Marc
My Words
Introduction
I
would first like to say that I am very honored and excited to
be attending the launch ceremonies of CareerMosaic India. This
is the first stage of fulfillment of a journey that began over
a year ago. To see it having come together as it has is quite
exhilarating.
I
believe that Career Mosaic India is going to be a unique trailblazer
in this business. In a sense it is bringing together the best
of the U.S.A.'s Internet recruitment industry, with the best
of India's recruitment industry. It is a site that will be focused
upon India and the needs of Indian professionals and companies,
but also international in scope, reflecting the important role
that India now plays on the global stage.
It
is in this environment that I have been asked to share with
you some perspectives on what is in fact going on right now
in America's recruitment industry. Perhaps there are things
going on there that will aid you in your efforts here. This
is in addition to the fact that, as we are indeed in a global
economy, what is happening in the U.S. is already effecting
and driving things that are happening here, in India.
As
I know it has in India, the impact of the information economy
and the Internet, upon America's hiring practices have been
dramatic and mind boggling. It really amounts to a crisis, in
the Chinese sense of the word. In Chinese, the word crisis means
both danger and opportunity. So from that perspective, we have
been facing a crisis of mythic proportions.
For
example, a Computerworld survey reports that the American IT
industry did something close to $500 billion in sales last year;
but it could have done another $500 billion if it had had the
people it needed to deliver the business. That is half a trillion
dollars in business that was literally left on the table.
The
Information Technology Association of America predicts that
of the 1.6 million IT jobs that will be created in the next
year, half will go unfilled. In today's economy, being on the
side of the fence that does not fill those positions does not
just mean lost opportunity. It might mean losing the company
itself. It is the golden rule of being first: first to market
makes the rules, and gets the gold.
So
there have been huge economic reasons for America's corporations
to figure out a way to staff those open positions. Enter dramatic
new improvements in how efficiently employers and employees
can now find each other via the internet job sites. Enter stock
plans, increased pay scales, and even reaching out to foreign
lands - like India - with large technically skilled work forces
ready to travel. These have all helped us make strides toward
solving the problem.
Yet
almost as quickly as solutions arose, so did new problems related
to those solutions. Employers began to realize that the Internet
was making it easier to collect large numbers of resumes, search
them for keywords, and turn around email responses in a fraction
of the time that it used to require. Yet the ease in which those
emails could be sent by candidates quickly turned those email
boxes into rivers of spam, requiring recruiters to spend hours
wading through to find the gold. Likewise, hiring H-1B candidates
was helping, but the annual cap started throwing 6 to 12 month
delays in the middle of a hiring process that was designed to
reach closure in a week. And worst of all, often companies would
have the perfect candidate in front of them, offer a great benefits
plan, a competitive salary, a 401K, and then lose the candidate
to a competitor down the street. In fact, while businesses had
always had to compete for the best candidates, in the last two
years, there emerged an entirely new breed of competitor that
was not only snatching potential new hires from recruiters'
arms at the altar, but were wooing away these companies best
and brightest current employees.
These
new companies were, of course the hot new Dot Coms and start
up IT companies that are part of the fission powering the central
reactor of this new economy. The new Dot Coms were using tools
and techniques that established companies had never before considered,
such as dramatic stock option plans, huge sign on bonuses, and
a recasting as the workplace as a "fun" environment.
We began to hear about skateboarding, rollerblading and Frisbee
games within company offices, not to mention frequent company-related
functions like pizza parties, happy hours or camping trips.
Throughout
1999 and first quarter 2000, a new dynamic began to emerge between
candidate and employer. The candidate became aware of his worth
as a highly prized commodity and used this knowledge to leverage
the best situation possible. Internet job sites became an important
research tool to know how much more you were worth this week.
Job hopping became a strategic career plan, staying at one company
long enough to vest one's options, then possibly get out to
do it again, with a higher base salary at another place.
In
many cases, conventional companies couldn't compete even if
they wanted to. Adding to their frustration was that these new
companies were able to persuade both the candidates and the
marketplaces that their stock was worth incredible amounts of
money, while never having earned a profit, and the older companies
were still attached to the conventional rules of valuation.
Then
came April. And like the famous Spring rains that occur in that
month, a Monsoon of Indian proportions thundered through the
boom-town economy, washing away a lot of what was false and
wrong. It is in this aftermath that we are beginning to really
get some clue as to the new role of recruiting in America today
and what companies must do to be competitive in this environment.
Proactive
Strategy Versus Reactive Tactics
A
lot of what we were seeing in the latter half of the last decade
was companies responding to the labor shortage in a Reactive
Mode. They noted certain specific changes that had occurred,
or tactics that their competitors were using, and they decided
that they too, would install a basketball hoop over the copy
machine, or would make Wednesdays free pizza at lunch, or just
go and award raises to employees that they thought might be
"at risk" from a savvy new headhunter. The problem,
however, is that this approach is applying tactics without a
strategy.
In
fact, last year, Watson Wyatt, a human resources consulting
firm, surveyed 551 large U.S. companies and found that 45% had
no formal recruiting strategy. Even more employers, 54%, don't
have a formal strategy for retaining employees once they have
been successfully recruited. Interestingly, now that the hot
new Dot Coms no longer have their magical stock options wand
to wave at any greedy and trusting candidate, they too are in
the same position. The better ones, however, that first were
good enough to survive April, have been reformulating their
array of tactics into very finely honed strategies. And again,
out of necessity, the better of America's bellwether corporations
have been starting to do this as well.
•
Archives •
Top
