Want to dramatically reduce recruiting costs, improve candidate quality and reduce the time to hire? Who doesn't? Here's a new idea: STOP ADVERTISING ON THE JOB BOARDS. Just say no! Go cold turkey. True, it's a pretty risky strategy if that's your only sourcing channel, but most large corporations report that fewer than 7.5% of all hires come from mainstream job boards. The sea is changing and all indicators point to a dramatic decline in quantity and quality of candidates coming from the job boards. Why not just take a short break and reinvest those dollars in recruiter training, better employee referral programs, networking and relationship recruiting? Maybe the major job boards will get the hint and actually change their approach and come up with better ways to provide real value to the candidates and employers they serve. While part of the blame for this decline lies with the job boards themselves, some of it rightly resides with the companies that use them. A short term time-out may be exactly what we need to spur some serious rethinking of how we use job boards in our overall recruiting strategies.

Below are two facts that illustrate one of the great paradoxes of modern corporate recruiting.

Fact #1: The best people aren't found on the job boards.

Fact #2: 85-90% of corporate recruiters use job boards as their primary (nearly exclusive) source of candidates to fill positions.

For the next few months my column will be devoted to the secrets and nuances of sourcing top employees using the mainstream recruiting tools like Monster, Careerbuilder, Zoom info, Linked-in and a whole host of other tools designed for high volume sourcing. I'll be experimenting with several new ideas and reporting on their success. These tools are the bread and butter for corporate recruiters with lots of requisitions and limited time. If you want to be part of our formal sourcing study or want to contribute some of your own lessons learned using these tools, just drop me a quick email (bryan@adlerconcepts.com) and we'll gladly include your experiences in our research. In the meantime...

Dr. Edward Deming, the father of Japan's industrial revival and quality movement after World War II is well known for his famous "Red Bead Experiment." In the experiment, students are asked to select a certain percentage of white beads from a jar containing both white and red beads using a small wooden paddle with holes in it. By design, the tool they use produces random results and yet Dr. Demming rewards students who get closer to the right percentage even though the results are completely out of their control. In last week's article Lou made a strong case that HR is wasting a great deal of money by propagating an antiquated, broken and fundamentally flawed hiring process. Much like Demming's experiment, the reason hiring remains the most random business process is the lack of proper tools, process controls and real knowledge about what drives hiring success. This week, part two of our three part series, we'll discuss the investments that companies should make in their hiring process if they want to gain control of their most important procurement process - the process of acquiring the right human capital. Below are the four most important changes companies can make now to save thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours in wasted time while raising the bar for hiring across the board.

Two weeks ago I wrote an article about bridging the gap between the hiring manager and the recruiter. Most of my advice in that column was focused on the hiring manager - in my estimation the weakest link in the hiring process. While hiring managers absolutely need to change some of their bad recruiting habits, much of the burden for helping them make those changes falls squarely on the shoulders of the recruiter. Just to refresh your memory, below is a list of common complaints I hear about corporate recruiters from hiring managers:

I continue to be amazed at the great divide between corporate recruiting professionals and the hiring managers they desperately want to serve. Even with training in the proper tools and techniques there seems to be a great division, a lot of finger pointing and a growing frustration. In the last two weeks I've personally trained several large organizations in the basics of Performance-based hiring^sm. Some of these training sessions were focused on hiring managers and others were focused on the recruiting departments. Here's what I heard from hiring managers:

Last week I started reading "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. His basic premise is that advances in telecommunications, education and the technology infrastructure have dramatically leveled the playing field making it viable for countries like India and the Ukraine to compete globally. His arguments are convincing - the world has indeed become flatter. The flattening process however, is not just limited to high tech sales and support, but has vast implications for human capital markets, recruiting and hiring right here at home.

[Note: The following is an excerpt from the 3^rd Edition of Lou Adler's Hire With Your Head (John Wiley & Sons) to be published in June, 2007. Email us if you'd like to find out how you can implement a multi-channel sourcing channel.]

The Internet has dramatically increased workforce mobility. Job satisfaction appears to be at an all-time low. Turnover is rising. People change jobs on a whim. Counteroffers are more prevalent and more are being accepted. No wonder. To find another job nowadays, all a top person needs to do is Google a few keywords, a job title, and a city. When combined with a huge reduction in "barriers" to leaving a company (i.e., portable pension plans, reductions in health-care insurance, and fewer fringe benefits), employees are capable and willing to leave for minor infractions or slightly better offers. Turnover is no longer considered a character flaw. In this environment, a well-positioned ad or a timely phone call is sometimes all it takes to find a top performer. To take advantage of this trend, companies need to move away from a classified ad mentality of boring hard-to-find jobs and, instead, adopt a consumer marketing approach to advertising.

Prior to the advent of Internet job boards, savvy job hunters who wanted to tap into the hidden job market would start by identifying recruiters who had an industry specialty. Job seekers would network directly with the recruiter to get a pulse on who was hiring and what positions were open. Recruiters would keep these candidates' names on file for a rainy day; and, when they were ready to make a move they would start dialing for dollars. The Internet has changed this landscape considerably. The job boards have indeed created a fluid marketplace for talent. However, the best talent still does not look actively; nor, do they want to be found in the resume banks on the Internet.