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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"
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?"
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"
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?"
Is Your Recruiting Department behind the Eight Ball?
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
The expression "behind the eight ball" refers to a difficult position from which escape is highly unlikely. In pool it's not good to be behind the eight ball because hitting the eight ball first is an automatic loss. Most (not all) recruiting departments are in heavy reaction mode, struggling to keep their heads above water, or out of the line of fire until the economic storm recedes. Most are not investing in the future nor preparing for the turnaround. This mentality is a sure recipe for being well behind the eight ball as this recession clears. There is good news. Most economists agree that we are at or near the bottom of this economic downturn.
» Continue reading "Is Your Recruiting Department behind the Eight Ball?"
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"
Hiring in the Age of Twitter
Topics: Networking, Newsletter
In a past life at a company that shall remain nameless, an employee made the mistake of hitting "reply all" to a corporate announcement instead of forward. Her reply went, not to her close friend as she intended, but to the whole company. While embarrassing, this would not have been a career-limiting move except for the fact that the reply detailed her job search and her urgent desire to get out of her current (insert uncomplimentary adjective here) job.
This led to her dismissal, a highly controversial move, since she was well liked and very good at her job. The point of this article is not to debate the decision, but to simply say: we ain't seen nothing yet. The plethora of social media tools now available, from Facebook to MySpace to Twitter, has led to an extraordinary blending of personal and professional lives in a very public forum which too many people seem to think is private. The latest casualty of this trend is the unfortunate "Cisco Fatty," a candidate who left her interview at Cisco and sent out the following tweet: "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work."
» Continue reading "Hiring in the Age of Twitter"
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"
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"
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"
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
Topics: Newsletter
When I worked in the high tech field in the 1980s and 1990s, IBM was the biggest player in the industry. They were the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Their sales pitch went something like this. "Buying IBM is safe." "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." "You'd have to be crazy to choose anybody else!" Even if there were better systems and software on the market (and there absolutely were), for a long time IBM won the lion's share of the business because they convinced managers that buying anything but "Big Blue" was RISKY. Their goal was simply to sow doubt and fear about their competitors.
Guy Kawasaki, who was at the time a famous product marketer at Apple, had the job of breaking through that barrier. He would do outrageous things to shake up his competition. He would send very expensive custom mailings to the product managers at IBM thanking them for their support of Apple. These mailing weren't addressed directly to the product manager, but rather they were written as if they were being sent to all of Apple's customers, when, in fact, they only went to a few selected product managers at Apple's core competitors. This would create havoc within the competition's marketing departments as they would try to invent even more expensive campaigns to counter what was perceived as a huge attack. IBM wasted a lot of time, money, people, and resources chasing Guy's phantom promotions. He would then focus his energy on activities that really made a difference with his customers and, not surprisingly, he won market share. Two lessons for Guy's antics: first, focus on activities that really make a difference with your customer; second, be positive and project that positivity into your customer, markets, and candidates.
» Continue reading "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt"
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.
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"
"Early-Bird" Strategies for Sourcing Top Sales People, or Sourcing Secrets of Top Recruiters - Lessons from a Top Candidate's Search
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting, Sourcing
Performance-based Hiring is about recruiting top performers, and in today's economy recruiters and companies have a chance to pick up some really great talent. The key word here is "chance." One prerequisite to finding and recruiting top talent is that recruiters must understand the mentality of a top performer. If I had to sum it up in one word it would be "Picky"! Top performers want the right job, not just any job. The job has to offer a challenge and be with the right company and the right people, not to mention offering the right compensation and benefits package. While timing is important, top performers won't rush into taking just any job. They are confident in their capabilities, and their job search is part of an overall master plan.
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?"
The First 100 Days - Recruiting in 2009
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
Do you think our new president will have it bad in his first 100 days? The recruiting industry is looking even worse. In late December we launched our annual survey and the results continue to roll in. We're keeping the survey open for a few more weeks so we can get the broadest picture possible of what's happening out there. You still have time to participate in the survey and receive the executive summary of our results, so if you haven't had a chance to fill it out, please take a moment to do it now by clicking here. Don't delay.
» Continue reading "The First 100 Days - Recruiting in 2009"
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"
Everything You Wanted to Know about Recruiting in 2009, but Were Afraid to Ask!
Topics: Newsletter
Yes, I know the title is a bit audacious, but we at The Alder Group absolutely are not afraid to ask for help. I'll be the first to admit that I can't quite handle this topic alone. That's why this week's article is designed to entice you to participate in our annual 2009 Recruiting Outlook and Challenges Survey. You can take this year's survey by visiting http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB228MEAHSVHN. It's live and ready to go right now.
» Continue reading "Everything You Wanted to Know about Recruiting in 2009, but Were Afraid to Ask!"
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)"
A Review of the Los Angeles Sourcing Summit
Topics: Newsletter, Sourcing
I know it's a long way to travel to Los Angeles, especially for our East Coast readers, but last Wednesday you missed a great opportunity to attend our first ever half-day sourcing summit. So for the benefit of those who couldn't make it, I'll provide a short summary of some of the "must know" sourcing ideas presented by our panel of experts. When we first conceived of the idea it was an experiment of sorts. Of course, that was also before the economy started heading south, companies like Citibank announced record layoffs (over 52,000 this month), and AIG got its first bailout check. We were a little concerned that sourcing might be at the bottom of recruiters' shopping lists this holiday season, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that interest was still high. While entry-level jobs are a little easier to fill, there is still the issue of weeding through increased candidate flow to find the real gems. Skilled labor is, and will always be, a challenge to find, even in a slowing economy. In fact, recruiters reported that getting skilled labor to move in this market is even more challenging. Recruiters have to use all their skills to make it happen. So our conclusion is that the war for top talent is hardly over, but the battlefield has made some dramatic shifts. In this week's article, I'll share some of the insights and key messages delivered at the summit to help companies build talent pipelines and capture the best passive talent available.
» Continue reading "A Review of the Los Angeles Sourcing Summit"
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"
Brain Trusts, RIFs and Performance-based Hiring
Topics: Newsletter
Today in board rooms around the world, business leaders are meeting to make plans on how to best weather the current economic crisis. None of these seasoned leaders, however, truly know the extent of the financial crisis or how long it will last. Their strategies will include such things as cutting costs, increasing marketing expenditures, selling off assets, buying struggling businesses, and reducing – or in some cases expanding – their work forces. These decisions will quickly trickle down through their organization creating a whole host of emotional reactions. In some cases there will be paralysis as leaders struggle to define a clear direction. If you happen to be in one of the few recession-proof industries like health care, you are probably counting your blessings. If not, you are wondering what changes you need to make to thrive in the current and coming storm.
» Continue reading "Brain Trusts, RIFs and Performance-based Hiring"
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"
Bailing Out the Recruiting Industry - a Time to Advance or Retreat?
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
In battles, victory almost always goes to the bold and confident. Many companies are feeling the strain of the economic situation, but how will the bold react? Last Friday was week one of our October Recruiter Boot Camp Online. The economic bailout bill had just been signed into law and I believe there was a short sigh of relief followed by a whole lot of anxiety. We asked our new class of eager recruiters to identify any challenges they now face as a result of the growing economic/financial crisis. Below are some of their comments:
» Continue reading "Bailing Out the Recruiting Industry - a Time to Advance or Retreat?"
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.
Are Recruiters Like Used Car Sales People?
Topics: Newsletter
Okay, be honest. Did you cringe when you read the title? Do you hate to think about being compared to a used car sales person? After all, used car sales people used to stand for everything that's shady, shabby, and shifty about sales. However, just like recruiting, a lot has changed in the used car profession. Ever heard of Carmax? Talk about a company that has transformed an industry! And just like recruiting, used car sales also has been transformed by the Internet. While people still put car ads in newspapers, most now go to Craigslist, autotrader.com, usedcars.com or carsforsale.com. If you are selling a car, you place an ad on-line just like you used to in the newspaper. And guess what? Just like in recruiting, most ads are boring, full of acronyms and abbreviations, and they all look the same. And just like in recruiting, the person who writes a creative or compelling ad has a competitive advantage.
» Continue reading "Are Recruiters Like Used Car Sales People?"
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"
Barack Obama, The OFCCP, and The Presidency
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
Note: this article has raised some controversy. Feel free to comment on Lou's Recruiters Roundtable blog.
It seems that an increasing number of our clients are undergoing frequent, and in some cases constant, audits by the OFCCP regarding their hiring practices. The audits are costly, nerve-wracking, time consuming, and often monopolize the entire focus of the department under scrutiny. This week the Democratic National Convention roared into my newly adopted home town of Denver, CO. It's quite the spectacle. The streets are closed, security has never been tighter, and the excitement is hard to contain. Michelle Obama hit a home run on Monday night with her speech. Edward Kennedy never looked statelier. Hillary Clinton took the podium on Tuesday, and Thursday we'll hear from the star of the show, Barack Obama himself. No matter what your political persuasion (and I won't reveal mine in this article), I can't help feeling a bit proud of our country for selecting a diverse candidate for the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.
» Continue reading "Barack Obama, The OFCCP, and The Presidency"
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"
Go for the Gold!!! Shifting from a Traditional, Reactive Corporate Recruitment Model to a Strategic, Proactive Framework
Topics: The Science of Recruiting, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting
In the spirit of the Summer Olympic Games, let's go for a gold level of service in recruitment – striving to be winners by providing best-in-class service to your clients.
Recruiting has been in a state of change for several years. As Applicant Tracking Systems have found their place in the hiring process, leaders are shifting their focus to finding ways to improve service levels to both candidates and hiring leaders. While there is no one solution for this next level of problem solving, one area of focus getting attention is the notion of shifting from the traditional, reactive corporate recruitment model to a more strategic, proactive framework. Currently this approach has a few different paths that it is taking – for some, it is a complete organizational redesign of the recruitment team, creating internal sourcing and research groups, alignment by function or job type, and one point of contact for hiring leaders; for others, they are dabbling in the concepts, applying what makes sense for their organization. Either way, it presents change of varying degrees with the potential for exciting results.
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"
Oddball Sourcing
Topics: Newsletter, Sourcing
The very fact that you were enticed to read this article proves that Oddball Sourcing works. Just the nature of the title allowed us to attract a different audience. As you may have guessed, we're looking for some oddballs – recruiters and sourcers with open minds, creative approaches, and somewhat odd tendencies. You know who you are, and apparently you've got what it takes to be an Oddball Sourcer or you wouldn't be reading this article.
Some people just think differently. Einstein developed most of his theories while watching the sun rise and set. He asked a lot of questions that other people weren't asking like, "How does a beam of light travel through the universe?" and voila – he invented the Theory of Relativity. I recently listened to the book on CD, Freakonomics, by Steven Leavitt. The entire book is about using common sense, logic, and data to answer some interesting and challenging questions. For instance:
» Continue reading "Oddball Sourcing"
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"
How Fast Can You Respond to Change?
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
"Even if you're on the right track,
you'll get run over if you just sit there."
– Will Rogers"If everything is under control,
you are going too slow."
– Mario Andretti
It is a cliché these days to say that the only constant in the business world is change, but that doesn't make it any less true. Here are some great statements about the way conventional wisdom gets turned on its head:
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
– Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Patent Office, 1899"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
– Harry Morris Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers, 1927"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
– Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
– Bill Gates, 1981
If these guys can get it so wrong, is it any wonder that the rest of us poor mortals have trouble predicting what's going to happen next? Who could have foreseen the depth and breadth of the current housing slump and its affect on the economy 12 months ago? How often do you see a merger or acquisition coming from down in the trenches? How many of us have seen our companies go from a hiring frenzy to a hiring freeze in just a few months?
» Continue reading "How Fast Can You Respond to Change?"
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"
Three Common Sense Secrets to Hiring Outstanding Sales People
Topics: Interview Training, Newsletter, Recruiting
Over the years, we've helped many companies apply the principles of Performance-based Hiringsm to find talented and productive sales people. When we first engage with these companies their conversations often begin with similar words… "Help me find sales people who are aggressive, multitaskers, closers who don't take ‘No' for an answer. It would be great if they came from our competitors and brought with them a few clients, contacts, or knowledge that will help them hit the ground running. And oh, by the way, I need them NOW." At this point in the conversation we have to intervene and help our clients think differently about the process of consistently hiring outstanding sales professionals. Below are three common sense secrets for doing just that:
» Continue reading "Three Common Sense Secrets to Hiring Outstanding Sales People"
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"
Perfect Candidates and Other Mythical Creatures
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
Most of us outgrow our imaginary friends. We give up Santa Claus in elementary school, lose faith in the tooth fairy once we have our adult teeth, and stop believing in unicorns and leprechauns well before puberty. Beloved childhood fairy and fantasy tales are put away and saved for the next generation.
» Continue reading "Perfect Candidates and Other Mythical Creatures"
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.
Recruiting Darwin Awards – Not Everybody Evolves
Topics: Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiting
Several years ago my children introduced me to the Darwin Awards. We've had a lot of fun reading some of the stories of the winners (or should I say "losers"?). These awards go to members of the human race who do something so dumb that they end up removing themselves from the gene pool – hence the name. For instance, take the guy who had a fuse in his car blow out on a long trip. He had the bright idea to use a bullet to replace the fuse. The logic was sound – it's made of metal and conducts electricity, doesn't it? Everything was going fine until the bullet heated up and exploded, leaving a big hole in his chest. As we travel the world talking to recruiters and recruiting organizations, I've become aware of some practices that, while not quite as deadly as the above example, do cause one to wonder what people are thinking. In the interest of brevity, I'm going to list just a few of the more egregious examples. I'll stop short of naming names, but know that every example is real.
» Continue reading "Recruiting Darwin Awards – Not Everybody Evolves"
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"
The Antidote for Bad Interviewers
Topics: Interviewing, Newsletter
You've been working hard to put together a strong slate of candidates for a hard-to-fill position, and through networking and sheer force of personality have assembled three qualified individuals. They each have strengths and weaknesses, but they all have been successful in the past achieving the types of goals and completing the types of tasks that need to be done in this job. Your biggest concern: an unpredictable hiring manager. You're never sure just who is going to hit the mark with this manager because it doesn't follow any pattern that you can see. The manager tends to take immediate likes and dislikes to certain candidates for reasons not based on their backgrounds.
» Continue reading "The Antidote for Bad Interviewers"
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"
Seven Deadly Sourcing Sins
Topics: Newsletter
You all know about the seven deadly sins. Commit any one of these and your eternal future may be in jeopardy. Today, I'll reveal the seven deadly sins of sourcing. While their eternal consequences may not be quite so dire, their negative effects on your ability to attract the best talent are an absolute certainty. For those of you who are well versed in classic literature, now would be a good time to recall Dante's seven levels of hell or some of the more graphic Greek tragedies. If I remember correctly they don't end well. So, to avoid similar consequences you might want to pay careful attention to these common sourcing pitfalls:
- Sourcing before understanding the real job. Don't even think about engaging in any sourcing approach without a complete understanding of the job. Here are just a few of the questions that must be answered before starting any sourcing approach:
- Why would someone who is good at this type of work want this particular job?
- What does the person need to do in the job to be considered outstanding?
- What will the person do, learn, and become with this job?
- Why is doing this job at your company better than doing the same job at a competitor?
If you were able to answer these questions with some degree of specificity, you may now proceed to the next six sins. All good sourcing activities require deep job knowledge, so it amazes me how many recruiters expect to attract top talent without it. Your ability to create a compelling pitch, post a killer ad, or convince a candidate who's on the fence to move forward all comes from job knowledge. Job knowledge also allows a recruiter to understand what the benefits are for the candidate (i.e., opportunity, growth, stretch). Otherwise, all you have left is compensation and benefits, and in this market, that's not nearly enough.
» Continue reading "Seven Deadly Sourcing Sins"
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"
Get Ready for the Recovery - Now Is the Best Time to Build a Proactive External Talent Pipeline
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
Now is the time to get ready for the recovery. It may sound strange, but if you have been in recruiting for any period of time, you know that hiring fluctuates—it goes up and down, expands and pauses. These cycles come with the territory. Some shifts are more dramatic than others, and currently it appears we are in a more profound slowdown than we would like. The signs are all around us with the housing crisis, gas prices, and layoffs recently announced in some industries. Some leaders may be quick to question what recruiters are doing when there is little or no recruiting going on. Be ready with this answer: creating a proactive pipeline of great candidates for future openings.
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"
Building Your Personal Recruitment Brand
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
When your clients or hiring managers think of you as a recruiter, what words come to their minds? Reliable? Insightful? Unresponsive? Bureaucratic? Whatever the words, these concepts define our personal recruitment brand. Hiring Managers may not communicate these directly to us in formal meetings, but they definitely share their opinions among their peers. Below is a short quiz which should help you get a jump start on where you stand with your personal recruitment brand. Ask yourself each of the following questions and be honest in your answers. No one’s looking, I promise.
» Continue reading "Building Your Personal Recruitment Brand"
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"
Effectiveness of Recruiting Tools/Techniques
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
It seems like every day you hear about a new recruiting tool or technique. The question is how many of them are really being used by recruiters? And more importantly, how many of them are effective? We asked that question on the Adler Group's Recruiting and Hiring Challenges Survey of 2008 to try to get some sense of how recruiters rate the tools and techniques they are using. The actual question was, “On a 1-5 scale (5 is best) how would you rank the effectiveness of these recruiting tools?” A rating of 3 means pretty effective, 4 means animportant resource, and 5 means an invaluable tool. In analyzing the results, a tool needs a rating of 3 or higher to be considered effective.
» Continue reading "Effectiveness of Recruiting Tools/Techniques"
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"
Plan, Do, Study, and Act - The Foundation for Continuously Improving Recruiting
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
Plan, Do, Study, and Act is Dr. Edward Deming's approach to Total Quality Improvement. If you know anything about The Adler Group, you know that we believe hiring should be a predictable, repeatable business process. We advocate a process called Performance-based Hiring which we firmly believe allows organizations to systematically hire top talent. To make it predictable and repeatable there must be a structured approach to hiring that can be scaleable throughout an organization and a continuous process of planning, doing, studying, and acting to improve upon that process. There are four components to this process including the creation of a Performance Profile for each position, a focus on sourcing top talent (we call this "Talent-Centric Sourcing"), an evidence-based interview using our Two Question Performance-based Interview, as well as an integrated process for recruiting and closing the candidate. In our recent survey we asked candidates to measure the effectiveness of key aspects of the hiring process from the recruiter's perspective by answering the following question:
» Continue reading "Plan, Do, Study, and Act - The Foundation for Continuously Improving Recruiting"
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"
Recruitment and Technology
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
Technology is both the booster and the bane of people-oriented processes. The combination of the major job boards and applicant tracking systems (ATS) has transformed recruiting, but has brought its own set of problems. It's a classic illustration of Michael Hammer's views on information technology. In an article published in 1990 in the Harvard Business Review, the MIT professor made the case that companies focus on fixing the wrong issues, using technology to automate existing work rather than using it to make non-value adding work obsolete. BPR, or business process engineering, postulates that unless you review your processes before implementing new technology, you run the risk of doing the wrong things faster. At the very least, you may add an additional administrative burden without concurrent productivity gains.
» Continue reading "Recruitment and Technology"
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 Metrics
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
Question 12: How would you rank your company in using the following metrics to track performance?
One of the areas we wanted to explore in our recently completed survey was the use of metrics in tracking recruiting effectiveness. We asked recruiters and recruiting managers to rank their use of a particular set of recruiting metrics in tracking their team’s effectiveness. We picked metrics that we considered to be some of the most important indicators of recruiting efficiency and success. These include:
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» Continue reading "Recruiting Metrics"
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"
Winning Despite a Weak Hand
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting
If you've been through our Recruiter Boot Camp, you know that we advise recruiters to stay current on the business events in their industry. In particular, news of layoffs, mergers, spin-offs and acquisitions, or anything that tends to make good employees nervous about their future at their current company. Good recruiters will immediately begin calling into those companies, using the uncertainty about their companies' future as a tool to coax top employees to jump ship. Many employees are willing to explore their options in these circumstances, so it's a technique that can be very successful.
» Continue reading "Winning Despite a Weak Hand"
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:
The Year of the Race!--Recruiting, Restructuring, and Rebuilding
Topics: Managing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting
2008 is the year of races, including the all-important race for the Presidency of the United States. As the presidential hopefuls gear up for their longest job interview ever, we shouldn't forget that the race for top quality talent in our own organizations has already begun, and candidates are bolting out of the gate at a tremendous clip. Unlike the presidential race, where now nine hopeful candidates are vying for one top job, the talent race is upside down with hundreds of thousands of candidates and even more open positions. As one pundit put it last year, "The talent wars are definitely over and the candidates have won!" Just like the bloated real estate market, we've got a glut of jobs and a shortage of talent (except perhaps in Michigan), and more recruiters than ever pitching their opportunities to an ever shrinking talent pool. Even if the economy dips into the dreaded recession, we'll still have jobs for talented people. It's a buyers market even for average talent, and recruiters are going to have to step up their game if they expect to attract top people. And just for the record... it's always a buyers market for top talent regardless of the position, industry, or economic circumstances.
» Continue reading "The Year of the Race!--Recruiting, Restructuring, and Rebuilding"
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"
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"
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"
Translating Marketing into Recruiting
Topics: Newsletter, Sourcing
Translating Marketing into Recruiting
I've always thought there were a lot of similarities between marketing and recruiting. Both are often considered "overhead" positions. Both work at proving their value to the business. Both can be poorly understood at the executive level. And both are often undervalued – after all, anyone can be a recruiter (or marketer), right? I once worked at a company where my predecessor as SVP of Marketing had previously been the VP of Engineering. He hadn't worked out in engineering, so they moved him over to marketing – after all, how hard can it be to run marketing (or recruiting)? He was actually there for over a year before he was eased out of the company.
» Continue reading "Translating Marketing into Recruiting"
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"
The One Question Interview Challenge
Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles
Two months ago I gave a presentation to a room full of HR managers and executives from an engineering company in Omaha, Nebraska. After the presentation I had several conversations about their hiring challenges with individual managers. I ended up giving three people copies of the audio CD, "The One Question Interview," with the challenge that they use this approach on their next big hire and report back on their results. Last Thursday I received the following voice message from John Martin of Cascade Engineering. Here's what he had to say:
» Continue reading "The One Question Interview Challenge"
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"
Rethinking College Recruiting
Topics: Networking, Newsletter, Recruiting, Sourcing
College recruiting, like all recruiting, continues to evolve as the demographics in the US shift. Generation Y, also known as "Millenniums," have some distinct preferences in the way they look for work and the way they approach their careers. Even those companies that don't recruit entry-level people need to pay attention to these preferences. Gen Y, those folks born after 1980, make up close to 25% of the current and potential workforce. As the Baby Boomers begin to retire, this group and their attitudes toward employment will increase in importance to employers.
» Continue reading "Rethinking College Recruiting"
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"
Get a Life! AND recruit candidates at the same time.
Topics: Networking, Newsletter, Recruiting, Sourcing
Today I'll share with you the inside scoop on Sodexho's first foray into using Virtual Job Fairs in Second Life. I recently interviewed Anthony Scarpino, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition for Sodexho, and Amy Brooks, one of Sodexho's recruiters who participated in their first ever virtual job fair. Amy recently attended our online Recruiter Boot Camp and graciously volunteered to share her experiences using Second Life to attract candidates.
» Continue reading "Get a Life! AND recruit candidates at the same time."
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.
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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.
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To Poach or not to Poach - is that Really the Question?
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
Last week on one of our free public webinars someone asked whether I thought it was okay for recruiters to "poach" another company's employees. This got me thinking about where the term "poaching" originates. Here are some definitions:
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Fixing Corporate Recruiting
Topics: Networking, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing
Last week I met with a Director of Recruiting from a major Fortune 200 company in the Midwest. In a recent meeting with one of her top corporate executives, the executive made the comment that he finally considered the recruiting department "fixed." The Recruiting Director was so taken back by the comment that she didn't really know how to respond. She was genuinely troubled by his comment. What does he mean by "fixed"? Perhaps it was a backhanded compliment or maybe he meant "fixed" in the sense that he's crossed it off his to-do list—he's no longer worried about it. Perhaps he believes that because they recently installed a new ATS system, added two or three additional recruiters, and restructured their sourcing department, he doesn't really need to worry about it any more.
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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.
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Compared to What?
Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training, Recruiting
I spent the first half of the '90s working at GE. This was in Jack Welch's heyday: best practices, work-out, and management course from Harvard professors at the training center at Croton-on-Hudson (affectionately referred to as Camp GE.) It was a great experience, but there were a few things about GE's personnel policies that didn't really make sense. One of these was what we called the 10-80-10 policy.
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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.
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Unmasking the Well-Prepared Candidate
Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting
It's back-to-school week here in Colorado, so my eight children are beginning yet another year of school. It's always interesting to me to gauge their reactions to their new teachers. They form their impressions very early, and some of those impressions are negative. Last night my son told me about his new sixth grade math teacher from you-know-where. "Oh dad, she is absolutely awful! She's extremely strict, she doesn't allow talking in class, and home work has to be in on time. If it's a minute late you get zero credit. She's way too serious, no fun, and she's the hardest, worst teacher in the school. Can you help me transfer out of her class?" We've all had teachers like this one, but what's interesting to me is that as you go through this process over and over with so many kids, you realize that the first day of school is very much contrived. It's a huge multi-act play. Every teacher has on his/her game face. Some try to scare the kids into submission while others try to win the students over by being open and friendly. Each has their own strategy and it's all carefully orchestrated to set the stage for the coming year. In two or three weeks once the impact of the teachers' "first day of school" speeches wear off, I'll start to get the "real" scoop. Sometimes the toughest teacher becomes my child's favorite. What I really care about is simply their ability to teach my children their subjects well.
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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.
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Would Your Recruitment Ads Win a Super Bowl Contest?
Topics: Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Sourcing
Ok, I admit it. Unless my team is playing, I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. And for advertising agencies, the Super Bowl is every bit as critical a contest as it is for the football teams. It defines bragging rights, generates huge publicity, and can mean millions of dollars in future business. If you search the web for Super Bowl advertising, you get over 2.6 million hits--there is actually a site called superbowl-ads.com. There are hundreds of sites that ask you to vote for your favorite (and least favorite) ads. It's become part of our culture. Job Boards such as CareerBuilder (with their chimpanzee campaign) have used the Super Bowl to generate enormous awareness of their offerings.
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Are You On YouTube?
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting, Sourcing
The FBI is looking for a few good interns, and they are looking on YouTube. Surprised? You shouldn't be. In June I spoke at the Arkansas Association of Colleges and Employers. As I travel I always ask my audiences, "What's new in recruiting? What have you seen that's really innovative and cutting edge?" One of the leaders of this group, Ron, mentioned the new campaign that the FBI launched three months ago on YouTube. He was so excited about it that his career center is now in the process of producing something similar to promote internships at his college. Naturally I had to take a look.
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Assess Your Company's Recruiting Department's Performance
Topics: Newsletter, Recruiting
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Making your Job a "Dream Job"
Topics: Networking, Newsletter, Recruiting, Sourcing
Depending on which survey you read, 40 to 60 percent of the workforce is just waiting for you to call them with a great job. The number of people who are dissatisfied with their current job seems to climb with every new report. CareerBuilder's "Dream Job" Survey in January 2007 revealed that 84% of US workers are not in their dream job. No, these are not the jobs we dreamed of as children (in case you were wondering, the most popular are firefighter, princess, dancer, and cowboy). The definition of a dream job for us "grown-ups" is far more prosaic that that. According to CareerBuilder, "Workers said they want to enjoy their work experience, apply their talents and feel like they're making an impact. Having fun at work was the most important attribute of a dream job for 39 percent of workers, which heavily outweighed the 12 percent who said salary was most important."
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Fail to Plan or Plan to Fail -
Have a plan before you pick up the phone.
Topics: Newsletter, Sourcing
Before you pick up the phone and start calling potential candidates and referrals, what's your plan? Whom are you calling? Why are you calling? What's in it for the people you are calling? Know the answers to these questio