Hard-to-find talent isn’t interested in submitting resumes or engaging with career sites. These are busy people, deeply focused on a project or idea. Reaching them is not only difficult — it’s often next to impossible.
Many do not have an online presence. Most will not respond to emails, Tweets, or phone calls — if you are able to find them. They are known to their circle of friends and colleagues only, and participate online primarily in technical forums, professional sites, and through emails with associates.
An engineer I know is top in his chosen field. He is highly sought after by a small circle of technical experts for his depth of knowledge and experience. He has no LinkedIn profile, no Facebook page, and does not Tweet. He only answers his phone when he knows the caller personally. Yet, he regularly changes jobs depending on how interesting the project offered. He has never spoken with a recruiter (other than me as a friend). He finds his projects through his narrow but powerful network of fellow engineers.
How would a recruiter ever find him — or the hundreds of others who are similar? keep reading…
A member of the Federal Reserve Board is complaining that too many of the new jobs created since the recovery began are low-wage, part-time, temporary, or all three.
Speaking last week at a conference in Washington, D.C., Fed Governor Sarah Raskin said, “Flexible and part-time arrangements can present great opportunities to some workers, but the substantial increase in part-time workers does raise a number of concerns.” These include, she said, a lack of benefits, lower pay rates, and, often, no sick or personal days off. 
Two-thirds of the jobs lost in the recession, she said, “were in moderate-wage occupations, such as manufacturing, skilled construction, and office administration jobs.” But fewer than a quarter have come back. “Recent job gains,” she observed, “have been largely concentrated in lower-wage occupations such as retail sales, food preparation, manual labor, home health care, and customer service.” keep reading…
There is nothing like a good controversy to stir up one’s feelings and subsequently a fierce debate. One of my favorite things about reading articles on ERE is how some of its contributors have a wonderful ability to write articles that generate comments a mile long because of controversial subjects covered. We were barely into 2013 when Adrian Kinnersley wrote an article entitled, “Why LinkedIn will never kill the professional recruitment industry,” which was very on point.
People are so polarized around this issue, but the comments section was what really made it an interesting read for me. If I didn’t know better I would have expected a fistfight to break out. One commenter even suggested that commission-only salespeople are unable to provide independent advice to candidates, and candidates know this. This inspired me to pick up my pen (figuratively, that is) and write, which I haven’t done lately.
The Demise of the Agency Recruiter keep reading…
I have compiled a sampling of questions (from my book) to help you when interviewing a staffing service. Naturally, the areas that are most important to you and your company will drive which questions you need to ask.
If you are not in the market for a new staffing service, perhaps you may want to circle back to your present staffing service and clarify certain points with them, if they were not previously discussed. keep reading…
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…
To acquire talent without the risks associated with full-time employees, organizations are using contingent workforce management expertise to engage with retired professionals for contingent and contract roles, gaining access to an underused crop of highly-skilled, knowledgeable talent.
This trend is part of a greater nationwide shift toward contingent work. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics currently ranks contingent work as one of the top five U.S. industries when ranked by employment growth.
The advantages of recruiting retirees for contingent assignments are numerous. Retirees represent a group of professionals who are seasoned and highly skilled in their respective fields. They also comprise a fairly stable source of workers. Unlike their younger counterparts, most retirees aren’t seeking full-time positions, and carry lower risk of leaving an assignment mid-term for another job.
Still, there are unique considerations employers should factor in when evaluating whether to recruit a retiree for a single project or temporary period of time. There’s also an art to sourcing retirees.
Here are four recruiting tips employers can use to more successfully and easily hire and onboard retirees: keep reading…
The world is suddenly waking up to the discovery that employers are bringing on temp and contract workers at a pace that will soon surpass the peak numbers of 2006.
Subscribers to The Fordyce Letter first read about the surge in temp workers in the May issue. Following the release of the June employment numbers by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, FordyceLetter.com reported, “There are now 2.534 million contract and temp workers in the U.S., a number just a few months shy of exceeding the all time high of 2.657 million reached in August 2006.”
Now, U.S. News says “Temp Workers Make Huge Comeback.” The article points out that the staffing industry has regained almost all the jobs lost in the recession, while other employers have added just over half the ones they shed. It’s not simply a sign of cautious employers bringing in extra help while waiting to see what the economy will do, but evidence of a trend.
Says the article, “In 1983, temporary workers made up just over half a percent of all employment. Now, that figure stands at nearly 2.3 percent — a remarkable change, despite the small numbers.”
“It’s a structural transformation,” maintains Arne Kalleberg, a professor of sociology at University of North Carolina who studies the labor force. keep reading…
Labor Finders has had enough interest in its free-temp-for-a-day program that it has started giving some companies their free days even before the program officially begins — Labor Day.
Here’s the deal with the program, in case you missed it. 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…
While all eyes last week were focused on the disappointing March job numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the report contained a curious blip that might be nothing more than a statistical aberration. Or it could be an early signal of employment trouble ahead.
The usually robust growth in temp jobs took a breather in March. Temp jobs dipped by 7,500 during the month, the first time since June the monthly employment report registered a decline. Out of a temp workforce of some 2.5 million, the drop is practically unnoticeable. But considering that staffing jobs grew by 91,300 in January and February, a reduction of any size is significant.
Recent history is also a factor. Looking at April 2011, the monthly jobs report said 251,000 jobs were created, the biggest rise since the census hiring of 12 months earlier. But that same report also showed the first decline in temp jobs in 19 months. Then in May, the economy added a mere 54,000 jobs. It was months before the pace of hiring returned to what it was in the first quarter of the year when 662,000 jobs were created.
Cautious employers can be forgiven therefore if they react as if last week’s Labor Department report were an omen. keep reading…
An IT staffing company you probably haven’t heard of is quickly hiring employees and recruiters after it won some new business that it probably hadn’t dreamed it would.
XpertTech has already grown about 400% in six months money-wise, and in terms of employee size, from 12 employees to 61 employees in six months. Now it’s hiring 30 people in 30 days in the San Francisco Bay area for a mobile phone application project. It’s looking for designers, coders, and others. Joe Budzienski, the company’s executive vice president, is telling candidates, “Whether you have just graduated college and have been developing in your dorm room between classes, or have worked as a senior engineer who realized app development was your true calling, we want to speak with you. The only thing we ask is you live, breathe, and eat APPS!”
“To be trusted with this project is an honor,” says Budzienski. “It’s a very very prominent company, global.” One job listing on LinkedIn suggests the client is a banking company, as do some other posts.
The 30-day hiring blitz started Monday, and XpertTech has hired 12 of the 30 already. keep reading…
“Unemployment is expected to remain above 8 percent for the next four years.” That gloomy assessment of the U.S. economy from FedEx Chief Economist Gene Huang is echoed in any number of reports and economic predictions.
“Most predictions,” says an economic analysis by the Society for Human Resource Management, “are less optimistic now than they were when 2011 began.”
What especially worries economists is whether the slow job growth is due to employer cautiousness — in which case growth will accelerate when economic confidence returns — or whether it is structural, meaning some jobs have been permanently eliminated, much the way automation obsoleted elevator operators.
“It is a fair bet that aggregate demand remains the main problem while pockets of skills mismatches persist, despite the high number of job seekers,” says the SHRM analysis.
The latest economist to weigh in is Gad Levanon, director of macroeconomic research for The Conference Board. Last week, he dissected recoveries of the past to examine the rate of job growth across multiple industries. What he found is that “the current employment recovery is the second slowest on record.” keep reading…
I was just reviewing the predictions I made for 2011 written at roughly this time a year ago. Much of what I thought would happen unfolded as expected, except for talent management. I had thought there would more focus on integrating the employee development and recruitment functions, and more internal hiring. I still think that’s on tap for this year. I was on target regarding hiring: There was no great uptick in the volume of hiring, and unemployment remained static. And I was on target with predicting that social media would be core to recruiting success and that RPOs would thrive.
Over the past two years, the way we think about work has changed. Perhaps accelerated by the recession, there is more focus now on finding satisfying and rewarding work than on just finding a job that pays the most.
More people are thinking about finding something interesting, challenging, and perhaps even fun to do that provides enough income. The key words here are interesting/challenging and enough. Fewer expect to get rich and there is less focus on the money. There is more focus on lifestyle, flexibility, free time to pursue other learning or hobbies or sports, and less interest in family. I’ll do more columns on these trends soon, but partly because of them here are the major changes that I see happening this year.
Internal Recruiting Goes Mainstream
Perhaps one of the most significant trends will be a greater focus on finding current employees to fill existing jobs. keep reading…
For those suffering from insomnia now around 2 a.m. Eastern, we’ve dug through a U.S. government website to find a 172-page document that may help you sleep — or, if you’re a federal contractor, could possibly keep you up at night.
The draft of the proposed rules, to be printed later today (Friday the 9th), would create a big new set of rules related to hiring people with disabilities. keep reading…
Contingent workers, consultants, and independent contractors will make up as much as 35% of the total U.S. workforce within a decade. You’ve got new challenges in attracting, and retaining this diverse type of workforce to your organization. Freelancers and free agents are different from the traditional full-time workforce in many ways, which I get into more in a longer version of this post, in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.
For now, let me just take one challenge organizations will have in increasing their internal hiring of independent contractors, consultants, and free agents: branding. keep reading…
Fresh off its Inc. ranking as one of the 10 fastest growing HR companies on the magazine’s fast 5000 list, BountyJobs is announcing a $5 million round of financing.
Led by Greylock Partners, the latest financing is coming from the company’s existing investors, which also include Accel Partners and Michigan-based RPM Ventures. BountyJobs said it will use the money to expand software and services support for new and existing customers.
“Despite fragmentation and inefficiency in the contingent search market, companies still spend billions of dollars each year on headhunters in the U.S.” said Dave Strohm, partner at Greylock Partners. “By giving companies a free, streamlined way to find and hire candidates through specialized headhunters, BountyJobs is transforming a major sector of the recruiting market.”
BountyJobs provides a marketplace for contingent recruitment, connecting companies that have open reqs with vetted recruiters who bid for the jobs. When a deal is struck, BountyJobs handles the paperwork and billing. Even in the touch economy of the last few years, BountyJobs reported it grew from $1.6 million in revenue in 2007 to $16.2 million last year.
The number of “free agent” workers has nearly exploded in the last three years, and now 44 percent of working Americans describe themselves that way.
A Kelly Services survey says economic necessity, the desire for more freedom and flexibility, and age have driven up the number of workers not tied to a single company for their livelihood. It’s a dramatic change from 2008, when Kelly’s survey found 26 percent of workers describing themselves as free agents.
Also fueling the rise is the increasing reliance of American business on contingent and contract labor, say the authors of a whitepaper detailing the results. Companies, note Jocelyn Lincoln and Megan M. Raftery, “can scale up and down faster and easier by adopting more flexible workforce strategies.”
A significant driver is the economy. Respondents to the 2011 survey were twice as likely as their counterparts in 2008 to say they became free agents because they were laid off or couldn’t find another job.
That suggests, the authors say, that as recovery occurs, some of the newly minted free agents will return to a traditional employee role. However, “the trend toward more free agents is still very strong and is increasing worldwide. Accounting for differences in legislative frameworks and social and cultural norms, we estimate that the global free agent population is at
least 20 – 30% of the entire workforce, and growing.”
Recently, USA Today wrote about the phenomenon of well-established professionals abandoning comfortable jobs to pursue their own interests. “Employees bid goodbye to corporate America” chronicled several workers, including two recruiters, who quit to follow their own path.
As the Kelly Services report makes clear, the move by knowledge workers to keep reading…
Negotiating the conditions of employment, hedging one job with another, being wary of accepting full-time jobs that put at risk other work or that compromise skill — those are becoming the normal patterns for accomplished professionals.
Individuals are finding new freedoms and exploring their own capacity and taste for change and entrepreneurism. Some organizations are looking for ways to adapt to all of this without endangering their own success, but it may be that these two different needs are not compatible. We will find out over the next 10 years or less. Certainly manufacturing firms and companies where hands-on work is required will not be able to be flexible enough to these changes. They will face friction between the workers whose jobs allow them to be virtual or part-time or flex-time and those whose work does not.
Here are some of the issues, paradoxes, and changes that employers, candidates, recruiters, and human resources are faced with. keep reading…
You may have heard about companies like CloudCrowd and concepts like microwork that involve new ways to staff; now, there are several more companies trying to shake up the field. They’d like to revolutionize the already-strong contingent staffing industry and in some cases the whole staffing field, making it more Internet-based, more cell phone-based, and just more sophisticated. Even 63-year-old Manpower’s getting into the act.
Three of the newer players, all based in California, include: keep reading…
If you’re out shopping today, there’s a good chance that the person helping you purchase your items or finding that deeply discounted item for you had a different, permanent job last year.
Even if you avoid all forms of in-person commerce in between Thanksgiving and New Years, like me, it is likely that the person fulfilling your order at an online retailer is in the same boat. keep reading…
