2010 Talent Acquisition Trends Webinar: Q & A on Recommended Action Steps

作者 : elsama 2010 Talent Acquisition Trends Webinar: Q A on Recommended Action Steps On January 13, 2010, nearly 800 ere.net community members converged online to participate in a webinar (embedded at the bottom of this article) discussing the trends Dr. Sullivan predicted will impact the talent acquisition profession in 2010. Over the course of that webinar a number of questions were raised, each of which is addressed here. Q1. Your trends article highlighted what is likely to happen during 2010, but you can you go further and tell us what are the top

10 overall actions steps that you would recommend for corporate recruiting leaders take? To summarize, we would recommend the following actions in 2010: Plan for a turnaround — assume that a turnaround will begin mid-year, but also look internally for indicators of when your organization is likely to rebound. Next, build an “ explode-out-of-the-box ” plan so that you are prepared to act quickly when the turnaround begins. Develop an agile plan — assume that there will be simultaneous growth and shrinkage within your organization. Plan for job growth in some departments, but also assume that additional cost reductions in other departments will be needed. Prepare a plan that includes agility and flexibility in all programs . Prepare action step outlines — it’s not necessary to complete a detailed written plan for every possibility, but you should prepare an action outline highlighting the key steps that you would take for the most likely upcoming events. Develop these steps using if-then scenarios (i.e. if this happens, then we will take these actions or steps). Prioritize jobs — because you will be operating with limited resources, focus your recruiting resources on the most important jobs. Start by prioritizing revenue-generating jobs, mission-critical jobs, and jobs in rapid growth business units. Prioritize tools — an increase in the competition for top candidates will require you to shift away from active candidate tools and instead concentrate on the tools designed to attract and land employed top performers ( passives ). Focus on reinvigorating the employee referral program , recruiting at professional events, boomerangs , and mobile platform. recruiting tools. Social media tools — this category of tools require special attention because it is still evolving. The key is to manage the social media initiative and to take advantage of the time of your employees when they are on social network sites. Also, broaden your perspective beyond LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter and use other social and internet mechanisms like videos, wikis, talent communities, and online forums. Integrate contingent labor — the most effective strategy for rapidly increasing or decreasing labor capability is the use of contingent labor . Identify the jobs where contingent labor is appropriate; then set a contingent labor percentage target that is equivalent to your projected maximum labor cost-cutting targets. Dollarize recruiting impacts — work with the CFO’s office to build your business case and to dollarize the impact on corporate revenues that can be attributed to delayed or poor hiring. Speed up internal movement — moving internal talent to where they can do the most good often costs less and has a more immediate impact than external hiring. The internal movement process at most organizations must be updated and targeted, so that the needed talent is more rapidly guided into the right jobs. ( Improving Internal Movement article .) Retention and blocking — expect your turnover rates to increase by as much as 50%, as the job market opens up. Start by identifying what excites those most likely to leave and then develop a corporate-wide blocking strategy to make it more difficult for recruiters to poach away your top talent. Q2. What role will contingency recruiting play as we approach a recovery? Because market volatility is likely to be a characteristic that defines the business environment for months and years to come, organizations must develop a process that guarantees flexible labor costs. If you count all types of labor in use today, contingent labor already exceeds 30% of the workforce in many organizations. The key is to integrate contingent labor management so that labor solutions that look at labor holistically can be presented to managers. Contingent labor should also allow you to rapidly increase labor capabilities that may only be needed during short growth spurts. Q3. Managing all labor via one function is a topic that has been discussed in my organization for several years, but no action has ever been taken. Can you tell me more about how other organizations have gone about establishing a holistic talent acquisition function that oversees recruiting, contingent vendor management, outsourced vendor management, and consultant engagement? Understanding the total labor picture is a dictate that has been emerging for several years, particularly in high-tech industries. Organizations like Microsoft, Valero Energy, and Qualcomm come to mind as benchmark firms. Developing a holistic approach generally entails putting all related functions under one leader, developing a methodology to determine in which jobs contingent labor works best, and including contingent labor in broader talent management activities like workforce planning , redeployment, and knowledge development and capture. The key to convincing executives to reorganize is to make the business case demonstrating the increased productivity and labor savings that could result from an integrated process. Q4. What are some of the best ways to market to passive candidates to increase predisposition to working at your company? The underlying premise here is that top performers who already have a job are not likely to entertain just any potential job opportunity. “Employed top performers with choices” (passives) have a significantly higher threshold that must be reached before they will consider a company or a new job. The starting point is to identify the job-switch decision factors that would peak their interest. Unfortunately, the attractors used to lure active job seekers (pay, security, and benefits) rarely impress these individuals. Factors more likely to work include working with an industry star or a great manager, exciting job challenges, access to new technologies, exciting learning opportunities, and a chance to lead. You can identify job switch criteria using three basic approaches: ask prospects individually to list their decision factors. ask your own top-performing employees in similar jobs to list their job switch factors. ask newly hired top performers during onboarding to list the decision factors they used. The job switch factors identified should then permeate your branding and employment marketing communications and be reinforced during every interaction with potential hires. Q5. Several industry pundits have predicted that 2010 will be the year that sourcing as a profession dies and becomes a $10/hr job. Do you agree with those pundits, and if not, how do you see the role of the professional sourcer changing/evolving? No I don’t. There will always be a role for top quality niche sourcers. The role of sourcing will certainly change, so that corporate sourcers evolve into network managers. Instead of doing transactional sourcing, they will use the time of others and focus their time on educating and helping employees and others to more effectively use their social networks. Having thousands of individuals source for you (crowdsourcing) is a powerful and cost-effective tool. Q6. What do you see as the be