It's a thought that requent crosses the minds of most recruiting and HR professionals on the corporate sides they struggle to fill the openings that loom before them.
'There must be a better way!'
Certainly, sifting through resumes isn't the better way. Job boards simply opened the spigot. No, its more like it opened the fire hydrant and our job is to drink from a fire hose. There are so few . . .so very few qualified people who apply. Don't applicants ever READ job descriptions? There are so many . . .too many . . .resumes. Is this what I went to college for? To waste my time . . . .my life . . ..reading the resumes of people who are clearly not qualified? Clearly they have proven they either do not or cannot read the position description. Now the thought shifts between:
'This is its own special kind of Hell'
and
'There must be a better way!'
There is a better way. If you are not finding the people you need through job postings, simply become proactive by targeting passive instead of active candidates. (That's what we do at The Good Search: see www.thegoodsearchllc.com )Why leave it up to chance that the person you need will simply swim by your job posting and be seized with the impulse to apply. Targeting ideal candidates is faster-better and costs less. It is a no-brainer. Moreover, when you target people who are right for the job can demonstrate due diligence, candidates, which makes hiring managers very, very happy.
So stop the insanity. Stop wasting your time and start living again by taking control of your search destiny. Proactively go after ideal candidates and you, your team, and your hiring managers will be so much happier because you will succeed like never before.
Do you have a search that's got you stumped? Are you finding too many candidates, too few contenders? Too many searches, too little time? Do you need to find a more affordable way to fill your openings? Do you have a search that is simply taking to long? Or a position a search firm has been unable to filled?
Ask any search-related question and we'll get you the answer.
Good Question! is a complimentary Q&A newsletter to which recruiters on the corporate side can subscribe. It's our way of giving back,getting to know you, and assisting you whenever possible over the course of your career.
Ever since the founding of my company more than a decade ago, I've evangelized the use of candidate pipelines. In my gut, I knew that focusing on research and sourcing (the execution engine of search that identifies and develops candidates) was the way to drive results and improve search performance.
We recently published a whitepaper detailing the actual effectiveness of pipelines, which can be deployed to fill a single opening or a range of openings at virtually any level from senior level executive through experienced individual contributor.
I knew our pipelines powered by human capital intelligence were good, but I didn't know how good until we did the math. The searches we tackle are often searches that other firms have been unable to fill. Often clients tell us as launch that there are no candidates left that they haven't talked to and therefore no apparent way to to fill the thing. When we finally stoopped and checked the metrics, we discovered that on average, our pipelines delivered the candidates who ultimately were hired within just 18 business days.
At a time when a growing number of firms are seeing business slow due to the economy, ours is rapidly expanding. It seems word is spreading that pipelines (whether offered by a vendor or home grown) are simply faster-better that traditional search.
For those on the corporate side who want to check the metrics of a new kind of search,simply visit:
Recruiting is a cyclical business subject to the vagaries of the economy. I've seen scores of corporate recruiters laid off at in recent months . . .
If you are one of those still standing, in addition to updating your resume and teeing up your next opportunity, you may want to consider taking proactive steps to increase your ROI at your current company.
One suggestion I have is for you to walk over to whomever is in charge of your company's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practice -- it often goes by different names like 'sustainability' or 'compliance and ethics' or 'environmemtal responsibility'. They, too, may be worried about their longevity, and the two of you should join forces.
Employee attraction and retention is one the primary dividends paid by a company's CSR practice. Yet remarkably HR and CSR rarely talk to one another So . . . if you have yet to leverage CSR branding in your reruiting pratice, nows the time, as it will grow your ROI. And if the CSR personnel have yet to tally their impact on employee attraction and retention, well, they should start running the numbers. For more on how candidates feel about great companies that also happen to be good, check our survey at http://www.thegoodsearchllc.com/html/survey.html
In fact, increasing your ROI may be a better strategy than teeing up your next opportunity, as those are getting increasing harder to find. For more on CSR, check
Much has been written about social networks. But check out The Anatomy of Buzz, a book by Emanuel Rosen. If social networks provide the infrastructure, the buzz is the energy that flows over it. Buzz has become increasing important in this day and age when we have too many advertising messages, emails, text messages, voicemails with which to contend. No one has the time to research every new product and service. Instead, most of us rely on a friend or an associate to recommend a product or to mention it. Get enough mentions, and you've got a buzz going and the social network fires up in response.
So consider social networks like LinkedIn. They're the conduits. If you really want to use a network effectively, then you need to fire up the buzz. It may be that you're an employer-of-choice, or the leading recruiter in a particular industry, or that you just did something amazing.
Buzz is fired up with information that your social network consumes. Not SPAM. Not ads. But word-of-mouth on how good or bad or cool or interesting or worthwhile something is.
So let's think of it as a tool. For a candidate, the buzz would be how he/she as a candidate is a hot prospect that prospective employers ought to snatch up. For a recruit, the buzz would be about a hot opportunity or hot company (employer-of-choice). You cannot control buzz, but you can spark it.
For instance, if you have a product that does not live up to its promise. . .the buzz will ultimately be about that. To generate positive buzz, there must be something amazing to buzz about, something special that makes you , your opportunity, or your company buzz-worthy.
Once you've got that in place, you connect with nodes in your network that are highly connected and communicative. How do you tell whether you dealing with someone who's a super connector. Chances are they called you and they're asking you a ton of questions. They have a voracious appetite for the latest information. The next time one of those contacts calls you. Don't get annoyed. Start the buzz and reap the rewards.
As a buyer of executive search, which would you prefer: a search firm that knows your industry like the back of its hand or one that is devoted to serving you and you alone?
In its early years, the consulting firm Bain & Company would only work with one client per industry to avoid potential conflicts of interest.
I wonder whether a contrarian, anti-specialization approach might actually resonate with some VPs of Talent Acquisition. I realize this flies in the face of experts who recommend that firms such as mine specialize in order to lure business away from the major retained search firms. In fact, I've been told that specialization is the only way to do so.
As neat and tidy as that seems and while specialization offers economies of scale, it poses a number of conflicts of interest. Moreover, specialization makes a search firm more vulnerable in whenever the economy takes a hit. If your sector goes in recession, so then do you.
I'd be interested in hearing whether any of you know of a firm that's refused to specialize in order to avoid conflicts of interest and off-limits list.
And I'd welcome discussion and comments on this and other 'out of the box' ways to explore raising the bar, inspired by the realization, 'there's got to be a better way!'
My daughter, all of 14, brought home a New York Times best seller the other day entitled,--I kid you not -- 'Skinny Bitch: A no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous!' The book is so hot that the authors immediately wrote a follow-on cookbook entitled Skinny Bitch in the Kitch, which, when the feminist in me is done being enraged, I find pretty funny.
So what does this have to do with recruiting? Everything. (Stay with me for a moment.) SB pretty much is a vegan rant that, for a number of chapters, is designed to gross out the reader by comfronting us with the often cruel consequences of eating food with faces -- something we generally don't like thinking about. The authors vividly describe slaughterhouse practices and the vagaries of eating rotting carcasses. In doing so, the extol the virtues of eating vegan . ..how healthy, caring, and skinny one will be if you'd just rule out meat and dairy.
My Katie read passages of the book aloud to me. In response, to encourage her new-found teenage idealism and previously unheard-of commitment to eat her veggies, I agreed to try vegan with Katie with the New Year. A meditation on the theme 'we are what we eat'.
Which brings me to recruiting. Recruitment is a kind of consumption. Companies that hire great talent that is also good (ethical, caring, inspiring to be around) will attract the same, whereas crummy, unethical, peevish, beady-eyed leaders attract similarly uninspiring talent.
Therefore, search firms ought to decide what team they want to recruit for . . .employers-of-choice (also known as Best Companies to Work For) that do a better job of treating their shareholders, employees, communities, and the planet right . . .or employer that lack distinction.
Of course, we define ourselves by the company we keep. As recruiters, we define companies by the company we keep. One can choose the upward or downward spiral. SB recruiting means you intend to thrive by taking the high road. You'll not only be successful, but in the eyes of those around you, you will look mahrvelous!
Search firms basically come in two flavors: retained or contingency. They are distinguished by how they are paid, not by how they conduct search, even though they do conduct search differently. Retained is generally aimed at the executive level and is a highly consultative process. Contingency firms are highly transactional. They must make rapid placements and move on.
Where do research firms fit in this picture? In fact, when I say 'research firm', what's the first phrase that springs to mind?
Is it 'name gen'?
Generally, research firms have been relegated to playing a supporting role in search. That perception may, in part, have its roots in residual sexism (in the early days at most search firms, researchers were women) and classism (research was framed as lower-level, administrative back office occupation.)
Research firms are typically the companies recruiters turn to when their hair is on fire: when they run out of names, or run out of candidates, or when they hit the wall with a 'search from hell'. But research is so much more than that. While it can fix recruitng problems, it is far more powerful when it is harnessed for proactive recruitment.
But defining research as name gen or lists of candidates is like saying coffee begins and ends with freeze-dried Maxwell House. That is so yesterday. That is so not Starbucks.
What if you're a retained firm that offers retained search powered by human capital intelligence that finds candidates faster-better? What if your retained search involves individual searches (as is typical), and also candidate pipelines across a range of openings, as we do? What if your firm delivers organizational intelligence (org charting, executive mapping, and profiling) and at the end of the day, delivers not only candidates but also intelligence as a product.
Hmmm. We think we've stumbled upon a new category of search firm. We're not your typical research firm. We're not your typical retained search firm. We are, in essense, both and neither. That makes our clients very happy and their competitors a little nervous.
I want to extend my earlier invitation to get connected in Y2008 to include joining my personal network on Plaxo Premium to enjoy the benefits of what is shaping up to be an amazing upgrade of Plaxo. Their premium social networking sight offers social networking with contact information.
I never really got excited before about using Plaxo. A lot of people were put off by 'Plaxo SPAM' aimed at keeping contact information up-to-date. But with the added benefit of business networking with keeping contact info current with being allowed to form groups . . .they've found what appears to be the perfect balance. Finally, a social networking site that is less 'work' and more 'net'!
So, my friends on ERE, let's get connected on Plaxo. Just sendan email to krista (dot) bradford (at)thegoodsearch (dot) net . . .and I'll forward you an invite to join my network on Plaxo.
Today, I want to take a moment to honor the work of Sir Cybersleuth, Shally Steckerl. Nearly a decade ago, I learned through a client at Intel that Shally was busy reinventing sourcing as we know it at Cisco.
Re-invention = innovation.
Since then, Shally has gone on to source for Google, for Microsoft, and now for the World . One of the things that impresses me the most about Shally is that he tracks and leverages the myriad and constant incremental changes on the Internet to stay out in front on the leading edge of Internet sourcing.
Check out his blog CyberSleuthing where you can read about the latest, coolest newdate limiting on Google. Or where you can learn how to snag Jigsaw contacts for free (yes, my friends, we're talking about 'free stuff'.) Shally is continually offering sourcers shorter paths to the best candidates. And for those who want to drill down evern more, Shally offers us hacks and cheatsheets (I highly recommend the Everything Bundle).
Yes, change in a web environment is a constant and that change is happening exponentially as the presentation below by Colorado high school teacher Karl Fisch details. In fact, my clients that include Google, Microsoft, Amazon and AOL often say managing that change resembles tuning the engine of a 747 while it is in flight at 30,000 feet altitude . . .not so easy, but Shally, Sir Cybersleuth, knows how to get it done.
Today, I am honoring the work of the King of String Glenn Gutmacher. I've attended a number of his presentations (and co-presented with him in Boston) and have always come away humbled by the intricacy and depth of his search strings.
Why should you care? Well, if you take a moment to sit at the feet of Glenn (which you do by visiting his blog or taking his course )you will find candidates you would not have been able to find otherwise. And then you, too, can assume your rightful place in the Court of String.
I head a retained search and human capital intelligence firm The Good Search that specializes in research that's pretty hard core. So, I am not easily impressed. In a former life, I was an investigative journalist. Moreover, I was surfing the Internet before there were browsers.
But Glenn and his Strings are worth studying and bookmarking. Better, fire up Broadlook Diver and pop in Glenn-esque bookmarks and really go to town. Oh, and for the record, this works not just for staffing level recruitment. We recruit at the highest levels and, my friends, the majority of VPs that one might recruit are not listed in the most obvious places online. You need to venture into the land of the King of String and he will lead you to them . . .
When was the last time you saw The Wizard of Oz and hummed along with that catchy tune 'If I Only Had a Brain'? Clearly, there are moments when we all could use more brain-age . . .But what is seriously in need of a brain transplant is the search process in general.
Most recruiters think of research in a highly transactional, cookie cutter kind of way. ('Just give me names.') That is such a wasted opportunity. At The Good Search (a retained search and retained research firm) we're total geeks when it comes to research. We embed it into virtually every step of the search process for a competitive advantage . . .we use it to inform search strategy, to make searches bullet proof, and to drive time-to-hire down to near zero. HCI is powerful stuff.
If research functions as 'the brain' of search and if your search organization hasn't yet tapped the power of 'human capital intelligence', it is time, my friend, to give it a try. For inspiration, I've copied a link to a rare, previously deleted scene from The W of O. Have a look while you contemplate ways to search smarter, not harder, through the use of intelligence.
At The Good Search, we evangelize powering every search engagement with Human Capital Intelligence (research on sterioids). HCI is about connecting the dots in addition to collecting them . . .so that we get to the right candidate faster/better.
And so this morning, as I sip my cup of 'jo, I thought I'd open it up to the ERE community-at-large to ask about your favorite recruitment research strategies and tools.
This morning, I am but a Student and you, my friend, are Master.
If knowlege is sourcing power, then a Mashup is the easiest way to supercharge your sourcing. Mashups are an exciting genre of interactive Web applications that retrieve content from external data sources and combine that data to better inform your recruiting practice. They are so Web 2.0 . . .
Mapping Mashups
One of the first mashups to become popular is ChicagoCrime.org Web site, which is a mapping mashup. The Web site mashes crime data from the Chicago Police Department's online database with cartography from Google Maps. Any data set that contains location is a candidate for a Mapping Mashup. And thanks to Google Maps API, we have the technology -- from the entry level MyMaps tab to more elegant web development. And Google isn't the only company facilitating the Mapping Mash. APIs from Microsoft (Virtual Earth), Yahoo (Yahoo Maps), and AOL (MapQuest) also are there for our geographical enjoyment.
You can map target companies, target candidates, or plug in where your recent hires have come from to spot trends.
Video and Photo Mashups
A picture is worth a thousand mashups. Photo hosting and social networking sites such Flickr with APIs that expose photo sharing has led to a variety of interesting mashups. According to IBM, 'Because these content providers have metadata associated with the images they host (such as who took the picture, what it is a picture of, where and when it was taken, and more), mashup designers can mash photos with other information that can be associated with the metadata. For example, a mashup might analyze song or poetry lyrics and create a mosaic or collage of relevant photos, or display social networking graphs based upon common photo metadata (subject, timestamp, and other metadata.). Yet another example might take as input a Web site (such as a news site like CNN) and render the text in photos by matching tagged photos to words from the news.' Of course, you can enter the names of your target companies to see what photos you might pull up. Often, that allows you to peer into the very offices of your competitors: One very neat photo mashup is tagnautica.
Search and Shopping
Search and shopping mashups have existed long before the term mashup became all the rage. BizRate, PriceGrabber, MySimon, and Google's Froogle have long used combinations of business-to-business (b2b) technologies or screen-scraping to aggregate comparative price data. But new APIs from online marketplaces inluding eBay and Amazon now make it possible to programmatically accessing their content for mashup on a Web 2.0 page.
News
iGoogle and other personalizable home pages often help users mashup news sources (such as the New York Times, the BBC, or Reuters) using syndication technologies like RSS and Atom (described in the next section) since 2002 to disseminate news feeds related to various topics. Syndication feed mashups create a personalized newspapers that caters to the reader's particular interests. An example is Diggdot.us, which combines feeds from the techie-oriented news sources Digg.com, Slashdot.org, and Del.icio.us.
Mashups are web pages that pull data from several data sources using things like APIs. Essentially, the power in mashups is that you can learn things you wouldn't have otherwise by combining data . . .for instance, Fortune reports on the best places to work, but have you ever seen where those places are? Or have you checked out a map of the most liveable states? Both are great links to send prospective candidates if you happen to work for one of the employers on the list or are located in one of the states . . .
Mashup allow you to transform anecdotal data into something that is absolutely proveable by combining data. For instance, as you will learn at SourceCon1, in a prior life I worked as an investigative reporter. I was extraordinarily impressed by the work of a colleague, Bill Dedman on redlining, lending institutions that racially discriminated against minority communities by refusing them loans as if someone had drawn aroud said communities with a big, fat red marker. Previously, all reporters could do is interview people who suspect they were discriminated against, but the banks would deny the allegations because the information was anecdotal. But then Dedman did something masterful: he proved relining by combing lending data with census data . . .and voila! He nailed banks with discriminatory practices.
Now, because we're a search firm that also happens to be a human capital intelligence practice (our Ferrari engine under the hood), I can't reveal the all the details of how we apply this to recruiting. But mashups do provide a quantum leap to more evolved clients who are seeking a competitive advantage in recruiting (we love those kinds of clients!). Of course, I will go into Mashups in my presentation at SourceCon1.
If you are going to be there, drop me an email at krista dot bradford at thegoodsearch.net and let's meet!
We've all been there. A search that refuses to be filled. The hiring manager is cranky and wants resumes, lots of them. But already you've gone through dozens, scores, even hundreds of CVs and nada. It's the kind of situation that makes you want to pack up your toys and go home.
Well, take a deep breath. In fact, take a few. (Staying calm is imperative.) If it gets personal, which it might, just step out of the way of the incoming barbs and let them blow past. Irritability comes from the pain the client finds himself or herself in. The solution requires compassion in the face of that inevitable dysfunction that comes from having too few people to get the job done.
Your job, my friend, is to identify the disconnect, to consult and inform, and then to redirect the search. Let's say the disconnect is an abosolute refusal to acknowledge a talent shortage, a labor crisis that demographically is growing by the day. The hiring manager implies that if you were really a great recruting, should simply be able to dial up and download a whole passel of great candidates. I've yet to meet Super Recruiter, capable of materializing candidates from thin air.
To find your own slice of Heaven in a search from Hell, you must define what it is that you are collectively looking for (must have requirements, nice to haves, and performance profile) and then you must find out how many of those candidates are available for the taking. Check job openings and note how many other companies are seeking the same people. Network and find out how competitive your opportunity is when compared to the other openings. Contact industry experts to discuss the search and possible work arounds to find previously untapped pools of talent. Next, you sit down and write a market intelligence report, summarizing your findings and possible solutions for the hiring manager, which can include changing the requirements of the role, making the opportunity more competitive, and/or throwing more resources at the search.
Of course, the hiring manager can decide to do nothing, except continue to yell for more resumes. Only thing is now there's the report that demonstrates the many reasons why yelling won't solve the problem. And it makes it clear that you are doing your job. It is time for the hiring manager to do his.
I just watched the Bourne Ultimatum (highly recommended if you're into action films). The movie brought back memories of my former life as a crusading reporter, and that, my friends, made me stop and think about the value of drawing on life experience outside the bounds of our official recruiting careers. I'd be interested in hearing from readers about what life experience informs your gut, your instincts, and your prowess in the human capital arena.
As a journalist, I've been shot at and tear-gassed and learned to 'duck and cover' in high heels, which now occassionally comes in handy at the office. I've been to war zones where I've had a pilot fall asleep at the wheel of his plane, have had bombs detonate around me, and where I learned the secret not to having one's legs blown off by a landmine was to have a campesino show you where to walk. (A valuable lesson in the value of tapping experts.)
I learned the value of shock and awe when I had a knife held to my neck by an angel dust crazed fiend in Watts: I told him to put his -expletive deleted - knife down, which he did . . giving me the split-second I needed to slide out of harms way. I interviewed a multitude of politicians, royals, rapists, and Presidents, which now, when viewed with head tilted to the side and one eye closed, resembles the wild array of candidates marching through my recruiting practice over the years. I interviewed the heads of death squads in Brazil, which now resemble occassional hiring managers in Searches from Hell. I worked undercover, which today informs my sourcing work. I even had a hit put on me for an investigative series I did on cocaine smuggers. My take away? Always sit with your back to the wall facing the door. (I have no idea what that has to do with recruiting . . .)
I developed computer-assisted research skills in part through befriending geeks and famous hackers, whom shall remain nameless. (Now, I befriend Shally . . .) I've investigated the CIA, and as a result, had the distinct impression the CIA investigated me. This is all to say that if you've lived . . .really lived . . .you have likely have developed deep skills that serve you well in recruiting. What follows is a montage of those crazy years, which to this day serve me well. See if you can guess where the footage was shot . . .
This just in: for those of us who spend the day tethered to our computers. A special shout out to AOL's Glenn Fox and his FoxGig blog for sharing this video with the world. Enjoy!
If you're having a tough time getting people excited about working at your company, perhaps the thing to do is have your own people star in their own MTV-like video. Connected Ventures, a startup in NYC, got busy one night and shot an amazing video featuring its own staff . . . It serves as an amazing promotional video for CV's recruiters. You fall in love withe the company and team in the space of just one song. Definitely worth duplicating the idea elsewhere. Click on the Lip Dub link below to watch:
