Mark and I have completed our numbers crunching for about 180,000 hires we collected from 40+ firms last month and we will publish our 9th Source Of Hire whitepaper probably by the end of next week- we're writing it now.

An early peek at the data will be discussed privately in an "open mike" webinar with survey respondents and CareerXroads colloquium members before the end of the month but an ERE webinar next week (2/17) will be the first public look at the current SOH data.

In addition to collecting data about how firm's hire, we also ask each year about how they did versus previous years and what they predict the coming year will bring.

Two years ago, January 2008, when we asked respondents about their future plans, for the first time, more firms predicted that they would make fewer hires in 2008 than in the previous year (we had been creating exercises in our colloquium meetings for contingency planning since October, 2007).

And bearing that prediction out, in January, 2009 our survey group said they actually made 22.2% fewer hires during 2008 than the year before.

A year ago, our survey group also predicted that 2009 would be much worse than 2008, predicting another 15.7% drop in hiring. In fact, not a single firm predicted they would hire more in 2009 than the previous year. In our February 2009 SOH whitepaper we said that this 100% “no-confidence vote about hiring activity (or lack of same) should give leaders pause” and suggested that 2009 was the opportune time to develop new strategies for 2010 when we could reasonably expect an upturn.

Well, 2010 has arrived and this new group of respondents confirmed last month (January 2010) their colleagues’ year-old prediction- 85% of the survey’s participants indicated that they had indeed filled even fewer openings in 2009….27.9% fewer. No one is likely to doubt that statistic.

The good news is that only 10.8% are now predicting they will fill even fewer openings in 2010. Another 37.8% say they will hold steady and 48% plan to grow. Even more good news is that the average growth predicted for all participants surveyed is 29%!

Let the good times roll.

Google is thinking about leaving China. Really?(he said very slowly and sarcastically)

For years I’ve been listening to companies whining about how they have to cave to various local customs that violate basic human rights standards.

The most common rationale is that it is better to give some hope to those who are discriminated against, supressed or otherwise denied basic freedoms by being there than not. Really?

B_ _ _S_ _ _

Google’s comments are disturbing and disappointing. Their rationalizations would embarrass me if I were an employee. Do no evil indeed. If Google’s leaders couldn’t imagine China escalating from censoring the search queries of dissidents in 2006 to searching for the dissident who made the queries in 2009…well…let’s just say “you reap what you sow”.

Google isn’t alone. Far from it. Hypocrisy with respect to EVP in many forms is a common characteristic among many companies who imply global value propositions to a U S audience but fail to walk the talk globally. And yes, there are many, many exceptions (- and I write about them when I can).

And we’ve been there before.

Thirty years ago hundreds of US firms were hiring and employing tens of thousands of workers in South Africa under that country’s restrictive Apartheid laws.

Increasingly these firms came under the scrutiny of a US public [also] awakening to the evils of discrimination. By the mid-seventies US firms were under serious assault from external groups and their own internal employees [boomers] who believed businesses must act responsibly. They were pressuring financial services firms, pension funds, university endowments, etc., etc. to dis-invest in the stock of any firm that did business in South Africa (with considerable success during the 70’s and especially the 80’s).

Partly, I believe, as a reaction to pressures at home, General Motors, the largest US employer in South Africa paid attention in 1977 to a solution proposed by Leon Sullivan, a board member and a South African minister who was black.

They adopted the Sullivan Principles. Essentially the Sullivan Principles (see the bottom of this blog) said that performance and talent, not race, gender, etc. would dictate promotions and rewards.

Long story, made short- by the mid 80’s 125 firms including Johnson & Johnson (where I was working) had adopted the Sullivan Principles. While many feel that the results are mixed, I credit these actions, albeit in some small way, to the demise of Apartheid.

Google’s failure to hold to its principles before entering China was a mistake. They should own up to it now. China’s view about censorship has always been about the suppression of people with a diversity of thought. 

Google could adopt the newest version of the Sullivan Principles proposed by Rev. Leon Sullivan and Kofi Annan, the UN General Secretary, in 1999, (as a bit more practical than their current mantra) but they should not bear the burden of confronting China alone.

Every firm that makes the claim to global principles- individually or collectively, needs to explain to their customers, employees and candidates how they will not collude in the suppression of the people they want to hire and sell to in the countries where they do business.

Some have done well, others after a set back and public scrutiny but, in many countries we could all do better.

IMHO, the next generation of talented candidates will be more engaged, more likely to perform at their best and more likely to stay if firms globally align their words and actions.

Despite everything, it is naïve to think that firms will risk growth because of "employee engagement" and operate against the perceptions that stockholders are interested in profit for its own sake. That is unless the same employees speak with their investments, 401ks and the like.

Original Sullivan Principles (1977) – from wikipedia

• Non-segregation of the races in all eating, comfort, and work facilities.

• Equal and fair employment practices for all employees.

• Equal pay for all employees doing equal or comparable work for the same period of time.

• Initiation of and development of training programs that will prepare, in substantial numbers, blacks and other nonwhites for supervisory, administrative, clerical, and technical jobs.

• Increasing the number of blacks and other nonwhites in management and supervisory positions. • Improving the quality of life for blacks and other nonwhites outside the work environment in such areas as housing, transportation, school, recreation, and health facilities.

• Working to eliminate laws and customs that impede social, economic, and political justice. (added in 1984)

Mark Mehler, my business partner in CareerXroads, and I are in the midst of collecting Source of Hire data from this past year.

We started two weeks ago and will finish in another week and a half (January 31). Then I'll crunch a few numbers and write another whitepaper. 

For nearly a decade we've been observing and commenting on the shift of recruiting sources of hire and the context in which the data is collected and analyzed (and then used to invest in the next cycle). The last SOH whitepaper is still quoted several times a week and considered "recent" even though we don't think it is (all of our work is in the public domain).

The data is seriously flawed. But that isn't point. It is better to understand what firms "attribute" their hires to and understand why and what  might be done to improve data than to assume that the data is "real" or, conversely so useless it has no value.

Reality is what we believe to be true and then act on i.e. perception is reality, and many, many firms accept their data...warts and all regardless of the reliability problems of self-report and the silliness of substituting "last IP address" and then spend money...or not on the next thing.

This year (like every year) we are only collecting data from companies with employee populations larger than 5000. We focus on F/T hires only and do not try to get much data on non-US. PEOs/outsourcing firms/RPO firms and third party in general is not of interest except as a source.

We also don't attempt to determine whether a given source is in fact more costly, productive or efficient (with one exception) because we can name the companies that actually have these measures, can correlate them with sources and there aren't enough to do a survey with.

More that we could do, we don't. Speed is of the essence. You want it? You do it. We'll help you. We do more than 20 "practice surveys" each year on issues that keep staffing leaders up at night. This is one that keeps me up.

Nearly 50 firms of the 200 we invited to participate have already completed the survey. We know who they are but none of the names of the participants have ever been released- to ensure that we get the real deal.

If you fit the criteria, and can make the deadline, we would be happy to have you as well but, just as a heads-up we will call you before we include you to doublecheck you are who you say you are. 

Join us here.

We'll do a webinar for survey participants in February before we begin releasing data publicly. That, other than helping us learn and share what we learn publicly (without cost) is the only incentive you might consider for the pain in the neck effort you'll go through ensuring you've gotten your data to us in a form we can compare.

Would appreciate any friends willing to pass this along or tweet this out to firms who might like to participate that we don't know.

Today was Career Day in NJ.

Rutgers University hosted their 45th semi-annual career fair for their students, the students from any other college willing to travel to New Brunswick and, actually, anyone else who felt like showing up…student or not.

An estimated 3500 did. So did Mark, my business partner, and I (we typically spend a day a month on college campuses or outplacement centers just to get a sense of the playing field.)

Janet Jones, one of Rutgers Career Services Directors and a great friend over more than a few years met us at the door.

165 companies had booths. A lot of retail, federal government and smaller firms were in attendance. A smattering of larger firms (but few of these had much more to offer than the smaller ones).

On the employer side, the folks at Target, Enterprise, Boeing, NSA and others where college hiring is part of their DNA we’re populated with experienced regional recruiters and knowledgeable hiring managers.

Many firms however sent their least experienced “university relations” staff to take resumes and show the corporate flag. The difference is that the firms with the more experienced staffs could easily figure out what to do with quality candidates that were non-traditional.

Despite the fact that every student attending had previously had the opportunity to upload their resume to a file accessible to every company, students were still loaded down with formal pieces of paper. And companies politely accepted every resume that was offered. I won’t speculate about what will happen to those pieces of paper since the resumes are all in digital form elsewhere but, if you were to press me I know where my bet would go. (There were exceptions-2-3 firms (of the 165) had very intense recruiters making notes on the resumes of each student they met and separating them in “appropriate” piles.)

Students we spoke to were universally clueless (I’ll get to that in a minute) but well groomed and prepped for their elevator speech like this 3.7 GPA Frosh seeking an internship.

Company reps were also well prepped, skilled and capable of spending 6 solid hours on their feet repeating their firms EVP mantra ad infinitum while hoping the next person in line would be superwoman.

As Mark noted, the very first class of Rutgers (which might have included future officers in the Continental Army) probably attended a similar event and would recognize immediately what was going on. (I’m wondering though how he knew that since he is so much younger than me)

I enjoyed approaching the employers more than the students. The students were matter of fact, helped me get a lay of the land, opened up immediately and clearly seemed to have a goal to get some traction with at least one or two companies.

The employers on the other hand blanched as I approached them. You could see the blood draining from their face as this 60 year old in jeans, tattered jacket, white beard and hat (I took off the sunglasses) came up to their booth. I’m sure they were trying to mentally access the script for how to handle someone older than their parents that they were sure would never fit into their company. And then I dropped the name of their boss…Oh boy!

So, how might this change? Obviously there are plenty of virtual fairs but that’s not what I’m talking about. Love the “meet up” in the flesh.

College Career Fairs serve a purpose and I’m impressed at how open and inclusive Rutgers is by letting so many non Rutgers folks pass through. The online database available for students is also a plus.

So why don’t:

-Students put together a business card with a 140 character profile on the back and contact info that includes a link to linkedin etc.?

- Students research the firms in advance and uncover employees who were Rutgers students a year or two before. Names to drop. Referrals to leverage.

I just don’t know.

For non profits, and there were quite a few at Rutgers this year, this venue is pure gold. One friend and recruiting leader, David Laska, who has settled in at NJ ARC and loves the contribution he makes there was thrilled to have met 80 prospects at a cost of $100.

Ya gotta love it.

I'm in Newark Airport's continental lounge getting ready to head out to India with SHRM's HR delegation. FutureStep, Recruitnblogs.com and Alliance Q are underwriting my adventure and I'll be blogging on the trip from a link on Recruit   ngblogshome page. 

Traveling to my 20th country as a student and learning how staffing differs culturally around the world is about as good as it gets. 

As the current administration attempts to jumpstart job creation, a parallel effort to help job seekers is being launched through the Department of Labor over the next few weeks. The schedule is extraordinarily aggressive.

SHRM's Kathleen Coulombe sent a message explaining the initiative to the members of several of the society's expert panels that read, in part:

The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA) is launching the Jobs for America’s Job Seekers Challenge in conjunction with the White House and IdeaScale.

The competition will use an online platform designed by IdeaScale that will allow toolmakers and developers to present their free online job tools to workforce development experts and jobseekers for discussion, rating, and voting (in several categories) on the various tools.

The DOL does plan to announce the tools that received the highest ratings but does not plan to “rate” or “rank” the other participants.

The Challenge initiative will be part of the activities coming out of the White House Jobs summit in December.

(DOL and SHRM have been exploring various ways in which SHRM could assist in the promotion and development of this program.)

Apparently, the DOL is very much interested in hearing from as many folks as possible. I wrote to DOL's Gina Wells after reviewing the sites and offered a series of critiques. She quickly responded and was encouraging about hearing from others. (She mentioned that among the folks she has already spoken with are Peter Weddles and several of the members of his association.)

The DOL welcomes you to use their new site, upload any tools you may have, and provide feedback about the site, the "challenge" or their methodology.

You can send your comments directly to Gina Wells, (wells.gina@dol.gov).

Last July 29th and 30th , over 800 troops returning from active service in Afghanistan and Iraq attended a pilot 2-day event at Ft Dix, NJ. 

Volunteers included Tip of the Arrow, Fort Dix staff, ESGRA, and NJ SHRM members led by Sherrill Curtis from the NJ SHRM Garden State Council along with hundreds of professional coaches and 50 employers with openings.

Information about the event was promoted extensively including through my blog and summarized later in John Zappe’s article for ERE..

...but the core of this event, what made it a bit different from other initiatives was the time devoted to personalized, face-to-face career guidance.

Many lessons were learned from the pilot. Among them wrote Sherrill: “Service members are not fans of concurrent sessions (preferring crowd experiences…if they are short and to the point) and they definitely require time to adjust to the overwhelming onslaught of re-entry information that comes their way (from every direction including and especially online).”

The feedback from the troops confirmed that having knowledgeable, caring professionals step-up and take the time to talk them through their individual issues and concerns was unique and absent in the resources available from other sources.

The volunteer career coaches Sherrill writes “offered a unique perspective that ignited a spark so the service member could successfully engage in their job search and present themselves with confidence to prospective employers.” I absolutely agree.

Sherrill’s committee (Mission Career Success) has continued to develop partnerships in the last few months and to engage in discussions around the US to with folks in and out of the military toward refining

"a goal of easing our returning warriors transition through personalized attention and guidance from insiders -Human Resource, Staffing and Career Coaching professionals."

 This morning, Friday, Sherrill is in Alexandria, VA at a SHRM Leadership Conference. The NJ Council is one of several finalists that could win an award for its initiative (maybe in the next hour or so). For my money…and I’m sure for hers winning is incidental to the reward of seeing the difference the volunteers have made. (I am moderating a panel next April on this and similar initiatives for a Career Management Alliance conference in New Orleans- Military in Transition: Paying it Forward.

However, with thousands of soldiers returning from service each month and estimates that as many as 25% are seeking jobs with little or no personal guidance, we should be able to do more.

The need isn’t an event but a continuing process to help individuals assess the resources everyone knows are there.  

The opportunity for HR professionals, Life or Career Coaches and Recruiters to volunteer to provide one-on-one career coaching is continuing.

Mission Career Success is geared to returning Veterans- providing guidance and information about their career path choices, how to translate their skills and knowledge to civilian occupations, create a professional resume, and offer job search as well as interview tips.

Anyone with applicable experience in Human Resources or Career Coaching interested in participating in the knowledge sharing is welcome.

To receive details about the program logistics and be matched up with a Veteran, contact the Tip of the Arrow Co-Founders: carlblum@tipofthearrow.net / 973-727-5651 or bobdeissig@tipofthearrow.net / 908-303-6720

Oh! And give a shout out to Sherrill (sherrill@curtisgroupllc.com) while you are at it. I'm sure she could have been doing some other things this Summer and Fall.

ERE's Social Recruiting Summit (#socialrecruiting), held in New York yesterday [Monday, Nov 17] was a another milestone in the evolution of niche, community-focused experiences that may eventually change the way we think about "conferences"- how we approach them as attendees and how their "owners" monetize them.

The fact that yesterday's subject matter reflected the medium was just coincidental. 

The combination of a comfortable guide (Laurie Ruettimann), diverse content (see next paragraph), pre-conference relationship building (#Monstersocial), intimate non-traditional setting (Comix on 14th street), and multi-media virtual conversations (free, live video-streaming, Twitter and google wave) were sufficient to engage nearly every attendee as valued members of a learning community... if only for a day.

I've no doubt that many who watched the video stream got the sense that there was an experiential component to the day that went well beyond the content- which was solid and ranged (at least for me) from several strong intellectual components (Master Burnett), diverse interactive presentation methods (Susan Burns), opt-in "off-court" conversations (Carmen Hudson, John Sumser, myself), and insights from authentic, real-time practitioners (Jessica Lee and an earlier panel of staffing leaders) sharing practices that fit, for the moment, their rapidly shifting worlds.

You could see the audience engage with each other, with those on stage and with the virtual cloud of professionals, critics, students and just plain gawkers peering in from everywhere else. Following the stream of comment suggested that adult learning, not lecture, was in the room.

In the future, as access to traditionally conference content is readily and cheaply instantly available via videostream, slidedecks, webinars, twitterfeeds, etc. conference goers will clearly demand much more than a series of static, lecture-hall teacher/student, 1-hour data dumps from smiling, glad handing vendors/consultants before they part with their employers' money and jet off for strange hotels in distant cities.

Practitioners increasingly want to participate in their learning and David's ERE staff's experiments with a medium is ripe for change is to be applauded.

Designs that let smaller groups participate and engage as peers in a communal learning experience confirms and transforms the value of those few hours that a lecture can never do.

Letting folks (outside of those who paid to attend) get a free glimpse of what they may be missing by not being there and still have a valuable take-away is, IMHO, brilliant.

Kudos to ERE.

A future ERE Corporate Leadership Journal (not yet out) will include an article about what HR leaders should be doing NOW to plan for the hiring of recruiters during the recovery.

John Zappe, the article's author, asked several members of our industry to respond to a series of questions (and then extracted contrasting points of view). I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product.

I was among those asked to contribute and, here is the unabridged answer I provided to one of the questions (which will, of course, be edited and combined with others in the final article):

Q: (John) What should employers look for in recruiting and in hiring recruiters? (In economic recoveries of the past, many employers simply hired entry-level HR staff and assigned them to jobs that needed doing, including recruiting. Or they reassigned generalists to the task. Is this likely to happen again? Should it? And if not, then what traits, skills, and knowledge, specifically, should HR leaders seek in their recruiter candidates?

A: (Gerry) The basic functions of recruiting: sourcing leads, finding prospects, screening candidates, selecting from a final slate and closing the chosen candidate can be taught.

The challenges are time to practice, clarity of the process, discipline to repeat, feedback loops and appropriate rewards.

Recruiting leaders ramping up their hiring on the other side of the recession need to decide on the balance of "functional" expertise (knowledge, skill and experience) they'll need and then clearly describe it.

The critical difference today versus 5, 10, 20 years ago is that the "design" elements of recruiting- the form that follows the function is now front and center.

It is the in-depth knowledge of how your firm's employment "brand" is embedded in every conversation, online and off that will make one recruiter so much more successful than another.

It is how today's recruiter handles each of the silver medalists to maximize their future utility or ensures that each and every candidate who applies gets a respectful response at every stage of the opening.

It is the attention to the experience of every stakeholder- the employee who made a referral, the hiring manager who is networked but stressed out, the recruiting leader who has to do more with less and that jobseeker that differentiates a mechanistic technician from an innovative professional.

This shift in emphasis is essential even though we seldom spent the time and effort to dig out and assess the quality of the experience in the past.

If anyone thinks entry-level HR professionals (who are typically undecided about the recruiting function) are going to replace dedicated staffing pros and succeed in driving a hiring process aligned to the company's business...then I've got a bridge you'll want to buy.

Take a look at ERE's Journal. I find it offers interesting value

If Social Media is keeping you up at night, relax-- You've just been there before.

(As we approach ERE's SM summit for what I'm sure will be an valuable day of conversation, I thought this commentary from our November CareerXroads Update might be interesting.)

In 1996, just 13 years ago, the Internet was at a tipping point - not so new that we couldn't see its promise but also not so accepted that we couldn't imagine its dangers.

As the debate raged on, the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) and the Society of Human Resource Development (SHRM) conducted a broad-based survey of several thousand firms to give the hype a dose of reality with a few facts by asking how firms were developing "policy" to guide their employee's use of it.

The report, published in BNA's January 2, 1997, Bulletin to Management, concluded that "Internet access is typically confined to a small proportion of the workforce."

• 41% of the respondents allowed only a "few" of their employee's use of email

• 54% gave a "few" employees access to other applications

• Only 10% allowed ALL employees full access to email and the Internet. "Many of these organizations require(d) employees to demonstrate a legitimate business need before they [were] granted Internet access"

• Formal written policies were rare with just 5% of the surveyed organizations reporting that they had developed written policies to govern employees' Internet activities.

• Access to the Internet differed significantly depending on what Industry you were in. While 90% of educational institutions had established internet access, only 25% of the banks and 17% of Utilities had done so in 1996.

• The recognition of the Internet as a business communication tool was not yet accepted. 60% of those with email (i.e. 24% of total respondents) used it to communicate with colleagues. Nearly half of those with email (i.e. 20% of respondents) used it for promotion and advertising.

• Websites were not yet the critical window they are today. Only 24% of the respondents had a website. For firms with 1000 or more workers, the figure rose to 60%. The sites were mostly ads, jobs and profiles of the organization.)

Thirteen years later, Social Media, rather than the Internet as a whole, are now at the center of the debate. But, the questions and answers are more than vaguely familiar.

(In fact, Mark dug out the report quoted above because the data we were analyzing last week seemed so much like what we had seen before.)

We conducted a quick, informal survey of large, highly-competitive firms (5000 or more employees) in the last two weeks at the request of a Colloquium member to specifically benchmark sm policy development and we were not surprised to see that nearly 100% of the firms invited to respond did so -- in just 72 hours.

We are reviewed the results with those contributing to them today and will likely publish some of our findings in future whitepapers.

However, there are a couple interesting notes (or side-notes) worth mentioning:

• 44% of current respondents do NOT have any policy governing Social Media usage

• 58.5% of those with policies first wrote or revised them in the last 6 months

• Policies were most likely written by Legal (35%), violations handled by HR (43.9%) or legal (39.4%), audits are mostly performed by Legal (41.9%); employees are informed about SM by Communications (39.7) rather than HR (8.1%).

• Less than half the firms surveyed (47.8%) have even attempted to put together Corporate, multi- discipline task forces to oversee Social Media policies but even those who have them aren't sure who is leading

• 6% have developed a "Community Manager" role to engage the firm in developing a deeper business understanding for how SM could contribute In the end we'll work it out.

As SM is shown to contribute to business solutions, and we are sure it will, the defensiveness will tail off and the challenges around who is its champion will resolve themselves. For the moment though, the half full crowd is still trying to convince the half-empty crowd.

8am on a dreary, rainy grey Wedenesday in a small corner of northern New Jersey.

Lots of trees past their peak as I look outside from a brightly lit Panera Bread breakfast nook. I'm sitting by a very fake but still enjoyable fireplace. The fog and drizzle cloak whatever is left of the trees' color.

I just backtracked 6 miles from the One Stop in the city of Dover, NJ to connect to Panera's wifi. Soon I'll spend a couple hours in conversation with 60 plus out of work professionals this morning.

Dover is in a time warp- less than hour and a half drive from where I live in central NJ (exit 9). 

In stark contrast to the tacky, but cutting edge buildings, people and firms in the business and development corridors found around most of America's biggest cities, Dover is a speed bump in the twilight zone of progress. 

The buildings here aren't new and they are definitely not "quaint". I mean they weren't new in 1960! I know that when I go into the industrial warehouse that encloses the local [un]employment office at 9am, I will see rotary phones. (I've been here before). A corner "Smoke Shop" with a large sign pointing to its check cashing services is busy down the block.

This is my third pro bono gig this month and it keeps me grounded..but no, not depressed at all. The people are bright, articulate and hungry. They soak up whatever you can offer and amazingly I learn more than I ever can give back simply by listening to their stories.

You can blog about Twitter, SM, Linkedin Google Wave, and Video interviews for hours but here these solid real life citizens haven't gotten around to reading any of those useful tomes because they really don't know where to look or how to make sense of what they read. They have questions the online community thinks were answered a decade ago.

They are seeking honest opinions and facts (without the sales pitch) about 21st century job hunting tactics. You won't find them on Twitter and their Linkedin profile leaves much to be desired... unless you first educate them on how to use them to be more competitive.

I'll bet there are speed bumps within an hour of most recruiters with folks just waiting for a helping hand.

The 19th ERE Expo held last week in Hollywood, FL was well done.

Included among the many images I took home Friday was:

- A Little Giveback.

Kudos to about 4 dozen players and a bevy of sponsors who stepped up to support another great poker tournament managed by last Wednesday by Jeremy Langhans on behalf of the ERE Foundation.

The charity raised $10,000 for its global children's educational initiatives.

Unfortunately,Jason (Slouch) Davis and I were taken out early by one of the Atlanta Sourcing Mafia, Eric Jaquith,...in the same hand. There will be a rematch.

The best hand of the night however, with three remaining at the final table, was set up when Chris (All in) Hoyt's A-2 was called by Elaine (crush'em) Orler's A-3 after the flop of A-4-J. The excitement began when a 2 on the turn made Chris a two pair and an 85% shoo-in to win. However, Elaine made a miracle 5 on the river for a straight and that was all she wrote.

Dan Cooke (WSJ) outlasted even Elaine to take the top prize- (a doll that sings Kenny Rogers "You gotta know when to hold'em..." which mysteriously disappeared.)

It is all about paying forward.

- A Lot of Community.

Over the last decade ERE has created an extraordinary online community that has spilled over to its two conferences. Perhaps even more valuable than its content are the connections made here. A strong balance of recruiters, vendors, consultants and even a few "owners" attended sessions, conversed and engaged.

Everyone was accessible and inclusive. You could sense an upbeat atmosphere (which I'm indebted to Russ Moon for pointing out along with his interesting analysis.)

It is all about the conversation.

- A Lot of Learning.

I attended quite a few sessions including a solid group of passionate practitioners representing Adidas, American Cancer, ADP, Davita, Fifth Third Bank, Intel, Microsoft, Fluor, Agilent, Sodexho and Walmart.

Listening to them speak reminded me about how far we've come in this space. And, yes, there is still a long way to go but the folks who are openly sharing their challenges and mis-steps as well as their accomplishments with their colleagues have a greater chance of success and will raise all boats.

It is all about transparency.

- A Trend or two.

I noted in both the discussions I had as well as the self-descriptions provided by vendors I spoke with that an "end-to-end, trusted advisory service" seemed to be the brand play of the day.

This image of an independent but totally pure advisory service was highlighted (and currently contradicted in my mind) by the extra-ordinary number of presenters who mentioned not one but a dozen partners helping them in their efforts. These were "partners" that the practitioners had personally gone out to check, benchmarked with other firms and had pulled together in a suite of services. Not long ago it would have been one "trusted advisor".

Today, it is clear (IMHO) that few external firms (agencies, recruiting specialists, etc. etc.) have either sufficient capability or a best of breed approach (versus their own suite of products, or their representative agreements to support certain products) to truly Broker the tools and services that have exploded in the space. This vacuum won't last long.

Much hype will unfortunately precede the convergence of new "Talent Acquisition Advisory Services" firms.

It is all about disclosure.

I'm looking forward to the next 5 weeks on the road.

Source of Talent, 09 is an extraordinary (free) report published the last week by two Australian staffing experts - Phillip Tusing, Destination Talent and Michael Specht, Inspecht.

I admit to being somewhat biased about the study because Philip and Michael surveyed an area CareerXroads has long been passionate about- Sources of Hire.

Mark and I were given an advanced copy and our initial analysis of the report is included, although in a slightly different form, as a Forward to their report.

The study provides for the first time International comparative data - and it is a delightful contrast to the US mindset. If only because it opens a small but fascinating new window into how cultural differences drive staffing around the world.

On the surface, the Australian study includes information about 92,136 hires reported by 409 “organisations” and is easily compared to several similar US reports, including CareerXroads’ annual Sources of Hire.

But, there is much more than a surface comparison here because the authors approached their data collection and analysis with an “eyes wide open” attitude - willingly offering a transparent look at their methodology and the challenges they faced as they swam through the sometimes conflicting currents of information.

Beneath the surface is a deep pool of data differences that should encourage serious conversation about the role culture plays in recruiting.

Here are a few “quick takes” comparing our US study with Australian sources. (I’m sure much more will surface over time - and would encourage others to take a deep dive looking for even more).

- The Australian SOT-09 lists the results for 18 sources. The top 6 (which account for 3 out of every 4 hires ) are as follows: - Job Boards- 29.6%, Internal Recruiters- 16.8%, Corporate Website- 10.6%, Referrals- 7.6%, Recruiting Firms- 6.8% and Internal Promotion- 6.3%.

Our first reaction was to note that the US market typically separates internal moves and promotions from all “external” sources. The Australian approach incorporates the two.

- By contrast, we adjusted our US study of 14 sources to compare to the Australian SOT-09 results (by combining both internal and external sources into one list). Our 5 top results (which also account for about 3 of 4 hires): - Internal Movement (including promotion)- 38.8%, Employee Referrals- 16.7%, Corporate Web site- 12.3%, Job Boards- 7.5%, and Direct Sourcing- 4.8%.

If Internal promotion and movement (US) are defined similarly in Australia then Internally filled positions are 6x greater in the US than in Australia! Not a minor difference no matter how you define this category.

- Job boards are considered a source for Australian hires nearly 4 times as often as in the US.

- In Australia referrals lead to hires half as often as in the US.

This gap becomes even wider when breaking out employee referrals for employers alone.

- It is not surprising that company web sites are attributed nearly as often as a major “source” in both Australia and the US.

We are still of the opinion that a company careers site is a destination. Attributing hires to the Career Site as a "source" dilutes the impact of other channels that influence visitors to go to the site.

- A quick comparison of adjusted agency hires shows the US at 1.7% versus 6.8% in Australia (really 9.9% if you compare only the employer hires).

Some of the difference is explained simply by the differences in the sizes of the firms participating in the respective studies but – not all. We would have thought Agency/Third Party hires in Australia would have tracked much higher.

- In both the US and Australian data, the attribution of social network sites in staffing is still quite small.

The reasons for this result require a much longer conversation than this quick take but both collection methods and investor hype are part of the answer.

While it is easy to assume (and is often noted by both US and Australian authors) that Australia lags the US market and eventually all these various sources will shift or converge toward US numbers, we do not subscribe to that conclusion. instead, we believe we are beginning to see basic differences in our respective approaches to hiring…country by country.

The evolution of a more sophisticated way to examine the staffing supply chain even on a national level is still out of our reach but eventually we may discover that combinations of sources that interact to brand, confirm and eventually influence job seekers to make better career decisions. These influence clusters may be as related to the culture of the country as they are to technology choices, economics and other business factors.

As more countries collect and share data similar to Source of Talent, 09, the standards for defining and comparing sources will continue to develop and this conversation is going to move to a new level. Michael Specht and Philip Tusing have taken an excellent first step. Kudos

I get quoted often. Most recently in Tuesday's WSJ. It was one line. No biggee (unless it is the first time- and then of course I would bring it to mom and frame it). It wasn't my first, so I eventually post the link in a specific area of my website.

Then, this morning's first email arrived:

Great news can drive business - and there's no better way to promote your business than with a custom reprint from Dow Jones Reprint Solutions!

In case you missed it, below is the link to the article:

Keeping Skills Sharp Through a Long Layoff August 18, 2009

What can a reprint do for you? - Promote your products or services - Serve as part of a marketing campaign, whether in print or electronic - Reinforce purchase decisions and assist in client retention - Build awareness among prospects, clients, investors and other stakeholders - Burnish your firm's brand image and credentials - Recognize key colleagues for their accomplishments.....

At the bottom of the email was a name and phone number for Chad and there was also an order form in the attachments.

I got to thinking about how many names might actually have been mentioned in a single issue of the Wall Street Journal. Gotta be a lot.

I tried to imagine doing this job and I figured whoever was doing this had either been banished to the Siberian equivalent of Dow Jones or had just joined the company and hadn't been told about the hazing.

Still, the email and the timing suggested the pitch was being done responsibly and quickly.

So I called Chad.  Yes, I did. And I interviewed him for about 10 minutes.

A Broadcast Journalism major, Chad has been working for Dow Jones for two years and every day he finds and sends these email packets to about 50 people that seem the most likely prospects i.e. not too famous or with big firms. I learned that you can even pay Dow Jones (a little) for the link from your website to theirs and (more) if you want to post the entire article on your website. (Hmmm. I may be skirting the law here.)

Chad has aspirations to move up and is very dilligent at his assignment. He is personable and can chuckle at his basic roles and responsibilities without demeaning them in the least. He appears to think through how he crafts his pitch and does alter it- probably more for job enrichment than in the results but he does get results and apparently enough to cover what he does. He tried to close me twice and thanked me for the call.

I advised him to work even harder for that promotion as I've no doubt several young grads in other countries would be more than willing to do the same work for much less. I'm happy to share Chad's number as I've no doubt he could be successful as a TPR.

Chad, if you are reading this, you have my permission to link to it for free and use me as a satisifed WSJ customer in referencing your accomplishments i.e. being willing to start wherever and do whatever well to get ahead.

(From CareerXroads' August Update)

The last bastion of the digital divide has fallen

He has accounts on Facebook, My Space and Twitter.

He runs an Internet Forum on Yahoo and keeps in touch with the rest of his friends via email.

He is 37 and homeless.

He lives under a bridge in NY City.

Mr. Pitts may lack a mailing address according to a Wall Street Journal feature by Phred Dvorak but you can certainly find him virtually.

Roughly half of some 200 shelters in the city run by various non-profits offer online access.  

When was the last time you needed a mailing address to hire someone?  Answer: If they can connect and perform (and you can direct deposit), it isn't relevant so no one should care.

(from the August Colloquium newsletter - Bellwether)

Social Networking, Reputational Risk and the Workplace

Deloitte's 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey suggests that many corporate leaders believe that there is a "great reputational risk associated with social networking."

Apparently 74 percent of those surveyed believe: "it is easy to damage a brand's reputation via sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube."

As a result, "60 percent of business executives say they have the "right to know" how employees portray themselves and their organizations online."

Maybe they do have a right to know how their organization is portrayed but we believe a growing % of employees do not agree with them - particularly about the personal side of that portrait.

from the August CareerXroads Update - musings on staffing written monthly since 1996

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Data geeks will love this TedTalks [Ted.com] video. I've never seen information presented visually the way Hans Rosling, a Swedish professor of global health, does it using an application he developed.

I was amazed by a deep data mining dive into global health care. The video (to which we were pointed by Jeremy Shapiro, a fellow data junkie who is leading one of the Staffing Standards Task Force groups) opens with a story by Professor Rosling trying to benchmark just how smart his students are at the beginning of his graduate class.

He asked them to take a 1-question pre-test: "Which country of each pair (below) has the highest child mortality?"(One member of each pair has twice the mortality of the other)

• Sri Lanka or Turkey • Poland or South Korea

• Malaysia or Russia

• Pakistan or Vietnam

• Thailand or South Africa

He discovered that the students consistently did worse than a control group of chimpanzees! (A group of peers -professors at his University, managed only to match the chimps.)

The professor surmised that it wasn't ignorance but preconceived ideas about the distribution of wealth and other variables that contributed to the result.

As we integrate staffing globally, I'm willing to bet that similar preconceived ideas we have about the employment process will also hinder our ability to devise effective protocols.

Here's hoping we do better than the chimps.

Last month 2800 NJ National Guard and Reserve troops returned home to NJ from Afghanistan and Iraq after a 9 month deployment.

Families in NJ were especially grateful because the mission was carried off without a fatality. The troops were greeted with applause, parades and many thanks.

Missing in the equation however was the fact that the troops were gone during an economic meltdown and many returned without a job.

Not fully knowing what career assistance was needed or, whether any help was needed at all, Sherrill Curtis, a volunteer leader on the  SHRM NJ State Council ( responsible for Workforce Readiness initiatives) got involved.

The timing was right and the needs turned out to be extensive.

Partnering with a NJ military transition firm, Tip of the Arrow Foundation, Sherrill pulled together volunteers, resources and support in record time. The result is a 2-day event planned for July 29 and 30 at NJ's largest military base, Ft. Dix.

More than 900 military men and women have already registered and 1200 are expected by the time the event takes place. Hundreds of career coaches, recruiters and HR professionals in NJ voluntered with just a few calls and emails to individually counsel each attendee on the first day.

Workshops and employer panels are also scheduled to focus on tactics for networking and using technology in the job search.

The second day is a job fair (free to NJ employers with jobs) that is totally booked.

We're now developing a Linkedin group as a follow-on to the event where troops can share their job hunting experiences, support one another and "out" the firms they have targeted who are slow to offer an interview. (This way recruiter volunteers can help break down a few doors-as appropriate to help folks get up to bat if they are qualified).

I know Sherrill and her new found military friends are planning to document the event and its value so others hopefully can use it as a template and develop thier own initiative.

If you get a chance, thank Sherrill.

I appreciate her work and the efforts of the many volunteers in HR, Staffing and Career Services communities. It is a pleasure to support them.

My son, a newly commissioned second Lt in the NJ National Guard who was in active service during the first Iraq war and who will likely be again deployed next year is also a fan.

We need to give more PR to the outstanding work that is being done by individual firms like Sodexho, Lockheed Martin, and many many more who reach out to military in transition. What is also needed however is the local and regional programming support for returning vets who are targeting firms that may not have gotten the word but with a nudge will give vets a chance to get to bat..

John Zappe's excellent article today (July 14) about how a jobboard has built its brand has many lessons.

I originally saw these ads on a New Zealand Recruitiment social network (Recruitment 2.0 Asia Pacific built by Paul Jacobs) a couple months ago and howled but didn't see the relevance until now.

First, check out a Youtube snippet of Chef Ramsey from popular restaurant reality show in the UK humiliating a local cook. I can only bear to watch part of it.

Then, contrast what you just saw with a typical but similar scenario (#2) of Little Gordon.

Finally, if you can get over the schock of hearing what looks like an 8-year old swear like a...pompous chef, you are ready to read John Zappe's article and how these ads have catapulted one job board to another level. 

Now if we can just link to some employer results. sigh

My eyelids droop when I hear lawyers or Phds explaining anything. And when they explain something legal, my head hurts. And when they explain the legality of testing, my head droops, hits the desk and I hurt even more.

(There are exceptions and among them I happen to love Charles Handler who recently wrote an ERE article on this subject)

However, while I think staffing leaders want to understand what is going on in all relevant corners of their world the recent Supreme Court decision on the Ricci case (which may eventually have some bearing on testing) is confusing.

The problem is that it is a complex finding and, while it will certainly be dissected for the next few months offering lawyers, EEO experts and psychologists extra exposure on webinars, my simplified [and arguable biased] take in a few somewhat declarative sentences follows:

- The City of New Haven uses a written test to determine whether to promote firefighters to a "command" position.

- The test adversely affects minorities i.e. they do significantly poorer.

- The City refused to accept the results of their own test because the results were "discriminatory". (The guys and gals who took the test and came out on top were upset and cried foul.

- The Supreme Court refused to accept the city's argument. The results stand.

- In sustaining the original results, the Supreme Court said that the City gave the test and now they need to live with the results.

-The Supreme Court also said that the City poorly argued that the test wasn't valid in the first place and so they had to assume it was valid until it was proven that it wasn't. (Lots of experts support the notion that the written test in question aka the "book learning" approach lacks any connection to the reality of what it takes to lead firefighters. Unfortunately, the [so called] experts argue among themselves about the best way to measure validity and ended up confusing the court.)

- Bottom line, the Supreme Court supports scientific selection which on its face cannot be ignored simply because a specifc group does poorly. The Supreme Court however is not saying that you can get away with a test that discriminates if it is NOT truly valid.

- However, the ruling was close and a minority [no pun intended] decision by Ginsburg championed a new notion- that "diversity" is a "primary objective in staffing". This has a lot of folks up in arms who think (as most of us do) that hiring candidates who will perform well is the primary objective..and that doing it fairly to ensure the successful candidates are, in fact, diverse is what we are talking about.

In the short run, if you validate against performance, you will have fewer problems. If you recruit against criteria you've validated, simply make sure your diverse candidates all meet the same bar. Tom Janz sent me this link to SIOP content and a few notes which prompted my blog. Thanks Tom (another PhD I can understand)