ERE.net

The interviewee queried the Microsoft Hardware Interviewer: “What is Microsoft’s commitment to hardware?” The applicant continued: “While, Microsoft is known for software, what is your vision for the hardware business?“

This scene played out over and over. Sometimes the candidate would even be looking over the interviewer’s shoulder without noticing the poster proudly displayed behind the Microsoft hiring manager. Yes, after 25 years, we were still getting those questions.

That was two years ago. Since then, we have changed the perception of Microsoft Hardware. We have changed the brand Hardware@Microsoft. Hardware@Microsoft has become a profession. The average “person on the street” may not know anything about Hardware@Microsoft. But a target audience of engineers who work in hardware will know about the importance of hardware in terms of Microsoft’s business vision.

ERE acknowledged our work with a “Most Strategic Use of Technology Award” and industry thought leaders like Dr. John Sullivan called our work “pioneering.” (In fairness, this award was shared by a talented group of colleagues who created View My World and incidentally just launched a new careers site.) While being recognized by one’s industry is flattering, the real success of our work was in solving a business need in our division.

The story of making Hardware@Microsoft a profession was an answer to a critical business issue.

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It has been an amazing year in recruiting and talent management. Despite severe economic hardships, budget cuts, and hiring freezes, recruiting functions have continued to innovate and stretch the limits of “standard recruiting.”

After evaluating hundreds of applications, here is part two of the list of best practices in recruiting that I recommend you emulate.

(This article was updated May 4, 2009; it originally said that GE Healthcare “abandoned its outsourcing model,” but this was incorrect. It did not.)

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It has been an amazing year in recruiting and talent management, despite severe economic hardships, budget cuts, and widespread hiring freezes.

Unlike the economic turmoil following 9/11 and the dot-com bubble burst, many recruiting functions have continued to innovate and stretch the limits of what can be defined as “standard recruiting.”

If you work in an organization that has given up on innovation and instead has adopted a survival strategy, it’s important to realize that many of your competitors are not standing still. If your organization chooses to wait for an economic recovery to begin modernizing their recruiting practices, you may find it nearly impossible to catch up.

One of the challenges in the fast-moving profession of recruiting is how to keep up with the latest evolutions in best practice. In my experience, there’s no better place to learn about practical tools and applications in recruiting and talent management than ERE.net.

Fortunately, ERE Media holds a yearly global competition aimed at identifying the very best “next practices” in recruiting. Each year, ERE receives hundreds of applications in eight recruiting program categories from well-known organizations like Microsoft, IBM, Ernst & Young, Intuit, Accenture, GE, Yahoo!, and from less well-known but equally innovative organizations like DaVita, the American Cancer Society, and Tata.

Fortunately, as a judge for the Recruiting Excellence Awards, I’m given the opportunity to highlight some of these amazing practices that your organization should consider adopting.

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About two-thirds of companies use “time to fill” as a metric, a measurement that Stephen Lowisz, for one, pooh-poohs.

Tony Blake, of last night’s recruiting-department-of-the-year award-winner DaVita, says the “infamous time-to-fill metric is somewhat of a necessary evil in recruiting.”

But, Blake said today at ERE’s Spring conference, a better metric is “time to find.” This is the time beginning when a job request comes in, ending in the time the recruiter sends the candidate to the hiring manager.

“If it took five weeks to fill the job,” Blake says, “but if they sent the job to the hiring manager after seven days, the time-to-find is seven days. The great sourcers on our team are literally sending great candidates in the first 10-14 days of the process.”

By lowering registered nurse time-to-fill 15.1%, DaVita saved $5.5M in potential overtime and contract nursing costs, while filling over 3,300 registered nurse positions.

Last night in San Diego, the winners of the 2009 Recruiting Excellence Awards were announced. After an intense judging process that lasted over a month, the finalists gathered in San Diego for the annual ceremony and dinner that kicks off the spring ERE Expo.

Congrats to this year’s winners:

• Best College Recruiting Program – Ernst & Young
• Best Corporate Careers Website – Yahoo
• Best Diversity Program – Microsoft
• Best Employee Referral Program – Accenture
• Best Employer Brand – Ernst & Young
• Best Retention Program/Practices – American Cancer Society
• Best Strategic Use of Technology – Microsoft
• Recruiting Department/Function of the Year – DaVita

Of course, none of this could have been accomplished without the incredibly hard work of our esteemed judging panel who graciously volunteered hours of their time to go through the entries.

If you want to learn more about what they did, tune in this afternoon to the live stream from ERE Expo at 11:15 a.m. PDT to watch the special panel session where many of the winners and finalists (including Valerie Kennerson, pictured, from the American Cancer Society) plan on sharing information about their winning strategies and tactics.

I’m thinking you’ve got a branding challenge if you’re trying to attract people to work in the inner-city — as public school teachers.

The New York City school system, a 2009 ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards finalist, is doing something about it. The department of education, which has to hire 4,000-7,000 teachers every year, or about 7% of its workforce, wasn’t happy with the quality of the teachers it was recruiting. It redid its brand to try to attract passive candidates who are high achieving, intellectually curious, and highly motivated.

It came up with an “I Teach NYC, Because it Teaches Me” motto to use on its website and elsewhere. The “elsewhere” includes a Twitter profile, a wiki for teachers and applicants, and a Facebook fan page launched June 2008. That Facebook page exceeded 3,000 page views per week during the peak time at the end of August 2008.

With the Ad Council, it also made videos — like the one I embedded below that made me wish my math and music classes in school were a lot more fun.

After about months of the branding initiative, it’s a tad too early to judge the quality of hire being generated. What we do know is that about half of the school system’s Facebook fans are over 25. These are folks who have work experience, and are exactly who the system’s trying to attract.

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It wasn’t easy!

We judges worked down to the wire to make decisions on this year’s awards, which in some categories were closer than a Minnesota Senate election.

I’m excited to see some new names and faces this year, like the American Cancer Society and the New York City Department of Education (expect something from me about the latter organization soon). They’ll join some familiar names, including 2008 double-honoree Ernst & Young, who are finalists for the 2009 ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards. They’ll all be honored in San Diego in conjuction with the ERE Expo, where the winners will be named.

I like that more non-U.S. companies seem to apply each year. And some are finalists this year, including Warehouse Stationery from New Zealand, as well as India’s Tata, and others.

Many of the companies — even though they’re on a list of finalists for a recruiting award — are slowing their hiring or laying people off — but many, like Microsoft, are hiring, too. Not surprisingly, doing-more-with-less was a common theme of many applications, as was the use of social media, and the need for employer brands that stand out in the crowded media market.

It was great working with the judges, who asked good questions, and volunteered a lot of their time.

You’ll hear more about the winners and finalists on ERE.net. Some of the winners and finalists will be on a panel at the Spring Expo (as will some of last year’s, like David York from KPMG, Indrajit Sen from Aricent, and Greg Spangle from Aimco). And I’m working on some in-depth articles about the honorees that’ll go in the Journal (ERE’s print publication geared toward recruiting leaders).

This year’s finalists for each category, in alphabetical order in each category:

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One of the challenges in the fast-moving profession of recruiting is how to keep up with the latest evolutions in best practices at the best firms. Fortunately, it’s a little easier to learn about the emerging benchmark best practices as a result of ERE Media’s Recruiting Excellence Awards, which honor the most strategic and innovative global recruiting practices developed throughout the year.

The awards banquet, which usually kicks off the Spring Expo, was an excellent start to the event that has become the pinnacle meeting point for the best and brightest in the profession. This year, more than 1,100 recruiting professionals and vendors descended upon San Diego, California to learn about organizations that are breaking new ground by becoming more businesslike and analytical.

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Last week I attended the biannual ERE Expo recruiting conference, the premier event for identifying best practices in recruiting and talent management. Attending it provided many examples of practices others would want to emulate. It also reminded me of several best practices that occur throughout the recruiting profession.

Unfortunately, not all companies are allowed to talk in public about their best practices, and almost all are reluctant to brag about them in the media. Fortunately, one of the things I specialize in is tracking best practices and what I call “next” practices. Below you’ll find some of my favorite best practices that you might want to consider emulating.

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article by Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett It’s no secret that some of the best engineers in the software industry didn’t graduate from MIT or Caltech, or any top-ranked school for that matter. It’s also true that some of the best chefs in the country didn’t attend a well-known culinary school, or intern in a world-famous restaurant. Our point is that oftentimes the best talent doesn’t exist in the talent pool recruiters so often cast their line into, but rather in the shallow ponds that often get overlooked. For a growing number of talent-savvy organizations, the solution to finding the prized fish in the shallow pond lies in awards programs and talent contests.

You may not have realized it, but a growing number of functional excellence awards programs are promoted, sponsored, and, in some cases, even organized by corporations. From math challenges to contests aimed at identifying the best customer service associate in a local geography, these events are quickly becoming a powerful tool used by organizations to build a who’s who database of talent. Even events that are not corporate affiliated are hunting grounds for good recruiters. Why are contents growing in popularity? Well, isn’t it obvious? If you wanted the fastest runner, what better way to find him or her than to wait at the finish line of a foot race? If you wanted someone that could dunk a basketball, the winner of a slam-dunk contest would be an obvious choice. Want the best golfer? Look for the one with the brand new tacky green jacket (at the Masters).

Finding the best in business is just as easy. If you want to identify the very best, it should be obvious that you should target any process that sorts through hundreds of professionals and then identifies the very best. Now is the time to begin looking at the winners of professional awards and contests as recruiting targets. Better yet, maybe you should consider sponsoring your own contest as a sourcing channel. The very best are not hard to find; their names have just been called as award winners.

Recruiting at Contests? I’ve Never Heard of That!

Now, maybe you’re thinking to yourself, “I’ve never heard of that before,” or “My company would never do that.” But, before you start thinking negatively, realize that the practice is actually quite common. Notable firms like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Intel, UBS, Bloomberg, Motorola, and even the National Security Agency have used contests as recruiting mechanisms. If you haven’t used them, you’re missing out on one of the most cost-effective mechanisms for identifying the very best. If you haven’t seen it, it might be because most awards and contest recruiting is stealthy.

The Benefits of Recruiting Contest and Award Winners

There are numerous reasons why you should recruit contest and award winners. Some of the primary reasons include:

• It’s easy. Finding the winners is incredibly easy because the names of the winners and the finalists are almost always published.

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article by Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett

Whether you’re a recruiter for a large or a small organization, it’s critical to keep up with the latest best practices, approaches and strategies. Through the ER Excellence Awards, ER Expos, and other niche events, ERE staffers and columnists help identify and share the leading-edge best practices in recruiting. Last week, more than 700 recruiting professionals descended upon sunny San Diego for ERE’s West Coast expo, an event that has become the pinnacle meeting point for the best and brightest of the profession. The event kicked off with several pre-conference workshops and the ERE awards dinner and ceremony, which showcased a number of organizations breaking new ground and radically redefining what strategic staffing means. As the conference chairman and a judge in the awards review process, I am privileged to be able to share with you some of the very best practices worthy of emulating. In keeping with the structure of the awards, the best practices are presented below, categorized by the award which recognizes them.

Recruiting Leader of the Year, Best Use of Metrics, and Best Recruiting Process: Dan Hilbert, Valero Energy

What Dan Hilbert and his team at Valero Energy have accomplished will forever change the strategic options that recruiting directors must consider. They have developed what may be the world’s most strategic staffing approach, one that emphasizes using metrics to refine “talent pipelines” to produce a talent supply chain. Leveraging technology, advanced analytics, and process design/integration, Valero has built a talent supply chain that is virtually automated and proactive. It is clearly the most business-like recruiting approach anywhere and Hilbert is a courageous leader to even attempt it. Best practices include:

• Predictive labor needs system. Algorithms analyze historical data that is combined with data on planned capital projects to predict future talent needs as far as three years’ out.

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article by Dr. John Sullivan & Master Burnett

One of the goals of this weekly column is to celebrate the best practices of the recruiting profession. In line with that effort, I’m happy to report that the Wall Street Journal has recently run an entire story focusing exclusively on the accomplishments of one of our own, Trudy Knoepke-Campbell of HealthEast. It’s important to recognize this rare event not only because it provides an opportunity to learn from HealthEast’s best practices, but also, more importantly, because it also might be an indication that the Wall Street Journal, the benchmark business newspaper, has begun to recognize the importance of recruiting. Although the Wall Street Journal does occasional feature stories highlighting recruiting trends, it is extremely rare for them to write an entire article highlighting the recruiting best practices of a single firm. We view such recognition by the prestigious newspaper to be just another indication that recruiting is recognized by those outside the profession as something that is of increasing interest to a wider business audience, because it is a function that can have direct measurable business impacts.

From Minneapolis-St. Paul to Wall Street

On October 3, 2005, The Wall Street Journal profiled Ms. Knoepke Campbell in its Theory and Practice column, which appears in the Managing section of the paper (click here to read the column). The column is dedicated to looking at the people and ideas that are demonstrating an impact and influencing managers. Ms Knoepke-Campbell, who tends to shy away from public recognition, says, “My jaw still drops every time I think about it. I was in the Wall Street Journal.” Proud she should, be because we estimate, as external observers, that the changes that HealthEast’s team have designed could have a positive dollar impact of over $23 million.

Stepping Up in a Time When Most Are Letting Down

Twenty-three months ago, this ERE column highlighted the efforts of HealthEast’s team to embrace the new DNA of HR and implement practices senior corporate leaders would clearly view as demonstrating a positive impact on the business. That column detailed the efforts of Ms. Knoepke-Campbell’s team to devise and implement best practices in the area of recruiting and workforce planning for the HealthEast Care System, a hospital system operating four hospitals, numerous clinics, home care, and medical transportation in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota. Fast-forward nearly two years later, and you find a story worthy of the Theory and Practice column in The Wall Street Journal. The Trudy Knoepke-Campbell story is truly one about a professional stepping up to meeting the expectations and needs of the business during a time when most practitioners are letting their organizations down. Survey after survey reveals that most corporate leaders are beyond being frustrated with their HR function; they’re downright unhappy. The Watson Wyatt Human Resource Scorecard Alliance found that while 83% of senior line managers consider the major HR functions critical to the success of the business, only 34% rate the performance of their organization in those areas as being “good” or better.

Contrast that rating with this one: 93.8% — the percentage of line managers surveyed at HealthEast Care System who stated that the recent work of Ms. Knoepke-Campbell and her colleagues to implement new selection tools and improve the processes were adding significant value to the business. Behind this story, and everything that HealthEast is doing with regards to workforce planning, is a theme, one we all could learn from: Stop defending the status quo because it is how “we have always done it,” and embrace new tools and processes that more accurately fit the current business environment. As director of workforce planning, Ms. Knoepke-Campbell, is charged with developing and implementing tools that ensure the hospital system has access to the right volume of employees at the right time and in the right location. While many would accept this role as an administrative one, Ms. Knoepke-Campbell sees it as a leadership role, a job not focused on mere forecasting, but rather one focused on investigating the needs of the business and devising workforce and recruiting strategies to fit those needs.

The Background

Trudy Knoepke-Campbell joined HealthEast Care System in the fall of 1999 as their first-ever director of workforce planning after completing more than 15 interviews. Her primary motivation for taking the job was that it gave her the opportunity to once and for all prove that compensation was not always to blame for people leaving an organization. At that time, the staffing situation at HealthEast wasn’t pretty. Vacancies in several key areas were forcing the organization to contemplate cutting back on critical services, and temporary staffing service utilization was driving labor costs through the roof. The vacancy rate in radiology for nuclear medicine technicians was especially acute: 58% of the allocated positions were vacant. Using temporary staff to fill just this void was costing the hospital group an estimated $1 million a year.

Major Successes

Both the WSJ column and our ERE profile of excellence highlighted the major quantifiable accomplishments of HealthEast’s team. Some of them include:

• “Best place to work” awards. HealthEast was ranked number one within the large business category as one of the great places to work in Minnesota for 2005 by The Business Journal. HealthEast was the only healthcare organization to be recognized among the 175 companies nominated. The Minnesota Hospital Association also recognized HealthEast in 2004 as the Best Hospital Workplace.

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