ERE.net

This eighth year of the ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards brought applications from big corporations, small companies, government agencies in the U.S., and consultancies in India. In some categories there were runaway winners, and in others, there were knock-down, drag-out barn-burners.

As fun as it is to judge, it was taken seriously. Some applicants used every hour of their midnight, January 6 deadline (we know — we were on the phone answering their questions) and judges used every minute of theirs (we know for the same reason). Judges wrote lengthy explanations of their choices, and some created algorithms to rank each applicant, and sent us the spreadsheets they created as living proof.

Anyhow, it sounds trite, but great work’s being done, in many cases under challenging circumstances. Some of the companies that didn’t win were so good that we hope they apply again, or share their stories on ERE.net webinars or at future conferences. As for next spring’s conference in San Diego, that’s where the winners will be announced, and that’s where they’ll take questions from you as to how they succeeded, overcame hurdles, and what’s in store next. Without further ado, here are the finalists in alphabetical order within the categories:

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A big congratulations to this year’s recipients of the ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards. They’ll be in the good company of past winners such as EY, Sodexo, DaVita, Starbucks, and Enterprise.

They were named today at the ERE Expo in San Diego. They also answered questions here from the audience, a super-interesting q-and-a session available online (see 10 a.m. on the 24th).

Beyond that, you’ll hear about the winners in multiple venues, including upcoming articles on this website, at this Fall’s conference in Hollywood Florida (September 7-9; expect to see Cisco, Accenture, Deloitte, and others on the agenda), and more.

You read about the finalists. Here are the winners. keep reading…

This was the seventh year of the ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards, but it was the military talent category, added for the first time, that was mentioned by more judges than any other category, as employers searched for creative ways to attract the many returnees coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq.

One judge (Rob Dromgoole) wrote on Facebook:

Finished voting for Recruiting Department of 2010 and Military Recruiting Program of Year 2010 for ERE. Lots of great applications. I’m humbled by how great some programs are.

And another (Gerry Crispin) emailed to say about the “military talent” category:

EVERY ONE of the Public and Private Companies and Agency firms who submitted to this category are winners. They are ALL engaged in ensuring that an underutilized but highly prized segment of our population is getting up to bat for jobs and competing for openings.

The judges took this project seriously, some showing me the spreadsheets and algorithms they created to keep track of their entries and sending me feedback on what worked and what didn’t.

As always, you’ll hear a lot more about the finalists throughout the year. At the Spring conference in San Diego, the winners will be announced, and you’ll be able to ask them how they did it, how they overcame challenges, and so on. We’ll also talk about them more on this site, in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, on the ERE.net site, and we’ll ask some to speak at ERE’s Fall Conference in Florida (September 7-9, 2011).

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

keep reading…

In my experience, there is no single action that has a greater impact on your employer brand image then by winning an external award for excellence in your people management programs. It is the equivalent to winning an Oscar for a movie. This external assessment sends a message to everyone heralding the quality of your work. Winning an award sends a credible and believable message that you have “excellent people management programs.”

That message is judged to be authentic in large part because the message verifying the quality of your work came from a neutral third party conducting a side-by-side external competition between multiple firms. Potential applicants don’t automatically believe what they read on your corporate website, but your believability goes up significantly when your message is supported by this external award. In addition to employer brand building, winning an award also increases your function’s internal credibility and prestige among your organization’s executives. This additional credibility is especially important in areas like HR that rely on “soft metrics,” which executives frequently view with a skeptical eye. If you fear that executives are unsure about their assessment of your performance or level of innovativeness, an external award can quickly dispel any doubts that they might have about the quality of your work. keep reading…

If you have read parts one through three, you already know that despite a down economy, a good number of organizations documented the need for innovation and made the business case for change in their organizations. The focus on supporting applicants using mobile technology was common, as were efforts to improve quality of hire, plan more effectively, and drive retention.

Notably absent from this year’s awards: a major focus on diversity. For the first time since the awards program’s inception, not enough applications were received in the category to enable adequate comparison. Did diversity drop in importance, or have diversity recruiting efforts become so embedded that organizations no longer evaluate them on a standalone basis?

In this final installment, I’ll look at the practices of two organizations that pulled their practices together to make the case as to why they should be considered the Function of the Year. keep reading…

In parts one and two of this series we covered the best practices of the winner and finalist in the employee referral, employer branding, and corporate career site categories of this year’s ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards. It’s hard to capture using just a few bullet points the degree to which organizations selected have thought through their efforts, but as you are reading through the series, I hope you are comparing your organization and contemplating how you stack up. The one thing that separates nearly all winners from the rest of the pack is the relentless application of learning to improve existing processes or devise new ones.

This installment will cover the college recruiting, retention, and strategic use of technology categories. keep reading…

In part two of this four part series covering the ERE Recruiting Excellence Award winners, we’ll take a look at how leading organizations are positioning themselves via employer branding and telling their story via their career websites. Always popular categories, this year drew numerous applications as more organizations realized the power of differentiating themselves in a highly competitive labor market despite economic turbulence around the world. keep reading…

In a fast-changing world, organizations must stay abreast of trends and best practices in recruiting and talent management. Unfortunately, when economic downturns occur, many firms slack off on benchmarking and assume that they will be able to catch up later. Conversely, the best of the best take advantage of downturns as an opportune time to catch up, develop a strategic plan, and advance their craft in ways laggards find hard to emulate when demand spikes.

In my experience, there’s no better way to identify the best firms and their best practices in talent management than to examine the accomplishments of the finalists and winners in ere.net’s annual recruiting excellence awards competition. Like in past years, this year’s participants have done some amazing things that are certainly worth emulating.

Each year, applications for consideration in one or more of the awards program’s eight categories come in from all over the globe. There is a good mix of large, medium, and smaller organizations, and a wide cross section of industries represented. As one of the judges who has evaluated entries since the award program’s inception, I like to conduct a deep analysis into what challenges participants are addressing, and what innovations they are developing in response.

This four-part series will highlight some of the amazing practices that earned organizations a spot as a finalist. While not all of the practices described may be ideal for your organization, in general they are practices that the judging panel finds indicative of world-class recruiting in progressive talent management organizations. keep reading…

You love your company. You love its culture, its people, its products. And you feel great coming to work every day.

But would you get the company’s logo tattooed on your arm?

Michael Long did. And he only officially become an employee at tech hosting company Rackspace this month.

Here he is, though, at last week’s South By Southwest getting his tat as bemused onlookers take pictures. keep reading…

A big congratulations to this year’s recipients of the ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards. They’ll be in the good company of past winners such as Starbucks, Deloitte, and Enterprise.

You’ll hear about the winners in multiple venues, including upcoming articles on this website, as well as at this week’s conference in San Diego, this Fall’s conference in Hollywood Florida (October 26-27-28), and in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. keep reading…

Coming off of a year of layoffs, pay and hiring freezes, bankruptcies, and bailouts, one would think it’s not the year for a recruiting award.

Think again.

ERE Recruiting Excellence Award applicants found creative ways to redeploy employees, including recruiters, avoiding layoffs and saving money. Others used the recession to redo their career websites, build a new employee-pipelining tool, and change its sources of hire to upgrade the technologically savviness of its workforce.

The judges were impressed. They were diligent and inquisitive, too, so to all judges, thanks.

Here are this year’s finalists. As always, you’ll hear a lot more about them throughout the year — in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, on this site, at ERE’s Fall Conference in Florida (October 26-27-28), and in the Spring.

As for the Spring ERE Expo in San Diego, there’ll be a reception Monday night where some information on the finalists will be available. The next day, the winners will be announced in front of the whole conference audience, and you’ll be able to ask them questions.

This year’s finalists, in alphabetical order within each category: keep reading…

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:

keep reading…

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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