On Talent

A Scavenger Hunt - For People

I spent last week with customers and prospects. And 3 weeks ago talked to a LOT of people at ERE West. The verdict is in and the sentiment has definitely shifted with recruiters. Just as Hank posted a couple of weeks ago about the pendulum swinging to candidate control in recruiting, it has also swung to sourcing becoming a major topic of interest for recruiters.

It seems that everyone I talk to is talking about filling the "hard to finds," or reaching out to passive candidates, or becoming more personalized and segmented in recruiting efforts. I will be posting a lot more on segmentation and personalization in upcoming blogs and talking about a couple of new partnerships that Hire.com is engaged in that will help in this area.

Speaking of partnerships and finding candidates, Jeff Bloch will be co-hosting a free webinar tomorrow at 2pm EDT/11am PDT with Dave Lefkow of Jobster on creative sourcing and searching techniques. It should be interesting. I'm looking forward to it. If you want to attend you can register here.

The Second Worse Thing

I once heard someone say the second worse thing you can do to a hiring manager is to present them with a stack of unqualified resumes. The worst is to track their hiring stats on those candidates. One of the problems I often hear from recruiters and sourcers at prospective customer companies is that they are "caught in the middle." The middle between candidate traffic and hiring manager satisfaction. It seems that the current state of sourcing automation--job boards--is how most company recruiters generate candidates for open positions today. They are barraged with resumes, many of whom aren't really qualified. But the recruiters I talk to are managing 50, 70, I've even heard 100 open positions. So they don't really have the time to appropriately screen the candidates. So in most cases they are passed directly to the hiring manager. (And I can't say I blame them--if I had 70 open positions and was being asked to support 10 to 20 hiring managers I'd be doing the same thing.)

A better approach? Use automation to make the recruiter's job more effective--not harder. By using the career website as the common collection point--regardless of source--a talent pool can be developed for filling a current position as well as future ones. Using candidate self-screening technology will allow the recruiter to establish minimum advertised job criteria to be used as a candidate filter. By taking this step--the applicant traffic can be substantially reduced and the candidates that are screened-in will be qualified. A smart recruiter who works with the hiring manager to develop the screening questions will be sending the hiring manager candidates that meet their first level cut. The recruiter might not even have to touch the candidate initially--they could be routed directly to the hiring manager for feedback on whether to proceed or not. Hiring manager satisfaction will increase.

The talenteer approach to the same problem is to have the pool of candidates from a variety of sources available before the job opens. Then using automated notification to let interesting (matching) candidates know about the position, then use screening to determine their fit. This approach should allow for delivery of qualified applicants to hiring managers in hours or days, instead of weeks. Learn how to use automation to become more effective.

If You Always Do What You've Always Done, You'll Always Get What You've Always Got

Great article today in ERE. Lou Adler makes a couple of great points about the current state of recruiting. Maybe because of the workload that many corporate recruiters carry today, they have become extremely reactive. Lou says "stop waiting." Wait for the req to open. Then post the job to external job boards and wait for candidates to apply. Then send resumes to hiring managers and wait for them to respond. Then send schedule requests to candidates and wait for them to accept. Then the interview happens and wait for hiring manager feedback. And so on. This process is causing hiring times to skyrocket, and is largely focused on active candidates only--not always the best source of top, high-quality talent.

It's time to get proactive! Dare to do something different. Build a close relationship with hiring managers to gain insight into what's coming. Really understand who will be needed in terms of skills and background. Start developing relationships with potential candidates BEFORE the requisition opens. In fact, knowing the kinds of talent that are going to be needed by the hiring manager allows a good recruiter to build long-term relationships with passive and semi-active candidates so there will be a pool of candidates available--not 30 days after the req opens, but on the same day. Imagine that!

Get Out of the Box

So I was talking to a prospective customer earlier this week and they iterated yet again what I've been hearing for a while now--there is a skills shortage developing in many  industries. We've known it for a while in health care--especially clinicians and RNs, and many of the science-heavy businesses like aerospace, petrochemical, and pharma. Now it seems that virtually every industry is reporting key shortages. The current issue of Human Resource Executive features a cover story entitled Filling the Gap. So what's the read here? It's time for corporate recruiting organizations to start thinking out of the box, be more strategic, and try to get ahead of the game. Think about how to source candidates from closely related skill sets or competencies--it might be amazing what some "fresh eyes" can do for any business in creative innovative products and services. Get out there, talk to hiring managers, understand what the really need. Then get creative in sourcing for the upcoming positions ahead of the actual demand. Filling reqs reactively is NOT strategic. And searching existing resume databases to fill position after position is certainly not thinking out of the box! Dare to be amazing--your company will thank you!