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Recruiting in an Age of Uncertainty

By Lou Adler, October 14, 2008

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%.

Chicken Little was so wound up he bumped into Henny Penny on his way to tell Ducky Lucky that the sky was falling. Within moments they all ran off to tell David Manaster that the sky was falling, hoping that David would do something, perhaps have another Expo. However, on their way to David's New York home, they bumped into Foxy Loxy who told them he would drive them directly to David's to save time. When I spoke with David later that week he told me neither Chicken Little, Henny Penny, nor Ducky Lucky ever showed up. However, he did tell me that Wisely Owley called and indicated that some recruiting leaders were using this time to rebuild their entire departments.

So rather than close down the department, slash the budget, stop training, stop recruitment advertising, hold off on the ATS purchase, put Jobs2Web on the backburner, and any other short-term tactical "feel right" move, perhaps take the advice of Wisely Owley and use this unique time to get ahead of the pack. As Wisely told me over a Woodford Reserve, or two, in a DC cabaret last year, a down economy offers the bold among us a chance to pick up market share on the cheap.

With this as a backdrop here are some things you might want to consider as you strengthen your recruiting department to handle the upcoming boom. Feel free to post your ideas on our Recruiters Roundtable blog. Those with the best ideas will get to attend Recruiter Boot Camp Online as my guest and tell their stories.

10 Things You Can Do Now to Build a Stronger Recruiting Department Rather than Dumping It

1. Accelerate the use of Web 2.0. Micro-targeting your recruitment advertising in combination with some two-way online dialogue will soon be "been there, done that." But if you haven't yet, get going, so you can be the first to sneer down at some expert at the next big recruiting conference you attend.

2. Call Doug Berg at Jobs2Web. Doug is the most technically savvy recruiting guy on the planet. Get the budget to implement Jobs2Web before the upturn begins. Your web site will be easily found by anyone Googling for jobs using terms you never would have thought of yourself.

3. Build a CRM-driven pipeline. We have an upcoming webinar describing the importance of aggressively collecting prospects via networking, LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Google, etc., and nurturing them with a SugarCRM-like tool. Done properly, within 3-6 months you'll have a pool of top talent waiting with bated breath for you to re-launch your hiring efforts. This effort alone will reduce your time to fill by 50% or more with a bigger reduction in cost per hire!

4. Reduce your recruitment advertising by 50% and invest a small part in building a talent hub for your most important group of hires. A talent hub is a microsite combining all similar jobs into one location. From here candidates can chat with recruiters, decide to become prospects, get an RSS feed for upcoming jobs, and join your CRM nurturing campaign. The site needs to be SEO'd (search engine optimized) so it can be found by those Googling for jobs. Since it doesn't discriminate based on experience and skills you'll see more people. Candidate quality will also improve if you describe the importance of the work involved and the impact the person can make. This type of messaging can be especially relevant in times of economic turbulence.

5. Rank and Yank. As a starter use a Jack Welch approach of ranking all of your recruiters into a 20%-70%-10% classification. The top 20% should have their contracts renewed. These are your recruiting stars. The bottom 10% should be eliminated immediately. Now is not the time to retain people who will slow you down. The middle 70% should be assessed from a value-add standpoint, some kept, and some not. If you're a real tiger, and want to make a name for yourself, replace the bottom half with someone else's top 10%. This way you'll increase your overall department productivity using a lot fewer recruiters.

6. Implement a formal hiring process that your managers and recruiters giddily follow. Don't not train or not make improvements. (Note: this is an intentional double negative that three proofreaders wanted to remove until I added this note stating why a double negative is doubly appropriate.) While I'd like you to implement Performance-based Hiring and train all of your managers and recruiters, you must now take the opportunity to do something significant to make your end-to-end hiring process better. As a minimum, junk traditional job descriptions and the use of out-of-the-box behavioral interviewing. Start the upgrade process by creating performance profiles before ever opening another requisition and using our Performance-based Interview before hiring another person. These two steps alone will get your recruiters and hiring managers on the same page and prevent you from hiring anyone who has practiced being a great interviewer.

7. Implement Workforce Planning and Metrics. Start forecasting your hiring needs by quarter for all your major positions. This is a simple form of workforce planning that you should begin implementing immediately. Then get your line managers to update this forecast quarterly and start tracking the quarter-to-quarter changes for future quarters. Once you see an uptick start sourcing in earnest. This is a forward-looking indicator of the good times returning. And while you're at it start implementing formal metrics for everything. Some of my favorites are time to fill, quality per hire, sendouts per hire, prospects per hire, and salary increase per hire. Of course, if you don't have a consistent recruiting and hiring process in place these metrics won't be of much help.

8. Change how internal candidates are evaluated for different jobs. Rather than hiring from the outside, companies are more willing now to move their best people internally. However, if your line managers use traditional job descriptions to screen people, they won't even be willing to see some of the best people in other departments or functions. This is where a performance profile can really help. By describing the performance expectations rather than the required skills and experience, candidates who have comparable accomplishments would be seen even if their skills are somewhat different. Our one-question performance-based interview in combination with our 10-Factor Candidate Assessment template will allow you to more comfortably make the assessment while minimizing the risk.

9. Send your recruiters to a Bill Radin, AIRS or Adler Group training program. I don't make a point of advertising for my competition, but sometimes making a point is the point. In this case, the point is not to sit around. Get better. If you're a recruiter establish a goal for yourself to be 25% better by mid-year 2009. Not only will you feel better, but you'll be more marketable, too. You'll also probably be one of those in the top 10% of your department discussed earlier. If you're a recruiting manager send your top 50% to these programs with the goal of making them 50% more productive by year-end 2009. This way you won't miss the 50% who are leaving.

10. Implement a Top-to-Bottom Early-Bird Sourcing Strategy. Most companies have a leftover sourcing process as their default strategy. While unintentional, it's not good. You can tell if you have a leftover strategy in place if many of the best people you finally see tell you they're already seeing other companies, or are ready to accept another offer, or not interested in hearing about your opportunities. The objective of an Early-Bird Sourcing strategy is to get to these same people before they enter the job market, or at the very moment they decide to look. This way you'll have first shot at these great people, rather than having to hire leftovers.

Don't forget to add your comments and ideas at our Recruiters Roundtable blog. More importantly, remember that…

Chicken Little is a story for teaching courage.
"Don't be a chicken little. Don't be afraid. The sky is not falling."