Forrester Research analyst Zach Thomas suggested that, “By making this acquisition, Monster is putting a real emphasis on search and they believe it will help them leap-frog the competition.” Others were less generous.

The answer has been coming ever since Monster began beta testing Power Resume Search several months ago. A few weeks ago, confident that its $100 million investment was the homerun it expected, Monster turned Power Search live, premiering it during an analyst meeting that was also webcast over a marathon five hours or so.

Tuesday, the company demoed the new search for a group of recruitment consultants and bloggers. And the result was no mere home run; think grand slam.

In a word, Monster’s new Power Resume Search is stunning. Stunning in its simplicity. Stunning in its speed. Stunning in its ability to intuit skills from a title, and to rank and rerank the resulting candidates depending on what skills and other qualities you decide important. Stunning in its potential for changing the job board business.

If you haven’t tried it for yourself, go here and test it out. What you’ll discover is that you can source candidates (if you really want) simply by entering a job title. Look at the results. Add a specific skill or a degree or some other parameter and the ranking changes.

What makes Power Resume Search different — and better — than the typical keyword resume search is that it has the intelligence to cut through the duff. The examples the Monster folks used in the demo were searches for bankers and lawyers. But try your own search, for, say a bookkeeper. Instead of getting a list of hundreds of resumes with bookkeeper in the text, you get a few dozen candidates who are bookkeepers and are most likely to be looking for that kind of work.

Trovix built its job-matching capability around context and concepts. A bookkeeper doesn’t need an understanding of Sarbanes-Oxley; a CFO does. You know that. But unless you exclude candidates with that term in their resume in a standard keyword search, you’re going to get CFO candidates with bookkeeping in their backgrounds along with accountants and … you get the idea.

It’s “the world’s best search engine,” said Monster’s Javid Muhammedali at the beginning of the demo. Google might take issue with the boast, but he is certainly on the mark when he says one of the virtues of Power Resume Search is that it is a search engine “that really helps you stop searching.”

One incidental, yet valuable feature is how a search can unearth skills not listed in the job req, which could or should be. It helps drive the recruiting process forward by arming recruiters with information they can take back to the hiring manager, Muhammedali explained.

It has some other nice touches, including how it presents candidate information and the side-by-side comparison of candidates.

Power Resume Search has a counterpart for job seekers in Power Job Search.

I ran a few job searches on a variety of different titles and got great results, which, in my case, meant fewer, but more accurate results. Monster showed this off during the demo using “business development manager” for the search with the result that all nine listings were specific to the title.

Monster points out that this search has benefits for the employer: the ad visibility improves, as does the likelihood that the applicants will be of higher quality since an ad won’t just turn up in a search because it happens to contain the seeker’s keywords.

Before you go away thinking all your sourcing problems are solved, know that this is a premium service, for which Monster will charge $845 for a two-week access. Right now, it’s a bargain at $260 for three days of searching in an area.

It’s also better at sourcing some types of jobs than others. New job terminology has to be added by Monster, though you can search for a specific keyword in a resume. And it won’t store search histories for OFCCP auditing until early next year.

Even so, it’s a big step. For Monster, it’s a $100 million-plus step. The company spent $72.5 million to acquire Trovix and $30-$35 million more integrating it into the job board. Monster intends to get back its investment and then some.

Muhammedali and Louis Gagnon, SVP Global Products, said the new search opens the door to differential pricing for resume sourcing. It probably won’t be long before Monster puts a higher price on CFOs than on bookkeepers.

Why can’t they do that now? They probably could, but the technical management is a challenge, since the resumes of CFOs and bookkeepers may well be part of the search results in a standard keyword search. But the Trovix powered search is smart enough to know that when you’re looking for a CFO, you don’t want a bookkeeper who reports to a CFO.

Narrowing down results with high precision saves time. Lots of time. And gets better results. That’s worth something.

I chose the word tribe because it is a good, short noun for the idea that “birds of a feather flock together.” And top managers can be a destination. They have their own posse and peeps who follow them wherever they work. I know: I work for one. But even the most incredible managers eventually run out of people to call when rounding up the usual suspects. This is where I come in. I sell the manager and the team. I look at the group that I am headhunting for and try to find some common denominators.

1. Get the existing team’s resumes. Use LinkedIn, resource managers, or go to their portal and search the bios. Look for common schools, themes, associations.
2. Ask the manager where he found them. Who is his best hire? How did he find them?
3. Take a look at the companies they worked for, and when. Is there a theme?

You figure out that Java developers in Europe like Twitter, W.O.W., Ruby games, and Stockholm. To get them to leave their company to come to yours, build your own tribe’s membership theme. To get a pitch, figure out what membership privileges are:

• Ask the people who work for your “chief” why they worked at three companies for him.
• Ask them what they like about the company.
• Ask them how it was different than the company they came from.

You can build a message from this, like “we still have Peet’s coffee! We still have Thirsty Thursdays! Conference Calls longer than 17 minutes are forbidden!”

That is the message. Not “Java Consultant — EMEA.”

• If they are doing the exact same thing, why would they leave one software company to come to another? To come back to a tribe like them.
• Examples of common denominators might be, “worked in start-ups,” “went to MIT,” “plays W.O.W.” or “brags about Platinum status.”

Here is a thumbnail of my tribe:

Bay Area Software Company. Managers who are Java experts. Peet’s Coffee. Thirsty Thursdays. “It’s-It” ice cream bars. People from Cal and Stanford.

I get that tribe. It’s the tribe of the Bay Area software engineers.

If you have ever been a worker bee or a headhunter in the Bay Area, which I have during several waves (1990, 1999, 2009), you know that there are companies with handbooks containing phrases like, ‘Managers must wear shoes. Beer Me Fridays are mandatory, and don’t get Folgers or you’re fired.” They stock Peet’s coffee; everyone is a Stanford and Cal grad; and now, It’s It (a Bay Area ice cream bar with a cult following) is in the breakroom. These people swarm to the new “it” company and they don’t stick around when Folgers makes its debut.

Call them and/or connect with them on Twitter, LinkedIn groups, user’s group meetings, industry associations, however, whenever. I may even ask an Internet sourcer to find some profiles to add to the pile. I look at my Rolodex. I put the whole lot of them into one big pile and I begin to air out my message that “we want you eventually and this is why.”

This is where the Tweetups come in. If I can get the manager/chief to ask the real qualifying questions that I mention above, it is not a stretch to get to the next piece. “If I find someone from Cal working at XYZ company, would you buy him a coffee in Stockholm?”

Or even better, “Tweet me before you go to Stockholm … and let’s find a place to meet … and if you have time, let’s send out a TweetUp to all of the Java developers in Stockholm who are following me on Twitter, and get them to meet you somewhere. We’ll Tweet that the first round of Guinness is on you at The Rusty Nail pub across the street from our client.”

That way I can put real live candidates who don’t have resumes in front of a real, live “chief” and without a lot of wasted time. Sounds expensive? Twenty five rounds of Guinness is a helluva lot cheaper than 35% of an annual package which the agencies are charging us, and you get to meet a real live person and do the puppy dog close.

For those of you with ADD, here is the upshot:

1. Analyze the tribe. Who are these people and what do they do and care about?
2. Evangelize the message of the tribe through your grapevine — Twitter, LinkedIn, your company’s career page, user group meetings — heck, anywhere you can.
3. Sell the manager on selling his job on the fly.
4. Always be closing the candidate on why your tribe kicks their tribe’s ass. Ask: “When they can come have a look see?”

There are going to be accountants and HR people who read this and say, “how does that fit into $10,000 cost per hire, and how do we know that this will work, and why do we have to do anything since everyone is unemployed and is dying to work here?”

But top-tier people are always taken out of companies. There are some things that just can’t be automated and outsourced and cost-optimized, such as building a A-team, building a tribe, and building loyalty.

Dice.com, the IT job board, introduced a new search result report that allows recruiters to toggle between the results that meet their criteria and other candidates who also match the criteria, but who haven’t been active on the site for a year.

Tom Silver, senior VP North America of parent company Dice Holdings, said the thought of offering additional results came about because more than half the searches on Dice are for candidates who have been active in the last 90 days. In their quest for fresh job seekers, recruiters were missing candidates with equally good skills.

“So,” says Silver, “We wanted to make it easier to see older candidates. We’re just trying to prompt recruiters to look at the entire database.”

Recruiters now get the results they asked for, as well as a tab that allows them to see candidates who first submitted a resume more than a year ago and haven’t been back since. The passive candidate results have all been filtered by Dice to make sure the email addresses are still current.

Why pick a year instead of six months? For the same reason eggs are sold by the dozen and reunions are celebrated in 5- and 10-year increments. “When you talk to people you hear they want to go a year back,” Silver explains. “It’s a natural calendar thing.”

Dice’s new feature is a curious twist on the usual recruiter pursuit of the passive candidate, a subject that’s come in for some ethical give and take in this economy.

Job boards typically don’t see a lot of searches for candidates a year or more old.  Job board sourcing is almost by definition a search for candidates who can fill a req now, so limiting results to 60 or 90 days is fairly typical. Job board denizens are, by definition, active job seekers. Thus aged resumes are inventory that is just not all that valuable, one reason the big boards encourage candidates to regularly update their profiles and resumes.

By offering up vintage candidates who now may have another year or more of experience and maybe even stronger skills, Dice is encouraging recruiters to look at job boards a little differently — as a rich repository of passive candidates, which may be why there is no current plan to offer up fresh resumes to recruiters searching for older ones.

It’s actually quite a clever approach:  Give recruiters exactly what they want, but tease them with easy access to vintage candidates they wouldn’t otherwise see. A value-add that may raise the value of aging inventory, and benefit once-active candidates.

What do recruiters who have tried it say about the new feature? It’s “yummy,” Silver told me. Seriously.

Tracked

This new site is not so much tool as resource. It got a positive review by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch the other day. He described the newly out of stealth site as “LinkedIn meets Yahoo Finance, on lots of steroids.”

At its center, Tracked.com is a financial information site, so it gives you all the usual data elements you would expect. It’s what comes next that makes Tracked more valuable. Besides the public companies, Tracked has bits and pieces on many private companies, too. The more public the private company, the more data available.

The LinkedIn analogy comes from the executives and key personnel that are part of a company profile. Tracked’s depth on them, however, doesn’t match what LinkedIn or ZoomInfo offer — not yet, anyway.  But as it layers on a network and a commenting capability, its content sources reach beyond what you are likely to find searching the public databases.

And keep in mind, Tracked.com is free.

To get the full value out of Tracked, you need to register and establish an account. Then you get to create tracking lists of companies, people, industries, and the like. This is an important difference from Yahoo Finance, which, while useful for top news, doesn’t offer near the depth of Tracked.com.

Tracked.com isn’t likely to replace your usual research sites any time soon. But its founder Mike Yavonditte has broad experience in the interactive world. In 2007 he sold ad service Quigo.com to AOL and a year later began work on Tracked.com. His progress and plans for the financial service so impressed Union Square Ventures, the New York City VC firm, that it kicked in heartily to the $11.5 million Tracked has so far raised.

Rethinking how we source is not easy. But the unrefined tools such as search engines, job boards, advertisements, and even referrals are slowly giving way to far more powerful social networks of candidates. These networks can be shaped for specific types of candidates and for specific skills and competencies. They can be the only source of candidates you have so that your focus can be on your brand and building awareness of your organization and the kinds of work you offer.

Does this sound a little pie-in-the-sky? Maybe given today’s level of understand and technology, it is a stretch to give up all other forms of sourcing, but I predict these networks will replace 90% of other sourcing techniques with in decade.

What Is a Social Network?

For those of us in recruiting, a social network may be better thought of as a pool of potential candidates or as a community of talent. This is not the same as a static database of candidates. It is an ever-changing, expanding network of people who have chosen to associate with one another virtually. I often make an analogy to a network being like a series of circles rippling out from a center. Those people at the center of the circles are your most valuable and most likely candidates. Each successive ring of candidates gets further from you, is less known, and therefore less valuable. LinkedIn denotes this by giving priority to those people you know and who know you and then giving lower priority to people who you know through others.

Why Create Your Own Social Network?

Most of us rely on the established networks for sourcing candidates. These include LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, and many others depending on your geography and specialty. These will always have some place in recruiting, but by creating your own network you can have much more impact and get better results.

The purpose of creating a social network is to bring the best people into your innermost circle. By building a relationship through frequent communication via whatever means make sense (telephone, email, Twitter, SMS, or IM), you get to know more about each other. Potential candidates can make decisions about whether they like you, the organization you represent, and the positions that are available. You get to screen candidates and select people who closely match your needs.

Creating the infrastructure for a social network can be demanding, but free ones such as Ning are available and provide some level of customization. Others are built from scratch or by using open source tools and modules. ERE.net’s community of users (you and me) is a good example of a social network of practitioners. We have common interests and any of us can find other recruiters who we might like to recruit or help to find a new position. This is an example of an open network, but it could just as easily be available only to people who answer some questions or pass through a filter of some sort qualifying them for membership.

With your own network, you can build in tests, require certain information, or in many ways decide if someone is the right person for your organization. By doing this you eliminate hundreds of unqualified people and reduce the time your recruiters spend screening out the unwanted.

A social network, or talent community, is always growing and changing. People can become a member of a talent community in several ways, but each requires them to learn more about the organization and provides the recruiter with more information about them. For example, if someone comes to the recruiting website and indicates an interest in a particular job, software can quickly assess a variety of things including aptitude for the job, interest, and skill level. People who answer questions in a certain way or who achieve certain scores can be referred to the most suitable positions, turned away completely, or forwarded directly to a recruiter for immediate followup. No one is asked to just “dump” their unevaluated resume into a hopper and wait for a follow up call — which usually never comes.

What Do Candidates Think?

Given these economic times, candidates are stressed and unhappy, as I have written in past articles. They are keen to find organizations that are responsive, friendly, and where they can showcase their own unique qualities. A social network allows this, and the candidates I speak with respond very positively to the immediate knowledge of how well they meet requirements. They are pleased to be invited to be part of a community they have an interest in and they are also glad to know right away that they are not a good fit and won’t be considered. No news is not good news to a candidate who is trying hard to refine his or her knowledge of different organizations and different positions, and who wants to maximize her time.

I am surprised that the hype about social networks revolves almost entirely around the public networks rather than on building your own. If you are in the planning stages for next year, set aside some of your budget to explore creating your own branded social network. You might be surprised at how well it works and at how it creates a far more efficient and candidate friendly environment than you probably have today.

AutoSearch Mobile, like its full-featured — and more expensive — PC and Mac version, makes it a snap for on-the-go recruiters to search much of the public (and some of the private) web without having to know all that complicated Boolean stuff.

That sound you just heard was the collective gasp of every sourcer in the world sucking the oxygen from the atmosphere. So that we may all resume breathing, let me hasten to say every recruiter ought to know how to write a Boolean search string.

But when you’re on the train commuting to work, or on the L circumnavigating the Loop or in a carpool on the 101 freeway, it’s way easier to use a pulldown menu and a few keywords to look for candidates for that new req. Behind the scene AutoSearch Mobile converts your keywords into Boolean, then searches the web for public resumes and a handful of key business networking sites for matches.

The results can be scrolled, the first few lines of the resume showing. Find something interesting and you can expand it to read more. You can email yourself the search results right from the app.

Lori Fenstermaker, principal of AutoSearch, told me the mobile search is slicker to see than to describe. “People are usually quite surprised,” she said, when they actually try it. “It’s really easy to use.”

Like the full version, AutoSearch Mobile will find matching candidates who have posted public resumes. It also searches LinkedIn, Twitter, Jobster, and ZoomInfo. Unless you have a connection, you’ll need to do a little sleuthing to track down a candidate from those sources, but then that’s why it’s called sourcing, and not compiling.

Fenstermaker sort of stumbled into the software business. The Grand Rapids, Michigan, resident was operating a boutique talent acquisition firm when she took a class in online sourcing.

“Pretty soon I found myself spending more time writing complex Internet search strings than I was calling candidates,” Fenstermaker admits in a post on the AutoSearch website. She turned to her husband who owned a software development company and AutoSearch was born.

It proved so popular with her search clients that they began asking to license it. Now AutoSearch is a separate company and, says Fenstermaker, it occupies most of her time.

AutoSearch for the PC or Mac has plenty of competition. There’s eGrabber and TalentDrive among others.

However, mobile search utilities are still relatively rare. Most of the leading job boards have iPhone applications to help job seekers search listings. But the only direct competition for AutoSearch Mobile I’ve found is Search On the Go, which is $9.99 in the iPhone store. It’s interface isn’t quite as simple, but it does save and display search strings, a feature that AutoSearch Mobile lacks. Both apps access only a single, generic search engine: Yahoo for AutoSearch Mobile, Google for Search on the Go.

If not HR/recruiting, then who?

Most HR/recruiting execs would suggest hiring managers themselves as the likely assignee. Others would contend that HR/recruiting is responsible for the quality of the candidates, but managers are responsible for the quality of hire. Others would suggest there are too many variables to assign it to anyone.

Further confusing the issue is determining when quality of hire should be measured. If you do it before the person starts, you’re measuring the sourcing and selection process. After the hire, you’re measuring the hiring manager’s management and leadership abilities as much as you are the candidate’s ability to perform the job needs. Compounding the time variable is the measurement standard. If you use a different measurement technique for before and after, then you’re left with a comparison between oranges and cell phones, or more likely, experience and qualifications vs. performance.

It’s because of these complex issues that I believe that HR/recruiting must take responsibility for quality of hire. If not HR/recruiting, then who?

Here’s my rationale behind the nomination.

1. Maximizing quality of hire is the most important strategic role HR/recruiting can play. Other than maximizing on-the-job performance and retention, there is no more important role for the HR/recruiting department. Not wanting responsibility for this seems odd to an old recruiter like me. All the executives I’ve placed thrive on this type of challenge. Why would HR/recruiting be reluctant to take on — even demand — this responsibility?
2. The CFO is responsible for the capital acquisition process, so why shouldn’t HR/recruiting be responsible for the talent acquisition process? While the financial department doesn’t select, install, and run the capital equipment it approves, it still manages the approval process and strongly influences the ultimate decision. This parallels the role HR/recruiting should play in the talent acquisition process.
3. Having responsibility means the process is adhered to, not the decision itself. Developing and monitoring the hiring/selection process is the role of HR/recruiting. This means developing and implementing processes that ensure that the best candidates are seen and hired. There should be an audit process as part of this to ensure that the best decision has been made, and that if it has not been, the process is modified.
4. There is a huge tactical and strategic cost to making mistakes. HR/recruiting needs to deal with all the mistakes, including finding replacements and dealing with the legal and employee relations issues. The opportunity costs of bad hires alone provides the rationale for some type of vigorous and auditable selection process. Who else could possibly lead this type of cross-functional effort?
5. If not HR/recruiting, then who? Hiring managers should police themselves on quality of hire. Some do it, most don’t, and even those that do, don’t do it well. Regardless, there should be one standardized process that works and is used company-wide. This is the primary reason why hiring managers can only be held responsible for the successful performance of the person hired, not the process used. If some managers want to use their own process, they need to be held 100% responsible for mistakes, including the costs associated with this. This is one way to convince them they should use the approved process.

Of course, if HR/recruiting is given the responsibility for maximizing and measuring quality of hire, there comes some programs that need to be implemented to pull it off. Here are some quick recommendations:

1. Stop using job descriptions to source and select candidates. If you describe the work that needs to be done and assess candidates on this, before and after the hire, you’ll solve the dual measurement problem and reduce turnover dramatically. The primary reasons new hires underperform and/or leave is lack of understanding of real job needs and a poor fit with their hiring manager.
2. Develop sourcing programs that target high-quality candidates, rather than eliminating the worst to see who’s left. This is not insignificant. It means you must stop asking knockout questions and stop posting boring ads. The only reason companies ask knockout questions is to eliminate weak candidates who apply. If you change the sourcing paradigm to target great candidates, rather than hoping great candidates fall through the cracks, you eliminate the “eliminate the weak candidates” problem at the strategic level.
3. Use a performance-based talent scorecard and evidence-based assessment system to measure pre-hire quality. Competency models and behavioral interviews are too generic and do not measure a candidate’s ability and motivation to perform the actual tasks required for success. Instead, candidates should be evaluated across all real jobs, including their ability to work effectively with the hiring manager. Quantifiable evidence of consistent and comparable past performance needs to be the basis of the yes/no decision.

With this type of process in place, HR/recruiting’s role then becomes one of ensuring that the process for maximizing quality of hire is being followed — not making the hiring decision. This is comparable to the authority given, or taken, by the CFO, in ensuring that capital expenditures are justified in some reasonable fashion. Maximizing the quality of every single hiring decision is the primary strategic role of the HR/recruiting department. If HR/recruiting wants a seat at the strategic table it should demand this responsibility.

The Recruitosphere is undergoing significant change, and one of those changes just announced was the acquisition by ERE of the only sourcing conference event of its kind: SourceCon. ERE is no stranger to acquiring bright and shiny pieces of the Recruitosphere; the present event was foreshadowed by the purchase of the three-decade-old Fordyce Letter, widely considered to be some of the best information for the search and placement industry.

Now that ERE has taken over the reins of the industry’s only live, in-person sourcing conference, it will be interesting to watch where it goes. David Manaster, owner of ERE, recently described the sourcing community as possessing a “distinct (and quirky) ethos.”

There are many definitions of the word “quirky” in the dictionary. Some of them say it is: far-out with informal terms; strikingly unconventional; idiosyncratic; odd; a strange attitude or habit

Although all of these describe one or some of sourcing’s characteristics, we would take it a bit further and suggest the grassroots sourcing community that has developed over the last decade or so around the teachings of several well-known sourcing gurus is a strikingly individualistic and dedicated workforce bringing some of the most innovative solutions to today’s hiring challenges. Even so, the industry itself is at the threshold of a new era.

For a very long time, sourcing was treated as a red-headed stepchild. Shunted to the darkened far corner of the room, some of today’s sourcers stingingly remember the disregard and sometimes contempt they were held in within their organizations. This was in the very few organizations that even had the foresight or temerity to bring them onsite! Many of them fell by the wayside, disheartened and discouraged by the lack of support, training, and development that they encountered in their daily pursuits. A few of them realized that the choice that lay before them was in the decision that they could either get better or get bitter. The ones that decided to get better trail-blazed the path that led to the threshold we are on today.

It’s only the beginning, folks.

We’re just scratching the surface of where we’re going to go. There are a few things we wish for the Sourcecon conference (and for all sourcers in the sourcing community) moving forward and they are enumerated below.

Learning
We hope you understand that we sourcers are students in our hearts. Most of us are madly keen to learn new techniques but more than that we’re focused on understanding, and true understanding comes through practice. We’re curious, we don’t take no for an answer or are satisfied with superficial answers. We’re practical. It’s important that we learn new things, but it’s really important that we put those new things to the task — that they not be fluffy theories. Impress us.

Tapping into creativity
When the answers don’t come to the questions that seem to not have answers, we hope you keep going. Everything has an answer. Somewhere. You just have to find it. That’s what we do and that’s what this event should do.

Empowerment
We hope you learn that tough times, disappointment, and hard work lead to happiness and that you always strive to help others, even when they’re scared. Especially when they’re scared. We’re tenaciously persevering; we hope you will be too.

High-quality content
We’re technology savvy, literate, effortlessly coachable, and natural problem-solvers, so don’t feed us copied or recycled content. Make it original; make it worth our while, something we didn’t already read in 10 other blogs. We need credible speakers who know what it’s like to be in the sourcing hot seat. It would be great if you could create a sourcing advisory board for everything around the event, but particularly agenda and speaker selection.

Open minded and transparent
We hope you learn the value of humility by moving past failure, that you are honest when no one is looking, and fight for the things you believe in. The “air of mystery” was cool for a little while, but as sourcers our next big hurdle now is solidifying management buy-in and increasing our professional credibility. Help us elevate our trade to a level where we are openly recognized as the specialists we are. We can achieve that together, with your help, but not if there’s all this “dark arts mystery” around our already fairly cryptic job descriptions; this miasma often turns off staffing leaders and others who might otherwise become great sourcers if the activity wasn’t so ambiguous-sounding.

We’re not sourcers because it’s cool or trendy; we’re sourcers because there’s nothing else we’d rather do. Along those lines, we hope you’re transparent. We must be transparent in our work, reporting our activities not just for compliance but for our own development. We track and document everything; we take copious notes; and we look under every rock. We’d love for you to be just as open with us as we have to be with ourselves.

Timing and Sponsorship
We get that this time we need to piggyback on another event, and that’s fine, but this really is a separate event so there should be a dedicated time and place. We should also have our own vendors because they are often a different breed than those who sponsor the ERE events. Here’s an idea: what if these vendors sponsor the challenges so prizes can be stepped up. This would motivate more people to participate in challenges. Oh, and we’d love to see a sourcing tools bake-off!

SourceCon is unique. It brings together the best minds in the sourcing profession to focus on minute intricacies of the art like no other event in existence.

I was at the first SourceCon, and remember being impressed by the vibe. There was an excitement in the air of a community coming together face-to-face for the first time. Several people came up to me unsolicited and told me how amazing it felt to finally be in a place where there were other sourcers “just like me.”

Since the current recession began, there has been talk of the death of sourcing. I disagree, and now ERE is putting its money where its mouth is.

So what does this mean?

For sourcers, this means that SourceCon is back, plain and simple! I and the ERE team respect the grassroots nature of the Sourcing community, and as we grow the event, we will do it in a way that respects the distinct (and quirky) ethos of the community.

For Leslie, SourceCon’s Founder, this is the result of years of her hard work building SourceCon into an amazing event. I and the ERE team will do our best to run the event as she has done, and hope to have her continued involvement for a long, long time.

As for us, SourceCon represents what ERE is all about — extending deeper into the talent acquisition community with another event that helps us to educate the profession.

We’ll be announcing the dates for the next SourceCon shortly, but if you can’t wait for your SourceCon goodness, check out The Source newsletter!

Beyond Google, many other systems we use on a daily basis accept Boolean searches. This includes LinkedIn, Monster, and quite probably your internal ATS. SearchOnTheGo won’t help you with these platforms, so if you want to get the most from them you need to know the basics of Boolean searching directly. Therefore, in less than 1,000 words, let’s see if I can explain how to do it!

Fully constructed Boolean search strings can look both confusing and complex, but don’t worry, because they aren’t! The first important thing to appreciate is that there are only five elements of syntax to understand. These are:

AND

OR

NOT

()

“”

By applying these appropriately, along with the keywords you wish to consider, you can create a huge range of search operations. There is no limit to how often you can use any of these elements in a search, so you can create very specific search strings, which will save you a lot of time in filtering the results.

AND

AND is the simplest function to apply. Any search terms that follow an AND command must appear in the result. For example:

engineer AND “senior developer”

will give results that include both the word engineer and the phrase “senior developer”. All search results will include both, and any CVs that have either engineer or “senior developer” (but not both) will not appear.

OR

OR provides options into a search. Usage of the OR command allows you to create a list of possibilities for which only one match is important. For example, the following search phrase would give you results that contain one or more of the stated words:

hospitality OR catering OR hotelier

NOT

NOT is the command of exclusion. If there are closely related terms that mean very different things, then usage of the NOT command is extremely valuable. An example could be as follows:

architect NOT “software architect”

This would give you results that contain the word architect, but leaving out any that use the phrase “software architects”. Very useful if you are operating in the construction industry.

The one major limitation with the NOT command is that it isn’t recognized by Google.

“” – Quotation Marks

You will have noticed that I have used the “” expression above in some examples already, wrapped around particular keywords. These quotation marks are used to capture a phrase that is to be kept intact, in the precise word order stated. Not using “” around a phrase will mean that each word is treated separately, usually with an assumed AND in between each one. For example:

pork sandwich

would give results that contain ‘pork‘ and ‘sandwich‘, but not necessarily in the same sentence or paragraph!

“pork sandwich”

would give results that only contain the phrase ‘pork sandwich‘

() – Brackets

Using brackets is essential for complex search strings, and it can be their application that causes the most confusion. Essentially, a clause within brackets is given priority over other elements around it. The most common place that brackets are applied by recruiters is in the use of OR strings. Perhaps a good example would be company names. You have a list of target companies from where you wish to find your talent, and a candidate can have worked at any one (or ideally several) of them. You might initially construct a command like this:

IBM OR Oracle OR “Red Hat” OR Microsoft

These are all large companies though, so any search like this is likely to generate a large number of results. If you wanted to find just individuals who have reached Manager or Director level, then you might use the following command:

“Manager” OR “Director”

To combine both commands into one search, we use brackets to tell the search engine that these are separate conditions. In order to tell the search engine that we want to see results containing either Manager or Director and also one of IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, or Microsoft, we group them like this:

(“Manager” OR “Director”) AND (IBM OR Oracle OR “Red Hat” OR Microsoft)

It makes no difference which order the two bracketed sections go; the same results will result either way.

Wrap-up, and big5hire.com

So, that’s a whistle-stop guide to the very basics of Boolean searching. I have only scratched the surface on its usage, and there are many more techniques that can be used by smart recruiters. For that, I can strongly recommend the blog of Glenn Cathey, the self-proclaimed Boolean Black Belt.

To put boolean into practice, play around with http://www.big5hire.com/. Big5Hire is probably the single largest CV database resource in the world, and it’s completely free! It aggregates the profiles from several major social networks, as well as CVs accessible through Google. The best value from it only tends to come from applying particularly complex or specific search strings, but that’s simply because there are so many profiles on there.

Let’s talk about the very interesting phenomena of communicating with potential candidates in ways that have not been there before. For years, we have been discussing whether to call first or email first. Some gurus suggest that you first send a detailed email, then leave a phone message, and then send a short email mentioning that you had called. Fine, but here are your other options today:

• Join a group on LinkedIn where the person is a member and send a message (which is free, by the way)
• Invite them to join a group on LinkedIn dedicated to their technical skills or their industry
• Look the person up on Twitter and follow him/her
• Re-tweet or reply to their tweets
• Share an article with them using the “share” button available on Ning and on many blogs
• Invite them to an interesting event posted on LinkedIn, or Ning, or elsewhere

(Note that when you invite somebody to an event or share content, you do not need to worry about the person not wanting to hear from you. All those systems have their built-in means of managing the person’s subscriptions.)

The above methods would let you reach more people, especially passive candidates. Your direct email may land in their junk folder. Your call may interrupt their day. (I can definitely say that as a former software engineer.) However, following them on Twitter or sharing news about their industry is a gentle, non-invasive way to get in touch with them. It also gives them a chance to take a look at your profile and figure out a bit about you before they respond. So, if you venture out on a particular network, make sure that your profile on whatever network that is, is professional, filled out, has your picture, and reflects your own or your company background.

Further on, built-in tools and tools built on top of social networks allow us to interact with lists of potential candidates with a touch of a button. It goes without saying that we need to figure things out about those people first, and avoid spam. But there’s nothing wrong in, say, following a list of people on Twitter whose profiles are promising, or sharing interesting content with a list of people who work in a particular industry. The “share” buttons available in many places, such as Ning networks, allow you to share an article with a list of email addresses. The (slightly buggy) tool twitterator.org allows us to bulk-follow a number of people on Twitter. You shouldn’t overdo this, of course; plus, Twitter has its (very reasonable) limitations and wouldn’t let you go too far in this direction. But these tools do increase our productivity.

Today most recruiters are on LinkedIn, many are on Facebook, and about 25% are on Twitter. This is based on some statistics that I have seen online, and is also true about my sourcing webinar attendees. There are endless online discussions on which network is the best, and whether some, such as Twitter, are “a waste of time.” Well, for one thing, Twitter and LinkedIn can hardly be compared. The functionality, the pace of communicating, the length and the nature of relationships are all very different, so your expectations also need to be different. And then, it makes most sense to me to use both LinkedIn and Twitter in conjunction, plus use other networks as well. If you have a targeted list of candidates, you can interact with them in different places simultaneously. You can look up information about them; they may be more present in one online place than the other. Perhaps they have a blog and would welcome your comments. You can invite the same person to a group on LinkedIn and follow them on Twitter, and so on.

There are ways to find the same people across networks. It’s, of course, easier if the person has a unique name and distinct keywords, such as technology skills, in the profile. However, if you get hold of an email address or a Twitter ID, this can sometimes get you pretty far in the sourcing process. In the recent SourceCon challenge I used the site pipl.com to look up people based on their username across networks. Pipl.com also allows you to look up people based on an email address.

An amazing, not explored by many, part of this communication with prospects is that the person may have very little info in their profile on one site vs. another, but based on what you have learned about them you might try to connect on either or both. Searching for candidates on one network and contacting them on another expands our sourcing capabilities.

Successful recruiting using social media requires new personal qualities. To conquer the social media world, we need to be fearless and open-minded. We also need either to be somewhat technical or to have coworkers who are. It’s not terribly hard to navigate different sites, but working with someone who is used to browsing and searching on the web helps. Then, there’s less structure out there now, so if you are creative, this is a useful quality; compare the well-defined ways of using a job board with the open-ended interactions on social networks. We need to get used to questioning our assumptions as we go. Facebook does not work like LinkedIn, so expect to see something different there. Assumptions do not work at all if you are used to searching in one or two places. Search syntax is different on Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Monster; though all these sites support Boolean logic, you can’t reuse the same searches around the social media.

Measuring our success is tricky. Since we still want to hire the best candidates and there are still traditional interviews and offer negotiation processes, perhaps checking how your social media activities affect your submission, interviewing, and hiring statistics makes a lot of sense. That said, we need to be spending a few hours here and there checking out what others do and what new tools show up.

It’s pretty exciting to be here, right?

Google is a sourcing tool, but while it may get the job done, how long will it take to sift through the results? Jobvite Source is more of a blend of the best attributes of ZoomInfo and Broadlook with access to the social networks as well as the entire Web.

Last week, during a demo, Chief Product Officer Jamie Glenn did a search for an online marketing manager and came up with the resumes of, maybe, a couple hundred possibles from all the Web’s free sources. A similar search on Google turns up results in the hundreds of thousands.

The difference is Jobvite Source can compare the results to the job req, sifting out the job listings and other stuff, leaving you with resumes that match the requirements. It does the same as a well-structured query to your ATS or a resume database.

Before you say “Yeah, so,” consider that what Jobvite Source does for the job req, it can do for the candidates. Once you’ve compiled the initial candidate list, applied whatever additional filters you want — Glenn limited the search to candidates in the San Francisco Bay Area — and are satisfied, you can toggle over to a view of the candidate and whatever background is available online about them. The compilations are not as extensive as the summaries on ZoomInfo, but they are detailed enough to let you decide whether to look more closely.

Once you’ve narrowed your candidate list, you can import them into your ATS or create a campaign right in Jobvite Source. Either way, you send them a Jobvite, inviting them to apply and letting them know you’re interested. Likewise, any employee can use Jobvite Source to send a personal invitation to friends and connections in their social networks that the technology has matched to the job description.

The candidate contact is the very essence of Jobvite. Says Dan Finnigan, Jobvite CEO, “The Jobvite is the way to engage the candidate.”

Earlier this year, Jobvite introduced an application allowing it to access the  LinkedIn and Facebook connections of a company’s willing employees. It searches out contacts who best fit the job requirements and suggests to whom a Jobvite ought to be sent. To use it, you had to take the whole Jobvite package. Jobvite Source is a standalone application that works with any ATS.

With so many companies moving toward integrated products, Finnigan explained that Jobvite choose to make Source available as a separate product in order to reach that part of the market that already has an ATS and doesn’t have the money or the inclination to switch.

Companies, Finnigan says, have been “obliterating their recruiting departments.” But they still need to fill jobs. He believes that recruiters are moving away from the for-fee resume databases to search for candidates elsewhere. “The world has changed to the open Web,” he says, mentioning all the networks and personal blogs and sites that have cropped up in the last five years. “What we think recruiters need is a way to integrate with all this stuff.”

Jobvite Source, with its automated searching and parsing and filtering, makes it possible for what remains of the recruiting staff — or an HR generalist, in the smaller shops — to source, rather than post and pray. It isn’t going to replace a sourcer like a Shally Steckerl, but there isn’t an employer who wouldn’t welcome a way to cut down on the average recruiter’s time spent looking for candidates.

With a starting price tag of $500 a seat, Jobvite Source can help the SMB market play on a leveler playing field with the bigger firms at a competitive price.

However, if you view recruiting as a marketing and sales job (as I and many strategic recruiting leaders do), knowing what channels brought the prospect to the organization and what messages led to conversion (talented individual > applicant > candidate > hire) are by far the most critical bits of data the function can collect. Without this information, it’s extremely difficult to scientifically budget for sourcing or build strategic sourcing systems capable of impacting organizational performance.

Luckily, however, there is a simple approach that ensures much more accurate and helpful information that doesn’t rely on transaction-minded recruiters documenting the source of hire.

If you rely on weak sources, chances are you’ll get weak results.

Why Source of Hire Data is Almost Always Wrong

There are numerous reasons why corporate efforts to capture accurate source of hire data are almost always doomed to failure. Some of those reasons include:

• Recruiters don’t care — not all recruiters are involved in selecting the sourcing tools they will have access to or even using them in general, so coding applicants is an activity that realizes little apparent direct benefit. Even recruiters who do source or play a role in their organizations’ sourcing strategy tend to be overconfident that they already know which sources work and don’t need data to inform them. Other recruiters are just old-school and will use the same sources over and over no matter what. Unless recruiters are made aware of how identifying source of hire accurately is critical to their success, no one is going to spend a lot of time on capturing it accurately.
• Conflict of interest — while some recruiters may care about scientifically validating which sources produce which results, the truth is that capturing data that makes the recruiting function more efficient is seen by some as identifying ways to make line recruiters less necessary.
• Not asking in a systematic way — most corporate recruiting processes are relatively flexible and give the recruiter a lot of leeway in determining source of hire. It’s rare to find a process that forces recruiters to specifically ask candidates which source most influenced their decision to apply. In other cases, the way the question is posed to candidates is so inconsistent that it dooms the reliability of the answer.
• Not segmenting clouds the data — many organizations that do collect source of hire data do so in such a way that the value of the data becomes so diluted it is virtually useless. For instance, can you segment your source of hire data by manager perception of candidate quality (used to validate their assumptions) or by post-hire performance rating? Knowing how top and bottom performers approach the organization is much more valuable than knowing the most common source, or how the average employee is found. Further, knowing how sourcing effectiveness varies by job family or region is essential.
• Technology forces bad choices — many corporations use applicant tracking systems to capture the source of hire data at the time of application. Although this is a good concept in theory, studies show that asking prior to hire doesn’t always yield the accurate answer, but rather the answer the applicant thinks might result in the best result. When recruiters enter applicants who have come via internal channels or who have been direct sourced, they tend to choose the first source in the drop-down list available. Few systems send validating questions periodically to confirm applicant data downstream, so errors in the front of the process produce bad data at the end of the process.
• Forcing a single source — it is common for active candidates to use any and all sources available to apply to an organization, while passive candidates may first be exposed to an opportunity via one channel, but ultimately apply via another. Few data-gathering approaches identify how the opportunity was first encountered, what channels influenced a decision, and what channel ultimately produced the application.

Perception Isn’t Always Reality

Periodically testing assumptions or perceptions is key to being a good leader. In 2007, we surveyed more than 15,000 hiring transactions, comparing the pre-hire documented source of hire to results from a post-hire candidate experience survey. The results were shocking, even for those of us who tend to be cynical. Only 26% of the time did the post-hire result match the pre-hire entry.

Further, the variances were much higher with certain sources than others. While recruiters and recent hires generally agreed on the percentage that resulted from employee referral and events, they radically disagreed on the percentage that resulted from the corporate career site, job boards, and even third-party recruiting partners. In the 2007 study, only 12% of new hires attributed the corporate career site as their source of introduction, while the pre-hire data attributed the career site with 57% of hires.

Gathering Valid Sourcing Data the Quick, Cheap, and Easy Way

Sales and marketing professionals have for years used a simple solution to accurately identify the “real reason” why people make the decisions they do. They ask after the decision has been made.

After a product has been purchased or a job offer accepted, the prospect has no reason to lie. The answer will not influence the process. Telling a salesperson that you only came to their dealership because you are interested in a car that only they have in inventory is a fact that could impact the dealer’s willingness to negotiate.

Shifting data collection to follow completion of a transaction removes any value of manipulation.

Additional Reasons Why Asking Post-Hire Is a Superior Approach

• As new employees, new hires may respond more thoroughly to questions out of a newfound sense of obligation to help out the new employer.
• Post-hire collection instruments can be built to collect smaller fragments of data over time as part of the onboarding process, allowing for both better collection activities and validation efforts.
• You’re only capturing data from the highest-quality applicants; in other words, those you actually hired.
• The risk-adverse worried about privacy issues might be more than willing to provide this type of information post-hire once they are made aware that the information will be used exclusively to help recruit high-quality teammates for them to work with in the future.

Action Steps to Implement a Post-Hire Source Identification Process

Consider the following tips when designing and implementing a post-hire source capture process:

• Ask during onboarding — while recruiting doesn’t always own onboarding, recruiting should be permitted to use the onboarding process to collect information from new hires. Ideally, a recruiter can ask the questions and probe for more information in person, but surveys work almost as well. Work with the onboarding team to ensure that the source of hire questions are always completed. If recruiting does not own the onboarding process, using secret shoppers to occasionally test that recruiting-prescribed activities are being completed as desired is advised.
• Email a questionnaire — if an onboarding option is not available, send a questionnaire or survey invitation via email to the individual before they start (because they are new, they are likely to spend some time on it).
• Ask when the candidate accepts — because recruiters administer the selection and offer presentation phases of the recruiting lifecycle, a possible alternative is to include an acceptance criteria survey in the actual offer acceptance process. After thanking them for their acceptance, ask for their help in improving the process of identifying future top-quality candidates like them.
• Educate the new hire — the first thing you want to do is educate the new hire about the importance of the process and how capturing the right sources will result in them eventually working along-side some other great hires. Educate them about the different factors that you’re most interested in; company awareness factors (employer branding factors) and how they learned more about the company/opportunity; what specific sources made them aware there was a current job opening; and what factors triggered their decision to actually apply.
• Ask the right questions — after “when you ask” and “who you ask,” the next most critical factor in getting useful data is what you ask. The following are the minimal questions I recommend. You shouldn’t limit respondents to one answer, but rather allow them to choose all that contributed to their decision to apply. Consider providing them with a detailed list of answers to choose from, based on the sources used and past new-hire answers along with a few blanks. When multiple factors are identified, ask them to rank them in descending order of the importance.

Recommended Questions:

1. Which source made you aware of our company as a desirable place to work?
2. What factors about our company or opportunity best got your attention?
3. Which source or factor made you aware that we had a current job opening in your field?
4. What factor or source convinced you to take action and apply for a job?
5. Were there any sources that provided information that discouraged you from considering our firm or applying for a job? If yes, what were those negative factors?
6. What were the key factors that convinced you to accept this job and what aspects or factors of the hiring process had no value or discouraged you?
7. Who else is exceptional at your previous firm that we should consider hiring?

Note: other powerful recruiting questions that you should be asking can be found here.

• Improving the accuracy of your current system — if you choose not to adopt a post-hire approach or if you decide to run tandem data capturing processes pre and post hire, it is still important to improve your current data capture process. Run a validation study that collects post-hire data for a limited time and compare the data received from the traditional approach to that collected. If both processes produce similar results, there’s no reason to change your approach. If you continue letting recruiters enter the data, spot check or use a random validation study to periodically check the accuracy rate of their entries. One recruiter throwing bad data into the system can throw off all of the results. Merely knowing that there is a chance that entries will be checked periodically will drive most recruiters to improve their accuracy. Adding a reward for accuracy will further improve results.

Leveraging Source of Hire Data

Collecting data and doing nothing with it should be a cardinal sin in a corporate setting.

Recruiting leaders need to develop a formal process at least twice a year to review sourcing data and adjust sourcing processes accordingly. Adjustments should include dropping bad sources, modifying recruiter training, shifting budget allocations, and determining the impact of sourcing changes on new-hire retention rates and job performance.

Final Thoughts

There are some in the recruiting profession who look down on sourcers and the sourcing function as something that’s necessary but not mission-critical. In contrast, there is nothing more important than great employer branding and placing the right message in the right communication channel to drive the desired action by the right people.

If you recruit basketball players for an NBA team from elementary schools, you’ll never win a single game, but if in contrast, you recruit exclusively at NBA All-Star games, no matter how bad the rest of your recruiting processes, you will have some great hires. I go by the axiom that “great sourcing is everything.” If you believe so too, you will act immediately to eliminate actions that lead to unreliable sourcing data. Using a post-hire source capturing approach is cheap, quick, and much more accurate than pre-hire source identification. It’s a slam-dunk.

As always, if you have tried this approach and want to make others aware of your success, or have questions/suggestions you would like others to focus on with regards to improving the process, please post them to the comments section following this article.

In a moment of frustration (or epiphany) I quipped that candidates were seeking relationships and our recruiting technology offers them the equivalent of a one-night stand (or more accurately a chance to complete an application). Looking past the potential off-color nature of the comment, the truth is there is a gap between what people in this world of Web 2.0 desire and what a typical recruiting operation allows. That gap is the williness on the part of recruiting to have a conversation with you unless you are part of the chosen few that meets with requirements of a specific job.

Jeff Jarvis writes in his book–What Would Google Do?—about the first law he learned on the Internet:

“Give the people control and they will use it. Don’t and you will lose us.”

Think: It Is Not About Us!

Giving up control is scary, but the alternative is downright frightening. If you would like to see that picture, just read Jarvis’s famous blog post about “Dell Hell.”(Use keywords “dell hell” in Bing.) It is the story of Jarvis in a moment of frustration with Dell that caused a groundswell of public opinion and caused Dell an amazing amount of pain (i.e. lost sales, bad PR, etc). Dell eventually got the message, but at what cost? To say that this event has caused a sea change is an understatement.

Think Distributed, Not Destination

Jeff Jarvis (What Would Google Do) suggests that companies (like Google) that act as a distribution system have been more successful in the Web 2.0 world than organizations (like Yahoo) that have focused on building portals and destination points. When you build a destination site, it is as if you are taking the prospect where you want them to go, as opposed to using the site as a method that they can go where they want to go. The Microsoft Talent Engagement Model (see graphic below) is more of a marketing distribution system for our jobs and jobs-related content than to a single talent community site. In fact, as you dig into the model, you will notice that activities and information flow in a myriad of directions as opposed to a single web site.

Not Creating New Communities!

We joined existing communities (LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook) and used their platforms to engage the appropriate segments of their membership. Not only do these social networking sites have a large number of active participants, the very audience we are trying to reach contained in their ranks. Forrester’s Technographics research indicates that a Groundswell has occurred and the majority of adults in our society (especially the best educated, highest-paid professions as well as the new entrants to the job market) have joined social networking sites. It is very apparent that our target audience is online and in these existing communities or social networking sites.

We are creating community, but not necessarily creating new communities (if that makes sense). Perhaps a way to good way to think about it is that we are organizing a community in way that can make the community function better to better meet the interests of our target audience. For active job seekers, we can provide a higher quality experience and help them navigate Microsoft. For the more passive individuals, we can provide the “inside scoop” on technologies; what it is like to work at Microsoft; and engage current employees in conversation.

An Alternative to Goodbye!

At Microsoft, we are pipelining talent in communities as an alternative to saying goodbye. These communities are located on social networking sites (LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook) as well as our vendor’s (Jobs2Web) platform. We use communities to

1. Offer an alternative to prospects who are not ready to apply
2. Offer an alternative to prospects who are screened out
3. Offer an alternative to prospects who do not complete the application process.

The Microsoft Talent Engagement Model (see graphic) illustrates that there is a lot going on in our approach to pipeline and creating community.

The pie chart in the upper-left hand corner is a reminder that the talent supply is comprised of active, casual, passive, and non-job seeking talent. And it points out the active job seeker is only about 14% of our potential audience. That leaves approximately 86% of the potential audience—causal, passive, or non-job seekers that could be part of the talent engagement equation.

The center of the funnel illustrates that we feed our SEO results; our SEM activities; our TalentStream (A CRM-based pipelines/community engaging approach that maps a target audience’s behaviors, attitudes, and interests to our outreach) campaigns; and the prospects generated from live and virtual events. Previously, I argued that SEO Is Not Enough: that tactic alone does not reach a large percentage of the potential talent supply. So we add TalentStream campaigns, events, and other outreach strategies to reach deeper into the potential talent supply toward where the more passive prospects are. We use a variety of approaches that are based on an understanding of our target audience’s behaviors, attitudes, and common interests.

The left-hand side of the Microsoft Talent Engagement Model depicts how we use a number of different opportunities to distribute information to active, as well as some casual and active prospects. In this way, we allow the prospect to decide how they want to engage or hear from us. For example, the passive job seeker might want to subscribe to a job agent that will alert them when a certain type of opportunity becomes available. The casual job seeker might have been referred by an employee to a specific job and we want to move them forward in our process. The prospect that is not looking might show up at a virtual event that has a Microsoft leader discussing an important new technology.

Not ready to apply? Not the right fit? Came in second? Regardless of the reason, the right-hand side of the Microsoft Talent Engagement Model graphic illustrates the ability to offer the prospects the opportunity to remain engaged. If they join a community, we will listen, answer questions, and converse with prospects. If they are “non-applicants” at the present time, we offer a variety of ways a prospect can decide how to receive information. For the person who is screened out of an interview process, we can offer them the opportunity to stay engaged while they wait for a better job fit. For the candidate who came in second in an interview panel, we can actively assist them in considering other opportunities within Microsoft. And for the person who has left Microsoft for other opportunities, we can keep in touch. In many instances Microsoft Alumni wish to return after a short length of time in their new venture.

This behavior of not allowing for conversations with prospects is going to catch up with the recruiting profession—and it is not going to be pretty for some of us. But we still have a chance to get in front of this. Apply or Goodbye is no longer the only option.

The THX commercial tickles our ears in the movie theater, loudly proclaiming the “Audience Is Listening.” The lesson of the Web 2.0 is the “Audience Desires a Conversation” and recruiters had best join in the dialogue.

One purpose of this article is a preview of a presentation for the Fall 2009 ERE event, where our talent community pilot will be discussed in the broader context of Web 2.0 Beyond the Social Recruiting Hype: Microsoft’s Approach to Building Talent Pipelines and Communities. While the presentation will be much broader than a discussion of “apply or goodbye”—one of our core beliefs is that Web 2.0 demands that we have conversations with prospective employees at all phases of the job search cycle. Failure to do so will result in our recruiting the best talent for Microsoft, and that significantly impacts our business.

You cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are continually flowing in. — Heraclitus

There’s a huge controversy that raises itself now and then here in the Recruitosphere and that’s the idea that one type of candidate (passive) is better than the other (active). The thinking goes along the lines of “If they’re looking, there must be a reason they’re looking!” There’s probably something wrong with the guy.

On the other end of the spectrum glistens the shiny new: that person popularly known as the “passive” candidate. The accompanying reasoning goes something like: “If he’s out there and nobody’s talked to him before, I’ll be the first one at the table to get the best (and biggest) portion.”

In reality, both lines of thought are problematic.

I’m reminded of the Clay Walker country song line, “What’cha gonna do, When the new wears off And the old shines through…?”

In defense of the actives, there are good people represented in the mix – and they’re going to turn up in some of our “passive” searches anyway. It happens the more thorough we become in our sourcing skills. I try not to leave anyone “behind” when I’m phone sourcing, unless the customer asks for a specific number out of a certain company.

The reality is, passives aren’t always truly “passive” and actives aren’t always “active.” Some “actives” have gone to ground, so to speak, and are fully engaged in another job that really gives them those desirable “passive” characteristics again that are so highly regarded nowadays. Skipping over them in any job search is a mistake. Keep in mind that anything we put out on the Net is going to stay out on the Net, regardless of our efforts or desire to remove it. So if someone has a resume, say “out there” somewhere, at some time, he or she could turn up in a future search regardless of whether they’re looking at the present time or not.

There are passives who really aren’t passive at all. They know what they’re doing to market themselves. They know how to glisten beneath all that fallen snow that assures they’ll be the first snowflake picked out of the landscape. This is the person who’s active on the net, who does a lot of posting (or a little) that includes a lot of biographical information that, at first glance, appears innocent. It’s not, usually. Those tagline signatures that give us names, titles, addresses and phone numbers should be approached with some hesitation. The question to ask is: “If I found them, who else hasn’t?”

I know it’s exciting when your Boolean search ferrets out that exact title in the exact location that the job is calling for and it appears that all you have to do is dial the number and confirm that the guy’s still there. I know very well that temptation to end there and call it finished.

Don’t! Doing this is short-shifting your customer as well as yourself. This little “gem” you uncovered as a result of your knowledgeable Boolean entry (you did work so hard to learn Boolean, didn’t you?) sometimes is tantamount to someone’s resume being posted out there – it screams, “Hey recruiter, look at me – I’m what you want – call me for your new job opportunity –I’ll make it easy – here’s my office number and my cell!”

No one understands that you have given everything. You must give more. — Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

“Foul!” you cry. “They’re mine to find!”

Yes, they are yours to find if that’s all you’re interested in finding. That “passive-active” usually has a team of coworkers he interacts with everyday. The best way to set that little hard rock into your job setting is to build his organization out around him. And that usually means (actually I don’t know of any other way) that you must get on the telephone and call him, or call his Administrative Assistant, or call his manager, or call the guy in the cube next to him, or call someone in the Mail Room who delivers mail to him and his group everyday, or call the VP of Engineering’s Executive Assistant, or call someone, anyone that will give you the names of the other people in his group!

Chances are they’re the truly passive candidates in the mix!

You must remove (at least one hand, momentarily) from the alphabet portion of your keyboard to dial that number. These days, and it’s going to become ever-more-important moving forward, you must become an active names sourcer vs a passive names sourcer! If you don’t do this your research will suffer the consequences as more and more people are learning (and depending) on Boolean to fill their searches. Set yourself apart by honing your telephone techniques. They’re the ones that are hardest to master and they’re the ones that return the most unique results! They’re the ones that give you the only advantage to finding the truly passive candidate – the guy sitting at his desk doing his thing, 8 to 12 hours a day, too busy to even think about another job. The guy who doesn’t “post” for ulterior reasons or isn’t listed in some fabulous online gathering. He’s the guy who’s gainfully and masterfully employed doing what you need him to do for you – go get him!

Keep in mind the overall quality of the pipeline. Proactively adding both passive and actives into it at the same time is going to give you a healthy mix in the end.

In a recent ERE article, I made the point that “employment churn” (fully employed people switching seats) will increase dramatically three to four months before any pickup in overall employment. This unplanned spike in voluntary turnover will leave many companies ill-equipped to handle the surge, since most are not considering replacement hires in their new hiring forecasts as a big item.

Based on some recent evidence, I believe that this spike will be more significant that anyone realizes. Worse, this could happen sooner than expected, blindsiding unprepared companies.

Here’s some of the evidence supporting this view.

Over the past few months I’ve been asking people who are fully employed these two questions:

1. How satisfied are you with your current job?
2. Are you looking now for something better?

Interestingly, more people said they were satisfied than unsatisfied, but even those who were dissatisfied most said they weren’t looking right now, probably because there isn’t much worth looking at. We created a formal survey to validate this result, since the impact of this effect on your current and future sourcing plans is huge (here’s the link to the two-minute survey).

Overall, 75% of the people said they would consider something if called, but only 20% of the most satisfied said they’d take the call. You’ll find the detailed results after you complete the survey, but here’s the chart showing job satisfaction vs. job hunting efforts.

Basically, the conclusions drawn from this survey (when validated by more participants) mean you should stop all of your active candidate sourcing programs immediately and aggressively ramp up your passive recruiting efforts.

What the survey results seem to indicate is that just having a job is far better than not having one, even if the job itself provides little personal satisfaction. Since there are so few good jobs out there, it’s not worth looking for something else right now.

As you can see by the chart, less than 10% of those unsatisfied and extremely unsatisfied with their current jobs are aggressively looking. And why would they? We’ve all read about low-ball offers, the number of applicants applying for each job, and the demeaning aspects of looking for a job in the current environment.

Given this situation, it’s unlikely many fully employed people would be looking, risking the jobs they already hold. You can observe a similar effect by tracking the use of the word “jobs” in a Google search.

Last year, this number was about 3.5mm per day. It peaked in March/April at 7.6mm per day, and has been running at 7mm per day for the past three months.

While still a huge number, one could conclude that the steadiness is a result of people not finding anything new. I’d further conclude, based on the survey results, that most of the people looking for these jobs are either the unemployed or those just entering the workforce.

It’s also pretty easy to conclude that as soon as the economy recovers just a little, those least satisfied of the fully employed will leave first. This movement will then trigger the next rung of those slightly less satisfied to ramp up their job-hunting efforts.

This, in turn, will lead the next group to move up their efforts, and so on. Pretty soon, a minor increase in voluntary turnover will lead to a massive game of musical chairs being played out across the country. It will only take a little bit of new job creation to start this major movement.

This is not a far-fetched scenario, with the tea leaves pointing to something like this happening in the next three to four months. Surprisingly, very few companies are ready for this unexpected surge in replacement hiring.

If you think there is a possibility of this type of scenario impacting your company, here are four ideas you might want to ponder at your next recruiting staff meeting. (For more on this topic, check out my September 2 webinar called “How Job Satisfaction Drives the Job Hunting Process.”)

1. If you have any open reqs for experienced hires, don’t expect to hire any good people who respond to your ads. You’ll need to enter into the passive candidate market aggressively to fill these slots or ramp up your employee referral program. Here are links to LinkedIn and Broadlook webinars with some advice on how to use these tools to identify and call these people.
2. Call Jobs2Web, TalentSeekr, or First Advantage and ask them to create talent hubs for you for your most critical positions. There’s no OFCCP reporting required for these microsites as long as you’re just collecting prospects for broad categories of jobs. Here’s a link to a sample of how your CRM system can be designed to convert a prospect into a candidate using a series of auto-response emails without the recruiter even picking up the phone. We call this the “Virtual Recruiter”(sm). The talent hub with this type of drip marketing is the shape of things to come.
3. Figure out how you’re going to attract strong, fully employed experienced people who currently consider their current job as far better than anything you have to offer. Consider that these passive candidates also represent 80% of the total candidate market, and it makes no sense to continue spending 80% of your resources on the other 20%.
4. Become preventative. Figure out how to minimize the impact of voluntary turnover at your company. Minimize “disgruntled employee syndrome” in a period where jobs are going nowhere, salaries are being cut, comp increases are nonexistent, and benefits are declining. This is a tough challenge that needs to addressed, not ignored.

There’s a lot to chew on here, but if we’re moving through an inflection point right now, expect the ride to be comparable to a trip aboard the Enterprise through a black hole. Expect it to be much worse, if you decide to ride it out, without considering the consequences.

Do you see what I see?
A star, a star
Dancing in the night,
With a tail as big as a kite.

–Do You See What I See, song lyrics

I was watching a movie a while back and I heard a line in it that has stuck with me and I think of often. It’s one of those file-markers I put in my brain at the time to think more about and maybe write about. I’m doing that now.

The movie was “Beyond the Sea,” a biographical film that took its title from the Darin song of the same name and was based on the life of singer/actor Bobby Darin, played by Kevin Spacey. It depicts Darin’s rise to teen idol success in both the music and film industry during the 1950s and 60s, as well as his marriage to Sandra Dee, played by Kate Bosworth.

Near the end of the movie Darin/Spacey is talking to his wife Dee/Bosworth about his career frustrations and what audiences want. It was the late 60s and Darrin’s successful 50s crooning was being made obsolete overnight by changing musical trends. He was confused and lost in his career. His wife casually made the remark, “People hear what they see.” In response, Darin successfully changed his presentation to accommodate a more modern audience.

As phone sourcers we rely on the telephone to deliver our “message.” What is that Gatekeeper “seeing” when you call her? Have you ever considered that what she is “seeing” is impacting what she is hearing and how she is reacting to you? Her reaction to you is informed by her intuition and her experience. It may also be informed by some extensive cross-wiring in her brain regions that represent abstract concepts … and who would have thought, anyway?

True, you’re going to run up against Gatekeepers who are young with not much experience to guide their reactions, but just as often, and more so these days I suspect, your task is going to be challenged by more experienced gatekeepers who are beginning to understand how their intuition guides their own decisions.
I doubt, though, many of them have an inkling about what I’m about to write about. That’s an advantage for you when you’re phone sourcing.

Research at the California Institute of Technology has shown that some people can actually “hear” what they see. It’s called synaesthesia — a genuine perceptual phenomenon where senses intermingle. It’s rare, but a more common form exists where a person is able to perceive numbers or letters as colors. The artist David Hockney is able to see color when listening to music. As the sound of a voice can be likened to music, is it such a far leap to ask yourself what color that receptionist might be “seeing” when she hears the tone of your voice?

Is she seeing red? We all know the association our culture has with the color red. Is a heightened aversion reaction like this impacting your sourcing efforts?

What if she “hears” the color blue and is washed over by the peaceful analogy of sensation that accompanies it? Do you think that would improve your results or lessen them?

Maybe she sees green. We all know what that’s associated with: go! Maybe it’s one reason some gatekeepers seem to cooperate with some people and not others. The question is, though, do all synaesthesia-affected gatekeepers see the same colors in response to certain tones? I suspect they might.

There is wide difference of opinion how common this is. I’ve seen estimates of 1/2000 and 1/20. It is genetic and also established that it’s more prevalent among females and that it runs in families. The chromosomal regions where the genes reside are known to contain genes associated with a variety of disorders, including autism, dyslexia, and epilepsy. My own family is marked by dyslexia.

I’ve always been acutely aware of how a person’s voice (and also many times, a person’s touch) impacted me viscerally. I can’t say that I see color, but I can say that I have a visceral reaction to certain voices (and sounds) that lulled my senses. The sound that comes to my mind right now is the sound of gum “popping” (some call it “smacking”). Most people find it annoying, but if there is someone chewing gum and making that “pop” sound every few chews, I’ll saddle up next to them just to listen. There is no drug in this world like it for me to set me into a catatonic state.

This sound sensitivity may be one reason why as a phone sourcer I am acutely aware of the Gatekeeper’s voice and immediately examine it when she answers (in a flash of a couple seconds) for clues as to her “ability” to help me. I admit, if I get a Gatekeeper on the phone whose voice I “enjoy” listening to, I’ll take more time drawing her out just because I like that visceral sensation she creates for me. I suppose it could be likened to a drug fix: I’m searching for them all day long!

Turning it around, I am often told how “nice” I sound on the phone. I interpret that as meaning that I probably have a good “phone voice” and might also be a contributing factor to why I get names using the telephone on most every call I make. It’s a theory, mind you; nothing scientific, but it’s a strong gut feeling I have. There’s more fire than smoke, I suspect, in this theory.

So, what do people tell you about your voice? Do you think of your voice as an asset, confidently using it in your work? I suspect those who do not like using the phone may not have had the positive experiences I’ve had with it. What do you think?

Silence is golden; speech is silver. ~ American Proverb

My brother-in-law visited the past week from New York City. He comes, usually, every August to stay a week or so with us here in part of the heartland of America, southwestern Ohio. That’s when the corn starts coming in and the tomatoes are ripe on the vine and he times his visits (I suspect) so he can eat like a king at our harvest table. We grow both.

I call it the Midwest; he argues that we’re not far enough west to be called mid-anything. Be that as it may, he is living in that peaceful twilight between the years your kids are grown and out of the nest and the beginning of the tsunami when they have grandchildren and those grandchildren become yours to keep a portion of some of your days. Or all of your days. Or every other day, whatever it may be.

Entering the room and gingerly turning over a naked doll-baby discarded and laying face-down on the floor with the big toe of his right foot, he sardonically declared, “Dead.”

I laughed just as the thing started babbling, googling, and burping, and leaving out sounds that normally are reserved for the nether regions of the body, all thanks to two D batteries in its back that are not yet dead.

“What did that thing cost?” he asked, warily eyeing the lifeless form on the floor that refused to stop emitting sound once prodded.

“Oh that’s a 50-cent Goodwill baby. If you go on Sundays, everything is half off if you’re over 50,” I answered.

Nodding at another smaller doll-baby sitting quietly in a chair across the room, he asked, “And that one?”

“Oh, that one cost about 10 bucks on sale at Kohl’s. That’s a store-bought baby. It doesn’t talk.”

“Doesn’t talk?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s why it cost more,” I answered with a wink.

And it occurred to me that this might be a good lesson for sourcing and recruiting.

How many of us think we have to talk our prey to death to get results? There are still a good number of people out there who think a good salesperson is a good “talker.” A good salesperson, like a good recruiter or sourcer, is a good listener and worth many times their weight in gold over a babbling fool.

Do you feel you have to do a lot of talking when you’re sourcing or recruiting? Why?

In her book The Truth About Search Engine Optimization Rebecca Lieb defines Search Engine Optimization as the art and science of making content attractive to the major search engines engines (there are over 300 million searches for jobs, careers, and employment on just Google each month) to look for a job (as opposed to job boards, which only get 10 million searches per month). So for recruiters, that would mean making our jobs or jobs related content “optimizable” by Google, Bing, and Yahoo. And I have to wholeheartedly reinforce that an SEO platform does a great job of targeting job specific keywords that are ranked by the major search engines.

For example, our partner Jobs2Web’s dynamic SEO platform has already accomplished its objective — getting our jobs content on the first page of Google (the search engine that enjoys a 70% market share for jobs searches). In the screen shot below, you will notice that 97% of our jobs (Microsoft Entertainment & Devices) are on the first page of Google.

And most of the jobs are listed “above the fold,” which is where the majority of eyeballs will notice your content and where 80% of search engine users click on links in the “organic results.” To see an example of this, search Google for “Seattle Developer Jobs” and you will see our site on the 1st page (#2 position). If you press on the link, it will take you to the landing page. We have similar landing pages for each keyword search that is performed.

And we are getting a significant increase in traffic to our respective jobs. But, it is still not enough. SEO alone will not allow you to source from all of the available talent pools. It is because (depending on your keyword targeting strategy) SEO primarily attracts job seekers who are active in their search and seeking “jobs”-related keywords. While that segment of our target talent audience is important, it actually is the smallest part of the job search cycle. The graph below reflects the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (circa 2006) overview of the talent supply in the United States. I think of this as a “job search cycle,” as it reflects where the respective segments of talent supply are with respect to changing jobs at any point in time.

Before you think that I am trashing our SEO partner Jobs2Web, I need to explain that our initial approach with the Jobs2Web platform focused on “jobs” and became the distribution system for our jobs and jobs-related content for search engines, as well as the leading social networking sites, blogs, and any relevant sites that we can connect with both active and passive talent. In an upcoming article, I discuss the idea of a Web 2.0 Recruitment Marketing Platform in greater detail.

If we relied on just SEO, our jobs-related content (per the above graph) would be seen by the active job seeker, as well as some of the casual looking talent (the ones who engage in web activities that mirror an active job seeker). And on a scale of easy to difficult, the active job seeker certainly is at the easiest level. And the most difficult (or nearly impossible) would comprise the part of the talent supply that is “not looking.” What I find interesting is that most organizations tend to work at both ends of the spectrum. We post jobs to attract the active job seeker and we engage in one-off sourcing projects to attract the part of the audience that is not looking. No wonder the ideal results are not being obtained: we are missing about 50% of the potential talent.

If you sat in on a Web 2.0 team meeting at Microsoft Entertainment & Devices, with my colleagues (John Phillips and Mira Aboulhoson) and myself, the conversation nearly always involves a discussion of the ramification of “human touch” vs. “technology touch.” We use both methods in our Web 2.0 Recruitment Marketing outreach to reach each segment of the target talent audience.

The current state of technology offers a prospect a choice that could be characterized as “apply or goodbye.” For the casual or passive candidates (which may not be ready to apply) we are offering an alternative to “goodbye.” We offer an array of choices that have built in some “human touch” and allow a prospect to choose how they want to engage with Microsoft.

For example, we reach deep into the active, casual, and passive talent pools with a “technology touch.” We augment technology initiatives with a “human touch” in social networking sites, talent communities, and by direct outreaches to micro-segments of our target audience. It is at the intersection of human touch (art) and technology touch (science) that success is realized.

Human touch, or Guanxi, is a critical element that makes our approach more successful than just a successful than a technology touch solution. I believe that every recruiter (at least every out-of-work recruiter) knows that a conversation with a prospect is very important. If our target audiences are moving online to social networking sites, at the very least we can observe that people are seeking relationships. More than just relationships, Web 2.0 uses a place for user generated content and conversation. These online sites have become virtual third places where relationships are built. And as a tenet of recruiting dictates, recruiting is about building relationship with potential talent, so that when the time is right, you can discuss your opportunities with them.

The challenge for recruiting comes when we attempt to integrate that Web 2.0 human touch into our transactional recruiting processes. While we acknowledge that getting to know a prospect is important, we just do not want to engage in a conversation until a hiring manager is interested in a prospect. And yet, we realize that community and conversation is the cornerstone of how we develop prospects into candidates. And while we are stuck in the tension between what we are doing (filling jobs transactionally) and what we need to doing (building relationships), we miss about 50% of the potential talent pool (causal and passive target audiences). By offering an alternative to goodbye, we can convert a much higher level of visitors, increase the yield of our Web 2.0 marketing efforts, and reach into previously untapped talent pools.

I am going to pause this discussion at this point — thinking about the 50% of the potential talent pool that you might be missing out on — and insert a commercial. For those attending the ERE Conference in Florida, I will illustrate our approach of reaching that causal and passive target audience as an integral part of our Web 2.0 Recruitment Marketing platform. This topic will be discussed in the broader context of Web 2.0 Beyond the Social Recruiting Hype: Microsoft’s Approach to Building Talent Pipelines and Communities.

“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.

From what I can tell, most companies aren’t ready.

Abraham Maslow, in addition to many behavioral economists, provides some underlying rationale for the idea that churn will ramp up quickly before the overall hiring stats increase.

As part of his “Hierarchy of Needs,” Maslow suggested that while people consistently strive for personal improvement, they become conservative in difficult economic times. During these periods, trade-offs are made where people protect their assets, including their jobs, avoid any unnecessary risk, and reduce their expenses. This is why good people, who are fully employed, are reluctant to move during economic slowdowns.

However, as hiring “green shoots” appear, those who are the most fed up with their current jobs (the least satisfied) will begin to pursue other opportunities. As these people leave, companies will fill these empty seats, most likely with others, currently fully employed. Soon these trickles of churn will turn into significant streams of turnover that will be measured in the national labor statistics. This spike in turnover is an early indicator of an economic recovery. To get a handle on this, here’s a super-short satisfaction survey you can send to your employees, everyone in your LinkedIn network, and everyone in your talent pool. We’ll track these results over the next few months to provide you with a sense of churn by industry and job level. Due to the severity of this recession, it’s quite likely that employee churn will really spike up over the next three to six months.

Once these early indicators start flashing yellow, it’s time to implement the hiring plans you’ve been developing aggressively over the past six months.

Here are additional ideas to consider as you get these plans ready for prime time:

Remember that one size doesn’t fit all. While the hub-and-spoke models brought to you by Jobs2Web, TalentSeekr, and First Advantage’s HireEngine are great for entry-level job seekers, college grads, and staff-level professionals, they might not be the ideal sourcing tool for executives, managers, and the top 10% in any field. The same is true for using social media — the new darling of corporate America recruiting — as a primary means to source talent. Developing a sourcing-channel strategy by position, demographic, and quality level is an essential aspect of any recovery plan. As Yogi Berra once said, “Don’t put all of your sourcing eggs in one basket, unless they’re hard-boiled.”

Don’t spend 80% of your resources on 20% of the market. If 15%-20% of the labor market is looking at any one time (active candidates), and even if it surges to 30% once the recovery begins, this means that 70%-80% of the market is passive. Further, one could easily prove that top performers tend to be more passive and more discriminating. Under this assumption, it seems appropriate to categorize your recruiting expenditures by active and passive and by quality to see how well you’re doing on an ROI basis. This might suggest that cost per hire is the dumbest metric on the planet.

Passive candidate sourcing comes with a significant cost, but a great ROI. If you define an A-level candidate as three to five times more productive than a C-level candidate, and B-level somewhere in between, paying a 30% search fee makes sense on an ROI basis. This is true at least for a top 10% person. On this same measure, a 15%-20% fee could be justified for a B-level person. On this basis it makes no sense to me why corporations are adverse to paying these fees, since they need to pay their own recruiters an equivalent amount in effort to hire anyone who’s not looking.

Creating talent pools is the sourcing sweet-spot. The most important tool to emerge over the past few years is the idea of building talent pools of prospects by job class. These are large databases of former candidates, employee referrals, and all of the people you sourced for jobs and came in second or third, among others. Using robust CRM systems, these candidates are sent regular emails describing compelling opportunities, and since they’re prospects, you don’t need to report on them until they apply for a specific job. If you make the apply process something other than just submitting a resume, you can also eliminate the bottom 75% during the first iteration, while attracting the top 10%. (Email me if you’d like to learn how outbound emails can be used this way.)

If you’re insistent on posting individual job requisitions, do it right. I’m predicting a significant decline (50%-75%) in the use of job-board advertising over the next few years. However, if you’re going to resist the move to the hub-and-spoke and talent-pool-sourcing model, make sure your ads are easy to find, and compelling. Emphasize what’s in it for the candidate, stop mentioning skills, and focus instead on the challenges. As part of this, use creative titles, like “Off-road Java Developer” or “So You Think You Can Sell,” to differentiate your jobs and attract a better class of candidates.

Implement a forward-looking workforce-planning process. If you’re not yet forecasting your hiring needs six to 12 months out, you should be. This will give you a big clue to what your line managers are saying about their future needs. Even more important is looking at the changes between these forecasts, especially in the differences two and three quarters out. These are great forward-looking indicators as to when the economy for your company will turn. Better: if you build in churn and turnover assumptions into these forecasts, you’ll be able to prioritize how you allocate your recruiting resources.

The key point here is that you need a specific sourcing strategy by job class (e.g., staff, management, sales, entry-level) and a channel-by-channel plan to implement it. This needs to be planned ahead of time and implemented as soon as you see an increase in involuntary turnover in this job class. This is your first clue that labor churn is beginning.

This will be confirmed by increases in month-to-month increases in your hiring forecast. Collectively this will give you a three- to four-month headstart on your competition. Getting candidates first will be a huge competitive advantage.

To see if your program is working, start asking all of your candidates how long they’ve been looking. If they say they’ve just started, you know you’re in the game. If they say they haven’t started yet, you’ve won.