LEAN, Just-in-time recruiting!

Unrealistic Expectations from Hiring Managers

2012-01-11T10:58:00.000-08:00

One of the class exercises in our Recruiter Academy Certified Education Program is identifying rebuttals for unrealistic expectations from hiring managers.

The first step in the exercise is to identify unrealistic expectations. Outlined below are a few of the expectations the students have discussed.

Sound familiar? :)!

Whenever I facilitate this exercise, I am reminded how much time, effort and energy is wasted when we are not able to overcome (or more importantly – avoid) these unrealistic expectations.

If you do not consult your managers and educate them on why these are unrealistic (and set realistic service level agreements) . . . your job becomes TWICE AS HARD!

Elite Recruiters are skilled at avoiding and/or overcoming these unrealistic expectations.

If some of these apply to you (see below), I would recommend that you dedicate some time to develop rebuttals to the ones that cause you the most pain :(.

I plan on providing rebuttals to common unrealistic expectations in the near future! So please shoot me an email of other expectations not listed below that you might be experiencing, and any special rebuttals you may use to overcome some of the ones outlined below!

I hope you are having a Perfect Day!

_________________________________________________________________________

Unrealistic Expectations from Hiring Managers

ASAP To fill:

That we will have qualified candidates the day we post the job!
Wanting a new position filled yesterday.
Hire a hard to fill job in less than 2 weeks.
Want position filled ASAP but they don't make room on their calendar for interviews.
Wanting to offer a position on Thursday or Friday and have the applicant start on Monday.

You work on MY schedule!

Wanting you to drop everything for their phone call or email...constant communication.
If you are on the phone making an offer you can't answer their phone call.

I follow my own process!

Not really knowing what they're looking for but expecting us to fill the job-they will just know when it 'feels' right...
Expecting a high quality hire with a poorly defined job (requirements/qualifications).
Hire someone prior to credentialing being complete because they need someone to start now!
Give me the information to schedule interviews in the afternoon for the applicants to interview the next morning.
After I've sent over 15 qualified applications and the position has been placed on hold, the manager wants you to repost the job so 1 person can apply.
Find me a candidate for this position, but you can't post the job or tell anyone that we actually have an opening.
Wanting applicants to interview with 10 + executives and have it scheduled in 2 days.

Candidate experience/compensation issues:

I want someone who has the most experience, education, skills - but I don't want to pay them that much money.
Wanting the best qualified candidate, yesterday, and they don't want to pay them their market value!

Other unrealistic demands! Oh by the way, I have a preferred candidate I forgot to tell you about, after you've screened 100 candidates.

Changing their mind about which specific position they want offered to a candidate after the offer is already made!
Being responsible for coordinating a large group to interview one person....along with travel time, hotels, airline, etc.

Recruiters - Key To A Productive Start for 2012!

2012-01-04T05:39:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

As most of you know, I am a huge fan of Brian Tracy. I thought his post called “The Golden Hour” worth sharing as we head into the new year.

I know when I practice the rules outlined during The Golden Hour as part of my Perfect Day Routine, I am happier AND more productive.

Speaking of being productive . . . we are excited about some of our upcoming events during January including:

January 19th – Empowering Recruiters to Present A Business Case to the C-Suite – REGISTER NOW
January 19th – Release of our 2011 Benchmark Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study – REGISTER NOW
January 19th – Announcement of the 7 Recruitment Organizations that qualified for our ‘Elite’ Honor Roll! REGISTER NOW

I hope you have a great start to the New Year!

David Szary

Holidays are the Best Time to Source Top Talent

2011-12-16T12:45:00.000-08:00

Studies indicate that the best time to connect with passive candidates is during the holidays and into January.

Why?

Most are reflecting on the past year, the new year -- and they are vulnerable to "listen" to new opportunities
Let's face it -- work slows down and they have more time to take a call, meet for a cup of coffee, or sit down and talk!
Many will know their ‘fate’ with respect to a year-end bonus. They will know what it is and when it will be paid out. If they are not happy, they will start a job search so they are prepared to leave once they have received it.

Now this doesn’t mean they will LEAVE their company and start with a new organization during this time. Rather, it presents a great opportunity to connect with top talent and start a positive dialog about your organization and their future goals.

As discussed in a recent blog most corporations struggle filling approximately 25% of their openings (average TTF for those positions – 113 days!)

Why?

Requisition management issues (common triggers – managers not engaged, position goes on hold but still being counted, sourcing req’s tainting data, etc.)
Sourcing issue (recruiters not spending the time and/or don’t have the expertise to recruit passive, top talent)

CALL TO ACTION!

If you are not taking advantage of this GREAT TIME to recruit top talent for your difficult to fill positions, we recommend:

Dedicating the time to do it! Maybe have fun with a sourcing blitz contest with your team?
Outsourcing it! If you don’t have time to do it (or it is not your cup of tea).

There are quality firms out there that will identify and recruit top talent from your competition for half the cost of recruitment agencies. I will shamelessly plug our sister firm – The RIO Group (www.riogrp.com). I have seen time and time again how they have deployed targeted recruitment strategies to fill difficult positions and/or develop talent pipelines and your database of talented professionals.

THE TIME IS NOW!

I would recommend running a sixty day report and identifying those positions that are critical to your organization and . . . devise a plan to source for them over the next 45 days. From experience, it could be the best solution you can implement to start the New Year off right!

10 Dumbest Things Recruiters Do!!

2011-12-07T05:42:00.000-08:00

So why do we keep doing them?

John Sullivan recently published an article “Top 10 Dumbest things Recruiters do….!"

The results further confirmed what we have been preaching for years! :)

Specifically –it is not ONE thing that Elite recruiters do differently, rather . . . it is that they do everything 10%+ better!

It is ‘technique vs. task.’

Let’s face it – We all play the same game and do the same tasks. We perform intake sessions with managers, source/interview candidates, manage the hiring process, deliver offers, etc.

It is those that master the art of each task (IE – proper technique) that are ‘Elite’. Those that work on their technique rather than just ‘check the box’ and say - - I did the task.

Ask employees for referrals – CHECK
Do an intake session and post position – CHECK
Qualify candidate compensation/career motives – CHECK

But did you do a good job and execute each task flawlessly?

Bottom Line - I find the majority of recruiters do not work at their craft and keep doing dumb things!

Why? Because:

They already think they know it all.
They don’t really care to get better.
They are looking for the ‘silver bullet’ piece of technology or tool to solve their problems that never materialize.
It is hard work!

I love two quotes by Brian Tracy:

“Good habits are hard to create and easy to live with”

“Bad habits are easy to create but hard to live with”

As we roar into 2012, are you ready to ‘self-reflect’ and . . . stop doing dumb things :)?

Are you Ready to create some new good habits?

We have created a Recruiter Competency/Skill Self-Assessment Tool to help you baseline your current performance and develop strategies to improve.

We have had over 2500 recruiters participate nationally! It is free and . . . we will send you your results (compared to industry averages) once you have completed it!

I hope you have a Perfect Day and Mr. Sullivan’s survey results (and this blog) inspire you to become an ‘Elite Recruiter’!

Answers to Questions Regarding Lean Recruiting!

2011-11-29T14:42:00.000-08:00

Learn what Henry Ford Health System did to improve recruiting performance.

Two weeks ago, Barb Matti, Director of Employment for Henry Ford Health System, facilitated a webinar regarding their recruitment organization’s “Lean, Transformation Journey”.

It was our most well attended webinar of the season with over 450 attendees! Because of time, we could not answer all the questions from interested participants.

Barb was gracious to answer the questions outlined below.

If you want to view the webinar – click here

I hope you’re having a Perfect Day!

It sounds like it was a mix of strategies to achieve your successes (new ATS, jobs2web and LEAN initiative)...but would you say was the biggest single contributor to the success thus far?

It really was a package deal. Doing the LEAN hiring process improvements without the new ATS and advanced Sourcing technology would not have worked. I would recommend you start with the LEAN review which helps identify the problem areas and things like technology will quickly service as contributors to success as well!

Was there a consultant who you worked with during this initiative?

We did look at metrics and staffing resource planning development with David Szary from LEAN Human Capital when we implemented the organizational model. The ATS and new hiring process implementations were all done in-house. David also helped with providing information on what other companies may/may not be doing as we were benchmarking along the way.

What do your Sourcing Specialists do if their job family is light on requisitions?

They assist the Talent Selection Specialist with screening and phone interviewing. They will also help with other job families and continue efforts on building networks for their own assigned areas. They help support the interview blitz days in partnership with the TSS and Hiring Managers.

I know you routed fewer candidates to the hiring manager. But did recruiting end up screening fewer candidates as well? If so, how did you do that?

Yes. Talent Selection became more intentional on what and where they were posting. Having a focused posting strategy defined by an intake with the hiring manager is critical. We also built more robust screening questions in the ATS to help identify and screen out anyone who we do not think is best qualified – meeting both requirements and preferences as defined by the conversation during the intake.

Do you have service level agreements around the availability of hiring managers for interviews?

We have an SLA with hiring managers – however, shared accountability is a challenge that will never go away and the culture has not adapted to this practice consistently. Regular communication is the key and that starts with a clear well defined intake session so expectations are set from the beginning.

Is the On-Boarding Agent the main (only) contact for the candidate? How does the process work from the candidate’s standpoint?

The On-Boarding Agent is the only contact from the point of offer to start. Once the offer is accepted, the On-Boarding Agent contacts the candidate and they are given clear direction on what will be taking place and what is needed from them as it relates to pre-employment screening, background checks, benefits information, orientation enrollment, etc. The candidate meets with the On-Boarding Agent before they start to take care of things like the I9.

Did the Recruiters find the job more interesting when you removed some tasks (onboarding, sourcing, etc.)?

Yes, specifically this freed the Talent Selection team up to be more of a strategic partner to their managers and provide a higher touch candidate experience.

How is the Sourcer’s performance evaluated? What metrics do you track for them?

This has been a work in progress. We use source tracking, the number of resumes routed to Talent Selection, quality of candidate survey feedback, and social networking utilization. We are currently working with our ATS vendor to try and define a sourcing scorecard to follow candidates they have sourced through the workflow and link them to interviews/hires.

How does your requisition approval process work? Do you have any challenges with it?

Requisition approval is done through the ATS. This was one of the biggest challenges before we implemented the new system. We have multiple BUs with different approval committees. However, we were able to identify a process and it is automated. The automation helped to minimize the number of days jobs were sitting with managers because the approval flow is all real-time and can be viewed by the submitting manager and Talent Selection so we can see what is pending approval.

How do you separate sourcing req’s from EEO tracking obligations?

Applicants who apply to the Sourcing reqs are also subject to the EEO tracking requirements. We have a process in which the applicants from the sourcing reqs are eventually linked to an active req.

Do you survey hiring managers regarding quality of hire after 45 days (IE – 6 months, 1 year)?

We do not currently but plan to add a 6 month time frame next year.

In your model, who schedules the candidate interview with the hiring manager? Who makes the offers?

The managers schedule their interviews and in most cases TS makes the offer.

How do you function with such a small # of Sourcers considering all the different talent pipelines that need to be developed in healthcare?

We tweaked the model over the last two years and don’t feel this is small. We have the right mix to support the different needs of our organization. You have to define what Sourcing is and which job families really need sourcing and that becomes the focus of the job. Sourcers are not assigned to all jobs.

At what point do the Sourcers hand the candidate off to the Talent Specialist? Do the Sourcers make offers?

Sourcing will do the initial outreach to pre-screen and will do phone interviews. Once a candidate is pre-qualified, they are routed to the TS through the ATS. Sourcers are not involved in the offer process.

How Do I Reduce Overall Time to Fill?

2011-11-18T05:56:00.000-08:00

If you would like to discuss solutions for reducing your TTF please contact us!

I have been knee deep in analysis of recruitment metrics/organizational performance as we finalize our 2011 Recruitment Benchmark Study this month.

While our client’s Voice of the Customer studies continue to suggest that responsiveness/speed (AKA –time to fill) is very important to hiring managers, most organizations still struggle with:

Identifying the root cause issues impacting TTF
Develop solutions to reduce it

In a recent post – Overall Average Time to Fill Metrics – Does it Really Capture what is going on?, we shared that while overall TTF was 47 days across over 75 organizations:

The % of positions filled in less than 60 days: 74%
Avg TTF for positions filled in less than 60 days: 24 days
The % of positions filled in 60 days or more: 26%
Avg TTF for positions filled in 60 days or more: 115 days

Think about that! While we fill 3 out of 4 positions very quickly (24 days), 1 out of 4 positions takes an average of 115 days to fill!

Investigating further, we found that these are also the positions that are:

Most critical to the organization!
Have the highest Cost of Vacancy
Impact customer, patient satisfaction the most
Very difficult to find candidates for (high demand/low supply)

With that said. . . to reduce overall TTF. . . the focus should clearly be on reducing TTF for those positions trending 115 days to fill!

So what are the solutions?

Working with our clients, solutions usually were found in three categories:

Data integrity – Common issues: TTF data was just inaccurate. Req’s that should have been closed were still open, positions that were on hold were still open. Recruiters were not using ATS status codes correctly. Not consistently tracking TTF the same (some recruiters tracking from Req Posted versus Intake Session with Manager).
Requisition Management – Common issues: Recruiters not developing Service Level Agreements with managers to reduce wait time. Infrequent communication rhythm with hiring managers that have positions trending over 45 days (red zone). Positions on hold. Lack of Manager engagement.
Sourcing Top Candidates – Common issues: Not dedicating enough time to sourcing quality candidates. Lack of expertise/skills to proactively source passive/quality candidates.

Working with our clients on these issues, we have seen phenomenal results in a short period of time.

If you would like to discuss solutions to reducing your TTF please contact us!

Some Cool Stuff at HealthcareSource!

2011-11-11T09:23:00.000-08:00

I was asked to speak at the HealthcareSource User conference this year regarding our Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study Trends.

It was an excellent conference in many respects but what jumped out most to me was . . . how they have listened to their customers!

The updates to their core products and introduction of new products (including SourcingManager) seem spot on.

HealthcareSource recently partnered with ASHHRA on the 2011 Healthcare HR Initiatives Survey*. They solicited input from healthcare human resource professionals regarding top initiatives for reducing costs, improving patient satisfaction, and patient safety. 69% of respondents chose “streamlining HR processes” as the key HR initiative to cut costs!

This is what we preach and teach every day! :)

With that critical information in mind, they have made significant updates to Position Manager to make it simple, easy and efficient to use. In addition, they are adding a host of reporting capabilities that will allow them to provide the key data required at the enterprise, department, and individual level to quantify a recruitment organization ROI to key stakeholders and drive performance improvement initiatives!

The fact that they will pull most of the data required to participate in our Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study (free of charge) is an added bonus :).

I was also really impressed with their new Sourcing Manager product! Again – they have made it simple, easy and efficient to manage all job board postings within a few clicks. It is similar to a top end catalog shopping experience. Quick, easy and efficient.

Most importantly – it provides the analytic platform required to analyze your recruitment advertising spend. While many products/agencies focus on Cost per Click or Cost per Application, SourcingManager provides process efficiency metrics from ‘Click to Hire’. They provide cost per hire and benchmark data across job boards. Cool, Cool, stuff.

They truly understand the principles important to Lean, efficient staffing process. And that the goal is not ‘clicks’ or applications’ . . . IT IS QUALITY HIRES! :).

It is great to see folks listening to the customer and developing solutions to their needs.

Topics You Are Passionate About!

2011-11-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

If you were unable to attend yesterday’s webinar facilitated by Barb Matti, Director of Talent Selection at Henry Ford Health System, you missed a great one!

She presented her recruitment department’s ‘un-sanitized’ case study regarding their Lean, just-in-time transformation Journey over the last 2 years (view online).

We were not surprised that it was our most well attended webinar of the year since we know that the recruiting community wants to hear case studies from/about their peers in the industry.

As we start to plan our webinar content for next year, we would love to get your input.

If you could participate in this brief survey, it will help us to develop relevant content with thought leaders in our industry.

Recruiters - The Backbone of an Organization!

2011-10-26T09:28:00.000-07:00

I’d like to share a thought I had on the road this week. Having had the opportunity to analyze recruitment performance at over 100 health systems throughout the nation, the statement “Nurses are the backbone of the health care delivery system” often comes up. This flattering statement is well deserved! With RNs making up 23% of our health care system’s workforce . . . nurses literally are the backbone given their dominant presence in the hallways !

With that said, I want to be the unofficial first person (I’m probably not but . . .) to say that “Recruiters are the backbone of each and every organization” we work for! We are the folks that identify the talented candidates that drive our organization’s success.

Given this fact, it amazes me that:

There is no degree in Recruiting (IE – Bachelor’s of Science in Business – Major: Talent Acquisition )
Many in recruiting view the position as a ‘stepping stone’ versus a ‘destination’ role.
Most have learned their craft thru unstructured ‘over the shoulder’, webinars, or conference learning sessions!
We often don’t get the credit we deserve regarding our organizations overall performance. If we didn’t find/recruit the top talent . . . .?

So what does wearing this lofty new title mean?

You need to be educated on the art & science of recruiting. Of course I will plug our Recruiter Certification Program as a powerful structured educational program. But, if not ours, find one and take it!
Be proud to be ‘the backbone of the organization’! Recruiting, in my mind, is a destination role in an organization.
Remember that respect is earned! Effective recruitment skills + strong knowledge of the business/service line you recruit for = respect from key stakeholders (hiring managers, candidates, executives, etc.)!

I hope you are having a Perfect Week!

Seeking Presenters to Share Their Story!

2011-10-19T10:48:00.000-07:00

As I reflect on the unofficial close to ‘Conference Season’ for the holidays, I am further convinced that what makes a conference great (to me) are the dynamic presenters that:

Are motivational
Are funny
Have real life experiences/case studies to share
All of the above!

From my conversations with other professionals at these events, I seem to be part of the majority that think this way. There’s nothing worse than listening to a person pontificating on the abstract theory of a topic telling you ‘what’ you should be doing.

I would rather hear the un-sanitized ‘real life’ case study related to something we all struggle with or want to learn about. I want the ‘how to’ strategies. I want to hear about the challenges and the success story regarding the journey!

We try to provide this type of experience when presenting at conferences or via our webinars. So, I’d like to shamelessly plug our next webinar!

Henry Ford Health System's Journey to Migrate to a Lean, JIT Recruitment Organization!

Presented by Barb Matti, Director of Talent Acquisition at Henry Ford Health System

November 2, 2011 from 1:00-2:00 PM EDT

In addition, I want to encourage all of you folks that are motivational, funny or . . . have real life experiences/case studies to share . . . TO SHARE YOUR STORY WITH US!

The National Association for Health Care Recruitment (NAHCR) is currently seeking presenters (Call for Presenters) for their Annual IMAGE Conference which will take place in Indianapolis next July! They’re seeking presentations that involve “real life” programs and case studies including topics such as: Allied Health/Nurse Recruitment, Behavioral Interviewing, HR Role in Investigations, Health Care Best Practices, Health Care Recruitment in Non Acute Care Settings, Recognition Programs, etc.

If you have not attended IMAGE before, I can assure you that it is a great conference!

ALSO…..If you have a case study to share, we would love to discuss spotlighting you on one of our webinars! Just email us.

The benefits of being an industry presenter include:

Being recognized as a credible spokesperson within our industry
Public recognition for your peers/team
Forcing you to document your case study for internal customers to learn about
Getting a chance to network with other industry thought leaders :)

I hope you take the opportunity to share your story!

PS – Take a look at the poll results from last weeks blog

Are You a Fan of Video Interviewing?

2011-10-12T06:59:00.000-07:00

Last week I was interviewed by HealthcareSource regarding my thoughts on video interviewing.

I have to say that overall, I am a big fan of video interviewing (and Interview Manager® ) for a variety of reasons including:

Interviewing ‘out of market’ candidates - - Why wouldn’t you have a dynamic video interview prior to bringing someone in? It is good for both parties to ‘meet’ in a two-dimensional format to see if it makes sense to move forward and the cost savings (versus just a phone view prior to flying a candidate in) are HUGE!!!
It allows managers to review and compare candidates. This is a really cool feature!
The entry portal can provide a really professional candidate experience including the ability to provide video links, etc.
Remote managers can participate in the interview - - saving time/money for all parties.
Candidates that do not have a video camera get one FOR FREE! So those folks that you might think are ‘technology phobic’ (because they don’t have a camera) . . . can see how easy it is to use .
Helps drive a Lean, efficient staffing process!

One of my clients commented “If I could just get a candidate to meet with my managers, they would get excited about our facility, location, and job opportunity. But I often can’t get them to fly in to visit us!" What a wonderful, risk free way to engage both parties to explore and see if there is a mutual interest!?

One candidate commented that video interviewing can also set a positive tone about how leading edge the organization is regarding technology (a good thing!). “If HR is using new technology . . . I bet the entire facility is!”

I have another client starting to implement a video interview platform for all entry level campus hiring. This is a great way to consistently evaluate candidates in a market segment used to using technology. Of course this platform probably isn’t the right tool for your non-exempt hires.
For many situations, video interviewing makes perfect sense to me! But, I’m curious what you folks think. Please provide us with your input by responding to the poll below. I will publish the results of what you’re thinking next week !

Taking the TIME to be a Recruitment Business Partner!

2011-10-05T06:39:00.000-07:00

The first week in October leaps us into the heart of the fall season and the end of FY Quarter 3 – 2011! For those of you that have embedded a continuous improvement methodology into culture, it is time for you to:

Update your performance scorecard/dashboard (both team and individual).
Celebrate success (areas where performance has improved).
Identify areas for improvement.
Develop a 90-day Performance Improvement Action Plan.

In addition, this is also the perfect time to have a strategic meeting with your key customers to discuss last quarter’s performance and plan for the future.

A one-hour meeting every 90-days with key customers is not only invaluable to quantify ROI and develop performance improvement initiatives (Can’t manage what you don’t measure!) but . . . to earn the respect as a true Recruitment Business Partner!

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!

The nature of our business unfortunately dictates that 90%+ of the time with our key customers is spent in ‘tactical mode’ discussing qualifying open req’s, interviewing candidates, delivering offers, etc. Rarely does it allow for discussions on:

Upcoming hiring needs
Succession planning
Staffing performance
Celebrating Success
Etc.

Then we wonder why our key customers don’t view us as Strategic Business Partners!?!? Hmmm? Why would they if we never engage in discussions on more strategic topics!

Now to accomplish this, you need to dedicate the TIME to updating your scorecard, developing a presentation, etc. And I know that TIME is the one precious commodity you don’t have enough of! But I am sure anyone reading this post would agree that the time invested is 100% worth it.

A straightforward meeting Agenda:

Discuss overall performance in areas of quality, responsiveness, customer satisfaction, efficiency, cost, etc. (key performance indicators on your scorecard)
Celebrate success
Discuss opportunities for improvement
Discuss 90, 180 day workforce needs, succession planning, etc.
Document any/all action items to be accomplished in next 90 days

This meeting can be accomplished in 1 to 2 hours over lunch and could be the most important time you INVEST towards being respected as a true Recruitment Business Partner!

I hope you’re having a “Perfect Week”!

Journey from Good to 'Elite' – Observations from the Road

2011-09-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

Over the last few months, I have met with dozens of recruitment organizations regarding their overall performance and their journey from good to ‘elite’ (either in-process or in the planning phase).

As always, during these peak periods of heavy analysis, I have learned some interesting things and. . . .I have participated in leadership discussions that have validated many of my convictions.
Some interesting observations:

Process improvement is a journey, not a one-time event! This thought was validated by a few organizations that have improved performance significantly in areas of responsiveness, productivity, process efficiency and customer satisfaction. They all commented, “This has not happened over night! It has taken us a couple years to get to this point.”

So much goes into analyzing problems, developing and implementing solutions, and then managing the change management process for all key stakeholders (recruitment team, internal/external customers, etc.). It’s hard work to do! It’s tough to turn critics into allies. But it can be accomplished by those that develop a project plan and are committed to the journey.

A well-balanced Scorecard is 100% essential. I have personally facilitated a year-to-date review with senior leadership at seven respected organizations over the past month. As I compared each organization’s performance against the previous quarter, year-over-year and industry benchmarks, I was truly amazed to see how engaged senior leadership was! The scorecard that was created for each organization provided the recruitment staff with instant credibility! While each team may still not be perfect, they each have a solid plan of action in place.

Here are some of the comments I heard:

“Wow, I didn’t know you were performing this well. This is great!”
“Look at these metrics! I can’t believe how much work your team has done to improve performance.”
“We need to take this information and ensure that all leadership sees how well you’re doing and what you’re doing to continue to improve.”

Organizations don’t invest enough resources into sourcing! Typical organizations fill 75% of their requisitions with active/internal candidates very quickly. 25% stay open 100+ days. The primary reason (outside of managing the requisition process with the hiring manager) is that not enough time is being spent by competent recruiters on sourcing to fill difficult positions.

Our studies suggest that it takes 3, 5, 20 hours of sourcing to identify one qualified and interested candidate for a very difficult to fill position. If the average # of candidates needed to fill a position is four (that is being conservative) then it will take 12-80 hours of just sourcing time to fill a difficult position. As a typical corporate recruiter, how many hours do you spend sourcing? Our research suggests the average recruiter spends just 1-3 hours per day. Do the math! And...we wonder why 25% of our positions remain open 100+ days! :)

I am always inspired by the organizations that, in spite of heavy workloads, shifting priorities, ornery managers :), etc. have the passion for continuous improvement and lifelong learning!

If you are interested in embarking on a journey and/or have a story to share - - I would love to hear from you!

Recognizing 'Honor Role' Recruitment Organizations performing at an Elite Level!

2011-09-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

Over the last two years, we have had the opportunity to analyze the performance of recruitment organizations from over 75 respected healthcare systems throughout the nation who have participated in our Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study.

For those of you not familiar with the study, in 2010 Lean Human Capital , in partnership with the National Association for Health Care Recruitment (NAHCR), recognized there was a significant gap in relevant, actionable benchmark data on critical aspects of staffing performance including productivity, process efficiency and responsiveness (speed).

In only our second year of the study, we have over 100 health systems committed to providing key performance data to objectively analyze how well they are performing compared to their peers across the country!

Through this process we have uncovered some truly amazing recruitment organizations that have worked extremely hard to develop a Lean, efficient staffing process & a culture passionate about quality & customer satisfaction!

We are excited to announce that we will be publicly recognizing those that are performing at an ‘Elite’ Level!

We have identified 10 key performance indicators that we believe objectively evaluate recruitment performance with respect to productivity, process efficiency and responsiveness. Once we finalize our 2011 Benchmark Study later this year, we will identify those Recruitment Organizations that are performing at an ‘Elite’ level.

They will be inducted into our inaugural ‘Elite’ Honor Role!

We then plan to develop case studies and share them with fellow recruitment organization interested in embarking on a Lean Transformation Journey from Good to ‘Elite’.

If you are not participating in our free Recruitment Benchmark Study, you still have time! Just contact us.

This will provide you the opportunity to benchmark your performance against similar size health systems throughout the country and. . . see if you are “Honor Role” status! :)

PS – for those non-healthcare recruitment organizations interested in analyzing your performance with respect to productivity, process efficiency, and responsiveness please contact us . We have worked with organizations within every major industry segment and can provide you with an objective analysis :) .

Jump Starting Your LinkedIn Network

2011-08-25T11:40:00.000-07:00

At our Sister Company - - The RIO Group - - they like to have friendly competitions to bring fun/play to the work place (think FISH Philosophy!) and find/hire more quality people! :)

One contest they had recently was around “Growing your LinkedIn network”. Of course the value of growing your network is to gain access to the 120 million + (and growing) community.

During a recent meeting they were discussing how it was progressing and . . . one of RIO’s finest (Nicole) mentioned she had just jumped her network by over 800 contacts!

For most folks, this is a phenomenal ‘net growth’ in LI contacts in a short period of time. This spurred a ‘best practices’ discussion on growing your network.

Mike McLean (http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepmclean), thanks for taking the time to consolidate the ideas you and the team had around this topic (see below)!

I hope everyone has a Perfect Day!
___________________________________________________________________

David -

Here are some of the top suggestions that were shared (thanks Nicole, Karen and Yvonne!).

If you have any questions – let me know. Mike

If you don’t know what a LinkedIn LION is . . . read the Wikipedia link for LION. This explains what a LinkedIn Open Networker (LION) is.

Anytime you see a profile with the following in their title - - LION, EMAIL ADRESS, A NUMBER SUCH AS 14,000+, A LION as a profile picture, etc - - -or on their page I would link with them! They are open networkers!

Here are some groups you can join that are loaded with Super Users!! All these folks “are open networkers”…
1. Members (123,300) TopLinked.com – I recommend signing up both within LinkedIn and also on their website. If you go to the website you can gain access for FREE to spreadsheets that have the contact information to close to 2000 Open Networkers. From these spreadsheets you can upload and send requests to link in. You can also pay a nominal fee to be added to the list.
2. Members (60,000+) OpenNetworker.com: part of TopLinked.com.
3. There are other groups that may also be more relevant to your industry so make sure to do a search under the Groups directory section and join.
When you have a candidate whether from Monster or LinkedIn or other sources, check to see if they have a Linkedin profile and have them connect with you. This does two things:
1. It keeps the candidate as part of your connections and if they leave their current firm or post they are now looking you know they are open game.
2. It connects you with co-workers of their past and present employers (easy to see the value in that!).
On your home page, in the upper right side, you’ll see an area called “people you might know.” Click on the See More. Linkedin provides an endless list of people related to you by keywords in your profile and their profiles. You can request to connect with people right from there.
Remember to diversify your group. Look for at least 1 person from every target company you have or link into a special Group that is for that skill set to get a good mix of professionals. The Open networkers group will always help put someone above the mark.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but it is a great starting point if you are looking to grow your network quickly with Super Users and/or folks within your industry disciplines.

If you would like to start growing your network feel free to LinkIn with me :) (Mike M).

Another Approach to Recruitment Resource Planning!

2011-08-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

For those that follow us, you know we are not fans of the “Requisitions per Recruiter” formula used for recruitment resource planning.

Our reasons include:

It doesn’t take into consideration hiring demand/workforce planning (IE – what types of people do you need? How many? When? ).
It doesn’t factor in the amount of time to source/find candidates to fill difficult/critical/visible positions.
It doesn’t factor in staffing supply chain efficiency (IE – how many applicants must be dispostioned? how many candidates must be routed to the hiring manager to fill a position)?

Our more advanced resource planning methodology is aligned with Materials Release Planning (MRP) methodology that has been used in JIT production manufacturing environments for years.

We wrote an article on this subject that you might want to check out.

Ultimately, we believe that you should use this methodology for recruitment resource planning BUT . . . .you must have accurate process efficiency metrics for it to be a useful tool.

If you have those metrics, we can assist in your planning efforts. Contact us.

If you are working towards developing the systems, ATS status codes and reporting required to use this methodology. . . another simple solution is utilizing your Annual Recruiter Productivity Metric.

This is a simple calculation:

# of positions filled (internal & external) / # of recruiter FTE

In our Healthcare Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study, the Mean productivity per recruiter was: 243 positions filled per recruiter (over 100 healthcare systems are participating)!

So if you know historically that a recruiter can fill 243 positions a year. And FY2012 hiring demand is 2543 positions filled. You would need 10.46 FTE recruiters to meet hiring demand.

Now I know this is a fairly simplistic model that doesn’t take many things into consideration (including those outlined above) BUT . . . if you do not have the metrics required to migrate to staffing supply chain model, I would encourage you to consider this method OVER “req’s per recruiter” (which I still don’t understand how it works).

Have a great week

3 Tips to Deal with an Urgent Request

2011-07-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

In the world of recruiting and HR, it seems that everything is portrayed as urgent requiring an immediate response, as though we're living in a constant state of emergency! We’re under siege from a constant stream of urgent requests from internal business partners. For example, a talent acquisition manager of one of our clients recently shared that much of her time, and that of her people, was spent responding to “urgent” questions or issues from internal business partners, rather than managing the business of talent acquisition – sound familiar?

In reality, what is often labeled "urgent" simply is not. But because we live in the age of smart phones, everyone assumes we’re available 24/7. So as we all know, people sit in meetings tapping away at their mobile devices and catch up on phone calls while walking to and from the bathroom. In some ways, technology has turned us into rapid-response junkies.

One of the most difficult aspects of this rapid-response culture is figuring out how to respond appropriately to clients and customers. On one hand, we know that our customers expect and value responsiveness, which we want to provide. On the other hand, not every request needs an instant response. In fact, doing so too often will not only reinforce the customer's expectation of rapid-response on everything, but also might not always yield the best results.

So the next time you get that email with the little red exclamation point or the voicemail at 10 PM, try these three tips for determining how to respond:

Don't assume urgent means right now. Talk with your boss or your customer about what he/she wants to accomplish and when it's really needed. His/her interpretation of "immediately" may be different than yours.
Respond, but don't necessarily act. Sometimes a client or colleague wants you to commit right away to a plan of action, but doesn't need more than that in the short term. Explain what you will do and your intended timeline to be sure that meets his/her needs.
Be prepared to say no. At times, you need to discern between a true crisis and a cry of wolf. Even if your customer thinks he needs it right now, it may be best to decline.

Have a great week!

Should You Keep Hiring Managers Waiting?

2011-06-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

I read the Harvard Business Review http://www.hbr.org/ as often as I can. We apply many of their concepts here at Lean. This recent article caught my eye. It ties in nicely to the approach we take with Hiring Managers regarding Service Level Agreements.

“Think Customers Hate Waiting?

How often have you found yourself staring at your computer screen as a progress bar tracks the machine’s fitful loading of an application or completion of a search and wondered, “What’s taking so long?” Good managers worry about wait time because a great deal of evidence (not to mention common sense) suggests that reducing it can increase customer satisfaction. Our research, however, demonstrates that a different approach — simply showing people what is taking so long — gets better results. Customers find waiting more tolerable when they can see the work being done on their behalf — and they tend to value the service more.

This holds true even when what’s shown is merely the appearance of effort. What we term the labor illusion — a demonstration of effort, whether literal or not, expended to meet the customer’s request — can be so effective, in fact, that many customers who endure waits but see a running tally of tasks end up happier than those who don’t have to wait at all. People even prefer waiting with the labor illusion to playing an interactive game of tic-tac-toe.

In one experiment we conducted, participants searched on a simulated travel Web site for a flight. Some watched the typical boring progress bar. Others could see each airline being canvassed. The second service received higher ratings, even when those using it were forced to wait for as long as a minute. In another experiment, each participant booked the same trip through two different sites and received identical results. One site delivered the results instantly but invisibly, whereas the other took either 30 or 60 seconds but showed the labor being done. A majority preferred the transparent — and slower — site.

Many of us have already experienced the labor illusion online: The travel Web site Kayak, for example, shows customers each airline it searches. We’ll increasingly encounter it in other environments as well. Apple recently augmented its automated voice response system with the prerecorded sound of typing, creating the impression that the digital operator is physically keying in the caller’s query. ATMs at the Spanish bank BBVA show an animation of bills being counted as customers wait for the machines to spit out their cash. The U.S. Postal Service has installed screens that show customers each step being taken by the postal worker who is helping them. Starbucks now requires that baristas steam milk for each drink individually — a process that increases wait time but allows customers to see what’s going on.

Transparency has long been heralded as a virtue in accounting and public relations. Our research suggests that operations can reap important bottom-line benefits from it as well.”

As we’ve discussed in our previous posts on Managing your Hiring Managers and Mission Health System’s Lean Journey using a Service Level Agreement can improve customer satisfaction by communicating a number of actions that are occurring during the recruiting life cycle.

Most relevant to Hiring Managers is communication about what is happening at each stage of the lifecycle and how much time each step usually takes. The Service Level Agreement will outline this to both parties. Hiring Managers will know, for instance, that in the first 10 days of a requisition being opened, Recruiting is sourcing and screening resumes to then forward along to them.

If Recruiting is using SLA’s often enough Hiring Managers become aware of what’s taking place, and by whom, at any given time in the process. The relationship between Hiring Manager and Recruiting immediately improves simply because they know there is effort taking place on their behalf, even if Hiring Managers cannot physically see it!

If you’d like to learn more about Service Level Agreements and how you can apply them to your organization please contact us.

Have a great week!

Overall Average Time to Fill Metric – Does it Really Capture What is Going on?

2011-06-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

One of the most compelling things we identified from our inaugural Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study was related to time to fill (TTF). We first reported on this back in November, 2010.

The data clearly demonstrated that average TTF does not represent what is actually going on with respect to staffing performance.

For most organizations, it showed that roughly 75-80% of the positions were being filled very quickly (20-30 days) while the other 20-25% of the positions were being filled in 90-100+ days!

Conclusion:
Recruitment organizations are designed (and excel) at filling what we call “business as usual” req’s with internal/referral/active candidates. However, they struggle to fill “critical/difficult/visible” req’s that typically require a more proactive, aggressive sourcing strategy (targeting passive candidates).

Based on these findings, we added the following TTF related questions to our study:

Number of positions filled in less than 60 days
Avg TTF for positions filled in less than 60 days
Number of positions filled in 60 or more days
Avg TTF for positions filled in 60 or more days

Of our Benchmark Study respondents so far, the data continues to support what we initially found:

% of positions filled in less than 60 days: 73%
Avg TTF for positions filled in less than 60 days: 23 days
% of positions filled in 60 days or more: 27%
Avg TTF for positions filled in 60 days or more: 113 days

If you do not currently measure TTF thru this lens, we encourage you to do so!

It will help you:

Understand how you’re currently performing with respect to time
Provide clarity around staffing/sourcing priorities
Provide guidance around developing a staffing model that will help you reduce TTF for critical/difficult/visible positions.

If you’re interested in participating in our Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study please contact us.

I hope you’re having a perfect day!

Just in Time Hiring - Is It a Dream?

2011-05-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

Building candidate pipelines to migrate towards JIT hiring has been talked about for years with little to no progress towards a solution.

From all the benchmark data I have seen (including our recent Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study), most organizations have time-to-fill metrics that hover between 25-90 days+ depending on the type of position they are trying to fill. While most discussions around this topic focus on the challenges of pulling off this feat, I want to discuss some pragmatic solutions that are realistic and achievable to implement.

Develop a hiring forecast in advance of need – I think we are missing the boat on this one. While everyone is working on very complex workforce planning models (I’m not saying stop doing this - - I still think this is a worthwhile activity), most every organization I know of:

Has a budget headcount forecast
Tracks employee turnover
Can predict (to some degree of certainty) headcount needs related to new business growth 90+ days out.
Can identify employees that are flight risks, on the fast track to be promoted, or about to retire

This data will allow you to predict hiring needs with a variance of say 10% +/-. Is it perfect? No. Will it give you a road map of what you need to recruit for 90 days out. . . Heck ya!

Identify the resources required to develop candidate pipelines to meet hiring needs. In manufacturing, this is called Materials Release Planning. Based on your process (and efficiency flows, time/resources required at each step, etc.) – you can identify the resources required to meet hiring demand throughout the ‘Staffing Supply Chain’. Richard Newsome provides a glimpse of this in his recent article. I have been using a more complex model with recruitment organizations for years!

Get Leadership to hold hiring managers accountable for time to fill. Over the last 2 months, I have performed value stream mapping exercises with 7 recruitment organizations. On average, less than 10% of the total time to fill was ‘processing candidates’. 90% of the time was ‘wait/delay’ time between processes. Of the wait time, over 50% was directly caused by managers (I know you are shocked with these findings) sitting on resumes, not making decisions, ‘waiting’ for a purple squirrel candidate, etc.

If managers were/are held accountable, you can expect to reduce TTF by 30-50%. PS – I know this idea is probably the toughest to get implemented.

Have dedicated sourcers for Critical/Difficult/Visible (CDV) positions – I know this is not a new concept but . . . it works :) . Most everyone underestimates how much time (sourcing) it takes to identify and recruit for these positions (no matter how savvy you are). I would invest in doing a pure time study to understand how much time it takes to ‘source’ a candidate for each of your critical job categories. Then you can truly identify how many resources you need to support hiring demand (again – check out Richard’s article).

For many of you, these are not profound ideas and/or thoughts. For some of you, you’ve probably implemented a few of these ideas with some level of success.

So why are most organizations struggling to migrate to a JIT hiring solution?

We are not managing customer expectations and/or educating them on what is required to meet their needs JIT (what they ask for when they say I want a req. filled ‘ASAP’ or ‘Yesterday’). Basic concepts like Production Planning and Materials Release Planning have been used in manufacturing organizations for years. We need to adopt them.
We are not investing the time to work with customers to understand hiring needs. We are not investing the time to implement Material Release Planning concepts into our Staffing Supply Chain to identify the resources required to meet hiring demand.

I don’t want to make this sound simple. But let’s not make this harder than it needs to be. If hiring quality (quality is #1) employees in a timely fashion is very important to your organization, it is time to take control!

I would love to hear success stories from organizations that have implemented these concepts to substantially reduce lead time/TTF without any decrease in quality or increase in cost.

I hope you are having a perfect day!

Lean Journey at Mission Health System

2011-05-04T06:12:00.000-07:00

If you missed it last week, Lori Halula, Manager of Recruiting for Mission Health System, and I conducted a webinar in partnership with HealthcareSource discussing how Mission engaged Lean Human Capital to conduct a Lean, Just-In-Time transformation.

During the webinar, Lori recapped the major milestones over the last year including:

How Position Manager data and Lean Human Capital’s Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study uncovered areas for improvement - As you may have seen from our press releases and other blog posts, we are now an integrated partner with HealthcareSource. As a part of this partnership, any client of Position Manager will now have a FREE automatic data feed from Position Manager. This feed will allow you to seamlessly participate in our benchmarking study, as well as build deeper analytics to measure your process efficiency.
Creation of a new, benchmarked analytics and performance metrics scorecard – As many of you have heard from me, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. It’s also more difficult to make key decisions and manage customer expectations without objective data to drive behaviors. A metrics scorecard can lead to a continuous improvement approach that drives the desired behaviors from your key stakeholders by using factual data that is very difficult to argue with.
Mission’s transition to an optimized recruiting structure including new roles & responsibilities – Early in the engagement, Mission conducted a 360 degree assessment with their recruiters where they evaluated their competencies and skills compared to other healthcare recruiters, to uncover areas for improvement. Sourcing candidates and building pipelines scored lower than other areas. Based on this data, as well as additional research, we decided to migrate the team from a generalist recruiting structure (where recruiters do everything for everyone) to a model that includes talent and sourcing specialists. In the new model, talent specialists work primarily with the candidates and hiring managers while sourcing specialists work to source candidates and build active and passive pipelines.
How conducting a Lean process audit and time-value mapping of Mission’s recruitment process reduced waste – In this exercise key stakeholders were documented for each step in the process as well as the process and delay times for each step. At the end the team worked on techniques to positively impact time to fill and improve customer service.
How Mission implemented Service Level Agreements to better manage the hiring manager relationship and expectations – Lori shared their experience about how hiring managers can negatively impact time to fill by delaying the movement of candidates through the hiring process. By putting in place service level agreements, Mission has created greater accountability for hiring managers as well as recruiters.

Mission’s ROI since going live has positively impacted time to fill, reducing it from 48 days (2010) to 42 days (2011)! We look forward to seeing more improvements over time.

If you have interest in hearing the entire presentation, here is the link to the recorded webinar: Mission Health System’s Lean Journey Webinar.

We are excited to have Lori participate in our Advanced Metrics pre-conference workshop on Tuesday July 12th at NACHR’s Annual Image conference! If you would like more information about this workshop, please contact us.

I would also encourage you to participate in our Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study. For more information, please contact us.

I hope you’re having a great week!

Lean, JIT Transformation - Simply Brilliant Ideas!

2011-04-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

If you missed NAHCR’s webinar last week, Miranda Maynard (Employment Supervisor for EMH Healthcare) updated us on their Lean, JIT transformation initiative of 2011.

It was an excellent ‘case study’ of what a continuous improvement journey is all about.

Incremental improvement over time can provide exponential returns.
Innovation doesn’t have to be rocket science. The best solutions are often simple which make them brilliant.

Some of the Simply Brilliant solutions EMH is implementing include:

Capturing accurate Metrics – To migrate to a Management by Fact/Data Culture:

Eliminating “Other” and “EMH Career Site” as options for a candidate to choose for source of hire. This has helped identify where top candidates are coming from to further develop cost effective sourcing strategies.
Recognizing that a sharp increase in TTF was a result of closing requisitions that have been open for a long period (a positive thing)!

Eliminating unqualified applicant flow – To spend Quality time with Quality Candidates:

Implemented pre-screen “Knock-out” questions prior to candidates applying for a particular position (most organizations implement these questions as part of the application process).
Implemented a behavioral-based online assessment (HealthcareSource’s Test source).

Make Time to Fill Service Level Agreements public and hold Managers accountable for achieving them:

Holding managers accountable for a 40-day Time to Fill metric ensures they are engaged in process. Currently evaluating adding this SLA to their performance evaluation in 2011.

Define/separate processes for ‘Business as Usual’ vs. ‘Critical/Difficult/Visible’ positions:

Immediate recognition of CDV positions and elimination of the time and cost associated with the “wait & see”/”post & pray” process.

We are excited to have Miranda participate in our Advanced Metrics pre-conference workshop on Tuesday July 12th at NACHR’s Annual Image conference! If you would like more information about this workshop, please contact us.

I hope you’re having a great week!

'Two Cents' from the Road

2011-04-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

As I have mentioned in the past, I am one lucky “recruiting guy” because I get to interact with talented recruitment professionals throughout the world on a daily basis.

With our Solution engagement, I also get to become a ‘teammate’ of many recruitment organizations! With our Benchmark Study, I have intimate interaction with many, many more!

This unique opportunity always provides me with many thoughts/observations/insights!
Some recent “Lean, JIT ‘Elite’ Recruitment Thoughts” from the road:

Discipline, sense of urgency, and self-direction are a few of the most important ELITE recruiter competencies you can possess.

The busier you get, the more time you need to plan your perfect day. If you are not planning at least 30 minutes a day . . . I bet you are 10-50% less productive than those that do!
You can plan all you want but . . . if you are not “true to your schedule”, if you do not commit to crossing off your TO DOs (ETFs, MTNs), starting/stopping meetings ON TIME, etc., IT IS WORTHLESS!

Trust is also very important. If your hiring managers don’t TRUST that:

You understand thier business
You have an eye for the talent they want/need
You know how to find top talent

They will continue to:

Ask to see all resumes before setting up interviews
Always want to “see more”
Not listen to your salary/offer recommendations, etc.

To earn trust, you must learn their business by attending staff meetings, learning from employees/candidates AND become an expert at performing intake sessions and setting SLAs

A strong ability to solicit interest is equally important. With technology, social media, it is much easier to FIND passive candidates . . . but still very difficult to SOLICIT THEIR INTEREST.

To SOLICIT INTEREST, you need to master the three keys to the art & science of recruiting top talent; compelling message, timing, and tonality.

While there are many facets to recruiting, if you:

Are able to plan for, and execute more Perfect Days (with passion :))
Have earned the trust of your hiring managers via knowledge and engaging/executing flawless intake/SLA sessions.
Have mastered the ability to engage and recruit top talent.

You are pretty darn ‘elite’ in my book!

My ‘two cents’ from the road . . . Please share any of your ‘two cents’ from the field! :)

I hope you have (or had) a good spring break!

The 80/20 Rule

2011-04-14T06:03:00.000-07:00

Author: Karen Antrim – Lean Human Capital

Years ago, my boss said to me “this place has too much of the 80/20 rule.” “80/20 rule?” I asked. “It’s when 80 percent of the work gets done by 20 percent of the people.” he answered.

In my real life, when I’m not sourcing or teaching sourcing, I’m a mom. I volunteer at my kids school, at our church, and for little league. I often observe the 80/20 there. You’ve probably noticed this in your real life too. 80 percent of the work is done by 20 percent of the parents.

Weekly, I read about a new tool, technique or process that is going to change the way we source. Or, I get an email for a class on how to improve and write better Boolean strings to find resumes or lists on the net. I’m all for constant learning and constant improvement. It’s the mantra our firm is based on. However, I work for recruiters who have very little time and a mountain of openings to fill. So my ability to get them accurate prospective candidates in a short time is a priority. My sourcing techniques must provide the biggest return for the effort. They must adhere to the “80/20 rule”.

The principle applies to recruiters who do their own sourcing. They have even less time for each activity in the recruitment process without a sourcing staff to assist them. The “80/20 rule” should become a guiding principle.

Simply put, the 80/20 rule is how to get 80% of your candidates with 20% of the tools and processes of sourcing.

Let’s take some specific examples. We all know that Linkedin.com has the largest community of profiles of any social professional network. If you have time constraints on your recruitment process, why use any other network? Get 80% of your prospects, build 80% of your network, start 80% of your conversations in LinkedIn.

Here is an inverse example. I understand the appeal of long and sexy Boolean search strings. As a Boolean geek, I dig‘em. But as a person who must be pragmatic in her practices, they do not return enough bang for the buck. They don’t adhere to the 80/20 rule. For example, the popular string (Intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR intitle:cv OR inurl:CV OR etc..) generally finds resumes that have been posted on a personal website or perhaps a university faculty bio. There just isn’t a large population of these out there. One can spend a great deal of time playing with keywords in this string and not get a large return for their time investment. This is an example of the 20/80 rule. 20% return on 80% of the investment.

Pick your top 3-5 successful sourcing activities, and stick with those. Mine are:

Site command to harvest linkedin.com
Subscription resume database such as Monster
My ATS
Finding associations and membership lists
Target companies to raid with call campaign

As a recruiter, you may change out #4 for working your own existing network.

Regardless of whether you’re a recruiter doing your own sourcing, or a sourcer supporting recruiters, putting 20% of your time in these activities will produce 80% of your prospect list. That leaves a whole lot of time for other tasks, such as candidate interaction, building your network, or branding yourself and your organization.

Happy Sourcing!

Mindful Recruiting / 5 simple ways to reduce your recruiting stress

2011-04-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

My wife and I just completed a course on Mindfulness. Yes like most husbands I didn’t go willingly, as it was her idea! But, by the end of the class I learned quite a few tips that I thought I would share with all of you.

Now you should know that I am the king of multi-tasking and a type “A” personality. I’ve tried these techniques myself and many of them have worked for me. I believe that if applied consistently these techniques will help many of you in your stressed recruiting lives.

The idea of mindfulness began at U Mass under Jon Kabat-Zinn. He sums the concept in this way. “Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment. We gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources for insight, transformation, and healing.”

Do one thing at a time. Single tasking may sound archaic in our multi-tasking world, but it can be quite powerful and can renew your focus. The concept comes from the Zen proverb “When walking walk, when eating, eat.” If you’re on the phone with a candidate or hiring manager, focus on the phone call. Don’t try to juggle your emails, IM, or other distractions. Just focus on the phone call. Simple focus on the one task at hand leads to better focus on your objective, and better service to your customer!
Put space between things. Putting space between calls and meetings throughout the day, even if it’s only 10 minutes, will give you a more relaxed schedule, and leaves space in case one task runs longer than another. It can also give you a chance to take a mini-break (note the next tip).
Spend at least 5 minutes a day doing nothing. I know you’re thinking “Oh No! But what will my boss, or partner, or kids say!” Yet sitting in silence, and simply breathing (yes breathing) can give you renewed focus for the next task, or the remainder of the day!
Stop worrying about the past or the future. Just focus on the present. We all do it, we spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the last call or meeting, or thinking about the one you have next week or in an hour, during the call or meeting you’re currently in! How many times have you missed an important point from your customer (candidate, hiring manager) or your family member, because you weren’t focused on the here and now? If you shift your focus to the present, you’ll see your stress drop, and your satisfaction with key relationships improve.
Enjoy the silence. On your next commute, when you come to a red light, try to just sit back for those 30 seconds and relax. Don’t pick up the phone and check email or voice mail. Just sit quietly. Another technique to try is to not use your commute time for phone calls, but as time for you to reconnect with yourself.

Keep practicing. When you feel yourself frustrated or stressed with your day try one of these tips. Or simply close your eyes for 10 seconds and breath. For home practice there’s a website called www.emindful.com that has online classes. Also if you’re an iPhone user a good app to try is SimplyBeing!

Finally I’ll leave you with this brief saying from Saki Santorelli, a mindfulness teacher. Try repeating this to yourself sometime.

May I be safe and protected from all inner and outer harm.

May I be happy, peaceful, and calm.

May I be as healthy and strong as possible for me.

May I care for myself with joy and ease.

Have a great week!

Monster's New Power Search Tool

2011-03-30T08:32:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I am a passionate Research professional and lead instructor for Lean Human Capital’s Internet/social media sourcing sessions.

Last week I spent several hours reviewing (also did a demo) the new Monster “Power Search” tool and thought I would provide a synopsis of what I learned.

There is a new way to do search. It’s called “semantic search”. The old way most search engines work is by using keywords based on digits in fields and Boolean commands. The results provided back to the user match the keywords you typed in based on what you are looking for.

Semantic uses an approach based on providing answers that ALSO included synonyms or common correlations to the search word or phrase you typed in. (i.e. if you type “lawyer” you will also get “attorney” “barrister” etc). (Important: These correlations are only as good as the developers who make them for each site).

Semantic search uses tools developed by a couple different companies, and universities. It is cutting edge, new technology. With that said, I suspect it is not fully refined or embraced in corporate development… yet.

Monster has taken a bold approach AND a $100 million investment to make their database searchable with the semantic search methodology.

Bottom Line:

I WOULD recommend Power Search to organizations that:

Do not have a sourcing team.
To recruiters that have limited Boolean and or search experience.

It does have a terrific interface and it is easy to use and learn. It provides easy returns.

However, I would probably not recommend it to those organizations that have a sourcing team and/or recruiters skilled in Boolean search techniques based on my ROI/Cost analysis.

I give kudu’s to Monster. They are investing in technology TODAY (and getting a jump on their competition?) that I suspect will eventually (don’t know time frame) become standard (and classic search option will fade away).

Some stat’s that Monster provided me are outlined below.

Shoot me an email if you have any success stories/challenges with this new search tool and/or semantic search technology!!!!

__________________________________________________________

Monster conducted detailed return on investment (ROI) studies with 48 recruiters from 15 large enterprise accounts to measure the value of Power Resume Search. In side by side comparisons with competitive products or standard keyword searching, customers found that Power Resume Search produced the following results:

65% average time saved using Power Resume Search compared to keyword-based search engines
150% average increase in the number of qualified candidates found
90% of recruiters prefer using Power Resume Search over other keyword-based search technology
97% of recruiters found qualified candidates faster using Power Resume Search

Karen Antrim
Associate
Research and Sourcing
Lean Human Capital

2011 Recruiting Trends

2011-03-16T07:56:00.000-07:00

As many of us begin to wrap up the first quarter of 2011, I’d like to explore some of the trends that we’re seeing and how they may affect the remainder of the recruiting year.

Heightened Focus on Employee Engagement

As the economy continues to recover this will be an interesting indicator to watch. Employee Engagement and retention were two of the biggest concerns for HR professionals in 2010, according to a survey conducted by Human Resource Executive magazine, and will continue to be in the year ahead. Based on 2010 survey data of employees from HR Solutions, only 27 percent of employees are ‘Actively Engaged.’ The remaining 73 percent is divided between ‘Ambivalent’ employees (60 percent) and ‘Actively Disengaged’ employees (13 percent). To address this issue, organizations are utilizing their most Actively Engaged employees as mentors to motivate and re-energize their disenchanted peers. According to the 2010 HRE survey of 802 HR Executives, 48% of participants responded neutral when asked about the current state of Employee Morale/Engagement at their organization. Such ambivalence has lead more organizations to increasingly focus on the results of their annual satisfaction surveys. This has included conducting break out focus groups or additional surveys to address engagement.

Voluntary Attrition Increases Dramatically

Most employers have been concerned about this for some time, as the past few years may not have been kind to their employees with regard to pay freezes, lack of bonuses, and increased workloads. The importance of retaining employees, especially high performers and those in critical roles is paramount. According to Harris Interactive, 54 percent of employees plan on looking for a new job once the economy improves. In an effort to thwart this, one trend we’re starting to see is the formation of strategic retention plans that go beyond just focusing on traditional compensation, to include professional development, career pathing and succession planning.

Jury’s Still Out on Social Media, LinkedIn becomes More Dominant

While we still haven’t seen strong ROI from the use of social media, organizations are still “dipping their toe” in its use. Within our client base we’re seeing little success with the usage of Facebook & Twitter beyond simple brand recognition efforts. But, we expect that over time these mediums will become more important once the mysterious ROI equation is solved and there are strong success stories as a result of their use. LinkedIn has continued to be the dominant player in the social media recruiting space but we expect to see even more pronounced usage this year. Our clients are adopting its usage at a more rapid pace and beginning to see the results from its use. The primary driver of return for LinkedIn seems to be finding enough time to use it. If you have enough time you’ll see the return.

We’ll continue to add to this list as we see more trends develop to keep you informed.

Planning Your Time - Perfect Week / Perfect Day

2011-03-03T08:02:00.000-08:00

Recently we hosted a poll to see when some of you plan for the next day of work. The results were interesting in that 76% of you do plan ahead either when you’re wrapping up your day or the next day with your cup of coffee. However 27% of you either don’t have time to plan or only plan a couple of times a week.

When do you plan your day?
I plan for the next day before I leave each day -- stress reliever! 51%
I am a morning planner -- with my cup of coffee 22%
Plan? I barely have time to go to the restroom! 20%
I sometimes plan my day -- maybe 2 to 3 days a week 7%

If you’re like me it’s difficult to manage your schedule and complete your “To-do’s” while operating in an environment of constant change, fire drills, etc. One of the techniques we teach to overcome this obstacle and become more productive and efficient is to adopt what we call “A Perfect Week, The Perfect Day” routine. This routine can help you and your team improve time management, planning, and organizational skills, manage multiple projects and tasks, and get more accomplished!

“A Perfect Week, The Perfect Day” routine helps set a strategic course for the week and allows for changes. The best time to develop “A Perfect Week” is in advance of your week (maybe Friday afternoon or early Monday morning).

Begin by listing all the activities you want to accomplish into two categories:

Billable. Billable activities directly relate to hiring new employees. Obviously this activity contributes to making money for your organization. Examples of billable recruiting time might include prospecting for candidates, making offers, attending job fairs, setting up interviews with hiring managers, qualifying a requisition, etc.
Non-billable. Non-billable activities are things that you must accomplish and typically support your billable activities. Examples include entering candidates into your ATS, developing postings for the Internet, activity reporting, department meetings, training, paperwork, etc.

If you’d like to see an example of the template we use to document our “Perfect Week” please contact me. At a high level it would look something like this:
Source six hours for BM position. Get three submittals to Kendall – Billable

Get requisition from Szary for the SVP of IT – Billable
Source four hours for SVP position – submit two candidates - Billable
Spend 2 hours in staff meetings - Non-Billable

The next step is to plan your days differently, something we call “Time Based Planning.” Most people manage their schedule using outlook or some other online scheduling system with a “To-do” list. Most of these “To-do” action items are not sequenced in order of priority and most people don’t embed their “To-do’s” into their daily schedule. Time-based planning allocates a specific time during your day to accomplish your “To-do’s” based on their priority.

In the example below I’ve taken the perfect week list above and mapped out one of my days through time based planning:

7:30 – 8:30 Planning, return emails, call Bob about Sue
8:30 – 11:00 Sourcing for SVP position
11:00 – 12:00 Interview with Joe Edwards for SVP of IT
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch – call Mom for birthday!
1:00 – 2:00 Interview Bill Wallace
2:00 – 3:00 Schedule Lisa & Catherine interviews
3:00 – 4:00 Phone screen BM candidate
3:00 – 5:00 Return all emails from net postings

Rather than having my day scheduled and then trying to map my “To-do” list to it, the two are embedded together!

Of course each week and every day won’t go perfectly! If activities you’ve documented in your perfect week change during the week then readjust and develop a new plan of action. Plans were meant to be changed!

Try this routine as a pilot. We think you’ll find it improves your planning, time management, and organizational skills.

Results of Our Quality of Hire Poll

2011-02-23T07:26:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I posted some thoughts on Quality of Hire, and asked you to share the ways in which your organization measures this metric.

33% of respondents measure Hiring Manager Satisfaction: This is an indication of Hiring Managers’ overall satisfaction with recruiting, gathered through surveys or focus groups, or in our terms, Voice of the Customer work.
29% measure New Hire Turnover: This is turnover of new hires versus their peer group. Most organizations & systems we work with measure voluntary terminations, but some also measure involuntary terminations.
17% don’t currently measure Quality of Hire but would like to.
13% measure New Hire Performance versus Their Peer Group: How does the performance of the individuals that were hired in the last six months/year compare to their peers? Are they meeting, or exceeding expectations?
8% measure various Other Aspects of Quality, such as turnover of top performers or voluntary versus involuntary termination rates.

The results are not surprising based on what we see and hear in the market. I’m pleased to see that many of you are capturing the “voice” of the Hiring Manager as a customer and also looking at new hire turnover.

New Hire Performance versus Peer Groups is gaining acceptance as a meaningful metric to use. But, the percentage of use could still be improved upon. The primary issue with this metric seems to be the inability to draw comparisons across performance management systems versus applicant tracking systems, such as integration (ensuring the two systems “talk to each other” to share data) and of course data integrity.

The key is to start to measure Quality of Hire any way you can! Only then will you be able to communicate the impact your recruitment function is having on transforming the talent landscape. Start somewhere, anywhere!

We’re working with a few systems on measuring quality of hire now. If you’d like to discuss how we can partner with you on measuring Quality of Hire please contact us.

Eliminate Waste -- Letting Internal Candidates Control Their Future

2011-02-17T10:43:00.000-08:00

In a recent Value Stream Mapping (VSM) exercise with a client, it became apparent (as it usually does) that a majority of the wait/waste time associated with their staffing process resided in the hands of the hiring manager (I’m sure you are surprised!).

In particular, we found it not uncommon for it to take managers:

7 days to respond to resumes submitted for consideration
7 days to get interviews set up.
Another 7 days to get feedback!

A simple, pragmatic idea came from our VSM session that I thought was worthy of sharing for discussion.

Once the manager has decided they want to interview an internal candidate, have the internal candidate take the lead to contact the manager to set up the interview, provide feedback to recruiter on status, etc. Of course a defined process/service level agreement (SLA) would have to be in place.

Possible process/SLA:

Internal candidate contacts Hiring Manager to set up interview within 24 hours of receipt that the manager is interested in interviewing them.
Once interview is scheduled, notify recruiter (via outlook?) that the interview is set.
Provide feedback to recruiter within 12?/24? hours of the interview with the hiring manager.

Think about the benefits:

Puts the responsibility on the internal candidate to “manage” their opportunities/career within your organization.
Relieves you of the wasted time required to set up interviews (who knows their schedules better than the two parties that need to meet?).
If you rely on the managers to set up interviews with internal candidates, it reduces substantial wait time inherent to managers handling that process!

Of course some inherent pitfalls:

Manager doesn’t provide timely feedback to internal candidates (causing employee dissatisfaction).
Internal candidate doesn’t keep the recruiter “in the loop” with regard to status of interview, feedback, etc. (can’t keep track of candidates for the position – wasting more time hunting down feedback).

I clearly see these two pitfalls as performance management issues versus process control issues. And as I think about this more, I think the pro’s out way the con’s.

I am curious . . . Does anyone manage their internal candidates like this?

David Szary

Recruiting Passive Talent - Learn from our Children

2011-02-09T12:14:00.000-08:00

I’m very lucky to be exposed to so many great thoughts, ideas and inspirational messages as I travel the country! I received one such message this week from Recruiter Academy Alumni, Erich Hartnett that I thought I would share!

If you have any great stories to share, please send them. I would love to broadcast to our community of over 17,000 recruitment/HR professionals.

Thanks Erich for the inspiration!
____________________________________________________________________________________

The New Year always brings fundraisers for good causes that our children get involved in. These fundraising events often involve going door to door to raise money for the particular cause.

For those of us that have had the opportunity, you would probably agree, there is no harder way to make a living “selling” something (or asking for money) than going door to door!

Well I recently had the opportunity to go door to door fundraising with my daughter Grace and witnessed pure excitement. Grace hounded me every day after school to get out there and knock on doors so she could ask folks to buy her cookie dough. She had no inhibitions, no preconceived “rejection” thoughts, just pure enthusiasm. To her the task was simple and fun. She skipped up to the door, rang the doorbell, introduced herself and began showing the cookie pictures on her sheet, then showed folks where to sign their names (the close). If folks said “no thanks”, she would skip to the next door and repeat the process. She had no idea why anyone wouldn’t want cookies and shared that excitement with everyone that answered their door. It was pure innocent enthusiasm for cookies, and nothing more. Grace showed me there is no such thing as rejection. There is just another door to knock on!

While there are many keys to being successful selling door to door, probably none is more important than a positive attitude about what you are selling and who you are selling to. If you BELIEVE you have something of value and . . . there are people out there that need/want your product or service, you will continue to walk door to door (through rejection after rejection) in pursuit of the next sale!

How does this relate to recruiting passive talent?

When recruiting top talent, we must:

Believe you have an awesome opportunity for the right individual. If the person you contact is not that person, they might know who is!
Believe that you will change the person’s life (for the better :)) that you find and hire into this role!

If you (I) attacked each sourcing session like my daughter Grace attacked door to door fundraising, ‘passive candidate recruiting’ would be a heck of a lot easier and a lot more fun!

Something we call can learn from!
Erich Hartnett

Measuring Quality of Hire

2011-02-09T12:12:00.000-08:00

We've always had requests from our clients and network on how best to measure Quality of Hire. For years there has been debate throughout recruiting circles on how to effectively measure it. I think the common consensus is that it's one measurable thing. Right? Some Holy Grail that once found will bring us everlasting happiness.

Our view is that the best way to measure quality is through a 360 degree view across your customer base. Quality of Hire is not simply one metric, but a host of them that when combined will give you an overall indication of the quality of the individuals your organization is hiring.

Here are some of the categories we consider when measuring Quality of Hire.

New Hire Satisfaction: After new hires complete the recruiting experience, ask them to rate the experience with your department through surveys or focus groups. This is even more critical for your internal transfers, which in many organizations represent 30-40% of your annual hires.

External Candidate Satisfaction: This measures the experience of those individuals that were declined by your organization. These are the folks that will go back out into the market and speak about their experience with your brand. Whether it was positive or negative, it will have a ripple effect through their network. Right now, I'm working with a client who is measuring this across one of their critical job families which also has a high attrition rate. Hence they're constantly trying to re-recruit candidates they previously declined, so this metric is critical to them.

Hiring Manager Satisfaction. What is the overall hiring manager satisfaction rating of their overall experience with recruiting? Consider aspects such as: Recruiters understanding of the business they support, responsiveness to the hiring manager, customer service, candidate quality, and others. For those of you that have worked with us you know this as part of the Hiring Manager Voice Of the Customer (VOC) work that we do.

Retention rates: What is the new hire voluntary termination rate for your new hires in their first year by department? What is it for your critical job families?

New Hire Performance versus Their Peers: How does the performance of the individuals that were hired in the last six months compare to their peers?. Are they meeting, or exceeding expectations?

We're working with a few systems on this now. If you'd like to discuss how we can partner with you on measuring Quality of Hire please contact us.

We'd also like to know what your thoughts are on this subject. To see the poll please click here.

Building Talent Communities – A pragmatic Approach using Dunbar’s Principle

2011-01-19T06:48:00.000-08:00

Because we have so much data/intelligence at our disposal, I think we have a tendency to over complicate and analyze things to the extent that we become overwhelmed with WHAT WE CAN’T DO rather than focused on getting started with WHAT WE CAN DO!

No better example of this dilemma is the concept of recruiters building talent pipelines/communities.

There is so much being written about using social media to develop communities by leveraging viral marketing strategies using multiple channels (LI, Twitter, FB, etc.) that . . . . it can make your head spin!

And when we humans get overwhelmed, we usually shut down and do nothing.

I was introduced to the Dunbar principle a few years ago. For more info check out the article on the Dunbar principle.

The short version of his principle is that there is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number. It lies between 100 and 230, but a commonly used value is 150.

I have often recommended that we use this complex (yet very simple) theory to start developing talent communities. Instead of getting overwhelmed with all the cool new Web 2.0 things you can do (that you are not getting too!), focus on a simple pragmatic process to get a talent pipeline going.

Identify the job categories you need or want to develop a pipeline within.
Within those job categories, start to identify prospects (via your ATS, online databases, LinkedIn, etc.) that you want to develop a relationship with.
Make an initial contact to engage in dialog (remember to develop a compelling message).
Over time, develop a candidate relationship management program to regularly connect with these individuals to cultivate the relationship.
Focus on developing your Top 150 Network - the top 150 candidates that you would like to continually have a relationship with - these can be active or passive candidates.
As you learn more about individuals in your network, think about replacing folks that are not the ‘quality’ you are seeking with others that are (or you think might be).
Invest 3-5 hours a week to developing and maintaining your Top 150 Network.

The key is to keep it simple and focus on developing your first 150 relationships. Dunbar would be proud!

Recruitment leaders, imagine how powerful it would be if each of your recruiters had a Top 150 Network!

Once this is created, think about expanding your network by leveraging social media sites, building online communities, etc.

Of course one of the keys to your success is being able to develop relationships with these individuals. Best practices include:

Becoming a resource to them.
Providing information of value.
Providing a compelling value proposition that answers the questions “So What?” and "What’s in it for me?”

Please don’t confuse this message. I do believe that social media tools will transform how we recruit in the future. I am not proposing that you abandon your social media/talent community initiatives! But sometimes taking a simple, pragmatic approach to launch an initiative is the right way to go!

A New Year -- Perfect Storm to Recruit Top Talent!!!!!

2011-01-06T09:24:00.000-08:00

Well, here we are. It’s 2011. The beginning of a new year. A time to reflect on the past and look into the future. For many, it’s time for their yearly “mid-life crisis”. As another year goes by, we most often reflect on:

Health – Not getting any younger!
Financial situation – Did my 401k go up? Did I pay down debt? Am I getting closer to retirement?
Career – Is this where I thought I would be at this time in my life?

This is often a time for dreaming and wishing and planning for a better life! In this state of mind, many will be open to more adventure/risk in the hopes of achieving a better quality of life!

It sounds to me like a perfect storm for recruiting top ‘passive’ talent!

As you get back into the groove after the holiday season, it is a perfect time too:

Contact top talent from your competition! Somebody might be ready to make a change.
Re-contact top performers that have not shown interest in the past.
Cast a wide net on those folks that were not open to relocation in the past. The family might be ready for an adventure and . . . the housing market is a tad better!

As we have written about in past blog posts the key to your ability to recruit top talent includes:

Timing (I’m proposing the time is right)
Compelling message (In less than 30 seconds, can you convey a compelling value proposition that answers the two questions – “So What?” and “What’s in it for me?”
Tonality in both your written and verbal communication – Are you positive? Do you convey excitement about the opportunity you have to offer? (Sales 101 – 50% of the close is a result of your excitement and passion for the product/service that you sell!)

Sooo – What are you waiting for? There’s no better way to get back into the swing of things than by carving out some time to source top talent for your organization (and maybe a little time for exercise too :) )!

Hope you are having a Perfect Week!

Eating Frogs Will Help You Enjoy the Holidays

2010-12-15T08:04:00.001-08:00

Like most of you, I find that the holiday season can bring intense pressure to meet deadlines and get things done before we take a few days off (hopefully :) ).

And when you are working at maximum capacity, you have little room for error and/or time to waste on non-productive, non-value added tasks!

In efforts to improve our time management/planning skills, we have studied experts in time management, personal achievement and behavior modification which has resulted in the creation of The Perfect Week/Perfect Day planning methodology .

I thought I would share a couple of simple, yet powerful, concepts from this methodology to ensure that you finish the year productively!

To maintain focus and sanity in extremely busy times, you must INVEST more time in planning your weekly/daily activities. Spending ½ hour creating a time-based daily schedule will allow you to be 25-30% more productive during the day.
Make sure you identify and ‘Eat your Frogs’ early in the day. Embedded into our methodology is Brian Tracy’s (www.briantracy.com) Eat the Frog philosophy. If you have never watched the Eat the Frog Movie - DO SO NOW! In one minute, you will grasp the invaluable concept. ‘Eating Frogs’ early on will build positive momentum and provide energy for the rest of the day!

Some other helpful hints are outlined in our free resources portal under time management/planning.

I hope that your next week is hyper productive so you can enjoy the holidays!

Helping Job Seekers helps children in need! PLEASE READ!

2010-12-09T05:49:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, with the help of recruiters across the country, I finished a book that I believe will help job seekers across the nation - “Best (and Worst) Advice for Job Seekers”.

The book is a quick read with ‘un-sanitized’ information that can immediately help you (or someone you know) with your job search, next interview, resume, etc.

Just as important, 100% of the proceeds on book sales will be donated to an amazing organization close to our hearts – St. Jude Children’s Hospital.

What a Win-Win!

For less than $10.00, you can help a job seeker and the children of St. Judes!

My goal is to raise over $2500 by the end of the year!

So . . .

If you know of a job seeker in need, what a great gift!

If you counsel Job Seekers, what a great resource to have in your office.

If you just believe in the amazing work that St. Judes does - - please donate!

Please spread the word on the book.

Please share this message via Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. to all your friends, co-workers, associates, etc.

I thank you for your assistance!

I hope you have a wonderful and safe Holiday Season

David M. Szary

NOTE: PURCHASING THE EBOOK (versus paperback) GENERATES THE MOST MONEY FOR ST. JUDES!

PS - If you have ideas of how I can market this book, I would appreciate your input .

PSS – Thanks again to all of the individuals that contributed to this endeavor.

The Art & Science of Becoming an 'Elite' Recruitment Mentor/Coach

2010-11-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

I was recently asked the question.….“What are you passionate about these days?” The answer was easy! I’m passionate about the work we are doing around Lean, JIT staffing, our Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study and educating individuals on ‘elite’ recruitment best practices.

That question prompted another.…. “OK, those are things you are working on today. What is something you have passion around but haven’t started to work on yet?”

After some reflection the answer was clear! I’m passionate about the art & science of becoming an ‘elite’ recruitment mentor/coach. What I’ve truly enjoyed most over the years has been spending time in the trenches inspiring recruiters to excel at their craft!

Based on my definition of what an ‘elite’ recruitment mentor/coach is, I find that there are many that are ‘average’ or ‘good’ but very few that are ‘elite’. Unfortunately, based on how recruitment organizations are structured today, most recruitment managers spend 80% of their time ‘fighting fires’ with very little time left to function as a true mentor and coach.

They’re often unable to find the time to perform such tasks as:

Performance management
Quarterly/monthly/daily leadership/motivation
Constructively critiquing recruiter’s technique (intake sessions, sourcing candidates, interviewing candidates, candidate interview preparation, interview debrief, extending offers, etc.)
Manage by using data/facts to help recruiters eliminate time/waste in the hiring process

The question to ask yourself is, “Are you an effective mentor or coach?” Here are some self assessment questions to consider:

When was the last time you observed (and provided constructive feedback) to a recruiter performing; intake sessions, sourcing candidates, interviewing candidates, candidate interview preparation, interview debrief, extending offers, etc?
Do you utilize qualitative/quantitative measurement systems to ensure they perform these processes well?
Do you inject the fish philosophy into your teams daily routine (IE, inject fun, games, playfulness into the day to day grind)?
Do you meet with your recruiters to discuss their career path? Do you assist them in the development of a project plan to meet their goals?
Have you created a culture passionate about lifelong learning, execution and continuous improvement? Do you conduct regular learning sessions for the team?

I’ve written a couple of articles on this subject that you might want to check out:

So, what am I passionate about these days? I’m updating a handbook I wrote 10 years ago on the art & science of being an ‘elite’ recruitment mentor/coach. The title is, Managers’ Survival Guide! I will provide excerpts from the handbook in the coming weeks and months!

RECRUITMENT LEADERS – take pride in being a great mentor/coach this week :)

Expectation versus Reality -- Deliver on Your Promises Consistently

2010-11-12T07:47:00.001-08:00

Companies who are serious about their talent need to deliver on their promises consistently.

When a candidate goes to your career website they begin to research your company. They are looking for information, drivers, and attractors that make your company a more intriguing proposition than others.

Let’s say they decide to apply, and they’re invited in for the interview. From the moment they arrive at your office they are gauging if the company they saw online matches what they see in reality. As you go further down the lifecycle of hiring someone, further expectations develop based on the information you portray to the candidate.

If the recruiter or hiring manager driving the interview process makes statements such as: “We have a strong work/life balance at our company. We believe in learning and development. We have an open door policy in which management is readily acceptable.” Then the organization better be prepared to deliver on those statements consistently.

Take the Gen X group and the Millenials. Both of these groups are getting a lot of focus from companies right now to ensure they fill talent gaps as boomers reach retirement. From our research, one of the key areas of attraction for both of these groups is learning and development. Another dynamic of these groups is a lack of long-term company loyalty. If your company states a strong position on learning and development, whether online, during the interview process or during on-boarding, and you don’t deliver on that promise these groups will leave quickly.

Best in class companies ask employees if the expectation they have of the company is matching the reality they’re experiencing over time. Results will show significant drop offs in satisfaction if companies aren’t effectively setting and managing expectations with their new hires.

The organizations that effectively manage expectation versus reality make sure that the messages they state on their website, during the interview process, and beyond are consistent and truthful. They also consistently ask the employees what they think. If the perception of new employees is not aligning with what companies are expecting then they should begin to make changes accordingly.

'Beware of overall TTF |All req’s are not equal |Do you measure sourcing time per submittal?’

2010-11-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

I am a lucky guy! Why? Because I get the opportunity to work/consult with recruitment teams throughout the country. This provides me a unique opportunity to not only meet some very good, talented people but also gather perspectives from multiple recruitment teams working in multiple industries.

Here are some of these thoughts/perspectives (and recommendations) from my last few months of travel:

Beware of the overall TTF metric! – The analysis of data from our clients, as well as those involved in our benchmark study, clearly shows that overall average TTF is not indicative of performance. Specifically:

TTF for positions filled with internal/active candidates is significantly less than TTF when filled by “sourced” candidates. In a recent analysis, we found overall TTF for an organization was 33 days. 90% of these positions were filled in an average of 23 days while 10% were filled an average of 92 days! ‘Average TTF’ clearly was not indicative of performance.
We recommend you track TTF for critical/difficult/important to fill job categories. This will help assess performance and improve hiring manager satisfaction.

Most organizations treat all new requisitions equally! – When a new requisition comes in, it is worked through the same staffing process regardless of how critical it is to fill and/or how difficult it is to fill.

When a recruiter takes on a position where there is no internal candidates and . . . NEVER has been filled through a posting and/or advertisement, why do we start the search using these tools that do nothing but create waste/time?
Make sure your staffing process has a step to identify when a position is ‘business as usual’ (high probability it will get filled by an internal/active candidate) or ‘difficult/critical to fill’ (need to escalate a sourcing strategy ASAP) and work it accordingly.

It takes exponentially longer to source top talent! – Search firms have known this for years! Just look at how they are staffed. To fill difficult/critical to fill positions, most recruiters get paid very well to manage a half dozen req’s or less. They are often supported by a research team to do deep Internet mining to fill their positions. But corporate recruiters are loaded up with 20, 30, 50+ req’s and . . . we are unsatisfied when they can’t fill them all?!

To understand how much time you need to spending sourcing candidates, we recommend tracking a key metric: Sourcing time per candidate submitted. This will provide you with a key metric to define how many hours sourcing it takes to fill your critical/difficult to fill positions.

If you would like to investigate these thoughts/recommendations further, don’t hesitate to email me!

I hope your having a productive week.

Managing Your Hiring Managers, Part Three

2010-10-20T10:29:00.001-07:00

We recently posted the first of three parts in our series about Managing Your Hiring Managers. (Part One, Part Two) We discussed how to understand what your hiring manager’s want through Voice of the Customer (VOC) and how to build credibility with your hiring managers.

Our final post of the series will focus on how to effectively manage the hiring manager relationship.

Effectively Managing the Hiring Manager Relationship

So, you’ve spent a great deal of time assessing your hiring manager’s needs through Voice of the Customer, and you’ve worked hard to establish credibility. Now, if you don’t effectively manage the relationship with them then all of your efforts will be wasted!!

One important step in the management of any consultative relationship is the ability to establish a strong foundation to the partnership (yes, you’re the recruiting consultant to your hiring manager!). This starts when consultants engage with clients in the initial intake session.

Intake Session = Foundation: If you have a good intake session then you have a strong foundation to build a relationship! A good intake session is not only about uncovering the basic wants and needs of your hiring manager but it will allow you to explore the position in great detail as well, including:

Why is the position open?
What are the top 3-5 key objectives for someone in this position?
What are the challenges a person will face in this position?
How is performance measured?
What is your hiring managers style/personality/culutre
Sourcing Strategy questions
Who are some of your top performers that I could network with?
Who are some of the top performers externally that you’re aware of?
Are you aware of any companies that might be struggling that I could tap into?
What are the selling points of the position?
What “knock out” questions do you suggest I use?
What is our Service Level Agreement?

Establishing a Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a key step in effectively managing the hiring manager relationship. It sets expectations in advance, for both you and your hiring manager about who is going to do what during the hiring process and how long it’s going to take.

For example, a well crafted SLA will outline how quickly you will be expected to provide qualified and interested candidates as well as how quickly your hiring manager will respond once you have submitted an initial slate of candidates.

If you’d like to see an example of our intake and SLA documents please contact me.

Finally, best in class organizations use detailed analytics, trend tracking, and ongoing voice of the customer sessions/surveys to consistently check on hiring manager satisfaction and correct areas of concern proactively.

If you’re effectively managing the relationship, you’re not only talking with your hiring managers often about the day to day aspects of candidate flow, but you’re also meeting with them at least quarterly to look at your high level results as a team to mitigate any areas of risk.

Have a fantastic week!

Pragmatic, NO COST Solutions to Reduce Time to Fill

2010-10-13T07:18:00.001-07:00

Over the last month, I have facilitated four LEAN Value Stream Mapping exercises. As mentioned in a recent blog , I am always amazed at how little time is spent in “Process Mode” and how much time is spent “Waiting”. With the four organizations I recently worked with, the average Process Time was less than 10% of the total Lead time (AKA – Time to fill).

Of course the key reason you perform a value stream mapping exercise is not just to map out your current state process but rather to identify solutions to reducing waste and wait time. In evaluating all four staffing processes, the most wait time “variation” centered around . . . . now don’t be shocked . . . ok I am going to say it . . . HIRING MANAGERS!

Yep, most wait time is centered around:

Defining the requisition once it was approved (getting enough information required to begin the search)
Managers selecting candidates to interview
Managers being available to interview
Managers making a decision on hire

Some simple, but highly effective strategies to reduce wait time that resulted from our value stream mapping exercises:

In advance of a requisition being approved (if it is pending approval), set up a meeting with the hiring manager to qualify the requisition (AKA - Intake Session). If for some reason the requisition doesn’t get approved, you can cancel the meeting.
If one recruiter fills a position with an internal candidate, let the recruiter assigned to back fill the position know ASAP. This gives them a heads up on a future position and they’ll be able to qualify the requisition with the hiring manager long before it hits the “system”.
“Batch” candidates for consideration and review with the hiring manager prior to submitting. Instead of routing candidates as you receive them, wait until you have 2 or 3 candidates. Then set up a quick con call to review them with the hiring manager. NEVER send resumes or paperwork WITHOUT a discussion with the hiring manager first. Call and say “I have 2 candidates I want to review with you that I really like. When can we discuss for 5 minutes?” Search Firm recruiters have been doing this for years!
Of course the ultimate way to remove wait time in the “route-review-interview” process is to eliminate the “route-review-interview” process. During the intake, identify times when the manager is available to interview (give yourself sufficient lead time) and then just schedule the top 2-3 candidates within those time slots. Why does the hiring manager need to review candidates before the interview? That is our job :)
Schedule a 15-minute “debrief” meeting with hiring managers immediately after the interview. Send an outlook request to meet to debrief at the same time you send the interview request.

While these seem like simple things to do . . . they can have a huge impact on overall TTF! We often get so obsessed with trying to reduce sourcing time, pipelining candidates, workforce planning, etc to reduce TTF when . . . while I encourage you investigate all of those things . . . the quickest, lowest cost strategy is just working on your current WAIT time bottle necks!

NOTE: Most of the above are based on the assumption that YOU control the interview/hiring process. IE – you assist managers with facilitating the interview/selection/offer process. If your process is to route candidates to managers and let them control the process . . . I would consider changing it ASAP. While it does take more time, in the long run you will save time/waste by being more efficient. For more information on this – Check out our Blog site and search under “process efficiency”.

If you are interested in more information on Value Stream Mapping, please connect with me.

Have a productive day :)

Managing Your Hiring Managers, Part Two

2010-10-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

Last week we posted the first part in this series on managing your hiring managers. We discussed how to understand what your hiring manager’s want (or just as important – need) through voice of the customer (VOC).

A key to building a consultative partnership with your hiring manager is by getting to know them personally and building credibility with strong functional knowledge of their organization, business unit and staff.

How do you accomplish this? The following questions will help guide you so that you can become recognized as a true staffing partner with your hiring managers.

Knowing Your Hiring Managers & Building Credibility - Self Assessment!

Do you have strong, personal relationships with your hiring managers?
Do you know where they are from, their hobbies and interests? You don’t need to be best friends. But, you should have some basic knowledge of your customer and who they are.
Do you know their administrative assistants or other support staff well?
Often the most important contact you’ll have is the Administrative Assistants and other support professionals aligned to your hiring manager. They can be your best ally to ensure you’re given access to the hiring manager’s schedule and they always have an ear to the inner workings of the hiring manager’s department.
Who are their top performers? Do you have a relationship with them?
If you’re trying to build a business for your hiring manager, you should always look at their leadership team. From the successor of the department to the top performers, the traits from these team members are what the hiring manager is seeking to build in his/her department and what you should look for when courting talent. Also building relationships with these leaders will ensure your opinion is vetted throughout the key influencers in your hiring manager’s world.
Do you have a strong functional knowledge of what they do?
What does the hiring manager actually do every day? You should have a basic understanding of how they spend their time. They should also know how you spend yours. :)
Do you keep up with the industry?
Sure, you should be reading Workforce & HR magazines, but you should also be reading up on the latest trends in your industry. Whatever the industry (i.e. healthcare, banking, home building), you should stay abreast of trends there.
Have you visited the department or met their staff?
If you have the ability to make a visit in person do so. One of my clients within the insurance industry conducts site visits once a month to make sure they have a face tied to the name.
Do you understand the career progression for each department?
How do people move up, or transfer out of their department. This can be a key selling point if this particular manager has a track record of creating star performers for your organization or system.
Do you meet with your managers quarterly to quantify your performance/ROI?
As part of a quarterly touch base (or onsite visit), do you present meaningful data to your hiring manager to show what you or your function has done for them in the past 3 months?

We have added this self-assessment tool to our Good to “Elite” competency/skills self assessment library (see below).

Click here to participate.

If would like a copy of your (or your team’s results) results, please email us.

Join us for our final installment next week when we’ll focus on how to effectively manage the hiring manager relationship.

Have a great week!

Managing Your Hiring Managers, Part One

2010-09-29T12:51:00.000-07:00

I’d like to share some highlights from my recent presentation at one of our local SHRM chapters, “How to Manage Your Hiring Managers”.

The most important thing to remember is you need to understand what your hiring managers want! You can't manage a relationship if you don't know what your customer wants or expects. Below are some good questions to keep in mind:

What are your hiring managers’ business goals?
What are their challenges?
What are their business drivers?
How does your department help your hiring managers achieve their goals?
Can you show alignment to these goals?

As we approach the end of the year and start to plan for the New Year the above questions can be used to help guide you and your hiring managers planning discussion for 2011. Be sure to capture and review the “wants/expectations” with your hiring managers on a regular basis to make sure you are on track and nothing has changed. This relates to one of the topics explored during last week’s webinar on planning for 2011. If you are interested in getting a copy, please email us.

Another great way to assess the needs of your hiring managers is by analyzing the “Voice of the Customer”. This can be achieved by using a variety of tools such as; surveys, polls, and focus groups. However, it’s always important to consider:

What is your customer’s expectation throughout the process ranked by importance? (See illustration below)
How does your customer rate their experience?

Once you’ve gathered this data, you’re now armed with the information you need to address your hiring manager’s needs. You’ll be able to add this metric to your talent management dashboard under Quality. This is commonly referred to as Hiring Manager Satisfaction.

In the next posting we’ll focus on building credibility with your hiring managers, and close with how to effectively manage those relationships.

If you’d like to see some examples of the tools we use to gather “Voice of the Customer”, please contact me.

Compelling Time to Fill (TTF) data – It can be misleading

2010-09-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

In a recent blogcast, (Time to Fill – Are You Managing A Key Metric You Are Measured On?), we discuss how time to fill can be misleading and . . . not a good indicator of hiring manager satisfaction and overall “responsiveness” to the truly critical hiring needs of the organization.

While most organizations might be able to track TTF by job category, they only report the overall average to key stakeholders. Unfortunately, this statistic becomes a “blended” rate of all positions regardless of priority, cost of vacancy , criticality to organization, difficulty to fill, etc.

And if an organization is not structured to truly support priority, critical to fill, or difficult to fill positions, there often is a big gap with respect to TTF between what we call Business As Usual Req’s – (AKA – BAU’s - repetitive positions that most often are filled by active, internal or referral candidates) and priority/critical/difficult to fill ones.

Some very intriguing data from one of our healthcare clients illustrates this point.

While there overall TTF for Q2 was 33 days (very, very good especially compared to our benchmark median of 41 days.

300 positions were filled in an average of 23 days
While 49 positions took on average 89 days to fill!

This provokes the questions:

Do you have the right organizational structure to support BAU and priority/critical/difficult to fill positions?
Do you have the right process to support these distinctly different types of positions?
Do you have the right resources to effectively screen through the active pool of candidates while proactively sourcing top talent not found in those circles?

If you haven’t done so recently, I would slice your TTF data by BAU and priority/critical/difficult to fill categories and analyze how well you are performing.

If your data is similar to the organization outlined above, then seek to develop strategies, processes,etc. to improve timeliness on the positions most critical to your organization!

I hope you're having a good week.

Value Stream Mapping – Eye Opening Exercise!

2010-09-15T09:08:00.001-07:00

Over the last two weeks, I have facilitated Value Stream Mapping exercises (a Lean Principle) with two recruitment organizations. If you have not participated in one of these before (a Lean Principle), the goal is to analyze a process (in this case, the recruitment/hiring process) and identify:

Process Time (AKA – Value Added Time)
Delay Time (AKA – Non value added Time)

Examples of processing time would be performing an intake session and/or phone interview, i.e., the time you spend actually processing the “candidate”. Wait time examples include waiting for candidates to call you back from an interview, waiting for a background check to clear or the most popular - - waiting for a manager to make a decision on interviewing a candidate, making an offer, etc.!

When you go through this tedious process (it is really tedious but . . . well worth the effort), it is amazing how little time we spend processing candidates and how much time we spend WAITING.

For this one particular healthcare organization, their average time to fill is pretty darn good for their hiring volume (38 days). As we analyzed their process using the value stream mapping methodology we found:

Total Process time – Low end: 8.5 hours – High end: 3.83 days (most of the difference was associated with sourcing for difficult to fill positions).
Total Delay time – Low end: 12.33 days – High end: 195 days! (this was mostly attributed to difficulty in finding quality candidates, hiring managers not making a decision, relocation issues, etc.)
Average Lead time (Process + Delay time) = 38 days (start to acceptance)

Once we identified current state process and delay times for each step, the team started to come up with solutions to eliminate waste. It was amazing to hear some of the easy to implement, no cost solutions they identified!

Whenever I facilitate this exercise, I am amazed at:

How much wait time “waste” is in our staffing process?
How we can, through a simple exercise, identify no/low cost waste to reduce wait time and ultimately . . . Time to Fill.
How much we often focus on the processes for “improvement” rather than eliminating waste for improvement.

If you would like more information about how we can assist your team in performing a value stream mapping exercise on your staffing process and share some best practices, let us know.

If you haven’t done this, and/or haven’t done one in a while, it is a worthwhile exercise as we prepare for 2011.

Hope you are having a good day!

Data Integrity — It is all about Education, Accountability and Visibility

2010-09-08T08:25:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, we have just concluded a Healthcare Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study highlighting key metrics relevant to a Lean, Just-in-Time recruitment strategy. As expected, since many of the key data points relied on humans to enter and validate the data, most of the participants struggled to reconcile and validate that their data was accurate. Those challenged by data integrity (or lack thereof), spent countless hours auditing the data to ensure it was accurate.

Of course the only way to ‘nip this issue in the bud’ is to ensure that the data is accurate at the transactional level, hence the often used IT cliché - - Garbage in, Garbage out!

While I know this is not a profound revelation, why do most organizations still struggle to capture accurate recruitment metrics?

From my experience, the root of the issue is three-fold:

Educational – Key staff members must understand the importance of capturing accurate data and what POSITIVE things result from ensuring the data is accurate. It is only when you answer the question – What is in it for me? – that you typically start to see improvements in data integrity. Some of the POSITIVE results of capturing clean data:

Enables the organization to develop performance improvement initiatives to save their organization time, money, and allow the teams to get more done in LESS TIME.
Allows the team to be able to quantify the ROI of their services to the organization. Makes us look good! :)
Quantifies the amount of work they actually perform!

Accountability – While I like to point out the POSITIVE reasons of capturing clean data, at the end of the day the recruiters need to be held accountable and measured on their ability to perform this task. I recommend that recruiters do a quarterly ‘self-analysis’ by reviewing their own data/metrics. Holding them accountable to this activity is a great way to clean up your data at the source! Some of the best in class organizations we work with instill an "audit" at the requisition close stage - before a req is closed, the recruiter goes back to ensure that all data is entered accurately in the system.

Visibility – I am a big believer in making your metrics “public”. All your customers should see your overall team metrics (have trend charts posted in a visible area in your office). All recruiter metrics should be public to the recruitment team. Typically the only folks that do not like to make their metrics public are . . . the ones that are not producing or don’t have clean data!

If you are struggling to capture clean data, I would make sure your team understands why it’s important and put a system in place to ensure accuracy. From experience working with our clients, you will see immediate improvements in data during the first 90 days!

I hope you have a good “back to school” week!

Who Is Blitzing?

2010-09-01T06:55:00.001-07:00

In a recent blogcast , we talked about injecting some fun into sourcing for top talent. Well, our team took it to heart and . . . over the last 4 weeks committed to having some fun while getting in dedicated sourcing time.

As outlined in the blog, folks could ‘opt’ into 3 daily sourcing sessions (7:30 to 8:30, 11-12 and 4-5). These times were selected based on thier experience of catching people live during those times.

During the first week, to check out who was going to attend a session, someone would send out an email – Who’s Blitzing!? (as in call blitz). The folks who were gong to participate would quickly shoot back an email confirming participation.

Over the course of the month, it was amazing to see these sessions ‘take off’ three times a day. Most importantly, it was great to see how this ‘fun’ challenge drove some very positive behaviors including:

Folks scheduling in sourcing time BEFORE other activities like interviews, meetings, etc. which is a key principle of our Perfect Week, Perfect Day Time Management methodology.
Folks being prepared for each call session with enough names for the blitz. This usually meant 2-3 hours of sourcing ‘research’ time to set up these call sessions. Again, another positive outcome of the challenge.
Motivation – Everyone that has participated clearly agreed it increased the quality sourcing of time! The 7:30 to 8:30 and 4-5 time slots were very productive and before this event . . . those call times were a hit or miss for the team. Some would get hit and some would be missed. Moving forward - - it will now become part of their routine.
Folks are seeing the benefits from this hard work!

Most importantly, everyone has seen increased candidate flow to some very difficult to fill positions during the month that often brings luke warm ‘effort’ as folks seek to enjoy the end of the summer!

I encourage you all to consider injecting some fun into your sourcing routine as we head into the last “official” week of the summer!

Have a great holiday weekend.

Recently Published Study Indicates Hiring to Pick Up to Pre-Recession Levels – Are You Ready?

2010-08-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

Just over half of large, recently downsized U.S. companies plan to boost staffing and reach pre-recession levels by 2012, according to Accenture's recent High Performance Workforce Study. The survey included 674 senior executives worldwide from companies with revenue of more than $250 million.

Investment in hiring for the U.S. based companies is expected to increase from 24 percent today to 37 percent within the next 12 months. The study also found that only 13 percent of executives said that they plan to reduce their employee base over the next 12 months.

Yet as we all know, the planned growth won’t come easily. If a hiring ‘boom’ is imminent, highly skilled workers will come at a premium again as companies seek to grow.

The focus would soon shift from cost reduction to proactive staffing resource planning required to address spikes in hiring needs.

Questions you might ask to decipher if you are in for a hiring boom:

Does your company have a strong balance sheet with cash to invest in a growth strategy?
Is your workforce already stretched thin?
Are you using contractors to supplement fulltime staff to get the work done today?
If there was a hiring “spike”, do you have the resources to get the job done?

If you answered YES to the first three questions and NO to the last, then it probably is time to start to develop a contingency plan in the event it DOES happen!

Be realistic but THINK POSITIVE about the future! Most important, be prepared.

I hope you enjoy the last few weeks of the summer.

Interesting data from ‘Elite’ Recruiter competency/skills assessment study – some advice to share!

2010-08-18T06:15:00.000-07:00

We are proud to announce that we have had over 1500 recruiters participate in our ‘Elite’ Recruiter Competency/Skills Self-Assessment Study! If you haven’t participated, we encourage you to do so! It is free! :)

It is interesting to see that outside of normal areas that recruiters always seem to rate themselves “low” (areas for improvement ):

Use social networking tools to source qualified, passive candidates (rating of 2.94 of 5)
Engage and recruit passively-looking top talent candidates (3.20 of 5)

The next two lowest scores were related to managing the search process:

Sets Service Level Agreements with hiring managers: 3.22 of 5.00
Manage and control the staffing lifecycle efficiently: 3.39 of 5.00

We have written articles/posts on this subject that have received positive reviews I thought I would share:

The Most Important Service Level Agreement

When are you available versus what do you think about this candidate?

Do you have credibility with your hiring managers?

We have also helped many organizations implement an “easy to use” one page Service Level Agreement document to be used when qualifying a new position (especially when it is a new hiring manager). If you would like a copy – please email us!

The scores above point to a skills gap with respect to a consultative approach to managing the search process. If you think this is an area where you need/want to “sharpen your ax”, I hope some of the information provided will be of value!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

Getting through the Dog Days of Summer . . . HAVE SOME FUN!

2010-08-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

In my 17 years as a recruitment coach/mentor, I have found that the beginning of August usually brings with it a common case of “Recruiter’s Rut.” Many of us drag ourselves into work on Monday after a long weekend of fun in the sun wishing we were still outside playing! We wake up realizing that the summer is almost over after it just began! We start to wonder “Where has it gone?”

In addition, the reality starts to set in that the year is 60% complete and . . . there is still a lot to accomplish!

It is at this point you can wallow in self pity or . . . inject some fun and passion back into your recruitment day!

I first wrote about “Recruiter’s Rut” back in 2002! I have personally seen this infectious ‘disease’ rip through entire recruitment departments with ease. The best cure is to gather your peers and develop a strategy to fight it.

Some ideas?

Well, since at the end of the day, each and every recruiter is measured on their ability to identify and recruit top talent for their organization . . . fun contests centered around generating quality candidate flow is always a great cure!

Recently, our sister organization implemented a contest for August that might help you to steer clear of ‘Recruiter’s Rut’.

They are holding three sourcing call blitz sessions each day (from 7:30 to 8:30, 11-12, and 4-5). These times were carefully selected as times that they had the best opportunity of getting someone live on the phone.
These are ‘optional’ sessions for all recruiters recognizing there are other activities that might prohibit you from attending all of them.
For each session, they are tracking:

Number of dials
Number of appointments set
Number of “live” conversations

Points are awarded as follows:

10 points: For attending a call blitz session
25 points: For a candidate submitted to hiring manager from the call blitz
50 points: For a Hiring Manager Interview
75 points: For an offer
100 pints: For a hire

In just the first week, we have seen more productivity, a spike in activity and . . . a little mojo back into the day.

Another fun contest you might deploy is the Recruiter Decathlon .

Even the most motivated, passionate recruiters I know (including me) sometimes need some assistance getting through the dog days of summer. If you feel Recruiter’s Rut settling in with you and/or your team . . . inject some fun back into the day!

Time, Tenure and Trust

2010-08-04T13:16:00.000-07:00

We have recently published our first annual Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark study . A core piece of the study was measuring/benchmarking key process efficiency metrics of the staffing supply chain.

Through this initiative, we found the average Route to Hire Efficiency Metric to be 6.7 to 1.

That is, it takes 6.7 candidates routed to the hiring manager to achieve 1 hire. While this actually is pretty darn efficient compared to studies we have done in other industries, Best in Class organizations (representing the average of the top 25%) Route to Hire Efficiency was 2.48 to 1!

Basically, the Elite, efficient organizations required half as many candidates (routed) to get 1 hire!

Or course there are/were many things they did differently to develop a Lean, efficient staffing process, but something all systems had in common was this concept of Time, Tenure and Trust.

Time – All Elite organizations spend a considerable amount of time on:

The intake session with the hiring manager. They made sure they clearly understood the need, how to market the opportunity; define clear service levels for service, etc.
The pre-screen process. Whether they used an automated assessment tool and/or some combination of phone interview, they spent enough time with the candidate to ensure they were someone that was worthy of consideration and should be interviewed by the hiring manager.
Discussing candidates with managers and proactively setting interviews.

While all these steps might seem obvious to some experienced recruiters, many recruiters/organizations still struggle to INVEST the time required in these three steps. The usual results include routing too many candidates to managers that they in return reject to be interviewed/considered. This is clearly evident in that the average Route to Hiring Manager efficiency was 43% while the Elite organizations efficiency was 80%!

Tenure – Most Elite firms agreed that they had many ‘tenured’ recruiters on staff that had built rapport with their hiring managers, taken the time to understand the business unit they supported, etc. All firms agreed that you can overcome short tenure by investing the time in the three steps above.
Trust – Elite recruiters have the trust of the hiring managers and they respect them as staffing consultants.
1. They interview the candidates the recruiters send rather than scrutinize!
2. They ask for their opinion when deciding on making an offer (or not).
3. They respect their input on compensation discussions.

While I don’t want to over simplify how the Elite organizations have become hyper efficient, I don’t want to lose the forest through the trees either! Time invested up front can quickly turn a non-tenured recruiter into a staffing consultant that garners a ton of TRUST FROM their hiring managers.

Some food for thought on a Wednesday!

PS – If you are a healthcare organization that wants more information on our Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study, please contact us!

Linked in – Networking Best Practices?!

2010-07-21T05:28:00.000-07:00

I had a great discussion with our team of recruiters regarding contacting potential candidates and/or networking using LinkedIn (LI). I thought I would share some ideas/tips I found very interesting!

The spirit of the conversation centered around the best ways to connect with folks you find within LinkedIn.

This led to the three most common ways to directly contact folks in LinkedIn and the “pro’s & con’s” of each method:

Send Inmail – While Inmail is great, it is a paid for service and can become expensive. So if you want to use it, it will cost some extra $ during the year.

Sending an Invitation to “link in” - LI only wants you to send an invitation to someone that you have a relationship with (past/present) and/or through an introduction with someone in your network. Of course while this can still work, it limits the number of people you could directly link in with outside of your network and without an intro. In addition, most of the recruiters on our team found introductions to be less effective and . . . less timely. While it might be a LI “no-no”, most of the recruiters said that they regularly send invitations as - “someone that they have done business with” – with great success and WITHOUT getting sent to the LinkedIn police :)

Join a group and send a group member a message – Joining a group is great and will allow you to directly contact folks within that group. Of course best practices say that if you join the group solely to post jobs you are recruiting for (asking for something) WITHOUT providing information of value (making a deposit if you will) . . . you might get banned from the group or at a minimum, find that folks tune you out.

The fourth method that many subscribed to is finding someone in LI and then looking them up on other sites (Jigsaw, White Pages, etc.) and contacting them directly (via phone/email). The logic behind this tactic is two-fold:

Many people don’t check LI all the time and/or don’t have LI emails sent to their personal email address so response time can be slow.

So many recruiters are becoming LI recruiters that people are getting saturated with Inmail, Invitations and group messages. So to “separate” themselves from the other recruiters, they are going back to traditional means of connection.

Linkedin can be very helpful; however, if the person you’re trying to find has left their company and you’re not able to find a home phone number.

Some other great points made during our conversation that I thought I would share:

If someone is a power networker in LI (300+++) connections, you can almost guarantee they will respond. Those that have only a few connections probably don’t check as much and . . . they use traditional means to connect.

LI provides such a wonderful amount of information to “personalize” your message so take advantage of it. Use the information on the potential candidate’s profile to make a connection, and quantify why connecting with you will benefit them and others in their network. If you send the canned LI message or a watered down version - - don’t expect great response rates or worse - - some unhappy peeps!

LinkedIn did not exist 5 years ago. It quickly has become an excellent recruitment tool. But as things change, you need to constantly be watching how others are using this tool and make sure you’re contributing to the conversation.

Time to Fill - Are You Managing A Key Metric You Are Measured On?

2010-07-14T05:51:00.000-07:00

We are excited that we had over 50 participants in our inaugural Healthcare Recruitment Benchmark Study . We had the pleasure of presenting our initial findings at the National Association of Healthcare Recruiters Annual Image Conference in Las Vegas last week. The conference, as always, was Five Star! And we were overwhelmed (and humbled) with the interest in our Lean, JIT recruitment principles and our actual study.

One metrics that surprised us (especially in our flat economy) was the percentage of positions that had been open over 60 days.

While the overall average Time to Fill (TTF) was trending around 46 days (which is good compared to years past and benchmark data from sources like Saratoga.org), 38% of the participants current open positions were trending over 60 days.

Further analysis provided some conclusions:

Recruitment teams are pretty good at filling what we call Business as Usual Req’s (BAUs) with internal or active candidates that apply to postings, especially since most are rewarded (and measured) on how many positions they fill. While we didn’t track this particular data element/segment in the study, our qualitative analysis indicates that the average TTF for these positions is 20-30 days.
Most organizations continue to struggle with filling difficult/critical to fill positions (CTF). These positions are still trending at 60, 90 days + TTF.

So while on the surface, most organizations feel pretty good about their overall TTF metric, under the surface managers are still concerned about their recruitment teams’ ability to fill CTF positions. Even more important, the inability to fill these positions JIT is often costing organizations millions of dollars (Cost of Vacancy).

We believe the three primary reasons that 38% of the positions are trending over 60 days are as follows:

Not managing/monitoring your over sixty days report: It is very easy for a recruiter carrying 25, 30, 50 req’s to forget what their top priorities are, which positions have been open over 60 days, etc. It you do not stay on top of your openings (and if managers aren’t pounding down your door, positions can creep past this milestone very fast.
Recruiters either don’t have the time to source for quality candidates or . . . are NOT carving out time.
Recruiters don’t have the skills/competencies (or both) to find high quality talent for their CTF positions.

Some solutions to reducing the percentage of positions trending over 60 days old:

On a weekly basis, have a team meeting to specifically discuss positions trending over 60 days. Position on hold? Close it. Candidates to disposition and get over to manager? Do it. One of our clients has recently implemented a Monday morning “huddle” to specifically discuss positions trending over 60 days. By making it a priority, they have cut these down from 25% to 13%!
The “time” issue is a little more problematic. It takes relatively no time to “source/pre-qualify” an active, internal or referral candidate. Literally, this process is a few minutes. On the other hand, it might take hours to source and pre-qualify one passive/top talent candidate. Most organizations do not factor this when developing recruitment resource plans! They don’t dissect which positions are BAU’s, which are CTF and . . . how much sourcing time needs to be dedicated to filling these positions. With our staffing optimization model, we take that into consideration when identifying the number of resources needed to manage the corresponding hiring needs. You should investigate this when developing your resource plans.
The 3rd reason is probably the easiest to fix. Assuming the recruiter has the competencies of an ‘Elite’ recruiter , they probably can be taught the skills to source top talent. At the very least, you could assign sourcing activities to those in your organization that enjoy and are good at sourcing or outsource part of the sourcing activities, such as name generation to allow your recruiters more time to cultivate relationships (and ultimately recruit) passive candidates.

If your organization measures you on TTF, I would ensure that you are deploying best practices to manage it!

Any questions, please contact me!

Health System Workforce Planning

2010-06-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

A recent article from McKinsey Report discusses how most health systems lack a rigorous approach for matching clinician supply to the demand for various health services. As a result, patient care and clinician morale suffer—and costs cannot be controlled effectively. Essentially they discuss the need for better workforce planning:

“Few health care systems forecast their workforce demands accurately.
Predicting the number of doctors who will be needed in ten years’ time isn’t
enough; it’s also necessary to figure out how many general practitioners,
specialists, nurses, and allied health professionals will be required. The
length of clinical training only compounds the problem.” – McKinsey, Managing
The Clinical Workforce

We concur with McKinsey’s recommendations and have added a few of our own from the work we do with our clients.

Our collective suggestions on creating proper workforce planning and staffing optimization structures include:

Forecasting: Begin with accurate forecasting focused on demand of services by job clusters. What types of jobs does the system need -- now, next year, and the year after? What types of jobs will need to be refilled or created based on market needs and system growth plans? Work with finance to get accurate budget projections - this should be something you do every year at the beginning of your fiscal cycle and at least once during the fiscal year to track changes.
Determine Baseline Demand: For each job category, determine your baseline demand. This would be a charting of hiring needs for at least the past year, ideally two years, by job family. Again this would involve working with finance to map the potential needs over time. You can also look at actual hires made month to month for the last year or two to get a sense of the fluctuations.
Forecast Changes in Demand: Map potential changes in hiring demand based on various factors, including demographic changes, retiring workers, consumer expectations, medical innovations, policy shifts, or productivity improvements. Career progression and job movement internally are also factors.
Scenario Analyses: Project various areas of impact to your model based on the aforementioned factors. Here you get to play with the "what if" scenarios - a spike in hiring in Q2, a dramatic slowdown in August, etc. The Scenario analysis will prepare you for these fluctuations and changes so you can be more proactive.

These are simple outlines of concepts, which of course have much more depth. In a future post or whitepaper we'll delve into workforce planning in more detail.

If you’d like to learn more about how we approach workforce planning and staffing optimization, and the benefits they could provide to your system contact me.

LinkedIn + Persistence + Phone + Respect = Success - Don't stop until they say, "NO!" - A TRUE STORY

2010-06-18T06:15:00.000-07:00

My colleague (Kristine) recently received an executive level, ‘niche skill-set’ search opportunity from one of her clients/hiring managers. As many savvy recruiters do these days, she developed a targeted sourcing strategy and:

Identified all competitor companies and companies that employed people with the skill set she was looking for.
Then defined all the different titles that this person would/could be called within these target companies.
She then started to seek potential candidates and individuals she could network with in this market (the client didn’t want to relo if possible) via LinkedIn.

Armed with this intel (and a compelling Value Proposition Statement/Attention Grabber) about this opportunity, she made contact (via Inmail or directly via business/personal email) with all the potential applicants/networking professionals.

While this is a very common practice among thousands of recruiters, her subsequent actions are often not.

She sent two to three electronic messages out to each and every candidate. While her response rate was good, she didn’t receive feedback from many and most importantly . . . she did not connect with the A+ talent her client demanded and deserves.
She didn’t give up. While most recruiters would give up on these “prospects” in search of others, she identified phone contact information (this is part of her normal process) for all candidates that had not yet responded to her Inmails/emails and started an out bound telemarketing campaign.

Covering all bases and having resilience:

She caught one individual around 7:30 am (knowing she was a manager, she called before meetings started - - usually around 8). Her brief discussion that morning led to a subsequent discussion that led to . . . . an interview, offer and hire for a critical to fill position with interface with the COO, CMO and CEO of a Fortune 500 company!

One day after the candidate (now new hire) accepted the offer, she sent the most wonderful email to Kristine.

“Kristine, I can’t thank you enough for being persistent and making contact with me. Honestly, while I was intrigued by your emails, I probably wouldn’t have called you back simply because I get so busy during the day with work, life events, etc.. Your persistence has allowed me to find an unbelievable opportunity for me and my family. I am grateful for your efforts!”

WOW!

Morale of Story:

Don’t assume that no response means they don’t want to talk, won’t help you network, etc. Remember they are as busy as you! (Are there calls or emails that you have NOT responded to because they are not urgent or of top priority?)
Emails, texting, social media tools, etc are awesome and a quick way to reach out to a targeted group of people quickly. But don’t fall into the trap of ONLY communicating via this method! A targeted sourcing strategy including emails, texts, and PHONE CALLS is the key to successfully recruiting passive candidates.
Your compelling message, your tonality when calling, and the time you actually call are . . . all key ingredients to successfully engaging top talent.
Don’t stop until they say – “No, not interested and . . . can’t help with networking” (objection handling on this topic is for another day!)

While I am sure all of you have heard this before and/or follow a similar strategy as a matter of practice . . . I thought this was a wonderful story to share to ensure you are practicing it NOW!

In this age of electronic communication, I think it is easy for even the savviest recruiters to fall into the trap of “email & pray” on occasion! :)

Making the Lean Business Case

2010-06-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

During our consulting engagements and training we’re often asked:

How do I convince my leaders and associates to practice lean?

The challenge is often a large mountain to climb. Perhaps the best way to start is to ask a different question. “What does it take for lean to become part of your company’s culture?” The answer begins with a matter of perspective. How do you enable a mass of constituents, hiring managers, recruiters, and business leaders, to see the value lean can bring to the organization?

Lean is a totally different perspective which enables people to solve a problem regardless of how the problem’s been defined. Let’s look at hiring 100 people as a common problem that a recruiter and a hiring manager would share. As a recruiter I might define the problem of meeting my hiring goal as an issue of not having enough quality candidates. From the hiring manager’s perspective, they could care less about my volume of candidates. They just want the one right candidate who’ll continue to generate revenue for the business and help their department achieve the business goals, times 100 of course. So while the two stakeholders have the same problem, they have different perspectives on what the root cause of that problem is.

So, not surprisingly, the solution starts with communication and knowledge sharing for each stakeholder to see the problem through a “lean lens.” We do this in our process optimization and design workshops, as well as when we develop training programs. Utilizing a “voice of the customer” approach, the various stakeholders are gathered to share their common views of the problem, and to discuss potential solutions for the problem through their respective “lenses” or their perceptions.

The other aspect of adopting this method is communication of the value add of going lean. As we have consistently discussed, we, as an HR function, are not as adept at communicating the value of what we contribute through the lens of the businesses we support (money, $, revenue, and $). As we’ll reveal soon with the results of our current healthcare benchmarking study, there are thousands of hours of waste in existence within many healthcare systems’ recruitment practices, but until we begin to equate that waste into dollar amounts, our businesses will not understand our value, or support initiatives such as lean. Our recent webinars have exposed many of you to the concepts of ‘cost of vacancy’ and other techniques to display potential ROI from lean initiatives. There will be more of that to come with the results of the study.

So consider:

Exercises and events to promote communication of common problems from the lens of all stakeholders
Communication of the value add of going lean from a business perspective that’s tied to financials.

More on this soon, but in the meantime contact me if you have questions or would like to discuss this further.

'Elite' Recruiter Assessment Results!

2010-06-02T13:40:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all those folks that participated in our 'Elite' Recruiter self assessment! We have just reached the 1500 participants mark!

For those of you who have not participated, please do so.

For those that have participated, you can check out the results to date.

After reviewing the results, one skill/attribute score that caught my eye was:

Acts as a trusted advisor to a candidate and articulates the career opportunity with your organization when negotiating salary offers.
To date, folks have rated themselves a 2.97 (out of 5).

Over the years, I have written many blog posts on this topic including:

Don't forget the reason we talked in the first place

What every recruiter can learn from spaghetti sauce

I know you were not looking, but you listened

52 reasons why someone should join your organization

So as you connect with candidates this week, I want you to reflect and make sure you are able to identify 2-4 non-monetary "motives" for which a candidate would leave their current position.

If you haven't had this conversation with them, there is a high probability that if/when you make an offer they will do one of the following:

Take a competing offer from a firm that does know their motives and can articulate how their company can meet them.
Stay where they are. Since it is easier to stay put than venture to new, unknown challenges.
Walk away simply because you don't have enough "ammo" to "close the deal".
Lure you into negotiating

Remember, once you decide you like a candidate, it's your job to help them understand how this move will benefit their career long term based on what they've told you about their career goals and aspirations. Not only do candidates have to sell themselves on the idea that your job could be a good move for their career; they also have to "sell" it to family and friends. The more you can do to help the candidate see how this position fits in with their career aspirations, the easier it becomes for the candidate to do the same.

Some food for thought after a long memorial day weekend!

I hope you have a perfect day!

___________________________________________________________________

In a recent post, "You know you are an Elite Recruiter if . . . .", we shared some attributes we believe Elite recruiters possess. We thought we would share other folks thoughts on this topic! If you have others - - please share

Your clients take you with them from company to company when they advance their own careers! - Patti Yaritz
You know that you are an elite recruiter if former candidates/new hires seek out your advice unsolicited and without your follow-up. Some of the most rewarding pat-on-the-back compliments I have ever received have come from new hires contacting me after I have left a company. - Thomas Bolt
You are included on emails from the SVP of HR to members of the internal recruiting team with comments like..."Team, let's make this happen". - Sandra McCartt
An elite recruiter is willing to share his/her knowledge with junior recruiters and is willing to mentor them to success. - Chuck Clevenger
An Elite recruiter gives back to the community by volunteering to freely help people in their job searches. An elite recruiter is known for his/her pro bono work. - Chuck Clevenger
An elite recruiter has the ability to advise and influence HR and Hiring Managers in regards to job specifications and compensation based on their knowledge of the local/national marketplace and talent pool - Dan Helpka
Candidates you once turned down, turn up 1 & 2 years later, successfully compete for jobs they now can do having gained the knowledge, skills and experience you advised them to get. - Gerry Crispin
More students are graduating from local high schools inspired by your efforts and more of them are looking to aspire to a college degree. - Gerry Crispin
More college students are inspired to major in areas that will drive company performance, innovation and collaborative culture. - Gerry Crispin
Company alumns send you leads of high performing prospects who they believe will benefit your firm and grow in the bargain. - Gerry Crispin
You are a local pro-bono pay-it-forward support of time and advice to One-Stop employment centers, community organizations offering employment counseling and resource limited health care organizations is lifting the brand image of your entire community and increasingly attracting candidates who previously wouldn't relocate. - Gerry Crispin
You are dedicated to assuring that their quality referrals and hires include diversity. You don't have to be told by hiring management, "We want to see some diverse candidates in the mix." You bring it and wow even those hiring teams who didn't expect, didn't want it, and didn't ask for it. - Valentino Martinez
You help build an elite TEAM! - Julie Rehbein
The C-level in your company gives you a call when it wants to add "impact level" talent and believes you can find it. - Mat Apodaca

Leveraging the Power of Your Network

2010-05-21T05:12:00.000-07:00

David released some of the initial results of our elite recruiter study a couple of weeks back .

One of the areas that was ranked as an area for improvement was Leveraging Networks. It just came up again the other day during an intriguing conversation with a client and I thought it was a topic that warrants further discussion.

We discussed that while 70% of people still find jobs through networking (according to Bureau of Labor), people spend less than 20% of their time “networking” to find a job. And if this is true, how much of a recruiter’s time should be spent developing relationships and networking to find quality candidates?

The point was well taken.

To level set the discussion - The definition from our competency/skill model is as follows:

Leveraging Networks: Draws upon a wide range of professional and/or business relationships for help and support in achieving individual and organizational goals.

After I thought more about this topic, it’s not surprising that recruiters rank themselves low here. Let’s face it. It takes work to maintain an internal and external network that can assist you in performing your work more effectively. This alone takes more time than most of us have in a day.

So if you think this is an area for improvement for you, following are a few techniques to consider:

The Lost Art of Investigative Questioning – Of course you need to have a robust network to leverage it. Most struggle to develop a network of professionals they can leverage for sourcing talent, etc. Using specific, probing questions with your Centers of Influence can exponentially improve your ability to build a strong network.
How Many Friends do you have – If you don’t invest time in maintaining the relationships and helping out your “friends” in your network, don’t expect them to be responsive to your request! Invest time in identifying how many true “friends” you have within your network and building upon this list over time.
Growing your friends network – Check out this post to discuss some simple tactics to grow your friends network! Some things to consider:
Prioritize the relationships - Focus your networking and energy on those that can help you with both your current and long-term problems. For work-related problems, this might be a peer or someone who is a level above you. For industry-related issues, this might be a peer at another company. Whoever it is, block time to spend with that person consistently, and stay connected!
Don't waste your time on the wrong people - Stop spending energy on a relationship that's not giving something back to you. Don't keep helping others out if you realize they really aren't helping you.

While all these tactics will help you create and grow a powerful network, probably the single biggest deterrent from you having a robust, interactive network of friends is having the DISCIPLINE to carve out the time to develop it!

Building your network needs to become part of your daily/weekly routine. I personally have developed the good habit of blocking off 30 minutes a day (I plan it into my Perfect Day Routine to develop my network and hit all of my news, websites, and blogs for industry information.

I know. This is easier said than done. And by no means can I say I do this 5 days a week/52 weeks a year!

Some behavior modification tips/techniques to help you build this “good habit”:

Post a note on your screen - - Am I building my Friends Network today?
Have a list of your “friends” network. Set a goal each quarter to grow this list. Make this goal “public” and post it in your office (i.e., – I will have 350 friends in my network by June 30, 2010. Review every month for growth. ).
Try to carve out 30 minutes of time when you are least likely to be interrupted. First thing in morning before you leave your house for work? End of day? Lunch? Friday afternoon?
Hold a contest with your fellow recruiters. Who can develop the most amount of new friends in the next 90 days?

With the instant access we have to millions of people, we often forget to develop lasting relationships that will and can benefit us in so many ways. INVEST in your network and it will provide dividends along the way.

Announcing Release of New Book: Best (and worse) Advice for Job Seekers!

2010-05-14T06:30:00.000-07:00

In developing our Elite Recruiter competency/skill model and collaborating on our ERE post – “You know you’re an Elite Recruiter if . . . “ I have been equally inspired and frustrated!

The one “attribute” causing me the most angst is:

“You know you are an elite recruiter if . . . You spend time each week helping those less fortunate to find employment, craft a better resume, prepare for an interview, etc.”

Of course I am inspired by this statement because I know it is the right thing to do. We as recruiters have so much knowledge to help job seekers at all levels. But do we on a regular basis? Probably like many of you, the day-to-day grind of work/life does not leave as much time as we would like. I know I would like to participate in these activities more but time contraints often leave me frustrated - specially when I read statements like the one above!

So I am proud that over the last year, I have been working on a project that I believe will benefit job seekers in this uncertain job market with unemployment still at 9.9%!

I am excited to announce that I have finished our book - “Best (and Worst) Advice for Job Seekers” that I believe will help job seekers across the nation!

I say “our” book because countless people and hundreds of hours have gone into the development of this book. It has been a collaborative effort that I think will provide insight/knowledge that will help others.

As I started to devise a plan for marketing, I was inspired by another post by Chuck Clevenger on our ERE blog.

“An Elite recruiter gives back to the community by volunteering to freely help people in their job searches. An elite recruiter is known for his/her pro bono work.”

With that said, a wonderful idea popped in my head. What if I was able to help job seekers (via the content in the book) but was also able to take the royalties and give back to others!

What if I could inspire folks to purchase the book for themselves (or their loved ones) recognizing the proceeds would go towards helping others!?

What a win-win!

I am excited to announce that all proceeds of the book sales will be donated to an amazing organization close to our hearts – St. Jude Children’s Hospital.

I’m asking for your assistance in helping job seekers and the children of St. Judes!

Please spread the word on the book. Please share this message via Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. to all your friends, co-workers, associates, etc.

To the job seekers out there, recognize that purchasing http://www.bestjobadvice.net/ might be the best money you might invest in your career and . . . you can feel good knowing your money will actually benefit the children of St. Jude’s.

For those of you who know job seekers, what if you bought the book for them allowing you to help two parties for the price of one!?

For your HR/Recruiting professionals, maybe you can purchase it and use the material to help candidates that need coaching/mentoring!?!?

If you have ideas of how I can market this book, I would appreciate your input .

Thank you to all of the individuals that contributed to this endeavor. I am also asking your assistance in helping others!

I hope you have a Perfect Week!

Benefits of Technolgy Going Down

2010-05-07T11:50:00.000-07:00

So as I tried to get online this morning, I quickly realized our network was down. And because we moved to the snazzy VOIP, that meant our phone system was down too :). While my first reaction was OMG . . . I quickly diverted my attention to miscellaneous projects that I have had on my Perfect Week/Day plan.

Without the constant interruptions of voice mail/email, I have been laser focused and have knocked off many “to-do’s” that I have “started and stopped” many times because of pesky CIE’s (calls, interruptions and emails for those that haven’t been through our Perfect Week/Perfect Day training program).

While I strive to get into “work flow zones” when doing project related work, I have to admit it is a very tough to discipline myself to halt email and put the phone on silent when attacking these projects.

Like you, I have people I am waiting to hear from!

But lacking that ability to be “connected” this morning quickly demonstrated how powerful and productive you can be when laser focused with no (or fewer) interruptions!

So on this Friday afternoon, if you have some projects that need “quiet, focused time”, halt your email, put your phone on silent and get into a “workflow zone”.

The results will be priceless!

Have a perfect day and a great weekend!

Expectation versus Reality - Deliver on your promises, consistently

2010-04-29T13:07:00.001-07:00

Companies who are serious about their talent need to deliver on their promises consistently. When a candidate goes to your careers website, it’s the first step they take in their research of your company. They are looking for information, drivers, and attractors that make your company a more intriguing proposition than others. Let’s say they decide to apply and they’re invited in for the interview.

From the moment they arrive at your office they are gauging if the company they saw online is reflective of what they see in reality. As you go further down the path of hiring someone, expectations continue to develop based on the information you portray to the candidate.

If the recruiter or hiring manager driving the interview process makes statements such as: “We have a strong work/life balance at our company” or “We believe in learning and development”, or “We have an open door policy in which management is readily acceptable,” then the organization better be prepared to deliver on those statements consistently.

Take the Gen X group and the Millenials. Both of these groups are getting a lot of focus from companies right now to ensure they fill talent gaps as boomers reach retirement. From our research, one of the key areas of attraction for both of these groups is learning and development. Another dynamic of these groups is a lack of long-term company loyalty. If your company states a strong position on learning and development online during the interview process and on-boarding, and then you don’t deliver on that promise; then these groups will leave quickly.

Some best practices to address this are:

Make sure that the messages you state on your website, during the interview process, and beyond are consistent and truthful.
Ask the employees what they think about their experience on a frequent basis through focus groups or employee satisfaction surveys.
Use realistic job previews on the careers website.
Make sure the candidate has a chance to see the work environment and talk with prospective peers as part of the interview process
Train recruiters and hiring managers on interview practices

By following some of these steps and others you'll experience higher retention rates and employee loyalty as the key results! Contact me with any questions or to discuss how we have worked with clients to bridge this gap.

The Most Important Service Level Agreement

2010-04-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

Of the 1000 recruiters who have participated in our Elite Recruiter self assessment benchmark study, they rate themselves a 3.29 on the skill:

Sets Service Level Agreements with Hiring Managers to define roles/responsibilities and control the hiring process

Having talked to countless hiring managers, I am not surprised at this response.

One of their biggest frustrations is not knowing what is going on with a particular search. They post a position, talk to their recruiter, and then . . . wait for candidates to come their way.

I thought I would share a post we published that received a ton of positive attention and discussion!

__________________________________________________________________________

The Most Important Service Level Agreement

While many recruitment organizations have created Service Level Agreements that define the recruitment/hiring process and each parties’ (hiring manager and recruiter) responsibilities (NOTE- if you want a Best Practice example SLA document – please email us), many do not define and establish a “time to first submittal” SLA. This SLA is (what I believe to be the most important) the one we can control the most.

We call this SLA: Requisition Received to “First Submittal.”…. more

Initial Results of our ‘Elite Recruiter’ Competency/Skills – Self Assessment

2010-04-08T09:14:00.000-07:00

The response to our ‘Elite Recruiter’ Self Assessment has been great! To date, over 600 folks have participated!

If you have not participated yet, please do (see below). Our goal is to have 2500 recruiters participate by July of this year!

Some initial interesting findings ……

Recruiter Competencies:

High self-assessment rating (4.0 of 5.0):

Interpersonal Skills (4.21): Treats others with respect and dignity. Promotes a productive culture by valuing individuals and their contributions.

We are not surprised; I think most recruiters feel they have good interpersonal skills. :o)

Areas for improvement (3.5 or below):

Customer/Client Focus (3.49): Maintains unwavering focus on delighting the customer/client.
Leveraging Networks (3.44): Draws upon a wide range of professional and/or business relationships for help and support in achieving individual and organizational goals.
Staffing Lifecycle Management (3.24): Plans and successfully executes a recruiting, selection and hiring process that results in top talent for the organization.

These numbers are consistent to many of our clients’ Voice of the Customer surveys. The clients (hiring managers, key stakeholders, etc.) still see these as areas of improvement as well, particularly Customer/Client Focus and Staffing Lifecycle Management.

Recruiter Skills:

High self-assessment rating (4.0 of 5.0):

Build relationships with peers, hiring managers and executives (4.09)
Remain upbeat, positive and energetic about opportunities with your organization (4.18)

Again, we are not surprised at these results. I think most recruiters believe they can build relationships and are upbeat, positive and energetic. In a 360 evaluation, do others believe the same? :o)

Areas for improvement (3.5 or below):

Posses the ability to create a compelling value proposition statement(s) to engage and recruit passive, top talent for critical-to-fill positions (3.38)
Use technology to manage data, candidate relationships, etc. (3.33)
Set Service Level Agreements with Hiring Managers to define roles/responsibilities and control the hiring process. (3.29)
Provide timely constructive feedback to candidates not selected for hire after interview. (3.29)

These numbers are again consistent with many of our clients’ Voice of the Customer survey results. All four of these areas are critical to the success of a recruiter, BUT . . . often not areas that recruiters (or teams) focus on for improvement. Too often, the focus is on ‘finding the passive candidate’ or lately – social networking and/or SEO - - rather than tactical skills that are critical to customer satisfaction! I’m not saying these other areas don’t deserve our attention (passive candidates, Social media, etc.) but - - sometimes I believe we lose the forest through the trees and lose sight of what the customer wants!

If you are interested in the complete results of the self assessment surveys to date, you must:

Participate in the assessment!
Email us at info@leanhumancapital.com. In the subject line put: Please send ‘Elite Recruiter’ results!

If you want your team to participate and have us tabulate your team’s results, please email us at info@leanhumancapital.com!

Have a Perfect Day!

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Healthcare

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Financial Services

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Retail

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Technology

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Third Party

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Manufacturing/Engineering

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Other

The "Elite" Employer Brand

2010-04-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I teed up this concept of an employer brand. Here are some key areas to consider when measuring your employer brand.

First, you must measure it. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and you can’t improve what you can’t measure. If an organization wants to maintain and consistently improve on the performance of its employer brand it must have a meaningful analytical philosophy that seeks to apply a quantitative and objective view to its brand. Without this, there can be no analysis and comparison for improvement.

Source effectiveness – The lifecycle of your employer brand begins with the first contact, which is typically an organization’s careers web site and subsequent sourcing stage. At this stage an organization should measure the effectiveness of the methods they have relied upon to attract candidates. This can allow the organization to view the most effective sources of attraction and consistently return to those sources based on the ROI achieved. We capture this in our current benchmarking study and what we find is people may be measuring it but they're not taking action. If they see overspending in a certain area, they don't adjust their spend in time and often wait until the year has passed. What should take place is that there should be an immediate shifting of the spend to the most effective sources as quickly as possible.

The recruiting process – This is a series of measurements at each stage in the life-cycle of the candidate’s experience during the entire recruiting process. The recruiting process is one of the most critical aspects in making the decision to join an organization, and often the most overlooked. An organization should measure the effectiveness of every single step a candidate attains in the recruiting process. Each touch point the candidate makes with your organization should be considered beginning with the online application, assessment, interviews, the offer, and orientation. If there is a negative impression that occurs during the initial online application stage of the recruiting process, then there may be a dramatic decrease in the candidate pool. In the initial discussion with a candidate, another negative impression may cause a candidate to withdraw from the process, and tell others about their negative experiences. Negative impressions at any stage of the recruiting process can dramatically reduce the candidate pool, and may provide fuel to create a significant gap for an organization that must meet their hiring needs.

Recruiter Effectiveness - In our elite recruiter benchmarking study we're taking a groundbreaking look at the competencies and skills of elite recruiters. What we've found is that effective recruiters engage candidates with the promise of the brand experience (EVP) and continually deliver on the promise. The elite recruiters even check in with their hires to make sure promises are being kept, and the expectations delivered when someone was hired match the reality of their experience.

Fit – How a candidate perceives their fit within your organization, the culture, and the position you are offering are critical elements in the messaging of your employer brand. Organizations should measure the effectiveness of the messaging in all elements of the employment brand through various media channels. These channels could be print or interactive media marketing and can also extend to the communication with the candidates recruited and interviewed by your company. Analyze the effectiveness of the messaging communicated about the culture within your company to improve the long term impact that fit can have on the attraction of your needed talent.

So the key takeaways here are that the brand is pervasive, and all encompassing across someone's life-cycle of experiences with your company. It must be measured through the sourcing, recruiting process, and fit of a candidate and then through the employee with your company. Finally, you as the recruiter, play a critical role in the portrayal of the brand promise, and should act as an ambassador to ensure its delivered!

Are you prepared to take ACTION on your great ideas? Insights? Leads?

2010-03-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

I was excited that over 1000 people attended our Good to Elite Webinar last week! It demonstrates that many professionals in our industry share the same passion for this topic. One of the topics discussed during the webinar was the concept of having an "IDEA" pad on your desk at all times. This topic received a ton of positive feedback.

All too often during the day, we come up with great ideas, insights . . .acquire new leads from discussions, etc. . . . that we do not capture nor take ACTION on.

The first issue (not capturing) drives the second (not taking action)!

A simple, but highly productive way to avoid this trap is to keep a separate “IDEA” pad of paper on your desk that is EXCLUSIVELY for these thoughts.

Capture: When a great idea and/or new lead pops up – have the discipline to write it on this pad of paper (NOTE: make sure this pad of paper does not turn into your "To-Do" list ! Your "To-Do’s" should go on your Perfect Day printout.
Action: Schedule 1 hour each week reviewing this pad of paper to take action on these thoughts.

While this seems like a trivial idea, it is another great example of the "little" things ‘elite’ performers do that separates them from the rest. From personal experience, when I have this IDEA pad on my desk, I am capturing more great thoughts that I can take action on. When I don’t . . . these great thoughts go into hyperspace and are lost forever!

So what is stopping you?

Come on - - Go get that pad of paper (right now), title it "IDEA PAD" and get back to work! :o)

PS –Our resources page has many tips/techniques like this one to become more productive and efficient. Why don’t you schedule 1 hour to review (with your idea pad of course)!

PSS – We had over 400 recruiters participate in our assessment survey last week. Our goal is 2500! Take a moment and participate!

‘Elite’ Recruiter Benchmark Study!

2010-03-12T11:52:00.000-08:00

For those that attended the ERE webinar – Going from Good to ‘Elite’ – - I hope I inspired you to take action :o) !

For those that missed it we discussed the competencies/skills of Elite Recruiters. I have also started work on another fun project related to this subject…

Shamelessly stealing from Jeff Foxworthy – - “You know you are a redneck if . . . “comedy routine, I am trying to develop a LONG list of “You know you are an Elite Recruiter if . . . “.

This fun exercise has also been inspiring me to reflect on what it is to be an Elite Recruiter and what I need to do to be one! Performing at an elite level doing anything is very difficult. Recruiting is no different.

Documenting these attributes in a fun way helps keep this passion burning and top of mind.

So OK – - You know you are an ‘Elite Recruiter’ if . . .

You get referrals from candidates you turn down for a position.
Your hiring managers ask you who they “should hire” . . . And listen to your advice.
Candidates seek your input on preparing for the interview with the hiring manager, making a decision on an offer, etc.
You keep track of all the people you have hired and have kept up an ongoing relationship with 90% of them.
You track your performance (quality, efficiency, responsiveness/ delivery) on a quarterly basis.
You quantify the ROI of your services to your key stakeholders.
You have clearly written quarterly Performance Improvement goals.
You spend time each week helping those less fortunate find employment, craft a better resume, prepare for an interview, etc.
You invest at least 15 minutes to ½ hour developing a written – hour by hour – daily plan of action that you deploy before each day.
You have received gifts from candidates/hiring managers for “changing their life” for the better.

PLEASE – WE ARE LOOKING FOR MORE ADDITIONS TO THIS LIST! Can you please email us at info@leanhumancapital.com with your ideas!

__________________________________________________________________________

‘Elite’ Recruiter Benchmark study!

Our goal is to get 2500 recruiters to participate in our free self-assessment benchmark study! To provide more granularity, we have decided to categorize ‘recruiters’ as outlined below.

To participate, just find the link that best describes you and . . . sign in! It will take you about 15 minutes to complete.

NOTE: This is for your OWN self-improvement! With that said, for us to have fair and accurate benchmarks, please take this seriously and respond with honestly.

We will publish the results at a later date to use as a benchmark!

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Healthcare

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Financial Services

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Retail

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Technology

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Third Party

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Manufacturing/Engineering

Competency/Skills of an Elite Recruiter – Other

Measuring Your Employer Brand

2010-03-03T09:48:00.001-08:00

I can only go a few days without having an insatiable craving for Starbucks or Caribou Coffee. Sure I can make coffee at home, but it’s just never seems as good. In addition, there’s the great atmosphere when I enter the coffee shop. The wonderful, helpful staff that remembers my name when they greet me.

And to top it all off - - for only four dollars - - I walk away with beautiful drink in a cup with cool logo and colors!

Okay I may be taking that a little too far, but as a consumer I have that passionate and long standing relationship with these brands. These consumer brands conjure up indelible images that resonate and remain with me. These are brands I will consistently use and recommend to others based on my experience and the feelings I get from patronizing their organizations.

So how do you define an employer brand?

Quality candidates - - whether they say so or not - - are looking for the same experience with an organization’s employer brand as a consumer would. The messages, images, and feelings presented shape the candidate experience they will receive. The “feeling” they get as they move through the recruitment process will not only be pivotal in their employment decision but in their recommendation of your organization to others!

Simply put, an employer brand is a long-standing relationship cycle of experiences between the employee and employer.

Your employer brand should resonate like a consumer brand with a distinct difference in the messaging. The messaging should be tailored to the future employee, and should be understood by all stakeholders - both current or future employees, and even customers. Having an effective employment brand means providing an enticing proposition for one to seek the opportunities at an organization. It begins at the sourcing stage and carries through the entire life cycle of the recruiting process, and continues throughout an employee’s tenure with the organization.

While most employers understand the value of an effective employer brand, they struggle with how to measure its’ effectiveness to ensure that their branding efforts are achieving the necessary ROI.

Some brief questions to ponder for next week’s post:

How do you measure your Employer Brand?
How do you know if you have an effective Employer Brand?
Do you have a gauge on how your sources tie into your employer brand?
How are you measuring your customers’ recruiting experience?
Do you have a sense of why people join, stay, or leave your company?

In my next post we’ll begin to discuss these questions in more detail. Also look for us at ERE San Diego where we’ll be talking about this during our session.

Good to Elite

2010-02-24T07:53:00.001-08:00

For those folks that know us, we are passionate about the pursuit of being “Elite” recruiters. Over the years, we have written about it on numerous occasions.

Some posts that have received chatter include:

Success Attributes of World-Class Recruiters

The Changing Role of the Recruiter

On March 10th, we will be facilitating a webinar with ERE entitled “Going from Good to Elite – Becoming an Elite Recruiter”. In preparation for this event, I have been collaborating with colleagues in the industry discussing this topic and getting their opinions on:

Skills/competencies of Elite Recruiters
What Elite Recruiters do that average recruiters don’t
How to go from average or good to elite.

If you have thoughts/opinions on this topic, I would love your input. Just drop me a note (email)!

Over the last year we have been working on a competency/skill model for recruiters.

If you are interested in taking a self-assessment, just click on the links below!

Recruiter Skills Assessment

Staffing Competency Assessment

I hope you all can join us for the webinar on the 10th!

Just as important, I would love your input on this topic!

Candidate Care in a Down Ecomony

2010-02-17T08:03:00.000-08:00

Last year we hosted a webinar on the “Changing Role of the Recruiter”. We posted some of the highlights of the discussion on our site.

Looking back, many of the “predictions” we shared have proven to be true! Unfortunately, one in particular doesn’t seem to be losing momentum and continues to affect millions of people and thousands of organizations.

Prediction: “With requisition loads down, recruiters will be asked to do “more with less” while the number of applicants per position will increase dramatically.”

In the midst of collecting data from numerous organizations for our benchmark study, it is still not uncommon to find applicant-to-hire ratios of 40, 50, and even 100 to 1! With economists predicting a slow “job recovery”, we probably won’t see this trend decrease over the next 12-18 months.

We usually equate high applicant-to-hire ratios with “wasted time” spent weeding through and screening out unqualified candidates. After all, one of the “Seven Deadly Sins of waste in Recruiting” is Overproduction.

Unfortunately, the flip side to this coin presents another challenging dilemma - developing and deploying an excellent Candidate Experience.

A few weeks ago I spoke to an audience of unemployed executives in Charlotte. Their number one gripe about us as recruiters?

“They never follow up. I don’t know where I stand in the process, or how long it will take.”

Of course this isn’t the first time I have heard this and I am sure it’s not the first time you have either.

The obvious reasons we should provide an excellent candidate experience have been well documented:

The negative impact a poor candidate experience has on your organization’s brand can be harmful. Every candidate who does not receive feedback or a “red carpet” experience can create a viral impact of a negative perception of your organization. With social media and the advent of sites like JobVent, Glassdoor and Vault, candidates have a greater lens of choice in their employers.
For B-to-C organizations, these companies can choose where they shop, where they do their banking, what healthcare facility or restaurant they visit, etc. The revenue loss associated with a poor candidate experience can be catastrophic.

If those two reasons are not compelling enough to stress the importance of an excellent candidate experience, let’s look at a few others:

Every “unqualified candidate” is someone’s brother, mother, close friend or relative. I am sure we all know of loved ones close to us that are out of work (heck, it might be you). You know the stress and anxiety it can bring. If you think of each and every candidate as your brother, mother, close friend or relative, I think it provides a different perspective to the importance of an excellent experience.
These “unqualified” candidates for this position might be “qualified candidates” for future positions. A bad experience today will impact their interest later.
“Unqualified, active candidates” talk to “highly qualified passive candidates”. If you believe the old adage – “Poor customer experience is shared with 8 people, a positive one with 2” - - a poor candidate experience might ruin your chance to engage top talent for your critical to fill positions in the future!

I know that developing strategies to provide an excellent candidate experience is easier said than done, especially with limited time, budgets, etc.

Some easy, quick, cost effective ideas to improve the candidate experience even just 10% are as follows:

Have a “follow up” policy. Whether it’s automated through your ATS or a generic email, thank candidates for applying and tell them the next steps in the process.
Post a guideline of your staffing process on your career site. This can be general in nature and give the approximate timing of each step in the process, but it will at least give candidates an idea of what the steps are and what will happen next.
Audit your candidate experience. They are your primary customers, so allow them to have a voice in shaping the experience of others. You will thank them for it!

If you’d like to see some examples of The Candidate Audit or other examples, contact me at bsavoy@leanhumancapital.com

Are you recruiting ‘Passive’ candidates as if they were ‘Active’?

2010-02-10T11:15:00.000-08:00

I had a recent conversation with a very frustrated hiring executive: The conversation resurfaced some ‘best practices’ around recruiting quality talent.

He was frustrated with the current recruitment efforts on critical to fill positions in his department. While they had gone through great lengths to deploy a sourcing strategy to drive quality, passive talent into the recruitment process, the vast majority of candidates they were interested in were “bailing” out of the process.

Pondering the situation, I asked a few simple questions to try and identify the root cause of the defects (for those that sat in on our 7-deadly sins webinar - - you know what I am talking about :o) ).

How are you engaging candidates into the process?
How quickly are you engaging candidates into the process?
Who are they meeting with on their first visit?
Where are they meeting?
Does the candidate fully understand the next steps after their first meeting?

The answers I received from the recruiter/hiring manager might not surprise you:

“Well we have them go through the normal process. If they are interested, we ask them to go online to register in our system”.
“Once they hit the system, the recruiter is calling them within 24 hours - - hopefully - - to do a pre-screen with them.”
“We like to have them come into the office and meet with the recruiter first - - then meet with the hiring manager. Ideally, we like to get a slate of candidates to come in and interview all the same day/afternoon. It is much more convenient for the hiring managers.”
“Ideally – the office. It makes it easier for us.”
“We let them know that we are interviewing several candidates and will have feedback within 3-5 business days.”

I think you know were I am going with this!

So after listening to his answers, I reflected and responded:

“So your managers are requesting the recruitment team to find the highest quality (often passive) talent possible but . . . you want the passive candidates to engage on your TERMS?

Fill out paperwork before I will talk to you
Come to my office
Sit in lobby with other candidates
Wait for a response

I don’t know about you folks, but if the University of Alabama used these technique to ‘recruit’ the most talented football players - - I bet they would not have won the national title last year!

While I don’t want to make light of this situation, I find this dilemma within hundreds of companies throughout the country. Simply put:

They are trying to recruit quality, ‘Passive’ candidates with their ‘Active’ candidate process.

Organizations that excel in recruiting top talent, take a holistically different approach to the passive candidate recruitment efforts.

Some Best Practices

1. How are you engaging candidates into the process?

Once the recruiter makes contact with a top prospect and does a preliminary pre-qualification (hopefully on the same call), they immediately seek to set up a “cup of coffee” meeting with a dynamic hiring manager. No initial paper work. We can take care of that later. No resume? No problem, lets just meet and have an exploratory conversation.

2. How quickly are you engaging candidates into the process?

Immediately (as outlined above)! I have worked with hiring managers that literally say - - if you get a top notch person on the phone, I will meet anywhere, anytime.

3. Who are they meeting with on their first visit?

While I am not saying they shouldn’t meet with a recruiter on the first visit, the quicker you get them connected with a dynamic hiring manager the better. From experience, it is much easier to engage a talented professional to have a “confidential, exploratory discussion over a cup of coffee” if for nothing else - - to network VERSUS – getting them to come for an interview with a recruiter!

4. Where are they meeting?

When you are not looking for a job, the last thing you would want is people to THINK you are looking. Coming to a competitors office for a visit - - in this day and age of LinkedIn, facebook, etc. - - is very risky at best. And to ask them to sit in the lobby with other “candidates” is disrespectful in my book.

5. Does the candidate fully understand the next steps after the first meeting?

If you meet someone and like someone, you should recruit that person. What is wrong with showing your excitement for taking the next steps – ask them their availability to meet with a key executive - - BEFORE you leave that first meeting? I am not implying an offer? I am just showing sincere excitement about moving forward and keeping the positive momentum during our courtship!

These are simple best practices I have seen successfully deployed by organizations that don’t fall into the trap of trying to recruit quality, ‘Passive’ candidates with their ‘Active’ candidate process.

If you find yourself in this dilemma, please share this with your hiring managers :o)

Have a great day.

7 Deadly Sins of Waste in Recruiting: Overproduction/Inventory

2010-02-03T07:16:00.000-08:00

For those of you that missed our recent webinar - 7 Deadly Sins of Waste in Recruiting - -one 'deadly sin' always seems to drive a lot of feedback/discussion - Overproduction / Inventory!

In the Lean Six Sigma world, the word “Overproduction” is defined as “Production ahead of demand”. The word, “Inventory” is defined as all components, work in process and finished product not being processed.

Arguably these are the biggest offenders to creating waste and . . . the time/cost required to eliminate them.

Examples of these areas of waste in talent management and solutions:

Overproduction/inventory in postings. Most organizations, as part of their staffing process, post each and every position to their website and a large job board (like Careerbuilder or Monster). While this seems to be a quick, cost effective sourcing solution, for those positions that do not require additional applicant flow and/or positions that have a very low probability of being filled by this source - - the cost/time associated with managing the unqualified applicant flow far exceeds the benefits.

Solution(s): When you receive a new position, evaluate the historical source of hire. If 80% of the time this type of position was filled through internal applicants or referrals, why not exhaust those channels before publishing the position to the masses? If less than 5% of the time a position is filled by large job boards, investigate more effective sourcing solutions (direct sourcing, niche job boards, etc.) before generating a routine posting on a large job board. Also remember that job aggregators (simplyhired.com, indeed.com, etc.) are going to “wrap” any posting you put on your own site anyway.

Routing multiple candidates to the interview stage. Historically, managers have requested (and we have provided) a ’slate’ of candidates for each and every position. Minimally, the rule of thumb has been the magical ‘3′ candidates per position. In some cases, we find recruiters routing 5, 10 or worse yet – - – all the candidates that applied for the position. To the definition, every candidate routed to the hiring manager that does not get hired is WASTE.

Solution: While psychologically I can understand that a manager wants to review his/her "options" before making a critical decision like hiring a new employee, if they trust that the recruiter has exhausted all candidate/sourcing options in order to come up with the best, and they understand the concept of waste, then there is no reason that there should ever be more than 3 candidates routed for consideration unless of course those first three don't meet the requirements. If this happens, it indicates that not enough time was spent up front understanding the requirements of the position and how each candidate would need to demonstrate that they are able to perform the required tasks. The more time spent up front with the hiring manager and those participating in the interviewing process to ensure all are in alignment and to validate how the candidate will be selected; the less time wasted in sourcing.

For high volume hiring and/or for managers that have experience hiring for a certain position, evaluating each candidate against previous hires (and more importantly - - the competencies/skills necessary to excel in the position) is a much better predictor of success than evaluating one candidate against another. Challenge the old-school mindset of "3+ candidates routed per position!"

Developing a slate of candidates for positions that go on hold. Ok – - how many times have you developed a slate of candidates for a position that . . . goes on hold! Now in fairness to hiring managers, there are legitimate reasons that this happens that for the most part are out of their control. But unfortunately, we know that other managers often post positions ahead of approval that have a high probability of never being approved. Talk about WASTE! The time spent sourcing/pre-screening candidates for positions that go on hold for some organizations is astronomical!

Solution: Consider making approval processes mandatory, or holding off on the sourcing process for 48 hours to double check the position approval status. For those of you that want to be more progressive - gain approval to implement a “charge back” policy! Charge back to the manager/line of business for openings that are put on hold and waste the valuable time and effort of the staffing function!

While we will never eliminate all of the overproduction/inventory in our hiring process, taking simple steps to incrementally remove waste will exponentially save you time and money!

Spend less time searching for resumes and more time searching for people with intelligence!

2010-01-27T11:11:00.000-08:00

OK - You have a critical, difficult-to-fill position and you have performed all the 'normal sourcing tactics' to fill it.

Posted on your website and a large job board or two
Networked with key employees
Surfed the Internet for candidates
Checked out LinkedIn

And unfortunately, you still don't have any interested, qualified candidates.

Does this sound familiar? What do you do next?

For many, the next step is the 'wait, hope & pray' tactic. You wait, hope and pray that some qualified candidates fall in your lap :).

For others, that have the time and expertise, you dive into deep Internet mining tactics (Boolean/semantic search) scouring remote databases/information for the elusive, 'passive' candidate.

From my experience, very few recruiters immerse themselves in identifying people that will KNOW the people you are looking to find and talk too!

This fundamental shift in thinking is so simple but very powerful. If implemented, this technique will transform the way you source candidates forever!

Instead of asking the questions:

Where can I find qualified professionals?
Where should I look for them?
What search techniques should I use to find quality talent?

Ask:

Who would know the person I am looking for?
Who can I talk to within a particular company (that has the talent I am looking for) that would know the person I am looking for?

For many creative sourcers, as part of the search strategy, they try to identify key words to source such as:

Competitor companies
Similar job titles
Key tools/technology the qualified candidate uses to perform their job

Now drive laterally through these questions with:

Who works with/for the person you are looking for? What is their job title?

And your search becomes more three dimensional.

Now drive straight down the middle with the question:

Who has recently left that company that knows the person I am looking for in that company?And you can strike oil!

Let me explain.

The first question - - Who works with/for the person you are looking for? - - will exponentially increase the # of people you can talk to to locate the person you are looking for (you know - - the whole 7-degrees of separation thing).

The second question - - Who has recently left that company that knows the person I am looking for in that company? - - will connect you with folks that have left an organization and probably do not have a vested interest in withholding sensitive, confidential intelligence. Heck - if they were let go, they are even more willing to assist in providing information that might help you and . . . unfortunately . . . 'hurt' their former employer.

Another important point here is the person’s level. While first instinct may be to go “to the top” and call the SVP or VP (like in a traditional sales approach), you may have non-compete issues that cause the contact to be reticent to provide the information you need. Don’t avoid this level, but be mindful of it. You may have greater success with peers and/or individuals that worked for the person you are seeking to identify.

Some examples to illustrate this concept:

Searching for accountants -- talk to actively looking controllers
Searching for .com developers -- talk to actively looking SQL - DBA's
Searching for OR nurses -- talk to actively looking anesthesiologist.
Searching for Market Research professionals -- talk to the Account Manager at the research firm.

Note - I referenced 'actively looking' in each of these examples. Probably the best person you can 'network' with is an active candidate that has recently left an organization.

Not only will they know the person you are looking for, but they often will provide un-sanitized information about the people you want to connect with. Add in other thought provoking questions to your conversation like - - Who were the top performers? - - Who worked best under pressure? - - and you might gain valuable insight to pinpoint your search.

A simple, straight forward approach to contacting them:

John:

I wanted to reach out. I saw you online and saw you worked for _________. I was hoping I could network with you and see if you could help me - and potentially one of your peers - out.

I have a great opportunity for the right person…. I am seeking ___________________________. I thought you might know the ________ folks at __________ that might be interested in this opportunity?

Were there some folks that you thought were really good that I should connect with?

Anyone that was not very happy I should connect with?

Any advice you would give me to help me with this search? It is a great opportunity for someone!
________________________________________________________________

Then when closing, I would always recommend asking them how you can assist them in their job search:

I really appreciate all your help. As mentioned, I found your information online.

How can I help you? - - what are you looking for?

What have you done so far to find a new opportunity?:

Have you tried www.indeed.com and/or www.simplyhired.com

I will keep my eyes/ears open…, etc .

The key to your success in engaging individuals is your sincere interest in helping connect individuals to excellent opportunities!

Too often I think we spend too much time searching for resumes versus people with intelligence that can help us with our search. We wrote a similar post on this subject that you might want to check out - The Indirect Networking Call.

Happy Hunting :)

Ensuring Staffing Process Excellence

2010-01-20T06:35:00.000-08:00

This week I had the pleasure of presenting to our local SHRM chapter on Staffing Process Excellence. Here are some of the highlights:

I know what you’re thinking, “We’re hiring fewer people this year”, or “Our hiring’s flat, so why bother with a Staffing Process Excellence exercise?”

Whether you’re hiring 5 people or 10,000 (yes – there are still companies that are hiring that many people), it’s the beginning of someone’s tenure with your company, and it acts as an extension of your brand.

A Staffing Process that’s excellent will enable you to utilize Voice Of the Customer (VOC) data to define and deliver an error-free fulfillment process that will deliver world-class customer satisfaction, improved retention, and even quality of hire.

The simple steps in Staffing Process Excellence are:

Gain Executive Buy-In. With every process improvement initiative you need the executives’ buy-in. Typically the best way to do this is to align the project to a business initiative. Are you trying to trim costs, improve customer satisfaction, or reduce attrition. All of these can be addressed with an improved staffing process.
Gather the Voice Of the Customer data. Begin by using surveys, focus groups, or other channels to tap into the perspective of those that work through your process each day. Hiring managers, candidates, recruiters, and others that are involved, should be consulted on how the process should look. Find out what opportunities exist to streamline the process from their perspectives.
Gather Process CTQ’s (Critical to Quality). These are aspects that are critical to meeting and exceeding customer expectations. These will also typically come as part of your exercise to gather the VOC information from your stakeholders.
Align the process. By now you have the needs of the customer (VOC) and you’ve gathered those aspects of the process that are critical to them (CTQ). Now you have to align the two, making sure the wants of the customer and the critical needs can be met. Exec or Org. Initiatives
Define the staffing process. At some companies this is a detailed chart of the staffing life cycle; for others it’s a simple list of bullet points. While best-in-class is a clearly articulated and defined process, even bullet points on a Word document are a start. The end goal is that with the input from customers you can now define the world-class process – and the best part is no one can say “Hey you didn’t ask me!” because each of the customer segments gave their input.
Educate, Implement, and Continuously Measure the new process. You’ve put all of this effort into your new process; now make sure it “sticks!” Don’t just email the new process out to everyone; instead, leverage executive buy in to have a big kickoff. Executive announcements, internal staff meetings, and even e-mails can have more power jointly coming from line execs and HR/recruiting.

You’re also going to need to educate each of the stakeholders on the new process, and then of course continually measure the results. Consistent surveys, focus groups, etc with the “customers” of the process will ensure long-term adherence.

If you have questions on staffing process excellence, or you’d like to discuss an audit of your staffing process, contact me.

Seven Deadly Sins of Waste: #2 – Waiting

2010-01-13T07:21:00.000-08:00

By Bradley Savoy

So I’ve just screened an exceptional applicant, and the next step in my process is to forward information to the hiring manager for approval to schedule an interview. I send the information along….and now I’m in the middle of the next sin of waste – waiting…..

If you think about your current staffing process, and you had analytics on it, you’d find that in many cases an inordinate amount of time is spent waiting. There are multiple reasons for this: delays based on decisions needed, peoples’ schedules (vacations, meetings, etc.), and various other factors that come into play.

Back when candidates held the power and the war for talent was in full swing; waiting on a decision for the next phase of the hiring process was a death knell. Back in my management consulting days I remember losing candidates to competitors if we couldn’t make a hiring decision in 24 hours because by the time we got to them they already had offers from our competitors in hand. Those days may be long gone in most cases, but they still exist for critical talent. For many healthcare organizations RN’s and PT’s are still critical positions to fill, and recruiting departments don’t want to wait days for approval from a hiring manager to move forward with the hiring process.

In our Proof of Concept we look at our clients’ staffing process flow, as well as the efficiency and time spent during the various stages of the process. We often find that a simple lean solution in reducing waste is to reduce the amount of time spent waiting on decisions from the various stakeholders of the process. A hiring manager may expect candidates faster than you can deliver them, and you may expect to receive feedback on candidates faster than the hiring manager can respond.

One way we address this is through establishing better relationships with hiring managers, as well as managing expectations on both sides. See our previous posts on being a Strategic Business Partner and establishing a Service Level Agreement. These will give you some simple tips and techniques to address this area of waste in your staffing process. And of course you can register to attend our webinar next week where we’ll discuss this, as well as other facets of the 7 Sins of Waste in Recruiting.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Waste: #1 - Overproduction

2010-01-06T09:41:00.000-08:00

Before the holidays, we had an enormous interest in our recent whitepapers on Just In Time and "The Seven Deadly Sins of Waste” in Recruiting. Based on the interest, we’ve decided to not only publish our thoughts on these topics in upcoming blogs, but also to host a webinar to discuss these topics.

If you’d like to attend the webinar on Wednesday, January 20th at 2:00pm EST, please register here.

One of the seven deadly sins of Waste is Overproduction. In recruiting and staffing - we’ve not only tolerated overproduction over the years, but we’ve actually rewarded recruiters for it!

For as long as I have been recruiting, I have found most recruitment organization manage by (and reward) the “How Many” philosophy:

How many calls did you make?
How many applicants responded to the posting?
How many people showed up at the open house/job fair?
How many people did you interview?
How many candidates did you route to the hiring manager for consideration?
How many resumes are in our database? How many resumes do you have access to?

Most have lived by the “more is better” philosophy.

Having read The Goal by Eli Goldratt, early in my recruiting career, I never understood this mentality

I always understood my goal to be:

To generate the most amount of quality hires/month for my organization (Mr. Goldratt calls this ‘Throughput’).

and that:

I had a fixed amount of time, money and resources (he calls ‘Constraints’).

I could not understand why:

I was measured by how many calls, interviews, or candidates routed??

Isn’t that counter-productive to the goal?

In reality – shouldn’t I have been rewarded for the following?

“Talking to the least amount of people that allowed me to hand pick a select few that I interview that nets me the perfect candidate I route to the hiring manager that gets selected and hired and becomes a top producer within the organization for the next decade!”

When you start to look at the staffing supply chain with this lens you start to ask yourself some different questions:

Why do we track how many calls, interviews, etc. a recruiter makes? Shouldn’t we track how efficient we are with the candidate activity we put into the staffing supply chain “funnel”?
Why would we post every position on a large job board when it causes a tremendous amount of overproduction/waste of unqualified candidates? Especially if these positions most often get filled by internal candidates or other sources and rarely, or NEVER get filled by Internet postings?
Why does a manager need to see 3-4 candidates before making a decision if we have identified the top candidate through sourcing/selection?

Don’t have time to get everything done during the course of the day? A root cause to your problem just might be the time associated with managing the waste caused by overproduction.

The fact of the matter is that overproduction causes waste. It also takes time, money and resources (that we have a limited amount of) to remove waste from the process.

And to think that most of us not only tolerate overproduction, but in some cases reward our recruiters, vendors, job boards, etc. for it!

A great way to save time and cut costs is to analyze each step of your staffing process for overproduction and look for ways to eliminate it BEFORE it gets into the process.

For more information on the seven deadly sins of waste in recruiting, join us for our free webinar on January 20th at 1pm EST.