A number of these suggested topics/tasks are useful (if not vital), and others aren’t. However, when we recruiters aren’t “drinking from a firehouse,” we’re wondering how soon they’ll lay us off, so in neither case can we work on these useful tasks. It would be valuable to have a company say to us:

We’re slowing down a bit now, so we’ll have you work on these other important tasks you haven’t had time to do up to now to keep you working for awhile.

Many companies are unable/unwilling to do this, and would rather lose our accumulated knowledge and practice and start all over again in the future with some largely/wholly new crew.

Anyway, back to those favorite wastes of time we’re supposed to do in the negative-5 to negative-20 hours of free time we have during the week: (more…)

Articles from academics don’t always provide practical lessons, but there have been two recent ones that everyone in talent management should pay attention to.

The results of the first one focus on the output differential produced by top performers. This study published in February in Personnel Psychology which cut across several industries, revealed that the top 5 percent of the workforce at the researched firms produced 26 percent of the firm’s total output. The top-performing 5 percent produced 400 percent more than you would expect (26 percent rather than 5 percent).

That means that top performers have an incredibly high ROI because they produce more than four times more; however, they are generally paid less than 20 percent over an average worker in the same job.

Just like on the business side of the enterprise where the 80/20 rule prevails (80 percent of your profit comes from 20 percent of your products) there should be a similar 80/20 rule covering employee performance. This disproportional impact means that despite the fact that many in HR are enamored with the practice of “treating everyone equally,” it turns out that that approach may be well-intentioned but misguided because in business, just like sports and entertainment, top performers have a significantly higher business impact than the average. Top performers need to be prioritized.

Prioritization Is Also an Essential Element of Referral Programs (more…)

At least to me, future agenda items are an important topic. Because after visiting well over 100 firms, I have found a dramatic difference between the agenda items that are found on 95% of the firms (cost per hire, ATS issues, req loads, etc.) and the truly advanced subjects that only elite recruiting firms like Google, DaVita, Sodexo, etc. would even attempt to tackle.

So if you have the responsibility for setting agendas or recruiting goals, here is my list of truly advanced recruiting topics that elite leaders would find compelling but that most others would simply find to be out of their reach. If you want to be among the elite, you should select a handful for implementation. However, even if you are currently overwhelmed by your current agenda, you might still find them to be interesting reading.

25 Advanced Recruiting Topics for Bold Corporate Recruiting Leaders (more…)

For an individual recruiter, it’s building trust with your hiring managers. For a recruiting manager, it’s building trust and showing progress on hiring needs with multiple hiring managers.  For the leader, it’s driving quality of hire, building relationships with leaders, enhancing the brand, globalizing hiring if required, managing a large budget,  driving productivity outcomes with the teams they manage, and delivering on hiring goals set out by the company at all levels especially the executive level. Any talent acquition strategy has to be aligned to these company goals and directly to the HR vision.

HR has to build bridges with their finance leaders and with those who influence strategy. For this to happen, talent acquisition has to be the bridge with its HR leaders to be the subject matter expert in hiring practices; specifically, hiring practices that help reduce short-term attrition. (more…)

When it comes to hiring talent, most companies place too much emphasis on compensation competitiveness and not enough on their cultural brand. They may have flashy careers websites and other candidate attraction materials, but these are generic and not reflective of the company’s unique culture.

In this article I will give you tips on how to make your company more competitive by taking the vital first step of identifying your culture. Only after this step will you be able to successfully attract candidates who will fit your values and be successful in their roles. Without it, you will be stuck in the Yugo Trap, continuing to hire mismatched candidates leading to poor retention. (more…)

As the economy picks up and unemployment rates continue to drop, I can forecast with a good deal of certainty that the turnover rates among all employees will increase. The value of and the demand for innovators will increase even more rapidly. In addition, innovators who have felt “stuck” at a firm for several years during the downturn may now have a reduced need for job security. And even if they have been treated well, they may simply be in the market for something new.

It is possible to retain almost every employee (many top firms like SAS have a 2-3 percent turnover rate), provided that you have the right tools and you are willing to be aggressive.

In the first part of this retention toolkit for innovators article I covered retention tools and approaches that could be implemented solely by innovator’s managers. In this second part, I cover numerous additional bold and aggressive retention tools and approaches for innovators but each of these requires some outside support from HR or senior managers.

Part II — 17 Bold and Aggressive Retention Tools and Actions for Innovators That May Require Senior Management or HR Support (more…)

Corporate executives are beginning to learn the high value of innovators, which can be 5 to 300 times the value of an average employee. If a company doesn’t have enough innovators, a primary option is recruiting them. In a previous related article, I highlighted how you can successfully hire innovators. But that knowledge alone isn’t sufficient because you have to constantly work to retain these individuals who are constantly being targeted by recruiters from other firms. It should be obvious that if your firm successfully recruited them away from their existing employer, there is a high probability that another employer could do the same thing again and recruit them away from you.

Unfortunately, 95% of all retention approaches can best be described as marginally effective for the average employee, which makes them useless when you’re trying to retain an individual innovator who doesn’t have the same needs and expectations of the average employee. Therefore, if you want to keep the best innovators, provide your managers with a toolkit of bold, aggressive, and data-driven retention approaches that are tailored specifically to your innovators.

Many of the practices that work to retain innovators are also effective in increasing their productivity. In this two-part article I will highlight the most effective retention practices that are specifically targeted toward retaining innovators, game-changers, and top performers. After over 20 years of retention research and practice, I can also assure you that each one of these 30+ tools is effective.

6 Characteristics of Effective Retention Efforts for Innovators (more…)

Today is Employee Appreciation Day, which gives you a great reason to take a few minutes to tell your staff, individually, and face-to-face, thanks for the great work you do.

That small gesture means far more than you might think. Globoforce, whose business is employee recognition, says workers who are regularly recognized for the work they do work harder, are more productive, and jump ship much less than those who rarely or never get feedback. The last survey Globoforce did, it asked workers if they planned to look for a new job. Among those who said they felt appreciated, 20% said they would look. Among the group reporting they felt unappreciated, 60% were going to look. (more…)

As a female professional and career coach, I am shocked by this turn of events. Mayer has been an icon for millions of working women who are constantly striving to strike the right balance between their responsibilities in the home and at the office. In fact, there have been numerous articles written about Mayer’s strategy to avoid employee burnout, such as letting employees like “soccer mom Katie” leave early on certain days to attend her kids’ soccer games, and then jump back online after the kids are in bed. By the looks of this decision, it sounds like Mayer has changed her tune.

Telecommuting is not a realistic option for all employees, but when used appropriately for the right people, it can be a win-win for both employers and employees. Catering to more than 33,000 employers, TheLadders works with an array of companies that offer flexible and remote work schedules to select employees, and judging from their results, I think it would be wise for more companies to follow suit. Here are five ways companies can benefit from offering telecommuting and other work-flexibility options to their teams. (more…)

Let me share what we’ve done over the past year at my company. (more…)

A recruiter is a cheerleader for the company. You are looking for the best team, and encouraging them to join because you know that this position at this company is a possibility of a lifetime. So how do you recruit for a company that has the reputation of being as “The 11 Worst Companies to Work for in America!”

My suggestions and thoughts: (more…)

It’s hard to find anything in recruiting that has failed to live up to its potential more than recruiting metrics. For nearly two decades recruiting leaders have poured resources into measuring recruiting success, and in most cases, the best that they have to show for it is being able to say “yes, we have metrics.” If you don’t know what’s wrong with most recruiting metrics, I have outlined in great detail in a previous article “what is wrong with metrics”).

So if you are a recruiting leader and you are frustrated or disappointed with your current metrics, this article will provide you with a list of the metrics that you should be using. I assure you that after reading this list you will definitely question your current metrics. The other possible option is that you may think that the metrics provided here are impossible, but you would be wrong (they are not).

Understanding the Three Time Periods That Metrics Should Cover (more…)

Smart HR managers should use Internal Employee Referral Programs (IERP) to provide high-quality employee names for internal transfers, promotions, and even openings on part-time project teams. The concept for internal referrals is the same as for external referrals, which is that great people know other great people and that most employees want to help the firm by contributing to the recruiting effort. The focus just shifts from external hires to using your employee’s internal network to finding top candidates for internal movement and promotions. An IERP has many advantages and benefits.

Benefits of Using Employee Referrals for Internal Openings

The many potential benefits of an IERP include: (more…)

However, I have still been able to identify 10 potentially high business impact strategic areas in talent management where almost no firm has a permanent company-wide strategy, plan, and team. The fact that almost no firms do these things isn’t because they lack a potential impact (most agree it could be high), so the lack of action must be because either no one has been trained in the area or because the strategic area is highly complex or highly political. Even if you don’t have the bandwidth to take action in any of these areas, review the list to see if you see the potential for a high business impact.

The Top 10 Strategic Talent Management Areas That Firms Ignore (more…)

Rather than fight, not understand, and not accept the behavior and way of the millennial, hiring managers should actively engage with this new generation and learn how to lead, manage, and motivate this new generation of workers.

When it was finally my turn to be put in the situation of hiring a millennial or two, I was a bit nervous, as I’d made all the above assumptions myself.

Thankfully, my first two millennial hires have worked out well. But to get these great hires, it took a keen eye and ear to locate these talented individuals. Let’s call them Kacey and Magi. (more…)

Dice Holdings, parent company of the IT specialty job site Dice.com, and others in the financial service and energy sectors, says its most recent survey of tech recruiters and hiring managers found that 64 percent of them will add new tech workers next year. Compare that to a second survey of hiring professionals in all sectors, which found only 46 percent expecting to add new hires.

The results of the tech-only survey does show some softening of the market. In the spring, when Dice asked this same question, 73 percent of the respondents expected to make tech hires in the last half of 2012. That tracks with the general job survey in the spring when 51 percent of hiring managers planned second-half hiring. (more…)

Not this one. One of the more highly regarded of the big U.S. tech companies has an in-house career center, one not publicized due to the internal belief that it gives the firm a competitive advantage. In fact, despite its wide reach with about 5,000 employees having used it, this center is barely even marketed within the walls of the company, with 60-70% of employees who use the career center hearing about it via word of mouth from other employees. (more…)

The 2012 Survey of Registered Nurses found 91 percent of responding nurses satisfied with nursing as a career and almost three-quarters of them (73 percent) said they were satisfied with their current job. That job and career satisfaction — the highest in the three years of the survey — may explain why 66 percent of the nurses intend to “continue working as I am.”

As the survey report itself says, “The 2012 survey results show a much improved sense of satisfaction with both career and job.”

Last year, only 74 percent of the nurses in the survey said they were satisfied with their choice of profession and only 55 percent of the nurses said they intended to “continue working as I am”; 24 percent planned to look for another job. In the 2012 survey, the percentage of nurses intending to change employers dropped to 17 percent. (more…)

Give up? Really?? This is an easy one! Both of you get to court the object of your desire.

Sadie Hawkins Day is “celebrated” on the first Saturday after November 9, which of course, is tomorrow. According to tradition — a tradition that evolved from a comic strip back in 1937 — Sadie Hawkins is the day when girls could ask boys out on a date and they pretty much had to accept. Back in pre-war America, that sort of thing just didn’t happen. But it caught on fast, after cartoonist Al Capp inked the first Sadie Hawkins Day race in his L’il Abner strip. (more…)