Over the past few weeks I’ve met with 50 or so recruiting leaders from major corporations around the country.  Interestingly, nobody is doing nothing.  A third are increasing their hiring forecasts, a third are hiring more recruiters, and a third are getting ready for a sign that hiring will increase.  It appears that the stars are finally in alignment.  So get ready to rumble.  We’re in for a triple witching hour hiring tsunami of epic proportions, and if you’re not ready now, it’s probably too late.

Every vendor in the recruiting space touts their latest recruiting and sourcing tool as the next killer app. If you were there, you saw many of them at the last ERE Expo in Florida in September. As the economy recovers, there will be many more at ERE’s Expo 2010 in San Diego next March. Some of them will be superb and worthy of serious consideration.

Over the past few months, I’ve been tracking employee satisfaction vs. job hunting activity. Here’s the link so you can take the survey yourself, see the results, and forward it to others.

A small trickle of new jobs will cause a tidal wave of unexpected replacement hiring. Here’s why you need to get ready now. Hopefully, it’s not too late.

The baseball trading deadline has just passed, and 100 or so players have new jobs with different clubs; however, total player employment is still exactly the same.

A few months ago I predicted the recovery would begin in July 2009. I was lambasted as some wild-eyed hippie, smoking something illegal everywhere, except in California. Well, they were right about the stupid prediction part… it won't start until September. With that in mind, here are some things corporate recruiting departments and third-party recruiting firms need to do to get in shape:  

Are you ready, getting ready, planning on getting ready, or waiting for some direction? While most companies are struggling and profoundly reducing their recruiting expenditures, there are a few who have established a below-the-radar "skunk works" to get ahead of the competition as soon as the downturn bottoms out.

Hiring will start to recover in Q2, 2009, and now is the time to rebuild your recruiting team and massively upgrade your sourcing and hiring processes.

Yes, I know the title is a bit audacious, but we at The Alder Group absolutely are not afraid to ask for help.  I'll be the first to admit that I can't quite handle this topic alone.  That's why this week's article is designed to entice you to participate in our annual 2009 Recruiting Outlook and Challenges Survey.  You can take this year's survey by visiting http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB228MEAHSVHN.  It's live and ready to go right now.