I just spent some time reviewing a number of predictions from 2009, getting a good laugh, and wondering how many of the predictions from 2010 will be as equally off-base, including my own prediction from last year that given everything that was happening in the economy, and the dearth of remaining corporate recruiting assets, companies would turn to 3^rd party providers en masse to handle their needs, and that it could have potential been a banner year.

Not.

I can safely hide behind the cautionary language of “may” or “could be”, but the reality was I thought companies would outsource a significant part of their efforts in order to keep some semblance of hiring capability if for no other reason than to replace workers who hadn’t been temporarily or permanently furloughed. Instead, despite every consultant’s pleadings, including our own, most organizations ran for the exits like rats off a sinking ship, and their scorched-earth policies when it came to laying people off and destroying internal infrastructure in the name of cost control resembled nothing less than theater-goers reaction to the fire alarm. In other words, panic.

In hindsight (or in our case and many others, foresight), we now see many of these actions were unwarranted, and in fact have placed organizations in highly precarious positions, where retention of key personnel will be critical to whether the company survives. They’ve cut to the bone, and when the “bone” leaves, the organization will fail.

Strategically, this is called a “nightmare”. But it’s ok. They can always blame the accountants

So what does this mean for 2010? Since no one gets slapped for making wrong New Years’ predictions, let’s survey the landscape and see what’s coming. Or not.

Here are ten I came up with over coffee.

1. Social media as a means of recruiting will continue to be viewed as the Holy Grail, but candidate quality won’t improve one wit, and hiring managers will continue to complain “they have no decent candidates”.
   In the absence of having to do actual hiring work, a number of pundits will continue to focus on how we all can hire better, using Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (wait, wha?…someone’s recruiting drug addled metalhead Goths with raging teen angst?), LinkedIn, all in the name of luring the notorious “passive candidate”. The fact that 18% of the American labor market is currently looking for work and is ready to start tomorrow means nothing. “Quality” has come to mean “only people who already have jobs with competitors who are willing to violate the very same non-compete agreement we’re going to ask them to sign but who aren’t looking for a new job”. Candidates will still find work the old-fashioned way (networking) and hiring managers will still complain, because that’s what they do. Always.
   
2. The economy heads for a double dip recession
   There are two axes hanging over the head of whatever kind of recovery we’re now in. The first is we’ve monetized our own debt, meaning we’re printing greenbacks as a way to ostensibly stimulate the economy. To the extent that only one guy in Kooskie, Idaho can actually claim he got his new job replacing ceiling tiles in rest stops on I-90 due to the $1 Trillion dollars earmarked for “stimulus”, it’s a safe bet this hasn’t been a good investment. The Chinese who lent us about $800 billion are going to start to object to us inflating our way out of the debt, and the Fed will respond with increased interest rates.

   The other ax is one that few have mentioned, and even fewer remember, though it was only about 2 years ago: $4 gas. Any economic recovery will mean higher oil prices, and high gas prices. The last time we saw $4 gas, people couldn’t pay their mortgages and well…the meltdown began. Interest rates, or $4+ gas – either way, the recovery comes to a screeching halt.

3. Hiring will continue to lag economic indicators

   Duh.
   

   Most experts seem to think we’ll get back to a “normal” unemployment rate of about 5% in 2014. Since this is after the end of the world in 2012, no one is listening.

4. Wall St. will continue their delusions

   What did the stock market do today? Oh wait…cool. Up another 150 points. WTH? Does ANYONE up there in Manhattan read the news? With the Chinese building factory after factory after factory to keep their own economy growing at something like 10% or more a year, they’ve created a bubble…the next bubble to break when they realize there are no consumers around to buy whatever products these new factories will produce. Commercial loan defaults are up, and make the mortgage defaults look like lost loose change in the couch by comparison. But the markets keep climbing. The Chinese will be broke, so they won’t be able to help us with THAT round of bailouts, so none of this makes sense.

5. Everything will be about retention

   Recruiters who are filling actual job openings have universally indicated it is harder to find qualified individuals if for no other reason than that people don’t want to leave the security of their current jobs for the uncertainty of being the new hire in an organization. But (and it’s a big “but”) because of this lack of transition, the lack of promotion, and stagnate wages, the pent-up demand to leave a current opportunity for something perceptually “better” is HUGE. It’s been bottled up for nearly two years now, and the minute the economy starts hiring again, not only will all the “under-employed” people be out competing for these jobs with all the unemployed still seeking work, but a significant part of employed population will be jumping ship.Organizations are aware of this, and a few are putting strategies in place to minimize the damage to their on-going operations. But because so many of the people left in these organizations, particularly at the senior level, are truly “mission-critical”, retention will get a focus it has never seen before.

6. Republicans will secure the House, and win enough seats in the Senate to filibuster just about everything.

   Regardless of your political bent, it’s generally perceived that the current crop of Democrats wouldn’t know sound economic policy from an exorcism. And no matter your opinion of the merits or lack thereof of healthcare reform, cap and trade, and a host of other issues, the GOP now runs significantly ahead of the Dems on a generic ballot, which means the party of Andrew Jackson is going to take a shellacking about 10 months from now. Likewise, with more seats to defend, coupled with some key retirements, the Democrats will lose their 60 seat filibuster-breaking super-majority in the Senate.
   
   Overall, this can’t really be viewed as a good thing, since it will mean essentially complete gridlock in D.C., and a failed presidency, which no American really wants to see, and from a business perspective, it will mean another 2 years of uncertainty at a time when we need decisive leadership. On the plus side, it means they’ll stop screwing things up and making it all worse.

   In 2012, things will get sorted out. Assuming the world doesn’t end.

7. Search firms will continue to see their work go uncompensated

   In 20 years of being in and around recruiting, never have I seen organizations so blatantly treat their vendors so poorly. This isn’t a personal complaint, as our clients have all been outstanding to work with. But time and again, I’ve witnessed companies this past year engage search firms to find candidates for positions that don’t exist, but which they feel MAY exist at some point in the future (where they will then have a pool of quality candidates to draw from). This will come back to bite them…hard…later on, but for now, it’s a cheap way to keep the pipeline full. This will continue for most of 2010.
   

   Most search firms will play along, but in the meantime, will be taking copious notes on who’s screwed them. Those companies will become “farms” in the next year or two. Mea culpas will fall on very deaf ears.

8. Job boards will continue to live on, just as they always have

   The “death of the job board” is usually an annual prediction by various pundits in this industry. I think this more of a wish, though, than a real prediction. My prediction is that they aren’t going anywhere. Monster (to take one example) is a billion dollar company, and billion dollar companies have enough resources to adapt. The fact that only 5% of people find jobs or fill requisitions through these media is irrelevant. They fill an important EEOC and OFCCP “need” and as a result, in the absence of anything else (especially social media recruiting which is akin to an East German Berlin Wall field of landmines when it comes to compliance and reporting, to say nothing of that old saw “disparate impact”) they’re here to stay. Live with it.

9. Someone will claim age/sex/racial/(insert victim status here) discrimination over the use of video resumes. And win.

   Technology has surpassed existing law, as usual. There is a future billionaire in the making out there who can somehow reconcile current anti-discrimination regulations with the desire of employees under 35 to use the tools of the Internet, including video, to present their credentials. There’s another billion to be made by the person who can figure out how to make video resumes searchable by recruiters. In the mean time, though, the lawsuits are going to start, fed in part by frustrations over jobs or the lack thereof.

   Was that age-ist of me? No, I’m over 35, so I get a pass.

10. @Animal will continue to be the Gilbert Gottfried of the recruiting industry, much to our pleasure.

    Love him or hate him, he’s here to stay. Enjoy it. He’s harmless. Except when he’s not.
    

There are a ton more – like the fact that as hiring DOES pick up, companies will use HR generalists to handle the tasks, rather than create expensive recruitment infrastructure, or other more obvious ones, like the fact that the Apple iSlate will take over every subject on the internet, even for those who wouldn’t own an Apple if you gave us one, but we won’t be able to get away from it no matter how hard we try (sorry…oh, wait. That’s just me).

But this is our list for the year. What’s your prediction for 2010? Let us know!!

Michael

In 20 years of being in, on, around, over, and under the recruiting industry, recruiting services, recruiting technology, and recruiters and their recruiting processes, there typically comes a point where I ask each of them a simple question, the answer to which is universally the same:  do you want quality candidates, or do you want a LOT of candidates?

The answer is inevitable: “Both”. The first thought that comes to mind when I hear this is also inevitable. As my father used to tell me when I wanted to borrow the car so me and my friends could loiter and cause general disconcern among shopping patrons of the nearest mall, “People in hell want ice water, too, son.”

Dad was never one to mince words.

Whatever a client’s seemingly incongruous wishes might be, however, it’s not to say they can’t fill hundreds, even thousands, of openings with quality employees, some of whom may be the best in the world at what they do. But I caution them not to expect to interview fifteen of these types for every opening. DO be prepared to interview only one or two.

That last point seems to be where most clients get stuck. They “get” the concept that quality and quantity tend to be like oil and water, and “agree” in principle, but where the problems come in are from their customers: the hiring managers (an evil lot upon whom recruiters, including me, cast countless aspersions, blaming them for everything from their endless delays in our finely honed process, to swine flu and global warming). “They” expect “more.” Always more.

It’s not entirely their fault, of course, but who hasn’t worked for a hiring manager that if they’d had an open req for “Founding Father” and you’d submitted only the resume of George Washington himself, wouldn’t ask to see a dozen others? We know the type. We all do.

Yet when we survey hiring managers during the course of process audits, we discover a trend. There is an ongoing conflict that one would be tempted to say is both illogical and irreconcilable, but which we maintain is a false choice, one which they’ve created for themselves — quality or quantity.

When we look at managers that had unusually large numbers of job openings that involved difficult-to-find critical skill sets, there was a disproportionate criticism of their assigned recruiting support that maintained they didn’t get to see enough candidates. In other words, they wanted more. The fact that “more” was virtually impossible to come by given the skill sets they required didn’t matter. They wanted to see more. If you could find one left-handed, Mandarin-speaking, purple squirrel with a PhD in confectionery science, than surely there were more.

Likewise, when we looked at managers whose open requisitions consisted of mostly “typical” types of jobs that involve commonly held skill sets, their criticism of recruiting support fell in the realm of “quality”. They wanted more “quality” (however that was defined).

As most managers fell in the middle, with a mix of both hard to fill and easy to fill job reqs, we expected that critiques of recruiter support would moderate, or fall along the lines of either quality concerns, or quantity concerns. Instead, we found their criticism was universal: they weren’t seeing enough resumes, and the resumes they were seeing weren’t of sufficient quality, regardless of the difficulty of recruiting for a particular position.

In other words, if you were a recruiter for a manager that had a variety of openings, some of which were “easy” and others of which were “hard” to recruit for, you took a double hit on the effectiveness rating. All of which, of course, merely confirmed what everyone who’s spent more than a week in a corporate recruiting environment already knows: hiring managers are entirely unreasonable creatures. But it explains why all of our processes, our tools, and our methodologies focus - almost to the exclusion of everything else - on the concept of “more.”

More candidates, better candidates, faster. Oh, and for less money, please. “More” operates in context, however — a context that makes the whole quality/quantity choice even more absurd. Supported by the virtual recruiting DOGMA that somewhere, there is in fact such a thing as a “perfect” candidate for every job opening, and the myth that with more candidates, you have a better chance of finding that perfect employee, recruiters are all but destined to “fail” in the eyes of their customers (”fail” being a relative word here, that speaks more to the attitude of the hiring manager towards the recruiters as a valuable partner in the hiring process than anything else).

Despite these dichotomies, virtually every new fad for recruiters to come along seeks to redefine “success” along the same lines - better, faster, cheaper. More for less.

We would argue that much of what has been established orthodoxy in recruiting circles is in fact self-defeating, and that a clean-sheet approach with a focus on candidate quality (not quantity) is long overdue. We need to develop real JIT recruiting. We need to cease engaging in activities that provide no demonstrable ROI, but which may be “fashionable” at the moment (Twitter????). We need to jettison the baggage of a “personnel department” past, a social media obsessed present, and the siren songs of an automated future, none of which will lead us where we need to be as one of the most valuable strategic assets a CEO has at his or her disposal to grow and transform their organization.

We intend to explore that concept next, and I hope you’ll follow along and join the conversation!

Since we last wrote, the economy has continued to dissolve in what has become an all too familiar news cycle:  Credit is tight, consumers save rather than spend, sales decline, layoffs occur, credit gets tighter, consumers spend even less, sales decline more, more layoffs occur, and so on.

We’ve also inaugurated a new President in an historic occasion that marked a turning point for the country. To address the economic challenges, the new administration has proposed the largest economic stimulus package in U.S. history, which, while welcome, is not likely to do much in the way of actually spurring the economy in the short term, which is when we need it.  Really — how many laid off MBA’s, software developers, and retail clerks are actually going to pick up shovels and start laying asphalt and repairing bridges, the “infrastructure” improvements where a large chunk of the monies are going to be targeted.

But we’re not here to debate that — far greater minds than ours are well paid to address these matters, although we note with some concern that a number of these minds worked for companies that got us into this mess.  What we have found, however, in the midst of this “economic dark night of the soul”, is that companies are beginning to look forward again, rather than back at the wreckage that was their balance sheet last year.  It seems a turning point has occurred, however small.

While no one is predicting roses and sunshine in the next few months, looking out further towards the latter part of 2009, most economists are now predicting at least some timid steps towards a recovery, and with that in mind, great recruiting organizations are already building pipelines of top talent for when they’ve been given the greenlight to start hiring for openings that will be critical by late 2009, early 2010.

Yes, layoffs will continue, and we can expect to see unemployment rates of 8.5% to 9.5% before those rates begin to ebb. But contrary to a number of chicken-little’s running around screaming the “D” word, there are elements to our economy in place now that make it highly unlikely we’ll ever see anything approaching what the 1930’s brought, with 25% unemployment and the complete loss of family assets sitting in banks. Unemployement insurance, FDIC protection, food stamps…we created a safety net that will ensure enough economic activity continues that the horrors of that era are virtually not repeatable, save for some unforeseen cataclysmic event.

That said, HR is now faced with a two pronged challenge of simultaneously looking strategically at recruiting the talent they know they will need, sooner if not later, while effectively transitioning employees displaced by reorganizations and outsourcing. In simplest terms, they need to be looking at recruiting while outplacing employees, an altogether scitzophrenic activity on the face of it, but a sign of the times.

There are a host of services that rightPRO™ provides that will enable companies to effectively win the “race for talent” that hasn’t gone away — it’s only taken a break during an extraordinary time. If someone is interested, there’s plenty of information on the web site.  But our services also include offerings we’ve effectively and successfully deployed over the past eight years, but haven’t highlighted as much: our outplacement job search and skills training. These programs have seen thousands of program graduates from companies of all sizes gain a significant competitive advantage as these workers are forced to re-enter the job market due to reorgs, RIF’s, layoffs…etc…whatever we want to call them.  Regardless of the name, they are devastating to the people effected. And companies whose specialty is providing outplacement services, quite frankly aren’t very good at getting the right tools in the hands of these workers, tools which will enable them to stand above the crowd and actually get hired again.

Outplacement is a valuable benefit that eases workers laid off into the reality that being laid off is not the end of the world. And provides them with networking and other skills that can, in some cases, assist in getting them new employment opportunities.  But what these benefits don’t provide, and what is critically missing, are real life skills that look at the search for a new career from the perspective of the recruiter, and from the hiring manager. Why? Because the companies providing outplacement services aren’t typically recruiting firms, and even if they do provide recruiting services, the two sides of the business don’t talk to one another. Yet they are opposite sides of the same coin.

Our rightPLACEMENT™ and rightSTART™ programs don’t seek to replace the services that outsourcing providers deliver — they augment what these vendors offer. And by providing workers with highly effective tools and strategies to identify, interview with, and get hired by their next employer, we help both these displaced workers (or in the case of rightSTART™, graduating students) get back on their feet, and save their employers countless hundreds of thousand or more in unemployment costs.

We’re a long way from a recovery, but not so far away that we shouldn’t be planning for how we’re going to capture the top talent needed to maximize our potential during that up cycle. In the meantime, there’s a need to help tens of thousands of folks who haven’t been in the job market for years. Give them a leg up, and a competitive advantage. They’ll remember you.  And how you treat them now will in part determine how likely you might be able to call on their skills again, or call on them to network with when looking for talent.

We’ve spent the last six months watching a train wreck in slow motion, and it’s time to move on. As we look towards that time, and plan accordingly, there’re going to be moments that we’re tempted to look back. But we need to resist those urges.  They hold us back. We need to look forward. Because those who sow today will reap tomorrow. But in the meantime, don’t forget to take care of the folks who got you here, but whose services now need to be redeployed. In both cases, we can help.

So the news comes out that we’re in a recession and oh…by the way…we’ve been having one since December of 2007, which makes this one a year old already.

Funny…it feels like it started about 6 weeks ago.

So in the midst of this recession, several BILLION dollars of spending has occurred in the areas of executive and retained search, contingency searches, recruitment technology, and recruitment outsourcing — all to facilitate …what?

HIRING!

To dovetail on my last post, we’ll continue to hear all this bad news, but my guess is that spending for 2009 in all of these areas will still number in the multi-billions of dollars, and will in fact increase. Why? Well, typically the first to go in a round of layoffs is the recruiting department for what would seem like obvious, albeit INCREDIBLY shortsighted, reasons. About 90 days later, someone fairly senior in an organization realizes that…”oops….we cut too much”. Then they start calling executive recruiters and outsourcers.

2009, in fact, could be a BANNER year for any company selling recruiting services!!

Remember you heard it here first

Our Mainstream Media

I opened the morning newspaper to yet another dose of economic cold water, and a host of companies announcing more layoffs (am I the only one that finds it incongruous that companies look for economic improvement by individually doing the one thing that collectively ensures it doesn’t happen?). The Dow was up 500+ points yesterday, but so what? It’ll drop 600 today, or maybe go up by 900 — the point swings have become absurd. Unemployment figures release showed another 550,000 looking for work, and we can anticipate the unemployment percentage to probably top out between 8% and (God-forbid!) 10% before this is all over. For context, the revised “full-employment” unemployment percentage is about 3.5% and the Great Depression had about 25% unemployment.

But really, in a sense it almost doesn’t matter (except to those who’ve lost their jobs, of course). Companies lay people off, not because they are acting in concert with other companies to collectively destroy any possibility of a swift economic recovery, but rather because they operate in a relative vacuum. The decisions are made for economic reasons based on previous decisions — and ONLY those previous decisions — made by that organization and which led up to the point of requiring a reduction.

Or, as we’re still seeing — the need to hire a significant number of new employees right away.

Notwithstanding their self-perceived notions of honor and dignity and nobility based on their righteous fight to ensure we, the masses, are well informed, the real purpose of any news outlet is to turn a profit.  In other words, they are a business just like any other business.  And as we all know, good news doesn’t sell. Bad news does. Train wrecks, natural disasters, wars, famine, corruption, graft,…economic meltdown. These are the things that sell newspapers, get viewers, and attract eyeballs to web sites. Which means higher advertising revenue. And in an economy where fully 90% of the problem is fear and uncertainty, it’s arguable that our media and its ability to instantaneously convey every conceivable snippet of financial or societal ill is a significant obstacle to getting this economy back on track. But if one looks very carefully, one can still find glimmers of an economy that is fully functional, and doing everything it is supposed to: rewarding companies that operate responsibly and have a product or service that people want to buy, and beating the living snot out of companies that have tried to redefine the rules of capitalism.

Detroit automakers are drowning, yet Dixie-based manufacturers like Toyota, Nissan and BMW are flourishing (relatively speaking).  One asking for a handout, the other getting about the business of selling things people want to buy.

YOU get to hear about how bad Ford, GM, and Chrysler are doing.  You DON’T get to hear how VW is opening a new plant, or how a German based steel company will be creating 1200 new jobs in Alabama starting next year. But what you’re left with is the impression the world is ending.

And it’s not.

Ok, you might say. But what does that have to do with MY economy? And you’d be right, because that’s really what this is all about. The economy really is about YOU. And me. Companies lay people off because they are living an economic reality that is unique to them, just as individual make economic decisions based on their own circumstances. Which is why I thought it fantastic, yesterday, when I saw two brand new cars on the road with 30-day tags.  One was a $200K Aston Martin, and another a $250K Bentley.

Releasing your inner-James Bond

And believe me when I say that where I live, this is so far out of the ordinary, both cars nearly caused accidents from the heads they were turning.  Pickup trucks and John Deere tractors are more the rule out here in the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley.

But here were two instances of successful people who still had enough confidence in the economy and the future to buy automobiles that truly no one needs or could ever justify. For THEIR economy, everything was fine.

Likewise, in spite of the media, I speak to recruiters, recruiting firms, and HR and Recruiting technology providers on a daily basis, and with very few exceptions, they are still quite busy. A new media company needing 500 new employees, another organization looking for 200 new account executives. Recruiters still filling jobs, and (to use one example) the over 1700 jobs listed just this past week on one career site for positions that pay well in excess of $100K, to say nothing of how many openings there are on Monster.com and other career sites.

Those companies are living a different economic reality. They’ve made decisions which have brought them to a point where further growth won’t be possible unless new people are hired. And these “thousand points” of economic “light” are the foundation of our collective economic recovery.

Is today scary?  Sure. But stop reading the news, don’t open your statements, and focus on YOUR economy. Your company’s economy. If you still believe, as I do, that America is not going to go out of business, and that a few months from now or a few years from now, we’ll all be looking back on this as a bad learning experience (starting with — HEY! don’t borrow more than you can pay back!), then everything will be fine.  Invest in yourself and your organization so that day comes sooner.

But don’t let the talking heads and wordsmiths who get paid to sell you bad news ruin your day. Or all your tomorrows for that matter. YOU are the economy, and what YOU do determines how quickly we can get back to building a better future for all of us.

Just my two cents…

Michael

Branding You Know

I’ve talked about the importance of branding for nearly 10 years, in virtually every capacity, to pretty much anyone who would listen. It is the sine qua non to any successful recruiting effort, for without it, no one is going to know what a great place to work you’ve got and all your efforts depend on the that other kind of branding, the one we all know: product and services marketing . And while it’s certainly true that branding matters (anyone NOT know the “brands”at right???), I think there’s a strong case to be made that employment branding matters even more. More than most organizations can even begin to imagine. Because at the end of the day, your company isn’t run by products and services, it’s run by people.

Yeah, I know…”people are our most important asset”; “people come first”; “our people are our best advertisement”. We’ve all have heard various corporate lines about how valuable employees are, right up until the company stock misses a target, or the jobs can be done more cost effectively in some part of the world that’s wide awake while we’re sleeping. You can bet the term “human capital” wasn’t coined by an HR person.

It is small wonder that Millennials entering the workforce today expect to change jobs 8 (!!!) times or more by the time they hit 30.

Thankfully, not every company thinks this way. And we know exactly who they are - the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For List.

If you look at that list, one of the things that will most stand out for you is that, far and away, every one of these organizations takes a view towards branding their staffing and recruiting efforts that is every bit as powerful as their message towards the products and services they offer. They live and breathe the mantra of employment branding every day so that they can continue to attract world class talent, and more importantly, retain them once they’re there.

What must life be like as a recruiter for one of these companies? What really are the advantages?

For one, potential applicants will flood your openings. A broader pool of applicants means more choices, both in qualifications and diversity. Name recognition soars, as your company’s name gets picked up by other publications as well, and other companies start calling to see “how you do it”. Your recruiting costs will decrease, sometimes dramatically, as you’ll rely less on 3rd party searchs, and enjoy a reduced need to advertise. Retention becomes virtually a non-issue, as employees find making the decision to leave such a culture extremely difficult (e.g. really, who leaves Google???). Sales increase as the positive PR generated from being on the list feeds what everyone knows - people want to buy from “great” organizations. Why? Because “great” organizations must make great products. Employee referrals likewise soar as employees now have all the reasons in the world to back up their position of why their company is such a great place to work.

Not least among the advantages is the view taken by senior executives about HR and its strategic value. Make the list, and the CEO WILL call you. Of course, in order to make the list, you’ll pretty much need his or her full support to begin with. The Great Places to Work Institute is the one who runs the list, and in order to be considered, you first have to apply.

But before you apply, think of all the things this kind of employment branding would make possible, and what are the implications to your organization. Aside from running the list, Great Places also assists companies in their efforts to get ON the list. Perhaps a phone call would be a great place to start.

Know who you are

At the end of the day, though, there can only be 100 companies on the list, but the benefits of marketing yourself and your employment brand as an organization that truly values it’s greatest and most difficult to find asset - people - will still make your life as a recruiter infinitely less challenging, your company’s bottom line significantly healthier, and your organization’s reputation in the marketplace vastly more positive. And that kind of marketing is priceless.

And yet despite countless articles around employment branding, and its objective and demonstrable advantages, has anyone noticed vast improvements in corporate working environments over the last five years? Arguably, the types of changes many organizations might need to make in order to be considered a “great place to work” involve a level of cultural change that could take years to fully realize. But aside from talking, have enough organizations really started to do something, especially in light of an ongoing, and already existing talent shortage that will leave them wholly unable to compete?

My own feeling is that much of what isn’t getting done boils down to a simple lack of the one resource no one can buy: time. They find themselves trying to put out whatever fire might be in front of them with limited budgets and limited resources rather than being able to focus on what can be done to make 2009 or beyond a banner year.

Can a solution like RPO help put out those fires so you can focus on things like strategic employment branding? It’s quite possible. But even beyond that, before another marketing campaign gets underway, have a conversation with your senior marketing person, and talk about how to look at employment branding and the dramatic impact it can have both on your recruiting and retention efforts, but also the impact it can have on the company’s sales and revenues.

At rightPRO Advisors, we often make employment branding strategies a key component of our recommendations, especially if coupled to an RPO service offering. But even if RPO isn’t for you, I think…no, I know… you’ll find the advantages of finally doing something about employment branding in 2008, when things have slowed down — a lot — in this economy, a key part of your company’s go-forward strategy in 2009 and beyond, and make you a key player “at the table”.

Good recruiting,

Michael

#7) RPO Doesn’t Work (or so I’ve heard…)

One of the reasons (among several) that I could never be a journalist is that, at heart, I’m a completely optimistic human being. People are generally good, I live in a great country, our economic system is the best in the world, and overall, life moves along in ups and downs, but its movement is always upward and onward. Our rising standards of living, our life expectancies, and just about every aspect of life in general on this planet is better than it was, say, 50 years ago.

Yawn….who wants to read that? Have you watched the Science Channel lately? Have you seen how violently our sun and planets will die, to say nothing of the universe itself in 100 trillion trillion years???!! As if we didn’t have enough to worry about right here and now…

The job of a journalist is, in part, to report the news, and it’s hardly news that everything is going along swimmingly. So by definition, they report on all the things that have gone wrong, whether the subject is the war in Iraq or a highly specialize business function. Which brings me to this latest myth, that the general outsourcing of recruitment services doesn’t work, doesn’t save money, doesn’t produce better candidates, and doesn’t deliver on it’s promise. And should you feel thusly, you’d be forgiven for thinking so, given that what little media you may have read about RPO may not have been entirely positive. Likewise, you may have the same impression based on media reports whether the subject is RPO, EPO, HRO, EBO, or any one of a dozen other “O’s” that comprise the alphabet soup of 21st Century business. Added to the media’s predilection for the depressing, is something more basic to human nature that every customer service department knows well: if you like something, you might tell 1 or 2 other people about it; if you don’t like something, or if something’s gone wrong regarding a purchase, you’ll tell several dozen others about your experience. So word of mouth, the best form of advertising, is a cruel double-edge sword indeed.

So yes, we’re all familiar with the failures, some of them spectacular, around HRO and its variations. No one ever said this was perfect. Far from it.

But what of the successes? The computer manufacturer who by outsourcing and assessing new inside sales reps grew revenue by half a BILLION dollars. The IT firm that shrank time to fill by 50% and will save $800K in recruiting costs this year, or the industrial rental giant that saved over $1M in recruiting costs last year, and looks to save even more this year. Why aren’t these in the news?

Because it’s not news when RPO does what it’s supposed to, and not many people want to read about how well someone else is doing, especially when they’re up to their elbows in alligators trying to get their own work done with ever decreasing resources.

So on the one hand you have folks like me, working with customers to see if RPO is a viable option for them, and talking about all these successes, and on the other you have this ostensibly “independent” fourth estate talking about all the risks, dangers, and failures that some well known companies have had with their own outsourcing experience. And of course, each of us is doing our job. Your job is to sort out the facts.

But to fully explode this myth, we need to understand several component that go into each of these deals, notably the promises made, the customer’s expectations, and the degrees of control over the recruitment process.

Promises Made

For 21 years, I’ve operated by the principle that if you under-promise, and over-deliver, you’ll have a happy customer. Does it work every time? Of course not. But especially in the last few years when RPO became a “mainstream” solution to an organization’s recruiting challenges, we’ve seen the promises around what RPO can do grow into proportions far in excess of its abilities to deliver. And yet those promise keep cropping up on the front end in part because there is an expectation on the part of potential customers that if they’re going to go down this road, they’ll see spectacular results. The reality, though, is that while the results I shared above are real, and quite frankly, not even all that unusual for Aon’s clients, it would be irresponsible of me or any other RPO vendor to suggest that we/they could guarantee the same or better results for your company. Every organization is different, and every process is different, and as the saying goes, “your mileage may differ.”

But do these kinds of promises get made every day? Certainly, and in some cases, the vendors making these promises know they are as hollow as a bottle of Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day. Thankfully, most consultants don’t operate this way, but there are enough who do to make it harder for every one, if for no other reason than they help foster an environment where customer expectations going into an RPO conversation have, at times, reached stratospheric levels.

Customer Expectations

Which brings us to those expectations. The vast majority of clients of RPO vendors initiated those conversations when something or every thing had “hit the fan.” Cost, customer satisfactions rates (or lack thereof), productivity metrics, you name it - they found they needed help. To say they were looking for a silver bullet would be an understatement. Jobs were on the line, and failure wasn’t an option. After all, it is a rare visionary indeed that takes a fully functional and lean recruiting organization that proactively seeks candidates to fill requisitions that don’t exist yet and has full control over its cost structure and then turns around and outsources it.

So part of what we need to manage is expectations - yes, we can save you money in most cases; yes, we can streamline your process; yes we can get you thinking strategically and proactively around future growth and add business value to your function within the organization; yes, we can help you find better candidates and do so faster, candidates who will turn into employees who perform better and who stay longer. Yes, yes, yes…but it doesn’t happen overnight. And when coupled to the fact that many organizations don’t or can’t outsource the entire process, the vendor is left with only partial control, which equates to partial results. So for example, if a company outsources only the sourcing component to a third party, but retains the same process (the one that’s taking 180 days to fill a requisition), it can hardly be expected that “better, faster, cheaper” is the likely outcome.

And yet partial outsourcing is far more common than total outsourcing, and it is in this area that we see customer satisfaction rates at their lowest - they’re expecting outcomes that are more in line with what customers see when they outsource the entire process to their RPO vendor, yet achieving results that are far different. And therein lie many of the failures.

Degrees of control

Does this mean that partial outsourcing is a bad idea? Far from it. But everyone needs to be very clear on what can be achieved and what the likely results will be. It is here that I think the analogy between RPO and marriage is quite appropriate. It is rare indeed that two people meet and get married after one date. Hey, it happens, I know, but it’s hardly the norm. I may have known I wanted to marry my wife after one date, but it took time for both of us to build the trust that comes with any committed relationship to make that a complete and total commitment in holy matrimony. Likewise with RPO, where with each phase, as more parts of the process are outsourced, trust between vendor and client turns into true partnership and truly amazing things can get accomplished.

(And please don’t let my wife know I’ve compared our marriage to a business arrangement. I love her madly, but I get into enough trouble with the laundry, and don’t want to have to explain this…lol)

The point being, of course, don’t expect what’s not achievable. And what is achievable, don’t expect it overnight. The company looking at RPO took months, if not years, to create its current state, and it will likely take more than a couple of months to turn everything around and make it a value added strategic partner to the business using process and cost efficiencies, rather than that “necessary evil” I’ve seen recruiting too often viewed as.

RPO works, and it works very well indeed for those organizations that are committed to squeezing out every competitive advantage they can from the engagement. Our case files are filled with the studies of both success and failure, and the successes are by an order of magnitude far greater than the failures. Will it work for you? That is a question we can’t answer here. As I said, your mileage may differ. But a conversation is what’s needed to determine that, and one you shouldn’t avoid having because you’d read somewhere, some time, that RPO doesn’t work. It works alright. The question is how well will it work for you?

Good recruiting,
Michael

Myth #8: RPO Costs Too Much

As we continue down the list of what I’m calling “myths”, or rather misperceptions, surrounding the use of recruitment process outsourcing to augment or replace an organization’s recruitment/staffing function or processes, somewhere on the ranking order we’d have to come to cost. The notion that RPO, by providing so many of the additional resources, and additional infrastructure not currently present in your existing process, would almost by definition be more costly certainly is not unreasonable. In fact, the question is all but universal.

But think about it for a moment…and allow me to really torture a metaphor, if you will. If I’m riding a horse and buggy to work, and this old mode of transportation isn’t cutting it for me anymore and I decide I need to do something more contemporary, I’ve got three choices. I can design and build from scratch my own automobile, assuming I have the money and resources to do so (to say nothing of the expertise required). Or I can cobble together some of the best aspects of this automobile to my horse and buggy, which may cost less, but which will still not give me a great car.

Or lastly, I can go out and buy a car from someone who makes cars. Now as absurd as it may seem, 100% of the people in this world, save for the odd eccentric here and there, go out and buy a car when they want to own a car, and yet 90% of these same people when they are in a senior recruiting position will effectively choose the option to either a) build from scratch their own “car”, or will b) cobble together some hybrid of parts onto their old “horse and buggy” recruiting process, ensuring again that their “car” is neither great, nor even much of a “car” for that matter.

Yes, it’s a stretch, I know. But not so much so that the logic is flawed.

And yet looking at the pictures (thank you, Google), it would seem that I’ve defeated my own argument that RPO doesn’t cost more, and can actually cost less, than my existing process, because surely a Ferrari costs more than the old horse and buggy you see up top. And you’d be right.

Unless, of course, you try to build your own Ferrari from scratch. Now we’re talkin’ serious coin.

Of course everyone doesn’t need a Ferrari (I do, but that’s a whole different conversation, and a notion my wife has not quite disabused me of), but if you’ve found that your recruiting process is woefully inadequate and/or antiquated, the most expensive option you can pick to address the challenge is to create everything from scratch. This point is one that I think everyone can agree upon.

But what if you’re not back in the “horse and buggy” days of recruiting? What if, actually, every thing is functioning fairly smoothly but you’ve been asked by your organization to see if additional savings can be found? Are there additional efficiencies that can be squeezed out to further streamline your efforts? Can all this (whatever “this” is) be done for less?

In the current economic environment, this question is being asked daily.

RPO vendors can do one thing that internal recruiting departments can never do - they can bring economies of scale to an equation just as a manufacturer can bring economies of scale to the fabrication of highly complicated components. But unlike the anonymous and repetitive process involved in manufacturing something, RPO is definitely not an assembly line workflow, as every customer’s process is different, and their needs and challenges are going to be unique to them. A complete and thorough understanding of these processes is, in fact, a critical component of a successful RPO engagement.

There are a number of RPO vendors, each bringing different value propositions which may make one more suitable to your organization than another, that rightPRO^TM Advisors can recommend which can bring to bear far more resources than any corporate recruiting department would ever be allowed to possess. From 24/7 sourcing to off-shored resume reviews and assessments to call centers to highly experienced recruiters with specialized backgrounds, they possess a number of assets that can benefit all or parts of a recruiting team within a company.

RPO can actually cost less - and deliver more - than your existing process is costing your company, but not in all cases. There are countless examples of clients saving hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars annually on their recruiting costs.

But is it possible that engaging an RPO vendor will actually cost more than what you’re currently spending on recruiting? Of course. Some people want a “Ferrari”. But for the vast majority of clients, the savings involved are a significant reason, if not THE reason, for engaging with a partner that can deliver these services for less, and can do so more effectively.

RPO costs too much? Not likely.

Making sure you pick the right RPO vendor is critical, however, and we can definitely assist you there.

Good recruiting,

Michael

#9) You’ll lose control

This should probably be ranked number #1 or #2, but since we’re not going in any particular order here on the myths that surround recruitment process outsourcing, let’s get this one taken care of right from the start.

Part of the advantage of using RPO to drive your talent acquisition processes is the ability to allow you to focus on what is central and core to the business. Far from losing control, an RPO engagement finally allows you to TAKE control of these processes, and scale the acquisition process so that for perhaps the first time ever, you can be proactive in these areas, rather than reactive.

Ok, that’s sounds like a consultant wrote it.

In English, it’s simple. When it’s you and six other recruiters, and 200 plus angry or eager hiring managers, all complaining that you aren’t sending the right candidates, or aren’t sending enough candidates, and everyone has as many reqs as they can handle, and your budget’s been held flat or even cut, what do you do?

Seriously, think about it.

You can’t hire more recruiters. There’s no money. Replace recruiters with better recruiters? You could, but then you’d lose 3 - 6 months of productivity from the new hire as they ramped up and built the internal relationships necessary to really be successful - assuming you made the right hire. Hiring more support staff is also out. And no money for better technology.

Your system’s not exactly broken, but it’s not exactly running as well as it could, and God forbid someone should come to you and say “we just opened a new facility in _____ and we need a 100 extra _____”. Been there. Done that. Got the gray hairs to prove it.

In other words, the entire process is running at maximum, it is entirely reactive, and there is zero bandwidth to go out and do all the things these experts tell you you should be doing (see “Can’t Sleep? Here might be a reason“) to be a great recruiting organization. To compound things, the company in the midst of all this potentially sees you not as a strategic partner, but an organization that is maxed out, barely able to keep its head above water, and a cost center that needs close monitoring.

But what if your recruiters finally had the time to recruit? What if the technology component, the sourcing component, the administration component, the reporting component, and the background assessments were off your plate? What if the employer branding and internal and external communications pieces, including all the Web 2.0 social marketing and networking, and the scheduling components were gone? What if the only thing left for you to do was related to:

1. fully vetting a candidate and building a relationship with them so that you could “sell” them on the opportunity of working for your organization; and
2. working closely with hiring managers to understand their expectations and industry and helping them to “close” candidates so that their customer satisfaction rates soared
3. networking with potential future candidates and passive candidates so that when the time comes for them to make a switch, your recruiters have already established those relationships and these candidates have already been “sold” on your company?

And what if you could do all those things within your existing budget?

Does it sound like you’re losing control of the process? Or does it sound like you’re gaining control of your process for the first time?

RPO also offers the ability to scale that most existing processes do not. So if someone does, in fact, come to you for an extra 100 hires for a new facility or plant or division or whatever, you can say “Yes, no problem.”

That’s why companies outsource payroll, benefits administration, sales force automation, customer relationship management systems, enterprise resource planning, human resource information systems, and a whole host of other activities that if retained in-house, in order to “retain control”, prevent them from focusing on the business. That’s why I call it right-sourcing.

And it’s why you should look at making that analysis for yourself - what can I get off my plate so that I can be more focused, more effective, more strategic, and more successful in my organization. For many, that means taking BACK control and looking at RPO.

Just something to think about on this rainy Wednesday afternoon in D.C…

Next up #8) It costs too much

Cheers,

Michael

I’m certain there are more than ten myths that surround this always touchy subject within every HR/Recruiting department, but we’ll try to confine it the most pernicious.

One of the most surprising things that I encountered when I entered the brave new world of recruitment process outsourcing was the pervasive antipathy of recruiters to the services of our industry. Now notwithstanding the outsourcing/right-sourcing argument we talked about earlier, when I, or any RPO vendor for that matter, show up for a meeting with the CFO or SVP of HR and there’s recruiting staff present, we can sometimes get same sense of “welcome” that Tomás de Torquemada must have had when entering a new town during the Inquisition. In other words, it can be a bit chilly.

But like many things that are new (if something that’s been around for 25 years or so can be considered “new), I’ve also come to understand that what people don’t like about RPO is not RPO itself, but rather what they think RPO is. It’s the perception more than the reality.

So although this topic has been done before, it obviously has not been done to the point of actually becoming part of our great collective recruiting subconscious and so we’ll do it again. Let’s dispel some of the myths that are associated with RPO:

#10) You’ll lose your job

Hardly. To lose that intellectual capital and organizational memory is self defeating for both the client and the RPO vendor. But companies turn to RPO in part because the existing process and existing infrastructure isn’t working. So part of any (successful) RPO engagement is to do a thorough review of that process. So it is hardly surprising that on occasion, part of the challenges that an organization is facing lies in the fact that they have the wrong people in the wrong job. Sometimes, those scenarios are egregious. And they aren’t all that surprising when recruiting departments in all too many companies are considered necessary evils, rather than strategic partners to be used for competitive advantage. One of the nation’s largest and best known financial institutions, in fact, made it a policy that employees who were about to be involuntarily terminated could avoid termination if there was an opening in the recruiting department. So objectively, the company’s worst employees were those who were tasked with bringing in the best talent available to work for this prestigious institution. So yes, if it is determined that ineffective recruiters are part of the problem, there is an opportunity during an RPO engagement to address those issues.

The flip side of this question is “will you keep your job if you don’t look to RPO to augment your existing process?” Given the successes and the ROI that RPO has demonstrated, it is not a stretch in the least to suggest that there are far more recruiters who have lost their jobs, and recruiting directors and VP’s that have lost their positions, for not thinking strategically and addressing those issues that RPO can assist with. By trying to keep everything in-house, and not looking to “right-source” those areas which were not core, organizations looking for more effective leadership had no choice but to look elsewhere.

And no, that doesn’t mean if you don’t engage RPO you aren’t strategic and will lose your job. As we’ve said before, this is not for every one.

But not to engage RPO because you feel you’re job is in jeopardy, is exactly the wrong way to think. By demonstrating your willingness to look at your function strategically, and by building the business case and demonstrating ROI, by managing your vendor/partner once engaged, and by reviewing and reporting whole new metrics and performance that you may never have had the ability to demonstrate, only then can you sit back and not worry whether you’re position is in danger. When you’re a valued partner to the business, and understand business issues outside just filling open requisitions, you not only ensure job stability, but have taken your “seat at the table”.

While I don’t sell RPO any longer, I firmly believe it has its place and is one of those tools you need to consider as you look to creating a more strategic vision within your recruiting function.

Next up… #9) You’ll lose control.

Michael