With only days left before this year’s college seniors become alums, those who don’t already have jobs are going to find it as hard to find work as last year’s grads did. And for those in the liberal arts, in the last few weeks, three different surveys of hiring managers and recruiting leaders found employers are only planning slight — if any – increases in the number of entry-level grads they bring on board.
Most striking about the surveys is that while they measured different aspects of hiring plans, and talked to different types of companies and employers, the bottom line was the same: entry-level jobs in a grad’s field are few.
Here’s what the three surveys found: keep reading…
Top performers have an incredibly high ROI
Articles from academics don’t always provide practical lessons, but there have been two recent ones that everyone in talent management should pay attention to.
The results of the first one focus on the output differential produced by top performers. This study published in February in Personnel Psychology which cut across several industries, revealed that the top 5 percent of the workforce at the researched firms produced 26 percent of the firm’s total output. The top-performing 5 percent produced 400 percent more than you would expect (26 percent rather than 5 percent).
That means that top performers have an incredibly high ROI because they produce more than four times more; however, they are generally paid less than 20 percent over an average worker in the same job.
Just like on the business side of the enterprise where the 80/20 rule prevails (80 percent of your profit comes from 20 percent of your products) there should be a similar 80/20 rule covering employee performance. This disproportional impact means that despite the fact that many in HR are enamored with the practice of “treating everyone equally,” it turns out that that approach may be well-intentioned but misguided because in business, just like sports and entertainment, top performers have a significantly higher business impact than the average. Top performers need to be prioritized.
Prioritization Is Also an Essential Element of Referral Programs keep reading…
Remember the Yugo? Yugos were cars built in the old Yugoslavia, in the 1980s. They were sold solely based on their low price. More than 100,000 cars were sold in an eight-year span, but their poor quality and service resulted in zero buyer retention.
When it comes to hiring talent, most companies place too much emphasis on compensation competitiveness and not enough on their cultural brand. They may have flashy careers websites and other candidate attraction materials, but these are generic and not reflective of the company’s unique culture.
In this article I will give you tips on how to make your company more competitive by taking the vital first step of identifying your culture. Only after this step will you be able to successfully attract candidates who will fit your values and be successful in their roles. Without it, you will be stuck in the Yugo Trap, continuing to hire mismatched candidates leading to poor retention. keep reading…
CEOs are frustrated. According to a ManpowerGroup survey, 34% of companies are experiencing difficulty filling mission-critical positions. Paradoxically, the Department of Labor reports that 12.3 million people are still unemployed. And so here we sit, asking ourselves, why are we struggling to find the talent?
Welcome to the Great Talent Gap of the 21st Century
In an article for Inc.com, Keith Cline wrote, “The demand for top-tier engineering talent sharply outweighs the supply in almost every market, especially in San Francisco, New York, and Boston. This is a major, major pain point and problem that almost every company is facing, regardless of the technology ‘stack’ their engineers are working on.”
If you’re a hiring manager or a recruiter in the trenches, you’re not seeing a way out of it any time soon You may need a production manager who knows calculus, or an experienced software developer, or a technology strategist with cloud-based computing experience; and you need them yesterday. Oh and, by the way, you need them at a “competitive salary” (i.e., the lowest wage possible).
To begin to close the gap, we first need to recognize that the talent gap of the 21st century is made up of smaller fissures. Second, we need to understand the interrelated economic and organizational forces which formed these cracks. And lastly, we need to get started now. keep reading…
Information security professionals are among the most stable of tech workers. They are paid well, the majority got raises last year — 20% of them of more than 5%. Plus the demand for security specialists will grow 11% annually for the next five years.
Those are findings from the most recent survey of IT security professionals conducted by (ISC)2, the world’s largest not-for-profit information security professional organization. More than 12,000 members and non-members took part in the biennial Global Information Security Workforce Study, reporting on matters ranging from salaries and workload to their views on the current state of information security and protection. keep reading…
As a recruiter, one of the main problems I face with prospective and actual clients is unrealistic expectations of who they can really hire. For a variety of reasons (which have been gone over many times before), there seems to be a sense of entitlement that the facts don’t bear out … “The very best of the best should beat a path to our door and be dying to work for us.”
I can think of one particularly relevant example of this. keep reading…
Recently, NBC News announced that it would begin to pay its college interns because the network hopes to attract more minority talent.
If you pay your interns, you get a much larger candidate pool. You get students whose parents can support them while they work for free, plus talented students who need to earn tuition money for school.
Who pays their interns and who doesn’t pay their interns? Is it fair to expect a college student (who may have huge educational loans to repay) to work for free or for “the experience?” Does paying an intern pay off for employers?
Here’s your answer, based on research from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. keep reading…
One of the most frustrating elements of recruiting occurs when after weeks of hard work, you have found an excellent candidate who is excited but you can’t get past the last sticking point: the appropriate starting salary. The candidate naturally wants more, but the company is often reluctant to offer more money because they are uncertain whether the new hire will produce at a level high enough to justify their higher salary request. Rather than losing the candidate, consider offering them a “salary reopener clause.”
The salary reopener gives the new hire a chance to get that added money within a short period of time, provided that their actual performance for the first few months has been worthy of the higher salary. No candidate wants to wait, but if they are confident in their ability, they may be willing to wait a short few months to show you that you are wrong. All you are really doing with the reopener clause is postponing the final salary determination until the new hire has a chance to prove their worth. Salary reopener clauses are quite common in union contracts but they are unfortunately underused by recruiters.
A Hiring Manager’s Uncertainty About Future Performance May Lead to a Low Offer keep reading…
The employment outlook here at the start of 2013 is a lot like it was just last week at the end of 2012: cautious, slow, but with a few areas — high tech, for instance — where competition for talent will be even keener.
On the employee side, there’s a little less optimism now, with more workers than at any point during 2012 saying they don’t expect things to change much where they work in the next six months. As recently as the third quarter of last year, Glassdoor’s quarterly survey of workers found 48 percent of them expecting their company’s business performance to improve in the months ahead. Now, the fourth-quarter survey released this morning, says only 40 percent feel that way.
The findings of Glassdoor’s Employment Confidence Survey mirrors the monthly Consumer Confidence survey conducted by The Conference Board. The business organization’s much-watched Index declined by 6.4 points between November and December. While worries over the impact of the fiscal cliff accounted for a big part of the decline, The Conference Board said fewer consumers expect business conditions to improve in the next six months. In November 21.3 percent thought things would get better. In December only 17.6 percent said that, while those expecting business conditions to worsen increased to 21.5 percent from 15.8 percent. keep reading…
Those of you who recruit for sales hiring managers know how challenging it can be to get a candidate excited about an uncompetitive or uninspiring compensation plan. On the flip side, you have probably found some great sales candidates on the market as the result of inadequate compensation plans.
Sales managers often recognize this obstacle and turn to their trusted recruiters for help, especially this time of year when compensation plans are revised for the following year. In some cases good effort and intentions fail to produce the desired outcomes. Fortunately we can help achieve solid placements.
Here are “five steps to a more effective sales compensation plan”: keep reading…
Salaries for tech workers in the U.S. will rise almost twice the national average in 2013 — some will increase even more, up to 12 percent — a symptom of how competitive the competition for talent has become.
“The hiring environment for technology talent is only going to become tougher for employers in the year ahead,” says Robert Half International. As a result, tech salaries, already among the richest in the country, will see an average increase of 5.3 percent, compared to a national average for all occupations of about 3 percent.
Many jobs, however, will see substantially higher increases. Mobile developers will see the biggest increase; their 9 percent average reflects the dramatic growth in mobile applications and the shortage of specialists in this area. Web developers and data professionals can expect an average 7.3 percent increase. Wireless network engineer positions will average a 7.9 percent bump. And when candidates with additional, and highly specialized skills are required, Robert Half says they can expect to average as much as 12 percent more than others with the same job title. keep reading…
After 30 years of recruiting outstanding senior staff, mid-level managers, and company executives, I can now state unequivocally that the single most important step in the passive candidate recruiting process is the 30-minute exploratory interview. Here’s why: keep reading…
Think you don’t need an employer branding strategy? Read on about a few numbers.
Physical therapists are the new nurses of healthcare recruiting, so much in demand that help-wanted ads for them are now among the most commonly advertised healthcare jobs online.
In fact, Wanted Analytics reports there are now more jobs advertised for physical therapists than any other job in any occupation, exceeding even those for nurses, which have held the top spot for years. And that’s after accounting for a 26 percent year-over-year decrease in the number.
Now a survey done by CKR Interactive’s Peer Group U.S. and healthcare marketing specialist Katon Direct helps explain why it’s so difficult to fill physical therapist openings. Besides simply the growing demand for those services, professionals in the field simply don’t want to change jobs.
“Only 4.1 percent of survey respondents say they are currently looking for a new job,” according to the 2012 National Physical Therapist Survey. That’s far less than the 38 percent of all workers a Globoforce survey said were looking. And it’s less than half the national unemployment rate. keep reading…
Having worked in executive search for more than 10 years, I have had great success in finding candidates but have encountered many obstacles in trying to place those candidates because often many hiring managers mismanage the hiring process. Below are five issues hiring managers must consider when trying to fill their open positions with superstar candidates. keep reading…
up high in the EA lobby
High pay, high housing costs, and an increasingly global recruiting environment have sent the recruiting market in California’s Silicon Valley back to the late 1990s.
Leaders from Genentech, Brocade, Electronic Arts, and other Valley companies talked about Silicon Valley recruiting at a July 18 event at Electronic Arts, put together by, among others, Brenda Rogers of Roku (the streaming-player company sporting a 67% employee referral rate) with help from CKR Interactive’s Andrew Gardiner, known by many as the founder of BAjobs.com.
Below are some highlights of that discussion entitled “recruiting top talent in the wake of a tsunami” put on by the Bay Area Human Resources Executives Council.
Moving From “Pay to Opportunity” keep reading…
Sometimes I’m asked about the graphic of sheep on my website. Sheep will follow other sheep — regardless of the danger — and the flash analogizes the importance of breaking the herd mentality. A great example of herd mentality is an event at many rodeos called Mutton Bustin. There is a sheep held in the middle of the arena whose sole purpose is to get the other sheep to run to it. This is one of the best examples of herd behavior I know.
When it comes to recruiting and hiring processes many recruiting leaders look at the hiring practices of successful companies and assume the same will work for them. We often hear about successful companies like Google that are able to attract great talent. Many of us hear this and immediately want to emulate their hiring process. Is this an effective strategy?
Will Deep Pockets Get You the Best Recruiters? keep reading…
In the world of sales, there is a high correlation between presentation skills and sales success. Great salespeople work to hone their communication skills and are able to communicate with confidence and impact. In addition, they are often remembered and acknowledged as key business partners — not simply as “someone trying to sell us something.”
Less successful salespeople, on the other hand, spend very little time consciously building their competency in this area.
But what are the elements of a great presentation? Is there a way to make a compelling presentation over the phone? And more importantly, what can recruiters do to build their phone presentation skills? In this article, I provide a simple 5-point checklist for recruiters who make presentations to candidates and hiring managers during phone conversations. keep reading…
A raft of new surveys from as varied a group as Dice, CFO magazine, and Silicon Valley Bank all say the same thing: Tech hiring is accelerating. To put that another way, if you think it’s hard hiring IT professionals now, just wait a few months.
From startups to mature firms, companies say they’ll be adding tech workers now and into next year at a faster pace than they have been. Even CFOs, who say they expect their overall company hiring to increase by 2.5 percent, predict they’ll be hiring tech workers at twice that rate. keep reading…
A day doesn’t go by that I don’t read a blog, LinkedIn discussion, or business article challenging the existence of a skilled worker shortage.
Just last week I presented a keynote address to the Executive Women’s Roundtable in Dallas, Texas. Most of the attendees were shocked by the statistics and trends I presented about skilled worker shortages. As suspected, I encountered a few objections. Most of the arguments targeted employers. The antagonists say that management in many companies simply refuses to pay qualified workers what they are worth. I can’t argue with them on that accusation. That is absolutely true.
Some employers still don’t get it — that high unemployment does not equal more qualified workers in this new global and technology-driven economy. The bar for minimum requirements has been raised substantially. Many previously employed and experienced workers now fall under the bar. To recruit and retain skilled workers, employers will need to re-examine how they compensate their workforce.
Supply and demand also plays a part. The supply of workers — domestic and international — available to do many task-oriented jobs far exceeds demand. Jobs that were once a sure bet to middle-class wages can now be performed at a fraction of a cost in developing countries or by automation. For those workers holding a high school diploma or less with no secondary education or trade school experience, I see low-wage, low-skill positions in your future.
But none of these arguments negates the fact that the U.S. has a significant and growing skills shortage. You need look no further than educational attainment, high school dropout rates, and basic literacy to see that U.S. employers are facing an acute shortage of skilled workers.
I can summarize my “case” for skilled worker shortages with two points. keep reading…
With only days left before this year’s college seniors become alums, those who don’t already have jobs are going to find it as hard to find work as last year’s grads did. And for those in the liberal arts, in the last few weeks, three different surveys of hiring managers and recruiting leaders found employers are only planning slight — if any – increases in the number of entry-level grads they bring on board.
