corporaterecruiting RSS feed Tag: corporaterecruiting

Recruiting Costs: A Manager’s Opportunity

by
J.P. Winker
Aug 12, 2008, 6:09 am ET

Cost has always been central to recruiting. One of the most popular (though not the most useful) metrics is cost-per-hire.

But demonstrating the value of recruiting is difficult. The reasons are simple enough — recruiting costs are tangible; the benefits less so. It takes time for new hires to become productive, and their contributions are difficult to measure with any precision. Furthermore, it is impossible to attribute an employee’s performance to the recruiter’s skill at getting the right fit, in the right place and time. Consequently, tying recruiting results to cost is nearly impossible. Few even try. So recruiting managers usually find themselves under pressure to “manage” costs better — which usually means do more with less. Some companies have just given up trying and handed over their recruiting to an RPO vendor.

RPO has its own issues, but one benefit of RPO may just be that recruiting managers begin to understand costs, and how to manage them to their advantage. I don’t mean “manage” as in “limit” (although that’s a very fine thing), I mean structuring costs to maximize flexibility, leverage in-house expertise, and limit cutbacks during down cycles. This is the “manage” they teach in B-school.

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Logic Prevails At Well-Structured Weekly Meetings

by
David Szary
Jul 25, 2008, 6:19 am ET

Like salespeople, one of the biggest challenges a recruiter faces is getting enough “outbound activity” (sourcing candidates, building relationships, etc.) while dealing with a steady stream of “inbound” interruptions (emails, status calls, etc.).

To compound this situation, we do this in an environment of constant change (shifting priorities, new requisitions, etc.).

If not managed properly, it is easy to lose focus, get de-motivated, and become non-productive.

To avoid this situation, most top sales organizations have a weekly “sales” meeting. Objectives of these meetings include:

  • Make sure each salesperson has a focused plan of action for the week.
  • Make sure each salesperson’s plan includes an adequate amount of measurable “outbound” activity.
  • Set team/individual priorities.
  • Discuss any administrative loose ends.

If, for some reason, you are not having a weekly “recruiting” meeting, start now. Based on the challenges outlined above, I can’t think of a logical reason why you wouldn’t.

In our research efforts, we have learned that the best sales organizations not only have meetings, but the salespeople enjoy attending them!

While the clear intent of these meetings is to get focused for a productive week, unfortunately, the majority of companies’ sales meetings are mundane, boring, and unproductive.

Most sales professionals view these meetings as a “necessary evil” to provide management with a status on progress toward their goals.

Indeed, during my 19 years in recruiting, I have attended my fair share of boring, mundane meetings!

To avoid falling into this trap, try the following meeting agenda/format. It provides structure and sets the tone for a productive, positive week:

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How Individual Recruiters Can Avoid Being Laid Off

by
Dr. John Sullivan
Jul 14, 2008, 7:00 am ET

During hard economic times, it’s survival of the fittest. Yet many corporate recruiters fail to understand or acknowledge the cyclical nature of our business; every five to seven years, recruiters are let go en masse.

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.

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5 Steps to Recruiting (or Sales) Success

by
Stephen Lowisz
Jul 10, 2008, 1:17 pm ET

A great recruiter should have the same skill sets and qualifications of a great salesperson. All of the great sales visionaries including Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins have taught these steps to sales professionals around the world, yet few recruiters today understand or use any of these available resources.

So much emphasis has been placed on prospecting or sourcing potential candidates that recruiters are not taught the basics of the sales process that follows the sourcing function. Having listened to thousands of third-party and corporate recruiters over the past 15 years, my sense is that less than 10% of recruiters understand basic sales principles.

Although the terminology may differ, the following are the critical steps to every successful sales professional or recruiting professional.

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The 20 Principles of Strategic Recruiting

by
Dr. John Sullivan
Jul 7, 2008, 4:06 am ET

Corporate recruiting is an interesting field. There are no books entitled The Theory of Recruiting or Principles of Strategic Recruiting. As a result, most individuals in recruiting tend to make it up as they go rather than follow a more defined set of rules or principles.

There is no formal body in recruiting that “codifies” the established practices. In this article, I am attempting to help resolve that problem by compiling a list (from my 35-plus years of experience in the field) that can serve as a foundation for your actions.

Of course, principles are guidelines to point you in the right direction. Remember to vary your direction depending on your business situation and global location.

20 Principles of Recruiting and Talent Management

The following is a list of 20 principles, laws, or guidelines to help you design and implement effective recruiting strategies and approaches:

 

 

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Have You Got the ERE Expo twitters?

by
Leslie Stevens
Apr 1, 2008, 11:55 am ET

Are you a twitterholic? Twitter is a social networking site that connects family, friends, and co-workers and shares knowledge between them. Your questions from the ERE Expo sessions will be shared with the group you select and so will the answers. Now, instead of whispering your questions to your neighbor, you can share your learning experiences with a group, even those colleagues back home. So log-in and get connected.

The Imperfect Evolution of the Corporate Recruiting Department

by
Lou Adler
Feb 29, 2008

Before we get to the future, a little history is in order. As part of the marketing for my retained executive search practice in the mid-1990s, I did consulting for dozens of mid-size companies through TEC (The Executive Committee) and YPO (Young Presidents Organization).

The primary focus of this work was the development of a strategic hiring plan that allowed companies to move from a loose entrepreneurial business to a more sustainable and well-run growing company. Pulling this off always required the CEO/founder to relinquish a major portion of his authority, the addition of a number of critical senior managers, and the implementation of scalable business processes for all core functions. As part of this, the independent free-wheelers had to either leave or join the team.

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Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number

by
Matthew Charney
Jan 30, 2008

Please forgive me. You already know me…by proxy, in the very least.

From the pages of Us Weekly (the generality implied in this paragon of journalism’s very name) to the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership (which, unlike the former, sadly discounts the impact of celebrities eating salad on the collective psyche of the nation), I’ve been psychologically deconstructed and catalogued more extensively than any personage in the annals of history. I am the subject of hundreds of articles, dozens of books, and won Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 2006. Not bad for someone barely old enough to rent a car.

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A Tale of Two Searches

by
Lou Adler
Jan 4, 2008

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

This past quarter, I conducted two senior-level management searches. Each one stands out as a shining example of what to do and what not to do. Understanding the differences can double your monthly placement rate in about half the time. Before reading the details, you should benchmark your own recruiting skills using this 10-Factor Recruiter diagnostic assessment to get a sense of what it takes to be a great recruiter.

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Your Corporate Website Is Boring Applicants

by
Dr. John Sullivan
Dec 10, 2007

Currently, the most underperforming corporate recruiting tool is the careers or jobs webpage. Honestly, taking your own for example, is there any chance it conveys the energy and excitement that you encounter on a regular basis as an employee? You and I both know that the answer is probably not, because 99% of corporate careers sites are just plain ugly and boring. It’s truly unfortunate that one of the primary channels of communication that both applicants and candidates experience is so poorly managed.

I realize that right now some of you are nodding your head in agreement, while others are getting defensive. Before you start spewing defenses, I realize that most corporate careers sites do receive a lot of traffic, and some actually receive more traffic than the parent site itself. This shouldn’t come as a surprise given that study after study has identified that nearly all applicants, regardless of their application channel, visit a company’s website to learn more about it or to verify that what they have heard about the firm is really true either before applying or shortly thereafter.

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Support from the Top

by
Leslie Stevens
Nov 30, 2007, 3:02 pm ET

CACI International is a company on a mission. That’s the message that Larry Clifton says he received from the company’s CEO and president before he accepted the position as the VP of recruiting and workforce management at the IT solutions and government contracting company. Missions are certainly one thing that Clifton understands, because he retired from the Air Force before joining CACI in 2000. But Clifton says that it’s his knowledge and understanding of leadership’s critical role in driving change and increasing accountability that has helped him the most since assuming his current role as the company’s chief talent acquisition leader.

“We’re in a very unique position,” says Clifton. “What I understood before I took the job, is that Paul Confoni, our CEO and President, wanted to grow the company to tier one status in the next four years through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions. That will result in a need to increase our workforce from 11,400 to 20,000 employees. So it was clear to me that we needed to improve our results very quickly to succeed with the mission. While I didn’t have a background in recruiting before coming to CACI, I do understand what it takes to initiate change and achieve results. You need leadership, you need process, and then you need to measure and improve the results. Our success has started at the top, because Paul is our number one recruiter, he supports everything we do. He also holds the line managers and the recruiters accountable for recruiting.”

One of the tools that Clifton has used to help speed-up the company’s hiring process is a memorandum of understanding between recruiters and CACI’s line managers. Clifton drafted the terms of the agreement, which spell out both the accountabilities and responsibilities of managers and recruiters in the sourcing and hiring process. As an example, the memorandum specifies how much time the line managers have to schedule an interview, once a recruiter refers them a candidate. But it was Confoni who approved the memorandum, and then went one step further, by incorporating all the memorandum’s timeframes and specific deliverables into the performance plans of the company’s recruiters and line managers. Holding everyone on the team accountable has improved results.

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Being Different Attracts

by
Kevin Wheeler
Nov 15, 2007

Differentiating your organization from others in the eye of the candidate is becoming our challenge as recruiters. It is increasingly difficult to recruit solely on the basis of salary or benefits or even on the merits of a particular job.

With everyone offering almost the same packages, tweaked and customized as they are, how can an organization gain a competitive advantage in recruiting? What tools or techniques can recruiters use that don?t simply rely on salaries and benefits?

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The Corporate Recruiter’s Guide to Competing with Agency Recruiters

by
Howard Adamsky
Jul 4, 2007

This article originally appeared January 17, 2007.

Agency folks tend to see the corporate world as bureaucratic and slow to make decisions; more specifically, they see most corporate recruiters as lacking the requisite skills and bare-knuckle tactics required to make things happen.

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External vs. Internal Recruiting: Who Does it Better?

by
Laura Randell
Jun 13, 2007

It has been debated many times, but the question of whether recruitment is best done with internal or external resources can only be answered at an organizational level, based upon a cost-benefit analysis.

When doing this analysis, consider which method of recruitment scores higher on the following metrics:

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Developing a Written Talent Acquisition Strategy

by
Dr. Michael Kannisto
May 8, 2007

If you’re like me, you probably spend a lot of time reactively addressing questions and requests for information from your customers. If that’s the case, you should feel good; people obviously know where to find you, and someone must have told them you often have answers!

My top three questions generally concern requests for processes and forms; requests for recruiting/sourcing data; and requests for interpretation of policies. Your mix might be different depending upon your job, but I’ll be willing to bet you’re often asked certain questions over and over. Have you ever noticed, though, that the best parts of these conversations usually occur in the last few seconds?

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The Language of Success

by
Kevin Wheeler
Mar 22, 2007

There is a common language used by top-level managers in every company, and these managers assume you can speak that language. It is a language centered on business concepts and understanding a handful of concepts. Whenever those of us in talent acquisition or human resources are not part of a conversation, it may simply be that we don?t speak or understand that language.

For example, CEOs instinctively move toward the action that will maximize profits and minimize costs or expenses. Investment is the first concept and cost savings is second. To them this is as basic as breathing, and they often do not consciously even realize that they have moved in that direction. However, many HR professionals focus on costs or on how a candidate feels about a given action, and they emphasize these over the investment side or over the impact on profits in presentations and conversations.

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Manage Your Own Brand

by
Dr. Michael Kannisto
Mar 13, 2007

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?

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So Now YOU’RE in Charge

by
Kevin Wheeler
Feb 22, 2007

Now you have what you always wanted: the chance to build your own recruiting function. Just a few days ago you were a recruiter, an HR generalist, or in some other role where you performed as an individual contributor. Just a few days ago you knew exactly what you would do should you ever have the chance, and it all seemed simpler than it does now.

As in all things, the first few days are the most challenging and they will set the tone for the future. I sometimes get emails or phone calls from newly minted recruiting managers who want some advice on first steps.

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Why Recruiters Need to Mind Their Own Business

by
Lisa Calicchio
Nov 29, 2006

Don’t take this as provocation; it is intended as advice on how to become a great recruiter. Let me explain.

Recruiters have a dual (and daunting) accountability to not only be experts in talent identification and acquisition, but experts in the businesses they identify and attract that talent to.

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9 Tips for Employers, 9 Tips for Third-Party Recruiters

by
Paul Hawkinson
Nov 22, 2006

Recruiters should be truthful, resourceful, and trustworthy. Employers should be reasonable and accessible. Read on for invaluable advice for both sides.

For Employers

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