The "Other" Referral Program: Executive Referrals

I recently had an opportunity to attend an executive briefing for about 30 of our members in New York City when the topic turned to employee referrals and their “other” referral process. That is, their process for handling referrals that come through their executives (think, "family and friends"). If you think that your standard referral process is overwhelmed, you should have heard the pain recruiting organizations are feeling over executive referrals in the current recruiting climate. Their comments were peppered with phrases like “nepotism”, “favors”, “family connections”, and “phony internships”.

Not only has the number of referrals coming from executives spiked, but the level of pressure they’re placing has also risen dramatically. It’s as if desperate candidates have exhausted all their normal avenues and decided that their best bet for getting a job is to turn to someone with some clout. And, executives who may have leveraged their own informal networks to get jobs in the past are all too willing to return the favor.

We at the Roundtable would like to hear what you’re doing about this situation, so we’ve departed from normal practice and we’re opening this particular entry for discussion.

• How are you responding these types of referrals?


• Have you created a separate, defined process for executive referrals?


• Do you embrace them or prefer to push back?


• If you push back, what are some of the approaches you’ve found most helpful?

Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with your peers right now. I suspect there’s a great opportunity for shared learning here.

Social Networking Is Not Just For Kids (Anymore)

Social networking is not just for kids (anymore)—the New York Times recently highlighted new data from comScore revealing that only 11% of Twitter users are teenagers from the ages of 12 to 17. Twitter has defied the traditional model of social media adoption, which would have put adolescents and college students as early adopters. Instead, Twitter’s users have mainly been adults (particularly attracting professional crowds) and businesses looking for a wide-reaching channel to ask questions and get answers, share ideas and news, and market themselves (whether its an individual, company, or product). Along a similar vein, an article earlier this year on CNN points out that the fastest growing age group on Facebook is women older than 55, and Facebook itself claims that its fastest growing demographic is people 35 years old and older.

For all the nay-sayers who have shunned the use of social media for recruiting or limited their use to only attracting college graduates, it’s hard to ignore the widespread infiltration of these technologies into the professional world and the shift in user demographics to a somewhat older generation. Use of social networking tools won’t go away any time soon, and will only get more sophisticated over time. It’s important to recognize today (and for the future) where your candidates reside, how they interact, and how they find information on the Web. Social networks are an excellent way for recruiters to share career opportunity information and build candidate pipelines in a scalable way (members only), especially if you only want to “stay in touch” for if and when hiring picks up again.

To get you started on Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn, check out our guides on setting up your own social networks for recruiting (members only).

Written by: Xi Chen

Don’t Let Outplacement Firms Damage Your Brand

The taboo word of layoffs is now (unfortunately) becoming main stream as organizations continue to shed workers. There is no easy way to let go of staff, and to help laid off workers get back on their feet to find new jobs or acquire new skills, many of us are turning to outplacement firms. Recent studies show that business is booming for these services; two in three organizations with layoffs have used outplacement services. But before we wave goodbye to our departing colleagues, are we sure that we’re putting them in good hands?

As outplacement firms deal with increasing volumes of layoffs, some workers using these services find their experience with these firms to be too impersonal, too brief, and too careless. And while for some former employers, providing outplacement services might be a check-the-box step for managing layoffs, consider this: former employees, just like potential candidates, are carriers of your employment brand. If a laid off worker has a poor experience with the outplacement firm used, this could translate into bad PR for their previous employer as well—whether it’s burning the bridge for future rehires (members only), deterring future family, friends, and acquaintances from applying, or sharing their experiences on Web 2.0 channels for the world to read.

To protect your employment brand and reputation during displacement activities, select and partner with an outplacement vendor as you would with vendors that you use frequently and over time. Here are few, for starters:

1) As with any type of vendor selection process, conduct an RFP with the vendors that you are considering. Albeit this selection process and time frame may be more abbreviated, it is still worthwhile and important to consider the credentials of more than one vendor.

2) Speak to customer references of these vendors, preferably those not provided by the vendor themselves, to get a sense of the type and quality of services offered. Also, consider speaking to people who have used their services, particularly those who are in the same employee population as the laid off workers from your organization.

3) Consider not only the historical performance metrics of the outplacement vendor that you’re working with, but also performance metrics of how your former workers are positively (or negatively) impacted by this vendor. If there any negative experiences documented, be prepared to address any potential areas (members only) that may damage your reputation.

Written by: Xi Chen

Personality Assessments Make Their Way into College Applications

We’ve all heard the debate about whether using personality assessment tests are a good way to select quality employees. A number of concerns are up for discussion: What is the validity of personality tests? Do these tests actually predict performance? Can candidates “game” these tests? Are these tests legal? Recent news headlines have made many of us re-evaluate our use of assessment tests.

Now, some universities are experimenting with personality tests as part of the admissions process and are encountering much of the same controversy that Recruiting has faced for years. The major difference between universities and recruiting organizations using these tests? Universities want to use personality tests as part of their diversity efforts to identify high-potential students who don’t score well enough on standardized tests while Recruiting usually uses these test for identifying personality characteristics associated with high performers.

As the demand for personality assessments increase by university there will be more and more companies that develop and test these instruments—hopefully, leading to more information about whether or not they can actually predict performance.

Simple Hygiene for Your Employment Web Site

The Internet bombards us daily with new forms of multimedia. Can you count all of the videos, podcasts, online games, and flash intros you’ve seen in the past month? Employment Web sites are following suit.

While multimedia lets us engage potential candidates with vivid displays, we easily overlook the actual information that they have come to find. In other words, we can’t forget content hygiene. This is particularly important today, with higher numbers of unqualified applicants at our doors who need reasons not to apply.

The good news is, improving the content hygiene of your employment Web site doesn’t require Flash, Java, or expensive vendors. What it does require is accuracy, completeness, and consistency of information. For a quick audit, visit your employment Web site and pretend to be a potential candidate. Can you find helpful, detailed content regarding your organization, the day-to-day work, future career opportunities, compensation structure, and future colleagues?

As a start, consider how Macy’s illustrates actual internal career paths of more than ten Macy’s executives. This probably didn’t require anything more than interviewing their own executives, yet it does a nice job of demonstrating the prevalence of internal movement within the organization.

(For Recruiting Roundtable members, look out for the new Employment Web Site Toolkit to improve the content hygiene and other aspects of your site, coming soon.)

Diversity in the Downturn

The outlook on unemployment these days: grim. Sensitivity about who is selected for layoffs have recently thrust workplace discrimination and diversity into the spotlight. The impact of the recession on different genders has been far from equal in the current labor market. Overall, men suffer from a significantly higher unemployment rate in the US, in large part because male dominated industries – like construction and manufacturing – have been hit hard by the recession.

But for employees holding Bachelors and MBA degrees, it turns out that the recession (and many organizations) has no favorites. A recent study of MBAs by Catalyst found no differences in the rates of layoffs for men and women with MBAs. This data is confirmed by other sources, like the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which shows comparable rates of unemployment for men and woman with BA degrees or higher. In fact, in times of economic uncertainty, promotions are still roughly equal amongst men and women who hold these degrees, particularly within middle management across U.S. organizations.

Given the impact that cost cutting tactics can have on HR programs, such as those dedicated to diversity, it is reassuring to see that a commitment to diversity isn’t being “cut” across many U.S. organizations.

Taking Advantage of the Labor Market?

Many search firms are currently seeing less talent demand from organizations as many have slowed hiring, and more inquiries from individuals seeking employment.

One unexpected result of this trend, recently reported by the NY Times, is reports of alleged overpromising to the job seeker.

To research search firms and add your own feedback, see our Search Firm Management Topic Center (members only), and participate in the Search and Staffing Firm Survey (part of the 2009 Recruiting Vendors Study), where members receive customized benchmarking analysis to help you manage spending and relationships with your search and staffing firms.

A Missing Ingredient in Campus/Graduate Recruiting

It’s that time again—students are buying their books and scheduling their classes as they prepare to head back to school. And, recruiting organizations are preparing for the 2009-2010 campus/graduate recruiting season. Just like buying books and scheduling classes have become a habit for students, our top campus/graduate recruiting priorities have become habit: choosing target schools wisely…check, being the employer of choice at those schools…check.

We station our representatives at our target school, hang our organization banner at the booth, and stack our shiny marketing brochures on the tables. While the leg-work of these priorities are important agenda items, we are missing an opportunity to have a large impact on our campus recruiting effort.

The oft-missing ingredient: clearly explaining the day-to-day job experiences to students while on campus, which can increase their performance once hired by 22%. As novices in the professional arena, students can easily misperceive the jobs themselves. Also, in an environment where you will be receiving an overload of applications from job-hungry students, encouraging them to be discerning about the job itself can help candidates self-select out of the process.

Consider the following:

• Have we consulted with hiring managers to confirm our perceptions of the job?


• Do our job descriptions clearly lay out the day-to-day activities?


• Do we have day-in-the-life videos or testimonials from recent graduates?


• Do we have hiring managers and/or recent graduates to speak with student candidates about the job experience?

(For Recruiting Roundtable members, we have a number of resources to help you implement a more effective Campus/Graduate recruiting program.)

Is RPO the Answer to Labor Market Volatility?

Better than expected U.S. and Australian unemployment statistics have gotten many recruiting organizations around the world asking: how can we prepare to hire again in the near future with our remaining recruiting capacity? Recruiting teams have certainly not been immune to organizational displacements—quite a few teams are looking much leaner these days than a year ago.

While hiring internal recruiters is one option, some recruiting organizations are toying with the idea of recruitment process outsourcing (RPO). RPO (defined for our purposes as the transfer of process management for a critical mass of recruitment activities to an external third party) has seen an uptick in interest recently. Organizations are considering RPO as an alternative to hiring internal recruiters because they feel uncertain about labor market recovery: will the job market make a quick comeback or drag its feet, as it did in 2001 and the early 1990s? Using an RPO vendor, in theory, will allow organizations to effectively manage employee headcount and reduce costs in the event of continued market volatility.

When the Roundtable first evaluated RPO several years ago, results for RPO engagements—quality metrics (i.e., quality of hire, level of service to hiring managers), cost, and cycle time—were lackluster, at best. For instance, one main reason why recruiting organizations previously selected RPO was to reduce costs; however, only about one-quarter of the organizations using RPO services saw a decline in costs.

Lesson: working with an RPO provider doesn’t necessarily guarantee positive results. Be sure to do your due diligence by establishing clear baseline metrics in advance and understanding the repercussions outsourcing will have on every function, business unit, and candidate population that you plan to outsource. For selection and implementation support, check out our RPO resources (members only).

We recently kicked off a research initiative to evaluate the current state of RPO. If you are using or considering RPO, take 15 minutes to complete our survey.


Written by: Xi Chen

Job Losses Slow but Unemployed Still Struggle to Find Jobs

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the US employment statistics for July and for the first time since April 2008 the unemployment rate did not increase. While it appears job losses have slowed from their pace earlier this year, hiring has not picked up and unemployment remains high. As of July 2009, over one-third of the unemployed have been without a job for more than 6 months. Moreover, not all segments of the labor market are being impacted equally with men, teenagers, and workers without college degrees fairing worse. If the underemployed (marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons) are included with the unemployed the rate of underutilized labor jumps to 16.3%. Until the economy stabilizes enough for business to increase their hiring efforts unemployment will remain high and Recruiting will need to focus on strategies that address the weak labor market.

Don’t Find Yourself Saying “If Only” When the Economy Turns

If and when (let’s hope “when”) the economy regains a head of steam, many of us will experience a wave of relief…and a wave of regret. We’ll be relieved at the prospects of a more positive outlook, but we’ll regret missing an unprecedented opportunity (right now) to increase the breadth and depth of our relationships with prospective talent. Only 25% of employed individuals are maintaining a relationship with a recruiter outside their organization. And, while many of the applicants that we’re seeing right now may be unqualified for our current openings, chances are that a non-trivial number of them are qualified for our future openings. When the economy turns, let’s not find ourselves saying “if only we’d done a better job of capturing the contact details of applicants during the downturn.”

This is an exceedingly rare opportunity to build your candidate pipeline to meet future hiring needs. Ask: When the economy rebounds, will we be headed back to the job boards, or will we be able to blast an email about our newest opening to the pools of talent that we’ve captured during the downturn? Keeping relationships warm isn’t easy, but we’re finding that some firms have are taking advantage of scalable, interactive Web 2.0 tools (members only) to make this happen. This is still an embryonic field, but we can all learn from their example.

Compelling Messages ≠ Competitive Advantage

Powerful brand messaging matters, but candidates (already highly skittish in this environment) are becoming far less tolerant of fluffy, dime-a-dozen promises. Your message might be compelling, but if it sounds similar to the competition, it’ll be less memorable, less credible – and less effective. Common sense, right? Maybe not. Take a quick tour of the careers sites of three of your talent competitors. Chances are, you’ll be surprised at how similar their messages are to each other’s (and yours). They’ll likely emphasize the same things that you’re emphasizing – and they’ll likely use similar language and imagery. Ask: If we stripped our name and logo off of our careers site, would a typical candidate still know that we’re the ones behind the messages?

Many recruiting organizations evaluate whether messaging to potential candidates emphasizes true strengths and meet strategic objectives/values. The best companies also test the opportunity for competitive differentiation that each message provides.

Bringing Reputation Management to Recruiting

Yesterday, we took a look at the advantages of playing hardball: timing our proactive outreach around periods of organizational uncertainty at our talent competitors. But…what goes around, comes around. We need be prepared to effectively recruit during periods of instability within our own organizations (and protect our best talent from the poachers that will inevitably come calling).

How do we reassure candidates who are anxious about destabilizing events in our organizations? It’s a tough question, but the good news is that the science of reputation management offers some answers. Most importantly: don’t “remain silent” and don’t make promises that you might not be able to keep. Because silence leads to negative speculation, recruiters need to proactively address these concerns with candidates. (Even if candidates don’t voice their anxiety, they’re feeling it.) These are tough conversations to manage, but creating a simple position brief for recruiters can make a big difference.

The position brief can be, well, brief – and simple: just a handful of bullets to help recruiters contextualize the “destabilizing event” and respond to candidate concerns. Your recruiters will thank you – and your candidates will be less likely to leave you.

Playing Hardball: Recruiting During Windows of Instability

We often talk about what we need to say to prospective talent. What are the job attributes (Corporate Leadership Council members only) that are likely to lure them to our organization? How can we make our pitch more compelling? And, those are important questions. Too often, though, we focus on the “what” at the expense of the “when” – that is, when to reach out to prospective talent. When are passive candidates most receptive to hearing from recruiters? Are there unique windows of opportunity that we should target?

Turns out that the answer is yes. Our most recent analysis demonstrates that “when you connect with candidates” matters just as much as “what you tell them.” And, one of the most significant factors that can change the receptivity of passive candidates is organizational stability (or a lack thereof). Destabilizing organizational events can make passive candidates up to 32% more active; as an organization moves from stable to unstable and employee job security comes into question, employees become more active in the labor market – and far more open to our outreach.

The best recruiting organizations recognize this, and they (ethically) play hardball, targeting candidates at other organizations during windows of instability. Doing this well, of course, requires knowing when these events occur – largely through competitive intelligence (CI). We’ve just developed a simple framework (Recruiting Roundtable members only) to show you how to bring the discipline of CI into your recruiting organization.

Are You Ignoring Half of the Labor Market?

A quick thought exercise: If you randomly approached 100 people on the street and asked them if they were actively exploring the labor market, what would you find? Well, you’d first find that people don’t like to be randomly approached on the street. More importantly, though, you’d learn that a surprising number of people are effectively “off the market.” In fact, our recent analysis of the labor market reveals that 40% of the labor market is passive. So what? If we only use recruiting channels frequented by active candidates, we’ll fail to reach almost 40% of the overall labor market. In marketing lingo, we’re cutting our “addressable market” in half. That’s a bad formula for approaching markets, whether you’re selling things or recruiting people.

You can see this vividly displayed in this chart. The chart might remind you of scenic mountain vistas. It will almost certainly remind you of the perils of failing to pursue passives. And, we hope it’s useful in making the case for more aggressive passive recruitment (and pipeline building) in your organization. (Roundtable Members: Click here to access our in-depth work on Building Talent Pipelines.)