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Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt

By Bryan Johanson, February 25, 2009

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.

Our greatest recruiting challenge in 2009 is FEAR.  Who's afraid today?  According to our 2009 survey, nearly everybody.  Top fears include:

Third-party Recruiters:

• Not finding enough business in 2009
• Not finding and keeping recruiters who know how, and have the persistence, to sell in this market
• More competition for a smaller number of openings
• Not being able to convince top talent to move from their current employer

Corporate Recruiters:

• Their company will choose to downsize the recruiting department
• Managers are afraid to pull the trigger on top candidates
• Leaders are afraid to approve any hiring – even for outstanding talent
• Limited budgets to achieve recruiting goals

Candidates:

• "The job I know is better that the job I don't know, even if it's not challenging; I'll stick it out until I know that the economy is better."
• "Relocation is impossible.  I'm under water on my home and I'm afraid to lose all my equity."
• "If they find out I'm looking, I'll go to the top of the layoff list."
• "I don't want to be the first person laid off if I start with a new company and they fall on hard times."

To survive we have to take the Guy Kawasaki model.  Nobody ever succeeds in this environment by being negative.  People are hoping for good news – something positive.  Recruiters who have the capability to close top talent in this economy are really earning their money.  It takes a tremendous amount of energy to succeed in this environment, but it is possible.  And when the economy recovers, these are the recruiters that will be left standing.  They must be better at recruiting than anybody else.

Don't believe everything you hear!  43% of our 2009 survey respondents say they are hiring about the same, more, or significantly more people in 2009 than in 2008.  Companies are hiring.  Maybe not the automotive industry or even your industry, but other industries are hiring so there is reason for hope.  The graph below comes directly from our 2009 survey results.  Click here to take our survey if you haven't already done so.

Don't give up on top candidates too early, and don't settle for second or third best.  Companies are more discriminating now.  Managers have adopted the attitude, "If we're only going to hire 20 people this year, they'd better be the best employees possible."  The bar has been raised.  Recruiters are being flooded with a pile of average candidates' resumes, so they must be better at screening and identifying top people.  We contend that the best way to do this is to have the recruiters, hiring managers, and everybody else involved in the hiring and interviewing process to be on the same page when it comes to identifying the real needs of the job.  Click here for some articles on our Multi-stakeholder Job Analysis model.

Take this time to network like crazy!  Start building up your pipeline of qualified candidates for the positions that you know will be needed once the economy starts picking up.  Update your records on top candidates. Come up with the top twenty people you'd love to hire and start talking to them.  Tell them you want to understand what they are looking for because you want them at your company when the time is right.  Once the economy picks up, these people will be in huge demand – you want to be first in line when they pick up the phone.  We call this having an early-bird sourcing strategy.

Offer Hope!  Did you know that 98 of our current fortune 500 companies were traded on the stock market in 1929?  They not only survived the crash, but they became much stronger because of it.  Sure, we're going through a down cycle, but just as business slumps happen, so do recoveries.  Those that profit are the ones that are able to find the opportunities, even in the decline. 

Happy Recruiting,
Bryan Johanson