Who controls your employment brand?  If you are not aggressively and proactively managing your employment brand, then grumpy people are controlling it; primarily bitter ex-employees and even worse, your less-than-happy current employees. 

It’s actually pretty simple to define.  Your employment brand is the word on the street about your organization as a place to work.  That’s it.  It’s not recruitment advertising.  It’s not some fancy aspirational slogan about what you wish you were.  It’s not the smoke and mirrors job description you created to make your boring job, working for an awful manager, sound enticing. 

It’s actually pretty simple to do.  Create a great place to work!  You can’t fake this.  You either have an environment that people enjoy working in or you don’t.  If you don’t, then start there. Fix it! If you do, then make sure people know about it. 

Your employment brand is what real people talk about when they go out to dinner with friends or answer questions about their job at a networking event.  Your employment brand is what former applicants say about how they were treated, or ignored, during your selection process.  Your employment brand is what your former employees say about their experience.  Your employment brand is simply the most important foundational piece of your recruiting strategy.

Be aggressive.  Be proactive.  Make sure you are the driving force behind your employment brand.  Or, feel free to sit back and let the grumpy people control the word on the street.  It’s your choice.

Trying to create or upgrade your employee referral program? Do you have what it takes to lead the effort? Is your organization ready to embrace the change?  Today I want to go beyond the tactics necessary to implement a strong employee referral program and discuss the leadership and organizational attributes that are at the core of world-class employee referral programs.

Passion.  Are you genuinely excited about the potential bottom-line impact of your program?  Have you read everything you possibly can about the topic? Have you talked directly to multiple people who have created award winning programs? If you, as the leader of the change effort, are not bouncing off the walls with excitement about the future of your program, you may not be ready to take this on.

Pride.  Are you proud of the program plans you have? Are you ready to go tell everyone about the exciting things you have planned?  Are you proud of your organization? Can you stand tall and talk with strangers about why they should work in your company?  Are your employees proud of where they work? How are your employee engagement numbers looking?  An engaged workforce is more inclined to support a program and create the success you are looking for.  

Creativity.  What interesting things are you prepared to do to catch the attention of your employees?  Creative does not necessarily mean you have to come up with an idea that no one else has. Sometimes creativity is finding a best practice from elsewhere and figuring out how to make it work in your organization and within your culture.  Are you prepared to step out of your comfort zone and try some new things? Creative referral programs catch and retain the attention of employees.

Willingness to invest.  Are you prepared to invest time and money today to save time and money tomorrow?  Companies with great employee referral programs understand that you must invest to win.  Companies with great employee referral programs believe that they will have a tremendous return on investment and aggressively move forward knowing that with strong leadership and flawless execution they will improve their quality of hire and reduce expenses.

Are you ready? Do you have what it takes? Go for it. Lead your company to success!

I love to hear about recruiters doing great things for their companies.  Admittedly, I get pretty grumpy when I talk about the lack of recruiting leadership out there.  There are many great recruiters.  There are some great recruiting leaders.  There are a few great recruiting organizations.  One of the recruiters that has cracked the code is Frank Zupan, who recently blogged “I am Recruiting and I Do Not Suck.”  Beyond the fact that he has a great sense of humor and a knack for catchy blog titles, he gets recruiting!

Frank has passion. He loves what he does.  He is proud of what he does.  He loves being a recruiter.  He has mastered the important things.  He does great work, pops up regularly to effectively engage in social media, and stays focused on keeping hiring managers, candidates and new hires happy.   And, most importantly, he has made a business impact.

He doesn’t just talk about being a good recruiter. He measures it. He reports it. He was also smart enough to align himself with a supportive leadership team that enables his success.  Great recruiters don’t stay in sucky organizations, they leave.

My grumpiness with recruiting isn’t with sucky recruiters.  My grumpiness is with sucky recruiting leaders and sucky executive leadership.  Most recruiters are well intentioned, passionate about their work, and good at what they do.  Too many of them work for companies that don’t support them.  Most work for companies that really don’t understand how to position recruiting for success.  

Do you make an impact on your business?  Do you measure it? Do you report it?  If not, be like Frank.  He doesn’t suck!

I am amazed by the number of HR leaders that don’t get recruiting. I respect that not everyone has experienced the pleasure, and periodic pain, of being a recruiter or leading a recruiting function. If you have not, stop looking for the easy road to results. Recruiting done right is not easy!

Many recruiting functions make a significant bottom-line impact to their organization. The ones that do have done the heavy lifting to transform recruiting from an administrative reactionary paper-pushing state to a highly strategic high-tech and high-touch function. There’s no big red button to press to fix recruiting.   

Recently I’ve been in multiple conversations with recruiting leaders with bosses that “don’t see the value” or “don’t have time” to implement an employee referral program. The concepts of an effective employee referral program are easy.  Committing the time, resources, and creativity to make a significant shift in your sourcing strategies and recruiter behaviors can be difficult. Who decided “easy” was the default path to success? 

I have had several flat-out scary conversations this month with recruiting leaders that work in organizations where “leadership” believes you should blindly outsource recruiting because “it will be easier.” Easier? Are you kidding me? Who said recruiting was going to be easy?

There are times where outsourcing recruiting may be the right answer. It’s never the first answer. It should never be because it takes effort to retain your recruiting staff and deal with volatile volume. It should only be implemented when extensive analysis validates the positive long-term impact on business results. That’s not easy.

Top notch recruiting is not for the faint of heart. I don’t believe that highly specialized recruiting in a competitive market is easy. I don’t pretend that high volume, high turnover, non-exempt recruiting is easy to manage. I do believe that the right recruiting leader, with the right attitude, and the right leadership support will always make a significant bottom line impact.

If recruiting was easy, anyone could do it!

I found myself so wound up in a work discussion this week that I nearly forgot to eat my lunch.  My eyes were lit up, my heart was racing, and I barely stopped talking long enough to breathe.  At one point, I feared drool.  When the waitress stopped by for the second time to see how we liked our meal, I said everything was great…and then realized I hadn’t even looked at my food.  I finally had to gain control of myself.  The topic? Recruiting.  What a geek! 

Even more specifically, the topic was a broken recruiting function.  There is little that fires me up more than talking to someone that needs to fix recruiting.  Hiring managers were grumpy, the candidate experience was shoddy, a crazy amount of money was being spent on agency fees, the employment brand was nearly non-existent, and the employee referral program was ineffective.   I could barely keep myself in the seat. 

Does your job do that for you?  It should.  Do you get all geeked-up when you talk about your job?  If not, get out!  Life is way too short to go to work and talk about boring stuff.   

When my lunch partner asked if a recruiting mess like this scares me, I was compelled to share my meteorologist analogy.  Here’s what I know, especially living in Cleveland, Ohio, when it’s 70 and sunny doing the TV weather report is kinda boring (albeit a rare and enjoyable phenomenon).  Now, bring on a good mid-January blizzard or an April tornado warning and the local weather reporters are all geeked-up.  Their hair is a mess, their sleeves are rolled up, the tie is askew, they are talking at warp speed, there is sweat rolling down their face…and the smile is uncontrollable!  That’s what I’m talkin’ about.  When all is calm, it’s a snore fest.  When it’s a mess, bring it on!

I am noticing a disturbing trend among some very talented professionals that I meet – they are unemployed or noticeably underemployed, by choice.  Yes, by choice!  They choose not to work for companies that believe that a 45-hour workweek is the new part-time.  They choose not to work for companies that are so poorly staffed that they have forced work-life balance to take a very ugly turn.  They choose to step down from leadership roles because today’s corporate expectations are so out-of-whack that it’s impossible to do a superior job and live the life they deserve.

Top talent wants a life. Top talent is exhausted and not willing to tolerate it any longer.  Who decided that working 70+ hours a week is the way it’s supposed to be?  Who decided that every e-mail must be answered immediately…regardless of the time of day?  Who decided that a vibrating cell phone is always more important than the friend or family member you are spending time with?

Corporate types take note: if you want to recruit and retain top talent, you must find ways to create and organize jobs that allow people to live their lives.  Now!  No more excuses.  I know it’s difficult.  So what?  You’re smart – you can figure it out.   Advertise professional jobs that are part-time.  Advertise your willingness to allow a job share.  Get your staffing levels to a point where people can actually accomplish their job in a reasonable amount of time.  Do this and watch your applicant quality skyrocket!

Your top talent will not stay just because you are paying them well.  They will go work for someone else.  They will take a demotion to have a life.  They will choose to stay home because they are no longer willing to put their life on hold for your crazy expectations!  If you think the cost of turnover is high…calculate the cost of top talent turnover.

You:  the stressed out one with the head that’s ready to explode…take a stand!  Put together a plan that makes business sense for your company.  Propose alternatives that will allow you to have a satisfying professional life and a satisfying personal life.  Find someone that is willing to share a job with you.  Find someone who is willing to work the days and hours that you choose not to.  It’s your life.  It’s your career.  Take ownership of it.  Now!  Who says you can’t have it all?

Periodically I check in with networkers that I admire to see what they are doing and what they recommend.  Here are some best practices of all-star networkers.

• Make it a priority. You must make the time to network.  If you wait until you have time, or until the time is just right, it will never happen.  I meet way too many people that find themselves in need of a network and realize that it has been years since they really made an effort to reach out and stay connected.  Set aside a certain amount of time, or a certain number of lunches per week, that you will dedicate to expanding or maintaining your network.
• Be visible. It is much easier to network when people can find you!  Get involved in your community, your church, in a business related organization or a local non-profit.  Get out of your office.  
• Ask questions.  Find out what you can about those in your network. Dig a little deeper. Find out what they are working on, what they are excited about – and what keeps them up at night.   
• Listen.  When you ask questions, listen to what people are saying and not saying.  The better listener you are, the more impactful of a networker you will be. When you are really listening, you can offer to help without people ever needing to ask.
• Connect the dots.  Find ways to connect the seemingly unrelated people and situations in your life.  You’ll be surprised at the number of times where you meet someone today that is looking for an accounting job and then remember that one of your contacts mentioned they were struggling to find an experienced accountant.  When you ask great questions and effectively listen you can easily connect the dots and help two people at the same time.
• Pay it forward.  You know the concept.  Help people whenever you can and expect nothing in return.  If you believe in the concept, then you know that someday, somewhere, you will get the help you need.  This is the opposite of the idea that if you help someone else that they “owe you one.”  There is no ledger to keep with genuine networking.  You may be able to offer something tangible like a courtesy interview, resume or interview tips, or maybe a job offer. You can offer people some realistic hope about their future through a little coaching. Your help does not always have to be work related -- you can make a lasting impression by doing something to help their kids or their non-profit cause.
• Value and protect your network.  Great networkers protect their network.  Just because you know a lot of people does not mean that you automatically give up your address book to anyone who needs a lead.  Don’t abuse the people in your network by sending everyone you meet their way.
• Let yourself be used.  Great networkers know when they are being used and allow it to happen anyway.  You know the phone call.  When you see the number you know that the caller needs a job because it’s the only time they ever reach out to you.  Pick up the phone and help! 
• Follow up, follow through, and stay in touch.  If you commit to something, do it. If you meet with someone, follow up with them to see how things went.  Don’t just walk away.  Stay in touch with the people in your network. 
• Have a strategy to keep your network active. Strong networkers use an approach that prioritizes and stratifies their network.

This blog post is an excerpt from an article I wrote that was published in the October 2010 issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. 

Knowing the pet-peeves of all-star networkers is just as important as knowing the best practices.  If you want to network with the best, just follow a few simple guidelines. 

• Don’t be an a*#hole.  This pet peeve, which I picked up from one of the best networkers I know – a former HR exec turned business development pro – seems to sum it up nicely, with very little explanation necessary.  If you remember only one tip, make it this one.  Be nice. Live the golden rule. Pay it forward. Always. 
• Don’t be a user.  Don’t be the person that only reaches out when you need something.  Build relationships, not just a long list of acquaintances that you call when you need a job, a favor, or a sale.
• Don’t forget to follow up and say thanks. If someone helps you, follow up. Let them know how things turned out.  I’m not talking about lavish gifts or meals. Call or buy them a cup of coffee and thank them for their efforts. Even though great networkers help without expecting anything in return, don’t take them for granted.
• Don’t be a “business card ninja.”  Don’t walk into a social or business gathering and fire off a hundred business cards in 10 minutes.  Don’t just work a room, fake a smile, shake hands, distribute all of your business cards and claim victory as a great networker. Go for quality, not quantity.  The best networkers slow down, talk to people, listen, get to know them, then hand out their card as a means to follow up and schedule a more meaningful conversation in the future.  That’s how effective networking begins.
• Don’t be creepy. Use your knowledge wisely.  Most of us are smart enough to learn a few things about new people we are going to meet by utilizing social media and an internet search.  If you find some common ground, it is fine to acknowledge “we both went to Ohio University.”  It’s just wrong to bring up minute details from someone’s past that confirm that you were digging way too deeply.  If you use LinkedIn or Facebook pictures as a means of identifying the person you are meeting at a coffee shop for the first time, great!  Just don’t let them see their picture enlarged on your phone when they walk in. That’s creepy!

This blog post is an excerpt from an article I wrote that was published in the October 2010 issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.  

You’ve implemented a well-branded employee referral program with creative ways to catch the attention of your employees. You’ve educated your employees on the

bottom-line value of your referral program and the high priority jobs that you are recruiting for.  Yet…your employee referral results are not quite where you would like them to be.  Now what?  Networking.  Educate your managers and high performing employees on how to go beyond talking to people about open jobs. Teach them the skills they need to build and maintain an effective professional network for life, while at the same time enhancing your employee referral program results.

Real networking is not about making a couple of calls to fill an open position.   Networking is not a transaction.  It’s about creating and effectively managing a network of people, based on long-term, two-way genuine relationship building.  At its core is a pay-it-forward mentality. You give without being asked and help because it’s the right thing to do. Relationships are based on trust, respect, and genuine caring for others.  Effective networkers know that people move in and out of their networks over time, but their networks are always active and always a priority. 

You know the reasons employee referrals are important.  There are countless studies, articles and blog posts confirming that referrals will save you money and increase quality of hire.  Assuming that you believe the data, then we must continue to find ways to make our employee referral programs more effective.  Well-networked recruiters, managers, and top performing employees are at the core of taking your employee referral program to the next level. 

By helping your employees become better networkers, you will build the foundation necessary to sustain a successful employee referral program.  Frankly, most people are just not that great at networking. It’s hard. It takes time. Most of your employees, and many of your recruiters, could use your help.

This blog post is an excerpt from an article I wrote that was published in the October issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.   Future blog posts will address tips for effectively building and maintaining your professional network.

If you are a recruiting professional and want to get smarter…more efficient, more effective, more productive…stop talking to other recruiters!  Get out of HR and follow a sales person around.  Walk down the hall and find your CFO.  Go behind the high security access doors and talk to some IT people.  Follow the bright colors and highly decorated cubes and talk to a marketing professional.

Why? Others cracked the code years ago on the very things we struggle with every day.

Trying to figure out to get the add-to-staff you need or the approval to upgrade your ATS? Spend a day with your CFO. Listen to what is important to her.  Ask if she cares how long it takes to fill a job.  Learn how to build the business case to justify adding to staff so you can effectively fill that backlog of revenue producing jobs.  Learn to articulate the impact you are making in pennies-per-share…not in days-to-fill. 

Trying to figure out how to manage your volatile requisition load and unpredictable staffing needs for your recruiting team? Talk to your IT friends.  They figured out this problem when they were all still writing COBOL code.  Figure out your baseline minimum staffing levels and then use on-call staff, contract recruiters, and staffing agencies or outsource the pieces of the work that don’t adversely affect the client.  Don’t build a staff to match the high end of possible volume.

Trying to figure out how to recruit with more of a sales-like approach?  Go on a few calls with real sales people...the ones that have 50% or more of their salary contingent on meaningful, measurable results.  Watch how they interact, follow-up, build relationships and how they close the deal.

Trying to figure out your employment brand or a social media strategy? Stop by the marketing department and let one of them stretch your brain out.  The most effective employment branding effort I ever implemented was one that my early-career-ultraconservative-HR geek-self would have never approved.   

You can do it!  Learn something new.  Apply the best practices of other professions.  And, for good measure, on the way back to your office…stop by and spend three minutes in audit and compliance…so they can help keep you out of jail!