On Talent

It's Clearer Than Reading Tea Leaves

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its employment numbers for April. The summary is as follows:

Employment rose in April, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.2 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 274,000 over the month. Job growth was widespread, with gains in construction, mining, and several service-providing industries.Total employment grew by 598,000 in April to 141.1 million, and the employment-population ratio--the proportion of the population age 16 and over with jobs--edged up to 62.6 percent. The civilian labor force increased by 605,000 in April to 148.8 million; the labor force participation rate, at 66.0 percent, also was up over the month.

These numbers exceeded most estimates substantially with increase in total employment and total civilian workforce both exceeding industry observer's estimates.

What does this signal for staffing organizations. This is the part that is easier to read than tea leaves--the pool of easy pickins is getting smaller. It is time for staffing organizations to begin (or return to) innovative recruiting, and maybe even more importantly sourcing, techniques to woo candidates. The active candidate population is dwindling and we are closing in on sub 5% unemployment. It will become tougher and tougher to find candidates to fill open positions in the coming months.

All of us need to begin to get creative.

Dreamers...

Channel surfin this weekend between the yard work and the errands, I caught a show (forget the channel) about transportation. The show focused on a few inventors - Talent - who have dedicated their lives to finding new modes and methods of transportation.

The inventors had a common theme, personal air travel...think George Jetson and the flying car he used on the air ways that took him to 'Spacely Sprocket' every morning for work. Could it be that we are on the verge of turning an animated future into our daily reality?

Read on.

As reported by John von Radowitz, PA Science Correspondent Feb 2005

'NASA System Could Make Flying Cars A Realiity'

A “highways in the sky” system developed by Nasa could be the first step towards turning Hollywood’s vision of the flying car into reality.

Later this year Nasa will demonstrate the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) before an invited audience of engineers, scientists and members of the public.

The event at Danville Airfield in Virginia may “one day be viewed as one of the most significant milestones in aviation history,” according to The Engineer magazine.

Nasa will have plans in place by the end of 2006 and the race to design the flying car of the future is on. Fueled by the fuel crisis (no pun) finding new, less environemntally intrusive ways to travel may be in the offing. Notice I didn't say cheaper....darn!

But very interesting. One inventor is a former Bell Helicopter Engineer with a shop in Olney, Texas and he's built a prototype helicopter, airplane that holds two, flies anywhere and lands any way. He has plans for the next beta to have wings that fold up turning the flying car into a land machine. And there were at least 6 other designs. The show had me walking outside looking up in the sky excited at the technology aspects and wondering about the future value of land under open skies and bright stars.

The other thought went to our space...not outer....talent. Who are the 6 inventors in our space? Who is taking us from the highway to the sky? And I'm not talking social networks. Who's out there thinking about the next wave?

Future Shock in the late 70s was a great book at forecasting the future. It's time for our industry, the talent industry to do more than go out on a limb. It's time we took technology to the next level and really added value. I don't need to go into all the reasons why we don't today....do I?

OK, said it before, you've heard it before from more than me...we store resumes and contact people later...usually much later. In a world of immediate response and communicationm when how we are treated on the Internet matters sending in resumes and waiting simply is not the way to fly.

So, I have ideas...some I keep to myself and some I share. Mine are likely not quite pie in the sky. But someone out there has pie in the sky notions. And I'll bet that soon, very soon someone is going to rock our world.

I can't wait!

Candidate Segmentation

I've heard it a lot more in the last few months than ever. Customers and prospects are talking about candidate segmentation. Again the (lagging) parallel between marketing and sourcing is producing an increased interest in market segmentation and personalization in sourcing. This is especially important in passive candidate sourcing. Identifying the wants, needs, and hot buttons of particular candidate groups and then tailoring the candidate experience will greatly aid in the attraction of those candidates to the right opportunities. Getting passive candidates to make the move requires that they see a compelling reason. This won't happen by posting a job description on a job board.

John Sumser said it well in today's post. Here is an extract:

...candidates must always be at the center of all of your employment marketing decisions, their influence radiating out to every point of contact you have with them. It's up to you to know their behaviors and preferences and tailor your employment marketing strategies to cater to their needs. Companies who recognize this and build their strategies around retaining and deepening their relationships with their potential employees are the ones who will succeed.

This kind of "micro" segmentation and personalized targeting have been the subject of good marketing for a few years. As we enter an economy where control of the recruiting process is shifting from the employer to the employee, this precise targeting, messaging, and candidate experience will mark the winners in the recruiting battle. The Talenteering Manifesto calls out this kind of personalized communication.

 

More March Madness

There was an interesting comment posted last night to my first "March Madness" post from *Joe* (I think Joe is an alias because the email address posted was bogus, but that's OK I'll reply to anonymous comments:-)

Joe's whole comment can be read here. This extract captures the gist of it:

For you to compare what HR/staffing folks do to a “college recruitment” campaign is insane.

When your out in the field talking to clients/prospects, you constantly here that cost/cost containment are important, in fact always top of the list.

Ask the college coaches about cost………laugable, they are given open ended $$$ and creative folks to almost prey on young kids…….yes kids……17-18.

I still think there is a lot to learn from recruiting practices of sports recruiters--sorry Joe, but that's my opinion. They do several things right (and yes they certainly aren't perfect or in some cases even model citizens) to land the best talent they can for their teams.

First--they are proactive. They don't wait until the end of the season and the day after signing day to start identifying their targets. If they did they would certainly NOT have a good recruiting year. This would be the analog of waiting for a requisition to open to start identifying candidates on the corporate side.

Second--they build relationships with their targets. They reach out using many communications channels to develop a relationship with their recruits (the kids) as well as other influences (parents and coaches). Developing relationships with potential candidates ahead of demand is a good practice.

Third--they create a positive recruiting experience. They get the recruit to feel "moved in" during the recruiting process. IMHO, this is an area where many staffing teams fall short. And I use the team here intentionally because during the interview/assess/select stages of recruiting a large part of the process lives with the business unit and hiring manager. The talenteer has to do a good job of facilitating the visit, and preparing the hiring team for the visit if the candidate is going to have a good experience. Many companies do the reverse--the candidate that is all fired up for the position has a negative experience at the time it matters most--the end of the process. This is sort of like the waitperson who takes great care of you through the entire meal and then disappears at the end after leaving the check--right when you are about to decide how much to tip them. See my previous post on experiential talenteering.

As far as cost containment, I too hear that but I think it makes a very strong statement that staffing is being treated far too tactically. The right metrics should be focused on staffing proficiency and return on talent investment. Jeff Hunter's post on this topic is very eloquent and should be read by all HR executives.

As far as fantasy--I fully realize that corporate recruiting is vastly different from sports recruiting, and can't be executed in the same way. Can we learn something from their best practices? Damn straight we can! If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got. I welcome further discussion on this topic.

March Madness: Where Does Experiential Come In

Like many people I spent a good portion of last weekend watching college basketball's March Madness. The opening rounds this year produced some of the best games I remember in a long time in both the men's tournament and the women's tournament. And how about the number of low seeds winning?!

Watching the games this weekend got me thinking about one of the keynote speakers we had last fall at HireWorks: The Hire.com User's Conference. The speaker was Jody Conradt, hall-of-fame coach of the University of Texas women's basketball team. Jody spent an hour over lunch one day discussing the talenteering involved in sports recruiting--particularly for a major program. There are a few points Jody made that apply to corporate recruiting as much as they do sports.

1. Create the experience. Jody talked about how they turn the campus visits of key recruits into a full-fledged UT experience for the recruit. They work with the communications and media colleges to create a multi-media experience that is tailored for the recruit. They create life size stand up photos of the player in UT uniform that welcomes them to their visit to Erwin Center--UT's basketball arena. Their name is in lights on the scoreboard. They take them to the dressing room where they "stage" the players locker--full gear laid out including a jersey with the recruits name and number hanging in front of a spotlit locker. They want them to feel the Texas experience. Do you treat recruits this way? Do you have the experience your company? If so is it a good experience?

2. They stay in constant communication. Jody talks about how her assistant coaches, student assistants, and even some of the players find ways to stay in touch with recruits personally. This might involve IM or chat sessions late at night, or email conversations. They want to stay top of mind. They want to continue to reinforce the Texas experience, and to be there to answer any questions or deal with objections proactively. Sports recruiting is cutthroat. So is corporate recruiting. Do you stay in touch with recruits before and after the interviews? How about after the offer and before they start? This is an easy time to get cold feet or to consider another offer.

3. Recruiting is broader than just the recruit. In the case of UT, they are recruiting high school students--so the parents are clearly a big piece of the recruits decision process. Jody and team accommodate this by appealing to the parents wishes as well. Tell them about academic programs, student affairs, and other concerns the parents may have about their child attending the university. They make sure they feel part of each step along the way. This too applies to corporate recruiting. Outside factors like a spouse, a significant other, and even parents can weigh in heavily on a career move. Do you factor in these outside factors in your talenteering efforts? Do you provide information to make them more comfortable as well? Many companies do some of the this for relocations, but it is just as important for local hires.

As talenteers, we can all learn a lot from sports recruiting. Many of their processes have been honed to a science. But those practices could help you win the next key sales hire, or engineering hire, or nursing hire. Learn experiential hiring.

Talenteering -- Online Recruiting 2.0

Jason Goldberg has a great post from yesterday on the Jobster blog on Online Recruiting 2.0. The thesis is a direct hit with my talenteering manifesto. Jason makes some great points in his post--read it.

I am a firm believer that recruiting must move to talenteering and begin to develop more targeted, segmented views of the market as well. Automation will help to refine targeting, identify top talent ahead of demand, and use those talent relationships to facilitate a flow of candidates that is more about quality and less about quantity.

Corporate Career Site: Destination or Source?

While catching up on some back feeds I ran across the research summary posted by Gerry Crispin at Career Crossroads Annex. You can read the full  post here. I found both the full report and the summary chock full of interesting factoids.

From Gerry's blog summary:

- 61% of all External Hires can be attributed to just two ‘Channels’- Employee   Referrals & the Internet.

My 2 cents: This number continues to grow. Many observers are crediting the job  boards with the majority of the  Internet candidates, but I believe that number is shrinking relative to the total number of Internet candidates as candidates in increasing numbers are seeking direct relationships with companies they are interested in.

- The Internet and expanding referral networks continue to put pressure on traditional forms of recruiting.

My 2 cents: This especially true of the expanding referral networks. This phenomenon goes beyond traditional employee referrals and is now augmented by formalized relationship networks using the power of the Internet and relationship mapping. Products like Spoke which has a network access to ~27 million people and the ability to leverage enterprise referral knowledge add a new accessibility to passive candidates. Jobster is set to come out of stealth mode with something  rumored to be relationship networking specifically for recruiters. Savvy talenteers have a whole new toolkit to use for sourcing.

- While the percentage of hires attributed to a company’s staffing pages is still inflated (we believe), evidence from a parallel study during January 2005 with CareerJournal.com suggests that “Virtual Walk-ins’ do indeed exist. Job seekers will go to company sites for reasons other than a job and find themselves drawn to openings and then to applying for them.

My 2 cents: By taking a more proactive approach to developing talent pools, not job applications, a far greater number of "virtual walk-ins" gets captured. This is the opportunity to start talent relationships with potential candidates who were interested enough to click on the career page link but may not find a job to be "drawn" to. This is the classic "coincidence hiring" syndrome:  it is a conicidence that the right candidate goes to the career site at exactly the time a job is open and applies. Odds are slim that if that job is not open, they won't come back for quite some time. Give them a way to create a job agent or profile of the ideal job without the position being open or applying for a job. That is sourcing ahead of demand and could increase the registration rates for virtual walk-ins by 10X to 20X.

- Hires attributed to the ‘Company Website’ (considered by us to be a ‘Destination’ and not a ‘Source’) have declined from 67% (of Internet Hires) to 54% this year.

My 2 cents: Gerry's parenthetical hits the nail on the head. The company career page(s) should not be purely a source, or simply a company job posting board--it should be a destination. All sourcing programs should direct candidates to the company career site destination. Better yet, the career site should consist of multiple destinations tailored to the unique needs of specific candidate types (engineers, sales, call center, field service, college, etc.) to offer a compelling candidate experience for each and every candidate. I guarantee that if companies took this talenteering approach to considering their career website as a set of experiential destinations, and notified matching candidates when interesting jobs became available, that the % of qualified applicants from the corporate career pages would increase and so would the quality of candidate.

 

Collaborative Hiring

Talenteering means think proactively. Talenteering requires collaborating with hiring managers to anticipate what their talent needs will be 3, 6, even 12 months down the road. Why (you ask)? Because getting ahead of demand allows you to build a better supply, and building a better supply makes you the preferred supplier. With this approach you can help build a better business by hiring better people.

Think about it. As a corporate recruiter--soon to be a talenteer--you have insider information that no other talent source has. Early access to the very people who will be creating the demand. By being proactive you can understand  their future business goals, challenges, and mission. Working with the business units you can create a talent plan that becomes an integral part of their business plan. And by being proactive in seeking out the business managers before they bring you an emergency requisition ("we don't need no stinking requisitions" thanks Jeff Hunter) you are able to create a sourcing strategy that can go beyond reactive, active candidate only sourcing. You, as a talenteer, just became an integral part of their business plan, and more importantly an integral of the business.

This is the heart of the Talenteering Manifesto. Plan--find out what the business will really need, and find out ahead of demand. Mapping--develop a targeted strategy of where the ideal candidates can be found. This might be targeted companies, associations, web profiles, relationship networks (real and digital), and any other sources you can dream up. Since you are being proactive you have time to cast a wider net. Develop a compelling message--your company has to appeal to the best of the best as a great place to work. Reach out to them and let them know why you are a great place to work in a language that is relevant to them--engineers and marketers don't speak the same language! Engage them in a personalized candidate experience--again by being ahead of the game the experience can become a dialog. You can use multiple channels to reach them email, RSS, create a blog for specific types of candidates, microsites with news and information relevant to them not just corporate wonk talk. Basically stay in touch.

Now when the positions open--yes the ones you were able to anticipate by collaborating with the hiring managers early and often--you will have a good flow of interested and interesting candidates to present to the hiring manager. You have become the preferred supplier by becoming an integral part of the process. This is an insider advantage that you have over staffing firms and agencies, recruitment advertising agencies, and job boards. They can all be resources to your staffing plan, but you are in the drivers seat.

That's talenteering!

(BTW. There is a great post on recruiting.com that was a collaboration between Jason Davis and Jeff Hunter that hits the nail on the head here too. It is also a great read on a very closely related topic.)

Metrics Mania

It seems like metrics are the hot topic amongst talenteers today. I've been with several customers and prospects late last week. They are all wanting to improve the way they prove their strategic value to their respective organizations and believe (and I agree) that metrics are crucial in that prospect. While I was on the road last week Randall Birkwood from T-Mobile wrote and excellent ERDaily article on the importance of effectiveness metrics. Jeff Hunter has been extremely eloquent over several posts in the last week, even engaging in a very lively blog dialog with Dave Lefkow on the topic of Jeff's "strike zone" metrics.

One thing is very clear to me from all of these sources--staffing metrics have to become better measures of effectiveness as apposed to today's efficiency metrics. It is difficult--let's make that impossible--to prove strategic value to an organization without being able to demonstrate business impact. That means metrics that can be used to prove return on talent investment. Reducing opportunity costs, faster time to revenue, creating a new product line all have business impact ramifications. Tying those actions to talenteering is the challenge and is making us think about a whole new set of metrics. Instead of cost per hire, we should be thinking about production from staffing investment (this is what Randall's article mentioned above was nibbling around the edges of) and requires a feedback loop from the hiring organization to measure the impact of the hire. Instead of time to fill we should be thinking about time to productivity, or Jeff's strike zone.

I hate to overly simplify the case here, but it really is time to get strategic or get outsourced--and that is at the heart of talenteering. Become more aligned with the business and help build a better business by bringing the right hires.

Just Exactly What Are We Measuring?

Sorry for being dark for a couple of days. I made a trip to the northeast on Monday and got trapped in the "surprise" blizzard coming home last night.

As I continue to talk to customers--both existing customers and prospects--I continue to be puzzled by just how stuck many companies are in yesterday. It manifests itself in the obsession with process caused by the candidate glut of the past 3 to 4 years. It manifests itself in the naivete of the belief that high volume produced by job board posting equals recruiting productivity. And it manifests itself in the meaningless ways that staffing organizations measure themselves. The two primary metrics used today are cost-per-hire and time-to-fill, and occasionally hiring manager satisfaction gets thrown into the mix.

These metrics are outdated and meaningless. And in many cases they are either manipulated or outright wrong. For example, a lot of staffing organizations manipulate the time-to-fill metric by moving the position in and out of a "hold" status. Buyers of ATS functionality want to know if the time-to-fill reports are taking this manipulation into account to make the number look better. Is that not manipulation? A more meaningful measure would be time to deliver qualified candidates, and percentage of candidates delivered that fit the job description. Or as Jeff Hunter called it his recent  post, the "strike zone" metric. After all isn't the point of talenteering to build a better business by hiring better (or the right) people. By being proactive the time to deliver should be improved, but if it isn't are we going to hire someone fast just to make the metrics look better? Of course not, or at least I hope not--thirty days of opportunity cost to hire the right person is a lot cheaper than hiring the wrong person fast! In fact I think I even remember a home page tagline on Unicru's website at one point that said something like: "what's so great about hiring the wrong person fast?"

And cost-per-hire is also meaningless. Most of the time all of the costs are not figured into the cost numbers because they lived in another budget anyway. What is probably more important here is source effectiveness. Which sources produced the best candidates (producers) most economically.

Net-net of this discussion is that we need to move away from artificial efficiency measures and begin to define effectiveness measures that show how staffing is impacting the business with good return on talent investment. I don't purport to have all of the answers, but I do observe that many organizations are stuck in yesterday's metrics and are not focused on the what the objective should be--RESULTS. Producing the best results possible for the company at the optimum investment. That's the talenteer's approach. I would be interested in comments and ideas about the right talenteering metrics.

Dive Into The Talent Pool Game

Received some good comments on the Experiential Talenteering post and the Talent Pools or Resume Database post. I thought I would just expand a little on those in today's post.

Alan Whitford, an e-HR and e-Recruitment consultant based in the UK says:
"One of the key differentiators that I have talked about over here (Europe) is that everyone has a talent pool if they have ANY type of candidate filing system - most just don't have any way of accessing it. Meanwhile, the accepted terminology that Hank started has a talent pool as an interactive, candidate communication environment.

My take is that what recruiters really really want is a 'talent puddle'- in other words the traditional shortlist of truly qualified candidates."

Alan's comment drives home a very important point. Most recruiting automation efforts today are actually making the recruiters job HARDER! Today's typical process is wait for requisition to be posted, post the job to a job board (usually the big ones), search existing resume databases for interesting resumes, merge the flood of resumes for the boards with the search results and then begin the hard work. Visually screening resumes, showing the pile of "possibles" to hiring managers, phones screening the interesting ones, and working the scheduling logistics to get candidates in. Meanwhile, many of the more interesting candidates (the passive and semi-passives) are not even involved.

The talenteering approach is to use automation to improve the flow of more qualified candidates, allowing the talenteer to present a shortlist of interested and qualified candidates to the hiring manager in less time. How? By marketing the company and the position in advance of the "official" opening of the position. (See Jeff Hunter's We Don't Need No Stinking Requisition post!) By taking a proactive approach to gain visibility into the upcoming requirements, filling a talent pool with both active and passive candidates, using automated matching to notify candidates of the new position (instead of posting to boards and waiting), and then using technology to screen candidates, the "talent puddle" referred to by Alan is what flows through the system to the talenteer and hiring manager.

Get proactive. Use technology to make your job easier not harder. Cast a wider net by sourcing ahead of demand for both active and passive candidates.

I Wish I'd Written This!

I found a new blog link today on Dave Lefkow's blog. It's a blog written by my friend Jeff Hunter  entitled And Talentism. In reading through Jeff's past posts I read one that truly strikes a chord with me (read my bio to see my musical interest:-) called We Don't Need No Stinking Requisitions.  Read it. Add Jeff's blog to your RSS feeds (if you forgot how to do that read my post here).

I won't attempt to even paraphrase Jeff because he so eloquently stated how and why hiring requisitions are an outdated artifact.  But I will pull this extract:

...the reason that there is no "sales requisition" is because there is a fundamental (though often unstated) belief that when you are closing deals, the customer is in the driver's seat, but when you are closing candidates, the company is in the driver's seat. In other words, candidates need jobs more than prospects need software (or services, or whatever you are selling).

And one would have to agree with that statement if there were only one employer in the universe for any particular sort of opening, and if there were vendors as numerous as the stars available for any prospective sales situation. But of course it is usually exactly the opposite.

The point Jeff makes here absolutely reiterates two talenteering points that have been in previous posts here. 1) Recruiting is SELLING and should be treated as such and 2) recruiting top talent, especially PASSIVE talent requires that the process accommodate the candidate being in the drivers seat. Any process that dictates that recruiting starts when the requisition is approved is fundamentally broken and is counter to the notion of sourcing ahead of demand to fulfill a talent plan.

It is my belief that if companies put the same effort into talent planning that they do into sales forecasting, and measure recruiting accordingly--on recruiting's ability to deliver quality talent not on their ability to process resumes more efficiently, then recruiting could work more like sales against their annual (or quarterly) plan in advance of demand. That would be the talenteering way.  Jeff makes another great point that if the offer is going through an approval process anyway, the requisition is redundant.

A point I made in the Talenteering Manifesto is that talent is not acquired it is attracted to companies that can offer the candidate a compelling opportunity. The requisition is a PURCHASING artifact--and does not fit! I reiterate--read Jeff's blog.

Experiential Talenteering

There is another great post over at smallbusinessbranding about 'experiential marketing.' You can read it here. Without telling the whole story, Michael describes the power behind the total customer experience created by a company like Apple, with iPod, PowerBook and all of their products. The experience from first encounter, through purchase, to unpacking the box, to interacting with their support desk is outstanding. I have to say that I was totally blown away by the whole experience with my iPod--even unpacking the box was exciting, the design of every single component was terrific.

This same concept applies to total candidate experience. I was talking to a close friend last night that has been going through a hiring ordeal (or nightmare) with the largest software company in Texas. It brings home to roost many of the concepts that Hank blogged about yesterday. Especially the need for companies that are trying to attract top talent to adopt a hiring culture.

This particular story shows exactly how not to do that. My friend is a very experienced marketing communications expert, and has developed a particularly strong reputation and history of analyst relations expertise. The company is looking for exactly that. My friend is currently doing very well as a free agent, is booked solid and wasn't looking for a job (remember the passive candidate?). They found her as a referral from an industry analyst--duh, she must be pretty good if one of the very same people they are wanting to interface with is referring her! So far so good--they did a great job of sourcing.

Now is when the s**t hits the fan. Their process is not flexible enough to deal with a busy passive candidate. They have a rigid process with as many as 12 different people involved in the interview--which is okay, lots of companies do that. But in this case, those people are all located at corporate headquarters 200 miles away. And of course their schedules were too busy to accommodate this in a single interview trip. So they asked my friend to make multiple trips--she said that couldn't work because her schedule was too booked with billable assignments to accommodate that. Then the recruiter went dark--gasp, candidates aren't allowed to push back on our process are they? They totally didn't grasp the notion of a process modification to accommodate a highly-desirable passive candidate being in control.

Finally, after filling in the hiring manager on the situation and 2 weeks passing they figured out a way to facilitate the interviews via phone and one trip to corporate. Guess what--the majority of the 12 interviewers were not even prepped to know why the were interviewing!

And in the meantime my friend had gathered a lot of information about the company from her analyst contacts, web research, and numerous other sources and now knew more about the company and its external perception than any of the insiders (see my earlier post on this topic here). In her process, she was interviewing the company--not visa versa. And the company failed miserably because they did not have a hiring culture, they did not know how to deal with a passive candidate, and they were not prepared for the process.

Talenteering is about relationships! We've said it before, and we'll keep saying it. Relationships live through the whole experience. What may have started out looking like a wonderful opportunity turned sour because poor execution ruined whatever relationship had been started. It doesn't do a lot of good to spend millions on recruitment advertising and sourcing programs, or tapping into great referral sources if the entire experience has not been thought through. Different talent requires different experiences. Work to understand this and execute experiential talenteering.

Scary - For Real!

One of those phrases we use as kids to describe and rationalize something or a situation we don't completely understand. When telling the story about how your friends pulled a prank on you the first time and you believed it - 'it was Scary - For Real!'. The description designed to give the experience depth, life and 'real' meaning.

Most kids had another phrase used to rationalize - 'Oops, I did it accidentally on purpose'. A feeble and sometimes cute attempt at placing the blame elsewhere when you and everyone involved knew it was you who accidentally lit the match in the field next to the house or decided mom's make-up was an experiment waiting to happen. More on this later. Right now it's scary out there - for real!

A few friends and I have been waiting, watching and asking one question of Talent specialists for the past couple of years. A simple question that got us for the most part puzzled looks. Why would anyone in the recent past worry about Offer Rejects? Companies were not hiring. People were not looking. Climate - job offered - job accepted. The question was asked last week again...this time the answer was proceeded with furrowed brows, a questioning look and some fear. Scary - For Real!

One company, a successful company...small, doubling in size - great technology - incredible market niche - nothing but growth...had 7 offer rejects in the past 3 months. A few of the rejections came after the offer was accepted only to be reversed the night before the start date because an offer 30% higher had come across the bow and wrecked the deal. Now, good recruiters read this and understandably exclaim, 'wouldn't have happened to me...I know how to bring the ship in'. I believe you. The point - the sea is churning....companies need talent and some are desperate. The companies who must have the talent and are willing to do what it takes are driving the cost and speed of the talent market. The rules are changing quickly - again...Scary - For Real!

Another company needs a Chief Architect and happily recruits only to learn three candidates and a month or two later their offer (right by local survey!) was off by 25 - 35%. They were low and lost time and productivity - the product schedule shift hurt - bad! Scary - For Real.

And now Google news as reported by By KEVIN J. DELANEY Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL February 10, 2005; Page B5

"Google Expansion Is Being Held Back By Hiring Process"

"Google Inc. executives said they can't expand as rapidly as they would like because they can't find enough qualified employees or deploy new computers fast enough."

So, Google tells Wall Street - sorry we can't make the forecast...not enough of the right talent. OK, it's about talent availability and the process to source, qualify and deliver. But c'mon...this is most successful IPO in a long while. Google can't have problems sourcing and hiring - talent is waiting at the doorstep - right? Wrong...Scary - For Real!

Health care, Retail, Truck Drivers...are there enough people to do the jobs? Probably. Are there enough of the right people willing? Maybe not. Are companies doing all they must do to ensure they have the right talent in the right place at the right time to drive the business? Good question.

CEOs all over the world are looking to HR and Talent Execs and are asking the same question. Where's the Talent?

Some are digging deeper and wonder what have we been doing for the past three years? Why haven't we been preparing for this? Some have...other Talent Execs say they missed it...Accidentally On Purpose'

So what is the answer?

The talent market has scared us before. We can't find enough - we increase salary and hiring bonus. Still can't - we offer a Porsche to the employee who refers the most. New strategies and maybe new businesses will emerge. Once the initial fear is over - the opportunity rush begins and probably already has.

A few things companies can do immediately to ensure talent competitiveness.

• Put a proactive talent strategy in place. Which begs the first question - do I have anyone in place now I trust who can make this happen. Close your eyes - if you don't get one. If you're the talent leader and are not secure with your abilities or staff - get the right Talent Strategists on board now.
• Whoever - must have vision...talent attraction recruitment and delivery is not easy in a competitive market. And this time it's not who can get the most expensive Sunday ad, thanks to the Internet everyone plays - all the time. Companies require a Talenteer with vision who also has a history of making their visions a reality.
• Recruitment Skills: The company has to understand that recruitment is a complex bi-directional selling process. We're not selling pens - we're bringing people together. Not easy in a market full of competition. You are up against messages from everywhere. Success requires balls out successful recruiting...that means the leadership must have a background. It's not enough for a HR generalist manager to hire the recruitment talent...it has to be a part of the culture - top to bottom.
• Technology Rules. Efficiencies and productivity have been added to all parts of the enterprise. Look at what Dell and computer manufacturing or how Fed Ex has changed the world of postal delivery. We want - expect everything now. Talent is the same. It is a unique mix of technology and recruitment skills that lead to talent success. Again, we are dealing with people and that requires a person to person process. Use technology to automate the administrivia of recruitment. We at Hire understand this...our clients do as well.
• Hire Culture Make hiring great talent important throughout the organization. Everyone from the CEO down has a role to play. Define it. Make it happen. Talk about, heck preach about it - ALL THE TIME. No more Scary - For Real! No more ' Accidentally On Purpose Excuses...

This is One of Those Times...companies are looking for talent answers - results...time to step up.

Talent Pools or Resume Databases

I have used the term talent pool several times in my previous posts. It occurred to me after talking to some prospects last week that many staffing teams don't really *get* the difference between a talent pool and a resume database. While surfing around on Dave Lefkow's blog (it's amazing how I keep finding new blogs!) I found this comment from Gerry Crispin. "The next generation of "tracking" systems will also differentiate between current and prospective candidates and, with the latter, help to manage and automate multiple levels of relationships along the 'pipeline'."

Gerry's comment iterates what I've been driving home in On Talent--talenteering is about relationships. And it is mostly about relationships with prospective candidates. And to my point earlier about the resume database vs the talent pool? A lot of great talent are not actively looking for jobs--hence they don't have a current resume stored on a job board or resume bank, and they probably aren't going to update one to stick in your resume database. Most of the resumes in your database are from active candidates who have been applicants to jobs previously. Not that they shouldn't also be part of your relationship efforts, but the resume data gets stale and shouldn't be relied on to source new positions or as the only source for sourcing ahead of demand (the real talenteering approach!).

A talent pool on the other hand is your marketing list. Your source for relationship development. This list contains enough information to allow you slice and dice the pool by job interest, geography, and other valuable marketing information. It gives the candidate an opportunity to participate in the relationship by doing real-time updates to their data--job interest, experience, geographic preference, and availability. It gives you an opportunity to develop a relationship (as Gerry so aptly pointed out) on multiple levels--not just send new job postings. This is the essence of relationship building. Send stuff that is interesting, relevant, and  timely to the candidate. Give the candidates a portal to obtain information about the company, what it's like to work there, and more specifically about the kind or work they might get engaged in their speak (engineerese for engineers, salesese for sales pros, accountingese for accountants). Keep these relationships interesting and engaging--all ahead of the real demand. Read The Talenteering Manifesto principles 2, 3, and 4.

Then when the position opens, interested candidates will apply--then you can ask for their resume and store it the resume database for tracking purposes. At that point they become a current candidate, or applicant, depending on your definition and tracking and process efficiency are invoked.

Talenteering--The Manifesto

In my post Friday evening I featured the first talenteer--Layne Buckley of Plantronics. You may also notice a new link here for the new Talenteering Manifesto that I have been working on. Layne was the first featured talenteer, because he truly represents the talent relationship management values that are expressed in the manifesto. First and foremost talenteering is about talent relationships--the continuous pursuit of the best candidates possible for every position--something Layne and Plantronics have honed in on. In the manifesto, I have defined the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Talenteers (with apologies to Stephen Covey). The 7 habits are summarized here:

1. Who do you really need? You have to have a sourcing plan that looks out at least 6 months. Interfacing with the business is imperative to accomplish this. In the Talenteer post of Friday I talked about sitting in meetings with Layne at Plantronics to get exactly this insight.
2. Where do you find 'em? Identify sources of potential candidates--especially for key strategic positions. In Layne's case he is working both active candidates mined from job boards and using a variety of sources to identify passive candidates including relationship networking software, networking events, referrals, and many other sources.
   a. Don't forget employees as a source. As Tom Peters so often points out in Re-imagine!, the top talent is looking for a challenging great place to work. Plantronics has an employee mobility program that is very active, encouraging all employees to participate.
3. Make them want you too! Every position requires a tailored message that will communicate in a style for the position what makes it compelling. Tailored emails, job descriptions, specialized talent portals are all ways to make the company and its positions more interesting to potential candidates.
4. Now tell them why they should want you--often! Communicate with the talent pool on a regular basis to send news about the company, seasons greeting, and any other good reason to communicate. Give the talent pool multiple ways to receive communications (email, RSS (more on this later this week), news portal, and other creative ways to get the word out will get candidates interested. This is another area that Plantronics excels. As they grow their talent pool, they leverage the relationships to build the pool into a community--or better yet several communities for engineers, marketing, sales, IT, and other positions by communicating ofter, including but not limited to open positions.
5. Get back to 'em as soon as you have something of interest. By doing the work (and it is work) of developing talent relationships ahead of demand, the talent pool is receptive (and maybe even anxious) to receive information about open positions. The sourcing and relationship development in advance of demand is what allowed Plantronics to reduce agency spend by $1.3M in a year at the same time reducing time to fill and improving candidate quality and hiring manager satisfaction.
6. Get engaged. Make sure that candidates that do apply hear back from you immediately about where they stand. Tell them what the process will be and keep them informed. Too many companies have "black hole" reputations when it comes to recruiting. This is another area where Plantronics has improved since adopting a talenteering approach. They have a very involved process, often involving as many as 12 people in the interview and assessment process, and then time to discuss and decide following. Candidates are kept in the loop as well as possible and are told ahead of time how the process works.
7. Measure. Refine. Iterate. This may be one of the areas that the talenteering approach at Plantronics absolutely shines. Layne is a statistics nut and surveys hiring managers and candidates frequently about what is working and what is not. Candidates who accept offers are asked why--candidates that did not accept offers or who did not apply are asked why not. All of this data is used to improve the processes

I hope this posting helps put some more legs on the Friday post about the talenteering approach at Plantronics. Read the Talenteering Manifesto. Let me know what you think. Use the comments link at the bottom of this post--I want to hear from you. Most of all I'm searching for more talenteers. If you have a story, let me know about it.

Totally Talenteer #1

I just returned from a whirlwind west coast swing visiting 6 customers, numerous prospects, and going on a sales call or two. I'm beat!

But I couldn't let the opportunity pass to feature a true talenteer. I've posted before about talenteering--the proactive, strategic, visionary, beyond recruiting role. I will continue to post about it. Today, I thought it would be great to discuss a real world example.

Layne Buckley, the staffing manager at Plantronics, is a true talenteer. Plantronics is worldwide leader in lightweight plastic headsets. Layne joined them a little over a year ago. Prior to Layne's arrival, most of the staffing processes were entirely paper based. Now they are almost entirely paperless, and to a large extent self-service for both candidates and hiring managers.

Proactive: I sat in a couple of meetings with Layne with key organizations where he was trying to get a better handle on their future hiring needs, and even more so what the ideal candidate profile would be. This kind of foresight is common with Layne's approach to help him get a better handle on source planning and actual sourcing requirements.

Technology: Layne runs frequent candidate mining "expeditions" to refresh his target candidate lists. For active candidates, Plantronics uses candidate mining to automate the searching for specific candidate types across numerous job boards with a single set of search criteria, saving weeks of search time by recruiting teams--using technology to screen the candidates applying for jobs. This frees up staffing team members to do more strategic activities such as tapping into passive candidate pools. To accomplish this Layne's team makes great use of relationship networks such as Spoke, LinkedIn, Plaxo and others to reach out the passive candidates. According to Layne, "In many ways the resume is becoming obsolete.  Hiring managers view them skeptically because of the amount of predictable embellishment.  Even when not embellished, resumes rarely address a specific position, forcing the hiring manager to search for the desired skills.  With relationship networking, Plantronics finds people currently doing a specific job.  They are encouraged to join the Plantronics talent community, minimizing the impact of and the need for a resume." Plantronics also has a great careers page that is both visually appealing and candidate friendly.

Relationship Building: In addition to sending job notifications, Plantronics regularly reaches out to it's 35,000 candidate-strong marketing list with company news, holiday greetings, and relationship builidng messages. This keeps the candidates on the list "warm" for future opportunities. These efforts have increased the opt-in talent community by 481% and job views by 505%--pretty staggering numbers.

Results: Overall the proactive, strategic, relationship building approach spearheaded by Layne at Plantronics has saved the company over $1.3 million in agency placement fees, and has saved more than 4 months of recruiter productivity in a year. The time to present qualified candidates and the time to fill have reduced substantially, but most importantly the hiring manager feedback about candidate quality and hiring process is glowing. And not only does Plantronics focus their data collection and metrics internally, Layne and team have surveyed more than 4,000 candidates that have applied at Plantronics about their experience, receiving very positive feedback and have used the feedback to continue to refine the total candidate experience.

For their efforts, Plantronics has been named a finalist in the ERE recruting awards for Best Use of Recruitment Technology. The winner will be announced at ERE West in late-March.

Layne truly is breaking new ground every day at Plantronics, and their talenteering results and corporate growth reflect it. Layne turly has stepped beyond recruiting and into talenteering, and I'm proud to say he is a Hire.com customer!

More Cluetrain Wisdom

In my Monday post I mentioned that I had dragged out my old copy of Cluetrain over the weekend and had reviewed the 95 theses. I also mentioned that I was amazed at how many of these theses apply to the talent "market" as well. Monday I pointed out theses 1 through 5--markets are conversations not monologues.

Today I want to point out another Cluetrain thesis that is more true now than when it was written:

12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

This is also very true of talent markets. I was visiting with one of our customers earlier this week and they talked about how the top candidates they were bringing in were so well prepared, that in many cases they were intimidating hiring managers with how much they knew about the company, its financial condition, its products strategies, and its warts. They were able to ask hard questions about topics that in many cases the interviewing team and the hiring manager had no knowledge whatsoever.

This is the age of information accessibility. With Google, Spoke, LinkedIn, Eliyon, and so many other ways to find not only information, but people who have information, any candidate interested in whether they are really finding a great place to work can easily obtain it. Good talenteers will also try to stay ahead of this curve and provide answers to the candidates, straightforward truthful answers so the candidate will get a feeling for the real company and how it responds to hard questions.

Participate in the conversation. When you've done a great job of finding the top talent through creative sourcing, don't lose them because of a bad recruiting experience. Talenteering is selling--be ready, and have the whole team ready to handle objections.

Cluetrain: Renewing the Theses

I've been almost obsessed recently with reading manifestos published at ChangeThis. There are a bunch of them about a lot of different topics. A very intriguing one is Hughtrain, somewhat of a takeoff on the popular book from a few years ago The Cluetrain Manifesto. Hughtrain is largely about how branding and advertising have to change in the "new" economy. (WARNING: Read it, it makes some great points that apply as well to employment branding, but the language and tone are, well, blunt.)

After reading Hughtrain, I was inspired to drag out my old copy of Cluetrain last weekend. When I read this book a couple of years ago I thought it was very provocative--now I think it is prophetic! I will be referencing a few of the Cluetrain theses over a few posts. But I'm going to start with 1 through 5:

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

Some of the points that I have made in previous posts about talenteering being about relationship building are SOOOO emphasized by these 5 theses. Employment brands cannot be sterile representations of a company--they have to be living, breathing, value-based representations of the company stated in straight-forward, natural, human language. Talent relationships are--exactly as Cluetrain calls them--conversations. And as I have pointed out in previous posts, the more personalized the conversation, the more recognizable it will be to the candidate.

So what's my point in all of this? It's time to adopt a talenteering mentality. Speak to each candidate market in terms they recognize and can relate to. Make the message conversational and in a tone and level that represents what your company could be for them--and not in a contrived and fake voice. Top talent is attracted to opportunities where they believe they are a good fit, their skills will be valued, where they have an opportunity to be challenged, and where they can increase their own personal value proposition. They will sense that through meaningful conversation with you. And just because it is called a conversation doesn't mean it has to be "1-on-1." The conversation is about listening to what the market (in this case talent pool) says, understanding that it is  living, breathing, and real, and using language and communications vehicles that are real, human, and relevant to what they care about.

Become a talenteer. Adopt a conversational style. Be proactive. Develop relationships.

Recruiter-ese: Marketing Opportunities

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm a marketing guy so I read a lot of marketing blogs. I've also always been a marketer who has been "out of the box." Some of this has been necessity (I've worked for at least 8 startups--lost count somewhere along the line) and some is style--that's just who I am. But one thing I continue to point out is now that I'm marketing for a recruiting automation software company (Hire.com), it continues to amaze me at how much of good recruiting follows the same principles of good sales and marketing (so you might think about reading some of those blogs too--I'll be referencing them often).

One of the marketing blogs that I read daily is smallbusinessbranding.  Its author, Michael Pollock, has created a small business branding manifesto . If you're a recruiter--read it.  More than half (possibly all) of the points Michael makes in this manifesto apply directly to recruiting. Loosely paraphrased, these are some of the high runners. Forget acquiring candidates--create an inclusive network. Forget traditional recruiting--think conversations. Forget control--it's an illusion. Forget selling--think connect. Forget professionalism--think humanism.

These concepts are what recruiting (and marketing) are all about. Here are some things you can do now:

1. Make an emotional connection--read personalize your communications. If you are looking for sales reps, create a message and proposition that tells the story in sales-ese of why a sales person should want to work there. Engineers--engineer-ese. Accountants--accountant-ese. Don't just post a job and wait.
2. Talenteering is not acquisition--it is attraction. Widgets and office supplies get acquired. Talent is attracted through a process of relationship building and sharing of relevant information (I think that's a conversation--see 3 below). Create an experience that supports this concept. This is the heart of building an employment brand--it's not the logos and colors and taglines, it is the total candidate experience created by building a personalized relationship. (Nice combination of 1 & 2 eh?)
3. Start a conversation. You can do some of it electronically. Create a personalized career portal. Create a recruiting blog, it's working well for others. Create live chat. Pick up the phone. Meet the candidate for coffee. Allow a conversation to happen. This is an absolute must for passive and semi-passive recruiting.
4. The candidate is control. You can automate your processes 'til the cows come home, but the good candidates will always be in control of the process. The timeline will be theirs, the information they want will be theirs, the people they talk to, etc. Support it, and make it easy for them to be in control.

Stop recruiting--start talenteering. Spend at least some portion of your day (even if it's only a half hour) doing something new that you haven't been doing to get more proactive.

Catch 'Em While You Can

I've been reading John Sumser's posts today, yesterday, and the day before about corporate websites. John is reaffirming something that we have believed for a long time--the number one career site on the Internet is your own. The numbers are staggering in terms of people who start at job boards that read about other jobs and gather corporate information while they are there--north of 90%! But think about the other HUGE attraction of a corporate career site, capturing interested candidates who came to your website because they were interested in your company, not because they came from a job board.

This is an ideal opportunity to tap into the semi-passive candidates. The ones that have a job, are happy with it, but are open to new opportunities. They  even surf around occasionally to see what's out there. These visitors to your website are the ones that probably already work in your industry, or for the competitors you are targeting with your recruiting efforts. This is where I believe most career sites fall short--they are just job listings. They don't compel the candidate by presenting your company as what Tom Peters calls a Great Place To Work (GPTW). Sumser talks about the website through its metaphors: the lobby, the gateway, the source, and the opportunity. Right on!

Yes I'm biased, but check out Hire Careers. It has a great page on culture, the work environment, and the benefits. Every career path has a separate portal with direct information in video from the department head. There is an employee spotlight, rotated monthly, where an employee blogs about their experience here. And of course there is a career site powering registration, information collection, job viewing and submission, and screening.

How many companies are missing the boat by not providing specifically tailored messages for mission-critical talent? If you are looking for engineers, create an engineer portal and blog. Sales reps should have a sales rep portal. Software engineers should have a technology portal--etcetera.

This is how relationships get built and nurtured. Provide information that candidates can use to assess why your company is a GPTW, and why the opportunity you are presenting is right (or not) for them. You'll be casting a wider net by not just presenting the career site in the light of active candidates, and the candidates will be getting relevant information. Talenteering is not about posting jobs and reviewing resumes, it is about being proactive and building relationships with the right kind of candidates in advance of openings!

Status Quo Whoa!

Being a marketing a guy I read a lot of posts about marketing. And being a marketing guy for a company that develops sourcing and recruiting products and services, I see a remarkable similarity between what we do as marketers and what you do as a recruiter. I will often point out those similarities here, such as the Scoble post about end-to-end experience a few days ago.

Today in Seth Godin's blog, there is a great post about doing stuff just because it is status quo. Seth uses the example of how stupid using drop down lists for states are at on-line shopping sites--but it's only used as an example of how once something becomes status quo, almost no one will break the mold.

I often get the same feeling about recruiting. It seems that what was good 20 years ago (resume tracking and searching for candidates) is the status quo today. And 10 years ago, Internet job boards were introduced as a source of resumes to search, and now they are the status quo. Open a req, post the job, wait for resumes. Search the resumes to find the closest fit, and make an offer. What about all the candidates that don't have resumes on the job boards, or don't read the job postings everyday? Are they not interesting? It seems to me that it is about time that at least part of the time spent today by recruiting teams should be spent being more proactive and finding sources of talent that don't have their resume floating--the passive or semi-passive candidates. This is where my push for talenteering comes from. Not to get radical. Just to think out of the box and start to do something different. Status quo might be the easy way out, and a safe way to do things--but it won't change the results you get. Only a change in attitude will do that.

If You Always Do What You've Always Done, Part 2

Reading John Sumser's article Electronic Recruiting News today, and especially following John's links to some of his archives from last year on high performance recruiting really got me thinking. (First it got me thinking about how prolific and insightful Sumser is--now that I've been blogging for a few months I can't even imagine the stamina it must take to write a column every day for years!) Second it got me back on my rant--most corporate recruiters today have fallen into practices over the last few years that fundamentally won't solve the problem of finding top talent. Processes that are REACTIVE. Reacting to demand after the hiring manager opens the requisition. Reacting to the candidates that apply to the job board posting. Pass along those candidates to the hiring manager to determine which ones to hire.

It's time to think differently. The dynamics of the market are changing. In order to land the best talent, processes have to be adjusted. PROACTIVE planning and sourcing to get ahead of demand has to become the norm. Kevin Wheeler hit the nail on the head again this week in his ER Daily column as well. Kevin and John both point out that a big part of recruiting success is PLANNING--understanding the demand before it occurs. Then developing RELATIONSHIPS with the right candidates by understanding the hiring managers real requirements, knowing the market, using technology as well as networking skills, and communicating a compelling great place to work value proposition to the candidates. Why? Because the best talent is not acquired by a post, wait, and track process.

From Sumser's Remarkable People post:

    Remarkable people share several traits:

•       They Value Their Own Time Highly  
•           •They simplify problems instinctively
•           •They build track records of accomplishment
•           •They have long term endurance and high energy
•           •Their perception of risk is different from others
•           •They are quick studies who easily move between disciplines
•           •They are hard to pigeonhole
•       They are hard to identify unless you have seem many of them

    The approach most recruiting departments take (filling requisitions in a reactive way) prevents     the recruiting team from ever finding these remarkable people. Every recruiter should be on the     alert for finding them. Any company should have a method for hiring them if found, regardless       of the req situation.

It's time to begin to think proactively. Strategic recruiting can help companies land the best talent available, but it will require us to think and act differently. Get out of the box. Get proactive.

People Not Paper

So here is my first big rant. As the market clamours to get more efficient at handling "paper" (resumes, requisitions, and applications), we've lost touch with the fact that candidates are people. This is the recruiting version of daddy's Oldsmobile--a lot of us seem to think that great candidates are lined up outside and we are in total control of the process. How can we expect to become strategic recruiters and hire more effective talent if we're only worried about how to be more efficient.

Yes there are lots of candidates for some jobs. Yes we have to be efficient in dealing with the high volume. Yes we have to be compliant. Enough! Do all that stuff and still figure out a way to create an amazing and humane experience for the candidate!

You know you have to stay in front of top talent. Keep them interested and engaged. But who has the time – or the creativity – to do it right?

So what can you do -- now? Dare to be amazing!

Get creative. Recruit for tomorrow today. Find top talent when they’re not even looking for a new job. Know who has those hard-to-find skills. Continuously build relationships – they’re people, not just requisitions. Find savvy ways to keep the dialogue going. The more touch points, the more you learn about your ideal candidates. Then use that knowledge to keep the conversation sharp and relevant. Make it impossible for them to not have you on their top of their list.

Be amazing! If you’re not, just point them to your competition. That’s where they’ll end up anyway.

Party Like It's 1984

In read a recent Kevin Wheeler article earlier this month in ER Daily with some interest. As you can tell I'm a little behind inmy reading! Kevin nibbles around the edges of a topic that I believe spans much further than workforce planning--we are all recruiting like its 1984 again.

Wake up and smell the cofee! The dynamics of business have changed requiring all of us to look for a new kind of agile talent. Guess what? That agile talent does not have the mentality of job seeking. They are looking for an amazing and engaging project or company. The candidate has access to so much information about the company just by Googling it that they know more than the people they are interviewing with. Meanwhile most corporate sourcing and recruiting practices would make you think that candidates are lining up at the door dying to work for their companies forever. THAT HAS TO CHANGE in order to hire the top talent everybody keeps talking about.

I will be expanding on what I think that means in subsequent posts--stay tuned. Meantime, let me know what you think --I'd love to hear.