ERE.net

The ranks of passive jobseekers are growing as workers decide now is not the time to look for a new job.  Many, in fact, are considering taking classes to improve their job prospects, while 41 percent told pollsters they intend to stay in their present job until they retire. Another 38 percent said they expected to hold onto their current job for at least another year.

Wise decisions, considering that only 23 percent of the companies surveyed intend to add full time workers in the next three months.

These are some of the findings reported in CareerBuilder.com and USA TODAY’s “Q4 2008 Job Forecast” released today. The report was based on a survey of more than 3,000 hiring managers and HR professionals and over 6,100 workers in private sector companies nationwide.

keep reading…

ERE was at RecruitFest in Toronto last week. Organized by Jason Davis, it featured some great speakers such as Susan Burns, Scott Love, Craig Silverman, and John Sumser. We asked speakers and attendees about what changes and challenges to expect in 2009.

keep reading…

In the United States, students are just beginning to return to campus after the summer holidays. For most organizations, college recruiting will also resume with the timeless routine of information sessions and campus visits for job fairs, interviews, and other related events.

But smart organizations are foregoing the traditional campus activities, in favor of leveraging the Internet. In fact, if you want to attract and hire the best students, forget going to campus at all; it’s not necessary.

College students tell me they are confused by the entire recruiting process. Organizations on the leading-edge of technology are still using the most traditional of methods to recruit them.

While every student has a Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace profile, most companies do not use them in the recruiting process at all. Students are actually a bit surprised that recruiters seem to use recruiting tactics that their parents relate to better than they do. Many are involved in virtual worlds, take online webinars, download lectures as podcasts, and learn from virtual professors. Yet, they must listen to a hiring manager and watch a PowerPoint presentation about some company in a stuffy room on campus.

Unfortunately, recruiters’ belief in the efficacy of past practices is reinforced with surveys by a variety of organizations and institutions with a vested interest in the status quo. But if you take a few minutes to sit down and actually talk to students, you get a different picture of what they would like, what would impress them, and what would engage them.

As demand for college graduates continues to steadily rise, the supply and demand figures for college students should be warning that times have changed.

The number of college students is fairly flat, growing at perhaps 1% a year, and is projected to remain that way for at least another four or five years. Another little-noted fact is that more women than men are enrolled in college and, unfortunately for the high tech and engineering worlds, women don’t tend to major in engineering, mathematics, physics, or computer science. All of these fields are facing significant declines in enrollments and in graduates.

Also consider the students of all age groups graduating from virtual universities that have no campuses. These students are valuable resources for corporations that are currently almost untouched and unrecognized.

Facing these challenges, I don’t see how organizations can focus on just a few campuses or limit their reach to elite schools. Here are a half-dozen tactics to guide your virtual efforts on campus:

keep reading…

The basic foundation for all recruiting is the ability to communicate and share information with potential candidates directly. In our modern, high-tech world, corporate recruiters have numerous channels they can use to communicate directly with candidates ranging from face-to-face visits to video chat.

However, there is only one tool that provides a “single point of contact” allowing the use of every form of messaging in use today at any time during the day and from any location. This tool, of course, is the immensely versatile smart phone.

Today’s modern smart phones pack more computing power than most computers did just a few short years ago. They can not only handle your basic person-to-person and conference voice calls, they can also interact with websites, publish blog posts, aggregate RSS feeds, send text messages, send multimedia messages, record/transmit video, record/transmit audio, send email from multiple accounts, take/send pictures, send and receive faxes, edit office documents, and interact with social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.

While many organizations empower their recruiters with smart phones, few build a corporate-wide recruiting strategy that leverages the phone as the hub of recruiter activity. Aggressively using smart phones requires forward thinking, something many recruiting managers who came up through the ranks as a transactional recruiter dedicate little time to. In organizations where technology isn’t pervasive and doesn’t permeate every process, the smart phone is seen as just a phone that happens to be mobile, despite its potential to be so much more.

keep reading…

Everyone in recruiting and employment branding strives to demonstrate to potential candidates the excitement that can be found within their organization. Most rely almost exclusively on “words” in paid advertising, brochures, and websites, but words are “so last year.”

Each month, fewer and fewer people read newspapers and books, and more of us get our information from moving media, including online videos, film, and TV. Why? Because videos require little effort to watch but still provide a powerful message. Written “words” are weak tools for quickly transmitting the energy and the passion that your employees have for their work. A better alternative is pictures, but they too can be limiting.

If a picture is worth a thousand words…then a video must be priceless. Recruiting videos can excite by allowing potential recruits to better “see, feel, and hear” the passion and the excitement at your organization. Videos allow an outsider to “meet” your employees, to see your technology, and even to tour your facilities.

However, for some reason, despite their incredible power, videos are the most underutilized powerful electronic recruiting tool.

Let’s face it, most traditional recruiting tools are waning in power. Brochures are time-consuming to develop, hard to distribute, expensive, and seldom read. Still pictures and narratives posted on corporate websites have value but they seldom stimulate or excite the visitor.

keep reading…

A significant part of my work involves giving presentations around the world on the hottest recruiting topics. It is an aspect of my work that I truly enjoy because it affords me an opportunity to continuously learn about where our profession is headed.

Through speaking, I not only help companies understand the latest recruiting trends, but I also learn from hundreds of professionals about what they see as hot topics, emerging trends, and how they are approaching them. I wanted to take this opportunity to share my thoughts on what recruiting trends will top the agendas of Global 500 recruiting managers in the next 12 to 18 months based on my interaction with more than 300 organizations around the globe this year.

The Latest Trends in Corporate Recruiting

Based on conversations with recruiting leaders, questions asked during seminars, advisory requests, and best-practice research, expect to see an increased emphasis in:

• Upgrading employment branding. Nothing is hotter around the globe in recruiting than employment branding. Firms throughout Asia, in particular, are increasingly adopting employment branding as a wildly important activity for 2009. The success of Google, a firm that has built the world’s strongest employment brand over an amazing five-year period, has led others to focus on this impactful long-term strategy. Key focus areas include increasing media coverage, increasing visibility online, building your “green” brand, and countering your “negative” employment brand. Firms to watch: Facebook, Google, Yum Brands, Tata, E&Y, Enterprise, U.S. Army, and Sodexo.
• Reinvigorating referral programs. Despite the growth of career-related Internet sites, the highest volume and quality candidates still come from well-designed employee referral programs. While heavy adoption was initially hampered by cultural issues around the world, today such programs are proving highly effective everywhere. Key focus areas include proactively approaching key employees for referrals (program targeting), leverage non-employee referrals, making reward systems more comprehensive, immediate, and visible, and last but not least, helping employees leverage social media to restore relationships, make new relationships, and build stronger relationships. Firms to watch: AmTrust Bank, Edward Jones, Whirlpool, and Amazon.com.
• Renewing the focus on quality of hire. As a result of strong research by organizations like staffing.org, recruiting leadership has begun to refocus its efforts on identifying factors that increase the quality or the on-the-job performance of new hires. Key focus areas include improved quality of hire metrics, calculating the performance differential between average and quality hires, and identifying sources that produce high-quality hires. Firms to watch: Aimco and Wipro.
• Reinforcing the business case for recruiting. As budgets tighten and slow economic growth continues, recruiting budgets will face constant constraints. Instead of whining, many leading talent organizations are seizing the opportunity to reposition themselves as non-transactional organizations. When the focus in recruiting is placed on non-transactional, more systemic issues, such organizations can work with the CFO and risk management to demonstrate the importance of supporting recruiting even during times of reduced hiring volume. The key focus areas include predictive modeling, dollarizing recruiting results, and showing the dollar impact of vacancies in revenue generating positions. Firms to watch: Aimco, DFS, Wipro, and Google.

keep reading…

We have been bombarded for a decade with news reports, articles, stories, and books about the looming talent shortage about to overwhelm our industries, businesses, and economies.

Taken at face value and looking at traditional work styles and jobs, there is some validity to these stories. Human resources people, recruiters, and some business people will affirm the shortage anecdotally. But it’s hard to find real examples and real numbers.

Certainly, anyone trying to hire a surgeon in North Dakota, a Starbucks barista in Oklahoma, or a stock broker in Alaska may have to look long and hard. But if you are looking for these folks in urban areas or places with significant populations, the number of qualified applicants increases substantially.

After all, it has never been easy to attract skilled professionals to rural areas, and it has become even more difficult as people leave the country for large cities. Rural parts of the world are emptying into cities — especially those located in coastal areas or those with significant educational and cultural activities.

Richard Florida’s books on the Creative Class point out in stark numbers and colorful graphs and charts the shifts in population away from some less desirable (and often semi-rural) cities and toward others that offer the lifestyle and engaging employment desired by the emerging creative class.

Sure, thousands of baby boomers are poised to retire over the next decade or two and, yes, there are somewhat fewer young folks behind them; but is that really going to be a problem? And will the number of boomers who choose to retire reach the predicted numbers?

Studies I have seen indicate that boomers will most likely defer retirement for some time because they have not saved enough to make retirement possible or because they remain healthy and want to continue working.

We will most likely also need fewer people to reach the same productivity levels of today.

The nature of work has changed dramatically. Today only about 2% of Americans grow food or work on farms. This is truly amazing considering the amount of food produced and exported. Farms have grown much larger and are more automated. Completely automated, GPS-guided tractors cultivate fields that used to take a dozen men and several dozen horses to plow.

keep reading…

There’s news - none of it good - from The Conference Board today.

In conjunction with a new index it began issuing today, The Conference Board said that the U.S. economic woes are going to continue and even worsen in the months ahead. This new Employment Trends Index was down in June and is off 8 percent in the last 12 months, standing now at 111.9.

“Most leading indicators of employment point to an even sharper deterioration in the labor market in the months ahead,” said Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board. “The steep decline of the employment trends index in recent months, and the fact that its weakness is spread throughout all of its components, does not leave much room for optimism.”

Before introducing the new index, Conference Board economists computed it back to 1973 using data from a variety of sources including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor and The Conference Board itself. (For the complete list go here.) According to the Board, the Trends Index “has accurately signaled every rise and fall in employment over the last 35 years.”

Why add yet another index to the dozens already out there? Says The Conference Board, “Aggregating individual indicators into a composite index filters out so-called ‘noise,’ to show underlying trends more clearly.”

There are plenty of indices, measurements, surveys and other bits and bytes of economic data that are published monthly, including several of The Conference Board’s that have been around for years. But The Conference Board’s Trends Index is a new one.

This week I will keep my column short and devote it to discussing a few books that I have read over the past few months. These books will fuel your creative juices, maybe get you a little angry, or at least motivate you to look at what you do differently.

They are all written by well-known authors who have explored similar topics before. But what is interesting to me is that every one of these books is centered on people, talent, and how talent will be used, organized, or deployed over the next few years.

Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty by Peter Cappelli

Peter Cappelli is known to ERE Expo audiences as he has spoken at the Expo and is frequently quoted in the press on talent issues. He is a professor at the Wharton School  at the University of Pennsylvania and frequently writes and speaks about talent issues.

In his recent book, Peter looks at talent as a supply-chain issue. Just as we take great care to ensure that we have a reliable source of raw material or parts for manufacturing, we need to do the same with the people who invent, design, manufacture or deliver, and sell our products and services.

keep reading…

Some news from various sources on employment eligibility, background checks, screening, and more:

New I-9 Form Released…

U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services just released its new version of the I-9 employment verification form, so make sure to update your records. (You can download it here; note that the new expiration date in the right-hand corner reflects 6/30/09.) You can move to an e-file for these forms, and perhaps you should: employeescreenIQ says its data shows that more than 85% of paper I-9 forms are filled out incorrectly. And electronically verifying this step is certainly a “greener” thing to do, and companies like Verified Person, Inc. agree. Its CEO, Jim Davis, says his Verified Person I-9 solution “affirms Verified Person’s belief in promoting an HR process that benefits the environment.”

From Resume Fluffing to Conviction Bluffing…

The folks at employeescreenIQ also say one of the hottest background-screening trends centers around the importance of thorough background checks in a shrinking job market. In fact, considering the state of the economy, “the job market is destined to become even more competitive, which in turn could lead some individuals to stretch the truth in order to secure employment,” according to the company’s new list of 10 background screening trends. Also, employeescreenIQ says conviction rates among job applicants are on the rise, and points to a 56% discrepancy rate between what is reported on a resume and what is found when conducting employment and education verifications.

keep reading…

As we passed the summer solstice here in the Northern hemisphere a few days ago, we completed our journey through half of 2008. It’s been a year where the economy, political environment, and nature itself have all stressed the rhythm of our daily routines.

Change most often occurs when systems are stressed and have to respond in order to survive. It is at the intersection of pain, technology, and economics that new products and services arise.

At first, these changes are frightening and require both learning and daring to adopt them. But once accepted and woven into the fabric of daily routine, they become indispensible. This was the case with applicant tracking systems and career sites on the Internet. And it is still evolving.

So far this year, I see at least four major trends emerging. There are probably more than four, but these are the ones I can make sense of and that seem big enough to warrant being called trends.

keep reading…

Will flexible employers be the ultimate winners in the war for talent now that gas prices are in the stratosphere? Employers offering transportation subsidies, telecommuting options, and virtual office arrangements may be wooing the best and the brightest candidates right now, even without the highest salaries and biggest relocation budgets in the marketplace.

“It isn’t unusual to find employees driving 50, 75, even 100 miles each way to work and that can cost them $5,000 a year just in gas,” says Chuck Wilsker, president and CEO of the Telework Coalition, a Washington DC-based organization that supports telework options.

“When telecommuting is an option, it eliminates the geographic recruiting boundaries and increases the pool of prospective candidates. I have heard of specific situations where employers have been able to offer 15% less salary, simply because the employee will no longer need to absorb the daily commute cost.”

Employees who commute 30 miles or more to work are likely to turn-over at higher rates now that gas prices have sky-rocketed, according to Wilsker, and it will only get worse when the job market and the economy rebound. If more firms begin offering telecommuting options to appease employees, the competition for top talent will literally have no boundaries, since proximity to the office will no longer be a major recruiting criterion.

In addition, with no ceiling on gas prices projected anytime soon, Wilsker says that commute costs are starting to concern highly skilled employees, not just hourly workers. In the past, employees making $150,000 to $250,000 might not have considered long commutes when weighing an offer, now they are now thinking about it long and hard before accepting.

keep reading…

Over the past 20 years or so, corporations worldwide have focused on a variety of initiatives. The bulk was aimed at improving efficiency, increasing profit, and ensuring quality. They have ranged from business process re-engineering to Six-Sigma quality, and have been responsible for the productivity gains world economies have enjoyed, as well as for the lower prices and better quality of most products we use.

These initiatives have changed our expectations. We expect everything we buy to work immediately with little to no need for an instruction booklet and last for a long time without the need for repair. We also expect products to be priced very low relative to how they were priced for our parents. Items such as televisions, cars, and computers are incredibly cheap compared to when they first appeared on the market, and prices continue to decline.

keep reading…

It is getting harder to find senior leadership talent, key technical staff, and even mid-level management. At least, this is what I hear from key recruitment leaders I poll from time to time.

I know of firms seeking vice presidents of sales and of marketing, and many looking for key R&D talent in sectors still largely unscathed by any economic slowdown (healthcare, pharmaceuticals, biotech, legal, and security firms). Good candidates are exploring options and taking a very cautious approach to employment.

keep reading…

Most corporate recruiting functions are far from strategic, and most recruiters are intensely resistant to change that. It’s a fact that the business world is rapidly changing, and how organizations recruit talent will be forced to change dramatically as well.

The corporate recruiting function of the future isn’t likely to be created from scratch, because the risk of failure is just too great. Instead, when corporate recruiting makes a shift in strategy and composition, it will most likely follow one of the existing “business models” that have already proven to be strategically effective.

keep reading…

A while back, I was asked to give a presentation at Google’s main campus in the heart of the Silicon Valley on the future of corporate recruiting. The audience was a combination of Google recruiting staff and recruiters from other organizations in the community that Google was interested in getting to know better.

Looking back, I realize that there is probably no better place to hold a discussion about the future of recruiting than at the one company that is proving daily that they are dedicated to pursuing a model that is effective first and foremost. While some might argue their approach is inefficient, Google’s powerhouse “recruiting machine” is demonstrating that to truly make evident a value for top talent you might just have to abandon all that you know and experiment.

keep reading…

Anyone who has worked in corporate recruiting for any period realizes they work in a profession that has dramatic up-and-down cycles. Unfortunately, the down cycles following rapid growth tend to be the harshest. Who can forget the literal “implosion” of world-class recruiting functions like those at Cisco, Nortel, and Trilogy after the 2001 downturn? Those dominating recruiting functions have never recuperated.

During the “great recruiter massacre” that followed the tech crash, many of the best recruiters from a wide spectrum of firms were forced to leave the profession for good. Whether there is a large or small recession, and whether it occurs this month or in six months, it is critical that you be prepared for it, regardless of when it actually occurs.

keep reading…

I’ve been a judge for the ERE awards for the past three years and have attended numerous recruiting conferences around the world. As part of this, I’ve seen great ideas come and go, and some not so great, somehow hang on. So I’m a bit cynical with most of the hype and the emergence of the next great hope.

However, something chilled me at this year’s ERE Expo in San Diego that hadn’t before. If you weren’t there, you missed something special. I was there, and even I missed it at first. It took awhile to register. While some of the presentations were great, some weren’t, but that’s not the point. What was special about this event was a sea change of ideas that collectively will hugely impact our business.

keep reading…

The longer I recruit for a living, the more I see recruiting inextricably linked to the economy. Our finger is on the pulse and, at any given time, if we’re honest, we can give you a pretty accurate read on whether the patient is thriving or on life support.

In fact, the longer I recruit, the more I start to think like a VC. At least, that’s what venture capitalist Stewart Alsop observed when we got together at the Money: Tech conference in NYC, a gathering where Web 2.0 meets Wall Street.

keep reading…

How much power does the U.S. President really have? In this election year, Dr. Gene Stanaland, president of GSE, Inc. and ERE Expo keynote conference speaker, says you really have to understand the power of the presidency, because most legislation gets revised by Congress and rarely resembles its initial form when it’s finally passed. So Stanaland says don’t vote for a candidate based on what they pledge to accomplish during their term, because they really don’t have control over what gets done. Instead, select your ideal candidate based upon his or her leadership abilities and character, because legislation always starts out as a pig, but ends up as sausage.

It’s all politics. It’s the motivation behind everything that gets done or doesn’t get done in Washington D.C. So according to Stanaland, the best way to predict what will actually be accomplished during the next presidential term is to understand how the politics will influence the decisions that are made and study the language used by politicians. As an example, Stanaland says cutting the deficit is not the same as merely reducing the projected deficit increase. The lesson: Never underestimate the influencing power of groups like the AARP and learn the language of Washington, if you want to really predict how our elected officials will act on certain issues.

Moody’s says we’ve been in a recession since December; we’ll be out by June. Stanaland says that much of the current economic data is characteristic of a recession, especially the consumer confidence index ratings, yet the actual numbers may not match the level of consumer fear and the recession conclusion reached by most of the mainstream media. To understand our current economic situation, he says you first need to understand what originated the problems. Our current economic problems are linked to “liar loans” where no documentation was required to qualify for mortgages. That has created lots of resale home inventory and record foreclosures. Yet Stanaland says that the current home foreclosure rates aren’t as high as advertised and foreclsoures may not be the sole source of our economic woes.

keep reading…