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bust of Socrates

I’ve always thought corporate recruiters could learn a lot from “headhunters” — not because I’m biased due to years spent in third-party recruitment (both as a recruiter and manager). It’s just that when I came to the “other side” I noticed one glaring weakness.

Corporate recruiters are very “process driven” and not very good, well, “hunters”; at least that tends to be the case for corporate recruiters newer to the profession. They get the procedures down quickly but they just haven’t been exposed to the world of recruiting and closing higher-level talent. More senior corporate recruiters, on average, have been exposed to both sides and may already use some of the principles I’ll discuss.

A few quick facts about recruiting top talent in the U.S. Currently in the U.S. unemployment is hovering around 8%, yet, more than 52% of employers (according to the Wall Street Journal) say they cannot fill their positions. How can this be? How can we have, in this economy, a jobs gap of nearly 4 million? keep reading…

If you are going to be strategic, you must be forward looking. Obviously forward-looking people stay aware of current trends. I’ve written extensively on recruiting trends, but the definition of “a trend” means that a significant group of firms have already implemented the practice. And that means that if you merely identify and copy current trends, by the time your firm implements them, you will have fallen behind the benchmark firms that would have continued to develop new approaches. If you are tired of simply playing catch-up and you want to “get ahead” of your talent competition, you need to move beyond current trends and instead identify “next year’s” upcoming practices long before they gain wide acceptance.

If you want to prepare for what’s next on the horizon, here is my list of “next year’s recruiting headlines” or “next practices” that will soon be adopted by leading edge firms. Don’t be surprised if you’re not familiar with some of these “next practices” because they are seldom written about and they are even less frequently implemented.

A List of the Top 20 Recruiting Headlines That You Can Expect to Read Next Year keep reading…

Deming, around 1980, in Japan

I was training a group of hiring managers in New York City a few weeks ago on the fine points of Performance-based Hiring. The conversation quickly focused to quality of hire: how to both measure and maximize it. One of the sales directors in the room was quite frustrated with his recruiting team, and suggested the way he controlled quality of hire was by rejecting 9 of 10 candidates their recruiters presented. The rest of the hiring managers then chimed by saying how disappointed they were with the quality of the candidates sent by their recruiters.

They attributed the primary cause to their recruiters’ lack of understanding of real job requirements. I suggested the problem was more likely a quality-control issue: using inspection at the end of the process to control quality of hire, rather than defining and controlling it at the beginning. keep reading…

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

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

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

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

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

It’s not the big that eat the small. It’s the fast that eat the slow! --Author Jason Jennings

If the rate of change inside your firm is slower than the rate of change occurring outside your firm, your end is in sight. --Jack Welch’s philosophy

Even the most optimistic business leaders have begun to realize that the incredible business turbulence that we have been undergoing for the last decade isn’t going to end. In fact, turbulence, volatility, and continuous rapid change are likely to become the “new normal.” Recently an excellent research study by the leading consulting firm BCG effectively identified and then quantified this high level of turbulence. A summary of some of their key findings include:

• Turbulence strikes more often than in the past — More than ½ of the most turbulent quarters over the past 30 years have been in the past decade.
• Turbulence has increased in intensity – Volatility in revenue growth, in revenue ranking, and in operating margins have all more than doubled since the 1960s.
• Turbulence today persists much longer than in preceding periods – The average duration of periods of high turbulence has quadrupled over the past three decades.
• Turbulence in key business results – key business areas including revenue growth, profitability, and industry rank have all shown triple-digit percentage increases over the last few decades.

The Goal Is to Become an “Adaptive Firm” and Function keep reading…

Corporate recruiting is a field where there are distinct and measurable differences between the average and elite functions. In short, what that means is that “elite” recruiting functions (defined as the top 1%) produce superior results and act in ways that are totally different from the average function.

I am frequently asked during corporate presentations to cite the difference between “good and great” recruiting functions. Well, as a former chief talent officer and someone who has spent years devoted to identifying what makes the handful of elite recruiting functions unique, I’ve come up with an assessment tool. It is a checklist that can be used by recruiting leaders as a self-assessment tool in order to determine how they compare “side-by-side” to the few firms that have reached this elite status. The 40 defining characteristics are broken into seven distinct categories and they are listed in a numbered format for easy scanning.

The 40 Defining Characteristics of an “Elite Recruiting Function” in 2012 keep reading…

In this webinar, Chris Havrilla and Ben Gotkin talk about the top 3 mistakes made when evaluating and implementing recruiting technology. Listen in to this fascinating episode.

When you are battling for talent in a highly competitive environment, you are likely to encounter more than your share of failures. In fact, because underperformance in recruiting is so common, I am constantly surprised when corporate recruiting leaders have no formal process for identifying specifically why their current recruiting efforts don’t produce their desired level of results. The formal method for identifying the factors that cause a process to fail is known as “failure analysis.” But unfortunately, even though it is used throughout business, failure analysis is seldom applied to the recruiting process.

I was recently reminded of the need for failure analysis while researching the extensive recruiting problems of oil and gas firms in the booming area around Alberta, Canada. I’ll be presenting my recruiting solutions at the Talent Hub Conference, Metropolitan Centre in Calgary, on Wednesday, September 19, 2012. But if you’re not involved in the petroleum industry, don’t worry because the same failure identification and prospect research processes can and should be used in any industry.  If you’re unfamiliar with the term “prospect research” it is a form of market research which involves the use of surveys and interviews to identify what worked and what didn’t work during the recruiting process and precisely what factors attract and turn off top prospects.

Prospect Market Research Is Required keep reading…

Within most corporate HR functions, the atmosphere is simply too politically charged to even consider raising this powerful question:“Which HR function ranks No. 1 with the highest impact on two critical business success measures — revenue growth and profit margins?” Well, the data is in, and we now definitively know that the answer is … recruiting is the most impactful HR function!

In my many years of working with corporations, I have come across only a handful of HR leaders who have taken the time to quantify the business impacts of recruiting (Google and Apple are the best). But if you shift industries and look at the sports and entertainment industries, you will find that it is well established that recruiting is the most impactful people management function.

In pro basketball for example, you could take an average individual player and attempt to develop them over time into a “LeBron James.” However, if you wanted immediate results with a low risk of failure, you would simply recruit LeBron away from his current team. But fortunately, in the corporate world there has now been a breakthrough global study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group that reveals the relative value produced by each of the different HR functions.

From the Best to the Worst

If you’re curious as to whether a particular HR function produces a high or low business impact, this section will reveal their ranking. keep reading…

In recent years issues with the RPO model have been well documented. It’s not so much the model itself because the theory is sound, on paper. It’s the execution of the model and competition driving cost-saving promises which can’t be met unless corners are cut or high volumes of lesser-experienced RPO recruiters are hired to fulfill demand.

Whether it’s an RPO model or simply an in-house direct recruiter model, the same conundrum exists. keep reading…

In this webinar, netPolarity Sourcing Manager and MARS Head Instructor Mark Tortorici shed light on technical user groups, and forums and show attendees how to actively mine these online communities using advanced sourcing tricks to make the most out of them, exponentially expanding your talent pool for passive and hard-to-reach candidates.

It’s no secret to any of us that the appetite and shift to more direct sourcing is driven to a large extent by the focus on cost savings. Agency margins have been driven down to within an inch of their life over the years and so the next natural step was always going to be to “do it ourselves.” Internal recruiters have been around now for years, some under the guise of the RPO model.

Internal headhunters (I differentiate from internal “recruiters”),  taking time to do full market mapping and cold call headhunting, are still very rare though. Mapping out competitors and building market intelligence takes time, and time is of course expensive. Whereas an internal recruiter may work on upwards of 100 vacancies per year (the numbers hugely fluctuate from company to company influenced by seniority of role, etc.), an internal headhunter doing the full lifecycle process may work on as little as 15 to 20 searches per year.

There’s also the issue of skillset required to do both roles. It’s very different asking a recruiter to sift through 100 resumes received in an inbox from a job posting than it is to ask a headhunter to start with a blank sheet of paper and map out the firm’s top six competitors and cold-headhunt call everyone at those firms who may have a relevant skillset. In my time spent heading up an executive search function at J.P Morgan, I never once posted a job advertisement. My role was purely to headhunt top talent in the market.

An internal headhunter is of course a role that should be used only for particular vacancies. It may be the most senior roles, or for niche roles, where typical channels to market aren’t satisfying the requirement.

So how do you convince the budget holders to invest in an internal headhunter who costs more than a typical internal recruiter, but who works on far fewer roles? keep reading…

In this session, Fred Shilmover of InsightSquared talked about the importance of data, being able to conceptualize and analyze it as well as what it means for your business.

Recruiting gets the best of the bad news from business leaders, who say a lack of support from human resources is largely to blame for the worsening shortage of talent and skills in their work groups.

Leaders of finance, IT, procurement, and other units of some 145 major global businesses reporting getting such low levels of support from their HR colleagues that few of them say they are satisfied with any of the department’s key talent management services.

Even in recruiting and staffing, where the largest number of leaders report receiving at least some level of service, 65 percent of them say they are dissatisfied. keep reading…

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

Over the last several years I’ve sat through no less than 100 staffing agency “pitches” in person or over the phone. At this point these meetings have begun to all sound very similar, so I’ll bucket agency sales pitches in to these three areas.

“We’re Different.” Almost every agency says they have a special/unique process for reviewing resumes, sourcing candidates, and access to candidates that sets them apart from their competitors. From my experience I’ve not really seen the impact of their “unique” process in the candidates they’ve submitted. Additionally, most agencies don’t appear to have a thorough understanding of their competition. At some point in almost every vendor meeting someone says that they don’t push paper like “everyone else.” I would encourage vendors to have a much more in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape before they make such broad sweeping indictments of their competitors.

“We Build Relationships.” Every vendor I’ve ever sat down with has said they build meaningful relationships with managers and they “get” our business unlike any other vendor in town. As a result they tell me they have the ability to make a cultural fit for our organization. To this statement I like to ask: “Give me an example as to how you screen for cultural fit.” I’ve been underwhelmed by all responses to this point.

“We Have a Proprietary Database.” I’ve heard this one a million times. Vendor ABC has a database of millions of qualified/ interested candidates at their beck and call to fill contract needs. I don’t doubt they have a long list of former contractors they’ve placed, but in my experience most contractors don’t feel the same level of loyalty to their staffing agency. Most contractors are more interested in the type of work, the end client, and compensation. And before you rebuke, I will concede there are notable exceptions to this point, but overall, it’s correct.

Overall my experience is that candidate screening is indeed not that different; that staffing agencies do not have a special candidate database (why, then do I get the same candidate submitted by different vendors all the time?); and your partnership with me is not that strong. In fact, too many vendors treat me as someone to work around than to work with.

Here are my suggestions. keep reading…

Many are surprised to learn that in growing corporations, recruiting can have the highest revenue impact of all of the HR functions. That is a powerful statement and it is also the premise of a presentation that I will make in September at the always-groundbreaking ERE national recruiting conference. We all know that in both the sports and the entertainment fields, there is a tremendous financial impact as a result of hiring top talent like LeBron James or George Clooney. Although the same significant financial impact also occurs in the corporate world, recruiting leaders have almost universally failed to focus on generating that revenue impact.

CEOs are laser focused on revenue growth keep reading…

In this session, Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin from CareerXroads plan to share their data from earlier this year and their thoughts about the last 10 years they’ve been asking a biased sample of companies for their data. A little story-telling, a little learning and a few recommendations on how you can improve what you do in the future (unvarnished by any hidden agenda).

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

As you may have heard, the company contracted to provide security guards to the London Olympics announced a scant three weeks before the event that – [psych! sorry!] — it was going to be (by some accounts) 7,000 guards short. This apparently caught nearly everyone, including the CEO of G4S (the largest security company in the world — at least up ’til now) off guard (no pun intended.) The hapless CEO, Nick Buckles, admitted to British lawmakers that his firm has embarrassed the nation.

The extent of the fallout from this debacle is not yet known for the Olympics, G4S, or its competitors (who seem likely to benefit from the over-commitment and incompetence of their industry’s giant). But in the meantime, there are key lessons to be learned for HR and talent acquisition professionals (not to mention business leaders): keep reading…

More and more there is talk of the HR business partner and HR generalist functions when it comes to all things HR. These functions are HR’s way of aligning with the C-suite or, as most say, getting a “seat at the table.” To have the HR business partner or HR generalist in your organization says you are being “strategic.” In any event, both of these roles are handling everything from succession planning to recruitment plans, depending on the organizations’ structure.

That said, one might ask what is the use in having a “specialist” in HR? More importantly, what are the implications for recruiters if indeed this is a trend? I’ll address both separately. keep reading…

A footwear company, known by consumers as FootSmart and officially as Benchmark Brands, is growing quickly, hoping to double in about four years, hiring recruiters, and adding an HR-recruiting-learning department which essentially has not existed prior. It even believes it’d be growing significantly faster if it had the right people in place, a refrain heard before in companies around the world.

FootSmart, based in Atlanta and with a distribution center in Memphis, has 300 employees. It caters to people who are getting up there in age (ha – like 45), or who have various feet and leg problems like blisters, bunions, plantar fasciities, back or knee pain, and so on. The combination of both comfort and health are what it sees as its advantage as a footwear company.

Thana Sakas is in charge of what the company calls its “Talent Asset Management” initiative. Before this, she was at Lee Hecht Harrison, a big outplacement outfit, and Accenture. Elizabeth Peterson, who has recruited for corporations and agencies, has joined Benchmark Brands as the director of talent acquisition. Lynette Harris, who has an HR background, is the new director of talent development.

Sakas started about seven months ago. Then, with about 280 employees, there was pretty much no HR department to speak of. The CEO realized he needed to hire strong recruiting and learning people, with benefits for the most part being outsourced.

Peterson has hired a full-time contract recruiter and a recruiting coordinator, a sourcer, and an additional part-time sourcer. “It’s just a moving target for us,” says Sakas, referring to her company’s growth. Prior to a recent workforce planning project, for example, the company thought it needed 18 people in the corporate office; it added 22 open spots after that planning was done.

Many of these open jobs are e-commerce jobs like Internet marketing and web development slots, for example. Some haven’t been posted yet. It uses Berglass + Associates for some top executive roles.

The value proposition — employer brand — Benchmark wants to achieve is a lot about growth, profitability, and cash flow. In other words, many retailers aren’t doing well, Sakas says, but this company is. keep reading…