Some business concepts worth considering when developing a hiring strategy:

1. When business conditions change, your strategy has to change along with it.
2. Tactics don’t drive strategy; strategy drives tactics.
3. Strategy drives the planning process. The plan drives the tactics.
4. Plan. Don’t react.
5. If you have the time, worry about the forest more than the trees.
6. You can’t push on a rope.

With this as a backdrop, it seems that most HR/recruiting departments don’t have a fundamental hiring strategy in place that ties directly to their company’s business strategy. If they did, it would seem, as a minimum, that requisitions would be categorized by the impact the job has on the company’s strategy. Some jobs would be more critical than others. Workforce plans would be developed to build pools of potential candidates for these critical jobs long before they’re needed, and hiring managers would be intimately involved and trained on how to find, assess, recruit, and hire the best prospects.

A description for this type of hiring strategy resembles something like this:

Maximize Quality of Hire Strategy: hire A-level talent for all strategic and critical management positions and the top-third for all other positions, without compromise. As part of this, offer careers, not jobs, at every level in the company.

While this is worthy, it seems that most hiring managers react rather than plan, and most don’t have a clue about how to assess and attract the best. HR/recruiting exacerbates the problem by focusing more on cost than quality, giving recruiters so much to do that they become mere paper pushers, and/or jumping from one sourcing idea to another in the vain search for the silver bullet.

Few companies are immune. While defining this type of hodgepodge hiring strategy is not easy, the one being used at your company probably resembles a combination of one or more of the following:

1. The transactional, minimize cost per hire strategy: find anyone who is actively looking who meets the job description at the lowest cost in the shortest period of time using the cheapest approaches possible.
2. The silver bullet strategy: try out every new sourcing idea with the hope that it works better than the last, and now tarnished, silver bullet.
3. The eliminate-the-worst strategy: put as many barriers as possible to eliminate the worst with the expectation that good people will be attracted and persevere because we have a great employer brand and an easy-to-find career site.
4. The proprietary talent pool sourcing strategy: build a talent pool of diverse talent and hope that a few people raise their hands when they’re emailed a boring job. (Note this is actually a pretty good sourcing strategy if coupled with better messaging and a career-focused assessment and recruiting process.)
5. The vendor-driven (aka the comp- or OD- or legal- or IT- or OFCCP-driven) strategy: let’s forsake all our responsibility for hiring and let our vendors tell us what to do, or let some bureaucrat, technocrat, or lawyer tie our hands.
6. The post and pray: post boring jobs on as many boards as possible with the hope that a good person inadvertently sees it.
7. The incomplete strategy: let’s do something really well, but then mess it up by not completing the process. Example: finding top-notch prospects who opt-out of the process early due to one of the following: application process is burdensome, recruiters don’t know the job, managers who are weak interviewers, offers that are uncompetitive, etc.
8. The “I’ll know it when I see it strategy” — aka the hiring manager-driven strategy: let hiring managers do whatever they want to do with heavy reliance on the job descriptions and the manager’s good sense of what success looks like. As part of this, recruiters are just told to send over as many candidates as possible who meet the specs.
9. The knock-out question or survivor strategy: this is a version of the “eliminate the worst” strategy, but starts by asking people a bunch of silly questions that only leave the desperate as survivors.
10. The hide-and-seek arrogance strategy: make it extremely difficult to find job postings, make it more difficult to apply, and require all candidates to bow down to the hiring manager if they’re fortunate enough to be granted an interview.

Of course, no one every starts out with this type of hiring strategy in mind, but somehow, piece-by-piece, this is what it evolves into. Part of the problem is letting the idea of the moment drive activity. As a result, we can often unknowingly affect the final outcome for the worse. This is called sub-optimization. For example, in today’s paper I just read that Orange County (California) is planning on widening its main freeway system into Los Angeles. Unfortunately, LA County is not planning on expanding the junction, with the result just moving the traffic bottleneck north by 10 miles.

Something like this happens every time a new sourcing process is implemented without considering the end-to-end impact. Problems like these can be minimized when there’s an overarching maximize-quality-of-hire strategy in place that everyone adopts. Then every subsequent action or decision can evaluated on how it impacts this strategy.

If you want to implement a maximize quality of hire strategy, you should first go through each step in your current sourcing, interviewing, and recruiting process and see if it’s counterproductive in some way or preventing the best people from consideration. With this as a framework, develop a two-pronged action plan. The first part involves stopping doing the things that prevent you from hiring the best. The second part involves implementing new processes based on how the best people look for new careers, how they compare different opportunities, and the criteria they use to accept an offer.

While I’ve been contending that HR/recruiting must take full responsibility for quality of hire, developing the strategy, plans, and processes is at the core of this. Of course, getting managers on board is the most difficult challenge here, requiring executive-level vision and support to be successful. A strong metrics and feedback program tracking everything pre- and post-hire is the essential piece that ties it all together. Developing, implementing, maintaining, and monitoring this maximize quality of hire strategy is what I mean by ownership. In my mind, maximizing quality of hire is the most second most important function of HR/recruiting. The first is developing and maximizing the talent already on board. Everything else pales in comparison.

The new sites, identical in design and structure, made their appearance earlier this month. Among them are Atlanta.jobs, Boston.jobs, Mexico.jobs, and India.jobs.

“We just started pushing them out,” says Chad Sowash, VP of business development for DirectEmployers, a non-profit HR consortium, that has recruiting as its focus. Among its services is the Job Central job board, to which members can post jobs without additional fee.

“It’s a new playing field,” Sowash adds. “What this is going to do is allow thousands more, perhaps tens of thousands more” sites where job seekers can look for jobs.

Assuming job seekers ever become aware of the existence of a domain offering only jobs and career information, then those looking for opportunities in a specific geography — Atlanta, for example — need only enter that area and the extension .jobs. Those looking for an occupation-specific opportunity enter the title and the .jobs extension.

Members of the DirectEmployers consortium can request the creation of any site name they think will be of benefit, said Sowash, suggesting an oil company might want to use  refinery.jobs for its openings.

“It won’t belong to any company, but if a company wants us to offer a name, we can. The registrar isn’t selling these domains. They still have them,” Sowash explained. “We can light up every combination someone can think of.”

Tom Embrescia, CEO of Employ Media, the administrator and manager — registrar, in Internet parlance — of the .jobs domain, said the venture with DirectEmployers is a “great way to see what the world wants.”

The domain — technically a sponsored top-level domain — was pitched to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) by Employ Media and its partner the Society for Human Resource Management. The proposal, approved in 2005, argued that a .jobs extension would make it easy for job seekers to find the career site of individual companies and would provide a modicum of protection against scam job postings.

Companies could only get a .jobs address by using the company name and by pledging to adhere to the SHRM code of ethics.

Although about 15,000 companies signed up for the .jobs address, job seekers are largely unaware of its existence. As a consequence, most .jobs addresses get little traffic.

Building sites on the “reserved” occupational and geographic addresses, says Embrescia, is a marketing experiment. “It’s a beta test,” he says, explaining later in the conversation, “We need to build consumer awareness that these (addresses) exist.”

Besides providing the technology to power the job boards, DirectEmployers’ dozens of Fortune 500 and 1000 members will be encouraged to promote them. “Now I’ve got Fortune 1000 companies working,” Embrescia beamed.

Besides members of DirectEmployers, other firms with a .jobs domain address will also be able to post their jobs to the new sites.

For member companies posting jobs to Job Central, the additional placement on geographic and occupational sites will be automatic, Sowash told me. They are also likely to get a premium posting position.

Non-members, who own a .jobs address, might have to post their jobs manually or pay a fee for automation.

Others who want to post to these sites might have to pay a posting fee, or have some other limitation.

“The rules haven’t been hammered out,” says Sowash. There’s also a 40-company advisory group providing input on site names, practices, and feedback on the design and functionality of the job boards, which, Sowash is quick to point out, don’t look like job boards. “These are not going to look like your father’s job board,” he vows.

I asked Sowash whether he and DirectEmployers expected push back or opposition to its exclusive deal with Employ Media. “Yeah,” he acknowledged, “we’ll probably hear from some people who are not too happy.” But he didn’t anticipate resistance from the job boards, most of whom are struggling in the economy and couldn’t take on a project of this magnitude.

Bob Etheridge, a co-founder of JobCircle and a former VP of another job board, GettheJob, says he suspects “job board owners are walking the fence, trying to determine are they friends or are they foes.”

There’s suspicion now that Employ Media is not only a names registrar, but “they are getting in the publisher business.”

Those quoted here and others who talked with me either for background or anonymously all supported DirectEmployers for its aggressiveness and initiative.

DirectEmployers approached Employ Media with a proposal almost a year ago, but Embrescia said he wasn’t ready then. Conversation resumed about the time Embrescia publicly floated the idea of selling off the reserved names.

“They had a good plan and when we were ready we talked with them,” Employ Media’s Embrescia said. Their facility with the technology, flexibility, and non-profit status, and their enthusiasm were convincing factors.

Still, a top executive with a leading job board who asked not to be named, said he initially was upset over the lack of openness in the process of developing the joint venture. Now, though, he doubts the new sites will do anything more than simply add to the already cluttered job board environment.

Coming at it from a different perspective, Gerry Crispin, CareerXroads co-founder and a leading recruitment consultant, complained that the latest turn means an end to “the embedded, implied promise” that all the jobs on a .jobs site would be legitimate and are those of the company whose name appeared before the extension.

“It no longer has the same aspirational goals,” laments Crispin, a member of the original SHRM advisory group that supported the .jobs creation. “It’s still milk, but there’s no guarantee it’s pasteurized.”

You follow all the rules, keep great records, and even passed an informal EEOC inquiry a couple years ago.

But lurking in your ATS is proof you’re breaking the laws of Germany, or maybe France, or possibly Canada. Maybe all of them. You never wanted those resumes (CVs, if you prefer), wouldn’t sponsor the candidates, and had no interest in hiring anyone from outside the region, let alone the United States. But now that you have applicants from countries with tough privacy laws, you are bound to follow them.

Dr. Donald Harris

“Some companies assume that because they do not have a physical operating presence in Europe or Canada that such privacy laws do not apply to them,” says HR privacy expert Dr. Donald Harris. “This is an erroneous and risky assumption.”

President and founder of HR Privacy Solutions, Harris advises companies on complying with U.S. and international laws regarding the collection and use of employee information.

Even a company with no physical presence in a foreign country may be bound by its laws, he says, should it recruit there. As you can see from the hospital example, recruiting doesn’t have to be active in order for the rules to apply. Receiving a single resume from a foreign national is enough to trigger the application of the privacy rules of the job seeker’s country.

“We are living in a global world, so things are changing, ” Harris says, explaining that the privacy rules of the European Union and its member countries are designed to protect their citizens’ personal information. “The Europeans don’t want to see their laws ignored.”

What keeps our HR hospital executive out of the hot water is that no country is actively pursuing such minor violations as storing CVs beyond the legal limit, or not providing the individual the right to delete their resumes at will. “Enforcement is very difficult for them,” Harris conceeded. The U.S. has no treaties or reciprocal agreements with other countries on these issues, so the impact of foreign rules is muted.

But, warns Harris, “While regulators may have considerable difficulty in enforcing the laws with a foreign company, the laws do apply and international cooperation amongst privacy regulators is increasing. After all, what self-respecting government would allow the Internet to provide a free pass for circumventing its laws relating to privacy, employment, or a host of other areas?”

While the hospital in our example may never open a clinic in a foreign country, or otherwise do business there, a manufacturer might. So might other companies.

“One really has to look at where a company is going” before it decides to ignore foreign rules, Harris observes. If in the future it does decide to go global, its past transgressions could exact a cost.

“And even apart from the legal issues,” says Harris, is showing ignorance or disregard of local laws and expectations about personal information a smart way to go about recruiting someone?”

So what could our fictional hospital do to avoid breaking foreign privacy rules? Here are some simple steps:

• Use pre-application questions that includes a geographic qualifier;
• Discard applications from foreign countries upon receipt;
• Make sure your site has a privacy statement that says what you will be doing with the collected information. Harris recommends that countries that are doing business globally take a look at Boeing’s privacy statement for guidance;
• Review what the European Union says about HR data collection.

In the October issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership we discuss this and other international privacy concerns with Harris and offer his insights on the trends in HR privacy. The Journal is available by subscription only.

Having related business units working closely together, rather than operating as independent silos, almost always increases efficiency, reduces errors, and improves overall results.

There’s no better example of what integration can accomplish than the modern-day supply-chain organization, which used to operate as four independent functions (purchasing; inventory management; warehousing; and shipping).

The integration of these functions into a single function with cross-activity analytics and shared goals turned an “overhead function” into a profit center at companies like Wal-Mart, Toyota, and Dell. The customer-service function also demonstrated the value of integration when it created single points of contact for customers using “customer contact centers” capable of addressing a wide range of customer needs from technical support to warranty registration and billing inquiries.

The result of all these innovations was a dramatic increase in customer satisfaction and loyalty/retention. City governments also strive to increase capacity, reduce errors, and save scarce resources when they closely coordinate police, fire, ambulance, and hospital services for handling emergencies.

When executives contemplate what function would benefit the most from breaking down silos and driving integration next, talent acquisition is almost always on their list. Given that numerous organizations are currently engaged in process reengineering efforts and that the budgeting cycle for 2010 is just around the corner, what better time could there be to start integration efforts?

While recruiting continues, requisition loads per recruiter are down and non-essential programs are on hold in many organizations.

Despite the temporary relief from massive requisition loads, executives are crying out for strategic moves and the application of new technologies seen by nearly everyone as relevant to talent acquisition. Growth of social networks and past experience with employee referral programs have led several executives in high-growth Fortune 200 firms to question whether traditional talent acquisition functions even make sense anymore.

One progressive CFO worked with talent acquisition leaders to develop a finance function-specific ERP with aggressive features that produced 80%+ of the function’s hires last year.

The Definition of Integrated Talent Acquisition

Integrated talent acquisition is an organizational design strategy whose primary goal is to break down barriers between like activities and bring economies of scale and quality management to the function.

It emphasizes the coordination of efforts, increased sharing of information, and group communications across several functions to increase speed, quality, and to reduce costs. The coordinated functions often include a mix of corporate functions including HR, finance, operations, business development, and outsourced service providers. In some cases, when the business itself is largely dependent upon the organization’s ability to acquire, develop, motivate, and retain talent, organizations have fully integrated activities across all functional boundaries into a single seamless process with accountability, shared analytics, and shared rewards.

Talent Acquisition Is Mostly Uncoordinated

It’s hard to make a strong argument against integration because working more closely together is so obviously a good thing, but that doesn’t make it common!

All too often, HR leaders are selected who rose to power vertically through a single function, most often training and development or HR operations, but occasionally talent acquisition.

The bias of said leaders creates a highly political environment where survival pretty much depends on “building your own empire” and masking reality to prevent easy replacement.

(I’ve even heard HR referred to as “Balkanized” – which is certainly not a compliment.)

It’s rare to find a talent acquisition function that’s truly integrated. In most cases, the “sub-functions” of talent management operate as semi-autonomous units, while in other more extreme cases the sub-functions operate as completely independent silos. I can’t begin to tell you how often I am met with blank stares when I ask talent acquisition professionals in companies with a formal talent management function to tell me what the function does!

You can quickly tell whether talent acquisition functions are currently integrated by simply looking for the signs of close integration, which include shared metrics, interdependent rewards, cross-departmental rotations, cross-functional teams, and periodic joint meetings.

Problems Caused By Lack of Coordination

Few talent-acquisition functions are closely integrated. Some of the problems caused by this lack of integration include:

• Lost during handoffs. With independent functions all handling a small piece of what it takes to find, court, hire, and onboard a new hire, it is very plausible that candidates may be inadvertently “lost” when they move from one phase of the process into another (for example, when finalists are handed off to a background vendor, some may be lost at either end of the transfer process).
• No way to identify the origin of errors. When a macro level process is broken up into many smaller pieces, each owned by someone else, identifying the source of errors or delays in the overall process is nearly impossible. An example might focus on delays in time to fill. Without an integrated process, shared analytics, and single-point accountability, determining which sub-process (sourcing, assessment, background verification, or offer generation/presentation) produced a delay could be impossible.
• Mixed terminology. As candidates are passed off between sub-functions, they are confused with different terminology and confusing acronyms, not to mention differing levels of service and an array of contacts.
• Lack of understanding or knowledge. Because one function doesn’t trust or even know what goes on within another function, certain activities may be needlessly repeated, increasing recruiting costs and time to hire. Other activities may unknowingly contradict with each other. (For example, references may be called more than once, or two business units may make totally different offers to the same candidate).
• Sabotage. It’s not unusual for some sub-functions to actually despise or even “hate” other talent-management functions. Some individuals can try to proactively hurt or sabotage other functions, while others just try to make them look bad (so that their function looks relatively better).

Talent Acquisition Activities That Should Be Coordinated/Integrated

There are many arguments that can be made for including or excluding talent-acquisition activities from the integration process.

The following list represents those activities that, at a bare minimum, should be coordinated (more formal criteria comes later in this article):

• Employer branding
• Workforce planning and forecasting
• Requisition management
• Experienced recruiting
• College recruiting
• Compensation (offer generation)
• Background verification (reference checking)
• Employment marketing
• Internal movement and job-posting programs
• Relocation
• Onboarding
• Retention and performance management

What Are the Keys to Integration?

If you are going to coordinate related activities, there are certain impactful things to “encourage” the different functions to work more closely together:

1. Joint reporting relationships. When you integrate, all the functions report directly to the same manager. When you coordinate, the reporting lines may be advisory or a dotted-line relationship.
2. Cross-training. Individuals are cross-trained to do multiple jobs. In addition, this training allows them to be redeployed for either short- or long-term assignments in other areas of talent acquisition or HR. Webinars and training sessions from every function in the overall process are available to all.
3. Shared communications. Shared newsletters, memos, and websites allow every function to know what’s happening in other related functions.
4. Cross-functional teams. Requiring inter-related teams to form cross-functional management and problem-solving teams can dramatically improve the workflow. Jointly funded projects can also improve cooperation.
5. Build influence skills. A great deal of HR work is now done by individuals who do not report directly to you … so the ability to influence others becomes critical. As a result, team leaders need to be trained in how to influence individuals who can’t be “forced” to cooperate.
6. Joint meetings. Periodic joint meetings (in-person and virtual) improve mutual understanding and increase the number of discussions about problems created by “other” sub-functions.
7. Inter-departmental rotations. Periodically rotating talent among interdependent departments improves communications, understanding, and cooperation. The rotations can be short-term or permanent.
8. Shared rewards. Performance rewards tied to the success of related functions can dramatically increase cooperation. For example, part of one function’s bonus pool is tied to offer acceptance rates so there is an incentive to provide reasonable offers to the recruiting function.
9. Common metrics. If all related functions in the hiring process are measured on their contribution to “time to fill,” they are all likely to focus on it and to work together with others to improve the overall metric. An integrated error reporting system would ensure that process errors could be assigned to the appropriate owner of that step in the process. Survey a sample of hiring managers and new hires to get their experience of what process parts were integrated and which ones were disjointed.
10. Wiki best-practice sharing. Providing in-house wikis that allow individuals from different functions to help build a shared talent-acquisition knowledge base helps increase ownership in talent acquisition by all. It also leverages the power of the crowd to ensure processes consistent with goals from every perspective. Individuals should be recognized and rewarded for facilitating the sharing of best practices between the different functions.
11. Shared forecasting and planning. When related units share forecasts and plans, they are much more likely to see the same upcoming problems and opportunities.
12. Shared database. Requiring the different sub-functions to use (and add to) the same database can dramatically improve understanding and information flow. Requiring all sub-functions to shift to databased decision-making can also improve quality and consistency.

Indicators That Disparate Functions Should Be Integrated

Integrating every function can actually be counterproductive, in that you can end up with a large, unwieldy bureaucracy. Instead, you should carefully select, using predetermined criteria, which activities should be closely integrated. There are several criteria that, when present, indicate that related sub-functions should be integrated.

Those criteria include:

1. Customer expectations. The first criteria for determining when functions should be integrated is whether the customer or user expects “a continuous process.” For example, when asked, hiring managers universally agreed that the requisition, recruiting, hiring, and onboarding processes should all be integrated. Candidates would also agree that it’s frustrating to be continually “handed off” to a different function throughout the process of becoming an employee. What this means is that whenever the customer expects “a seamless process,” senior managers need to work to provide that integrated process.
2. Significant “handoff” errors. When poorly coordinated functions “handoff” a user to the next step or function in the process, there is a markedly increased chance of errors occurring during the transition. If errors are costly, the inter-functional communication must be nearly perfect (like at the handoff point between the recruiter and the compensation offer specialist, where miscommunication can lead to extremely low offers that have no chance of acceptance). Independent functions with different terminologies and unique acronyms can dramatically increase misunderstandings. Formal integration certainly improves communications and makes handoffs smoother because a single manager oversees the inter-related functions.
3. Significant inter-dependencies. If the output of any particular sub-function is highly dependent on the quality of the inputs from the function that precedes them in the process, they are dependent. For example, sourcers depend heavily on accurate position descriptions that outline all criteria that will be used to screen candidates.
4. The need for simultaneous operations. When related operations are “linear” (meaning that a follow-up step doesn’t begin until the previous step is completed), there is less need for integration. However, when you want to minimize “slack time” and keep your workforce fully occupied, it’s critical that several functions operate simultaneously. For example, when you’re processing the firing of one employee, you can begin sourcing a replacement. Obviously, it’s hard to manage overlapping, simultaneous operations without close coordination.
5. The need for speed. In any case where speed is essential for process success, coordination can certainly help to identify roadblocks and unnecessary delays. Wherever speed and responsiveness are important (as they are in hiring), at the very least, a coordinated effort is necessary.
6. The need for cost efficiencies. Operating numerous independent sub-functions is simply more expensive because each must have its own manager, metrics, and policies. Overall process costs also increase when two functions unknowingly repeat the same task because of poor communication. If you want administrative cost-savings, eliminate duplication and overlap through integration and coordination.
7. Physical separation. If the interdependent functions are physically located away from each other, the distance will cause less-natural interaction. The reduced frequency of interactions among employees means that lower levels of trust and understanding develop among the employees of these separate functions. Obviously, effective coordination and integration can help to prevent any “us vs. them” mentality from developing.
8. Shared technology. Whenever two separate functions share the same database or software, integration ensures more consistent data-entry and database maintenance.

Final Thoughts

The concepts of coordination and integration have a proven track-record. Merely spending a few hours with managers of the supply-chain or customer-service function can get you all the insights and tools that you need. Yet some will fight because of their insecurities or political agendas.

The best way to overcome resistance is to identify the biggest complainers and whiners; keep the ones who put the good of the organization ahead of their own private agendas. After integrating talent management, don’t stop there.

Work with the rest of HR to integrate the three primary areas (buy talent, build talent, and increasing productivity) so that all aspects of talent management and the business act as one.

There was a blog posting by David Lynn recently here on ERE that asked where recruiting belonged: under HR?

I could feel the blood rushing into my fingers as I answered: “I have strong feelings about this. It belongs under finance with a leg into biz dev and mergers & acquisitions as well.”

And it does.

Here’s why:

Recruiting is such a vital function in an organization because it touches every person in that organization. Not every department can be said to do this. We all know a company is as good as its people.

Recruiting belongs under finance because it is basically a competitive intelligence function.

Yes, recruiting involves talking to people in the outside world, and if you’re doing it right you’re gathering intelligence along the way. I suspect applications like salesforce.com could be very useful in these maneuvers, but I am talking out of school because I am not using it (yet). But any application that could capture (and distribute) the notes, thoughts, and facts that any contributor in the company enters regarding a particular candidate would be wildly useful as an “M&A” tool.

“He said money seems tight around his company and he’s worried moving forward about the viability of his position.”

If I was working as an M&A professional (and I have) I would look at that and think, “Hmmm…I wonder if they’re having cash-flow problems.”

I’d then take a look at the company in question (if it was a competitor and I was tasked with finding objects to buy) and do a preliminary inquiry into the company’s possible availability.

“Hello Mrs. CFO. This is Maureen Sharib. I am with XYZ and our desire to grow is why I am calling you. Could we maybe have a conversation around a possible partnership between our two companies?”

Putting it like that belies the fact that I know they’re having cash-flow problems, or at least something is going on inside her company that is making their employees think so. A gentle knock on her door but an opening for discussion, nevertheless.

I’d approach finance first because, after all, this is the drive engine of the company. She’s going to be consulted anyway in an event like this, so why not include her from the get-go and make friends early? Let it be her idea taking it to her boss.

Reporting up through finance makes sense for business development as well.

“He’s frustrated with the technology inside his company. Doesn’t feel they’re keeping up.”

Wow. If I was working in business development and had something I could sell to this company, I’d sit up straight and immediately pull Hoover’s up for contact information, and then I’d call.

“Hello, Purchasing. This is Maureen Sharib and I have a technology product that could change your employees’ attitudes towards their jobs.”

Let Purchasing walk with the glory. You just made a sale.

This isn’t brain surgery and appears to me to be common sense. What does it appear to you as?

The company announced the Series B funding tonight. The round was led by ATA Ventures, whose co-founder and managing director, Hatch Graham, will join Jobvite’s board of directors. In December 2007 Jobvite received $7.2 million in Series A funding from a group led by CMEA Capital.

Jobvite says it grew its client count by 300 percent in the last year and now counts Accuweather, Mozilla, TiVo, Yelp, and Zappos among its customers.

One reason for Jobvite’s success is its versatility. Not only has the company built a nicely featured ATS, but it took care in the development to include the kind of networking capabilities that recruiters want. The recruiting platform allows for internal collaboration, encouraging employees to make referrals and, to the extent company culture and hiring managers allow, they can participate in the hiring process.

Making this a more active exercise is Jobvite’s behind-the-scenes job matching capability. Employees can choose to connect Jobvite to their Facebook friends,  LinkedIn connections, and Twitter followers. Jobvite analyzes the profiles of those connections and suggests good matches with company openingx to the employee, who can choose to send a “jobvite” invitation to their friend, follower, or 1st degree connection.

Jobvite is an on-demand system with a yearly subscription fee priced for the SMB market and designed to be less demanding of recruiter time.

“This recession is fundamentally changing recruitment, pushing companies to become more cost-effective, innovative, and strategic. Companies are looking to the technology industry to make this possible,” says Dan Finnigan, president and CEO. “Our growth this year proves we’re serving a big need and delivering immediate ROI to our customers. With this new investment, the strong additions made to our team this year, and the on-going advancements in our technology, I’m looking forward to what Jobvite will do for our customers.”

Rather than a focus on rapid growth, companies will look for sustainable growth. To achieve this, many more workers will be contractors, consultants, or work as temporaries or part-time. The average age of the workforce is going to get older as Baby Boomers stay longer and fewer young people seek regular corporate jobs. Learning to re-use and find new positions for internal talent will be important.

Many economists are worrying that we may have a jobless recovery, which means that rather than hire lots of people, companies will not seek to fill the jobs eliminated in this recession. They will try hard to maintain a small, highly productive workforce. Today’s BLS figures indicate that productivity is at an all-time high, despite the layoffs and slower economy. That means we are all working harder (and maybe also smarter). So CEOs may be asking: why do we need to add more people and lower our productivity?

What Does This Mean for Recruiting?

Recruiting is full of managers. These are the people who run their recruiting organizations efficiently and effectively. They implement processes, cautiously install technology, focus on customer satisfaction, and stay within their budgets. As long as the world doesn’t change too much, they thrive.

For many organizations, this can be outsourced. A solid, well-chosen RPO can take over the transactional side of recruiting and provide the people you need. It may cost a bit more than the internal recruiter and may not always be as tuned-in to the environment, but they will be capable and offer flexibility in times when hiring is slow.

As I have written many times before, internal recruiters will have to become competent in thinking more broadly about talent. Here are five things you can do.

Step #1: Realize what is happening and accept it

It is highly unlikely that recruiting will return to its pre-recession state within the next two to three years; it probably never will.

Learn as much as you can about the labor market, productivity, and the economy. Understand where your organization is compared to its competition. Realize that recruiters will still exist and even prosper, but when working for a recruiting agency or an RPO and not when working for a corporation. Inside corporations there will be jobs for talent leaders and strategic recruiting people, but not for very many regular recruiters.

Step #2: Assess your organization’s talent

What capabilities and skills do you (or the management team) think will be needed to remain competitive? Does your firm have a labor force capable of thriving in the markets you engage in? What would make it more competitive?

You can form focus groups, talk to hiring managers, meet with your organization’s strategic planning team, and understand where the firm is headed. The more you can speak intelligently and in an informed way about business issues, the better you will accepted and the more influence you can command.

Step #3: Focus on building capability, internally and externally

Develop systems and methods to find the internal talent that will most likely be able to meet the longer-term needs of your organization. Perhaps set up internal talent task forces to begin suggesting what new capabilities and skills should be hired. Ask managers who their stars are and why they are stars. Involve line management but, in subtle ways, begin to demonstrate an ability to do things more strategically and to think on a broader scale than simply filling positions.

Step #4: Communicate and educate

Spread the word about the changes in the labor market and suggest new ways to look at talent. Use the resources you have such as ERE or any of the think-tanks such as my own Future of Talent Institute to get informed and able to explain what is happening to your management.

Write an internal blog, create a talent newsletter, or just send periodic emails about the labor market. The important thing is to keep the issues of people and talent at the forefront of any discussion about business development or growth.

Step #5: Focus on leadership issues, not tactics

What really separates a winner is the focus on longer-term strategic issues and not on day-to-day activities. As I said above, outsource or automate those tactical issues so that you have time to focus on the bigger ones.

By setting up task forces and by focusing on a few critical areas, you can broaden the focus of the recruiting department and make it more integral and important to the success of the firm.

This is what leadership is all about: educating and setting expectations, engaging people to achieve goals and then getting out of the way.

The future is fine for all of us in the talent arena, but it will require a different set of skills and a new mindset.

(Bear with us as we work out the kinks with this new technology; the audio starts off a little rocky but should improve — at least a little bit — after a minute or so.)

I’ll demonstrate why there is a confluence of factors that make this a “perfect storm” of opportunity if you implement a countercyclical hiring strategy.

I’ll start out with three analogies that show how this current economic lull is an outstanding opportunity to fill your forecasted senior management vacancies that will result from baby boom retirements.

Analogy #1 — Understanding the Perfect Time to Buy

Any manager who has participated in a significant volume of corporate purchasing negotiations realizes that there are economic and competitive factors that make a particular period the “perfect time” to get the best deal. The “best deal” means a procurement opportunity where, with little effort, you are likely to get the best quality, the broadest selection, and at the lowest price.

The five factors that provide a “perfect deal” opportunity include:

• No competition — when your competitors aren’t buying.
• High availability — when the available quantity or volume of the product is high so that sellers have a surplus.
• High-quality — when the quality of the product is high.
• Low cost — when the cost is low (because of the high supply and the low demand).
• Low supplier power — when the weakened bargaining power of the seller has made them more open to concession in terms.

For many markets, it’s a “once in a generation” perfect-storm opportunity when these five factors occur simultaneously. While many nations do not have a labor shortage, many including the United States do have a talent shortage.

If your organization has struggled in the past two decades to find top talent to fuel growth initiatives, this temporary respite in competition for labor should be leveraged to the hilt.

Procuring high-quality talent at low cost and with minimal effort would certainly make you a hero among senior managers with mounting volume of work to be completed.

Analogy #2 — Understanding the Perfect Time to Acquire Exceptional Sports Players

Let’s assume for a few minutes that you run a professional sports team. You would quickly realize that the best time to build a sports franchise by recruiting enough star players to give you the capability of winning the championship would be when most of the following “five factors” are present:

• No competition — the other top teams aren’t recruiting, so no one else even bids on top talent.
• Talent costs were low — because no one is actively bidding, the costs of acquiring any available talent would be low.
• High-quality talent available — an opportune time to recruit would be when there were a number of genuine superstars available and in addition, there was also a large volume of high-quality talent available across all of your key positions.
• The players lack power — whenever there is a lack of competition and few open positions, even exceptional players become amenable to considering and accepting job offers that they would not have previously been considered.
• Everyone is recruitable — and most important, all in the case where all no trade clauses have been made null and void, you could literally “take” any player from any team without any remuneration or legal restrictions.

Actions that you would take when most or all of these factors occurred would include:

• You would over-hire players — should this “perfect storm” confluence occur, the opportunity would undoubtedly excite both you and your managers. It would probably also cause you to expand your recruiting, so that you would “load up” with talent, even in positions where you were already satisfied with the talent you currently had.
• You would designate “evergreen jobs” to ensure you never have a shortage of great players. For these few roles, you would continually recruit and hire exceptional talent whenever it was available at a reasonable price. The logic would be simple. In the sport of baseball, you could never have “enough” pitchers with an ERA of under 3.0. If you “own” all the talent, your competitors can’t. If you had “surplus talent” in key positions, you could just adopt new approaches to take advantage of the available talent.
• You would make immediate “opportunity hires” — if the team that you managed was a professional golf team, you would have previously assessed all of the top talent in your league. As a result, you would not need a lot of time to decide who you wanted to hire and who you didn’t.
• You would directly “raid” other firms when they are weak — unlike in professional sports, there are no restrictions on recruiting away top talent from competitors, so you would develop an active poaching process to take their best players when their team was at its weakest.

Analogy #3 — The “illogical” current corporate recruiting strategy

In 99.9% of all corporations, if Tiger Woods (or his equivalent in business talent) walked into your recruiting office and you did not have an open requisition for his specific position, you would literally send him away. Because the economy is down, corporate recruiting is stuck in cost-cutting mode. It isn’t doing any significant sourcing or hiring and the CFO may in fact have already decimated the recruiting team.

Most would classify this current time period as “bad times” when you lay low to avoid getting the recruiting budget cut even further. You certainly wouldn’t view this as the best time for recruiting in a generation.

All the Factors Point to a Great Time to Recruit

The purpose of these three related analogies is to demonstrate the identifiable factors that make it a perfect time to buy. You might be surprised to learn that whether you’re buying products or sports stars, the factors that make it “an ideal time to buy” are strikingly similar.

Currently, top talent is abundantly available; at no other time in recent economic history has the pendulum swung so far toward the advantage of the employer.

Unfortunately, most corporate recruiting leaders haven’t taken advantage of this opportunity. Perhaps the leaders in corporate recruiting are too close to the situation to actually see the tremendous opportunity that is facing us today.

Because revenues are down, today isn’t the perfect time to do large-scale hiring, so implement select “surgical hiring” where you selectively build your organization by hiring a relatively small number of exceptionally talented individuals for your key positions.

In the following section I’ve provided the most important factors that should cause you to begin countercyclical hiring.

The Perfect Time for Recruiting

• Competitors are out of the market — almost no one is in the talent market right now. Most firms have instituted a hiring and/or a budget freeze, which means the competition for talent is ridiculously low. They won’t need to enter into a single bidding war for top candidates when the talent competition is out of the marketplace. In addition, you might feel relatively alone among corporate recruiters, if you choose to visit college career centers.
• High-quality talent is available — in some downturns, only low-quality talent is laid off by corporations. However, during the current downturn, because of a large number of recent mergers, facility closings, and the complete elimination of some major firms, the amount of extremely high-quality unemployed or underemployed talent available around the world is at an all-time high. Even currently employed top talent who have jobs haven’t been treated very well during the downturn, and a record number of over 60% of these fully employed individuals are open to new opportunities.
• Costs are low — the lack of competition and the down economy have forced the price of available talent in almost all positions back down to reasonable levels. New referral approaches and Internet and social networking recruiting tools have also reduced the cost of recruiting talent. Taken together they have dramatically decreased the cost of adding talent.
• Talent is amenable — the lack of available job opportunities has “shifted the power” away from talent and toward corporations to the point where top talent will consider job opportunities and options today that they would have rejected as little as two years ago.
• The coming retirement wave — the dramatic reduction in stock prices and 401(k) values has temporarily postponed the upcoming wave of retirements. Despite this delay, these retirements will come eventually and if the economy turns around suddenly, firms may very soon be faced with a tidal wave of retirements. Because large-scale retirements may begin in as little as a year or two, now’s the perfect time to “stockpile” and develop possible replacements for your most experienced managers and technical talent.
• The coming retention problem — if your organization is among the many that have undergone layoffs, frozen hiring, reduced budgets, and maybe even cut salaries through the use of furloughs, the odds are that your current employees are overworked and stressed. This less-than-perfect treatment coupled with the fact that many of the “new generation” of employees have little to no loyalty to a single firm will result in a dramatic increase in turnover as soon as more external opportunities begin appearing. Obviously, you should begin retention efforts immediately but it may not be possible to remove the “bad taste” that your current employees experienced. Expand your recruiting efforts to find replacements and realize that new hires are likely to be more loyal than most employees because they are now seeking security and they would certainly remember the fact that you “saved them” during a period when no one else would even look at their resume.
• Remote work is more feasible — the unwillingness of some talent to relocate has limited a firm’s talent options, but the increase in knowledge work coupled with the currently available technology makes it possible to allow top recruits to work at home with no loss in productivity.

Other advantages to countercyclical recruiting include:

• There are benefits if you “begin looking early” — the competition in the market for products and services has not slowed down in the slightest. As a result, companies are now planning numerous new technologies and processes to increase their productivity. By hiring now you provide new hires with enough training and development time to be up-to-speed as these new technologies come online. Hiring individuals before you need them also gives them a chance to adjust to your corporate culture. Hiring a surplus of talent will provide you with an opportunity to “release” employees or new hires who can’t meet productivity goals. A final advantage of beginning your recruiting search early is that even if you merely stretch out the time period over which you are actively looking for talent, you automatically increase the odds that one or more top individuals will become available during the extended search time.
• So what if you hire too many? — can you imagine a sports team having too many stars of the caliber of Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, or A-Rod? With this exceptional talent, you could more easily beat your competitors. I once saw a general manager at Agilent Technologies respond with astonishment when an HR manager suggested that it would be a problem to have a “surplus” talent in our number-one, high-impact position. The GM responded without hesitation that “would be a nice problem to have.” If we had too much talent in that position, “we would just try new things because of our increased capability.” I hope that you can see that, yes, there would be some added costs in “over hiring” but the opportunities and benefits would far outweigh those costs.

Update Your Recruiting Strategy with These Seven Elements

Hopefully the analogies and the eight factors listed above have convinced you that now is the time to rethink your approach to recruiting.

If so, there are seven major elements related to countercyclical recruiting that you need to consider adding to your current recruiting strategy:

1. “Pre-need hiring” — this approach is where you build relationships and hire talent before you actually need it in order to provide ample time to develop and acclimate to your culture .
2. “Over hiring” — over hiring is where you purposely hire more talent than you immediately need in order to prepare for an “upturn” in demand. Alternatively, you can also use this as a stimulus to “swap” poor performing current employees with high-quality replacements.
3. Build a talent pool — a “talent pool” is a group of highly desirable talent that you identify, assess, and build relationships with over time, so that when an opening occurs, most of your sourcing and initial assessment is already done.
4. Opportunity hiring — this approach involves quickly “pull the trigger” and immediately hire superstars (that you have pre-identified and pre-assessed) immediately as they become available.
5. Most wanted list — this element is a combination of talent pool and opportunity hiring. Under this process, at the beginning of the year you select the top 25 (up to 100) most desirable individuals in your industry. You essentially “prequalify” them and you then spend the rest of the year trying to recruit them. As soon as one becomes available, you make a hiring decision.
6. Employer brand re-building — odds are that if your firm has undergone layoffs, furloughs, mergers, or bankruptcy that your external image as a “top place to work” has been severely damaged. Add to corporate actions the fact that numerous opportunities for employees (current and former) to share their perspective online have popped up in recent years and it becomes clear that nearly every organization needs an aggressive strategy to manage their brand perception online.
7. Approaches for identifying when your competitors are recruiting – “countercyclical” recruiting is where you recruit talent during times when other firms are out of the talent market. If you are not sure who is recruiting actively, have an intern check your competitor’s websites to see which jobs they are recruiting in high volume.

Final Thoughts

A handful of firms (Google, Slide, Microsoft, Principal, and HP) have to be recognized because they understood both the need and the opportunity to continue hiring during this downturn, even though they too may have been cutting their workforce.

However, the majority of recruiting directors haven’t taken advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime recruiting opportunity. I can only identify two major reasons for their lack of action.

The first is that they have just failed to be strategic and instead had a misdirected focus on cutting recruiting costs, rather than the more impactful strategic focus of increasing corporate revenues.

The second more palatable reason is that they understood the opportunity but they just didn’t have the capability of building an effective “business case” with senior management. That latter reason in one I’ll tackle in a future article.

If TechCrunch indeed has the goods, it could lead to antitrust accusations against the two companies by the federal government, which has been investigating reports of recruiting collusion for at least two months. The Washington Post first reported on June 2 that the Justice Department was studying the recruiting practices of several large tech firms. Besides Apple and Google, Yahoo and biotech company Genentech were named in the story.

Albert Foer, president of the American Antitrust Institute, was quoted saying, “This could be collusive restraint on trade, which could have a serious impact on competition.”

Now, TechCrunch says it has confirmation of the practice from former Google employees. The writer of the post, M.G. Siegler, says TechCrunch was also forwarded an email allegedly sent by a Google recruiter to a candidate that says:

“From your reference to the [APPLE DIVISION], I take it that you are currently working there. If this is the case, we will not be able to proceed with your application. Google has an agreement with Apple that we will not cold call their staff.”

As all seasoned recruiters know, poaching — recruiting talent from others and especially from competitors — is a time-honored practice. Stealing the best talent from a competitor strengthens the hiring company while it weakens the company from whom the candidate was poached.

Because agreements between two companies on who and who can’t be hired could limit competition, antitrust issues are raised.

As the TechCrunch post notes, Apple and Google have had a close relationship for several years. Until he resigned last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt sat on Apple’s board of directors. In recent months that relationship became increasingly uncomfortable as Google pushed deeper into Apple’s business.

Though the world knows Google as a search and advertising company — and it is, with almost all its revenue coming from that business — in recent years it has released a number of products as it tries to diversify. Some of them, Google’s  mobile device platform Android for example, are competitive with Apple’s line.

Schmidt’s resignation came only days after the Federal Communications Commission began asking why Apple refused to allow a Google voice application to be offered on its iPhone store.

Sometimes the recruiters who been laid off have just been unlucky enough to have worked for an organization that is failing or in an industry that has been strongly affected by the recession. Yet, others have been laid off partly because of performance or attitude. Many recruiters remain tactical, and fail to grasp how strategic their function is to a firm. Many have remained working for leaders and organizations that do not appreciate how much they could contribute to the success of the business. And even fewer have become leaders who take command of the recruiting process and forge a function that competes effectively against other organizations and consistently supplies their organization with quality talent without relying on the use of extraordinary measures.

In my many years in the profession I have only known a handful of these people. Most corporate recruiters become recruiters by accident and leave the profession for some other HR or related field after a short stay. Their stay is a roller coaster of half-completed technology implementations, high staff turnover, muddled objectives, and often leaves a legacy of unhappy hiring managers. To achieve even the simplest objectives, they have to use outside resources, employ a large number of recruiters, or seek to outsource the function.

Unfortunately HR has not positioned the recruitment function as strategic, nor has HR realized that the role of talent manager, aka recruiting and development leader, is emerging as one of the most potentially needed (and influential) professions within the organization.

Generally, those recruiters who lead the effort to supply scarce talent are filled with bad habits and uncertainty that create a revolving door of leadership and produce lackluster results.

To change this and move toward a position of respect and strategic leverage, recruiting leaders should examine their own behaviors and thoughts and see if they reflect any of the habits I list below. If so, now is the time to change.

Bad habit 1: Arrogance about yesterday’s tools and techniques
Yesterday’s successes probably will not be repeated by using the same techniques or technologies. Over-reliance on techniques like cold calling, telephone screening, and resume reviewing are examples of methods that have seen their heyday but are still widely championed and loved. I frequently talk with recruiters who swear that the old ways are the only ways — the best ways — and insist that everything from interactive websites to LinkedIn are just fads.

Tomorrow belongs to recruiters who embrace such emerging practices as social networking, video interviewing, online assessment, and candidate relationship management. Recruiters experimenting with virtual communities and with building online relationships already have a advantage over the recruiter who is tied to geography and to face-to-face meetings. Labor markets are not confined to single countries, work can increasingly be done anywhere, and recruiting is a virtual, global game.

Bad habit 2: Filling requisitions instead of meeting business objectives
Most recruiters are obsessed with filling slots. That is what they have been taught to do without regard to need or effectiveness. They have a hard time discussing the value of positions with hiring managers who often regard the recruiter as little more than a clerk trusted to filter piles of resumes that are supposed to magically be arriving each day because of the organization’s prominence or brand. They are given requisition to fill and they dutifully go forth and do so — even if it is a poorly defined job or one that might be done by someone with a different skill set.

Recruiters who have the respect of the organization’s leadership have to be brave enough and well-enough informed about current issues and business needs to engage in meaningful conversation with a hiring manager. They have to be equipped with knowledge about the organization’s strategic business objectives, the needs of the hiring manager, and the state of the talent marketplace. They need to present numbers and data and make a case for hiring the competencies and skills that will be most effective in meeting the business needs of the organization.

In short, they need to act as a resource and consultant to hiring authorities and show a deep knowledge and understanding of the needs of the business. And, on top of this, they then need to be able to fill the position from a talent community they have built in anticipation of the need.

Bad habit 3: Failing to build new competencies
The emerging competencies for recruiters include the ability to engage people in conversation using virtual tools, the ability to collaborate virtually on projects, to influence hiring managers, and build targeted marketing strategies. These are totally different skills from those that dominated the profession a decade ago. In fact, over 80% of the skills that made a recruiter successful in 1997 are of little value today. For example, interviewing skills, cold calling, and reviewing and screening resumes are not critical skills. Even less understandable are the recruiters who are competent at interviewing and who then focus on getting even better at it instead of on developing skills that might be more useful. It is very easy to rely on the competencies that made us successful and not notice that times change as do the skills we need.

Far more important are the ability to write a blog, influence a candidate, and identify the value proposition of an offer.

Bad habit 4: Functional Shortsightedness
More and more of the most strategic recruiters I run into have a background in disciplines such as marketing, sales, and operations. Fewer are coming out of traditional HR disciplines. And an elite handful is morphing into talent managers — people who can understand and integrate recruiting with employee development, competency analysis, performance management, and succession planning. These recruiters are not afraid to try out new approaches, nor are they afraid to experiment and leverage technology. The most innovative websites and process improvements are emerging from recruiting leaders who have no training as recruiters and who have recently entered the field. They are writing exciting blogs, using search engine optimization techniques, and experimenting with interactive websites and tools.

The recession may be tough on recruiters, but it is also forging a new breed of talent expert. Recruiting inside organizations is evolving into talent management and the focus will be on ensuring that the organization has the critical talent it needs to achieve business goals. The talent manager will need to be able to run scenarios, produce numbers, and show where the best talent comes from whether it is developed internally, hired from inside or brought in from outside.

Out of every recession have come new ideas, new functions, and exciting change. Recruiting is at the forefront of many of the changes and for a small number of you it will be an invigorating time of learning new skills and adopting new techniques, habits, and technologies.

“It’s a really unique situation where you have someone who is at a crossroads personally and professionally.” — Elliot Wilson

If living and working in this economy of disappearing jobs, tiny budgets, and little recruiting is getting a bit old, then perhaps you have arrived at your own personal crossroads. This metaphorical location is the intersecting point where what used to work for you in the past ends and what you will need to change in order to be successful in the future begins. As I see it, you have only two options:

1. You can continue to do what you are doing and wait for the economy to “get back to normal.”
2. You can make some fundamental changes to your core assumptions of how businesses that survive will operate so you might survive as well.

Personally, I have grave concerns about Option 1 because no one knows exactly what the new “normal” might be, and for all we know, this aberration might be the new “normal” and will remain such for years to come. If you share my concerns, please consider the following thoughts:

Expect Less. It matters little if you work as a contractor, agency, or corporate person. The face and very composition of work is changing radically. As such, the rewards normally tied to work will probably change as well. Consider the work-a-day existence of your past and acknowledge that it is probably going to remain in your past. Perhaps benefits will disappear. Perhaps the concept of “full time” will be based upon organizational need as opposed to “employee” legal standing. Perhaps you will trade value for money to be paid every Friday with both parties reevaluating the relationship every few months. Either way, expect less and smile.

Expect More. This is an opportunity for the cream of the crop to do great things. (It is also an opportunity for those who are not yet the cream to get there.) Regardless of what our flat, highly politicized world becomes, capitalists and entrepreneurs will always need to build great organizations in order to do great things. Those who effectively traffic in the procurement of human capital will always be paid for the talent they bring to the table because that is real value. Can’t get a job with one company? How about 60 hours a week with three or four companies? The time to get creative is now.

Don’t Freak on the Politics. I read a post on ERE saying that if the site went political, “I am out of here.” This thinking will not help your cause, your career, or your wallet. Show me something that affects your profession/business today and I will show you something that was political yesterday. The time to become aware and involved is now, because you can’t benefit from the political aspects of business with an “I-am-just-a-recruiter” mentality. Don’t get me wrong: I hate long, lunatic pointless ranting posts that blame all of this misery on one party/person/group or the other. The time for blame is over, and the time for awareness and action has arrived. Exactly how you do that is your decision, but pointing out the importance of being politically aware is mine. (In all of my years, I have never seen a recruiter with a copy of the Wall Street Journal. Why is that?)

They Told You They Have No Money? Are you an agency or a sourcer or some other vendor selling peripheral recruiting services? If so, let me tell you a little secret; all organizations have money. When they say that they have no money, they mean they have no money for you. That means, that they do not see real value in what you are selling, because if they did, they would find the money; they would stay up nights looking for it. I strongly suggest that all of us dramatically increase our value proposition. How? For openers, lower your price, because as cost goes down, value goes up. As an example, If I were in the agency business, I would reduce my fees. Most agency people hate this thinking for endless reasons but doing placements at 15% a pop is more sensible then non-stop conversations with clients about why your candidates are worth 30%. Those individuals who allow money to stand in the way of doing business are making a grave mistake.

Paradigm Shifts Are Good. Use Them. Many years ago, the Swiss owned the watch industry. Then the Japanese began to make watches using cheapo quartz innards that were far more accurate as opposed to expensive Swiss movements. That was a paradigm shift and all paradigm shifts bring the marketplace back to zero as the race begins again! The Japanese made bazillions of these watches and decimated Swiss domination. The Japanese found a better way, and the world bought. The lesson here? The future of recruiting is up for grabs. Radical new ideas in conjunction with creative, global, and scalable solutions will change everything! If you have an idea, shoot for the moon now or spend your life wishing that you did.

Leave Recruiting. Shocked? You shouldn’t be. Please remember that recruiting has no bar to entry. If and when recruiting “comes back,” regardless of how good you might be, your competition will be every 24-year-old kid with capped teeth and greased hair looking to make a buck. What’s that you say? They will recognize your years of experience and talent? Hmmm … Some will, but more will not, as their lower pricing will be a strong lure. Tired of being part of an industry that gets squished ever five or so years? Are you an agency person who is beginning to hate the grind and 75 cold calls a day? A corporate person who despises the politics and the games? If so, perhaps now is the time to realize that recruiting does not have to be a life sentence. Good recruiters have terrific skills and they can do so many other things. As an example, about three or four years ago, I was with Dave Lefkow doing a presentation in NYC for a fortune 100 client. Look at Dave now. Who knew? Hopefully, you can see there is more then one way to bring home the bacon.

These ideas are but the tip of the iceberg in looking at new ways to think, act, and do business. I do not see any real option to making these changes, because either business will adjust to you, or you will adjust to business. Which one do you think will happen?

(Hanging around Minnesota this Friday? See Howard Adamsky speak at Best Buy headquarters in Richfield. The presentation is entitled “Brave New World/The Emerging Role of Tomorrow’s Recruiters.” Cost is $12,500 per person but it’s free if you mention Howard’s name. Donuts included of course. Register at http://www.mntrn.org/ )

But maybe you weren’t quite as fortunate, and your crew was heavily loaded with regular staff recruiters, who were going full steam to keep up with the incredible hiring requisition load. Or maybe you have shed the contractors, but even your remaining staff is struggling to stay busy. Unfortunately, now that the economy has gone south, they’re running half the req loads they once did. Not only are they questioning their own job security, but you’re constantly fending off queries from your boss, the rest of HR, and maybe even the CFO as to just what the recruiters are doing, and why should you be maintaining the same staff you had when the current workload has shrunken so dramatically. Sounding familiar?

Hopefully, back in January of this year, you took Lou Adler’s sound advice that “hiring will start to recover in Q2, 2009, and now is the time to rebuild your recruiting team and massively upgrade your sourcing and hiring processes.” Perhaps you’ve done just that, and are now well positioned to address any coming business increase. Or possibly you didn’t get that opportunity, or your business still hasn’t begun to bounce back.

In any event, you do have alternatives — methods you can use to gainfully deploy your staff resources in ways that clearly, and measurably, demonstrate their ongoing value to the business. The challenges will be different, depending on the size of the company you’re in. In a small firm, you are likely to have more latitude in initiating change — but possibly fewer resources available. In a larger firm with more resources, you are likely to need to build a support coalition of colleagues, business partners, or executives to create the right atmosphere for change. But in either situation, it’s critical that you build the “business case” — show the ROI through well-tracked and supportable metrics.

In my more than 20 years of recruiting leadership, predominantly in hi-tech, I’ve had ample opportunity to face this challenge, given the cyclical nature of that business. And as you can imagine, I willingly responded to a blog posting earlier this year asking other recruiting veterans for their experiences in facing the same issue. 13 of us shared our stories, from a variety of industries and backgrounds. The following are a few snapshots of some of the proven practices and strategies that have been successfully implemented by others to preserve their key recruiting assets during previous business slowdowns.

Some of these are creative twists on previous themes, while others represent really out-of-the-box thinking. [NOTE: All of them are predicated on the assumption that you know your staff --- their skills, strengths/weaknesses, and backgrounds. If you're new in the role, you might want to begin with a resume review and light career discussion with each of them.]

I do hope you find some of the suggestions below fascinating, creative, and useful. I will be presenting a seminar/workshop on this very subject, and with a lot of additional detail on implementation, at the upcoming ERE Expo in Florida in September, and we’d love to see you there.

1. (Internal) Outplacement Services: For the regular recruiters, create a corporate career university — in essence a full outplacement program modeled after those offered by external vendors (at ridiculous prices). The recruiting staff would run workshops, on and off-site, such as resume writing, interviewing skills, campaign management, negotiating offers, use of the Internet, etc. This one is very easy to show a solid ROI for.
2. (External) Outplacement Services: Take the same offering “on the road” to college placement offices, state unemployment offices, and even social groups/non-profits, as a community service. It may also be a tax write-off.
3. Business Development: Deploy researchers/sourcers on business development activities. You can gain access to your sales department’s CRM (client/customer relationship management system), and then scan those prospects that had weak or limited knowledge recorded in the database. Then you can create a full Company Profile — sort of like a Dun & Bradstreet Plus workup, and at no cost to the organization.
4. Directed Research: Those same researchers/sourcers, working with the senior admin staff, can get a “heads up” on all planned executive travel that would be visiting customers or prospects. Once you know who they are meeting with, create a “personal dossier” on each of the individuals they will be meeting with, (including home addresses, photos, personal data, etc,), put it in a packet, and give it to the traveling executive the day before departure, as “airplane reading.”
5. Top Grade your Recruiting Staff: Assuming you’ve already reduced your roster of contract recruiters, go through a performance-based ranking of those remaining, with career development as an outcome, (and preparation for further staff reduction if needed).
6. Build a Talent Pool Pipeline: Assess your past “hardest to fill” position, and launch a branding outreach campaign to candidates for future consideration. Be very clear about any available openings, and work from a perspective of building a “friends of (our company)” that you want to stay in touch with. Newsletters can be perfect for this.
7. Train the Hiring Managers: This is something we often never had the time to do, but certainly do now. There are some great programs available in the market — or better yet, create your own.
8. Re-skilling: While you’re in training mode, what could you deliver internally to your own recruiting staff to better equip them for when the market picks up and the “war for talent” resumes? Do they need refreshers on the latest Internet recruiting techniques, or using social networking tools in recruiting? There are some great resources offered right here on the ERE website, or you may even have a resident guru on your own staff.
9. Internal Process Analysis: When was the last time you sat back and closely examined the actual workflow in your recruiting operation? Most any analysis will turn up innumerable inefficient practices, roadblocks, and artifacts of “the way we always did it.” This is a great time, during low volume recruiting, to experiment with new ideas and even some best practices you “borrow” from other firms.
10. Technology Upgrade: It may be a little tough to get resources approved for an upgraded applicant tracking system, but when was the last time you shopped the market? As the competition and functionality has grown, prices in many cases have come down, and if you “upgrade” to a less expensive system, you’re the hero! This also applies to your firm’s recruiting website, which most of us will admit is often out of date.
11. Special Project Work: Thinking outside the walls of recruiting, what special projects may be in need of some of the skills your recruiters can bring to the table? HR has many cyclical programs that roll out throughout the year, such as newsletter releases, career/succession planning, etc. that may lend themselves well to the recruiter’s skill set.
12. Assist HR in Core Services: Recruiters often have two key ingredients that could add value in assisting with employee relations issues (which often escalate during a downturn). Many of them will have previous experience in many aspects of the “HR Generalist” role, and all of them have pre-existing relationships with many of your employees — because they hired them!

“How do they do it and what can be done to prevent them from doing it to us?” is a question many corporate recruiting leaders are asking. The underlying premise here is that if corporate recruiting departments could be organized and run like contingency recruiters and executive search firms, lots of money would be saved.

Despite the promise of the objective, very few companies have been able to successfully pull it off.

There are a variety of reasons for the this. Following are the most obvious:

1. The hunter vs. farmer issue. External recruiters are more hunter-types, drawn to the challenge of commission sales. Corporate recruiters are farmer-like, cultivating relationships, seeking more security, and focusing on activity.
2. Compensation vs. security. The best third-party recruiters make tons of money and the pretty good ones do OK. These recruiters are driven by the compensation, just like any top salesperson, so if the pay isn’t comparable, you’ll attract a different person with different motives and achieve different results.
3. The ability to cherry-pick assignments. The best contingency recruiters select the jobs they want to work on, and the best always have enough assignments. They also can walk away from those that turn out to be too time-consuming. Executive search recruiters are known to be industry specialists and seek out assignments that match their interests and abilities. Corporate recruiters just can’t say no.
4. The ability to select hiring managers. The best external recruiters develop long-term relationships with their hiring manager clients. This increases their influence, they hear about potential openings before the reqs are formalized, and they are more influential at every step in the process. This matching isn’t so easy for corporate recruiters who are assigned to work with hiring managers.
5. Workload differences. It’s much easier to develop and maintain client and candidate relationships when a recruiter is working on fewer assignments. Most retained recruiters handle 3-4 assignments at any one time with the help of researchers. Most contingency recruiters handle 8-10 assignments, but only focus on the easiest three or four. This is far less than most corporate recruiters.
6. Multi- vs. single-company focus. External recruiters — again I’m only referring to the best here — tend to be subject-matter experts and represent similar jobs with different companies. This is a real advantage to a candidate, since he or she can leverage her efforts by dealing with fewer recruiters and be exposed to more opportunities. This advantage doesn’t exist for a corporate recruiter who only represents one company and probably a smaller range of job opportunities.
7. Continuous vs. long-term candidate relationships. Good external recruiters have access to more jobs in the short run, and are more likely to be someone whom the candidate will work with again in the future. Corporate recruiters tend to be more transactional, filling jobs and moving on. This is huge disadvantage for corporate recruiters, since they also lose the ability to network and get as many top referrals.
8. Speed vs. bureaucracy. Good active candidates are easy to place. Just call up three to four companies and present your candidate, and bingo — a placement. It’s very likely that one of the companies called will have an instant need for a strong person. Corporate recruiters are tied to the pace of their company, which is usually slow and methodical.

Most of the differences noted above are organizational and compensation-based, and not easy for a large corporation to emulate, but all is not lost. Much of the competitive advantage external contingency recruiters have is speed of execution — finding the best first and getting them out on interviews quickly.

With this in mind, here are some ideas on how corporate recruiters can close this time gap and get to the best people quicker:

1. Be found first. Getting top people as soon as they enter the job-hunting marketing is a huge competitive advantage. A well-connected third-party contingency recruiter can present a top person to multiple clients within days. By the time a corporate recruiter finds this same candidate, it’s often too late. The person has either already accepted another position or is too involved to be interested. External recruiters work very hard at getting candidates to call them first, either through aggressive advertising or word-of-mouth networking. To offset this, corporations need to develop early-bird sourcing programs to compete on this level. This includes compelling advertising, search engine marketing programs, and the use of talent hubs.
2. Leverage your employee referral program. While each individual corporate recruiter is unlikely to be able to develop a deep network of potential prospects, a company’s employees are. To get this going, have your employees reach out to every great person they’ve worked with in the past using LinkedIn or something equivalent to establish the connection. Make the program formal, with regular emails, having your employees tell their contacts to contact them first, whenever they want to consider leaving their current company. This way, you’ll increase your odds that you’ll have a crack at attracting the best before everyone else.
3. Build a pipeline of prospects. Over many years, you should be able to build a huge prospect database filled with leads, business card info, and resumes. Some of the newest and more robust CRM systems can help you nurture this database and reach out with compelling emails when an opportunity arises. RSS feeds, agents, and Twitter job feeds are also good ways to stay in touch. The key is to be compelling and be regular. This is a great way to build your brand and attract good candidates before they’ve thought of looking on the open market.

As part of all this, you must provide prospects you find early in their job hunt an opportunity to learn more about the job on a non-committal, exploratory basis. Too many corporate recruiters, reinforced by their hiring systems, force candidates to commit before they’re ready. This means you need to allow these prospects to talk with or IM recruiters or managers, rather than send a resume or fill in an application. Finding candidates first is important, but if you push too hard you’ll turn the best off, so a balance is required during these initial discussions.

Even if you get the person first, the real work now begins. You’ll need to offer a compelling job that rivals everything else out there. As part of this, your corporate recruiters must be great negotiators and be able to fight off their external rivals who are aggressively trying to place your great catch before you make an offer. It’s important to think through the hiring process end-to-end including how job descriptions are written, the professionalism of the interviewing process, and how offers are presented and closed. It won’t much matter how soon you find these stars if the back-end falls apart.

It’s not possible to create an external search firm environment within a corporate structure. Regardless, there are things recruiting leaders can do to at least be in the hunt and minimize their reliance on external firms. But whatever you do, expect these external firms to do something better, different, and sooner, in response.

Can a situation ever arise where a company is too successful for its own good? Scott Pitasky from Microsoft addressed this very question at the ERE Expo 2009 Spring in San Diego.

While Microsoft is one of the greatest success stories in modern business, Pitasky said that success can cause a company to become complacent. When this occurs, companies may become set in their ways and fail to adapt with the times. As he simply put it, “you can’t just know what you know.”

Not content to let this happen, Microsoft has made numerous efforts to stay ahead of the game, including its Web 2.0 initiatives for which the company recently received an ERE Recruiting Excellence Award. Microsoft’s Marvin Smith will be covering this in greater detail at the ERE Expo 2009 Fall.

As the presentation went on, Pitasky covered some of the ways to transform your staffing organization “from checkers to chess.” In other words to know where you want to go and think ahead, in place of a more reactionary approach. Pitasky continued on this topic and discussed ways to dramatically change the focus of your company’s workforce within five years.

In addition, an important point was made about the necessity of knowing not just about your company’s demand, but the available supply. By using a funnel methodology, Microsoft developed a system of quickly finding which candidates are qualified for interviews, narrowing down the market, and saving valuable time. Elaborating on this, Pitasky covered Microsoft’s index for quality of hire, helping to identify the most effective sources of hire.

Lastly, the importance of telling your company’s story was made clear. The crucial question brought up was “do you want to create your employment brand or do you want to let someone else do it?” Pitasky discussed some key strategies for using your employment brand to communicate with people in a way that is relevant with them. Watch these highlights from the presentation to learn more!

Only first names were to be used, and nothing was to be put in writing. Even though I was the head of recruiting and staffing for a large, multi-national company, I was putting my team in serious jeopardy just by having this conversation. Fortunately, the liaison was successful — we were not caught that day, and so far no one has discovered that we met together.

What am I describing? An international spy ring? The sale of competitive intelligence?

No, it was something much more serious. I was talking with a vendor … without a representative from the Procurement department present.

This will doubtless be remembered as a bumpy year for those of us in this profession. While finding talent in a market that has been turned upside-down represents a major challenge, it’s the secondary effects of this economic downturn that will truly test those of us in Talent Acquisition. I recently wrote about the likely increase in “executive referrals” resulting from current economic conditions. Other secondary effects could include anything from a reduced talent pool in the coming years (as families struggle to justify the return-on-investment of a college education), to an almost certain delay in the migration of the Baby Boomers to the Happy Hunting Ground of retirement.

While these effects are years away, there is another implication that you’ve probably already encountered — the increased influence of Procurement and Purchasing departments in the Recruiting function. And with so much renewed emphasis on spending, I predict you’ll see Procurement play an even greater role in the coming months.

No matter which side of the recruiting aisle you sit on (corporate or vendor), you’ve doubtless encountered Procurement departments by now. They’re the group that coordinates RFPs, negotiates prices, and even gets involved in managing vendor “performance.” It’s becoming more and more difficult to spend a single dollar on a product or service without their involvement nowadays. How are people reacting? Some enjoy leaving the “negotiating” to the experts; others feel like involving strangers interferes with trust-based vendor relations that have in many cases been built over a period of years. Regardless of your opinion, however, this model is here to stay.

How did this happen? When companies decided to get “leaner” back in the 1980s, they started buying raw materials more strategically. As a result, they began seeing huge improvements in cost-of-goods-sold as trained professionals scanned the markets for price, managed supply-chains of goods, leveraged the trade-offs between volume and price, and generally took a long-term approach to raw materials purchase. With subsequent enhancements in technology, it became even easier for companies to begin purchasing from a global market.

Another interesting change then began to take place: in addition to purchasing bulk commodities like iron ore and precious metals, Procurement departments began getting involved with large national contracts to purchase office supplies, technology, rental car contracts, and even started establishing preferred airlines for their organizations.

This was nearly always great for the company. It increased efficiency, and drove costs down. The challenge that we’ve all started encountering is that such a cold and impersonal approach can have its limits, particularly when it comes to people. Let me first state that I am completely in favor of running businesses as efficiently as possible. I support the work Procurement does, and sleep better knowing companies are paying the true market price for steel and corn oil. However, a process that was developed to purchase bulk quantities of material, ship it in container vessels, and store it for months until needed has some rather interesting implications for the acquisition of top talent.

Take my secret meeting, for example. I was talking with a trusted vendor with whom I’d worked for years. Things were pretty simple in the past — a company would have an open position, I’d ask my vendor-partner to work on the job, and they’d fill it.

Now, my fairly-straightforward relationship suddenly becomes very complicated. For example, I must first get my trusted vendor on the Approved Vendor list. In the most common scenario, the Master Service Provider determines the bill rate or the mark-up that can be charged (which usually must also cover a 2%-3% fee for them). My trusted vendor might not be able or willing to work at those rates. As such, the “approved vendor list” I ultimately end up with might consist of untried and/or undifferentiated firms who were chosen based on price alone.

The second hurdle is how to efficiently communicate with the third-party vendors who are actually recruiting for my position. Third-party vendors are often prohibited from speaking directly to me by contract; instead I must enter my requirements in the Master Vendor’s system. Questions regarding my position are asked and answered in writing. Third-party vendor phone calls are made to vendor managers, who are then supposed to capture feedback and communicate it back.

My research leads me to conclude these processes often seem cumbersome and arbitrary to vendors. Measures that are important from a traditional procurement perspective (quick turnaround times, low fees, and long contract periods) are not necessarily the same measures that create an environment for finding top niche talent, but vendors are measured only on these key metrics.

Clever vendors know where to pay their tribute. I’ve had my Procurement department inform me that they’d had extensive meetings with a job board, and were about to sign a major contract. Not only did I know nothing of the conversations, but I had rejected this particular tool months before. So why was procurement so anxious to sign? Because they’d negotiated a great rate, of course.

Procurement as a corporate function is here to stay. However, there are a few things you can do to make your relationship thrive.

Figure out who they are: Find out who comprises your Procurement department. Schedule time to meet with key leaders, and engage them before the next RFP. You have more in common with this department than anyone else; after all, you’re responsible for procuring a raw material every bit as important as printer paper. You’re responsible for procuring Talent!

Establish yourself as the decision-maker: Like any service function, Procurement wants to help you. They really do. As we’ve already seen, though, the prime measure of success is cost. And in 10 years of recruiting, I’ve never met a single hiring manager who told me that cost was the most important thing to them, and you probably haven’t either. Ultimately, you own the relationships you have with your vendors. Make sure Procurement understands that you are the decision-maker.

Find a way to work together: With the current emphasis on cost, you’re likely to see Procurement involved in nearly anything that involves paying an invoice. This year they may oversee your temporary labor contract, but next year look for them to become involved with retained searches and career fair giveaways. The point is that they have a job to do, and you do too. Invest in whatever is necessary to ensure you’re sharing information and working together.

Advocate for your customers: While learning to work together will necessarily involve compromise, never forget who you are ultimately there to represent: the job-seeker. Contracts that may seem advantageous to your company because they’ve resulted in huge rate reductions may end up costing you in the long run as vendors choose to simply not work with you, or not to send along their best candidates. I spoke with several vendors as I researched this article who said that they have been in situations where they were “asked” to accept maximum bill rates that were a third less than the amount of some candidates’ actual pay rate! While this looks great on a “vendor scorecard,” it means those companies never even get to see top candidates.

Share successes publicly: Chances are, you can learn a lot from your Procurement colleagues. And they can learn from you. Once you have that first shared victory together, be sure to publicize it. Executives love hearing how the company attracted top talent, but they love hearing how money was saved even more! Setting a public example of how to engage Procurement effectively is a great way to build your own organization’s brand as well.

Some people say good times are just around the corner; others say more bad times are ahead. In either case, companies are sure to continue using Procurement professionals to keep costs down. Learn what these colleagues do, and learn to work with them. If you do, it will mean getting the right talent into your organization at the right price. And that beats secret meetings any day of the week!

That’s what a small group in Washington State is proposing and for no less a location than New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, where the National Football League draft is conducted.

Here’s the game plan, according to Corporate Draft and its organizers, Nolan Wheeler and Mike Gazdag:

Fifty companies are to pay $30k each to have a crack at 2,000 fully vetted veteran senior corporate managers and executives and 500 MBAs. There’s to be two days of “meet and greet” followed by two days of draft picks, during which the participating companies get to “draft” one of the hopefuls sitting in the Music Hall audience.

The companies, who also are present in the Music Hall, get five minutes to make a pick. When they do, they telephone their selection to the draft staff which delivers a custom stitched jersey to the master of ceremonies while the lucky job seeker is escorted to the stage as their 30 second video backgrounder is shown to the assemblage.

“We’re getting the talent based on hype,” Wheeler explains when we ask why any successful, seasoned corporate leader would pay their own way to New York City to go through such a spectacle. “They are going to be looking at this as an ego stroke.”

He likens the experience to “The Apprentice, but professional.” The show, he says, will “bring a bit of Hollywood to recruiting.”

It’s already brought a certain amount of illusion. Mention of Corporate Draft popped up a few weeks ago as a comment posted by Nolan Wheeler to an ERE article. In the comment, Wheeler doesn’t disclose he’s the organizer of Corporate Draft, instead writing, “A friend of mine who works at Amazon.com told me about these guys.”

Why didn’t he identify himself? “To be honest, I didn’t want people phoning me or emailing me,” says Wheeler.

Corporate Draft has no contract with Radio City Music Hall, though the booking agent there is familiar with the name and has had conversations about reserving the facility.  Wheeler Industries, the company organizing the corporate draft, lists its address as Seattle’s prestigious Bank of America Fifth Avenue Plaza. But, it’s a Mailboxes Etc. maildrop.

According to Wheeler and Mike Gazdag, who said he’s the Corporate Draft’s director of communications, Wheeler Industries is a strategic HR consulting firm. Wheeler described the HR work as “a mile wide and an inch deep,” explaining that he specialized in bringing operational solutions to HR problems. Gazdag said that since the early part of the decade Wheeler and Wheeler Industries have been focusing more on recruitment, which is how the idea for the draft came about.

“He (Wheeler) uses the sports analogy in hiring, ” Gazdag says. “The idea sort of came out of that.” Wheeler, adding more detail, says drafting employees was suggested jokingly when he would liken hiring a CEO or corporate leader to drafting a captain of a football or hockey team. One day, he says, “I wondered: Why don’t people do that?”

The reason, as any good football fan will tell you, is to level the playing field to some extent. That’s why expansion teams and the teams with the worst record get to pick first. Corporations, which don’t depend on evening up the talent pool in order to keep up fan interest, want to hire the best. All the better if they can spirit away top performers from the competition.

Wheeler says two staff recruiters are working now sourcing candidates for the draft, while he has been reaching out to search firms seeking partners and inviting them to submit candidates. Corporate Draft promises that each of the executive candidates will be “screened, interviewed, tested, and referenced.”

“I can’t name names, of course, ” Wheeler says when we asked what search firms have signed on. Nor would he say what companies have come up with the $30,000 to participate in the draft. “I don’t want to share that,” he says.

We asked if he could at least provide the name of some of the clients for whom Wheeler Industries has done work. Wheeler declined. “You have me on the spot here,” he said. “I feel I am being attacked. This is not a scam.”

When the decision was made a couple of years ago to update its talent acquisition system by tying together all the company’s far flung offices with an SAP system, Microsoft decided it was a good time to rework its global careers face. As happens with companies that grow from a bright idea to a 100,000 worker worldwide enterprise in barely 30 years, Microsoft’s recruitment efforts had sprouted dozens of online iterations for different countries, different regions, and even for different business units.

Bewildered candidates looking for opportunities around the world had to visit multiple sites since there was no central jobs listing. Behind those career sites were different tracking systems, making it challenging for Microsoft to manage promising candidates.

Even in the U.S., where centralized recruiting has been the rule, Microsoft’s online recruiting presence has become so bloated that candidates can become lost in the navigational maze. The sheer breadth and depth of the content can become an obstacle itself, causing information overload that could keep job seekers from getting to what they wanted to know.

In the words of the woman whose job it is to bring order, and consistency, and, yes, excitement to Microsoft’s global recruiting presence, “We wanted a consistent global message for Microsoft; consistent storytelling and improved transactional capabilities.”

Margie Medd, Microsoft’s director of employment branding, says the work to update the software company’s online recruiting began about two years ago, when the company decided to invest in a new talent acquisition system. It made no sense, she explains, to roll out a global ATS, “but then have all these separate sites.”

Thus was born the recruitment marketing initiative that Medd leads. Her team includes recruiters, recruitment marketers, web developers, a validation group, and representatives from some of the countries where Microsoft has a recruiting presence. Not all of them work on the project fulltime (about 10 do that), but all of them have a part in developing the new Microsoft global careers site.

The team followed a methodical path, setting business, and marketing goals. First on the list was to present a consistent global message, perhaps a natural for Medd, whose first career was in marketing. No less important was to improve the user experience, making job searching and applying simpler, and more logical.

Not only an office software provider, but a burgeoning entertainment business, Microsoft also wanted a candidate wow factor; career site elements to “impress and inspire them,” says Medd. “We were looking for a much more modern voice.”

The end game of all this, Medd notes, “is increasing the throughput of qualified candidates,” and, she adds, “telling our employment story for ourselves. This is our brand to manage.”

We didn’t explore with Medd the recruiting challenges Microsoft has been facing in recent years from the likes of Google and the “name” startups, but the Redmond, Wash. giant has lost talent battles to these companies, as well as to hundreds of less-known startups. Even though it’s got a successful game unit (Xbox 360) and the much-maligned “blue screen of death” is mostly a fading memory, Microsoft’s recruitment marketing, at least the part you find when you search for “Microsoft jobs,” is uninspired. The U.S. homepage is busy. The message fuzzy.

There’s no doubt the company realizes that, as Medd observes, “We have been underinvesting in telling the company story. We’ve let others tell our employment story for us.” On its pioneering View<my world> site there’s a page that begins:

“Microsoft is one of the world’s best kept secrets.
That sounds funny when you’re talking about a company nearly everyone’s heard of. But the truth is, most people don’t know the whole story about what it’s like to work here. And you should, because it’s a good story.”

That will all change when the first of the new career pages is unveiled this summer. Focus groups and employee surveys, including “a healthy dose of recent hires,” gave Medd and her team a sort of mantra for their work: “We have talented people doing amazing things.”

In the new site, these people will be telling their stories in videos. “It will be dev to dev,” she says, meaning one software developer talking to another. Or one project manager talking to another. “There is a desire for authenticity,” says Medd, adding that the videos won’t be scripted or “scrubbed. They will be true to the experience.”

Job seekers will be able to search for any Microsoft job anywhere in the world from one place. They’ll be able to learn of jobs that meet their qualifications and their interests, via the improved keyword matching capability of the SAP system. They’ll also be able to quickly find out more about a job or a division, thanks to easier and clearer navigation, and less wordiness.

“Everything,” says Medd, “will be new.”

Things will get better for you when you get better.

Sage advice indeed, and now might be the best time to take heed.

When I assess candidates, this is one of the factors I examine — finding out how the person got better. Not surprisingly, the best people have this core trait in common, and in spades. They’re always getting better. All of them improved themselves and the activities they were directly responsible for. A good portion of these people went out of their way to improve things they weren’t directly responsible for, so you need to give these people an extra star.

A much smaller group went out of their way to improve not only themselves, but also the people they worked with, whether they were responsible for them or not. These were the true leaders of the bunch.

As you assess candidates in the future, look for the degree the person got better, which will help you more easily separate the best from the merely good.

Surprisingly, very few had the exact level of skills, academics, and experience requirements listed on the job description. While they all possessed enough of the requirements to do the work required, the mix was different than the “must haves” listed, and the level of experience in absolute terms was generally much less.

Offsetting this was something far more important — a track record of consistent high performance doing comparable work, often in different industries.

Just like top people in any field, recruiters needs to consistently change and improve, just to stay even. To get better, you need to change even faster.

With that said, here are some ideas on how to get massively better. With recruiting departments being cut 30%-70% on average, getting massively better represents a survival of the fittest mentality.

In my opinion, if you don’t want to get massively better, drop out of the industry and do something you want to get massively better at.

How to Get Massively Better

1. Become someone worth knowing. Recruiters need to be able to connect with lots of top-notch people on an ongoing basis. This is the best way to get referrals of great passive candidates. If you’re worth knowing, hiring managers and candidates will seek you out. They’ll refer the best people they know to you without asking. If you’re not worth knowing, you’ll only attract the attention of those desperate for the job you’re currently representing. This is a transactional relationship. Those who are worth knowing develop long-term relationships that span years, not just a few days. Here’s an article on how to become someone worth knowing.
2. Know the job. If you don’t know the job, the best you can do is screen on skills and experience. If you know the job, you can quickly become someone worth knowing. You’ll be able to counsel and advise your candidates and hiring managers alike. You’ll be more accurate in your assessments and you’ll be able to defend qualified candidates from those hiring managers who conduct superficial or narrow interviews.
3. Build a network of all-stars. If you’re placing similar type positions (e.g., developers, tax managers, ASIC engineers, pharma sales reps), most of your placements should come from referrals. To get these referrals, you’ll need to be considered an expert in your field. Part of this is cultivating relationship (not transactions) with every top person your best employees are connected with on LinkedIn. If you’re a third-party recruiter, build these relationships with the best people on your LinkedIn list. While they won’t give you great referrals right away, after a few months of professional nurturing and knowledge sharing, you’ll have a strong network to work once the req is approved.
4. Become partners with your best managers. Recruiters are at least 50% more productive when they have a peer relationship with their hiring manager clients instead of a subservient one. This recruiter/manager partnership is developed when recruiters have a strong understanding of real job needs, present a few highly qualified candidates in a timely manner, have strong assessment skills, and can influence the shape of the job and the person ultimately hired. You know you’ve arrived when your hiring managers see everyone you recommend without having to review their resumes.
5. Implement an early-bird sourcing strategy. During the first few days of a job search, the best active candidates contact their close confidantes, previous mentors, and a short network of influential people. In parallel, they Google for jobs by searching on the job title, the city, and the word “jobs.” The best of this group start interviewing within the first week. Time is now a competitive advantage, so being called first and being found first is the key to hiring the best as soon as they enter the market. Becoming an early-bird is an essential skill if you’re sourcing active candidates.
6. Become an expert in consumer marketing. The messaging (ad copy) is a critical aspect of implementing an early-bird sourcing strategy. Rather than benchmark other recruiting departments, benchmark the best consumer products companies. When you do, you’ll notice that their advertising is written to appeal to their target audience with a focus on the benefits of the product rather than the technical specifications. For recruiting, this means eliminating traditional job descriptions filled with requirements (comparable to the product specifications) and start describing what the person will do, learn, and become (the benefits). While there’s much more than this consumer marketing stuff, it won’t help much if you’re posting boring job descriptions.

These are just some ideas on how to get massively better, and it really doesn’t matter if you do these exact things. What does matter is that you start getting massively better at what you’re doing today. Once you get on the path of getting better — whether it’s more training, attending meetings, leading workshops, taking on more challenging assignments, or becoming more innovative — don’t stop. Getting continuously and massively better is the real goal here.

As Jim Rohn said, “Things will get better for you when you get better.”