This is a can of worms that few HR or Talent executives even attempt to open since quality of hire is a difficult metric to measure.  Instead of looking at the positives of focusing on Quality of Hire (topic will be discussed at length in an upcoming blog), let’s look at the potential negatives to your organization of making a poor hiring decision.

Your company could be losing a significant amount of money in in figures that never end up on a balance sheet, however can be detrimental to your business success.  Think about lost opportunities, wasted time, and overall business degradation that occurs when you make poor or rash hiring decisions not based on quality of hire metrics.

Although most organizations will pay lip service to the fact that their most important asset is their people, few companies really ensure that they attract the right people and get the wrong people off the bus.  What is the real cost/effect of making poor hires or procrastinating on needed action of current staff?

Although many of these numbers are subjective, let’s first look at the overall, non-balance sheet cost of a poor hire:

1. Recruitment Costs

• HR/Talent Acquisition Time
• Management Time
• Interview Team Time
• External Tool Cost – Agency, Job Board, Etc.

2. Compensation

• Poor Hire Salary
• Poor Hire Benefits
• Overhead – Phones, Technology, Etc.

3. Productivity Losses

• Start-up Performance – Less than Acceptable
• Low Morale of Co-Workers
• Standards of Performance Lowered by Default

4. Lost Business

• Prospects Lost
• Customers Lost
• New Business Lost

5. Other Costs

• Unemployment Compensation
• Severance Allowances
• Legal Fees
• Reputational Impact – Often Leads to Lost Business

If you just add up the wasted time, the cost of a poor hire could be monumental!  Although there is no perfect was to calculate actual cost, it’s obvious that one bad hire could have lasting impact.  Isn’t the quality of hire really where an organization’s recruiting team can have the greatest impact?  Why do so few companies measure this?

Let’s switch gears for a minute. We do not live a perfect world where every hire can be guaranteed to be a good hire.  What do we do if we make a bad hire?  Why do so many organizations regard mediocre or poor performance with more time?  Let’s take a look at the potential cost of procrastination:

1. Holding on to Poor Performers

• Mediocre and even poor productivity becomes acceptable in the company because on non-action.
• Mangers waste too much time trying to change behaviors that are in the DNA of a poor performer.
• Wasted money on training programs to try and improve performance of poor performers that do not display the core competencies of the position.
• Management is viewed negatively for not addressing the low performance.
• Possible loss of customers and prospects.
• Eventual negative impact on the company’s performers.

2. Promoting an Individual Based on Something Other than Competency (Tenure, etc.)

• Possible loss of other employees and customers.
• Negative impact on morale.
• Potentially creating two gaps – one in the new position and one in the now open position.
• Possible replacement of the non-qualified employee.

Avoiding miss hires, not holding on to poor performers, and not promoting based on criteria other than competencies and behaviors, can save your organization time, costs, and potentially lost revenues.  Avoiding Quality of Hire Metrics will only lead to greater unpublished losses.

We all know the success of the twitter platform hinges on the number of followers someone can attract.  Bloggers, recruiters, and even companies are spending millions of dollars to build their list of followers in order to leverage them for marketing their products, services and careers.  Lets face it, as recruiters it takes hours and hours of tweeting in the hopes of generating groups of followers that may turn into future candidates.   With all of the effort it takes to actually leverage twitter, the real question is – Who owns your followers?

I have been asking both recruiters and sales reps this exact question and 100% answered the same way – every last one indicated that they owned all of their followers since they spent time to develop them.  Really?  Does the individual or their employer own these followers?

If history repeats itself, corporate and agency recruiters could be spending time building what they thought was their network, only to loose all rights to their employer.  In 2008 a recruiting consultant in the UK who works for Hays was forced to hand back all of his LinkedIn contacts!  The number one tool for executive recruiters may prove to be of little to no value when changing jobs!

In late 2010 PhoneDog.com filed a lawsuit against writer Noah Kravitz after he quit his job and took his Twitter account with him.  With the blessing of the company, Noah changed his screen name from Phonedog_noah to NoahKravitz  and kept the 17,000 followers that he had convinced to follow him while writing for PhoneDog.  Noah continued his tweeting under his new handle and 8 months later was served with a lawsuit – PhoneDog claimed that the Twitter list was a customer list and is asking for $340,000, or $2.50 a month per follower for eight months.

Can you imagine the impact this could have on recruiter if the courts rule in favor of PhoneDog.com?   We spend hundreds if not thousands of hours building our networks to better serve our employers, yet they may be able to strip away one of the most important tools of recruiter – the Rolodex!

New York IP attorney Henry Cittone recently told the New York Times: “This will establish precedent in the online world, as it relates to ownership of social media accounts.  We have actually been waiting to see such a case as many of our clients are concerned about the ownership of social media accounts vis-à-vis their branding.”

The case of PhoneDog v. Kravitz is scheduled to go before a judge in late January of this year and will likely establish some legal boundaries which are very hazy today.  Courts have long held that client lists, built up over time on a company’s good name and using its resources, are company property. But do Twitter followers — or LinkedIn contacts, or Facebook friends — meet the same standard? “There is a huge gray area here,” says Elise Bloom, co-chair of Proskauer Rose LLP employment law practice. She expects many more lawsuits like the Phonedog case before the dust finally settles.

“Because of the nature of social media, you have to share a certain amount of personal information and commentary in order to be effective,” Bloom says. “Attracting lots of followers and keeping them, which of course is what your employer wants, means that, yes, mixed in with the corporate messages, you are going to talk about planning your wedding or what restaurants you like.”

Fine, but it does raise the question: Is it your employer your followers are really interested in, or is it you?

We often talk about how to better screen candidates, but how thoroughly do we consider how candidates might screen us? This notion lead Workforce Management to compile a list of 200 Questions Job Candidates May Ask Your Company – here are some of my top picks. Candidates may never ask them. You may never outright answer them. But are your recruiters prepared to handle them? It could mean the difference between winning or losing the best candidates for your company.

Questions for Recruiters

• Can you tell me about this executive’s management style?
• Why is this position open?
• Is this a new position?
• What can you tell me about the person who will be interviewing me?
• Can you describe specifically how the company navigates/balances work and personal-life issues?

Questions for HR

• In your opinion, what is the most important contribution this company expects from its employees?
• I know that for the position for which I am interviewing, the company decided to recruit outside the organization. How do you decide from recruiting within and going outside?
• What major problems are being faced in this position or department right now?
• Can you please tell me a little bit about the people with whom I’ll be working most closely?
• Who are the company’s stars and how was their status determined?
• If you hired me, what would be my first assignment?

Questions for Hiring Managers

• What is the organization’s plan for the next five years? How does this department or division fit in?
• Will you be expanding or bringing on more products or services I should be aware of?
• What are some of the problems that keep you up at night?
• What would be a surprising but positive thing the new person could do in the first 90 days?
• How will my leadership responsibilities and performance be measured? By whom?
• What are the company’s strengths and weaknesses compared to the competition? (Name one or two companies.)
• What is currently the most pressing business issue for the company or department?
• What personal qualities or characteristics do you most value?
• Could you describe your typical management style and the type of employee who works well with you?
• What are some misconceptions people have about the company?
• Every company contends with office politics. It’s a fact of life because politics is about people working together. Can you give me some examples of how politics play out in this company?
• I’m delighted to know teamwork is highly regarded. But evaluating team performance can be difficult. How does the company evaluate team performance?
• How does the company balance short-term performance versus long-term success?
• How does the company contribute to thought leadership in the market?
• What are the success factors that will tell you the decision to bring me on board was the right one?

More Probing Questions (often for high-level assignments)

• Can you show or sketch me an organizational chart?
• What are the most important responsibilities of the job? How much time should be devoted to each area of responsibility?
• What are the biggest technical challenges ahead for this department/company?
• Presuming I’m successful in this role, where else might I be of service to the company?

Questions Designed to Close the Deal

• Until I hear from you again, what particular aspects of the job and this interview should I be considering?

Questions Stars May Ask

• What is the gross profit margin of the division I will be working in? What percentage of the total profit from the company does it generate? Is it increasing or decreasing?
• What is your company’s “killer application”? What percentage of the market share does it have? Will I be working on it?
• What makes this company a great place to work? What outside evidence (rankings or awards) do you have to prove this is a great place to work? What is the company going to do in the next year to make it better?
• What would I see if I stood outside the door at five o’clock? Would people be smiling? Staying late or leaving early? Would everyone be taking home work?
• Many of your competitors have great products and people programs. What is the deciding factor that makes this opportunity superior? Are you able to say things you will do to make this a great experience for me if I accept the position?
• Does your company offer any “WOW” benefits? Does it pay for advanced degrees? Does it offer sabbaticals? Onsite childcare? Relocation packages? Mentor programs? How are these superior to your competitors? What about job sharing? Flex-time arrangements? Telecommuting? Workout facilities?
• When top performers leave the company, why do they leave and where do they usually go?
• What is your “learning plan” for me in my first six months? What competencies do you propose I will develop that I don’t currently have?

Keep this in mind – there is no substitute for being prepared!

In speaking with hiring executives and candidates over the past few months, it became painfully obvious that many recruiters really fell short of expectations in 2011.   Whether it was because of work load, lack of resources, lack of technology, or a host of other real issues, the fact remains that confidence in recruiters continues to decrease while their effect on the entire recruiting process continues to increase.In the 2011 Corporate Leadership Council report, “The percentage if new hires rated above average fell significantly across the past year.”   The report goes on to state that “only one in three hiring managers are satisfied with the influence Recruiting has on the business.”  The harsh reality is that “nearly 80% of the variation in quality of hire is driven by differences in recruiters’ individual profiles and recruiter management practices.”

So what does this have to do with 2012 and New Year Resolutions?

Plenty!

On Saturday night as I drank a glass of great red wine and watched Dick Clark’s coverage of the ball dropping in New York’s Time Square, I received an email from a corporate recruiter that I have known for at least 12 years.  I didn’t read the attachment immediately, however I saw the title of the document he sent me.  It read “2012 Recruiter Resolutions.”  On Sunday morning, January 1, 2012 I opened his email and began reading his resolutions from a recruiter’s perspective.  The more I read the more I thought it should be shared with anyone in the business of recruiting.

After some debate and a bribe of dinner and Starbucks on me, he finally agreed to let me publish his list as long as I promised to keep his name anonymous.  Following is the unedited list from “Fred” (fake name used to keep up my end of the agreement!).

2012 New Year Recruiting Resolutions

• I will be honest with each candidate and tell them when they are no longer a candidate – verbally and not through email or some other automated method.
• I will communicate with my hiring managers often and reach out to them with updates before they come looking for me.
• I will not rely only on ‘Posting and Praying’ to fill my open positions but will justify the use of job boards for each position.
• I will not fall prey to the silver bullet syndrome of sourcing  - there is not one tool or medium that I will solely rely on.
• I will ask more questions to understand the real motivations of each candidate and will communicate each of these to my hiring manager.  (if I cannot do this, I have not done my job!)
• I will not hide behind email when interacted with my hiring managers and candidates.
• I will track the source of each of my hires and compare that at years end to their performance to better understand where the best candidates come from.
• I will set expectations with each hiring manager prior to beginning the search process.  This includes what I will commit to and what they need to commit to.
• I will make an investment in myself by attending at least 2 recruiter development sessions – even if on my own dime.
• I will hold myself accountable for the performance of each candidate I place for the first year of their employment with my company.

These are some pretty lofty goals, however they fit right in to correcting the perceptions that CLC identified above.  I would suggest that anyone involved in recruiting consider making these part of their recruiting resolutions for 2012.

As you review Fred’s resolutions,  what are yours?

as recruiters with the evaluation that comes from our hiring managers.   More than 60% of the recruiters I have spoken with that rank themselves as “great” recruiters were ranked as “poor” by the managers they support!

Recruiter Replies:

• My manager does not understand what I do.
• My manager never knows what he/she wants.
• My manager does not communicate with me – I need to track him/her down.
• My manager only wants me to email them resumes.

Hiring Manager Replies:

• My recruiter does not understand my business.
• My recruiter does not understand what I need/want.
• My recruiter does not communicate with me – I need to track him/her down.
• My recruiter just emails me the resumes to review – I make the decision on who to bring in.

Do you see the trend here?  Whether real or just perception, perception is reality to our hiring managers.   So the questions is: why do we have this disconnect?   Obviously there are multiple answers to this question – and much of the responsibility is on the head of the recruiter.   Our manager’s are not innocent in this disconnect, however the recruiter should be the one driving the process to change this misconception or perception.

As I write this I can feel the daggers being thrown at me, the evil stares that are directed at me, and the nasty tweets that will come as a result of my view on this.  After almost two decades as a recruiter, I believe it is our responsibility to set and manage our client’s expectations.

So what can we do to avoid or fix this disconnect? Here are few points to consider that I will address in future blogs.

• Become subject matter savvy
• Communicate often (Good or Bad)
• Develop the reputation as a problem solver
• Lead your manager when developing the search strategy
• Lead you manager when taking the job order

The whole notion of leading your hiring manager is key to developing an effective relationship with them.  So many recruiters take for granted what the manager is looking for and do not ask the right questions, in the right way, to solicit the needed response.

In almost every training session I lead, one exercise is to have each recruiter develop a list of questions they would ask their hiring manager when taking a new job order.   It shocks me every time to hear experienced and junior recruiters alike forget to ask basic questions or deep follow up questions to really understand the position and more importantly, what’s in the head of the manager. For example, most recruiters ask the basic questions that include: What are the minimum position requirements? What does the ideal candidate look like? Is this a replacement or new position? What is the position compensation?  When do you need it filled?

In and of themselves, none of these questions are inappropriate or incorrect.   Often its how we ask the question that makes the real difference.   Lets take one simple example.

Instead of asking: What are the minimum requirements of the role?

Ask: What specific experience does the candidate need to have? AND Rank those in order of need.

Will these solicit different responses – YES.   Try the second question and you will be amazed at the reply you receive from your manager.   When asked to define the specific experience and skills needed and to rank them, you will hear your hiring manager rationalize each ‘requirement’.  You will hear things like: ” I really need them to able to do XXXXX, however I could possible train them to do YYYYY.  Although they may have started with 8-10 must haves, usually they will express what is really critical and paint a more clear picture of their real needs – often only 4-5 items.

Instead of asking: Why is the position open?

Ask: Where did the last three people in the role go?

Understanding the success or failure of the previous candidate is critical to understanding the profile the manager is looking for.  If one or two of the previous employees were promoted, ask follow up questions and have the manager describe what made each person successful and what their previous experience was.  This will paint a picture of what the hiring manager has in mind as to the correct profile even though it can differ from the actual job description.

In short, taking the job order the right way by asking the right questions is step one to better understanding the needs of our managers.  It is our responsibility as trained recruiters to ask the leading questions that get a manager to properly describe the necessary skills and experience of the candidate.   Saying “My manager doesn’t know what they need” is a copout that can be avoided by a more structured approach to job order intake.

Having a roadmap of what information to ask a hiring manager is often very helpful and I have provided a link to a sample project strategy and intake document here.  Please feel free to modify to your specific needs and share your success with the community at large by posting your follow up comments.  Happy hunting and stay tuned for Part 2 and Part 3 of this series!

Center.  Although my blogs generally do not endorse an event or conference, I feel obligated to share to my experience as both a symposium speaker and attendee.

The event was titled “Building the World-Class Recruiting Organization…the journey continues.”  On the speaking roster were some of the most talented and thought provoking speakers I have seen at a recruiting event.   Andres Tapia started off the morning with an insightful look at the real business case for diversity and how many organizations and their diversity officers embrace color, however fail to embrace the individual and their culture.  

Todd Safferstone from the Corporate Leadership Council did an exceptional job of taking more than a years worth of data and painted real and credible picture of the current employment landscape and the effective good/bad recruiters have on candidate quality.

In the midst of subbing for his boss and watching the IPO of his employer (LinkedIn), Kevin Krantz moderated a panel that included Suzi Edwards (Thoughtworks), Diana Hughes (Northern Trust), and Michele Porfilio (Crowe Horwath) in discussion of LinkedIn best practices.  Although it was full of great content from the panel members, the sales pitch could have been toned down just a bit – no harm done Kevin!

An then there is the “Godfather” of recruiting, Gerry Crispin.  True to form, Gerry led an interactive, educational panel that included Annie Chae (Microsoft), Chris Gould (Aon Hewitt), and Tito Magobet (RIM) discussing best practices in sourcing and sourcing processes.

And finally, yours truly closed the event with a high energy and highly interactive session on recruiting metrics and their impact on recruiters as well as their often mis-allignment with business objectives.

In short, the leadership team at SMA of Greater Chicago did a fantastic job of promoting  the event, securing great speakers, delivered fantastic content, and managing the event for a flawless conference.   My hat is off to both Chloe and Ed!!!!If you missed the conference and are looking for additional opportunities to learn from real industry practitioners, check out www.thelearningconference.com.   This event, being held at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago in September, will include 9 “How-To” sessions encompassing topics ranging from developing a social media strategy, building a global sourcing function, to managing your hiring managers.

In what is still being described as a down economy, current reports reveal that banks reported a 77% increase in earnings last year, fueling a renewed focus on growth.

Cutting to the bone

With lending at a standstill and the stock market experiencing some of its lowest numbers in recent years, many banks cut pretty deep in late 2007, 2008 and 2009 and are now looking to staff up.  In addition many institutions are required to hire more employees to ensure they are in compliance with new laws such as the Dodd-Frank overhaul of the banking industry that passed in mid-2010.  Federal regulators are constantly looking under the hood of many of our largest banks to ensure the engine is running to currently defined specifications.

Poor Customer Experience

Although many banks are being forced to add staff to meet new regulations, others are adding staff due to some of the worst customer criticisms they have experienced in decades.  In recent years, institutions became notorious for freezing credit lines without notice, calling loans without even considering renewals, and cutting staff in branches to never before seen lows.

Pre-crash, I remember walking into my local Fifth Third or JPMorgan branch and being greeted by multiple bank staff members.  Today, I walk into these same branches and wait 15-20 minutes in line before I reach the teller or customer service rep chewing gum, and seemingly bothered by my presence.

Changing Their Tune

Bank of America regularly ranks first in mortgage servicing and second in home loans.  Due to struggling homeowners they have hired more than 12,000 to alter these loans under current loan modifications rules.

In a press release at the end of 2010 Bank of America revealed its intention of hiring more than 1,000 small business bankers by the beginning of 2012 – realizing how large a part of the economy small businesses really are.

CEO Brian Moynihan, even stated at one point that “Small businesses play a role in driving innovation and growth in our economy, and the steps we’re taking at Bank of America will help create more certainty, more confidence and more opportunity for small businesses in all of our markets.  Our small business bankers will live and work in the communities they serve, making them uniquely eligible to work with these businesses and wage the ideal combination of financial services to help them grow.”

In addition to small business lenders and credit executives, there also seems to be significant growth in mezzanine finance, wealth management, compliance/risk management, middle market commercial banking and even hedge funds.

Hottest Trends

As the economy continues to rebound, financial institutions will likely continue to hire at rates no seen since before the bust.  Here are the some of the key position trends within the areas mentioned above:

Mezzanine Finance

• Junior Analysts
• Analysts
• Associates

Retail Banking

• Personal Bankers
• Branch Sales Managers

Wealth Management

• Associate Bankers
• Private Bankers
• Wealth Managers
• Relationship Managers

Commercial Banking

• Commercial Lenders
• Relationship Managers
• Small Business Lenders
• Credit Analysts
• Underwriters

Compliance/Risk Management

• Credit Risk
• Operational Risk Management
• Legal
• Regulatory Compliance

Hedge Funds

• Investor Relations
• Operations
• Hedge Fund Administration
• Accounting
• Analysts
• Risk Managers
• Traders

Capital Markets

• Institutional Sales
• Fixed Income Traders
• Equity Traders

A quick search on Indeed.com shows over 300,000 open positions, when performing simple searches using the various titles above.  There is no doubt that competition is starting to rise in the financial services sector – so how do banks get ready for the next war for talent?  Stay tuned for a future blog!

I personally had conversations with 2 Corporate Heads of Talent acquisition that told me they could not find enough experienced people who really knew how to recruit, knew how to manage their hiring managers, or knew how to close candidates.  They both indicated that most of the recruiters they interview today understand how to post jobs on LinkedIn, send a job specific tweet, or perform a Boolean search, however few could properly engage a potential candidate after they found the name!!!

It was seemingly appropriate that both of these conversations happened just prior to my session titled Recruit… or get out of the way! What I spoke on addressed two major topics:

• More resources/money spent does not guarantee recruiting results: in essence, our studies have shown that those organizations who spend the most dollars on fancy sourcing tools, technologies, etc, actually have some of the lowest scores when measuring Return on Investment, candidate experience,  and hiring manager satisfaction.  More tools most often DID NOT mean better results.  In contrast, organizations who mastered the tools they had and focused on the entire recruiting process from identification to engagement to closing, faired much better.

• To be effective, recruiting organizations must master the 8 steps of recruiting including:
  1. The Brand
  2. The Job
  3. The Search
  4. The Sell
  5. The Deal
  6. The Quit
  7. The Start
  8. The Proof

For a copy of the presentation that explains both of the major issues more thoroughly and provides more information on the 8 steps mentioned above, click HERE.

With the swirl of activity now seen at recruiting conferences, on recruiting blogs, and in the media regarding the economy and the need to qualified employees, it seems obvious that we in the industry are headed for an implosion.   Until recruiters focus on marrying the right recruiting skills with the right resources, it seems likely we will experience another recruiting shortage.  Recruiters talk about not being able to find the right qualified candidates – well what about recruiting candidates?

I have been fortunate to speak at the event in past years and was invited back again this year to conduct a session entitled Recruit or Get Out Of The Way….  The purpose of the session is to look at the common mistakes that recruiting organizations make and learn how to overcome these often self-imposed barriers. As recruiters, we often talk about the tools we don’t have, the money we can’t spend and the resources we can’t get. Although these are all very valid issues, we seem to spend more time licking our wounds than leveraging the tools and resources we do have.

Be sure to join me for a high energy, engaging, and thought provoking session on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 from 3:30 – 4:45PM PST at the Manchester Grand Hyatt.  I look forward to seeing you there!

To me, Think Before You Post, means that the recruiter employs a process to their sourcing strategy that involves much more than posting their open job to Careerbuilder, Monster and the like and waiting for candidates to apply. Now before you accuse me of being anti-job board, let me say that I believe these tools can be very effective – when used at the right time. (We’ll come back to this in a minute) My excitement continued to increase as I read the introduction of the whitepaper, where it states in black and white: And believe it or not (it’s your choice, but we think you should believe it), most of the best practices apply before you ever post the job in question anywhere. YES, I thought as I continued reading. Someone actually gets it and will explain for us that there are many other options to candidate sourcing strategies that involve effective activities outside of the typical posting and praying.

The Arbita folks go on to ask the question of whether or not to outsource the sourcing function. This is a debate that I hear daily, and here are the 3 questions they asked:

• Are you searching for a skill set that is routine for your organization or fits into your sourcing expertise?
• Are you filling a one-of-a-kind job, or one that you’ll fill very sporadically? Or is it an industry new to you or one that requires a skill set with which you are unfamiliar?
• Do you have the support of backup sourcing expertise that may be required?

These are great questions that every recruiting organization should ask themselves when building a sourcing capability – kudos again to the authors of the paper!

Section three of the paper goes on to address the issue of keeping candidate sourcing internal, and the different levels of involvement by the recruiter and the potential candidate. Again, the authors do a great job of laying out a broad spectrum of sourcing activities that range from 100% candidate initiative to 100% recruiter initiative and everything in between.  By the time I finished this section I was really looking forward to the list of best practices that were promised as part of this publication.

As I turned to section 4, it was titled: The Seven-Step Best Practices Approach For Internal Sourcing. I thought for sure that I hit the jackpot and would see a very systematic approach to sourcing that involves the recruiter, the hiring manager and any others involved in the process. What I saw was this:

• STEP 1: Post to the job boards.
• STEP 2: Search your internal resources.
• STEP 3: Actively search the job boards.
• STEP 4: Search the Web for qualified resumes and profiles.
• STEP 5: Conduct deep-Web searches.
• STEP 6: Search trade associations and related resources.
• STEP 7: Cold call direct to competitive companies.

As soon as I read Step 1 I immediately went from elation to frustration.  The #1 step in internal sourcing best practices includes posting all of our jobs to external job boards – REALLY???? It’s best practices like these that lead to the phenomenon within corporate recruiting known as “Post & Pray”. The last time I checked, posting to job boards was not free and evidence continues to suggest that their effectiveness has continued to decrease over time. Let me be clear – I am not advocating abolishing job boards. There is a time and place for most every sourcing tool, however the real question is when should we use each tool based on our need?

A list of Best Practices generally can be applied to every situation with relative certainty in being effective.  In this case, it is my belief that these 7 steps provide a one size fits all approach to an issue that varies by recruiter, company, division, objective, etc.   In other words we are led to believe we can apply a solution to a problem that has not yet been defined.

After having spent the last 15+ years developing sourcing strategies, I am regularly asked what tools are the best and when should they be used.  I always answer the same way – it depends on what problem you are trying to solve and what do you already have as sourcing resources.

Now that I have opened my mouth, let me break down for you my list of sourcing best practices.

STEP 1: Understand the objectives.

This may almost seem to be a simple, silly question – however the answer will dictate how you approach developing your sourcing strategy.  What problem are you trying to solve?  What itch do you need to scratch? What is the most important objective?

Rank these is order of importance:

• Gather CI and BI on the market and competitors
• Help with screening in/out more candidates
• More qualified and interested candidates
• Recruiters do not have time/skills
• Pipeline talent ahead of demand
• Find more passive candidates
• Find more active candidates
• Increase size of talent pool
• Save $$$
• Lower time to hire
• Increase diversity hires
• Increase quality of hire

STEP 2: Create a talent profile/sourcing channel document.

Create a document that groups together like position profiles and clearly defines that channels that need to be covered by each profile.

Keys to remember:

• Main issue with recruiting/sourcing at the req level is if requirements change, expectations are not understood, etc.
• Look at your reqs and work out how many have similar (Multi-incumbent) requirements and group them together as a profile.
• Helps define the lanes in the road and clearly defines all the passive and active channels that need to be covered by profile and then allocate the appropriate resources against the channels. Reduce mine vs. your’s vs. duplication and redundancy.
• Ensure resources cover all the key sourcing channels and hidden talent pools.
• Acts as an anchor to discussion on what channels yield results by profile.
• Educates all members on different and creative tactics that need to be assessed and evaluated.
• Creates some corporate memory and understanding around the historical Channels ROI.

Sample:

STEP 3: Measure the results.

The holy grail of recruiting, measuring the effectiveness of each source selected in step 2 will help you create an effective future sourcing strategy by profile group.  REMEMBER – there is no silver bullet!

Sourcing strategies and effective tools will vary for each organizations based on variances in Sourcing objectives, Company reputation, Recruiter abilities, Position profiles, Etc. – I think you get the idea!

Suggested items you can measure:

• Candidate Pipeline by Sourcer/Recruiter
• Candidates in Formal Process by Sourcer/Recruiter
• Candidates by Target Company/Competitor
• Monthly Candidate Submits/Accepts by Sourcer/Recruiter
• Candidate Probability by Requisition
• Passive Candidate Throughput – Percentage
• Active Candidate Throughput – Percentage
• Sourcing Throughput – Candidates Rejected
• Target Company Throughput – Candidates Rejected
• QUALITY OF HIRE BY SKILLSET/REQ BY SOURCE

STEP 4: Create a formal plan.

Combine steps 1 thru 3 to create a formal sourcing strategy.

Sample Strategy:

Phase 1:

• Costs – 0 to $
• Timeline – Weeks 1 to 3
• What – Internal candidates; applicant tracking system; employee referrals; recent candidate networking; corporate website; etc.

Phase 2:

• Costs – $$
• Timeline – Weeks 2 to 5
• What – Already paid for resources such as resume databases; membership and attendee lists; existing research library; user groups; professional associations; competitive intelligence; etc.

Phase 3:

• Costs – $$$
• Timeline – Weeks 3 to 6
• What – Post externally starting with free boards; general job boards; industry specific job boards; niche job boards; professional journals; newsletters; banner ads; e-mail campaigns; print; etc.

Phase 4:

• Costs – $$$$
• Timeline – Weeks 4 to 6
• What – Engage external research vendors; perform in house research; etc.

Phase 5:

• Costs – $$$$$
• Timeline – Weeks 6+
• What – Engage external agencies

It’s time to really recruit or Get out of the Way!!!!!!