What if Your Firm Fought a Talent War and No One Showed Up?

The following is a guest post from Brian Sommer, a member of the Talent Drive Advisory Council and a wicked smart guy from Chicago.

My Kingdom for a Quality Candidate

A few years ago, recruiters saw the idea of job board as a good thing. Now, a single source database for talent isn’t looking so good. Why?

•   Some of the largest resume databases may contain as much as 70% overlap in content. Is time spent eliminating duplicates a value added activity?
• Worse than the resume duplication problem is that there may simply be too many job boards in the market.  Current estimates put the number closer to 30,000 unique job boards.  No matter how effective an individual recruiter can be there is no way they could adequately or optimally scan or search all of these databases.
• Fraud and gaming of resumes are still rampant problems in online job boards.  When recruiters reject 95%+ of the resumes returned by search tools in these databases, the fault has more to do with gaming and not with the development of search strings. Worse still, the time and productivity lost sifting through these unqualified resumes is killing recruiting productivity, hurting employers and hurting the more qualified candidates. The latter point is especially important as the most qualified candidates are often the more experienced and employable workers who don’t know how to game job boards. If recruiters can’t get access to the best candidates, then what value do job boards provide?
• Recruiters are overly reliant on the very same technology solutions (i.e., job boards) as their competitors.  This virtually guarantees they will have an undifferentiated approach to human resources and recruiting. They will fish the same pond for the same fish. In this context, recruiters reduced the sourcing of quality candidates to a simple challenge: who can create the best search string.

Social networks are moving into ascendancy as far as sourcing of passive recruiting candidates.  Unfortunately, the methods being used to build out many of these newer systems for recruiting purposes are not well thought out. Users of many social networks are now finding their personal and professional data is being shared with third parties to mine for sales, recruiting and other opportunities. Social networks are making this data available as a way to generate cash for their firms; however, as they commercialize their offerings, they are disenfranchising their users.

There are other problems in the recruiting and sourcing space today.  Too few companies fully utilize their applicant tracking systems.  Data goes in these systems and is rarely ever looked at again.  Compounding the problem, companies do not do an adequate job of mining their internal talent when looking for individuals to fill new or different positions.  Technology is available to easily address these business problems but it’s either underutilized or unused altogether. We call the latter: SPOTS (software products on the shelf).

Too many HR/recruiting professionals are not injecting themselves into their business’ ecosystem.  Specifically, they are not attending industry trade shows, networking with high potential candidates in non-company venues, etc. If you want to find great talent, go where the candidates congregate. Successful recruiters are outgoing and cosmopolitan.

To Win and Be Strategic

The best HR recruiters will adopt four key business practices:

1. The best recruiters will leverage the capabilities of others with ruthless efficiency and zeal.  They will seek technology that will give them the maximum coverage over the most, relevant online job board databases.  They will turn over tedious tasks of filtering, elimination of duplicate resumes and search string creation to others who make this their core competency.  As a result, great recruiters spend their time vetting the very best possible candidates sourced over the largest possible pool.
2. Great recruiters seek multidisciplinary people to avoid future turnover problems.  The current trend for hiring specialist personnel with highly specialized skills for unique roles may require rethinking.  In a time where businesses must be extraordinarily agile and nimble, it no longer makes business sense to hire such narrowly defined individuals.  That is because the business will undoubtedly change its needs and requirements almost as fast as a position is filled.  Better recruiters are digging deeper and searching harder to find individuals with a greater chance of being redeployed in other roles within their firm as circumstances and business strategies change.
3. Great recruiters constantly search for newer technologies that improve their business results. The world of recruiting and sourcing is anything but static today and so one’s approach to recruiting technology must be equally dynamic. Job boards are, in the words of my teenager, “So last Tuesday”. Savvy recruiters today are utilizing newer sourcing technologies that scan passive and active job seekers. They use technologies that scan thousands of job boards and prioritize results for recruiters.
4. Great recruiters don’t just fill open positions. They leverage their time better so that they hire strategically and hire for longevity. Recruiters that use poor sources of recruiting information (i.e., a single job board database full of gamed resumes) will end up settling for a less than ideal candidate just so they can close out a specific job placement request. Sub-optimal employees will not last long as they are unqualified or unable to adapt to constantly changing business conditions. Better recruiters seek solutions that scan across a broader spectrum of potential candidates and return a more qualified (and higher quality) set of candidates for review.

Brian Sommer is software market analyst with Vital Analysis and President of the technology strategy and marketing firm TechVentive, Inc. . Brian covers the HR, Finance and Professional Services spaces. Please read his blogs at: www.servicessafari.blog.com and www.softwaresafari.typepad.com. 

Comments

[Bob Eskridge]

I believe, like you do, that online sources of candidates are only one part of the entire recruiting process. The most successful recruiters will not only look at job boards, online resumes, and social networking sites, but will also put in the time to discern the candidate’s qualifications, goals, experience, etc. In my job as president of a physician recruiting firm, I stress to my associates that they are not just trying to fill a position as quickly as possible, but to nurture long-term relationships with candidates and clients. The sloppy recruiter might find an applicant for a job, but if they don’t give the candidate and hiring organization personalized attention, they are likely to win the battle but lose the war.

[Darin Phillips]

John Sviokla of Harvard Business School Press (http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/sviokla/) just blogged on the need for companies to wake up and start leveraging social networks. I recently blogged on the Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) of the future that will facilitate employees using their social networks (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, Xing, Ecademy, etc.) to help the company bring in more 'birds of a feather'. However, the fact that once your profile is online you will be subject to marketing and sales professionals contacting you is inevitable.

This is a great post from Brian Sommer!

Darin Phillips
http://darinphillips.blogspot.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/darinphillips