The Retail Staffing Challenge: Wrap it up — We’ll take it!

Today we have a great guest blog post by Mike Dwyer a senior consultant at Aon. I enjoy bringing people on that are passionate and knowledgeable about their niche. Enjoy the article and read more about Mike at the end.

We’re all aware of the challenges facing the retail and restaurant industries during this most recent recession.  In fact, our own 2009 Holiday Retail Survey reports that most companies hiring volumes will be the same or lower this year.  Very few have escaped the effects of the recession and certainly very few retailers can say that the recession has not upset their business in some material way. Consumers are closing their checkbooks and are shredding their credit cards.

So what’s positive?  Is there relief on the horizon?  Short answer: We are seeing 19% of retailers planning to hire more than last year! Perfect example — retail shop Toys ‘R Us is slated to hire 35,000 employees for the upcoming holiday season.   This and other major retailers’ hiring moves are an indication that markets may be looking up and that consumers are consuming again! And the AP article If you aren’t part elf, then this might help

With the holidays around the corner, we thought it would be a good idea to learn what retailers are thinking and what challenges they face when researching candidates for hire for the next two months or two years. I’ve personally worked in retail staffing and therefore understand the challenges of hiring great customer service focused individuals who have a background in retail/restaurant and who are quick on their feet. Echoing the challenges from respondents to our survey:

•  “Store managers’ best source for quality candidates this holiday season are the tried and true methods of employee referrals and walk-ins, followed by job boards and the company website.”

•  “With store managers indicating candidate quality and time wasted on unqualified candidates as their biggest seasonal challenges”

How is it possible to discover, attract and hire candidates or otherwise learn about the status of the hiring market?  I feel the answer could be an integrated approach using social media channels to engage your target audience. Once they are engaged you can create a strong community of candidates, employees and customers for future needs while marketing your regional stores in the process.

I am an avid user of social media channels like Twitter , Facebook and LinkedIn I have daily challenges weeding through all the noise, spam and misinformation that can and will dilute my focus on finding quality candidates and talent.  Most often, though, I find myself having many positive networking experiences via social media channels, frequently resulting in quality candidate finds, new business leads, media placements and most importantly, new like-minded friends and professional contacts.

In fact, I see the unlimited hiring/discovery potential in tapping into current employees’ online communities via the holy trinity of social media: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

But first, let’s take a look back several years ago, when I was a corporate recruiter for an upscale quick-serve restaurant concept in charge of hiring retail staff in new markets with an aggressive growth strategy.  I was constantly reaching out to the existing regional store managers and employees for referrals. The idea that “employees of a feather, flock together” was our hiring mantra.

At this company, we would host weekly job fairs in the existing or newly-built stores, and we’d advertise these fairs in leaflets posted in every restaurant shop window, on Monster.com, community bulletin board and college campus we could find within a five-mile radius of a store. This was, of course, 2004 — the year after Facebook was started by college student Mark Zuckerberg in his Harvard dorm room.

Ultimately, our employees didn’t have the resources to go to school, work two jobs AND refer great candidates to us for the restaurant’s burgeoning demand.  And in fact, the weekly job fairs made for a very uneven ratio: (i) heavy candidate traffic that was impossible to manage or (ii) no candidates whatsoever.

If it’s not job fairs or traditional ways of advertising open positions, what is the answer to discovering and hiring talented people?

 Imagine…

• Qualified candidates served up to store managers every day
• Empowering your regional and store managers to hire great people without a great deal of effort.
• Hosting a daily employee referral driven job fair through a trusted Twitter or Facebook Community.
• Providing a predetermined targeted in-market recruiting event scheduled without taking valuable time from your store managers (they have a store to run) or your (you have a recruiting strategy to execute) limited time. 
• Finding a place where you could host an employee referral driven job fair each day – even on weekends or after hours.
• Solidifying and implementing a recruiting strategy that, in addition to attracting the right candidates, also helped drive a groundswell of new customers to your door through word of mouth.

 Social media is an easy way to tap into existing groups of employees outside of their direct friends and family.  It’s a way to organize a Meetup or a Tweetup, to pull together a consistent in-market recruiting event keeping great candidates available for future anticipated upticks and seasonal influxes.  It’s a way to help motivate current employees and valuable store alumni to stay connected for future needs.

 I wish I had this resource seven years ago, when I was going storefront to storefront down Beltline Road in Dallas Texas in 100-degree August heat.  If you would have told me I could find and develop relationships with the best retail candidates from my Blackberry, I would have thought you were crazy…..but now…

 Imagine if it were real.

Mike currently is a Senior Consultant in the New Media and Creative Services within Aon’s Organizational Performance & Implementation group. In this role, he consults human resources and corporate communications executives on ways to engage target audiences via social media. Mike can be found on Twitter @cruiter or LinkedIn

Recruiting web videos–Poll results

Click on the link to see the poll results.

http://polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/59062/zewan

Do you have plans next year to use web video as part of your recruiting process?

http://polls.linkedin.com/p/59062/zewan

One key element in social media that seems to be absent  is web video in the hiring process.  Social media is quickly becoming a critical medium to deliever the employment message to prospective candidates and building talent communities. 

It seems the best way to deliver this job-specific message is through creative, real-life web video to drive talent attraction and community building, not static text from an outdated internal job description.  One way is let the hiring manager talk about their job and what they are looking for( of course, edit it) and serve it up to candidates.   That is what passive candidates want to see…

I’m curious to see what organizations web video plans are in 2010…

Please click on the link to take the Linkedin poll. Thanks

http://polls.linkedin.com/p/59062/zewan

2000 Retail Holiday Survey

last call for 2009 Retail Hiring Survey http://tinyurl.com/lr53nx #fb

Aon 2009 Seasonal Hiring Survey with Linkedin

You may be interested in participating in our seasonal hiring survey we are doing with Linkedin.

This upcoming holiday hiring season appears to be a difficult time to predict store staffing needs.  The results of this survey will help you benchmark your seasonal hiring forecasts compared to other retailers.  Aon will produce and distribute the survey results to participants during the week of September 21st.

This survey will only take 3 minutes of your time.

http://partner.linkedin.com/2009/08/linkedin-talent-direct-message-from-aon-consulting-worldwide/

Five “Do’s” for Handling High-Volume Recruitment in a Down Economy

This Aon Consulting Whitepaper explores different strategies and tactics to effectively handle the huge surge of job applicants in the down economy.

Click here to download whitepaperWhitepaper–Five “Do’s” for Handling High-Volume Recruitment in a Down Economy

RPO Top 10 Potential Risks

Recruitment Process Outsourcing or RPO can be tricky and risk prone—i.e. looks good on paper, but when you peel it back, it may be best to keep it in-house.  As you first start with the exploratory internal discussions of RPO and will it solve our problems, below is a framework to consider about the inherent risks involved with RPO.  As an advisor, I like to start with a couple of very basic questions:

1) Is there enough pain or is it worth the risk?  

2) If it’s really worth it, how to best mitigate risk to insure a successful RPO implementation and most important the steady state.  

Below is a flexible discussion framework for addressing some of the most common RPO risks and at what stage.  This tool enables the buyer to establish a proactive stance in addressing your future, unknown risks.  This is especially helpful to use if you are the Head of Talent Acquisition (who will have to live with the decision) or a project manager running the process.  Begin by asking the committee to think about the following and talk about their point of view about the risk.

Top 10 RPO Risks

Risk	Description	Implementation Stage	Severity of Risk	Mitigation Strategy
Vision	Lack of clear definition of the end state	All Stages	High	Clearly define the degree of change and what isn’t changing
Implementation Plan	Slow and disrupted implementation	Pre-Transition	Medium	Robust, detailed, and integrated implementation plan
Leadership and Sponsorship	Lack of sufficient support to ensure successful implementation and adoption of the change	All Stages	High	Leadership-driven change campaign that includes case for change and continuous communication
Productive employees	Workforce capability and confusion	Transformation	Medium	Comprehensive training and education for all levels (skills, processes, and behaviors)
Customer and Performance Expectations	Performance and quality problems	All Stages	High	Metrics and monitoring to mitigate risk
Engaged stakeholders	Disconnected employees and customers	All Stages	High	Audience-appropriate communication strategies and tactics timed in successive stages to meet evolving needs
Competing Initiatives	Lack of sufficient resources to implement on time and within budget	Pre-Transition, Transition	Low	Prioritize and commit to the initiative—not flavor of the month
Employment Practices	Employee resistance to use new hiring practices and procedures	Steady State	Low	Deliver and Communicate new recruiting playbook to fields customized to various audience
Data Management	Disconnect and inaccurate applicant data	Transformation and Steady State	Low	Effectively integrate the data of all 3rd vendors with ATS and other key systems
Regulatory	Workforce actions to right to unionize (e.g., Lilly Ledbetter)	Steady State	Low	Seek HR or employment law on the potential impact of new hiring process and changing employment laws

 

Observations and Trends in RPO- 2009 and beyond

I see many of our RPO clients using this downturn to reorganize and optimize recruiting functions focusing efforts on:

1. reducing cost
2. improving processes and disconnects (“eliminating waste”)
3. building in flexibility, scalability
4. optimizing systems
5. introducing hybrid recruiting and hiring models
6. implementing web based assessment tools for high volume jobs
 

• Recruiting leaders are increasingly relying on carefully managed sets of third party partners rather than internal FTE’s to support delivery.

• Recruiting roles continue to become more specialized (industry, skill set,
functional, task etc.) to meet business unit hiring demands.

• Recruiting roles are also differentiating into exempt and non-exempt
specializations, reflecting:

i. Different hiring practices
ii. Different recruiting skill sets

• I believe clients will continue to look to outsource their high volume, similar job type, recruiting and hiring work. This particular area typically constitutes “low hanging fruit” for many HR departments and operational excellence for field operations.  Decision drivers include:

i. Non-strategic hires
ii. Quick win with immediate ROI – e.g. reduce 90 day turnover
iii. Vendors own the entire administrative process, and
iv. Service Level Agreements facilitate management and clarify
accountability

• I also believe there will be a continuing trend toward centralizing hiring
administration across multiple business units, with resulting gains in ROI (data entry, status calls, questions, and interview coordination).
• These trends, however, will impact installed ATS systems, some of which may require additional functionality in addition to being re-configured for futurestate processes. In all cases, the optimized applications will need to be
integrated with existing or new third-party partners.

Implementing an Applicant Tracking System– Are you ready?

Whitepaper: Implementing an Applicant Tracking System– Are you ready?

Attached whitepaper: Implementing an Applicant Tracking system– Are you ready?

In today’s economy, operational efficiency is a top priority for all organizations. HR executives are looking for ways to improve overall effectiveness while cutting costs. One common solution is to deploy an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to easily standardize activities in the hiring process.

A “current process paradigm” approach to ATS implementation exposes HR executives to significant risk and even more if it is global. Mapping an ATS solution on purely current-state hiring processes may be shortsighted and limiting.

Aon Consulting to Speak at Upcoming ERE Expo in San Diego

John Hassett and Miriam Nelson from Aon Consulting are hosting a pre-conference workshop on Monday, March 30 at 2pm during the upcoming spring ERE Expo.  We will be discussing best practices for high volume recruitment, retention and enhancing the candidate/employee experience.  This is a highly interactive workshop and participants will walk away with a journal of best practices to bring home to their organizations. 

 

Buyer Beware- How to Protect Yourself from an RPO Ponzi Scheme

The more I read about the Bernard Madoff scandal the sicker I get about it.  We should all try and learn a lesson from this if we can, even in our industry.  At the end of the day, things that seem too good to be true usually are.

There are certain attributes that happened in the Madoff ponzi scheme that could apply to any industry including RPO.  Buyer Beware- Here are some things to look out for when selecting a new RPO provider or when evaluating your current vendor:

• How well do you know this vendor’s history? How long have they been in business and what were they doing before they started this company?  Character and integrity are values worth paying extra for.
• How did you hear about this vendor?  How well does the person referring the vendor know about what goes on behind the smoke and mirrors of big marketing campaigns?
• Implementation fees are fine but do your vendor’s implementation fees feel particularly high?  Be comfortable to have your vendor break down where these fees are being applied especially if you feel like they are too high.  You never know, you may be funding their last new client’s delivery.
• Be careful if the price per hire feels too good.  Yes that’s right, I said it.  There is such a thing as a price point that is too good.  If this is the case I suggest that you dig into how the vendor is able to provide this price point per hire and how long they can do it for.  You want your pricing model to be a win-win for both parties to succeed and sustain.
• Is your vendor going through a large expansion of new clients?  What happens when the high implementation fees from new clients slows down?  Can your price per hire sustain long term delivery?
• How well is your vendor funded?  Are they public or private?  If private, who are their investors?  How transparent is their financial state?  In today’s economy only the companies with the healthiest balance sheets will be able to weather the storm.

I realize that there are a number of other things that you need to consider when selecting an RPO provider but in light of recent events in the economy and on Wall Street, it may be worthwhile to add these to your list.  If you vendor is open to all of these items then you are in good shape.  If not, I would be a little worried.

Executive Coaching

A recent blog focused on the benefits provided by realistic job previews in finding new hires who are both a good match (and therefore likelier to stay on the job) and are prepared to be individual contributors as quickly as possible. The same idea applies recently at an executive level. The result is “executive onboarding.” Aon’s Lorraine Stomski talks about the strategic advantage of this valuable corporate initiative and other benefits it provides.

Why is Executive Onboarding important?
There is risk that new leaders face in their first months on the job. Forty percent of new hires are going to fail in their roles within the first 18 months. There’s a 50% probability that a new executive will quit, or be fired, within the first 3 years. There’s a real advantage to organizations to help that person anticipate what potential derailers there may be and to quickly help them align and develop their network of support in the organization. Executive Onboarding is a process of coaching a new leader through the transition into this new role. It’s an intensive process that helps the leader accelerate the success of transition.

What is the profile of a good coach?
Coaches need to have an excellent business background coupled with a psychology background. Coachees are executives running businesses. They have to lead strategy – they have to get people behind them to execute the strategy. So, you need a very sophisticated coach [who] understands the business perspective and the psychological perspective of what it means to be a new leader.

Building Talent Pipelines

Even with the looming recession and huge uncertainty, various industry research and real life client work are pointing to a common conclusion that the war for talent is indeed here and is becoming global in nature.  The knowledge economy is creating specialized needs for talent in strategic, new areas across functional lines as well as a new breed of high-performing leadership.  Along with the demographics crunch of the upcoming Baby Boomer retirement wave, many companies are potentially facing a severe talent deficiency.  In my opinion, it is essential that corporate recruiting departments need to plan for and build an operational platform to address their future talent needs.

As such, my experience indicates that the majority of current corporate recruiting models are reactive in nature – an important position opens, either through attrition or new business need, and the recruitment function then reaches into the labor market to advertise the opening or tap into their social network through Linked-In and others or call an executive search firm, find candidates and screen them. 

In order for the VP of Recruiting to strategically plan for and handle the talent crunch, this is the way to get a seat at “the table”…..where it is?( Which got me thinking, what ever happened to the Chief People/Talent Officer of the lates 90’s early 2000’s) Organizations need to shift from a reactive recruitment model to a proactive recruitment model.  Corporate Executive Board’s report titled “Building Talent Pipelines-Key Findings and Implications for Action” ©2006  confirms that corporate recruiters tap only 50% of the potential labor market by not having the capacity, skill or technology to continuously reach out to the passive candidate and develop an ongoing relationship.  In addition, CedarCrestone 2008-2009 Report on HR Systems sites that organizations the only succession plan for the top of the house grew revenue at 4.3% while organizations that involved middle management into the talent management process grew revenue at a rate of over 3 times or !4.3%.  Things that make you go……hmmmmmmmm.   Good article http://www.inc.com/resources/recruiting/articles/20060501/aschweyer.html

and here http://www.talentmgt.com/succession_planning/2007/June/351/index.php

 

Corporate recruiting departments can execute on this, through the construction and management of a talent pipeline, consisting of both internal and external talent to augment their ongoing talent needs and succession planning processes. 

Aon Consulting Names Bob Lopes as Human Capital Practice Co-Leader

Lopes to lead RPO/EPO and Benefacts businesses

CHICAGO, Oct. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Aon Consulting, the global human capital consulting organization of Aon Corporation (NYSE: AOC), announced today that Bob Lopes has joined the firm as co-leader of the Human Capital practice.

Lopes will be responsible for the Recruitment Process Outsourcing/Employment Process Outsourcing (RPO/EPO) practice, which helps clients identify and select talent in a cost effective and efficient
manner. Through state-of-the-art sourcing and selection processes, the RPO/EPO team improves job candidate quality, reduces early turnover and decreases cycle time to fill. Additionally, Lopes will lead the Benefacts practice, which provides clients with tools to help employees understand the full value of their compensation and benefits, while enhancing the employer’s ability to recruit and retain employees.

Lopes brings nearly 23 years of industry experience to Aon Consulting. Previously, he served as president and CEO of Veritude, a wholly owned staffing and recruiting company of Fidelity. Prior to Veritude, Lopes
served as vice president of Global Client Management for ExcellerateHRO, where he had client responsibility for more than 400 global clients, generating more than $600 million in revenues. Lopes was also global
managing director of Towers Perrin Administration Solutions, where he had responsibility for all aspects of the global benefits outsourcing business.

“We welcome Bob to Aon Consulting,” said Kathryn Hayley, chief executive officer of Aon Consulting. “He has a proven track record of serving clients in a variety of industries throughout the world. Bob joins
our Human Capital Practice, which provides tools and expertise for organizations to attract, develop and retain high-quality and highly productive employees. It has never been more important for companies to
have a strong workforce in place, and I’m excited about Bob’s vision of serving clients in this capacity and look forward to working with him as we continue shaping the workplace of the future.”

Lopes is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame. He joined Aon Oct. 20, and is based in Radnor, Pa. Lopes reports to Hayley.

Passive candidates…Is there ROI?

One of the more frustrating and heated debates right now in corporate recruiting is that a passive candidate is better quality that a active one.  Especially now, in this market, isn’t everyone an active one?  And, what about companies lovefest with the passive candidate and how they desperately need to get these gems into the hiring process?   You are throwing money away.   I repeat, you are throwing away money.  Why, I ask, why is this so important? Great perspective in this article written by Howard Adamsky for ERE:   http://www.ere.net/2005/05/01/the-myth-of-the-passive-candidate/

Realistically, with the right process, messaging and structure, over 90% of corporate jobs should be filled with active candidate flow. 

One client I was working with this year wanted to actively direct source passive candidates out of call centers and retail stores and entice them to come work at their call center. 

You got it — cold calling call center reps making $9.50/hr.  Are you crazy?  Plus, they were not very competitive on their pay rate.  Across the board, there is this perception that passives rule the world.  The question I ask myself is:  Am I crazy about the ROI of a passive candidate?  Please let me know.  In the meantime, as I anxiously await your feedback, here are some key things to consider when designing a passive recruiting strategy with ROI.  The hard dollar ROI with this approach is you should be able to cut search firm spend by 50%-75%.  

Key things to consider when designing a passive recruiting strategy with ROI: 

• Pick critical talent-identify a strategic job type with decent volume.
• Pick a core business unit or department.
• Revenue generating type jobs are a great focus.
• Must have compelling talent attraction message for the job type and not just overall employment brand.
• Must have talented recruiters to move passives “off the bag”
• Take dedicated team out of the day to day grind
• Position them as a recruiting business partner with business unit
• Must be willing to be aggressive with comp and sign-on bonus
• Think long term-It’s going to take a year of slugging it out
• Be realistic on costs and time to value
• Beware of loss of focus – “Requisition based” Corporate recruitment departments are reactive and get pulled in all directions.
• And, of course an executive sponsor

Aon Consulting Partners with Taleo to Provide Best-of-Class Talent Management Implementation Services to Global Enterprise Organizations

New partnership offers comprehensive human capital solutions including project management, best practices, hiring process design, and change management

PRNewswire-FirstCall
CHICAGO
(NYSE:AOC)

CHICAGO, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Aon Consulting, the global human capital consulting organization of Aon Corporation (NYSE: AOC), today announced that under terms of an extended partnership agreement, Taleo will introduce Aon Consulting’s implementation, delivery and consulting services to its enterprise customers worldwide.

With this agreement, Aon Consulting, a certified Taleo Enterprise partner, will offer Taleo customers a comprehensive set of its human capital solutions including:

– Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) services and Applicant Profile®, a proprietary selection and assessment testing platform, for Taleo Recruiting customers; and

– Performance and succession planning consulting services for Taleo Performance customers.

“Aon Consulting’s human capital solutions complement the best practices, industry benchmarks and change management capabilities Taleo offers to our customers today,” said Guy Gauvin, executive vice president of Global Services for Taleo. “By combining Taleo’s market-leading talent management solutions with Aon Consulting’s extensive human capital expertise and global resources, we’ll be able to further help organizations win the war for talent.”

“The combined solutions resulting from this partnership will give organizations the human capital expertise they need to develop a robust talent management strategy and implement it on a world-class SaaS platform,” said Dan Hajjar, executive vice president of Aon Consulting. “We’re looking forward to working with Taleo, and developing a long-term and mutually beneficial relationship that provides best-in-class solutions and services to organizations around the globe.”

Using Total Rewards Statements to Attract and Retain Top Talent

Over the past few months, Aon’s Benefacts Practice have been surveying our client’s employees about the information they receive in their Total Compensation/Total Rewards Statements. The purpose of the survey was to gauge our success in providing communication value and meeting clients’ objectives through our “Rewards on Board” product. The employees’ answers help build the ROI case for the value of our personalized rewards statements. One of the biggest impacts that we have seen is the improvements that this product can have on employee referrals which has proven to be one of the most cost effective ways to attract the highest quality of talent.

Workforce Management Magazine just ran a a great article today in its recruiting and staffing e-newsletter with Bill Crawford, SVP Aon Consulting about “Rewards on Board”.  You can see the article online by clicking: http://www.workforce.com/section/06/feature/25/75/40/index.html

Here are the results of our survey:

Realistic Job Previews – A Smart Investment

by Amy Mills, Ph.D.,
Assistant Vice President

Generally companies post brief job descriptions on their websites, online, or in newspapers to recruit a wide variety of potential candidates. But that kind of job description does not tell the whole story. Hiring managers need to delve deeper and make available “realistic job previews” for serious candidates to truly understand the job for which they are applying.

The primary difference between recruitment marketing pieces and RJPs is their fundamental purpose. RJPs give the candidate the full picture of the job in both work activities and job context. They focus on helping candidates understand the kind of position they would be taking on, the work environment in which they will spend their days or nights, and the essence of the company’s culture. Essentially, RJPs tell candidates “what it’s like to work here and do this job.”

Marketing and recruitment pieces focus much more on just the positive aspects of the job and organization. They are intended to help with the critical need to generate quality applicant flow. But once that is accomplished, the immediate need is to engage the candidate in the screening process-in effect, to get the candidate to think. This is where RJPs contribute to self-screening and to improvements in selection process efficiency and effectiveness.

Applicant Knowledge Can Improve ROI

In the typical recruitment and selection process, candidates are relatively uninformed. They may have surface knowledge of the job; they may know some people employed by the company. Realistic job previews provide an opportunity to increase candidates’ knowledge levels in the areas HR professionals feel are most important, and to do so in an efficient and engaging way. Substantial research demonstrates that arming candidates with better information about what they can expect results in reduced turnover. This means lower employment costs, better performance, and stronger ROI.

What Keeps you up at Night? Clutch Performance

How many times has a consultant asked you, “What keeps you up at night?”  It’s a well-intentioned question aimed at getting to heart of whatever issues plague your organization, but it may have outlived its usefulness.  In any case, I know how I would respond if someone had asked me that question today: “Clutch.”

Clutch means several things, but in this instance, I am referring to the sports version of clutch. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, a sportsman/woman is clutch when he/she flawlessly executes under extreme pressure when the stakes are the highest. A recent example is Eli Manning’s instant-classic escape from the Patriots’ ferocious pass rush and desperate heave to David Tyree in the latest Super Bowl. The successful completion set the Giants up to score the game-winning touchdown and was the very essence of clutch.

What kept me up last night was the absolutely tremendous display of clutch performance by the US Women’s Gymnastics team at the Beijing Olympics.

Employment Branding Matters Even More

Branding

Last time, I talked about the importance of branding. And while it’s certainly true that branding matters (anyone NOT know the “brands”at right???), I think there’s a strong case to be made that employment branding matters even more. Because at the end of the day, your company isn’t run by products and services, it’s run by people.

Yeah, I know…”people are our most important asset”; “people come first”; “our people are our best advertisement”. We’ve all have heard various corporate lines about how valuable employees are, right up until the company stock misses a target, or the jobs can be done more cost effectively in some part of the world that’s wide awake while we’re sleeping. You can bet the term “human capital” wasn’t coined by an HR person.

It is small wonder that Millennials entering the workforce today expect to change jobs 8 times or more by the time they hit 30.

Thankfully, not every company thinks this way.  And we know exactly who they are — the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For List.

If you look at that list, one of the things that will most stand out for you is that, far and away, every one of these organizations takes a view towards branding their staffing and recruiting efforts that is every bit as powerful as their message towards the products and services they offer. They live and breathe the mantra of employment branding every day so that they can continue to attract world class talent, and more importantly, retain them once they’re there.

Skilled Trades Shortage in Manufacturing Sector

Believe it or not manufacturing is a hot sector for employment especially in the U.S.  Listen to the media and you would think this is the big loser.  No wonder the Millennials have no interest and manufacturing continues to see their talent pool evaporate.

At a time when employment trends can seem somewhat confusing, one thing is certain:
In many manufacturing facilities, there is a worrisome shortage of skilled trade workers.  This shortage has real business implications.  According to the National Association of Manufactures’ 2005 Skills Gap report, 83 percent of respondents indicated that these shortages are currently impacting their ability to serve customers.  Critical needs are in the manufacturing skilled trades, especially in a services capacity that cannot be off-shored.

Why Do Organizations Use Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

In an industry that is becoming increasing commoditized, it is refreshing to know that not all buyers are choosing their Recruitment Outsourcing partners primarily on price. In a recent Benefit and Talent Survey taken by Aon Consulting in January 2008, over a thousand respondents comprised of HR Leaders from organizations of all sizes located throughout the US answered a series of questions to help examine their current strategies and programs in these areas. With respect to Recruitment Outsourcing, we discovered the following results:

What is the Key Business Driver for Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

As most of us have learned about anything you buy, you usually get what you pay for. Recruitment Outsourcing is no different. There is no doubt that pricing is important and must make sense for both parties to be successful but I think that the main focus of the partnership should be on the improvement in the speed and quality of candidates that you are hiring. I am glad that I am not alone.

If you are interested in seeing the results of the rest of the survey please send me an email or go to www.aon.com/benefits_survey.

- John Hassett

Branding…it matters.

For loyal readers (I’m guessing we’re about to break into double digits at this early stage!) who’ve been waiting patiently for the next installment of “RPO Myths”, or any installment for that matter, and whose keen eyes have noticed that there is a significant difference in our look and feel (again), you are witnessing the birth of a blog in progress at a major U.S. multinational corporation.  Branding is something these organizations take very seriously, and when middle aged rule-breakers like John Hassett and I go off and start sharing our expertise and throwing our own logos and colors and such up on the Internet, well…let’s just say there are some people who get paid to point out that we may have veered slightly off course and were quickly heading for places that didn’t exist on the corporate GPS.

The defining event was when this blog started showing up pretty high in a Google search around RPO and blogs. Anyone who’s set a Google alert for anything being published anywhere that has the word “Aon” in it (which by the way includes an awful lot of things written in Gaelic), also gets alerted when something appears in a blog, and among the recipients of those alerts would be pretty much the whole of the marketing team here at Aon.  That’s when the phone calls started.

The good news is that they love the blog.  Love the concept, love the content, and love the initiative we took to create something that really doesn’t exist in the marketplace. The bad news is that we’d pretty much violated every branding policy that Aon’s published. Like all of them. Ever. And while I may not find the Aon branding and colors to be exactly what I’d have come up with, it dawned on me after several dozen emails, a few conference calls, and some face time with some of the marketing leadership that my opinion in this case is irrelevant — and that’s ok.

Now my opinion being irrelevant is a fairly common occurrence around my house. For example, my wife will ask what color we should paint the bedroom, I’ll say “cinnamon” or “hunter green”, she’ll say “desert sand” and anyone who’s happily married knows what color that bedroom is going to get painted.

Great Article on Employee Referral Programs

John Hassett, Recruitment Process Outsourcing, was quoted in last week’s issue of Workforce Management on referral programs. John provided insight on different approached employers are using. See link and full text article below with John’s insight highlighted.

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Despite Success, There Are Reasons to Be Wary of Referral Programs

Employers unfamiliar with referral programs can inadvertently create an HR phenomenon known as inbreeding, which occurs when companies continuously recruit candidates that are virtual clones of the existing workforce population.

By Gina Ruiz

Employee referral programs consistently are recognized as among the most effective methods for attaining talent. Candidates are usually strong cultural matches with an organization who tend to hit the ground running and have a low likelihood of early departure.

According to a 2007 CareerXroads survey, employee referrals are the No. 1 external source of hire—accounting from almost 30 percent of new talent. Twenty percent of survey respondents said one out of two employee referrals result in a hire.

But for all the good that employee referral programs can yield, they also cause problems. It’s simple human nature; people often gravitate toward individuals with similar tendencies and characteristics. Employees tend to know—and recommend—candidates who resemble them in some way, whether it’s the same college degree, comparable professional background or the same country club.

With that in mind, it becomes important for companies to realize that referral programs are not always the best recruiting approach. In fact, referral programs can sometimes thwart such objectives as changing corporate culture, assembling a workforce with a new set of skills or bolstering diversity, says John Sumser, a recruiting consultant and author. “If companies are trying to get out of a rut or rehabilitate a dysfunctional workforce, referral programs are going to hamper those efforts because all they will do is produce more of the same type of worker,” he says. Companies also should remember that employees may not always make sound decisions when it comes to referrals, basing a recommendation on family or a friendship rather than objective criteria like professional experience. This is a precarious situation because it can erode the quality of a referral.

What’s more, employers unfamiliar with referral programs can inadvertently create an HR phenomenon known as inbreeding, which occurs when companies continuously recruit candidates that are virtual clones of the existing workforce population. It stifles the flow of fresh talent with new ideas, says Peter Weddle, CEO of recruiting consultancy Weddle’s.

It’s a situation that can create insularity and complacency and harm an employer’s competitive edge, says Paul Rowson, general manager of WorldatWork in Washington. What makes the misuse of referral programs damaging is that given a positive reputation, companies often fail to recognize when these initiatives are hindering their efforts. “Sometimes companies will blindly push these initiatives forward without first determining whether it makes strategic sense,” Rowson says.

Myths, myths, and more myths (continued) #7

#7) RPO Doesn’t Work (or so I’ve heard…)

One of the reasons (among several) that I could never be a journalist is that, at heart, I’m a completely optimistic human being. People are generally good, I live in a great country, our economic system is the best in the world, and overall, life moves along in ups and downs, but its movement is always upward and onward. Our rising standards of living, our life expectancies, and just about every aspect of life in general on this planet is better than it was, say, 50 years ago.

Yawn….who wants to read that? Have you watched the Science Channel lately? Have you seen how violently our sun and planets will die, to say nothing of the universe itself in 100 trillion trillion years???!! As if we didn’t have enough to worry about right here and now…

The job of a journalist is, in part, to report the news, and it’s hardly news that everything is going along swimmingly. So by definition, they report on all the things that have gone wrong, whether the subject is the war in Iraq or a highly specialize business function. Which brings me to this latest myth, that the general outsourcing of recruitment services doesn’t work, doesn’t save money, doesn’t produce better candidates, and doesn’t deliver on it’s promise. And should you feel thusly, you’d be forgiven for thinking so, given that what little media you may have read about RPO may not have been entirely positive. Likewise, you may have the same impression based on media reports whether the subject is RPO, EPO, HRO, EBO, or any one of a dozen other “O’s” that comprise the alphabet soup of 21st Century business. Added to the media’s predilection for the depressing, is something more basic to human nature that every customer service department knows well: if you like something, you might tell 1 or 2 other people about it; if you don’t like something, or if something’s gone wrong regarding a purchase, you’ll tell several dozen others about your experience. So word of mouth, the best form of advertising, is a cruel double-edge sword indeed.

So yes, we’re all familiar with the failures, some of them spectacular, around HRO and its variations. No one ever said this was perfect. Far from it.

But what of the successes? The computer manufacturer who by outsourcing and assessing new inside sales reps grew revenue by half a BILLION dollars. The IT firm that shrank time to fill by 50% and will save $800K in recruiting costs this year, or the industrial rental giant that saved over $1M in recruiting costs last year, and looks to save even more this year. Why aren’t these in the news?