Late summer and fall events in 2010 have enough traditional and non-traditional venues for networking, learning and development to satisfy anyone’s taste.

Hopefully your budget will bring you to a few where Mark and I are having interesting conversations. We try to list all our meetings here.

This year the more unusual discussions include:

- The Human Resource Executive’s HR Technology Conference & Exposition held annually in Chicago (9/29-10/01). Elaine Orler and I will be formally debating the topic “Is the Candidate Experience Worth It.” For the first time I am taking the ‘con’ position and will argue that no one really cares or will notice so don’t waste your time. (I hope to lose the debate but have every confidence I will win. )

- I’m also moderating a panel at the HR Technology Conference on the “future of job boards…or not” with Ray Shreyer (IBM), Aaron Matos (Jobing), Doug Berg (Jobs2Web) and Peter Weddle (International Association of Job Boards). This will be a lively discussion!

- At the ERE Expo in late October Mark and I are moderating an unusual panel of undergrads and recent grads. One panelist is an author and creator of the MBA Oath and another, now at Pepsi was featured on April’s Fortune Magazine cover story about companies hiring military leaders. A recent Lockheed engineer and a top undergraduate EE Senior round out our effort to find young folks with a first-hand experience and opinions that are hard to ignore. (We may be able to fly in to ERE’s Seattle summit at Microsoft on Social Recruiting [9/13] despite a conflict we have with our own Colloquium the following day.)

- Onrec’s (9/14-16) lineup this year in Chicago will include our panel on Military Hiring. Several incredibly knowledgeable individuals who are extraordinarily passionate about this subject (as most have military connections themselves). Chad Sowash (Direct Employers), Angela Guidroz (Geaux Veterans), RJ Naugle(Microsoft) and Chris Murdock (IQuent Talent Partners) are front and center in this conversation about a truly underutilized pool of talent. Moderating this discussion will be a pleasure.

- The Learning Conference in Chicago (9/27-29) is a small and intimate setting for getting into the ‘How to’ on dozens of staffing subjects. It is probably the best venue for my fairly serious (but never-the-less tongue-in-cheek) “HOW TO Improve Source of Hire Data Collection From a 1 Sigma Error Report to a Strategic Staffing Tool” (and I still disagree more than half the blogs on this subject).

- Boston is the site for RecruitFest this year (10/7-8). It is my favorite UN-conference. Unwind. Let it hang out. Engage in a more direct, interactive and in your face discussion about the Candidate Experience and much more. I hope Jason brings back the drumming.

- Locally, a great effort is being set up to draw staffing professionals together at a state wide Colorado Staffing Conference (Powerboost 2010) put together by a Denver based TRN . They have a solid line up. If you are not from the area or can’t make it there look into what’s happening locally by you. (We’ll also be speaking at the NJ SHRM Garden State Conference [11/1-2])

- Your vendors and employer associations are also putting on impressive shows this year with memorable keynotes and concurrent sessions and we do plan to participate in PeopleClick-Authoria (10/11-14) and DirectEmployer (10/6-8) user/member conferences.

- Finally, our own CareerXroads Colloquium peer-to-peer discussions in August, September and October continue to support members who want to go out and share their practices at public conferences (and more than 2 dozen of them have given or will give talks as practitioners in 2010 at the events mentioned above and others earlier this spring that we didn’t mention).

Speaking at any of the above venues as well as many others taking place is a great way to make a difference beyond your company (and it won’t hurt your career either).We encourage anyone with a solid case (challenge, plan, execution and results) to consider sharing with their colleagues.

Remember, it isn't the idea that is the WOW. It's the execution on that idea and your ability to learn from it that changes the game.

In April I posted a survey asking employers [in a pretty in-your-face-manner] "How prepared is your recruiting process to handle job seekers with disabilities".

My ERE blog on the subject that month, emails to clients and friends, tweets and requests by folks with large databases (like David Mendoza who prompted the survey in the first case during an earlier conversation) drove very large n umbers of folks to read...but not complete the survey.

Many told me later that so little was being done they were embarrassed to say "no" to everything.

That said about 40 firms, half were very large, did complete the survey. Mark and I will have a private open mike webinar for those firms who did respond in August. We'll have a public discussion of results later for those interested.

Among the dozen questions we asked employers was one that focused on aspects of the career site that offered disability content:

Another question focused on recruiter resources:

Seems we have a bit of work to do.

In Washington DC next month (August 20th) 2 dozen of the country's largest firms with military hiring initiatives/aspirations will quietly discuss their practices, challenges and needs at an informal, impromptu meeting hosted by GE.

No vendors, no contractors, no press, no suppliers and no third party will be in attendance. No fees are being charged. 2 observers: A representative from the DOL responsible for initiatives helping veterans in transition and a representative from SHRM will be the flies on the wall.

This unprecedented 1-day invitation only meeting is a [rapid response] outgrowth of a conversation at SHRM's national conference in San Diego last month when it became clear that a series of new initiatives to support returning troops in transition were in the pipeline for Fall deployment and that the government was reaching out to corporations to better understand the priorities.

In that conversation, Susan Schieren, GE's Manager of Military and Sales Leadership Programs, noted that firms with substantial interest and existing programs had never seriously benchmarked with one another in a private setting. A few quick calls and emails, an agreement to have an Administration observer, and GE's willingness to host in DC resulted in an invitation sent to top firms that produced an immediate "we're in" response.

As evidenced by this Fortune article, there are 100s of thousands of transitioning soldiers- a unique pool that many feel is inadequately managed from the military as well as the private sector side. Some who make the transition will become extraordinary private sector leaders. Some will become just great employees. Many will be overlooked or simply fail because of a lack of information or support. The challenges faced by employers willing to engage them, consider them and hire them are not as obvious as one might think.

Here's hoping this next conversation, an extension of the one we witnessed in California will add to the growing initiatives by lots of groups to change the game for returning veterans.

I'm quoting Dr. Michael Kannisto, BASF's head of staffing who sent me an interesting email this morning.

Apparently Old Spice had such a great online response to a series of commercials ("The Man Your Man Could Smell Like"...something I missed entirely) that they filmed and posted online individual replies to dozens of them with the very appealing actor in the commercial.

It made me think about creating video replies to individual visitors to a career site as part of an FAQ section or having the recruiter embed an automated yet customized video message to folks they were turning down, perhaps encouraging more selectivity or additional experience rather than a cold email.

World class ideas are a dime a dozen. The very best firms are separated from the very worst only by execution.

Mark Stelzner's blog summarizing his observations was so good as a conversation starter that most of what I could say about the conference I said in my comments there.

My only additions are these:

-I can't be sure but I suspect fewer staffing professionals and staffing leaders attended this year's SHRM annual conference than ever before. It may be that I'm wrong but Mark Mehler and I know quite a few folks in a pretty broad range of staffing sectors. They weren't there. A few of the sessions on staffing seemed to be well attended (i.e hundreds in the audience but I believe most were not full time recruiters.)

And it makes sense given the enormous number of staffing conferences and user conferences that have been evolving over the last decade.

The problem for SHRM is if there is a disconnect between attendees and the large proportion of space on the trade show floor that is staffing related. You can rationalize being there for "branding" only so long.

- The "What Are You Thinking" Award goes to The Ladders for their 30k "data mining" service. If you have an account with the Ladders and your recruiters can't effectively mine it, train them properly or get recruiters who can. Maybe I'm missing something but even if we're talking 16 searches, this is still a pretty expensive "name gen" service from a single database.

- The award for "building community with an event where I can actually go and enjoy a conversation" goes to Monster who teamed up with SHRM for a tweetup that was just right. @ewmonster is high on my list of people in this space who truly get it.

- The "product I've been wanting to see for awhile" award goes to Careerbuilder's Inside hire service for job seekers.

The idea of giving job seekers data to help them understand more about who they are competing with when they apply for a job is not new but, actually putting it out there, is a game changer. There is lots to criticize about his [beta] version (and I did for more than half an hour) but it still is 10 miles out in front of everyone else.

I encourage every recruiter who has a posting on CareerBuilder to apply for their own job (i.e. mystery shop it) via CareerBuilder and examine the data about your competitors (yes, you can get it w/o that but do it my way anyway). Then give CB feedback. I'm going to watch what this spawns. More to come.

Of the 200+ participants in the room yesterday afternoon, 2/3 appeared to be veterans and many of those were working in the private sector as HR professionals.

These pre-conference sessions were last minute additions to SHRM's agenda but clearly a welcome change to see the society demonstrate some flexibility.

Lee Webster, a SHRM staffer who oversees the HR Standards initiative and is also a veteran himself was instrumental in helping the Conference group put together an afternoon of core and concurrent sessions followed by a small reception for networking. Another session is scheduled today (Sunday)

Several military leaders spoke about their personal challenges in dealing with and adjusting to private life after the military.

An Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs responsible for military transition (Jefferson) was (in my opinion) the critical keynote and he didn't avoid what could have been a contentious issue...TAP.

Instead of defending...or agreeing with the criticisms of the resources for transitioning troops, he simply said that for whatever reasons it was put in place (decades ago), it is not relevant in 2010 and he is in the last stages of a 100 day sprint to change the transition tools and capabilities.

After getting input from numerous sources inside and outside the government, the Asst Sec. listed and described a host of plans he expected would begin being rolled out this Fall.

I was impressed by the range and detail he provided which suggested to me at least that he understood the problem and the solutions needed. Unfortunately, the real question is whether in the execution, he will have the level of resources and scalability that are absent today. He did look over to Lon, the SHRM CEO who was present throughout this session (gets points from me for showing up) and ask if he could come back next year in an expanded initiative with SHRM and report on the changes. Lon immediately agreed. The members of SHRM should hold them both to it.

I watched Sherrill Curtis' (below in picture on right) concurrent session afterward on Recruiting the Military. I've blogged about Sherrill in the past and John Zappe has written about her efforts as well. She has been instrumental in getting hands-on help to the thousands of troops at Ft Dix in NJ mustering out by working with the tip of the Arrow Foundation.

After her session while we were talking in the hallway, a young uniformed trooper, Jessica I, with a press pass (for a military newspaper). Jessica (below in picture on left) showed up looking for the sessions. still a little out of breath because she learned about the opportunity too late but wanting to get her story.

Jessica quizzed Sherrill on what had gone on and how she could do to get good content for an article she wanted to write. Then Sherrill quizzed Jessica who it seems is in the National Guard, loves to write, just finished her journalism degree in May and is looking for a public affairs job to start her career.

If you want to help Jessica and can offer either advice or interviews in southern California, let me know and I'll be happy to make the connection.

This will be my 20th SHRM Annual Conference and the 15th consecutive time I'll address a concurrent session (my first time in Chicago 1996 my talk was entitled "HR and the Internet" and fewer than 10% of the people in the room had ever seen a page on the web.)

I'm already in CA but hanging with relatives in Sacramento before taking a quick flight down tomorrow.

SHRM anticipates 10,000 paid attendees and at least 3k more can be added when vendors, speakers, journalists and others are counted. The numbers appear up significantly from last year.

Of the 25 or so gigs I do each year, this isn't the most intimate, or the easiest to plan for, or the easiest to speak at or the one I'm going to have the most fun at. It simply is the biggest and, it is about the business of HR and its relationship to a function I'm passionate about.

As much as I love the various niche staffing seminars, expos and unconferences, missing SHRM's annual is tantamount to taking a step back and here's why:

- Collateral meetings. Over the years hundreds of professionals in HR and staffing -some SHRM driven but many external to SHRM meet before, during and after the conference. The networking opportunities to engage people who are at the very top of their area of expertise in day long conversations is without peer. SHRM has a dozen specialty panels, the SHRM foundation and HRCI boards to name just a few groups that regularly meet at these conferences. They do make a difference. Getting on these panels is not as difficult as some might imagine and the work is not about preserving a static past but instead creating initiatives to develop alternate futures.

- Sessions. Of the 200 sessions there are likely to be many that miss the mark but the few that resonate with me will be worth examining. Trends may not start here but they certainly are indicative of how extensive needed changes are understood. I watch the audience reaction as much as I do the speakers. I also note which of the speakers spend any time in the audience.

- Tweetups, meetups and side sessions can be overwhelming but there are certainly enough of them and enough variations in size and locale to meet every taste for additional networking. (I invite anyone interested in a very boring subject...staffing standards to stop by th Sapphire Room in the Hilton from 2-4 on Tuesday to network with the work groups involved in this long term initiative. We promise to bore you but also to enlist you if we can.)

- EXPO. The SHRM vendor expo is larger than any other. Who is making a splash and who didn't show tells much about the space.(Only the HR Technology Conference IMHO offers a similar sense of what is happening by walking the aisles.) Ignoring the chotchkes and asking better questions is a major opportunity for vendors, consultants and practitioners who get it...or want to get it.

After 20 years I still enjoy the challenge of being a good student. If I'm lucky, I'll never graduate.

If you see a hat and I'm under it, say hi.

There is a stark irony in using social media to find and woo candidates for a firm that blocks social media.

This creative presentation by Mitch Lieberman, VP Strategic Solutions, SugarCRM brings it home.

Mitch points out that an organization's changing internal culture and its shifting approach to customers must go hand in hand.

We agree.

We would add that the Talent Acquisition process can enhance or depress the speed of that change. Staffing Leadership that makes the case to take risks is essential.

A corollary Mitch suggests we ponder:

"Old Organization + New Technology = Expensive Old Organization"

(revised from CareerXroads April Bellwether)

I hope everyone is enjoying a great 3-day weekend.

Military transition is a special focus for SHRM in NJ and at the SHRM National Conference in June.

I've no doubt it is becoming a special focus for many other firms as they recognize what an untapped source of talent veterans can be.

175,000 military troops will leave the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard this year. 25,000 will be looking for work. 12,000 are disabled.

These numbers (just 1 year) do not include the Reserves and National Guard troops returning from overseas only to find they have no job. Specific units according to some sources have jobless rates as high as 50%.

The numbers above were provided to me by a Regional Veterans Affairs official (who also had fewer than 40 employees to provide counseling for troops in 20 states.)

One of my panelists at RecruitDC this past week, Carl Savino, President of Corporate Gray, offered data from another source suggesting the numbers were much larger.

Many of the firms in the audience last week were exceptional employers of returning vets but the discussion focused on what more we could do even beyond our own companies.

Returning veterans basic needs to better understand how to find and use the various job resources that are available is hindered by a lack of effective government counseling. Recruiters, career counselors and others who are knowledgeable about the best tools out there are stepping up do more to fill the gap.

In addition to some great initiatives (feel free to describe your volunteer or free initiatives in the comment section below i.e.@stevelevy, @sherrillcurtis, etc.), there is a call to action in New Jersey at Ft. Dix for early June by the NJ State Council affiliated with SHRM.

They are still seeking counselors/recruiters to participate in assisting several hundred transitioning troops learn more about how to compete effectively. Details can be found here and feel free to email Sherrill Curtis at sherrill@tipofthearrow.net

The SHRM Annual conference in San Diego will also feature pre-conference workshops for employers and military personnel about transition issues and challenges.

The discussions about the need to support transitioning troops have taken on a new urgency this year as resources are stretched and customized onboarding efforts by employers who are hiring returning vets become more evident.

There is also a dark side as we hear more about the concern some employers express about lost productivity due to multiple deployments. This is increasing and may be affecting the ability of candidates to successfully compete.

In some cases I've even been hearing that a few coaches are suggesting that reservists and national guard troops seeking new jobs NOT include their service as part of their resumes.

I've one response for any person considering this idea. Don't do it. Fight for who you are. You not only hurt your own image of yourself but damage those who will apply after you. Firms discriminating need to be addressed- whatever the cost. And, If you counsel troops to hide what they should be most proud of, find another line of work.

I would like to give a shout out and thank

- all who have served and are serving.

- all the folks who participated in my two recent panels on Military Recruiting at RecruitDC and the Career Management Alliance conferences.

All these folks are engaged in numerous efforts beyond their day-to-day work and are making a difference to those who have served. Several panelists served themselves, some were deployed, some academy grads or married to a vet and at least one is a kick-butt marine:

Sherril Curtis, Curtis Consulting Group
Chris Galy, Intuit
Angela Guidroz, Geaux Veterans (formerly w Sodexo)
Carl Savino, Corporate Gray
Kathleen Smith, Clearedjobs.net
Chad Sowash, Direct Employers
Donald Watson, DOL

(I've one more military panel to moderate at Onrec in September and I challenge other Fall conferences to include military recruiting panels to discuss issues relevant to their conference theme i.e. sourcing, social media, etc.)

- and, finally to my son 2nd Lt Gerald R. Crispin, training in Georgia for deployment and, to my fasther, Lt Col. W. T. Crispin, whose service in WWII and Korea is remembered with pride by his family on Memorial Day.

Thank you.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Next month Spirit Airlines is planning to charge you extra for your luggage...not additional luggage- ALL your luggage i.e your Carry-on.

Do you think they asked their customers whether this was a good idea?

I was reminded of the move when a Saturday Night Live skit this past weekend opined that the move to charge for carry-on luggage would increase the purchase of very large cargo pants.

The skit reminded me that I first heard about this strange idea last month when I read a blog by Boston based CTO, John Moore.

John offered an alternative solution: Instead of charging, why not use Social Media and Customer Relationship Management tools to get your customers involved in the conversation. Challenge them to come up with better ideas to offset costs.

John suggested that the airline

provide a simple cost calculator around this cost per passenger and let [their] customers play with the data. The learnings, the thought process invoked, will feed directly into the Ideation Platform…

Crazy talk.

Still, I thought, ok, companies don’t charge money for participating in the recruiting process but, from the job seekers point of view there is a real cost in time spent to apply (not to mention the various candidate experience challenges) and so, why not charge?

After all, you couldn’t really make them any angrier than they already are and your hiring managers would probably agree with the notion

Perhaps you could make the case that if job seekers paid for the privilege of applying:

- you might feel compelled to actually thank them for making you an income producing function.

- you might have fewer applications from folks who clearly aren’t qualified and should have known it before applying.

- you might make enough to support some level of feedback. More for those who meet requirements and even more for the finalists.

- you could increase your income by having more qualified prospects apply, and therefore you’ll want to have an environment that prospects will really want to be part of. (Of course you’ll have to describe it truthfully in a lot more detail than the current job descriptions and flat video testimonials we usually see.)

- Maybe the fact that you charge for applying will force more applicants to value your process…and expect more from it.

Let me think about what else we could charge for…or not. Or, perhaps we could use social media and CRM to accomplish the same thing. Maybe give a breakdown of your recruiting process, data about similar hires over thelast two years and their respective success rates/retention rates. Maybe some "fit" data about the team the job seeker would be joining and their demographic composition, leadership style - maybe even their latest 360 scores.

Crazy talk.

Or, perhaps SNL could do a skit about job seekers trying to complete a "free" application for employment and depict how bizarre their behavior is trying to get a response...any response.

In my day...and probably yours too, few counselors would have recommended going to work for the US government. Other than a stable job, the backbiting, politicizing and frustration of trying to make a difference in a quicksand environment seemed one heck of a way to waste a life. (That just a younger version of me talking)

Fast forward to 2010

- Comparable jobs in the public versus private sector: Government jobs pay more. Lots more.

- Opportunity: Large private sector companies will grow slower in headcount...especially in the United States than any other sector. Government workers, having missed all the layoffs for the last 20 years, will actually retire in droves.

- Benefits: Our taxes pay for as much as 4x the benefits as the private sector. You don't hear Gov't workers bitching about their health care nor do they vote it down like their private sector colleagues.

- Retirement: Damn near guaranteed. Like Benefits, the private sector has been able to reduce or renege on retirement benefits since the Regan administration...and hundreds of companies have left millions of 20-30 year pensioners high and dry.

- Ethics: Probably a wash as both the public and private sectors are equally onerous (in my humble opinion) especially after Enron, Lehman and many, many more we could argue about. (Want a list of all those folks with backdated options contracts?). Its a matter of choosing well against a firm's aspirational values and then living them...or not.

and finally,

- Candidate experience: Gov't agencies are now promising to acknowledge you, offer status updates and tell you if you didn't get the job. (See John Zappe's article from last week).

Good golly, the best private firms can do (and this is with firms that have an ATS but simply fail to turn most features on or bother to audit whether anything actually works) is about 1% for the promise, 50% for acknowledging, 5% for status and maybe 5% for letting you know when the opening has closed.( And that is a gift since our data for the Fortune 500 is actually worse. The 100 best firms to work for is better but they are a drop in the bucket).

So, to new college grads: if a stable, higher paying job with good health care benefits, chances for career growth and probability of retirement are of interest and, where if you do reply you can be relatively assured they will at least acknowledge you if not actually tell you how you did in the end, there is at least one place you might consider.

How embarrassing.

According to John Zappe's article, .Jobs Council Seeks Information Now, Public Comment Later, the council made up of SHRM volunteers decided yesterday to collect additional information around Employmedia's proposal to change the restriction on the naming convention for the .Jobs domain.

Excellent!!!

I certainly echo David Manaster's comment (although the credit is due specifically to SHRM's volunteer leaders- not the Society).

"I’m encouraged by what appears to be a more serious fact-finding process by SHRM and the Council & look forward to seeing the details."

While I'm equally certain that few in the Industry have the same level of interest, understanding or concern about the evolutionary steps of the .Jobs internet domain as they might have about other, more immediately pressing, challenges, this 'time-out' offers a brief but critical opportunity for additional stakeholders to really dig into.

So dig.

I'm convinced there are solutions that would allow a co-operative group working with those already in the game to invest & develop the domain's potential. And do so in a way that the needs of EmployMedia, employers, job-lead providers (i.e. job boards) and, most importantly, the core people that ICANN orginally thought SHRM could protect- the jobseekers can be met.

It will remain an insurmountable challenge however unless a more folks who are now on the sidelines step up and get involved, unless more in the staffing community take the time to get up to speed and make their thoughts known and more leadership is exhibited by those with a vested interest.

For me, this and 'ANSI/ISO standards' have my attention as the two arenas - long-term issues whose tipping point is now- and that 10 years from now will stand out having changed the game. Anyone looking to chat on the topic will be able to reach me as a priority.

After speaking with Gary Rubin today, I thought I would make my opinion known and attempt to influence the Advisory Board conference call meeting tomorrow.

(For the rest of you this will make no sense-feel free to check John Zappe's article this week- or, you'll want to argue and while I love the debate, please write your own blog as I won't be responding to comments on this one. )

The following comments were placed on the .jobs policy website in the General Comments section.

I actually don't agree with many of the comments here [.jobs policy website] although I understand and respect why most of them are being made.

I do believe the original move to include SHRM in the Charter for .jobs was a wise and creative effort on the part of ICANN to protect job seekers and build a legitimate playing field where employers and prospects might have an interchange (both good and bad experiences) without worrying whether the job or the employer with the job is real and instead, scamming the job seeker.

I'm convinced that the .job domain remains unrealized is because SHRM lacks the vision, the plan and the will to live up the the intent of the Charter. All talk, no walk. It saddens me because SHRM does have the resources but simply fails to see beyond its traditional role, its generalist priorities and, equally, I lack the skills, knowledge and experience to get them to see what it could be. That is SHRMs right as a professional association (I'm but 1 member) and most of its members have not been educated sufficiently to complain and force the shift (or convince me I'm wrong).

Enter Direct Employers, a trade association managed by experienced Industry professionals who probably get more heat than they deserve (if they didn't bring half of it on themselves).

With one key difference, I believe their strategy (to manage and develop .jobs) is brilliant, that it would change the game, preserve the original intent of ICANN and provide corporations with valuable services and job seekers with better means to acquire leads (I can just imagine how many folks are now sure I've gone bonkers but, it is true just not going to detail it here.).

There is a fatal flaw however, and it truly is fatal. The .jobs domain is a territory. Every corporation has the right, if they follow the rules, to post their own real job to their own [companyname].job url. I like it. Easy enough.

Now [right now] there is a proposal to open the naming beyond [companyname] to include [geography], [industry], [specialty] etc. etc. So, for example, a place for jobs to reside known as IndianapolisPharmaceuticalAccounting.jobs could (and will) exist along with just about every other combination - 10s, 100s of thousands of places. Confusing?

Not really. You don't actually go to this distant galaxy because technology will automatically place your [employer] positions in the right combination of places and, search engines like google will easily find them for a job seeker who, if they recognize that the .jobs domain MUST be a real job in a real company, will prefer it over .com. Yes, there are 'ifs'

As an employer, btw, if you want to go to the far off galaxy of .jobs and place your openings in each one of the places yourself, you can do it for free, (as long as you can demonstrate you are a real firm with real jobs)

So far, I really like this- except the group that is supposed to allow this to happen, EmpoyMedia, has already decided that only one 3rd party firm will be allowed to develop these many, many different places. This is equivalent to giving Comcast the exclusive cable rights for all of North America.

As it turns out, I dislike monopoly more than I like this concept and, at the moment, I'm especially ticked at the .jobs Comcast for some of the business practices related to how they are getting the contract as well as the folks who are supposed to be watching my back...like SHRM but who don't get that they are not.

SHRM is basically saying "look we're not in this 'business' we just want to make sure that the job seeker is taken care of according to the Charter and, who really knows what will happen anyway." (Washing their hands when the end game looks messy reminds me of the regulators recently watching while no-down-payment, no background check mortgages were approved and simply noted that highest percentage of our population now had homes to live in. Yup not really a fair analogy...live with it.)

My opinion is that there are reasonable solutions here where everyone can win.

There needs to be a legitimate way for any firm who understands and agrees with the strategy to help build the infrastructure and share in the results.

Large investments need to be made to educate employers and the jobseekers that .jobs has value so this deal would not be possible for everyone if that is taken into account. (If firms are shut out, I believe there is ample cause for restraint of trade and, since I'm no lawyer, I don't have to remind anyone about how feeble my opinion is.)

On the other hand, perception can impact what real people do and I'm just as certain that there will be no winners here including SHRM if the Society plays only a passive role.

As to all the misunderstandings, mis-stated facts and other issues of timelines leading up to today, it would seem prudent of any truly independent council considering what to do next to at least offer a serious period of public comment- say 30 days. At the least you might want to tell your own 250,000 members in a public notice in HR Mag, or your 30,000 members who think Staffing is their lifeblood in th a public notice in Staffing Magazine. Why not put a notice in the bag of each of the 1000 attendees at the Staffing Management conference at the end of this month? Run a couple focus groups there. You won't have to tell the rest of us, we learned about it this week.

Then, look at the facts, deliberate and move to vote.

Just sayin'

A survey Mark Mehler and I launched this week was designed to answer the following question:

‘Are Employers who are approached by jobseekers with requisite skills, experience and knowledge but who happen to have a disability, prepared to assess their ability (and not be distracted by their disability) given the decade long shift to digital protocols?’

A number of networks ranging from Starr Tincup to ERE have offered to distribute this survey link to their contacts and, I hope, as readers of this blog, you will consider answering for your firm.

We would like to get a “measurable” bottom line for where US firms are today and, down the road, it would be great to show a positive change where the gaps are greatest.

The participating firms will not be made known for obvious reasons, only general size and type will be published. We will however ask for and examine the distribution of the firms that participate to make this as representative as we can.

We will also invite respondents to a webinar(s) to discuss the survey results and the data, like our source of hire survey will be put in the public domain.

The idea to do a survey came out of a conversation I had a couple weeks ago with Dave Mendoza while we were speculating about the experience of disabled candidates specifically those returning from the military (I'm moderating several panels about military hiring this year)

My interest also stems from a gig Mark and I did with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) at Rochester Institute of Technology under a n IBM grant nearly a decade ago. NTID graduates were, at the time, not benefiting by the run up in interest in hiring new engineering and computer science majors. We conducted focus groups with recruiters, students and working graduates and identified several choke points in the recruiting process that unintentionally filtered disabled candidates out.

We wrote about the problems in ComputerWorld and we were interviewed for an article in the Wall Street Journal. I remember mostly one email I received from a recent grad (#2 in his class) of NTID who read the WSJ article and wanted to share his story.

He had been unsuccessful finding a job for 6 months...lots of initial interest but then no response once he was phone screened. Perusing a job posting online at a small software firm, he was invited to connect to the recruiter via a chat room and was told "you are a great candidate for our open position but you need to go to this link and complete a test"- which he did.

The email went on to say that he had just received an offer conditional on his background check and he was scheduled to start the following Monday.

"When", he asked, "should I tell them I'm deaf?"

Tell your friends about the survey.

One of my favorite staffing leaders [who is also fascinated by metrics] Tom Becker, VP Staffing of Comsys, was recently inspired by an article in Fast Company about David Lee Roth- rock star eccentric or business metrics genius.

The premise was how David Lee Roth (DLR) quickly assessed whether a venue’s “prep” had been completed to his satisfaction. According to the article Tom shared with me, DLR buried a slightly crazy requirement for a bowl of jelly beans with all the brown ones removed in all his standard [140 page] contracts.

This oddity wasn’t an oversized rock star ego at work but instead a business genius in the making- an early warning sign of potential problems. Among the complex items he needed to have in order to produce a great show were many that would take hours upon hours to check to see if they were done properly- a costly effort unless the likelihood of a serious problem was evident.

He learned that if they didn’t find the Jelly Bean requirement then there was a good [statistical]chance something really critical was also overlooked...and vice versa.

Tom Becker, writing about this idea in his own blog asks “What types of early warning signals are in your recruiting process that impact the candidate experience?” Great question.

The critical leap Tom made was considering the “candidate” as not just the one of the few finalists but, instead ALL those folks who cared enough, qualified or not, to put themselves through one more onerous application process and throw their hat in your ATS ring.

Is it really essential to survey them all (not that anyone does) or,is there a staffing equivalent to a bowl of jelly beans with the brown ones removed- a quick indicator of candidate satisfaction for the tens, even hundreds of thousands of potential customers for your products and services- people who may never be seriously considered for a job but who cared enough to declare their interest?

For example, if you are a customer facing corporation have you ever considered examining a small sample of your applications to compare their names with your customer list? Have they increased, decreased or remained the same in their customer activity since you last told them you would “be in touch if we like you but otherwise you’ll never again hear from us and btw don’t bother to reply to this email”?

What other bowls of Jelly Beans might we embed in our processes?

Peter Cappelli's recent HR Executive column, Leadership Lessons from India, is much more than a tongue-in-cheek recipe for solving some of our leadership woes.

The George W. Taylor Professor of Management at The Wharton School, makes serious sense in describing that what is amiss in the US is a failure to see Business goals and objectives as anything but money- especially the money that the leader can acquire for himself.

Peter points out that Indian business leaders' order of priorities are a bit different than most of their US counterparts as shown below:

"1. Chief input for business strategy;

2. Keeper of organizational culture;

3. Guide or teacher for employees;

4. Representative of owner and investor interests; and

5. Representative of other stakeholders (e.g., employees and the community)."

Dr. Cappelli further notes that "Shareholder value comes fourth on the list" but it hasn't seemed to hurt their performance (and much more).

(My time in India in December with the SHRM delegation included numerous conversations and blogs around similar themes. The Leadership symposium our delegation attended was especially notable in this regard.)

Peter is one of the few Management Professors of note pushing the envelope around how our US culture needs to redefine "business" to be more competitive on a global scale.

John Zappe's Source of Hire article on ERE Wednesday (2/17), a day after my ERE webinar, offered a great snapshot of the information we look to share each year.

We we finally published CareerXroads' 2010 Sources of Hire whitepaper Friday. It is our 9th. I almost remember why we began doing it in 2002- to document how the Internet was impacting recruiting (since the hype about "traffic" never seemed to lead anywhere).

Earlier last week before finishing the report I dug out a 1998 SHRM/EMA study about 1997 SOH data and used it to start the discussion this year. The purpose, which I wrote about here was to contrast just how much has changed in the last dozen years.

In the conclusion of this year's whitepaper, I noted the top sources of an Australian SOH study published last June by Michael Specht and Philip Tusing. They represent the challenge we'll all have in the next dozen years trying to make sense of our supply chain on a global basis.

The real message however is that a "Source" should not evoke images of a spring in the mountains gushing job seekers into a series of aquaducts that move them directly to their respective employers. If anything, we need to examine this water way analogy as if it were a big murky channel where multiple "sources" add their input at various points. Mapping this channel by studying the relationships of different sources just isn't done...yet.

in addition, employers need to collect, detail and confirm the sources they do measure with more than one method. Instead of whining about the flaws in one method versus another, improving self-report and combining it with appropriate technical inputs and survey tools will lead to a more reliable result.

I just finished CareerXroads 9th annual Sources of Hire whitepaper- its being edited as I write this. We'll publish sometime next week when I have two webinars on the subject (one here with ERE).

To offer some context, I dug out a 1997 SHRM/EMA study to use as part of the intro so I could contrast the evolution. Its a hoot but also a lesson about not standing still...and some still are.

Here’s a bit of history to set the stage, provide some context and entertain.

12 years ago, SHRM, which had recently acquired the Employment Management Association, engaged in a joint survey of “Staffing Metrics” via a mailing to 5500 prospects- all of the 4000 EMA members and a sample of randomly selected SHRM members and volunteers.

256 companies responded, a 5% response rate, with their 1997 Sources of Hire, associated costs and much, much more. The many pieces of trivia contained in this (print) document (one of the many documents lying fallow in our desk drawers) are worth noting briefly because this was one of the last serious studies to offer meaningful results…with some academic controls.

It also was the beginning of the impact that the Internet was to have…on everything in Recruiting.

“Time-to-start” in 1997 was “computed to be 52 days.” We doubt if many firms can match that number even today and by definition it spans the date of approval until the day the new hire shows up for work.

Average cost-per-hire (CPH) ranged from a low of $369/per hire for Job Fairs and $408 for employee referrals to highs of $1638 for print ads and $9,339 for 3rd party agency hires. The “Internet” offered an average cost per hire of $678. While we believe CPH has some value in examining recruiting process’ efficiency, today the standard for how CPH is measured and the problems with how this figure is then mis-used have convinced us not to go there in our annual whitepaper. (Perhaps when the American National Standards Institute approves a real standard for CPH later this year…but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.)

So think about these 1997 sources of hire before tackling our survey…or wrestling with your own internal benchmarks.

1997 Sources of Hire (EMA/SHRM)

28.7% - Newspaper ads

19.7% - Employee Referrals

10.4% - Agency (3rd party contingency)

08.7% - Contract Recruiters

08.3% - Job Fairs

05.0 % - Other advertising

04.6% - Image advertising

04.2% - Trade journals

02.9% - College

02.9% - Resume services

02.1% - Agency (3rd Party search)

02.1% - Internet

01.5% - Radio

We told you this trip down memory lane would be entertaining. Lol. (Lol wasn’t used in 1997). With 256 respondents, the data was broken out by size of firm and industry. They even captured the average starting salary so that a simple ratio of cost as a percentage of total compensation could be calculated.

Needless to say times have changed.

What hasn’t changed are the challenges associated with collecting, comparing and leveraging this data to make better decisions.

(We would like to send a special tip-of-the-hat to Gary Cluff, a long time volunteer leader and author of many of these EMA surveys. Gary is a nationally recognized expert in recruiting despite his misspent youth crunching numbers for EMA and he is still making a difference in the DC area and leading the staffing function at Mitre Corporation. Here's to you Gary.)

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)