ERE.net

If you are a recruiting leader, I would like to introduce you to a concept that many are not familiar with, which is “whole career employment.” The premise of this hiring and workforce planning model is that instead of the traditional expectation that employees will work at a firm continuously from their hire date until they retire, leaders need to plan for the eventuality when top employees may come and go from your firm several times throughout their whole career.

This new model is necessary because it fits both the changing loyalty levels and expectations of workers and the evolving way that work is done. The average tenure of the American worker at a single firm is just over four years and Americans may hold between 5 and 10 jobs throughout their career. This process of hiring, losing and bringing back employees requires a hiring model that is more flexible and sophisticated than most firms currently have.

A whole career model is a hiring and workforce planning strategy that focuses on the reduced loyalty and retention levels among top performing employees. Instead of focusing on hiring a top person only one single time, it plans on targeting them for rehire at several different points throughout their entire career. Smart firms will plan to recruit and hire the very best back into regular or contingent jobs at points in their career when we need them and when they are willing and able to work for us in some capacity. The goal is to get as much high-quality work from top performers whenever they are available throughout their career.

Lifelong Employment Is Coming to an End keep reading…

In America, boys want to grow up to be athletes and girls want to be teachers. In the rest of the world, they mostly want to be scientists or doctors or engineers.

Most abandon those youthful dreams as they get older, says LinkedIn. The company surveyed some 8,000 of its 187 million members, asking them about their early career dreams and how they compared to the job they now have. Only 30 percent went on to become what they dreamed about as a child or at least work in a closely related field.

What happened to those early dreams? The professionals working in other jobs were most likely — by 44 percent — to explain,  ”As I got older, I became interested in a different career path.”

Fulfilling their childhood hopes, especially for those U.S. boys dreaming of becoming the next Kobe Bryant or Eli Manning, paled as they realized that taking pleasure in work was more important. At least that’s what 70 percent of the respondents said. keep reading…

Of all the developments and trends in human resources, what would be at the top of your list?

Would strategic HR be there? How about outsourcing; or, should that be in-sourcing? Does employer branding and the “war for talent” belong there? And where would technology fit in, especially the trend away from so-called best-in-class components and toward integrated systems?

Not an easy call is it? Just since the start of the recession in late 2007 human resource departments, and the profession itself, has seen a remarkable shift in both function and practice. Strategic HR, a concept that began to percolate about the same time companies changed the personnel division to the HR department, got jumped into the C-suite consciousness shortly after the layoffs began. It was helped along by the angst created earlier by Keith Hammond’s wake-up call to the profession, “Why  We Hate HR.” keep reading…

Talent management and recruitment, or really any of HR’s core functions, can be one of the most rewarding professions out there. It comes ready with excitement, positive challenges, and constant opportunities to learn. It is this sense of fast-paced, interesting work (with people, you do enjoy working with people, right?) that appeals to so many young professionals and is a contributing factor as to why the field can often be a difficult career to break into. However, as with any profession, those already entrenched in the war for talent have their own share of difficulties.

Within the ranks, it can often seem that opportunities to advance are rare. Outside forces dictate the how and why of advancement and everything from market demands to internal perception of the function to closed-door politics can come into play. Outside of building a strong resume and giving the proverbial 110 percent, moving up the corporate ladder is an undertaking that falls outside most talent professional’s locus of control.

As difficult as it may be for established employees, those trying to break into the field are too often left with the feeling that they are just butting their head against a wall, looking for the well-kept secret that has prevented them from landing that first all-important gig. Establishing, building, and maintaining a career in the talent management arena can be without a doubt a frustrating endeavor.

A quick tete-a-tete over drinks, on a professional message board or at a networking event, will often show that talent management professionals, often reserved in the workplace, hold no qualms about airing their grievances off site amongst their peers. Whether in a classroom setting working toward a graduate degree, attending a professional certification prep class, or simply kicking back after a long day — those working in field, the people listening to and fixing problems all day long, have their own fair share of issues.

Some of the more commons complaints I’ve heard over the years from talent pros (and others in the HR field) include: keep reading…

Demand for recruiters has slowed in the last few months, but the overall job count remains strong across the U.S.

Wanted Analytics says the number of jobs for recruiters is 12 percent higher than a year ago, with some 14,000 ads for recruiting jobs posted online last month. That’s down from the peak in May, but, says Wanted, the effect may simply be seasonal, as a similar dip occurred a year ago, continuing through the end of the year, before rising sharply. keep reading…

I can’t say enough about how important and difficult a recruiter’s job can be. Yes, we have our share of easy-to-fill jobs, and yes there are times when our load is not quite as crazy as it could be. One might even argue none of us have any reason to complain when there is a bevy of qualified candidates waiting to fill our jobs courtesy of the current economic climate … true!

However, candidates don’t know the half of what it takes from getting the requisition off the ground and posted, to selling a job to a candidate at a company that frankly isn’t worth the paper requisition it came on. This is where I am going with all of this.

Companies make good decisions and they make bad decisions. The good decisions are designing competitive benefits and recognition programs to attract and retain employees. That is, as a recruiter I am happy to highlight in an interview and beyond the plentiful and robust benefit offerings my company has to offer in hopes that the candidate will find the overall proposition of working with us enticing. More often than not the candidate considers all that is available to him/her. A deal is made and everyone is happy.

Here’s where our job becomes difficult: keep reading…

(Editor’s note: With so many new ERE members coming on all the time, we thought that each week we’d republish one popular classic post. Here’s one, below.)

When I attend career fairs, hiring conferences, recruiting events, or through conversations with prospective candidates, I keep learning that the wrong people are attending these events and working as recruiters. As I walked the room at a recent career fair, prior to the event starting, I sought to introduce myself to some of the other company representatives. I was surprised that many of them were unable to communicate at a level that would properly represent their company.

The behavior I witnessed at this event and many others is predictive of how these recruiters behave in the office and how they represent their company through other communication tools such as social media. Later as the candidates flowed into the fair to meet the companies, I witnessed these individuals sitting behind their tables, eating food, talking on cell phones, and displaying body language that suggested they didn’t want to be bothered.

Fortunately, I witnessed several individuals that did exhibit proper career fair behavior and strong recruiting traits. They were the ones that had long lines of candidates and also the ones whose companies are always recognized as recruiting industry leaders. The difference in success was clear.

We can all gain market intelligence by speaking with prospective candidates and finding out where they have applied, who they have interviewed with, and what their experiences have been like. Some of the experiences that I have heard are horrific, yet not surprising. So why do HR and recruiting leaders continually hire or put the wrong people into recruiting positions? I don’t get it.

Each year there are new tools, technologies, and platforms developed to help take “recruiting to the next level,” as the cliche goes. The problem is, all of these wonderful breakthroughs can be fruitless due to inadequate operator behavior. Moreover, if companies and organizations really want to eliminate or lower their agency recruiting spending, then start hiring similar profiles and not promoting an individual out of customer service or demoting someone from another department and sending them to recruit.

Regardless of where your next recruiter comes from, I have developed some essential skills, traits, and qualities that successful recruiters should possess. Aside from the regular “good communication, ability to work hard, team player” skills that everyone wants — here are a few of the most important must haves: keep reading…

Stress, hair parts, offer rejections, Groupon’s job seekers, background checking, and disabilities — we weigh in on all of them in today’s roundup.

Speaking of weight: the world’s people weigh a collective 316 million tons, of which 17 million tons is in excess globs of body fat. Who knew? Thanks to the researchers at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, now you do.

Wondering what this has to do with recruiting? Nothing, near as we can tell. (Oh, sure, we could have said hiring a fatty will mean time wasted snacking, since the average American needs almost 250 calories just to maintain the excess weight.) But we just thought this is great water cooler talk.

Now, here’s the skinny (no, we couldn’t, can’t, and won’t resist punning): North America has 6 percent of the world’s population, but carries 34 percent of the weight. Don’t go blaming Canada. The U.S. weighs in as the heaviest nation, where it takes a mere 12.2 adults to equal a ton. From now on, we’re counting how many people get on the elevator with us.

Food Stylists Are to Blame

It’s not our fault we eat too much. If those food stylists didn’t make all those dishes look so delicious, who’d eat them? It’s an up-and-coming profession that’s part of the seven awesomeist jobs we never heard of, says Brazen Careerist, a carer site for the under-30s.

keep reading…

From working with recruiters for more than 20 years, I‘ve observed many styles and variations in their recruiting work habits. Some are hunters, some are farmers, and yes, some are clueless. But they all have the same goal: to make hires. I’ve seen some good practices that have been made apparent to me over the years.

Great recruiters don’t just automate the hiring process. They delve into it to find perfect candidates. And they are creative.

Suppose they are recruiting for an “application security analyst.” They search for the industry-related organizations or job certification-related organizations for the position, such as OWASP and CISM, and then search resume databases, LinkedIn, and ATS’s for places it is cited.

Amazing recruiters leave no stone unturned. When they search for a candidate and receive 100 resumes, they review every single resume, even after the position has been filled. That’s because an amazing recruiter knows that these resumes can be used for other positions.

Rock star recruiters learn to partner with their hiring managers and understand their business. keep reading…

As the business community sheds recruiters from full-time positions, many organizations bring on contract recruiters to use when required and dump when not required. I am here to help you to avoid making one of life’s more miserable career decisions: becoming a contact recruiter. Here’s the advice:

Do not ever become a contract recruiter.

Allow me to repeat. (The gravity of the situation bears repeating, and you just might thank me some day.) Do not ever become a contract recruiter.

Now let me tell you why. keep reading…

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the traveling production of Les Misérables. It was the fourth time I had seen the musical, so the most surprising thing might have been that in the 20 years and several revisits since my first Les Mis experience, the play still turns me into a sobbing mess. However, what surprised me most is that the play offers several lessons that can be applied to recruiting.

Those of you who have seen Les Misérables, as well as those of you who haven’t, may immediately assume that this connection is a stretch. Frankly, I don’t blame you. What may be more disturbing to me than any skepticism you have about this is the fact that I was thinking about work lessons during a brilliant musical. Perhaps, though, what this really highlights is how the lessons we learn which dictate how to live and how to interact with others really do apply to professional dealings just as much as to personal relationships and actions, and they apply to the real world as much to fantasy.

Les Misérables offers quite a few lessons that apply to business and recruitment, but here are the five most prominent ones:

keep reading…

Just in time for Administrative Professionals Day, CompData says salaries for executive assistants, admins, and other office support staff are inching up.

After years of stagnant pay, CompData’s BenchmarkPro survey found wages up on the order of 2 percent. Executive assistants, among the highest paid, now average $51,600 per year, up from $50,200 in 2010. Executive secretaries saw a 2.4 percent rise: $45,000 in 2010 to $46,100 in 2011. Receptionists increased 2.6 percent between 2010 and 2011, to $27,900.

“Although salaries for many administrative professionals increased in 2011, the rate of increase for most of these jobs was less than the 2011 average rate of inflation reported in the Consumer Price Index of 3.2 percent,” said Amy Kaminski, director of marketing for Compdata Surveys, a pay and benefits survey data provider. keep reading…

This article, along with my previous article, Your Relationship and Reputation Credit Score: How You Earned It and How It Affects Your Relationship Karma, is designed to help you help the people you serve, whether you are in the recruiting or career development field.

In the previous article, we explored how the way we treat others creates, metaphorically speaking, a credit score that affects whether people want to do business with us, help us, or … hire us. This score also affects whether people trust and respect us. While it affects every aspect of one’s professional life, a person’s “Relationship and Reputation Credit Score” plays an especially central role in one’s job hunt and career trajectory.

Enjoying the positive career benefits of a high Relationship and Reputation Credit Score requires emotional intelligence, especially in the dimension of self-awareness. It requires cutting through the self-absorption brought on by busyness and preoccupation with one’s projects and agendas. It requires not taking liberties with the position power we have, and thinking that small acts of disrespect — like repeatedly taking calls or texting during meetings with “subordinates” — go unnoticed and leave no emotional wake. It requires becoming mindful of the many Relationship and Reputation Moments Of Truth which, depending on how we handle them, build up or diminish our Relationship and Reputation Credit Score over time.

Becoming More Mindful of Relationship and Reputation Moments of Truth

Here are a few examples of what I mean by Relationship and Reputation Moments Of Truth that affect our score: keep reading…

This past Saturday an event was held at Best Buy headquarters in Minneapolis called MinneBar. No, not that kind of bar, although there was some of that after it was over.

This is a BarCamp style event with 1,000+ Minneapolis and St Paul tech folks gathered for a day-long structured unconference to talk about techie, geeky, and nerdy things.

The event is free, including parking, lunch, and post-event beer.

Number of recruiters or HR folk in attendance: less than 10.

WHAT??? keep reading…

I recently watched a DVD from a conference for entrepreneurs. One of the speakers, Stephen Snyder, gave a presentation on how a business person’s credit rating affected them in far more ways than most people realize. As you know, lending institutions offer more favorable rates to people with high credit scores. When we engage in behaviors that lower our score, lending institutions lose interest in doing business with us. We pay a price for this disinterest either by having our loan request denied or having to pay a higher interest rate. Thus, our “bad behavior” makes us less desirable, and we pay a price for that.

What was most fascinating — and concerning — was what he had to say about how even very smart and successful people unwittingly do things that damage their credit score. Even really smart people have credit-related blind spots that cost them, and because they’re blind spots, they don’t even realize which behaviors penalize them.

The Relationship and Reputation Credit Score We Don’t Even Realize We’re Accumulating

I found myself thinking about credit scores as a metaphor for how we treat others, and how the cumulative effect of our actions creates a metaphorical Relationship and Reputation Credit Score. This credit score influences whether others want to do business with us, and how favorably they think of us and treat us. They influence the quality of our relationships and our reputation.

The Cumulative Effect of Your Treatment of Others Creates Your Relationship and Reputation Credit Score

This metaphorical score profoundly affects how people feel about us, how much they respect us, and whether they want to work with us. I use “work” both in the literal sense and the figurative sense. Our Relationship and Reputation Credit Score affects whether people want to do business with us, hire us, or be on their project team.

Your Relationship and Reputation Credit Score Affects Your Relationship Karma

Our Relationship and Reputation Credit Score also influences whether people want to work with us collaboratively or whether they strive to squeeze the most they can out of us. It affects whether they are willing to give us the benefit of the doubt when we unwittingly do something insensitive or unkind.

It affects whether they see us as someone who can be trusted, who can be counted on to keep their agreements and commitments, and whose word is their bond.

All these perceptions—based on what we put out—come back to us in “relationship karma.” keep reading…

Having worked with and trained many recruiters and owner/ managers all over the world, it is clear to me that almost universally, the first improvement that can be made is in actually measuring performance. It probably won’t surprise most people that with rare exception, in the recruitment industry globally appraisals are at best a “congratulations you’ve hit your target for the quarter, let’s increase by 10% next quarter and good luck,” and at worst non-existent.

Somewhere in the middle is an appraisal that only gets pulled out of the drawer when someone is not hitting their targets. Often called a “performance improvement plan,” or cynically a “you’ll be fired if you don’t achieve this” plan, it usually only monitors quantitative measures, and is rarely supported by adequate training. It could be argued that the managers and owners themselves need to go on a performance improvement plan at the same time to observe and improve upon their influence over their underperforming team member.

It surprises me further how managers expect their teams to perform when they themselves are too busy hitting their own revenue targets. There’s a clue in the title given to those responsible for a team of performers: manager. You have to manage their performance and every aspect of it. keep reading…

I have never met an unhappy, urologist anywhere.

You may not have thought you want to be a urologist. That’s perfectly understandable. But after watching a video — one that ended with the quote above — that won a marketing award, you may change your mind.

This clip called ”Why Urology?” was just honored with a platinum from the International AVA Awards competition. That’s a contest put on by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals, which gets about 1,700 entries.

The video was produced by the American Urological Association, and has been viewed nearly 5,000 times on YouTube. keep reading…

The holiday season is so very counterintuitive. Its many traditions demand that we rush around to get everything done in time, yet it also calls upon us to pause and reflect. Whenever I stop for a moment to examine the deeper meaning in our shared purpose as recruiters, I am humbled by the random acts of courage we witness every day in the candidates that we serve. The bravery may be stark and obvious as they endure the loss of a job, a home, or a loved one. Or it may be subtle and just as poignant as they suffer the slights and indignities that are simply part of being a job applicant today. The very act of becoming a candidate tests one’s mettle in profound ways. So, this holiday season let us remember the Hero’s Journey.

Within each of us, in the collective unconscious, there lies a hero — an archetype that Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung believed lies dormant until called to action. Studying world mythology, Joseph Campbell built upon Jung’s work, discovering that no matter what the myth, a hero’s journey remains the same. All heroes must leave what is familiar, venture forth, do battle, and then return, forever changed, with new talents and gifts to share. For those of us in talent acquisition, that means we deal with something far more important than recruiting metrics and candidate tracking systems: with each and every recruiting engagement, we bear witness to the hero’s journey.

Each senior executive, each technologist, each professional in some way is forever changed by his or her search for a new opportunity. If that involves unemployment, and even homelessness, the bravery and determination required of our hero is the stuff of which legends (and movies) are made. keep reading…

Two of the hottest topics in corporate recruiting today are the candidate experience and need for transparency. And although many corporations are making a sincere effort to improve that candidate experience, they often pay only lip service to becoming more open, honest, and transparent. No corporate leader that I know directly lies to applicants.

However, if you consider omitting information that could directly help the applicant successfully understand the process or land a job to be a lie, then there are quite a few areas where corporations are omitting the complete truth. keep reading…

Ending what, for most, is a short week, we bring you the penultimate Friday roundup for 2011. Today’s collection includes mystery applicants, a police recruiting campaign gone bad, and Salesforce’s Rypple.

We start with a job seeker good deed from the Challenger people:

Free Job Hunting Advice By Phone

For two days next week, job seekers will be able to get career advice directly from professional counselors at no charge. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. CST on December 27 and 28, counselors will accept calls from job seekers nationwide, answering questions and offering advice about the job hunting process.

The number is 312-422-5010. Job hunters can get more information about the call-in at firm’s website and blog.

This is the 26th year that the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray  & Christmas will offer this free call-in service .

Salesforce Acquires Rypple

Rypple, the company that brought a social, collaborative networking approach to performance management, is being acquired by Salesforce.com. The CRM company announced last week that it was buying Toronto-based Rypple for an undisclosed amount. keep reading…