Resplendent Recruiting

Women Leaders: The Hard Truth About Soft Skills

2010-02-19T10:23:00.000-05:00

Sometime last summer, as the recession continued to reduce the ranks of the employed, the demographics of American business shifted dramatically, and for the first time women found themselves making up a majority of the U.S. workforce.

Heralded by some as a long-overdue organizational sea change that will change the face of business and create new opportunities for women, the shift nonetheless highlights the huge gap that most organizations still face when it comes to putting women in senior leadership roles. Women head up fewer than 3% of the Fortune 1,000 companies. The lower you go down the organizational ranks, the better the situation gets—but not that much. According to our Best Companies for Leadership survey, the top 20 organizations are almost twice as likely as the other 1,000-plus companies surveyed to have a high proportion of women in senior leadership positions.

So what should those lagging organizations do to improve the balance? Certainly they should adopt some other best practices of the top companies surveyed, such as creating cultures the foster leadership—cultures that closely manage succession planning and provide growth and development opportunities.

Altering the Equation
But according to Mary Fontaine, global head of Hay Group's leadership and talent practice, organizations should also be exploring how women change the leadership equation, both in terms of the strengths they bring to an organization and the barriers they still face.

Fontaine points to a Hay Group study of 45 outstanding women executives from large multinationals, including IBM (IBM), PepsiCo (PEP), and Unilever (UN). The women were selected based on such metrics as sales and profitability as well as the climates they created for their teams.

When compared with a peer group, selected by participating organizations, of effective male executives and less effective women, the Hay Group found that the 45 women used a broader, more effective range of leadership styles to motivate and engage people.

"The outstanding women," Fontaine notes, "used a better blend of what we think of as traditional masculine styles—being directive, authoritative, and leading by example and as well as feminine ones. They also knew when to be more nurturing, inclusive, and collaborative."

The men surveyed, and the less effective women, tended to rely primarily on the masculine styles.

Fostering Collaboration
Similar results, Fontaine says, were obtained in another leadership diversity study Hay Group recently completed in partnership with one of the top 20 organizations in the BusinessWeek/Hay Group study. In that study, the company's female executives were significantly more likely than their male counterparts to coach and develop others and to create more committed, collaborative, inclusive—and ultimately more effective—teams. The study also found that while women tended to foster genuine collaboration, male executives were far more likely to view negotiations and other business transactions as zero-sum games.

The need for collaboration, inclusiveness, and building trust and relationships, Fontaine says, is becoming increasingly important as organizations continue to remove entire layers of old command-and-control management jobs and replace them with more matrixed leadership roles.

"It's as if someone took an eraser to the organizational chart, wiping out a big chucks of boxes and replacing straight, solid lines with a web of fuzzy, dotted ones," Fontaine observes. These new roles, she says, carry even more accountability than traditional leadership roles, but with far less direct authority.

"When you're operating out in the vast white space of today's organization with just a handful of direct reports, you can coerce and demand until the cows come home, but no one will pay any attention," Fontaine says. "If you're going to be successful, you have to know how to influence, collaborate, and subtly gain the trust of others—skills women may inherently be better at than men."

Fontaine is quick to point out, however, that for men and women alike, good, effective leadership is not genetic but an ability acquired and developed through experience and training. The problem, she says, is that in many organizations, women still don't have the opportunities that men have to develop and practice those skills.

Some organizations are trying to create such opportunities. IBM, for example, has made a major commitment over the past decade to understanding and reducing barriers women faced in reaching positions of higher responsibility. The company is reviewing its leadership program to identify specific types of development experiences that should be provided to women.

Those organizations that lag behind in accepting women as senior leaders, especially at the senior level, are only going to hurt themselves and their shareholders. "Ultimately it's about business performance," Fontaine says. "And given the research and what we're seeing with clients, I believe that in the future, the best companies in terms of performance will be those that truly embrace diversity [by] hiring, developing, and promoting women to key leadership roles."

Business Week February 16, 2010

Economists Expect Shifting Work Force

2010-02-19T10:14:00.000-05:00

Increased Automation and Relocations Overseas Means a New Employment Mix Will Take Hold When Hiring

About a quarter of the 8.4 million jobs eliminated since the recession began won't be coming back and will ultimately need to be replaced by other types of work in growing industries, according to economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey.

PM Report: Many Lost Jobs Gone Forever9:28The Wall Street Journal's latest forecasing survey showing economist believe about a quarter of the 8.4 million jobs eliminated since the recession began won't be coming back. Economics editor David Wessel and Barrons.com's Bob O'Brien discuss the results.
.
Charts and Full ResultsSee forecasts for growth, unemployment, housing and more. Plus, views on the Fed's rates, stimulus and more. Survey conducted Feb. 5-9. (Or download all data as .xls)Complete Coverage: Forecasting Survey Econ: Fed Independence Survives Bernanke Battle .
While the job market is constantly shifting as some sectors fade and others expand, this recession threw that process into overdrive. Thousands of workers lost jobs as companies automated more tasks or moved whole assembly lines to places like China. As growth returns, so will job creation—just with a different emphasis in the mix of jobs being created.

Economists in the survey are predicting a slow upswing for the economy as a whole. Respondents on average expect economic growth to settle at about 3% in 2010, off sharply from the powerful 5.7% seasonally adjusted annual growth rate in the fourth quarter.

This is why job creation has become such a worrisome issue: Based on that growth projection, over the next year economists estimate the U.S. will add about 133,000 jobs a month. That sounds good and it's certainly better than more job losses. But with about 100,000 new jobs a month needed just to soak up new entrants to the work force, that pace of job creation will only slowly reduce the high unemployment rate.

About the SurveyThe Wall Street Journal surveys a group of 56 economists throughout the year. Broad surveys on more than 10 major economic indicators are conducted every month. Once a year, economists are ranked on how well their forecasts have fared. For prior installments of the surveys, see: WSJ.com/Economist.
.
That's why the economists expect the unemployment rate to only fall to 9.4% by the end of the year—down from 9.7% in January. They say job growth needs to average more than 200,000 per month for the U.S. to see a strong recovery in jobs.

The White House released its economic forecast Thursday, projecting payrolls will increase by an average of just 95,000 a month this year with the unemployment rate averaging 10%. The Council of Economic Advisors expects GDP growth to be about 3% in 2010, in line with the surveyed economists.

It isn't just weak growth that's damping job growth. "Companies, in the name of making money, substitute against labor through outsourcing or technology," said Allen Sinai of Decision Economics. Wages and benefits make workers "so expensive that who wants to hire them? As a result, the displaced workers won't be rehired unless we have double the growth rate we're expecting."

View Full Image
Associated Press Santilya Bailey of Detroit looks for employment while attending a job fair in Detroit on Wednesday.
.
On average, the 55 respondents, not all of whom answered every question, said three-quarters of the jobs losses during the recession are cyclical, meaning the positions will eventually return when demand picks up. For example, the manufacturing industry has shed 2.2 million jobs since 2007, as consumers and businesses cut spending sharply amid the credit crisis. When demand stabilizes, factories need to bring some of those workers back. Indeed, the sector added jobs in January for the first time in nearly three years.

But some companies have used the recession to find ways to do more with less. "There's a certain Darwinian angle to recession," said economist Sean Snaith of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Fla. "Firms that survive are stronger for having the experience. They tighten down and look for ways to cut waste."

MoreBetter Education Shields Women From Worst of Job Cuts .
The challenges facing the economy—and the government's response to them—translated into low marks for President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The economists gave the president an average grade of 57 out of 100, while Mr. Geithner scored an average of 60. Just 10 economists gave both men marks in the A or B range above 80. Despite the low marks, 29 of the economists expect Mr. Geithner will still be Treasury secretary at the end of the year.

J.P. Morgan Chase economist Bruce Kasman said, "You need to change incentives for hiring in a permanent way, but that is hard to do amid deficits."

However, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke fares significantly better, with an average grade of 78, and 33 economists giving him an A or B. "The Fed chairman misread the economy and risks initially but eventually acted aggressively and successfully," said Jim O'Sullivan of MF Global. And despite a bruising confirmation battle earlier this month, most economists said the central bank's independence was only slightly undermined by the process.

Increased Automation and Relocations Overseas Means a New Employment Mix Will Take Hold When Hiring Resumes.ArticleVideoComments (150)more in Economy ».
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By PHIL IZZO
About a quarter of the 8.4 million jobs eliminated since the recession began won't be coming back and will ultimately need to be replaced by other types of work in growing industries, according to economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey.

PM Report: Many Lost Jobs Gone Forever9:28The Wall Street Journal's latest forecasing survey showing economist believe about a quarter of the 8.4 million jobs eliminated since the recession began won't be coming back. Economics editor David Wessel and Barrons.com's Bob O'Brien discuss the results.
.
Charts and Full ResultsSee forecasts for growth, unemployment, housing and more. Plus, views on the Fed's rates, stimulus and more. Survey conducted Feb. 5-9. (Or download all data as .xls)Complete Coverage: Forecasting Survey Econ: Fed Independence Survives Bernanke Battle .
While the job market is constantly shifting as some sectors fade and others expand, this recession threw that process into overdrive. Thousands of workers lost jobs as companies automated more tasks or moved whole assembly lines to places like China. As growth returns, so will job creation—just with a different emphasis in the mix of jobs being created.

Economists in the survey are predicting a slow upswing for the economy as a whole. Respondents on average expect economic growth to settle at about 3% in 2010, off sharply from the powerful 5.7% seasonally adjusted annual growth rate in the fourth quarter.

This is why job creation has become such a worrisome issue: Based on that growth projection, over the next year economists estimate the U.S. will add about 133,000 jobs a month. That sounds good and it's certainly better than more job losses. But with about 100,000 new jobs a month needed just to soak up new entrants to the work force, that pace of job creation will only slowly reduce the high unemployment rate.

About the SurveyThe Wall Street Journal surveys a group of 56 economists throughout the year. Broad surveys on more than 10 major economic indicators are conducted every month. Once a year, economists are ranked on how well their forecasts have fared. For prior installments of the surveys, see: WSJ.com/Economist.
.
That's why the economists expect the unemployment rate to only fall to 9.4% by the end of the year—down from 9.7% in January. They say job growth needs to average more than 200,000 per month for the U.S. to see a strong recovery in jobs.

The White House released its economic forecast Thursday, projecting payrolls will increase by an average of just 95,000 a month this year with the unemployment rate averaging 10%. The Council of Economic Advisors expects GDP growth to be about 3% in 2010, in line with the surveyed economists.

It isn't just weak growth that's damping job growth. "Companies, in the name of making money, substitute against labor through outsourcing or technology," said Allen Sinai of Decision Economics. Wages and benefits make workers "so expensive that who wants to hire them? As a result, the displaced workers won't be rehired unless we have double the growth rate we're expecting."

View Full Image
Associated Press Santilya Bailey of Detroit looks for employment while attending a job fair in Detroit on Wednesday.
.
On average, the 55 respondents, not all of whom answered every question, said three-quarters of the jobs losses during the recession are cyclical, meaning the positions will eventually return when demand picks up. For example, the manufacturing industry has shed 2.2 million jobs since 2007, as consumers and businesses cut spending sharply amid the credit crisis. When demand stabilizes, factories need to bring some of those workers back. Indeed, the sector added jobs in January for the first time in nearly three years.

But some companies have used the recession to find ways to do more with less. "There's a certain Darwinian angle to recession," said economist Sean Snaith of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Fla. "Firms that survive are stronger for having the experience. They tighten down and look for ways to cut waste."

MoreBetter Education Shields Women From Worst of Job Cuts .
The challenges facing the economy—and the government's response to them—translated into low marks for President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The economists gave the president an average grade of 57 out of 100, while Mr. Geithner scored an average of 60. Just 10 economists gave both men marks in the A or B range above 80. Despite the low marks, 29 of the economists expect Mr. Geithner will still be Treasury secretary at the end of the year.

J.P. Morgan Chase economist Bruce Kasman said, "You need to change incentives for hiring in a permanent way, but that is hard to do amid deficits."

However, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke fares significantly better, with an average grade of 78, and 33 economists giving him an A or B. "The Fed chairman misread the economy and risks initially but eventually acted aggressively and successfully," said Jim O'Sullivan of MF Global. And despite a bruising confirmation battle earlier this month, most economists said the central bank's independence was only slightly undermined by the process.

By Phil Izzo
WSJ February 11, 2010

The Technology-Collaboration Disconnect

2010-02-19T10:10:00.000-05:00

Advanced social media and communications tools have made it easy to connect with friends across the globe at little cost. This ease of collaborating online is rarely experienced at work. Of those companies that do deploy collaboration programs, 75% consider them fair at best.

The gap between how we use information technology in our personal and our professional lives is growing, leading to higher employee dissatisfaction with corporate IT departments that "can't seem to catch up" with new technologies.

Most companies go wrong by thinking first about the potential of the technology. Instead, successful leaders should think first about behavioral and structural factors, such as the development of trusted relationships. Among more than 50 large organizations assessed by The Corporate Executive Board's IT Practice, the best have begun with an understanding of the capabilities knowledge workers need, not the capabilities new technologies provide.

Collaboration underpins business productivity. Leaders are developing cases around the following four productivity questions:

1. Innovation: Are we capturing creativity from across our extended R&D network?

2. Cost: Will the coordination costs of working with external service providers erode our cost savings?

3. Execution: Is the proliferation of virtual teams breaking our decision making?

4. Talent: Are working conditions attractive for the brightest or more progressive workers?

To capture value from investments in collaboration and social media, leading companies are following these six principles:

1. Foster collaboration around how employees really work. One Fortune 500 company created "Networks of Excellence," within which work groups of 20-30 people focus on specific business challenges. The tools became a resource to allow teams to work better rather than a task on top of assignments.

2. Roadmap the capabilities users need, not just the enabling technologies. Identify and prioritize the capabilities teams need and then translate them into the appropriate technology choices. All discussions can then focus on the needed outcomes not whether a specific tool should be deployed.

3. "Market" fewer, high demand capabilities that provide 80% of user benefits. Many collaboration tools are over-loaded with functionality. Identify the highest-impact capabilities and promote and train on these capabilities. You dilute the message by promoting everything the tool can do.

4. Be proactive to avoid information loss. Avoid investments in collaboration and social media at your peril. People will find a way to bring tools into the enterprise. You can reduce the risk of external data leakage and undocumented collaboration by guiding users toward a controllable environment.

5. Make feedback an explicit step in service rollout. Test how receptive people are to collaboration, both initially and over time. Many new collaboration ideas look promising at the start, but quickly lose usage as people revert to old collaboration patterns.

6. Create one version of the truth: Consolidate future product plans into a single technology roadmap. One company created a single view with simple directions to order the "Digital Worker" packages. The result was to reduce the ad hoc investments happening across voice, video, data, knowledge management, and mobility solutions.

By following the principals detailed above, companies can lever social media and communication tools to promote collaboration and spark productivity.

Business Week February 12, 2010

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Leading Private Companies Report Plans to Hire, Increased Optimism; Signals Positive Shift in Economic Recovery

2009-12-07T09:36:00.000-05:00

PricewaterhouseCoopers' Private Company Trendsetter Barometer tracks the business issues and standard industry practices of leading, privately-held U.S. businesses. It incorporates the views of 260 chief executive officers (CEOs/CFOs): 140 from companies in the product sector and 120 in the service sector, averaging $194.1 million in revenue/sales, and including large, $300M plus private companies

NEW YORK, Nov. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- As markets begin to stabilize, CEOs of the nation's leading private companies surveyed for PricewaterhouseCoopers' Private Company Trendsetter Barometer anticipate improvements in the U.S. and world economies within the next 12 months (43 percent optimistic about the U.S. economy). This sentiment was mirrored by international marketers, with 49 percent of reporting CEOs optimistic about the world economy over the next 12 months, up 19 points from the prior quarter and 30 points from one year ago.

In line with this optimism, Trendsetter CEOs reset revenue growth projections for the next 12 months, up nearly two points from last quarter's 5.2 percent to the third quarter's 7.1 percent. Both international marketers and their domestic-only peers reported increased revenue projections, with the latter closing the gap (7.4 percent and 6.8 percent, respectively). Overall, more than two-thirds of leading private businesses plan for positive revenue growth over the next 12 months, with 33 percent expecting double-digit growth and 35 percent expecting single-digit growth. Only nine percent forecast negative growth, while 16 percent expect zero growth.

"With revenue increasing and productivity at an all time high, we're beginning to see signs of economic recovery," says Ken Esch, partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers Private Company Services practice. "Private business owners are taking full advantage of anticipated growth and are repositioning themselves for the future."

Improving Gross Margins Trigger Plans to Hire

Approximately 23 percent of private companies surveyed reported higher gross margins in the third quarter while 27 percent reported lower margins, resulting in a net minus four percent, better than the prior quarter's minus 12 percent and one point higher (a net minus 3 percent) than one year ago. In line with these results, costs and prices decreased for net 15 percent and net 18 percent of all respondents, respectively.

"Lower than usual gross margins still represent a challenge for private company owners, but slightly better results this quarter combined with an expected increase in hiring indicates that leading private companies are taking action consistent with their increasingly optimistic view of the future," says Esch.

Approximately 42 percent of Trendsetter executives plan additions to their workforce, up from the prior quarter's 34 percent and in line with last year's 48 percent. Alternatively, 10 percent plan to reduce staff over the next 12 months, up one point from last quarter and up two points from last year. Surveyed CEOs project an average composite workforce increase of 2.5 percent - up from the prior quarter's 1.4 percent but remaining below last year's 3.6 percent. Smaller private companies (revenues under $100 million) plan more increases in their workforce than do larger counterparts, with anticipated overall composite workforce increases of 5.0 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively (both up 1 point since last quarter).

"Private companies generally operate with fewer people, so it's expected they will need to act quickly when they anticipate demand to pick up for their products and services," says Esch. "Private companies are also looking to upgrade their talent base, as the recession left many well-qualified people looking for work -- even at reduced salaries."

International Sales Continue to Creep Higher

Those private businesses already operating abroad reported international sales improving over the prior quarter, with 32 percent reporting increases (up 8 points from the prior quarter but down 6 points from one year ago), 20 percent reporting decreases, and 48 percent reporting no change. Over the next 12 months, the average prospective contribution from international sales to total revenues among those operating abroad is 18 percent. Interestingly, those operating in emerging markets -- including China, India and Brazil -- expect a solid 26 percent contribution to total revenues, while all others selling abroad expect a 14 percent contribution.

Spending and Capital Investments Remain Steady

Similar to previous quarters, private companies doing business abroad -- especially the one-third selling in China, India and Brazil -- remain ahead of their domestic-only peers in prospective spending over the next 12 months. Approximately 29 percent (up 1 point from last quarter) of all Trendsetter executives plan major new investments of capital over the next 12 months; prospective spending is expected to be an average of 8.9 percent of sales (up from 7.1 percent in the prior quarter and 8.2 percent one year ago).

Marketing
International Domestic-Only In China/
Marketers Peers India/Brazil
------------- ------------- ------------
Plans over
the Next 12
months: 3Q09 2Q09 3Q09 2Q09 3Q09 2Q09
------------ ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Major Capital
Investments 34% 35% 25% 22% 44% 50%

Expansion to
New Markets
Abroad 15% 17% 3% 1% 28% 28%

Increased
Operational
Spending
(net) 61% 64% 53% 45% 67% 72%
------------

New Products/
Services 29% 37% 23% 17% 28% 42%

Information
Technology 17% 19% 21% 18% 22% 28%

Sales Promotion 29% 20% 14% 14% 22% 22%

R&D 21% 15% 5% 4% 17% 22%

"These results reflect an economy on the mend, and companies operating internationally are able to take advantage of higher growth opportunities around the world," says Esch. "The emerging markets continue to be a viable source of growth and development, as evidenced by the significant planned investments by companies in these markets."

Bank Loans and Lack of Demand Cited as Barriers for Growth

Despite a four point drop from last quarter, concern about lack of demand remains the principal potential barrier to growth, cited by 77 percent of respondents. Other top concerns include legislative and regulatory pressures (43 percent), profitability and decreasing margins (43 percent), possibility of increased taxation (35 percent) and lack of capital for investment (27 percent).

PricewaterhouseCoopers works with a majority of the leading private companies in the U.S. Our 2,000 private company individuals focus on understanding the strategy and business objectives of private companies and their owners, working together to add value while reducing risk. Our professionals are provided with cross training to enable them to connect the dots across a number of private company issues such as compliance, controls, access to cash flow, expansion, exit strategies, succession, wealth management and the many areas that can help build or diminish long term success and value. For more information about PwC's private companies services please visit pwc.com/pcs.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (www.pwc.com) provides industry-focused assurance, tax and advisory services to build public trust and enhance value for our clients and their stakeholders. More than 163,000 people in 151 countries across our network share their thinking, experience and solutions to develop fresh perspectives and practical advice.

© 2009 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. All rights reserved. "PricewaterhouseCoopers" refers to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (a Delaware limited liability partnership) or, as the context requires, the PricewaterhouseCoopers global network or other member firms of the network, each of which is a separate and independent legal entity.

For more information about Barometer surveys, including recent economic trend data and topical issues, please visit our web site: www.barometersurveys.com

SOURCE PricewaterhouseCoopers

Preparing for an IT Talent Squeeze

2009-11-05T13:50:00.001-05:00

IT employers, take note: The federal government’s tight time frame for computerization, along with a steep implementation curve, will require more IT workers for health care organizations—soon. Job projections range from at least 41,000 positions to more than 200,000.

Information technology leaders shouldn’t be lulled by today’s sluggish hiring market into thinking IT employees won’t be on the move anytime soon. With the race to computerize the nation’s medical records poised to take off, that’s going to change, industry watchers say.

The federal government’s tight time frame for computerization, along with a steep implementation curve, will require more bodies—soon, and in the thousands at least, they say. The federal stimulus bill, which earmarked $19 billion for incentives related to computerization at hospitals and physician practices, also included financial penalties beginning in 2015. Just 9 percent of hospitals use electronic records on even a limited basis, according to a recent study.

Based in recent discussions with IT experts, the debate seems to be less about the likelihood of a hiring surge and more about how many jobs it will fuel and how soon that surge will happen.

Job projections range widely, from at least 41,000 positions to more than 200,000, depending upon the analysis cited. The 41,000 figure is likely on the low end, says Dr. William Hersh, one of the researchers involved. “That data is probably an understatement—it looked mainly at hospitals,” says Hersh, who chairs the Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health & Science University.

At the moment, though, many health care leaders are in a holding pattern, waiting for the outcome of health care reform, as well as the finalization of key health IT regulations and related grant funds, industry watchers say. In late August, Vice President Joe Biden announced the distribution of nearly $1.2 billion in grants to assist hospitals. The funds won’t start being distributed until October. “Everybody is hunkered down right now,” says John Stevenson, a Dallas-based IT executive consultant and a past president of the Society for Information Management, an IT professional organization.

But once hiring starts, likely by early 2010, watch out, says Walt Zywiak, a principal researcher for Computer Sciences Corp.’s Healthcare Group, based in Falls Church, Virginia. Zywiak was among those who predicted that talented IT employees, including systems administrators, database engineers and security architects, will be recruited from other industries.

“When it [the hiring] does happen, I think there is going to be a tremendous shortage of people,” Zywiak says. “There will be a tremendous competition to get staff out there to install systems.”

Projecting a squeeze
A hiring frenzy may seem more like a mirage now, given that many IT employees have been sidelined by the recession. IT unemployment can be difficult to track, given that positions fall across a number of job categories as characterized by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But a recent analysis of second-quarter data by Information Security Media Group, a publisher, found that unemployment across a range of IT professional jobs had reached an annualized rate of 4.1 percent. That may sound low, compared with unemployment overall, but for IT, it’s the highest figure in at least five years.

And IT leaders don’t yet appear to be in much of a hiring mood. Just 8 percent reported plans to add staff and 85 percent reported maintaining current levels, according to a spring survey of more than 1,400 chief information officers by Menlo Park, California-based staffing firm Robert Half Technology.

Nor are health care jobs immune to layoffs. In mid-August, officials at Kaiser Permanente announced that roughly 1,850 jobs in California (out of 135,000 employees) would be eliminated.

But the long-term IT staffing forecast has been bullish, even prior to the $19 billion commitment under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In the spring, officials at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted that the demand for network systems and data communications analysts would increase by 53 percent from 2006 to 2016 and other technology jobs, including information-research scientists and database administrators, by at least 20 percent.

Initiatives by the Obama administration are projected to boost IT-related federal spending—with a particular focus on health care, energy and green building projects— from $76 billion in 2009 to $90 billion by 2014, according to Input, a Reston, Virginia-based research firm.

Meanwhile, the federal stimulus bill includes both carrots and sticks. Hospitals and physician practices that achieve meaningful use of their electronic health records can reap financial incentives starting in 2011. The term “meaningful use” is still being defined, but for those who don’t make the grade, reductions in Medicare reimbursements begin in 2015.

Just 1.5 percent of hospitals have a comprehensive electronic records system, and an additional 7.6 percent have implemented a system in at least one unit, according to a New England Journal of Medicine study published this year. “To this point, the health industry is basically the backwater of IT technology,” says Tom Pettibone, founder and managing partner at Transition Partners, an IT management consulting firm.

Still, Pettibone senses some reluctance from hospital leaders, who already are financially stretched by the economic downturn. He says they tend to say, “ ‘Look, if I get a few dollars, I need it for beds. I don’t need it for electronic health records.’ ’’

Hiring and poaching
In the Denver area, physician practices and other health care organizations started computerizing medical records several years ago, and so Denver may serve as one harbinger of the staffing challenges organizations will face, says Shannon Salter, a Denver-based information technology practice manager for Hudson IT, a recruiting and consulting firm.

There’s definitely been poaching, she says: “We’ve seen a lot of health care clients recently taking top talent in the IT field out here from other industries.”

Nationally, Zywiak predicts that two primary tech groups will be in high demand: people who can install systems and those who can troubleshoot, forming a bridge between clinicians and tech experts in resolving workflow problems and other implementation challenges.

Security architects and other related specialists also will be hot commodities, given the inherent privacy concerns involved with storing and sharing personal medical data across large hospital systems or even regional networks, says Kurt Roemer, chief security strategist at Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Citrix Systems. For similar reasons, technologists who specialize in cloud computing—storing vast quantities of information over the Internet rather than on individual servers—will likely find numerous health-related employment opportunities, he says.

Employers in non-health industries typically hold one advantage, say Zywiak and several others interviewed. Health IT salaries, particularly at hospitals, tend to be on the lower end compared with other industries, such as financial services. Salter says the difference is not substantial—roughly 5 percent lower than other types of IT jobs— and can be offset by non-salary perks, such as good health insurance and generous time off.

But any pay discrepancies likely will fade away once hiring heats up, says Marty Witrak, who chairs the workforce subgroup of the National Rural HIT Coalition, a cross section of rural health professionals and other interested parties.

“If hospitals are in jeopardy of losing their Medicare and Medicaid payments, they will find ways to pay people a competitive wage to get them to come and work for them,” she says. “They will have to.”

At Hudson’s Denver office, Salter can attest to that ripple effect. In the last six months, Hudson has been approached by several human resources specialists outside health care, she says. They wanted more information about local salary scales to keep their IT specialists from straying.

Workforce.com Article 10/2009
By Charlotte Huff

2009-11-05T13:47:00.000-05:00

Workforce.com: Special Report on Talent Acquisition Technology—Logging Off of Job Boards

Special Report on Talent Acquisition Technology—Logging Off of Job Boards
Many organizations are eschewing general-purpose job boards and turning instead to social networking sites, search engine marketing and niche job sites to get the specific worker skills they need. The online giants are trying to change with the times, however.
By Ed Frauenheim
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Whitney has about had it with job boards. Whitney, vice president of human resources at data networking equipment company Infinera, has stopped buying job ads on online job boards, with the exception of limited postings at Monster.com for positions like entry-level accountants.

Sunnyvale, California-based Infinera needs highly technical talent, such as optical engineering specialists. In the past two years, Whitney found job boards were filling just 5 percent of his openings despite the fact that trolling through résumés from major job boards took up about 25 percent of his recruiters’ time.

Infinera now concentrates on finding passive candidates—those not actively seeking a new job—through a combination of employee referrals and social networking tools such as LinkedIn. The firm’s annual spending on job boards has dropped from tens of thousands of dollars annually to a few thousand dollars. Job boards “are just too generic to be useful for specific skill sets,” Whitney says.

Whitney’s plight is one reason job boards face challenging times, and Infinera’s new focus reflects a shifting landscape in online recruiting. Organizations that once relied on general-purpose job boards are turning to alternative strategies, including social networking sites, search engine marketing and niche job sites. In a May study by research firm AIM Group, nearly 45 percent of recruiters surveyed said they used networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook with mixed or great results.

Such experimentation owes partly to the recession, which is prompting firms to look for less-expensive recruiting methods. The economic downturn also means fewer jobs to advertise, and therefore skimpier revenues at traditional sites like Monster and CareerBuilder. Both vendors reported sharply lower results for the first quarter of this year.

Still, the job board giants aren’t likely to disappear overnight. They say they’re changing with the times, with improvements such as social networking features, enhanced search tools and greater career development content. Bolstering professional development services is a smart strategy for job boards, because it can woo the passive candidates whom employers typically crave, says recruiting industry analyst Peter Weddle. And given the limited dollars currently flowing into recruiting, the pressure is on job boards to stand out, Weddle says.

“We’re separating the boys from the men in today’s marketplace,” he says.

Evolving model
Job boards have evolved a great deal from the first ones that appeared in the mid-1990s. Initially, they were little more than the Internet equivalent of classified ads. Just as classifieds were confined to newspapers, the job board universe for years has been centered at the so-called “big three” sites: Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo HotJobs.

Yet specialty sites have proliferated. Weddle estimates there are now roughly 100,000 job sites worldwide.

Job boards contribute to a small but significant chunk of hiring. Recruitment advisory firm CareerXroads estimates that job boards are the source for about 12 percent of external hires. About six in 10 open positions at large corporations are filled with external hires, according to CareerXroads’ annual study on sources of hires published in February. The share of external hires attributed to job boards has stayed roughly the same the past four years.

That share is unlikely to increase, says Gerry Crispin, principal with CareerXroads. Companies are looking more to alternatives such as social networks and search engine marketing, which involves bidding to place job ads next to search results on sites like Google.

“By and large, corporations have maxed out on the proportion of candidates they’re going to get from job boards,” Crispin says.

Together, Monster and CareerBuilder account for half of all job board hires, according to CareerXroads. And, for the first time in the 8-year-old study, CareerBuilder this year overtook Monster in terms of hires attributed to the respective job boards.

CareerBuilder has developed a wider set of services in the past several years, says Brent Rasmussen, the company’s president for the North America region. On the employer side, CareerBuilder now offers consulting on talent acquisition, advertising agency services and outplacement services.

Such services accounted for less than 5 percent of CareerBuilder’s business three years ago but now make up more than 15 percent, Rasmussen says.

Organizations may not be hiring as much during the recession, but “they’re looking at their employment brand,” he says.

For job seekers, CareerBuilder offers to help people chart their career path, get skills training and connect through its professional network, BrightFuse.com.

“We’re more than just a job board,” Rasmussen says. “We’re the global leader in human capital solutions.”

Monster’s makeover
Other job boards, such as Monster, are making similar claims. A site redesign launched in January features a career mapping service that mines Monster’s millions of résumés to see how people have progressed in their work. Through its acquisition of Affinity Labs last year, Monster also has a stable of sites focused on different professions, such as teaching and nursing.

“To a degree, we’re a job board,” says Monster CEO Sal Iannuzzi. “To a degree, we’re really not.” Broadening Monster to become a career and lifestyle hub has been a priority for Iannuzzi since taking over two years ago.

Still, Monster has sought to improve some job board basics. The company has reduced the number of steps required to post résumés from about 20 to four. Another Monster focus is uneven job search results—an issue that still vexes the industry. Last year, Monster paid $72.5 million for résumé-matching technology specialist Trovix, whose software is designed to take into account the relevancy of skills and job experience and how recently a candidate worked in a particular field—much like a real recruiter.

Monster plans to release a version of the Trovix tool later this year, and Iannuzzi expects big results. “We’re coming very close to mimicking that human capability,” he says.

Yahoo HotJobs has had a more relevant matching technology in place for about a year, says Chris Merritt, general manager of the HotJobs division. Merritt says that helps explain why HotJobs ranks second in traffic to CareerBuilder in the career resources category, according to research firm comScore.

In April, CareerBuilder had 23.5 million unique visitors, followed by 17.5 million at Yahoo HotJobs and 11.6 million at Monster.

In recent weeks there has been speculation Yahoo will sell HotJobs. Merritt, who took over as the site’s general manager this year, declined to comment except to confirm that the company is reviewing its entire product portfolio under Yahoo’s new chief executive, Carol Bartz.

He is also optimistic about HotJobs’ business, in part because of a sales effort launched last summer. The Smart Ads campaign turns job listings into Internet display ads and “narrowcasts” them to Yahoo’s 500 million users worldwide based on their behaviors.

For example, someone who spends time on the Yahoo Finance page and reads Yahoo news articles with a financial bent might get an ad for a stockbroker opening. Smart Ads are shown both on Yahoo sites and on partner sites including Walmart .com.

The program is “growing like a weed,” Merritt says.

While Monster and CareerBuilder offer automated career development tools, HotJobs relies largely on articles by experts, including the advice of HotJobs senior managing editor Tom Musbach. “It’s very difficult to have a tool give you good career advice,” Merritt says.

Keeping current
Neither the human touch nor the high-tech approach is a panacea at the moment. Yahoo’s Career Assessment page recently featured this stale headline: “2006’s Career Dos and Don’ts.” When asked to suggest a path from “reporter” to “analyst,” Monster’s Career Mapping software kept suggesting a career as a “telecom analyst”—a limited result.

Still, efforts to boost career development resources are on the right track, says consultant Weddle, who later this year is publishing a book with his picks for the 100 best job boards. Weddle says smart companies are using the recession to build a repository of relationships rather than résumés. And the job boards that can best serve that goal, he says, are ones with the feel of a professional organization, attracting both active job seekers and passive candidates not looking for work.

“The best job boards are transforming themselves into virtual associations without the dues,” he says.

Dice Holdings, the parent of technology-focused job board Dice.com, is shooting for this goal. Both Dice.com and sister site JobsintheMoney.com, which concentrates on finance positions, feature career news and advice. Posts on Dice.com discussion forums have doubled in the past year to about 9,000 per month, says Dice CEO Scot Melland.

“The expectations of job seekers are going up,” Melland says. “We are becoming much more of a career management or a career development tool than we were five years ago.”

The career content helps explain Dice’s attraction to passive candidates: About two-thirds of Dice.com users are employed.

There’s a cost for ‘free’
Another challenge to the traditional job boards comes from free or near-free listing services. Google Base is a free service from the Internet search giant that allows people and organizations to publish all sorts of information on the Web, including job openings. Online bulletin board Craigslist charges $25 per job ad in cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, but is free in other locations. Major job boards, by comparison, charge hundreds of dollars.

The recent report from the AIM Group, though, indicates “free” comes with a cost. “The free sites, like Craigslist and Gumtree in the U.K., aren’t getting very high marks from recruiters,” Peter Zollman, founding principal of the AIM Group, said in a statement. “While they’re ‘free,’ the effort associated with posting ads there and the work required to screen candidates make them not-very-valued alternatives—at least for now.”

Then there are the vertical search engines devoted to jobs. SimplyHired and Indeed, also known as aggregator sites, aim to provide comprehensive job searches by gathering job openings from around the Web.

Dan Finnigan, CEO of recruiting software firm Jobvite, likens the general job boards to America Online. AOL’s “walled garden” approach gave way to Google’s ability to organize the entire Web easily, Finnigan says. In a similar way, he says, recruiting is moving away from the “closed” systems of job boards and their limited information about applicants and jobs to approaches that target potential candidates based on their overall profiles online—including their relationships in social and professional networks.

“People’s profiles are increasingly everywhere,” says Finnigan, who headed Yahoo HotJobs earlier this decade.

Jobvite’s software allows employees to send job listings to people in their LinkedIn and Facebook networks. It also makes it easy for visitors to corporate career pages to pass along job openings to people in their networks.

Too little, too late?
It’s inaccurate to say the major job boards are missing the social networking trend altogether. CareerBuilder recently launched a service designed to help companies gather information about applicants from sources such as blogs, social networking sites and Web forum postings.

But it may be too little, too late to convince Infinera’s Paul Whitney. Whitney, whose firm uses Jobvite, says traditional methods of recruiting, including job boards, “have failed us. They failed us badly.” Jobvite’s system helps encourage employee referrals, which typically is the best source of hiring, he says. And Infinera uses the technology to boost its visibility on tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

“Employers must respect the boundaries between the personal and the professional in reaching out to these areas,” Whitney says. “But this is where the talent of the future will be.”

Ed Frauenheim is a Workforce Management senior staff writer based in San Francisco. E-mail editors@workforce.com to comment.

No Labor Shortage – Just a Shortage of Imagination

2009-10-05T18:14:00.001-04:00

September 16th, 2009 By Kevin Wheeler
In many cases the shortage of skilled labor may be caused more by very narrowly defined job descriptions and a lack of imagination than by any real shortage.

We set up expectations and define jobs based more on what we want (or think we want) than on what is realistically available.

Many of us say that we cannot find qualified C# programmers, for example, when we all know that there are very few people with good skills in this area. We are left with two choices: wait to find a disgruntled one that we can steal from some other employer or decide to do something to change the supply by developing training programs or taking on apprentices.

Many emerging jobs require a new perspective, rather than an entirely new skill set. An interior designer could easily do the new job of home stager – someone who decorates your house prior to selling it — but for a much lower price. Many skills for jobs in the health care arena can be learned quickly, but are all based on a common set of skills around patient care, communication, and appreciation for and understanding of technology. The real challenge is perpective, atttiude and sometimes the willingness to work for less.

Developing People is a Requirement for Success
I spent many years working in the semiconductor industry when it faced a labor shortage of skilled process engineers and equipment operators. We eventually devised training programs that took basic electrical engineers and developed them into capable process engineers quickly. IBM trained thousands of programmers throughout the 1960s and 1970s to meet its own huge needs. At the same time, IBM and other companies quietly worked with academic institutions to develop today’s academic computer curricula.

This training and development does not have to be of the same type that a person would receive at an ordinary academic institution. In a most every case, corporate training can concentrate on skills that are needed right now and forego the theoretical, the basics, and the nice to have but not critical things. Whether or not a person goes back at some point to get those basics remains a question, but I believe that efficient training can address the labor shortage issue quickly.

In both world wars, the U.S. Armed Forces have reverted to intensive training programs to fill critical positions. They have learned that this can be as efficient a process as having a huge standing army. The trick is in accepting that there is a responsibility on the part of employers to develop the people they need. Employers should be willing to provide the training and development for the jobs they have a need to get done. Waiting for the school system or the government to do your job for you has never been a very good strategy.

We Need To Expand the Labor Pool
Many available people are older or retired and have skills that have become obsolete or are not needed right now. However, these people could be retrained for some of the open positions if we took a different attitude. Unfortunately most of us, or most of our employers anyway, would rather spend money on search fees, agency fees, administrative overhead, and advertising rather than on intensively training people with decent basic skills. Granted we cannot train people for every job because many of them do require experience, or time in the saddle, as they say, in order to be successful. However, I think we could significantly lessen the labor shortage if we were willing to be a bit wider in our job expectations and definitions.

This is why I constantly argue for integrated staffing and development because I believe their functions are inextricably intertwined. It is very difficult to do one without doing the other. If we are to look at recruiting has a process, we are going to have to incorporate development into our staffing thinking and staffing into our training thinking.

Whether this is done through merging departments, or whether it is done simply through good collaboration doesn’t really matter. What is critical is that there is a dialogue between the two functions. . If you work in a small company where there are no separate training and recruiting functions, then this becomes even easier for you to do.

You need to always think whether an open position is better trained for or hired for. Is it a job that would be impossible to train someone for in a reasonable period of time, or is it a job that someone could be trained to do fairly quickly?

When management and recruiters both develop a broader understanding of the issues and step up to the fact that in many cases skilled people are just not available at a reasonable cost, then developing people becomes sensible and cost effective.

There are no labor shortages or surpluses – there are just shortages of imagination and an unwillingness to accept responsibility for filling our own needs.

Hiring Is Hard Work

2009-08-31T07:27:00.006-04:00

By Jack Welch

What's the biggest hiring mistake you've ever made?

Would you believe that with about 60 years of combined experience, we've made too many hiring mistakes to name just one? It's true. Now, many occurred when we were newer at this game, but picking the right people never gets easy. Indeed, we almost blew it twice recently, saved only by last-minute epiphanies in both cases.

Incidentally, even as we were in the midst of making these almost-mistakes, we were cringing a bit, concerned we were offtrack. And yet we forged ahead, feeling simultaneously hopeful and helpless. Our candidates (whose descriptions have been altered to protect their privacy) seemed bright and shiny enough. And we were just so tired of interviewing when there was real work to be done.

Hiring is real work, of course. In fact, given the central importance of your people, it's as important as work gets. And yet, too often we rush headlong into painfully common pitfalls.

Take, for instance, our first near-miss, when we almost gave in to the impulse to hire a person who was too good to be true: Ivy League degree, several impressive technology jobs, and exactly the skills we needed. Well-dressed, well-spoken, charming, eager—the works. Even her target salary was in the low range. The only problem? She couldn't explain why she hadn't held a job for the last six months.

"She's perfect," we actually said to each other, and, "Maybe the job market is tighter than we thought." Finally, we came to our senses when her references simply would not return our numerous calls, forcing us to remember that people who look too good to be true usually have a knack for covering up blemishes on their track records.

A related hiring mistake is rushing to hire a person because he possesses your missing pieces—the Wharton MBA, a way with words, the "prestige" experience. Back when one of us (Jack) was a new graduate of the University of Illinois trying to build a plastics business, he leaped at every candidate whose résumé listed DuPont. Some of those hires turned out fine; others were duds. In the end, pedigree was less important than the entrepreneurial nerve and sales savvy they needed to succeed.

Flip the coin, and you'll find another common hiring slipup: going for the familiar. Same college, social background, favorite baseball team, whatever. This dynamic crops up especially in global hiring, where managers seem irresistibly drawn to the candidate who literally speaks their language. Again, familiarity hiring can work. But too often, once your new hire settles in, you begin to discover shortcomings you should have dug for earlier but didn't because you "knew" the candidate. You only knew what he seemed like—you.

Then there's the mistake of hiring a candidate who has too much experience, or more aptly, too little runway. Yes, it can feel reassuring to bring aboard a person who has seen it all. But eventually these individuals can grow bored of seeing it all again, and without upward options, they become a managerial problem without an easy solution. You've hired someone into a dead end.

Finally, a misstep we've both taken is hiring a candidate who's smart and capable but just too lacking in emotional intelligence, or EQ, the term coined by researcher Daniel Goleman to describe the combination of self-awareness, authenticity, compassion, and resilience that helps make people great teammates and leaders. Luckily, most people develop EQ as they mature, through work and life experiences, good and bad. And many others can be coached to develop latent EQ within. But occasionally you bump into a talented and competent candidate, as we did not long ago, who's so lacking in the EQ components of humility and realness that you can't take a chance. Again, this young man had a lot of the right stuff, but when he started telling us he had never made a mistake in his life and didn't expect to, we knew we'd heard enough.

The happy ending to this story is that we eventually ended up with great people, but we'd have to predict that our hiring travails will never end. As long as "real work" beckons, time is tight, and hope springs eternal, the science of hiring will be imperfect. Just like all the people doing it.

This question and answer originally appeared in Business Week magazine on June 27, 2008.

Why Employee Retention Matters More Today Than Yesterday

2009-08-31T07:13:00.003-04:00

Why Employee Retention Matters More Today Than Yesterday
By Roberta Matuson July 6, 2009

We all know that it's an employer's market. Unemployment is the highest it has been in 26 years. So why are you having a difficult time filling positions? And why should you even think about employee retention when you have candidates lining up outside your door?
According to BusinessWeek, "In the midst of the worst recession in a generation or more, with 13 million people unemployed, there are approximately 3 million jobs that employers are actively recruiting for but so far have been unable to fill. That's more job openings than the entire population of Mississippi." So why do so many employers still believe they are in the driver's seat?
Some people mistakenly believe these openings are mostly lower level positions. You know the kind of jobs that most Americans are not interested in doing. This is simply not the case.
I was speaking last week to one of my clients, who is the CEO of a publicly traded company. He was expressing concern over the inability of his VP of Sales and Marketing to fill several key sales positions that have been open for months. I can't tell you exactly why he is having a difficult time since I have not been actively involved in the search. However, I suspect that it is a combination of things. This is an international company. He needs people with very specific experience in a market where talent is treated like talent. By that I mean, these employees are treated as valuable employees. Their employers know how difficult it is to replace producers. That means there is quite a limited pool of candidates for my client and others to pull from.
There are some lessons we can all learn from this. Eventually the pendulum will swing and it will become an employee's market. I don't have a crystal ball so I can't tell you if that will happen next year or within the next five years. But I can say for sure that it will happen again. Here are some things you can do today to retain the talent you have.
Treat your employees like fine antiques - In some organizations, I've seem managers treat their furniture better than they treat their employees. Think of your employees as irreplaceable. This shouldn't be difficult to do if you've done a great job of hiring.
Promote your talent - Give credit where credit is due. Try this the next time you are in a meeting with a customer. Instead of telling the customer that the department fixed their problem, give them the name of the employee who made this happen. Try doing this in front of the employee. Don't be surprised if the room lights up.
Talk less and listen more - It is difficult to hear what people are saying if you are doing most of the talking. If you ask a question, wait until you receive an answer. Allow your employees to be heard. Then respond accordingly.
Only ask if you really want to know something and are prepared to take action - I can't tell you how many times I am approached by companies who tell me they've done a number of employee surveys over the years and that lately their response rate has been dismal. That's usually because they keep asking the same questions and continue to ignore the answers they are receiving. I can tell you from experience that you are better off doing things your own way than asking for input you have no intention of using.
Retention is actually one of the few things you can control, particularly in this economy. Don't believe me? Just give it a try.
Enjoy the ride!

Thoughts on the Recruitment and Retention...

2009-08-31T06:57:00.007-04:00

Why are Recruiting and Retention Always Lumped Together?
by Harry Griendling

Over the past few years, the term “recruiting” has increasingly become almost automatically appended with “and retention.”

The titles of VP, Director, or Manager of Recruiting & Retention have become pretty common, and many industry commentators clump the two together, almost perfunctorily.

I don’t get the connection.

Most organizations carelessly use these terms, so it may help to gain some clarity by agreeing on our definitions.

First, “recruiting” refers to those activities that are undertaken to convince employees of other companies to leave their current job in favor of a new one. By definition, the end result of this process should be the addition of new workers to our payroll who were not on that payroll the day before we recruited them. In other words, recruiting results in the influx of new talent into a company.

An important point here: this definition renders the phrase “internal recruitment” oxymoronic, and properly so. There is no such thing as internal recruitment, since you cannot, by definition, recruit someone to join the company who is already an employee. You can internally move, redeploy, reassign, or transfer them, but you cannot recruit them. Having recruiters spend time on internal movement activities and calling it “internal recruiting” represents a misuse of a recruiter’s time that will decrease the effectiveness of a function’s ability to actually recruit new talent into the company.

On the other hand, “retention” refers to those activities that a company undertakes to keep its highly valued current employees engaged and committed to the company. In other words, after workers are recruited, hired, trained, and productive, we initiate certain actions and engage in certain behaviors to encourage their ongoing loyalty to our firm.

Many companies do a nice job of making new employees feel welcome and provide excellent onboarding programs to assist with boosting retention from the employee’s first day. But these also occur after a new employee has been recruited, and after recruiting has moved on to finding candidates to fill the next requisition.

Separate and Distinct
If “recruiting” focuses on external talent who does not yet work here, and “retention” focuses on keeping the employees who are already here, aren’t these two activities separate and distinct at their core? Don’t they require vastly different activities and different skill sets to accomplish? Why do we automatically lump these activities together?

The most common thinking, of course, ties the quality of recruiting to retention performance using the argument that if the recruiting function hires the right people in the first place, our workers will have higher engagement, will be more career-oriented, and will stick around longer. But there are a few big problems with this argument.

First, in all but a few rare cases, recruiting doesn’t make the hire; the hiring manager does. Almost universally, the most the recruiting function can do is create the slate of finalist candidates (if they even do that), and the manager takes it from there.

Recruiting may have a vote, but it is rarely a veto. And on those rare occasions when it is a veto, it is not an override veto: recruiting may be able to stop a hire, but it can never force one on a hiring manager who doesn’t want the candidate, no matter how poor the manager’s reasoning.

Turnover’s Fuzzy Logic
The other problem with the argument is that it reflects fuzzy logic about the prime causes of turnover. While a good recruiter should be able to increase the quality of the candidate slate, and therefore increase the quality of the final hire, a bad line manager, poor management practices, and unkind co-workers can frustrate the greatest hire in the world, causing them to leave in record time.

Does a recruiter have control over any of these factors? I have never read a study that links attrition to recruiting practices. I have read hundreds of studies, though, that clearly link attrition with bad management practices, poor selection practices (remember, the manager makes that decision), bad bosses, boring work, lack of career-enhancing opportunities, and unsatisfactory compensation opportunities. Notice that none of these qualities have anything to do with recruiting.

Another challenge in merging these functions is that the capabilities required to be a great recruiter have little overlap with the skills required to build impactful, measurable retention programs.

Great recruiters have an external focus on the market of people who do not work here and may not have ever thought about working here. Retention initiatives are internally focused on people who have already decided to work here. Why would we think that one human being would be good at or be able to split their time between the two worlds? In fact, both roles are large enough to ensure that if you are doing one well you are almost certainly under-delivering in the other.

Interestingly, when we ask recruiting leaders who have this title to enumerate the scope of their retention activities, it is typically limited to ensuring the quality of candidates in the pipeline, sometimes providing marketplace feedback on competitive talent practices (usually compensation and talent management schemes at direct competitors), and marketplace feedback on the company’s market reputation.

Recruiting can certainly increase attrition through poor recruiting practices. Recruiters could, for example, misrepresent actual job duties, fail to eliminate habitual job-changers, or fail to stand firm with hiring managers about best hiring practices. But these are recruiting failures, not retention failures.

Look at it this way: assuming that recruiting does its job right, retention of that employee is no longer up to the recruiting function once that hire becomes an employee. It is up to HR and to line management to ensure their long-term success and loyalty.

After all, consider that line managers:

Make the final hiring decision.
Are primarily responsible, along with HR, for onboarding/new hire integration.
Direct employees’ day-to-day work.
Set the tone of the work unit.
Lead the career development, along with HR, of direct reports.
With assistance from HR, provide performance feedback/direction.
Using HR programs, are responsible for promotions, both within their work groups and throughout the organization.
Let’s stop pretending that recruiting and retention are natural soul mates. Even more importantly, let’s put the retention focus where it properly belongs: in the hands of HR for overarching programs and in the hands of line managers for day-to-day delivery.

Let’s make first-year retention performance and top talent retention performance part of line managers’ key performance objectives. Let’s measure HR business value in terms of their demonstrated effectiveness at impacting workforce engagement and key employee retention.

Let recruiting focus on bringing us the best new talent on the market.

Then recruiting and retention will have the space they need to improve.

Top 10 Tech Skills That Stand Out

2009-07-27T08:18:00.000-04:00

Top 10 Tech Skills That Stand Out

BY BRITTANY BALLENSTEDT 07/15/09 03:40 pm ET

A recent survey by Dice.com found that hiring managers are having a difficult time finding job applicants with skills and experience related to the security, efficiency and cost effectiveness of technology, specifically to fill talent voids in areas like networks and databases, and strategies like virtualization and collaboration. "At a time when certain job openings prompt a wave of responses, managers need a way to identify the most serious contenders, just as candidates need a way to demonstrate their skill in a particular technology," the survey states. "For both, certifications are a key element."
While direct experience is key to landing a technology job, Dice says, here are the top 10 skills and certifications that can make applicants stand out:
1. Security
2. Virtualization
3. Java/J2EE
4. SAP
5. .net
6. Database Administrators/Administration
7. Oracle
8. Active Federal Government Security Clearance
9. Project Manager/Management
10. Sharepoint

Can You Really Get a Job Using Twitter?

2009-04-18T18:45:00.001-04:00

Can You Really Get a Job Using Twitter? One Job Seeker Gives a Resounding YES.
Forbes Magazine 04.15.09

BusinessWire - There are many articles and stories about people posting and searching for jobs via Twitter. The big question is does this type of approach work? For one job seeker, the answer is a resounding yes.

P. Downes of Staatsburg, New York, needed a new job. After posting his resume on several job sites, spending money on creating a better resume, and even using professional career coaching, nothing was working. "Then I found TweetMyJOBS.com (http://www.tweetmyjobs.com)," says Downes. "Instant Karma." He received notification of an open position, called the hiring company, got a meeting, and was quickly hired.

TweetMyJOBS.com is the idea of Gary Zukowski, an entrepreneur located in Charlotte, North Carolina. Users can search jobs for free by signing up for various job channels in for cities across America. Companies, in turn, can post jobs on the site as well. When a job becomes available on a job channel for which a person has subscribed, the person instantly receives a text message on his or her cell phone notifying them of the opportunity.

"Job seekers and recruiters are all rushing to use social media such as a way to find and post jobs," says Zukowski. "However, since this process is so new, people want to know if this approach truly works. Because of the functionality we offer we are confident that we have built a service that will produce results."

How much has this experience with TweetMyJOBS.com affected Mr. Downes and his career? "In addition to my normal day to day sales responsibilities part of my new job is Social Media Guru!"

About TweetMyJobs.com
TweetMyJOBS.com is an innovative online service based out of Charlotte, NC that connects employers and job seekers instantaneously using Twitter. Employers can post jobs and notification of the job will automatically be sent to a job seeker as a text message. It was founded by Gary Zukowski, a 21-year veteran of corporate America. He also owns and operates EasySoft Solutions, Inc., an IT Staffing and Consulting company in Charlotte, NC, and holds a graduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Northeastern University.

Social Media Etiquette

2009-04-17T08:13:00.005-04:00

Social Media Etiquette Roundup: Understanding Cultural Norms
By Debra Askanase

There seems to be a favorite type of blog post addressed to the new social media user: “What To Do On… (name of social media network).” Along with blog posts, there are FAQs on almost every forum, listserv, and social network. Why do we need these posts? Each participatory media has its own culture and cultural norms. Part of the beauty of participatory media is that the participants actually want you to participate and reap the benefits of participation.
The culture of each social media network is entirely different. I would never write a blog comment with the same informality with which I’d write on a Facebook Wall. Not even to the same person. A Facebook friend always starts his updates with “…has just updated his professional blog. Check it out!” He acts similarly on Twitter. He doesn’t know that participatory media means…participating and not advertising. A little bit of cultural orientation would probably increase his business three-fold.
Non-profits often make the same mistakes as people. Many smaller non-profits that I work with are just beginning to dive into social media, but are intimidated by the cultures. They want to engage meaningfully, but don’t know how to start.
I want you to create meaningful conversations with your stakeholders. I have compiled a list of etiquette and cultural orientation advice about using each of the major social media networks and tools on the web.
Enjoy and, if you appreciate these tips, pass them along. If you have additional links or tips, please let me know. I look forward to conversing with you on the web!

Twitter Etiquette
14-Point Guide to Twitter Effectiveness (and culture):Writing My Twitter Etiquette Article: 14 Ways to Use Twitter Politely
Chris Brogan: Social Media Is No Place for Robot Behavior
Mashable’s Top 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You In Return on Twitter
Great cultural tips from Twitip (and a good twitter resource): Use Twitter for Your Business the Right Way

Blog Etiquette
Good overview of blog etiquette: Blog Etiquette
The cultural norms for blog comments: Blog Etiquette and Commenting
Nice roundup of blog etiquette from several blogs: Blog Etiquette or Blogtiquette
Good tips on making your blog look & conform to the cultural norm: 10 Mistakes That Could Be Killing Your Blog
Culture of blog linking: Why No One Links to Your Blog

Facebook Etiquette
A whole blog only about Facebook etiquette here!
A personal coach’s experience of the two cultures: Twitter vs. Facebook culture
Friending on Facebook: The Facebook Commandments
Facebook etiquette for the college crowd:The Dormdelicious Guide to Facebook Etiquette

MySpace Etiquette
Suite 101 Roundup: MySpace Etiquette Tips

Nice perspective from the college crowd: Cyber Etiquette: The Do’s and Don’ts of MySpace
Bebo and MySpace etiquette: Bebo and My Space–Yes, My Love…There are Rules

LinkedIn Etiquette
From a reputation management expert’s perspective for both the business and the individual LinkedIn Etiquette: Five Do’s and Don’ts
Good LinkedIn and Networking Etiquette Post: Etiquette for LinkedIn and the Professional Networking World
From LinkedIn Blog: 7 Rules of LinkedIn Etiquette
Social Bookmarking Etiquette
Mashable’s great tips on using StumbleUpon and understanding its community: How to Get the Most Out of StumbleUpon
Thoughtful guide to social bookmarking etiquette, in general: Social Bookmarking Etiquette
YouTube Etiquette: Be A Good YouTube Commenter

Podcast Etiquette
Podcast Etiquette: How To Make Your Guest Look Like a Star
Very comprehensive overview of Podcast Culture (note: cannot find more recent information): Podcast Culture — Made by Podcasters

What NOT To Do On Social Media Sites
Interactive Insight Group’s Superlist of What Not to Do
What not to do with each social media tool: The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook
Additional Reference
Interactive Insights Group’s 100 Resources to Boost Your Social Media Savvy in 2009 is a wonderful resource for using social media.

TweetMyJobs & Technology

2009-04-02T08:49:00.008-04:00

I just posted my first 2 jobs (IT Java Architect/IT Desktop Apps Mgr for Idexx Laboratories) on TweetMyJobs and I'm looking forward to testing it out. Now that I'm back to recruiting mostly IT positions - I'm really enjoying utilizing some of the new technology I've been following. We certainly are living in exciting technological times!

Check out the link I was just sent: http://bit.ly/LGu8z

TweetMyJOBS.com Connects Employers and Job Seekers on Twitter
Monday March 30, 2009 on Talent Management.com

Charlotte, N.C.The social networking site Twitter is based on the question, “What are you doing right now?” If the answer is looking for a job or seeking to fill an open position, a new start-up has built an application that might be for you.The company is TweetMyJobs.com, and was founded by Gary Zukowski, an entrepreneur located in Charlotte, NC. Using a proprietary software program that Zukowski created, people can search jobs for free by signing up for various job channels in cities across America. Companies, in turn, can post jobs on the site as well. When a job becomes available on a job channel for which a person has subscribed, the individual instantly receives a text message on his or her cell phone announcing the opportunity.“The goal is to become the premier and largest job posting site in America,” Zukowski said. “Based on the simplicity for both the job seeker and job poster, we are confident we are well-positioned to become the industry leader and completely revolutionize the employment market.”In addition to connecting individuals, TweetMyJobs.com provides resume posting services, the ability to forward a job to a friend and a service that allows companies to feed all of their jobs electronically to TweetMyJobs.com.“Everyone keeps asking, what are the practical business applications for Twitter,” Zukowski said. “TweetMyJobs.com addresses that need in the marketplace.”

For more info: http://www.tweetmyjobs.com/

The 20 Best Job Search Web Sites

2009-03-27T08:02:00.003-04:00

The 20 Best Job Search Web Sites
03.11.09 by Sean Ludwig, PC Magazine

Unemployment numbers are sky high, but there is a silver lining: there are lots of great online resources to help job seekers find work.

As we all know by now, unemployment numbers are sky high and companies are laying people off like it's 2001 again. However, there is a silver lining for those looking for new employment: there are more resources than ever to help job seekers find work.
These 20 Web sites take different approaches to find you the right job. Some sites, like Indeed, simply aggregate material from all other sites, while sites like TheLadders make you pay to take advantage of their high-paying job services. No matter how select or general you want your job search to be, one of these sites has you covered.
Scroll through our list of favorites and find the career site that best fits your own needs. And good luck with the job hunt!

Listed below is PC Magazine’s Top 20 Best Job Search Sites:

1. Beyond.com. Beyond claims to be the “largest network of niche career communities” on the Net. It essentially hooks together different organizations like PRJobForce.com and PhillyJobs.com all in one place, which makes it easy to find leads in your community.

2. CareerBuilder.com. As the Web’s biggest job site, CareerBuilder gets more than 23 million visitors a month. The company has been around since 1995, and has developed an incredible network of listing sources and job search centers since that time.

3. Craigslist.org. The granddaddy of online classifieds gives those who are focused on searching for jobs within their communities an easy way to look. It might be one of the least-polished entities listed here, but the sheer number of local job listings makes up for it.

4. ExecuSearch. This site looks to be a selective, higher-tier job search property. ExecuSearch screens and reviews every resume that is submitted, and helps employers find the best possible candidates for their open positions.

5. Hound. Hound’s search engine shows jobs from employer Web sites only. In theory, this cuts out duplicate listings and shows opportunities that are not posted on other job boards.
6. Indeed. Indeed works as an aggregator for listings from major job Web sites, company Web sites, associations, and other online sources. Its simplicity and ease of use are its best features.

7. JobCentral. JobCentral is a service formed by a nonprofit consortium of U.S. corporations like IBM and Dell, which makes it ideal if you’re looking for corporate job listings.

8. JobServe. JobServe claims it was “the world’s first Internet recruitment service.” In 2008, JobServe advertised more than 2.5 million jobs across 15 industry sectors.

9. Jobster. Jobster uses an active approach to help employers and recruiting teams of all sizes find their candidates. The company calls its method “social recruiting,” and it services 24 different job categories.

10. LinkedIn. Best known for being a social network for professionals, LinkedIn also has thorough job listings, some of which are exclusive to LinkedIn.

11. Monster. In addition to being arguably the best-known global job-listings site, Monster also offers advice on resumes, interviewing, and salary information.

12. Oodle. Oodle, which specializes in online classifieds, includes a job classifieds section that finely cuts job opportunities down to job title, category, industry, and company. Did you know, for example, that Best Buy has nearly 10,000 openings?

13. onTargetJobs. onTargetjobs owns a lot of smaller niche sites like BioSpace.com and MedHunters.com. Its expansive niche database allows users to find compatible job listings more easily than with general sites.

14. SimplyHired. SimplyHired is similar to Indeed, as it also aggregates listings from major job Web sites, newspapers, company Web sites, and associations. However, the site goes a little deeper and allows users to send their resumes out for posting on five other sites for free.
15. SnagAJob. SnagAJob is basically the antithesis of sites like TheLadders and ExecuSearch, as its focus is on hourly employment only. The site has partnered with companies like 7 Eleven, Red Lobster, and AMF, to bring the most up-to-date hourly job openings.

16. TheLadders. This job site has branded itself as the place to look for $100,000+ jobs only. Job seekers have to pay $30 per month to fully take advantage of the site’s services.

17. Trovix. Trovix’s free search engine makes the job-search process more personalized. Users input their work experience and qualifications and the site matches results to what info they have given. Trovix also has an innovative feature called Job Map, which allows you to type in your location and see on Google Maps how many jobs are available in your area.

18. TweetMyJobs. One of the newest sites to take advantage of social media, TweetMyJobs supplies Twitter users with instantaneous job listings that are derived from TweetMyJobs’ Job Channels.

19. USAJobs.com. USAJobs is the official job site for the U.S. government. With the government looking to significantly increase spending during the next few years, looking at federal jobs might not be a bad move if you’re in a tough place.

20. Yahoo! HotJobs. As one of the biggest job sites on the Web, HotJobs distinguishes itself by focusing on features such as status (which shows how many times one’s resume has been viewed) and the ability to block companies from seeing your resume. ...

See link on PCmag.com: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2342781,00.asp

TweetMyJobs

2009-03-19T09:42:00.001-04:00

Very interesting article I found on ERE.... I can't wait to check out TweetMyJobs!

TweetMyJobs Has a Following And A Whole New Business
John ZappeMar 18, 2009, 11:28 pm ET

TweetMeJobs might have been a more fitting name for TweetMyJobs, a new service that leverages Twitter’s instant, broadcast messaging capabilities to send job posts to anyone who signs up at TweetMyJobs.com.

We say TweetMeJobs because the volume of tweets sent in the few weeks this free site has been up is nothing short of staggering. Mostly, the jobs are coming from Indeed, the jobs aggregation site that itself has maybe three-quarters of a million jobs online at any moment. Using Indeed’s jobs is just to build volume while the concept catches on, founder Gary Zukowski told us. As the number of jobseekers grows, so will the original job postings. Already, about 40-50 original jobs a day are tweeted.

We pause, here, to explain how this works. Jobseekers (and recruiters) need two things: 1) A Twitter account, and; 2) a TweetMyJobs login. It doesn’t matter which you get first. When you register at TweetMyJobs.com you’ll pick a geography and a job category. Actually, you can pick as many as you want. Then wait for the first job to be tweeted to you. The message will be short, since Twitter accommodates only 140 characters. Check the jobs on your Twitter page, or have the messages sent to your phone. Yes, regular text charges apply.

Back to Zukowski, who says the idea of using Twitter as a job distribution channel occured to him a few months ago as he was mulling over various ways of using social media in his own IT staffing and consulting business, EasySoft Solutions. He started building TweetMyJobs about the time the New Year dawned. Six weeks later he had a functioning site, and launched in mid-February. A remarkably short development time for an IT project, but also a cleverly simple one for the masses who have yet to discover Twitter.

Says Zukowski, “We needed to build something a layer or two above Twitter for all those laymen who aren’t there yet.” What he politely means is that jobseekers and recruiters who don’t know a tweet from a Tweety Bird can use the service.

What makes TweetMyJobs different from a job board is the instant notification and the potential for an equally fast reponse. “The differentiator is instant notification,” Zukowski explains, offering up the example of an on-the-go jobseeker who can find out about an opportunity while, well, while on-the-go. Or how about using it in place of the hiring hall, he says.
A few days ago, says Zukowski, the Connecticut State Department of Labor called about using TweetMyJobs to distribute its jobs. Since the original site only offered the 50 largest metro markets in the U.S., he’s been busing adding more geographical divisions, and has expanded into Canada, India, Israel, and the U.K.

From the recruiter’s perspective, if you need candidates now — a staffing order for 30 call center reps or for systems techs — you can get the word out fast and get a response back, even, potentially, in seconds. In fact, by the end of this week, Zukowski will have a profiling feature enabled on the site. Candidates can upload their resume, add whatever else they need, and get a short URL that they can Twitter back when an interesting job gets Tweeted to them.
Everything is free, and what’s free now will stay that way for the forseeable future. However, there is a business model here. Zukowski tells us in time he’ll offer premium features like retweeting stale jobs, bulk tweeting corporate openings, and who knows what else.

Jobvite's Move to Social Network Recruiting

2009-03-03T08:56:00.012-05:00

Although familiar with Jobvite, I haven't used the e-recruitment provider until recently. This new move to social networking will make Jobvite even more valuable...

This article is from John Zappe - ERE February 10, 2009:

Jobvite's New Tools May Be Game-changers for Social Network Recruiting
Jobvite, the e-recruitment provider that emphasizes collaborative hiring, is releasing a new LinkedIn and Facebook interface today. Now, Jobvite users not only can forward company openings to their friends and connections, but they’ll know who among them is the best match for each position.

That alone makes the announcement news, but this is a game-changer. Even more important than the access it gives recruiters to two of the largest networks in the world, is the validation Jobvite is bringing to all those predictions about the value of social networks as a recruiting tool.
No need to point out that recruiters discovered social networks almost as soon as they came along. That’s true enough, but consider how they’ve been used for recruiting. It’s mostly been a passive exercise with Facebook and MySpace widgets enabling a company’s jobs to appear on individual pages. LinkedIn and others of its kind have been mostly a source of leads.
In the one instance, the social networks are little more than a job board in new clothes. In the latter case, it requires active recruiter time to source candidates, more targeted perhaps, but functionally not a whole different from using Google or Yahoo or other research tools. As recently as last summer Kevin Wheeler was predicting that eventually social networks “will become core to good recruiting and talent management,” though he called them “over-hyped and poorly used at the moment.”

Jobvite’s announcement today, and last week’s from Appirio, are bringing us closer to realizing as practice what Wheeler astutely saw as a trend. What the new tools from both companies do is to leverage social networks in a directed manner. Where referral programs pioneered by the likes of companies such as Jobster (site; profile) scattered job opening announcements like seeds in the wind, Jobvite and Appirio tell participating employees who among their contacts would be a best fit. Forwarding the opening is still up to the employee, but at least it won’t be an address-book dump.

So similar are the tools from the two companies that you have to wonder if it’s one of those natural evolutionary paths or someone was peeking in someone else’s window. Both also operate pretty much the same way.

Here’s how the new Jobvite tool works: A participating employee opts in to the program by logging into their Facebook or LinkedIn account (Appirio’s took works only with Facebook) using the Jobvite service. Jobvite then analyzes their Facebook friends and 1st-degree LinkedIn contacts, matching them to jobs on the basis of the skills they list, the job titles and companies in their profiles, and other relevant information. Matches are reported to the employee who chooses to forward — or not — the job opening.

This is where the Jobvite tool parts company with Appirio’s tool to go a step further. Actually, it goes many steps forward: A recipient of a job announcement who decides to forward it to their contacts can also opt-in for the matching feature. So even if you have no connection to the company that has the job opening, you can see who among your contacts is a good fit and forward it only to them. And so long as the referrals are made via the link in the email, everything is tracked so the recruiters know whence came the referral.

“In a world in which the job seeker is changing,” says Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite, “It’s obvious the backend side of e-recruitment is going to change.” In this case, Jobvite’s created a sort of guided viral program that leverages the information individuals volunteer about themselves to find the best match among their employees’ contacts.

There’s plenty more to like about the new release. Interested referrals who choose to apply can use their online profiles, instead of a traditional resume. There’s also a LinkedIn widget they can use to find out who works at the company, should they have questions or want to make a direct contact. There’s also a Twitter application to send job invitations to followers and, if they have posted a Twitter profile, to offer up matches.

“People want to use their networks to do their jobs better,” Finnigan was saying as we talked about the social networking phenomenon. “The people who do that have friends and contacts who do that too and those are the people recruiters want to reach.”

Despite the tracking, Finnigan said neither Jobvite nor the employer ever learn who is in anyone’s network (except, of course, should one of them apply for the job). The way both the Facebook and LinkedIn APIs work keeps the data from flowing back. Jobvite neither stores nor retrieves data.

One interesting aspect is that the APIs these social networks make available have a value that Appirio and Jobvite and others still to come are commercializing in an important way. LinkedIn sells a recruiter service itself. So how long will it be before the network operators start to charge for this kind of access? That will depend on how well these recruiting programs pan out and especially how much more efficient they are identifying good candidates.

How good, then, are the matches? That all depends on how good the profiles are and how well designed the job description is. Jobvite’s analysis uses job titles, geography (location), education, skills and keywords. For competitive reasons, Finnigan didn’t get too specific about the algorithms Jobvite uses. But he did say the system is heuristic. “It has to learn over time,” he told us. “Suffice it to say there is a feedback loop.”

Chances are it uses fairly standard matching developed by the ATS builders as a starting point, then learns to give more or less weight to certain terms and their proximity to each other based on things like whether similar candidates in the past applied for the job and whether interviews were scheduled and possibly even if offers were made. (Jobvite is a recruitment management system that includes calendaring, CRM, ATS, and offer management.)

As Finnigan added, social networking and the kinds of tools that Jobvite is introducing, are the future of recruiting.

Ten Imperatives for Strategic Sourcing

2009-02-16T10:04:00.003-05:00

I hope everyone is enjoying this long weekend - I know I am! If you enjoy recruiting as much as I do, you'll be taking some time to get caught up on some reading. While cleaning out my folders, I found this back to basics article on Sourcing posted by The Human Capital Institute on HR Guru.

Ten Imperatives for Strategic Sourcing

Great companies maintain their competitive advantage by almost unfailingly “getting the right people on the bus”. The first link in the chain is sourcing. Top sourcing and recruiting professionals implement and even invent “next” practices but they also have a solid grasp on the fundamentals. They are forecasters, strategic planners, savvy marketers, analysts and futurists. A profile of today’s top sourcing professional looks something like this:

1. They know what they’re looking for:
Great sourcing starts by taking the time to understand and document the skills necessary for success. This means satisfying today’s needs but also sourcing people with the capabilities to quickly learn new skills and competencies as the business evolves. This isn’t guesswork, effective sourcing means understanding corporate strategy and objectives, two or three years out, and being knowledgeable about industry trends.

2. They have a sourcing strategy:
Effective sourcing requires a targeted approach; it is not a numbers game. As above, top recruiters understand the corporate business strategy so that they know what types of talent to target and how to prioritize sourcing and recruiting efforts. They also gather intelligence in how target talent looks for work and how they are successfully sourced. Different talent requires different approaches, different tactics and different messaging.

3. They think and act like marketing professionals:
Recruiters and sourcers used to be like order takers, the calls were mostly incoming. In the past, a one-to-many advertising approach was acceptable. Today attention grabbing job titles and compelling descriptions are just the starting point. Targeted messaging, sophisticated branding, highly engineered career web sites and a CRM approach to building and leveraging a talent pipeline are necessary but no longer leading edge. The best sourcing professionals are adopting a consumer marketing approach, using a wide range of tools, technologies and methods to reach their audience and compel it to take action. They understand the importance of stealth marketing to build buzz around the firm and its opportunities and they know that the best candidates, like consumers, aren’t likely to respond to the first message they receive.

4. They relentlessly tap the networks of their employees:
There is no better sourcing method than employee referral. Every employee can be a talent scout. Every conference, seminar, birthday and wedding can be an opportunity to assess potential talent. World class sourcing operations engage the workforce to refer candidates. Employee referral is is the least expensive and most efficient sourcing method, most importantly, it results in better hires. At least one-third, and ideally one-half of hires should come from this source.

5. They source everywhere:
Great sourcers see no borders or boundaries in finding the best performers. This means they fear no challenge when it comes to poaching top talent, or bridging geographic borders. They target their competitors’ ‘A’ players. They are leaders in their organizations in arguing for the recruitment of top talent no matter where it resides in the world. As futurists, they also realize that the best people are less likely to emigrate or relocate today, and so they advocate for the use of virtual and remote teams so that the very best can be assembled regardless of distance.

6. They measure, analyze and continuously improve:
The best know where they are adding the most value, they know the effectiveness of each source and method and they can calculate their impact on the business. They can articulate their value in financial terms by tracking the revenue impact of the people they source and who are hired versus the cost of their own operations. They measure and analyze their efforts and outcomes so that they can demonstrate their worth, but more importantly, so they can continuously make adjustments to improve their sourcing and recruiting methods.

7. They understand and leverage technology:
No surviving profession has changed more profoundly in the past ten years than sourcing. Job boards, resume databases, intelligent search engines, social networks, blogs, wikis and virtual worlds are just some of the sourcing tools that have come on the scene since the late 1990s. It is next to impossible for a sourcing specialist to compete today without a mastery of at least some of these tools. Those who keep apace of emerging technologies and become selective early adopters, can gain tremendous competitive advantage.

8. They add rigor to the hiring process:
The best talent expects to be tested strenuously before an offer is made, after all, good people don’t want to join a firm that will take just anyone. In sourcing, rigor starts by knowing what you’re looking for, targeting talent strategically and screening potential sources thoroughly.

9. They contemplate the future:
Strategic sourcers know that there are almost always precursors or warning signs that alert to upcoming change. These may be broad economic changes that impact demand for talent. More often change is portended by disruptive technology, new competitors, breakthrough processes or pending regulations. Despite the pace in most sourcing and recruiting operations today, top professionals take the time to think about the future.

10. They source all types of talent:
The contingent and non-traditional workforces are growing at more than five times the rate of the traditional workforce. Organizations rely more and more on contract, temp, remote, flex-time and part-time workers. Worker preference is also driving the trend as both older and younger talent often opt for the freedom and higher comparative wages that contract work offers and/or the flexibility of alternative work arrangements.

In the past, sourcing and recruiting existed in the context of a labor market that was local and domestic and in which the majority of recruiting occurred through traditional sources such as newspapers and agencies. Today, the talent market is global, virtual and contingent. Unemployment rates are near historic lows and the best aren’t actively looking for work. Sourcing has become strategic, the leading professionals in the field are adapting by using the techniques above.

LinkedIn Launches "Talent Advantage" Suite

2009-02-13T07:08:00.004-05:00

by Elaine Rigoli February 2nd, 2009

Roughly one new member per second,” explains Francois Dufour, LinkedIn’s senior director of Enterprise Marketing.

He is, of course, referring to the rapid growth of LinkedIn, which now tops 35 million members. And due to job postings on LinkedIn having doubled over the last six months, the company has unveiled a “new” suite of solutions for recruiters. It’s called LinkedIn Talent Advantage, which is essentially an enhancement of four existing products and one brand-new product.

The newest feature is geared primarily to corporate recruiters, but third-party recruiters should know how to use LinkedIn Custom Company Profiles. It’s something you may see in client offices, and it’s something clients may ask you to help them develop as they seek to present information that is relevant based on a job-seeker’s background and professional interests.

(If you’re thinking this was already an option, you’re right…users were already able to view company profiles. The changes now allow companies and recruiters to develop an employer brand with content specifically designed for particular profiles.)

In addition, the company has added enhancements to LinkedIn Recruiter; LinkedIn Jobs Network; LinkedIn Talent Direct; and LinkedIn Employer Advertising.

“LinkedIn Talent Advantage lets recruiters unlock the power of LinkedIn’s extensive professional network so they can uncover quality passive candidates who are unlikely to be on traditional job boards,” says Dufour.

Social Networking

2009-02-11T12:59:00.006-05:00

An interesting article by John Zappe on Jobvite....

Jobvite’s New Tools May Be Game-changers For Social Network Recruiting

Jobvite, the e-recruitment provider that emphasizes collaborative hiring, is releasing a new LinkedIn and Facebook interface today. Now, Jobvite users not only can forward company openings to their friends and connections, but they’ll know who among them is the best match for each position.

That alone makes the announcement news, but this is a game-changer. Even more important than the access it gives recruiters to two of the largest networks in the world, is the validation Jobvite is bringing to all those predictions about the value of social networks as a recruiting tool.
No need to point out that recruiters discovered social networks almost as soon as they came along. That’s true enough, but consider how they’ve been used for recruiting. It’s mostly been a passive exercise with Facebook and MySpace widgets enabling a company’s jobs to appear on individual pages. LinkedIn and others of its kind have been mostly a source of leads.
In the one instance, the social networks are little more than a job board in new clothes. In the latter case, it requires active recruiter time to source candidates, more targeted perhaps, but functionally not a whole different from using Google or Yahoo or other research tools. As recently as last summer Kevin Wheeler was predicting that eventually social networks “will become core to good recruiting and talent management,” though he called them “over-hyped and poorly used at the moment.”

Jobvite’s announcement today, and last week’s from Appirio, are bringing us closer to realizing as practice what Wheeler astutely saw as a trend. What the new tools from both companies do is to leverage social networks in a directed manner. Where referral programs pioneered by the likes of companies such as Jobster ([4] site; [5] profile) scattered job opening announcements like seeds in the wind, Jobvite and Appirio tell participating employees who among their contacts would be a best fit. Forwarding the opening is still up to the employee, but at least it won’t be an address-book dump.

So similar are the tools from the two companies that you have to wonder if it’s one of those natural evolutionary paths or someone was peeking in someone else’s window. Both also operate pretty much the same way.

Here’s how the new Jobvite tool works: A participating employee opts in to the program by logging into their Facebook or LinkedIn account (Appirio’s took works only with Facebook) using the Jobvite service. Jobvite then analyzes their Facebook friends and 1st-degree LinkedIn contacts, matching them to jobs on the basis of the skills they list, the job titles and companies in their profiles, and other relevant information. Matches are reported to the employee who chooses to forward — or not — the job opening.

This is where the Jobvite tool parts company with Appirio’s tool to go a step further. Actually, it goes many steps forward: A recipient of a job announcement who decides to forward it to their contacts can also opt-in for the matching feature. So even if you have no connection to the company that has the job opening, you can see who among your contacts is a good fit and forward it only to them. And so long as the referrals are made via the link in the email, everything is tracked so the recruiters know whence came the referral.

“In a world in which the job seeker is changing,” says Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite, “It’s obvious the backend side of e-recruitment is going to change.” In this case, Jobvite’s created a sort of guided viral program that leverages the information individuals volunteer about themselves to find the best match among their employees’ contacts.

There’s plenty more to like about the new release. Interested referrals who choose to apply can use their online profiles, instead of a traditional resume. There’s also a LinkedIn widget they can use to find out who works at the company, should they have questions or want to make a direct contact. There’s also a Twitter application to send job invitations to followers and, if they have posted a Twitter profile, to offer up matches.

“People want to use their networks to do their jobs better,” Finnigan was saying as we talked about the social networking phenomenon. “The people who do that have friends and contacts who do that too and those are the people recruiters want to reach.”
Despite the tracking, Finnigan said neither Jobvite nor the employer ever learn who is in anyone’s network (except, of course, should one of them apply for the job). The way both the Facebook and LinkedIn APIs work keeps the data from flowing back. Jobvite neither stores nor retrieves data.

One interesting aspect is that the APIs these social networks make available have a value that Appirio and Jobvite and others still to come are commercializing in an important way. LinkedIn sells a recruiter service itself. So how long will it be before the network operators start to charge for this kind of access? That will depend on how well these recruiting programs pan out and especially how much more efficient they are identifying good candidates.

How good, then, are the matches? That all depends on how good the profiles are and how well designed the job description is. Jobvite’s analysis uses job titles, geography (location), education, skills and keywords. For competitive reasons, Finnigan didn’t get too specific about the algorithms Jobvite uses. But he did say the system is heuristic. “It has to learn over time,” he told us. “Suffice it to say there is a feedback loop.”

Chances are it uses fairly standard matching developed by the ATS builders as a starting point, then learns to give more or less weight to certain terms and their proximity to each other based on things like whether similar candidates in the past applied for the job and whether interviews were scheduled and possibly even if offers were made. (Jobvite is a recruitment management system that includes calendaring, CRM, ATS, and offer management.)

As Finnigan added, social networking and the kinds of tools that Jobvite is introducing, are the future of recruiting.

Article printed from ERE.net: http://www.ere.net/ Posted by: John Zappe
URL to article: http://www.ere.net/2009/02/10/jobvites-new-tools-may-be-game-changers-for-social-network-recruiting/

New Tools for Recruiters on LinkedIn

2009-02-05T12:09:00.004-05:00

LinkedIn Launches Set of HR Tools - Helps Recruiters find Passive Candidates
By Chris Crum 2/2/2009 on WebProNews:

LinkedIn has introduced a new set of tools for HR professionals called LinkedIn Talent Advantage. The release reflects LinkedIn's mentality that the best job candidates aren't always actively seeking new jobs, although job posting responses on LinkedIn have doubled over the last six months.

Included in the suite, are:

1. LinkedIn Recruiter, which helps corporate recruiters source top passive talent, with extended search, full profile viewing, direct messaging and team collaboration tools.-

2. LinkedIn Jobs Network, which consists of job postings on LinkedIn that deliver precise targeting, candidate match recommendations and viral distribution of job postings throughout the network.

3. LinkedIn Talent Direct, which consists of "InMail" campaigns to reach more potential candidates faster and more precisely.

4. LinkedIn Employer Advertising, which can be targeted to specific groups of professionals

5. LinkedIn Custom Company Profiles, which are rich and extensible company profiles with viewer-aware information that can adapt to the viewer’s location, industry, function, etc. to build an employment brand.

"LinkedIn Talent Advantage lets recruiters unlock the power of LinkedIn’s extensive professional network so they can uncover quality passive candidates who are unlikely to be on traditional job boards," says LinkedIn’s Senior Director of Enterprise Marketing Francois Dufour. "Over 900 leading companies already depend on LinkedIn’s recruiting solutions. The hiring market has changed, and the new LinkedIn Talent Advantage is a game-changer for the human resources community."LinkedIn has developed a reputation as the go-to social network for professional networking. This new package should do nothing except build upon that. With the economy in the shape its in and job cuts announced left and right, tools like this have never been more relevant.

Chris Crum WebProNews Monday 2/2/2009

Facebook as a new ERP Tool?

2009-02-04T15:08:00.010-05:00

I've been hearing more and more about utilizing social networking as an employee referral tool - very interesting concept when you think about it. I thought the two articles below made some good points.

Both articles below can be found on ERE's Facebook page. "Realizing the Power of Facebook" is written by Raghav Singh and "New Tool Leverages Facebook Friends for Employee Referrals" by John Zappe.

Realizing the Power of Facebook

Many employers are eager to tap the potential of social networks as sources of talent. The potential is huge, and facing difficult economic conditions, these can be a cheap source. But it’s easier said than done. Some employers have put up their own corporate pages on Facebook. But this accomplishes nothing more than to prove ignorance of online social media. What makes social media so popular is their, well, social nature. They enable people to meet social needs. This may seem as obvious as the nose on your face, but it’s amazing how many employers don’t get it.

The word “social” has many definitions, but some of the more appropriate ones are 1) pertaining to friendly companionship or relation; 2) Seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; and 3) living or disposed to live-in companionship with others rather than in isolation. The point being that people use social media as a two-way street and to get a sense of community. To belong to a community one has to have something to contribute and be accepted as a member. A community is people interacting with each other. It requires free flow of ideas and thoughts. None of that is delivered by a corporate web page, which is essentially static. People do not invite companies to be their friends. The same is true for recruiters wanting to get hires off Facebook. Creating and cultivating a network to the point where one actually has a hire can take a long time, and the ROI can be impossible or very difficult to justify. It’s not possible to say that X number of hours spent networking will result in Y number of hires and it is not a replicable model.

The Amway Model
There is a very successful and proven approach to tapping the potential of social networks. This has been around for decades before there was Facebook. Companies that operate using network marketing — such as Amway, Avon, and Mannatech — build and work their networks by providing a little structure and the messages they want delivered along with incentives to get the results they desire. They know that their networks exist and thrive where they become communities. They are not clubs where anyone can buy a membership and get the benefits. The people that succeed at network marketing emphasize the social component. The same is true of Facebook. Active members have built their networks to form communities they want to be part of. It’s a two-way street, with lots of interaction, dialog, and sharing — elements that have been true of communities since there have been communities.

Employers wanting to tap social media for talent need to recognize and respect these realities. It’s not about putting up a web page — it’s about what you have to contribute. Therefore it’s easier to tap the networks that already exist — those of employees. Employees can be encouraged to write about their employer, their experiences at work, things the company is doing that may be interesting to others, and so on. Some ERP systems now offer functionality that allows an employee to directly post jobs to their Facebook page. But this requires flexibility and giving up control over what gets put on those Facebook pages along with the job postings. Many employers are accustomed to having all communication beyond the firewall restricted to the boring drivel put out by the PR department. The idea that employees can be writing, blogging, and putting out stories about their employer without review can give many an HR manager an acute case of dyspepsia.
I had one such experience where a company I worked with was so shaken by a blog posting I wrote that was critical of someone, that they created an entirely new corporate policy requiring all employees to have everything they wanted to put on a blog, a website, or any other medium approved or risk termination. Of course, not everyone is as paranoid or PC as this bunch — they would be uncomfortable about any writing that was critical of Bin Laden, on the outside chance he’s really a nice guy who’s been framed or badly misunderstood.

Don’t Kill the Goose
Succeeding at tapping social networks as a source of talent requires participating or contributing to what makes them popular. Many recruiters have limited time to create their own networks or spend time blogging. But in either case what employees do will be far more effective and, more importantly, far more credible and therefore better received than any hype that marketing can spin about the paradise that exists inside the corporate walls. This isn’t exactly a new idea — some employers have long allowed candidates to talk to current employees without any monitoring of the conversation to get a true sense of what it’s like to work there.

Trying to control or restrict that is an exercise in futility, better described as tilting at windmills. Of course that never stopped employers and others from trying. Employers tried for years to restrict their employees’ use of the web out of the fear that they would just waste their time, before finally giving in, by which time mobile devices had made the restrictions irrelevant anyway. The same will be true of social networks — the desire to control the lives of others is deeply ingrained and anything having to do with the web seems to turbocharge it — just look at China and most of the Middle East. Of course, as all that try it have discovered — such actions result in equally forceful opposition.

By embracing social networks and encouraging employees to talk up their employers, warts and all, any employer can turn their workforce into a big referral program that will dwarf any effort the recruiting organization can manage on their own. The key is to recognize that social networks exists first and foremost for the benefit of their members — to provide them a sense of community and meet their social needs. To reiterate — the value provided by a social network is that it is social. An employer that can’t understand this simple concept should best stay away from trying to tap social media.

New Tool Leverages Facebook Friends For Employee Referrals

There’s a cool new app from a young startup making its first foray into the recruiting sector. Released by San Mateo-Calif. Appirio, the Referral Management Solution connects Salesforce and Facebook to allow a company’s employees to pass along job openings to their Facebook friends and refer them to hiring managers.
What makes it worth the $25,000 annual fee is how Appirio’s tool does its work. First, it pretty much runs on its own, once an employee opts in. It’s magic comes from its ability to access the employee’s friends list, analyze their job skills and experience from the profile Facebook members complete, and match them against company openings.

It’s up to the employee to pass along the opportunity and refer their Facebook friends. Interested candidates who decide to move forward can be sent to the company’s career site to apply, but all are tracked by Salesforce.

The accompanying pictures shows a Facebook page with a referral recommended by the Referral Management Solution. The page also includes sales leads, which are generated by a version of the same program that’s designed for developing sales leads and viral marketing.

Privacy, Appirio’s VP of product management and marketing Ryan Nichols told us last week when he walked us through the system, is “top of mind for us.” Neither the employer nor Appirio know who the potential matches are. They do get to know there are matches, but, says Nichols, the job data is brought to Facebook and contact information isn’t exported. “Just sending messages to friends. That’s all it is,” he says.

What makes Appirio’s use of social connections for recruitment different from some of the other programs out there — Jobster, for example — is that it identifies connections that are a match before anyone has to lift a finger. Other referral programs tend to simply cast a wide net and hope that the right fish swim in. With the Referral Management Solution, Facebook referrals at least know their profile keywords fit the job req keywords. As is always the case, the quality of the match depends on the quality of the job description and the profile and how many keywords are matched.

Appirio’s tool works only with Salesforce, no doubt because Salesforce — and Sequoia Capital — are financing the startup. Nichols told us versions for other recruiting software are in the works.

ROI on Social Networking (cont'd)

2009-02-03T08:48:00.005-05:00

As a recruiter, I spend a lot of time keeping up on the latest and greatest technology out there - heaven forbid I miss something! In my blogs I'll be incorporating many of the articles I find along the way.

Here's the best article about using LinkedIn for sourcing I've found out there. It's from ERE and it's written by Irina Shamaeva:

Sourcing with a Free Account - Do you use LinkedIn for sourcing? Everybody does these days, right? Would you like to be more efficient, reach more relevant people, and do this all for free? Perhaps you are aware of some of the points below, but I hope you will find something new here too.

Join LinkedIn Groups
Suppose one of your areas is, like mine, SAP Consulting. Search for groups using the word SAP in the group search box. The groups will be shown in the order of size. You will find:
SAP Community with almost 15,000 membersSAP Network Global (12,000+) … Active 12,000 membersSAP People Forum almost 8,000 membersetc.
Join these groups. The instant benefit is that all of the members are now in your network even if they are beyond the 3-level connection distance.
Search for Group Members and Send Them Messages for Free
There are two ways to search for people in a group. First, there’s a simple search box within the group members tab. You can search for members by keywords. The advantage is that you will see 500 results.
Now notice that you can “send a message” to any of these people using a link under their name in the list of results. If you go to the very last page of the search results, you will likely see people who are connected to you only through the group, yet you can send them a direct message. That is just like sending a LinkedIn “Inmail” but is free.

The second way to search is to use the new advanced people search functionality. You are able to check one or more of your groups on the advanced people search page to target your search at these groups’ members. You can now combine your search with keywords, target title, company, location, etc. If you have a free account you would only see 100 results. (It used to be 500 just recently.) I don’t see it as a big limitation; there are always ways to run a variety of searches to see more results. If you mouse over a person’s profile in the results list you will see the link “send message” for people who are either connected to you or are in your group. If you go to a profile view, you will see the same “send message” link there as well.
Important Notes on the LinkedIn search syntax:
a) LinkedIn search allows you to use Boolean syntax: as an example, in the group search members box you could look for“SAP FI” AND Consulting NOT Recruiter.
b) However, just like Google, LinkedIn search does not recognize special characters like @. It’s no use to include @ in your search string in order to find email addresses either on Google or on LinkedIn.
c) While Google search would see the symbol * as “a word or a few words” and some databases like Monster would allow to use it as a “wildcard,” LinkedIn search doesn’t recognize the symbol * at all.

Post Discussion Items on Groups
On the majority of LinkedIn groups, the discussion boards have anything and everything. People self-advertise, announce that they are “open networkers,” etc. However, if you post a discussion item about your opportunities there’s a chance you will see some relevant responses.
Or, post an interesting industry-specific question in the hopes that you will hear from experts.

Explore the Company Pages
The company search is located at http://www.linkedin.com/companies
Search for the company you are sourcing for. LinkedIn shows a lot of information on a company page. That includes the “career path” that helps identify target companies for your sourcing.
Search within the companies is rather limited, but you could also do a Google X-ray search like this: site:http://www.linkedin.com/companiesto investigate target companies and look for their employees.
As an example, do a Google search
SAP Consulting site:http://www.linkedin.com/companies “San Francisco”
and explore the results.

Use Contact Capture to Parse and Organize Your People Searches
Broadlook Contact Capture is a great tool with many uses, and it’s free. You can download it at http://www.broadlook.com/braingain
On the “people search” page on LinkedIn, use the “extended” view. Highlight-all on the page and use Contact Capture to capture the results. The tool was not made for pages like this, and you will get some extra “junk” — but this will capture all the first and last names. If you searched for employees of a specific company where you know the email pattern, you can now create an email list for these people.
(Another relevant tool comes from eGrabber. It is not free but is extremely useful for capturing and parsing LinkedIn profiles. Go to the site www.eGrabber.com and look for the “Excel” tool.)
Have Their Email Address? Learn More About the Person
If you have an email address that is likely to belong to someone you’d like to learn more about, there are several ways to do it using LinkedIn.
You can enter it in the “import contacts” page. If the person is on LinkedIn and is not in your network you will get a link to his/her profile. Another way is to use the LinkedIn Outlook toolbar. If you create a contact in Outlook with the email, save it and reopen, you will see a link to the profile. You can download the Outlook toolbar from http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=outlook_toolbar_download

Drive Traffic to Your Profile
It is somewhat similar to search engine optimization for websites. Make sure your profile is complete, and it’s clear what your competency is and who you are looking to connect with. Make your profile rich in content; add links and applications such as Wordpress if you have a blog. Use relevant keywords in your profile including variations (such as consultant and consulting).
To get more relevant people to find you, post interesting questions and answers in the LinkedIn Q&A section; start LinkedIn groups; use your LinkedIn profile link in your signature in emails, blog posts, Twitter posts, etc. (Here’s mine, by the way: http://www.linkedin.com/in/irinashamaeva)

Being an “open networker” or not is, of course, a personal preference. I think though that with 30+ million of people on LinkedIn, it’s a good idea not to limit yourself to networking with a just few people whom you closely know, but allow yourself to see and be seen by a larger community.
I hope you liked what you read. I’d also like to invite you all to join our “Boolean Strings” group on LinkedIn. It’s a great community of people and you will have a chance to learn a lot and to share your web sourcing knowledge.

by Irina Shamaeva Jan 13, 2009 ERE

ROI of Social Network Recruiting

2009-02-02T16:09:00.001-05:00

I've always found myself motivated by the word "resplendent" and thought it appropriate for my new blog. Resplendent Recruiting is all about the most effective and up-to-date recruitment tools in the market today. LinkedIn, Twitter, Tweetdeck, Facebook, MySpace, Digg and many many more tools we have at our fingertips to use. But are all of the tools making us better recruiters? Can we measure the ROI of social networking and if so, how?

I like this article by Adam Nash posted on ERE:

"One of the most powerful things about the LinkedIn platform is its search capability, although it takes many people a while to discover the power of people search. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to share some of the less obvious features of LinkedIn search, which when mastered can take your efforts to a whole new level.

The following tips are pretty technical. However, I’m sharing them because I have found them immensely useful in the past few weeks, and hopefully some of you are interested in becoming power users of LinkedIn search. So, using the example of a search for Java engineers for LinkedIn, here are five tips on how to search LinkedIn like a pro:

1. Jump right into advanced search. One of the biggest advantages of the LinkedIn platform is that the data about people is in a structured format. This means that you don’t have to combine everything into a generic keyword query - you can actually specify query terms for specific fields. For example, if I’m looking for people who currently work at Oracle, I could just search for the keyword. Unfortunately, that will match everyone who has "Oracle" on their resume, either from a former job, or just to say that they know how to work with Oracle databases.Instead, using advanced search, you can specify "Oracle" in the field directly for positions, even specifying the "current position only" check box. That will give you a tight search that only returns people who currently have Oracle in their current role. You can access advanced search by clicking the link next to the search bar on the header of the LinkedIn website. You can also find many of the advanced search tools just by clicking "Refine Search" on any LinkedIn search results page.

2. The Magic of Boolean Search: OR. People use different words to describe similar concepts on their profiles. For example, a Java engineer might have "Java" on their profile. However, they might also have "J2EE" or "JSP". LinkedIn search supports the concept of OR, which means that you can have LinkedIn return people who have any one of those terms in their profiles. (Please note, the "OR" has to be in capital letters) So, in our search for a Java engineer, we might do a search for: Java OR J2EE OR JSP This search will return people in your network who have any one of those terms in their profile.

3. The Magic of Boolean Search: AND. If you thought OR was fun, get ready for a real party when you add AND to the mix. AND allows you to insist that a person have both terms in their profile.So, if you want someone who has both Java and Engineer in their profile, you would type: Java AND Engineer. This becomes incredibly powerful when you combine it with OR. For example, if I am looking for a good Java engineer, I might split each term into several possible words:
(Java OR J2EE OR JSP) AND (Engineer OR Architect OR Lead). Note the use of parentheses to group the OR terms together, so the AND will apply correctly to any of the words in each group of terms.

4. The Magic of Boolean Search: NOT. The last function in the Boolean search trio is NOT, and it is a tricky but powerful operator. It can’t be used alone, but in conjunction with other terms it will exclude people from your search who have that term in their profile.So, for example, when I run the search above in my network, a lot of the engineers closest to me who fit that description are actually already at LinkedIn! That’s no good for a recruiting search. NOT is here to the rescue. With the following search:(Java OR J2EE OR JSP) AND (Engineer OR Architect OR Lead) AND NOT LinkedIn. You will get back every person who matches the original query, but without people who have LinkedIn on their profile.

5. Leverage the sorting functions. By default, LinkedIn sorts your search results by keyword relevance. In many cases, this is the best option, because it will prioritize results based on the keyword matches from your search. However, LinkedIn does offer other options.For example, LinkedIn has the ability to sort search results by number of degrees from you, which is particularly useful if you are trying to find people closest to you in your network.
To use the sorts, just click "Refine Search" on the header of any search results page.
It may take a bit of practice at first, but it is amazing how quickly the above tips can really take the effectiveness of your searches to a whole new level. It is very easy to do a quick search on LinkedIn, and then, using Refine Search, constantly optimize the results with the techniques here to get to a very rich and accurate set of profiles.
I hope these tips prove useful to you. I’ll be back again with more tips and tricks on how to make use of both existing and new features. "