Details are sketchy, but Dave Mendoza did post an email about the hire to his site Six Degrees From Dave. The email is from a recruiter for Nelson Staffing and says the firm got a contract from “A Major (and pretty exciting) employer in the South Bay here in N. CA.” The email doesn’t name the employer, but it says Nelson needs to find “200 upbeat and enthusiastic recruiters and sourcers for them — by next week.”

While California’s Bay Area — home to Silicon Valley — is crowded with tech employers, few are big enough to support a need for 200 recruiters. Google is. The company laid off about 100 contract recruiters at the beginning of this year, which was 25 percent of its recruiting force. The fact that the company is now hiring 200 suggests that it expects to grow in 2010.

Some 70 percent of the new positions are at company headquarters. The rest are in other parts of the U.S. and in other parts of the world. All the positions are onsite; “no work from home.”

I’m guessing that the positions on the Nelson job board for recruiter and sourcer in Mountain View (Google’s HQ) are the same ones referred to in the email. If so, the pay scale appears to be in the $40-$45 per hour range for sourcers and $60-$70 for recruiters.

Incidentally, Mendoza’s post doesn’t mention Google by name. Nor would he confirm that the online search and advertising company is behind the hiring. Other sources, however, did confirm that it is Google.

Mendoza’s blog post has all the details — they are also in the online job postings — but briefly, here’s what Nelson Staffing says it wants:

• Experienced Recruiter (minimum 5 years total in both corporate and/or agency recruiting) – Technical,  sales, product marketing. Recruiting experience on resume in ’09;
• Recruiters (minimum 4 years recent exp) – Candidate sourcing;
• Sourcers (minimum 3 years solid recent exp) – Ability to reach passive candidates – exceptionally internet savvy;
• Recruiting Coordinators (minimum 2 years in an HR support or recruiting support role) – heavy scheduling, process management.

Below, Toole talks about these job-market trends, and the upcoming need for a lot of recruiters who have left the profession to come on back.

Rather than a focus on rapid growth, companies will look for sustainable growth. To achieve this, many more workers will be contractors, consultants, or work as temporaries or part-time. The average age of the workforce is going to get older as Baby Boomers stay longer and fewer young people seek regular corporate jobs. Learning to re-use and find new positions for internal talent will be important.

Many economists are worrying that we may have a jobless recovery, which means that rather than hire lots of people, companies will not seek to fill the jobs eliminated in this recession. They will try hard to maintain a small, highly productive workforce. Today’s BLS figures indicate that productivity is at an all-time high, despite the layoffs and slower economy. That means we are all working harder (and maybe also smarter). So CEOs may be asking: why do we need to add more people and lower our productivity?

What Does This Mean for Recruiting?

Recruiting is full of managers. These are the people who run their recruiting organizations efficiently and effectively. They implement processes, cautiously install technology, focus on customer satisfaction, and stay within their budgets. As long as the world doesn’t change too much, they thrive.

For many organizations, this can be outsourced. A solid, well-chosen RPO can take over the transactional side of recruiting and provide the people you need. It may cost a bit more than the internal recruiter and may not always be as tuned-in to the environment, but they will be capable and offer flexibility in times when hiring is slow.

As I have written many times before, internal recruiters will have to become competent in thinking more broadly about talent. Here are five things you can do.

Step #1: Realize what is happening and accept it

It is highly unlikely that recruiting will return to its pre-recession state within the next two to three years; it probably never will.

Learn as much as you can about the labor market, productivity, and the economy. Understand where your organization is compared to its competition. Realize that recruiters will still exist and even prosper, but when working for a recruiting agency or an RPO and not when working for a corporation. Inside corporations there will be jobs for talent leaders and strategic recruiting people, but not for very many regular recruiters.

Step #2: Assess your organization’s talent

What capabilities and skills do you (or the management team) think will be needed to remain competitive? Does your firm have a labor force capable of thriving in the markets you engage in? What would make it more competitive?

You can form focus groups, talk to hiring managers, meet with your organization’s strategic planning team, and understand where the firm is headed. The more you can speak intelligently and in an informed way about business issues, the better you will accepted and the more influence you can command.

Step #3: Focus on building capability, internally and externally

Develop systems and methods to find the internal talent that will most likely be able to meet the longer-term needs of your organization. Perhaps set up internal talent task forces to begin suggesting what new capabilities and skills should be hired. Ask managers who their stars are and why they are stars. Involve line management but, in subtle ways, begin to demonstrate an ability to do things more strategically and to think on a broader scale than simply filling positions.

Step #4: Communicate and educate

Spread the word about the changes in the labor market and suggest new ways to look at talent. Use the resources you have such as ERE or any of the think-tanks such as my own Future of Talent Institute to get informed and able to explain what is happening to your management.

Write an internal blog, create a talent newsletter, or just send periodic emails about the labor market. The important thing is to keep the issues of people and talent at the forefront of any discussion about business development or growth.

Step #5: Focus on leadership issues, not tactics

What really separates a winner is the focus on longer-term strategic issues and not on day-to-day activities. As I said above, outsource or automate those tactical issues so that you have time to focus on the bigger ones.

By setting up task forces and by focusing on a few critical areas, you can broaden the focus of the recruiting department and make it more integral and important to the success of the firm.

This is what leadership is all about: educating and setting expectations, engaging people to achieve goals and then getting out of the way.

The future is fine for all of us in the talent arena, but it will require a different set of skills and a new mindset.

(Bear with us as we work out the kinks with this new technology; the audio starts off a little rocky but should improve — at least a little bit — after a minute or so.)

“It’s bad. That’s spelled B-A-D,” he moaned.

“No, it’s spelled V-E-R-Y B-A-D,” I corrected, a habit of mine he doesn’t like me for. “Let’s hope the stock market gets back to 10,000. That seems, to me, to be a psychological barrier to hiring,” He interrupted: “I don’t care about the stock market anymore, I don’t care about real estate. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all about jobs,” he said heatedly before addressing the latest impact on his veterinary business — the closing of the overnight-shipping business DHL about 30 miles north of his Southern Ohio practice that employed 8,000 and provided incomes to some of his patients.

“Layoffs started coming by the hundreds.”

Now that those 8,000 have lost their jobs and their unemployment is now running out, those people are not taking their kitties to the vet for neutering; they’re choosing instead to keep their children’s inoculations current. They’re not taking on new dogs to their households that need feeding; they’re putting food on the table. If a decision needs to be made to provide an animal with life-extending medication or treatment that is often-times expensive, it is often made in the negative or delayed. “They’re choosing the bare minimum that keeps the animal alive. Who knows: maybe somewhere they’re thinking they may have to eat them,” he said, half jokingly. The stark and grim reality shone through in the statement.

Things are picking up around here, though, and sourcers are on the front line. I’m seeing the glimmer of recovery in some of the work that’s coming in. But it has a long way to go to reach 2007 levels. A long, long way, I know, but I still believe that 10,000 marker (it closed at 9,370 on Friday, Aug 7) is a psychological barrier to hiring: above it our phones are ringing off the hook; below it all goes quiet. It’s been like that for a long time. I hope, this time back, though, those in the CFO offices all across America aren’t so traumatized by losses that they’ve ratcheted that number up. They well could, taking a lesson from this travesty delivered to us by another SEC oversight. Time, will tell.

But, I ask the question again that brought you here; if so many have gone, who is left? Who is left in our profession that will be able to answer the call back to hiring? WHO has been able to weather this atomic blast to our economy all these many months and who has kept themselves ready to address the recovery after the nuclear winter? You?

How have you done that? I’m curious.

Sometimes the recruiters who been laid off have just been unlucky enough to have worked for an organization that is failing or in an industry that has been strongly affected by the recession. Yet, others have been laid off partly because of performance or attitude. Many recruiters remain tactical, and fail to grasp how strategic their function is to a firm. Many have remained working for leaders and organizations that do not appreciate how much they could contribute to the success of the business. And even fewer have become leaders who take command of the recruiting process and forge a function that competes effectively against other organizations and consistently supplies their organization with quality talent without relying on the use of extraordinary measures.

In my many years in the profession I have only known a handful of these people. Most corporate recruiters become recruiters by accident and leave the profession for some other HR or related field after a short stay. Their stay is a roller coaster of half-completed technology implementations, high staff turnover, muddled objectives, and often leaves a legacy of unhappy hiring managers. To achieve even the simplest objectives, they have to use outside resources, employ a large number of recruiters, or seek to outsource the function.

Unfortunately HR has not positioned the recruitment function as strategic, nor has HR realized that the role of talent manager, aka recruiting and development leader, is emerging as one of the most potentially needed (and influential) professions within the organization.

Generally, those recruiters who lead the effort to supply scarce talent are filled with bad habits and uncertainty that create a revolving door of leadership and produce lackluster results.

To change this and move toward a position of respect and strategic leverage, recruiting leaders should examine their own behaviors and thoughts and see if they reflect any of the habits I list below. If so, now is the time to change.

Bad habit 1: Arrogance about yesterday’s tools and techniques
Yesterday’s successes probably will not be repeated by using the same techniques or technologies. Over-reliance on techniques like cold calling, telephone screening, and resume reviewing are examples of methods that have seen their heyday but are still widely championed and loved. I frequently talk with recruiters who swear that the old ways are the only ways — the best ways — and insist that everything from interactive websites to LinkedIn are just fads.

Tomorrow belongs to recruiters who embrace such emerging practices as social networking, video interviewing, online assessment, and candidate relationship management. Recruiters experimenting with virtual communities and with building online relationships already have a advantage over the recruiter who is tied to geography and to face-to-face meetings. Labor markets are not confined to single countries, work can increasingly be done anywhere, and recruiting is a virtual, global game.

Bad habit 2: Filling requisitions instead of meeting business objectives
Most recruiters are obsessed with filling slots. That is what they have been taught to do without regard to need or effectiveness. They have a hard time discussing the value of positions with hiring managers who often regard the recruiter as little more than a clerk trusted to filter piles of resumes that are supposed to magically be arriving each day because of the organization’s prominence or brand. They are given requisition to fill and they dutifully go forth and do so — even if it is a poorly defined job or one that might be done by someone with a different skill set.

Recruiters who have the respect of the organization’s leadership have to be brave enough and well-enough informed about current issues and business needs to engage in meaningful conversation with a hiring manager. They have to be equipped with knowledge about the organization’s strategic business objectives, the needs of the hiring manager, and the state of the talent marketplace. They need to present numbers and data and make a case for hiring the competencies and skills that will be most effective in meeting the business needs of the organization.

In short, they need to act as a resource and consultant to hiring authorities and show a deep knowledge and understanding of the needs of the business. And, on top of this, they then need to be able to fill the position from a talent community they have built in anticipation of the need.

Bad habit 3: Failing to build new competencies
The emerging competencies for recruiters include the ability to engage people in conversation using virtual tools, the ability to collaborate virtually on projects, to influence hiring managers, and build targeted marketing strategies. These are totally different skills from those that dominated the profession a decade ago. In fact, over 80% of the skills that made a recruiter successful in 1997 are of little value today. For example, interviewing skills, cold calling, and reviewing and screening resumes are not critical skills. Even less understandable are the recruiters who are competent at interviewing and who then focus on getting even better at it instead of on developing skills that might be more useful. It is very easy to rely on the competencies that made us successful and not notice that times change as do the skills we need.

Far more important are the ability to write a blog, influence a candidate, and identify the value proposition of an offer.

Bad habit 4: Functional Shortsightedness
More and more of the most strategic recruiters I run into have a background in disciplines such as marketing, sales, and operations. Fewer are coming out of traditional HR disciplines. And an elite handful is morphing into talent managers — people who can understand and integrate recruiting with employee development, competency analysis, performance management, and succession planning. These recruiters are not afraid to try out new approaches, nor are they afraid to experiment and leverage technology. The most innovative websites and process improvements are emerging from recruiting leaders who have no training as recruiters and who have recently entered the field. They are writing exciting blogs, using search engine optimization techniques, and experimenting with interactive websites and tools.

The recession may be tough on recruiters, but it is also forging a new breed of talent expert. Recruiting inside organizations is evolving into talent management and the focus will be on ensuring that the organization has the critical talent it needs to achieve business goals. The talent manager will need to be able to run scenarios, produce numbers, and show where the best talent comes from whether it is developed internally, hired from inside or brought in from outside.

Out of every recession have come new ideas, new functions, and exciting change. Recruiting is at the forefront of many of the changes and for a small number of you it will be an invigorating time of learning new skills and adopting new techniques, habits, and technologies.

Many of us may have had a bout of unemployment and know how empty a day becomes when it is without purpose or goal. We miss the social interactions, and the distractions and diversions from our own problems. Employment, even when people are not really pleased with the work they are doing, gives meaning to life. It provides a reason to get up, to join social events, and is a primary source of happiness. Certainly, there are many people who for a while enjoy the leisure of unemployment, but almost all eventually became bored, dissatisfied, and start looking for something meaningful to do. Recruiters know this is true because every day they see people who may have the resources to not work but are seeking a job. When we ask candidates what they are looking for, they almost always, somewhere in their answers, mention the desire for a challenge or for social interaction and always for meaningful work.

Ultimately, unemployment becomes an issue that can threaten the stability of governments and lead to riots and worse. Germany’s Nazi government was partly an outcome of the unemployment created by the Great Depression, combined with massive inflation. Organizations are always caught in the space between wanting to be good citizens and keep good people employed, and the need to generate profit and increase stock prices. Many of us work (or have worked) for organizations that had every intention of not laying anyone off, yet in the end succumbed.

Yet, as the United States and other countries struggle to keep people employed, they often forget that the solution is not always about preserving the jobs that already exist. The solution to unemployment is to create jobs — lots of them in new and emerging areas.

Most recessions lead to the destruction of jobs in industries and areas that have been automated or made obsolete by newer technologies and methodologies. And at the same time, new jobs are created in emerging business areas. This has happened here in Silicon Valley many times. As semiconductor production was sent to Asia, software and biotech firms began to emerge, and picked up many of the unemployed workers. Venture capital fueled the growth of Yahoo, Google, and hundreds of other firms. And these firms employed thousands and attracted some of the world’s most talented and educated people to the United States.

Innovation and creativity are employment engines, but at the moment they are idling when they should be at full power. Even the U.S. Patent office is slowing down as innovative dries up.

Yet in this recession we have seen venture capital investment fall to record lows and, after a peak of 22 companies filed for an initial public offering in 2007, only two have done so since. New companies are not being created with the zest of the past, and lack of money keeps many innovative firms small and less able to make an impact on the marketplace or to employ many people.

As a nation we face several conundrums: As Richard Florida points out in The Atlantic, unemployment is highest where there are the least educated and skilled people and where the likelihood of new companies investing is low. Fewer private companies are going public, venture capitalists are investing less money, and the education of technical and scientific talent is at a low.

We are not going to come out of this recession just by employing people in massive public works projects or by propping up failing companies with obsolete and non-competitive products and services. Even if these measures work at all, their impact will be small and short.

Our stimulus money should go to entrepreneurs, inventors, and creative people who will dream up the new services and the new tools and products that will fuel growth and employment. We need to incentivize investment in high unemployment areas and provide education and training at no cost to those who need it.

We should be investing in education of all types, but especially in non-traditional areas that hold the potential to help people learn faster, cheaper, and with more enjoyment. Education is partly to blame for the uneducated and unskilled workforce we have. It did little to make learning fun, challenging, or useful. It still relies on pain as the main indicator of learning quality; if a course is fun or easy, then the student must have not learned very much.

The online universities, video learning, podcasts, virtual tutors, and other non-traditional tools may be the game-changers education needs. It will take government investment to make this mainstream. Pouring tax dollars into yesterday’s industries is not only wasteful but very dangerous.

I realize that recruiters have little to do with job creation or loss. We are primarily the ones who find the people to fill these new jobs. But here are two ideas about how we can make a significant difference.

Idea #1: Find a job in an emerging industry or service area
Green energy, robotics, and biotech are all job creation industries. U.S. News & World Report each year publishes a list of those jobs they see as “ahead of the curve.” This past December, for example, a couple of their emerging jobs were data miner and healthcare informatics specialists.

By focusing on finding people for these industries, you can enhance your own career and help thousands of people find employment.

Idea #2: Help your organization use different people
Very often people with obsolete skills can adapt to new industries and learn new skills quickly. What recruiters need to do is to be aware of what skills translate well and of which types of people can make these transitions the fastest. As the semiconductor industry emerged in Silicon Valley in the 1970s, there were no fabrication workers and no equipment repair technicians who had experience with the equipment used. Recruiters were then forced to find existing workers who could learn fast. By taking workers from the fruit and vegetable canning industries and mechanical technicians from the Army, they staffed an entire industry. Our challenge today is to find the emerging jobs and the existing workers who can fill them. This is how we can contribute to the “new” world that is emerging from this recession.

Recruiters can influence, drive change, and educate their organizations. The great recruiters are already doing this and making a big difference in the lives of thousands of unemployed and underemployed people.

“It’s a really unique situation where you have someone who is at a crossroads personally and professionally.” — Elliot Wilson

If living and working in this economy of disappearing jobs, tiny budgets, and little recruiting is getting a bit old, then perhaps you have arrived at your own personal crossroads. This metaphorical location is the intersecting point where what used to work for you in the past ends and what you will need to change in order to be successful in the future begins. As I see it, you have only two options:

1. You can continue to do what you are doing and wait for the economy to “get back to normal.”
2. You can make some fundamental changes to your core assumptions of how businesses that survive will operate so you might survive as well.

Personally, I have grave concerns about Option 1 because no one knows exactly what the new “normal” might be, and for all we know, this aberration might be the new “normal” and will remain such for years to come. If you share my concerns, please consider the following thoughts:

Expect Less. It matters little if you work as a contractor, agency, or corporate person. The face and very composition of work is changing radically. As such, the rewards normally tied to work will probably change as well. Consider the work-a-day existence of your past and acknowledge that it is probably going to remain in your past. Perhaps benefits will disappear. Perhaps the concept of “full time” will be based upon organizational need as opposed to “employee” legal standing. Perhaps you will trade value for money to be paid every Friday with both parties reevaluating the relationship every few months. Either way, expect less and smile.

Expect More. This is an opportunity for the cream of the crop to do great things. (It is also an opportunity for those who are not yet the cream to get there.) Regardless of what our flat, highly politicized world becomes, capitalists and entrepreneurs will always need to build great organizations in order to do great things. Those who effectively traffic in the procurement of human capital will always be paid for the talent they bring to the table because that is real value. Can’t get a job with one company? How about 60 hours a week with three or four companies? The time to get creative is now.

Don’t Freak on the Politics. I read a post on ERE saying that if the site went political, “I am out of here.” This thinking will not help your cause, your career, or your wallet. Show me something that affects your profession/business today and I will show you something that was political yesterday. The time to become aware and involved is now, because you can’t benefit from the political aspects of business with an “I-am-just-a-recruiter” mentality. Don’t get me wrong: I hate long, lunatic pointless ranting posts that blame all of this misery on one party/person/group or the other. The time for blame is over, and the time for awareness and action has arrived. Exactly how you do that is your decision, but pointing out the importance of being politically aware is mine. (In all of my years, I have never seen a recruiter with a copy of the Wall Street Journal. Why is that?)

They Told You They Have No Money? Are you an agency or a sourcer or some other vendor selling peripheral recruiting services? If so, let me tell you a little secret; all organizations have money. When they say that they have no money, they mean they have no money for you. That means, that they do not see real value in what you are selling, because if they did, they would find the money; they would stay up nights looking for it. I strongly suggest that all of us dramatically increase our value proposition. How? For openers, lower your price, because as cost goes down, value goes up. As an example, If I were in the agency business, I would reduce my fees. Most agency people hate this thinking for endless reasons but doing placements at 15% a pop is more sensible then non-stop conversations with clients about why your candidates are worth 30%. Those individuals who allow money to stand in the way of doing business are making a grave mistake.

Paradigm Shifts Are Good. Use Them. Many years ago, the Swiss owned the watch industry. Then the Japanese began to make watches using cheapo quartz innards that were far more accurate as opposed to expensive Swiss movements. That was a paradigm shift and all paradigm shifts bring the marketplace back to zero as the race begins again! The Japanese made bazillions of these watches and decimated Swiss domination. The Japanese found a better way, and the world bought. The lesson here? The future of recruiting is up for grabs. Radical new ideas in conjunction with creative, global, and scalable solutions will change everything! If you have an idea, shoot for the moon now or spend your life wishing that you did.

Leave Recruiting. Shocked? You shouldn’t be. Please remember that recruiting has no bar to entry. If and when recruiting “comes back,” regardless of how good you might be, your competition will be every 24-year-old kid with capped teeth and greased hair looking to make a buck. What’s that you say? They will recognize your years of experience and talent? Hmmm … Some will, but more will not, as their lower pricing will be a strong lure. Tired of being part of an industry that gets squished ever five or so years? Are you an agency person who is beginning to hate the grind and 75 cold calls a day? A corporate person who despises the politics and the games? If so, perhaps now is the time to realize that recruiting does not have to be a life sentence. Good recruiters have terrific skills and they can do so many other things. As an example, about three or four years ago, I was with Dave Lefkow doing a presentation in NYC for a fortune 100 client. Look at Dave now. Who knew? Hopefully, you can see there is more then one way to bring home the bacon.

These ideas are but the tip of the iceberg in looking at new ways to think, act, and do business. I do not see any real option to making these changes, because either business will adjust to you, or you will adjust to business. Which one do you think will happen?

(Hanging around Minnesota this Friday? See Howard Adamsky speak at Best Buy headquarters in Richfield. The presentation is entitled “Brave New World/The Emerging Role of Tomorrow’s Recruiters.” Cost is $12,500 per person but it’s free if you mention Howard’s name. Donuts included of course. Register at http://www.mntrn.org/ )

But maybe you weren’t quite as fortunate, and your crew was heavily loaded with regular staff recruiters, who were going full steam to keep up with the incredible hiring requisition load. Or maybe you have shed the contractors, but even your remaining staff is struggling to stay busy. Unfortunately, now that the economy has gone south, they’re running half the req loads they once did. Not only are they questioning their own job security, but you’re constantly fending off queries from your boss, the rest of HR, and maybe even the CFO as to just what the recruiters are doing, and why should you be maintaining the same staff you had when the current workload has shrunken so dramatically. Sounding familiar?

Hopefully, back in January of this year, you took Lou Adler’s sound advice that “hiring will start to recover in Q2, 2009, and now is the time to rebuild your recruiting team and massively upgrade your sourcing and hiring processes.” Perhaps you’ve done just that, and are now well positioned to address any coming business increase. Or possibly you didn’t get that opportunity, or your business still hasn’t begun to bounce back.

In any event, you do have alternatives — methods you can use to gainfully deploy your staff resources in ways that clearly, and measurably, demonstrate their ongoing value to the business. The challenges will be different, depending on the size of the company you’re in. In a small firm, you are likely to have more latitude in initiating change — but possibly fewer resources available. In a larger firm with more resources, you are likely to need to build a support coalition of colleagues, business partners, or executives to create the right atmosphere for change. But in either situation, it’s critical that you build the “business case” — show the ROI through well-tracked and supportable metrics.

In my more than 20 years of recruiting leadership, predominantly in hi-tech, I’ve had ample opportunity to face this challenge, given the cyclical nature of that business. And as you can imagine, I willingly responded to a blog posting earlier this year asking other recruiting veterans for their experiences in facing the same issue. 13 of us shared our stories, from a variety of industries and backgrounds. The following are a few snapshots of some of the proven practices and strategies that have been successfully implemented by others to preserve their key recruiting assets during previous business slowdowns.

Some of these are creative twists on previous themes, while others represent really out-of-the-box thinking. [NOTE: All of them are predicated on the assumption that you know your staff --- their skills, strengths/weaknesses, and backgrounds. If you're new in the role, you might want to begin with a resume review and light career discussion with each of them.]

I do hope you find some of the suggestions below fascinating, creative, and useful. I will be presenting a seminar/workshop on this very subject, and with a lot of additional detail on implementation, at the upcoming ERE Expo in Florida in September, and we’d love to see you there.

1. (Internal) Outplacement Services: For the regular recruiters, create a corporate career university — in essence a full outplacement program modeled after those offered by external vendors (at ridiculous prices). The recruiting staff would run workshops, on and off-site, such as resume writing, interviewing skills, campaign management, negotiating offers, use of the Internet, etc. This one is very easy to show a solid ROI for.
2. (External) Outplacement Services: Take the same offering “on the road” to college placement offices, state unemployment offices, and even social groups/non-profits, as a community service. It may also be a tax write-off.
3. Business Development: Deploy researchers/sourcers on business development activities. You can gain access to your sales department’s CRM (client/customer relationship management system), and then scan those prospects that had weak or limited knowledge recorded in the database. Then you can create a full Company Profile — sort of like a Dun & Bradstreet Plus workup, and at no cost to the organization.
4. Directed Research: Those same researchers/sourcers, working with the senior admin staff, can get a “heads up” on all planned executive travel that would be visiting customers or prospects. Once you know who they are meeting with, create a “personal dossier” on each of the individuals they will be meeting with, (including home addresses, photos, personal data, etc,), put it in a packet, and give it to the traveling executive the day before departure, as “airplane reading.”
5. Top Grade your Recruiting Staff: Assuming you’ve already reduced your roster of contract recruiters, go through a performance-based ranking of those remaining, with career development as an outcome, (and preparation for further staff reduction if needed).
6. Build a Talent Pool Pipeline: Assess your past “hardest to fill” position, and launch a branding outreach campaign to candidates for future consideration. Be very clear about any available openings, and work from a perspective of building a “friends of (our company)” that you want to stay in touch with. Newsletters can be perfect for this.
7. Train the Hiring Managers: This is something we often never had the time to do, but certainly do now. There are some great programs available in the market — or better yet, create your own.
8. Re-skilling: While you’re in training mode, what could you deliver internally to your own recruiting staff to better equip them for when the market picks up and the “war for talent” resumes? Do they need refreshers on the latest Internet recruiting techniques, or using social networking tools in recruiting? There are some great resources offered right here on the ERE website, or you may even have a resident guru on your own staff.
9. Internal Process Analysis: When was the last time you sat back and closely examined the actual workflow in your recruiting operation? Most any analysis will turn up innumerable inefficient practices, roadblocks, and artifacts of “the way we always did it.” This is a great time, during low volume recruiting, to experiment with new ideas and even some best practices you “borrow” from other firms.
10. Technology Upgrade: It may be a little tough to get resources approved for an upgraded applicant tracking system, but when was the last time you shopped the market? As the competition and functionality has grown, prices in many cases have come down, and if you “upgrade” to a less expensive system, you’re the hero! This also applies to your firm’s recruiting website, which most of us will admit is often out of date.
11. Special Project Work: Thinking outside the walls of recruiting, what special projects may be in need of some of the skills your recruiters can bring to the table? HR has many cyclical programs that roll out throughout the year, such as newsletter releases, career/succession planning, etc. that may lend themselves well to the recruiter’s skill set.
12. Assist HR in Core Services: Recruiters often have two key ingredients that could add value in assisting with employee relations issues (which often escalate during a downturn). Many of them will have previous experience in many aspects of the “HR Generalist” role, and all of them have pre-existing relationships with many of your employees — because they hired them!

There was the “CIO” position calling for a high school diploma and two to three years of experience. He actually emailed the company and found out it was a startup with fewer than six employees. They were really looking for a network admin and thought a flashy title would attract someone entrepreneurial. OK, this is obviously an amateurish company that has no clue how to write a job description to save their lives.

But what about the global telecom company that was looking for a software manager who had a requirement of “5-7 years experience using .NET 2.0 or above.” In Seattle, I can tell you exactly when .NET became “the platform.” In 2004. My friend spoke to the recruiter, and she told him that he didn’t have enough .NET 3.0 experience; the hiring manager wanted someone with at least five years of experience with .NET 3.0. But 3.0 has only been around for three years or so. We are only on version 3.5 now. My friend tried to explain that to the recruiter, but she obviously had no understanding of the technology she was recruiting for.

As a recruiter, I have friends and colleagues constantly asking me “why do companies do this?”

It ranges from the whole lack of follow-through when it comes to the candidate experience to hyping job descriptions way out of proportion (sheer hypocrisy, IMHO, when we complain about exaggerated resumes!) How many times can I say to my professional network that hiring managers generally write job descriptions, and unless a recruiter is really knowledgeable about the industry and the job, s/he has no idea why two “requirements” may be mutually exclusive, or that sometimes a company will use a generic description to build a pipeline, or that perhaps the organization has an internal candidate lined up but for legal reasons has to post the job externally? It’s getting really old, really fast.

And in my own search for a position in the last several months I am appalled at the lack of what I see as “professional courtesy.” If I have a phone screen or in-person interviews with a member of an organization for a recruiting position, and you don’t give me the courtesy of answering my email or phone call a week later to follow up on my candidacy, why on earth would I consider working for you? Obviously you don’t value the candidate experience.

Yes, we are swamped with resumes and our sourcing may be falling by the wayside. Yes, our hiring managers are being incredibly slow to respond to us and candidates are getting desperate. Yes, we may even be concerned about riding out this economy. But many of the pains the candidates are feeling are not new, they are not unique, and as a profession we are giving ourselves a bad reputation, worse than even it was before. My own rule of thumb is that if a candidate has spoken with anyone from my organization (phone screen, for example) they deserve a politely worded email or phone call to let them know they are no longer a candidate for the position.

If organizations are laying off their seasoned recruiters in an effort to save money, they are doing themselves a huge injustice when job descriptions and situations like the ones outlined above become more commonplace than not. Recruiters should be some of the most valuable gatekeepers any organization — be it corporate, non-profit, or agency environments — has in their arsenal. And part of that gatekeeping responsibility lies with the recruiter to push back on badly written job descriptions. It goes to the “account management” portion of our profession. We are the experts at what we do, and our hiring managers should respect that knowledge and work in partnership with us.

I have just been at the Australasian Talent Conference in Sydney, Australia, for the past week and what was most interesting was to listen to the issues and concerns of those recruiters who have not been laid off and whose organizations are still hiring.

They are faced with challenges that many of the ERE writing team have talked about over the past year.

First of all, many candidates are reluctant to shift jobs — or even take a job when they are unemployed — unless that organization and position fit very closely with their career objectives and values. It is not about money or security. It’s about alignment with their own inner self.

Second, they are carefully looking at the interaction with the recruiter as a reflection of the organization. How I am treated and served by the recruiter is likely to be how I am treated as an employee.

And third, they are looking for work that is engaging and meaningful — not a job, but a passion.

This may sound silly or even unrealistic given the economy, but it is a real phenomena. I am not sure what is driving it. Perhaps it is the fact that Generation Y values of passion, meaningfulness, and sustainability are becoming more mainstream. Many are looking for much more than a job.

I believe this is driving a change in the skills recruiters need. A modern recruiter needs less in the way of the traditional technical skills in the mechanics of recruiting, and much more in the way of “soft” skills.

Here are five skills for recruiters. These are ones I have used before, but updated for new times. I have also inserted a simple diagram that you are free to use, modify, and add to. I am open to your opinions about what should be on this chart and your thoughts on whether this is the right set of values and skills or not.

Skill #1: Recruiters have personal values and talk about them
Do you do what you say? Do you answer their questions honestly? Are you upfront about the issues and problems they may face? Do you connect them to people who are objective about the company and the position?

Knowing yourself and what your values are about work, people, and relationships is key to being a successful recruiter. You must be authentic and convey your sincerity to candidates who will test you and probe you to see if they are really your values. Candidates can sense if your values and the organization’s are not aligned, and that disconnect will make the best candidates much harder to close.

Skill #2: Recruiters know and can explain the talent market
The competent recruiter is able to tell the hiring manager what the talent market looks like, what the supply of talent for a particular job is likely to be in her area, and how difficult it will be to find and close on candidates. This knowledge has to be data-driven and can only be collected by vast reading, lots of discussion, the intelligent use of surveys, and other data tools. They are finding web-based tools that help them mine and understand candidate trends, likes and dislikes, and they can tell you which candidates are most likely to be good employees.

Gathering and interpreting data, making correlations between competencies and success, and measuring the impact of different marketing messages is already a skill top-notch recruiters need to have.

They also know the direction the market is moving for their client or organization. Are competitors laying people off? Is the market growing, shrinking, flat? This kind of information, combined with the ability to build relationships, can make an ineffective recruiting function very powerful.

Skill #3: Recruiters build relationships
The ability to find great people and build relationships with them should be the core competence of every recruiter. This is what all great recruiters do. Recruiters within organizations need to get out of the organization and get to know people at all levels and professions who might be useful to their firm. They need to use technology to help create the initial relationship, and then they need to leverage that by using social media including Twitter, blogs, websites, and anything else that will create authentic interaction with a potential candidate.

More than half of every recruiter’s time should be used to network, build relationships, communicate, and get involved with candidates. Recruiters who can provide some career advice, listen to candidates’ concerns, and provide advice on which positions might be the best fit will be recruiters who grow and thrive in this and any economy.

Skill #4: Recruiters prove their value
Competent recruiters use metrics to put together business arguments for programs they initiate or for the systems they buy. They use facts, numbers, and results to get what they want. They have a core set of metrics that show how they add value, raise quality, improve profits, or save money.

If a CFO asks for the ROI of recruiting for a position, a really modern recruiter will have data and can help a hiring manager make a business case for that position.

Skills #5: Recruiters sell and close candidates
In the end, a recruiter is as good as the number of candidates that she can close. To do this, she needs to be good at selling candidates and hiring managers. She needs to know how to overcome objections and turn negatives into positives. She needs to offer solutions, work out compromises, and in the end make the hire happen in a way that is consistent with her values and those of the organization.

Being a modern recruiter is, in some ways, easy. It’s about treating candidates as you would like to be treated. It’s about knowing who you are and what you believe so that you can quickly know when the direction you are headed is wrong.

There’s no need for anything fancy — we know that a lot of people are recently out of a job and want to make it easier for as many recruiters as possible to find a new gig.

So let’s do this super simple. If you’re a recruiter and you’re in the job market, leave a comment with your:

Name

Email address

Former title

Former company

Location

Feel free to leave additional details as well if you’d like.

We are getting emails and calls every single day from very capable friends in the industry who are being laid off or having contracts come to an end. There’s no shame in looking for a new job in this economy.

Lastly, don’t forget to check out the ERE Job Board. There aren’t as many listings as there were before the recession, but there may be a match!

Best of luck, and let us know how we can help.

Things will get better for you when you get better.

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

When I assess candidates, this is one of the factors I examine — finding out how the person got better. Not surprisingly, the best people have this core trait in common, and in spades. They’re always getting better. All of them improved themselves and the activities they were directly responsible for. A good portion of these people went out of their way to improve things they weren’t directly responsible for, so you need to give these people an extra star.

A much smaller group went out of their way to improve not only themselves, but also the people they worked with, whether they were responsible for them or not. These were the true leaders of the bunch.

As you assess candidates in the future, look for the degree the person got better, which will help you more easily separate the best from the merely good.

Surprisingly, very few had the exact level of skills, academics, and experience requirements listed on the job description. While they all possessed enough of the requirements to do the work required, the mix was different than the “must haves” listed, and the level of experience in absolute terms was generally much less.

Offsetting this was something far more important — a track record of consistent high performance doing comparable work, often in different industries.

Just like top people in any field, recruiters needs to consistently change and improve, just to stay even. To get better, you need to change even faster.

With that said, here are some ideas on how to get massively better. With recruiting departments being cut 30%-70% on average, getting massively better represents a survival of the fittest mentality.

In my opinion, if you don’t want to get massively better, drop out of the industry and do something you want to get massively better at.

How to Get Massively Better

1. Become someone worth knowing. Recruiters need to be able to connect with lots of top-notch people on an ongoing basis. This is the best way to get referrals of great passive candidates. If you’re worth knowing, hiring managers and candidates will seek you out. They’ll refer the best people they know to you without asking. If you’re not worth knowing, you’ll only attract the attention of those desperate for the job you’re currently representing. This is a transactional relationship. Those who are worth knowing develop long-term relationships that span years, not just a few days. Here’s an article on how to become someone worth knowing.
2. Know the job. If you don’t know the job, the best you can do is screen on skills and experience. If you know the job, you can quickly become someone worth knowing. You’ll be able to counsel and advise your candidates and hiring managers alike. You’ll be more accurate in your assessments and you’ll be able to defend qualified candidates from those hiring managers who conduct superficial or narrow interviews.
3. Build a network of all-stars. If you’re placing similar type positions (e.g., developers, tax managers, ASIC engineers, pharma sales reps), most of your placements should come from referrals. To get these referrals, you’ll need to be considered an expert in your field. Part of this is cultivating relationship (not transactions) with every top person your best employees are connected with on LinkedIn. If you’re a third-party recruiter, build these relationships with the best people on your LinkedIn list. While they won’t give you great referrals right away, after a few months of professional nurturing and knowledge sharing, you’ll have a strong network to work once the req is approved.
4. Become partners with your best managers. Recruiters are at least 50% more productive when they have a peer relationship with their hiring manager clients instead of a subservient one. This recruiter/manager partnership is developed when recruiters have a strong understanding of real job needs, present a few highly qualified candidates in a timely manner, have strong assessment skills, and can influence the shape of the job and the person ultimately hired. You know you’ve arrived when your hiring managers see everyone you recommend without having to review their resumes.
5. Implement an early-bird sourcing strategy. During the first few days of a job search, the best active candidates contact their close confidantes, previous mentors, and a short network of influential people. In parallel, they Google for jobs by searching on the job title, the city, and the word “jobs.” The best of this group start interviewing within the first week. Time is now a competitive advantage, so being called first and being found first is the key to hiring the best as soon as they enter the market. Becoming an early-bird is an essential skill if you’re sourcing active candidates.
6. Become an expert in consumer marketing. The messaging (ad copy) is a critical aspect of implementing an early-bird sourcing strategy. Rather than benchmark other recruiting departments, benchmark the best consumer products companies. When you do, you’ll notice that their advertising is written to appeal to their target audience with a focus on the benefits of the product rather than the technical specifications. For recruiting, this means eliminating traditional job descriptions filled with requirements (comparable to the product specifications) and start describing what the person will do, learn, and become (the benefits). While there’s much more than this consumer marketing stuff, it won’t help much if you’re posting boring job descriptions.

These are just some ideas on how to get massively better, and it really doesn’t matter if you do these exact things. What does matter is that you start getting massively better at what you’re doing today. Once you get on the path of getting better — whether it’s more training, attending meetings, leading workshops, taking on more challenging assignments, or becoming more innovative — don’t stop. Getting continuously and massively better is the real goal here.

As Jim Rohn said, “Things will get better for you when you get better.”

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%.

An Almost Endless Stream of Ideas on How to Increase Corporate Recruiting Department Productivity by Over 100%

1. Only hire recruiters who are, or can become, partners with their hiring managers. Recruiters who are partners with their clients get more time to discuss real job needs, they send out fewer candidates, make more hires, and overcome natural hiring manager resistance to see top candidates who don’t fit the bill on paper. Partners make twice as many placements per month than recruiters who are perceived as vendors to their clients, so this is a huge productivity opportunity.
2. Make sure your recruiters are competent to do the work assigned. One way to increase productivity is to ensure all of your recruiters are as good as those in the top 10% on your team. (Contact me if you’d like to check out our new online recruiter assessment tool we’ve created with Profiles International.)
3. Make sure every recruiter understands the jobs they’re filling. Sadly, most recruiters don’t know much about the jobs they’re representing. Whether it’s a call center in Chicago, a sales rep in San Jose, or a J2EE architect in Ashtabula, recruiters need to know what drives on-the-job success, why the job is critical to the company, and why a top person should consider it.
4. Make sure your recruiters totally understand their target market. Recruiters need to be subject-matter experts regarding the job, the industry, and especially the needs of their ideal “target” candidates. Creating candidate personas is the first step, including demographics, associations, first- and second-degree networks, conferences, recognition awards, academic connections, and motivating needs. This allows them to write compelling ads, post them in the best places, know exactly who to call, what to say, how to get great referrals, and how to convince the best people your job is the best of the bunch.
5. Make sure your recruiters know how to recruit. Recruiting means getting more candidates interested at the beginning, ensuring that few drop out in the middle, and 95% of all offers are accepted on fair terms. Effective applicant control is at the core of this and most recruiters don’t even know what this even means. Do you know how many candidates you’ve lost because your recruiters dropped the ball somewhere in the process?
6. Make sure your recruiters are respected by the candidates they represent. If recruiters aren’t seen as subject-matter experts and career advisors by their candidates, you’re losing some great people before the process even begins. You’ll get a good sense of this by calculating how many “A” level candidates your recruiters uncover and place on a typical search. If it’s not 70% or more, you’ve found a huge productivity improvement opportunity.
7. Make sure your recruiters can accurately assess candidate competency. Recruiters should be able to get this right 80% of the time with a 30-minute performance-based phone screen, at least to the point of not embarrassing themselves by recommending a totally unqualified person. Think of the time wasted sending out a candidate who shouldn’t be seen in the first place.
8. Make sure your recruiters are tough-minded, confident, and persistent. The best recruiters don’t take no for an answer, they defend their candidates from superficial assessments, and they close on career opportunities more than money. These recruiters are 2-3 times more productive than those who cave at every negative. Double your team’s productivity by making sure your recruiters are those who don’t give up without a fight.
9. Manage time. Cold-calling people you don’t know is a big time-waster. Calling people who are good who will call you back is an ok thing to do if a great ad didn’t work. A sequenced sourcing strategy based on the “low-hanging fruit principle” of selling should be established for every search assignment. Then, measure your recruiters on qualified sendouts/hour to start finding out where your team is wasting its time.
10. Don’t let your recruiters call people who won’t call them back. Start tracking voice-mail return rates. Those with the highest percentages (target a minimum of 75% to start) usually spend more time calling referrals, are seen as subject-matter experts or come across as extremely professional. To improve productivity 300%, either train your recruiters to increase their callback rate from 25% to 75%, or hire those who already do it without complaining how hard it is.
11. Make sure your recruiters get 2-3 high-quality referrals on every call. The ability to get high-quality referrals is the secret behind passive candidate recruiting. A great referral will call you back if you mention the name of the great person who provided the referral. Recruiters then need to prequalify every referral and only call those who are worthy. If you track great referrals per call, you’ll quickly know which recruiters are able to play in the passive candidate recruiting talent game.
12. Prepare a process-flow diagram of every step in your hiring process and calculate the yield at each of these steps. Look at each step in your hiring processes and see where you lose the most candidates. First, track ad response and apply rates. At the back end of the process, figure out how many good candidates were poorly assessed or excluded for dumb reasons. Then start working on those process steps that can double or triple your team productivity.
13. Make sure you’re attracting early-birds, not leftovers. When you examine the problems associated with most active candidate sourcing programs, you quickly discover that they’re attracting leftovers, or candidates who have been in the market a few weeks or more. If you’re not attracting the best of the bunch as soon as they start looking, you’re wasting time and resources going through electronic stacks of resumes of unqualified people. Implementing an early-bird sourcing strategy can increase your active candidate sourcing productivity by 100-200%!
14. Eliminate all barriers-to-entry. The best people, whether they’re active or passive, are more discriminating and don’t want to be pushed into filling in an application before they’re ready. To address this critical need, establish an open-door policy where you allow candidates to “just look around” before getting serious. This is what Web 2.0 is really about — establishing two-way relationships using a variety of entry points to attract someone’s attention.
15. Manage your 500-pound gorillas. A huge productivity loss is managers who can’t recruit, don’t know real job needs, or can’t accurately interview. If you’ve ever lost a good candidate for one of these reasons, or if managers refuse to see a top-notch person with a slightly different skill set, you know how much time is wasted here. Getting hiring managers inducted into the real world of hiring top performers will double your productivity almost overnight. Not doing it will diminish the impact of everything else mentioned here. (Contact me if you’d like to find out about our new gorilla taming programs.)

Doing everything described will absolutely result in a 100%-200% productivity gain. If not, you didn’t do them right, so start over and try again. Even if you did achieve the productivity improvements, start over again anyway to get another 100%-200% productivity improvement.

Things are changing so fast you need to keep at it by establishing a continuous improvement program. Bottom line, this is what this article is really about.

Recruiters who leave (or get new jobs within) the profession have more to offer than most prospective employers probably realize. For that matter, they have more to offer their own companies than their own employers probably realize — for example, during tough times, a lot of recruiters have research skills that could be put to use in the sales department.

Perhaps we can get a reasons-you-should-hire-a-recruiter list going (post in the comments section).

Dear Potential Employer:

Please accept this letter of recommendation for the journalist applying for your job opening. I know this is unorthodox — a generic reference letter. But permit me to explain. Thousands of men and women who made journalism their vocation have lost their jobs. For many, telling a community’s stories through words and images is the only career they’ve known.

They didn’t leave their jobs; their jobs left them. Many are still shell-shocked, wondering if potential employers in other fields will place any value on the things they do best.

That’s why I write this letter. I don’t pretend to know the individual who’s applying to you, and certainly, every journalist is unique. But as someone who has spent decades hiring and firing, coaching and mentoring journalists, I know a bit about their skills and values and what they could mean to your organization.

I also know that journalists may not be comfortable appearing to brag about what they do well; self-esteem can get downsized pretty easily these days.

So permit me to make their case to you. Here are 10 reasons you should hire a journalist.

Have you noticed a slew of emails lately for free or cheap training? Is it tempting, when budgets are being cut back, to say that having everyone pick some of those and/or sending a handful of staffers to a conference and report back to the group, is how your team will fulfill its training goals this year? Exactly what goals will you fulfill that way?

Maureen Sharib

We in recruiting can learn something from sales training programs and organizations — a near-ubiquitous category. The good ones from major firms like Miller-Heiman to boutique firms like High Probability Selling (Jacques Werth), and tons of programs ranging from specific skills (negotiations, closing, communication) to entire approaches (customer-centric selling, target account selling) are promoted as means to help salespeople identify the right prospects and ultimately close more deals. The effect should be more revenue to the firm than the cost and time devoted to learning, justifying the training’s ROI.

But training is only a support mechanism — a means to an end. It is a way for managers to identify high performers, those who adapt to training and a way to remediate poor performers — it also can be a way to justify the team leader’s performance. Talk to most salespeople and they will rattle off a series of training programs they attended. Training is usually part of most annual sales/marketing corporate meetings. Even for technical folks, training is the norm because it is the way that they keep up on the latest technologies and don’t become as obsolete or un-marketable as the Commodore 64.

Top 5 Reasons Why Recruiting Managers Avoid Training

It mystifies us as to how many staffing leaders brush off quality training as a major expense that no one has time for. We offer a sample of the actual, lame excuses and objections received for your amusement:

1. “I have the most seasoned recruiters/team”: Considering that we hear this one constantly — then everyone has the most seasoned recruiters and team. This means that ultimately no one has the most seasoned recruiters or team. Define “seasoned.” Is it someone who has been recruiting the same way for 20 years with some modicum of success? Or did they work in agencies and had to produce? We know marketing people with 20 years of experience who were so behind that they lost touch with what was going on in marketing. We don’t mean performance measures in terms of length of service, but rather in terms of results. We buy the fact your recruiter can fill a position in less than six weeks consistently and has an 80% fill rate; we do not buy the fact that s/he is “seasoned.” That type of thinking means there is likely no real measurement of performance in the organization; all the more reason to have metrics and training.
2. “I have no budget for training”: Money is allocated, meaning that with the proper business case, it is possible to obtain funding for training. What talent managers are really saying is: a) they have no power in an organization and are not strategic assets; b) they don’t understand or are incapable of developing a business case; and c) they are not invested in the performance or betterment of their own people. If the motivation exists, the money will be there. Training is an investment with the end result of affecting the top or bottom line. If you train recruiters and sourcers well, the result is faster hires, more strategic fit, and enhanced competitiveness — at a lower cost.
3. “I already know all that stuff that so-and-so teaches”: Well, if you knew everything that Shally Steckerl, Maureen Sharib, and the other “gurus” knew, then you would be teaching instead of working for someone else to pay your bills. Plus, the “gurus” are focused on the R&D needed to consistently improve and do not do anything else except participate in the cycle of teach-learn. Without that laser focus and talent, it is impossible to hone a skill to that level. Plus, truly intelligent and confident people will benchmark against others as a measure of their true performance. In fact, they enjoy the challenge and look for their own areas of strength and weakness.
4. “I am the team leader; I should know and impart everything”: The job of a team leader is to understand the strengths/weaknesses of the team and provide the best available resources to help them succeed. A team leader who feels this way is someone who is not developing his people and is in need of management training and coaching.
5. “There’s a lot of free and cheap training in this economy, why pay more?”: Look at the source of the free webinars and inexpensive workshops from these self-proclaimed experts. Where did they come out of the woodwork? These are people who were contract recruiters yesterday and would jump back tomorrow if they could land a steady gig. These “overnight gurus” are looking for quick cash in the meantime to cover their bills. That’s a big difference from the dedicated recruitment training and consulting organizations that invest heavily in R&D (see #3 above) to innovate and share best practice methods. The industry leaders are tried and tested, offering true research, proven by experience. You can see the passion and enthusiasm in their presentations, and the same from their huge fan bases. But there is a cost to maintain that kind of world-class operation. You get what you pay for.

Glenn Gutmacher

We recently spoke to a recruiting manager who claimed “no budget,” “seasoned recruiters,” and “I know everything.” As we listened to her, we got the impression that she was quite unmotivated to do anything more than what she currently did, even though it was costing her organization more money. No doubt the minute her boss comes across someone who is a little more motivated, this person will likely be gone and — without keeping up — obsolete.

Training Works When Linked to Metrics, Processes

By linking specific goals such as increased productivity per recruiter, compressed fill times, or enhanced sourcing outcomes, training can demonstrate ROI as tangible, measurable increases are noted. With reinforcement of concepts and proper implementation, an adaptable recipient can immediately begin demonstrating observable behavioral and productivity changes.

Training is a means to an end — an investment in self-development. According to Lauri Bassi, CEO of McBassi & Company, “the single most powerful predictor of stock price is a firm’s investment in training.” If that isn’t compelling enough for you, consider this. Continuous learning is the hallmark of the top performer, because only a top performer recognizes that it is needed to always stay ahead and mitigate threats. There is no excuse — zero — for not doing it.

Quality training starts with an evaluation of the team, its strengths and weaknesses, and a comparison of the team’s performance actively benchmarked against current industry or internal performance metrics. Without defining success and comparing it to external yardsticks, understanding the true performance of the team or individual is impossible.

How the Virtuous Cycle Begins, Takes Hold

What we often find is that every team is comprised of a wide range of ability and aptitude. For larger teams, whether the training is held onsite or via webinar, full group attendance trainings are not enough to achieve meaningful goals. Post-training exercises can reveal who has done their homework if the company management reinforces the importance.

However, smaller groups allow the trainer to address more specific needs (e.g., how to source Finance requisitions vs. Information Technology) while also allowing team members to open up. A strong trainer can be more interactive and draw out questions, comments, and learn who “gets” it on an individual level.
Who the manager thinks is the rockstar often ends up falling to the middle of the pack once you get past the basics. Others previously deemed average are suddenly motivated and end up becoming subject-matter experts. Of those, inevitably at least one surfaces who can be coached to become the internal lead for train-the-trainer initiatives. This insures ongoing learning that reinforces the gains from the official instructor(s) and creates a virtuous cycle.

The opportunity for people to specialize (e.g., particular tools or subject matter) and share what they learn as a group in a recurring format can evolve into what is called a “Community of Practice” or “Center of Excellence.” Don’t be surprised if others outside your team hear about these and ask to attend! Now you have the core for special project committees that can start to institute new, more productive processes and systems with metrics behind them.

The accomplished trainer/consultant does not lead these groups or sessions, but rather counsels recruiting management and/or project teams from behind the scenes as a trusted advisor. Such leaders have the expertise and experience to recommend tweaks along the way to optimize systems as well as avoid bad surprises. And when the occasional major problem arises, they can draw upon similar experiences to confidently suggest ways to address it.

If all this isn’t happening in your organization, maybe it’s time to look at an organization that provides quality training and consulting, and has proven its value repeatedly for companies like yours.

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.

On top of all that, for many roles you need to fill (such as in sales, operations, and general management), it can be harder to attract “in-place” people during difficult times than in good times.

Thus for starters, challenging economic times require a greater focus on candidate management. With so many people looking for work and resumes coming in at a much faster rate, there are simply more candidates to manage. Thus it’s easier for recruiters who are usually very good at this to drop the ball (and for those who usually don’t do so well to begin with, it’s doubly worse). And, as mentioned above, since as a rule people magnify their experience during difficult times, any slip-up will be judged much more harshly during a downturn than when things are good.

But the converse is also true (which is why this is a great opportunity for relationship building): Those with whom you followed up and treated well will never forget how you stood out from the rest of the pack of potential employers who never called them back.

And remember, since the way you act reflects your employer brand, how people are treated during this time makes or breaks your employer brand!

Thus for all candidates who have submitted a resume for a role, an email should immediately be sent as a common courtesy. This can be automated through an applicant tracking system.

However, for those who have come in for an interview but did not get an offer, they should be followed up with personally. Sending an email in this instance is not only bad form; it’s cowardly. Emails are a one-way form of communication that provide no interaction, can be passed onto others and, importantly, don’t allow you to develop a broader relationship with candidates overall.

For these candidates, prioritize which candidates to contact first and then set aside time to make the calls. Block out time at the end of the day, at 5:00. Since it’s later in the day, you may have to leave a message. But if you do so, don’t leave the reason you’re calling on their voice mail (it’s the same as sending an email). Rather leave a message saying simply to call you back. Then once you do get them on the phone, be straightforward and genuine (although I’ll comment in a later column on what to say during that call).

To review, here are some reminders for candidate follow-through:

1. Prioritize which candidates to call first
2. Set aside time to make the calls
3. Don’t send a letter or email
4. If you have to leave a message, don’t say why you’re calling
5. Once you talk to them, be straightforward and genuine
6. Network with them for the future
7. Don’t worry about the legal issues of turning them down in on the phone

Recruiting during this time also forces you to hone and sharpen your skills. For instance, with active candidates, economic downturns require more investigation skills and a greater focus on candidate evaluation. Simply because someone is laid off doesn’t mean they are a bad candidate. However, it does require greater investigation to insure that there aren’t performance issues.

And, as mentioned, “passive” candidates can be harder to recruit than in good times. Actively recruiting someone in a sitting position from a competitor is harder because there has to be a compelling reason for them to take your call. In addition to likely being overwhelmed (since they’re the people doing all the work), passive candidates will be a lot more risk-averse. Thus they will have less patience for your inquiry and will need to know a lot of information up front (this doesn’t just apply to senior executives, but to lower-level employees as well).

For instance, a passive candidate will likely want to know on the first call the risks, rewards, and the reasons they should consider making a move. They will definitely have a “show-me-the-money” attitude. This requires that you talk to your hiring managers ahead of time about a range of issues, including compensation, severance, relocation, change in control and layoffs, and have many “tools” in your toolbox, before making the call. And when you make the call, be legitimately open and empathetic with candidates, and to hear their concerns.

Candidate relocation, in particular, is a hard issue to deal with during this time, but again with every challenge comes the opportunity to think out of the box and have more tools at your disposal for the future.

Companies need to be prepared to pay more than they normally would for relocation. A candidate will typically not want to take a financial hit on their house and will need to “made whole.” Some companies will guarantee a buyout of a house at its appraised value (and some will even offer more than the appraised value). Another option is a company can provide rental assistance for a candidate’s current home (helping them find a renter), while the candidate looks for a buyer, and if they can’t sell it in six months the company will buy it. And there are many variations for how to deal with this issue. The key here is to be open-minded and come up with creative solutions. Work with internal or external relocation experts to come up with options and then educate senior leadership on this issue.

Lastly, these challenging times enable you to deepen and improve your relationships with third-party recruiting partners. Let’s face it: we can’t do everything ourselves. There’s no reason you can’t leverage your relationships with outside recruiters for help in ways you hadn’t before considered. And because they’re hurting too, many outside recruiters will likely be more flexible in partnering with you.

For instance, many search firms will be more open to unbundling their services and perhaps discounting as well. But the key is to reach out to them and figure out a way to work together. And, as with candidates, outside recruiters too will remember which companies reached out to them to try to find a way to work together during these challenging times, and which never returned their call.

Thus these challenging times are, in fact, opportunities for you to build your skills and relationships as a recruiter, which will enable you to continue to stand out from the pack, add value to your organization, and have greater tools at your disposal for when the tide turns and the good times once again roll!

Can you hear that sound? It is the groaning reverberation of a deep and protracted recession. It is the sound of layoffs and loss. Of homes foreclosed, 401(k)s decimated, and of violent shifts in the professional and financial worlds. It is the sound of unsinkable companies … disappearing. It is deep and it is wide and it is ugly, and it has either already affected you or it will. No matter; Les Brown said it best. “It does not matter what happens to you. All that matters is; what are you going to do about it?”

So let me ask? What are you going to do about it?

I will tell you what most recruiters I am communicating with are currently doing. They are putting one foot in front of the other and existing each day with the hope that tomorrow will be a better day. They are scraping together bits of work and hustling like never before in order to make things happen. They are hanging tight and surviving, creating what are sure to be a breed of some very tough, street-savvy recruiters who will do well when things get better. Very well.

What will you do when things get better, and more importantly, what will be expected of you when the business of recruiting returns full force? What new breed of recruiter will evolve from this misery and what will they bring to the table to meet the still undefined future all of us must face? What gritty strengths and skills will be required to jump in with both feet in order to stake your claim to be successful?

• Ability to search for passive candidates? (I think not)
• Experience with applicant tracking systems? (Nice but not a big deal.)
• Number of connections on social networking systems? (Jury is out)
• Your blog? (Don’t hold your breath)
• Use of video in recruiting? (Possible, but not of staggering importance)
• Metrics and branding? (To a degree. Lets say yes and no…)

Here is what I think you will have to master/do/become in order to be in the first wave to return to full capacity and more importantly, to stay there: To paraphrase Kenny Moore, “Those specializing in the impossible will do well.”

Do more then understand what the client wants; Grok it. It will no longer be enough to simply understand the requirements a candidate must possess. You will have to amass a deep understanding of the subtitles, nuances, and specific content knowledge necessary to make a candidate successful. As such, you will have to develop much tighter relationships with hiring managers in order to ask enough of the appropriate qualifying questions to develop an unmistakable picture of exactly what the client is expecting you to deliver. Gone are the days of 10-minute chats about what a manager requires.

Say goodbye to political correctness. Your services are not being used to be politically correct. The promotion of fairness is a fool’s errand. You client is depending on you to support the acquisition of the very best candidate. End of story. Discriminate with passionate abandon against anyone who is not qualified to do the job and let HR sweat the numbers. Do this one thing and you can rest assured that you are doing your job.

You will have to become a political animal. Most recruiters, present company included, are not all that good at the politics of the workplace. (I can assure you that my disinhibition has made some see me as less then charming.) Politics is not a dirty word; it is a reality of businesses everywhere. Taking advantage of organizational politics is an opportunity to do what you have to do in order to do what you need to do in order to be successful. Hold your nose and play the game; successful recruiting is worth that effort.

You will have to pick up the phone. We must never lose sight of the fact that recruiting is a gregarious and rollicking business of people relating to and engaging other people. Social networks, talent pools, and other pockets of potential ability are wonderful but until you pick up the phone and drive the candidate side of the process, it is all pixels and IMs. When it is person-to-person contact you need, the experience of picking up the phone can be magical.

You will have to drive and execute the deal. It is imperative that we take charge and set the recruiting process in motion, keep it moving, and manage the overall dance. Drive the client to action, move the candidate towards acceptance, and close the deal. This is easier said then done, as so much is an art as well as a science. My advice is to be bold, take risks, and do whatever is required to create an intelligent hire that will benefit the organization as well as the candidate.

Are these five points the end all in terms of what recruiters must become? No, but let us begin there. When hiring commences in earnest again, we must not come back as the same people we were. We must pounce on talent and claim it as our own. (If you do not know what this means, you have never worked for an agency.) I feel strongly about this because if you do not think that organizations can engineer recruiters out of their existence, you are very sadly mistaken.

One more thing. Be nice. You will be interfacing with a desperate, angry job market. Every call and e-mail you do not return is linked directly to a real person just like you. Keep a kind and encouraging word for those still lost and frightened.

But when clouds roll in, suddenly many things are revealed. We are now in such a time.

This morning I went to my favorite bookstore in San Francisco and sadly learned it is closing in a few weeks. The age of books is probably over; their manufacturing process consumes water, trees, toxic inks, and gasoline for transportation. We now have a new model — e-books delivered via the Kindle and Sony Reader and even via the iPhone.

Not as satisfying to us old guys, but the way it will be.

Manufacturing plants close for several reasons including automation, lower consumption, and more efficient processes. Durability, recycling, and re-using change the economic model.

Cars last 10-15 years now, can be largely assembled by robots, and are increasingly recyclable. Furniture, houses, most material things only need replacing due to the pressure of fashion. The cycles of fashion will slow and sustainability will be our watchword.

So what does all this have to do with recruiting?

Maybe everything. If talent is an increasingly rare resource, we will need to sustain, develop, and engage people more than we have in decades.

Employers will hire fewer people as regular employees and then make sure they are taken care of. The age of disposable people, although hard to see right now, is also over. We will hire more carefully and develop more completely than we have. This means recruiters will have to be better at assessing candidates and at aligning personalities to corporate cultures. Many jobs will be performed by contracted employees, leased employees, and consultants.

But these people will also be working for organizations that nurture and value them. We could be entering a very good time with better opportunities for many people.

Finding people with specific skills will most likely become less critical for some positions and more critical for others. The recruiting models will be far more complex than they tend to be now. Good employers will try harder to anticipate needs and re-skill workers as much as they can. It will simply be a cheaper alternative to hiring. Internal transfers and movement will increase along with this and recruiters will be finding and placing people from inside companies as well as from outside.

If you are a recruiter today, what should you do? What does the future look like?

First, I believe there will be a need for fewer of us overall, but those who remain in the profession need to build a set of skills that are deeper and more strategic than they are today.

Here are some of my thoughts depending on whether you are currently working as a recruiter or if you have been laid-off and are thinking of changing careers.

If you are working today…

1. Plan on settling down at this one employer for at least five years. Make a personal commitment because the rapid turnover of the 1990s and early 200os is ending.
2. Nothing new in my advice here, but learn the business of your business. Recruiters should not be as interchangeable as they seem to be today. What core value do you provide your organization that I couldn’t? Usually this would be a very thorough knowledge of what your company does, of its technology, processes, and competition. Sometimes this is gained by spending time outside of recruiting as a worker in some other function. Rotations or temporary assignments are great. Take a class, talk to the CFO, CEO, CTO, CIO, or whoever holds knowledge around your products and services. Learn what the key culture elements are for success. Study successful employees and try to determine why and how they are so successful.
3. Broaden your skills beyond recruiting. Learn the basics of employee and career development and succession planning. The best recruiters will have interchangeable skills — they can develop people one week and recruiters the next. These two functions are merging rapidly and may eventually be considered as a set.
4. Of course, continue to build your technical recruiting skills. Learn Internet search, social networking skills, and candidate relationship management. Stay up-to-date with emerging technologies and skills; the traditional skills are valuable and useful but they will not be enough to remain competitive.

If you are unemployed today…

1. Make sure you are ready to commit to at least a five-year learning and working stint. As I say above, the time for job-hopping is over. Pick an industry that is growing (medical devices, computer security, financial planning, auditing, and government services) and learn the technical side of that business.
2. Try to get a job in that industry in any capacity to learn the business. I don’t think you can be a successful recruiter if you have never worked in the industry you are recruiting for. This is contrary to what many recruiters believe, but I think the emerging successful businesses will demand this depth of knowledge. They may outsource recruiting of administrative positions, but the good jobs will go to the most knowledgeable recruiters.
3. Don’t let any recruiting skills you have slip. Stay up-to-date. Perhaps volunteer to help others who are job-hunting. Help them rewrite their resumes, plan a job hunting strategy, or prep them for an interview. This way you keep your skills sharp, learn what to look for in candidates, and even pick up industry knowledge.
4. Stay optimistic. This is not the time for self-pity. Reflect, learn, volunteer, and stay active in your job search. Unless you are starving, eventually choose a job where you feel comfortable making a long term commitment and then get to work learning all you can.

If there is anything I know about what’s coming it is this: we are in a new era when learning the new and forgetting the old will be a primary skill.

Grasp new ideas, even if you don’t at first understand them. Waiting will just put you behind a huge wave that will be hard to surf.

My best example is Twitter. This seemed like a pretty limited and, frankly, dumb tool when I first saw it two years ago. But I could see that it had potential. If enough people began to use it, it presented a novel way to engage candidates and connect with them. I presented it at a recruiting conference as a potential recruiting tool and was met with skepticism and even some disapproval.

Today, it is becoming a mainstream tool for recruiting and search. It is even being touted as a replacement for Google!

Time waits for no man, as the saying goes, and it has never been truer.

Not this time.

One month severance pay plus a couple of weeks unused vacation puts six weeks between him and reduced living. His wife works, and her job looks “pretty secure,” for now.

But he needs to find a job. Immediately interviewing, he’s finding that departments are looking for a new kind of recruiter — one who can do their own sourcing on the front end as well as bringing up the rear in hiring. It seems to me like a lot to ask, and maybe one of management’s forays into “let’s see all we can get” while the “gettin’” appears to be good. It smacks of greed to me but maybe I’m just sensitive on the issue, sensitized as I have been at all the recent media coverage of excess and waste among those with influence.

“Have you thought of doing anything else?” I asked. I could hear him brighten somewhat when he told me, quickly, in a pleasant-sounding stream, of how one of his secondary skill sets at his company was keeping some of its outdated equipment running — he was the go-to person, it seems, for the company’s “Help Desk” requirements.

“Do you enjoy that?” I asked. Quickly, and eagerly, he admitted he did but then added that going there would mean a drop in pay.

“But do you like doing that?” I pressed.

“Yes, I do,” he admitted.

“Then doesn’t that count for something?” I pressed again, trying to be gentle.

“It does, I guess.” I could hear he wasn’t wholly convinced but his mind was starting to ponder the idea.

“I think of this whole thing as a “reset” mode for all of us,” I continued. It’s not like some of us are on the outside and some of us are on the inside. We’re all in this together and whatever happens we’re all of us affected, together.”

“That’s true,” he agreed.

“It doesn’t make it easier, I understand,” I said. “But maybe, just maybe, some of us will be able to go in the direction of our dreams, as that old saying goes,” I continued, referring to Henry David Thoreau’s, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.”

We then talked about some proactive things he might also do: posting a “job-wanted” notice in a geographically-local LinkedIn group; attending some in-person networking events; getting active in the “groups” and “discussions” on the social/business networking sites like ERE, RecruitingBlogs.com, and Fordyce; contributing articles, remarks, and advice; and sourcing who was left in staffing at local companies and contacting them directly with his resume. Before we hung up I asked him to stay in touch with me. I told him I was interested in where he goes from here. And I am.