Biting the Bullet

There's no better time like today to re-examine your company's recruiting. Most hiring departments need a major restructuring to address client goals.

Professionals who entered the work force in before the 1990s, faced an entirely different job market than todays. When unemployment (in the US) fluctuated between 8-10 percent, there were neraly 15 million applicatants for a million jobs. This seems to be the case in India today where applicants are lining up in the hope of being selected. Sometimes they pray for divine intervention.

Fortunately, technology has helped increase worker efficiency and productivity as well as streamlined the employment process. No longer must job-seekers wait for the Sunday classifieds to find the next week's leads. In fact, today the opposite is true -- it is now the recruiters who are lining up to find promising candidates.

Surprisingly, instead of examining the current economic and technological conditions, many recruiters seem to be attributing the applicant shortage to their company's branded image. Were we able to change public perception of the company, they say to themselves, the legions of potential employees would arrive at our door.

Some recruiters also appear to believe that their inability to fill job openings is simply a temporary problem, but even a slowing economy liberated only 5,000 dot-commers last month. How quickly were these workers absorbed into new positions? How long will they remain with their new companies? Compare those 5,000 workers with the 800,000 open IT positions, and it becomes clear that not every recruiter is reaching his or her goals.

The fact is, though, that new hires have to come from somewhere. The corporations that are luring your employees are the ones making drastic internal changes. Most companies don't discuss these changes for reasons of competitive advantage. We have here some such secrets.

Fire the entire recruiting team and start from scratch. Candidate selection and employment are the deliverables. The recruiter's mission is to bring qualified candidates to the door; it's best to automate the rest of the process. This means that you won't be hiring experts in interviewing, testing and paper-pushing, but rather people who excel in attracting candidates. Rename your recruiting program Candidate Relations, Candidate Acquisition, Talent Search, or another moniker that focuses on either the person or the relationship that is your ultimate goal. The idea is to establish a presence where the candidates are learning, talking, reading or reviewing tools and to build connections with every potential employee.

Some of these relationships will need to be managed for the long term. Questions to answer: How many staff members in your current program can do that? What are their titles? How flexible are they? Of course, you could use third-party recruiters for 100 percent of your hiring, but that doesn't develop the long-term relationships that are essential to finding and hiring the best talent.

Organise around a knowledge core. Most recruiters have limited access to company business plans, needed skills, sources of talent, knowledge of the competition and turnover analysis. Moreover, the knowledge that these recruiters do have is generally a mile wide and an inch deep; in other words, they know very little about almost everything. Recruiters too often operate in a compartmentalised staffing program without a sufficient understanding of their company's strengths and weaknesses, short- and long-term goals or strategic objectives. Hire the research capability to arm them; make information a central component of the researcher's desktop, accessible from any location. Do remember that a researcher is not a recruiter. Do you have any researchers on your staff? Buy information from the outside if you must, but if you do so, be aware that you will lose a competitive advantage.

Pay serious money for performance. That's right, pay your recruiters handsome salaries and provide them with the budget to attract the best candidates. Then give bonuses for meeting corporate aims, not just individual goals. Solidify your measures of performance and communicate them to your recruiters. Send your worst-performing employees to the best outplacement firm you can find and help them get hired by your competitors; do this twice a year.

Stop benchmarking techniques or bold ideas and start benchmarking strategy, organisational structure and communication. Emphasise communication within the company, especially between managers and field recruiters. Study the way in which your competitors make decisions and contrast their methodologies with those of your own firm.

Instigate change from within the company. Use the results of your research to develop clear investment proposals such as referral bonuses, technology tools for automation, training programs and retention strategies. Make sure that each of these proposals guarantees a measurable return on corporate goals, sales and shareholder value. Pitch one proposal to management every quarter.

If your company's survival literally depends on hiring the best and the brightest, it may be time to stock your candidate acquisition program with fresh skills and competencies. It's absolutely imperative that you rethink the way in which your recruiters are trained, organised, informed and compensated. Match a competitive market with competitive agents and you're on your way to mining talent and filling jobs.