Candidate Shortlist Very Important in Europe

2009 was a unique year for recruiting globally, but European organizations had their own set of challenges.

Across 2009, the Roundtable launched an exclusive European cohort of the Recruiting Effectiveness Dashboard (RED) to help our members hiring in Europe better understand the local recruiting climate.

What we found is intriguing. While European hiring managers are still rating their new hire performance below the global benchmark, the rating has improved steadily over the last year and half. This increase is occurring as the RED global benchmark has remained pretty much flat.

Why is new hire performance in Europe rising?

European hiring managers are now more frequently reporting that they were interviewing ‘A-level’ candidate shortlists. European hiring managers who interviewed an ‘A-level’ candidate shortlist observed 20% higher new hire performance than their peers who interviewed a ‘C-level’ shortlist observed. This reinforces, particularly for our European colleagues, the importance of putting together high-quality shortlists and how recruiting functions can help influence quality past the point of hire.

For resources to track, trend, and benchmark your critical recruiting metrics, visit the Recruiting Effectiveness Dashboard (RED). To learn more about European recruiting trends, Roundtable members can view the webinar replay, Findings from 2009 RED European Cohort .

Week End Roundup: March 5th

In this week’s Week End Roundup: Rise in internal transfers; lowest planned layoffs in February; and mixed employment outlook for Canada.

New Hiring—Lately, It's More of an Inside Job (Wall Street Journal)
In 2009 employers filled more than half of job openings with existing employees. Internal transfers and promotions accounted for 51% of all full-time positions filled in 2009, up from 39% in 2008 according to CareerXroads.

Job Cuts Fall in February to Lowest Since 2006 (Washington Post)
The number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms fell to the lowest level in February since 2006, and employers appear to have shifted away from downsizing. Employers announced 42,090 planned job cuts last month, the lowest level of monthly job cuts since 37,178 were announced in July 2006.

Hiring to go Hand-in-Hand with Layoffs in 2010 (HR Canadian Reporter)
The Canadian employment picture looks mixed in 2010, with the majority of Canadian organizations planning to hire new staff (87%) while more than one-third are still planning targeted layoffs.

Don't Blame Snow: Feb. Jobs Data Likely to be Weak (Daily Times)
The February job report is likely to be bleak. The White House states that last month's snowstorms are expected to have artificially inflated job losses by at least 100,000. Private economists counter by stating that once the snow effect is filtered out, the data will still signal weak hiring.

Candidate Rules of Engagement: Breaking Through the Noise

The competition for jobs has swelled. As we reported a few weeks ago, the number of applications recruiters receive for a given position has more than doubled since 2007 (average of 70 in 2007 vs. 162 in 2009). Further, a large portion of these applicants are unqualified. In a recent RR survey of more than 400 recruiting professionals, over half reported 15% or less of the applications they recently received even meet basic qualifications.

How can candidates make recruiters lives easier and increase their chances of getting noticed? Below are recruiting professionals’ recommendations for candidates.

• Focus on your resume/CV first and foremost. Over 61% of recruiters say a really good cover letter does not matter.
• Only apply for positions where you meet most of the qualifications.
• Tailor your resume/CV to the job.
• During interviews, be very specific in examples of your previous experience.

Check out all the results of the Recruiting Roundtable’s Candidate Rules of Engagement Survey.

Week End Roundup: February 26th

After a month of silence, the Week End Roundup returns! In this week’s Week End Roundup: Possible failure to create sufficient jobs; increase in outsourcing of UK jobs to India and Eastern Europe; and creative tactics to get MBAs in front of potential employers.

Millions of Unemployed Face Years without Jobs (New York Times)
The impact of the recession was of such severe magnitude that economist fear the recovery will fail to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the unemployed.

Despite Visa Curbs, UK Companies Recruiting Indian Workers (The Times of India)
Despite recession and new restrictions on hiring professionals from India and other non-EU countries, British companies are continuing to recruit migrant workers to fill existing skill gaps in the UK. Among employers planning to outsource jobs overseas, more than half (51%) plan to relocate UK jobs to India, and more than a third (37%) plan to shift jobs to Eastern Europe.

Business Schools Get Creative as On-Campus Recruiting Dwindles (Wall Street Journal)
With fewer employers able to visit campus to recruit and interview MBAs, business schools are paying for video conferencing technologies and even student road trips to get their students in front of cash-strapped employers.

Fixed Income a Hot Area in Slow Jobs Recovery (Washington Post)
Banks are hoping that the fixed-income trading boom will lead to an increase in hiring this year. There is a preference for hiring cheaper junior staff rather than giving out big compensation plans to top managing directors. That said, exceptions are being made for senior executives with proven client relationships.

Prepping for a Rebound

Many Recruiting executives tell us that they are, or have been, in prep mode for a while. After experiencing organizational changes across 2009 within the broader organization and also specifically within Recruiting, many recruiters are taking stock of how to prepare for a hiring comeback, in whatever form it may present itself.

Regardless of whether you suspect a roaring resurgence of hiring, or a timid trickle of opening, below are some tips we have compiled for preparing for a hiring rebound:

1. Assess the Damage to Your Employment Brand—Audit your brand to understand how recent events across 2009 affected your brand reputation, employee perceptions, and the accuracy of your messages to the labor market.
2. Reevaluate Your Workforce Plan—Consult with the business to align (or re-align) sourcing strategies against changing talent needs, and create an action plan to execute against new requirements.
3. Optimize Your Recruiting Team Capabilities—Manage recruiter workloads, make your recruiting structure more flexible, and build next-generation recruiter capabilities (I should note this is our research focus this year as mentioned in an earlier post so stay tuned for our findings across the summer and fall).
4. Shore up Your Talent Pipelines—Use a combination of offensive and defensive strategies to reduce “leakage” in your pipeline due to heightened turnover. Further, in light of tightened budgets, evaluate ways to source more cost-effectively.

Roundtable members, feel free to jump into our Web site to access our resources and a replay of the webinar we hosted on this topic.

Hiring Outlook Positive But Globally Varied

Employers across global markets plan to increase hiring in 2010, but the pace of hiring varies greatly by global region. The latest global Manpower Employment Outlook Survey reports the strongest hiring forecast in the Asia-Pacific region, weakest in the United States, and mixed in Europe and South and Central Americas.

In the United States and other regions hit hardest by the recession, the hiring outlook remains cautious. According to CareerBuilder’s 2010 Job Forecast, 20% of U.S. employers expect to add headcount in 2010, up from 14% in 2009.

The Asia-Pacific region, on the other hand, expects hiring to return to pre-recession levels in 2010. India reports the strongest hiring plans. The Hiring Outlook Survey by Naukri.com, India’s largest jobs Web site, reports that 72% of recruiters are forecasting new jobs to be added in 2010, up from 45% in July 2009.

Whether your hiring forecast for 2010 is cautious or aggressive, a certain amount of infrastructure is necessary to fulfill hiring plans. Consider the following activities:

• Confirm workforce plans


• Increase size or flexibility of your Recruiting team


• Re-engage talent pipelines


• Assess and address employment brand damage

For more information on these tactics, Roundtable members can see the webinar replay, Jumpstarting Your Hiring Engine. For more trends related to talent attraction and other HR areas, see the HR Quarterly Trends Report published by our sister program, the Corporate Leadership Council, available in March.

Curbing the Crowd

High application volume and low applicant quality is a perennial concern, and it isn't getting better.

Application volume has increased more than 130% worldwide since 2007 to average a staggering 162 applications per open position. Unfortunately, more applications does not equal higher quality applicants. More than half of the applicant pool meets basic qualifications only 15% of the time.

An overload of unqualified applicants causes two familiar concerns. First, the Recruiting team spends more time on candidate screening and less time on more valuable activities such as sourcing and conversion. Second, candidates become dissatisfied with the Recruiting process when they do not receive proper treatment from a rushed Recruiting team. This situation damages the employment brand and causes top talent to depart from the selection process.

While you may think that making it more difficult for unqualified individuals to apply to open positions will help reduce resume volume, this approach could also dissuade top talent from applying. As such, tactics to curb this trend need to be creative:

• Improve Job Posting Clarity—A certain percentage of unqualified applicants simply do not understand the qualifications of the position well enough to know whether they would be a good candidate. Make sure job postings clearly state which qualifications are required for the job (i.e., candidates without these qualifications will be screened out) and which qualities characterize an ideal candidate (i.e., desired but not required). RR members, see the Job Posting Clarity Checklist.


• Rationalize Sourcing Channels—Some channels bring in too many unqualified applicants to justify their ROI. If it is impossible to let go of a channel completely, make tweaks to improve its performance, such as targeting employee referral communications to employees who are most likely to know qualified individuals. RR members, see the Sourcing Channel Evaluation Tool.


• Insert a One-to-Many Candidate Screening Activity—Some organizations require all applicants to attend a teleconference or watch a video that explains the basic qualifications of the position and provides a realistic preview of the job. This method is particularly cost-effective for high-volume positions and provides candidates a chance to self-select out of the application process. RR members, see how Wachovia did this.