It has been an amazing year in recruiting and talent management, despite severe economic hardships, budget cuts, and widespread hiring freezes. Unlike the economic turmoil following 9/11 and the dot-com bubble burst, many recruiting functions have continued to innovate and stretch the limits of what can be defined as “standard …

It’s hard to find a more misunderstood and mismanaged human resource area than employee turnover. Executives are constantly sounding off about how “bad” employee turnover is, but in some cases, employee turnover is actually a positive thing. Imagine, for example, that you had a poor-performing worker like Homer Simpson. If …

More often than not, it is the simplest things in life and in business that produce the biggest impacts. Having spent more than 30 years analyzing corporate recruiting practices and strategy, I have noticed there are some rather basic questions that, if only posed, would have a profound impact on …

It would be pretty hard to throw a stone in most HR organizations without hitting someone who manages an antiquated process. Despite significant changes in how people live, work, and play, many HR practices continue on as if they were operating in 1960. For years employment advertising specialists relied on …

For many in corporate staffing, contingent labor management is an unpleasant activity often relegated to the lowest-cost outsourced service provider the organization could find, mainly because no one internally wanted to deal with it. The work is largely considered mundane, process-oriented, and as a necessary overhead cost that provides little …

Let me apologize upfront for this “rant” on HR’s failure regarding workforce planning, but I can’t think of another time where human resources as a profession appeared to be floundering to the point where it’s embarrassing itself. All you have to do is read the paper on a regular basis …

Economic downturns, mergers, and acquisitions all place pressure on organizations to curb labor costs. No time in the last decade has that tenet been more apparent than right now. Layoffs, large or small, force organizations to cut loose the talent in which they have invested salary and training dollars. While …

What’s hot in talent management changes quite often.  Right now, there’s no hotter topic within the talent management community than workforce planning. The reasons are simple: with the current economy driving revenues down dramatically, many senior executives are examining how to plan ahead in order to increase their firms’ capabilities, …

Questions & Answers How do you make the business case to managers who believe now is not the time to be recruiting college grads/interns, etc.? What are the long-term consequences of stopping college recruiting? Any time you make a business case you need to address the concerns of your audience …

You can’t read a newspaper these days without reading about organizations that are implementing employee furloughs in order to save money and to avoid layoffs. They might seem like a good idea but they might end up not saving money at all and could cause more turmoil than they are …