How About This For Recruiting in the Future?

In a newsletter from the World Future Society I came across the following piece of information.

"Mobile devices are enabling new spontaneous connections in real-world settings, including love connections. One day soon, your phone will play matchmaker, recommending that you introduce yourself to someone nearby whose online profile displays tastes or passions similar to yours. Impossible? An iPhone application called Serendipity is currently being commercialized by MIT researchers." From an article written by Erica Orange entitled "Mining information from Data Clouds" in the July-Aug 2009 issued of The Futurist.

Well if works for finding romantic connections why not work for finding new employees? You can carry around your resume on your phone, with your job interests. Recruiters can have job profiles on their phones and be searching for matching candidates. An introduction is made and by "bumping" your phones a resume is transfered.

What do you think? Cool or creepy?

Should Recruiting Get the Boot?

There is alot of discussion about how to change HR ranging from "trash it completely" to "I am ok with the way it is." I am in the middle. I am not ready to dismantle the HR department. I don't think you can. But it can and should change in a number of arenas. HR people need more cross training in business and in their company's business in particular. For that matter business people, the other managers, need more cross training in HR. It would be an eye opener.

Thinking along those lines I thought a good place to start would be in recruiting. Alot of people complain about HR and the recruiting function. Contingency and contract recruiters always avoid HR and try to get to the functional manager. The functional managers are always complaining about slow the in-house recruiters are in finding people. And in-house recruiters actually see themselves as the "non-HR" side of HR, more the sales and marketing wing of HR.

So lets give recruiting the boot from HR. Make recruiting the responsibility of the functional departments. HR can train them on interviewing, the laws they have to abide by (as if they would) and give them the proper format for an offer letter. Make each department have a recruiting specialist reporting to the functional manager. Eveyone will be happy then. The outside recruiters will have someone to deal with that "actually knows the job." Managers will have control on the speed of the search and the cost of the search.

HR can then do that administrative and compliance stuff, because after all that is what we are supposed to do best. We will sign up those new employees and then hand them back to the hiring department. Everyone is happy. (Edited comment... I was being very sarcastic here.)

BTW, those functional departments will also be responsible for handling the EEOC suits and contractual violation lawsuits that are filed. After all HR had nothing to do with it, so don't come crying to us.

What do you think? Do I have a winner here?

Finally My Place at The Table: OOPS Someone Took My Chair

For all you aspiring Vice Presidents of Human Resources I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that CEOs are recognizing the importance of HR. The bad news is that they are tapping non-HR executives to fill those roles. According to an article in the June 23rd issue of The Wall Street Journal more and more large companies are opting to fill the head HR position with executives who "know the business" as opposed to an HR professional who "... can get hung up in the process and forget what the goal is." These large companies that have tapped non-HR execs to head HR include Microsoft, Qwest, Avnet and athenahealth. (A side note to yesterday's post on Aggressive Recruiting. Microsoft is aggressively going after Yahoo employees. Perhaps this is because Microsoft's chief HR person was running a business unit and took this competitive approach to HR.)

The article said this trend reflects "... a perception that some traditional HR professionals lack the deep understanding of business and financial issues that CEOs increasingly want." The article quoted a headhunter saying "Many organizations are looking for their HR leader to be able to understand in great detail the business and the challenges of the business." Well this as always been a complaint about HR and the self-admitted shortcoming of many people in HR.

So how do you keep this from happening to you? Here are my recommendations:

1. Get out of human resources! No not permanently, but try to take on some other responsible role in your organization in order to learn the operational side of the business.


2. Learn the financials of your business, of business in general. If you skipped those finance classes in school go get the education.


3. If you can't move within your company, take on a responsibile role on a volunteer board. Take a leadership role. (I posted about this earlier here.)


4. Pay attention to your industry beyond the HR aspects. Read industry periodicals. Read the marketing and operations stuff.


5. Track trends. Become a futurist.


6. Speak up! Make observations, make suggestions. Get paid attention to. Be a resource for solutions in general.


7. Take on the hard assignments. Volunteer.


8. Lastly, do what you are currently doing VERY WELL. If you don't know your own craft and you do slip-shod work no one is going to care what else you do.

Well those are just a few suggestions. What else should be on this list?

Aggressive Recruiting: Acquiring the Talent and Avoiding the Buildings

There is a very interesting article today on ere.net, written by Dr. John Sullivan, regarding aggressive recruiting as an alternative to a merger and acquisition. His point is an excellent one if what you are seeking in the M&A is the talent of the target organization. He calls this the "neutron bomb" approach, where you take all the talent and leave the buildings standing. He cites Microsoft's recruiting campaign for Yahoo employees as an example of this approach. Microsoft could not get Yahoo and its search capabilities by purchasing the company so now they are aggressively trying to woo away Yahoo employees with this background.

In a traditional M&A you get all the "assets" of the organization and also all the liabilities. One of these liabilities is all the poor performing employees the target organization had. Also in a traditional M&A you have all the regulatory stuff you have to deal with, during which time all the talented people you wanted may have jumped ship. So his solution is that if you want the talent go for the talent and skip the rest of it.

One point he mentions that will stand in the way of getting this done is the lack of aggressiveness many HR recruiters have. Historically, to directly poach another company's employees was a no-no. Companies would use third party recruiters, and hence pay a big fee, to have the recruiter go after the talent wanted. Sullivan says that HR needs to get over that roadblock and face business realities about capturing the talent needed. I have seen this before as well. However, I think it may not be exclusive to HR. I have had company managment direct HR to be careful in recruiting because of some relationship between the CEO's.

Obviously this does not apply if the purpose of your M&A is the actual buildings and equipment. In some situations, as in heavily unionized facilities, you take particular pains NOT to acquire the people in the transaction. But even in that situation, there may be talented people in your target that you may want to try and recruit before you go after the company. HOWEVER, one very large roadblock to this PROACTIVE step occurring is that HR usually only gets involved in M&A AFTER the fact and not before. Another reason to have that "place at the table".

Attracting Employees: Great Job and Cool Red Shorts

How would you like to have an organization where people not only wanted to work, they actually trained to compete for the positions that were open? Sound unreal? It is not. It is the L.A. County Lifeguards! There is an article in the June 6th issue of the Wall Street Journal entitled Sink or Swim that describes the competition and the training that rookies go through to get the job that inspired Baywatch. Lifeguarding at this level is not just a simple summer job. Many of the lifeguards fulltime employees and the lifeguards are assigned to the fire department. All are athletes, some with military experience, some with Olymipic aspirations. The benefits are good and the pay starts at over $20/hr with some guards making close to six figures. The contenders for the job go through a competition that washes the less than able out. But the rewards are there.. the coveted red shorts and the orange lifesaving "can" and the glamour. Great employment branding here!

So what are some the lessons we learn from this as employers that will help us attract the "best?"

• Have a hiring process that promotes "We hire the best", a competition.


• Have a vision and rules that support it... for lifeguards it is "Always Face the Water"


• Pay well


• Have some sort of "glamour" associated with the position


• Give something to them that indicates publicly they are part of the "best"- That coveted pair of red shorts.

Do you have an organization where people are clamouring and competing to get in the door? If not you may want to rethink how you can position the company to be the "lifeguards" of you industry.

Mentors and Meeting Face to Face: Writer's Block Leads to a Great Find

All morning I was struggling with a topic for a blog. I thought of a couple outlandish, like "Treat Your Employees Like Puerto Rican Races Horses: Perform or Die" and then I realized that had been done, it is called the GE Way. So I went looking for inspiration by reading other blogs. It did not take long. I read Penelope Trunk's post today, in The Brazen Careerist, about finding a mentor entitled "How I Found My Favorite Mentor". Some very sage advice. This includes a link to a previous post on a 7-Step Plan to Find a Mentor which I thought was excellent.

Much of the advice she gives in these posts also applies to the process of networking. And keeping in touch with clients and customers. And employees and bosses. It is all about people skills. One of her lines in particular points this out: "...meeting in person makes the relationship feel qualitatively deeper by virtue of the fact that you get that whole other layer of nonverbal communication." (BTW, reading the comments section is almost as instructive as reading the post itself.)

I have a few email "mentors" who I have never met in person. As a result of reading Penelope's blog post I am going to make an effort to meet some of these people.

Everyone in HR should have several mentors (learned that from reading above) and should make an effort to meet them in person. Give it a try. If you have mentors add to the discussion and tell us how you found them and how you keep them.

I also think that recruiters should make an effort to meet candidates in person. I know in my recruiting past this often changed my impression of people, for good and bad. And I know that getting a candidate in front of the hiring manager often worked to their benefit as well. So recruiters chime in, what has your experience been?

Environmental Scanning: Some Great Reads on HR

As I was catching up on some reading, after having been on a trip to California, I wanted to point out to you some great reads and some new materials for you, especially if you are involved in recruiting.

Kris Dunn of The HR Capitalist has started another blog on recruiting called Fistful of Talent. It is a multi-author blog that will feature many different takes on recruiting. Today's is about the appearance of applicants today. Oh, The HR Capitalist (see link above) is about whether HR can be trusted or not. So check it out.

Jim Stroud, of the Recruiters Lounge has a FREE BOOK entitled Resume Forensics that you can download for FREE. It talks about resources and tips for finding resumes and candidates using search engines. Valuable stuff.

Ann Bares, of Compensation Force has a post today about The Quiet Pink Pay Revolution, women gaining on men in the workforce. Very interesting.

Penelope Trunk, The Brazen Careerist, talks about what knowing what you should be doing by what you did as a kid. A thought provoker.

Tomorrow I will blog about the SECRET union conspiracies under way with some companies, so stay tuned.

Video Resumes: Getting Your Next Star Employee

I read an article today on the SHRM site today about VIDEO RESUMES . It talks about the increasing use of video to present a candidate and his/her qualifications. I think we are going to see more and more of this as Generation Y enters the workforce in greater numbers. It is not hard to see video on MySpace or even in blogs where something from YouTube has been inserted. People send video by phone all the time, with no other message attached. I get to see my granddaughter weekly by looking at my son's MySpace page. So obviously there is value to the use of video, even beyond the ease of creating it.

What is this value? To the candidate it is a good way to get across their ability to speak well as they cover their background. For the employer you get to see this same ability. You can measure presentation skills. However, there is a downside as well. Not every resume will have the same production value. Not every position needs to have good presentation skills. Good "on camera" skills may mask a lack of other skills.

The article points out that HR professionals (and legal professionals) are torn. The naturally conservative types see the opportunity for descrimination on race, disability and "looks." The less conservative see the opportunity to make decisions about candidates in situations where speaking ability, charisma and leadership potential are important.

So my questions for readers are:

• How do feel?
• Have you viewed one?
• If yes, how was it received?
• What do you see as the value?
• What do you see as the pitfalls?

Let me know.