A reporter from the Wall Street Journal once asked me what I thought was the greatest secret in recruiting.  Such a broad question would usually cause one to ponder, but my immediate response was that abusive hiring processes cost organizations millions of dollars by turning possible customers into lifelong “haters.” …

The most powerful recruiting advertisement I’ve seen in the last two years didn’t originate from Google and it wasn’t found on a social media site; instead it was a “take your breath away” billboard designed to attract a single person. Usually billboards are a complete waste of money, but this …

Spock of Star Trek fame was famous for pointing out things that were completely illogical, which leads me to believe he would have had a field day examining corporate recruiting practices. Of all the things that we do in corporate recruiting that are difficult to logically justify, my vote for …

In any situation where employees fail to perform as expected, investigators must determine if the human error could have been caused by factors beyond the employee’s control. Such external factors might include actions by senior management, lack of adequate information or job training, faulty inputs to the process, or rewards …

The Hotbeds of Evolution and Innovation are Shifting No one can argue that rapid growth of the technology sector in 1997 left many technology companies desperate for talent, and that desperation drove many charged with recruiting for such organizations to both collaborate and innovate new practices to help close gaps …

You will never become a world-class recruiter if you restrict your learning to benchmarking against other similar corporate recruiting functions. Great recruiters can and do learn many things by studying completely different business functions like sales, marketing, branding, supply chain management, quality control, and customer relationship management. In addition, great …

Prepare action step outlines — it’s not necessary to complete a detailed written plan for every possibility, but you should prepare an action outline highlighting the key steps that you would take for the most likely upcoming events. Develop these steps using if-then scenarios (i.e. if this happens, then we …

A Contest to Identify the Most Effective “Finding Tool” This story begins with a famous government agency, DARPA, wanting to test the effectiveness of the available tools/approaches to locate missing objects or individuals, i.e., pieces of downed aircraft, wanted criminals, or missing children. Because this task was so large in …

Action steps for handling the power shift There are four primary action steps that you should consider when the competition for attracting and retaining talent once again becomes intense for your organization: Jugaad is now required: The intense competition for candidates that occurs in a war for talent, coupled with …

Last week I introduced this series by talking about how general business changes have rendered what many might consider traditional strategy development in talent management more of a hindrance to organizations than a benefit. I did not say that strategy is not important, or that delivering a strategic impact is …