OnRec, Sourcecon, HR-XML, HR Technology, ERE, Kennedy (next week) and many other Fall conferences taken as a whole make several statements about trends:
Michael Marlatt, working in a contract role at Microsoft showed a fabulous YouTube video, Another Tech Bubble by, TheRicheterScales group. Some presentations at ERE and HR Technology were new and different. ERE has a download site to review them. We especially enjoyed Tony Blake's (Davita) 5 Smartest and 5 Dumbest Things I've Done as a Recruiting Leader and hope he'll reprise that at a colloquium meeting next year.
We received a request via Linkedin recently from a financial services executive who had been contacted by a headhunter who knew us, who had an opportunity and forwarded it via our connection - 2 degrees of separation.
The executive wanted assistance in assessing whether the headhunter was worth working with (we read that as whether to return the note). As we contemplated a response to gently imply that you would be crazy not to, we spied the NY City financial guru's current title [partial to protect those too reluctant for their own good]:
AIG EXCESS CASUALTY GROUP
Operation & Compliance
How appropriate!
We have always been strong advocates of offering in-depth descriptions to every candidate about "What Comes Next" in a company's recruitment process. Helping a candidate understand how behaviorally-based interviews improve selection and what that means when they are responding is a good thing (although some firms and recruiters still prefer shock and awe).
We think you can get to another level of reliability and validity of recruiting if all finalists have the same interview training (this also assumes of course that all of the recruiters and hiring managers also have the same interview training). We've seen plenty of efforts at colleges to provide basic training but fully expect to see more generic programs like WinTheView as well as programs customized to the corporation.
Yes, outplacement firms and career coaches are fully capable of offering great value but the majority of applicants have little or no training.This would somewhat balance the playing field. We would recommend finding content that is most closely aligned with your process and point candidates to it in a resources section. If you partner with remote video interview platforms such as InterviewApplicant.com we are certain candidate interview training is even more critical and should be built into the process.
We found two videos on a social network for New Zealand recruiters that are quite innovative and (for one of them) potentially disruptive. Both are significantly more "real" than anything we see in the USA:
The first is a recruiting video for Fulton Hogan, a construction firm, that is produced like a movie trailer. The second video is a shocking approach to looking at the customer experience, one of a series produced by a retail association.
For the latter video, we're considering what a candidate experience produced along the same lines might look like. It would certainly wake a few folks up.
The Recruiting Roundtable, a division of the Corporate Executive Board (NASDAQ: EXBD) recently published a study detailing the negative impacts of poor selection decisions in hiring employees. Several contributing factors included:
The report (which claims to be based on data from more than 8,500 hiring managers and 19,000 of their most recent hires) points out that employers get what they hoped for (a win-win outcome where both agree that they made the right decision) only half the time and 40% of new hires report they received insufficient and inaccurate information about the job when they were applying.
We believe the failure to engage new hires in the recruiting process is where the true opportunity cost is eventually impacting the company's bottom line. Hiring employees that are capable of great performance but who are de-motivated at the beginning to achieve their potential is a guaranteed formula for disaster.
We received a note from David Shadovitz, the Publisher of HR Executive Magazine who in an upcoming edition, would like to recognize the Best HR Ideas of the previous year. The deadline for submissions is Dec. 19, 2008. To be considered, the program or initiative needs to have been officially launched between Jan. 2, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2008. In addition, HR needs to have been the principle driver of the program or initiative.
The ERE Staffing Awards presented in the Spring of 2009 is also looking for submissions for the best Recruiting Practices
Don't miss these great opportunities.