ERE.net

by Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett

On January 13, 2010, nearly 800 ere.net community members converged online to participate in a webinar (embedded at the bottom of this article) discussing the trends Dr. Sullivan predicted will impact the talent acquisition profession in 2010. Over the course of that webinar a number of questions were raised, each of which is addressed here.

Q1. Your trends article highlighted what is likely to happen during 2010, but you can you go further and tell us what are the top 10 overall actions steps that you would recommend for corporate recruiting leaders take?

To summarize, we would recommend the following actions in 2010: keep reading…

Maximizing your use of time is the key to hiring more top performers. In a recent webinar with Jobs2Web, I described the sourcing sweet-spot. This is the point just before and just after a fully employed person decides to consider looking for another position. This time-frame represents the window of opportunity to hire the best passive candidates and early-birds with less effort and salary premiums than any other point.

If you get to these top people first, you’ll have no competition, and they’ll be much easier to recruit since they’ve already made the decision to pursue a new job. However, it’s what you do when you first connect that will determine whether you’re successful or not in hiring them. This involves a number of critical recruiting key skills. These are described below.

If you’re a recruiting manager, evaluate your current crop of recruiters and any new hires to determine whether they have these skills or the ability to learn them. If you’re a recruiter and you want to hire more top performers, you need to be exceptional in these areas. As you’ll see, hiring top performers without paying unnecessary compensation premiums requires great recruiters, great opportunities, and great hiring managers. Without these, it just becomes a numbers game. But as Chicken Little, or some other similar authority, once said, “the early bird catches the worm, as long as you have a good fishing pole.”

Passive candidates and those just entering the job market — the early-birds — are a different breed of prospect. For one thing, they’re not desperate. This changes the game entirely from those who have been looking for more extended periods of time. More important, if they’re good, they’ll be very choosy and they will get multiple offers. But since you’re first, and if you play your cards well, you should be able to reel in these top performers in greater numbers than those recruiters who find them after you do. In this case, your competition has to play catch-up. This is a great position to be in. But to pull it off you have to be an exceptional recruiter. Here are the key recruiting skills needed to turn these top candidates and prospects into great hires.

Recruiting Skills Required to Turn Hot Prospects Into Great Employees keep reading…

You cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are continually flowing in. — Heraclitus

There’s a huge controversy that raises itself now and then here in the Recruitosphere and that’s the idea that one type of candidate (passive) is better than the other (active). The thinking goes along the lines of “If they’re looking, there must be a reason they’re looking!” There’s probably something wrong with the guy.

On the other end of the spectrum glistens the shiny new: that person popularly known as the “passive” candidate. The accompanying reasoning goes something like: “If he’s out there and nobody’s talked to him before, I’ll be the first one at the table to get the best (and biggest) portion.”

In reality, both lines of thought are problematic. keep reading…

I once heard a story that the CEO of a major executive search firm told a group of newly minted partners to never present candidates who are unemployed. When one of the new partners raised his hand and challenged the CEO as to how the firm could adequately serve its clients without evaluating all potential candidates, the CEO implied that, by definition, anyone who is unemployed is inferior.

I understand this line of thinking. It’s simple, concise, easy to categorize. A “sexy” pitch. In fact, it’s the same line of thinking that leads to the idea that anyone who hangs out with a communist must be a communist sympathizer, or that someone who fires a woman must be a misogynist, or who is accused must be guilty in some way. In short, it’s dead wrong. keep reading…

Over the past few months I’ve been making some not-so-bold predictions about the demise of job boards and the rise of the “hub and spoke” sourcing model for finding a better class of active candidates. Rather than repeat the prognostication here, I’d suggest that despite the shift to this new and improved sourcing model, in the long run it might not really matter.

Here’s why: from a practical standpoint, only 20 to 25% of candidates are actively looking at any one time. This is a high-end estimate, with 15 to 20% more likely, and in normal economic times probably around 15%. This means that 80% of most candidates aren’t looking.

So despite my current fondness for Jobs2Web, and the possibility that TalentSeekr and First Advantage’s HireEngine will become powerful talent hubs, I’m concerned that too many recruiting managers are aiming at the wrong target. It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to prove the case that there are more top-10-15% performers among those people who aren’t looking than those who are. So why are we spending so much effort to find candidates we don’t want to hire, even if we’re doing it more efficiently? keep reading…

Whenever I need an idea for an article I call Doug Berg, the CEO and/or founder, or something like that, at Jobs2Web. So to meet this week’s need, Doug suggested I write about my reticular activator. I thought this was a bit personal, and while initially offended, it turned out to be great advice. I think you will, too. keep reading…

About 25 years ago when the self-help gurus came on the scene, I heard Jim Rohn say something that still sticks:

Things will get better for you when you get better.

Sage advice indeed, and now might be the best time to take heed. keep reading…

Times are tough. Even those companies that are doing reasonably well are cutting their recruiting teams by a minimum of 30% to a maximum of 90%, and tightening up expenses to the absolute barest minimum.

Half of these cuts are probably necessary anyway, the balance most likely an overreaction to the dismal economic conditions most companies are now facing.

There is an expectation that along with the cuts these recruiting departments need to drastically improve their productivity by 30%-50%, almost overnight.

The good news is that while most corporate recruiters are working hard, the majority are not working smart.

As a result, getting 50% or 100% productivity gains isn’t that hard to do. With this in mind, here are some things recruiting leaders can do to increase overall productivity by at least 100%.

keep reading…

As the economy tumbles, and companies right-size their recruiting departments, the bottom-half is the first to go. Under this scenario, those formerly in the relatively secure 2nd quartile are now in the bottom-half. So be wary or get better.

With this sobering news in mind, I offer those of you in all quartiles this short, 10-point personal evaluation guide. While some of them are a bit crazy, they’re based on comparing your performance to the best in the business. It will tell you quickly whether you’re in the top 25% and how to stay there.

keep reading…

Back in 1992-1993, during the last serious recession, I got laid off. I was out of work for approximately 13 weeks before being hired as a recruiter. My job was focused on hiring sales representatives and I had more than enough candidates for the role. Perhaps because of that, I was arrogant. I let many candidates whom I had contacted or interviewed for the role simply slip away, without calling them or following up. Not long after that, I was at a job fair and some of the candidates I had interviewed for the sales rep role came up to me. In front of my relatively new colleagues, they pulled no punches in criticizing me for not following up and getting back to them.

As embarrassed as I was to hear that then, my accusers were right! I had dropped the ball and not gotten back to them. What I had not realized (even though I had experienced the same thing during my own period of being laid off), was that during recessionary times, everything we do as recruiters gets magnified.

As a result, to me, times of difficulty do put us under a microscope in which perceptions are skewed. However, so too do they present great opportunities to build even better relationships with candidates and third party search providers, to sharpen our skills and give ourselves greater tools as recruiters, and to further enable us to be unique professionals who stand out from the pack.

But to begin, let’s be clear: It’s an ugly world out there. Your company may have gone through layoffs and decimated its recruiting department. And now you’re the one that’s left — and you still have to fill requisitions and hire people.

keep reading…

“Talent Pools.”

“Talent Pipelines.”

“Talent Networks.”

All of these buzzwords describe the same thing — the idea of building a community of individuals whose skills you will need before there is an immediate opening for them. The idea is to strengthen the bonds between these people and the organization so that when the need arises, it’s a simple matter of picking up the phone.

In theory, of course.

In practice, I’ve seen too many software solutions aimed at creating these “communities” turn out to be little more than databases with candidate names and contact information. I’ve seen too many companies fall in love with the idea (which is a really good one), but not put in them time necessary to implement them in a way that realized the concept’s potential.

This Tuesday, I attended a NY Recruiting & HR Network Meetup and had the pleasure of hearing Linda Paul, the Director of Team Development at Meetup talk about her work. keep reading…

Groucho Marx once said, “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have someone like me as a member.” Some recruiters feel similarly about candidates. They don’t want anyone who shows the least interest in joining an organization like theirs. They reject these applicants out of hand while searching out the true gems. These recruiters bypass “active candidates” while concentrating on those ever sought after, much-prized “passive candidates.” The question I have to ask is, what’s so great about passive candidates?

We spend so much time pursuing the passive candidates that we overlook the ones knocking on our door. Something about the stigma of someone who’s out there looking. But in this time when literally tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs, it’s crazy to assume that everyone who is out there looking for a job is “damaged goods.”

Some people I’ve met even look for reasons to devalue the candidacy of active candidates who are still employed. I’ve heard recruiters question why people are responding to ads while they still have a job. This train of thought goes something like, “In this day and age if you have a job, why would you be considering making a move? Are you about to be fired or laid off?” What is it that makes us question the motives of people looking for jobs? Aren’t we making our jobs harder by only looking for the flaws in active candidates? I’m all for screening applicants, but lately I’ve seen recruiters time after time shooting themselves in the foot.

Are we back in high school playing “hard to get”? As Todd Raphael put it when we were discussing this topic, “It’s a silly game where a candidate is supposed to be pretending they’re not looking.”

And what makes someone a passive candidate anyway?

keep reading…

It takes little effort to convince active job seekers to apply for jobs; however, the same cannot be said for currently employed top performers.

The difficulty in getting individuals actively engaged in their industry and performing at top levels to apply increases significantly during tight economic times because even the best-of-the-best are more reluctant to leave the relative security of their current job.

If you want to overcome a candidate’s reluctance and increase your recruiting function’s “convincing capability,” consider a friends program. It can add a powerful convincing tool to your arsenal and leverage your best employees to help you sell your opportunities to hard-to-convince targeted talent.

A Groundbreaking Program

The concept was developed in the late 1990s at Cisco Systems by Michael McNeil, whom I consider to be the father of employment branding and modern marketing-based recruiting.

The program is based on the premise that everyone wishes they had “a friend” inside a firm they could call and get the real, honest scoop on the job and the firm prior to applying. When the program was first launched, it was so innovative and different that Fast Company magazine wrote about it, as did a number of other management publications.

US West, now Quest Communications, employed a similar program. The approach was one I applauded at the time because it specifically addressed the insane level of competition for top talent that firms were encountering and acknowledged the impact of providing a better candidate experience on a firm’s success rate. While the program would probably not be as effective today if it were plucked from history and implemented exactly as it was, it could very easily be modernized to be even more effective today given the advancements in person-to-person and person-to-group communication technologies.

Employees as Supplemental Recruiters

“Friends programs” are similar to employee referral programs in that they both solicit your employees’ help during segments of the recruiting process. The premise is a simple: you get a small group of targeted employees to volunteer as “recruiting boosters” to communicate directly with preselected potential or current applicants who need an extra boost to excite them. The employee agrees to communicate with them (usually on the phone) for a short, honest conversation about their job. The applicant can view the opportunity to talk directly with someone in their job as having a friend that works at the company. Also, the informal nature of the conversation with a “friend” is less threatening because it’s a conversation among colleagues or equals and is more about addressing the talent’s issues versus those of the employer.

The friends concept is powerful because it utilizes the best salespeople for convincing hard-sell individuals…top employees who currently work in the job. Current employees in the job are more convincing because they “live” the job every day. They can discuss at length how the work actually gets done as opposed to the summary the job description provides and the overly rosy characterization of the work environment recruiters push. The willingness to coordinate an honest/candid conversation makes the company more credible.

keep reading…

There is no doubt that technology has had a significant impact on the way we identify and recruit candidates in this age of social networking and blogging, but have we gone too far?

I recently had the opportunity to speak at a recruiting conference whose major theme focused on technology and its application in the recruiting lifecycle. As I stood in the back of the room waiting for the speaker in front of me to finish her presentation, I was shocked at what she had to say. She stated that “there is no reason to actually talk to a candidate today.” She continued by saying that “email and text messages should be the only means we use to contact and recruit candidates today because that is the medium they use.”

As this well-known speaker’s comments began to sink in, I realized the cause of many of the problems we face today — it’s people like this speaker who teach us to rely almost exclusively on technology! I may not be a doctor, but the last time I checked, every candidate is a living, breathing, human being with the innate craving to have a relationship with other living, breathing, humans.

Within the recruitment profession today, technology has moved from a tool to identify candidates and create efficiencies to a mechanism that replaces real relationships. If we all rely on the same technologies to identify, engage, and recruit candidates, what will be the differentiator from company to company? Are candidates to be treated as a commodity?

Have we forgotten that recruiting is sales? That sales is what builds real relationships? That technology should enable us to be more efficient but cannot engage a candidate in the way a recruiter can? Obviously these are all rhetorical questions aimed at pointing out how our near-reliance on technology is only exacerbating the problems we face today.

As I surveyed the room after I heard these ridiculous statements, I realized the impact this speaker had on the audience of seemingly young, inexperienced recruiters who were attempting to learn at least one nugget of information they could apply when returning to their respective companies.

keep reading…

Are you perpetually recruiting? Then you should be perpetually sourcing. And, no surprise, there’s a sourcer’s tool for the recruiter who wants to find, build and maintain a relationship with future potential hires.

Version two of the popular Perpetual Sourcing web-based sourcing and CRM system was released last month. That might not ordinarily be news, but the enhancements and improvements are the result of a collaboration of Todd Davis, who developed the program, sourcing guru Shally Steckerl, and vendor Intelestream.

“This product is especially unique due to the level of industry expertise found at its core. As a senior recruiter with companies such as Microsoft, Google, Starbucks, and Yahoo, Todd Davis offered his knowledge to help us create his ‘dream solution.’ Shally Steckerl, founder of JobMachine consulting has also played an intricate role in collaborating on this project,” reports Intelestream’s Director of Marketing Stafford McKay. “It’s great to be right in line with the best practices taught by the experts.”

Davis has described Perpetual Sourcing as a pre-ATS applicant tracking system. An apt description for a system designed for the passive candidates found through LinkedIn, Spoke, Hoovers, Jigsaw, and ZoomInfo, all of which the system can automatically assess. It also can help source candidates via the search engines, managing your search strings for you. It also helps with OFCCP and EEOC compliance, by saving search histories, including locations searched, search strings used, and candidates sourced .

Because it is a CRM tool, it also manages contacts with the candidates. It synchronizes with Outlook and has direct email campaign capabilities.

Perpetual Staffing is based on SugarCRM, the commercial open source customer relationship management software that is in use worldwide by customers as varied as GoDaddy and North Carolina State University.

Davis developed Perpetual Sourcing in 2007 and offered it through PerpetualSourcing.com before transitioning the operations earlier this year to Chicago-based CRM consultant Intelestream.

This year in the recruiting industry there has been a lot of talk about how companies are tapping into Web 2.0 technologies to enhance their recruiting. But how is the candidate community also using these technologies for their own purposes, and what impact is it having on our recruiting strategies?

keep reading…

A couple of weeks ago there was an ERE article comparing recruiting to dating. I recently had an experience of a different nature. I was on a plane returning from an engagement and a man named Ted sat down next to me. He spent the next 90 minutes trying to save my soul.

This was a waste of time.

Not that my soul isn’t worth saving. But it was a waste because I am very firm in my religious beliefs and am not about to change them because of a 90-minute conversation with someone.

It was not an unpleasant conversation. He seemed like a delightful man and we laughed at times as we talked. He was not going to change my mind, but I did respect his commitment. His dedication. He did not let go. Our flight took off at 5:45 in the morning and he was in full swing. He started the conversation before he had his seat belt buckled and he kept it up even as people were deplaning.

He was recruiting.

I was impressed with his zeal. Then again, he is recruiting for a very important cause. It occurred to me that he probably started up these conversations whenever he traveled. He was always looking for recruits, and to put this in recruiting parlance, he is frequently looking for “passive candidates.” He never rests in his search, as there are always openings in his organization. Was he effective? Not with me, but I wonder how many people he has successfully recruited. Lots, I would guess, from the extent of his travels. He has been all around the country and all around the world. He finds people wherever they are. That’s his mission, and that’s what his organization needs.

What’s your mission? Professionally speaking, what are you trying to accomplish? There’s a lot we can learn from Ted. Are you constantly recruiting? Do you strike up conversations with people on planes, in malls, or at events? Are you always trying to meet new people? In the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross” the sales manager says selling is as simple as ABC: Always Be Closing. There are lots of similarities between selling real estate and recruiting, but that’s for another article.

Perhaps we need to create acronyms to remind us how to be successful recruiters. Maybe, if you’ve been finding yourself lax in the networking department, your ABC is “Always be connecting.” If your pipeline is drying up and you’re feeling frustrated, JKL – Just Keep Looking! Or NOP – Never Overlook Possibilities. But don’t compromise your standards. Remember PQR – Persistent Quality Recruiting. But be sure to MNO – Make Numerous Overtures if you’re going to EFGH – Effectively Find Good Hires. OK, I mean, okay, maybe I’m getting carried away, but we do need to remember that candidates don’t always present themselves neatly at our office door. We find them when and where we least expect them.

keep reading…

There’s a new recruitment site where a candidate doesn’t need a resume, doesn’t need to say who they are, doesn’t even have to go looking for the job.

Some companies have made hires that way for years. It’s just that those “special” candidates are the boss’s relatives. For the rest of the world, the new site is an experiment in anonymous sourcing. It’s called Scopings and it sort of reminds us of those old computer dating programs. Candidates put in a little bit of information about themselves; employers put in a little more information.

The computer compares the candidates to the job description and suggests possible matches. Then the courting begins.

Only when both of you show enough signs of interest is the cloak of anonymity dropped. keep reading…

Consider this as a basic truth: in tough economic times every job looks better, especially the one you already have.

This would imply that during recessions there are fewer good people actively looking and it’s tougher to get the best passive consider to even discuss your career opportunity. If this is the case, one could conclude that the bulk of the people who are looking during economic downturns tend to be those who are unemployed or marginally employed.

Since this group does not represent the best-of-the-best, you’ll need to rethink your entire sourcing strategy to make sure it’s targeting the people you want to hire. Here’s a short video describing how good people enter the job market. Now here’s a quick test to determine how well you’re doing: if you’re seeing less good people than last year using the same sourcing techniques, stop using them!

However, if you do find a few good people, regardless of how you’re finding them, expect these candidates to have more objections and concerns than usual. And the better the candidate, the more objections the person has. So, if you can’t smoothly and professionally handle objections, you won’t be placing many top performers.

Here are some ideas on how to deal with some common objections. They’re more prevalent with the economy on shaky ground. The theme behind them all is to reveal very little information about your assignment until you have a complete understanding of the candidate’s background. By withholding information, you’ll gain candidate interest. This is the key to applicant control.

keep reading…

Understanding human behavior can help you recruit more passive candidates.

When filling a job order, most recruiters search through virtual stacks of resumes hoping one stands out, matching most of the skills and experiences listed on the job description. When calling a person, the recruiter attempts to gain this same information by first describing the job and then asking the person to describe his or her background. If there’s a fit, the selling process begins.

If you want to hire more top performers, this is exactly what you shouldn’t be doing.

A little understanding of human nature and solution selling offers some guidance on how to approach passive candidates and quickly get them more interested in what you have to offer. If you follow the instructions closely, you’ll even be able to get two to three great referrals on each call. You’ll want these, especially if you decide you’re not interested in pursuing the candidate.

In the last sentence, pay notice to who decides to move forward or not. It should be the recruiter, not the candidate. If you’re letting your candidates decide if they’re interested in your opportunity, you’re not recruiting, you’re just box-checking and order-taking. Making this decision is the first part of the applicant control process essential to good recruiting.

For the sake of brevity and making a point, let me narrow the passive candidate recruiting process down to two small, but critical, first steps. The first relates to a candidate saying they’re not interested in considering your opportunity, even before you’ve told them anything about it.

The second relates to those who don’t say “no” right away, but instead ask about the comp, title, and location.

I’m sure you would agree that getting past these two pivotal points will dramatically increase the number of top candidates you put into your pipeline.

keep reading…