Defining What Effective Means

Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler are well known in the staffing world, and with good reason. Their consultancy called CareerXRoads has been adding value to the world of talent acquisition for quite a while now. 

One of the things they do is to publish a (free) quarterly newsletter they call CareerXRoads Update. In the most recent edition, there was a piece called: Measuring the Right Thing is Crucial to Social Media in the Future*.  It is well worth the read for both recruiter and candidate alike.

Worth it for the recruiter because it helps to put some important factors into perspective such as the difference between what really constitutes a "source of hire" and the process by which hiring decisions are made.

After all, if one looks at the track record of hiring decisions that turn out to be really good ones, it becomes pretty clear pretty fast that the source from which a contact is first made isn't nearly as important as the quality of the process that leads to the decision to hire since it is common knowledge that a very high percentage of hiring decisions that everyone hoped were home runs end up going South.

Point being that at the end of the day, the corporate recruiters add up the "source of hire" stats and then pat themselves on the back because of all the money they saved on ads or search fees or whatever because they sourced "X"% of their candidates from Facebook, Twitter, employee referral or some other free source.

If you read the piece, you will quickly understand the foregoing assertion that the original point of contact is not nearly as important as the process in terms of trying to measure "effectiveness" fo the hire.

Worth it for the candidate because what is really (or should be) critical to them is not how they "found" the opportunity but rather did they do their homework before saying yes in order to do all they could to make sure that they were making the right decision. After all, if it turns out that what everyone hoped was going to be a good 'marriage' ends up in a divorce, it is the candidate's life that is the one most damaged, not the company's.

So, given that ExecuNet is not in the recruiting business, why would I take up space on this topic?

Answer: Because like any business, we are frequently asked by prospective members "how effective are you" or "what is your "success" rate? A very fair question if you happen to be in a job search and your definition of”success" or "effectiveness" is defined as "a job offer"

Now, don't get me wrong, we post jobs on ExecuNet (have for all 23 years that we have been around) and I lost count long ago as to the number of members who have ended up with acepting offers as a result. And if I were to extend the definition to "interviews" (F2F or phone) I couldn't even begin to count, but that's not the point.

The point that so many forget is the percentage of job changers who actually make a change as the result of responding to a job posting is quite small especially when compared to those made as the result of networking.

And at the senior executive level, those who get jobs as the result of ads (i.e. postings) even less.  While the stats I have seen over the years in terms of jobs obtained as the result of postings runs around 10-15% give or take, when I talk to our members who have 'landed' 70% tell us that the "source" was networking, and that's just those that I hear from, my guess is that the percentage is actually higher.

So where I am going with all this is simply to say to the corporate staffing world that Gerry and Mark's update makes a lot of sense.

To the executive job seeker my point is that in measuring the effectiveness of a resource you are utilizing in a job search, look at and determine the "value" of what you feel the resource brings to your effort so that when the opportunity surfaces, by whatever channel, are you better prepared to take full advantage of the opportunity than you otherwise might have been because of the investment of time and/or money that you have made in that resource.

Said differently, when the "what" (i.e. the interview) comes along, how much did the resource help you with the "how" so that you were able to sell yourself as the aspirin for their headache and actually get an offer? 

If you don't know what the "how's" are and more importantly how to use them, knowing where to see thousands of "what's" is more often than not nothing more than an exercise in frustration.


*  Re-published with permission of Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler of CareerXroads, your staffing strategy connection. To reach Gerry or Mark, email mmc@careerxroads.com or visit their web site at http://www.careerxroads.com

Hiring Roulette

Among the all-time debates with no answers such as: nature or nurture; chicken or egg and of course DiMaggio or Mays there remains the nagging one of hiring or retention.

What is tougher, making a good hiring decision or retaining "A" players once you find them? These are issues that probably have been studied, surveyed, poked and prodded by more organizations than have sworn off applicant matching systems, attitude surveys and exit interviews combined, but that doesn't mean that we don't keep on looking for the answers even though much of the time the results in the real world make us think that our resident guru is Monty Python rather than McKinsey.

But undaunted, we keep trying, and even though the study will be a year old come October, the Corporate Executive Board and more specifically the Recruiting Roundtable which is a subsidiary of CEB released the results of a significant study last October which they say was the first of its kind in that they tried to actually identify the key reasons why more than 50% of the hiring organizations or the new hires themselves regret the decisions they made.

When one thinks of the time, energy and money that is focused on the issues of hiring and retention, this is not a number that generates optimisim on either side of the debate.

In any case and for sure, the issue is certainly not going to be solved here, but nonetheless I thought the study was of sufficent interest to share in the event there were those who might not have seen it or like me, had forgotten about it as we are wont to do. Even so, the data has lost none of its importance to any one of us who sit on either side of the desk:

The study details several contributing factors, including that 40% of new hires report the information they received about the job when they were applying was less than accurate. Overall, only half the time will organizations and new hires achieve a win-win outcome where both agree that they made the right decision.

"Given the high cost of early career turnover, organizations cannot afford to make the wrong hiring decisions," says Senior Director Donna L. Weiss. To save millions, the Roundtable aims to help organizations reach that win-win outcome closer to 100% of the time. After analyzing data from more than 8,500 hiring managers and 19,000 of their most recent hires, the Roundtable identified three important reasons organization fail to consistently hire high quality candidates:

(1) they over-rely on candidates describing themselves rather than having them demonstrate what they can do,

(2) they don't follow a consistent, evidence-based selection decision process and

(3) they fail to provide the candidate with enough information and 'experience' about what the job is really like.

Based on detailed quantitative analysis and over 100 interviews, the Roundtable has identified 10 key strategies that organizations can deploy to improve their selection processes.

One recommended approach is to move beyond the traditional selection process to include an experiential component to the process. Weiss adds, "By providing candidates with an experience that is either 'on-the-job' or that is key to job success, organizations can better observe a candidate's capabilities and a candidate can get a better sense of what the job is really like. This is one way to drive to more win-win outcomes."

If you felt the information in the study was interesting and/or helpful, on Friday, August 21st at 1:00 p.m Eastern, you might also want to consider joining Leah Haunz Johnson who is the Senior Director of the Corporate Leadership Council of CEB’s Human Resources Practice. Leah is going to be the featured presenter on an ExecuNet Webinar called: Motivation vs. Malaise: Driving Engagement in a Troubled Economy

About the Recruiting Roundtable

The Recruiting Roundtable provides research, training, and tools to help recruiting executives and their teams make decisions that achieve the highest return on their investments. Roundtable services address key recruiting challenges in areas such as recruiting strategy, sourcing, candidate assessment, diversity management, employment branding, onboarding, outsourcing, metrics, workforce planning, among others. Additional information on the Recruiting Roundtable can be found here.

About the Corporate Executive Board

The Corporate Executive Board (NASDAQ: EXBD) provides analysis and authoritative guidance to the world's most successful organizations. With a member network of over 80% of the Fortune 500, the Corporate Executive Board delivers indispensable resources for timely decision-making on all issues related to strategy, operations and general management. For more information you can click here.

I have purposely left the information on both the Recruiting Roundtable as well as CEB here in case some readers might be becoming aware of one or both for the first time. If you operate in or care about hiring and/or retention space either from the corporate side or the staffing industry side these are sources for thought leadership that merit your continued attention.

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?

Easy Come Easy Go?

Easy come, easy go - a phrase most of us have heard all our lives, and there are a number of situations where I suppose it might apply, but when it comes to hiring and retaining talent these days, it is not something most companies want and certainly don't want to encourage.

Yet, if you look at the numbers from any number of sources, including ExecuNet's, the time that employees remain at the same company keeps dropping. Last year in our Executive Job Market Intelligence Report respondents reported they were with their last company an average of 3.4 years. This year's survey dropped to 3.2, and when we asked about industry, this year they said it was 4.2 and that is down from 5.0 in 2005.

The point being that when you come across companies that are doing really innovative stuff that goes well beyond the lip service paid by all too many organizations, it gets your attention for sure.

Bill Taylor is probably a name that is known to many readers, especially if you are a fan of FastCompany. He was a co-founder of the magazine along with Alan Webber. Bill is also the author of a business must read called Mavericks at Work. Taylor also blogs for Harvard Business Publishing.

In a recent post, he waxes ecstatic (as well he should have) over what he found when he went to visit the online shoe superpower Zappos. I am not going to spoil the article for you by parroting back all of the neat stuff they do there, besides, Taylor says it far better than I could anyway.

I will, however, share one tid bit that will give you some idea of the degree to which the company works to make sure that those they hire really want to stay and are as customer service obsessive as the company culture dictates.

The company like many others has an extensive training program for new employees, but about a week into theirs, Zappos offers any new employee $1,000 if they wish to leave the program. Some do, but the company feels that by offering this sort of "bribe" it helps them to retain those who really do "get it." Cool move.

This practice also, I think, does something else. It helps to deliver the message that they want their employees to really feel they are not just a part of the enterprise, but a really important part, and while obviously loyalty to any organization is an accumulation of many factors, including old standbys like compensation and benefits, but step #1 is people need to feel valued.

What's In A Name?

You really have to love the Internet! I just wish I had the time to find sites like Buzzwhack which my colleague Robyn Greenspan, our resident and much loved Internet Junkie sent to me today. Among other things, Buzzwhack comes up with a Buzzword of the day, and since Robyn knows I get a kick out of off-beat job titles (yeah, I know, I need to get a life!) she fired it off to me.

Actually, it isn't just me who's interested in the "title of the week" stuff. At ExecuNet, we have been following it for a bit as well in terms of how companies are using different titles to describle some of the senior level executives, a few examples of which have been:

Chief Digital Officer
Chief Encouragement Officer
Chief Innovation Officer
Chief Learning Officer
Chief Momentum Officer
Chief Networking Officer
Chief Officer of Ideas
Chief People Officer
Chief Performance Officer
Chief Sustainability Officer
Click Quality Czar
Corporate Workplace Executive
Enthusiast Evangelist*
Senior Simplification Specialist
Vice President of Global Sales Excellence

*my personal favorite

In any event, the word of the day was COR and was offered up as the latest C-level title, which apparently stands for (are you ready?) Chief Obstacle Remover. The guy who came up with it was Michael Thiel, president of IC Intracom US, but whose business card says his title is COR

Some of the titles I have seen over the years I thought were fairly cool, and I think this one is "cool" too, but from a leadership perspective, I also like it because I think it sends a nice "branding" message on both a personal and professional level.

To his customers it says "I'm here to help" and to his staff it says "I feel my role is to do all I can to enable you to do your job so we can all serve our customers better." It also, I think, says something about Thiel as a person. I don't know if it is true or not, since I have never met or talked to him, but the impression I get when I see the title is that he understands that leadership (at least over the long haul) doesn't come from titles, it comes in large measure from helping others.

Chicken Little Doesn't Know Everything

As we are all acutely aware, the stock market has been behaving like something you could only find at Six Flags. Given the hype that we get on a minute by minute basis via CNN or MSNBC or whatever oracle you use to get your news fix, it is a wonder that we have anyone left who can look forward to anything.

Okay, maybe that's going a bit too far. I don't know about you, but no matter how you get your news information these days, it really is pretty tough to stay optimistic. Not that those of us here at ExecuNet have any deeper insights into the future than anyone else, nonetheless, in our own small way, some time ago in an effort to try and help our members and readers get a somewhat different perspective on how all this stuff was likely to impact their professional work lives, we set up a place on the site so that senior executives who were interested in getting a 10,000 foot view of the Executive marketplace could check it out from time to time. Over the years it has proven to track very well against what other indices say is going on.

So, to in some way try to counteract recent headlines, be advised that from where we sit, the sky is not yet falling. Based on our monthly polls of both executives (Executive Employment Outlook) and recruiters (Recruiter Confidence Index) we still appear to be in pretty decent shape.

On the executive side which tends to be more conservative than the recruiting world, nearly half of those who responded (46%) were confident or very confident that the market for executives would improve of the next 6 months. That was up 14% from a year ago, and 8% higher than July. When we asked the recruiters the same question, 69% were confident regarding the executive employment outlook for the next 6 months, and while they were not up quite as much month over month as the execs were, they were still up 2% from the July survey.

The two monthly surveys I am citing here are not the only way in which we attempt to take the economic temperature, but over the years they have turned out to be pretty good indicators and we have no reason to think they will not continue to be, so for now anyway, we are still, as they say, bullish.

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.

Senior Executive Job Market

As time has passed since ExecuNet was founded nearly 20 years ago we have become pretty accustomed to people coming to us with questions about what's cooking in the senior executive market place. The subjects cover the waterfront from wanting to know about the advent of social networks like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, etc. to age discrimination. Often it is the media, but obviously it is a subject of even more intense interest to our members.

While we spent a good deal of time throughout the year trying to respond to the inquiries, it became pretty clear pretty fast that it would be a good idea to at least establish some sort of a more comprehensive data source from which we could track market changes year to year. For the past 15 years that effort has turned into an annual publication which we call The Executive Job Market Intelligence Report.

As it has grown over the years, we continue to get more calls asking for copies or at least wanting to know more about it. Since it is a member benefit, naturally it goes to our members first in hard copy as well as being available to them online. Once that is done, however, we also try to be as responsive as we can within reason and cost to respond to the requests for more information.

It is with that in mind that I thought for those who might have an interest, I could at least make readers aware that in addition to an executive summary of the report which is available online at no cost, that Peter Clayton, executive producer at Total Picture Radio also recently spent some time talking with our President Mark Anderson and myself about both the report and the market in general. It was a fun discussion (Peter always makes it easy) so if it is a subject of interest, it can be heard here, and even if this is not a subject of interest, if you are not familiar with Total Picture Radio, but are interested in pro active career management in general, it is a URL well worth book marking.

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.