Articles - Lou Adler
RSS FeedUsing Changes in Talent Mix to Calculate Hiring ROI
Topics: Newsletter
©2009. All Rights Reserved. The Adler Group, Inc.
The Basics of Hiring ROI
Caution: you are about to enter the zone of the CFO. Tread carefully. Bring your green eyeshade and calculator. However, if you master this information, you'll be able to calculate the ROI for your current hiring processes and any new hiring initiative imaginable. Beware though, if it turns out that the ROI of your current hiring process is less than 25%, you're in big trouble. On the other hand, if any proposed new program is over 100% you'll be able to get instant CFO approval and a high-five, along with the check. But don't be seduced, any new hiring programs might not work as promised if the economy recovers anytime soon. Then you'll just be scrambling to stay even.
To see the importance of calculating hiring ROI, just multiply the number of people you're forecasting to hire in the next 12 months by their average compensation. This is probably a big number. For example, if you're planning on hiring a group consisting of college grads, experienced techies, and a bunch of customer service reps, you're probably looking at an average compensation of $65,000. If you're hiring 1,000 of these folks, this means you'll be spending $65 million on new hires in the next 12 months, and if you're going to hire 100 you'll be spending $6.5 million.
» Continue reading "Using Changes in Talent Mix to Calculate Hiring ROI"
The Hub and Spoke Model for Passive Candidate Sourcing
Topics: Recruiting
Over the past few months I've been making some not-so-bold predictions about the demise of job boards and the rise of the "hub and spoke" sourcing model for finding a better class of active candidates. Rather than repeat the prognostication here, I'd suggest that despite the shift to this new and improved sourcing model, in the long run it might not really matter.
» Continue reading "The Hub and Spoke Model for Passive Candidate Sourcing "
What Happens If the Recovery Is Very Slow?
Topics: Managing
Despite my optimistic view of the past few months, I'm considering the possibility that the recovery could be very long in coming and very slow in growing.
» Continue reading "What Happens If the Recovery Is Very Slow?"
Sourcing Trends and Predictions 2010
Topics: Sourcing
Over the past six months, I've worked with dozens of major companies and some of the latest new recruiting and sourcing technologies. Based on this, it's not a reach to contend that how companies will find, recruit, and hire top talent in 2010 and beyond will be far different than how it's been done in the past few years.
» Continue reading "Sourcing Trends and Predictions 2010"
How to Activate the Best Passive Candidates in the Federation
Topics: Sourcing
Whenever I need an idea for an article I call Doug Berg, the CEO and/or founder, or something like that, at Jobs2Web. So to meet this week's need, Doug suggested I write about my reticular activator. I thought this was a bit personal, and while initially offended, it turned out to be great advice. I think you'll agree, too.
» Continue reading "How to Activate the Best Passive Candidates in the Federation"
A Hiring Manager's Bill of Rights - An Open Letter to My Recruiter Article June 10 2009
Topics: Managing
Take a look at this letter from your hiring manager. As you read it, make it personal. Put your name at the top. Think of a hiring manager you think would send you something like this and put his or her name at the bottom. Then send it to a hiring manager who is the least likely person to send it. Hiring top people is a two-way street. Unfortunately, for most recruiters it's always uphill.
Dear (put your name here),
I'm frustrated. You've let me down too many times to let this continue. As your client, I believe your performance must improve in order to succeed in building and developing a strong team. Your role is critical, but somehow you've trivialized it. I don't want to see average candidates anymore and I don't want to see people who are obvious misfits. You need to take on a bigger role in this process, be more involved, and become more of a consultant than a vendor.
However, with that said, I am not without fault here. Since I want you to have an equal stake in the outcome, I must be more involved in the process from beginning to end. With this in mind let's describe our new partnership relationship in finding and hiring more A-level talent.
Can Your Company Hire A-level Talent?
Topics: Newsletter
Can Your Company Hire A-level Talent?
Every company wants to hire the best people, but most haven't figured out how to do it consistently and across the board. Here's a short checklist of prerequisites. Rank yourself on a 1-5 scale to see where you stand, with 5 being the best and 1 being worse than pretty bad. If you don't score at least 35-40 on this 10-factor survey, you've got your work cut out for you. After you've finished this assessment, send us an email if you'd like to find out how to get started right away on hiring A-level talent every time.
» Continue reading "Can Your Company Hire A-level Talent?"
8 Cool Ways to Engage Your Hiring Managers and Hire More "A-level" Talent
Topics: Working With Hiring Managers
If it wasn't for hiring managers, recruiting would be so easy. But, alas, this is not to be. Instead, we can either confront them head on, or put our heads down in despair, and find still other perfectly qualified candidates they still won't like. Unfortunately, too many recruiters fall into this endless productivity-draining black hole, and wonder why the latest new sourcing wonder drug quickly loses its effectiveness.
» Continue reading "8 Cool Ways to Engage Your Hiring Managers and Hire More "A-level" Talent"
Recruiting Top Talent 2010 - Are You a Traditionalist or a Web 2.0 Free Radical?
Topics: Recruiting
Regardless of how tepid the recovery, sometime in early 2010 the demand for hiring will pick up, exacerbated by an increase in involuntary turnover. Once this happens, panic will ensue, with everyone gearing up to hire the best people they can find, at the lowest cost possible, and in the shortest period of time. How you respond to this pickup will be based on whether you're a traditionalist or a Web 2.0 free radical.
Traditionalists are those companies who will respond to this increase in hiring by aggressively seeking candidates to fill these open positions using the latest niche sites, adding Facebook pages, expanding their social networks, pushing their ads to blogs and user groups, and adding Twitter feeds to their new crop of career pages. By itself this is a reactive approach, built on using silver bullet tactics. It's a form of the classic req-driven, "needle in the haystack" sourcing model. With a well-known employer brand, it actually might work. However, when you strip away the bells and whistles, it's based on the flawed premise that top people will respond to negative, boring, and exclusionary ads if you post them in enough places.
Back to the Future: January 2010
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
Fast forward to January 15, 2010. What are some of the hiring challenges you're now facing?
» Continue reading "Back to the Future: January 2010"
Adler's Best Sourcing Tip Since the One about Sliced Bread
Topics: Newsletter, Sourcing
"Be found first!"
Two people came up to me after speaking at the SHRM Staffing Management Association (SMA) Conference in Las Vegas last week (April 2009) and said this was the best tip they heard after four days at the conference. Of course, two out of 700 doesn't imply a trend. However, if you were Googling for "best sourcing tips SHRM SMA" you actually might find this article on the first page. And that's what being found first means. Its importance cannot be understated.
» Continue reading "Adler's Best Sourcing Tip Since the One about Sliced Bread"
An Action Plan to Convert Your Corporate Recruiters into Headhunters
Topics: Recruiting
In normal economic times, search firms make a lot of money placing candidates corporations should be able to find on their own.
» Continue reading "An Action Plan to Convert Your Corporate Recruiters into Headhunters"
The One-Question Performance-based Interview Redux
Topics: Interviewing
When you become a really good interviewer, you realize the interview is the best sourcing, recruiting, and closing tool ever invented.
Back in the early ‘80s when I launched my recruiter career, I was filling senior staff positions (engineers, accountants) and mid-level managers, and quickly realized these few common truths about human nature:
- Most hiring managers make selection decisions based on limited information and their need to fill the job.
- More candidates - even the best ones - make superficial guesses about the job based on limited information and their need to change positions.
- Managers don't trust recruiters.
- Candidates don't trust recruiters.
- Knowing the job can help create trust.
» Continue reading "The One-Question Performance-based Interview Redux"
What is Your Recruiting Strategy?
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
Do you have a recruiting strategy, or do you just adopt the latest fad and see if works? This probably won't work. Tactics don't determine strategy; strategy determines tactics. And when business conditions change, a company's strategy needs a corresponding change. So does the company's recruiting strategy. Some of these strategic changes are brought about by technology innovations, demographic shifts, changes in government policy, and economic cycles. Regardless of their causes, incorporating these changes and shifts into the business planning process allows companies to remain competitive.
» Continue reading "What is Your Recruiting Strategy?"
Outliers and the True Secret to Success
Topics: Recruiting
For a number of reasons, Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Outliers, is a good read for recruiters and managers, in fact, for anyone who wants to get ahead in life.
» Continue reading "Outliers and the True Secret to Success"
Adler's Wild and Crazy Economic Recovery Plan
Topics: Newsletter
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:
» Continue reading "Adler's Wild and Crazy Economic Recovery Plan"
Adler's Recruiter Self-Development Plan
Topics: Recruiting
About 25 years ago when the self-help gurus came on the scene, I heard Jim Rohn say something that still sticks:
"Things will get better for you when you get better."
Sage advice indeed, and now might be the best time to take heed.
» Continue reading "Adler's Recruiter Self-Development Plan"
Lou Adler's #1 Secret to Sourcing Passive Candidates
Topics: Newsletter, Sourcing
Pre-internet, circa 1995, there were three primary means to obtain names of passive candidates: industry guides, cold call ruses, and networking. Today there are at least 30 and the number is growing weekly. Some of these include LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Broadlook, the AIRS stuff, Twitter, Facebook, Google/Boolean searching, all of the LinkedIn search offshoots, and everything else not mentioned. However, the most important one is getting on the phone and networking.
Because it's now so easy to get names, they become less valuable. Try this string to see how easy it is to get some names of the best pharmaceutical sales reps in New Jersey: "~CV (sales OR rep) awards -reply -respond -yours -jobs -find -results NJ pharma."
» Continue reading "Lou Adler's #1 Secret to Sourcing Passive Candidates"
How to Do Twice As Much With Half the Recruiting Team
Topics: Managing, Networking, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
Times are tough. Even those companies that are doing reasonably well are cutting their recruiting teams by a minimum of 30% to a maximum of 90%, and tightening up expenses to the absolute barest minimum.
» Continue reading "How to Do Twice As Much With Half the Recruiting Team"
An Open Letter to President Obama: Your Job Creation Forecasts Could be a Myth
Topics: Newsletter
Dear President Obama,
Once the banking crisis gets solved, the next bottleneck that needs to be addressed is the woeful state of the government hiring process. If not addressed properly, it will cripple the economic stimulus package by putting a lid on job creation in both the public and private sectors.
Despite record unemployment, there is a severe supply shortage of skilled workers at the technical and trade levels. These are the jobs that drive the economy, allow the middle class to prosper, and minimize the swings in every economic cycle. Overall, it's estimated that $200 to $300 billion of government financed programs will be short-circuited by this hiring problem.
» Continue reading "An Open Letter to President Obama: Your Job Creation Forecasts Could be a Myth"
Use a "Skunk Works" Mentality to Rebuild Your Recruiting Programs
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
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.
» Continue reading "Use a "Skunk Works" Mentality to Rebuild Your Recruiting Programs"
Adler's 'Crazy Metrics' for Progressive Recruiters
Topics: Recruiting
As the economy tumbles, and companies right-size their recruiting departments, the bottom half is the first to go. Under this scenario, those formerly in the relatively secure 2nd quartile are now in the bottom half. So be wary or get better.
» Continue reading "Adler's 'Crazy Metrics' for Progressive Recruiters"
Lose Your Personality and Become a Better Person and Better Interviewer
Topics: Interviewing, Newsletter
When I started out in the search business, it became quickly apparent that most managers weren't great at interviewing. For one thing, I always thought my candidates were great, and they didn't.
Part of this difference of opinion was due to a lack of understanding of what the real job entailed, lack of any rigorous assessment process, and a desire for many to take short cuts, waiting for the "perfect" candidate to arrive. In this case, unanimity of perceptions substituted for evidence and logic. In the bargain, many great candidates were excluded for bad reasons.
» Continue reading "Lose Your Personality and Become a Better Person and Better Interviewer"
Recruiting Lessons from 'Fast Company'
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
The March 2009 issue of Fast Company lists its take on the 50 most innovative companies in the world.
» Continue reading "Recruiting Lessons from 'Fast Company'"
Benchmark Your Recruiting Skills Using the New 10-Factor Recruiter Scorecard
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
Back in 1999 I developed the first competency model for corporate and third-party recruiters. It's still relevant today, but not quite perfect. Here's a free online version (with instant feedback) you can use to assess yourself and your team.
We're now putting a new recruiter assessment tool together, and the following are some of the updated factors we're considering. Please look them over, rank yourself and/or your team and tell us what you think. Then, text the word "sourcing" to 96625 and enter your score to see where you stand.
» Continue reading "Benchmark Your Recruiting Skills Using the New 10-Factor Recruiter Scorecard"
Multi-stakeholder Job Analysis - A New View on How to Find, Assess and Hire Top Talent - Part II
Topics: Newsletter
In Part I of this article, I made the contention that there were so many different people involved in the hiring process that consensus was impossible to reach. This included HR and OD, recruiters and sourcers, hiring managers and everyone on the hiring team, and lest we forget, the candidates themselves. In the government contractor hiring process this problem is made worse since the actual hiring manager is sometimes difficult to identify and recruiters tend to work off marginal job specs.
Develop a Recovery Sourcing Strategy
Topics: Sourcing
The economy will recover some day. I'll admit I was a bit overly optimistic in an earlier article this year. It must have been the New Year's bubbly.
» Continue reading "Develop a Recovery Sourcing Strategy"
Multi-stakeholder Job Analysis - Part I
Topics: Newsletter
Here's a basic truism: the further the recruiter is from the hiring manager, the less effective he or she will be in finding top performers. It's pretty obvious that the better you know the hiring manager and the job you're representing, the more insightful and professional you'll be when sourcing, qualifying, and recruiting candidates.
Recruiters who aren't partners or closely aligned with their hiring manager clients regarding real job needs send in too many unqualified candidates and have little influence with them. Collectively, this makes it difficult to close the candidate, overcome basic concerns, and to even get referrals.
» Continue reading "Multi-stakeholder Job Analysis - Part I"
Are You a Web 2.0 Wannabe?
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing, Working With Hiring Managers
If you don't invest in finding tomorrow's candidates today, you'll become history.
» Continue reading "Are You a Web 2.0 Wannabe?"
Are You in the Stone Ages on the Sourcing Evolutionary Scale?
Topics: Newsletter, Sourcing
Over the past few years I've had the opportunity to work with some of the leading recruiting technology vendors along with a bunch of small and large companies in a variety of industries. What becomes relatively clear as one zooms out is that there is a rapid merging of advanced consumer marketing concepts with recruitment technology. Some might call this Web 2.0 on steroids, or Web 3.0, but it's certainly far beyond the Web 2.0 stuff companies are implementing today.
There are a bunch of common threads that are apparent in those companies that are taking full advantage of these trends. For one, their recruitment leaders are well-versed in the latest technologies and proactively use and support them. Second, these companies tend to be extremely sophisticated on the use of advanced marketing and advertising for their own products and services – this makes the decision to use these same concepts for recruiting top candidates a simple and smooth one, since no convincing is necessary. Third, these companies are relatively flat and not overly bureaucratic – their recruiters work closely with hiring managers, there is a dedicated IT support team for the recruiting department, legal and HR compliance doesn't dominate the decision-making, and the executive team advocates, not merely supports, the idea of state-of-the-art sourcing and recruiting.
» Continue reading "Are You in the Stone Ages on the Sourcing Evolutionary Scale?"
Don't Fire Your Recruiters Just When the Recovery is About to Begin
Topics: Recruiting
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.
» Continue reading "Don't Fire Your Recruiters Just When the Recovery is About to Begin"
Avoiding Managerial Misfits and Other Great Ways to Reduce Turnover
Topics: Newsletter
In my 20-plus years as a full-time recruiter I personally made 487 placements. These ranged from mid-level staff to senior management positions. My firm, which on average had 3-4 other recruiters, made an additional 1,200 similar placements. We had a replacement guarantee that ranged from 120 days for contingency searches and one year for a retained executive search. Regardless of the level or type of search, we replaced about 3-4 people per year. On top of this, there were probably another 15-20% who underperformed in some fashion.
» Continue reading "Avoiding Managerial Misfits and Other Great Ways to Reduce Turnover"
The UAW, the Detroit Bailout, and Related Sourcing Issues
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing, Working With Hiring Managers
A top-down command-and-control structure leads to power grabbing, not power sharing. It prevents people from seeing the bigger picture as groups defend their turfs and fight off change at all costs. This sounds like Detroit, and until Detroit develops and implements a customer-driven strategy with a culture of success before self-interest, the bailout won't work.
» Continue reading "The UAW, the Detroit Bailout, and Related Sourcing Issues"
Is Your Career Site Turning Off Top Candidates?
Topics: Newsletter
Most career sites are designed to repel the best and attract the worst. Where do you stand on this critical measure?
Following is a 10-factor evaluation you can use to benchmark your company's career site. If you don't score at least 50 points on the 10 core factors, you're needlessly losing some great candidates and paying too much for those you do hire. (We offer a free online evaluation of your site, so you might want to take advantage of this.)
» Continue reading "Is Your Career Site Turning Off Top Candidates?"
How to Tame 500-Pound Gorillas (aka Your Hiring Managers)
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter
I've been in the recruiting business in some way or another for the past 30 years. Here are the ten most common hiring mistakes I've seen repeated year in and year out by company after company. Most of them are attributed to the inability of hiring managers to properly assess and recruit top performers. The second big problem is the lack of understanding of real job needs on the part of the recruiter and hiring manager alike. What's most surprising is that most companies aren't focusing on addressing the hiring manager facing problems. This is the 500-pound gorilla in the room that HR and recruiters seem to be afraid of, or can't see. First, let's review the problems and see if they line up with your personal experiences before we introduce some taming techniques.
Adler's Infamous List of Top 10 Hiring Mistakes
1. Managers overvalue motivation to get the job, not motivation to do the job. Lack of motivation to do the work required is one of the primary reasons for underperformance, lack of job satisfaction, and turnover. Managers seem to think that extroversion and interview preparedness correlate with on-the-job performance.
» Continue reading "How to Tame 500-Pound Gorillas (aka Your Hiring Managers)"
Don't Sell the Job, Sell the Next Step!
Recruiting Lessons from a Winning Football Drive
Topics: Recruiting
Too many recruiters rush the closing process, trying to push the candidate across the finish line before the race has even started. If you want to win the recruiting game, stop the Hail Mary's.
How to Develop a Talent-Driven Hiring Strategy in Changing Times
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
One of our clients asked us to lead a full-day sourcing strategy review session for their recruiting and hiring leaders. The company believed they were moving in the wrong direction and needed to rethink everything they were doing very quickly. The catalyst for all this was the impact of the economic slowdown, the recent elections, and the company's overall strategic redirection and its desire to remain extremely competitive regardless of the current economic cycle.
Following is a quick summary of the ten core areas we discussed. These could be a helpful guide for you if your company's business conditions are rapidly changing. Thinking through the process ahead of time is far better than reacting to across-the-board restructuring edicts from on high.
» Continue reading "How to Develop a Talent-Driven Hiring Strategy in Changing Times"
Use a Cross-Functional Perspective to Implement a Just-in-Time Sourcing Strategy
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
Progressive companies are now implementing Just-in-Time (JIT) sourcing programs to ensure they have a ready pipeline of top talent once the economy recovers. This will provide early adopters a significant competitive advantage and an increased share of the best talent.
10 Ways to Increase Candidate Quality in Tough Economic Times
Topics: Recruiter Training
Here's a basic truism that's even more true in tough economic times: hire the best people you can, and don't ever compromise. Ever.
Hiring top performers should be the ultimate measure of a recruiter's performance, and one of the top 2-3 for a hiring manager. This is difficult to pull off for a number of reasons. For one, candidate quality is not typically measured on an on-going basis, so it's hard to pin down the source or the reasons for success or failure. Worse, in economic slowdowns there are more people looking, and the best who are fully-employed hunker down and are more difficult to pull out of their relatively safe harbors. Regardless, the goal of increasing candidate quality should not be comprised. With this in mind, here some things you can do to improve the overall level of candidate quality, both in good times and bad::
» Continue reading "10 Ways to Increase Candidate Quality in Tough Economic Times"
Using Situational Leadership to Assess Competency
Topics: Assessment, Managing, Working With Hiring Managers
We're working with a fast-growing security software company whose CEO is using Blanchard and Hershey's Situational Leadership model for their management development program.
» Continue reading "Using Situational Leadership to Assess Competency"
Obama vs. McCain, Jobs and the Role of Advertising on the Winning Candidate
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
Are you aware that there were 101 million searches conducted last month on Google with the word "jobs" in the search string? Here's the link to Google's AdWord site to verify for this for yourself.
While this article is not a political treatise on how advertising influenced who you will vote for (or have voted for), it is an article on how recruitment advertising is rapidly coming of age and what you must do to attract top applicants for your job openings. It's also an article on introducing our annual Compelling Advertising Contest for 2009, but more on this in a moment. Search engine optimization will be a critical new aspect of our search contest this year, so a little background on this is in order.
» Continue reading "Obama vs. McCain, Jobs and the Role of Advertising on the Winning Candidate"
Recruiting in an Age of Uncertainty
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
On my way to a recruiting event in Chicago last week I came across a fellow whom I'll call Chicken Little. He told me the sky was falling. I asked him how he knew and he told me six of his candidates just reneged after accepting offers, the company then implemented a partial hiring freeze, and the CEO slashed their recruiting department's budget by 50%.
» Continue reading "Recruiting in an Age of Uncertainty"
The Secrets of Hiring Great Sales People Finally Revealed
Topics: Interviewing, Performance Profiles
Over the years, I've been involved in developing hiring tools for sales representatives in a variety of industries including high technology, financial services, industrial products, consumer products, auto sales, woman's cosmetics, business services, medical products, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare.
» Continue reading "The Secrets of Hiring Great Sales People Finally Revealed"
The Best of Lou Adler's Recruiting Rules
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter
I’ve discovered a few critical recruiting principles over the past 30 years placing hundreds of top performers in staff, management, and executive positions. For marketing purposes, I call these Lou’s Recruiting Rules. If you learn and implement these twelve techniques from now on, on every search, you’ll call them lifesavers. Here’s my list of rules that will take you to the upper echelon of recruiters anywhere in the world:
» Continue reading "The Best of Lou Adler's Recruiting Rules"
Carly on CEOs, Presidents, and Performance Profiles
Topics: Newsletter
On September 16, 2008 Carly Fiorina made the statement that none of the presidential or vice-presidential candidates had the experience to be the CEO of a major corporation. Somehow she, or the media, emphasized the McCain/Palin half of the foursome. As a result, she's now in some hot water, and has been off-camera for awhile.
» Continue reading "Carly on CEOs, Presidents, and Performance Profiles"
Behavioral vs. Performance-based Interviewing Using Stephen Covey's Seven Habits
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter
One of my all-time favorite books is Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I started developing the two-question performance-based interviewing system in the early ‘90s to assess these seven traits. I felt that if candidates possessed them there was a high probability the person would be a strong performer and someone with high potential. These seven habits were later merged into our 10-Factor Candidate Assessment Scorecard.
During the process of developing Performance-based Hiring we were often asked how the interviewing component compared to behavioral interviewing, which at the time was considered the standard for interviewing. As a means to demonstrate the comparison I'll use Covey's seven habits as the benchmark.
10 Great Ways to Make Bad Hiring Decisions
Topics: Interviewing
I wrote a rather controversial article last week comparing Obama vs. McCain using our 10-factor evidence-based assessment system. The stated purpose of the article was to propose that Presidential candidates should be vetted just as rigorously as any candidate for any job.
» Continue reading "10 Great Ways to Make Bad Hiring Decisions"
McCain vs. Obama Using the 10-Factor Candidate Assessment Scorecard
Topics: Assessment, Newsletter, Performance Profiles
Note: this article has raised some controversy. Feel free to comment on Lou's Recruiters Roundtable blog.
In my book, Hire With Your Head (John Wiley & Sons, 3rd Edition, 2007), I introduced the idea of using an evidence-based assessment process when evaluating and comparing candidates. This is based on using ten factors that have been shown to accurately predict on-the-job success, and on having the hiring team rank each one in a group meeting on a 1-5 scale after the interviews are completed. Click here for a sample of the form we use for staffing and middle-management positions. I thought it would be interesting to use this 10-Factor Scorecard to evaluate who would make a better President, Obama or McCain.
» Continue reading "McCain vs. Obama Using the 10-Factor Candidate Assessment Scorecard"
Use Job Satisfaction to Increase Your Placement Rate
Topics: Recruiting
I've always used a multi-factor approach to ensure candidates evaluate career opportunities across multiple factors, both short and long term. These typically included things like job stretch, impact, growth opportunities, learning, benefits, and compensation.
» Continue reading "Use Job Satisfaction to Increase Your Placement Rate"
Whole Brain Interviewing
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter
Beauty is in the Eyes of the Beholder – Lie Zi
I was in Moscow the day the invasion of Georgia began. Our Russian guides, who up to that date were pro-American, saw the same conflict as a liberation clearly provoked by Georgia. Some of the more vocal on our tour, as well as the Russian guides, saw Barak Obama as the new American ideal, with John McCain being quite troublesome. Others saw Obama as a neophyte, ill-equipped to go belly-to-belly with Putin the Terrible. A former CBS Moscow bureau chief on the tour suggested diplomacy was called for, while the hawkish Americans in the group wanted a strong U.S. counter-attack. It seemed most Russians wanted an escalation of the conflict to demonstrate that they were no longer going to be pushed around by the West. I could go on, but by now you're probably wondering what any of this has to do with recruiting.
» Continue reading "Whole Brain Interviewing"
Run Recruiting Like a Factory Manager if You Want to Hire More Top Prospects
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing, Working With Hiring Managers
I've been around a lot of years, and I can't remember a time when recruiters, recruiting managers, hiring managers, HR executives, and company leaders didn't complain about the lack of good candidates. When the Internet and job boards came along, we were promised the solution was at hand.
» Continue reading "Run Recruiting Like a Factory Manager if You Want to Hire More Top Prospects"
Random Chance and How Managers Make Faulty Hiring Decisions
Topics: Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiting, Sourcing
Hiring is too important to leave to chance, but that's exactly what hiring managers do when hiring experienced outside people.
Consider this: managers typically make three different types of hiring decisions – an internal move (either a promotion or lateral transfer), hiring a rookie right out of college, and hiring an experienced outside person for an open position.
What's surprising is that a different set of rules applies for how each decision is made. More surprising is that the success rate for recent college grads and internal moves is far more predictable than for an outside, experienced hire. This suggests that it might make sense to change the outside hiring decision to more closely mimic the process used for college grads and internal promotions.
» Continue reading "Random Chance and How Managers Make Faulty Hiring Decisions"
Use the One-Question Interview to Make More Placements with Fewer Candidates
Topics: Interviewing
You need to become a better interviewer than your clients if they're excluding good candidates even before they meet them, or if they're not too good at assessing competency.
» Continue reading "Use the One-Question Interview to Make More Placements with Fewer Candidates"
Recognize These 10 Job-hunting Styles to Source More Top Performers
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter
If you frequently find top people who are either over-qualified, uninterested, or tell you they've just accepted another job or are close to it, job-hunting typecasting can increase the number of top performers you see.
I've observed over the years that top people enter the job market in predictable ways depending on how satisfied they are with their current jobs. Here's a short video highlighting the job-hunting psychology of the top performer. Obviously, the more anxious they are about the quality of their current jobs, the more aggressive they'll be in looking for something else. Ten classic job-hunting styles stand out, from those who are simply open to talk about possible opportunities to those who are ready to accept a reasonable offer in a few days. From a consumer marketing perspective these would be called customer personas. Knowing the type of person you're seeking can help you develop a targeted sourcing strategy, rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach. Segmenting your candidate pool this way will become more and more necessary in order to increase the quantity and quality of top performers you're seeing.
» Continue reading "Recognize These 10 Job-hunting Styles to Source More Top Performers"
Recruiting Passive Candidates in Tough Economic Times
Topics: Networking, Recruiting
Consider this as a basic truth: in tough economic times every job looks better, especially the one you already have.
» Continue reading "Recruiting Passive Candidates in Tough Economic Times"
6 Steps for Hiring the Best Every Time
Topics: Interviewing, Performance Profiles, Recruiting, Sourcing
Over the past 30-plus years, I've been involved in thousands of searches, worked with hundreds of hiring managers, trained 3,000 to 4,000 recruiters, and worked closely with dozens of major companies. Following are some of the common threads among the best techniques, processes, and tools that I have seen and used.
» Continue reading "6 Steps for Hiring the Best Every Time"
A New Perspective on Sourcing Top Talent - Eight New Ideas You Need to Consider
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter
Consumer marketing ideas have overtaken traditional sourcing approaches faster than anyone could have imagined. Job boards are dead; talent hubs are alive. Skills-based postings will soon follow the dodo bird into extinction, and will be replaced with ads focused on the future, not the past. They will be crafted with the latest search engine marketing concepts in mind. If you want your fair share of tomorrow's talent, you'd better start changing how you source them today.
Here's what I see as the fundamental ground rules for sourcing top talent, circa 2010. Implementing them now will give you a reasonable head start.
» Continue reading "A New Perspective on Sourcing Top Talent - Eight New Ideas You Need to Consider"
10 Steps for Hiring the Best Every Time
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter
No amount of art or magic will help you consistently hire top people. A bit of science, however, might just do the trick. By this I mean a series of steps that if everyone in your company follows will allow you to hire more top people on a consistent and repeatable basis.
Over the past 30+ years I've been involved in thousands of searches, worked with hundreds of different hiring managers, trained 3,000 to 4,000 recruiters, and worked closely with dozens of major companies. Following are the common threads among the best techniques, processes, and tools I've seen and used. Collectively, they add up to a business process for hiring top people. While Performance-based Hiring provides a simplified high-level summary of these, it's the details and execution that will ultimately determine success.
» Continue reading "10 Steps for Hiring the Best Every Time"
Abraham Maslow, SPIN Selling, and Recruiting
Topics: Assessment, Negotiating, Recruiting
Understanding human behavior can help you recruit more passive candidates.
When filling a job order, most recruiters search through virtual stacks of resumes hoping one stands out, matching most of the skills and experiences listed on the job description. When calling a person, the recruiter attempts to gain this same information by first describing the job and then asking the person to describe his or her background. If there's a fit, the selling process begins.
» Continue reading "Abraham Maslow, SPIN Selling, and Recruiting"
The Passive Candidate Recruiter's Scorecard – How well do you measure up on these 10 critical recruiter skills?
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
Many things have changed in the past few years regarding best recruiting practices, especially with the increased focus on passive candidate sourcing and recruiting. Based on this we decided to create a passive candidate recruiting scorecard. If you'd like to evaluate yourself, just review the following factors and rank yourself on the 1-5 scale described. This will be pretty insightful just to see where you stand if you're a recruiter, or where your team stands if you're a manager or director.
As you review each of the factors below rank yourself on the following 1-5 scale, with a Level 5 representing super star performance and a Level 1 representing absolute incompetence. On this scale a 2.5 would be considered adequate or average.
Level 1: Has no ability whatsoever, or doesn't want to do it under any circumstance.
Level 2: Has some ability, but needs urging or hasn't done it, but has the potential to learn.
Level 3: Has strong ability, has proven results, and is self-motivated to do it consistently.
Level 4: Has very strong ability with proven results and does it faster or does a lot more of it. Often trains others.
Level 5: Is one of the best in the business in this area. So good, in fact, is sought out to train others.
Four Trends Affecting the Future of Recruiting
Topics: Recruiting
This past week I spent time with a major recruitment advertising agency, a large direct marketing organization, and the top-performing office of one of the largest temp-to-perm employment agencies in the country.
These meetings revealed some trends that might help you develop your future recruiting strategies.
» Continue reading "Four Trends Affecting the Future of Recruiting"
Why a Nimble Early-adopter Sourcing Strategy Will Yield the Best Candidates
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
- Bob Dylan
As most of you would agree, how companies market and advertise jobs to top people is changing at an accelerating pace; in most cases, more rapidly than companies can respond. Simply put, the winners in the ongoing war for talent will be those who can establish nimble and targeted programs designed to both anticipate and subsequently lead these changes.
Understanding where sourcing has come from and where it's going can help you get the needed jump-start as you begin developing your sourcing strategies for the recovery just about to start.
In the Olden Days of Sourcing – considered anything before 1995, or pre-Internet – print media and the telephone were the primary sourcing tools of choice. This was the era of the hidden job market, classified ads, company loyalty, and where networking was largely Rolodex-based. Big display ads dominated the Sunday Times and Thursday's Wall Street Journal. Job changes were fewer, but each decision meant more.
» Continue reading "Why a Nimble Early-adopter Sourcing Strategy Will Yield the Best Candidates"
Assessing Team Skills
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter
For most of us, cooperating with people, discussing ideas, collaborating on projects, influencing others, and working on cross-functional teams typically represents 50-75% of most workdays. Team skills are critical and those that do it well are rewarded in terms of influence, support, promotions, and bigger reviews. Those without it are avoided, shunned, or assigned to the proverbial closet. Working with people without decent team skills literally sucks the energy out of the rest of team, bringing everyone down.
» Continue reading "Assessing Team Skills"
The Uneven Evolution of Corporate Recruiting
Topics: Recruiting
Much of the hiring process from sourcing to closing to onboarding has changed significantly over the past 20 years. Much hasn't. And therein lies the problem.
» Continue reading "The Uneven Evolution of Corporate Recruiting"
Assessing Leadership Using the Two-Question Interview
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter
As a recruiter, and as part of a rather callous objective of maximizing income in the shortest period of time, it became quickly apparent that being a better interviewer than my clients was a critical skill. The quest to achieve this was how the two-question Performance-based Interview and 10-Factor Candidate Assessment scorecard were born.
» Continue reading "Assessing Leadership Using the Two-Question Interview"
Your Recruiting Success Depends on How Well You Manage Managers
Topics: Managing, Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
In a recent ERE article I made the case that a tipping point was close at hand for converting recruiting and sourcing into a scalable and systematic business process.
» Continue reading "Your Recruiting Success Depends on How Well You Manage Managers"
Use an Evidence-based Assessment Process to Hire More Top Talent
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter
Sometimes the best person for a job is not the best interviewer. Most often the best interviewer is not the most talented among a group of three or four candidates. Frequently the best person for a job, who is a good interviewer, is underwhelmed by the opportunity available and comes across as quiet or uninterested. On top of these problems, add hiring manager bias, lack of understanding of real job needs, temporary nervousness on the part of good candidates, and lack of preparation on the part of the interviewing team members. Collectively, it's fairly obvious why current interviewing and assessment techniques are poor predictors of on-the-job success. All this suggests that the traditional unstructured interview as well as the structured behavioral interview are inadequate in overcoming these hiring process problems.
I recently had the opportunity to discuss this topic as a panelist on a Human Capital Institute web program with Cathy Lee Gibson, the former Director of the Human Resources Program at Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School. The focus was on how to better "manage" hiring managers. This is a point of significant interest to any of the recruiters among us who have lost a good candidate because one of our clients made an incorrect assessment. It should also be a point of major interest to any hiring manager who is at odds with their recruiting or HR group regarding how to best measure candidate quality.
During the webcast I described the evidenced-based assessment approach we've developed as part of Performance-based Hiringsm to specifically address this all-too-common problem. Our solution was to change the method used by the interviewing team to decide whether to hire someone or not. Rather than add up a bunch of superficial or biased yes/no votes, the idea was to delay the assessment until all of the interviewers could present their findings. Once this is completed, the group collectively makes the hiring decision based on all of the evidence presented. Cathy summarized this whole point succinctly by saying it was akin to being "a juror, not a judge," during the interview.
» Continue reading "Use an Evidence-based Assessment Process to Hire More Top Talent"
The Recruiting Tipping Point
Topics: Recruiting
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.
» Continue reading "The Recruiting Tipping Point"
A Dozen or So Different Ways to Ask the One-Question Interview
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Interview Training, Newsletter
Early in my search career I realized that many of my clients weren’t very good at evaluating candidates. This made me have to find more candidates than necessary to complete most searches. To minimize this wasted effort, I created the one-question Performance-based HiringSM interview, primarily to better defend my candidates from weak interviewers. Once I became proficient with the technique, I started training my clients how to use it. This helped prevent good candidates from being excluded due to bad interviewing, and required fewer candidates to be seen on each assignment. Here’s how the process works:
» Continue reading "A Dozen or So Different Ways to Ask the One-Question Interview"
Are You Suffering from Over-Sourcing Syndrome?
Topics: Assessment, Sourcing
O•ver sourc•ing syn•drome: the need to find more candidates than needed caused by inappropriately eliminating the good candidates you already have.
» Continue reading "Are You Suffering from Over-Sourcing Syndrome?"
Sourcing Basics: Stop Throwing Away Good Candidates for Bad Reasons
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter, Recruiting, Sourcing
I can't remember a time when recruiters, recruiting managers, hiring managers, HR executives and company leaders didn't complain about the lack of good candidates. When the Internet and job boards came along we were promised the solution was at hand. But more than 10 years later the problems in finding talent have gotten worse, not better. Perhaps, just perhaps, the solution to better sourcing is not better sourcing.
» Continue reading "Sourcing Basics: Stop Throwing Away Good Candidates for Bad Reasons"
How to Interview Top Performers
Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing
Top people cannot be interviewed the same way as everyone else. Although most recruiters and hiring managers know this, few know how to do it. It's not about selling the job, charming the person, and over-talking. It's about using the interview to get the candidate to sell you.
» Continue reading "How to Interview Top Performers"
All You Need to Know About Using ZoomInfo to Source Great Candidates
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter, Recruiting
ZoomInfo and LinkedIn should be the starting points for any search assignment from experienced staff to CEO. Here's the link to an article on how to use LinkedIn for passive and active candidate sourcing. This week's article will focus on using ZoomInfo to find more great candidates within hours.
ZoomInfo is different than LinkedIn. LinkedIn is an opt-in networking site whereas ZoomInfo constantly crawls the Internet seeking out information about companies and people connected to those companies. The company information includes an overview, basic financial performance, and an easy means to find industry information, competitors, and current and past employees. The biographical information is presented in a manner that appears to be resume-like, but in reality is a web page consolidating information from a variety of web sources about the person. This includes information like someone being mentioned in a company press release or having spoken at an industry event.
» Continue reading "All You Need to Know About Using ZoomInfo to Source Great Candidates"
The Imperfect Evolution of the Corporate Recruiting Department
Topics: Recruiting
Before we get to the future, a little history is in order. As part of the marketing for my retained executive search practice in the mid-1990s, I did consulting for dozens of mid-size companies through TEC (The Executive Committee) and YPO (Young Presidents Organization).
» Continue reading "The Imperfect Evolution of the Corporate Recruiting Department"
Great Active Candidate Sourcing Ideas
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Interview Training, Newsletter
There are some top-notch, fully-employed people who sometimes voluntarily seek out new career opportunities. Since they’re fully-employed and top-notch they don’t expend too much effort in looking for something else. When they get itchy or at the first hint of trouble they’ll first start networking with friends and former associates. Then they’ll contact a recruiter or two. Then they’ll probably Google for jobs (e.g., searching on the job title and a location) and check out some specialty or niche job boards. If nothing develops from these sources, they’ll probably look at the career websites of some highly regarded companies. As a last resort, they’ll check out the major boards.
» Continue reading "Great Active Candidate Sourcing Ideas"
Recruiting Ideas that Stand the Test of Time
Topics: Recruiting
Over the past 30 years, I've worked with thousands of managers, executives, and recruiters. While many things have changed involving recruiting over these years, a few things have stayed the same. Here's my short list of the best things I've learned about recruiting, sourcing, and hiring top talent that seem as true today as they did when I first started as a recruiter.
» Continue reading "Recruiting Ideas that Stand the Test of Time"
Back to Basics: Understanding Real Job Needs
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Newsletter
As far as I'm concerned, to be a great recruiter you need to understand real job needs. This is the core competency of the best recruiters. I've never met a top 20% recruiter who didn't understand that the real job was not the job description. A job description just lists skills, qualification, experience requirements, and an overview of responsibilities. The real job is what the person does every day: solving problems, making things happen, influencing others, overcoming challenges, making decisions, and getting results consistently. Those recruiters who use the job description to screen candidates are little more than box checkers, missing out on some great people who have comparable but not identical backgrounds.
» Continue reading "Back to Basics: Understanding Real Job Needs"
Passive Candidate Recruiting in a Slowing Economy
Topics: Recruiting
Lack of planning and poor execution are the two most common causes of failure, whether it's fighting a war, launching any type of business initiative, or reallocating recruiting resources. When business conditions change, appropriate planning and reallocation of effort becomes even more important. When done properly, you'll be able to anticipate problems before they cause too much damage. From a recruiting perspective, this planning needs to start by understanding the mindset of potential candidates while they contemplate switching jobs as economic conditions worsen.
» Continue reading "Passive Candidate Recruiting in a Slowing Economy"
10 Great Tips for Using LinkedIn to Find the Best Passive Candidates on the Planet
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Networking, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
LinkedIn is a great tool for finding passive candidates who want to be found. This is its little-discussed power. No one would publish their profiles otherwise. While some recruiters are still reluctant to jump on board, others have been making placements since day one. Here are some ideas on how to get started right away to take full advantage of this remarkable networking tool:
How an Intervene-Earlier Sourcing Strategy Can Multiply Your Pool of Top Candidates
Topics: Managing, Networking, Sourcing
We're currently conducting a major research project on how top people look for new jobs. This research will offer great insight into what companies need to do to better align their current sourcing efforts with market realities. If you'd like to take part, just send this survey link to all of your best candidates and those you've recently placed.
Inside the Mind of the Top Performer - Part I
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Interview Training, Negotiating, Networking, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting
Top performers are different than average performers both on the job and how they look for a new one. Simply defined, a top performer is a person who consistently exceeds expectations. While you might be able to determine a person's potential to be a top performer in 30 days or so, it takes at least a few months to determine if a person is a top performer. This has to do with motivation, team skills, and the consistent achievement of results. For a variety of reasons, just because a person can do the work, it doesn't mean the person will do the work. Generally speaking, if a top person takes a great job that perfectly fits his or her needs and aspirations, it's unlikely the person would even consider changing jobs in the first year or so. The person is typically on a steep learning curve, making an impact, and highly satisfied with the current work and the potential future opportunities.
» Continue reading "Inside the Mind of the Top Performer - Part I"
A Tale of Two Searches
Topics: Networking, Sourcing
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
This past quarter, I conducted two senior-level management searches. Each one stands out as a shining example of what to do and what not to do. Understanding the differences can double your monthly placement rate in about half the time. Before reading the details, you should benchmark your own recruiting skills using this 10-Factor Recruiter diagnostic assessment to get a sense of what it takes to be a great recruiter.
» Continue reading "A Tale of Two Searches"
The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent
Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
Everybody - from the Board and CEO down to every manager and supervisor - talks about the importance of hiring top talent. But only a rare few have converted the concept into reality. A number of companies have actually succeeded in embedding the idea into their corporate cultures, but in most cases, even these leave the "how" up to the recruiting department and each individual manager. Creating a road map on the "how to" of hiring top talent is the purpose of this book. It's now more important than ever. The worldwide demand for talent has increased as the supply of trained, talented, and available labor has declined. Even a temporary economic slowdown will not alter demographic trends and the long term need for talent.
» Continue reading "The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent"
Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Superficial Assessments
Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training, Recruiting
I wrote a version of this article for ERE in April 2007. It seemed worthy of repeating as a year-end reminder of the critical role that recruiters need to play to ensure that bad decisions don't preclude the best person from getting hired. As you'll find out, the key point of the article is that good candidates, who we spent a great deal of time developing, can often be lost for easily preventable reasons. Setting up some process or check-point can prevent the problem from arising in the first place. If this isn't possible, you need to have some counter-measures ready to employ to mitigate any problems that do arise.
» Continue reading "Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Superficial Assessments"
The One Single Thing You Must Do to Become a Better Recruiter in 2008
Topics: Recruiting
This article describes the most important factor involved in individual-recruiter success.
» Continue reading "The One Single Thing You Must Do to Become a Better Recruiter in 2008"
Don't Let The Grinch Steal Your Recruiting Season
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting
Last week Lou gave you our prelude to the holidays using the "12 Days of Christmas" theme. Today we'll take a look at the realities of recruiting in today's tough market through the eyes of none other than The Grinch himself. So let me begin by quoting rather liberally from the beginning of one of the greatest holiday stories of all time. My apologies in advance to Dr. Seuss and to my eight children.
» Continue reading "Don't Let The Grinch Steal Your Recruiting Season"
12 Great Sourcing Gifts for the Holiday Season
Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Networking, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
If you want to generate one great candidate day after day after day, follow my 12 golden rules for sourcing the best. These are this year's stocking stuffers whether you're hiring active or passive candidates.
» Continue reading "12 Great Sourcing Gifts for the Holiday Season"
10 Steps to Increase Interviewing Accuracy into the 90% Range
Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing, Networking, Recruiting
There are two huge problems when hiring is viewed as an end-to-end process. The first one involves sourcing. Most companies are terrible when it comes to advertising, recruiting, and attracting the best. Of course, as a recruiter, how I make my money is by finding top people that others can't. And, in today's Internet age, this is actually quite easy. However, this is a big waste of time if you or your hiring managers don't know how to accurately assess candidate competency.
» Continue reading "10 Steps to Increase Interviewing Accuracy into the 90% Range"
How to Overcome Early-stage Recruiting Objections
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting
After finding some interested candidates, transactional recruiters send in a stack of resumes to the hiring manager hoping one will fit. This isn't recruiting. This is roulette.
The best recruiters use a very sophisticated sales technique called solution selling during the sourcing process based on deep job matching. This starts by working with the hiring managers to clarify job needs, define the performance objectives, and develop an employee value proposition. From this, targeted sourcing approaches are developed that involve convincing the best people why they should consider your opportunity. Done properly far fewer candidates are presented to the client, all are seen, and one of them is hired based on an offer package emphasizing opportunity rather than compensation.
» Continue reading "How to Overcome Early-stage Recruiting Objections"
The Official Rules for Writing Creative Ads
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting, Sourcing
Don't overlook online advertising as a means to find top talent. As described in an earlier section ("Understanding Top Talent"), it was made clear that top people look online for new career opportunities whenever they experience a "job dissatisfaction moment." While these online excursions are short – ranging from 30-90 minutes at a time – a well-positioned and compelling ad can often snare a few top performers. In this section we'll cover some of the tactics you can use to implement a targeted ad campaign strategy to attract this group of top performers.
» Continue reading "The Official Rules for Writing Creative Ads"
Hiring and Recruiting Challenges Survey 2008 Preliminary Results
Topics: Interviewing, Managing, Recruiting, Sourcing
We are currently in the midst of our somewhat annual Hiring and Recruiting Challenges 2008 Survey. You should take the survey. Just the questions will get you jazzed. The answers, on the other hand, will make you shudder.
» Continue reading "Hiring and Recruiting Challenges Survey 2008 Preliminary Results"
The Secrets of Top Recruiters Finally Revealed
Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
I'm very proud of the fact that I've helped hundreds (maybe thousands) of recruiters in the U.S. and around the world increase their monthly placement rate by 50-100% and in some cases much more. As part of our planning for our 2008 "The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent" tour, I've put together my list of "recruiter essentials" we'll cover during the workshop. These are the secrets that every top recruiter follows in order to maximize their placement rate. [FYI: We've incorporated these same points into our final Recruiter Boot Camp Online program for this year (the four-part course starts Nov. 2, 2007) and our San Jose LIVE: Performance-based Hiring Tour 2007 event on December 5, 2007.] While there are about 20 key techniques we teach during the workshop, in my opinion the following 10 techniques represent the difference between average and great recruiter performance:
» Continue reading "The Secrets of Top Recruiters Finally Revealed"
How to Control Your Hiring Manager Clients and Make More Placements
Topics: Interviewing, Managing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Working With Hiring Managers
Our clients do a lot of dumb thing that cause us recruiters to work too hard. These all seem to fall into big buckets of lost opportunities. Here are the ones that head the list:
» Continue reading "How to Control Your Hiring Manager Clients and Make More Placements"
The Seven Axioms of Yves Behar
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
Don't use Wal-Mart advertising techniques to sell to a Tiffany's buyer - Lou Adler
Great design is at the heart of great marketing. For years, I've been preaching about the need to use advanced consumer marketing concepts to attract top talent. Every issue of Fast Company has some great marketing ideas that can be incorporated in your recruitment advertising and sourcing programs. The October 2007 issue is no exception.
» Continue reading "The Seven Axioms of Yves Behar"
The Official Rules for Advertising Your Jobs
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting, Sourcing
- Show some R.E.S.P.E.C.T. This is the most important rule of them all: treat candidates as exceptional people and show them at least as much respect as you show your customers. It seems that retail organizations and those close to their end customer clearly understand this. From a sourcing standpoint this means you emphasize what's in it for the candidate over what's in it for the company.
» Continue reading "The Official Rules for Advertising Your Jobs"
How to Recruit the Best Passive Candidates
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
Passive candidates are, by definition, people who are not currently looking for a job. Despite this, most people in this category would be willing to discuss a new career opportunity if it offered some significant upside opportunity.
» Continue reading "How to Recruit the Best Passive Candidates"
The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent
Topics: Assessment, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
Every sport has rules, even pickup games. We even have rules for our kids - when they can watch TV, play video games, go to bed, etc. Business has rules for just about everything - important things like capital expenditures, accounting, SEC reporting, and product design and testing; or less important things like how to dress, when to come to work, how to earn vacation, and how to fill in expense reports. What's surprising is there aren't any rules for what's supposedly the most important thing a company needs to do - hire and retain top talent.
» Continue reading "The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent"
Hot Tip #29 - Humongous Techniques to Boost Your Recruitment Advertising Efforts
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
I've just finished reading Dan and Chip Heath's Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. This is a great book on marketing and how to influence others, and many of the ideas can be directly applied to recruiting in general and recruitment advertising in particular. When you combine this with Hire With Your Head you'll be finding more top candidates and making more placements before the week is out.
Hot Tip #28 - The Anatomy of a Great Ad
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiter Training, Sourcing
If you want to attract top people online, your ads need to be outrageous, compelling and found. To prove it we're launching our first annual outrageous ad writing contest. To win a fully-paid scholarship to Recruiter Boot Camp Online (a $1200 value!) you need to follow these guidelines on how to write and post ads that really pull in top people. We'll also award a second scholarship if you can get better results doing it a different way, but I personally wouldn't waste my time. With that said, here's the template we've used to write ads to successfully attract great candidates from entry-level to executive.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #28 - The Anatomy of a Great Ad"
Work Smarter, Not Harder
Topics: Interviewing, Negotiating, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
I'm in Australia this week working with a number of different recruiting organizations. In Australia the talent supply is far short of demand, so getting assignments is relatively easy, while finding and closing strong candidates takes exceptional sourcing and recruiting skills. Candidates always have multiple offers and counter-offers are standard. To meet this challenge head on, the recruiting teams I'm working with wanted to figure out how to double their monthly production within six months.
» Continue reading "Work Smarter, Not Harder"
The Psychology of Recruiting Top Performers
Topics: Negotiating, Networking, Recruiting, Sourcing
You've just placed a top performer in a new job. It's a great fit right off the bat. The job is as advertised, job expectations were clear, the person is making an impact, doing work she enjoys, working with a great team, and working for a top-notch manager who is a true mentor.
» Continue reading "The Psychology of Recruiting Top Performers"
Hot Tip #27 - Double Your Placement Rate in Half the Time
Topics: Interviewing, Networking, Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiting, Sourcing
Let's start by identifying some of the biggest yield losses in the recruiting process and begin improving these. Starting with the worst, here are just basic metrics you might want to consider to achieve our goal:
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #27 - Double Your Placement Rate in Half the Time"
Are You Masking Your Hiring Process Problems with the Wrong Solutions?
Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
Just about every corporate recruiter has too many requisitions to handle as effectively as possible. The problem is magnified when good candidates get excluded for dumb and preventable reasons, generally weak interviewing skills on the part of the hiring manager or a candidate who wasn't at his or her best. Sometimes good candidates are excluded before they're even seen because they don't have exactly the right background. Sometimes good candidates pull themselves out to of the process because the job doesn't seem interesting or the candidate didn't like the hiring manager. Few companies address these problems directly--instead they avoid them, focusing most of their energy and resources on hiring more recruiters or developing new sourcing ideas. This is comparable to buying more raw materials than necessary for a factory that has an excessive scrap rate rather than fixing the scrap problem.
» Continue reading "Are You Masking Your Hiring Process Problems with the Wrong Solutions?"
Hot Tip #26 - A Partial List of the Ten Commandments of Recruiting Passive Candidates
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
There's a great article about recruiting in the September 2007 issue of Fast Company - "The Inevitability Of $300 Socks." Actually, it has nothing to do with recruiting unless you read between the lines. And what a great story is told between those lines! Chip and Dan Heath, the authors of the business best seller Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, make the point in their article that some basic products attain premium pricing when they're seen as ideas rather than mere commodities. The Heaths cite alcohol, jeans and spa treatments as idea-based products and oil changes and fax machines as idea-free. You obtain premium pricing and margins with idea-based products and basic market returns with basic commodities
Hot Tip #25 - A Partial List of the Ten Commandments of Recruiting Passive Candidates
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
Here's a modified version of an earlier article that's worth considering today more than ever. Over my 25 years of recruiting experience, I've learned a few important principles about how to effectively recruit passive candidates. Most were learned by trial and error, and while they might not all be applicable to your specific situation, collectively they offer a pretty decent road map of what it takes to hire more top passive candidates on a consistent basis. Here are the first five of my favorite ten commandants for recruiting passive candidates. The next five will be covered in next week's Hot Tip article.
How to Assess Potential and Promotability
Topics: Assessment, Managing, Newsletter, Recruiting
In a recent email I paraphrased the following quote. My son had sent it to me in regards to training and evaluating officers in the military. He thought it would be useful in assessing managers, executives, and leaders. It's been attributed to a variety of different people, and I can't seem to find the originator, so I apologize for not giving the true author official credit.
Amateurs think tactics.
Professionals think logistics, planning and strategy.
Reformers think staff selection, retention and team development.
» Continue reading "How to Assess Potential and Promotability"
Hot Tip #24 - These Six Techniques Can Improve Your Productivity by 100%!
Topics: Assessment, Interviewing, Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiting, Sourcing
Most recruiters waste too much time doing unnecessary work. The solution is not reducing your req load, it's cutting your sendouts/hire in half. This will increase your productivity by 100%. In the process you'll start hiring more people who are top performers, but not great interviewers, and you'll stop hiring people who are great interviewers, but not top performers. Here's how to pull off this amazing feat:
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #24 - These Six Techniques Can Improve Your Productivity by 100%!"
Hot Tip #23 - How to Prep a Candidate
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips
We all know that most hiring managers don't conduct broad-based, evidence-based interviews. Many base their judgments about candidate competency on some combination of first impressions, technical knowledge, academics, and smarts. One sure way to improve your hiring batting average (sendouts/hire) is to prep your candidates to cope with whatever questions or circumstances arise. If you handle the candidate prep well enough, you can also prep your clients without them even knowing it.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #23 - How to Prep a Candidate"
Hot Tip #22 - Sourcing Passive Candidates is More than Lead Generation
Are You Wasting Major Time on Minor Stuff?
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Sourcing
Here's my minimalist definition of sourcing: presenting qualified and interested candidates within a reasonable period of time to a hiring manager, and have 100% of them be interviewed.
The 10 Pillars of Effective Sourcing
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
Too many companies fall into the trap of using a "by default" sourcing strategy as their primary means to find top people.
» Continue reading "The 10 Pillars of Effective Sourcing"
Assess Your Company's Recruiting Department's Performance
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
» Continue reading "Assess Your Company's Recruiting Department's Performance"
Hot Tip #21 - Talent Hubs, Mashups, and Widgets
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiting, Sourcing
The fundamental sourcing strategy for any major corporation should be the building of the biggest proprietary database of resumes, contacts, and leads as possible. From this database candidates should then be culled and contacted based on specific job needs. Building the database and keeping it warm are two separate tasks. For this article, let's address the building of the database.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #21 - Talent Hubs, Mashups, and Widgets"
Hot Tip #20 - Stop Googling and Start Networking
Topics: Networking, Recruiter Hot Tips, Sourcing
A piece of data worthy of note: some old friends just told us that their daughter - a very talented Gen Xer - has just joined a professional business network weeks after landing a new job. The only thing unusual about this was that she told her parents she was using this network to plant the seeds for her next job.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #20 - Stop Googling and Start Networking"
An Open Letter to Our Candidates
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
Imagine that this letter appeared on the first page of your company's career website, or perhaps on your company's home page in place of the "Careers" button.
» Continue reading "An Open Letter to Our Candidates"
Hot Tip #19 - Passive Candidate Recruiting Requires Professionalism and Product Knowledge
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Sourcing
If you do any passive candidate recruiting you should go to LinkedIn.com and link to me using my lou@adlerconcepts.com email address. Of course, I won't give you a pass-through to any of my one million plus first and second degree candidates unless you clearly understand real job needs (here's an article on how to take the assignment and using performance profiles that you must read first) and have sent me a compelling email as to why this is a great job for a great person. Of course, that's not the purpose of this article, but it's a good introduction to my real point on how to contact and recruit passive candidates.
Hot Tip #18 - On the Sourcing Edge - New Ideas for Passive Candidate Development
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Sourcing
I've recently created a ning.com business networking site called Sourcing Strategy. You should join it if you want to hear about the latest techniques in Internet sourcing. We'll be using this site to share, discuss, and create some great new ways to attract top people to a company's career website. The most obvious "in your face" idea is the use of a business networking site like this one to find and recruit top talent. I suspect some recruiters are already calling other recruiters who post clever, practical, and innovative ideas. Those who philosophize and pontificate are quickly shunned.
The Most Advanced, Innovative Career Website in the World
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
I'm in the process of preparing a product requirement document for a state-of-the-art career website, and I need your help. While cash is somewhat limited, creativity isn't. The client has even suggested that the product spec by shared with every other company in the world as long as they help input some ideas into the design process.
» Continue reading "The Most Advanced, Innovative Career Website in the World"
Using the Panel Interview to Save Time and Increase Accuracy
Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training
If you want to increase assessment accuracy and save time, conduct more panel interviews. These are much better than an all-day series of one-on-one 45-60-minute interviews. When organized properly, panel interviews help everybody involved learn more about the candidate, even weaker interviewers, if they just observe. Panel interviews also provide a great means for subordinates to get involved in the hiring process. Subordinates should never conduct one-on-one interviews, since they usually are trying to work for someone they like, so they focus on the wrong issues. For another, they're rarely objective, and worse, many of them are weak interviewers. A panel interview overcomes all of these problems. However, I didn't always believe this strongly that panel interviews were that good of an idea.
» Continue reading "Using the Panel Interview to Save Time and Increase Accuracy"
Hot Tip #17 - Googling for Resumes Using Performance Terms
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiting, Sourcing
When cold-calling passive candidates or searching for names, lists, and resumes on line, I make a point to maximize my time by only talking with high performers. This way, even if these people are not perfect for the assignment at hand, they know other top performers who are. Of course, to be a successful full-cycle recruiter you have to be very good at getting these top people to call you back, then recruiting them and then getting the referrals (we show you how to do this in Recruiter Boot Camp Online). To save time at the front end you must limit your calling to only top people. You can do this by adding recognition terms, honors, and awards into your online searches.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #17 - Googling for Resumes Using Performance Terms"
Hot Tip #16 - Six Simple Ways to Increase Interviewing Accuracy
Topics: Assessment, Interviewing, Recruiter Hot Tips
- Make sure everyone who has a vote knows the job. If an interviewer isn't sure of the real job, he'll overvalue his intuition, his perception of the job, and the candidate's first impression and communication skills to make the assessment. As a result the assessment will be about 50% accurate for a yes vote, and a bit worse on the no vote side. Interviewers need to know real job needs in order to have a chance of making the right hiring decision. I won't take an assignment unless everyone on the hiring team knows what the person taking the job needs to do to be successful. Neither should you. Preparing a performance profile with the hiring team will help.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #16 - Six Simple Ways to Increase Interviewing Accuracy"
Being a Good Interviewer is More About Recruiting than Selection
Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training, Recruiting
I learned to become a better interviewer than my clients for only one reason: to prevent good candidates from being excluded for bad reasons. Too many of my clients were assessing candidates improperly, either overvaluing first impressions or using some narrow range of skills to determine competency.
» Continue reading "Being a Good Interviewer is More About Recruiting than Selection"
Are You Ready for the Upcoming Feeding Frenzy?
Topics: Newsletter
The jobs report for May 2007, which came out on June 1st, showed an unexpectedly large increase of 157,000 in non-farm U.S. payroll. At the 2007 June NACE conference in New York City, recruiters were clamoring for new ways to attract college grads and undergrads, especially MBAs. At a publisher's convention starting June 3rd, 250 CEOs from small companies were desperate for ways to hire top talent. And the list goes on...
» Continue reading "Are You Ready for the Upcoming Feeding Frenzy?"
Hot Tip #15 - The Second Part of the Two-Question Interview
Topics: Interviewing, Recruiter Hot Tips
If you want to better understand a candidate's thinking, planning, and job-specific problem-solving skills, just ask this question: If you were to get this job, how would you go about solving this typical problem (describe the problem)?
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #15 - The Second Part of the Two-Question Interview"
Hot Tip #14 - Why You Should Hire People Who Are Weak Interviewers
Topics: Interviewing, Recruiter Hot Tips
There is good news and some bad news on the hiring front. First, I'll give the bad news. There are three big hiring mistakes many people are now making in greater numbers than ever before:
- Hiring someone you shouldn't have. The person interviewed well, but underperformed once on the job.
- Not hiring a great person because the person didn't interview well. Many top performers are not great interviewers. In fact, this might be the easiest person to hire since no one wants them.
- Not attracting a great person who did interview well. Talented people who interview well are the hardest to recruit since everyone wants to hire them.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #14 - Why You Should Hire People Who Are Weak Interviewers"
The Elements of Applicant Control
Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing
On January 3, 1978, I became a contingency recruiter working for a small, highly regarded, two-person search firm (I was number three). This was a pretty odd job to take at the time, since I voluntarily left my spot as VP and GM for a 300-person automotive parts manufacturing company. Somehow, working 80 hours per week didn't seem worth it.
» Continue reading "The Elements of Applicant Control"
Leverage "Leverage" to Get More Hot Referrals
Topics: Newsletter
This could be a very good article, maybe even a great one. It all depends on your point of view. For the chance it turns out to be a great article, wouldn't you agree that it's certainly worth investing a few minutes' reading time?
» Continue reading "Leverage "Leverage" to Get More Hot Referrals"
Hot Tip #13 - How to Use the Phone to Get Referrals
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Sourcing
I'll take Kevin Bacon's Six Degrees of Separation to a minor extreme, I suspect that with just the names on ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, or a simple Google search you are only one person removed from everyone in the country. (P.S. You can connect with me on LinkedIn using my email, lou@adlerconcepts.com. Everyone who buys my book can also connect with me and share advanced recruiting ideas like these on my Ning Recruiting Tactics site.)
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #13 - How to Use the Phone to Get Referrals"
Hot Tip #12 - Use MySpace to Get More Employee Referrals
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Sourcing
If you don't have a MySpace page, get one so you can see how it works. Once you have the page start linking to all of your friends, then start adding other recruiters to your Friends List. If you go to MySpace find me via email (lou@adlerconcepts.com) and send me your link, so I can add you to my Friends List. Of course, that’s not the point of this hot tip. Leveraging technology is the point.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #12 - Use MySpace to Get More Employee Referrals"
The Most Important Interview Question of All Time
Topics: Newsletter
If you want some quick insight into a candidate's technical competency, motivation level, and team leadership skills, start by asking this two-part question: "Of all of the things you've accomplished in your career, what stands out as most significant? Now could you go ahead and tell me all about it?"
Getting the correct answer to this question can tell you 65 percent to 75 percent of everything you need to make an accurate hiring decision. The correct answer comes by fact-finding and getting complete details of the accomplishment. As an example, let's try it out right now with you as the candidate. To start, write down a short description of your career-defining accomplishment. This would be the best work you've ever done. If you don't have a major accomplishment like this you can boast about quite yet, write down a project or an assignment you worked on that made you very proud.
» Continue reading "The Most Important Interview Question of All Time"
The Best People Are Looking - Finding and Hiring Them Is the Challenge
Topics: Newsletter
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 listing boring, hard-to-find jobs and, instead, adopt a consumer-marketing approach to advertising.
» Continue reading "The Best People Are Looking - Finding and Hiring Them Is the Challenge"
Hot Tip #11 - Time is Your Most Valuable Commodity - Don't Waste It
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiting
Use the idea of leveraging time to your advantage whenever a candidate decides to opt-out of your process - under the contention that your job is no better than others she's considering. Here's an example of how this scenario plays out.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #11 - Time is Your Most Valuable Commodity - Don't Waste It"
Hot Tip #10 - New Weapon Now Available to Win the Talent Wars
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Sourcing
Stalemate.
If every recruiter and every company builds compelling talent hubs, creates search engine optimized career sites, runs exciting ad campaigns, implements a proactive employee referral program and uses the latest name generating techniques, all you'll get are average results. With a finite supply of top people what else could you expect? Of course, if you do all of these things first, or better, you will get exceptional results for a short period of time, until diminishing returns sets in. However, there is still one weapon that is more important than all of the rest combined - that few companies use to their advantage - the hiring manager.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #10 - New Weapon Now Available to Win the Talent Wars"
Speed Kills
Topics: Assessment, Interviewing, Recruiting
There is no longer a hidden job market. The line between active and passive candidates is blurring. Turnover is on the rise. Workforce mobility is increasing. It's easy to look for a new job, apply, and be interviewed from your desktop. The barriers to entry and exit are falling.
» Continue reading "Speed Kills"
Recruiting Is Not Selling, and Other Misconceptions about the Most Important Part of Hiring
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
Excerpted from the 3rd edition of Hire With Your Head (John Wiley and Sons, Inc. June, 2007)
After you've made an offer, but before accepting it, your candidate is probably shopping it around hoping to get something better. As soon as a candidate accepts your offer, the person gets buyer's remorse, wondering whether she made the right decision or left something on the table. Even if the person doesn't have a better offer on the table, lack of conviction when resigning sets the stage for a counteroffer. Effective recruiting becomes the difference maker when you want to ensure that more offers get accepted and stay closed.
Hot Tip #9 - Use the 30% PLUS Solution to Close More Deals
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips
Hiring the best is getting more and more competitive. To ensure you're hiring the strongest talent available you need to plan on offering them at least a 30% increase. However, this increase doesn't need to be all compensation. From what I can tell, more candidates are shopping their offers around and accepting counter-offers. If you find yourself in this squeeze-play, you'll need to reposition your offers as more than compensation.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #9 - Use the 30% PLUS Solution to Close More Deals"
Hot Tip #8 - Don't Get Snowed by Generalities
Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Recruiter Hot Tips
I advocate the use of a one-question performance-based interview. The essence of this is to ask candidates to describe significant projects followed-up by detailed fact-finding. If you do this type of questioning for 3-4 projects over 3-10 years you'll obtain a trend line of performance. Then compare these accomplishments to the performance profile you prepared when you took the assignment to assess job fit. The key to success here is to get details about each accomplishment, not accepting the candidate's initial responses at face value. An example best illustrates this point.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #8 - Don't Get Snowed by Generalities"
Learn to Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Dumb Decisions
Topics: Negotiating, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
The demand for top people has exploded. Part of this is due to demographics, a strong economy, and a widening gap between those with high-demand skills and available supply. Matters are made worse by the increase in workforce mobility, the blurring of the lines between active and passive candidates, and the transparency of the job market.
» Continue reading "Learn to Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Dumb Decisions"
Hot Tip #7 - Problem of the Week: Hiring Managers Making Superficial Judgments.
Topics: Interviewing, Recruiter Hot Tips
Last week I saw the play 12 Angry Men starring Richard Thomas and George Wendt. This is a great play to see if you want to become a better recruiter and be entertained at the same time. From a recruiting perspective, you'll quickly learn what it takes to defend your candidate from dumb decisions. This is very important if your clients or those on the interviewing team have ever made incorrect assessments using superficial information, wrong information, or on the quality of the candidate's interviewing skills.
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #7 - Problem of the Week: Hiring Managers Making Superficial Judgments."
Recruiting Lessons from an Advanced Practice Nurse
Topics: Newsletter
A few years ago, we helped a major hospital chain prepare a performance profile for an advanced practice nurse. A performance profile emphasizes what a person needs to do to be successful in a job, rather than the qualifications and experience. While both are required, it's better to focus on what a person does with his or her skills to more accurately assess their competency and motivation. Better yet, by clarifying performance expectations up-front, recruiters can find more talented people who might not have the exact mix of skills, experience and qualifications listed on the job description.
» Continue reading "Recruiting Lessons from an Advanced Practice Nurse"
Hot Tip #6 - Problem of the Week: Candidates rejecting offers or delaying their decision
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips
This week's problem is one that most recruiters experience on a regular basis - candidates either rejecting an offer outright or saying something like, "I have to think about it," after getting an offer. This problem is easy to solve - never make an offer formal until the candidate has committed to accepting it, either on-the-spot, or the next morning.
Do You Have a Winning Sourcing Strategy?
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing, Sourcing
What's your company's sourcing strategy? Do you have a target audience in mind you want to hire, and do you have the appropriate plans, tactics, and resources in place to pull it off? If you do, you probably have this strategic plan written out with the trade-offs analyzed and argued about and each sourcing channel then optimized to produce results. Of course, before it was implemented, the plan was presented to your senior management with all of the ROI "guesstimates" for approval.
If you don't have this type of sourcing strategy process in place, you might find this article of interest.
» Continue reading "Do You Have a Winning Sourcing Strategy?"
Hot Tip #5 - The Adler Group Recruiting Hot Tip of the Week - March 27, 2007
Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Sourcing
This week's tip relates to the emergence of Google Base ads showing up more frequently in candidate searches. As you're aware (hopefully) there is an increase in candidates using Google to look for jobs before going directly to a company career site or one of the major boards. A typical string would include the job title, a location, a keyword or two and the term jobs. "Dallas jobs sales" would be a typical example. While it doesn't always happen, more and more you'll see an unusual search box appear at the top of this listing. Here's what it looks like:
» Continue reading "Hot Tip #5 - The Adler Group Recruiting Hot Tip of the Week - March 27, 2007"
Recruiting Circa 2010: Critical Hiring Trends You Must Watch
Topics: Interviewing, Managing, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
Web 2.0 has resulted in a rapid change in how hiring top talent could be conducted. But from what I can tell, very few companies are moving rapidly enough to take full advantage of this great opportunity.
» Continue reading "Recruiting Circa 2010: Critical Hiring Trends You Must Watch"
Why You Must Eliminate Job Descriptions
Topics: Interviewing, Performance Profiles, Recruiting, Taking the Assignment
As far as I'm concerned, the use of traditional qualifications-based job descriptions are the primary reason companies are not finding enough top people.
In this article, I'm going to prove that they are unnecessary, counter-productive, reduce the size of the applicant pool, encourage sloppy management, and are the cause of most hiring mistakes. Of course, your comments are welcome.
» Continue reading "Why You Must Eliminate Job Descriptions"
How to Expand the Talent Pool Rather than Recycle It
Topics: Newsletter
In a recent ERE article I made the contention that the talent shortage is real and things will get worse unless major new initiatives were started. Some of the people who responded to the article contended that the talent shortage is not real if we just expand the talent pool by considering untapped sources of talent, like retiring baby boomers and woman reentering the workforce. If I look at the number of the articles written by esteemed authors (FYI: I am not in this category) about the talent shortage it seems that it's running 2:1 in favor of a talent shortage. Peter Cappelli, one of the more prominent naysayers, seems to be somewhat silent of late on this score; so, maybe he's shifting his position. Regardless, when you look under the hood at some of the data and the conclusions reached, there does seem to be relative unanimity on the idea that within the U.S. borders there is an upcoming skills gap. The solution, therefore, is to somehow expand the talent pool - both domestically and internationally - to offset the upcoming skills shortage.
» Continue reading "How to Expand the Talent Pool Rather than Recycle It"
The Anatomy of Success
Topics: Interviewing
As many of you know, I'm in the research phase of my second book, Talent Rules! – Playing the Hiring Game to Win. The theme of the book is an examination of the global, economic, and cultural forces shaping the workforce of tomorrow, and what must be done today to address the massive changes ahead.
» Continue reading "The Anatomy of Success"
Why Top Candidates Take Jobs - Understanding and Managing Motivation
Topics: Newsletter
Understanding candidate motivation is the first step in implementing an appropriate recruiting strategy. On a very simple level there are only two reasons why candidates look for new jobs and ultimately accept offers. One reason is a "going-away" strategy. This usually has to do with leaving a bad job situation. This could be the result of a lay-off or a spouse's relocation. Recruiting is relatively easy if the candidate's current situation is weak and future options are limited. Standards are lowered based on these personal circumstances. If you find strong candidates in this position, move fast. You have a good, but temporary, advantage. Their future opportunities will change for the better very quickly.
» Continue reading "Why Top Candidates Take Jobs - Understanding and Managing Motivation"
Anatomy of a Bad Hire
Topics: Assessment
When you really think about it, there are only two major hiring mistakes that companies make on an ongoing basis.
» Continue reading "Anatomy of a Bad Hire"
Use Multi-Channel Sourcing to Improve Candidate Quality
Topics: Newsletter
(Note: The following is an excerpt from the 3rd 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.
» Continue reading "Use Multi-Channel Sourcing to Improve Candidate Quality"
Sourcing and Recruiting a Mobile Workforce
Topics: Sourcing
While completing the research for the third edition of my book, Hire With Your Head (Wiley & Sons, June, 2007), I found out a lot has changed. The thing that stands out most is the profound increase in workforce mobility in the U.S. labor market.
» Continue reading "Sourcing and Recruiting a Mobile Workforce"
Recruiting is Not Selling, and Other Misconceptions About the Most Important Part of Hiring
Topics: Newsletter
Sure, luck means a lot in football. Not having a good quarterback is bad luck.
- Don Shula
After you've made your offer, but before accepting it, your candidate is probably shopping it around and hoping to get something better. As soon as a candidate accepts your offer, the person gets buyer's remorse, wondering if she made the right decision or left something on the table. Even if the person doesn't have a better offer on the table, lack of conviction when resigning sets the stage for a counter-offer. Effective recruiting becomes the difference maker when you want to be sure more of your offers get accepted and stay closed.
Talent Rules! Are You Playing the Hiring Game to Win?
Topics: Newsletter
Geoffrey Moore's book Crossing the Chasm should be required reading for every corporate recruiting manager in the world. Next add SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham and, while you're at it, include Search Engine Marketing, Inc., by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt. There is not one single word about recruiting in any of these books, that's why they're so important. Collectively they describe how to market and sell to consumers. If you change the word "consumers" to "candidates" you'll understand what it will take to hire more top people in the next few years. Of course, if your supply of top talent is increasing you don't have to worry about this. In this case then you should read Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin to learn how to manage teams and increase employee retention.
» Continue reading "Talent Rules! Are You Playing the Hiring Game to Win?"
Shift Strategies, Not Tactics, to Make More Placements
Topics: Sourcing
Most hiring managers are disappointed with the candidates presented by their recruiters, whether they're internal or external corporate recruiters.
Right or wrong, here are the typically cited reasons:
» Continue reading "Shift Strategies, Not Tactics, to Make More Placements"
Stop Making Excuses!
Topics: Assessment
The entire October 30, 2006, edition of Fortune was devoted to the subject of greatness. The primary conclusion drawn from the numerous articles on the topic is that greatness is achieved through hard work in combination with continuous self-improvement. Talent or ability alone is never enough.
To measure a candidate, I use a form (the 10-Factor Candidate Assessment template) with a 1-5 scale using 10 strong predictors of on-the-job success. Surprisingly, the scale isn't much different from the one described in the Fortune articles.
The following is a quick summary of this ranking, which is a system that you can apply to measure candidate quality and determine whether you are a great recruiter.
» Continue reading "Stop Making Excuses!"
How to Defend Your Candidates from Stupid Decisions
Topics: Newsletter
By becoming partners with their hiring manager clients, recruiters can use their influence to better defend their candidates from dumb decisions and poorly designed practices and policies. The key to the defense requires intervening at each step of the assessment and selection process, while fighting soft emotions with hard evidence.
Here are some things you can do to get started:
» Continue reading "How to Defend Your Candidates from Stupid Decisions"
Are You Playing the Hiring Game to Win?
Topics: Recruiting
A few months ago I made the case in an ERE article (Hiring the Best is a Team Sport) that corporate recruiting departments should not be organized to compete with third-party recruiters.
Aside from performance-based compensation, there are a few obvious reasons supporting this philosophy:
» Continue reading "Are You Playing the Hiring Game to Win?"
How to Prep a Candidate
Topics: Newsletter
If you've ever lost a good candidate due to a poor assessment, spending time prepping your candidate might be the missing piece in making more placements. Doing a good job here can certainly reduce your send-outs per hire by 25-30%. Setting up one or two fewer interviews for each hire will boost your productivity and save you at least one day a week, because you won't have to do searches over again. Making sure that the best candidate gets the job - not the best interviewee or the person with the exact qualifications - is the key to becoming a more effective and productive recruiter.
» Continue reading "How to Prep a Candidate"
How to Prep a Candidate
Topics: Recruiting
Many recruiters consider their hiring manager clients a bit weak on interviewing skills, assessing competency, and recruiting top people. Of course, most managers consider their recruiters a bit weak on understanding real job needs and finding qualified candidates.
A good candidate prep can sometimes reduce this gap.
» Continue reading "How to Prep a Candidate"
Tech Talk: Technology Trends Can Predict the Future of Recruiting
Topics: Newsletter
In a recent ERE article, I made some predictions about the world of recruiting circa 2010. Based on what I saw at the recent October 2006 HR Technology Conference in Chicago, it turns out I was wrong. It looks like the predictions will come true much sooner than I'd suggested.
» Continue reading "Tech Talk: Technology Trends Can Predict the Future of Recruiting"
The Future of Recruiting: A Retrospective
Topics: Recruiting
In a recent ERE article, I made some predictions about the world of recruiting circa 2010. Based on what I saw at the recent HR Technology Conference in Chicago, it turns out I'm wrong. It looks like the predictions will come true much sooner than suggested.
» Continue reading "The Future of Recruiting: A Retrospective"
The Disruptors: Fundamental Changes in Recruiting You Need to Put on Your Radar Screen
Topics: Recruiting
To stay on the forefront of recruiting, you might want to read the October 2006 edition of Business 2.0. The cover story pretty much tells it all: The Next Disruptors: They're Gunning for Google. And Skype. And Citibank, Ford, Oracle and AT&T. Meet 11 Companies Whose Breakthroughs Will Change Everything.
Hiring the Best Is a Team Sport
Topics: Managing
If you want to hire top quality candidates in the shortest period of time at a reasonable cost, you'll need to organize your team to meet the ever more challenging recruiting demands of your company.
» Continue reading "Hiring the Best Is a Team Sport"
Hiring the Best is a Team Sport
Selecting Your Recruiting Team to Win the Hiring Game
Topics: Newsletter
In my opinion, most hiring processes and corporate recruiting departments have been built using a Lone Ranger model. Hiring third-party recruiters and allowing them to play using their own rules is a losing proposition. Not only is this inefficient, results are unpredictable and doing this leaves your recruiting efforts at risk if one of your starters leave. If you want to scale "best practices and best processes" you have to start with a well-organized team of specialists doing the right things every time.
What's Hot, What's Not - and What Should Be
Topics: Recruiting
I think I have been to every ERE Expo since the dawn of the Internet, but Dave and crew outdid themselves in Florida this year. It was filled with fresh faces, new ideas, and a new take on some lingering problems.
» Continue reading "What's Hot, What's Not - and What Should Be"
5 Critical Things Recruiters Need to Do to Become Partners With Their Clients
Topics: Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
Our recently completed 2006 Recruiting and Hiring Challenges survey revealed some significant conflicts between recruiters and their hiring managers that aren't abating. Between 50 and 60% of the survey respondents indicated these were significant problems at their companies:
» Continue reading "5 Critical Things Recruiters Need to Do to Become Partners With Their Clients"
The Three Critical Things Recruiters Need to Do to Become Partners with Their Clients
Or, how to stop losing good candidates for dumb reasons
Topics: Newsletter, Working With Hiring Managers
Our recently completed 2006 Recruiting and Hiring Challenges survey revealed some significant conflicts between recruiters and their hiring managers that aren't abating. Between 50-60% of the survey respondents indicated these were significant problems at their companies:
Counterpoint: Why There is Absolutely No Difference Between Generations
Topics: Recruiting
We've been fooled: there's no difference in hiring and managing people of different age groups, whether they're 16 or 60.
» Continue reading "Counterpoint: Why There is Absolutely No Difference Between Generations"
Boom! Why We Should Blow Up the Recruiting Department and Start From Scratch
Topics: Recruiting
According to Ben Franklin, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
» Continue reading "Boom! Why We Should Blow Up the Recruiting Department and Start From Scratch"
How to Hire Better Salespeople
Topics: Assessment, Interviewing
Let's start this article with two BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals). The first one: reduce turnover of all newly hired sales people by 50%. The second one: reduce the time to their achieving quota by half. These goals are in the bag if you do these three things before you hire another salesperson:
» Continue reading "How to Hire Better Salespeople"
How to Hire Better Sales People
It Only Takes Two Questions If You Know What You're Looking For
Topics: Assessment, Interviewing, Newsletter
Let's start this article with two BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals). The first one - reduce turnover of all newly hired sales people by 50%. The second one - reduce by half the time for all newly hired sales reps to achieve quota. Imagine the impact that would have on your company's performance. If you do these three things before you hire another sales person, these BHAGs are in the bag:
Five Great Things You Can Do Today to Find More Great People Tomorrow
Topics: Sourcing
In our just completed 2006 Recruiting and Hiring Challenges survey, 68% of the respondents indicated that sourcing was a major problem - comparable to dealing with hiring managers who supposedly don't know what they're doing. This seems very odd, since 55% of this same group said that they were satisfied or very satisfied with their sourcing efforts. The only thing I can infer from this seemingly inconsistent data is that people are measured largely on how busy they are, not on the results they achieve.
» Continue reading "Five Great Things You Can Do Today to Find More Great People Tomorrow"
Is the Transactional Corporate Recruiting Model Doomed?
Topics: Recruiting
We just closed our annual hiring challenges survey, with a few hundred participants describing their perspective on the state of the recruiting industry. From a preliminary review it's not comforting, especially if you're a corporate recruiter or recruiting manager. Most alarming is that things haven't gotten better since we took the survey last year. In fact, the situation has deteriorated. For example:
» Continue reading "Is the Transactional Corporate Recruiting Model Doomed?"
How to Prevent Just About Every Common Hiring Mistake There Is
Topics: Newsletter
It starts by defining the work that needs to be done - not the skills required to do it.
In this article, I want to present six common hiring problems that can be virtually eliminated by using Performance Profiles instead of job descriptions when taking the assignment. (Here's an ERE article for more on this.)
» Continue reading "How to Prevent Just About Every Common Hiring Mistake There Is"
On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 8
Topics: On Becoming a Great Recruiter
The fight for top talent is intense and it will get worse. Interim results from our 2006 Recruiting and Hiring Challenges survey (this is the last week you can still take the survey) indicate that the number of offers being turned down is increasing, ad response is declining along with candidate quality, and turnover is increasing. In my opinion, without great recruiters implementing best practices for every search, these problems will not go away. The purpose of this "On Becoming a Great Recruiter" series is to give recruiters hands-on tactics to hire great people, one search at a time.
» Continue reading "On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 8"
On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 7
Topics: On Becoming a Great Recruiter
When someone says "no" to your offer, your goal is not to convince him to say "yes." Your goal is to get him to say "maybe."
» Continue reading "On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 7"
On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 6
Topics: On Becoming a Great Recruiter
If one of your client groups has ever incorrectly eliminated a good candidate because someone on the hiring team was a weak interviewer, this article is written for you.
» Continue reading "On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 6"
On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 5
Topics: On Becoming a Great Recruiter
If you've followed the advice provided in the previous four articles, you're now finding more top active and passive candidates.
» Continue reading "On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 5"
On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 4
Topics: On Becoming a Great Recruiter
We're into the fourth week of our eight-week program on becoming a top 10% recruiter. By now, you should have taken the online recruiter diagnostic to benchmark your current performance. You might want to take it again to see how much you've improved so far. Here's the link to our Recruiting Challenges 2006 survey. This is one you'll want to take. Participants will learn where they stand among their peers in both performance and compensation.
» Continue reading "On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 4"
Tame Your Hiring Managers
Topics: Newsletter
If it wasn't for hiring managers and the rest of the interviewing team, recruiting would be so easy. Despite this, there are several things you can do to get the hiring team to see the situation correctly. Here are a few ways you can tame your hiring managers:
» Continue reading "Tame Your Hiring Managers"
On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 3
Topics: On Becoming a Great Recruiter
We're into the third week of our eight-week program on becoming a top 10% recruiter. Aside from reading the two previous articles, there were four other things you had to do to get to this point: 1) take the online recruiter diagnostic to see where you are today; 2) email me (lou@adlerconcepts.com) about the biggest change you need to make to become a better recruiter; 3) sign up for a comprehensive survey; and 4) begin tackling the reading list presented in the previous article. Now you're ready to find some top candidates.
» Continue reading "On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 3"
On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 2
Topics: On Becoming a Great Recruiter
Managers have a hard time assessing competency and motivation, even though many have gone through some type of formal interviewing training. It turns out the real problem is not the questions being asked; it's not knowing the job they're evaluating the candidate against. Not knowing real job needs turns out to be the root cause of the most common hiring mistakes: hiring people who are partially competent, or hiring people who are competent but not motivated to do the work required.
» Continue reading "On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 2"
On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 1
Topics: On Becoming a Great Recruiter
Over the next eight weeks, you have a chance to learn what it takes to become one of the top recruiters in the country. This means you'll be able to make at least $150,000-$175,000 per year; you'll be seen as a true career consultant by your candidates and a true partner by your clients.
» Continue reading "On Becoming a Great Recruiter - Part 1"
Is the Business Model for the Corporate Recruiting Department Fundamentally Flawed?
Topics: Recruiting
In this article, I'm going to make the case that the underlying organization and structure of most U.S. corporate recruiting departments are fundamentally flawed. In fact, in many ways they resembles the worst performing business model of them all - a not-for-profit, government-funded, bureaucratic monopoly. Worse, unless big changes are made, companies who use this outdated model will never find enough top people to meet their business needs.
How to Work a Cold List
Topics: Newsletter
Say you're looking for a product marketing manager for a high-tech company. Here are five ways to find great names of passive candidates for this job in the next two hours:
» Continue reading "How to Work a Cold List"
How to Recruit Young Professionals
Topics: Recruiting
This is a true story about my first recruiting lesson. You might find it useful if you want to hire more young professionals.
» Continue reading "How to Recruit Young Professionals"
Recruiting is Sales: How to Become a Better Salesperson Today
Topics: Recruiting
Before you begin reading this article, write down all of the reasons your candidates and hiring manager clients give you for not moving forward.
» Continue reading "Recruiting is Sales: How to Become a Better Salesperson Today"
News Flash: Why U.S. Companies Are Losing the War for Talent
Topics: Sourcing
In the May 13 Los Angeles Times, a front-page story described how top-tier college grads were making decisions about which of their many job offers to accept. The article started with the idea that when the demand for talent is far greater than the supply, companies need to be more aggressive and more creative in their recruiting efforts.
» Continue reading "News Flash: Why U.S. Companies Are Losing the War for Talent"
The Best Article Ever Written on Passive Candidate Recruiting
Topics: Sourcing
This could be a very good article, maybe even a great one. It all depends on your point of view. For the chance it turns out to be a great article, wouldn't you agree that it's certainly worth investing a few minutes' reading time?
» Continue reading "The Best Article Ever Written on Passive Candidate Recruiting"
Find Out How Much Your Bad Hiring Decisions are Costing Your Company Each Year
The Lack of Business-like Processes Cost Most Companies $25 Million to $100 Million Annually!
Topics: Newsletter
How many people will your company hire over the next 12 months? Multiply this number by the average salary (some number between $50,000 and $100,00). Now do the math. If you're hiring 500-1000 people this represents a total expenditure of $25 million on the low side to $100 million on the high side. I don't think HR/Recruiting as a group is doing a very good job of spending this money wisely. How many of the following ten "worst practices" represent the state of affairs at your company?
How HR/Recruiting Wastes $100 Million Every Year!
Topics: Recruiting
How many people will your company hire over the next 12 months? Multiply this number by the average salary (some number between $50,000 and $100,000). Now do the math.
» Continue reading "How HR/Recruiting Wastes $100 Million Every Year!"
The Ten Commandments of Recruiting Passive Candidates
How to Increase Your Passive Candidate Recruiting Effectiveness by Over 200%
Topics: Newsletter
Over my 25 years of recruiting experience, I've learned a few important principles about how to effectively recruit passive candidates. Most were learned by trial and error. Sending me your thoughts on their usefulness in today's market would be appreciated (lou@adlerconcepts.com).
How to Prevent Just About Every Common Hiring Mistake There Is
Topics: Performance Profiles
In this article, I want to present 12 common hiring problems that can be virtually eliminated by using performance profiles instead of job descriptions.
» Continue reading "How to Prevent Just About Every Common Hiring Mistake There Is"
The 10 Commandments of Recruiting Passive Candidates
Topics: Sourcing
During my 25 years of recruiting experience, I've learned a few important principles about how to effectively recruit passive candidates. I would now like to pass these on to you.
» Continue reading "The 10 Commandments of Recruiting Passive Candidates"
To Hire More Top People, You Need to Become Talent-Centric
Topics: Recruiting
If you're not seeing and hiring enough top people, you have a problem. If things are getting worse rather than better, you have a bigger problem. If you're using more high-priced contract employees or more external search firms to fill in the gaps to meet hiring needs, you're masking the problem. Identifying the problems and providing a few solutions is the point of this article.
» Continue reading "To Hire More Top People, You Need to Become Talent-Centric"
A Performance Profile for a Recruiting Manager
Topics: Performance Profiles
As you know, I suggest that recruiters prepare a performance profile whenever starting a search assignment. A performance profile describes the top six to eight performance objectives a person taking the job needs to do to be considered successful.
» Continue reading "A Performance Profile for a Recruiting Manager"
Why We Lost the War for Talent
Topics: Recruiting
Over the past 67 months, I've asked 117 different Fortune 500 companies and 272 small to mid-sized companies if they've finally won the war for talent. Only a handful said yes.
» Continue reading "Why We Lost the War for Talent"
Use a "Share Before Deciding" Candidate Assessment Model to Increase Interviewing Accuracy
Topics: Newsletter
It really doesn't matter what questions you ask to conduct an accurate assessment. What matters is how you assess the answers. Too many problems occur when managers are left to their own devices on whether or not a candidate should be hired. Most managers decide quickly then collect information to confirm this decision. Then they vote. This is referred to as a "decide and collect" approach. It gives more votes to managers who are weak interviewers, since these people tend to vote no more often than yes, and a no vote can override two or three yeses. The "decide and collect" approach also allows for presentation to count for more than performance, since first impressions trigger the "yes/no" decision. Some managers overvalue their intuition or a narrow range of technical skills. This results in two common hiring errors - hiring people who are partially competent or hiring those who are competent but not motivated to do the work.
How to Improve Interviewing Accuracy by 50 to 100 Percent
Topics: Interviewing
No matter how good a recruiter you are, your personal success rests on the ability of your hiring manager clients to accurately assess your candidates. How many of us have lost good candidates because somebody on the interviewing team made an incorrect assessment? In this article, I'd like to introduce you to a new way of looking at the interview assessment process.
» Continue reading "How to Improve Interviewing Accuracy by 50 to 100 Percent"
The 15-Minute Hiring Manager Selection Training Course
Topics: Interview Training, Recruiter Training, Working With Hiring Managers
I was recently reminded of an old story from my pre-ERE days and heavy recruiting days. You might find it useful as you attempt to train your hiring manager clients to become better at defining their real job needs and assessing candidate competency.
» Continue reading "The 15-Minute Hiring Manager Selection Training Course"
Use the Interview to Defend Your Candidates
Topics: Newsletter
If you've ever had a good person you've presented to the hiring team get blown away for stupid reasons, you've got to learn how to defend your candidates. At one level this requires that you present concrete evidence to fight decisions made on emotions, biases, intuition or a too-narrow range of technical skills and competencies. Too many good people get excluded for the wrong reasons when evidence is not used to justify the selection. Too many average people with great interviewing skills get hired when feelings, prejudices and intuition override judgment.
» Continue reading "Use the Interview to Defend Your Candidates"
The Search for the Perfect Candidate - Part 4
Topics: Sourcing
In the previous three articles in this series on the search for the perfect candidate, I made the case that three fundamental changes were required to hire more top performers:
» Continue reading "The Search for the Perfect Candidate - Part 4"
In Search of the Perfect Candidate - Part 3
Topics: Sourcing
In recent articles, I've made the case that the search for the perfect candidate was unlikely to be successful - unless some big changes were made:
» Continue reading "In Search of the Perfect Candidate - Part 3"
In Search of the Perfect Candidate
Topics: Newsletter
Everybody wants to hire more top performers including diverse candidates, passive candidates and those in any field where the supply is less than the demand. And why not? These are the people who have great track records, great academic backgrounds, great personalities, great experience and have worked at companies doing just what you want done. Even better, these great people are just like you - smart, savvy and ready to move ahead.
» Continue reading "In Search of the Perfect Candidate"
In Search of the Perfect Candidate - Part 2
Topics: Sourcing
In a recent article, I made the contention that perfect candidates for your open positions might not have exactly the same background listed in your job descriptions.
» Continue reading "In Search of the Perfect Candidate - Part 2"
In Search of the Perfect Candidate - Part 1
Topics: Interviewing, Recruiting, Sourcing
Everybody wants to hire the perfect candidate. And why not? These are the people who have great track records, great academic backgrounds, great personalities, great experience, and have worked at companies doing just what you want done. Even better, these great people are just like you - smart, savvy, and ready to move ahead.
» Continue reading "In Search of the Perfect Candidate - Part 1"
Don't Let the Bureaucrats Win
Topics: Recruiting
There is a conspiracy preventing companies from hiring top people. The bureaucrats are behind it. We've been fighting the war for talent for a long time and nobody has won. Odd.
» Continue reading "Don't Let the Bureaucrats Win"
Using John Wooden's Pyramid of Success for Hiring
Topics: Newsletter
How many recruiters, hiring managers or members of the interviewing team think they can determine a candidate's total suitability for a job based on some quick measure of just one or two core traits? For one thing, it takes much more than just one or two traits to determine competency and motivation to do the work. For another, if just one of these partial predictor traits is assessed incorrectly, a good candidate can be inadvertently excluded too early in the process. This is the fundamental cause of the most pervasive of all hiring problems -not hiring someone who could far exceed expectations.
» Continue reading "Using John Wooden's Pyramid of Success for Hiring"
How to Defend Your Candidates from Stupid Decisions
Topics: Recruiting
In recent articles, I made the case that fundamental shifts in decision-making and perspective had to take place in order for a company to see any sustained improvement in its hiring results.
» Continue reading "How to Defend Your Candidates from Stupid Decisions"
One Picture is Worth 1000 Words
Topics: Newsletter
A version of this article written by Lou Adler initially appeared on ERExchange.com.
This article is exactly 1000 words long. It contains instructions on how to draw a picture. Drawing the picture will have a profound affect on your ability to think conceptually. More important, it will make you a better recruiter. Now grab a pencil and a blank sheet of paper.
» Continue reading "One Picture is Worth 1000 Words"
How to Stop Making Dumb Hiring Mistakes
Topics: Interviewing, Sourcing
Over the past years, I've made the case that there are two pervasive problems preventing companies from hiring enough top people.
» Continue reading "How to Stop Making Dumb Hiring Mistakes"
How to Use Advertising to Attract Top People
Topics: Sourcing
Here's something you might want to consider whether you're hiring active, passive, or not-so active or not-so-passive candidates.
» Continue reading "How to Use Advertising to Attract Top People"
How to Measure Candidate Quality
Topics: Assessment
Measuring candidate quality is something many companies struggle with. But its importance is obvious: It's how you can assess the usefulness of your sourcing channels and of the recruiters involved; if done properly, it's also a way to assess the quality of the candidates hired compared to their subsequent on-the-job performance.
» Continue reading "How to Measure Candidate Quality"
How to Write an Ad for the Generations
Topics: Newsletter
These articles are a mix of great content with a little bit of marketing. The content will give you a taste of our recruiter and hiring manager training programs. If recruiters go to our Recruiter Boot Camp Online, they'll become better recruiters. Guaranteed. If hiring managers go to our Performance-based Hiring interviewing and recruiting workshops, they'll hire better people and make fewer dumb hiring mistakes. This will make recruiters far more effective. If your company trains all of its recruiters and hiring managers, hiring top people can become a predictable and systematic business process at your company.
» Continue reading "How to Write an Ad for the Generations"
How to Use the Interview to Recruit Top People and Prevent Dumb Hiring Mistakes
Topics: Interviewing
The interview is a bridge. It's how the hiring team determines whether a candidate is qualified for the job. Less obvious, the interview is how top candidates determine whether they want the job. So if you're only using the interview for assessing candidate quality, you're missing a tremendous recruiting opportunity. Of course, if the hiring team isn't collectively very good at interviewing, you're wasting a lot time doing searches over again and you won't be able to hire too many top people anyway.
» Continue reading "How to Use the Interview to Recruit Top People and Prevent Dumb Hiring Mistakes"
12 Ways to Become a Better Recruiter in 2006
Topics: Newsletter
You'll want to save this article. It highlights 12 great things you can do in 2006 to become a better recruiter. There are links to other ERE and Adler Group articles and tools, so this email could wind up being a good reference tool for you throughout the year.
» Continue reading "12 Ways to Become a Better Recruiter in 2006"
Do Your Hiring Processes Earn You Money or Cost You?
Topics: Managing
Let's play "Recruiting Monopoly." As you'll see, there are a number of critical stages in this game that correspond to the recruiting and hiring processes at most companies.
» Continue reading "Do Your Hiring Processes Earn You Money or Cost You?"
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
Topics: Managing, Recruiting
This article is exactly 1,000 words long. It contains instructions on how to draw a picture. Drawing the picture will have a profound affect on your ability to think strategically. It will also make you a better recruiter. Now grab a pencil and a blank sheet of paper.
» Continue reading "A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words"
Recruiting and John Wooden's Pyramid of Success
Topics: Assessment, Recruiting
A few weeks ago, my wife of 35 years saw my eyes fill with tears as I was watching TV. Fortunately, I was watching a basketball game, so she knew it wasn't too serious. After 35 years, she knew immediately the cause, and responded, "Oh, that John Wooden fellow must be speaking again."
» Continue reading "Recruiting and John Wooden's Pyramid of Success"
10 Steps to Finding and Hiring Diversity and High-Demand Candidates
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
Here are two basic principles of recruiting that you need to apply when targeting passive candidates, diversity candidates, or any type of candidates in high demand:
- The more competition there is for a group of candidates (like nurses, pharmacists, sales reps who always exceed quota, design engineers who were elected to Tau Beta Pi, diversity candidates, etc.), the more recruiting effort is required to attract and hire them.
- Top people want top jobs, regardless of their cultural, ethnic or religious background or gender.
» Continue reading "10 Steps to Finding and Hiring Diversity and High-Demand Candidates"
How to Negotiate Compensation
Topics: Negotiating
Sometimes you just don't have enough money in the budget to attract a top person. The following compensation negotiation techniques will allow you stretch your budget 10% to 15% without paying extra. But be careful using them. They're for professionals only. Without practice, you might wind up paying more or losing a good person for dumb reasons.
» Continue reading "How to Negotiate Compensation"
How to Convert Cold Calls into Hot Candidates
Topics: Networking, Recruiting
Jim is the best recruiter at LNM, a division of a Fortune 500 company. Karen is a strong marketing manager who is not looking for a job. Jim found Karen's name on ZoomInfo, and he is now cold calling her to explore the possibility of considering her for the position.
» Continue reading "How to Convert Cold Calls into Hot Candidates"
Performance-based Hiring: The New Operating System
Topics: Managing
In a recent article - Does Your Company Really Have What It Takes to Hire Top Talent? - I presented a 10-point assessment on how to measure your company's ability to hire top talent. Take the evaluation to see where your company stands. In this article, I'll make the case that by implementing an operating system for hiring top talent, companies will finally be able to win the war for talent by making sure everyone involved in hiring is on the same page - using the best tools and techniques available. Even better, I'll suggest that a proven operating system (OS) already exists - Performance-based Hiring.
» Continue reading "Performance-based Hiring: The New Operating System"
Does Your Company Really Have What It Takes to Hire Top Talent?
Topics: Managing
Here's your chance to take a unique Hiring Top Talent evaluation of your company's hiring effectiveness. In 15 minutes, you'll find out how your recruiting department compares to the best in the country -- and what you need to do to get into the upper echelon.
» Continue reading "Does Your Company Really Have What It Takes to Hire Top Talent?"
Sourcing in the Sweet Spot
Topics: Sourcing
As I've mentioned in other articles, the iPod offers a great model for sourcing and recruiting. Three things stand out:
- It's a system. The iPod is a fully integrated information system — not simply a standalone music player. In comparison, most corporate recruiting departments resemble a hodgepodge of different technologies, tools, competing processes, and poorly linked information channels.
- It's strategic. Healthy businesses grow and change when strategy drives tactics. The iPod has metamorphosed Apple Computer. When tactics and processes drive strategy, companies languish and so does sourcing. Too many recruiting departments are driven by tactics, bureaucracy, and processes. For example, why do we still post boring job descriptions online?
- It's customer- and market-driven. The iPod is compelling, easy to buy, simple to use — and fun. The sourcing processes at most companies treat potential employees as vendors. The processes are impersonal; jobs are hard to find; the marketing copy (a.k.a. the job description) is boring and exclusionary; the application process is demeaning; and the interviewing process is unprofessional.
» Continue reading "Sourcing in the Sweet Spot"
How Performance Profiles Will Make You a Better Recruiter
Topics: Performance Profiles
For years, I've been writing about the use of performance profiles as the lynchpin of effective recruiting. Everybody who has ever used one for conducting a search has experienced better results. By this I mean more and stronger candidates, improved relationships with hiring manager clients, better understanding of real job needs, more consensus about candidates, candidates who are easier to close, a significant reduction in salary demands, fewer counter-offers being accepted, a reduction in turnover, increased job satisfaction and far better on-the-job performance.
» Continue reading "How Performance Profiles Will Make You a Better Recruiter"
Understand How Your Customers Buy Before You Start Selling to Them
Topics: Sourcing
Let me make a few points about sourcing:
» Continue reading "Understand How Your Customers Buy Before You Start Selling to Them"
The Essential Elements of Every Great Hire
Topics: Sourcing, Sourcing, Working With Hiring Managers
As I get ready for another great ER Expo in Boston (September 28-29, 2005) and a chance to meet old friends and make new ones, some big recruiting questions come to mind. Here's probably the biggest
» Continue reading "The Essential Elements of Every Great Hire"
Eliminate Job Descriptions if You Want to Hire More Passive Candidates
Topics: Performance Profiles
I've been a very successful recruiter, a reasonably successful trainer, and a middling author for the past 25 plus years. Early on, I came up with a new way to take search assignments, by first asking my clients to describe what successful people doing the work required did differently than average people. My objective in asking this question was part of a youthful and dubious goal of doubling my search commission income while cutting in half the time spent on any search.
» Continue reading "Eliminate Job Descriptions if You Want to Hire More Passive Candidates"
Recruiting Basics: Making Offers
Topics: Recruiting
This article was originally published November 12, 2004.
If you've ever had an offer turned down or had a candidate say, "I have to think about it," you made the offer too soon. You've probably also broken the cardinal principle that every recruiter must follow: "Never make a formal offer until it's been 100% accepted. Test it first, test it again, and continue to test it until the candidate says yes." Then make the offer.
Here's how this "testing the offer" process works:
» Continue reading "Recruiting Basics: Making Offers"
Marketing 101 for Recruiters
Topics: Sourcing
This is an article about how to find more top candidates. It might not seem like it until the end, though.
» Continue reading "Marketing 101 for Recruiters"
How to Deal With Technical Managers and Other (Too) Bright People
Topics: Working With Hiring Managers
Engineers and software development managers are the toughest hiring managers in the world to deal with. But that's only if you exclude sales managers, marketing managers, company executives, operations people, customer service managers, functional VPs, and of course, financial people at all levels.
» Continue reading "How to Deal With Technical Managers and Other (Too) Bright People"
The #1 Secret of Hiring Success
Topics: Interviewing, Performance Profiles, Recruiting, Sourcing
If your hiring manager clients are not doing a good job of assessing your candidates, you should review this article with them. No matter how good a recruiter you are, if your clients pass on your good candidates, you're working too hard doing searches over again. The key is just to assess a candidate's motivation to do the work.
» Continue reading "The #1 Secret of Hiring Success"
10 Recruiting Initiatives You Must Start Immediately
Topics: Recruiting
No matter where you are in the world or what industry you're in, no matter how big or small you are, and no matter what types of positions you're trying to fill, everyone struggles with finding and hiring top talent. The solution for everyone is the same - unless candidate supply far exceeds demand or you're the employer of choice in your industry. But before I provide the solution, some background is in order.
» Continue reading "10 Recruiting Initiatives You Must Start Immediately"
iPods and the Weakest Link in the Hiring Chain
Topics: Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
I've been advocating the use of the iPod as a metaphor for better hiring practices. If you have an iPod, you know that it's much more than a music player. It's a complete, integrated music system. You can quickly download music and podcasts, burn CDs, and plug it into your car, home music system or Bose speaker set. You don't even have to read the instructions to do any of this stuff and get great music anytime, anywhere.
» Continue reading "iPods and the Weakest Link in the Hiring Chain"
The Ten Ps of Recruiter Survival
Topics: Recruiting
Since the beginning of the year I've spoken with over 500 corporate recruiters, asking them to describe their biggest hiring challenges. As part of this, we also conducted a Recruiting and Hiring Challenges 2005 Survey to get a better understanding of what's really happening and to see if any major trends were developing.
Here are some of the findings so far:
» Continue reading "The Ten Ps of Recruiter Survival"
Are you a Rounder or a Flatlander?
Topics: Recruiting
What if everything you thought was true wasn't?
» Continue reading "Are you a Rounder or a Flatlander?"
Get Out of the Clouds
Topics: Recruiting
My ongoing Recruiting and Hiring Challenges 2005 Survey is continuing to reveal some startling information, such as:
» Continue reading "Get Out of the Clouds"
How to Become a Partner with Your Clients
Topics: Recruiting
This article was originally published on July 16, 2004.
The single best way to become a more effective recruiter is to become a true partner with your hiring manager clients. And the single best way to become a true partner with your hiring manager clients is to know the job.
» Continue reading "How to Become a Partner with Your Clients"
Managing Hiring Managers
Topics: Working With Hiring Managers
If it wasn't for hiring managers, recruiting would be so easy.
This is one of the conclusions drawn from my annual Recruiting and Hiring Challenges Survey 2005. Here are some other preliminary conclusions from the survey results:
» Continue reading "Managing Hiring Managers"
Get Off the PC and On the Phone
Topics: Sourcing
We're now in the midst of my annual recruiting and hiring challenges 2005 survey. You might want to take it. You'll be doing yourself a favor by participating in an important industry study. It will be especially important to you if you're not hiring enough top candidates right now. The survey will show you what you need to do to break this bottleneck.
The preliminary results so far are quite revealing. Two big findings stand out:
» Continue reading "Get Off the PC and On the Phone"
Are You Chasing Your Tail, or Is Your Tail Chasing You?
Topics: Managing, Recruiting
Over the past month, I've had the opportunity to discuss talent management strategy with over 500 recruiting and HR leaders from companies across the U.S. I started these talks by asking the question, "Are you aware that most corporate executives and line managers don't consider HR/recruiting strategic enough?"
» Continue reading "Are You Chasing Your Tail, or Is Your Tail Chasing You?"
So You Want To Be a Headhunter?
Topics: Recruiting
There is a major and accelerating shift now underway at most major U.S. corporations regarding how to best recruit new talent. Corporate recruiting departments are now more serious than every before about competing head-on with third-party agencies and executive search firms.
» Continue reading "So You Want To Be a Headhunter?"
Sourcing 101
Let's separate fact from fiction. This will help you find and hire more top candidates. It'll also help if you read the last two paragraphs of this article first. The article will have more value this way, since it will change your perspective about the real reason why you're a recruiter.
» Continue reading "Sourcing 101"
A Service Level Agreement for Hiring Passive Candidates
Topics: Sourcing
As recruiters make the shift to hiring more passive candidates, having a formal service level agreement (SLA) in place with their hiring manager clients becomes more important. While I don't do as much recruiting today, I still never take an assignment without having a formal agreement in place with the hiring team as to what each person's roles and responsibilities are in the search process. I use this agreement both to establish my professionalism and to insure that the hiring manager and the other members of the interviewing team don't do anything that would compromise the search process.
» Continue reading "A Service Level Agreement for Hiring Passive Candidates"
The 10 Commandments of Recruiting
Topics: Interviewing, Recruiting, Sourcing
Recruiting is like sales and marketing rolled into one. If a company has a great brand, a great job, and a great hiring manager, not too much marketing or recruiting is required. But if your company lacks one or more of these factors - or if you're targeting hard-to-fill positions - then stronger recruiters are required.
» Continue reading "The 10 Commandments of Recruiting"
Handling the Problems with Passive Candidates and Hiring Managers
Topics: Sourcing, Working With Hiring Managers
There are more name-generating tools becoming available everyday. My favorites include Jobster, SearchExpo, Broadlook, ZoomInfo, AIRS Oxygen, and LinkedIn. These and the other networking tools should be checked out and used.
But there's more to recruiting and hiring passive candidates than generating a list of names. Success with these tools depends on how well you convert these cold names into hot candidates.
Here are some other factors that need to be considered when hiring passive candidates:
» Continue reading "Handling the Problems with Passive Candidates and Hiring Managers"
The Passive Candidate Report: Networking and Metrics
Topics: Sourcing
For the foreseeable future, I'll be using this weekly ERE column to write exclusively about the challenges of finding and hiring passive candidates. Feel free to comment, send questions, or suggest topics. Recruiting less active and passive candidates will become the focus of attention as corporate recruiting resources are shifted away from pursuing active candidates.
» Continue reading "The Passive Candidate Report: Networking and Metrics"
4 Things Recruiters Must Do to Hire Passive Candidates
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
If you missed ERE's ER Expo 2005 Spring in San Diego, you missed a great event. You should attend one of these bi-annual event every year or so, just to stay on top of the latest trends. There is some great practical information presented by an extraordinary group of recruiting experts.
» Continue reading "4 Things Recruiters Must Do to Hire Passive Candidates"
"Blink" and Hiring More Passive Candidates
Topics: Sourcing
If you want to hire more top-performing passive candidates, you should read a new book called Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. While it has nothing to do with hiring or management or recruiting, reading it will make you a better recruiter, since it has much to do with human nature.
» Continue reading ""Blink" and Hiring More Passive Candidates"
The Single Most Important Trait of Success
Topics: Assessment, Interviewing
Probably everyone knows this already, but it's worth a reminder. There is one competency that overrides all others combined. I call it the master competency. In fact, during an interview you only need to assess a person for this one single competency to determine if the person is a good fit for the job. To make it even easier, you only need to ask one question to determine if the candidate possesses this trait or not.
» Continue reading "The Single Most Important Trait of Success"
How to Attract and Hire Passive Candidates, Part 5
Topics: Sourcing
Candidates can be divided into four broad categories, depending on how active or passive they are:
» Continue reading "How to Attract and Hire Passive Candidates, Part 5"
How to Hire Passive Candidates, Part 4: The 30% Solution
Topics: Sourcing
Over the past few weeks I've been focusing on what it takes to hire more passive candidates. Here's a quick take on the key themes:
» Continue reading "How to Hire Passive Candidates, Part 4: The 30% Solution"
How to Hire Passive Candidates, Part 3: Sourcing Strategies
Topics: Sourcing
Here's a basic principle you'll need to follow if you want to hire more passive candidates: Offer careers, not jobs. But more on this in a moment.
» Continue reading "How to Hire Passive Candidates, Part 3: Sourcing Strategies"
How to Hire Passive Candidates, Part 2: The Basics
Topics: Sourcing
Passive candidates are different from active candidates - in both how and why they look for new opportunities. If a company wants to hire more passive candidates, it must rethink every aspect of its hiring and sourcing processes. In this series of articles, I'll describe what it takes to set up a corporate recruiting department to hire passive candidates.
» Continue reading "How to Hire Passive Candidates, Part 2: The Basics"
How to Hire Passive Candidates - Part 1
Topics: Sourcing
As I read the articles published every day on ERE, it's very clear to me that as writers we live in two different worlds. One group provides advice and insight on how to hire active candidates more efficiently. The other group focuses on how to hire more top passive candidates. When looked at from this perspective, the reasons for disagreements are obvious. The tools and techniques required to hire passive candidates are far different than those required to hire active candidates.
So, if you're a recruiter who wants to hire more top passive candidates, read on.
» Continue reading "How to Hire Passive Candidates - Part 1"
A Look Back at 2004 from a CEO's Perspective
Topics: Recruiting
Last year, I wrote an article from a futuristic perspective - January, 2005, to be exact. The CEO of some mythical company was looking back at 2004 and thanking the recruiting team in a letter for doing a remarkable job. The point of the letter was to demonstrate what the recruiting team had to accomplish during 2004.
The point of this article is to allow you to gauge your progress in implementing better hiring and recruiting processes. Following is a summary of the letter.
» Continue reading "A Look Back at 2004 from a CEO's Perspective"
Good Interviewing Starts With Knowing the Answers, Not With Asking Questions
Topics: Interviewing
It hit me like a snowstorm this week: The problem with interview training is that too much time is spent on learning to ask questions, rather than knowing the answers. Interestingly, if you already know the correct answers, asking the questions requires no training whatsoever. So in this article I'm going to give you the answers to determine if a candidate possesses the universal core traits of success.
But before I tackle this important issue, let's make this article interactive.
» Continue reading "Good Interviewing Starts With Knowing the Answers, Not With Asking Questions"
Technology Trends: Recruiting Passive Candidates
In a recent ERE article (Recruiting Lessons from the iPod) I made the case that recruiting must become more iPod-like. The point was that the iPod is more than a music player, it's a music system. By tying together a very neat music player with simple player management software, an online store, drop-and-play plug-in sound systems, and a host of well-designed accessories, Apple quickly became the dominant name in the music industry.
» Continue reading "Technology Trends: Recruiting Passive Candidates"
Recruiting Lessons from the iPod
Topics: Recruiting
Why is the iPod such a phenomenon?
It's not because it looks neat or works well. Those things are just a small part of it. The real reason it's such a phenomenon is that it's more than a music player, it's a music system. In fact, it's a music business system far larger than itself. Get this: 4.8 million iPods were sold in the fourth quarter of 2004 alone. At this rate, soon everyone in the world will soon have one.
There are business, management, and especially recruiting lessons to be learned from the success of the iPod.
» Continue reading "Recruiting Lessons from the iPod"
How to Eliminate the Three Biggest Hiring Errors
Topics: Assessment, Interviewing, Performance Profiles
Consider this: Based on hundreds of observations, about two-thirds of the time hiring errors can be attributed to one of three major interviewing mistakes. They're all easy to correct. It only takes a few simple steps which anyone can learn and use.
» Continue reading "How to Eliminate the Three Biggest Hiring Errors"
How to Recruit and Hire Passive Candidates
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
To get started recruiting and hiring top passive candidates, it's important to understand the theory of recruiting. The following has never before been revealed in print, so please tread carefully as you proceed through the balance of this article.
» Continue reading "How to Recruit and Hire Passive Candidates"
Technology Trends: Become a Better Customer
Topics: Recruiting
Every month, I do an article on the state of technology. This month is no exception.
» Continue reading "Technology Trends: Become a Better Customer"
Forget Six Sigma! One Sigma Is the Real Goal for Hiring Top Talent
Topics: Recruiting
Every company wants to make hiring top talent more predictable. Some even go as far as putting a Six Sigma task force together to begin the process. Yet they're all unlikely to succeed. Six Sigma is about process improvement. Unfortunately, you can't implement process improvement until you have a process to improve.
» Continue reading "Forget Six Sigma! One Sigma Is the Real Goal for Hiring Top Talent"
Using Root Cause Analysis to Hire Better People
Topics: Recruiting
Diagnose before prescribing. Every first-year med student learns this simple admonition. It should be applied to business decisions more often. In an attempt at quick improvement, we often try to implement solutions without enough information. This situation is not exclusive to HR/recruiting.
» Continue reading "Using Root Cause Analysis to Hire Better People"
Networking Revisited and Some Caveats on Social Technology
Topics: Networking
"This is deja vu all over again!"
-Yogi Berra, circa 1965
A few years ago I wrote an article on the importance of using networking as a primary sourcing tool. The essence of the article can be boiled down into the following key principles:
» Continue reading "Networking Revisited and Some Caveats on Social Technology"
The 2X Factor: The Real Cost of Bad Hiring
Topics: Recruiting
I'm going to make the case that the cost of a bad hiring decision for most positions is 2 times (2X) the person's annual salary. This is not a one-time cost either. It happens year after year. That's a lot of money.
You'll use this information to become a better recruiter. Here's how:
» Continue reading "The 2X Factor: The Real Cost of Bad Hiring"
Technology Trends: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Topics: Recruiting
Dateline Chicago, October 2004, HR Technology Conference
This is a story of missed opportunities, lack of vision, not enough courage, and hope for the future.
» Continue reading "Technology Trends: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly"
Is Your ATS an Asset or Liability?
Topics: Sourcing
In the past few weeks I've written about two seemingly unrelated issues - the shift in corporate America to emphasizing the hiring of less-active candidates, and how to assess executive potential in up-and-coming managers.
» Continue reading "Is Your ATS an Asset or Liability?"
Shootout at the Not-OK Corral: Comparing Various Interviewing Techniques
Topics: Interviewing
Let's have a no-holds-barred interview shootout. Winner takes all. But first, the fine print. Let's establish the selection criteria.
» Continue reading "Shootout at the Not-OK Corral: Comparing Various Interviewing Techniques"
Use the Two-Question Interview to Assess Executive Potential
Topics: Assessment, Interviewing, Interviewing
Whether you're a corporate or external recruiter, there are four things you must be able to do in order to increase your influence with your hiring manager clients:
» Continue reading "Use the Two-Question Interview to Assess Executive Potential"
The Future of Hiring: The Shift Is On to Hire Less Active Candidates
Forget active candidates. Pursuing less active candidates should be your goal.
» Continue reading "The Future of Hiring: The Shift Is On to Hire Less Active Candidates"
The Anatomy of a Search: Week Four
Topics: Sourcing
This is the fourth week of our search for a VP Operations at an East Coast healthcare organization. We're now heavily into the recruiting, assessment, and selection process. This article describes what it takes to recruit top passive candidates.
» Continue reading "The Anatomy of a Search: Week Four"
Thinking Outside the Box First Requires Getting Out of It
Topics: Recruiting
Sometimes summer reading can bring a new perspective on old problems. Here are a few samples, and some rather odd advice:
» Continue reading "Thinking Outside the Box First Requires Getting Out of It"
Case Study: Are You a Strategic or a Tactical Thinker?
Topics: Sourcing
I have a simple rule you might want to follow if you want to achieve any one of the following hiring results:
» Continue reading "Case Study: Are You a Strategic or a Tactical Thinker?"
Using Retained Search as a Model for the Future of Hiring
Topics: Recruiting
First, the vision.
As I finished up my presentation for the September 13-15, 2004, ER Expo 2004 Fall in Boston, the overwhelming idea came to mind that hiring top talent can some day be a systematic business process. By this I mean that companies and their hiring managers can assume that when a hiring need arises, it will be quickly filled by a strong person. When this day arrives, the systems will be in place to automatically ferret out the best people available, using a variety of effective sourcing techniques.
» Continue reading "Using Retained Search as a Model for the Future of Hiring"
The Anatomy of a Search, Part 3
Topics: Networking, Sourcing
This is the third week of our search for a VP Operations for an East Coast healthcare organization. We're now heavily into the sourcing, networking, and candidate presentation process. This article describes in detail the semi-sourcing and networking phase of the recruiting.
» Continue reading "The Anatomy of a Search, Part 3"
The Future of Hiring: It's Not Pretty
Topics: Working With Hiring Managers
Here are a few random observations on a summer's day, as I contemplate what I'm going to say at ERE's upcoming ER Expo 2004 Fall in Boston on the state of hiring. Interesting. We're having a mild pickup in hiring and everyone is panicking (according to the Bush team we've turned the corner, and according to the Kerry team it's a U-turn, but that's a different article).
» Continue reading "The Future of Hiring: It's Not Pretty"
The Anatomy of a Search, Part 2
Topics: Networking, Sourcing
We've just finished the first week of our search for a Director/VP Operations for a $300 million medical services company. I'll be documenting the results of this search over the next few weeks. The overall project plan and how we got the business and prepared the performance profile were summarized in the kick-off article. This week, we prepared the sourcing plan and began our advertising and networking program.
» Continue reading "The Anatomy of a Search, Part 2"
The Anatomy of a Search
Topics: Networking, Sourcing
This is a reality article series. Over the next few weeks, I'll document an actual retained search we've just received for a VP of operations for a $300 million medical services company. Our goal is to start presenting candidates within two weeks.
» Continue reading "The Anatomy of a Search"
Why Job Branding Is More Important Than Employer Branding
Topics: Interviewing, Performance Profiles, Sourcing
What's all the fuss? Hiring top people isn't as tough as most recruiters and hiring managers make it out to be. Job branding is the key. But before you start job branding, you must first stop doing dumb things that prevent you from hiring top people. No hiring initiative will work effectively unless you stop doing these things first:
» Continue reading "Why Job Branding Is More Important Than Employer Branding"
Joining the Geek Patrol, Convergence, and Other Advanced Techniques for Finding Semi-Candidates
Topics: Sourcing
This is not an article on semi-sourcing. It's a quiz. After each sourcing problem described below, you'll be asked a multiple-choice question. If you get all of the questions right, you'll be able to attend our free August 2004 online course on how to find top people. Actually, if you just take the quiz and respond reasonably well you'll be able to attend. Just send an email to info@adlerconcepts.com when submitting your response.
Recruiting is Marketing (and Other Dumb Ideas on Finding Top Employees)
Topics: Recruiting
In a recent article I made the contention that too much time and effort is wasted finding top candidates, when the real focus should be on finding top employees. Top candidates work hard on getting the job. Top employees work hard on the job. There's a world of difference, and the implications are huge.
» Continue reading "Recruiting is Marketing (and Other Dumb Ideas on Finding Top Employees)"
4X4: A New Take on What It Takes to Become a Great Recruiter
Topics: Recruiting
[Note: Many of you have recently signed up for our free August 2003 online semi-sourcing course. Since that happened last August -- it was an old article -- you were a bit late. However, those who attended did learn how to find top semi-active and semi-passive candidates at less than $500 per hire. For ICRs this was done WITHOUT using TPRs, while increasing candidate quality to only "A" level candidates. For TPRs (third-party recruiters) this means you could find more top people more quickly than your competitors and most ICRs.
» Continue reading "4X4: A New Take on What It Takes to Become a Great Recruiter"
Your Future: Embracing the Strategic Inflection Point
Topics: Assessment, Working With Hiring Managers
Andrew Grove (author of Only the Paranoid Survive) defines a strategic inflection point as a changing of the rules of the game resulting in a massive shift in the way business is conducted. As an example, consider the impact the PC and the Internet had on changing the way business is done in many different companies and industries. HR/recruiting is now going through its own strategic inflection point.
» Continue reading "Your Future: Embracing the Strategic Inflection Point"
10 Ways to Still Get Search Fees
Topics: Recruiting
In a recent article, 10 Ways to Avoid Paying Search Fees, I made the case that larger companies have targeted third-party recruiter (TPR) expenses as a major cost-saving opportunity. Up until a few years ago, my own prediction was that success was unlikely until these companies started aggressively pursuing less active candidates. While it might take a few more years, this fundamental shift is now underway.
» Continue reading "10 Ways to Still Get Search Fees"
If Hiring Is #1, Workforce Planning Must Be #2
Topics: Sourcing
The following are the results of a survey taken by over 100 hiring managers and 200 recruiters. How would you have answered the questions? After you read the results, you'll be asked to determine what year the survey was taken.
» Continue reading "If Hiring Is #1, Workforce Planning Must Be #2"
10 Ways to Avoid Paying Search Fees
Topics: Managing, Recruiting
The easy performance improvements are over. As the hiring market recovers, corporate recruiting departments will be called upon to handle more work with fewer trained recruiters and with fewer good people applying. Recruiting managers who adjust for this imbalance now will be able to minimize the impact of a recovering labor market.
» Continue reading "10 Ways to Avoid Paying Search Fees"
Why Metrics Don't Matter Anymore, or Are You Missing the Big Picture?
Topics: Managing, Recruiting
Doing the wrong things more efficiently is not a good thing -- even if you do them well. [You might want to read that opening sentence again: it's a key part of this interactive article. There are a few questions based on this at the end. If you answer them, even incorrectly, they'll entitle you to a free guest pass at one of my upcoming public workshops. We're in Boston on May 26 and Washington, DC on June 23rd. The point of this article is to get everyone to start thinking about problems from a different perspective. So make your answers as odd and as different as you can possibly imagine.]
» Continue reading "Why Metrics Don't Matter Anymore, or Are You Missing the Big Picture?"
Hardball Recruiting, Part 4: Negotiating and Closing Offers
Topics: Recruiting
This is the fourth and final part in my "hardball recruiting" article series. We're down to one or two final candidates, and the offer process is about to begin in earnest.
» Continue reading "Hardball Recruiting, Part 4: Negotiating and Closing Offers"
Hardball Recruiting, Part 3: Influencing Hiring Managers
Topics: Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
This is the third in a four-part series on hardball recruiting. The topic of next week's final installment will be how to negotiate and close offers. If you're dealing with mid-level staff or more experienced positions, you'll need to become an expert at hardball recruiting.
» Continue reading "Hardball Recruiting, Part 3: Influencing Hiring Managers"
Hardball Recruiting, Part 2: Addressing Mid-stage Concerns
Topics: Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
Corporate and third-party recruiters can dramatically improve personal performance by increasing their control and influence at each step in the hiring process. This includes how you take the initial assignment, how you present candidates, and how you close the deal. The best way to do this is to become a true partner in the hiring process, rather than just a vendor submitting resumes.
» Continue reading "Hardball Recruiting, Part 2: Addressing Mid-stage Concerns"
Hardball Recruiting: Getting Back to Basics
Topics: Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
Now that recruiters have to recruit again, it's worthwhile dusting off the old recruiter training manual and getting back to basics. To maximize their effectiveness, recruiters must understand and follow the unwritten golden rule of headhunting -- a.k.a. "hardball recruiting" -- revealed in today's article.
» Continue reading "Hardball Recruiting: Getting Back to Basics"
The Hidden Secret to Better Recruiting
Topics: Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
"Do you have any more candidates" This is possibly the worst thing a client can say to you if you're a recruiter attempting to find out how well your candidates did.
» Continue reading "The Hidden Secret to Better Recruiting"
Using the One-Question Interview to Recruit Top People, Assess Potential, and More
Topics: Assessment, Interviewing, Recruiting
[Note: This is a rather technical article on how to improve your interviewing and recruiting skills. This information will be important to recruiters who want to find better people, learn how to recruit and negotiate offers, and increase their influence with their hiring manager clients. Do not read this article if none of these apply. - Lou Adler]
Using the One-Question Interview to Recruit Top People, Assess Potential, and More
Topics: Interviewing, Recruiting
[Note: This is a rather technical article on how to improve your interviewing and recruiting skills. This information will be important to recruiters who want to find better people, learn how to recruit and negotiate offers, and increase their influence with their hiring manager clients. Do not read this article if none of these apply. -- Lou Adler]
Why You Must Hire Top Employees, Not Top Candidates
Topics: Assessment, Sourcing
If you do things better, you'll get a nice raise, a pat on the back, some recognition, maybe even a promotion. If you do better things, you'll become famous.
» Continue reading "Why You Must Hire Top Employees, Not Top Candidates"
Why You Must Hire Top Employees, Not Top Candidates
Topics: Interviewing
[Note: Someone sent me a note recently with the observation that there are frequently two themes in my articles -- one obvious and one hidden. This person also suggested that I should reveal the hidden theme, so people would get more out of the articles. As a test, I've decided to reveal the second idea in this article at the end. You might want to read this article with that in mind, and see if you can guess the second theme before completing the article. To make it even more interesting, I've added a third, less obvious theme in this article -- tied to a contest. If you'd like to win a free autographed copy of my book and two guest passes for any of our upcoming public workshops, just send in your ideas, with some justification, to info@adlerconcepts.com or post a review in the ER Forum. I hope this makes the article more interesting. -- Lou Adler]
» Continue reading "Why You Must Hire Top Employees, Not Top Candidates"
Don't Let Tactics Drive Strategy
Topics: Managing, Recruiting
Moral of today's story: Don't let tactics drive strategy. Don't mistake activity for progress.
» Continue reading "Don't Let Tactics Drive Strategy"
ATS Survey Results: Why You Must Defend Your Desktop
Topics: Sourcing
This is an experiential and interactive article. Another first, but that's not the real point. Stay with me on this, if you can.
» Continue reading "ATS Survey Results: Why You Must Defend Your Desktop"
The Science of Recruiting - Part 10: Closing and Negotiating Offers - Advanced
Topics: The Science of Recruiting, Negotiating, Recruiting
Sometimes candidates say no. Sometimes they say it when you first call. This isn't so bad. When they say it when you're just about to make an offer, or have already made the offer, it is really bad. But don't lose total hope; there are still some things you can do to try to recover from this fateful event. The Science of Recruiting is, after-all, built on sound principles to guide the recruiter through the landmines and pitfalls of hiring top people.
» Continue reading "The Science of Recruiting - Part 10: Closing and Negotiating Offers - Advanced"
10 Outside-the-Box Wacky Ideas for Hiring Better People
Topics: Networking, Recruiting, Sourcing
Over the past few years I've made some pretty wild assertions on these pages about how to hire better people. While they have caused quite a stir, and despite the inevitable nay-saying, they've all proved out to be extremely effective. Here are my choices for the top 10 wackiest ideas on how to hire better people.
» Continue reading "10 Outside-the-Box Wacky Ideas for Hiring Better People"
The Science of Recruiting - Part 9: Negotiating and Closing Offers - The Set Up
Topics: The Science of Recruiting, Negotiating, Recruiting
Now we're down to one or two final candidates, and the offer process is about to begin in earnest. If you've uncovered the candidate's key concerns as described in earlier articles in this Science of Recruiting series you know what you have to do to move the process to closure.
» Continue reading "The Science of Recruiting - Part 9: Negotiating and Closing Offers - The Set Up"
Defend Your Desktop: Help Design Your Next Applicant Tracking System
Topics: Sourcing
Making hiring top talent a systematic process requires some bold initiatives on the part of the HR/recruiting department.
» Continue reading "Defend Your Desktop: Help Design Your Next Applicant Tracking System"
Why Your Hiring Strategy Must Map to Your Business Strategy
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
"Each year China produces as many engineers and scientists as the United States does -- and while its numbers are going up, America's are going down."
-- Fortune, February 23, 2004.
This is serious stuff that must be considered now. But how many HR/recruiting departments have a five-year hiring plan that supports the company's business strategy and addresses issues like this one? What about a one-year plan? How many recruiting departments wait until a requisition is approved before they even start to look for people?
» Continue reading "Why Your Hiring Strategy Must Map to Your Business Strategy"
The Science of Recruiting - Part 8: Influencing Hiring Managers - The Hiring Decision
Topics: The Science of Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
You can't afford to do searches over again. After you've presented 3-5 solid, maybe even superior candidates, the worst thing a manager can say is, "Do you have any more candidates?" Preventing this is one of the reasons why you must be able to influence hiring managers at every step in the hiring process.
How to Win Candidates and Influence Clients
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing, Working With Hiring Managers
Here's a basic principle worth considering: a recruiter's performance is based largely on the quality of the last candidate recommended. How well you do here depends primarily on how well you handled taking the job assignment.
» Continue reading "How to Win Candidates and Influence Clients"
The Science of Recruiting - Part 7: Influencing Hiring Managers: How You Present Candidates Matters
Topics: The Science of Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
Recruiters must be able to influence hiring managers at every step in the hiring process. It starts when the job description is put together, it continues with the presentation of candidates, and ends with leading the candidate selection process. In the previous segment of this series the concept of taking performance-based job descriptions was presented. These differ from traditional job descriptions in that they describe what the person taking the job must do, or achieve, to be considered a successful hire. This allows for more accurate assessments and the ability to create a superior job match, a core principle involved in hiring top talent. In this edition of the Science of Recruiting, techniques will be described on how to use the candidate presentation to describe this critical job match. This is a big step in a recruiter's evolution in becoming a true partner with their hiring manager clients. It also sets the stage for leading the debriefing session, the subject of the next article in this series.
The Science of Recruiting - Part 6: Influencing Hiring Managers - Taking the Assignment
Topics: The Science of Recruiting, Taking the Assignment, Working With Hiring Managers
Influencing hiring managers is as important as influencing candidates. If hiring managers won't take your advice you shouldn't be a recruiter. The interviewing and assessment process is not a perfect science. So recruiters need to guide managers along, insuring that the best available candidate gets hired. You can't afford to spend your time showing hiring managers an endless stream of candidates until the perfect one magically appears. Or, until they're so worn down they can't tell the difference.
Use the PEI Process and Become a Better Recruiter in Four Hours
Topics: Interviewing, Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
This is big. This is the first multi-multimedia article on the performance evaluation interview (PEI) process ever published on ERE, or maybe anywhere else for that matter. Even bigger is that I'm about to introduce the single best way for you to become a better recruiter before the day is over.
» Continue reading "Use the PEI Process and Become a Better Recruiter in Four Hours"
The Science of Recruiting - Part 5: Creating Job Stretch
Topics: The Science of Recruiting, Networking, Recruiting
The best candidates always require more information as they move through the hiring process. It has been my observation that when a candidate decides they're no longer interested in a job it's because they don't have enough of the right information. The recruiter is responsible for getting it to them.
» Continue reading "The Science of Recruiting - Part 5: Creating Job Stretch"
The Wrong Solution for the Right Problem
Topics: Sourcing
It's important to segregate problems associated with implementing a systematic approach for hiring top talent into two different groups. The first involves the effectiveness, or quality, of the process itself. The second addresses the consistency, or how well the users implement the process. In this case, users are the recruiters, hiring managers and members of the interviewing team. Overall success depends on the two factors of the process: quality effectiveness and user consistency.
» Continue reading "The Wrong Solution for the Right Problem"
Isn't It Time for HR to Become a Strategic Partner? Here's How!
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
In his book, Only the Paranoid Survive, Intel's Andrew Grove describes the importance of "strategic inflection points" as both historical and mind-changing. Strategic inflection points are events that fundamentally alter the nature of a business or profoundly change the rules of the game. The introduction of the PC was one of these. So was the Internet. Cell phones with email, PDA and camera functions are probably another, especially when you add virtual keyboards and screens.
» Continue reading "Isn't It Time for HR to Become a Strategic Partner? Here's How!"
The Science of Recruiting - Part 4: Uncovering and Handling Major Candidate Concerns
Topics: The Science of Recruiting, Networking, Recruiting
The best active and passive candidates always have multiple opportunities. As a result they need more convincing that the job you're offering is better than the other opportunities they're considering. Recruiting is not about finding and hiring candidates who need another job. Anybody can do this. Recruiting is about influencing top candidates who don't need your job to consider it anyway, and then keeping them involved at every subsequent step in the hiring process.
Become Famous! Make Hiring Top Talent a Systematic Business Process
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
No one would disagree that hiring top people needs to become a more consistent and systematic business process. Too much time is wasted by too many recruiters and hiring managers doing too many different things, many of them counterproductive.
» Continue reading "Become Famous! Make Hiring Top Talent a Systematic Business Process"
The Science of Recruiting - Part 3: Overcoming Basic Candidate Concerns
Topics: The Science of Recruiting, Networking, Recruiting
The best active and passive candidates always have multiple opportunities. As a result they need more convincing that the job you're offering is better than the other opportunities they're considering. For passive candidates, they need to be convinced that your job is even worth evaluating. Convincing these top candidates to proceed in the hiring process and then to accept a fair offer is what recruiters need to do to be successful. Recruiting is not about finding and hiring candidates who need another job. Anybody can do this. These candidates will do whatever you suggest.
» Continue reading "The Science of Recruiting - Part 3: Overcoming Basic Candidate Concerns"
A Look Back at 2004 (Yes, 2004) From a CEO's Perspective
Topics: Interviewing, Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
To: The Recruiting Department
From: The CEO
Date: 1/1/2005 I am immensely proud of the work done in 2004 by each and every member of our company's recruiting department. It has been one outstanding year, and you all are due enormous praise for doing a remarkable job this past year. And what a year it has been!
» Continue reading "A Look Back at 2004 (Yes, 2004) From a CEO's Perspective"
The Science of Recruiting - Part 2: Networking
Topics: The Science of Recruiting, Networking, Recruiting
If you want to make Performance-based Hiring a reality, having a steady source of top candidates is essential. Networking is the key to pulling this off. To me, networking represents the difference between good and great recruiting. I don't look at job boards as a primary source of top candidates. Every now and then you'll find one, but not frequently enough to count on this source. However, networking, when properly done, can be the prime source of all your best people. How to do it well is the key. This will be the topic of this edition of the Science of Recruiting. And as you'll soon discover, it most certainly is a science.
» Continue reading "The Science of Recruiting - Part 2: Networking"
The Science of Recruiting - Part 1: Making First Contact
Topics: The Science of Recruiting, Networking, Recruiting
Welcome to our new series of articles, The Science of Recruiting. Over the next ten editions, we'll look at every skill and technique necessary to be a great recruiter. At the end of it all, you'll have a sense of what you need to do to take your performance and success as a recruiter up another notch or two, or maybe more.
» Continue reading "The Science of Recruiting - Part 1: Making First Contact"
Magical Hiring Formula: Just Measure These Three Core Traits
Topics: Interviewing, Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
Based on surveys and operational reviews we've conducted over these past 10 years, it appears that there is one common hiring mistake which just about everybody has encountered: hiring someone who is competent but unmotivated to do the required work.
» Continue reading "Magical Hiring Formula: Just Measure These Three Core Traits"
Job Matching and the Universal Core Trait of Success
Topics: Interviewing, Performance Profiles
Here's an idea. Let's ask 25,000 people from all walks of life, in every profession, in every job, in every industry, in every country, what they think it takes to be successful in their field of expertise.
» Continue reading "Job Matching and the Universal Core Trait of Success"
Boom! How to Handle the 2004 Hiring Explosion
Topics: Managing, Recruiting, Sourcing
[Note: Recruiters, you might want to send this article to your boss, your clients, and your CEO. It's about your well-being in 2004.] Here's some holiday advice for hiring managers and HR/recruiting managers, and anyone else who works with recruiters or will need recruiters to help them hire people in 2004:
» Continue reading "Boom! How to Handle the 2004 Hiring Explosion"
Why Forward-Looking Metrics Are Needed in a Changing Economy
I just read an article about the supposed "benefits" of the steel tariff, but which also reminded me that there are really three types of metrics.
» Continue reading "Why Forward-Looking Metrics Are Needed in a Changing Economy"
The Secrets of Hiring Top People Finally Revealed!
Topics: Interviewing, Recruiting
Consider this hiring puzzle: Some companies have created extensive competency models, but haven't seen much difference in the quality of their new hires. Other companies have started top-grading, but also haven't seen much difference in the quality of their new hires. Still other companies rely on the tried and true behavioral interview and -- not surprisingly -- haven't seen the quality of their new hires increase by much.
» Continue reading "The Secrets of Hiring Top People Finally Revealed!"
The Time Value of Time, and How to Get Hiring Managers to Spend It
Topics: Assessment, Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers
If you conduct a root cause analysis of hiring mistakes, the following big issues stand out:
» Continue reading "The Time Value of Time, and How to Get Hiring Managers to Spend It"
How To Use the Interview to Increase Your Influence with Hiring Managers
Topics: Interviewing, Working With Hiring Managers
One of the common concerns I hear from recruiters is that they want more influence with their hiring manager clients.
» Continue reading "How To Use the Interview to Increase Your Influence with Hiring Managers"
If You Must Use Job Boards, Here's How!
Topics: Sourcing
Job boards could be more effective if they prevented unqualified candidates from ever applying for an open job in the first place. Here's one idea on how they could do this: kill candidate agents, and limit to three the number of jobs a candidate can apply for daily.
» Continue reading "If You Must Use Job Boards, Here's How!"
Red Alert: Why You Must Stop Using Job Descriptions, Today!
Topics: Managing, Performance Profiles, Sourcing, Working With Hiring Managers
As most of you know, I don't hide my beliefs very well. For example, in recent articles I've been lambasting job boards as being the number one way not to hire good people. But actually, job boards are number two on the list of obstacles preventing companies from hiring top talent. Number one is the traditional job description.
» Continue reading "Red Alert: Why You Must Stop Using Job Descriptions, Today!"
The Hiring 2.0 Revolution: Are You a Rebel or a Tory?
Topics: Interviewing, Recruiting
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
-- Yogi Berra
In the thoughts that follow, one fork in the road leads to some minor changes in the hiring process and lots of activity, but the status quo is preserved. The other leads to a more vibrant future, and hiring top people becomes a systematic, Six Sigma business process. This is the Hiring 2.0 revolution.
» Continue reading "The Hiring 2.0 Revolution: Are You a Rebel or a Tory?"
Hiring 2.0: Moneyball, and Why You Must Defy Conventional Wisdom
Topics: Networking, Recruiting, Sourcing
Hiring 2.0 is the operating system for the next generation of hiring tools. The objective of Hiring 2.0 is to establish the standards for making hiring top talent a systematic business process.
» Continue reading "Hiring 2.0: Moneyball, and Why You Must Defy Conventional Wisdom"
Why You Should Stop Using Job Boards, Today!
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
If everyone stopped using job boards to find candidates, everything would start to improve within one week. This is one of those things that can jump start the Hiring 2.0 revolution (Hiring 2.0 is the concept that hiring top people can by a systematic formal business process.).
» Continue reading "Why You Should Stop Using Job Boards, Today!"
Implementing Lean Hiring: The Revolution Gets Serious
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
The goal of the hiring revolution is nothing less than making hiring top talent a systematic business process. Everything else is secondary -- processing resumes, reducing costs, improving time to fill, even metrics.
» Continue reading "Implementing Lean Hiring: The Revolution Gets Serious"
The Hiring Revolution: Setting the Stage
Topics: Recruiting
The systematic hiring of top people is the primary goal and mission of the hiring revolution. Read last week's article if you need any proof as to why you need to join this revolution. It's about your future.
» Continue reading "The Hiring Revolution: Setting the Stage"
There's Going To Be a Revolution
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing, Working With Hiring Managers
Dateline: New York City. Sometime in the distant future. Band of 176 Recruiters Start the Hiring Revolution This is a strange but true tale about 176 conspirators who started the hiring revolution. Their objective was nothing less than making hiring top talent a formal Six Sigma process.
» Continue reading "There's Going To Be a Revolution"
The Emperor Has No Clothes
Topics: Recruiting, Sourcing
Are our hiring processes built upon a pillar of salt? I was thinking about this while stuck in L.A. traffic recently, and it became clear to me that we're solving the wrong hiring problem.
» Continue reading "The Emperor Has No Clothes"
Networking Semi-Candidates
Topics: Networking, Sourcing
As many of you know, I advocate (and use) a policy of sourcing that emphasizes semi-candidates. Semi-candidates are either semi-active candidates who look on the job boards infrequently; or semi-passive candidates who don't look at all, but want a recruiter to call.
» Continue reading "Networking Semi-Candidates"
Why Recruiters Are Even More Important Now That the Recovery Is Finally Here
Topics: Recruiting
This was going to be an article on how to systematize one-on-one recruiter skills. It would have included topics like how to increase your effectiveness with hiring managers and how to become more of a career counselor to top candidates.
» Continue reading "Why Recruiters Are Even More Important Now That the Recovery Is Finally Here"
Systematizing Semi-Sourcing
Semi-sourcing is a recruitment technique that maximizes candidate quality while minimizing time to hire and cost per hire. Most current recruiting programs focus their efforts on finding a few good people in large pools of active candidates - for example, by using job board advertising. Surprisingly, most companies continue to spend too much money and time on this tactic and are having limited success.
» Continue reading "Systematizing Semi-Sourcing"
These Secrets of Semi-Sourcing Will Change the Way You Find and Hire Top Candidates Forever
Are you aware that you are one of 10,000 people who saw this headline?
Are you aware that you are one of 1,000 people who decided to read this article?
Are you aware that you are about to be only one of 100 people who will respond to the offer I'm making at the end of this article? As a result of responding to this offer, you are about to become a better recruiter. Enjoy!
The Sourcing Sweet Spot: How to Find the Best Without Really Trying
While there are only three types of candidates in the world, there's a world of difference in how you find and hire each type. If you're not seeing enough good candidates, it's possible you're using the wrong tactic to find the right candidate.
» Continue reading "The Sourcing Sweet Spot: How to Find the Best Without Really Trying"
Using Performance Profiles to Improve Recruiter Effectiveness - Part 2
Topics: Performance Profiles, Recruiting
Part II
It is my contention that the only way to systematically hire superior people is to clearly define superior performance before beginning any new job search. In Part 1 of this two-part series, the idea of using a performance profile instead of a job description was introduced as a means to accomplish this. The benefits of using a performance profile include more accurate assessments, a bigger pool of top candidates to choose from, significant reductions in time to hire, and -- by clarifying expectations upfront -- a more highly motivated and competent workforce.
» Continue reading "Using Performance Profiles to Improve Recruiter Effectiveness - Part 2"
Performance Profiles: The Key to Hiring the Best - Part 1
Topics: Performance Profiles
Part I
I've been a recruiter, recruiting trainer, and recruiting consultant for over 25 years. Before that (when I worked for a living), I had 12 different jobs in 10 years with three different Fortune 500 companies. During this 35-year span, I've either hired to work for me, or placed, well over 500 people, conducted over 2,500 interviews, and debriefed over 5,000 candidates and hiring managers.
» Continue reading "Performance Profiles: The Key to Hiring the Best - Part 1"
The Best Way to Find Top People Is Still Networking
Topics: Networking, Sourcing
If everybody knows that one thing is true, why do so many people try something else?
Most companies will tell you that their employee referral program is the best way to find top talent. Most recruiters, including me, will tell you that networking with former and current candidates is the best way to find top talent.
» Continue reading "The Best Way to Find Top People Is Still Networking"
My Favorite Interview Question
Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing, Interviewing
Let me describe the single best interview question of all time: "Can you please describe your most significant accomplishment?" It's a great way to start an interview. I spend about 10 minutes on this question, gaining insight in the results achieved, the environment, and the process used to achieve the results. I then repeat the question to gain broader insight into the trend of team and individual accomplishments and see how they relate to specific job needs.
» Continue reading "My Favorite Interview Question"
The Best Interview Question of All Time
Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Interviewing
Over the course of the past 20 years, I've been searching for - among other things - the single best question to ask in an interview. What I wanted to create was a One-Question Interview, a stand-alone query that would pierce through the veneer of generalizations, overcome typical candidate nervousness, minimize the impact of the candidate's personality on the interviewer, eliminate the exaggeration which many candidates adopt as an interviewing ploy and actually determine if the candidate is competent and motivated to do the work required. I also wanted this question to begin the recruiting process, convincing the candidate by the question itself that the person asking it was sophisticated and professional, and that the company involved was a great place to grow a career.
» Continue reading "The Best Interview Question of All Time"
The Dufus Factor
Topics: Assessment, Interviewing
Interviewing for a job is a lot like a first date - neither party wants to look like a dufus. But it happens all too frequently, and I'd like to offer a few tips on how to avoid it.
» Continue reading "The Dufus Factor"
Would You Like Fries With That Hire?
Topics: Recruiting
As a recruiter, I find myself wondering why managers often approach the hiring process as though they were ordering fast food at the drive-through. First they scan the menu to see what's offered, then they pick the top three or four things they want. "I'll take one MBA, with a BSEE, a 3.5 GPA or better, and don't forget three years of marketing experience." While ordering this way at local hamburger joint almost always produces exactly what you want, it doesn't work nearly as well for hiring.
» Continue reading "Would You Like Fries With That Hire?"
Shaking Things Up With Outrageous Ads
Topics: Sourcing
I wrote a great recruiting ad the other day. Maybe you saw it - maybe you even answered it! It was the one that asked the candidate to fast-forward to next year and listen to a boss raving about all the terrific things that candidate had achieved during the past twelve months. I closed by saying, "If you'd like this story to be yours, send in your resume..."
Search by Keyword:
Recruiter Boot Camp
- Learn the latest sourcing and networking techniques
- Use new techniques to take an assignment
- Defend your candidates from dumb decisions
2009 Performance-based Hiring LIVE Tour
- Discover new sourcing techniques
- Learn what drives on-the-job success
- How to close on opportunity not compensation
- Find out how to use deep job-matching techniques
- Recruiter Diagnostic
Are You a Great Recruiter? Take the Recruiter Diagnostic to find out now. - Free Career Website 5-Point Evaluation
Is your career web site an asset or liability? Find out with our free 5-point evaluation. - The Recruiting and Hiring Process Audit
Click to download the slides from Adler Group & Hireability's discussion "Do You Have What it Takes to Hire Top Talent?" - Performance Profile Preparation Guide
Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating performance profiles including some great sample. Use this when taking your next assignment and discover how to change the selection criteria from skills to performance - The Performance-based Interview Guide
A complete Benchmark Interview Kit, including a Technical Product Manager Performance Profile, Structured Behavioral Event Interview, and a 10-Factor Candidate Assessment. - 10-Factor Candidate Assessment
Download our classic 10-Factor Candidate Assessment for a quick, easy, and most importantly, accurate way to assess the quality of any candidate. - 10-Factor Assessment for Corporate Recruiters
Check the recruiters on your team (or yourself!) with this 10-Factor Assessment for Corporate Recruiters. - The Corporate Recruiting Department 10-Factor Assessment of Critical Deliverables
Check your recruiting team with this 10-Factor Assessment for a Corporate Recruiting Department. - Legal White Paper
Click to download this report on the legal foundation for Performance-based Hiringsm.