This is startling given that the economy is not strong and that millions are out of work. The natural inclination would seem to me to be to hunker down and hang on to the job you have, no matter how bad it is. That is what happened in previous recessions. Yet these were disgruntled, unsatisfied, and unfulfilled people who voluntarily, many without other positions or jobs lined up, chose to leave.

In discussions with some of them, I heard talk about feeling they having been used to bolster executive salaries and inflate shareholder expectations unrealistically. Many felt unappreciated and disrespected — a word I hear a lot now and never used to hear at all.

And with eroding benefits and the potential of better access to health care, the hold that corporations used to have is loosening.

I think we are seeing the early signs that the attitudes and expectations of the emerging and experienced workforce are changing faster than many thought likely and that traditional firms may find it harder and harder to employ the best people.

I among others have been predicting that the age of the entrepreneur is dawning — a time when more and more people are confident and optimistic about working for themselves, offering their services for a fee to someone who needs their skills. Many of the ones I speak with are convinced that this is a better way to feel fulfilled and be prosperous than the daily grind of going to work for an employer.

The success of crowdsourcing sites like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and other sites where anyone can offer their services for bid such as elancer or freelancer say a lot about what is happening. It has become relatively easy to offer products for sale on sites such as eBay or Craig’s List or to find a match between your skills and the needs of someone else.

But many corporations and recruiters are in denial. They will not agree that a significant number of people feel this way but at the same time they will not deny that it is hard to find, attract, close, and retain the skilled talent they need. And as Baby Boomers start to retire and move out of the active job market the gap will grow.

It does not take a crystal ball to see the signs of change.

Expectations Have Changed

People expect work to be engaging, interesting, and fulfilling. Younger people even feel it should be fun. The organizations that offer project-type work, work that poses a challenge, or work that fulfills humanitarian needs, are not having much trouble finding good people. Gen Y, those in their 20s, have been the pioneers in changing attitudes and in showing that individuals can find work that is fulfilling and earns money — often by working independently or by joining a very small firm or startup.

Choice, Not Control

People want to be empowered to make decisions, to be free from bureaucracy and administrivia. They know they have a lot to contribute and are frustrated when seemingly meaningless rules and procedures are put into place with no consultation or discussion.

Firms like Brazil’s Semco are run as democracies, and employees have the power to decide almost everything. For the past few decades this, along with Gore-Tex in the U.S., have been storybook examples of how organizations may look as we move into this century. The hallmarks for success include participation in decision-making, freedom over schedules and work assignments, and fair, transparent, and equitable pay based on contribution.

A Focus on Employment Branding

But, in lieu of making these painful changes to structure and existing practice, firms are instead focused on using the power of advertising and image-shaping to enhance or create an employment brand in the hope of attracting people.

Most employment branding efforts use Madison Avenue-style tactics to raise interest in a company. The campaigns are expensive and require immense effort, but there may be a period of time when more good people are attracted to a firm. The downside is that once hired they may quickly move on if the hype is not reflected in practice.

Semco, on the other hand, has no trouble attracting great people primarily through referral, word-of-mouth, and by the quality of the products and services they offer. Historically, very few firms have had to resort to expensive branding campaigns to attract the people they needed. Talented people with the right skills sought out the firms. This is why the employment market has always been skewed toward the employer who has been able to set salaries, offer the benefits it wanted to offer, and carve out jobs with minimal regard to the candidate’s or employee’s needs or desires.

Firms such as Lincoln Electric, Gore-Tex, IBM, and recently Facebook have little need to do overt employment branding because their employees do the recruiting for them.

More Interest in the Candidate Experience

Also, almost in acknowledgement that they have not done a good job in providing a candidate with a positive experience — with good customer service — when they apply for a job, there is now more emphasis and interest in improving that experience.

Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads has long been an advocate for improving the candidate experience and has tirelessly worked to get firms to make substantial changes in how they deal with a candidate. Recently he has created the the Candidate Experience Awards to further enhance this effort.

But it is unfortunate that he has to do this. It is simply another sign that the tide has turned away from traditional employers to the smaller firms that do care about the candidates and do listen to them and offer decent service.

More Effort and Money Being Placed on Becoming Listed as “The Best Place to Work”

Many firms spend thousands of dollars in fees and salaries to compete for a Best Place to Work award. Many have full-time employees dedicated to this effort for a significant time period while also ramping up employment branding activities.

Again, this is only viable because there is not enough natural interest in these firms to attract good people.

As traditional organizations try to fit round pegs into square holes, the smaller startups and enlightened larger firms are finding it easier to hire good people.

Good people are attracted to places that are in alignment with their needs, attitudes, and intellect, and those places are increasingly organizations that are flexible, fun, empowering, respectful, transparent, and flat. But the dinosaurs didn’t evolve successfully and I doubt that larger firms will either.

As gatekeepers, your function is far from trivial. You are key to finding the best talent and therefore ultimately a core player in corporate success. But we continue to act like our job is about as important as sorting screws or stocking shelves. We are rarely influencers or early adopters of technology.

Influencers are noted for focus, their ability to make a case for what they want that is backed up with data, and for empowering others to act. In many cases, they also use the latest tools to raise awareness and efficiency.

If you want to be an influencer here are some ideas, concepts, and provocative moves you can use to transform your recruiting function.

Narrow the Field

Most recruiters have too large a scope and hence spread themselves very thinly, pleasing no one.

Determine who the most critical hires are for your firm — the ones who generate revenue, create new products or services, or build strong customer relationships — and then focus primarily on locating where the best of those people are. Use social media, targeted messaging, and focused branding to attract them. Every recruiter should have a community of interested, qualified, and available talent so that they can quickly fill any open position.

To do this may require finding additional resources to recruit the less important positions. These can be offloaded to an RPO or agency or, given enough recruiters in your organization, to the less experienced.

The most challenging part of this is to determine what the most important positions are. But once the priorities have been set, you can then be far more successful by being able to focus.

Get Relevant Data

Spend the time to establish measurable and meaningful goals that can be proven by facts and data. Your goals and what you focus on have to be approved and believed by the hiring managers. The best way to establish the measures is to include hiring managers in formulating them.

Then set up mechanisms and software that can collect and generate the needed numbers without a huge commitment of time. Focus on just three or four metrics and make sure your recruiters know what they are and are rewarded for attaining good results.

I suggest you try to get agreement on reporting such things as quality of hire (perhaps measured by time to productivity, team acceptance, speed to promotion, or turnover within 90 days), and overall staffing efficiency measured by dividing the total of all the base salaries of your hires by your total recruitment spend, including all overhead, advertising, posting fees, search costs, and signing bonuses and so one. This figure is much better than cost per hire as it is free from regional salary differences and the differences in cost to hire for different positions.

An additional measure is the time to present a candidate that is acceptable to the hiring managers. And that should be as close to “0” as possible. Perhaps realistically the time should be 24-48 hours.

Go for the Crowd

Leverage your employees and seek out connections, referrals, and recommendations of good people. Don’t worry about specific professions or skills. Go for anyone who your employees think is a high performer, unusual thinker, entrepreneur, and doer. You can screen them later and, as work changes and new needs arise, who knows whom your firm may need. As IDEO’s CEO David Kelley says, “Hire people you know you don’t need now, but you think you might need later.”

A wide range of skills and experience means that you have a broad and deep talent community to ask for additional referrals if the community does not have what you need already.

If you are an influencer, you should be able to have a conversation about this, even if you are not successful in changing anyone’s mind. By planting the seeds, offering a few different people, and showing you are thinking about the long term success of your firm, you add value and gain respect.

Move the Transactional Out

Outsource or automate whatever is routine, transactional, and doesn’t directly lead to a new candidate, a close, or a hired person. Your job is to find and get great people hired. It’s not to administer paper, write reports, manage budgets, and schedule interviews. Someone else (or a tool) can do this, freeing you and your team to hire the most critical contributors.

Empower Hiring Managers

Let them do more. This is their hire, not yours. You are the scout, the initial evaluator, and the coach. You should be coaching the hiring managers and advising them how to probe, sell and close. Of course, you can help this process by quickly providing good candidates, but the key is to offload as much as you can to them.

This may require you to invest time in training them, providing them with tools, and influencing them to take more responsibility by showing them how critical their involvement is to their own success.

Use Technology — Especially Video

I have written many articles on using tools to improve productivity and quality. I truly believe that much of what currently takes up recruiter’s time is wasted energy. Everything including branding, sourcing, interviewing, assessing, marketing, onboarding and workforce planning can be augmented or even completely offloaded to technology.

For example, social media, and crowdsourcing techniques can relive you of most of the need for Boolean search, job posting, and other time-consuming tasks with low return on your time investment. By feeding candidates good content, and by creating and managing engaging social media pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+, you can improve the flow of qualified candidates.

If you augment this with video-based simulations, games, or similar activities that assess skills and abilities, you can eliminate the need for many tedious hours of interviewing or testing.

And, if you use video interviewing you can save time, lower the costs of travel and time wasted waiting and scheduling, plus you will have a recorded interview that can be viewed by hiring managers anywhere, anytime. Consistency rises; decisions are made against the same information.

There is no better way you can become truly professional at what you do than by improving your ability to quickly deliver great people and by being able to influence hiring managers to make better decisions.

Over the past two years, the way we think about work has changed. Perhaps accelerated by the recession, there is more focus now on finding satisfying and rewarding work than on just finding a job that pays the most.

More people are thinking about finding something interesting, challenging, and perhaps even fun to do that provides enough income. The key words here are interesting/challenging and enough. Fewer expect to get rich and there is less focus on the money. There is more focus on lifestyle, flexibility, free time to pursue other learning or hobbies or sports, and less interest in family. I’ll do more columns on these trends soon, but partly because of them here are the major changes that I see happening this year.

Internal Recruiting Goes Mainstream

Perhaps one of the most significant trends will be a greater focus on finding current employees to fill existing jobs. Rather than continue time-consuming and expensive external searches, more hiring managers will opt to go with an almost-ready internal candidate who is a good cultural fit and is willing to learn fast. Although hiring managers may push back at this, management will encourage it, and the increasing difficulty in finding and recruiting top talent will help accelerate the trend.

Over the next few years there will be a move to enlarge the skills of current employees so they can be moved around to different functions as demand fluctuates. Employee development will morph from delivering training, to providing accelerated apprenticeships, developing simulations, and finding ways to encourage informal and on-the-job learning.

Recruiters should focus on encouraging hiring managers to look at these internal employees, encourage them to hire internally, and develop better internal talent communities to expose hiring managers to talented employees and employees to opportunities.

Social Goes Mobile

When recruiting does look externally, more of it will happen on mobile devices. The explosion of Android and iPhone apps means fewer potential candidates will be using traditional computers.

Clearly candidates with technical edge and savvy — the ones you are probably the most interested in hiring — will be spending most of their time on smart phones, iPads, and other tablets. If you have not developed specific recruiting apps that take advantage of these mobile platforms, you will be at a disadvantage as we roll into the middle of 2012.

More applicant tracking systems are now capable of using a social profile rather than a resume, and as most candidates already have such a profile it only makes sense that they use it to apply for a position.

Everything from branding to screening to even doing interviews is moving to mobile platforms and using such things as simulations, video, and chat. Twitter, Google, Facebook, and other major players will introduce more mobile apps and functionality during this year.

By the end of 2012, the traditional career site will be mostly obsolete. If it exists at all will be little more than the place where the candidate makes the formal application. Smart firms will make everything they do mobile-friendly and compatible and encourage candidates to interact more with hiring managers, other employees, and even alumni in online forums, chat rooms, Twitter chats, and via video, Skype, and other similar media.

Just-in-time Sourcing and Recruiting

Sourcing has already moved from searching static databases to using social media, and this trend will continue to grow. Rather than build proprietary databases or talent pools, recruiters can participate in and look for potential candidates in many different online forums and communities. As almost all professionals have an online presence, whether in LinkedIn or Facebook or elsewhere, and as many are also likely participating in Twitter chats, Facebook conversations, and so on. Searching for talented people is getting easier each month.

A recruiter can find an interesting potential candidate, start a conversation, provide the candidate with a variety of information sources about the organization and position, and even direct the candidate to screening apps and apps that allow the candidate to apply.

Recruiters can also use their network of current employees, alumni, friends, and colleagues to crowdsource good candidates and leverage referrals.

Entire recruiting campaigns can be run in a matter of days or weeks by using referrals, crowdsourcing, social media, mobile technologies, and by rethinking the recruitment process. Through streamlining, simplification and by getting hiring managers more involved, candidates can be found, screened, assessed, and hired in days.

Continued Rise of Contingent Workers

The use of contractors, part-time employees, and consultants has soared during the recession. And it will continue to grow for two reasons: the first is that it provides employers with the flexibility they seek to manage costs and headcount easily and much more cheaply than by frequent layoffs. Second, many people are finding that contingent employment suits their lifestyle and interests well. They can plan other activities around their work schedules, they can budget according to the amount of time they are willing to work, and they get variety in the kind of work they do and who they work for.

It will be hard to return to the model of employment where just about everyone is a regular employee. Strategies changes frequently, world events and business cycles make it necessary to adjust priorities more often than ever before, and people are less and less willing to commit to a long-term employment arrangement that is uncertain and stressful.

The Beginning of Applied Analytics

Look for more vendors to offer analytical software specifically for human resources and recruiting. We will begin to see how various independent events have an effect on the quality of hire by tapping into data hidden away in their ATS and HRIS systems. They will begin to seriously track and use data to decide the best sources of candidates, what key traits lead to retention and on-the-job success, and where they can reduce costs or efforts and still get good results.

All in all, the economy and the election will dominate this year and, as a result, this should be a year of modest employment growth, a focus on hiring returning military veterans, and even more growth in outsourcing volume recruiting and hard-to-fill positions to RPOs.

The question is: why haven’t these tools and technologies made any significant difference?

If we look at other professions, it is clear that technology is not what makes the real difference. Take building as an example. Using only primitive hand tools, carpenters and masons from Roman times on crafted buildings that are enduring and emulated. The construction methods they used are studied and copied, while their tools gather dust in museums. Chinese accountants used abacuses to keep their books and sailors had glorified rowboats to explore the world’s oceans. It turns out that knowing how to do something is a far more critical skill than what tools are used to do it. Tools do not cause change and transformation, but methods and processes do.

The skills involved in building, accounting, or sailing are what make the difference between success and failure and often between life and death. Those who have improved the methods of building — the ones who figured out how to build skyscrapers and elevators — have contributed more to our progress than have the tools they used.

Technology saves labor and time and often lets us do things we could not do with our own muscles or brains, but it is not a substitute for core knowledge or for understanding how to do something or for human behavior.

And that is most likely why recruiting has not changed. While recruiters have many new tools, they are using traditional processes and methods without much innovation. This is most likely because, despite the hype about a talent shortage, there is really not a major problem finding talented people. If fact, most recruiters would be bored if their job became too easy — and many enjoy the hunt. Innovation usually occurs when there is an unsolvable problem or a major problem or a crisis, and recruiting has yet to run into any of those.

But what could be is still interesting. What would an efficient, updated recruiting process look like? Here are a few ideas that I think might work.

If anyone has already tried them or plans on giving them a try, I would like to hear from you in the comments section.

Idea 1: Stop any branding activities and focus totally on referrals. If you are in a nationwide or global firm with a known reputation, branding is a secondary concern. You already attract people because of your product or service brand and most likely have a pipeline of good candidates. Whenever you have an opening, just let employees know and ask them to use their networks to bring in any additional people you might need.

Referrals are free, fast, and effective. Incentives are not really needed and may actually cause employees to reach out to less-than-optimal candidates in the chance of getting whatever reward your offer. Instead give the employees who refer the best candidates, whether they are hired or not, a title such as “Preferred Referrer” or “Trusted Referrer,” and give anyone they refer priority consideration. This will incentivize others to become a titled referrer and raise the bar on the type of candidates you get.

Idea 2: Use online assessments and reduce interviews. Forget screening interviews, meet and greets, and extensive resume reviews. Instead invest in developing one or two screening tests that can be given online, are scored instantly, and provide both you and the candidate with feedback.

These kinds of screening tools can reduce your workload, improve the candidate experience, and result in much better candidates. The challenge is to develop the right tests that actually screen for the characteristics that are important for the job or for the organization.

There may need to be several tests for different positions or levels, but none of this is more costly or time-consuming than endless phone screens and interviews. I would go so far as to say that recruiters should never interview anyone in person. By implementing online screening and eliminating face-to-face interviews, you could potentially expect a recruiter to handle 20-50% more open requisitions.

There are many firms who can do this for reasonable costs, and the online testing and screening business is growing rapidly. Charles Handler, one of the other writers on ERE, has just released a book cataloging and commenting on most testing services available today.

Idea 3: Use video interviews heavily. Video interviews are a powerful and effective way to do more with less and improve legal compliance.

Video interviews are no longer taboo, and many candidates find them much more effective and less stressful than face-to-face interviews. Face-to-face interviews are expensive and time consuming and most of the time lead nowhere. Probably 75% of all interviews do not lead to an offer because of poor screening and poor candidate qualification. By conducting one live interview that is recorded, many people can view the same interview and evaluate the same responses. This leads to consistency, the lack of which is the greatest legal issue with multi-person, live interviews. By recoding the interview, there is proof that the interviews were done legally and that no discrimination occurred.

Idea 4: Train recruiters and hiring managers thoroughly on closing candidates. Make sure every recruiter and as many hiring managers as possible know how to identify potential acceptance issues and how to overcome objections.

Most acceptance failures are because someone — a recruiter or a hiring manager — did not pick up on signs that a candidate had reservations or issues that would be difficult to overcome: perhaps a reluctant spouse, a nagging doubt about the organization or the project, a desire to stay at their current employer, and so on.

It takes practice and training to notice these things and many recruiters are not well trained to not only notice the potential problem, but to deal with it. I often recommend that recruiters take a traditional sales training class where these skills are and the methods to overcome them are taught.

Idea 5: Communicate with mobile technology and via social media. Getting feedback to candidates regularly and fast is one of the ways to differentiate your organization from other and to get first-mover advantage with a candidate.

Most candidates today are more than willing to receive feedback and updates via their Facebook, LinkedIn, or other accounts. Email is fine, but experiment with other methods that cut down the time you spend and get the word out faster. Hiring managers should consider interviewing candidates using Skype or other tools. You could develop a mobile app to provide feedback or updates.

There are probably at least a dozen more ideas that you could try that would lower costs, improve speed, and provide higher quality candidates. But, then again, by doing it the way we always have, we ensure job security — for a while.

Big data refers to the totality of information available. This includes data in emails, instant messages, in video, and in audio files — all data that might help create a more complete understanding about an issue or person or provide an answer to some question. All the spreadsheets and databases we are currently using are made up of structured data, data that can be organized into columns or rows and then added or otherwise analyzed.

And, while this type of data is incredibly useful, access to unstructured data would add dimensions and depths that only the CIA can currently realize.

Historically, the volume and unstructured nature of so-called “big data” prevented much in way of analysis. An individual had to listen to the audio, watch the videos, read all the material, and integrate and analyze to form a conclusion. This is obviously very time-consuming, and requires training and the ability to assimilate many kinds of media. But we now have computers that are close to being able to look at large amounts of this kind of data and draw inferences, make suggestions, and provide summaries. The CIA and other government agencies undoubtedly already are using these tools to analyze email, voice mail, and phone calls in search of terrorists.

But these capabilities are about to be available to everyone. In the past few months Oracle announced it had acquired Endeca, a company that does dataanalysis and is building a Big Data Appliance — a computer specially designed to handle the volume of information found in unstructured data. IBM developed Watson, the computer that played against humans and won at Jeopardy, as a big data analysis machine.

HP announced a few days ago that it is integrating Autonomy, which it purchased earlier this year, into a new hardware platform for data analysis, SAS has developed a number of big-data applications, and EMC recently acquired Greenplum, another data analysis firm. Each of these firms is looking to mine the potential of the massive amounts of data that exist and that are being created.

Imagine the power these tools will potentially give to marketing and advertising folks. They may be able to specifically target individuals with messages that, based on the analysis of what they are writing or talking about, will entice them to buy a product or choose a suppler. On the more positive side, this level of understanding will make it possible for computers to take over call centers, much of customer support, and other jobs where knowing a lot about the caller as well as the products will be most useful.

What This Means for Recruiters

For recruiters, this may change everything about what we do and how we do it.

The capability this analytic software has is scary and threatening. To thrive in the coming world of big-data analysis, we will all have to learn to adapt and to develop very different skills from the ones we now have.

Here is just a cursory sampling of what may be in store.

Job Descriptions

By analyzing what a department produces, what data is gathered and used, who people talk to and interact with in meetings or in social networks, these programs will be able to identify key characteristics of successful people and from that develop a list of competencies, skills, and attitudes that are most likely to be successful. They can match this against current requirements and suggest changes or skills that might improve or complement whatever exists. But a job description or analysis will be much more complete and accurate than they are today.

This capability will be here in a year or two.

Sourcing

By tapping into a larger data-set than we can access or analyze today, we can find more people and learn more about them than ever. We can perhaps get referrals from whoever a person calls, what they talk about, and who they refer to in the conversations.

These tools will also completely eliminate the need for Boolean search or experts in using the various forms of search that are popular today. These will all be automated to a great extent. Imagine a computer akin to the Hal 9000 in 2001:Space Odyssey that can understand human languages (similar to Siri on the Apple iPhone 4S) and conduct a search independently of a recruiter. They will be able to dig much deeper and make inferences based on data that would be impossible for a human.

I look for some of this capability within two to three years at the most.

Assessment

We have an increasing ability to learn more and more about people by gleaning bits of information about someone from scraping or extracting data from websites/public information/social networks and from information about the products or services someone buys or uses, and from their interests extracted from comments, Tweets, locations, and so forth.

This, combined with better analysis of the job as described above, will let us choose people with a higher probability of success than we can do today with all of our tools.

This is just around the corner and could probably be put into practice at some level today if the machines were available for commercial use (some are) and the costs were reasonable.

Metrics and Performance Analysis

With the power that these tools are already capable of, everything we do will be tracked and can be correlated to our performance.

We will be able to measure and track which calls resulted in the most candidates, what methods yielded the greatest returns, and how well our candidates performed once hired. Some of this capability is available today with tools incorporated into HRIS systems like SAP and Oracle.

Legal and Privacy Concerns are huge and will require another article to discuss.

What are your thoughts about all of this? Is this all just a pipe-dream or do you agree that it will happen?

So anyone wielding such a powerful tool should be certain of its validity and of their skill in using it. The EEOC considers the interview to be a selection test, and requires that it be validated before use. Yet, I would guesstimate that few interviews are validated at all, and the ones that are may not be delivered consistently or by a competent, trained interviewer.

Research has consistently shown that the typical unstructured interview is pretty unreliable. It does not consistently ensure that the most qualified person gets a job or that the person will perform any better than another candidate chosen with less care. In all the studies that I have looked at, the validity of choosing candidates by only using an unstructured interview process is about the same as simply picking someone at random.

Interviews are rarely done consistently from interviewer to interviewer or from candidate to candidate. Yet, we typically consider all the interview inputs for a candidate as if they were done in the same way. Therefore we are comparing apples to oranges, and the hairs we split and the time we spend agonizing over a small detail or a particular answer to an interview question is wasted.

No wonder that candidates often roll their eyes at the absurdity of the interview process.

Assessing candidates is highly subjective, and is based on whatever assumptions (prejudices) the recruiter or hiring manager has, their mood, and the chemistry between them and the candidate. Even factors such as physical appearance, tone of voice, or time of day can impact the interview.

I often ask recruiters to think about what would happen if they selected two candidates for a job who each had the same qualifications and who had known the questions that were going to be asked and had prepared the same answers. If another recruiter interviewed them, would they both receive the same score on the interview, as they should?

DDI and other respected selection organizations offer excellent tools to improve the reliability and validity of interviews, and everyone who does interviewing should be trained in these methods and use them consistently. These well-constructed, validated, and structured interviews given by a trained interviewer can increase reliability by a significant amount, yet they are still only a little more reliable than simply picking a “winner” at random from your final pool.

Carefully constructed interviews, where the questions are directly related to measureable skills, competencies, or past experiences, take a lot of time to prepare and, to be most effective, have to be delivered in a similar way (ideally exactly the same way) to each candidate for the job. This alone would eliminate most of the interviews I have had personally. From my experience as a recruiter and candidate, these rambling, unstructured interviews were far more common. The interviewer ranged over a wide variety of topics, dipping into my resume here and there to ask a question or ask me to validate something they already expected and wanted to hear. In most cases, I could manipulate the interview in subtle ways to make sure my strengths were showcased. In other words, a sophisticated candidate can game the system in many ways to tilt the deck in their favor.

Another Way

On the other hand, there are many tools available to recruiters that could improve their ability to reliably select and recommend candidates that have the depth of skill and aptitude the positions calls for. These tools can save endless amounts of time and free up a recruiter to spend more time sourcing, selling, and ensuring that the candidates are informed and engaged.

These tools include a multitude of screening and testing tools: validated realistic job previews, simulations, aptitude. and skills tests, as well as simple things like asking candidates to actually do something relevant to the job: edit an article, write an advertisement, critique a circuit diagram, locate an error, etc.

Internships are another great way to assess a candidate’s fit into an organization as well as their motivation, interest, and ability – both professionally and to work within a team. While they can be difficult to set up and take time, once they are underway an organization has an almost steady stream of good candidates under assessment.

And still another excellent way to get feedback on past performance and character is to conduct a reference check. Using a tool such as Checkster, you can get anonymous and wide-ranging feedback from many people who have worked with the candidate.

I know many of you use other tools in your evaluation, but I also know you always conduct interviews — often many of them. If the interviews are used to establish a human connection, market the organization or position to the candidate, and are not the primary source of gathering the information to make a decision, I have no issue with them. When they are used as a selection tool — and particularly when we are proud of them as a selection tool — I get concerned. There are many better way to select candidates than the interview, and we should be using them more and more.

Individuals are finding new freedoms and exploring their own capacity and taste for change and entrepreneurism. Some organizations are looking for ways to adapt to all of this without endangering their own success, but it may be that these two different needs are not compatible. We will find out over the next 10 years or less. Certainly manufacturing firms and companies where hands-on work is required will not be able to be flexible enough to these changes. They will face friction between the workers whose jobs allow them to be virtual or part-time or flex-time and those whose work does not.

Here are some of the issues, paradoxes, and changes that employers, candidates, recruiters, and human resources are faced with.

These have already complicated the employment market and created confusion as work itself is being redefined and re-calibrated.

Flexible Working Times

Everyone wants to work when they want to, whether that is at night, weekends, or during what we call a “normal” working day. Mothers want time with their children and would like to work when the kids are sleeping or in school. Others are more productive in the wee hours and want to sleep in the daytime. And still others want to vary their schedules depending on their mood or family needs.

Individual contributors who can work alone are most likely to be able to find work with flexible schedules. People who might enjoy such flexibility include data-input people, researchers, web developers, programmers, and others whose work spans time and is done individually.

Some organizations allow flexibility within defined parameters or with prior approval. Only a few are truly open to a varied, unpredictable schedule even if work is done in a timely way and all deadlines are met. My own website is coded and maintained by a person who has a full-time job that gives her flexibility and control over her time and allows her to take on additional work.

More firms are offering flexible working times and slowly are focusing on results rather than time as the measures of performance.

It will be tough to convince very good people to work for organizations that do not allow flexible work. Employment branding and messaging should be clear about the time requirements, and you should target an audience where flexibility might not be a critical consideration, such as younger men and single folks who do not have children or other responsibilities. You can also target baby boomers who have grown up in a business world without flexibility and are comfortable with that.

Multiple Jobs

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics defines multiple jobholders as people who are either hourly or salary workers who hold two or more jobs; self-employed workers who also hold an hourly or salary job; or unpaid family workers who hold an hourly or salary job as well. Currently official figures indicate that about 5% of Americans fit this category.

Organizations still expect and seek loyalty, even though they have shown their employees little of that when times get tough. Young workers, especially Gen Ys, often do have more than one source of income. They rarely make that public. They know it would be frowned on or even be the reason for getting them fired. There is very little a recruiter can do about this, but if you reject those who you suspect of having multiple jobs, you will significantly reduce your candidate pool and the quality of that pool.

Virtual Work

Having employees working from home or from remote work centers is common, and more employers are allowing this due to a variety of converging reasons, including the desire to save energy, increased travel times, skill shortages, and a global workforce.

Over the past decade so many companies have encouraged virtual work that it is almost expected. People are comfortable working with their laptops and smart phones, and have access to Skype accounts and collaborative workspaces. All of these tools make working away from a physical place practical, convenient, and cheap.

There is no doubt that this form of employment will grow rapidly and, in my opinion, may make up as much as half the U.S. workforce within a decade as most employers recognize the benefit of allowing workers to be located remotely.

Temporary Work

More employers are looking for temporary employees. This used to signal the beginning of a recovery as employers hired temps and then converted them to regular employment as the economy improved. We have seen a significant surge in temporary hiring, but very few are likely to be converted to regular employees.

Both sides are wary of commitment. Employers are not convinced that the economic recovery is sustainable and are reluctant to take on labor that may not be needed. Potential employees are not sure they will have a job that lasts and may be happier with one or two temporary jobs that spread out their risk. This article in the Huffington Post seems to bear this out and is only one of many similar ones.

Generational Mindset

As many have written, there are large differences in attitudes about work and time, between the three major generations in the workplace. Baby Boomers (those over 45) are generally traditional and are comfortable with being physically at work, in an organization, and working an 8-hour or longer day.

Gen X (those between 30-45) is also comfortable working in traditional ways, but they are more open to virtual work, and demand flexibility for their family.

But Gen Ys (those under 30) are the change agents. They do not really want to work for any organization, but especially don’t want to work for those with layers of hierarchy and reams of policies and procedures. They want flexible, virtual work, and are more likely to have multiple jobs. They are the hardest to recruit and the hardest to retain. Yet, finding ways to attract and accommodate them will be crucial because they are the future of most organizations as Baby Boomers age and move out.

Long-term unemployment will likely be the new normal, and employers, recruiters, and candidates will find a host of ways to engage people outside of “regular” employment. In fact, the term “regular employment” is becoming meaningless.

As the recession continues, many people will find ways to earn a living without relying on traditional jobs. Many of the best will find greater satisfaction in working as consultants or contractors and, while they may technically be unemployed, they may actually live and feel better while earning less. This will be a challenge to our consumer society and its associated economy.

Recruiting in this morphing environment will likewise be more and more challenging and require adaptation to recruiting people with different work and pay patterns. Recruiting the regular employee will become a smaller segment of hiring and be more of a challenge than ever before.

Earlier this week, Mercer released its What’s Working survey that found that “one in two U.S. employees [are] looking to leave or [have] checked out on the job.” Other surveys support these findings, including ones by Right Management.

Is this simply the grass-is-greener syndrome, or is there something else going on? Even though there are plenty of jobs for certain types of people — Amazon is adding 5,000 people, and McDonald’s, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple are just a few others that have announced fairly large hiring plans — we are not actually out of this recession, and changing jobs is a risky business.

While money and benefits are not the primary reason people leave their employers in normal times, these times are very different.

This recession has lingered longer than most and is impacting a generation of workers who have not suffered much from recessions in the past. Their tolerance is different, and so are their expectations.

Today I think there are four primary drivers of these rather frightening statistics. And these same reasons will eventually drive away the new people you recruit as well, unless you are candid and realistic right up front with the candidates.

The first driver is actually pay this time. For many employees it has been a long time since they have gotten much in the way of a pay increase. The recession is often used as a reason for not granting reasonable increases, and managers have been more focused on performance — of lack of performance as a way to hold down these increases.

Yet, employees see their organizations making good profits and in some cases even record profits. Corporate coffers are flush with cash, yet this has not translated into significant pay increases. At the same time, option grants have shrunk due to changes in how they are taxed, giving some employees even less reason to stay.

Employees perceive a unfairness in how they are paid compared to how firms are profiting.

Second, and not completely separated from pay, is the amount of work that is being asked of employees. Many people I speak with are really doing what two or more would have done prior to this recession. Managers have asked for more and gotten it as employees fear there are few other jobs.

Yet the perception about jobs is changing, and many are starting to make a move if for no other reason than to lessen their workload or find a more flexible employer.

A third growing issue is the attitude younger workers, especially those in the Gen Y category, have about work. They feel their personal freedom is threatened by restrictive social media polices. And they are unhappy with the unwillingness of many firms to allow flexible working hours. They are also inclined to want open, authentic cultures and this recession has caused firms to tighten up communications, keep more secrets, and allow much less open discussion. This is all negative to the younger folks who will seek out more open and flexible environments.

A fourth element is lack of development. Many surveys have pointed out that Gen Y in particular, but all of us at some time, want to take on new responsibilities and learn new skills. During the recession organizations cut back on training and limited development opportunities. In some cases when development was available no one could take advantage oif it because of high-demand work requirements that left no time available. This has resulted in frustrated and bored employees who are looking for a change.

In reality, it’s not hard to see why these surveys are showing a potentially devastating amount of turnover about to happen.

I also realize that while there may not be a lot you can do about these things; there are always creative tactics that can help. Here are some thoughts.

First of all, make internal mobility the most important thing you focus on. Helping employees find new positions may be the best and most direct way you can influence them to stay. Yet, most organizations either erect numerous bureaucratic hurdles that make moving around tough, or they simply do not offer any simple way for an employee to learn about possibilities.

The intranet or some other internal website should be designed so that employees can learn about open positions and can apply for those positions. Work with HR to take down barriers and make it as easy to move between positions as it is to move outside the firm. This probably means that many current practices will have to change. Organizations with low turnover generally follow several rules that guide the internal application and transfer process.

1. Employees should be able to interview for new positions without permission from anyone.
2. They should not have to complete any sort of application form, and resumes should be very simple, if used at all.
3. They should be able to leave their current position within a maximum of two weeks after accepting another offer — even if their old position has not been filled.
4. Salaries offered should be similar to those an external hire would receive.

Second, help hiring managers reposition jobs to match the available skills rather than seek out only those who are perfect fits.

Don’t go for the exact match. Encourage hiring managers to be more open to giving internal candidates an opportunity. Exact matching is expensive and pays little in return. No one is good enough at predicting what the exact set of skills are going to be for every project and job. Hiring internal people with basic qualifications is often the better decision as these people not only bring enthusiasm and freshness, but also fit the culture. Recruiters need to encourage managers to experiment and realize that most of us are not doing the exact job we were trained to do or even the work our degrees prepared us for.

And, finally, be open with potential candidates about what’s going on in the company.

When you set realistic expectations up front, you lessen the disillusionment that will come after the new hire starts. Strive for authenticity. Encourage them to talk to employees who are happy and engaged. Make sure candidates are good culture fits and that they are fully informed about the work they are going to be expected to do.

Working with the hiring managers is key to success, as talent shortages are partly caused by lack of imagination. Jobs can be tailored to fit candidates, job descriptions can be changed, and managers can be flexible. It takes negotiating with them and providing them information about what’s going on. Turnover may happen, but you may be able to lessen its impact or bring in new people better fitted to your culture.

There are hundreds of stories like this. Candidates with great education, experience, and who have worked for all the right companies often fail miserably because they don’t fit into the culture of the company.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, believes his success has been in finding the right people — the ones who fit comfortably into the corporate culture. So do a growing number of recruiters, hiring managers, and CEOs.

Ten years ago we didn’t hear very much about fit, although it has always been a concern and a part of the decision on whether to hire someone or not. But recently it has become the most important concern, often overriding technical skills or experience. As we move to flatter organizations, more team and project work, and increasingly collaborative work environments, finding people who get along with others and fit into corporate culture are essential to success. They keep harmony, they build community, and they create trust, all important ingredients for success in innovative global and competitive environments.

Personal fit should be an integral part of your candidate assessment process. Fitting into a culture, organization, team or job is not always easy. Some people feel more connected and more included than others, and those who feel the most connected and involved tend to be the ones who perform well and stay. People who feel that they belong to something important — something that engages and excites them — make organization more successful.

Candidates experience the corporate culture almost from their first contact with the organization. They see it in how they are treated, how diligent and caring the employees are, and what the work environment is like. As soon as they meet the hiring manager, they are assessing his or her style and values. When these are in alignment, good performance follows.

Likewise, recruiters and hiring managers are subconsciously assessing candidates from the moment they meet. That gut feel we frequently have about a candidate is probably based largely on how we see them fitting into our team and how well we think we will get along with them. This is often partly based on people who have similar interests or hobbies, who have had similar experiences, or who have known the same people. The more common connections with a candidate, the more likely they are to fit into our culture.

But the first step in more objectively assessing culture fit is to articulate what makes up the culture of your organization.

Know Your Culture

Most firms do a poor job of figuring out what makes up their culture and whether candidates would be comfortable in it or with a particular manager. Many factors make up the corporate culture. Some of those are as basic as work schedules and travel demands, but perhaps more significant are the ethics and values the organization believes in, the style of everyday management, and how communication takes place.

Take the time to understand what the ingredients are of your true culture, not the espoused one, and then you will be able to assess candidates with far greater success.

Four Ways to Assess Fit

Here are four ways to determine whether or not a candidate fits your culture.

Realistic Job Previews. Some firms rely on realistic job previews, where candidates get a glimpse of what it would be like to actually do the work. The Shaker Consulting Group has created these for firms such as Key Bank and Starbucks. Previews allow candidates to select themselves “out” of the interview process and also, when combined with testing, allow organizations to determine the potential quality of fit of a candidate. The downside is that but often candidates overlook potential mismatches and move forward.

Use Referrals and Internal Connections. Referrals have been widely written about here on ERE and elsewhere. They can be a gold standard for cultural fit because current employees, or even those who may not be employees but know your organization well, typically choose to refer people who will fit the culture. You can simply ask employees to focus on people who would be a good fit, rather on people with high skills levels or experience. The downside of referrals is that you can overuse your network and run out of good candidates, and it is always hard to get referrals consistently. It often requires a “push effort” to get people motivated and once the push goes away, effort falls back to low levels.

Use Social Networks. Social networks are a potentially highly effective way to determine cultural fit or at least to see whether or not a potential candidate communicates and interacts in a way that fits. By developing a Facebook or LinkedIn page and then engaging candidates in conversations, recruiters can learn a great deal about communication skills, language ability, and motivation. The downside is that these require time and effort; often, more than an average recruiter has available. However, it is probably true that candidates who have joined your network and participate in conversations at all are a better fit than those who do not.

Fit Testing. There are many tests of cultural and personal fit that can streamline assessment and that add a quantitative dimension to the selection process. These tests have been around for decades and have a solid track record when used properly. Of course, the downside of testing is the candidate’s acceptance and the time needed on both the candidate side as well as on the recruiters to interpret the results.

But whatever method or combination of methods you decide on, making sure candidates will be comfortable in their work environment and with their hiring manager should be a key consideration.

By getting candidates who are aligned to your culture, you will experience faster time to productivity, deeper involvement in problem solving, greater innovation, and less turnover.

Why do people stay at a company or leave? What motivates such behavior, and how can employers motivate people to stay longer? What is a “good” rate of turnover and how do we know who to entice to stay and who to let go? While this article cannot hope to answer these questions in any detail, let’s take a quick look at the subject and see what we find.

First of all, when employees are asked why they leave, they usually give reasons like these: They want a better work/life balance, more money, a better opportunity for career growth, more independence and control over their own work, and of course job security.

For most of the past decade, employers have worked hard to give employees more time off and more benefits aimed at the family. They have increased salaries and offered stock options, enriched and enlarged jobs until some employees are now complaining that their jobs are too enriched, and they have offered employees more autonomy over the kinds of work they do, where they do it and how they do it. More pay is “at risk,” meaning the employee has to perform to get it, and this is at least loosely coupled to job security.

What is surprising is that turnover, which should be at an all-time low given this slow economy, is about the same as always. Sure, the rate has slowed a bit and few firms are experiencing the 25%-20% turnover rates of the past two or three years, but people are still leaving — good, valuable people who we want to keep. And as the recession eases, more will decide to leave: the grass is always greener.

So the question becomes: what are the real reasons people leave and what can employers do about it?

What is important here is that no single factor in and of itself is decisive in causing turnover or in raising retention rates. Like so many others things, it is the systemic effect of several factors that leads to a final decision. People from different cultures respond differently to various factors, as do those of different ages.

Professor David Finegold and Senior Research Scientist Susan Mohrman, at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California, presented a paper in the Spring of 2001 at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland entitled: What Do Employees Really Want? The Perception vs. The Reality.

This paper presents research from a wide range of organizations, people, and cultures and disputes many of the reason people commonly give for leaving. Some of their findings include the fact that security is generally only a major factor in those over 50 and that money is only a motivator is those under 30. For most employees in the in-between ages, other things play a much large role.

Most employees want these four things in their organization most of all:

1. A clear and compelling strategy;
2. An innovative environment low in bureaucracy;
3. Challenging work assignments that enable employees to grow their capabilities; and
4. Rewards based, in part, on how well the organization performs.

As I look at these I see that almost all of our “traditional retention” tools fall short. I was recently in an organization where they were going through the annual stock-option-granting exercise. They spent days and days assessing how valuable each person on the management team was (against some dubious criteria, I must say) and then how many options they would each get. The firms that practice this all say it is to retain people. Yet, many of those with options leave whenever the new firm offers an equal or better package of their own stock! It takes a lot of stock and many years of accumulation before this becomes a more powerful retention tool than satisfaction with the job or a challenging project.

One of the most intriguing results of this research was the finding that group or team incentive pay is a larger factor in retention than individual pay. By offering incentive pay to an entire team, you force management to encourage and develop individuals and you push individuals to work together so they can all get the reward. By focusing on paying and rewarding individuals for their performance you often work against team efforts. Yet, most good things are accomplished by groups of people pulling together and few, indeed, by anyone working alone.

I have always believed and counseled my clients that creating an exciting, challenging workplace filled with managers who are held accountable for turnover is the best retention policy of all.

The negatives of turnover are obvious: greater costs to hire and train new employees, lost knowledge and experience (i.e., intellectual capital), decreases in productivity, and lower quality of work. The positives are less well understood, but no less real: infusion of new ideas, additional of new knowledge and experience to the company’s knowledge base, lower wages as new employees often enter at a lower scale, and enhanced promotional opportunities for those who stay.

The costs of replacing a lost employee can be staggering. Costs can be as much as 3x base salary for a mid-level manager. Formulas abound for calculating replacement costs. The Saratoga Institute offers a commonly used one. There are others that are less traditional. But anyway you calculate it, turnover costs money.

It would seem that if our traditional beliefs about why people leave are not valid and that if our current retention tools are not that effective, it is time to try some new approaches. Challenging work, flexible schedules, good managers, rewards based on what actually gets done — sounds like common sense to me.

The first four months of 2011 have shown that social media is far from a fad. More and more ordinary people are joining networks, sharing pictures, uploading video, and opening their personal lives to friends and colleagues.

Facebook now has well over 700 million members. LinkedIn is about to go public, making it the first of the social media firms to do so. Empire Avenue is streaking forward, educating us on how to make social networking valuable, while Twitter continues to grow as a tool for sharing and crowdsourcing information.

The benefits of joining any network are quickly apparent: connecting easily to friends, staying in touch with distant family and friends, finding employment or a mate, sharing information, learning, and being entertained are all positive outcomes.

These outweigh the potential risks about lack of privacy. People are increasingly sophisticated about what they share and why they share it.

Very few are sharing things that might affect their careers or personal lives; the greater danger may be that some users are learning how to game the system and manipulate their social image. Hopefully, the power of the crowd — their own friends and associates — will limit this.

Video Job Posting?

According to ComScore, YouTube is the second-most-used search engine in the world after Google. The trend is for people to focus on exploring and learning by watching a video rather than by reading a description.

It seems obvious to me that recruiters should be making short videos about the jobs they are seeking candidates to fill. By getting hiring managers to make a 1-3 minute video describing a particular position, its requirements, and perhaps by interviewing someone who already does that function, a recruiter could have a powerful attraction tool. It is a medium especially suitable for mobile applications which are all the rage right now.

Employees could send short videos to friends as part of a referral program, and if the job descriptions are done well enough, there could be a viral effect as people watch the video and forward it on to friends.

I am not talking about the realistic job previews I see often on corporate career sites. I am talking about the actual job description being a video with a verbal indication on how to apply.

I am actually surprised that I haven’t seen this being done yet given that it is very easy to make videos and that YouYube provides special channels for distributing them. If you are already doing this for current, open positions, I’d love to get a link.

Down With Communities

It seems like every organization is using social media to attract and engage interesting and qualified people in their opportunities. While they call this “community” building, I am not sure that is the best term. A standard definition of community is, “A group of people living together in one place.” It also implies that they are made up of a spectrum of people.

But corporations are striving to build groups made up of only people who have the same general interests and abilities. This is a special interest group, not a community.

Maybe that would be clearer to everyone if we got out of the community hype and began to build very specific SIGS. People understand that better, and realize that they can belong to many SIGS at the same time. It is rather difficult to be part of several communities. One firm calls them “hives,” and I like that term a lot as well — both corporations and candidates are after the honey.

Job seekers can now scan a vast array of possibilities and explore potential jobs they would never have been aware of prior to social media. The same goes for recruiters who can now touch thousands of people who were invisible before.

Serious Games and Learning

Empire Avenue is a fascinating product that has the potential to raise the social media game to a new level of interaction and understanding.

Basically it is what is called a serious game — one that is fun but is also educational — and results in a useful outcome. Each person who joins becomes a “stock” that can be bought and sold using play money. Whether anyone buys your stock depends on your perceived value. That value is based on two factors: how many people have bought shares in you and on your level of participation in various social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

The more you participate, and the more others retweeet, comment on your posts, or engage in conversation with you, the higher your stock price goes. Each stock pays dividends, and so when you purchase someone’s stock determine how it will improve your own wealth. It is always wise to choose people who have a significant social profile.

Empire Avenue then is both a social media aggregator as well as a way to score and track your ability to use social media effectively. By experimenting with various ways of tweeting and communicating, by building larger and more useful networks of people who respond and engage in conversation, the faster and higher your stock prove will rise.

I look at this as a useful recruiting tool, an educational product, and a fun experience. And, if you are so inclined you can purchase shares in me by joining Empire Avenue (free) and going to my profile. I am still pretty inexpensive!

Additionally, women account for 51 percent of all workers in high-paying management, professional, and related occupations. There are now more women in management positions than men for the first time in American history, and it isn’t stopping anytime soon. Women are projected to account for 51.2 percent of the increase in total labor force growth by 2018. And, these are not exclusively American trends — they are also trends in Europe and many Asian countries.

More women are attending and graduating from universities. Men make up only 40% of the students in American universities while women are closing in on two-thirds of the university population and receive the majority of college degrees. No one is exactly sure why this is happening but we do know that boys are diagnosed more often with learning disabilities and are more likely to be expelled or incarcerated. Or it may be that men are disengaged and uncomfortable with traditional teaching methods. They often feel able to go off on their own, start a business, or just hang out with friends.

So what does all of this mean for your organization and recruiting?

Obviously there will be a growing number of well-educated women entering the workforce. A wise strategy would be one that began to actively seek them out, engage them in learning more about your organization, and provide them with enticements that are geared to their needs.

Most of our recruiting efforts are traditional, and that generally means weighted in favor of men. We assume that most employees are willing to work a “normal” 8-hour day and a “normal” 40-hour work week. We assume they want bonuses and blocks of vacation time. And we assume they are willing to play the political games that are frequently needed to get ahead. These include those beers after work with the boss, talking sports, cars, and participating in events after work.

All of these may not be good assumptions if you want to stay competitive and get the best and most educated people available.

Here are a few things to consider: 

It’s just good business strategy to hire women. With women becoming the majority of the workforce, it is just common sense to find better ways to attract and engage them. More and more startups are now led by women and more are moving into the ranks of senior leadership.

A number of organizations including HP and IBM have designed specific strategies to attract women. One organization, Cigna, has invested 2 million dollars to recruit and develop executive-level women. Pepperdine University found that the Fortune 500 companies with the best record of promoting women outperformed their competitors by anywhere from 41 to 116 percent.

And, a recent study by Catalyst shows that companies with the highest representation of women in their senior leadership had better financial performance as a group than those with the lowest number of women. Yet, women only account for 14% of the boards of Fortune 500 in the U.S. France and other European countries have now mandated that boards will be 40% female.

Are you finding the women you already have? Many recruiters and hiring managers are not actively seeking out the women already working in their organizations. Internal hiring and development of women are cornerstones of improving your brand image. Each recruiter should focus on making sure that a diverse slate of candidates that includes current female employees whenever possible is presented to hiring managers.

By making it a policy to help women move up and across the organization you can enhance your brand image and consequently your ability to attract more women.

You need to make sure your brand is friendly to women. Very few organizations take the time to examine their brand messaging to see how it appeals or doesn’t appeal to men and women. Women often feel undervalued, unappreciated, and underserved by recruiters and organizations. There is a subtle expectation that they should react to things and have the same approaches as men do to situations and events.

It is very important to think about the overt and covert messages that come through when someone thinks about your brand. Messages that may appeal more to women than men are those offering flexible work time or that talk about a friendly and collaborative workplace. Socially responsible organizations are also important to many women. Imaging needs to show women in a variety of roles and testimonials and interviews with women showcase what you are doing. Women need to see and hear that their work will be rewarded and appreciated and that the expectations are not less for them than they are for men.

You should relook at all your HR policies and practices. Numerous surveys show that women are looking for very different benefits than men. Some of the specific things they are looking for include job sharing, part-time telecommuting, flexible business hours, and paid and unpaid work interruptions for child care and elder care.

Women are also looking for non-hierarchical organizations with a reputation for collaborative decision-making. If your organization, like so many, has a lot of men at the top this may be a problem. But often lower down there are women managers and women-led teams that offer that collaborative environment. Every recruiter should understand how women contribute to their organization and what roles may be most attractive.

Ignoring women, thinking they are the same as men, assuming we all want to same things are very dangerous practices. Beginning to tailor your strategies and tactics to the dominant workforce makes good sense to me.

(Stats are from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics unless indicated otherwise.)

Are you able to take advantage of technology to do the boring, repetitive parts of recruiting? Do you have tools that automatically schedule interviews, recommend people based on their resumes, create all the reports and documents you need? Are you able to recruit faster than before? Have you invested in systems, technology, and process improvements to lower costs and improve the speed to hire, develop, retain, or engage your employees? If not, you are clearly lagging behind those who have, and will have a tough time catching up.

HR will be (and already is) under full assault from the third-party world.

Increases in productivity significantly lag the investment in tools and process improvements. We normally first use new technologies to emulate what we already do in another way. It’s only after significant time that we begin to find new and innovative ways to use the tools and adjust our processes accordingly.

An example is the introduction of the typewriter. In the early days of the typewriter a manager would dictate to a stenographer, who would take shorthand and then use the typewriter to create a document. This took two people and three steps. It took decades before we got to the point of eliminating the stenographer by having the manager learn to type and enter the document directly. But when this occurred, the profession of stenographer disappeared (as did shorthand), efficiency went up, and the number of people an office needed went down.

There is a similar story about the applicant tracking system. Introduced in the late 1980s, it really just added a step to the standard recruiting process — and even slowed it down and added staff — by requiring resumes to be scanned and checked for accuracy. They were weak on search. They consumed hours of IT time to set up and maintain. It has taken 20 years to get where they are today, and there is long way to go yet before they are really productivity-enhancers.

These examples illustrate what I mean: It takes a lot of time from the introduction of a new technology for people to learn how to use it and to adjust processes and structures. It takes a long time for technology vendors to adapt and improve the outputs, interface, and capabilities.

From the 1970s through the mid-1990s organizations globally were investing heavily in computers and software, and everyone assumed that because of those tools, productivity would soar. For anyone old enough to remember, that did not happen. Lots of economists called this the productivity paradox. It seemed that no investment in technology, computers, or software caused any major change in productivity. Then, around 1995 everything changed. Suddenly productivity began to climb and averaged 2.6 percent until 2000. Then another amazing surge occurred when productivity jumped to 3.6 percent through 2003. It has now settled back into a comfortable 2.4 percent per year growth, which is still greater per year than those before 1970. The great lesson is that investments in technology and process improvements pay off — but it takes time for that to happen.

The challenge we face is to increase the speed it takes and adopt and adapt sooner.

Recruiting

In recruiting, it means investing in software that will increase your ability to interact with candidates. This includes all sorts of things from websites and highly targeted marketing systems to candidate relationship management tools and social media. These tools have to be focused on achieving a goal: The goal might be to refine how candidates are sourced and to reduce the number of people needed to do each step of the hiring cycle. Or, the goal might be for a single person to attract, source, screen, and present a candidate, while the administrative tools automatically track everything that is happening and generates the appropriate reports and paperwork. By introducing systems without goals or reasons, the tools become burdens.

Education

In education, this means actively finding ways to turn the delivery of facts, data, and information over to the Internet and the sources it makes available. It means using games and simulations to teach math, science, history, and many other subjects. It means that eventually one teacher/mentor/coach could work with hundreds of people — some virtually and some perhaps face-to-face — with no loss of quality. But achieving this would require new processes, new ways of thinking about education, and the implementation of lots of new technology. Fortunately, the technology is relatively cheap compared to just a decade ago. By being located in the Cloud, distribution is simplified and IT gets out of the way. As Apple and Android are showing us, small apps downloaded to mobile phones and laptops extend our reach.

Career Development

In career development, it means using the advice and testing tools that are freely available in the Internet. It might mean developing self-guided career dialogues and realistic video-based job previews. It could be linking to blogs and commentaries about careers and work that would inform and guide decisions.

In almost every field of HR there are more possibilities than I can imagine. Some outsourcing firms are already investing heavily in developing technology and new systems to raise productivity. IBM and many Indian companies fully understand the productivity paradox and realize that every dollar spent today will pay itself back many times over down the road.

Technology, combined with process improvements, will either revolutionize a stale and unproductive function or force its services to be outsourced to more efficient and effective third-parties. Opportunity calls!

This is but one example of the many times we accept tradition for it face value. Far better to be a bit of a skeptic and question everything that seems to be common sense or that everyone believes.

Here I examine a few of the common beliefs that most recruiters hold.

Interviews Are Critical to Make a Good Hire

One of the greatest myths of all is that interviewing is the best way to assess people. Numerous vendors provide interview training and promise that if you conduct interviews well you will select people who will perform better and stay longer. If you conduct highly structured, well-thought-out interviews consistently and apply what you learn, research shows that this is the case. But in my many years of experience, I find that interviews are done well only very rarely and most of them are little more than chitchats.

As I have written many times, only a combination of assessment techniques will really work — and then not perfectly. Research has consistently shown that by combining skills testing along with assessing for cultural fit and motivation, success on the job can be improved over interviewing. These tools are also cheaper and faster than the normal interview process which takes way too much expensive time of both recruiters and hiring managers. They are also far more defensible and objective than interviewing, which even when it is well done, is a highly subjective process.

Innovative approaches include using simulations, gaming techniques, and video. All of these make serious candidates engagement more likely and will lead to better end results.

If I were to skip anything in the hiring process, it would be interviewing. I would give assessment tests based on careful research on the needed skills and competencies as well as on cultural fit. Once there is a final list, I would let the manager select based on his or her face-to-face assessment.

Finding People Who Fit Our Culture Is Critical

But it may also be just as cost effective to simply hire people after a cursory screen for skills, experience, and culture fit. We downplay our own intuition way too often. How many times have you felt that a candidate would not work out, but were persuaded by test results or interviews that they would be a good hire only to find out later that your gut was right? Or, conversely, rejected a candidate for one manager who later makes a big splash for another hiring manager?

It is possible to over assess and over analyze. I see this especially with younger and less experienced recruiters who perhaps overly rely on tools rather than to take a chance. Creativity and innovation occur frequently where you least expect it. Candidates who do not fit the mold, so to speak, may become the ones who have the breakthrough ideas or who shake up the normal way of thinking to refocus a project or stimulate some new ideas.

The Candidate Is Your Primary Customer

There is a strong recruiter belief that the candidate is your customer. While there is no doubt that it is very important to market and brand your organization and the job to the candidate and to maintain impeccable relations, candidates are not your most important customer.

The hiring manager has always been and remains the key to your success. Recruiters who are not aligned to their hiring manger’s needs are usually not successful for long. By aligning yourself with the hiring managers and making sure they get the types of candidates they are looking for in timeframes they accept, you will ensure your own ability to continue doing good recruiting.

One manager I used to work with told me this: “I know what kind of person I need and I actually know several people that I’d love to hire. I am just not sure how to approach them. If you can get them interested and bring them in here, I’ll convince them to work for me.”

My job became simply a liaison — the go-between — and we were able to hire a number of great engineers as a team. I am sure you all have similar stories and experiences. When you are an ally and partner with a hiring manger, everything else seems to go smoothly. Your messages are clearer. Your assessment is more accurate. And your success is ensured.

Make sure your metrics, sourcing strategies, and selection tools are all acceptable to your hiring managers. Involve them and keep them informed at every level and you will get the budget and staff to recruit the best people. Branding and candidate relationships come second to this.

Technology Is Essential to Success

I love technology. Mr. Gadget is my middle name. But, you can successfully recruit with no technology at all. Any of us who began our careers in the B.C. era (Before Computers), are still comfortable with a manual system of filing, telephoning, and face-to-face conversation.

While I do not believe you should forego the tools we have, it is always good to focus on what is core: building relationships with hiring managers and candidates. Your first goals should be building networks, getting to know lots of people, and getting a brand in an area so people come to you. Known recruiters in an area are always successful because they can tap into a vast group of contacts and connections to find just what they need. The Internet and blindly sourcing in the dark may give you some results; they will never be as easy or as fun as those that come from your own networks.

Technology can aid that process and I do not advocate going back to paper and filing cabinets. I do recommend keeping a healthy perspective on what is important and never let technology get in the way of your core business of building relationships.

Always be a skeptic. Always question the common wisdom. Work out your own answers, march to your own drummer, and you will reap the benefits for a long time.

If you take the time to talk to recruiters who have garnered a reputation for success, you will discover that they share a few traits in common.

It is these common interests, inclinations, or skills that differentiate them from all the others. It would be useful to look for these traits whenever you are trying to find more recruiters or to identify those most likely to add the most value.

These recruiters are not real people. They are composite people that I made up from some of the best I have seen and worked with.

Trait 1: Great at networking because they have a strong interest in people

I know this sounds trite, but it is true. Every great recruiter has a need to be around and with people. They like to meet new people and seek out opportunities to do that even when they are not recruiting.

Bill Warren is a great example. He began recruiting when he was just 23 and a new college hire. The college team asked him to help out on campus and he immediately put the network he had developed in his fraternity and social activities to work. As he worked in a technical industry, he put together an on-campus special interest group sponsored by his company. They sent engineers to talk and demonstrate uses for their products in applied situations. With the blessing of his boss, he was able to spend several weeks each semester in campus building the reputation of his firm and their research. Recruiting was easy after the first year and remains that way today. Bill, meanwhile at 28, has become a full-time recruiter, where he is quickly becoming a star. When you ask him why he is successful, he just says: “I like people and want to help them do what they want to do.”

His networking skills are massive both in person and online. He cultivates relationships and understands that all solid relationships are built on quid pro quo: doing something for someone who, in turn, does something for you. It is this give and take that makes for success, and he is willing to share his career advice, mentoring skills, and technical expertise. In return he gets the loyalty and commitment of many candidates.

Trait 2: Marketing and influencing skills

Sue Smith is ranked as the top recruiter in her retail organization. Hiring volume is aggressive and needs are changing all the time. Turnover is often high and seasonal hiring presents many challenges. She has to recruit contingent as well as full-time staff, and is involved in lots of internal politics.

Yet, Sue is able to ride these waves and still make progress. While she is a good networker, where she really shines is in influencing and selling. Sue aims to get candidates interested in the work, project, and hiring manager by identifying and communicating their positive aspects, pointing out challenges when appropriate, and generating excitement. She presents well-vetted candidates to the hiring manager whom she has “presold.” Through Facebook, email, and phone calls, she uses her networks as marketing channels and targets them for specific functions and sometimes even for specific hiring managers.

Trait 3: Personalizing and leveraging uniqueness

They transcend brand by personalizing each hire and each hiring manager. Each of these recruiters has found the power and importance of personalization. Rather than rely on a generic recruiting brand, they instead brand every job and manager as unique. They know how to steer the right candidates to the right managers because they have deep knowledge of the needs and capabilities of each through their networking skills and ability to influence. While each takes a different approach, there is lots of overlap and commonality between them. They can push and pull candidates and managers toward a mutually desirable end.

Trait 4: They use technology; they are not consumed by it

Neither of these recruiters is a technology nerd. They use what works for them and whatever they can understand. They make sure both candidates and hiring managers also understand and are willing to use the tools.

Bill does this by creating special interest groups that can be either virtual or face-to-face. He lets candidates and managers gravitate toward those that match their interests and abilities. He has leveraged more technology than Sue because his primary candidates are dispersed and distant, but he is not a “techno freak” in any way.

Sue uses technology to enable communication. She has the amazing ability to implement a technology seamlessly by starting out small, experimenting with a few candidates and hiring managers, and growing it slowly when it works. She probably spends no more than one or two days a month where technology is her focus.

Great recruiters are focused on getting results, but what is more important to them is that both the hiring manger and the candidate feel that they have had a real exchange of information and that both are comfortable with the decision. I am amazed that their candidates have few regrets about accepting a job and the short-term turnover is remarkably small. Hiring managers, too, are content and pleased with their hires.

The recruiting process is not about individual recruiters, though. It is about making good matches in a seamless and efficient way. Great recruiters figure out how to do this while appearing almost in the background. The greatest praise you can get is when the hiring manger says, “Wow! Did I make a great hire last week.”

I have used examples in the past that place a value on a function within an organization in terms of its cumulative contribution to sales, number of patents produced, or depth of contact with a customer.

Yet, it has been hard to bring this down to an individual level and precisely say that employee A contributed X dollars of value. We never get to this level of precision (or even want to), but we are getting closer to understanding and measuring the skills and attributes that contribute to overall organizational success.

For example, which recruiter is the “best” in your department? Which assessment test provides a higher quality candidate? How much do diverse hires contribute to success? How many good candidates were rejected because of faulty assessment practices or inappropriate tools? We could add many more questions to this list, but getting answers even to these few is a challenge.

The answers require a standard that you would like to achieve, or a quantified definition of such concepts as “best” and “successful.” Once those have been defined, then the challenge is to find a process and tool to measure them.

Some firms, from Best Buy to IBM, are starting to do just this. They are applying quantitative measurements to talent management, recruiting, and HR. They are reaping profits and cost savings from doing so. As other organizations catch on to this, measurement will become a part of HR and recruiting. And this will put many recruiters and HR professionals in a strange space — that of determining with some level of certainty which people perform better than others, which managers have lower turnover, and which functions add the most value (revenue/loyalty/patents).

Most people are uncertain about quantitative measurement, not usually understanding what it means, and not quite believing that individuals can be assessed in such a way. And, measuring individuals’ outputs and contributions had been problematic.

By assessing for very specific capabilities and skills, we may be able to vastly improve the sales, innovation, and product development in our organizations. Imagine being able to says with a high level of certainty that a set of specific skills, obviously combined with organizational fit, would provide a more productive employee than some lesser set. We do this more or less subjectively today, but these tools would give us greater certainty and help remove favoritism and chance from the equation.

Today, we are starting to see sophisticated algorithms and software, some new HRIS tools along with CRM and specific measurement software that make it easier to gather data and mine it. Longitudinal studies can be carried out and base levels can be established so that the impact of future changes can be observed and correlated. Trends can be analyzed and patterns predicted. Some of the tools resemble those being used by Netflix and Amazon to recommend products (and predict which products will be most successful).

OrcaEyes is just one organization that is offering tools and services to help quantify the people side of business.

One of the best ways to begin getting familiar with what’s going on is to at least skim through one of these resources.

Books are appearing which educate and explain the hows of measuring people and their performance. One example, Investing in People: Financial Impact of Human Resource Initiatives, is an SHRM-inspired book written by two big names in the HR measurement area: Wayne Cascio and John Bourdreau. In chapters titled “The High Cost of Employee Separation,” The Payoff from Enhanced Selection,” and “Costs and Benefits of HR Development Programs” they lay out an accessible framework for presenting HR data in a way that business managers can appreciate.

Another book, Reinventing Talent Management: How to Maximize Performance in the New Marketplace, was written by William A. Schiemann. Schiemann runs a consultancy that focuses on measurement. This book introduces the concept of “people equity” and shows how some employees are far more valuable than others. He also shows how to build equity and improve business performance in ways traceable to people.

Another excellent book, Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin, does not take a quantitative position but does provide a different perspective on how to look at people both within your organization and candidates. His focus is on looking at what people can do and on how to become better at what you do. While not a book on prediction, it is informative and challenges some of our preconceived notions about people.

My own prediction is that quantitative HR is quietly going to replace most of traditional touchy-feely HR within a decade. This will transform organizations and how we think about work.

People are the now the most expensive asset that an organization has. Selecting the right people, the best people, is going to be more emphasized than in the past. I can envision CFOs and other executives using these quantitative tools to lessen the need for more people, to improve efficiencies, and to raise productivity. Mass hiring of lower quality people ended with this recession. Now the focus is on finding fewer people of higher quality with better skills. Our only challenge is to figure out what that means and how to measure it.

Internal functions don’t have to do any of these things. They are entrenched in almost all organizations, and because their function is perceived as incidental to overall organizational performance or success, not much in the way of efficiency is really expected or, unfortunately, rewarded. This means that few recruiting leaders have any incentive to improve their function. In fact, doing so may mean a smaller budget, less headcount, and even less status.

So this leads to the headline question: Do we need an internal function at all? Does it do something that an external provider cannot do? Can it do it at least as cheap or as fast? Can it provide a higher-caliber candidate?

Some thoughts:

1. Internal recruiters who are employees should have one major advantage over any external provider. That is a deep knowledge of the corporate culture and what success criteria are, and also what individual managers are looking for in candidates. The deeper and more scientific this knowledge is, the more it can be repeated, refined, and taught to others. A really outstanding internal function would nurture and develop a core of highly knowledgeable and trained recruiters who would have this knowledge. HP, in the old days, and IBM today, have this kind of built-in DNA that is very hard to replicate. External functions will always have difficulty achieving this level of intimacy with their clients, even when co-located, primarily because their employees have less motivation to invest in gathering this information and may be interchanged frequently. This is one area where length of service and commitment to the culture can pay dividends.
2. To remain competitive with outside providers, an internal function has to be as efficient as or more efficient than an outside provider. This means constantly improving operational excellence, adding appropriate technology, providing detailed market information and coaching to hiring managers, and building a reputation for adding real value through the quality of talent it provides. I have never seen this in any client or organization I have worked in, and I think this is the area of greatest potential return. Internal functions are never very efficient, primarily because leadership is transitory: I am not sure of the average tenure of a recruiting leader, but I would guess it is less than three years. This means there is little to no continuity of planning, no oversight of process improvements, and little opportunity to choose, install, learn and refine technology. Most organizations I have worked with change processes, procedures, and technology with each leader who arrives. Plans that have taken months to create are thrown away overnight. Recruiters know that they can do what they want, for the most part, because there will be no accountability or continuity. This is the area where an external provider, with a profit motive and an efficiency goal, can beat an internal function hands down.
3. Recruiters also need to be retained, trained, and incentivized to perform. External agencies can offer commissions, bonuses, and other rewards for outstanding performance. They can fire inefficient or incapable recruiters quickly. Internal functions are usually tied to traditional reward structures that do not provide the shorter term, efficiency-based rewards that would be more effective. A recruiter can barely perform at all and survive (and even thrive) by courting a few hiring managers or by being a good bureaucrat. And employment laws and internal practices limit when and how a recruiter can be fired, and the process is lengthy. Again, it is essential that internal recruiters be selected carefully based in skills and motivation and offered whatever incentives are available to encourage short and long term performance as well as retention.
4. The emerging prominence of social media should offer internal functions hope. Social media inherently dependent on intimate knowledge about the firm, candid communication, and the ability to take advantage of the networks of current employees. All of these give internal functions an edge.

Yet I am not convinced that this will make much difference. The RPOs and agencies are rapidly adopting social media and are even offering to manage the talent communities of individual firms. Many medium or small firms are not even looking at social media as a recruiting channel, and larger firms have widely divergent opinions and practices.

Effective social media use requires time and dedicated people who can interact with candidates, generate content, provide advice, and screen candidates for individual jobs. These are all strengths that internal recruiters have if they are given the time and charter to do so. Unfortunately again, corporate policy, management’s inability to see the benefits of social media, the fear of litigation, and lack of staff depth usually means this does not happen.

Given the state of recruiting functions today there are few compelling factors to recommend retaining an internal function. I have outlined where they could gain advantage, and a handful are doing these things, but by and large they offer little that would make them indispensible. By negotiating tough performance-based outsourcing agreements and allowing outside recruiters access to hiring managers, firms could eliminate the administrative and benefits costs of retaining employee-recruiters and the function could be reduced to a few liaison folks and vendor managers.

Partly this is driven by the commonly held assumption that these skilled and experienced people have been affected by the recession and are actually in the job market. Recruiters know this is not the case and that many candidates have become even more difficult to find and entice away from a secure position.

While demand for lesser-experienced, educated, and skilled candidates has slacked, it has risen for those with higher-level skills. Many firms are trying to replace the employees they had with moderate skills or who were in learning roles, with people already accomplished in their profession.

This is a poor time to be an apprentice or a mid-level worker, as the focus is on paying a bit more for people with better skills who are more capable of achieving goals with minimal help right away.

This has put a huge burden on recruiters. It has increased the number of searches needed for the hard-to-find candidates while almost eliminating the need to source for the easier-to-find positions. This, in turn, has driven recruiting leaders to take a hard look at developing specialized internal sourcing functions or finding an outside firm or individuals to do it for them.

Things to Consider

Before deciding whether to keep sourcing inside or find an external provider, a recruiting leader needs to make sure they have answered three questions carefully: (1) is there a sufficient volume of need that will last over some period of time to justify focused sourcing, (2) do you need to simply have the names and contact information of potential candidates so that a recruiter can screen and assess them, or do you also need screening and assessment or even more than that, and (3) do you have the internal staff with the capability, knowledge, and bandwidth to be effective?

If there is an ongoing need and you lack staff, looking at an outsourcing provider might be both time and cost effective. Building an internal sourcing capability can take months of training in addition to the time needed to find recruiters with the needed skills. Many firms turn to contractors for this service, and that may make sense. Contractors are often local, may be very familiar with your organization and both its culture and skill needs, and work for a reasonable fee. However, they also often increase the leader’s workload significantly.

When sourcing needs are high, timelines are short, needs varied and changing, and the skills hard to find locally, then other solutions may be better.

What Kind of Outsourcing Do You Need?

There are three types of outsourcing:

1. Generating names of potential candidates, often called research, which results in a list of names and contact information. These may turn out to be viable candidates, but many will not. All screening and assessment is made by internal recruiters and hiring managers. Results are most likely measured by how many names were generated, how quickly it was done, and how closely they met the previously-agreed-to specifications.
2. Generating names and then screening and assessing them. This usually means that only candidates who meet certain qualifications are presented. Results are measured by how many qualified candidates are presented and by the speed with which this takes place.
3. An emerging type of sourcing involves all of the above but also includes developing and managing a proprietary talent community of qualified candidates. This might include frequent communication with candidates, setting up and maintaining a Facebook page or something similar, and providing a means for internal recruiters and perhaps hiring managers to communicate with candidates.

Tips for Outsourcing Success

Clarity and Transparency: You need to have a clear strategy that outlines how sourcing fits into your overall success, where it is most needed, and be very open about why you are seeking an outside source.

Know which of the three types of outsourcing above you are primarily interested in: Obviously that choice will affect which outsource partner to use and will impact what level of relationship you need to have. Names generation can be performed by individual contractors and they can be located almost anywhere. The major choice criteria are ability to find the people you are looking for and the speed they can do it. Other sourcing arrangements are more complex; often need face-to-face contact at some point; and require a more sophisticated level of negotiation.

Choose an appropriate partner: Many times I see recruiting leaders choosing outsourcing partners without full knowledge of how deep their skills go or what their previous clients thought about them. You need to get references, spend time making sure their expertise matches your needs, and perhaps even start with a trial to see how they perform. You also need to make sure they can grow with your needs and fit your corporate culture.

Define your service level expectations: Work with your outsourcing partners to write down a set of expected performance levels, including time to find candidates, how many need to be presented, and what constitutes quality. Defining what a quality candidate is often becomes the most difficult aspect of a relationship. Take the time to be sure the definition is clear and how it will be measured is agreed to by the hiring manager, the outsourcing provider, and yourself.

Establish a vendor relationship manager: Relationships don’t just happen, and they are far more than a contract. Good communication, access to hiring managers when needed, and a willingness to negotiate through difficult issues are necessary components of any successful relationship.

Having a single person who acts as the account manager with the outsource provider is the best way to begin building a long-term-success model. When I speak with parties to failed outsourcing arrangements, lack of communication and difficulty to get issues resolved are significant factors.

Develop conflict resolution processes: Be sure to set up some informal and formal ways for conflicts, disagreements, and uncertainties to be addressed. This can be through the vendor relationship manager or through a committee or other body that is set up to deal with conflicts. The more defined this process is, the better it will be. It should answer questions such as: when is a conflict at the level of needed more formal resolution, how is a complaint raised, and whose decision is final.

Allow access to hiring managers and other key employees: Make sure you allow an appropriate level of direct interaction between the outsource team and the hiring managers. After all, the goal should be finding and placing a quality candidate, not about internal power struggles and politics.

There are many success stories, and all of them are because these basic steps were followed.

Instead, he found that hiring in some niche areas greatly exceeded his expectations, but that overall, hiring was slow. The slew of candidates just applying for anything grew all year, swamping his team’s ability to evaluate and respond to each candidate. But at the same time, the candidates he desperately needed were not among them. Internet searching turned up a few candidates, as did employee referrals, but there were many unfilled requisitions as 2010 came to a close.

As he crafted his plans for 2011, he pondered the use of social media, which they had only dabbled in and not very successfully in 2010, and well as whether he really needed his sourcing team — at least as it had been designed with a heavy emphasis on Internet sourcing of passive candidates.

If this story rings true to you, here are some ideas on what 2011 may bring. And, some strategies that be effective as we continue to evolve sophisticated sourcing methods and better online tools.

Hiring Situation

There will be no hiring boom or any return to the pre-2009 years. 2011 will be another year where demand for highly experienced and skilled technical experts will continue to grow, as will the need for people with global experience. Demand will drive more global recruiting efforts, and more work will move to wherever the skills are. This means that knowing how to recruit in Central Europe, India, China, and Brazil will outstrip most organizations’ capabilities. It will drive the need to set up remote sourcing teams or find people locally who can source in those countries and regions.

Mid-level hiring will remain slow, and there will be few additions to support or administrative staff. Much of this hiring will be outsourced to RPOs and agencies that specialize in specific areas. The demand for workers with minimal skills will shrink even further as technology replaces them. Many organizations have already replaced receptionists with automated sign-in systems and automatic call systems. Accounting and bookkeeping systems are using OCR to automatically input receipts and other data into their systems.

The bottom line is clear: recruiting internally will be focused on hard-to-fill, business-critical positions, and if the internal function cannot meet the needs, external agencies and RPOs will be called in.

RPO

RPO will continue to grow as a service with more sophisticated approaches and more technology. Some firms will focus on specific regions or on functional verticals. These RPOs will invest the time and conduct research that will help them build large communities of candidates with narrow, deep expertise. They will do this cheaper and better than a corporate recruiter can because of dedicated resources and investment in technology. Corporate recruiting functions need to build better ways to assess RPO firms, establish firm performance criteria, and negotiate contracts based on how well your needs are met, rather than on cost.

Talent Management

I have long advocated that every organization should increase its focus on developing a holistic and integrated approach to talent. That will begin to happen in earnest this year. Every major survey, including those from Pricewaterhouse Coopers and the Boston Consulting Group, indicate that CEOs are now relentlessly focused on getting better people in their organizations are are willing to put the resources in place to make it happen.

Critical positions need to be clearly identified, and there should be a plan as to how those positions will be filled. The plans should rely on a mixture of internal promotions/transfer as well as external placement. Development should be a key component and lead to a percentage of positions being filled by newly trained internal candidates. Entry-level hiring can feed this pool, as long as development and assessment are in place. Rigorous performance assessment in real time as well as feedback to recruiting on success traits are also important parts of a successful talent management plan.

Employment Brand

Building a believable and vigorous brand will consume more time and resources than it did in 2010. A recruiting website will be much less critical, although still important, to success. It will be more important to use a variety of marketing tools, including targeted marketing, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as LinkedIn, to interest more people in learning about your organization and opportunities.

Global brand building will be essential for firms looking for global talent. Qualified people in many countries identify closely with the brand of the firm they work for. If your firm has no brand, is not well known, and does have an attractive product/service offering,recruiting will be very difficult, given the competition. That is why the focus should be on identifying your uniqueness and on developing a marketing campaign to emphasize it and use it to find key talent.

Internal Sourcing Teams

Internal sourcing teams will morph from a focus on Internet search, which will remain a small part of the process, to a major focus on social media. The purpose of the sourcing team will be to ensure a supply of interested people who can be turned into candidates by a combination of skilled recruiter involvement and sophisticated marketing tools. These teams will be small, technically highly skilled, and capable of being community managers, marketers, and expert in identifying and assessing key candidates virtually.

Social Media

In every way, the backbone of the recruiting function will be its ability to use social media — the tools that connect and engage millions of potential candidates. Their success will be in how effective they are in convincing people to take part in the sub-communities that they create for their firms. This will require a strategy that has been carefully thought out and is revisited constantly and updated as its effectiveness is evaluated.

Whether they use Facebook, Hyves, LinkedIn, or another community is immaterial. What matters is that the community they choose attracts the kind of people they need. New smaller specialist communities may arise over the next year, and staying abreast of these, or even creating them, may make the difference between success and failure.

In light of this, John may want to rethink his priorities and spend time to really strategize about what the needs of this organization will be and where he needs to put his resources.

In many ways 2011 will look a lot like 2010 but with more focus on implementing the initiatives that were started in 2010 and in being realistic about the use of RPO, outsourcing, and the need to focus on critical positions.

The U.S. Army was one of the first organizations to pioneer video games for attracting potential recruits. A couple of years ago the Army launched its highly successful recruiting game called America’s Army, which has significantly helped raise recruitments. The Army has also created a multi-million dollar U.S. Army Experience Center located in Philadelphia where potential recruits, using computers and Xbox 360 controllers, explore different army bases and occupations using video games.

L’Oreal has launched Brandstorm, which is a competition across national boundaries to help candidates determine their marketing skills. Many other organizations have launched interactive games, including IBM’s game that has made the press recently with its free simulation, CityOne, an interactive game targeted at business leaders, city planners, and government agencies. The game allows players to react to a variety of crises and see how their decisions affect outcomes.

Realistic job previews, video tours, and game-like activities are becoming standard on leading recruiting sites because more candidates come and stay longer when the process of learning about your organization and your open positions is fun and engaging. Recruiters are learning from the game world that elements such as awarding points, giving out badges, showing progress toward a goal, or using an avatar increase results.

Gaming elements drive behavior, as many retailers have learned. Even when there is no formal “game,” we are often using the gaming elements when, for example, we participate in Frequent Flyer or other loyalty programs. Counting points is part of what makes Weight Watchers successful and millions play World of Warcraft  or Facebook’s Farmville for nothing more than gathering points or unearthing treasures. Whether the challenge is to collect points, win badges, score goals, or kill avatars, we alter our behavior in some way to achieve goals that are often intangible and not even important (e.g. collecting ears of corn in Farmville).

And game-playing is growing and attracting more people of all types. One survey found that up to 35% of C-suite executives play video games (even though this study was funded by PopCapGames.com), while 97% of 12-17 year-olds play them, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

Over the next decade, gaming concepts and technology will become a standard element in your recruiting strategy.  Websites will become more interactive and offer a more compelling reason to engage than they do today. More organizations will discover that their ablity to find and hire good candidates will be partly because they found ways to engage, entertain, and entice them to learn more about the organization and the job available.

Here are six ways you can begin to “play the game” of gaming.

1. Provide candidates who come to your recruiting site with rewards. Offer candidates rewards such as gold stars or badges when they have viewed a video, taken a poll, completed an assessment, or left a comment in your chat room. Encourage them to come back and get more points by learning more about your company. Provide a progress bar so they can see how much of their profile they have completed or how much of the recruiting site they have viewed. You have seen these progress bars when you first created a profile on Facebook and LinkedIn. Most of us want to have profiles that are close to 100% complete so we are motivated to come back and add details over time.
2. Investigate using virtual worlds such as Second Life. KPMG, IBM, and other organizations have experimented with virtual job fairs, interviews, and tours with varying degrees of success. Part of the issue with using virtual worlds is that the technology is very new and still has interface issues. On the other hand, it offers a glimpse of what I think will be a normal part of online life in a few years.
3. Develop video-based job tryouts. Shaker Consulting Group has pioneered developing job tryouts using video to provide candidates with a realistic idea of what it is like to hold a certain type of job. At the same time, these act as a way to screen candidates for those jobs. Organizations such as Starbucks, Key Bank, and Sherwin-Williams have used these with a high level of satisfaction.
4. Hold virtual job fairs. There are several tools that allow you to create interactive job fairs, including those from 6Connect and Unisfair. By using virtual job fairs you can offer more candidates an opportunity to discover what you have to offer as well as provide them with more in-depth information about your positions and organizations than you can at a face-to-face job fair.  By creating an interactive and fun experience, candidates remain engaged and spend more time with you than they would at a conference. It also gives you more time to assess the candidate.
5. Use Tests, Puzzles, and Simulation. The Secret Service of the United Kingdom has perhaps one of the cleverest simulations I have seen. You become an Operations Officer and have to digest information quickly and make decisions. The simulation shows you what is involved in intelligence work and gives the Secret Service a good assessment of your judgment and decision-making capabilities. Another fascinating approach is being used by Gild, a Tech Crunch disruptive startup that combines gaming and job boards. By using polls, short tests, asking candidates to solve problems, provide ideas or solutions, or by having them take part in multi-person discussions, you can learn a great deal about the candidate. They can learn about what you do in your organization, how decisions get made, and what issues arise. Generally this knowledge will lead to a candidate who better fits your culture and who is happier in the work they are doing
6. Develop a Full-Fledged Game. If you have between U.S. $50,000 and $3 million, consider developing a truly interactive game similar to those of produced by L’Oreal or the U.S. Army. Costs range from as little as a few thousand dollars for a Flash-based web-embedded solution to several million for a dedicated, X-Box controlled one. But, by creating a simulated environment where candidates can experience and actually get involved in the work you do, you can raise engagement and success to a new level.

There are few limits to what is now possible on the Internet. Technologies and techniques that were way too expensive or even impossible even five years ago, are now easily and cost-effectively available.  A new world awaits you.