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Over 700 million people are on Facebook, 200 million on Twitter and at least 100 million on LinkedIn. How many of them do you think are your prospects or candidates? People today are spending more time than ever in online networking sites, but they weren’t built for recruiters.

To reach them where they are spending their time online you need to control how you are perceived online where first impressions can make or break your attempt at engagement. As recruiters we often ignore social networks as a passive candidate outreach tool because we are unsure or confused about how to make our approach stick.

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There’s an old adage that you should treat candidates as customers. Somehow this has been forgotten in the current era of high unemployment and slow job growth. I’m going to reframe this idea and suggest that if you want to hire the best people possible, treat everyone as if they were a passive candidate. This is vital for candidates who are actually passive candidates. More important, treating everyone with the respect they deserve, including those who are active candidates, will fundamentally improve your overall quality of people you hire.

Here’s why.

For one thing, by treating everyone with respect they’ll all feel positive about your company’s selection process and your company. As a result, they’ll tell everyone in their network and post it on Glassdoor before the day is out. This is just commonsense, and common courtesy. In addition, this is a great technique for getting some great referrals. To do this, mention some non-competing jobs during the interview and ask if the person knows any top-notch people they’d refer, even those not looking.

Another important reason for treating all candidates with this type of respect is to increase assessment accuracy. Let’s be frank: the negative bias of being active or unemployed is hard to overcome, especially for hiring managers. The problem is that there are some very good people in these groups who could be outstanding hires if they were objectively assessed. Some corporate-level intervention akin to a blind audition is essential in order to measure these people properly.

While the feel-good idea of treating candidates as customers makes for good marketing jargon, most people just don’t know how to do it. Some company-level guidance can help here. Here are some ideas on how to operationalize this idea. These are essential if you want to hire passive candidates. As you’ll see, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be applied to all candidates regardless of their job-hunting status. keep reading…

Every executive and hiring manager worth his or her salt will tell you hiring top talent is the most important thing they need to do. Unfortunately when it comes to putting their money on the table, most often all you’ll see is pocket change.

Somewhere in the bowels of the company’s mission statement is some form of the platitude “hiring top talent is a major company objective.” But in the field where the battle is played out, a different picture emerges. Hiring top talent, especially those who aren’t looking for a job, is not about posting a boring job description on some site, getting people to apply, and then conducting a series of behavioral interviews. It’s about finding and convincing these top people that your position offers the best career move among competing opportunities. While many recruiters and individual hiring managers can pull this off one assignment at a time, only those companies with a compelling employer brand have mastered the art at scale.

Another positive U.S. Department of Labor hiring report with 244,000 new jobs created in April 2011 brings seven months of significant job gains. A few more months like this and there will be a real need for companies to accelerate their passive-candidate recruiting. LinkedIn’s historic IPO roller coaster of a run provides credence to the interest in tools available to help make this shift. LinkedIn can be an invaluable tool in the right hands. In the wrong ones, however, it’s just an expensive company directory. Worse, once everyone has the same directory it will be even less valuable without a companywide ability to recruit and hire passive candidates.

Except in isolated instances, I’m going to contend that based on how companies now recruit passive candidates, most of their efforts will be wasted. In large part, this is attributed to the lack of alignment with strategy and tactics. Simply put, you can’t hire top passive candidates who aren’t looking, using processes designed to hire active candidates who are looking.

Rather than get into all of the nitty-gritty details of this, the following are some of the bigger issues you need to consider to make sure your company is ready and able to hire passive candidates in any sizeable quantity. If you can’t answer unequivocally yes to the following questions, don’t waste your time recruiting passive candidates. Instead, spend it figuring how to get ready. keep reading…

As many of you know — I announced it at the ERE Expo in San Diego — I’ve decided to bring recruiting back to recruiting. This is my new old mission. Somehow this has been lost in the past few years when overall candidate supply exceeded demand. Hiring top talent is not the same as finding top talent. While sourcing is a step in this journey, it is only a step, and one getting easier each passing day.

Consider this: at the current rate, by March 11, 2012, everyone will be connected by one degree of separation with everyone else either via LinkedIn or Facebook. (FYI: I define sourcing as the process of name generation only. If you pick up the phone and call a person who did not apply, and convince him or her to consider your position, you’re recruiting. If the person applied for a job and all you’re doing is qualifying the person, that’s screening, not recruiting.)

While sourcing is getting easier, recruiting these now-more-visible folks is getting harder. This will become even more challenging as the demand for top talent accelerates, and everyone makes a wholesale shift to contact the same passive candidates you’re contacting. In this case, good recruiting skills will make all the difference as to who attracts and hires the person. keep reading…

The job market has been picking up, and hiring managers are aggressively trying to increase human capital to reach their 2011 revenue goals. Having the right people in the right seats is key, and we see many companies take too much time when seeking to hire good talent. The most successful recruiters create a sense of urgency for their hiring managers, whose priority is acquiring top talent.

It is folly to assume there is an unlimited talent pool in this market. The current 8.9% unemployment rate (based on February 2011 data) is deceiving. First, the actual unemployment level is higher than the numbers suggest because of the number of people who have stopped looking for jobs. Also it is distorted. Many of the jobs that were eliminated during the recession are never coming back. So looking at unemployment levels alone will create the one thing you cannot afford to create: complacency. keep reading…

Many recruiters lose too many good candidates at the beginning of the sourcing and recruiting process, due to lack of basic recruiting skills. As a result, they work too hard screening more candidates than necessary and lowering overall candidate quality, since they let the best ones get away without a fight. The problem starts by not responding properly to the “what’s the job?” or “what’s the comp?” question when first engaging with a hot prospect. keep reading…

Although there were some naysayers about my predictions for job growth in 2011 (Dec 14, 2010 ERE), it’s more clear that 2011 will be banner year for professional hiring, coupled with the added impact of employee churn. Even if the prediction is somewhat premature, get ready for it anyway. What else are you going to do?

With that as a backdrop, consider the impact Facebook’s new career network BranchOut will have on the world of recruiting in general, and its direct effect on LinkedIn in particular. It’s certainly a knock-off, but as a start I would have expected a more original name. LinkedIn is less about its name and more about the depth of its interconnectivity and its growing ability to automatically connect people with open opportunities.

Since BranchOut is just starting up, it’s less robust and less useful then LinkedIn, but this will change, so start building your empire (their term). Let me start off this comparison with my point of view (POV). keep reading…

I predict that the market is finally heating up. Of course, I’ve been wrong for the past few years, so you might want to take the next few ideas on how to get ready for 2011 with a grain of salt. Or not.

The market for top talent is definitely heating up, and you need to take some serious steps to stay on top of your company’s recruiting activities. In five informal surveys I’ve done in the last 15 days, three out four recruiters (sample of 1,000) suggest that for the professional worker, 2011 will represent the tipping for significant job growth, with 2012 being a banner year. At last. keep reading…

In the November Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, in an article titled “Talent Acquisition as a Tool of Succession Management,” I discuss talent acquisition in the context of succession management programs. I propose that our recruiting leaders are not involved enough in succession planning and the execution of those plans. You’ll get more detail in the Journal, but to summarize: Talent managers and the executive echelon can make much more use of their internal recruiting capability than they currently do. Of course, it wouldn’t be a replacement strategy but simply a way to enhance and augment corporate succession management.

I Like My People, Even if They Don’t Perform!

Talent managers, in the designing, planning, and executing of a given plan, usually restrict themselves to the question: “Who internally can I preserve or develop to replace Jane Smith if she leaves,” and disregard the question “who externally can I attract” for consideration with Jane for that same position.

The implications of not using all available sources in succession management programs and not including talent acquisition as part of the plan (which also means integrating it with workforce planning) is apparent: What can be the greatest strategic competitive advantage in the human resource and human capital management arena is reduced to nothing more than a tactical, possibly irrelevant process, likely documented on a seldom-used Excel sheet. keep reading…

This morning, at its first ever user conference, Talent Connect, LinkedIn revealed two brand new product offerings to its “Recruiter” customers: Jobs For You and Referral Engine. David Hahn, LinkedIn’s VP of Product Management, and Deep Nishar, LinkedIn’s VP Products & User Experience, shared details of the new offerings with attendees as well as the story of how the new Jobs For You product came to be.

keep reading…

In my mind, there are four types of corporate recruiting styles. These are shown below. In fact, I’ll contend (and attempt to prove in this article) that this style directly impacts the quality of people brought into an organization. If quality of hire matters, recruiting leaders need to take this “recruiting style” issue into account as they build and develop their recruiting teams.

The Four Primary Recruiting Styles and the Impact on Quality of Hire

1) The “Farmer” — aka the “post and pray” or the Dilbert model. This type of recruiter reposts the job description with the hope a good person will apply, does not challenge hiring managers to understand real job needs, has only basic knowledge of the company and industry, uses skills and experiences to screen candidates, follows the rules, and makes excuses when someone complains about not seeing enough good people. The primary target in this case is the active candidate who somehow found the posting. If you have a strong employer brand and candidate supply exceeds demand, this style can actually work. keep reading…

On the face of it, this title makes no sense. First, how could a passive candidate have multiple offers? Second, who cares? In today’s troubled economic times, when we make an offer, it’s accepted, no negotiations, no counteroffers, no competing offers. It’s just accepted. Period.

So I could leave it at that, and make this officially the shortest article I’ve ever written on ERE in 10 years. But what’s the point then? Under the low probability chance the market for top talent is finally starting to heat up a bit, recruiters might soon be faced again with the challenge of recruiting candidates with multiple offers. And, if not, they can bookmark this article for that exciting day.

So for recruiters who don’t remember what it’s like, and for those recruiters who are too young to remember the golden olden days when top candidate supply was less than demand, a little history is in order. Whenever the economy is expanding more than a few percentage points, labor shortages in certain job categories frequently occur. Under these circumstances, companies aggressively compete for this scarce talent by bidding up prices (i.e., salaries and signing bonuses) and increasing the speed of decision-making. In this hyper-heated market, mistakes are made, recently hired candidates are pursued by ultra-competitive recruiters who are paid for making placements, and hiring managers are pulling out their hair. For third-party recruiters this is what’s referred to as “the good old days.” keep reading…

“To see the right and not do it is cowardice.”

–Author Unknown

A recent article by John Zappe entitled Should We Be Telling the Unemployed Not to Apply? was excellent. Furthermore, judging by the varied, contentious, and well-thought-out comments, John’s work clearly struck a nerve with a cross section of ERE readership, this writer included.

Tell the unemployed not to apply? Why not? Welcome to the ugly underbelly of capitalism, artificially induced fairness, and employment rage of the masses. Welcome to the new world order that simply does not have enough to go around, combined with the enabling technology’s required to outsource as many possible jobs to the most dirt-poor places on this planet. Think of how Ralph Lauren lives and think of how those who make his clothing live. Beyond despicable.

Welcome to the sad realization that capitalism tends to work far better when there is a surplus as opposed to a shortage; when there is an oily excess that tends to hide the evil of discrimination and of inequity and of monstrous corruption. Welcome to the post-surplus economy of underemployment and lost careers, of investments vaporized and the numbing fury that accompanies learned helpless. Welcome the myopic CEO who views employees as an expense to cut as opposed to an investment to nurture. Welcome my fiends, to the new normal. keep reading…

A long time after the rest of the world, I finally saw the movie Avatar, and I was thrilled. Not from the 3D or the big story, but from the fine details. These, in my mind, made the difference, leading millions around the world to believe there is such a planet like Pandora (or that we’ll find one in 150 years time — in 2154, as James Cameron wrote).

I believe these details can help recruiters reach a huge success, especially if they use the social media. keep reading…

Without question, having a large LinkedIn network is a competitive advantage for any recruiter working on hard-to-fill positions and hard-to-find candidates. This advantage is lessened dramatically with LinkedIn Recruiter, since it includes complete visibility to the 70mm+ people in their network. Since this full-visibility product is off-limits to TPRs, it levels the playing field somewhat for corporate recruiters. But this is not as significant a disadvantage as it would seem to those of us who have to find top candidates the old-fashioned way — networking. Getting pre-qualified referrals from people who will call you back is the real secret of recruiting passive candidates. keep reading…

We’re now working on a major survey with LinkedIn on determining the percent of its 70mm+ network that is active, passive, or somewhere in between. Recent data from the Recruiting Leadership Council (CLC Recruiting — Building Talent Pipelines Survey) indicates that for a broad sample of the U.S. workforce, 15-20% are very active and around 20% passive, with the remaining 60% showing a mix of passive and active behaviors. Our internal research would indicate that higher-quality and more senior-level prospects are more passive than the population at large. Regardless, this means that a significantly larger percent of the workforce is passive rather than active. This is a critical and overlooked point when developing new recruiting and sourcing processes.

For example, while most companies want to focus on hiring more passive candidates, they continue to use processes that are based on how active candidates look for new jobs and how they decide to accept one over another. As technology improves (LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Proactive Employee Referral Programs) it’s becoming much easier to identify passive candidates, but identifying names is not the same as attracting them, and much much different than hiring them. With the goal of hiring top performing passive candidates, here are some process changes you might want to consider implementing. keep reading…

At Chicago’s SMA Symposium last month, I presented an updated version of my corporate recruiter scorecard. Here’s a link to the handout and the ranking form (when you get to the site, see my June 13 post, top center).

Before you rank yourself, you should assign your target candidates into one of the following six buckets based on their level of business impact, personal growth rate, job satisfaction, and job-hunting status. This will allow you to quickly separate the strong from the meek, and from this, determine the appropriate recruiting and sourcing strategy to use. keep reading…

A report in The Huffington Post two days ago has sent the recruiting world into a paroxysm of self-examination.

Dozens of comments here at ERE and more at RecruitingBlogs and probably elsewhere too, are condemning the practice of excluding the unemployed from jobs.

The HuffPo article reported that some companies are specifically discouraging the unemployed from applying. It cites a few specific example, and says it’s not hard to find ads with wording such as this from Craigslist for a restaurant manager: “Must be currently employed.”

The article doesn’t say whether this is a trend. However, one of the ERE posters commented that “This ‘practice’ been going on for almost as long as I can remember (30+ years of TPR) now everyone is upset because a company actually said it in a job post?”

ERE blogger Brenda Le triggered the discussion when she wrote about the HuffPo article and said: “IMHO — It is a disgrace in this country, given the current economy that companies are practicing this kind of behavior — it can’t possibly be the norm.” keep reading…

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…