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I was watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this weekend with my kids — I love that movie and not just because I have a crush on Johnny Depp! It is a fun movie — just lighthearted enough to keep the kids interested with just enough “life lessons” to allow my kids to watch it over and over again.

One of the parts I love about this movie is the scene where the squirrels can identify a good nut from a bad one. I was struck by how nice it would be if we, as HR professionals, could simply knock someone on the head and, depending on what we hear, know whether they were a good fit or not.

But alas, we don’t have that luxury; we have to ascertain whether a candidate is a good fit based on the information we have at the time. And, as most decisions go, the result is only as good as the data leading up to it.

Herein lies the foundation for the upcoming pre-conference workshop for the ERE Expo in San Diego. Recruiting Beyond the Job Description is a pre-conference workshop designed to help you take the data you have about a job, combined with the commitment you have as professionals, and build a recruitment and selection process that greatly increases the chances for a good organization and job fit. keep reading…

Most methods of hiring, retaining, developing, and managing recruiting and talent acquisition professionals are ineffective, non-strategic, and mostly outdated.

In my upcoming workshop at the spring ERE Expo, we’ll be discussing many of the common issues that are faced by those who manage and hire recruiters, and will share some of the most groundbreaking research in this arena.

For now, let’s discuss one issue in the hiring of recruiters, and one issue in the performance of recruiters and talent acquisition professionals.

Hiring Recruiters

It is safe to assume that most professionals enter the recruiting industry into highly transactional positions where performance is mostly measured by how much they “do.” keep reading…

I’ve often chatted with talent acquisition professionals about the global aspects of their business — an increasingly important focus. What I hear a lot of is that people have travelled to another country a few times, or have a friend or colleague there, and assume that they’re prepared to successfully recruit from their North American office or integrate into local culture if relocated. While unintentionally, many of us in North America make these assumptions about what recruiting and staffing are like based on our own experience.

Over 20 years I’ve learned that these assumptions in a global context rarely pay off. I often hear people say things like “Singapore is similar to Hong Kong because they are both in Asia”; or “Italy is similar to France because they are close to each other and in Europe.” Well, that is sort of like thinking the United States of America is similar to Mexico because they’re both part of the Americas. I think many of us in North America would shake our heads at this comparison, but it is not uncommon to develop plans based on what we know, and then take a few assumptions about the target location expecting to excel. Wrong! What works in our own space doesn’t necessarily translate when you cross a border, ocean, or even a region. At times, it can feel like you’ve brought your baseball bat to a cricket game — yes, the function seems the same, but without understanding the game, the home run is much more difficult to achieve.

This is why I’ve called on two of my esteemed peers, Danielle Monaghan and Roel Lambrichts, to join me at the upcoming ERE Expo Spring 2012 in San Diego for an open dialogue about creating and sustaining talent acquisition success on a global scale. Essentially, we’re inviting everyone to have coffee with us and join the discussion. I chose this type of session and dynamic presenter group because of the diverse backgrounds and global companies that have benefited from our expertise. Danielle is the HR director North Asia – Greater China, Japan, & Korea at Cisco Systems, based out of Beijing. Roel is the head of talent acquisition Europe for Coca-Cola Enterprises based out of Brussels.

You may have experienced the kinds of things we’re talking about here. If not, it’s likely you will in the future as companies continue to globalize. While “global recruiting” is a currently a buzzword in our profession, there is more to it than making some overseas calls and sifting through resumes. I know I made a lot of assumptions when I first started to recruit outside my own home region (more than 20 years ago); we all do.

I’ll never forget the “aha” moment when I realized the one-size-fits-all-model was not going to work. keep reading…

Just a bit of what I’m hearing here in Florida, at the annual fall gathering of hundreds of recruiters and companies in the recruiting, staffing, and human resources field: keep reading…

Many recruiters we meet believe that their value to their organization is predominately in identifying and bringing good candidates to the table. Yes, this is certainly your role (it says so in your job description), but it is only a part of your value.

Your value — what you can get done — depends on increasing your influence and strengthening your reputation. And part of that is presentation: not so much what you say but how you say it.

Presentation skills, or a person’s “presentation” is a package; a combination of tangible and intangible behaviors and skills, including:

• How you perform “on your feet”
• Appearance
• Poise
• Knowledge
• Preparation
• Value

How are you known in your organization? Are you known as someone who: keep reading…

We all know that a job description is not a job ad.

So why do we see so many boring, long, and legalistic job ads — postings that are really just job descriptions? I suspect it boils down to a few things:

• No time
• Not enough of the right kind of information about the job
• Outside pressures (from the hiring manager, other departments, etc.)
• A less-than-clear understanding of how to create an effective job ad

In a session at ERE’s fall conference, I’ll be tackling the challenge of creating compelling, enticing, and effective job ads. I’ll be looking at some of the best examples — and examining why the bad ones are so awful. I’ll talk about how a great job ad lowers your cost per hire and drives up the quality of your candidates. And I’ll cover why the art of creating a great job ad transcends any technological changes — be they social media, job boards, or ATSs.

Most importantly, I’ll break apart the different parts of a job ad and show you how they work, how to build them, and how to improve your recruiting results as you do so.

I encourage you to join me in “Job ads That Deliver Results,” Friday, September 9, from 2 to 3 p.m.

Innovation, as defined, is simply “the introduction of something new.” So, why is innovation all the rage? And, why is it reserved for product development or business process … rarely a cornerstone to the human resources strategy? Especially today — the workforce revolution is real, with boomers retiring, millennials entering, and retention and engagement paramount. The time is now for HR to claim the right to deliver innovation on par with our product organizations.

Innovation can be iterative and incremental or transformational. Regardless, it comes with struggles and triumphs. In September I’ll share with you glimpses of innovation and its trails and tribulations throughout my 25 years in HR and staffing, spanning from new recruiting models to internal placement to marketing campaigns.

One of the capstone victories in in my career is my most recent role with Cisco. I will share a true startup story of building the Staffing Innovation Organization: a high-performing, agile team that delivered a foreign yet transformational internal recruitment and retention process in this Fortune 100 company. You may have read about Cisco Talent Connection, which received the 2011 ERE Recruiting Excellence Award for the best retention program, but that was just the summary. At the Fall ERE Expo, we’ll discuss the roadmap of introducing and championing innovation within Staffing and HR at Cisco: lessons learned, successes, and tips for driving innovation in your own organizations.

You won’t want to miss this session, just like a summer box office hit — it comes with plot twists, special effects, and a dramatic ending. Looking forward to sharing my innovation journey.

Everyone knows that networking is critical to finding a job, or for schmoozing with senior leaders at your company. But networking is essential for talent acquisition leaders who want to do a great job. Why? Because leading a recruiting function is hard. Really hard. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not rocket science, but it’s a lot of moving pieces. And just one broken part can derail hiring throughout the company in a very visible way.

So what’s the connection to networking for talent acquisition leaders? Tricks, tips, good ideas, and best practices to constantly making improvements to the way we run the talent acquisition machine. Instead of constantly reinventing the wheel, as we tend to do, we need to take the time to step out of our frenetic schedules and connect, learn, and brainstorm with our peers. The payoff benefits your team, the talent acquisition function, your organization — and your own personal development.

How can we make this happen? Here’s one great idea: attend ERE in September in Florida. Really. It’s an inexpensive way to pack in a ton of networking, learning, best practices, and discussion into two days. You deserve it — and your company deserves it.

So what’s the big deal about strengthening your presentation skills? A lot, if increasing your influence with the hiring managers and creating a reputation as the “go to” person for recruiting is important to you. This is a description of presentation that goes far beyond the old interpretations of platform skills such as poise and dressing for success. While personal presentation and effective speaking are important elements of your presentation, there are several other elements that are equally potent though less conventionally addressed.

When faced with hiring managers who are busy (and some less interested then they should be) and with the best candidates shopping options, like it or not, how you present becomes as important (we would say more important) than what you present.

While brevity and fact-based presentation are key today, if what you present is a recitation of the facts about a candidate, ranking them using some algorithm, this can be, quite frankly, boring. How do you get the hiring manager to not only want to meet with you, but also to listen to you, seek your advice, and respond? It’s in your presentation. For example, when you start working with a hiring manager and as the process continues:

• Are you fearful about bothering them in approaching them with your concerns or questions?
• How responsive are you? Are you slow because you are seeking the “perfect candidate”?
• How good are you at building relationships?
• How focused are you on the hiring managers’ issues and needs? Have you inquired as to their key priorities for the role?
• Are you interesting to talk to and meet with? Do you bring energy, knowledge, and value-add ideas to the discussions?
• Do you conduct yourself like a peer or subordinate?

These questions reflect the “intangible” elements of presentation. Many recruiters we meet believe that their value is predominantly in identifying and bringing good candidates to the table. Yes, this is certainly their role, though only a part of their potential value. And strong presentation will help you expand your value.

Start acting like a peer, bring distinctive and useful knowledge to the discussion, demonstrate beyond what is expected, look and be impressive, and you will be seen differently. Presentation is a package, and the ol’ a la carte approach will only take you so far.

The Techniques for Highly Effective Recruiters pre-conference workshop we’re giving at the Fall Expo will address these issues and more to help you increase your effectiveness and impact as a recruiter in your organization. And yes — it’s in your presentation.

You see them everywhere: job ads that are little more than corporate gobbledygook, pulled from a job description more interested in covering legal points than communicating with humans.

Ask yourself: as a recruiter, is this really the best you can do?

I would suggest that, in fact, you can do better — and that doing better will bring you great rewards.

In the fall session of ERE’s conference, we will be tackling the challenge of creating compelling, enticing, and effective job ads. We’ll be looking at some of the best examples — and examining why the bad ones are so awful. We’ll talk about why the art of creating a great job ad transcends any technological changes, be they social media, job boards, or ATSs, and how a great job ad lowers your cost per hire and drives up the quality of your candidates.

But September is a long time from now, and I really want to get started — so I’m making an open call for the best and worst job ads you’ve seen (or even created yourself). keep reading…

Word on the street from San Diego is that Accenture is about to launch a new employee referral program using LinkedIn. It’ll make it easier for employees of Accenture — a perennial competitor for the best-referral-program ERE award — to see who among their contacts, based on people’s profiles, might fit into various Accenture job openings.

The company has tested out the tool and is very bullish on it. Accenture’s Sjoerd Gehring will be speaking at ERE’s big annual fall conference in Hollywood, Florida (September 7-9) on using LinkedIn as well as other tools — such as smart phones — in employee referrals.

Some of the event this week is being streamed live. Here’s some more scuttlebutt from the conference and from throughout the recruiting world today:

keep reading…

Those of a certain age will remember a very famous print advertisement that McGraw-Hill used to run. It was called “The Man in the Chair,” and featured an imposing looking gentleman sitting in a chair, staring intently at the reader, while the ad copy to the left of his picture read: “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know your company. I don’t know your company’s product. I don’t know what your company stands for. I don’t know your company’s customers. I don’t know your company’s record. I don’t know your company’s reputation. Now what was it you wanted to sell me?”

The moral at the bottom of the page was “Sales start before your salesman calls.” The message was straightforward: developing trust based vendor/customer relationships takes much more than a sales call, and the more you know about your customer up front the more likely you will be successful.

As requisition loads increase to frightening new levels, and because the ERE Expo in San Diego was approaching, I received dozens of inquiries from vendors eager to talk about their new product offerings. And while I love hearing about the latest and greatest tools and services, more often than not I feel a lot like the stern old man in the chair. keep reading…

If today’s employment report from payroll processor ADP is any indication, February was a good month for hiring. A very good month.

The 217,000 private sector jobs that ADP says were added during the shortest month of the year was the largest increase reported by the company since November 2006.

Based on ADP’s payroll data and compiled by Macroeconomic Advisers, the monthly Employment Report is considered a harbinger of the official Labor Department report that will be released Friday. While the two reports use different methodology and the government report includes public sector employment, the ADP report offers economists an early look at the employment trend.

Economists had been expecting the ADP report to show an increase of 170,000 to 180,000. Estimates for the government report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics average 200,000 more jobs in February, according to a survey by Dow Jones Newswires. keep reading…

In March’s ERE Expo (San Diego) I’ll be presenting the final general session on Vision and its relationship to what we do. This topic was inspired by the recent democratic Egyptian revolution in Egypt. It really made me think about so many things and I wanted to share some of them with you. At the conference I’ll share much more about my thoughts on this, but for now I’ll concentrate on the subject of having Vision and how, in so many ways, the Egyptian revolution is a result of visionary recruiting. keep reading…

This March at the ERE Expo attendees (and those watching the live video stream) will be treated to something new. For the first time in the Expo’s history three of the longest-running ERE authors (Kevin Wheeler, Lou Adler, and myself) will come together for a live crossfire to respond to your questions and top issues. For nearly 14 years the three of us have shared our perspective on strategic issues, current trends, and emerging issues, sometimes agreeing, sometimes not.

In recent weeks the three of us have tackled a number of topics including the growing influence of social media, the future of recruitment process outsourcing, and improving functional efficiency and effectiveness. While these topics are likely to emerge during the crossfire so too are many others. The top-20-plus subjects on my mind heading into the crossfire include:  keep reading…

Last week I had the pleasure of serving as the chairperson of the Fall ERE Expo in Hollywood, Florida. During my opening remarks, I discussed five things that are “keeping senior recruiting leaders up at night.” The list seemed to resonate with the crowd at the Expo, as many took time to talk to me about it. It was created at a “Recruiting Summit” hosted by CareerXroads on August 17th in Oak Park, Illinois, and Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin get the credit for pulling many different responses together into these five coherent themes.

The survey, while not scientific in manner, included input from over 20 powerhouse organizations, including Wal-Mart, Lockheed Martin, Kimberly Clark, Lilly, Campbell’s, Limited Brands, Cargill, State Farm, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Target, and others. The five items, along with my commentary, are presented below: keep reading…

If you are not one of the nearly 500 people getting set to converge on South Florida Wednesday for ERE Expo 2010 Fall, you aren’t totally out of luck.

As has become the norm for all of our events for the past 2 years, we will be live streaming many of the sessions for free for those of you who can’t make the trip.

Of course we can’t bring you all of the benefits of attending the events live in person like the tremendous networking and access to our expert speaker faculty, but if it is not an option for you to be there in person, clear your schedule for Wednesday and Thursday so you can take advantage of the stream.

This year, you will find some new ways to participate in the Expo, including a way to submit questions directly to the speakers during the sessions — both via email and phone. Everything will be taking place at www.ereexpo.com/2010fall/live/, so make sure you bookmark that page!

Here is a schedule of what sessions will be streamed: Note: All times listed are EST keep reading…

The Fall ERE Expo is less than three months away (Oct 26-28 in Hollywood, FL to be precise). Maybe you’re thinking about coming, but you’re still firmly straddling that fence. Maybe you’ve already ruled it out. In either case, here are three reasons why you need to make this a priority.

Take Time to Think Strategically

Years ago when attending a week-long management development class in the foothills west of Denver, I had the chance to participate in an interesting exercise. We were told to “go outside, walk around, and think strategically.” For the next hour, I meandered around in a daze, and my brain started to hurt. Was I really thinking strategically? How did I know for sure? Was I confusing tactics for strategy? What would I report on to the class when the exercise was over? Would others laugh at me and say “THAT’S NOT STRATEGIC!” Well, you get the idea.

In the end, the point of this exercise was simply that if you don’t separate yourself from the day-to-day minutia of your job (and life), it’s really hard to take a step back and think strategically.

During my career, I’ve attended seven ERE Expos (side note … I should propose a “Frequent Attender” loyalty program: attend nine conferences, get the 10th free!). Anyway, each one gave me a great opportunity to step away from the day-to-day craziness of running a recruiting team and deeply reflect on what we were doing, and where we were going. From personal experience, I can tell you that sitting on a beautiful beach in South Florida is a great place to do this reflection.

Here are three suggestions to get you started on your beachside strategic thinking: keep reading…

“Better late than never.”

Even though ERE Expo ’09 (Spring) ended more than a month ago, I thought of writing this piece connected to that event. Thanks to an invitation from Todd Raphael of ERE, I flew down to San Diego from India and enjoyed making a presentation on “10 Secrets-to-Success of Employee Referrals in India.” It was one of the breakout sessions and obviously many had other choices to attend. To those who I missed interacting with, I am now making an attempt to share my thoughts again through this medium.

Before I got into the main theme of my presentation I shared some thoughts about India. I assumed that most in the audience would not have experienced India and hence a small introduction helped them to appreciate the context. My PowerPoint presentation is embedded below, along with this write-up. It will be good to go through that with the following synopsis in mind: keep reading…

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.)

keep reading…