HR Strategy

Although recent terrorist events may have occurred thousands of miles away from you, there are many potential people-related problems that may still occur at your location. Strategic HR people need to react quickly to business problems and managers need to realize that uncertainty and inaction can actually increase anxiety, so …

In times of tight budgets and low growth, managers need to think twice before hiring more staff. Hiring people is expensive, time consuming, and even a bit risky if you later find out that you don’t really need more employees. Smart managers consider the alternatives that are available to increase …

Any savvy recruiter is well aware of the economic downturn that is facing most industries today. If that downturn has not yet affected your job as a recruiter, let me assure you that soon it will. Where I work in the Silicon Valley, the wave of recruiter layoffs is well …

I’m often asked, who are the “visionaries and thought leaders” in employment? In most professions, identifying the leaders is relatively easy. But it?s not that easy in recruiting. I have found after over 30 years in employment that we are a unique profession. Employment has no official “father or mother,” …

It’s amazing that only one company I know, Cisco, requires rigorous internal recruiter training before a recruiter can start recruiting. Most firms use a “throw them out there and see what happens” approach. If your newly hired recruiter has a background in executive search or sales you are probably OK. …

One of the primary questions in the minds of candidates is “Where will I be two years from now?” Unfortunately, most recruiters and managers respond to that question with meaningless generalities like, “You’ll have lots of opportunities.” In fact, what candidates actually want is a realistic preview of where they …

When there is a war going on, sometimes the smartest thing to do is to avoid the battle entirely and live where there is relative peace. In a similar light, if you are facing a shortage of talent, consider this strategy: put the work where the talent is already located, …

In baseball, major league teams get much of their talent from “farm teams.” A farm team is a team that they sponsor so that when they developed talent beyond the skill limits of the farm league, the farm team then passes along that talent to the next higher level team. …

One of my pet peeves in HR is the “overuse” of hiring freezes. All too often, senior managers respond to a minor budget crisis by immediately putting on a hiring freeze. In some companies the freeze seems to be a predictable practice that is repeated once or twice a year, …

Most hiring decisions are traditionally made by individual managers; however, these are some reasons why hiring is better done by a small permanent hiring team.Why Managers Shouldn’t Do Most Hiring There are numerous reasons why individual managers shouldn’t be doing most of the hiring. They include: “Rustiness.” The limited volume of openings …