The Recruiting Inferno

Another ubiquitous thread about the “best metrics” started my brain pondering the inherent problems with developing and maintaining metrics for recruiting.

First, I considered Weinberg’s Law of Metrics which states that which gets measured gets fudged. As it pertains to us, the issue here revolves around all the post hoc modifications of the data that take place if the numbers don’t tell the story you want. From my quant background, I learned that you must put in place an analysis plan rather than phish for the data that supports your position. 

Then there is the Metric Law of 90s: The first 90% of a recruiting project takes 90% of the schedule. The remaining 10% of the project takes the other 90% of the schedule. We tend to do the easy stuff first (probably because it satisfies many a frenzied – or whining – hiring manager) which can lead to a false sense of progress leading to inflated values for self-reported metrics. Again, a realistic and agreed upon recruiting plan that is followed helps here.

Finally, the Metric Law of Least Resistance asserts that the more human effort required to calculate a metric, the less often (and less accurately) it will be calculated, until it is abandoned or ignored altogether.

Which is why although I love human capital analyses focused on EVA, they are a bear to gather information on and calculate. Sure they are accurate but the effort is enough to curdle the blood of even the most ardent numbers junky.

No wonder cost-per-hire is still around! 

It’s the Canadian version of the Bureau of Labor Statistics but IMHO far better. I subscribe to The Daily – great information that any recruiter in Canada should be using to formulate and implement their recruiting strategies.

Here’s something for people like me who hate salary disparities…

[Females/Males] who worked 49 to 52 weeks (mostly full time) in the reference year for pay or in self-employment.

All income values are in constant (2005) dollars.

Earnings or employment income – Refers to total income received by persons 15 years of age and over during calendar year 2005 as wages and salaries, net income from a non-farm unincorporated business and/or professional practice, and/or net farm self-employment income.

Median earnings of individuals – The median employment income or earnings of a specified group of employment income recipients is that amount which divides their employment income size distribution, ranked by size of employment income, into two halves, i.e., the earnings of the first half of individuals are below the median, while those of the second half are above the median. Median earnings is calculated from the unrounded number of individuals (e.g., males 45 to 54 years of age) with earnings in that group.

It seems to be everywhere, doesn’t it?

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My friend of 16 years is far and away the best global HR person I know. His experience includes exceptionally productive roles as a Chief Administrative Officer and top HR Executive/Lawyer (reporting to the CEO). This guy is ridiculously board-savvy and has transformed or accelerated growth in companies ranging in revenue and employees to $2.8 BLN and up to 22,000.

Experience includes financial services, entertainment, consumer, media, recruiting of new senior management teams, management of corporate growth by acquisition, and executive comp/benefit and local/global organization development. Started his HR career at GE…

If you are hiring someone at this level – if you have to ask salary you probably can’t afford it (what do you want me to do, lie about it?) – then call me at 203-216-6226 and I’ll put you in touch.

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One year ago today – 1 PM EST – my beloved Mr. Stinky passed on to that great catnip meadow in heaven. Yes, I’m grieving today but it doesn’t prevent me from ratcheting up my recruiting efforts to help l me get through the day.

David Hosier ruminates about trivial matters here – I think his writings are pretty darn funny. One of his older posts is about lessons he learned from his cat Dilbert. Dave’s observations IMHO have direct correlations to recruiting success…

1. Show people that you’re happy to see them. It’s unfortunate that far too many in our profession view speaking with people as a chore. Whatupwitdat? Every person has the potential to feed you a treat or scratch you on the head.
2. Play wildly, and play often. I’ve wrote often through the years here at ERE that recruiting is one of the top three toughest and most important jobs in any company. Did I mention the very best think 24/7? Always try new things and don’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself – people truly appreciate transparency.
3. Be affectionate with people you like. Don’t be afraid to bring them a mouse tail or a bird’s head. Remember their birthdays and important facts about their lives. It’s all CRM, right ~jer?
4. Help people clean up their messes. Look, if someone royally screws up an interview, take the time to debrief and work with them to improve. Coach them, mentor them, whatever it takes to get them to the next level. You will be rewarded (of course you’ll still have a few more messes to clean up).
5. When someone does something that hurts you, violently kick and bite them. Maybe it’s just the New Yorker in me but never get mad, get even. If a “client” screws you out of revenue, well, you know what you have to do.
6. Say hi to people out your windows. Always observe, always say something. You never know where your next treat will come from.
7. Always look for new things to sniff. Stop thinking everything’s a damn nail just because you know how to use one hammer. Unsettle yourself by trying something new once each week.
8. Eat anything and everything you find on the floor. lol, everything’s a potential meal, whether it’s big or small. Small gets big, big gets bigger. What’s the worst you can do – yack it up somewhere?
9. Try to kill toy mice by drowning them in your water dish. Toy mice=recruiter wannabes.
10. Sit in the bathtub and watch drops of water roll towards the drain. Every great recruiter must spend time observing – success isn’t always about the pitch. Observation typically improves clarity and clarity is the gateway to new ideas.
11. Eat bugs. Even little bugs have protein value (at least Bear Gryllis says so)

David also offers lessons learned from one his other cats but I haven’t related them to recruiting…yet. Here they are:

1. Don’t talk to strangers: Sniff them first.
2. Know when it’s your time to get attention.
3. Don’t take someone else’s job: After you do your “business” in the litter box, leave it for Dilbert to clean up. He’s good at that.
4. Don’t give your caretaker more work to do when they come home.
5. Throw up in the middle of the night when they’re sleeping.
6. Let others know when you’re not happy with them: Hiss and growl.
7. Reach for the unattainable: Chase light and reflections from watches.
8. Remember your roots: Knead soft, fuzzy things.
9. Don’t be ashamed of your shortcomings: If you feel carsick, just lose control of all bodily functions. That’ll teach ’em.

So in honor of Mr. Stinky, how about acting like a feline today?

Serious and not-so-serious ruminations about telecommuting…

Finally getting to blogging about telecommuting again. In reading the American Electronics Association report of two months ago, I can’t help to think of the volume of short-sighted companies who haven’t yet embraced the concept. In case you’re not into click throughs, ruminate these findings:

• Telework is the practice of allowing, encouraging, and even requiring that employees work remotely part- or full-time, usually from their home, facilitated by collaborative information and communication technologies.
• The Telework Coalition estimates that more than 45 million U.S. workers telecommute at least once a week.
• As of 2005, 44 percent of U.S. companies offered telework options, up from 32 percent in 2001, according to Mercer Human Resources Consulting.
• Of the 1,400 CFOs surveyed by staffing consultant Robert Half International, nearly 50 percent said telework is the second best way to attract talent after salary; one-third listed it as the best way.
• A University of Maryland study found that 1.35 billion gallons of fuel worth $4.5 billion at current prices of $3.33 per gallon could be saved if everyone with the potential to telework did so just 1.6 days per week. (NOTE FROM STEVE: Gas is how much now???)
• Transitioning to an economy in which most of the white collar workforce teleworks at least some of the time offers the potential to lower the cost of business, increase productivity and access to workers, and reduce traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions.

Other than having to replace lesser managers who cannot manage remotely (that old command and control thing), is there a downside that people aren’t talking about? And why is it that RHI can’t survey heads of recruiting? When was the last time a CFO had to answer a question from a great candidate by saying, “No, we don’t offer telecommuting; you’ll have to relocate to New York City and work in the office.”

Madeline Tarquinio, Research Director for ERE, put together a great get-together for the NYC ERE Group (the FIRST group on ERE – thanks David). Sadly, a family situation precluded her attendance but she was toasted by many.

Of course, Manaster took little time in dogging me about my blog posting frequency, so here it is D-Man, my public promise to blog far more than I have been the past year (ya hear that Snyder?). I have a notebook full of observations from the business world as it relates to talent and I’m coming back with no-holds barred.

Since I’ve known David for over 10 years, I’ll continue to let him review any potentially ascerbic POVs (I like him too much to embarrass him publically – lobster bib incident notwithstanding…you gotta let it go David, let it go).

Again, thanks to the entire ERE team for creating such a great Forum – the recruiting community has benefited from their hard work.

So David, when are you getting married??? 

Recruiting is so much more than pulling resumes off job boards (NOT recruiting but order taking). It has to take into account the person coming to your office or moving into the area and using mass transit to get to work.

It comes as no surprise that the New York Subway System is a huge money pit where even $1 Billion can’t ensure that elevators and escalators can work properly. Just imagine that you have this incredible person on the hook to accept your job offer – and has some kind of physical disability – who will have to use our area’s mass transit system yet will never know when it will work properly.

The lassitude and excuses proffered by the MTA are lame and are another set of reasons why recruiting to NYC Metro is so challenging…it’s more than just salary folks!

Resumania lives!

We’ve all shaken our heads at some of the odd things people write in their resumes and cover letters. Here’s a story of an addition to the junk folder that I just received today.

I’m working on building a national sales team for a customer – these hunters and gathers cannot be run-of-the-mill; they must have specific company experience and of course, must have a Rolodex to kill for (for all the guffawers out there, I am in 100% agreement with the spec and targets).

So today I received the following in an intro…

I have all your requirements and significant sales and sales managment leadership credentials, except ‘extensive rolodex of IT decision makers’.

Not sure what book this person read to guide their job search but did they ever unload the gun into their feet. If this were an isolated incident, I’d just laugh it off but it isn’t. Whomever is guiding most job seekers these days – career services, experts, books, newspaper columns, etc. – really needs to be laid off. The quality of job seeker expertise is abysmal…

“The S.E.C. told me that all of its actions were helpful to investors and that no one could have prevented the Bear Stearns collapse because it was caused by liquidity issues, not capital issues. My respectful response is that if Bear were thoroughly well capitalized, why would liquidity issues come up at all?”

This past weekend, Ben Stein wrote a scintillating piece in Sunday NYTimes explaining how he believed the Wall Street collapse turned into something of catastrophic proportions.

So much about the Wall Street collapse reminds me of recruiting these days…

“Weren’t fail-safe devices in place to guard against risk?” Weren’t there regular meetings taking place where the recruiter explained the reality of the marketplace to the hiring managers instead of constantly going back to the same dry well?

“Weren’t government watchdogs there to make sure that catastrophes could not happen?” Wasn’t there a service level agreement in place that defined roles, responsibilities, and results?

“Weren’t ratings agencies on the job to police what was going on in the canyons of Lower Manhattan?” Didn’t the recruiter maintain metrics of channel performance and didn’t the recruiter regularly explain the magnitude of these statistics?

After 10 years here with ERE and its ancestors, after having the first blog and the first group, I’m afraid so little has changed. I’m subscribed to an insane number of groups -not as much as Queen Shariba but she is very different than the rest of us ;) – and it seems as if every 6 months or so, a new crop of recruiters is talking about the same stuff. Deja vu all over again.

We joke about HR being the last group to visit “the table” yet as recruiters we seem to collectively do no better at creating a significant paradigm shift. Every day some wet-behind-the-ears TPR calls me speaking 1000 miles per hour; after 15 seconds I’m forced to ask them, “By the way, what’s your name?”

Every day, another sourcer/recruiter is asking for “special websites” when it is clear they haven’t done the work themselves before asking the world.

Every day, it’s another inane discussion about the “best” ATS when in the end it’s about personal preference, price and support rather than features.

Recruiting is beginning to run amok – won’t anyone bother to see how we can ensure that the bottom doesn’t fall out?

Not too long ago, there was a company on Lawn Guyland named American Home Mortgage; AHM was one of those sub-prime lenders who collapsed, thousands were unceremoniously let go, and the company filed for Ch. 11 protection.

I just checked out to see how they were branding themselves in the aftermath and on my buddy Paul Forster’s site, Indeed.com, there it was;  listing for AHM Servicing stating…

Competitive pay! Great benefits! Fun atmosphere! Employee recognition programs! We are looking for talented mortgage professionals for our Irving Servicing Center

The AHM building stands vacant on Rt. 110 in Melville; the 6500 people who were nuked are probably wondering what happened to the fun atmosphere (“Hey, it’s pink slip day! Let’s dance!!)

Talk about perfuming a pig.