12 Ways (a company can) Keep Recruiters Busy

From ERE Exchange

by Dan Kilgore

Jun 5, 2009, 5:52 am ET

If
you're like some corporate recruiting leaders before the current
downturn hit, you had your staff balanced with a solid mix of regular
full-time staff, supplemented with contract staff to get you through
the hiring peaks.

But maybe you weren't quite as fortunate, and your crew was heavily
loaded with regular staff recruiters, who were going full steam to keep
up with the incredible hiring requisition load. Or maybe you have shed
the contractors, but even your remaining staff is struggling to stay
busy. Unfortunately, now that the economy has gone south, they're
running half the req loads they once did. Not only are they questioning
their own job security, but you're constantly fending off queries from
your boss, the rest of HR, and maybe even the CFO as to just what the
recruiters are doing, and why should you be maintaining the same staff
you had when the current workload has shrunken so dramatically.
Sounding familiar?

Hopefully, back in January of this year, you took Lou Adler's sound advice
that "hiring will start to recover in Q2, 2009, and now is the time to
rebuild your recruiting team and massively upgrade your sourcing
and hiring processes." Perhaps you've done just that, and are now well
positioned to address any coming business increase. Or possibly you
didn't get that opportunity, or your business still hasn't begun to
bounce back.

In any event, you do have alternatives - methods you can use to
gainfully deploy your staff resources in ways that clearly, and
measurably, demonstrate their ongoing value to the business. The
challenges will be different, depending on the size of the company
you're in. In a small firm, you are likely to have more latitude in
initiating change - but possibly fewer resources available. In a larger
firm with more resources, you are likely to need to build a support
coalition of colleagues, business partners, or executives to create the
right atmosphere for change. But in either situation, it's critical
that you build the "business case" - show the ROI through well-tracked
and supportable metrics.

In my more than 20 years of recruiting leadership, predominantly in
hi-tech, I've had ample opportunity to face this challenge, given the
cyclical nature of that business. And as you can imagine, I willingly
responded to a blog posting earlier this year asking other recruiting
veterans for their experiences in facing the same issue. 13 of us
shared our stories, from a variety of industries and backgrounds. The
following are a few snapshots of some of the proven practices and
strategies that have been successfully implemented by others to
preserve their key recruiting assets during previous business slowdowns.

Some of these are creative twists on previous themes, while others
represent really out-of-the-box thinking. [NOTE: All of them are
predicated on the assumption that you know your staff --- their skills,
strengths/weaknesses, and backgrounds. If you're new in the role, you
might want to begin with a resume review and light career discussion
with each of them.]

I do hope you find some of the suggestions below fascinating,
creative, and useful. I will be presenting a seminar/workshop on this
very subject, and with a lot of additional detail on implementation, at
the upcoming ERE Expo in Florida in September, and we'd love to see you there.

1. (Internal) Outplacement Services: For the regular
   recruiters, create a corporate career university - in essence a full
   outplacement program modeled after those offered by external vendors
   (at ridiculous prices). The recruiting staff would run workshops, on
   and off-site, such as resume writing, interviewing skills, campaign
   management, negotiating offers, use of the Internet, etc. This one is
   very easy to show a solid ROI for.


2. (External) Outplacement Services: Take the same
   offering "on the road" to college placement offices, state unemployment
   offices, and even social groups/non-profits, as a community service. It
   may also be a tax write-off.


3. Business Development: Deploy researchers/sourcers
   on business development activities. You can gain access to your sales
   department's CRM (client/customer relationship management system), and
   then scan those prospects that had weak or limited knowledge recorded
   in the database. Then you can create a full Company Profile - sort of
   like a Dun & Bradstreet Plus workup, and at no cost to the
   organization.


4. Directed Research: Those same
   researchers/sourcers, working with the senior admin staff, can get a
   "heads up" on all planned executive travel that would be visiting
   customers or prospects. Once you know who they are meeting with, create
   a "personal dossier" on each of the individuals they will be meeting
   with, (including home addresses, photos, personal data, etc,), put it
   in a packet, and give it to the traveling executive the day before
   departure, as "airplane reading."


5. Top Grade your Recruiting Staff: Assuming you've
   already reduced your roster of contract recruiters, go through a
   performance-based ranking of those remaining, with career development
   as an outcome, (and preparation for further staff reduction if needed).


6. Build a Talent Pool Pipeline: Assess your past "hardest to fill" position, and launch a branding
   outreach campaign to candidates for future consideration. Be very clear
   about any available openings, and work from a perspective of building a
   "friends of (our company)" that you want to stay in touch with.
   Newsletters can be perfect for this.


7. Train the Hiring Managers: This is something we
   often never had the time to do, but certainly do now. There are some
   great programs available in the market - or better yet, create your own.


8. Re-skilling: While you're in training mode, what
   could you deliver internally to your own recruiting staff to better
   equip them for when the market picks up and the "war for talent"
   resumes? Do they need refreshers on the latest Internet recruiting
   techniques, or using social networking tools in recruiting? There are
   some great resources offered right here on the ERE website, or you may
   even have a resident guru on your own staff.


9. Internal Process Analysis: When was the last time
   you sat back and closely examined the actual workflow in your
   recruiting operation? Most any analysis will turn up innumerable
   inefficient practices, roadblocks, and artifacts of "the way we always
   did it." This is a great time, during low volume recruiting, to
   experiment with new ideas and even some best practices you "borrow"
   from other firms.


10. Technology Upgrade: It may be a little tough to
    get resources approved for an upgraded applicant tracking system, but
    when was the last time you shopped the market? As the competition and
    functionality has grown, prices in many cases have come down, and if
    you "upgrade" to a less expensive system, you're the hero! This also
    applies to your firm's recruiting website, which most of us will admit is often out of date.


11. Special Project Work: Thinking outside the walls
    of recruiting, what special projects may be in need of some of the
    skills your recruiters can bring to the table? HR has many cyclical
    programs that roll out throughout the year, such as newsletter
    releases, career/succession planning, etc. that may lend themselves
    well to the recruiter's skill set.


12. Assist HR in Core Services: Recruiters often have
    two key ingredients that could add value in assisting with employee
    relations issues (which often escalate during a downturn). Many of them
    will have previous experience in many aspects of the "HR Generalist"
    role, and all of them have pre-existing relationships with many of your
    employees - because they hired them!