Archive for the ‘Strategy’ Category
Monday, October 11th, 2010
Prospective employees care about where they work. Even in today’s constrained job market, a tainted image can cost you a great hire. A weak brand tends to be perceived as a sign of risk, and nobody wants to leave the comfort of steady employment for an environment that could be unstable or unfulfilling. When you enter the talent market, consequently, you need to make sure your company’s brand is in order. Your candidates will be watching.
There are many factors that could cause a candidate to react negatively to your brand. If your business has been beat up in the press, endured a precipitous decline in stock price or lost a few key clients or employees to competitors, for example, candidates will notice … especially passive candidates. This puts you in the position of having to sell your company to the most desirable potential employees, explain your company’s plans to overcome recent challenges and demonstrate your potential for the future. Essentially, you wind up having to convince a candidate that your company is worth joining.
This is no way to recruit!
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Tags: brand, candidates, job market, STREAM, talent market, talent pools
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Monday, August 30th, 2010
For corporate recruiters, the past two years have seemed like a problem of open reqs: specifically, there haven’t been many. The recession has dealt a blow to the profession and the businesses served, and the median duration of unemployment, according to Harvard Business Review, is six months (and counting), double what it’s been at any point in the last five decades. The problem, therefore, seems pretty obvious.
Or, is it?
Maybe it isn’t just a protracted period of unemployment and jobless recovery at work – maybe we’re also seeing a lower quality of demand.
Employers could be investing more in their talent, rather than taking advantage of an unfavorable employment market to secure employees at lower rates and save a few dollars. While this thinking may be attractive now, it can have disastrous consequences down the road.
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Tags: Corporate Recruiting, outsourced recruiting, outsourcing, recruiting outsourcing, ROI, talent, talent market, TMR, unemployment
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Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
Short-sightedness is the current curse of corporate recruiting. As company executives remain focused on the day-to-day swings of the market and economy, they are overlooking an opportunity to lay the foundation for future growth – by bringing in revenue-producing employees. Everyone is feeling it, of course, which is what creates the opportunity in the marketplace for you to secure a competitive advantage.
According to a post on Monster’s “Recruiting and Hiring Advice” blog:
This resistance cuts across the industry, from temp agencies to retained search firms. “Employers are hesitant to hire non-contingent workers, so they’re hiring contingent employees,” says Tony Gregoire, senior research analyst at Staffing Industry Analysts. “Often they’re even skittish to hire contingents. There is growth in staffing, but it’s spotty. We project 16 percent revenue growth for industrial staffing in 2010, but healthcare should see a 3 percent decline in revenue.”
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Tags: candidates, Corporate Recruiting, hiring, outsourced recruiting, outsourcing, recruiting outsourcing, STREAM
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Monday, August 23rd, 2010
After a severe financial crisis and signs that the economy has turned the corner, we’re all eager for a recovery, however cautious, to get under way. But, what happens if that isn’t the case? There are signs that some risks could flare up again, which would require a fast change from any plans you currently have in the works. Since traditional corporate recruiting tends to have a fairly long lead time, this could leave you in a tough position.
I ran into a story on FINSwire that claims some investment banks may be instituting pay cuts and layoffs in the coming months, with up to 20 percent of them being cut. This is not a trivial amount. And as we all know, action in the financial services industry has a way of affecting everyone else.
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Tags: economy, financial crisis, financial services, financial services industry, risk, risk management, STREAM
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Wednesday, August 18th, 2010
Could it be this bad? A 60 Minutes story, according to Harvard Business Review, claimed: “A new breed of American worker is about to attack everything you hold sacred …”
Cross-generational tension is nothing new, of course. Generation X and the Baby Boomers have always struggled to find common ground, and the Boomers had to cope with substantially different worldviews – and treatment – from its predecessor generation. HBR continues:
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Tags: Baby Boomers, Generation Gap, Generation X, Generation Y, generations, hiring, Millennials, STREAM
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Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
There are high hopes for an economic recovery. The worst of the global financial debacle feels like it’s behind us, though there are many business leaders and experts suspect that this may not be the case. “Double-dip” recessions and expectations of more mortgage delinquencies – triggered by a combination of falling home values and constrained household incomes – could lead to more economic malaise. And doubtless, this prospect has an effect on your plans to recruit and hire.
So, the big question becomes one posed recently by Deloitte: “Where are you on the recovery curve?” There’s an essential tension between forecasted economic activity and near-term business needs, especially in the wake of a recession that forced difficult staff cuts leaving your company under-powered and your staff stretched thin.
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Tags: Corporate Recruiting, economy, financial crisis, market research, research, talent market, TMR
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