Archive for September, 2010
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010
Since the financial crisis of September 2008, much has changed. Entire industries have changed, likely for decades, and the notion that a recovery can absorb all the employees dislocated by the recession holds no credibility. Many are being forced into career changes, and unemployment and under-employment remain rampant. As a result, all the rules of corporate recruiting are changing, whether we like it or not.
What constitutes a good candidate, how passive job-seekers are best approached and whether your recruiting expectations are even reasonable … all of this has to be revisited. In general, it’s time to take a fresh look at the talent markets in which you operate to understand how they have changed and to determine which approaches will be most effective going forward. In order to gain this level of insight, you’ll need to conduct some rigorous talent market research … which few companies have the time, resources or inclination to do on their own.
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Tags: economy, financial crisis, market research, recession, talent acquisition, talent market, TMR
Posted in Intelligence | No Comments »
Monday, September 27th, 2010
What happens when you find the perfect candidate for your company? This person has the skills and experience that could make a major difference in the entire company’s performance – and wants to join you. You make an offer, right? The stars are lining up, and you need to take full advantage of the opportunity.
Of course, there’s only one problem: you don’t have an open position for this person. Without the necessary approval, how can you make this great strategic hire?
When you can’t pull the trigger right away, you need to change your strategy from hiring to candidate cultivation. Until you can add headcount, it’s necessary to find ways to keep a candidate engaged and interested in your company … and also from becoming interested in your competitors. When you set out to do this, you need a plan, and that’s where KGTiger can help.
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Tags: candidates, Corporate Recruiting, hiring, HR outsourcing, HRO, outsourced recruiting, outsourcing, recruiting, STREAM
Posted in Strategy | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
Hiring is starting to open up, albeit slowly, and many companies are starting to think about adding to their capabilities. For corporate recruiting departments, it’s no different. Even in the best of economic conditions, the recruiting function is tasked to run lean, and recessions wind up taking a disproportionate toll on the department. Once the job market thaws, corporate recruiting teams are like any other department, looking to replace critical resources that were lost. But, this may not be the best way to restore your capabilities.
Instead of thinking about bodies, turn your mind to results. Consider your department’s strategic objectives, and what it will take to accomplish them. Adding people may be an intuitive solution, but it isn’t always the best one. Instead, you need resources, defined more broadly.
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Tags: BYTE, Corporate Recruiting, hiring, job market, recruiting, ROI
Posted in Process | No Comments »
Monday, September 20th, 2010
There is no metric more carefully watched in corporate recruiting than “time to hire.” The length of time it takes to turn an open req into an employee is the fundamental benchmark in determining a corporate recruiter’s success. Of course, efforts to shrink the duration can lead to a degradation of employee quality, which means that recruiters have traditionally needed to balance speed with diligence. Being able to accomplish the former without impairing the latter, however, can make your operation far more powerful.
There are several barriers to accelerating time to hire, as many factors can disrupt even the smoothest and most carefully planned corporate recruiting operations. Difficulties in sourcing – particularly for rare or highly coveted skill sets, industries and experience – can result in longer lead times, and competing offers can drag out the process at the end.
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Tags: BYTE, hiring, ROI, time to hire
Posted in Process | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010
Corporate recruiting provides your company’s lifeblood: talent. Without people, of course, nothing gets done … and without the right people, nothing gets done well. Your team, through effective sourcing and interviewing, is instrumental in keeping the business running and growing. Yet, these efforts are rarely recognized as instrumental to your organization. Corporate recruiting has always suffered from a low profile in most businesses, which often makes it difficult to get the resources you need to operate effectively.
To gain the recognition that your corporate recruiting team deserves, you need to position it as being of strategic value. You have an opportunity to do this every time you fill a key, high-profile req. You just need to manage the recruiting process effectively internally, and that starts with forging the right partnerships.
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Tags: Corporate Recruiting, STREAM, talent pool, talent pools
Posted in Process | No Comments »
Monday, September 13th, 2010
From the time you receive authorization to fill a req through new-hire orientation, there’s a lot that can go wrong. The entire corporate recruiting supply chain is fraught with risk – there are so many reasons why a position can remain vacant for a long time, costing your company ROI every day. To preserve your company’s upside, you need to be able to identify these risks up front and take steps to mitigate them. If you succeed, you’ll accelerate the returns associated with every new employee.
Think about every step involved in filling an open req. There is sourcing, screening, interviewing, reference and background checking, negotiating and finally bringing the candidate in the door for the first day as a new employee of your company. You could run into problems at each of these points, from looking in the wrong talent pools to having a breakdown of communication that causes a person who has accepted an offer not to follow through and arrive the first day.
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Tags: candidates, market research, ROI, talent market, talent pool, talent pools, TMR
Posted in Strategy | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
Businesses need more help these days, but they realize they don’t have to pay for it. It looks as though this year’s crop of college graduates will have an easier time finding jobs, as recruiting is on the rise for the first time since 2008, but salaries remain under pressure for these first-time entrants to the professional workforce.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers notes that recruiting fell 22 percent from 2008 to 2009. While this year’s increase of 5.3 percent makes up little ground, it’s nonetheless a step in the right direction.
For corporate recruiters, the campus recruiting challenges on the horizon are interesting. They will have to hire more people than they did last year, cope with a number of resume submissions per open req that is still high and convince candidates to take positions that pay lower than may be expected. Even with those who are new to the workforce, this may not be easy.
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Tags: BYTE, campus recruiting, candidates, hiring managers, job market, recruiting, talent
Posted in Process | No Comments »
Monday, September 6th, 2010
In an employment market like the one around us today, your hiring managers may tend to find passive candidates far more appealing. After rounds of layoffs and pay cuts, those who have held their ground are usually among the best at what they do. So, when the reqs start to open up, corporate recruiters are looking to seize talent from their competitors: they want a competitive edge. If you’re out on the prowl for passive candidates, however, you need to be ready for a unique set of challenges.
The obvious, of course, is that passive candidates aren’t looking. You need to find them, entice them and sell them on your opening. You need to make it clear that it’s worth their time to engage with you and that the upside related to doing so is profound. Further, the experience needs to be tailored to someone who knows that you’re the party that wants something.
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Tags: candidates, hiring managers, job market, STREAM, talent, talent acquisition
Posted in Strategy | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
The hiring process is built on questions and answers. You ask candidates about their motivations, skills and experience. They ask you about the company and the work environment … not to mention compensation and career paths. At its best, there’s an easy and comfortable back-and-forth, and everyone walks away from the process well-informed. When the process is one-sided, however, it can feel like an interrogation, with only the bare light bulb missing. This dynamic is unproductive and probably won’t lead to satisfaction on either side.
The interrogation problem is particularly prevalent when a corporate recruiter is talking to passive candidates. A lot more selling is required, and the prospect has fewer reasons to engage directly. The recruiter may feel the temptation to pry information from the candidate – and talk too much while doing so – ultimately tainting the interview and costing the company a strategic hire.
The results of an interrogation speak for themselves.
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Tags: candidates, hiring, interviewing, STREAM
Posted in Process, Strategy | No Comments »
