Now I know, you are told by everyone from your barber to your Father-in-law that if you are unemployed or about to be unemployed, you need to market yourself like Billy Mays (Oxyclean - classic pitch guy) markets miracle scratch removers.  I agree that you need to network like crazy and make sure people you trust know you are in the market.  HOWEVER, to post a resume on the Internet opens you to everything from spam to identity theft.

An article I read over the holiday points out that posting your resume on a typical job board can be at least annoying, at worst dangerous.

Be a lazy Google millionaire. Earn $64 an hour from home. Get 250 business cards free.

These are just some of the 80-plus junk e-mail messages, known as spam, that are pouring into John Gembecki’s inbox on a daily basis since he started looking for a job in July.

Gembecki is sure that every piece of spam is a result of the resumes he put on Monster.com and other employment sites because he created a Gmail account for his job search that he doesn’t use for anything else.

Leave it to spammers to take advantage of the underemployed but this is a true risk of posting resumes on any job board.

There are, however, alternatives which allow you to build a profile (not upload a resume - remember the “lazy google millionaire” - take the time and build a profile from scratch) and remain anonymous.  You only get contacted for opportunities that you define and you never divuldge your identity until you are contacted by a company (yes, an actual company) who has something of interest to you.  AllianceQ is built on one of these new technologies - QuietAgent.

Take the old addage in Recruiting that a job search is like dating.  If you wanted a date would you post your phone number and address on the supermarket billboard?  Nope, you’d probably go to eHarmony or Match.com and see what’s out there before you reveal yourself.  Smart strategy in dating, smart strategy in job seeking.

• Employers cut 533,000 jobs in Nov., most since 1974
• More than 10.3 million Americans were unemployed in November, the most in 25 years.
• Bush told reporters: “Our economy is in a recession. This is in large part because of severe problems in our housing, credit and financial markets, which have resulted in significant job losses.”

Who do you think is on the front lines of this dilemma in our economy?  Corporate Recruiting departments for one.

Layoffs are always a tough time for Recruiting departments; with fewer openings and more applicants, the tension between job seekers and Recruiters escalates.  It’s like calling the cable company customer service person for the 5th time in a month - you may want to rip his/her head off even though you know it’s not his/her fault your cable is out again!

This tension is caused by the conflict of job seeker needs and Corporate Recruiter bandwidth:

• Job seekers feel more desperate in times of massive layoffs etc.  It takes longer to find new employment and everyone’s senses are heightened in an environment of significant competition.  During this time, job seekers NEED more attention.
• Job seekers may not “trust” that Corporate Recruiters are actually concerned about their ability to find employment and therefore doing all they can to help.  Job seekers NEED reassurance.
• Recruiters are innundated with a significant increase in applicants for each job, reducing the time and effort they can give to each applicant.  Recruiters BANDWIDTH is minimized.
• Layoffs in Recruiting Departments mean that at this crucial time in “candidate experience”, many recruiters are carrying larger requisition loads than in go-go hiring times.  Recruiters BANDWIDTH is stretched paper thin.

So what can a corporation do to ease the fears and concerns of their job seekers and provide Recruiters with a way to meet the needs of the candidates (customers).

OVER COMMUNICATE

Many ATS systems are set up to send a “Thank you” when someone applies.  Many Recruiting Departments feel this is enough effort and FAIL to communicate when a requisition is closed or put on hold or filled.  The “BLACK HOLE” of recruitment gets bigger in difficult times because rather than face the tension mentioned above, companies hide from it.  The effect is that the tension INCREASES instead of subsides.

Most ATS systems have the ability to automate communication when a requisition is closed (if yours doesn’t, then send this post to your ATS vendor and ask them to help you solve the problem) and ALL ATS systems have the ability to custom craft an email for this “end of the line” communication.  Fix the black hole by crafting an honest, caring email and make sure everyone gets it:

Thank you for your patience while we executed our hirng process for the Accountant 2 position you applied for.  Unfortunately this position has recently been closed.  You’re application will remain active in our system for the next 12 months and we will certainly call you should a similar posiiton come open.  In the meantime, we wish you the best of luck in your job search.  We realize these are unique times and while we wish we could hire everyone who applies, we simply can not.

Or even better yet - put an offer in your email to help them find work!

Thank you for your interest in a position with <company>.
We realize that you recently applied for the Accountant 2 position.  Unfortunately that position is no longer vacant.  We encourage you to check our website to see if there are other positions that match your background.

If you don’t see a role with us that is of current interest we would still like to assist you in finding a new position by introducing you to other great companies who may be able to give you the position you seek, right now.

<Company> is a Member of AllianceQ - a partnership of leading companies collaborating to increase our ability to find the world’s top talent.

It’s an easy, free and confidential service.  Simply share your background and what you desire in a new job.  In addition to being considered by <Company>, you are automatically and anonymously considered for thousands of other opportunities with leading employers every day.

To join AllianceQ or for more information, visit: http://www.AllianceQ.com/company

Again, thank you for considering <Company> in your job search and we look forward to considering you for future opportunities.

This communication is guaranteed to reduce tension and provide the job seekers hope and a continuation of their job search.

All they really want.

Ahh, yes, change is upon us.

So as a Recruiting Leader - now is the time to change!  Heck, with all the bearish news and C-Level nerves at defcon 1 you can change your organization and no one will probably realize it until 2010 when we start to come out of this mess.  So what changes and when?  Here are 5 simple steps to greatness you should be taking today:

First; clean house.
Evaluate everyone in your organization and streamline your staff.  Keep only those Recruiters and Recruiting leaders who have headhunter DNA.  Anyone who is an administrative recruiter (those who shuffle paper, email or text everyone and don’t own a headset because they really don’t want to talk to candidates) needs to be redeployed.
The net effect of this single step is that you will create an actual recruiting department that is effective and focused.  Redeploy those Admin Recruiters to support the Headhunters in reference checking, scheduling interviews and putting together paperwork for new hires.  Chances are that’s really what they want to be doing anyway if they aren’t actually headhunting!

Second; Re-0rganize the department.
Thin on Leadership and long on talent is the optimum department.  Recruiting Managers who routinely meet with hiring leaders to put out fires for recruiters and “consult” on their behalf are rendered unnecessary by step one above.
Your staff should be comprised of 75% headset wearing, cold-calling agressive sales-type recruiters who can consult with leaders and drive hiring decisions, 15% support staff to manage process for these folks and 10% Leadership.  Today, I’ll bet you have 60% admin recruiters, 20% support staff, 5% headhunters and 15% leadership.  Totally inefficient.

Third; Run the department “like it’s 1999″.
Not a play on Prince’s song but a mindset that you must have even in this market.  Your recruiters (see 1 and 2 above) should be BUSY - building networks, identifying talent, interviewing people even if they don’t have jobs today.  The reason the C-Suite is so enamored with Retained Search is that this is what they are doing today - building supply IN ADVANCE of demand.  Business 101.  When you need them, don’t go looking for them.  Find them in advance and have them at your fingertips.  Try it, you’ll like it.

Fourth; Provide Value outside of hires.
Yes you can.  If you do 1-3 above, your department will be a storehouse of competitive intelligence, candidate/customer feedback and market data.  This is information that if gathered correctly, can give your company a distinct competitive advantage in today’s market.  Experience the joy of walking into the VP of Marketing’s office with reams of competitive data your team has gathered.  She will be forever your advocate and tell 6 of her peers what an amazing group you are.

Fifth; Get your systems in order.
No need to “buy” anything but during this lull in hair on fire activity, get a CRM system in place, connect it to your ATS and finally get your ATS to do what you need it to do (like talk to candidates and end the black hole!), not what the vendor tells you it can do.  Befriend your tech department (they are slow too) and divert some online advertising dollars to paying for changes and/or upgrades.

5 steps to create a real 21st century recruiting department.  Do it today, do it now.  If you wait the economy will come back, you’ll be forced into reaction mode again and you’ll look back at your chance that passed you by like you look at Christmas Day on December 26th.

 ”now is when I most want to keep my customers, because it’s much harder to get new ones”. 

Is anyone taking this stance for candidates?  Probably not.  It seems that in our world of too many job seekers for too few jobs, we are more than willing to treat our candidates as if they are in infinite supply.
 
But this is a dangerous mistake.  The candidate who applies for a role at your company today may turn out to be a customer or even worse, someone you desperately need to hire in 2010.  How you treat them today WILL dictate how the perceive your company in every interaction in the future.

I’m not advocating sending fruit baskets to everyone who takes the time to apply to one of your open positions (chances are they applied for the wrong job for a myriad of reasons) but at the very least, you need to close the “black hole” and communicate with everyone, both thanking them for applying AND letting them know the final disposition of their application.

You can do it, your ATS can automate it for you.  You just have to realize that it’s not a burden to do it.  It IS the right thing to do and it’s just common business sense.

Thank you to the Soldiers. 
Whether you believe in the two wars we are fighting or not, the fact is that there are neighbors of yours willing to die so you can keep getting the Vanilla Latte for $5.  These are really the only heroes left in the world.  Once your comic book days are gone, you realize that pro sports figures are really just overpaid meglamaniacs and your business “heroes” have run the best companies in the country into the ground - Soldiers are the only ones still living up to the title.  On many flights I take these days the captain comes on and recognizes soldiers on the flight and the whole plane erupts into cheers and clapping.  Thank you for keeping my homeland safe.

Thank you to the American voting public. 
You took the unprecedented step of electing our first African-American president and stepping outside the box.  I have faith that this courage and commitment to change will be rewarded, I’m really thankful that I get to see the outcome of the decision.

Thank you to my network.  All 7,020,900 of you. 
Through my years I have been lucky to know and stay connected to many amazing people; generous, funny, brilliant and caring people.  My network grows and I know that I have this network to count on whenever I need to call out for help.

Thank you to my Co-Workers and Boss. 
I have the great fortune of working in a job I love for people who are a cut above.  I feel like this team can conquer the world and in fact, I believe we will.  These are difficult times for many people so to be able to work with you all every day makes me eternally grateful.

Thank you to my wife and family. 
There are blessings you take for granted ($5 latte) and then there are the blessings you hope you NEVER take for granted.  My family is my DNA and it’s my DNA that put me right where I am.  How do you thank someone for DNA?  Call, email and spend time with them when you can.  My wife is my greatest fan, my rock and the person who keeps me humble.  I crave balance and she can tip the scales just so and put me back on course.

Thank you all.

Happy Thanksgiving 2008.

Joe the Plumber comes to prominence by voicing concerns about being taxed under Senator Obama’s tax reform.  He’s worried that the plumbing business he is buying will put him over $250K in earnings and he’ll be punished by new tax laws proposed by the Senator.

Now Joe is a national figure; mentioned in news articles, tv shows, and a very public debate.

Only, Joe isn’t what he says he is.

He isn’t a licensed plumber
He’s had cursory conversations about taking over a 3 man plumbing business that nets $100K a year (not $250K)
He’s had two tax liens in the last year, one that is still outstanding
He’s signed up for a plumbing apprenticeship but has never finished it
He makes about $45K a year.

His celebrity was nothing by hype.

Sound like any candidates you’ve dealt with? 

The McCain camp says they can’t possibly check out the backgrounds and stories of every person that may reach conversational status but they do admit that Senator McCain’s standing up for him and calling him “rich” on national TV may have been a mistake.

Hiring managers and John McCain have a lot in common.  They buy the hype, they believe what they want to believe and they more often than not, hire on the news and end up firing on the facts.

As Recruiters, it is OUR responsibility to weed out the Joe the Plumbers from our process.  We have to stand up to the hype and be willing to point out that all that glitters is not gold.

That said, I am amazed at how many recruiting departments are OK with continuing to let candidates sit in the “black hole” of recruitment.  This “black hole” is created by not communicating with candidates outside of the original “we got your application” email that is sent by the ATS.  I estimate that anywhere from 50% - 85% of the candidates that apply each year to Corporate America hear NOTHING after this acknowledgment! 

Now back to “paying it forward”.  Recruiters don’t want to deliver the “no thank you” message for fear that they will be inundated with calls from candidates asking “why not?”.  These are long held beliefs that seem to be driving business process decisions even though it is unfounded.  I know of several F100 companies who communicate with ALL candidates after the initial aknowledgement and close the loop with 100% of the applicants - WITHOUT this imaginary call volume.  They simply give the candidate information that they are longing to have AND are offering them help in continuing their job search.

Pay it forward is as simple as choosing to communicate with your candidates and giving them information about their application.  Really, it is very simple.

Managing Recruiting During an Economic Downturn: The Top 10 Action Steps to Take

he also mentions “10 Recruiting Problems You Might Face During Tough Economic Times”.  Problem #4 is of high interest to me.

An increased volume of traffic. Normally, all great recruiters focus on the employed candidate (the so-called passive candidates). However, layoffs and high unemployment may mean that some high-quality people are now available among the ranks of the unemployed. Unfortunately, if you actively recruit during tough times, the volume of mediocre but enthusiastic unemployed people who will apply for your jobs will also increase dramatically.

So I’m a glass half full guy and see this as an opportunity and not a problem.  Increased flow of applicants during times of higher unemployment is one of the greatest opportunities a company has to cement its employment brand as positive.  How you treat the “mediocre but enthusiastic” (really judgemental and subjective and NOT my words) applicant today dictates your success when the unemployment rate dives and we are back fighting for talent.

Here’s the logic.  When you have 5 openings in marketing (as opposed to 55 during high growth boom days) it is very easy to classify really good candidates as “mediocre and enthusiastic” because it’s a sellers market and you and your hiring manager can be as picky as possible for these few hires.  But when the market comes back and it is once again a buyer’s market (we all know it will happen) how you treated these candidates will come back to bite you.  Remember, we are still in the age of Facebook, myspace, the vault etc. so if you fail to make a positive impression on the hoardes of people who need you today, you will find yourself wanting when you need them.  And you will.

Here’s the action plan (so simple it’s crazy that it isn’t being done by most companies):

1. Disposition everyone.  No, not only in the ATS to cover your EEO butt but actually communicate with everyone who has applied to your company through the automated email process available in everyone’s ATS.  Most companies don’t understand that not communicating with someone who has applied is NEVER an acceptable business rule.
2. Talk to anyone who meets minimum qualifications.  Really, you don’t have time?  5 openings in Marketing?  What are you doing if you aren’t talking to candidates?  Find the candidates who meet your needs today or who MAY meet your needs in future growth times and treat them like diamonds, not dirt.
3. Give people reasons.  Again, most ATS vendors allow you to add a reason; doesn’t meet minimum qualifications, wrong location, salary too high etc.. but recruiting departments turn off this functionality because they don’t want to “upset” a candidate (meaning they don’t want to have to defend their decision in the event a rejected candidate calls)
4. Don’t trust me, trust your candidates.  Again, you have time (I know you do) so hold an impromptu candidate focus group and find out what your candidates (selected and not selected) want from you.  You’ll find they simply want communication and not to fall into the black hole that corporate recruiting departments create to protect themselves.

The true measure of your employment brand is how you treat the people you CAN’T hire, not how you treat the people you desperately need.

The economy is in the tank, unemployment is rising and the financial services industry is in mid collapse.

Ahhh, it reminds me of 2001.  You see, 7 short years ago I was a the heart of the last “collapse” - the dot.com industry was collapsing, 9/11 had rocked our economy and faith in all things good, the stock market was plunging and people were losing jobs at an alarming rate.

Like then, our situation today is simply a Bear necessity.  When markets are oversold they correct themselves.  An internet company with no revenues can not support a $300 per share stock price and no, people who make $40K a year can not afford a $500K home.  No matter how we try to break the natural order of things, the world corrects itself.

But this is a recruiting blog, not an economics lesson so what does this bear necessity mean for YOU as a corporate Recruiter?

• You will see a lot of your friends get laid off.  When I left a company in 2000 called CommerceOne (dot.com) we had 32 people in our department.  4 months later, there were 4. 
• You will be asked to do more with less.  Tight budgets mean a return to basics; headhunting, free recruitment solutions, networking etc. All the things great recruiters use when the paid subscriptions dry up.
• You will FINALLY have time to be a consultant.  With less open positions, now is the time to get face to face with the executives in the company and teach them a few things about recruiting!!  Don’t hide!
• New and improved technologies and strategies will emerge.  Before the last collapse, we had no Linkedin, Facebook or YouTube so spend this time researching and experimenting with new techniques and technologies and be on the lookout for innovation.

To survive this bear market correction, be sure you are adding value to the process.  Put yourself in the CEO’s shoes; If you are simply pushing paper to hiring managers and creating offer letters - are you worth keeping in this economy?

How many are really right?  In my experience, not many.

Joel mentions the demise of Itzbig as being the indicator that many, not only companies (jobster) but classes of companies (eHarmonies), will fail in the current economy.  But two things bother me about his predictions;

1. In the loser list, he mentions that recruiting budgets are being slashed yet #1 on his winners list is LInkedin, the most expensive corporate recruiting solution (paid solution - it’s still free to use it the headhunter way) on the market.  I heard that they are getting over $200K a year from Microsoft for the pleasure of using their solution so if budgets are getting cut, how does this one win?
2. Joel mentions;

And when employers batten down the hatches of recruiting dollars, they stay with tried and true methods instead of straying outside of their comfort zones.

To me, this is criminal if true.  What’s tried and true is old and false.  Pulling your head into the shell, putting it into the sand and hoping that the economy comes back before the C-suite realizes that the recruiting department is still costing the company too much money is why Joel also quotes an industry leader as saying “Our industry is f***ed!

If Corporate Recruiting departments stop striving to be great in difficult times, if they completely reverse the momentum they’ve created in the last few years, if they stop reviewing new technologies and techniques that can help solve once and for all the problems that plague them - then I agree,

“Our industry is f***ed!”