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article by Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett

Last week, we introduced numerous examples of organizations using talent contests, corporate challenges, and awards programs to source top talent that might otherwise be overlooked. This week, our attention turns to the action steps required to take advantage of this recruiting approach. Hopefully, you’ve had time to think about what recruiting needs you have that could be resolved through contests, and can start to develop a program as you read on.

Action Steps

If you want to take advantage of contest and award recruiting, here are some suggestions to get you started. We have broken the suggestions down into two categories: using other organizations’ contests, and running your own. Each can be wildly effective. If you don’t have the budget to launch your own contest, taking advantage of those that already exist is the next best thing.

Using Existing Contests, Challenges, and Awards Programs

The first step is to ask your current top performers in each mission-critical job family what prominent awards and contests already exist in their field. Professional organizations tend to offer the most awards and contests, and could often use sponsors and judges. Focus on the associations that represent your hard-to-hire and mission-critical functional areas. While sponsors can make demands in some cases, judges are given greater access to the actual talent, so figure out what you need from the relationship and pursue the role that best suits your needs. If the opportunity to serve as a sponsor or judge is not available to you, consider building a relationship with the judges and follow up with them after the event to find out which contestants impressed them. If the judging panel isn’t cooperative, look for a way that is not as barrier-prone. For example, you might consider sponsoring a special section of a local university’s newspaper to profile the contestants or interview the judges.

Examples of Professional Association Contests and Awards Programs

• The Robot Challenge. This year marked the 10th anniversary of the IEEE Robot Challenge. Founded by the Baltimore section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the challenge allows teams of students to design, construct, and battle robots. The contest is intended to provide students with a full life-cycle view of life as an engineer.

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article by Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett It’s no secret that some of the best engineers in the software industry didn’t graduate from MIT or Caltech, or any top-ranked school for that matter. It’s also true that some of the best chefs in the country didn’t attend a well-known culinary school, or intern in a world-famous restaurant. Our point is that oftentimes the best talent doesn’t exist in the talent pool recruiters so often cast their line into, but rather in the shallow ponds that often get overlooked. For a growing number of talent-savvy organizations, the solution to finding the prized fish in the shallow pond lies in awards programs and talent contests.

You may not have realized it, but a growing number of functional excellence awards programs are promoted, sponsored, and, in some cases, even organized by corporations. From math challenges to contests aimed at identifying the best customer service associate in a local geography, these events are quickly becoming a powerful tool used by organizations to build a who’s who database of talent. Even events that are not corporate affiliated are hunting grounds for good recruiters. Why are contents growing in popularity? Well, isn’t it obvious? If you wanted the fastest runner, what better way to find him or her than to wait at the finish line of a foot race? If you wanted someone that could dunk a basketball, the winner of a slam-dunk contest would be an obvious choice. Want the best golfer? Look for the one with the brand new tacky green jacket (at the Masters).

Finding the best in business is just as easy. If you want to identify the very best, it should be obvious that you should target any process that sorts through hundreds of professionals and then identifies the very best. Now is the time to begin looking at the winners of professional awards and contests as recruiting targets. Better yet, maybe you should consider sponsoring your own contest as a sourcing channel. The very best are not hard to find; their names have just been called as award winners.

Recruiting at Contests? I’ve Never Heard of That!

Now, maybe you’re thinking to yourself, “I’ve never heard of that before,” or “My company would never do that.” But, before you start thinking negatively, realize that the practice is actually quite common. Notable firms like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Intel, UBS, Bloomberg, Motorola, and even the National Security Agency have used contests as recruiting mechanisms. If you haven’t used them, you’re missing out on one of the most cost-effective mechanisms for identifying the very best. If you haven’t seen it, it might be because most awards and contest recruiting is stealthy.

The Benefits of Recruiting Contest and Award Winners

There are numerous reasons why you should recruit contest and award winners. Some of the primary reasons include:

• It’s easy. Finding the winners is incredibly easy because the names of the winners and the finalists are almost always published.

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As part of my continuing series of case studies and analyses of truly world-class recruiting functions, I am highlighting the key features of Google, the world’s first recruiting culture and the only “corporate recruiting machine.” Google recruiting has made an incredible breakthrough in that they have convinced senior management to literally “change the work” so that every employee has time to work on his or her own projects and is continually challenged, stimulated, and learning. There is no better attraction and retention tool then exciting work and Google has made it the centerpiece of their company. In Part 2 of this case study, I’ll highlight the remaining elements of Google’s recruiting approach and point out some areas where they can improve.

Recruiting Structure

Google has plans to nearly double its workforce, growing from approximately 5,000 employees to 10,000 employees in the near future. The recruiting structure that they have designed to enable such growth is, like most successful recruiting organizations, primarily a centralized operations model. The basic reason why firms use a centralized a recruiting function is to ensure that most of the recruiting is done by recruiting professionals, as opposed to generalists, who for the most part don’t have the skills or the attitude to be great recruiters. Centralization also makes it easier to share top applicants between business units, a key activity which seldom occurs when decentralized generalists execute recruiting.

The recruiting function is headed by Arnnon Geshuri. A key tenet of any excellent recruiting function is that the function has the capability to handle in-house the most important and visible positions, i.e. executive search. At Google, recruiting is responsible for filling both executive leadership and top-level technical positions. The executive group is notably headed up by Mike Strong, one of the best recruiting leaders I have ever met. Because Google believes wholeheartedly in sourcing the best talent that is ferociously sought after by competitors, every element of the recruiting function is abundantly staffed with highly focused professionals. They realize that the volume and caliber of talent they desire is not going to be mined from a job board, resume bank, or general recruitment advertising (something Google consciously avoids.) To ensure that the company has the capability to recruit talent at the capacity needed, the recruiting model has been broken up into very distinct roles, each requiring specialized expertise. These activities, carried out in a highly choreographed manner by teams tied to divisions and business units, include:

• Recruiting research analysts

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