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Many contract recruiters wish they had taken that internal recruiting position offered to them two or three years ago. As in every recession, being an internal employee is viewed with envy. It seems only logical that as layoffs and cutbacks greatly reduce the number of contract recruiters, the interest in being a regular employee rises. The lure of a regular paycheck, benefits, and the sense (although false) of security score high.

But I am not so sure that a contract recruiter should want to be an employee. While the functions that HR performs may be essential, they don’t necessarily have to be performed by an employee. Organizations are realizing that they have more employees than they need — and very often in the wrong place. Why should any organization spend salary, development, and retention dollars on employees who do not generate new products or revenue? What does a recruiter contribute that an contractor could not? There are already hundreds of companies that have replaced their recruiting team with contractors and third-party recruiters and have had success. Unfortunately, most HR professionals are convinced that their organization could not function without them as employees, but I think they are wrong.

Given what is happening in business strategy, HR is about to undergo the biggest reduction in workforce it has ever seen. keep reading…

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

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

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

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

In normal economic times, search firms make a lot of money placing candidates corporations should be able to find on their own.

“How do they do it and what can be done to prevent them from doing it to us?” is a question many corporate recruiting leaders are asking. The underlying premise here is that if corporate recruiting departments could be organized and run like contingency recruiters and executive search firms, lots of money would be saved.

Despite the promise of the objective, very few companies have been able to successfully pull it off.

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It was agreed by all that the meeting was to be held in the strictest secrecy.

Only first names were to be used, and nothing was to be put in writing. Even though I was the head of recruiting and staffing for a large, multi-national company, I was putting my team in serious jeopardy just by having this conversation. Fortunately, the liaison was successful — we were not caught that day, and so far no one has discovered that we met together.

What am I describing? An international spy ring? The sale of competitive intelligence? keep reading…

“I don’t have to tell you that things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody is out of work or scared of losing their job…banks are going bust.”
–Peter Finch, “Network”

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

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

I will tell you what most recruiters I am communicating with are currently doing. keep reading…

(the chart in this story was updated February 23)

Once again referrals have turned out to be the leading source of external hires in the annual CareerXroads source of hire survey. In 2008, 27.3 percent of the external hires made by the 45 large employers who completed the survey came from referrals made primarily by employees, but also by alumni, vendors, and others.

Corporate web sites — a destination and not an actual “source,” insists the report — was second with 20.1 percent of the external hires coming from there. Rounding out the top three were job boards, which accounted for 12.3 percent of the hires.

No big news in those results. For the last several years the survey that CareerXroads principals Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler conduct every January has consistently found referrals accounting for about 3 of every 10  external hires made by the participating companies.

What is different this year is that 38.8 percent of all openings were filled by internal transfers and promotions.

“We found that very interesting, ” says Crispin. “That’s the highest number since we started this survey eight years ago.”

His explanation is that despite hiring freezes, critical openings still have to be filled. But, now that’s being done internally and the  jobs the transfers leave are simply being absorbed by the remaining staff.

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I couldn’t help but wonder: who are these two third-party agencies Kevin Wheeler is talking about, around 7:30-ish minutes into this interview? The ones he says are delivering candidates at a single price, on a routine basis, on a quick turnaround? In case you were wondering, too: they are Accolo and Decision Toolbox. keep reading…

Elaine wrote about today’s Employment Report for ERE’s sister publication, The Fordyce Letter, and there’s no other way to put it — it’s just awful across the board.

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Given that:

• Corporate recruiters have access to tens of thousands of active candidates via job boards and specialized career sites.
• Corporate recruiters have access to information about tens of thousands of inactive candidates via a variety of Web tools ranging from Google to ZoomInfo to LinkedIn.
• Thousands of corporate recruiters have been certified in advanced sourcing techniques from firms like AIRS and the Adler Group.
• ATS and hiring management systems not only house customized resume databases, but they also enable recruitment processes to be streamlined so that recruiters are able to spend less time on operational details and more time delivering value-added services to hiring managers.
• Once the sole resource of search firms, research, and sourcing firms provide rapid candidate generation services to corporate recruiters at affordable prices.

…Why aren’t search firms out of business?

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I am keeping the Seven Wonders of the Week alive but I need your help! I picked out six of the top discussions and wanted to ask what you think #7 should be. What discussion should I add to the list? Let me know what you think by posting a comment below.

Monster and CareerBuilder- Do You Need Both?

Interesting…this was actually a topic of discussion at this month’s ERE happy hour in Atlanta. Matt Faskamp wants to know if his company can save costs by using only one job board subscription instead of two. Do Monster and CareerBuilder really have unique visitors? Mike Jenkins says you only need one but not to forget to add Yahoo! Hot Jobs to that list. He recommends looking at your companies’ specific needs (i.e., international capabilities, board that provides more candidates for critical positions, user feedback, and capabilities of your ATS). Chandra Bodapati is the first to recommend Internet search instead. Kristin Gissaro and Sam Morse agree that Matt might want to take a different approach and turn toward niche boards and social networking sites. Kelly Dingee wisely advises Matt to run stats from his ATS and ask candidates what they use. She has personally had success with all three big boards…it depends on the reqs. She agrees with others that Matt should consider niche boards, Internet search, and social networking sites. Good luck, Matt. Let us know what you decide to do!

Is Outsourcing Outrageous or the Natural Way of Things?

This topic first posted by Maureen Sharib on July 15 continues to dominate the ERE discussion boards a week later. Maureen addresses the “biggest boogeyman” in today’s campaigns…outsourcing. More specifically Maureen argues that U.S. companies are motivated to outsource their call centers because of worker productivity and efficiency not necessarily lower costs. One reason might be that these employees receive a defined career path with opportunities not available for U.S. call centers. T Tallis believes that “part of the problem is unions.” Charles Hillman disagrees, defending unions, and focusing on the negative impact outsourcing has on American workers, families, and the economy. Amanda Blazo can sympathize with both sides having managed operations for two offshore Internet research centers. Whether offshoring or not, Amanda says it boils down to the fact that “some companies do certain jobs better than others.” I am not sure Jeff Weidner would agree; he believes these efficiencies are a result of the low cost-to-hire allowing for more employees to work on one job. Mike Johnson refers to a study by Booz Allen Hamilton and Duke University reminding us that “off-shoring high-skilled functions does not replace jobs offshore.” Joshua Letourneau also refers to an article he wrote that “takes a deeper dive into the globalization and commoditization of names sourcing today,” including issues with telephone name generation training and competition. Deborah Jones agrees with Amanda that outsourcing is not outrageous but natural since these centers in the Philippines and India offer more opportunitites and agrees with T Tallis that unions are to blame. She draws a parallel to the automotive industry. Maureen Sharib shares the news the GM has cut health care benefits for its employees. Joshua Letourneau and Paul Davenport empathize with employees but defend GM’s position. Joshua reminds us that “the point of a publicly traded company is to create shareholder value — nothing more, nothing less.”

The conversation has continued to heat up this week…you might want to check it out!

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Each week, ERE discussion group members share ideas, voice concerns, and work together on similar recruiting challenges. After a year or so of feeling a little reluctant to participate, I recently started to post comments and messages in some of these groups. I think part of what made me hesitant to contribute was the fact that there is so much information. It was hard to spend the time picking out the most relevant discussions. I thought I would make it a little easier by giving everyone a weekly update — a summary of the top seven most interesting discussions of the previous week.

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How is it possible that some companies’ human resources departments can act with such indifference that they actually behave in a manner that is inhumane and unresourceful?

In some circles and industries, an increasing trend is taking hold where recruiting departments have resorted to crafting lengthy recruiting contracts issued by newly centralized recruiting departments. In these examples, the departments have gone well beyond centralization and have engaged in a practice and approach best described as militarization.

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The decision of whether or not to hire additional recruiters can be a struggle. During hectic times, the workload can be overwhelming. It can seem like an easy solution to increase the flow of resumes by opening up positions to numerous agencies. However, it is important to educate these staffing firms on the details of the job, the process, and the environment. Without this knowledge, they won’t have the information they need to deliver quality candidates. Using third parties can be a valuable strategy. But, being proactive and communicating with them every step of the way takes time. Without these extra conversations, positions won’t necessarily be filled more quickly.

Traditional Staffing Firms

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This article originally appeared January 17, 2007.

Agency folks tend to see the corporate world as bureaucratic and slow to make decisions; more specifically, they see most corporate recruiters as lacking the requisite skills and bare-knuckle tactics required to make things happen.

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Two recruiters called me last month to offer recruiting assistance on a particular project they heard my company was working on. This was a routine search in the $50,000 to $60,000 range that we had filled hundreds of times before. In this particular instance, however, we were caught in a backlog.

The recruiters were right about the period of time being longer than usual. Since both were esteemed individuals I’ve known and respected for well over 10 years, I decided to invest about a half hour with each to fully explain the search.

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It has been debated many times, but the question of whether recruitment is best done with internal or external resources can only be answered at an organizational level, based upon a cost-benefit analysis.

When doing this analysis, consider which method of recruitment scores higher on the following metrics:

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Not only is this a great career, but it saves me lots of money on cable movie-channel subscriptions, as nothing can be as entertaining as the fits and starts, about-faces, shenanigans, internal conflicts, behavior irregularities, lies, deceit, and manipulation our sometimes prospective clients and candidates endear us with.

Here are three of my most notable stories, which are funny looking back 10 years later, but they were not quite so funny at the time:

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How have third-party agencies fared over the past five years with the rise of Internet recruiting? Are there more of them or fewer? Are they doing what they did five years ago? How have they changed? What is going to happen to employment agencies over the next few years?

Agency owners and users, from Europe to Australia, constantly ask me such questions during my travels. Everyone agrees that times are changing and the role of agencies along with them. While there will always be a handful of agencies that remain similar to those we have today, most will undergo major evolution.

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Some years back I was made to realize that even the highest-level corporate chieftains can find themselves at a loss when it comes to knowing which questions they should ask a recruiting firm.

There I was, sitting face to face with a well-known chairman of a significant public corporation seated behind his expensive mahogany desk. The CFO was to my right; the HR executive vice president to my left. The conversation was going well until I was thrown a curve ball.

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Recruiters should be truthful, resourceful, and trustworthy. Employers should be reasonable and accessible. Read on for invaluable advice for both sides.

For Employers

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