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I was just reviewing the predictions I made for 2011 written at roughly this time a year ago. Much of what I thought would happen unfolded as expected, except for talent management. I had thought there would more focus on integrating the employee development and recruitment functions, and more internal hiring. I still think that’s on tap for this year. I was on target regarding hiring: There was no great uptick in the volume of hiring, and unemployment remained static. And I was on target with predicting that social media would be core to recruiting success and that RPOs would thrive.

Over the past two years, the way we think about work has changed. Perhaps accelerated by the recession, there is more focus now on finding satisfying and rewarding work than on just finding a job that pays the most.

More people are thinking about finding something interesting, challenging, and perhaps even fun to do that provides enough income. The key words here are interesting/challenging and enough. Fewer expect to get rich and there is less focus on the money. There is more focus on lifestyle, flexibility, free time to pursue other learning or hobbies or sports, and less interest in family. I’ll do more columns on these trends soon, but partly because of them here are the major changes that I see happening this year.

Internal Recruiting Goes Mainstream

Perhaps one of the most significant trends will be a greater focus on finding current employees to fill existing jobs. keep reading…

ADP, best known by the adjective “payroll processor,” will need to launch a rebranding campaign. Something like, “ADP, the full-service human capital company.”

The $10 billion company announced today it is acquiring The RightThing, a leading recruitment process outsourcer, which three years ago acquired AIRS. Terms of the deal weren’t announced.

It’s the second acquisition for ADP in as many months. In September it bought Asparity Decision Solutions, a supplier of  employee health benefits decision support tools.

Besides giving ADP a strong and immediate presence in the burgeoning RPO business, The RightThing’s AIRS unit brings a sophisticated recruitment technology and a well-regarded recruiter Internet training component.

However, the announcement strongly suggests that it was the RPO side of the house that ADP was after in the acquisition. keep reading…

Doing less with more. We measure it. Monitor it. Optimize it. Benchmark it. Roll it. So many schools of thought channeling through webinars, blogs, SMS feeds, etc. assail the minds of talent acquisition leaders daily. It can be hard to take the time to process it all, let alone roll out a custom implementation when what is really needed today is a purple squirrel with an engineering degree willing to relocate for less money. Late nights at the office resuscitated the question, “Can we get back some of the time we spent executing necessary, yet time-consuming transactional activities and reallocate the team’s time to more strategic client-facing initiatives and management’s time to taking care of the team?”

I approached this conundrum earlier in my career with the help of my talent acquisition team at that time. As we began an examination our own processes, we tried to keep a “lean-esque” perspective on what we see is the incremental value recognized through individual process steps. The central challenge became whether we could change the way in which something is executed, while still retaining (or increasing) its incremental value. Ultimately, can we do it quicker, cheaper, and not cannibalize our effectiveness and efficiency?

keep reading…

As the years have rolled by I have become increasingly aware of how poorly internal recruiting functions perform when compared to recruitment process outsourcing organizations or agencies. These have to make a profit or go out of business. They have to operate efficiently and continue to innovate and stay ahead of the demands or questions that clients will have.

Internal functions don’t have to do any of these things. They are entrenched in almost all organizations, and because their function is perceived as incidental to overall organizational performance or success, not much in the way of efficiency is really expected or, unfortunately, rewarded. This means that few recruiting leaders have any incentive to improve their function. In fact, doing so may mean a smaller budget, less headcount, and even less status.

So this leads to the headline question: Do we need an internal function at all? Does it do something that an external provider cannot do? Can it do it at least as cheap or as fast? Can it provide a higher-caliber candidate?

Some thoughts: keep reading…

Even though we are in an economic down cycle and unemployment in the U.S. is hovering around 10%, recruiters are still struggling to find people with the skills and experience their hiring managers are looking for.

Partly this is driven by the commonly held assumption that these skilled and experienced people have been affected by the recession and are actually in the job market. Recruiters know this is not the case and that many candidates have become even more difficult to find and entice away from a secure position.

While demand for lesser-experienced, educated, and skilled candidates has slacked, it has risen for those with higher-level skills. Many firms are trying to replace the employees they had with moderate skills or who were in learning roles, with people already accomplished in their profession. keep reading…

John Smith began 2010 with the hope that hiring would ramp up slowly over the year and that he would be able to re-establish his crackerjack sourcing team that was eliminated in 2009. He believed that sourcing passive candidates off the Internet would provide enough candidates, with very little need for job postings or agency involvement.

Instead, he found that hiring in some niche areas greatly exceeded his expectations, but that overall, hiring was slow. The slew of candidates just applying for anything grew all year, swamping his team’s ability to evaluate and respond to each candidate. But at the same time, the candidates he desperately needed were not among them. Internet searching turned up a few candidates, as did employee referrals, but there were many unfilled requisitions as 2010 came to a close.

As he crafted his plans for 2011, he pondered the use of social media, which they had only dabbled in and not very successfully in 2010, and well as whether he really needed his sourcing team — at least as it had been designed with a heavy emphasis on Internet sourcing of passive candidates.

If this story rings true to you, here are some ideas on what 2011 may bring. keep reading…

What does it mean when a recruiter in Texas announces a line of recruiter fashion and another one in Santa Monica launches a website offering “management and employee removal services?”

That we are in the dog days of August? That we’ve been in the summer sun too long? That I’m being Punk’d?

Turns out the press releases about these ventures are for real.

The LeafBuilder clothing line is an assortment of T-shirts that you use to flaunt your recruiting prowess. The number of maple leafs on the shirts corresponds to your placements — and the price. The entry-level T with a single leaf (corresponding to between 1 and 1,999 candidate placements) is $21.95.

Make it into the agency ownership ranks and a seven leaf, long-sleeved version will set you back $293.95. Somewhere on the site there’s a product that will run you over $1,500. keep reading…

As the nation and the world emerge from the depths of the recession, labor economists tell us that this recovery will be slower and bumpier than most Americans living today can remember. Like the Great Depression of the 1930s, this one will leave its scars on the economy and the national psyche. Employers will feel its consequences rippling through their workforce and their recruiting efforts, with effects lasting for years, if not an entire generation.

What are the consequences for employers? What are the long-lasting changes the recession has wrought on the recruiting and retention of workers? There are several, say industry leaders, vendors, suppliers and individual recruiters.

Foremost, probably predictably, is the need to rebuild recruiting programs. Beyond that, there are almost as many opinions concerning the recession’s impacts as there are people I asked about it. Some predict that the cuts to job board spending will be permanent; others say social media recruiting will become a key sourcing tool, others suspect it will never amount to more than a minor tool; most expect that recruiting will be held to a higher standard of performance and economy.

Out of all the predictions and expectations — those I solicited and those I came across in discussions and blog posts and even tweets — I distilled four broad trends. You can read about these in more depth in the July issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. For now, here’s a brief look at these trends. keep reading…

Mike Nale is a victim of the recession. In less than three years he has gone from promising founder of a recruitment marketing agency in Oahu, to living in a pay-by-the-day room. Having long ago sold off his possessions and swallowed his pride, Nale depends on handouts from friends and the rare odd-job.

A few weeks ago he took the desperate step of sending a plea for money to his LinkedIn network.

“It was a slow, downward spiral,” he told me recently. “I could see it happening, but I thought, ‘It will get better. I’ll find a job. Something will come through.’”

At 6.9 percent, Hawaii’s unemployment rate is among the nation’s lowest. For Nale, though, it hardly matters. “I don’t know where the jobs are,” says the one-time Manpower recruiter who two short years ago was being interviewed for his launch of a jobs TV show for the Islands. “I was a recruiter. You would think I should know how to find a job.”

His last TV appearance was as the central figure in a news story about Hawaii’s unemployed.

Nale’s story may among the more desperate, but his difficulty in finding work is not at all unusual. keep reading…

Spring has arrived, and much like our economic recovery, it is working to get a foothold on the slippery chill of winter. Like the seasons, business cycles are perpetual and growth and employment will return. Like the affects of a harsh winter, the landscape can forever be changed and it can be argued that the economic downturn has forever changed corporate recruiting. In many corporations, recruiting is seen as a cost center and many functions were downsized in cost-cutting measures. As economists analyze signs of economic recovery, hiring activity has picked up in comparison to a year ago. And many of these recruiting functions that were impacted by layoffs are now being challenged to keep up with hiring demand with fewer resources.

To augment the labor load balance of supply and demand, talent acquisition leaders restricted by headcount and budget limitations are partnering with external suppliers. Recruitment process outsourcing or RPO service providers are seen as a logical choice to partner for recruiting labor support. However, RPO service standards do not exist, and vary between organizations. Talent acquisition leaders are left to decipher between service offerings to identify the right partners to align with. With the term RPO being uses loosely by many suppliers, the marketplace can be confusing.

To contribute to the confusion, many of the true RPO providers have evolved from pure outsourced providers to offering specific task-oriented services to support the individual steps of the recruiting process. I describe the move from broad scope to narrow scope as the emergence of micro-recruiting services. In an attempt to understand the change, I will explore the relationship between RPO providers and their customers and the catalyst for transformation. keep reading…

This recession is accelerating a trend that was already underway: the tendency of organizations to outsource and decentralize non-core functions. I define core very simply: anything that generates revenue (e.g. the sales team), invents new products or services (e.g., R&D) or deeply touches customers (e.g. consultants, advisors). And, let’s face it, internal recruiting functions are not core. keep reading…

During this economic downturn, recession, slump — pick your phrase — we have seen more contract recruiters and search companies take a hit. Not a surprise. Fewer hires, and thereby less to outsource to third parties. As I talk with third-party recruiting organizations, many are trying desperately to branch out into other industries, get new accounts, and market. Many are changing terms and offering discounts. This behavior was expected, and as with the time after the Internet boom, and there are a percentage of these staffing companies that just won’t make it. There are a number of contract recruiters who will also want to go inside.

However, our U.S. economic situation may not allow for expansion of RPO or the conversion of contractors to full-time hires. keep reading…

There’s an interesting discussion going on over at the Video 2.0 for Recruitment blog about the U.S. Army’s $33 million investment in a recruiting video game.

Ernest Feiteira picked up on an item I posted and started a conversation about the value of such recruiting tools. A couple others chimed in about the ROI, something I’m looking into for a future article.

At this point in the discussion, there’s no resolution to the question of how you would calculate the ROI.

However, Down Under, the Aussies must believe that outsourcing their military recruiting pays off because they have been doing it for some years. I know that because I talked with a Manpower spokeswoman about a press release announcing that the Milwaukee  firm just won a $200 million recruiting contract from the Australian  Defence Force.  keep reading…

Despite mixed results with HR outsourcing, outsourcing parts or all of the recruitment process is growing as companies discover the flexibility and scalability that external worker provisioning can offer.

A new study from outsourcing research firm Everest Global suggests that while the recession is reducing the size of RPO contracts, interest is growing, especially among employers with 8,00-15,000 employees.

“RPO buyers are attracted to a value proposition with cost reduction and scalability elevated due to the current economic climate, followed by improvement of recruitment processes, access to best-of-breed options and technologies, and enhanced employer branding,” said Katrina Menzigian, Global’s VP of  Research. keep reading…

Chris Forman of AIRS talks about the economy, how his company is doing, and what’s going on with the recruitment outsourcing business. keep reading…

The traditional recruiting model should be replaced by what I call Solution Recruiting — which I will be writing about in an upcoming Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. For the time being (for the website), I wish to mention a part of the solution I’m proposing.

This part of the solution is called a “Recruiting Project Manager.” Recruitment Process Outsourcing has often failed when the client believed it to be a wondrous pipeline, where money flows out and perfectly qualified employees flow in, without effort or oversight necessary on the part of hiring managers. As in other areas of business process outsourcing, RPO requires considerable upfront planning and the provision of adequate onsite project managers. Because of this, I believe that the development of a new kind of employee — the Recruiting Project Manager — will be a significant milestone in the evolution of corporate recruiting.

As segments of the recruiting process are outsourced, it will become increasingly important to hire individuals who are capable of acting as liaisons between onsite enterprise clients (including hiring and recruiting managers) and offsite RPO resources. These recruiting project managers will oversee different functional groups (such as Internet sourcing, phone sourcing, candidate development and recruiting, coordinating and scheduling), often in dispersed locations. The skills required to be successful in this role are considered to be “high-touch” and “high value-added” in that they require a great deal of direct contact. They also are considered to be of greater value than other skills that are more routine.

While a number of these skills can be taught, many members of recruiting organizations who are highly competent in the traditional roles will not possess the necessary skills to function in a new recruiting environment. These newly required skills include competencies in the following areas:

• Formulating business strategies and goals
• Outlining the competencies needed to achieve those goals
• Identifying core competencies — those competencies that the organization must have in-house
• Analyzing current competencies and identifying gaps
• Formulating hiring strategy for addressing the gaps, including bringing in new skills and developing competencies of current staff
• Monitoring and managing ongoing requirements for organizational capability
• Interpreting and analyzing explicit and implicit social communication
• Articulating and representing diverse organizational interests

Some of the competencies in this list are common to many types of project management. However, I have included the last two competencies that are based on managing social relationships because of the greater interpersonal requirements of the hiring process.

Recruiting Project Managers will be critical in the new recruiting environment because they will serve as necessary bridges between hiring companies and outsourced providers of services.

Many contract recruiters wish they had taken that internal recruiting position offered to them two or three years ago. As in every recession, being an internal employee is viewed with envy. It seems only logical that as layoffs and cutbacks greatly reduce the number of contract recruiters, the interest in being a regular employee rises. The lure of a regular paycheck, benefits, and the sense (although false) of security score high.

But I am not so sure that a contract recruiter should want to be an employee. While the functions that HR performs may be essential, they don’t necessarily have to be performed by an employee. Organizations are realizing that they have more employees than they need — and very often in the wrong place. Why should any organization spend salary, development, and retention dollars on employees who do not generate new products or revenue? What does a recruiter contribute that an contractor could not? There are already hundreds of companies that have replaced their recruiting team with contractors and third-party recruiters and have had success. Unfortunately, most HR professionals are convinced that their organization could not function without them as employees, but I think they are wrong.

Given what is happening in business strategy, HR is about to undergo the biggest reduction in workforce it has ever seen. keep reading…

It may be the worst recession in decades, but that didn’t stop Bayard Advertising Agency from launching a new recruitment consulting and RPO business.

“Maybe it is a crazy time,” laughs Mark DeChant. “But our clients were asking us for this. There might even be a bigger need now, with HR departments handling so many other things.”

DeChant is managing director of Worklight, LLC, Bayard’s new RPO subsidiary. He comes to the company from CareerBuilder, where he was an area sales manager. His background includes a stint as business development manager at staffing firm Ranstad.

Although Bayard is only the second large recruitment ad agency to branch into RPO (the other is Bernard Hodes) DeChant says it’s a natural extension of the business. “The deliverable at Bayard, without an RPO, is an electronic version of a person,” he explains. Adding the recruiter between the sourcing and delivery to the client simplifies the process for an employer.

It also gives Bayard another service to offer its 1,100 clients. DeChant says Bayard reps are routinely asked to recommend screeners, sourcing firms, RPOs and the like. “This allows us to keep the revenue in house and makes it easier for the client since we already know them and helped them plan their recruiting strategy,” he adds.

Worklight is offering a complete RPO menu from screening of resumes to the complete sourcing and vetting of candidates. Worklight also provides HCM consulting and training. “Sourcing, interview techniques, OFCCP compliance,” are part of the training curriculum DeChant notes.

“Now,” he adds, “with this set of services, when a client asks, we can say, ‘Yes, we can help with that’.”

More bad news on the employment front today as Spherion reports it lost $126.2 million in the last quarter of 2008, giving it a $118.5 million loss for the year.

The staffing and RPO company’s 4th quarter revenues were $507.5 million, down $74 million over the same period in 2007. For the year, Spherion reported revenue of $2.19 billion versus $2.02 billion the previous year.

“Challenging economic conditions adversely impacted our company’s performance during the fourth quarter,” Spherion President and Chief Executive Officer Roy Krause says in the financial release announcing the results. “Our focus on cash flow and containment of operating costs continues to improve our financial stability and flexibility during these challenging economic times.”

The revenue figures were below Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts estimated 4th quarter revenue between $518 million and $522 million.

The news, however, didn’t negatively affect the already battered stock price. Spherion was up 3 cents on the day to $1.37. The stock price has been as high as $7.08 in the last year, but began a downward slide in April before dropping precipitously in October as the extent of economic crisis made headlines.

In releasing its numbers, Spherion said, “The continuing economic volatility makes it difficult to predict with any certainty the amount of demand that will be seen in the market, and therefore management has elected not to provide revenue and earnings guidance for the first quarter of 2009. The company believes that a combination of existing cash balances, operating cash flows, and existing revolving lines of credit, taken together, provide adequate resources to fund ongoing operations.”

An interview with Rich Kenny of Northwest, who talks about the company’s combo with Delta; reducing time-to-hire; background checks; on-the-spot hires; recruitment advertising; and improving the candidate experience.

keep reading…