to your colleague who woke up to a flooded kitchen.
9. Background checking. You love to solve those gritty little problems and, if the truth be told, you are a bit nosy about other people’s secrets. Each successful conversation with a prior employer where you wheedle more than “name, rank, serial number” is a personal triumph for you, and you do keep score.
10. Data management. Let all those thorny interactions with people be done by someone else. You aren’t a hermit; you just prefer working with data, tending the gold mines, and providing information and even a bit of wisdom to those who approach you with respect for its value.

Now that you’ve figured out what you like best, what are some potential career paths for you to consider? If you checked networking, have you considered business development, or even going into business yourself? Networking is essential for business development. If it’s your own business you’ve been considering, start with writing down your vision for it. The larger it is, the bigger the team you’ll need to help you get there, so start by developing those relationships. (Hint: Those other people will like doing those things you just crossed off your list.)

If you chose negotiating and closing the deal, then you are a natural for strategic consulting on either side of the table. If you have had a long career, are appropriately credentialed for your intended customer base, and truly understand the internal politics of organizations, your counsel will be valuable to senior management and professionals in outplacement. If you have extensive experience in a narrow industry or niche market, consider positioning yourself as a consultant within that realm.

If grooming the candidate was your top pick, have you dreamed of becoming a coach? In professional coaching, as in most things, education and credentials count for a lot in the marketplace. Before considering “quick and easy” routes, sit down and plan (you love to do this anyway) how to become an expert and how to get the word out. Great ways to practice the skills you’ll need include mentoring. If you can’t do this at your present job, consider giving to your local youth mentoring project such as Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

If you opted for cold calling, leading a sales team may give you the action you crave. Your only problem is that there just aren’t enough hours in any one day to do everything. Leading a sales team lets you multiply your effectiveness without burning out. If you can’t move up in your own organization, you might want to spend a few of those precious spare moments looking at other possibilities.

If organizing is your passion, no matter how much technology you already use, consider expanding your toolbox. You would be great at managing computer networks that support the myriad activities of complex organizations. It comes easy to you but remember that most of us can’t keep track of our car keys and glasses, much less the critical info