The Recruiting Process

The thing to remember through all this is that when people talk about competing for talent in the U.S. today, there is one word that comes up very frequently, which is War. It is a war for talent. Military analogies proliferate. The stakes are enormous, and entire careers and lifetimes of work can be exponentially augmented or wiped out based on strategic decisions that are made and hiring goals that are achieved or missed. And the tactics can run from the extreme to the ruthless although, in all cases presented here, are ethical and fair business practices. The bottom line question is do they work? They do. So, I present the following in the spirit of sharing information. Will these strategies and tactics work here? I think most will. How comfortable and capable you are in making them part of your company's repertoire is up to you.

The recruiting process really breaks out into 5 separate sub-processes, that at times merge with or enhance each other. But they each represent different functions, which is why I present them as such. The process is: Attract, Qualify, Pitch, Train, Retain.

Power of Attraction

Much emphasis has been placed on this, understandably so. Pre-information age, all you had to do was attract enough people and SOMEONE would take the job.

As you are all aware, the Internet job boards such as CareerMosaic, Headhunter, Monster, HotJobs and thousands others, have created a breakthrough in this process. A recent report by Goldman Sachs shows that in the U.S. a classified ad running for 30 days in a major newspaper runs about $3295, while a 30 day posting on a major job board runs about $167. Even more importantly, the Employment Management Association revealed that the actual cost per hire using conventional media such as newspaper ads and job fairs was $3000 while cost for an online hire was around $700. As we noted earlier, however, the ease that the internet affords to applicants has created a chronic problem of resume overload in recruiters mailboxes.

One response that has evolved in the U.S. is the creation of the e-Sourcing Professional. This is an individual, often a recruiter, whose job is to solely source the Internet and evaluate all the responses coming in for the entire company, so that only those most choice selections are passed on to the actual recruiters, who then go to work on getting the person to consider a job with the company. By centralizing this function, you optimize and let everyone do what they do best.

One company that is using this approach effectively is MicronPC. Their e-sourcing director is able to screen the online responses so that within one week, they made 54 offers to technical candidates and got 52 acceptances. The recruiters themselves did not deal with the front end sourcing from the net; they only dealt with contacting and persuading the candidates.

Beyond the job boards themselves, we have seen the emergence of some tools that aim to consolidate searching multiple databases into one action. One such program is a package called Resume Scout, offered by Careerpath.com. This allows a company to search all the databases that it is subscribed to at one time. Monster.com, one of the larger databases, has come out against this service, issuing a cease and desist order, claiming that its method undermines the value of their offering. This is currently an issue being debated both in the press and in the courts right now.

Probably the most significant development in the Attraction area is the growing emphasis that companies are putting on their own corporate recruitment web sites. This is a big reflection of your commitment to "HR as Your Second Business". For example, when you give out a link to your website in a job posting, ad or mail piece, does it go to your main corporate home page, or to your recruitment home page? Great efforts are now being made to make these portions of corporation's sites as professional, powerful and engaging as the main site. The goal of these sites is to capture both those candidates who are consciously pursuing a job with the company (active candidates) as well as those who may not yet be, but are favorably inclined toward the company and may be interested in a job at a later date (passive candidates).

Another technique that is gaining in popularity are online contests that challenge professionals (i.e. techies) in their prowess in a skill area, and offers them cash or prizes as awards for the best. The prospect of working for the sponsoring company is mentioned in passing, in such a way that the candidate hardly notices he is agreeing to allow himself to be contacted.

In all, online recruiting is as strong as ever. Last year 10% of all newly hired people found their jobs on the Net. At companies such as Microsoft, Sun and Unisys, the Net lags behind only employee referral programs as the most effective recruiting medium. 48% of corporate recruiters posted their job opportunities to the web last year. And job seekers - even execs - are fully in the game. 62 percent of aspiring senior managers say they'll use the Internet to search for their next job. The benefits are there to the company that makes the Web part of their mission and that commits the resources to effectively handle the volume of response that it generates.

Other extreme measures that might sound crazy but are actually working include:

• Moving billboards. Zero-Knowledge, a Montreal software company needed to achieve hyper fast growth at one of its offices. So, it hired a mobile billboard that read "Do you want to be a part of Internet history?" and drove it past the offices of high-tech companies like Nortel Networks and Discreet Logic. The stunt netted 500 resumes, half of them from the targeted companies.

• Employee Referrals. Some companies use this as a casual technique, but reports are that this should be moved to center stage as a key tactic. Whether promoted by the company or not, it is one of the most highly effective forms of recruiting, percentage-wise, in terms of how people are referred to new jobs. Docent, a California based e-learning company started its program by rewarding employees with a $2500 bounty on all hires they refer. It worked so well that they raised the number to $5000 the next year, and added a grand prize, a Ford Explorer that is raffled to all who successfully referred one new hire. Despite the cost of the incentives, Docent estimates that it has saved more than $500,000 in recruiting costs.

• Prisoners. At 2.2%, the state of Iowa has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation. This includes every type of worker, not just IT. Rock Communications, a printer with large orders to fill and no workers available, made a deal with the local prison to train non-violent offenders into a temp work force that has turned out to be a win-win deal for all involved. Rock is filling its orders and the prisoners are learning skills that give them a better chance of joining society and having a real job upon release.

• Sponsoring Booths at Rock Concerts. Nortel Networks made it a point to have a recruiting booth at every Jimmy Buffet concert they could get to. Why? Jimmy Buffet came up as a favored musician among the engineers that they have working at the company, the result of deep missionary research into what makes their target audience tick.

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