People Will Always Pay a Premium for Quality

If you are familiar with ,ExecuNet then it will come as no surprise for you to know that we collect trend information in the executive career management arena.

One of these collection channels we call the Recruiter's Confidence Index. The RCI is a monthly survey of the recruiting community and includes both retained and contingency firms.

The core of the index is focused on their feeling about the market over the next 3-6 months. If you are interested in the latest you can click here.

In doing the survey however, we often will ask some other questions based on trends that we have either read or hear about on a day to day basis.

Recently, we wanted to check and see what the executive recruiting community folks were feeling were their "top business challenges" at this point in time vs. several months ago when the answer was a resounding "what business!"

Among other things, I was struck by the fact that doom and gloom on the nightly newscasts and the front pages notwithstanding, the #1 issue came back as: finding qualified candidates.

To explain: I was struck that this was the top concern not because this is a new issue. Finding top tier talent (what's the buzz word these days - "A" players?) has always been a major challenge, and remains so. [Hence the title of this post] No, what got my attention was not what was on top of the list, but what wasn't even in the top three - specifically the hunt for new business.

This isn't to say that firms that specialize in the sectors that have really been hard hit (Financial Services, Credit, Construction,and Housing) aren't still feeling it big time, for many are, but as a whole, at least based on what people were telling us in the last couple of months, the sky may still be very cloudy and producing occasional severe storms; nonetheless, they are starting to see some light on the far horizon.

And in case you were wondering, #2 was covered by the phrase "client and business issues" (whatever that may mean) and #3 was "relocation." Certainly one can tie the latter to the housing market, and it would also make selling a candidate tougher for sure, but the fact that recruiters' phones were starting to ring (if not off the hook but still ringing) was a good sign.

What are you hearing?

And the Answer Is?

I would guess that anyone and everyone who watches or plays in the world of recruiting and/or talent management is aware that Kennedy Information is hosting their annual Recruiting Conference & Expo in Orlando the week after next. Even if you are not a staffing space watcher, it is always an interesting event to attend.

I am looking forward to being there for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it gets me to Florida so I can stay the weekend and see my grandson - always a nice fringe benefit.

I am also flattered and looking forward to being part of a panel moderated by Pete Weddle, CEO of Weddles and the Executive Director of IAEWS on The Future of Online Talent Acquisition. Also on the panel will be Don Ramer,CEO & Founder, Arbita, Rob McGovern, Chairman and CEO of Jobfox and Jenny Floren, CEO of Experience.

While we certainly expect a lively discussion as well as questions from the audience, Pete asked all of us to think about a couple of questions beforehand, and while certainly I am thinking about them, I also thought it might be fun to post them here and see what, if anything, others might have by way of an opinion. So if you are of a mind, what might be your thoughts on the following:

1. How will the online behaviors and preferences of the Baby Boomers who will still be in the workforce for the next 10 to 15 years influence the way online recruiting will be conducted at that time and

2. What aspect of online recruiting today might we all look back on 10 or 20 years from now and consider as charmingly quaint, horribly misguided, or just plain dumb?

I'm all ears!

Time Flies When You're Having Fun?

For those who work in the staffing world, Kevin Wheeler is a name that needs neither introduction nor defending. He is both well known and very well respected on both a personal and professional level. Kevin is also a regular contributor to ERE, and one of his recent posts caught my eye because it dealt in part with what goes on in the life of a recruiter. The title of the article is: Multitasking: The Key to Success: Challenges that only the agile recruiter will be able to conquer.

If you have never been one or if you are a candidate waiting to hear from one and are wondering what's going on, Kevin's piece may well help in understanding and therefore mitigating to some degree the level of frustration that thousands if not millions of candidates feel in being part of a process that from the candidate's perspective is often not well understood.

Indeed, in the 20 years that ExecuNet has been around, to say the failure on the part of recruiters to respond has been a major complaint would be the understatement of the year. It is a complaint that has followed the recruiting world for many, many years, and of which the profession is acutely aware.

That being said, when we talk with recruiters, as we do on a daily basis, it is a major source of frustration to them as well, but awareness doesn't necessarily translate to progress or in saying that some happy medium has been reached. Ask both candidates and recruiters alike and I think both would say we have a long way to go.

Anyway, since the readers of this blog (or maybe I should just say reader?) tend to be senior level executives, I thought suggesting they give Kevin's article a stare might be useful.

If you decide to read it, keep in mind that what he is describing is a recruiter who "gets it" and who behaves like someone who understands that they represent not only themselves but who also understand that they represent a profession. Not everyone "gets it" in any profession which is why the ones who do have earned the reputations they have and of which they are justifiably proud. They are also, by the way, those with whom we like to do business.

We Have Some Good News & Some Bad News

There are some very interesting and informative articles on ERE as anyone who cruises the staffing world is keenly aware.

Saw one the other day written (extremely well I might add) by Lisa Calicchio, who is the Director of Recruiting for the Pharmaceuticals Team, for Johnson & Johnson. She calls the piece People Are People: Don't Fight It, Work With It. I am not going to reiterate all she had to say here (a) because you can read it for yourself and (b) because she certainly doesn't need me to speak for her at all.

After I read the article, however, it caused me to reflect on my own 45+ years experience in the HR world in general and the portions of that which were and to some degree still are focused on staffing. It also made me think of the number of "hiring tools" to which I have been exposed over that same period. Someday I am going to sit down and try to see how many I can write down!

While certainly progress has been made by both recruiters and candidates alike, it is still abundantly clear that given the number of hiring decisions that end up going South, we still have much to learn.

While it has been a while since I have seen some stats, it is still my perception that the failure rate in terms of hiring decisions that turn out to be successful, especially at the executive level, would compete well with the divorce rate.

You could give every applicant every test known to man plus a lobotomy and still end up with what amounts to a coin toss. Okay, maybe that's a bit extreme, but it still feels more right than wrong.

Of course, the big question is why, and if you are looking for the answer to that one, you might as well stop right here. If I knew, obviously I would apply it to our own company first and then bottle and sell it.

So maybe your experience has been different, but for me, it just seems that there are certain things in life that no matter how much you study, test, prepare, visualize in yoga class or whatever, you just don't know how it "feels" in the real world until you are there. Getting married is one; becoming a parent another. How it is really going to feel and turn out for both the employer and the employee is one more.

It may be frustrating, not to mention painful and expensive for all concerned, and that's the bad news.

On the other hand the fact that we are still searching for answers provides a living for a significant portion of the population, and that's the good news.

Blow the Sucker Up?

For those of us who follow the articles posted daily on ERE (Electronic Recruiting Exchange) the name Kevin Wheeler not only comes as no surprise, but when mentioned is often accompanied by the nodding of heads coupled with an assortment of facial expressions which convey the respect and acknowledgment that comes when people feel you really have earned a "thought leader" merit badge. Makes no difference if you agree or not, Mr. Wheeler is clearly a thinker who, and happily for the rest of us, is also a very effective communicator of ideas.

Kevin recently posted a piece entitled Blow the Sucker Up? in which he challenges a fair amount of the conventional wisdom on a number axioms surrounding the care and feeding of staffing strategies that have been around since the days of help wanted ads on sandwich boards. The article is much too long to reproduce here, but if you haven't read it, I would certainly recommend it.

Below, however, are five of what Kevin considered the most critical notions that people should consider "blowing up." It is an interesting list and if it stimulates your curiosity, as I would think it might, then you have some appreciation of the challenging perspectives he presents.

* Only passive candidates are the best.

* It's not possible to keep people as candidates for more than a short time.

* Most candidates want to apply with a resume and don't like online screening or profilers.

* Each candidate will have to be interviewed in person.

* There is no way to show a direct correlation between the sourcing and interview process, and the eventual performance of the candidate.

While I had read Kevin's piece a few days ago, I was reminded of it again today as I was being interviewed by HR Executive who had called ExecuNet regarding some of the data that had come from our Executive Job Market Intelligence Report part of which talked about the degree to which senior level executives were not happy campers in their current jobs and the implications of this in light of the current issues surrounding both recruiting and retention.

One of the things we talked about was the fact that organizations that were really serious about winning their battles in the "war for talent" had best come up with innovative solutions. I suggested to the reporter that one of those folks who has demonstrated that he really is thinking about this stuff is Wheeler and that I very much admire the way in which he gets people's attention by challenging the status quo without making the reader feel too much like a jerk for not thinking about some of this stuff themselves.

Bells and Whistles

Ami Givertz is someone I have never met or even spoken with on the phone, but he is, in my opinion and those of many others who read his posts, an extraordinarily gifted writer.

Ami is currently the SVP of Business Development for RCI Recruitment Solutions so I can only assume that he is a gifted marketing person as well. Certainly would follow given his skill in putting words together that somehow tranform themselves from simple narrative to an extraordinary intellect that seems to flow effortlessly from his keyboard.

Ami used to blog far more than he does now, so when he pressed the pause button on his former blog it was a big void in my day, but when I recently discovered him once again as one of the bloggers on Bells and Whistles (the blog site of RCI) and found that his voice had not been lost entirely, it definately brightened my day.

If you have not had the chance to check out both his observations on the staffing space and those who roam the recruiting blogosphere, you would do yourself a service to save Ami posts as one of your favorites.