Articles from academics don’t always provide practical lessons, but there have been two recent ones that everyone in talent management should pay attention to.

The results of the first one focus on the output differential produced by top performers. This study published in February in Personnel Psychology which cut across several industries, revealed that the top 5 percent of the workforce at the researched firms produced 26 percent of the firm’s total output. The top-performing 5 percent produced 400 percent more than you would expect (26 percent rather than 5 percent).

That means that top performers have an incredibly high ROI because they produce more than four times more; however, they are generally paid less than 20 percent over an average worker in the same job.

Just like on the business side of the enterprise where the 80/20 rule prevails (80 percent of your profit comes from 20 percent of your products) there should be a similar 80/20 rule covering employee performance. This disproportional impact means that despite the fact that many in HR are enamored with the practice of “treating everyone equally,” it turns out that that approach may be well-intentioned but misguided because in business, just like sports and entertainment, top performers have a significantly higher business impact than the average. Top performers need to be prioritized.

Prioritization Is Also an Essential Element of Referral Programs (more…)

While within the HR community gamification is still catching on (I find a number of my clients don’t even know recognize the word) gaming, in all forms, is incredibly popular. When the latest Call of Duty video game was released in November, one in four workers planned to call in sick. Look at it from a productivity standpoint: The amount of hours it took to create all of Wikipedia’s content in 12 years … is spent every three weeks playing Angry Birds.

During Jane’s keynote speech, she cited the 2012 Gallup study that found that 71% of American employees aren’t fully engaged in their work, making it “impossible to innovate” and costing $30 billion in lost productivity annually.

It’s no surprise that she believes gamification can help. Evidently she’s not alone. A study by gamification company Gigya showed that gamification increases website engagement by 29 percent, website commenting by 13 percent, and social media sharing by 22 percent. Here are some recent employee gamification success stories. (more…)

At least to me, future agenda items are an important topic. Because after visiting well over 100 firms, I have found a dramatic difference between the agenda items that are found on 95% of the firms (cost per hire, ATS issues, req loads, etc.) and the truly advanced subjects that only elite recruiting firms like Google, DaVita, Sodexo, etc. would even attempt to tackle.

So if you have the responsibility for setting agendas or recruiting goals, here is my list of truly advanced recruiting topics that elite leaders would find compelling but that most others would simply find to be out of their reach. If you want to be among the elite, you should select a handful for implementation. However, even if you are currently overwhelmed by your current agenda, you might still find them to be interesting reading.

25 Advanced Recruiting Topics for Bold Corporate Recruiting Leaders (more…)

Even the best corporations that excel at recruiting routinely fail to realize that references and the reference process itself can be powerful sources for identifying and selling top talent.

References should be considered valuable recruiting targets because anyone who is given as a reference by top talent is almost always more experienced and knowledgeable then the individual who designated them as a reference. The availability/visibility of references has dramatically increased now that the names of references can be easily found on the Internet and within LinkedIn. As a result, smart recruiting leaders and recruiters should re-examine references as one of the most underused but cost-effective areas for identifying top talent.

The Top 8 Most Effective Reference-related Recruiting Approaches (more…)

The beginning of this year’s report spells out the demise of more simplistic views about source of hire tracking: that data is easy to get, that it is reliable across the board, and that it is clean (one source = one hire). If you’ve been in recruiting for more than a decade, you probably know that things weren’t much better before the Internet drove so much hiring activity. I remember laughably tracking sources of hire via a questionnaire we asked applicants (online and on paper) and trying to create data based on employee’s recollections of how they came to apply for their job 5-10 years ago.

So no data is perfect but this data is very imperfect. Still, it is the best set of data and analysis we have on sources of hire. With that monster-sized disclaimer out of the way, here are some of the results.

Referrals, Career Sites and Job Boards Top List Again

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Referrals and the company career site are the two leading sources for new workers hired by the 1,054 companies participating in SilkRoad’s just released study of recruitment marketing effectiveness.

Between them, they produced 40% of the more than 150,000 hires the companies made in 2012.

This is the second year the HR software provider has compiled ATS data from its customers to report on their source of hire. This year, the company included interviews as a measure of effectiveness.

The data set came from companies as small as 100 employees and some larger than 10,000; 60% had under 2,000 employees, 30% fall between 2,000 and 10,000, and the remaining 10% are larger. A company spokesman said the employers represent “the entire scale. We have lots of technology, healthcare, higher education, and several other strong verticals.”

As it did last year, SilkRoad found that job boards collectively yielded more interviews and hires than did all other external sourcing efforts. (For the report, SilkRoad classified corporate career sites and inside recruiter efforts as internal, explaining “they are company resources.” Company sites were included because they are “internally controlled element of job advertising.”)

Among the job boards, Indeed yielded more interviews and hires than any other single site. CareerBuilder was second. (more…)

This year, 37 of the 90 companies that entered won the two-year-old competition, seven of them with distinction. Most of the winners were large operations like Pepsico and Intel, with thousands or tens of thousands of employees. However, smaller firms like BTRG, with 500 or so employees, also made the list.

What all the participants share in common is a willingness to open their recruiting process to scrutiny.

Unlike almost every other HR award (excepting Great Places to Work designations), the Candidate Experience Awards are more report card than competition. Companies not only respond to a detailed survey about their recruiting practices, they also must submit their applicants — successful or not — who are also asked to complete a survey about the process. (more…)

A website for “challenges” students can take, leading to a job.

And, two big new launches from the applicant tracking company Jobvite.

All below. (more…)

It’s hard to find anything in recruiting that has failed to live up to its potential more than recruiting metrics. For nearly two decades recruiting leaders have poured resources into measuring recruiting success, and in most cases, the best that they have to show for it is being able to say “yes, we have metrics.” If you don’t know what’s wrong with most recruiting metrics, I have outlined in great detail in a previous article “what is wrong with metrics”).

So if you are a recruiting leader and you are frustrated or disappointed with your current metrics, this article will provide you with a list of the metrics that you should be using. I assure you that after reading this list you will definitely question your current metrics. The other possible option is that you may think that the metrics provided here are impossible, but you would be wrong (they are not).

Understanding the Three Time Periods That Metrics Should Cover (more…)

Anyhow, that’s all kinda hard to top. The four-person recruiting team led by Gabriela Garza-Ramos told me on a call Friday that, a year later, it has. (more…)

Smart HR managers should use Internal Employee Referral Programs (IERP) to provide high-quality employee names for internal transfers, promotions, and even openings on part-time project teams. The concept for internal referrals is the same as for external referrals, which is that great people know other great people and that most employees want to help the firm by contributing to the recruiting effort. The focus just shifts from external hires to using your employee’s internal network to finding top candidates for internal movement and promotions. An IERP has many advantages and benefits.

Benefits of Using Employee Referrals for Internal Openings

The many potential benefits of an IERP include: (more…)

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. –Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

As we emerge from the strains and exertions of 2012 and look to manage our recruiting efforts in the New Year, we are all sure to suffer one ongoing problem: distractions that will eat away at our time and our productivity. Too many things both online and off scream for our attention and too many people want a piece of our day. This is not good.

I believe that the time to clear off your desk and start afresh is now, and even more then the physical aspects of cleaning house are the mental aspects of knowing that if you have a job of any significant responsibility, the watchword for renewed success will be productivity. One’s ability to get their recruiting done despite the madness and the noise that puts us in the zone Stephen Covey referred to as “the thick of thin things” is an ongoing effort with which we all struggle. (If you have not read Covey’s seminal book the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People yet, I can’t imagine a better way to kickstart the year off in your favor.)

With this in mind, I offer 10 insights that will surely contribute to enhanced success as a recruiter in the year all of us are about to enter. (more…)

As the human resources director for one of the country’s fastest-growing private companies, I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing the highs and lows, the meltdowns and meaningful moments, and seen the best and worst in people, along with the downright bizarre.

While the previous list would make a great piece in itself, that’s not what I am most passionate about. What drives me is the opportunity I’ve been given, which has been hiring more than 1,000 extraordinary employees in the past five years, leading to recognition from Inc. Magazine as the nation’s No. 29 job creator — No. 1 in the financial and banking industry — and being listed on Fortune Magazine’s Great Place to Work list as the No. 21 best medium workplace.

Results like this are not the production of a boilerplate hiring method or template that fits every company, but the collective achievement of a unit that believes in working as a team to produce a superior end result for the user.

To understand what it takes to assemble a successful entity like Veterans United, read on before you hire your next applicant. (more…)

As consultants and trainers, we work with a lot of different recruitment teams, and regularly see companies doing more than just the referral basics these days. More than just “poster and pray,” sharing the program and bonus opportunity with new hires, or sending out recognition (from recruiting or the business leaders) to top referrers. And, individual recruiters are regularly soliciting referrals.

It’s one of the best low-hanging-fruit “direct sourcing” techniques out there. I mean, who doesn’t want warm leads for tough to fill jobs? But, how are they soliciting them? This actually matters. And the best recruiters do it a little differently.

Level 1: Who Do You Know Who’s Looking? (more…)

The end of the year is also a time where many individuals are reevaluating their current work and life situation and planning for the future. You may be skeptical but in this article I provide more than 20 reasons why corporate recruiting leaders should actually ramp up recruiting during the holiday season.

The Top 20 Reasons Why December Is a Powerful Time to Recruit (more…)

If you are a recruiting leader and you want to increase the quality of referrals and push the volume to near 50% of all hires, this article highlights the best practices in the area of employee rewards and motivation.

Motivating Employees to Make Quality Referrals (more…)

Requiring an updated resume in order to move forward slows down and occasionally stops employee referral efforts. Consider an alternative approach, which is offering an option to employees, so that all they must submit is a prospect’s name and contact information in order to begin the referral process. This approach is known as a “name-only” referral.

Why Requiring a Resume Creates a Roadblock (more…)

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 (more…)