The Staffing Strategy Connection
CareerXroads®Update - February 2009 - Like snowflakes, every layoff is different
By Gerry Crispin, SPHR and Mark Mehler
mmc@careerxroads.com
Since 1996 our Update has been published 10-12 times each year and aims to share commentary, observations, perspectives and data we come across during our staffing adventures. We hope you continue to enjoy it and pass it on to friends. All are invited to register for the Update for free. Coupled with our Bellwether, a provocative monthly look at trends we share with CareerXroads Colloquium members, we are always willing to challenge the accepted wisdom or poke a little fun at the staffing industry and ourselves in the process.
We invite you to keep in touch and join us during the year at the various conferences where we speak or simply attend.
It is Monday Morning: Do you know where your next hire is -- and the next -- and the next after that?
We're analyzing data and writing a whitepaper on hundreds of thousands of openings representing this past year's Sources of Hire from dozens of companies. This will be our 8th SOH study.
We expect this annual report will be posted for downloading by mid-February and we will send a link in next month's Update (it is free - we never sell our research). Several webinars and presentations are scheduled and at least one or two articles are in the works for the first quarter.
Over the years our whitepapers on Sources of Hire (which can be found in the News/Articles section of the CareerXroads website) have been more of a critique of how firms collect data than a confirmation of the importance of one method of hire versus another. However, we've noted in the past the gradual rise of direct sourcing, the silly notion of having your website as a source, the initial rise of hires from social media and the critical value of having an employee refer you (as much as 70 times more effective from the jobseekers point of view than any other approach). We expect to see some changes and improvements and will enjoy the next few weeks of number crunching.
Even The Ivy League Colleges are Hunkering Down.
Harvard MBAs returning from their holiday were greeted January 13 with an email from Jana P. Kierstead, Managing Director, MBA Career Services who stated right off the bat that "postings in the Job Bank are down 24%." We're sure this factoid doesn't portend anything dire. We can't imagine any of the June crop of grads from Harvard's Business School will go hungry. Most likely it simply means fewer alternatives. But that isn't true everywhere else.
We are beginning to hear about significant numbers of offers being recalled from undergrads in less prestigious institutions of higher learning. This could become an issue and we would encourage firms considering similar actions to think twice. Reneging on young professionals at the very beginning of their careers in the "Age of Facebook" is sure to have lasting consequences. If you must do it, think about investing enough to create a much more positive experience:
- Use a phone call not an email.
- Counsel with Career Services first.
- Offer severance.
- Consider outplacement support.
- Build a self-help ning.com network for those affected and get employee volunteers to support it and help develop leads.
- Consider graduate school grants (we heard one firm was considering this).
- Consider int'l. travel grants.
- [Your innovative option here]
Back to Harvard. We were amazed at the level of career management initiatives the Business school invests in. They include:
- a Career Coach assigned to each student,
- Job Search Teams: 7-9 students plus 1 coach collaborating with one another to achieve their employment goals,
- several Career Services portals,
- a series of industry-specific networking strategy programs called Beyond the Job Bank that focus on issues like networking best-practices, and
- Directors' Notes, an effort by the Career Services staff to be more transparent with their knowledge and thoughts in light of the economic situation.
Kudos to Harvard. We expect they aren't alone but clearly are changing the playing field.
Staffing's Carbon Footprint=1.25 tons of CO2 emissions per hire and why you should care.
What does green recruiting mean to you, your staffing function, your firm? It is likely to be something you'll hear a lot more about in the coming months. But, too few leaders see it as a critical issue today.
Why do we think this issue will move to the front burner sooner rather than later? Money, of course. The environment, at least over the next four years, is a national priority for political funding and the color of that money is definitely green and flowing toward sustainability projects.
A webinar presented by Kennedy this month, presented by Gerry and Liz Pellet, a national branding expert with Emerg International, is just one of many you might expect to see in the future as literally everyone jumps on the bandwagon in 2009. The central question is how the notions of sustainability will impact recruiting and why you should bother now.
John Sullivan's article in HR Executive Online magazine, Steps to Implement Green Recruiting rightly points out: "If you can't show that a large number of quality applicants consider a firm's environmental record as one of their primary criteria for selecting a job, you'll never get senior management to buy into a major green recruiting effort." We suggest that you are already losing (or gaining) candidates in part due to changing values about the environment. Here are three thoughts you might consider:
First, review and honestly describe how your firm currently views their responsibility to a sustainable future. Is it:
- a philanthropic initiative,
- a measured effort to reduce their carbon footprint (i.e recycling),
- an investment in transforming their own products and services to meet sustainable goals,
- an investment in "offsets" where sustainability cannot be achieved and,
- a core to the firm's future success in attracting customers.
Whether one, or more of the above, your answer will help define how your recruiting needs might best align to your firm's "green" vision and there are no lack of challenges in making sure the messages and actions are consistent, transparent, and that the recruiting function itself is walking the talk wherever you start.
Next, assess whether your ability to hire the best and
brightest is going to be dependent on an EVP that
connects to your firm's impact on the environment or
not. It also wouldn't hurt consider the extent that
recruiting and HR are willing to influence 'up'. You
might not be ready to fall on the sword just yet.
We worked for some time on a definition for Green
Recruiting and this is as comprehensive a statement
as we can offer: Employers and Staffing leaders
committed to "Green Recruiting" recognize, accept
and embrace their firms' accountability to social
responsibility, community involvement, environmental
stewardship and sustainability. They assess their
results at all levels of their respective organizations
and they especially recognize that their firms' future
performance is dependent upon sharing their vision
and actions with stockholders, employees and
candidates in order to attract, engage and influence
the most talented candidates to come and stay.
Finally, beyond your firm's commitment to sustainability (and purely as an aside), have you thought about actually calculating your staffing function's "Carbon footprint" (i.e. the tonnage of CO2 annually released by the direct activities of recruiters, hiring managers and job seekers in the employment process)? With www.carbonfoot print.com, a UK based calculator that converts your actions, personal and business, into tonnage of CO2 emissions, it is a relatively easy exercise. Using the site (and lots of assumptions), we calculated that a recruiting function in a modest-sized (1000 employee) non-green-conscious firm that hired a mix of 240 applicants would generate 320 Tons of Carbon CO2 emissions or about 1.25 tons/hire.
What would the impact be of reducing the average # of
times a candidate interviews, the number of
candidates you see for every position, even the cars
your out-of-town applicants are driving (or being driven
in)? (On the frivolous side, what is the CO2 cost of
advertising for candidates in a newspaper versus
online? Sorry, but I'm going to have to do the
calculation.)
Can a company whose "green" commitment is rising,
afford a recruitment function and process that isn't?
Corporate Recruiting Leader Compensation: The good news is you made [a lot] more in 2008 than 2007...
...and now for the bad news.
John Dooney and Evren Esen from SHRM's research function, writing for an annual SHRM Supplement, HR Salaries Weaken With the Economy, reported much that was to be expected given the times we're facing but also a few unexpected items. The data is quite worth the read. It was obtained from 85,000 HR practitioners in 2000 companies in 5000 locations via a collaboration between Watson Wyatt and SHRM.
Bottom line, only positions in International HR and Recruiting Leadership show compensation as significantly up in 2008 over 2007 (and recruiting is up 17%!! - some generalist positions are showing decline of 17%!! Hmmm. Makes sense to us.) Short Term Incentives (STIs) however are down and predicted to head down even further (big mistake).
On the downside, even with the increase in 2007, the total compensation of top corporate recruiting leaders is still lower than many of their colleagues leading other HR silos (i.e. T&D, Benefits, etc.).
Corporate staffing leaders are deeply engaged around the incentives they offer prospective employees as a part of their firm's EVP. (Must be something about shoes for the cobbler's children.)
Revisiting 2008 Predictions - Recycled for 2009
A year ago we made six very tongue-in-cheek predictions for 2008. This month we revisited them and found them to be less outrageous today given all that has transpired. Here's a precis of what we claimed would happen during the last year - and some thoughts about where it will go in 2009.
#1 - SS#s Stolen, Class Action Suit Follows.
"A major corporation will be hit with a class action
suit by August 2008 for requiring ALL candidates to
submit their social security numbers when first
completing their online company application
(regardless of qualifications)"
This didn't happen - yet (but legislation is likely in
2009). Whenever we meet with students, job seekers,
etc., we advise them to make up a social security
number rather than offer it up in response to a generic
online application and to report the company to the
Better Business Bureau. Most firms are still missing
or have substandard employment privacy policies.
They are lawsuits waiting to happen.
#2 - Closed, Online Affinity-Specific Networks
explode.
"Everyone joins as many different networks as they
can and competition is fierce to see just how many
groups one person can actually belong to. An Atlanta
accountant claims the title. He belongs to more than
150 social networks."
Contrary to our predictions that public social networks
were reaching their peak in 2008, Facebook still offers
incredible value (now at 200 million) primarily
because of its mobile and other open source
applications. Linkedin is certainly holding its own.
But, every corporation with any sense is re-evaluating
their policies about the social network and
experimenting with them as critical productivity and
collaboration tools. ROI data is sketchy but as many
top firms have said, "the cost of not incorporating
private social networks within our corporate culture is
unacceptable."
A half million private social networks are currently
based on Ning's platform alone! (One of them,
recruitingblogs.com, a community of 15,000 recruiters
has significant traction.) Hundreds of trade
organizations, college alumni associations and
professional associations have launched private
groups and are building them out as we speak.
#3 - Newspapers Acquired by Online Properties
"the Newspaper Association of America waves the
white flag of surrender for its entire industry as
classifieds drop to 15% of the Conference Board's 60-
year-old index monthly index (1989=100) thereby
forcing a fire sale of newspapers to online search
engines."
Unfortunately, we were too conservative - no one
wants to buy the newspapers so they are just going
bankrupt or eliminating print themselves and going
directly to web publishing.
#4 - Companies "Open" Up - Somewhat
"Corporate initiated transparency will increase
substantially in 2008 as highly-competitive firms
voluntarily publish (for all to see) - - -
OK, we weren't serious in 2008 and we're not about to
believe that any but the most progressive firms will
make inroads in 2009.
#5 - Feedback Stimulates Job Simulation
Explosion
"A handful of companies bolt onto their online
application process in 2008 a new style of simulation
that goes beyond typical one-way testing and
assessment approaches."
Starbucks launched their "Job Tryout" in March for
store management candidates and Microsoft's
Microsites with its deep dives into aspects of specific
job families are two of maybe a dozen efforts coming
to fruition that we believe will eventually change the
game.
#6 - [Jobseeker] Information Tools to Make
Companies Really Transparent Suddenly Appear
"a suite of online services that helps them
[jobseekers] identify 50-100 target companies and
then build a private database on each firm to include:
Not all in one place - but sooner or later - - -
CareerXroads
The Staffing Strategy Connection
By Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler
mmc@careerxroads.com - 732-821-6652
