A while back, I was asked to give a presentation at Google’s main campus in the heart of the Silicon Valley on the future of corporate recruiting. The audience was a combination of Google recruiting staff and recruiters from other organizations in the community that Google was interested in getting …

Anyone who has worked in corporate recruiting for any period realizes they work in a profession that has dramatic up-and-down cycles. Unfortunately, the down cycles following rapid growth tend to be the harshest. Who can forget the literal “implosion” of world-class recruiting functions like those at Cisco, Nortel, and Trilogy …

I am an unabashed follower of the HR philosophy of Jack Welch, former CEO of GE. He is a proponent of a “business-like” approach to HR that emphasizes its critical role in impacting organizational results. Welch is certainly controversial in HR circles because he advocates many things that “softies” in …

There is nothing more important in the business world than demonstrating the dollar impact of what you do. Every major business function from marketing, sales, finance, supply chain, customer service, and production routinely demonstrate their return on investment. However, as with many aspects of corporate life, HR tends to be …

When times are good and recruiting is booming, invariably recruiters wonder why there is no bonus plan for internal corporate recruiters. The impetus for their proposal stems from the fact that external third-party recruiters routinely receive bonuses based on their performance. In my experience, it is the incentive system that …

In previous articles, I highlighted what’s wrong with interviews, some alternatives to supplement interviews, and pre-planning steps to improve the customer experience. In this part, I’ll provide some suggestions on changing the timing and the content of interviews, both of which can increase the number of top performers who will …

Recruiting Managers, Do You Really Have a Recruiting Strategy? Part 1. What is a recruiting strategy? When I meet with directors or managers of corporate recruiting, I routinely ask them a simple question: “What is the name of your recruiting strategy?” Almost without fail, I get one of two basic …

Profile of the Two Teams Strategic recruiting team: It focuses on the very highest impact jobs, including mission critical jobs, senior execs, revenue producing jobs, jobs with a high consequence of an error, and "high value customer" impact jobs. These jobs require a firm to hire candidates who are in …

12 Best Practices I Would Emulate Valero's business-case model. Using basic statistical regression models, the recruiting function identified the gaps between what the business would need to continue operations and what talent they could bring in via their current model. They then converted that gap into a dollar impact and …

Interviews Stink as Selection Devices Everyone conducts interviews; it is an established part of business culture and nothing is going to change that. Applicants expect interviews as do recruiters and managers. Unfortunately, the extensive use of a tool does not make that tool and accurate one. There are literally dozens …