If you work for an auto company in Detroit or an airline or a mortgage company, the time to prepare for layoffs has already past. For the rest of us, the time is now to improve your job security.

While recruiting can be a team effort, it is also essential that you take some time to be selfish in order to protect your own career.

Here are 15 concrete steps to improve your job security as a corporate recruiter:

1. Make the business case for the department. Before you start being concerned about your own job, consider building up the reputation of the recruiting department as a major contributor to corporate success. The best approach is to lead a team that builds a strong economic case for the direct dollar impact recruiting has had on business revenue (work with the CFO’s office to make those calculations credible). Help the department demonstrate the catastrophic recovery time required following the last dramatic reduction in the recruiting function. Not only will this effort help limit departmental layoffs, it will also demonstrate to recruiting leadership that you know how to make a strong business case and that you’re doing your part to support the team. Build the case for continued hiring during tough times because of the wealth of talent that is available. Demonstrate to managers the high quality of hires who can be obtained by poaching the very best from firms that have been weakened by the economic downturn.
2. Be recognized externally. If any recruiters are to remain, those who have received external recognition for their excellence traditionally have been much more likely to be retained. External recognition can include winning awards (like ERE, RASBIC, or Optimas) or becoming an officer in professional recruiting associations like EMA. Write articles for the leading recruiting websites (like ERE.net) and the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. Speaking at local and national recruiting events can also improve your credibility internally as well as your visibility externally at other corporations that might consider hiring you.
3. Focus on growing business units. Most corporations have learned the value of continual hiring in certain key strategic business units even while simultaneously laying off employees in others business units (ask someone in strategic planning to point out the growth areas). Focus on requisitions for these key business units or consider a transfer so that you become the assigned recruiter for one of these growing business units, because this will decrease your chances of being laid off. If you can impress the GM of that business unit by producing some significant recruiting results, they might agree to go to bat for you with your director of recruiting. If you make yourself indispensable, some business leaders might be willing to actually fund your position during down times.

4. Identify the decision-maker. Who would make the layoff decisions within recruiting and HR? Strengthen your relationship with them and make them aware of your successes.
5. Become the “go to” person. Identify critical areas where the recruiting department will need to be strong in the future and become a leader in that area. Proactively make recruiting leadership aware that you are the person who can be counted on to be a project lead (before others) in critical “new” or hot areas of recruiting.
6. Increase your visibility. Identify and become involved with any high-profile projects that are underway at your company (within recruiting, HR, and in the business) and try to take on some type of leadership role on those teams. The more visible you are to management, the more likely it is you’ll be recognized for your contributions to the company. Obviously, becoming valuable to the business and to the broader HR department will improve your chances of survival. If you’re bold, do your own calculations to demonstrate that you have a high ROI to the firm. Also, provide recruiting management with a list of your company’s top performers, innovators, and award-winners that you have recruited.
7. Be a global recruiter. Despite an economic downturn, there will still be recruiting needs somewhere around the globe. If you become an expert in recruiting in one of those geographic areas (or if you show a willingness to transfer to an international office), you can increase your job security.
8. Become future-focused. Forecast for future problems and trends in global recruiting, generational recruiting, CRM, baby boom retirements, employment branding, recruiting technology, and metrics. Incidentally, if you demonstrate your expertise and convince senior management that the recruiting “lull” will only need to last over a short period of time at your firm, you might save both you and your colleague’s jobs.
9. Start a blog or be active in online forums. Writing a periodic blog that covers recruiting and how to get a job at your firm can help your company’s recruiting efforts dramatically. In addition, writing a blog sends a message internally that you are knowledgeable and that you know how to use the Internet. You can use metrics from the blog to demonstrate its popularity. Being active on Internet recruiting forums can increase your visibility both internally and externally. By answering questions and proposing new ideas, you make it easier for your boss to see the breadth and depth of your knowledge.
10. Train recruiters. Individuals who can successfully train new recruiters have an obvious value at firms that will need to hire and train “rookie” recruiters after the downturn.
11. Offer to go on a contract basis. Sometimes volunteering to work on a contract basis will provide you with income during a time when your organization is unwilling to invest in “permanent” recruiters.
12. Sales is an option. Great recruiters are, by definition, great salespeople. During down economic times, great salespeople are still in demand. As a result, consider transferring to a sales job until recruiting jobs return within the firm.
13. Transfer into HR. Unfortunately, great recruiters don’t always “fit” within the less-aggressive HR department. But if you’re looking for security, it’s an option to consider until recruiting returns. Avoid OD and training because they are often cut dramatically during corporate downsizing.
14. Become an expert. Make everyone aware that you are an expert in critical areas of recruiting that are unlikely to be totally eliminated (even after the recruiting department is decimated). Some of those areas of expertise that are likely to be more secure include employment branding, employee referrals, technology, metrics, social networking, and internal movement, among others.
15. Use budgets to stay current. Before the recruiting budget gets frozen or cut, take advantage of any available funds to upgrade your skills and employability through recruiter training (i.e., AIRS), seminars, and conferences.

Increase Opportunities

Although risky, here are some steps if you decide to leave early:

• Target growth firms. Identify the firms in your industry or region that are likely to continue growing, in spite of any economic downturn. Benchmark with them and build relationships with recruiting management there to increase your options.
• Build your networks. Great recruiters are experts in networking and now is the right time to utilize your networks to help judge your future employability.
• Target customers and competitors. If your firm’s customers and competitors see the excellence of your work, they are more likely to consider picking you up after a layoff.
• Think consulting. If your firm allows it, do some external consulting (even for free) in order to improve your skills in case you later want to become an independent consultant.
• Consider third-party recruiting firms. This only works if you’re really aggressive, but building relationships with the vendors that your firm currently works with might increase your options.
• Consider relocation. Even during severe downturns, there is intense recruiting going on somewhere around the world. Because most international firms realize that U.S. recruiting expertise is some of the best, your chances are good, if you are willing to relocate and you have strong language skills.
• Consider a little vacation. The war for talent has been a real battle and any recruiter worth his or her salt has earned a little vacation! If you saved your money, you can wait out the recession until recruiting returns.
• Post your résumé. It’s often a good idea to test the market before layoffs get out of hand. Use sources and methods that can be successfully hidden from your current employer. If you’re risk-adverse, at least talk to some laid-off recruiters with similar expertise to get some idea of what the market is like.

Early Warning Signs

Don’t be naive or caught blind-sided. Now is the time to begin assessing the risk of potential layoffs and to determine “where you stand” in the potential layoff order.

Some possible action steps include:

• Work with finance, budgeting, and strategic planning types within your company in order to determine when and how severe the budget cuts may be. Examine previous down cycles to see what indicators were accurate “predictors” in the past. Review your own firm’s financials, 10Ks, stock price growth, sales and production forecasts, and external analyst reports to assess your firm’s stability.
• Look for early warning signs of turmoil like merger activity, scandals, pay freezes, promotion freezes, travel freezes, and purchasing freezes for nonessential items. Also view the exit of senior managers and major players as an early warning sign. Use your network within HR to see if anyone is exploring RPO outsourcing options. Be especially cognizant of any activity involving “WARN” notifications (Government mandated layoff notices), or soliciting outplacement vendors. Obviously, major cuts in requisitions or actual hiring freezes must be looked at as a possible “beginning of the end.” Finally, look at similar firms in your industry, because they might be early indicators of what is likely to happen at your firm.
• Look at your own awards, recognition, seniority, performance appraisal, customer service ratings among managers, and forced-ranking scores to estimate your own survivability. If you’re really bold, sit down with your recruiting leadership and ask what you can do to assess your position and then to improve it.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately, I’ve known hundreds of recruiters who were forced to abandon recruiting permanently because they were either “naïve” or they waited too long to be proactive in building their job security and employability.

Like it or not, recruiter layoffs are coming. If you love recruiting as I do, take steps now to ensure that you have a long career (without interruptions) in this exciting field.

There is no formal body in recruiting that “codifies” the established practices. In this article, I am attempting to help resolve that problem by compiling a list (from my 35-plus years of experience in the field) that can serve as a foundation for your actions.

Of course, principles are guidelines to point you in the right direction. Remember to vary your direction depending on your business situation and global location.

20 Principles of Recruiting and Talent Management

The following is a list of 20 principles, laws, or guidelines to help you design and implement effective recruiting strategies and approaches:

1. A well-defined strategy. The foundation of any recruiting effort is a clearly defined and communicated strategy that illustrates the brand message, target candidates, primary sources, and most-effective closing approaches (the who, what, when, and how). Poorly defined or communicated strategy elements results in wasted resources and weak hires. In addition, the best strategies have the capability of “shifting” as the economy and the demand for candidates change.
2. Pipeline approach. The most effective recruiting approach is to build a steady stream of applicants (a pipeline). In order to build a continuous “talent pipeline,” use a “pre-need” approach that includes workforce planning, branding, continuous sourcing, and onboarding.
3. Competitive. The most effective recruiting approaches are compared against and are clearly superior to those of a firm’s talent competitors. Because competitors will quickly copy your most effective approaches, a continuous side-by-side assessment of “yours versus theirs” is necessary. A sub-principle applies to candidates: because the very best are always in high demand, if you don’t have to literally “fight” for a candidate, in most cases, you do not have the best candidate in the field.
4. Employment branding. The approach with the highest impact and the only long-term recruiting strategy is employment branding, the process of building your external image as an excellent place to work. By proactively making it easy for potential applicants to read, hear, or see the factors that make working at your firm exciting, you can dramatically increase the number and quality of your applicants over a long period.
5. Global. For jobs that require top talent, the process must have a global recruiting capability. This is because the very best talent is unlikely to live within commuting distance of your job.
6. Target employed “non-lookers.” The best recruiting processes are designed to identify and successfully hire currently employed top performers. This means that the process needs the capability of identifying and convincing employed individuals who work at your competitors and may not be actively looking for a position. Unfortunately, most corporate recruiting approaches are designed to attract “active” candidates.
7. Speed. Making fast hiring decisions is essential whenever a candidate in high demand decides to make a job switch. Top candidates must be hired using “their” decision timetable. Research shows that top candidates are off the market in less than half of the normal corporate time to fill.
8. Sourcing is critical. If you don’t utilize sources that attract a high percentage of top performers, it is unlikely you will make a quality hire. After employment branding, effective sourcing is the most critical element of the recruiting process. Generally, the most effective source is employee referrals. Other effective but under-used sources include recruiting at professional events and contests. Using ineffective sources means that you must spend inordinate amounts of time and money on candidate screening in order to avoid a weak hire. The source that is used must be shift, depending on the type of candidate required for that position. Unfortunately, many recruiters use the same exact sourcing scheme for every job.
9. Data-based decisions. Base decisions on sources, screening tools, and which individual to hire on facts and data, not emotion or even common practices. Making decisions based on objective data helps eliminate biases and causes the recruiting process to produce more consistent, reliable, and high-quality results. It’s also true that in a fast-changing world, “what works” changes quickly so recruiting practices become obsolete quickly. Unfortunately, rather than being a small part of recruiting decisions, emotions and “it’s the way we’ve always done it” tend to dominate corporate decision-making.
10. Build a recruiting culture. The most effective approaches build a corporate-wide “cultural of recruiting” where every manager and employee is a recruiter. Because of their continuous contact and interaction with outside talent, everyone must play an important supplemental role in identifying talent and in spreading the employment brand. The most effective recruiting strategies convince employees to be 24/7 talent scouts, making every employee a recruiter.
11. A candidate-centric approach. Focus the process on the candidate’s needs, their job selection criteria, and the candidate experience. A significant part of recruiting is “selling” the candidate on applying for and accepting the job. At least in part, recruiting must follow the customer relationship management (CRM) and the sales and marketing models. Often, the number-one reason why candidates reject job offers is the way that they were treated during the hiring process. It’s also important to note that candidates may be current or future customers, so treating them poorly can directly impact future revenue.
12. Prioritize jobs and targets. Effective recruiting processes maximize resource utilization by identifying and focusing on the positions with the highest business impact. That generally means revenue-producing and revenue-impact jobs, as well as jobs in high margin and rapid growth business units. The process should also target high-impact individuals known as top performers, innovators, and gamechangers.
13. Managers are the delivery system. Although corporate recruiting designs the process, managers “deliver” and execute a significant part of that process. As a result, hiring managers must understand its elements and support its precise execution. You must effectively demonstrate to individual hiring managers that they will suffer whenever a bad or “butts in chairs” hire is made. Therefore, recruiting must make a strong business case to individual hiring managers that convinces them of the importance of executing the process precisely. The most effective way of influencing hiring managers is by converting recruiting results into their dollar impact on that individual manager’s revenue and profit.
14. Diversity. An effective recruiting process must include enough variation and personalization to meet the unique needs of diverse individuals from around the world. Diversity and inclusiveness are becoming not just legal terms but critical components in building global sales.
15. Selling applicants. The very best recruiting processes builds “relationships” with potential applicants over time in order to increase their level of trust and interest. Unfortunately, no amount of benefits or job features will be convincing to high-demand applicants without this level of trust. Because all candidate-screening processes have flaws, stretching out the assessment process over time allows you to learn more about the candidate and decrease the chances of making a bad hire. The best approaches are designed to take advantage of the fact that a target candidate’s willingness to consider a new job changes quite rapidly, as a result of changes in their own job and organization.
16. Technology. The best processes rely heavily on technology and the Web in all aspects of the recruiting process. Technology can improve screening, increased hiring speed, cut costs, and provide the firm with the capability of hiring globally.
17. Integration. Recruiting processes must be integrated with other HR processes. Those recruiting processes that operate independently rather than in unison with other HR functions like relocation and compensation will produce diminished results.
18. Talent shortages. Although industries often face talent shortages, individual firms can actually have a surplus of candidates if they have a strong employment brand, a great referral program, and a candidate-friendly hiring approach. For example, handsome movie stars seldom have difficulty getting “dates” even when the average “Joe” can’t find a single one. Talent shortages are relative and depend on your image and what you have to offer.
19. Remote work options. Offering candidates remote work options dramatically increases the candidate pool. Firms that have the capability of managing candidates who work from remote locations have a distinct competitive advantage. They can attract the top performer who doesn’t live in the area, who desires working at home, or who isn’t willing to make a long commute.
20. Metrics and rewards impact recruiting. Every aspect of recruiting improves dramatically when managers and employees are measured, recognized, and rewarded for their contribution to recruiting. By convincing senior management and HR to place metrics and rewards on key aspects of recruiting, you send a clear message about its importance.

Final Thoughts

Almost every business function has come to realize that if you want consistency and excellent results, you must clearly define the rules of the game. There are, of course, exceptions and perhaps even additions that can be made to the principles outlined above.

But, after working with recruiters and recruiting managers from hundreds of companies, I found that these guidelines will give you a pretty good idea of the essential laws of recruiting and where to focus your efforts if you want superior recruiting results.

It’s almost impossible to pick up a newspaper or magazine and not read about the economic conditions that are putting a strain on almost everyone’s budget and way of life.

Rather than ignoring it or hoping it will go away, look upon it as a chance to “turn lemons into lemonade” and to further strengthen your employment brand image.

It has been common for corporations to offer benefits to their employees to ease their commutes or to help save the environment. However, the recent dramatic rise in gas prices provides corporations with an opportunity to really amp up their offerings, and to demonstrate to those they wish to attract and retain that the organization “cares” about them.

In fact, one study by Dr. Wayne Hochwarter, of Florida State University, found that high gas prices led to more stress on the job, thus impacting employee performance. In his research, Dr. Hochwarter found that one-third of the employees surveyed said they would quit their job for a comparable one closer to home.

Research by outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that 34% of employers had potential candidates who turned down jobs because of long commutes and added nearly 8% of employers report turnover caused by high transportation costs.

Acting now provides an opportunity to build your employment brand because the combined topics of gas prices, food prices, and the mortgage crisis are hot in the media. As a result, any bold action by a corporation is likely not just to be viewed positively by employees and potential applicants but also by those covering consumer confidence and spending in the media.

Efforts by employers to help workers cope with these economic factors will likely be written up in the press and in business publications. Not only would you be helping your workers, but you will also be building employee loyalty while getting free PR to further strengthen your employment brand image. It’s an opportunity that won’t last long, so it shouldn’t be missed.

Many firms have already been recognized for excellence in these areas, including Google, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco, Nike, and HP. There are many actions to consider, and I’ve separated the various options into broad categories below.

Promoting Drive-Less Options

The first group of options is relatively cheap, but they can have a significant impact on the amount of money your employees need to pay in commute costs. 12 “drive-less” options include:

1. Compressed workweek options. Offer schedules that allow commuters to reduce the number of days they come in to work. A 4-day, 10-hour workweek is the most popular, but some professions also use 3-day, 12-hour weeks. The key is to not just offer these programs, but to encourage individual managers to allow their employees to actually take advantage of them. If coverage is an issue, consider allowing employees to alternate on/off alternative schedules.
2. Work at home. A related option is to allow employees to choose on their own to work one or more days at home. In addition to saving commute costs, firms like Best Buy have found that telecommuting can generate up to a 35% increase in employee productivity, and research by the Gartner Group found up to a 40% improvement. Allowing employees to take periodic “planning” or innovation days where they spend their time thinking and planning for the future can also be an effective option. Benchmark firms in this area include Best Buy, Sun, IBM, Agilent, and HP.
3. Satellite offices. By establishing satellite offices closer to where employees live, firms can offer opportunities for employees to use restricted computer and communications networks that cannot be accessed remotely while reducing the mileage employees drive to and from work. Employees that need to use company equipment (but do not necessarily need to meet with coworkers) can decide on which days they will work from these remote corporate locations. Microsoft’s touchdown space is an excellent example of this practice; however, Sun is the benchmark firm in this area, locating offices on all major access routes into major metropolitan areas.
4. Bike/walk to work. This can both improve health (reducing benefit costs) and help employees save on gas. Companies can facilitate this practice by offering maps that highlight the flattest and quickest routes. They can also help by providing relaxed dress codes that allow employees to wear athletic clothes, as well as providing bike storage space and showers for their peddling employees. Walk to work or walk to mass transit location programs can have similar positive impacts.
5. Make all-day meetings remote. Rather than requiring everyone to commute to all-day meetings, use conference calls and Web-based tools to allow some workers to attend meetings from home. These options can also save airline travel costs. HP and Cisco are the benchmark leaders in this area.
6. On-site services. Dry cleaning, concierge, flowers, and take-out food can reduce the need for employees to run errands during lunch and after work. Also, consider vendor-provided gas-saving services like engine tune-ups and tire inflation. Google is a leader in this area.
7. Offer online training. This can save on travel costs. Also, consider offering university classes on-site, so that your employees can improve themselves without the increased costs associated with driving to a local university.
8. Reduce lunchtime and snack travel. For firms with few on-site lunch options, consider inviting lunch wagons that can sit in the parking lot. Other options include providing box lunches and snacks on site, as well as menus from local restaurants that deliver, shifting the cost of ordering out to the food provider.
9. Increase company car usage. Firms can help their employees reduce their personal gas costs by liberalizing or expanding the number of opportunities for employees to use company cars.
10. Job transfers. In organizations with many outlets (like retail), reduce employee gas usage by offering a one-time option to facilitate transfers to locations closer to the employee’s home. Consider offering internal “save on gas” job fairs where workers can meet with managers from other locations to see if relocation is a viable option that provides mutual benefits.
11. Shift the organization’s start time. In congested areas, starting your commute an hour earlier or later can result in significant gas savings as a result of fewer backups and less congestion.
12. Live close to work facilitation. Firms can offer services or work with local Realtors in order to make it easy for their employees to find apartments and housing close to the workplace. The leading firm in this area is Facebook, which offers an astonishing $700 per month salary supplement for employees who live within a mile of their headquarters. University Hospitals in Cleveland is also a benchmark organization.

Share the Commute

• Coordinate shared commuting. Firms can help their employees to both save on gas and tolls by facilitating employee carpools, van pools, or a company shuttle. In many large cities, tax breaks encourage corporate van-pooling programs. An additional benefit is the reduced need for employee parking. Microsoft, Yahoo, and HP are benchmark firms. Also, offer a company-sponsored shuttle bus from transit stations close to work or from strategic locations.
• Coordinate schedules. More individuals would share rides if they could share similar schedules with individuals who live close to them. This option requires you to work with individual managers to ensure that they make commuting part of their scheduling decision criteria.

Facilitate Opportunities for Cheaper Gas

• Negotiate group discounts. Because corporations with many employees have significant buying power, work with local fuel suppliers and individual gas stations to negotiate volume discounts for employees who use targeted stations. Incidentally, try similar options for bulk food items to help employees deal with the rising cost of food.
• Buy “company” gas. Some organizations have their own fueling facilities and these firms might be able to find a way to offer that gas to employees. By buying “gas futures,” firms can successfully hedge against future price increases (i.e., Southwest Airlines has successfully done this for its aviation fuel).
• Allow employees access to “fleet” stations. Some firms utilize gas stations that provide gasoline for fleet cars. Negotiate with their vendors to identify opportunities where employees can get gas at these low-priced fleet stations.
• Negotiate “buy” options. Use the company’s volume buying power to help negotiate lower-cost deals with vendors that allow your employees to lease or buy more gas-efficient vehicles. Vehicles might include scooters, electric segues, bikes, and compact or hybrid cars. (Note: there federal and in some cases state tax advantages associated with purchasing hybrid cars.)
• Subsidize mass transit. Offer subsidies to individuals who use mass transit. Some government agencies provide tax advantages to firms that facilitate the use of mass transit (others provide penalties to those that don’t).

Increase Manager and Employee Participation

Corporations can take specific steps to encourage both individual managers and employees to participate in gas-saving options:

• Measure and reward managers. Recognize those who are “commute cost” friendly; conduct an employee survey to identify the best.
• Executive participation. Have the CEO and senior executives actively participate in company programs (i.e., participating in car pools, biking to work, or occasionally driving the company shuttle).
• Gas incentives. Provide gas cards as incentives and rewards for top-performing employees and managers.

Miscellaneous Options

• Conduct a survey and ask employees what they think you should be doing.
• Benchmark other firms to see what else is possible.
• Allow compacts, hybrids, and scooters to park closer to the building to send a message that you care about the environment.
• Help them sell their gas-guzzler car or subsidize the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles.
• Add saving gas as a criterion for selecting new facility sites.
• Consider reducing nepotism restrictions so that family members can work together and thus, commute together.

Provide Employees with Opportunities to Earn More Money

Because rising costs are essentially lowering your employees’ “real” standard of living, provide your employees with more opportunities to earn more money during these tough economic times:

• Opportunity for overtime. Encourage managers to develop more opportunities for employees to work overtime to help them offset the rising cost of living.
• Pay for performance. Offer increased opportunities for performance-based pay. Although giving employees “more money” is always a high-cost item, if any additional pay is based strictly on improved performance, both firms and employees can come out ahead.
• Increase mileage allowance. The IRS has recently recognized a higher cost of gasoline by increasing the amount of reimbursement that it allows per mile traveled. Companies can help their employees by not waiting and increasing their mileage allotment immediately.
• COLA. A final option to consider is offering your employees periodic cost-of-living adjustments. Sometimes this is necessary in order to decrease your employees’ need to look for a second job (or even a job at another firm) in order to meet their family needs.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there are many options available to corporations. For the best impact, implement a comprehensive program with many elements. Not only will this approach have a larger impact on employees, but it also increases the odds of your effort receiving positive exposure.

That is, until recently, when Microsoft raised the level of its recruiting aggressiveness to the point where it would have to be rated an “A” on the aggressiveness scale.

The first indication came prior to the initial merger offer to Yahoo, when its central sourcing team directly emailed recruiting messages to Yahoo engineers, playing on their concerns about Yahoo’s future. Just last week, they ran a full-page color ad in the paper announcing in bold type…“Microsoft has search jobs in the valley”.

There is no secret who the ad was intended for, despite daily defections from Yahoo there is still some top-notch talent inside the company that the competition would love to poach. No subtlety here!

Develop Talent, Hire Talent, or Buy the Competition

In nearly every industry, talent is the primary driver of both a firm’s capability and its capacity to perform. For firms that are growing, either holistically or through industry consolidation/expansion, there are really only three options to ensure access to talent.

Some companies opt to build or develop talent; unfortunately, development is often a “slow” option that provides mediocre results in a fast-changing world.

A second option, growth through mergers and acquisitions, allows the firm to increase its capabilities relatively rapidly as a result of “buying” or merging with a major competitor. It is one of the most common and fundamentally sound business strategies available, and one in constant use around the world. However, M&A is expensive, and often leads to defections of the very key talent you have liked to have retained. Mergers and acquisitions can be hostile or tame, something we have witnessed with Microsoft’s attempt to acquire in recent months.

When M&A doesn’t work, companies have yet another option, one that is less complex, less time-consuming, and much less expensive. This option is to poach away most, if not all, of the talent that provides the competition with its capacity to exist, something Microsoft is obviously doing in a very public way.

The “Neutron Bomb” Recruiting Approach as an Alternative to Mergers

The “Plan B” poaching strategy that firms should consider a feasible alternative to mergers and acquisitions focuses on using strong recruiting approaches to directly “poach away” the target firm’s key employees. This effectively gives you access to all of the capability that produced their intellectual capital without the internal drama that led to the competitor’s chaotic state.

I call this recruiting-based alternative to mergers the “neutron bomb” strategy, because much like the military’s neutron bomb after detonation, “the buildings” are left intact but the people are gone. (Yes it’s the same neutron bomb metaphor that earned Jack Welch the former CEO of GE, his nickname “Neutron Jack.”)

Microsoft not so subtly revealed its new recruiting emphasis by running a full-page color ad last week in the San Jose Mercury News (the key newspaper of the Silicon Valley). While it’s generally true that employed engineers don’t read newspaper career sections when they’re looking for a job, the act of placing a full-page ad garners buzz on the Internet, blogs, and social networks.

In that ad, Microsoft made it clear that it was investing heavily in search technology (the strong-suit of competitor Yahoo) and that it wanted to grow employment in that area. It also noted that it currently has over 2,000 employees in the Silicon Valley, thus indicating to potential Yahoo employees that relocation wouldn’t be necessary.

Advantages of Recruiting Versus M&A

If you have enough courage and a strong recruiting function, there are many advantages associated with implementing a “neutron” recruiting strategy in lieu of buying a competitor:

• Opportunity to select the best. Recruiting allows you to “cherry pick” the target firm’s key innovators, game-changers, and top performers in just the critical knowledge areas where you need help. With M&A, unfortunately, you have to acquire every employee, including unnecessary administrative staff and a significant number of slackers. While you can get rid of them post-acquisition, it’s a messy process. Using professional football as an analogy, in lieu of buying the entire team complete with its facilities, you would instead focus on recruiting away the best coaches and top quarterbacks, running backs, pass rushers, and wide receivers. In the end, you would have “cherry picked” a small number of individuals but a significant portion of the team’s capability to win.
• Avoid merger pains. When you merge two large companies, you must also merge different corporate cultures, business processes, and management structures. This integration is a major effort that can distract your employee’s attention away from the customers and the product. In contrast, when you recruit away a firm’s employees as individuals or in small, intact teams (known as “lift outs”) these new hires don’t carry with them as high a level of hope or expectation that everything will remain the same. Instead, these individuals immediately realize that they are expected to change and adapt to the existing processes and culture.
• No complicated negotiations or approvals are required. Unfortunately, firms have to get the government’s approval of any large merger, but you don’t have to get anyone’s permission to recruit away a firm’s key employees (this is because employees are not owned and are free to leave at any time. Consequently, there are few legal issues if your recruiting effort focuses on recruiting the individual employees for their capability and not the firm’s proprietary technologies. In fact, your recruiting effort can even be general enough that you don’t have to mention a competitor firm by name. For example, in the case of the current Microsoft recruiting effort, Yahoo’s current search and advertising employees already know that the recent advertising “deal” with Google carries with it the possibility that their job and their impact will be lessened at Yahoo. Merely letting the world know through advertising and word-of-mouth approaches that Microsoft is doing significant hiring and investment in a particular functional area is sufficient on its own to attract at least the interest of most of the targeted employees.
• Recruiting processes are already in place. Recruiting new employees is an everyday occurrence, so there are processes and staff already in place to handle any upturn in volume. In direct contrast, M&A activities occur infrequently and as a result, they require the firm to put together a new M&A and transition team each time they make a major move. If you have a strong employment brand (as Microsoft does) the odds of reaching your recruiting goals under this strategy are extremely high.
• No need to lay off. Under the M&A approach, you acquire every employee. Unfortunately, you may get a “surplus” with some weak employees or unnecessary duplicates. If you use the “neutron” recruiting strategy, you won’t need to plan for and execute the massive restructuring and the almost inevitable layoffs that are commonly associated with M&A. As a side benefit, it allows you to avoid the upturn in job-seeking among your most valued employees that research shows happens as a result of even modest downsizing.
• Recruiting may result in lower turnover. When you recruit new employees, you don’t have to give them the complicated and uniform stock option and severance benefits that are generally associated with employees acquired as a result of a merger or acquisition. Because these new hires were hired as “individuals”, the hiring package doesn’t have to be uniform across the board, as it is with mergers. As a result, you are able to negotiate a tailored package with these “recruited” new hires, which is more likely to directly meet their individual wants and needs (thus limiting the risk of future turnover). In addition, because these individuals were “cherry picked,” they are much more likely to stay with your firm because they have been selected to closely “fit” your corporate culture and your business growth areas.
• Others will follow. Fortunately, it’s not necessary for your recruiting function to initially target a huge number of employees. The reason behind this is the fact that once you successfully recruit away a company’s key leaders and influencers in a particular functional area, it’s highly likely that many others will choose to follow. Some will come on their own volition, while others will come as a result of referrals from newly hired employees.
• Leave behind damaged remnants. If you are successful in recruiting away a significant number of the targeted key employees, you leave your former competitor in a confused and often weakened state. This gives your firm an opportunity to move ahead rapidly, while your competitor must take time to regroup. This might seem harsh to some in HR, but remember, the business world is highly competitive and if you frequently use the phrase “war for talent,” it’s only natural that you would use more “war like” approaches when recruiting.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately, HR and talent management are seldom brought into a merger or acquisition situation until after the deal is already done. Even then, their primary role is just to smooth the transition into a single firm.

However, there is a role for talent management prior to the decision to even begin M&A activity. That role is to offer senior management the option of achieving almost the same results (gaining a large volume of quality, trained talent quickly) without the associated complexity and costs related to mergers and acquisitions.

In my experience, not very many Directors of Talent Management or Chief Talent Officers have had the courage to step forward and intervene before major merger plans are underway. However, because M&A activity is continually increasing, even in our troubled economy, now might be the time to make an exception and to propose the “neutron” recruiting option as Plan B.

Recruiting talent is a business function, and business activities get branded as hostile or aggressive all the time without the negative connotations that are often associated with aggressive or hostile recruiting. As global competition heats up and the balance of global economic power shifts away from the United States, recruiters are going to have to get over their personal objections and embrace business realities.

Traditional interviews continue even though no one enjoys them! There is little argument that traditional interviews are time-consuming for all parties involved, often repetitive, and highly subjective. If you include the time it takes to write up notes and to debrief the interview team with time actually spent interviewing candidates and multiply that by the number of candidates considered, you would quickly realize what a serious “time drain” interviews are on corporate resources.

Fortunately, recruiters looking to embrace a radical new approach and save countless hours of needless work (not to mention misery and frustration) can follow the lead of singles looking for love.

“Speed interviewing” and the concepts supporting it come directly from the social phenomena known as “speed dating.” Supported by lots of cognitive research that suggests initial intuition is as accurate as or more accurate than prolonged assessment, a few leading-edge organizations are hopping on board and testing speed interviewing as a possible solution to end the giant disconnect between society today and the HR systems of yesterday.

Brave corporate pioneers include such firms as IBM, Abbott Labs, PNC Financial, Travelodge, Texas Instruments, the Salt River Project, and RBC. The companies use this process for experienced candidates and for college hires.

Thin Slicing: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

HR traditionalists are probably wondering how anyone could gather enough information in a short burst of interaction to make a decision as complicated as whom to hire. After all, there are so many parameters to consider.

However, if you pay any attention to the New York Times bestseller list, you might have heard about a book entitled Blink written by Malcolm Gladwell. While there are numerous learnings in the book relevant to HR, one of the most relevant to this discussion is the concept of “thin slicing.”

Thin slicing is something we all do every day. It is the act of taking an activity and breaking it down into micro segments, which then get coded and analyzed for trends. For instance, when you are driving, your mind captures input from a variety of sources including your car’s instrument cluster, the rear- and side-view mirrors, your peripheral vision, the sounds around you, and of course, your view out the windshield. Your mind then analyzes to help you make a decision about your next course of action. The capture and analysis of all that data takes place in seconds.

Every activity can be thin sliced. While Gladwell introduces several examples of thin slicing, one of the most relevant to us in recruiting has to do with analyzing married couples to determine the health of their relationship.

This is the most relevant example, because accepting a job with an employer is a lot like accepting a spouse in a marriage. Both parties come to the table with expectations, both parties enter into the arrangement voluntarily and can exit at any time, both parties derive benefit from the relationship, and yet both parties remain separate entities continuing to grow/evolve.

In presenting the research of psychologist John Gottman, Gladwell explains how thin slicing videotaped interaction between two married individuals allows Gottman and those trained by him to predict with 95% accuracy how likely the marriage is to last. Gottman’s research of 3,000 couples started in the 1980s. He began with an hour of videotaped interaction and coded each second of video by tagging it with one of 20 enumerated emotions that were present in each of the participants’ facial expressions. The enumerated emotions were then summed and added to additional biofeedback data producing a ratio of positive to negative.

After years of study, he discovered that the observation period could be cut to 15 minutes with a negligible impact on predictive accuracy and to three minutes if an 80% accuracy rating is tolerable. Today, Gottman only looks for four signs: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt, the last being the most telling sign of failure.

Thin slicing works because the subconscious mind is very methodical and rational. In reality, it functions like a finely tuned computer program. The conscious mind, on the other hand, is not as methodical, rational, or unbiased.

As a result, decisions influenced by the subconscious, something that often occurs when time does not exist to evaluate things further, tend to be much more accurate and fact-based.

Speed Dating Concepts

Speed dating is a relatively modern process that is used to help singles rapidly screen a large number of potential dates. The process has been used successfully by dating services, senior citizen groups, and even churches. It was designed because many individuals found that the traditional approach to dating just wasn’t working for them.

The concept is simple and relatively straightforward. Individuals looking for a date sit at separated tables and do a five-minute interview with their first potential date. Then a bell goes off, and each of the potential dates get up and rotate to another five-minute interview, until they’ve interviewed everyone who has interested them. The concept is popular because it allows you to meet and then quickly determine whether an individual fits your selection criteria and is worth the time and the risk involved in an actual one-on-one date.

Speed dating advantages include low risks, a brief time commitment for each assessment, and an opportunity to meet and assess a large number of candidates all at once. Speed dating groups routinely report high satisfaction rates, as well as relatively high dating success rates, in spite of the relatively short initial assessment time.

Like Gottman’s experience with assessing married couples, many who have found speed dating effective had to complete the process several times to help hone their subconscious mind’s ability to discern what truly leads to success versus what the conscious mind states you should look for.

Advantages of Speed Interviewing

Although there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to speed interviewing in the corporate world, the most common design involves inviting a large number of candidates (between 25 and 200) to meet in a large room. If there is only one hiring manager, each candidate rotates through for a single timed interview.

Another option is to have several interviewers present (and each candidate rotates through each) in order to get multiple assessments of the same candidate for a single job. Another alternative is having multiple managers from different departments present (each potential candidate rotates among the interviewing managers), so that the candidates have the opportunity to get exposure to the diverse job opportunities throughout the firm (similar to a corporate job fair).

Time the interviews so each is the same length, make all assessments on a scoring sheet, and set a time limit between five and 15 minutes.

You may be skeptical, but consider that the traditional interview format you currently use also has dozens of inherent weaknesses. In fact, the speed interviewing process has some significant advantages you must consider, regardless of your view on quick judgments:

• Immediate comparisons between candidates. Because most interviews for a position are stretched out over days or even weeks, it’s hard for managers to actually remember what they learned in previous interviews. Stretching out the interview process makes accurate comparisons between candidates who managers have met over a several-week period extremely difficult. Speed interviewing provides a significant advantage here because you see all of the candidates within a couple of hours.
• Less “trash time.” In basketball, wasted minutes (when the outcome of the game is no longer in doubt) are called trash time. During an interview, trash time is the time that the interviewer spends “being polite” after they have already made the decision to reject the candidate because of their negative first impression or lack of “company fit.” Candidates can also have “trash time” after they have decided early on during the interview to reject the manager or the job. This “trash time” is often unavoidable in traditional interviews because both managers and candidates have been told that interviews should last at least an hour. Because speed interviews are timed and short, both disillusioned managers and interviewees can walk away almost immediately after they’ve made a decision to reject.
• Less total time devoted to interviews. Because speed interviews average five to 10 minutes, managers’ time (and expense) spent interviewing is reduced dramatically.
• An opportunity to see more candidates. Speed interviewing allows you to see a large volume (two to 10 times more candidates), so there’s less chance that you will “miss” a great candidate who happens to have a poorly written résumé (and thus they would be screened out of most interviewing processes). Using speed dating, you get a quick look at almost everyone who is interested.
• Managers like them. Most managers dislike traditional interviews and many show their dislike by putting them off for weeks. In contrast, companies frequently report that managers who have participated in speed interviewing have high satisfaction rates. Like it or not, many managers dislike the rigid structure and rules associated with behavioral interviews. In contrast, they actually enjoy using their intuition, first impressions, and the opportunities to make snap judgments. Because managers are making gut judgments, they are more likely to “own” the hiring decision because they had almost total control over the decision criteria.
• It fits the “next” generation. Although it’s easy to over-generalize; many argue that the short attention spans of the new generation just don’t fit hour-long interviews. This new generation often loses interest quickly and they sometimes don’t want to do the preparation required for lengthy interviews. For these reasons, speed interviewing is deemed “cool” and has seen the most activity on college campuses, although Travelodge uses it to hire managers.
• Scheduling ease. Because hiring managers can literally “get it all done” in a short period of time, they are more willing to participate in speed interviewing sessions that are held at night or during weekends. In addition, being able to hold speed interviewing sessions outside of work hours and at more convenient sites (like hotel meeting rooms) results in the attraction of more of the highly desirable “currently employed” candidates. Holding these events off-site also eliminates the need to waste a candidate’s time going through security and it eliminates the disquieting interruptions that routinely occur during long interviews held in someone’s office.
• Shorter time to fill. Because often the very best candidates are literally “out of the market” within 10 and 22 days, any process that speeds up the hiring decision will provide you with more opportunities to make offers to innovators, game changers, and top performers. Although most speed interviewing designs don’t require hiring decisions to be made on the spot, a good number of them utilize that feature (knowing that makes candidates more willing to show up). In addition, a side benefit to speed interviewing is that candidates may see this rapid decision-making process is an indication that the company itself excels at making timely decisions (a characteristic that innovators and top performers admire).
• An opportunity to assess other characteristics. Traditional behavioral interviews focus on assessing experience and verbal clues. However, because of time constraints, speed interviews almost force the interviewer to focus on a different set of factors including first impressions, body language, and emotional cues. A few firms have used the informal “networking time” before the timed interviews begin as an additional opportunity to assess whether candidates have the social and interactive skills necessary for successful team players

Items related to assessment accuracy:

• Accuracy. If you buy into the research on rapid decision-making, the speed interviewing process is the way to go. Consider doing a “split sample” test, where some candidates are hired using traditional interviews, while others go through the speed interviewing process. You can then assess the accuracy of each by comparing the on-the-job performance and retention rates between the two methods.
• Fewer “canned” responses. Like it or not, the Internet has educated most candidates to the point where they come “over-prepared” to traditional interviews. It’s not unusual for candidates to rehearse and to prepare canned answers to traditional questions. A byproduct to speed interviewing is that you may get more genuine and off-the-cuff responses.
• Less pressure. Candidates are generally less apprehensive and nervous, and the interviewer might get a more accurate assessment of candidates who under-perform because of their anxiety.
• Superior documentation. Because speed interviewing occurs in a single place and time, it’s easier to get interviewers to document their decisions on a simple form. Even if speed interviews don’t prove to be more valid (accurate predictors) the process forces consistency, which almost guarantees that the interviews will have a higher reliability (consistent treatment over time).
• Perfect assessment isn’t always necessary. Some jobs do not require “perfect” initial assessment because if a weak candidate slips through, they will be quickly identified during new-hire training or as a result of their weak on-the-job performance. This is often the case in call centers or retail service. As a result, speed interviews can add great value because even though they don’t always select top performers, the process quickly screens out obvious turkeys and individuals who just don’t “fit” your corporate culture.

Potential Problems

There are problems associated with any form of interviewing but especially with speed interviewing. The first is the possibility that snap subconscious judgments will lead to discrimination.

Second, these interviews don’t get any in-depth or technical information from the candidate and there is literally no time for the candidate to ask questions (which may impact their interest in the firm).

Third, the noisy interview room can make it hard for interviewers to hear and focus on their current candidate. Finally, many managers and those in HR firmly believe that the most accurate assessments are made slowly.

Three Tips to Remember

If you are bold enough to try an assessment strategy that leverages speed interviewing, here are a few key lessons to keep in mind:

1. Just like driving, learning to thin slice any activity takes practice, and initial efforts are likely to only yield success between 55% to 60% of the time.
2. While it is possible for the subconscious mind to discriminate, the likelihood of occurrence can be reduced by completing the speed-interviewing process blind (i.e., candidates sit behind an opaque screen).
3. Once candidates are assessed, the process can and should convert to selling them on the job, (i.e., customer servicing them).

Final Thoughts

Although anything associated with “dating” invariably makes HR people nervous, it’s important to realize that advantages to speed interviewing make even lifelong skeptics like myself reconsider my initial thoughts about the process.

I suggest you try it and compare the results to your traditional interviewing process. You might just find that the ROI is higher than you initially thought possible.

Peter Drucker once said that companies get it wrong 2:3 times. With a failure rate like that, tossing a coin would be a more effective measure! Be bold, try new things, and rely on the data.

When economic times are volatile and businesses are facing a downturn in revenue, many CFOs turn their attention to cost-containment. A logical place to start cutting costs is labor, given that in many industries labor costs account for an average of 60% of all variable costs.

The volatility in the business climate not only dictates that labor costs be contained, but also that organizations become more agile in their use and deployment of labor, a characteristic not generally managed well in the traditional employer/employee relationship.

Successful organizations must develop workforce plans that allow their organizations to shift people resources rapidly from areas of low return to areas of high return, as the business environment shifts.

HR instead needs to prepare in advance and have a viable plan and strategy to ensure that any workforce reduction/adjustment is executed in such a way that it doesn’t damage their image or reduce morale of employees retained.

One approach to consider is developing a contingent workforce strategy that allows organizations to rapidly cut labor costs by releasing contingent contract or temporary workers.

Layoffs Are an Ugly Option

Most of the problems with workforce plans occur because managers consistently over-hire and under-fire.

The net result is that labor costs essentially become “fixed” rather than being variable. That problem is compounded in organizations that have grown holistically with little or no attention being paid to workforce planning or workforce productivity analysis, because they often become headcount fat very early on.

Although layoffs are a commonly used option to reduce labor costs, they are far inferior as a solution compared to the use of a contingent workforce.

Some of the many problems associated with layoffs include:

• They are highlighted in the press and as a result, they hurt your external employment brand image. When customers read about your layoffs they might also assume that these layoffs mean that the company is in trouble or that the product quality will suffer.
• Layoffs and their related severance packages are expensive and administratively time-consuming.
• Releasing talent that you fought to acquire and paid to develop is a waste of resources. In addition, your laid-off workers could end up working for your competitors.
• Even though head count is reduced the workload is often not, and as a result, employees end up taking on a larger workload and new tasks, which results in higher error rates and slower process time.
• The process of selecting who will be laid off and the reorganization after the layoff are time drains on managers who should be focusing on the product and the customer.
• They traumatize everyone including workers who remain and managers that have to let go of talent they helped develop.
• They cause employees to shift their focus toward job security and away from serving the customer.
• Even rumors related to upcoming layoffs are productivity killers. Once one has occurred, there will be a lingering fear that it won’t be the last.
• There is little evidence that they consistently produce a positive ROI.

Some organizations attempt to use performance management to resolve their surplus employee issue, but that process is slow and generally incapable of handling a large number of employees. Instead, a superior option is to require managers to maintain a significant percentage of their workers as contingent workers.

Developing a Contingent Workforce Strategy

A contingent worker is a worker who can easily be released by a firm. Most are contractors, part-timers, or “temps” but there are other variations. They are superior to permanent workers because of the fact that they are easier to “get rid of” when they are no longer needed.

A contingent workforce strategy is sometimes called a “shamrock” strategy because it splits a firm’s labor force into three distinct leafs. Each leaf of the shamrock represents a different form of labor including permanent employees, contingent labor, or outsourced labor, each of which gets a predetermined percentage of work allocated to it.

To support a shamrock strategy, HR departments must provide managers with a series of related tools that determine the appropriate balance of labor types given projected market conditions. This strategy gives managers an increased capability to cut labor costs whenever product sales decrease or conversely, to rapidly add talent when the business is growing.

Where traditionally having contingent workers meant occasionally hiring a number of “contractors” or temps, what is really needed is a more dynamic and strategic approach that provides managers with more options.

Benefits of a Contingent Workforce

Some of the many potential benefits of having contingent workers include:

• Lower expectations. When contingent workers are hired they know upfront that they are insured employment only up to their contracted date.
• Managers are less reluctant. Managers don’t have the same fear or resistance as they do when they fire a “permanent” worker because managers know contingent workers realize they may be let go at any time (managers often lack the courage to release permanent employees!) There is also less paperwork involved in releasing them.
• Easier to find. As other firms lay off and the unemployment rate rises, there are many more highly qualified individuals willing to accept contingent positions.
• Easier to add. Because they don’t count as headcount, a new contingent worker can often be added when there is an immediate need in a specific area, even when there is a headcount freeze.
• Only when you need them. Talent and skills can be added but then released quickly when they are no longer needed.
• Lower costs. Some contingent workers will work for less and sometimes with minimal or no benefits. In all cases, there are no costly pension benefits and retirement issues.
• Redeployment. Contingent workers can sometimes be designated as “floaters” and thus be available for redeployment to fill short-term needs much like a utility player does in baseball.
• Better assessment. Hiring workers on a contingent basis allows you to assess them “on-the-job,” and you can then keep only the best.
• Legal issues. There is less of a probability of legal action when you release contract workers.
• Stronger employment brand. Using contingent workers allows firms to cut labor costs without the negative brand-damaging publicity attached to large-scale layoffs. It also allows you to avoid the damage to morale that comes with formal layoffs.

9 Steps in a Contingent Workforce Strategy

There are nine critical steps in developing and implementing a contingent workforce strategy:

1. Determine when you need more contingent workers. The ratio of contingent workers to permanent workers should shift up and down as the economic situation changes. HR must identify exactly when this contingent percentage should increase or decrease. Start by examining a 5- to 15-year historical pattern in order to identify the critical periods or events that indicate that you should increase or decrease your percentage of contingent workers. For example, this could be when sales fall, when sales are growing rapidly, peak periods (summer, Christmas, etc.), prior to mergers, or if you are contemplating the sale or closure of a business unit.
2. Determine your ideal target percentage of contingent workers. Examine historical patterns to see what the highest growth rate could be, then do both a best- and worst-case scenario to estimate the maximum and minimum levels of contingent workers you will need for both scenarios. The normal range of contingent workers can be as low as 5% (in medium growth times) to a high of 25% of the total workforce. The high is set based on the maximum conceivable percentage of the workforce that could be laid off in a worst-case situation.
3. Assess who should be classified as contingent. Why wait until it’s time to actually do layoffs to determine which individuals and jobs would go? Determine in advance and use the information to begin the process of converting those positions and shifting those people into contingency jobs. By converting individuals who would likely to be laid off to contingent you “soften the blow,” giving employees an advanced warning. The transition gives them time to adjust, though some will quit when their status is changed. Incidentally, shifting current workers into contingent jobs is generally better than hiring “new” contract workers because they already know the company and its culture.
4. Develop contingent workforce metrics, rewards, and punishments. HR must proactively develop effective metric or measurement systems to report the percentage of contingent workers in each business unit or department. To further ensure compliance, managers must receive punishment and “embarrassment” when they fall below their contingency targets and rewards when they meet or exceed them.
5. Use contingent worker status as an element of performance management. Effective contingent plans are integrated with performance management programs. For example, under some contingency workforce plans, bottom performers are transferred into contingency jobs as a step before termination. If they are not in a low-priority job, or if their performance improves, they can be returned to permanent status. This interim step makes it easier for managers with less courage to begin the process of getting rid of bottom performers.
6. Develop contingent floaters to improve productivity. Contingent workers may include people designated as “permanent floaters” whose day-to-day job assignments are contingent. These contingent floaters are cross-trained in several job areas so they can be instantly redeployed when there is a sudden need for talent. Because they already know the firm, their performance will likely exceed those hired from temporary help agencies.
7. Designate overflow rollover people for peak periods. Determine which business units have occasional “spikes” (benefits enrollment, for example) that require extra short-term help. A”rollover” can handle short-term overload that can’t be handled by the normal staff. If there are “counter cycle” jobs (i.e., peaks in one department occur simultaneously with slow times in other departments), contingent rollover plans can be even more effective. Outsourcing firms (with call centers) can also be contracted to handle “over loads” in lieu of, or in addition to, internal employees.
8. Use outsourcing as an element of a contingent workforce. Outsourcing firms can be treated as a form of contingent workforce. Outsource in those areas that add little value or are likely to be reduced during a layoff. In addition, as more and more consulting firms expand their outsource business volume, the possibility of outsourcing firms actually absorbing your administrative workers (from your payroll to theirs) increases. Some firms will accept your employees as part of a long-term outsourcing contract. Your employees keep getting paid but not directly by you.
9. Shift the work to areas where the laws are more flexible. Consider shifting the little work that you need done to areas where the laws are more flexible when it comes to laying off or firing workers. Replacing workers with technology and equipment is another option to increase your flexibility.

Final Thoughts

As business times become more turbulent, it is critical for HR to increase its focus on workforce planning. One of the key elements of any successful workforce plan should be the increased use of a contingent workforce.

Unfortunately, most HR departments manage their temporary and contingent workforce almost as an afterthought. Instead, the status of this important element of the workforce strategy must be elevated in the process and redesigned to maximize its strategic impact.

The time to act is now rather than waiting for the CFO to come knocking on your door with predetermined head count management solutions that cause as many problems as they solve.

By Dr. John Sullivan & Master Burnett

The subject of analytics is often discussed but rarely executed well, even in the most well-established talent management functions.

While most organizations collect data, manipulate it, and produce reports from it, few could honestly state they are leveraging HR data to drive business performance by making better decisions about how the organization’s largest variable expense is managed.

Instead of powering decision science, the majority of established talent management analytics do a great job at telling us what has happened and how much administration has been completed. When reported, the verbal response to such analytics is often “that’s interesting,” but little to no action is triggered.

A lot of factors have contributed to the sad current state of analytics in the human resource function; luckily, most are remediable today.

Drivers of Weak Analytics

• Skill deficiency. Until recently, many of the tools that enable robust analytics required intermediate- to expert-level understanding of statistics, a skill rarely held by the average HR professional. As a result, talent management functions lacking the budget to hire a dedicated analyst often went without. While many organizations could still benefit greatly from hiring a statistician or true business analyst, many of the tools used to power advanced analytics have become significantly easier to use in recent years.
• Lack of business knowledge. The second most pervasive barrier to developing world-class analytics is one the HR profession gets chastised for on a regular basis. While more and more HR professionals are learning more about their organization’s business than ever before, a majority lack a deep understanding of the business to figure out all of the talent management system touch-points and interactions capable of demonstrating a causal tie to business performance. The increased visibility of talent management issues in recent years is helping to rectify this, as many organizations are moving more professionals with line-management experience into human resource management roles.
• Expensive tools. While a lot can be done with modern spreadsheet applications, true business intelligence platforms have been relatively expensive up until recently. The growth in availability of enterprise-class opensource applications has exerted significant cost pressure on commercial business intelligence providers, making such applications much more affordable.
• Lack of quality data. Even with deep business knowledge, analytical skills in place, and access to leading-edge tools, a majority of organizations struggle to enable world-class analytics in large part because the quality of the data they have to work with is beyond poor. Because many HR professionals are overly burdened with task-oriented work, capturing data in a valid, consistent way is not a work habit that has been well-honed. While workloads are not likely to decrease anytime soon, a growing number of tools in the “text analytics” market are enabling organizations to analyze trends using data in a form most talent management organizations have in abundance, unstructured text.
• Complicated nature of talent management. It is easy for those outside the HR function to criticize HR, but ask any functional executive who has transferred into HR from another function and they will confirm that managing the systems that govern talent is inherently more complex than originally perceived. In many respects, the HR function is a full-fledged business within the enterprise, one that requires in-depth access to cross-functional expertise to execute well. A growing number of organizations are starting to realize that employment opportunities truly are products. As such, they must be designed, packaged, marketed, sold, supported, and serviced. This new mindset is bringing new professionals honed in such skills to the HR function following the realization that it is a lot easier for other professionals to learn HR than it is for HR professionals to learn marketing, sales, or finance.

As talent management increases in perceived importance among members of the executive committee, the pressures on HR leaders to be more scientific will only become more prevalent. Luckily, several emerging tools are coming online that will help HR professionals accomplish significantly more.

Emerging Tool/Approach: Text Analytics

The first promising tool, just emerging from infancy stage and still relatively complex in nature, is enterprise class software to enable “text analytics.”

The HR function is full of data residing in blocks of text that historically was difficult to derive trend data from, including verbatim responses in learning development plans, performance evaluations, applicant/candidate/employee/manager surveys, online forums, emails, etc.

To make use of such data in the past required that human readers comb through all of the related documents, manually extracting comments in context and categorizing them according to some predetermined categorization schema, an activity capable of consuming an enormous amount of labor in even the most basic of scenarios.

Text analytics software is making such analysis feasible to the masses by automating the contextual comment parsing and categorization processes. The software can complete overnight analysis that would take teams of humans manually executing the process months to complete.

The power of this emerging capability within HR is simply astounding. For instance, employment brand managers could point such software systems to blogs, social networks, online publications, and even internal employee forums to monitor for trends.

Learning and development function leaders could deploy the system across a bevy of common internal documents, including development plans, performance appraisals, performance improvement plans, business development plans, and even documented corporate strategies to determine emerging knowledge, skill, and ability needs.

Recruiting functions could use the technology to analyze applicant surveys, new hire surveys, and online forums to determine emerging trends impacting the performance of recruiting process. On a grander scheme, recruiting functions could leverage text analytics to comb through thousands of academic research abstracts, identifying common hypothesis, solutions, and sources to rev up hiring initiatives.

Organizations interested in using text analytics systems must understand upfront that these systems were designed primarily for organizations to analyze consumer feedback. If you believe that employment opportunities are a product, leveraging such technologies shouldn’t be that big of a stretch.

These technologies are still very new, most coming to market only within the last year. Implementing them will be complex, just as figuring out new methodologies to use them will be innovative. In time, such systems will become easier to use. Emerging providers include Clarabridge, Attensity, Business Objects, and SAS.

Emerging Tool/Approach: Predictive Modeling

Predictive modeling isn’t new, but its application in HR is still relatively rare, and for that reason we still consider it an emerging approach. Several of the barriers that inhibit the development and widespread adoption of world-class analytics are solved by predictive modeling systems.

It is one thing to hypothesize a connection between employee absenteeism and production-line performance, then set out to prove it, but it is an entirely different thing to sit back and let statistics tell you what is related without forming any hypotheses. Manually hypothesizing correlations and setting out to prove them is time-consuming and requires significant knowledge of HR, the business, and statistics.

Predictive modeling, on the other hand, only requires that you have access to massive volumes of HR and business performance data, business intelligence software, and the skills needed to set the software to task.

Predictive modeling is used extensively by marketing professionals to determine what impacts consumer behavior. As predictive analytics have been around for some time, many executives already have some exposure to them and trust in their validity.

The potential applications of predictive modeling like text analytics are huge in HR. Imagine being able to forecast the exact budget needed to power all HR systems at the optimal level required to produce specific predetermined levels of workforce productivity. Predictive modeling can identify what HR systems drive increases in productivity, inhibit productivity, present risk, etc. It can be used to power decision models or simply alert you/your managers to potential issues.

Unlike the text analytics market, a majority of the business intelligence systems supporting predictive modeling are mature. The market includes common desktop software (Microsoft Excel), opensource enterprise class applications (Pentaho), and commercial business intelligence leaders (Business Objects, etc.).

Key Principles with Emerging Tools/Approaches

Any time an individual or organization can leverage a new tool or approach that significantly impacts their capacity to perform, an opportunity arises to develop a competitive advantage.

Unfortunately, leveraging new and emerging tools often requires that users step out of their comfort zone. This practice is not uncommon in HR, if it were we wouldn’t be using IVR in HR call centers, workflow management systems in recruiting, or text messages to communicate with candidates.

The keys to keep in mind when using these new tools and approaches include:

1. Set your sights on solving business problems as opposed to HR problems. If any words more common among HR practitioners make it into your proposal for adopting these tools, you have ignored this key.
2. Understand that you will be blazing new territory. With that role will come a bevy of challenges and obstacles to overcome.
3. Realize that moving forward with plans to add these capabilities to your talent management function may require that you hire talent from outside the HR profession.
4. Prepare yourself for failure in at least 60% of your initial attempts. Numerous studies have shown that more often than not top performers fail at least 60% of the time when trying something new. Too many HR functions set much higher expectations and give up too quickly. If Tiger Woods stopped playing golf because he lost a majority of the tournaments he entered, he would have quit a long time ago.

Final Thoughts

Continuing to compete and thrive in an emerging global economy powered by evolutionary technologies that are changing at an ever-increasing pace will require HR practitioners to become significantly more strategic.

The technology exists today, as does the need to deploy it, but too many in leadership roles lack the courage to depart from the status quo. If you look at what frustrates the executive committee most about the current state of HR, nearly every concern could be solved with a more robust analytics infrastructure and a talent management workforce capable of understanding the business and being able to prove their impact on its performance.

Start the conversations now, give the tools a shot, start asking questions, prove what works and what doesn’t, and most importantly, have fun for a change!

I have been writing on the need for increasing the speed of hire for nearly a decade. During that time, many corporations have begun to realize the benefits of fast hiring. Unfortunately, too many rely on a single time-to-fill metric as their way of measuring hiring speed.

There are many reasons why you should hire quickly in certain cases, but there are also problems related to using an average time-to-fill metric as an exclusive measure of hiring speed. Fortunately, there are several alternative measures which can better help you understand precisely when and where an organization should emphasize fast hiring.

Why Speed Matters in Hiring

There are three primary reasons why firms should emphasize fast hiring.

The first relates to the ability to land high-demand candidates.

One large accounting firm recently found that if they didn’t act within 22 days, their chances of landing “high-demand” candidates decreased by nearly 90%. A large electronics firm researched the issue and found that the very best in their field (the top 10% of candidates) were often gone within 10 days.

The logic of speed hiring is simple: if Tiger Woods decided to leave his golf team, he would be in such demand that he might be in and then out of the job market in as little as a few hours.

A second reason for speed hiring is the economic loss to the corporation of having position vacancies. Obviously, if an airline has insufficient pilots for each of its planes, it would lose revenue from each of those canceled flights.

The pharmaceutical firm Merck found that having vacant positions in its R&D function has a direct measurable impact on the time it takes to develop new products for market.

Financial institutions have also found that having vacant positions in revenue-generating jobs, such as loan officers, costs them revenue on a daily basis because these vacant positions caused them to “miss” opportunities to make profitable loans.

The third reason relates to the “sudden” availability of currently employed individuals. The very best recruiting departments proactively seek out individuals who are currently working at other firms in an attempt to convince them, over time, to leave their current job and to join your firm. This process is known as “relationship recruiting” or “pre-need” recruiting.

The concept is a simple one. A corporation identifies highly desirable individuals and “works on them” in order to eventually convince them to join your firm. Unlike normal recruiting, when the candidate decides when to leave, this recruiting process pushes them to make that decision earlier than normal.

This process takes some time, and it’s hard to predict exactly when it will succeed. However, whenever the individual does decide to leave, it’s important for recruiters to act quickly. Fortunately, because your firm approached first, it’s highly likely that you will be the only firm directly targeting this person. But if you don’t hire quickly, he or she will likely begin looking at other firms.

Slow hiring decisions will also give their current boss an opportunity to make counteroffers, further reducing the odds that you will successfully land them.

The key lesson to be learned is that once these targeted individuals decide to make a move, you need to have the ability to open a position “suddenly” and have already designed an assessment process that is fast enough to offer them a new position almost immediately (within days) of when they make a “mental decision” to leave their current firm.

Misleading Time-to-Fill Metrics

The key concept is that fast hiring yields higher-quality hires. Unfortunately, that simple concept gets warped when corporate recruiting management begins to encourage fast hiring across the board as a result of using the metric known as “average time to fill.”

I am a big fan of fast hiring but certainly not for all candidates or jobs, and here is why:

• Averages are misleading. When you average hiring speed across all jobs, you get a misleading number. You might have made quick decisions in low-impact jobs but have made slow decisions for jobs with a slate of “high-demand” candidates. It’s simply not a good idea to automatically hire fast in every instance.
• Fast hiring is expensive. For key jobs and for top talent, it’s worth the added cost to hire fast. But not all jobs have a large-enough business impact to justify the added costs and management time involved in making fast hiring decisions.

Lesson to be learned: Measure speed of hire only for key jobs where it really matters.

It’s important not just to hire fast, but also to make sure that the position is filled as close as possible to its need date, and here is why:

• Hire at the speed that the manager needs. Because the time-to-fill metric is a corporate-wide average, many recruiters focus on simply meeting that average. However, there are certain critical positions where you can hire individuals within the time that meets the corporate average but still end up hiring too slowly. These positions need to be filled by the date that the manager actually needs them, known as the need date (i.e., one day to two weeks), but it’s almost always faster than the corporate average time to fill.
• You can hire too fast. In-demand candidates need to be decided on quickly, but it’s possible to hire too fast, long before a new hire is actually needed. Anyone who understands the corporate requisition process realizes that quite often, managers issue a requisition without knowing how long the process will actually take. As a result, if the hiring manager needs the individual in 60 days and you hire them in 15, they would be ready to start long before they were actually needed. As a result, fast hiring in response to a requisition can lead to what is known as premature hiring.

Lesson to be learned: Measure how close individuals are hired to the actual date that they are needed. The goal should be hiring on the “need date,” not before or after they are needed.

Factors That Allow for Slow Hiring

There are some cases when fast hiring just isn’t necessary:

• The candidate pool is sufficiently large. Speed isn’t as much of an issue if you are recruiting 100% active job seekers. Employed top performers and individuals with rare skill sets are in high demand (which is why you hire fast). However, if your candidate pool is made up of unemployed people, speed is less of an issue (because they have little choice but to wait until you make a hiring decision).
• A great brand allows you to be slower. If you have a great brand (i.e., Google), speed hiring is less important because even top performers may be willing to wait for the opportunity.

Lesson to be learned: Your hiring speed should be adjusted based on the candidate pool for that job. In some cases, you can be incredibly slow when you are recruiting from “active” candidates who are primarily unemployed. In the rare cases where the firm has a strong employment brand, you can take your sweet time and still lose only a few candidates.

Measure Speed and Quality

In most cases, you hire fast primarily because it improves the quality of individuals you can successfully land.

• Measure quality of hire also. The on-the-job performance of a hire (quality of hire) is always the most important metric in recruiting. You do fast hiring in order to get quality, so one metric alone (time to fill) is useless unless you also measure quality of hire.
• Fast hiring might lead to hiring errors. Making fast decisions can lead to weak assessment and bad hires either for skill or corporate fit. Develop a pool of applicants long before you need them, which allows you to assess them slowly and accurately over time.

Lesson to be learned: Measuring speed is fine only if you correlate it the quality of hire, to ensure that one produces the other. That relationship between speed and quality of hire might only exist for requisitions with high-demand candidates.

Additional Time-Based Metrics

Instead of measuring average time to fill, there are some additional and sometimes superior options to consider:

• The cost of a vacancy. This superior metric converts the cost of slow hiring (a large number of vacancy days) into dollars, something managers can clearly understand. Managers almost always hire slowly until they fully understand the revenue impacts of such vacancies.
• Hire by availability date. For targeted individuals you proactively pursue, the metric needs to be the time from when they “become available” (the day that let you know that they have decided to leave their current job) to the point where you make them an offer.
• Same-day hiring. For critical positions and highly desirable candidates, corporations have to have the ability to hire on the same day that the candidate becomes available. Generally, up to 5% of all hires should qualify for same-day hiring.
• No requisition hiring. In the rare cases where highly sought after “game changers” or innovators become available, firms have to be able to hire these individuals without an open position or requisition.

Final Thoughts

On the surface, hiring fast might seem like an easy concept to understand. In reality, it’s quite a complex issue. It’s critical that recruiting managers realize that hiring fast has great value, but it also has some related pitfalls.

It’s important to know when and where fast hiring leads to a significantly better quality of hire and a measurable positive impact on revenue.

By Dr. John Sullivan & Master Burnett

Employee referral programs are a lot like bottles of wine. Most companies have at least one, the vast majority of which are average or less than average, and only a few ever truly become exceptional. But the similarities don’t stop there.

When the blend of features is perfect, everyone talks about their experience with friends and family, and the producer ends up making a small fortune on a modest investment. Just as great wines go bad if not handled correctly, so do great referral programs.

In studying the design of referral programs that produce phenomenal results, it became clear that the top-producing programs clearly do things differently and execute nearly everything at a level of quality most in HR could barely even fathom.

One of the design elements that distinguishes programs producing more than 50% of an organization’s hires from programs producing 20% is a program marketing strategy that hyper-segments the employee population and communicates with each segment in a much more effective way.

Understanding Your Actual Referral Activity

In organizations with informally managed programs, research shows that more than 60% of referrals were not initiated by the employee, but rather by individuals outside the organization approaching the employee and asking to be referred. Presumably, these candidates were hoping to avoid the “black hole” of applicant death known as the career site.

Given this high concentration of applicant-initiated activity, it is a logical conclusion that in programs where this is occurring, the percentage of referrals actually qualified would be only marginally better than the career site itself, which we know is often 1:1000.

On the flip side, programs with formal, dedicated management often find that 1:5 referral is qualified, a significantly higher percentage by any measure.

The plain truth of the matter is that lacking formal leadership, most programs take on a path much like that of a leaf in a windstorm; the external forces control the destiny of the leaf.

The concept behind employee referrals is simple. Talented employees who desire to work alongside other talented people would seek out such talent, build a relationship with such talent, and eventually ask such talent to consider working with them. It’s a concept that works really well in organizations that demonstrate both trust in and respect for employees that follow through on the concept, but few companies actually trust and respect their employees!

The primary mechanism by which top-performing programs prove they trust and respect employees is by delivering a world-class program experience. One element that program participants in top-performing programs indicated was of value and that they would like more of was program communications.

Communicating to Build Program Participation

Assuming your organization is committed to demonstrating trust and respect for employees by servicing employee referrals in a world-class way, the next step is to drive program participation. This is a science that top-performing programs use to influence the flow of inbound referrals.

For example, if five hires are needed in a specific job family in June, and the average cycle time to produce a hire is 30 days, and it takes five referral candidates to produce a single hire, then in many formally managed programs, a messaging campaign is initiated with the goal of producing 25 referrals in late April or early May. Not only are the communications tied to forecasted demand, they are designed in such a way to influence qualified referrals while discouraging generic referrals.

The program marketing secrets we uncovered that lead to greater program participation include:

• Targeted messaging to hyper-segmented employee populations.
• Delivery of messages using a minimum of three different channels.
• Design of messages to provide immediate value to recipients beyond application to the referral program.
• Scheduling of messaging campaigns based on workforce planning forecasts.

Each of these marketing program design characteristics is discussed below.

Hyper-Segmented Messaging

While an average program may draft employee referral program messages once a quarter, the message is usually generic in nature and broadcast to the entire organization. Top-performing programs, on the other hand, may generate thousands of campaigns a year, some of which may be targeted at only a small handful of employees.

Segment messaging may include:

• Employee location
• Job family
• Job performance rating
• Labor type (employee, contractor, consultant, etc.)
• Tenure
• Previous employer
• Past referral success/failure
• Diversity characteristics
• Affinity group membership
• Management level
• Preferred method of communication
• Educational background (degree, institutions attended, etc.)

While some messages are relevant to the entire employee population, the vast majority are not.

The secret is to avoid “dumbing down” messages to make them relevant to everyone and instead deliver extremely relevant messages to much smaller populations. It may seem like a lot of work, but the payoff makes it well worth it.

Three-Pronged Message Delivery

Another key learning from the research is that not all employees pay attention to the same channels of communication. Some people read posters, while others ignore them. Some people read every email, while others employ filters to sort out only the most important. Some people prefer face-to-face, while others require written materials.

What the research shows is that you need to leverage at least three channels if you want your message to reach a majority of the employee population. What happens if you don’t use at least three? The research shows 72% of employees were unable to recall basic program features when prompted, compared to 43% in companies using three or more.

The key we found was the number, not necessarily the use of specific channels. While email was common among nearly all top-performing programs, there were a significant number of top-performing programs that do not leverage email at all, like construction companies.

The most common sources of communication used include:

• Signs in public places (have you considered bathroom stall doors?)
• Email
• Websites
• Intra-office mail
• Voicemail broadcasts
• Team/Departmental/Functional meetings
• Mail sent to employees homes
• Payroll notices/Stubs

Design Messages to Provide Immediate Value

More often than not, even the best marketing efforts found among average programs involved messages that were informative but not of value. Top-performing programs, on the other hand, refined the ability to develop messages that had value outside their immediate application to the employee referral program.

For instance, emails alerting employees in a specific location about mission-critical or hard-to-fill jobs may also contain guidance on how to use an online directory to find old friends or former colleagues. Because the process of how to find someone has relevance outside the act of making referrals, there is a much better chance the message will gain traction and lead to employees trying the activity suggested.

Other messages might introduce funny facts about the organization or tips on using an employee benefit in an innovative way that prime employees with interesting stories they can tell others when talking about their employer.

Some of the elements that can be designed into messaging campaigns to provide value include:

• A summary of key business performance indicators in a language the average employee could understand.
• Tips/guidance on tools and techniques employees can use to identify suitable talent.
• Wow stories that provide “interesting” conversation material for employees to chat about with people outside the organization.
• Updates on what urgent needs exist and priming questions that might help employees figure out who they know. If I were to ask you a very specific question, say for instance, do you know any financial analysts that used to work for Bear Stearns, it would be much easier for you to answer quickly than if I were to ask you a very broad question.

Messaging Campaigns Tied to Workforce Plans

The final element that differentiated marketing of the employee referral program between top and average programs was the existence of a strategy to coordinate the delivery of messages with needed workforce activity.

Several of the firms that best 70% of hires via their ERP year-over-year have proven that you can reverse-engineer what messaging is needed and when it must be sent to produce a targeted flow of referrals as needed.

By using yield model calculations, program managers can determine how many referrals are needed to make a hire, how many referrals are generated in response to specific campaign types, what factors increase referral activity, etc. Combining this data with traditional staffing analytics enables the program coordinator to proactively manage the referral program, versus allowing the winds of the organization to control its destiny.

Summing Up

Managing a world-class employee referral program isn’t something you do in your spare time. It requires a relentless focus on quality and execution, just like producing a fine wine.

California wine producers proved years ago that wine-making is a science, not an art, and managing an employee referral program is no different. When it comes to program management elements that make a difference, program marketing is right up there with managing the participant experience.

Marketing a program in a world-class way entails driving program participation to meet specific program goals and objectives. If you have a world-class experience but are not achieving significant referral volume, program marketing might be your issue.

However, if you don’t have a system for delivering a world-class participant experience, you shouldn’t even be thinking about program marketing yet. The cardinal rule? You can’t start with a crappy program and slowly make it better if you need mass participation to drive significant hiring volume.