RECRUITINGRESULTS.BOWERCG.COM

Stop Looking For A Job!

2012-05-06T14:47:05Z

Stop looking for a job! Start building relationships. Every day I talk to someone looking for a new job. Some are between jobs. Some are employed and unhappy. Most are uniformly dumbfounded by the lack of success of their sit-behind-the-computer-and-apply-online job search strategy.

Obsessively waiting for the job of your dreams to magically appear online is not going to work. We’ve all seen the statistics about the high percentage of jobs that are filled via networking and through a company’s employee referral program. Then why do job seekers continue to sit at home and hope to find a job? That dumbfounds me. Stop focusing on applying for open jobs. Start focusing on building relationships that will get you positioned for consideration for open jobs.

Eat a big bowl of “getupoffthecouch” for breakfast tomorrow and start talking to people. Anyone. Everyone. Get yourself on the radar. There is no such thing as a bad networking contact. You don’t know all the people that your friends and former co-workers know. You don’t know when someone you know is going to meet the person you need to know. Go tell your story. Help others along the way. It’s a two-way street.

And, if you are a recruiter sitting in your office praying that the perfect candidate will apply to your job posting or a business development professional cold calling people to get 30 seconds to explain how you are different from the last 25 people that cold called (and are just like you), then stop! It’s the same for you.

It’s never too late. Start today. Call a friend. Have coffee with a former co-worker. Connect with a college pal on social media. Hang out in a local coffee shop. I can all but guarantee that there is at least one recruiter in every coffee shop in town!

That’s the game. Start building relationships. Keep building relationships. Never stop building relationships. You can choose to play the game. Or you can stay at home. Seems like a simple choice to me.

Who is Recruiting Your Recruiters?

2012-04-24T23:39:40Z

I woke up today thinking about how we know when we have great recruiters around us (don’t ask why – I’m just geeky that way about recruiting). Simple answer: you know you have great recruiters when others are aggressively recruiting your recruiters.

You know you have a great recruiting team when your hiring managers (especially the sales leaders) want their assigned recruiter to stop recruiting and start selling for them. That’s a statement!

You know you have a great recruiting team when your competitors know who your top recruiters are, because you are crushing them in the talent market. When your competitors know more about your recruiters than you do, start to worry.

When search firms figure out that the reason you no longer call for their help is because of the great new recruiter you have; and they attempt to woo them away in order to get their cash flow moving again, then you have a great recruiter.

Previously, I posted about “The Parking Lot Test” as a simple assessment to determine if you have a top-notch recruiter on your team. Here’s the premise: if you tell your most important hiring manager that you are transferring their assigned recruiter to another business unit and they threaten to run you over in the parking lot, then you know you have a great recruiter!

If your recruiters aren’t being recruited and if your hiring managers could care less if you move their assigned recruiter, then you have a problem. Time to clean house. Time to start recruiting someone else’s great recruiters!

Does Your CFO Thank You For Recruiting Metrics?

2012-04-16T13:55:40Z

Does your CFO call you monthly to thank you for your recruiting metrics and the impact you made to the bottom line? Do your recruiters look forward to metrics that validate their personal impact to improving business results? Do your metrics provide you the insight necessary to make upgrades to your recruiting strategy and tactics? If you did not answer a resounding yes to these questions, then you have some work to do!

Are you measuring results or activity? If you are proudly sending out data to show how many interviews you had, the number of phone screens you completed, or my all-time-favorite waste of paper: time to fill, then you are measuring activity. These are merely indicators and do nothing to prove the value and impact of your recruiting function.

If you are measuring the quality of your sourcing and the quality of hire then you are measuring results. If your data can prove a reduction in turnover, an increase in department and company performance, and a reduction in expense, then you are measuring results. If your data can prove that the experienced call center reps that you hire stay longer and perform better than those without call center experience, then you are measuring meaningful results.

If you are measuring results, then you have actionable data that will allow you to continually upgrade your sourcing, screening, and selection strategies. You will be able to build the business case proving an increase in recruiting staff will reduce third party recruiter spend. You will be able to prove that investing more in your employee referral program will decrease your cost for job boards. You will know the impact of your social media and employment branding efforts and be able to justify additional resources for the future.

Measuring activity is easy. It’s why most HR functions default to it. Measuring results is difficult. Measuring results takes time. Measuring results takes an amazing amount of collaboration. Measuring results will make sure that your CEO and CFO know that you are making a significant impact to the ongoing success of your business!

Sourcing Veteran Candidates is Not Enough

2012-03-26T18:05:20Z

I’m impressed with the efforts of recruiting teams that are focused on sourcing military Veterans to upgrade the talent of their company’s leadership. I’m disappointed when I hear about the difficulties they are having in actually hiring great Veteran talent into their organizations. Sourcing is not enough. Making the quality hire is the only meaningful measure of success.

My fear is that the cart is before the horse in many organizations. Strategic sourcing efforts are great when hiring managers are prepared to hire from the source. My fear is that the reluctance of hiring managers to see beyond the specific details of the most recent position on the resume will render these great Veteran sourcing programs worthless.

We have an obligation as recruiting leaders to educate and influence our hiring managers on how to effectively view the leadership, teamwork, and results orientation competencies developed in the military as the leadership competencies necessary in corporate life.

The continued overly conservative narrow-minded “I will only hire someone that has worked in this exact job in our exact industry” mentality is way too pervasive in selection today. This is not just a problem with hiring Veterans. It’s a widespread problem across many organizations.

I am thrilled when I hear about companies that have created dedicated teams to specifically source Veterans. My excitement builds when I hear about the efforts to create a Veteran-friendly employment brand or on creating mentoring and onboarding programs designed to help Veteran new hires effectively assimilate into corporate culture. Great. Keep it up! That’s step two.

If you are not filling an increasing number of your leadership openings with Veterans, then you may want to stop sourcing for a moment and bust out your influencing skills and impact the thinking of your hiring managers. That’s step one!

It’s not enough to just source great candidates. We must be able to hire the great candidates. What are you going to do about it?

Three Recruiting Horror Stories. And It's Only Tuesday.

2012-03-14T01:50:44Z

Do you ever stop to think about how your recruiting practices affect your employment brand? You should. It’s only Tuesday and I have already heard three recruiting horror stories this week.

A search begins for two new leaders. So far, so good. Two weeks into the search the company decided it really needed one “even bigger” leader instead. It happens. Restart search. Recruiter notifies candidates and goes back into the market to tell a new story.

Several weeks later the company decides that what it really needs are the two leaders it originally asked for. Cue up the horror movie soundtrack. Restart search. Tell the story again. Are you kidding me? Would you take precious time off of work to interview with this company? Would you leave your job for this opportunity? I doubt it.

Do you ever stop to think abut how your employment brand is affected by your “strategy” to have multiple contingent search firms simultaneously working a search? I know, I know. It’s easy for the recruiting leader to throw a search out to multiple firms and let the race begin. We can save the discussion for another day about the poor third party recruiter behavior this generates.

Let’s look at it from the candidate perspective. “In the last 36 hours I have heard from four different recruiters about the same job…they were not listening to the company, because they all explained the job differently…no one seemed to really know much about the company. The only constant was how aggressive they were in getting my resume. The company seems really unorganized and desperate.” Actual quote. Actual candidate. Was it yours?

Do you ever stop to think about how your employment brand is affected by going dead silent for three weeks after a candidate has been in for the “final” interview after leaving work on four different occasions in two weeks to accommodate your schedule? I heard this story today. Again. It could be any Tuesday. Or Friday. It doesn’t matter. I hear this story all the time.

Slow down. Stop if you have to. Think about how your practices are experienced by the candidates. Think about how many people hear their stories. You create your employment brand. Think about it. Then do something about it!