We all acknowledge the fact that for the past few years we have been fighting a war for talent. While the war may have subsided as the economy retrenched, don’t let the calm before the storm catch you off guard. A major problem is about to descend upon U.S. corporations: …

Recruiting is a strange field. You can’t get a degree in it at any university, and that makes learning how to become a great recruiter a difficult task. Corporations also contribute to “recruiter ignorance.” Over 95% of all corporate recruiters are given their job without any required classroom training program …

I received a number of follow-up ideas from readers as a result of my article in January on how to improve offer acceptance. Here are some of the best: Eric Lane, Intuit From Eric Lane, Silicon Valley recruiting guru and director of executive staffing at Intuit: Find out about “family” needs. Find a …

Are top performers expensive? If you ask any expert in compensation to tell you what the typical pay differential (i.e., salary and bonus) is between an average performer and a top performer in the same job, you might be surprised to find out that the differential isn’t much. The analysis …

In Part 1 of this article series, we looked at the many reasons why your organization should measure the quality of its hires. Here in Part 2 we’ll take it a step further and get into the details of what to measure and when to measure it. Quality Of Hire: What …

I consider the single biggest fault with corporate and external recruiting functions to be their almost universal failure to measure the quality (or performance) of the people they hire. Nearly every other “overhead” function, from supply chain to package delivery, has jumped on the ISO or six-sigma bandwagon, but recruiting …

If you’ve watched an hour of business news on television or picked up a business magazine lately, the mix of good and not-so-good economic news probably puzzled you. It’s been a real roller coaster lately, and no one can predict when exactly our economy might exit its current slump. Some …

Many employees want to change the world?? or at least know that their job makes a difference. Wanting to know that their job has an impact?? whether it is on the product, the customer, the environment, or society?? is becoming an increasingly more important issue. Unfortunately, in large corporations many …

Remember back in high school, when everyone seemed to follow the most popular athlete or cheerleader around? Not only did everyone follow these “stars” around, but everywhere they went suddenly became a “cool place.” Well, the same is true in recruiting. If you recruit noted professionals (known as “magnet hires”) …

I get to work with quite a few senior HR people during the time they are proposing new HR or recruiting programs. Almost without exception, they seem totally surprised when their new “pet project” is massacred by a team of MBA financial analysts armed with a battery of what I …