Good News for the Recruiting Industry!
On Thursday March 18, President Obama signed into action a new bill, which will directly affect the staffing industry over the next few years. Our industry has taken one of the largest hits over the past two years, since many companies reduced their hiring initiatives, which left many staffing and recruiting companies with half the volume they were used to in prior years. However, President Obama has made it one of his top concerns to get the whole country and economy back on its feet, starting with reducing unemployment. February saw little progress in decreasing nonfarm unemployment. The current unemployment rate has remained at 9.7% and February only saw 36,000 more employed Americans in comparison to January. The new bill will directly respond to these sluggish numbers by creating $18 billion in tax breaks for companies who hire in the next year. The bill is proposed to create 250,000 new jobs over the next year. Although that may not seem largely significant, it will bring new business for the recruiting industry, something that we can all look forward too!
Byron West
President
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Spring 2010 ERE Expo Learnings
Hire Velocity attended the ERE Expo last week in San Diego. We were able to meet a lot of interesting people and learn about some of the new technology in the recruitment field. The ERE Expo is a great place for recruitment professionals to network and exchange ideas with other professionals. Going to all the sessions and exhibits is a way to learn about new recruiting products, services and technologies.
Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) was really embraced at the ERE Expo this time. RPO has been shaped into a customizable service that ranges from outsourcing of a single task to outsourcing the entire recruiting process. Outsourcing a single task, or On-Demand RPO, seems to be the trend recently with more companies outsourcing tasks such as sourcing & screening to extend the reach of their team versus permanently adding onto it. We also heard some very strong opinions that life cycle recruiting needs to be done by more than one recruiter. Rather than having one person manage the entire recruiting process, it is more economical and efficient to have people do the specific tasks of the recruiting process such as sourcing and screening, relationship management, and administrative functions. This is the most efficient way to get quality results.
A big topic at this ERE Expo was incorporating social media into the recruiting process. Using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs is all part of the social media strategy that needs to be adopted by companies because it is the future. In the recruitment industry, a hot trend is tweeting and retweeting open job positions. By doing this, there is potential for thousands and thousands of job candidates to view the open position. Tracking ROI by each social media channel is just now coming into play so companies can identify the source of each candidate found. Reporting is getting very sophisticated but there are a lot of amazing tools, techniques, and companies that can be leveraged.
The old school “Post & Pray” method of recruiting is rapidly becoming outdated and the general consensus is that is a waste of money. The Internet is only growing, so it is important to utilize all of the resources available to maximize the response. It’s a big Internet world out there so cast a wide but targeted net. Don’t just fish in one pond!
One of our favorite sessions dealt with the 4 pillars of recruiting – Process & Policy, Technology, Team Alignment and Metrics. These pillars are critical for success in your recruiting organization.
Valeri Marks
CEO
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Proactive Recruiting
Over the years, one of the biggest challenges Hire Velocity has faced is communicating the importance of proactive recruiting to our clients. A large majority of US companies approach recruiting from a much more reactive standpoint. For example, many companies fail to build the relationships and talent pipelines they should be building, when hiring is down. Instead, many companies wait until five electrical engineers are needed, and they post jobs expecting to get the five best electrical engineers out there. Although this approach does work occasionally, we have come to find that the best talent is acquired through continuous proactive recruiting. Creating a talent pipeline can enable your company to pick from the best available prospects when the time comes. Generally, companies may view proactive recruiting as the more expensive approach, but the cost of reactive recruiting can reach similar heights while necessarily bringing back the quality talent you’re looking for in a timely manner.
Instead, find a recruiting partner that can build relationships with prospective applicants and passive candidates in order to streamline the hiring process. The University of Illinois at Chicago did a study on proactive recruiting particularly pertaining to finding qualified female candidates. In two different job searches for the same position, proactive recruiting nearly doubled the number of qualified applicants and showed a huge increase in the number of female applicants. Proactive recruiting was defined as an aggressive search for talent rather than a simple job post.
In recent years, Technology has eased the pains of creating an effective proactive recruiting process. Applicant tracking systems such as Silk Road’s Open Hire, iCims, and Taleo, (for example) have enabled companies to build robust talent pools and ease the process of finding qualified passive candidates. Leveraging the right technologies can create the infrastructure and foundation needed to lower your recruiting costs and enhance your recruiting process. Thus, it’s essential to look past the “reactive” recruiting methods such as job postings, and create a proactive recruiting process that will build a much more qualified talent pool.
Finally, remember that it is always a good practice to continuously promote your brand from a recruiting perspective. Your career site is the door to your company and should display the goals, values and culture of your company. Once you do proactively get the candidate to your front door, make sure you leave a great impression!
Byron West
President
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The Importance of Diversity Recruiting
Most American companies view recruiting diversity as a burden for business, unrelated to the idea of having diversity in the workplace but rather the hassle associated with finding diversity candidates. It’s no secret that diversity recruiting is not a common result of the standard recruiting process. Many companies find that diversity candidates are not resembled in the majority of resumes on Monster, Careerbuilder, and other large job sites. However, there are overwhelming benefits to integrating a diversity of cultures in the office. Several companies have found first hand that the diversity of culture has led to several new ideas that have increased efficiency or led to new products.
Take the Frito Lay organization for example, their desire to recruit diverse candidates led to their product Doritos. Increasing diversity in the workplace will also increase creativity. Not all problems can be answered with one solution; other cultures can bring new ideas, which a homogeneous culture might not stimulate. Therefore, diverse recruiting strategies will bring benefits to the workplace, which are always worth pursuing.
Additionally, in an examination of common western culture in comparison to eastern culture, one noticeable difference is the view of relationship management. Eastern cultures rely on strong relationships between whom they work with. As a result, many customers of companies in the Far East have strong relationships with those they work with. Recruiting diversity more specifically from Asian countries can create stronger relationships with customers and strengthen the ties between those you work with. One downside to diversity in the workplace can be barriers in communication, however those barriers subside over time leaving the benefits of recruiting diversity.
Byron West
President
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