Recruiting Strategy

If you are a recruiting leader or recruiter who is constantly on the lookout for new recruiting trends, practices, and tools, you have surely already heard of QR codes. QR codes are a second-generation barcode that allows potential candidates to quickly and directly access supporting materials and websites using only a camera equipped smartphone. QR codes have many uses, but …

I have stated for years that “recruiting is just sales with a crummy budget,” but there is one major differentiator: sales professionals widely accept the principle that you can’t successfully sell to a customer with multiple options unless you fully understand the customer. Professional sales organizations have been using market research for decades to learn the needs, expectations, and the …

One of the easiest ways corporate advisors and consultants help their clients improve performance quickly is highlighting and putting an end to dumb things being done that negatively impact results. Over the years I have developed my list (some of it is shared below), but I would love to hear your thoughts on what you are seeing today that makes …

by Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett It’s 5:30 a.m., and Joe McHenry, a 36-year-old international tax manager who works in New York City, wakes up, checks his e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter activity from his smartphone all before getting out of bed. By 6:45 a.m. he’s dressed and walking to the train station for his 40-minute commute into the city. …

It’s hard to build a world-class corporate recruiting function without a comprehensive list of the principles that define a top function. While tips on being a good recruiter are available in abundance, there is little written that focuses on the undocumented principles that separate merely average functions from those that truly deliver. Based on my observations in the field over …

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that when business revenues are down, it simply doesn’t make sense to carry a large-scale recruiting effort, but if you’re smart, you know that once an economic turnaround begins, the competition for talent will again be fierce. Starting a major recruiting effort too early or too late both have negative …

Talent Is Key in Any Turnaround   Despite CEOs acknowledging that developing “strategies for managing talent” (Growth Reimagined, PwC, 2011) is the most critical business problem they face in this difficult business environment, there are few leaders in talent management bold enough to accept the challenge of leading a business turnaround. Recruiting leaders often say that they want to have …

I’ve written many times about actions recruiting managers can take to improve the impact of recruiting, but with the ongoing pressure many recruiting functions feel to do more with less, now is a great time to review a short list practical, easily implemented actions appropriate for an individual recruiter or manager. These low-hanging fruit are capable of producing dramatic results …

Recruiting leaders tend to be a pretty conservative group, sticking with tried-and-true approaches, tools, and methods.  Because they are almost always managing from the weeds, there is little time invested in identifying, testing, and refining new solutions, but that doesn’t mean such solutions don’t emerge. The inventory of available approaches is quite large, with many solutions existing under the radar. …

Talent acquisition functions spend thousands of hours and millions of dollars designing processes to hire top performers, innovators, and game changers. Unfortunately few of those dollars or hours are spent fixing the biggest roadblock in recruiting A-level talent: weak hiring managers. Everyone seems to intuitively know that managers are the weakest link in any hiring process but few have had …