Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

For all of us in the recruitment industry, I know I state the obvious when I say that 2009 has started badly. U.S. unemployment rate reached a 16-year high of 7.2 percent in December 2008, and daily there is news of record layoffs in every virtually every sector of the economy. Worse yet, the Economic Cycle Research Institute tells us that the economy may not grow again until 2010.

I have watched closely monthly employment data for over 10 years while on the Board of CareerBuilder and running HotJobs, and now Jobvite. It is very clear that, the road ahead will certainly be extremely difficult for those whose job it is to hire.

We simply must not hunker down and wait out this storm. The world is changing, and we must not only rethink how we do things, but begin taking action now. Why? Because those companies who are hiring – to fill urgent openings, make replacements, or opportunistically upgrade talent – have recently made deep cuts in their recruiting budgets and staff.

As we know all too well, recruiting teams are being asked to do more with every person left and dollar spent. It is my belief that in this challenging period new practices and innovations will arise that will change recruiting forever and professionally catapult those who lead and embrace them.

At the core of this change, I believe, will be greater accountability for us to improve recruiting ROI, and that does not necessarily mean lower costs, though that is a part of it. More importantly, technology is beginning to make it easier for companies to track the quality of hires, and thus, demand better hires. Thus, we will have to continuously improve at hiring the best talent we can.

But that is easier said (in blog posts like this) than it is to do. The good news: web technology and social recruiting will enable companies to hire high quality people at less cost. Here are some ideas that come up in conversation when I talk with leaders among our customers and in the industry:

Crunch your numbers. Most of us think we pay close attention to how we spend our dollars and what we get for them. But, if we are honest, we probably have not done enough to really figure out what works best. Since we all have to cut costs, we should do so based on a close scrutiny of sourcing strategy and results.

Take this time now to look back at your data – when you have far fewer requisitions – to determine what sources are delivering the most value and talent for the least money.

For example, Paul Whitney, VP of Human Resources at Infinera, reviewed data not only on where his money was going, but also data on how his recruiters were spending their time. His conclusion: Infinera wasn’t getting much to justify the expenditure on job boards.

Not only were job boards yielding 3-4% of hires, but recruiters were spending about 25% of their working time going through the applicants. That was a big investment in an unproductive source, and it didn’t take Paul long to shut it down.

Be tactically smart. During the recent hiring boom, many told me that too often they felt their job was to “post and pray,” collecting as many names and resumes they could get their hands on. But now is the time to be more proactive and resourceful.

For example, more and more recruiters are now realizing that many of the kinds of people they seek maintain up-to-date profiles publicly on the Internet in social networks, and that they are connected to people they know or people in their company.

LinkedIn, Facebook, professional communities (like university or company alumni networks) and even search engines (like Google’s profile”database) are usually a much better, as well as cheaper, way to target the right folks with the right opportunities than job boards. You’ll also find that with fewer recruiters to do this work, employees can and are willing to help through their networks.

Recruiters at Bazaarvoice, in Austin, Texas, like other leading-edge recruiters, are using LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to find prospective candidates and build a dialogue with them. And they keep thinking of ways to build referrals – through the networks of their employees, business partners and even the local community. On the main page of the corporate career site, Bazaarvoice features an invitation in bright orange for anyone to refer a candidate and earn a referral bonus by doing so.

Beyond smart tactics, recruiters can also add much more value in times like this by…

Contributing strategically. The recruiting team must get more involved in setting the company’s people strategy in this changing economy, or get close to those who are. It is times like this when companies ask, “How can we do this better?”

Recruiting professionals can inform the answers, including trends in supply and demand of key talent, interests and needs of emerging talent, or a sense of how organizational changes will “play” in the labor market. Those recruiters who have successfully made this strategic leap become more vital to their companies’ futures and say they have greater professional satisfaction.

Be a marketer. Recruiters are, after all, marketers of the company’s talent brand. Learn from your colleagues down the hallway in marketing and adopt their strategies, tools and successes.

Craft your recruiting programs the way marketers create theirs: target your audience surgically, then focus your message to communicate with that specific audience, and be sure to deliver valuable information that’s interesting and relevant to them. Most importantly, any marketer knows to provide a great experience for prospects and customers.

Candidates at TiVo are now treated like customers at TiVo. Candidates get personalized communications that interest them, just like a TiVo subscriber gets recommendations on upcoming television programs.

The team, led by William Uranga, Director of Talent Acquisition at TiVo, has applied this principle to every touch point with applicants, from the application form to the calls they receive, to make sure they provide as great a candidate experience as TiVo’s customers have.

Be a quality closer. I remember a quote from a boss early in my career that went something like, “Sales is the ability to persuade – not manipulate – a person into a win-win situation.”

When I was young, I wanted to close every deal. But we now know sometimes it makes sense to walk away, too. A great recruiter brings the right candidates and hiring managers closer together. Rather than pushing deals that are not right for both sides, a trusted recruiter builds a reputation of never pushing an expedient or bad match, but instead, working for the right match.

Now when the quality of every hire matters more than ever, build trust by advising hiring managers well and knowing how to close the right person for the right job.

The reality of this recession is that it is going to be long and rough for all of us. They all eventually end. But, when it is over, recruiting will be permanently changed. These challenging economic times provide recruiters an opportunity to prove their worth to employers and stand out from the crowd. Start thinking strategically, keep an eye on the bottom line and look for ways help your company thrive.

By changing our horizons and investing in growth now, the recruiting profession will be more strategic and essential than ever before. And when companies return to growth – and hiring many of the people who have been laid off – good, professional recruiters will be in high demand.

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