The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also revised its reports for November and December. In November, the BLS now says the economy gained 64,000 jobs, up from its previous estimate of a 4,000 job gain.

That improvement was more than offset by the bureau’s revision to its December number. Instead of the 85,000 job loss it first reported, the BLS now says 150,000 jobs were actually lost.

The report prompted Morgan Stanley’s David Greenlaw to tell Marketwatch, “All in all, we see encouraging signs of progress in labor market conditions and expect to see much better payroll performance in coming months.”

Economists had been expecting a job gain in January, but also a slight worsening of the unemployment rate. A Reuters survey said the average of the economist predictions was for a gain of 5,000 jobs. Marketwatch’s survey put the job growth at 25,000.

The BLS report was complicated by adjustments the bureau made to its data and the introduction of expanded reports, including reports detailing the labor situation of veterans, individuals with disabilities, and the foreign born, and more depth in other areas.

The data revisions adjusted the size of the labor force back to January 2009, which meant that the monthly job changes as first reported were too low. The revisions added 617,000 more lost jobs to the 2009 totals, making the official count for the year a loss of 4.78 million jobs. And the December number is subject to still further revision.

The BLS also reported that the number of unemployed persons by reason of job loss decreased by 378,000 to 9.3 million. Nearly all of this decline occurred among permanent job losers (which, according to the BLS, means “persons whose employment ended involuntarily and who began looking for work”). However, the long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was up in January to 6.3 million. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of long-term unemployed has risen by 5.0 million.

Other indices reflected essentially the same yin-yang as the BLS. The Monster Employment Index was down 1 point, while The Conference Board’s count of new, online jobs, showed a gain of 381,800 over December. That’s the biggest jump in new online postings since the Help Wanted OnLine Data Series began in May 2005. But the total number of jobs posted online is still lower than every month in 2008 except for December.

The Consumer Confidence Index also ticked upwards slightly, mostly due to consumers’ more positive outlook for the short term. (The Consumer Confidence Index is a composite of multiple indices derived from a monthly survey conducted by The Conference Board.)

Says Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, “Consumer Confidence rose for the third consecutive month, primarily the result of an improvement in present-day conditions. Consumers’ short-term outlook, while moderately more positive, does not suggest any significant pickup in activity in the coming months. Regarding their financial situation, while consumers were less dire about their income prospects than in December, the number of pessimists continues to outnumber the optimists.”

A Bloomberg survey also says economists expect the unemployment rate to rise to 9.8 percent, the highest since 1983. An ADP report released this morning foreshadows the lower, yet still continuing job loss. The ADP National Employment Report says the U.S. lost 254,000 private, nonfarm jobs in September, a drop of 23,000 from the revised August jobs report. It’s the lowest drop that ADP has recorded since August 2008.

Government economic reports released today showed the tentativeness of the U.S. recovery. A Commerce Department report said consumer spending in August was up 1.3 points, the biggest rise in eight years, and the fourth increase in a row. But fueled as it was by the Cash for Clunkers program, economists warn not to expect anything similar when the September results are reported at the end of this month.

Meanwhile, the Monster Employment Index, also released this morning, was down two points from September, while yet another report, this one from the Labor Department today, said 551,000 first-time claims for unemployment were filed last week, 17,000 more than the previous week and 20,000 more than the consensus of the 41 economists polled by Bloomberg.

Then there is the report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas which says fewer layoffs were announced in September than in any month since March 2008. The 66,404 layoffs tallied in the report are 10,000 fewer than in August and 30 percent lower than in September last year.

Today’s reports prompted the New York Times to start its story this way:

“A fusillade of economic reports released Thursday showed the economy’s rebound off the bottom seems to be leveling off, and that any recovery may come in fits and starts over the rest of the year.”

That seems to precisely describe what most of us have been sensing instinctively: Things may not be getting much worse, but they don’t seem to be getting better either.

In separate conversations with two attendees of this week’s HR Tech show in Chicago, both mentioned that they had been told by vendors who sell overseas and recruiters who work globally that Europe and Asia are recovering more rapidly than the U.S.

There’s a much greater hesitancy to commit (to purchases or hires) here than in the rest of the world, one of the two offered.

That feeling seems evident in the Consumer Confidence Index released by The Conference Board Tuesday. The Index was off by 1.3 points, a small decline, to be sure, but part of a pattern that began in May.

After rising almost 30 points between February and May, the Index has leveled off, hovering right around 50.0. The Index is a measure of how consumer confidence compares to 1985, when the Index was set to 100. So while confidence isn’t dropping much, it isn’t improving either.

Reporting the numbers, Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said, “While not as pessimistic as earlier this year, consumers remain quite apprehensive about the short-term outlook and their incomes. With the holiday season quickly approaching, this is not very encouraging news.”

An economist quoted in the Bloomberg story summed up conditions this way,

“The economy is on track for a jobless recovery, and unemployment will likely remain high well into next year,” said Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto. “We’re just not seeing a pickup in hiring. It means a long road to full recovery.”

If so, it’s important that you start planning your recruiting activity and resource needs for this worst-case situation.

To take a stab at this complex issue, imagine you’re in the boardroom with your company’s senior executive team discussing the impact of the prolonged economic slowdown on your current business strategy and the current year’s annual operating plan.

Your input involves your employees’ morale and productivity, the company’s organization structure, all of the organizational development plans underway and proposed, and the overall hiring outlook.

The Big Picture: Impact on the Company

While I’m no expert at this, I suspect the initial discussions last year at the initial executive confab, right after black September 2008, focused on massive short-term expense control. Hopefully, you were part of this planning session to make your views known.

Most likely, the results of this session included a hiring freeze, a companywide expense reduction program, and a huge RIF. It’s now recognized this was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, but typical when business conditions quickly turn south.

Moving forward, when the executive team realized it overreacted (sometime in the first quarter of 2009) these expenses cuts were fine-tuned. If you were in the meeting, you would have said, “I told you so.”

It normally takes about three to six months to realize that reactive expense cuts are too deep and not targeted enough. Based on this, some relief was provided for critical projects, but some appropriate, important deeper cuts were made.

Now moving on to the second quarter of 2009. This is when companies started preliminary planning for the recovery and started to release RFIs and RFQs for projects that were just shelved six months earlier.

As part of this, everyone responsible for approving these projects, especially purchasing, was in expense-control mode, ensuring they’re negotiating very hard, and getting the best price possible for everything.

Nine months later though (July 2009), there is a big shift in the conversations at these board meetings. As long as you are a participant, you know all about these and are a critical part of the go-forward planning. As you’re aware, this talk doesn’t just involve recovery planning and short-term tactical moves; there is an ominous feeling that things just might not return to normal.

One question most executive teams are now considering is what happens if the tepid recovery peters out. Or, what if there’s a short-term bump, followed by an inflation-fueled bust?

These are significant strategic issues, without easy answers.

Whenever there’s a fundamental shift in business conditions, as we’re possibly seeing today, a corresponding shift in business strategy and operational direction is required to ensure long-term company viability.

This is much bigger than budget cuts and hiring freezes. Ultimately, decisions made under this dark cloud will affect every aspect of business, including product and marketing strategy, operational performance, and financing.

Of course, it affects the recruiting department and what it will be doing over the next three to nine months.

Impact on the Recruiting Department

While I have no clue as to how the recovery or non-recovery will affect your company, I have no doubt your company will be affected. Here are some things your executive team is probably considering, and the impact of these on the recruiting department.

With the major expense reductions already implemented, the near-term outlook will most likely focus on improvements in operational efficiency. This will involve major process reengineering efforts in every function and department, including some type of significant reorganization. The goal of all of these programs will be to extract long-term cost savings and increased flexibility. This will allow a company to better react to whatever the economy has in store for it.

These efforts will affect the recruiting department in at least three ways. First, on the hiring front, making sure that the right people are available to conduct whatever reengineering effort is underway. Second, if there’s a reorganization, the recruiting department will need to help move some people out and add a few here and there. Third, and most important, is a reengineering of the recruiting department itself.

From what I’ve seen in just about every company in the Fortune 1000, huge operational efficiency opportunities are available to increase both recruiting department and individual recruiter productivity. One important example is the idea of eliminating requisitions and using a hub-and-spoke sourcing model powered by a robust CRM instead.

Here’s a recent article that describes this approach in more detail, plus some other sourcing ideas that can profoundly increase recruiting department productivity.

Other ideas to increase recruiting department productivity include having recruiters partner much more closely with hiring managers to eliminate wasted effort, overhauling the role of hiring managers to be totally responsible for hiring, implementing a rolling workforce plan to minimize costly reactive sourcing programs, and leveraging the employee referral program to target A-level passive candidates.

All of this needs to be based on a detailed process flow map highlighting inefficiencies and bottlenecks. At a minimum, this will help prioritize your process reengineering efforts. (Email me if you’d like to see a sample of this type of process flow map.)

On a worst-case basis, assuming an extremely shallow recovery, some companies will need to undergo a massive restructuring to have a chance of long-term survival — think GM, Chrysler, many banks, and perhaps some units at GE, to highlight a few.

This restructuring includes disposing of non-productive assets, centralization of core functions, a huge downsizing effort, and possible consolidations with industry rivals. Offsetting this will be increased focus on new product development in combination with alternative marketing and distribution efforts.

In some cases, the recruiting department will be the one being restructured, so it’s important to be part of the solution helping design your organization of the future. This includes being on top of marketing trends, understanding how to implement a flexible and effective sourcing and recruiting program, and having only A-level recruiters on your team.

This is a very high-level view and quite pessimistic, but it’s not out of the range of possibility for many companies. Even if your personal situation isn’t as bad as described, getting prepared and taking some of the actions described will be helpful.

Then the worst-case for you will be the implementation of an extremely productive and efficient recruiting and hiring process for hiring the best talent on the planet. And I think we’d all agree, that’s a pretty good “worst” case.

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!

In May, there were 250,000 more jobs posted online than in April. The 8 percent increase brought the number of advertised jobs online to 3,367,000. Though modest, the increase dwarfs the 21,000 job posting gain The Conference Board reported in October 2008.

“The May bounce in labor demand is a very welcome sign,” said Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board. “Labor demand typically leads the trend in both employment and unemployment, so positive signals on labor demand are always important.”

While some of The Conference Board’s four U.S. regions showed more improvement than others, all had more online jobs advertised in May than in April. This extended to the state level where 43 states had more jobs.

With every silver lining there comes the dark cloud. Even with the increase, the number of online vacancies is 1,152,000, or 25 percent, below last year’s advertised openings. Overall in the U.S., as of April there were 4.4 unemployed workers for every online advertised vacancy, according to The Conference Board.

That picture will undoubtedly change Friday when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its monthly employment report for May. Wanted Technologies, which gathers the data for The Conference Board’s Help Wanted Index, predicts the BLS will report the U.S. economy gave up 565,000 jobs in the month, a number that is about 6.6 percent higher than what the company says is the consensus of economists.

Economic predicting, however, is a dicey business, bearing more than a passing resemblance to crystal-ball gazing. Besides The Conference Board’s upbeat report this morning, other reports from the Institute of Supply Management and the government showed declines in certain watched indicators, but because they were less than expected, stock prices are up by triple digits.

The ISM reported that manufacturing continued to shrink during May, but by at a rate less than in prior months. A construction report from the government showed spending in April rose for the second month in a row. The increase was the largest in eight months. And, though consumer spending fell in April, the decline was less than had been predicted.

Recruiters are also feeling more confident that we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. ExecuNet’s Recruiter Confidence Index, released today, surged 16 points during May. It was the the third increase in as many months. The index surveys executive search recruiters who are part of the ExecuNet network on their expectations for increases in search assignments.

Of the 143 executive recruiters surveyed, 57 percent are confident or very confident the executive employment market will improve in the next six months; 67 percent of the survey respondents expect at least a 10 percent increase in corporate search assignments.

“This looks very much like an inflection point,” says Stephen Stanley, chief economist for RBS Securities, who was quoted by Marketwatch this morning. “And the corroborating evidence … all suggest that the pace of layoffs is finally beginning to abate.”

Nevertheless, the 539,000 jobs lost during April pushed the unemployment rate nationally to 8.9 percent. It could have been even higher, but for government hiring in anticipation of the 2010 census.

“It is a sobering toll,” said President Barack Obama, cautioning that, “We should expect further job losses in the months to come.” Still, “The gears of our economic engine do appear to be slowly turning once again,” the President said. “Step by step, we’re beginning to make progress.”

The American people apparently sensed that too. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence Index for April took its biggest jump up in more than year, rising from 26.9 to 39.2. The 5,000 households that were surveyed also showed more optimism about improving business conditions. Those expecting that jobs will continue to decline over the next several months decreased from 41.6 percent to 33.6 percent, while those expecting more jobs increased to 13.9 percent from 7.3 percent.

That confidence was supported by a slight rise in the Monster Index. Though the change is still far below where it was a year ago and not even as high as in February, the Index found that eight of the nine regions in the U.S. had increases. Leisure and hospitality and some increases in banking and finance were the primary drivers to the Monster Index improvement, suggesting that seasonal hiring is probably playing a role in moderating the job losses.

But do you have a plan that will enable you to explode out of box immediately as the downturn ends?

If you don’t have a feasible recruiting turnaround plan, you may be hurting your organization.

Research shows that the majority of recruiting organizations don’t have a documented recruiting strategy, let alone one specifically developed to deal with a recovery of the macro-economy. While one could argue that it’s difficult to plan when you don’t know exactly when things will improve, such an excuse is just that, an excuse.

Scenario planning, or a what-if analysis, prepares you to handle the turnaround no matter when it occurs.

As a recruiting manager, ask yourself — before one of your senior executives asks you first:

“What exactly needs to be done in advance so that when the time comes, the recruiting function has the capacity and capability to dramatically ramp up recruiting?”

Benefits of Having an “Explode Out of the Box” Strategy

Whether the turnaround in your industry comes this year or next, it’s critical that you have an operational plan and strategy to prepare for it when it does come.

The reasons why it’s critical for you to develop this “explode out of the box” strategy include:

• Competitive advantage. During economic recoveries, organizations that can react quickly can pick up market share from competitors not quite as agile. This is especially true if your organization isn’t the largest or the most well-known in your industry.
• “Right time” advantages. The key is to “ramp up” recruiting at the “right time,” rather than being too early or too late. If you start active recruiting too early, you’ll leave a large number of recruits waiting in limbo before you can take action. If you start too late, you’ll miss out on the first movers (i.e., forward-looking talent who is among the first to be willing to assume the risk of a new position and firm).
• Free time. Although your budgets might be lean and hiring may be frozen, this “lull” is a great time to rethink your past approach. Once the frenzy of new hiring begins, there will be little time to think strategically and to develop a workable plan. This lull time will also allow you to identify new and emerging tools (mobile phones, Twitter, social networks, talent communities, etc.) and to adapt them to your company’s needs.
• Recruiter availability. If you plan accurately and act quickly, you’ll have your pick of the top available recruiters. Having a well-designed plan might, by itself, attract some of the best recruiters who have been frustrated when they had to operate in an ad-hoc environment.
• Lower costs. If you plan in advance, you will be able to attract some of the best recruiters at relatively low salaries. In addition, you might be able to secure low-cost deals with vendors before increased demand drives up their prices and limits implementation availability.
• Training and education. It is certainly true that hiring managers and some of your recruiters might be a little rusty. A great plan will allow you to improve your training and education processes so that everyone “gets up-to-speed” precisely at the right time.
• It’s a global competition. If your company is one of the many that has a global reach, it’s likely that the talent wars will heat up in certain geographic regions (or product areas) long before an overall turnaround occurs. If your plan includes elements that allow you to “explode out of the box” in these hot areas, you can help your company much sooner. You can also use these micro-targeted areas as a testing ground for your new plan.
• Strategic image. By being forward-looking, you might improve recruiting’s image as a strategic function.

Elements of an Effective “Explode Out of the Box” Recruiting Plan

If you’ve been a manager in recruiting for any significant period, you’ve already been through one or more up-and-down cycles. I’ve been through a half-dozen of them and from my experience, it is relatively easy to identify the elements that must be upgraded following a prolonged downturn. The key elements of a great turnaround plan include:

• Strategic goals. Revisit your current recruiting goals and make them more business-like. That means narrowing your goals and making them more focused on business impacts. These goals should include ramping up from little activity to maximum capability in 30 to 60 days; prioritizing jobs based on their business impact; hiring more top performers and innovators; improving the employer brand; and making managers more effective at hiring while reducing the time they must devote to it. Whatever goals you develop, make sure they are strategic and measurable.
• Strategic metrics. Shift the recruiting department’s focus away from operational metrics and toward business-impact metrics. You will need a metric for each strategic goal that you have set. Focus on these six strategic business-impact metrics: Quality of hire; innovation from new-hires; revenue loss due to position vacancies; the cost of new-hire turnover; diversity in management positions; and employer brand impact (you can’t attract the very best without a consciously developed and effective brand image).
• Executive buy in. Because recruiting doesn’t operate in a vacuum, recruiting leaders must realize that their plan needs to be developed with input from HR, executives, and hiring managers. Of all the executives, the CFO and COO are the most important because they control requisition freezes and recruiting budgets. The CFO must also be involved in developing the process to calculate the potential revenue loss that could result if the recruiting function is not adequately prepared with an “explode out of the box” plan.
• Prioritize positions. When hiring is “unfrozen,” it unfortunately often follows an illogical pattern. In some cases, the number of “low business impact” positions that are opened up may exceed the number of mission-critical openings. If this happens, it’s imperative that you have already prioritized business units and positions to ensure that you focus the most resources and your best recruiters on the high-impact positions. If you do this in advance and make it well-known, politics and loud “whining” will have less of an impact on your efforts.
• Competitive analysis. A critical part of the plan is to analyze your “talent competitors.” This includes forecasting when they are likely to ramp up, which jobs are likely to initially focus on identifying, and what tools they are likely to use.
• A timetable. An effective plan includes a timeline with key milestones and accountabilities. As a result, everyone knows “what to do” and “when to do it” after the “explode out of the box” recruiting plan is activated.
• Prepared managers. Even though recruiting designs the hiring process, it is a fact that managers do the actual hiring. If you expect your managers to be more effective at hiring, include an element that demonstrates the dollar impact of weak hiring. Once you get their attention, you need a process and support material that painlessly educates them about best practices among hiring managers; they will have their own “turnaround” issues in addition to recruiting, so begin this effort before the turnaround begins.
• Identify precursors to a turnaround. Part of your turnaround plan should be examining past turnarounds in order to identify warning signs which would allow recruiting to more accurately predict when hiring within your firm is most likely to open up. Work with the CFO and COO to identify those early warning signs.
• Identify applicants’ expectations. Any economic downturn can have a measurable impact on the expectations of potential applicants. It’s a mistake to assume that their expectations and their “decision criteria” for selecting a job have remained the same. Instead, survey a sample of the most desirable potential applicants to identify their current wants, needs, and expectations.
• Retention. Include a retention component in your plan because as the economy opens up, you are likely to experience as much as 50% increase in employee turnover as a result of your competitor’s expanded recruiting efforts. This means that you need to identify the specific employees that are most “at risk” of leaving. Then you must develop both a retention and a “blocking” strategy to directly counter your competitor’s recruiting and branding efforts.
• Rebuild your brand. There is no more powerful recruiting tool than building your external employer brand image. Under this plan, your branding efforts should be an ongoing process that “virally” spreads your message by having your managers and your best employees talk about the aspects that make your firm a great place to work. Develop plans to spread your message on the Internet, as well as at professional conferences and in the media.
• Re-energize your referral program. There is no more effective way of rapidly ramping up your recruiting capability than by convincing your employees to become 24/7 “talent scouts” as part of your employee referral program. The best referral programs focus on proactively seeking out top performers for referrals and on educating their employees on how and where to identify the best. The best also change the focus away from monetary rewards and toward reinforcing your employee’s critical role in helping to “build the team,” so that both they and their colleagues have a continuous opportunity to work alongside the very best.
• Build a talent pool. After branding and referrals, the next most powerful tool for preparing for an upturn is to build a talent pool for key positions. This means pre-identifying potential applicants and building relationships with them, so that when a position opens up, you already have a list of names of individuals that are both qualified and interested in your firm.
• Your recruiters and tools. Develop the capability of rapidly increasing the number of recruiters you have available. This element of the plan might include options for utilizing contract recruiters, outsourcing options, the use of agencies, and finally, by getting other HR professionals within your firm to contribute a few hours per week to the recruiting effort. In addition, the plans should be “scalable” to meet the different levels of recruiting volume that you might face. You will also need to “up-skill” your recruiters, so that they know how to utilize the many emerging Web 2.0 and marketing based recruiting tools. You might also need to plan for “new” positions within the recruiting function, including experts in building talent communities, metrics/analytics, employer branding, social networking, and mobile phone recruiting.
• Recruiting territory. The current mobility of the U.S. population is the lowest that it has been in 60 years. As the turnaround begins, more individuals will be willing and able to physically move to get a great job. As a result, your plan should expand the geographic scope of your recruiting beyond what is currently feasible.
• Budget and resources. There is a significant time lag between when recruiting has to dramatically increase its capabilities and the point in time where the CFO gets around to fully funding those recruiting activities. So include numerous cheap and no-cost options for branding, sourcing, screening, and making convincing offers. Part of the plan should include leveraging other people’s time, so that your firm’s employees and managers can initially pick up some of the recruiting load (i.e., employer referrals, social networking, recruiting at professional events, and boomerang hires).

Final Thoughts

The current lull in recruiting activity is a great opportunity to develop an “explode out of the box” recruiting plan that gives you the capability to ramp-up recruiting from nearly zero to extremely high levels almost overnight. It’s inevitable that you will need this type of plan, so the only remaining question is when is the best time to develop it?

In my experience, if you wait until the day when requisitions begin to be unfrozen, it will be too late to do an adequate job. Also, don’t wait until you have sufficient budget resources to hire a consultant to help you; just having a plan will build you instant credibility within HR and among senior managers. If you develop a really effective plan, you will actually prevent a great deal of stress on both yourself and your recruiting team because you will be well prepared for any problems that might occur during the turnaround.

I’ve outlined the key elements that you need to include in the plan, so the next step is up to you. The time to act is now!

Classical Economist Adam Smith

Leading economist Dr. Robert Genetski joined us on April 1 at the ERE Expo 2009 Spring to share his wisdom regarding the current state of the economy.

Genetski began by explaining the classical principles of economics and the factors that dictate how the economy works in modern day society. From there, he proceeded to explain issues that have contributed to our current economic downtown, illuminating exactly how things became as serious as they did.

Of most interest to the audience were Genetski’s predictions on how the economy would affect labor markets in the coming months, the challenges we can still expect to face, and an idea of when we will begin to see the economy recover. Watch these highlights and prepare yourself to take advantage of the inevitable economic recovery.

I find it striking how the worst problems in employment seem to center around the local areas that support the industries that are the epicenters of this recession: the real estate bubble, automobile manufacturers, etc.

Lots of red…

This morning, Indeed released data that they are calling Industry Trends, which compare the current number of online job postings in the United States today with the same data from a year ago.  It’s no longer news that there’s fewer jobs out there, but even with that in mind, the numbers are grim.

On the job seeker side, Google searches for the keyword “jobs” had a seasonal dip in December, followed by a huge spike in the new year. At one point in January, they were up over 50% over the historical average, an indication of just how many people are now looking for work.

The graph on the bottom of the Google Trends data represents media coverage about jobs, which has been on the rise since mid-2008.

All of the data above is backward-looking — it tells us what has happened in the past. What does the future hold?

Intrade is a online market that is used to trade futures on anything from who will be the next justice to leave the Supreme Court to which continent will host the Olympics in 2016. It harnesses the wisdom of those crowds willing to put their money where their mouths are in order to collectively predict the future.

Here is the chart for the Intrade futures on whether or not the U.S. unemployment rate will be higher than 9% at the end of December 2009.

The market is now predicting a 60% chance that the unemployment rate will be over 9% by the end of the year, up from 7.6% today. At the beginning of this year, it was predicting a less than 20% chance — like the Google trends on job searches, it has spiked dramatically since.

Batten down the hatches.  It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

There’s no other way to put this — in spite of the semi-cheery headline (“Jobs May Rebound in 2010″) the forecast is unrelentingly negative for this year. The only nationwide pockets of short-term job growth are government and education, with no private sector industry showing job growth for the year.

Economics is notoriously inaccurate, but I think that every recruiter should check out this data for the their industry and geography and have a plan for if these numbers turn out to be true.

At present, there is an economic stimulus bill under review in the Congress, submitted by the new Administration, that may reach $1 trillion in new spending programs. Are you feeling optimistic yet?

Since the 1980s, the U.S. economy has demonstrated to the world how to stimulate growth and job creation: low taxes, free trade, and low government intervention. For decades, such policies have kept unemployment rates lower in the U.S. compared to almost all first-world, industrial nations.

What happens when governments intervene in economies? Consider two examples:

1. The 1930s: In the U.S., it was about money supply, taxes, and trade…
Historians generally agree that there were three federal government actions that contributed to the financial collapse of the 1930s. The well-known stock market crash of October 1929 was just the flashpoint for events that ultimately moved the economy from a difficult recession to a depression:

• Federal Reserve Bank: According to Dr. Milton Friedman, in his book “Free to Choose,” from 1930 to 1933 the Federal Reserve Bank acted to reduce the money supply by 28%. Result? With a smaller money supply, massive bank failures (9,000+) occurred across the U.S. Banks closed due to under-funding for credit, lending, and daily operations.
• Congress increased taxes to balance the federal budget.
• Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act: In 1930, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised the costs of goods imported to the U.S., which set off a trade conflict with other countries.

Results? The GDP of the U.S. was:

1930: -8.6%
1931: -6.4%
1932: -13.0%

In a recent article, Dr. Thomas Sowell, economist and author, commented on the Smoot-Hawley Act and federal actions of the 1930s:

• Unemployment rate before government actions: June 1930: 6.3%
• Unemployment rate after government actions: February, 1932 to January, 1935: 20%+

The rate of 24.9% in 1933 was the high point, with a rate range from 14% to 19% through 1938.

2. The 1990s: In Japan, it was about government spending, trade, taxes…
In the 1990’s, the biggest experiment in history for government spending to stimulate an economy was undertaken by Japan. According to a recent Washington Post article (9/22/08), from 1989 to the early 1990s, Japan experienced economic events that severely impacted investments, banks, and real estate:

• Financial markets in the 1980s were heavily engaged in speculative investing, with the Nikkei average peaking in 1989 before it collapsed to a value that is 30% of its value of that period.
• Banks engaged in increasingly speculative lending practices, which created a loan portfolio bubble that, as loan assets dropped in value, threatened bank industry solvency.
• Real estate investments were highly speculative, especially commercial properties. Prices collapsed, ending in huge losses to investors. Properties today are at 40% of property values of that period.

How did the Japanese government react to collapsing values of investments, bank loan portfolios, and real estate, as well as a long-term recession?

According to the article noted, in the early 1990s, the government of Japan launched massive spending programs, borrowing heavily to finance new public works construction as well as subsidizing hundreds of thousands of banks and businesses that would otherwise be insolvent. Government borrowing and spending exceeded $700 billion U.S. in the 1990s. In addition, according to the Institute of International Economics, Japan increased taxes and imposed new trade regulations to protect domestic markets.

Results?

Hello, World!

The U.S. economy has outperformed the economy of Japan since the mid-1990s and the onset of Japan’s economic problems. If government spending and intervention are the answers, why didn’t Japan achieve growth rates at least comparable to or better than the U.S. for the time period? Government spending and intervention were policy failures for Japan and we as a nation will hopefully not follow the path of failed policies.

Can we go back to basics? We already know how to create jobs: low taxes, free trade, and less government intervention. Let’s get to it!

The monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics described the U.S. situation in surprisingly gloomy words for bureaucrats. Noting that the unemployment rate rose .4 points in one month — from 7.2 in December to 7.6 percent nationwide at the end of January – the BLS report said in its very first paragraph: “In January, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major industry sectors.”

The only job categories to show growth were Education and Health Services, up by 54,000 jobs, and Government, which grew by 6,000 jobs. Construction and manufacturing together lost 318,000 jobs.

The 11.6 million Americans now officially out of work represent mostly those still actively looking for work. Discouraged workers who have given up, even temporarily, looking for work, and those working part-time because they can’t find full time jobs come to almost 10 million more. If those workers were counted as part of the unemployed, the unemployment rate would be closer to 15 percent.

In Washington, Senate negotiators have trimmed somewhere between $70 and $80 billion from the stimulus bill, depending on when and to whom reporters were talking. The latest report from the Wall Street Journal says that a bipartisan group was working to get the stimulus bill closer to the $800 billion floor the Administration insists is the minimum it will accept. That would necessitate finding as much as $45 billion more to take out of the bill that by some estimates has mushroomed to $935 billion. However, negotiators expect the final cuts to amount to $100 billion.

There is one bright spot: Oil is down on the New York Mercantile Exchange to under $40 a barrel. That’s the first time since 2005 it has been so low.

Compared to other times and places (for example Iraq, the Great Depression, World War I and II) things are actually pretty good. Most of us have jobs, food, careers, education, and many opportunities. For the unfortunate, there are safety nets and far more programs to assist them than ever before. There is a time for all things and this series of layoffs, downsizing, and recalibrating is as necessary a part of the cycle of life as are the seasons.

Change is a messy, painful, and tiring process but it almost always leads to something better. The changes that will follow this recessionary time will bring renewal and energy to our professional and personal lives. I cannot do much about how your organization is faring or how it deals with change, but I can offer you some tips about coping with your own change process.

Unwanted change causes very definite behavioral patterns to emerge.

Psychologists who have studied and documented the change process describe four distinctive phases we have to pass through to complete a change cycle.

Phase 1 is denial:

Many of us saw the recession coming but denied it. We saw job openings decrease and heard the rumors in our own organizations about how sales were down. The normal reaction is to discount those stories. In our professional lives, we have been barraged with new ideas, tools, and approaches to our established routines.

Again, most of us have had the tendency to discount their importance. Over my career, I have heard applicant tracking systems, the Internet, and social networking all dismissed as fads.

While many of us know intellectually that many of these tools and processes are useful, we cannot accept the change they bring. Whether thinking about our careers, jobs, or the tools we use there is no more denying that the changes have come and are real and permanent.

• Get the facts, do some research, and make a decision based on data and facts about whether the things you are seeing are real, useful, and whether they need to be acted on.
• Don’t hide in the sand or hope things will just get better by themselves. Your actions will make things better or worse – nothing else.

Phase 2 is resistance:

Even when we have the information we need, we still often push back. We refuse to use the tools or we complain loudly about their shortfalls. We argue about what is happening and we dig in our heels and try to hang on to the past as hard as we can. It is very difficult to accept change and overcome your own dislikes and lack of comfort with the new tools, processes, or even with the need to find a new job.

• Take small steps and try one new tool or process and keep at it for a while. Network with others and see how they are using it. Check in with candidates and hiring managers about how they feel. Not everything is useful, but many can make a significant difference to how you do your job.
• Some of these tools might help you cope with a smaller staff or with the loss of outside assistance.

Phase 3 is exploration:

Very few of us are able to just jump into new solutions without any concern or hesitation. Most of us tend to be overly cautious and adverse to any changes. You know you are entering this stage of the change process when you begin to make small changes. For example, you start experimenting with minor process improvements or decide to do without replacing a sourcer or you adopt a new technology you are unsure about.

Exploration is the step when you may try and discard many approaches – and that’s perfectly okay to do. In fact, it’s the right way to make change happen. Not everything is going to be successful or right for your situation.

• Think of positive ways to incorporate new applications or tools into your routine on a regular basis. That makes the changes less dramatic and gives you time to learn how to use them well.
• Establish some objective assessment criteria to be able to better judge whether or not the new approach is working.
• Reward anyone on your team who tries a new approach, tool, idea.

Phase 4 is commitment:

Eventually you will come to see these new approaches as normal and you will have a hard time even remembering the old days and the old ways. New tools become “old” tools and we feel comfortable with the processes, assumptions and ideas that have evolved over some period of time. This becomes the new norm.

• Don’t stop here. Continue to experiment and try new things – even when you have just adopted something.
• Continuously scan the environment for changes, trends, new products and solutions.
• Complacency is your biggest enemy!

The slow times will pass and recruiting will ramp up almost without warning. Use this time to learn, adopt, examine your own practices, and make the changes you think will make a difference. As we emerge from this recession, the entire recruiting profession will look different, be run differently, use different tools, and be based on different assumptions than it was.

There is nothing to be gained in crying about how bad things are. Grab the opportunities and profit from these changing times.

The government has done a great deal recently to boost the productivity (output) of the economy through its trillion-dollar bailout and coordination of merger activity, but freeing up credit and keeping well-known firms alive have not halted job losses in many industries, including those in the housing, mortgage, and financial sectors.

Both government and corporate leaders have under-emphasized the role of the job market in the economic downturn to the point that in my opinion, the time has come that we must consider the real possibility that the job market will move from a recession into a depression.

I define a “jobs depression” as an unemployment or underemployment of 10% or higher.

Factors Impacting a Move Into a Jobs Depression

Most of the factors that have resulted in our increasing unemployment rate are well known. They include decreased sales and profit in major industries like housing, and large-scale layoffs in the financial services sector. Unfortunately, other negative factors that you might not be aware of will continue to drive the unemployment rate toward double digits. Despite record holiday sales at Amazon.com, most retailers reported results that were the worst since 2001. As a result, you can expect that many retailers will embrace large-scale layoffs, outlet closures, and delayed capital expansion plans as they work to shore up cash flow issues.

You can also expect a second round of mortgage failures as more and more homeowners walk away from homes so severely underwater financially that they actually make money by declaring bankruptcy despite interest rates being at an all-time low. Further complicating the economy are more local issues, namely significant reductions in tax revenues that will pressure many state and local governments into hiring freezes and layoffs.

At the global level, the strengthened dollar and economic instability in many global economies will likely slow growth in those markets, further cutting demand for U.S. exports. While domestic and foreign demand drop, the workforce will actually grow, fueled by aging boomers foregoing retirement and relaxed immigration rules. Despite increasing demand, you can expect that even the healthcare and high-tech sectors will be hunkering down.

What Makes This Unemployment Rate Surge Different?

Unlike previous periods of high unemployment, this time around there will be an abundance of people who want to work but who simply put just do not have the skills required for the jobs that are open. For example, traditional government work projects like the one planned by incoming President Obama have traditionally been used to offset manufacturing and construction layoffs, putting “pick and shovel” jobs in the hands of unskilled workers; however, even such low-level jobs have seen rampant innovation in recent years that has consequently raised the bar with regards to entry-level skills needed. This will make it difficult to place a large number of unemployed individuals from other industries in public work projects.

The next problem area that continues to be ignored is our retraining capacity. This time around, you can expect large-scale cutbacks at universities and educational institutions, which in the past have had the capacity to retrain the unemployed. With corporate grants, financial aid programs, and tax revenues drying up, many unemployed will find universities and even trade schools out of reach. The result will be the reduction or elimination of most retraining opportunities, so that when new jobs actually do open up, few will have the required advanced skills that will be required to actually do the job.

In addition, because there has been no decrease in worldwide competition and pressure to innovate, this time around the skill sets of the unemployed will also deteriorate so rapidly that few of them would even qualify for the jobs that they were laid off from only a year or two ago. The net result is that any “new jobs” are likely to go to states or countries that have maintained their skill development and retraining programs.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately, we face a bleak employment picture where there is a surplus of individuals available to work but a shortage of the necessary skills that the market will require. This skill shortage will mean that individuals will remain on unemployment longer than they have in the past. This skill shortage will at the same time bid up the price and the competition for the remaining available well-trained workers in key positions.

To corporations, that means that there will be increased pressure to move available jobs to where the “skills are.” For governmental policymakers, the future competitive advantage of a country will not be the price of its labor or the number of individuals available to work, but rather the ability to continuously upgrade the skill sets of the workforce.

To individual firms, it means that the only alternative to offshoring most new high-skilled jobs will be the development of effective retraining programs that can rapidly and cost-effectively upgrade the skills of the unemployed. Unfortunately, retraining a large number of entry-level workers is not an area that most firms excel at.

For the first time in memory, a successful rebounding economy as a result of the government’s efforts might not be followed by an increase in the number of skilled jobs held by U.S. workers. Half of the economy (the output segment) might turn around relatively rapidly, while the other half (the jobs segment) might stagnate for a significant period of time. 2009 is looking too much like 1931 to allow anyone to think that another unemployment depression is not possible.

“Try not; do.”
Yoda

We recall a time back in late November 2002 when, out of shear pain and frustration, Howard wrote Recruiting Today: Good People in Difficult Times.

As we read it now, its content and tone seem strangely familiar. We hear the same fear and grief from so many today as in those miserable days gone by. Lost again, adrift in a sea of uncertainty, anguish, and doubt. Revenue, stability, normalcy — once again threatened as we seek a road out, a spit of land where we can rest and think of why so many of our lives have been disrupted. First-time angst for newer recruiters; multiple times for others.

As with most misery, there is pain and that sense of unfairness. The feeling of “why me?” comes to mind. Yet entitled as we are to these dark feelings and tendencies toward self-pity or rage, good news looms in the distance, and his name is Barack Obama. Seeing him just before his victory speech, we could not help feeling that in just the right light and posture, our soon to be president smiles the same smile with which Jack Kennedy warmed, charmed, and challenged us in 1961. That might seem like long ago, but time is meaningless when you are in trouble, and make no mistake — as a country, we are in big trouble.

So despite all that is broken, we have much to celebrate.

Regardless of the financial meltdown, the bailout(s), and the evaporation of unspeakable amounts of money and jobs, we urge you to see the good news: Eight of the most ugly, brutish, and crushing years we can remember will end on a sparkling day in January as Barack Obama assumes the Presidency. For this opportunity of optimism and renewal, we are endlessly grateful. We do not remember the last time we felt this sky high with possibility, energy, and hope. We also do not remember a time that doing well by doing right had more meaning and greater importance then it does right now.

In our society, most of what we do is connected in ways both far reaching and profound. Stop spending money in one location, and you put a person out of work in another, as saving oneself rich simply does not work. The engines that fuel our greatness run on money, and money is generated by the growth, profitability, and ongoing innovation (see Recruiting, Innovation, and Thinking Differently) that accompany the careful building of great organizations. The bottom line is actually quite simple: we need to get this country back to work and we need to do it fast.

But what is to happen to recruiters? What is to happen to those individuals who build the organizations? Do we hang in and wait? Do we go off on our own? Leave the business?

Sadly, there is no easy answer, but we do urge you to consider the following five points upon which to reflect:

• Help others. No one succeeds alone. Employing the spirit with which Kennedy challenged us, “ask not what your country can do for you.” With that thought in mind, reach out to people you know who have lost their jobs and help guide them on how to reinvent themselves as best you can. As recruiters, we are specialists in knowing what companies are looking for, often just by reading a requisition. Share this knowledge and feel good when your friend or neighbor gets their new start with your help. (See Are You Really Meant to be a Recruiter as it will help you get that little lift that makes us feel better in challenging times.)
• We will come out of this. We have seen this before. It is nasty and unpleasant, but it will not last. Fight on and keep heart. Tough times do not last; tough people do. Become one very tough person.
• Question the futurists/thought leaders. Do you ever wonder about thought leaders and how they are anointed? Is there a secret ceremony? A special handshake or some type of a magic decoder ring? Want to continue reading them? Feel free, but take it all with a grain of salt as so much of it is yesterday’s news. We need to invent the future, not reconstruct the past.
• Lead the charge. Your brain is as good as ours or anyone else’s. The future is up for grabs. Can you add to the collective progress in terms of building great companies? If so, do it and do it now because to look back and wish that you did would be tragic. Innovate, restructure, and design your own future because the time to do great things is now.
• Outthink, outwork, outhustle. Bill Russell once said “hustle is talent” and this is a man who knows a few things about both. Working for a fool? A company that will never succeed? Change jobs or strike out on your own, as it is far better to fail because of your inability than because of their abysmal leadership.

We would like to dedicate this article to all of the great recruiters out there. We strongly believe that new opportunities will be unearthed and great things will happen to those who move forward with dignity, a commitment to excellence, and an unwavering belief on one’s personal sense of value.

This economic slowdown is not just about the failure of our banking system or of the credit markets. This failure is a symptom of the major changes that are occurring as we enter a new century. The Depression of the 1930s redefined the agriculturally based banking and finance world and made it competitive and efficient for an industrial age.

We are now in a similar period.

The nature of business and work is rapidly evolving. Organizational structure will become less hierarchical, more nimble, and flexible. Employees will begin to be treated with respect as investors — not assets or human capital. People are the most precious of success factors, and we each choose to invest our time and skills in an organization that respects and listens to us. When we are not respected, we move on. Entrepreneurship has grown rapidly in response to the lack of respect innovative employees have been given.

Look to see the finance system change to reward innovation. Look at small organizations with a global network or loosely allied suppliers and partners to dominate the economic climate of this century. It is the end of GM and other large, hierarchal organizations that were the model of efficiency in an industrial age.

Many of us will miss the familiarity and the rules of the past that gave us a sense of security and certainty. But surely this economic meltdown must signal to the most conservative of believers that times are changing.

Indeed, even our profession is changing fundamentally, although we are just beginning to see and understand those changes. The habits and skills we developed in a slower-moving, more certain 20th century no longer work so well. Our cheese has been moved, as the eponymous book says, and we will miss the familiar world of job boards, resumes, face-to-face recruiting, ringing telephones, cold calls, and classified ads. Technology and the Internet still feel unfamiliar and foreign to many recruiters, but we have entered a technology-dominated, virtual era.

But here are a few of the many things we have to look forward to:

1. Personalization of the recruiting process. Today every candidate is treated pretty much the same. Recruiters call that being fair, but I call it lack of customer service and concern. We are all individuals, and want our uniqueness to be understood and evaluated. Retailers and product manufacturers understand this and provide hundreds of variations on products to meet our individual needs. We will need to use technology to communicate with candidates better and more frequently and at a deeper level than we do now. We will have to tailor jobs to meet candidates’ qualifications rather than to keep looking for the “right” person for our standardized job profile. The whole matching process will become more dynamic and offer the candidate more choices. Social media will become the “home base” of recruiting, and the hallmark of successful recruiting organizations will be their ability to use social media well.
2. Development integrated with recruiting. When the supply of skilled and ready people is exhausted, which will be soon, we will have to look at developing people internally or hiring people without the skills we need and training them. Corporate resilience is marked by the ability to develop people with the skills they need to compete. Look at HP, IBM, and Procter & Gamble. Each of these firms has spent millions on employee development and each is successful — even in these dark times. I think there is a correlation. Integrated talent management will be a no-brainer for the HR people of this century. Being able to make solid decisions, based on data, as to whether a position should be filled with an external experienced person or an internal trainee will become a powerful skill.
3. Selling and marketing as important skills for recruiters. Even though it is harder than ever to see because of the slow economy, being able to explain to a candidate why your organization is better than another one will be a vital ability for recruiters to have. The candidate pool is going to get smaller, smarter, and more discriminating — just as the consumer pool has. Why would you buy one video camera over another? Mainly because of the powerful marketing and communication campaigns of their manufacturers. Candidates will seek out firms with good reputations and financial track records, as they are already doing. That is why lists such as the “100 Best Companies to Work For” are so popular. Candidates are literally shopping for jobs not, for the most part, taking whatever comes along.

The entire recruiting profession will look different, be run differently, use different tools, and be based on different assumptions than it was in the 20th century. And that’s good — because we will need new tools for the new problems of talent shortages, rising free agency, smaller firms, and rapid change.

Let us give thanks this week for the plentiful ideas and creativity that have contributed so much to America’s leadership in human resources, in developing human potential, and in continuously exploring the limits of our capabilities.

And may all of you have a peaceful, bountiful, and happy Thanksgiving.

I am not sure if recruiters noticed, but several analysts did. I recently read an analyst’s report that compared several high-tech companies on the number of open positions they had as an indicator of long-term earnings and profit.

Given that analysts are doing this, we should be, too. We should be very sensitive to what our own management is thinking, how orders are shaping up, what the sales team is projecting, and then adjusting our own efforts accordingly.

If you don’t have access to this information you have two ways to get it. First of all, go to your manager and ask him or her for help. They will hopefully share what they can with you or help you find it. Second, cultivate your own sources by making friends with someone in sales or another part of your organization where people have that “inside” information that gives you an early indication of how things are going.

With that information in hand, here are five specific actions you can take to increase the odds of surviving, and even thriving, in this down economy.

Action Item #1: Get in Shape

You can’t make much progress in building credibility with management until your own function is in good shape. Recruiters who saw the signs of a recession could have begun trimming the fat in their processes months ago. Get aligned with your management team and cut when they cut, slow down when they slow down, and show them you are aware and responsible.

The last several years of high demand for talent have allowed many recruiting functions to increase their headcounts, add tools and services that are not providing a significant return, and get sloppy in measuring efficiency. This is the time to examine every step in your recruiting process and see where you could be more efficient – in other words do more with fewer resources, less time, or less money. What are you spending on job postings? Could that be reduced? Could you switch to using targeted emails or some other lower cost methods? Where are you spending the majority of your budget? How could you reduce that by 10%? 20%? What can you stop doing that really won’t hurt you?

By prioritizing and cutting, refocusing, and rethinking everything you do, you will end up with a much healthier function. You will better weather the recession and be poised to aggressively deal with the boom that will inevitably come.

Action Item #2: Be Nice

Every act of discourtesy to a candidate will eventually be reflected in how they talk about you to other people. Employment brands are built on small acts – not on the big campaigns or websites. A solid brand is the accumulation of years of good deeds, happy candidates, satisfied managers, and authentic communication. Many candidates will be stressed and perhaps out of a job. They need honest feedback and guidance, if possible, on how they present themselves.

Firms that take the extra time to sit down with a candidate or send them an email and let them know their status, possibilities, and even strengths and weaknesses will reap many benefits in a stronger brand.

Action Item #3: Ruthlessly Focus

Target your marketing and sourcing only on the kinds of people you most need. Cut out or reduce all the resources you spend on marginal activities. For example, you might reduce the use of agencies that recruit volume candidates, stretch out the time to fill less critical positions, or try to use some of the new social networking tools to reach out to certain groups of candidates.

Look at internal hiring and see if there isn’t a way to improve the number of employees who move. Talk to management about increasing that number and decrease external hiring.

The goal should be to attract mostly the types of candidates you need and who are qualified. You can use this slower time to experiment on messaging, screening techniques, and on ways to get fewer but better candidates.

Action Item #4: Use Technology – Experiment!

As always, I harp on using technology whenever you can. Social networking tools can help you create and build relationships with candidates. Most are very inexpensive or free.

Experiment with better, more frequent emails to certain candidates on your shortlist; create a newsletter or blog to give interested potential candidates updates on your organization; and experiment with tools such as Twitter, Broadlook, or Checkster.

Action Item #5: Build Relationships

I am more and more convinced that posting job descriptions is an archaic process. While I have no doubt that the practice will live on for a long time, it is not the best, cheapest, or fastest way to find good people.

Using technology to develop relationships and to communicate regularly with a selected and screened pool of candidates is the key to your real success.

In general, you are going to find only a few of the people you need by posting on Monster or any other job board. The most successful recruiters use their network, ask employees (and others) for referrals, and focus on building communities of potential candidates. This is what agencies and headhunters have been doing for decades and it’s why they have been successful.

Learn from product and service marketing how to do a better job. Watch how some leading organizations are using social media to attract and recruit candidates. Begin to generate candidates from relationships formed online. Make it a rule of thumb that if you are generating hundreds of responses to a job posting, you are doing something terribly wrong.

I guarantee that if you do all five of these things in an organization that is well-managed, you will survive this recession and become an example of how to positively deal with stressful times.