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Talent management and recruitment, or really any of HR’s core functions, can be one of the most rewarding professions out there. It comes ready with excitement, positive challenges, and constant opportunities to learn. It is this sense of fast-paced, interesting work (with people, you do enjoy working with people, right?) that appeals to so many young professionals and is a contributing factor as to why the field can often be a difficult career to break into. However, as with any profession, those already entrenched in the war for talent have their own share of difficulties.

Within the ranks, it can often seem that opportunities to advance are rare. Outside forces dictate the how and why of advancement and everything from market demands to internal perception of the function to closed-door politics can come into play. Outside of building a strong resume and giving the proverbial 110 percent, moving up the corporate ladder is an undertaking that falls outside most talent professional’s locus of control.

As difficult as it may be for established employees, those trying to break into the field are too often left with the feeling that they are just butting their head against a wall, looking for the well-kept secret that has prevented them from landing that first all-important gig. Establishing, building, and maintaining a career in the talent management arena can be without a doubt a frustrating endeavor.

A quick tete-a-tete over drinks, on a professional message board or at a networking event, will often show that talent management professionals, often reserved in the workplace, hold no qualms about airing their grievances off site amongst their peers. Whether in a classroom setting working toward a graduate degree, attending a professional certification prep class, or simply kicking back after a long day — those working in field, the people listening to and fixing problems all day long, have their own fair share of issues.

Some of the more commons complaints I’ve heard over the years from talent pros (and others in the HR field) include: keep reading…

Demand for recruiters has slowed in the last few months, but the overall job count remains strong across the U.S.

Wanted Analytics says the number of jobs for recruiters is 12 percent higher than a year ago, with some 14,000 ads for recruiting jobs posted online last month. That’s down from the peak in May, but, says Wanted, the effect may simply be seasonal, as a similar dip occurred a year ago, continuing through the end of the year, before rising sharply. keep reading…

(This article was co-authored with Amy McKee, Sr. Director, Global Talent Acquisition, at Autodesk.)

Mobile …finally! DNA footprints in the cloud; recruiting back to basics: getting to know the candidate; the end of the traditional ATS; emerging markets dominate; augmented reality; disruptive marketing and stunt PR; the end of social media; candidate cloning and the end of recruiters as we know it!

The impact and level of debate created by Recruitment 3.0 & 4.0, certainly took us by surprise. Based on feedback, it is clear that there has been healthy discussion and many companies have re-appraised/reviewed their recruiting strategies.

Recruitment 5.0 is the final paper in the trilogy.

3.0 was all about building.

4.0 all about driving value.

5.0 is all about … Personalization, self-sufficiency, predictability, big data, and back to basics.

The defining features of Recruitment 5.0:

• Mobile recruiting finally takes off and becomes the dominant channel.
• Recruiting gets back to basics and focuses on building relationships. Included in this is a focus on personalization/humanization and dominating/driving communications.
• Footprints in the cloud. Companies obsessively get to know their customers/consumers, and recruiters do the same with their “corporate” talent pools
• Data DNA: Companies draw data to profile candidates based on online habits and trends.
• Technological developments bring an end to the traditional ATS.
• Emerging markets emerge and dominate.
• Augmented reality and disruptive marketing dominate recruiting marketing.
• As companies seek to attract the best talent in a candidate short market, they set up their own courses, universities/academies, and “clone” future employees.
• As talent becomes more scarce, talent becomes more contract by nature and more flexible.
• It’s the end of recruiters as we know it … the death of the recruiting profession?

Some meaty stuff.

Reviewing these bullet points, some companies are already experimenting and executing on elements, but as time passes, these will become dominant in our thoughts, plans and strategies.

Let’s explore in more detail. keep reading…

I have been a recruiter for nearly a decade now. Being a recruiter is not for everybody; however, for me it is a way of life. I truly enjoy it, and finding this pure enjoyment in what I do professionally has made what seems like a difficult profession to most become relatively seamless to me.

Don’t get me wrong — I have my days. There are the standard frustrations, ups and downs, and the things that happen that make me take a step back and say “ the candidate did what!?” We are dealing with human capital, the most volatile and important resource known to man, and there is a certain degree of absurdity you need to work within from time to time.

I was doing some reflection the other day, as to why things seem to just come together for me so often with passive candidates, hiring managers, and other areas within recruitment, and I found one simple trend. keep reading…

Within most corporate HR functions, the atmosphere is simply too politically charged to even consider raising this powerful question:“Which HR function ranks No. 1 with the highest impact on two critical business success measures — revenue growth and profit margins?” Well, the data is in, and we now definitively know that the answer is … recruiting is the most impactful HR function!

In my many years of working with corporations, I have come across only a handful of HR leaders who have taken the time to quantify the business impacts of recruiting (Google and Apple are the best). But if you shift industries and look at the sports and entertainment industries, you will find that it is well established that recruiting is the most impactful people management function.

In pro basketball for example, you could take an average individual player and attempt to develop them over time into a “LeBron James.” However, if you wanted immediate results with a low risk of failure, you would simply recruit LeBron away from his current team. But fortunately, in the corporate world there has now been a breakthrough global study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group that reveals the relative value produced by each of the different HR functions.

From the Best to the Worst

If you’re curious as to whether a particular HR function produces a high or low business impact, this section will reveal their ranking. keep reading…

In this session, Fred Shilmover of InsightSquared talked about the importance of data, being able to conceptualize and analyze it as well as what it means for your business.

I can’t say enough about how important and difficult a recruiter’s job can be. Yes, we have our share of easy-to-fill jobs, and yes there are times when our load is not quite as crazy as it could be. One might even argue none of us have any reason to complain when there is a bevy of qualified candidates waiting to fill our jobs courtesy of the current economic climate … true!

However, candidates don’t know the half of what it takes from getting the requisition off the ground and posted, to selling a job to a candidate at a company that frankly isn’t worth the paper requisition it came on. This is where I am going with all of this.

Companies make good decisions and they make bad decisions. The good decisions are designing competitive benefits and recognition programs to attract and retain employees. That is, as a recruiter I am happy to highlight in an interview and beyond the plentiful and robust benefit offerings my company has to offer in hopes that the candidate will find the overall proposition of working with us enticing. More often than not the candidate considers all that is available to him/her. A deal is made and everyone is happy.

Here’s where our job becomes difficult: keep reading…

Recruiting gets the best of the bad news from business leaders, who say a lack of support from human resources is largely to blame for the worsening shortage of talent and skills in their work groups.

Leaders of finance, IT, procurement, and other units of some 145 major global businesses reporting getting such low levels of support from their HR colleagues that few of them say they are satisfied with any of the department’s key talent management services.

Even in recruiting and staffing, where the largest number of leaders report receiving at least some level of service, 65 percent of them say they are dissatisfied. keep reading…

(Editor’s note: With so many new ERE members coming on all the time, we thought that each week we’d republish one popular classic post. Here’s one, below.)

When I attend career fairs, hiring conferences, recruiting events, or through conversations with prospective candidates, I keep learning that the wrong people are attending these events and working as recruiters. As I walked the room at a recent career fair, prior to the event starting, I sought to introduce myself to some of the other company representatives. I was surprised that many of them were unable to communicate at a level that would properly represent their company.

The behavior I witnessed at this event and many others is predictive of how these recruiters behave in the office and how they represent their company through other communication tools such as social media. Later as the candidates flowed into the fair to meet the companies, I witnessed these individuals sitting behind their tables, eating food, talking on cell phones, and displaying body language that suggested they didn’t want to be bothered.

Fortunately, I witnessed several individuals that did exhibit proper career fair behavior and strong recruiting traits. They were the ones that had long lines of candidates and also the ones whose companies are always recognized as recruiting industry leaders. The difference in success was clear.

We can all gain market intelligence by speaking with prospective candidates and finding out where they have applied, who they have interviewed with, and what their experiences have been like. Some of the experiences that I have heard are horrific, yet not surprising. So why do HR and recruiting leaders continually hire or put the wrong people into recruiting positions? I don’t get it.

Each year there are new tools, technologies, and platforms developed to help take “recruiting to the next level,” as the cliche goes. The problem is, all of these wonderful breakthroughs can be fruitless due to inadequate operator behavior. Moreover, if companies and organizations really want to eliminate or lower their agency recruiting spending, then start hiring similar profiles and not promoting an individual out of customer service or demoting someone from another department and sending them to recruit.

Regardless of where your next recruiter comes from, I have developed some essential skills, traits, and qualities that successful recruiters should possess. Aside from the regular “good communication, ability to work hard, team player” skills that everyone wants — here are a few of the most important must haves: keep reading…

In this session, Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin from CareerXroads plan to share their data from earlier this year and their thoughts about the last 10 years they’ve been asking a biased sample of companies for their data. A little story-telling, a little learning and a few recommendations on how you can improve what you do in the future (unvarnished by any hidden agenda).

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

How much after-hours work are your recruiters putting in? For recruiters who often reach out to a hot prospect outside of work hours, 24/7 connectedness is becoming the norm. As demand for mobile access has grown, ATS vendors have responded by  making access on demand simple and versatile.

All of this mobility means more and more work is being done outside of what used to be regular working hours, raising the question of what rules and policies companies should have to govern all those wireless communications that occur after recruiters leave the office for the day.

New research from SHRM says more than half the companies responding to a survey about wireless usage policies don’t have any.

“Employers are not creating policies that delve into employees working outside of the traditional workday,” said Evren Esen, manager of SHRM’s Survey Research Center. “Whether an employee responds to e-mail at night or during the weekend is usually linked to organizational norms. If there is such an expectation, then employees are likely to follow suit.” keep reading…

More and more there is talk of the HR business partner and HR generalist functions when it comes to all things HR. These functions are HR’s way of aligning with the C-suite or, as most say, getting a “seat at the table.” To have the HR business partner or HR generalist in your organization says you are being “strategic.” In any event, both of these roles are handling everything from succession planning to recruitment plans, depending on the organizations’ structure.

That said, one might ask what is the use in having a “specialist” in HR? More importantly, what are the implications for recruiters if indeed this is a trend? I’ll address both separately. keep reading…

When I was asked to moderate a main-stage discussion at ERE’s Fall Expo in September with two economic analysts from Morningstar, I was both excited and a bit worried. To clarify, for those who may not know, Morningstar (not to be confused with Morningstar Farms, the maker of frozen meatless meals) is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. It offers investment consulting and retirement planning services and manage nearly $200 billion in assets. Among other things, Morningstar employs a crackerjack team of economists and analysts who research and comment on trends in the global marketplace.

I was (and am) excited to be a part of this particular session because I’m a news junkie, I’m passionate about HR/talent acquisition development, as well as the need for HR professionals (that includes you, recruiters) to understand and use information about our economy to drive business results.

But I was also a bit nervous because — let’s face it — most HR professionals will proclaim (with little if any hesitation): “I’m terrible at math”; “I don’t get numbers”; and that “I’m a ‘people’ person.” Bottom line:  news and trends about the economy are not top of mind for many in our field. So I knew right away that my challenge was going to be getting folks engaged with this topic. But I’m always up for a good challenge.

The trends in our economy affect our business and our roles as talent professionals every day. But what information is the most important? What can we do with it? Why should we care? keep reading…

Though recruiting and working with recruitment professionals has been a pleasure, there are some things that drive us crazy.

Here are five things that we loathe but hate to admit: keep reading…

Sometimes I’m asked about the graphic of sheep on my website. Sheep will follow other sheep — regardless of the danger — and the flash analogizes the importance of breaking the herd mentality. A great example of herd mentality is an event at many rodeos called Mutton Bustin. There is a sheep held in the middle of the arena whose sole purpose is to get the other sheep to run to it. This is one of the best examples of herd behavior I know.

When it comes to recruiting and hiring processes many recruiting leaders look at the hiring practices of successful companies and assume the same will work for them. We often hear about successful companies like Google that are able to attract great talent. Many of us hear this and immediately want to emulate their hiring process. Is this an effective strategy?

Will Deep Pockets Get You the Best Recruiters? keep reading…

From working with recruiters for more than 20 years, I‘ve observed many styles and variations in their recruiting work habits. Some are hunters, some are farmers, and yes, some are clueless. But they all have the same goal: to make hires. I’ve seen some good practices that have been made apparent to me over the years.

Great recruiters don’t just automate the hiring process. They delve into it to find perfect candidates. And they are creative.

Suppose they are recruiting for an “application security analyst.” They search for the industry-related organizations or job certification-related organizations for the position, such as OWASP and CISM, and then search resume databases, LinkedIn, and ATS’s for places it is cited.

Amazing recruiters leave no stone unturned. When they search for a candidate and receive 100 resumes, they review every single resume, even after the position has been filled. That’s because an amazing recruiter knows that these resumes can be used for other positions.

Rock star recruiters learn to partner with their hiring managers and understand their business. keep reading…

As the business community sheds recruiters from full-time positions, many organizations bring on contract recruiters to use when required and dump when not required. I am here to help you to avoid making one of life’s more miserable career decisions: becoming a contact recruiter. Here’s the advice:

Do not ever become a contract recruiter.

Allow me to repeat. (The gravity of the situation bears repeating, and you just might thank me some day.) Do not ever become a contract recruiter.

Now let me tell you why. keep reading…

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.  – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Of course, Dickens was referring to sourcing and recruiting circa 2012. What Dickens was really saying is that with the emergence of LinkedIn and related networking tools, sourcing should not be split apart from the full-cycle recruiting process. The work involved in both now overlaps to such a degree that you can’t logically separate the two without compromising performance. Reading between the lines of his epic novel, here’s why Dickens believes this way. keep reading…

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the traveling production of Les Misérables. It was the fourth time I had seen the musical, so the most surprising thing might have been that in the 20 years and several revisits since my first Les Mis experience, the play still turns me into a sobbing mess. However, what surprised me most is that the play offers several lessons that can be applied to recruiting.

Those of you who have seen Les Misérables, as well as those of you who haven’t, may immediately assume that this connection is a stretch. Frankly, I don’t blame you. What may be more disturbing to me than any skepticism you have about this is the fact that I was thinking about work lessons during a brilliant musical. Perhaps, though, what this really highlights is how the lessons we learn which dictate how to live and how to interact with others really do apply to professional dealings just as much as to personal relationships and actions, and they apply to the real world as much to fantasy.

Les Misérables offers quite a few lessons that apply to business and recruitment, but here are the five most prominent ones:

keep reading…

In more 10 years in the staffing industry in various operational, managerial, and corporate roles and in different countries, I have interviewed, coached, and trained hundreds of recruitment consultants from all over the world. Though local differences must be taken into consideration, the characteristics that make you a top performer in Salt Lake City also work in Singapore or in Paris. Based on what I saw, heard, and learned, here is my quintessential list of the 5+1 habits that make a top-performer in any economic cycle or market: keep reading…