Archive for February, 2010
Monday, February 15th, 2010
Today’s workforce is comprised of four generations, each of which has a distinct way of looking at the world and approaching its careers. Rapid advances in technology over the past 40 years have done more than change the tools of the office – they have fundamentally altered how people interact, which in turn has shaped worldviews. The gradual progression that preceded the PC revolution (and the internet revolution after it) is now a relic, and corporate recruiters and hiring managers will have to develop the skills necessary to connect with a variety of candidates who prefer specific styles and even use vastly different language.
This week, we will explore the implications of talent pools consisting of four generations that could not be more different from each other. The Baby Boomers, quickly approaching retirement, will leave a substantial gap to be filled. The flight of institutional knowledge and business experience will be exacerbated by the sheer size of this generation, which is expected to lead to significant shortfalls in talent in key positions. Generation X is readying to fill the Boomers’ large shoes, but the generation is smaller than its predecessor, leaving the younger Generation Y to fill the gap. And, the Millennials have not only begun to enter the workforce but are now starting to seek their second and third jobs.
The experience gaps that are likely to result will require the development of unorthodox talent pools, designed to meet specific needs and address the organizational structures that will have to change because of the shifting demographic. The challenge before corporate recruiters is unprecedented, and when it arrives, it will redefine our discipline.
Join me this week on the KGTiger blog as we explore how corporate recruiters an edge in what will become new territory for talent management.
Bookmark this link for the entire Generation Gap series >>
Tags: Baby Boomers, corporate regruiting, Gen X, Gen Y, Generation Gap, Generation X, Generation Y, generations, Millennials, talent management, talent pools
Posted in Strategy | 3 Comments »
Friday, February 12th, 2010
Four Ways to Improve New Product Launch Recruiting: New products require new talent. A venture into a product or service line can be fertile territory for sales and company value growth, but it can be risky. In addition to needing new capabilities – from research and development through sales, support and relationship management – you face competitive factors that weren’t an issue in the past. The most effective way to boost your odds of success while mitigating risk is to secure the best talent for your new product or service line.
Read the article >>
How Much Time Do You Spend with Your Hiring Managers?: Whatever the answer is, it probably isn’t enough. Corporate recruiters spend a disproportionate amount of their time engaged in administrative activities. This leads to hidden costs throughout the recruiting supply chain, but the impact is perhaps most profound when it comes to hiring manager relationships. After all, the hiring manager is best positioned to raise the profile of the corporate recruiting team within a company.
Read the article >>
Human Resources Procedures Never Caught up with the Web: A little over a decade ago, we were waiting for the entire corporate recruiting supply chain to change. Everything was going to become much, much easier, as our profession had announced its commitment to all things technological. The internet would make our lives easier. The entire sourcing and recruiting process would be made more efficient by job boards (as they were called at the time) and the ability for candidates to apply for jobs directly through company websites.
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Tags: Top Stories
Posted in Week in Review | No Comments »
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
A little over a decade ago, we were waiting for the entire corporate recruiting supply chain to change. Everything was going to become much, much easier, as our profession had announced its commitment to all things technological. The internet would make our lives easier. The entire sourcing and recruiting process would be made more efficient by job boards (as they were called at the time) and the ability for candidates to apply for jobs directly through company websites.
We had no idea, frankly, that candidates would work as hard as they have.
With more than 10 years of perspectives, we’ve seen a boom/bust economy that has led to uniformly heavier corporate recruiting workloads. Applicants are applying to the same jobs several times, in some cases. In general, they are finding more open positions and can cast a wider net. Corporate recruiters can’t keep up with the volume. In the late 1990s, they’d lament an open position with hundreds of resumes. Today, a few hundred resumes would be a relief – the new norm involves thousands of applicants.
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Tags: BYTE, candidates, CareerBuilder, Corporate Recruiting, HR, HR outsourcing, human resources, job boards, Monster, outsourcing, recruiting outsourcing, resumes, ROI
Posted in Process, Strategy | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
Every business area struggles to figure out just how many employees are enough. For corporate recruiters, usually required to operate lean, this can be particularly vexing. It’s possible to get temporary help to take the sting out of temporary surges in activity (e.g., sourcing for a special project or initiative), but the returns are usually compromised by the limited support they can provide and the time necessary to train them on internal processes and tools.
The solution to this challenge is to find a source of administrative HR capacity with which you have a continuous relationship (to obviate the need for continued training) that can increase or decrease essentially on demand. Like an accordion, your use would be able to expand and contract according to the rhythm of your business.
KGTiger’s BYTE service provides the administrative support necessary to help a corporate recruiting department through temporary periods of increased activity without requiring a substantial or long-term investment. We can provide a range of services – including resume formatting and a candidate “bat-phone” – to ease the impact of a spike in resume submissions or a wave of hiring (think of campus recruiting efforts, for example).
The advantage, though, is that this “accordion capacity” constricts when you don’t need it any longer. So, you’re able to keep your investment limited and focused on results, and a process that is usually packed with inefficiency becomes streamlined and cost-effective.
Tags: BYTE, HR, HR outsourcing, human resources, outsourced recruiting, outsourcing, recruiting outsourcing, resume formatting
Posted in Process | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Whatever the answer is, it probably isn’t enough. Corporate recruiters spend a disproportionate amount of their time engaged in administrative activities. This leads to hidden costs throughout the recruiting supply chain, but the impact is perhaps most profound when it comes to hiring manager relationships. After all, the hiring manager is best positioned to raise the profile of the corporate recruiting team within a company.
Too often, corporate recruiting is viewed as mostly transactional. You receive a req, and you look for a candidate. The process ends on the first day of work. There is little collaboration with the hiring manager, who is seen to have rather specific roles: defining position requirements, interviewing candidates and making the final decision on a hire. This approach doesn’t lead to the deep relationship that should be shared by a corporate recruiter and hiring manager in order to make the recruiting and hiring process more effective.
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Tags: BYTE, candidates, Corporate Recruiting, hiring managers, HR outsourcing, human resources, optimizing recruiting, outsourcing recruiting, outsouring, ROI, STREAM, TCO
Posted in Strategy | No Comments »
Monday, February 8th, 2010
New products require new talent. A venture into a product or service line can be fertile territory for sales and company value growth, but it can be risky. In addition to needing new capabilities – from research and development through sales, support and relationship management – you face competitive factors that weren’t an issue in the past. The most effective way to boost your odds of success while mitigating risk is to secure the best talent for your new product or service line.
1. Understand what’s available
The availability of talent should be included in any new product launch plan, but the process of sourcing talent can provide its own challenges. Using KGTiger’s TMR service, you’ll be able to identify high-value talent pools where you may not expect them to exist. Not only will this result in more effective corporate recruiting, it will give you an edge over the competition.
2. Have a plan
Sometimes, traditional recruiting measures will not work, especially if you’re pursuing scarce or highly desired talent. Begin the corporate recruiting process with a clear sense of how you will approach talent pools and the steps you will take to attract high-impact candidates.
(more…)
Tags: BYTE, HR outsourcing, outsourced recruiting, outsourcing, product launch, recruiting outsourcing, talent acquisition, talent management, talent pools, TMR
Posted in Strategy | 1 Comment »
Friday, February 5th, 2010
Five Ways to Improve Your Time to Hire Performance: Time to hire is the metric that matters most, even if aspects of it are beyond your control. But, it’s what executives understand, so it isn’t going to go away. Since you’ll be held accountable to it, you need to find ways to improve your time to hire performance. In addition to cutting time to source and streamlining the offer letter and negotiation efforts, there are steps you can take to help your hiring managers respond more quickly. You’ll be influencing, not controlling, but in the long run, these tips can help you improve the overall performance of your company in attracting talent, which leads to a salient return on investment.
Read the article >>
As Job Market Seeks Recovery, Start Recruiting Now: So, what can we make of the talent market right now? A year ago, the situation was nothing short of dismal. Job cuts peaked in January 2009, according to the latest data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, with 241,729 layoffs announced – the largest one-month reduction since January 2002. And, the five months that followed continued to be severe. Since the start of the recession, 2.5 million positions have been cut, Challenger says, with 1.6 million of them coming between July 2008 and June 2009.
Read the article >>
Facebook: A Powerful Corporate Recruiting Resource: In just about every business, the potential value of Facebook has been kicked around. Corporate recruiting is no different. There are 350 million users on this site – the most popular social networking platform on the web – and it’s still growing aggressively. So, the upside is only going to grow. Add to this the fact that there’s a robust application development community outside Facebook, which provides a steady stream of fresh, innovative thinking, and you can see the wide range of possibilities for professionals in our business.
Read the article >>
(more…)
Tags: Top Stories
Posted in Week in Review | No Comments »
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
Time to hire is the metric that matters most, even if aspects of it are beyond your control. But, it’s what executives understand, so it isn’t going to go away. Since you’ll be held accountable to it, you need to find ways to improve your time to hire performance. In addition to cutting time to source and streamlining the offer letter and negotiation efforts, there are steps you can take to help your hiring managers respond more quickly. You’ll be influencing, not controlling, but in the long run, these tips can help you improve the overall performance of your company in attracting talent, which leads to a salient return on investment.
1. Deliver only the best candidates – through effective sourcing
Who wouldn’t deliver only the best candidates? Think past the obvious, though, to the process that yields these high-quality job-seekers. Improve your sourcing and screening techniques to ensure that your hiring managers can move beyond the “HR stuff” and dig right into questions of specific experience, skills and competencies. Use targeted talent pools to ease the overall workload and help you bolster the set of available candidates. Show the hiring manager the quality of the resumes you’re delivering, and he may be excited to take faster action.
(more…)
Tags: hiring managers, HR metrics, HR outsourcing, human resources, metrics, outsourced recruiting, recruiting metrics, recruiting outsourcing, resumes, STREAM
Posted in Process | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
In just about every business, the potential value of Facebook has been kicked around. Corporate recruiting is no different. There are 350 million users on this site – the most popular social networking platform on the web – and it’s still growing aggressively. So, the upside is only going to grow. Add to this the fact that there’s a robust application development community outside Facebook, which provides a steady stream of fresh, innovative thinking, and you can see the wide range of possibilities for professionals in our business.
But, it gets tricky. Facebook is a destination for both personal and professional information, so it can be difficult to engage candidates the way you would in other online venues, such as LinkedIn. Balance your hunt for talent and information with a healthy respect for personal boundaries, and you’ll gain better results in this environment.
The critical component in successful Facebook-based corporate recruiting is time. You need to be able to commit to the development of your recruiting presence, from content to community growth. Think of it as similar to the development of any concentrated talent pool (after all, that’s exactly what it is). It’s easy to wind up overloaded with social media tasks … and you still have the business of sourcing, interviewing and placing candidates to which to attend.
(more…)
Tags: BYTE, Corporate Recruiting, Facebook, LinkedIn, social media, social networking
Posted in Intelligence, Strategy, Transformation | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
So, what can we make of the talent market right now? A year ago, the situation was nothing short of dismal. Job cuts peaked in January 2009, according to the latest data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, with 241,729 layoffs announced – the largest one-month reduction since January 2002. And, the five months that followed continued to be severe. Since the start of the recession, 2.5 million positions have been cut, Challenger says, with 1.6 million of them coming between July 2008 and June 2009.
Yet, the second half of last year wasn’t nearly as bad. After January, the layoff rate did fall, though it stayed above a monthly average of 130,000 for the first six months of 2009. The situation became much better after July 1, 2009, and the monthly average for from July through November was only around 69,000, with November (the last month reported) coming in at slightly above 50,000 cut positions.
(more…)
Tags: BYTE, Challenger Gray and Christmas, hiring in a recession, job cuts, layoff, layoffs, recession, talent market, unemployment, unemployment rate
Posted in Intelligence, News | 1 Comment »
